Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel's top court has ruled that a Jewish settler group legally purchased an East Jerusalem property from the Greek Orthodox Church, ending a nearly two-decade battle over the Old City property.

The Ateret Cohanim organisation, which seeks to "Judaize" Israeli occupied East Jerusalem, bought three buildings from the church in a controversial deal struck in secret in 2004.

The sale triggered Palestinian anger and led to the dismissal of Patriarch Irineos I the following year.

The church brought charges against Ateret Cohanim, claiming the properties were acquired illegally and without its permission.

In a decision released late Wednesday, Israel's Supreme Court dismissed the church's appeal, noting that the "harsh allegations" of misconduct by the parties involved in the original sale were "not proven to be true" in earlier proceedings.

The church blasted that ruling as "unfair" and without "any legal logical basis".

It condemned Ateret Cohanim as a "radical organisation" that had used "crooked and illegal methods to acquire Christian real estate" at a crucial Jerusalem site.

The church's lawyer, Asaad Mazawi, told AFP Thursday that the ruling marked "a very sad day".

"We are talking about a group of extremists that want to take the properties from the churches, want to change the character of the Old City and want to invade the Christian areas," he said.

Backed by Israel, "unfortunately they are succeeding," he said.

The Greek Orthodox Church is the largest and wealthiest church in Jerusalem with extensive land holdings there dating back centuries.

It has faced repeated accusations of corruption and facilitating Israeli settlement expansion on its properties.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem in the June War of 1967, in a move not recognised by most of the international community.

SANAA — The United Nations special envoy arrived in Yemen on Wednesday for talks on reopening routes to a rebel-blockaded city that has proved the thorniest problem in implementing a fragile truce.

Swedish diplomat Hans Grundberg flew into the capital Sanaa, held by the Iran-backed Houthi insurgents since 2014, less than a week after the truce was renewed for a second period of two months.

Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country, is witnessing what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis, seven years into a conflict between the Houthis and a Saudi-led coalition.

Grundberg hailed the truce extension, calling it a "positive signal of the parties' seriousness to uphold and implement the truce".

"Yemenis have seen the truce's tangible benefits. We have witnessed a significant positive shift and we have a responsibility to safeguard it and deliver on its potential for peace in Yemen," he told reporters.

Grundberg said he would meet the rebel leadership to discuss proposals for reopening roads into Taez, Yemen's third biggest city which has been largely cut off since 2015.

"I hope we will have constructive discussions on our proposal for reopening roads in Taez and other governorates, as well as economic and humanitarian measures and the way forward," he said.

Holding talks on Taez was one of the terms of the truce, along with resuming commercial flights out of Sanaa and allowing fuel ships into the lifeline port of Hodeida, which is also in rebel hands.

Flights have resumed from Sanaa to Amman and Cairo and tankers have docked in Hodeida in an attempt to ease fuel shortages in Sanaa and elsewhere.

BEIRUT — Rescue teams scrambled to douse a massive blaze in Lebanon’s largest pine forest on Wednesday that authorities said could be deliberate, as the country braced for another summer of fires.

The fire in the northern Dinniyeh region broke out on Tuesday night, prompting the army and volunteer firefighters to intervene to try to salvage one of the Middle East’s lushest pine forests.

The army on Wednesday said it dispatched helicopters but it was still struggling to contain the fire, hours after it started.

“Unfortunately, the forest fire season starts at the Batramaz forest in Dinniyeh,” said Environment Minister Nasser Yassin, who visited the area on Wednesday.

“It is possible that the fire was sparked deliberately,” he said, urging authorities to investigate. 

Lebanon is grappling with its worst-ever financial crisis and lacks the tools and capabilities to combat catastrophic wildfires that have increased in recent years, partly because of rising temperatures due to climate change.

Lebanon’s corruption-ridden state has consistently needed foreign assistance for disaster response.

The government’s shortcomings have angered environmental activists, who warn of the damage being done to the country’s ever-shrinking natural treasures.

“May God forgive those who did not appoint forest guards, who left forest areas without fire fighting equipment, and who neglected the development and support of civil defence,” environmental activist Paul Abi Rached wrote on social media.

Last July, it took Lebanon days to extinguish wildfires that ravaged pine forests in the north, left a 15-year-old volunteer firefighter dead and forced many people from their homes.

In 2019, the government’s failure to contain devastating wildfires was one of the triggers of an unprecedented, nationwide protest movement against perceived official incompetence and corruption.

Scientists have warned that extreme weather and fierce fires will become increasingly common due to man-made global warming.

GENEVA — Israel's occupation and discrimination against Palestinians are the main causes of the endless cycles of violence, UN investigators said on Tuesday.

A high-level team of investigators, appointed last year by the United Nations Human Rights Council to probe "all underlying root causes" in the decades-long conflict, pointed the finger squarely at Israel.

"Ending the occupation of lands by Israel... remains essential in ending the persistent cycles of violence," they said in a report, decrying ample evidence that Israel has "no intention" of doing so.

The 18-page report mainly focuses on evaluating a long line of past UN investigations, reports and rulings on the situation, and how and if those findings were implemented.

Recommendations in past reports were "overwhelmingly directed towards Israel", lead investigator Navi Pillay, a former UN rights chief from South Africa, said in a statement.

This, she said, was "an indicator of the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and the reality of one state occupying the other".

The investigators also determined that those recommendations "have overwhelmingly not been implemented", she said, pointing to calls to ensure accountability for Israel's violations of international law.

"It is this lack of implementation coupled with a sense of impunity, clear evidence that Israel has no intention of ending the occupation, and the persistent discrimination against Palestinians that lies at the heart of the systematic recurrence of violations in both the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel."

'Witch hunt' 

Israel has refused to cooperate with the Commission of Inquiry (COI) created last year following the 11-day Hamas-Israel war in May 2021, which killed 260 Palestinians and 13 people on the Israeli side.

Israel has in the past loudly criticised Pillay for “championing an anti-Israel agenda”, and on Tuesday the foreign ministry slammed the entire investigation as “a witch hunt”.

The report, it said, was “one-sided” and “tainted with hatred for the State of Israel and based on a long series of previous one-sided and biased reports”.

It had been published, it said, as “the result of the Human Rights Council’s extreme anti-Israel bias”.

Israel and its allies have long accused the top UN rights body of anti-Israel bias, pointing among other things to the fact that Israel is the only country that is systematically discussed at every regular council session, with a dedicated special agenda item.

The COI, which is the highest-level investigation that can be ordered by the council, is the ninth probe it has ordered into rights violations in Palestinian territories.

It is the first, however, tasked with looking at systematic abuses committed within Israel, the first open-ended probe, and the first to examine “root causes” in the drawn-out conflict.

SIR BU NAIR, United Arab Emirates — Under a blazing sun, far from the skyscrapers and SUVs of modern Dubai, hundreds of enthusiasts took to Gulf waters in traditional wooden vessels, keen to preserve an ancient heritage.

Around Sir Bu Nair, a teardrop-shaped island roughly 100 kilometres from both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, two of seven emirates that make up the UAE, 118 teams raced dhows, the sailboats that have plied the Arabian Peninsula’s waters for centuries.

“I started about 10 years ago, when I was 23, with my father and my brothers,” one of the sailors, Abdullah Al Mheiri, told AFP under the setting sun.

He had just ventured out across choppy waters with 11 crew mates to take part in the Al Gaffal dhow race, a gruelling annual tournament that stretches from early morning to early afternoon.

On one dhow, the crew, clad in white robes, toiled to unfurl a white sail, pulling at arm’s length on ropes and then scrambling for balance as the giant fabric caught the wind.

For Mheiri, taking part is his way of paying tribute to his heritage — Al Gaffal refers to the return of fishermen to Dubai’s coasts after journeying out to sea.

‘Duty’ to preserve environment 

Like much of the Gulf prior to the discovery of oil, the settlements that now make up the United Arab Emirates, including Dubai, were formed largely around maritime activities, notably pearl-diving using the once-ubiquitous dhows.

But with the establishment of the federation in 1971 and the advent of oil driven development, the UAE’s economic activity would swiftly balloon to become the Arab world’s second largest after Saudi Arabia.

Despite sitting on relatively low oil wealth compared to its neighbours, the emirate of Dubai saw a spectacular rise, capitalising on its strategic location to transform itself into a finance, air travel and tourism hub.

But away from the flitting of social media influencers and luxury high-rises, Mheiri prefers the quiet respite that he finds on the open sea.

The race’s starting point, Sir Bu Nair, is ideal, he believes, as it is also home to a nature reserve.

“We have lived with the sea for hundreds of years,” he said. “Preserving the environment is a duty.”

According to the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO, the island “is one of the most important hawksbill nesting sites within the entire Arabian Gulf and certainly by far the most important location in the UAE”.

Preserving heritage is vital for the organisers of Al Gaffal and they have sought to set an example with the competing sailboats, which are not fitted with engines.

“One of the most important messages we send is the transmission of this heritage from one generation to the next,” tournament Director Mohammed Al Falahi told AFP.

“But the fact is that it also doesn’t pose a risk for nature,” he added. “We haven’t forgotten that Sir Bu Nair is a nature reserve that shelters many species of turtles” in the Gulf.

The teams of sailing enthusiasts set off at dawn on Saturday, at times battling the searing heat as much as the waters.

Their sails hoisted, the vessels caught the wind, like white clouds floating across the expanse of blue, towards the Dubai shoreline, where the nearby Burj Al Arab hotel towers in the shape of a sail.

VIENNA — Major European countries and the United States are expected to seek to censure Iran as the UN atomic watchdog started meeting on Monday amid stalled talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

The resolution drafted by the United States, Britain, France and Germany is a sign of their growing impatience as diplomats warn the window to save the landmark deal is closing.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Board of Governors meets Monday through Friday in Vienna.

If the resolution urging Iran to "cooperate fully" with the IAEA is adopted, it will be the first motion censuring Iran since June 2020.

Talks to revive the accord started in April 2021 with the aim of bringing the United States back into the deal and lift sanctions again, and get Iran to scale back its stepped-up nuclear programme.

The 2015 landmark deal — promising Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs in its nuclear programme — started to fall apart in 2018 when then US president Donald Trump withdrew from it.

Talks to revive the agreement have stalled in recent months.

The coordinator of the talks, the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell, warned in a tweet this weekend that the possibility of returning to the accord was “shrinking”.

“But we still can do it with an extra effort,” he said.

‘Send a message’ 

In a report late last month, the IAEA said it still had questions that were “not clarified” regarding traces of enriched uranium previously found at three sites which had not been declared by Iran as having hosted nuclear activities.

Iran has warned “any political action” by the United States and the so-called E3 group of France, Germany and the UK would “provoke without any doubt a proportional, effective and immediate response”.

“Those who push for anti-Iran resolution at IAEA will be responsible for all the consequences,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian tweeted on Sunday.

Kelsey Davenport, an expert with the Arms Control Association, told AFP a resolution was “necessary to send a message that there are consequences for stonewalling the agency and failing to meet safeguards obligations”.

“There is no excuse for Iran’s continued failure to provide meaningful cooperation with the agency’s investigation,” she said.

China and Russia, which are also parties to the Iran nuclear deal — together with Britain, France and Germany — have warned any resolution could disrupt the negotiation process.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, called on the EU to “undertake extra diplomatic efforts”.

In a tweet on Sunday, he warned of a “tense” Board of Governors meeting.

In shadow of Ukraine 

But even if the climate is tense, negotiations are unlikely to fall apart, according to Clement Therme, associate researcher at the Rasanah International Institute for Iranian Studies.

“Given the war in Ukraine, the Europeans are not ready to trigger a new crisis with Iran when they are already dealing with a crisis with Russia” which invaded its neighbour in February, he said.

The expert suggested the resolution would be worded “in a way that does not close the door to further negotiations”.

A key sticking point is Tehran’s demand for Washington to remove the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological arm of Iran’s military, from the official US list of terror groups.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has refused to do so ahead of tough November midterm elections.

“The political cost Biden will pay for lifting sanctions on the IRGC is high, but it pales in comparison to the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran,” Davenport said.

She said Biden’s administration “should double down on other creative proposals to get negotiations back on track”.

According to the latest IAEA report, the Islamic republic now has 43.1 kilogrammes of 60 per cent-enriched uranium.

If enriched to 90 per cent, this could be used to make a bomb in under 10 days, Davenport warned in a report last week.

“Weaponising would still take one to two years, but that process would be more difficult to detect and disrupt once Iran moved the weapons-grade uranium from its declared enrichment facilities,” Davenport said.

Iran has always denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon.