West Bank: Israeli forces kill Palestinian teenager in Nablus amid rising settler violence

ASSISSINATED BY IDF SNIPER WITH KILL SHOT

The Palestinian health ministry says Gaith Yamin, 

16, died of a bullet to the head

Gaith Yamin, 16, was fatally shot in the head by Israeli forces on 25 May 2022

 (Twitter)

By MEE staff
Published date: 25 May 2022

Israeli forces shot and killed a 16-year-old Palestinian on Wednesday in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The ministry identified the teen as Gaith Yamin, who it said was shot in the head in the vicinity of Joseph's Tomb.

Israeli settlers, protected by soldiers, arrived at the tomb early on Wednesday and were confronted by Palestinian residents who object to their presence in the city.

The Israeli army violently dispersed the Palestinian crowds, firing live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets and teargas.

At least 80 Palestinians were wounded, according to Palestinian medics. Most of the injuries were caused by rubber-coated steel bullets.


The Israeli army said it responded with live fire to hundreds of Palestinians who hurled rocks and petrol bombs at soldiers while they escorted settlers to Joseph's Tomb.

The shrine, revered by Muslims and Jews, is a regular flashpoint between Palestinians and Israelis.

The Palestinian education ministry condemned the killing in a statement and stressed the need "to deter the occupation and hold it accountable for its heinous crimes".

Israeli forces have killed more than 50 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank this year, including many teenagers and prominent journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

On Saturday, Amjad al-Fayed, 17, was killed by Israeli forces during a raid in Jenin.
Settler attacks

The killing of Yamin comes amid a wave of settler violence against Palestinians in Nablus, located in the northern region of the West Bank.

On Tuesday night, several attacks on Palestinian civilians and properties were reported by local media in the towns of Huwara, Burqa, Urif and Burin.

At least six people were injured and damage was recorded to vehicles and shops, according to the Palestinian news website Arab48.

Rising settler violence against Palestinians in Burqa reignites struggle over landRead More »

Settler violence across the West Bank has seen an “alarming” rise since 2021, according to United Nations experts.

Some 370 settler attacks that led to damage to property were recorded in 2021 and a further 126 assaults caused casualties.

Violence carried out by settlers includes the use of live fire, physical assaults, arson attacks and uprooting of olive trees.

This year, more than 541 injuries to Palestinians caused by settlers were documented so far, of which 217 were in Nablus alone.

Around 16 of those injuries were caused by live ammunition. At least one Palestinian was killed by an Israeli settler this year.

There are more than 600,000 settlers who live in over 200 settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in breach of international law.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Americans Must Demand an Independent Investigation of Shireen Abu Akleh’s Killing

BY PHYLLIS BENNIS – RICHARD FALK

 MAY 26, 2022
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Shireen Abu Akleh was a seasoned al-Jazeera correspondent for the past 25 years. She was known and respected throughout the Arab world for her brave, honest reporting of the Palestinian struggle.

On May 11, she was shot and killed while covering an Israeli raid on the Palestinian refugee camp outside Jenin.

Abu Akleh’s killing in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was shocking, but hardly unusual. According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, she was the 86th journalist to be killed while covering Israeli oppression since Israel first occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem in 1967.

But her killing is part of a longer pattern of Israeli violence and collective punishment — not just against journalists but against all Palestinians — committed with impunity and rationalized by trumped up “security” concerns.

The depth of this abuse was again made shockingly visible after the killing itself, when Israeli police attacked the funeral procession carrying Shireen’s body to the church. They threw Palestinian flags to the ground and violently beat mourners — including the pallbearers, who nearly dropped the casket.

The killing of Shireen and the assault on the funeral procession demonstrated once again the structural nature of Israeli racism and violence against Palestinians. As Amnesty International describes it, Israel’s “regular violations of Palestinians’ rights are not accidental repetitions of offenses, but part of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination.”

There’s no serious question that Abu Akleh was deliberately killed by an Israeli sniper. She was wearing a helmet and a blue protective vest marked “PRESS” and surrounded by other journalists when the group was fired on. She was shot in the head and killed. Another Palestinian journalist was shot and seriously injured.

As so often happens, Israeli officials immediately tried to blame the Palestinians. Israeli officials from Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on down made unconvincing claims that Palestinian gunmen were responsible for the killing. Within hours, fieldworkers for the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem easily refuted the Israeli claims.

By the time Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with his Israeli counterpart Benny Gantz on May 17, Tel Aviv had largely pulled back from its claims of Palestinian culpability. The Israeli press claimed that Gantz had indicated Israel welcomed an investigation of Shireen’s killing.

But that claim (unmentioned in the Pentagon’s read-out of the meeting) flew in the face of reports that Israel had already decidedit would not investigate, because questioning Israeli soldiers as potential suspects “would provoke opposition and controversy within the IDF and in Israeli society in general.”

Such a pattern of denial is but one aspect of a broader pattern of oppression that is much more pervasive.

Israel itself makes no secret of this. The country’s own Basic Law of 2018 explicitly gives only Jewish citizens of Israel, not Palestinian citizens, the right of self-determination.

Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, along with B’tselem, have concluded that this pattern constitutes the crime of apartheid. This international crime, and its associated human rights violations and war crimes, has continued for decades while political, diplomatic, economic, and military support from the United States goes forward unconditionally.

Washington sends more than $3.8 billion every year directly to the Israeli military, most of it used to purchase U.S.-made weapons systems, ammunition, and more. This makes the U.S. complicit in Israel’s criminal wrongdoing.

So what needs to happen now?

International engagement is crucial. The International Criminal Court has the authority to add the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and attacks on Palestinian journalists to its existing investigations of alleged Israeli crimes. A variety of UN bodies could also respond by issuing reports that offer policy recommendations.

Calls for an independent, credible investigation need to include a focus on United States responsibility.

Biden administration officials and some members of Congress have called for an investigation of Abu Akleh’s killing. That’s welcome, but hardly sufficient. Israel has a long history of conducting its own investigations, and virtually all result in impunity for Israeli military forces. High-ranking military officials and political decision makers are never even scrutinized.

We in the United States should insist on more.

Why? Above all, because our own tax dollars pay for 20 percent of Israel’s entire military budget. The bullet or the gun used to kill Shireen could have even been purchased from U.S. weapons manufacturers with our own money.

If that’s the case, we need to know — because U.S. laws prohibit it.

The Leahy Law’s restrictions on military aid is unequivocal: “No assistance shall be furnished,” it says, “to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”

Credible information, including from Israel’s leading human rights organization and five respected journalists standing with Shireen Abu Akleh when she was killed, indicates she was shot in cold blood. If that isn’t sufficient, the State Department should propose an independent, UN-based fact-finding team to prepare a report.

Militarism is on the rise, both in the U.S. and around the world. Maybe the brutal killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, a U.S. citizen as well as a proud Palestinian born in Jerusalem — and the police attack on mourners grieving her death — will provide an impetus toward rethinking Washington’s unconditional support of Israeli lawlessness.

Phyllis Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and serves on the national board of Jewish Voice for Peace. She’s the author of Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer.

Richard Falk is the Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and a former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. He lives in Santa Barbara.

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Shireen Abu Akleh's killing: A culture of impunity is the norm in Israel's occupation


In-depth: The decision not to investigate the Palestinian journalist's killing reflects a culture of impunity for the systemic violence required to maintain Israel's military occupation.

Ali Adam
23 May, 2022

The killing of veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh shocked Palestinians and led to an outpouring of grief, but the subsequent whitewashing of Israel’s accountability for her killing held few surprises.

Faced with widespread condemnation after her death, Israel initially resorted to blaming Palestinians for her killing by circulating video footage showing gunmen firing indiscriminately in Jenin.

Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem quickly debunked the Israeli army’s narrative, proving that the video was in a location far from where Abu Akleh was killed, forcing Israeli authorities to backtrack on their claim.

"It was never an understatement to say that international impunity for Israel is the backbone of the occupation"

Senior Israeli army officers then switched to a different but familiar narrative; that a soldier from an elite IDF unit may have ‘accidentally’ shot her, suggesting that there were armed Palestinians in the vicinity of Abu Akleh when soldiers opened fire.

Palestinian eyewitnesses and journalists at the scene reject this. They say that Shireen and her colleagues were clearly identifiable as journalists and were wearing flak jackets and helmets marked PRESS. There were no clashes in the area at the time, they said.

Recent video footage of the last few seconds prior to the incident confirms this. The video shows relative calm in the area, with the Al-Jazeera team, among other people, casually walking around and talking when they were targeted.

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Analysis

Marc Owen Jones

In the end, last week Israel’s military announced that it was not planning an investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing on the grounds that there is no suspicion of a criminal act. Case closed.

“Israeli investigations into its own crimes have always been little more than public relations stunts staged for damage control following a crime that caused a massive blow to Israel’s standing among its Western allies, but with no real intentions to enforce accountability,” Muhammad Shehada, from the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, told The New Arab.

“But what Israel has found over the years, and especially the past few years, is that no matter how much it escalates its illegal and criminal actions against the Palestinians, Western, and especially American, support remains the same,” he added.

Israeli human rights group Yesh Din condemned Israel’s response, saying the army’s own law enforcement mechanisms are no longer even pretending to give the appearance of investigating.

“Israel didn’t even bother to stage the usual stunt of a full investigation into the killing of Shireen. You only need PR stunts when you have conditional support from your allies,” Shehada added.

“It was never an understatement to say that international impunity for Israel is the backbone of the occupation.”

The decision not to investigate Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing is consistent with Israel’s record over the decades. [Getty]

A history of impunity

For Palestinians, the decision by Israel not to investigate Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing is consistent with Israel’s record over the decades, whether with journalists or civilians.

In April 2018, journalist Yasser Murtaja was shot by an Israeli sniper as he covered Gaza’s borders protests. He was also wearing a press jacket when he was shot.

Faced with outrage over his murder, the Israeli government alleged that Murtaja was a member of Hamas’ military wing, a charge that didn’t hold given that a month before his killing he was offered a grant by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) which said that its vetting process found no ties to militant activities.

Ultimately, no one was brought to justice.

"Israel sees the brutal force it exacts against Palestinians as a necessity to maintain its military occupation regime over millions of Palestinians"

Similarly, Fadel Shanaa, a Palestinian cameraman for Reuters, was killed in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza in 2008, when an Israeli tank opened fire on him and his crew. Shanaa was also wearing body armour that identified him as a journalist. Israel conducted an investigation and exonerated its troops.

But it’s not only journalists. Palestinian medic Razan Najjar was killed by the Israeli army while she was trying to evacuate the wounded during Gaza’s border protests in 2018.

She held up her hands as she approached the injured near the border fence and was clearly wearing a white medical vest. Israeli soldiers shot her in the chest.

Israel’s military subsequently tried to insinuate that she was being used as a ‘human shield’ by Hamas. Again, no Israeli soldier was held accountable.

RELATED

The human cost of Israel's war on Gaza

In-depth

Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman

Perhaps the most high-profile incident in recent years was the killing of Abdul Fatah al-Sharif, 21, in Hebron by Israeli soldier Elor Azaria. Caught on camera shooting the injured man in the head from close range, the incident provoked widespread condemnation.

However, after serving nine months in military jail he was pardoned and released, going on to become a hero for many in Israel’s right-wing circles and a local celebrity.

During the Second Intifada the killing of Rachel Corrie also garnered international attention. The American peace activist was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer while protesting the demolition of a Palestinian home in Gaza.

After years of campaigning by her family and high-profile hearings, Israel’s Supreme Court in 2015 upheld a decision which invoked the ‘combat activities exception’, which exempts the Israeli military from liability during ‘wartime activity’.

"Only 0.7% of complaints against Israeli soldiers filed by Palestinians lead to indictments. Over 80% of cases are closed without a criminal investigation ever taking place"

Palestinians are more than aware that these well-known cases of impunity are the norm. Data collected by Israeli rights group Yesh Din shows that only 0.7% of complaints against Israeli soldiers filed by Palestinians lead to indictments.

Over 80% of cases are closed without a criminal investigation ever taking place.

Citing the failure of Israel’s army in bringing soldiers to justice, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem announced in 2016 that it would stop filing complaints of abuse altogether, as they cause more harm than good to Palestinian plaintiffs.

“Israel’s history of conducting investigations into its army’s crimes shows that they are not meant to seek accountability, but rather to grant blanket impunity to its soldiers,” Shehada said.

“These criminal actions are not outliers, they’re an everyday reality for the Palestinians, and everyday practices of the Israeli military occupation. And they’re not individuals’ behaviour, they’re meticulously designed state behaviour,” he added.

“Israel sees the brutal force it exacts against Palestinians as a necessity to maintain its military occupation regime over millions of Palestinians.”

Ali Adam is a journalist and researcher whose work focuses on issues linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Follow him on Twitter @_AliAdam_

Shireen Abu Akleh's killing is just the tip of the iceberg in Israel's war on journalism

While the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh shocked the world, it was far from an aberration in Israel's fight to contain the truth and control the narrative about its human rights abuses, writes Lowkey.

Lowkey
25 May, 2022

Demonstrators gather in Paris as part of worldwide protests against the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces. Abu Akleh was the 55th journalists to be killed since 2000. [Getty]

The violent spectacle of Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing at the hands of Israeli occupation forces has exposed Israel’s multi-faceted war against journalism, and its fight to prevent the truth about its crimes from being exposed. As often is the case, it starts with the Palestinians but doesn’t end there.

The shockwaves from the 5.56 mm bullet that hit the exposed part of Shireen’s head under her press helmet continue to reverberate around the world. Her killing must not be decontextualised and separated from Israel’s wider machine targeting courageous journalists pursuing truth, whether in Palestine or elsewhere.

The morbid truth is that in the tortured logic of apartheid PR, Shireen Abu Akleh is more dangerous to the Zionist project dead than alive. It is rare that Israel is actually forced to battle the ghosts of its crimes, but Shireen will be one such ghost.

Her name is now known by millions who can’t speak the language she so diligently reported in for almost 30 years, but it must not be exceptionalised. The name Shireen Abu Akleh stands on a proud list of martyrs, who despite clothing publicly identifying them as press, were killed by Israeli occupation forces.

"The name Shireen Abu Akleh stands on a proud list of martyrs, who despite clothing publicly identifying them as press, were killed by Israeli occupation forces"

Systematic targeting of journalists

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate documented 870 violations by the occupation against journalists in 2021, but Israel’s targeting of journalists goes back decades. According to the Palestinian Journalists’ Union, 55 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israel over the since the turn of the century.

The name of Shireen Abu Akleh must be held high along others like Yasser Murtaja who was killed covering the Great March of Return from Gaza by an Israeli sniper, as well as Nazih Darwazeh, Basil Farraj, Ahmed Abu Hussein, Fadel Shana, Issam Tillawi, Khaled Reyadh Hamad, Mahmoud al-Kumi and James Miller, all killed by Israeli forces despite being clearly identified as press by their clothing.

Reporters Without Borders asserts that at least 144 Palestinian journalists have been seriously injured by Israeli forces since 2018, with methods of repression ranging from live ammunition to rubber coated steel bullets, to batons, stun grenades and teargas.

Another disturbing way in which Israel suppresses journalism is through the prosecuting of Palestinian journalists with the claim that their work is tantamount to incitement. Between 2015 and 2018, almost 500 Palestinians were arrested by occupation forces on charges of incitement merely for things they posted on social media. Many of them were journalists and some were even children.

It is believed there are 15 Palestinian journalists currently in occupation jails for supposed incitement. Several of these journalists are being held in administrative detention, which has no fixed period and can last as long as a year and six months. Lawyers have claimed that the sentences of imprisonment for social media posts can be affected by how well received they are online, and in some cases the more likes a post attracts the longer the prison sentence is.

Controlling the narrative beyond Palestine

According to the International Middle East Media Centre, any foreign journalist who attempts to report from occupied Palestine is “required to register with the Israeli military.” It is also asserted that “any footage they film is required to go through the Israeli Military Censor’s office” before it can be used outside. But the fluidity of the internet has provided ways around this totalitarian arrangement.

The NSO Group, which gave birth to the Pegasus Spyware, is described by the Jerusalem Post as an “informal arm of the Israeli government.” It was founded by IDF Military Intelligence Unit 8200 alumni and has exported its spyware to many different states across the world. This spyware has been used to target thousands of journalists from major newspapers and channels.

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Voices

Randa Abdel-Fattah

The question that remains in contention is to what extent the NSO Group has access to the information obtained when other states use Pegasus to invade the privacy of journalists and human rights activists. Court documents reveal that Cherie Blair, a supposed human rights lawyer who sits on the Advisory Board of the NSO Group, was made aware by the company that the ruler of Dubai had hacked his ex-wife’s phone through use of Pegasus, and then passed on this information to the target.

If NSO has no access to the information Pegasus is used to obtain by other governments, how exactly would Blair be made aware of this? If NSO does, in fact, have access to the data procured using its spyware, that means an arm of the Israeli government was present in the phones of at least 50,000 people, including thousands of journalists, worldwide.

A key part of Israel’s war against journalism operations in the UK is the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), which is bankrolled by a scion of arms manufacturing family, Poju Zublodawicz. His father founded Soltam Systems, which went on to be subsumed into Israel’s largest arms giant, Elbit Systems.

Protesters hold press vests with names of journalists killed by Israeli forces during a demonstration against the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh outside the BBC office in London on May 14, 2022. [Getty]

The organisation is headed by a current reserve in the IDF and previous employee of the Israeli PM office Richard Pater. BICOM is focused on inserting a pro-Israel narrative into media coverage in Britain. It employs numerous politicians and journalists to advocate for its interests in the public sphere. It has worked extensively with US lobby group AIPAC on “developing grassroots networks” and has coordinated with the Israeli Embassy on anti-BDS campaigns in Britain.

One journalist who works closely with BICOM is the City Editor of the Daily Mail, Alex Brummer, who can factually be described as an Israel lobbyist. Simultaneous to his role at the Daily Mail, he chairs an organisation called the Abraham Initiatives, which is funded by the Israeli Ministry of Justice.

According to the Abraham Initiatives Trustees Report, it exists to "advance synergy between Israeli bodies & respective agencies & institutions in the UK." In addition to his role there, Brummer is also a Vice-President of the Board of Deputies, which also asserts in its 2020 Trustees Report that it has a “close working relationship with the Israeli Embassy in the UK and strengthened links with the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the IDF.”

"This is the lesson from history: there is no justice possible in this malignant system, only a careful management of injustice and the arrogantly curated containment of righteous indignation"

Lessons from history

The treatment of mourners at Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral, which so deeply shocked the insufferable pro-Israel liberals across English language media, while a horrific spectacle, was not an aberration for Israeli occupation forces (IOF). Lina Abu Akleh, the niece of Shireen, told me in my interview with her this week that she was “threatened personally” by the IOF with physical attack at the funeral.

Less than a year before Shireen’s killing, the IOF shot and killed Shawkat Khalil Awad at the funeral of a 12 year-old child, Mohammad al-Alaama, they had shot dead just the day before. None of this violence is new, it just appears more shorn of its pretensions than ever before.

Another lesson from history, which may be particularly harsh, is the killing of the US citizen, Rachel Corrie, in Gaza by an IOF driven bulldozer in 2003. As it did with Shireen, who was also a US citizen, the US government proceeded in the aftermath to whisper sweet nothings in hopes of containing the pulsations of rage from those mourning and demanding justice.]

The company that manufactured the bulldozer, Caterpillar, then hired the private intelligence company C2i to infiltrate the campaign and spy on Rachel's parents as they struggled for justice.

This is the lesson from history: there is no justice possible in this malignant system, only a careful management of injustice and the arrogantly curated containment of righteous indignation. Israel’s war against journalism will only escalate from here.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi hip hop artist, academic and political campaigner. He is a patron of Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the Racial Justice Network and The Peace and Justice Project founded by Jeremy Corbyn. His latest album Soundtrack To The Struggle 2 featured Noam Chomsky, Frankie Boyle and Ken Loach and has been streamed millions of times.

Follow him on Twitter: @Lowkey0nline

Have questions or comments? Email us at: editorial-english@alaraby.co.uk

Opinions expressed here are the author's own, and do not necessarily reflect those of their employer, or of The New Arab and its editorial board or staff.

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Will Israel survive without US support?

Tehran, IRNA – Israel’s dependency on the United States has grown to the extent that has raised doubts whether the regime’s existence can continue without the help of the White House, despite Tel Aviv’s efforts to gain political and economic independence.

Ties between Israel and the US were limited and in fact very cold until the end of 1960s. Relations then turned into a classical form of supporter-client in 1970s and began to become strategic in 1980s, as we see today.

The two sides now have close ties in political, diplomatic, military, and economic fields, among other things. That has raised different opinions about the type of the relations between Washington and Tel Aviv and the fact that which side has dominance over the other.

Moreover, those close ties have raised serious doubts about the future of the Zionist regime and the final cap of the US support for it.

-- US’s all-out support

It is the fifth decade that US-Israel relations have evolved from two-player international ties to reach the current level that Tel Aviv has become a special and strategic partner of Washington. There are surprising figures on the amount of US support for Israel as well as its financial and weapon aid to the regime.

The US has paid political prices for making Israel survive more than any other political issue. Since 1970s, the US has used its veto power at the UN Security Council more than 80 times to annul demand and resolutions by the council. According to Qatar-based Al Jazeera News Network, 53 out of those cases were in support of Israel and rejecting the resolutions meant to put pressure on the regime.  

Economically and financially, the United States’ support for Israel has been unprecedented, and the regime has been the biggest receiver of military assistance from Washington.

Until some years ago, the United States had spent more than 146 billion dollars as aid to Israel so far, of which an average of around four billion dollars has been allocated to weapons and arms aids per annum.

The US provides Israel the largest aids in the framework of the regime’s military supremacy doctrine in the Middle East in order to turn it into a regime with the most up-to-date weaponry. Therefore, American authorities refuse to provide Arab states in the region with updated weapons.

However, the White House’s Look East policy in recent years has prompted the Tel Aviv regime to make itself independent from Washington.

Israel is a pariah regime in the eyes of Arab and Muslim public opinion throughout the region and as a result of its lack of strategic depth, the regime does not feel secure.

Even hand-made rockets of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip can reach every point in occupied territories.

In terms of economy and industry, Israel does not have any independent and inclusive economic sector, which can supply its own demands.

The most important source of income of the regime comes from tourism industry, which can be affected badly if insecurity or chaos forces tourists out of the occupied lands.

– Israel’s endeavor for independence

Middle East Monitor, a research website, analyzed US-Israel ties, writing that Israeli officials traveled to several countries to discuss Ukraine War in order to improve Israel’s geopolitical situation both in the Middle East and Europe.

New York Times reported in 2021 that the US’s financial support for Israel stood at about 10 percent of Israeli economy, while the Americans’ four billion dollars in 2020 was estimated as 1 percent of the economy.

Israel is well-aware that the US has changed its political approach towards the Middle East and it is leaning towards the Pacific Ocean and Eastern Europe, so the regime has adopted the strategy of independence and maturity.

– Will Israel survive?

Newsweek weekly has reported that four decades of relationship between the US and Israel ended up in dependence of Tel Aviv on Washington and that the dependency is so deep that it should be asked if Israel can survive without American support.

Israel suffers from severe weaknesses in terms of security issues and because of lack of strategic depth and excessive dependency on revenues from tourism industry, the regime does not have so much flexibility in terms of budget deficit.

Moreover, Israel is fully dependent on the US concerning supply of arms and ammunitions, so other countries such as the UK, France, Russia, and China cannot take the US’s position in affording iron dome and missile power or joint cyber operations.

The general support for Israel may be at a high level in the United States, but political and social trends in the superpower can affect future relationship between the two allies destructively, so Israel may survive, but undoubtedly the continuation of its existence would become very hard and it will experience less security in a much poorer territory; thus, Israeli factions are not keen on returning to dependence on the US.

4208**9417

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Fresh sandstorms wreak havoc as thousands hospitalised across Middle East

Sandstorms ripped through Gulf states as well as Iran, Iraq and Syria this week, putting thousands in hospital and disrupting flights.

The New Arab Staff & Agencies
25 May, 2022

Sandstorms have ripped through much of the Middle East over the past few days 

[Anadolu via Getty]

The latest in a series of sandstorms has torn through much of the Middle East in the last few days, sending thousands to hospital with breathing difficulties.

For the second time this month, Kuwait International Airport suspended all flights Monday because of the dust. Video showed largely empty streets with poor visibility. Flights resumed on Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia’s meteorological association reported that visibility would drop to zero on the roads in Riyadh, the capital, this week. Officials warned drivers to go slowly. Emergency rooms in the city were flooded with 1,285 patients this month complaining they couldn’t breathe properly.

Iran last week shut down schools and government offices in the capital of Tehran over a sandstorm that swept the country. It hit hardest in the nation’s southwest desert region of Khuzestan, where over 800 people sought treatment for breathing difficulties. Dozens of flights out of western Iran were canceled or delayed.

In Syria, sandstorms wreaked damage on camps in the Raqqa area in the country's north, with a number of camp residents taken to hospital because of breathing difficulties, North Press Agency reported.

Sandstorms in northern and eastern Syria earlier this month killed five people, the Syrian news outlet reported.

The Middle East's sandstorms are becoming more frequent and intense, a trend associated with overgrazing and deforestation, overuse of river water and more dams.

Experts say the phenomenon could worsen as climate change warps regional weather patterns and drives desertification.

Iraq has been particularly hard hit by the storms, with thousands of people hospitalised by the barrage of sand storms this spring.

“Its a region-wide issue but each country has a different degree of vulnerability and weakness,” Jaafar Jotheri, a geoarchaeologist at the University of Al-Qadisiyah in Baghdad told AFP.

In Iraq, desertification exacerbated by record-low rainfall is adding to the intensity of storms, Jotheri said.

“Because of 17 years of mismanagement of water and urbanisation, Iraq lost more than two thirds of its green cover,” he said. “That is why Iraqis are complaining more than their neighbors about the sandstorms in their areas.”

Iraq's meteorological society forecast "rising dust" in parts of the country until the weekend.

Last week, the world's tallest building - the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai - vanished behind a layer of dust because of a sandstorm.

Iraq Report: 

Iraq is facing an ecological disaster

Once known for its fertile lands and lush agriculture, Iraq is facing an impending climate crisis as drought, incessant sand storms and scorching heat, compounded by a failing government, promise a difficult summer.

The New Arab
24 May, 2022

For thousands of years, Iraq and ancient Mesopotamia have been known as a green, fertile land surrounded by an otherwise inhospitable climate. Iraq is also known in Arabic as Bilad al-Rafidayn, or the Land of the Two Rivers, in reference to the Tigris and Euphrates that have long sustained some of the world’s oldest civilisations.

Despite this rich and fertile history, Iraq’s water sources are drying up due to domestic neglect and regional powers such as Turkey and Iran damming up waters that have historically flowed through the country.

If Iraq’s water resources – vital to life – are put under any additional strain, conflicts could erupt not over fossil fuels, but over this key fundamental resource that is essential to life – both human and otherwise.

"If Iraq's water resources – vital to life – are put under any additional strain, conflicts could erupt not over fossil fuels, but over this key fundamental resource that is essential to life – both human and otherwise"

Desertification and dust storms

In recent weeks, Iraq has been buffeted by seemingly incessant dust storms that have covered the Middle Eastern country in an ominous orange haze. Aside from the obvious respiratory conditions that these dust storms have caused, they have also led to fatalities.

Flights were suspended, government offices shuttered, and thousands were hospitalised since Iraq came to a halt, and the dust storms have led to the death of at least one Iraqi and several others in neighbouring Syria.

The latest dust storm is the eighth in just one month with more such incidents expected in the near future, indicating that these are more than simply a freak occurrence.

Adding to the dust storms are Iraq’s now-annual scorching summer heats. While Iraq has always been a hot country, the recent spikes in temperatures – that can hit as high as 50 degrees Celsius – have been amplified recently, particularly due to intermittent electricity and a shortage of air conditioning.

The searing temperatures, increased water and soil salinity, and the gradually declining annual rainfall has led to another problem – food insecurity.

An Iraqi woman walks in the capital Baghdad during one of many sand storms that have hit Iraq since last month, covering the city in a thick orange haze, on May 1, 2022. [Getty]


Already this year, the lack of water has led the Iraqi government to order farmers to cultivate only half the usual land they would be harvesting close to this time of year. The reduced size of arable land, and the added strain of high temperatures and lack of water, have meant that farmers have quite often watched their harvests wilt to half their usual size.

Agriculture ministry spokesman Hamid al-Nayef said the state was helping by raising the purchase price in order to pay producers around $500 per tonne of wheat.

In 2019 and 2020, wheat harvests had reached five million tonnes, enough to guarantee “self-sufficiency” for Iraq, he told AFP.

This season, Iraq may only grow 2.5-3 million tonnes of wheat, “not enough for a whole year for the Iraqis,” Nayef acknowledged. “We will have to import,” he said.

However, that may not be a readily available solution. As is often the case with economics, Iraq’s problems have also been impacted by international worries, particularly as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had an additional knock-on effect on the prices of fuel, fertilisers and seeds.

Russia and Ukraine are both in the top ten of wheat exporters globally, sitting at third and tenth respectively. As the war between the two continues, this has had a significant slowing effect on the export of hundreds of millions of tonnes of wheat, impacting the global supply while simultaneously ramping up prices.

While global warming and the climate crisis have impacted much of the world, it has been felt particularly acutely in Iraq, a country already ravaged by war, mismanagement of natural resources (including water), and a political system that is stunted by corruption and nepotism.

This has left Iraq more vulnerable and susceptible to global shocks – such as Ukraine – in addition to spiralling costs resulting from supply chain problems that have been felt on an international scale, particularly as China – Iraq’s largest investor – attempts to eradicate its latest wave of coronavirus.

It has also left Iraq – weakened by decades of war and a lack of sovereignty – at the mercy of its neighbours.

Turkey, despite its rhetoric that often champions countries deemed to be in need – such as Somalia – seems to have little problem with continuing to build dams on both the Tigris and the Euphrates to generate hydroelectricity. This has led to, in some cases, a drop of almost two-thirds of expected water flow into Iraq.

"While global warming and the climate crisis has impacted much of the world, it has been felt particularly acutely in Iraq, a country already ravaged by war, mismanagement of natural resources, and a political system that is stunted by corruption and nepotism"

While Ankara’s decision to build these dams has alleviated some of Turkey’s energy problems, it has exacerbated Iraq’s water problems, leading to receding river banks, desertification, and increased soil salinity – a death knell for agriculture.

The water flow has been so badly weakened that the salt water of the Arabian Gulf has begun to flow further inland, further damaging Iraq’s soil.

Iraq’s neighbour to the east, meanwhile, has also been the source of damaging water policies. Iran has stymied the flow of the Shatt al-Arab river by digging canals to the Bahmanshir tributary, leading to not only a 90 percent drop in water, but also a shifting of the international border by affecting the Shatt’s dividing thalweg line in favour of Iran.

Such is the level of distress in Iraq at its receding water supplies that the authorities in Baghdad – ordinarily very friendly to Iran – announced in January this year that they would seek legal action against Iran to compel it to respect international treaties.

The thalweg line in the Shatt was one of the key causes behind the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. While there is little chance that Iraq will be able to militarily prosecute a war to secure its borders now, this water and border issue may be the spark of a future conflict between the two uneasy neighbours.

Domestic political impasse continues

Iraq’s political impasse continues as last October’s election winners have continued to fail to form a new government, following staunch resistance from a coalition of rival Shia Islamists who are hesitant to give up their share of power.

Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose bloc won last year’s election, has presided over multiple attempts to form a majority government but has failed to realise his ambitions.

This led him to declare last Sunday on Twitter that his bloc would cede the ground to the other opposition parties to try and form a government, and that his Sairoun coalition will instead sit in the opposition for “no less than 30 days”.

"The longer Iraq stays in political paralysis, the greater the fury felt by Iraqis will be, particularly as the water crisis worsens, summer temperatures cause tempers to flare, and food prices skyrocket"

In a televised address on Monday, a visibly frustrated Sadr accused the “obstructing third” of Iraqi parliamentarians – largely a coalition of pro-Iran Shia Islamists – of being susceptible to “corruption and vice” and blamed them for not allowing the Iraqi people to have a strong, majority government.

Sadr also hinted that he may, once again, call on his supporters to descend on the streets of Iraqi cities to demonstrate.

More than seven months since the last elections, Iraq is still under a caretaker government led by incumbent Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.

However, Kadhimi’s government is powerless to do much beyond administering the civil functions of the state. The Iraqi Supreme Federal Court ruled last week that the caretaker government would not be allowed to pursue a legislative agenda and would instead 
This means that, despite numerous promises of change, Iraqis are once again faced with a political quandary that has seen politicians bickering over ministries and clerics dictating the terms of an Iraqi democracy that has many of the trappings of a Shia theocracy.

Ultimately, it seems likely that they will come to some sort of concession, even if Sadr continuously rules out forming a coalition government. The longer Iraq stays in political paralysis, the greater the fury felt by Iraqis will be, particularly as the water crisis worsens, summer temperatures cause tempers to flare, and food prices skyrocket.

If a new government with a new legislative agenda is not in office soon and, most importantly, is not viewed by Iraqis to be initiating policies that will reduce the terrible burdens that they have been facing since 2003, there is a high chance we may yet witness yet another violent summer.

The Iraq Report is a regular feature at The New Arab.
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Bank of England tells banks to take climate action now or face slashed profits

Reuters
May 24, 2022 

LONDON — Banks and insurers which fail to properly manage climate risks could face a 10% to 15% hit to annual profits and higher capital requirements, the Bank of England said on Tuesday.

In its first comprehensive stress test of how Britain’s financial system’s will cope with climate change and stresses from the shift to a net zero-carbon economy by 2050, the BoE said action now would lower future costs.

Banks and insurers would be able to manage the costs of moving to a net-zero economy if they act now – or else costs will mount, including for customers, the BoE said.

“The first key lesson from this exercise is that over time climate risks will become a persistent drag on banks’ and insurers’ profitability – particularly if they don’t manage them effectively,” said BoE Deputy Governor Sam Woods in a speech.

“While they vary across firms and scenarios, overall loss rates are equivalent to an average drag on annual profits of around 10-15%.”

Banks face pressure from climate activists to cut financing to fossil fuel projects.

But Woods said banks and insurers would need to continue financing more carbon-intensive sectors of the economy to help them transition to a low carbon future.

“Cutting off finance to these corporates too quickly could prove counterproductive, and have wide-ranging macroeconomic and societal consequences, including through elevated energy prices – potentially akin to those whose negative effects we are experiencing today.”

In the most severe climate change scenario posed by the BoE, where no additional measures are taken to reduce the rise in global temperatures, banks and insurers test could face total losses of up to 350 billion pounds if they take no action.

“To the extent that climate change makes the distribution of future shocks nastier, that could imply higher capital requirements, all else equal,” Woods said, adding that a debate was to be had.

Properties at risk of flooding would become prohibitively expensive to insure under the severe scenario, the BoE said.

The BoE tested the ability of 19 banks and insurers to understand how climate change will affect their business models and if they hold enough capital to cover climate-related risks like catastrophes, or falls in the value of property and other assets on their books.

The Bank had already said there would be no pass or fail mark due to the test’s experimental nature, and that the results would not determine capital requirements for now.