Foreign News
Palestinian PM Shtayyeh hands resignation to Abbas over Gaza ‘genocide’
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has announced the resignation of his government, which rules parts of the occupied West Bank, due to the escalating violence in the occupied territory and the war on Gaza.
“The decision to resign came in light of the unprecedented escalation in the West Bank and Jerusalem and the war, genocide and starvation in the Gaza Strip,” said Shtayyeh, who submitted his resignation to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday.
“I see that the next stage and its challenges require new governmental and political arrangements that take into account the new reality in Gaza and the need for a Palestinian-Palestinian consensus based on Palestinian unity and the extension of unity of authority over the land of Palestine,” he said.
Shtayyeh’s comments come as US pressure grows on Abbas to shake up the PA and begin work on a political structure that can govern a Palestinian state following the war.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has on numerous occasions rejected calls for the PA under Abbas to take control of a Palestinian state and govern Gaza.
Last week, Israeli lawmakers backed Netanyahu’s rejection of any ‘unilateral’ recognition of a Palestinian state. “The Knesset came together in an overwhelming majority against the attempt to impose on us the establishment of a Palestinian state, which would not only fail to bring peace but would endanger the state of Israel,” said Netanyahu.
But the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs slammed the vote and accused Israel of holding the rights of Palestinians hostage due to the occupation of Palestinian territories. “The ministry reaffirms that the State of Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations and its recognition by other nations does not require permission from Netanyahu,” it said in a statement.
Since the signing of the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, little progress has been made towards achieving a two-state solution.
As the International Court of Justice (ICJ) hears from about 50 countries on the legal implications of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, the far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday announced plans to build more than 3,300 new homes in response to a shooting that killed one Israeli civilian. Smotrich said the decision would begin an approval process for 300 new homes in the Kedar settlement and 2,350 in Maale Adumim, where the attack occurred.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was “disappointed” to hear of the Israeli announcement of the new settlements. “It’s been longstanding US policy under Republican and Democratic administrations alike that new settlements are counter-productive to reaching an enduring peace,” he said in Buenos Aires. “They’re also inconsistent with international law. Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion and in our judgement this only weakens, it doesn’t strengthen, Israel’s security.”
Violence in the occupied West Bank has escalated significantly after the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that killed 1,139 people. Israel’s retaliatory bombardments on Gaza have killed more than 29,000 Palestinian civilians, according to the strip’s Ministry of Health. Palestinian health officials also say at least 401 people have been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank during the same period.
(Aljazeera)
United States President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to demand control of the Panama Canal after accusing Panama of charging excessive rates on US ships passing through one of the busiest waterways in the world.
“Our Navy and Commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
He later doubled down during a speech in Arizona on Sunday, saying the US was “being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else”.
The US largely built the canal in 1914 and administrated territory surrounding the passage for decades. But Washington fully handed control of the canal to Panama in 1999 after a period of joint administration.
Trump also hinted at China’s growing influence around the canal, which connects the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.
“It was solely for Panama to manage, not China, or anyone else,” he said in the original post. “We would and will NEVER let it fall into the wrong hands!”
“It was not given for the benefit of others, but merely as a token of cooperation with us and Panama. If the moral and legal principles of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question,” Trump said.
Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino firmly responded to Trump on Sunday.
“Every square meter of the Panama canal and the surrounding area belongs to Panama and will continue belonging so,” Mulino said in a recorded message posted on social media.
He further denied that China or any other country has direct or indirect influence over the canal. He added that fees were not decided on a “whim”.
The canal is key to Panama’s economy and generates about one-fifth of the government’s annual revenue.
[Aljazeera]
At least 13 people, including four children, have been killed in two incidents in Nigeria as large crowds gathered to collect food and clothing distributed at annual Christmas events, police say.
In the capital, Abuja, at least 10 people died on Saturday and many more were injured in a scramble to receive gifts of charity being distributed by the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Maitama district.
“This unfortunate event, which took place around 6:30am [05:30 GMT], resulted in a stampede that claimed the lives of 10 individuals, including four children, and left eight others with varying degrees of injuries,” said Josephine Adeh, a police spokesperson.
In a separate incident in Okija in Anambra State in southern Nigeria, three people were killed in a crush at a charity event organised by a philanthropist, state police said.
“The event had not even started when the rush began,” police spokesman Tochukwu Ikenga said. There could be more deaths recorded as officers investigate, he said.
In both incidents, the victims were mostly women and children who were trampled as crowds tried to reach the provisions being offered.
[Aljazeera]
A nine-year-old child and four adults have been killed, and more than 200 injured after a car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, officials say.
At least 41 people were critically injured after the incident which lasted around three minutes, police said.
The arrested suspect has been named in local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi citizen who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had worked as a doctor.
Reiner Haseloff, the premier of Saxony-Anhalt state, said a preliminary investigation suggested the alleged attacker was acting alone.
He added that he could not rule out more deaths due to the number of injured.
The suspect is currently being questioned and prosecutors expect to charge him with murder and attempted murder in due course, the head of the local prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.
Prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens added that the investigation was ongoing but suggested the background to the crime “could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany”.
The suspected attacker has no known links to Islamist extremism – social media and posts online appear to suggest he had been critical of Islam.
Footage from the scene showed numerous emergency services vehicles attending while people lay on the ground.
Further footage then emerged of armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground by a stationary vehicle.
Unverified video on social media purports to show a car ploughing into the crowd at the market.
City officials said around 100 police, medics and firefighters, as well as 50 rescue service personnel rushed to the scene.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who travelled to the city on Saturday, described the attack as a “dreadful tragedy” as “so many people were injured and killed with such brutality” in a place that is supposed to be “joyful”.
He told reporters that there were serious concerns for those who had been critically injured – which German media reports is in the dozens – and that “all resources” will be allocated to investigating the suspect behind the attack.
There would be a memorial service for the victims at the Magdeburg Cathedral later on Saturday, he added.
[BBC]
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