M O A R F U N
1:48 pm
Hamas chief accuses Israel of ignoring ceasefire deal
Hamas’ chief says Israel is ignoring the terms of an unofficial ceasefire agreement for the Gaza Strip.
Ismail Haniyeh tells foreign reporters in Gaza today that the understandings, brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the UN, now are “in the danger zone.”
He says Israel has shown “no respect” for the terms and the 2 million residents of blockaded Gaza who “have not felt” any improvement to their living conditions.
His comments come a day after a Hamas spokesman said Israel was abiding by the terms of the deal.
Israel does not officially acknowledge a ceasefire agreement with Hamas and the other terror groups in the Strip that was brokered in early May following an intense two days of fighting.
Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade after the Islamic terror group group violently seized control of the coastal Palestinian enclave in 2007, saying it was necessary to prevent arms smuggling.
Since March 2018, Hamas has led mass protests along the Israel-Gaza border, with Israel accusing it of using the often violent demonstrations as cover to attack troops and the security fence.
The two have fought three wars over the past decade and the informal understandings are aimed at preventing another war.
— with agencies
1:49 pm
After suspected neo-Nazi murder, pro-migrant mayors in Germany get death threats
BERLIN — At least three prominent German pro-migrant mayors have received death threats, it emerges today, days after police arrested a suspected far-right extremist over the assassination-style gun murder of a local politician.
Germany has been shocked by news that the top suspect in the June 2 shooting of Kassel city local politician Walter Luebcke is an alleged neo-Nazi, believed to have been angered by an influx of refugees and migrants.
Now several other local politicians, who have been attacked or targeted in the past for welcoming asylum seekers, report that they have again been threatened.
One of them, Cologne mayor Henriette Reker, was stabbed in the neck by a right-wing sympathizer in October 2015 and has been under police protection ever since.
“The mayor has received death threats,” a Cologne police spokesman tells AFP.
Another mayor, Andreas Hollstein, of the small town of Altena in North Rhine-Westphalia state, on Tuesday confirmed to German news agency DPA that he had again received death threats.
He was slashed with a knife in 2017 after accepting a national award from Chancellor Angela Merkel for Altena’s work with refugees.
His attacker had criticized Hollstein for taking in refugees, it emerged during the trial.
Holger Kelch, the mayor of Cottbus, says he had received 500 hate mails and three death threats since 2017 when he called for calm in the city after it emerged the killer of a German pensioner came from Syria.
News of the death threats comes in the wake of the Luebcke case, which prosecutors are treating as a political murder.
— AFP
2:02 pm
Russia to ‘take into account the interests of Iran’ at Jerusalem security talks
Russia’s national security says Iran’s interests in Syria must be taken into account, ahead of a meeting in Israel next week with his Israeli and American counterparts.
“Iran is in Syria at the invitation of the legitimate government and is actively involved in fighting terrorism. Therefore, of course, we will have to take into account the interests of Iran,” Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev is quoted saying on the Russian embassy in Israel’s Twitter account.
Israel in recent years has carried out hundreds of strike in Syria on targets linked to Iran, which it accuses of working to obtain a foothold on the northern border from which it can launch attacks. The US has also condemned Iran’s military presence in Syria, where it is fighting along with Russia on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.
“We will face the fact that the interests of states have different directions. The Russian side will take into account the interests of Iran bring them to the attention of the Israeli and the American side,” Patrushev says.
Israel has billed next week’s meeting, which will also include National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat and US National Security Adviser John Bolton, as “unprecedented.”
The rare tripartite talks are expected to deal mostly with Syria, specifically Iran’s efforts to entrench itself militarily near Israel’s borders, and the planned withdrawal of US troops from the war-torn country.
Source: timesofisrael.com/liveblog-june-20-2019/
Archive: archive.fo/JifCO