Day: September 28, 2023

Israel reopened crossing points with Gaza on Thursday, allowing thousands of Palestinian workers to get to their jobs in Israel and the West Bank, after nearly two weeks of closure prompted by violent protests along the border.

Around 18,000 Gazans have permits from Israeli authorities to work outside the blockaded enclave, providing an injection of cash amounting to some $2 million a day to the impoverished territory’s economy.

The move comes amid stepped-up international efforts by Egypt and the United Nations to defuse tensions and prevent a new round of armed conflict in the enclave.

For around two weeks, protestors throwing stones and explosive devices have faced off against Israeli troops who have responded with live fire, killing at least one man and wounding dozens more.

Protests on Wednesday were less intense, and so was the Israeli response. A Palestinian official familiar with mediation efforts told Reuters the development came “upon the request of mediators to de-escalate tensions”.

Desperate to go back to their jobs, workers began to flock to the Palestinian side of the crossing soon after Israel made the announcement late on Wednesday.

“We want to go to work and earn a living for our children because the situation was too bad for us the past two weeks,” said Khaled Zurub, 57, who works in construction in Israel.

Cogat, the Israeli Defence Ministry agency that coordinates with the Palestinians, said security assessments would determine whether the border remained open.

Hazem Qassem, a spokesman for the armed Islamist Hamas group that rules Gaza and opposes peace deals with Israel, said Israel was constantly violating Gazans’ fundamental right to freedom of movement with repeated border closures and the blockade of Gaza.

Israel blocks many goods from entering Gaza with Egyptian backing, citing security concerns, and also reserves the right to restrict exports.

According to IMF figures, per capita income in Gaza is only a quarter of that of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The World Bank says unemployment is nearly 50%.

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More than half the 120,000 ethnic Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh have left in less than four days after Azerbaijan seized control of the mountain enclave where they had managed to defend their autonomy for three decades.

Azerbaijan’s lightning military operation triggered an exodus unparalleled in the South Caucasus since the war in which Armenians took over the territory as the Soviet Union broke up, and hundreds of thousands of Azeris fled.

Azerbaijan says it is prepared to respect ethnic Armenian rights as it reabsorbs the region, but with a history burdened by folk memories of alleged genocide, ethnic cleansing, pogroms and at least two wars, the Armenians are fleeing in fear.

By Thursday morning, Yerevan said 65,036 people had crossed into neighbouring Armenia, most driving for over 24 hours with their belongings down a choked mountain corridor through Azerbaijan.

“This is one of the darkest pages of Armenian history,” said Father David, a 33-year-old Armenian priest who came to the border to provide spiritual support for those fleeing. “The whole of Armenian history is full of hardships.”

Many of the Armenians in heavily laden cars, trucks, buses and even tractors spoke of spending cold mountain nights with hunger and fear churning in their stomachs.

In Soviet times, Nagorno-Karabakh enjoyed autonomy within the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.

But as the Soviet Union crumbled the First Karabakh War erupted. About 30,000 people were killed between 1988 and 1994 and more than a million people displaced, more than half of them Azeris. In 2020, Azerbaijan struck back, reclaiming swathes of land in and around Karabakh in a 44-day war, and setting the stage for last week’s conquest.

Azerbaijan on Wednesday arrested Ruben
Vardanyan, a banker and philanthropist who headed Karabakh’s separatist government between November 2022 and February 2023. On Thursday it said he had bee charged with illegally crossing Azerbaijan’s border.

Its victory and the surrender of Karabakh’s weapons change the contours of the South Caucasus, where Russia, the United States, Turkey and Iran all vie for influence.

Armenia has blamed its ally Russia, preoccupied with the war in Ukraine, for not doing anything to help. But Moscow says Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has only himself to blame, and should not have sought closer ties with the West.

The United States, home to the world’s second largest Armenian diaspora, has courted Armenia with words and humanitarian aid but criticised Azerbaijan, which has close relations with Turkey.

Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), met Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku on Wednesday after visiting Armenia.

Power “stressed the urgency of allowing unhindered humanitarian access to Nagorno-Karabakh, including those stuck in the Lachin Corridor, and the urgent need for expanded access for humanitarian groups”, a spokesperson said.

“The Azerbaijani president noted that the civilian population had not been harmed during the anti-terrorist measures, and only illegal Armenian armed formations and military facilities had been targeted,” Azerbaijan said.

“Touching upon the rights of Armenian residents living in the Karabakh region, President Ilham Aliyev emphasized that, like other ethnic minorities living in Azerbaijan, their rights would be ensured within the framework of the country’s legislation and international obligations.”

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Switzerland’s glaciers suffered their second worst melt rate this year after record 2022 losses, shrinking their overall volume by 10% in the last two years, monitoring body GLAMOS said on Thursday.

The one-two punch for Swiss glaciers during the country’s third hottest summer on record means they lost as much ice in two years as in the three decades before 1990, it said, describing the losses as “catastrophic”.

“This year was very problematic for glaciers because there was really little snow in winter, and the summer was very warm,” Matthias Huss, who leads Glacier Monitoring Switzerland (GLAMOS), told Reuters.

“The combination of these two factors is the worst that can happen to glaciers.”

More than half of the glaciers in the Alps are in Switzerland where temperatures are rising by around twice the global average due to climate change.

This year, low winter snowfall combined with an early start and a late end to the summer melt season dealt the heavy losses, GLAMOS said.

In the peak melt month of August, the Swiss weather service said the elevation at which precipitation freezes hit a new record overnight high, measured at 5,289 meters (17,350 ft), an altitude higher than Mont Blanc’s summit. This exceeded last year’s record of 5,184 meters.

Pictures posted by Huss on social media during data collection trips in recent weeks showed for the first time on record new lakes forming next to glacier tongues, streams of melt water running through ice caves, and bare rock poking out from thinning ice. In some places, bodies lost long ago have been recovered as ice sheets have shrunk.

“We are really losing the small glaciers,” Huss said. “The remnant ice is becoming covered by rocks and debris, regions that have been snow and ice covered over the last decades and centuries are becoming just black slopes that are dangerous because of rockfall.”

In some places, GLAMOS had to cease monitoring due to the melt.

“We have closed down one of our monitoring programs on a small glacier in central Switzerland because it just became too dangerous to measure,” Huss said. “It became very small and therefore unrepresentative.”

Swiss records go back to at least 1960 and as far back as 1914 for some glaciers.

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Conditioning U.S. aid to Israel is a nonstarter for the many Republicans and Democrats who require an ironclad guarantee for the U.S.-Israel alliance. But former President Donald Trump, fresh off a trip to Israel in 2017, expressed annoyance when told he couldn’t leverage U.S. military aid to Israel to broker a peace deal with the Palestinians, a new book claims. 

“I was told ‘there’s no connection,’” Trump told a group of journalists during a dinner at the White House, according to  Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post, which is scheduled for release on Tuesday.

“No connection?” Trump added in disbelief. 

The book’s author, Martin Baron, was executive editor of The Washington Post at the time of the dinner, which he attended with other journalists from the newspaper.

Frustrations with Netanyahu

Trump’s inquiry about conditioning the annual $3.8 billion in U.S. assistance to Israel came after he met with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on that June 2017 trip.

According to a recent book by Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, Trump was more impressed with the Palestinian leader. “I thought he was terrific,” Trump said of Abbas in an interview with the author. “I thought he wanted to make a deal more than Netanyahu.”

Trump also complained to then-Israeli President Reuven Rivlin that “Bibi doesn’t want peace,” according to Netanyahu’s recent memoir.

Trump repeatedly groused about Netanyahu’s refusal to go along with his idea for an “ultimate deal” with the Palestinians. He expressed frustration that he had to postpone the rollout of his Middle East peace plan, blaming Netanyahu’s failure to form a government after several rounds of elections. When the plan was unveiled at the White House on January 28, 2020, Netanyahu caused an uproar by suggesting the U.S. initiative was a green light for the annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Trump’s Israel record

Despite his suggestion to condition military aid, and the sometimes rocky relationship between the two leaders, Trump was hailed by Netanyahu as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.” During his tenure, the U.S. embassy was relocated from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the U.S. formally recognized Israel’s control over the Golan Heights and withdrew from the Iran deal, and four Arab countries signed normalization deals with Israel. 

A 2019 Pew Research Center poll showed 71% of Israelis had faith in Trump’s leadership and 55% approved of his policies. 

Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024 and is in a statistical tie with President Joe Biden, according to recent polls. GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy recently came under fire for pledging to end Israel’s dependence on U.S. assistance. 

The post Trump was frustrated that he couldn’t leverage U.S. aid to push Israel toward a peace deal, book claims appeared first on The Forward.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin returns to the United States Thursday after wrapping up his first tour across the African continent as Pentagon chief.

Austin started his tour in Djibouti, home to the primary U.S. military base on the African continent. There he met with Djiboutian leaders and Somalia’s president, whose forces, Austin said, had made more progress against the al-Shabab terror group in the past year than the previous five years combined. 

Austin then turned to Kenya, visiting a base in Manda Bay near the Somali border where a terrorist attack in 2020 killed three Americans. 

 

“Message here being very clear that the war on terror still remains top on the agenda of the American government,” said Vincent Kimosop, a policy analyst with Sovereign Insight. 

 

The American and Kenyan defense secretaries signed a five-year security agreement to support working together against their common terror threat. 

 

Austin also pledged $100 million in support of Kenyan security deployments, as Kenya prepares to lead a multinational peacekeeping mission to Haiti to combat gang violence. 

 

“Kenya is ready, Kenya is willing to lead that multinational peacekeeping force that will go to Haiti,” said Kenyan Cabinet Secretary of Defense Aden Duale.

 

Austin ended his trip on Africa’s western coast, becoming the first U.S. defense secretary to ever visit Angola. Officials of both nations are hopeful that Angola can dump Russia as its arms supplier and opt for American-made weapons.

“Africa deserves better than outsiders trying to tighten their grip on this continent,” Austin said. “Africa deserves better than autocrats selling cheap guns, pushing mercenary forces like the Wagner Group or depriving grain from hungry people all around the world.”

 

Austin called out African military juntas without naming Burkina Faso, Gabon, Mali or Niger. It was his most forceful rhetoric since the military removed Niger’s elected president from power in July. 

 

“When generals overturn the will of the people and put their own ambitions above the rule of law, security suffers — and democracy dies,” Austin said. “Militaries exist to defend their people, not to defy them. And Africa needs militaries that serve their citizens and not the other way around.” 

 

France decided this week to withdraw its military forces from Niger by the end of the year, and analysts say the U.S. could follow suit should the Nigerien military not return the elected government to power. 

 

“Niger has become the key hub, the key center of counterterrorism operations for the U.S. and France in the region,” said Bill Roggio of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “And if this is, if it’s cut back, or if it’s reduced, or if it’s ended, there is no other assets in the region that the U.S. can use.”

 

The U.S. has so far kept its forces in Niger, but the Pentagon has declined to conduct counterterror operations with Niger’s military.

Republican presidential hopefuls take to the debate stage on Wednesday night in California. VOA is on the ground in Armenia. In what appears to be an international effort, an American soldier is freed from North Korea. Plus Women in Indian-Administered Kashmir are finding their voice.

Former vice president and 2024 presidential candidate Mike Pence was hot for teacher during Wednesday evening’s second GOP debate, boasting that he’s “been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years.”

“My wife, uh, isn’t a member of the teachers’ union, but I’ve got to admit, I’ve been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years,” Pence said after fielding a question on education.

Pence’s wife, Karen, taught elementary school for more than two decades before Pence was elected governor of Indiana in 2012.

The post BEASTMODE: Pence Says He’s ‘Been Sleeping With a Teacher For 38 Years’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley snapped at fellow 2024 challenger Vivek Ramaswamy for his prolific use of Chinese spyware app TikTok, telling him during Wednesday evening’s second GOP debate that she feels “a little bit dumber” when he speaks.

“Honestly, every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say,” Haley interjected as Ramaswamy praised TikTok’s ability to connect politicians with younger voters. “This is infuriating, because TikTok is one of the most dangerous social media apps that we could have.”

TikTok—and China’s spy operations more broadly—have been a hot topic among the 2024 GOP challengers, with each vowing to enact an outright ban on the app’s use in America. Ramaswamy, who later clarified that he would also ban the app eventually, said he views it as an important platform to connect with younger voters.

More than “150 million people are on TikTok,” Haley told Ramaswamy. “That means they can get your contacts, they can get your financial information, they can get your emails, they can get your text messages, they can get all of these things. China knows what it is doing.”

Shortly after the exchange, Fox News cut to a commercial break that featured a TikTok ad.

The post BEASTMODE: Nikki Haley to Vivek: ‘Every Time I Hear You, I Feel A Little Bit Dumber’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.