Hezbollah Accuses Int’l Organizations of Intimidating Syrian Refugees in Lebanon
Sputnik – 29.06.2018
BEIRUT – International organizations and some Lebanese actors have been intimidating Syrian refugees and asylum seekers displaced by war and who want to return to their country from Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement, said on Friday.
“According to our data, there are some international organizations, and certain local parties, which intimidate the refugees and provoke concerns about the return,” Nasrallah told the Al-Manar broadcaster.
The Hezbollah leader called for action to ensure a safe and comfortable return to Syria of those willing to go back to their homeland.
The Lebanese movement would take its own measures to help the refugees until the Lebanese and Syrian authorities establish cooperation in this area, Nasrallah added. Hezbollah has set up a special mechanism for these activities, and plans to open special centers where the refugees can call, and civil committees for interaction with the refugees, according to the group’s leader.
Since the beginning of the Syrian military conflict in 2011, millions of Syrians have fled the country to other states, including neighboring Lebanon. The situation around Syrian asylum seekers and refugees in Lebanon has recently exacerbated in a wake of the authorities’ claims that the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR had been discouraging those displaced by the Syrian war from returning to their home country.
Labour Friends of Israel: Palestine refugees’ right to return is ‘extreme and illegitimate’
MEMO | June 29, 2018
Westminster-based lobby group Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) has described the Palestinian refugees’ right of return as “extreme and illegitimate”, in a letter to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn this week.
LFI’s letter came in response to remarks made by the Leader of the opposition on 25 June, during a recent visit to Jordan. In a Twitter post, Corbyn wrote:
“In Jordan, I went to Baqa’a, one of the largest Palestinian refugee camps. We must work for a real two state settlement to the Israel-Palestine conflict, which ends the occupation and siege of Gaza and makes the Palestinian right to return a reality.”
In the period 1947-1949, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from or fled their homes as Zionist militias and the Israeli army destroyed hundreds of villages in what became Israel. Refugees attempting to return were killed, and Israel passed laws to expropriate their properties.
Corbyn’s expression of support for the Palestinian refugees’ internationally-recognised rights, prompted anger and concern from British pro-Israel groups, including LFI.
In a letter from LFI chair MP Joan Ryan, the pro-Israel group describes the Palestinians’ right to return (which is referred to in scare quotes) as “highly contentious”, and at odds with Israel’s insistence on retaining its Jewish majority of citizens.
Ryan added: “I do not believe that it does anything to encourage the compromises and concessions a future negotiated settlement will involve for foreign politicians to appear to endorse the most extreme and illegitimate demands of either side.”
The LFI chair concluded by urging Corbyn to “immediately clarify” what he understands by a right to return, and to only use “language… [that] helps to advance, not hinder, the cause of peace, reconciliation and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.”
A spokesperson for the Labour party said: “These rights are inalienable and guaranteed by UN Resolution 194 of 11 December 1948. How the right of return is implemented is a matter for the negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.”
Israeli occupation forces deliver ‘humanitarian aid’ to Syria
Al-Manar | June 29, 2018
Israeli occupation forces delivered about 60 tons of ‘humanitarian aid’ to the Syrian Golan Heights on Thursday night, in a new and this time clear attempt to support terrorists based in the country’s south who have been engaged in fierce battle with the Syrian government troops.
Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported a ‘special operation’ took place overnight Thursday in which “some 300 tents, 13 tons of food, 15 tons of baby food, three pallets of medical equipment and medicine and some 30 tons of clothes and shoes were transferred into Syria from four different spots on the border.”
As the occupation military delivered the aid, it made it clear it will not allow fleeing Syrians to enter occupied territories, the Israeli daily quoted a statement issued by occupation army.
IOF “was monitoring the events in southwest Syria and was prepared for a variety of different scenarios, including sending further humanitarian aid,” Ynet quoted occupation army spokesman as saying.
The Zionist occupation regime has repeatedly offered different forms of support to militants fighting the Syrian government. The Syrian army has repeatedly seized Israel-made weapons in areas controlled by terrorists.
Russia will not let US ‘deal of the century’ go ahead
MEMO | June 27, 2018
Senior Hamas leader Mousa Abu-Marzouk said on Monday that Russia has promised not to let the US’ “deal of the century” go ahead, a statement published on Hamas’ website said.
In an interview with Al-Mayadeen TV Abu-Marzouk said: “We agreed with the Russians that the ‘deal of the century’ will not be allowed to go ahead.”
On Monday, a senior Hamas delegation headed by Abu-Marzouk wrapped up a visit to Moscow where they met the Russian president’s envoy to the Middle East and the deputy foreign minister.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported a Hamas official from Gaza saying that the visit was arranged to coincide with a US delegation’s trip to the Middle East.
The Hamas official said that Russia is a considerable player in the Middle East which has direct relations with all the players in the region, including Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas also said that its delegation discussed the humanitarian situation in Gaza and said that the Russians promised to work to end the Israeli siege and alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in the enclave.
Israel to ‘Prolong Bloodshed’ in Syria as Media Pushes ‘Sensational’ Iran Claims
Sputnik – June 27, 2018
With two Israeli missile having struck targets near a Syrian airport on Tuesday, Rick Sterling, an investigative journalist and member of the Syria Solidarity Movement, told Sputnik that the likelihood of Israel backing down from its attacks are pretty slim.
As Sputnik previously reported, the Israeli Air Force was attempting a late night attack on an Iranian cargo plane that was unloading at Damascus International Airport. Footage has since emerged allegedly showing the aftermath of the Israeli strike.
The incident follows multiple strikes by Israel in recent months in what it calls “retaliatory” measures against Iran’s presence in Syria, which it sees as a threat to its safety. Iran has had a foothold in Syria since the conflict first began in 2011.
Sterling told Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear on Tuesday that the missile launch proved that Israel has no intention of helping solve the Syrian conflict, but instead hopes to keep the fight going.
“I think Israel is continuing to provoke the situation,” Sterling told show host Walter Smolarek. “They don’t want to see the conflict end, they want to prolong the bloodshed there and prevent the Syrian government from finally defeating terrorism there in Syria.”
“They’ve acted for many years now as a protectorate of the terrorist groups… they’ve been actively involved in the conflict from the get-go… they’ve medically treated terrorists inside Israel and with [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu going along bedsides, with videos showing him greeting medically treated extremists,” Sterling pointed out.
Highlighting Israel’s love of proclaiming Iran as a threat, the journalist stressed that the 70-year-old country has repeatedly cried wolf on the matter.
“Israel uses Iran as a pretext… they always claim that they’re attacking armaments headed for Hezbollah or armaments from Iran or Iranian contingents,” he told Smolarek. “They’ve exaggerated the Iranian participation in the conflict from the start.”
“It is a dangerous situation right now. We don’t know what the calculations in Israel are and it’s pretty hard to predict what the US is going to do — there’s competing wishes within the US military, CIA and the national security establishment,” Sterling noted.
Predicting the media coverage to come on the matter, Sterling suggested outlets would ultimately create “sensational claims and fears about civilians being attacked and civilians being targets and very horrible events about to happen.”
Jeremy Corbyn Says Future Labour Government Would Recognize Palestine as State
By Whitney Webb | Mint Press News | June 25, 2018
The leader of the U.K. Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, officially announced on Friday that the U.K. would recognize Palestine as a state under a future Labour government. Corbyn, speaking in Jordan during his first trip to the region since becoming party leader in 2015, stated that the recognition of a Palestinian state would be aimed at achieving “a genuine two-state solution” that he would seek to tackle “very early on” were Labour to emerge victorious in the U.K.’s next general election in 2022.
“I think there has to be a recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people to their own state, which we as a Labour Party said we would recognize in government as a full state as part of the United Nations,” Corbyn stated.
A day later, on Saturday, Corbyn visited Jordan’s Al-Baqa’a refugee camp, which has long hosted Palestinians who fled the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
After visiting the camp, Corbyn asserted the need to consider the rights of Palestinians in any future peace process, stating that “there has to be a right of the Palestinian people to live in peace, as well as the right of Israel.”
Corbyn has long been an advocate for Palestine, having been a long-time patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and having endorsed key elements of the boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS) movement.
More recently, Corbyn has condemned Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – calling the move a “catastrophic mistake” — while also calling out Western silence over Israel’s killing of unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza during the Great Return March earlier this year. Corbyn’s criticism of recent Israeli violence targeting Palestinians has included calls for the U.K. to halt arms sales to Israel if those arms “could be used in violation of international law.”
As a result of his continued advocacy for Palestinians, Corbyn has consistently been attacked by the U.K.’s Israel lobby as an “anti-Semite.” Such concerns over “anti-Semitism” have grown into a frenzy in the U.K. media in recent years, particularly after Labour’s surprise performance in U.K. elections last year that led them to pick up several seats in Parliament. The “witch hunt” to smear Corbyn as an “anti-Semite” has led several Jewish groups to call out “the weaponization of anti-Semitism for political ends.”
Given his statements over the weekend on recognizing Palestine as a state, accusations of Corbyn’s “anti-Semitism” are unlikely to die out anytime soon.
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.
Javier Solana refused visa waiver to US because of Iran trip
Press TV – June 25, 2018
Javier Solana, a former secretary general of the NATO military alliance and foreign policy chief of the European Union, has been refused a visa waiver to enter the US because of his trip to Iran in 2013.
Solana, who played a central role in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program when he was the EU’s foreign policy chief, said on Monday that his renewal application on the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) had been rejected for the first time.
ESTA is an automated system that determines the eligibility of visitors to travel to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program.
The Spanish-born politician and physicist had been due to speak at an event at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.
Solana, 75, said that he considered the issue “to be more bureaucratic than political.”
“It’s a bit of a mean decision,” Solana told Spain’s Antena 3 TV channel. “I don’t think it’s good because some people have to visit these countries to keep negotiations alive.”
“I’ll see what I can do to fix this. It’s a computer – an algorithm – and if you’ve been in Iran lately, they take you out of the system. It’s like you don’t exist visa-wise, because you can’t visit the country.”
Solana, who received his US doctorate in physics in 1971 from the University of Virginia, said he would apply for a US visa instead, a more cumbersome and expensive process. “I need to go because I need to work there and I’m a professor at various universities,” he said.
Solana, who has also served as Spain’s foreign minister, said he had been invited to Iran in 2013 to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Solana had no official government post at that time.
The US Visa Waiver Program allows people from 38 high-income countries, namely EU states, Australia, Japan and South Korea, to travel to the US without applying for a visa.
However, in 2015, the administration of former US President Barack Obama signed a law that would require foreign citizens eligible for the waiver program to obtain a US visa if they had traveled to Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen after March 1, 2011.
Such travelers are required to go through the full vetting process required to get a visa, including an in-person interview at a US Embassy or Consulate.
But visa waivers can also be granted on a case-by-case basis for those who have traveled to Iran as government representatives, journalists or aid workers.
The rule predates US President Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban on five Muslim-majority countries and North Korea. The Trump administration has been especially hostile to Iran. Trump announced in May that the US would withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
See also:
US visa waiver program violates JCPOA
December 20, 2015
… US President Barack Obama on Saturday signed a USD-1.1-trillion funding bill that aims to exclude from the VWP all dual nationals from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Sudan, and anyone else who has traveled to those countries in the past five years. Such foreign nationals are now required to obtain a visa through standard measures, including face-to-face interview at a US consulate.
Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy Alaeddin Boroujerdi told reporters on Sunday that the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), stipulates that Washington should set no new restrictions on Iran. …
Young protesters are defying Israel’s blockade with scraps of paper and plastic
By Jonathon Cook | The National | 24 June 2018
First Israel built a sophisticated missile interception system named Iron Dome to neutralise the threat of homemade rockets fired out of Gaza.
Next it created technology that could detect and destroy tunnels Palestinians had cut through the parched earth deep under the fences Israel erected to imprison Gaza on all sides.
Israel’s priority was to keep Gaza locked down with a blockade and its two million inhabitants invisible.
Now Israel is facing a new and apparently even tougher challenge: how to stop Palestinian resistance from Gaza using flaming kites, which have set fire to lands close by in Israel. F-16 fighter jets are equipped to take on many foes but not the humble kite.
These various innovations by Palestinians are widely seen by Israelis as part of the same relentless campaign by Hamas to destroy their country.
But from inside Gaza, things look very different. These initiatives are driven by a mix of recognisably human emotions: a refusal to bow before crushing oppression; a fear of becoming complicit through silence and inaction in being erased and forgotten; and a compelling need to take back control of one’s life.
Palestinians encaged in Gaza, denied entry and exit by Israel via land, sea and air for more than a decade, know that life there is rapidly becoming unsustainable. Most young people are unemployed, much of the infrastructure and housing are irreparably damaged, and polluted water sources are near-unpotable.
After waves of military attacks, Gaza’s children are traumatised with mental scars that may never heal.
This catastrophe was carefully engineered by Israel, which renews and enforces it daily.
The kites have long served as a potent symbol of freedom in Gaza. Children have flown them from the few spots in the tiny, congested enclave where people can still breathe – from rooftops or on Gaza’s beaches.
Five years ago, the film Flying Paper documented the successful efforts of Gaza’s children to set a new world record for mass kite-flying. The children defied Israel’s blockade, which prevents entry of most goods, by making kites from sticks, newspapers and scraps of plastic.
The children’s ambition was – if only briefly – to retake Gaza’s skies, which Israel dominates with its unseen, death-dealing drones that buzz interminably overhead and with missiles that can flatten a building in seconds.
A young girl observed of the kite’s lure: “When we fly the kite, we know that freedom exists.” A message scrawled on one read: “I have the right to pride, education, justice, equality and life.”
But the world record attempt was not only about the children’s dreams and their defiance. It was intended to highlight Gaza’s confinement and to issue a reminder that Palestinians too are human.
That same generation of children have grown into the youths being picked off weekly by Israeli snipers at unarmed protests at the perimeter fence – the most visible feature of Israel’s infrastructure of imprisonment.
A few have taken up kite-flying again. If they have refused to put away childish things, this time they have discarded their childish idealism. Their world record did not win them freedom, nor even much notice.
After the snipers began maiming thousands of the demonstrators, including children, medics and journalists, for the impudence of imagining they had a right to liberty, the enclave’s youths reinvented the kite’s role.
If it failed to serve as a reminder of Palestinians’ humanity, it could at least remind Israel and the outside world of their presence, of the cost of leaving two million human beings to rot.
So the kites were set on fire, flaming emissaries that brought a new kind of reckoning for Israel when they landed on the other side of the fence.
Gaza’s inhabitants can still see the lands from which many of them were expelled during the mass dispossession of the Palestinian people in 1948 – under western colonial sponsorship – to create a Jewish state.
Not only were those lands taken from them, but the Jewish farming communities that replaced them now irrigate their crops using water Palestinians are deprived of, including water seized from aquifers under the West Bank.
The kites have rained fire down on this idyll created by Israel at the expense of Gaza’s inhabitants. No one has been hurt but Israel claims extinguishing the fires has already cost some $2 million and 7,000 acres of farmland have been damaged.
Sadly, given the profound sense of entitlement that afflicts many Israelis, a small dent in their material wellbeing has not pricked consciences about the incomparably greater suffering only a few kilometres away in Gaza.
Instead, Israel’s public security minister Gilad Erdan called last week for anyone flying a kite, even young children, to be shot. He and other ministers have argued that another large-scale military assault on Gaza is necessary to create what Mr Erdan has termed “durable deterrence”.
That moment seems to be moving inexorably closer. The last few days have seen Israel launch punitive air strikes to stop the kites and Palestinian factions retaliate by firing significant numbers of rockets out of Gaza for the first time in years.
The Trump administration is no longer pretending to mediate. It has publicly thrown in its hand with Israel. It withdrew last week from the United Nations Human Rights Council, accusing it of being a “cesspool of political bias” after the council criticised Israel for executing Gaza’s unarmed demonstrators.
On a visit to the region last week, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, urged ordinary Palestinians to rebel against their leaders’ refusal to accept a long-awaited US peace plan that all evidence suggests will further undermine Palestinian hopes of a viable state.
Mr Kushner is apparently unaware that the Palestinian public is expressing its will, for liberation, by protesting at the Gaza fence – and risking execution by Israel for doing so.
Meanwhile, Prince William is due in Israel on Monday, the first British royal to make an official visit since the mandate ended 70 years ago. While Kensington Palace has stressed that the trip is non-political, Prince William will meet both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in an itinerary that has already been claimed by both sides as a victory.
From the vantage point of the Mount of Olives, from which he will view Jerusalem’s Old City, the prince may not quite manage to see the kite battles in Gaza’s skies that underscore who is Goliath and who is David. But he should see enough in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem to understand that western leaders have decisively chosen the side of Goliath.
BBC presenter rapped for highlighting Israeli killings of Palestinian kids
Press TV – June 25, 2018
BBC has found its presenter Andrew Marr guilty of breaching editorial guidelines for commenting during his flagship Sunday morning program that Israel has killed “lots of Palestinian kids.”
The broadcaster issued the unprecedented ruling against one of its most senior personalities after a complaint was filed against Marr over his comment during a discussion about a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria during the April 8 edition of The Andrew Marr Show.
“And the Middle East is aflame again. I mean there’s lots of Palestinian kids being killed further south as well by Israeli forces,” the veteran presenter said, referring to clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Irked by Marr’s remark, anti-Semitism campaigner Jonathan Sacerdoti complained that Marr’s remarks were “incorrect” and “unrelated” to the topic of Syria.
“He stated there’s a lot of Palestinian kids being killed further south by Israeli forces,” Sacerdoti’s complaint said.
“This is completely incorrect and is made up. This was irrelevant to the conversation on Syria… and also actually completely false.”
The BBC producers had referred to the fact that five “younger people” had been killed between the beginning of the year and the date of the program and that several Palestinian children and younger people had been killed in the week following the broadcast, but the campaigner argued that later events could not be used to justify Marr’s remarks.
The BBC’s head of executive complaints, Fraser Steel, took the side of Sacerdoti in a letter.
“In the absence of any evidence to support the reference to ‘lots’ of children being killed at the time of transmission, it seems to us to have risked misleading audiences on a material point,” he said.
“We therefore propose to uphold this part of your complaint.”
At least 130 Palestinians, including 14 children, have been killed by Israeli forces since the “March of Return” rallies began in the Gaza Strip on March 30. About 13,300 Palestinians have sustained injuries, of them 300 are currently in critical condition.
UN Climate Demand Opens the way for More Abuse of Poor Farmers
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | June 22, 2018
If there is one climate program which should have died in a welter of shame, that programme is third world conservation programmes, programmes which have reportedly already caused mayhem in places where government backed forces have committed atrocities to drive farmers and tribes out of nature reserves.
Forests provide a critical short-term solution to climate change
22 JUN 2018
To prevent the worst consequences of climate change, we need to act now.
There is a “catastrophic climate gap” between the commitments that countries have made under the Paris Climate Agreement and the emissions reductions required to avoid the worst consequences of global warming, according to UN Environment’s Emissions Gap Report 2017.
The Paris Agreement aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2˚ Celsius, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5˚ Celsius.
Current pledges from governments represent only about half of what would be required to avoid a 2˚C temperature rise, and just one third of what’s required to limit warming to 1.5˚C.
While this “emissions gap” is significant, UN Environment suggests it can still be closed in a cost-effective manner.
One of the major contributors to closing the gap is forests.
The good news here is that 6.3 gigatons (billion tons) of carbon dioxide emission reductions have already been reported over the past six years from forests in Brazil, Ecuador, Malaysia and Colombia alone under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), according to the UNFCCC Lima Hub. This is equivalent to more than the annual emissions of the United States.
“This is a significant step forward, showing that forests can be a central part of the solution to climate change,” says the head of the UN-REDD Programme Secretariat, Mario Boccucci. “We have an unprecedented opportunity: political will, know-how, finance. Now we need to build on progress and scale up rapidly in the coming years.”
…
Protecting forests, including mangroves, makes climate action cheaper and faster. We need to build the political case for this across all countries.
“The Emissions Gap Report once again underscores the urgency of redoubling our efforts to reduce emissions,” says UN Environment climate change expert Niklas Hagelberg.
“It shows that solutions exist, and if they are adopted quickly we can turn our current situation around. But with each year we wait, we make our ability to limit dangerous climate change more difficult, risky and costly.”
Full article: https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/forests-provide-critical-short-term-solution-climate-change
Even the Guardian has noted the connection between offering large cash grants to tyrants in return for declaring regions off limits to humans, and vicious attacks against people living in the affected regions;
The tribes paying the brutal price of conservation
John Vidal
Sun 28 Aug 2016 17.00 AESTAcross the world, governments are protecting habitats. But indigenous peoples are being evicted
The Botswana police helicopter spotted Tshodanyestso Sesana and his friends in the afternoon. The nine young Bushmen, or San, had been hunting antelope to feed their families, when the chopper flew towards them.
There was a burst of gunfire from the air and the young men dropped their meat and skins and fled. Largely through luck, no one was hit, but within minutes armed troops arrived in a jeep and the nine were arrested, stripped naked, beaten and then detained for several days for poaching in a nature reserve.
Welcome to 21st-century life in the vast Central Kalahari game park, an ancient hunting ground for the San, but now off-limits to the people who forged their history there. The brutal incident took place last week, just days after Botswana’s wildlife minister Tshekedi Khama, the brother of President Ian Khama, announced a shoot-on-sight policy on poachers.
Khama claims the policy, which is supported by conservation groups, will deter poaching and the illegal wildlife trade, which is widely seen by Europe and the US as disastrous for biodiversity. But there are no rare or endangered species such as elephants or rhinos in the areas where the bushmen hunt. Sending a helicopter gunship and armed guards to arraign the hunters looks rather like an escalation of the low-grade war that Botswana has waged for years on one of the most vulnerable indigenous groups in the world.
…
Full article: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/28/exiles-human-cost-of-conservation-indigenous-peoples-eco-tourism
The damage is not limited to shooting down tribespeople from helicopter gunships. In Ivory Coast, poor farmers who are trying to produce cocoa are being pressured to pay large bribes to be allowed to work their farms in “conservation areas”.
… The government of Ivory Coast took action recently against cocoa-driven deforestation by expelling cocoa farmers from Mount Péko National Park (which means “mountain of hyenas” in the local Gueré language). According to a report by Human Rights Watch and the Ivorian Coalition of Human Rights (RAIDH), the evictions were poorly planned and carried out in violation of human rights standards. When we visited Mount Péko after the eviction, we found the park once again filled with cocoa smallholders who had returned. Some smallholders explained to us that when they finally returned to Mount Péko, they simply paid the authorities higher bribes to go back to cultivating their lands in the park. …
Read more: http://www.mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/chocolates_dark_secret_english_web.pdf
Lets see – large numbers of skilled but very poor farmers in Africa trying to make an honest living being backed into a corner, forced to pay large bribes, their families brutalised by armed thugs. Its pretty obvious what will happen next, and when it does, Western green policies will bear the ultimate blame.
Kushner says US Administration Will Continue with “Peace Plan” Even Without Abbas
IMEMC News & Agencies – June 24, 2018
US president Donald Trump’s senior adviser, Jared Kushne,r in an interview with Al-Quds Palestinian newspaper, said that his country will go on with a Middle East peace plan which has not been announced yet, whether Abbas agrees to participate in it or not.
Kushner questioned Abbas’s ability to make a deal, as the Palestinian Authority (PA) is boycotting the US administration for its moves, which included declaring Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
“If President Abbas is willing to come back to the table, we are ready to engage; if he is not, we will likely air the plan publicly,” Kushner said, according to an English-language transcript released in Washington.
“However, I do question how much President Abbas has the ability to, or is willing to, lean into finishing a deal. He has his talking points which have not changed in the last 25 years,” Kushner said.
Commenting on the interview, Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Abbas, said: “The road to peace is clear – commitment to the two-state solution, a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital. This is the road to any negotiations or any meetings.”
Kushner and US Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt, visited Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt before talks on Friday and Saturday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Arab leaders conveyed they wanted to see a Palestinian state.
Erekat: Kushner represents a policy of dictation
In response, senior PLO member, Dr. Saeb Erekat said Kushner’s interview again illustrates the US refusal to talk substance, to mention Palestinian rights or a Palestinian state.
“This is an attempt to push forward a plan that consolidates Israel’s colonial control over Palestinian land and lives while telling the Palestinian people that money will compensate for our inalienable rights. Plain and simple: Palestine and Palestinian rights are not for sale,” Erekat said in a statement, according to the PNN.
“Kushner represents a policy of dictation rather than negotiations”, he added. “It is the Trump Administration has walked away from the negotiations, from international law and UN resolutions.”
Erekat added that the PA has continuously heard the same from the Israeli government that believes that there will be a better economic situation by pulverizing the political rights of the people of Palestine. Therefore, Kushner’s interview only confirms what we have heard from every international envoy we have met with, that there’s nothing of substance coming from the Trump Administration.
He added that it is outrageous to accept such blatant disregard of international law to be replaced with business packages to resolve the struggle of a people striving for their freedom.
“The aids of the current US Administration, including Jared Kushner, have heard it clear from our fellow Arab leaders that the core of the solution should be grounded on ending Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the establishment of a sovereign and the independent State of Palestine on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. Certainly, the end of Israel’s occupation and the fulfillment of our political rights is a matter of consensus among all Palestinians that are united on the vision and will to live in freedom,” Erekat concluded.
Hamas: Our people will bury US plans under their feet
Hazem Qasem
Palestine Information Center – June 23, 2018
GAZA – The Hamas Movement has said that the massive presence of citizens in the March of Return rallies on Friday, June 22, has reflected that the popular struggle in Gaza will continue until all goals are achieved.
In a press release, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem said the ongoing popular uprising on the Gaza border aims to entrench the Palestinian people’s right to return to every part of their land, including Jerusalem, and their right to live in dignity and with no blockade.
“Such ongoing rallies prove that the [Israeli] occupation’s attempts to terrorize our people into not participating in them have failed,” Qasem affirmed, pointing to the exposure of protesters to aerial attacks during the past week.
“These marches have sent a message to the US administration, which is trying to impose plans or projects aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause, that our revolutionary people on the border will bury such schemes under their feet and will not allow any party to detract from their rights,” he underlined.
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The Crusades – colliding narratives
Ashes of Pompeii | June 13, 2026
They say history is written by the victors, but the Crusades offer an interesting historical contrast: a two-century collision that produced not one history, but two parallel, irreconcilable realities. The dates and the battles are identical in both accounts, but the moral axis is entirely flipped.
In the traditional Western narrative, the Crusades are framed as a heroic, if tragic, epic. The First Crusade is a pious pilgrimage; the knights are romanticized figures of chivalry in shining armor, bravely holding the line in a hostile, exotic land. The eventual loss of the Holy Land is mourned as the “fall of Outremer,” a tragic retreat of European civilization. In this telling, the East is often reduced to a passive backdrop, its inhabitants viewed through a lens of mystique or backwardness, mere obstacles to a divine mandate.
But cross the Mediterranean, and the exact same timeline reads like a chronicle of foreign invasion and eventual, hard-won restoration against the barbarous northerners. The dates do not change, but the adjectives do. Here is the history as it is remembered in the Levant… continue
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- As World Cup kicks off, Gaza amputee girls chase football dreams
- Oxfam: More Palestinians killed by Israel across West Bank in last 3 years than previous 17 years combined
- US-Iran ceasefire may be imminent, but will Israel blow it up? – Daily Update
- The Issue of Israel Is Ending Democracy In Michigan
- Israel is stealing homes, livelihoods, and lives in West Bank
- Gaza is not an aberration – Israel planned this genocide decades ago
- Israel is changing the face of Lebanon, mainstream media is normalizing it – 3 articles
- Genocide lobby benefits from EU anti-racist fund
- No Tricks Zone
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
- European “Expert Commission” Urges COVID-19-Like Global Climate State Of Energency!
- Real-World Observations Do Not Support The Position That Climate Change Is Human-Caused
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