JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued an order Tuesday mandating that his office approve all secret diplomatic meetings in advance, his spokesperson said, as officials scrambled to contain the growing diplomatic firestorm over Israel’s disclosure that its top diplomat had met with his Libyan counterpart.
The exposure of the first-ever known encounter between Israeli and Libyan foreign ministers ignited angry street protests in several Libyan cities and sent Libyan Foreign Minister Najla Mangoush fleeing to Turkiye for fear of her safety.
Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, who heads one of the country’s rival governments, said he was temporarily suspending Mangoush from her position over the reported meeting. Libya has a history of unremitting hostility toward Israel.
Netanyahu sent the directive Tuesday to all government ministries, requesting they receive approval from his office before conducting any covert political talks. The order also asked that Netanyahu personally approve the publication of news concerning such sensitive meetings.
A Netanyahu aide, Topaz Luk, said Netanyahu issued the order in response to fallout from the Libya scandal. It was not known if Netanyahu knew about Foreign Minister Eli Cohen’s meeting with Mangoush ahead of time.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced Sunday that Cohen met Mangoush in Rome last week in what it hailed as a “historic” step toward the normalization of ties with Libya.
Having established diplomatic ties with the UAE and Bahrain, during the Trump administration, Netanyahu’s government anxiously wants to do so with other Arab states to change its status in its long-hostile neighborhood and end its regional isolation.
But the backlash served as a glaring reminder that despite the warming ties between Israel and the Arab world, challenges remain as ordinary citizens in the region still oppose closer relations with Israel.
Within hours of the revelation, Mangoush was on a plane to Turkiye, Dbeibah announced her suspension and Netanyahu’s political opponents were seizing on the crisis to criticize the foreign minister and his lack of discretion.
A ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes diplomacy, said the ministry was forced to go public after an Israeli news site learned about the meeting. Israeli media said the acting United States ambassador to Israel, Stephanie Hallett, had expressed American displeasure with the Israeli announcement in a meeting with Cohen on Monday. The US Embassy had no immediate comment.
In Libya, protests erupted for a second straight night Monday over the prospect of normalization with Israel. Demonstrators set tires ablaze, waved Palestinian national flags and chanted against Dbeibah, the prime minister.
The leader of Libya’s Tripoli-based administration in the country’s west, Dbeibah has defied calls for him to hand over power. The oil-rich nation has for years been split between two rival governments in its eastern and western halves. Each side has been backed by armed groups and foreign governments.
Libya was plunged into chaos after a NATO-backed uprising toppled longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. Qaddafi was hostile to Israel and a staunch supporter of the Palestinians, including radical militant groups.
Israeli PM orders ministries to get his OK before secret talks, as drama over Libya meeting persists
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Israeli PM orders ministries to get his OK before secret talks, as drama over Libya meeting persists
- Netanyahu sent the directive Tuesday to all government ministries, requesting they receive approval from his office before conducting any covert political talks
- Netanyahu sent the directive Tuesday to all government ministries, requesting they receive approval from his office before conducting any covert political talks
As Iran conflict spills over, Iraq’s Kurds say ‘this war is not mine’
- The Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language, are rooted in the mountainous region spread across Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran
- “This isn’t my war,” said 58-year-old Satar Barsirini
SORAN, Iraq: On a deserted road not too far from the border between Iran and Iraqi Kurdistan, Satar Barsirini looked up at the sky, now streaked with jets and drones.
Iraq’s Kurdish region has found itself caught in the crossfire of a regional war triggered by US and Israeli attacks on the Islamic republic.
Dressed like the Kurdish fighters he once served alongside, Barsirini still wears the khaki shalwar, fitted jacket and scarf wrapped around his waist.
Though recently retired, he refuses to give up his peshmerga uniform as he tills his small plot of land.
The rumble of jets and hum of drones “come from everywhere. Especially at night,” he told AFP in the hamlet of Barsirini, dozens of kilometers from the border.
He described the “shiver in our flesh” as the drones hit the ground outside.
“I feel bad for the people, because we have paid a lot in blood to liberate Kurdistan... We just want to live.”
Irbil, the autonomous region’s capital, and the valleys leading to the border have been targeted by Tehran and the Iraqi armed groups it supports.
American bases there have come under fire, as have positions held by Iranian Kurdish parties — the same ones US President Donald Trump said it would be “wonderful” to see storm Iran.
But Iran warned on Friday it would target facilities in Iraqi Kurdistan if fighters crossed into its territory.
“This isn’t my war,” said 58-year-old Barsirini.
He recalled the brutal repression and flight into the snowy mountains after the 1991 Kurdish uprising that followed the first Gulf War.
- ‘Dangerous people’ -
The uprising was repressed, leading to an exodus of two million Kurds to Iran and Turkiye.
“When we fled the cities for our lives, we went to Iran. They helped us, they gave us shelter and food,” he said.
The Kurds would not forget that, Barsirini stressed, adding that they could not just “turn against them” now to support the US and Israel.
“I don’t trust (Americans). They are dangerous people,” he said.
The Kurds, an ethnic minority with a distinct culture and language, are rooted in the mountainous region spread across Turkiye, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
They have long fought for their own homeland, but for decades suffered defeats on the battlefield and massacres in their hometowns.
They make up one of Iran’s most important non-Persian ethnic minority groups.
A week of war has gripped daily life in Iraqi Kurdistan, residents told AFP.
“People are afraid,” said Nasr Al-Din, a 42-year-old policeman who, as a child, lived through the 1991 exodus — “thrown on a donkey’s back with my sister.”
“This generation is different from the older ones” that have seen “seen fighting.”
Now, he said, you could be “sitting down in your home... and all of a sudden a drone hits your house.”
“We may have to go into town or somewhere safer,” said Issa Diayri, 31, a truck driver waiting in a roadside garage, his lorry idle for lack of deliveries from Iran.
- ‘Shouldn’t get involved’ -
Soran, a small town of 3,000 people about 65 kilometers (40 miles) from the border, was hit Thursday by a drone that fell in the middle of a street.
There, baker Yussef Ramazan, 42, and his three apprentices, hurriedly made bread before breaking their fast.
But, living so close to the Iranian border, he said “people are afraid to come and buy it.”
He told AFP he did not think it was a good idea “for the Kurdish region to get involved in this war.”
“We are not even an independent country yet. We would like to become one, but we are nothing for now, so we shouldn’t get involved in these situations.”
Across the street, Hajji watched from his empty dry cleaning shop as the road cleared.
Before the war, the town was crowded as evening fell, he said, declining to give his full name.
“But after the drone explosion, no one was here. In five minutes, everyone left the street and no one was out.”
