‘We will never be Jerusalem’: Abu Dis pours scorn on Trump plan

Mayor of Palestinian town cut off from Jerusalem by Israeli wall says it has no aspiration to be capital of future ‘state’

It seems nobody thinks much of the hillside Palestinian town of Abu Dis, not even its mayor, who finds it hard to say why he took the job. “For real, I don’t know,” he said. “There’s a lot of crime and drugs.”

When they still lived in a village with stunning views of the golden Dome of the Rock and the Mount of Olives, families from Abu Dis would walk across the valleys into Jerusalem to sell sheep, goats and cheese.

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Iranian rapper Amir Tataloo arrested in Turkey

Musician was detained in Istanbul after Tehran issued Interpol request

The rapper Amir Tataloo, one of Iran’s most famous musicians, has been detained in Istanbul after an Interpol request from Tehran authorities.

Turkish police confirmed on Tuesday they detained Tataloo, real name Amirhossein Maghsoudloo, in Istanbul’s Fatih district because of an Interpol red notice flagging him as a wanted person.

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Trump’s Middle East peace plan: key points at a glance

President’s vision emphasises Israel’s security rather than Palestinian self-determination

President Donald Trump has unveiled his much-touted Middle East peace plan, tweeting a map showing his vision for an even further depleted Palestinian state than that envisioned by the Oslo peace agreement in 1993.

The crude “concept” map in the plan shows the occupied Jordan valley under Israeli control – although Trump suggests that could be eased in the future – and a West Bank split north and south around Jerusalem, heavily eaten into by Israeli settlements which the plan proposes to recognise under Israeli sovereignty.

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All that’s missing from Trump’s ‘overly good’ Middle East plan is Palestinians

The unusually detailed 80-page proposal fulfils a wishlist of Israeli demands while abandoning longstanding tenets of US diplomacy

Donald Trump pronounced his newly unveiled peace plan “overly good” to the Palestinians but it was the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was at his side, grinning broadly.

Related: 'Don't talk about history': how Jared Kushner crafted his Middle East 'peace' plan

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Trump unveils Middle East peace plan with no Palestinian support

Plan offers route to Palestinian state but recognises Israeli settlements in West Bank

Donald Trump has unveiled his vision for Middle East peace in a White House launch that gifted Israel a wishlist of its long-held demands while promising Palestinians a potential “state”, but with severe restrictions.

Standing next to the smiling Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump announced details of the 181-page plan to cheers and applause. Palestinian leaders were absent from the launch, having pre-emptively rejected his proposal, citing flagrant bias.

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Reporter who wrote book on Saudi crown prince was allegedly targeted by hackers

State department investigates after New York Times journalist Ben Hubbard says his phone was targeted in 2018

A New York Times reporter was allegedly targeted with spyware linked to Saudi Arabia in 2018, at a time when the kingdom was targeting several Saudi dissidents around the world.

A new report by Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School found that Ben Hubbard, who has written a book about Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, was targeted by spyware known as “Pegasus”, which is made by Israel’s NSO Group.

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Trump unveils ‘ultimate deal’ for Middle East peace – video

The US president launches his plan for peace in the Middle East, saying the 80-page proposal offers a 'realistic two-state solution' that has already been agreed to by Israel as the basis for negotiations. Despite the absence of a Palestinian presence at the launch, Trump says the US will support Palestine if the president, Mahmoud Abbas, 'chooses the path to peace'

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Where once there was fury, Palestinian issue now stirs up apathy

Region no longer views fate of Palestinians as lynchpin, or – in some cases – even a cause worth championing loudly

For much of the last 70 years the cause of Palestine stirred the Arab street. From Yemen to Morocco and all points in between, laments were sung in song and enshrined in poetry as the decades mounted without a Palestinian state. Regional statesmen built careers by standing by a people without a land. Wars were fought and lost in their name.

After the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, that slowly began to change and by the time Iran became the preoccupation of the US and its allies in the region, the Palestinians were cast into the unfamiliar role of playing second fiddle. Then came Donald Trump, and ever since the once-overarching cause of the region has barely been given a seat in the orchestra pit.

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Africa is humanitarian ‘blind spot’: the world’s top 10 forgotten crises – report

Climate emergency is fuelling drought, food poverty and disaster in the global south but humanitarian crises under-reported

The African continent is a “blind spot” for coverage of the humanitarian crises that are being fuelled by the climate emergency, according to a new analysis [pdf].

Madagascar’s chronic food crisis, where 2.6 million people were affected by drought in 2019, came top of the list of 10 of the most under-reported crises last year, Care International’s annual survey found.

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Oil chief urges west to call out foreign meddling in Libya conflict

Mustafa Sanalla says country facing disaster as blockade disrupts oil production

World powers will be complicit in the collapse of the rule of law in Libya if they do not do more to call out the countries backing those responsible for disrupting the country’s oil exports, the head of the Libyan national oil corporation has said.

Mustafa Sanalla said too many western powers were happy to let the countries meddling in Libya sign non-intervention agreements that they had no intention of honouring.

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Yemen rise in violence threatens to derail peace moves, UN warns

Special envoy calls for emergency meeting of security council as violence flares

The sudden surge in violence in Yemen could scupper fragile moves towards a peace settlement, the UN’s special envoy for the country has said.

“We have to get the genie back in the bottle,” said Martin Griffiths. “Whoever started this renewed violence, it is unequivocally the case that there has been a huge rupture of confidence and a huge loss of life for the sake of uncertain territorial gains.”

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Trump to meet Israeli leaders as doubts over ‘peace plan’ grow

Netanyahu’s trip a welcome distraction from indictment while election opponent Gantz also visits White House

Donald Trump is set to disclose details of his much-delayed Middle East “peace plan” during meetings with Israeli leaders in Washington on Monday, amid a rising global chorus of doubt about its timing and substance.

The choreography between the US and Israel has been interpreted as a convenient distraction for both Trump, who faces an impeachment trial, and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces three criminal corruption indictments and an uncertain election campaign.

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NSA faces questions over security of Trump officials after alleged Bezos hack

Democratic lawmaker asks agency if it is confident the Saudi government has not sought to hack US officials

The US National Security Agency is facing questions about the security of top Trump administration officials’ communications following last week’s allegations that the Saudi crown prince may have had a hand in the alleged hack of Jeff Bezos.

Ron Wyden, a senior Democratic lawmaker, asked the director of the NSA whether he was confident that the Saudi government had not also sought to hack senior US government officials, including the White House adviser Jared Kushner, who has reportedly had a WhatsApp relationship with the Saudi heir.

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Netanyahu hopes to ‘make history’ during White House visit

Israeli prime minister to travel to US for unveiling of Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said he hopes to “make history” during his upcoming visit to the White House for the unveiling of Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan.

Addressing his cabinet before departing for the US, Netanyahu described the current environment, characterised by close ties with Trump, as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that Israel should “not miss”.

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Veterans criticize Trump’s downplaying of US troops’ brain injuries

Several US veterans’ organizations call for president to apologize for remarks about injuries suffered by service members in Iraq

Veterans of Foreign Wars, a prominent organization advocating for US military veterans, has called for Donald Trump to apologize for remarks downplaying brain injuries recently suffered by nearly three dozen American service members in Iraq.

Related: Trump downplays brain injuries suffered by US troops in Iran missile strike

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Reporting on the Iran nuclear deal: ‘nothing happens until everything happens’

Our world affairs editor reflects on how, despite years of negotiations, we came once again to the brink of conflict

Countries tend to go to war when diplomacy fails. But Washington and Tehran are now facing off because it succeeded. It was because the 2015 nuclear deal was Barack Obama’s proudest foreign policy achievement that Donald Trump was so determined to destroy it.

The US and Iran are sliding back towards the brink of conflict. If a missile had landed a little bit differently in the course of the latest exchange of hostilities, they would probably be at war by now.

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Former BBC executives criticise Orla Guerin’s Holocaust report

Michael Grade and Danny Cohen hit out at ‘unjustifiably offensive’ News at Ten piece

The former BBC chairman Michael Grade and Danny Cohen, its former director of television, have joined criticism of the broadcaster over an “unjustifiably offensive” News at Ten report that appeared to link Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Holocaust.

Orla Guerin, the BBC’s international correspondent, made the reference at the end of an interview with Holocaust survivor Rena Quint ahead of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

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Prince Charles wishes Palestinians ‘freedom, justice and equality’

Prince of Wales walks alongside Muslim and Christian leaders on historic visit to West Bank

The Prince of Wales has sympathised with the Palestinian people, speaking of the hardships they face and saying he wished them “freedom, justice and equality” in the future.

Charles’s words of support – spoken during his first visit to the Palestinian occupied territories – came as Donald Trump was expected to unveil his long-awaited Middle East peace plan.

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Billions of locusts swarm through Kenya – in pictures

Huge locust swarms in east Africa are the result of extreme weather swings and could prove catastrophic for a region still reeling from drought and deadly floods. Dense clouds of the ravenous insects have spread from Ethiopia and Somalia into Kenya, in the region’s worse infestation in decades

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Saudi Arabia ‘planned to spy on Khashoggi’s fiancee in UK’

Exclusive: US agencies believed kingdom intended to monitor Hatice Cengiz after journalist killed

US intelligence authorities urged British counterparts to keep a close eye on Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, after they became aware of a plan by Saudi Arabia to keep her under surveillance in the UK last year, according to western intelligence sources.

The US believed the kingdom had the “ambition and intention” to monitor Cengiz in London last May, seven months after Khashoggi was killed in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, where he had gone to obtain papers so the couple could marry.

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