Bahrain crown prince calls for Hamas-Israel ‘hostage trade’

Bahrain’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister, Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa attends the IISS Manama Dialogue in Manama, Bahrain. (Reuters)

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Updated 17 November 2023

Reuters

November 17, 2023 22:09

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Bahrain crown prince calls for Hamas-Israel ‘hostage trade’

Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa said security would not be realized without a two-state solution
Prince Salman, speaking at the IISS Manama Dialogue, also called for Palestinian elections once the war ends

Updated 17 November 2023

Reuters

November 17, 2023 22:09

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MANAMA: The crown prince of Bahrain on Friday called for a “hostage trade” between Hamas and Israel in order to achieve a break in hostilities that he said could lead to an end to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa also said that security would not be realized without a two-state solution, in which he described the US as “indispensable” in achieving.
“It is a time for straight talking,” he said, urging Hamas to release Israeli women and children held hostage in Gaza and for Israel in exchange to release from its prisons Palestinian women and children, who he described as non-combatants.
“The intention is to break so people can take stock, can bury their dead, people can finally start to grieve and maybe people can start to ask themselves about the intelligence failure that led to this crisis in the first place,” he said
Qatar has been leading mediation efforts between Hamas and Israeli officials for the release of more than 240 hostages.
Bahrain established ties with Israel in 2020 under the US-brokered Abraham Accords, driven in part by shared concerns over Iran. Bahrain is an important security partner of the US, hosting the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
Prince Salman described the situation in Gaza as “intolerable” and condemned both Hamas for its Oct. 7 attack and Israel for the “air campaign” it launched in response.
He outlined what he said were red lines in the conflict, including the forced displacement of Palestinians, “now or ever,” an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza, and a military threat from Gaza toward Israel.
Prince Salman, speaking at the IISS Manama Dialogue, also called for Palestinian elections, once the war ends, that would lead to a “just and lasting peace” that he described as the establishment of an Palestinian state which he said would also lead to security and stability for Israel.
“This conflict has been an ongoing, open wound in the Middle East for the past 80 years,” he said.
More than 12,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault on the coastal strip, according to Gaza health officials. Israeli authorities say 1,200 were killed on Oct. 7 and over 200 Israelis and foreign citizens taken hostage.
An exchange of hostages was the only way to achieve a necessary break in violence so that humanitarian aid like medicine, fuel to power medical machines, and food could be provided to the Palestinians in Gaza, Prince Salman said.

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Reuters denies reporting of ballistic missile attack against Israel

Updated 5 sec ago

Reuters

August 03, 2024 01:50

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Reuters denies reporting of ballistic missile attack against Israel

“Any claims that Reuters reported imminent preparations for a ballistic attack by Iran are false"

Updated 5 sec ago

Reuters

August 03, 2024 01:50

WASHINGTON: Reuters denied on Friday that it had reported on imminent preparations for a ballistic missile attack against Israel, after reports circulated on social media citing the news agency as saying this.
“Any claims that Reuters reported imminent preparations for a ballistic attack by Iran, including that satellites and radars have picked up ballistic missiles and drones leaving Iran, Yemen and Iraq toward Israel, or that Turkiye and Iraq have closed their airspace, are false. Reuters did not report this,” a spokesperson said.

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Topics: War on Gaza

Israel advances most West Bank settlements in decades: EU

A general view of the West Bank Jewish settlement of Efrat, on Jan. 30, 2023. (AP)

Updated 03 August 2024

AFP

August 03, 2024 00:20

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Israel advances most West Bank settlements in decades: EU

Excluding east Jerusalem, some 490,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank alongside some three million Palestinians

Updated 03 August 2024

AFP

August 03, 2024 00:20

JERUSALEM: Israel advanced last year the highest number of settlements in the occupied West Bank since the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, the European Union’s representative office in the Palestinian territories said on Friday.
Plans for 12,349 housing units moved toward approval in the West Bank, the EU office said, warning of the impact on a potential two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Another 18,333 units moved forward in the planning process in annexed east Jerusalem, the EU office said.
The total — 30,682 units in both the West Bank and east Jerusalem — is the highest since 2012, it added.
The report comes at a time of heightened tensions in the West Bank and east Jerusalem over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, which has been raging since October 7.
“The EU has repeatedly called on Israel not to proceed with plans under its settlement policy and to halt all settlement activities,” the EU office said.
“It remains the EU’s firm position that settlements are illegal under international law.
“Israel’s decision to advance plans for the approval and construction of new settlement units in 2023 further undermines the prospects of a viable two-state solution.”
All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.
Dozens of unauthorized settlements have sprung up in the territories — ranging from a few tents grouped together to prefabricated huts that have been linked to public electricity and water supplies.
Excluding east Jerusalem, some 490,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank alongside some three million Palestinians. Far-right parties in Israel’s governing coalition have pressed for an acceleration of settlement expansion.
Since the start of the Gaza war, violence between Palestinians and Israeli troops and settlers has intensified.
At least 594 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers in the West Bank since October 7, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry figures.
At least 17 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed by Palestinian attacks in the West Bank over the same period, according to official Israeli figures.
The landmark Oslo Accords codified mutual recognition of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, as well as interim Palestinian self-government.
Last year Norwegian peace worker Jan Egeland, one of the deal’s architects, told AFP that he now considered the accords dead.

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Topics: War on Gaza Palestine Gaza US West Bank

Thousands throng Beirut show as Hezbollah vows revenge

Updated 03 August 2024

AFP

August 03, 2024 00:51

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Thousands throng Beirut show as Hezbollah vows revenge

Foreign airlines have suspended or canceled flights to Beirut but many Lebanese expatriates are still pouring in, although some have cut their holidays short

Updated 03 August 2024

AFP

August 03, 2024 00:51

BEIRUT, Lebanon: As Hezbollah’s leader threatened Israel with crushing retaliation for killing their top commander, thousands in Beirut flocked to a dance extravaganza in a stark illustration of Lebanon’s deep divisions.
In the capital’s southern suburbs — a Hezbollah stronghold — tens of thousands of black-clad women and men in military uniform joined Thursday’s funeral procession for slain commander Fuad Shukr.
Across the city on the Beirut waterfront, nearly 8,000 people attended a spectacular dance show that evening by the Mayyas troupe that won the “America’s Got Talent” television contest in 2022.
“I am sad people are dying in southern Lebanon and Gaza, but resistance is not just about carrying a gun and fighting,” said 45-year-old Olga Farhat.
“Joy, art and celebrating life is also a form of resistance,” the human rights activist told AFP.
Fireworks opened the dance show, hours after Hezbollah buried Shukr, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in the southern suburbs on Tuesday.
The show entitled ‘Qumi’ — rise up in Arabic — was an ode to the Lebanese capital that has endured decades of conflict, upheaval and a years-long economic crisis.
“There is a split in the country between those who don’t care for war and feel that... Hezbollah wants to impose its collective identity on them, while the other group is fighting,” Farhat said.
“I understand both points of view, but we are tired of wars and crises, we want to enjoy life.”

In the southern suburbs, thousands of Hezbollah supporters chanted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
Across the city, dozens of Mayyas dancers performed a moving tribute to war-battered south Lebanon, from where Hezbollah has been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire with the Israel army since the Gaza war began on October 7.
“I grew up during Lebanon’s (1975-1990) civil war and I was raised to believe in the Palestinian cause,” Farhat said.
“But today I say ‘Lebanon first’.”
The raid that killed Shukr and an Iranian military adviser also cost the lives of three women and two young siblings, authorities said.
In a video clip circulating online, their bereaved mother said their lives were a “sacrifice for you, Sayyed (Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah).”
Speaking from the southern suburbs, Hussein Nasreddine, 36, said: “We love life like everyone else... but if Israel drags us into war, it is our duty to die as martyrs.”
The cross-border violence since October has killed at least 542 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters but also including 114 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
On the Israeli side, the army reports 47 dead, including on the annexed Golan Heights.

In June, the head of the Hezbollah bloc in the Lebanese parliament, Mohammad Raad, who lost a son in the border clashes, lambasted Lebanese “who want to go to night clubs... beaches, and enjoy their lives” as war rages in the south.
This week, independent lawmaker Mark Daou angered Hezbollah supporters by posting a photograph of Thursday night’s show with the comment: “The strongest response to Israel is the culture of life and beauty.”
Daou, who was elected after mass protests against the political leadership responsible for the country’s slide into economic crisis, told AFP he refused to “reduce Lebanon to a battlefield.”
Many politicians, especially from Lebanon’s Christian community, have criticized Hezbollah for risking war with Israel.
Peace-building expert Sonia Nakad said “the bigger the tragedy, the greater the division” in Lebanon.
In Lebanon, power is shared according to sectarian quotas, with communities so divided about the country’s past that events following 1943 are missing from official history books.
Each party “wants the other to be an exact copy of them to be able to co-exist, while they are opposites in everything,” she said.
“The Lebanese have yet to renounce using violence against each other, no matter how big their disagreements,” she said.
Foreign airlines have suspended or canceled flights to Beirut but many Lebanese expatriates are still pouring in, although some have cut their holidays short.
Rabab Abu Hamdan said she planned to go back to the Gulf after feeling “very stressed in the past few days.”
“Despite the difficult circumstances, Lebanon remains the best vacation destination,” she said.

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Topics: War on Gaza Palestine Gaza US Lebanon

US warns a famine in Sudan is on pace to be the deadliest in decades as the world looks elsewhere

A displaced Sudanese woman rests inside a shelter at Zamzam camp, in North Darfur, Sudan, August 1, 2024. (REUTERS)

Updated 03 August 2024

AP

August 03, 2024 00:26

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US warns a famine in Sudan is on pace to be the deadliest in decades as the world looks elsewhere

As most of the world paid attention to conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and the larger Middle East, the Sudanese war quickly grew into the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with 11 million displaced

Updated 03 August 2024

AP

August 03, 2024 00:26

WASHINGTON: The newly confirmed famine at one of the sprawling camps for war-displaced people in Sudan’s Darfur region is growing uncontrolled as the country’s combatants block aid, and it threatens to grow bigger and deadlier than the world’s last major famine 13 years ago, US officials warned on Friday.
The US Agency for International Development, the UN World Food Program and other independent and government humanitarian agencies were intensifying calls for a ceasefire and aid access across Sudan. That’s after international experts in the Famine Review Committee formally confirmed Thursday that the starvation in at least one of three giant makeshift camps, holding up to 600,000 people displaced by Sudan’s more than yearlong war, had grown into a full famine.
Two US officials briefed reporters on their analysis of the crisis on Friday following the famine finding, which is only the third in the 20-year history of the Famine Review Committee. The US officials spoke on the condition of anonymity as the ground rules for their general briefing.
The last major famine, in Somalia, was estimated to have killed a quarter of a million people in 2011, half of them children under 5 years old.
The blocks that Sudan’s warring sides are putting on food and other aid for the civilians trapped in the Zamzam camp are realizing “the worst fears of the humanitarian community,” one of the US officials said.
War in the northern African country erupted in April 2023 when two rival generals, both with international backers, suddenly opened a deadly battle for control of Sudan’s capital, sidelining an existing civilian transitional government that Sudanese had hoped would bring stability to the country. On one side, the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, grew out of the Janjaweed militias notorious for their mass attacks, rape and forced displacement of civilians in Darfur in 2003.
As most of the world paid attention to conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and the larger Middle East, the Sudanese war quickly grew into the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with 11 million displaced. Unlike the earlier war, acute hunger is almost countrywide.
Aid workers were last able to get humanitarian relief to the trapped civilians at the camps in Darfur in April. The RSF has the area under siege and is accused of attacking hospitals, camps and other civilian targets.
World Food Program director Cindy McCain urged the international community in a statement after the famine declaration to work for a ceasefire. “It is the only way we will reverse a humanitarian catastrophe that is destabilizing this entire region of Africa,” she said.
USAID Director Samantha Power stressed the famine was entirely man-made. Both sides, “enabled by external patrons, are using starvation as a weapon of war,” she said in a statement.
The US officials Friday pointed to Washington as the largest source of aid — the little that gets through — for Sudan. They countered questions about why the Biden administration was not using air drops or any of the other direct interventions by the US military to get food to people in Darfur that they were in Gaza, saying the terrain in Sudan was different.
The United States and Saudi Arabia have invited the two sides for ceasefire talks in Switzerland in August. The RSF leader said it planned to attend, while the military-controlled Sudanese government stated that any negotiation before implementing the Jeddah Declaration “wouldn’t be acceptable to the Sudanese people.”
The Jeddah Declaration of Commitment to Protect Civilians passed last year meant to end the conflict, but neither side committed to its objectives.
International experts use set criteria to confirm the existence of famines. Formal declarations of famines are usually made by the countries themselves or the United Nations, and politics often slows such declarations.

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Topics: Sudan conflict Sudan UN World Food Program

Libya’s $70bn wealth fund sees thaw in UN asset freeze by year-end

Updated 03 August 2024

Reuters

August 03, 2024 00:14

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Libya’s $70bn wealth fund sees thaw in UN asset freeze by year-end

Of its estimated $70 billion in assets, the fund has $29 billion in global real estate, $23 billion in deposits invested in Europe and Bahrain and $8 billion in equities spread over more than 300 companies around the world

Updated 03 August 2024

Reuters

August 03, 2024 00:14

LONDON: The Libyan Investment Authority is expecting UN sign-off by the end of the year to actively manage its $70 billion in assets for the first time in more than a decade, its chief executive told Reuters.
The LIA, set up under Muammar Qaddafi in 2006 to manage the country’s oil wealth, has been under a United Nations asset freeze since the 2011 revolution that toppled Qaddafi.
This means that in order for Africa’s largest sovereign wealth fund to make new investments, or even move cash from negative interest rate accounts, where they have been losing money, the LIA needs UN Security Council sign-off.
Chief Executive Ali Mahmoud Mohamed said the authority is confident the council will provide the landmark approval by November or December for an investment plan it submitted in March.
“We believe our investment plan with be accepted ... we don’t think they will refuse it,” Mohamed told Reuters via a translator.
The first of LIA’s four-part plan is the “very simple” step of reinvesting money that has built up during the freeze, such as payouts from bond holdings.
The LIA has previously tried to actively manage its funds. But in the turmoil following Qaddafi’s ouster, it at one point had dueling chairmen, backed by different factions within the country. A British court ruled in 2020 in Mohamed’s favor. In 2020, the LIA said a Deloitte audit showed the freeze had cost it some $4.1 billion in potential equity returns.
He said transparency has since improved; the LIA released audited financial statements in 2021, covering 2019. It aims to publish the 2020 numbers in the coming months and provide them annually from next year.
And while the LIA was 98th out of 100 sovereign funds in a 2020 ranking of sustainability and governance by Global SWF, an industry data specialist, it stood at 51st this year.
Of its estimated $70 billion in assets, the fund has $29 billion in global real estate, $23 billion in deposits invested in Europe and Bahrain and $8 billion in equities spread over more than 300 companies around the world. It also has roughly $2 billion worth of matured bonds.
The UN Security Council Committee was not immediately available to comment. Last year, after meeting with the LIA, its members “noted the progress made on the implementation of the LIA’s Transformation Strategy” and stressed “the importance of guaranteeing the frozen funds for the benefit of the Libyan people.”
Mohamed said that it is also planning to request approval this year for two further investment plan “pillars” — one that covers its share portfolio and another that relates to domestic investment plan.
The LIA is targeting domestic investments in solar power and helping increase oil exports. Libya is one of Africa’s largest oil exporters, pumping roughly 1.2 million barrels per day.
If the UN does not approve its investment proposals, Mohamed said “we will keep trying...we will keep asking and requesting.”

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Topics: Libya UN

Bahrain crown prince calls for Hamas-Israel ‘hostage trade’

Bahrain crown prince calls for Hamas-Israel ‘hostage trade’

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Israel advances most West Bank settlements in decades: EU

Israel advances most West Bank settlements in decades: EU

Lebanon has right to defend its land amid systematic Israeli escalation, Mikati tells army officers

Hezbollah resumes steady rocket, artillery fire against Israel

Thousands throng Beirut show as Hezbollah vows revenge

Thousands throng Beirut show as Hezbollah vows revenge

Lebanon has right to defend its land amid systematic Israeli escalation, Mikati tells army officers

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US warns a famine in Sudan is on pace to be the deadliest in decades as the world looks elsewhere

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Libya’s $70bn wealth fund sees thaw in UN asset freeze by year-end

Libya’s $70bn wealth fund sees thaw in UN asset freeze by year-end

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Bahrain crown prince calls for Hamas-Israel ‘hostage trade’

Bahrain crown prince calls for Hamas-Israel ‘hostage trade’

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