JERUSALEM: Israel supports the establishment of a Kurdish state, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday, as Kurds in Iraq gear up for a referendum on independence that lawmakers in Baghdad oppose.
Israel has maintained discreet military, intelligence and business ties with the Kurds since the 1960s, viewing the minority ethnic group — whose indigenous population is split between Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran — as a buffer against shared Arab adversaries.
On Tuesday, Iraq’s Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani said he would press ahead with the Sept. 25 referendum despite a vote by Iraq’s parliament rejecting it.
“(Israel) supports the legitimate efforts of the Kurdish people to achieve their own state,” Netanyahu said, in remarks sent to foreign correspondents by his office.
Western powers are concerned a plebiscite in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region — including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk — could divert attention from the war against Daesh militants.
Netanyahu said Israel does however consider the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) a terrorist group, taking the same position as Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
An Israeli general told a conference in Washington last week that he personally did not regard the PKK, whose militants have been fighting Turkey for more than three decades, as a terrorist group.
Netanyahu, who is due to address the UN General Assembly on Sept. 19, voiced support for “the Kurds’ aspirations for independence” in a speech in 2014, saying they deserve “political independence.”
His latest remarks appeared to be a more direct endorsement of the creation of a Kurdish state.
But they will cut little ice in Baghdad, which has no diplomatic relations with Israel and has strong ties with Israel’s arch-foe Iran.
Iraq’s neighbors — Turkey, Iran and Syria — oppose the referendum, fearing it could fan separatism among their own ethnic Kurdish populations.
Kurds have sought an independent state since at least the end of World War One, when colonial powers divided up the Middle East after the collapse of the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire.
Israel endorses independent Kurdish state
Israel endorses independent Kurdish state
Syria leftover explosives kill and injure over 180 children: NGO
BEIRUT:Landmines and unexploded ordnance in Syria have killed or injured at least 188 children since president Bashar Assad’s overthrow in December, the Save the Children charity said Thursday.
Of that figure, more than 60 children were killed, the UK-based group said, warning the toll could rise as more families return to the war-ravaged country.
Since Assad was toppled on December 8, “landmines and explosive remnants of war have caused at least 628 casualties, more than two-thirds of the total number of casualties for all of 2023,” Save the Children said.
The United Nations last week said about 1.2 million people had returned home to Syria in the past three months, including over 885,000 who were internally displaced.
“Much of Syria is pockmarked by mines and explosive remnants of war after 13 years of conflict,” said Bujar Hoxha, the charity’s Syria director.
“At least 188 children have been killed or injured in about three months — that’s an average of two children a day,” he added.
The group called on the transitional authorities and international donors to speed up the process of clearing mines and unexploded ordnance in Syria.
A report by non-governmental organization Humanity and Inclusion last month had warned of the dangers posed by unexploded munitions left over from the devastating civil war that erupted in 2011.
It said experts estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 of the roughly one million munitions used during the war had never detonated.
Also last month, at least eight civilians including three children were killed when unexploded munitions ignited at a house in northwestern Syria, a war monitor and the civil defense said.
UN Security Council warns against Sudan rival government
The UN Security Council has voiced “grave concern” over a charter signed by Sudan’s paramilitary forces, warning it could deepen the country’s war and worsen the humanitarian crisis.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, at war with Sudan’s army since April 2023, signed the charter last month with its allies to establish a “government of peace and unity” in RSF-held areas.
“The members of the Security Council expressed grave concern over the signing of a charter to establish a parallel governing authority in Sudan,” council members said in a statement late on Wednesday.
They warned such a move would “risk exacerbating the ongoing conflict in Sudan, fragmenting the country, and worsening an already dire humanitarian situation.”
They also urged warring factions to immediately cease hostilities and engage in “political dialogue and diplomatic efforts toward a durable ceasefire.”
For nearly two years, the army and RSF have been locked in fighting that has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted more than 12 million and created what the International Rescue Committee calls the “biggest humanitarian crisis ever recorded.”
The war has torn the country in two, with the army controlling the north and east, while the RSF holds nearly all of the western region of Darfur and swathes of the south.
In recent weeks, army forces have made gains in the capital Khartoum and in central Sudan, retaking key areas that were swiftly seized by paramilitaries when the war began.
PKK must disarm ‘immediately’: Turkiye defense ministry source
- Last week, PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan urged his militant group to dissolve and his fighters to lay down their arms in a historic call
ISTANBUL: Outlawed Kurdish group PKK and all groups allied with it must disarm “immediately,” a Turkish defense ministry source said on Thursday, apparently referring to Kurdish forces in Syria.
“The PKK and all groups affiliated with it must end all terrorist activities, dissolve and immediately and unconditionally lay down their weapons,” the source said.
Last week, PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan urged his militant group to dissolve and his fighters to lay down their arms in a historic call.
The 75-year-old founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party has been jailed since 1999.
The PKK, which has engaged in a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state in which tens of thousands of people have died, declared a ceasefire on Saturday and said it would comply with Ocalan’s call.
But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has backed the peace move, was quick to warn that if the promises weren’t kept, the military would continue its anti-PKK operations.
“We always keep our iron fist ready in case the hand we extend is left hanging in the air or bitten,” he said on Saturday.
Since January 1, 478 “terrorists” have been “neutralized” in anti-PKK military operations, the source said, of which 195 were in Iraq and 283 in Syria.
US pushes for Kurdish oil exports resumption at Baghdad meeting
BAGHDAD/DUBAI: A US diplomat will attend a planned meeting in Baghdad on Thursday on the resumption of Kurdish oil exports via Turkiye’s Ceyhan pipeline, five sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, as Washington continues to push for a restart.
The Iraqi oil ministry is hosting the talks on accelerating a resumption in oil exports from Iraq’s semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan region. They have been delayed till Thursday due to disagreements over terms between oil firms and the oil ministry.
One of the sources, an Iraqi oil ministry official with direct knowledge of the meeting, said the planned attendance of the diplomat, based at the US embassy in Baghdad, had come in response to a request from Washington.
The White House National Security Office did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.
“The presence of the US diplomat aims to help push the negotiations forward and reach solutions to the issues hindering the resumption of oil exports in a way that satisfies all parties,” the oil ministry official said.
Reuters revealed last month that Iraq has come under increasing US
pressure
to allow Kurdish oil exports via Turkiye, thereby boosting supply to the global market at a time when Washington wants to reduce Iranian oil exports as part of its efforts to curb Tehran’s nuclear program.
Iran views its neighbor and ally Iraq as vital for keeping its economy afloat amid international sanctions.
But Baghdad, a partner of both the United States and Iran, is wary of getting caught in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump’s policy of squeezing Tehran, sources have told Reuters.
“There is strong insistence from the US side on ensuring the success of the negotiations (on resuming Kurdish oil exports) by any means,” said a government official close to the talks. “We hope that the US role will help reach a reasonable and acceptable agreement for the Iraqi government.”
Israeli government moves to sack attorney general
- Baharav-Miara, a fierce defendant of the judiciary’s independence, has often taken positions that clashed with those of Netanyahu’s government
JERUSALEM: Israel’s government has begun proceedings to dismiss Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, a vocal critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing “prolonged disagreements.”
In a letter published late Wednesday, Justice Minister Yariv Levin said the move was over “inappropriate conduct and the existence of significant and prolonged disagreements between the government and the attorney general.”
The minister also indirectly accused Baharav-Miara, Israel’s first female attorney general, of politicizing her position as legal adviser of the government.
“Legal advice reflects the position of the law,” the letter stated, and should not be “advice that serves as a political tool, misusing its position for political purposes to completely paralyze the work of the government.”
Levin submitted a motion of a no-confidence to the cabinet secretary, part of a process that commentators say could go all the way to Israel’s Supreme Court.
Baharav-Miara, a fierce defendant of the judiciary’s independence, has often taken positions that clashed with those of Netanyahu’s government.
When the prime minister returned to power in 2022 after being ousted, Baharav-Miara warned that his new government’s legislative program threatened to turn Israel into a “democracy in name, but not in essence.”
In March 2023, she accused Netanyahu of acting “illegally” when championing the controversial judicial reforms that caused political division and mass protests.
After the war in Gaza started, she criticized the unequal enforcement of Israel’s mandatory military service, due to long-standing exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jewish men.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid suggested on Wednesday on X that her criticism of the government’s stance on Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community was behind the attempt to sack her.
“She only told them two things they needed to do: recruit evaders and stop transferring corrupt funds to the ultra-Orthodox under the table. That’s why they want to oust her,” Lapid wrote on X.
