Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 04-05/2023
French court upholds freezing of assets of Lebanon’s embattled central bank chief
AP/July 04, 2023
BEIRUT: A French court Tuesday upheld the freezing of the assets of Lebanon’s embattled central bank governor, rejecting his appeal to have them released, an official close to the investigation said. Several European countries are investigating central bank Gov. Riad Salameh and his associates over myriad alleged financial crimes, including illicit enrichment and laundering of $330 million. A French investigative judge on May 16 issued an international arrest warrant, or Interpol red notice, for the 72-year-old Salameh after he failed to show up in Paris for questioning. France, Germany and Luxembourg in March 2022 froze more than $130 million in assets linked to the investigation. The European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, or Eurojust, said at the time that the investigation targets five suspects accused of money laundering. Salameh, who has repeatedly denied charges of corruption had requested that his assets be unfrozen. On Tuesday, a French appeals court rejected his appeal, saying that his assets will remain frozen, according to an official close to the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. The central governor has repeatedly said that he made his wealth from his years working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch, inherited properties and investments. He said he would only resign if convicted of a crime. A Lebanese judge representing the Lebanese state earlier this year charged Salameh, his brother Raja and associate Marianne Hoayek with corruption.
Last week, Hoayek was questioned in France and she signed a document pledging not to return to work at the central bank and not to have any contacts with the Salameh brothers and paid a 1.5 million-euro ($1.63 million) bail, Lebanese judicial officials said. During her questioning, Hoayek denied charges of corruption saying that most of her money were inherited from her father.Salameh and his brother Raja didn’t go to France for questioning. During a visit to Lebanon in March, a European delegation questioned Salameh about the Lebanese central bank’s assets and investments outside the country, a Paris apartment — which the governor owns — and his brother’s brokerage firm. Reports have circulated that the Lebanese central bank had hired Forry Associates Ltd., a brokerage firm owned by Raja, to handle government bond sales from which the firm received $330 million in commissions. Riad Salameh, a Lebanese-French citizen, has held his post for almost 30 years, but says he intends to step down after his current term ends at the end of July. Once hailed as the guardian of Lebanon’s financial stability, Salameh since has been heavily blamed for Lebanon’s financial meltdown. Many say he precipitated the nearly four-year economic crisis, which has plunged three-quarters of Lebanon’s population of 6 million into poverty.

Report: France wants to add Iran to five-nation group on Lebanon
Naharnet/July 4, 2023 
France is willing to propose adding Iran to the five-nation group on Lebanon, which comprises the U.S., France, KSA, Qatar and Egypt, al-Akhbar newspaper reported Tuesday. The daily said that Paris has evaluated the outcome of its envoy's visit to Lebanon and has launched an action plan in two international and local directions. it went on to say that French President's Personal Envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian who visited Lebanon last month found that it is best to hold a dialogue sponsored by France and the five-nation group, after he heard from Lebanese officials that national dialogue attempts have failed. Le Drian will visit Riyadh soon and is considering to start a trip to Qatar, Egypt, and the U.S., al-Akhbar said, adding that the former French minister will also hold talks with Tehran. Meanwhile, al-Joumhouria newspaper claimed that Lebanon has not yet been informed on Le Drian's next visit to Lebanon, doubting that Le Drian will return to the crisis-hit country. It added that France's priorities must have changed after the recent tumult across France over the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old outside Paris and that Lebanon can no longer be a priority to the French.

LF: Dialogue wanted by defiance camp aimed at torpedoing Taif Accord
Naharnet/July 4, 2023
The Lebanese Forces’ Strong Republic parliamentary bloc on Tuesday charged that “the dialogue wanted by the defiance camp is only aimed at torpedoing the Taif Accord and the Lebanese constitution.”In a statement, the bloc warned that such a dialogue would seek to “enshrine the one-third-plus-one veto share for a certain group in addition to the third (Shiite) signature on government’s decrees.”And noting that it “does not reject dialogue as a principle,” the bloc stressed that finding solutions for crises should take place though “open-ended electoral rounds leading to the election of a new president,” not through “unconstitutional sessions carrying the dialogue label.”Hezbollah’s top lawmaker Mohammed Raad had on Monday called for “dialogue and understanding in order to finalize the presidential juncture as soon as possible,” noting that “those who do not want dialogue do not want a president but rather protracted vacuum.”

Ministry of Finance provides clarity on Alvarez & Marsal report: Not the final version
LBCI/July 4, 2023
The Ministry of Finance clarified on Tuesday that what it received from Alvarez & Marsal is only a preliminary draft of the report being prepared for the audit of the accounts of the Banque Du Liban, and it is not a comprehensive and final report. In a statement, the ministry pointed out that its role in this matter is as an intermediary between the bank and the company, in accordance with the terms of the contract, to provide the necessary data needed for the report. The ministry affirmed that upon receiving the final report, it would immediately submit it to the Council of Ministers, which has the authority to act on its content. The Ministry of Finance also stated that Finance Minister Youssef Khalil had prepared letters of response to the MPs who requested the report to be handed over or published, explaining the principles governing the handling of this matter. The ministry considered the information circulating regarding individuals or attributed to the report as inaccurate data intended only to create confusion.

Ministry of Finance provides clarity on Alvarez & Marsal report: Not the final version
LBCI/July 4, 2023
The Ministry of Finance clarified on Tuesday that what it received from Alvarez & Marsal is only a preliminary draft of the report being prepared for the audit of the accounts of the Banque Du Liban, and it is not a comprehensive and final report. In a statement, the ministry pointed out that its role in this matter is as an intermediary between the bank and the company, in accordance with the terms of the contract, to provide the necessary data needed for the report. The ministry affirmed that upon receiving the final report, it would immediately submit it to the Council of Ministers, which has the authority to act on its content. The Ministry of Finance also stated that Finance Minister Youssef Khalil had prepared letters of response to the MPs who requested the report to be handed over or published, explaining the principles governing the handling of this matter. The ministry considered the information circulating regarding individuals or attributed to the report as inaccurate data intended only to create confusion.

IMF report serves as a clear accusation against Lebanon's authorities, says banking source
LBCI/July 4, 2023
A banking source emphasized the importance of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) report regarding the description of the financial gap, estimated at around $73 billion, and the fact that the funds available in the Central Bank of Lebanon and commercial banks were almost sufficient to cover all deposits.
The source added that the financial gap accumulated when the state failed to issue bonds and resorted to borrowing from the central bank. Furthermore, it also contributed, after the announcement of the cessation of payments and through poor management, to the waste of about $22 billion of depositors' money in the Central Bank and about $15 billion of bank funds by allowing the repayment of "dollarized" loans in Lebanese lira or at an unrealistic exchange rate. The banking source considered the IMF report an explicit accusation against the Lebanese authorities, highlighting their primary and fundamental responsibility for the current situation.

Lebanese opposition delegation meets German officials
LBCI/July 4, 2023
The opposition delegation, consisting of MPs Fouad Makhzoumi, Ghassan Hasbani, Elias Hankach, Adib Abdel-Masih, Bilal al-Hosheimi, Waddah Saddeq, Raji al-Saad, and the political advisor to MP Fouad Makhzoumi, Carol Zouein, met with German Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office Tobias Lindner, along with Head of the Syria Desk at the German Foreign Ministry. According to a statement issued by Makhzoumi's media office, "This visit comes as part of Makhzoumi's initiative to convey the opposition's voice and representation to the international community, including the agreement with the International Monetary Fund, economic and political reforms, as well as the issue of Syrian refugees in Lebanon."

Mikati calls for end to 'fabricated problem' over cabinet sessions
Naharnet/July 4, 2023 
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati accused again those opposing cabinet meetings of "seeking to spread vacuum."In a statement Tuesday, Mikati said, in an apparent reference to the Free Patriotic Movement, that those who are claiming to preserve the president's powers have themselves practiced obstruction for years. "Elect a president as soon as possible, have mercy on the Lebanese and stop fabricating useless arguments and problems," the prime minister said, adding that cabinet is not the responsible for the presidential vacuum. "Stop the negativity, the obstruction, and the sectarian incitement," Mikati said. Mired in a crippling economic crisis since 2019, Lebanon has been governed by a caretaker cabinet for more than a year and without a president for more than eight months. No group has a clear majority in parliament and lawmakers have failed 12 times to elect a new president, amid bitter divisions. The FPM ministers have been boycotting the caretaker cabinet sessions, claiming that cabinet can not convene without a president. Mikati has recently informed the ministers about his will to call for a session to discuss the 2023 budget, media reports said.

Lebanon's expatriates contribute to the country's vitality, Says Foreign Minister
LBCI/July 4, 2023
Lebanon's Caretaker Foreign Minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, emphasized the continuous contribution of the diaspora in helping Lebanon, stating that "expatriates always contribute to assisting Lebanon, and the primary lifeline for the country is the funds from the diaspora abroad." Speaking at the third Emigrants Economic Conference, Bou Habib said, "Despite being victims of the economic crisis, including those related to deposits, expatriates continue to transfer money to Lebanon." He pointed out that "Lebanese residing in the Gulf, Africa, and Europe are the primary support for the Lebanese economy, not overlooking the significant role of Lebanese expatriates in the Americas and Australia." He affirmed, "There can be no economic recovery in Lebanon without restoring trust and rebuilding relationships with the diaspora. The purpose of expatriate funds reaching Lebanon is to support residents in their resilience in their homeland." In conclusion, he stressed that "we must stimulate the "emigrant economy," and this cannot happen without reforms and the proper functioning of constitutional institutions."

Belgian lawyer to file defamation complaint against MEP Marie Arena over Lebanon corruption remarks
LBCI/July 4, 2023
Belgian lawyer Pierre Chome announced on Tuesday that he would file a complaint against Member of the European Parliament Marie Arena. The complaint is related to statements made by Marie Arena on June 16th in front of the European Parliament in Brussels, where she stated that corrupt individuals in Lebanon should not be helped but punished. She called on the European Union to impose sanctions on Riad Salameh and all judges who hinder investigations into corruption in Lebanon. Chome considered Arena's words as defamation and slander, stating that her accusations, without providing any evidence or mentioning the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, constitute a public condemnation of his client. He added that Salameh was being dragged into the mud before the highest European authority without any right to respond to these false and suspicious speeches. Chome considered Arena as serving the interests of Qatar and Hezbollah, which Iran supports. He revealed that the complaint against Arena will be filed in Brussels, charging her with defamation, and it will target all individuals involved in this crime.

Mikati issues decision establishing committee to study real estate border disputes
NNA/July 4, 2023
Prime Minister Najib Mikati issued, on Tuesday, decision # 86/2023 stipulating the formation of a committee to study the disputes over real estate borders.

Hamieh: Expanded meeting over Beirut airport was to evaluate, recommend measures to facilitate passengers' movement
NNA/July 4, 2023 
Caretaker Minister of Public Works and Transport, Ali Hamieh, indicated in a statement that "the expanded meeting held today over the issue of Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut, was for the purpose of evaluating and recommending measures and procedures at all levels to facilitate the smooth flow of passenger traffic through the airport."Hamieh praised the efforts exerted by the airport employees, saying: “All appreciation to the administrative, security and private sector workers for their efforts in this regard and their determination to perform their duties to the utmost.”

Corm during press conference on new tariffs for "fixed landlines" & "Internet via unlicensed network": Intimidating citizens is unacceptable & decree...
NNA/July 4, 2023 
Caretaker Minister of Tele-Communications, Johnny Al-Corm, held a press conference on Tuesday in which he discussed the fixed sector tariff, which will become LBP 200,000 with 1,000 talk minutes, explaining the reasons and circumstances that led to this amendment. Corm pointed to the various problems that the sector suffers from, which, if not addressed, will result in negative ramifications. "I called for this conference to talk about the two points, tariff and the Internet through an unlicensed network…Based on my position, I consider that I have duties to ensure the continuity of this sector, especially since it suffers from numerous issues that can lead to its downfall if not addressed,” Corm underlined. He also considered that the intimidations made to citizens are unacceptable, as they put them at loss and in confusion, since some thought that tariff amendments include the cell phone sector as well. He affirmed, herein, that the mobile phone sector has absolutely nothing to do with the new amended tariff, since its tariffs have already been modified previously and have been linked to “Sayrafa” rates, thus solving its problem. The Tele-Communications Minister continued to indicate that "the decree amending the tariff was transferred to the Council of Ministers, which has two options: either to amend the tariff, which is the right decision, or to cover the cost through subsidies that we tried previously with the Lebanese Lira, the electricity sector, foodstuffs, and oil, whereby the citizen ended up paying the price…so do we go back to that approach?!”As for the Internet sector through a network established without a license, Corm referred to decree #9458 which deals in its provisions, especially the fourth section, with this illegal phenomenon that violates the laws. He added that articles 16 and 17 of said decree stipulate taking control of the network and placing it at the disposal of the Tele-Communications Ministry until the appropriate decision is taken by the concerned judiciary, while the Tele-Communications Ministry works to secure the service. Finally, Corm highlighted the need for everyone’s cooperation, otherwise anyone who does not comply with the decree will have to be referred to the concerned judiciary. “We hope that the Council of Ministers will take the appropriate decision regarding amending the fixed sector tariff," he concluded.

Al-Makary: Truth & justice alone can warm the heart of Bsharre, Tawk family
NNA/July 4, 2023 
Caretaker Information Minister, Ziad Al-Makary, tweeted today following the Bsharre incident, confirming that a “white history” will solely be preserved between the regions of Zgharta and Bsharre. He said, “We are a generation that wants to build a common future for our children, through which they safeguard the land and the unified heritage…I offered condolences to the wounded families, stressing that only truth and justice can warm the heart of Bsharre and Tawk family…We, thus, repeat our call to the security services.

Berri meets Army Commander
NNA/July 4, 2023 
House Speaker Nabih Berri is currently meeting with Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun, at his Ain-El-Tineh residence.

Al-Hrawi after meeting with Culture Minister: National Heritage Foundation supports the National Museum in maintaining its sustainability
NNA/July 4, 2023 
Caretaker Minister of Culture, Judge Muhammad Wissam Al-Murtada, continued Tuesday to follow-up on the challenges facing the National Museum in light of the current prevailing circumstances, whereby he met at his National Library office in Sanayeh with the President of the National Heritage Foundation, Mona Al-Harawi. Al-Hrawi expressed her Foundation's readiness to provide full support to the National Museum in terms of needed equipment, lighting and maintenance, so it can continue to receive visitors from all countries of the world as a “cultural landmark and a distinctive cultural heritage”.

Gasoline price drops, diesel's rises
NNA/July 4, 2023
The price of the gasoline canister dropped on Tuesday by LBP 2,000 and that of LP gas by LBP 18,000, while the price of diesel rose by LBP 1,000.
Prices are consequently as follows:
95-octane gasoline: LBP 1, 626,000
98-octane gasoline: LBP 1,666,000
Diesel: LBP 1,413,000
LP Gas: LBP 763,000

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 04-05/2023
Analysis-Abraham Accord Arab states seen sticking with Israel despite Jenin violence
Michael Georgy and Lisa Barrington/DUBAI (Reuters)/July 4, 2023
Public fury is growing in the Arab world over one of Israel's biggest military operations in the occupied West Bank in years, yet Arab states which normalised ties with Israel are unlikely to turn their condemnation of the Israeli assault into action.
Thousands of people were evacuated from the Jenin refugee camp as the Israeli operation continued for a second day on Tuesday, and Palestinian officials said at least 10 people had been killed. Israel says its army is destroying infrastructure and weapons of Iran-backed militant groups in the camp. The military operation is diplomatically awkward for the four Arab states that have signed peace pacts - known as the Abraham Accords - with Israel, and it makes the already distant prospect of including Saudi Arabia in the U.S.-backed push for normalised ties even more remote.
But analysts said economic and trade interests were likely to trump any moral outrage felt in the Abraham Accord states - Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco. "The UAE and Bahrain see the accords as durable and key to their broader national interests," said Sanam Vakil, Director of the Middle East North Africa Programme at The Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.
"But optically, amid the violence, there will be no open embrace of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and certainly there will be much diplomatic pressure underway to cease Israeli aggression."
FROM CONFLICT TO PROSPERITY
The United States has been working to further expand the Abraham Accords, hoping that they can be leveraged to advance progress on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. The hope is also to transform regional conflict to economic prosperity in one of the world's most volatile regions - and although Israeli-Palestinian troubles show no signs of easing, they do not threaten the survival of the Abraham Accords. "The Israeli incursion of Jenin won't hurt the Abraham Accords. It will of course place the relationship under strain somewhat... (But) it will be business as usual," said Neil Quilliam, associate fellow Middle East and North Africa Programme Chatham House. The leaders of Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords at the White House in 2020. Sudan and Morocco followed later. Israel, largely cut off economically and politically for decades from its Middle East neighbours, sees them as a way to access new commercial opportunities in the Gulf and beyond. For example Israel has begun cooperating with the UAE in the finance, energy, water, security, technology and other sectors, and in March this year a free trade agreement, Israel's first with an Arab state, came into effect. However, Israel's rapprochement with the Arab states has not been a smooth ride - and it has not been made any easier by the advent of a coalition government under Netanyahu that includes hardcore rightist parties who want to annex Israeli-occupied West Bank land where Palestinians have long sought to establish an independent state. Palestinian officials say they feel betrayed by their Arab brethren for reaching deals with Israel without first demanding progress toward the creation of a Palestinian state. Previously, only two Arab states - Egypt and Jordan - had forged full ties with Israel.
LIMITED ACTION
The Abraham Accord states still complain about Israeli policy towards the Palestinians whenever violence spikes, but only limited action follows. Bahrain on Tuesday condemned the Israeli assault on Jenin and called for a revival of the long-stalled peace process. The UAE's foreign ministry called for an immediate end to what it called repeated and escalating campaigns against the Palestinian people. Morocco said in June it would delay until after the summer a summit of the Abraham Accords nations it is due to host in protest over Israel's decision to expand settlement building in the occupied West Bank and after an earlier Israeli raid on Jenin in which five people were killed. But it went no further. Israeli hopes of normalising ties with wealthy regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia had already faded long before the latest Jenin violence. Riyadh has said normalisation is not possible until Palestinian statehood goals have been addressed. U.N. aid agencies have expressed alarm at the scale of the latest Israeli military operation in Jenin, while the internationally backed Palestinian Authority said it was suspending contacts with Israel. However, the PA has lost a lot of support among Palestinians and international reaction to Israel's incursion has been quite muted. The United States said it respected Israel's right to defend itself but said it was imperative to avoid civilian casualties. Commenting on his country's burgeoning relationship with the UAE, Israel's ambassador to that country, Amir Hayek, told Reuters in an interview last month: "It's not that we don't have disagreements (with the UAE)." But, he added, it is a relationship that has "passed the point of no return".

Car ramming 'attack' injures 7 in Tel Aviv
Agence France Presse/July 4, 2023
A suspected car ramming and stabbing attack in Tel Aviv injured seven people Tuesday before the suspect was "neutralized", police and medics said, on the second day of a major Israeli army operation in the occupied West Bank. Police said they received a report about "a car that attacked a number of civilians" in north Tel Aviv and that the "terrorist has been neutralized". "It appears that the suspect was driving a vehicle traveling from south to north, rammed into pedestrians standing in the shopping center and proceeded to get out of the vehicle to stab civilians with a sharp object," police said.
Medics said they were treating five injured people. Police said the number of wounded altogether was seven. The incident took place on the second day of the biggest Israeli military operation in years in the militant stronghold of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank. The military operation left 10 Palestinians dead and forced thousands to flee their homes. At least 187 Palestinians, 25 Israelis, one Ukrainian and one Italian have been killed this year, according to an AFP tally compiled from official sources from both sides. They include, on the Palestinian side, combatants and civilians, and on the Israeli side, mostly civilians and three members of the Arab minority.

Israeli raid forces thousands to flee Palestinian refugee camp
Our Foreign Staff/The Telegraph/July 4, 2023
Thousands of Palestinians have fled the Jenin refugee camp following a major Israeli raid in the West Bank, a Palestinian official said. About 3,000 people had left their homes since the start of the operation in the early hours of Monday morning, Kamal Abu al-Roub, the Jenin deputy governor, told the AFP news agency. Arrangements were being made to house them in schools and other shelters elsewhere in the city of Jenin, he added. Mr Roub’s remarks came as Israel said it was close to completing its operation in Jenin, which marked the fiercest fighting in the city in more than two decades. A wounded Palestinian died overnight and another body was found on Tuesday morning, bringing the death toll to 10, with around 100 wounded, 20 of them critically, the Palestinian health ministry said. The Israeli military said it had confirmation of nine Palestinians killed by its forces. All were combatants, it said. Offices and businesses across the occupied West Bank were expected to close on Tuesday in response to calls for a general strike to protest the operation, which the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, the president, has described as a “war crime”.Very few people were on the streets of Jenin on Tuesday morning, which were littered with debris and burned roadblocks from the previous day’s fighting. Aid groups, meanwhile, called on Israel to guarantee humanitarian access to the refugee camp, where some 14,000 people live in less than half a square kilometre. Israeli bulldozers ploughed through streets in the camp in the raids to destroy improvised explosive devices, cutting water and electricity supplies, though Israeli officials said they would work to restore services. On Tuesday, the military said border police had found an underground shaft used to store explosives in the refugee camp and had dismantled two observation posts. Hundreds of fighters from Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Fatah live in the camp, which has been fortified with a range of obstacles and watching posts to counter regular army raids. The Islamic Jihad faction claimed four of those killed during the operation as its fighters. Hamas, another Islamist faction, claimed a fifth. It was not immediately clear if the other five fatalities - males aged 17 to 23 - were combatants or civilians. Prior to Monday’s operation Israel had already stepped up raids in the northern West Bank, which has seen a recent spate of attacks on Israelis as well as Jewish settler violence targeting Palestinians. Israeli-Palestinian violence has worsened since last year, and escalated further under the coalition government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, which includes ultra-nationalist ministers and MPs.

Are the latest Israeli raids proof that the West Bank is turning into Gaza?
James Rothwell/The Telegraph/July 4, 2023
Israel’s latest raids on Jenin seems to be drawing to a close, but it could mark the beginning of a new and extremely bloody era in the decades long conflict with the Palestinians. While the death toll remains fairly low compared to Israeli bombing campaigns in the Gaza Strip, where dozens can be killed in mere hours, it is the weaponry involved which is causing such deep concern. For the first time in 20 years, the Israeli military has launched a wave of airstrikes on targets in the densely populated city of Jenin, striking “command centres” and other buildings used by militant groups. Israeli troops also used a helicopter to attack a position in Jenin in June, and a few days later launched a drone strike on a moving car containing Palestinian gunman. These aerial tactics are commonly used when Israel bombs the Gaza Strip, the blockaded enclave controlled by Hamas, as was the case during brief wars in May 2021, August 2022 and April 2023 wars. But they are almost unheard of in the West Bank, which has long been considered “volatile” but not in such a dire state that launching airstrikes would be a proportionate use of force. Israel’s use of drone strikes in the West Bank suggests that in the months to come it could suffer a similar fate to Gaza: pummelled by aerial attacks during flare-ups in the wider conflict and perhaps blocked off from the rest of the territory.Israel says it launched Monday’s operation to root out Palestinian militants plotting attacks on Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and civilians in Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv.
There have been many such attacks, including the shooting of a British-Israeli mother and her two daughters earlier this year as they drove through the West Bank. Israel’s Western allies largely accept this justification and have been broadly supportive of the Jenin operation so far.
However, the operation also seems to have a political element to it. For weeks, the extreme-Right elements of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, who are capable of bringing down his government, have been demanding a tougher stance on West Bank militant groups. They were clearly delighted by the escalation to aerial attacks.
But the current round of violence is not just being fuelled by tit-for-tat violence between settlers and soldiers on the Israeli side and Palestinian militants on the other. There is deep despair about the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process and, in the absence of any serious peace talks for decades, many young Palestinians feel that violence is now the only way to resolve the conflict. The failure of the Palestinian Authority, which nominally controls the areas of Jenin and Nablus, will also be cited as a key factor in the rapidly deteriorating situation. And there are now signs that militants in the northern West Bank are themselves working on the so-called “Gaza-isation” of the area, by stocking up on more powerful weaponry. In recent weeks, for example, there have been several rocket attacks from the northern West Bank on nearby Israeli settlements. All were reminiscent of the crude rocket attacks launched by Hamas in the Gaza Strip during the early stages of its rise to power there. This will be of deep concern to Israel, which is already concerned that it’s just weeks away from a multi-front air war, with drones, rockets and missiles launched from Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and possibly even Iraq. Israeli commanders have hinted that this week’s operation in Jenin is just the first of many on a similar scale, though it is unclear what the end goal will be. And with no clear end in sight, and no appetite for serious peace talks on either side, things can only get worse.

Israelis protest at international airport against judicial overhaul plan
Associated Press/July 4, 2023
Thousands of Israelis have blocked traffic and snarled movement at the country's main international airport, the latest mass demonstration over Benjamin Netanyahu's contentious planned judicial overhaul that has divided the nation. The Netanyahu government's push to pass several overlapping reforms to the country's judiciary has plunged Israel into an unprecedented crisis and divided an already highly polarized country. Protesters waving Israel's blue-and-white national flag and blowing horns blocked the main thoroughfare outside Ben Gurion Airport's main terminal and demonstrated inside the arrivals hall. Several flights had significant delays, according to the airport website. Protesters periodically scuffled with police, who dispatched mounted officers to the scene. Police said officers arrested at least 37 people for creating a public disturbance. "We're against dictatorship," demonstrator Rami Matan said. "We're against the rules that the ugly government of Netanyahu" wants to impose, Matan said. Netanyahu and his ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox political allies are pressing ahead with plans to pass several contentious changes to Israel's judicial system after attempts to reach a compromise with opposition lawmakers disintegrated. The planned overhaul has drawn rebuke from the Biden administration and consternation from American Jews. Netanyahu ally Simcha Rotman, who chairs parliament's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee and has spearheaded the overhaul, said Monday that he would bring a bill to strip the Supreme Court of its authority to strike down government decisions it deems "unreasonable" this week. That "reasonability standard" was used by the Supreme Court earlier this year to upend the appointment of a Netanyahu ally as interior minister because of a conviction for bribery when he served in the role in the 1990s and a 2021 plea deal for tax evasion. Critics say removing that standard would allow the government to pass arbitrary decisions and grant it too much power. Last week, over 100 Israeli air force reservists signed a letter saying they would refuse to show up for duty if the government moves forward with the plan. Netanyahu and his allies came to power after November's election, Israel's fifth in under four years, all of which were largely referendums on the longtime leader's fitness to serve while on trial for corruption. Netanyahu, whose corruption trial has dragged on for nearly three years, and his allies in his nationalist religious government say the overhaul is needed to rein in an overly interventionist judiciary and restore power to elected officials. Critics say the plan would upend Israel's delicate system of checks and balances and push the country toward dictatorship.

UN urges Security Council to extend Turkey border crossing into northwest Syria for 1 year
IDLIB, Syria (AP)/Tue, July 4, 2023
The U.N. secretary general is hoping that the Security Council will vote later this month to keep a key border crossing from Turkey to Syria’s rebel-held northwest open for critical aid deliveries for a period of one year instead of six months, a U.N. official said Tuesday. Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib is home to some 4 million people, many of whom were earlier displaced during the 12-year civil war, which has killed nearly half a million people. Hundreds of thousands live in tent settlements and rely on aid that comes through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing. The Security Council is expected to vote in the coming days, as the current six-month opening period expires on July 10. The situation got worse after the Feb. 6 earthquake that hit southern Turkey and northern Syria, killing tens of thousands of people and leaving many more homeless and in need of aid. In the past, Russia, the main backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, abstained on or vetoed resolutions on cross-border aid deliveries. It has sought to replace aid crossing the Turkish border to Idlib province with convoys from government-held areas in Syria. Since the early years of the war in Syria, Turkey has sided with and supported the rebels. The Security Council initially authorized aid deliveries in 2014 from Turkey, Iraq and Jordan through four crossing points into opposition-held areas in Syria. But over the years, Russia, backed by its ally China, has reduced the authorized crossings to just one from Turkey — and the time frame from a year to six months. “The U.N. Secretary-General has been very clear that he would like the Security Council to renew the cross-border resolution which expires on July 10 for 12 months,” said David Carden, the U.N.’s Deputy Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria crisis. He spoke to journalists during a visit to Idlib. He said a 12-month renewal was needed in order for the U.N. to implement early recovery projects such as durable shelters. “What we want is to get people from tents into durable shelter,” he said adding that such shelters are cooler in summer and warmer in winter, in addition to the privacy they give to families. The February earthquake left more than 4,500 dead in northwestern Syria and about 855,000 people had their homes damaged or destroyed, according to the U.N.. After the earthquake, two additional border crossings between Turkey and Syria were opened initially for three months. They were extended for a further three months in May to help the flow of aid.

Russian fighter jet crashes into the Pacific, and the fate of the MiG-31's 2 crew members is unknown
MOSCOW (AP)/Tue, July 4, 2023
A Russian fighter jet crashed on Tuesday during a training mission off the country's Pacific coast and the fate of its two crew members wasn't immediately known. The Russian military said that the MiG-31 fell into the Avacha Bay on the southeastern coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. It said that rescue teams were searching for its two crew members. The military said the aircraft wasn't carrying weapons. It didn't immediately offer any further details or say what may have caused the crash. The MiG-31 is a twin-engine, two-seat supersonic fighter designed to intercept enemy planes and cruise missiles at long ranges. It has been in service with the Soviet and Russian air forces since 1980s.Another MiG-31 crashed in the Murmansk region in the Arctic in April and its crew members bailed out safely. The Russian air force has suffered a string of crashes that some observers have attributed to a higher number of flights amid the fighting in Ukraine and tensions with the West.

Ukraine reports 'particularly fruitful' few days in counteroffensive
Dan Peleschuk/KYIV (Reuters)/Tue, July 4, 2023
A Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces has been "particularly fruitful" in the past few days and Ukraine's troops are fulfilling their main tasks, a senior security official said on Tuesday. The comments by Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, were Kyiv's latest positive assessment of the month-old counterattack although Moscow has not acknowledged Ukraine's gains. Russia, which began its full-scale invasion in February 2022, still holds swathes of territory in eastern and southern Ukraine but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday his troops had made progress after a "difficult" week. "At this stage of active hostilities, Ukraine's Defense Forces are fulfilling the number one task – the maximum destruction of manpower, equipment, fuel depots, military vehicles, command posts, artillery and air defense forces of the russian army," Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, wrote on Twitter. "The last few days have been particularly fruitful," he said, without providing any details from the battlefield.Valeriy Shershen, spokesperson for the Tavria, or southern, military command, said Ukrainian troops had advanced by up to two km (1.2 miles) in the Berdiansk direction of southern Ukraine, despite fierce Russian resistance. On Monday, Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said fighting had surged around the eastern city of Bakhmut, captured by Russian forces in May. She said the Ukrainian military had taken back 37.4 square kilometres (14.4 square miles) of territory overall in heavy fighting in the past week.Military spokesperson Andriy Kovalev said on Tuesday Ukraine was continuing to put pressure on Russian forces north and south of Bakhmut, and had enjoyed "partial success" in heavy combat. He said the Ukrainian military was managing to hold back an attempted advance by Russian forces in the Lyman, Avdiivka and Marinka directions in eastern Ukraine. Reuters is unable to verify the situation on the battlefield, where each side says the other is suffering heavy losses. Russia said on Tuesday Ukraine had attacked Moscow with at least five drones that were all either shot down or jammed, though one of the capital's main airports had to reroute flights for several hours. Russian shelling on Tuesday morning killed a man and a woman in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, the local prosecutor's office said.

Russia, Ukraine accuse each other of plotting imminent attack on nuclear station
Reuters/Tue, July 4, 2023
Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday accused each other of plotting to stage an attack on the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, long the subject of mutual recriminations and suspicions. Russian troops seized the station, Europe's largest nuclear facility with six reactors, in the days following the Kremlin's invasion of its neighbour in February 2022. Each side has since regularly accused the other of shelling around the plant, situated in Ukraine's south, and risking a major nuclear mishap. Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the head of Rosenergoatom, which operates Russia's nuclear network, said Ukraine planned to drop on the plant ammunition laced with nuclear waste transported from another of the country's five nuclear stations. "Under cover of darkness overnight on 5th July, the Ukrainian military will try to attack the Zaporizhzhia station using long-range precision equipment and kamikaze attack drones," Russian news agencies quoted Karchaa as telling Russian television. He offered no evidence in support of his allegation. A statement issued by the Ukrainian armed forces quoted "operational data" as saying that "explosive devices" had been placed on the roof of the station's third and fourth reactors on Tuesday. An attack was possible "in the near future". "If detonated, they would not damage the reactors but would create an image of shelling from the Ukrainian side," the statement on Telegram said. It said the Ukrainian army stood "ready to act under any circumstances".
The military also provided no evidence for its assertions. The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been trying for more than a year to clinch a deal to ensure the plant is demilitarised and reduce the risks of any possible nuclear accident.IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has visited the plant three times since the Russian takeover but failed to clinch any agreement to keep the facility safe from shelling or other incidents linked to the conflict. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told Ukrainian television that Grossi had proved ineffective in trying to uphold safety at the plant. "Any disaster at Zaporizhzhia could have been prevented if (Grossi had been) clear straight away," Podolyak said, accusing the IAEA of flipflopping in his approach to the problem. "That is, instead of this clowning around that this man is doing. And when there is a disaster, he will say they had nothing to do with it and warned about the dangers."

Turkey’s Erdogan Pours Cold Water on Sweden NATO Entry Talks
(Bloomberg)/Tue, July 4, 2023
Turkey’s president downplayed the chances of a significant breakthrough at talks this week to bring Sweden into NATO, amid a row over the burning of a Koran in Stockholm. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking before discussions between the foreign ministers of Turkey, Sweden and Finland on Thursday, slammed last week’s incident, including the fact Swedish police allowed it to proceed. “The determined struggle with terrorist organizations and Islamophobia is our red line,” Erdogan said on Monday after a cabinet meeting in Ankara. “These are hate crimes that feed on hostility to Islam. It’s much worse that this hate crime can be committed under police protection.”The ministers are meant to help break an impasse that has kept Sweden waiting to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for more than a year. Their talks will come ahead of a high-stakes summit of leaders of the alliance on July 11 and 12. The desecration of Islam’s holy book happened after Sweden’s police had denied permits for similar demonstrations in recent months, citing national security concerns. But their decisions have been overturned by courts ruling that freedom of speech must be prioritized unless there is an immediate threat to public safety. Sweden’s government has condemned burnings of the Koran. Sweden applied to join NATO in May 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. Erdogan quickly objected to the bid, alleging that Stockholm supported groups Turkey classifies as terrorists. Still, Turkey has allowed the membership process to nudge forward and agreed to fellow applicant Finland joining the bloc in April, despite initial concerns. For NATO, northern enlargement would boost its presence in the Arctic and give it more clout in the Baltic Sea. Sweden’s entry is particularly important for Finland to secure supply routes and bring depth to its defenses. To date, 29 of NATO’s 31 members have ratified Sweden’s entry, with Hungary continuing to stall alongside Turkey. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is set to meet US President Joe Biden in Washington on Wednesday to discuss the issue.
“The Turkish nation is not warm and sympathetic to Sweden’s entry into NATO in its current state and outlook,” Devlet Bahceli, and Erdogan ally and leader of the MHP nationalist party, said on Tuesday.
MHP wants “sincere and convincing steps” from Sweden, he said. Sweden had hoped a major step would be its new anti-terror law, which entered into force on last month. In Stockholm’s view, it was the last remaining obligation under an agreement signed last year to pave the way for ratification. Still, Erdogan has said that the legislation, which makes participation in any terrorist group punishable by law, is not enough.

Jordan FM calls for investment into war-torn Syria to speed up refugee returns
Associated Press/Tue, July 4, 2023
Jordan's foreign minister has called for international investment into conflict-ravaged Syria's crippled infrastructure to speed up refugee returns. Ayman Safadi made the remarks during a visit to the capital Damascus, where he met with Syrian President Bashar Assad and his counterpart, Faisal Mekdad. Jordan, which shares a border with the war-torn country and hosts some 1.3 million Syrian refugees, played a crucial role in the once-pariah state's return to the Arab League. It hosted regional talks in May between Syrian, Saudi, Iraqi and Egyptian officials in an initiative to reach a political solution to the years-long crisis. Syria's uprising-turned civil war, now in its 13th year, has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half of its prewar population of 23 million. Syrians in both government-held territory and an opposition-held enclave in the country's northwest suffer from rampant poverty and crippled infrastructure. "We have offered everything we can to ensure them a dignified life," Safadi said at a news conference following his meetings. "But what we are sure of is that the refugees' futures lie in their country." The Jordanian foreign minister said that securing critical infrastructure and basic necessities will speed up voluntary refugee returns, especially as international aid for refugees continues to decline. Assad in a statement released by his office echoed similar sentiments, saying that investment in infrastructure and reconstruction would create the "best environment" for refugee returns. "We reaffirm that the refugee file is a solely humanitarian and moral issue that should not be politicized in any way," the statement read. Anti-refugee sentiment has soared in Lebanon and Turkey, two other neighboring countries hosting Syrian refugees. But while government-held Syria receives humanitarian aid through United Nations agencies, Western-led sanctions have made it difficult for Damascus to fix electricity, water and other infrastructure decimated in the conflict and more recently by a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake in February. Western countries, most vocally the United States and the United Kingdom, say that Syria is still not safe for return. U.N. agencies and human rights organizations say the same, with groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch saying they have documented cases of arbitrary detention and disappearances. Safadi's meetings with Mekdad and Assad also discussed the humanitarian crisis in Syria, steps toward a political solution to the conflict, and drug smuggling, which has become a lucrative industry in the economically shattered country.

Greek foreign minister says Athens is ready for talks with Turkey to resolve sea borders dispute
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP)/Tue, July 4, 2023
Greece is ready to start talks with Turkey to resolve a long-standing dispute over maritime borders that has repeatedly brought the two neighbors to the brink of armed conflict, Greece’s newly appointed foreign minister said Tuesday. Giorgos Gerapetritis said the Greek government wants to “take advantage of the ongoing positive climate” in order to come to an agreement on delineating the areas in which each country has exclusive economic rights, including the right to search for offshore oil and gas. Turkey disputes areas which Greece says fall within its own economic zone and where it’s seeking to start a search for offshore oil and gas reserves. Turkey claims much of the economic zone of Cyprus where several sizeable offshore natural gas deposits have been discovered. The feud over exploratory drilling rights had culminated in a naval standoff three years ago. Another key issue at the heart of Greek-Turkish tensions that Gerapetritis wants resolved is the extent of the continental shelf — and by extension, Greek sovereign territory — of Greek islands near Turkey’s coastline in the Aegean and the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey doesn’t recognize that Greek islands off its borders have a continental shelf, while Greece insists that position is in contravention of international law. “All that remains is to determine whether Turkey also sincerely wishes to forge a path of rapprochement, without this meaning that Greece will go back on its red lines or its national priorities,” Gerapetritis said after talks with his Cypriot counterpart, Constantinos Kombos. Gerapetritis said at the top of those priorities is an agreement to reunify ethnically divided Cyprus as a federation made up of Greek and Turkish speaking sectors in line with United Nations resolutions. Cyprus was split in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup by supporters of union with Greece. Turkey and the breakaway Turkish Cypriots now insist that any peace deal has to first recognize separate Turkish Cypriot sovereignty. Greek and Turkish officials have held a series of high-level meetings in the wake of devastating earthquakes in southern Turkey in February. They promised to shelve disputes that have caused repeated rounds of tension and even the risk of war over decades. Just before his reelection last month, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told The Associated Press in an interview that he would extend “a hand of friendship” to Turkey.

Egypt, Turkey appoint ambassadors to upgrade diplomatic relations
Huseyin Hayatsever and Nadine Awadalla/Reuters/July 4, 2023
Egypt and Turkey have appointed ambassadors to each other's capitals for the first time in a decade to restore normal diplomatic relations, their foreign ministries announced on Tuesday. The two nations' relations broke down in 2013 after Egypt's then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi led the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Mursi, an ally of Ankara. Egypt expelled Turkey's ambassador and accused Ankara of backing organisations bent on undermining the country. They have not had ambassadors since, though Sisi, now Egypt's president, and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan agreed to reinstate them in May. Amr Elhamamy will become Egypt's ambassador in Ankara while Turkey nominated Salih Mutlu Sen to become its ambassador in Cairo, the foreign ministries said in a joint statement. The appointments marked an important milestone in the normalisation of relations, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said following the announcement. "From now on, our relations will continue to improve rapidly in political, economic and all other fields. This is the will of our president and government," Fidan told a news conference. Consultations between senior foreign ministry officials in Ankara and Cairo began in 2021 as Turkey sought better ties with Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Normalisation between Ankara and Cairo accelerated after Sisi and Erdogan shook hands in Doha at the World Cup in 2022. After a series of further steps towards rapprochement, Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry visited Turkey to show solidarity after the massive earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria in February.Turkey's foreign minister made a return visit to Egypt the following month. The two countries have also been at odds over Libya, where they backed opposing factions in an unresolved conflict, and also over maritime borders in the gas-rich Eastern Mediterranean.

Sudanese paramilitaries shoot down army fighter jet
Arab News/July 04, 2023
JEDDAH: Heavy fighting raged across the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Tuesday as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces shot down a Sudanese army fighter jet and artillery and machinegun fire rocked the city. “We saw pilots jumping with parachutes as the plane plunged to the ground,” said one resident of northern Khartoum. The paramilitaries said they “arrested the pilot after he landed with a parachute,” and accused the regular army of “heinous massacres” in greater Khartoum. Residents in Omdurman, across the river from Khartoum’s city center, saw “heavy clashes using various types of weapons.”
Others saw airstrikes in the area of the state television building, where the paramilitaries had launched an attack this week and fired anti-aircraft weapons on Tuesday. In this picture taken on September 23, 2017, Mohamed Hamdan The armed forces led by Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan have been fighting paramilitaries led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo since April 15, in a brutal conflict that has killed nearly 3,000 people and dis- placed millions, triggered ethnically motivated killings in the western region of Darfur, and threatened to become a protract- ed civil war. The paramilitaries quickly took control of swaths of the capital and have brought in extra fight- ers from Darfur and Kordofan as the conflict deepened, transfer- ring them across bridges from Omdurman to Bahri and Khartoum, the other two cities that make up the wider capital across the confluence of the River Nile.
Medics warn the toll of dead and wounded is probably much higher than recorded figures, with many casualties unable to reach health facilities, two-thirds of which are out of service. About 2.2 million Sudanese have been displaced within the country and 645,000 have fled across borders.

Sudanese struggle with a medical meltdown as doctors flee and hospitals close
REBECCA ANNE PROCTOR/Arab News/July 04, 2023
CAIRO: Hospitals across Sudan have been bombed, looted and occupied by armed factions since fighting broke out more than two months ago between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group. As a result, millions of civilians are being denied vital healthcare.
Medical supplies rapidly dwindled after the conflict began on April 15, with shipments of medicines and other medical supplies stolen or undelivered. Meanwhile, scores of health professionals have been killed, wounded or forced to leave the country. Dr. Adel Mohsen Badawi Abdelkadir Khalil, 65, is among the many medics who chose to flee with their families, abandoning the private clinic in the capital Khartoum he had managed for more than 15 years. On April 21, fearing he would be conscripted by the RSF to treat the paramilitary group’s wounded, he made the painful decision to join the flood of refugees making the perilous journey north to the border with Egypt. “I was inside my clinic preparing my tickets to go to Cairo when I saw attacks outside. People were yelling and weeping,” Mohsen told Arab News from an apartment in the Egyptian capital he shares with other displaced Sudanese families. “I immediately locked all my doors and turned off the lights and hid there. If the RSF know you’re a doctor, they will take you to tend to their army.” Mohsen said that when he and his family caught the bus to Egypt, he was careful not to tell officials or fellow passengers he was a health professional, instead concealing his 30 years of medical experience for his own safety. The public-health sector has long been fragile in Sudan, where 65 percent of the population lives in poverty. With the departure of so many medical workers, aid agencies have warned that the nation is facing a major health emergency. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, only 20 percent of health facilities are still operational in Khartoum.
“We have been witnessing the near collapse of the health system in Sudan,” Alyona Synenko, the Africa region spokesperson for the organization, told Arab News. Those unable or unwilling to flee Khartoum have been forced to hunker down in their homes with little or no access to clean water or electricity. According to several Sudanese refugees Arab News spoke to in Cairo, many of those who remained behind face the threat of dehydration and starvation, such is the scale of the need for aid in Khartoum and nearby cities. The collapse of basic utilities and other public infrastructure is having an especially serious effect on hospitals by undermining their hygiene protocols, rendering vital medical equipment inoperative, and depriving chronically sick people of potentially life-sustaining treatment. “Besides the departure of some of the medical personnel and the shortages of medical supplies, hospitals are suffering from a lack of food, clean water and electricity,” said Synenko.The fighting has, for example, left 12,000 dialysis patients at mortal risk as hospitals have run out of the medications they need and the fuel to power generators, according to the trade union that represents the country’s doctors. It has also impeded the delivery of humanitarian aid that 25 million people — more than half the population — now desperately need. In addition, there are fears that the summer rainy season will bring with it seasonal epidemics such as malaria, which wreaks havoc in Sudan every year, and a shortage of drinking water could cause a cholera outbreak. “Sudanese health workers and the volunteers of the Sudanese Red Crescent Society have been accomplishing the impossible, working in such extreme conditions,” said Synenko. “While we are working with the Ministry of Health to deliver urgent surgical supplies to hospitals, we are also calling on all actors to respect and protect medical facilities and personnel. This is not only an obligation under international humanitarian law, it is a moral imperative because numerous lives depend on their work.”Dr. Atia Abdalla Atia, secretary-general of the Sudan Doctors trade union, told Arab News that he and his colleagues have documented the deaths of at least 14 medical professionals since the fighting began. The union has also confirmed the evacuation of 21 hospitals, the bombardment of 18, and one case of a doctor going missing, he added. On Saturday, the trade union accused the RSF of raiding the Shuhada hospital, one of the few still operating in the violence-torn country, and killing a staff member. The RSF denied the accusation.
FASTFACTS
FASTFACTS It is believed that fewer than 20 percent of health facilities in Khartoum are still operational. As of late May, 14 medical professionals had been killed, 21 hospitals evacuated and 18 bombed, according to a doctors’ union. The targeting of health facilities and medical personnel during a conflict is considered a war crime under international humanitarian law. The RSF has reportedly seized control of several hospitals to use as bases of operation. During a meeting of the UN Security Council on May 22, Volker Perthes, the UN’s special representative for Sudan, highlighted reports of such activities and said the “use of health facilities as military positions is unacceptable.”In a report published by medical journal The Lancet, aid agency Doctors Without Borders said that health professionals at facilities across Sudan have been repeatedly confronted by fighters who steal medicines, other health supplies and vehicles. Jean-Nicolas Armstrong Dangelser, the agency’s emergency preparedness coordinator in Port Sudan, told the journal that although some instances of looting are financially motivated, others appear callously calculated to deliberately deprive patients of care.
In Khartoum, for example, medical warehouses were raided several days in a row. When staff were able to return, they found fridges unplugged and medicines spilled on the floor. “The entire cold chain was ruined so the medicines are spoiled and can’t be used to treat anyone. We are shaken and appalled by these deplorable attacks,” said Armstrong Dangelser.
“We are experiencing a violation of humanitarian principles and the space for humanitarians to work is shrinking on a scale I’ve rarely seen before … People are in a desperate situation and the need for healthcare is critical, but these attacks make it so much harder for healthcare workers to help.”
Clashes between the military and the RSF intensified on Sunday as the fighting in Khartoum and the western regions entered its 12th week, according to a Reuters news agency report. Air and artillery strikes as well as small-arms fire could be heard, particularly in the city of Omdurman, as well as in Khartoum, the report said. More than 2,000 people have been killed since fighting broke out on April 15, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, which collects data on conflicts and other violence worldwide. The UN estimates that upwards of 1.2 million people have been displaced, out of whom at least 425,000 have fled abroad. Last week, military chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan called on young men to join the fight against the RSF and, on Sunday, the army posted photos it said were of new recruits. Saudi Arabia took the lead in efforts to evacuate thousands of foreigners from Sudan in the early days of the conflict. The Kingdom’s diplomats have also been working with their US counterparts to help broker a lasting ceasefire in the country. A five-day extension of the last truce expired last month with little sign of a let-up in the violence. That ceasefire did, however, allow surgical supplies donated by the International Committee of the Red Cross to be distributed to seven hospitals in Khartoum by the Ministry of Health, including anesthetics, antibiotics, dressings, sutures and infusions. But according to Atia, the doctors who chose to remain in Sudan are generally working with only the most basic of medical equipment and supplies, which is putting patients at risk, and many of the remaining medical staff are desperate to leave. “Everyone is asking where they can go to escape this,” he said. In many areas, field hospitals staffed by volunteers have been set up in schools and other public buildings in an attempt to make up for the lack of operational state institutions, and help treat the chronically sick and, increasingly, those who succumb to the effects of dehydration and malnutrition. “Everything has been left in the hands of civilians and the few doctors and hospitals that are left,” said Atia. “We are trying to focus on the chronic diseases (and) also at home where people are dying due to lack of water, food and no access to drugs.”

Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 04-05/2023
Why did Russia invade Ukraine? Experts break down Putin's motivations and excuses for launching his war.
Sinéad Baker/Business Insider/July 4, 2023
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Insider spoke to three experts about why it happened, and the motives behind President Putin's move. They highlighted how Russia viewed Ukraine over its history, and some recent geopolitical shifts. Russia surprised the world on February 24, 2022, by invading Ukraine, starting a brutal battle that is still raging today. Russia's President Vladimir Putin has given varying public explanations for why he launched the invasion. Here are the reasons Putin gave, how they match with reality, and the other likely reasons why Russia sent its armed forces into an independent, sovereign nation.
Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, before declaring itself an independent country, cementing the move in a referendum days before the USSR collapsed in December 1991. The country has maintained its independence ever since. But Putin still refers to Ukraine as Russian, and denies it's a nation in its own right. He told then-US President George W. Bush in 2008 that Ukraine wasn't even a country. Stephen Hall, a Russian politics expert at the University of Bath in the UK, said many Russians still hold this view, and that "it isn't just the Kremlin." Hall said Russia sees Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, as the "mother of Russian cities," and for Putin he can't have that being outside his own country.
Hall added that Russia needs to claim Ukraine in order to back up its argument to being a great power that has existed for millennia.
Without it "Russia can't claim a thousand years of history because Kyiv was already in existence 1,200 years ago, when Moscow was a forest," he said.
Fifteen of today's sovereign nations were once part of the Soviet Union, and experts say Russia cares more about Ukraine than nearby Belarus, as well as other former USSR countries in central Asia. Hall said "Putin's opinion has always been that Ukrainians and Russians are the same people, that they're part of the Slavic Brotherhood of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine."
Belarus is already essentially a Russian puppet state, making a military invasion of it almost pointless, whereas Ukraine has increasingly aligned itself with the West in recent years.
Belarus is also much smaller than Ukraine and Russia is less interested in claiming its history, Professor Brian Taylor, a Russian politics expert at Syracuse University, noted. Thomas Graham, cofounder of Yale University's Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies program, said Ukraine has been important to the "Russian political imagination for decades, if not centuries."
A former US presidential advisor on Russia, Graham also said that Ukraine's territory aided Russia's economic strength throughout its history, including supplying much of the Russian Empire's coal, steel, and iron from the 19th century. He added that without Ukraine's Donbas region, "Russia would not have been a great power at the end of the 19th and into the early years of the 20th century."
Putin blamed the West
Taylor said the invasion of Ukraine reflects Putin's "grievances that have been brewing for a long time."For Putin, "Russia has a right to rule Ukraine. Russians and Ukrainians are one nation and one people. They were illegitimately and artificially separated when the Soviet Union collapsed, and he blames the West for trying to pull Ukraine out of Russia's natural friendship," Taylor said. At the start of the invasion, Putin blamed NATO's expansion into eastern Europe for forcing his hand, echoing a criticism he has made for years.
Hall said the idea that NATO is threatening Russia by expanding towards its borders is "very much part of the Russian propaganda narrative."
He also pointed out that NATO doesn't simply expand, but that countries apply to join, usually motivated by a perceived outside threat. In eastern Europe, that threat often comes from Russia. Lithuania's prime minister, for example, told Insider in February that her country joined NATO "because of Putin." But Putin has reversed that excuse and was playing a "blame game," she said.
A NATO excuse
Putin has used the NATO line to try to convince an international audience who might already have strong misgivings about the Western military alliance, Hall said. And if Russia can engage with even a minority who feel this way "it creates an electoral voice for Russia to use to try and stop Western engagement," he said. Hall added that even if NATO was expanding "that doesn't justify what Russia has done in Ukraine." Ukraine's own ties with NATO deepened after 2014, when pro-Russian forces invaded eastern Ukraine, starting a conflict that continued until the 2022 invasion.
But Taylor said he doesn't see a "coherent explanation" for how NATO's alleged expansion could lead to this war. Before Finland joined NATO earlier this year, no new countries had joined the alliance since 2004, and even then it was "pretty tiny countries" — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — Taylor noted.
He also said that NATO didn't put additional troops in the region "so it wasn't like the addition of those countries created this military force on Russia's doorstep."In fact, Taylor said that the US was cutting back on the size of its armed forces in Europe until pro-Russian forces occupied parts of Ukraine in 2014.
One of Putin's most frequently claims is that "Nazis" run Ukraine, so Russia must intervene to stop them. This is despite Ukraine having a Jewish president in Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and there being no evidence the country's leadership is controlled by Nazis. Taylor said there are some who identify with Nazi ideology in Ukraine, but "it's a small group. They've never been politically powerful or important, but they are there.""But there are also Nazis in Russian politics, there are Nazis in American politics," he said. The experts said the key to understanding Russia's repeated claim of Ukrainian Nazis is that they use the term differently to the West. "Russia has a different perception of what Nazism is and what fascism is in general to how we perceive it in the West," Hall said. "Nazism is Russia-phobia to them. So the Ukrainians are Nazis because they're anti-Russian." Putin also promotes this Nazi idea to win support in the West, where people have always been "susceptible" to the argument that Ukraine has a Nazi problem, Hall said. He said Putin's strategy is partly "throw things at the wall and see what sticks."
But really, Putin just wants a legacy
According to Graham, there is no evidence that Putin was under public pressure to invade Ukraine, which suggests at least some of his reasoning was personal. All three experts said Putin's desire to be revered in history books likely motivated him to attack. Hall said Putin's anxiety is around "am I going to be a footnote in Russian history or are they going to write books about me like they do Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Stalin."Taylor agrees, saying that Putin sees himself as "a great historic Russian leader restoring Russian lands, and he was thinking about his legacy as he turned 70."
"What have the great Czars done? They've expanded Russian territory," Graham said.
Even so, why now?
Even with all of the above, why the invasion happened when it did is an intriguing question. Experts pointed to multiple reasons why Russia invaded in February 2022. One was the arrival of Zelenskyy, who came to power in 2019 after a career as a comedian and actor. Putin believed that in Zelenskyy "he had someone he could manipulate in Ukraine," Hall said. Taylor said that during the 2019 election, Zelenskyy was also seen "as the one who was potentially more pro-Russian. He's from a Russian speaking region. His first language was Russian." But then, in 2021, Ukraine charged one of Putin's closest allies with treason. Taylor said the arrest of Viktor Medvedchuk made Putin realize "his goal of bringing Ukraine under Russian control peacefully has failed. And so the only option left is the military one."He also pointed to geopolitical reasons why Putin didn't launch a full invasion sooner. Part of the reason was US President Donald Trump getting into power. Trump was "very friendly towards Putin, at least in his public language," said Taylor, and also publicly criticized NATO. This meant Putin could wait to see if the alliance would " kind of shatter from within."But in 2021 President Joe Biden, who was a much stronger proponent of NATO, took office. Taylor also credits the COVID-19 pandemic, saying Putin "was much more isolated for that two-year period than he normally would have been." Graham said Putin's recent tendency towards "megalomania" had been "exacerbated" by him being "in extreme isolation."
Putin saw his chance
Graham believes that Putin also likely saw some opportunities from the state of global politics in 2022. He noted Zelenskyy had a low approval rating before the invasion, and some squabbling among Ukraine's elite meant Putin thought they likely wouldn't unite against him. The US' "chaotic" withdrawal from Afghanistan, new leaders of Germany and the UK, and pressure for France's president all meant Putin thought there was no "capable Western leadership" to oppose Russian aggression, he said. Based on all this, Putin thought that he could just invade Ukraine and take Kyiv in a matter of days.But little has turned out the way he expected. "Almost all of Putin's assumptions turned out to be wrong," Graham said.

Syrian regime organised feared ghost militias, war crimes researchers say
Stephanie van den Berg and Maya Gebeily/Reuters/Tue, July 4, 2023
In the early years of Syria's brutal conflict, top government officials established and directed paramilitary groups known as shabbiha to help the state crack down on opponents, war crimes investigators have documented.
In a report shared with Reuters, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) published seven documents its investigators said showed that the highest levels of Syria's government "planned, organised, instigated and deployed" the shabbiha from the start of the war in 2011.
U.N. investigators in 2012 concluded there were reasonable grounds to believe shabbiha militias committed crimes against humanity, including murder and torture, and war crimes such as arbitrary arrest and detention, sexual violence and pillaging.
CIJA's cache does not contain direct written orders to commit atrocities. The Syrian government did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters. It has previously blamed opposition fighters for several mass killings studied by CIJA in the report. The government has not publicly commented on the shabbiha, which means ghosts in Arabic, or whether it had any role in organising the groups.Dating from as early as January 2011 - the first days of the protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's rule - the documents detail the creation of so-called Popular Committees, groups that incorporated regime supporters already known as shabbiha into the security apparatus, and trained, instructed and armed them, the report said. The documents include instructions on March 2, 2011 from military intelligence to local authorities via Security Committees run by Assad's Baath party leaders to "mobilise" informers, grassroots organisations and so-called friends of the Assad government. In further documents in April they are ordered to form them into Popular Committees.
They also contain instructions in April, May and August, 2011 to Popular Committees from the newly-established Central Crisis Management Committee (CCMC), a mix of security forces, intelligence agencies and top officials that reported directly to Assad, the report said. One of the CCMC's first directives, dated April 18, 2011, and included in full in the report, ordered the Popular Committees to be trained on how to use weapons against demonstrators, as well as how to arrest them and hand them over to government forces. A German regional court in 2021, in a case against a Syrian intelligence services official, said in its judgment the CCMC was established in March 2011, reporting to Assad as an ad hoc body composed of senior leaders of the security forces. A U.S. district court found in 2019 in a civil case that Assad himself established the CCMC, which the court called "the highest national security body in the Syrian government" and "comprised of senior members of the government". Reuters reviewed seven documents made available in full in the CIJA report, which was due to be published later on Tuesday. The report also draws on dozens of other papers, which were collected from government or military facilities after territory fell to the rebels. CIJA has not released all the documents it quotes from, saying some are being used in ongoing investigations in European countries. The documents showed the government created the militias "from day one", rather than latching onto pre-existing grassroot groups, as scholars of the Syrian war previously thought, said Ugur Ungor, an expert on Syrian paramilitaries and a professor of Holocaust and Genocide studies at the Dutch NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, who has reviewed the documents in CIJA's new report.
PAPER TRAIL
Some human rights scholars who have studied the role of the shabbiha in the Syrian war say the Assad regime initially used the groups to distance itself from violence on the ground. "The regime did not want the security forces and army to be pictured doing these things," said Fadel Abdul Ghany, chair of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a UK-based advocacy group. No shabbiha members have been brought to trial in international courts. Ghany, who reviewed the documents, said they could help build such cases. "Here you have the paper trail that shows how these units were mobilized", one of CIJA's directors, Nerma Jelacic, told Reuters. CIJA is a nonprofit founded by a veteran war crimes investigator and staffed by international criminal lawyers who have worked in Bosnia, Rwanda and Cambodia. Its evidence on Syria has previously been used in court cases against regime officials conducted in Germany, France, Sweden and the Netherlands.
NINE MASSACRES
CIJA named nine massacres in Syria the reports said involved pro-government militias, including in the neighbourhood of Karm al-Zeytoun in the city of Homs in March 2012. One Syrian man, who asked not to be named as he feared reprisals against relatives still living in government-held zones in Syria, told Reuters his wife and five children were among those killed there. "The shabbiha put them up against the wall, tried to violate them, then shot them," he said. At the time, he had joined a rebel group and was in a nearby district, al-Adawiya - where another massacre had just taken place, also cited by CIJA.
"The moment I heard that my kids were dead, I was holding a six-month-old baby that had just been killed in Adawiya. So, I was imagining what had happened to my kids," he said, speaking by telephone from within a rebel-held enclave in northern Syria.
Reuters was not able to independently confirm his account. The CIJA documents showed tensions between some branches of the security forces and some Popular Committees as reports of abuses spread - but rather than rein-in the militias, the security forces issued instructions to not oppose them.
CIJA's Syria team of 45 people studied the documents to detail the growth of the shabbiha groups from neigbourhood-level loyalist groups to a well-organised militia and later a parallel wing of the army called the National Defence Force (NDF). Reuters earlier reported on the 2012 creation of the NDF.
While there is no international war crimes court with jurisdiction over Syria's conflict, there are a number of so-called universal jurisdiction cases in countries like the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Germany which have laws allowing them to prosecute war crimes even if they are committed elsewhere.
Ghany said the documents were "necessary" pieces of evidence linking the shabbiha to the state in international justice cases. "These documents make it possible to pursue people legally - if there are individuals in European countries, then a case can be brought against them," he told Reuters.
(Reporting by Stephanie Van Den Berg and Maya Gebeily; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)

UN and Arabs Whitewash Atrocities of Bashar Assad, Instead Blame – Guess Who?
Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/July 04, 2023
The League of Arab States (LAS), which represents 22 member countries, has spent several decades issuing statements of condemnation against Israel. Each time Israel launches a counterterrorism operation in response to Palestinian terrorism, including rockets fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel and shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks, it is denounced.
The same League of Arab States, however, has no problem embracing an Arab president whose regime has killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs, including Palestinians and Syrians, since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011.
The LAS... has effectively whitewashed Syrian President Bashar Assad's atrocities against his own people and Palestinians.
Assad, in his speech before the Arab heads of state, ironically expressed hope that the summit would mark "the beginning of a new phase of Arab action for solidarity among us, for peace in our region, development and prosperity instead of war and destruction."
Here is an Arab leader, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arabs and the displacement of millions more, preaching about "peace, development and prosperity."
Saudi Arabia played a significant role in welcoming the Assad regime back to the League of Arab States. The Saudis have shown that they prefer to make peace with Assad than normalize their relations with Israel. Drastically cooling years of diplomatic efforts, the Saudis insist that until a Palestinian state has been established, the kingdom will not normalize ties with Israel. If the Saudis are so concerned about the Palestinians, why are they rushing to embrace an Arab dictator whose regime has killed thousands of Palestinians?
With no apparent preconditions for Assad, the League of Arab States is turning its back on more than 500,000 dead Syrians, nearly seven million Syrian refugees, and 13 million displaced Syrians.
According to UN Special Rapporteur, Alena Douhan, the sanctioning countries, including the US, would be interfering in Syria's right to murder its own people en masse. That would, indeed, be attempting to secure a very specific change in its policy. Wouldn't not chemically burning entire villages of civilians to death be a better human rights policy?
According to the UN's Douhan, in yet another report, it is not Assad who should be held accountable and punished with sanctions. It is not Assad who has destroyed Syria's infrastructure with bombing, murder, and overall devastation, but rather: "Israeli settlements... in the occupied Syrian Golan.... [have] limited the Syrian population's access to land and water, in violation of their rights to adequate housing, food and health.... The report also contained recommendations [that]... The international community should put in place punitive measures to put an end to these crimes. All dealings with settlers, settlements and the incumbent Prime Minister [Netanyahu] should cease."
The UN's concern over the Syrian people's rights to land and housing is commendable, but where was its outcry when Assad gave a quiet 30 days' notice to the seven million refugees scattered across the Middle East and beyond to prove ownership of their homes and property or to forfeit ownership? Assad's"Law 10" land grab... was met with not a whisper of protest by the UN.
According to Amnesty International: "In 2019, more than two-thirds of all refugees came from just five countries: Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar...." The Palestinians were not even mentioned.
The UN freely admits that: "The League of Arab States (LAS) shares a common mission with the United Nations (UN): promoting peace, security and stability by preventing conflict, resolving disputes and acting in a spirit of solidarity and unity.... building their engagement through capacity-building exercises and staff exchanges. The Security Council also has sought to strengthen interaction with the LAS...."
With such chummy comradery between these two organizations, including interchangeable staff, it is not a wonder that the UN has strategically placed despotic regimes in its councils and – as demonstrated in resolution after resolution -- taken such an aggressively biased stance against Israel.
After 12 years of what then US Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013 called the"moral obscenity" of Assad's "indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons," the UN decries sanctions against the Assad regime, and the Arab League embraces Assad with great honor and not a word of censure.
The outrageous hypocrisy and double-standards of the Arab countries and the UN is astonishing -- and unacceptable. The League of Arab States pretends to care about its fellow Arabs, while its good friend, the UN, purports to care about human rights.
"Why has this [UN] Council chosen silence?" UN Watch's Hillel Neuer asked."Because Israel could not be blamed. Because, in truth, the despots who run this Council couldn't care less about Palestinians, or about any human rights. They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state, to scapegoat the Jewish people. They also seek something else: To distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights."
The League of Arab States has no problem embracing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose regime has killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs, including Palestinians and Syrians, since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011.
The League of Arab States (LAS), which represents 22 member countries, has spent several decades issuing statements of condemnation against Israel. Each time Israel launches a counterterrorism operation in response to Palestinian terrorism, including rockets fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel and shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks, it is denounced. The Israeli government is also condemned by the LAS each time it approves the construction of housing units for Jewish families in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The same League of Arab States, however, has no problem embracing an Arab president whose regime has killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs, including Palestinians and Syrians, since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011.
Since the beginning of the civil war in Syria, 4,214 Palestinians have been killed; another 3,076 Palestinians are being held in prisons belonging to the Syrian regime, while another 333 others have gone missing, according to the Action Group For Palestinians Of Syria, a London-based human rights watchdog group that monitors the situation of Palestinian refugees in Syria.
About 400,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria have been displaced as a result of the war, The United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) revealed.
"The majority of the 438,000 Palestinian refugees remaining in Syria have been displaced at least once within Syria – with some having been displaced multiple times – and over 95 percent of them remain in continuous need of humanitarian aid to meet their basis needs.... Up to 280,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria are currently displaced inside Syria, with a further 120,000 displaced to neighboring countries, including Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and increasingly, to Europe. There are 31,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Many of them have been pushed into a precarious and marginalized existence due to their uncertain legal status and face limited social protection."
Last year, the United Nations Human Rights Council estimated that 306,887 civilians were killed during the civil war in Syria. Syrian opposition groups estimate that a total of 613,407 people were killed in Syria. The most violent year of the conflict was 2015, when about 110,000 people were killed. Half of the war's victims died between 2013 and 2015, according to the Council.
The League of Arab States, remembered for its rejectionist 1967 "Three No's" resolution (no to peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel), has effectively whitewashed Syrian President Bashar Assad's atrocities against his own people and Palestinians. In May, Arab foreign ministers agreed to reinstate Syria's membership in the LAS after its suspension more than 10 years ago. Later, Assad was invited to attend the LAS Summit in Saudi Arabia's port city of Jeddah.
Assad, in his speech before the Arab heads of state, ironically expressed hope that the summit would mark "the beginning of a new phase of Arab action for solidarity among us, for peace in our region, development and prosperity instead of war and destruction."
Here is an Arab leader, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arabs and the displacement of millions more, preaching about "peace, development and prosperity."
Saudi Arabia played a significant role in welcoming the Assad regime back to the League of Arab States. The Saudis have shown that they prefer to make peace with Assad than normalize their relations with Israel. Drastically cooling years of diplomatic efforts, the Saudis insist that until a Palestinian state has been established, the kingdom will not normalize ties with Israel. If the Saudis are so concerned about the Palestinians, why are they rushing to embrace an Arab dictator whose regime has killed thousands of Palestinians?
Days after Syria was welcomed to rejoin the LAS, the very same organization called on the international community to "intervene to end Israel's violations against Palestinian children and ensure the protection of their rights."
Before Syria was officially welcomed back to the LAS, Assad was invited to the United Arab Emirates where he was received by Emirati royalty with full honors as "a group of honor guards lined up to salute his excellency."
It is not as though Assad has expressed any contrition whatsoever or admitted an iota of responsibility – whether currently or throughout his rampage of atrocities against his own people. "I did my best to protect the people. I cannot feel guilty when you do your best. You feel sorry for the lives that have been lost. But you don't feel guilty when you don't kill people. So it's not about guilty," he claimed, astonishingly, in an Barbara Walters interview in 2011.
With no apparent preconditions for Assad, the League of Arab States is turning its back on more than 500,000 dead Syrians, nearly seven million Syrian refugees, and 13 million displaced Syrians.
There had not been any significant repercussions for Assad until then US President Donald Trump authorized the bombing of Syrian chemical weapons facilities in 2018 and signed the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act legislating international sanctions against Syria's murderous regime in 2019.
The UN adopted "special procedures" resolutions decrying "unilateral coercive measures" in September 2014 (about three months after Assad's farcical reelection and attempted image rehabilitation), and again in October 2020 (almost immediately following the US's institution of the Caesar Act sanctions). It seems odd that a human rights body such as the UN would need to take "special procedures" to countermand a "civilian protection act."
Along with these procedures, the UN appointed Alena Douhan as Special Rapporteur for assessing the humanitarian situation in Syria.
Douhan, in her reports to the UN, rails against the negative impact of sanctions on Syria, but seems less specific about humanitarian issues and more concerned with defining legal terminology:
"Unilateral coercive measures have been defined by the Human Rights Council in its resolutions 27/21 and 45/5. These encompass economic and political measures imposed by one or a group of States to coerce another State into subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights, with a view to securing some specific change in its policy."
This would be the very definition of sanctions. According to Douhan, the sanctioning countries, including the US, would be interfering in Syria's right to murder its own people en masse. That would, indeed, be attempting to secure a very specific change in its policy. Wouldn't not chemically burning entire villages of civilians to death be a better human rights policy?
Unsurprisingly, the UN seized upon Douhan's policy-making prowess to tack the subject of "Unilateral Coercive Measures" (UCMs) onto Israel. Douhan requested reports from Palestinian NGOs such as "Palestinian Centre for Human Rights," which warmed to the newly minted legal terminology and promptly submitted reports such as, "Impact of Israeli Unilateral Coercive Measures on the Right to Health of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip."
According to the UN's Douhan, in yet another report, it is not Assad who should be held accountable and punished with sanctions. It is not Assad who has destroyed Syria's infrastructure with bombing, murder, and overall devastation, but rather:
"Israeli settlements... in the occupied Syrian Golan.... [have] limited the Syrian population's access to land and water, in violation of their rights to adequate housing, food and health.... The report also contained recommendations [that]... The international community should put in place punitive measures to put an end to these crimes. All dealings with settlers, settlements and the incumbent Prime Minister [Netanyahu] should cease."
The UN's concern over the Syrian people's rights to land and housing is commendable, but where was its outcry when Assad gave a quiet 30 days' notice to the seven million refugees scattered across the Middle East and beyond to prove ownership of their homes and property or to forfeit ownership? Assad's"Law 10" land grab, where, Salon Syria reports, his government "...liquidate[d] their titles and seize[d] their holdings.... using the law to seize the homes of opposition supporters and give them to its own support base [including selling them to foreign investors]," was met with not a whisper of protest by the UN.
Diametrically opposed to its tacit approval of Assad's land-seizures is the UN's obsession with the Palestinian refugees and their "right of return." Although UN resolution 194 would ostensibly pertain to the right of all refugees to return to their land of birth, if they will "live at peace with their neighbors," there seems to be little effort in pursuing this in practice for Syrian refugees.
The UN's prioritizing the Palestinian refugees over the seven million Syrian refugees is incomprehensible, stinks of hypocrisy and seems yet another symptom of how corruptly the UN betrays its own sanctimonious determinations.
Why doesn't the UN open an entirely new agency solely for Syrian refugees as it did for the Palestinians through UNRWA?
That move, though, seems highly unlikely in light of this year's UN World Refugee Day report. Four of its six paragraphs railed about, "the Nakba - the event that shattered Palestinian lives... for generations, tracing back to 1947... As the largest and most protracted displaced population since World War II" – thereby completely negating the Syrian refugees, as well as many others.
According to Amnesty International:
"In 2019, more than two-thirds of all refugees came from just five countries: Syria, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Myanmar. Syria has been the main country of origin for refugees since 2014 and at the end of 2019, there were 6.6 million Syrian refugees...."
The Palestinians were not even mentioned.
The Syrians are one of many peoples taking a backseat to Palestinians. An Arab News headline from last month reads: "Sudan war uproots 2.5 million, UN says, as bodies line Darfur streets." The ensuing article says: "The UN has spoken of possible 'crimes against humanity' in Darfur, where the conflict has 'taken an ethnic dimension.'"
The Sudanese regime responsible for the ongoing massacre, for instance, sits, along with a majority of non-democratic states, on the UN Human Rights Council.
The UN freely admits that:
"The League of Arab States (LAS) shares a common mission with the United Nations (UN): promoting peace, security and stability by preventing conflict, resolving disputes and acting in a spirit of solidarity and unity.... building their engagement through capacity-building exercises and staff exchanges. The Security Council also has sought to strengthen interaction with the LAS...."
With such chummy comradery between these two organizations, including interchangeable staff, it is not a wonder that the UN has strategically placed despotic regimes in its councils and – as demonstrated in resolution after resolution -- taken such an aggressively biased stance against Israel.
Mirroring the UN's bizarre version of events and culpability, only three months before embracing the murderous Assad, the Assistant Secretary General of the LAS denounced "the international community's silence and apathy toward... the occupied Palestinian territories.... [holding] prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu fully responsible for...an Israeli siege for more than a week.... the international community [must]... utilize all means to put an immediate end to the Israeli regime's blatant aggression," Iran's Tasnim News reported.
After 12 years of what then US Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013 called the"moral obscenity" of Assad's "indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons," the UN decries sanctions against the Assad regime, and the Arab League embraces Assad with great honor and not a word of censure.
The outrageous hypocrisy and double-standards of the Arab countries and the UN is astonishing -- and unacceptable. The League of Arab States pretends to care about its fellow Arabs, while its good friend, the UN, purports to care about human rights.
"Why has this [UN] Council chosen silence?" UN Watch's Hillel Neuer asked.
"Because Israel could not be blamed. Because, in truth, the despots who run this Council couldn't care less about Palestinians, or about any human rights. They seek to demonize Israeli democracy, to delegitimize the Jewish state, to scapegoat the Jewish people. They also seek something else: To distort and pervert the very language and idea of human rights."
*Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.
© 2023 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
*Enclosed Picture: Yarmouk refugee camp, near Damascus, on May 22, 2018, days after Syrian government forces regained control over the camp. (Photo by Louai Beshara/AFP via Getty Images)
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19777/un-arabs-syria-atrocities

The ‘Right’ to Rape and Enslave Non-Muslim Women
Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/July 04/2023
“I will burn you all. I will cut your throats. I will rape you and your mother because I have the right to do so.”
Such were the recent words of a Muslim man to a minor girl in France, who had been chatting with him on Facebook. After she refused him, he defaulted to irate terrorist threats, at one point also texting, “Soon we will cut your throats and play football with your heads.” The communication was accompanied by a video showing a beheading scene.
Based on the name the French report gives—Fabio Califano—it appears that the terrorist, who was subsequently arrested, was a convert to Islam.
Responding to the fear and terror he and his family lived with, the girl’s father, who was described as “devastated and angry,” said “Islam is not what I have been hearing [it is]… Religion is peace, tolerance, respect […] We have been living in fear for a year!”
There is much continuity here: whether the ongoing “irony” of non-Muslims being repeatedly assured that Islam means peace—only for them to experience the exact opposite—or whether yet another Western convert to the “religion of peace” suddenly and inexplicitly turns terroristic.
Even the assertion that “we will cut your throats and play football with your heads” echoes through the ages. As one example, Mu‘izzi, an eleventh century Persian poet, once tried to incite an emir to butcher all Christians in the Middle East:
For the sake of the Arab religion, it is a duty, O ghazi king, to clear the country of Syria of patriarchs and bishops, to clear the land of Rum [Anatolia] from priests and monks. You should kill those accursed dogs and wretched creatures. . . . You should … cut their throats. . . . You should make polo-balls of the Franks’ heads in the desert, and polo sticks from their hands and feet.”
Even so, and despite all of the continuity redolent in this recent terroristic outburst, the one line that truly stands out is: “I will rape you and your mother because I have the right to do so.”
In fact, this is hardly the first time that a Muslim man insists that it is has “right”—given by Islam—to enslave and rape non-Muslim women. Such men routinely cite the same hadiths and verses from the Koran. Verses 4:3 and 4:24, for instance, permit Muslim men to have sexual relations with as many women as “their right hand possesses,” meaning as many women — all non-Muslim, of course — as they are able to take captive during a jihad.
The Koran further uses language, discussed here, that presents such women as things, not persons. Literally translated, Koran 4:3 permits Muslims to copulate with “what” —not who—“your right hands possess,” as captured by Shakir’s translation.
To understand how such scriptures and terminology inform the jihadist mind, consider the following excerpts from a New York Times report titled, “ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape”:
In the moments before he raped the 12-year-old girl, the Islamic State fighter took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.
He bound her hands and gagged her. Then he knelt beside the bed and prostrated himself in prayer before getting on top of her.
When it was over, he knelt to pray again, bookending the rape with acts of religious devotion.
“I kept telling him it hurts — please stop,” said the girl, whose body is so small an adult could circle her waist with two hands. “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God,” she said in an interview alongside her family in a refugee camp here, to which she escaped after 11 months of captivity. [Emphasis added.]
The report continues:
One 34-year-old Yazidi woman, who was bought and repeatedly raped by a Saudi fighter in the Syrian city of Shadadi, described how she fared better than the second slave in the household — a 12-year-old girl who was raped for days on end despite heavy bleeding.
“He destroyed her body. She was badly infected. The fighter kept coming and asking me, ‘Why does she smell so bad?’ And I said, she has an infection on the inside, you need to take care of her,” the woman said.
Unmoved, he ignored the girl’s agony, continuing the ritual of praying before and after raping the child.
“I said to him, ‘She’s just a little girl,’” the older woman recalled. “And he answered: ‘No. She’s not a little girl. She’s a slave. And she knows exactly how to have sex.’’’
“And having sex with her pleases God,” he said.
Are such perverse beliefs confined to ISIS and other fanatical jihadists—who have “nothing whatsoever to do with Islam,” as maintained by mainstream liars and fools—or do they permeate Muslim society in general? Evidence indicates the latter.
In Pakistan, for example, three Christian girls walking home after a hard day’s work were accosted by four “rich and drunk” Muslims—hardly ISIS candidates—in a car. They “misbehaved,” yelled “suggestive and lewd comments,” and harassed the girls to get in their car for “a ride and some fun.” When the girls declined the “invitation,” adding that they were “devout Christians and did not practice sex outside of marriage,” the men became enraged and chased the girls, yelling, “How dare you run away from us, Christian girls are only meant for one thing: the pleasure of Muslim men.” They drove their car into the three girls, killing one and severely injuring the other two.
Or consider the words of human rights activists speaking about another Muslim man’s rape of a 9-year-old Christian girl:
Such incidents occur frequently. Christian girls are considered goods to be damaged at leisure. Abusing them is a right. According to the community’s mentality it is not even a crime. Muslims regard them as spoils of war. [Emphasis added.]
Most recently, after a June 3, 2023 report details the sufferings Hindus experience as “infidels” in Pakistan, it quotes some who fled saying,
In Pakistan, there is no difference between meat and women…. Had we stayed back, our women would have been torn to shreds.
Once relegated to third world countries like Pakistan and ISIS-controlled areas, the subhuman treatment and sexual abuse of “infidel” women is becoming a common fixture in the West—as the aforementioned young French girl and her family recently learned.
In Germany, for example, Muslim migrants regularly act out on their conviction that all “German women are there for sex.” In just one instance, 2016 New Year’s celebrations in Cologne, migrants molested a thousand women.
Similarly, in Britain, where a large Muslim minority has long existed, countless British girls in various regions have been sexually abused and gang raped by Muslims who apparently deemed it their Islamic right. Said one rape victim: “The men who did this to me have no remorse. They would tell me that what they were doing was OK in their culture.”
A Muslim imam in Britain confessed that Muslim men are taught that women are “second-class citizens, little more than chattels or possessions over whom they have absolute authority” and that the imams preach a doctrine “that denigrates all women, but treats whites [meaning non-Muslims] with particular contempt.”
Another Muslim convicted of rape in a separate case told a British court that sharing non-Muslim girls for sex “was part of Somali culture” and “a religious requirement.”
In short, whether seen by “pious” Muslims as a “religious requirement”—as cited by an ISIS rapist to his 12-year-old victim—or whether seen as part of Pakistani (Asian), Somali (African), or British-convert culture—in a word, Islamic culture—the subhuman treatment and sexual degradation of non-Muslim women and children by Muslim men who deem it their “right” is apparently another “exoticism” the West must embrace if it wishes to keep worshipping at the altar of multiculturalism.

Wagner’s mutiny and the destabilizing role of unregulated militias
Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg/Arab News/July 04, 2023
The failed rebellion led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, in Russia last week highlighted the inherent risk of private armies or militias acting autonomously from regular armed forces. It appears now that the Russian authorities are determined to end that anomaly. Other countries where such groups proliferate should take note.
Last Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin told members of the security services that they “essentially prevented a civil war” by acting “clearly and coherently” during the Wagner Group’s armed mutiny on June 24.
President Putin gave Wagner militants a choice: “Today, you have the opportunity to continue serving Russia by entering into a contract with the Ministry of Defense or other law enforcement agencies, or to return to your family and friends. Whoever wants to can go to Belarus. The promise I made will be fulfilled,” Putin said. “I repeat: The choice is yours.”
This was only the latest and most dramatic case of private armed groups threatening the security and stability of areas in which they operate. That is true even when they work in coordination and with the knowledge and support of the state.
Wagner fighters are known to be active in several other places around the world, including Syria and parts of Africa, where at times they self-finance, act autonomously and may be involved in illicit trade and human rights violations. After their short-lived revolt in Russia and subsequent measures taken by the Russian government, it is not clear what will happen to them abroad.
Philosophers and learned scholars have long warned about the potential dangers of independent armed groups. Mainstream Sunni Muslim scholars have long argued that only the state can mobilize and use force, although that opinion was not always adhered to. The great 10th-century Arab poet Al-Mutanabbi said in a famous line: “He who dispatches a ferocious lion to do his hunting may one day become the prey of that beast.”
That intuitive wisdom has been expanded in modern scholarship, especially in Europe as it transitioned from the feudal system to nation states — a transformation that marked a clear departure from the diffused multiplicity of private armies belonging to feudal lords.
The state’s monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force or violence has become a core concept of modern political philosophy and public law.
The French legal scholar Jean Bodin stressed this concept in the 16th century, as did the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the 17th. Writing in the early 16th century, Italian Renaissance author Niccolo Machiavelli bluntly warned: “Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these armies, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies.”
Early 20th-century German political philosopher Max Weber wrote that monopoly over the use of force was the “defining” feature of a state, as a “human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” He also described the state as an “association that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence, and cannot be defined in any other manner.”
However, Weber did not rule out that the state may grant a private actor the right to use force, as long as the state remains the only source of the right to use force and that it maintains the capacity to enforce this monopoly.
This Weberian theory has dominated political discourse during the past century, including his apparently permissive attitude toward delegating the state’s power, or “outsourcing” it, to private actors. However, the recent proliferation of nonstate actors, including state-authorized militias, has led to a reconsideration of that license. Some countries, such as the US, have had well-regulated militias with clear divisions of labor and checks and balances to keep them under control, with them being almost indistinguishable from the regular armed forces, thus preventing them from going rogue and ensuring the government’s monopoly over the use of force.
Other countries have not had the same luck managing state-sanctioned militias. In the Middle East region, for example, there has been an alarming growth in the number of uncontrolled militias. While the rationale behind establishing some of those armed groups may have been justified at some point, their continued existence poses a serious challenge to stability, national unity and the cohesion of the mainstream armed forces of the state. A clear example is Hezbollah of Lebanon, whose representatives serve in the Lebanese Cabinet and sit in the parliament, but it has its own foreign and security policies, with little or no oversight or control by the government. Studies have identified scores of groups similar to Hezbollah in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and elsewhere.
As state-sanctioned entities grow in number and strength, they have frequently undermined state institutions.
As these state-sanctioned entities grow in number and strength, they have frequently undermined state institutions and acted against state interests. They have become destabilizing agents even when established with official knowledge and support. New research has therefore challenged the apparent Weberian permissiveness toward such groups. It argues for a reversion to the earlier traditions of Bodin and Hobbes and the ideal of states’ monopoly of force being not only about its control but also its use. The state must, therefore, be the sole actor to wield force. The mutiny of the Wagner Group is a case in point in support of this view, as it has demonstrated that a state monopoly on the use of force can be undermined by state-sanctioned private military outfits.
While it may be difficult to weed out existing state-authorized militias and private military groups in this region all at once, the Wagner case should make it imperative to exercise greater control to ensure that they work for the public good and not narrower personal, tribal or sectoral interests. Command and control by the armed forces and regular financial oversight are essential to keep them from going astray.
*Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg is the Gulf Cooperation Council assistant secretary-general for political affairs and negotiation, and a columnist for Arab News. The views expressed in this piece are personal and do not necessarily represent GCC views. Twitter: @abuhamad1