Photo source: Haaretz By Naveed Qazi Editor, Globe Upfront When the most right-wing government in Israel’s history took power through Netanyahu again, the coalition put forward legislation that severely restricted the judiciary. Due to this, thousands of protestors gathered in Tel Aviv and beyond in January 2023 to rally against what they believe is a grave risk to their institutions. This happened at a time when Israelis, as new settlers, were attacking Palestinians. That’s why the pretence of peace is slowly getting evaporated as protests have gained momentum. As far as Netanyahu’s cabinet goes, it’s filled with far-right extremists such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister who has been given a role to supervise settlement policy. The Israeli protests of 2023 are a culmination of long-term forces that have created flaws and weaknesses in Israeli democracy, with many calling them structural flaws. The political struc...

Photo source: New Arab By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront For further normalisation of Israel-Arab relations, Negev Summit happened in Israel in March 2022. Organised by Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, it was a diplomatic move which would strengthen the already drafted Abraham Accords. Four Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Egypt attended the summit. There was a hefty dose of symbolism to the Negev Summit, beginning with its location which was in Kibbutz Sde Boker, the final home of Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who was also the first signatory of the country’s declaration of independence.  The Negev Summit was also concomitant as it took place twenty years to the day since the adoption of the Arab Peace Initiative at the Beirut Arab League summit of 2002. That initiative, ground-breaking at the time, offered full normalisation and peace with Israel upon Israel’s acceptance of a Palestinian state and the fruition ...

  Photo source: Al-Monitor  By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront Israel’s observer status inside African Union granted in July 2021 has split many political institutions in the continent. An observer status for Israel gives them the privilege to participate in the organisation’s activities, but they don’t have the ability to vote or propose resolutions, showing that an observer status gives limited rights. However, through it, Israel will fine-tune its diplomatic relations in the continent. The consequences of recognising Israel could be as important as the 1975 Resolution 77 (XII) by the Organisation of African Unity, the predecessor of the African Union, which recognised Zionism as a form of racism.  Historically, many experiences between Africans and Palestinians converged, as they saw liberation struggles in lieu of Western imperialism. This can be explained in the wording of the above-mentioned Resolution 77 (XII), which equated between 'the racist regime in occupi...

  Photo source: The New Arab By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront T he indiscriminate aerial bombings in Gaza in May 2021 marked the near terminal collapse of nearly three decades of flawed peacemaking in Palestine. The new attacks echoed what Gaza went through in 2008 and 2014 conflicts. It had begun with the Oslo Accords, which did not bring any viable framework for peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians. After that, a two state solution was rallied for, which granted powers of governance to the Palestinian Authority, whose formal role became policing Palestine in the context of an unending occupation. Repeated failures to revive negotiations for a two state solution have culminated in the so called ‘deal of the century’. Former President Donald Trump, in his hegemonic project, surrendered any pretension, for a moral standing under international law. It granted Israel an open license for land grabs, and colonial settlements. This deal of the century also ratifi...

Photo source: India Today By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront   T he ultra-rightist conservative conception of the world has championed a religious bigotry stemming towards Muslims. There are myriad pro-Israel organisations that offer political cover for Islamophobia, including the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, StandWithUs, Middle East Forum, and others. Even more ensuing funding is provided to these groups by pro-Israel billionaire Islamophobes like Sheldon and Miriam Adelson. American Hindus, influenced and motivated by the American Jewish community, have went on to build a network of think-tanks, foundations, and lobbying groups which promote Hindutva values. Among them are the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), the Dharma Civilisation Foundation (DCF), and Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation. For these advocacy groups, promotion of Hinduism goes hand-in-hand with the fight against Islam and Muslims. In fact, HAF announced a $75-million lawsuit against four Indian-Am...

Photo Source: The Times of Israel By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Upfront There is an insincere praise bestowed upon Netanyahu after 2021 post election in Israel that the Jewish state under him was not racist, fascistic, or an apartheid, and a colonial enterprise. He was lionised, in some quarters, for uplifting the lives of Israeli Arabs, by helping them with post secondary degrees, but the fact remains that under his leadership, Israel was not only at war with Palestine, but also within. He initiated political infightings, in perpetuation of his power, and exploited every divide between Jews, Arabs, religious, secular, Ashkenazi, and Mizrahi by stoking historical resentments. For this reason, it will probably take years for Israel's political and social fabric to heal. He first took office in 1996, a year after a Jewish extremist assassinated the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, for spearheading the Oslo Accords. A month before the assassination, Netanyahu took part in a demonstrati...

Photo Source: Associated Press By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe UpFront To flare up more tensions in the Middle East, United States has said that West Bank settlements are consistent with international law. In November 2019, Mike Pompeo told reporters that the Trump administration believes any legal questions about settlements should be settled by Israeli courts, and that declaring them as an infringement of international law, hinders a negotiation for any peace deal. President Trump has retracted many of the decisions on Israel-Palestinian conflict, since he took over office, which has resulted in more torment for the Palestinian leadership. Infact, talks between Israel and Palestine have been broken down since 2014. The reason why United States calls West Bank settlements legal now is because the political and diplomatic actors believe that the mantle exhibited before hasn’t helped the cause of peace. But, in reality, it embraces the hardline Israeli view, at the cost of fut...

Photo Source: Al Jazeera By Naveed Qazi | Editor, GlobeUpFront Donald Trump’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights on 25 March 2019 marked one of the most controversial foreign policy decisions of his presidency. As reported by Al Jazeera, the proclamation was signed at the White House alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it effectively endorsed Israel’s 1981 annexation of the territory captured from Syria during the 1967 Six Day War. The move was unprecedented: no other major power had recognised Israel’s claim, and the UN Security Council had repeatedly affirmed that the Golan Heights remained occupied Syrian territory. The timing of Trump’s decision was politically significant. According to Victor Kattan in JSTOR, the proclamation came just two weeks before Israel’s general election, providing Netanyahu with a symbolic victory to present to his electorate. In the United States, the announcement coincided with the annual conference of...

Photo source: USA Today By Naveed Qazi | Editor, Globe Up Front It was a day to symbolise the sufferings of Palestinian Muslims, who were expelled from their homeland.  But something tragic happened.  The day of sympathy, for 700,000 Palestinians expelled during the 1948 war, turned into a mass killing of people. The 70 th anniversary turned into a macabre, a bloodbath. A 31-year-old Nasser was shot in the chest, about 800 meters away from the fence. At the hospital, his heart stopped beating. One of the teenagers, an 18-year-old, Bilal al-Ashram, son of Nisma Abdelqader, was shot straight in the head. His brother, at the local morgue, had been shocked about his death. On Facebook, Bilal had written a post the previous day, where he insisted to go to Bir Se’ba, a city in the south, from where his family had been expelled during the Nakba . Factually, the journey was their birthright, but they were killed for their intentions.  Killing ...