San Remo: The Forgotten Milestone
Ninety five years ago, prime ministers, ambassadors and other dignitaries from Europe and America gathered in the Italian Riviera. Journalists from around the world reported on the upcoming San Remo Peace Conference and the great expectations the international community placed on this event, just a year after the Paris Peace Conference had settled the political map of Europe at the end of World War One.A Dybbuk in the White House
On Sunday, April 25, 1920, after hectic deliberation, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers (Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the U.S. acting as an observer) adopted the San Remo Resolution -- a 500 word document which defined the future political landscape of the Middle East out of the defunct Ottoman Empire.
This Resolution led to the granting of three Mandates, as defined in Article 22 of the 1919 Covenant of the League of Nations. The future states of Syria-Lebanon and Iraq emerged from two of these Mandates and became exclusively Arab countries. But in the third Mandate, the Supreme Council recognized the “historical connection of the Jewish people to Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country” while safeguarding the “civil and religious rights” of the non-Jewish population.
Subsequently, the British limited the Jewish Homeland in Palestine to the area west of the Jordan River and allowed eastern Palestine to be gradually administered by the Hashemites. The territorial expansion to the east eventually gave birth to the Kingdom of Transjordan, later renamed Jordan in 1950.
The importance of the San Remo Conference with regard to Palestine cannot be overstated:
In Jewish folklore a dead malcontent may return to possess the living. The troubled soul is known as a “dybbuk’, and it runs amok making mischief. Writers and people of stage and screen have invoked the fiend to aggravate family wrangles to the point of madness.JCPA: The Power Struggle for Leadership of the Palestinian Authority
Yet for all its wicked antics the dybbuk wants nothing more sinister than to settle a score. It may upturn some lives in the ghetto, but not the balance of world power. And no dybbuk, until now, toyed with the President of America.
Love or hate Obama’s par-cooked nuclear deal, there’s no doubting the architect’s turn-up of the old order. Iran, hitherto America’s number one foe, is to be, in the world’s number one hotspot, America’s number one ally.
A detente, in other words, is brewing between the world’s powerhouse and the world’s sour pickle jar. The President’s resolve to bring war-mongering mullahs in from the cold is life-changing.
Debate his grip on reality; fret at the madness of trusting Iran to abide by unverifiable terms; believe that the terms will inhibit or pave the way to nuclear breakout; extol Obama’s indefatigable self-belief or cut at his mulish naïveté, it all pales beside one dominating horror. Effectively a president of America has decamped to the enemy.
The conflict between Abbas and Dahlan, who for years had been a favorite of Abbas, erupted in 2011 and escalated to the point that Dahlan was expelled from Fatah and tried in absentia.
Since then there have been various attempts at mediation. Even Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi tried, but Abbas rebuffed his appeal to mend fences with Dahlan.
The Ramallah court’s ruling prompted a wave of rumors about new, behind-the-scenes mediation efforts.
Such efforts appear to depend on whether the PA will appeal the court’s ruling. Fatah officials who are close to Dahlan confirm that reconciliation efforts have resumed, taking account of Dahlan’s growing power in Gaza and in the refugee camps in Lebanon.
Recent months have also seen a spike in Dahlan’s power in the refugee camps and general area of Jenin and Nablus, leading to armed clashes between his supporters in the Balata camp (adjacent to Nablus) and Abbas’ followers in the Nablus area.