US better be aware of Putin's Evil Empire

US better watch out. This might be the ideal time, with political  chaos, and a slipping, fractured, foreign western support abroad, for the "Alliance of Evil" - Russia, N.Korea, Iran, Cuba, and other potential supporters, to attack the USA.

Middle East: In the Wake of the Ceasefire, Don't Forget: Israel Is the Aggressor - Opinion by: Ahmed Twaij

After nearly two weeks of violence between Israeli forces and Hamas militants in Gaza, a ceasefire agreement has finally been reached. But the duration of the ceasefire remains questionable, especially given that the grievances that led up to the most recent conflict persist, and without addressing them, it's only a matter of time before the next wave of violence begins. Indeed, less than a day after the ceasefire was announced, violent clashes began again between Palestinian worshippers and Israeli police at Al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem, reproducing the same conflagration that led to the armed conflict with Gaza.

Read more at: In the Wake of the Ceasefire, Don't Forget: Israel Is the Aggressor | Opinion

Middle East-Gaza-Israel: 'The Scene Is Horrific:' Gazans Trapped as Israel Escalates Bombing, Killing Dozens in the Territory |

The death toll in Gaza has reached at least 83, including 17 children, and hundreds of people have been injured, as Israel’s aerial bombardment of the besieged territory continues. Israel is now sending troops to the Gaza border for a possible ground invasion as many Palestinians are celebrating Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan. The Biden administration on Wednesday gave Israel a green light to continue its assault, and Israel has reportedly rejected calls for an immediate ceasefire, despite growing international condemnation.

Issam Adwan, Gaza project manager for We Are Not Numbers, a youth-led initiative to share Palestinian stories with the wider world, says many international observers make the mistake of viewing the latest violence in isolation. “They think this war is the only violation of human rights Israel is doing to the people of Gaza. Over the past 15 years, we have witnessed three brutal wars, and this is a fourth one,” says Adwan.

Read more at 'The Scene Is Horrific:' Gazans Trapped as Israel Escalates Bombing, Killing Dozens in the Territory | Link TV

Middle East Israeli-Palestine conflict: Can the EU help defuse tensions as Israeli-Palestinian violence escalates?

The EU has long been a staunch supporter of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: a position that Hugh Lovatt, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, expects to be maintained for the foreseeable future.

Josep Borel said: "The EU is unwavering in its support for not just two states but for [mid-1990s peace agreements] the Oslo Accords and the peace process,"

With regard to the latest flare-up, he added: "It's difficult to come up with a unified European Union-wide position - that has been the case for years - but the statement put out in Borrell's name, I think, was one of the better ones put out internationally." Nonetheless, Lovatt does not expect the EU to take an active role in mediation between Israel and the Palestinian Territories in the coming days or weeks, in keeping with its relatively restrained position in the past and during the war of 2014. "The EU has limited added value when it comes to escalation and de-escalation in Gaza," he said. "This is to an extent of the EU's own making because it refuses to have contact with Hamas.

"Those that play a mediating role are those that have contact: Egypt, Qatar and the UN

Read more at Can the EU help defuse tensions as Israeli-Palestinian violence escalates? | Euronews

Israel-US Relations: Antony Blinken Tells Israel to 'Do Everything' it Can to Avoid Civilian Deaths in Conflict

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to de-escalate the violence in Gaza but reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel, the Associated Press reported.

Read more at: Antony Blinken Tells Israel to 'Do Everything' it Can to Avoid Civilian Deaths in Conflict

Middle East: Israel-Gaza violence: Tel Aviv targeted with new Hamas rocket fire — live updates

Sirens rang out in Tel Aviv early Wednesday morning after the armed branch of Hamas said in a statement that it was "in the process of firing 110 rockets" toward Israel's largest city.

The Israel Defense Forces said that families in Tel Aviv had been woken up and taken to bomb shelters.

Hamas also said it had launched 100 rockets at the southern town of Beer-Sheva. The Associated Press reported that Israeli aircraft struck a high-rise building in Gaza City early Wednesday morning.

Read more at: Israel-Gaza violence: Tel Aviv targeted with new Hamas rocket fire — live updates | News | DW | 12.05.2021

Middle East - Palestine and Israel: US can't be ‘sole mediator any more between Israel and Palestine,’ says Palestinian PM

In an exclusive interview with FRANCE 24, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh hailed the ruling by the International Criminal Court allowing an investigation into possible war crimes committed by Israel and Palestinian factions. He urged the court’s chief prosecutor to quickly open a formal probe, noting that it would be an important step towards an international recognition of Palestine as a state.

Speaking to FRANCE 24 just days after the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled that it has jurisdiction in the Palestinian Territories, paving the way for a criminal investigations into possible war crimes or atrocities committed by both sides, Shtayyeh stressed that Israel was the main aggressor.

He also expressed confidence, following his first contacts with the Biden administration, that the US would soon reopen the Palestinian diplomatic bureau in Washington as well a US consulate in East Jerusalem and would resume aid to the Palestinians.

Shtayyeh however acknowledged that the new US administration was not very likely to rescind the Trump administration’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. This is why, Shtayyeh claimed, a real peace process could not be mediated solely by the US and a broader international involvement was necessary to bring about a two-state solution. Such an effort, he noted, should include regional players such as Jordan and Egypt, as well as Europe, Russia and China.

Read more at: US can't be ‘sole mediator any more between Israel and Palestine,’ says Palestinian PM - The Interview

Middle east: Palestinian Authority urges Israel to return to talks focused on 2-state solution

The Palestinian Authority's foreign minister on Saturday urged Israel to return to talks based on a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ahead of the transition to a new U.S. administration.

Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki's comments came in a joint statement with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukry and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi of Jordan.

Read more:Palestinian Authority urges Israel to return to talks focused on 2-state solution | CBC News

Middle East: Israel and U.A.E. agree to full diplomatic relations

Israel and the United Arab Emirates announced Thursday they are establishing full diplomatic relations in a U.S.-brokered deal that required Israel to halt its contentious plan to annex occupied West Bank land sought by the Palestinians.

Read more at:
Israel and U.A.E. agree to full diplomatic relations | CBC News

Middle East: Israel- Palestine Relations: 'Netanyahu’s annexation plan threatens Palestinian, Israeli economies already struggling after Covid-19

The annexation – part of a peace plan unveiled by US President Donald Trump and Netanyahu at the White House in January – could mean imposing Israeli sovereignty on up to 30 percent of West Bank territory, although a final plan has not yet been unveiled.

“Truthfully, I think no one knows what will happen on July 1 or any day after. Not even Netanyahu himself,” said Elias Zananiri, vice chairman of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organisation) Committee for Interaction with the Israeli Society. “One thing is clear. The Palestinians will in no way accept any form of annexation,” he told FRANCE 24 on Sunday.

Read more at:
Netanyahu’s annexation plan threatens Palestinian, Israeli economies already struggling after Covid-19

Britain: Johnson warns Israel against plans to annex part of West Bank

Britain: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged Israel not to go ahead with the annexation of part of the occupied West Bank, saying it would be illegal and "contrary" to the country's interests.

His Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, set Wednesday as a possible start date for the process of applying Israeli sovereignty to Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley.

Read more at:
Johnson warns Israel against plans to annex part of West Bank - BBC News

Middle East - Palestine Erekat:: What EU should tell Pompeo on Israel - by Andrew Rettman

"What the US is doing in Palestine is a threat against every single principle of peaceful coexistence between nations" - that is what EU foreign ministers should tell US secretary of state Mike Pompeo in Monday's (15 June) video-talks, according to Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian diplomat.

"They [the EU] should say that in case of annexation ... there will be consequences for Israel, including sanctions," Erekat told EUobserver in an interview the same day.

Read more at: 
Erekat: What EU should tell Pompeo on Israel

Palestine: Israel kills 10,000th Palestinian since 2000, US media largely ignore it

Israeli forces invading Palestinian Territory just killed a 15-year-old unarmed Palestinian boy with a bullet to the head. The 10,000th killed since 2000

Read more at :
https://israelpalestinenews.org/israel-kills-10000th-palestinian-since-2000-us-media-largely-ignore-it/

Middle East: Beyond rockets and air strikes: The Israeli-Palestinian trade war

Israel blocks xports from leaving the territories on February 9, in another chapter of the trade war they have been fighting since September, when the Palestinian Authority banned Isra…

Read more at:
https://www.france24.com/en/20200216-beyond-rockets-and-air-strikes-the-israeli-palestinian-trade-war

Middle East: Boxed in by US and Israel, an ailing Abbas takes defiant stance against Trump peace plan

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is 84 years old and in fragile health. Speaking Tuesday at the UN, he roundly rejected US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian co…

Read more at:
https://www.france24.com/en/20200211-palestinian-leader-mahmoud-abbas-peace-plan-defiant-stance-trump

EU versus Trump Middle East Peace Plan: Borrell travels to US, after trashing Trump peace plan

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell will visit the US on Thursday and Friday for meetings with US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, national security advisor Robert O'Brien and senior advisor to the president, Jared Kushner. Earlier this week, Borrell was highly negative in a statement about the Israel-Palestine peace deal announced by president Donald Trump, but prepared by his son-in-law Kushner.

Read more at: Borrell travels to US, after trashing Trump peace plan

Middle East: EU-Israel Relations: Surge in Israeli demolition of EU-funded buildings - by Andrew Rettman

EU losing patience with Israel

Israel has sped up demolitions of EU-funded and Palestinian structures in the West Bank amid hawkish talk on taking over the territory.

It wrecked or seized 97 structures worth some €480,000 in the area last year which had been built using EU or member states' funds - a 90 percent increase on the year before, according to internal EU figures seen by EUobserver.

It also demolished 35 percent more Palestinian structures and displaced 95 percent more Palestinian people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem than in 2018.

And the trend is set to continue this year, if Israel's right-wing defence minister, Naftali Bennet, gets his way.

"The state of Israel will do everything to ensure that these territories will be part of the state of Israel," he said at an event in Jerusalem last week, referring to Area C, a vast swathe of the West Bank which belongs to Palestine, the UN says, but which remains under Israeli military jurisdiction since Israel conquered it in 1967.

"We are not at the United Nations," he said, according to Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post.

"We are embarking on a real and immediate battle for the future of the land of Israel and the future of Area C," he added.

But the EU foreign service said: "Demolitions and seizures of humanitarian assets are contrary to Israel's obligations under international law".

"Our focus remains on the halt of the demolitions, confiscations, and of settlement construction and expansion and on the humanitarian protection of the most vulnerable populations," it added.

"On a number of occasions, often in coordination with the EU member states, the EU has called for the restitution and/or compensation of EU-funded humanitarian assets which have been demolished, dismantled, or confiscated by Israel," it also said.

The EU, Germany, France, and the UK issued statements condemning the latest surge in Israeli settlements in the region on 9 January.

The West Bank and Gaza are meant to form a future Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as a shared capital with Israel, according to the EU and UN formula for ending the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict.

But Israeli settlers, more than 630,000 of whom have moved to the conquered lands since 1967, have already broken up the West Bank into small cantons, making the two-state solution look increasingly less possible.

And recent US policy U-turns - moving its embassy to Jerusalem and saying that the Israeli settlements were not illegal - have also harmed EU conflict resolution.

"Israel's settlement policy seriously undermines the viability of the two-state solution and the prospect for a lasting peace," the EU foreign service said.

The Israeli mission to the EU did not respond to EUobserver's questions. 

Read more at: Surge in Israeli demolition of EU-funded buildings

Israel-USA-Palestine Relations: Is the US Trump Administration starting to embrace international lawlessness?

The US Trump Administration’s declaration that it no longer considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal marks another step away from the principles of international law.

The illegality of the settlements by Israeli citizens on Palestinian land is quite clear from Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: “The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

The 600,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have already colonized much of Palestine, fragmenting its territory — over which the Israeli occupier retains complete military control — criss-crossing it with roads barred to Palestinian users, stealing much of the most fertile land and depriving the Palestinian population of most of the available water.

The Israeli towns that have been planted across Palestinian territory are a serious barrier to the independent Palestine to which almost all countries, including the US and Israel, remain technically committed — though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown up how hollow this commitment is by repeatedly stating explicitly that there will never be a Palestinian state on his watch.

The pro-forma international condemnation has not halted the settlement programme nor prompted any Israeli government to consider meeting its obligations towards Palestine under the Oslo Accords.

The US has also regularly used its veto to block UN resolutions condemning the settlements even while officially viewing them as illegal.

It’s also against international law to apply sanctions with the aim of changing the government in the targeted country.

The US Trump Administration decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, is in fact encouraging ever more reckless and aggressive ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the Israeli Right-Wing authorities and assures them that racist legislation such as the Nation State Law, reducing Israeli Arabs to second-class citizens, will not affect the enormous economic and military sponsorship they receive from the US.

Relying on Israeli allies to rein in its expansionist government has never worked. A US thumbs-up to illegal settlements makes that clearer than ever.

Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said: "The United States is neither qualified nor is authorised to negate international legitimacy resolutions, and it has no right to give any legitimacy to Israeli settlement."

Palestinian militant groups also weighed in, calling it the official funeral of the Oslo peace process - which laid the foundations for Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip - and urging stepped-up resistance to the Israeli occupation.

Bottom-line: the US Trump Administration has basically ripped-up the Oslo Agreement of which the US was a co-signer and is now applying the "Trump doctrine of the jungle"

 EU-Digest

United Nations - "US and Israel get a black eye at the UN": In blow to U.S. administration and Israel, UN fails to pass anti-Hamas resolution - by Amir Tibon and Noa Landau

 The resolution condemning Hamas, which was presented by the U.S. before the UN General Assembly on Thursday, fell short of the required two-thirds majority and failed to pass.

The resolution condemning Hamas, which was presented by the U.S. before the UN General Assembly on Thursday, fell short of the required two-thirds majority and failed to pass.

Read more: In blow to U.S. administration and Israel, UN fails to pass anti-Hamas resolution - U.S. News - Haaretz.com

Middle East - Palestine: Israeli Defence Minister Lieberman quits over ceasefire with Palestine

Israeli defence minister quits over ceasefire, splitting ruling coalition

Read more:
https://www.euronews.com/2018/11/14/israeli-defence-minister-quits-over-ceasefire-splitting-ruling-coalition