Author: Emil Lazarian

Over the past week Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and other Armenian officials have been hinting that a peace deal with Azerbaijan could be imminent. 

They say the sides have reached agreement on three core principles of a deal while "details" remain to be settled.

Pashinyan told parliament on October 30 that a peace deal is "realistic" if the sides remain faithful to the principles of mutual recognition of territorial integrity, delimitation/demarcation of the shared border based on the 1991 Almaty declaration and the opening of transport links in a way that respects the two countries' sovereignty and customs laws. 

Later, ruling party MP Gevorg Papoyan echoed the prime minister, saying that only the "details" of the agreement are left to be hammered out.

Azerbaijan's deputy foreign minister, Elnur Mammadov, confirmed that "most points" of the peace agreement had been agreed with Yerevan. Mammadov said that reaching a deal had become "easier" thanks to Azerbaijan's takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh after its September 19-20 lightning offensive. 

Following that offensive, several planned meetings between Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders failed to take place in a reflection of the sides' differing preferences on who should mediate. 

Baku refused to take part in EU-led peace talks in Granada, Spain and in Brussels, while Armenia's prime minister was a no-show at a CIS summit in Bishkek where he'd been expected to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, Armenia was represented at a meeting in Tehran on October 23 that involved Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan.

Armenia's lack of interest in Moscow-brokered peace talks comes as the country looks to the West for new strategic and security allies, signing an arms deal with France and intensifying diplomatic relations with a number of Western states. 

Prior to Azerbaijan's September offensive, which triggered the exodus of the region's entire Armenian population, the Karabakh Armenians' fate had been the thorniest issue in the talks. Baku had rejected the prospect of granting the region autonomous status, as well as Yerevan's calls for an international mechanism that would ensure the Karabakh Armenians' rights and securities under Azerbaijani rule. 

During Azerbaijan's attack on Karabakh on September 19, Pashinyan announced that Armenia's priority was to ensure that Karabakh Armenians could remain in the region and live a "dignified" life there. But now that it has been emptied of Armenians, Yerevan seems to have abandoned this demand and instead started the process of granting them refugee status or Armenian citizenship.

"Our policy is that if those displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh do not, objectively speaking, have the opportunity to return to Nagorno-Karabakh – our wish is that they all stay in Armenia, and live and work here," Pashinyan told a cabinet meeting on November 2. 

Another critical issue is "the opening of transport links," a provision of the 2020 ceasefire agreement that cemented Azerbaijan's gains in the Second Karabakh War. 

Baku long discussed this provision in the context of its "Zangezur corridor" project, which for a time it insisted was to be a seamless corridor connecting mainland Azerbaijan with its exclave Nakhchivan through Armenian territory and beyond Armenian sovereignty. 

Azerbaijan stepped back from the maximalist version of this project in February, and, after the September offensive, began giving assurances that it would no longer insist on a corridor and would instead make do with an alternative route through Iran. 

But Armenians are wary of these assurances, particularly given Russia's apparent interest in the Zangezur corridor project.

Fears persist in Armenia that Azerbaijan will use force to make the corridor a reality, and continued rhetoric from Baku about "Western Azerbaijan" is doing nothing to allay these fears. This is the notion that parts of Armenian territory rightfully belong to Azerbaijan, or that, at the very least, Azerbaijanis have the right to settle in formerly Azerbaijani-populated parts of Armenia. 

These concerns are shared by the EU, which has called on Azerbaijan to commit to respecting Armenian territory and by the U.S., where, according to Politico, Secretary of State Antony Blinken briefed members of Congress in early October on the risk of an Azerbaiajni invasion of Armenia. (The State Department rejected this report.) 

The Lemkin Genocide Prevention Institute issued a "red flag alert" on November 1 over a possible "invasion of Armenia by Azerbaijan in the coming days and weeks." 

On November 2, the US State Department told the Voice of America's Armenian service: "Any violation of Armenia's territorial integrity will have serious consequences." 

By Eurasianet.org

https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/Azerbaijan-Softens-Stance-On-Zangezur-Corridor-As-Peace-Deal-Nears.html

Jerusalem’s Old City, which has been deserted since the Gaza War, just had its most significant explosion of anger since the recent conflict erupted.

The Old City is no stranger to tension. It is arguably the main cauldron of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

What made Sunday’s eruption different was where it took place: a normally quiet car park in the Armenian Quarter, tucked away in the south-east corner of the Old City.

On the face of it, an increasingly heated quarrel in this corner of Jerusalem is about property development. But it cuts to the heart of the agony so many communities in Israel and Palestine have experienced in more than 100 years of conflict.

The current war, the Armenians say, has focused global attention on the unbearable violence in Israel on October 7 during Hamas' surprise attack, and the subsequent massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza.

That crisis, in turn, has empowered radical Israeli settlers to seize more Palestinian land and intimidate communities

Armed men with guard dogs descended on part of the car park right next to a private garden over which an Armenian flag stands tall.

Hagop Djernazian, a community leader, stood in the fray surrounded by Israeli police, lawyers, clergy and large crowds of agitated residents.

“I was at home. At three o’clock I got a message that a group or armed settlers had arrived,” he said, amid the furore.

“They have pepper spray. They kicked us out of the property. When the police came we went back in. The priests arrived as did our lawyer.”

Tensions had already been high before the arrival of the armed men. The car park in which they were prowling is the centre of a bitter and murky property battle, involving a private developer’s plan to build a hotel on the site, which makes up 25 per cent of the entire quarter.

The land was sold by the Armenian Patriarch with the involvement of a now-defrocked priest who was responsible for the Patriarchate’s vast property portfolio.

“The whole thing stinks,” Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli anti-settlement activist and lawyer, told The National.

“This patch of land is strategically located. In Camp David, [Prime Minister Ehud Barak] was willing to give Palestinians the Christian and Muslim Quarter, but only half of the Armenian Quarter. Israel wanted its road, one of the only vehicular routes in the Old City” Mr Seidemann added.

“I’ve said to my friends in the international community, ignore the legalities for now. There are hundreds of members of a community confronting armed people with dogs and weapons. It’s on the brink of an explosion. The last thing we need is an eruption of convulsive violence in Jerusalem. Sort out the legal issues later – make this go away.”

The Armenian community is indeed seething. They fear the deal might spell the end of their presence in the Old City.

Without a car park, the Quarter’s already dwindling numbers would not be able to keep its institutions going, turning the area from a centre of Armenian life into a museum, they say.

Garo Ghazarian, a high-profile US-Armenian attorney and part of a group of international lawyers who have banded together to prevent the deal, summed up the stakes at the end of a fact-finding mission in June:

“The Armenian Quarter is of national and international importance for all Armenian people all over the world,” he told a packed courtyard of residents and international journalists, flanked by peers from across the Armenian diaspora.

“It is of the highest historical value and wealth to the Armenian nation. It is an integral part in the identity of the Armenian people in general. It is living proof of the centuries-old history of our people. It is testament to our great civilisation in world history.”

On October 26, the Patriarch announced that he had a sent a cancellation letter to the developers, although no one from the community has seen it.

That same day, bulldozers turned up to the site and began knocking down walls, prompting members of the community to keep watch on regular intervals.

Although they were already on alert, Sunday was different. The arrival of anonymous armed men was a significant escalation.

Mr Djernazian beckoned in rage in the direction of one particular man, Danny Rothman, a figure at the heart of the property deal about whom very little is known.

Mr Rothman declined to comment on the reason behind his surprise arrival and the current status of the wider property deal.

Perhaps worst of all, many in the community feel betrayed by their religious leadership. Many believe the Patriarch was incompetent at best for signing away the property. Others believe corruption is the reason.

The breakdown in trust is dangerous for the tiny community.

Armenians in the Holy Land, numbering only a few thousand people, are mostly the descendants of victims of the Armenian Genocide, who scattered themselves throughout the Middle East to escape the Ottoman Empire's oppression in the early 20th century.

There is also a much older religious community, whose presence for centuries makes the Armenians one of the foremost Christian denominations in Jerusalem.

Now, those two parts of the community, co-religionists in one of Israel's worst crises, are bitterly divided.

There are, however, signs things might be improving.

Many priests joined the community in the car park on Sunday, not easy given their boss started the saga. A new bishop has just arrived from Armenia to deal with the institution’s property. A number of figures in the community told The National they hold him in high regard.

The Patriarch himself even turned up, according to a press release. “The community stood strong, with 200 members in unity to prevent the takeover and save the Armenian Quarter,” it read.

On Monday, quiet had returned to the car park. Mr Djernazian stood by the rubble kicked up by the bulldozers mere days previously.

“Jerusalem has been targeted for years, but it’s important to note that people are using the war in Gaza to target Armenians when they are most likely to be alone,” he said.

“We have had a presence here since the 4th century, so we will never give up. Losing this land would mean endangering not just the Armenian presence in Jerusalem but the Christian one, too.”

he Nagorno-Karabakh conflict seems to have come to an end. Faced with Armenia’s weakness and isolation, Azerbaijan has seized Nagorno-Karabakh in a lightning mission that has led to the mass exodus of more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians from the territory to Armenia, in what many already claim is another ethnic cleansing in the post-Soviet space.

However, tensions are far from leaving the South #Caucasus. Russia, Turkey and Iran have strong interests in the region. Moreover, the attacks suffered by Israel at the hands of Hamas may lead the Jewish state to try to harm Iran in the region.

What interests are at stake in the South Caucasus? How has Azerbaijan finally gained power over Nagorno-Karabakh? Will this be the definitive end of the conflict between #Armenia and #Azerbaijan?