Category: 2. Middle East

By Olivia Le Poidevin

GENEVA (Reuters) -Israel has demanded the U.N. Human Rights Council scrap a commission investigating rights violations in the Palestinian territories and Israel, accusing the body of bias, in a letter seen by Reuters.

In the message sent on Wednesday, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Daniel Meron, said The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, discriminated against his country.

Israel has…

SARAJEVO (Reuters) -Slovenia declared two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, persona non grata on Thursday, the first European Union country to do so, Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon said.

The government accused Israel’s national security minister Ben-Gvir and finance minister Smotrich – both West Bank settlers – of making “genocidal statements” and inciting violence against Palestinians.

There was no immediate reaction from Israel’s government which has…

LONDON (Reuters) -Details of more than 100 British nationals including spies and special forces soldiers were included in one of the country’s worst ever data breaches that led to thousands of Afghans being relocated to the UK, British media reported on Thursday.

The leak by the Ministry of Defence in early 2022, which surfaced on Facebook a year later, prompted the relocation of more than 16,000 Afghans to Britain as of May this year amid concerns that they would face deadly reprisals from…

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid on Thursday denounced Israeli airstrikes on the Syrian capital, Damascus, as “reckless behavior,” Anadolu reports.

“Attacking the Presidential Palace in Damascus undermines the (Syrian) regime and doesn’t serve our strategic goals,” Yair Lapid told Israel’s public broadcaster KAN.

“It is a reckless behavior. The Middle East follows it and realizes that we believe laws do not apply to us,” he said.

Lapid…

Slovenia announced on Thursday that it would ban two far-right Israeli ministers from entering in what authorities said was a first in the European Union.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich will be declared “persona non grata,” the Slovenian government said in a statement, accusing them of inciting “extreme violence and serious violations of the human rights of Palestinians” with “their genocidal statements”.

In June, Australia, Canada, Britain,…

Dozens of Druze crowded the Israeli-controlled side of the armistice line in the occupied Golan Heights on Thursday, hoping to catch a glimpse of relatives on the Syrian-held side who might try to cross the barbed-wire frontier.

Young men drove around the area near the de facto border, waving the Druze flag with its five colourful stripes representing the pillars of their Druze faith, an esoteric offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The area has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War,…

The Turkish and Syrian presidents on Thursday spoke over the phone and discussed the latest developments in Syria following Israel’s attacks, Turkiye’s Communications Directorate said, Anadolu reports.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told his Syrian counterpart Ahmad al-Sharaa that Israel’s attacks on Syria are “unacceptable,” adding: “Israel’s aggression poses a threat to the entire region,” according to a directorate statement.

Noting…

Pope Leo XIV on Thursday renewed his call for “an immediate ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip and expressed his “profound hope” for “dialogue, reconciliation and lasting peace in the region,” following an Israeli attack on a Catholic church sheltering civilians, Anadolu reports.

The appeal came in a telegram signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin after the Church of the Holy Family in Gaza was hit during an Israeli military raid.

The…

A French court on Thursday ordered the release of Lebanese national Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, one of Europe’s longest-serving political prisoners, Anadolu reports.

The Paris Court of Appeals sentencing chamber approved the release of Abdallah, broadcaster BFM TV reported.

The court ruled that he would be released on July 25.

Abdallah was part of the Lebanese National Movement, and later joined the Palestinian resistance.

After being arrested in Lyon, France on…