Iranian nukes may not be aimed at Israel

• Last Updated: October 19. 2009 10:48PM UAE / October 19. 2009 6:48PM GMT

The international community is closely watching talks between the West and Iran over the latter’s nuclear programme, and offering their black-and-white predictions on the outcome. But Russia seems to have a totally fresh solution in mind, wrote Tariq al Homayed, the editor-in-chief of the London-based daily Asharq al Awsat.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, who is known for his no-nonsense attitude, told the Russia Today television station and other media outlets: “It is important that Israel and Iran start working towards normalisation. There is nothing impossible about that.”

Mr Lavrov argued that when the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was in power, no one ever thought that Israel would negotiate with him. It should also be remembered, he added, that under the rule of the Shah of Iran, Israel had offered support to Tehran in its nuclear missile programme in return for Iranian oil.

“I don’t know exactly when, but normalisation between Israel and Iran will ultimately happen,” the minister said, as quoted by the editor.

Now, if Russia’s view is that Iran and Israel must and will reconcile at some point, then the question that begs the Arabs for an answer is: “Why and against whom is Iran stockpiling all its weapons?”

Turkey-Israel: headed in opposite directions

Though Israel and Turkey have their many differences, no one knows whether these disagreements will cause a “hostile rupture” in their relationship, Saad Mehio commented in the Emirati newspaper Al Khaleej.

Throughout the Cold War, the Israelis and the Turks were in on the same side: they were both involved in a heated confrontation with the Arab liberation movement led by Gamal Abdul Nasser’s Egypt. The two parties developed a form of co-operation that morphed into a strategic partnership with the signing of the military pact in 1996, an agreement whereby either state has the right to deploy air, marine and infantry forces in the other’s territories.

But since then, two major developments have altered this equation: first, the collapse of the Soviet Union, which coincided with a number of countries acquiring weapons of mass destruction in the region, raising doubts in Ankara about Nato’s ability to ensure Turkey’s security. Second, the rise of political Islam in Ankara, though mild and open to the West, has brought with it a reluctance to fully engage with the Israeli government.

“The Turkish and Israeli locomotives are rolling on opposite directions; they may not collide but even flashing past each other is sure to cause a lot of noise,” the writer concluded.

Hamas and Fatah must seize this opportunity

It has become clear that reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah has reached an impasse and pushing for it now may only bring negative results, said the pan-Arab daily Al Quds al Arabi in its editorial.

In a bid to absolve the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, of the stigma that was attached to him after his initial mismanagement of the Goldstone report, Fatah has signed the Egyptian document on which the reconciliation deal is supposed to be based.

Hamas, however, has been losing the political gains it has accumulated through its widely publicised campaign against the Palestinian Authority’s mishandling of the Goldstone report because it is still indecisive on the reconciliation agreement.

Now, all the petty skirmishes between Fatah and Hamas must be stopped, or at least suspended, to enable both parties to make the best out of this “great Arab-Muslim achievement,” which seeks to finally take Israel to the dock.

“We are about to get into a ferocious diplomatic battle that calls for concerted Arab efforts and, more particularly, a unified Palestinian front.”

Let it be a truce, then, a respite that would allow the two Palestinian factions to aim their arrows at their mutual enemy, rather than at each other.

Today’s US resembles a pre-Civil War US

It seems that growing numbers of US citizens have had enough of paying taxes to fund two wars too far removed from them that they fail to make out any glimmer of hope or progress in the horizon, wrote Baher Saleh in the opinion section of the London-based Iraqi newspaper Azzaman.

Some Americans are now starting to push their respective states to repeal federal legislation, while others go so far as ask their governors to secede.

Thomas Naylor, a professor emeritus of economics at Duke University and the leader of the movement for the Second Vermont Republic, said earlier this month that the federal government had lost its moral authority, while Kirkpatrick Sale, of the Middlebury Institute, who studies separatist movements, said that the current debate over cancelling federal laws and separatism is reminiscent of the US civil war.

The global crunch played a major part in stoking separatist sentiments among the individual states. Add in the fact that he Texas governor, Rick Perry, has lately stated that he was in favour of secession, and one cannot miss the popular discontent with both Washington and Wall Street.

* Digest compiled by Achraf A El Bahi

aelbahi@thenational.ae