JERUSALEM/AMMAN: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stopped an Israeli lawmaker from taking on a Jordanian counterpart in a fist-fight on Wednesday over a diplomatic crisis between the two neighbors.
The July 23 shooting to death of two Jordanians by an Israeli Embassy guard who said he was acting in self-defense has outraged Amman, stirred up pro-Palestinian sentiment in the kingdom and prompted US mediation efforts.
Oren Hazan, a member of Netanyahu’s rightist Likud party, had tweeted on the day of the shooting that Jordanians “who we keep supplied with water and whose butts we defend day and night” needed “re-education.”
His comments prompted a challenge from a similarly fiery lawmaker in Jordan. “Let him meet me, if he is a man,” Yahya Soud said on Twitter.
They were due to square off against each other on Wednesday morning on the border.
As the appointed time neared, both men posted images of themselves on social media driving to the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge crossing between Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
But Hazan’s journey was cut short after Netanyahu’s office ordered him to turn around. A statement from the prime minister’s office did not say why Netanyahu had stopped the fight from proceeding. There was no immediate comment from Jordan.
Hazan said on Twitter he was disappointed the encounter had not taken place. Soud told reporters he had been “serious about going down to the bridge and busting this dirty man’s nose.” Netanyahu stepped in, Soud said, because Israelis “can’t face up to Jordanians.”
In 1994, Jordan became the second of only two Arab countries to make peace with Israel.
Netanyahu calls off fistfight between Israeli, Jordanian lawmakers
Netanyahu calls off fistfight between Israeli, Jordanian lawmakers
Gunmen kidnap and kill nine bus passengers in Pakistan’s Balochistan
- Armed men offboarded passengers, who hailed from the Punjab province, from two buses in the Zhob district
- No group has claimed responsibility for the incident, but suspicion is likely to fall on Baloch separatist militants
QUETTA: Armed men killed nine bus passengers after kidnapping them in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, officials said on Friday, in the latest attack on commuters hailing from the eastern Punjab province.
The attackers took the passengers with them after intercepting two buses on the N-70 highway in Balochistan’s Zhob district, according to a senior official of the paramilitary Levies force. Their bodies were found in the nearby mountains in the intervening night of Thursday and Friday.
No group has claimed responsibility for the latest attack on the Punjab-bound buses, but suspicion is likely to fall on Baloch separatist groups who have been involved in multiple such attacks targeting ethnic Punjabi commuters in the past.
“Armed men intercepted two Lahore-bound passenger buses at the Balochistan-Punjab national highway near Sara Dhaka area and kidnapped nine ethnic Punjabi travelers after checking their national identity cards (NICs),” Yasin Mandokhail, the Levies station house officer (SHO) in Zhob district, told Arab News.
“The bodies are being shifted to Rakhni Hospital for medico-legal procedure.”
Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan government, said security forces immediately responded to the attack but the attackers fled under the cover of darkness.
“Security forces are conducting a thorough search operation in the area,” he said in a statement.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but most impoverished province, has been the site of a long-running insurgency that has intensified in recent months, with separatist militants attacking security forces, government officials and installations and people from other provinces, particularly Punjab, who they see as “outsiders.”
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) is the strongest of a number of insurgent groups long operating in the mineral-rich region bordering Afghanistan and Iran, who accuse the central government of stealing their resources to fund development in Punjab.
The federal government denies the allegations and says it is working for the uplift of local communities in Balochistan, where China has been building a deep-sea port as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.
Last August, nearly two dozen passengers were killed after BLA militants forcibly removed them from Punjab-bound buses in a string of coordinated attacks in Balochistan. Another seven Punjabi commuters were offboarded from buses and killed in Balochistan’s Barkhan district in February this year.
In March, the BLA separatist hijacked a train with hundreds of passengers aboard near Balochistan’s Bolan Pass, which resulted in the deaths of 23 soldiers, three railway employees and five passengers. At least 33 insurgents were also killed.
On Thursday, Pakistan Railways suspended train service from Balochistan provincial capital of Quetta to the rest of the country for a day after law enforcement agencies shared security concerns.
Palestinians in Gaza pay high price to get hold of scarce cash
- People reliant on an unrestrained network of powerful cash brokers to get money for daily expenses
- To curtail Hamas’ ability to purchase weapons and pay its fighters, Israel stopped allowing cash to enter Gaza
With nearly every bank branch and ATM inoperable, people have become reliant on an unrestrained network of powerful cash brokers to get money for daily expenses – and commissions on those transactions have soared to about 40 percent.
“The people are crying blood because of this,” said Ayman Al-Dahdouh, a school director living in Gaza City. “It’s suffocating us, starving us.”
At a time of surging inflation, high unemployment and dwindling savings, the scarcity of cash has magnified the financial squeeze on families – some of whom have begun to sell their possessions to buy essential goods.
The cash that is available has even lost some of its luster. Palestinians use the Israeli currency, the shekel, for most transactions. Yet with Israel no longer resupplying the territory with newly printed bank notes, merchants are increasingly reluctant to accept frayed bills.
Gaza’s punishing cash crunch has several root causes, experts say.
To curtail Hamas’ ability to purchase weapons and pay its fighters, Israel stopped allowing cash to enter Gaza at the start of the war. Around the same time, many wealthy families in Gaza withdrew their money from banks and then fled the territory. And rising fears about Gaza’s financial system prompted foreign businesses selling goods into the territory to demand cash payments.
As Gaza’s money supply dwindled and civilians’ desperation mounted, cash brokers’ commissions – around 5 percent at the start of the war – skyrocketed.
Someone needing cash transfers money electronically to a broker and moments later is handed a fraction of that amount in bills. Many brokers openly advertise their services, while others are more secretive. Some grocers and retailers have also begun exchanging cash for their customers.
“If I need $60, I need to transfer $100,” said Mohammed Basheer Al-Farra, who lives in southern Gaza after being displaced from Khan Younis. “This is the only way we can buy essentials, like flour and sugar. We lose nearly half of our money just to be able to spend it.”
In 2024, inflation in Gaza surged by 230 percent, according to the World Bank. It dropped slightly during the ceasefire that began in January, only to shoot up again after Israel backed out of the truce in March.
Cash touches every aspect of life in Gaza
About 80 percent of people in Gaza were unemployed at the end of 2024, according to the World Bank, and the figure is likely higher now. Those with jobs are mostly paid by direct deposits into their bank accounts.
But “when you want to buy vegetables, food, water, medication – if you want to take transportation, or you need a blanket, or anything – you must use cash,” Al-Dahdouh said.
Shahid Ajjour’s family has been living off of savings for two years after the pharmacy and another business they owned were ruined by the war.
“We had to sell everything just to get cash,” said Ajjour, who sold her gold to buy flour and canned beans. The family of eight spends the equivalent of $12 every two days on flour; before the war, that cost less than $4.
Sugar is very expensive, costing the equivalent of $80-$100 per kilogram (2.2 pounds), multiple people said; before the war, that cost less than $2.
Gasoline is about $25 a liter, or roughly $95 a gallon, when paying the lower, cash price.
Bills are worn and unusable
The bills in Gaza are tattered after 21 months of war.
Money is so fragile, it feels as if it is going to melt in your hands, said Mohammed Al-Awini, who lives in a tent camp in southern Gaza.
Small business owners said they were under pressure to ask customers for undamaged cash because their suppliers demand pristine bills from them.
Thaeir Suhwayl, a flour merchant in Deir Al-Balah, said his suppliers recently demanded he pay them only with brand new 200-shekel ($60) bank notes, which he said are rare. Most civilians pay him with 20-shekel ($6) notes that are often in poor condition.
On a recent visit to the market, Ajjour transferred the shekel equivalent of around $100 to a cash broker and received around $50 in return. But when she tried to buy some household supplies from a merchant, she was turned away because the bills weren’t in good condition.
“So the worth of your $50 is zero in the end,” she said.
This problem has given rise to a new business in Gaza: money repair. It costs between 3 and 10 shekels ($1-$3) to mend old bank notes. But even cash repaired with tape or other means is sometimes rejected.
People are at the mercy of cash brokers
After most of the banks closed in the early days of the war, those with large reserves of cash suddenly had immense power.
“People are at their mercy,” said Mahmoud Aqel, who has been displaced from his home in southern Gaza. “No one can stop them.”
The war makes it impossible to regulate market prices and exchange rates, said Dalia Alazzeh, an expert in finance and accounting at the University of the West of Scotland. “Nobody can physically monitor what’s happening,” Alazzeh said.
A year ago, the Palestine Monetary Authority, the equivalent of a central bank for Gaza and the West Bank, sought to ease the crisis by introducing a digital payment system known as Iburaq. It attracted half a million users, or a quarter of the population, according to the World Bank, but was ultimately undermined by merchants insisting on cash.
Israel sought to ramp up financial pressure on Hamas earlier this year by tightening the distribution of humanitarian aid, which it said was routinely siphoned off by militants and then resold.
Experts said it is unclear if the cash brokers’ activities benefit Hamas, as some Israeli analysts claim.
The war has made it more difficult to determine who is behind all sorts of economic activity in the territory, said Omar Shabaan, director of Palthink for Strategic Studies, a Gaza-based think tank.
“It’s a dark place now. You don’t know who is bringing cigarettes into Gaza,” he said, giving just one example. “It’s like a mafia.”
These same deep-pocketed traders are likely the ones running cash brokerages, and selling basic foodstuffs, he said. “They benefit by imposing these commissions,” he said.
Once families run out of cash, they are forced to turn to humanitarian aid.
Al-Farra said that is what prompted him to begin seeking food at an aid distribution center, where it is common for Palestinians to jostle over one other for sacks of flour and boxes of pasta.
“This is the only way I can feed my family,” he said.
Russia and US hold ‘frank’ talks on Ukraine war
- The US secretary of state said Moscow’s top envoy Sergei Lavrov shared new ideas on resolving the conflict
- The Kremlin denied peace talks were stalled and said it was still open to contacts
KYIV: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US top diplomat Marco Rubio held “frank” talks on the Ukraine war during a meeting Thursday, both sides said, as Washington hit out at Moscow’s lack of “flexibility.”
The US secretary of state said Lavrov shared new ideas on resolving the conflict which he promised to present to US President Donald Trump, but played down the prospect of a breakthrough.
The pair met hours after Moscow pummeled Kyiv for a second straight night and as the United Nations said the number of victims from Russian attacks was at its highest level in three years.
Trump, who forced the warring countries to open negotiations for the first time in three years, this week accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of talking “bullshit” on Ukraine.
The US leader’s efforts to secure a ceasefire have failed to extract any concessions from the Kremlin, despite multiple calls with Putin.
Rubio told reporters Lavrov had floated something “new” on the conflict, but did not give details.
“It’s not a new approach. It’s a new idea or a new concept that I’ll take back to the president to discuss,” he said.
He added that it was not something that “automatically leads to peace, but it could potentially open the door to a path.”
The US diplomat said he had also conveyed Trump’s anger that the more than three-year war, triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion, was still ongoing, criticizing Moscow’s lack of “flexibility.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the United States would deliver more weapons to Kyiv and that he had “specific dates” on when they would arrive, in response to an AFP question.
Zelensky said in an X post that Ukraine was “ready” for different approaches to “scale up protection,” including by “purchasing a large defense package from the United States, jointly with Europe.”
Trump seemed to back up such an agreement. In an interview with American broadcaster NBC late on Thursday, he said NATO was “paying” the United States for weapons to send to Ukraine.
“We’re sending weapons to NATO, and NATO is paying for those weapons, 100 percent... And then NATO is going to be giving those weapons (to Ukraine),” Trump said.
Trump also said he would make a “major statement... on Russia” on Monday.
NATO secretary general Mark Rutte said he had spoken with Trump and was “working closely with allies to get Ukraine the help they need.”
The leaders of Britain and France meanwhile announced they had prepared plans for a peacekeeping force to be deployed to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire.
Ukraine said that two people – a 22-year-old policewoman on duty at a metro station and a 68-year-old woman – were killed in the latest assault on the capital.
Police described Maria Dziumaga as a “kind, cheerful, sincere, responsible, and dedicated police officer” who had joined in 2023.
AFP journalists heard loud detonations reverberating over Kyiv throughout the night and saw flashes from air defense systems illuminating the sky.
Resident Karyna Wolf said she could hear the growing buzz of a drone until a large explosion rocked the flats just two floors above in her building.
“I immediately jumped away from the wall, away from the windows and ran into the hallway, and in those seconds there was an explosion. There was a lot of glass shards flying at me,” the 25-year-old said.
As Rubio and Lavrov met in Kuala Lumpur, Zelensky was at a conference in Rome, where he called for more international political and military support.
Zelensky said Putin wanted “our people to suffer, to flee Ukraine and for homes, schools, for life itself to be destroyed,” urging Western leaders to boost defense investments.
The Kremlin denied peace talks were stalled and said it was still open to contacts.
Moscow has for months refused a ceasefire and two rounds of talks with Ukraine have produced no breakthrough.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia launched 415 drones and missiles at the country while Zelensky urged allies to quickly roll out fresh sanctions against Moscow.
The fresh onslaught came just one night after Russia fired a record 741 long-range drones and missiles.
Officials said the nighttime attack on Kyiv also wounded 22 people.
AFP reporters saw firefighters putting out flames in a damaged residential building and people emerging from shelters, carrying sleeping mats and pets after the air alert was lifted.
Russia’s defense ministry said the strike targeted “military-industrial enterprises” in Kyiv as well as air bases.
The UN announced that attacks on Ukrainian cities in June had led to a three-year high in the number of civilians killed or wounded.
It said it had verified at least 232 people killed and 1,343 wounded during the month — the highest combined toll since April 2022.
Trump says US to supply weapons to Ukraine via NATO
- US leader has expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the lack of progress toward ending the war
- Trump had pledged to swiftly end the war but months into his presidency, little progress has been made
WASHINGTON/KYIV/ROME: US President Donald Trump said on Thursday the United States would supply weapons to Ukraine via NATO and that he would make a “major statement” on Russia on Monday.
In recent days, Trump has expressed frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the lack of progress toward ending the war sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“I think I’ll have a major statement to make on Russia on Monday,” Trump told NBC News, declining to elaborate.
Trump also told NBC News about what he called a new deal between the US, NATO allies and Ukraine over weapons shipment from the United States.
“We’re sending weapons to NATO, and NATO is paying for those weapons, 100 percent. So what we’re doing is the weapons that are going out are going to NATO, and then NATO is going to be giving those weapons (to Ukraine), and NATO is paying for those weapons,” Trump said.
“We send weapons to NATO, and NATO is going to reimburse the full cost of those weapons,” he added.
For the first time since returning to office, Trump will send weapons to Kyiv under a presidential power frequently used by his predecessor, two sources familiar with the decision said on Thursday.
Trump’s team will identify arms from US stockpiles to send to Ukraine under the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows the president to draw from weapons stocks to help allies in an emergency, the sources said, with one saying they could be worth around $300 million.
Trump on Tuesday said the US would send more weapons to Ukraine to help the country defend itself against intensifying Russian advances.
The package could include defensive Patriot missiles and offensive medium-range rockets, but a decision on the exact equipment has not been made, the sources said. One of the people said this would happen at a meeting on Thursday.
The Trump administration has so far only sent weapons authorized by former President Joe Biden, who was a staunch supporter of Kyiv. The Pentagon and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump had pledged to swiftly end the war but months into his presidency, little progress has been made. The Republican president has sometimes criticized US spending on Ukraine’s defense, spoken favorably of Russia and publicly clashed with Ukraine’s leader. However, sometimes he has also voiced support for Kyiv and expressed disappointment in the leadership of Russia.
$12 billion pledged for Ukraine
Russia unleashed heavy airstrikes on Ukraine on Thursday before a conference in Rome at which Kyiv won billions of dollars in aid pledges, and US-Russian talks at which Washington voiced frustration with Moscow over the war.
Two people were killed, 26 were wounded, according to figures from the national emergency services, and there was damage in nearly every part of Kyiv from missile and drone attacks on the capital and other parts of Ukraine.
Addressing the Rome conference on Ukraine’s reconstruction after more than three years of war, Zelensky urged allies to “more actively” use Russian assets for rebuilding and called for weapons, joint defense production and investment.
Participants pledged over 10 billion euros ($12 billion) to help rebuild Ukraine, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said. The European Commission, the EU’s executive, announced 2.3 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in support.
At talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov while in Malaysia, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had reinforced the message that Moscow should show more flexibility.
“We need to see a roadmap moving forward about how this conflict can conclude,” Rubio said, adding that the Trump administration had been engaging with the US Senate on what new sanctions on Russia might look like.
“It was a frank conversation. It was an important one,” Rubio said after the 50-minute talks in Kuala Lumpur. Moscow’s foreign ministry said they had shared “a substantive and frank exchange of views.”
‘Nightly terror’
Zelensky said Thursday’s assault by Russia had involved around 400 drones and 18 missiles, primarily targeting the capital.
Explosions and anti-aircraft fire rattled the city. Windows were blown out, facades ravaged and cars burned to shells. In the city center, an apartment in an eight-story building was engulfed in flames.
“This is terror because it happens every night when people are asleep,” said Karyna Volf, a 25-year-old Kyiv resident who rushed out of her apartment moments before it was showered with shards of glass.
Air defenses stopped all but a few dozen of the drones, authorities said, a day after Russia launched a record 728 drones at Ukraine.
South Korea, Japan and US conduct air drill as defense chiefs meet
- Joint air drill involves a US B-52 strategic bomber and fighter jets of the two US allies over international waters
SEOUL: South Korea, Japan and the United States conducted a joint air drill on Friday involving a US B-52 strategic bomber and fighter jets of the two US allies over international waters, Yonhap news reported, citing the South’s defense ministry.
The three countries’ defense chiefs also held an annual meeting in Seoul on Friday, where they recognized the importance of close trilateral cooperation in addressing security challenges posed by North Korea, in the Indo-pacific and beyond, the defense ministry said in a statement.
“We’re illuminating a future path together, a path where partnerships can evolve through persistent and regular engagement from building capacity to really sharing responsibility,” US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said in opening remarks before the meeting.
“(North Korea) and China are undergoing an unprecedented military build up with a clear and unambiguous intent to move forward with their own agendas. We need to be mindful of that,” Caine said.
