AMLO NEO-LIBERAL

AMLO Expanded Mexico’s Military. It Built Airports Instead of Reining In Murders

Andrea Navarro
Fri, April 19, 2024


In his six years as Mexico’s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gave his country’s military two important jobs: build infrastructure works to supercharge the economy and rein in violent crime.


By the end of his presidency, he will have accomplished only one — and left the other worse than ever.

AMLO, as the president is known, has used Mexico’s armed forces to build airports, construct a nearly 1,000-mile long railroad through the Mayan jungle, and create a state-owned airline. Those initiatives are likely to burnish his economic legacy as he prepares to leave office following this June’s presidential election.

Yet Lopez Obrador will leave another legacy as well. His administration has presided over the bloodiest term in the nation’s recent history, with more than 170,000 homicides since he took office in 2018 through February. That is a 26% increase from the 135,345 murders during the term of his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto. And it has happened despite the combined budgets of the armed forces — the Ministries of Defense, Navy and the National Guard — being boosted by 150%.

“This government had the largest legal tools, institutional backup and budget than any other administration, and all the numbers are the worst,” said independent Senator Emilio Alvarez Icaza. “We’re seeing the worst numbers in homicides, in disappeared, in femicide. So the question is, what did they do?”

Nearly all of the extra funds AMLO’s administration provided to the military were directed to refashioning the armed forces into a construction behemoth, according to an analysis by Bloomberg News and Presupuesta Policy Consulting SA. This is the most in-depth assessment of the military’s resources and spending priorities to date. Meanwhile, as heists, kidnappings and extortions proliferated, the budget to train and deploy soldiers remained practically unchanged in real terms.

A separate public security ministry — which finances certain civilian-run public security efforts including the federal prison system — spent nearly 55% less during Lopez Obrador’s administration than Peña Nieto’s, and roughly 12% less than during Calderon’s term. The ministry receives funding for the National Guard, which Bloomberg did not include in this calculation since it is operated by the military.

While the president is flanked by top brass from Mexico’s Defense Ministry and Navy at various ribbon cuttings, cartels have been left to effectively run pockets of Mexican society. They charge locals for everything from Wi-Fi connections to water usage and even the right to have a party. Since the start of this year’s presidential election season on March 1, nearly 400 people connected to politics have been threatened or kidnapped, according to Mexico City-based consultancy Integralia. At least 24 have been murdered.

All of that has made public safety a top issue for voters. One recent poll said 46% feel security has gotten worse during AMLO’s term, and 74% think the government is very corrupt. It’s also ratcheted up tensions with the US, where migration across its southern border with Mexico and the influx of fentanyl-laced drugs are top issues in the presidential race between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

That leaves Mexico’s next president — be it AMLO’s protégé and overwhelming favorite Claudia Sheinbaum or opposition candidate Xochitl Galvez — with limited options for reining in the military’s spending and reach, at least in the short term. In 2022, AMLO changed the constitution to allow the military to handle public security until at least 2028.

“He made it really hard for the next administration to walk everything back unless they have a wide majority in congress,” said Lisa Sanchez, head of Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia, a think tank that published a report called The Business of Militarization. “Their economic and political empowerment carries other risks — they’re a much more powerful force than they used to be.”

The President’s office and the Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment on this article. “There’s talk that the army and the navy are involved in everything,” Lopez Obrador said during one of his regular morning press conferences in January. “It’s not about militarizing the country. It’s about relying on two institutions that are pillars of the Mexican nation and that have helped us deliver in our responsibility to govern.”

In an interview, Arturo Zaldivar, the former head of the Supreme Court who is now helping Sheinbaum design her security strategy, said that “the armed forces have always been loyal in Mexico,” but as far as infrastructure-building goes, “we’d maybe have to re-calculate the role these institutions have. It was important for them to intervene, and we’ll have to see if there’s reason for them to stay.”

On Friday, during Acapulco’s Banking Convention, Sheinbaum said she did believe the National Guard — whose members can be seen patrolling Mexico City’s subways and beaches all over the country — should remain under the Secretary of Defense while existing separate from the army. However, she said she hasn’t yet determined whether several state-owned companies will remain under the armed forces’ jurisdiction or be placed in civilian hands.

“Whoever wins, Xochitl or Claudia, is going to face a lot of problems in ruling this country,” said Maria Elena Morera, activist and head of Causa en Comun AC, a nonprofit that studies security and other issues. “With the military, they have so much power now — maybe they can reach an agreement that’s good for them. But it’s going to be hard to take away all those businesses, and they were the ones who really insisted in handling the country’s security.”

The Public Budget

The program had a very official-sounding name: “National Security Government Infrastructure Projects.” But rather than funding infrastructure works that serve the public like a train line or new airport, the investment program funds upgrades and expansions of the military's footprint.

During AMLO’s administration, the Defense Ministry used the funding to build new air and military bases and remodeled and expanded military hospitals, according to Bloomberg’s analysis of military spending. It also modified a ranch to include an equine reproduction center, added a cargo elevator for a gym at its headquarters in Lomas de Sotelo in Mexico City and built a diving center in Cozumel, among other projects.

What’s also notable is that the military ultimately spent 288% more for the program than the 35.4 billion pesos, or about $2.1 billion, that Congress originally approved from 2019 to 2022. That meant the military infrastructure program accounted for 22% of the Defense Ministry’s annual budget, a leap from the 1% to 3% that was typically allocated during the Calderon and Peña Nieto years.

The Navy’s National Security Government Infrastructure Projects program, meanwhile, now only accounts for 1.5% of its ministry’s overall budget. That’s less than the 2.5% during the Calderon years and the 4.3% during the Peña Nieto era.

The Defense ministry was able to spend more than was allotted for such projects through what’s known as an amendment — a tool that lets a ministry change the budget without Congress’s approval, as is the case in many other countries. Congress is only informed about amendments in rare circumstances where the changes exceed 5% of a given governmental branch’s budget, according to Aura Martinez, an information coordinator at the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency.

Defense has been an avid user of amendments, spending 27% more than Congress approved from 2019 to 2022, according to the analysis.

“We’d never seen so many spending mechanisms made available to the armed forces as we’re seeing now,” Sanchez said. “Defense’s overspending equals all of the Labor Ministry’s annual budget.”

While he’s spending more on the military, Lopez Obrador’s priorities have differed from those of his predecessors. Historically, Mexican presidents have devoted nearly 50% of the Defense administration’s budget to training, recruiting and deploying soldiers, and buying weapons. Under Lopez Obrador’s administration, that share of the budget, in real terms, will have fallen to 17%.

Instead, 51% of the Defense and Navy’s combined budgets of 331 billion pesos in 2024 was earmarked for infrastructure projects.

Nearly half of the 259 billion pesos that Defense got this year will be used to finish the third of the Maya Train line it’s in charge of building. The railway is designed to ferry passengers between tourism hotspots like Cancun and Merida, and to hotels the military is building and operating deep in the Mayan jungle.

Another chunk will go to operating the new state-owned airline as well as managing airports near Mexico City and Tulum.

Much of the military’s business operations are housed under a government-run company called Grupo Aeroportuario, Ferroviario, de Servicios Auxiliares y Conexos, Olmeca-Maya-Mexica SA — better known as Gafsacomm. AMLO created the conglomerate in 2022 to oversee most government-built infrastructure projects and handed over its operation to the Defense Ministry. Its budget this year of 15 billion pesos will help it operate 12 airports, five hotels, three natural parks, two trains, a museum and the Mexicana airline.

Hardly anyone expects the airports or the airline to turn a profit in the near future. While the group’s losses will be covered by public coffers, it will get to keep any profit it does make and redirect it to the military’s pension system.

“The trend is that increasingly, the armed forces are going to have different money-making streams,” said Sanchez. “And that’s dangerous because you’re giving more money to an armed corporation that has a legitimate use of power and 400,000 soldiers.”

Lopez Obrador sees the projects as a way to develop the economy of traditionally poor parts of the country, which will create more employment and lead to better conditions, ultimately improving public safety. And the military has to be in charge of it all because, in the president’s view, it’s able to rise above the corruption that plagues civilian agencies handling funds for major projects. The military can deliver at a fraction of the cost of a private company and in a much shorter time, he says.

The Shadow Budget

There are several other, less transparent ways that Mexico’s armed forces receive funds to oversee infrastructure works.

The Defense and Navy control trusts in which they or other entities can deposit money without being required to disclose where the funds came from or how they’re being used. At the end of 2023, trusts administrated by the military held 81 billion pesos, compared with 7 billion pesos at the end of Peña Nieto’s government in 2018, according to nonprofit Mexico Evalua.

Given the lack of disclosure, there’s no way to know how much of the money in the trusts is accounted for in the budget.

“The exorbitant sum of it all and the risk of double counting are exactly why they should tell us what’s in there,” said Sanchez.

Then there are contracts. Between 2019 and 2022, the Defense Ministry received an additional 191 billion pesos through agreements with other federal ministries for public projects including the Maya Train, according to the nonprofit Mexican Institute of Competitiveness, known as IMCO.

Contracts are rarely made public and increasingly difficult to track, given Lopez Obrador’s near dismantling of transparency watchdog, the National Institute for Access to Public Information and Data Protection. IMCO obtained the information through government information requests and legal challenges.

“We’re facing an opacity monster,” said Paula Villaseñor, the former head of IMCO’s Effective Government division. “It’s incredibly hard to know how much money and contracts they have.”

Sara Velazquez, the lead author of a report called “National Inventory of the Militarized,” said the military receives money from so many sources that it’s nearly impossible to trace all of it.

“I think even they don’t know how much money they get every year,” she said.

Record Murders

Mexico’s official crime statistics are known to be far from exact. The country’s “cifra negra,” or the estimated share of crimes that go unreported, reached 92% in 2022, according to statistics agency Instituto Nacional de Estadistica y Geografia. Homicides, though slightly down from the first few years of Lopez Obrador’s administration, are on track to end up the highest ever in a presidential term. The Secretariado Ejecutivo del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Publica (SESNSP), which is separate from Inegi, has counted 170,959 homicides with intent since AMLO took office through February of this year.

The president has acknowledged that homicides have surpassed those in previous administrations, but he casts blame on the violent country he inherited. Homicides fell 7% between 2021 and 2022, and dropped 4% between 2022 and 2023, which Lopez Obrador said was a direct reflection of his security strategy.

“It’s crazy to think that what we used to consider a violent year was one with 20,000 victims of homicide with intent,” said Lilian Chapa, a public-policy analyst who served as an adviser to SESNSP. The registry counted 29,705 homicides with intent in 2023.

National Guard Does It All

Last year, security consultant Manuel Garza witnessed the biggest heist he had seen in two decades. A shipment of mainly electronic goods worth nearly 17 million pesos was traveling along the highway from the port of Veracruz through the central state of Puebla. The person monitoring it on a screen suddenly saw the dot freeze.

An alert was raised when the dot hadn’t moved in over 40 minutes, said Garza, who is being identified using a pseudonym to protect him from retaliation. When the company’s private car came to check the scene, the truck’s security team of two armed guards were nowhere to be found.

The National Guard showed up 30 minutes later. When the truck’s driver called from the neighboring state of Hidalgo, he said he and the two guards had been tied up. But the National Guard didn’t take down the witnesses’ statements. For that, the security company had to go to the local prosecutor’s office. They got back nothing else from the heist.

The episode is emblematic of how the military has frequently taken a halfhearted approach to law-enforcement responsibilities it inherited when the Mexican government did away with the Federal Police in 2019.

The National Guard had a total headcount of about 104,000 at the end of 2022. That includes 17,419 members drawn from the disbanded Federal Police and 1,050 new recruits. However, the majority of the force is made up of soldiers and marines on loan from the Defense and Navy. The troops were given new uniforms and armbands, but little to no training on how to do police work.

That has led to plummeting arrests as many National Guard members prefer to turn a blind eye to whatever crime is happening before them than go through the motions of properly arresting a suspect and filing the report correctly, according to Chapa, the public-policy analyst. Seizures of illegal drugs and weapons have plummeted as a result.

Guillermo Montes, who also asked to use a pseudonym, was one of the marines transferred to the National Guard. He saw many of his fellow guardsmen make mistakes when they intervened at the scene of a crime because they had no idea how to track down robbers or respond to 911 calls.

One of the hardest things to do, he recalled, was present evidence in front of a judge. Often, their cases were dismissed on procedural grounds, since they hadn’t been fully trained on the protocols of filling out police reports.

“The armed forces are not trained to be police,” he said. “We followed in order to help, but we were lacking many of the things that the police know.”

Lopez Obrador didn’t always back such broad use of the armed forces. He had been vocal about sending the military “back to its barracks” since losing the 2006 presidential election against Calderon, who had the armed forces take to the streets to fight cartels. That resulted in more than 103,000 homicides during his administration.

“We can’t solve the country’s insecurity and violence with the army,” Lopez Obrador said in a video dated 2010. “We can’t use the military to make up for the civilian government’s shortcomings. It’s important we don’t give the army excessive faculties — we can’t accept a militarist government.”

But it didn’t take long for him to change his mind. In regular meetings during his transition into office, the Defense Ministry’s top brass laid out how corrupt the Federal Police was and how the military was the only institution worthy of his trust, according to a person familiar with the situation.

The Federal Police were plagued by reports of abuse of power, torture and corruption. Last year, Genaro Garcia Luna, who had been in charge of Mexico’s battle to root out illegal narcotics and vanquish drug kingpins, was convicted by a federal jury in New York of helping Sinaloa cartel members import and distribute drugs in the US. His defense has requested a new trial.

Though AMLO initially presented the National Guard as a civilian force, it’s effectively operated by the Defense Ministry, and its budget is routinely transferred to the military. In August 2022, Lopez Obrador issued a decree to place the guard under the Defense Ministry.

In April 2023, Mexico’s top court said that decree was unconstitutional, and gave the government until Jan. 1, 2024 to return the operation of the guard to the civilian ministry.

AMLO has said he would abide by the court’s order, but in February, he sent a new proposal to Congress to officially move the National Guard to Defense. Congress has yet to pass it.

“We’re living in two worlds,” said Ernesto Lopez Portillo, former member of Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission and head of Universidad Iberoamericana’s Citizen Security program. “The world of the constitution that says public security is a civilian matter” and “the world of reality, where the National Guard is, under every indicator that we have, strictly military.”

Money and Power

Sheinbaum has said she intends to consolidate the National Guard, and following AMLO’s footsteps, that it should operate under the Defense Ministry.

Meanwhile, Galvez has said the military has been asked to do too many things unrelated to their core mission.

“They shouldn’t be building trains, patrolling parks or handing out books,” she said at an event in Campeche in March. “A large part of the country is in the hands of criminals these days, we need the military to return to its national security activities.”

Mexico’s militarization isn’t exclusive to the federal government, according Causa en Comun's Morera. Military and Navy officials now oversee public-security ministries in 17 of the country’s 32 states. Sixteen of those states are ruled by AMLO’s Morena party.

For whoever wins Mexico’s presidential election on June 2, the key question will be how to deal with an empowered, enlarged and wealthy military that has taken over hundreds of tasks that used to be in the hands of civilians — and that has more revenue streams than ever — while reining in the record-breaking number of homicides.

“They’ve overused a perverse blanket called national security,” said Senator Alvarez Icaza. “Now the dilemma is, how do we take away all the money and power that Lopez Obrador gave them?”

--With assistance from Maya Averbuch, Rafael Gayol and Michael O'Boyle.

Mexico’s Sheinbaum Wants Debt-Laden Pemex to Go Green

Scott Squires
Sat, April 20, 2024 

Mexico’s Sheinbaum Wants Debt-Laden Pemex to Go Green


(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s leading presidential candidate wants to revitalize the nation’s troubled state oil company with a new focus on clean energy. But first, Claudia Sheinbaum knows she has to fix Petroleos Mexicanos’ $106 billion debt problem.

“We have to work on two fronts: on the one hand, the refinancing of the debt,” the frontrunner said at Mexico’s annual banking convention in Acapulco Friday. “At the same time, the entry of Pemex into other energy sources or other types of electricity generation.”

Pushing Pemex to embrace new and cleaner technologies would be a substantial shift from its traditional oil-and-gas focus under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Bondholders warn it’s unlikely to succeed unless the company and government address Pemex’s financial woes, slash its debt and boost flagging production.

“Pemex doesn’t have the cash for green energy projects,” said Adriana Eraso, a corporate analyst at Fitch Ratings in New York. “Only in very rare cases are renewables profitable enough to make up for revenues generated from fossil fuels.”

Sheinbaum said Friday she expected Pemex to refinance its bonds ahead of upcoming maturities in 2025, a plan that may free up cash for the company to play a role in Mexico’s energy transition.

Read More: Mexico Presidential Frontrunner Sees Pemex Refinancing Debt

“Most likely the current Pemex CEO and the president are going to leave us with a long-term plan,” Sheinbaum said.

Cleaning up the image of Pemex — the most indebted company in emerging markets and the world’s most indebted oil producer — has potential global resonance as banks and investors increasingly eye companies committed to environmental, social and governance metrics.

A new direction for the beleaguered driller could also transform Mexico, which recently surpassed China as the largest US trading partner amid a potential nearshoring boom.

One of the realities Sheinbaum faces is that global oil majors are dialing back their green ambitions as returns on renewable investments sag. Companies including Shell Plc and BP Plc have cut their emissions reduction targets, citing “uncertainty in the pace of change in the energy transition.”

Unlike other oil majors, however, Pemex doesn’t have much financial breathing room to undertake a green shift. It’s facing billions in late payments to service providers and its infrastructure is crumbling after years of underinvestment, causing a slew of accidents, oil spills and methane leaks in recent years.

Sheinbaum, an environmental engineer and former Mexico City mayor who looks poised to replace Lopez Obrador, first outlined her energy strategy last month, on a national holiday commemorating the expropriation of foreign oil assets in 1938.

Her plan would cap Pemex’s oil production in coming years at around 1.8 million barrels a day — an increase from about 1.5 million barrels now — while the government focuses on sparking growth in green energy. She’d do that by broadening Pemex’s scope to include technologies such as lithium extraction and electric-vehicle infrastructure, and by empowering state power company Comision Federal de Electricidad to invest in renewable resources and bolster electricity transmission networks.

Sheinbaum would spend about $13.6 billion on new projects to boost Mexico’s use of renewable energy while still adding gas-burning power plants. She’d also increase wind and solar power generation, modernize hydroelectric stations and add about 3,850 kilometers (2,390 miles) of transmission lines.

Her blueprint also reflects a sustainability plan recently released by Pemex to attract ESG investors by slashing its greenhouse-gas emissions.

Critics fault Sheinbaum’s aim to keep financially distressed state entities at the center of Mexico’s energy sector, leaving private companies by the wayside. It’s a strategy that AMLO, as the current president is known, relied on to promote “energy sovereignty.” Since 2018, he’s rolled back the pro-market reforms of his predecessor and invested billions in growing Mexico’s domestic fuel-refining capacity.

“Sheinbaum’s recent statements have deviated from promises she made regarding a more private sector-friendly approach in the pre-campaign period,” said Alejandro Schtulmann, research director at Mexico City-based political consultancy EMPRA.

Sheinbaum said Friday that there must be clear rules for private sector investment in Mexico’s energy sector, and that public sector investments in Pemex would take time to “bear fruit.”

A Pemex spokesman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Pemex’s oil and gas output has also withered to less than half of what it was two decades ago. Slashing debt is key to turning around the company’s finances, since money that could be spent fixing aging equipment is instead being used to cover unpaid bills and interest payments.

The company has lately relied on tax breaks and cash injections from the government to stanch the financial bleeding. AMLO has lavished support on Pemex, granting it as much as 1.37 trillion pesos (around $80 billion) over the course of his administration, which hasn’t reversed the company’s decline.

While investors expect government support to continue under Sheinbaum, she has said little about what she would do to address Pemex’s financial problems over the long term.

She’ll also be up against strained public finances. Mexico is facing its largest budget deficit since the 1980s as AMLO spends big at the end of his presidential term, according to Oscar Ocampo, an energy analyst at IMCO, a nonprofit that focuses on competitiveness.

“AMLO entered office with a much easier financial situation than Sheinbaum will inherit,” Ocampo said.

To be sure, Sheinbaum is still in campaign mode. Polls show her more than 20 percentage points up on opposition rival Xochitl Galvez, who is proposing a corporate restructuring for Pemex that would include selling assets and closing refineries, as well as opening the energy sector to private investment.

The frontrunner hasn’t strayed from AMLO’s stance of keeping state-owned companies at the forefront of Mexico’s energy sector, but that strategy may change if she wins on June 2, said Luis Maizel, a senior managing director at LM Capital Group in San Diego, which holds about $18.5 million in Pemex bonds.

“We’ll see Sheinbaum grow eight feet taller when she takes over,” Maizel said. “Mexico needs more energy and doesn’t have enough money. She’ll have to lean on the private sector.”

Mexico Presidential Frontrunner Sees Pemex Refinancing Debt

Maya Averbuch, Carolina Millan and Scott Squires
Fri, April 19, 2024 

Mexico Presidential Frontrunner Sees Pemex Refinancing Debt

(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s leading presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum said she expects Petroleos Mexicanos, the world’s most indebted oil producer, to refinance its bonds ahead of upcoming maturities in 2025.

“By necessity it has to be in 2025, because there is a maturity of part of the debt coming up in the next year, and we have to work on that,” she said in an interview on the sidelines of Mexico’s annual banking convention in Acapulco. “Most likely the current Pemex CEO and the president are going to leave us with a long-term plan.”

Analysts and investors agree that Pemex stands as one of the greatest challenges Mexico’s next president will inherit. The company’s debt burden stands around $106 billion, including $6.8 billion due in 2025.

Sheinbaum, a former Mexico City mayor from the ruling Morena party, has positioned herself as a natural successor to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The popularity of AMLO, as the president is known, has helped her lead the race with 58% of voting intention, according to the Bloomberg Poll Tracker. Mexicans will pick their new president on June 2.

She added that her team would have to build on the plan left by the current administration and management, and establish a timeline for Pemex to develop other business options.

“We have to work on two fronts: on the one hand, the refinancing of the debt, and allow that refinancing to be associated with the production of oil, the refining of oil,” she said, “and at the same time, the entry of Pemex into other energy sources or other types of electricity generation.”

Pemex’s oil and gas output has withered to less than half of what it was two decades ago. Slashing debt is key to increasing production, since money that could be spent fixing aging infrastructure is instead being used to cover interest payments. The company’s debt load is so large that has hindered its market access, and refinancing the bonds could prove costly as global rates remain high.

The company has roughly $8.8 billion in debt due in the remainder of 2024, according to its latest earnings presentation. Lopez Obrador’s government has promised to cover the majority of it.

Sheinbaum said that she would look to appoint a chief executive for Pemex who has both financial expertise and experience in the oil sector. She said that she had someone in mind for the position, but that she would only reveal the name at “the right moment.”

Pemex Strategy

Lately, Pemex has relied on tax breaks and cash injections from the government to remain afloat. AMLO has lavished support on the company, granting it as much as 1.37 trillion pesos, or around $80 billion, over the course of his administration.

An environmental engineer and former Mexico City mayor, Sheinbaum outlined her energy strategy last month, including a roughly 1.8-million-barrel daily cap on Pemex’s oil production in coming years — a slight increase from about 1.5 million now — while the government focuses on sparking growth in green energy.

New Projects

The company’s future plans, including participating in the extraction of lithium, are financially viable, Sheinbaum said in the interview. The funding for energy initiatives would come in part from the private sector and in part from extra revenue from projects executed during Lopez Obrador’s administration, such as the purchase of plants from Spanish firm Iberdrola.

Her administration would also look for ways to improve Pemex’s environmental record, confronting problems such as methane emissions.

“We have to advance in what would be a vision of decarbonization of the economy, to what point oil production will continue and until when,” she said. “Natural gas is going to continue to be a very important fuel in the future.”

--With assistance from Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, Paola Vega Torre and Rafael Gayol.

(Updates with details of Pemex debt load, more comments from Sheinbaum starting in eighth paragraph)

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Chile’s Finance Minister Signals Tougher Stance in Pension Talks

Maria Eloisa Capurro and Matthew Malinowski
Sat, April 20, 2024 



(Bloomberg) -- Chile’s government will sharpen its negotiation strategy to approve President Gabriel Boric’s flagship pension reform in the Senate, avoiding early concessions that left many allies disappointed, according to the nation’s finance minister.

While the administration remains open to dialogue with lawmakers, it will not get bogged down by hot-button issues like employer pay-ins, Mario Marcel said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings in Washington. Political talks will continue while specialists analyze the proposal, and officials will insist on more cooperation from the opposition.

Many government coalition lawmakers felt resentment after talks in the lower house, Marcel said. “They noticed the government’s push for flexibility wasn’t met with a response from the opposition. Now we have to be more constructive.”

More than half way into his term, Boric is struggling to approve marquee bills to raise revenues and boost pensions in one of of Latin America’s wealthiest nations. The economy, meanwhile, is turning a corner after an anemic 2023 marked by tight monetary policy, high political uncertainty and low confidence. Marcel is one of the ministers in charge of communicating the government’s positions and negotiating in the fragmented Congress.

In January, the lower house backed the base text of the pension reform but rejected several key articles, most notably one on a proposed new employer pay-in. The legislation is now starting to make its way through the Senate and is currently at its Labor Committee, where article-by-article discussions can begin in two or three weeks, Marcel said.

“The administration wants the committee’s work to continue regardless of whether at the same time there is more technical work involving legislative advisers and the government,” Marcel said. “We want to avoid having a waiting period like we had in the lower house.”

The legislation seeks to address low pensions that were one of the drivers behind a wave of social unrest starting in late 2019. The government wants to shift away from the current system of individual savings accounts managed by private funds toward a more mixed set-up with a solidarity component.

Government Estimates

A University of Cambridge-trained economist, Marcel is presiding over a recovery in activity that contrasts with expectations of a slowdown in other Latin American nations like Brazil and Mexico.

Local activity surpassed analyst forecasts in the first months of the year, prompting investor growth estimates to rise closer to the government’s 2.5% projection. By comparison, the World Bank expects Latin America’s gross domestic product as a whole to expand just 1.6% in 2024.

Growth prospects are getting support from the central bank’s cycle of interest rate cuts, which has shaved 475 basis points from borrowing costs since July. Still, policymakers have signaled more cautious reductions ahead, citing global risks including geopolitical tensions and the US monetary policy.

In coming weeks, Chile’s government will publish its latest Public Finances Report, with estimates including growth and inflation. Marcel said there will be marginal changes in the administration’s forecasts.

“The main message that this report will have from the fiscal point of view is that it will affirm this year’s fiscal goals,” he said.

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Five waves of UBS layoffs to start in June, SonntagsZeitung says

Reuters
Sun, April 21, 2024

The logo of Swiss bank UBS is seen in Zurich


VIENNA (Reuters) - Layoffs under Swiss banking giant UBS's cost-cutting programme announced after its takeover of Credit Suisse will take place in five waves this year starting in June, newspaper SonntagsZeitung reported on Sunday.

UBS was not immediately available for comment.

In August UBS announced its plan to eliminate around one in 12 of its Swiss jobs and cut costs by more than $10 billion as it consolidates a competitor that unravelled as panicked customers withdrew billions from their accounts.

Most of the cost savings are set to come from cutting staff and analysts have estimated between 30,000 and 35,000 jobs could go globally.


"In total, 50-to-60% of ex-CS (Credit Suisse staff) will probably be laid off over the five rounds," SonntagsZeitung quoted a source it described as an insider as saying.

After the first round in June, in which 25-30% of former Credit Suisse staff are expected to be made redundant, the next rounds will take place in August, September, October and November, the newspaper reported, putting the planned savings at 12 billion Swiss francs ($13.2 billion).

($1 = 0.9100 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; editing by Barbara Lewis)

Nobel laureate Esther Duflo proposes taxing 3,000 billionaires to protect the world’s poorest from climate change—and most Americans likely agree with the plan

Sunny Nagpaul
Sat, April 20, 2024 

CHRISTINE OLSSON/TT News Agency


The world’s rich nations have agreed, several times, that helping poor countries cope with the fallout from climate change is a priority — but so far they’ve failed to put their money where their mouth is, raising a fraction of one percent of the money they’ve pledged for this task.

To solve this dilemma, Nobel laureate Esther Duflo has a proposal: Tax 3,000 of the world’s richest people to ensure the poorest can survive the climate-changed future.

Duflo presented the proposal this week at the most recent Group of 20 nations meeting held in Washington, D.C. The 2019 Nobel laureate in economics has a very straightforward goal in mind, she told Fortune: generate enough public funding to protect the world’s poorest citizens dying from climate change.

“That is our moral debt,” Duflo told Fortune. “It's much more money than the international community, and rich countries, have been able to commit towards poor countries for any form of climate action.”

The plan involves a global 15% minimum tax on the profits of large multinational companies, which was approved by the G20 in 2021, as well as a global 2% income tax on billionaires, which was proposed to the G20 for the first time in February by Brazil.

The idea is not to tax the ultra-rich more, Duflo said, but rather to ensure that they are paying income taxes in general—since notoriously, this group avoids a lot of taxation. And once their fair share of taxes are collected, she argued, “what better use of them than to compensate the very poorest people in the world for losing their life due to climate change?”

Duflo’s two-prong proposal argues that rich nations owe a “moral debt,” since they have historically released the most greenhouse gas emissions, while poor countries, which emit very little, suffer disproportionately from the most harmful disasters exacerbated by climate change. Duflo calculated that moral debt to be about $518 billion per year—based on the impact that a ton of carbon has on the climate, the effect rising temperatures have on likelihood of death, and the roughly $7 million statistical value of a human life as determined by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We owe this money to the poor citizens of the world,” Duflo argued. While parts of this plan have previously been suggested by economists, the newest elements are “to calculate how much we owe, where it could come from, and how it would be spent,” she told Fortune. The moral debt, she noted, is based on current environmental damage calculations and would decrease if global greenhouse gas emissions are lowered. In her view, collecting income tax from the wealthiest individuals who often avoid paying taxes through complex financial maneuvering is a way to raise public funds “from sources where it wouldn’t be very painful,” she said. It “rather seems like a very reasonable place to find money.”

Duflo isn’t alone in that opinion–69% of people in the U.S and 84% of people in Europe support a global tax on millionaires, according to research by the French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, and about 55% of people in the U.S support sharing half of the global tax with low income countries.

According to Duflo’s proposal, the two tax programs would generate about $400 billion each year in public funding to mitigate the climate change disasters, like heat waves, floods, droughts, and intense storms, that people in poor countries face much more severely than those in developed countries.

The first part of the program was approved by the G20 in October 2021, when 137 countries and jurisdictions agreed to a 15% global minimum tax on the profits of large multinational companies. If each company complies, the taxes would generate an extra $205 billion per year, according to estimates by the European Union Tax Observatory. As of this January, about 40 countries have implemented that tax, including the nations in the European Union, Japan, Greece and Italy.

The second tax program, a proposed 2% income tax on billionaires, was proposed by Brazil’s Finance Minister Fernando Haddad in February. France’s Minister of Finance Bruno Le Maire endorsed it, saying the G20 should aim to reach an agreement on the billionaire tax by 2027, Reuters reported.

And in fact, many wealthy people, like Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet, have endorsed the logic behind the proposal for years. Buffett famously stated he pays less in taxes than his secretary, despite his colossal estimated net worth of about $136 billion. The wealthy, Duflo said, “should be taxed proportionately at the same level as anybody else on their income, which is not the case today.”

The 2% is a total—not in addition to any income tax the wealthy are already paying. For example, if a billionaire is currently paying a 1% income tax rate, they would only pay an additional 1% under Duflo’s plan. The plan would raise an additional $250 billion per year, and along with the corporate global tax, the total raised would approach $500 billion, the amount of “moral debt” Duflo calculated.

As for where the money would go, Duflo suggested direct cash transfers to individuals, city and state authorities. She believes this fund should be separate from “investments in renewable energy,” because there is growing importance for a fund that “is of everybody’s benefit,” and not just those with access to green technology. With app-based banking now widespread, she said, it’s relatively easy for people to access cash even in remote or poverty-stricken areas of the world, like Northern India, Bangladesh, and Africa.

Aside from the usefulness of cash in a time of crisis — allowing people to temporarily relocate, take time off work or move a herd of animals during a weather disaster — growing research suggests direct cash transfers are an increasingly effective way to end extreme poverty. A 2016 Oxford study found direct cash transfers can significantly improve health, economic outcomes and psychological well-being, and also helps people access resources for safety during climate-related disasters. Technology that predicts floods, droughts, heatwaves, and other natural disasters could even be used to automate direct cash transfers to the people most vulnerable, Duflo added.

Duflo’s proposal is one of the biggest climate relief funding packages ever proposed at the global level, and the next steps for the proposal will be picked up at a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Rio de Janeiro in July. The G20 members represent around 85% of the global GDP, over 75% of the global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

US to Advance Carbon Offset Standards to Prevent Greenwashing

Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Fri, April 19, 2024 



(Bloomberg) -- The US soon will unveil tougher standards meant to drive greater integrity for carbon markets — a bid to ensure the trading regimes drive real emission reductions and not just greenwashing.

Climate envoy John Podesta said Friday the State Department will be calling for carbon credits to represent real, additional and permanent emission reductions that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. The US also will make clear the regimes must avoid carbon leakage, where reductions in one area are simply replaced by increased pollution elsewhere. The standards will also make clear companies should not use carbon credits to substitute for or delay in investments in reducing their own emissions, Podesta said.

The initiative marks a high-level endorsement of carbon credits amid increasing interest in using offsets to drive private sector finance toward renewable power and emission-cutting projects in developing nations. Critics warn it’s difficult to assess the real-world impact of carbon offsets and worry companies will use the tools to avoid cutting their own pollution. The guidance being developed by the US State Department dovetails with similar efforts by the UK and EU.

The United Nations-backed Science Based Targets initiative, the world’s main verifier of corporate emissions plans, drew scrutiny recently for indicating companies should have greater leeway to use carbon credits to offset their Scope 3 emissions, the climate footprint of their supply chains.

Carbon markets “can help deliver the finance that developing countries need to help lead the clean energy transition and protect forests,” Podesta, senior adviser to the president for international climate policy, said Friday at a State Department event on the issue. But, he added, it’s essential they have integrity and provide “confidence” for investors.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry argued the efforts are critical to unlocking trillions of dollars in private sector finance to counter climate change. “If we do not mobilize the private sector, we do not win this battle,” he said. “We need high-integrity carbon markets to drive climate ambition and action.”

Separately Friday. a carbon offset initiative championed by Kerry, the Energy Transition Accelerator, took a step toward full operations with an announcement the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions will serve as its secretariat. The program will be guided by a newly announced consultative group, including Kerry as honorary chair and other members, such as International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol.

--With assistance from Alastair Marsh.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

How green are parties' manifestos vying in the European election?

Marta Pacheco
Sat, April 20, 2024

How green are parties' manifestos vying in the European election?


European environmental legislation has become a divisive issue in recent months, with a serious of angry protests by farmers only the most visible sign of a backlash against the European Green Deal, the flagship policy agenda of the European Commission under president Ursula von der Leyen. There are signs of a widening division not only between Greens and other parties, but also in the traditional centre ground, with the two largest groups in the European Parliament – the centre-right European People’s Party and the Socialists & Democrats – taking opposing positions on a number of key files, not least the Nature Restoration Law.

With lawmakers due to go into full-on campaign mode after the last plenary session of the current cycle next week, the European Parliament released results of an EU-wide opinion poll of 26,000 citizens which suggests 71% would be likely to vote in the elections if they were held the following week. If that figure is reflected in real turnout on 6-9 June, it would be a dramatic uptick on participation of 43% in 2014, and 51% at the last ballot in 2019.

In terms of issues that EU citizens think “should be discussed as a matter of priority” going into the elections, the top four positions were poverty and social exclusion, health, jobs, and defence and security, cited by 31-33% of respondents, followed by climate action (27%). Among the youngest voters, under 25 years, climate came top on 33%. Farming and agriculture came in ninth on 23%.


But the survey leaves us in the dark on green policy beyond climate action: no questions were posed, for example, on nature restoration or biodiversity – the word ‘environment’ appears only twice in the 220-page report, and ‘Green Deal’ is mentioned only once. The main political groups give varying levels of prominence to these topics in their election manifestos. While there is some common ground – all agree that some sort of climate action is necessary – there is huge variation in level of detail and concrete commitments.

Unsurprisingly, the Greens have put climate and environmental policy front and centre among their commitments for the next parliamentary term.
Energy, air, water

The Greens have pledged to transform the EU’s energy system — to rely 100% on solar, water, wind and geothermal — and phase out fossil energy by 2040, starting with coal by 2030.

“The EU needs a clear plan for the total phaseout of fossil gas and oil as early as 2035 and no later than 2040,” read the Green’s political manifesto.

Led by lawmakers Terry Reintke (Germany) and Bas Eickhout (the Netherlands), the Greens are also vowing to support the development of cheap electric transport and charging infrastructure, pledging to have air quality in the EU meeting World Health Organization guidelines by 2030. The European People’s Party (EPP), led by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen (Germany), also hails a strategy to curb air pollution and it is the only political force pledging to ramp-up global hydrogen production, while the Greens urge caution saying such fuel comes with “higher risks and costs for both consumers and industry” and should be “reserved for backup” in the power system.

On biodiversity, the Greens insist that from 2026, 10% of the EU budget must be spent on biodiversity objectives and they pledge to put forward a Seas and Ocean Law and to create a European Natural Disaster Fund, to strengthen climate adaptation.

European leaders ‘outpaced’ by increasing risk from climate change, environment watchdog warns

Both the Greens and The Left are calling on the prohibition of the privatisation of water resources, while the Socialists and the EPP refer to “water protection and management” and the intention to “implement a strategy for water”, respectively.

The Left, led by MEP Walter Baier (Austria), wants to increase the EU’s target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 55% to 65% by 2030 and bring forward the date for the climate neutrality target from 2050 to 2035. Lawmakers in the Left want to dismantle 'the SUV economy' through laws that ensure carbon-neutral and road user-friendly car production. They are calling to ban private flights, prioritise trains for journeys under two and a half hours and to revive night trains.

The EPP seeks the completion and development of the new Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) infrastructures, deemed crucial for structuring the European territory and enhancing the efficiency of the European Single Market. It vows to intensify research in the fields of energy, notably nuclear fusion and to establish a CO2 circular economy throughout Europe.
Food

On food systems, The Left wants to establish an agro-ecological policy model for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) based on an environmentally sustainable agriculture, ensuring fair incomes for farmers. The Greens pledge to fight for a 50% reduction in pesticide use by 2030, while the Socialists want to “improve food production by embracing sustainable farming and fishing” and vow to reduce the use of pesticides based on national best practices, improve soil management, and protect biodiversity.

“The EU needs to strengthen the plant-based protein sector and encourage a transition towards more plant-based diets, building on policy proposals including the Plant-Based Treaty,” read the Green’s political manifesto.

Left-wing lawmakers are set to put forward a European Basic Income law that obliges EU countries to “legally guarantee everyone a minimum income that covers the basic needs for a decent life”, including, among others, food, housing and energy.

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party (ALDE) wants to reform the CAP to “lift bureaucratic burdens” and to introduce new rules for genetically-engineered crops to increase productivity and reduce the volume of pesticides used. Liberals also vow to encourage food donations to “avoid food waste”.

"By 2040, the EU might lose an additional 6.4 million farms, a staggering decrease of over 60% as compared to 2016,” warned the EPP’s manifesto, noting farmers need to have "a future and stand for dialogue instead of top-down approaches”.
Backing investments

Led by Luxembourg’s European Commissioner Nicolas Schmit, the Socialists have centred their campaign on general pledges backing investments for the green transition, such as in the so-called Renovation Wave, meant to make buildings across Europe more energy efficient. These pledges are aligned with those from the EPP, wanting to encourage investments to integrate further the European electricity and gas market, energy efficiency and net-zero industrial projects, including clean technologies.

The same goes for ALDE, which defends investments in “all types of renewables”, including nuclear power, “complemented by carbon removal, capture and storage technologies”.

“We must ensure that the EU electricity interconnection target of at least 15% is reached by 2030,” read ALDE’s manifesto. It wants to expand the scope of the European Emissions Trading System (ETS) to cover all remaining carbon-polluting sectors and to enable decarbonisation of all types of transport.

The Socialists and the EPP in Parliament, along with ALDE, with Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann (Germany) as the lead candidate, want to “increase public and private collaboration and investments” in grid capacity and storage and accelerate energy efficiency. They want to “simplify, shorten, and speed up” the digitalisation of licensing and permitting procedures of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.

Leak suggests reliance on carbon storage to meet CO2 emissions targets
Plastic & chemical pollution, raw materials

Socialists make a reference to tackling plastic and chemical pollution, notably PFAS, a pledge shared by the EPP, which promises to “strengthen the European waste reduction strategy and the European plastics strategy”.

The Greens, too, have promised to increase the scope of existing taxes on plastics and hinted at applying the “polluter-pays-principle” across all sectors.

“We will fight for a toxic-free Europe by 2030 by phasing out the use of the most harmful chemicals through a stronger chemicals law,” read the Green’s manifesto, noting the intention of fighting for a 50% reduction in pesticide use by the same year.

Referring to the importance of critical raw materials, EPP lawmakers want to “promote a common European resource strategy, identifying the existing resources worldwide”. ALDE is the only political force referring to the development of a European strategy for the bioeconomy, including the sustainable use of biomass.

The Left insists the EU "must not assign the accession countries the role of suppliers of cheap raw materials” as it is currently doing, the party argues. As for the Greens, they defend “remodelled trade deals” to protect social rights, the environment and climate when seeking for critical raw materials for the EU green transition.

“We will push to improve bilateral trade and investment agreements with binding and sanctionable sustainability provisions. Specifically, the Paris Agreement, the Kunming-Montreal biodiversity agreement, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the ILO core conventions,” read the Green’s manifesto.

Without presenting an official manifesto, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) party has vowed to protect the environment at “a cost we can afford” with “sensible and sustainable” measures that won’t place “costly burdens” on businesses and EU countries. Conservative lawmakers, who have not nominated a candidate lead, pledge to lower emissions, keep the air clean, protect wildlife, fishermen and the ocean.

Ambulance driver killed while aiding Palestinians injured in attack by Israeli settlers in the West Bank

Mia Alberti, Abeer Salman, Eyad Kourdi and Tim Lister, CNN
Sat, April 20, 2024 a

An ambulance driver from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society was killed while transporting Palestinians injured in an attack by settlers in the West Bank on Saturday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.

The 50-year-old driver, Mohammed Awad Allah Mohammed Musa, was killed when the ambulance was hit by gunfire, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) told CNN. Israeli settlers fired the shots, it said.

In a separate incident the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) detained another ambulance crew at the entrance of the Thabet Thabet hospital in Tulkarm, West Bank, the PRCS reported.

In pictures shared by the organization, the ambulance crew is seen siting inside an IDF vehicle while surrounded by IDF soldiers. PRCS says the crew was detained and interrogated while trying to carry out “humanitarian work.”

CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment.

IDF soldiers detain an ambulance crew at the entrance of the Thabet Thabet hospital in Tulkarm, West Bank. The ambulance crew is seen siting inside an IDF vehicle while surrounded by soldiers. - Palestinian Red Crescent Society

Earlier on Saturday, the IDF said security forces had killed “10 terrorists” in an ongoing operation at the Nur Shams refugee camp, just East of Tulkarm, in the occupied West Bank.

It said in a statement that “IDF and Israel Border Police forces are continuing extensive counterterrorism activity in the area of Nur Shams. Thus far, the security forces eliminated 10 terrorists during encounters, apprehended eight wanted suspects, exposed explosive devices and routes, and conducted searches in structures.”

It said eight IDF soldiers and one Border Force officer were lightly or moderately injured.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health condemned both the detention of the ambulance crew and “the deliberate killing of an ambulance driver…on Saturday evening, while he was performing his humanitarian duty in transporting (people with) injuries from settler gunfire near the town of Al-Sawiya, south of Nablus.”

The ministry said in a statement that it “urgently calls on international health organizations, human rights institutions, and the International Committee of the Red Cross to urgently act to curb the escalating practices of the occupation and settlers against treatment centers and medical crews, and to allow them to perform their humanitarian duty.”

“The targeting of medics, ambulances, treatment centers, medical staff, obstructing their movement, and preventing them from reaching the wounded, constitutes a blatant and clear violation of international humanitarian law and international norms and treaties,” the ministry said.

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More than 14 Palestinians killed as violence flares in West Bank

Ali Sawafta and Nidal al-Mughrabi
Updated Sat, April 20, 2024 
   

NUR SHAMS, West Bank (Reuters) -Israeli forces killed 14 Palestinians during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, while an ambulance driver was killed as he went to pick up wounded from a separate attack by violent Jewish settlers, Palestinian authorities said.

Israeli forces began an extended raid in the early hours of Friday in the Nur Shams area, near the flashpoint Palestinian city of Tulkarm and were still exchanging fire with armed fighters well into Saturday.


Israeli military vehicles massed and bursts of gunfire were heard, while at least three drones were seen hovering above Nur Shams, an area housing refugees and their descendants from the 1948 war that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel.

The Tulkarm Brigades, which groups forces from numerous Palestinian factions, said its fighters exchanged fire with Israeli forces on Saturday.

The West Bank, a kidney shaped area about 100 km (60 miles) long and 50 km wide that has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since it was seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

The Gaza war has overshadowed continuing violence in the territory, including regular army raids on militant groups, rampages by Jewish settlers in Palestinian villages, and street attacks by Palestinians on Israelis.

Thousands of Palestinians have been arrested and hundreds killed during regular operations by Israeli army and police since the start of the Gaza war, most members of armed groups, but also stone-throwing youths and uninvolved civilians.

On Saturday, Palestinian health authorities said at least 14 Palestinians, two of whom were identified by Palestinian sources and officials as a gunman and a 16 year-old boy, were killed during the raid, one of the heaviest casualty totals in the West Bank in months. Another man was killed on Friday.

The Israeli military said a number of militants were killed or arrested during the raid, and at least four soldiers were wounded in exchanges of fire.

In a separate incident, the Palestinian health ministry said a 50-year-old ambulance driver was killed by Israeli gunfire near the village of Al-Sawiya, south of the city of Nablus, as he was making his way to transport people injured during the attack on the village.

It was not immediately clear whether he was shot by settlers. There was no immediate comment from the military.

GAZA STRIKES CONTINUE

In Gaza, where fighting has continued despite the withdrawal of most of Israel's combat forces earlier this month from southern areas, the death toll passed 34,000, Palestinian health authorities said on Saturday.

Israeli strikes hit the southern city of Rafah, where over one million Palestinians are sheltering, as well as Al-Nuseirat in central Gaza, where at least five houses were destroyed, and the Al-Jabalia area in the north, health officials and Hamas media said.

In Rafah, a strike hit a house and killed a father, daughter and pregnant mother, Hamas and Palestinian media outlets said. Doctors at the Kuwaiti hospital were able to save the baby, medics said, making the baby the family's only surviving member.

Five other Palestinians were killed in a separate Israeli air strike on the city before midnight, health officials said.

The Israeli military said troops were carrying out raids in central Gaza, where they were engaged in close quarter combat with Palestinian fighters.

Overall, Israeli strikes in Gaza killed 37 Palestinians and wounded 68 over the past 24 hours, Palestinian health authorities said.

Rafah is the last Gaza area that Israeli ground forces have not entered in a more than six-month war aimed at eliminating the Islamist Hamas group that rules the enclave, following the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, that killed some 1,200 Israelis and foreigners.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced wide international opposition to the plan to attack Rafah, where the military says the last remaining organised brigades of Hamas are located and where the remaining 133 Israeli hostages are believed to be held.

(Nidal al-Mughrabi reported from Cairo, additional reporting by Maayan Lubell and James Mackenzie in Jerusalem, editing by Mark Heinrich, Frances Kerry, Mike Harrison, Sandra Maler and Cynthia Osterman)

Two Palestinians killed by Israeli troops in fresh West Bank violence

FRANCE 24
Sat, April 20, 2024



Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Sunday, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. The Israeli army said it had “neutralised” two assailants who had attempted to stab and shoot troops. The deadly incident comes after at least 14 people were killed during a multi-day Israeli raid further north in the West Bank, the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Saturday. Read our liveblog to follow today's developments in the Middle East.

Summary:

Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight killed at least 13 people, including nine children, health officials said Sunday.


Israeli forces killed at least 14 Palestinians during a multi-day raid in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Saturday. An ambulance driver was also killed as he went to pick up wounded from a separate attack by Jewish settlers, the Palestinian health ministry said.


The US House of Representatives approved a $26 billion military aid package for Israel on Saturday that includes around $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza.


The US House of Representatives passed billions of dollars in new military aid to Israel which continues to prosecute its war against Hamas, despite growing international concern for the fate of civilians in Gaza.


(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP & Reuters)

US sanctions ally of Israeli minister, entities backing 'extremist' settlers

Simon Lewis
Updated Fri, April 19, 2024 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on an ally of Israel's far-right national security minister and two entities that raised money for Israeli men accused of settler violence, the latest actions aimed against those Washington blames for an escalation of violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The sanctions, in addition to those already imposed on five settlers and two unauthorized outposts already this year, are the latest sign of growing U.S. frustration with the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The moves on Friday, which freeze any U.S. assets held by those targeted and generally bar Americans from dealing with them, hit two organizations that launched fundraising campaigns to support settlers accused of violence and targeted by previous sanctions, the Department of the Treasury said in a statement.

The Biden administration's moves against Israeli settlers have upset right-wing members of Netanyahu's governing coalition who support the expansion of Jewish settlements and ultimately the annexation of the West Bank, where Palestinians envisage a future state.

They come as the complex relationship between Washington and its ally Israel is tested by the war in Gaza and as the Biden administration urges Israel to show restraint in responding to retaliatory strikes by Iran.

Washington sanctioned Ben-Zion Gopstein, founder and leader of the right-wing group Lehava, which opposes Jewish assimilation with non-Jews and agitates against Arabs in the name of religion and national security. Gopstein has said Lehava has 5,000 members.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said members of the group had engaged in "destabilizing violence affecting the West Bank."

"Under Gopstein’s leadership, Lehava and its members have been involved in acts or threats of violence against Palestinians, often targeting sensitive or volatile areas," Miller said in a statement, warning of additional steps if Israel does not take measures to prevent extremist attacks amid an escalation of violence in the West Bank in recent days.

The European Union also said on Friday it had agreed to take sanctions against Lehava and other groups linked to violent settlers.

A spokesperson for Israel's embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Gopstein, the most prominent Israeli figure targeted by U.S. sanctions, is a close associate of and has family ties to National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who himself lives in a West Bank settlement.

Ben-Gvir, like Gopstein, was a disciple of the late Meir Kahane, an ultranationalist rabbi whose Kach movement was listed by Washington as a specially designated global terrorist organization.

Ben-Gvir on Friday slammed what he called harassment against Lehava and "our dear settlers who have never engaged in terrorism or hurt anyone," labeling the allegations against them a "blood libel" by Palestinian groups and anarchists.

"I call on Western countries to stop cooperating with these antisemites and end this campaign of persecution against the pioneering Zionist settlers," Ben-Gvir said in a statement released by his office.

CROWDFUNDING

Since the 1967 Middle East war, Israel has occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River, which Palestinians want as the core of an independent state. It has built Jewish settlements there that most countries deem illegal. Israel disputes this and cites historical and Biblical ties to the land.

The Biden administration in February said settlements were inconsistent with international law, signaling a return to long-standing U.S. policy on the issue that had been reversed by the previous administration of Donald Trump.

One entity targeted on Friday, Mount Hebron Fund, launched an online fundraising campaign that raised $140,000 for settler Yinon Levi, the Treasury said, after he was sanctioned on Feb. 1 for leading a group of settlers that assaulted Palestinian and Bedouin civilians, burned their fields and destroyed their property.

It said the second entity, Shlom Asiraich, raised $31,000 on a crowdfunding website for David Chai Chasdai, who the United States sanctioned for initiating and leading a riot that included setting vehicles and buildings on fire and causing damage to property in the Palestinian town of Huwara, resulting in the death of a Palestinian civilian.

“These types of enforcement actions against entities helping violent settlers evade U.S. sanctions are what give sanctions teeth," said Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, director of research for Israel-Palestine at Democracy for the Arab World Now, a human rights group that has highlighted efforts by supporters to evade sanctions against settlers.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis; additional reporting by Henriette Chacar and David Ljunggren, editing by Susan Heavey, Chizu Nomiyama and Deepa Babington)



EU sanctions extremist Israeli settlers over violence in the West Bank

Mared Gwyn Jones

euronews
Fri, April 19, 2024

EU sanctions extremist Israeli settlers over violence in the West Bank


A  political agreement on the move emerged among the bloc's 27 member countries last month, but technical work has delayed its implementation, prompting many countries - such as France and Belgium - to unilaterally impose national sanctions.

Some 490,000 Israelis live in settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which are considered a breach of international law. Attacks on Palestinians in the occupied territory have surged since the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas last October, causing around 460 deaths, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Four individuals and two entities responsible for settler violence will as of Friday be blacklisted under the EU's human rights sanctions regime, meaning they will be banned from travelling to the bloc and their financial assets frozen.

The sanctioned entities are Lehava, a far-wing Jewish supremacist organisation, and Hilltop Youth, whose activities were recently halted by the Israeli Defense Forces for multiple incidents of violence and abuses against Palestinian civilians.

Two leading figures of Hilltop Youth, Meir Ettinger and Elisha Yered, are also targeted.

The move comes amid escalating violence in the West Bank, where tensions have deepened since a 14-year-old boy from a settler family was killed last Saturday.

NGO Human Rights Watch says Israeli settlers are displacing Palestinian communities by destroying their homes, and are responsible for assaults, torture and sexual violence against Palestinians.

The EU's high representative for foreign policy, Josep Borrell, has previously said that settler violence is one of the biggest obstacles to future peace in the region since settlers oppose the two-state solution which would give statehood to Palestinians.

The bloc has also repeatedly censured Benjamin Netanyahu's government for backing projects aimed at expanding settlements in the West Bank and areas around Jerusalem, and called for such decisions to be reversed.

In January, several members of the Israeli government joined a far-right conference promoting the construction of Jewish settlements in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The formal approval of the sanctions also comes as the bloc carefully calibrates its stance on the Middle East conflict following a rapid escalation in tensions between Israel and Iran.

Since Iran launched an unprecedented aerial attack on Israeli territory last Saturday, EU leaders have doubled down on their stance of solidarity with Israel but also urged Netanyahu's cabinet to exercise restraint.

Some capitals, however, want Brussels to toughen its stance on Netanyahu. Spain and Ireland have led calls to review the bloc's trade deal with Israel - the Association Agreement - to exert pressure on its government to exercise restraint in its Gaza offensive.

On Friday, Belgium's deputy prime minister Petra De Sutter claimed Belgium would "take the lead" to "re-evaluate" the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

"We call for an EU-wide import duty on products coming from illegal Israeli settlements," De Sutter said.

A note drafted by the EEAS - the EU's diplomatic arm - last December urged the EU to "enforce continued, full and effective implementation of existing EU legislation and bilateral arrangements applicable to settlements products."

Under EU legislation, Israeli products made by settlers should be clearly labelled as such and subject to less preferential customs arrangements, but the rules are not strictly enforced.

Aftermath of an Israeli raid at Nur Shams camp

Israel-Gaza briefings: No let-up for Gazans while world focused on Iran attack

Yolande Knell - BBC News, Jerusalem

Sat, April 20, 2024 


[BBC]


While the media's glare in the Middle East this past week was diverted to Iran's dramatic missile and drone attack on Israel, there has been no let-up in fighting in Gaza.

Dozens of Palestinians were killed daily - including many children, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry. It now says Israel has killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza since the start of the war.

As Israel's forces continue with their efforts to destroy Hamas, they have conducted small-scale, often deadly operations, from the top to the bottom of the territory over the past week.

On Tuesday, in the middle of Gaza, relatives clutching limp and bloodstained bodies of small boys and girls rushed from al-Maghazi refugee camp to al-Aqsa Martyrs' hospital in nearby Deir al-Balah.

Medics at the hospital said that at least 12 people were killed and some 30 injured by shelling in al-Maghazi.

"They were playing in the street. Why were they struck? They weren't in any position close to Israeli forces," one man told the BBC. Another added: "They were just playing. They were in the market with people coming and going normally."

Israel's military has not commented on what happened there, but this week in Gaza the central refugee camps have been its main focus. It said it was "eliminating terrorists and destroying terrorist infrastructure" such as attack tunnels and military compounds used by armed Hamas fighters in "precise" action.

After Israeli forces were reported to have left another camp, Nuseirat, late on Wednesday, residents began trickling back to inspect the damage to their homes.

Much of the Nuseirat camp has been reduced to rubble [Reuters]

"We have no place to stay, 90% of the houses are destroyed," one father told us despairingly as he picked his way through the new piles of rubble.

In the very north of Gaza, Israel's tanks rolled back into Beit Hanoun, which troops had left weeks earlier. Israel said it was targeting Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives based at schools where displaced families were living. Locals talked of men being stripped and detained.

Footage has also emerged of Israeli strikes in parts of Gaza City, in the north, and Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians live in tents after fleeing the fighting elsewhere.

Israeli defence analysts say that the military is carrying out targeted operations against Hamas, in line with a switch to lower-intensity fighting that was agreed with the US.

Earlier this month, Israel withdrew most ground forces from Gaza, leaving just one brigade to secure a line that splits the enclave into two parts - north and south.

While it has since been announced that two reservist brigades are being called up, and some soldiers have been deployed across the border, the prevailing opinion is that a planned ground offensive in Rafah is still some way off.

"I don't think anything is imminent," says Prof Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser, now based at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. "I don't think there's the force there for conducting a major operation in Rafah."

Israel has promised to root out remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah - the one Gazan city where it has not yet launched a ground offensive. It believes that some of the remaining 130-plus hostages snatched from southern Israel during the deadly Hamas attacks on 7 October, which also killed more than 1,200 people, are held there.

But Prof Freilich says for "the full-on attack that people were talking about you'd need two things: to move out all the refugees and then to call up some of those reserves".

"Between those, it's at least a couple of weeks. And now there's the [week-long Jewish] Passover holiday."

The US and other allies point out that a large-scale invasion could deepen an already dire humanitarian crisis.

Amid miserable living conditions and the continuous threat to Rafah, many Gazans stuck there long to return home to the north of the territory.

Israeli military warned Palestinians not to return to their homes in north Gaza [Reuters]

But on Monday, Israel's military renewed warnings for them not to make the journey, a day after witnesses said its forces had opened fire on crowds heading along a main coastal road. killing five people.

The IDF did not comment directly on that incident, but an Israeli military spokesman said afterwards that Palestinians should stay in southern Gaza because the north is a "dangerous combat zone".

"We have dreamt of returning home since we left in the early months of the war," Amr Daoudi told us back in Rafah. "But for now we have put it out of our thoughts."

More than six months of fighting have flattened vast tracts of the north. Israel's restrictions on aid have also left some 300,000 who remained there through the war on the brink of famine, according to the United Nations.

International pressure on Israel in the wake of the killing of seven aid workers from US charity World Central Kitchen on 1 April led to a string of announcements on increasing relief to Gaza, notably opening up the Ashdod commercial port and a new northern crossing.

While aid concerns have been overshadowed, in the past week, by fears of a wider regional war, there have been constant updates on developments - Israeli defence officials declaring the arrival of shipments of flour destined for newly reopening bakeries, for example.

Anecdotal evidence, including social media footage of grilled meat being sold in Jabalia camp for the first time in months, has also circulated, suggesting food is becoming more easily available.

Palestinians at a food distribution point in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza [Getty Images]

However, aid agencies say that far more needs to be done to reverse critical shortages.

As the UN launched a flash appeal to raise $2.8bn (£2.3bn) in funding, mainly for Gaza, a senior official from its humanitarian office complained of lingering access problems, particularly to reach the north.

"We are dealing with this dance where we do one step forward, two steps backwards; or two steps forward and one step backward," says Andrea de Domenico, who heads the UN humanitarian office for Palestinian territories.

If Israel's response to Iran's recent strikes is now over, drawing a line under the latest round of violence between these two old enemies, the media and foreign players are likely to increase their scrutiny of goings-on in Gaza once again.

Already, we got a hint of this when the UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron came to express solidarity with Israel and try to reduce tensions after the Iranian attacks of 13-14 April.

"The real need is to refocus back on Hamas, back on the hostages, back on getting the aid back in, back on getting a pause in the conflict in Gaza," he said, ahead of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

For now, international mediation efforts to secure a new truce have largely stalled.

The main obstacle remains that Israel will discuss a temporary halt to bring home hostages but will not stop fighting until Hamas is eliminated. Hamas says it will not release the hostages without a path to end the war.

For ordinary Gazans struggling just to survive and Israelis desperate to bring home loved ones trapped in captivity, the best hope now could come from a new diplomatic thrust.

Without it there is the threat of a lingering war which carries a huge cost to humanity and constantly risks sparking further destabilising conflict in an already volatile part of the world.

[BBC]