Trio establish formal relations at ceremony viewed as image boost for Trump and Netanyahu
Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have signed agreements to establish formal relations, ending a decades-old taboo in Arab diplomacy as power and priorities shift in the Middle East.
“Today’s signing sets history on a new course,” Donald Trump told a crowd outside the White House where the deal was signed. “This an incredible day for the world,” he said.
Continue reading...‘The move against Palestine is not a step that can be stomached,’ says Erdoğan
Turkey has threatened to suspend its diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates and recall its envoy, a day after the Gulf state announced it would become the third Arab country to establish full ties with Israel.
“The move against Palestine is not a step that can be stomached,” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told reporters on Friday.
Continue reading...Israel’s relationship with neighbours is no longer defined by occupation, Palestinians say
Shortly after Donald Trump announced he had brokered a “huge breakthrough” deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the White House published a list of bullet points detailing what it had achieved.
Only at the bottom, just after “expanded business and financial ties between these two thriving economies”, did the very last sentence blandly mention what had previously been the key regional issue: the fate of the Palestinians.
Continue reading...Israel and the United Arab Emirates announced an agreement on Thursday that will lead to a full normalisation of diplomatic relations between the two states, a move that reshapes the order of Middle East politics from the Palestinian issue to Iran. However, cracks in the deal became quickly apparent, with Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying there was 'no change' to his annexation plans, while the UAE insisted that it 'immediately stops annexation'. The agreement was rejected by Palestinians, with some calling it a conspiracy.
Trump hails US-brokered pact as ‘peace agreement’ but cracks quickly appear as Netanyahu denies change of plan
Israel and the United Arab Emirates have agreed to establish full diplomatic ties in a historic Washington-brokered deal under which Israel will “suspend” its plans to annex parts of the Palestinian territories.
However, cracks in the deal became quickly apparent after its announcement on Thursday, with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying there was “no change” to his annexation plans, while the UAE insisted that it “immediately stops annexation”.
Continue reading...Common ground rests on a ‘peace plan’ aided by splintered Arab solidarity over Palestine
The peace deal that few saw coming had been gathering steam in plain sight. Even before the election of Donald Trump, Israel and the UAE had been inching closer, drawn together by three factors – enmity with Iran, a loathing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a mutual belief that the agreed formula for peace with Palestinians was no longer working.
More than anything else, combating Iran became the conduit for the two sides. The adage of a foe of a foe becoming a friend has rarely been more apt. Tehran’s determination to acquire a nuclear weapon, its extensive reach into the Arab world, potential to shut off the Strait of Hormuz, and Shia Islamic revolutionary zeal, provided enough common ground for both sides to sharply deepen intelligence links to strategic levels over the past four years.
Continue reading...Donald Trump has said the United Arab Emirates and Israel have agreed to establish full diplomatic ties as part of a deal to halt the annexation of occupied land sought by the Palestinians for their future state. US officials described the agreement, to be known as the Abraham Accords, as the first of its kind since Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994. It also gives Trump a foreign policy success as he seeks re-election in November
Continue reading...A week after going into exile, the scandal-hit former monarch is said to be staying in a $12,000-a-night suite in the Emirates palace hotel
At first it was Portugal, then the Dominican Republic, but now Abu Dhabi is firming as the most likely place of residence for Spain’s scandal-hit former king Juan Carlos.
On Saturday, Spain’s NIUS media group published an image that showed a man with at least the likeness of Juan Carlos in a face mask, descending from a plane.
Continue reading...Administrators outline position of UAE’s largest healthcare provider which faces multiple investigations
Joint administrators for NMC Health, the holding company of the UAE-based healthcare provider NMC Group, have said the company will probably be dissolved or put into liquidation.
Administrators from the consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal Europe were appointed in April to oversee the hospital operator, after an application from one of its biggest creditors, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank.
Continue reading...Fire swept through a 48-storey high-rise in the United Arab Emirates on 5 May, sending flames shooting into the night sky.
Seven people were reportedly injured in the blaze at Abbco Tower in the city of Sharjah near Dubai. Authorities said it wasn’t immediately clear what caused the fire
Continue reading...In debt, unable to earn and refused repatriation over coronavirus fears, many migrant workers face an uncertain future
Each night, Bipul* is kept awake by the fear of loan sharks hounding his parents for the money he owes. Five months ago, the 25-year-old Sri Lankan borrowed $1,400 (£1,120) to pay recruiters to take him to the United Arab Emirates, where he got a job as cleaner at a five-star hotel. But since the coronavirus outbreak there are no longer any guests, so he no longer has work and the loan is going unpaid.
“I really need a job so I can repay it,” he says. “I also need to earn money to help my family. This is such a big problem.”
Continue reading...Rights groups say host countries should offer foreign workers same protections as citizens
Crammed into work camps, stood down from their jobs, facing high rates of infection and with no way home, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers are bearing the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic in the Middle East, migrant advocates and diplomats say.
Such workers’ risk of exposure to Covid-19 is so high, rights groups say, that host countries need to offer the same protections granted to their citizens or face the threat of a rampant outbreak that proves ever more difficult to contain.
Continue reading...As the fifth anniversary of the Saudi and Emirati coalition intervention dawns, the prospect of peace is further away than ever
Aisha al-Temmimi, 21, has never adjusted to the dust and heat of the Yemeni desert city of Marib. Her family are from the lush green highlands of Hajjah in the country’s north, but were forced to leave after fighting between the Iran-backed Houthis and government forces reached their village two years ago.
Marib, already rich in oil and gas reserves, has become something of a boom town since Yemen’s war broke out, a place where those displaced by violence elsewhere in the country have found relative safety. Even Marib’s stability, however, has proven fragile after fierce new battles to the north and west of the city.
Continue reading...Revelation fuels calls for investigations into Cambridgeshire force and Foreign Office after high court bombshell
There are demands for independent inquiries into the roles of the Foreign Office and Cambridgeshire police after an investigation into the abduction of a princess on a British street was allowed to lapse.
Princess Shamsa Al Maktoum of Dubai was snatched two decades ago by men working for her father, Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum, the billionaire ruler of Dubai, who is a friend of the Queen.
Continue reading...Ruling backs Princess Haya’s claim that husband Sheikh Mohammed intimidated her
Can Sheikh Mohammed’s reputation survive?
The ruler of Dubai orchestrated the abductions of two of his children – one from the streets of Cambridge – and subjected his youngest wife to a campaign of “intimidation”, a damning UK family court judgment has found.
In findings that risk destabilising diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, a close Gulf ally of Britain, the actions of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum were described by the judge as behaviour which, on the balance of probabilities, amounted to potentially breaking English and international law.
The Guardian and other news organisations can reveal the ruling following months of private hearings and a legal dispute that reached the supreme court. It details an extraordinary family saga spanning 20 years during which the sheikh, 70, organised international kidnappings, imprisoned two of his daughters and “deprived [them] of their liberty”.
Much of the 34-page fact-finding ruling by Sir Andrew McFarlane, president of the family division of the high court in England and Wales, records the events surrounding the notorious disappearances of Princess Shamsa from Cambridge in 2000, when she was 19, and of Princess Latifa, who was seized by Indian army commandos from the Indian Ocean in 2018, when she was 32, before being forcibly returned to Dubai.
Appeal court rejects challenge by Sheikh Mohammed, who may now go to supreme court
The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, has failed in his latest attempt to prevent publication of two family court judgments involving his children with his ex-wife Princess Haya of Jordan.
The court of appeal in London also refused his lawyers permission to take the case to the supreme court but said they had until 4pm on Tuesday to lodge an application directly with the UK’s highest court if they wished to object. The two family court judgments cannot be published until any such potential further appeals have been determined.
Continue reading...Sheikh Mohammed opposes release of family court rulings involving two of his children
The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, is attempting to prevent publication of two family court judgments involving his two children with his ex-wife, Princess Haya of Jordan, the court of appeal in London has been told.
At the opening of a hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday, Lord Justice Underhill read out a public statement explaining that the case “raises matters of public interest beyond the particular issue in the wardship proceedings”.
Continue reading...Stephen Fry, Noam Chomsky and more than 40 NGOs say the country’s support for the event is at odds with its record on human rights
As bestselling authors from Jung Chang to Bernardine Evaristo prepare to gather in Abu Dhabi for the first Hay festival in the United Arab Emirates, leading figures have spoken out against the country’s compromised free speech. Stephen Fry - the festival’s president – has joined more than 40 public figures and organisations castigating its government for “promoting a platform for freedom of expression, while keeping behind bars Emirati citizens and residents who shared their own views and opinions”.
An open letter signed by Fry, Noam Chomsky, and a coalition of more than 40 NGOs including Amnesty and PEN International, is calling on the UAE to use the launch of the festival’s Abu Dhabi branch – which opens on Tuesday – to “demonstrate their respect for the right to freedom of expression by freeing all human rights defenders imprisoned for expressing themselves peacefully online”.
Continue reading...Rules intended to protect domestic workers have only made them more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, say activists
Amita* knew she had to escape. After five months of being assaulted, starved and being forced to work for 20 hours a day as a domestic maid in a suburban house in Kuwait, the 45-year old from Nepal seized her chance. While the household slept, she climbed out of a downstairs bathroom window and fled.
Amita managed to find the Nepali embassy, hoping that staff there would assure her safety and help send her home to Kathmandu.
Continue reading...In Abu Grein, on Libya’s frontline, the militiamen’s scars read like a rollcall of the wars that have roiled the country since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. One of the fighters, a truck driver named Muhammad, removes his cap to reveal a balding pate etched with shrapnel gashes. “From Da’ish,” he says, referring to a 2016 battle he fought against Islamic State in the Libyan city of Sirte.
Now, he says, yet another foe has captured Sirte: rebel militias under the command of a 76-year-old aspiring strongman named Khalifa Haftar. Last Sunday, these militias attacked Muhammad and his men, killing 11 of them, ignoring a shaky truce in a long-running war that started last April with a blitz on the Libyan capital by Haftar’s forces.
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