Israel’s prime minister pitches fiber optic cable idea to link Asia and the Middle East to Europe

Israel’s prime minister pitches fiber optic cable idea to link Asia and the Middle East to Europe
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a news conference with Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides at the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, Cyprus, September 3, 2023. (Reuters)
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Updated 04 September 2023
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Israel’s prime minister pitches fiber optic cable idea to link Asia and the Middle East to Europe

Israel’s prime minister pitches fiber optic cable idea to link Asia and the Middle East to Europe
  • Talks between Christodoulides and Netanyahu precede a trilateral meeting with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Monday

NICOSIA, Cyprus: Israel’s prime minister on Sunday floated the idea of building infrastructure projects such as a fiber optic cable linking countries in Asia and the Arabian Peninsula with Europe through Israel and Cyprus.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he’s “quite confident” such an infrastructure “corridor” linking Asia to Europe through Israel and Cyprus is feasible.
He said such projects could happen if Israel normalizes relations with other countries in the region. The 2020 US-brokered Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and the Biden administration is trying to establish official ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“An example and the most obvious one is a fiber optic connection. That’s the shortest route. It’s the safest route. It’s the most economic route,” Netanyahu said after talks with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.
The Israeli leader’s pitch is itself an extension of proposed energy links with Cyprus and Greece as part of growing collaboration on energy in the wake of discoveries of significant natural gas deposits in the economic zones of both Israel and Cyprus.
Netanyahu repeated that he and Christodoulides are looking to follow through on plans for a 2,000-megawatt undersea electricity cable known as the EurAsia Interconnector connecting Israel with Cyprus and Greece that aims to act as an energy supply back-up for both Israel and Cyprus.
“You want to be connected to other sources of power that can allow a more optimal use of power or give you power when there is a failure in your own country,” Netanyahu said. “That is something that we’re discussing seriously and we hope to achieve.”
Another energy link involves a Cypriot proposal to build a pipeline that would convey offshore natural gas from both Israel and Cyprus to the east Mediterranean island nation where it would be fuel for electricity generators or potentially be liquefied for export by ship.
Christodoulides said given Europe’s need for energy diversification in light of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Cyprus and Israel are looking to developing “a reliable energy corridor” linking the East Mediterranean basin to Europe through projects including gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas (LNG) processing plants.
Netanyahu said his government fully backs a European decision to create a regional fire fighting hub in Cyprus from which aircraft and other technology could be dispatched to help put out fires in neighboring countries.
“The climate isn’t going to get cooler. It’s going to get hotter. And with, you know, with the heating up of our region and the globe, firefighting becomes a really important thing. We can I think we can do it better together,” the Israeli leader said.
Talks between Christodoulides and Netanyahu precede a trilateral meeting with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Monday.
Since 2016 such meetings between the leaders of the three countries have become a staple of what they said are burgeoning ties that Netanyahu described as “a deep friendship, both personal, but also between our nations” that is “real” and “long overdue.”


Mayor of south Lebanon village killed in Israeli strike - Lebanon state news agency

Mayor of south Lebanon village killed in Israeli strike - Lebanon state news agency
Updated 1 min 20 sec ago
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Mayor of south Lebanon village killed in Israeli strike - Lebanon state news agency

Mayor of south Lebanon village killed in Israeli strike - Lebanon state news agency

DUBAI: The mayor of the south Lebanese village of Taybeh was killed by an Israeli strike on Monday, the Lebanese state news agency reported.


‘Worst Christmas ever’ in birthplace of Jesus as impact of war empties Bethlehem

‘Worst Christmas ever’ in birthplace of Jesus as impact of war empties Bethlehem
Updated 2 min 50 sec ago
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‘Worst Christmas ever’ in birthplace of Jesus as impact of war empties Bethlehem

‘Worst Christmas ever’ in birthplace of Jesus as impact of war empties Bethlehem
  • Since Oct. 7, West Bank has experienced a rise in attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians, which were already at a 15-year high this year before the war

BETHLEHEM: Bethlehem is normally at its busiest at Christmas but this year war has scared away tourists and pilgrims from the Palestinian town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, leaving hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops deserted.
With global headlines dominated since Oct. 7 by news of the Hamas attacks in southern Israel, followed by Israel’s military assault on Gaza and a rise in violence in the West Bank, business owners in Bethlehem said no one was coming.
“We have no guests. Not one,” said Joey Canavati, owner of the Alexander Hotel, whose family has lived and worked in Bethlehem for four generations.
“This is the worst Christmas ever. Bethlehem is shut down for Christmas. No Christmas tree, no joy, no Christmas spirit,” he said.
Located just south of Jerusalem, Bethlehem is heavily reliant for income and jobs on visitors from all over the world who come to see the Church of the Nativity, believed by Christians to stand on the site where Jesus was born.
Canavati said that before Oct. 7, his hotel was fully booked for Christmas, to the point that he was looking for rooms elsewhere in the town to help out people he could not fit in.
Since the war started, everyone canceled, including bookings for next year. “All we get on the email is cancelation after cancelation after cancelation,” said Canavati.
He took Reuters TV on a tour of the hotel, opening doors to empty rooms and showing the silent dining room.
“We had at least 120 people having dinner here every night and it was packed. The noise, the people. Empty. No Christmas breakfast, no Christmas dinner, no Christmas buffet,” he said.
Surge in attacks
Since the 1967 war between Israel and neighboring Arab countries, Israel has occupied the West Bank, which Palestinians want as the core of a future independent state.
Israel has built Jewish settlements, deemed illegal by most countries, across the territory. Israel disputes this, citing historical and biblical ties to the land. Several of its ministers live in settlements and favor their expansion.
Since Oct. 7, the West Bank has experienced a rise in attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians, which were already at a 15-year high this year before the Hamas attack.
Bethlehem’s Manger Square, a large paved space in front of the Church of the Nativity that usually serves as a focal point for Christmas celebrations, was quiet and almost empty, as were nearby streets where most souvenir shops were shuttered.
Rony Tabash, who sells crucifixes, statuettes of the Virgin Mary and other religious trinkets in his family’s store, was tidying shelves and merchandise to pass the time.
“We are almost two months without any pilgrim, any tourist,” he said, adding that he was keeping the store open as a way to stave off hopelessness.
“We want to feel that everything will be back, like to normal life,” he said.
Ala’a Salameh, owner of falafel restaurant Afteem, said his business was operating at 10 percent or 15 percent of capacity, catering for local Palestinian families rather than the usual influx of foreign visitors.
He said he was keeping the restaurant open because his staff needed the work.
“I have workers, so from where I can give them money to take and to feed their families, their kids?” he said.
“We are praying for peace. For peace. You know, Bethlehem is the city where peace was born, so it should be the messenger for peace to be spread all over the world.”


Israel bombs southern Gaza as Hamas demands prisoner releases

Israel bombs southern Gaza as Hamas demands prisoner releases
Updated 32 min 6 sec ago
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Israel bombs southern Gaza as Hamas demands prisoner releases

Israel bombs southern Gaza as Hamas demands prisoner releases
  • Hamas demands that all its members in Israeli prisons be freed in exchange for the hostages
  • Israel says there are still 137 hostages in Gaza, activists say around 7,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Israel bombed southern Gaza’s main city on Monday after Hamas warned no Israeli hostages would leave the territory alive unless its demands for prisoner releases were met.
Hamas triggered the conflict when it carried out the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli figures, and taking about 240 hostages back to Gaza.
Israel has responded with a military offensive that has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed at least 17,997 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The ministry said on Monday that dozens of people had been killed in Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip, while Israel’s army reported rocket fire from Gaza into Israel.
An AFP correspondent reported that Israeli strikes on Monday hit the main southern city of Khan Yunis, while Palestinian militants Islamic Jihad said they had blown up a house where Israeli soldiers were searching for a tunnel shaft.
Hamas on Sunday warned that Israel would not receive “their prisoners alive without an exchange and negotiation and meeting the demands of the resistance.”
Israel says there are still 137 hostages in Gaza, while activists say around 7,000 Palestinians are in Israeli jails.
Months of intense bombardment and clashes have left Gaza’s health system on the brink of collapse, with most hospitals no longer functioning and nearly two million people displaced.
AFP visited the bombed-out ruins of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and found at least 30,000 people taking refuge amid the rubble after Israeli forces raided the medical facility last month.
“Our life has become a living hell, there’s no electricity, no water, no flour, no bread, no medicine for the children who are all sick,” said Mohammed Daloul, 38, who fled there with his wife and three children.

No safe place
The UN estimates 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced from their homes — roughly half of them children.
Israel had urged people to seek refuge in the south, but after expanding the war to include southern targets, there are few safe places for civilians to go.
Humanitarian organizations continued to press Israel for greater protection of civilians in the conflict.
Mapping software deployed by Israel’s army to try to reduce non-combatant deaths was condemned as inadequate Sunday by Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories.
“A unilateral declaration by an occupying power that patches of land where there is no infrastructure, food, water, health care, or hygiene are ‘safe zones’ does not mean they are safe,” she said.
Only 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning at any capacity, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA.
“Gaza’s health system is on its knees and collapsing,” said World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as the agency called for immediate, unimpeded aid deliveries.
Israel’s army chief Herzi Halevi said Sunday his troops were using “significant force” in Gaza, hailing “significant achievements” in the war.
The army told AFP on Monday that 101 soldiers have died in the Gaza ground offensive, and previously put the number of wounded at around 600.
It said Sunday it had struck more than 250 targets in 24 hours, including “a Hamas military communications site,” “underground tunnel shafts” in southern Gaza, and a Hamas military command center in Shejaiya in Gaza City.
Some 7,000 “terrorists” have been killed, according to National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi.
“Hamas should not exist, because they are not human beings, after what I saw they did,” Menahem, a 22-year-old soldier wounded on October 7, told AFP during a military-organized tour that did not allow him to give his surname.

UN to demand ceasefire
The UN General Assembly will meet on Tuesday to discuss the situation in Gaza, its president said, after the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution for a ceasefire on Friday.
A draft of the text seen by AFP closely follows the language of Friday’s failed Security Council resolution, “expressing grave concern over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a leaders’ gathering in Qatar on Sunday that the Security Council’s “authority and credibility were severely undermined” by the US veto.
Qatar, where Hamas’s top leadership is based, said it was still working on a new truce like the week-long ceasefire it helped mediate last month that saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners and humanitarian aid.
But Israel’s relentless bombardment was “narrowing the window” for success, said Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday again rejected a ceasefire.
“With Hamas still alive, still intact and... with the stated intent of repeating October 7 again and again and again, that would simply perpetuate the problem,” he told ABC News.
But Blinken also said the United States was “deeply, deeply aware of the terrible human toll that this conflict is taking on innocent men, women and children.”
There are fears of regional escalation with frequent cross-border exchanges between Israel and Lebanese militants, and attacks by pro-Iran groups against US and allied forces in Iraq and Syria.
Syria’s state news agency said Israel had carried out strikes near Damascus late Sunday, but air defense systems had prevented any significant damage.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the strikes had targeted Hezbollah sites in the Sayeda Zeinab district and near Damascus airport.
Meanwhile, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels threatened to attack any vessels heading to Israel unless more aid was allowed into Gaza.
France said Sunday one of its frigates in the Red Sea had shot down two drones launched from Yemen.


UN council envoys to visit Gaza crossing as crisis spirals

UN council envoys to visit Gaza crossing as crisis spirals
Updated 11 December 2023
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UN council envoys to visit Gaza crossing as crisis spirals

UN council envoys to visit Gaza crossing as crisis spirals
  • The informal one-day trip organized by the UAE and Egypt comes amid a spiralling humanitarian crisis in war-torn Gaza
  • The US, which vetoed Friday the Security Council resolution, did not send a representative as did France

AL-ARISH: UN Security Council ambassadors arrived Monday in Egypt to visit the Rafah border crossing with the besieged Gaza Strip, days after the United States vetoed a council resolution for a ceasefire.
The informal one-day trip organized by the United Arab Emirates and Egypt comes amid a spiralling humanitarian crisis in war-torn Gaza, described as a “graveyard” by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Around a dozen ambassadors are taking part in the visit from countries including Russia and the United Kingdom.
But the United States, which vetoed Friday the Security Council resolution did not send a representative as did France.
“There is no justification to turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering inflicted on the Palestinian people in Gaza,” an Egyptian foreign ministry official told the envoys during a briefing following their arrival.
Lana Nusseibeh, the UAE’s envoy to the Security Council, said member states were taking part in the trip in their “national and personal capacities.”
She said the visit aims to help them “understand not only the suffering and destruction experienced by the people of Gaza but also their hope and their strength.”
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA briefed the envoys on the harrowing humanitarian situation in Gaza before he headed to the embattled territory for his third visit since the start of the war in October between Israel and Hamas militants.
There is “deep frustration disappointment, and some outrage also that... we can’t even reach a consensus for a ceasefire,” Lazzarini said after the meeting.
“There is no real safe place in the Gaza Strip, even the UN premises currently hosting more than 1 people have been hit,” he said.
The situation for Palestinians, Lazzarini said, is desperate.
“Hunger is prevailing in Gaza. More and more people haven’t eaten for one day, two days, three days... people lack absolutely everything.”
The diplomats are due to visit the Rafah crossing, the only gateway into the narrow enclave, as well as a hospital treating Palestinian patients in the Egyptian town of El-Arish near the Gaza border.
The war on Gaza was triggered when Palestinian Islamist group Hamas carried out the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, according to Israeli figures, and taking about 240 hostages back to Gaza.
Israel has responded with a military offensive that has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed at least 17,997 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
The UN estimates 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced — roughly half of them children — by the war and Israel’s intense bombing campaign that has reduced vast areas to rubble.
The war and siege have taken a heavy toll on basic services, especially health care, with only 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals functioning at any capacity, according to the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, and dire shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine.
Israel had urged civilians to seek refuge in Gaza’s far south, but the army has kept striking targets throughout the territory, leading to UN warnings that there is no safe place left in Gaza.


UN General Assembly meets Tuesday to discuss Gaza

UN General Assembly meets Tuesday to discuss Gaza
Updated 11 December 2023
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UN General Assembly meets Tuesday to discuss Gaza

UN General Assembly meets Tuesday to discuss Gaza
  • The General Assembly, whose resolutions are nonbinding, could vote on a text for a cease-fire resolution at the meeting
  • The draft reportedly follows Friday’s vetoed Security Council resolution, ‘expressing grave concern’ over Gaza situation

UNITED NATIONS, United States: The UN General Assembly will meet on Tuesday to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, officials and diplomats said Sunday, after the United States last week vetoed a Security Council resolution for a ceasefire.

A special meeting of the General Assembly has been called for Tuesday afternoon by the representatives for Egypt and Mauritania “in their respective capacities as Chair of the Arab Group and Chair of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation,” a spokesperson for the Assembly president said.

According to diplomatic sources, the General Assembly, whose resolutions are nonbinding, could vote on a text for a ceasefire resolution at the meeting.

A draft of the text seen by AFP closely follows the language of Friday’s vetoed Security Council resolution, “expressing grave concern over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.”

It calls for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” as well as the “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”

On Friday the United States blocked the ceasefire resolution which came after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called an emergency meeting of the Security Council, deploying the rarely-used Article 99 of the UN Charter to bring to the council’s attention “any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.”

The body’s “authority and credibility” have been “severely undermined” by its delayed response to the war, Guterres said afterward.

At the end of October, in another of its resolutions, the General Assembly called for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas.

Two weeks later the Security Council broke its silence on the war for the first time by calling for “extended pauses and humanitarian corridors” — using less clear language than a ceasefire or a truce.