Israeli Knesset Member (MK) Dov Khenin boasts a long record of public service; he has been active in Israeli politics for some 29 years and served four Knesset terms. But perhaps most notably, he is the only Jewish member of the Arab-Israeli party Hadash (Al-Jabha), and so his decision...

Turkey’s lira plunged more than 4 per cent against the US dollar on Friday, its biggest one-day fall since a currency crisis took hold in August, raising concerns that Turks are buying more foreign cash as ties with Washington deteriorate, Reuters reports. The 2018 crisis, which tipped the economy into...

Hungarian authorities detained a Syrian man on Friday accused of taking part in beheadings in Syria as a member of Daesh, Budapest prosecutors and the European judicial co-operation agency Eurojust said, Reuters reports. The 27-year-old man, identified by Hungarian authorities as F. Hassan, is suspected of executing about 20...

Ten civilians were killed when Russian military aircraft conducted a number of airstrikes in opposition-held Idlib on Friday, according to the White Helmets civil-defense agency, Anadolu reports. Russian warplanes took off from the Khmeimim Airbase in Syria’s Latakia province, striking targets in Idlib’s Al-Fuah, Khan Sheikhun and Kafriya districts,...

The repercussions of US President Donald Trump’s unofficial recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights has reverberated across the international community, and especially among influential Jewish groups in the US, Anadolu reports. Powerful pro-Zionist organizations in the US — such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the...

Two Palestinians were killed and dozens of others injured, including an Anadolu Agency photojournalist, during a Friday rally along the Gaza-Israel buffer zone, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, Anadolu reports. In a statement, ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra confirmed that two Palestinians — aged 18 and 29 — had been...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday he would sue two of his main political rivals for libel over remarks relating to a graft scandal involving a German submarine deal, Reuters reports. In a video published on his Facebook page, Netanyahu said he had instructed his attorneys to...

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that US-backed forces had dislodged the Daesh militant group from its last holdout in Syria, Reuters reports. “Here’s ISIS on Election Day. And here’s ISIS right now,” Trump said, using the acronym for the group, as he displayed a before-and-after map to...

I had not heard of New Zealand’s 38-year-old prime minster Jacinda Ardern until the recent mosque massacres in Christchurch in which over 50 Muslims attending Friday prayers were attacked by a far right terrorist. In cold blood he emptied his semi-automatic rifles at one mosque and then calmly drove...

The Syrian government vowed to take back the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights as its allies and enemies alike condemned US President Donald Trump on Friday for moving to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the territory seized in war, Reuters reports. Trump’s statement on Thursday marked a dramatic shift in US policy...

Despite the fact that Saudi officials thought the sortie in to Yemen would only last a few weeks, we are now in the fourth year of the war on Yemen. This portrays the coalition’s failure as it has contributed to leading Yemen to become the world’s most humanitarian crisis....

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could face more corruption charges after new details of his role in the so-called submarine affair emerged. The submarine affair – often known as Case 3000 – refers to a series of allegations against close associates of Netanyahu, who it is claimed lobbied Israeli...

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With Human Rights Watch releasing a statement on 21 March on behalf of Saudi women activists brought to court in Riyadh a week earlier, world attention remains focused, and rightly so, on the appalling treatment the women are receiving at the hands of a Saudi regime determined to crush...

Sudanese authorities have rejected an appeal made by families to release their relatives held following anti-government, despite President Omar Al-Bashir’s promise to free those arbitrarily detained. Dozens of families gathered at the information building of the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) yesterday to hand over a letter calling...

Israel’s Former Defence Minister and head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Avigdor Lieberman, has released an election campaign video attacking the country’s Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) population, as a new poll reveals 65 per cent of Israelis would prefer their parties didn’t sit in government. In the video released yesterday to...

At least 12 refugees have died in Al-Hawl refugee camp, now home to some 72,000 people, as the humanitarian situation in the camps worsens, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said yesterday. “Last night, another 2,000 women and children arrived at Al-Hol camp in northeast Syria from Al-Baghouz. Up...

This week, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled to ban Michael Ben Ari – the leader of the extreme-right-wing Otzma Yehudit party – from running in the country’s upcoming general election on 9 April. Onlookers breathed a sigh of relief, congratulating the court on making “the right decision” and narrowly avoiding...

A former adviser to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Abdul-Khaliq Abdullah, has called for the international community to “liberate” the Gaza Strip from Hamas, which he said was “an occupation government in Gaza”. “Has Hamas become a government of occupation in the Gaza Strip? It is time to...

Syrian regime attacks in Idlib and Hama have displaced nearly 200,000 civilians over the past five months, the Director of the Syrian Response Coordinators Team, Mohammed Al-Hallaj, said. Al-Hallaj told the Anadolu Agency that some 122,000 civilians have been displaced from the provinces of Idlib and Hama as a...

The British Ambassador to Lebanon Chris Rampling has affirmed his country’s keenness to provide more support to the Lebanese Armed Forces and to strengthen the joint military and security relations between the two countries, stressing that the Lebanese army remains the only legitimate defender of Lebanon. The British embassy...

An Israeli group which promotes “separation” from the Palestinians has been slammed for publishing a series of “racist” videos, warning against the annexation of the occupied West Bank. Writing in Local Call, Meron Rapoport took to task a series of election-related clips released by The Commanders for Israel’s Security...

Jordan has rejected the Arab League’s request to ban the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and label them “terrorist movements”, informed sources told the Shehab news agency yesterday. The sources said the Arab League’s General Secretariat has sent a secret letter to the Jordanian Ministry of Interior calling for the...

Jordanian King Abdullah II has reaffirmed the country’s position regarding the occupied city of Jerusalem saying “Jerusalem is a red line” for him and that the Jordanian people fully stand with him on this issue. King Abdullah said during a meeting with dignitaries from the Jordanian province of Zarqa:...

An Israeli military analyst has urged the army to “adapt” to recent Palestinian resistance operations in the occupied West Bank, accusing forces of a “soft” response to recent events. Amos Harel, writing in Haaretz, described the West Bank as in a state of “turmoil”, noting the killing of a...

The Palestinian Authority (PA) “faces a suffocating financial crisis after deep US aid cuts and an Israeli move to withhold tax transfers”, reported AFP. The US “cut more than $500 million in Palestinian aid in the last year”, while “the PA has decided to refuse what little US aid...

Israeli occupation forces raided a French government-linked cultural centre in East Jerusalem to shut down a Mother’s Day event, reported AFP. According to the report, “an order posted on the door of the building by Israeli authorities said that the centre…intended to host an event organised with a women’s...

Palestinian citizens of Israel living in the city of Rahat in the Negev desert started a general strike to protest against the Israeli authorities’ demolition policy pursued against the city. Israeli authorities on Wednesday demolished six houses belonging to Al-Atayqa family in Rahat, under the pretext that they were...

A state of anger has prevailed across social media networks after a number of Saudi girls posted videos of them dancing in Riyadh’s streets. The video showed footages of 12 prominent male and female dancers who were preparing for a public show, which is reportedly taking place in Riyadh...

One of the most influential donors to the powerful AIPAC pro-Israel lobby group will not be speaking at its annual conference this weekend after being taken to task for sending out a string of hate-filled tweets aimed at two of America’s rising Muslim politicians, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib....

A ferry sank Thursday in Iraq’s Tigris River, leaving 100 people dead and dozens injured, Iraq’s Interior Ministry said in a written statement, Anadolu reports. The boat was reportedly carrying 170 passengers to a small tourist island when it sank near Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province in northern Iraq....

The US ambassador to Yemen, Matthew Tueller, yesterday blamed the Houthi group for “reneging on its obligations” under the United Nations (UN)-led peace agreement over the country’s portal city of Hodeidah. Speaking at a news conference held in the Yemeni capital of Aden, Tueller said that Houthis’ weapons pose...

An Israeli report said that Egypt has put forward a plan for a settlement between Israel and Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, led by Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Israel Hayom newspaper reported on Thursday that “according to security sources in Egypt and Palestinian officials in Gaza...

Children under age 15 are almost three times more likely to die from diseases due to lack of clean water and sanitation than from violence in countries in conflict, the United Nations’ children’s agency reported on Friday, The Thomson Reuters Foundation reports. Most vulnerable are young children under age...

2,000 members of the National Democratic Rally (RND), led by former Algerian Prime Minister, Ahmed Ouyahia, resigned from the party in protest against the latter’s statement which they considered “contrary to the principles and ethics of political action.” The members who resigned announced in a statement joining the popular...

Aren’t those who race towards normalisation and into the arms of Israel ashamed of themselves when they see a young man, still at the beginning of his life, manage, on his own, to strike fear and panic in the hearts of the Israeli enemy, armed with weapons? When they...

The Yemeni government protested on Thursday against what it called “functions’ transgression” by officials representing the United Nations Verification and Inspection Mechanism for Yemen (UNVIM) and the director of the office of UN Envoy to Yemen Martin Griffith. This came in a letter the Yemeni Minister of Foreign Affairs,...

Turkey’s foreign minister on Thursday slammed US President Donald Trump’s tweet on the occupied Golan Heights, Anadolu reports. “The territorial integrity of states is the most fundamental principle of international law,” said Mevlut Cavusoglu in a tweet. Attempts by the US to legitimize Israel’s actions against international law will...

France told Iran on Thursday that European efforts to keep a nuclear deal alive did not mean Tehran had a blank cheque to violate the human rights of its citizens, after lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh received a long prison sentence, Reuters reports. An internationally renowned human rights lawyer jailed in...

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accompanied Israel’s prime minister on a visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday in the first such gesture since Washington recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, angering Palestinians, Reuters reports. The ancient Western Wall, the most sacred prayer site in...

US sanctions on Hezbollah are harming Lebanon as a whole, President Michel Aoun said on Thursday ahead of a visit to the country by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Reuters reports. The United States deems the heavily armed, Iran-backed Hezbollah group a terrorist organisation and has been steadily...

The United States’ top general on Thursday called Turkey’s plans to obtain Russia’s S-400 missile defense system a “tough issue”, stressing that Washington’s alliance with Ankara is something he wants to secure for the long term, Anadolu reports. “This issue of the S-400 is a tough issue, and we’re...

An Egyptian court on Thursday upheld prison terms ranging from three to 25 years each for 82 people convicted earlier for alleged “acts of violence”, Anadolu reports. A judicial source told local media outlets that the Court of Cassation, Egypt’s highest appellate court, had upheld prison terms handed down...

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Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday it has summoned Egypt’s ambassador to Khartoum, Hossam Issa, over Egypt offering oil and gas exploration blocks “in Red Sea areas subject to Sudanese sovereignty”, Reuters reports. It also urged oil and gas exploration companies against submitting any bids. Egypt’s South Valley Egyptian...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US President Donald Trump on Thursday that he had “made history” after Trump said it was time to recognise Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a statement from Netanyahu said, Reuters reports. The recognition of the disputed area, seized by Israel in the...

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday it was time to back Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights that Israel seized from Syria in 1967, providing a boost to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the middle of his re-election campaign, Reuters reports. After 52 years it is time...

US President Donald Trump had to sneak in to Iraq, a supposed US ally, arriving at the Ein Al-Assad airbase for an unannounced visit on 26 December. Not a single Iraqi official was there to welcome him. Instead, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi angrily snubbed him, refusing to travel...

On 14 March, scores of Palestinians in the starving Gaza Strip took to the streets in several cities carrying the slogan “We Want to Live”, calling for “equality, dignity, food and job opportunities.” That day passed quietly, but the interior ministry in Gaza warned the protesters not to take...

Israeli forces have shot dead a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank near the city of Bethlehem; the fourth such killing in 24 hours. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that one of its crew treated a man with two bullet wounds near an Israeli military checkpoint near Bethlehem...