UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council on Sunday was considering two draft resolutions on Yemen after Russia put forward a rival text aimed at blocking action against Iran over missiles sent to the country’s Houthi rebels.
The council is set to vote on Monday on renewing sanctions on Yemen for a year, but a British-drafted text also calls for “additional measures” in response to a UN report which found that Iran had violated the arms embargo on Yemen.
The rival Russian-drafted text presented to the council on Saturday and seen by AFP would extend the sanctions regime on Yemen until February 2019 without any reference to the UN report’s findings on Iran and possible action targeting Tehran.
Diplomats said Russia could veto the British text, allowing for a vote on its own draft resolution.
Negotiations were continuing on Sunday.
The report by a UN panel of experts concluded that Iran was in violation of the 2015 arms embargo after determining that missiles fired by the Houthis at Saudi Arabia last year were made in Iran.
Russia maintains that the report’s findings are not conclusive enough to justify action against Iran.
Britain, backed by the United States and France, had initially sought to condemn Iran, but that was dropped in negotiations.
The last draft resolution expresses “particular concern” that “weapons of Iranian origin were introduced in Yemen after the imposition of the targeted arms embargo” and that Iran is in “non-compliance” with UN resolutions.
The council would express “its intention to take additional measures to address these violations,” according to the British-drafted text.
It adds that “any activity related to the use of ballistic missiles in Yemen” meets the criteria for imposing UN sanctions.
Iran has repeatedly denied arming the Houthis in Yemen, despite claims by the United States and Saudi Arabia that the evidence of an arms connection is irrefutable.
Russia, which has traditionally friendly relations with Iran, is providing military support along with Tehran to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia on Wednesday said the draft resolution should focus on renewing the mandate of sanctions monitors for Yemen instead of taking aim at Iran.
“It’s a resolution about the extension of the working group, not about Iran. So we should concentrate on extending the working group first,” he said.
While the report found that Tehran had violated the embargo by failing to block the shipments, the experts said they were unable to identify the supplier.
US Ambassador Nikki Haley is pushing for council action to rein in Iran and prevent the war in Yemen from escalating into a broader regional conflict.
In a New York Times editorial last week, Haley wrote that “the UN panel has given the world a chance to act before a missile hits a school or a hospital and leads to a dangerous military escalation that provokes a Saudi military response.”
A Saudi-led coalition supporting Yemen’s government has been fighting the Houthis since 2015 in a conflict that has led to what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Russia can block council action by using the veto power it enjoys as one of the five permanent Security Council members, along with Britain, China, France and the United States.
Russia moves to block Iran missile criticism in UN resolution on Yemen
Russia moves to block Iran missile criticism in UN resolution on Yemen
Father of the last living American hostage in Gaza hopes Trump can bring his son home
Adi Alexander said he thinks Netanyahu wants to bring everybody home, but on his own terms
TEL AVIV: Unlike many families who blame Israel’s government for not getting their loved ones released from captivity in Gaza, Adi Alexander is hesitant to point fingers.
Pragmatic and measured, the father of the last living American being held hostage by Hamas just wants his son to come home.
“I don’t want to get into who came first, the egg or the chicken,” Alexander told AP on Friday from his New Jersey home. Still, with the once-promising ceasefire giving way to renewed fighting between Israel and Hamas, he wonders whether Israel can secure his son’s freedom and is more hopeful about the US’s chances to do it.
Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old Israeli-American soldier who grew up in the US, is one of 59 hostages still in Gaza, more than half of whom are believed to be dead. Last week, Hamas said it would release Edan and the bodies of four other hostages if Israel recommitted to the stalled ceasefire agreement.
Days later, though, Israel launched rockets across Gaza, breaking the two-month-old deal and killing hundreds of Palestinians. The hostilities show no signs of abating, with Israel vowing Friday to advance deeper into Gaza until Hamas releases the remaining hostages.
The return to fighting has inflamed the debate in Israel over the fate of those held captive. Netanyahu has come under mounting domestic pressure, with mass protests over his handling of the hostage crisis. But he also faces demands from his hard-line allies not to accept any deal that falls short of Hamas’ destruction.
A father’s hope
Adi Alexander said he thinks Netanyahu wants to bring everybody home, but on his own terms. He questions Netanyahu’s plans whereas he believes US President Donald Trump’s message is clear: He’s focused on bringing the hostages home. Alexander said he’s counting on the US to bridge the large gap between Israel and Hamas. His message to Trump about his administration’s efforts to free his son and the others: “Just keep this job going.”
Many families of the hostages say Trump has done more for them than Netanyahu, crediting the president with the ceasefire. In December, before taking office, Trump demanded the hostages’ immediate release, saying if they weren’t freed before he was sworn in for his second term there would be “hell to pay.”
Phase one of the deal began weeks later, and saw the release of 25 Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight others in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The ceasefire was supposed to remain in place as long as talks on the second phase continued, but Netanyahu balked at entering substantive negotiations.
Instead, he tried to force Hamas to accept a new ceasefire plan put forth by US Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff. That plan would have required Hamas to release half its remaining hostages — the militant group’s main bargaining chip — in exchange for a ceasefire extension and a promise to negotiate a lasting truce.
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as called for in the original ceasefire agreement mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
The US engages directly with Hamas
As a soldier, Edan would have been released during the deal’s second phase. But Hamas announced this month that it would release Edan after the White House said it had engaged in “ongoing talks and discussions” with the group — separate from the main negotiations. It is the first known direct engagement between Hamas and the US since the State Department designated it a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
Adi Alexander said Adam Boehler, who’s helping spearhead the Trump administration’s efforts to free the hostages, led those separate talks because phase two was stalled. But he said he didn’t believe Hamas’ claim that it would release his son because it came out of left field and wasn’t being considered as part of the discussions between the group and Boehler.
The anxious father said he speaks with Witkoff and Boehler almost daily and understands the negotiations are ongoing despite the resumption of fighting.
A native of Tenafly, a New Jersey suburb of New York City, Edan moved to Israel in 2022 after high school and enlisted in the military. He was abducted from his base during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war, when Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 others hostage.
The grueling wait
Since Edan’s abduction, there’s been little news about him.
Hamas released a video of him over Thanksgiving weekend in November. His family said it was difficult to watch as he cried and pleaded for help, but it was a relief to see he was alive.
Freed hostages have given the family more news, according to his father. Some said Edan had lost a lot of weight. Others said he’d been an advocate for fellow hostages, standing up for kidnapped Thai workers and telling their captors that the workers weren’t Israeli and should be freed.
Although he knows the resumption of fighting means it will take more time to get his son back, Adi Alexander said he thinks both sides had became too comfortable with the ceasefire and that this was one reason phase two never began. He wants the war to end, and hopes the fighting will be limited and targeted and push everyone back to the table.
“Somebody, I think had to shake this tree to create chaos, and chaos creates opportunities,” he said. “The only objective is to get back to the bargaining table to get those people out.”
King Abdullah II urges UK’s PM Starmer to push for Gaza ceasefire reinstatement
- The British premier thanked King Abdullah for his country’s leadership and work towards a political solution
AMMAN: Jordan’s King Abdullah II called on the international community to take urgent action to halt Israel’s attacks on Gaza and reinstate a ceasefire during a phone call with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday.
The king also urged the need to resume aid deliveries to Gaza, warning of the worsening humanitarian crisis, Jordan News Agency reported.
Reiterating Jordan’s firm opposition to any displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, King Abdullah warned against continued attacks on Palestinians and violations of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem.
Discussing Syria, the King Abdullah also reaffirmed Jordan’s support for the Syrian Arab Republic’s unity, sovereignty and stability.
Starmer highlighted his deep concern about the renewed Israeli military action in Gaza and the lack of humanitarian aid to the enclave, a statement from Downing Street said.
The British premier thanked King Abdullah for his country’s leadership and efforts aimed at a political solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis.
He welcomed the Arab plan for Gaza and commended the efforts of Jordan and regional partners in developing it. The leaders agreed to continue urging Israel and Hamas to return to the ceasefire.
Starmer said that the UK remained a strong partner to Jordan and the two leaders agreed to keep in close contact.
45 killed in Sudan paramilitary attack in North Darfur: activists
- The aid group gave a “preliminary list of the victims of Al-Malha massacre” blamed on RSF
KHARTOUM: A paramilitary attack killed at least 45 civilians in North Darfur’s Al-Malha area, according to an initial toll shared by activists Saturday.
The local volunteer aid group, known as a resistance committee, in the state capital El-Fasher, gave a “preliminary list of the victims of Al-Malha massacre” blamed on the Rapid Support Forces, with 15 people still unidentified.
Fatah urges Hamas to relinquish power to safeguard ‘Palestinians’ existence’
- “Hamas must show compassion for Gaza, its children, women and men,” Al-Hayek said
GAZA CITY: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah movement called on its Islamist rivals Hamas Saturday to relinquish power in order to safeguard the “existence” of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
“Hamas must show compassion for Gaza, its children, women and men,” Fatah spokesman Monther Al-Hayek said in a message sent to AFP from Gaza. He called on Hamas to “step aside from governing and fully recognize that the battle ahead will lead to the end of Palestinians’ existence” if it remains in power in Gaza.
In Turkiye, mass protests give vent to long simmering anger
- “Some young people are being politicized for the first time in their lives,” said Yuksel Taskin, a lawmaker from the main opposition CHP
- The move sparked a wave of protest which spread within 48 hours to more than two-thirds of Turkiye’s 81 provinces
ANKARA: The massive street protests gripping Turkiye may have been triggered by the arrest of Istanbul’s popular opposition mayor but they reflect a much broader sense of frustration, observers say.
“There is a great anger. People are spontaneously taking to the streets. Some young people are being politicized for the first time in their lives,” said Yuksel Taskin, a lawmaker from the main opposition CHP.
Wednesday’s arrest of Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s most powerful political rival — came just days before the CHP was to formally name him their candidate for the 2028 presidential race.
The move sparked a wave of protest which spread within 48 hours to more than two-thirds of Turkiye’s 81 provinces, even including strongholds of Erdogan’s ruling AKP such as the central area of Konya, as well as Trabzon and Rize on the Black Sea.
Despite a ban on protests and a heavy police presence on the streets, huge crowds of protesters have taken to the streets, including many university students who are not normally seen as politically engaged.
The protests are the biggest in Turkiye since the massive demonstrations of 2013, which began at Istanbul’s Gezi Park to protest its demolition and spread across almost the entire country.
“The feeling of being trapped — economically, socially, politically, and even culturally — was already widespread,” Kemal Can, journalist and author of numerous books on Turkish society told AFP.
Imamoglu’s arrest, he said, had sparked a strong reaction, “especially among young people worried about their future in a country where freedoms are increasingly restricted. It’s a reaction that goes well beyond Imamoglu.”
“We’re the children of the ‘raiders’ who have now grown up,” reads a slogan carried by many young protesters, using an old-fashioned term that Erdogan coined for the 2013 Gezi Park protesters when he was prime minister.
“This is not only about the CHP, but about everyone. The question is whether Turkiye will live under an authoritarian regime or be a democratic country,” said Ilhan Uzgel, who handles the party’s external relations.
In a bid to highlight the non-partisan nature of the protest movement, the CHP has invited all Turks, not just party members, to join its symbolic primary vote on Sunday when Imamoglu is to be named the party’s presidential candidate.
“We are determined to hold this primary although (the government) is trying to block it. But it will go ahead,” insisted Uzgel.
The pro-Kurdish opposition DEM, the third party in parliament, has also thrown its support behind the protests which have taken place for three nights in a row outside Istanbul City Hall.
“By using the judiciary, they are trying to reshape the opposition in order to consolidate the regime,” explained DEM lawmaker Ibrahim Akin.
DEM is regularly accused by the government of having ties with the banned Kurdish militant PKK, which is blacklisted by Ankara as a terror group.
But in recent months, the Turkish government has sought to end the decades-long conflict and last month, jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan urged his fighters to lay down their weapons and disband.
“For several years, the government has sought to split the opposition, or keep it tied up with internal issues. It has succeeded several times. But this time, the opposition has thwarted this strategy,” said Can.
For Gonul Tol of the Washington-based Middle East Institute, the government’s efforts to “drive a wedge” between DEM and CHP through its peace overtures toward the PKK had clearly failed, after DEM came out strongly against Imamoglu’s arrest.
“The government now seems to be seeing how long this wave of discontent will last, hoping to weaken it through pressure, protest bans and arrests,” said Can.
“If the opposition gives in to threats from the authorities who are accusing it of provoking the street, and gives the impression its determination has weakened, the government will increase the pressure,” he said.
“The coming days will be crucial.”
