Opinion

The PA’s misplaced optimism

November 7, 2024 

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (L) and US President Donald Trump shake hands before a meeting at the Palace Hotel during the 72nd United Nations General Assembly on 20 September, 2017, in New York

 [Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images]

by Ramona Wadi
walzerscent

The return of Donald Trump as US president will undoubtedly evoke the memory of a string of unilateral concessions to Israel, ending with the Abraham Accords, that undoubtedly contributed to the current premeditated sense of oblivion towards the genocide in Gaza. We can also remember how the Palestinian Authority was shunned; the PLO office in Washington was closed down; and funds to the PA were cut. The PA, however, apparently has no memory of any of these abuses, hoping no doubt that it is seen as being diplomatic while trying to garner favour.

“We will remain steadfast in our commitment to peace, and we are confident that the United States will support, under your leadership, the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people,” wrote PA President Mahmoud Abbas in his congratulatory letter to Trump.


Being that confident can only be attributed to an attempt to claim some degree of political relevance.

Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing genocide and the occupied West Bank is far from free of Israel violence. In both areas, the US is funding the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and has been doing so for decades. And yet you would not think so given the tone of Abbas’s message. His optimism it totally misplaced.

In April this year, Trump urged Israel to “finish what they started” in Gaza. The rhetoric, however, as is Trump’s style, was vague. “Get it over with, and get it over with fast, because we have to, you have to get back to normalcy and peace,” Trump said during an interview on the “Hugh Hewitt Show”. Peace after a genocide that the international community is wilfully ignoring and which the US is funding very deliberately? That can only mean a peace without Palestinians, and there is no normalcy about that, because Palestinians would have disappeared as a result of Israel’s internationally-supported genocide.

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Just two months earlier, Trump’s son in law and former advisor Jared Kushner was dreaming about and advocating for luxury beach front properties in Gaza. Palestinians, he said, should be moved to the Naqab Desert and Egypt. He had also admitted that it was possible that Israel would not allow the forcibly displaced Palestinians to return to their homes in Gaza, a possibility that was asserted publicly as fact by the Israeli military during a media briefing on Tuesday night.

While Trump has stated that he will focus on domestic policies and bring an end to the wars, such a message is too simplistic.

Behind that tone lies decades of US foreign policy; diplomatic relations with Israel; funding Israel’s colonial enterprise and military; its Qualitative Military Edge; the unilateral concessions made to Israel by the Trump administration during his first presidency; and, of course, Kushner’s investment proposals. And let us not forget Kushner’s efforts to get UNRWA defunded and discredited during Trump’s tenure, as well as the attempts to alter the definition of a Palestinian refugee. Of course, the US excels in helping Israel create perpetual refugees out of Palestinians, but Kushner finds no contradiction in that, as long as Gaza becomes available as investment bait for luxury beachfront properties.

The PA might need to reconsider its positive stance. US presidents look after Israeli interests. That’s an undeniable fact, and is unlikely to alter. Palestinians have already been forcibly displaced from northern Gaza. How can Abbas express confidence in Palestinians achieving their “legitimate aspirations” when Trump’s previous record demonstrates otherwise, and the rhetoric so far still points towards genocide?

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Settler farms, a means to steal Palestinian land, report finds


November 7, 2024 

Middle East Monitor –

Israeli soldiers guard Jewish settlers as they seize the lands of Palestinian farmers in the village of Burqin, west of Salfit, in the occupied West Bank 

[Nasser Ishtayeh/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]

In the 1980s and 1990s, Israel took the initiative to establish illegal settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, in the form of “agricultural and shepherd farms”, with the aim of plundering swaths Palestinian land, an investigative report by Haaretz newspaper has said.

According to the report, these “settler farms” have received huge funding from successive Israeli governments, although a very small number of settlers live in them.

These settlers include dozens of school dropouts who were transferred by the government to the “farms” as if they were institutions that care for juvenile delinquents. Instead these young men are groomed and used in terrorist attacks against Palestinians.

According to Haaretz, the number of these “farms” has increased from 23 in 2017 to about 60 at the end of 2021, and to 90 “farms” in 2024 with an estimated area of 650,000 dunams (650 square kilometres), or about 12 per cent of the area of the occupied West Bank.

The secretary general of the Israeli settlement movement Amana says the movement’s central mission is “preserving open areas mainly through farms”, explaining that “the settlers’ farms has more than twice the area of built-up settlements… each farm can guard an area of thousands of acres.”

Successive Israeli governments have, in recent years, transformed tens of these shepherds’ outposts, or “farms”, into “central projects” and provided them with resources in an unprecedented manner.

“Tens of millions of shekels were pumped into these farms directly from different ministries, the settlements’ budgets and the Settlement Authority,” the report said.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has reiterated that he was working to legalise them, according to the newspaper.

The farms also receive funding from the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (the Permanent Fund for Israel – KKL), through the “Youth at Risk” project, which aims to “whitewash the farms” and finance them. The project includes “enrichment programmes” provided by the Ministry of Education.

Brazil: university cancels lecture by Israeli professor after student protest

November 7, 2024 
Middle East Monitor –

Palestinian and Brazilian students protesting at a lecture by Israeli-Brazilian Professor Michel Gherman [Eman Abusidu]

by Eman Abusidu

Palestinian and Brazilian students have protested against a lecture by Israeli-Brazilian professor Michel Gherman at the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) in Brazil. The lecture was cancelled as a result.

Gherman is an associate professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and a researcher at the Centre for Studies on Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He describes himself as a “left-wing Zionist” and has shared videos on social media where he attempts to justify Zionist ideology, which underpins the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

A social media post shows pro-Palestine students interrupting the lecture on the university campus. They claimed that the lecture “supported the genocide of Palestinians,” portrayed “Israel as the victim,” denied “reality,” and undermined the “standards that public universities should uphold.”

Walking in an orderly fashion to the front of the lecture room, the students’ chants expressed the solidarity of the youth of Latin America with the youth of Yemen and Palestine.

The lecture was titled “Between Barbarism and Messianism: Perspectives for the Day Ahead in the Current Crisis of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict”. Pro-Palestine students argued that it helped to promote the idea that one can criticise the Israeli genocide in Gaza while still advocating for the existence of the occupation state. They also claimed that it identified “moderate Zionism” as “a political and ideological movement that defends the creation of a Jewish national state” in Palestine and spread misinformation about legitimate Palestinian resistance against the occupation of Palestine.

‘Palestine and our country. Together we will win. Anti-Imperialist League’

“Palestine and our country. Together we will win. Anti-Imperialist League”

According to Fábio Gentile, the coordinator of the UFC’s postgraduate programme in Sociology and one of the lecture’s debaters, “A group of students entered the room carrying pro-Palestine posters and an image of [Yahya] Sinwar, shouting and calling for the lecture to end.”

He added: “Zionism is one of the worst and most bloodthirsty human creations. It is unacceptable that, while Zionism is committing acts of genocide and barbarity in Palestine, the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) is colluding with this [lecture].”

Gentile pointed out that the protest follows more than a year of the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has killed 43,000 Palestinians and wounded 103,000 others. “Moreover, two million have been displaced and are deprived of fresh water, food and medicine.”

The protests at the Federal University of Ceará are among many pro-Palestine activities in Brazilian universities aimed at challenging any promotion of the apartheid regime in Israel. Palestine solidarity movements are growing stronger despite the presence of Zionist groups in Brazil. Pro-Palestine activists have succeeded in forcing the cancellation of events such as the Israeli Universities Festival, despite efforts by the pro-Israel lobby in Brazil to dehumanise and criminalise pro-Palestine solidarity.



Student protests demand that universities in Brazil should boycott Israeli professors and institutions, renounce academic agreements and end all academic relationships and ties with Israeli institutions. “Solidarity with the Palestinian people must extend both within and beyond the university walls, in light of the ongoing genocide,” they insist.

A survey conducted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCTI) revealed that the Brazilian federal government and the University of São Paulo each have seven scientific agreements with Israel, and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) has three.

Five of the federal government’s agreements with the occupation state are for “Scientific and Technological Cooperation”, one is for “Technical Cooperation” and one is for “Nuclear Energy”. The first agreement was signed by Brazil and Israel in 1962.

The University of São Paulo is one of the largest universities in the country. It has partnerships with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Ariel University in one of Israel’s illegal settlements, the University of Haifa and the Jerusalem School of Business Administration, as well as the Consulate General of Israel in São Paulo.

Some of these partner universities have historical ties to the Israeli military and the Zionist movement. The agreements remain in place despite Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip and calls from the Palestinian people to sever such relations because Israeli universities are complicit in the violence and should, they say, be isolated internationally.

Canada faces legal action over complicity in Gaza genocide


November 7, 2024 

Middle East Monitor –

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators march during a protest in downtown Toronto,Canada

 on August 3, 2024 [Mert Alper Dervış/Anadolu Agency]


A coalition of Canadian legal rights groups has launched a landmark lawsuit against the federal government, charging it with failing to prevent genocide in Gaza and violating its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The Coalition for Canadian Accountability in Gaza, which includes the Legal Centre for Palestine (LCP), the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) and other legal advocates, alleges that Ottawa has failed to meet its legal obligations to prevent genocide and has violated the plaintiffs’ rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The legal action has been filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on behalf of two Palestinian-Canadians who have suffered devastating losses in Gaza during Israel’s year-long assault on the civilian population.

The case centres on two plaintiffs: Hany el Batnigi, who was trapped in Gaza during the initial bombardment in October and lost multiple family members to Israeli attacks, and Tamer Jarada, whose family suffered crushing losses when their apartment building in Gaza City was destroyed by an Israeli air strike, killing his father, sisters, uncle, aunt, nephews and numerous extended family members.

READ: Canada must stop US sale of Canadian-made weapons to Israel, rights groups urge

The lawsuit specifically challenges Canada’s continued military exports to Israel and its failure to exercise influence over Israeli actions. The filing argues that the government has neglected to deploy available tools, including sanctions against Israeli leaders, preventing Canadian citizens from serving in the Israeli military, and curtailing Canadian charities’ support for illegal acts in Israel.

The plaintiffs are seeking a declaration that Canada has violated its duty to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide. Additionally, they argue that the government’s failure to act has violated their Charter rights to security of the person and equal protection under the law without discrimination.

The legal action also criticises Canada’s Gaza Special Measures temporary resident visa programme, which has failed to provide adequate assistance to Palestinians fleeing the conflict, with both plaintiffs experiencing major obstacles in their attempts to secure safe passage for surviving family members to Canada.

31% of Americans say support for Israel is ‘too strong’, survey finds


November 7, 2024 

Middle East Monitor –

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators, holding banners and flags, gather to protest the elections in which Republican nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Kamala Harris competed for president on Election Night in New York, United States on November 05, 2024 [Fatih Aktaş/Anadolu Agency]

Nearly a third of Americans view US support for Israel as being “too strong”, a poll conducted by Edison Research has revealed.

According to the poll’s findings, 31 per cent of voters nationwide said US support for Israel is too strong, 30 per cent said it’s not strong enough and 31 per cent said it’s about right.

The exit poll conducted by Edison Research also found that 56 per cent of US voters believe most undocumented immigrants in the United States should be offered a chance to apply for legal status, 40 per cent said they should be deported to the countries they came from.

The poll came as America voted for its 47th US president, with Donald Trump securing his return to the White House in the new year.

The Washington Post had described the choice between candidates Trump and Kamala Harris as the worst selection of presidential options in the history of the United States.

Residents in US state of Michigan attribute election loss for Democrats to genocide in Gaza


November 7, 2024 

Middle East Monitor –

A voter checks in with election officials before casting ballot for the US presidential and congressional elections at Dearborn High School in Dearborn, MI, United States on November 05, 2024. [Adam James Dewey – Anadolu Agency]

Voters in the US state of Michigan, notably in the Arab-American hub of Dearborn, sent a resounding message in the 5 November presidential election that was driven by opposition to the US stance on the Gaza Strip, Anadolu Agency reports.

Dearborn, where more than half of the population has Middle Eastern roots, views the current US government as supporting genocide. Residents shifted support from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party, which contributed to Donald Trump’s nearly seven-point win against Kamala Harris in the city.

Residents, who annually vote Democrat, demonstrated a stark change in this election.

In 2020, Trump received only around 30 per cent of the vote in Dearborn, compared to Joe Biden’s 69 per cent. This year, voters appeared to respond to what they view as a lack of action by Democrats against Israel in its more than year-long onslaught in Gaza, which has killed in excess of 43,000 victims.

“This community usually votes majority Democrat. They didn’t this time around,” resident Mohammad Abudrabo told Anadolu, reflecting his frustration. “I think regular people are not happy, and people who normally vote Democrat feel like they’re not being heard.”

He accused Democrats of losing “touch with reality”.

Abudrabo criticised the Democratic Party’s support for Israel, noting that “60 per cent of Democrats oppose the genocide. So just as a matter of politics, why would you not stop it?”

Ali Altimi emphasized the profound importance of Palestine for the community – regardless of party affiliation.

“Whether it’s Republican or Democrat, the biggest thing for us, and I think everyone in Dearborn shares this, is what’s happening in Palestine,” he said.

He indicated that even those who are not into politics or outside the Middle Eastern community are concerned about the financial aid flowing overseas while Americans struggle with inflation. “With prices increasing here, it’s like common sense,” he said.

Altimi hopes a change in leadership could improve the situation domestically and abroad. He said people are fed up and want economic stability. And they want the killings to stop In Palestine.

“So, I think that Gaza played a role in the Democrats losing.”

Since Israel launched war on Gaza on 7 October, 2023, most of the more than 43,400 Palestinians who have been killed have been women and children, and more than 102,300 others have been injured, according to local health authorities.

More than a year into the onslaught, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel stands accused of genocide against Palestinians at the International Court of Justice.

“Q Day” Is Coming: Is the World Prepared?

Quantum computing is universally expected to render our most common data security methods obsolete.

Ian Munroe
November 7, 2024

There are concerns about the extent to which different countries will be able to protect themselves, the author notes. (Illustration by Paul Lachine)

While threats from phishing emails and other kinds of cyberattacks are more of a nuisance with each passing year, there’s a greater worry ahead: quantum computing is universally expected to render our most common data security methods obsolete. The only question is how soon.

“As of right now, every piece of information that we have is already lost,” says Shohini Ghose, a quantum physicist and professor of physics and computer science at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. “The day the quantum computer was proposed was the day that we’'ve all become vulnerable. And I don’'t think we realize that, as yet — and if it sounds like panic and alarm, actually we are not panicking and being alarmist enough.”

This raises a couple of pressing questions: How should we respond? And how will that response shape a potentially transformative technology at a pivotal stage of development?

Recently, Ghose and a handful of other experts from around the world gathered near the Eiffel Tower at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to tackle these questions. Other international organizations are also searching for answers.

Quantum computers harness the properties of subatomic particles to process information. The first such machine of its kind is generally considered to have been built in 1998. It consisted of two quantum bits, or “qubits,” the fundamental units of information with which these machines encode data. IBM’s Quantum System One, which was inaugurated near Bromont, Quebec in 2023, (and which looks vaguely like a streamlined floating garbage can), has a 127-qubit processor. Early in 2024, a California-based start-up announced it had developed a machine with more than 1,100 qubits.

Challenges abound. For one thing, qubits are notoriously sensitive to their environment and generally need to be kept at temperatures colder than that of outer space. But the progress so far has been enough to capture the attention of political leaders.

In 2016, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was jokingly asked jby a reporter to explain how the technology worked, he made international headlines by delivering a convincing answer to a room crammed with physicists. “A regular computer bit is either a one or a zero, either on or off. A quantum state can be much more complex than that, because as we know, things can be both particle and wave at the same time, and the uncertainty around quantum states allows us to encode more information into a much smaller computer. So that’s what’s exciting about quantum computing,” Trudeau said, to applause. “Don’t get me going on this, or we’ll be here all day.”

Governments around the world have invested more than US$40 billion in quantum research and development to date, according to consulting firm McKinsey and Company. The consultancy estimates the overall market for the technology could hit US$173 billion by 2040.

Rebecca Krauthamer, co-founder and chief product and technology officer at QuSecure, a post-quantum cybersecurity company, says the goal is to produce machines that are more than just bigger, faster classical computers. Comparing the former to the latter is “like comparing a microwave to a candle,” she says. “They’re just totally different worlds.”



Quantum computers will eventually be able to tackle those problems exponentially faster than can conventional computers. Digital signatures and blockchain could also be compromised.


This new world is being touted as a way to deal with pressing global challenges such as food security and climate change, among other problems. But as development accelerates, risks also come into view. “For all the amazing things they’ll do, one of the things they will also do is break many of the mechanisms we use for e-commerce and data protection presently. So we need to come up with new mechanisms which would protect us against such an event,” says Vikram Sharma, CEO and founder of Canberra, Australia-based QuintessenceLabs and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Cybersecurity. “If we don’t, it would potentially impact the correct functioning of our society.”

Some of the most commonly used encryption methods, known by the abbreviations RSA and ECC, hinge on the difficulty of completing mathematical tasks such as factoring large numbers. Quantum computers will eventually be able to tackle those problems exponentially faster than can conventional computers. Digital signatures and blockchain could also be compromised by the technology.

A recent KPMG survey of 250 major corporations found that 60 percent of those in Canada and 73 percent in the United States believe “it’s only a matter of time” until the technology is applied to disrupt current cybersecurity protocols. One result, a 2022 report from the World Economic Forum noted, may be that “all regulations and laws regarding privacy, data management etc. would be impossible to uphold[3] .” A likely erosion of public trust in digital technology could compound these problems.

Companies such as Sharma’s and Krauthamer’s are developing tools to protect digital information from “Q Day” — when a quantum computer powerful enough to compromise the encryption systems that secure our digital world emerges.

When that will happen is hotly debated. An annual survey of several dozen leading quantum experts in 2023 put the time frame at between five and 30 years, with an estimated chance of 31 percent, on average, that a machine capable of cracking conventional cryptographic schemes will be built within a decade. “The technology is clearly maturing, and there is no known fundamental barrier to realizing large-scale quantum computing,” the survey’s authors wrote. “Cyber-risk managers should consider it more a matter of ‘when’ than of ‘if.’”

Adding to these fears is the belief that we won’t know when Q-Day has arrived. During the Second World War, when a team of codebreakers at an estate home in southeast England managed to crack Nazi Germany’s Enigma cypher machine, “they didn’t blast that out as an announcement to the world. They kept that secret, right?” Krauthamer says. “And so we are also unlikely to know when a... ‘cryptographically relevant quantum computer,’ comes online because it’s a very powerful tool and those that have that tool first will likely want to keep it secret as long as possible.”

Governments have been pouring significant amounts of money into research and development inhopes of gaining a strategic advantage. China is believed to have invested by far the most, at US$15 billion, according to McKinsey. The Chinese government built a sprawling 37-hectare national laboratory devoted to quantum computing near Shanghai in 2017. Earlier this year, researchers published a paper in the Chinese Journal of Computers that described the technology as “an exciting yet formidable challenge to cryptographic security” and claimed they had found a new approach that “has shown better realistic attack capabilities” against widely used RSA encryption.



And while Q-Day could still be years out, some governments are believed to be using "harvest now, decrypt later” attacks that involve acquiring and storing huge amounts of encrypted data so they can later access it.


And while Q-Day could still be years out, some governments are believed to be using "harvest now, decrypt later” attacks that involve acquiring and storing huge amounts of encrypted data so they can later access it once a “cryptographically relevant” quantum computer exists. In one such suspected attack, internet traffic from Toronto to South Korean government websites was diverted by China Telecom en route to its final destination for six months in 2016. “It is absolutely happening now,” Krauthamer says. “I can’t get into the political side. But it is a sure thing.”

What’s more, the analytical power of a machine that can break current encryption protocols is also likely to be far greater than with conventional computers, she says, meaning the insights that can be gleaned from online data leaks will be “much more impressive.” That could also put anonymized data sets at risk of being decoded.

So a rush to protect sensitive data is unfolding. Google says that in 2022 it put in place post-quantum cryptography — which relies on algorithms based on different math that are believed to be able to withstand quantum attacks — for all of its internal communications. The White House has been urging federal agencies in the US to begin migrating to this new type of cryptography and in July, its Office of Management and Budget said the cost of doing so will top US$7.1 billion between 2025 and 2035.

In August of 2024, one US agency published a trio of algorithms it hopes system administrators will adopt “as soon as possible.” The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which promotes innovation and competitiveness in American industry, said these new post-quantum standards will “secure a wide range of electronic information, from confidential email messages to e-commerce transactions that propel the modern economy.” The algorithms were eight years in the making. Two were co-produced by researchers at IBM. The third was co-produced by an expert who has since joined that company. (A fourth algorithm that the agency is expected to publish is also being built in collaboration with IBM.)

Other countries are introducing requirements for sensitive sectors of their economies to begin the shift to post-quantum cryptography, Sharma says. Governments can also play an advisory role by putting out guidance and standards on how organizations can protect themselves from quantum attacks, he says, as NIST is doing. They can become early adopters too, and “showcase how large organizations can transition into this new security regime. And then the follow on to that could be that they say, ‘all right, if you want to do business with us, then we need you to equally conform to a certain level of security maturity.’”

In Canada, a national quantum strategy launched in 2023 pledges in part to identify what information held by the federal government “is at greatest risk” and to develop a plan to protect it. But Ghose says a much broader effort is needed. “We have to really mobilize to shift to much better encryption systems,” she says. “We have to mobilize all of our different sectors, and both the small businesses as well as the large industry players, to really think about this and rapidly translate to these newer standards that are not as vulnerable.”

On an international level, there are also concerns about the extent to which different countries will be able to protect themselves, and what exactly the gap between the haves and have-nots will mean.

“The big risk is a huge quantum divide between countries with quantum technologies, with huge national programs about quantum technologies, and countries that don’t have programs or don’t have quantum technologies,” says Luca Possati, an assistant professor at the University of Twente in the Netherlands who studies human-technology interaction. “The risk of divide and the consequences of a possible divide can be very dangerous ,” he adds. “But of course, it’s quite difficult to say what is going to happen because there are so many variables, we still don’t know actually all the potentialities of this technology.”


The opinions expressed in this article/multimedia are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of CIGI or its Board of Directors.

About the Author
Ian Munroe

Ian Munroe is a journalist with a focus on technology and international relations.

 AFGHANISTAN

Khalilzad sees Trump’s return as chance to fully implement Doha deal

• by Mujeeb Rahman Awrang Stanikzai
• 
  

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Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. special envoy for Afghan reconciliation, expressed optimism that Donald Trump’s potential return to the presidency presents an opportunity to fully enact the Doha Agreement, a deal aimed at facilitating a peaceful resolution in Afghanistan.

“With Trump’s return to the U.S. presidency, there is an opportunity for full implementation of all the elements of the Doha Agreement in Afghanistan,” Khalilzad said in a recent statement.

The agreement, signed on February 29, 2020, in Doha, Qatar, by Abdul Ghani Baradar, then head of the Taliban’s negotiating team, and Khalilzad on behalf of the Trump administration, outlined terms for the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners and a gradual withdrawal of American troops. The deal also laid the groundwork for intra-Afghan negotiations meant to shape the country’s future governance.

Critics have argued that the Doha Agreement contributed to the rapid collapse of the former Afghan government, particularly in the wake of the swift U.S. military withdrawal. The accord’s ambitious goals for peace and cooperation faced significant hurdles after the fall of the government and the subsequent rise of the Taliban to power.

The agreement was structured around three main parts:

Part A involved Afghanistan’s commitment not to host or cooperate with international terrorist groups and the U.S.’s pledge to support Afghan security forces.

Part B stipulated the phased reduction of U.S. military presence, with a target of withdrawing all forces within 14 months, contingent on Taliban compliance. It also called for prisoner releases and the initiation of intra-Afghan dialogue.

Part C outlined U.S. commitments to seek UN Security Council endorsement and maintain positive bilateral relations focused on reconstruction and economic cooperation.

Despite these detailed provisions, the Doha Agreement’s promises of sustainable peace and political settlement remain largely unfulfilled. Analysts and former officials, including Khalilzad, now watch Trump’s political prospects with renewed interest, debating whether his leadership could revive the agreement’s intentions or exacerbate challenges in U.S.-Afghan relations.

OSHA investigating after Target employee dies on aerial lift at central Pa. store

Updated: Nov. 05, 202
By John Beauge | Special to PennLive

PENNSDALE—The Occupation and Safety Administration is investigating the workplace death of a Target store employee Saturday in Lycoming County.

Brianna Burley-Inners, 26, of South Williamsport, was trapped between a “manlift,” or movable work platform, and door frame while working on the security system in the ceiling in the store near Pennsdale, state police said. Manlifts are machines that enable workers to perform tasks at heights. They have an enclosed platform attached to a lifting mechanism that raises and lowers workers and their tools.

She was last seen by co-workers about 11:30 p.m., they said. As workers were checking out about midnight the lead employee radioed Burley-Inners to see if she was on her way, they said.

RIP

164 workers died in occupation-related accidents in Turkey in October: report

ByTurkish Minute
November 7, 2024

A total of 164 people died in workplace accidents in Turkey in October, according to a monthly report prepared by the Health and Safety Labor Watch (İSİG), the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported.

Four minors were among the reported work-related fatalities.

Construction was the leading sector to record fatalities among workplace accidents, representing 30 percent of the deaths. Agriculture was second, with 18 percent, followed by transportation with 11 percent.

The most frequent cause of death was falling from a height, which accounted for 19 percent of all workplace deaths, while experiencing a heart attack represented 18 percent and traffic accidents accounted for 15 percent.

Lax work safety standards have been a significant cause of concern for decades in Turkey, where workplace accidents are a nearly daily occurrence. İSİG reported nearly 2,000 work-related deaths in 2023.

According to İSİG, more than 30,000 occupational accidents have been reported since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in November 2002.

İSİG General Coordinator Murat Çakır earlier said the reason for the large number of fatalities in work-related accidents has to do with the policies of the AKP, which he said aim to turn Turkey into a source of cheap labor for Europe.

According to Çakır, workers feel obliged to work under unsafe conditions, fearing that they will otherwise be unable to support their family.

İSİG began to record occupational fatalities in 2011. The group records the number of workers who die due to the lack of workplace safety and campaigns for stricter workplace safety measures.

A yearly report produced by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) on labor rights revealed that Turkey is one of the 10 worst countries in the world for workers in industrial sectors. According to the Brussels-based ITUC, workers’ freedoms and rights have been further denied since police crackdowns on protests in Turkey in 2023.