PARIS: An exiled Iranian opposition group that was the target of a failed bomb plot in France two years ago took its annual rally to the Internet on Friday as it sought to pressure the Tehran government despite the coronavirus outbreak.
The Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an umbrella bloc of opposition groups in exile that seek an end to Shiite Muslim clerical rule in Iran, traditionally holds a mass gathering each year on the outskirts of the French capital.
The NCRI was responsible for arguably the most influential opposition move in years when it became the first group to expose Iran’s covert nuclear program in 2002, although it has since had a chequered record.
It says it has huge backing within Iran although analysts say its support is very hard to gauge. Its detractors have questioned the nature of the support that attends its gatherings, which usually draws thousands of people, and the motivations of its speaker list that includes a raft of former politicians and lawmakers.
Eighteen sitting US senators were among those who spoke on Friday as did US President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who has repeatedly backed the group.
The COVID-19 outbreak forced the NCRI to make the rally virtual. It said the event was connected to 30,000 locations within Iran and 100 countries across the world.
“The mission of our generation is to overthrow the mullahs’ criminal regime and to restore the trampled rights of all the people of Iran,” the group’s leader Maryam Rajavi said during the six-hour event.
The online rally comes just two days after an Iranian diplomat and three others were ordered to stand trial in Belgium over their role in a failed plot to carry out a bomb attack at the NCRI gathering near Paris in 2018.
The NCRI members joined the 1979 Islamic revolution but later broke from the ruling clerics. Based in Iraq in the early 1980s, their fighters clashed with US forces during the 2003 Iraq war, but have since renounced violence.
The group was once listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union but is no longer.
Tehran has long called for a crackdown on the NCRI in Paris, Riyadh, and Washington. The group is regularly criticized in state media.
Two years after failed bomb plot, Iranian opposition rallies backers online
https://arab.news/24m4v
Two years after failed bomb plot, Iranian opposition rallies backers online
- The Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) traditionally holds a mass gathering
- It says it has huge backing within Iran although analysts say its support is very hard to gauge
West Bank villagers vigilant but vulnerable after settler attacks
- “Hundreds of settlers entered the village, followed by more than 300 Israeli soldiers who stormed the village and declared it a closed military zone,” said Suleiman Dawabsha, head of Duma’s village council
RAMALLAH: Sitting around a fire in the hills of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Ibrahim Abu Alyah and some friends stood watch over his herd in the aftermath of a settler attack on their village.
“We are here so that we can put away the sheep and tell people to protect their homes in case settlers come,” said Abu Alyah.
After 14-year-old Israeli herder Benjamin Achimeir went missing on April 12 in the nearby illegal settler outpost of Malachi Hashalom, dozens of Jewish settlers raided his village of Al-Mughayyir, north of Ramallah.
Armed with rifles and Molotov cocktails, they set houses ablaze, killed sheep, wounded 23 people, and displaced 86, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA.
One Palestinian was also killed in the violence.
Abu Alyah, a shepherd, lost “20 or 30 sheep” and the cash he made from selling milk products when his house was set alight.
We currently have more than 70 prisoners inside Israeli prisons on charges of joining protection committees or trying to form an organized body.
Amin Abu Alyah, Al-Mughayyir’s mayor
Al-Mughayyir’s mayor, Amin Abu Alyah, said the settlers, who were part of the search party for Achimeir, burnt “everything they found in front of them,” including houses, a bulldozer, and vehicles.
He said several citizens tried to organize protection committees to defend themselves from raids but were prevented.
“We currently have more than 70 prisoners inside Israeli prisons on charges of joining protection committees or trying to form an organized body,” he said.
In the nearby village of Duma, 5 km north of Al-Mughayyir, old fears came true on Saturday when hundreds of settlers entered the surrounding fields.
That day, Achimeir’s body was found bearing marks of a stabbing attack.
People watched powerless as settlers rampaged through the village.
“Hundreds of settlers entered the village, followed by more than 300 Israeli soldiers who stormed the village and declared it a
closed military zone,” said Suleiman Dawabsha, head of Duma’s village council.
Mahmud Salawdeh, a 30-year-old iron worker whose house was torched in the attack, felt vulnerable when he realized the soldiers were not stopping the attack.
“We feel helpless because we are unable to protect ourselves, and the army protects the settlers,” he said.
“I lost all my money and my future,” he added from the ground floor of his charred house on the outskirts of Duma, near the fields the attackers came through.
At his feet, burnt furniture and shattered glass covered the floor, while walls black with soot served as a reminder of the firebombs thrown at the building.
His workshop in the adjacent room was torched, charred remnants of old tools lay around, and a large wooden box where he had been raising 70 chicks was now empty.
The incident opened old wounds for Duma residents, who remember the tragedy that struck the Dawabsha family.
In 2015, the family’s home was set ablaze by a settler extremist, killing the couple and their toddler and leaving only one surviving member, four-year-old Ahmed Dawabsha.
Duma residents, like many West Bank villagers, say they are protected neither by Palestinian security, which is only allowed to operate in 40 percent of the territory, nor by Israel, which controls the rest.
Israeli soldiers do not always restrain settlers from attacking Palestinians, OCHA said.
In January, “in nearly half of all recorded incidents (of settler violence) after 7 October, Israeli forces were either accompanying or reported to be supporting the attackers,” it said.
OCHA recorded 774 instances of Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians since war broke in Gaza on Oct. 7, and said 37 communities had been affected by violence between April 9 and 15, “triple the number” of the preceding week.
At least 462 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank during that period, according to Palestinian official figures.
Meanwhile, the administration of US President Joe Biden imposed sanctions on two entities accused of fundraising for extremist Israel settlers already sanctioned, as well as the founder of an organization whose members regularly assault Palestinians.
Included in the Friday sanctions are two entities — Mount Hebron Fund and Shlom Asiraich — accused of raising funds for sanctioned settlers Yinon Levi and David Chai Chasdai. Both men were previously sanctioned by the Biden administration for violently attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.
The penalties aim to block them from using the US financial system and bar American citizens from dealing with them.
The fundraising campaigns established by Mount Hebron Fund for Levi and by Shlom Asiraich for Chasdai generated the equivalent of $140,000 and $31,000, respectively, according to US Treasury.
In Levi’s case, the fund now sanctioned by the Biden administration is linked to the settler council in the area, a body that receives state money.
The Biden order on Friday stopped short of sanctioning the settler council itself.
The West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, has seen a surge in violence since early last year, which has intensified since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza erupted.
Despite the hardships, “we will never leave,” said the herder Abu Alyah.
But the 29-year-old already had to move in September from his former herding grounds on the other side of Al-Mughayyir, closer to the settlement outpost.
The weekend’s attacks marked a peak in violence due to the sheer number of people who took part in them, but also reflects a wider trend in the West Bank, NGOs said.
“It is clear that the escalation of violence in the West Bank has occurred in tandem with the crisis in Gaza,” charity ActionAid said in a statement.
On Wednesday evening, settlers were planting Israeli flags along the road that runs between Al-Mughayyir and Malachi Hashalom.
Mikati, Macron discuss Lebanon crisis as Army chief presents military needs in Paris talks
- Israeli raid kills official working for educational body affiliated with Hezbollah
BEIRUT: Israel continued its raids on Hezbollah positions on Friday amid reports of dawn explosions in Iran, as Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace.
Lebanese Army Commander Gen. Joseph Aoun and the Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces Gen. Thierry Burkhard also attended the extended meeting.
According to reports, Aoun presented a study to the French military commander, as well as the head of the Italian armed forces, about the needs of the Lebanese Army, its current situation, challenges, and logistical and material requirements.
FASTFACT
Hezbollah forces based in Lebanon have clashed with the Israeli army in recent weeks, marking their most serious hostilities since a war between them in 2006.
The discussion focused on “how to assist in enhancing the situation of the Lebanese army in the south, provided that a committee is formed to study these needs and how to secure the necessary support and funding.”
The international community insists on Lebanon’s compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701, while Lebanon, in return, demands assistance for its military to enable it to deploy more of its forces in the south to implement the resolution.
Aoun described his separate meetings with his French and Italian counterparts as “positive.”
Israeli warplanes carried out an attack on a house in the town of Aita Al-Shaab with two air-to-ground missiles.
The raid resulted in the killing of Mohammed Hassan Abdel Mohsen Fadlallah, 54, who worked at the Islamic Education Foundation (Al-Mahdi Schools), an educational institution affiliated with Hezbollah.
Israeli Army spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X that “reconnaissance soldiers from Battalion 869 spotted saboteurs inside a military building belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the Aita Al-Shaab area. An airstrike targeted the building and the saboteurs who were stationed there.”
Hezbollah announced a few hours later the targeting of a gathering of Israeli soldiers in the vicinity of the Al-Raheb site with artillery shells.
Israeli forces fired machine guns at one of the Wazzani areas while Israeli artillery shelled the outskirts of the town of Rmeish.
The total number of Hezbollah deaths has now reached 280 since the beginning of the war.
Russia Today news agency — citing Israel’s Yneti website — claimed it had the names of a number of high-ranking Hezbollah members who were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon since the start of the clashes on the southern front on Oct. 8.
The report stated that the Israeli Army often carries out attacks against vehicles, “demonstrating its deep knowledge of Hezbollah's organizational structure and role distribution in the field.”
According to the report, 14 senior Hezbollah figures have been killed in the attacks.
They include Ismail Youssef Baz, the commander of the coastal sector of Hezbollah; Mohammed Hussein Mustafa Shahhouri, the commander of the rocket and missile unit in the western sector of the Radwan Force; Ali Ahmed Hussein, the commander of the Hajir region of the Radwan Force; Ali Abdul Hassan Naeem, deputy commander of the rocket and missile unit in Hezbollah; and Ali Mohammed Al-Debs, a central commander in the Radwan Force.
The report also published the following names: Hassan Mahmoud Saleh, commander of the attack in the Jabal Douf area; Mohammed Alawiyah, commander of Hezbollah’s Maroun Al-Ras area; Hassan Hussein Salama, a commander in Hezbollah’s Nasser unit; Wissam Al-Taweel, a commander in the Radwan Force; Ali Hussein Burji, commander of the southern Lebanon region of Hezbollah’s air unit; Hussein Yazbek, local commander of Hezbollah in Naqoura; Abbas Mohammed Raad, a leader in the Radwan Force and son of the head of the Hezbollah parliamentary bloc; Khalil Jawad Shehimi, a leader in the Radwan Force; and Ali Mohammed Hadraj, commander the Palestine branch of the Quds Force in the Tyre area.
Hezbollah usually mourns its dead without acknowledging their political or military roles within the organization.
Kuwait economic fund signs coordination MoU with ILO
- MoU aims to coordinate joint actions in economic and social development in developing countries
WASHINGTON: The Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development has agreed a memorandum of understanding with the International Labor Organization to enhance development cooperation, Kuwait News Agency reported.
The MoU was signed by KFAED Acting Director General Waleed AI-Bahar and ILO Assistant Director General for External and Corporate Relations Laura Thompson on the sidelines of the 2024 spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington DC.
The MoU establishes a framework for technical cooperation and aims to coordinate joint actions in economic and social development in developing countries. This includes exchanging expertise and information in economic, financial and commercial sectors.
The five-year renewable agreement focuses on collaborative activities aligned with the goals of both organizations in the countries in which they operate. The partnership will also involve sharing resources in areas of mutual interest such as statistics, policy enhancement, youth economic empowerment, gender equality at work, crisis response and South-South cooperation.
Regular consultations are planned to ensure effective coordination of operations in the targeted nations.
International reactions after Israel’s reported attack on Iran
- Widespread calls for utmost restraint between Iran and Israel to avoid serious repercussions
PARIS: Here are some international reactions Friday after Israel’s reported attack on the Iranian province of Isfahan, where it has military bases and nuclear facilities:
UN SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTONIO GUTERRES
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated that it was “high time to stop the dangerous cycle of retaliation in the Middle East,” his spokesperson said in a statement.
“The Secretary-General condemns any act of retaliation and appeals to the international community to work together to prevent any further development that could lead to devastating consequences for the entire region and beyond,” Stephane Dujarric said.
RUSSIA
Russia has made clear to Israel that Iran “does not want escalation,” Moscow’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday, after reports Israel had carried out retaliatory strikes against its arch-rival.
“There have been telephone contacts between the leadership of Russia and Iran, our representatives and the Israelis. We made it very clear in these conversations, we told the Israelis that Iran does not want escalation,” Lavrov said in an interview with Russian radio stations.
UAE
The United Arab Emirates’ foreign ministry on Friday expressed concern about regional tensions in a statement, calling for ‘utmost restraint’ to avoid serious repercussions.
JORDAN
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on Friday Israeli-Iranian retaliations must end, warning against danger of regional escalation.
GERMANY
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for de-escalation following a strike on the Iranian city of Isfahan and said Berlin would work with its partners in this direction.
“De-escalation remains the order of the day in the near future. And we will also talk about this with all our friends and allies, and work together with them in this direction,” Scholz told reporters on Friday.
G7
G7 foreign ministers Friday urged “all parties” to “work to prevent further escalation” in the Middle East, following reports that Israel had carried out revenge strikes on Iran.
“In light of reports of strikes on April 19th, we urge all parties to work to prevent further escalation. The G7 will continue to work to this end,” the Group of Seven industrialized nations said in a statement.
The ministers from Italy, the UK, US, France, Germany, Japan and Canada said they “demand that Iran and its affiliated groups cease their attacks”.
SPAIN
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called Friday for all sides to avoid “an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East” after reports that Israel carried out retaliatory strikes on Iran.
“We must avoid any action that would lead to an escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. The seriousness of the moment demands responsibility and restraint from all parties,” he wrote on X.
JAPAN’S CHIEF CABINET SECRETARY YOSHIMASA HAYASHI
“Japan is deeply concerned about the situation in the Middle East and strongly condemn any actions that lead to the escalation of the situation.
“Japan will continue to make all necessary diplomatic efforts to prevent the situation from worsening further.”
CHINA
“China opposes any actions that further escalate tensions and will continue to play a constructive role to de-escalate the situation,” said foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian.
IAEA
“IAEA can confirm that there is no damage to Iran’s nuclear sites. Director General Rafael Grossi continues to call for extreme restraint from everybody and reiterates that nuclear facilities should never be a target in military conflicts. IAEA is monitoring the situation very closely,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said on X.
OMAN
“The Sultanate of Oman is following the continuing tension in the region and condemns the Israeli attack this morning on Isfahan,” the foreign ministry said, adding that it also “condemns and denounces Israel’s repeated military attacks in the region.
“Oman once again appeals to the international community to address the causes and roots of tension and conflict through dialogue, diplomacy and political solutions, and to focus on ceasefire efforts in Gaza and resort to international law and United Nations resolutions to reach a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian issue.”
EC PRESIDENT URSULA VON DER LEYEN
“We have to do everything possible (so) that all sides restrain from the escalation in that region ... It is absolutely necessary that the region stays stable and that all sides refrain from further action,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
UK
“We have condemned Iran’s reckless and dangerous barrage of missiles against Israel on Saturday and Israel absolutely has a right to self-defense. But as I said to Prime Minister Netanyahu when I spoke to him (this week) and more generally, significant escalation is not in anyone’s interest, what we want to see is calm heads prevail across the region,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said.
ITALY
“We invite everyone to be cautious to avoid an escalation,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told RAI news on Capri where Italy is hosting a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of Seven nations.
“This is something we from the government’s side take very seriously and are following very closely,” Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said.
“There has to be an end to the exchange of blows and escalation.”
Gazans cool down in seawater despite nearby Israeli vessels
- Soaring temperatures in the embattled Palestinian enclave have prompted Gazan children to resort to the sea
RAFAH: Soaring temperatures in Gaza during the past week have driven thousands in the enclave’s southern city of Rafah to seek respite on beaches.
The proximity to Israeli military vessels did not stop hundreds of war-weary Gazans from bringing their children to enjoy a day of paddling and swimming, according to Arab News’ reporter in the embattled Palestinian enclave.
Many of the 1.4 million displaced Palestinians in Rafah live in makeshift shelters, including tents, on the beach, near the Egyptian border.
Since the Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip broke out on Oct. 7 last year, Gazans have been forced to resort to salty seawater for washing, bathing and even drinking due to the collapse of the water system.
