Blinken wraps up Mideast visit with no breakthrough in efforts to end violence

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas welcomes US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, on January 31, 2023. (AFP)
Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas welcomes US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, on January 31, 2023. (AFP)
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Updated 31 January 2023

Blinken wraps up Mideast visit with no breakthrough in efforts to end violence

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas welcomes US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ramallah, on January 31, 2023. (AFP)
  • Blinken met Abbas but there was no sign of progress on even the modest goal of halting the latest escalation
  • Mahmoud Al-Aloul, Fatah leader, said Palestinian leadership no longer has any confidence in US policy

RAMALLAH: As he completed a two-day visit to Israel and the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and called for a de-escalation of tensions, but offered no new US initiative to help achieve this.

There were no signs he was making progress on even the modest goal of halting the latest wave of violence, much less of addressing the broader issues surrounding potential peace talks.

Abbas placed all of the blame for the spike in violence on Israel and berated the international community for not doing more to put pressure on Israeli authorities.

Both Blinken and William Burns, the head of the CIA who met Abbas on Jan. 29, urged him to take action against Palestinian military groups and reduce the levels of violence against Israel.

Blinken called for calm on both sides following the incident last week when a Palestinian gunman killed seven people outside a synagogue in Jerusalem, and amid anger among Palestinians over the actions of Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank.

He took that message into the meeting with Abbas and warned all parties against taking any action that could threaten a two-state solution that results in the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Blinken criticized Israel for its actions that Washington believes create barriers to the two-state solution. In particular, he highlighted “settlement expansion, the legalization of (settlement) outposts, demolitions and evictions, disruptions to the historic status of the holy sites and, of course, incitement and acquiescence to the violence.”

After the meeting with Abbas, Blinken said the US would provide an additional $50 million for the UN’s agency for Palestinians and announced that he had reached an agreement with the Israeli government to provide 4G telecoms services for the Palestinian people.

Abbas called for “the complete cessation of unilateral Israeli actions, which violate the signed agreements and international law.” He reiterated the longstanding demand by Palestinians for Israel to end its occupation of their territory.

“We are now ready to work with the US administration and the international community to restore political dialogue in order to end the Israeli occupation of the land of the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital,” he said.

“The continued opposition to the efforts of the Palestinian people to defend their existence and their legitimate rights in international forums and courts is a policy that encourages the Israeli occupier to commit more crimes and violates international law.

“Our people will not accept the continuation of the occupation forever, and the regional security will not be strengthened by violating the sanctity of the holy sites, trampling on the dignity of the Palestinian people and ignoring their legitimate rights to freedom, dignity and independence.”

The Palestinian leadership told Blinken that if calm is to be restored, Israel must halt its unilateral measures, stop its construction of settlements in the West Bank, end Israeli army incursions into Palestinian cities, and prevent attacks and violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank.

The Palestinians also demand that Israel release withheld Palestinian Authority tax revenues and provide a political horizon for resolving the conflict.

Senior Palestinian sources said US understanding and support for the Palestinian demands could prevent further escalation and build confidence, which might persuade Abbas to resume security coordination with Israel, which he halted on Jan. 26 following the killing of nine Palestinians in Jenin.

Mahmoud Al-Aloul, a Fatah leader, said the Palestinian leadership no longer has any confidence or hope in American policy because it is seen as only concerned with protecting and supporting the Israeli occupation.

He added that Blinken’s visit came after Palestinians decided to confront the “crimes and attacks of the occupation and its settlers, which have recently intensified.”

Political analyst Majdi Halabi told Arab News that Blinken’s visit was crucial because it would contribute to the efforts to calm the situation and reduce tensions between Palestinians and Israelis.

“Abbas cannot prevent individual attacks by Palestinians against Israeli targets,” Halabi said. “He can influence the Lions’ Den group because it includes elements of the Fatah organization that he heads.”

He added that the US can also put pressure on Israel to stop demolitions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Jerusalem, reduce the number of arrests of Palestinians, and limit settlement expansions. Washington could do this, if it wanted to, because Israel needs US financial help and its assistance to confront Iran, he said.

Palestinian political analyst Nabil Amr said the Americans can only offer advice to both sides and talk about the need for calm and preserving the two-state solution. Meanwhile, “the pressure is inevitably on the Palestinian side,” he added.

The Americans “are no longer able to influence the Israeli government, and the Israelis do not listen to them and take advantage of their support to fuel their war against the Palestinians,” Amr said.

Washington “is making demands the Palestinians cannot fulfill even if they accept them, such as preventing individual operations against Israelis. Those who carried out the recent attacks against Israeli targets had no connection with the Palestinian organizations but were individuals, so how can the Palestinian Authority prevent them?” he added.

Amr strongly criticized the current US policy on the conflict, describing it as “managing crises without a political horizon.”


Israeli president urges halt to judicial overhaul after protests

Israeli president urges halt to judicial overhaul after protests
Updated 27 March 2023

Israeli president urges halt to judicial overhaul after protests

Israeli president urges halt to judicial overhaul after protests
  • Warning from the head of state underlines alarm over divisive proposal
  • Isaac Herzog’s plea follows a night of protests in cities across Israel

JERUSALEM: Israeli President Isaac Herzog urged the government on Monday to halt its bitterly contested judicial overhaul, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sacked his defense minister for opposing the move, sparking mass street protests.

“For the sake of the unity of the people of Israel, for the sake of responsibility, I call on you to stop the legislative process immediately,” Herzog said on Twitter.

The warning from the head of state who is supposed to stand above politics and whose function is largely ceremonial, underlined the alarm the divisions opened up by the proposals has caused. It followed a dramatic night of protests in cities across Israel, with tens of thousands pouring out on the streets following Netanyahu’s announcement that he had dismissed Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

A day earlier, Gallant had made a televised appeal for the government to halt its flagship overhaul of the judicial system, warning that the deep split it had opened up in Israeli society was affecting the military and threatening national security.

Three months after it took power as one of the most right-wing governments in the country’s history, Gallant’s removal has plunged Netanyahu’s national-religious coalition into crisis, during a deepening security emergency in the occupied West Bank.

The judicial overhaul, which would give the executive control over appointing judges to the Supreme Court and allow the government to over-ride court rulings on the basis of a simple parliamentary majority has drawn mass protests for weeks.

While the government says the overhaul is needed to rein in activist judges and set a proper balance between the elected government and the judiciary, opponents see it as an undermining of legal checks and balances and a threat to Israel’s democracy.

Netanyahu, on trial on corruption charges that he denies, has so far vowed to continue with the project and a central part of the overhaul package, a bill that would tighten political control over judicial appointments, is due to be ratified in parliament this week.

He is expected to make a statement later on Monday.

As well as drawing opposition from the business establishment, the project has caused alarm among Israel’s allies. The United States said it was deeply concerned by Sunday’s events and saw an urgent need for compromise, while repeating calls to safeguard democratic values.


Rushed daylight-saving decision puts Lebanon in two time zones

Rushed daylight-saving decision puts Lebanon in two time zones
Updated 27 March 2023

Rushed daylight-saving decision puts Lebanon in two time zones

Rushed daylight-saving decision puts Lebanon in two time zones
  • Government issued last-minute decision to delay the start of daylight saving time by a month
  • Some institutions implemented the change while others refused, causing confusion

BEIRUT: The Lebanese government’s last-minute decision to delay the start of daylight saving time by a month until the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan resulted in mass confusion Sunday.
With some institutions implementing the change while others refused, many Lebanese have found themselves in the position of juggling work and school schedules in different time zones — in a country that is just 88 kilometers (55 miles) at its widest point.
In some cases, the debate took on a sectarian nature, with many Christian politicians and institutions, including the small nation’s largest church, the Maronite Church, rejecting the move.
The small Mediterranean country normally sets its clocks forward an hour on the last Sunday in March, which aligns with most European countries.
However, on Thursday, the government announced a decision by caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati to push the start of daylight saving to April 21.
No reason was given for the decision, but a video of a meeting between Mikati and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri leaked to local media showed Berri asking Mikati to postpone the implementation of daylight saving time to allow Muslims to break their Ramadan fast an hour earlier.
Mikati responds that he had made a similar proposal but goes on to say that implementing the change would be difficult as it would cause problems in airline flight schedules, to which Berri interjects, “What flights?”
After the postponement of daylight saving was announced, Lebanon’s state airline, Middle East Airlines, said the departure times of all flights scheduled to leave from the Beirut airport between Sunday and April 21 would be advanced by an hour.
The country’s two cellular telephone networks messaged people asking them to change the settings of their clocks to manual instead of automatic so the time would not change at midnight, although in many cases the time advanced anyway.
While public institutions, in theory, are bound by the government’s decision, many private institutions, including TV stations, schools and businesses, announced that they would ignore the decision and move to daylight saving on Sunday as previously scheduled.
Even some public agencies refused to comply. Education Minister Abbas Halabi said in a statement Sunday evening that the decision was not legally valid because it had not been taken in a meeting of the Cabinet. If the government meets and approves the decision, he wrote, “we will be the first to implement it” but until then, “daylight saving time remains approved and applied in the educational sector.”
Soha Yazbek, a professor at the American University of Beirut, is among many parents who have found themselves and their children now bound to different schedules.
“So now I drop my kids to school at 8 am but arrive to my work 42 km away at 7:30 am and then I leave work at 5 p.m. but I arrive home an hour later at 7 pm!!” Yazbek wrote on Twitter, adding for the benefit of her non-Lebanese friends, “I have not gone mad, I just live in Wonderland.”
Haruka Naito, a Japanese non-governmental organization worker living in Beirut, discovered she has to be in two places at the same time on Monday morning.
“I had an 8 a.m. appointment and a 9 a.m. class, which will now happen at the same time,” she said. The 8 a.m. appointment for her residency paperwork is with a government agency following the official time, while her 9 a.m. Arabic class is with an institute that is expected to make the switch to daylight saving.
The schism has led to jokes about “Muslim time” and “Christian time,” while different Internet search engines came up with different results early Sunday morning when queried about the current time in Lebanon.
While in many cases, the schism broke down along sectarian lines, some Muslims also objected to the change and pointed out that fasting is supposed to begin at dawn and end at sunset regardless of time zone.
Many saw the issue as a distraction from the country’s larger economic and political problems.
Lebanon is in the midst of the worst financial crisis in its modern history. Three quarters of the population lives in poverty and IMF officials recently warned the country could be headed for hyperinflation if no action is taken. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of President Michel Aoun ended in late October as the parliament has failed to elect a replacement since.


US says ‘strongly urges’ Israel leaders to find compromise

The North Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC. (AFP file photo)
The North Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC. (AFP file photo)
Updated 27 March 2023

US says ‘strongly urges’ Israel leaders to find compromise

The North Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC. (AFP file photo)
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fires Defense Minister Yoav Gallant
  • ‘We continue to strongly urge Israeli leaders to find a compromise as soon as possible’

WASHINGTON: The United States is deeply concerned by events in Israel and “strongly urges” leaders there to find compromise as soon as possible, a White House spokesperson said on Sunday after the firing of Israel’s defense minister triggered mass protests.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday, a day after Gallant broke ranks with the government and urged a halt to a highly contested plan to overhaul the judicial system.
“We continue to strongly urge Israeli leaders to find a compromise as soon as possible. We believe that is the best path forward for Israel and all of its citizens,” White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement.
Some three months since taking office, Netanyahu’s nationalist-religious coalition has been plunged into crisis over the bitter divisions exposed by its flagship judicial overhaul plans.
The overhaul package would tighten political control over judicial appointments, handing the executive wider freedom to name judges to the Supreme Court.
“As the president recently discussed with Prime Minister Netanyahu, democratic values have always been, and must remain, a hallmark of the US-Israel relationship,” Watson said.
“Democratic societies are strengthened by checks and balances, and fundamental changes to a democratic system should be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support.”


Group says Libyan coast guard fired shots over rescue ship

Group says Libyan coast guard fired shots over rescue ship
Updated 27 March 2023

Group says Libyan coast guard fired shots over rescue ship

Group says Libyan coast guard fired shots over rescue ship
  • The Libyan coast guard vessel “dangerously” approached the rescue ship, threatening its crew “with guns and firing gunshots in the air,” the SOS Mediterranee said in a statement

CAIRO: Libya’s coast guard fired warning shots over a humanitarian vessel as it attempted to rescue a rubber boat carrying migrants off Libya’s coast, a sea rescue group said. The coast guard went on to return some 80 Europe-bound migrants to Libyan soil.
The incident Saturday in international waters was the latest reckless sea interception of migrants by the Libyan coast guard, which is trained and financed by the European Union to stem the influx of migrants to Europe, said the SOS Mediterranee group, whose vessel was warned off by the coast guard.
A spokesman for the coast guard didn’t respond to a request for comment. The Italian coast guard said it had received a report about the incident, but complained that SOS Mediterranee didn’t follow correct procedures in reporting it.
The Ocean Viking, a rescue ship chartered and run by the non-profit SOS Mediterranee, was responding to a distress call to help the rubber boat carrying migrants in the Mediterranean Sea when a Libyan coast guard vessel arrived at the scene, the group said.
The Libyan coast guard vessel “dangerously” approached the rescue ship, threatening its crew “with guns and firing gunshots in the air,” the SOS Mediterranee said in a statement.
The coast guard was caught on camera threatening the vessel and firing a weapon into the air. In the footage, the coast guard vessel is seen traveling at a high rate of speed before maneuvering, apparently to prevent the Ocean Viking from reaching the migrant boat. At one point, gun shots are heard.
“You can’t shoot at us. You can’t shoot at us. We’re leaving the waters now,” a person on the Ocean Viking is heard saying.
Under threat, the Ocean Viking sailed away while the Libyan coast guard intercepted the boat and “forcibly” took the migrants back to war-wrecked Libya, it said.
Seabird 2, a civil surveillance plane owned by the German non-governmental organization Sea-Watch, reported seeing migrants who had fallen overboard from the rubber boat before the coast guard recovered them.
In further footage from the group’s civil surveillance plane, the coast guard was seen maneuvering and approaching the rubber boat, before forcing the migrants to disembark on the coast guard vessel. Gunshots were also heard in the footage, with people on board the surveillance plane saying, “They are shooting in the water ... They are shooting at the people.”
Saturday’s incident was the latest report from European NGOs operating in the Mediterranean Sea of threats or violent behavior by the Libyan coast guard, which is trained and financed by the European Union, part of efforts to stem the flow of migrants from the North African country toward Italian shores.
Libya has in recent years emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants seeking a better quality of life in Europe. The oil-rich country plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
Human traffickers have benefited from the chaos in Libya, smuggling in migrants across the country’s lengthy borders with six nations. The migrants are then packed into ill-equipped rubber boats and other vessels and set off on risky sea voyages.
So far this year, some 20,000 migrants have arrived in Italy, far exceeding the 6,000 who came in the same period in each of the preceding years, according to Interior Ministry figures.
Over the weekend alone, an estimated 3,300 migrants — many departing on small boats from Libya or Tunisia’s coastal city of Sfax — were rescued in the Mediterranean and were heading toward Italian ports to disembark, the Italian coast guard said.
At least three rescues were conducted by the Louise Michel rescue ship, which is financed by the street artist Banksy. The group said its vessel was detained Friday off Lampedusa after it rescued 180 people in several operations. Thirty-four were plucked from the water after their boat capsized.
The Italian coast guard said the vessel had been seized because the crew disobeyed orders to head to a port in Trapani, Sicily after the first rescue and instead picked up other migrants in three other rescues. The coast guard said that disobedience put migrants at risk and complicated its own efforts to coordinate rescues during a particularly busy weekend.
“The instructions given to the NGO ship, given its small size, were also aimed at preventing it from taking on board so many people that would jeopardize both its safety and that of the migrant boats it would be rescuing,” the coast guard said in a statement.
It added that the NGO aircraft that were also sending reports of boats in distress “overloaded the communications system” of the Italian coordination center, duplicating alerts that government aircraft were already providing.
In recent months, the hard-line Italian government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has made it harder for humanitarian vessels to operate, often assigning ships to ports farther north after a single rescue, which the groups say limits their ability to save lives.
Meloni’s allies say the presence of so many rescue ships in the Mediterranean encourages migrants to risk their lives on smuggler boats.
 

 


Israeli consul in New York resigns, says cannot serve Netanyahu

Asaf Zamir. (Twitter @AmbAsafZamir)
Asaf Zamir. (Twitter @AmbAsafZamir)
Updated 27 March 2023

Israeli consul in New York resigns, says cannot serve Netanyahu

Asaf Zamir. (Twitter @AmbAsafZamir)
  • “I can no longer continue representing this Government,” Asaf Zamir said on Twitter

JERUSALEM: Israel’s consul-general in New York said he was resigning on Sunday in protest at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in a surging dispute over a judicial overhaul sought by the government.
“I can no longer continue representing this Government,” Asaf Zamir said on Twitter. “I believe it is my duty to ensure that Israel remains a beacon of democracy and freedom in the world.”