EU leaders expressed surprise and regret Tuesday after the Israeli government barred a member of the European Parliament from entering the country on an official visit and deported her to Spain.
Ana Miranda, a Galician MEP in the Greens group, landed at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv Monday evening along with eight other lawmakers from two European Parliament delegations, one for Israel and one for Palestine. On the orders of the Israeli interior ministry, Miranda was put on a flight to Madrid.
“It’s a diplomatic conflict [and] it’s intolerable that Israel exerts control over members of a delegation that’s going to Palestine, not going to Israel,” Miranda told POLITICO.
A spokesperson for the Israeli Mission to the EU said: “The only reason that she was not allowed to enter is the issue that she tried to enter [Israel] illegally.” This referred to Miranda’s participation in a flotilla in 2015 that aimed to break the naval blockade of Gaza by Israel.
Israel has recently elected a far-right coalition government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Miranda said that while being held at the airport for three hours, a female border control guard repeatedly told her to “shut up,” and that when Miranda explained that she was an MEP, the person replied: “What is the European Parliament? It’s nothing here.”
Miranda said she did not hide her participation in the flotilla when questioned.
The four-day visit by MEPs this week will include trips to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where the Palestinian Authority has limited autonomy. The delegation was denied access to Gaza, Miranda said.
Parliament President Roberta Metsola described her “disappointment” on Twitter, saying she will contact the Israeli authorities to demand answers, and also convene the leaders of political groups to discuss the next steps.
Relations between Jerusalem and the Parliament have been cordial as of late, with the institution having hosted Israeli President Isaac Herzog to mark Holocaust Memorial Day in January. Metsola, a Maltese MEP from the center-right European People’s Party, visited Israel in May last year.
Miranda was given the go-ahead to enter Israel, according to emails dated February 2 and 14 between the EU’s External Action Service in Israel and the country’s foreign affairs ministry, seen in full by POLITICO. The emails stated that Manu Pineda, a Spanish far-left MEP who chairs the Palestine delegation, was barred entry, but made no mention of banning Miranda from entering. Miranda said it was a “lie” that she was still banned from entering Israel. “Otherwise they would not have authorized me [to travel],” she wrote in a follow-up message.
The spokesperson for the Israeli Mission to the EU said Pineda — who did not travel to Israel with the rest of his delegation — supports Hamas, designated as a terrorist organization in the EU. The EU’s General Court has ruled that Hamas should be removed from this list, a decision that is currently suspended pending an appeal by the Council.
Pineda told POLITICO in a statement: “I am not a Hamas supporter, no matter how much the Israeli regime insists.”
He continued: “The Israeli regime can continue to insist on its alibi of photos and Hamas. But in reality what they are doing today is preventing my work as chair of the Delegation for relations with Palestine and preventing the proper functioning of this delegation, because of my past as a human rights activist in Gaza.
“Israel has a very serious human rights problem and does not want anyone to witness the killings, forced displacements, illegal settlements and systematic arrests,” he added.
Pineda’s Left group has demanded that the Parliament take “reciprocal measures” for Israel. He said this means that no Israeli politician or diplomat should be allowed entry.
“Respect for all elected MEPs and the European Parliament is essential for good EU-Israel relations,” said Nabila Massrali, the European Commission’s spokesperson for foreign affairs. “This decision is deeply disappointing, it is also surprising.”
Gregorio Sorgi contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
BERLIN — In an earlier life as a reporter in Moscow, I once knocked on the door of an apartment listed as the home address of the boss of company that, our year-long investigation showed, was involved in an elaborate scheme to siphon billions of dollars out of Russia’s state railways through rigged tenders.
To my surprise, the man who opened the door wore only his underwear. He confirmed that his identity had been used to register the shell company. But he wasn’t a businessman; he was a chauffeur. The real owner, he told us, was his boss, one of the bankers we suspected of masterminding the scam. “Mr. Underpants,” as we called him, was amazed that it had taken so long for anyone to take an interest.
Mr. Underpants leapt immediately to mind when, nearly a decade on, I learned that a sulfurous academic dispute had erupted over whether foreign companies really are bailing out of Russia in response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent international sanctions.
Attempting to verify corporate activity in Russia — a land that would give the murkiest offshore haven a run for its money — struck me as a fool’s errand. Company operations are habitually hidden in clouds of lies, false paperwork and bureaucratic errors. What a company says it does in Russia can bear precious little resemblance to reality.
So, who are the rival university camps trying to determine whether there really is a corporate exodus from Russia?
In the green corner (under the olive banner of the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland) we have economist Simon Evenett and Niccolò Pisani of the IMD business school in Lausanne. On January 13, they released a working paper which found that less than 9 percent of Western companies (only 120 firms all told) had divested from Russia. Styling themselves as cutting through the hype of corporate self-congratulation, the Swiss-based duo said their “findings challenge the narrative that there is a vast exodus of Western firms leaving the market.”
Nearly 4,000 miles away in New Haven, Connecticut, the Swiss statement triggered uproar in Yale (the blue corner). Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, from the university’s school of management, took the St. Gallen/IMD findings as an affront to his team’s efforts. After all, the headline figure from a list compiled by Yale of corporate retreat from Russia is that 1,300 multinationals have either quit or are doing so. In a series of attacks, most of which can’t be repeated here, Sonnenfeld accused Evenett and Pisani of misrepresenting and fabricating data.
Responding, the deans of IMD and St. Gallen issued a statement on January 20 saying they were “appalled” at the way Sonnenfeld had called the rigor and veracity of their colleagues’ work into question. “We reject this unfounded and slanderous allegation in the strongest possible terms,” they wrote.
Sonnenfeld doubled down, saying the Swiss team was dangerously fueling “Putin’s false narrative” that companies had never left and Russia’s economy was resilient.
That led the Swiss universities again to protest against Sonnenfeld’s criticism and deny political bias, saying that Evenett and Pisani have “had to defend themselves against unsubstantiated attacks and intimidation attempts by Jeff Sonnenfeld following the publication of their recent study.”
How the hell did it all get so acrimonious?
Let’s go back a year.
The good fight
Within weeks of the February 24 invasion, Sonnenfeld was attracting fulsome coverage in the U.S. press over a campaign he had launched to urge big business to pull out of Russia. His team at Yale had, by mid-March, compiled a list of 300 firms saying they would leave that, the Washington Post reported, had gone “viral.”
Making the case for ethical business leadership has been Sonnenfeld’s stock in trade for over 40 years. To give his full job titles, he’s the Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies & Lester Crown Professor in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management, as well as founder and president of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, a nonprofit focused on CEO leadership and corporate governance.
And, judging by his own comments, Sonnenfeld is convinced of the importance of his campaign in persuading international business leaders to leave Russia: “So many CEOs wanted to be seen as doing the right thing,” Sonnenfeld told the Post. “It was a rare unity of patriotic mission, personal values, genuine concern for world peace, and corporate self-interest.”
Fast forward to November, and Sonnenfeld is basking in the glow of being declared an enemy of the Russian state, having been added to a list of 25 U.S. policymakers and academics barred from the country. First Lady Jill Biden topped the list, but Sonnenfeld was named in sixth place which, as he told Bloomberg, put him “higher than [Senate minority leader] Mitch McConnell.”
Apparently less impressed, the Swiss team had by then drafted a first working paper, dated October 18, challenging Sonnenfeld’s claims of a “corporate exodus” from Russia. This paper, which was not published, was circulated by the authors for review. After receiving a copy (which was uploaded to a Yale server), Sonnenfeld went on the attack.
Apples and oranges
Before we dive in, let’s take a step back and look at what the Yale and Swiss teams are trying to do.
Sonnenfeld is working with the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), which launched a collaborative effort to track whether companies are leaving Russia by monitoring open sources, such as regulatory filings and news reports, supported where possible through independent confirmation.
Kyiv keeps score on its Leave Russia site, which at the time of writing said that, of 3,096 companies reviewed, 196 had already exited and a further 1,163 had suspended operations.
Evenett and Pisani are setting a far higher bar, seeking an answer to the binary question of whether a company has actually ditched its equity. It’s not enough to announce you are suspending operations, you have to fully divest your subsidiary and assets such as factories or stores. This is, of course, tough. Can you find a buyer? Will the Russians block your sale?
The duo focuses only on companies based in the G7 or the European Union that own subsidiaries in Russia. Just doing business in Russia doesn’t count; control is necessary. To verify this, they used a business database called ORBIS, which contains records of 400 million companies worldwide.
The first thought to hold onto here, then, is that the scope and methodology of the Yale and Swiss projects are quite different — arguably they are talking about apples and oranges. Yale’s apple cart comprises foreign companies doing business in Russia, regardless of whether they have a subsidiary there. The Swiss orange tree is made up of fewer than half as many foreign companies that own Russian subsidiaries, and are themselves headquartered in countries that have imposed sanctions against the Kremlin.
So, while IKEA gets an ‘A’ grade on the Yale list for shutting its furniture stores and letting 10,000 Russian staff go, it hasn’t made the clean equity break needed to get on the St. Gallen/IMD leavers’ list. The company says “the process of scaling down the business is ongoing.” If you simply have to have those self-assembly bookshelves, they and other IKEA furnishings are available online.
The second thing to keep in mind is that ORBIS aggregates records in Russia, a country where people are willing to serve as nominee directors in return for a cash handout — even a bottle of vodka. Names are often mistranslated when local companies are established — transliteration from Russian to English is very much a matter of opinion — but this can also be a deliberate ruse to throw due diligence sleuths off the trail.
Which takes us back to the top of this story: I’ve done in-depth Russian corporate investigations and still have the indelible memory of those underpants (they were navy blue briefs) to show for it.
Stacking up the evidence
The most obvious issue with the Yale method is that it places a lot of emphasis on what foreign companies say about whether they are pulling out of Russia.
There is an important moral suasion element at play here. Yale’s list is an effective way to name and shame those companies like Unilever and Mondelez — all that Milka chocolate — that admit they are staying in Russia.
But what the supposed good kids — who say they are pulling out — are really up to is a murkier business. Even if a company is an A-grade performer on the Yale list, that does not mean that Russia’s economy is starved of those goods during wartime. There can be many reasons for this. Some companies will rush out a pledge to leave, then dawdle. Others will redirect goods to Russia through middlemen in, say, Turkey, Dubai or China. Some goods will be illegally smuggled. Some companies will have stocks that last a long time. Others might hire my old friend Mr. Underpants to create an invisible corporate structure.
A stroll through downtown Moscow reveals the challenges. Many luxury brands have conspicuously shut up shop but goods from several companies on the Yale A list and B list (companies that have suspended activities in Russia) were still easy to find on one, totally random, shopping trip. The latest Samsung laptops, TVs and phones were readily available, and the shop reported no supply problems. Swatch watches, Jägermeister liquor and Dr. Oetker foods were all also on sale in downtown Moscow, including at the historic GUM emporium across Red Square from the Kremlin.
Swatch watches, Jägermeister liquor and Dr. Oetker foods can all be bought in downtown Moscow, including at the historic GUM emporium across Red Square from the Kremlin | POLITICO
All the companies involved insisted they had ended business in Russia, but acknowledged the difficulties of continued sales. Swatch said the watches available would have to be from old stocks or “a retailer over which the company has no control.” Dr. Oetker said: “To what extent individual trading companies are still selling stocks of our products there is beyond our knowledge.” Jägermeister said: “Unfortunately we cannot prevent our products being purchased by third parties and sold on in Russia without our consent or permission.” Samsung Electronics said it had suspended Russia sales but continued “to actively monitor this complex situation to determine our next steps.”
The larger problem emerging is that sanctions are turning neighboring countries into “trading hubs” that allow key foreign goods to continue to reach the Russian market, cushioning the economic impact.
Full departure can also be ultra slow for Yale’s A-listers. Heineken announced in March 2022 it was leaving Russia but it is still running while it is “working hard to transfer our business to a viable buyer in very challenging circumstances.” It was also easy to find a Black & Decker power drill for sale online from a Russian site. The U.S. company said: “We plan to cease commerce by the end of Q2 of this year following the liquidation of our excess and obsolete inventory in Russia. We will maintain a legal entity to conduct any remaining administrative activities associated with the wind down.”
And those are just consumer goods that are easy to find! Western and Ukrainian security services are naturally more preoccupied about engineering components for Putin’s war machine still being available through tight-lipped foreign companies. Good luck trying to track their continued sales …
Who’s for real?
Faced with this gray zone, St. Gallen/IMD sought to draw up a more black-and-white methodology.
To reach their conclusions, Evenett and Pisani downloaded a list of 36,000 Russian companies from ORBIS that reported at least $1 million in sales in one of the last five years. Filtering out locally owned businesses and duplicate entries whittled down the number of owners of the Russian companies that are themselves headquartered in the G7 or EU to a master list of 1,404 entities. As of the end of November, the authors conclude, 120 companies — or 8.5 percent of the total — had left.
The Swiss team was slow, however, to release its list of 1,404 companies and, once Sonnenfeld gained access to it, he had a field day. He immediately pointed out that it was peppered with names of Russian businesses and businessmen, whom ORBIS identified as being formally domiciled in an EU or G7 country. Sonnenfeld fulminated that St. Gallen/IMD were producing a list of how few Russian companies were quitting Russia, rather than how few Western companies were doing so.
“That hundreds of Russian oligarchs and Russian companies constitute THEIR dataset of ‘1,404 western companies’ is egregious data misrepresentation,” Sonnenfeld wrote in one of several emails to POLITICO challenging the Swiss findings.
Fair criticism? Well, Sonnenfeld’s example of Yandex, the Russian Google, on the list of 1,404 is a good one. Naturally, that’s a big Russian company that isn’t going to leave Russia.
On the other hand, its presence on the list is explicable as it is based in the Netherlands, and is reported to be seeking Putin’s approval to sell its Russian units. “Of course, a large share of Yandex customers and staff are Russian or based in Russia. However, the company has offices in seven countries, including Switzerland, Israel, the U.S., China, and others. What criteria should we use to decide if it is Russian or not for the purpose of our analysis?” St. Gallen/IMD said in a statement.
Answering Sonnenfeld’s specific criticism that its list was skewed by the inclusion of Russian-owned companies, the Swiss team noted that it had modified its criteria to exclude companies based in Cyprus, a favored location for Russian entrepreneurs thanks to its status as an EU member country and its business-friendly tax and legal environment. Yet even after doing so, its conclusions remained similar.
Double knockout
Sonnenfeld, in his campaign to discredit the Swiss findings, has demanded that media, including POLITICO, retract their coverage of Evenett and Pisani’s work. He took to Fortune magazine to call their publication “a fake pro-Putin list of Western companies still doing business in Russia.”
Although he believes Evenett and Pisani’s “less than 9 percent” figure for corporates divesting equity is not credible, he bluntly declined, when asked, to provide a figure of his own.
Instead, he has concentrated on marshaling an old boys’ network — including the odd ex-ambassador — to bolster his cause. Richard Edelman, head of the eponymous public relations outfit, weighed in with an email to POLITICO: “This is pretty bad[.] Obvious Russian disinformation[.] Would you consider a retraction?” he wrote in punctuation-free English. “I know Sonnenfeld well,” he said, adding the two had been classmates in college and business school.
Who you were at school with hardly gets to the heart of what companies are doing in Russia, and what the net effect is on the Russian economy.
The greater pity is that this clash, which falls miles short of the most basic standards of civil academic discourse, does a disservice to the just cause of pressuring big business into dissociating itself from Putin’s murderous regime.
And, at the end of the day, estimates of the number of companies that have fully left Russia are in the same ballpark: The Kyiv School of Economics puts it at less than 200; the Swiss team at 120.
To a neutral outsider, it would look like Sonnenfeld and his mortal enemies are actually pulling in the same direction, trying to work out whether companies are really quitting. Yet both methodologies are problematic. What companies and databases say offers an imprecise answer to the strategic question: What foreign goods and services are available to Russians? Does a year of war mean no Samsung phones? No. Does it mean Heineken has sold out? Not yet, no.
This has now been submerged in a battle royal between Sonnenfeld and the Swiss researchers.
Appalled at his attacks on their work, St. Gallen and IMD finally sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sonnenfeld.
Yale Provost Scott Strobel is trying to calm the waters. In a letter dated February 6 and seen by POLITICO, he argued that academic freedom protected the speech of its faculty members. “The advancement of knowledge is best served when scholars engage in an open and robust dialogue as they seek accurate data and its best interpretation,” Strobel wrote. “This dialogue should be carried out in a respectful manner that is free from ad hominem attacks.”
With reporting by Sarah Anne Aarup, Nicolas Camut, Wilhelmine Preussenand Charlie Duxbury.
Douglas Busvine is Trade and Agriculture Editor at POLITICO Europe. He was posted with Reuters to Moscow from 2004-08 and from 2011-14.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Jerusalem: Israel’s parliament voted on Tuesday to advance Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s contentious plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary, despite widespread public opposition.
After a stormy debate, the first two bills of the judicial reform passed in a first, non-binding reading, reports Xinhua news agency.
Out of the 120 seats in Parliament, 63 lawmakers voted in favour of the bills, 47 against, and 10 were absent.
Members of Netanyahu’s new ultra-religious and ultranationalist coalition government celebrated the outcome.
“A great night and a great day,” Netanyahu wrote on Twitter after the vote.
The first bill would alter the composition of the nine-member committee that appoints judges, limiting the influence of legal professionals and giving the government an outright majority.
If approved, the law would enable the government to choose judges.
The other bill would eliminate the Supreme Court’s authority to cancel basic laws passed by Parliament, even if they are unconstitutional.
The vote means the ruling coalition could now bring the two bills for the final second and third readings in Parliament, after which they will become laws, kick-starting the reform.
Opposition members warned that the bills will weaken the legal system and politicize it.
Yair Lapid, the centrist leader of the opposition, criticized the coalition on Twitter, saying: “Members of the coalition — history will judge you for this night for the damage to democracy, for the damage to the economy, for the damage to security, for the fact that you are tearing the people of Israel apart and you simply do not care.”
The divisive reform has also sparked a massive uproar in Israeli society.
Tens of thousands of Israelis rallied outside the parliament in Jerusalem on Monday as the votes began. They held flags of Israel and chanted “Democracy!”
A major concern of the protesters is that the reform will concentrate power in the hands of Netanyahu.
The longest-serving leader of Israel is facing a criminal trial over corruption charges and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has warned his involvement in the proposed reform puts him in a conflict of interest.
Jersalem: Israeli protesters gathered outside the Parliament building in Jerusalem as Israel’s far-right government is pressing ahead with a controversial overhaul of the judicial system and ready to hold the first vote on two bills.
A spokesperson with the Jerusalem district’s police told Xinhua news agency that “tens of thousands” of people attended several massive rallies in the city on Monday.
Inside Parliament, lawmakers were preparing to hold the first vote on two bills aimed at curbing the Supreme Court’s oversight over legislation and increasing politicians’ influence over the court.
The vote is the first stage of three rounds of votes, after which the bills will become law, kick-starting the government’s planned overhaul.
One bill aims to alter the composition of the nine-member committee that appoints judges in a way that would limit the influence of legal professionals and grant the government an outright majority.
If approved, the law would enable the government to choose judges.
The other bill calls to eliminate the Supreme Court’s authority to invalidate basic laws passed by the Knesset, or the Parliament, even if they are unconstitutional.
The bills are the first two in a series of bills pushed forward by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-religious and ultranationalist coalition government, which according to critics will undermine the democratic foundations of Israel.
Netanyahu and his coalition partners argue that the plan aims to address the excessive influence of courts and legal advisers in lawmaking and decision-making.
Many protesters arrived in Jerusalem in convoys from across the country, blocking major routes on their way.
The protest started at dawn, with dozens of off-duty reserve soldiers rallying outside the home of Simcha Rothman, one of the leading lawmakers of the reform, in the settlement of Pnei Kedem.
Similar demonstrations were held outside the homes of other members of the coalition across the country.
A major concern of the protesters is that the reform will concentrate power in Netanyahu’s hands.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader, is facing trial over corruption charges and Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara has warned his involvement in proposed reform puts him in a conflict of interest.
Earlier in the day, Netanyahu accused the protesters of “trampling democracy” and “not accepting the results of the election” during his speech at the Knesset.
He said his coalition is open to a dialogue with critics of the reform but will press ahead with the planned votes in the Knesset.
Jerusalem: Authorities in Israel have registered a police case against a 48-year-old Kerala farmer, who reportedly went missing in Israel earlier this month while visiting the country on a state government-sponsored trip to study Israeli modern agricultural techniques.
Biju Kurian, a native of Ulikkal panchayat in Kannur district, was part of a 28-member Kerala government’s delegation of farmers, sent to Israel to study state-of-the-art techniques such as hydroponics and precision farming.
On February 17, Kurian reportedly went missing.
Despite Israel’s law enforcement agencies’ best efforts to trace him, Kurian’s whereabouts were not known.
“We have registered a police case against him. He will be deported once we nab him,” an official said.
The delegation, led by Principal Secretary B. Ashok, left for Israel on February 11. The farmers’ delegation left Israel on Sunday without Kurian, they added.
Kurian’s family in Kannur are also clueless about his mysterious disappearance and were making desperate attempts to reach out to him.
Jerusalem: PC and printer major HP Inc is laying off 100 employees and most of the job cuts will be in HP Indigo, which is engaged in the production of digital printing machines.
Some of the layoffs will also come from HP’s marketing system and headquarters, which manages sales activities in the country, according to the marker.com.
HP employs 2,600 people in Israel.
The company in November last year announced it will lay off nearly 4,000-6,000 employees by the end of 2025, which is between 7-11 per cent of its workforce.
The company announced a ‘Future Ready Transformation Plan’, estimating annualised gross run rate cost savings of at least $1.4 billion by the end of fiscal 2025, and restructuring and other charges of approximately $1 billion.
The company said in a statement that the decision in Israel “creates capacity to reinvest in growth priorities while adapting to current market challenges”.
“HP continues to innovate and create customer value and remains focused on driving the continued digitisation of industry with agility, creativity, and cutting-edge technologies. We are committed to treating people with transparency, fairness, compassion, and respect,” said the company.
HP laid off about 60 employees from its Netanya branch in the country in October last year.
HP Indigo Division is a division of HP’s Graphic Solutions Business.
On the Israeli side, that would mean a commitment to not expanding settlements until at least August, according to the diplomats.
On the Palestinian side, the diplomats said it would mean a commitment until August not to pursue action against Israel at the U.N. and other international bodies such as the World Court, the International Criminal Court and the U.N. Human Rights Council.
Instead of a resolution, the diplomats said the Security Council will adopt a weaker presidential statement along the lines of the resolution, probably on Monday. Presidential statements, which require support from all 15 council nations, become part of the council’s record but are not legally binding.
The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the highly sensitive negotiations.
A veto of the settlements resolution would have been a political headache for President Joe Biden as he approaches the 2024 presidential election.
Biden is struggling to balance his opposition to Israeli settlements and his support for a two-state resolution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict with moves to improve ties with the Palestinians that have wide backing among his progressive supporters.
A veto would alienate U.N. member countries supportive of the Palestinians, like the United Arab Emirates, which was sponsoring the resolution in the Security Council, as the West seeks support for Ukraine in the war with Russia.
The U.S. will be looking to the United Arab Emirates and other countries sympathetic to the Palestinians to vote in favor of a resolution in the 193-member General Assembly on Thursday condemning Russia for invading Ukraine and calling for a cessation of hostilities and the immediate withdrawal of all Russian forces.
The deal was arrived at on Sunday after days of frantic talks by senior Biden administration officials with Palestinian, Israeli and UAE leaders. Diplomats said the intensive effort including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Sullivan’s deputy Brett McGurk, the top diplomat for the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, and special envoy for Palestinian affairs Hady Amr.
The Palestinian push for a resolution came as Israel’s new right-wing government has reaffirmed its commitment to construct new settlements in the West Bank and expand its authority on land the Palestinians seek for a future state.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The United Nations and most of the international community consider Israeli settlements illegal and an obstacle to ending the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Ramallah: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to pressure the Israeli government to stop its unilateral measures in the Palestinian territories.
An official statement sent to reporters said that Abbas received a phone call from Blinken, during which they discussed the latest developments “in the wake of the recent Israeli decisions that violate the signed agreements and international resolutions.”
Last week, the Israeli government decided to authorise nine settlement outposts that were illegally built up in the West Bank in response to a series of attacks by Palestinians in Jerusalem, Xinhua News Agency reported.
Abbas called on the US “to intervene quickly and effectively to put pressure on Israel to stop all these dangerous measures” to ensure the continued prospect of a two-state solution.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Blinken on Saturday confirmed that he would contact the Israeli government and that his administration would continue its efforts to stop unilateral Israeli actions.
Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 and has since established settlements on it, a move considered a violation of international law and a major source of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
The settlement issue is the most prominent aspect of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and one of the main reasons for halting the last direct peace negotiations between the two sides in 2014.
Tel Aviv: Israel on Wednesday (local time) approved a law to strip citizenship over “terrorism” offences, reported The Times of Israel.
The Knesset approved a law to strip convicted terrorists with Israeli nationality of their citizenship — provided they receive funding from the Palestinian Authority or an associated organization.
The bill, which passed with 94 votes in favour and 10 against in the Knesset, also paves the way for Israel to expel people from the country or annexed east Jerusalem.
The law, an amendment to Israel’s 1952 Citizenship Law, applies to both Israeli citizens and permanent residents incarcerated following a conviction for terror, aiding terror, harming Israeli sovereignty, inciting war, or aiding an enemy during wartime, and enables the interior minister to revoke their status after a hearing, reported The Times of Israel.
The law enables citizenship to be revoked even if the person lacks a second citizenship, provided they have a permanent residence status outside of Israel. Once citizenship is revoked, the person would be denied entry back into Israel.
(Except for the headline, the story has not been edited by Siasat staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Israel has passed legislation allowing the state to strip Arabs convicted of terror offences of citizenship or residency and deport them to the West Bank or Gaza Strip if they have accepted financial aid from the Palestinian Authority.
The new law, which the Knesset voted for on Wednesday, is designed to discourage what Israel calls “pay for slay” stipends, which Palestinians view as assistance for the families of those imprisoned. Israel says the longstanding practice serves as an incentive to violence.
“It is inconceivable that Israeli citizens and residents who have not only betrayed the state and Israeli society but have also agreed to receive payment from the PA as wages for committing the act of terrorism, and continue to benefit from it, will continue to hold Israeli citizenship or residency status,” an explanatory note to the bill says.
The decision could affect 140 citizens of Israel with Palestinian heritage and 211 Palestinians from East Jerusalem with Israeli residency permits who are currently held in jail, according to the Israeli rights group HaMoked.
The deportation of people from East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in 1967, would be considered a war crime under international law, and critics have said the new measures amount to population transfer.
Jewish members of the Knesset, including the opposition, voted overwhelmingly in favour of the legislation, which passed 94-10, while Arab lawmakers voted against it. Ahmad Tibi, the leader of the opposition Ta’al party, which advocates for the rights of Israel’s Arab minority, said the bill was racist because it did not apply to Jews convicted of terrorism.
“An Arab who commits an offence is a conditional citizen,” he said. “If a Jew commits the same offence or a more serious one, they don’t even think of revoking his citizenship.”
Kadoura Fares, the head of the Palestinian prisoners’ club, a West Bank-based group that represents prisoners and their families, said the law was a “very dangerous decision that aims to transfer Palestinians from their cities and villages under the pretext of getting social assistance from the Palestinian Authority”.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is a semi-autonomous body that controls parts of the West Bank, while the Gaza Strip is ruled by the Islamist group Hamas. In 2018, Israel passed a law allowing the government to withhold the same amount of money the PA is estimated to give to the families of Palestinian prisoners.
Last year, Israel’s supreme court ruled that the state could revoke the citizenship of people convicted of acts that constitute a “breach of loyalty”, including terrorism, espionage and treason.
In a separate case and a legal first, Israel recently deported Salah Hamouri, a dual national Palestinian-French human rights lawyer from East Jerusalem. The state claimed he belonged to a banned militant group, which fitted the 2021 definition of a breach of loyalty.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
