Europe must unite, work with Middle East partners to bring end to Gaza hostilities: EU foreign policy chief Borrell
Josep Borrell said that the conflict between Israel and Hamas was the “most urgent geopolitical issue we have to deal with”
Updated 13 January 2024
Arab News
LONDON: The EU’s foreign policy chief said on Saturday that Europe had to unite and work with its Middle Eastern partners to push for an end to hostilities in Gaza.
After his trip to the Middle East to meet with leaders and officials to discuss the crises in the region, Josep Borrell said that the conflict between Israel and Hamas was the “most urgent geopolitical issue we have to deal with.”
I started 2024 with a new mission to the Middle East. The EU urgentlyneeds to deal with the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the risk of this conflict spreading in a more united way.
Borrell said, after discussions with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, that he counted the Kingdom as one of the EU’s main partners — alongside Jordan, Egypt and the Arab League — in trying to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and bring the two-state solution back to the fore.
“With my Saudi interlocutors, we discussed the situation in Gaza,” he said.
“Our analyses converged on several critical points: The need for a rapid end to the fighting and the release of hostages, the need to avoid a forced displacement of Palestinians outside of the enclave and the need for a rapid withdrawal of Israeli forces at the end of the military operation,” he added.
Borrell added that he also discussed with Saudi officials the efforts being taken to halt Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping.
“We also discussed the risks of the conflict spreading to the wider region. This included the precarious situation in the Red Sea as a result of attacks by Houthi rebels on merchant ships,” he said.
“For our part, we are discussing options to help restore freedom of navigation, including the creation of a new European maritime operation alongside mission Atalanta, which is already operating off the coast of Somalia,” he added.
During his visit to Lebanon, Borrell spoke with caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati and other political figures about the need to avoid the country being drawn into a wider conflict with Israel.
“I conveyed to all my interlocutors our deep concern at the risk of seeing Lebanon drawn into a conflict with Israel, and our desire to help prevent such a disastrous development,” he said.
“All of them, including the representative of Hezbollah, told me they were equally eager to avoid being pulled into such a downward spiral.”
Borrell also spoke to UNRWA Commissioner General Philipe Lazzarini, reiterating the EU’s support for the humanitarian organization, its opposition to the displacement of Palestinians from Gaza and its backing for more aid to be allowed into the enclave.
Lazzarini on Saturday said that the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza was “staining humanity,” as the conflict moved into its 100th day.
“The massive death, destruction, displacement, hunger, loss and grief of the last 100 days are staining our shared humanity,” he said in a statement as he visited the Gaza Strip.
“It’s been 100 days since the devastating war started, killing and displacing people in Gaza, following the horrific attacks that Hamas and other groups carried out against people in Israel. It’s been 100 days of ordeal and anxiety for hostages and their families.”
The massive death, destruction, displacement, hunger, loss, and grief of the last 100 days are staining our shared humanity.
Borrell also said that following his trip to the Middle East, he was confident the EU and its regional partners can work together toward resolving the crises.
“Returning from this mission, my conviction has only deepened on the urgency for the EU to intensify its involvement in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the same time, I am also more convinced than ever of the feasibility of doing so in close cooperation with our regional partners,” he said.
“Since Oct. 7, there have been divergent views within the EU on how to react to the conflict in Gaza. This lack of consensus has weakened the EU in the region and prevented us from having influence on events, despite the fact that we are very directly impacted by this conflict and its consequences.
“The time has come for us to unite and shoulder our responsibility to push for an end to the hostilities in Gaza, and work with our partners to actively pursue the implementation of the two-state solution.”
Israel says retrieved bodies of hostages were in Gaza tunnels
Israel has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
Updated 21 sec ago
AFP
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said Monday that the bodies of four hostages retrieved from Gaza last week were found in tunnels under Jabalia, where troops have been engaged in fierce fighting in recent days.
The army said last week it had recovered the bodies of Ron Benjamin, Yitzhak Gelerenter, Shani Louk, and Amit Buskila, all of whom it said had been killed in Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel.
Their remains were recovered “from underground tunnels in Jabalia in northern Gaza,” the army said late Monday in a statement.
During a military operation, Israeli soldiers searched a suspected building in which a tunnel shaft was located, the army said.
“Soldiers then entered the underground tunnel route in a night operation and inside it conducted combat,” it said.
During the fighting the soldiers “located the bodies of the hostages and rescued them from the tunnels,” the army said.
Gelerenter, Louk, and Buskila were killed and abducted from the Nova music festival, while Benjamin was killed at the Mefalsim intersection from where his body was taken to Gaza, the army said last week.
Thousands of young people had gathered on October 6 and 7 to dance to electronic music at the Nova festival event held near Re’im kibbutz, close to the Gaza border.
Fighters from Hamas crossed over from Gaza and killed more than 360 people at the festival, Israeli officials have said.
The Nova festival victims accounted for nearly a third of the more than 1,170 people killed in the October 7 attack, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Out of the 252 people taken hostage that day, 124 are still being held inside the Gaza Strip, including 37 the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 35,562 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Since early May the Israeli military has been engaged in renewed street battles in northern and central Gaza.
On Friday, the army told AFP that the fighting in the northern town of Jalalia was “perhaps the fiercest” in over seven months of war.
Fighting in north and central Gaza erupted again when the military began its assault in the far-southern city of Rafah on May 7.
Iran’s Raisi ‘unbefitting of condolences’: son of ousted shah
Updated 21 May 2024
AFP
PARIS: Iran’s former president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash, is not worthy of condolences due to the rights abuses he is accused of overseeing, the son of the late Iranian shah said Monday.
US-based Reza Pahlavi, whose father Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was ousted in the 1979 Islamic revolution and died in exile in 1980, warned the death of Raisi would not affect the policies of the Islamic republic at home or abroad.
“Today, Iranians are not in mourning. Ebrahim Raisi was a brutal mass-murderer unbefitting of condolences,” Pahlavi said in a post on his official Instagram.
“Sympathy with him is an insult to his victims and the Iranian nation whose only regret is that he did not live long enough to see the fall of the Islamic republic and face trial for his crimes,” the former crown prince added.
Rights groups including Amnesty International have long accused Raisi of being a member of a four-man “death committee” involved in approving the executions of thousands of political prisoners, mostly suspected members of the outlawed opposition group People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), in 1988.
As a key figure in the judiciary ever since and then president from 2021, Raisi has also been accused of responsibility over deadly crackdowns on protesters and other violations.
But Pahlavi warned the death of Raisi, as well as that of his foreign minister Hossein-Amir Abdollahian in the same crash, will “not alter the course” of the Islamic republic, where supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has final say.
“This regime will continue its repression at home and aggression abroad,” Pahlavi said.
Pahlavi was a key member of a broad coalition of Iranian exiled opposition groups that joined together in the wake of nationwide protests that erupted in September 2022.
The coalition broke up amid tensions, but he remains an influential figure for some in the diaspora.
Pahlavi’s father the late shah, who was groomed by the West to be a Cold War ally, grew increasingly autocratic during his decades-long rule, using his feared Savak security service to crush political opposition and leading to criticism from Washington of his human rights abuses.
Iran’s President Raisi and FM Amir-Abdollahian join a long list of world leaders who have perished in air disasters
The duo perished on Sunday when the helicopter carrying them crashed in a mountainous region of northern Iran
At least two dozen top officials and serving heads of state have died in plane and helicopter crashes over the past century
Updated 20 May 2024
Robert Edwards
LONDON: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was confirmed dead on Monday after search-and-rescue teams found his crashed helicopter in a mountainous region of northern Iran, close to the border with Azerbaijan.
Killed alongside Raisi were Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and seven others, including the crew, bodyguards and political and religious officials.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has assigned Vice President Mohammad Mokhber to assume interim duties ahead of elections within 50 days. Ali Bagheri, the country’s one-time top nuclear negotiator, was appointed as acting foreign minister.
Iranian authorities first raised the alarm on Sunday afternoon when they lost contact with Raisi’s helicopter as it flew through a fog-shrouded mountain area of the Jolfa region of East Azerbaijan province.
Iranian authorities first raised the alarm on Sunday afternoon when they lost contact with Raisi’s helicopter. (AP/Moj News Agency)
Raisi had earlier met Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on their common border to inaugurate a dam project.
On the return trip, only two of the three helicopters in his convoy landed in the city of Tabriz, setting off a massive search-and-rescue effort, with several foreign governments soon offering help.
As the sun rose on Monday, rescue crews said they had located the destroyed Bell 212 helicopter — a civilian version of the ubiquitous Vietnam War-era UH-1N “Twin Huey” — with no survivors among the nine people on board.
State television channel IRIB reported that the helicopter had “hit a mountain and disintegrated” on impact.
Analysts have highlighted concerns about the safety of Iran’s civilian and military aircraft, many of which are in a poor state of repair after decades of US sanctions deprived the nation of new models and spare parts.
Iran has kept its civil and military aviation fleets flying during its isolation since the 1979 revolution through a combination of smuggled parts and reverse-engineering, according to Western analysts.
“Spare parts would have definitely been an issue for the Iranians,” Cedric Leighton, a retired US Air Force colonel, told CNN.
State television channel IRIB reported that the helicopter had “hit a mountain and disintegrated” on impact. (Reuters/West Asia News Agency)
“In this particular case, I think this confluence of spare parts, because of the sanctions, plus the weather, which was very bad over the last few days in this particular part of northwestern Iran.
“All of that, I think contributed to a series of incidents and a series of decisions that the pilot and possibly even the president himself made when it came to flying this aircraft … And unfortunately for them, the result is this crash.”
Sunday’s incident is only the latest in a long history of air disasters that have claimed the lives of world leaders since the dawn of aviation.
One of the first instances of a serving leader or head of state to die in an air accident was Arvid Lindman, the prime minister of Sweden, whose Douglas DC-2 crashed into houses in Croydon, south London, while attempting to take off in thick fog on Dec. 9, 1936.
As the age of aviation took off during the interwar period, more and more leaders began taking to the skies for diplomatic visits and to touch base with the more distant corners of their dominions.
On Sept. 7, 1940, Paraguayan President Jose Felix Estigarribia died in a plane crash just a year after taking office, followed in 1943 by Poland’s prime minister in exile, Wladyslaw Sikorski, who died on July 4, 1943, when his B24C Liberator crashed into the Mediterranean shortly after taking off from Gibraltar.
While aviation technology and safety rapidly advanced after the Second World War as more and more countries began establishing their own air forces and civilian commercial fleets, technical faults, bad weather, and foul play continued to claim lives.
The top officials were found dead at the site of a helicopter crash on Monday after an hourslong search through a foggy, mountainous region. (AP/Moj News Agency)
On March 17, 1957, Ramon Magsaysay, the president of the Philippines, was killed when his plane crashed into Mount Manunggal in Cebu. A year later, on June 16, Brazil’s interim president, Nereu Ramos, died in a Cruzeiro airline crash near Curitiba Afonso Pena International Airport.
Africa has also seen its share of air disasters. On March 29, 1959, Barthelemy Boganda, president of the Central African Republic, died when his Atlas flying boxcar exploded in midair over Bangui.
Then, in 1961, Swedish economist and diplomat Dag Hammarskjold, who served as the second secretary-general of the UN, died when his Douglas DC-6B crashed into a jungle in Zambia on Sept. 18.
With the 1960s came the widespread adoption of helicopter flight in conflict zones, search-and-rescue operations, and increasingly as an efficient way for politicians, diplomats and business leaders to get around and land in areas without an airstrip.
Sunday’s incident is only the latest in a long history of air disasters that have claimed the lives of world leaders since the dawn of aviation. (AFP)
Like fixed-wing aircraft, however, helicopters are not immune to bad weather conditions, obstacles, human error, sabotage or terrorism.
One of the first world leaders to die in a helicopter crash was Abdul Salam Arif, the president of Iraq, who reportedly died when his aircraft was caught in a thunderstorm on April 13, 1966.
Similar incidents followed with the April 27, 1969, death of Bolivian President Rene Barrientos in a helicopter crash in Arque, and Joel Rakotomalala, the prime minister of Madagascar, in a crash on July 30, 1976.
Bad weather contributed to the death of Yugoslav premier Dzemal Bijedic on Jan. 18, 1977, when his Gates Learjet crashed into a mountain during a snowstorm.
Climatic conditions were also blamed when Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos Aguilera’s Beech Super King Air 200 FAE-723 crashed on May 24, 1981, and when Mozambican President Samora Machel’s Tupolev-134A crashed while trying to land in a storm at Maputo on Oct. 19, 1986.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. (AFP)
As the skies became busier, the potential for accidents grew. On July 18, 1967, Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, the first president of the Brazilian military dictatorship after the 1964 coup, died in a midair collision of Piper PA-23 aircraft near Fortaleza.
On May 27, 1979, Ahmed Ould Bouceif, the prime minister of Mauritania, died in a plane crash off the coast of Dakar, Senegal, and Francisco Sa Carneiro, who served as Portugal’s prime minister for only 11 months, died on Dec. 4, 1980.
Not all crashes can be blamed on the weather or pilot error, however. In several cases, aircraft have been deliberately targeted as a means of killing their high-profile passengers.
Panamanian leader Gen. Omar Torrijos died on July 31, 1981, when his Panamanian Air Force plane crashed under suspicious circumstances.
On June 1, 1987, Lebanese statesman Rashid Karami, who served as prime minister eight times, was killed when a bomb detonated aboard his helicopter shortly after takeoff from Beirut.
In one particularly devastating incident, Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira were both killed on April 6, 1994, when their Dassault Falcon 50 9XR-NN was shot down while approaching Rwanda’s Kigali airport.
Iranians will observe five days of mourning for victims of the helicopter crash. (Reuters/West Asia News Agency)
There have been several investigations into the air crash that killed Pakistan’s Gen. Zia Ul-Haq on Aug. 17, 1988, but no satisfactory cause was found, leading to a flurry of assassination theories.
The Pakistani Air Force Lockheed C-130B crashed shortly after takeoff from Bahawalpur. According to investigators, the plane plunged from the sky and struck the ground with such force that it was blown to pieces and wreckage scattered over a wide area.
Despite vast improvements in aviation safety, disasters have continued to strike well into the new millennium.
On Feb. 26, 2004, Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski died when his Beechcraft Super King Air 200 Z3-BAB crashed while trying to land in poor weather at Mostar.
A man lights a candle to offer condolences outside the Iranian embassy, in Baghdad. (Reuters)
John Garang, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and briefly first vice president of Sudan, died when his helicopter crashed into a mountain range in the country’s south after getting caught in poor weather on July 30, 2005.
Muhammadu Maccido, the sultan of Sokoto in Nigeria, was killed alongside his son when his ADC Airlines Flight 53 crashed on Oct. 29, 2006, and Polish President Lech Kaczynski died on April 10, 2010, when his Tupolev-154 crashed in foggy weather when approaching Smolensk airport in western Russia.
In the latest incident prior to Raisi’s death, the deceased was actually at the controls when the aircraft got into difficulty. Chile’s former president, Sebastian Pinera, was killed on Feb. 6 this year when the Robinson R44 helicopter he was piloting crashed nose-first into Lake Ranco.
An Iranian woman holds a poster of President Ebrahim Raisi during a mourning ceremony in Tehran, Iran. (AP)
While this list of fatalities might give world leaders pause for thought as they step aboard their presidential jets on their next diplomatic outing, it is well worth remembering that modern air travel is statistically many times safer than traveling by road.
That said, an experienced pilot, an aircraft in good condition, a clear weather forecast, and a flight plan shrouded in secrecy would no doubt improve their odds of making a safe arrival.
Iran to hold presidential election on June 28: state media
The election calendar was approved at the meeting of the heads of the judiciary, government, and parliament
Updated 20 May 2024
AFP
TEHRAN: Iran announced Monday it will hold presidential elections on June 28, state media reported, following the death of President Ebrahim Raisi and his entourage in a helicopter crash.
“The election calendar was approved at the meeting of the heads of the judiciary, government, and parliament,” state television said.
“According to the initial agreement of the Guardian Council, it was decided that the 14th presidential election will be held on June 28.”
US says Houthis fired ballistic missile over Gulf of Aden
“This continued malign and reckless behavior by the Iranian-backed Houthis threatens regional stability and endangers the lives of mariners,” CENTCOM said
The Houthis did not claim credit for any fresh assaults on Monday, but they regularly do days later
Updated 20 May 2024
Saeed Al-Batati
AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s Houthi militia launched a ballistic missile over the Gulf of Aden on Sunday, the US military said.
This comes as the Houthis intensified attacks on Yemeni government soldiers around the country.
The US military said in a statement on Monday morning Yemen time that at about 9:35 p.m. (Sanaa time) on Sunday, the Houthis launched one anti-ship ballistic missile from Yemen over the Gulf of Aden, but neither the US-led coalition nor international commercial ships reported being hit by the missile.
“This continued malign and reckless behavior by the Iranian-backed Houthis threatens regional stability and endangers the lives of mariners across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden,” CENTCOM said.
The Houthis did not claim credit for any fresh assaults on Monday, but they regularly do days later.
The Houthis’ newest missile launch is part of an escalation of missile and drone strikes against commercial and navy ships in international seas near Yemen as well as in the Indian Ocean, which the Houthis claim are in support of Palestine.
The Houthis attacked dozens of ships with hundreds of ballistic missiles, drones and drone boats during their campaign against ships, which started in November.
They also took control of one commercial ship and destroyed another.
The US military said on Saturday that a Greek-owned and operated oil tanker heading toward China in the Red Sea, flying the flag of Panama, barely avoided being struck by a ballistic missile launched by the Houthis.
Meanwhile, four Yemeni government troops were killed on Monday while battling the Houthis in the province of Taiz, bringing the total number of soldiers killed in Houthi attacks to 11 in less than a week.
Local media said that the government’s Nation’s Shield Forces engaged in heavy fighting with the Houthis in the Hayfan area, on the border between Taiz and Lahj provinces, that left four of its soldiers dead.
On Saturday, a soldier from the same Yemeni military unit was killed and another injured while defending their position in Haydan against a Houthi onslaught.
Six more Yemeni soldiers from the government’s Giants Brigades were killed on Saturday in fighting with the Houthis in the Al-Abadia region of Marib’s central province.
On Monday, the Houthis held a military burial procession in Sanaa for two of their troops killed while battling with Yemeni government forces.
The Houthis have organized similar funerals for hundreds of fighters who have died on the front lines ever since the UN-brokered ceasefire came into effect in April 2022.
At the same time, official media said that Yemen’s Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Mohsen Al-Daeri met the UN Yemen envoy’s military adviser, General Antony Hayward, in Aden on Sunday to discuss Houthi attacks on government troops across the country, peace efforts to end the war, and the smuggling of Iranian weapons to the Houthis.
Al-Daeri said that the Houthis had breached agreements with the Yemeni government and would continue to pose a danger to international maritime lines as long as they controlled Yemeni territory on the Red Sea.
He also accused Iran of continuing to supply weapons and military officers to the Houthis through direct journeys from Iran’s Bandar Abbas port to the Houthi-controlled Hodeidah port.
On Monday, UN experts, including Nazila Ghanea, special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, urged the Houthis to release five members of the Bahai religious minority and to stop persecuting religious minorities in regions they control.
“We urge the de facto authorities to release these five individuals immediately and refrain from any further action that may jeopardize their physical and psychological integrity,” the experts said.
Armed Houthis abducted 17 Bahais, including five women, after bursting into a meeting in Sanaa a year ago, and they have refused to release them despite local and international requests.
According to the UN experts, the Houthis released 12 Bahais under “very strict conditions” after signing a written pledge not to communicate with other sect members, avoid religious activities and not leave cities without permission, and that the Houthis continue to hold five who are at risk of mistreatment by their captors.
“We are concerned that they continue to be at serious risk of torture and other human rights violations, including acts tantamount to enforced disappearance,” the UN experts said.
