The Israeli airline El Al filed a petition to the High Court of Justice in Israel against Air India’s route over Saudi Arabian airspace, connecting New Delhi to Tel Aviv. The Catalonia dispute has spilled over international borders into Germany, where Carles Puigdemont was arrested on Sunday. The China-North Korea meeting has sent very clear signals to the rest of the world, indicating that new bilateral ties could redraw the power dynamic in the region.
Air India has landed into an Israeli legal battle
Israel’s national airlines, El Al, has sued the Israeli government over the route that Air India took on the first ever flight to Tel Aviv across Saudi airspace on Thursday, March 22. “At a press conference in Tel Aviv, the airline’s president and CEO Gonen Usishkin and chairman Eli Defes argued that by allowing Air India to fly over a country that does not grant El Al the same rights, the government of Israel is violating its commitments to Israel’s national air carrier,” writes Raphael Ahren in The Times of Israel.
“Flight AI 139, which took off in India at 2:30 p.m., was the first plane leaving from or headed toward Israel that flew over Saudi Arabia and Oman, two Arab states that have no diplomatic relations with Israel,” Ahren writes.
The day the flight took off was described as a “historic evening”, in which the “Israeli skies are connecting with the Saudi Arabian skies in one direct flight.” “During Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the new Air India route as “historic.” The new service, which is significantly shorter — and thus cheaper — than all previous flights connecting Israel with India, “is significant economically, technologically, diplomatically and for tourism — significance of the highest order,” he said,” Ahren writes.
El Al argues that allowing Air India to cross airspace that is closed to Israeli-owned airlines violated the Convention on International Civil Aviation. As long as El Al is barred, foreign airlines should also be banned, it argues. El Al was privatised in December 1994.
“Furthermore, permitting Air India’s new route also violates a bilateral agreement Jerusalem and Delhi signed in 2016, the Israeli carrier maintained. That agreement stated that Israel is obligated to allow El Al “an equal and fair opportunity” to operate the flight route between Israel and India.”
Still struggling for independence
“Much as the Spanish government would like to portray the case against Carles Puigdemont, the former leader of Catalonia, as purely a criminal matter, his arrest in Germany on Sunday on a Spanish warrant has pushed the bitter struggle over Catalan independence into a far broader and distinctly political arena,” editorialises the New York Times.
The Spanish government has said that it does not interfere with judicial decisions, and that the Supreme Court wants to put Puigdemont on trial for rebellion and misappropriation of public funds, not for his pro-independence campaign.
“That is not the full story, however, as witnessed by the Catalan crowds that have taken to the streets upon news of Mr. Puigdemont’s arrest. Madrid’s relentless and heavy-handed response to the Catalan independence movement, starting with the riot police deployed to forcefully, and sometimes violently, disrupt the referendum last October and continuing with charges of rebellion (which in Spain means actual use of force and carries a penalty of up to 30 years in prison) against Mr. Puigdemont and 12 other leaders of the independence movement, is hardly the way to win the hearts and minds of the Catalans or the support of other Europeans,” the editorial board writes.
As long as Puigdemont stayed in Belgium (where he took refuge after fleeing Spain), he was left alone by Madrid. But when he left over the weekend, the German police were tipped off, and they made the arrest.
“That effectively dragged Germany, Europe’s giant, into the fray. Under the European arrest warrant used in the European Union, Germany is required to transfer Mr. Puigdemont to Spain within 60 days. But the warrant requires that the Spanish charges have German equivalents. Misappropriation of public funds does, but “rebellion” is only vaguely similar to “high treason” in the German penal code. That’s a tough one to apply to a democratically elected official who never resorted to force, and the German courts can decide to transfer Mr. Puigdemont on the condition that he not be tried for rebellion.”
“Now that Berlin has been thrust into the dispute, it would do well to tell Madrid that treating the ill-conceived Catalan independence drive as treason gives the movement a moral authority it does not warrant. A conciliatory gesture toward Catalonia would do far more to defuse a confrontation that has gone too far,” the editorial board writes.
The Beijing-Pyongyang alliance
Stronger ties between China and North Korea could complicate the nuclear issue, the Korea Herald warns. In an editorial, the South Korean paper argues that even though what the two leaders discussed remains secret, there is “a high possibility that it will complicate the matter of denuclearizing the North.”
“As the security situation related to the North’s nukes turned critical lately, with summits between South and North Korea and between the U.S. and North Korea expected in April and May, respectively, Pyongyang and Beijing probably felt acutely the need to close ranks,” the editorial board writes.
“The issue is what they might be seeking to achieve through their efforts to get closer.”
“There is a good chance that Xi and Kim may have discussed sanctions against the North. It is also likely that Kim asked Xi to work toward moderating them. One cannot exclude entirely the possibility that China, the North’s sole ally, will seek ways to accommodate the North’s demands.
If Kim’s overture for dialogue leads to China breaking from the international front of sanctions and China and the North getting back to the solid alliance of the past, the efforts to denuclearize North Korea will come to nothing.”
The problem of North Korean nuclear armament will be complicated if China is trying to leverage “hegemonic influence” over the U.S. on issues like trade.
“To Pyongyang, the prospect of gaining many concessions from the US through negotiations likely dimmed after Trump nominated hawkish figures such as CIA Director Mike Pompeo and former Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton as secretary of state and national security adviser, respectively. This may have caused North Korea to turn to China as a “safety valve” in case its summit with the U.S. goes awry.”
“It is hard to imagine a process of denuclearizing North Korea without China being involved. But if Beijing rushes to restore diplomatic, security and economic assistance to the North for the sake of their alliance or its regional hegemony, the process will likely go up in smoke. In this context, the Kim-Xi summit arouses concern of a confrontation between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan on one side and North Korea, China and Russia on the other.”
It will be beneficial to all countries, the Korea Herald concludes, to avoid such confrontation. China also needs to do more to persuade Pyongyang to denuclearize.