Tag Archives: Damascus consular attack

ISRAEL/IRAN TENSIONS: PROVOCATION, RETALIATIONS, WIDER WAR OPTION/FEARS

25 Apr

OPTION/DANGERS

[Prefatory Note: Questions posed by Mohammad Ali Haqshenas on

behalf of International Quran News Agency and responses of

Richard Falk, April 19, 2024; this text is slightly modified. The

focus is on the Israeli April I attack on Iran’s Damascus consular, and the

international law implications of Iran’s retaliation against Israeli targets on April 13, followed a week later a by Israel’s second drone attack on a military base not far from Isfahan, which both countries somewhat

downplayed. Israel seemed to have given up the wider war option

at least for the present in response to diplomatic pressures from allies to

deescalate regional tensions. The future remains uncertain, especially,

if Israel goes ahead with the threat of a major military operation in

Rafah].

​

  1. What do international laws and conventions say when it comes to targeting a country’s diplomatic mission?

The immunity of consular facilities from international attack is one of the most widely respected, useful, uncontroversial commitments of international law since its inception. It was formalized and details specified in the Vienna Convention on Consular Immunity. Even without this Convention Israel would be bound by a similar body of constraints that are considered part of ‘customary international law’ that enjoy the status of ‘jus cogens’ norms, that is, standards of behavior binding on all sovereign states whether or not a treaty exists. When as here a widely ratified treaty does exist, then disputes about obligatory behavior are decides by reference to the treaty, with an optional Protocol conferring compulsory jurisdiction on International Court of Justice to adjudicate. From the above it follows that being a non-party does not relieve a government of a sovereign state from the obligation to comply with the legal framework.

In this instance such arguments are superfluous as both Israel and Iran are parties to the Vienna Convention as are another 180 states.

Although Israel is widely assumed to have launched the attack on the Damascus concular facility located within the larger Iran embassy compound in Syria. In a strange twist the US State Department spokesperson refuses as if April 24 to confirm that targeted facility was indeed a consular facility entitled to immunity from hostile action. It is strange as the build struck has been uniformly assumed to deserve treatment as Iran’s consular facility. The US continues to contend three week after the attack that the location and identity the building in question is still ‘under investigation.’

  • Following the Israeli strike against the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Tehran urged the UN Security Council to condemn the strike but the Council failed to do that due to the US support for Israel. What does this inaction mean when we take into account the responsibilities of the UN to maintain international peace?

Such action in the UNSC by the USA to insulate Israel from its obligation to comply with international law with regard to consular and embassy immunity is a reminder that when it comes to enforcing international law, the UN was designed to be weak, unmistakably intended to allow the P5 in the Security Council to  by giving an unrestricted right of veto to the five countries victorious in World War II. The veto is arguably the UN’s greatest deficiency when it comes to achieving the paramount war prevention goals of the UN. In effect, the 1945 architects of the UN subordinated upholding international law to strategic primacy for these five geopolitical actors in relation to enforcement or even interpretation of relevant legal obligations. Although only five countries are accorded a right of veto in the UN Charter, it has been used, especially by the US to thwart the will of overwhelming majorities among Member governments by being extended to shield ‘friends’ and allies from accountability.

Some years ago the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, called critical attention to this situation with the pithy phrase ‘the world is greater than five.’ The world is certainly greater, but regretably the UN is not. There are many situations of this kind concerned with securing compliance with international law by UN members who cannot veto a proposed UN decision but enjoy a sufficient special relationship with one of the five that suffices to block any UN enforcement initiative taken against it. In the 1999 Kosovo War, for instance, NATO avoided seeking authorization from the UNSC because it anticipated a Russian veto.

  • What are the long-term implications for international law if such attacks go unchecked?

The implications for international law are what they have always been in modern times. When the obligations of law clash with the strategic interests of powerful states, geopolitical policies prevail, and the core obligation of the rule of law (treating equals, equally) is ignored. This generalization applies to the pre-UN history of international relations. A good example is the war crimes trials conducted at Nuremberg and Tokyo in 1945 where the crimes of the victors were exempted from legal scrutiny while the crimes of the losers were the subject of indictment, prosecution, and punishment. More concretely, the atomic bombings of Japanese cities and the strategic bombing of German cities were accorded impunity. A double standard highlighted by being described as ‘victors’ justice,’ but an ideological defeat for advocates of law-governed behavior as shaping behavior among sovereign states and in the relation of states to the rights of peoples.

It is a mistake to conclude that international law is useless because of this subordination to geopolitics. For one thing, an effective international legal order is essential to sustain the stability of relations in most areas of interaction among sovereign states. Trade, investment, finance, communications, travel and tourism, diplomacy are among the areas of international life that depend on mutuality of interests and the practice of equality when it comes to enforcement and implementation. Beyond this, ‘responsible statecraft’ by dominant states (‘dominance’ does not necessarily refer to the same political actors that possess veto rights at the UN) can unilaterally exercise restraint in the use of the veto or in pursuing conflictual behavior. Many would insist that the US has weakened the UN by its ‘irresponsible statecraft.’ The extent to which the US has managed relations between the UN and Israel in an excessively indulgent manner, illustrated by its complicity with genocide is illustrative.  Unconditional support for Israel is also as much of a reflection of domestic political considerations in the US and Western Europe as it is of the international conflictual context.

Even when international law is flagrantly violated as it was in the Damascus attack, and Israel is protected against a punitive response at the UN, the impact on world opinion, global solidarity initiatives, and the clarification of legitimacy ensure that international law plays a role in the behavior of states and the outlook of global public opinion. Populist action often influences the policies and behavior of leading geopolitical actors. In the post-1945 anti-colonial wars the weaker side militarily generally prevailed politically, in part because international law and the flow of history seemed to everywhere on their side. Transnational activism in the form of boycotts and sanctions often is vindicated by assessments that the targeted country is violating international law in serious and obvious ways. In short, international law, even if not implemented by the inter-governmental order of states or by the UN, is helpful in mobilizing civil society to take a variety of nonviolent coercive actions. This dynamic contributed to the collapse of the apartheid regime in South Africa 30 years ago and it is mounting ever stronger pressure on Israel in light of its Gaza genocide, further justified by its defiance of international law.   

  • Iran said it used its legitimate right to self-defense by launching strikes against Israel. What do international laws say about this?

There are several issues present. Does a single attack of this nature, however unlawful, engage the right of self-defense as specified in Article 51 of the UN Charter. This Charter definition is linked to “a prior armed attack” as distinct from an act of aggression, but given the paralysis in the UN, it might be deemed reasonable in view of the frequency of past lethal violations of Iran’s sovereign rights and the failure by the UN to take any punitive action, or even a resolution of censure, against Israel’s defiant attitude in shaping national policy in the security domain.

A further international law issue concerns matters of proportionality and discrimination. Estimates vary as to the scale of the Iranian attack involving 170 or more drones, 120 ballistic missiles, and 30 cruise missiles seems both disproportionate and indiscriminate, and yet little damage resulted, and no one killed. As Iran gave some notice of its planned retaliation to the US and other governments, it may have intended, as some commentators have suggested, that its retaliation for Israel’s responsibility in relation to the Damascus attack, to be symbolic and performative, rather than a full-scale attack as suggested by the array of drones and missiles.

To some extent, because of enforceability issues, what a state does in retaliation for such one-off violations of its sovereignty is assessed and judged in relation to precedents reflecting past practice. If deemed to be consistent with such practice it is legitimized and widely viewed as acceptable, whereas if not, it is regarded as unacceptably provocative. Israel has reacted to the Iranian attack of April 13 as an unacceptable provocation, despite its own prior attack causing high-profile Iranian deaths and the paucity of damage inflicted by Iran’s retaliation. Israel is proposing a retaliation to Iran’s retaliation. If Israel has carried out its threat in a way that causes death and destruction in Iran it is almost certain to have escalated the conflict in dangerous ways. When acting in these grey sectors of law, such as is the law governing international retaliation, the criterion of reasonableness offers some guidance to both actor and responder, and affects public discourse and media treatment. Of course, perceptions of reasonableness may vary greatly, and often make assessments based on alignments rather than. the characteristics of behavior.

In my judgment the sequence of events is revealing, a highly provocative attack on Iran’s diplomatic facilities in Syria, killing seven Revolutionary Guards, including a leading general with command responsibility for Iran’s role in Lebanon and Syria, followed by Iran’s ambiguous retaliation that could be viewed as a failure to inflict major damage in Israel or a successful symbolic display of capabilities programmed to avoid substantive damage, and a similarly ambiguous second Israeli retaliation, this time against an Air Base near Isfahan that was not highly provocative. Overall, Netanyahu in the Damascus attack was exploring the wider war option, backed off after the US and other regional and supporting governments insisted upon not elevating the tensions with Iran to overt combat, and possibly a regional war.

  • Some analysts believe that the Israeli regime targeted the consulate to escalate tensions with Iran and use this as a cover to continue its massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. What is your take on this and how can Tel Aviv be held accountable for its crimes in Gaza?

As suggested above, Netanyahu has failed to achieve the goals of Israel’s massively destructive and inhumane response to October 7, seeming to leave his last best option, the widening of the war in ways that make Iran the main antagonist of Western interests in the Middle East. The backgrounding of the Ukraine War in light of the events in Gaza lend plausibility to this kind of ‘politics of deflection.’ Israel is a master of shifting public attention from its crimes to its critics or to quite different objects of concern that better suit its national interests..

Achieving accountability in a legal sense is almost impossible so long as the Global West, especially the US, supports Israel. Any attempt to impose accountability through the UN would almost certainly be blocked by casting a veto in the Security Council, which the US has not been reluctant to do. Accountability in its political dimensions could be achieved if Israel is treated by many governments in the Global South and civil society activism as ‘a pariah state’ as was the experience of apartheid South Africa; solidarity initiatives rooted in civil society activism combined with resistance to apartheid seemed to explain the radical moves of the Pretorria regime, releasing Nelson Mandela from prison and negotiating a peaceful transition to constitutional democracy and racial equality. Accountability in a moral sense is exhibited by public expressions of outrage on the part of peoples the world over as well as by the frustrations caused by unenforceability of ICJ decisions and General Assembly activism in reaction to the unlawfulness of apartheid. 

  • What do you think about the efforts of the ICJ to hold Israel accountable for its genocide in Gaza, especially given that the regime is planning an attack on Rafah where more than 1.5 million displaced have taken refuge?

This question raises complicated issues. The initiative in the ICJ has been greatly important for passing judgment on Israel’s moral and political wrongdoing with respect to the Gaza genocide yet limited in effectiveness as to behavior. The ICJ has been unable to implement the persuasive legal pronouncements of its Interim Orders of January and March instructing Israel to take actions to mitigate further suffering of the Palestinian people while the Court ponders the allegations of genocide. Israel has refused compliance with the Provisional Measures requested in the South African ICJ initiative. Israe backed by the US, and seems poised to go ahead with its threatened attack on grossly overcrowded Rafah, despite expectations of shockingly high casualties.

The ICJ and the UN generally are neutralized by ‘a crisis of implementation.’ In the face of stubborn geopolitical resistance it lacks the mandate, will, and capabilities to enforce international law, let alone promote global justice. If the UN became more robustly endowed, an obvious undertaking would be to form an International Protection Force that would give meaning to the UN Responsibility to Protect norm adopted with much fanfare by the Security Council 20 years ago, and then deceptively invoked a little over a decade ago to justify a regime-changing intervention in Libya. As things presently are, a justifiable coercive and punitive response to genocide in Gaza is unthinkable, which tells us a lot about why so many people are disappointed by or frustrated with the UN, not realizing that it was structurally designed to vest control over international security issues, broadly defined, in the P5, the winners in World War II, and the last stand of a world order based on a dying European colonialism and an ascendant America.

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Pivot to Iran? Decoding April 1st

18 Apr

[Prefatory Note: This is a revised text of an opinion piece published in Turkish, a contribution invited by Semin Gumusel on April 14, 2024; developments arising from the convergent incidents on April 1st continue to reverberate, making updating a high priority.]

April 1st Pivet from Gaza: Damascus Massacre, Al Shifa Hospitial, World Central Kitchen Attack, the Biden/Netanyahu Diplomatic Dance, and Iran’s Retaliation

Certain dates become iconic through being engraved in the public consciousness of an era. The 21st century has already had two such enduring occurrences: the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the United States, initiating ‘the war on terror’ and the Hamas cross-border attack on Israel prompting a genocidal response. April 1st has not yet such heightened significance. Yet the five events that arose from what took place on this single day in April exhibit the dangerous and both visible and secretive interactions affecting the political life of the Middle East. The fallout from April 1st that might come to be regarded as producing a cycle of responses of such magnitude as to mark  the end of the post-Cold War Era.

These five happenings associated April 1st are inter-connected developments that if considered together bring a sense of coherence to the long ordeal of the Gaza population of 2.3 million Palestinians. Each occurred during a slowly unfolding crisis throughout the Middle East that has heightened dangerously combustible regional global tensions.  As a result, attention, energies, and resources have been in recent months diverted from a series of urgent global challenges arising from climate change, regressive forms of nationalism, and failures of political leadership made worse by a weakening transnational populist engagement. Earlier it was hoped such engagement from below might exert sufficient pressures on governments and economic elites to produce needed regulations and reforms with respect to the seemingly distinct underlying problematic issues. Despite the dark skies now overhead, the confluence of these five events at the start of April might even induce shifts in policy priorities in ways that could influence regional and international behavior to enhance or further diminish prospects for ecological resilience and humane global governance.  

Pivot to Iran: Temporary or Transformative?

The first of the April 1st events to be considered was the Israeli missile attack on a consular building within the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus. Twelve persons were killed, including seven members of the Iranian Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps who were apparently serving as military. Among these latter victims, presumably the Israeli targets, was General Mohammed Reza Zahedi, the highest ranking Iranian to be assassinated since the US Baghdad high-profile assassination of Gen. Qassem Suleimani, a popular political figure and military leader in Iran who was killed while he was on a diplomatic peace mission in January 2021 during the last days of the Trump presidency.  

Carrying out such violent actions across international borders is itself an international crime, often treated as an act of war, and certainly a political provocation. In addition, in the present instance the assassinations of these Iranians were aggravated by being not only an unlawful use of force that violated Syrian territorial sovereignty but additionally involved the illegal targeting of a foreign diplomatic facility, which international law treats as a prohibited target area. Such attacks are forbidden in deference to the reciprocal interests of all sovereign states, even when relations between governments are strained, in the security of diplomacy and the safety of their diplomats.

The Supreme Guide of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was not wrong when he denounced the attack as equivalent to an assault on Iranian territory that was located in Syria. Iran’s leader vowed to retaliate for Israel’s allegedly evil acts by attacking Israeli territory. The Israeli government lost no time officially warning Tehran that any retaliation from Iran that causes harm on Israeli territory will result in an Israeli response intended to harm targets in Iran. Israel’s Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, and Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to Ayatollah Khamenei’s statement with their own escalatory threats in the form of policy statements—Israel harms any country or non-state actor that harms it, and given its past practice, it will do so disproportionately as it has against the entire Palestinian population in Gaza during the past six months in response to the October 7 Hamas attack. [Israeli reliance on disproportionate force has long been a feature of its national security practice. See Falk, “Dahiya Doctrine: Justifying Disproportionate Warfare—A Prelude To Genocide,” April 1, 2024, blog, richardfalk@wordpress.com]

This provocation of both Iran and Syria on April 1st somewhat surprisingly posed no acknowledged difficulties for Biden’s foreign policy, which remained steadfastly both anti-Iranian and anti-Syrian, despite the fact that this non-retaliatory Israeli attack flagrantly violated international law, caused death and destruction, and escalated risks of a wider war in the region if, as was expected, Iran carries out its threat of retaliation. Biden while lecturing Netanyahu on attacking and otherwise interfering with humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza, went out of his way at the same time to reaffirm the US resolve to stand with Israel in any future eruption of violent struggle with Iran, Syria being left in limbo, but also without doubts about the willingness of America to side with Israel should Syria decide to retaliate or to join Iran in a joint response.

World Central Kitchen Attack

The second incident at the start of April caused a more immediate policy  impact. It consisted of an enraged Western response to the much publicized Israeli attack on a World Central Kitchen (WCK) well-marked foreign aid convoy of three vehicles delivering 100 tons of desperately needed food and medical supplies to starving and wounded Palestinians in northern Gaza, an attack that killed six aid workers and their driver. Similar atrocity incidents affecting the foreign delivery of equally needed aid to Gaza had occurred ever since the start of Israeli military operations in the days after October 7. Indeed many far worse incidents if measured by the deaths of innocent aid workers than this one had occurred ever since Israel started retaliating for the October 7 Hamas attack. What made WCK attack different from other attacks was the fact that the aid workers killed were nationals of Western countries supporting Israel rather than Palestinians or nationals of Global South states. From a moral and legal perspective the national identity of the victims should make no difference, but if assessed from a political perspective a different story emerges.

What followed the WCK attack was a flurry of high-profile media and governmental expressions of outrage directed at Israel’s presumed deliberate responsibility for such an attack, holding both Netanyahu and Biden responsible for such deliberate lethal violence directed at nationals of their allies. The fact that 2024 Biden’s reelection prospects have become clouded by growing criticism of his unconditionally pro-Israeli policy in the face of the Gaza genocide, which were further aggravated by this incident. It was clear that Israel had crossed a red line. The deliberate killing of Western aid workers by Israel was not acceptable and must not be repeated. What followed, was a sharp criticism of the WCK attack a warning to Israel that if such incidents were repeated it would lead to a revision of US willingness to give the same level of support to Israel. What immediately followed was directly responsive, Biden’s public criticism of Israel which until the WCK attack was as rare as Netanyahu’s apologies to the Western governments of the victims. Sometimes, words matter more than deeds! 

Geopolitical Panic: Biden/Netanyahu Fence-Mending Diplomacy

This concurrence of April 1st happenings produced a geopolitical panic attack in both Tel Aviv and Washington, prompting an emergency fence-mending telephone conversation between Biden and Netanyahu a few days later with Blinken reportedly listening quietly on the line. Although the actual conversation took place on April 4, it was organically tied to the WCK attack three days earlier. Netanyahu was so backed into a corner that he felt the need to apologize in public to the governments of the WCK aid workers killed without seeming to be either weak or antagonistic in addressing the concerns of Israel’s chief backers, especially the US. Biden, in contrast, was walking a tightrope straddling contradictory domestic critics with one side pushing for the US Government to break with Israel by pushing harder for a ceasefire and the other side seeking reassurance that Israel would continue to enjoy Western support come what may.

What gave away this unusual double diplomatic game was the immediate public disclosure of a normally private conversation between two embattled leaders. This represented a sharp departure from diplomatic practice in international crisis situations suggesting that special considerations were present. The usual practice in similar circumstances is to regard such direct conversations between heads of state as highly confidential, at least for a decent interval, leaving the public and even the media to engage in conjectures as to the exchange, and to make their best unverified guess as to the presumed blend of anger, explanation, and regret. But because the main purpose of the Biden/Netanyahu conversation seemed to be to reassure Americans, and the West more generally that Israel was neither abandoned nor any longer assured of unconditional support unless it changed its ways of interfering with the international aid and humanitarian efforts of Western countries, it became expedient for both leaders to disclose the content of what was said.

On reflection it is far more acceptable in the West for Israel to attack the aid workers of the UN (so long as no Westerners are killed), especially those working heroically throughout the crisis within the confines of UNRWA to mitigate Palestinian suffering, enduring the loss of their own staff throughout the Gaza onslaught.

 In this sense, the most dangerously irresponsible feature of this complex public relations initiative was to reveal a strong pledge of continuing US support for Israel’s anti-Iran approach, which plausibly could have the effect of heightening Netanyahu’s incentives to foment a direct encounter with Iran to hide his multiple failures–to destroy Hamas, to gain the release of October 7 hostages, to minimize a surging global backlash against Israeli legitimacy, and to win back his own popularity among Israelis. It also conveyed to the leadership in Iran the unwelcome news that Israel would be backed in relation to Iran even when Israel violated basic rules of international law. This renewed show of solidarity with Israel made a devastating wider war much more likely and was obviously intended to frighten Iran sufficiently to moderate the retaliatory response that it had warned would be forthcoming. To send such signals to Tehran and Tel Aviv was to reinforce the impression that the US remained dedicated to achieving regime-change in Iran and willing to give Netanyahu indirect encouragement to hide his failures in Gaza by widening the conflict zone to include Iran and those non-state actors in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.

As could have been anticipated, and perhaps desired by the Netahyahu leadership, was Iran’s retaliation by military drones and missile programmed to hit targets within Israel. Most of the Iranian attack weapons were intercepted and destroyed by a combination of US military operations, the collaborative efforts of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France, and the UK, as well by Israel’s formidable defense forces, and cause little damage within Israel. This attack occurred on April 13th, but as with the sharp shift in the tone of the Biden/Netanyahu relationship, the retaliation by Tehran was a direct consequence of the Damascus attack on April 1st. As suggested earlier, Netanyahu is fighting for his political life in Israel, making a wider war seemingly his tempting option to avoid facing the likely consequences of personal and national defeat. The recklessness of the Damascus attack makes little sense otherwise. The US involvement in Israel’s defense and Netanyahu’s initial reaction to the effect that Israel remains determined to attack Iran directly in view of its attempted military strike. Such a posture confirms Israel’s encouragement of a shift of attention away from Gaza, and in the direction of Iran with uncertain consequences. The reactions of other countries in the region, as well as China and Russia will determine just how wide this new phase of conflict becomes.

Atrocities at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City

The final noteworthy occurrence on April 1st took place when Israel withdrew its forces from devastated al-Shifa Hospital and surroundings in Gaza City. On that day Israel ended its two weeks of atrocity behavior at al-Shifa Hospital, where Palestinian patients confined to their beds were shot dead as were doctors who refused to abandon the hospital, and several hundred Palestinians killed in the course of the military operation. Hamas and Islamic Jihad suspects, often with no evidence of affiliation or even sympathies were killed on the spot after being seized. Of course, for this there was no apology from Netanyahu or pretense from Biden of issuing a warning to Israel to refrain from such behavior. If atrocity victims in military operations are Palestinian, whatever befalls them, no feathers are ruffled in Washington. For its own domestic reasons, the US Government wants to show that it supports humanitarian aid efforts without challenging Israel’s war-fighting methods or insisting that international law guidelines be respected in struggles with regional rivals even as here under conditions of occupation subject to the constraints of international humanitarian law. For such admonitions, only the voices of moral authority in the West, such as Pope Francis or UN Secretary General Guterres can hope to be heard by the peoples of the world. The views of dissenters from the grotesque ordeal of genocide in Gaza are shunted to the sidelines of general awareness and media reportage. Their online words, analysis, and appeals, while influential for those opposed to the genocide, especially as reaching eyes and ears unfiltered by the informal censorship of the main media platforms in the Global West. These pleas for peace and in denunciation of international crime seldom carry weight with governments and political elites unless compatible with strategic interests of major states. The silence of the West in the face of genocide is a complicity crime shamelessly accentuated by the material, intelligence, and diplomatic forms of active support given to Israel since October 7, deserving criminalization.

Reflections on Convergence and the Future of the Middle East

Recounting these events makes it evident that April 1 is a day worth reflecting upon to gain an appreciation of the criminal dimensions of Israel reaction of the October 7 attack and the overall response of the Western liberal democracies (former European colonial powers except Spain, and breakaway British colonies, particularly the US, Canada, and Australia). Whether these focal points will drift toward a devastating regional inter-civilizational clash or hasten the declaration of a much overdue ceasefire cannot be currently known. Obviously embarking upon a genuine peace process is the haunting question that overhangs the prior discussion. This lends abiding interest to how we come to perceive these five events, and how they play out in the weeks and months ahead, with the immediate preoccupation being the prospect of an Israel military strike against Iran. Whether this strike is symbolic or substantive may either avert the drift toward major warfare or accelerate it. Wiser heads do not often prevail in Israel, and so the fate of the region and world may depend on this being an exception.

The defense of Israel by military and intelligence cooperation of the Global West and several Sunni Arab governments suggests that containment of Iran, especially with respect to its nuclear program, has precedence over solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle. Whether the peoples of these countries will challenge these priorities of the governments who came to the defense Israel is a question that will be clarified in the years ahead. The policy choice in West between escalating hostility toward Iran and the renewal of normalization initiatives will remain relevant even if calm is eventually restored to Israel/Palestine relations, which itself can turn out to be delusional if Israel is faced with a combination of resistance activities and solidarity initiatives.   

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