LaNUBlog™

Isreal calls deal ‘historic mistake’. In what has been described as a landmark agreement, Iran has agreed to suspend certain aspect of its nuclear enrichment activities after an intense negotiation on Sunday with global powers in Geneva, Switzerland. The agreement reached with the P5 + 1 group (United States, China, Germany, United Kingdom, France and Russia) would see Iran allowing inspectors greater access to its nuclear programme and halting some aspect of its nuclear enrichment process in exchange for the lifting of sanctions valued at almost $7 billion (N1.11 trillion).

Israel at loggerheads with ally, US Israel’s worst fears may be realised if a proposed deal by world powers goes ahead with Tehran, sharply curtailing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s options in his campaign against Iran’s contested nuclear programme. The possible accord may not only tie Israel’s hand in any future military action against Iran, but it could also have an unexpected knock-on effect and stymie U.S.-brokered negotiations between Israeland the Palestinians. In a bitter outburst, Mr. Netanyahu denounced, on Friday, the contours of an Iranian agreement leaked to the media, once again putting himself in direct conflict with Washington. “This is a very bad deal and Israel utterly rejects it,” he said as he headed into his third round of talks in just 48 hours with the U.S.Secretary of State, John Kerry. “Israel will do everything it needs to do to defend itself and to defend the security of its people,” Mr. Netanyahu told reporters. Tellingly, Mr. Kerry did not appear ...

Businessmen trading in Irbil compare it to the Dubai of 20 years ago. Even at moments of remembrance the origins of World War One seem as distant as the fall of Rome. The steps in the doomed diplomatic dance in the summer of 1914 are hopelessly remote to the modern mind. It's not just the imperial ambitions and the strategic balances - this was a world where politicians still wore frock coats and the seditious syncopations of ragtime were an affront to Christian decency. But there are places where the furtive manoeuvrings of the politicians - which went on in parallel with the fighting - still feel like unfinished business. Very few Western Europeans could tell you what the main result of World War One really was - except that it led directly to World War Two. It brought countless indirect changes too of course, but they are hard to measure. The prosperous north of Iraq feels like a different country The role of women in parts of Europe and North America at least, was transf...

Continuation... "In Area C, which is 60% of the West Bank, Palestinians have got to be able step-by-step to develop it," says Tony Blair, who represents the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers and has been working on a Palestinian economic initiative. "Along the Jordan Valley you have immensely rich agricultural land. It's hard to see frankly how in the future you're going to have a Palestinian state that doesn't include that." Mr Blair has been pressing for an easing of restrictions, such as extending the opening hours of Allenby Bridge. "What we've got to try to do I think, even in advance of final agreement, is to give people on the Palestinian side a sense that the world is changing and that they can see the prospect of a genuine state opening up before them," he told me. "Likewise for the Israelis of course [we must show] that the security concerns… are going to be taken account of." Regional uncertainties In previous i...

Rows of date palms stand sentinel across the vast, flat stretch of land along the border between the West Bank and Jordan. The view is dotted by dozens of Israeli settlements and Palestinian villages. This is the Jordan Valley, captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War, most of it now still under Israel's military and administrative control. However the fertile, largely undeveloped strip - which makes up a quarter of the West Bank - would form an integral part of a future Palestinian state if the Palestinians have their way. Israel, on the other hand, says it cannot give up the valley for reasons of security. Peace talks which resumed in August are being held in secrecy, but the fate of the valley is said to be one of the points on which Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are struggling to find a compromise. At a Palestinian family farm in Jiftlik the date harvest is just finishing. Teenagers reach up from a platform to shake the ripe fruits from each tree while their e...

Damascus - Israel has reportedly carried out an air strike on a Syrian military installation to stop a shipment to Hezbollah, as inspectors said Syria's entire declared stock of chemical weapons has been placed under seal. Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television said on Thursday that Israel had hit a Syrian air base in Latakia province, targeting a shipment of surface-to-surface missiles destined for the Lebanese Shi'ite movement. A US official confirmed to AFP that "there was an Israeli strike" but gave no details on the location or the target, while Israeli officials refused to comment. "Historically, targets have been missiles transferred to Hezbollah," allied with Syrian President Bashar Assad, the official said. Al-Arabiya quoted the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying explosions took place on Wednesday near Latakia at an air defence base. In May, Israel carried out two air strikes inside Syria, and a senior Israeli official told AF...

Israel is thought to have carried out several air strikes in Syria earlier this year. Israeli aircraft have carried out a strike near the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, a US official says. The official said the strike targeted Russian-made missiles intended for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Latakia is a stronghold of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an important port city where the Alawite community to which he belongs is concentrated. Israel is widely reported to have carried out at least three air strikes in Syria so far this year. Reports of the strike came as the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said all Syria's declared equipment for making chemical weapons had been destroyed, one day before a deadline. Action by the OPCW was agreed following allegations, denied by the Syrian government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas - and after the US and France threatened military intervention. Delicate moment A US o...

Two rabbis face kidnapping charges after allegedly arranging assaults of Orthodox Jewish husbands to persuade them to grant divorces to their wives, authorities said Thursday. FBI raids on Wednesday night led to the arrest of the men, who were arraigned in federal court in New Jersey on Thursday, according to court documents. A criminal complaint alleges that the rabbis charged Jewish wives tens of thousands of dollars to orchestrate kidnappings and accepted $20,000 for such an operation from undercover FBI agents. Their goal? To obtain “gets,” a document that Jewish law requires a husband to present to his wife in order to be issued a divorce, the complaint says. In the Orthodox Jewish world, a get is more important than any sort of document drawn up in civil courts. The derivation of this law is found in Deuteronomy 24:1-2: “When a man marries a woman or possesses her, if she is displeasing to him…, he shall write her a bill of divorce and place it in her hand, thus releasing he...

Jericho - The Palestinians could expand their struggling economy by a third and slash their budget deficit in half if Israel allowed them to use 61% of West Bank territory that is now largely off-limits, the World Bank said on Tuesday. The bank and donor countries supporting the Palestinians have repeatedly urged Israel to open up the restricted territory, known as Area C. But the report released on Tuesday marked the first detailed attempt to quantify Palestinian losses. "Access to Area C will not cure all Palestinian economic problems but the alternative is bleak," the report said. "Without the ability to conduct purposeful economic activity in Area C, the economic space of the West Bank will remain crowded and stunted, inhabited by people whose daily interactions with the state of Israel are characterised by inconvenience, expense and frustration." Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yigal Palmor said most of the issues raised by the World Bank are to be s...

The influential leader of Israel's Sephardic Jewish community, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, has died aged 93. Vigils had been held for the past month at a hospital in Jerusalem where he was being treated as his health declined. He will be buried later on Monday. The rabbi was a leading Torah scholar and arbiter of Halacha, or Jewish law. He was also the spiritual leader of the Shas party, which he founded in 1984 to boost representation for Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin. Until then, Israel's government and religious institutions had tended to be dominated by Ashkenazi Jews - those of European descent. Though it is currently in opposition, Shas became a kingmaker in several coalition governments. Shas leader Arye Deri wept uncontrollably as he expressed his grief. Shas leader Arye Deri sobbed uncontrollably after Rabbi Yosef's death was announced "How will we remain alone. Who will lead us,'' he asked, referring to the rabbi as "our father...

Jerusalem - A majority of Israelis would support unilateral military action against Iran, according to a poll published on Friday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government was ready to act alone. Some 65.6% of 500 Jewish Israelis surveyed by the pro-government Israel HaYom newspaper said they would support military strikes to halt Iran's nuclear programme, and 84% believed the Islamic republic had no intention of reining in its alleged drive to build a bomb. Israel and many Western countries accuse Tehran of trying to develop a nuclear warhead, a charge Iran denies. Netanyahu in a speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday said Israel was ready to act alone to stop Iran making a bomb, in a warning against rushing into deals with Tehran's new leaders. "Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone," Netanyahu told a UN summit, in an attack on overtures made by Iran's President ...

In the town of Mushirfa in northern Israel, the quiet is only broken by the sound of crowing cockerels or the call to prayer from the local mosque. It seems a long way from the civil war in neighbouring Syria, where opposition forces have recently been involved in fierce clashes with government troops around Damascus. Yet this was the home of Mueid Aghbaria, a 28-year-old construction worker who shot to death on the outskirts of the Syrian capital last month. Videos and photographs of his bloodied corpse were posted on the internet and shown in the media. "From the information we gathered, he got a one-way ticket to Turkey and, as God knows, from there he went into Syria," his father Zaki tells me. He believed he was following his calling and his group, and that he was supporting his fellow Muslims who had fallen victim in this conflict Zaki Aghbaria He says Muied was very religious and had long had jihadist sympathies. He had previously wanted to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned against working with the Iranian government. In a speech to the UN General Assembly, he described President Hassan Rouhani as a "wolf in sheep's clothing". He said Israel would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, even if it had to stand alone on the issue. Iran replied that it had no intention of developing nuclear weapons, and called Mr Netanyahu's comments "extremely inflammatory". There has recently been a thaw in relations between the US and Iran, with Mr Rouhani and US President Barack Obama recently speaking on the phone together - the first top-level conversation between the two countries for more than 30 years. But Mr Obama assured Mr Netanyahu on Monday that the use of force was still on the table in dealing with Tehran's nuclear programme. Rouhani thinks he can have his yellowcake and eat it too Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Iran's Foreign Minister, Javed Zarif,...

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is heading to the US for talks with President Barack Obama which will focus on Iran's diplomatic charm offensive. Before leaving the US on Friday, Iran's new President, Hassan Rouhani, shared a 15-minute phone call with Mr Obama. Mr Netanyahu, who will meet Mr Obama on Monday then address the UN on Tuesday, said he would "tell the truth in the face of the sweet talk". Israel and the West suspect Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb. Tehran denies the claim. Mr Rouhani, who spoke to President Obama late on Friday, has said he wants to seek a deal with world powers on Iran's nuclear programme within months. The phone conversation was the first top-level conversation between the two countries for more than 30 years. Mr Rouhani, a moderate, was elected in June, replacing hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. On his return to Tehran on Saturday, Mr Rouhani was welcomed by hundreds of supporters hailing his trip, as well as a smal...

An Israeli soldier has been abducted and killed by a Palestinian man in the northern West Bank, Israel's Shin Bet intelligence agency says. The soldier was seized on Friday and his body found near the town of Qalqiliya on Saturday, it said. A suspect has been arrested. Shin Bet named him as Nidal Ammer, a 42-year-old man who worked with the soldier. More arrests are expected, it added. The West Bank has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. The Shin Bet statement says the suspect had confessed to abducting and killing the soldier in the hope that he could trade the body in exchange for the release of his imprisoned brother. The soldier's body was found in a well, it said.

French diplomat Marion Fesneau-Castaing said she was dragged from her vehicle. Diplomats from a number of European countries and the UN have reacted angrily after Israeli soldiers intervened to prevent them delivering aid to Bedouins in the West Bank. One French diplomat said she was forced to the ground from her vehicle. The aid was being delivered to Khirbet al-Makhul after homes there were demolished under a High Court order. An Israeli spokesman said it was reviewing whether the diplomats had abused their privileges. 'Throwing stones' The homes in Khirbet al-Makhul were knocked down on Monday after Israel's High Court ruled that they had been built without the correct permits. BBC Middle East correspondent Kevin Connolly, in Jerusalem, says the Bedouin villagers of Khirbet al-Makhul have refused to leave the land where they say they have grazed sheep for generations. The Israeli soldiers intervened to prevent the aid getting through The diplomats said that as s...