The Israeli occupation authorities have demolished more than 500 Palestinian buildings in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip since the start of 2020, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revealed on Monday. The UN agency said that 506 buildings were razed to the ground...

The Libyan African Aviation Holding Company has announced that the authorities in Tripoli and their counterparts in Tunis will reopen the air corridor between the two countries next month. The company made the announcement on Facebook. “Consultations have been held with the Tunisians,” it explained, “and as a result...

The European Union yesterday expressed its disappointment and concern over the resignation of Lebanon’s prime minister–designate, while urging the Mediterranean country to form a new government in order to obtain financial support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The EU said that “the Lebanese leaders need to come together and...

Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi warned on Sunday of the consequences of instability in Egypt and attempts to “destroy” the country after a number of limited protests took place in some governorates on Friday evening. The Egyptian President used a speech at the inauguration of an oil refinery in the Mostorod...

Saudi Arabia, the head of the G20, announced yesterday that the summit will be held virtually on 21–22 November, news agencies reported. Saudi’s King Salman Bin Abdulaziz will chair the meeting, the G20 presidency said in a statement reported by Saudi Press Agency (SPA). “The G20 presidency will build on the success...

It is abundantly clear that Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, has underestimated the seriousness of the challenges facing Palestine and the Palestinians. The rushed agreement between his party, Fatah and Hamas in Istanbul on September 24, and the Palestinian leader’s speech at the 75th session of the UN General...

A Somali official on Monday lauded Turkish support to Guled Abdi, a young inventor from the East African country who was invited to attend Teknofest, Turkey’s largest aerospace and technology event, and will receive a scholarship for further education, reports Anadolu Agency. “The support Guled Abdi has received will...

Turkey foresees that trade and economic ties with the Netherlands will gain momentum in the coming days, the Turkish trade minister said on Monday, reports Anadolu Agency. Addressing the virtually held Turkish-Dutch Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO) meeting, Ruhsar Pekcan said: “We aim to increase our bilateral trade volume to...

Five civilians, including two women and three children, were killed in a rocket attack near Baghdad airport on Monday, the Iraqi Defense Ministry said, reports Anadolu Agency. The ministry’s Joint Operations Command said in a statement that two Katyusha rockets landed on a house in the Radwaniyah area. Two...

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday Armenia must immediately withdraw from the territory he said it was occupying in Azerbaijan, and it was time to end a crisis over the breakaway region after clashes between Azeri and Armenian forces. At least 21 people were killed on Monday in...

Turkey is sending Syrian rebel fighters to support Azerbaijan in its escalating conflict with neighbouring Armenia, two Syrian rebels have said, as Ankara pledges to step up backing for its majority-Muslim ally. The clashes over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh are the heaviest since 2016, with reports of dozens of...

Saudi Arabia’s Tourism Development Fund on Monday signed an agreement with Riyadh Bank and Banque Saudi Fransi to finance up to 160 billion riyals ($43 billion) of tourism projects in the kingdom, state news agency SPA reported. The agreement will set up mechanisms to finance tourism projects across the...

At the dawn of the era of political normalisation between the UAE, Bahrain and Israel, Palestinian media circles and journalists have warned against the popular Nas Daily, which millions watch on Facebook and other social media. They have demanded that subscribers should boycott the show, and accuse it of...

The Gulf States and Egypt planned to attack Qatar before imposing their blockade in 2017, a senior Qatari official revealed in an Al Jazeera documentary broadcast on Sunday. “There is intelligence evidence documented by heads of states that proves a planned military invasion of the State of Qatar,” said...

The Palestine Liberation Organisation said on Monday that remarks made by the Secretary General of the Arab League about making peace with Israel were “false”, Al-Watan Voice has reported. “Ahmed Aboul Gheit’s remarks that the ongoing normalisation of some Arab states with the occupation stopped Israel’s annexation plans...

The UAE has incurred losses of about 20.5 billion dirhams ($5.6 billion) during last week’s stock transactions, despite the deals signed with Israel. Major shares declined due to the negative impact of selling operations conducted by investors, while the overall Dubai Financial Market General Index fell 2.12 per cent....

Six Palestinians died after they drowned in an old cesspit in the village of Deir Al-Asal near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, reported Wafa news agency. A father and his son were digging a septic pit near an old one which collapsed, leading to a sudden flood which drowned them both, witnesses...

Israeli protesters have placed washing machines in front of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem, local media reported yesterday. This came, according to the reports, after the Washington Post revealed that Netanyahu and his wife were carrying bags of their dirty laundry to the US in order to have...

Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Shamkhani, said yesterday that the least severe punishment for US following its assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani is expelling it from Iraq, Iranian media reported. According to the Iran Daily, Shamkhani said that Washington’s assassination of Soleimani in Iraq in January “is a glaring example...

Israel “is not a normal state”, the leader of the National Umma Party in Sudan, Sadiq Al-Mahdi, has said. “For determined reasons, Israel is not a normal state, but an aberration. Normalisation is a soft name for surrender and has no connection with peace,” Al-Mahdi said. At a seminar entitled...

Armenia has proven again that it is the biggest obstacle to peace and stability in the region by attacking Azerbaijan, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday. “Turkey will continue to stand by its brothers in Azerbaijan as it has always done,” the president announced on Twitter. Meanwhile, Turkey pledged...

A motorcade rally took place yesterday in London in solidarity with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), also known as the Hashd Al-Shaabi, in recognition in their role in combatting Daesh. The event started in Cricklewood, where there is a large Iraqi community, and headed towards the Iraq Embassy before ending at...

Israel’s designation of Islamic Relief as a terrorist group will be challenged next month in the country’s supreme court, Chief Executive of the UK based charity, Naser Haghamed, has announced in a Guardian article arguing “Islamic Relief is a charity, not a terrorist group. We’re going to court to prove it.”...

Waves of internally displaced persons have increased the difficulties of everyday life for civilians in the north-west areas of Syria. Although a ceasefire was agreed in March, civilians in the region still face a new humanitarian crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic. To this has to be added spiralling...

Egypt’s security forces had arrested nearly 400 people protesting against government failures by Friday evening, according to a report by Mada Masr.  Protests against President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi have continued across Egypt for more than a week after whistleblower Mohamed Ali called for Egyptians to unite against the regime. Egyptians suffer under...

The Czech Republic has signed a deal to buy an Israeli anti-aircraft missile system in a deal worth an estimated $450 million, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday. Developed by Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, SPYDER is a low to high-altitude surface-to-air missile system designed to protect against fighter aircraft, helicopters, other...

Arab citizens and ultra-Orthodox Jews are the cause of the outbreak of the coronavirus in Israel, Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn said on Saturday. “Recent demonstrations in Tel Aviv are not the cause of the spread of the coronavirus, the virus broke out among the Haredi and Arab resident communities,...

Greece yesterday condemned vandalism to a mural of the Greek flag on Kastellorizo island blamed on Turkish nationals, a day before the arrival of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, AFP reports. Kastellorizo , officially Megisti, is a Greek island and municipality of the Dodecanese in the Eastern Mediterranean. According to AFP’s...

Two people were stabbed in Paris near the former Charlie Hebdo offices on Friday, in an attack directed at the magazine over its republication of cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) earlier this month. The French satirical magazine originally published the cartoons in January 2015, inspiring two terror attacks, which...

Israeli lawyers and human rights activists have petitioned the supreme court for the country’s security forces to block the training of Indian police officers involved in “severe violations” of human rights and international law in Indian-administered Kashmir. Singed by 40 people, the petition was launched after Israel Police, the Ministry...

French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday condemned Lebanese leaders for allegedly serving their own interests and neglecting reforms offered by France. At a news conference in the French capital Paris, Macron stated: “I am ashamed of Lebanon’s political leaders,” claiming that they “did not want, clearly and resolutely, to respect...

An investigation by Sky News claims to have uncovered evidence of a potential war crime in Yemen committed by the US-backed, Saudi-led coalition. According to a report, an investigative team travelled to a remote northern village, close to the Yemeni-Saudi border where a coalition air strike targeted a family home. As...

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) yesterday transferred 100 militants belonging to the Southern Transitional Council (STC) from Yemen’s interim capital city of Aden to Socotra. Yemeni media quoted local sources as saying that the militants were transferred “onboard an Emirati ship”, Abu Dhabi recently launched construction works of a...

Iran has obtained gold from Caracas in return for the fuel loads it sent to Venezuela, Iranian chief commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced yesterday. Yahya Safavi explained that the gold was transferred to Tehran by “airplanes to prevent any accident during transit”. “Iran seeks to...

The United States is putting pressure on Sudan to accept settling Palestine refugees on its soil, member of the PLO’s Executive Committee, Bassam Al-Salhi, was reported saying by Anadolu yesterday. “Special sources told me that the ongoing normalisation talks between Washington, Israel and Sudan include Sudan’s possibility to resettle refugees on its...

New York Democratic Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), on Friday cancelled her participation in an event commemorating the life of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. An AOC spokeswoman said Ocasio-Cortez would not attend the event, organised by Americans for Peace Now (APN) and which is scheduled to take place...

Azerbaijan yesterday declared a state of war in some of its cities and regions following attacks by Armenian forces on military and civilian sites over the weekend. The decision was made in a meeting of Azerbaijan’s National Assembly yesterday, in which it enforced partial measures in its border regions...

Turkey’s 21st-century geopolitical strategy is called the Blue Homeland. It is the brainchild of retired Rear Admiral Cem Gurdeniz, who talked to MEMO about Turkey’s eastern Mediterranean policy, which envisions the protection of Turkey’s rights and interests in the declared and undeclared maritime jurisdiction areas. Once narrowly only associated...

A Canadian man who, in several interviews with the New York Times, recounted a gruesome description of working for Daesh has been accused by police of making the entire story up, the Times reports. Shehroze Chaudhry was arrested in Burlington, Ontario, on Friday under Canada’s little-used terrorism “hoax” laws, which carry a...

Egypt’s public prosecution has announced the release of 68 children arrested since the beginning of the 20 September demonstrations. The announcement has sparked fierce criticism among human rights organisations, who question why children are being arrested and what happened to them in the week they were detained. All the...

Pro-regime Egyptian TV host, Ahmed Moussa, yesterday boasted about the Egyptian navy’s killing of two Palestinian fishermen after they had allegedly crossed into Egyptian territorial waters a day earlier. “Whoever tries to cross our borders will be chopped, and we are not bothering anyone, and there is no time...

Moroccan Prime Minister Saadeddine Othmani told the UN General Assembly on Saturday that there can be no peace without giving Palestinians their rights. “There can be no just or lasting peace unless the Palestinian people can exercise their legitimate right to establish an independent and viable state with Jerusalem...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has issued “strict” directions related to the ongoing campaign against supporters of disgraced Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan in the occupied West Bank, Safa reported on Sunday. According to informed sources, the campaign was launched in the wake of the normalisation deal between Israel and...

Pakistan Ambassador to Syria, Saeed Muhammad Khan, yesterday reiterated his country’s support for the Palestinian cause and its full rejection of normalising relations with Israel before the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Ambassador Khan made the remarks during a meeting with the...

The UAE’s Ambassador to the US, Yousef Al-Otaiba, claimed that his country has stipulated that Israel postpones its plans to annex large areas of the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley, for a long time before it signed the normalisation agreement with the occupation state, Israeli Maariv newspaper...

Whilst literature on Israel’s state violence against Palestinian children is nothing new, there are apparent limitations on the current discourse which tends not to extend beyond theories of childhood trauma in conflict zones; nor do they form part of a critique of the ideologies underpinning Israel as a settler-colonial...

Israel’s High Court of Justice has postponed its ruling on the status of Sudanese asylum seekers, largely from Darfur, after hearing about the possible normalisation of ties with Sudan, Haaretz revealed on Sunday. The developments in relations between Israel and Sudan could, according to the newspaper, have an impact...

A delegation from Fatah arrived in Cairo yesterday to meet Egyptian officials and members of Hamas for reconciliation talks and to discuss the upcoming general elections. Fatah spokesman, Hussein Hamayel, said the meeting follows those held last week in Turkey and later in the Qatari capital, Doha, adding that...

On 10 September 2020 Dr Adnan Al-Jasem became the first doctor in northern Syria to die from coronavirus. Al-Jasem had fled the bombings in Deir Ezzor in the east of the country and tended to the wounded throughout Syria’s nine-year long war. Yet it was the virus he died...

A male refugee died of COVID-19 on Sunday, the first reported death of an asylum seeker since the pandemic broke out in Greece in late February, a government official told Reuters. The 61-year-old Afghan, a father of two children, who lived at the refugee camp of Malakasa north of...