Region

A new Palestinian government will need the approval of the Hamas-dominated parliament, the Islamist movement's prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reported.

Hamas signed a reconciliation deal last month with the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which is dominated by its bitter rival Fateh, in a surprise move that aims to overcome a years-long intra-Palestinian split.

"Any government that does not obtain the confidence of the parliament will have no constitutional legality, and Fateh and Hamas have agreed on this," Haniyeh said in a speech to Hamas MPs in Gaza.

"The legislative council [parliament] will also monitor the consensus government's work," he said.

Hamas has dominated the Palestinian parliament since winning a landslide victory in the last parliamentary election, held in 2006.

But the US and Europe have since backed the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads Fateh, and boycotted the Islamist movement.

Under the terms of the April 23 reconciliation deal, the two sides would work together to form an “independent government” of technocrats, to be headed by Abbas, that would pave the way for long-delayed elections.

Representatives from both Fateh and Hamas have met several times for talks on a final line-up for the government to end their division after Hamas expelled Fateh from Gaza in a week of deadly clashes in 2007.

The reconciliation agreement incensed Israel, putting the final nail in the coffin of faltering US-led peace talks between Israel and Abbas’ Palestinian Authority.

A senior Fateh official arrived in Gaza City on Tuesday for talks on forming a unity government, according to AFP.

Meanwhile, Hamas on Wednesday cleared out of the private Gaza residence of Abbas, in the most concrete sign yet that the rivals are moving towards reconciliation, The Associated Press reported.

The Islamic Hamas took over the residence when it seized Gaza from the Western-backed Abbas in 2007, leaving him with only parts of the West Bank. Since then, the rivals have become entrenched in their respective territories, setting up separate governments.

On Wednesday, Hamas security forces removed belongings from the Abbas villa in Gaza City. They loaded mattresses, desks and chairs onto pickup trucks and drove out of the gated compound.

The security forces, which had used the compound as a base, barred camera crews and photographers from filming or taking pictures as the items were driven away, but later allowed them into several rooms on the ground floor.

A modest living room with a flat-screen TV was devoid of decorations, but two large photo albums on a shelf contained pictures of Abbas with various leaders and officials, including former US mediator Dennis Ross.

Iyad Al Bozum, a spokesman for the interior ministry in Gaza, confirmed that security forces cleared their belongings from the residence, but that a formal handover of the villa requires another government decision.

“Our presence there during the past seven years was to protect the place,” he said.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Arab Israelis are increasingly voicing a Palestinian identity and national demands, as hate attacks by Jewish extremists and laws perceived as discriminatory have multiplied.

Some 10,000 Arab Israelis rallied in northern Israel earlier this month for the right of return for Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes during the war that led to the creation of Israel in 1948.

It was a much higher than usual turnout for the annual commemoration of the Nakbeh (Arabic for catastrophe) and drew an angry response from Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

He described the protesters as a "fifth column", and thundered that they should "march directly to Ramallah", a Palestinian city in the West Bank "and stay there".

A growing number of Arab Israelis are visiting the cities of West Bank, if only to spend the odd weekend, as they search out all things Palestinians.

“The Palestinian people are one, wherever they live,” said Shaher Mahamed, from the Arab Israeli town of Umm Al Fahm, on a visit to the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

“My ID card says I’m Israeli, but my heart is Arab Palestinian, and always will be.”

More than 760,000 Palestinians — estimated today to number more than 5 million with their descendants — fled or were driven from their homes in 1948 and commemorate Nakbeh Day on Thursday.

The 160,000 who stayed behind are now known as Arab Israelis and number about 1.4 million, some 20 per cent of Israel’s population.

Each weekend, growing numbers of Arab Israelis pack out cafes and hotels in the West Bank and flock to the markets, combining visits to relatives with cheaper shopping and leisure.

“The Palestinians who live inside Israel coming here to shop in Nablus has really given a boost to the city’s markets,” said clothes shop owner Abu Hussein.

‘Nationalism and marginalisation’ 

The reassertion of a Palestinian identity by growing numbers of Arab Israelis comes after a string of attacks on Christian and Muslim properties by suspected Jewish extremists, and after several new Israeli laws they perceive as infringing on their civil rights.

“Palestinians inside Israel have never lost their national awareness. But at the moment it’s growing,” said Nadeem Nashef, director of an Arab youth organisation based in the northern Israeli city of Haifa.

The attacks, and attempts “to give more privileges to Jews, have pushed people into taking firmer [nationalist] positions,” Nashef said.

Mordechai Kedar, professor of Arab studies at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, agreed.

“The attacks that have taken place in the last few weeks, such as the burning of cars and scrawling of [racist] graffiti, ignite feelings of nationalism and of marginalisation,” he said.

The uptick in racist attacks has alarmed Israeli police, who have begun working in tandem with the internal security service Shin Bet to prosecute what some politicians are calling “terrorist” acts.

But despite the government’s proclamation of its determination to root out the racism of the extremists, Arab Israelis feel they are simultaneously marginalised by the establishment.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this month defended plans to enshrine in law Israel’s status as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

For Palestinians, accepting Israel as a Jewish state would mean accepting the Nakbeh and potentially precluding the right of return for 1948 refugees and their descendents.

In March, Israel raised the threshold of votes parties need to get seats in parliament, in a bill boycotted by all opposition MPs on the basis that it marginalises minority parties such as the Arab nationalist Balad.

But Mordechai argued that Arab Israelis still want to stay put, given the alternatives in the Middle East.

“They still prefer to live inside Israel rather than another Arab country,” Kedar said.

DAMASCUS — The resignation of the UN's Syria envoy weeks before President Bashar Assad's expected re-election has dealt a new blow to already dim hopes for a negotiated end to the war.

The international standoff was underlined Wednesday with Damascus reacting to Lakhdar Brahimi's announcement that he will step down on May 31 by accusing him of bias and interference in domestic politics.

And with no sign of an end to more than three years of war that has killed 150,000 people and displaced nearly half the population, new suspicions have emerged that Syria is using chemical weapons on its own people.

Brahimi, backed by the United States and Western allies, had coaxed Assad and Syria's fractious opposition to attend peace talks in Geneva this year.

But negotiations broke down amid bitter recriminations after only two rounds, and the war has slipped into a fourth year.

Brahimi, who resigned Tuesday after nearly two years in the job, said he was "very sad that I leave this position and leave Syria behind in such a bad state".

Asked what his message to Syrians would be, Brahimi said: "Apologies, once more, that we have not been able to help them as much as they deserve; and, tell them the tragedy in their country shall be solved."

UN chief Ban Ki-moon blamed the failure to find peace on “a Syrian nation, Middle Eastern region and wider international community that have been hopelessly divided in their approaches to ending the conflict.”

Accusations of bias

But Al Watan, a daily newspaper close to the Assad regime, put the blame on Brahimi Wednesday.

“Brahimi is Saudi Arabia’s man,” it said, in reference to the wealthy Sunni kingdom’s backing for the Sunni-dominated uprising against Assad.

“He demonstrated his partiality for the opposition, particularly during the Geneva meeting by expressing his support for the National Coalition and its chief, Ahmad Jarba.”

State news agency SANA said there were numerous reasons for Brahimi’s failure, focusing on what it said was his interference in domestic affairs.

“A mediator cannot interfere in the sovereign affairs of states,” it said, without elaborating.

But British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who will host a meeting in London on Thursday of the pro-opposition Friends of Syria, blamed the regime.

Responsibility for the “collapse of... negotiations rests wholly with the regime’s refusal to engage in negotiations that addressed the issues at the heart of the Syrian conflict,” he said after Brahimi’s announcement.

Insisting that a negotiated solution is the only way forward, he said Assad and his backers “need to re-engage in the political process, and show they are serious about reaching a political settlement.

The Friends of Syria would talk Thursday “about how we can turn this dialogue into meaningful political process.”

Regime vote 

But with Assad’s regime insisting on proceeding with the presidential election on June 3, prospects for a resumption of peace talks seem dim.

Torbjorn Soltvedt, analyst at British think-tank Maplecroft, said Assad’s bid for another term “has removed any pretence that the Syrian regime is engaging in meaningful talks with opposition over a potential transitional government.

“Assad’s focus remains firmly fixed on the battlefield, and on forcing a situation in which the Syrian government can dictate the terms of any settlement.”

Assad faces two other candidates in the country’s first multi-candidate presidential vote, but he is expected to easily win.

His challengers are little known, and have so far hewed the government’s line, deeming the conflict a war against “terrorism”.

Speaking to Al Manar, the television station of Assad ally Hizbollah, candidate Hassan Al Nuri praised Syria’s army and Assad’s father and predecessor Hafez Assad.

“I’ve always admired his personality,” he said of the former president.

Maher Al Hajjar, the other candidate, told Syrian state television he was running “because of the terrorism that is targeting Syria,” saying “external Arab, regional and international forces were targeting the Syrian people.”

With diplomacy stalled, new allegations of chemical weapons use by Syria’s regime have emerged.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Tuesday that, “in recent weeks, new, smaller quantities of chemical arms have been used, mainly chlorine.”

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons watchdog, which is overseeing the removal of Syria’s toxic arms, has sent a mission into the war-torn country to investigate.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court Wednesday sentenced 79 supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi to jail terms of between five and 10 years over their involvement in deadly clashes, judicial sources said.

The defendants were convicted for participating in clashes between Morsi supporters and opponents that killed 12 people in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria last July, after the military overthrew the Islamist president, the sources said.

Since Morsi’s ouster, his supporters have been staging weekly protests calling for his reinstatement.

The rallies have often degenerated into violent street clashes with security forces and civilian opponents.

Eleven defendants were given 10 years in jail, 13 were jailed for seven years, 55 were jailed for five years and seven acquitted, the sources added.

They were accused of murder, attempted murder, carrying weapons, and torturing 16 people in an Alexandria mosque, the sources said.

At least 1,400 people, mostly Islamists, have been killed in street clashes since Morsi’s overthrow, and thousands have been jailed.

Hundreds have been sentenced in mass trial.

Morsi himself faces three trials on various charges, including collusion with militant groups.

Almost 500 security men have also been killed in a wave of militant attacks carried out in retaliation for the crackdown on Morsi supporters.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah appointed his son as governor of Riyadh province on Wednesday in a move that strengthens his branch of the ruling dynasty as it approaches a difficult decision over how to transfer power to the next generation.

Prince Turki Bin Abdullah’s elevation to one of the most important positions held by ruling family members in the absolute monarchy comes months after another son of the king, Prince Mishaal Bin Abdullah, was made governor of Mecca province.

Moves in the ruling family are closely watched at home and abroad for clues on who will rule the world’s top oil exporter, a country which also a huge influence over Muslims through its guardianship of Islam’s holiest sites.

The Saudi line of succession does not pass directly from father to son, as in European monarchies, but has moved along a line of brothers born to the country’s founder King Abdulaziz who died in 1954.

As that line nears its end, the Al Saud dynasty is grappling with how to move the succession down to the next generation of the family.

King Abdullah, who is over 90, has made a series of changes and appointments over the past two years that have consolidated the position of his allies in the family.

The most recent was the appointment of Prince Muqrin, the youngest of King Abdulaziz’s sons to survive into adulthood, as deputy crown prince, a newly created position that makes him next in line to rule after King Abdullah and Crown Prince Salman.

That move was seen as delaying the moment when the Al Saud will have to decide on a prince from the younger generation to take charge, and prompted speculation about a wider deal between different branches of the family.

Prince Turki’s promotion from his previous job as deputy governor was made in a series of royal decrees carried on state media, which also removed the deputy defence minister, Prince Salman Bin Sultan, from his post.

Prince Salman Bin Sultan, a younger brother of former intelligence chief Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, and a key figure in organising Saudi Arabia’s support for Syrian rebels, had met visiting US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel on Tuesday evening.

The decrees said Prince Salman had left the defence ministry position at his own request, a wording used every time a senior prince departs a post. He was replaced by the outgoing Riyadh governor Prince Khaled Bin Bandar.

Until 2011, the position of Riyadh governor had been held for five decades by Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz, who was made crown prince in 2012.

The province is home to the country’s capital and is the heartland of the Al Saud’s traditional support base. Prince Turki Bin Abdullah was born in 1970.

Besides appointing sons as governors of Riyadh and Mecca provinces, two of the three most important in the country, Abdullah has also made one of his sons, Prince Abdulaziz Bin Abdullah, deputy foreign minister.

However, his most senior son, and the one seen as most likely to one day become king, is Prince Miteb Bin Abdullah, who is head of the Saudi Arabian National Guard.

His main rival as a likely candidate to rule from among the next generation of the family is Interior Minister Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, say many Saudis and foreign analysts who follow the succession process.

SANAA — The Yemeni army killed more than 30 Al Qaeda insurgents in heavy fighting on Wednesday, a senior military commander said, after the Islamists attacked military posts in a southern province where the government launched an offensive two weeks ago.

A military source said the militants had surprised troops at military outposts in the Azzan and Gol Al Rayda districts of Shabwa province, killing at least eight soldiers and sparking a battle that raged for hours. An army colonel was among the dead, a defence ministry source said.

The Yemeni army had captured both Azzan and Gol Al Rayda, as well as the Mahfad district in Abyan province, earlier this month after heavy fighting in which scores were killed on both sides.

Many of the militants, from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and its affiliate, Ansar Al Sharia, fled to the mountains and turned to hit-and-run tactics against security forces and government facilities.

Wednesday’s raid was one of their most daring actions since then. Lieutenant General Ahmed Saif Al Yafe’i, head of the Yemeni army’s Third Military Command, called the assault a desperate attempt by “a group shaken by defeat” to show it was still able to fight back.

“Dozens of militants have fled Azzan, while more than 30 elements have been killed since the dawn of this day,” the state news agency Saba quoted Yafe’i as saying.

He said the fighting had revealed that Al Qaeda was recruiting children to fight and that documents and pictures showing this would be made available to the media soon.

A military source, speaking earlier by telephone from the battlefront in Azzan, told Reuters eight government soldiers and 10 Al Qaeda militants had died in the fighting before air force planes were called in to attack the retreating militants.

Black flag of Al Qaeda

A Yemeni journalist who specialises in covering Al Qaeda, Abdulrazzaq Al Jamal, reported on his Facebook page that the militants had killed soldiers at a checkpoint and raised a black flag inscribed with the words “There is no god but God and Mohammad is his Prophet” over the main police station in Azzan.

Residents also said that many people had been forced to stay indoors as the sound of fighting rang out over the town.

Military sources in the field said the army had forced the militants to retreat, and that they had taken their dead and wounded with them.

The defence ministry said government forces had also captured a number of the militants in Azzan, who were found in possession of “documents, bombs and explosives belts”.

The stability of Yemen, which shares a long border with the world’s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, is an international concern, not least because AQAP has used it to launch attacks abroad. The United States has stepped up its aid and support for the government and military, including drone strikes.

Yemen has been beset by turmoil since 2011, when mass protests, part of the Arab Spring that began in North Africa, forced long-ruling president Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down.

Last week, four soldiers were killed in a gunbattle with militants near the presidential palace in Sanaa.

On Sunday, a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a military police building in the coastal city of Mukalla, killing at least 10 soldiers and a civilian.

Apart from the threat from Islamist militants, the Arab world’s poorest country is also trying to cope with a separatist movement in the south and a rebel group in the north.

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia — US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel flew to Saudi Arabia Tuesday for meetings with leaders there at the outset of a weeklong Middle East trip designed to reassure allies of the Obama administration’s commitment to their defence.

Hagel arrived in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah and immediately met with the deputy defence minister, Salman Bin Sultan. Later he was meeting with Crown Prince Salman, the designated successor to King Abdullah

The Saudis are hosting a meeting Wednesday of defence ministers from the Gulf Cooperation Council states, including Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. It is their first session with a US defence secretary since 2008, and the formal agenda includes missile defence and other security issues linked to Iran.

Hagel said he also will discuss with the Gulf ministers the civil war in Syria and the nuclear negotiations with Iran.

On Friday, the State Department’s top arms control official, Rose Gottemoeller, said Syria has moved about 92 per cent of its chemical weapons stocks to port for shipment out of the country. In a breakfast meeting with reporters in Washington, the undersecretary of state for arms control said the rest of the weapons are at a single site near Damascus.

The head of the United Nations mission charged with destroying Syria’s chemical weapons had said earlier that the last 16 containers of chemical agents are in a contested area that is currently inaccessible due to the fighting.

The US has a ship on standby to undertake the destruction of Syria’s chemicals. The MV Cape Ray has on board two huge machines, called field deployable hydrolysis systems, which will mix the chemicals with heated water and other chemicals to break down the toxic weapons in a titanium reactor, making them inert.

On Iran, US officials have said the Obama administration is concerned about an emerging threat to talks designed to seal a nuclear deal with Tehran.

The Russian business daily Kommersant has reported Russia plans to buy 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil a day, shattering an export limit defined by an interim nuclear agreement that world powers and Iran reached last year. The oil-for-goods exchange is still far from finalized, the newspaper said, but its potential challenges Western efforts to secure a comprehensive agreement.

In an appearance before Congress last week, Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington could impose new economic sanctions if Iran and Russia move forward with reported contract.

While nuclear negotiators met in Vienna, Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Obama administration has warned Iran and Russia about moving proceeding along this path, saying that it would violate the interim agreement reached last November in Geneva.

LONDON — Health and infectious disease experts met at the World Health Organisation on Tuesday to discuss whether a deadly virus that emerged in the Middle East in 2012 now constitutes a “public health emergency of international concern”.

The virus, which causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or MERS infections in people, has been reported in more than 500 patients in Saudi Arabia alone and spread throughout the region in sporadic cases and into Europe, Asia and the United States.

Its death rate is around 30 per cent of those infected.

Experts meeting at the United Nations health agency’s Geneva headquarters would consider whether a recent upsurge in detected cases in Saudi Arabia, together with the wider international spread of sporadic cases, means the disease should be classed as an international emergency.

Global health regulations define such an emergency as an extraordinary event that poses a risk to other WHO member states through the international spread of disease, and which may require a coordinated international response.

In a statement issued late on Tuesday, the WHO said the experts’ discussions were continuing later than planned and that its assistant director general for health security, Keiji Fukuda, would hold a news conference on Wednesday to announce the conclusions of the meeting.

MERS, which causes coughing, fever and sometimes fatal pneumonia, is a coronavirus from the same family as SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which killed around 800 people worldwide after first appearing in China in 2002.

JEDDAH — Saudi health authorities announced Tuesday five new deaths from MERS, raising the total death toll in the country worst-hit by the mysterious coronavirus to 152 since it appeared in 2012.

Meanwhile, four new infections by the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome have been registered, raising the total of cases to 495, the health ministry said.

The ministry added that six patients who had been infected by the SARS-like virus have been cured.

The new deaths occurred on Monday, with one patient dying in Riyadh and the remaining four in the commercial capital Jeddah.

MERS causes fever, coughing and shortness of breath, and can be lethal particularly among older people and those existing health problems.

Some 30 per cent of the several hundred people infected with it have died, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The virus first emerged in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and recent research has suggested it may originate in camels.

The vast majority of cases have been in Saudi Arabia, but MERS has also been found in 16 other countries.

Most cases involved people who had travelled to Saudi Arabia.

RAMALLAH — Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Al Malki said on Monday he had asked world powers to classify Israeli settler groups who attack Palestinian communities and holy sites as terrorist organisations.

The move comes as part of a Palestinian drive to refer their demands for an independent state in Israeli-occupied territory to more international bodies since US-backed peace talks collapsed last month.

Malki said militant settlers known as the “Hilltop Youth” and vigilantes who use the “price tag” slogan “practice terror ... constantly against the Palestinian people, their land, holy places and property”.

“Price tag” refers to retribution the settlers say they will exact for any attempt by the Israeli government to curb settlement in the West Bank, an occupied Palestinian area that is sought as part of a future state.

“These groups play a role in killing, incitement to violence and spreading the culture of hatred and racism,” he said in the letter sent to Russia, the United States, Canada, the European Union, the United Nations, the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic States.

Palestinian anger has mounted over incursions by militant Jewish settlers into Palestinian villages where they have torched buildings, scrawled hateful slogans and attacked residents. No such attacks are known to have caused any deaths.

The European Union and Western countries have for decades referred to several Palestinian armed groups as terrorist organisations and, more recently, have also included the Israeli ultra-nationalist militant group Kahane Chai.

A US State Department country report on terrorism published last month described the raids by militant settlers, but did not designate them as terrorist groups.

The UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs in 2013 reported 399 settler attacks resulting in Palestinian injury or property damage.

Israeli officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the Palestinian move.

Palestinians want an independent state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands Israel captured and occupied after the 1967 war. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Rising

Since the UN recognised Palestine as a non-member state in 2012, Palestinians have stepped up a campaign to join UN bodies and submit their complaints to international opinion.

Israel sees these moves as unilateral and harmful to peace negotiations, which broke down in April amid mutual blame.

Israel’s justice and internal security ministers asked the Cabinet last week to introduce the “terrorist group” label for the attackers.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said last year suspects in “Price Tag” incidents would be subject to measures such as longer detentions and denial of access to lawyers while under interrogation — measures akin to those used by Israel’s security services against Palestinian militants.

Despite dozens of arrests by Israeli security forces of suspects over the past year, there have been few convictions. Police say many are minors to whom courts show leniency.

The frequency of attacks has risen sharply over the past month since the Israeli military demolished structures in a West Bank settlement built without government authorisation.

Ahead of Pope Francis’ visit to the Holy Land in late May, the Roman Catholic patriarch in Jerusalem has expressed alarm over threats to Christians repeatedly scrawled on church property by the suspected settler vandals in recent months.