CONTEXTUAL SUMMARY OF ALL PRIOR NEGOTIATIONS

Conflicts around the world today are fully shaped by the lasting machinations & legacies of the former colonial powers. Denial of that is revisionist and irrational. National interests and the economic dependencies fostered in that period have paved the way for the inhabitants of those former colonies to remain entrenched in deep ethnic conflict and lasting hatreds fueled by the ongoing proxy conflicts of the great powers, or economic considerations. US-Russian Cold War calculations repeatedly fueled the major Arab-Israeli Wars. Iranian-Israeli relations repeatedly utilize Palestinians, Kurds, and Lebanese in their proxy engagements. Arab Spring uprisings will continuously bring to power regimes that are increasingly anti-West and anti-Israel.

People marginalized and displaced by the process of colonization hold lasting grievances that in new wars will continue to trigger violent engagements. The ongoing tensions and currently intractable low-grade then high-grade violence between the Judean and Palestinian communities is certainly more complex than colonialism yet far more immediate than distant wars and expulsions with ancient Babylon or Rome. Moving forward it is less vital that the root cause be debated conclusively, but instead that the proximate causes are understood and acted upon to secure a lasting settlement. The mechanisms of which we believe are outside the normative nation-state framework.

This analysis will propose the rationale and series of interlinked tactical interventions to be carried out in Israel and Palestine that will break the intractable deadlock of the failed peace negotiations. It will highlight the combination of renewed multi-track diplomatic efforts that will in harmonization produce three viable confederated states; coexistence; as well as peace and economic development between various peoples involved. Most importantly it will showcase a new intervention theory called Parallel State; the Para-State approach to seemingly endless inter-ethnic conflicts.

ANALYSIS

“An analysis of the problem begins with the fallacy of thinking the solution to the problem begins or ends with the land.”

“It also must begin with the understanding that all roads may go through Al-Quds/ Jerusalem, but not all roads lead to it. More importantly, not all possibilities stem from the obsession, a European obsession, with control of the Holy Land.”

Historic Grievances & Immediate Threats

The seemingly innumerous problems with the so-called peace process are founded in the complete lack of agreement on how and when the conflict began; who allowed this process to occur and ultimately who currently supports its continuation. 

This rhetoric and vast historical revisionism contribute to the lack of meaningful dialogue and subsequent action. Via a rapid historical phase analysis, we can observe highly divergent reference points and alignments of modern grievance.

What most shapes our narrative is a sense of eternal victimization, persecution, near extermination and refusal to be obliterated at the hands of nearly all the peoples of the Middle East and Europe.

Judean/Israeli Perception:

a) Slavery in Egypt 

b) Canaanite Conquest, 

c) First Hebrew Commonwealth, 

d) Babylonian Exile, 

e) Second Hebrew Commonwealth, 

f) Roman Occupation, 

g) Judeo-Roman Wars, 

h) Diaspora, 

i) Zionist Congressional Organizing, 

j) Shoah (HOLOCAUST), 

k) Independence War, 

l) Sinai War 1956,  

m) 1967 Six Day War,  

n) 1973 Yom Kippur War 

o) 1982 Lebanon War, 

p) Intifada One, 

q) Oslo Process, 

r) Intifada Two, 

s) post 2005 Separation Barrier, 

t) 2008 Hezbollah War, 

u) Gaza War 2006, 2008, and 2010, 

v) Gaza War 2014,

w) Judicial Unrest 2023

x) October 7th War

“What most shapes our narrative is a sense of eternal victimization stemming from having to pay with our blood and our lands for the crimes of the Europeans.” 

Palestinian Perception:  

1. Philistines,
2. Caliphates, 
3. Crusaders,
4. Ottoman Rule, 
5. The Revolt of 1843 
6. Balfour and British Rule, 
7. 1948 NAKBA (Catastrophe),
8.  1967 Occupation of West Bank and Gaza, 
9. Formation of PLO 1964 
10. 1967 (Second Catastrophe) 
11. Post-1967 Resistance Period,
12. 1970 Black September Massacres in Jordan
13. 1982 Israeli-Lebanon War,
14. Sabra-Shatilla Massacres, 
15. First Intifada One
16. Oslo, 
17. Second Intifada
18. 2005 Hudna/ Apartheid Wall
19. 2006 Hamas Electoral Victory/ Hamas/Fatah Civil Conflict 
20. 2008 Gaza War,
21. 2010 Gaza War, 
22. 2014 Gaza War
23. The Genocide of Gaza

“The contradictions of these clustered collective perspectives are virtually irreconcilable. But that is not as important as you may believe. We do not have to agree to a narrative only aims and indicators.”

From the Palestinian historic narrative there occurred a series of grave injustices and failures of leadership that took place throughout Ottoman and British occupations. Working against their rightful existence in the state of Palestine; Arab, Turkish, and English collaborators enabled a Jewish colonial presence which by the end of the Second World War; facilitated by Euro-American guilt over German atrocities allowed mass Jewish immigration to occur into historic Palestine which had not had any substantial Jewish population since 73 CE (Laqueur, 1972). Between 1936 and 1939 the Palestinians organized a large revolt against the British commission’s recommendations to divide Palestine. Deborah J. Gerner in Encyclopedia of 20th Century Ethnic Conflict stated that;

“Initially the rebellion was nonviolent; however after a British commission recommended splitting Palestine the revolt flared again in a much more violent form”. 

Following a series of provocations, ethnic cleansing, and the military defeats of Arab armies; by January 1949 Palestine was literally wiped off the map in order to give birth to the State of Israel. For many Palestinians, the source of the conflict goes back to the end of the First World War when Palestine was conquered from the dissolving Ottoman Empire by Great Britain and France which via the Sykes-Picot Agreement divided up the Arab world to ensure their spheres of interest.  

During the same time period, the Balfour Declaration was issued in Britain which promoted the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Zionist political manipulations in the United States fueled by the calculations of the Cold War enabled the State of Israel to expand rapidly past the boundaries established by the United Nations in 1948. Following the event called “the Catastrophe” (Nakba); Israel engaged in rapid annexation of all of historic Palestine in 1967. A series of wars with its neighbors; a series of atrocities inside Israel and other nations; and a continuous brutal occupation are now further compounded by daily expansions of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and a state of total siege and blockade in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

A commonly held perception is that the Europeans and Americans helped the Jews build a Zionist colony on their historic homeland. 

In many cases, they fled to Arab nations that reduced them to permanent internal refugees and others that massacred and expelled them. After being betrayed by the other Arab leaders they were forced into an extended exile that continues to this day. The Americans, controlled by the Zionist Lobby will arm and support the Israelis no matter what human rights violations are committed. Currently, not only has every Arab nation for the most part failed to help us or defeat Israel; the Americans have invaded Iraq and removed our primary ally Saddam Hussein, and our political leadership has been completely divided between Hamas (Gaza Strip) and Fatah (West Bank); and Israeli settlement expansions in the West Banks are proceeding; displacing Palestinians from whatever bi-national settlement potentially is achieved (over 9% of West Bank has been settled). 

“The Judean-Israeli historic narrative is around two thousand years longer in collective formation; reinforced by the annual retelling of the narrative within the religion itself.” 

To Judeans this is our historic homeland, given to them by their god after slavery in Egypt; from which they were exiled after three violent wars with the Roman Empire (66-135 CE). In the collective memory of the Jewish people they then lived in a series of ghettos within Muslim and European countries that ended regularly with pogroms, rape, robbery, deportation, and eventually the genocide of the Shoah (Holocaust) between 1939-1945.  

Inspired and motivated by the global Zionist movement and its founder Theodor Herzl; Jewish gradual colonization of Palestine had begun in the 1840’s but rapidly accelerated following the First World War in 1919. From the Jewish Zionist perspective Palestine was the only viable homeland for the Jewish people though settlements were offered and discussed in Sinai, Dominican Republic, Cyprus, Uganda, and Argentina. The Zionist Movement had succeeded by 1943 in purchasing nearly 400,000 acres, amounting to around 6% of the land for an estimated $560,000,000 paid to corrupt Ottoman officials, absentee Palestinian landlords living abroad, and peasant Fellahin (Laquer/Rubenberg). This provoked a massive Palestinian Uprising in 1936-1939 which was crushed by the British Colonial Authority shattering prematurely any nascent resistance to the Zionist program. Jews entered the Allied forces en masse during both WW1 & 2 and gained military training throughout the war while virtually all Palestinians abstained from military service and some of the Palestinian leadership openly collaborated with the Nazis.

It was of course vitally important to these planners that Zionism and later Israeli forces first overcome Palestinian resistance and then clear as much of the country as they could of its Palestinian population. They understood perfectly that otherwise the Jewish State called for by the partition plan would not have control of its internal lines of communication. Most importantly, they understood the well-established demographic calculus of Palestine, which meant that without ethnic cleansing, the new state would have nearly as many Arabs as Jews. But least as important as this objective was the driving forward and establishing of strategic lines on which the Arab armies could be confronted should they enter Palestine as they did on May 15^th, 1948.

In 1948 United Nations Resolution 181 divided Palestine into two new, highly unreasonable states; one Jewish and the other Palestinian Arab but this was rejected completely by the surrounding Arab countries who quickly decided to go to war with Israel which defeated them easily despite the mythology of six Arab armies v. Jewish partisans and holocaust survivors; it was a militarily comparable match (Morris, 2009).  For the Judean people, this was a historic victory and the beginning of modern Israel while for most Arabs and Palestinians this was an unjustified post-colonial war; an illegal partition of the land, and a humanitarian catastrophe. 

Subsequent Arab-Israeli wars in 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, 2008, 2014, and 2023 only made the Palestinian political question less likely to be answered and expanded the size of the Zionist state. Egypt and Jordan pressured Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip not to challenge the status quo or engage in acts of resistance against Israel (Gerner). Palestinians were massacred by Arab armies in Jordan (1970) and Lebanon (1982).  Palestinians lacked any unifying, effective leadership for decades and lacked any formal political representation until the creation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1964. In addition to this all most of the Palestinian leaders were expelled, assassinated or exiled once the Israeli 1967 occupation of Gaza and the West Bank began. 

According to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), nearly 6,000,000 Palestinians are still refugees while the State of Israel has been fully recognized by all of the Global North and most non-Muslim nations. To the Palestinians this created a lasting hatred and feeling of betrayal by the international community but most importantly created a feeling of hostility towards the new citizens of Israel who were celebrating their victory and freedom at the expense of another nation. 

The widespread Israeli belief is that without US military support and a strong military-industrial complex they will be annihilated by their Muslim neighbors. The Palestinians have never been an existential threat to Israel as compared to Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran, but they remain the most serious catalyst of organized political violence against Israel. Ultimately whatever political color Israelis hold three deep resentments will shape any peace process: A) there are dozens of Muslim States and this is the only Jewish State; their historic persecution necessitates a national home. B) Whatever they have done to the Palestinians is pale in comparison of what other groups have done in the same situation and continue to do. C) If this is nothing resolved in the next forty years the “Arab-Israeli” population (of 1.6 million) will grow inside pre-1967 Israel to point where ensuring a “Jewish State” will become impossible to maintain.

Critiques of UNRWA state that it fosters dependency, lacks fiscal transparency and is unusual as the UN’s only ethno-specific refugee organization. 

“As it stands, the self-perpetuating bureaucracy of UNRWA is one of the central factors offering day jobs to members of terror groups, propping up Palestinian dependency and perpetuating the myths and falsehoods about Israel which help prevent a solution to the conflict.”- Romirowsky and Spyer in How UNRWA creates a dependency state.

To many Palestinians UNRWA is their only reliable existing para-state. War failed, Intifada 1 & 2, Oslo failed. Track 1 & 2 has also failed. The brutal operations of October 7th, 2023 have created a ne chaos in Gaza. The result is a de facto one-state (or three-state) solution which is an incubator for a wider longer violence.  Multi-track diplomacy is about all levels of engagement working on conjunction as a system, but due to the unfeasible nature of the previous engagements; we are proposing a more radical intervention package without necessitating recognition of anyone’s states.

In the early morning of October 7th, 2023 Hamas terrorists killed approximately 1,200 people and carried of 200 as hostages. In under 72 hours the IDF killed around 3,000 Palestinians in Gaza. As of last recrodring that number was above 11,500 on 11/15.

“Violence is actually all we seem to understand lately, but also all we have engaged in since the very very beginning. Although the ratio of killing remains favoroable to Israelis at a rate of about 20 to 1.”

“This grisly inventory finds the total number of deaths in conflicts since 1916 numbering around 45,000 Arabs and Judeans.

“It’s not irrational to hate people you see as dribing you off your land and reducing your entire people to the status of refugees. What we do with that hate has to be modualted.”

Speaking to the Objective Proximate Causes

Objective proximate causes are existential problems for both states and both peoples. As in for every square meter of West Bank territory absorbed into a settlement any future Palestinian state slowly ceases to lose ground. For every Arab-Israeli (Palestinian) born inside Israel; the reality of the Jewish State begins to crumble. As revolutions break out all over the region the overall security situation is deteriorating. Peace has always take a back seat to security and has always been punctuated with a new round of violent engagement. The following causes are understood on both sides as the primary provocations which trigger violence in the conflict. 

The Primary Root Cuase: Physical integrity of bi-national territory.

This is clearly understood on both sides in relation to the highly limited size of territory both peoples lay their claim to. Pre-1967 Israel has a population of over 2.0 million Palestinian Arabs. East Jerusalem and the West Bank have been settled by over 650,150 Jews which hold an estimated 9% of West Bank territory. The issues most difficult to negotiate include not only Jerusalem; the capital claimed by both; or the ever expanding settlements or the separation/apartheid barriers; but by where to draw borders so that a viable Palestine can exist alongside a secure Israel.

Speaking to the Primary Proximate Causes: 

Each side holds a seemingly intractable bottom line perspective making their distrust grow even deeper as their leaders fail to deliver peace, security or economic development. These core provocation issues and the policies taken on them most harm the ability to hold any meaningful negotiations for peace. What follows are the ten primary proximate causes which require corresponding Benefit Harm indicators we advocate for in the fourth section to monitor their resolution or disruption. Symmetric Indicators as explained in more detail later are the agreed to measurement systems for a specific proximate causes where belligerent sides in a conflict lay out specific provocation parameters.

According to a report by B’TSELEM (Sep, 2008), Access Denied, Israeli Measures to deny Palestinians access to land around settlements: 

“Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation by discrimination, in which it runs separate legal systems, one for Israelis and the other for Palestinians, and under which the scope and nature of human-rights violations vary based on nationality. This system has led to the theft of hundreds of thousands of dunams of land to benefit the settlements and their residents”. 

“Look, the grievances are very well documented. There is very little land and very little room for neogtiaon. Also, Palestinians in exile number around 9 million, and those living under occupation number 5.3 million. There 14.4 million Palestinians in the world and there are around 22.6 million people that might be considered Judeans; we cannot all live on a piece of land the size of New Jersey.”  

1. Structural Apartheid:  Israelis are always very loathe to be equated with South Africa and deeply fear the long term ramifications of the nascent boycott, divestment and sanction movement. The word however means a policy of seperateness, a state of seperation of peoples based on their identity. Apartheid which is a crime against humanity is also the basis of the Israeli-Arab conflict; structural attempts in Israel and the occupied territories to maintain Jewish privilege, especially Ashkenazi Jewish privilege over all other ethnic groups. Apartheid is measured and understood as explicit and implicit structural division for the purpose of fortifying ethnic privilege. The most obvious extensions of this Apartheid are the checkpoints, ethnic identity cards and the Security Barrier Walls.

2. Jerusalem/Al-Quds Holy Sites: Both Israelis and Palestinians view Jerusalem/Al Quds as their capital. The Old City holds the most holy site to Judaism (Ha Kotel/ Western Wall of destroyed second temple) and the Dome of the Rock; the third holiest site in Islam. A periodic flashpoint for violence, Jerusalem/ Al Quds highlights a major issue between both sides. The Palestinians want full control of East Jerusalem, which was occupied by Jordan prior to the Six Day War in 1967. Israel has actively worked to expand the Jewish presence in East Jerusalem and environs in order to make its division impossible. All West Bank Palestinian Muslims under age 35 are restricted from entering the Dome of the Rock except on major holidays with permits. All Palestinian-Israeli Jerusalem residents have access. All attempts to expand Jewish presence represent an explicit arena of contention. As do Arab or Jewish desecration and neglect 

3. Settlement Expansion/Cessation: Israeli settlements in the West Bank according to Israeli NGO B’Tselem occupy on 1% of West Bank territory but via security barriers and jurisdiction extend to a full 42% of administrative control (Yesha Council disputes this and states that the settlements take up 9.2 %, arguably on some of the best lands). This issue is one of the most glaring issues on the table as the majority of international human rights bodies have repeatedly ruled that the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories have no legal basis and must be removed in order to pave the way for a viable Palestinian state to emerge. Despite such obvious refusal of the settlements Israel has ignored all UN resolutions and recommendations and planned for more settlements to be built on Palestinian lands. Israel unilaterally dissolved and destroyed its Gaza Strip settlements in 2005.

4. Access to Water: As of today Israel has access to all the major water resources in the area some of which are located in the Palestinian Territories. Most of the natural resources that go into the Palestinian areas are only allowed to go in under Israeli control and monitoring and this would be essential to be removed in order to allow the state of Palestine to grow and enjoy full and real sovereignty.

5. Refugees/Right to Return: in 1948 over 711,000 Palestinian refugees decided to flee their homes thinking that they could return in a matter of weeks or months after Israel’s defeat by the Arab armies. Others were forced out of their homes by the advancing Israeli army which forcibly evacuated of 500 villages (Pappe, 2006). By leaving their homes they paved the way for the actual establishment of the state of Israel and paved the way for almost never returning to their homes. A good number of Palestinians did not flee and became the so-called “Arab-Israelis” and today they are part of the Israeli society albeit as fourth class citizens. Today the Refugees issue is being used for political use only as most of the Arab countries to refuse to give Palestinian refugees and rights or citizenships in order to support “the right of return” and Israel will never allow Palestinian to return as this would mean that the Jewish people would become a minority in their own Jewish land that they have fought so much in order to have. On the Jewish side, persons with one Jewish grandparent are covered under the existing right to return and are given an extensive benefit basket.   

6. The Borders/ Palestinian State Recognition: The Israeli government has repeatedly stood against any idea of a true sovereign Palestinian state due to proclaimed existential security risks. According to Israel any Palestinian state will not be connected in terms of geography with limited air space and sea freedom making the idea of a state kind of hopeless in the eyes of many Palestinians. In addition, there many Israeli restrictions relating to any future state for the Palestinian people such as any state would need to be without any army and even the polices forces would need to fully report its use of weapons. The state would also be forced to rely on Israeli utility companies, water works and be economically dependent for some time.

7. Foreign Military Aid/ UNRWA Aid: Israel was the recipient $2.775 billion in 2010, $3 billion in 2011, $3.07 billion in 2012 (and $3.15 billion per year from 2013-2018) while Israel’s defense budget is around $15 billion. The United States and Israel engage in extensive intelligence sharing and defense research. The US also has the largest community of Jews outside of Israel. AIPAC, the Israel lobby in the United States has a disproportionate amount of influence over U.S. policy and the notion of the U.S. an independent outside arbiter is naive.  

8. Demographic Changes: Israelis are acutely worried about demographic changes inside of Israel that will affect the state’s “Jewish Character” in the long run. 1.6 million Israeli citizens of Arab, Bedouin, Druze and Palestinian descent make up currently over 20 % of the population. Equally worrying is that out of an estimated 13 million people in greater Israel (Israel, Judea & Samaria/ West Bank), under Israeli jurisdiction (excluding 2.3 million in Gaza) only 7.4 million are classified as being Jewish.

9. Regional Instability: As various Arab governments erupt in civil strife and internal conflict Israel continues to worry about its own security in an environment rife with revolution, civil war and arms proliferation. Egypt’s 2011 revolution and subsequent coup brought Muslim Brotherhood in and then out of power; Hamas is the Palestinian branch of Muslim Brotherhood. Jordan which is over 70% Palestinian is Israel’s only remaining regional ally besides Turkey which is growing also increasingly hostile. There has just been a war in Syria that killed over 600,000 people and divded up the entire country. There is brutal war in Yemen. The current confict in Gaza will take many more lives.

10. Bi-Partisan Palestine/ Israeli politician instablity: Since the Palestinian civil war in 2006 Gaza Strip has been controlled by Hamas and the West Bank Palestinian Authority by Fatah. Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist and Fatah is viewed as corrupted. This in essence has created two Palestines only one of which is willing to negotiate anything with the State of Israel and neither of which can enforce policy on the other.    

It is important to note that immediately prior to the October 7th attack thre had been many proceeding months of Judean unrest around the Likud Party efforts to curtail the powers of the Supereme Court.

And, of course on October 7th, 2023 on the 50th of the Yom Kippur War; several thousand Hamas commandos infiltrated southern Israel; slughtered 1,200 people, kidnapped 203 and triggered the overwheling Israel response which has so far killed over 11,500 Palestinians ans seeks to proceed with a ground operation inside Gaza.

“These are the major issues, but the grievance that both sides hold against one another: we have been locked in brotal existential struggle for around 75 years.” 

This is a major point that can be far more important than Jerusalem, water, or even refugees. The hatred that both sides have for one another and the pain that each side caused the other are so deep that we cannot simply make any future agreements because of a true lack any sense of trust or sincerity. There has to be a true healing process to be formed that involves both sides with the focus on those who suffered because of the Israeli existence or the Palestinian presence in the Territories. 

Ultiatmely, the harsh and uncomfortable reality is that we must look beyond Palestine and Israel as a paradigm for a solution process. The total failure of the so-called Peace Process is rooted in that it is grounded in the Westphalian State system.

It has been dictated to us on fully European terms.

“Now, I will say this. When I first learned the Irgun, the Shi’a, and also the Kurds were holding meetigns in Rojava I said this was clearly all a Mossad plot. Or smoeting Russian.”

Why would so many long time enemies be making deals?

It was so illogical that the Zionists were deaking with Iran directly behind the backs of the Americans.

However, it was clear to me that many people were involved in the Rojava Revolution and with time it occurred to me that we have been accused of “never missing an oppertnity to miss an opportunity.”

I think we all felt a desperation after the October 7th attacks, particularly because Hamas had been participating in the Solution Process. It was their most vile reactionary element that carried out of the blood carnage of Alksa Flood, but certainly it was also the most vile elements of the Likudkik government and deep state that knew about it, and did nothing.

“Hamas is not a monolith. Every single resistance has factions and every single movement doesn’t always have the luxury of control over its armed wings. However, we all know the killing ratio is 100 to 1, so whatever we unleash the will take 100 in the end as long as the Americans keep footing the war bill. What is tragic is that we were getting closer and closer to a meaningful Hudna, and then the bloody flood.” 

Section Two

An analysis and justification of an intervention(s) to address the problem(s), including theories of change to use.

Our underlying analysis is that Western imposed peace negotiations have completely failed, Palestinian statehood is inevitable; and demographic realities inside of Israel make the continuation of a Jewish state impossible if the status quo is maintained. 

This intervention package to be coordinated by the Palestinian & Jewish diaspora. It is geared to reinvigorate meaningful dialogue, foster functional reliance and allow three viable administrative division within a Palestinian-Israeli Confederation based on violence cessation, recognition of each other’s territorial claims and freedom of movement & rights attainment within the three territories (Gaza, Pre-1967 Israel, and the West Bank).  

The five underlying theories of change are: 

1. Democratic Confederalism.The Kurds developed a fusion ideology in 2004. Abdullah Ocelan should be credited with merging anti-imperialism, women’s liberation, zionism, anarchism, Brazilian social theory, and armed self defense. With Ocelan in Turkish prison from 1999 onward his corresdondance with Murray Booklchin a Jewish American theroist metamophaized the Kurdistan Workers Party from a Leftist National liberation struggle into the moden parallel state system of Cantons in Northern Syria. This ideology and its tactics, its practical applications will be found in later chapters.

2. Parastate Infrastructure: The development of capacity via civil services, trade unions and social enterprises interlinking diaspora financing to community based organizations. Operating in a given nation wracked by failed state policies; a parallel state is built in the shadow of a failing one. This economic leverage is first utilized in the building the capability through Civil Society organizations to provide services to populations; then coordinating their functionality to mirror those attributed to best practices of developed countries. The Para State is build piecemeal out of CBS, SMO, NGOs and small businesses with a unified vision of human rights attainment for the communal identity they share. Successful demonstrations of Parallel State Development are the American Nation of Islam, the Kurdish national movement, the Irish Republican movement, the Bangladeshi mega “NGO” BRAC, Iranian built Hezbollah, Palestinian Hamas and of course the Zionist Movement’s formation of the State of Israel. That is alot of loded aremd actors to devise that there is an alternative to the predatory state system.

“Trilateral Confederation” assumes triumvirate confidence building with full inclusion of Hamas, Fatah, and the Israeli Coalition government functioning as three

1. cooperative administrative units assuming separate but coordinate jurisdiction over their zones of control. All confidence measures revolve on acceptance of Eight Core Agreements; 

1) Israel’s’ right to exist in historic Palestine, 

2) Palestine’s right to exist in modern Israel, 

3) Agreement to a forty five year Hudna (ceasefire) that rewards security and development cooperation with a roll back of Israeli military presence to 1967 borders 

4) Right to return of all foreign nationals with one Jewish or Palestinian grandparent to areas under respective tri-national control, 

5) Palestinian (“Arab-Israeli”) populations centers inside pre-1967 Israel fall administratively under Palestinian Authority if 67% are Arab 

6) Israeli settlement expansion freeze and 1 m3/ for 1m3 reciprocity of pre-1967 Israel in exchange for West Bank territory settled, 

7) Joint adminsitration of Jerusalem  

8) All political offices will be held based on democratic election; the peace process is to be governed by human rights indicators & tri-state administration of Gaza, Israel & West Bank.

9) Jordan and Egyptian Sinai will be merged into the nucleus of the First Confederation.

10) The First Confederation will pursue normaization of relations with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. Which will form the nucleaus of the Seond Confderation.  

4. “Multinationalization; is economic and human rights centered development coupled with civil disobedience an non violent peacefaire directed against anti-domcratic regimes; utilizing battalions of foreign volunteers.

All Confderation allies and states will field a fully multi-nation, muklti-religions civil service and defense force. Such a force will deliberately work to reduce regressive ethnic confessionalism by forming units (Tabors) cross composed of ethnic gorups and genders. 

Multi-nationalization is deliberate and strategic diversification of a project’s field team to recruit and include a composition of staff whereby harm directed against this staff is mitigated by their groupings of foreign nationals. 

This strategy plays directly to racist/ nationalist media tendencies and multiplies the “outsider Impact” of the field teams effort. Multi-nationalization is however completely subordinated to leadership directives of the CBOs the effort helps facilitate the impact of.  

5. “Functional Reliance”: formation of strategic and economic partnerships that involve multi-ethnic enterprises to build solidarity via functionally relying on the other ethnic group to co-lead, manage and serve in programs. It also involves mass inclusion of belligerent populations within ethno-heterogeneous civil services functionally relying on peace to ensure development. 

Fucntional relaince proposes that socia service dependency should be fostered by the multi ethnic multi sectarian civil service. It should be impossible for one ethnic gorup to dominate any branch of the services.

A revoltuion of course follows a similar pathway of blood letting and elite consolidation of new spoils of war and chaos. We must move from the eye for eye barbaric mentality towards reconciliation and justice. 

Our intervention recommendations involve measured, scalable responses in the following categories based on threat levels corresponding to rights violations in the 3 categories of Symmetric Indicators to be outlined in the next section. For the sake of vast simplification of the algorithm findings matrix here are the primary intervention recommendations by category:

Interventions to be taken by Non-State Actors

1. Multi-nationalizing the conflict decreases impunity of violent reprisals. Increasing overall levels of developed-nation volunteers serving in territories as well as Arabs serving in Israel is ideal especially during escalations of conflict. 

Until the estbalishment of the First Confedertation the combined civil service and defense force will be known as the POPULAR MOBILISATION FORCES. 

2. The Gaza Strip must be evacauted and then fully rebuilt. It is an open wound and flash point for everlasting violence. Gaza blockade naval flotillas should be launched periodically but attempt to enter Gaza from international waters only in response to symmetric indicator based events. Egypt must allow Palestinian settlement in the Sinai. 

3. Boycott, Divestment, Sanction campaigns directed against Israeli, Egyptian, and Jordanian economic, educational and cultural sectors should be strengthened. 

4. Refusals to serve in occupied territories and diversions to National Service should be encouraged. Mass Israeli dissident infiltration of National Service should mirror mass Palestinian infiltration of the UNRWA agencies.

5. Person-to-person correspondence campaigns increased. Social media ought to broadly utilized in order to increase the awareness of the other side’s perspectives and lives through a mass facilitation program.  

6. “Seeds of Peace” style camps and activities should be rapidly stepped up and further established in Rojava, Cyprus, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. These camps should be seen as vital organizational training grounds for this effort. They should be human rights grounded, democratic confderalist in nature, and impart skills needed to support the Popular Mobilisation Forces.

7. Joint economic ventures should be encouraged especially activities that link asset ownership and management. Palestinians should switch to their own currency pegged to the Jordanian Dinar.

8. Palestinian and Judeean populations in diaspora should be organized into Parastate administrative units. Politically and industrially organized and administered by either Hamas, Fatah or an emergent Party. All States that have since 1948 not recognized benefits of citizenship of Palestinian diaspora ought to be viewed as hostile to peace. Factions are urged to pursue annexation efforts of territory into a Greater Palestine.   

9. Mobilization of a Palestinian Lobby to harness Palestinian-American remittances and votes. This lobby like AIPAC must focus on all areas capable of social agency. It must mirror AIPAC’s tactics and organizational structure in every possible regard. It must also focus on reducing AIPAC monopoly of agency in regards to the Near East within the United States. We must block foreign arms from reaching the Middle East.

10. Occupational Annexes should never be excluded as they are based on precedent. Sykes Picot was the first precedent arbitrarily drawing up the borders of the region. Israel itself is of course the second occupying and annexing far beyond the 1948 agreed borders. Russia is the th third taking territory, basing soldiers there and annexing it via referendum. Valid occupational annexes include any territory bordering any of the three administrative zones Gaza, Israel, and West Bank containing a 67% majority population of Palestinians or Judeans 

So some portion of us after a study of history reject that the state system is such an advanced and civilized way to manage social policy. Most of that analysis would sugest the state system is an engine of ahrvest and war. 

Interventions as Policy recommendations to State Actors

1. Recognition of Bi-partisan Palestinian State in exchange for recognition of Israeli Administrative control of pre-1967 borders excluding population centers with 67% Palestinian Arab majority. Further equalizing administrative land disputes proceed to equalize land holdings to 1m3/1m3, a 50/50 land and resource split involving trading taxation/ administration of Arab-Israeli population centers for Jewish Settlement in West Bank.
2. Settlement freezes/ and scheduled settlement turn-overs.
3. Prisoner amnesty for quarterly periods of violence cessation.
4. Israeli Development assistance in exchange for periods of violence cessation.
5. Institute full draft in Israel with enlargement of National Service to channel Arab-Israeli intuitional exclusion into capacity building via service in Gaza and West Bank. 
6. Piecemeal, scheduled administrative turnovers proceed for periods of violence cessation.
7. Targeted kidnappings of soldiers are only to be traded one for one.
8. Scholarships for Palestinian students at Israeli universities.
9. Extension of Joint-Palestinian Israeli Civil Service inclusion.
10. Mashav will develop modules to teach Palestinians cooperative economic and organizational frameworks necessary for state capacity. 
11.  Mashav and UNRWA will fund the creation of joint Palestinian-Israeli peacekeeping and emergency relief brigades and deploy them under the UN peacekeeping architecture.
12.  Joint Palestinian-Israeli kibbutzim and Moshaviim for collective living, industry and agriculture will be established in Gaza, West Bank, Israel proper and Sinai subsidized by American Jewish community, USAID, Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. 

Long Term Conflict Intervention Recommendations:

Political/Diplomatic tools

• Outsider Mediation for implementation of localized programs.

• Coexistence-Coordination Offices established in each village, town and city.  

• Political Capacity and Aid assistance to all factions espousing peace and recognition.

• Hudna/Recognition/Normalization especially between Israel-Hamas; Israel-Iran, and Israel-Hezbollah. 

• Human Rights Defense Missions increased inside of Syria along with continued non-military support for any Syrian factions that might recognize Israel.

• Dispute resolution mechanisms further established.

• Crisis Management Systems better implemented.

• Public Diplomacy/Pressure: U.S.A. must reduce military aid to Israel.

• Threat/Use of diplomatic sanctions: A regional arms embargo must be put in place to curtail weapons flow into a region that will be plagued by increasing civil unrest.

Legal/Constitutional tools

• Codification of an agrreebale founding draft for the First Confederation based on the recommendations of this treatise. 

• Constitutional Reforms in place in both Israel & Palestine, Egypt, and Jordan to better reflect Human Rights obligations.

• Formal power sharing mechanisms set in place to create a functional bi-partisan Palestinian State alongside an Israeli one.

• Human Rights monitoring must be carried out by outside multinationals.

• Police, judiciary, corrections capacity assistance must increase in Palestine.

Economic/Social tools

• Conflict-sensitive Israeli led Development Assistance via Mashav.

• Intergroup dialogue interactions stepped up on all four tracks.

• Restrictions on US financial flows.

• Conditional incentives/inducements: (debt relief, trade preferences, investment)

• Threat/Use of targeted economic sanctions (BDS): Although this has been viewed with controversy among countries like Israel and the USA but has received wide and major official and non-official support from many countries around the world such as England, Norway, Denmark, and others who imposed sanctions on Israeli banks that fund and have ties with the Israeli illegal settlements. We think that this is indeed an effective tool that can add more pressure on the Israeli refusal to accept and respect International Law but we also think that it can generate more awareness and more understanding among the public in Israel for example and not explaining the problems with an angry tone. 

Military/Security tools

• Foundation of the POPULAR MOBILISAITON FORCES, THE MIDDLE EASTERN CIVIL SERVICE, AND THE MEC DEFENSE FORCES.

• Security guarantees including “Arab-Israeli” units of the IDF to help in security of West Bank and Gaza. Joint defense training between Israeli, Hamas, and Fatah fighters.

• Systematic Confidence-building measures

• Security Sector Reform: All Israelis and Palestinians to be drafted into either IDF or PDF (Palestinian Defense Force) regardless of ethnicity. Only way out universal draft will be enrolment in a revised National Service Corps to be radically expanded in scope to all civil services. 

• Joint Israeli-Palestinian Military Observer/ Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Missions will be enhanced via the United Nations.

• Arms Embargoes will be encouraged between Russia and America to cut arms flow into the Middle East generally.

• Preventive Military/Police deployment will cease except by combined units. All Israeli security-intelligence forces will be pulled out of post-1967 borders except to facilitate settlement turn over.

• Threat of Force/Deterrence

Primary Resource Agreements:

1. Joint Palestinian/Israeli/Jordanian control of Galilee water resource
2. Joint Administration of Hospitals and Universities
3. Doubling Israeli-Palestinian land mass via purchase/ annexation of Sinai and Transjordan
4. Palestinian control of Dead Sea
5. Security Parity (Demilitarization/ Arms transfers)
6. Israeli non-proliferation for Iranian non-proliferation
7. Demilitarized Golan (to be included in the Palestinian State)
8. Demilitarized Gaza Strip (to be connected to West Bank via a security corridor and train tunnel)
9. Demilitarization South of Litany River and North of Kishon River
10. Return of Sheba Farms to Lebanon
11. Golan Heights transfer to PA control
12. Implementation of a 2 Child maximum per family 
13. Extension of West Bank PA down to Gulf of Aqaba
14. Triple Seacoast of PA (Akko, Gaza City, and a third site build between Aqaba and Eilat)
15. 4 Separate Courts, Civil and Religious; 2 per polity
16. Separate Knesset/ Palestinian Congress both based in East and West Jerusalem respectively.
17. Release of all Palestinian political prisoners
18. Right of Return respective and regulated, parity in returning numbers negotiated to return to respective zones of control.
19. EU to aid Palestine (infrastructure only)
20. US to aid Israel (infrastructure only)
21. Bedouin autonomous region in Sinai or population transfer to Palestinian zone.
22. Structural dual citizenship benefits (tax credits, work visas, health care, educational)
23. Dismantling the barrier walls
24. Reduction of Israeli arsenal in exchange for greater aid, (Aid for decommissioned weapons program).
25. Structural reform from Knesset Parliamentary system to tri-territory Representative Democracy within a Democratic Confederalist framework. 

Section Three 

Suggested partnerships that are required to develop the intervention(s) and how these might be obtained.

The concept of a Para-State is an intermediate tactic of development coupled with resistance to human rights violation meant to forge realities on the ground leading up to the changing of borders and setting of policies of governments the Parallel State exists beside. To achieve any of of our “unrealistic” demands and programs we of course accept that one cannot ignore the hard line of either side which is holding power. Fatah is awash with collaborators, opportunists and corrupt officials. Hamas is led by Islamist fundamentalists. Likud, Kadima and even Avodah have entrenched elite interests to serve.

Ceasefire and Separation

There comes a time beyond outsider pontification, and insider political imagination when the forces on the ground most come to the realistic calculus that the end game for this conflict must be in separation before there can be meaningful coexistence. As we have outlined, militarily neither side’s strategy proves effective at eliminating the other, and certainly hardens the resolve of both confessions. Historically, each has a vague (and at the same time existentially immediate) claim to this land. Religious zeal aside there is overwhelming archeological proof of this being the historical Hebrew homeland, and suffice to say the Dome of the Rock occupies its place as Islam’s third holiest site. From a human rights perspective the Palestinian people, cognizant of a nationalist identity or not, were living on this land for at least the last 1,930 years.

The mindset and values of Israeli Jewish society and Palestinian Muslim society are so different and mutually exclusive as to render a vision of bi-national statehood tenable only in the most disconnected and unrealistic of minds (Morris, p.187).

Surely Israeli society is an incredibly diverse one in both ethnicity and political perspective. It has vast potential to be an exporter of development, medicine and technology to the developing world once it can divest itself from this ongoing war. Surely Palestinian fundamentalisms and Hebrew fundamentalisms are not the desired ends of either peoples, but a part and parcel result of this war.

To end the war we must separate the combatants, but this task must fall upon the shoulders of the hardliners; the Revisionists and Hamas who can at present muster the political will to take this bold step. To cantonize and ghettoized the Gaza Strip and West Bank into non-viable micro-states will not end this conflict. The separation must be implemented and development must follow.

Hamas has in recent years undergone an incremental process of political integration, a process mostly ignored by the movement’s foes and detractors. It has displayed political and tactical moderation, including keeping unilateral ceasefires until June 2006, abandoning the claim to mandatory Palestine and accepting a two-state solution comprising the 1967 territories. Hamas has not, however, complied with external pressures to abandon armed resistance, disarm and recognize Israel. The main reason for doing so is not only ideological, but strategic: complying with the demands would leave Hamas without any credible sanctions in the final-status negotiations that until now have been the only scenario for a lasting peace (Knudsen & Ezbidi, p. 204).

We are past the brink. The demographic reality is that within twenty years there will be an equal number of Arabs and Jews occupying the territorial space of Palestine, this will not broad well for either Israel’s commitment to democracy or the Palestinians already diminished human rights. The willingness of Iran to fuel violence by proxy as well as the total lack of dialogue and cultural exchange within the Middle East between the Muslim nations and the third Hebrew commonwealth leaves no lasting avenues for human exchange. Vultures swoop over Palestine and both the Christian and Muslim world have explicitly demonstrated their zeal to use both Jew and Palestinian as pawns in a game.  If Hamas will not put down its guns (and who could rationally expect them to) or acknowledge the right of the Jews to occupy their land, then let us work with what they have offered for some time. The premise of Hudna: long term truce.

Hamas is silent about what happens when a notional long term Hudna signed with the Israelis comes to its appointed end. While Hamas’ leaders have left open the length of the term of the proposed Hudna, regarding this as subject of negotiation with the Israelis once they have accepted the principle, their general philosophy is that the future should be left up to future generations. It is usually assumed that a long term Hudna will probably last for a quarter of a century or more. That is viewed as too long a time for anyone now to predict what may happen afterward. There will always be a possibility that the Hudna will come to a premature end because of a breach. If that were to occur, it would be unlikely that the breach would come from the Hamas side. This is for the simple reason that it is a religious obligation on the Islamic side to honor such an agreement until the end, once made, unless violated by another party. Should the Hudna last until the prescribed date, one scenario is that those in charge then will simply negotiate a renewal (Azzam, p.168).

Were some emerging, strong Israeli leaders able to the muster the will of their divided society to accept their sworn enemy Hamas as a partner in Hudna it might have lasting impacts that would shake the region to the core. The signing of such a truce need not happen on the Lawn of the White House or need be rewarded with some Nobel Prize. The proof of its worth would be in its results. The objective would be simple to grasp. The House of Israel and the House of Palestine have been for around one hundred years locked in bloody combat. To stop the war one need not peace, but instead the structural pursuit of lasting ceasefire coupled with a program to build two economically healthy nations with intertwined need.

Surely the Jewish radicals of the Kach underground and Gush Emunim would prefer a Jewish civil war to a lasting partition, surely no one on either side wishes to give an inch. But this program is an inch by inch reclamation coupled with one more territorial reality. Other than Egypt, Israel and Iran what county in the region has any claim to historical borders other than those imposed by Sykes-Picot. That is to say that the Palestinian Diaspora must surely be aware the extent to which the Arab regional powers owe them, have failed them and have despised them. 

A Hudna, signed by a Zionist government and Hamas would be an act of covenant not international relations. To Hamas it would be a holy act and an existential necessity to prove the validity of Islamism in Palestine. To Memshala Israel it would mean a settlement of a prolonged drain on its nation’s coffers and moral and an opening of its society to the developing world. As per the Blueprint, not the Road Map: Jerusalem would be bi-nationally controlled (the Palestinians would maintain control over the Temple Mount, Christian and Muslim Quarters and the East of the City as AL Quds). The West Bank and Gaza Strip would be supplemented by additional territories in Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Sinai; settlements would be exchanged for Arab towns and land would be purchased (or simply seized) from neighboring countries unwilling to endorse this lasting truce. Refugees abroad would have the right to return to newly constituted Palestine and those with specific claims to land and property inside Israel proper would be bought out and compensated. Hamas would have free reign to Islamize Palestine in so far as it did so within a Democratic sphere and allowed secular space in its new society. But, even if it refused to moderate its zeal for religion, it would be empowered by Israel to dismantle the armed forces of all other factions and be the sole army on the ground.

         The messy business of a population transfer must begin immediately at the offset of implementation. It goes without saying that Israel’s Arab Israeli population will seek and lobby to have their Palestinian cake and eat it too as it were. That is to say some will find it far easier to live as second class citizens in a multi-ethnic Hebrew dominated commonwealth, then as forced participants in a newly independent, Shari’ah dominated Palestinian nascent state. Suffice to say these are the painful realities of survival. Israel cannot maintain even a minute percentage of 20% Arab population within its borders; so-called Arab Israelis, Bedouin, and any Druze unwilling to serve in the armed forces will find themselves on the other side of the line.

         This process must proceed in staged evacuations one for one; one settlement block for one Arab Israeli town, there will be misery, separation anxiety, and great soul searching as to moral justification and long term finality of peace. There will be obvious Palestinian anxiety on absorbing a largely secular, more affluent Arab-Israeli middle class, and finalizing the loss of of their historic territory to the Zionists. The Israeli public will surely grieve the infighting of evacuating 600,000 plus settlers from the West Bank and ceding any claim to East Jerusalem, “Judea” and “Samaria”. But it is the very homes of the settlers, their infrastructure, their roads, their settlements into which the larger Arab Israeli evacuees must be placed.

         We reiterate that this process will not be easy, nor will it be quickly accomplished. There will be resistance on the part of the settlers, anticipatively armed resistance; and there will be obvious international objection to the forced deportation of the Arab-Israeli into the newly created Gaza-West Bank Palestine.

         The vital stage must be to insure the Israeli coalition government and Hamas dominated PA work together to implement this transfer and maintain Hudna with the realization that territorial integrity of their respective nations is vital.

         It is irrelevant as to whether Hamas recognizes Israel’s right to exist, or if the final treaty implementing the separation plan is one of ‘peace’ or instead ‘Hudna’. It is irrelevant if the two sides agree to a 10 year truce, a 60 year truce, or a 100 year truce. Phase 1 is separation in its most utter form, the sealing of each side behind their lines. As the Jew and Arab are separated from each other’s forced and hateful embrace the iron wall must be strengthened. The separation barrier must be built taller and its gates must be locked on both sides until the time is correct. For in the period of Hudna there must arise a new generation who does not remember the war or the blood spilled in repetition.

         The common media adage suggests that the Arab world is particularly hostile to democracy. In virtually all but a single regional state a cruel military oligarchy rules with a junta and an iron fist. Surely, second to Israel the greatest acknowledged enemy of the Arab masses are their own governments. However, in both Israel and occupied Palestine the Palestinian Arabs have repeatedly demonstrated a zeal for both democratic process and a commitment to civic society. Although the election of the Hamas government was a seemingly critical blow to the trampled peace process, it has not been argued that this was not a supervised and legitimate expression of Palestinian democracy. Within Israel itself the Arab parties and the 1.3 million Arab-Israeli Palestinians participate in the regions only democracy, within the Jewish State.

         We are not dealing with howling mullah unfamiliar with Western ideas of statecraft. The BluePrint as a plan is flexible and staged in its intricate redrafting of the Middle Eastern Map, its specifics are for another treatise at another time. Paramount to the survival of both people’s is a rational acknowledgment that they have failed for nearly 100 years at both peace and war. Surely some of the responsibility for rebuilding the Palestinian nation falls on the oil oligarchies and the European Union, just as surely does America have a long term relationship with Israel. But, before any realistic mobilization of these respective mini-states can be used to demonstrate Democratic Islamism and Zionist Universalism respectively; they must stop the war.

         It has been found that social movements like those which are responsible for the modern concepts of Israel and Palestine thrive on ‘imagined community’, strictly defined identity, and symbols of some historical Golden Age. When coupled with religion a social movement has the ability to draw from a deep well of support and sustain a struggle indefinitely.

         The acronym for Hamas translates to the word Zeal. There was once a group of Hebrew revolutionaries in the year 66 CE that carried the same name in their war with an occupying power the Roman Empire. Their faction, the Zealots and Sicarii carried out merciless acts of terrorism against their own people and the Roman occupiers. The Hebrew people are ‘stiff necked’ the Torah says, prone to stubborn arrogance as well as religious fervor.  I am not a man of peace, but a man of pragmatism. If on this wide earth the Hebrew and Palestinian people have found no meaningful source of shelter and security for their respective kind; if locked in bloody struggle the sins of Europe and the sins of Arab oligarchy are channeling both out houses to cosmic, unending war; then we must separate and do so quickly.

         If in a simple ten year Hudna both Houses can be made relatively politically homogeneous and their peoples can, uninterrupted by siege and war build two nations, side by side. Then one day, as each subsequent Hudna is renewed the fundamentalists on both sides will find their grasp weakened, they will find blue jeans and art museums are more to the mass appeal than puritanical embrace of religion. The time to act is now. The leaderships of both houses are old men who know nothing but war. But old men die. Younger more visionary leaders who forge their respective nations in the prism of human rights not theological canon can from inside their war torn land and from its vast Diaspora bring both peoples apart and then raise them up side by side together.

What factions most influence the ongoing conflict? 

Israeli/ Judean:

Sabra Ashkenazi Elite in Avodah/ Likud/ Kadima

American Jewish Diaspora via AIPAC umbrella

Sephardic Elite

Ultra-Orthodox Parties/ Sects

Russian-Israeli leadership/ Israel Betanyahu

Mizrahi Jews

Ladino Jews

Druse

Ethiopians 

Bedouins

Non-Jewish Migrant workers

Non-Jewish African refugees

Palestinian/Arab/Iranian

Fatah (West Bank Palestinian Elites)

Hamas (Gaza leadership) 

Palestinian Left Wing

“Arab-Israeli” Palestinians

Palestinian Euro-American Diaspora

Jordanian Palestinians

Palestinians in Syria/ Lebanon/ Iraq /Egypt

Iranian Revolutionary Guard

Hezbollah Lebanon

Hezbollah Iraq

The Core Track 1 Parties are obviously the State of Israel (lack of credible actors), the Palestinian parties Fatah (discluding still Hamas); the United States, Russia, the European Union, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League. The core parties to implement Parastate Strategies however are the dissident and opposition parties that make up the adversarial political culture on both the Israeli and the Palestinian side in country and diaspora, the political construction on both sides have shown to add more complications and challenges in the face of finding any peaceful resolutions to the conflicts over the years via Track 1 & 2 because they revolve around intractable elite actors. On the Israeli side Israel is widely considered as one of the few democracies that exist in the Middle East region if not the only one. The political system in Israel is based on a multi-party participation in the Knesset which has 120 seats. The politics of Israel is full mix of right wing, left wing, center, and religious parties; but the current Likud government led by Netanyahu is the most conservative in Israeli history. There are a number of parties that represent the Arab population of Israel but such parties and other minority parties such Meretz, Balad, United Arab List, Hadash have limited seats in the Knesset. 

There is more however to the Israeli politics as there groups who play a major role in the Israeli politics and it influences it a great deal such as the Israeli lobby in the United States AIPAC and other groups that help and promote to finance and help build the illegal settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip before 2005. The politics in Israel can be quite complicated and hard as the Prime Minister  cannot act alone without the support and consent of the parties that are part of any political coalition. For example right now Prime Minister Netanyahu has been under heavy pressure from his religious allies in the Knesset and who played a major role in his win of 31 win seats in the parliament making it difficult for him to go ahead and make and deals with the Palestinians for example that could enable and help the “peace process” move right ahead. 

For the Palestinians on the other hand it is quite different, since the removal of the Palestinian people and the UN mandated “State of Palestine” in 1948, politics among the Palestinians did not see the light until 1964 when the Palestinian Liberation Organization was established. Yasser Arafat who was born in the Gaza Strip, Khan Younis was elected chairman later that year making himself a lifelong representative on behalf of the Palestinian people and for the Palestinian cause. The PLO also engaged in military operations against Israel and other Arab regimes.

An important faction of the Palestinian politics is Hamas, a party that is enjoys a wide support from many Palestinian factions especially those among Palestinian who reside in refugee camps which make up the majority of the population in Gaza Strip for example. The party was founded by Sheik Ahmed Yassin who was viewed by Israel as fully peaceful and in fact Hamas was allowed and supported by Israel as Israel saw that the sole enemy of Israel was the secular nationalist party of Fatah. There are more parties that emerged throughout the Palestinian territories like the Third Way, The Future, Palestine Democratic Union, and Palestine Forum launched by Palestinian businessman Munib al-Masri. Much of the Palestinian political system only came through to the scene in the last 10 years while before it was the PLO and essentially the 1980’s were Hamas began to become Fatah’s main rival. 

It is important to highlight that most of the parties involved receive support from outside parties. Hamas was supported by Israel at first then as its political agenda became to be more threatening to Israel it found support from countries that are considered enemies by Israel such as Iran and even countries like Saudi Arabia and most recently Qatar, one of the biggest donors and supporters of Hamas today. The same applies to Fatah, the primary party emerging from PLO that struggled ever since its creation by the Arab League to find a home as the organization had been forced to relocate from a number of countries either by international pressure promoted by Israel or by hosting Arab countries. 

Many positive and negative changes happened since the beginning of the conflict in 1948. A major and notable change is the rise of Israeli human right groups that promote justice and peace for the Palestinian people as such groups did not appear when Israel was established for example and at the same time many Palestinian organizations that promote peace and co-existence have emerged recently as they also did not appear during war times with Israel and emerged increasingly after the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords which is so far the biggest positive change that took place between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Before 1993 Israel has always defined the PLO as one that is responsible for “terrorist attacks” against Israeli targets in Israel and outside of Israel. And for the PLO and the Palestinian the idea of signing peace agreements with Israel was never an idea to be taken with much seriousness. This is a big positive change that added many positive points to the Palestinians and the Israelis at the same time as it increased and made a new kind of hope that perhaps and despite all the complications the Palestinians and the Israelis can still find a way to make true peace and live side by side in co-existence and respect. Also relevant are the New Historians; Israeli academics challenging long held beliefs about events within the context of the conflict.

The first Palestinian elections that took place in 2005 was also a major change as it showed a strong sign of the Palestinian readiness to run state and civil institutions sending a strong and powerful message to the world that it was time to help the Palestinian gain their right of a state. Unfortunately this message was negatively received by the International community and Israel as the major winner of such elections was the organization of Hamas and eventually leading to a full isolation of the organization and any decisions made by its government. In fact many of its democratically elected officials were simply arrested by the Israeli army. This lead to a major division among the Palestinians making it more difficult for any unity that can run a state if any and more sanction imposed by Israel especially on the Gaza Strip. Also after the signing of the Oslo Accords, the assassination the of the Israeli Prime Minister Rabin by Jewish extremists was a major blow to the peace process as it set the Oslo agreements in another direction that eventually lead to its collapse and the Palestinians uprising once against the occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. The unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 also played a major role in the politics among the Palestinians as the Fatah militias gradually began to lose control over the strip allowing the Hamas forces to eventually force them out of the strip and take over the governance of the Strip leaving the Palestinians under two governments one in the West Bank and one in the Gaza Strip leaving Israel as a clear winner of such division as it became easy for the Israeli propaganda to argue that Palestinian lack for ability to manage and run a state on their own. 

Effect of Third Parties

Third parties have played a big role in the conflict but unfortunately so far without much effectiveness because of client-patron relationship between American and Israeli. The uncanny relationship between Israel and the United States has hampered the US’s ability to serve as a so-called neutral mediator.

The United States has mixed interest with its efforts to make peace in the Middle East making it lose credibility not only among the Palestinians but also among the Israelis. For example, the US quickly condemned the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait while ignoring the obvious occupation of the Palestinian territories by the Israeli army. The United States played a major role in the birth of the Oslo Accords and the peace between Jordan, Egypt, and Israel. Russia and recently the European Union have played an important role in the management of the conflict but unfortunately with not much success due to the Israeli refusal of obeying international resolutions carried out by organizations such as the United Nations. Or the Russian support for the Syrian government in the vile Civil War no ongoing.

The role of mediation is essential to resolve this situation and to implement the broad package of interventions we are recommending. The superpowers have taken the role of the mediator over the years and since the 1948 war between Israel and the Arab States. It is important to understand that at least one side of the fighting groups would still find many reasons to think that the parties playing the role of mediation may have a highly biased, being biased can jeopardize any creation of an honest peace talk that aims to a lasting peace between Arabs and Jews.

To successful bring peace is not ever a matter of negotiations, but instead of the collective of the communities at war. Since elite interests in both Israel and Palestine so color this discourse we resolve that the Para-State will draw its operational strength from a variety of factions in Israel, Palestine and the Diaspora which do not feel bound to entrenched interests of the old rules of the game. They need not share ideology or end game view; instead three things hold this alliance of partnered organizations together: 1) understanding that the survival of both peoples relies on immediate resolution; 2) that state failure will be rectified with para-state tactics, and 3) to obtain the 8 core agreements and meaningful coexistence violence cessation via a Hudna and separation communities into functional administrative units is more relevant than high minded notions of peace.  

Primary Organizational Partners:

As was demonstrated in the First 1987 Intifada and the Israeli Social Justice Demonstrations of 2011 there is a great deal of internal dissent within both communities that can be mobilized outside of the major power blocs and parties. These are the groups that we would involve in the early coalition to form the terms of the network applying Para-State strategies.

Peace Now (Shalom Achshav):  is the largest Israeli SMO with the goal of promoting a viable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict utilizing mass mobilization and policy  advocacy. They believe in Jerusalem as “two-capitals for two States”, the viability of land swaps, dismantling settlements which it views the key existential long term threat to state of Israel and Palestine.

Seeds of Peace: The group was founded in 1993 and was in presence of the signing of the Oslo Accords at the White House. The main idea of Seeds of Peace is to allow the future leaders of Palestine, Israel, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cyprus, and other countries that experience conflict and ethnic disputes. It’s main program comes through the Seeds of Peace International Camp in the state of Maine, USA. Where teenagers from almost 27 countries are given a life changing experience in which they are able to interact with one another away from the conflict zone in order to provide them with a unique chance to see the world together from a coexistence point of view. 

Hadash (The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality); is a Jewish and Arab socialist political party in Israel with four seats in Knesset.

Meretz is the largest of the left-wing, Zionist, social-democratic political parties with the greatest degree of electoral success (with 12 seats held b/t 1992-1996 and 6 seats currently). It was the result of 1992 merger of leftist Ratz, Mapam, and Shinui. The party emphasizes a two-state solution, social justice, human rights, freedom of religion. 

Al-Haq: is an independent Palestinian human-rights organization founded in 1979 and based in Ramallah. Its main purpose and mission is to monitor and document human-rights violations by all parties involved in the conflict, it also provides regular reports on human right violations as well as research and studies the are related to the conflict.

B’Tselem: It was founded in 1989 and its main purpose is to monitor all the human rights violations that take place within the Palestinian Territories by multi-nationalizing the conflict with foreign volunteers. It also promotes for more peace efforts within the state of Israel. They have been very effective in developing a model for development coupled with non-violent resistance inside of Palestine. 

International Solidarity Movement (ISM): is a Pro-Palestinian Rights organization founded by Israelis and Palestinians that works to resist the occupation peacefully and what they view as the long and unjustified oppression of the Palestinian people by what they view as the apartheid state of Israel. It was founded in 2001 and it’s main aim is to strengthen the Palestinian non-violent resistance by utilization of multi-national volunteers for development programs and non-violent resistance. 

The New Israel Fund (NIF) is a U.S.-based non-profit organization established in 1979 which describes its aim as social justice and equality for all Israelis. It is credited with seed-funding “almost every significant cause-related progressive NGO in Israel”. Since its inception the fund has provided over US $250 million to more than 900 organizations. NIF states that while its position is that “Israel is and must be a Jewish and democratic state” it says it was “among the first organizations to see that civil, human and economic rights for Israeli Arabs is an issue crucial to the long-term survival of the state. Its “activist arm” Israeli NGO Shatil will be vital to this effort.

This list does not even begin to scratch the surface of the opposition movements in both communities, merely to provide a departure point from the Hamas/Fatah & Likud/Avodah leadership “consensus”.

Section Four

1. A process for Monitoring and Evaluating the success of the intervention.

We will plan to utilize an advanced hybrid conflict monitoring tool to track our work in Israel Palestine. Via the cumulative work of three coordinated, multi-nationalized teams; a “FAST” monitoring team, a “Harm/Benefit” intervention team advising interventions on the ground, and a “MSTC” research team in a secure location removed from conflict directing policy advocacy toward outside stakeholders and manipulating the public via the media; we will apply M&E to our interventions.

All three sections of this team are vital to comprehensive and meaningful analysis guiding targeted intervention. M&E operatives are to be non-politically aligned, human rights oriented coordinating directly with local staffs in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Cyprus. There will not be a centralized base of country operations except in Greece. A policy advocacy office will be established in Washington D.C. 

Swiss “FAST” will be used for predictive trending, CARE “Benefits/Harm Handbook” to rationalize intervention and “Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts” (MSTC) for long term contextual planning.  Rather than identify one and invalidate others for approach we seek to make a base line conflict analysis using a fusion of three. None of them are complete enough for field level practitioners to comprehensively offer meaningful intervention solutions. But each offers possibility in hybrid for definitive action to interdict mass violence.

All Interventions supported with Information & Intelligence. That means that all participating partner organizations are incentivized via transparent data sharing and mutual aid based resource sharing agreements. It means that hundreds of small CBO, SMO, NGO, trade unions, religious groups and parties are cooperating and coordinating action on the same network. Events are interpreted using FAST and interventions are recommended via BHH. All interventions are monitored using universal human rights and supported with hard data.

Tool: FAST

“Rapid Interpretation of Meaningful Data”

Application purpose of FAST: An office staff is set up in Greece to monitor the following communications data coming out of the region. Their objective is to acquire qualitative data to determine “root, proximate, and intervening factors that can lead to the outbreak of a violent conflict or shape an existing conflict” and acquire quantitative data based on daily event indicators. 

The tool allows a trained bi-national data collection team to selectively analyze big data trending from a) internet reports from factional monitoring groups, b) news/social media content from institutions of influence by faction c) monitor civilian radio communications in zones, d) collate incoming first hand field reports to flag indicators based on conflict variables.

  Qualitative data methods: Arabic/Hebrew/Farsi language news/social media; reports from leading CBO monitoring groups; Benetech open source reports; data triangulation via UN and NGO reports; Palestinian & Israeli governmental data. 

Primary Root: Physical integrity of bi-national territory.

Quantitative factors measurements: the following are primary tracking indicators. # Instances of mass violence reflected via hospitalizations/ reported casualties. # Instances of arrest. Weekly prison population. # of demonstrations/ funeral processions in approximate participating numbers. # targeted assassinations quarterly. # exchanges of fire with casualties. # Suicide attacks/Rocket attacks. Settlement expansion by m3. $ US aid/remittances to both sides civilian/ military per quarter. Quantity # of multinationals present in occupied territories. Quarterly demographic reviews.

Assumptions: Presence of bi-lingual, bi-national data analysis team. Operational relationship with understood mutual aid agreements with monitoring agencies based in Gaza, Israel, West Bank and United States. Open channels of communication with all major factions. Aggregate software to recommend daily threat levels and trend annual data in means that as politically useful for the peace process. All operational imperatives meet two decisive bottom lines; a) violence cessation and b) the right of both peoples to exist within the territory of Palestine within three administrative units; Gaza, Israel and West Bank as a confederated entity.

Resource Implications/ Availability: Office staff of 24 staff/ 24 volunteers to utilize tool 24/7 based in Greece. Regional administrative bases in Gaza, Jerusalem, & Nablus. Strategic Autonomous Partner Action Organizations in every population center above population 25,000 capable of monitoring and actionable effect. 

Conflict intervention recommendations: The FAST team in Greece will issue daily reports to all allied Partner Organizations; make weekly ‘process threat’ advisories; hold monthly web briefings on findings and trends, and issue quarterly summaries directly to the communications/ diplomatic representatives of all Israeli/Palestinian/American Jewish factions. It will issue twitter and text message alerts in the event of imminent hostilities to all subscribers. It will maintain clear line of communication open between a) Hamas leadership, b) Fatah leadership, c) the Israeli party in power/ the 2^nd and 3^rd largest Israeli parties by seat in Knesset d) AIPAC e) U.S. State Department.    

Intervention recommendations will proceed via three levels. A) Public Address via mass advisories, b) Partnership Network Alliance and 3) External Factions of influence. All will embrace free association, autonomous action, explicit non-violence and human rights based approach via Benefit/Harms Handbook (BHH) Tool.

Tool: BHH

Application of Benefits/Harms Handbook (BHH) in “Approximate benefit/harm of threat & intervention:

Application purpose is to “to help actors take responsibility for the impact of their work on people’s human rights. It offers a set of simple interrogative tools that help staff think more deeply and effectively about the impacts of their work, and taking responsibility for both positive and negative impacts. It also provides a framework for monitoring potential negative or unintended impacts, as well as ways to mitigate these.”(Action Alert, 2004).

BHH is centered on weighing the impact of ones interventions though three delineated categories of existing human rights: Security Rights (RR), Civil/Political Rights (CPR), and Economic/Social/Cultural Rights (ESCR) along with their indicators, impacts and logical framework outcomes. 

The Tool applies a Human Rights Based Approach to the logical framework model. It best used in local operations and not well suited for conflict management at large short term.

Assumptions: Participation of organized Palestinian and Israeli NGOs with indigenous bases of support to accurately conduct Human Rights centered DME of recommended interventions is imperative. Each is operating autonomously in our network with daily operations, budgeting, and operational protocols independent of central authority. Symmetric Indicators agreed to by all parties in conflict utilized throughout engagement. Demographic disaggregation of quantitative data based on religion, ethnicity, political faction utilized in FAST are withheld as this system centers on overall human rights implications.

A focused BHH application to an intervention is up to discretion of the faction or operational body recommended too. Non-discrimination/ protected categories are selectively applied as needed. Broad Segment data is used to guide operational discretion on intervention usage. For our system we will have provided training to each of our allies to apply a Logical Framework Approach algorithm to assess use of an intervention based of level of potential war violation (harm) with level of peaceful rights advancement (benefit). The fundamental process revolves around ‘Symmetric Indicators’ being agreed to within the analytical process.

“The practice of human rights actors in development reveals little consistency in the formulation of indicators. A bewildering diversity prevails, whether actors are focusing on duty-bearer compliance at the macro-level or on performance of planned development change at the micro-level. One overriding challenge is therefore how to establish greater consistency in the design of indicators to facilitate horizontal comparisons between countries or between state parties” (Human Rights Indicators, WB p.15)

Analytical Framework: Main Steps and Suggested process

BHH contains “tools for situation analysis (profile tools), impact assessment (impact tools), and project (re)design (decision tools)” (Action Alert, 2004). Profile tools allow us to achieve a human rights centered, balanced assessment of the perceived impact an intervention will achieve. The objective supply of data to aid the best practice implementation of the tool will be supplied by the FAST team making the intervention recommendation. BHH will allow the local operational leadership to act.

Consultation with local contacts in community, organizational review of the FAST data and individual partner organizations’ information & intelligence capacities will ultimately guide the decision to select the intervention.

 Guiding Questions / Pre-Arranged Indicators

Two quotes serve to illustrate the challenge and dilemma. In the OHCHR Draft Guidelines on a Human Rights Approach to Poverty Reduction, from 2003, it was argued that “most of the indicators proposed in these Guidelines are standard indicators of socioeconomic progress, although it should be observed that some human rights indicators, especially those relating to civil and political rights, do not usually figure in measures of socio- economic progress. Essentially, what distinguishes a human rights indicator from a standard disaggregated indicator of socio-economic progress is less its substance than (a) its explicit derivation from a human rights norm and (b) the purpose to which it is put, namely human rights monitoring with a view to holding duty-bearers to account. (OHCHR Indicators Draft)

The Profile, Impact and Decision sub-tools are each organized according to the three categories of human rights: 

1. Security Rights (SR):

Right to a) life b) liberty c) security of person d) Right not to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

2. Civil/Political Rights (CPR):

Right to a) participate in public affairs, b) freedom of opinion/expression c) a fair trial

3. Economic, Social & Cultural Rights (ESCR):

Right to a) the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health b) to adequate food c) to adequate housing d) to education e) to social security f) to work with paid leave & ability to form trade unions.

Special Protective Categories: a) women, b) children, c) migrant workers, d) demographic minorities.

The tool addresses the full action impact of rights holders/ duty bearers and the underlying causes of the potential harm or benefit via action. Actions, Attitudes and Artifices are the focus of the tool.

Human rights-based approach to relief and development presupposes that all people are entitled to certain minimum conditions of living with dignity (human rights). Relief and development organizations aim to help people achieve these conditions, thereby acknowledging their human responsibility to do so. This implies they take responsibility for the human rights impact of their work –whether positive or negative. Human rights are therefore the central criteria for analyzing the overall impact of a project.” (Action Alert, 2004.)

Quantitative/ Quantitative data measurements: Agreed to “Symmetric Indicators for Separation & Economic Development in Israel Palestine 2020.”  

Resource Implications/ Availability: Utilizing DME/BHH trained staff regional leadership assesses a threat and intervention response via 3 categories of benefit/harm to rights (Security, CPR, ESCR) posed by threat/event/action looking at its history-nature via PROFILE. That threat/event/action data is plugged into IMPACT TOOL algorithm which weighs the Benefit/Harm Level (potential rights violation) on a scale of 58. Each increment has corresponding intervention recommendations made via the DECISION. The 3 rights categories via benefits/harms are then again re-assessed and intervention is selected. 

Conflict Intervention Recommendations: The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a multi-dimensional, ongoing low-intensity mass human rights violation that directly aids in fueling the instability of the region at large. One of the least understood aspects of the occupation and conflict has been the role of non-Israeli/ non-Palestinian multinational volunteers. Although comparatively low in overall casualty count compared to other global conflicts since the 1991 Palestinian Uprising a steady cohort of European, Latin American, American and Iranian volunteers have changed the overall strategic calculus.

Military intelligence officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have highly enhanced Palestinian capacity for military action and terrorism since the first intifada. Multi-nationalization actions via the International Solidarity Movement have smuggled thousands of Euro-American volunteers to serve in Palestinian development capacities as well as human shields in the occupied territories. The combination of capacity to inflict harm, European non-violent foreign volunteers embracing the BDS movement, the Israeli embrace of structural apartheid via the Security Wall and take over Gaza by Hamas have all worked to reduce the levels of violence that peaked in the Second Intifada (2000-2005). Surely track 1, 2, 3, & 4 peace work has contributed as well.  

Our intervention recommendations involve measured, scalable responses in the following categories based on threat levels corresponding to rights violations in the 3 categories. 

All interventions are reviewed once implemented via BHH Human Rights implications, impacts, and outcomes. Each side should adopt a 1 for 1 approach. Harm for Harm & Benefit for Benefit.  

Application of “Making Sense of Turbulent Contexts” (MSTC) to “place the intervention in a wider context of outcomes that secure rights obligations and make complex ethno-political phenomena understandable to outside parties.” Most of the problem/ provocation data was detailed in section one.

Primary Purpose: The MSTC Tool’s primary purpose is to render highly complicated, protracted ethnic conflicts understandable to internal and external actors.

Conceptual Assumptions

“Turbulent Contexts” refers to “Situations of Chronic Political Instability (SCPI).” This term expands the notion of ‘complex humanitarian emergency’ to reflect the long-term, cyclical and political nature of many of these contexts. It covers phenomena such as cyclical conflict, violence against civilians, political unrest, extreme polarization of wealth, natural disasters over a number of years, population displacement, and the need for humanitarian assistance. The emphasis is on the chronic and political nature of these contexts. (Action Alert, 2004) The goals is to analyze greed/ grievance as well as historic and current perceptions in light of complicated political science/ identity driven variables.

Conclusion

We do not possess the arrogance to assume that all or many of these specific tactical or policy suggestions will result in coexistence or peace in the immediate future. We shall no longer be beholden to the European constructed state system, to international law forced upon us from the outside or the so-called norms of diplomacy and state building. To advocate for a Para-State is a revolutionary act as it inherently rejects the salvation of either people lies in a government imposed solution. It also conquers the means to attain human rights from those that perpetually violate them.

This blueprint, like the ones we wish to see emerge in every nation where governments and elites trample on the rights of humanity is an emerging vision. One subject to the free association and consensus of those it effects; to be led by social movement organizations that do not believe in the particularism of national origin or identity or the exclusionary determinism forced upon them by either history or an outside party.   

A people without a land retuned to a land that still had people. This land has changed hands via blood and fire throughout the centuries and while “holy” to some and “strategic” to many; it is now the home of over 13 million people, Jews and Palestinians who respectively seek a solution that is based on Justice. That barrier to peace is never common people. It is always in the interests of those that rule to perpetuate war. The Parallel State’s aim is not one state, two state, three state; or to redraw a map that never reflected anyone’s wishes to begin with. Our aim is simple. Without violence or political office our aim is to seize control of those things that were our states obligation; freedom, security and development thus safe guarding our collective human rights without waiting for those that have trampled upon them of centuries to negotiate responsibly for their attainment. 

Appendix 2

NINE TRACKS IN THE MULTI-TRACK SYSTEM

Track 1 – Government, or Peacemaking through Diplomacy. This is the world of official diplomacy, policy making, and peacebuilding as expressed through formal aspects of the governmental process.

Track 2 – Nongovernment/Professional, or Peacemaking through Conflict Resolution. This is the realm of professional nongovernmental action attempting to analyze, prevent, resolve, and manage international conflicts by non-state actors.

Track 3 – Business, or Peacemaking through Commerce. This is the field of business and its actual and potential effects on peacebuilding through the provision of economic opportunities, international friendship and understanding, informal channels of communication, and support for other peacemaking activities.

Track 4 – Private Citizen, or Peacemaking through Personal Involvement. This includes the various ways that individual citizens become involved in peace and development activities through citizen diplomacy, exchange programs, private voluntary organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and special-interest groups.

Track 5 – Research, Training, and Education, or peacemaking through Learning. This track includes three related worlds: research, as it is connected to university programs, think tanks, and special-interest research centers; training programs that seek to provide training in practitioner skills such as negotiation, mediation, conflict resolution, and third-party facilitation; and education, including kindergarten through PhD programs that cover various aspects of global or cross-cultural studies, peace and world order studies, and conflict analysis, management, and resolution.

Track 6 – Activism, or Peacemaking through Advocacy. This track covers the field of peace and environmental activism on such issues as disarmament, human rights, social and economic justice, and advocacy of special-interest groups regarding specific governmental policies.

Track 7 – Religion, or Peacemaking through Faith in action. This examines the beliefs and peace-oriented actions of spiritual and religious communities and such morality-based movements as pacifism, sanctuary, and nonviolence.

Track 8 – Funding, or Peacemaking through Providing Resources. This refers to the funding community-those foundations and individual philanthropists that provide the financial support for many of the activities undertaken by the other tracks.

Track 9 – Communications and the Media, or Peacemaking through Information. This is the realm of the voice of the people: how public opinion gets shaped and expressed by the media-print, film, video, radio, electronic systems, the arts.

PREAMBLE

الديباجه

None of us are pro-peace. We are pro-survival. Pro-stability. We are invested in possibilities that by the birth of the Confederation stop the flow of blood throughout our lands. We have all been taught an endless amount of mythology, based on very little real evidence. It suggests that what occurred between the Tigris and Euphrates, and what occurred down the Nile was progress. It suggests civilization, and later religion, and even later science all emanate from our peoples and our lands.

The Ziggurats of the Neolithic age tell a story. Civilization began with the creation of castes and the centralization of power into early state systems. The cradle of all civilization began with specializations of labor; chaining early humanity to useful trades; and the conscription of worker slaves. The appointment of Kings. It began with tributes to unseen Gods, all-powerful oligarchs, and eventually a cast of priests to preside over mythology, then later religions, later still over since, and this all served one thing: to prevent us from rebellion. The unnatural subjugation of all humanity into productive labor is not a unique story to Mesopotamia. This book is not about insurrection or economic development. It’s not a rejection of ethnic identity or the work of atheists. What is clear:  

The status quo is not sustainable. It is chaotic uncertainty at best. The entire Middle East is awash in an endless war and has experienced every measure of barbaric atrocity. This state of modern warfare has proceeded without any actual peace since 1920, but the bloody chaos existed a long time before that. Almost in perpetuity for as long as we have ever known. Every nation is vulnerable, every nation is complicit in the killing fields today. The Western powers and Eastern powers have used us. They have handed us sophisticated weapons to murder each other in varying combinations while the great transnational corporations harvest the energy supplies in the ground. This has nothing to do with civilizational clashes or the competing interpretations of Abrahamic religion. That is just the framework for our terrifying division, not the cause of it. The Modern Middle East must cast off its oligarchy, cast off its foreign domination, cast off its ethnic particularism, and embrace peace on its own terms. 

It is not true that the tinderbox of the dying Ottoman erupted via Palestine. Nor is it true that the roads to Jerusalem from Cairo, Damascus, Karbala, Najaf, Mecca, Medina, and Tehran are all guarded by the now-flailing American empire. Not all original sins of the region began with Crusaders, Ottomans, Zionists, meddling foreigners, and with our oil. 

“The truth is, that any so-called peace process is little more than a short-term buy-off. Allowing the hegemon powers more time to take, to utilize what lies under our sands until it all runs out.” Egypt, Jordan, and briefly the PLO were paid off to make peace. Now the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan, and soon even Saudi Arabia are paid to stand down because the Americans and Europeans use Israel in Palestine as a forward operating base. Just as the Russians use Syria and Iran. Of course, the Iranians and Israelis have their interests, and of course, they have their own regional goals; but without external arms and subsidies, they could not sustain such aggressive posturing and mount such adventuristic foreign policy. 

It is also a wild deception that the Islamic State (ISIS) has its origins in any normal version of Islam. That its goals were divinely inspired and that its recent defeat brought an end to this type of Wahbai Salafist insurgency. ISIS was an entity controlled by, supplied by, and supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan’s intelligence services.

It is time now for the coming generation of the Middle East to take steps to prevent the interventions of foreign powers, as well as to contain the regressive impulses of theocracy.  

In short, the road to an actual long-lasting peace is not through the conquest of states, the dispersion of the Jews again, or religious fundamentalism. The road to peace is in fact not peace; it is instead about ceasefire, and separation into stable units but not embracing the chauvinistic nationalism of outsiders; particularly the meddling of the East and the West; NATO, Russian Federation, and rising China. We do not have to commit to anything with these actors. But we must enter a confederation strong enough to repel foreign aggression, stamp out internal fundamentalism, stamp out ethnic conflicts, and secure the ceasefire. Secure a framework of civil and human rights acceptable to the diversity of religions and of course, prevent the indefinite traffic of weapons and currency for access to the finite resources of gas and oil. 

The academia, the media, and the West obsessively have focused on Palestine, because (a) The Israelis, despite being mostly Jewish are at least half European or Slavic in appearance (approx. 2 million are Ashkanzi/ European and 4 million are Sefardic/ Mizhahi) (b) Israel is without a single doubt a manipulation of several thousand years of collective trauma experienced by the Jewish people into being a modern Otremer: a colony that Europe and America rely on for regional control. But while accepting or refuting that statement; it cannot be denied that so was Pahlavi Iran until 1979. So has been Jordan and Egypt, and the abomination of Wahbbi Salafist extremist Saudi Arabia; as well as each of the Petro-States of the Gulf. Unique in a world where race is the most essential passport to privilege; of  8-9 million Israelites: 3 million look fully European. For the greater part of 800 years since being butchered by Crusaders culminating in the holocaust; the Jews have in essence, or at least the Ashkanzi in charge of Israel decided they will collaborate with Christian Europe against their Semitic cousins, the people of the region they were expelled from by Romans nearly 1,900 years ago.

The Shi’a also know a great deal about persecution. Iran and the Shi’a have many characteristics similar to the Jews. Particularly a feeling of their backs against a wall, then the sea. The world’s oldest groups of Christians; the Armenians, Assyrians, and Maronites have survived endless wars by retreating to the mountains. The Sunni are being held hostage between secularism and regressive fundamentalism; Egypt, Turkey, and Pakistan are caught between those feelings. The contradictions of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are lost on no one.

Thus an unusual realignment is suggested. Five pillars, keystone nations if you will, that if realigned restore the Israelis to their lost homeland indefinitely and return the Jews to being a people of the Middle East. With the realignment of Israel away from her European mixed tribes, abusers of over two thousand years back to the tent of her blood; then there are only four nations left that can sow widespread death, extremism, and disorder and they; Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey will be managed one by one. 

          The five intrinsic incubators of regional instability and endless war behind which the Middle Eastern resources are divided up and plundered: Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. Each with external pipeline of funds and trade linking back to hegemonic power. The semi-peripheral powers of the Middle East.

The three intrinsic imperialists are external profiteers who secure themselves from endless war. They steal resources and direct efforts toward Maldevelopment: USA-NATO, Russian Federation, and eventually the People’s Republic of China.

The initial geography behind which a Middle Eastern Confederation can be birthed, formed, and fortified: Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Armenia, Kurdistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Kashmir.

For the skeptics let us draw on the fact that America is under 300 years old. The virtually complete reliance on fossil fuels for transport and trade is less than 100 years. All of Europe exhibited mass violence and religious atrocity for around 2,000 + years and the nations of the Middle East have produced all Western religions, writing, science and literacy dating back perhaps 3,000 years. Essential to this document is an understanding that we are proposing the confederation of peoples who have lived beside each other in relative non-violence for as long as recorded history existed, and only the interventions of Crusaders, Mongols, and European imperialists have escalated conditions to perpetual war and genocide.

The road between both halves of Jerusalem to Al-Quds runs in fact to the mountains of Kurdistan. To a people without a state, who by historical circumstance were in the last 40 years trained to fight by Palestinians and trained to organize by Zionists. Who, although speaking 11 dialects of Kurdish are linguistically and culturally most similar to the Persian Iranians. The Iranians, who are the only existential threat to Israel, still have over 40,000 Jewish citizens and share a version of Shi’a faith with the Lebanese, Yemanis, Bahrainians, and Iraqis and a language with the Afghans; fight East and West via these Proxies.  Finally, Egypt is a nation that subsists on Western aid but revolution is always below the surface. Jordan is over 60-70% Palestinian and without American and Israeli support could not exist as a country.

So it is not the coexistence of Israel in Palestine that is the lynchpin of peace. Yet in warfare, they have drawn in virtually all the actors that are needed to make a Hudna, or a lasting ceasefire in order for the Israelis to ally with the two other powers that ensure the Confederation can raise its flags; Iran and Egypt. Which is to say the historic enemies of the Jews. Nations that as Egypt and the Babylonian and Assyrian Empires; did reportedly attempt to obliterate the Jews, then the “Eivree” or Hebrews. “Jews’ is a word invented by Romans, as there is no J sound in Hebrew or Aramaic.

Although all our people learn and think in several thousand-year segments. Although we find almost unceasing war records no matter what empire or confederation was in power. The point of unity for the nations of this proposed Confederation is a historical legitimacy and self-awareness of being largely monotheistic, desert tribes that absolutely no outsider or insider to the region could subjugate completely. This does not make an argument that Palestinians are Canaanites, the Lebanese Phoenicians, or that Jews should not be called Jews but are the 20-30% intermixed survivors of the Israelite tribes Dan, Yehuda, and Levy; Eivri, or Yehudeans. Or that of the 13 million worldwide population of descendants of the Jews perhaps as few as 5 million are remotely even practicing the religion. Which is speculated. 

“Essentially speaking we are talking about a confederated alliance of states and self-governing cantons that must find a common cause for separation and economic development intrinsically linked to a series of strategic agreements between Judeans, Persians, Arabs of all religious confessions, and Kurds of all political types. Not factoring in whether they have states or are not recognized by the world state system.”

1. The Confederation is founded by historic tribes, the geographic nation is secondary if not necessary to the parties representing the majority of the tribes who reside in the Maghreb, Middle, and Near East. Specifically the fertile crescent with geopolitical implications from Tunisia to the west, to Kashmir in the East, to Sudan in the south, and the Caucuses. But rooted deeply in accords between Israel, Palestine, Shi’a Iran, and the Parties of the Kurds.   
2. The Confederation is based on ethnic cantons that will be self-governed by religious law, civil law, or tribal custom but all cantons must be Universal Human Rights law-abiding; which is to allow the exit from any community of those that wish to live under secular civil law.
3. The Confederation is based on democratic autonomy; thus a co-gendered leadership, a census, and a system of voting and elections must be in place to implement religious laws that are binding throughout a canton.   
4. The Confederation will conscript and maintain a unified Defense Force and Civil Service that through 3 years of military or civil duty deploy diverse forces amid the Confederation to foster shared values in a complex and diverse society.
5. The ethno-civil administrative capitals of the Confederation pending cessation of military conflict will be Cairo, Jerusalem-Al Quds, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, Mecca, Diyarbakur, Istambul, and Tehran.
6. The Israelis and Palestinians are not the key elements of actualizing the Confederation, but they are capable of indefinitely destabilizing the effort to form the alliance and must be specifically managed.
7. The Israeli, Iranian, Saudi, and Turkish agreement is the only way to militarily secure the confederation.
8. The Kurds (in civil society/ ideology), Shi’a (in security), Lebanese (in trade), and Israeli (in technology, but certainly all sectors) have specific developmental technology as well as governance systems that are integral to this project.
9. The Confederation will pursue non-alignment. 

There are critical security, international relations, and domestic crisis issues that threaten the very existence of the Israeli and Palestinian peoples much more so than the ongoing, comparatively low-intensity occupation of the Palestinian zones of control in the West Bank and blighted Gaza. The region at large is in an acute state of political and social unrest; the governments of Somalia, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Yemen have fallen resulting in foreign occupations, civil wars, and general anarchy. Shi’a Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia are at proxy war throughout the Muslim world.

Many will object to us describing Israel as a “Jewish military Colony”, and object to calling the separation barrier the “Apartheid Wall” but linguistics and agreement of a shared paradigm are vital to the success of this unit’s objectives. We assure you the credentials of our core research team from Israel are sufficiently grounded in lived experiences of both the intelligence service and defense forces; while our Palestinian team’s Jihadist and patriotic background would be of little question.

Chaos and revolution are spreading while security, what little there was is unraveling. All of this was acutely exacerbated by the 2001 & 2003 American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq; resulting in the virtual anarchic non-governance of both countries today.

This treatise has been researched and written by a group of Judeans, Arabs, Israelis, Palestinians, and Kurds concerned with the collective survival of their respective peoples as they occupy and are occupied in the heart of this massive, unending conflict. There is very little hope of this macros-regional war or micro-peace settlement between Israel and Palestine being resolved on the level of government. Palestinians have two competing governments; Hamas and Fatah; Israel has a coalition government, but in reality is controlled as a military oligarchy on the behest of Ashkenazi Judaism and the foreign policy goals of the United States of America. 

For the approximately 16 million humans living in Greater Israel/ Historic Palestine; the scenarios are not optimistic in the slightest. 

Peace is improbable, demographics are not favorable to the 5-6 million categorized Jews and beyond the religious overtone of the landmarks described by three world religions as ‘holy land’; Israel is also a nuclear-armed semi-peripheral power aligned completely and dependent on financially a Jewish Lobby and interest in the United States which cultivates the specific and direct interests of two intractable groups; the US military-industrial complex and the 2-3 million Ashkenazi (European) Israeli Jews; which enjoy a standard of living inside the Jewish colony markedly different from the Jews of other ethnic backgrounds.

There has been ceaseless warfare in the Maghreb & Middle East since 1920. All of the scenarios discussed in the treatise are inseparable from the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but it is naïve and European to link the peace of the region to our specific peace. A peace that will never be under the dynamics of the current situation, the minuscule size of the land, and endless regional intrigue. Arms and aid money, for control of energy resources.

Thus we concern ourselves in this first manuscript with Israelis (of all religions and ethnicities) and Palestinians (of all demographics). We are concerned with the broader course of humanity, but this has been authored to ensure that regardless of humanities general course; there will always be Palestinians, and there will always be Jews; and if there are to be “Israelis” an identity that is less than 85 years old; we must engage in radical steps to subvert the course of the mainstream Zionist project; delink ourselves of Euro-American hegemony and stop the inevitable slaughter of our collective peoples.

“A new level of atrocity is coming.” 

Palestinian demographics will increase to above 50% inside the green line which they trend toward (currently the reality is something like 7 million Arabs to 8 million Jews + others), and or if Israel uses a nuclear weapon of which it has over 500. Or Israel is sucked into or provokes a war with Iran. Or any number of possible scenarios with state collapse, proxy war, Saudi and Iranian warfare, and further misadventures with enormous cost in-human life. To stop the final floodgates from opening, to address the broad systemic internal contradictions of the Israeli state and to secure a viable Middle Eastern Confederation, a radical policy of reorientation must begin with a realistic assessment of the only other three parties on the ground besides Memshala Yisrael which can broker regional any lasting stability. Israel must deal directly with Hamas, Fatah, Kurdish Parties, and most importantly the Islamic Republic of Iran. Only an uneasy truce and alliance of this kind can focus policy and praxis on awakening the consciousness of the Sunni Arab majority.

“It is no longer a question of moralizing the conflict, obsessing over past failures, or temporarily abating a cycle of degenerating violence. Or conducting more banal and expensive anthropological studies on identity.” 

In the Israeli Knesset, amid the Palestinian resistance factions, among the various Persian & Arab power brokers and the para-state organizations on the ground (and in the Diaspora) all realize that neither by sheer will nor by force of arms can they destroy one another. Blame for the modern quagmire that is the Middle East may fall squarely on the post-colonial powers of Europe and the United States for the proliferation of arms without stipulation or control. However, the new reality is that if the third Hebrew Commonwealth of Israel is to survive; if a Palestinian State is to be brought into being; as well as if any measure of regional stability is to be achieved, radical and unorthodox steps must be taken to close the breach. The breach is not simply a result of Israeli defense against Arab aggression, or vice versa; it is a breach in the foundation of the modern security calculus. All parties involved must become more attuned to the heightened stakes via lessons of history and sound political science.  

This treatise offers an objective analysis of the Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya in order to advocate for its recognition as a viable partner, not in immediate peace; but in implementation of separation, economic development, and most importantly; Hudna. It makes a fundamental case for supporting Kurdish national ambitions in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. We advocate for a full and lasting partnership between Israel and the revolutionary Shi’a government in Iran. But, we envision and call for something so much more powerful.

To claim that Memshala Israel has secured its borders, or contained conventional military threats to its existence is to say that glass is made out of sand. The process by which glass is made from sand renders the base substance unalterably changed and requires the release of energy through fire and heat to yield something far more unstable than its original form. While the cousins of Ishmael and Yitzhak, the Israelis and Palestinians, are indeed two peoples intractably bound to a single, tiny piece of land, they are met with a recurring problem. The Israeli public and government (currently) lack the will to commit genocide. The Palestinian Resistance factions cannot (currently) procure or introduce a means to mass murder that won’t render their own homeland a house of ash.

Surely whispered in both camps is the notion that it wouldn’t be ‘objectionable’ for the other and their kind to be ‘pushed into the sea’ or ‘dumped on the other side of the Jordan.’ The survivors of the Shoah cannot (yet) bring themselves to this, nor would international opinion condone genocide in the Holy Land in this day and age. As for the Palestinians, pushing the Jews into the sea has more to do with rhetoric than ability, conscience, or even intention. The ancestors of both races defended the holy land against the Christian Crusaders locked arm in arm. 

There are over 1,400 years of precedent for relatively peaceful co-existence and less than 100 to the contrary. Anyone telling you otherwise has a vested interest in your ignorance.

Even the death toll of the First Intifada (estimated at 421 Israeli/1,549 Palestinian) and the more bloody melee of the Second Intifada, which included suicide bombers and collective punishment,  cost only 1,062 Israeli and 5,500 Palestinian lives. The invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2008 resulted in 13 Israeli and 1,417 Palestinians. In the ongoing Gaza Wars in 2010-2015, an estimated 100 Israelis and over 5,000 Palestinians have lost their lives. 

Between 2015 and 2023 multiple rounds of fighting in Gaza killed several thousands of Palestinians and a few dozen Israelis. In the same period, the Syrian Civil War killed over 500,000 people.  That means that in the entirety of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict beginning in 1948; less than 50,000 people have cumulatively died, comparatively to virtually all other ethnic conflicts that is a footnote, a statistic. The body count of the Palestinian-Israel civil war is comparatively low when compared with other global ethnic conflicts like those waged in Sri Lanka, Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, and Ukraine.  

Hamas must be directly engaged as the only viable partner capable of securing Palestinian temporary acceptance of the third Hebrew Commonwealth and thereby securing the Jewish National home by buying both sides more time for ultimate reconciliation before more desperate measures are introduced. The Three Parties of Kurdistan must be supported aggressively by both people overtly and covertly. Shi’a Iran is the only semi-peripheral power both sides can count on, as all other states besides Egypt are European inventions; and Egypt is an incredibly unstable place locked between a US-backed military dictatorship and the Muslim Brotherhood. The road to peace does not run through Jerusalem/ Al-Quds, but without a full ceasefire between the Judeans and Palestinians no other keystone ally, tribe, or faction can be aligned to the program to build up a Middle East Confederation in our lifetimes. 

“The window of achieving political and military victory within our lifetimes is a narrowing window. If we falter, if we squander possibility in the name of imagined identity and unseen gods; all will be lost. All of our people no matter what they pray to, will be facing annihilation together.” 

“We ask you to read these documents carefully and go back to your factions, parties, organizations, armies, and places of worship to testify on the nature t of this plan.” 

By the best calculations of our Party we have a window of less than 200 years before the oil reserves run out, but under 40 years to achieve the Confederation on the terms of the many peoples of our nations. There is nothing in anyone’s scripture that calls for this endless warfare. There is nothing that tells us there must be homogenous practice or uniform belief. 

A Reading from the Blessed Qu’ran:

When the sun (with its spacious light) is folded up;

When the stars fall losing their luster.

When the mountains vanish (like a mirage);

When the she-camels, ten months with young

 Are left unattended. 

When wild beasts are herded together (In human habitations);

When the oceans boil over with a swell;

When the souls are sorted out (Being joined, like with like);

When the female (infant),

Buried alive, is questioned for what crime she was killed;

When the scrolls are laid open;

When the sky is unveiled;

When the blazing fire is kindled to a fierce heat;

And when the Garden is brought near;

(Then) shall each soul know what it put forward;

So verily I call to witness the planets, that recedes;

Go straight, or hide.

And the night as it dissipates;

And the dawn as it breathes away the darkness.

“We are going to use code.” 

We are going to use metaphor. We will fight on the low roads and high roads and from the mountains. We will not contradict myths or religious tenets, we will not offer up science as a God. 

Rise of the 

Middle East Confederation

صعود اتحاد الشرق الأوسط

We are all very old peoples. We all laugh, we love and we dance in circles with our comrades. We have many types of language and custom, and many of these customs have been subsumed, or evolved, or were maintained with zeal and blood of martyrs. 

It is not in our interests to keep fighting even if we have no will to make peace. For it is clear that we have no ability or also ACTUAL willingness to completely destroy each other. So we must find a way to live on our very different terms.

For thousands of years our people gathered at the crossroads of the world. Or were born here. We traded, we intermarried, we made alliances, we raided, we fled, we made war and also, we conquered, pillaged, assimilated, massacred, made total fitna. But none of our peoples have killed in the numbers we now kill with weapons from outside our sphere.  Many tribes, many peoples, ARE WE who remember our ways and our customs BACK THOUSANDS OF YEARS. With stiff necks and incredible stubbornness to relinquish our sense of identities OR BELIEFS. 

We all live with memories and tribulations going back several thousand years. 

This is a treatise co-written by the People of the Book, but also those that came before these books, and those that never believed in a religion.  It is pieced together and translated differently by the Zoroastrians, and the Judeans; by the Persians, by Arabs, and Phoenicians, by the Kurds; by the Palestinians living as citizens in exile or in camps as refugees. By Assyrians and Druze, by Shi’a, by Sunni, by Orthodox and Latin Christians. By Yemanites, Chechens, Assyrians, Armenians, Maronites, Sunni and Shi’a Lebanese, Jordanians and Syrian Arabs, Alawites, and Georgians as well. 

“All who wish to see peace and if not peace, separation and long-term ceasefire. If not peace, if not understanding; then trade and normality. All people in our region have suffered enough. To survive the wars of the last four thousand years, to stop the wars of tomorrow; 

“Enough! Ceasefire. 

Build confidence apart.” 

“Let us separate into our respective camps and return to our ancestral lands or in those lands we are welcomed; let us confederate and defeat forever the meddling of outside nations that speak of peace, trade in arms, and reduce us to barbarism!”

“These authors and practitioners of a fourth track diplomacy call for an end to false, wasteful peace. An end to all outside invasions. 

If we cannot pray in the same ways, or speak the same languages; this is no impediment to declare HOLLIS! HUDNA! From our many flags let us become a Middle East Confederation from the Western Maghreb to the Indus River.”   

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PREAMBLE………………………………………………………………………………………3

CONTEXTUAL SUMMARY OF PRIOR NEGOTIATIONS…………………………………..12

UNIVERSAL INDICATORS……………………………………………………………………48

STATEMENTS OF POSITIONS……………………………………………………………………………………….

CORE ARGUMENTS……………………………………………………………………………………………………..

MANUEVERS…………………………………………………………………………………..

PART ONE………………………………………………………………………………………

• Inner Book One: The Judean and Palestinian State…………………………………..

PART TWO………………………………………………………………………………….50

• Inner Book Two: Homage to Rojava……………………………………………………… 

1. BAKUR [The Northern Cantons]……………………………………………………………..
2. ROJHELAT [The Eastern Front]……………………………………………………………………………..
3. BASHUR [The Southern Cantons]……………………………………………………………..
4. ROJAVA [The Land of the Setting Sun]………………………………………………………..

PART THREE……………………………………………………………………………

• Inner Book Three: A Vision of Life in the Middle East Confederation 

I. [DECOLONIZED JUDEANS: The Eivree back from the exile] ………………………………………

II. [AWAKENED SUNNIS: The majority Arab population and the Turks]……………………………… 

III. [SHI’A REVIVAL: Iran, Lebanon, Bahrain, Hezbollah, Alawites, Popular Mobilization Forces, Houthis]……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

IV. [KURDS & KURDISTAN: A people with no state]………………………………………………………

V. [CHRISTIAN ORTHODOXY: Assyrians, Chaldeans, Maronites, Greek Orthodox Arabs, Armenians]………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

VI. [SABEANS: Druze, Yazidis, Samaritans, Zoroastrians, and the protection of special minority populations]………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

VIII. [BAHAI]………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

VIII. [SECURING EQUAL RIGHTS AND CIVIL PROTECTIONS FOR CITIZENS, GUEST MIGRANTS, and NONBELIEVERS]……………………………………………………………………………

CONCLUSIONS………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

• Inner Book Four: A Draft Constitution of the Middle East Confederation 

MAPS & ADDENDA……………………………….……………………………………………

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES……………………………………………………………………………………………. 

Chapter (12) Twelve

Paris, France

HEVAL PILING

Absolument tout moun, all people, in “La Resistance”, which is to say le People’s Protection Units (Y.P.G.) and Women’s Protection Units (Y.P.J.), will give you only a Kurdish guerrilla name,” says Heval Piling of Paris, France. He is the son of African immigrants that have settled in the outskirts of the French capital.

Some are given their “heval name” by the P.K.K. cadros during the smuggle crossing from the base of the Qandil mountain over le Tigris river into north east Syria’s Jazeera Canton. Others are given their nom de guerre in the first few days of their arrival at the guerrilla Academy near Qerechow. Some gain it beforehand through  their affiliation with Kurdish Movement in Europe. There are probably under 100 names used. 20 of them are quite common and they are frequently recycled.

The training base is located amid the levers, pumps and minoring systems of the Ruemelin oil fields, the original base and 22 foreign volunteers and Y.P.G./Y.P.J. fighters were incinerated in Turkish airstrikes which occurred in early May.

You are given a first name and can choose your last name. And this is who you are while fighting for the Revolution in Rojava.  

My code name means ‘The Tiger’. I heard a story before I left for Syria from a tall anarchist, code named Firat. I am very paranoid about any press coverage or even photographs the French police are already harassing my family. I am a black so I will not be treated the same as other French. I am already under suspicion.

Heval Firat told me that after his first tour of six months he came back and held a small meeting of radicals. He told them of his time in Rojava and encouraged them to go experience the revolution themselves. He was arrested two days later. Clearly an informant was in the meeting. He was charged with terrorism and recruitment of terrorists. His passport was confiscated and it took him a year to travel to Rojava because getting it back was such mierd. (Such shit). 

I grew up on the outskirts of Paris. In one of those Arab ghettos you always see the riots happening in. I am of African descent thus I am not treated exactly like a French man. When I deployed to Rojava with the volunteers my family was harassed weekly. I was accused of joining Daesh and preparing for terrorism. The entire time I was there serving, I was stressed. So stressed. The security service kept telling my Mom I was a traitor to France. France is one of countries with strict policies on entering the Y.P.G. as a volunteer. Like Britain they make your life a living hell and try confiscate your passport on reentry.

My name is the Tiger, or Piling in Kurdish. The Arabs have given me another name, but it is top secret. I later went on to kill many men in Deir-Ez Zor with the Dragunov sniper rifle I was given. I speak fluent Kurmanji so I was put in a Kadro unit. Party lifers who have sworn total allegiance to ‘the Revolution’ and Serok Apo. Fanatics, like me.

Abdullah Ocalan’s face is absolutely everywhere in Rojava we have read. The sly, chubby brilliant revolutionary beaming out at us all from his prison cell in Imrili, should he still be alive. He is perhaps not alive. The Turkish fascists have held him hostage and tortured him since 1999. But this is his party and his revolution. One must accept the cult of Apo (which means uncle) because his leadership allowed miracles for the Kurdistan Workers Party (P.K.K.); yes ‘our P.K.K.’ survived the Cold War and is the last resistance movement left to challenge the West and its puppet Turkey. We are asked to read his books and understand his thinking before we enter the Y.P.G. because this is a revolutionary militia. We are fighting for far more than the destruction of Daesh!

I am an Anarcho-Syndicalist and a Platformist. My group in France and Russian has sent to the Y.P.G. to make an assessment about its capabilities and Rojava’s potential for survival against the Turkish army once Daesh is eradicated. Groups like M.L.K.P. have for years used Rojava as a training ground and contributed hundreds of fighters to the cause. Not as many as the Jihadists certainly. But it is thought that more than half of the 500 volunteers were Turkish nationals with the M.L.K.P. I am to discover if my group can make a base here like they do. I am to discover if the Turks will just burn this whole revolutionary effort to the ground.  

HEVAL PILING

I am very excited to join the armed struggle. I think it is inspiring what the Kurds have done since the Siege of Kobane when they were almost completely annihilated. 

Of course the U.S. airstrikes saved them. Of course as soon as ISIS is finished the Turks will sweep south to mop up this cordon of resistance the P.K.K. has built via its Syrian arm the P.Y.D. We are probably the last wave of foreigners that will go in. The logistics will get worse and the fight with Turkey will not be the same as the fight with Jihadists in Daesh.

I am good with a rifle. I know the language. They will respect me more because I have taken the time to learn Kurmanji, the other volunteers always complain how shut out they are by language. Firat managed to get his passport back and not be charged with terrorism. He arrived in Rojava a few months before me and went back to his Suikast unit. Heval Firat encouraged me to come, though I was not at the fatefully infiltrated meeting where all the potentials were discovered, charged and shook up to step down.

The number 500 is very small. Embarrassing even; the M.L.K.P. is a disciplined Turkish communist group who has taken on over 100 Shahids. They have a deep alliance with the Party. But my structure has sent me to make the same deal. Can Rojava hold out long enough to export revolution? Can volunteers survive long enough to return to fight in the West? These are the questions I must answer. And while I’m away French police will make my mother very upset and afraid. They will basically terrorize her.

Besides from Firat the Anarchist and Piling, the Tiger; there were several other French of note who prepared to cross into Rojava or were already inside. We know them only by their assigned Kurdish names. Heval Serhat was a lawyer and a petite aristocrat. Proudly French he prepared for adventure not revolution. He was there to kill ISIS and avenge his terrorized homeland. France had over all borne the brunt of ISIS terror. They sure underestimated what effect the well-choreographed executions would have on the hyper-plugged in West. If anything it got them invaded with greater speed.

Serhat wasn’t named Serhat yet, nor was he even trying to join the Y.P.G. He was not a leftist and was hoping to link up with a famous Spanish fascist who had made a name for himself in Sinjar with the YBS. Unlike the YPG, he wouldn’t have to deal with all the ideological bullshit he was told. Serhat was a dandy; handsome and conservative. The struggle of his life before he got to the killing fields may have been the challenge of law school examinations. Some woman may have broken his heart once.

A stranger to military or Islamist danger, Sher was “a Parisian waiter with socialist family values”. He had less qualms with the left being a leftist and was eager to join the YPG. His English was almost non-existent as was his Arabic and Kurdish, but he was eager to battle ISIS. Sher was a communist but not in any party. He had fired a rifle before and assumed he proved to be a good enough shot.

Neither Heval Sher nor Heval Serhat were eager to battle the Turks. They were aware that they were coming in on the tail end of the counter-ISIS operation. Raqqa, Mosul and the rest would all fall one after another by the wintertime. And after that all acknowledged the Americans would abandon its Kurdish and Shiite allies. The Turks would then move in to crush the revolution in Rojava and kill anything in their path. These were the discussed eventualities.

HEVAL PILING:

This was going to be the last time volunteers could get in easily, and fight ISIS, as they would be finished soon and the border sealed up for a time. 

After this batch, everyone will be fighting against Turkey. What made the period of our deployment most uncertain was a combination of factors. First, ISIS was almost entirely annihilated in Raqqa and on the run in Deir Ez-Zor. Second, the Russian Syrian-backed army and the Y.P.G. were racing on either side of the Euphrates River to seize more territory. So far most of the largest river cities were in the hands of the Syrian Regime and most of the oil was in our hands. Tension was building, sometimes erupted into firefights; since no one realistically believes the Assad Regime will tolerate Federal Rojava. At the same time, Turkey is ready to attack Afrin Canton at any time, seizing the Western most Canton before we can fight our way through Syrian Jihadists in Al Qaeda to close the gap. And, everyone knows our U.S. allies will abandon us as soon as ISIS is vanquished. Thirdly, the impending Kurdish referendum will provoke the Iraqi Army to seize border crossings in Sinjar and North West of Dokuk, making betting people and supplies into Rojava even harder.

The biggest uncertainty is what will happen when ISIS is inevitably defeated. But it’s not that uncertain really. Turkey, the second largest military in N.A.T.O. will immediately attack us and try and crush the revolution. Any of us are still here to face them. We will all most likely be killed. C’est la vie. This is the risk of real change. This is the Resistance of our time so we say. The historic event that will shape the movement for real change for the next thousand years.

“Only a coward would profess loudly these coffee house revolutionary views then turn their back on defending a real revolution!”

Chapter (11) Eleven

Kobani (Ayn al-Arab), Rojava Region, Syria

Kobani—also known as Ayn al-Arab—lies to the east of the Euphrates River. The town had grown up around a 1912 train station built as a stop on the Ottoman Empire’s Berlin-to-Baghdad railway. The city was largely home to Armenians and Kurds and had a population of about 45,000 when Syria’s civil war began in 2011.

In July 2012, Kurdish forces in the Y.P.G./Y.P.J./P.K.K. took over protection of the city of Kobani and all the districts around it.

Kobani holds a strategic position on the border with Turkey. From Kobani in the West, past Sinjar and toward Erbil in the East, lay a corridor of oil pipelines and refineries. ISIS was tapping the oil for more than $2 million per day in revenue. Control of Kobani would help solidify ISIS control of Syria’s oil fields. Locking down that revenue was part of the goal for creating the ISIS caliphate Under ISIS control, Kobani would also be a haven for recruits going south to fight in Iraq. Already over 50,000 had crossed in.

“It looked easy.” On Sept. 16, ISIS forces seized a key bridge over the Euphrates. A drive with tanks and artillery captured small villages and brought ISIS to within 10 kilometers of the city of Kobani by Sept. 20. Soon artillery fire was falling into the city. Turkey counted 130,000 Syrian Kurdish refugees streaming across the border four days later.

Up to 4,000 ISIS fighters were advancing in parts of the city. Countering them was a determined force of fighters, starting with groups of Syrian Kurds. They were soon joined by Peshmerga, official Kurdish forces of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, and numerous other groups. Kobani’s defenders were in trouble, though. ISIS took an important hill from the YPG—Kurdish militia in Syria—on Sept. 26. The momentum could overwhelm the city. Brazen ISIS forces behaved like an army moving freely, out in the open on the roads and arid terrain.

The Siege of Kobanî was launched by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on 13 September 2014, in order to capture the Kobanî Canton and its main city of Kobanî (also known as Kobanê or Ayn al-Arab) in northern Syria, in the de facto autonomous region of Rojava.

By 2nd October 2014, the Islamic State had succeeded in capturing 350 Kurdish villages and towns in the vicinity of Kobanê, generating a wave of some 300,000 Kurdish refugees, who fled across the border into Turkey‘s Şanlıurfa Province. By January 2015, this had risen to 400,000. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and some Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions (under the Euphrates Volcano joint operations room), Peshmerga of the Kurdistan Regional Government, and American and US-allied Arab militaries’ airstrikes began to mount a last-minute defense.

For the next 112 days the world watched as the Kurdish forces defended the city street by street by street block by block in horrific bloody street fighting.

Waves upon waves of Daesh truck bombs blowing young men and women apart. It was believed that the outnumbered and outgunned Free Syrian Army, Peshmerga, Y.P.G. and Y.P.J. were doomed and would be quickly annihilated.

The Islamic State advanced with precision and with incredible confidence. In several prongs they attacked Kobane City murdering everyone standing in their way. Some people they put them naked in cages, then burned them alive. Some they gang raped, some they scalped, beheaded or others they burned alive in cages.

In the ISIS mythology anyone killed by a female fighter is denied the glory of martyrdom, so they savagely set on any female defenders they captured.

In many ways, every horrific thing you might associate with the Syrian Civil War came from the Islamic State, or the Assad Regime and or the Russians. But the brutality Daesh is known for, they recorded it gleefully. They broadcast it freely. They made it sleek for replay in dark corners of the internet. And also on the screens of Western TV.

In a Report by American Air Force analyst Rebecca Grant:

“When the so-called Islamic State set its sights on Kobani, Syria, in mid-September 2014—encircling Kurdish fighters there—then-Secretary of State John Kerry warned that the city couldn’t be saved. As Turkish tank crews watched tensely from across the border, the US Air Force and coalition air power went into action, making supply drops and hitting surrounding ISIS forces with bombs dropped from B-1B bombers. 

The 112-day siege proved to be the turning point in America’s commitment to fighting in Syria, and a battle lab for dynamic air and ground tactics.”

Mosul, Iraq, fell to ISIS in June 2014. Three months later, ISIS fighters were battling Iraqi forces less than 25 miles from Baghdad. The fall of either Baghdad or Damascus would have sent a theological signal to an even greater number of foreign volunteers to enlist. At the time of Kobane it was widely understood by the intelligence community that over 50,000 foreign fighters had joined ISIS. Largely entering through Turkey. 

US and coalition airpower intervened, releasing 1,200 weapons in strikes during August and September 2014.

“As you know, this has been an important week for the US and our coalition forces as we began air strikes in Syria,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Sept. 26. US and Arab allies carried out 43 air strikes into Syria, he reported.

The first US airstrikes near Kobani began on Sept. 27. Air Force F-15Es struck an ISIS command and control center; a typical target for that phase of the campaign. Also in action were aircraft from the carrier USS George H. W. Bush. For the next two weeks, coalition air strikes continued, but only in small doses. Coalition planners struggled to pinpoint suitable targets and to work with Kobani’s defenders. By Sept. 30, the Pentagon reported 76 airstrikes in Syria, mostly near Kobani.

Washington was in shock. The Intelligence Community and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper “acknowledged that they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” President Barack Obama told “60 Minutes” on Sept. 30, 2014.

Defending Kobani would take a direct US commitment to defeating ISIS in Syria. While US and coalition partners were pledged to chase ISIS out of Iraq, Syrian policy was another matter. Fighting for Kobani meant more intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, more air strikes, and forging a relationship with groups of Syrian Kurds as new partners on the ground.

“You can’t defend Kobani, Baghdad, Mosul, Erbil, and Sinjar,” as well as conduct strikes “against the Islamic State in places such as Raqqa, with a limited number of ISR orbits to collect necessary intelligence,” a senior Pentagon official told Kate Brannen of Foreign Policy on Oct. 7.

Although the coalition apportioned air strikes to the beleaguered town, pessimism prevailed. A total of 135 air strikes had been carried out on Kobani targets by Oct. 9. “The US has now struck Kobani more than any other target except the Mosul dam,” Jim Sciutto of CNN tweeted on Oct. 9, 2014.

Still, Washington wavered. The Obama administration had committed publicly and at the United Nations to pursuing ISIS through Iraq. What about Syria

“As horrific as it is to watch in real time what is happening in Kobani … you have to step back and understand the strategic objective,” Kerry said at a news conference in Washington with Philip Hammond, Britain’s foreign secretary.

“We are trying to deprive ISIS of the overall ability to wage [war], not just in Kobani but throughout Syria and into Iraq,” Kerry added.

“No Can Do” screamed Time magazine’s headline on the prospects of saving Kobani.

“The US has been restricted in its ability to battle ISIS for two reasons: it waited for months before taking action, and then—per Obama’s orders—it decided not to commit any US ground troops to the fight,” Mark Thompson wrote in Time on Oct. 9, 2014. Katherine Wilkens of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace called Kobani “A Kurdish Alamo.”

“In a coalition where most of Washington’s regional partners are primarily focused on regime change in Syria, the jihadist attack on Kobani offers a test case of whether the United States can get its partners to temporarily set aside their other priorities and act effectively against the Islamic State,” Wilkens wrote in an Oct. 10, 2014, piece.

NATO allies such as the Netherlands and Belgium were deploying forces to join the coalition, and France was already in the fight. For the time being, their parliaments had restricted air strikes to territory in Iraq only. Ultimately, Bahrain, Britain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE air forces participated alongside the US providing air support for Kobani.

Airpower was the main tool available. “Just to remind, there’s not going to be a US ground combat role here,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, Pentagon spokesman, said on Oct. 10, 2014. “I’m putting that out very clearly.”

As for airpower, some doubted its effectiveness, given the slipping situation.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen because, again, in the absence of any ground force there, it is going to be difficult just through airpower to prevent ISIS from potentially taking over the town,” then-Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken told NBC News on Oct. 13.

Air strikes were, however, definitely having an effect. The attacks quickly constricted the mobility of ISIS forces. “Before the air strikes happened, they pretty much had free rein,” admitted Kirby. “They don’t have that free rein anymore, because they know we’re watching from the air.”

ISIS forces got better at concealment, according to Kirby.

Two types of air strikes were underway. First was dynamic targeting of what Kirby called “mobile assets on the ground.” These included tanks, command posts, even trucks used in the oil smuggling. Deliberate, pre-planned targeting also went against “fixed targets, a headquarters building, command and control nodes, a finance center, oil refineries.” The idea was to prevent ISIS from consolidating its gains.

However, a sprinkling of strikes wasn’t going to be enough. ISIS forc- es and tanks advanced closer to the center of Kobani on Oct. 10. A spasm of suicide vehicle bombings followed as ISIS fighters tried to dislodge Kurdish strongpoints.

Both sides were now determined to prevail.

Saudi Arabia joined US fighters and bombers striking ISIS targets southwest of Kobani on Oct. 13.

“Rather than the bombing prompting a tactical retreat” by ISIS units, “they appear to have doubled down in their quest for Kobani,” observed Derek Flood, a journalist who was in Turkey on Oct. 15, 2014. As American air strikes rapidly increased in and around Kobani, ISIS fighters “ushered in reinforcements from their reservoir of recruits in al-Raqqa and Aleppo, and ramped up their employment of vehicle-borne suicide bombers,” Flood wrote in the CTC Sentinel, West Point’s counterterrorism journal, in November 2014.

For ISIS, too, this was chosen ground. It clearly mattered to ISIS, Kirby said, “because they kept presenting themselves there and presenting targets.”

In fact, the air strikes put Kobani in the global spotlight. For the US and coalition partners, Kobani was on the verge of becoming a major failure.

Across the border, Turkish tanks lined up to keep a wary watch. Turkish civilians could see the fighting in Kobani from the town of Suruc on their side of the border.

ISIS fighters took over key checkpoints then a key outlying overlooking  hill. And then drove the Kurdish defenders out of a key defensible school building. Defeat look inevitable.

With Kobani nearly defeated, Washington made its move. NATO ally Turkey had entered the anti-ISIS coalition on Oct. 2. Now Turkey agreed to allow resupply to the Kurds to sustain the fight in Kobani. Washington placed its bet on airpower.

On Oct. 20, three USAF C-130s conducted multiple airdrops to resupply Kurdish forces, defending the city. In the airdrops were 24 tons of small arms and ammunition. The airdrops also included 10 tons of medical supplies. Kurdish authorities in Iraq provided the supplies, according to Central Command. As the operation progressed, Operation Inherent Resolve would log over 1.4 million pounds of supplies airdropped from August to December of 2014. From a strategic perspective, there was hope.

“For its campaign against Kobane, [ISIS] has converged en masse for a conventional attack upon a fixed geographic point,” observed Jill Sargent Russell of Kings College London. While ISIS “might momentarily hold an advantage against any concerted defense with effective fire support, they are weak and soft targets,” she pointed out in an Oct. 20, 2014, comment to Britain’s Daily Telegraph.

“Suddenly, the fight for this little-known town took on vast symbolic significance,” wrote Fred Kaplan in Slate on Oct. 31, 2014. “And if ISIS was telling the world that Kobani was a decisive battle along the path to the Islamic State’s victory, then Obama—who’d put American resources and credibility on the line—had little choice but to treat it as a decisive battle as well,” Kaplan assessed.

By early November, ISIS was failing to gain new ground. Four attempts to take a border crossing with Turkey had failed. ISIS called for reinforcements. So did the Kurdish fighters. Backed by steady US and coalition airpower, the Kurdish groups were securing their foothold in Kobani.

ISIS controlled about 60 percent of Kobani as of Nov. 5, 2014. It would prove to be their high-water mark.

The decision to assist Kobani marked a change in the US strategy in Syria. Now the US had to “deliver on helping develop a trained, moderate opposition in Syria that has the requisite leadership and military skills to actually go ahead and defend territory inside Syria,” as Kirby explained at the Pentagon.

What followed was two months of street-by-street fighting. For US airpower, the problem was that ISIS fighters had wrapped themselves around the city and what was left of its civilian population.

It was up to a combination of ISR and battlefield input from the Kurds to outline areas for strikes. As the force on the ground improved tactically, so did its use of airpower. Open supply lines from Turkey also had a significant effect.

US and coalition aircraft striking Kobani faced a long flight from deployed bases. They also had to fly past Syria’s air defenses. Syria’s integrated air defense system usually looked westward, toward Israel, and coalition aircraft operated in the East. Yet the threats were real.

American F-22s in-theater helped quarterback the strike packages. Aircraft such as B-1 bombers, F-15E and F-16 fighters, and others carried electronic warfare systems able to process and jam signals. The B-1s were especially good at dealing with electronic threats.

Dynamic targeting was sharpened during the siege of Kobani. Joint Tactical Air Controllers rarely deployed with the Kurds. Instead, they employed ISR to watch the fight. As targets developed, JTACS did collateral damage estimates and forwarded targeting. Sometimes cell phones were part of the process.

Lt. Gen. John W. Hesterman III, then-commander of US Air Forces Central Command, explained that the vast majority of dynamic targeting strikes were “well away from friendly troops in contact. And we use a multitude of sources to initially ID the enemy and communicate what we see. Then JTACS in operations centers do a collateral damage estimate and then we deconflict friendlies. And when that’s done, a senior officer clears the sortie.”

“You know, the average time for those strikes, by the way, is measured in minutes, not hours, or even halves of hours.”

By far the single largest amount of ordnance pounding ISIS targets in Kobani came from B-1 bombers, which dropped 1,700 precision guided weapons on Kobani during the siege.

“Bones” from the 9th Bomb Squadron at Dyess AFB, Texas, deployed to Qatar in July 2014 expecting six months of long combat overwatch flights to and from Afghanistan’s airspace. They had been used consistently since 2001 to loiter and drop bombs, provide overflights, or simply keep watch. Previously, in Afghanistan, the 9th Bomb Squadron’s B-1 crews found it could take four to five hours to develop and strike a target.

In 2013, they’d dropped just 93 bombs in Afghanistan over six months.

At Kobani, the intensity of the fight ratcheted up. “It was a massive shift in rules of engagement,” said Lt. Col. Erick Lord, the 9th BS commander, to Military.com in a January 2018 interview.

In Kobani, “It was just go. Blow everything up,” Lord said.

“It was an urban environment, so there were a lot of buildings,” Maj. Charles Kilchrist told the website.

“We had jets there every single day for 24 hours a day. Along with the F-15E Strike Eagles,” he said.

An F-16 pilot described her missions over Kobani. Especially after night sorties, dawn would break over the deserted town. It looked “like a moonscape,” she said.

One ongoing concern was interference from Syria’s Air Force. This F-16 pilot appreciated how F-22s often just took care of air superiority and let the F-16s concentrate on air-to-ground work.

Maintaining air patrols over Kobani meant six or more hours on station. Depending on what happened, fighters were often rerouted back into Iraq to refuel.

The F-15s and B-1s would tag each other, handing off targeting coordinates as they rotated in and out for the days-long watch.

“We were just bombing them back, and back, and back … to the West, and [ISIS] would try to sneak around to the South, and then we would see them, and … it was just a huge battle,” Kilchrist said.

On the ground, the arrival of Iraqi Kurd Peshmerga troops brought forces with experience in coordinating US air strikes.

“There were times we were bombing across the street, and as soon as the weapons were going off, they are charging into the rubble to take out what’s left and move forward that line of troops to the next block,” one B-1 pilot told Air Force Times. “It’s an amazing job the [Kurdish forces] did and how they are, more so than air- power, critical to victory in Kobani.”

The B-1s went Winchester—dropping their entire bomb load in one mission—a total of 31 times in the fight for Kobani. That was a credit to smooth air-ground coordination. Typically, crews would release weapons on individual targets throughout several hours.

“The more they [ISIS] try to act like an army … they just reinforce failure, and we kill them at a very great rate,” concluded Hesterman.

“They were very willing to impale themselves on that city,” one B-1 crew member told Air Force Times.

On Jan. 19, 2015, Kurdish YPG fighters stormed Mistanour Hill. Kobani was declared fully liberated about a week later.

The “air strikes helped a lot. It helped when we had a reliable partner on the ground in there who could help us fine-tune those strikes,” Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon on Jan. 27.

Kobani was a significant defeat for ISIS. It lost personnel, territory, and its command and control safe haven. The ISIS plan to mass and exert military force over the city fell apart.

CNN reported ISIS fighters withdrew from Kobani because “we no longer had places to hold there,” an ISIS fighter said. “We were inside Ayn al-Arab and we occupied more than 70 percent, but the air strikes did not leave any building standing, they destroyed everything.” The targets even included motorcycles, he added.

Also in late January, Hagel announced the US would begin to train and arm Syrian opposition forces. The success of combining Kurd ground forces and coalition airpower at Kobani had proved the concept.

Then-USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh acknowledged that his service flew about 60 percent of the sorties in the air war against ISIS. However, he shrugged off the credit.

“The DOD approach is not to defeat ISIS from the air. The intent is to inhibit ISIS, to attrit ISIS, to slow ISIS down, to give a ground force time to be trained because the ground force will be required,” Welsh said in a State of the Air Force press conference on Jan. 15, 2015.

Holding Kobani was not the end of the ISIS fight. It took a huge acceleration of air strikes from 2015 through 2017 to secure Iraq and bottle up the worst of ISIS. The weapons release count for Operation Inherent Resolve reached 106,808 at the end of 2017.

However, at Kobani, airpower again stepped in as the workable option in a foreign policy crisis, with lives on the line and the world watching. As with Bosnia, Kosovo, and the early days of Afghanistan, allies found their airmen provided a way to fight.

Concluded one B-1 crewman: “I look forward to telling my grandkids that I got to help these people and to defend their homes.”

On 26 January 2015, the YPG and its allies, backed by the continued US-led airstrikes, began to retake the city, driving ISIL into a steady retreat. The city of Kobanê was fully recaptured on 27 January; however, most of the remaining villages in the Kobanî Canton remained under ISIL control. The YPG and its allies then made rapid advances in rural Kobanî, with ISIL withdrawing 25 km from the city of Kobanî by 2 February. By late April 2015, ISIL had lost almost all of the villages it had captured in the Canton, but maintained control of a few dozen villages it seized in the northwestern part of the Raqqa Governorate. In late June 2015, ISIL launched a new offensive against the city, killing at least 233 civilians, but were quickly driven back.

The battle for Kobanî was considered a turning point in the war against Islamic State and the beginning of official collaboration between the United States of America, the single largest military force on earth and the Kurdistan Workers Party, considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, American and virtually every major country in NATO.

This was also the beginning of the PKK-American alliance lacking any other credible ground force to take on ISIS; a leading imperalist hegemon shortly after began training and funding one of the last important leftist gurerral groups left standing after the cold war, as long as they could work under a front; and the name of that front become the SYRIAN DEMOCRATIC FORCES.

Chapter (10) Ten

Raqqa City, ISIS Controlled Territory, former Syria

Recounts the decapitated  mujahadeen Abdullah Shamil Abu-Idris.

ABU IDRIS

“There is a protracted siege now well underway of this Syrian Bunker Citadel, that historically changed hands many many times; and it was clearly not going to end well. Not for the attackers, the defenders, or the 200,000 plus people trapped standing in between.”

Not every single ‘Daesh’ is an intimately, innately miserable and evil person. Some are also Turkish spies, the mentally ill, or rapists. Some are on drugs, some are sadists and also people with identity crises. Some just wanted to fuck concubines. Or impose themselves upon others. For many of the ten million people who found themselves within the ISIS zone of control, an area around the size of Great Britain. It was the lesser of many evils. That is why in virtually every city that initially encountered ISIS with all but a few exceptions, there was no resistance at all. 

The City of Raqqa at the height of the S.D.F. Offensive had around half a million people living in it and under it. Raqqah was re-developed by the Assad regime as one enormous bunker complex, a fall back base for the regime if Damascus fell. Which it nearly did. The capture of either Baghdad or Damascus, historic centers of Islam would have triggered in the global Muslim community a surge of foreign fighters. It would have subconsciously triggered a mighty influx of support.

“God is Great”, but his actions are often highly in-understandable! Everywhere on earth the Ummah was suffering, crying out for the righteous to stand up to these Crusaders, these Shiite Apostates and their Zionist allies. That is what the Baghdadi Caliphate was set up to achieve. The defeat of the Kafirs and the glorious triumph of Sunni Islam. Real Islam, not the Islam of reformers, collaborationists, idolaters and innovationists. Embracers of Shirk. The inevitable return of the Mahdi our redeemer. But, things have again completely fallen apart. We’re barely holding on now, surrounded by a united cohort of enemies.”

As explained by the Jihadi Abdullah Abu-Idris a Syrian Arab from Medayiin captured and interrogated during the gruesome 9 month battle for Raqqah City.

At the height of the Caliphate following the death of the Prophet Mohammed, Abu as Salem,  in X year our Ummah stretched from Spain to Indonesia, from the Balkans down to Africa. The Caliphate of Baghdadi well it was allegedly the size of Great Britain, had some 12 million subjects and stretched from just west of Baghdad to just east of Damascus. The largest city, currently completely under siege was Mosul and the administrative capital also completely now surrounded by Kurdish hordes is Ar Raqqah.   

There are barren beige rocky, earth dunes in every direction. Alongside the Euphrates River it is lush and periodically scenic, but less than three kilometers out; dust and despair. Ramadan has begun, but the infidels bombard us day and night. We are in full retreat on all sides.

It is so hot, but of course I remember to make my prayers and keep my faith, because I am a Muslim. I submit only to Allah, and I know the road I am on will lead me to paradise either in this world should we be victorious, or in the next should we fall as Martyrs.

There remains a deep vacuum in the depiction of the war to explain the motivation of the 40,000 estimated Muslim volunteers who crossed the world, infiltrated Iraq & Syria, to defend the radical Caliphate led by Baghdadi. Humanizing these people is essential to making any basic arguments that ISIS had real grievances and framed reality in a way that spoke and speaks to a whole generation of Muslims. However, as complex the span of motives might have been, but 2017 most of them were dead and the coalition had encircled both Mosul and Raqqa City their dual capitals. If a Mahdi was coming, he was very late in the game. As rapidly as “the Caliphate” had risen and marched in every direction, its forces were now nearly obliterated. Of course it was this hardcore of foreign fighters that held out the longest, with their families, with absolutely nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

My name is Abdullah Shamil Abu-Idris, or ‘Shamil Basayev’ as my name of war. I’m named after a famous Chechen Mujahideen, freedom fighter killed in the liberation and resistance wars that happened in the Caucuses between 1994 and 2004. He was killed in an airstrike to his phone in 2006. I am Syrian, but to us Shamil is a real Muslim hero. He took on the Russians after all, the same barbarians we fight now on our south western front. Well anyway, the Russians eventually martyred Shamel. Allegedly also they killed 1 in 7 Chechens and raped 1 in 3 of all Chechen women. Which perhaps is why such a large contingent of foreign mujaheddin as Chechens.

Now, we fight the Russians and Hezbollah from the South and the Kurds from the North. In Mosul the Shiites surround us. The American airstrikes have completely tilted the battle field against us. 

There are not that many of us left. Perhaps 5,000 fighters, in the beginning it seemed we were sanctified and invisible, mujahedeen arriving from around the world. There is a distinctive dread of impending defeat. The Kafirs have bombed all out cities and given weapons to the Kurds and Shi’ites who are our resolute enemies.

I never got enthusiasm from a public beheading. I’m a good Muslim, so I never got down on the excesses happening under the mantle of the Caliphate. I came with my wife and two children from Chechnya. Clearly the Ummah is under attack in every corner of the globe and the Caliphate here was such an obvious form of resistance. The endless be-headings, gruesome public burnings and sex slaves were a little much for me. Over tea, some of us would go so far as to say it was the actual undoing of the entire Islamic State project this very well publicized brutality. Throwing homosexuals off the roof tops, well everyone had a chuckle about it, but really we should not have televised all that stuff.

Now, Mosul and Raqqa are completely besieged and we’re all going to fight to the death. Raqqah City was rather beautiful once. The Caliphate was nothing like all the slaughter and terrorism on the media, though we made that media and we made that terrorism. What people will never understand, the Kafrs I mean, is that we all actually want a caliphate. We want women protected in the home. We want non-believers regulated paying the Demi tax. We want alcohol and cigarettes banned. We want mandatory prayer five times a day. It’s Islamic to want these things. The Kurds are all secular communists, so we killed them. The Shi’a are treacherous hypocrites, so we killed them. The Yazidis are devil worshipers, so we massacred them in Sinjar and made their women sex slaves. I didn’t do any of that. I arrived in 2016. It was actually beginning to crumble apart already, but I had faith in the Caliphate. Well of course I still do have faith that the will of Allah is highly complicated and this grand set back is all part of a larger clash, a cosmic war. Of course Islam will triumph in the end, because that is what the prophet declared. But, for now, things look bleak.

I mean, how many generations of Muslims must fall to these crusaders before we restore the true religion of Islam? This is about resistance to the genocide of Muslims. Albeit, strange that the leaders live in mansions and drive sports cars. Strange that none of the Imams are very learned. Strange that Turkish and Saudi money is all over the place in rumors, but all the ISIS leaders met in an American prison.

Frankly, life here is not a lot better or a lot worse that in fascist Russia. I would say that for my family all things are comparable, or were until Raqqah was besieged. Now, I suppose we will all die here at the murderous hands of Kurdish communist armies.  

I think it is good to die for Islam, but maybe for the sake of my family we will try and get through the lines and cross down the river to Al-Mayadeen.

The last stand against the invading Kurdish army will be in the Deir-Ez-Zor Province, deep in the desert along the Euphrates River valley.

The Western Media dehumanizes Muslims and makes us look fanatical, but after our people are massacred in every single nation on earth and the West declares explicit war on our religion, what exactly is the moderate position? There isn’t one.

I was young when the towers came down, but it was appropriate. The C.I.A. and its Zionist allies have toppled the governments of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. They are remaking the Middle East for the good of Israel and oil corporations. The fact that their alliance against is one of Shiites and Kurds speaks to how they will stop at nothing, arm anyone to destroy Islamic law and governance. The great hypocrites are the Saudis for while they secretly send us money and clerics, they live off the glut of American petroleum trade. 

This project, the Caliphate had contradictions of course. But, it was popular to many and most under its rule. Sunnis welcomed a protecting force with so much instability in Syria and Iraq. Iraq has fallen to the Persian Kafirs who fight us with Iranian help in Mosul.

We are better warriors than the Shi’a or Kurds, but we don’t have air power. This is why we are now losing the war town by town, street by street.

I will get out of Raqqah, but I will fight and die with the brothers for the Islamic State. I know that at least for me and my Muslim brothers, this is very historical and important. 40,000 of us came to support this, thus it is not the cult of Baghdadi or extremism. It is legitimate and essential to Sunni that this survive, whatever the odds.

I am of course willing to shoot Kafirs to protect true Islam! That is in the Qur’an. That is what Jihad is. War is terrible, the war in Syria is very awful. But, we didn’t start the war. The war is a product of the big game between Russia and America. Everyone is clear on that. The Shiites side with Russia because of oil interests and politics. The Kurds side with America, because everyone hates their seditious plans. 

Look, I’m not so violent! I’m not so radical. I’m against the sex slaves, fast cars and big houses of the leadership. I’d like to sometimes have a drink, sometimes. I had bacon in Russia, it was very tasty. You will never understand why this was important to us, but it was very important to us. For my generation it was almost cataclysmic. As if the Prophet himself might show up any day now.

But in the end he did not. And the coalition airstrikes took their bloody toll. Though I will likely meet a martyr’s death out here, I must say that the Caliphate and the rise of ISIS was enthralling to all the billion or more believers. Everywhere on earth Muslims are being massacred. Everywhere we are impoverished and abused.

If like others I had sat this all out and watched it from a TV screen I would not have lived up to my own beliefs about Allah and my faith and my religion.

Later on they very much beat me badly for many days. Then eventually I was executed in a ditch. I cannot really confirm or deny that there were any virgins where I went because I do not want to upset any of the tens of thousands of Islamic martyrs who resisted the Kurdish infidels, Shiite apostates, and Western Crusader forces. 

But actually, when I died, I was just dead, with no bells whistles, virgins or rivers of milk or of red wine. The only virgins were probably the Kurdish and Yazidi girls we all abused.

Chapter (9) Nine

Birmingham, United Kingdom

In Birmingham, U.K. sometime in late of 2016, two British Hevals meet in a bleak coffee shop with no phones to say hello, good bye and hash out some final details for their upcoming deployment into Rojava.

“My government name is not relevant to you, Hevalin, as they say.” Havalin is the plural of Hevals, my man and multiple friends.

Says Heval Errdal, a cheeky British Jew of left wing leanings with many Kurdish friends. He sits with his old friend Ana Montgomery Campbell from Lewes, U.K. who later died a Martyr in the defense of Afrin Canton. The British pipeline begins in Birmingham. Actually hundreds of ISIS Islamists had been recruited from Birmingham. Literally many hundreds.

“You may call me by my Kurdish guerrilla name, Heval Erdal. I’m lanky and have a highly disarming grin, so say the ladies. I’m just having a kid, which is to say a laugh; the ladies don’t say nothing like that. I’m British clearly, but also a cheeky part Jew. It’s not a very well thought out part to be honest. Don’t practice any of it. I became active in the Kurdish movement protesting Turkish arms deals and attending cultural events at the centers. My working class British city had literally hundreds of Jihadists who took off for the Middle East and joined Daesh. Fuck all mate, hundreds! They took wee kids and wives with them. They thought it was the end of times. Well it had end of times properties, I’ll give it that.”

So I was always a ‘wee activist’ with politics of the progressive kind, but I love them Kurds man! They’re so awesome. Humble, principled mountain people. Leftists. Warriors. Love um! Sometime in August of 2016 I made up my mind to travel to Kurdistan and join up with the People’s Protection Units; the famous and glorious Y.P.G..

So I worked a bit more than usual. I saved up about 2,000 quid and there I had a chance to ask the right questions about who to contact, literally just an email address called YPG REVOLUTION, and I answered a bunch of questions for them. Then I was approved to go. It didn’t take nearly as long as lots of chaps complained. Britain has the second largest contribution of foreign fighters to Y.P.G./Y.P.J. right after Turkish leftists. 

But life happens, you have a girlfriend you can’t bring, and you have an apartment you can’t just leave. You also have a bit of fear in you. No one wants to die! Unless you’re one of these Jihadist tossers. You make various excuses. Well not me, I don’t worry about dying. I had a pretty boring apartment. My job was bullocks. We all have bollocksy jobs so it made it easier to leave mine and go, knowing how much I hated my current situation in what Kurds call Capitalist Modernity. Also, there were brave Hevals who went in earlier, when things were more desperate and asymmetrical.   

I had become friendly with Heval Helen Qerechow, whose British name was Ana Campbell via the various protests and Kurdish events. She was far more ideological than I was. She was what we called later a ‘true believer’ a highly committed young revolutionary. Me, I just wanted to kill Daesh, and also the Turkish fascists. I wasn’t stupid to the politics mind you, but I was more of the fighterly mind set. I had set myself on a warpath. I grew up working class and I would die working class and revolution would never come home to the U.K., but if I could contribute well to the Y.P.G. and aid the Kurdish resistance then I would feel like I was a man of my word. All these years yelling about arms deals and Turkish coups all didn’t ever do much, but it was how you made friends with Hevals and aspiring Hevals. Heval in Kurdish means comrade/friend. It’s what movement people call each other affectionately and ideologically. 

Actually they had met just one weekend before her self deployment to Syria. I went out with Ana and we talked a little bit about what we were risking and why we were risking it. She went in about five months before me. This was maybe on the eve of.

“I’m all in the game mate, I’m just all about it. As an anarchist and as a human, this is the real deal as I see it,” Ana declared.

“I mean eye to eye sis, I agree,” I tells her.

“I mean as a woman and as an activist this seems so big, so important, how could we ever just go on and ignore this and act like we have and validity to our own fight?”

Ana always talked in big questions, rhetorical like ones for circular thinking.

“I mean are you scared?” she asks me, “I’m not scared at all.”

“No, not scared to die. Maybe scared to be tortured or maimed, but all part of a revolution I guess,” I reply.

“You have to be brave. Everyone is watching us. The Kurds and the vultures, you know they want to make up stories about why we went out there, going out there to die in a foreign war, a Kurdish war! It’s our war, it’s the last stand for idealism.”

“It’s pathetic so few leftists are going, have gone,” I say.

“No, it’s up to us to be an example of trust worthy European leftists and what we can contribute. Everything has to be about possibility not fear!”

“You’re a shining star,” I tell her.

“Serok Apo says that Womens’ leadership is what saved the P.K.K. in Qandil, and has saved the Rojava revolution.”

“Well surely it has,” I just agree with her now because I’m not ever one to argue with her on either Feminism or what Serok Apo said. She’s very ideological and I am not, so it’s easy to avoid contentious bickering.

“I’m so happy we’re both finally going,” she says.

“Yeah, good times,” I reply.

“We probably won’t see each other that often. The Y.P.J. has its own separate structures. How do you feel about that? I think I prefer the old way when we were all together.”

“I think I read they need to be able to tell the conservative Kurdish village fathers their daughters aren’t getting banged out in the P.K.K., and also because Kurdish Women’s Movement wants their own self-governing spaces.”

“Yeah both probably. But anyway we will meet up for tea and have long fireside talks about ideology like you love so much,” she smiles. 

So I was scheduled to begin the Academy in Qerechow in August of 2017. I had booked a direct flight to Erbil from Heathrow. Ana was in the class before me for the Y.P.J.; Women’s Protection Units, the co-gendered womens structure.

We had both been arrested several times scuffling with the Turkish security service at this demo or that. Never did any hard times either of us. Well why should we have? We were fighting for Kurdish Freedom, for peoples’ freedom; against fascists and Islamic terrorists, the kind that lived in Birmingham and migrated to Syria with their families for the war.

Now my motives were pure, but they were not purely ideological. Apo didn’t make me do it! I just felt that Daesh was a heinous evil. I felt the Turks to be true aggressors. And I wanted to avenge the fact that so many people from my city had headed over to the enemy. An enemy which throws homos off roof tops. Kidnaps and sex enslaves young women. Commits genocide! And until the Operation Inherent Resolve I.S.I.S. was gradually taking over the entire Middle East into their “Caliphate”. 

“So I packed my bag and joined the international volunteers!” About five months after Anya went down to Rojava to join the Y.P.J. The proud, inglorious 500 or 600 so who ended up with the Y.P.G. and its various affiliated structures. The embarrassingly low turnout compared to the well over 40,000 Jihadists who turned out to join I.S.I.S. is a matter of leftist defeat, human cowardice, ineptitude of Kurdish propaganda, and the psychological barriers of joining a violent shit show that no one is clearly ever going to win.

Her last words before she left England were actually the same last words she said to me before she was blown apart on the Afrin Front. The phrase has a couple meanings to the Hevals. “Onwards to invincible victory,” or “Victory is certain ”, or in Kurman, “Serkaften ”.

To which I replied “Serchevan.” On the eyes.

Within the next year Heval Errdal’s entire family would be arrested in the United Kingdom and cahrged with aiding terrorists financiall and Anna Campbell would be dead.

Chapter (8) Eight

‘The Academy’ on Mt. Qerechow, Rojava-Syria

On April 25th, 2017. 

A few hours ago the Turkish State rocket bombed our training academy on the plateau of Mt. Qerechow. 18 Hevals died, some of them foreign volunteers. 5 Peshmerga also died in the strikes. The training base has been moved down the ridge into the oil pumping facility. It is unclear what makes the new location any safer. A new batch of internationals has just arrived from Sulaymaniyah. The lessons and training must continue.  

Jansher is a mustached bear of a man, clad in a forest green multicam uniform gesticulating all his lessons with his animated hands.

“People were being massacred and sold into sexual slavery. Gang rapes and decapitations were gleefully being live streamed. What exactly would you have done?” recounts Heval Jansher the intellectual Georgian Kadro responsible for the ideological and historical training of new Internationalist volunteers.

“We came down from the mountains in convoys of pick up trucks, semi-armored school buses and on foot. We moved in fearless columns committing perhaps half of our remaining beleaguered armed forces. Tens of thousands of Yazidi men, women and children were huddling helplessly and exposed in the Shengal mountains. Without our intervention all their men would have been massacred and their women sold off in markets. In Kobane around this same time Daesh has surrounded our Syrian Kurdish brothers and sisters and were on the verge of wiping us off the ground in North Syria. At that time ISIS was 30 miles from Baghdad and 100 miles from Damascus. Every day hundreds of foreign fanatics were joining them. Entering easily with the help of the Turkish state.”

“We broke through the Turkish lines and along with American airstrikes saved Kobane from total destruction. We literally saved the lives of over 50,000 Yazidis trapped in the Sinjar facing Daesh genocide. We took up positions in Kirkuk awaiting an inevitable Daesh or Iraqi Army attack.” 

Perhaps sometimes we changed out of our baggy green guerrilla uniforms into those of local forces or simply took the uniform off. Without the Party, without the People’s Defense Forces which bolstered every Y.P.G./Y.P.J. position there would have been no one for the Americans to arm as it would have all been Islamic State territory.

It is possible that the P.K.K., that is to say the Kurdistan Workers Party did some very nasty things internally and externally during its thirty year war with the Turkish State. Certainly there were both internal purges of real and imagined counter revolutionaries as well as deliberate attacks on civilians, but war is war and war is very brutal on absolutely everyone.

The P.K.K. was trained in war by the Palestinians in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon in the 1970’s. There is a historic sympathy that the Party has to the cause of Palestine as a thankful result of this early collaboration. It is completely unacknowledged, and unsubstantiated that the Russians also trained the P.K.K. But that’s who was hanging out in the Bekaa Valley in the 1980’s. Palestinian guerrillas. Iranian special forces. Lebanese Shiite partisans. Russian spies.

The P.K.K. got openly involved in the fight against ISIS first in Kobane and then in Sinjar. It can be said in unambiguous terms that without the leadership of the Party, assisted by coalition air power the revolution in Rojava would not have survived the Islamic State onslaught. Abdullah Ocalan has been in prison since 1999. 

A variety of tactical and ideological innovations have had to have been made for us to survive. However, the adaptation of Democratic Confederalism is not a publicity stunt or mere revisionism. The Party has had to adapt, Ocalan has helped us find the context to adapt. Without his leadership the P.K.K. would not have withstood the tumultuous collapse of global state socialism in the 1990s.

The Revolution in Rojava is of course a product of Party discipline and functionally speaking there is very little difference between the Y.P.G./Y.P.J. and the People’s Defense Forces of the P.K.K., the majority of the Y.P.G./Y.P.J. commanders are P.K.K. cadres.

In the insurrection against the Turkish State which began in this phase in 1984, over 50,000 people died and the majority of them were Kurds. If nasty, brutal violent things such as burying people alive, executing busloads of Turkish civil servants, carrying out suicide bombings, periodically purging the ranks of real or accused counter revolutionaries.

But even though we are declared a terrorist organization because Turkey is so important to N.A.T.O. and the Kurdish issue is so intractable, the U.S. led coalition of course used the Y.P.G./Y.P.J. dressed up as the Syrian Democratic Forces to annihilate ISIS. The Turkish state had a daily telephone riot with their American counterparts. No one was stupid. Everyone knew every dollar, every rifle and every bit of training given to the Syrian Democratic Forces which was over 60% Kurdish Y.P.G./Y.P.J. anyway would be routed to the P.K.K. when the war with ISIS was over and the fighting resumed in earnest between the Kurdish allies and Turkish Army. But, in 2015 after Kobane there was no other reliable ally on the ground and the Turks had to wait for the dust to settle. In Kobane the tide was turned for ISIS and the S.D.F. became the default U.S. Coalition proxy in Syria. Between 2015 and 2018 the S.D.F. smashed ISIS towns and cities from the North and the Assad Regime aided by the Russians hit them from the West. With no friends, under attack in every direction the once seemingly invincible Jihadists of Daesh were defeated, falling back to Ar-Raqqah and holes in the desert to hide. The Regime forces, Hezbollah, the S.D.F., the P.K.K. the Coalition, the Iraqi Army, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the al-Hashid ash-Sha’bi Popular Mobilization Forces we all ground them under our boot heels on all sides. Now only Deir Ez-Zor is left to liberate. But once these Cheta Daesh are temporarily defeated, isolated, trampled on and crushed in some shitty desert town that will change nothing. The Saudi funded and Pakistani spread Wahabbi-Salfist virus  By no means will this war be over any time soon.

By 2014 around the time that the Y.P.G./ Y.P.J. militia, assisted heavily by the P.K.K.’s People’s Defense Forces, the K.D.P. Peshmerga and the Coalition airstrikes were battling their way out of the ISIS siege in Kobane, effectively cementing for five years an American led Coalition- leftist Kurdish alliance and changing the dynamics of the Civil War in the North of Syria completely. But no one was stupid, not Turkey, not Daesh not the American Special Forces sent to arm and coordinate airstrikes with us. There were acrimony upon acronyms, there were shells of meaningless letters to make the American Congress feel better about releasing military aid. But, no one Heval was completely stupid. We all knew that the very minute Daesh was defeated we’d be alone and that all these enemies and friends knew the truth. That nothing happening politically or militarily in North Syria would be decided except by the Party. 

The P.K.K. Our Party, the Kurdistan Workers Party! To the Turks we are nefarious terrorists. They want to hunt us down and kill us all. For we are an existential threat to the Turkish State. All states, really Hevals. 

They convinced America and Europe to adopt that line. To the Kurdish people the premier Party of Resistance to oppression and total annihilation as a coherent people. The very last defense against seemingly triumphant Capitalist Modernity. The only military force capable of defeating I.S.I.S. on the ground. An entity that is outside the immediate theatre of war, with the possible exception of Russia and China, still very much considered a terror group by the West and N.A.T.O. forces of which the Turkish State contributes the second largest military force. Over 250,000 combatants.

  No one in their wildest dreams can imagine that when the smoke clears and ash settles that the first Democratic Confederalist polity, safeguarding some 4-5 million people will be allowed to survive. But for now the total rubble of what was left from the siege of Kobane has in defiance been rebuilt in the sprawl of white brutalist two to six story dwellings buttressing in defiance the long white wall and treacherous minefield the Turks built across the entire northern border.  

Says Heval Commander Cancer, pronounced ‘Jansher’ the Guerrilla from his notes, 

“Actually, I tried to prepare them for a lifestyle of revolutionary militancy. Kill the enemy. Kill the enemy before the enemy can airstrike, execute, torture or disappear you and your friends. I don’t think they all got it. The training was just too short. They retained much of their Western bourgeoisie privileges. They thought it would maybe be like a movie. It’s a shame the British woman died, she was the one with possibly the very most revolutionary potential, for a foreigner excluding the Germans. That’s all I can say about that, Heval.”

Heval is the Kurdish Kurmanji word for friend, or comrade. In case you had forgotten that. Sometimes I find it best just to repeat myself over and over and over again to make sure you’re paying attention. I was born in Georgia. I’m not even ethnically Kurdish, actually.

Within the Kurdish movement there is a tendency to imbibe a rather endless amount of black tea. A tendency to have poor sleeping habits. A tendency to chain smoke. But, they also light their own cigarette. To let another light your cigarette is ideologically suspect.

Sometimes the Party has debated on banning cigarette smoking, like it has alcohol, drugs, sex, romance, having kids, having a family, contacting your immediate family and acquiring any material things beyond what fits in a ruck sack, in service of the war effort. However, being a revolutionary militant is quite stressful actually. And there sure are a lot of things that can kill you faster than a cigarette. A whole lot of things, actually.

“The legend goes that in a meeting in a tea house in the village of Lice near Diyarbakir City, on November 25^th of 1978 a group of young students lead by Abdullah Ocalan founded the Kurdistan Workers Party and launched a revolution unlike anything the world had ever seen before it,” explains Heval Jansher. A Guerrilla in good standing with the Party. Good standing means trust. Good standing means not being a Pizkarek; a problem. Bad standing, means re-education, prolonged isolation or indefinite detention. Eventually, if nothing else seems to work, it means a bullet.

Chapter (7) Seven

Shengal (Sinjar), Iraq

“There have been reports of genocide on the Holy Mountain.”

They’re mass executing all the men, and carrying about the women and children as slaves.

Bahaa Ilyas and Roza Saeed Al-Qaidi are Yazidi activists. These are wholly their words. Taken from reports amde right after the genocide:

“The sun greeted me as I woke on the morning of 3 August 2014. I was a researcher at the University of Duhok, 200 miles from Sinjar. It was to be a happy day as I was waiting –  first for my salary, and then for Roza, my then-fiancée. Roza and I had plans to go shopping for our engagement party, which was to take place a few days later. We were excited, our future now starting to unfurl before us. We have not felt that way again since.”

As Roza and I waited at the bank, uneasy murmurs started around us, and phones began to ring. My phone vibrated; a friend was calling. ISIS has attacked Sinjar, he said frantically. Time stopped as the news took hold of us. Roza phoned her sister who was at her home on the outskirts of Duhok. Her sister told her that videos were being published online of ISIS fighters in Sinjar, and that there was news of killings of Yazidis in the streets. I called another friend, a Yazidi man in a village in Sinjar, who described ISIS vehicles with banners and heavy artillery driving past his home. My mother who was in my family’s town of Bashiqa, also called to say she had heard that ISIS was slaughtering Yazidi men and taking away women. Yazidis are fleeing, she said, urgently.

I withdrew as much cash as I could and ran outside to flag down a car to take me to my mother in Bashiqa. Roza waited for a bus to take her to her family’s village outside of Duhok. We said goodbye tearfully, but quickly. We weren’t sure if and when we would see each other again. I made my way to my town, into which ISIS had not yet advanced. My entire family was put into the cars and drove to Lalesh, the Yazidi holy site near Duhok. Concerned that ISIS would advance to Lalesh, women and children were then driven by car to Duhok. Some of my uncles and myself followed on foot. Two days later, ISIS had occupied Bashiqa. My family survived, but thousands of Yazidis in Sinjar did not.

The Yazidis are a religious minority that has existed for millennia. With less than a million individuals, most of us live in the Kurdish Region of Iraq. Other Yazidi communities live in Syria, Turkey, Russia, Armenia, and Georgia, as well as farther afield, in Germany, the US and elsewhere. The Yazidi faith descends from the ancient religions of Mesopotamia, and today we believe in the one God. That the Yazidis are a pre-Judaic religion, and so are not ‘People of the Book’, has long motivated the political, economic and social marginalization of our community.

At various points throughout our history, attempts have been made to wipe us out– we regularly refer to the ‘73 genocides’ that we have suffered. Prior to the ISIS attack, it was the Ottoman Turks who had made the most successful attempt. Misunderstandings of our faith are deeply rooted and it is not uncommon for people to casually – and wrongly – refer to us as ‘devil worshippers’ or ‘those who worship stones’. ISIS founded its genocidal attack on these old prejudices.

In the early hours of the morning of 3 August 2014, while I was still asleep in Duhok, ISIS fighters left their bases in Iraq and Syria and moved towards the Sinjar region in northwest Iraq, close to the Iraqi–Syrian border. Hundreds of villages are spread out around the base of Mount Sinjar, with one main town, Sinjar town, huddled at the base of the southeastern side of the mountain. Mount Sinjar, an arid 100-kilometre-long mountain range, forms the region’s heart. Before the ISIS attacks, the majority of the region’s inhabitants were Yazidis, with a smaller number of Sunni Arabs. The relationship between the Yazidi and Arab communities, who lived together in Sinjar town and in some of the other villages, was built on friendship and neighbourly relations that extended across generations.

ISIS attack on Sinjar came two months after they occupied Mosul in June 2014. It was quickly apparent that the Yazidis were their target, our existence perceived to be a stain on their so-called caliphate. Some families fled into the Kurdish Region of Iraq. Others escaped to the upper slopes of Mount Sinjar, where they were besieged by ISIS. Thousands were trapped under Iraq’s August sun, with no shade, water, food or medical care. Hundreds died on the mountain before the Syrian Kurdish forces, operating under the cover of Iraqi and American airstrikes, rescued the survivors.

ISIS captured thousands of Yazidis in their villages or on the roads during their attempt to flee. Within 72 hours, most of the villages had been emptied, with the exception of Kocho, which ISIS did not vacate of its residents until 15 August 2014. Upon capture, ISIS fighters separated Yazidi men and adolescent boys from their families. Almost all of the men and boys were executed, often by a shot to the back of the head. Their families were sometimes made to watch. ISIS fighters then moved the Yazidi women and children deeper into ISIS-controlled territory where they were registered. ISIS took note of the ages of the women and girls over the age of 9:  whether they were married or not; whether they had children and, if so, how many. In short, they were pricing them.

Yazidi women and girls have been sold and resold into sexual slavery, beaten, starved and forced into labour in the homes of ISIS fighters. ISIS does not permit the sale of Yazidis to non-ISIS members, but the money to be made is enough for fighters to risk their own lives breaching this rule. Fighters sell women and children back to their families for tens of thousands of US dollars. Yazidi families are selling all they have, and borrowing more, to buy back their women and children from the men who raped and tortured them. There has been tremendous media attention on Yazidi women and girls who have been enslaved – but there has been little attempt to understand how the crimes ISIS commits against our women and girls fit into the group’s attempts to destroy our community. The Yazidi women and girls held by ISIS are not ‘sex slaves’. They are genocide survivors, and for those who did not survive, they are victims.

Boys over the age of 7 are taken from their mothers and forced into ISIS training camps, where they are indoctrinated and taught to fight. Some have died fighting on ISIS’s frontlines. It has been difficult to locate the boys and rescue them.

As ISIS-controlled territory in Iraq and Syria came under aerial attack by the US-led coalition, Yazidi captives, trapped in fighters’ houses and on ISIS military bases, were reportedly among the casualties. As the ‘caliphate’ crumbled, ISIS fighters fled, taking the captured Yazidi women and children with them. Their fate and whereabouts remain unknown.

Today, I am back living in Duhok and working as a research assistant on the LSE Middle East Centre’s project ‘Documenting Yazidi Victims of ISIS‘. The project aims to build a consolidated database of Yazidi victims by age, gender, location and crime(s) suffered, using rigorous demographic techniques modelled on the methodology accepted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Our team will – with the consent of the survivors and their communities – create and organise data collected for use in accountability proceedings, identification of remains in mass graves, humanitarian interventions, community-building, and broader advocacy. It is specifically envisaged, and is an integral aspect of the methodological planning, that the documentation project will play a significant role in achieving justice for Yazidis against the crimes committed against them by ISIS. The data will ground existing advocacy for accountability processes in national, regional and international courts and tribunals. Once courts or tribunals seize the cases, the documentation project’s data will provide reliable information of high probative value for use before various existing and future accountability processes. I am proud to be part of this effort.

For the Yazidis who have survived, most of us now live in displaced people’s camps, unfinished buildings and in rented accommodation in the Kurdish Region of Iraq. A small number have received asylum in Germany, Sweden, Canada and elsewhere. Others, in their desperation to find safety, have fled on dinghies to Greece. Some, including people I know, have drowned in the Mediterranean. A few have taken the risk and returned to Sinjar, which – though destroyed – is now under the control of the Iraqi central government. The region, littered with IEDs, is not yet safe. Mass graves holding the remains of Yazidis are regularly uncovered. There is a need for forensic preservation and analysis, as well as more generally for reconstruction. Living with dignity in Sinjar remains a challenge.

The Yazidis continue to hope for the rescue and return of the women and children still held by ISIS. We hold out hope that some of the Yazidi men captured have survived and might also be reunited with their families. We have survived, for now, ISIS’s attempt to destroy us, but we remain a deeply traumatized community in need of support: psycho-social support, educational and livelihood initiatives, including those specifically aimed at increasing female social and economic independence, forensic documentation of mass graves, reconstruction, including infrastructure for potable water, healthcare and education – our list is long. But if I were to summarise, I would say the Yazidi community, displaced from Sinjar and desirous to return, needs three things: assured security, justice for the crimes committed against us and recognition of the genocide. The prejudices against our community must be uprooted and made to wither in the light. This requires the calling of the crime committed against us by its true name.

The morning I awoke thinking about my engagement belongs to a more innocent time, one to which Roza and I cannot return. This morning, I sat in front of my computer. On its screen are the names of thousands and thousands of Yazidis. 

They are categorized: killed, kidnapped, missing. I know they, like me, they once woke up looking forward to the day ahead of them.

Report by: 

Bahaa Ilyas is a Yazidi activist who has been in close contact with internally displaced people through different agencies and organizations since 2014. Currently, he is a researcher on the LSE Middle East Centre’s ‘Documenting Yazidi Victims of ISIS‘ project.

Roza Saeed Al-Qaidi is a Yazidi activist. Since ISIS’ attacks on the Yazidis in August 2014, she has been involved in humanitarian aid and has interviewed Yazidi survivors, particularly women and girls who had been sexually enslaved by ISIS fighters, on behalf of a number of different organizations.

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Further explains the fixer Abu Hamza, the assumed Kunya of Kurdish businessman named Alacan Al-Biban of Kirkuk: 

ABU HAMZA:

“The Yazidis live in and around a holy mountain called Jabal Sinjar. It lies along the Syrian-Iraqi border 80 kilometers West from Mosul in the Nineveh Governorate. Their holiest site called Lalish, the tomb of their avatar for the Peacock Angel “Tawuse Melek”, Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir is found between three mountains. The Arafat, the Misat and the Hizrat.”   

On the highest peak of Jabal Sinjar is the Chel Mera Temple. “The Temple of Forty Men”. The temple is so ancient no one actually remembers how it got that name, but it is believed forty men were buried there.

The Yazidis have three hereditary castes; the Murids, the Sheikhs and the Pirs. In some ways their beliefs are linked to Sufism and Zoroastrianism.  They believe in reincarnation and forbid intermarriage with other groups. Although some claim they have holy books called the Kiteba Cilwe (Book of Revelation) and Mishefa Res (Black Book), there is great reason to believe these are forgeries created in 1911-1913 and virtually all Yazidi religious theology is a chain or oral transmission called Qawls; hymns with cryptic allusions and supporting stories.  

The Yazidis are ethnically and linguistically Kurdish. They speak Kurmanji, like the Kurds of Syria and Turkey. They are concentrated in North western Iraq in a highly mountainous  area called Sinjar by the Arabs or Shengal, by the Kurds. They are monotheistic, Gnostic religion. Over the years Sunni Muslim Arabs have typically accused them of devil worship, because of their belief in a pea cock fire angel. In 1414 their sacred Lalish was razed. In 1640, Ottoman Turks carried out a pogrom killing around 5,000 of them. In 1892 Turkish Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II mass conscripted the men to eradicate their faith. In 1974-1975 Saddam Hussein deported Yazidis and re-settled Arabs in Sinjar. Around 137 Yazidi villages were destroyed. In 2007 there was a Jihadi campaign of bus bombings, kidnappings  and terrorism that left as many as 300 Yazidis death and over 1,500 injured. In 2009 Al-Qaeda used a series of truck bombs in Sinjar to kill upwards of 500 Yazidis in Qahtaniya and al-Jazira. So Turks and Arabs killing Yazidi is as Sunni Islamic as tea and shawarma. 

The story of the woman being fed, oh yes, fed, her one year old son. A later story.

In August of 2014 “Those who run from death”, the KDP Peshmerga, abandoned their positions and allowed almost all of Shengal to fall to ISIS without firing a shot. ISIS then began a rapid campaign of summary execution, forced conversions, sex slaving and out right genocide. On August 3^rd 2014 ISIS captured the holy city of Sinjar. A massacre began. Over 200,000 Yazidis fled into the surrounding mountainside. 50,000 of them were trapped on Mt. Sinjar exposed to the elements with ISIS bandits raping and murdering their family and friends.

ISIS Cheta shot 70 to 90 men in  Qiniyeh Village, 360 in Harden village. 200 Yazidis were lined up and shot in Sinjar city. 60 to 70 killed in Ramadi Jabal. 50 in Dhola village, 100 in Khana Sor and 200 more on the road between Adaniaya and Jazeera. Dozens in al-Shimal village and more on the road from Matu to Jabal Sinjar. Women were gang raped. Children were buried alive. In most cases the Yazidi girls and women were separated for rape and sex traffic to various ISIS held cities. Old women were shot. 

Using “rape as a weapon of war” Daesh bandits actually had gynecologists examine their captives to set slave prices based on virginity. They were treated like cattle. There were online price indexes. Sales on Telegram, Facebook and WhatsApp. Prices varied. Between $2,000.00 and $10,000.00. Less than 5 women actually escaped. Many died in captivity or allied bombardment.

The Sinjar Mountains are over 100 km long range running east to west. The lower western segment in Syria and eastern higher segment in Iraq. The range is viewed as sacred by the Yazidis who consider them the place where Noah’s ark came to rest.

On August 8^th the United States President Barack Obama ordered airstrikes against ISIS in the area of Sinjar. Air strikes and supply drops for the Yazidis hiding there.

ABU HAMZA:

The 50,000 Yazidi besieged on top of Mount Sinjar began to die from hunger and thirst and exposure to the elements. On August 10th P.K.K. and Y.P.G. guerrillas, with truck mounted heavy machine guns supported by mobile light infantry charges, broke the ISIS siege and began guiding Yazidis to refugee camps and shelter. Some were evacuated by the Peshmerga via Cezanne and Telkocher roads to Dohuk, Iraq-K.R.G. Though the majority broke out with the P.K.K.-Y.P.G. safe corridor to Rojava. 

They fought most of the rescue operation from pick up trucks or on foot. With small backpacks which mostly had been loaded with extra magazines and hand-grenades, canteens of water and sometimes a few cans of Mortadella. Or canned olives or whatever there was left before they shipped out. Clad in green baggy fatigues the PKK made a rapid incursion through ISIS held territory to launch the largest humanitarian evacuation of the war, saving the lives of tens of thousands of civilians hiding on the mountain.  

By August 8^th most of the remaining Yazidis had been evacuated by the P.K.K. to the K.R.G. areas and Rojava.  On August 10^th airstrikes opened up a passage for another P.K.K. evacuation into Syria of some additional 20,000 to 30,000 Yazidis. But there were still around 10,000 trapped on the mountain still by 13^th August receiving airdrops of food and water from the coalition forces. Eventually, the guerrillas got almost everybody out alive.   

On August 15^th there was a large massacre in Kojo. Over 80 men were killed outright. The entire male population of Khocho, around 400 men were butchered. Around 1,000 women and children were abducted for sex slavery. In Tal Afar 200 Yazidi were shot at the prison. A report in late September concluded over 5,000 Yazidis had been exterminated. Several thousand, perhaps as many as 7,000-10,800 women and girls were carried off to Mosul, Raqqa and other ISIS strongholds.  The confirmation of the missing versus the dead has not been cleared up yet many years later. 

Repeated raids by P.K.K. commandos rescued 51 Yazidis in March and 53 in April. The majority of the abducted women and girls are still missing, having been living in brutal, in-human slavery for over four years. Most have all been presumed dead. Mass graves keep getting found all over the liberated areas. 

“From time to time a young woman, an escapee, jumps off Mt. Sinjar. That will probably go on for many years to come,” explains Alacan, known mostly to outsiders and journalists as Abu Hamza. 

“They were all mentally and definitely physically abused by the vile bearded Chetta in ways we cannot ever possibly comprehend. That few can even bear to hear.” 

Chapter (6) Six

Newyorkgrad, United American States

“All of the buildings appear to be very, shall we say, forever. Permanent. Almost invulnerable, blyat. These elegant high towers of blue and black, glass and steel, towers built in defiance of gravity and common sense. Like mega sculpture, like a love song to the invisible hero called American Capitalism. You look down at all of the City, even all Downtown and Midtown and imagine all the utter debauchery other people are having at your expense. Well anyway I have my name on my own little cage here. So I too can say I’ve made it in New York City. “So I’ve made it here in America!”

In the background a saxophone cacophony erupts!

As told by “Heval” Goldy. A Russian Sympathizer now held in a small electrified cage in Midtown West. A gated community for the ultra-rich called the Hudson Yards. They call her “Goldy the Very Expensive Goldfish”. Of course that wasn’t her real name at all. Her name at the agency is Sussudio. Her name in Russian, it means “rich soon”.

And she states in letter:

“I live in a tall residential tower complex in Western Midtown in a costly new development named the Hudson Yards. Right in the very  heart of success. A tower complex built in recent years above the train yards of west 34^th street. I work my sweet ass off to keep that apartment rent free. The game I am playing with this chubby Indian Brahman venture capitalist roommate, is eating off his plate without him imagining he’s becoming my patron. Drain the clock, not his cock as they say. But really he annoyingly proposes marriage as often as my Sergei had. And the others. And the other. I am waiting for a Russian Jewish doctor. He will love me again. I know it. The stars say as much. As for Sebastian. I think he’s calling himself Kawa now.” I guess we all have all kinds of names.

“He writes to me. I don’t write to him back,” I would later tell the FBI, or the CIA, or the Police Dept. and the Department of Homeland Security or whoever else I was being forced to talk to. But I, of course blat, I do write him back, I’m his muse. He creates well, though most of it is chaos. Much of it very much misses the mark, as it were.

I once remarked to Oleg the Bear, a common friend; “A relationship with Comrade Adonaev is like a roller coaster. Extremes of up and down, drama and thrills. But like all such thrill machines. You can tolerate it only in increments, you must step off and stay off. Sometimes for many years.”

My blonde hair is convincingly dyed from light brown. I told Sebastian that once and he said I was beautiful either way, but should try brown hair like him. I don’t hate him. I just prefer not to have him around, thinking he can save me, heal me. Get me to higher ground on his terms. I just don’t like giving him hope that we have a future of any kind. I’ve always been adamant about that. Sometimes against my better judgment I’ve kissed him and those kisses gave him too much hope.  That he can save up, get it together and save me, he can’t. I’m a kept woman. That comes with a price tag and comes with responsibilities. Like sex on demand. I’ve told him that, but I’ve told him many not true things so maybe he can’t put it all together. He thinks it’s love. It’s maybe some kind of fucking weird 19^th century muse lust love, blat, but it’s really a product of his mental illness, not my encouragement. His writing is pretty prolific, some of his paintings are highly unique. Overall, he’s impressive. But not patron or marriage material, as he is broke.

Not long walks and art making and picnics with couscous and chicken blat with no value. The book and paintings he’s made me don’t help my mom immigrate to the U.S.A. Or get me a passport, for that matter now that it’s looking like my special marriage hasn’t resulted in anything.

“Let me roll up my sleeves and also my skirt, a little! Look at me in the eyes! I have all my teeth to bite. So sexy and educated and multilingual. What a catch to catch if you can. I am a wild debutante, elusive and amazing. I am a graceful fighter of course, forced to pour men off shots in a tavern downtown.” 

“Zdrastvistia! The purpose of my sponsor is to buy and sell luxury carrots. Also a flying carpet to get you home after all the bullshit we will make you sit through telling Russian American tales. Also to warn you about Chechens, and also to distribute out a phone number where slaves with abused lives can get J 1, S 1 or go to college. There is singing and poems. We will try and pour you things called Vodka, but it’s not Vodka. To us it’s like water for wound care.” 

“Good and also bad men went to war and women also went to war, and Americans and Russians watched out of the corner of the Newspaper or on the telescreen. And of course supplied the arsenal and the airstrikes. But, ultimately it was a far away spectacle happening far from both empires.”

“The papers called them “the New Chechens” because when the war kept going, people came back trained in god-only-knows how much carnage capability. The war I’m referring to is the Syrian Civil War/ the Revolution in Rojava which was a phantom menace to all. But it was more a dark dream based on improbable odds. Chechens, are in fact a very real jihadist menace that fought us to the last bullet in Mosul, Raqqa and Deir-A-Zor. They brought their whole families into their fun little Jihad. These re-moniquored “Chechens” aren’t like them. They were secular and young, and mostly on the Kurdish or Shi’a side, or the Peshmerga. They all left our families at home. There were plenty of war path teams and factions, mine/ ours was the most moral, but lived in a state of total delusion. They were following a pudgy faced aging man in Turkish solitary confinement. We thought breaking rocks was a useful form of soliloquy.”

My latest patron is a Brahman, which is something pretty fancy in India. He’s a tech guy but looks and acts more like a Wall Street guy. He’s just too fucking rough on me. It has a lot in common with rape in my own home. He goes deep up my ass too often. He’s pulling my hair and slamming me against the bar. He punches me in the head as hard as he can. He gets what he pays for. He slams me for about five minutes until he cums. Like a Quisling, snorting pig. I’m the star of a very private show!

Sebastian wrote to me the other night to go down memory lane and formally tell me he is off for Syria soon. Well I guess this is the end of him finally. I don’t feel that bad, or much of anything. He wants to end it like this anyway. He’s living up to an expectation of himself. He wants to die a martyr, that is up to him.

My patron climbs off me eventually. A lot of meat to him, I’ll need to stretch it out. Jon isn’t really just a Jon, he’s my roommate too. He’s the one paying me to live somewhere nice with him. A Brahmin. They do what they want. Including fuck my asshole on a Tuesday afternoon. Am I fucking to not pay my rent? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing. I wish I had something better, someone better to do but I don’t. The Russian doctor, well he said I was “a little too high maintenance.”

I haven’t seen Comrade Sebastian Adonaev since the end of the summer. The time we gave it another go, the poetry for some kissing. The hopeless romanticism in him. Well anyway he’s the same old man and I’m the same old gal. He’s still broke and still just a shiftless adventurer, romanticizing the Chornay. He once wrote an 800 page book for me, yet I’ve only read the first couple chapters. He wrote me over 200 poems, but they all sound about the same. Words rhyming about love, hate sex and devastation in Angliski. He painted and framed a painting in Brighton and bought a gold frame for it. It’s still up. I was dating a doctor, but he left me. I was dating a Corporate lawyer but it was never serious. My original patron cut me off over my first Adonaev affair.  Now I’m fucking the so-called roommate to cut down on expenses. Well anyway “my roommate” has a pretty big Indian style Xanny Kama sutra cock. He manages some tech finance derivatives schemes in L.A., which could be anything.

Later on, in a year when I was arrested by the secret [police and they demanded that I tell them about what Sebastian was to be doing in Syria, honestly I didn’t know that much. I wasn’t that interested or directly invested. 

He periodically would send me all these miserable looking, often bloody war photos, but I didn’t want to see any of them. He would beg to be allowed to see me. But in reality I wanted very little nothing to do with him. I live my own life. It’s mostly mine. I chose it and made all the bad decisions! Later on I’d sometimes message his WhatsApp and tell him to ‘Come home now please’. But I didn’t, mean, to me. He would probably survive the war. He is tough in his own way. Very lucky. The roommate, comrade Brahmin patron, he likes to choke me. I need a new roommate. Or I should just pay cash, every hole is too many holes. I’m working on a possible new patron with a place by the beach in Miami.

I remember thinking only a little bit about his strange Syria objective. What I failed to see, though Sasho, our old boss explained it to me, was that he was actually going to Syria to impress me. How ludicrous, nothing could be further from impressive to me. He was going to live, I was pretty sure. But to do what? Live to be a mentally broken person that I could never imagine how to heal.

We have some fun but also very messy history Sebastian Adonaev and I, blat,  but I think going to this war was the stupidest thing he ever did, far worse than Haiti, worse than loving me. It was hard on me anyway. I will certainly not be meeting him at the airport, should he survive the war. I am tougher than he, but it’s still not nice to make a person watch un willingly your attempt at self murder. Functionally speaking that man is dead to me. I have to insulate myself from mad men seeking high publicized means for suicide. The man just wants to die in a meaningful way, but that doesn’t help my situation at all! Yet, I still have all his letters, I still have the two published books about me. I still have the gold framed multi-color pornograph on the wall.

When the secret police dragged me in to find out where Sebastian went, I told them: 

“He is probably in Havana…” 

“He’s definitely not in Havana, toots.”

“Don’t call me toots, blyat.”

They then did pretty nasty stuff to me just to punish him. Or maybe just cause I don’t have any actual papers? Or maybe because degrading a Russian blonde is as American now as apple pie. They eventually bent me over and just took turns fucking me on the interrogation table. Good times. It’s really not that free a country.

Eventually, my Brahman patron bailed me out, somehow. He lectured me about “pussy footing around with terrorists that don’t have my best interests at heart.”

“Well where the fuck is your useless Jew Chechen is now?” my Patron asks me. 

“He’s probably climbing up a Holy Mountain, blyat. In his mind anyway. Thinking of me the whole entire time.”

“But here you are. Locked in a fish bowl with no passport. With one to help you besides me and maybe your Serge,” the patron replies, “And like a goldfish, I can do whatever I want and you won’t remember it 8 seconds later.

He punches her in the face and rapes her with his partner over a table.

Chapter (5) Five

Diyarbakir (Ahmed)

Recounts Heval Amraz, also known in certain circles as “Comrade Moving Target.”

AMRAZ:

“I found myself as a young man in Diyarbakir City, the place we long call ‘Ahmed’, the future capital of all Kurdistan.” The black walled citadel of Bakur. The proud capital city of a nation that doesn’t exist, yet.” And the wicked Turkish boots do grind the necks and general spirit of the people all around us.

A poetic if not fully epic place! An ancient citadel of giant black stone walls and total martial law. A town of prisons, stories, heroes and valiance in the epoch of the Kurdish people. Little wine bars, a thriving literary scene. It cannot decide whether to be eastern or western, Turkish or Kurdish. The epicenter of a great revolt, or the dystopian mockery of the full blown repression of a colonizing power forcing a boot heel on our neck.  As Kurdistan is a powerful and long repressed enduring idea, that idea is becoming a reality on the barricades here and in a long running fight in the mountains. An imagined community of over forty million souls who are wrongfully, shamefully divided between the imposed nation states of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran all things have two names, all things are both real and imposed upon us. As if to be a Kurd requires an act of insanity, and an act of double thinking. A persistent zealous fight to make the world acknowledge our rights and identity. To admit we have a right to survive as a nation beset with enemies on all sides.  

AMRAZ:

“Following the Turkish military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was prohibited in public and private life. The prison of Diyarbakir filled up and the endless wails of rape and torture propelled the movement to full mobilization and to take up arms again.

 Diyarbakir, which in my people’s tradition is also called “Ahmed”, has now swollen to nearly 4 million people since the eradication and ethnic cleansing of over 5,000 Kurdish villages in the great ranges of mountains to the east. The primary battlegrounds between the Party and the Turkish State. Growing up there, there was of course no Kurdish allowed in school, no Kurdish books or music except deeply underground. Were it within the Turkish State’s power, we would not even have Kurdish names! We would admit to being backwards people of “Mountain Turks”. I was born in the year of the largest, latest and greatest uprising. And although since the days of the Medes there have been  “one thousand sighs and one thousand failed revolts” ‘, this uprising was to be completely different.

 In 1984 Abdullah Ocalan and the Kurdistan Workers Party simultaneously attacked three Turkish army posts and police stations in Bakur and announced the beginning of the revolution. For the next thirty years, almost without pause the P.K.K. and its armed guerrillas would battle the Turkish military across Bakur, the name we call the Turkish occupied zone of Kurdistan which means “the North”. Over 50,000 would die, mostly Kurds actually. The Turks would engage in vast acts of scorched earth barbarism and we in the Party would eventually turn to outright terror. In the end, the majority of the deaths were Kurdish civilians. In the end the only liberated ground was a handful of villages deep in the mountains of North Iraq, the Qandil.

Now, ‘Heval Amraz’ is of course not my original name. It is the name given to me by the guerrillas of the P.K.K. when I joined the Party. By that time we were fully surrounded in Qandil being attacked on all sides and death seemed certain. Total defeat as well. Our great leader had been kidnapped in Kenya. Major leaders of the movement including the brother of Abdullah Ocalan, Osman, had completely betrayed us. Our own Iraqi Kurdish brothers in the K.D.P. and P.U.K.-Peshmerga were collaborating with Turkey and America to annihilate us.

How do I tell you my story? What does it really matter? How does this even begin or end for an outsider. For people who do not even know where Kurdistan begins or ends, or even care. As Turkey is a N.A.T.O. ally, and no matter what it says or does will remain a beneficiary of great power largesse.

AMRAZ:

“I cannot tell you my real name of course. I cannot speak for the Party, nor can I fully disclose the deepness of my hope and my hate to a stranger. I can only speak to a feeling shared on differing levels by thirty to forty million Kurds. ” 

I will try to say something for the benefit of doubt, that non-Kurds could care about us so much that they would come to our land by the hundreds. To fight and die alongside us not simply fighting in resistance to Islamic radicalism, genocide and repression, but also because they grasp the larger idea. The total and utter radicalism and implications of Abdullah Ocalan’s vision. The survival of the revolution rests not in securing a Kurdish State, but instead to export these ideas abroad. To make the blood of the martyrs raise the flood waters of all mankind and provide a blueprint for liberation.

Of course we began as communists, we began admiring the Cubans and it was the Russians and Palestinians that first trained armed resistance in the early days in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. But we are not Communists or Nationalists anymore. Our thinking on the subject of liberation has evolved. The Cuban connection and the Palestinians connection are very real and enduring parts of the story.

But, when we all almost died on the mountain top, surrounded and out gunned in 2000 there were no Cubans, or Russians or Palestinians to help us as they were all defeated or fully besieged. By some miracle, or just by sheer will the Party survived. And the 1989 defeat of Communism internationally required us to climb higher, dig deeper to criticize and self-criticize. To adopt an evolution in our thinking. With our ranks decimated, the armed struggle In a complete stalemate, declared a terrorist organization by almost every European country; we evolved. The revolution could not ever be won with arms and ideology alone. Nor could we secure Kurdistan while every other nation on earth embraced “Capitalist Modernity”. To secure our victory and survival as a people in Bakur, Bashur, Rojhelat and Rojava we would embrace the ideas of a Jewish anarchist from Vermont, as re-interpreted in prison by Ocalan and implemented by the new largely female leadership of the Party. This methodology called “Democratic Confederalism”, adopted by the Party in 2004 would soon find actual expression in Rojava. The Wild West of Kurdistan, the North most area of Syria. In 2014 when the Civil War broke out the Party and its allied militias seized control of major towns and cities across Syria abandoned by the Assad regime. 

AMRAZ:

Thus we came down from the mountains, out of the underground and prepared to make a stand in Rojava where the radicals of the Islamic State were terrorizing our people and butchering everyone in their path. If we go back to the mountains it will signal only our isolation and defeat. If we hold these cities, if we showcase that we are fighting to defend not just for Kurds but for Arabs, Assyrians, Yazidis, Circassaians, Chechens and the Turkmen too; if we show that Democratic Confederalism is the solution, the way ahead for all oppressed peoples; then others will join us. And like the Nawruz mountain fires this uprising will eventually spread everywhere! There is a historic destiny to our revolution. To be victorious where all others failed!

A most dramatic pause.

Out of habit, Comrade Moving Target lights a cigarette and pours himself a cup of black tea. On the walls of the small office set up at the training base, which is also his room, Comrade Amraz looks the dead in the eyes. Or death in the eyes? Or perhaps both. As the posters of the martyrs plaster all the walls and the war expands everywhere around us.

Chapter (4) Four

Nizhny Novograd, Russian Federation

“It’s not always cold in Russia,” explains Polina Mazaeva, a Russian Chuvasan sympathizer and mother of a seven seven old named Yazan. Yazan was born to a Syrian Druze father who is not with them anymore. It’s complicated, yet not that complicated in virtually every society. 

MAZAEVA:

“As men abandoning women with their child is a very old story actually in all cultures.”

A pause.

“It’s just that we have had to exhibit a certain moralistic coldness. A certainly ethical chill? This was the experience of growing up in the ruins of the Soviet Union. But we are not without beliefs. We are not without our sympathies. You just have to be careful how you talk about them. Things need to be rational, they need to be sentimental but only if sentimentality is kept in letters or behind closed doors.   

Outside Moscow and St. Pete’s life is often lived poorly. Nationalism was at an all time high. When many have an internal critique about our leaders, or the price of buses. Or the treatment of homosexuals or Chechens, perhaps we keep it out of our heads. Because the United Russia Party has made many advances to restore us to national dignity. Curb the oligarchy to some degree and reign in the gangster-ism of the 1990’s. The infrastructure of the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, outside the downtown area remains largely as it was in the late 1950’s. Optimistically better than what Stalin provided, but still brutalist, soul sucking Soviet crumble. Certainly the upcoming bus boycott will test the limits of ‘free speech’. There are piles of dirty snow all about the fourth largest city in the Federation. The very tall statue of Lenin still stands near the Hotel Marins Park. He’s still the default father of the nation. Only the ultra-wealthy have any admiration for the Czars, except for of course Peter the Great who stands tall over Moscow.”

Russia is a multiethnic, mostly single party oligarchic federation of some 158 nationalities, immediately east four hours from Moscow is the Chuvash Republic. The semi-central Asian Chuvash people are vaguely European and vaguely Asian; almost all are orthodox Christian and have never in remembered Russian history run afoul of the central authority. Never got themselves butchered or deported en-masse to Siberia. No, no, the Chuvash play well with others. The Chuvashan capital is Cheboksary on the Volga, but many can be found in Nizhny Novgorod, the Russian Detroit, once a closed and secret city called Gorky.

Who is Polina Mazaeva? A coy Russian Agit-prop? No, No, she actually has fallen in love with this tragic radical, Sebastian Adon. And they are preparing to meet, but have composed a number of Russian American, or Americano Soviet love songs and scribbles.

Why and when Sebastian and Polina began to write to each other is of no great mystery, both were in pure existential crisis. They wrote often and eloquently in the year leading up to his deployment in Kurdistan Syria and Iraq. These letters and poems all sounded similar, but not the same to previous love affairs across the Cold War, but they reinforced each others’; motivation. 

This is not a ballad for two people who move on. But fundamentally the reality of their underlying narrative was that one day Sebastian, who had more agency via his U.S. passport would fly to her and give her a new life. A more tragic but realistic understanding of the correspondence was that before he was going to do the hard part; give her and her son a new life; he would go to Syria, where obviously he could die. 

She brought the contradiction up only seldom. Their worst fights were Polina’s frequent accusations of Sebastian’s womanizing. Which was real, but not as magnified as she made. He wasn’t sleeping with every single woman friend he appeared in a Facebook photo with. But, he had lovers she didn’t see. He assumed she did too, but in reality she did not. She loved the idea of him, but never expected him to ask for some mega long distance monogamous relationship. It was strange. But she had a son and little Yazan kept her more faithful. Sebastian in the meantime took under half a dozen women to bed, the idea of Polina was sentimental to him, but also not exactly real. Periodically she would flip out over a woman he appeared with on social media. But, it would fade. Several times he threatened to cancel the Russian leg of the trip, but he didn’t actually want to. Russia was something he needed to see before he died. And, he probably will die out there like the 600,000 plus others who had perished in the war so far. Maybe in an airstrike, but likely from a mine. ISIS had allegedly booby trapped every room of every house of every village, town and city they had occupied.

The correspondence was real. They uniquely relied on each other to float. The underlying assumption that their struggle was real, that Sebastian would die on some barricade rather than raise a family and that Yazan had sort of frozen her life into place. Sebastian had clearly acquired a revolutionary delusion of grandeur and was now enslaved to his own expectations of heroism. Polina had fallen hard for her baby’s father and been rejected and abandoned. The Russian state and her parents shouldered some of the costs of raising a seven year old, but her life was a dull repetition and a soft cage.

Yes, the struggle was quite real!  Sebastian had several times averted ongoing suicidal ideations through her soft tone and patient words. Polina had taken on new online classes and high expectations of what was possible. While the flirtation with self-harm was mitigated by the responsibility of motherhood, she had dark times. They needed each other after a point. They waited happily for the next response which honestly flowed all day every day since he was an ambulance man and she was very per diem self-employed with information technology type assignments in graphic design. They wrote and wrote and wrote. Sometimes poems, songs or sketches. Sometimes he would tell her how hard he planned to fuck her, or she would write out something that seemed hard enough to be a rape scene. They both were getting what they needed out of it. A friend in a dark time. Two friends in long distance Post-Soviet love. Two dreamers who live in utter and total nightmares. It gave them something to believe in.

 Polina Ivanova Mazaeva throws back her crimson dyed hair and makes a pouty Chvashan face for a selfie. I love only three men! I love my son the very most, he is the future. He is happy and free and built from diverse parts. Yazan is his name and he is seven. Like any mother I have to love my son very first, even before myself! I am sometimes a dramatic and hysterical person, but this is who I am. Also, a jealous wife.

My mother is of unknown ethnicity, unknown as her mother was adopted as an orphan during the Great Patriotic War against Germany. Her father is a happy smiling Chuvash.

I love second, my forbidden ex-husband, Damien. He is in Dubai now, we tried hard to make this work, but he is Druze and I am Chuvasan, and never the two can be together. We tried. But it was too complicated. I love him still, I fantasize about him returning for me and carrying me off to the high tech parts of the Middle East, but he is gone.

Only the face of my son reminds me of him a little. They make fun of him in school and call him Arab, but this is not Arab. He is Chuvash, and Druze. Holy, actually, a reincarnated Druze inside him will speak in parables sometimes.

“My third love, and final for now is Mr. Comrade Sebastian Adonaev. An American. A New York revolutionary, a medical worker on ambulances and a very gifted artist. Perhaps better understood an upper middle class malcontent. Aspiring revolutionary? I hope he will not die in Syria, but statistically, it is probable. He has my heart in some strange way. Actually only with his spirited words.” 

Sebastian makes a lot of written reports, partly because he’s a writer and partly because his team is spread widely over four countries. He writes me love letters and also forwards technical reports. They are highly boring, but cast some insight into his Middle Eastern movements and affairs. I am not really invested in his brigade of foreign fighters bound for Syria, of course, but I admire them all for their relative bravery. Rather, it would be better if he just stayed in Russia with me when he arrives, which will apparently be on May Day 2017.

Sebastian writes to Polina Mazaeva frequently, as though the spirit of the 18th century coils still be alive with the tools and technology of Century 21:

Dear Pauline,

There are eight people in or supporting the growing expeditionary party into Rojava. Some are working on the field ground and some from the safety of the U.S.A. Demhat al-Jabari, a Kurdish patriot I met in university, is negotiating with me in Kurdistan. He will likely go to Rojava, but return for school in the fall. Shoresh is an actual anarchist, he doesn’t really have a role as much as he showed up to fight in the Y.P.G. and perhaps do some gardening. The constant gardener doesn’t care about any bigger picture or whether Rojava will rise or fall, he will come for six months and depart. He has a wife and young baby, so it’s better, I guess. Alacan al-Biban Rasool is a Kurdish fixer boss. He’s a local to Erbil. He does Fixing, without ever taking money. Yelizaveta Kotlyarova is a Russian doctor, actually just a podiatrist, and Dr. Jordan Wagner is an ER doctor and they will do medical control from the stateside. Pete Saint Reed is a marine leading a little medical detachment inside Mosul. Justine Grace Schwab is working with Alacan al-Biban, also with Pete, and maybe could be our 8^th; but she has savvy and magic and cunning, but doesn’t play on a team well.

Our overall contribution to the humanitarian side of the war in the end was under forty women and men deployed in Iraq under the auspices of Pete Reed’s N.G.O. Global Response Management, and mere four volunteers from abroad, myself and a gardener named Spike going up in the mountains, and over the river and into the Y.P.G. A Peruvian nurse named Francisco who worked briefly with Pete in the battle of Hawija, and a Kurdish American negotiator named Demhat al-Jabari. So Pete Saint Reed was definitely a better commander and focused wholly on the work in Iraq. 

“There are a lot of complications,” he claimed.  One may have been the lack of a reliable hotel bar in Rojava.

My unit of four, really three in the end was actually all we could manage to get over there and into Syria. Several dropped out, unexpectedly? No expediently expected. The American activist drama queen, “VIP leftist” Cecily Macmillan. A medical assistant in training named Joshua Hunter and a Ukrainian EMT named Philip. Syria is not actually an easy place to sell volunteerism in America.

Few of these volunteers in the end proved dependable, but who could really blame them in the face of the Syrian Civil War bloodbath. Only the Kurds Alacan al-Biban and Roj did any leg work, out of patriotism. Oh yes, Spike did his seven months but certainly none of that was dedicated to the medical mission. He deployed to shoot.

Really Pete Reed’s success, if you can deem it any success what he actually accomplished, in Iraq was about managing to access the W.H.O. money.  His military veteran can do bravery and being embedded with the Iraqi Special Operations Forces helped a lot. The potential disaster of our Syria mission had most to do with the near total inability to reinforce or evacuate our team once inside Syria, being therefore wholly dependent on the whims of the YPG. Which again, stands for People’s Protection Units, the P.K.K. mostly Kurdish militia fighting ISIS as the primary Coalition-led proxy. Who allegedly, and in reality have a deep “martyr culture” and a sort of contempt for Western medical workers. 

Sebastian’s reports, like his mind, dig deep then ramble out into incomplete destinations. Actually almost no one read them besides Demhat, Alacan al-Biban and Polina; sometimes Mr. David Smith, or Arlington. On the subject of Polina and Sebastian;

“We are both writers and both artists, she took only a slight interest in my Middle Eastern Affairs.” So Sebastian thought, but that was not true she followed Russia in Syria closely. The Russian media anyway called it world war three. Polina wrote many email letters and some he printed out and carried with him in a leather binder.

Sebastian carried her letters about to reinforce himself when the weather was too hot which it always was and death would inevitably get too near, which it sometimes did. Such was one;

My Dear Comrade Sebastian,

Priviet, 

Maybe because many of all in my life you don’t know. You are important for me, that’s why I am winding all, afraid to lose you. I don’t want to be selfish, it just happens. And I really didn’t want any relationship before I knew you better, because I needed to take a break after the last relationships, and do something with my psyche and my life. 

Why do I love you? When you wrote to me in October, I just couldn’t understand why you sent me such long letters. Especially because most of them were difficult for me to read. I just wanted to be polite and answered when I could. But then I saw that you feel bad, very bad. And I have a rule – if I have failed so far in my plans, I need to support those who don’t see for themselves how much they can do. You can do all you wish. You can gather people and organize them for common activities. For a good deal.  You are a wonderful person. You supported me later. And I began to be inspired by you. I learned how you feel, how you sympathize with other people, what your heart is. You have a beautiful smile and so much fire. Simply, we are all people, and we all have weaknesses that we have to contend with. And you too, and me.

Now you inspire me more and more, and I like your ideas, because I begin to understand them (it was difficult before because of the language barrier), and of course this feeling – I hate it, but I miss you constantly and I would not want to share you with anyone. I’m really unstable for the last three years, there were so many reasons, that’s why I did not want to get attached to anyone – it would create problems for everyone.

But you’re great, just know this. I love your strange smile. Your brown eyes. Even when they are tired after a hard day. I love your voice and I love your face. I love your body (so far imagined in the pictures), I love your thoughts and that thing which guides you, the reasons why you are and what you do. You are a very kind person, so you suffered a lot. And you are wonderful, in any case, even when your strength is running out. I just love you because you exist. I would follow you everywhere and support you in any crazy thing, and I would share with you my most beautiful night dreams. And if you were nearby, I couldn’t let you leave a bed, I would give you all of me. Simply, you are very important and forgive me, if somewhere my old complexes I project on you. I’m not perfect at this. Sorry. It happens in only one timeline, then leaves. Wait a little, please, you’ll see a lot of good from me. And I hope you feel a little better today or soon. If you need to speak about any of your problems I am always here.

Your comrade & your future lover,

Polina Ivanova Mazaeva

P.S.  

Don’t have affairs with other lesser women or get yourself killed in the war. There are actually many people besides me who care about you!