The leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said the U.S. military in the Middle East “will pay the price” in response to the death of a powerful Iranian commander in a U.S. strike.
During a televised speech on Sunday marking the death of Gen. Qassem Soleimani and several Iranian-backed Iraqi militia leaders on Friday in a U.S. drone-launched missile that targeted his convoy in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, Hassan Nasrallah said responding to the killing of Soleimani was also the responsibility of Iran’s allies in the region.
“When the coffins of American soldiers and officers begin to be transported… to the United States, [U.S. President Donald] Trump and his administration will realize that they have really lost the region and will lose the [2020 U.S. presidential] elections” Nasrallah added.
The militant leader noted that U.S. civilians in the region “should not be touched.”
The Shi’ite Lebanese group is a close ally of Iran, receiving financial and military support from Tehran.
A man holds a picture of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei with Iranian Revolutionary Guards top commander Qasem Soleimani (L) during a demonstration in Tehran, Jan. 3, 2020 against the killing of the top commander in a US strike in Baghdad.
Iranian leaders, including Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, have vowed a “crushing response” to the killing of Soleimani who led Iran’s elite Quds Force.
Other Iranian-backed militia leaders in Iraq and Yemen have also pledged to retaliate against Soleimani’s death.
Potential attacks on Israel?
Considering Nasrallah’s speech on Sunday, experts said Hezbollah has a wide set of options that it could use for vengeance against the U.S. and its interests in Lebanon, Israel and the broader region.
Hezbollah “has a rocket arsenal of over a hundred and thirty rockets and mortars and a history of conducting attacks both against the U.S. and other targets within Lebanon and elsewhere,” said Thomas Abi-Hanna, a global security analyst at Stratfor, an intelligence firm based in Austin, Texas.
“Potential attacks against U.S. interests, diplomatic personnel and others in Lebanon are one potential threat they could pose,” Abi-Hanna told VOA, adding that Hezbollah could also choose to launch attacks against neighboring Israel.
“Given the group’s animosity towards Israel and Israel’s close alliance with the U.S., they could attempt to strike either American or Israeli targets within Israel using that same set of rockets,” he said.
Since the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, the two sides occasionally have exchanged attacks. In the wake of Syria’s civil war, Israel has also hit Hezbollah targets inside Syria, where the Lebanese group has been fighting on the side of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
On Saturday, Gholamali Abuhamzeh, a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said Iran has identified 35 U.S. targets across the Middle East, including in Israel, which could potentially be attacked by Tehran and its proxy forces.
But Israeli security analyst Eli Nisan told the U.S.-funded Alhurra TV Sunday that Israel has taken all precautionary measures in this regard.
“Israeli intelligence and air force are ready to defend the country and will respond to any assault from Iran, Hezbollah or [the Palestinian] Islamic Jihad,” he said.
FILE – Hezbollah security forces stand guard as their leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah speaks via a video link on a screen in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Sept. 10, 2019.
Lebanon at risk
Other experts said that Nasrallah’s threats could be seen as a “declaration of war” against the United States and its allies.
“Using such a language by the head of the Hezbollah militia puts Lebanon at stake,” Lebanese affairs analyst Luqman Selim told Alhurra Sunday.
“What Nasrallah is doing is basically throwing Lebanon’s people and its institutions into an unpredictable labyrinth,” Selim said, noting that “Hezbollah is a non-state actor and its actions are not sanctioned by the will of the Lebanese people.”
Hezbollah was designated by the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997.
Ezel Sahinkaya contributed to this story from Washington.
Seven children and four women were among 14 civilians, killed when a roadside bomb blew up their bus in northwestern Burkina Faso, the government said.
“The provisional toll is 14 dead,” a statement said, adding that 19 more people were hurt, three of them seriously in Saturday’s blast.
The explosion happened in Sourou province near the Mali border as students returned to school after the Christmas holidays, a security source said.
“The vehicle hit a homemade bomb on the Toeni-Tougan road,” the source told AFP.
“The government strongly condemns this cowardly and barbaric act,” the statement said.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack but jihadist violence in Burkina Faso has been blamed on combatants linked to both al-Qaida and Islamic State groups.
Meanwhile, the army reported an assault against gendarmes at Inata in the north on Friday, saying “a dozen terrorists were neutralized.”
The deaths came the week after 35 people, most of them women, died in an attack on the northern city of Arbinda and seven Burkinabe troops were killed in a raid on their army base nearby.
Burkina Faso, bordering Mali and Niger, has seen frequent jihadist attacks which have left hundreds of people dead since the start of 2015 when Islamist extremist violence began to spread across the Sahel region.
In a televised address on Tuesday President Roch Marc Christian Kabore insisted that “victory” against “terrorism” was assured.
The entire Sahel region is fighting a jihadist insurgency with help from Western countries, but has not managed to stem the bloodshed.
Five Sahel states — Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad — have joined forces to combat terrorism in the fragile region that lies between the Sahara and the Atlantic.
Increasingly deadly Islamist attacks in Burkina have killed more than 750 people since 2015, according to an AFP count, and forced 560,000 people from their homes, U.N. figures show.
Spain’s Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez failed on Sunday in a first attempt to get parliament’s backing to form a government, leaving him two days to secure support to end an eight-month political gridlock.
Sanchez has been acting prime minister since a first inconclusive election in April and November did not produce a conclusive result. He needed an absolute majority of at least 176 votes in his favor in the 350-seat house to be confirmed as prime minister but failed to get it.
He obtained 166 votes in favor and 165 against, with 18 abstentions, while one lawmaker did not attend.
On Tuesday, Sanchez will only need a simple majority – more “yes” than “no” votes. He is likely to get that after securing a commitment from the 13 lawmakers of Catalonia’s largest separatist party, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), to abstain.
Earlier this week, Socialist Party leader Sanchez and Pablo Iglesias, head of the far-left party Unidas Podemos, restated their intention to form the first coalition government in Spain’s recent history.
The two parties together have 155 seats, short of a majority, so Sanchez is reliant on the votes of small regional parties.
In a sign of how close the race could be on Tuesday, a member from the small regional party Coalicion Canaria, Ana Oramas, voted against Sanchez instead of abstaining as her party had agreed on Friday.
During Sunday morning’s debate, Sanchez stressed that a Socialist-Podemos coalition would take a progressive approach.
Sanchez and Iglesias have said they will push for tax hikes on high-income earners and companies and also intend to roll back a labor reform passed by a previous conservative government.
The morning was marked by tension during the speech of Mertxe Aizpurua of pro-independence Basque party EH Bildu.
Aizpurua called the conservative and right wing parties People’s Party, Vox and Ciudadanos “Francoists”, a reference to late dictator Francisco Franco, and criticized the Constitution and King Felipe.
She was met with boos and shouts of “murderers”.
The Senate seems certain to keep President Donald Trump in office thanks to the overwhelming GOP support expected in his impeachment trial. But how that trial will proceed — and when it will begin — remains to be seen.
Democrats are pushing for the Senate to issue subpoenas for witnesses and documents, pointing to reports that they say have raised new questions about Trump’s decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine.
Once the House transmits the articles of impeachment, decisions about how to conduct the trial will require 51 votes. With Republicans controlling the Senate 53-47, Democrats cannot force subpoenas on their own.
For now, Republicans are holding the line behind Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s position that they should start the trial and hear arguments from House prosecutors and Trump’s defense team before deciding what to do.
But small cracks in GOP unity have appeared, with two Republican senators criticizing McConnell’s pledge of “total coordination” with the White House during the impeachment trial.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she was “disturbed” by the GOP leader’s comments, adding that there should be distance between the White House and the Senate on how the trial is conducted. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, meanwhile, called the pledge by McConnell, R-Ky., inappropriate and said she is open to seeking testimony.
Democrats could find their own unity tested if and when the Senate reaches a final vote on the two House-approved impeachment charges — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
It would take 67 votes to convict Trump on either charge and remove him from office, a high bar unlikely to be reached. It’s also far from certain that all 47 Democrats will find Trump guilty.
Democratic Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama said he’s undecided on how he might vote and suggested he sees merits in the arguments both for and against conviction.
A look at senators to watch once the impeachment trial begins:
Murkowski
In her fourth term representing Alaska, Murkowski is considered a key Senate moderate. She has voted against GOP leadership on multiple occasions and opposed Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 2018.
Murkowski told an Alaska TV station last month there should be distance between the White House and the GOP-controlled Senate in how the trial is conducted.
“To me it means that we have to take that step back from being hand in glove with the defense, and so I heard what leader McConnell had said, I happened to think that that has further confused the process,” she said.
Murkowski says the Senate is being asked to cure deficiencies in the House impeachment effort, particularly when it comes to whether key witnesses should be brought forward to testify, including White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.
“How we will deal with witnesses remains to be seen,” she said, adding that House leaders should have gone to court if witnesses refused to appear before Congress.
Collins
FILE – Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is surrounded by reporters as she heads to vote at the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 6, 2019.
The four-term senator said she is open to calling witnesses as part of the impeachment trial but calls it “premature” to decide who should be called until evidence is presented.
“It is inappropriate, in my judgment, for senators on either side of the aisle to prejudge the evidence before they have heard what is presented to us,” Collins told Maine Public Radio.
Senators take an oath to render impartial justice during impeachment — an oath lawmakers should take seriously, Collins said.
Collins, who is running for reelection and is considered one of the nation’s most vulnerable GOP senators, also faulted Democrats for saying Trump should be found guilty and removed from office. “There are senators on both sides of the aisle, who, to me, are not giving the appearance of and the reality of judging that’s in an impartial way,” she said.
Jones
Jones, a freshman seeking reelection in staunchly pro-Trump Alabama, is considered the Democrat most likely to side with Republicans in a Senate trial. In a Washington Post op-ed column, Jones said that for Americans to have confidence in the impeachment process, “the Senate must conduct a full, fair and complete trial with all relevant evidence regarding the president’s conduct.”
He said he fears that senators “are headed toward a trial that is not intended to find the whole truth. For the sake of the country, this must change.”
Unlike what happened during the investigation of President Bill Clinton, “Trump has blocked both the production of virtually all relevant documents and the testimony of witnesses who have firsthand knowledge of the facts,” Jones said. “The evidence we do have may be sufficient to make a judgment, but it is clearly incomplete,” he added.
Jones and other Democrats are seeking testimony from Mulvaney and other key White House officials to help fill in the gaps.
Mitt Romney, R-Utah.
Romney, a freshman senator and on-again, off-again Trump critic, has criticized Trump for his comments urging Ukraine and China to investigate Democrat Joe Biden, but has not spoken directly about he thinks impeachment should proceed.
Romney is overwhelmingly popular in a conservative state where Trump is not beloved, a status that gives Romney leverage to buck the president or at least speak out about rules and procedures of a Senate trial.
Cory Gardner, R-Colo.
FILE – Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., listens during a hearing to review the FY 2020 State Department budget request, April 10, 2019.
Gardner, like Collins is a vulnerable senator up for reelection in a state where Trump is not popular. Gardner has criticized the House impeachment effort as overly partisan and fretted that it will sharply divide the country.
While Trump is under water in Colorado, a GOP strategist says Gardner and other Republicans could benefit from an energized GOP base if the Senate, as expected, acquits Trump of the two articles of impeachment approved by the House. An acquittal “may have a substantial impact on other races in Colorado, up to and including Sen. Cory Gardner’s re-election,” Ryan Lynch told Colorado Public Radio.
Martha McSally, R-Ariz.
McSally, who was appointed to her seat after losing a Senate bid in 2018, is another vulnerable Republican seeking election this fall. She calls impeachment a serious matter and said she hopes her constituents would want her to examine the facts without partisanship. The American people “want us to take a serious look at this and not have it be just partisan bickering going on,” she told The Arizona Republic.
Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn.
A three-term senator and former governor, Alexander is retiring next year. A moderate who’s respected by both parties as an old-school defender of Senate prerogatives, Alexander has called Trump’s conduct “inappropriate,” but says he views impeachment as a “mistake.”
An election, which “is just around the corner, is the right way to decide who should be president,” Alexander said last fall. “Impeachment has never removed a president. It will only divide the country further.”
Somali militant group al-Shabab says it attacked a military base used by U.S. and Kenyan military teams Sunday.
A cloud of black smoke could be seen rising from the military base in the coastal town of Lamu, along Kenya-Somalia border. The base hosts Kenyan and American forces.
Lamu County Commissioner Irungu Macharia confirmed the attack and says the area is not yet secured.
“Between 4 and 5 there was that attack at that military base, that airstrip. Our officers engaged those intruders, and it has continued up to around 6. But now the situation has calmed down, but the area is not still secure for us to go to that place. But normalcy has returned, and our officers are on the ground,” he said.
In a statement, al-Shabab said it had taken control of part of the camp, and it has inflicted casualties in the attack.
Kenya Defense forces in a statement also said they fought off the attackers and four militants were killed.
A Kenyan police officer observes motor vehicle traffic near the scene where armed assailants killed three people and injured two others in Nyongoro area of Lamu County, Kenya, Jan. 2, 2020.
The attack comes days after al-Shabab fighters killed three people on a passenger bus in Lamu County.
The area that borders Somalia has been under security operation in the last five years.
Al-Shabab has carried out wave attacks against Kenyan security forces and civilians in the coast and northeastern region.
Abdullah Abu Rahma has been arrested by Israeli soldiers eight times in the last 15 years, spending weeks or months in prison and paying tens of thousands of dollars in fines for organizing protests.
He’s among a growing number of Palestinians who have embraced non-violent means of protesting Israel’s military rule and expanding settlements, and who are increasingly finding those avenues of dissent blocked.
Israel says the Palestinians should address their grievances in peace talks. But negotiations ground to a halt more than a decade ago, and the current government’s position on core issues is rejected by the Palestinians and most of the international community.
More than 50 years after occupying the West Bank, Israel is still systematically denying Palestinians civil rights, including the right to gather, Human Rights Watch said in a report released last month. Israel has also stepped up its campaign against the Palestinian-led international boycott movement, and the United States and other countries have adopted legislation to suppress it.
Israel has also come down hard on Palestinian attempts to seek redress at the International Criminal Court. Last month, after a five-year preliminary investigation, the court said it was ready to open a full investigation pending a ruling on territorial jurisdiction. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the court’s decision “pure anti-Semitism.”
Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director for Human Rights Watch, said Israel has “all but declared Palestinian opposition to the systematic discrimination they face illegitimate.” Shakir himself was deported from Israel in November over his alleged support for the boycott movement.
If it succeeds in banning forms of peaceful advocacy, he says, Israel will have “effectively left Palestinians no choice but submission to a regime of systematic repression, or violence.”
For decades, the Palestinians were branded terrorists because of their armed struggle against Israel, which included suicide bombings and other attacks on civilians. At the height of the Second Intifada, the violent uprising in the early 2000s, and for years afterward, observers wondered why there was no “Palestinian Gandhi.”
One candidate for such a title might be Abu Rahma, who for several years organized weekly protests outside his West Bank village of Bilin against Israel’s controversial separation barrier. Israel says the barrier is needed for security, but would have cut off village residents from their land. The protesters eventually forced authorities to reroute the barrier following a court order.
FILE – Palestinian Ashraf Abu Rahma runs away from tear gas fired by Israeli troops, not pictured, during a demonstration in the West Bank town of Bilin, near Ramallah, Sept. 9, 2011.
The protests often saw Palestinian youths hurl rocks at Israeli security forces, who responded with tear gas and rubber-coated bullets. But Abu Rahma says he never threw stones and told others not to do so, partly out of concern they would hurt other protesters.
That didn’t keep him from being arrested.
Over the years he was charged with entering a closed military zone — referring to land outside the village — and hindering the work of soldiers, who were overseeing the construction of the fence.
“I don’t go to them, they come to us,” he said.
In 2009 he was charged with stockpiling weapons after he collected spent tear gas canisters fired by Israeli soldiers and put them on display. He later served a 16-month prison term after a military court convicted him of incitement and participation in illegal protests.
“There have been various, multiple charges of this kind, but not once have they accused me of striking a soldier or throwing a stone,” he told The Associated Press. In 2009, he was acquitted on the weapons possession charge and a charge of throwing stones.
Issa Amro, another prominent activist who has organized protests against Israeli settlements in the West Bank city of Hebron, faces 16 charges, including calling for disobedience and disrupting Israeli life — the lives of settlers.
He says he has been detained on 10 occasions this year alone, usually after being beaten by settlers.
FILE – Palestinian activist Issa Amro, center, speaks after his release from detention, in the West Bank city of Hebron, Sept. 10, 2017.
“The soldiers never did anything to stop the attackers, but they arrested me every time a settler said I attacked him,” he said. As a Palestinian, he is governed by Israeli military law, while the Jewish settlers in Hebron enjoy full rights as Israeli citizens.
“Israeli authorities ban any political expression in the Palestinian territories,” Amro said. “They want us basically to accept the occupation, the discrimination, the land grab, the restrictions, and not to speak up against it.”
Human Rights Watch said Israel relies on sweeping military orders, many of which date back to the 1967 Mideast war, when it seized the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza, territories the Palestinians want for their future state.
Civilians can be jailed for up to 10 years for attending political gatherings of more than 10 people or for displaying flags or political symbols without army approval, Human Rights Watch said. Military orders ban 411 organizations, including every major political movement, it added.
“After 52 years, Israel’s sweeping restrictions of the basic rights of Palestinians can no longer be justified by the exigencies of military occupation,” Shakir said. “Palestinians are entitled at minimum to the same rights Israel provides its own citizens.”
In response to questions about the Human Rights Watch report and the restrictions on protests, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the Palestinian leadership of seeking to “attack Israel in the international arena” rather than trying to end the conflict through negotiations.
Peace talks broke down after Netanyahu was elected in 2009. In September, he vowed to annex large parts of the West Bank, a move that would almost certainly extinguish any remaining hope of creating a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Islamic militant group Hamas, which rules Gaza, have also cracked down on dissent in recent years. The PA has detained hundreds of people, including Amro, who was jailed for a week in 2017 over a Facebook post. Hamas violently dispersed protests last March, arresting dozens of people.
In addition to protesting, many Palestinians have also rallied behind the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, a nonviolent campaign that claims to be modeled on the struggle against South African Apartheid.
The campaign has sparked a major backlash by Israeli authorities, who say its true aim is to delegitimize the state and eventually wipe it off the map.
BDS endorses the Palestinian claim of a right of return for the descendants of refugees who fled or were driven out of Israel in the 1948 war that attended its creation. If fully realized, that would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority state. Critics have also seized on statements from prominent BDS supporters to brand it as anti-Semitic, something organizers vehemently deny.
A 2017 law bars entry to foreigners who have called for economic boycotts of Israel or its settlements. Israel invoked the law when it deported Shakir and when it refused entry to U.S. congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib earlier this year.
In May, German lawmakers passed a resolution that denounced the boycott movement and described its methods as anti-Semitic. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution opposing the boycott movement in July.
At least 25 U.S. states have enacted laws aimed at suppressing the BDS movement, including Texas, which passed a law forcing state contractors to sign a pledge that they do not support the campaign. A federal judge blocked enforcement of the law in April, saying boycotts are a form of protected free speech.
Gerald Steinberg, who heads a pro-Israel group called NGO Monitor that campaigns against BDS, said its “demonization paints Israelis as blood-thirsty war criminals, land-thieves and child killers.”
“These accusations contribute to or are used to justify attacks against students and speakers on university campuses, harassment in other venues and in some cases, violent terror,” he said.
Abu Rahma and other activists reject such characterizations, saying their struggle is not against Israelis but against the occupation.
“I see how the occupation is an obstacle to everything,” he said. “The path that I am on, I have to continue. I have to struggle. It’s not easy.”
