A file from the French Directorate of Military Intelligence (DRM), dated to April 15, 1994, mentions “specific requests for ammunition and backing in transporting arms purchased in Israel and Poland” by the defense attaché of the Rwandan embassy in Paris.
Since the second decade of the Twentieth century to today, the (re)production of masses of Palestinians as the hosts and hostages of zones of encounter with arms has been the condition of Israeli existence, citizenship and sensoria, national history and spatiality.
Great power competition between the United States, China, and Russia, as well as a host regional tensions between middle powers like Iran, Israel, Turkey, and Gulf states, will test the strength of international institutions and multilateralism moving forward, a reality that does may not bode well for international cooperation and conflict resolution in the future.
Moreover, Bahrain, the UAE, Sudan, and Morocco normalized their relations with Israel forcing Turkey to rehabilitate its bilateral affairs with the latter to avoid stigmatization as a “troublemaker.
Read: What Drives Pakistan on the Recognition of Israel: The Arab Gulf, India, or the Pakistanis?Fortunately for Pakistan, India’s lobbying campaign has been somewhat toothless due to the good relationship it has with China.
The other parties with which China has cultivated closer economic ties – Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, Egypt, and Turkey – have less of a sanguine perspective.
They have traveled back to Palestine, which more often they simply call “home,” with some being rejected entry by the Israeli occupants of their lands.
Bahrain, which is under an increasing amount of Emirati influence, aligned with the UAE (rather than Saudi Arabia, as it might have done in the past) on both the questions of renormalizing relations with Syria and establishing full-fledged formalized ties with Israel.
It operated militarily all around the Syrian territory over the years, as it saw the potential loss of its Syrian ally as an existential threat for the axis of resistance against Israel, which includes Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria.
The targeting of Muslims through discriminatory domestic policy is aligned with America’s foreign policy interests, as seen in the hyper-surveillance and targeting of Palestinians to protect Israel’s (fracturing) hegemony of support in American government and society.
Iran’s leadership seeks to challenge the status quo and empower the so-called “Axis of Resistance” in its struggle against the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.
Today, Turkey’s Eastern Mediterranean policy depends on the Turkey-Libya EEZ deal that challenges the Mediterranean Energy Plan of Israel, Cyprus, and Greece.
To add insult to injury, in his latest televised speech, Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s secretary general, downplayed the killing of Slim speaking for over an hour without mentioning his name, claiming that the fact that Slim was killed in an area controlled by Hezbollah does not indicate their culpability, and hinted that Slim’s killing might be the work of Israel or any Western party which benefits from politically accusing Hezbollah of the murder.
Instead, looking at the ways religious belonging and behaving intersect with political identities and behaviors solve the puzzle of apparently very secular projects leading to political battles over Islamically correct social behaviors, which are currently happening not only in Egypt, Iraq, Sudan to name a few but also India, Myanmar or Israel.