Author: Emil Lazarian

Self-proclaimed President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko was outraged by Armenia's decision not to participate in the summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Minsk, Belarusian news agency BelTA reported on Nov. 23.

"We also discussed the situation in the Caucasus and some dissatisfaction of one of the members of the Collective Security Council," Lukashenko said, referring to Armenia skipping the summit.

Read also: Armenia joins over 65 nations in Malta to chart course for ending war in Ukraine

The Belarusian dictator added that "there have always been and will be problematic issues," but they should be "resolved at the negotiating table, not by making demarches for no reason."

Read also: Armenia officially delivers humanitarian aid to Ukraine

The CSTO summit began on Nov. 23, in Minsk, Belarus.

On Nov. 14, Lukashenko invited Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan to the CSTO meeting, but the latter refused the invitation.

Secretary of the Armenian Security Council Armen Grigoryan stated that Armenia's presence in the CSTO, which is essentially led by Russia, creates "certain problems" for Armenia, while it is important for Yerevan to cooperate with Western partners on security issues.

Read also: Armenian PM claims his country not Russia’s ally in war against Ukraine, Kremlin reacts

On Nov. 15, Pashinyan assured that his country is not preparing to withdraw from the CSTO, despite the fact that it will not participate in the next meeting of the CSTO Security Council.

The CSTO is a military alliance that includes Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine

It’s almost midnight and a group of people nervously talk among themselves on Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate Road in Jerusalem’s old city. One man holds a muzzled dog, while another speaks anxiously on a phone. The group becomes agitated as an Israeli police car drives down the narrow street towards the car park that lies on land owned by the local Armenian church.

Inside the car park, about 200 local residents of the Armenian quarter are gathered at the site that they say is under threat from an Israeli-Australian property developer. Known as the Cow’s Garden, the site includes a seminary, community hall, five homes and represents 25 per cent of the Armenian quarter’s land in the old city. Surrounded by historic ramparts, the car park is an important space for the 1,000 Armenians who still live within the old city and a possible site for affordable housing.

Many protesters are descendants of those displaced by the Armenian genocide committed by Turkish Ottomans more than a century ago, although the Armenian presence in Jerusalem dates back more than 1,600 years. “There were contacts between Armenia and Palestine even before Christ, and the Cathedral of St James – which stands today at the heart of Jerusalem’s Armenian community – was founded around 420 AD,” says Matthew Teller, author of Nine Quarters of Jerusalem. Like Palestinians in the old city, Armenians are technically stateless and deemed residents rather than full citizens of Israel, after its forces occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967.

The Armenian community’s future is under threat after its local religious leader, known as a patriarch, Nourhan Manougian, entered into a controversial deal in 2021 to lease church land to Xana Capital, a United Arab Emirates company owned by an Israeli-Australian property developer who plans to build a hotel. The developer did not respond to a request for comment sent on LinkedIn.

Local resident Kegham Balian says the deal undervalued the old city site and should never have been agreed to without the community’s consent. One priest who was heavily involved in the deal has since been defrocked and after significant backlash, Manougian says he cancelled the deal with Xana Capital last month – although members of the community have not yet seen the letter cancelling the lease.

Despite the deal supposedly being cancelled and no court order enforcing the lease, armed Israeli settlers turned up at the car park on November 5th with dogs and pepper spray; while diggers remain at the site, after arriving earlier this month and knocking down one wall and digging up in one section of the car park. The Armenian community rallied in response and set up a 24-hour watch to prevent further demolition, which senior church leaders in Jerusalem criticised as “illegal actions”.

On this night, those gathered at the car park were joined by patriarch Manougian – who arrived in a black Mercedes and refused to speak to these pages – and several priests who led locals in prayers. “We’re peaceful and we get on with our Jewish and Palestinian neighbours,” says Balian, “but if we don’t make a stand here, the entire Cow’s Garden will be gone.”

Earlier that evening, Setrag Balian says the Israeli police arrived with a private security company and told them that if they didn’t leave the site, they would be forced to by Israeli soldiers. The next day armed settlers arrived again, accompanied by Israeli police who arrested three Armenians while demanding they produce evidence that the land is theirs.

An Israeli military spokesperson referred The Irish Times to the Israeli police for comment, who said: “The Israel Police is not a party to civil or contractual disputes and it is not part of its role. Upon receiving reports or complaints in suspicion of a criminal offence, they are dealt with by the police accordingly.”

The Armenian Quarter sits beside the old city’s Jewish Quarter and includes one of the main routes to the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites.

Israeli lawyer Daniel Seidemann, who founded Terrestrial Jerusalem which tracks development that harms the status and stability of the contested city, says that “settlers are interested in creating an uninterrupted bridge between Jaffa Gate and the Jewish quarter of the city” and describes this as dovetailing with a wider strategy backed by the Israeli authorities to encircle the old city with settlements and biblically-inspired settlement projects. As examples, he cites Israeli encroachment in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheik Jarrah and proposals for a settler-run national park on the Mount of Olives.

Multiple properties in Jerusalem’s Muslim and Christian neighbourhoods have become embroiled in opaque transactions often involving shell companies which sometimes lie dormant for years before groups aligned with settlers take legal action to force possession through the Israeli courts.

With media attention focused on the war in Gaza and in the West Bank, Seidemann believes settlers see an opportunity to quickly take possession of the strategic Armenian site. “What is happening there is not only a threat to the community, it is a threat to the integrity of the city,” he says. “Jerusalem would not be Jerusalem without a vibrant Armenian community.”

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/middle-east/2023/11/26/disputed-land-deal-threatens-future-of-jerusalems-armenian-community/

As Hamas partisans continue the calumny that Israel’s counterterror operations equate to genocide, real genocide looms in the South Caucasus. In September, Azerbaijani troops seized the entirety of Nagorno-Karabakh, forcing the exodus of its 120,000 indigenous Christians.

Both Azerbaijan and Turkey long used the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute to justify hostility to Armenia. Their actions subsequent to the conquest of the largely Christian region, however, hint that diplomatic dispute was more an excuse for their hostility rather than its true cause.

Driving along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, military fortification in Azerbaijan is obvious. Whereas Armenia builds customs posts and observatories, Azerbaijan constructs helicopter landing pads, airfields, rocket installations, and advanced radar stations. Barracks house dozens of troops at remote locations along the border. Azerbaijani forces have already seized territory within Armenia. President Ilham Aliyev, meanwhile, says that even Armenia’s capital Yerevan is Azerbaijani territory. The implication is clear: Azerbaijan prepares for a new war rather than a lasting peace.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan encourages such belligerence. In the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, he declared, “Like Armenia, Israel will fail too.” His description of the terror war as a struggle between “crescent and cross” reflects his true mindset. American and British diplomats may see Turkey’s army as an important NATO contingent, by Erdogan himself describes it as the “Army of Muhammad.” Both Erdogan and Aliyev regularly belittle Armenians, insult rivals by calling them Armenian, and describe Armenians as dogs or insects.

There are ample reasons why the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has issued a “red flag alert” warning of the possibility of Azerbaijan perpetrating genocide against Armenia and Armenians. The question policymakers should ask is why after 30 years, the frozen Nagorno-Karabakh conflict suddenly erupted and why Aliyev so confidently dismisses diplomacy.

Some pundits may cite developments in Turkey or Russia, but they miss the forest for the trees. The reason why beginning three years ago, Azerbaijan rebuffed diplomacy and turned instead to war was a change in the regional balance of power.

The Azerbaijani economy is a one-act show. SOCAR, its state oil company, works in conjunction with BP (formerly British Petroleum) to finance the Azerbaijani government. BP has little interest in the quality of Azerbaijan’s government or its descent into a brutal dictatorship. While ordinary Azerbaijanis wallow in poverty, the Aliyevs spend hundreds of millions of dollars on London real estate and billions of dollars on new weaponry.

Azerbaijan imported nearly 70% of its arsenal in recent years from Israel. In one extreme example, an Israeli drone company seeking to win an Azerbaijani contract demonstrated its system by attacking an Armenian military position. Earlier this month, Baku purchased a $1.2 billion Barak MX air defense system from Israel.

So long as Azerbaijan can undertake a military buildup to give itself both a qualitative and quantitative edge over its neighbors, the chance for peace in the region is zero. Military balance matters. While democratic states fund their people more than their militaries, Aliyev does the opposite. In effect, he diverts the revenue BP’s decades-old contract provides to finance aggression and perhaps even genocide. BP may not be legally responsible, but it is shortsighted. As Aliyev ignores his own public, the risk of assassination or even revolution increases in the long term. No ex-Soviet dictatorship expects a color revolution until the day it erupts.

Should Aliyev order an outright invasion of Armenia, the resulting disruption will likely end BP’s ability to transport its gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey. If Azerbaijan, overconfident in its gas windfall, seeks to end the oldest Christian state completely, BP may shrug its shoulders, but it will be impossible for BP to sidestep its reputational stain. Simply put, its contract enables Azerbaijan to purchase weaponry from Israel and Turkey to pursue genocide against Armenian Christians.

BP may want to sidestep politics, but Aliyev will not give it the chance. It is time for BP to tell Aliyev: Enough is enough, BP will not be party to any dictator’s genocidal ambition.

Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/is-bp-financing-armenias-destruction