RAMALLAH: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has named Mohammad Mustafa as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the state-run Palestinian news agency WAFA said on Thursday.
Mustafa’s appointment comes after mounting pressure to reform the governing body of the occupied Palestinian territories and improve its governance in the occupied West Bank where they are based.
The new prime minister was assigned to lead the relief and rebuilding of the Gaza Strip, and reform the institutions of the Palestinian Authority, WAFA added.
Mustafa replaces former Prime Minister Mohammed Shttayah who, along with his government, resigned in February.
The PA, which is dominated by the Fatah political party, held administrative control over Gaza until 2007 after Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections in the occupied territories and expelled it from the strip. Since then, Hamas has ruled Gaza and the PA governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Palestinian President Abbas appoints new prime minister of Palestinian Authority
https://arab.news/46nhw
Palestinian President Abbas appoints new prime minister of Palestinian Authority
- Mustafa’s appointment comes after mounting pressure to reform the governing body of the occupied Palestinian territories
Five Israeli soldiers injured in intense clashes along Lebanese border
- Drones used in attack were made in Lebanon, Hezbollah says
- Southern front ‘no less important than what is happening in the Gaza Strip,’ lawmaker says
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Monday claimed responsibility for a strike that Israel said wounded five soldiers in the country’s north, the latest casualties in more than seven months of cross-border clashes.
The group said it carried out “an aerial attack with a swarm of suicide drones targeting Israeli soldiers’ sleeping quarters in Beit Hillel.”
The attack succeeded in “killing and injuring Israeli commanders and soldiers … (at a) newly established site for the 403rd Reserve Artillery Battalion of the 91st Division south of Beit Hillel,” it said.
The Israeli Ziv Medical Center reported “the arrival of four injured soldiers due to a fusillade near the Yiftah settlement in northern Israel on the Lebanese border.”
The Israeli army later said that five soldiers had been injured.
Meanwhile, Israel conducted a drone strike on the Lebanese town of Chihine, with no casualties reported.
At the time of the raid, residents were fleeing the area after coordinating with UNIFIL forces operating in the region and the Lebanese Army.
The Israeli army also fired artillery and machine guns at targets on the outskirts of Mays Al-Jabal.
The resumption in hostilities came after a relatively calm Sunday and ahead of a speech by Hezbollah’s secretary-general on Monday evening.
The group also said it “targeted a group of Israeli soldiers in the Israeli site of Birkat Risha.”
Israeli media reported that missiles were launched at Pranit Barracks in Western Galilee in Lebanon.
Hezbollah said it destroyed a Merkava tank with a guided missile and caused casualties “after closely observing the movements of the enemy at the Yiftah barracks.”
It also targeted Israeli soldiers near the Al-Jardah site.
The Israeli army said a drone fired from Lebanon fell in the Zarit area but no one was hurt.
Lebanese security reports said: “Hezbollah introduced new weapons into its military operations. These included heavy missiles and a new drone with optical or thermal guidance to target the Israeli Iron Dome.”
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Ezz El-Din said that the support front that Hezbollah had opened in southern Lebanon to help the Gazans was “no less important than what is happening in the Gaza Strip.”
The group “has so far only used traditional weapons developed by brothers working in the national industry. So, these drones are a Lebanese national industry,” he said.
After discussions on a ceasefire settlement on the southern front ended, Lebanese Army Commander Gen. Joseph Aoun met Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani in Qatar.
The Foreign Ministry quoted the prime minister as saying that Qatar would “continue to provide support to the military institution so that it can continue its essential role in preserving Lebanon’s security and stability.”
The ceasefire efforts focus on the implementation of UN Resolution 1701 through the reinforcement of the Lebanese army in the border region and the withdrawal of Hezbollah from it.
Villages and towns in southern Lebanon have been deserted for more than seven months after residents fled the Israeli shelling of their homes. Those that remain have to race to bury their lost loved ones between attacks.
Fadi Hounaikah and his family were killed in an Israeli raid as they examined the remains of the supermarket they once ran and which had been damaged in a previous strike.
A local security source said Hezbollah had advised local people attending funerals not to check on their damaged properties during processions because of the dangers involved.
Residents should instead “accompany the funeral procession and take maximum precautions to ensure their safety,” the group said.
Also, after infrastructure maintenance teams were targeted by attacks, UNIFIL mediated with the Israeli side to allow them set times to carry out essential repairs to water, electricity and telecommunications systems.
However, a technician and a paramedic were killed last week when a maintenance team for a mobile service provider was targeted by an Israeli raid, despite being accompanied by the Lebanese Army.
Can Israeli PM Netanyahu achieve his stated war objectives with Rafah assault?
- Despite claim there are four brigades in Rafah, it is unclear how many operational fighters Hamas still has
- Some Israeli analysts say Israel needs to make Hamas ideologically and politically irrelevant, not do the opposite
LONDON: This week, before-and-after imagery released by US commercial satellite company Planet Labs showed the extent of the damage inflicted in just one day by Israeli forces on the outskirts of Rafah, close to the Egyptian border.
This is not the city of Rafah itself — yet. Awaiting a resolution of the political standoff between their government and the US, which has threatened to stop supplying ammunition if Israel invades Rafah, the 98th Airborne and the 162nd Armored divisions are massing to the south of the city.
In the satellite imagery captured on Tuesday, groups of tanks can be seen in the vicinity of the Rafah crossing, which Israeli troops occupied and closed on Monday, and grouped in several other strategic locations.
While they are waiting, however, they have been laying waste to much of the surrounding infrastructure and indulging in some symbolic wanton vandalism: in a video released on Tuesday a tank rolls over a “I love Gaza” sign near the crossing.
The contrast between the satellite images taken on Monday and Tuesday is striking. In the course of one day, hundreds of homes, commercial buildings, agricultural plots and other structures on dozens of sites either side of the Salah Al-Din highway were destroyed.
“This,” said a spokesman for the Israeli government on Tuesday, “is the beginning of our mission to take out the last four Hamas brigades in Rafah.”
But although Netanyahu has gambled his political future on two objectives tied to a continuation of the devastating and murderous assault on Gaza — the destruction of Hamas and the killing of its top commanders — after seven months of all-out warfare those objectives seem increasingly unattainable.
Despite the Israeli claim that there are four brigades in Rafah, it is unclear exactly how many operational fighters Hamas still has, or exactly where they are. It is also not clear if they have chosen, as some commentators have suggested, to make a “last stand” in Rafah, or even, after seven months of war, if they have the weapons and ammunition necessary to do so.
Even less certain is the location of Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar, from whom nothing has been heard since the invasion of Gaza began.
Sinwar, Israel’s public enemy number one, has become a ghost, so much so that on Thursday US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby made a public plea for him to “come clean about what his intentions are.”
Writing in The Spectator this week, Middle East analyst Jonathan Spyer suggested that, “contrary to what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might wish, Sinwar, his brother Mohammed, and the Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif are almost certainly not currently besieged in a bunker in Rafah, surrounded and obliged to either agree to the Egyptian (ceasefire) proposal or be crushed beneath the treads of the 98th and the 162nd.”
In fact, added Spyer, director of research at the Middle East Forum, “it is not even certain if the Hamas leaders and their hostages are even still in the Rafah area, or ... in some other part of the strip.”
Gaza, although barely larger than the small Mediterranean island of Malta, has nevertheless proved to be a frustrating landscape for Israeli operations.
On Thursday it emerged that even before the Oct. 7 attack, Israel had tried, and failed, to assassinate both Sinwar and Al-Deif, the commander-in-chief of Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades.
In remarks made to a Jewish organization in the US and broadcast on Israeli television’s Channel 12, Israel’s former military chief of staff Aviv Kochavi said a perceived “change with Hamas” in 2021 had led to the decision to try to kill the two men.
“We tried, and it’s hard,” he was reported as having said.
“In a densely populated, heavily built-up area it is very hard. So, we had been working for months in order to procure the operation but we couldn’t.”
Kochavi also added his voice to the growing chorus in Israel critical of Netanyahu’s increasingly unpopular determination to continue military operations in Gaza.
“I don’t think there is a way to bring back the hostages without halting for the time being the war,” he said. Furthermore, he added, “I don’t think we can achieve complete victory in months — forget it, it will take years.”
For the Netanyahu government, however, Rafah represents a stage for political theatre — a last opportunity to declare the war won and, in the process, to ensure Netanyahu has a political future.
INNUMBERS
• 120 People taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7 still unaccounted for.
• 252 Israelis and foreigners taken hostage in the attack, according to Israel.
• 80,000 People known to have fled Rafah since last Monday after Israeli warning.
“They're looking for a victory,” said Yossi Mekelberg, a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Program at London-based policy institute Chatham House.
“They are looking for a photo op: ‘Here is his head, we’ve cut off the head of Hamas, now it’s all over’.”
Although the message from Biden “is very clear — for the United States to even suggest imposing an arms ban on Israel is a huge thing,” Netanyahu is also facing a potential internal revolt by his right-wing cabinet members, such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Givr and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who oppose any ceasefire with Hamas.
Ultra-religious, “they are on a different planet,” said Mekelberg. “It’s not between them and other human beings, it's between them and God. And they are telling Netanyahu if he compromises too much with Hamas they will leave the government, and that there is no point in them staying in government if we don't enter Rafah.”
Whether they would find Sinwar there is anybody’s guess, says Gershon Baskin, a former adviser to Israeli, Palestinian and international prime ministers on the Middle East peace process.
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“I'm sure that he's not just sitting and waiting,” he said. “He has certainly booby-trapped tunnels and bunkers in the whole area between Rafah and Khan Younis, and maybe they also have access to places north of there. We don’t know.”
But if Sinwar is in Rafah, “from my experience with the man there is no way he is going to surrender. He will fight to the death. I think that he believes that he will never survive this war. He’s not afraid of death. In fact, he believes that it’s his duty to become a martyr and he will try to kill as many Israelis along the way as possible.”
According to Baskin, an all-out ground attack on Rafah would be “catastrophic, for any hostages and the civilian population. There’s no doubt about it. I have heard there are about 40,000 people left in the quadrant that Israel said they wanted people to move out of, and you have another 1.2 million at least in the city of Rafah and its surroundings.”
Humanitarian considerations aside, Mekelberg believes that, even if Rafah is attacked and razed to the ground, Sinwar is killed and victory declared, assaulting the city would be a strategic mistake — and would not deliver the hoped-for existential blow to Hamas.
“The main threat to Israel from Hamas comes from its ideology and politics, not from its military,” he told Arab News.
“The military you can deal with. But the Israelis need to convince people that this ideology doesn’t serve the Gazan people or Palestinian people generally, and that there is an alternative that offers hope, and it is doing very badly at that right now.
“Israel needs to make Hamas ideologically and politically irrelevant and it is doing exactly the opposite, making them more and more relevant.”
Baskin agrees.
“The only way to defeat the Hamas ideology is with a better ideology, and that is to make the two-state solution real to Palestinians, to show them that their fight, their struggle for independence and dignity, is on the road to victory,” he told Arab News.
That, he added, “is the only way to defeat Hamas” and, with the right leadership in Israel, and an alternative to Mahmoud Abbas for the Palestinians, doing so would be “easy.”
“All Israel has to do is declare that it recognizes the state of Palestine, and then every other country in the world would do that as well,” he said.
“Then what I would do is organize a regional conference, including all of our neighbors, hoping that the Saudis would participate, and asking the Americans and Europeans to join in but not to run the show, and negotiate borders and Jerusalem and refugees and economic relations.”
The stumbling block to all this, he says, is Netanyahu, “who since 2009 has done everything he can to avoid the possibility of a two-state solution and for whom this war is definitely about his own personal political interest.”
Turkiye’s new austerity measures: The ‘bitter medicine is not just for ordinary citizens’
- Measures to reduce luxury spending in public sector under a savings plan unveiled on Monday have symbolic value, analyst tells Arab News
ANKARA: With local elections over, Turkiye’s Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz and Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek on Monday unveiled the much-awaited austerity plan as the country trends toward orthodox policies to ensure its fiscal discipline and a lasting price stability amid rocketing inflation rates.
One thing is clear: To attract investors and curb inflation, Turkiye needs to continue with tax reform and austerity measures in the public sector. So, the bitter medicine is not just for ordinary citizens.
According to the austerity plan, Turkiye is taking strict measures to curb public spending, with only essential state investment projects to be launched in the coming period.
Priority will be given to investment projects with physical progress of more than 75 per cent, projects planned in earthquake zones, green and digital transformation projects, and port-railway projects near industrial zones.
However, experts are skeptical about the implementation of the measures and see them merely as gesture of goodwill that falls short of expectations.
Beyond symbolic measures such as reducing the number of luxury and unnecessary public vehicles or limiting the number of public sector employees, the focus is now on the direction and scope of a meaningful fiscal policy to curb inflationary pressures.
Wolfango Piccoli, co-president of Teneo Intelligence in London, says the new measures do not resemble a coherent package to strengthen fiscal discipline, but are instead a move to appease Turkish voters who are increasingly worried about the rising cost of living.
“Moreover, past similar initiatives have shown that implementing (and monitoring) austerity measures applied to Turkiye’s bloated state apparatus will be challenging,” he said.
“Some of the more eye-catching measures, such as a freeze on the purchase and rental of new vehicles and a limit on hiring new staff, will have a limited impact on 2024 budget spending,” he said.
Piccoli believes that the package aims primarily to bring some control over the public administration but will not repair the deep economic damage caused by the economic policies of recent years.
Turkiye’s annual inflation rate climbed to almost 70 percent in April, and the central bank’s latest quarterly inflation report expects it to peak at 75 percent to 76 percent next month.
By the end of the year, the central bank anticipates that inflation will be brought down to 38 percent.
However, a recent joint study by Koc University and KONDA Research has revealed that households’ year-end inflation expectations rose to 96 percent, up from 72 percent recorded last January.
Departing from its traditional policy, the Turkish Central Bank has already raised its key interest rate by 4,150 basis points since last year.
Under the austerity package, public institutions will be prohibited from purchasing and renting new vehicles and from buying or constructing new buildings for three years.
The salaries of civil servants serving on boards of directors will be restricted. Activities such as trips, cocktails, and dinners will not be organized except for international meetings and national holidays.
At the launch of the package, Simsek said the government would make additional reforms to public finances and accelerate structural reforms.
The number of new public sector employees will for three years be limited to those needed to replace retiring workers, while the funds allocated for purchasing goods and services by state institutions will be reduced by 10 percent and those for investments by 15 percent.
Economy czar Simsek, who was in the US in April for meetings with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, G20 and many fund managers, expressed confidence in Turkiye’s improving credit rating after S&P’s recent upgrade from B to B+. He attributed this to improved policy coordination and external rebalancing.
“The continuous decline in the annual current account deficit over the last eight months is a success of our program,” he said.
“With the decline in the current account deficit and the positive outlook for external financial inflows, the improvement in our foreign exchange reserves will continue,” he added.
The leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, Ozgur Ozel, likened the new plan to a “disguised IMF program.”
Turkiye posted a current account deficit of $4.5 billion in March. Because Simsek did not say how much the austerity package would reduce the deficit in the 2024 budget, experts point out the impossibility of assessing performance.
Piccoli said: “It is expected that in the best-case scenario, the measures will lead to savings of around TL100 billion to TL150 billion ($3.1 billion to $4.65 billion).
“The government's 2024 budget deficit is about TL2.4 trillion, so Simsek’s austerity package amounts to a rounding error,” Piccoli said.
“It is not a coherent, credible austerity plan supporting the disinflation process. At best, it is a show of goodwill. Even if 150 billion liras of savings are realized, the budget deficit will be above 6 percent of GDP in 2024,” he added.
Experts stress the need for a comprehensive and focused reform program with a clear timetable to build confidence in the newly announced measures.
Selva Demiralp, a professor of economics at Koc University in Istanbul, reflects on the early 2000s when Turkey faced a previous major economic crisis. At that time, Kemal Dervis, brought in from the United States, was appointed as the state minister in charge of the economy. He was sworn in on March 13, 2001 and subsequently announced the “Transition to a Strong Economy” program on April 14.
“In that program, steps were taken to increase transparency in public procurement, abolish incentives for low-productivity areas, expand the tax base through the use of tax identification numbers, and increase tax penalties. With the new measures announced today, we see steps towards increasing tax penalties, which is a positive move. Similarly, measures to reduce luxury expenditures in the public sector carry symbolic value,” Demiralp told Arab News.
“If we are entering a period of ‘bitter medicine’ for the economy, it is crucial to signal that the burden is shared not only by fixed-income earners but also by the highest-ranking public sector bureaucrats,” Demiralp added.
However, Demiralp pointed out that luxury expenditures constitute a small proportion of the state budget.
“The main waste stems from non-transparent expenditures such as tenders and incentives in inefficient sectors. We do not see any steps towards transparency in this regard. Academic studies by Turkish professor Ufuk Akcigit show that Turkey is one of the countries providing the most incentives, but these incentives are neither controlled nor monitored,” she said.
Demiralp believes that reducing civil servants’ wages in real terms should not be part of austerity measures. “It is important to anchor inflation expectations and align salary increases with these expectations. However, if we are to achieve this, the central bank must ‘do whatever it takes’ to meet the inflation targets, ensuring that salaried employees are not adversely affected,” she emphasized.
“Foreign investors will value the signaling aspect of the package. Contractionary fiscal policy, in conjunction with tight monetary policy, will undoubtedly assist the central bank,” she said.
“From a foreign investor’s perspective, the primary concern is whether aggregate demand is being restrained, rather than the societal distribution of the austerity program’s costs. Therefore, they will likely be less concerned about the burden placed on fixed-income groups, which I previously highlighted.”
Bahraini investments in Jordan reach more than $1bn
- Jordanian exports to Bahrain increased to JD47.9 million in 2023
AMMAN: Bahraini investments in Jordan now total about $1.2 billion, according to a recent report by the Amman Chamber of Commerce.
As of the end of April, Bahrain was ranked fourth among foreign investors on the Amman Stock Exchange, Jordan News Agency reported.
While trade between Jordan and Bahrain experienced a slight downturn in 2023, totaling JD92 million ($129 million) compared with JD136 million in 2022, Jordanian exports to Bahrain increased modestly from JD45.9 million to JD47.9 million.
However, Bahraini exports to Jordan dropped significantly from JD90.1 million to JD44.3 million during the same period.
In the first two months of 2024, bilateral trade amounted to JD10.6 million, comprising JD5.8 million in exports and JD4.8 million in imports.
Bahrain and Jordan have signed several cooperation agreements in various sectors to bolster trade exchange, establish free trade zones, form joint business councils, and facilitate collaboration between entities such as the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Federation of Jordanian Chambers of Commerce, and the Amman Chamber of Industry.
In addition, measures have been implemented to combat tax evasion through agreements on double taxation avoidance concerning capital taxes.
As of May 4, the ACC has registered 24 Bahraini partners with a collective stake of approximately JD553 million.
Among these, 12 partners operate in the services and consulting sector, holding a stake of JD392 million, while five are involved in the communications and information technology sector, with a total stake of JD54 million.
Three partners are engaged in the financial and banking sector (JD18 million), one in construction and building materials (JD79 million), one in the food sector (JD5 million), one in furniture (JD6 million), and one in health and pharmaceuticals (JD50,000).
In February 2023, Jordan, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain signed 12 agreements during the third meeting of the Higher Committee for the Integrated Industrial Partnership for Sustainable Economic Development.
These agreements, collectively valued at approximately $2 billion, encompass sectors including agriculture, medicine, metals, chemicals, electric vehicles and waste management.
The committee unveiled nine comprehensive industrial projects, with investment exceeding $2 billion, with the objective of enhancing domestic production in partner countries by more than $1.6 billion.
These projects are expected to generate approximately 13,000 direct and indirect employment opportunities in the four countries.
Future of relations between Japan and Middle East in the spotlight at event in Amman
- Topics at conference include economic and regional integration, formulation of security policies
- Experts, decision-makers discuss the challenges extremism pose to Japanese interests in the region
AMMAN: Delegates at the inaugural Japan-Middle East Strategic Dialogue Conference, which concluded on Monday in Amman, discussed the future of Japan’s relations with countries in the region.
Specific topics covered during the two-day event, which was organized by the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan and the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo, included economic and regional integration, the development and transfer of technology, and the formulation of security policies, the Jordan Times reported.
The participants included experts and decision-makers from across the Middle East and Japan, who discussed the challenges extremism and terrorism pose to Japanese interests in the Middle East, and the significant effects they have on the behavior of non-state actors and regional stability.
They also highlighted notable investments by Japan in the burgeoning entrepreneurship sector in the Middle East, particularly in small and medium enterprises, and the nation’s promising ventures in the development of energy infrastructure in the region.
During the opening ceremony on Sunday, Nazir Obeidat, president of the University of Jordan, said the conference can play a significant role as a cornerstone of Jordanian-Japanese relations, which have been characterized over the years by mutual respect and stability.
He highlighted the exceptional nature of a bilateral relationship he said is underpinned by a shared philosophy, its diverse components, and effective mechanisms for the implementation of agreements. He also underscored Jordan’s growing belief in the pivotal role that education, research, innovation and creativity can play in fostering genuine development, economic prosperity and sustainability.
Obeidat expressed his hope that Japan can help Jordan foster an environment conducive to scientific advancement and the building of partnerships between academia and industry, and affirmed his university’s commitment to this.
The Japanese ambassador to Jordan, Okuyama Jiro, noted that this year marks the 70th anniversary of Jordanian-Japanese diplomatic relations, and the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Japan International Cooperation Agency office in Jordan.
He reiterated that Japan views Jordan as a strategic ally, in recognition of the nation’s pivotal role as a regional hub and gateway to the Middle East, with significant ties to Africa.
The envoy also acknowledged Jordan’s resilience in its efforts to confront economic challenges and refugee crises while maintaining security and stability, and praised authorities in the country for their exemplary approach to addressing multifaceted issues.
