On July 15, 2024, eight European ministers sent a joint letter to the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affair and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, Josep Borrell, calling on the European Union to reconsider its strategy towards Syria.

It has been more than a week since the pro-Palestine student protests started in US universities, and they continue to expand and escalate. The protests that began at Columbia University have so far spread to more than 60 universities across the US, with tens of thousands of university students and teaching and administrative staff participating.

The spectrum of opinions and comments on the April 14 Iranian attack on the Zionist entity extends between the two extremes of the spectrum. These comments include those who try to ridicule the attack and those who exaggerate its assessment. This disparity is not strange, as the extent of polarization locally, regionally, and internationally has reached unprecedented peaks it had not reached for many decades.

Day after day, the different elements of the “step for step” puzzle are becoming clearer. This puzzle includes many integrated elements, including, among other things: “changing the regime’s behavior”, “sanctions”, “early recovery”, “decentralization and autonomous governance”, “administrative reforms”, “safe and neutral environment”.

“The Syrian crisis will not be resolved until there is international consensus on the solution, and specifically American-Russian consensus”.

This saying has been spreading widely within Syrian politicians on both sides of the fence, and to some extent among the general public.

Perhaps the most dangerous thing in the matter is that this “saying” is being presented as an axiom, and as an absolute, simple, and inevitable truth, and there is no need to discuss its validity at all.

Some believe that the so-called “Step for Step” (S4S) project, which De Mistura launched in 2017 (through his plan that did not see the light at the time and was called the “Pre-Transitional Phase”) and which Pedersen continues to work on under its current name, has reached a dead end and has been put away.

Last Thursday, January 11, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) began looking into the case filed by South Africa on December 29, 2023, in which it accused “Israel” of committing the crime of “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, on the basis of “Israel’s” violation of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention), based on both parties being signatories to the Genocide Convention. This is the first time that a case has been filed against the Zionist entity in the ICJ. However, in 2004 the ICJ considered a request for an advisory opinion related to the Zionist entity, specifically regarding the separation wall that it built in the occupied West Bank, which the ICJ concluded was illegal. There is also before the ICJ a request for another advisory opinion – on which a decision has not yet been issued –referred by the UN General Assembly at the end of 2022 on the legal consequences of “the Israeli occupation, settlement, and annexation”.

Many media, political, and human rights organizations covered the sessions in which the two parties presented their case. A lot of general information was circulated about the ICJ, the Genocide Convention, and what has been happening in Gaza since last October 7. We will not cover this type of information here, but we will try to answer some basic questions briefly, each of which can be expanded upon in later articles.

The Russian representative to the UN said in one of the many sessions held by the Security Council during the last few weeks to discuss the “Israeli” aggression against Gaza, and in response to the repeated Western argument for its unconditional support for the brutality of the Zionist entity based on “Israel’s” right of self-defense, the Russian UN representative said: “Israel has no right to defend itself because it is an occupying state.”

The grain agreement signed between Russia and Ukraine, with Turkish mediation, ended on July 22. The agreement stipulated allowing transport of Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea, provided that the shipments be inspected in the Turkish Bosphorus Strait, under supervision of Turkey and the UN, so that they would not be used to transport weapons.

These days, the prevailing trend regarding the Syrian crisis, at least in appearance, is one towards reconciliation, settlements, and calming at the level of relations with the Arab countries and Turkey. That is despite what the extremists seek to promote against the settlement, particularly with Turkey.