Algeria may be the latest target in efforts to garner further Arab recognition of the Jewish state, despite its Gaza war conduct and rejection of Palestinian national aspirations.
To that end, a Philadelphia-based far-right pro-Israeli organisation, the Middle East Forum, has put Algeria in its crosshairs in an apparent attempt to build pressure on the North African state to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.
Algeria would be a prize catch.


Is Algeria Next

Divide and conquer has become Israel’s main operating principle in a world in which it stands condemned for its war conduct, impunity, and intransigence, and is increasingly isolated.
Israel applies the principle whether it is in Gaza, Syria, its uphill battle to gain the high ground in its information wars, or its efforts to encourage Jewish immigration.
In Israel’s latest application of the principle, it sees an opportunity to capitalise on Christian assertions that their African brethren are the primary victims of Muslim aggression in what amounts to a religion-driven conflict.
A recent spate of kidnappings for ransom by criminal gangs and jihadists in Nigeria, a country with swaths of ungoverned land, and long-standing violence driven as much by religion and ethnicity as by access to land and water and crime, has fuelled the assertions.


Divide and conquer

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title as well as Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, co-authored with Dr. Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario and  Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa.

Divide and conquer

Mideastsoccer

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