Fatah on Saturday called on Palestinians to keep up their demonstrations over Washington’s move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as the movement confirmed that its leader will refuse to meet with US Vice President Mike Pence later this month in protest of the controversial decision.
After protests gripped the West Bank and Gaza for a third straight day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was yesterday due in Paris, where demonstrators had rallied on the eve of his arrival.
Arab League ministers, meeting in an emergency meeting in Cairo late on Saturday, urged Washington to rescind its decision.
US President Donald Trump’s decision on Wednesday upended decades of US diplomacy, causing an overwhelming global diplomatic backlash.
Four Palestinians have been killed and dozens wounded since Trump announced the new policy, which drew criticism from every other UN Security Council member at an emergency meeting on Friday.
In a statement, Fatah urged Palestinians to “keep up confrontation and broaden it to all points where the Israeli army is present” in the West Bank.
Its leader, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also became the latest influential Arab figure to pull out of talks with Pence who is to travel to the region later this month.
“There will be no meeting with the vice president of America in Palestine,” Abbas’ diplomatic adviser Majdi al-Khaldi told reporters.
‘CROSSED ALL RED LINES’
“The United States has crossed all the red lines with the Jerusalem decision,” he said.
Egypt’s Coptic Pope Tawadros II also canceled a meeting with Pence, saying Trump’s announcement had failed to take into account the “feelings of millions” of Arabs.
Ahmed al-Tayeb, who heads al-Azhar, Egypt’s top Sunni Muslim institution, has also pulled out of a planned meet.
There were fresh clashes on Saturday as Palestinian protesters in the occupied West Bank hurled stones at Israeli troops who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds.
Retaliatory Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip killed two Hamas militants on Saturday while two others died near the border fence the day before.
Mourners vented their anger at the funerals of those killed while a bus was also stoned near Arab towns in Israel’s northern Wadi Ara district, injuring the driver.
“Violent riots have erupted at approximately 20 locations” in the West Bank and Gaza with soldiers using “riot dispersal means” that lightly injured three Palestinians, the Israeli army said in a statement.
The Palestinian Red Crescent gave a higher toll of 171 hurt in the West Bank and 60 in Gaza, with injuries ranging from gunshot wounds to tear gas inhalation and beating by security forces.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing