Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Monday for "urgent steps" to calm spiralling violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, after high-level talks in Jerusalem.

Washington's top diplomat travelled to Jerusalem on the second leg of his Middle East tour, after meeting Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El Sisi and foreign minister in Cairo.

Israel is reeling from an attack Friday that killed seven civilians outside a synagogue in occupied East Jerusalem, a day after the deadliest army raid in years in the occupied West Bank claimed 10 Palestinian lives.

Following talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blinken urged "all sides now to take urgent steps to restore calm, to deescalate".

"We want to make sure that there's an environment in which we can, I hope, at some point, create the conditions where we can start to restore a sense of security for Israelis and Palestinians alike," he said.

In the latest bloodshed, Israeli forces Monday killed a Palestinian driver in the West Bank, officials on both sides said, with the army saying the car had hit a soldier's leg before speeding off.

Since the start of the year, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of 35 Palestinian adults and children — including attackers, fighters and civilians.

Over the same period six Israeli civilians, including a child, and one Ukrainian civilian have been killed. All were shot dead in the attack Friday outside the synagogue in an East Jerusalem settlement.

The United States has historically taken a lead on Middle East diplomacy, and Egypt, which has relations with Israel, has long served as a mediator in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Following what Blinken described as “very candid” discussion with Netanyahu, the top US diplomat is due to meet Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen.

Blinken envoy will also travel to Ramallah in the West Bank for talks with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas.

Blinken’s long-planned visit has taken on a new urgency amid the spiralling violence.

The fatal east Jerusalem shooting was preceded by the Israeli forces’ deadliest operation in the West Bank in years.

Ten people were killed Thursday in the densely populated Jenin refugee camp, in a raid Israel said targeted Islamic Jihad operatives.

The military later hit sites in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave.

The latest bloodshed has heightened international concern, with Pope Francis on Sunday deploring the “death spiral”.

French President Emmanuel Macron urged all parties to avoid feeding a “spiral of violence” and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for “maximum responsibility” on all sides.

Blinken on Monday met Sisi and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.

Blinken commended Sisi for “Egypt’s important role in promoting stability in the region” and “discussed ongoing efforts to deescalate tensions between Israelis and Palestinians”, said the State Department.

Blinken’s Israel visit is part of the Biden administration’s efforts to engage quickly with Netanyahu, who had tense relations with the previous Democratic president Barack Obama.

While there, Blinken reiterated US support for a Palestinian state, a prospect few expect to advance under the new Israeli government.

BEIRUT — A total of 10 people were killed in a series of drone strikes targeting pro-Iran factions in eastern Syria, including three dead in strikes on Monday, a war monitor said.

A pro-Iran commander was among the three killed in the drone strikes Monday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that they had been inspecting the site of strikes that had killed seven others the previous evening.

"A commander in an Iran-backed group and two of his companions, all of them non-Syrian, were killed this morning after renewed drone strikes," the observatory said on Monday.

Pro-Iran factions, including Iraqi groups as well as Lebanon's powerful Hizbollah, have a major presence around the Iraq-Syria border, and are heavily deployed south and west of the Euphrates in Syria's Deir Ezzor province.

The commander's pick-up truck was targeted while he was inspecting the site of the Sunday evening strike that destroyed a convoy of six refrigerated trucks transporting Iranian weapons to Syria from Iraq.

The convoy was struck in the Albu Kamal border region, said the observatory, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria.

The seven killed Sunday were truck drivers and their assistants, all of them non-Syrians, the Observatory said, adding that they were "killed as a result of unidentified aircraft targeting a convoy of Iran-backed groups".

The monitor could not verify the identities of the victims.

Iran-backed groups 

An Iraqi border official, however, told AFP that the vehicles targeted in Sunday's attack were Iraqi trucks.

But the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the press, said that the trucks were not transporting Iraqi goods and had crossed illegally into Syria.

"Iraq does not export anything to Syria," he said Monday.

No country claimed the assault, but Israel has carried out hundreds of air and missile strikes against Iran-backed and government forces in Syria, where the US military is also active.

“The trucks were transporting Iranian weapons,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman had told AFP Sunday.

Tehran provides military support to its ally Damascus in Syria’s civil war, including through armed factions.

The strikes hit a convoy of trucks, but also the headquarters of Iran-backed groups in the area, activist Omar Abu Layla, who heads the Deir Ezzor 24 media outlet, told AFP Monday.

“There was heavy damage in the area that was struck,” he said.

A pro-Syrian government radio station had reported Sunday that “unidentified war planes targeted, in a number of raids, six refrigerated trucks”, without providing further details.

The Syrian government did not immediately comment on the strikes.

Israeli strikes 

The Observatory said at least two similar convoys had entered Syria from Iraq this week, offloading their cargo to pro-Iran groups in the eastern town of Al Mayadeen.

Both Albu Kamal and Al Mayadeen are in Deir Ezzor, and Albu Kamal has seen similar strikes in the past.

The observatory said in November that a strike in the area hit a pro-Iran militia convoy of “fuel tankers and trucks loaded with weapons”, killing at least 14, though an Iraqi border guard official said there were no casualties.

In December, Israel’s then-military chief Aviv Kohavi said his country had launched the raid, adding that the convoy was carrying weapons bound for Lebanon, where Hizbollah has an influential role.

Israel rarely comments on individual raids but has acknowledged carrying out hundreds of air and missile strikes in Syria since civil war broke out in 2011.

A US-led coalition fighting the remnants of the Daesh terror group in Iraq and Syria has also carried out strikes on pro-Iran fighters in Syria in the past.

The conflict in Syria started with the brutal repression of peaceful protests and escalated to pull in foreign powers and global extremists.

Nearly half a million people have been killed in Syria’s conflict, which has also displaced about half of the country’s pre-war population.

HEBRON, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces killed a Palestinian driver in the occupied West Bank on Monday, officials on both sides said, with the army saying the car had hit a soldier’s leg before speeding off.

Nassim Naif Salman Abu Fouda, 26, died from “a bullet wound to the head fired by the occupation [Israeli] soldiers in Hebron this morning”, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The Israeli forces said that soldiers had “identified a suspicious vehicle” and “asked the driver to stop the vehicle in order to inspect it”.

“A soldier approached the vehicle and the driver rammed into his leg,” it added.

Troops then “fired towards the vehicle as it attempted to flee the scene and hits were identified”, the army statement said. “The vehicle continued driving and then crashed.”

An eyewitness told AFP that “four or five soldiers surrounded him [Abu Fouda] when he was in his car, front and behind”.

“They started shooting at him then he was hit,” added the witness, Hazem Abu Sneineh.

The army said the driver was taken from the car by Palestinian medics and “was later declared dead”.

Abu Fouda’s body was wrapped in a green Islamic prayer rug as it was carried from a mosque in central Hebron for burial, surrounded by hundreds of mourners.

He is the 35th Palestinian killed in the conflict this month, in the West Bank and Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem — including militants, civilians and several children — according to an AFP tally based on official sources from both sides.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.

The funeral in Hebron was held just before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Israel for a visit that will also include talks with the Palestinian leadership, amid one of the conflict’s deadliest phases in years.

Israel is reeling after a Palestinian killed six Israelis including a child and one Ukrainian citizen in a shooting on Friday outside a synagogue in occupied East Jerusalem.

The attack came a day after Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp, in a raid the army claimed targeted operatives from Islamic Jihad.

On Sunday, CIA Director Williams Burns held talks in the West Bank with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas to discuss the “dangerous developments”, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

The US embassy declined to comment to AFP on CIA chief’s meeting.

CAIRO — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived Sunday in Egypt at the start of a Middle East trip on which he will look to notch down Israeli-Palestinian tensions after an eruption of violence.

Blinken, who will travel on Monday and Tuesday to Jerusalem and Ramallah after his stop in Cairo, had long planned the visit to see Israel's new right-wing government, but the trip takes on a new urgency after some of the worst violence in years.

Seven Israelis were killed on Friday outside a synagogue in a settler neighbourhood of east Jerusalem, and another attack followed on Saturday.

On Thursday, nine Palestinians were killed in an Israeli army raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank in one of the deadliest such operations in years.

Blinken will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and call “broadly for steps to be taken to de-escalate tensions”, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters as he condemned the “horrific” synagogue attack.

The violence is also likely to figure in talks between Blinken and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.

 But experts questioned whether Blinken could achieve any breakthroughs.

“The absolute best they can do is to keep things stable to avoid another May 2021,” said Aaron David Miller, a veteran US negotiator, referring to 11 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas that ended with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire.

Ghaith Al Omari, a former Palestinian official now at The Washington Institute, expected Blinken to repeat traditional US positions rather than break new ground.

“The trip itself is the message,” he said.

“Blinken will ask Abbas to do more but it is not clear what they can do,” he said, referring to the Palestinians.

‘Flooding the zone’ 

with Netanyahu 

Blinken’s visit is part of an effort by the Biden administration to engage quickly with Netanyahu, who returned to office in late December leading the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.

Israel’s longest-serving prime minister had a fraught relationship with the last Democratic president, Barack Obama, as Netanyahu openly sided with his Republican adversaries against US diplomacy with Iran.

Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, visited earlier in January to discuss Iran after Biden’s efforts to restore a 2015 nuclear accord — despised by Netanyahu, effectively died.

“I’ve never seen such an intense flurry of high-level contacts under any administration as you’re watching right now,” said Miller, now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Biden team is looking “to avoid confrontation with Netanyahu”, Miller said, noting the strong support for the Israeli leader among Republicans who now control the House of Representatives.

David Makovsky, also at the Washington Institute, said he also understood that CIA Director Bill Burns has been visiting the region.

“It looks a little like flooding the zone,” he said.

Blinken is expected on his trip to reiterate US support for a Palestinian state, a prospect that few expect to advance under the new Israeli government.

The State Department said Blinken would also call for the preservation of the status quo at the flashpoint Al Aqsa Mosque compound, which is holy both to Jews and Muslims.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right ideologue who holds a security post in Netanyahu’s government, in early January defiantly visited the site, which Jews call the Temple Mount.

TUNIS — Polling began in the second round of elections for Tunisia's toothless parliament on Sunday, but as the divided nation grapples with economic woes, all eyes will be on turnout.

A handful of voters trickled through a polling station in central Tunis on Sunday morning, casting ballots for a total of 262 candidates competing for 131 seats in the new legislature.

The body has been largely stripped of its authority following President Kais Saied's dramatic power grab in the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings.

On July 25, 2021, Saied sacked the government and froze parliament before dissolving it and pushing through a new constitution granting him almost unlimited powers, sweeping away the system that had emerged from the 2011 revolt.

The latest polls, whose first round in December saw just 11.2 per cent of registered voters take part, are seen as the final pillar of Saied's transformation of politics.

The new legislature will have almost no power to hold the president to account.

"There's no way I'm voting," said Mohamed Abidi, 51, a waiter at a cafe in Tunis.

"Saied isn't listening to anyone to find solutions for our situation. The whole economy is suffering but he's not interested — he only wants to keep his place in the presidential palace."

But taxi driver Belhassen Ben Safta disagreed.

"We've got to vote! We can't leave even the slightest possibility that the old system returns."

Analysts predict few of Tunisia's 7.8 million eligible voters will cast their ballots in the second round, as major parties including Saied's arch-rivals, the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha, call for a boycott.

The ISIE elections watchdog said that by 11:00am (1000 GMT), around 4.7 percent of voters had cast their ballots, slightly more than at the same time during the first round.

 'Dramatic' situation 

Youssef Cherif, director of Columbia Global Centres in Tunis, said "this parliament will have very little legitimacy, and the president, who is all-powerful thanks to the 2022 constitution, will be able to control it as he sees fit."

Cherif also noted Tunisians' "lack of interest" in politics.

With inflation at over 10 per cent and repeated shortages of basic goods from butter to cooking oil, Tunisia's 12 million people have been focused on more immediate issues.

Ratings agency Moody's on Saturday downgraded Tunisia to Caa2, citing "the absence of comprehensive financing to date to meet the government's large funding needs".

Omrane Dhouib, an apprentice baker in the capital, said he was struggling to make ends meet, and had no faith in any of the country's political elite.

"Saied had the chance to make radical changes. He seized all powers but he did nothing," he said.

More than 32,000 Tunisians are estimated to have made clandestine bids to reach Europe over the past year, as poverty and unemployment rise.

The election takes place in the shadow of Tunisia's drawn-out negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout worth nearly $2 billion.

Cherif said the talks were stumbling over the United States' concerns for the future of Tunisian democracy and Saied's apparent reluctance to "accept the IMF's diktats" on politically sensitive issues, including subsidy reform.

Lawyer and political expert Hamadi Redissi said there was a "blatant discrepancy" between Saied's rhetoric against the IMF and the programme his government proposed to the lender "on the sly".

"We have a president who opposes his own government," he said.

CAIRO — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived Sunday in Egypt at the start of a Middle East trip on which he will look to notch down Israeli-Palestinian tensions after an eruption of violence.

Blinken, who will travel on  Monday and Tuesday to Jerusalem and Ramallah after his stop in Cairo, had long planned the visit to see Israel’s new right-wing government, but the trip takes on a new urgency after some of the worst violence in years.

A Palestinian gunman on Friday killed seven people outside a synagogue in a settler neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem, and another attack followed on Saturday.

On Thursday, nine people were killed in an Israeli army raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, in one of the deadliest such operations in years.

Israel said it was targeting Islamic Jihad militants and later hit sites in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire.

Blinken will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and call “broadly for steps to be taken to de-escalate tensions”, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said as he condemned the “horrific” synagogue attack.

The violence is also likely to figure in talks Monday between Blinken and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, whose country’s traditional role as a Middle East mediator has helped him remain a key US partner despite President Joe Biden’s criticism of his human rights record.

The United States, with its close relationship to Israel, has historically taken a lead on Middle East diplomacy.

But experts questioned whether Blinken could achieve any breakthroughs.

“The absolute best they can do is to keep things stable to avoid another May 2021,” said Aaron David Miller, a veteran US negotiator, referring to 11 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas that ended with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire.

Ghaith Al Omari, a former Palestinian official now at The Washington Institute, expected Blinken to repeat traditional US positions rather than break new ground.

“The trip itself is the message,” he said.

“Blinken will ask Abbas to do more but it is not clear what they can do,” he said, referring to the Palestinians.

 ‘Flooding the zone’

Blinken’s visit is part of the Biden administration’s efforts to engage quickly with Netanyahu, who returned to office in late December leading the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.

Israel’s longest-serving prime minister had a fraught relationship with the last Democratic president, Barack Obama, as Netanyahu openly sided with his Republican adversaries against US diplomacy with Iran.

Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, visited this month to discuss Iran after efforts to restore a 2015 nuclear accord — despised by Netanyahu — all but died.

“I’ve never seen such an intense flurry of high-level contacts under any administration as you’re watching right now,” said Miller, now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Biden team is looking “to avoid confrontation with Netanyahu”, Miller said, noting strong support for the Israeli leader among Republicans who now control the House of Representatives.

David Makovsky, also at the Washington Institute, said he also understood that CIA Director Bill Burns has been visiting the region.

“It looks a little like flooding the zone,” he said.

Netanyahu has hailed as a key achievement the 2020 normalisation of relations with the United Arab Emirates, which has moved full speed ahead on developing ties despite public concerns over the new government’s moves.

Blinken is expected on his trip to reiterate US support for a Palestinian state, a prospect few expect to advance under the new Israeli government.

The State Department said Blinken would call for the preservation of the status quo at the flashpoint Al Aqsa Mosque compound, which is holy both to Jews and Muslims.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right ideologue who holds a security post in Netanyahu’s government, in early January defiantly visited the site, which Jews call the Temple Mount.

In Cairo on Sunday, Blinken made no reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, only telling young people at the American University in Cairo that he was visiting Israel and the occupied West Bank.

“It’s important for us not just to engage government to government but to engage with every segment of society,” he said.

In Egypt, Blinken is also expected to discuss regional issues such as Libya and Sudan, the State Department said.

Egypt remains one of the top recipients of US military assistance, but the cooperation faces scrutiny from parts of Biden’s Democratic Party due to Sisi’s rights record.

Authorities released hundreds of political prisoners last year, but rights groups estimate some 60,000 remain in detention

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Two Israelis were injured on Saturday by gunshots in East Jerusalem hours after a gunman killed seven outside a synagogue.

Israeli occupation authorities said the latest gun attack occurred on Saturday morning in Silwan just outside the old, walled city in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

A father, 47, and his 23-year-old son sustained gunshot wounds to their upper bodies and were rushed to hospital, medics said.

The mass shooting was reportedly carried out by a 21-year-old Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem who drove up to the synagogue in the Neve Yaakov neighbourhood and opened fire during the Jewish Sabbath, and on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The attack came with tensions rising across the region a day after one of the deadliest army raids in the occupied West Bank in roughly two decades, as well as rocket fire from militants in the Gaza Strip and Israeli retaliatory air strikes.

Crowds shouted "Death to Arabs" as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured the scene of the synagogue attack late Friday.

Palestinians held spontaneous rallies to protest the killings in Gaza and across the West Bank, including in Ramallah where large crowds swarmed the streets chanting and waving Palestinian flags.

Several Arab nations that have ties with Israel condemned Friday night’s shooting.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was “deeply shocked” by the “terrible” Jerusalem attacks and that his country “stands by the side of Israel”.

French President Emmanuel Macron said a “spiral of violence must be avoided at all costs”.

The gunman at the synagogue was killed by occupation forces during a shootout that followed a brief car chase after the attack.

Nine people had been killed on Thursday in what Israel described as a “counterterrorism” operation in the Jenin refugee camp.

It was one of the deadliest Israeli army raids in the West Bank since the second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, of 2000 to 2005.

Israel said Islamic Jihad operatives were the target.

Islamic Jihad and Hamas both vowed to retaliate, later firing several rockets at Israeli territory.

After the synagogue shooting, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the attack proved “the resistance knows how to find the appropriate response” to Israeli “crimes”.

Washington had announced on Thursday that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would travel next week to Israel and the Palestinian territories, where he would push for an “end to the cycle of violence”.

A US State Department spokesman confirmed on Friday that the visit would go ahead and said Blinken would discuss “steps to be taken to de-escalate tensions”.