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WASHINGTON — US President Joe Biden on Tuesday nominated former treasury secretary Jack Lew to be ambassador to Israel, tapping a veteran political player with close ties to Israel at a turbulent time between the allies.

Lew, an Orthodox Jew who observes the weekly Sabbath, will play a key role in managing the relationship as Biden attempts to broker a potentially historic deal for Saudi Arabia to recognise Israel.

The nomination comes after a spike in tensions, with Biden criticising an overhaul of the judiciary by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in what critics say is a threat to democracy by the most right-wing government in Israel's history.

Lew will need confirmation from the Senate, where Biden's Democratic Party retains control but Republicans ahead of the 2024 US election could fight against the nomination.

In a formal statement, the White House cited the "distinguished career in public service" of Lew, who has served in successive Democratic administrations.

Under Barack Obama, Lew — a trained lawyer — served as treasury secretary and earlier as White House chief of staff, director of the Office of Management and Budget and as a deputy secretary of state to Hillary Clinton.

David Makovsky, a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that Lew, while more of a budgetary than a foreign policy expert, would be the first former Cabinet secretary to become ambassador to Israel.

"Having him there is a signal by the president that he greatly values the bilateral relationship and that he wants someone of stature," said Makovsky, a longtime friend of Lew.

"It's going to come at a difficult time," he said.

Lew would succeed Thomas Nides, another veteran Democratic political operative who made headlines with his unusually blunt language on Netanyahu's judicial reforms.

Nides cited personal reasons as he left the position. His wife, Virginia Moseley, is a senior executive at CNN who remained in the United States during his tenure.

Hopes and tensions 

In the latest outreach, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke separately on Tuesday with Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, amid Saudi insistence on progress on the Palestinian issue before any normalisation.

With Abbas, Blinken discussed "support for a two-state solution and opposition to actions endangering its viability," a State Department statement said.

Brett McGurk, the coordinator for Middle East policy at the White House, is also visiting the region. Saudi Arabia has been seeking military and nuclear commitments from the United States in return for recognising Israel, with official sources cautioning that no agreement is imminent.

Biden describes himself as a friend of Israel and initially sought to minimise tensions with Netanyahu, who is popular among Republicans and had a toxic relationship with Obama.

But Biden has also kept Netanyahu at arm’s length, with a visit to the United States expected only later this year.

The Biden administration has criticised the growth of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and returned to a pre-Trump policy of barring US funds for work at universities on occupied territory, triggering furious denunciations by Republicans who have vowed to use their power in Congress to reverse course.

Biden, however, has maintained one of Trump’s key decisions of moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which Israel considers its eternal capital but Palestinians also want as the capital of an elusive future state.

MANAMA — Israel's foreign minister agreed on Monday with his Bahraini counterpart to boost trade relations, during his first visit to one of the two Gulf Arab states to establish ties with Israel.

"The foreign minister and I agreed that we should work together to increase the number of direct flights, the tourism, the trade volume, the investment," Eli Cohen said during a ceremony to inaugurate Israel's new embassy.

The embassy in the capital Manama will replace the first embassy Israel opened in 2021, a year after it established diplomatic relations with Bahrain as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords.

Under the accords, Israel also established ties with the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.

Monday's ceremony was attended by Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani, who said the event signified a "shared commitment to strengthening and cultivating bilateral relations".

"As we build into deeper diplomatic endeavours and engage in bilateral cooperation across various sectors, the establishment of this new embassy assumes a pivotal role in our collaboration," he told reporters.

Cohen arrived in Bahrain on Sunday, accompanied by a business delegation of more than 30 companies working in high-tech, logistics and real estate.

Earlier on Monday, he met Crown Prince Salman Bin Hamad Al Khalifa and discussed "the importance of advancing a free trade agreement and projects to connect youths in Israel and Bahrain", Cohen posted on X, formerly Twitter.

"We look forward to expanding the circle of peace and normalisation to other states in the area," he said.

Despite now having steady ties with Israel, Bahrain and the UAE have joined other Gulf Arab states in issuing a series of condemnations against it this year.

The storming of Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and raids by Israeli forces on Nablus and the Jenin Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank were among Israeli moves that sparked a Gulf outcry.

However, Cohen’s trip coincides with growing speculation about an impending normalisation deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which is not a signatory to the Abraham Accords.

Riyadh and Washington have held talks on Saudi conditions for progress on normalisation with Israel, according to people briefed on the meetings.

“There are more Arab and Muslim countries that have shown interest in taking a step forward in joining the peace circle,” Cohen told a press conference in Manama, without naming them.

In Bahrain, Cohen also visited the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet base where he discussed maritime security cooperation, according to a statement by US Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT).

The visit “underscores our expanding partnership with Israel”, NAVCENT commander Vice-Admiral Brad Cooper was quoted as saying.

PORT SUDAN, Sudan — War-torn Sudan’s army chief returned to Port Sudan on Monday after visiting Juba for talks with South Sudan’s president, as the United Nations warned the number of refugees could double by the end of the year.

Abdel Fattah Al Burhan’s meeting with President Salva Kiir was his second trip abroad since the war with paramilitaries began in April, following a visit to Cairo last week.

The meeting covered “efforts by regional countries, including South Sudan, to address the crisis”, according to a statement from Sudan’s ruling sovereign council.

Sudan’s acting foreign minister, Ali Al Sadiq, voiced hope that South Sudan, which declared its independence in 2011 after two decades of civil war, could mediate in the deadly conflict.

“We in Sudan feel that South Sudan is the best country to mediate the conflict in Sudan, because we have been one country for so long and we know each other, we know the problems and we know our needs,” he said in a statement.

The war between Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has killed at least 5,000 people, according to conservative estimates from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project.

It has also spurred a massive exodus, with 4.8 million people fleeing their homes — 1 million of whom have crossed borders — according to the UN.

In Geneva, the UN refugee agency said it and partners were appealing for $1 billion “to provide essential aid and protection to over 1.8 million people expected to arrive in five neighbouring countries by the end of 2023, fleeing ongoing conflict in Sudan”.

“This is a two-fold increase of what was initially estimated in May to be required to respond to the crisis, as displacement and needs continue to soar,” UNHCR said in a statement.

Millions in the Sudanese capital Khartoum have not had a day of peace from devastating air strikes, artillery fire and street battles since April 15.

Residents again reported “intensified shelling” on Monday, as the army and the RSF targeted each other’s bases with “artillery and rocket fire”.

In central Khartoum, air strikes left a massive plume of smoke rising above the buildings, witnesses said.

The Sudanese Armed Forces control the skies and have carried out regular air strikes, while RSF fighters dominate the streets.

Most of the fighting has taken place in the capital and the western region of Darfur, where residents reported fighter jets targeting “RSF leadership” in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state and the country’s second biggest city.

Burhan’s visit to South Sudan comes after repeated diplomatic efforts to end the fighting have floundered.

The early months of the war saw multiple truces brokered by the United States and Saudi Arabia being systematically violated, before the two mediators adjourned talks in June.

South Sudan has sought to play a mediating role to try to end the conflict.

Almost 250,000 people — including Sudanese refugees and South Sudanese returnees — have crossed the border since the war began, according to the UN.

“Those arriving in remote border areas find themselves in desperate circumstances due to inadequate services, poor infrastructure and limited access,” the UNHCR regional refugee coordinator for the Sudan situation, Mamadou Dian Balde, said on Monday.

UNHCR said that so far, only 19 per cent of the $1 billion it appealed for had been received, as humanitarian groups scramble to provide refugees with critical necessities like water, food and shelter.

The dire health situation among new arrivals requires particularly urgent attention, it said, pointing to high malnutrition rates and outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and measles.

In Chad, where over 400,000 people have fled horrific violence in Darfur, aid group Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned that the desperate need in refugee camps had reached a level where “people are feeding their children on insects, grass and leaves”.

Amid severe shortages, “some have gone five weeks without receiving food”, Susana Borges, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Adre, said in a statement.

Camps also lack water, sanitation, shelter and medical care.

“The most urgent health needs we are dealing with are malaria, diarrhoea and malnutrition,” Borges added.

Dozens of children under five have already died of malnutrition in Chad camps, according to the UN.

KIRKUK — A curfew was lifted in the multi-ethnic Iraqi city of Kirkuk on Sunday after protests turned violent and led to the deaths of four people.

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani imposed the curfew on Saturday evening after rival protests — between Kurdish residents on one side and Turkmen and Arabs on the other — descended into deadly unrest despite a security presence.

Tensions had been brewing for nearly a week in Kirkuk, a northern city which has historically been disputed between the federal government in Baghdad and authorities in the autonomous Kurdistan region of the north.

The curfew "has been lifted", General Kawa Gharib, the police chief in Kirkuk, told AFP. "The situation is now stable throughout the city."

Sudani called for a commission of inquiry into the incident.

Four Kurds were killed and 15 people wounded during Saturday's violence, according to the latest toll issued Sunday by Amer Shuani, the local police spokesman.

At least three of the four victims were shot dead, health officials said, but it was unclear who was responsible.

Security forces had been deployed as a buffer to keep the rival groups apart, and an AFP correspondent said they had to fire warning shots to disperse the Kurds.

Arab and Turkmen demonstrators had staged a sit-in near the headquarters of the Iraqi security forces in Kirkuk province on August 28, after media reports that Sudani had ordered the site to be handed over to the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), which used to occupy it.

In response, Kurdish protesters tried to reach the headquarters on Saturday, and the situation degenerated.

On Sunday morning General Jabbar Naeema Al Taee, Kirkuk's top security official, told AFP that the building at the centre of the tensions was "under the control of the army" of Iraq and the sit-in was over.

In 2014, the KDP and the peshmerga, the security forces of the Kurdistan region, took control of Kirkuk, an oil-producing region of northern Iraq.

However, federal troops expelled them in autumn 2017 after tensions over a referendum on Kurdish independence.

WAD MADANI, Sudan — Five civilians were killed by bombs that "fell on their homes" in Khartoum, a Sudanese medical source told AFP, a day after an air strike in the city's south killed at least 20 civilians.

Residents of the war-torn capital reported the city was again pummelled by artillery and rocket fire Sunday, in the fifth month of war between the army and paramilitary fighters.

"The death toll from the aerial bombardment" in southern Khartoum late Saturday "has risen to 20 civilian fatalities", according to a statement from the neighbourhood's resistance committee. They are among many volunteer groups that used to organise pro-democracy demonstrations and now provide assistance to families caught in the line of fire.

In an earlier statement, they said the victims included two children, and warned that more fatalities went unrecorded, as "their bodies could not be moved to the hospital because they were severely burned or torn to pieces in the bombing".

Since war began between the regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces( RSF) on April 15, around 5,000 people have been killed, according to conservative estimates from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project.

The Sudanese Armed Forces control the skies and have carried out regular air strikes while RSF fighters dominate the streets of the capital.

Western countries have accused the paramilitaries and allied militias of killings based on ethnicity in the western Darfur region, and the International Criminal Court has opened a new probe into alleged war crimes.

The army has also been accused of abuses, including a July 8 air strike that killed around two dozen civilians.

More than half of Sudan’s 48 million people now require humanitarian aid and protection, and six million are “one step away from famine”, according to the United Nations.

Despite insecurity, looting and bureaucratic obstacles, the world body says it has been able to get aid to millions of those in need.

The war has internally displaced around 3.8 million people, the UN says, while another million have crossed borders into neighbouring countries.

Among the displaced are nearly 2.8 million from Khartoum, according to the International Organisation for Migration. That is more than half the capital’s pre-war population of around five million.

Those who remain shelter from the crossfire, rationing water and electricity.

In Khartoum, resistance committees have been some of the only sources of relief, helping dig survivors out of the rubble of bombed buildings, braving gunfire on the streets to deliver medicine and documenting atrocities committed by both sides.

Nearly five months in, the violence shows no signs of abating.

Witnesses on Sunday again reported the army targeting RSF positions in northern Khartoum with “artillery and rocket fire”.