Day: September 16, 2019

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday to annex “all the settlements” in the West Bank, including an enclave deep in the heart of the largest Palestinian city, in a last-ditch move that appeared aimed at shoring up nationalist support the day before a do-over election.

Locked in a razor tight race and with legal woes hanging over him, Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival. In the final weeks of his campaign he has been doling out hard-line promises meant to draw more voters to his Likud party and re-elect him in Tuesday’s unprecedented repeat vote.

“I intend to extend sovereignty on all the settlements and the [settlement] blocs,” including “sites that have security importance or are important to Israel’s heritage,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Israeli Army Radio, part of an eleventh-hour media blitz.

Asked if that included the hundreds of Jews who live under heavy military guard amid tens of thousands of Palestinians in the volatile city of Hebron, Netanyahu responded “of course.”

Israelis head to the polls Tuesday in the second election this year, after Netanyahu failed to cobble together a coalition following April’s vote, sparking the dissolution of parliament.

Netanyahu has made a series of ambitious pledges in a bid to whip up support, including a promise to annex the Jordan Valley, an area even moderate Israelis view as strategic but which the Palestinians consider the breadbasket of any future state.

To protest that announcement, the Palestinian Authority held a Cabinet meeting in the Jordan Valley village of Fasayil on Monday, a day after Israel’s Cabinet met elsewhere in the valley.

“The Jordan Valley is part of Palestinian lands and any settlement or annexation is illegal,” Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said at the start of the meeting. “We will sue Israel in international courts for exploiting our land and we will continue our struggle against the occupation on the ground and in international forums.”

Critics contend that Netanyahu’s pledges, if carried out, would enflame the Middle East and eliminate any remaining Palestinian hope of establishing a separate state. His political rivals have dismissed his talk of annexation as an election ploy noting that he has refrained from annexing any territory during his more than a decade in power.   

Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war.

Over 2.5 million Palestinians now live in occupied territories, in addition to nearly 700,000 Jewish settlers. Israel already has annexed east Jerusalem in a move that is not internationally recognized. The international community, along with the Palestinians, overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem illegal.

Tuesday’s vote will largely be a referendum on Netanyahu, who this year surpassed Israel’s founding prime minister as the country’s longest-serving leader.
 
He has cast himself as the only candidate capable of facing Israel’s myriad challenges. But his opponents say his legal troubles — including a recommendation by the attorney general to indict him on bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges loom too large for him to carry on.

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Jin Gyeong-sun was in his early 20s when he fled Pyongyang during the Korean War, heading to South Korea and leaving behind two sisters and a brother in the North.

Seven decades later, Jin still hasn’t met or even spoken with his separated family.

“I cannot even express my sadness in words,” says Jin, now 89 years old and living in Seoul. “Especially around Chuseok,” the Korean autumn harvest holiday celebrated last week, “I miss my family as much as ever.”

For first-generation separated Koreans like Jin, time is quickly running out to see their relatives on the other side of the border.

Making matters worse, official relations between North and South Korea have soured yet again, delaying plans for a resumption of government-sponsored family reunions. 

Too late for some

For many, it’s already too late. Sixty percent of South Koreans who have registered for family reunions since 1988 have already died as of August, according to data from South Korea’s Unification Ministry.

Among the approximately 54,000 survivors, 23 percent are 90 or older and 41 percent are in their eighties, Seoul’s numbers show.

At 74, Lee Sang-won is among the younger North Koreans who fled during the war. But for Lee, who came to South Korea during the United Nations-led Hungnam Evacuation in 1950 when he was five years old, memories of family have faded.

“It’s just been too long,” says Lee.

Resumption of reunions – a priority?

Since 1985, a total of 21 rounds of inter-Korean family reunions have reconnected a total of 4,355 individuals and 1,757 families. But there have been fewer reunions in recent years, even as the number of first-generation separated Koreans dwindles.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, whose parents also left North Korea during the Hungnam Evacuation, has highlighted the urgency of resuming family reunions.

In a statement for last week’s Chuseok holiday, Moon said the resumption of family reunions is “highest priority” for the two Koreas.

“It’s wrong that governments in both the South and the North have not given them even a chance for such a long time,” Moon said.

The latest round of reunions occurred in August 2018 at North Korea’s Mount Kumgang resort, with 83 North Koreans and 89 South Koreans participating. One hundred families from each side had been invited, but some dropped out after discovering their family members across the border had already died.

A few months later, Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to formalize the reunions, including restoring a permanent meeting place, allowing for the exchange of letters, and resuming video reunions.

South Korea made preparations to resume video reunions, refurbishing 13 video conferencing rooms nationwide that had been last used in the 2000s. South Korea also purchased video equipment to be sent to North Korea, after the U.N. last year granted a sanctions waiver.

But as with other aspects of the Moon-Kim agreements, the reunion issue has become stalled amid the breakdown in nuclear talks with Pyongyang. North Korea has since blasted Seoul, saying it has no intention of resuming dialogue with the South.

Last week, North Korea said it would accept the recommendation of the U.N. Human Rights  Council to work with South Korea on the issue of helping separated families. But so far there appears to be no visible progress toward that end.

It’s a discouraging pattern for Jin, who says he has applied 21 times for reunion events, but has been rejected each time.

“There is little time for me, and people like me,” he laments. Jin says he would love to one day visit Pyongyang, his old hometown, adding: “Or at least send a letter.”

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Two candidates who claim they will win through to Tunisia’s presidential runoff — a conservative law expert and an imprisoned media mogul —
could hardly be more different, but both bill themselves as political outsiders.

Nabil Karoui, behind bars since August 23 on charges of money laundering, is a populist showman whose political colors changed with the times, culminating in the launch of his Qalb Tounes (Heart of Tunisia) party just months ago.

Maverick Kais Saied, meanwhile, is an academic committed to social conservatism who has ploughed his own furrow.  

Nicknamed “Robocop” due to his abrupt, staccato speech and rigid posture, the impeccably dressed Saied shunned political parties, avoided mass rallies and campaigned door-to-door.

Hours after polling booths closed in the country’s second free presidential polls since the 2011 Arab Spring, he declared he was in pole position.

“I am first in the first round and if I am elected president I will apply my program,” he told AFP in a spartan apartment in central Tunis.

On the campaign trail, he advocated a rigorous overhaul of the constitution and voting system, to decentralize power “so that the will of the people penetrates into central government and puts an end to corruption”.

With a quarter votes counted Monday, Tunisia’s electoral commission (ISIE) put Saied in the lead with 19 percent of the vote.

Often surrounded by young acolytes, he has pushed social conservatism, defending the death penalty, criminalisation of homosexuality and a sexual assault law that punishes unmarried couples who engage in public displays of affection.

Tunisia’s ‘would-be Berlusconi’

While Saied came from the sidelines with his unique approach to courting Tunisia’s voters — and did so with barely any money behind him — media magnate Nabil Karoui’s story is more flamboyant.

He has long maintained a high profile, using his Nessma TV channel to launch high-profile charity campaigns, often appearing in designer suits even while meeting some of the country’s poorest citizens in marginalized regions.

These charitable endeavors, including doling out food aid, “helped me to get closer to people and realize the huge social problems facing the country,” he once told AFP. “I have been touched by it.”

Unlike Saied, he previously threw his lot in with an established political party, officially joining Beji Caid Essebsi’s Nidaa Tounes in 2016, after actively supporting the late president in his successful campaign two years earlier.

He formally stepped down from Nessma’s management after being criticized by international observers for his channel’s partisan conduct in 2014.

But he subsequently made no secret of continuing to pull the strings at the channel, while honing his political profile.    

His supporters claim his arrest was politically motivated, but detractors cast him as a would-be Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian premier who they allege partly owns his channel.

The arrest of the controversial Tunisian businessman in August followed his indictment the previous month in an investigation that dates back to 2017 and the submission by anti-corruption watchdog I-Watch of a dossier accusing him of tax fraud.

The 56-year-old was still given the green light to run and hit the campaign trail by proxy, deploying his wife and activists from his Heart of Tunisia party to woo voters.

“Nabil Karoui is in the second round,” an official from the mogul’s party told AFP late Sunday, as the businessman sat in prison outside the capital Tunis.

Partial results from ISIE on Monday put him in the second spot.

Observers say that if Karoui does make it to the second round, it will be hard for authorities to justify keeping him behind bars without a trial.

Saied, meanwhile, has not been immune from discomforting scrutiny.

Confronted late last week in a broadcast debate with a photo showing him meeting an ex-member of a banned Salafi group, he asked: “Do I have to ask permission to meet someone?”

But in a sign of voters’ antipathy towards the overall field, the ISIE put turnout at 45 percent, down substantially from the 64 percent recorded for the country’s first democratic polls in 2014.

The date of a second and final round between the top two candidates has not been announced, but it must be held by October 23 at the latest and may even take place on the same day as legislative polls set for October 6.

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker held their first face-to-face talks Monday, without any visible signs of a breakthrough on an elusive Brexit deal.

The two men talked over a two-hour lunch of snails and salmon in Juncker’s native Luxembourg, amid claims from the U.K. — though not the EU — that a deal is in sight.
 
The European Commission said after the meeting that Britain had yet to offer any “legally operational” solutions to the issue of the Irish border, the main roadblock to a deal.
 
“President Juncker underlined the Commission’s continued willingness and openness to examine whether such proposals meet the objectives of the backstop”— a border provision rejected by Britain.
 
 “Such proposals have not yet been made,” the European Commission said in a statement, adding that officials “will remain available to work 24/7.”
 
Johnson says the U.K. will leave the EU on the scheduled Oct. 31 date, with or without a withdrawal agreement. But he insists he can strike a revised divorce deal with the bloc in time for an orderly departure. The agreement made by his predecessor, Theresa May, was rejected three times by Britain’s Parliament.
 
Johnson said in a Daily Telegraph column Monday that he believes “passionately” that a deal can be agreed and approved at a summit of EU leaders on Oct. 17-18.
 
While the EU says it is still waiting for firm proposals from the U.K., Johnson spokesman James Slack said Britain had “put forward workable solutions in a number of areas.”
 
He declined to provide details, saying it was unhelpful to negotiate in public.
 
The key sticking point is the “backstop,” an insurance policy in May’s agreement intended to guarantee an open border between EU member Ireland and the U.K.’s Northern Ireland. That is vital both to the local economy and to Northern Ireland’s peace process.
 
British Brexit supporters oppose the backstop because it keeps the U.K. bound to EU trade rules, limiting its ability to forge new free trade agreements around the world after Brexit.
 
Britain has suggested the backstop could be replaced by “alternative arrangements,” but the EU says it has yet to hear any workable suggestions.
 
Neither side expects a breakthrough Monday, but much still rests on Johnson’s encounter with Juncker, who like other EU officials is tired of the long-running Brexit drama, and wary of Johnson’s populist rhetoric.
 
The British leader has vowed to leave the bloc “do or die” and compared himself to angry green superhero the Incredible Hulk, telling the Mail on Sunday newspaper: “The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets, and he always escapes … and that is the case for this country.”
 
European Parliament Brexit chief Guy Verhofstadt branded the comparison “infantile,” and it also earned a rebuke from “Hulk” star Mark Ruffalo.
 
Ruffalo tweeted: “Boris Johnson forgets that the Hulk only fights for the good of the whole. Mad and strong can also be dense and destructive.”
 
Monday’s meeting marks the start a tumultuous week, with the Brexit deadline just 45 days away.
 
On Tuesday, Britain’s Supreme Court will consider whether Johnson’s decision to prorogue — or suspend — the British Parliament for five weeks was lawful, after conflicting judgments in lower courts.
 
Johnson sent lawmakers home until Oct. 14, a drastic move that gives him a respite from rebellious lawmakers determined to thwart his Brexit plan.
 
Last week, Scotland’s highest civil court ruled the prorogation illegal because it had the intention of stymieing Parliament. The High Court in London, however, said it was not a matter for the courts.
 
If the Supreme Court overturns the suspension, lawmakers could be called back to Parliament as early as next week.
 
Many lawmakers fear a no-deal Brexit would be economically devastating, and are determined to stop the U.K. from crashing out of the bloc on Oct. 31.
 
Just before the suspension, Parliament passed a law that orders the government to seek a three-month delay to Brexit if no agreement has been reached by late October.
 
Johnson insists he will not seek a delay under any circumstances, though it’s not clear how he can avoid it.
 
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Monday that the government would obey the law, but suggested it would try to find loopholes.
 
  “I think the precise implications of the legislation need to be looked at very carefully,” he told the BBC. “We are doing that.”
    

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The first Chinese-born woman to sit in the lower house of Australia’s federal parliament is under a sustained attack for failing to disclose her membership in organizations linked to China’s Communist Party. 

There are claims Gladys Liu had connections with senior figures in Beijing’s covert political propaganda apparatus, which have raised questions about her eligibility to sit in the Australian parliament.  

The lawmaker has admitted being a member of the China Overseas Exchange Association between 2003 and 2015, which at the time was part of China’s powerful State Council, the Chinese government’s central political and administrative body.  The Hong Kong-born politician says her membership was entirely innocent, and has denied any conflict of interest.  She said she is “a proud Australian.”

Australia’s center-right Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Liu is the victim of a “smear” campaign with a “grubby undertone”.

The political assault is led by the opposition Labor Party.  It has demanded to know if the government had received warnings about her from Australia’s intelligence agencies.  Ministers have declined to comment.

Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese denies the scrutiny of Liu is based on race and says he wants to get to the truth.

“What the motivation is here is to ensure that there is accountability for people’s actions.  It has nothing to do with race and the only person who has raised race in these issues are, of course, prime minister Morrison,” he said.

Gladys Liu is a former speech pathologist who became an Australian citizen in 1992.  Her parliamentary career has collided with growing anxiety in Australia over allegations of Chinese meddling in its domestic politics, and cyber espionage.  A taskforce is to investigate foreign interference in Australian universities because of fears over China’s growing influence on campuses.

These are sensitive issues, given Australia’s reliance on China for its recent prosperity.  China is Australia’s biggest trading partner.

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