JERUSALEM: Israel’s UN envoy on Wednesday said his country does not always act in the interests of its ally the United States, after Israeli strikes targeting Hamas leaders in Qatar drew a rare rebuke from President Donald Trump.
The White House on Tuesday said Trump did not agree with Israel’s decision to take military action on the US ally’s soil and had warned Qatar in advance of the incoming strikes.
But Qatar, which hosts a large US military base and is the venue of repeated rounds of Gaza peace talks, said it had not received the warning from Washington until the deadly attack was already under way.
“We don’t always act in the interests of the United States. We are coordinated, they give us incredible support, we appreciate that, but sometimes we make decisions and inform the United States,” Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon told an Israeli radio station.
“It was not an attack on Qatar; it was an attack on Hamas. We are not against Qatar, nor against any Arab country, we are currently against a terrorist organization,” he said.
Palestinian militant group Hamas said six people were killed in the strikes, including a son of its top negotiator, but that its senior leaders had survived. Qatar said one of its security officers also died.
Danon said Israel was “still waiting for the results” of the operation.
“It is too early to comment on the outcome, but the decision is the right one,” he added.
Israel doesn’t ‘always act in interests of the US’, ambassador says after Qatar strikes
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Israel doesn’t ‘always act in interests of the US’, ambassador says after Qatar strikes
- Israel’s UN envoy on Wednesday said his country does not always act in the interests of its ally the United States, after Israeli strikes targeting Hamas leaders in Qatar
Trial opens in Tunisia of NGO workers accused of aiding migrants
- Aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia went on trial on Monday, as Amnesty International criticized what it called “the relentless criminalization of civil society”
TUNIS: Aid workers accused of assisting irregular migration to Tunisia went on trial on Monday, as Amnesty International criticized what it called “the relentless criminalization of civil society” in the country.
Six staff members of the Tunisian branch of the France Terre d’Asile aid group, along with 17 municipal workers from the eastern city of Sousse, face charges of sheltering migrants and facilitating their “illegal entry and residence.”
If convicted, they face up to 10 years in prison.
Migration is a sensitive issue in Tunisia, a key transit point for tens of thousands of people seeking to reach Europe each year.
A former head of Terre d’Asile Tunisie, Sherifa Riahi, is among the accused and has been detained for more than 19 months, according to her lawyer Abdellah Ben Meftah.
He told AFP that the accused had carried out their work as part of a project approved by the state and in “direct coordination” with the government.
Amnesty denounced what it described as a “bogus criminal trial” and called on Tunisian authorities to drop the charges.
“They are being prosecuted simply for their legitimate work providing vital assistance and protection to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in precarious situations,” Sara Hashash, Amnesty’s deputy MENA chief, said in the statement.
The defendants were arrested in May 2024 along with about a dozen humanitarian workers, including anti-racism pioneer Saadia Mosbah, whose trial is set to start later this month.
In February 2023, President Kais Saied said “hordes of illegal migrants,” many from sub-Saharan Africa, posed a demographic threat to the Arab-majority country.
His speech triggered a series of racially motivated attacks as thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia were pushed out of their homes and jobs.
Thousands were repatriated or attempted to cross the Mediterranean, while others were expelled to the desert borders with Algeria and Libya, where at least a hundred died that summer.
This came as the European Union boosted efforts to curb arrivals on its southern shores, including a 255-million-euro ($290-million) deal with Tunis.
