UN urges end to ‘illogical escalation’ between Israel, Palestine

UN urges end to ‘illogical escalation’ between Israel, Palestine
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Palestinians carry the body of Abdullah Sami Qalalweh during his funeral at his village of al-Judaydeh south of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, on Feb. 4, 2023. Israeli forces shot dead the 26-year-old at a military outpost. (AFP)
UN urges end to ‘illogical escalation’ between Israel, Palestine
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Palestinians inspect a damaged house following an Israeli morning raid at the Aqabat Jabr refugee camp in Jericho city in the occupied West Bank, on February 4, 2023. (AFP)
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Updated 05 February 2023

UN urges end to ‘illogical escalation’ between Israel, Palestine

UN urges end to ‘illogical escalation’ between Israel, Palestine
  • Saturday’s violent storming of West Bank camp reflects ‘extremist mentality’ of Israeli govt, sources say

RAMALLAH: The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has urged an end to the “illogical escalation” between Israel and Palestine.

Volker Turk warned that recent measures taken by Israel would “lead to more violence and bloodshed.”

In a statement distributed in Geneva, Turk said: “I am afraid that the recent measures taken by the government of Israel only serve to fuel more violations and abuses, especially the decision to facilitate obtaining permits to carry weapons.”

He warned that the matter “accompanied by hateful rhetoric, will only lead to more violence and bloodshed.”

Israel denounced Turk’s statement, accusing him, in a statement issued by its ambassador to the UN in Geneva, of bias and of “only condemning the state of Israel.”

The high commissioner added: “Instead of doubling down on the failed methods of violence and coercion that have single-handedly failed in the past, I urge all concerned to break out of the illogical logic of escalation that only ended with dead bodies, loss of life and sheer despair.

“Collective punishment measures, including forced evictions and house demolitions, are expressly prohibited under international humanitarian law and are incompatible with provisions of international human rights law.”

The high commissioner called for urgent measures to de-escalate tensions, including ensuring that international standards were maintained in investigating deaths and serious injuries.

Turk said: “Impunity has spread, which signals that abuses are permissible.”

His warning came as Mustafa Al-Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative Party, criticized the bias of the US in failing to pressure the Israeli government into ending attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

He made the remarks to Arab News after Palestinian medical sources said that at least 13 Palestinians were injured during clashes with the Israeli military in the West Bank on Saturday.

Israeli troops stormed the Aqbat Jabr refugee camp south of Jericho on Saturday morning.

The action led to clashes, resulting in the injury of three citizens by live rounds and other rubber-coated metal bullets.

Israeli forces had demolished part of the walls of a besieged house in the camp and used loudspeakers to request the surrender of those inside.

Palestinian medical sources said that three of the injured in the camp clashes were transferred to Ramallah hospitals in critical condition.

According to media sources and residents in the camp, three family members were arrested, including a father and son. The Israeli army also demolished a house in the camp.

Israeli sources said that troops ended the military activity in Aqabat Jabr camp and left four hours after the raid began. A search for two people who allegedly carried out an armed attack at Almog junction a week earlier did not result in arrests.

Israeli armed forces claimed that troops had raided Aqabat Jabr refugee camp and questioned several people suspected of involvement in the attack.

An army statement said that clashes took place with Palestinian gunmen during the military operation, and that there were no casualties on the Israeli side.

It added that 18 people were interrogated in the field, and six were transferred to Shin Bet for investigation.

Al-Barghouti told Arab News that the violent storming of the camp reflected the “extremist mentality” of the Israeli government, which has imposed a policy of collective punishment on Palestinians.

He described the military action — which resulted in the wounding of 13 Palestinians — as unjustified.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that the Israeli military impeded the entry of medical and health personnel into Jericho.

Israeli armed forces have limited the exit of Palestinians in Jericho city’s eastern side during the last seven days.

It deployed tightened checkpoints at all main road entrances into the area.

Israeli authorities closed all secondary entries with earthen mounds, searching for two gunmen who opened fire toward on a restaurant at Almog on Jan. 28. No injuries were reported from the incident. Several Palestinians were arrested and later released after questioning.

Authorities adopted a “collective punishment policy” on the city by obstructing movement, searching cars and checking identities, sources said.

Citizens waited in vehicles for several hours in front of checkpoints at all entrances to the city.

The army’s actions disrupted daily life for the city’s 30,000 residents.

Dozens of citizens and workers endured waits of up to four hours at Israeli military checkpoints, while others were prevented from leaving the city entirely.

Jericho houses a terminal that serves as the only exit point for 3 million Palestinians to travel from the West Bank to countries around the world.

The closure of the city over the past week has significantly impeded the movement of citizens traveling and returning from abroad.

A doctor in the emergency department of a major Palestinian hospital in Ramallah told Arab News that the Israeli army was “deliberately shooting at the upper limbs” of targets, increasing the chances of fatal injury and death.

An ambulance officer from Jericho told Arab News that the three people left in critical condition from the camp raid were moved to Ramallah hospitals due to a lack of medical equipment in nearby hospitals.

They were transported more than 40 km, passing through several Israeli military checkpoints.

Palestinian factions have condemned the storming of Aqabat Jabr as a crime, calling for a confrontation with Israel.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said: “The occupation’s aggression against the Palestinian camps in the occupied West Bank, in addition to the escalation of daily arrest campaigns, will not weaken the continuous resistance until the occupation is defeated and our national goals are achieved.

“The escalation of resistance operations in all forms and various means categorically confirms that a new phase is taking shape in the West Bank and will pursue settlers and turn their colonies into prisons for settlers.”

Tariq Ezz El-Din, media spokesman for the Islamic Jihad Movement, said that the “ very dangerous” Israeli escalation needed to be met by “resistance activities.”

The Palestine Center for Prisoners Studies warned that Israeli authorities had stepped up arrest campaigns against Palestinians since the beginning of the year.

The center recorded 540 arrest cases, including 92 children and 10 women, in January.

It also referred to the Israeli army’s escalation of raids on towns and cities in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The center said that Jerusalem saw the largest share of arrests, with 270.

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Violence in Tunisia prompts increase in migrants heading for Europe

Violence in Tunisia prompts increase in migrants heading for Europe
Updated 16 sec ago

Violence in Tunisia prompts increase in migrants heading for Europe

Violence in Tunisia prompts increase in migrants heading for Europe
  • Sub-Saharan migrants cross Mediterranean after President Saied blames them for crime, demographic change
  • Italian PM Meloni warns Europe faces ‘invasion’ if more not done to halt flow of people

LONDON: Migrants from the Ivory Coast and other sub-Saharan countries are attempting to flee to Europe after an uptick in violence against them in Tunisia.

North Africa has long been used as a staging post for people desperate to leave the continent and travel northward, but numbers have increased after Tunisian President Kais Saied blamed migrants for an increase in crime in his country, and claimed their presence was part of a plot to “change the demographic makeup” of Tunisia.

That has led to a number of migrants facing violence or eviction from their accommodation. Some have even been shot at.

One Ivorian migrant, 30-year-old Noela, told The Times: “My husband was arrested, I have been robbed at knifepoint and I am scared to leave home. People here were nice, but now things have changed.”

Many are now buying boats in order to strike out for Italy, despite efforts by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to curb the number of migrants traveling to the peninsula.

An activist in the Tunisian port town of Sfax, which is seeing the bulk of the traffic, said: “Sailings are linked to that speech (by President Saied) and Ivorians are the biggest group among those leaving.”

Meloni claims charity organizations running boats in the region are helping migrants to make dangerous crossings, and has warned Europe faces “an invasion” if more is not done to stop the flow. So far this year 20,000 people have successfully made the journey to Italy, with 12,000 of those coming from Tunisia.

At least 80 people died in the Mediterranean last month on the way to Italy from Turkey, while 30 more drowned off the coast of Libya last week.

Between March 6 and 12, Ivorians, whose country has seen a number of civil wars since the turn of the century, made up the largest single group among the 3,300 people who made the trip to Italy, most via the island of Lampedusa. Another 1,500 people, mostly from sub-Saharan Africa, were turned back by the Tunisian coast guard.

A Tunisian people smuggler told The Times that many were making the trip now as it was “the last chance for them” amid Tunisia’s increasing hostility and Italy tightening its rules.

Another smuggler added that Tunisians were increasingly refusing to travel with sub-Saharans across the sea so as not to give away their identity on account of their skin color, leading to migrants buying vessels to pilot themselves.

“They have no jobs, no food, nothing. This has convinced them to go as soon as possible,” he told The Times. “They are good — they don’t steal boats, but they buy them.”

Ivorian DJ Dobe Aboubacar, based in Tunis, said most of his countrymen in Tunisia planned to leave for Germany or France.

“Because of the poor economy in Tunisia — and then because of the president’s speech — even more now want to leave,” Aboubacar, who runs a Facebook page for migrants in Tunisia, added.


Palestinian PM blasts ‘racism’ of Israeli minister

Palestinian PM blasts ‘racism’ of Israeli minister
Updated 17 min 18 sec ago

Palestinian PM blasts ‘racism’ of Israeli minister

Palestinian PM blasts ‘racism’ of Israeli minister
  • Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich: ‘There are no Palestinians, because there are no Palestinian people’

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on Monday blasted as “inflammatory” remarks made by far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that Palestinians do not exist.
“There are no Palestinians, because there are no Palestinian people,” Smotrich said Sunday, quoting French-Israeli Zionist activist Jacques Kupfer, speaking at an event in Paris according to a video circulating on social media.
“After 2,000 years of exile, the prophecies of Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Isaiah are beginning to come true and God is gathering his people, the people of Israel are returning home,” Smotrich said.
“There are Arabs around who don’t like it, so what do they do? They invent a fictitious people and claim fictitious rights to the land of Israel, only to fight the Zionist movement,” he added.
Smotrich last year became a minister in the cabinet of Israel’s veteran leader Benjamin Netanyahu, which analysts have called the most right-wing government in the country’s history.
“It is the historical truth, it is the biblical truth... the Arabs in Israel must hear it, as well as certain Jews who are confused in Israel, this truth must be heard here at the Elysee Palace (in Paris), and at the White House in Washington, and everyone must hear this truth,” Smotrich continued.
Shtayyeh, speaking before a cabinet meeting of the Palestinian Authority on Monday, said the “inflammatory statements are consistent with the first Zionist sayings of ‘a land without a people for a people without a land’.”
He said the comments were “conclusive evidence of the extremist, racist Zionist ideology... of the current Israeli government.”
Smotrich and his Religious Zionism group have a history of making incendiary remarks about Palestinians.
In February, Smotrich called for the Palestinian town of Hawara in the occupied West Bank to be “wiped out” after two Israelis were shot dead by an alleged Hamas militant.
Hundreds of rampaging Israeli settlers later torched Palestinian homes and cars in the West Bank town.


Iraq to hold provincial elections on November 6

Iraq to hold provincial elections on November 6
Updated 20 March 2023

Iraq to hold provincial elections on November 6

Iraq to hold provincial elections on November 6
  • Elections for the councils, the first in a decade, will take place in 15 of 18 Iraqi provinces

BAGHDAD: Iraq’s parliament has set November 6 as the date for elections for provincial councils, powerful bodies that were dissolved amid anti-government protests in 2019.
“Provincial elections will take place on November 6, 2023,” a statement from parliament said Monday, after lawmakers agreed on the date overnight.
The elections for the councils, the first in a decade, will take place in 15 of 18 Iraqi provinces, excluding the three provinces in the autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.
The provincial councils, created by the 2005 constitution following the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, carry relatively significant power in federal Iraq, including allocating the budgets for health, transport and education.
The last provincial elections took place in 2013, when loyalists of then prime minister Nuri Al-Maliki came out on top.
The next provincial elections should have taken place in 2018, but were postponed.
A year later, amid vast anti-government rallies, protesters demanded and obtained the dissolution of the provincial councils, in part because critics accused them of being rife with corruption.
Alaa Al-Rikabi, an independent MP who emerged in the aftermath of the October 2019 protest movement, condemned the return of the councils.
“We refuse to allow them to be reinstated,” he said, adding that they “open the door wide to corruption.”


Iraq PM to hold Turkiye talks on water, Kurdish rebels

Iraq PM to hold Turkiye talks on water, Kurdish rebels
Updated 20 March 2023

Iraq PM to hold Turkiye talks on water, Kurdish rebels

Iraq PM to hold Turkiye talks on water, Kurdish rebels
  • Shia Al-Sudani to meet Turkiye’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his first visit to Iraq’s northern neighbor since he came to power in October
BAGHDAD: Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani will visit Turkiye on Tuesday for talks including on scarce water resources and the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a government source said.
Sudani is set to meet Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his first visit to Iraq’s northern neighbor since he came to power in October, an adviser to the head of the Iraqi government said, speaking anonymously.
“The two main issues are water and the presence of the PKK in northern Iraq,” he added, referring to the rebel group that has been fighting the Turkish army for decades.
War-scarred Iraq is now digging ever deeper for water as a frenzy of dam-building, mainly in Turkiye, sucks water out of the region’s two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates.
The Tigris and the Euphrates both have their sources in Turkiye, and Baghdad has long accused Ankara of withholding water in dams that choke the rivers, dramatically reducing flows into Iraq.
According to official Iraqi statistics from last year, the level of the Tigris entering Iraq has dropped to just 35 percent of its average over the past century.
Declining river flows have been made worse by a dire lack of rainfall in recent years, coupled with poor irrigation practices in Iraq that see excessive exploitation of water from the rivers.
Amid criticism, Turkiye’s ambassador to Iraq, Ali Riza Guney, ruffled feathers last July when he said, “water is largely wasted in Iraq” and called on people to “use the available water more efficiently.”
Sudani will also discuss with Erdogan the presence of rear bases of Kurdish fighters from the Turkish PKK rebels in northern Iraq, which Ankara has repeatedly sought to root out in air and ground operations.
The rebels have kept up a deadly insurgency for Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Turkiye since 1984.
Turkiye has dozens of military facilities in northern Iraq for use in its war against the PKK, which Ankara and its Western allies blacklist as a “terrorist” group.
In July 2022, Iraq blamed Turkiye for artillery strikes on a park in Iraqi Kurdistan that killed nine civilians, including women and children.
Turkiye denied its troops were responsible and accused the PKK.

Kuwait Oil Company declares ‘state of emergency’ after oil spill on land

Kuwait Oil Company declares ‘state of emergency’ after oil spill on land
Updated 20 March 2023

Kuwait Oil Company declares ‘state of emergency’ after oil spill on land

Kuwait Oil Company declares ‘state of emergency’ after oil spill on land
  • No injuries or disruption to production had been reported

KUWAIT: The Kuwait Oil Company declared a “state of emergency” on Monday after an oil spill on land in the west of the country, according to a statement posted on the company’s Twitter account.

However, no injuries or disruption to production had been reported, said Qusai Al-Amer, head of admin support at the company.

“No toxic fumes have been detected on site,” he added.

Teams have been dispatched to determine the source of the leak and contain the incident, Al-Amer said.

The Kuwait Oil Company has previously reported oil leaks in its fields in 2020 and 2016.

In 2017, Kuwaiti authorities reported two slicks off the Gulf’s state’s shores over the span of a few days.

With AFP