Keyword: peaceandsecurity
-
Susan Rice has said that a “huge” portion of her work at the United Nations was defending Israel’s legitimacy. Her new job will likely be no less Israel-centric. snip Rice has scored mostly high marks from Jewish groups for her defense of Israel at the United Nations, although right-wing groups were furious with her in 2011 when she condemned Israel’s West Bank settlement policies. She did so even as she cast a Security Council veto that nullified a resolution condemning the settlements. In her new job, Rice isn’t likely to get an Israel break – particularly with Secretary of State...
-
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to agree to return to the negotiating table without preconditions. “Since he doesn’t speak Hebrew, and my Arabic isn’t great, I will turn to him in a language we both understand,” Netanyahu said at a special Knesset session dedicated to the Israeli-Arab conflict. “I say: Give peace a chance,” he said, alluding to the title of John Lennon’s 1969 classic. snip Appearing in the plenum because 40 MKs had signed a petition forcing him to address the topic of the Arab Peace Initiative, the prime minister said...
-
Former British prime minister Tony Blair launched a scathing attack on fundamentalist Islam Sunday, writing that the West needs to admit that there is an ideological issue within the religion. Writing in the Daily Mail about last month’s gruesome murder of soldier Lee Rigby, in what officials have said is an Islamic terror attack, Blair said that the extremist world view within Islam went ” deeper and wider than it is comfortable for us to admit. “There is a problem within Islam – from the adherents of an ideology that is a strain within Islam. And we have to put...
-
The aim is to articulate that God does not sanction anyone to killIsraeli government sources claim Francis is apparently thinking of calling a meeting between leaders and faithful of the world’s three biggest monotheistic religions, in Rome, to launch a message of peace, countering violence and the use of God’s name to justify hatred and terrorist acts. The sources say the Pope announced his intentions during an Audience on April 30, but there was no mention of this in the communiqué the Holy See’s issued after the Audience. President Shimon Peres of Israel “told the pope that there are people...
-
DEAD SEA, Jordan — Hoping to use economic promise as a bridge to a peace deal between Palestinians and Israel, Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced an estimated $4 billion economic development proposal for the West Bank on Sunday that he said could cut the 21 percent unemployment rate by two-thirds. “The greatest existential threat and the greatest economic threat to both sides is the lack of peace,” Kerry said. “To not try to head these off would be tragic, and it would be irresponsible.” International business leaders rallied by former British prime minister Tony Blair will propose new...
-
DEAD SEA, Jordan – US Secretary of State John Kerry unveiled on Sunday a $4 billion economic plan to revitalize the Palestinian economy, as he called on Israelis and Palestinians to forgive past wrongs and return to the negotiating table. “The plan for the Palestinian economy is bigger and bolder and more ambitious than anything proposed since Oslo more than 20 years ago,” said Kerry as he spoke at the closing session of the World Economic Forum by the Dead Sea in Jordan.
-
AL SHUNAH, Jordan: US Secretary of State John Kerry unveiled on Sunday a plan to boost the Palestinian economy by attracting $4 billion in private investment, saying it could transform the lives of the people. As he seeks to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the table to negotiate a peace deal, Kerry said it was also imperative to create jobs and meet the hopes of young people for a better economic future. He has tasked Tony Blair, the Quartet's special envoy to the Middle East, with drawing up a plan to revitalise the West Bank through boosting industries...
-
RAMALLAH: Peace between Israel and the Palestinians is a "priority," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on a visit to the region on Thursday, warning that time was running out for a two-state solution. "The prospects of a two-state solution cannot be kept alive forever as the situation changes," he told reporters from the seat of the Palestinian presidency in the West Bank city Ramallah. "The two-state solution does not have much longer, there is not much more time in which it could be brought about," he emphasised. Hague's visit to Ramallah followed a meeting between Abbas and US Secretary...
-
JERUSALEM (AP) — The United States and Israel raised hopes Thursday for a restart of the Middle East peace process, despite little tangible progress so far from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's two-month-old effort to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. As they met in Jerusalem, Kerry praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the "seriousness" with which he is looking at ways to revitalize peace hopes. Kerry expressed optimism without outlining any concrete strategy for ending a stalemate between the two sides that has seen them hardly negotiate one-on-one at all over the last 4½...
-
TEL AVIV, Israel, May 17 (UPI) -- Nobel Energy of Houston, which discovered Israel's big natural gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean, is pressing the government to decide on an energy export policy as the prospect of an undersea pipeline to Turkey gains credibility. Israel's deep-water Tamar field, found in 2009 and containing an estimated 9 trillion-10 trillion cubic feet of gas, began production March 31. But Nobel and Israeli partner Delek Energy, the team that discovered Tamar and other fields off Israel, is reluctant to develop the much bigger Leviathan field, found in 2010, until it the government makes...
-
Word is that both Israel and Turkey are seriously entertaining the notion of constructing an undersea pipeline to deliver Israeli natural gas to Turkey and, perhaps, hence to Europe. The Turks reportedly have expressed willingness to foot part of the estimated $2 billion bill. Such pipelines exist elsewhere in the world, most notably from Russia and from Norway. It is becoming evident that a veiled agenda underpinned the recent Turkish willingness to consider a rapprochement with Israel. Turkey, it appears, hankers after Israeli gas. The perceived Turkish softening was fueled by Israel’s offshore gas discoveries, a fact which nevertheless did...
-
A new investigation released by Wall Street Daily just revealed a disturbing pattern of price manipulation in the energy markets. The six-month investigation, conducted by renowned energy analyst, Karim Rahemtulla, was triggered by the incredible disparity in gas prices between the United States and Europe. The price of natural gas in the United States is presently about $4/mcf. Yet the price in Europe is upwards of $15/mcf. “Such mispricing simply cannot occur in an efficient market,” says Rahemtulla. For the global economy to function properly, the energy markets must be priced efficiently. It can be no other way. Any malfeasance...
-
CIA director John Brennan arrived in Israel Thursday evening and held consultations on the situation in Syria, amid fears that Israel could get drawn into the fighting there. Upon landing in the country, Brennan, whose visit was not announced ahead of time, went directly to the army’s headquarters in Tel Aviv for a meeting with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Channel 10 reported. During the meeting, the two shared intelligence assessments, and Ya’alon reiterated Israel’s refusal to let advanced weapons make their way from Syria to Hezbollah, vowing to continue carrying out strikes against arms shipments. According to Israel Radio, the...
-
For decades, it seemed that most countries of the Levant, east of the Mediterranean Sea, had little or no share of the Middle East's abundant energy resources. Israelis even had a joke about how Moses led his people through the desert for 40 years to reach the one place in the region with no oil. But in the past few years, there have been offshore discoveries of gas and possibly oil that look set to open up new economic possibilities. In future, they could also redefine strategic relationships. A 2010 US Geological Survey report estimated that there were 122 trillion...
-
ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a critical U.S. ally in the Muslim world, is struggling with the crisis in Syria, which has strained his country’s fast-growing economy, swamped it with hundreds of thousands of refugees and created unusually public friction with Washington. The urgency of Erdogan’s concerns over Syria was underscored by Saturday’s car bombings that killed 46 people in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, where thousands of Syrian refugees have taken shelter. Erdogan’s government blamed the blasts on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — an allegation that Syrian officials quickly denied. snip
-
Turkish Hattat Holding and China-based Harbin Electric International signed a deal to build a coal-based power plant in northwestern Turkey on May 10. The plant is planned to have a capacity of 2,640 megawatts (MW) in total. Around $2.4 billion will be invested in the project, Hattat Holding Chairman Mehmet Hattat said at the signature ceremony. Hattat Holding had been in talks with a number of Chinese, South Korean and Westerns firm to build a new coal-fired thermal power plant in the region for a while. The Harbin Electric International Project Director expressed his satisfaction with the deal. “We produce...
-
Turkey is closer to coming to an agreement over joint energy projects with Israel, according to a report on Friday in the Turkish daily Today’s Zaman. The recent natural gas discoveries off Israel’s coast led to a discussion over how to best transfer the gas to Europe. The paper quotes top Turkish officials as stating they are moving to be in favor of “extensive cooperation” with Israel and Cyprus. Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Energy Minister Taner Yildiz were said to have discussed the issue on Friday at an energy conference in Istanbul. Gul said at the conference that Turkey...
-
Secretary of State John Kerry called Friday for greater efforts to "unfreeze" decades of tense stalemate between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, after meeting here with the foreign minister of the divided Mediterranean island. "The United States supports a bi-zonal, bicommunal federation. We would like to see us unfreeze this conflict and be able to move to a resolution," Kerry told reporters after meeting here with his Cypriot counterpart Ioannis Kasoulides. "We also look forward to working with the foreign minister, and with President (Nicos) Anastasiades and others to try to move Cyprus forward on one of the world's frozen...
-
TEL AVIV, Israel, May 9 (UPI) -- Israel's rapprochement with onetime strategic ally Turkey is a vital element in Ankara's drive to become the intercontinental east-west energy hub in the Mediterranean and many expect it to produce an energy alliance that will transform the region. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan has, since taking power in 2002, transformed his country's economic prospects through a wide-ranging diplomatic drive aimed at restoring Turkish leadership in the region. He has long sought to transform Turkey, which has no energy resources of its own, into the unassailable central hub for transporting oil and gas...
-
WASHINGTON: The problems that plague the Middle East, including Iran's nuclear ambitions and Syria's civil war, require "political, not military" solutions, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday. Saying the "old order" was vanishing in the region, Hagel stressed in a speech that the United States would work to promote democratic reform while bearing in mind the "limitations" of American power. Although the Pentagon chief made clear that Washington had not ruled out potential military action against Iran or Syria, his remarks highlighted President Barack Obama's cautious stance on resorting to armed force in the volatile region. He said that...
|
|
|