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Bible Quotations For Today
Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 18/01-05/"At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? ’He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me."

In the case of an athlete, no one is crowned without competing according to the rules
Second Letter to Timothy 02/01-13: "Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus; and what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well. Share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs; the soldier’s aim is to please the enlisting officer. And in the case of an athlete, no one is crowned without competing according to the rules. It is the farmer who does the work who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in all things. Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David that is my gospel, for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself.

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on january 19-20/16
In Surprise Move, Bitter Political Rivals in Lebanon Announce Deal/By ANNE BARNARDJAN/New York Times/January 19/16
Aoun-Geagea/Words are seldom enough/The Daily Star/January 19/16
Aoun-Geagea Questionable demagogue deal/A narrative that doesn't cut anymore/Tom Harb/January 19/16
Geagea and Aoun: The Hezbollah's Petains/By:Tom Harb/January 19/16
Is Aoun-Geagea alliance more about increasing Christian clout than presidency/Josh Wood/The National/January 19/16
Will the “historic reconciliation”end the presidential vacuum/Myra Abdallah/Now Lebanon/January 19/16
Why Israel is keeping a close eye on Iran’s parliamentary elections/Ben Caspit/Al-Monitor/January 19/16
How one Coptic woman made Egyptian parliamentary history/George Mikhail/Al-Monitor/January 19/16
Former Israeli minister calls removal of Iran sanctions a 'black day'/Mazal Mualem/Al-Monitor/January 19/16
Gambles that lie behind the Iran nuclear deal/Dr. John C. Hulsman/Al Arabiya/January 19/16
The creation of nightmares in Saudi Arabia/Jamal Khashoggi/Al Arabiya/January 19/16
Syria peace efforts haunted by 2014 Geneva talks/Brooklyn Middleton/Al Arabiya/January 19/16
The Islamization of France in 2015“We are in a war against jihadist terrorism that threatens the entire world”/Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute./January 19, 2016
The Fourth Industrial Revolution/Klaus Schwab/Al Arabiya/January 19/16
What has the U.S. 'leading the world from behind' achieved/Raghida Dergham/Al Arabiya/January 19/16

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin for Lebanese Related News published on january 19-20.16.htm
Israel's Military Chief: Iran Sanctions Relief Means more Funds for Hizbullah
Mustaqbal 'Relieved' by 'Maarab Reconciliation': Final Say Belongs to Parliament
Aoun's Bloc Says Geagea's Move Aims to Unify 'All Lebanese, Not Only Christians'
Bkirki Says 'True Intentions' will Begin Appearing after Geagea-Aoun Deal
Bassil Meets Berri, Hopes Aoun's Nomination by Geagea Will Speed up Election of President
Geagea Says Aoun has High Chances, Holds onto Ties with Hariri
Khalil Meets Gemayel: We Hope All Ministers Will Be Present at Next Cabinet Meeting
Report: Berri Backs Franjieh Despite Geagea's Support for Aoun
Mustaqbal Officials Meet with Hariri after Geagea's Support for Aoun
In Surprise Move, Bitter Political Rivals in Lebanon Announce Deal
Aoun-Geagea/Words are seldom enough
Aoun-Geagea Questionable demagogue deal/A narrative that doesn't cut anymore...
Geagea and Aoun: The Hezbollah's Petains
Is Aoun-Geagea alliance more about increasing Christian clout than presidency?
Will the “historic reconciliation”end the presidential vacuum?

Israel's Military Chief: Iran Sanctions Relief Means more Funds for Hizbullah
Naharnet/January 19/16/Israel's military chief has said that the Iranian nuclear deal and the lifting of sanctions that followed present Israel with "grave dangers,” adding that Tehran's funding for Hizbullah will increase notably in the coming years. Iran’s “advanced military industry” will develop further, and its transfer of funds to Hizbullah, which has so far stood at around a billion dollar a year, will increase, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said Monday. Iran’s proxy regional activities will pose an increased risk around Israel in the immediate future, he said. “Iran is fighting a proxy war against Israel. Hizbullah is the most severe threat to Israel. Since 2006, it has been armed, funded, and even led by the Iranians,” he added. Eisenkot spoke at the Ninth Annual International Conference held by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a top Israeli think-tank, in Tel Aviv. Hizbullah remains the Israeli army's “No. 1 enemy,” Eisenkot told the conference, accusing the party of challenging Israel’s aerial and intelligence superiority through its conversion of 240 Shiite towns and villages in southern Lebanon into rocket assault bases. But he stressed that “Hizbullah understands the implications of an escalation in Lebanon.”

Mustaqbal 'Relieved' by 'Maarab Reconciliation': Final Say Belongs to Parliament
Naharnet/January 19/16/Al-Mustaqbal parliamentary bloc expressed its “relief” Tuesday over what it described as “the reconciliation that occurred in Maarab yesterday between the Lebanese Forces and the Free Patriotic Movement,” a day after LF chief Samir Geagea declared his support for FPM leader MP Michel Aoun's presidential bid. “The bloc is following up on the developments related to ending the vacancy of the presidential post and it discussed the LF's declaration of support for General Michel Aoun's candidacy and (ex-)minister Suleiman Franjieh's announcement that he will maintain his own presidential nomination,” said Mustaqbal in a statement issued after its weekly meeting. “The bloc stresses the importance of holding the elections in order to end the presidential void, emphasizing its commitment to (ex-)PM Saad Hariri's directions in this regard,” it added. Mustaqbal, however, underlined that “the final say in this regard belongs to parliament, in line with the democratic system and the Constitution.” Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the term of Michel Suleiman ended without the election of successor. Mustaqbal Movement leader Hariri launched late in 2015 a proposal to nominate Franjieh as president. Geagea, Hariri's ally in the March 14 camp, was a presidential nominee at the time and observers have said that the LF leader's nomination of Aoun is a reaction to Hariri's proposal. Geagea noted Monday, however, that his move is not “impulsive or spontaneous” but one that is rather based on “deep reflection.”

Aoun's Bloc Says Geagea's Move Aims to Unify 'All Lebanese, Not Only Christians'
Naharnet/January 19/16/The Change and Reform parliamentary bloc stressed Tuesday that Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea's nomination of bloc chief MP Michel Aoun for the presidency is aimed at unifying “all Lebanese, not only Christians,” noting that agreements that “transcend political agreements” are possible in this regard. “The Change and Reform bloc has lauded LF leader Samir Geagea's nomination of MP Michel Aoun,” bloc secretary MP Ibrahim Kanaan announced after Change and Reform's weekly meeting in Rabieh. “This step is a glimpse of hope seeking to unify all Lebanese, not only Christians, with the aim of reaching a national solution that saves the republic,” he added. Kanaan noted that the election of a president must be based on “filling the vacuum through a broad Lebanese will.”“We are seeking communication and understanding with everyone,” he underlined. “We are capable of reaching agreements that transcend political alignments and Geagea's initiative respects the National Pact,” Kanaan emphasized. He also stressed the bloc's “keenness on Lebanon's good relations with all Arab countries,” pointing out that “the principle of non-interference in the affairs of Arab countries is an essential policy that protects Lebanon.”Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the term of Michel Suleiman ended without the election of successor. Al-Mustaqbal movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri launched late in 2015 a proposal to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh as president. Geagea, Hariri's ally in the March 14 camp, was a presidential nominee at the time and observers have said that the LF leader's nomination of Aoun is a reaction to Hariri's proposal. Geagea noted Monday, however, that his move is not “impulsive or spontaneous” but one that is rather based on “deep reflection.”

Bkirki Says 'True Intentions' will Begin Appearing after Geagea-Aoun Deal
Naharnet/January 19/16/Maronite Bishop Boulos Sayah has said that Bkirki was awaiting the reaction of the Lebanese factions from Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea's endorsement of the candidacy of Change and Reform bloc chief MP Michel Aoun. “We are waiting to see following this move how the rest of the partners in the nation, who used to say that the ball is in the court of Christians, would react,” Sayah told al-Joumhouria daily published on Tuesday. “The Christians agreed. Now their (the other factions) true intentions will be revealed,” he said. “We had been waiting for this moment for a long time,” said Sayah. “Bkirki demands Christian unity and backs all steps that lead to rapprochement and the election of a president,” he added. On Monday, Geagea pulled out from the presidential race and endorsed the candidacy of his long-time rival in the latest political maneuvering aimed at resolving Lebanon's 20-month political deadlock. Geagea's withdrawal was touted as an attempt to close ranks and unite Lebanon's Christians. But Marada chief Suleiman Franjieh, another top Christian leader, stressed that he would stay in the presidential race. The Kataeb, another top Christian party, is expected to announce its stance from Geagea's support for Aoun on Wednesday.

Bassil Meets Berri, Hopes Aoun's Nomination by Geagea Will Speed up Election of President
Naharnet/January 19/16/Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil described on Tuesday Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea's nomination of Change and Reform bloc chief MP Michel Aoun as president as a “breakthrough” in Lebanon. He remarked after holding talks with Speaker Nabih Berri: “We are witnessing a breakthrough, which we hope will speed up the election of a president and we hope our allies will support us.”“We hope that all sides will take advantage of this breakthrough,” he told reporters at Berri's Ain el-Tineh residence. “The nomination will help us resolve disputes,” hoped the minister. Geagea announced on Monday his nomination of his old rival Aoun for the presidency, ending weeks of speculation on the matter. Observers saw the nomination as a response to Mustaqbal Movement leader MP Saad Hariri's nomination of Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh as president. Geagea was a presidential candidate of the March 14 camp, which Hariri is a member of. Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the term of Michel Suleiman ended without the election of a successor. Numerous electoral sessions were scheduled, all but one were held due to a lack of quorum at parliament over the dispute over a consensual nominee.

Geagea Says Aoun has High Chances, Holds onto Ties with Hariri
Naharnet/January 19/16/Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea said Tuesday that Change and Reform bloc leader MP Michel Aoun has higher chances to be elected president, a day after he endorsed the candidacy of his long-time rival. Following talks with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi in Bkirki, Geagea reiterated his call on parliamentary blocs to take the appropriate stance and hold the presidential elections as soon as possible. “I don't think that the Kataeb party would take a negative stance from the unity” between the LF and the FPM, said Geagea in response to a question. “There is no reason to have negative reactions to my endorsement” of Aoun, who is the founder of the Free Patriotic Movement, he said. The Kataeb is expected to announce its position from Geagea's support to Aoun for the presidency on Wednesday. Geagea also said his ties with al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri have not changed. “What brings us together with Hariri and al-Mustaqbal Movement is bigger than any other political development,” he said. Al-Mustaqbal bloc is expected to announce its stance from the LF-FPM attempt to unite Christians through Aoun's candidacy later Tuesday. “We will reach common ground” with al-Mustaqbal, said Geagea. Lebanon's top post has been vacant since May 2014 as Lebanese politicians failed to agree on a consensus president. Aoun and Geagea were angered along with other Christian politicians late last year when Hariri nominated Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for president without consulting them.

Khalil Meets Gemayel: We Hope All Ministers Will Be Present at Next Cabinet Meeting
Naharnet/January 19/16/Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil noted on Tuesday that Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea's nomination of long-time rival Change and Reform bloc chief MP Michel Aoun for the presidency “has created a new dynamic in the country.”He hoped that the breakthrough would help revive the work of the cabinet. “We are keen on seeing all members of the cabinet present during its upcoming session,” said the minister after holding talks with Kataeb chief MP Sami Gemayel. “The economy will be revived with a president and functioning cabinet and parliament,” he added. “We will study the new factors that emerged in the presidential file,” stated Khalil. Geagea announced on Monday his nomination of his old rival Aoun for the presidency, ending weeks of speculation on the matter. Observers saw the nomination as a response to Mustaqbal Movement leader MP Saad Hariri's nomination of Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh as president. Geagea was a presidential candidate of the March 14 camp, which Hariri is a member of. Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the term of Michel Suleiman ended without the election of a successor. Numerous electoral sessions were scheduled, all but one were held due to a lack of quorum at parliament over the dispute over a consensual nominee. The vacuum in the presidency has weighed heavily on the operation of the parliament and government.

Report: Berri Backs Franjieh Despite Geagea's Support for Aoun
Naharnet/January 19/16/Speaker Nabih Berri has stressed that he backed the candidacy of Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh despite the Lebanese Forces endorsement of Change and Reform bloc chief lawmaker Michel Aoun for the presidency, al-Akhbar daily reported Tuesday. Sources close to Berri told the newspaper that the speaker will not announce his official stance before carefully studying the latest deal struck between LF chief Samir Geagea and Aoun. On Monday, Geagea pulled out of the presidential race in favor of Aoun in an attempt to close Christian ranks and resolve the country's 20-month political deadlock. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014. The sources said that Berri backs Franjieh and that his ally Hizbullah would not change his stance. The speaker said last week that he gave the MPs of his bloc the freedom to chose the candidate they wanted if Geagea backed Aoun and al-Mustaqbal Movement chief Saad Hariri continued to back Marada leader MP Suleiman Franjieh. Hariri nominated Franjieh for president last month without consulting Geagea, who is his ally in the March 14 alliance. The move angered both Geagea and Aoun, who is Franjieh's ally in the March 8 coalition.

Mustaqbal Officials Meet with Hariri after Geagea's Support for Aoun
Naharnet/January 19/16/Al-Mustaqbal Movement officials were in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to hold talks with former Prime Minister Saad Hariri following the Lebanese Forces backing for Change and Reform bloc chief MP Michel Aoun for the presidency. Several newspapers said that a delegation from al-Mustaqbal traveled to Riyadh on Monday night. The movement that is led by Hariri is expected to announce its stance from LF chief Samir Geagea's endorsement of Aoun's candidacy following the weekly meeting of its parliamentary bloc on Tuesday. Geagea’s backing for Aoun, his rival, is aimed at undermining the chances of Marada leader MP Suleiman Franjieh to reach the country's top Christian post. In a surprise move late last year, Hariri and Franjieh struck a deal following talks in Paris for the Mustaqbal leader to back the Marada chief for the presidency in return for Hariri to become prime minister. Franjieh said following a visit to Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Monday night that he would stay in the presidential race. High-ranking officials in al-Mustaqbal told al-Joumhouria newspaper that Geagea's support for Aoun “does not target us.”They said the movement will study its next move following the new development on the presidential file. Baabda Palace has been vacant since May 2014.

In Surprise Move, Bitter Political Rivals in Lebanon Announce Deal
By ANNE BARNARDJAN. 18, 2016/New York Times
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Two of Lebanon’s most prominent Christian politicians — one a crucial political ally of Hezbollah, the other its longtime foe — struck a surprise agreement on Monday that could help end the standoff that has left the country without a president for nearly two years.
In the deal, Samir Geagea, the leader of the Lebanese Forces party, threw his support behind the presidential candidacy of his lifelong rival, Michel Aoun, whose Free Patriotic Movement is Hezbollah’s main Christian ally in Parliament.
It was a remarkable development even in the context of Lebanon’s constantly churning politics. The two men are bitter adversaries. Their militias fought bloody battles during Lebanon’s civil war a quarter-century ago, and they have been on opposite sides over the most radioactive issues in Lebanon: Israel and the war in Syria. If the deal sticks, Mr. Geagea’s move could throw the political alignments of the last decade into turmoil and strike a blow at Saad Hariri, the leader of the Future Movement, which is the largest Sunni party and the main political rival of Hezbollah, the most powerful Shiite organization.
Mr. Geagea’s party is the Future Movement’s largest Christian ally in the parliamentary bloc known as March 14. That bloc was formed to oppose the domination of Lebanon by Hezbollah’s ally, neighboring Syria, after the assassination of Mr. Hariri’s father, the former prime minister Rafik Hariri.
By siding with Mr. Aoun, long seen as Hezbollah’s candidate, Mr. Geagea is throwing into question the future of March 14 at a volatile time for the bloc.
Future is aligned with Saudi Arabia, and Hezbollah with Iran, and the relations between those regional powers are tenser than ever. Future also was an early and vociferous supporter of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, while Mr. Aoun sided with Hezbollah in supporting the government, which the Shiite militia is now aiding with thousands of fighters.
There was no immediate comment from Mr. Hariri, whose political standing has been under increasing strain. He remains largely in exile, while Future risks losing traction among young Lebanese Sunnis tempted by more militant groups, and Christians worry about rising radicalism in neighboring Syria.
The deal will not be final until approved by Parliament in the coming weeks, and many obstacles could still arise.
Some analysts speculated that Mr. Geagea’s move could be an attempt to better position himself for the presidency, or to get back at Mr. Hariri, who angered Mr. Geagea recently with his own surprising alliance. Mr. Hariri proposed a deal that would make him prime minister and install as president Suleiman Frangieh, a close friend of Mr. Assad and a rival of Mr. Geagea.
Mr. Geagea’s Lebanese Forces militia was Israel’s main proxy during the civil war and carried out the infamous massacre in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in 1982. He is the only one of Lebanon’s major political leaders to have served time in prison for war crimes, although all sides, including Mr. Aoun’s forces, took part in atrocities.
The Christian parties hold the key to the presidency because Lebanon’s political system allocates power according to sect. The president must be a Maronite, from the country’s largest Christian denomination. But the candidate must be approved by Parliament, so he must have the backing of larger Muslim parties.
Deep divisions over the Syrian conflict, how to deal with more than one million Syrian refugees in the country and the dividing of political spoils have left the country with a presidential vacuum that has ground many government functions, shaky at the best of times, to a halt.
Citizens have long put up with rickety electrical and water systems — and widespread corruption. The latest indignity, a garbage collection crisis, has left trash piles accumulating alongside highways. Announcing his endorsement of Mr. Aoun, Mr. Geagea said he hoped the initiative would “move the country out of the current phase it is in to one that is better,” a goal that arguably sets the bar low.
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on January 19, 2016, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: In Surprise Move, Bitter Political Rivals in Lebanon Announce Deal. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

Aoun-Geagea/Words are seldom enough
The Daily Star/Jan. 19, 2016
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea’s endorsement of Free Patriotic Movement chief Michel Aoun as president Monday was a milestone on two levels: one for Christians, the other Lebanese in general.
The good news is that any agreement between two once implacable foes is a move that should be commended, regardless of who they are. And former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s initiative backing Sleiman Frangieh for the presidency was the first step in the direction that this entente is heading.
Monday’s event was an awakening for Lebanon’s Christians, a community whose divisions have threatened its clout, power and influence in Lebanon’s political scene. Geagea and Aoun’s coming together will go a long way toward healing the rifts that keep the community apart.
But although the presidency is reserved for Maronite Christians, whoever takes the role must remember that they represent all the nation’s sects, people and political parties. All of these segments will need to be on board for a candidate to fill the presidency.
And it is worth noting that the election of Lebanon’s president has seldom been a solely Lebanese affair – something to keep in mind while the region is so volatile and divided.
Many of the concerns Geagea raised while endorsing Aoun will ring true for many Lebanese. The implementation of these, however, is far from easy and clear, and only consensus can lead us there.
Indeed, Aoun’s presidency is far from confirmed, and though this endorsement greatly fosters his chances, only Parliament has the power to vote him in.
Only the coming days will show if this body, which represents all Lebanese society and sects, can agree on the LF and FPM leaders’ vision of Lebanon’s future.

Aoun-Geagea Questionable demagogue deal/A narrative that doesn't cut anymore...
Tom Harb/January 19/16
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/01/19/aoun-geagea-questionable-demagogue-deala-narrative-that-doesnt-cut-anymore/
Over the years every time Lebanese Christian politicians or leaders wanted to cut a bad deal, start a retreat, or do something bad for the nation but good for their own advancement, they would start using an empty rhetoric and emotional narrative. In 1985 Elias Hobeika told the Christians he is going to Damascus to defend their rights. Samir Geagea removed him in 1986 stating that Hobeika was selling out. In 1989, Dr Geagea signed on the Taef agreement saying this was good for the Lebanese Christians. General Aoun opposed Taef because it gave power to Assad and Hezbollah. Aoun was removed by the Syrians and Geagea and the last said he knew what he was doing was for the sake of the Christians. In 2005 Lebanese Christian politicians allied with Hezbollah because this was as they said, good for the Christians. In 2006 Aoun signed an agreement with Hezbollah saying this was in the interest of the Christians In 2008, all these politicians went to Doha and said this was in the interest of the Christians. Now Geagea is saying voting for Aoun is in the interest of the Christians.
In past years this narrative used to work with simple good hearted citizens in Lebanon and the Diaspora. Not anymore today. The spokesmen and bloggers of the Lebanese Christians politicians are trying to impress the public by declaring that Geagea knows international politics very well and he is acting with intelligence. What the public knows now, thanks to social media is that Geagea or Aoun do not understand international politics but try to position themselves, not their community, where they can survive and thrive, not their community to take advantage of the region's changes. Now they are moving to hide under the umbrella of the Iran deal, a generous umbrella which they will stay under until they find out the next stage.
But people know more than ever before. The Aoun candidacy is not a unifying factor for the Lebanese Christians. And partnering with Hezbollah is contrary to the interest of the Lebanese Christians. Aoun and Geagea can maybe convince their own partisans, but not the majority of Lebanese. Some politicians who are rushing to obtain slices from the big cake, are parroting the same arguments to calm the public. It is not working and it won't work anymore. The Aoun Geagea partnership with Hezbollah cannot be hidden under words such as: we know better, trust us, let's act in the interest of the nation. We heard these words before and 25 years later, it led to disasters. We won't allow a new disaster without exposing it. It won't be an easy promenade for anyone who wants to fool the public anymore.

Geagea and Aoun: The Hezbollah's Petains
By:Tom Harb/January 19/16
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/01/18/tom-harbgeagea-and-aoun-the-hezbollahs-petains/
After being responsible for a devastating civil war among Christians in 1990, which they have never faced responsibility for, and which has led to 15 years of Syrian occupation and 10 years of Hezbollah terror. After having blocked any liberation of Lebanon by the Cedars Revolution, after having entered in coalition with Hezbollah in 2005, 2006 and having endorsed Hezbollah's invasion in 2008. After having been sitting on the necks of the Lebanese Christians for 30 years, wasting time with their endless disputes, calculating their political gains over the people's national interest, Samir Geagea and Michel Aoun finally ended up where they should have been from the beginning: together, in failures and mediocrity. They have united the Christians? Absolutely not. They have united their own political interests. They have contained Hezbollah? Absolutely not, they have been contained like sheep by Hezbollah and Iran. Aoun is in Iran's pocket, and Geagea is now in support of Aoun, entering Iran's other pocket. Hezbollah won the game. If the choice is between Frangieh and Aoun, what kind of a choice is that? Between the ally of Nasrallah and the ally of Assad? Aoun's partisans are delighted to have Geagea support their boss, who is Nasrallah's man. Geagea's men are running around telling the Christians, our boss is intelligent, he knows what he is doing. That's the best way to get out of it. Out of what? Out of the pit that both Geagea and Aoun have thrown the Christians in since 1990 and again after 2005. This is no intelligence, this is cold calculations on behalf of politicians to secure political office and political survival. The difference with the 1990s and the 1980s, Dr Geagea and General Aoun, and today, is that people aren't dumb, aren't uninformed and have ways to communicate and expose political opportunism and corruption. You have betrayed the trust of the Christian people in you. For your past battles against the Syrians are now erased from your credit. Like Petain, a hero of France during WWI and a collaborator with the Nazis during WWII, you have become the Petains of 2016. Aoun at the Presidency? Good luck. Geagea winning seats at the cabinet and being received by Rouhani in Tehran. Good luck. You can go far after becoming Hezbollah's Petains. But one place you aren't going back to: The hearts of a majority of Lebanese and of the Christian people of Lebanon. And you will see it by yourselves, soon.

Is Aoun-Geagea alliance more about increasing Christian clout than presidency?
Josh Wood/The National/January 19/16
BEIRUT // At a heavily-fortified compound in the hills north of Beirut, Lebanon’s two most powerful Christian politicians sat down for what was an unlikely meeting. During Lebanon’s civil war, the former warlords’ forces had fought long, bitter battles against one another, laying waste to the Christian corners of the country. And this enmity continued long after the war and through to the present – their power struggles moving away from sandbagged front lines and into politics, each has long eyed the presidency. One man is an ally of Hizbollah, while the other has vowed to oppose the powerful Shiite movement and other vestiges of Syrian power in Lebanon. But on Monday, Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese Forces, invited Gen Michel Aoun to his mountaintop headquarters to announce that he was backing his adversary to become Lebanon’s next president. By an unwritten agreement made in 1943, Lebanon’s president is always a Maronite Christian, its prime minister a Sunni and its parliamentary speaker a Shiite. However, largely thanks to a boycott of parliamentary votes by Gen Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement and its allies, Lebanon has now been without a president for 20 months. In the face of this political stagnation, Mr Geagea defended his move as necessary to keep the country from collapse. But his newfound friendship with Hizbollah ally Gen Aoun may mark something else: an attempt by Lebanon’s Christian parties to refocus power away from the Shiite and Sunni groups that have monopolised political clout here. “Definitely they are in need of one another to close ranks and present a united Christian front to balance out the Shiite and Sunni political power base,” said Imad Salamey, a professor of political science at Beirut’s Lebanese American University. “They sense that unless they come together, they will become politically irrelevant. And by coming together now, they could have a significant say in the presidency.” While there is plenty that still divides Gen Aoun and Mr Geagea, a plan to end the country’s political vacuum proposed late last year by Saad Hariri — leader of the Sunni-backed Future Movement and the anti-Syria “March 14” political coalition – provided the rivals with common ground. The plan would install Sleiman Franjieh, a personal friend of Syrian president Bashar Al Assad, as president and return Mr Hariri to the post of prime minister. Both Gen Aoun and Mr Geagea opposed the plan, which would sideline the two men and end their own presidential ambitions.
While Gen Aoun’s participation in the pro-Syria “March 8” alliance is often seen as a marriage of convenience – in 1989 his forces launched a “War of Liberation” against Syrian troops in Lebanon and after the war he lived in exile until Syrian troops withdrew from the country in 2005 – Mr Franjieh’s support for Syria is seen as more sincere and heartfelt. The rapprochement between Gen Aoun and Mr Geagea, and any effort to consolidate Christian power, could cause fissures in Lebanon’s pro and anti-Syria political blocs and potentially redraw the map of the political landscape here.
“March 8 and March 14, they will remain. However they wouldn’t be as consolidated and as coherent as they have been,” said Mr Salamey. Invoking the name of a series of bloody battles between Mr Aoun and Mr Geagea’s forces 26 years ago, Mohammad Machnouk, a member of the Future Movement and Lebanon’s minister of environment, tweeted that Mr Geagea’s move marked a “war of elimination” between Mr Hariri and Mr Geagea.
“We hope that this war will not remove our hope of electing a president in the near future,” he said. Mr Hariri has not yet responded to Mr Geagea’s move. As Mr Hariri’s strongest ally, the future of the March 14 coalition could be in jeopardy if Mr Geagea’s shift causes a rift between the two men.
On paper, Gen Aoun should now have enough votes to secure the presidency when parliament next meets for an election. But Lebanon’s speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, said he will not convene parliament for a vote unless he has guarantees that all of the main sectarian parties agree to attend, meaning that more consensus-building would need to be done before Gen Aoun could become president. “I think the jury’s still out,” said Kamel Wazne, political analyst and founder of the Centre for American Strategic Studies in Beirut. “He has a good chance, but he hasn’t reached the point where we can declare him a winner.” For Mr Salamey the move is more about giving Gen Aoun and Mr Geagea influence over the presidency — and giving Christians a greater say in Lebanese politics — than installing Gen Aoun as president. “I highly doubt that an alliance between Aoun and Geagea will ultimately lead to Aoun becoming president ... the opposition to Aoun being president is, I think, overwhelming,” he said. “However this alliance will make sure that any president will have to have the approval of these [two] figures. I think this is the bottom line.”
foreign.desk@thenational.ae

Will the “historic reconciliation”end the presidential vacuum?
Myra Abdallah/Now Lebanon/January 19/16
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea nominated former head of Free Patriotic Movement Michel Aoun for presidency yesterday, during a joint press conference in Maarab, the Lebanese Forces headquarters. After nearly 30 years of conflict and communication breakdowns, the two Christian leaders united their efforts to find a common ground and announced their cooperation to end the presidential deadlock. The reconciliation between Geagea and Aoun was seen as a “historical” alliance, especially after the cruel battles that took place between the two Christian leaders during the Lebanese civil war; clashes that have been deeply imprinted in the collective memory of many Lebanese people.
“It’s a very important step forward on a national level, especially after the historically extended conflict between Aoun and Geagea,” said analyst Kassem Kassir. “It’s a strategy to reshuffle the deck, especially after Hariri’s nomination of Frangieh.” Last month, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri decided to nominate head of the Marada Movement Suleiman Frangieh for the presidency. Frangieh’s nomination was opposed by a number of March 14 officials, including Geagea, especially since Frangieh is known for his close relations with the Syrian regime and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. However, a Lebanese Forces source NOW previously spoke to confirmed that Geagea’s nomination of Aoun is not a reaction to Frangieh’s nomination, but a result of the dialogue that has been going on for nearly a year between the two Christian parties.
“What happened is related to the power dynamics between Christian officials,” analyst and director of the Lebanese Center for policy studies Karam Karam told NOW. “The position of Christians in power, the 25 year experience between Aoun and Geagea and the regional developments – especially the position of minorities in the region - accelerated the reconciliation.”
Being supported by his Christian rival Geagea, who was a presidential candidate too, Aoun will definitely have a higher chance of becoming president. Although Frangieh’s withdrawal was a probable scenario, after the Maarab press conference, Frangieh confirmed his determination to remain a presidential candidate, restricting the presidential competition to him and Aoun. “The nomination of Michel Aoun by the Lebanese Forces won’t change anything in the status-quo,” said analyst Rashed Fayed. “From one side, Aoun said that he won’t participate in the presidential elections unless he was the only candidate and Frangieh has not withdrawn his candidacy so far; and from the other side, Hezbollah doesn’t seem to be accepting the nomination. Hezbollah’s MPs and ministers did not make any statement regarding the nomination. The question is whether Tehran will benefit from the election of a Lebanese president now.”
Hezbollah has long been accused by political analysts and March 14 politicians to prefer the presidential vacuum over any president. But, Michel Aoun has always been Hezbollah’s number one candidate, even after Hariri nominated Frangieh. However, to date, Hezbollah officials did not make any statement or comment on Aoun’s nomination by the LF. Kassir told NOW that Hezbollah officials, whom he privately spoke with, confirmed their support for Aoun and considered his nomination by the LF a positive step forward. However, even with the LF and Hezbollah’s support, Aoun can’t win the presidential elections unless other political blocs support him too. “To know if Aoun has more chances than Frangieh to become president, we have to wait for the official political statements of [Nabih] Berri and Walid Jumblatt’s blocs. However, if Hezbollah decided that it is time to elect a president, it will pressure Berri and Jumblatt to elect the candidate the party decides on,” Fayed told NOW.
The electoral law was one of the important topics discussed during the official statement. A new electoral law is definitely needed in Lebanon; yet, politicians were unable to agree on a new law that is in the interest of all Lebanese people. The electoral law was mentioned during the press conference; however, the statement did not specify which electoral law they will be working on implementing. “The old [electoral] law does not give the Christians a good representation and this is a major problem. Therefore, the electoral law was an important part of the press release since this law is what will form the political power in the future,” said Kassir.
“The new alliance might not be successful in electing a president. It only changed the rules of the competition but it did not facilitate the election of a president. The same goes for the electoral law. To be able to establish a new electoral law, political sides in Lebanon need to set serious dialogues and establish serious alliances between them in order to agree on a new law. However, the alliance will facilitate the dialogue that might lead to a new electoral law,” said Karam.
The political scene in Lebanon gained a new identity. The fact that Geagea nominated Aoun for the presidency broke the old alliances, known as March 8 and March 14. Geagea and Aoun, both being Christian, gave the current political alignments a more sectarian aspect. “This reconciliation should be completed by communications with other political parties to avoid another type of alignment. If Aoun and Geagea’s reconciliation was completed by the fact that Hezbollah joins the alliance to support Aoun, the realignment won’t be sectarian anymore,” Kassir told NOW.
“After this alliance, the Christians are not on both sides anymore. The old realignment of March 8 and March 14 has ceased to exist,” said Fayed.
Myra Abdallah tweets @myraabdallah

Doctors Without Borders raps attempts to deter migrants
By AP Brussels Tuesday, 19 January 2016/The aid group Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday attempts by various European Union nations to deter migrants have put thousands of people in danger and created more business for smugglers. In a report, it said border closures and tougher policing only encourage people seeking sanctuary or jobs to use other routes to get to Europe. MSF’s head of operations, Brice de le Vingne, said “policies of deterrence, along with their chaotic response to the humanitarian needs of those who flee, actively worsened the conditions of thousands of vulnerable men, women and children.”The group urged the EU to create more legal ways to come to Europe and allow asylum applications at the land border between Turkey and Greece. More than 1 million migrants arrived in the EU last year, however they have not always been welcomed. Dutch police said Tuesday they arrested three protesters the previous night at a demonstration against a town’s plan to build a center for asylum-seekers. Riot police cleared a central square in the town of Heesch after demonstrators began throwing eggs and fireworks at officers. Police say there were no injuries. The demonstrators were protesting plans, not yet been formally approved, to build a center for 500 asylum-seekers in Heesch, a village of some 13,000 inhabitants 100 kilometers (62 miles) southeast of Amsterdam. Last week, someone hung a pig’s carcass from a tree near the proposed location. Meanwhile, the European Union’s top migration official says so-called “hotspots” should be up and running in Greece and Italy within a month in an effort to better control how migrants flow into the bloc and conduct early security checks on them. The hotspots intended to register new arrivals, take fingerprints and other data, and perform background checks. Those with no chance of asylum would quickly be sent home, while others would be more evenly distributed among EU nations. Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos was quoted by Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Tuesday as saying he sees no immediate end to the flood of asylum seekers and that it’s critical to get hotspots running quickly.

French prosecutors won't seek charges in deadly 2004 plane crash
AFP, Bobigny, France Tuesday, 19 January 2016/French prosecutors announced Monday they will not seek charges in the deadly 2004 crash of a Paris-bound airliner in Egypt, citing overwhelming evidence of human error. The Boeing 737 carrying mainly French tourists plunged into the Red Sea after taking off from the resort Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 148 people on board the low-cost Flash Airlines flight. In a press statement prosecutors pointed to "numerous failures" including "rapid analysis resulting in bad decisions" in the January 3, 2004 crash. The evidence "does not allow for any other hypothesis than one attributable to the errors of the flight team," prosecutors said, adding the probe is now closed because the pilots died in the crash. Victims' families were outraged by the prosecutors' decision over the probe into the crash that killed 134 French people. "All the mistakes are on the pilots, who are no longer here. How handy!" said Claude Fouchard, president of the association of victims' families. "However there are people out there who were at fault," he told AFP, singling out Flash Airlines "which flew lousy planes with inept, extremely tired crews." The airline was liquidated over 10 years ago, but its former president is still alive, said Jean-Pierre Bellecave, a lawyer for the families. He noted the president could have at least been questioned in case. "My clients are now asking: 'After all these years, who will take revenge for us.'" Experts investigating the crash pointed out in a 2009 report that the pilots aboard were inadequately trained and suffering from fatigue due to their intense working hours in the two weeks leading up to the accident. Flash airlines did not even have the necessary flight manuals, the experts found. France's aviation authority, the BEA, also blamed the pilot, a former military member, who suffered from "spatial disorientation." The families hired their own experts who concluded in a June 2007 report that assigned blame to numerous players in the tragedy, including France's air traffic civil aviation authority DGAC for not grounding the airline's planes. The investigating magistrate in the case has a month to decide if anyone will stand trial in the case.

Khamenei Welcomes Lifting of Sanctions, Warns against U.S. 'Deceit'
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 19/16/Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Tuesday against American "deceit" after Tehran finalized a landmark nuclear deal with world powers led by the United States. In his first comments since the agreement was implemented, Khamenei stressed in a letter to President Hassan Rouhani the need to "guard against deceit and violations of arrogant states particularly the United States." The supreme leader, who had the final say on Tehran's nuclear negotiations, welcomed the lifting of sanctions under the deal, but said that was "not enough for boosting the economy and improving people's lives", according to the letter published by the IRNA news agency. Rouhani wrote to Khamenei on Monday to provide an update after the U.N. atomic watchdog declared that Iran had met conditions stipulated in the nuclear deal. "We have to watch if the other parties fulfill their commitments," the supreme leader wrote in response. Washington cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 1979, when its embassy in Tehran was stormed by students, months after the Islamic revolution, leading to a 444-day hostage crisis. Khamenei has never endorsed repairing relations with the US and has largely followed a similar tack to Iran's late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who dubbed America the "Great Satan". The nuclear deal saw an end to years of painful economic sanctions on Iran but Washington on Sunday announced new financial measures against Tehran's ballistic missile program. Tehran decried the new measures as "illegitimate."

Saudi Accuses Iran of Sowing 'Sedition, Unrest, Chaos'
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 19/16/Saudi Arabia on Tuesday accused Iran of a nearly four-decade record of "sedition, unrest and chaos," as the international community tried to calm tensions between the regional rivals. "Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, Iran has established a record of spreading sedition, unrest and chaos in the region," the Saudi Press Agency quoted an unnamed senior foreign ministry official as saying. "During the same period, the kingdom has maintained a policy of restraint in spite of having suffered -- as have neighboring countries -- the consequences of Iran's continued aggressive policies."The official said Iranian policy was based primarily on the idea of exporting revolution. "Iran recruits militias in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen", the official said, further accusing Iran of supporting "terrorism" and carrying out assassinations. Tensions between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and predominantly Shiite Iran reached a new high this month when Riyadh and a number of its Sunni Arab allies cut diplomatic ties with Tehran. They acted after protesters burned Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran following the kingdom's January 2 execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr.

Saudi foreign minister asks if Iran can change
By Staff Writer Al Arabiya News Wednesday, 20 January 2016/Iran continues to support violent extremist groups which have been responsible for the deaths of approximately 1,100 U.S. troops in Iraq since 2003, Saudi foreign minister, Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir, has said in an opinion piece published in the New York Times Tuesday. Jubeir wrote that world was watching Iran “for signs of change, hoping it will evolve from a rogue revolutionary state into a respectable member of the international community.”But he added that Iran “rather than confronting the isolation it has created for itself, opts to obscure its dangerous sectarian and expansionist policies, as well as its support for terrorism, by leveling unsubstantiated charges against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”He said that there was what appeared to be signs of change within Iran and he said the GCC nations acknowledged the Islamic Republic’s actions in suspending the expansion of its nuclear program. The foreign minister explained: “Certainly, we know that a large segment of the Iranian population wants greater openness internally and better relations with neighboring countries and the world. But the government does not.”He said that since the 1979 revolution Iran’s behavior had been consistent in its continued efforts to expand the revolution. As a result, he said, “Iran has supported violent extremist groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and sectarian militias in Iraq. “Iran or its proxies have been blamed for terrorist attacks around the world, including the bombings of the United States Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, and the assassinations in the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin in 1992.”He said that since the 1979 takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran, there had been attacks on numerous other embassies, including the British, Danish, Kuwaiti, Saudi and Russian in Iran and abroad by what he called “Iranian proxies.”Jubeir accused the actions of ‘Iran’s surrogate’ Hezbollah in Lebanon and the war waged against the Syrian opposition as helping the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to flourish. The minister said that it was in the interest of Iran for Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to remain in power. Quoting a 2014 report by the U.S. State Department, he said “Iran views Syria ‘as a crucial causeway to its weapons supply route to Hezbollah.’” He accused Iran of supporting the Houthi militia takeover of Yemen, which in turn caused the war that has killed thousands. “Iran is the single-most-belligerent-actor in the region,” he wrote, adding: “and its actions display both a commitment to regional hegemony and a deeply held view that conciliatory gestures signal weakness either on Iran’s part or on the part of its adversaries.” He explained that Iran had violated the U.N. Security Council’s resolutions by testing a ballistic missile on Oct. 10 and firing a missile in December close to American and French vessels in international waters. Responding to threats to Saudi security he said: “In an outlandish lie, Iran maligns and offends all Saudis by saying that my nation, home of the two holy mosques, brainwashes people to spread extremism. “We are not the country designated a state sponsor of terrorism; Iran is.”And he said that Saudi Arabia had been a victim of terrorism, “often at the hands of Iran’s allies,” while the kingdom continued to fight extremist terror.

Jubeir: Syrian opposition should choose delegates
Reuters, Riyadh Tuesday, 19 January 2016/Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday no one should dictate to the Syrian opposition who represents them at peace talks, as a proposed Jan. 25 meeting looked set to be delayed by differences over who will attend. The planned Geneva talks are part of a peace process endorsed by the U.N. Security Council last month in a rare display of international agreement on Syria, where a five-year-old civil war has killed at least 250,000 people. The world body said on Monday it would not issue invitations to the talks between Syria's government and opposition until major powers pushing the peace process reached agreement on which rebel representatives should attend. "The Syrian opposition is the party which decides who represents it in the talks, and the higher committee that emerged from the Riyadh conference is the concerned party and they are the ones who decide who represents them in the talks," Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said in Riyadh. "No other party is allowed to impose on the Syrian opposition who represents them in the talks with Bashar al-Assad," he added, at a joint news conference with visiting French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said on Monday that the United Nations will proceed with issuing invitations "when the countries spearheading the ISSG (International Syria Support Group) process come to an understanding on who among the opposition should be invited". The countries driving the diplomatic initiative on Syria include the United States, Russia and other European and Middle Eastern powers, among them rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. U.N. diplomats say it looks increasingly likely that the U.N.-brokered talks between Syria's government and opposition will be delayed. The opposition, at a meeting in Riyadh last month, set up a 34-member body to oversee the talks. The peace process calls for negotiations aimed at setting up a transitional government and eventual elections. Western-backed Syrian opposition groups have said they want government sieges to end before talks can start. The United Nations says government and opposition sieges have put civilians at risk of starvation.

UK’s Cameron hopeful Iran will attend Syrian donor meeting
By Reuters London Tuesday, 19 January 2016/Prime Minister David Cameron is hopeful Iran will send a representative to next month’s Syrian donor conference in London, his spokeswoman said on Tuesday following a call between the British leader and Iranian President Hassan Rowhani.
The Feb. 4 meeting being hosted by Britain, Germany, Norway, Kuwait and the United Nations, aims to raise funds for Syrians displaced or plunged into poverty by the country’s civil war. “We would hope to see representatives from a number of regional players including those from all sides in the Syria conflict attending the conference in London,” Cameron’s spokeswoman told reporters following a 20-minute phone call between the two leaders.“We are hopeful there will be Iranian representation at the meeting.”

New Aid Enters Besieged Syria Towns
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 19/16/Aid convoys have made new deliveries of fuel, food and medicine to four besieged Syrian towns, humanitarian officials said on Tuesday. The United Nations, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Syria's Red Crescent (SARC) said in a joint statement that simultaneous deliveries reached the towns on Monday. They said fuel had entered Fuaa and Kafraya, which are under rebel siege, and Madaya, which is under a government siege. Food and medicine was also delivered to the rebel-held town of Zabadani, which was not included in similar aid deliveries to Fuaa, Kafraya and Madaya this month.The statement said however that a joint delegation of aid officials was not able to enter Fuaa and Kafraya to carry out assessments of humanitarian needs. "The joint team had to postpone the mission to Fuaa and Kafraya upon receipt of reports from armed groups that more time was needed to finalise security arrangements in areas under their control," the statement said. All four towns were part of an agreement last year to end fighting and allow the entry of humanitarian aid. But access to the towns has been fraught, and there have been reports particularly from Madaya that civilians have starved to death under siege. There have also been reports of deaths from lack of medical supplies in Fuaa and Kafraya, though the government has been able to airdrop some supplies to the towns, a capacity rebels do not have. Some 42,000 civilians are believed to be in Madaya, with fewer than 1,000 in Zabadani and some 20,000 in Fuaa and Kafraya. After the September deal, an initial aid delivery was made, but no subsequent assistance was allowed in until January 11, after reports of deaths in Madaya raised international concern. A second convoy of food and medicine entered Madaya, Fuaa and Kafraya on January 14, but the UN, ICRC and SARC have called for continuous access to all four besieged towns. Aid groups have also warned that residents suffering from malnutrition and illness need to be evacuated from the towns. Last week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged all sides in Syria's war to protect civilians and warned that "the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime."More than 260,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.

Germany's Tornado Reconnaissance Jets 'Can't Fly at Night' over Syria
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 19/16/German Tornado jets deployed to Syria for reconnaissance missions can't fly at night, Bild daily reported Tuesday in a new embarrassment for the defense ministry which has been battling equipment problems. The six aircraft sent to Syria are fitted with surveillance technology, and had been touted as being capable of taking high-resolution photos and infrared images, even at night and in bad weather. But Bild reported that night flights were impossible as pilots are blinded by the cockpit light which is far too bright. A defense ministry spokesman admitted that there is "a small technical problem that has to do with the cockpit lighting." "It is possible that the night goggles worn by pilots result in reflections," he said, adding that the ministry was looking at resolving the problem within the next two weeks. He added that there was "currently no need to fly at night in Syria" and that the deployment was performing at "100 percent." Germany's military has faced criticism in recent months over the state of its weaponry. Its G36 assault rifle -- which is being phased out by the army -- became the butt of jokes after reports that it had trouble firing straight at high temperatures. Der Spiegel magazine had also reported last year that only four of the military's 39 NH90 helicopters were currently useable. Most recently, the army said the external fuel tank of one of its Eurofighter combat planes fell off as it was preparing for takeoff.

ISIS confirms death of 'jihadi john' in Syria
AFP, Beirut Wednesday, 20 January 2016/The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group confirmed Tuesday the death of British jihadist "Jihadi John", saying he was killed in a drone strike in their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa in November. Born Mohammed Emwazi, he was known as the executioner of the militant group appearing masked in a string of videos showing the beheadings of Western hostages. In its online magazine Dabiq, the group said Emwazi was killed on November 12 "as the car he was in was targeted in a strike by an unmanned drone in the city of Raqqa, destroying the car and killing him instantly". The U.S. military had said at the time that it was "reasonably certain" he had been killed in the strike.

Netanyahu: Israel to Destroy Home of Teen Accused of Killing Jewish Woman
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 19/16/Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that the home of a Palestinian teen accused of stabbing a Jewish woman to death in the occupied West Bank would be demolished as a deterrent. "We are going to destroy the terrorist's house," Netanyahu said as he visited the Otniel settlement in the West Bank, where Sunday's fatal stabbing occurred, according to his office. Israeli forces have arrested a Palestinian teenager for the killing, which led to outrage among Israelis. His uncle told AFP he was 15, while Israeli media reported his age as 16. Israel regularly demolishes the homes of alleged attackers in what it describes as a deterrent. Rights groups say it amounts to collective punishment, with families forced to suffer for the acts of relatives. Netanyahu again accused Palestinian leaders of incitement. "The hatred that caused this murder has an address," he said.
"It is the incitement campaign led by the Palestinian Authority and other elements such as the Islamic Movement and Hamas, and it is about time the international community stopped their hypocrisy and called things by their names."A wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks erupted in October, and many of the assailants have been young people, including teenagers. Some analysts say the attacks have been in part driven by frustration with the complete lack of progress in peace efforts, Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the fractured Palestinian leadership. Israel says incitement by Palestinian leaders and news media has been a main cause of the violence. In Sunday's attack, the assailant broke into the home of Dafna Meir, a 38-year-old nurse and mother of six, and stabbed her to death. At least some of her children, aged four to 17, were home at the time, but none was hurt. Hours later on Monday, a new knife attack on a street in another West Bank settlement wounded a 30-year-old pregnant woman. The 17-year-old Palestinian assailant was shot by security personnel and taken to hospital in severe condition after the attack in Tekoa, south of Jerusalem.

Emirati prosecutors file warrant for men dancing in uniforms
By AP Dubai, UAE Tuesday, 19 January 2016/Prosecutors in the United Arab Emirates have filed an arrest warrant for two men who wore military uniforms and danced in an Internet video. The state-run WAM news agency announced Tuesday that Abu Dhabi prosecutors had filed the warrant for the men.
It described the video as showing “two men donning military uniforms and making outrageous physical movements that did not respect the uniform, the morale and the value of national service.”The country has suffered dozens of casualties in the ongoing Saudi-led war against Shiite rebels in Yemen, making authorities especially sensitive about its military.

Libya announces members of new unity government
Reuters, Tunis Tuesday, 19 January 2016/The make-up of a new Libyan government of national accord aimed at uniting the country's warring factions under a U.N.-backed plan was announced on Tuesday. A Tunis-based Presidential Council formed under the plan named a total of 32 ministers. The council had pushed back the deadline for naming the government by 48 hours, amid reports of disputes over the distribution of ministerial posts. “I congratulate Libyan people & Presidency Council on formation of Govt. of National Accord,” U.N. envoy Martin Kolber wrote on Twitter. Kolber called on Libya’s rival parliaments to endorse the unity government, although less than half of lawmakers have signed up to the deal.

Chinese president in Saudi Arabia to boost profile
By Staff writer Al Arabiya News Tuesday, 19 January 2016/Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to reaffirm diplomatic and economic bilateral relations between the two nations. Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Xi held one-on-one talks that focused on a range of key regional and international issues including conflicts in the Middle East. During the joint summit, Saudi Arabia and China signed 14 agreements and memoranda of understanding to enhance cooperation between the two countries in various fields. A memorandum of understanding was signed in line with China's Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiative, which aim to build roads, railways, ports and airports spreading from Western China to Central Asia and onwards to Europe. Another memorandum of understanding was signed for building a high energy nuclear reactor that would use gas for cooling. Saudi Arabia's oil giant Saudi Aramco and China's Sinopec also signed a framework agreement for strategic cooperation between the two companies. Xi, making his first presidential visit to the Middle East, will also travel to Egypt and Iran. The unprecedented trip aims to raise the economic giant's profile in a troubled region.

Tunisian police fire tear gas to disperse protests
By Tarek Amara Reuters, Tunis Tuesday, 19 January 2016/Tunisian police fired tear gas on Tuesday to disperse hundreds of angry protesters demanding jobs in the central city of Kasserine, two days after a young unemployed man committed suicide, local residents said. Mass unrest in Tunisia five years ago was triggered by the suicide of a disaffected young man and sparked revolutions that transformed the Arab world. But while countries such as Libya and Syria have been torn apart by violence, Tunisia avoided the worst of the chaos and remains relatively stable. Despite democratisation since the toppling of autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali, many Tunisians fret over high unemployment and inflation and a continued marginalisation of rural towns - factors that helped fuel the 2011 uprising. "Security forces chased the protesters in the streets of the city and fired tear gas," Hatem Salhi, a witness, told Reuters by telephone.
The Interior Ministry later announced a night time curfew in Kasserine as a preventative measure. Hundreds of unemployed protesters had gathered in front of the headquarters of the Kasserine governorate, where some threatened to commit suicide, prompting tear gas salvoes by security forces to scatter them, witnesses said. Unemployment rates had risen to 15.3 percent by the end of 2015 compared with 12 percent in 2010, driven by poor economic growth and a decline in investment in both public and private sectors coupled with a rise in the number of university graduates, who now comprise one third of jobless Tunisians. Another witness said soldiers and police officers prevented the protesters from storming the headquarters of the governorate building. Kasserine is among Tunisia's most impoverished areas, with its highest regional unemployment at about 30 percent. Residents and local media said Ridha Yahyaoui, the jobless man who committed suicide, killed himself after local authorities refused to accept his request for a post in the public sector. Authorities had no immediate comment. Tunisia's 2011 "Arab Spring" uprising was sparked when a struggling young market vendor committed suicide, unleashing a tide of anger among the young unemployed that eventually forced Ben Ali to step down and flee the country. Workers received some good news on Tuesday when the main UGTT union and largest industry association struck a deal to increase wages for about 1.5 million private sector employees, a decision that could avert strikes and protests. The UGTT had threatened a general strike if Tunisia's Chamber of Commerce and Industry refused to raise wages. Government officials and business leaders say social tensions, strikes and demonstrations have led dozens of local and foreign companies to pull out of Tunisia since Ben Ali's fall.

Confronting militants in Yemen ‘inevitable’: Bahah
AFP, Abu Dhabi Tuesday, 19 January 2016/Yemeni Prime Minister Khaled Bahah said on Tuesday that confronting militants in government-controlled regions of the war-torn country was inevitable in the future. Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS) group are both active in Yemen, but so far the Yemeni government and its allies have concentrated on battling Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels. Eliminating the extremism of the militant groups will not be resolved through dialogue, Bahah told reporters in Abu Dhabi. "A confrontation is inevitable, whether it takes place today or tomorrow," he said. "Today we are facing various forms of terrorism aimed at shedding blood, killing innocent people, destroying cities... and endangering liberated regions" of the country, Bahah added. The Saudi-led coalition supporting the government with air strikes and ground troops has so far not targeted the militants even though Al-Qaeda seized the southeastern port city of Mukalla in April. Loyalist forces have regained control since July of five provinces including the government's temporary capital Aden. But the government faces a growing militant presence in the city where there have been several attacks and assassinations targeting officials. "The presence of these groups has hampered efforts to rebuild liberated" towns destroyed by months of deadly fighting between rebels and loyalists, said Bahah who himself escaped a bombing claimed by ISIS in Aden last year. Bahah, who is also vice president, insisted that his government hoped to return to Sanaa "peacefully... through political consultations."He did not give a date for the postponed next round of UN-brokered peace talks between the government and the insurgents. The Yemeni government sat down with the rebels and their allies last month in Switzerland for six days of talks that ended without a major breakthrough. Foreign Minister Abdulmalek al-Mikhlafi said Saturday that the talks, initially scheduled to start on January 14, had been pushed back until January 20 or 23 More than 5,800 people have been killed in Yemen since the start of the Saudi-led bombing campaign, about half of them civilians, according to the United Nations.

U.S. ambassador sees separate justice for Israelis, Palestinians
AFP, Jerusalem Tuesday, 19 January 2016/U.S. ambassador Dan Shapiro on Monday charged that Israel seems to apply separate "standards" of justice for Israelis and Palestinians, drawing a rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "Too much (Jewish) vigilantism goes unchecked, and at times there seems to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law, one for Israelis, and another for Palestinians," Shapiro said in a speech at the annual meeting of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv. The ambassador welcomed the indictment in early January of two Israelis over a firebombing in the occupied West Bank last year that killed a Palestinian couple and their toddler. The indictments were "an important demonstration of Israel's commitment to prosecute acts of terrorism, regardless of their source, but too many attacks on Palestinians lack a vigorous investigation or response by Israeli authorities," he said. Netanyahu's office insisted Israel "applies the law on Israelis just as it does on Palestinians" and said Shapiro's comments -- coming on the same day as the burial of an Israeli mother of six who was stabbed to death in her home in a West Bank settlement -- were "not acceptable or just".
By AFP Jerusalem Tuesday, 19 January 2016/Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that the home of a Palestinian teen accused of stabbing a Jewish woman to death in the occupied West Bank would be demolished as a deterrent. “We are going to destroy the terrorist’s house,” Netanyahu said as he visited the Otniel settlement in the West Bank, where Sunday’s fatal stabbing occurred, according to his office. Israeli forces have arrested a Palestinian teenager for the killing, which led to outrage among Israelis. His uncle told AFP he was 15, while Israeli media reported his age as 16. Israel regularly demolishes the homes of alleged attackers in what it describes as a deterrent. Rights groups say it amounts to collective punishment, with families forced to suffer for the acts of relatives. Netanyahu again accused Palestinian leaders of incitement. “The hatred that caused this murder has an address,” he said. “It is the incitement campaign led by the Palestinian Authority and other elements such as the Islamic Movement and Hamas, and it is about time the international community stopped their hypocrisy and called things by their names.”A wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks erupted in October, and many of the assailants have been young people, including teenagers. Some analysts say the attacks have been in part driven by frustration with the complete lack of progress in peace efforts, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the fractured Palestinian leadership. Israel says incitement by Palestinian leaders and news media has been a main cause of the violence. In Sunday's attack, the assailant broke into the home of Dafna Meir, a 38-year-old nurse and mother of six, and stabbed her to death. At least some of her children, aged four to 17, were home at the time, but none was hurt. Hours later on Monday, a new knife attack on a street in another West Bank settlement wounded a 30-year-old pregnant woman. The 17-year-old Palestinian assailant was shot by security personnel and taken to hospital in severe condition after the attack in Tekoa, south of Jerusalem.

Why Israel is keeping a close eye on Iran’s parliamentary elections
Ben Caspit/Al-Monitor/January 19/16
Israel's response to the lifting of sanctions on Iran was typically acrimonious. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Jan. 17, “Israel will monitor the implementation of the deal and will notify of any violation.” He added that Tehran “has not abandoned its aspirations to acquire nuclear weapons and continues to act to destabilize the Middle East and spread terrorism throughout the world, in violation of its international commitments.”Netanyahu doesn't really trust the international community, including the United States, to keep meticulous track of how Iran implements the commitments it made in the nuclear deal. At his induction ceremony, Netanyahu’s new Mossad chief Yossi Cohen declared that the risks inherent in a post-nuclear agreement Iran are even greater than before. As far as Netanyahu is concerned, Israel is the last watchdog defending the free world from Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Most opinions among Israel’s defense establishment and the Israel Defense Forces are slightly different. Senior IDF officials speak of the nuclear agreement in very dissimilar terms, using concepts unlike those embraced by Israel’s political leadership.
“It is true,” confirmed one top military source, speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “There is not a single expert in the IDF who believes that the Iranians have abandoned their nuclear aspirations. On the other hand, international pressure, sanctions and the clandestine campaign have induced them to sign the nuclear agreement, and it is our assessment that they will implement it meticulously. The agreement creates a 10- to 15-year window, which provides us with an enormous opportunity. We are talking about a strategic turning point. For the last 15 years, Iran has followed a steady vector leading to nuclear capacity. Now it has all been blocked, rolled back and frozen at a reasonable distance from that goal. This is real news.”
This is heresy, as far as Netanyahu is concerned. Even if the prime minister had similar thoughts, he would never admit it publicly. He is committed to one single agenda and always sees things from one angle. The perspective with which Israel’s security establishment — the IDF, the Mossad, military intelligence, the Shin Bet and other branches of the defense forces — assesses the situation is purely professional. They see a much more complex picture, replete with advantages and disadvantages. While they may not admit it publicly, at this particular stage, the advantages of the agreement with Iran outweigh its disadvantages.
“The agreement removes the Iranian nuclear threat from the agenda for 10 to 15 years,” said another senior defense official on condition of anonymity. “That is a lot more than an Israeli military attack or even an American assault would achieve. An achievement of this magnitude must not be belittled.”
As far as conventional weapons are concerned, Israel’s military establishment is almost as worried as the political leadership.
“In its initial stage, the agreement allows $100-150 billion to flow to Iran,” said a third senior military official on condition of anonymity. “We must not forget that the vision of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force has not changed. They aspire to spread [former Supreme Leader Ruhollah] Khomeini’s teachings and to destroy Israel. Over the next few years, Iran will be wealthier, more daring and more dangerous. We will witness these efforts in Iraq, in Lebanon, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and even in Gaza. Hezbollah’s financial crisis has become increasingly apparent over the past few months, but it is likely to end now. These are hardly positive developments for the region. It is like pouring oil on a fire.”
But the overall picture is a lot more complicated than the billions of dollars that Iran may or may not pour into its efforts to bolster international terrorism.
“Armies and intelligence forces have weaknesses,” said one of the Israeli sources. “They size up the decision-makers and top commanders of the opposing side as well as its military capacities. It is harder to evaluate deep trends within society itself. This is true of Iran as well.” He is referring to the upcoming Iranian parliamentary election scheduled to take place Feb. 26. The IDF regards this election as a pivotal event that could indicate in which direction the Iranian people are heading. Within Iran, there is a historic clash of titans between two conflicting trends: continued domination of the revolution by the Quds Force and generals like Qasem Soleimani, or the desire for normalcy and the good life shared by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people — who, according to most Western experts, are now fed up with the Islamic Revolution.
A top Israeli intelligence official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, “We saw this trend in the 2009 riots, which were suppressed with considerable force. The ensuing election of [President Hassan] Rouhani was evidence that the real will of the Iranian people had not changed. The people want freedom. Right now, we don’t know what will happen in the elections for the Majlis. Will the Quds Force be able to stir the pot and tilt the results in their favor?”
Another area where it is possible to identify signs of the structural conflict between the forces of Iranian radicalism and supporters of normalcy within the country is the attitude toward losses suffered by Iranian forces in the war with Syria. According to information that has reached the West, Iran has contributed some 2,500 elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps troops to the fight in Syria. They have suffered about 170 casualties, with hundreds more (between 300 and 400) wounded. As a result of these losses, Tehran has ordered at least some of these forces home, replacing them with Shiite volunteer militias from Iraq and Iran.
“It was surprising to see the Iranian sensitivity to casualties,” said an Israeli official. “We did not expect that. This is an important statement. Iranian society is drawing closer to normalcy and Western values. The ability to throw thousands of troops into a campaign and sustain heavy losses can no longer be taken for granted. The process is fascinating.”
It is interesting to note the similarities between top Israeli defense officials’ assessment of Iranian society and that of the US administration. The fundamental argument between President Barack Obama and Netanyahu is that Netanyahu contends that the nuclear agreement could perpetuate the rule of the ayatollahs, providing them with hundreds of billions of dollars to revive the economy and reinforce the regime at this particularly critical juncture. In contrast, the Americans claim that drawing closer to the West and opening the Iranian economy — and society in general — to Western influences under the agreement are the elements that could expedite a process of internal change in Iran and bring the revolution closer to an end.
The Israeli defense establishment does not dismiss the American approach entirely. According to some analyses, the money that Iran stands to receive over the next few years will not be enough to really revive the Iranian economy and improve the living conditions of the average Iranian who is now struggling. According to these assessments, those precise circumstances pose the greatest threat to the regime.
“None of us would bet on where things will go from here. We have no way of knowing,” a senior Israeli intelligence source told me this week on condition of anonymity. “In this business, not everything is a precise science. There are a lot of unknowns that are hard to anticipate. All that is left for us to do for now is to take a good look at next month’s elections, and on that basis, try to understand what direction the country is taking.”

How one Coptic woman made Egyptian parliamentary history
George Mikhail/Al-Monitor/January 19/16
CAIRO — Becoming a member of parliament as the first Coptic woman to win an individual seat representing a district known for its tribalism and intolerance was a difficult feat. Mona Gaballah succeeded in entering the annals of Egyptian parliamentary history as the first Coptic woman to represent the al-Jamaliah and Manshiyat Nasser district.In an interview with Al-Monitor, Gaballah talks about the hurdles she faced during the electoral race, which includes society’s prevailing patriarchal culture where even women refuse to vote for other women. Gaballah also opined that further developing the public sector requires the elimination of bureaucracy, though she rejects calls to amend the current constitution.
The text of the interview follows:
Al-Monitor: What are the main obstacles and difficulties that you faced in this electoral race, particularly considering that this was the first time that a Coptic woman succeeded in winning an individual seat?
Gaballah: Prior to entering the race, my main concern revolved around the patriarchal culture that permeates society, to the point even where women refuse to vote for other women. Another concern was the fact that the al-Jamaliah and Manshiyat Nasser district that I represent is characterized by its tribal and familial affiliations that dominate the electoral scene. Yet I decided to enter the race despite not hailing from a prominent district family and residing in Heliopolis — not al-Jamaliah or Manshiyat Nasser.
In the end, through my office at the Free Egyptians Party, I gained voter confidence by working hard for the past three years to resolve my district’s problems, succeeding in hooking up a great many houses to the central water supply, despite their lacking such services for the past 17 years. As a result my electoral chances were greatly improved.
Al-Monitor: Al-Jamaliah and Manshiyat Nasser district suffers from many problems, such as poor health and housing services. As a member of parliament representing this district, how will you deal with these problems?
Gaballah: First, I intend to join the Parliamentary Local Development Committee to combat corruption on the local and central levels. To solve my district’s problems, we must decentralize the system of governance and give local leaders the authority to tackle issues dealing with health and education, for which they shall be held accountable. Now, when a local leader is admonished, he blames some other entity claiming that the matter was beyond his purview. In addition, a “local parliament” must be established in my district and be composed of local young constituents tasked with communicating with the people and drafting practical and realistic solutions to their problems.
Al-Monitor: From your perspective as the first Coptic woman to win an individual seat, what do Copts want from the parliament?
Gaballah: The attainment of parliamentary seats by 36 Copts in total, and my success as the first Coptic woman to win an individual seat since 1923, is proof that Egypt has overcome extremism. Therefore, I must now speak in my capacity as a deputy representing the nation and not just Copts. Laws must be enacted to do away with discrimination, and an anti-discrimination office should be established, as stipulated by the current constitution, to criminalize any activity deemed to discriminate between citizens.
There are other laws that must be drafted to achieve social integration, among them a unified law for the construction of places of worship to establish clear nondiscriminatory regulations relating to the building of mosques and churches.
Al-Monitor: Do Coptic women have specific demands from the current parliament?
Gaballah: The demands of Coptic women are the same as those of Muslim women.
Al-Monitor: As a defender of Egyptian women’s rights, what are your legislative priorities?
Gaballah: Through my visits to the district, I found that Egyptian women are most interested in the adoption of a new rental law, as the current one threatens the stability of Egyptian families, and a compromise must be reached between tenants and landlords in that regard. Evicting entire families at the end of their rental agreement is very detrimental, especially considering that rents are high to begin with. The Free Egyptians Party has drafted a law that deals with the rental crisis.
Second on the list of priorities is a law that compels the state to provide assistance to female breadwinners who are responsible for their family's expenses. For example, the Ministry of Social Solidarity must grant women who are breadwinners low interest long-term loans, since the state does not aim to profit from such loans.
Al-Monitor: As a founder of the Himaya [Protection] Movement that aims to develop the public sector and shield it from corruption, what are the key laws that you plan to propose inside parliament in order to achieve said goals?
Gaballah: The party has many draft laws in the works, aimed at combating corruption and developing the public sector. We must do away with bureaucracy and encourage the public sector into thinking outside the box. For example, the Maspero Egyptian television building is losing 3 billion [Egyptian] pounds [$383 million] per year. We could rent out its studios to private television companies, thus putting its employees to work.
Al-Monitor: How do you stand vis-a-vis calls to amend the current constitution?
Gaballah: The Egyptian Constitution must be implemented and translated into laws before talking about amending it. As to the calls for increasing the president’s powers and reducing those of parliament, my opinion is that parliament will not stand against the president, but will cooperate therewith to solve Egypt’s problems.
Al-Monitor: You stated that your success as the first Coptic woman to win an individual seat in parliament is proof that the nation is homogenous. In the coming years, will we see a Coptic woman holding the post of president of the Arab Republic of Egypt?
Gaballah: A Coptic woman assuming that role would be a miracle from heaven. The Egyptian people are miracle workers, but personally I am not thinking of running for the presidency.
Al-Monitor: Do you view the current parliament as one devoid of an opposition?
Gaballah: Talk about parliament being a consensual non-opposition one is untrue. Parliament’s job is to oversee the government and question ministers in relation to their performance and conduct, as well as review the government’s plans and determine its ability to implement its programs.
Al-Monitor: Will parliament oppose the government but not the president, particularly considering that the majority of the members of parliament stated their support for the president?
Gaballah: Parliament will not oppose the president for the sake of opposing him. How can parliament oppose the president if he proposed a national project that benefits Egypt? The president wants Egypt to become a democratic state, and he is well aware that achieving that requires the existence of divergent opinions. As such, he will welcome any opposition that serves the public interest.
Al-Monitor: Will the Free Egyptians Party ally itself with the Support Egypt bloc?
Gaballah: The party officially refused joining this parliamentary bloc because the electorate chose their representatives based on their partisan affiliations and not their affiliation with a new coalition possessing unknown goals and programs. Therefore, prior to joining any new coalition, I must garner the consent of all my constituents.

Former Israeli minister calls removal of Iran sanctions a 'black day'
Mazal Mualem/Al-Monitor/January 19/16
For more than two decades, Ephraim Sneh, a former minister from the Labor Party, has been following Iran’s nuclear project with great concern. As a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in 1992, he drew the attention of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to Iran’s aspirations to develop a nuclear bomb. Since then and in every capacity he has served, including as deputy defense minister, he has not let up on this subject, delving deep into it. In an interview with Al-Monitor on the day the sanctions were lifted, he depicted a grim picture of what the “Iranian victory” means to world peace, calling it a "black day" not only for Israel but for humanity in general.
The full text of the interview follows:
Al-Monitor: The economic sanctions on Iran were lifted after it was established that it had complied with its part of the agreement, so why are you still concerned?
Sneh: Because when you induct one of the darkest and most benighted regimes on earth into the family of nations and give it a red-carpet treatment, that is a black day for humanity. What it means is that the international community — indeed, the most important democracies — has lost its moral bearings. Those countries did not have the courage to confront this regime. Instead, they opted for a compromise that has satisfied most of Tehran’s demands.
What a lot of people don’t understand is that having a nuclear weapon is not Iran’s end goal. Rather, it is one of its means toward becoming a global power. As soon as the Iranians got what they wanted and the sanctions were lifted, they simply put their nuclear program on a back burner. As far as they’re concerned, acquiring a [nuclear bomb] is only being delayed on their rout toward their strategic objective.
Now that the sanctions have been lifted, Iran — in addition to being inducted into the family of nations — will also become richer. It will have much more money to buy modern weaponry and fund its regional expansion. This will make it easier for Tehran to apply pressure on the Western countries. For example, as soon as the sanctions were lifted, Tehran announced that it was poised to purchase more than 100 European-made Airbus aircraft. Given this state of affairs, I can’t envision the European partnership in Airbus acting against Iran if the latter were to breach the nuclear deal.
In addition, the other serious aspect of this deal is that it pronounces Iran as a legitimate hegemonic player in the Middle East. Not only is the international community lifting the sanctions and prepared to buy Iranian oil and let this evil country develop economically, but [it also enables] Iran to become a dominant factor in strategic affairs. It was already three months ago that the Iranians were invited as equal partners to the talks on Syria. They are also deviously playing the Islamic State card, saying, "We’ll help you [fight] against them." It’s convenient to believe the Iranians, but what exactly is the big difference between the two? It’s just a different version of the same barbaric Muslim fascism.
Al-Monitor: What do you think about President Barack Obama’s promise that Iran will not have a nuclear bomb?
Sneh: For his promise to be serious, he also needs to make sure that if Iran violates the agreement, he will act vigorously against it, including the use of military force. I am not sure that he is resolved to do that during the last year of his presidency. From that perspective, he is a man of his word. He will complete his term with Iran not having acquired a nuclear bomb. But it would be a mistake to look at Iran’s danger only through the nuclear prism rather than having a broader perspective that looks at its aggression and endeavors to become a global force.
Obviously we also need to bear in mind that it was the Obama administration that pushed for this agreement, so his statements on this issue are understandable. That’s his legacy. Two things drove him to broker the nuclear agreement: His tendency to avoid confrontations — any confrontation, for that matter — and his failure to see the Iranian regime’s real intentions. He failed to draw a distinction between the means and the end. What he did was to temporarily take away Iran’s ability to advance its nuclear program — that is to say, the means — but he did advance the regime toward its end. It was easy for the Europeans to toe the line with Obama, because Europe, barring a few occasions, has always balked at confrontations. And it is also a captive of its own economic interests.
None of this — perish the thought — stems from any hostility from Obama toward Israel. Rather, it has to do with his fundamental approach. He preferred to respond to the national mindset that shuns confrontations. In other words, he put political considerations ahead. That was further compounded by a naive view of what the ayatollah regime’s true colors are.
It was just last week that we got a reminder that even after the agreement and shortly before the sanctions were lifted, Iran’s hatred of America has not waned. Tehran simply could not pass up the opportunity to publicly humiliate the United States after taking the American sailors prisoner. The reason for this is its contempt for American values, and no leniency in the sanctions will ever change that.
Al-Monitor: Doesn’t your pessimistic outlook border on paranoia? There is an agreement; the nuke project has been checked and the nuclear facilities are being supervised. Some senior Israeli defense experts, the likes of Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Isaac Ben-Israel, even see some advantages in the deal. Shouldn't Israel feel calmer?
Sneh: No one who has been bombarded by thousands of Iranian-made missiles during the past decade can be deemed paranoid. The missiles that Hezbollah fired at Israel from Lebanon and the rockets that Hamas fired from the Gaza Strip all originated from Iran, which was also the one pulling the strings. Let me make it clear: Israel’s main enemy is Iran. Its supreme spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, even wrote a book that was published just a few months ago, in which he explains how Israel will be annihilated: It will be surrounded by areas for launching missiles. So this isn’t paranoia.
What this means is that Israel ought to prepare militarily for this. It needs to prepare its defense arrays such as the Magic Wand system and procure missile defense batteries. It must also enhance its capabilities to operate against Hezbollah and Iran. The recent development — the lifting of the sanctions — emboldens Iran, and whatever emboldens Iran poses a danger to the State of Israel. I’m not sure we won’t need to resort to the military strike option in the future. Truth be told, Iran has been distanced from the bomb — 10 to 15 years, according to the signatories of the deal — depending on whether it cheats or not. In reality, all Iran is doing is putting its nuclear clear program on a back burner. It’s not pulling the plug on it. That’s why the issue of intelligence oversight is very important. Such collaboration between Israel and the US is essential and still possible. This will enable us to find whether or not the Iranians are violating the agreement.
Al-Monitor: According to your view, Israel got the short end of the stick in the nuclear deal. Could it even have had any input?
Sneh: [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s approach and fears are justified, yet the actions he took were miscalculated. The rift he has caused with the Obama administration has hurt Israel’s interests. A different Israeli government with a more constructive and intimate dialogue with the American administration might have averted this disaster or at least been able to have important changes made to the wording of the agreement. Yet Netanyahu chose to follow the interests of the Republican Party rather than Israel’s own security interests.
From the very start of Obama’s first term, I had called for a deal by which the government of Israel would adopt a more lenient approach toward the Palestinian issue in return for a tougher American posture on Iran. I said it seven years ago. They even called it “Itamar for Natanz.” Bibi would not hear any of it. Had we taken that approach, Obama would have had a foreign policy achievement to show for it and the entire picture would have been different. It took a long time for the sanctions to be crippling, during which Iran made headway, building more centrifuges and enriching more uranium. They constantly took advantage of the delays.
Al-Monitor: So who’s to blame?
Sneh: I don’t want to point fingers. All I’m saying is that a different Israeli policy might have prevented ahead of time this detrimental development. Had Netanyahu not unilaterally identified with Obama’s domestic rivals and had he adopted a different stance on the Palestinian issue, he could have demanded a tougher American policy in return.
Al-Monitor: Aren’t you also concerned by Pakistan’s nuclear capability, another radical Islamic state?
Sneh: Pakistan does not have aspirations to become a global force and take over the region. Pakistan doesn’t want to impose a radical interpretation of Islam on other countries, nor is it seeking the State of Israel’s annihilation. India and China also have nuclear weapons. The main worry is when a nuclear bomb falls in the hands of an irresponsible regime. I’ve been following Iran since 1992, and for many years I was the only one who warned of its danger.

Gambles that lie behind the Iran nuclear deal
Dr. John C. Hulsman/Al Arabiya/January 19/16
The many skeptics of the Iran nuclear deal were wrong about the speed of Tehran’s implementation. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed over the weekend that Iran has, in a little over three months, met all the criteria agreed to. Now sanctions are set to be relaxed, meaning Iran will immediately receive $30 billion of the $100 billion worth of its assets that have been frozen worldwide. Most of the barriers to Iran connecting with international business are due to come down. While U.S. businesses will still face limits due to ongoing sanctions related to Tehran’s sponsoring of terrorism and human rights abuses, European companies will not. Iran will have access to the Swift global banking system, reconnecting its economy to the world. Initial sentiments about the deal coming to fruition are highly favorable - Iran’s stock market rose to its highest levels in 18 months on Saturday, as sanctions were due to be lifted. This is vital for Iran’s government if it is to meet Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s goal of the country taking off economically. It aims to grow at a China-like 8 percent per year in the near term. To achieve this, the government estimates Iran will require $30-$50 billion worth of foreign investment, a mighty hurdle to overcome. However, Iran amounts to just about the last sizable economy that has been cordoned off from international capital. This will prove a powerful enticement for foreign investment.
Domestic politics
However, lying behind this seemingly straightforward story are three desperate behind-the-scenes gambles that the lifting of sanctions sets in motion. First, Iranian parliamentary elections are due to be held by the end of February. Despite retaining Khamenei’s backing, President Hassan Rowhani’s technocratic reformers are a minority in the outgoing parliament. Without this changing, it will be almost impossible for Rowhani to enact the structural reforms necessary to overhaul the sclerotic economy. He desperately needed sanctions to be lifted as soon as possible, creating a feel-good factor in his upcoming political struggle with conservative forces determined to derail his economic reform agenda. Washington is betting that Iran’s greater exposure to the world will alter the nature of its regime. The second gamble relates to Iran’s vital energy policy. With the global oil price already down to a mere $29 per barrel, post-sanctions Iran aims to immediately place another 500,000 barrels per day onto the global market. This will exert significant downward pressure on prices, which have already fallen by a dizzying 70 percent from their June 2014 highs. The obvious danger for Iran of pursuing such a plan is that as the energy industry is the only immediate vehicle for its economic revitalization, further depressing global prices could prove highly counter-productive. Without an oil bonanza occurring due to the end of sanctions, as has been confidently predicted by the government, Rowhani could quickly find himself in political trouble.
U.S. calculations
The final gamble behind the relaxation of sanctions belongs to President Barack Obama and the United States. A 15-year wager that the nature of the Iranian regime is bound to change for the better has begun. The short-term U.S. gain is that the Middle East is no longer on a nuclear hair-trigger.
However, the longer-term bet has yet to be won by either side. Iran hopes to pocket the economic gains it has just made, reform its economy, and grow stronger regionally. After 15 years, it will be under no strictures not to revive its nuclear program. Iran can then do so from a position of economic strength, with the overall character of its government unchanged but more powerful. Washington is betting that Iran’s greater exposure to the world will alter the nature of its regime, making it a status-quo rather than a revolutionary power in the region. These narratives cannot both be correct. Which one prevails amounts to the greatest gamble of all.

The creation of nightmares in Saudi Arabia
Jamal Khashoggi/Al Arabiya/January 19/16
As if Iran and its nightmares were not enough, us Saudis insist on creating our own nightmares that divide us. A decade ago, I published an article entitled “Empowered by the creation of nightmares.” At the time, we were starting to free ourselves from the radicalism that had infiltrated our community - a radicalism we had ignored until the Sept. 11 attacks. We started to gradually uphold a spirit of openness under the late King Abdullah, who was then crown prince. His statements were always enlightening, especially for intellectuals. “We’re a part of the world and can’t be disconnected from it,” he said. Those who rejected this openness tried to create nightmares by saying it would Westernize us and corrupt our women. The creation of nightmares is an old tactic used by fascist movements to terrify the public from a supposedly imminent danger. This is how they attract frightened supporters. The creation of nightmares started in the 1980s as an attack on modernism by the Sahwa religious movement, a faction of Saudi Salafism. The creation of nightmares is an old tactic used by fascist movements to terrify the public from a supposedly imminent danger. This is how they attract frightened supporters. This was shortly followed by accusing opponents of Westernization, liberalism and secularism. Since the creation of nightmares requires someone to blame, these movements might target a novelist, poet or minister, misinterpreting their statements. In the abovementioned article, I recalled how Osama bin Laden painted a gloomy picture of the kingdom’s future at the start of the war to liberate Kuwait, saying the Americans were plotting to change the regime, abolish sharia law and Westernize Saudi Arabia. According to him, they would not leave the country before appointing a secular prime minister. Such a tactic was aimed at rallying supporters for the protection of the country from a nightmare he created.
Accused become accusers
Creating nightmares can fracture society by creating enmity between the government and its citizens. Conspiracies and misinterpretations follow. I was targeted many times by the Sahwa movement. Today I again criticize the creators of nightmares, who are now liberals who were accused by the previous creators of nightmares of being a threat to the country. They even portray some movements, such us the Muslim Brotherhood or ‎ Salafist Sururiyah more dangerous than the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They also portray the Salafist Sururiyah movement as an imminent danger - one of them even called for its “extermination.”
How many concentration camps would we need to establish? Who can identify Brotherhood and Sururiyah members for extermination? No one, since according to the new creators of nightmares they are secret organizations. The aim is to spread suspicion, accusations and mistrust. It would be useless to reconcile the nightmares produced by ideological tribes that cannot abolish one another. The solution is to spread pluralism, freedom of opinion, and the right of people to disagree as long as it does not harm public order. This is what the Saudi Council of Ministers called for during a Ramadan session in 2008 attended by the late King Abdullah. I kept in mind its statement due to its importance: “The kingdom is always seeking to consolidate the core values of Islam such as justice, equality, solidarity, tolerance, the right to decent life and responsible freedom, and the right to be different as permitted by sharia law without harming oneself or others.” The liberal movement must stop creating nightmares, for which Saudi Arabia has started to pay a price. Our opinions will never be uniform, our understanding of religion will differ, we will follow various paths in life, and our personalities and social behavior will continue to diverge. Some might see this as a problem, but there is strength in diversity if we decide to make space for tolerance, which is one of the foundations of Islam.

Syria peace efforts haunted by 2014 Geneva talks
Brooklyn Middleton/Al Arabiya/January 19/16
Bashar al-Assad’s criminal regime continues to ignore basic humanitarian norms while Russia lashes out, claiming that the United States, Britain and France are “politicizing” Syria’s hunger and aid issue. Setting aside the myriad of disagreements on security matters and Assad’s future grip on power, the humanitarian situation in Syria – alone – sets the worst backdrop possible for the upcoming peace talks scheduled to take place on January 25 in Geneva. The ongoing failure to adequately address the current top priorities – ending government and ISIS siege on civilian areas, pressuring all sides to facilitate the transfer of humanitarian aid and halting the intentional targeting of hospital and healthcare professionals – continues to be a mistake. Weeks prior to this, I asserted that all talks on Syria should first focus on pressuring parties to agree to the U.N. resolutions already implemented; the failure to address the most recent breaches paves the way for continued violations.
The Assad regime has made a habit out of guaranteeing the safe transfer of humanitarian aid to besieged areas ahead of peace talks.
It has been one month since the U.N. resolution 2254 was passed. Yet, Syria is no closer to seeing an end to its bloody civil war than it was before. More egregiously, intentional and rampant starvation – despite aid workers’ efforts – continue to claim the lives of civilians. On 11 January, NPR reported that the U.N. successfully delivered critical humanitarian aid to Madaya, besieged by the regime, and to the villages of Foua and Kefraya, which are besieged by rebels but periodically receive air drops of supplies from the Syrian military.
Mounting death toll
Even after the arrival of the aid convoys, the death toll from hunger continued to mount. Reports indicated that at least five people died in Madaya, prompting Doctors without Borders (MSF) to demand evacuations for all people who remain close to death.
No party involved in the conflict has yet attempted to air drop aid to Madaya or other areas under government siege, which could present an opportunity for Arab states to do their part to recommit to the U.S.-led coalition and, most importantly, actively alleviate suffering in Syria.
The Assad regime has made a habit out of guaranteeing the safe transfer of humanitarian aid to besieged areas ahead of peace talks. Two years ago, it allowed the transfer of aid to the starving to death Yarmouk camp - after months of choking it off from critical aid. Peace talks were scheduled to take place in Geneva four days later. Two years later, the ramifications of allowing the Assad regime to treat the transfer of humanitarian aid as optional – as well as the rise of ISIS - are obvious and dire. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon noted that in 2014 the U.N. proved capable of delivering food to approximately five percent of Syrians living in besieged areas while now, he said, the U.N. is failing to reach even one percent. Peace talks cannot be had while Syrians, on the brink of starving to death, are rendered literally speechless by hunger. Ending this bloody civil war is a moral imperative and a necessity for international security; hosting talks immediately remains crucial but it is foolish and dangerous to think that any progress can be made while hideous crimes against humanity continue.

The Islamization of France in 2015“We are in a war against jihadist terrorism that threatens the entire world”
Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute./January 19, 2016
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/01/19/soeren-kern-the-islamization-of-france-in-2015/
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7256/france-islamization
An estimated 40,000 cars are burned in France every year — a destruction often attributed to rival Muslim gangs. Every day, more than 80 cars are burned.
The rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, called for the number of mosques in France to be doubled over the next two years. Boubakeur said that 2,200 mosques are “not enough” for the “seven million Muslims living in France.” He demanded that unused churches be converted into mosques.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls revealed in April that more than 1,550 French citizens or residents are involved in terrorist networks in Syria and Iraq.
“Can we not talk about subjects that split opinion? If you talk about immigration, you are a xenophobe. If you talk about security, you are a fascist. If you talk about Islam, you are an Islamophobe.” – Henri Guaino, MP.
“Those who denounce the illegal behavior of fundamentalists are more likely to be sued than the fundamentalists who behave illegally.” – Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front party.
The Muslim population of France reached 6.5 million in 2015, or around 10% of the overall population of 66 million. In real terms, France has the largest Muslim population in the European Union, just above Germany.
Although French law prohibits the collection of official statistics about the race or religion of its citizens, this estimate is based on several studies that attempted to calculate the number of people in France whose origins are from Muslim-majority countries.
What follows is a chronological review of some of the main stories about the rise of Islam in France during 2015:
JANUARY
January 1. The Interior Ministry announced the most anticipated statistic of the year: a total of 940 cars and trucks were torched across France on New Year’s Eve, a 12% decrease from the 1,067 vehicles burned during the annual ritual on the same holiday in 2014. Car burnings, commonplace in France, are often attributed to rival Muslim gangs that compete with each other for the media spotlight over which can cause the most destruction. An estimated 40,000 cars are burned in France every year.
January 3. A 23-year-old Muslim man in Metz tried to strangle a police officer while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” (“Allah is the greatest!”). The assault took place at the police station after the man, who was arrested for purse-snatching, asked the officer to bring him a glass of water. When the policeman opened the cell door, the man lunged at him. The officer was rescued by a colleague who saw the scene unfold on a video surveillance camera.
January 7-9. A series of jihadist attacks in Paris left 17 people dead. The first and deadliest of the attacks occurred on January 7, when French-born Islamic radicals Chérif and Saïd Kouachi stormed the offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo and fatally shot eight employees, two police officers, and two others, and injured eleven other people. On January 8, a third assailant in the attacks, Amedy Coulibaly, shot and killed municipal police officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe in Montrouge, a suburb of Paris. On January 9, Coulibaly entered a HyperCacher kosher supermarket in Paris, killed four people and took several hostages. Coulibaly was killed when police stormed the store. His female accomplice, Hayat Boumeddiene, France’s “most wanted woman,” remains at large and is believed to have fled to Syria.
Last January, Amedy Coulibaly (left) murdered a policewoman and four Jews in Paris, before being shot dead by police. Right: Medics carry a victim wounded in an attack by Islamist terrorists, who shot hundreds of concert-goers, killing 90, at the Bataclan theater in Paris on November 13, 2015.
January 18. A poll by the firm, Institut français d’opinion publique (IFOP), published by Journal du Dimanche, showed that 42% of French people oppose the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, such as those published by Charlie Hebdo, and indicated they believed there should be “limitations on free speech online and on social networks.” The vast majority (81%) said they favored stripping French nationality from dual nationals who have committed an act of terrorism on French soil. More than two-thirds (68%) said that French citizens should be banned from returning to the country if “they are suspected of having gone to fight in countries or regions controlled by terrorist groups.”
January 20. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the terrorist attacks exposed a “territorial, social, ethnic apartheid” that is plaguing France. In a speech described as one of the strongest indictments of French society ever by a government figure, Valls said there was an urgent need to fight discrimination, especially in impoverished suburbs that are home to many Muslim immigrants. He said that despite years of government efforts to improve conditions in run-down neighborhoods, many people have been relegated to living in ghettos. He added:
“The social misery is compounded by daily discrimination, because someone does not have the right family name, the right skin color, or because she is a woman. I am not making excuses, but we have to look at the reality of our country.”
January 21. Valls announced a €736 million ($835 million) program to augment its anti-terrorism defenses amid a rapidly expanding jihadist threat. He said the government would hire and train 2,680 new anti-terrorist judges, security agents, police officers, electronic eavesdroppers and analysts over the next three years. The government will also spend €480 million on new weapons and protective gear for police. The initiative includes an enhanced online presence based on a new government website called “Stop Djihadisme.”
January 27. Police arrested five suspected jihadists, aged 26 to 44, in dawn raids in Lunel, a small town near the Mediterranean coast. At least ten, and possibly as many as 20 people from the town — with a population of just 25,000 — have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with the Islamic State.
January 28. An Ipsos/Sopra-Steria poll produced for Le Monde and Europe 1 Radio found that 53% of French citizens believe the country is “at war” and 51% feel that Islam is “incompatible” with the values of French society.
Also in January, artwork depicting women’s shoes on Muslim prayer rugs was removed from an exhibition in the Paris suburb of Clichy-la-Garenne after the Federation of Islamic Associations of Clichy warned it might provoke “uncontrollable, irresponsible incidents.” The artwork, made by the French-Algerian artist Zoulikha Bouabdellah, included high-heel shoes placed on the center of prayer rugs in shades of blue, white and red, symbolizing the French flag. She said she did not consider the work to be blasphemous, but curator Christine Ollier said it would be removed to “avoid polemics.” The act of self-censorship was criticized by other artists, who said that the freedom of expression was being undermined.
FEBRUARY
February 5. A teacher at France’s only state-funded Muslim faith school quit his job, saying that the Averroès Lycée (high school) in Lille was a hotbed of “anti-Semitism, sectarianism and insidious Islamism.” In an article published by Libération, philosophy teacher Sofiane Zitouni wrote:
“The reality is that Averroès Lycée is a Muslim territory that is being funded by the state. It promotes a vision of Islam that is nothing other than Islamism. And it is doing it in an underhand and hidden way in order to maintain its state funding.”
The school’s director, Hassan Oufker, said he would sue Zitouni, of Algerian descent, for defamation.
February 12. The Union of French Muslim Democrats (L’Union des démocrates musulmans Français, UDMF), a start-up Muslim political party, said it had begun fielding candidates in local elections in eight cities in France. UDMF founder Najib Azergui said his group wants to give a voice to the country’s Muslim community by: promoting Islamic finance; promoting the use of Arabic in French schools; working to overturn France’s ban on wearing the veil in schools, and fighting against the “dangerous stigmatization that equates Islam with terrorism.”
February 15. The government announced a series of measures to clamp down on the radical Islam being spread in mosques, including a ban on financial support from countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. French Muslims opposed the move. Karim Bouamrane, a socialist politician said:
“If foreign countries are stepping in to fund mosques, it is because the French government won’t. Muslims cannot run the risk of refusing cash from outside, because the French government won’t allocate them funds to build mosques.”
Bouamrane said France’s 1905 law separating Church and State should be changed to allow the French state to provide financial support for Muslim worship.
February 16. Nacer Bendrer, a 26-year-old French citizen, was extradited to Belgium for his role in the May 20214 jihadist attack against the Jewish Museum in Brussels. He is suspected of helping compatriot Mehdi Nemmouche, 29, carry out the attack in which four people were murdered. When arrested near Marseilles, Bendrer was in possession of a Kalashnikov type of assault rifle, two automatic pistols and a shotgun. Bendrer and Nemmouche reportedly met while in prison in Salon-de-Provence in southern France between 2008 and 2010.
February 23. For the first time ever, French authorities confiscated the passports and identity cards of six French citizens who were allegedly planning to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State. The government said it might seize the passports of at least 40 others.
February 25. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve unveiled a plan to “reform” the Muslim faith to bring it into line with the “values of the French Republic.” This, he said, would be done by means of a new “Islamic Foundation” devoted to conducting “revitalizing research” into a form of Islam that “carries the message of peace, tolerance and respect.” The government would create, among other measures, a new forum to: promote dialogue with the Muslim community; improve the training of Muslim preachers; combat radicalization in French prisons; and regulate Muslim schools.
MARCH
March 3. Prime Minister Manuel Valls announced that the state would double the number of university courses on Islam in an effort to stop foreign governments from financing and influencing the training of French imams. Valls said that he wanted more imams and prison chaplains who have been trained abroad to “undergo more training in France, to speak French fluently and to understand the concept of secularism.” There are currently six universities in France offering courses in Islamic studies and theology. Valls said he wanted to double that number to 12 and that the courses would be free of charge.
March 6. Mohamed Khattabi, the “progressive” imam of the Aicha Mosque in Montpellier, said in a sermon that selfishness is part of “the nature of women.” Khattabi — a Moroccan-Canadian who has lived in France for more than 20 years, and who claims to be a “promoter of an Islam within French society, of coexistence” — said:
“No matter how much good you bestow upon a woman, she will deny it. Her selfishness drives her to deny it. This holds true for all women, whether Western, Arab, Muslim, Jewish, or Christian. This is the nature of women.
“If a woman overcomes her nature and acknowledges [the truth] … Allah grants her a higher place in paradise. But if she succumbs to her nature, and refuses to acknowledge the man’s rights — or rather, the goodness that man bestows upon her — she is destined to go to [hell]…”
March 8. Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned that as many as 10,000 Europeans could be waging jihad in Iraq and Syria by the end of 2015:
“There are 3,000 Europeans in Iraq and Syria today. When you do a projection for the months to come, there could be 5,000 before summer and 10,000 before the end of the year. Do you realize the threat this represents?”
March 16. The Interior Ministry blocked five Islamist websites that, it said, were promoting terrorism. The sites included one belonging to al-Hayat Media Center, the propaganda wing of the Islamic State. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said: “I make a distinction between freedom of expression and the spread of messages that serve to glorify terrorism. These hate messages are a crime.” But the Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, Nils Muižnieks, criticized the move because it was carried out without judicial oversight: “Limiting human rights to fight against terrorism is a serious mistake and an inefficient measure that can even help the terrorists’ cause.”
March 17. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve revealed that the government has stopped paying welfare benefits to 290 French jihadists fighting with the Islamic State. He said that the agencies responsible for distributing welfare payments were being notified as soon as it was confirmed that a French citizen had left the country to fight abroad.
March 19. Prime Minister Manuel Valls unveiled a new bill that would allow intelligence services to monitor and collect the email and telephone communications of anyone suspected of being a terrorist. “These are legal tools, but not tools of exception, nor of generalized surveillance of citizens,” he said. “There will not be a French Patriot Act,” he said, referring to American legislation bearing the same name. “There cannot be a lawless zone in the digital space. Often we cannot predict the threat, the services must have the power to react quickly.”
APRIL
April 4. The rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, called for the number of mosques in France to be doubled over the next two years. Speaking at a gathering of French Islamic organizations in the Paris suburb of Le Bourget, Boubakeur said that 2,200 mosques are “not enough” for the “seven million Muslims living in France.” He demanded that unused churches be converted into mosques.
April 7. The Secretary of State for State Reform, Thierry Mandon, claimed that the lack of “decent” places of worship for French Muslims was partly to blame for some of them turning to radical Islam. He said:
“There are not enough mosques in France. There are still too many cities where the Muslim faith is practiced in conditions that are not decent. We are forced to recognize that sometimes the Muslim places of worship are not satisfactory. If they are decent, open rather than underground or hidden, it will be better.”
April 8. Hackers claiming to belong to the Islamic State attacked TV5Monde, a French television network, and knocked it off the air globally. The network broadcasts in more than 200 countries. “We are no longer able to broadcast any of our channels. Our websites and social media sites are no longer under our control and are all displaying claims of responsibility by Islamic State,” the broadcaster’s director general, Yves Bigot, said. The hackers accused President François Hollande of having committed “an unforgivable mistake” by joining a US-led military coalition carrying out air strikes against ISIS positions in Iraq and Syria.
April 13. Prime Minister Manuel Valls revealed that more than 1,550 French citizens or residents are involved in terrorist networks in Syria and Iraq. The figures have almost tripled since January 2014.
April 13. An opinion poll produced for Atlantico found that nearly two-thirds (63%) of French citizens were in favor of restricting civil liberties in order to combat terrorism. Only 33% said they were opposed to having their freedoms reduced, although this number increased significantly among younger respondents.
April 15. A 21-year-old Muslim destroyed more than 200 gravestones at a Catholic cemetery in Saint-Roch de Castres, a town near Toulouse. Police sent the man to the hospital because he was in a “delusional state and unable to communicate.”
April 22. French police arrested Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a 24-year-old Algerian computer science student suspected of planning an attack on Christian churches in Villejuif, a suburb south of Paris. He was arrested after apparently shooting himself by accident. Police found three Kalashnikov assault rifles, handguns, ammunition and bulletproof vests, as well as documents linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State, in his car and home. Police said Ghlam had expressed a desire to join the Islamic State in Syria.
April 21. A study by the Observatory of Religion in the Workplace (Observatoire du fait religieux en entreprise, OFRE) and the Randstad Institute found that 23% of the managers in France were regularly confronting religious problems at work, up from 12% in 2014. OFRE President Lionel Honoré said religious tension had increased since January because Muslims who feel stigmatized by the jihadist attacks in Paris were becoming more forceful in asserting their beliefs.
MAY
May 5. Sébastien Jallamion, a 43-year-old policeman from Lyon, was suspended from his job and fined €5,000 ($5,400) after he condemned the death of Frenchman Hervé Gourdel — who was beheaded by jihadists in Algeria in September 2014. Jallamion explained:
“I am accused of having created, in September 2014, an anonymous Facebook page, showing several ‘provocative’ images and commentaries, ‘discriminatory and injurious,’ of a ‘xenophobic or anti-Muslim’ nature. As an example, there was that portrait of the Caliph al-Baghdadi, head of the Islamic State, with a visor on his forehead. This publication was exhibited during my appearance before the discipline committee with the following accusation: ‘Are you not ashamed of stigmatizing an imam in this way?’ My lawyer can confirm this… It looks like a political punishment. I cannot see any other explanation.
“Our fundamental values, those for which many of our ancestors gave their life are deteriorating, and that it is time for us to become indignant over what our country is becoming. This is not France, land of Enlightenment that in its day shone over all of Europe and beyond. We must fight to preserve our values, it is a matter of survival.”
May 11. Sarah K., a 15-year-old French Muslim girl of Algerian descent who was banned from class twice for wearing a long black skirt to class, was allowed to return to school wearing a similar dress. Maryse Dubois, the head teacher of the Léo-Lagrange school in the town of Charleville-Mézières, had said she considered the long dress to be a conspicuous religious symbol and a violation of France’s secularism laws. Sarah’s mother said Dubois backed down after news of the incident went viral.
May 27. The leaders of a small mosque in Oullins, a suburb of Lyons, made legal history by using France’s 1905 law separating church and state to prevent a Salafist from radicalizing other members of the mosque. The law includes a clause that guarantees the right to worship and calls for sanctions against anyone found to be disrupting a worship service. A court in Lyons found Faouzi Saïdi, 51, guilty of being disruptive by criticizing the mosque’s imam and holding parallel prayers. Saidi, who was fined €1,500 ($1,640), said his only crime was to “have a big mouth.” He added: “I don’t understand why I’ve been convicted. I practice Islam as it is prescribed.”
JUNE
June 4. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s opposition party — rebranded as “The Republicans” — held a meeting on the question of “Islam in France or Islam of France” as part of a roundtable discussion on the “crisis of values” in France. Sarkozy said: “The question is not to know what the Republic can do for Islam, but what Islam can do to become the Islam of France.”
Muslim groups criticized the meeting. “We cannot participate in an initiative like this that stigmatizes Muslims,” said Abdallah Zekri, the president of the National Observatory on Islamophobia. The organizer of the meeting, MP Henri Guaino, countered: “Can we not talk about subjects that split opinion? If you talk about immigration, you are a xenophobe. If you talk about security, you are a fascist. If you talk about Islam, you are an Islamophobe.”
June 6. Prime Minister Manuel Valls said that more than 850 French citizens or residents had travelled to fight in Syria and Iraq. More than 470 are still there and 110 are believed to have been killed in battle.
June 7. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that 113 French citizens or residents have died as jihadists on battlefields in the Middle East. There are 130 ongoing judicial proceedings concerning 650 persons related to terrorism, and 60 individuals have been banned from leaving the country.
June 7. More than a dozen members of Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride), a group formed to defend Muslims against “Islamophobia,” went on trial in Paris for allegedly plotting terrorist attacks. The group — formed in August 2010 by a 37-year-old Franco-Tunisian, Mohamed Achamlane, who refers to himself as “Emir” — put a message on its website demanding that French forces leave all Muslim-majority countries. The message said: “If our demands are ignored, we will consider the government to be at war against Muslims.” In court, Achamlane said: “There is no radical or moderate Islam. There is only authentic Islam.”
Jun 15. Prime Minister Manuel Valls told a half-day conference on relations with the Muslim community that “Islam is here to stay.” He also stressed that there is no link between Islam and extremism. “We must say all of this is not Islam,” Valls said. “The hate speech, anti-Semitism that hides behind anti-Zionism and hate for Israel … the self-proclaimed imams in our neighborhoods and our prisons who are promoting violence and terrorism.” The conference did not discuss radicalization because the issue was deemed too sensitive.
June 23. A court in Paris rejected a case brought by a mother trying to sue the French government for failing to stop her teenage son from leaving to join jihadists in Syria. The boy was 16 when he left with three others from the French city of Nice in December 2013; he took a plane to Turkey, then traveled overland to Syria. His mother, identified only as Nadine A., argued that airport police in Nice should have stopped the boy because he had only a one-way ticket and no baggage. The court ruled that the airport officers were not responsible, and rejected her demand for €110,000 ($120,000) in compensation.
June 28. Prime Minister Manuel Valls told iTele that there are between 10,000 and 15,000 Salafists in France, and that 1,800 people were “linked” in some way to the Islamist cause. He said that the West was engaged in a “war against terrorism,” adding: “We cannot lose this war because it is fundamentally a war of civilization. It is our society, our civilization, that we are defending.”
June 29. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve revealed that France has deported 40 imams for “preaching hatred” in the past three years: “Since the beginning of the year we have examined 22 cases, and around 10 imams and preachers of hatred have been expelled.”
June 29. Yassin Salhi, a 35-year-old father of three, confessed to beheading his boss and trying to blow up a chemical plant near Lyon. The severed head was found hanging on the fence outside the plant, next to two flags bearing the Muslim profession of faith. Salhi, a truck driver, was born in France to parents of Moroccan and Algerian descent. Before his arrest, Salhi took a picture of himself with the severed head and sent the image to a French jihadist fighting for the Islamic State in Syria. Salhi’s wife said: “We are normal Muslims. We do Ramadan.”
Also in June, in Bordeaux, the De L’Orient à L’Occidental grocery store, whose owners recently converted to Islam, scrapped a “gender ban” after facing a barrage of criticism. In an effort to ensure that males and females did not come into contact with one another in the store, the owners attempted to ban women from shopping on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and to ban men on Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays.
JULY
July 8. The weekly newsmagazine, Valeurs Actuelles, launched a nationwide petition titled, “Do not touch my church!” after the head of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, said that empty churches in France should be converted into mosques. The magazine pointed to an Ifop poll which showed that nearly seven out of ten respondents (67%) said they were opposed to turning French churches into mosques.
July 10. Mohamed Achamlane, 37, the Franco-Tunisian leader of a banned group called Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride), was sentenced to nine years in prison on terrorism charges after police raids found weapons and a list of Jewish targets in his personal files. The group, created in 2010 with the purported goal of stopping the spread of “Islamophobia,” was banned by the government in March 2012 after jihadist propaganda appeared on its website.
July 14. Some 130 cars were burned in Paris to mark the Bastille Day, the French national day. More than 80 cars are burned every day in France, mostly by young Muslims.
July 15. French authorities foiled a jihadist plot to behead a high-ranking member of the French military at Port-Vendre, a military base near Perpignan, and post a video of the decapitation on the Internet. Counter-terrorism police arrested three men, including Djibril A., a former seaman with the French Navy.
July 22. A 21-year-old woman named Angelique Sloss was attacked by a mob of Muslim women after they saw her sunbathing with two friends in the Parc Léo-Lagrange in Reims. The women accused her of “immorally” exposing too much flesh at a public location.
AUGUST
August 13. A court in Dijon upheld a decision by Gilles Platret, the mayor of Chalon-sur-Saône, to stop offering alternatives to pork in school cafeterias. Platret welcomed the ruling as a “first victory for secularism.” The move was condemned by Muslim groups. Abdallah Zekri of the French Council for the Muslim Faith (Conseil français du culte musulman, CFCM) said:
“I can only condemn the decision of the mayor, which was not made to restore social peace in schools and is creating an outcry in the Muslim community. All Muslims respect secularism. Muslims have never asked for halal meals in canteens.”
August 16. French mayor Yves Jégo filed a petition to introduce a new law that would require all French public schools to offer a vegetarian option in the cafeteria. The initiative aims to help students who cannot eat pork due to religious reasons. Jégo said the topic of school lunch menus was a “source of a useless confrontation aimed in reality in most cases at the Muslim community” that “challenges our ability to make living together a reality.” More than 150,000 people have signed the petition.
August 21. Ayoub El-Khazzani, a 26-year-old Moroccan, was arrested after he boarded a high-speed Amsterdam-to-Paris train with 554 passengers on board and opened fire with a Kalashnikov rifle. He was subdued with the help of three Americans and a Briton. It later emerged that El-Khazzani had fought with ISIS in Syria and was known to at least four intelligence agencies.
SEPTEMBER
September 6. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front party, accused Germany of exploiting the migrant crisis in an effort to drive down wages. Speaking to supporters in Marseilles, she said:
“Germany probably thinks its population is moribund, and it is probably seeking to lower wages and continue to recruit slaves through mass immigration. Germany seeks not only to rule our economy, it wants to force us to accept hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers.”
September 7. President François Hollande said France would take in 24,000 migrants over the next two years: “It is the duty of France. The right of asylum is an integral part of our soul and flesh. Our history demands this responsibility.”
September 8. Prime Minister Manuel Valls condemned two French mayors who said they would only take in Christian refugees. “You do not sort refugees on the basis of religion,” Valls said. “The right to asylum is a universal right.” The mayor of Roanne, Yves Nicolin, said he would only take in Christians, to be “certain they are not terrorists in disguise.” The mayor of Belfort, Damien Meslot, said he would only consider taking in Christian families from Iraq and Syria because “they are the most persecuted.”
September 22. Eric Zemmour, a French writer and political journalist, was acquitted of charges of inciting racial hatred. Zemmour had been prosecuted for comparing gangs of foreigners to the invading barbarians that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. In a May 2014 radio broadcast, he had said:
“The Normans, the Huns, the Arabs, the great invasions after the fall of Rome have now been replaced by gangs of Chechens, Roma, Kosovars, Maghrebins and Africans who rob, assault and pillage. Only homogenous societies such as Japan, which have for a long time said no to mass immigration and protected their natural barriers … have escaped this street violence.”
Prosecutors had called for him to be fined €5,000 ($5,400) and for the radio station RTL to be fined €3,000 euros for posting the broadcast on its Internet site. The court, however, declared: “Excessive and shocking though these words may appear, they only referred to a fraction of the communities and not to them in their entirety.”
September 27. Mohamed Chebourou, a 27-year-old French-Algerian Islamic extremist, went on the run after being granted a brief leave of absence from the Meaux-Chauconin prison in Seine-et-Marne, east of Paris. He was serving a seven-year sentence for robbery and was not to be released until 2019. He was later arrested in Algeria. France’s Justice Minister Christiane Taubira faced pressure to explain how an Islamic extremist could be granted a furlough from prison.
OCTOBER
October 12. A 15-year-old Muslim student was arrested after shouting “Allahu Akbar!” (“Allah is the Greatest!”) and shooting his physics teacher in the hand with a BB gun at a school in Châlons-en-Champagne. The boy said he wanted to die a martyr.
October 20. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front party, went on trial on charges of inciting religious hatred after comparing Muslim street prayers to the Nazi occupation. At a campaign rally in Lyon in 2010, she had said:
“I am sorry, but for those who really like to talk about World War II, if we are talking about an occupation, we could talk about the [street prayers], because that is clearly an occupation of territory.
“It is an occupation of sections of the territory, of neighborhoods in which religious law applies — it is an occupation. There are no tanks, there are no soldiers, but it is an occupation nevertheless, and it weighs on people.”
Le Pen said she was a victim of “judicial persecution.” She added:
“It is a scandal that a political leader can be sued for expressing her beliefs. Those who denounce the illegal behavior of fundamentalists are more likely to be sued than the fundamentalists who behave illegally.”
October 29. Counter-terrorism police foiled a jihadist plot to attack the principle base of the French Navy in Toulon. They arrested Hakim Marnissi, a 25-year-old native of Toulon, who had been under surveillance since summer 2014, when he began posting ISIS propaganda on his Facebook page. Police believe Marnissi was radicalized by Mustapha Mojeddem, a French jihadist, also from Toulon, who is fighting with ISIS in Syria.
NOVEMBER
November 13. A series of coordinated jihadist attacks in Paris and its northern suburb, Saint-Denis, left 130 people dead and more than 360 injured. Three suicide bombers struck near the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, followed by suicide bombings and mass shootings at cafés, restaurants, and a concert hall in Paris.
November 14. In a televised address to the nation, President François Hollande blamed the Paris attacks on the Islamic State. Speaking from the Elysée presidential palace, Hollande said:
“It is an act of war that was committed by a terrorist army, a jihadist army, Daesh [Arabic acronym for the Islamic State], against France. It is an act of war that was prepared, organized and planned from abroad, with complicity from the inside.”
November 14. Ahmad Almohammad, one of the jihadists who blew himself up at the Stade de France, the venue targeted by three suicide bombers during a game between the national team and Germany on November 13, had posed as an asylum seeker to gain entry into the European Union. He had entered the European Union with a fake Syrian passport. It emerged that he had been welcomed ashore on the Greek island of Leros on October 3 by volunteers with the French charity, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).
November 16. In a rare speech to a joint session of parliament, President François Hollande warned: “We are in a war against jihadist terrorism that threatens the entire world.”
November 17. Thirty Muslims, all of Bangladeshi origin and living in Paris, turned up to protest the jihadist attacks on November 13. Paris is home to up to 1.7 million Muslims. One of the protesters, Mohammad Hassan, said:
“Muslims are not being loud enough. This needed to be done because some Muslims are afraid of coming out to say the truth. About five percent of Muslims support the terrorists. The rest of them need to speak out. I wish more Muslims would join us here.”
November 18. Police raided an apartment in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis outside Paris, after they receive a tip that Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the architect of the Paris attacks, might be at the location. Two people were killed, including Hasna Aitboulahcen, a female suspect who detonated a suicide vest. Eight people were arrested.
November 18. A Jewish teacher was stabbed in Marseille by three people claiming to be supporters of the Islamic State. Three men on scooters approached the teacher in the street before showing him a picture of Mohamed Merah, a jihadist who killed seven people in a series of attacks in southern France in 2012. They then stabbed the teacher in the arm and leg.
November 24. Anouar Kbibech, the president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (Conseil Français du Culte Musulman, CFCM), called for imams in France to obtain preaching licenses as a way to “fight against radicalization.” The certification would verify that imams “promote an Islam that is open and tolerant” and “respect the laws of the Republic.” This “empowerment” could be “withdrawn” if necessary.
November 30. The latest issue of the ISIS French-language magazine Dar al-Islam called on supporters in France to kill teachers who promote secularism in French schools. “It is therefore an obligation to fight and kill these enemies of Allah,” the magazine wrote (p.17).
DECEMBER
December 2. The Secretary General of Air France’s CGT labor union, Philippe Martinez, revealed the organization had expelled nearly 500 members suspected of being Islamic extremists.
December 2. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced the closure of a mosque in Lagny-sur-Marne, east of Paris, on the grounds that it was spreading Islamic radicalism and recruiting for ISIS. It was the third mosque to be shut down on the grounds of extremism within a week.
December 13. Nearly 70 employees of the two main airports in Paris had their security clearances revoked after they were identified as being Islamic extremists. So-called red badges are issued to employees, including aircraft service technicians, baggage handlers and gate agents, who work in the secure zones of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports.
December 15. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front party, was acquitted on charges of inciting hatred over comments she made likening Muslim street prayers to Nazi occupation. The presiding judge said that while Le Pen’s comments were “shocking,” they were protected “as a part of freedom of expression.”
December 16. Between 800 to 1,000 migrants tried to break into the Channel Tunnel near the French port city of Calais in a bid to reach Britain. Police, who used tear gas to disperse the crowd, said the number seeking to cross the Channel in a single day was “unprecedented.” Approximately 4,500 migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East live in squalid conditions at a makeshift camp in Calais known as the “Jungle.”
December 31. In his traditional New Year’s Eve address, President François Hollande warned that France could be subject to more jihadist attacks in 2016:
“We have just experienced a terrible year. Beginning with the cowardly attacks against Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher, then the bloody assaults in Montrouge, Villejuif, Saint-Quentin Fallavier, then the Thalys train, and ending with the horrific acts of war in Saint-Denis and Paris… France is not finished with terrorism. The threat is still there. It remains at its highest level.”
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. His first book, Global Fire, will be out in early 2016.
© 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserv

The Fourth Industrial Revolution
Klaus Schwab/Al Arabiya/January 19/16
We stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. In its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society.
The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.
There are three reasons why today’s transformations represent not merely a prolongation of the Third Industrial Revolution but rather the arrival of a Fourth and distinct one: velocity, scope, and systems impact. The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent. When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance.
The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.
Already, artificial intelligence is all around us, from self-driving cars and drones to virtual assistants and software that translate or invest. Impressive progress has been made in AI in recent years, driven by exponential increases in computing power and by the availability of vast amounts of data, from software used to discover new drugs to algorithms used to predict our cultural interests. Digital fabrication technologies, meanwhile, are interacting with the biological world on a daily basis. Engineers, designers, and architects are combining computational design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering, and synthetic biology to pioneer a symbiosis between microorganisms, our bodies, the products we consume, and even the buildings we inhabit.
Challenges and opportunities
Like the revolutions that preceded it, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life for populations around the world. To date, those who have gained the most from it have been consumers able to afford and access the digital world; technology has made possible new products and services that increase the efficiency and pleasure of our personal lives. Ordering a cab, booking a flight, buying a product, making a payment, listening to music, watching a film, or playing a game—any of these can now be done remotely.
In the future, technological innovation will also lead to a supply-side miracle, with long-term gains in efficiency and productivity. Transportation and communication costs will drop, logistics and global supply chains will become more effective, and the cost of trade will diminish, all of which will open new markets and drive economic growth.
Like the revolutions that preceded it, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to raise global income levels and improve the quality of life for populations around the world
At the same time, as the economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee have pointed out, the revolution could yield greater inequality, particularly in its potential to disrupt labor markets. As automation substitutes for labor across the entire economy, the net displacement of workers by machines might exacerbate the gap between returns to capital and returns to labor. On the other hand, it is also possible that the displacement of workers by technology will, in aggregate, result in a net increase in safe and rewarding jobs.
We cannot foresee at this point which scenario is likely to emerge, and history suggests that the outcome is likely to be some combination of the two. However, I am convinced of one thing—that in the future, talent, more than capital, will represent the critical factor of production. This will give rise to a job market increasingly segregated into “low-skill/low-pay” and “high-skill/high-pay” segments, which in turn will lead to an increase in social tensions.
In addition to being a key economic concern, inequality represents the greatest societal concern associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The largest beneficiaries of innovation tend to be the providers of intellectual and physical capital—the innovators, shareholders, and investors—which explains the rising gap in wealth between those dependent on capital versus labor. Technology is therefore one of the main reasons why incomes have stagnated, or even decreased, for a majority of the population in high-income countries: the demand for highly skilled workers has increased while the demand for workers with less education and lower skills has decreased. The result is a job market with a strong demand at the high and low ends, but a hollowing out of the middle.
This helps explain why so many workers are disillusioned and fearful that their own real incomes and those of their children will continue to stagnate. It also helps explain why middle classes around the world are increasingly experiencing a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction and unfairness. A winner-takes-all economy that offers only limited access to the middle class is a recipe for democratic malaise and dereliction.
Discontent can also be fueled by the pervasiveness of digital technologies and the dynamics of information sharing typified by social media. More than 30 percent of the global population now uses social media platforms to connect, learn, and share information. In an ideal world, these interactions would provide an opportunity for cross-cultural understanding and cohesion. However, they can also create and propagate unrealistic expectations as to what constitutes success for an individual or a group, as well as offer opportunities for extreme ideas and ideologies to spread.
The impact on business
An underlying theme in my conversations with global CEOs and senior business executives is that the acceleration of innovation and the velocity of disruption are hard to comprehend or anticipate and that these drivers constitute a source of constant surprise, even for the best connected and most well informed. Indeed, across all industries, there is clear evidence that the technologies that underpin the Fourth Industrial Revolution are having a major impact on businesses.
On the supply side, many industries are seeing the introduction of new technologies that create entirely new ways of serving existing needs and significantly disrupt existing industry value chains. Disruption is also flowing from agile, innovative competitors who, thanks to access to global digital platforms for research, development, marketing, sales, and distribution, can oust well-established incumbents faster than ever by improving the quality, speed, or price at which value is delivered.
Major shifts on the demand side are also occurring, as growing transparency, consumer engagement, and new patterns of consumer behavior (increasingly built upon access to mobile networks and data) force companies to adapt the way they design, market, and deliver products and services.
I am a great enthusiast and early adopter of technology, but sometimes I wonder whether the inexorable integration of technology in our lives could diminish some of our quintessential human capacities
A key trend is the development of technology-enabled platforms that combine both demand and supply to disrupt existing industry structures, such as those we see within the “sharing” or “on demand” economy. These technology platforms, rendered easy to use by the smartphone, convene people, assets, and data—thus creating entirely new ways of consuming goods and services in the process. In addition, they lower the barriers for businesses and individuals to create wealth, altering the personal and professional environments of workers. These new platform businesses are rapidly multiplying into many new services, ranging from laundry to shopping, from chores to parking, from massages to travel.
On the whole, there are four main effects that the Fourth Industrial Revolution has on business—on customer expectations, on product enhancement, on collaborative innovation, and on organizational forms. Whether consumers or businesses, customers are increasingly at the epicenter of the economy, which is all about improving how customers are served. Physical products and services, moreover, can now be enhanced with digital capabilities that increase their value. New technologies make assets more durable and resilient, while data and analytics are transforming how they are maintained. A world of customer experiences, data-based services, and asset performance through analytics, meanwhile, requires new forms of collaboration, particularly given the speed at which innovation and disruption are taking place. And the emergence of global platforms and other new business models, finally, means that talent, culture, and organizational forms will have to be rethought.
Overall, the inexorable shift from simple digitization (the Third Industrial Revolution) to innovation based on combinations of technologies (the Fourth Industrial Revolution) is forcing companies to reexamine the way they do business. The bottom line, however, is the same: business leaders and senior executives need to understand their changing environment, challenge the assumptions of their operating teams, and relentlessly and continuously innovate.
The impact on government
As the physical, digital, and biological worlds continue to converge, new technologies and platforms will increasingly enable citizens to engage with governments, voice their opinions, coordinate their efforts, and even circumvent the supervision of public authorities. Simultaneously, governments will gain new technological powers to increase their control over populations, based on pervasive surveillance systems and the ability to control digital infrastructure. On the whole, however, governments will increasingly face pressure to change their current approach to public engagement and policymaking, as their central role of conducting policy diminishes owing to new sources of competition and the redistribution and decentralization of power that new technologies make possible.
Ultimately, the ability of government systems and public authorities to adapt will determine their survival. If they prove capable of embracing a world of disruptive change, subjecting their structures to the levels of transparency and efficiency that will enable them to maintain their competitive edge, they will endure. If they cannot evolve, they will face increasing trouble.
This will be particularly true in the realm of regulation. Current systems of public policy and decision-making evolved alongside the Second Industrial Revolution, when decision-makers had time to study a specific issue and develop the necessary response or appropriate regulatory framework. The whole process was designed to be linear and mechanistic, following a strict “top down” approach.
But such an approach is no longer feasible. Given the Fourth Industrial Revolution’s rapid pace of change and broad impacts, legislators and regulators are being challenged to an unprecedented degree and for the most part are proving unable to cope.
How, then, can they preserve the interest of the consumers and the public at large while continuing to support innovation and technological development? By embracing “agile” governance, just as the private sector has increasingly adopted agile responses to software development and business operations more generally. This means regulators must continuously adapt to a new, fast-changing environment, reinventing themselves so they can truly understand what it is they are regulating. To do so, governments and regulatory agencies will need to collaborate closely with business and civil society.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution will also profoundly impact the nature of national and international security, affecting both the probability and the nature of conflict. The history of warfare and international security is the history of technological innovation, and today is no exception. Modern conflicts involving states are increasingly “hybrid” in nature, combining traditional battlefield techniques with elements previously associated with nonstate actors. The distinction between war and peace, combatant and noncombatant, and even violence and nonviolence (think cyberwarfare) is becoming uncomfortably blurry.
As this process takes place and new technologies such as autonomous or biological weapons become easier to use, individuals and small groups will increasingly join states in being capable of causing mass harm. This new vulnerability will lead to new fears. But at the same time, advances in technology will create the potential to reduce the scale or impact of violence, through the development of new modes of protection, for example, or greater precision in targeting.
The impact on people
The Fourth Industrial Revolution, finally, will change not only what we do but also who we are. It will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, meet people, and nurture relationships. It is already changing our health and leading to a “quantified” self, and sooner than we think it may lead to human augmentation. The list is endless because it is bound only by our imagination.
I am a great enthusiast and early adopter of technology, but sometimes I wonder whether the inexorable integration of technology in our lives could diminish some of our quintessential human capacities, such as compassion and cooperation. Our relationship with our smartphones is a case in point. Constant connection may deprive us of one of life’s most important assets: the time to pause, reflect, and engage in meaningful conversation.
One of the greatest individual challenges posed by new information technologies is privacy. We instinctively understand why it is so essential, yet the tracking and sharing of information about us is a crucial part of the new connectivity. Debates about fundamental issues such as the impact on our inner lives of the loss of control over our data will only intensify in the years ahead. Similarly, the revolutions occurring in biotechnology and AI, which are redefining what it means to be human by pushing back the current thresholds of life span, health, cognition, and capabilities, will compel us to redefine our moral and ethical boundaries.
Shaping the future
Neither technology nor the disruption that comes with it is an exogenous force over which humans have no control. All of us are responsible for guiding its evolution, in the decisions we make on a daily basis as citizens, consumers, and investors. We should thus grasp the opportunity and power we have to shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution and direct it toward a future that reflects our common objectives and values.
To do this, however, we must develop a comprehensive and globally shared view of how technology is affecting our lives and reshaping our economic, social, cultural, and human environments. There has never been a time of greater promise, or one of greater potential peril. Today’s decision-makers, however, are too often trapped in traditional, linear thinking, or too absorbed by the multiple crises demanding their attention, to think strategically about the forces of disruption and innovation shaping our future.
In the end, it all comes down to people and values. We need to shape a future that works for all of us by putting people first and empowering them. In its most pessimistic, dehumanized form, the Fourth Industrial Revolution may indeed have the potential to “robotize” humanity and thus to deprive us of our heart and soul. But as a complement to the best parts of human nature—creativity, empathy, stewardship—it can also lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny. It is incumbent on us all to make sure the latter prevails.

What has the U.S. 'leading the world from behind' achieved?
Raghida Dergham/Al Arabiya/January 19/16
President Barack Obama’s last State of the Union address was lackluster compared to the global hype that accompanied his election to the White House seven years ago. Obama admitted that the U.S. has become more divided and begrudged under his tenure, and expressed regret for failing to bring Americans together. However, he wasn’t sorry for a lot of things and was rigidly adamant that his views and policies are the right ones. He seemed convinced that his legacy will have him classed as a visionary who saved the United States from arrogance, condescension and war. His opponents though have a different view. They blame him for dwarfing the United States and its global leadership, weakening its clout, and undermining its prestige. Obama’s arrogance and conceit has radically helped expand the gap and deepen U.S. divisions, they say.
History will judge him on this count. However, Obama is clearly determined for Iran to be the crown jewel of his legacy. He has closed the book on hostility with Tehran, recognized the legitimacy of the regime and the 36-year-old Iranian revolution. This was achieved through the nuclear deal, which acknowledged Tehran’s “right” to possess nuclear capabilities while postponing its ability to build nuclear weapons by 10 years, in return for lifting the sanctions on Iran and accepting for it to have a leading regional role.
However, Obama’s historical legacy is different from the legacy he leaves at the end of his term a year from now. What kind of America and the world has the Democratic president contributed to making? Will Obama leave a more difficult task for his successor than the one he inherited from Republican President George W. Bush? And more broadly, does a one-term or two-term president shape U.S. foreign policy, or is the presidency one chain of long-term strategic U.S. policymaking, which usually spans at least two decades?
The supporters
Those who revere Obama, and consider him a good president that saved America, cite a number of his supposed achievements to justify their support. First of all, they say, Obama has read the mood of the U.S. public opinion well and met its demands. This included pulling away from Bush’s wars fought in retaliation of the terror attacks of 9/11. Those attacks blindsided the American people, who then associated terror to Arabs, especially Sunni Arabs.
However, the majority of Americans soon turned against Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially when it turned out that the evidence for the weapons of mass destruction premise for the latter war had been falsified. Ultimately, Obama took heed and withdrew from Afghanistan and Iraq, and resisted further military entanglements abroad.
Secondly, Obama’s supporters say he protected the U.S. from major terror attacks, though some reluctantly admit Bush’s contribution to this. They attribute the elimination of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Obama and cite it in response to accusations of his weakness or cowardice. They say that Obama, like Bush, followed the doctrine of “we fight terrorists abroad so we don’t have to fight them in American cities.”
Obama critics blame him for dwarfing the U.S. and its global leadership, weakening its clout, and undermining its prestige.
Third, Obama’s supporters are fond of his “leading from behind” doctrine, which they believe has kept the U.S. away from involvement in wars. They believe this has meant sharing of the burden instead of U.S. bearing it all alone. By doing so, the economic, political and military cost have been outsourced to countries that are willing. This has allowed the U.S. to exercise leadership without a cost, which is a major achievement in their eyes.
Fourth, Obama’s backers say his decision to stay away from conflicts have helped improve the economy, allowing the president to focus on internal issues and tackle unemployment. To them, the Obamacare healthcare scheme has also been a success.
Fifth, the pro-Obama camp is proud of his non-confrontational relationship with China and of his intent to appease nations that have a history of confrontation with the U.S. They believe Obama’s pivot to Asia, away from the Middle East, is wise and worthwhile. In their view, it is time to get rid of the historical bonds with the Middle East particularly as there is less U.S. need for Middle Eastern oil following the discovery of massive oil reserves in the U.S. and the collapse of oil prices to below $30 a barrel.
Sixth, the supporters of Obama’s policies perceive the relationship with Russia only from the standpoint of coordination and consultation on radical disputes or to build semi-alliances like the one in Syria. The supporters are also happy with the decision taken by the Obama administration to manage crises with Russia, including over Georgia and then Crimea, at a time when Western sanctions have been imposed on Russia. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) discourse has changed in the era of Barack Obama as well.
Seventh, Obama supporters agree with his Syria policy, including the backtracking of his red line on chemical weapons and Assad’s departure. They support his categorical rejection of getting involved five years ago when protests erupted in Syria demanding reforms, which resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe, killing 300,000 people and displacing 9 million, and turning Syria into a magnet for terrorism.
Eighth, the pro-Obama camp also has no qualms about blessing a Russia-Iran alliance with the Assad regime and Hezbollah, which Washington still classes as a terrorist group. That is as long as the U.S. can escape involvement in the Syrian quagmire, regardless of the radical change in regional and international balances of power this has caused, which is in fact desirable by some in this camp.
Ninth, the supporters of Obama’s policies have not kept up with what happened after his famous speech in Cairo, which was supposed to lead to bold policies including the determination to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. They did not keep up with the bid to encourage the Turkish model of Islamist democracy in Egypt, when the Muslim Brotherhood was endorsed as the “moderate” alternative after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. Instead, they viewed all this as an achievement and part of Obama’s “leading from behind”.
Something similar happened when Muammar Qaddafi was toppled in Libya, although the U.S. was more involved there through U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and ambassador to the UN at the time, Susan Rice. This too was seen as an achievement.
Tenth, the engagement with Cuba is cited as an achievement, so is eliminating Ebola. Climate change agreement is an achievement too, supporters of Obama claim.
'Neo-isolationist'
On the other hand, those who assign moral, political, and visionary responsibility to Obama rebut the claim the he is an advocate of peace. They cite the covert drone wars that practically fulfilled the desires of the Americans as long as there were no American bodies being flown back home and scenes of carnage caused by the U.S. In reality, Obama’s policies and drone wars did leave behind scores of victims.
Yet this is not the critics’ main argument against Obama. They believe he is a “neo-isolationist” president. The first criticism against Obama is that he tore apart harmony in America. While George W. Bush arguably created divisions, Obama deepened them, they say. Obama’s critics say Obama turned the U.S. from a superpower to a paper tiger. It is this approach, in their view, that has allowed Russia to see the U.S. as “infirm” and weak.
Obama’s critics believe his pattern of leading from behind gives a mandate to the likes of Russia and Iran, from Georgia and Syria to Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon, at the expense of U.S. interests and values. They say that the true leader is not someone who reads moods and events well but someone visionary who protects the United States’ exceptional and leading role.
They say the cost of isolationism, the reputation of weakness and decline, and of abandoning allies will be dear for the U.S., despite all claims to the contrary. Critics also say economic recovery would have happened regardless of Obama’s policies.
There is a belief that Obama’s policies vis-à-vis Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Assad, and China have fueled Sunni and Shiite extremism. They have allowed militias, rather than states, to take matters into their own hands, and given Iran the key to expand regionally and challenge the U.S. They have also proved the accusations against Washington of abandoning friends and allies, while making Russia a leader in the Middle East in cooperation with Iran and in conflict with Turkey.
The critics say the vengeful culture behind installing Shiite Iran as leader in the Sunni-majority Muslim world will repel Sunni partners, who are necessary in the war with ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other terror groups. This will also deepen the Sunni-Shiite strife by creating a cycle of resentment and revenge.
The Obama legacy, according to his critics, is the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Libya and Syria caused by half-hearted interventions or complete lack of it. In the view of the critics, refusing to intervene does not exempt the U.S. from its moral responsibility and does not befit a superpower that claims to uphold supreme values. Evading this predicament and pretending that everything is alright amid a huge humanitarian disaster, and remaining silent in the face of starvation, barrel bombs, and war crimes is moral bankruptcy, whatever the justification.
Obama’s critics are opposed to the core of his policy that claims to fight ISIS, while there is a de-facto alliance with Iran-backed militias. This is happening also while Obama turns a blind eye to Russian strikes on Syrian rebel groups instead of ISIS. They oppose the U.S. bowing down to Tehran’s diktats and legitimizing its violation of international resolutions, whether through its ballistic missile program or its overseas military meddling.
They say the world Obama has left behind is not safe or secure, but is a ticking time bomb.
While President Obama is still in the process of shaping his legacy but he has placed it in the hands of others. The next Iranian elections will be a test and so will be the endgame in Syria. If ISIS strikes in U.S. cities, this will also undermine Obama’s legacy.
So perhaps the proven legacy of the 44th president is that he has seen greatness as an unnecessary burden for the United States, and decided to “lead from behind” believing this best serves the U.S. interests. Was this Obama’s decision or was it part of long-term U.S. strategic thinking, which often carries contradictory elements to preserve power?
Only time will tell.

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