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Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) on Saturday said that Israel will not provide fuel or gas to Gaza if conflicts continue. Liberman halted the transfer of fuel to Gaza on Friday, after several Gaza terrorists who detonated a bomb on the Israel-Gaza border fence and attacked an IDF position inside Israel. "As long as the violence in Gaza - including sending incendiary balloons and burning tires opposite Israeli towns - does not cease completely, we will not renew the provision of fuels and gas to Gaza," Liberman tweeted. Earlier on Saturday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said that conflict...

CNN host Jake Tapper said Friday that President Trump appears to be tougher on singer Taylor Swift than on the Saudi Arabian government "President Trump has been harsher about Taylor Swift this week than he has about [Mohammad Bin Salman]," Tapper said on CNN's "The Lead," referring to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Tapper's comment came amid reports that Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month. The Post reported Thursday that the Turkish government said it has video and audio recordings that prove Khashoggi was killed. Khashoggi went missing...

President Donald Trump has said the US will inflict "severe punishment" on Saudi Arabia if the kingdom is found to be responsible for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He said he would be "very upset and angry if that were the case", but ruled out halting big military contracts. Mr. Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government, vanished on October 2 after visiting its consulate in Istanbul...…

A delegation from Saudi Arabia has arrived in Turkey... Prince Khaled al-Faisal, the governor of Mecca, made his brief visit in his capacity as special adviser to King Salman, indicating that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is treating the issue as a priority. Later the same day Turkey said the two countries had agreed to form a joint working (effort) to investigate the situation…

Violence on Friday included incident where four Palestinians were shot dead after breaching security fence Israeli forces have shot dead six Palestinians, including four in a single incident, in one of the deadliest days in months of mass protests along the security fence separating Gaza and Israel, Gaza’s health ministry said. The ministry said four were killed in one location, where the Israeli military said it opened fire on Palestinians who breached the fence and approached an army post. No Israeli troops were harmed, the army added. At least 140 Palestinians were wounded by live bullets, the ministry said. The...

Khashoggi never had much time for western-style pluralistic democracy. In the 1970s he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, which exists to rid the Islamic world of western influence. He was a political Islamist until the end, recently praising the Muslim Brotherhood in the Washington Post. He championed the ‘moderate’ Islamist opposition in Syria, whose crimes against humanity are a matter of record. Khashoggi frequently sugarcoated his Islamist beliefs with constant references to freedom and democracy. But he never hid that he was in favour of a Muslim Brotherhood arc throughout the Middle East. His recurring plea to bin Salman in his...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Can we talk? Donald Trump would like to chat. And, boy, is he ever. Riding high after Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s successful confirmation, the president has been on a rollicking press tour of late. He’s inviting reporters up to his private cabin on Air Force One. He’s calling in to his favorite shows. And he’s turning closed White House events into major media moments. On Thursday alone, Trump held four separate press availabilities, including one that featured a profanity-laced Oval Office performance by Kanye West, the rapper and producer who has emerged as Trump’s top Hollywood...

Hungarian security and Turkish stability are directly linked, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said after talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Budapest on Monday. Orbán said Hungarian foreign policy must look to three cities: Ankara, Moscow and Berlin, three great powers around which Hungary has revolved for many centuries. Orbán expressed appreciation to Turkey for accommodating several million refugees that arrived via neighbouring countries and thanked the Erdogan for “fully meeting” Turkey’s agreement with the European Union, which he said was another precondition for European security. On another subject, Orbán said that Hungary and Turkey would raise the level of...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s threat to remove any mayors chosen in local elections next March deemed to be “contaminated by terrorism” is a rejection of democracy and an attempt to scare voters away from the main pro-Kurdish party, one of its members of parliament said. Turkish authorities stepped up pressure on the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) following the breakdown of a ceasefire with Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in July 2015. The government says the HDP is, in effect, the political wing of the PKK. The crackdown gained momentum after a failed coup a year later that...

Andrew Brunson, the evangelical pastor being tried on espionage/terror charges in a controversial case that has badly bruised the U.S.’ relations with its NATO ally Turkey, is due to appear in court tomorrow. Hopes on the American side are that the 50-year-old native of Black Mountain, North Carolina, who has been held for a year in prison and under house arrest since July, will finally be freed.The hearing comes amid a burgeoning alignment between Washington and Ankara over Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident Saudi journalist who is feared to have been murdered by a Saudi hit squad in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. Secretary of...

American pastor Andrew Brunson, who was swept up in a wave of arrests in the wake a failed coup attempt in Turkey, was released on Friday, easing a major controversy between the United States and the NATO ally. A judge ordered Brunson's release as part of a reported deal in which President Trump will “ease economic pressure” on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s country. Turkey is not dropping the case against Brunson. The prosecutor “demanded up to 10 years in prison for terror charges,” a pro-government outlet reported, but Brunson will be allowed to leave the country. “The Second High Criminal...

Was Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and then his body cut up with a bone saw and flown to Riyadh in Gulfstream jets owned by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman? So contend the Turks, who have video from the consulate, photos of 15 Saudi agents who flew into Istanbul that day, Oct. 2, and the identity numbers of the planes. Supporting the thesis of either a murder in the consulate or a "rendition," a kidnaping gone horribly bad, is a Post story that U.S. intel intercepted Saudi planning, ordered by the prince, to...

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) – Syria’s Kurds “have been great partners,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday evening in Washington DC, as he addressed a conference of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA.)Pompeo affirmed that the Kurds would be party to negotiations over Syria’s political future.“We are now driving,” he said, stressing that last word, “to make sure that they have a seat at the table.”Pompeo is the most senior US official to affirm a long-term commitment to Syria’s Kurds.Previously, Amb. James Jeffrey, who was appointed Pompeo’s Representative for Syria Engagement in late August,...

WOW! Sammi found this at the FMSO database of the newly released Iraq Regime documents. It details Iraqi efforts to monitor a U.N. inspection team, break into their personal briefcases (actually says it was complained about but not that they did it), and hide Russian and Turkish scientists. As usual, the parentheses are the translators. (PDF)CMPC-2003-000776Mr. General Director of the Office of National Supervision Subject: Visit of the IAEA team A team of the IAEA did a SURPRISE (translator’s emphasis) visit today, on the 15th of December 2002, to 1) Oumm Al Maarek Company (Mother of all battles Company) 2)...

Finally, after an excruciatingly long wait of almost two years, it appears the incarceration of United States pastor Andrew Brunson will finally come to an end. According to NBC News, the White House has brokered a deal to secure Brunson’s freedom: The White House expects North Carolina pastor Andrew Brunson to be released by the Turkish government and returned to the U.S. in the coming days, two years after he was detained, according to two senior administration officials and another person briefed on the matter. Under an agreement senior Trump administration officials recently reached with Turkey, Brunson is supposed to...

ISTANBUL – American Pastor Andrew Brunson, whose detention in Turkey has sparked a tense standoff between Ankara and Washington, will likely be released following a hearing scheduled for Friday, according to his lawyer. “There is a good chance he could walk free,” Brunson’s lawyer, Ismail Cem Haravut told Yahoo News. Brunson, a Christian preacher from North Carolina, became the center a diplomatic row between Ankara and Washington after Turkey jailed on terrorism charges. Ankara accuses Brunson of having links to groups guilty of orchestrating a failed coup attempt in 2016, through the small evangelical he has run in the coastal...

Syrian rebel fighters have pulled the last of their heavy weapons from front-line positions in Idlib Province, meeting the deadline for a truce negotiated by Russia and Turkey — and possibly sparing the civilian population from a bloody government offensive. It was a rare act of unity for the ordinarily fractious rebel forces, who on Monday drove trucks carrying a tank, artillery and missile batteries out of their base in this small town, as a small group of international journalists looked on. “We are now standing in the demilitarized zone,” said Saif al-Raad, a spokesman for the National Liberation Front,...

Xelil Åžirvan, a commander of a group of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, told Sputnik that a US military base had been detected near the town of Al-Qa'im in northwest Iraq on the border with Syria. "According to our data, the United States has set up a new military base in the strategically important region of Al-Qa'im in Anbar province on the Iraqi-Syrian border. Americans are building up their military presence in the region, which is why Iraqi government forces have sent more military reinforcements to Al-Qa'im to boost border protection," he said. A spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that he is preparing for a military solution to the violence on the country’s southern border. “If the reality of civil distress in Gaza is diminished, that is desirable, but that is not certain to happen, and so we are preparing militarily,” Netanyahu said in the cabinet meeting. “That is not an empty statement.” The prime minister’s remarks come after the Defense Ministry ordered IDF troops to send reinforcements to the region on Thursday in preparation for a possible escalation.

Turkey will defend its sovereign rights in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday in Ankara’s latest warning against hydrocarbon exploration off the coast of Cyprus. “We have a duty to protect [our rights],” Erdogan told a meeting of party officials, adding that standing up for its rights has given Turkey its existing “political, economic and social stature.” “We have been able to achieve this not only by taking action against certain people at home but also by standing up to the world’s biggest economic and military powers,” Erdogan said. Asked about...