Day: 10 June 2023

Jordan and Egypt Saturday signed a cooperation agreement under which Egypt will use the Aqaba Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU) during the remaining period of the floating vessel’s charter contract. Director General of the National Electricity Company (NEPCO) Amjad Rawashdeh and Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company (EGAS) Chairmn Magdy Galal signed the agreement during a ceremony attended by Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Saleh Kharabsheh and Egyptian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Tarek El-Mulla. Kharabsheh said the main objective of the agreement is to benefit from the resources of the two countries with higher efficiency at a lower cost, stressing that the use of the floating vessel in Aqaba will run until the end of its charter contract in late 2025, after which the coastal gasification unit the ministry is currently implementing will be used. He said the energy ministry is in the process of issuing bids for the gasification unit and that a perspective on how far the designs meet the needs of the two countries will be in place in the next two months, adding that the Jordanian government will launch the national program to supply natural gas to factories as well as homes in Amman and Zarqa, urging Egyptian firms to invest in it. For his part, the Egyptian minister said his country has the expertise in domestic gas applications and will help to maximize Jordan’s benefit in this field, stressing the importance of Jordanian-Egyptian cooperation in implementing a number of energy projects. He noted that Egypt has multiple energy efficiency and carbon emissions and global warming reduction ventures, adding that natural gas is a top priority in industrial projects.

Source: Jordan News Agency

Jordan Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Khaled Touqan said Saturday the Kingdom is interested in expanding cooperation with Iraq and all Arab countries in the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and is willing to offer technical support and training and exchange expertise in this field. Touqan said during a recent meeting with an Iraqi delegation led by Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Head of the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission Naeem Al-Aboudi that Jordan is keen on cementing ties with Iraq, particularly in scientific and technological fields and the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The Jordanian nuclear reactor, he pointed out, is a landmark national scientific achievement, thanks to Jordanian expertise and competencies that endeavored to reach an advanced level in the national nuclear program for peaceful purposes and keep pace with global scientific developments in this domain. Toukan pointed to the various components of the Jordanian nuclear energy program, including the nuclear power plant, the nuclear reactor for research and training, the uranium exploration and mining project and the development of human resources, as well as the work of the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME). For his part, Al-Aboudi commended the model progress Jordan made in the nuclear field, adding that Iraq continued to enhance cooperation and share Jordan’s scientific expertise. Toukan accompanied the Iraqi minister and his delegation on a visit to the Jordan University of Science and Technology, where they were briefed on future projects and aspiration to make the university a scientific center at the Arab and international levels.

Source: Jordan News Agency

Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Makram Al-Qaisi and Yemeni Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism Muammar Al-Eryani Saturday discussed prospects of promoting tourism between Jordan and Yemen. Al-Qaisi told the Yemeni minister and an accompanying delegation that he will consider all matters related to the arrival of Yemeni tourists to Jordan with relevant entities, noting the Ministry’s efforts to facilitate entry procedures. He said the ministry would cooperate with the Yemeni side in training matters and developing human resources to promote tourism, and is continuing to restore archaeological sites through the Tourism Promotion Board and the Antiquities Department. Al-Qaisi pointed to medical tourism in Jordan, which has the capabilities, skilled cadres and medical experts. The Yemeni minister said his country is interested in forging closer cooperation in medical tourism due to Jordan’s reputation in this field, calling for facilitating the procedures for Yemeni patients seeking treatment in Jordan.

Source: Jordan News Agency

The Israeli army killing of a young Palestinian man near Ramallah was highlighted on the front page of the three Palestinian Arabic dailies published today. Al-Ayyam daily described the killing of Mahdi Samir Bayadseh, 29, from Ramallah near Rantis checkpoint west of Ramallah as ‘cold-blooded execution.’ It said the Israeli army claimed he attempted to attack soldiers. Al-Quds daily said that in addition to the killing of Bayadseh, an elderly Palestinian man injured in the latest Israeli aggression on Gaza has died of his wounds. It also said that a girl was detained in Huwara, south of Nablus in the West Bank, on an allegation she attempted to carry out an operation. The third daily, al-Hayat al-Jadida, said that while Bayadseh was killed near Rantis checkpoint, dozens of injuries were reported in confrontations with soldiers in the West Bank. It also quoted presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh responding to remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on settlements affirming that settlements are one of the major obstacles to peace. The paper quoted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging Netanyahu not to undermine prospects of a Palestinian state. Al-Ayyam said Netanyahu considered the occupied West Bank as part of the ‘land of Israel,’ describing not allowing Jewish settlement in it as ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Al-Quds said under pressure from US President Joe Biden and reprimand from Blinken, Netanyahu postpones a meeting on a settlement plan that would divide the West Bank. It said the Palestinians in Israel held protests in their towns against Israeli police apathy in dealing with a rise in crime in their communities. The paper also said President Mahmoud Abbas is going to visit China on Tuesday. Al-Ayyam and al-Hayat al-Jadida had a report on the situation of the Sub Laban family, which is about to lose its home in Jerusalem’s Old City to Jewish settlers.

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA

Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel published a new position paper in which Adalah analyzes a series of recent measures by the current Israeli government which constitute annexation of the West Bank and a clear policy to extend the regime of Jewish supremacy and deepen the apartheid in the West Bank that has been established for generations. The position paper, The Acceleration of the Annexation of the West Bank under the 37th Israeli Government led by Prime Minister Netanyahu, encompasses a legal analysis of measures taken to move towards annexation since the latest iteration of the Netanyahu government was seated in December 2022. In its December 2022 coalition agreements and guiding principles, the new government pledged to increase Jewish settlements and development across the West Bank and to ultimately implement Israeli sovereignty across all of the West Bank. This position paper analyzes several of the Israeli government’s grave actions to annex the West Bank. These include institutional changes and transfer of spheres of operation to government offices, legalization of outposts and expansion of settlements; and direct application of Israeli domestic law in the occupied West Bank. The position paper also includes Adalah’s legal appeals to the Israeli authorities in regard to these actions and responses it received from officials. These responses show the government’s explicit, open and official intention to continue to perpetuate Israel’s control of the West Bank and to apply Israeli law to it, contrary to the provisions of international law, while completely denying the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. These include a letter from the Government Secretary, stating that ‘Judea and Samaria are the cradle of the history for the Jewish people and were liberated in 1967 in a defensive war against the aggression of the Jordanian occupation, which illegally held these areas since 1948,’ and bases its justification for holding these territories on the claim that they were designated for a Jewish state by the League of Nations at the San Remo Conference held after the First World War in 1920. As Adalah’s report concludes, these alarming measures constitute de facto and de jure annexation of the West Bank and are gross violations of international law. Taken together, these decisions constitute war crimes, a crime of aggression, and a crime against humanity (apartheid) under the Rome Statute, as well as a deepening of the apartheid system that already exists. These measures will also have a direct impact on the question that is currently pending before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), regarding the legal consequences of Israel’s policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the International Criminal Court, which is currently conducting an investigation into the commission of war crimes by Israel. Adalah’s Legal Director, Dr. Suhad Bishara, stated: ‘These measures are part of an unequivocal program by the government of Israel to annex parts of the West Bank and institute full Israeli sovereignty over the land. This is an attempt to wholly erase the right of the Palestinian People to self-determination and bypass Palestinians’ rights under international law. We urge the international community to not look away from these flagrant violations of international law and to take immediate action against these measures.’

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA

‘Every single minute of the day is violent for Gaza’s beleaguered population under Israel’s blockade, which is a prime example of slow, latent, and attritional violence,’ Euro-Med Monitor’s Chief of Programs and Communications Muhammad Shehada told a crowd on Tuesday at University College London (UCL). Held by UCL’s Bartlett Development Planning Unit and chaired by Professor Michael Walls, the 6 June seminar aimed to examine state-sanctioned violence across three prominent cases, namely in Ethiopia, Gaza, and Ukraine. Shehada highlighted how Israeli restrictions on the occupied Gaza Strip ‘cage its people in a permanent state of non-life, where young Palestinians face unparalleled crises of unemployment and impoverishment.’ Adding that ‘economic warfare and collective punishment are precisely Israel’s publicly stated goal of the blockade,’ Shehada pointed to Israel’s former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s 2018 statement that said, ‘We allow them to keep their heads above water, but not beyond that.’ Shehada also highlighted Israel’s policy of stifling the Palestinian economy and development in Gaza specifically, citing former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s 2021 statement saying, ‘We will not allow real and long-term development in the Gaza Strip.’ Speaking about Israel’s arbitrary restrictions on Gaza’s imports and its virtual ban on the enclave’s exports, he called attention to how, in the early years of the siege, Israel drafted a plan to allow a limited number of food trucks into Gaza based on the bare minimum number of calories needed for survival. Even then, Shehada told seminar attendees, the actual number of trucks permitted was lower than initially proposed in the plan. Attendees learned how the blockade is designed to cut Gaza off from the rest of the world and make it invisible to the outside population, as Shehada explained that Gazans’ freedom of movement is strictly limited to mostly medical humanitarian cases, and foreign nationals’ access to the Strip is fully banned with minor exceptions (e.g. some members of the international media, UN agencies, and European diplomats). ‘So, you have a situation of perpetually slow and agonizing deaths, exacerbated by periodic military assaults,’ Shehada stated. ‘Each is followed by an excruciatingly slow reconstruction process. But Gaza receives attention only when violence is physical, spectacular, and destructive, despite the everyday life being just as tormenting.’ Referring to earlier Euro-Med Monitor reports, Shehada underscored the psychological damage caused by Israel’s blockade to Gaza’s population, particularly Gazan children, of whom about 91% are estimated to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA

Over 400 alumni of the City University of New York (CUNY) have signed a letter expressing their solidarity with Fatima Mohammed, a Yemeni graduate of CUNY School of Law who has been targeted by a smear campaign for speaking out against Israeli war crimes in her commencement speech this year. The signatories said they were ‘deeply concerned both about the law school’s inaction in protecting a student at a time when her safety and well-being is at risk, as well as by the actions of the Board of Trustees and Chancellor that actively worsened the harm caused. We are appalled that any student – let alone a student who has spoken at the behest of her classmates – would be put in danger without any action or statement of support by our law school.’ The letter read, ‘The law school claims to be an institution that stands united in the belief that only when the world can see the full range of human experience reflected and represented in the law will we have justice for everyone. In total conflict with this purported mission, CUNY’s disregard for the student, her experience, and her humanity is unacceptable and unconscionable.’ ‘We are appreciative and proud of her [Fatima’s] call for social justice. To see her words distorted and characterized as hateful by the Mayor and the New York Post is reprehensible, but to see this further affirmed by CUNY’s Board of Trustees and Chancellor is an affront to all of us,’ added the letter. ‘The attack on this CUNY student is also a shameful example of the vilification of students in educational institutions around the country who support Palestine or are critical of Israel.’

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA

Hundreds of Palestinian students demonstrated today in downtown Nazareth, north of the 1948-occupied territories, in protest of the ongoing crime wave and the failure of the Israeli police to take action to end this phenomenon. During the demonstration, students raised banners condemning all forms of violence, murder and intimidation. On Thursday, five Palestinian nationals of Israel, including a 15-year-old, were shot dead at a carwash in the town of Yafa an-Naseriyye, an Arab town near the city of Nazareth. Since the start of the year, 100 people have been killed in crime-related violence in Arab communities in the 1948-occupied territories, according to NGOs. Palestinians have long blamed the Israeli police for turning a blind eye to gun violence among Arab Israelis and even complicity with criminal gangs. Arabs in today’s Israel are Palestinians who stayed on their land following the establishment of the occupying state in 1948 and their descendants. They make up about 20 percent of the country’s nine million people. By law, their rights are equal to those of Jewish citizens. But in practice they suffer discrimination in employment, housing, policing and other essentials.

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA

Scores of Palestinians marched today in downtown Ramallah, in the center of the West Bank, demanding the Israeli occupation authorities to hand over the withheld bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces over the past few years. The march was called for by the families of Palestinian martyrs whose bodies are withheld by the occupation authorities. During the march, protesters chanted slogans and waved banners demanding the immediate handover of the martyrs whose bodies are either buried in Israeli number cemeteries or kept in mortuaries. Israeli occupation authorities have escalated the practice of withholding the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces, claiming that funerals of Palestinians had provided grounds for incitement. According to rights groups, the bodies of at least 132 Palestinians, including 12 children, killed by Israeli forces since 2015 are currently withheld by the Israeli occupation authorities. The Geneva Conventions of 1949 recognize that the parties of an armed conflict must bury the deceased in an honorable way, and ‘if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged and that their graves are respected, properly maintained, and marked in such a way that they can always be recognized’. In 2017, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the state has no legal basis to withhold bodies, but reversed course in 2019 and upheld the government’s policy to withhold bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation troops. According to Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, a Haifa-based NGO, Israel is the only country in the world that has a policy of confiscation of human remains, where it relies on regulations dating back to 1945 (during the British Mandate) as grounds for its policy.

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA

Scores of Palestinians took to the streets today in the Palestinian city of Qalansawe in the 1948-occupied territories in protest of the Israeli policy of home demolitions targeting the native Palestinian population in the country. The protesters blocked the main road in the city to express their rejection of the Israeli policy, under which dozens of homes and structures in the city and elsewhere across the occupied territories are at risk of demolition. They chanted slogans and raised banners denouncing the unfair Israeli planning and construction policies which favor the Israeli Jewish population against the indigenous Palestinian community. Arabs in today’s Israel are Palestinians who stayed on their land following the creation of the occupying state in 1948 and their descendants. They make up about 20 percent of the country’s nine million people. By law, their rights are equal to those of Jewish citizens. But in practice they suffer discrimination in employment, housing, policing and other essentials.

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA

Hardcore Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian civilians today in the neighborhoods of Wadi Hasin and Jaber in the Old City of Hebron, south of the occupied West Bank, causing minor injuries among local residents, according to witnesses. WAFA correspondent said army-guarded Israeli settlers hurled stones and let their dogs attack Palestinians after raiding the two neighborhoods, causing some of the local Palestinian residents to lose consciousness. Meantime, a group of Israeli settlers physically assaulted a Palestinian shepherd while grazing his sheep in Masafer Yatta are, south of Hebron, causing him bruises. Settler violence against Palestinians and their property is routine in the West Bank and is rarely prosecuted by Israeli occupation authorities. Over 650,000 Israeli settlers live in Jewish-only colonial settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law.

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA