New Delhi: After having hosted Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister Modi will land in Ramallah on February 10. While India and Palestine have been discussing the proposed visit for a while, this is the first confirmation of its date and it comes in the middle of Netanyahu’s visit to India.
Modi wants to maintain a balance of ties. With India’s growing relations with Israel, Modi’s Government is keen to seek Palestinian confidence to win hearts and minds of Indian Muslims, to prevent the chances for grievance motivated terrorism.
‘The visit to the Palestinian territory is likely to be part of Prime Minister Modi’s outreach to the Arab world in the second week of February, during which he will hold a meeting with the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The official said that the trip indicates that India remains on track with its traditional stance on Palestine. Palestine had praised India’s recent vote in the UN against the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,’ writes Kallol Bhattacherjee for The Hindu.
Tehran: Iran added its voice to criticism of a US plan to form a new border security force in Syria, saying on Tuesday that it will cause more instability and ‘add flames’ to the war-torn country. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said that the planned Kurdish-led force will further complicate the conflict in Syria and is a ‘blatant intervention’ in that country’s internal affairs. Ghasemi’s comments were carried by Iran’s official IRNA news agency.
The new force announced by the US will exacerbate tensions between the US, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. Forming a new border, the Kurdish militia force is threatening the states (Iran, Turkey, Iraq and Syria) that hold major Kurdish population, which are demanding a separate homeland. Particularly, the move will challenge Iran’s growing regional influence that has spread over lraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and across.
‘The Syrian-Kurd canton of Afrin could become the target of a Turkish offensive as Ankara’s partnership with Russia and Iran in Syria is strained by the Assad Government assaults on Idlib and recent rebel attacks on Russian facilities in the country, analysts have said. The attacks on Idlib and the rebel bombing of a nearby Russian air base has opened fissures in what Ankara vociferously, and Moscow more mutedly, had for more than a year hailed to be a promising partnership in Syria’. Writes Suraj Sharma for the Middle East Eye.
North Korea agreed on Tuesday to send a large-sized delegation, including athletes, a cheering squad and officials, to the upcoming Pyeong Chang Winter Olympics following the first high-level talks with the South in almost two years. According to a joint press statement issued after the talks, held at the border village of Panmunjeom, the two Koreas will soon hold follow-up talks to deal with the logistics concerning the participation in the games scheduled for next month.
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Kim is violent and aggressive, and his use of repression and rent probably has encouraged sycophants and groupthink within his inner circle. Left to his own devices, Kim could blunder into a situation that leads to rapid and potentially uncontrollable escalation, especially since he has almost no experience in negotiation and compromise in foreign affairs. Kim’s recent behaviour is to buy time for nuclear developments, also to create diffidence between US and its Pacific allies.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson outlined plans in a speech on Wednesday for the US to remain engaged diplomatically and militarily in Syria long after the defeat of the radical Islamic State group.
The presence of US forces is important to prevent the resurgence of Daesh and Al-Qaeda. However, the great powers are less worried about the terrorist groups and more about their interests at stake. US has planned to form a Kurdish border security force to corrode growing Iranian, Turkish, and Russian influence in the Middle East and hence US will not leave Syria in years to come.
Violent protests erupted again on Sunday in two areas of the capital, Tunis and another town, after relatively calm two days. The latest protests in the country are against austerity measures. After nearly a week of at times violent protests, police used tear gas against dozens of young protesters in the Ettadamen district of Tunis in renewed demonstrations over a tax hike. More than 500 protesters have now been arrested and the army has been deployed in several cities after days of anti-government demonstrations.
‘Over the last three years, there has been an increasing number of popular protests about socioeconomic questions by people who feel excluded from the democratic transition,’ said Rory McCarthy, an expert in Tunisia and Islamism at Magdalen College, Oxford University.
‘Basically, people are saying that demands for major change, particularly an end to corruption and a much more just economic system, haven’t been addressed,’ writes Jason Burke for The Guardian.
The Carnegie Middle East Center held a discussion between Maha Yahya and Safwan M. Masri for the launch of his new book. In the book, Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly (Columbia University Press, 2017), Masri explores the factors that have shaped the country’s exceptional experience since the Arab Spring. He argues that Tunisia stands out not as a model that can be replicated in other Arab countries, but rather as an anomaly, whose history of reformism set it on a separate trajectory from the rest of the region.
Poland’s new Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, will reshuffle the two-year-old conservative government on Tuesday before flying to Brussels to discuss controversial judicial reforms. The long-expected shake-up will probably involve naming a new finance, foreign, environment and health minister, several sources close to the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party have told Reuters. ‘The swearing-in should take place around noon,’ Morawiecki’s Spokeswoman Joanna Kopcinska said on Monday.
‘In response to concerns that the rule of law was at risk in Poland, the European Commission took the unprecedented step last month of initiating a process that could lead to the country being stripped of its voting rights at EU institutions. Brussels has accused Warsaw of subverting the fundamental values expected of a democratic state by allowing political interference in its courts,’ writes Christian Davies and Jennifer for The Guardian.
‘I see it as a continuation of the drive to calm the situation and the emotions in areas where conflict was not needed including the environment and the defence sectors, said Malgorzata Bonikowska, Head of the Centre for International Relations think tank’. Says ABC News.
The extreme weather is forcing a tight power supply balance, and people are being urged to prepare for possible outages. The Australian Energy Market Operator has activated its ‘reserve trader functions’ in Victoria, which will see it effectively pay some heavy energy users to curtail their power output this afternoon. The businesses involved had volunteered to be part of the demand management scheme.
‘Certainly there needs to be radical change in Australia’s energy sector if we are to see significant progress toward our Paris target. Generating electricity accounts for more than 30 percent of Australia’s emissions, and is also the area where great advances in technology are being made. Currently more than 80 percent of electricity going into the National Energy Market comes from fossil fuels. An Australian Institute report from September last year argued that Australia could meet its 2030 Paris commitments if the electricity sector cut emissions by about 50 percent below 2005 levels. The report says that would mean moving to about 70 percent renewable energy sources by 2030,’ writes Nick for ABC News.
A US judge has blocked attempts by the White House to end a programme barring the deportation of children brought illegally to the US by parents. In September, President Donald Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) programme. But San Francisco’s Judge William Alsup ruled that it must stay in place while litigation against the move continues. The Obama-era scheme protects some 800,000 people, and also provides temporary permits for work and study.
‘If the court order stands, it could potentially ease some of the pressure on Democrats and Republicans in Congress to find a legislative solution before the program ends. Democrats on Wednesday hailed the ruling but urged lawmakers to continue working on a legislative fix,’ writes Lauren for The Guardian.
‘The assertion was a 180 from Trump’s earlier stance that immigration legislation must include funding for the border wall and radical changes to the visa process in addition to the safety measures Democrats are pursuing for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program,’ writes Mary Kekatos and Francesca Chambers for Daily Mail.