World View: Saudi Arabia Denies Reports of Saudi Ground Troops in Yemen

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Jimmy Carter blames Netanyahu for failure of Mideast peace negotiations
• European Union in disarray over big surge in migrants this weekend
• Saudi Arabia denies reports of Saudi ground troops in Yemen

Jimmy Carter blames Netanyahu for failure of Mideast peace negotiations

Jimmy Carter shakes hands with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, the West Bank, on Saturday (Reuters)

Former US president Jimmy Carter said that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want a two-state solution and never did:

I don’t believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu desires to have the same goal achieved that all American presidents and secretaries of state have advocated, and that is a two-state solution. I think he made that quite clear during the campaign, that as long as he’s in charge, there will be no two-state solution, and therefore no Palestinian state. […]

President Obama follows the policy that every president has followed since I’ve been in politics, that a two-state solution is best. And my conviction is, and I would imagine that many people in America would agree, that Netanyahu does not now, and has not really ever, sincerely believed in a two- state solution with a Palestinian state alongside Israel, both living in peace. …

The end of occupation and settlement expansion that a two-state outcome implies is, in our view, the best guarantee of Israel’s future security and acceptance by its neighbors,” he said. “To help achieve this goal, we feel it is high time that the countries of Europe take a more proactive role, underpinned by a serious financial commitment to assist in Gaza’s reconstruction.

In 2006, Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid was published. In it, he said, “Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Middle East.” In 2002, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Jimmy Carter “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

President George Bush proposed the “Roadmap to Mideast Peace” that advocated a two-state solution, a State of Palestine existing side-by-side with a State of Israel in peace and harmony. However, as I wrote in May 2003 in “Mideast Roadmap – Will it bring peace?”, no peace plan can work because Generational Dynamics predicts that Arabs and Jews would be refighting the 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Both Presidents Bush and Obama have tried several times to implement the 2003 peace plan, but have failed every time, less because of opposition by Netanyahu, and more by the fact that the people of the West Bank, governed by the Palestinian Authority, and the people of Gaza, governed by Hamas, hate each other and cannot get along. Jerusalem Post and Nobel Prize

European Union in disarray over big surge in migrants this weekend

Over the weekend, European Union rescue boats rescued almost 6,000 migrants coming from Libya to Italy. At one point, 17 separate rescue missions were taking place simultaneously.

The surge in the weekend’s migrants was due to the warm weather and calm seas. It is thought that the flood of migrants will continue to increase over the summer, only leveling off in the fall with the colder weather.

In March, EU border control executive director Fabrice Leggeri said that, “We are told there are between 500,000 and one million migrants ready to leave from Libya. We have to be aware of the risks.” This figure has not been independently confirmed, but it is believed that there are at least tens of thousands of migrants in Libya queued up to make a trip to Europe, and that hundreds of thousands of migrants will make their way to Europe by the end of the year.

According to reports, migrant smugglers have adopted an effective new method for transiting migrants from Libya to Europe. The smuggler obtains a simple rubber dinghy, fills it up with migrants so that it’s dangerously loaded, and sends the dinghy out into the Mediterranean Sea. The migrants are instructed to wait until they see a boat, and then to slash the rubber on the dinghy so that it sinks. Government and commercial vessels are required by international law to rescue passengers on a sinking boat.

EU is funding an enlarged search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean called Operation Triton. However, there is substantial disagreement in the EU about how arriving migrants are to be distributed among the 28 EU countries. Human rights organizations are demanding that each EU country take a suitable percentage of the migrants, but some countries are refusing to take any at all. UK officials, in particular, are refusing to agree to accept any migrants, for fear of increasing the popularity of the anti-immigrant UK Independence Party (UKIP), which is advocating complete withdrawal of the UK from the EU. There are similar concerns in France because of the rise of Marine Le Pen’s Front National. Guardian and Gulf News and International Business Times (6-Mar)

Saudi Arabia denies reports of Saudi ground troops in Yemen

According to reports from Yemen, there were helicopter gunships hovering overhead, as at least 20 troops from a Saudi-led Arab coalition came ashore Sunday in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden. Some officials called it a “reconnaissance” mission directed at the Iran-backed Houthi militias that have taken control of most of Yemen.

Saudi Arabia began conducting a fierce campaign of airstrikes against Houthi targets on March 23, ended it on April 21, and then started it up again on April 22. The Saudis have always said that they planned to follow up the air campaign with a ground invasion. It’s thought that Sunday’s troop landing is in anticipation of the ground invasion.

The Saudi military spokesman denied that there was any troop landing on Sunday, but he was too clever by half:

I can assure you that no [coalition] forces disembarked on the ground in Aden today.

Analysts are pointing to his use of “today” as a weasel-word to avoid answering the question. AP and The National (UAE) and Arab News

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Jimmy Carter, Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas, Gaza, Hamas, Palestinian Authority, Italy, Libya, Fabrice Leggeri, EU, Operation Triton, UK Independence Party, UKIP, Saudi Arabia, Yemen
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