Region

JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces on Thursday raided a West Bank town after three deadly attacks rocked Israel  in a week, with two Palestinians shot dead and a third killed after he launched a knife attack on a bus.

The violence comes after a Palestinian armed with an M-16 assault rifle killed five Israeli civilians in the streets of Bnei Brak, an Orthodox Jewish city near Tel Aviv, on Tuesday night.

That shooting took to 11 the number of people killed in the week of violence carried out by Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, days before the holy Muslim month of Ramadan begins.

The latest bloodshed erupted on Thursday morning when Israeli forces said its soldiers returned fire after being shot at during an operation to arrest suspects in the West Bank city of Jenin.

"During the activity, Palestinian gunmen opened fire at the troops. IDF troops responded with fire," the army said in a statement, adding that one soldier was hospitalised.

The Palestinian health ministry said "the Israeli occupation forces" killed two Palestinians, both males aged 17 and 23, in Jenin and another 15 were wounded.

Later on Thursday morning, a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli civilian on a bus south of the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the army said, before "a civilian on the bus shot the terrorist dead."

Shaare Zedek hospital in Jerusalem said they treated a man aged about 30 for stab wounds to his torso.

The Palestinian health ministry identified the alleged assailant as Nidal Jumaa Jafara, 30.

Islamic Jihad warning 

The Gaza Strip-based secretary general of the Islamic Jihad, Ziad Al Nakhala, announced in a statement that the group’s armed wing would step up activities “in light of the storming of Jenin camp by the Zionist enemy army”.

The violence has cast a pall ahead of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which begins this weekend.

Last year, clashes in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem escalated into 11 days of bloody conflict between Israel and the Hamas Islamic group that controls the Gaza Strip.

Early Thursday, far-right Israeli lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir taunted Hamas as he walked the Al Aqsa compound, which Jews revere as the site of two ancient temples.

“All night Hamas threatened me and said that I was in the line of fire and told me not to come here, I say to the Hamas spokesman shut up,” he said.

Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and occupied East Jerusalem in the June War of 1967. Palestinians seek to end Israel’s rule of those territories and build an independent state on the land.

Peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians have been frozen for years.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is opposed to a Palestinian state, and instead has pursued a policy of economic easements for Palestinians.

Bennett is also a former settler leader and construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank has continued unabated, despite his diverse coalition that ranges from nationalists to Israeli doves to an Arab Muslim party.

Nearly half-a-million Israelis live settlements across the West Bank that are considered illegal under international law.

BAGHDAD — Six months after Iraq’s parliamentary vote, the war-scarred country is no closer to electing a president amid a bitter political stalemate that has thrown institutions into limbo.

Wrangling between rival Muslim Shiite blocs in the assembly on Wednesday scuppered the legislature’s third attempt to elect a head of state.

Though a largely ceremonial role, the president determines the country’s next prime minister who will in turn form a cabinet to be voted in by an absolute majority of lawmakers.

What is the hold-up? 

A schism running through the so-called “Shiite house” of Iraqi politics lies at the heart of the impasse.

Firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has long claimed the largest bloc in parliament, with 73 seats out of the 329-member legislature.

But his bloc does not have enough members to establish a clear majority — forcing him to reach out to form an untraditional alliance.

Eschewing the more predictable grouping with other Shiite factions, Sadr has chosen to ally with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Sunni parties to form a coalition dubbed “Saving the Homeland”, with 155 seats.

The coalition backs KDP candidate Rebar Ahmed for the presidency — a post reserved for Kurds, while the post of prime minister by convention goes to a Shiite.

Shirking the tradition of forming a “consensus government” between Shiite parties, Sadr hopes to put forth a “majority government” led by his cousin, Iraq’s ambassador to Britain Jaafar Al Sadr.

This has placed his coalition at loggerheads with the Coordination Framework — a powerful force that includes former premier Nuri Al Maliki’s party and the Iran-backed Fatah Alliance, the political arm of the Shiite-led former paramilitary group Hashed Al Shaabi.

The Coalition Framework has 130 MPs, which boycotted all three sessions to elect a president, preventing the assembly from reaching the required two thirds quorum.

How to resolve the crisis? 

After the third vote failed on Wednesday, Sadr again rejected the idea of a consensus government, saying this would amount to the “death” of Iraq.

A date for a new vote has yet to be set, and Iraqi political analyst Ihsan Al Shammari believes this “indicated that there is no prospect for the resolution of the crisis”.

“There is no rapprochement between [Sadr’s] alliance and the Coordination Framework,” he said.

This risks dragging the crisis out for months, while keeping the incumbent president and prime minister in their seats.

“Unless there is an outside threat, such as the organisation of Islamic State [Daesh] in 2014 which pushes political leaders to come together and quickly reach agreement, they will continue for as long as it takes to reach what they want. Even if that means surpassing the limits set out in the constitution,” said political expert Hamzeh Haddad.

What does the constitution say? 

Under the Iraqi constitution the president should be elected within 30 days of the first meeting of the new parliament, which in this case was on January 9. This deadline has largely expired and we “have broken the constitution”, said legal expert Ahmed Al Sufi.

The country’s highest legal body, the federal court, afterwards extended the deadline to elect a president to April 6. But the judges can only give an opinion and not seize the political initiative.

The court “has no authority, other than to rule whether the constitution has been violated or not”, said Sufi.

Parliament could dissolve itself and call new elections. But to do that, at least a third of the MPs must meet and present the proposal which must then be approved by a majority plus one.

This option is not very likely, said Haddad as there is “no political will”.

“And as was demonstrated by the low turnout in the past two general elections, Iraqis have very little appetite to go out and vote,” he added.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi lawmakers on Wednesday failed for a third time to elect a new national president for lack of a quorum, officials said, deepening the war-scarred country's political crisis.

The continued failure by parliament to select a president after last year's elections reflects a deep schism between Shiite political groupings.

"The assembly adjourned its session until further notice," the parliament's press service said without giving a new date.

Iraq's federal court has given lawmakers until April 6 to choose a new president. If that deadline is missed, said political scientist Hamza Haddad, "We could reach a point where new elections are decided to break the deadlock."

A parliamentary source told AFP that only 178 out of 329 lawmakers were present in parliament on Wednesday, far short of the two-thirds quorum required for the vote.

As in the previous two aborted votes, last Saturday and February 7, Wednesday's session was boycotted by a major Shiite coalition bloc in parliament.

Half a year after October 2021 legislative elections, Iraq still does not have a new president or prime minister, keeping the country in a state of political paralysis.

Parliamentarians must first elect the head of state, by convention a member of the Kurdish minority, with a two-thirds majority. The president then appoints the head of government, a post now held by Mustafa al-Kadhemi.

Among the 40 candidates for the presidency, two are considered the frontrunners: incumbent Barham Saleh, of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and Rebar Ahmed of the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).

On February 13, Iraq’s supreme court ruled out a presidential bid by KDP-backed veteran politician Hoshyar Zebari, after a complaint filed against him over years-old, untried corruption charges.

Iraqi politics were thrown into turmoil following October’s election, which was marred by record low turnout, post-vote threats and violence, and a months-long delay before the final results were confirmed.

The largest political bloc, led by firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, had backed Zebari for the presidency before moving its support to Ahmed.

The failed votes in parliament have underscored the gulf in Iraqi politics between Sadr, the general election’s big winner, and the powerful Coordination Framework, which called the boycotts.

The Coordination Framework includes former premier Nuri Al-Maliki’s party and the pro-Iran Fatah Alliance, the political arm of the Shiite-led former paramilitary group Hashed al-Shaabi.

Alongside backing Ahmed for the presidency, Sadr intends to entrust the post of prime minister to his cousin and brother-in-law Jaafar Sadr, Iraq’s ambassador to Britain.

That prospect is unpalatable for the Coordination Framework.

RIYADH — Saudi Arabia is waiting for "serious steps" from Yemen's rebels on a potential prisoner swap before responding to their offer of a ceasefire, an official told AFP on Tuesday.

The Saudi-led coalition, which backs the government in Yemen's conflict, is yet to comment on the surprise announcement from the Iran-backed Houthis, who called a three-day truce and dangled the possibility of a permanent end to hostilities.

The rebels' offer on Saturday, the seventh anniversary of the start of the war, came a day after a wave of cross-border drone and missile attacks on Saudi targets, including an oil plant within sight of Jeddah's Formula One Grand Prix.

Saudi Arabia "is waiting for serious steps from the Houthis before dealing with the truce initiative put forward by the Houthis", a Saudi diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity, referring to a possible prisoner swap in the coming days.

On Sunday, the Houthis said an agreement had been reached to free 1,400 of their fighters in exchange for 823 pro-government personnel, including 16 Saudis and three Sudanese.

The brother of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi is among the prisoners set for release, Abdul Qader Al  Murtada, head of the Houthis' prisoners affairs committee, wrote on Twitter.

The exchange is “under consideration” tweeted Hadi Haig, his counterpart in Yemen’s government.

The latest statements have lifted hopes of diplomatic progress after the war, which has killed hundreds of thousands directly or indirectly and left millions on the brink of famine, entered its eighth year.

“We are pleased to hear that some progress has been made in negotiations between the parties on another major release,” said Basheer Omar, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Yemen, which handles the logistics of swaps.

“We hope to soon see a release process for the detainees and their families. But we are also aware that negotiations of this kind during an active conflict are complex and require time,” he told AFP.

The last prisoner swap was in October 2020, when 1,056 people were released on each side, according to the ICRC.

On Saturday, the Houthis offered peace talks on a permanent ceasefire on condition that the Saudis end their blockade and air strikes and remove coalition forces from Yemen.

However, the rebels have shunned a meeting in Riyadh from Wednesday that is hosted by the Gulf Cooperation Council and involves the Yemeni government and US and UN envoys to Yemen. The Houthis say they won’t travel to enemy territory for talks.

RABAT — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was visiting Morocco on Tuesday to discuss regional security and meet Abu Dhabi Crwon Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

The trip comes in the shadow of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which along with sanctions has sent wheat and fuel prices soaring in a serious blow for import-dependent North African countries.

"We know this pain is keenly felt in the Middle East and North Africa, where most countries import at least half of their wheat," State Department Acting Assistant Secretary Yael Lempert said before the trip.

Blinken flew in late Monday from Israel where he had joined top diplomats from the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain and Egypt for a meeting that underlined a seismic shift since 2020 in relations between Arab countries and Israel.

On Tuesday he started talks with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch, with the Western Sahara dispute and security cooperation on the agenda, including the fight against the Daesh group and Al Qaeda in the Sahel.

The same subjects will loom large in meetings the following day with Morocco’s regional rival Algeria.

Blinken will also meet Tuesday evening with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed at the Emirati leader’s Moroccan residence.

Blinken and Prince Mohammed are set to discuss efforts to revive the 2015 landmark Iran nuclear deal, which aimed to limit Iran’s nuclear development in exchange for loosening sanctions, an agreement dropped by former US president Donald Trump in 2018.

Their meeting also comes amid an escalation in cross-border missile and drone attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels against the UAE and Saudi Arabia, allies in a grinding war that has laid waste to the impoverished nation with no end in sight.

Blinken will also meet a group of Moroccan women involved in science and technology.

Western Sahara 

In Morocco, Blinken is set to discuss the Western Sahara, a phosphate-rich former Spanish colony with a vast Atlantic coastline home to rich fisheries.

Morocco controls 80 per cent of it including a key highway towards West Africa, while the rest, a desert area bordering Mauritania and Algeria,  is run by the Polisario Front independence movement.

Trump in 2020 recognised the region as sovereign Moroccan territory in a break with decades of US policy, after Rabat agreed to reestablish relations with Israel under the so-called Abraham Accords.

President Joe Biden’s administration has been tight-lipped on how it will follow up on the move, which came just weeks after the Polisario declared a 1991 ceasefire null and void, sparking fears that the long-frozen conflict could flare up again.

Morocco has urged the US to take a step further and open a consulate there, like the UAE, a move to which the Biden administration has not committed.

The State Department said in a report Monday that it supports a Moroccan autonomy plan and the work of recently appointed UN envoy Staffan de Mistura.

The UN sees the territory as a “non-self-governing territory”.

Blinken’s visit to Rabat also comes as the US seeks stronger support for Ukraine from a region where many countries have been reticent to criticise Moscow.

They include Morocco, which has declined to condemn Russia at the United Nations, frustrating both Washington and European capitals.

The Emirates are a long-standing US ally but “MBZ” has steered a more assertive foreign policy course, forging closer ties with China and intervening in the Libya conflict on the side also backed by Kremlin-linked mercenaries.

Asked about Washington’s ties with the UAE, a senior US official responded drily that the two sides will talk about “the next phase in the relationship and how we can take it forward”.

SDE BOKER, Israel — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the top diplomats of Israel and four Arab states wrapped up landmark meeting on Monday vowing to boost regional cooperation, which Israel claimed would send a strong message to its arch foe Iran.

The talks brought together for the first time on Israeli soil the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, which all normalised ties with Israel in 2020 — and of Egypt, which made peace with Israel in 1979.

Israel's Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, the meeting's host, said that "this new architecture, the shared capabilities we are building, intimidates and deters our common enemies, first and foremost Iran and its proxies.

"They certainly have something to fear."

UAE Foreigh Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan called the gathering "historic".

"What we are trying to achieve here is changing the narrative, creating a different future," he told reporters after the talks.

The meeting's late-Sunday opening, in the Sde Boker kibbutz deep in the Negev Desert, was marred by a shooting attack in northern Israel that killed two police officers and was claimed by the Daesh group, which has rarely managed to stage attacks inside Israel.

And early Monday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's office confirmed he had caught COVID, a day after he held closed-door meetings with Blinken, followed by joint press conference without masks.

Iran nuclear deal 

The talks on restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal were high on the agenda in meetings Blinken held on Sunday with Israel's Bennett, Lapid and President Isaac Herzog.

Speaking alongside Lapid on Sunday, Blinken said the US believes restoring the agreement is "the best way to put Iran's [nuclear] programme back in the box" after the US withdrew from the deal under former president Donald Trump in 2018.

The European Union's foreign policy chief said at the weekend that an agreement with Iran to restore the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action could be reached "in a matter of days".

Blinken stressed that "when it comes to the most important element, we see eye-to-eye" with Israel. "We are both committed, both determined, that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon."

Lapid said the two sides "have disagreements" about the deal, whose restoration is in the final stages of negotiation in Vienna after almost a year of on-and-off talks.

But "open and honest dialogue is part of the strength of our friendship", Lapid said.

"At the same time, Israel will do anything we believe is needed to stop the Iranian nuclear programme."

'No substitute' 

UAE and Bahrain formed ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords, brokered by former US president Donald Trump. Morocco then reestablished relations with Israel under a separate Trump-brokered agreement.

Israeli leaders have argued that the normalisations highlight a changed Middle East, where Arab leaders are no longer compelled to keep a distance from Israel so long as its conflict with the Palestinians remains unsolved.

The Abraham Accords infuriated the Palestinians, who argued that they marked a betrayal of a decades-old Arab League consensus to isolate Israel until it agrees to the establishment of Palestinian state, with its capital in occupied East Jerusalem.

Blinken has voiced strong support for the Abraham Accords, negotiated by the previous US administration, but cautioned at the Negev meeting that they cannot replace Israeli-Palestinian peace-building.

The gains brought about by the Abraham Accords “are not a substitute for progress between Palestinians and Israelis”, Blinken told reporters.

In Israel Sunday, Blinken also discussed strategies to ensure calm this year during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Christian Easter celebrations and the Jewish Passover holiday, which overlap.

Tensions in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim as their future capital, partly fuelled an 11-day conflict in May last year with the Islamist group Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip.

Blinken stressed the need to “prevent actions on all sides that could raise tensions, including [Jewish] settlement expansion” in occupied Palestinian territories, a rare in-person condemnation of Israeli efforts to expand the Jewish settler population.

GENEVA — UN investigators lamented on Monday that serious rights violations, including possible crimes against humanity, were continuing with impunity across much of Libya, blocking the country's transition to peace and democracy.

In a fresh report, the Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya warned that multiple and widespread violations threatened the integrity of the electoral process and efforts to move towards democracy.

"There will be no peace without ending these violations. There will be no democracy without putting an end to impunity," mission chair Mohamed Auajjar told reporters.

The three-person team pointed to intimidation and harassment of activists, attacks on lawyers and judges, and mass violations against vulnerable groups like migrants, women and detainees.

The experts had already concluded in their first report last October that acts of murder, torture, imprisonment, rape and enforced disappearance in Libya's prisons may amount to crimes against humanity.

Since then, "We have uncovered further evidence that the human rights violations experienced by detainees in Libya are widespread, systematic or both," Auajjar said.

The mission's second report covers the period since last November, coinciding with increased political turmoil in the lead-up to and aftermath of the postponement of hoped-for elections.

Libya was meant to hold elections last December, as part of a UN-guided peace process aiming to draw a line under a complex conflict that dates back to the 2011 revolt that toppled and killed dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

But as political factions wrangled over the legal basis and the eligibility of controversial candidates, the polls were postponed indefinitely.

Auajjar said the fact-finding mission, which was created by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2020, would not comment on political developments in the country.

However, the team had focused heavily on violations and crimes “that can especially hamper Libya’s transition to peace, democracy and the rule of law”, he said.

“In our view, the culture of impunity that is prevailing in different parts of Libya is impeding that transition.”

The experts said they had received “alarming reports of attacks on civil society organisations and activists in Libya”.

The report decried a “public campaign denigrating the work of civil society and a shrinking civic space”, pointing to how “activists are routinely threatened online... and live under the constant fear of abduction, arrest and arbitrary detention”.

And “chilling video recordings of activists ‘confessions’ were posted” on the Tripoli Internal Security Facebook page, it said.

“The mission fears that such ‘confessions’ may have been obtained under duress and are intended to terrorise activists.”

The experts highlighted impunity for attacks against women politicians, including for the enforced disappearance of parliamentarian Seham Sergiwa in 2019, and the 2020 killing of outspoken lawyer and activist Hanan Al Barassi.

This has had a chilling effect on women eager to participate in politics in Libya, the experts said.

“We see the shrinking civic space,” mission member Tracy Robinson told reporters.

And especially, she said, “we see shrinking numbers of women engaged in government.”

DAMASCUS — Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday signed into law a bill enshrining a six-month jail sentence for citizens residing in the country who spread disinformation undermining the state’s reputation.

Under the previous law, only Syrians residing abroad could be hit with jail sentences, likely in absentia, for spreading fake or exaggerated news deemed damaging to the state. 

But under the new legislation approved on Monday, Syrians at home will likewise face prison time.

“Every Syrian who knowingly publishes false or exaggerated news that undermines the prestige... of the state shall be punished by imprisonment for at least six months,” the presidency said in a statement.

The same sentence was laid out for any Syrian who “publicises news that could improve the reputation of an enemy state”, the presidency added.

The statement did not specify which countries fall under that label.

The new law also introduced a prison sentence of at least one year for “every Syrian who, in writing or in speech, called for the cession of Syrian territory”, according to the statement.

Syrians have feared prosecution for criticising the state for decades, even though the constitution did not lay out specific legislation banning such comments. 

“People across the country... lived in fear of being arrested for expressing their opinion, belonging to a dissenting political party, reporting for the media, or defending human rights,” the United Nations Human Rights Council said this month.

The latest move follows months of growing discontent over a spiralling economic crisis.

Civil war erupted in Syria in 2011 after the violent repression of protests demanding regime change.

Around half-a-million people have been killed and millions have been displaced in the conflict, which has battered the country’s economy.

The rising cost of living has been further stoked by food and fuel price inflation resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.