TEL AVIV: Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid took off for Germany on Sunday, in his latest diplomatic effort to persuade Western powers to ditch a nuclear deal with Iran.
Israel has long opposed a revival of the 2015 accord, which has been moribund since then US president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew in 2018 and reimposed biting sanctions on Tehran.
Momentum that built toward a restored agreement last month appears to have slowed, after the three European nations that are party to the agreement — Germany, France and Britain — on Saturday raised “serious doubts” about Iran’s sincerity in restoring the deal.
Meeting his cabinet before flying to Berlin, Lapid thanked these three powers for the “strong position” they had voiced in a tripartite statement on Saturday.
These powers charged that Tehran “has chosen not to seize this critical diplomatic opportunity,” adding that “instead, Iran continues to escalate its nuclear program way beyond any plausible civilian justification.”
Lapid told his cabinet that “Israel is conducting a successful diplomatic campaign to stop the nuclear agreement and prevent the lifting of sanctions on Iran.
“It is not over yet,” he added. “There is still a long way to go, but there are encouraging signs.”
An Israeli diplomatic official, who requested anonymity, told AFP that Iran will be the focus of the talks when the delegation lands in Berlin.
“It’s important to continue to coordinate positions and to influence the European position. Germany has an important role in this,” the official said.
Lapid, who was traveling with senior security officials, is scheduled to meet Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier before returning to Israel late Monday.
The 2015 agreement, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, gave Iran sanctions relief in return for restricting its nuclear program.
Negotiations underway in Vienna since April 2021 have sought to restore the agreement, by lifting the sanctions on Tehran and pushing Iran to fully honor its prior nuclear commitments.
Last month, the European Union, which acts as the mediator of the talks, put forward a “final” draft of the agreement.
Iran and the US then took turns to respond to the text, with Washington saying on Friday that Tehran’s reply was a step “backwards.”
Israel PM heads to Berlin for fresh pitch against Iran deal
https://arab.news/5urx3
Israel PM heads to Berlin for fresh pitch against Iran deal
- Israel has long opposed a revival of the 2015 accord
- Momentum that built toward a restored agreement last month appears to have slowed
UAE president meets Afghanistan delegation in Abu Dhabi
- Reconstruction, economic ties, regional stability discussed by officials
DUBAI: UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan on Tuesday met with a delegation from Afghanistan led by Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, state news agency WAM reported.
The meeting, which took place at Qasr Al-Shati in Abu Dhabi, included talks on bilateral ties and regional stability.
“The discussions focused on economic and development fields, as well as support for reconstruction and development in Afghanistan,” WAM reported.
The Taliban government took power in August 2021 when the US-backed government collapsed and its leaders fled into exile.
No country has recognized the Taliban government although some, including China, have kept their embassies open and accredited Taliban diplomats.
Beijing has accepted Bilal Karimi, a former Taliban spokesman, as an official envoy to China despite its non-recognition of Afghanistan’s current rulers.
“China hopes that Afghanistan will further respond to the expectations of the international community, building an open and inclusive political framework, implementing moderate and prudent domestic and foreign policies, resolutely combating all kinds of terrorist forces,” Wang Wenbin, spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said earlier, in explaining Beijing’s acceptance of a Taliban envoy.
India reopened its embassy in Kabul in June 2022, less than a year after it was shut down, and has engaged with the Taliban even though it does not formally recognize the current government.
Amanda Knox returns to Italian courtroom, looking to clear name ‘once and for all’ in slander case
- Brutal 2007 murder of her British roommate fueled global headlines as suspicion fell on Amanda Knox, then an exchange student from Seattle
- In the fall, Italy’s highest Cassation Court threw out the slander conviction that had withstood five trials, ordering a new trial
FLORENCE: Amanda Knox returns to an Italian courtroom Wednesday for the first time in more than 12½ years to clear herself “once and for all” of a slander charge that stuck even after she was exonerated in the brutal 2007 murder of her British roommate in the idyllic hilltop town of Perugia.
The slaying of 21-year-old Meredith Kercher fueled global headlines as suspicion fell on Knox, a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle, and her new Italian boyfriend of just a week, Raffaele Sollecito. Flip-flop verdicts over nearly eight years of legal proceedings polarized trial watchers on both sides of the Atlantic as the case was vociferously argued on social media, still in its infancy.
All these years later, despite Knox’s exoneration and the conviction of an Ivorian man whose footprints and DNA were found at the scene, doubts about her role persist, particularly in Italy. That is largely due to the accusation she made against a Congolese bar owner who employed her part time, a claim that led to her being found guilty of slander.
Knox, now a 36-year-old mother of two small children, returns to Italy for only the second time since she was freed in October 2011, after four years in jail, by a Perugia appeals court that overturned the initial guilty verdict in the murder case against both Knox and Sollecito.
She remained in the United States through two more flip-flop verdicts before Italy’s highest court definitively exonerated the pair of the murder in March 2015, stating flatly that they had not committed the crime.
“I will walk into the very same courtroom where I was reconvicted of a crime I didn’t commit, this time to defend myself yet again,” Knox wrote on social media. “I hope to clear my name once and for all of the false charges against me. Wish me luck.”
Knox’s day in court was set by a European court ruling that Italy violated her human rights during a long night of questioning days after Kercher’s murder, deprived of both a lawyer and a competent translator. In the fall, Italy’s highest Cassation Court threw out the slander conviction that had withstood five trials, ordering a new trial, thanks to a 2022 Italian judicial reform allowing cases that have reached a definitive verdict to be reopened if human rights violations are found.
This time, the court has been ordered to disregard two damaging statements typed by police and signed by Knox at 1:45 a.m. and 5:45 a.m. as she was held for questioning overnight into the wee hours of Nov. 6, 2007. In the statements, Knox said she remembered hearing Kercher scream, and pointed to Patrick Lumumba, the owner of a bar where she worked, for the killing.
Hours later, still in custody at about 1 p.m., she asked for pen and paper and wrote her own statement in English, questioning the version that she had signed.
“In regards to this ‘confession’ that I made last night, I want to make clear that I’m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressure of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion,” she wrote.
Whatever the outcome, Knox risks no more jail time. The four years she served before the first acquittal covers the three-year slander sentence.
Fighting rocks Gaza as major powers push for truce
- The Gaza war raged on unabated, with the Israeli military reporting its fighter jets struck around “65 terror targets” across Gaza
RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Heavy fighting rocked Gaza on Tuesday after G7 and Arab powers urged both Israel and Hamas to agree to a truce and hostage release deal outlined by US President Joe Biden.
Mediator Qatar said it had yet to see statements from either side “that give us a lot of confidence,” but the foreign ministry said Doha was “working with both sides on proposals on the table.”
Washington said it would seek a UN Security Council resolution to back the three-phase roadmap which Biden presented last Friday as Israel’s plan, even as the war has ground on.
Under the proposal, fighting would stop for an initial six weeks and hostages would be swapped for Palestinian prisoners, ahead of the start of a phase to rebuild Gaza, Biden said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, however, stressed that fighting would only have to cease temporarily to free the captives, and that Israel still plans to destroy Hamas.
A statement from the premier’s office said Israel’s war cabinet was meeting in Jerusalem on Tuesday, but no further details were given.
A source with knowledge of the truce negotiations said CIA chief Bill Burns would be “returning to Doha... to continue working with mediators on reaching an agreement between Hamas and Israel on a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages.”
Biden told Qatar’s emir that “Hamas is now the only obstacle to a complete ceasefire,” and “confirmed Israel’s readiness to move forward” with the terms he set out last week.
Hamas, which has long ruled the Palestinian territory of 2.4 million people, said Friday it viewed Biden’s outline “positively.”
But a senior Hamas official in Beirut on Tuesday accused Israel of seeking “endless” truce negotiations, and repeated the group’s position rejecting any deal that excludes a permanent ceasefire.
Hamas has stuck to that position in months of intermittent talks involving US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
Those three countries have now urged both sides to agree a truce deal, as have Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.
The Group of Seven countries also gave their full endorsement, arguing the plan would also bring vastly more aid into Gaza and “an enduring end to the crisis, with Israel’s security interests and Gazan civilian safety assured.”
“We call on Hamas to accept this deal, that Israel is ready to move forward with, and we urge countries with influence over Hamas to help ensure that it does so,” said the G7 which also includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
UN Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland also urged both sides to back the proposal, writing on X that “there is no alternative — and any delay, every day simply costs more lives.”
The Gaza war raged on unabated, with the Israeli military reporting its fighter jets struck around “65 terror targets” across Gaza and that troops located tunnel shafts and weapons in the southern city of Rafah.
It also said warplanes and ground forces were attacking targets in the Bureij area in central Gaza.
Four bodies were retrieved from a bombed house in Bureij, and three more from a destroyed building in Gaza City, the civil defense agency said.
Gaza’s government media office said another Israeli strike killed eight police officers in Deir Al-Balah.
The White House insisted Monday that the truce plan was Israel’s own and not drafted by Washington to put pressure on its key ally.
However, Biden also took a swipe in an interview with Time magazine at Netanyahu, who is leading a shaky right-wing coalition government and has been fighting corruption claims in court.
Asked if he believed the Israeli premier was dragging out the war for political self-preservation, Biden said: “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion.”
Biden also said that he and Netanyahu were at odds over the need to create a Palestinian state.
“My major disagreement with Netanyahu is, what happens after... Gaza’s over? What, what does it go back to? Do Israeli forces go back in?” he asked.
“The answer is, if that’s the case, it can’t work.”
French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday told Netanyahu in a phone call that the Palestinian Authority of president Mahmud Abbas that rules parts of the occupied West Bank should “ensure the governance” of Gaza after the war.
Macron said the proposed truce deal “should reopen a credible perspective for the implementation of a two-state solution, the only one able to provide Israel with the necessary security guarantees and to respond to the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians.”
Netanyahu’s office said he told Macron Israel’s “fundamental objective,” in addition to securing the hostages’ release, was to eliminate Hamas, and that it was determined to do so.
On the political front, Slovenia’s parliament on Tuesday recognized the State of Palestine, following fellow European Union members Ireland and Spain as well as Norway last month in a move that enraged Israel.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, 120 of whom remain in Gaza, including 41 the army says are dead.
The Israeli military on Monday confirmed the latest deaths of captives, naming them as Nadav Popplewell, 51, and three men in their 80s, Chaim Perry, Yoram Metzger and Amiram Cooper.
The Hostages Families Forum group, which has joined a series of mass protests demanding a truce deal, said the men “should have returned alive to their country and their families.”
Israel’s bombardment and ground offensive have killed at least 36,550 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Some 55 percent of Gaza’s structures have been destroyed, damaged or “possibly damaged,” according to the United Nations satellite analysis agency.
Aid group Oxfam said displaced Gazans are living in “appalling” conditions, with children sometimes going for a whole day without food and thousands sharing the same toilet.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk also threw his support behind the truce plan, saying of the war that “we don’t even know how to describe it anymore.”
“It is beyond precarious. It is beyond catastrophic.”
Famine is possibly underway in northern Gaza despite recent aid efforts, a new report warns
JERUSALEM: An independent group of experts warned Tuesday that it’s possible that famine is underway in northern Gaza but that the war between Israel and Hamas and restrictions on humanitarian access have impeded the data collection to prove it.
“It is possible, if not likely,” the group known as the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWS NET, said about famine in Gaza.
Concerns about deadly hunger have been high in recent months and spiked after the head of the World Food Program last month said northern Gaza had entered “full-blown famine” after nearly seven months of war. Experts at the UN agency later said Cindy McCain was expressing a personal opinion.
An area is considered to be in famine when three things occur: 20 percent of households have an extreme lack of food, or are essentially starving; at least 30 percent of the children suffer from acute malnutrition or wasting, meaning they’re too thin for their height; and two adults or four children per every 10,000 people are dying daily of hunger and its complications.
That’s according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a collection of UN agencies, governments and other bodies that in March warned famine was imminent in northern Gaza.
Tuesday’s report by FEWS NET is the first technical assessment by an international organization saying that famine is possibly occurring in northern Gaza.
Funded by the United States Agency for International Development, FEWS NET is an internationally recognized authority on famine that provides evidence-based and timely early warning information for food insecurity. It also helps inform decisions on humanitarian responses in some of the world’s most food insecure countries.
But for a formal declaration of famine, the data must be there.
Such a declaration could be used as evidence at the International Criminal Court as well as at the International Court of Justice, where Israel faces allegations of genocide.
The report cautioned that data collection would likely be impeded as long as the war goes on. It said people — including children — are dying of hunger-related causes across the territory and that those conditions will likely persist until at least July, if there isn’t a fundamental change in how food aid is distributed.
The report also cautioned that efforts to increase aid into Gaza are insufficient, and urged Israel’s government to act urgently.
The UN and international aid agencies for months have said not enough food or other humanitarian supplies are entering Gaza, and Israel faces mounting pressure from top ally the US and others to let in more aid.
Israel has repeatedly denied there is famine underway in Gaza and rejected allegations it has used hunger as a weapon in its war against the militant Hamas group. It has opened a number of new crossings into Gaza in recent months, saying they helped increase the flow of aid.
But Israel has also been expanding its offensive in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, once the main hub of humanitarian aid operations. That invasion has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and other supplies to Palestinians facing hunger.
The Israeli military, which is responsible for the crossings into Gaza, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the FEWS NET report.
As Gaza hostage crisis drags on for Israel, here’s what we know
- Of those still in captivity, Israel has pronounced 43 dead, saying their remains are being held by militants
JERUSALEM: Israel’s announcement that four more hostages died in Hamas captivity, including three men in their 80s, stoked fears that time is running out for captives in Gaza who are still alive.
It set off protests across Israel calling for an immediate ceasefire deal that would secure the release of the dozens of remaining captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
About eight months into the Israel-Hamas war, here’s where things stand, according to official Israeli figures:
HOSTAGES TAKEN OCT. 7 AND EXCHANGED
Israel’s hostage crisis began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and kidnapping about 250 back to Gaza.
Of the hostages taken, 105 were released during a weeklong ceasefire in November, in an exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners. The released hostages included 81 Israeli citizens and 24 foreign nationals, most of them Thais.
Four female hostages were released prior to this ceasefire through deals brokered by the US and other mediators.
HOSTAGES REMAINING IN GAZA
After the November ceasefire, more than 120 hostages remained in Gaza, including four Israelis captured years earlier. Two of them, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, were Israeli soldiers believed to have been killed in a 2014 war.
HOSTAGES DEAD IN GAZA
Of those still in captivity, Israel has pronounced 43 dead, saying their remains are being held by militants. Some are believed to have been killed during the Oct. 7 attack. The cause of death for others is unknown, although Hamas has claimed some were killed in Israeli airstrikes. Israeli officials believe that the number of dead hostages could be higher.
HOSTAGES NOT DECLARED DEAD IN GAZA
There are about 80 hostages left in Gaza who Israel has not pronounced dead.
That includes about 15 women and 2 children under the age of 5 — Kfir and Ariel Bibas, whose mother, Shiri Bibas, is also still in captivity. Two men in their 80s are also among the captives.
Also included is Hersh Polin-Goldberg, a 23-year-old American-Israeli who was taken hostage at a music festival where over 300 people were killed. Polin-Goldberg’s parents have led a global campaign seeking their son’s release and drawing attention to the plight of the hostages. Hamas released a video of Polin-Goldberg in April. Badly wounded in the Oct. 7 attack, his left hand was amputated. But the video marked the first sign he was alive.
Another hostage believed to be alive is 26-year-old Noa Argamani, whose mother Liora Argamani has stage 4 breast cancer and hopes to see her daughter alive once more.
DEAD HOSTAGES BROUGHT BACK TO ISRAEL
Israeli troops have recovered from Gaza the bodies of at least 16 hostages, according to Israeli government figures.
The bodies of two hostages, including female soldier Noa Marciano, were brought back from Gaza in November. So were the bodies of three hostages killed by friendly fire in December.
The bodies of seven hostages, two women and five men, were recovered in Gaza last month.
HOSTAGES FREED THROUGH MILITARY RESCUES
The Israeli military says it has rescued three hostages in Gaza.
It brought 1 home in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack.
Two men were rescued in February when troops stormed a heavily guarded apartment in a densely packed town in the Gaza Strip. Airstrikes carried out to provide cover during the raid killed more than 60 Palestinians, including women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
