Author: Jalatian Sonya

A new highway stretch will help to improve transport connections between Iran and Armenia. The governments of the two nations signed an agreement for the construction of a 32km highway stretch between the two countries. Building the new highway is expected to cost US$214.6 million.

The project will be complex due to the geography and topography of the area, requiring the construction of 17 bridges and two tunnel sections. In addition, the work will include building six overpasses and five interchanges.
The project is due to commence at the end of 2023 and should take 36 months to complete. The new highway stretch will reduce journey times and improve safety for drivers over the existing road connections.

The leaders of Georgia and Azerbaijan have put forward the idea of Georgia acting as mediator and host of peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan. 

Armenia has yet to respond.

The proposal comes in the wake of Azerbaijan's refusal to show up for planned talks in Spain because France was to participate as a mediator and Turkey was not. 

Current iterations of Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks have been underway since early 2021 but made little progress due chiefly to differences over the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh's Armenian population.

Now, Baku's lightning offensive to take back the entire territory on September 19-20 and the resulting exodus of the Armenian population and dissolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic has created a new reality.

On October 8 Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev paid an unannounced visit to Tbilisi and held a joint briefing with Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili. 

The two leaders hailed bilateral economic and energy cooperation and mooted the idea of Georgia hosting peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan in either bilateral or trilateral format. Garibashvili also reiterated Georgia's recognition of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity (i.e. sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh). 

"We are grateful to Azerbaijan, which, in turn, always supports the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia. We have also confirmed that we have great hopes that Azerbaijan and Armenia sign a peace agreement," he said. 

"We have always been impartial here in Georgia and are ready to contribute to this issue today. We want to be a mediator in this matter and are ready to offer any friendly format. Our future should be peaceful and stable, and all three countries of the South Caucasus should address regional issues themselves."

Aliyev welcomed the idea and suggested he would prefer it to the ongoing peace talks formats.

"Several countries and also some international organizations are trying to support the normalization process between Armenia and Azerbaijan today. We welcome that. If it is not lop-sided and biased, of course, we welcome any mediation and assistance. However, in my opinion, taking into account both the historical relations and the geographical factor, the most correct option in this field would certainly be Georgia," Aliyev said. 

"[I]f Armenia agrees, the heads of our relevant authorities can immediately come to Georgia for both bilateral and trilateral meetings."

There have been two tracks of mediation between Armenia and Azerbaijan since Azerbaijan's victory in the 2020 Second Karabakh War which saw it regain most of the territory it lost in the first war in the early 1990s (it regained the rest in its September offensive). One track is overseen by Russia and the other by the EU with help from the U.S. 

After Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to recognize each other's territorial integrity at an EU-mediated meeting in Prague last October, media in both countries reported the launch of separate talks between Baku and the de facto authorities then governing Nagorno-Karabakh. 

These talks made little progress and took place amid Baku's 9-month blockade of the breakaway region. Eventually, the de facto Karabakh government disbanded itself and several of its former leaders now face charges in Azerbaijani custody.

But there is still a chance for a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which did not intervene in Baku's offensive to take over Nagorno-Karabakh. 

The first post-offensive meeting between Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was to be held in Granada, Spain, on the sidelines of the European Political Community Summit, on October 5. 

But a day before the Granada meeting, Aliyev refused to go, citing the exclusion of Turkey, its closest ally, from would-be multilateral talks, and the inclusion of Armenia's ally France. 

"Due to France's biased actions and militarization policy that seriously undermine regional peace and stability in the South Caucasus and put at risk European Union's overall policy towards the region and regardless of official Baku's insistence, not agreeing to participation of Turkey, as a regional country, in the pentalateral meeting Azerbaijan has decided not to participate in Granada meeting," Hikmat Hajiyev, a senior advisor to Aliyev, wrote on X. 

This isn't the first time Georgia volunteered to host talks between its two neighbors. During the 2020 war, then-Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia offered to mediate, but the warring sides showed no interest. 

In late 2021, in the course of Armenia-Azerbaijan talks, Georgia refused to participate in a so-called 3+3 format involving the three countries of the South Caucasus plus the three larger powers on the region's periphery, Turkey, Iran, and Russia. Its refusal was based on Moscow's involvement. Georgia has no diplomatic relations with Russia, which according to Georgian law has been occupying the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia since 2008.

By Varsen Aghabekian, Dar al-Kalima University Press, 2023, paperback, 226 pp. MEB $25

The Saga of Survival fills an important gap in the history of the Armenians of Palestine. While there are good studies about the Armenian communities of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, an analysis of the Armenians of Palestine has been missing. Varsen Aghabekian fills this gap by telling the history of Armenians in Palestine during the inter-war period (1918-1948). What is unique about this study is that Aghabekian is able to intertwine her family history with that of the history of the larger Armenian community of Palestine. The strength of the book does not lie in unearthing new primary sources to reconstruct history, rather it is heavily based on oral history, an extremely valuable source that no other scholar in the area has utilized.

The Armenian presence in Palestine dates back to the fourth century CE, when Armenian pilgrims began arriving in Jerusalem after the discovery of the holy sites of Christianity. The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem in its present form came into being in the first decade of the 14th century, when the Brotherhood of St. James was established in the Holy City. It was around the Armenian Patriarchate that a small Armenian community sprang that eventually formed the Armenian Quarter, which encompasses one-sixth of the Old City of Jerusalem. Those descending from this early community are known as “the locals” (kaghakatsis), while those who arrived after the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923) are known as “visitors” (zuwwar). 

In her book, Aghabekian is able to show the common and interconnected histories of Armenians and Palestinians. What is unique about the Armenians of Palestine is that they suffered multiple catastrophes: the Armenian Genocide, the 1948 Nakba and the 1967 Naksa. Aghabekian concentrates on the first two catastrophes. In the course of five chapters, she discusses the rise of the Armenian community of Jerusalem from the ashes of genocide, the challenges faced by the community and the important role played by Armenians in the context of Palestinian history. She concludes the book with the Nakba, which became the turning point for the Armenians of Jerusalem, leading to dispossession and the immigration of thousands to surrounding countries, Europe, the United States and Australia.

Aghabekian also discusses the struggles surrounding the arrival of Armenian refugees during and after the genocide. The Armenian Patriarchate had a monumental task to feed and take care of the refugees, while local Armenians also assisted the refugees. Despite a brief period of tension between both groups due to cultural and linguistic differences, their relations improved during the British Mandate period. It is this period upon which Aghabekian most concentrates by bringing the voices of the living and the dead to life. Her father, for example, Ohannes Aghabekian, becomes one of the important voices in the book. In describing the difficulties of life during the 1930s, he recalls: “I used to walk over 10km to Battir and bring vegetables on my back to sell in Jerusalem so my family would have food to eat. I was only 12 years old.” Unlike other historians, Aghabekian also tells the story of the Armenian Catholic community in Jerusalem, mostly formed by the survivors of the genocide.

Aghabekian demonstrates how the local Armenians who were fluent in Arabic were much more integrated in Palestinian society. With their excellent education, acquired mostly from missionary schools, they were able to occupy important positions within the British colonial administration. Armenians also excelled in diverse professions, such as medicine, photography, ceramics, shoemaking, goldsmithing and silversmithing, among others. 

The Armenians of Jerusalem were not immune to the Palestinian-Zionist conflict. In Aghabekian’s words, “Armenians have suffered politically, socially and economically like Palestinians, including the loss of properties in 1948.” In chapters four and five, Aghabekian tells the story of the Armenians during the 1948 war and its aftermath. She specifically concentrates on Patriarch Guregh Israelian, who played an important role in alleviating the suffering of the Armenians. She expresses Armenians’ fear and anxiety upon becoming refugees for a second time. During the war, thousands of Armenians from throughout Palestine poured into the Armenian Patriarchate looking for a safe haven. Despite this, around 40 Armenians were killed by the Haganah militia’s shelling, including my great cousin Hagop Der Matossian. Similar to the other Palestinian upper-class families, Armenians lost most of their businesses and homes in West Jerusalem. 

The Saga of Survival is a fantastic book that tells the story of the Armenians of Palestine during a critical phase of the modern period. The book is unique as it tells the story of the period from those who experienced it, and not through the perspective of colonial archives. No other scholar has successfully utilized such a rich trove of oral history to tell this unique story. The book is extremely important to scholars and non-scholars alike who are interested in understanding the complexities of the Armenians of Palestine during the Mandate period, as well as the previously untold details relayed by Armenian witnesses and victims of the Nakba.

Bedross Der Matossian is a professor of Modern Middle East History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the former president of the Society for Armenian Studies.