 Hello and welcome to Newsclick. Today we have with us Prof. Ajaz Ahmad and we will be discussing the developments between Israel, Palestine, Egypt and Turkey. Ajaz, this has been a very interesting month. We have really breaking of relations virtually between Turkey and Israel after the Pamir Commission report. We have had the people sending back the Israeli ambassador and the entire embassy staff. Now we have Mahmoud Abbas and Abu Mazen approaching the United Nations for a General Assembly seat for Palestine. How do you read the situation? Do you think it's a break in the past? Do you think that this will change in some sense the matrix between Israel and Palestine? If you isolate the question of the application by Mahmoud Abbas for recognition of Palestine is stated by the Security Council, basically General Assembly and Security Council by the United Nations. If you isolate it from the rest, that has a very different kind of picture in my view. After the release of the Palestine papers which showed how well compromised, how deeply compromised the Palestine Authority has been, which is what the left has always been saying. It was proved to be right. These people had to do something dramatic. At home they are faced with a truly popular movement which is being led by people other than people of the Fatah, even in the West Bank. They want to move that from the popular level back to the diplomatic level, back to the international relations level and so on and so forth. This is that sort of thing. Most of Mahmoud Abbas' most senior advisers have said openly that this is a tactic to bring Israel back to the negotiating table. They also understand how limited this initiative is as a matter of fact. It would have one or two useful things for the recognition, but they also downsides to it. But that's a different matter. Do you think, for instance, it's a public recognition that the negotiations are going nowhere, that the U.S. as a quote-unquote honest broker, which it at least claimed it was, is now no longer of any use for the Palestinian issue. And do you think in some sense it's also a public burial, as Ilan Parfe has once said, of the two-state proposal? The traffic is really going to come out of it, and this is the end of it. That may actually be the way things will move, but I'll say again that, you see, Palestine papers didn't have much of an impact on the international scene because it happened right in the middle of the great Arab Spring, so the tension was elsewhere. It certainly was not noticed by many people in India with some worthy exceptions, but this was a major event among the Palestinians. And that idea that this peace process was going somewhere, that was a final nail in the coffin of the peace process so far at the majority of the Palestinians were concerned. So they had to, in fact, do something radical to show that they are not puppets of the Americans altogether, and which then forced that action. He had to stand up and see him get himself seen resisting the United States. And Obama played to that. Obama's speech, vindicated, and Obama's speech, and then Mahmoud Abbas, still going to the General Assembly, gave to Mahmoud Abbas what he was looking for at this juncture. And aside from anybody's intentions or plans or whatever, it's a good thing. The facts are now known, this is how it is. Heret says that Obama's speech is the most pro-Israeli speech ever delivered by US president on the floor of the United Nations. Interestingly enough, the Quartet has also a report, which for the first time does not talk of stopping settlements. Every statement otherwise had this as a stopping settlement or returning to the 1967 borders. The statement, which is a response to this request for recognition, says that within three months, the two sides should come up with a credible plan on the basis of which negotiations may take place. Particularly when you have United Nations resolution, you have a legal position that 1967 borders. And you also have the 1948 anyway as in United Nations resolution. You also have the same resolutions in the UN explicitly calling for those settlements to be now frozen and dismantled in the future. So far, the positions that Mahmoud Abbas has taken do not jeopardize those. My fear is that having done this theater, now he will start giving in to the Americans. And the Americans will slip in the language. Recognize a demographic change that is taking place post-1967, et cetera, et cetera. Two states, one Palestinian and one the Jewish state of Israel. So you have a UN document recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. You know, a language of that kind. And privately, Arakath, one of his most senior advisors, is on record. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we know he has said that we don't care whether you call it a Jewish state or not. Which means he doesn't care what happens to the Palestinians who live inside Israel. So the betrayal of all of that is just phenomenal. But you'd also raise that larger issue of, that is the other part. You see, Turkey and Egypt played a very important role in pretty much forcing Hamas to into this unity document with Fatha and essentially making several concessions to the Fatha. And it's not very clear what concessions the Fatha made in return. Now, once this theater is over and that issue is forced by Hamas, so now what did we get out of this theater? And now what is the basis of this unity? But yes, having embarrassed, I think not only the Americans, but some of the Europeans, Germany in particular. Germany has already said that they will not vote in favor of statehood. France, I think, would likewise take that kind of position if it comes to the Security Council. So there will be a split within Europe. So one of the results of this is that everyone is going to have to stand up and declare their hand. Just where do they stand on this? Well, that's in some sense for the last 20 years. That's still visit advance because behind this so-called facade of this process. I think it's a good thing. So in that sense, it resolves the ambiguity. I think that part is a good thing. Other issue really is that there is that of people who are moving and certainly Palestine has been one of the issues that they have moved on in the past and even today as we see in Egypt. Also the fact that it is rain, whatever there is, there is a movement towards some kind of resistance to what is happening is the effect of the new level policies of the Israeli government. So as somebody called it the Arab Spring without Arabs. So in that sense, there is also the fact that people are moving in both places in different ways. And this also has its own dynamic. What do you think? I don't expect much of an impact of this on the Israelis. In fact, it will harden the positions and it will vindicate Netanyahu and Lieberman and all of those people. It will strengthen the Israeli state position right in the middle of this bid, right in the middle of this bid. Three days ago, the U.S. has announced further sale of weapons to Israel of a highly sophisticated kind, right in the middle of this. So it's going to strengthen the hands of the far right in Israel. And all those people who came out in the Israeli streets, you know about 15 to 20 percent of the population came out in the streets demonstrating not one of them raised a slogan against the colonization. So I don't believe they are now going to somehow discover that they are beneficiaries of this colonization. In the Arab world, I think again, a lot of people, a lot of people in this Arab Spring, especially in Egypt, are so enamored of the United States. The United States will give us democracy. United States will give us this. United States will give us this. United States will guarantee that after Mubarak we'll have democracy and so on. And now you get this. So that secular middle class that was looking to the United States is going to have to do a bit of rethink partly because Muslim Brotherhood will not permit them not to think about it. So really look the fact the five border guards were shot by Israel as a part of this so-called Sinai incursion, which of course did not that it didn't happen. But Egypt was not really concerned in it, but shooting down five border guards. And the anger it has shown in Egypt, very clearly there is a groundswell of anger. There's a groundswell of support to Palestine and cause the fact that the Gaza-Rafa border. In fact, there has been some movement on that. All of it shows that in Egypt, internal politics difficult to go with Israel anymore public. Look, I agree these are very good things. I agree there is this popular. There are two things I would say. If the Israeli, if the Egyptian army is going to have a ruling coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood, there's a third element of the traditional premobaric elite in this triangular new dispensation. If you're going to adopt Muslim Brotherhood as a major partner in your power equation, you have to give them something, especially in Gaza. Hamas is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. On Gaza, you have to do something. And yes, when you do something, either Israel does something like shooting down Egyptians or the border is opened. Not only Muslim Brotherhood, but a lot of Egyptians get moved by it. There's no question about it. I agree. But if you look at the military point of view, the two firmest allies militarily of Israel for the last 20 years, Turkey and Egypt, have both virtually broken relations with Israel. That's a very significant issue. Look, if Israel thinks that it can push Turkey around the way it pushes anyone else around, it's not on. And I'm not talking about killing eight Turks. They gulped it. For a year, they didn't do a damn thing. But Israelis will not stop drilling for that oil. What is driving Turkey and Israel apart is the discovery of oil and natural gas in Eastern Mediterranean on a coastline that is shared between Israel, Turkey and Cyprus. And Turkey has been asking them to stop this drilling in it. Israel, during the last one year, has gone much more aggressively doing that. So the real fight between Turkey and Israel is oil. Another interesting one of Gaza also has gas off its coast. I was going to say that if the Palestine were a state, it would be Gaza's coastline. Lot of what Israel claims for it to be their coastline is actually the Gaza coastline. So when Mr. Erdogan says, I'm going to go to Gaza one of these days, it's a very multifaceted thing he's playing. It's a very complex game being played. And it's only media such as ours that can actually bring this out because the establishment media just will not touch this question of that oil and that illegality of what Israel is doing over the issue of oil with a country, the only country in that region, which is militarily more powerful. So it's interesting that what you were saying that though each of the players have their own intent in all this, but in totality, what it has done is opened out the Palestinian questions in uncertain ways. So we really cannot predict as for the last 20, 30 years, the kind of status we have had on the Israeli-Palestine issue is no longer seems to be holding. Because disturbance under the heavens is usually a good thing. Particularly when you have a situation, when you have a situation as bad as that, things getting shaken up bound to be a good thing. Thank you Ajaz. On that note, we will conclude the session of this week today.