Region

TUNIS — The eve of Ramadan is a frantic time for Tunisian coppersmith Chedli Maghraoui, who skilfully puts a new shine on families’ favourite kitchenware before the Muslim holy month starts.

From couscous pots to beloved tea sets, the metalware gets a professional polish from the 69-year-old craftsman who labours away solo at his workshop in the old city of Tunis.

So great is the pre-Ramadan rush that he has to politely tell customers he is just unable to work any faster: “I can’t do it — I still have other orders and, as you can see, I’m working alone.”

Maghraoui scrubs items and uses a method known as hot-dip tinning where he coats the copper with a thin layer of tin to stop metal oxidation — a process that makes pots gleam like new.

As he reconditions one well-loved pewter piece, he fans an oven fire that heats a pot with the object inside, before brushing it and plunging it into a large bucket of water.

Maghraoui says he is proud to be among the few still practicing the time-honoured craft in the ancient North African city: “It’s a tradition that has existed for centuries and it’s still alive.”

Tunisian women often receive copper or white copper gifts when they get married, or inherit the items from their mothers. Many bring their beloved heirlooms to Maghraoui to protect them a little longer.

“I get a special feeling when I use my shiny pot during Ramadan”, said Sana Boukhris, 49, an accountant. “The tradition reminds me of good times as a child, when my mother would prepare for the holy month.

“There is blessing in these things I inherited from my mother.”

Cracked skin 

Dalila Boubaker, a housewife, said she could only afford to get two pots polished up for Ramadan this year as households across Tunisia struggle with inflation and high unemployment.

“Everything has become so expensive,” sighed Boubaker, with the cost for a polish job now ranging from 20 to 200 dinars ($6-$65) per item, depending on the item’s size and shape.

Abdejlil Ayari, who has worked as a coppersmith in the medina for 48 of his 60 years, said the run-up to Ramadan was intense every year.

“People prepare to have their kitchenware treated before Ramadan so it looks impeccable for the whole month, so the kitchen looks good and women enjoy their pots,” he said.

Trade is also brisk for beautiful old pieces in the Souk En-Nahhas (copper market) where around 50 shops sell reconditioned coffee makers, teapots, incense burners and small cups.

Demand is so high that “we’re not taking orders anymore,” said Mabrouk Romdhane, who at the age of 82 owns three such stores in the market in the heart of the medina.

Ayari said he learnt the trade from his father and started before he was even a teenager, but he now worries that few young people want to follow in his footsteps.

Maghraoui, who bought his workshop 20 years ago from someone who had inherited it but didn’t want it, agreed.

“Each death among my colleagues is a loss for this profession and a step towards its disappearance,” he said.

Maghraoui held out the palms of his hands, the skin cracked and blackened from his trade, and said: “This generation wants an easy job and doesn’t like having this.”

BEIRUT — Security forces in crisis-hit Lebanon’s capital fired tear gas on Wednesday at a protest against deteriorating living conditions, as the currency plummeted to new lows against the dollar.

The country’s economic meltdown, described by the World Bank as one of the worst in recent global history, has plunged most of the population into poverty according to the United Nations.

Many of the hundreds who protested in Beirut were retired servicemen whose army pensions have lost most of their value, and depositors locked out of their savings by cash-strapped banks.

“I used to make around $4,000, now my pension is worth $150,” retired general Khaled Naous, 70, told AFP. “We’re unable to secure basic necessities.”

Security forces fired tear gas as some demonstrators tried to push through barriers to reach the Beirut compound which houses government offices, while other protesters hurled stones.

AFP correspondents said a demonstrator and a member of the security forces were wounded.

The Lebanese pound, officially pegged at 15,000 to the dollar, has been trading on parallel markets at more than 100,000 against the greenback — a dizzying plunge from 1,507 before the collapse began in late 2019.

Lebanese banks have imposed draconian withdrawal restrictions since then, essentially locking depositors out of their life savings and infuriating Lebanese.

“The people are demanding their most basic rights” while the authorities “respond with tear gas”, complained army veteran Amal Hammoud, 53.

A delegation of retired servicemen later met with caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati to discuss their plight.

‘Selling my furniture’ 

The currency plunge has been devastating for those on public sector salaries, and has triggered price hikes on imported fuel, food and other basic goods.

Supermarkets this month started to price items in dollars.

Retired teacher Hatem, 73, said he had given up meat and stopped using his car because costs were prohibitive.

“I am forced to be a vegetarian,” he told AFP in downtown Beirut.

“How am I supposed to live? My pension is $150 while the generator bill is $200.”

Many Lebanese rely on private generators for power because the cash-strapped state is only producing a few hours of electricity a day.

Some protesters shouted slogans against the political elite, which is widely blamed for the country’s financial collapse.

Marwan Seifeddine, a father of five, told AFP he was barely making ends meet on a pension now worth just $50.

“I’m unemployed and I’ve been selling my furniture to feed my family,” he said.

Political inaction has been a hallmark of the Lebanese economic crisis.

Since last year, the country has had no president and only a caretaker government, amid persistent deadlock between rival blocs in parliament.

In late 2019, Lebanon was rocked by unprecedented protests against the political class and deteriorating living conditions.

DUBAI — Yemen's Houthi rebels and its internationally recognised government reached an agreement Monday to exchange more than 880 prisoners, the United Nations confirmed, while urging the two parties, at war since 2014, to continue talks.

The agreed exchange comes after Saudi Arabia and Iran, who back opposing sides in the conflict, this month moved towards restoring diplomatic ties after a seven-year rupture.

The parties "agreed on implementation plans to release 887 conflict-related detainees from all sides", Hans Grundberg, the UN secretary general's special envoy for Yemen, told a press conference in Geneva. 

The Houthis seized control of Yemen's capital Sanaa in 2014, prompting a Saudi-led intervention the following year and fighting that has left hundreds of thousands dead and caused one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

Participants in Bern, Switzerland, "agreed to reconvene in mid-May to discuss more releases", Grundberg said after 10 days of talks overseen by the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). 

The agreement provides for the release of 181 people detained in Huthi prisons, including Saudi and Sudanese nationals, along with 706 rebels, Abdul Qader al-Murtada, head of the Houthi's Swiss delegation, told the group's Al-Masirah television earlier on Monday. 

"The exchange will take place in three weeks," he said. 

Grundberg did not wish to comment on questions about deadlines for the prisoner swaps, instead urging the government and rebels to “facilitate the speedy implementation” of the agreement and to “agree on more releases”. 

The Swedish diplomat also declined to answer questions about the total number of prisoners on both sides, citing “the complexity of the negotiations”.

A UN-brokered ceasefire that took effect last April brought a sharp reduction in hostilities. The truce expired in October, though fighting largely remains on hold.

Majed Fadail, a member of the Yemeni government’s delegation, said the Houthis would release former defence minister Mahmoud Al Subaihi and other officials, as well as four journalists.

A Yemeni government official, who asked not to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the press, said 15 Saudi citizens and three Sudanese nationals were among those to be freed.

The Yemeni government welcomed the agreement in a statement released by the official Saba news agency, praising efforts by the UN and the ICRC to facilitate the deal.

The White House also hailed the “important step”, saying it “builds on the positive environment created by a truce in Yemen that has effectively stopped the fighting for the past 11 months”. 

Diplomatic momentum 

The prisoner swap was announced after Grundberg last week noted “intense diplomatic efforts” to end the conflict.

“I believe that Yemenis have an environment right now where there are possibilities to take serious steps forward,” Grundberg said in Geneva.

The latest closed-door negotiations mark the seventh meeting aimed at implementing an agreement on prisoner exchanges reached in Sweden five years ago.

Under that deal, the sides agreed “to release all prisoners, detainees, missing persons, arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared persons, and those under house arrest”, held in connection with the conflict, “without any exceptions or conditions”.

The latest agreement comes a year after the Huthis said they had agreed to a prisoner swap that would see 1,400 rebels freed in exchange for 823 pro-government fighters, including 16 Saudis and three Sudanese nationals.

In 2020, more than 1,050 detainees were released following an agreement reached by the warring parties, according to the ICRC.

During a Security Council meeting last week, UN officials said the detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran should offer momentum toward peace.

However, it will not solve all Yemen’s problems. The influence of the two regional powers is only one dimension of a complex conflict in a country fractured along confessional, regional and political lines, analysts warn.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel's settler movement celebrated Tuesday after parliament annulled part of a law banning them from residing in areas of the occupied West Bank the then Israeli government evacuated in 2005.

That year the government of Ariel Sharon, a long-time settler champion turned peacemaker, oversaw a unilateral withdrawal by Israel from the Gaza Strip, and the removal of Jewish settlers from the Palestinian enclave and four settlements in the northern West Bank.

Legislation passed at the time barred Israelis from staying in those areas, but an amendment approved by lawmakers overnight permits Israelis to return to the West Bank settlement sites near the city of Nablus.

The parliamentary vote notably paves the way for Israeli authorities to formally allow settlers to return to Homesh, the only one of the four sites whose residents were forcibly removed before their homes were demolished.

Most governments around the world consider all Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories as illegal but Israel disputes this.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power in December, at the helm of one of the most right-wing administrations in the country’s history. 

Amid a surge in violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the UN Security Council last month called on all parties “to observe calm and restraint, and refrain from provocative actions”.

The council in a February 20 statement expressed its “strong opposition to all unilateral measures that impede peace — including Israeli construction and expansion of settlements, confiscation of Palestinians’ land and the ‘legalisation’ of settlement outposts”.

Israel’s far-right settler lobby has made Homesh a symbol of their cause.

A small group of activists returned to the site in 2009 and built a yeshiva, a Jewish seminary, which was evacuated dozens of times by Israeli forces until the military ultimately allowed them to stay. 

In December 2021, an AFP photographer saw the school and a dormitory at the site which were made from tarpaulin mounted on wooden frames. The site was being guarded by the Israeli military. 

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a West Bank settler who has claimed “there isn’t a Palestinian people”, heralded the parliamentary vote as “historic”. 

The legislative move “starts to erase the shame of expulsion” and “advances the regularisation of our presence at Homesh”, he wrote on Twitter.

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — The Palestinian Authority on Monday called an Israeli minister's remarks denying the existence of the Palestinian people "conclusive evidence" of the Israeli government's "racist ideology".

Israel's far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, is part of veteran leader Benjamin Netanyahu's government that took office in December, one of the most right-wing in the country's history.

Smotrich, who has a history of incendiary remarks, faced international rebuke earlier this month after calling for a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank to be "wiped out".

"There are no Palestinians, because there isn't a Palestinian people," he said on Sunday in Paris, quoting French-Israeli Zionist activist Jacques Kupfer at an event in his memory, according to a video circulating on social media.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said ahead of a Cabinet meeting on Monday the "inflammatory statements" made by Smotrich "are consistent with the first Zionist sayings of 'a land without a people for a people without a land'".

They provided "conclusive evidence of the extremist, racist Zionist ideology... of the current Israeli government", Shtayyeh argued.

Evoking biblical "prophecies" that are "beginning to come true", Smotrich said: "After 2,000 years... God is gathering his people. The people of Israel are returning home."

"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 said.

"It is the historical truth, it is the biblical truth," he added.

"The Arabs in Israel must hear it, as well as certain Jews in Israel who are confused — 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."

'Inflammatory' 

The minister, who met no French government officials during his trip, was speaking from a lectern which featured a map of so-called Greater Israel, including the West Bank, annexed Golan Heights, blockaded Gaza Strip and Jordan — the neighbouring Arab country that signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967, when it also seized east Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights.

Smotrich’s comments came as Israeli and Palestinian representatives met in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Shiekh along with Egyptian, Jordanian and US officials for “extensive discussions on ways to de-escalate tensions between the Palestinians and Israelis”, according to a joint statement.

The Jordanian foreign ministry on Monday condemned the minister’s remarks, calling them “extremist racism” and Smotrich himself an “extremist”.

It warned in a statement that his “use of a map... that encompasses the border of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” may be in violation of the 1994 peace accord.

Hamas, Gaza’s Islamist rulers, said the comments revealed the “racist and fascist policies” of Israel, and urged the international community to take a “firm stance”.

Asked about what Smotrich had said, Danny Danon, a lawmaker from Netanyahu’s Likud party and former Israeli ambassador to the UN, told AFP: “Lawmakers have the right to say whatever they want.”

Smotrich had called in early March for the Palestinian town of Huwara to be “wiped out” after two Israelis were shot dead there by an alleged Hamas militant.

After the shooting, hundreds of rampaging Israeli settlers torched Palestinian homes and cars in the West Bank town, and a Palestinian man was killed in the nearby village of Zaatara.

Speaking last month, the United Nations’ Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland called for the “cycle of violence” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be “stopped immediately”.

Violence has intensified in the West Bank in recent months, coinciding with Netanyahu’s return to office.

HUWARA, Palestinian Territories — A shooting attack in the northern West Bank town of Huwara on Sunday injured two Israelis, the army and rescuers said, as Israeli and Palestine officials held talks in Egypt over a surge in violence.

The attack in Huwara came three weeks after the fatal shooting of two Israeli settlers, also in Huwara.

The attack came during Israeli-Palestinian talks in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh after a surge in deadly violence in the occupied West Bank.

Egypt's foreign ministry said the talks aim "to restore calm".

Tomer Fein, a rescuer from the Magen David Adom emergency response service, said: "We found two injured people, one of them in serious condition, with wounds in the upper body".

The second was "in a state of shock", he said.

They were treated at the scene and then evacuated by ambulance, Fein said in a video released by the service.

Neither Hamas nor the Islamic Jihad group claimed the attack, but they released similarly-worded statements describing it as a "normal response to the crimes of the occupation".

The meeting, which follows similar talks last month in Jordan where both sides pledged to prevent more violence, comes amid concerns of a feared escalation during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan starting in the coming week.

Hussein Al Sheikh, Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) secretary general, said Saturday on Twitter that the Palestinian delegation would participate "to demand an end to the continuous Israeli aggression against us".

But militant Palestinian factions rejected the effort.

On February 26 two Israeli settlers were shot dead in Huwara in what the government called a "Palestinian terror attack".

The attack, during the Jordan talks to address rising violence, sparked more unrest, when dozens of Israeli settlers set homes and cars ablaze in revenge, and a Palestinian was killed.

Bezalel Smotrich, head of the far-right Religious Zionism party and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition, said after the Israelis' deaths that Huwara should be "wiped out".

He later backtracked saying he "did not mean harm to innocents", after his comments provoked international condemnation.

Days later, on March 7, during a raid on Jenin, to the north of Huwara, the Israeli forces said it killed Abdel Fatah Hussein Khroushah, 49, who it acccused of killing the two settlers and called a "terrorist operative".

He was among six men killed, the Palestinian health ministry said, in clashes that the army said included soldiers launching shoulder-fired rockets amid ferocious gunfire.

The West Bank, occupied by Israel since the 1967 June  War, is home to hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers who live in state-approved settlements considered illegal under international law.

Violence intensified last year but has worsened in the West Bank during the tenure of Netanyahu's government which took office in December, a coalition with ultra-Orthodox Jewish and extreme-right allies.

The government of Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption, has vowed to continue the expansion of West Bank settlements.

About 230,000 Israelis live in occupied East Jerusalem, along with at least 360,000 Palestinians who want to make the sector the capital of their future state.

But Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations have been stalled since 2014.

BAGHDAD — Iran's top security official on Sunday signed a deal with Iraqi authorities for "protection" of their common border, the Iraqi prime minister's office said, months after Tehran struck Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq's north.

Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region hosts camps and rear-bases operated by several Iranian Kurdish factions, which Iran has accused of serving Western or Israeli interests in the past.

In November, Iran launched cross-border missile and drone strikes against several of the groups in northern Iraq, accusing them of stoking the nationwide protests triggered by the death in custody last September of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini.

Ali Shamkhani, who heads Iran's Supreme National Security Council, inked the deal with his Iraqi counterpart Qassem Al Araji during a visit to Baghdad, the statement said.

It comprises "coordination over the protection of common borders", and will also see the "strengthening of cooperation in several areas of security", the statement from the office of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani added.

Shamkhani denounced "vicious activities by counter-revolutionary elements" in northern Iraq, a reference to the Kurdish groups operating in the country, according to Iran's state news agency IRNA.

He said the agreement signed on Sunday "can completely and fundamentally end the vicious actions of these groups," which the Iranian government labels "terrorist".

After the Iranian strikes, Iraq in November announced it would redeploy federal guards on the border between Iraqi Kurdistan and Iran, rather than leaving the responsibility to Kurdish peshmerga forces — a move welcomed by Tehran.

Factions based in Iraq's mountainous north have in the past waged an armed insurrection against Tehran, but in recent years their activities have declined and experts said they had ceased nearly all military activity.

Shamkani's visit coincides with the 20th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled former dictator Saddam Hussein.

His fall gave birth to a political system that granted the Shiite majority dominance over politics.

Many of these Shiite factions — including Sudani’s backers in parliament — are supported by Shiite-majority Iran. Relations between the two neighbours have grown ever-closer over the past two decades.

Baghdad had also played a role in mediating a reconciliation between Iran and regional rival Saudi Arabia, hosting several rounds of talks between the two since April 2021.

Riyadh and Tehran had cut all diplomatic ties in 2016 before a surprise Chinese-brokered reconciliation deal was announced earlier this month.

Shamkhani also met the governor of Iraq’s central bank and the deputy minister of foreign affairs, according to IRNA.

Tehran is a key trade partner for Baghdad, which in turn is largely dependent on gas and electricity from Iran.

TEHRAN — Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has favourably received an invitation from Saudi Arabia's King Salman to visit the kingdom following the reconciliation deal between the two countries, an Iranian official said on Sunday.

"In a letter to President Raisi... the king of Saudi Arabia welcomed the deal between the two brotherly countries [and] invited him to Riyadh," tweeted Mohammad Jamshidi, the Iranian president's deputy chief of staff for political affairs, adding that "Raisi welcomed the invitation".

The two regional heavyweights announced on March 10 a Chinese-brokered deal to restore ties seven years after they were severed.

Riyadh cut relations after Iranian protesters attacked Saudi diplomatic missions in 2016 following the Saudi execution of Shiite cleric Nimr Al Nimr — just one in a series of flashpoints between the two longstanding regional rivals.

The deal is expected to see Shiite-majority Iran and mainly Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia reopen their embassies and missions within two months and implement security and economic cooperation deals signed more than 20 years ago.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told reporters on Sunday that the two countries had agreed to hold a meeting between their top diplomats.

He added that three locations for the talks had been suggested, without specifying which.

The detente between Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, and Iran, strongly at odds with Western governments over its nuclear activities, has the potential to reshape relations across a region characterised by turbulence for decades.

Iran and Saudi Arabia support rival sides in several conflict zones including Yemen, where the Houthi rebels are backed by Tehran, and Riyadh leads a military coalition supporting the government.

The two sides also vie for influence in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

A number of Gulf countries followed Riyadh's action in 2016 and scaled back ties with Tehran, though the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait recently restored ties.

Iran said last week it would welcome restoring ties with Bahrain following the deal with Saudi Arabia.

In the past, Bahrain accused Iran of having trained and backed a Shiite-led uprising in the Sunni-ruled kingdom in order to topple the Manama government. Tehran denies this.

In September, Iran welcomed an Emirati ambassador after a six-year absence, and a month earlier it said Kuwait had sent its first ambassador to Tehran since 2016.

Iran’s top security official Ali Shamkhani also held talks with Emirati President Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi on Thursday in yet another sign of the shifting relations in the region.

CAIRO — Turkey's top diplomat said on Saturday President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi would meet to mark the end of a decade of estrangement between the two countries.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, speaking alongside his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry during a visit to Cairo, said Ankara wanted "to restore diplomatic relations between the two countries at the highest level".

Shoukry said there was a "political will coming from the presidents of our two countries... seeking to normalise relations".

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan welcomed Cavusoglu's visit to Cairo as an "important step towards a more stable and prosperous region".

It follows a trip by Shoukry to Turkey last month to show solidarity after the devastating earthquake that claimed tens of thousands of lives in Turkey and neighbouring Syria.

"It is possible that we will disagree in the future, but we will do everything to avoid breaking our relations again," Cavusoglu said.

Relations ran into trouble after the 2013 ouster of Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, an ally of Turkey.

At the time, Erdogan said he would "never" speak to "anyone" like Sisi.

But in November, Sisi and Erdogan shook hands in Qatar, in what the Egyptian presidency heralded as a new beginning in their ties, and the two leaders then spoke by telephone after the February 6 earthquake.

Cavusoglu on Saturday said the meeting between Erdogan and Sisi would take place “after the Turkish elections”, including the presidential vote slated for May 14.

While diplomatic exchanges were once frosty, business never stopped: In 2022, Turkey was the largest importer of Egyptian products totalling $4 billion.

But disagreements remain, with Turkey home to Arab journalists critical of their governments, in particular Egyptian media close to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group outlawed by Cairo.

Cairo and Ankara also disagree over Libya, where Turkey has sent military advisers backing forces opposed to Egyptian ally Khalifa Haftar, the eastern based Libyan military strongman.