ARABINFOCUS

                  EMIRATES: MOHAMED BIN ZAYED APPOINTS CROWN PRINCE The president of the United Arab Emirates, Cheikh Mohammed ben Zayed Al Nahyane, appointed his son, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, as part of a major restructuring of the Emirati executive. The president has decided to grant a position of high responsibility by naming his brother, Mansour bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, vice president of the Kingdom, a position he shares with the governor of Dubai, Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum. In addition, the other two brothers of the Emirati president, Tahnoun bin Zayed Al-Nahyan and Hazza bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, will both be deputy governors of Abu Dhabi. These changes follow a line of development that already began with a reorganization of the two largest sovereign wealth funds in the capital. Emirates National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoun has been appointed Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.   The sec...

                                                      THE DEFEAT OF NETANYAHU Benjamin Netanyahu and the far-right government, with the participation of religious radicals, have been forced to suspend the judicial reform that they had prepared in the face of the popular outcry of thousands of citizens who condemn the terms of this reform that violates the principle of independence. of the judiciary. Netanyahu has suspended the project but has not annulled it as the protesters claim, so we will have to wait this summer to see if the crisis occurs again. In terms of democracy, the now-suspended judicial reform has no value. Its objective is to give parliamentarians a higher authority than judges and magistrates. This is clearly undemocratic. But this is Netanyahu's style. This man cannot be trusted. It has been seen when another of the Likud leaders, the f...

                NETANYAHU LOSES HIS UNPOPULAR REFORM Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a delay to his  bitterly contested plans  to overhaul the country’s judiciary. The judicial overhaul, which would give the executive control over appointing judges to the Supreme Court and allow the government to override court rulings, has drawn mass protests for weeks. Israel’s leading labour union, Histadrut, has announced a general strike, with its head saying that Israel had marched “to the abyss”. (from Al Jazeera)

                                                             CRISIS IN ISRAEL   Israel has been in a serious political crisis since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the rest of the far-right government introduced a judicial law reform that imposes the power of parliamentarians over that of magistrates. The country's president, Isaac Herzog, has demanded an end to this project, which has unleashed massive anti-government demonstrations. "Our security, our economy and our society are all threatened", adds the president, who solemnly appeals "to the Prime Minister, to the members of the government and to those of the majority" to "immediately stop" the examination of the project in Parliament " in the name of the unity of the people of Israel" Netanyahu dismissed Defense Minister Yoav Galant this weekend for calling for a...

                                      CULF COOPERATION COUNCIL NOW MORE STRENGTH The Gulf Cooperation Council (CCG is the multilateral platform that supports diplomacy in the Arabian Peninsula, an area in full swing that sets the agenda for the Middle East. The Arab forum, divided into blocs since the outbreak of the Arab Spring, continues to be subject to strong internal tensions despite the diplomatic rapprochement between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other members of the organization with Qatar, the wayward partner who promoted the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood after the revolutionary outbreak and that built bridges with Turkey and Iran, hostile actors for the interests of the group. The Al-Ula declaration, signed in January 2021 by the six members that make up the CCG, served to definitively bury the hatchet after the lengthy boycott of Qatar. Since then, relations with Doha...

                        ISRAELI MINISTER SAYS THE PALESTINIANS DO NOT EXIST We are used to the racism of the Zionist state of Israel against the Palestinian people. But Israel has taken a new step and its finance minister, Bezail Smotrich, has shown himself to be a fascist by declaring that the Palestinian people do not exist and that Israel is surrounded by Arabs, with no Palestinians. Such a cruel and stinking statement could not be expected from a far-right minister, member of a government, led by Netanyahu, which accumulates radicalism and Jewish religious extremism "That kind of comment doesn't help at all," said Farhan Haq, Spokesperson for the United Nations Secretary General  of the ONU,  Antonio Guterres. The United Nations "will continue to support therights of the Palestinian people and to push for a solution to  two states, Israeli and Palestinian, living side by side in the peace and security," he ad...

FOUR PALESTINIANS  KILLED IN JENIN BY ISRAELIS Four Palestinians, including a teenager and fi ghters, were killed by Israeli fire on Thursday in Jenin, in the northern occupied West Bank. During this incursion four Palestinians were killed, said the Palestinian Ministry of Health which identified Omar Awadin, 16, Nidal Khazim, 28, Youssef Chrim, 29, and Louay Sghir, 37. The armed wing of Hamas, the ruling Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip, said Youssef Chrim was one of its leaders in Jenin. Nidal Khazim was a member of the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Islamic Jihad, according to this radical Palestinian organization. Twenty-three injured people were also hospitalized, five of them in serious condition, the ministry added. Mahmoud al-Saadi, of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Jenin, told that a unit of commandos dressed in civilian clothes had burst into downtown Jenin. Jenin is one of the places where the Israeli armed forces regularly operate.

                                        OPEN CRISIS BETWEEN MOROCCO AND AN ISLAMIC PARTY The royal cabinet of Morocco has today shown its disagreement with the political party "Islamist Justice and Development Party" (PJD) for the criticism launched against Israel for its recent armed intervention in the West Bank, where several Palestinian citizens were fatally attacked. The PJD, headed by the former Prime Minister, Abdallah Benkiran, refers in particular to an Israeli attack on Nablus, noting that "three Palestinian martyrs died as a result of this attack by Israeli forces." But Morocco, which diplomatically recognized Israel in December 2020 and maintains extensive military cooperation with the Jewish state, does not want it to be criticized by the Kingdom's political parties. However, Benkiran maintains that Israel maintains an occupation army in the occupied territories and poin...

                                        CHINA, A MAJOR PLAYER IN THE MIDDLE EAST China has managed to establish itself as a very important player in the Middle East by mediating between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and getting these two countries to agree to re-establish diplomatic relations and open embassies. This fact is all the more important since until recently the Islamic Republic of Iran was considered in Ryad as one of its worst enemies. But China would have to preserve its role as mediator if it broke its neutrality in the Ukraine war and sent arms to Russia. The president, Xi Jinping, was not that Vladimir Putin is not a normal person and has acted in this conflict with imperial gestures. China, which defends the territorial unity of the countries, cannot support the fact that Russia has invaded Ukraine militarily and occupied a part of its territory. If China appears to be an ally o...

 SAUDI ARABIA AND IRAN RESTORE RELATIONS Riyadh and Tehran have announced this Friday that they have restored their normal diplomatic relations. A decision that will undoubtedly have a major impact in the Middle East. These relations had been withdrawn in 2016 when there was a violent demonstration outside the Saudi embassy in Tehran over the execution in Saudi Arabia of the Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, accused of conspiracy. The negotiations that have led to the reestablishment of relations have been carried out in Beijing, with the intervention of the Chinese authorities, between the head of Iranian national security, Ali Shamkhani, and the Saudi government adviser, Mohamed Al-Aiban. Undoubtedly, this restoration, apart from being an achievement mediated by China, has undone the efforts that the US president, Joe Biden, had been making to convince the Prince, Mohamed Bin Salman, to recognize Israel, as seven Arab countries have done. Israel loses an important card in the Middle Ea...

                 T HE WAVE OF VIOLENCE GROWS IN OCCUPIED TERRITORIES The wave of violence that has taken place in the occupied Palestinian territories, since the formation of the new far-right Israeli government headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, with the support of Jewish religious radicals, claimed a new incident on Thursday in which he died an Israeli and three others were injured. The perpetrator of the attack was a member of the armed branch of the Palestinian movement "Hamas", who pointed out that what happened was a personal initiative of the attacker, Motaz Khawaja, 23, adding that the anti-Palestinian aggression policy of the Hebrew government have repercussions on events such as the one that occurred this Thursday in Tel Aviv. The assailant was killed by Israeli security forces. Why this new wave of violence in the West Bank? It would be speculative to attribute it solely to Palestinian militants. If they react violently, it is due to th...

                        TUNISIA DENOUNCES “PLOT” AGAINST ITS ARAB IDENTITY The president of Tunisia, Kais Saied, has provoked an international movement of attention towards this North African country, when he affirmed last Sunday that the increase in the presence of illegal African emigrants can be considered as "part of a plot against the Arab identity -Muslim” of the country. Saied's words are harsh, but they correspond to the feeling that the population has, at least for the most part, about the behavior of sub-Saharan emigrants, to whom continuous crimes against property and respect for Tunisian laws are attributed. “There is a criminal plan to change the composition of Tunisia's demographic landscape, and certain individuals have received large sums of money to give residency to sub-Saharan migrants,” said Saied. However, this statement has been criticized by human rights defense organizations, stating that it goes against...

                                    ISRAELI MINISTER SAYS HE SHOULD BE RAZED The United Nations rapporteur for human rights, Volker Turk, has accused the Israeli Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, for remarks in which he called for the Palestinian village of Huwara to be “wiped out”, describing the comments as “an unfathomable statement of incitement to violence and hostility” “The situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is a tragedy, a tragedy above all for the Palestinian people,” Volker Turk told the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council on Friday as he formally presented a report on the situation in the occupied territories. Smotrich made the comments on Wednesday after a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks and Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank. The European Union also called on Friday for accountability and for perpetrators to be brought to justice after a rampage...

                    ISRAEL INCREASES ITS AGGRESSION IN OCCUPIED TERRITORIES Israel has increased its aggressive operations against Palestinians in the West Bank in recent days, while groups of Jewish settlers also attacked the Palestinian population in towns in the Nablus region. The settlers were released, except for eight who remain in custody. Settlers committed shootings, arson attacks and beat Palestinians with metal rods and rocks, according to Palestinian media reports. Some 390 Palestinians were injured – the majority from tear gas and smoke inhalation.   The Palestinian Authority said that at least 30 Palestinian homes and more than 100 cars had been burned.   Every year, hundreds of attacks have been carried out by Israelis living in illegal settlements against Palestinians and their properties in the occupied West Bank.   So far in 2023, at least four Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers in the ...