MENA Week in Review - July 11, 2014 Share This /

This week Israel launched a massive aerial campaign in the Gaza Strip, Syrian rebels in Aleppo were threatened by an offensive attack from the Assad regime, and details of President Obama’s proposed Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund were released with the President’s 2015 Overseas Contingency Operations Request.

• Israel and Hamas exchanged rocket fire, leading the Israeli military to launch Operation Protective Edge, an aerial campaign targeting Hamas militants and rocket caches in the Gaza Strip.
  • No Israeli fatalities have been reported, while more than 100 Palestinians have died in air strikes.
  • The New York Times reported that some of the Israeli strikes have hit cafes broadcasting World Cup matches, and women and children have been counted among the dead.
• Operation Protective Edge comes on the heels of the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in Hebron, and the retaliatory murder of a 16-year old Palestinian teen in Jerusalem.
• There is speculation that a gag order on information relating to the teenagers’ deaths provided political space for the aerial assault now taking place against Hamas militants in the Gaza strip.
• In response to the recent formation of a Hamas-Fatah unity government, members of Congress, including Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), have called for the cessation of aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA), the governing body of the West Bank. Paul introduced S.2265, the Stand with Israel Act in the Senate, which would stop all U.S. financial aid to the PA. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), however, blocked the Act, citing the full Senate Foreign Relations Committee should consider the bill first.
• The Syrian National Coalition, the political wing of the Syrian opposition, met in Istanbul this week where they elected Hadi al-Bahra as their new president.
• The Free Syrian Army warned U.S. officials that the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham [ISIS] would capture Deir al-Zour, a strategic Syrian city along the Iraqi border, without outside assistance.
  • ISIS recently took control of Deir al-Zour, including the al-Omar oil field located within the province.
  • The Washington Post released an editorial on President Obama’s proposed Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund, a program that will allocate $5 billion to “build and maintain a network of partners on the front lines of critical terrorist threats.”
  • The editorial raised concerns on the possibility of foreign security services using the fund to commit human rights abuses, noting that “If U.S.-backed forces commit human rights abuses, the damage is twofold: The fight against insurgents is compromised, and so is support for alliance with the United States.”
• Iraq’s Parliament is struggling to form a new unity government. The political process appeared near collapse failing to elect a speaker of parliament, the first step before selecting a president and a prime minister as laid out in the Iraqi Constitution.
• The U.S. held a delivery of F-16s, scheduled to be delivered to Iraq’s Balad air force base in September. Balad is a strategic air base that has been the target of ISIS’s Iraq offensive. While, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed the Kurds for aiding ISIS.
• Several members of Congress criticized the Obama administration’s plan for handling the ongoing conflict in Iraq. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI) tweeted: “National Security officials are indicating that we are making this up as we go along in Iraq”
• Iran delivered 3 Su-25 aircraft to the Iraqi air force this week. The delivery of aircrafts indicated deepening Iranian involvement in the crisis in Iraq.
• The U.S. increased manned and unmanned surveillance flights over Iraq to over 50 a day. The flights are meant to assess the threats posed by Sunni militants and determine whether a stronger U.S. military response is needed.
• Bahrain declared Tom Malinowski, the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, persona non grata, after a meeting took place between the assistant secretary and political opposition leaders.
  • In response to the Bahraini government’s actions, the Washington Post editorial board called on the U.S. to take action against Arab states, like Egypt and Bahrain, that “can flout U.S. counsel on human rights and political reform and even insult and humiliate the Secretary of State and his top aides without fear of meaningful consequences.”
• Houthi Shiite rebels seized the city of Amran, north of the Yemeni capital of Sana’a, less than a week after the collapse of a ceasefire between the rebels and the Yemeni army. This is a setback for the U.S.-backed government, who has attempted to stabilize the country for the past three years following the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.