Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Cop28: ‘failure is not an option,’ says summit president – as it happened

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Sultan Al Jaber calls for countries to come together amid disagreements over the future of climate action

• China ‘would like to see agreement to substitute renewables for fossil fuels’

There is some more food-related news from the conference today, writes Fiona Harvey.

The Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation (ACF) launched on Sunday, a group that’s being called the “high ambition coalition for food”. It has Brazil, Sierra Leone and Norway as co-chairs, and other prominent members include Rwanda and Cambodia.

Strengthen national visions and food systems transformation pathways, inclusive of 10 priority action areas and consistent with science-based targets.

Update Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), Long-Term Low Emission Development Strategies (LT-LEDS),​​ and National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) in line with these updated National Food System Transformation Pathways and/or Implementation Plans, by 2025 at the latest.

Report annually on targets and priority intervention areas

“Peasant family farmers, Indigenous and local communities, forest collectors, pastoralists, fisherfolk, and agricultural workers, are among the populations most harshly affected by climate change worldwide. Yet they are also the central actors who can sustainably transform food systems. Supporting their livelihoods through specifically tailored public policies is essential to achieve an agroecological transition towards healthy, resilient and sustainable food systems.”

Let’s face it: climate summits are broken. The delegates talk and talk, while Earth systems slide towards deadly tipping points. Since the climate negotiations began in 1992 more carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels has been released worldwide than in all preceding human history. This year is likely to set a new emissions record. They are talking us to oblivion.

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Qatar says ‘narrowing window’ for freeing more hostages held in Gaza – as it happened

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Mediation efforts are continuing to secure a new Gaza ceasefire and free more hostages held by Hamas despite the ongoing Israeli bombardment that is “narrowing the window” for a successful outcome, Qatar’s prime minister said Sunday.

“Our efforts as the state of Qatar along with our partners are continuing. We are not going to give up,” sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told the Doha Forum, adding that “the continuation of the bombardment is just narrowing this window for us”.

If Israel is above international law, sanctions should be put on it. Israel should not be allowed to continue violating international humanitarian law and international law.

Our main concern is not the day after. It is today. We want the stop of atrocities and genocide that is happening today.

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‘Come with solutions’: Cop28 president calls for compromise in final meetings

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Sultan Al Jaber urges nations to be flexible as talks reach impasse over whether to phase out or phase down fossil fuels

Ministers and negotiators must come to the vital final meetings of Cop28 without prepared statements, without rigid red lines, and be prepared to compromise, the president of the UN climate summit has said.

Sultan Al Jaber, whose position is now pivotal to the talks as they enter their final days, on Sunday convened a majlis of all countries, a meeting in the traditional form of an elders’ conference in the United Arab Emirates.

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Iran stops Mahsa Amini’s family from travelling to receive human rights prize

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Ban comes as jailed Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi begins new hunger strike before award ceremony

Iran has banned Mahsa Amini’s family from travelling to France to receive the EU’s top human rights prize on her behalf, as the family of the imprisoned Nobel peace prize winner Narges Mohammadi said she had begun a new hunger strike before Sunday’s award ceremony in Oslo.

In Mohammadi’s absence, her 17-year-old twin children, Ali and Kiana, will instead collect the award on her behalf, reading out a speech their mother smuggled out of her cell.

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Groundbreaking graphic novel on Gaza rushed back into print 20 years on

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When Joe Sacco created Palestine no one knew what ‘comics journalism’ was. Now his pioneering book has eager new readers

An acclaimed nonfiction graphic novel about Gaza, which pioneered the medium of “comics journalism”, has been rushed back into print after surging demand since the fresh outbreak of the conflict two months ago.

Palestine, by Joe Sacco, was originally released in comic book form by the American publisher Fantagraphics 30 years ago, then published as a single volume by the company, and by Jonathan Cape in the UK in 2003.

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UN chief vows to go on seeking ceasefire in Gaza despite US veto

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António Guterres says UN has no clear route map to stop conflict and world institutions are ‘caught in a time warp’

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has vowed he will not give up seeking a ceasefire in Gaza after the US wielded its veto to block the move at the security council on Friday, leaving the UN without a clear route map to stop the conflict lasting many months.

Speaking at the Doha Forum in Qatar, Guterres did not directly criticise the US in his address but said the security council was “paralysed by geostrategic divisions”. He added world institutions “are weak and outdated, caught in a time warp reflecting a reality of 80 years ago”.

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Sisi poised to win power again, but Egyptians’ minds are on Gaza

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There’s no chance of a fair election on Sunday, but Egypt president’s weakness on Gaza is showing in a country racked by poverty, corruption and inflation

For Egyptians, the only signs that an election is imminent are the posters of President Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi’s face plastered on every available wall and billboard across the country.

The repetitive images of Sisi – always gazing into the distance with a stiff, forced smile – are so ubiquitous that people have turned to the only venue for free expression they have left and have begun making memes of them to share online. One picture that circulated features Jack and Rose from the film Titanic sitting on the deck of the ship surrounded by Sisi’s campaign posters. In another, people joke that a pregnant woman passed so many pictures of Sisi on her way to work that her newborn baby resembled the incumbent president.

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Labour steps up criticism of ‘intolerable’ killings in Gaza

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Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy slams Israeli ‘death and destruction’ and urges UK travel ban on violent settlers

• Read more: Labour will oppose expulsions of Palestinians and bar violent settlers from UK

The Labour party today delivers its strongest criticism of Israel over its attacks on Palestinians, describing the death and destruction in Gaza over the past two months as “intolerable” and attacking two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers for “totally unacceptable” support of illegal settlements in the West Bank.

In a sharp change of tone, David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, with the full backing of party leader Keir Starmer, attacks the Israeli authorities for “turning a blind eye” to violence by settlers in the West Bank, which has “forcibly displaced” more than 1,000 Palestinians from their homes since the attacks on Israel by Hamas on 7 October.

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Biden bypasses Congress to sell tank shells to Israel amid further fighting in Khan Younis

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Emergency declaration used to sell $106.5m worth of ammo for Israel’s tanks as reports of fierce fighting in southern Gaza city of Khan Younis emerge

The Biden administration has used an emergency authority to allow the sale of about 14,000 tank shells to Israel without congressional review, the Pentagon said on Saturday.

The state department on Friday used an Arms Export Control Act emergency declaration for the tank rounds worth $106.5m for immediate delivery to Israel, the Pentagon said in a statement.

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Thousands call for Gaza ceasefire on central London march

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Police say 13 protesters arrested during march from Bank Junction to Parliament Square

Thousands of pro-Palestine protesters gathered in Parliament Square, London, on Saturday to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

The protesters marched from Bank Junction to Westminster, with many holding signs with the words “Free Palestine” and “End the siege”. Some protesters chanted: “One, two, three, four, occupation no more, five, six, seven, eight, Israel is a terrorist state.”

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Israeli military says five of its soldiers killed in war – as it happened

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Heavy fighting continued overnight in northern Gaza, both from the air and on the ground, the Israel Defense Forces said on Saturday.

According to the IDF, fighters from the battle team of the Kafir brigade fought and killed a group in the area of ​​a school in the Shejaiya neighbourhood. IDF forces later found a number of Kalashnikov weapons, grenades and ammunition inside the classrooms.

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Cop28: petrostate Azerbaijan to host next UN climate summit in 2024 – as it happened

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The other day, our eagle-eyed reporter Patrick Greenfield spotted former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng striding through the Cop complex.

We all wondered what on earth Kwasi, who was at the top of a government which tried to overturn the UK’s fracking ban, could be doing at Cop, and whether the chancellor who crashed the UK economy was a vital part of the negotiating team.

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Civilians make up 61% of Gaza deaths from airstrikes, Israeli study finds

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Civilian proportion of deaths is higher than that in all world conflicts in 20th century, data suggests

The aerial bombing campaign by Israel in Gaza is the most indiscriminate in terms of civilian casualties in recent years, a study published by an Israeli newspaper has found.

The analysis in Haaretz came as Israeli forces fought to consolidate their control of northern Gaza on Saturday, bombing the Shejaiya district of Gaza City, while also conducting airstrikes on Rafah, a town on the southern border with Egypt where the Israeli army has told people in Gaza to take shelter.

This article was amended on 9 December 2023 to clarify that +972 Magazine is an Israeli-Palestinian publication.

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UN says Gaza near ‘full-blown collapse’ as US vetoes ceasefire call

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UN officials including secretary general describe humanitarian breakdown in territory as they plead for immediate ceasefire

The UN is at “breaking point” in Gaza, its most senior official has warned, as his colleagues described the “untenable” humanitarian catastrophe in the territory, with 700 people sharing a single toilet and people burning plastic to keep warm.

One official said UN agencies were “barely operational” and staff were bringing their children to work “so they know they are safe or can die together”.

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US defies appeals to back UN resolution for urgent Gaza ceasefire

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US vetoes resolution despite pleas from secretary general and Arab allies, saying ceasefire ‘would only plant the seeds of the next war’

The US has defied appeals from its Arab allies and the UN secretary general to back an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, telling the security council that to do so would merely plant the seeds of the next war.

The US vetoed a United Nations resolution calling for a ceasefire late on Friday, despite a dramatic warning from António Guterres that civil order was breaking down and the risk of a mass exodus into Egypt growing, with as yet unclear consequences for the rest of the region. The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1 with the UK abstaining.

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Almost 100 journalists killed and 400 imprisoned in 2023, says report

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International Federation of Journalists says 68 killed covering Israel-Hamas war, more than in any other conflict in over 30 years

A leading organisation representing journalists worldwide has expressed deep concern at the number of media professionals killed around the globe doing their jobs in 2023, with more journalists killed during Israel’s war with Hamas than in any other conflict in more than 30 years.

In its annual count of media worker deaths, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said 94 journalists had been killed so far this year and almost 400 others had been imprisoned.

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Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer killed in Gaza

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Tributes pour in for one of the leaders of a young generation of writers in Gaza who chose to tell their stories in English

Tributes poured in for the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer on Friday after friends said he was killed in a strike on Gaza.

Alareer was one of the leaders of a young generation of writers in Gaza who chose to write in English to tell their stories, with friends describing his defiance in the face of the Israeli army’s assault on the Gaza Strip.

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Footage shows IDF parading scores of Palestinian men around in underwear

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Israeli media claimed images show Hamas fighters but several civilians have been identified including a journalist

The International Committee of the Red Cross has said it is concerned by images of semi-naked Palestinian men being paraded by the Israeli military in Gaza, adding that all of those detained must be treated in keeping with international humanitarian law.

“We strongly emphasise the importance of treating all those detained with humanity and dignity, in accordance with international humanitarian law,” Jessica Moussan, a spokesperson for the ICRC, said in a statement.

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Cop28: president says summit ‘has already made history’ as negotiations enter final days – as it happened

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Sultan Al Jaber holds press conference at start of second week as summit focuses on children, education and food

Canada has been asked by the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, to help develop language on the potential phase down or phase out of fossil fuels, its environment minister told reporters on Friday morning.

Steven Guilbeault, a former activist who is environment minister for the fourth largest oil and gas producer in the world, announced that Canada would require its fossil fuel industry to cut its emissions between 35% to 38% below 2019 levels starting in 2030 on Thursday.

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