Category: FOREIGN

Foreign Blogs is a network of global affairs blogs and a supplement to the Foreign Policy Association’s Great Decisions program.

  • Bahrain calls for peace conference at Gaza-focused Arab League

    Bahrain calls for peace conference at Gaza-focused Arab League

    Host Bahrain called for a Middle East peace conference Thursday at the start of an Arab League summit dominated by Israel’s war on Gaza, which has been raging in the Gaza Strip without a ceasefire in sight.

    King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa was addressing fellow heads of state and government at the 22-strong grouping in the capital Manama, more than seven months into a conflict that has convulsed the region.

    “(We) call for an international conference for peace in the Middle East, in addition to supporting full recognition of the State of Palestine and accepting its membership in the United Nations,” said the king.

    It is the first time the bloc has come together since an extraordinary summit in Riyadh, the capital of neighbouring Saudi Arabia, in November that also involved leaders from the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, based in the Saudi city of Jeddah.

    At that meeting, leaders condemned Israeli forces’ “barbaric” actions in Gaza but declined to approve punitive economic and political steps against the country, despite growing anger in the region and widespread support for the Palestinian cause.

    That could change this time around as backing builds globally for a two-state solution long advocated by Arab countries, said Kuwaiti analyst Zafer al-Ajmi.

    Western public opinion has become “more inclined to support the Palestinians and lift the injustice inflicted on them” since Israel’s creation more than 70 years ago, Ajmi said.

    Meanwhile, Israel has failed to achieve its war objectives including destroying Hamas and is now mired in fighting, he said.

    Change of ‘tone’

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday said nearly 500,000 people had been evacuated from the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where he is insisting on going after remaining Hamas despite objections from US President Joe Biden.

    He also disputed claims that Israeli operations there would trigger a “humanitarian catastrophe”, though much of the international community remains squarely opposed to a Rafah invasion.

    Against that backdrop, and with mediator Qatar describing talks on a truce and hostage release deal as close to a stalemate, “the tone of Arab countries has changed”, Ajmi said, raising the possibility that the final declaration out of Thursday’s summit could include “binding” measures.

    The message would be especially strong coming from a summit held in Bahrain, one of two Gulf countries along with the United Arab Emirates to normalise ties with Israel in 2020 under the US-brokered Abraham Accords.

    Beyond the Israel-Hamas war, Arab leaders are also expected to discuss conflicts in Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Syria, whose President Bashar al-Assad is due to attend after returning to the Arab fold last year.

    Attacks by Yemen’s Huthis on Red Sea shipping, which the rebels say are intended as a show of solidarity with Palestinians, could also be on the agenda, said Bahraini analyst and journalist Mahmeed al-Mahmeed.

    Bahrain joined a maritime coalition organised by Washington to counter those attacks.

    “These vital sea lanes are not only important for countries in the region, but also for the global economy,” Mahmeed said.

  • Famous Italian chef Rubio attacked by Zionists for supporting Palestine

    Famous Italian chef Rubio attacked by Zionists for supporting Palestine

    Italian Chef Gabriele Rubini was attacked by Zionist supporters of Israel outside his home after he publicly expressed support for Palestine.

    He posted a video of himself, face drenched in blood, explaining how he was attacked just outside his home. The caption of the video said, “Terrorists. They waited for me outside my house, six of them, and cut the gate wires to massacre me.”

    A large group of his followers extended their heartfelt wishes to him and showed solidarity with him in a march. He thanked them by writing, “Thanks girls, thanks guys. We smile in the face of terrorists and continue straight until the liberation of Palestine”.

    The Chef later posted a selfie with a swollen eye and making a victory sign. The post said, “Thank you all for the support”. It went on to explain, “In the end, stitches on my head where they gave me the hammer, cuts and abrasions where they hit me with bricks, fracture of the facial orbit where the 60 targeted punches ended up.” He pledged to not stop talking about the oppression faced by Gazans, “And we start again”, he asserted, “A hug to the Jewish community.”

  • Sudan facing ‘inferno’ of violence, crushing aid holdups: UN

    Sudan facing ‘inferno’ of violence, crushing aid holdups: UN

    Residents of conflict-hit Sudan are “trapped in an inferno of brutal violence” and increasingly at risk of famine due to the rainy season and blocked aid, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for the country warned Wednesday.

    Tens of thousands of people have died and millions have been displaced since war broke out in April 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

    “Famine is closing in. Diseases are closing in. The fighting is closing in and there’s no end in sight,” Clementine Nkweta-Salami told a press conference.

    The grim situation is only expected to worsen, with “just six weeks before the lean season sets in, when food becomes less available, and more expensive.”

    Noting that more than four million people are facing potential famine, Nkweta-Salami added that the onset of the country’s rainy season means that “reaching people in need becomes even more difficult.”

    The area’s planting season also “could fail if we aren’t able to procure and deliver seeds for farmers,” she said.

    And “after more than a year of conflict, the people of Sudan are trapped in an inferno of brutal violence.”

    “In short, the people of Sudan are in the path of a perfect storm that is growing more lethal by the day,” Nkweta-Salami warned, adding that the humanitarian community needs “unfettered access to reach people in need, wherever they are.”

    The United Nations has expressed growing concern in recent days over reports of heavy fighting in densely populated areas as the RSF seeks control of El-Fasher, the last major city in the western Darfur region not under its control.

    “Right now the humanitarian assistance they rely on can’t get through,” Nkweta-Salami said.

    More than a dozen UN trucks loaded with medical equipment and food, which left Port Sudan on April 3, have still not reached El Fasher, she said, “due to insecurity and delays in getting clearances at checkpoints.”

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    © Agence France-Presse

  • Israeli settlers storm Al Aqsa mosque, raise Zionist flag

    Israeli settlers storm Al Aqsa mosque, raise Zionist flag

    Dozens of Israelis reportedly stormed the compound of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site, and raised the Zionist flag.

    Footage verified by Al Jazeera and released by Anadolu English shows a man holding the flag as an Israeli police officer speaks with him calmly and does not forcibly escort him from the compound.

    The incident follows rallying calls made by Beyadenu, an organisation that says it aims “to strengthen the Jewish People’s connection” to the holy site, for the Israeli flag to be raised at the mosque on May 14, reported Al Jazeera.

    Palestinians regard the day as the Nakba – or the “catastrophe” – which led to the creation of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

    The storming of the compound is a regular occurrence even though entering any part of it is forbidden for Jews due to the sacred nature of the site.

    Simultaneously, videos have surfaced of Israeli forces brutally manhandling a young boy trying to enter the mosque at the Damascus gate of Jerusalem.
    In previous years, Israeli forces have also attacked Palestinian worshippers inside the mosque.

    Israeli children threw aid for Gaza in garbage

    Videos and pictures of extremist groups from Israel vandalising aid trucks for Gaza have emerged online where children could be seen throwing aid packages in the garbage.

    Meanwhile, more than 450,000 Palestinians have now fled southern Rafah city with another 100,000 evacuating the north as Israel’s military steps up ground incursions.

    Israeli jets bombed the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing scores of people including children. In the north, Israeli tanks, bulldozers, and armoured vehicles.

  • ‘Drive like a woman’, French road safety campaign tells men

    ‘Drive like a woman’, French road safety campaign tells men

    A French road safety association said Monday it had launched a campaign urging men to drive like women, aiming to cut traffic deaths while debunking the sexist stereotype that men are better behind the wheel.

    “Drive Like A Woman”, runs the slogan on the ads, seen mostly in metro stations and posted online, from the association Victims and Citizens.

    “A look at the data tells you that there’s no truth” to the stereotype that men are better drivers, the association said in a statement.

    Some 84 percent of deadly road accidents were caused by men, it said, citing a governmental road safety report.

    Victims and Citizens, which assists people injured in traffic accidents and runs awareness campaigns, said it hoped to prompt a change in the “mentality of men and therefore in their behaviour”.

    According to the government report, 93 percent of drivers causing an accident under the influence of alcohol were men.

    “Driving like a woman just means one thing, staying alive,” the ad campaign said.

    Close to 3,200 people died in road accidents in France last year, with early data for this year pointing to a possible increase in 2024.

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    © Agence France-Presse

  • Modi files candidacy for India election in Hindu holy city

    Modi files candidacy for India election in Hindu holy city

    India Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday formally submitted his candidacy to recontest the parliamentary seat for the Hindu holy city of Varanasi in a general election he is widely expected to win.

    The marathon six-week poll concludes next month, and the 73-year-old premier used the election formality as a campaign event that paid deference to the country’s majority faith.

    Varanasi is the spiritual capital of Hinduism, where devotees from around India come to cremate deceased loved ones by the Ganges river, and the premier has represented the city since sweeping to power a decade ago.

    Hundreds of supporters had gathered outside a local government office to greet Modi when he arrived to lodge his nomination.

    Footage showed the premier handing over his candidacy paperwork, flanked by a Hindu mystic.

    “It’s our good fortune that Modi represents our constituency of Varanasi,” devout Hindu and farmer Jitendra Singh Kumar, 52, told AFP while waiting for the leader to emerge.

    “He is like a God to people of Varanasi. He thinks about the country first, unlike other politicians.”

    Modi, who has made acts of religious worship a central fixture of his premiership, had spent the morning visiting temples and offering prayers at the banks of the Ganges.

    Tens of thousands of supporters had lined the streets of Varanasi to greet Modi as he arrived in the city on Monday atop a flatbed truck, waving to the crowd from atop a flatbed truck as loudspeakers blared devotional songs.

    Many along the roadside waved saffron-coloured flags bearing the emblem of his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), throwing marigold flowers at the procession as it passed by.

    ‘Not wanted’

    Modi and the BJP are widely expected to win this year’s election, which is conducted over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging the democratic exercise in the world’s most populous country.

    Varanasi is one of the last constituencies to vote on June 1, with counting and results expected three days later.

    Since the vote began last month, Modi has made a number of strident comments against India’s 200-million-plus Muslim minority in an apparent effort to galvanise support.

    He has used public speeches to refer to Muslims as “infiltrators” and “those who have more children”, prompting condemnation from opposition politicians and complaints to India’s election commission.

    The ascent of Modi’s Hindu-nationalist politics despite India’s officially secular constitution has made the Muslims in the country increasingly anxious.

    “We are made to feel as if we are not wanted in this country,” Shauqat Mohamed, who runs a tea shop in the city, told aFP.

    “If the country’s premier speaks of us in disparaging terms, what else can we expect?” the 41-year-old added.

    “We have to accept our fate and move on.”

    abh/gle/mca

    © Agence France-Presse

  • India vote resumes with Indian-occupied Kashmir poised to oppose Modi

    India vote resumes with Indian-occupied Kashmir poised to oppose Modi

    India’s six-week election resumed Monday including in Indian-occupied Kashmir, where voters were expected to show their discontent with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cancellation of their disputed territory’s semi-autonomy and the security crackdown that followed.

    Modi remains popular across much of India and his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is widely expected to win the poll when it concludes early next month.

    But his government’s decision in 2019 to bring IOK under its direct rule — and the subsequent clampdown — have been deeply resented among the region’s residents, who will be voting for the first time since the move.

    “What we’re telling voters now is that you have to make your voice heard,” said former chief minister Omar Abdullah, whose National Conference party is campaigning for the restoration of IOK’s former semi-autonomy.

    “The point of view that we want people to send out is that what happened… is not acceptable to them,” he told AFP.

    IOK has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947. Both claim it in full and have fought two wars over control of the Himalayan region.

    Rebel groups opposed to Indian rule have waged an insurgency since 1989 on the side of the frontier controlled by New Delhi, demanding either independence or a merger with Pakistan.

    India accuses Pakistan of backing the insurgents, a charge that Islamabad denies.

    The conflict has killed tens of thousands of soldiers, rebels and civilians in the decades since, including a spate of firefights between suspected rebels and security forces in the past month.

    ‘Referendum’

    Violence has dwindled since the Indian portion of the territory was brought under direct rule five years ago, a move that saw the mass arrest of local political leaders and a months-long telecommunications blackout to forestall expected protests.

    Modi’s government says its cancelling of IOK’s special status has brought “peace and development”, and it has consistently claimed the move was supported by Kashmiris.

    But his party has not fielded any candidates in the IOK valley for the first time since 1996, and experts say the BJP would have been roundly defeated if it had.

    “They would lose, simple as that,” political analyst and historian Sidiq Wahid told AFP last week, adding that Kashmiris saw the vote as a “referendum” on Modi’s policies.

    The BJP has appealed to voters to instead support smaller and newly created parties that have publicly aligned with Modi’s policies.

    But voters are expected to back one of two established IOK political parties calling for the Modi government’s changes to be reversed.

    “I voted for changing the current government. It must happen for our children to have a good future,” civil servant Habibullah Parray told AFP.

    “Everywhere you go in Kashmir today you find people from outside in charge. Everyone wants that to change.”

    In rural districts outside Srinagar, the region’s biggest city, army soldiers patrolled roads in convoys of bulletproof vehicles.

    Several polling booths around the constituency had more than two dozen paramilitary troops guarding voter queues.

    Boycotts called by rebel groups left few Kashmiris willing to participate in past elections, with just over 14 percent of eligible voters in Srinagar casting a ballot during the last national poll in 2019.

    By mid-afternoon on Monday nearly 30 percent of people in the constituency had voted, with booths still open for several more hours.

    Nearly one billion voters

    India’s election is conducted in seven phases over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging the democratic exercise in the world’s most populous country.

    More than 968 million people are eligible to vote in India’s election, with the final round of polling on June 1 and results expected three days later.

    Voter turnout elsewhere in India has so far declined significantly from 2019, according to election commission figures.

    Analysts have blamed widespread expectations that Modi will easily win a third term and hotter-than-average temperatures heading into the summer.

    India’s weather bureau has forecast more hot spells in May and the election commission formed a taskforce last month to review the impact of heat and humidity before each round of voting.

  • Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers; CNN exposes Israeli detention center for Palestinians

    Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers; CNN exposes Israeli detention center for Palestinians

    CNN has published and aired a damning report with the help of Israeli whistleblowers working at the Sde Teiman detention camp in Israel. The exposé has revealed systemic abuses by the military, including prisoners being restrained, blindfolded, and forced to wear diapers.

    Israel’s military base, which is now a detention center in the Negev desert, was photographed twice by an Israeli worker of a scene that he says continues to haunt him.

    Picture showed rows of men in gray tracksuits sitting on paper-thin mattresses, ringfenced by barbed wire. The detainees were blindfolded, their heads hanging heavy under the harsh glare of floodlights.

    The whistleblower told CNN about the conditions these men were kept in, detailing that they are forbidden from speaking to each other, so they mumble to themselves.

    “We were told they were not allowed to move. They should sit upright. They’re not allowed to talk. Not allowed to peek under their blindfold.”
    Guards were instructed “to scream uskot” – shut up in Arabic – and told to “pick people out that were problematic and punish them,” the report laid out.

    Where is Sde Teiman?

    Sde Teiman is located some 18 miles from the Gaza frontier and is split into two parts: enclosures where around 70 Palestinian detainees from Gaza are placed under extreme physical restraint, and a field hospital where wounded detainees are strapped to their beds, wearing diapers and fed through straws.
    “They stripped them down of anything that resembles human beings,” said one whistleblower, who worked as a medic at the facility’s field hospital.
    “(The beatings) were not done to gather intelligence. They were done out of revenge,” said another whistleblower. “It was punishment for what they (the Palestinians) did on October 7 and punishment for behavior in the camp.”

    Why is it a paradise for medical interns?

    The whistleblowers give a peek into the very common practice of amputation of prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained by constant handcuffing. The detention centre is also called “a paradise for interns” because sometimes underqualified medics perform procedures here and learn through practice.

    Accounts of Palestinians held in the Israeli detention centre

    CNN interviewed Dr. Mohammed al-Ran who headed the surgical unit at Northern Gaza’s Indonesian hospital, one of the first to be shut down and raided as Israel carried out its aerial, ground and naval offensive.

    He was arrested on December 18, he said, outside Gaza City’s Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, where he had been working for three days after fleeing his hospital in the heavily bombarded north.

    He was stripped down to his underwear, blindfolded and his wrists tied, then dumped in the back of a truck where, he said, the near-naked detainees were piled on top of one another as they were shuttled to a detention camp in the middle of the desert.

    “We looked forward to the night so we could sleep. Then we looked forward to the morning in hopes that our situation might change,” said Dr. Mohammed al-Ran, recalled.

    Al-Ran was held in a military detention center for 44 days, he told CNN. “Our days were filled with prayer, tears, and supplication. This eased our agony,” said al-Ran.

    Punishment for speaking to each other

    A prisoner who committed an offense such as speaking to another would be ordered to raise his arms above his head for up to an hour. The prisoner’s hands would sometimes be zip-tied to a fence to ensure that he did not come out of the stress position.

    For those who repeatedly breached the prohibition on speaking and moving, the punishment became more severe. Israeli guards would sometimes take a prisoner to an area outside the enclosure and beat him aggressively, according to two whistleblowers and al-Ran.

    Unleashing dogs as form of “the nightly torture”

    That whistleblower and al-Ran also described a routine search when the guards would unleash large dogs on sleeping detainees, lobbing a sound grenade at the enclosure as troops barged in. Al-Ran called this “the nightly torture.”

    “While we were cabled, they unleashed the dogs that would move between us, and trample over us,” said al-Ran. “You’d be lying on your belly, your face pressed against the ground. You can’t move, and they’re moving above you.”

    The same whistleblower recounted the search in the same harrowing detail. “It was a special unit of the military police that did the so-called search,” said the source. “But really it was an excuse to hit them. It was a terrifying situation.”

    “There was a lot of screaming and dogs barking.”

    Strapped to beds in the hospital

    “If you imagine yourself being unable to move, being unable to see what’s going on, and being completely naked, that leaves you completely exposed,” the whistleblower said. “I think that’s something that borders on, if not crosses to, psychological torture.”

    Another whistleblower said he was ordered to perform medical procedures on the Palestinian detainees for which he was not qualified.


    Response of IDF

    The Israeli Defence Forces did not directly deny accounts of people being stripped of their clothing or held in diapers. Instead, the Israeli military said that the detainees are given back their clothing once the IDF has determined that they pose no security risk.

    Two Palestinian prisoners associations said last week that 18 Palestinians – including leading Gaza surgeon Dr. Adnan al-Bursh – had died in Israeli custody over the course of the war.

    Sde Teiman and other military detention camps have been shrouded in secrecy since their inception. Israel has repeatedly refused requests to disclose the number of detainees held at the facilities, or to reveal the whereabouts of Gazan prisoners.

  • UN Security Council seeks inquiry into mass graves in Gaza

    UN Security Council seeks inquiry into mass graves in Gaza

    The UN Security Council on Friday called for an immediate and independent investigation into mass graves allegedly containing hundreds of bodies near hospitals in Gaza.

    In a statement, members of the council expressed their “deep concern over reports of the discovery of mass graves, in and around the Nasser and Al-Shifa medical facilities in Gaza, where several hundred bodies, including women, children and older persons, were buried.”

    The members stressed the need for “accountability” for any violations of international law and called on investigators to be given “unimpeded access to all locations of mass graves in Gaza to conduct immediate, independent, thorough, comprehensive, transparent and impartial investigations.”

    Hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been repeatedly targeted since the beginning of the Israeli military operation in the Palestinian territory, following the October 7 attack.

    Israel has accused Hamas of using medical facilities as command centers and to hold hostages abducted during the initial attack.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) said in April that Al-Shifa, in Gaza City, had been reduced to an “empty shell,” with many bodies found in the area.

    The Israeli army has said around 200 Palestinians were killed during its military operations there.

    Bodies have reportedly been found buried in two graves in the hospital’s courtyard.

    The UN rights office in late April had itself called for an independent investigation into reports of mass graves at Al-Shifa and at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis.

    Gaza officials said at the time that health workers at the Nasser complex had uncovered hundreds of bodies of Palestinians they alleged had been killed and buried by Israeli forces.

    Israel’s army has dismissed the claims as “baseless and unfounded.”

    The statement Friday from the Security Council did not say who would conduct the investigations.

    But it “reaffirmed the importance of allowing families to know the fate and whereabouts of their missing relatives, consistent with international humanitarian law.”

    Israeli genocide against Palestinians has killed at least 34,943 people in the Gaza Strip, mostly women and children, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said Friday.

  • Congressman Andy Ogles introduces bill to send protesting students to Gaza

    Congressman Andy Ogles introduces bill to send protesting students to Gaza

    Republican lawmaker Andy Ogles has decided that the violent detention of college students participating in Gaza solidarity protests isn’t enough of a punishment. Instead, he believes the only way to encourage the students to stop using their right to protest is to ship them off to Gaza.

    Ogles, a Tennessee Representative, introduced a new bill into the House proposing that students who were arrested for protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza should be sent abroad to “provide community service” for a minimum of six months in the war-torn strip.

    He proposed this bill on Wednesday.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/college-anti-israel-agitators-could-173040790.html?

    “Any person convicted of unlawful activity on the campus of an institution of higher education beginning on and after October 7, shall be assigned to Gaza for the purpose of providing community service… for a period not fewer than six months,” the bill reads.

    It is not currently clear what the exact parameters of the proposed community service would be, though the bill points to the term’s definition in U.S. Code, which are identified by universities “through formal or informal consultation with local nonprofit, governmental, and community-based organizations.”

    Even though it’s unlikely to gain momentum, the bill could impact approximately 2,100 students who were arrested while participating in peace protests in recent weeks.

    It’s at least the second time Ogles has hatefully condemned the citizens of Gaza and their American allies who want an end to the war. In February, the Tennessee Republican ruthlessly advocated for the complete extermination of Palestine while engaging in a fiery spat with an activist.

    “You know what? So, I think we should kill ’em all, if that makes you feel better,” Ogles, a self-described Christian, told a protester asking him about dead Palestinian children. “Everybody in Hamas.”

    “Hamas and the Palestinians have been attacking Israel for 20 years. And It’s time to pay the piper,” the lawmaker had remarked.

    Meanwhile, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, and more than 77,000 Palestinians have been injured in the conflict, according to data from the Gaza Health Ministry. Most of the victims have been women and children.