MOSCOW, November 7. /TASS/. Widespread pro-Palestine protests may compel the US and EU to force Israel’s hand toward accepting a ceasefire; US Secretary of State Antony Blinken came back virtually empty-handed from his latest Middle East tour aimed at tamping down the Gaza crisis; and the EU may jettison its unanimous voting rule, stripping member states of their veto power. These stories topped Tuesday’s newspaper headlines across Russia.

 

Izvestia: Pro-Palestine protests may compel US, EU to force Israel’s hand toward ceasefire

Protests in support of Palestine, which have engulfed European countries and the US, are gradually expanding and will sooner or later force governments in EU capitals and the Biden administration in Washington to start more forcefully persuading Israel to agree to a ceasefire. However, neither the European Union nor the United States should be expected to abandon their public support for the Jewish state, said experts interviewed by Izvestia. For now, the Israeli political leadership is clearly in no mood to end hostilities despite Washington’s pleas.

Deepening protests in support of the besieged Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip could make European countries review their approaches to resolving the situation in the Middle East, Boris Dolgov, lead researcher with the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Oriental Studies, said.

"The anti-Israeli wave sweeping through Europe and the US is putting Israel’s viability in question in terms of economic ties, as well as humanitarian and diplomatic relations. Since there are large Muslim communities in European countries, protests against Israel may put pressure on national leaders, forcing them to take some action to at least make Israel accept a ceasefire if not to resolve the conflict," the expert pointed out.

However, Western countries should hardly be expected to radically change their position and abandon support for Israel, at least at the rhetorical level, Sergey Demidenko, head of the School of Political Studies of the Institute for Social Sciences at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), noted. According to him, all parties to the process realize that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is here to stay, at least until two states are established, but the interested parties currently have no political will to make such an outcome a reality.

Experts expect that Israel’s military operation will expand. "Israel is cautious but political developments are pushing it towards expanding its ground operation. They [the Israelis] have backed themselves into a corner by their rhetoric," Demidenko said.

 

Vedomosti: Blinken wraps up desultory Middle East tour of Israel, Arab states, Turkey

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has concluded his tour of the Middle East, the second since the start of hostilities in the Gaza Strip between Israel and radical Palestinian group Hamas. In Ankara, the top US diplomat met with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, to discuss the Gaza crisis and bilateral cooperation, Vedomosti writes.

Blinken was not received at the highest level in Turkey; only a deputy regional governor was waiting on the tarmac to greet him, with the drastically downgraded protocol dramatically underscoring the chill in US-Turkish relations. But, this should not be interpreted to mean that Ankara is indifferent to its dialogue with Washington, said Ikbal Durre, associate professor at Moscow State Linguistic University’s Department of Foreign Regional Studies. Although Turkish-US relations are experiencing a rough patch, Ankara has no wish to burn bridges with Washington.

According to the analyst, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is still expecting to receive US loans that he needs to set Turkey’s economic ship aright. The Turkish authorities are also interested in expanding defense cooperation with Washington, which is why their criticism of Israel will be limited to rhetoric, however fiery. "However, everything may change if more parties join the conflict," the expert added.

Blinken’s Middle East trip kicked off on November 3 in Israel, where he tried to persuade the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take a break in the war, or "humanitarian pause" in the US side’s preferred phrasing, an idea that found zero support in Tel Aviv. After that, Blinken discussed the same issues with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan in the Jordanian capital of Amman. On November 5, he met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on the West Bank. In addition, the US secretary of state also made an unannounced visit to Baghdad.

Abbas’s consent to take responsibility for the future of Gaza is one of the results of Blinken’s tour of the Middle East, Ivan Bocharov, program coordinator of the Russian International Affairs Council, said. Meanwhile, however, the outcome of the top US diplomat’s trip should not be overestimated, the expert went on to say. He pointed out that US President Joe Biden’s October 18 tour of the countries of the region (except for a visit to Israel) had been canceled after an airstrike on a Gaza hospital, which sparked a storm of criticism against the US administration from Muslim nations. "Middle Eastern countries don’t see Washington as a neutral mediator. Blinken’s second trip was aimed at mitigating the consequences of the airstrike, but I don’t think that the Americans succeeded," the expert stressed.

 

Izvestia: EU may jettison unanimous voting on foreign policy, stripping members of veto

The idea of waiving the right of a single EU member state to veto decisions by the 27-nation bloc as a whole marks an attempt to deprive certain countries of their sovereignty, said members of the European Parliament (MEP) interviewed by Izvestia. The proposed move first and foremost concerns countries such as Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, which do not always support Brussels’ foreign policy line. However, discussions of a move toward adopting a qualified majority voting system are gaining traction amid difficulties in agreeing on financial support for Kiev.

Mainly, it is the German authorities and EU officials that are calling for waiving the right to a veto, but not everyone supports this idea. The right-wing opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD) party stands for strengthening the right of veto for individual EU member states and opposes the further centralization of power in the European Union, German MEP Gunnar Beck told Izvestia. Slovak MEP Milan Uhrik also stressed that it was unacceptable for national governments to hand some of their powers to the EU.

Issues that are currently subject to unanimous decision-making in the EU include taxation, foreign policy and security. In other cases, decisions can be made through a qualified majority. Expanding the principle to foreign policy decisions seems to be quite a difficult process, said Timofey Bordachev, head of the Center for International Studies at the Higher School of Economics (HSE University).

The idea of qualified majority voting will inevitably be promoted and if the EU fails to conduct such a reform after a while, the union’s future as a single player will become very questionable, Russia in Global Affairs Editor-in-Chief Fyodor Lukyanov noted.

"The Germans are tired of Poland, Hungary and the like. They want to make sure that they can buy a dozen allies and make all decisions together with the French, ignoring both the Poles and the Hungarians," Bordachev said.

The transition to a decision-making procedure based on a qualified majority is painful because "it creates a situation where the opinion of a country can simply be disregarded," Lukyanov pointed out.

 

Vedomosti: Trump leading Biden in polling in key swing states one year ahead of vote

Former US President and Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is leading incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden in key swing states, Vedomosti writes, citing a poll conducted by The New York Times (NYT) and Siena College exactly one year ahead of the US presidential election, which is set to be held on November 5, 2024.

According to the poll, voters in five out of six swing states - Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania - are leaning toward supporting Trump over Biden. However, the poll showed that both Biden and Trump are equally unpopular. Moreover, two-thirds of those polled said that the American nation was headed in the wrong direction.

Since the poll was conducted by the NYT, which is a de facto official bullhorn of the Democratic Party, it could be part of a well-coordinated behind-the-scenes attack on Biden, aimed at taking him out of the presidential race, said Vladimir Vasilyev, senior research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for US and Canadian Studies. The current White House team has failed to put forth a clear policy line on the Middle East and, consequently, the nation is sharply split between the pro-Israel camp (castigated as "Islamophobic") and the pro-Palestine camp (accused of being "anti-Semitic"). As a result, some Democrats say that Biden has become an ineffective president who is only creating problems in domestic and foreign policy and, thus, should not seek another term in office. The current White House occupant, in the expert’s words, is losing popularity among both pro-Israel voters and Arab-Americans.

As well, many Democrats believe that Biden is not fit to run for president again due to his advanced age and given that his program is directed towards the past instead of the future, Andrey Kortunov, academic director of the Russian International Affairs Council, explained. Still, US party machinery always works for the incumbent president and Biden still has significant influence and controls powerful administrative resources.

 

Vedomosti: Russia sees rise in oil, gas revenues

Russia’s actual oil and gas revenues in October made up 18% of the total amount expected to be earned in all of 2023, Vedomosti writes, citing data from the Ministry of Finance. Budget revenues grew 2.2-fold last month compared to the month before.

The current situation favors an increase in oil and gas revenues. According to Bloomberg Economics expert Alexander Isakov, Russia receives $2 bln to $2.3 bln in additional annual revenues from a $1 rise in oil prices.

Apart from high oil prices and a low ruble exchange rate, another reason behind growing oil and gas revenues is that companies are paying a windfall profits tax on hydrocarbon production, which happens once in a quarter, experts say. The tax does not depend on the volume of production but on the revenue from oil sales, excluding production and transportation costs. This is why revenues correlate strongly with oil prices, Kirill Rodionov, an expert at the Institute for the Development of Technologies, explained.

Taxes from the oil industry dominated Russia’s oil and gas revenues long before the current gas crisis broke out in Europe, Rodionov noted. According to the expert, declining gas supplies to Europe are negatively affecting taxes from the gas industry. Russian gas giant Gazprom’s exports to EU countries plummeted by 66.3% in the first nine months of 2023 compared to the same period of 2022, according to the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSOG). In addition, gas prices kept falling in the region.

Another reason why Russia’s oil and gas revenues grew in October is because, last month, oil producers did not receive damper payments from the government since in September average stock prices for oil significantly exceeded the level where damper payments are canceled, Rodion Latypov, author of the Hard Numbers Telegram channel, explained. However, damper payments will be resumed in November and so oil and gas revenues will fall, the expert noted.

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