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The recent war between Hamas and Israel was a perhaps unnecessary reminder of the problem that Hamas control of Gaza brings--to Gazans, Israelis, and all Palestinians. It's obvious that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has no solutions to offer, and his most recent move was to cancel parliamentary elections yet again. None have been held since 2006, and he himself was elected in 2005--for a four year term now reaching its 17th year. It's also clear that neither Israel nor Egypt wishes to "conquer" Gaza and take full responsibility for the area and its populace.

What then are the options? This is the subject of a symposium in Mosaic Magazine, building on an analysis by former Israeli ambassador tothe United States and Knesset member Michael Orenentitled "How Gaza Became Israel's Unsolvable Problem."

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My own contribution is called "What Can Be Done Politically To Weaken Hamas."It begins this way:

Americas interests in Gaza are threefold: to alleviate the humanitarian suffering of the Palestinians living there, to strengthen Israels security, and to see an end to the control of the Gaza Strip by a terrorist group increasingly allied with Iran. Hamas stands in the way of all three, and the end of Hamas control of Gaza should underpin Americas strategy in the region over the coming years. How can this be won?

Pressure Points

Abrams gives his take on U.S. foreign policy, with special focus on the Middle East and democracy and human rights issues.

I thenargue thatthe "only possible way to remove or at least badly undermine Hamas in the long run is political: it is by reducing its level of support, building up support for alternative groups, and preventing it from ruling by sheer force. A key problem today is that there is no alternative that is more attractive to Palestinians."The goal should be to undermine Hamas by showing Gazans, over time, that there are better alternatives than perpetual rule by an Islamist proxy of Iran, and moreover, that those alternatives are real and indeed are visible in the West Bank. This is admittedly a long-term approach and one that may fail, but there are no short-term approaches that offer any real change.

The idea, I conclude, is to give Palestinians an open choice between Hamas and decent government without corruption and terror. It is a choice they have never had except in the few months after Arafat died.

My argument, and those of Amb. Oren, former Israeli National Security Adviser Gen. Yaacov Amidror, and Gen. Amos Yadlin, and others can be found at Mosaic.

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Can Democracy Help Solve The Problem of Gaza? - Council on Foreign Relations

An Iranian motorcyclist rides his motorcycle past an electoral banner for the conservative politician, head of Iran's judiciary, and Irans June 18 presidential elections candidate Ebrahim Raisi, in downtown Tehran on June 3. (Morteza Nikoubazl / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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Theres a running joke among Iranians that the Iranian political system must be far more advanced than the one in the United States; months after the US election millions of Americans doubt the winner, but months before the Iranian election, everyone was certain who the winner was going to be.

Iran has begun an electoral process in which the vote, scheduled for June 18, is predetermined and where voter participation will likely be at a record low. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appears to have handpicked Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-liner who is head of the judiciary, to succeed Hassan Rouhani as president.

This has never happened before in Iran, and since 1997when Mohammad Khatami, a reform-minded long-shot candidate, won the presidencyelections have been especially unpredictable and dramatic. Khatami continued to defy the odds by winning another mandate in 2001 against conservative candidates. Four years later, a relative unknown backed by Khamenei named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad upended the prior arrangements. While ostensibly a right-wing extremist, he secretly harbored anti-establishment sentiments. In the meantime, a popular democratic movement called the Green Movement, born of the 2009 election, shook the system for more than a year.

In 2013 and 2017, another reformist candidate, Hassan Rouhani, ran on a platform of joining the global order, de-escalation, and rolling back social and religious strictures. He easily defeated the hard-line candidates arrayed against him, including Raisi.

On all these occasions, spontaneous popular mobilization emerged from below. The regime tolerated it as a price to pay for maintaining its legitimacy and a display of its popular sovereignty.

These past elections have not been fully democratic. Women are barred from running, and candidates must be vetted by a process in which only those hailing from the religious elite are ultimately allowed to run. Still, elections provide opportunities for internal regime dissenters to voice their views and even get elected.

Mass participation in an electoral process has been a cornerstone of the Islamic Republic from the beginning. In 1979, the electorate voted to abolish the monarchy. This is a legacy of the republics founder, Ruhollah Khomeini, who was adamant that veering from this model would betray his vision. The current supreme leader, Khamenei, has until now followed the same formula. Elections confer both legitimacy and an internal dynamism to the system, which has likely prolonged the rule of the clergy against formidable odds.Current Issue

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Informal opinion surveys indicate that the participation rate, which normally averages around 70 percent of the electorate, is expected to fall below 35 percent, perhaps even to the lower 20s.

If the election is allowed to go ahead under these circumstancesthere is always a chance Khamenei could reverse the process by decreea pillar of the clerical system, namely its republican element, will be permanently impaired. Once voters fall out with a political establishment, they may not be easily nudged back to the ballot box. This kind of fissure, as the republics founder repeatedly emphasized, could endanger the Islamic regime in the long run.

Raisi is a 61-year-old mid-ranking clerical judge who is now poised to reach the highest echelon of theocratic establishment in the Islamic Republic. At seminary schools, first in the city of Mashahd and then at the holy city of Qum, he became a devout follower of a clergyman named Noorollahian who later became an aide to the custodian of the Imam Reza Shrine, one of the nerve centers of the clerical regime. At age 23, he married the daughter of the future Friday prayer leader of the city of Mashhad, a hard-line cleric named Ahmad Alamolhoda. Both his teacher and his father-in-law played key roles in his meteoric rise in the clerical-juridical firmament. Thanks to these connections as well as his talent for political maneuvering, he raised himself through the ranks of the juridical system with bewildering speed. Starting out as assistant prosecutor and inspector of the revolutionary courts in the provinces, he soon became top prosecutor in a city 30 miles west of the capital. At the ripe age of 25, Raisi found his way to Tehran, where he took up a post as assistant to the chief prosecutor general of the Revolutionary Courts, Ali Razini. Two years later, in 1988, he was invited to join the so-called Committee of Death to mete out death sentences to thousands of political prisoners who refused to renounce their political or ideological beliefs. This was in the last months of the IranIraq War in which a sense of fear and paranoia pervaded the entire regime.

After joining the Committee of Death, it was smooth sailing to top-tier jobs like inspector general of the Judiciary, chief prosecutor at the Special Court of the Clergy and, for the last three years, the top justice at the Judiciary.

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But until now, people believed that the Committee of Death had been just three judges. Few people knew that Raisi was in fact a fourth judge, who presided over the proceedings. This surprising development was revealed in August 2016 through the efforts of the family of a deceased dissident cleric named Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri.

In August 2016, Montazeris family released a taped message of a meeting in which the dead cleric admonished the Committee of Death members for their bloody misdeeds. He said, History will condemn us [for this], and the names of those responsible will be written in history as criminals. Raisi has routinely evaded addressing the charges, preferring instead to blame Khomeini for the orders and minimize his own role.

The selection of Raisi as Irans de facto strongmanat a time when there are persistent rumors of the deterioration of the supreme leaders healthis a puzzling choice. On the upside, his past record of fighting tirelessly for the interests of the clerical establishment endears him to the large array of factions and groupings that come under the umbrella of Principalist or Conservative forces. A series of setbacksincluding loss of elections to the hated reformists, the betrayal of Ahmadinejad, the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the economic meltdown, and the divisive nuclear accordhave demoralized these hard-line factions in recent years, and they have been seeking out a unifying charismatic figure like Raisi to restore confidence in their ideology.

In addition to this, for the last few years, Raisi and his team have crafted an image of him as an incorruptible crusader for the little guy. The state-run television frequently airs footage of his visits to courthouses, closed factories, and dispossessed peasants lots in which he is seen railing against government misconduct. In all this coverage, he tries to appear unassuming and troubled by injustice. Sometimes he orders new rulings against a prior judgment on the spot. On his website, he states that he has dismissed hundreds of corrupt judges and public prosecutors in his capacity as the chief of the Judiciary.

Still, the fact that he will have won the presidency in an uncompetitive and lopsided manner is sure to tarnish his reputation with the electorate for years to come.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the leader of the Green Movement who has been under house arrest for over a decade, expressed his solidarity with those boycotting the election. Calling the vote staged, he decried the butchering and total elimination of republicanism.

Even the two major reformist-clerical groupingsthe Militant Clerical Society and the Theological Teachers and Researchers Societywhich have always encouraged people to vote in the past, no matter how undemocratic the conditions, are refraining from endorsing candidates. The Theological Teachers called the election cosmetic. In a statement issued by the group on May 26, it warned that the Guardian Council and some elements outside it are bent on creating a mono-factional rule.

At the same time, Raisis appalling human rights recordspecifically his role in the murder of thousands of political prisoners in the summer of 1988is a major liability for him and his backers. It is not inconceivable that the International Court of Human Rights at The Hague could take up a case against him litigated by lawyers of the victims families and find him guilty.

There were many indications that decision makers had opted for a norm-defying course of action weeks before the announcement of the list of approved candidates. On May 4, a spokesman for the Guardian Council, the oversight entity charged with vetting candidates, announced that it had changed the rules for selecting candidates even though a constitutional amendment is supposed to be needed for such a change. Then, a few days later, another spokesman declared, Well, the people as well as national and political anticipations always expect to see a large rate of participation in the election. However, on strictly legal and statutory grounds, a low participation poses no problem for the credibility and legitimacy of the elections.

Finally, on May 26 when the Guardian Council rolled out its final list of approved contenders for the 2021 election, one name, aside from the current vice president and other reformist candidates, was absent: Ali Larijani, a three-term parliamentary spokesman, former secretary of the Supreme National Supreme Council, and special adviser to the supreme leader. Larijani was believed to be the only candidate who could have defeated Raisi. (Three of the six lay jurists in the Guardian Council had been placed there by Raisi himself.)Related Article

It is little wonder that few people will turn out for the June 18 vote. Even those who believe a monolithic leadership has a better shot at bringing the country out of its economic morass and therefore support Raisi may not vote; his victory is already foreordained.

The voting bloc that has consistently prevented the country from going fully theocratica coalition of students, young people, secularists, and middle-class voters who come together briefly during electionsis now boycotting the election. They saw their hopes dashed under the reformist presidency of Hassan Rouhani, whose second term saw an economic depression that devastated the livelihood of tens of millions of the same people that were the chief backers of the reformists. The damage was so calamitous that even if the massive sanctions imposed by Donald Trump were to be lifted today, it would take years for many people to rebuild their lives.

On top of that, two major waves of protests by the unemployed and the working poor were put down in an exceedingly violent manner, further alienating the voters from the reformists.

With the loss of faith in reformists and the absence of any viable candidates to challenge the official establishment candidate, it was an opportune moment to do away with the republican element of the regime. This move would have elicited massive waves of protest just three or four years ago but was met with a collective yawn. According to a poll by Mehdi Nasiri, a former hard-line activist and publicist, 70 percent of those polled said they wouldnt take part in any form of election because they saw no point in doing so.

Absent any major developments, the trend is here to stay. According to some experts, among them a prominent Iranian sociologist named Taghi Azad Armaki at the University of Tehran, most Iranians want reform, and so even a hard-line administration occupying all three branches of the government will be forced to moderate its radicalism. I believe that Conservatives would have to follow the reformist path, Armaki told the newswire IRNA. However, if the election becomes unpolarized, it becomes monolithic and therefore turns the act of criticism into one of opposition. Like most Iranians, Armaki doesnt see the election as creating immediate dangers for the regime, but he said it will strain the system.

Another academic from Azad University, who requested anonymity, predicted a darker future for Iran. He told me that he anticipated further militarization, increased repression, and more confrontations with other countries: If Raisi wins, which seems more than likely now, I see a short period of retrenchment and relative peace followed by very serious deterioration of the conditions both domestically and internationally with unforeseen consequences for everyone.

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Irans Incredible Shrinking Democracy - The Nation

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There has lately been an uptick of articles in the media, particularly the Western media, warning about the impending end of Indias democracy. Concurrently, many officials in Indias ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have engaged in illiberal rhetoric toward minorities. The government has acted in authoritarian ways toward social media, most recently attempting to intimidate Twitter in an attempt to censor voices critical of the governments handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Indias rank in democracy indexes has subsequently dropped.

For example, a recent article in Responsible Statecraft stated that the Modi government demolished the secular foundations of Indian democracy, replacing it with a Hindu state in which non-Hindus are at best tolerated, dangerously mixing truths with falsehoods. An uninformed reader could be forgiven for thinking that Indias democratic constitutional disposition had been abolished and replaced with a fascist dictatorship la Hitler. While, on one hand, it is certainly true that the rhetoric and actions of the BJP would lead one to that conclusion, it is also true, on the other hand, that the Indian state, built on the basis of the 1949 constitution, has not been replaced. This would be like arguing that the former U.S. President Donald Trumps rhetoric and incitement amounted to the replacement of the U.S. government and constitution with a racist dictatorship.

In reality, reports of the collapse of Indias democracy are often alarmist and misinformed. Indias institutions particularly the courts remain strong; democracy remains vibrant especially at the local and state levels, where the BJP has been defeated multiple times and where opposition parties control many governments and most importantly, its society remains heterogeneous, thus inhibiting a centralized tyranny. India is a far cry from being a one-party state.

It is important, however, to differentiate between democracy and liberalism.

In an interview with journalist Yascha Mounk, Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, noted that despite some institutional erosion in the past few years:

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there is a sense, still, that the ultimate strength of India is a free and fair election, which is partly why the BJP pulled out all the stops to try and win the [recent] West Bengal [state] election to try and show, we can do it there also, in the stronghold of Mamata Banerjee, the leader of the opposition there. We can beat her. The people love us. And theyre showing that to us. The BJPs current leadership flourishes under the sense that theyre liked by everyone, under every circumstance.

Democracy in India is strong and entrenched, especially at the state level. A bigger problem is the lack of a competent political party that could challenge the BJP on the national level. The party that used to fill this role, the Indian National Congress, or simply the Congress Party, has its own set of problems. While it avoids much of the ethno-religious rhetoric of the BJP, it lost legitimacy because of its history of stifling bureaucratic policies, its role serving as a front for feudal interests, and most damaging, its own anti-democratic dynastic politics. The BJPs emergence had much to do with its promise of development and competence rather than its core Hindu-nationalist ideology, which only appeals to a relatively narrow base. The BJPs platform for development and good governance is why ambitious politicians have defected to it from the Congress Party. Minus Prime Minister Narendra Modis charisma, it is not self-evident that the BJP would have staying national power. India is sorely in need of a functional alternative to the BJP that can provide an alternative to that party at the center.

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The BJPs inability to handle the COVID-19 crisis and get much done is not just a reflection of its own capabilities, but a reflection of Indias weak state, an institutional deficiency that results in the state not being able to get much done. This phenomenon goes back thousands of years, as I have previously discussed at The Diplomat. Democracy works extremely well for Indias society, because it is the means by which different identity groups in a highly heterogeneous society can share and balance power. It prevents any individual or group from becoming too strong and imposing their will on the customs of other groups. Indias post-independence constitution and the entrenchment of federalism and ethnic-based states has merely perpetuated a system that will never look like Chinas centralized, totalitarian state. Indias very diversity itself pushes back against any democratic backsliding.

However, despite Indias democratic norms and heterogeneity, Indias society is not particularly liberal, and this is reflected in the actions of its elected governments. Indias famed tolerance is more a function of different caste, religious, and ethnic groups maintaining a peaceful coexistence with each other rather than converging into a shining melting pot (outside of certain circles and big cities). Tolerance is not celebration and oneness.

Todays cultural and social trends are not necessarily evidence of democratic backsliding, but are rather evidence of social norms in India that are illiberal toward speech, individual expression, and criticism. As the political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote, individual freedom in India has been limited much more by things like kinship ties, caste rules, religious obligations, and customary practices. But in some sense, it was the tyranny of cousins that allowed Indians to resist the tyranny of tyrants. Indias democratically elected rulers, from all parties and on all levels union (central), state, and local behave in an illiberal manner because the society from which they spring is in many ways illiberal, sociologically speaking. Parties across the ideological spectrum have resorted to censorship, libel cases, and intimidation by the police. Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of the state of West Bengal, whose party, the local All India Trinamool Congress, was recently lauded for defeating the BJP, has herself often intimidated critics. The desire of every local potentate to carve their own fief is a strong factor that prevents any party from establishing an authoritarian government at the central level.

Ultimately, many in the media and among activists want to see a version of India come into being that accords with their own preferred vision, rather than dig deeper into the complexities of Indias history and sociopolitical evolution. It is not conducive to an accurate analysis of Indias politics to view it through the dichotomous lens of democracy versus authoritarianism, and of freedom versus fascism. Political systems are in a constant state of change based on the dynamics of the actors and institutions involved, and there is no one particular endpoint. For example, the English and then British political system witnessed numerous battles for power between royal authority and the nobility, then between the king and parliament, and then between the established and working classes before becoming what it is today.

There is every reason to believe that a society as diverse as Indias will likewise witness a constant tug-of-war between various groups, political parties, regions, and institutions, and that it is unreasonable to expect India to develop a Western-style liberal democracy right off the bat, if ever. India will continue to evolve in a direction that will probably be both relatively democratic given democracys enormous popularity and legitimacy in the country but also relatively illiberal, given political and social attitudes. But Indias democracy and constitutional order will remain strong and resilient, with its ethnic heterogeneity, regionalism, and multiplicity of groups providing a cushion against the entrenchment of authoritarianism, even if this is expressed in terms of group identities rather than individual rights.

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Why India's Democracy is Not Dying The Diplomat - The Diplomat

As the leaders of the worlds wealthiest nations wrapped up their first in-person summit since the outbreak of the pandemic, they released a joint communiqu on Sunday, underscoring areas of solidarity and the differences that remain when it comes to tackling a host of global crises.

The group, including President Biden, did not reach agreement on a timeline to eliminate the use of coal for generating electric power, a failure that climate activists said was a deep disappointment ahead of a global climate conference later this year.

The leaders sought to present a united front even as it remained to be seen how the plans would be executed.

The agreement represented a dramatic return of Americas postwar international diplomacy, and Mr. Biden said it was evidence of the strength of the worlds democracies in tackling hard problems.

Speaking to reporters after the summit, Mr. Biden said the leaders endorsement of a global minimum tax would help ensure global equity and a proposal to finance infrastructure projects in the developing world would counter the influence of China, providing what he said was a democratic alternative.

Those initiatives, he said, would promote democratic values and not an autocratic lack of values.

Everyone at the table understood and understands both the seriousness and the challenges that we are up against and the responsibility of our proud democracies to step up and deliver to the rest of the world, Mr. Biden said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, who hosted the summit, said that the gathering was an opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of democracy.

That would start, he said, with agreements to speed up the effort to vaccinate the world, which he called the greatest feat in medical history.

Asked about the failure to go further on climate policy by setting firm timelines, Mr. Johnson said that the general criticism was misplaced and failed to take into account the full scope of what was achieved during the summit.

I think it has been a highly productive few days, he said.

Mr. Biden hoped to use his first trip abroad to show that democracy, as a system of government, remained capable of addressing the worlds most pressing challenges.

The communiqu issued on Sunday fleshed out some of the proposals that have dominated the summit and was explicit in the need to counter the rise of China.

Three years ago, China wasnt even mentioned in the G7 communiqu, according to an administration official who briefed reporters on its contents. This year, there is a section on China that speaks to the importance of coordinating on and responding to Chinas nonmarket economic practices and the need to speak out against human rights abuses, including in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

The communiqu promised action against forced labor practices in the agricultural, solar, and garment sectors.

It also noted the need for supply chain resilience and technology standards so that democracies are aligned and supporting each other.

At the same time, the nations agreed to an overhaul of international tax laws, unveiling a broad agreement that aims to stop large multinational companies from seeking out tax havens.

The administration official called it a historic endorsement to end the race to the bottom in corporate taxation with a global minimum tax that will help fund domestic renewal and grow the middle class.

But for all the good will and declarations of unity, there were questions about how the proposals would be translated into real-world action.

For instance, on the tax laws, a number of hurdles have yet to be overcome.

The biggest obstacle to getting a deal finished could come from the United States. The Biden administration must win approval from a narrowly divided Congress to make changes to the tax code, and Republicans have shown resistance to Mr. Bidens plans.

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Biden: Summit Offers Democratic Alternative To Chinese Influence. - The New York Times

(Washington, DC) The United States Congress should swiftly pass two critical laws needed to protect and advance the right to vote, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For the People Act, Human Rights Watch said today. Both pieces of legislation are essential to protecting US democracy.

Since the troubled transition from the administration of former President Donald Trump, state legislators throughout the US have introduced hundreds of bills that would restrict access to voting, many of them echoing Trumps false claims about the 2020 presidential election results. These state laws represent backsliding in the US from voting systems historically aimed at upholding the rights of voters and respecting the will of the people. Without federal action, the rights of voters will be seriously impaired, particularly those of Black, brown, and low-income voters, Human Rights Watch said.

Two laws pending before Congress would help the United States ensure that the will of the people, not of politicians, determines the outcome of an election, said Nicole Austin-Hillery, US director at Human Rights Watch.Passage of both the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For The People Act would be a crucial step toward guaranteeing every American a baseline level of voting access, free from efforts to hamper, dilute, or nullify their votes.

The United States has along history of discriminationagainst Black and brown people exercising the right to vote. Even after the federal enactment of the US Voting Rights Act in 1965, which aimed to reduce discrimination in voting, Black, Latinx, and Native American citizens experienced many obstacles to voting. Changes by some states in recent years, including those enabled by a 2013 US Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder, which eviscerated federal oversight under the act have made voting harder, not easier. The Covid-19 pandemic hasexacerbated these problems. Trumps promotion of a false narrative about the results of the 2020 election, echoed by his allies, is a serious attack on the concept that every vote should count. It also harms the millions of voters of color who came out in record numbers to speak through the ballot box.

The decentralized administration of elections in the United States means thatno state administers elections in exactly the same way as another state. Each US state has a chief election official who has ultimate authority over elections, but which official holds this power varies from state to state. For example, many states rely on their secretary of state as their chief election official, some require governors to appoint top election officials, and others use appointed bipartisan election commissions. It is a patchwork quilt of voting systems.

The groundswell of new state laws began early this year with the introduction of253 bills proposing voting restrictions across 43 statesas of February 19, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. That number rose to at least 389 bills in 48 states as of May 14, the Brennan Centerreported recently. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the For The People Act would increase federal oversight of state laws that might restrict the right to vote and quell the voices of the most vulnerable voters.

The US should urgently take action to protect the rights of voters, Austin-Hillery said. In the words of the late Congressman John Lewis, the vote is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have. No voter should be blocked from using it.

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US: Action Needed to Protect Democratic Rights - Human Rights Watch