UAE: An outspoken Emirati ruling family member on Wednesday raised the prospect of Qatar’s leadership changing amid a growing diplomatic crisis between it and other Arab nations attempting to isolate the energy-rich travel hub from the rest of the world.
Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi’s comments in an interview with The Associated Press came as Emirati officials also announced those offering support to Qatar online could face years in prison and fines for offering sympathy to the country, suggesting the crisis will only intensify.
“Qataris are questioning whether this is going to end up in seeing a change in leadership itself in Qatar,” Al Qassemi told the AP in his office in Sharjah, near Dubai. “So it is a very serious issue. Again, this is Qataris speaking to international media wondering whether this is possible at all.”
He added: “Doha now is completely isolated. Doha now needs to take serious steps very rapidly to placate not only their neighbors but also their allies around the world.”
Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates were among those who joined Saudi Arabia on Monday in cutting diplomatic ties with Qatar. They alleged Qatar funds terror groups and has a worryingly close relationship with Iran, a nation with which it shares its vast offshore natural gas field.
Qatar long has denied funding extremists, and its foreign minister has struck a defiant tone in interviews, even after worried residents emptied grocery stores in its capital of Doha. Qatar relies heavily on food imports, especially those coming over its only land border with Saudi Arabia. The Arab countries have blocked Qatari vessels from entering their airspace, as well as using their seaports as Saudi Arabia has closed off its land border.
Among others joining them are Yemen’s internationally backed government, which has lost the capital and large portions of the war-torn country. The Maldives and one of conflict-ridden Libya’s competing governments also have joined them in cutting ties to Doha.
Late Tuesday night, the Jordanian government announced it was reducing its level of diplomatic representation in Qatar and canceling the local registration for Al-Jazeera TV. And on Wednesday, the African nation of Mauritania joined them.
Soccer’s world governing body FIFA has said it remains in regular contact with Qatar, which will host the 2022 World Cup. Qatar just finished one of the stadiums for the tournament, though others have yet to be built.
The Gulf countries have ordered their citizens out of Qatar and gave Qataris abroad 14 days to return home. The countries also said they would eject Qatar’s diplomats.
Qatar Airways, one of the region’s major long-haul carriers, has suspended all flights to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain until further notice. It has increasingly been sending flights over Iran and Turkey to avoid Saudi and Egyptian airspace.
Al Qassemi, who previously wrote a column describing steps Qatar would need to take, said that the crisis will only escalate if Doha doesn’t back down. He said Qatar needed to shut down or limit its Al-Jazeera news network, as well as stop funding extremist groups and others.
His comments took on further strength as the UAE’s Justice Ministry warned social media users that they can face three to 15 years in prison time and fines starting from 500,000 dirhams ($136,000) for offering sympathy for Qatar. The ministry quoted UAE Attorney General Hamad Saif Al-Shamsi on social media making the warning, saying it came over Qatar’s “hostile and reckless policy.”
While liberal compared to much of the Middle East, the UAE has tough cybercrime and slander laws under which people can be arrested, imprisoned and deported for taking photographs without the consent of those shown.
Al Qassemi also warned Qatar should not rely on hosting some 10,000 American troops at its Al-Udeid Air Base as protection against the Arab nations lined up against it. US President Donald Trump made a series of tweets Tuesday calling into question his commitment to the peninsular nation after earlier telling Qatar’s ruling emir that “we’ve been friends now for a long time.”
“The Qataris should not count on that base as being a guarantee of sort of American protection when it comes to conflict with Saudi Arabia,” Al Qassemi said. “I think the Americans would choose to side with Saudi Arabia over any other country in the region.”
UAE ruling family member: Qatar now questioning its leaders
UAE ruling family member: Qatar now questioning its leaders
US hits Israeli settler group with sanctions over West Bank violence
- Sanctions block Americans from any transactions with Amana and freeze its US-held assets
- Settler violence had been on the rise prior to the eruption of the Gaza war, and has worsened since the conflict began
The Amana settler group “a key part of the Israeli extremist settlement movement and maintains ties to various persons previously sanctioned by the US government and its partners for perpetrating violence in the West Bank,” the Treasury Department said in a statement announcing the sanctions.
The sanctions also target a subsidiary of Amana called Binyanei Bar Amana, described by Treasury as a company that builds and sell homes in Israeli settlements and settler outposts.
The sanctions block Americans from any transactions with Amana and freeze its US-held assets. The United Kingdom and Canada have also imposed sanctions on Amana.
Israel has settled the West Bank since capturing it during the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians say the settlements have undermined the prospects for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Israel views the West Bank as the biblical Judea and Samaria, and the settlers cite biblical ties to the land.
Settler violence had been on the rise prior to the eruption of the Gaza war, and has worsened since the conflict began over a year ago.
Most countries deem the settlements illegal under international law, a position disputed by Israel which sees the territory as a security bulwark. In 2019, the then-Trump administration abandoned the long-held US position that the settlements are illegal before it was restored by President Joe Biden.
Last week, nearly 90 US lawmakers urged Biden to impose sanctions on members of members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over anti-Palestinian violence in the West Bank.
Around 100 projectiles fired from Lebanon into Israel: army
- Israel’s first responders said two people, including a 65-year-old woman with a shrapnel wound to the neck, sustained light injuries in northern Israel
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said Hezbollah fired around 100 projectiles from Lebanon into northern Israel on Monday, with the country’s air defense system intercepting some of them.
Israel’s first responders said two people, including a 65-year-old woman with a shrapnel wound to the neck, sustained light injuries in northern Israel and were taken to hospital.
The military said in a first statement that “as of 15:00 (1300 GMT), approximately 60 projectiles that were fired by the Hezbollah terrorist organization have crossed from Lebanon into Israel today.”
Later it said, “following the sirens that sounded between 15:09 and 15:11 in the Western Galilee area, approximately 40 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory.”
Israel has escalated its bombing of targets in Lebanon since September 23 and has since sent in ground troops, following almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges of fire begun by the Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in support of Hamas in Gaza.
‘No plan B’ to aid Palestinian refugees: UNRWA chief
- Israel ordered ban on organization that coordinates nearly all aid in war-ravaged Gaza
- UNRWA provides assistance to nearly six million Palestinian refugees
GENEVA: There is no alternative to the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, its chief said Monday, following Israel’s order to ban the organization that coordinates nearly all aid in war-ravaged Gaza.
“There is no plan B,” the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, told reporters in Geneva.
Within the UN “there is no other agency geared to provide the same activities,” providing not only aid in Gaza but also primary health care and education to hundreds of thousands of children, he said.
He has called on the UN, which created UNRWA in 1949, to prevent the implementation of a ban on the organization in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, which was approved by the Israeli parliament last month.
The ban, which is due to take effect in January, sparked global condemnation, including from key Israeli backer the United States.
UNRWA provides assistance to nearly six million Palestinian refugees across Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.
Israel has long been critical of the agency, but tensions escalated after Israel in January accused about a dozen of its staff of taking part in Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
A series of probes found some “neutrality related issues” at UNRWA and determined that nine of the agency’s roughly 13,000 employees in Gaza “may have been involved” in the attack, but found no evidence for Israel’s central allegations.
Lazzarini was in Geneva for a meeting of UNRWA’s advisory commission to discuss the way forward at the organization’s “darkest moment.”
“The clock is ticking fast,” he told the commission, according to a transcript.
Describing Gaza as “an unrelenting dystopian horror,” he warned that “what hangs in the balance, is the fate of millions of Palestine refugees and the legitimacy of the rules-based international order that has been in place since the end of the Second World War.”
Anton Leis, head of Spain’s international cooperation and development agency and chair of the advisory committee, told reporters that there was “simply no alternative to UNRWA,” which he said had seen more than 240 staff members killed in Gaza since the start of the war.
“It is the only organization that possesses the staff, the infrastructure and the capacity to deliver lifesaving assistance to Palestinian refugees at the scale needed, especially in Gaza,” he said.
Lazzarini agreed, saying that “If you are talking about bringing in a truck with food, you will surely find an alternative,” but “the answer is no” when it comes to education and primary health care.
Lazzarini warned that a halt to UNRWA’s activities in Israel and East Jerusalem would block it from coordinating massive aid efforts inside Gaza.
“This would mean we could not operate in Gaza,” he said, adding that it would not be possible to coordinate the deconfliction with Israeli authorities to ensure aid convoys can move safely.
“The environment would be much too dangerous,” he said.
The UNRWA chief has charged that Israel’s main objective in its attacks on the agency is to strip Palestinians of their refugee status, undermining efforts toward a two-state solution.
“We have to be clear, even if UNRWA today would cease its operation, the statue of refugee would remain,” he said.
Without the agency, he said, the responsibility for providing services to the Palestinian refugees “will come back to the occupying power, being Israel.”
If no one steps in to fill the void, he said, it “will create a vacuum ... (and) sow the seeds for more extremism, more hate in the future.”
He called on the international community to go beyond statements of condemnation and put far more pressure on Israel.
“We feel alone.”
‘Jordan stands firm against Israeli aggression on Gaza,’ King Abdullah says as he opens parliament
- Addressing lawmakers, King Abdullah said Jordan was working tirelessly through Arab and international efforts to stop the war
RIYADH: Jordan stands firm against the “aggression on Gaza and Israeli violations in the West Bank,” the country’s King Abdullah said on Monday as he opened a newly elected parliament.
Addressing lawmakers, he said Jordan was working tirelessly through Arab and international efforts to stop the war.
“Jordan has exerted tremendous efforts, and Jordanians have valiantly been treating the wounded in the direst of circumstances. Jordanians were the first to deliver aid by air and land to people in Gaza, and we will remain by their side, now and in the future,” he said.
In his speech, the king told newly elected parliamentarians at the start of their four-year term that the current parliament was “the first step in the implementation of the political modernization project, on a track to bolster the role of platform-based parties and the participation of women and young people.”
“This requires parliamentary performance, collective action, and close cooperation between the government and parliament, in accordance with the constitution,” the king was reported as saying by Jordan News Agency.
King Abdullah said the government aimed to provide Jordanians with a decent life and empower youths while equipping them for the jobs of the future.
“We must continue implementing the Economic Modernisation Vision to unleash the potential of the national economy and increase growth rates over the next decade, capitalising on Jordan’s human competencies and international relations as catalysts for growth,” the king said.
Large Gaza food convoy violently looted, UNRWA says
- UN aid official said last week Gaza aid access had reached low point
GAZA: A convoy of 109 trucks was violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza, resulting in the loss of 98 trucks in what aid workers say is one of the worst such incidents in the more than 13-month-old war, an UNRWA aid official told Reuters on Monday.
The convoy carrying food provided by UN agencies UNRWA and the World Food Programme was instructed by Israel to depart at short notice via an unfamiliar route from Kerem Shalom crossing, Louise Wateridge, UNRWA Senior Emergency Officer told Reuters.
“This incident highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza,” she said, adding that injuries occurred in the incident.
“The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated; without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive,” she said.
WFP and COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency says it does all it can to ensure that enough aid enters the coastal enclave, and that Israel does not prevent the entry of humanitarian aid.
A UN aid official said on Friday that Gaza aid access had reached a low point, with deliveries to parts of the besieged north of the enclave all but impossible.
