Watchman Newsletter

Palestinians set date for UN statehood bid

YNet News (Link) - AFP (August 13, 2011)

The Palestinians will present their bid for membership of the United Nations on September 20, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Malki told AFP on Saturday.

“Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will personally present the request to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon... at the opening of the sixty-sixth session,” on September 20, Malki said.

Abbas “will insist on this historic initiative and Ban Ki-moon will present the request to the Security Council,” the foreign minister added.

Malki noted that the Palestinian Authority chose September because Lebanon, which will hold the presidency of the Security Council, would be in a strong position to push the bid forward.

“Lebanon will hold the presidency of the Security Council in September and this will help us because the president of the council has special prerogatives, which is crucial,” he said.

‘Palestinians set date for statehood showdown at UN’

The Jerusalem Post (Link) - Gil Shefler (August 13, 2011)

The Palestinians set September 20th as the date for the much-anticipated vote over Palestinian statehood at the United Nations, according to AFP.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki informed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will ask the international community to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state on the first day of the annual opening gathering at UN headquarters in New York.

“Abbas will personally present the request to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon... at the opening of the sixty-sixth session,” he was quoted as saying by the French news wire. “[Abbas] will insist on this historic initiative and Ban Ki-moon will present the request to the Security Council.”

The announcement cast aside speculation that the Palestinians might quietly step back from their bid for statehood in response to mounting international pressure against it.

Syria uprising may lead to regional war

Haaretz (Link) - Zvi Bar’el (August 12, 2011)

Thousands of Egyptians have already signed a petition circulating on Facebook that calls for the expulsion of the Syrian ambassador from their country. For once, it is not an Israeli ambassador who receives such attention. The initiators of the petition hope to have over one million Egyptians sign the appeal, which may push the current Egyptian military government to publicly condemn Syrian President Bashar Assad.

New Syrian Facebook pages have decided to use humor to recruit people to the opposition, ironically describing the recent events in Syria as if they happened in Britain. Turkey, however, does not find the situation in Syria so funny.

In recent days, the Turkish army summoned hundreds of officers for reserve duty, placing them in bases near the border with Syria. Turkish sources report that the military has been on high alert along the border to prepare for a massive flight of Syrian refugees into the country, as well as for the possibility of NATO strikes in Syria. Only hours after Turkey’s foreign minister visited Damascus did the government understand that Prime Minister Erdrogan’s ultimatum to Assad fell on deaf ears, after news broke that the city of Homs was being battered by Syrian security forces.

Weaker euro states could lose local banks

The Telegraph (Link) - Harry Wilson (August 10, 2011)

Equity analysts at Standard & Poor’s, the credit rating agency, said that the problem with the European banking system is that it is “not aligned to the single currency area” and that larger banks with operations across the region were likely to replace smaller single country-focused lenders.

“We envisage that banks operating on a more EU-wide basis, alongside an ECB with appropriate powers, would be an important part of a sustainable euro project,” said Tony Silverman, a financial analyst at S&P.

“This may mean peripheral countries should not necessarily expect to have their own domestic banks,” he added.

Mr Silverman points out that about 50pc of eurozone deposits lent through the European Central Bank and the interbank market are to banks that have loans in excess of their deposits, adding there is a “conspicuous” absence of banks that are net lenders to the market.

“We would question whether this is sustainable and indeed to what extent such funding can meaningfully be regarded as temporary,” said Mr Silverman.

Global Economic Downturn: A Crisis of Political Economy

Stratfor Global Intelligence (Link) - George Friedman (August 9, 2011)

Classical political economists like Adam Smith or David Ricardo never used the term “economy” by itself. They always used the term “political economy.” For classical economists, it was impossible to understand politics without economics or economics without politics. The two fields are certainly different but they are also intimately linked. The use of the term “economy” by itself did not begin until the late 19th century. Smith understood that while an efficient market would emerge from individual choices, those choices were framed by the political system in which they were made, just as the political system was shaped by economic realities. For classical economists, the political and economic systems were intertwined, each dependent on the other for its existence.

The current economic crisis is best understood as a crisis of political economy. Moreover, it has to be understood as a global crisis enveloping the United States, Europe and China that has different details but one overriding theme: the relationship between the political order and economic life. On a global scale, or at least for most of the world’s major economies, there is a crisis of political economy. Let’s consider how it evolved.

Roman-era Sword Uncovered in Ancient Ditch in Jerusalem

The Media Line (Link) - Arieh O’Sullivan (August 8, 2011)

Like a postcard sent from the battle ground, a Roman sword, still in its leather-bound wooden scabbard, was unearthed in a Jerusalem ditch where it had apparently lain since the revolt that destroyed the Second Temple almost 2,000 years ago.

Archaeologist Eli Shukron told The Media Line it was a rare find and the only one that could definitely be linked to the Great Revolt by the Jews against the Romans in August 70 A.D.

The discovery was even more symbolic for the archaeologists since it came just a day before Jews mark the destruction of the Temple on the 9th of the Jewish Month of Av, which falls on August 9.

The iron sword was discovered in a dig carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority in Jerusalem’s ancient drainage channel that ran from the site of the ancient Temple through the City of David to the Siloam Pool.