The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey

US President Donald Trump may envision himself as a Middle Eastern puppet master only to find out that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Arab and Muslim leaders have played him. Even so, it is Hamas and the Palestinians who are likely to hold the bag, not Mr. Trump. The fact of the matter is that no one in the Middle East and the broader Muslim world sees their interests minimally represented in the US president’s 20-point plan to end the Gaza war, but no regional leader is willing to get on Mr. Trump’s wrong side by telling him so.

US ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack appeared to frame the administration’s thinking in a freewheeling interview on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's high-stakes meeting on Monday in Washington with President Donald Trump, his fourth in ten months. The two men’s discussions will focus on a 21-point plan presented by Mr. Trump earlier in the week to Arab and Muslim leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu appear to have set out their positions in advance of the meeting, suggesting that harsh words could be exchanged.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Israel continues bombing Gaza, Houthis launch a drone strike on the Israeli city of Eilat, Israel conducts airstrikes in Doha, Qatar, the Gaza aid flotilla is being swarmed by Israel according to crew, and European states are recognizing Palestinian statehood. A lot is going on in terms of the Middle East and especially Israel Palestine. James M. Dorsey of the Turbulent World blog/Substack, a longtime scholarly commenter on the Middle East, returns to break it all down and discuss a number of topics including the two-state solution vs. the one-state solution vs. the one-state reality, Gulf and Arab states now seeing Israel as a bigger security threat than Israel, Israel's attack on a compound in Gaza that killed members of the Doghmush clan and its implications, Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard's Knesset run, problems with the Palestine Authority, Israel's West Bank annexation plans, and much, much more. To listen to the podcast or read the transcript, go to https://jamesmdorsey.substack.com/p/israels-bombing-europe-recognizes

Even by its own standards. Israel is cutting off its nose to spite its face. On Sunday, Israel scored an own goal when it targeted the compound of Gaza's powerful Doghmush clan, killing 25 extended family members. Located in Gaza City's Sabra district adjacent to the city's municipality, the Doghmush have long had a troubled relationship with Hamas. Without identifying the Doghmush by name, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has long hoped that the family, despite its chequered past, and other clans would serve as a Palestinian fig leaf in a post-war Gaza administration that would exclude Hamas and the West Bank-based, internationally recognised Palestine Authority and would be subservient to the Jewish state. It was a strategy that was doomed from the outset.

Recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN is gaining momentum, with Australia, the UK and France joining over 145 countries in support. Yet, major players like the US and Japan remain hesitant. What impact does this have on a long-lasting solution to the war in Gaza? BFM 89.9 discusses this with Dr. James M. Dorsey, Adjunct Senior Fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

International sports boycotts of Israel are a question of if rather than when, with mounting pressure and ever more targeted boycotts and sanctions against Israel and widespread public anger at the Jewish state’s conduct of the Gaza war. Next week’s United Nations General Assembly proceedings in New York, where Gaza is certain to take centre stage, are likely to make it increasingly difficult for international and national sports associations to remain on the sidelines under the fictional assertion that sports and politics are separate, and that sports build bridges.

James M. Dorsey discusses on TRT World the impact of the Gaza war on Israeli soldiers, with hundreds reportedly taken their own and many more suffering from Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

What steps will the Doha emergency summit take following Israel’s attack_TRT 16092025 by James M. Dorsey

US Secretary Marco Rubio’s first engagement after arriving in Israel this weekend to discuss the Gaza war and the fallout of Israel’s strike in Qatar sent a dangerous signal. By visiting Jerusalem’s Western Wall, a Jewish place of prayer and pilgrimage together with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the United States’ Christian Zionist ambassador to the Jewish state, Mike Huckabee, Mr. Rubio was implicitly framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a religious and civilisational rather than a national dispute.

Is Qatar the straw that breaks the camel’s back by James M. Dorsey

Israel is playing a high-stakes game of bluff poker. The problem is that the stakes are high not only for Israel but also for its foremost supporters, the United States and Europe, as well as Gulf states with which it enjoyed close relations despite differences over Gaza, Palestine, and Iran. How the US, Europe, and the Gulf respond to Israel's targeting of Hamas's leadership in exile in Qatar, one of three mediators alongside the United States and Egypt in the Gaza war, is likely to determine whether Israel's gamble pays off. The fact that Israel failed to kill any of the senior Hamas leaders gathered to discuss an Israeli-endorsed US proposal to end the war and initial responses to the attack don't bode well for Israel.

Israel’s risky strike against Qatar was neither an unmitigated success in Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s terms nor a complete failure, even if it’s too early for a definitive cost-benefit analysis of what could prove to be a watershed.

With the United States and Israel discussing a follow-up to a US$38 billion ten-year Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries, which is set to expire in 2028, Israeli officials are warming to the notion of a paradigm shift in US-Israeli military relations.

Nearly two years into Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, ceasefire negotiations remain stalled, the humanitarian toll continues to mount, and international divisions are deepening. Despite mounting global pressure, Israel has resisted calls for a permanent ceasefire, insisting on unfeasible conditions. During this week’s Middle East Report, James M. Dorsey analysed the faltering ceasefire efforts. Dorsey outlined the core of the impasse: a mounting divergence between Israeli and much of the international community, and Hamas’s demands on the other. In August, Hamas accepted an Israeli-endorsed US proposal for a 60-day ceasefire. Yet, Israel and US envoy Steve Witkoff shifted the narrative, insisting any truce be permanent and linked to full hostage release—effectively changing the negotiated goalposts. Dorsey warned that this tactical shift by Israel and the United States amounts to deliberate undermining of ceasefire momentum. “So, in effect, what Israel is doing is sabotaging a ceasefire,” Dorsey said. The Trump administration has enacted sweeping punitive measures against Palestinians: preventing Palestinian officials—including President Mahmoud Abbas—from attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York; barring Palestinian passport holders from US entry; and sanctioning Palestinian human rights groups supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Dorsey observed that diplomatic and economic pressure on Israel remains insufficient—yet potentially poised to escalate. “Private sector and limited government sanctions are troubling Israelis, but not enough to push Prime Minister Netanyahu to reconsider his policies,” Dorsey said. At the same time, civil society in Europe and elsewhere are campaigning for sanctions against Israel. “If and when sanctions start to kick in by the Europeans, serious sanctions that start to hit where it hurts, that’s something that Israel is going to have to take account of,” Dorsey said. Dorsey also spotlighted the latest flotilla of 50 ships from 44 countries—including activists from Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar—that has set sail to break the siege of Gaza. He flagged the unprecedented involvement of Gulf nationals as “remarkable,” given the suppression of pro-Palestinian expression of support in much of the Middle East. Finally, Dorsey touched on Lebanon’s entanglement: the Lebanese government, under US pressure, has committed to disarming Hezbollah, though the group has refused to comply. On paper, this move is framed as a step toward consolidating state sovereignty by ensuring the monopoly of arms rests with the state. But in practice, it places Beirut in an impossible bind. Hezbollah, still reeling but not broken from its latest confrontation with Israel, has declared it will not give up its weapons as long as Israeli forces occupy Lebanese land. This creates a standoff between Hezbollah, which commands loyalty across significant sections of Lebanese society, and the fragile Lebanese state. For ordinary Lebanese, this uncertainty compounds daily struggles. The country is still reeling from years of financial crisis, the 2020 Beirut port explosion, and one of the world’s worst currency devaluations. Analysts warn that pressure to confront Hezbollah militarily could trigger fresh conflict in a society exhausted by instability. At the same time, Washington insists that Lebanon must show it can rein in armed groups operating independently of the state. As Dorsey put it, this leaves Lebanon “between a rock and a hard place,” trying to navigate American demands without igniting a civil confrontation that could spiral into another round of violence.

Israelis are enjoying their mangoes this summer at sharply reduced prices at the expense of food-deprived Gazan Palestinians. The sharp drop in mango prices is as much a result of Israel's throttling of the flow of food into Gaza and its economic blockade of the Strip as it is a byproduct of increasing consumer boycotts of Israeli products and US President Donald Trump's tariffs on Brazilian and Mexican imports of the fruit. As a result, Israel is witnessing a mango glut, with the Gaza market shut down because of the almost two-year-long war, and Latin American producers are grabbing European market share from Israel with pricing that undercuts Israeli produce. Mangos are the exception to the rule. Most private sector and primarily limited government sanctions and boycotts of Israel are causing Israelis discomfort, but not yet the kind of pain that could persuade Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to rethink his warmongering and morally, legally, and politically questionable policies. However, the pain is likely to increase, all the more so as Israel and the Trump administration proceed with plans to make Gaza even more uninhabitable than it already is, so that Palestinians decide they have no option but to emigrate.

The UAE’s long-standing no holds barred campaign to persuade Western and other nations to proscribe the Muslim Brotherhood as the source of all Islamist evil, is producing results. The question is whether crackdowns on freedoms of expression and assembly, leaving Muslims and others with few, if any, release valves, coupled with anger at Western and Arab restrictions on expression of support for the Palestinians and a Western refusal to sanction Israel for its Gaza war conduct, creates a feeding ground for a next generation of Islamist militants.

James discusses on Radio Islam the dim prospects for ending the Gaza war and resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Pursuing diametrically opposed objectives, Gaza's ceasefire mediators are working at cross purposes. The divide among the mediators, the United States, Qatar, and Egypt, significantly diminishes the chances of the ceasefire talks succeeding and, if they do, reaching a deal that would lead to an end of the war. Hamas’s renewed acceptance by Hamas of a months-old Israeli-endorsed US proposal for a 60-day-ceasefire was as much a product of the mediators working at cross purposes as it was a Qatar-Egyptian attempt to get the talks back on track. It was also an effort to re-engage US President Donald Trump, who, faced with mounting criticism of Israel’s Gaza starvation policy from segments of his support base, has gone silent on the ceasefire talks. Finally, Qatar and Egypt hope the revived talks will keep open the door to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The prospects for a Palestinian two-state solution appear increasingly bleak as Israel presses ahead with its military campaign to seize control of Gaza City while advancing a major settlement project that would sever the West Bank from East Jerusalem. On BFM 89.9, James weighs in on how international powers are responding and what could halt this devastating war. Separately, James talks to AzNews about the equally bleak prospects

Netanyahu has long used ultranationalist threats to collapse his government as a justification for his refusal to end the Gaza war, while, in fact, the far-right ministers in his Cabinet provide him a needed fig leaf to pursue policies designed to advance their shared notion of Greater Israel at the expense of Palestinian aspirations.