Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel unveiled a package of "confidence-building measures" for the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, after Defence Minister Benny Gantz hosted talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on his first visit in years.

Abbas, leading a high-ranking delegation on his first visit to Israel for an official meeting since 2010, held talks with Gantz at his home in the central town of Rosh HaAyin, according to Israeli sources and media.

"We discussed the implementation of economic and civilian measures, and emphasised the importance of deepening security coordination and preventing terror and violence — for the well-being of both Israelis and Palestinians," Gantz said after the meeting on Tuesday evening.

On Wednesday, Israel's defence ministry announced "confidence-building measures" with the Palestinian Authority (PA).

These included a $32 million advance payment to the PA in taxes collected on its behalf by Israel, and the granting of 600 extra permits allowing Palestinian businessmen to cross into Israel.

It also announced the regularisation of 6,000 more Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, which has been under Israeli control since the June War of 1967.

Israel had already announced in October, for the first time since 2009, the regularisation of the status of 4,000 Palestinians living in the large swathe of the West Bank known as Area C, where Israel exercises civilian as well as military control.

“The meeting dealt with the importance of creating a political horizon that leads to a political solution, in accordance with international resolutions,” Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Hussein Al Sheikh said Wednesday.

Excluding East Jerusalem, the West Bank is home to nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers, living in communities regarded as illegal under international law.

The talks also covered “the tense conditions on the ground due to the practices of settlers” as well as “many security, economic and humanitarian issues”, Hussein Al Sheikh added.

After Israel’s coalition government led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett was formed in June, Gantz had visited the PA’s headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah in August for talks with Abbas, the first official meeting at such a level for several years.

But after those talks, hawkish Bennett, the former head of a settler lobby group who opposes Palestinian statehood, underlined that there was no peace process under way with the Palestinians, “and there won’t be one”.

Right-winger Bennett leads a motley coalition of parties ranging from the Jewish nationalist right to the left and centre.

Israel’s right-wing opposition Likud Party condemned the latest meeting, saying that “concessions dangerous for Israel’s security are only a matter of time”.

The party added a dismissive reference to Bennett’s governing coalition, which includes an Israeli Arab party for the first time.

“The Israeli-Palestinian government has put the Palestinians and Abbas back on the agenda... it is dangerous for Israel,” the Likud said.

‘Deepens Palestinian divide’ 

Gantz’s meeting with Abbas follows a recent visit to the region by US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, with the administration of President Joe Biden seeking to reboot relations with the Palestinians that were broken under Donald Trump.

Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, also condemned the visit.

It went against the “national spirit of our Palestinian people”, a Hamas statement said.

“This behaviour by the leadership of the Palestinian Authority deepens the Palestinian political divide, complicates the Palestinian situation, encourages those in the region who want to normalise relations with the occupier, and weakens the Palestinians’ rejection of normalisation,” Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said.

Qassem was alluding to Gulf Arab states Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Morocco and Sudan, which signed US-brokered normalisation deals with Israel during the presidency of Trump.

BEIRUT — At least two members of a pro-Syrian army militia were killed in an Israeli strike on the Syrian port of Latakia, a war monitor said on Wednesday.

The strike before dawn on Tuesday marked the second time that Israel has hit the key cargo hub since the outbreak of Syria's civil war in 2011.

The Israeli attack, one of nearly 30 that have hit Syria this year, caused significant damage with stacks of containers catching fire.

"Two members of a pro-regime militia were killed in the Israeli strike," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"They had suffered serious wounds and succumbed to their injuries" in hospital in Latakia on Wednesday.

Three other militia fighters were also wounded.

Syrian state media said the containers hit in the strikes carried "engine oil and spare parts for cars and other vehicles".

But the Observatory said the cargo was "arms and munitions".

Syria's ally Iran condemned the air strikes, describing them as "inhumane and immoral" and an example of Israel's "provocation of crisis in the region".

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh accused Israel of “making a mockery of all international laws, regulations and norms by carrying out repeated attacks on Syrian territory on false pretexts”.

Since the start of the conflict, Israel has routinely carried out air strikes on its strife-torn neighbour, mostly targeting Syrian government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters.

So far this year, Israel has targeted Syria nearly 30 times, killing 130 people, according to Observatory figures.

The Israeli military has defended the strikes as a necessary measure to prevent its arch-foe Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep.

KHARTOUM — Sudanese gunmen have looted a World Food Programme warehouse containing some 1,900 tonnes of food aid in Darfur amid a surge of violence in the troubled western region, officials said on Wednesday.

Residents of El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, reported heavy shooting near the warehouse late Tuesday. "We heard intense gunfire," Mohamed Salem told AFP.

A WFP official said they were "conducting an audit into what was stolen from the warehouse, which contain some 1,900 tonnes of food products".

Darfur has seen a spike in conflict since October triggered by disputes over land, livestock and access to water and grazing, with some 250 people reported killed in fighting between herders and farmers in recent months.

Tens of thousands have been forced to flee their homes, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

Sudan is also reeling from political turbulence in the wake of a coup led military chief General Abdel Fattah Al Burhan on October 25.

Last week, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres condemned looting and violence near a former UN logistics base in El Fasher that had been recently handed over to the local authorities.

Over 14 million people, a third of Sudan's population, will need humanitarian aid next year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the highest level for a decade.

Darfur was ravaged by a civil war that erupted in 2003, pitting ethnic minority rebels who complained of discrimination against the Arab-dominated government.

More than 300,000 people died and 2.5 million were displaced during the conflict, according to the UN.

While the main conflict in Darfur has subsided, with a peace deal struck with key rebel groups last year, the arid region has remained awash with weapons and violence often erupts.

A joint UN and African Union mission, UNAMID, ended 13 years of peacekeeping operations last December.

KUWAIT CITY — A new Kuwaiti government was sworn in on Wednesday, the oil-rich Gulf emirate's fourth in two years, after the last one resigned in November amid political deadlock.

Kuwait has been shaken by disputes between elected lawmakers and successive governments for more than a decade, with parliaments and Cabinets dissolved several times.

The last government called it quits in November in the face of a standoff with parliament over reforms.

The Cabinet was sworn in before the crown prince, the official KUNA news agency reported.

It is the fourth government that Sabah Al Khaled Al Sabah has formed since his appointment as prime minister in December 2019.

Kuwait is the only Gulf Arab state with a fully elected parliament, which enjoys wide legislative powers and can vote ministers out of office.

Oil Minister Mohammed Al Fares and Foreign Minister Sheikh Ahmed Nasser Al Mohammed Al Sabah retain their posts in the reshuffle.

However, the new lineup includes a critical voice in Finance Minister Abdulwahab Al Rushaid, who earlier this month called on government to “focus on a sustainable economy rather than on the fluctuations of oil prices”.

Like most Gulf countries, Kuwait’s economy and public finances have been hit by the coronavirus pandemic and the slumping price of oil.

In last year’s elections, the opposition and its allies won nearly half of parliament’s 50 seats.

The polls were the first since the new emir, Sheikh Nawaf, took power on the death of his half-brother, Sheikh Sabah, at the age of 91.

In recent years there have been mounting calls for reform in Kuwait, where expatriate residents make up 70 per cent of the 4.8 million population.

TRIPOLI — Libyan prosecutors ordered the culture minister detained on Wednesday as part of an investigation into alleged graft of state funds, a week after arresting the education minister in a similar case.

Prosecutors had questioned Culture Minister Mabrouka Touki and ordered her detained on charges of “falsifying official documents in order to complicate the processes of review and oversight of public spending”, it said in a statement.

This relates to alleged graft over a contract for maintenance works on ministry buildings which had already been refurbished last year.

Touki, an academic with a degree in nuclear physics, was appointed in March as part of the country’s interim unity government.

Her detention comes a week and a half after Libya’s Education Minister Moussa Al Megarief was arrested as part of an inquiry into a lack of schoolbooks.

The prosecution service said it was investigating possible “negligence” in that case.

Libya plunged into a decade of chaos following the 2011 revolt that toppled president Muammar Qadhafi, and state institutions are riddled with corruption.

The North African country was supposed to hold a presidential election last Friday in a United Nations-led effort to drag Libya out of its years of conflict. The ballot was delayed to an unspecified date after bitter arguments over divisive candidates and a disputed legal framework.

BAGHDAD — An Iraqi police officer was murdered about two weeks after the Daesh group kidnapped him, officials said on Wednesday.

A low-level Daesh insurgency continues to disrupt efforts to restore stability to Iraq, which is scarred by years of warfare and unrest.

The militant group had released photos purporting to show the decapitated body of Colonel Yasser Al Jourani, whom they had seized while he was hunting with friends in Iraq’s Hamrin region earlier this month.

One of his hunting companions was found shot dead, while a second who had been tortured later died of his wounds, a security source told AFP.

The spokesman of Iraq’s armed forces chief said Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi had ordered that security efforts against Daesh forces be boosted.

“We will pursue the terrorists to achieve justice and vengeance for our martyrs,” the army chief’s spokesman said.

Over the past few days security forces announced a large-scale operation in the mountainous Hamrin region.

Iraqi military operations and airstrikes killed “five Daesh agents”, an Arabic acronym for Daesh, leading to the discovery of several “terrorist caches” containing bombs and weapons, a statement from Iraq’s security forces read.

“Two bodies of two kidnapped people were found,” it added, without naming the victims.

Daesh overran large swathes of northern and western Iraq in a lighting offensive in 2014 before eventually succumbing to counter-attacks by government forces backed by a US-led coalition in 2017.

Today, Daesh maintains a largely clandestine presence in Iraq and Syria and conducts a sustained insurgency on both sides of the border, according to a United Nations report published early this year.

Across the two countries, Daesh is believed to retain about 10,000 active fighters, according to the report.

The last major attack claimed by Daesh in Iraq targeted a market in Baghdad’s Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City in July and killed about 30 people.