Tag: InternationalNews

{A bomb attack outside the main police station in the city of Gaziantep killed one police officer and injured 13 others.}

A bomb attack outside the police headquarters in Turkey’s southeastern city of Gaziantep has killed one police officer and injured several others, officials said.

Turkish media reported that an explosive-laden vehicle blew up next to the safety barriers at the entrance of the city’s main police station on Sunday.

Governor Ali Yerlikaya told CNN Turk that 13 people, including nine police officers, were injured in the explosion.

All roads in the region have been closed down as a safety precaution and police sources are now trying to find a white commercial vehicle linked to the bombing, DHA news agency said.

Police on edge

Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Gaziantep, arrived at the explosion site 10 minutes after the blast.

“I counted at least six ambulances at the scene,” she said. “We didn’t see any smoke but we smelled it in the air.”

Reporters were told that there may be a threat of another attack.

Our correspondent said she noticed that police officers at the station were “extremely nervous”.

“Police officers wouldn’t let anyone come within 100 metres of the police headquarters,” she said. “They are literally cocking their weapons at anyone that approaches.

“At some point there was a woman, who came very close, and a police officer cocked his weapon and yelled at her to get back.”

Dekker said roads around the police station had already been blocked off before the explosion, possibly due to an expected May 1 rally.

A May 1 rally in the city of Adana was cancelled earlier on Sunday as a result of a suicide bomb threat.

Elsewhere in Turkey on Sunday, three soldiers were killed and 14 others wounded in an attack blamed on Kurdish fighters during a military operation in the southeastern town of Nusaybin, Turkey’s army said in a statement.

Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast has been hit by waves of violence in clashes between government security forces and members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) after a ceasefire fell apart last July.

{Authorities declare state of high alert after thousands break into Green Zone against backdrop of continued violence.}

A state of high alert has been declared in the Iraqi capital Baghdad after protesters broke into the fortified Green Zone and stormed the parliament building, shortly after politicians again failed to approve new ministers.

Saturday’s development was the climax of weeks of political turmoil in Iraq that has seen MPs hold a sit-in, clash in the parliament chamber and seek to dismiss the speaker, halting efforts by Haider al-Abadi, the prime minister, to replace party-affiliated ministers with technocrats.

The unrest also coincided with a blast that targeted Shia pilgrims near Baghdad, killing at least 23 people.

The Green Zone is the most secure part of the Iraqi capital, housing the parliament, the prime minister’s office and embassies.

“You are not staying here! This is your last day in the Green Zone,” shouted one protester as thousands broke into the central Baghdad area.

Protesters, many of them supporters of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, attached cables to the tops of heavy concrete blast walls that surround the Green Zone, pulling them down to create an opening, television footage showed.

They then headed to parliament, where some protesters ran around the building and broke into offices, while others shouted “peacefully, peacefully” and tried to contain the destruction, an AFP news agency reporter at the scene said.

Security forces were present but did not try to prevent the demonstrators from entering the parliament building, the reporter said.

Protesters pulled barbed wire across a road leading to one of the exits of the Green Zone, effectively preventing some scared lawmakers from fleeing the chaos.

Protesters attacked and damaged several vehicles they believed belonged to parliamentarians, sources told Al Jazeera.

Ministerial nominees

Parliament failed to reach a quorum on Saturday after approving some of Abadi’s ministerial nominees earlier in the week.

The Green Zone unrest kicked off minutes after Sadr, the powerful Shia leader, ended a news conference in the holy city of Najaf during which he condemned the political deadlock.

Last month he had threatened that his supporters would storm the Green Zone, but he did not order them to enter the area in his Saturday address.

The politicians “refused to end corruption and refused to end quotas”, Sadr said, adding that he and his supporters would not participate in “any political process in which there are any type… of political party quotas”.

Key government posts have for years been distributed based on political and sectarian quotas.

Abadi’s move to change the system has been opposed by powerful political parties that rely on control of ministries for patronage and funds.

Baghdad bombing

Both the US and the UN have warned that the political crisis could distract from the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

Iraqi government forces backed by US-led military assistance have regained significant ground from ISIL, which overran large expanses of the country in 2014.

But the group still controls a large part of western Iraq, and are able to carry out frequent attacks against both civilians and security forces in government-held areas, including Baghdad.

Saturday’s car bombing, which occurred in the city’s Nahrawan area, killed at least 23 people and wounded up to 38 others, security and medical officials said.

ISIL, which considers Shia to be heretics, claimed the attack and said it was carried out by a suicide bomber who detonated a vehicle laden with three tonnes of explosives.

The officials said the explosion struck a road used by Shia pilgrims who were walking to the shrine of Imam Musa Kadhim in northern Baghdad for annual commemorations.

Kadhim, the seventh of 12 imams revered in Shia Islam, died in 799 AD.

The pilgrimage has in recent years turned into a huge event that brings Baghdad to a standstill for days.

{Qatar calls for emergency session while opposition group labels Assad government’s onslaught “crimes against humanity”.}

Qatar has called for an emergency meeting of the Arab League and urged the international community to “assume its responsibilities” as the Syrian government keeps up its air offensive on the northern city of Aleppo.

Government warplanes and helicopter gunships launched new air strikes on Saturday on Aleppo’s rebel-held neighbourhoods, killing at least eight people, officials said.

In the rebel-held east, dozens of civilians left the Bustan al-Qasr district on the ninth straight day of the Syrian military onslaught, an AFP news agency correspondent said.

The few people out on the streets watched the sky anxiously for government warplanes, running for shelter when one launched a new raid.

Responding to the Aleppo assault, the Syrian opposition accused the government of committing war crimes on civilians.

Speaking after a meeting in Istanbul in Turkey of the Syrian National Coalition, Anas al-Abdeh, the group’s leader, said: “Aleppo has been reeling under intense, ferocious bombardment. It is a systematic campaign. Therefore our meeting today focused on the situation in the besieged area, including Aleppo city.

“It is clear that the regime’s uninterrupted shelling and air strikes amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“They attacked medical facilities, residential areas and a bakery catering for more than 300 families.”

Conflict’s worst fighting

Once Syria’s economic hub, Aleppo and its surrounding countryside have suffered some of the worst fighting in a conflict that has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions.

The city has been divided into rebel and government-controlled zones.

At least 246 civilians have died in shelling, rocket fire and air strikes on both sides of the city since April 22, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) monitor said.

The Britain-based SOHR, which relies on a network of sources on the ground, reported on Saturday 28 air strikes on eastern neighbourhoods.

But in its daily report on Syria, Russia’s defence ministry said it had recorded only “three ceasefire violations in the city of Aleppo”, blaming them all on the rebels.

Syria’s SANA state news agency said shelling of western government-held neighbourhoods killed three civilians, including a child, and blamed al-Nusra Front and its allies.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Louay Safi, a former Syrian National Coalition leader, said: “There is an all-out war on Aleppo.

“The intensity of bombing is very high. They are hitting water facilities, public facilities … the regime hasn’t spared anybody.

“A large number of people have been killed in Aleppo and many of those who have been hurt are elderly and children. They are targeting residential areas using barrel bombs which are indiscriminate.”

A pro-government newspaper said on Thursday the army was preparing an offensive to recapture all of Aleppo and the surrounding province.

Battleground Aleppo

Some families have fled to safer districts, while others have left by the dangerous Castello Road, the only route out of east Aleppo.

Hospitals have also been bombed: four medical facilities were hit on Friday on both sides of the frontline, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

A raid on Wednesday hit a hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders and the ICRC as well as nearby housing, killing 30 people.

Aleppo was left out of a new temporary US-Russian brokered truce in the government stronghold of Latakia as well as Damascus and the nearby rebel-held Eastern Ghouta.

Fighting halted at 1am on Saturday in a “freeze” that held for 24 hours in Damascus and Eastern Ghouta, and was set to last for another 48 hours in Latakia.

Diplomatic moves

On the diplomatic front, John Kerry, US secretary of state, is due to travel on Sunday to Geneva in a show of support for the temporary truce and will meet the UN envoy to Syria and the Jordanian and Saudi foreign ministers.

The state department said his talks will focus on “efforts to reaffirm the cessation of hostilities nationwide in Syria”.

A new round of UN-backed peace talks is set to start on May 10 in the Swiss city.

The US has appealed to Russia to keep President Bashar al-Assad’s government in check.

Russia, however, has said that it will not ask Syria to halt the air raids on Aleppo.

“No, we are not going to put pressure on [Syria] because one must understand that the situation in Aleppo is part of this fight against the terrorist threat,” Gennady Gatilov, deputy foreign minister, said.

The Qatari request to the Arab League came in the form of a memo seeking discussion on “the dangerous escalation seen in Aleppo where civilians are subjected to massacres at the hands of the forces of the Syrian regime, which has led to the deaths and injuries of hundreds”.

Qatar’s state news agency QNA said Mohammed bin Jassim Al Thani, the foreign minister, made phone calls to his Turkish, French and British counterparts to discuss the humanitarian situation in Aleppo “in light of the brutal shelling and air strikes of the regime forces in Syria targeting civilians and residential areas”.

Saying that the assault was in defiance of all international charters and principles, he called for the international community to “to stop the ongoing massacre and protect the Syrian people”.

A similar message was conveyed by Sultan bin Saad al-Meraikhi, Qatar’s assistant foreign minister, in a phone call to Mikhail Bogdanov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, QNA reported.

Saudi Arabia has also called on the international community and allies of Assad who had committed themselves to the “cessation of hostilities” to take necessary measures to stop “the attacks and crimes against the people of Syria”.

{Bihar state forbids any cooking between 9am and 6pm in bid to prevent accidental fires that have killed dozens.}

With sizzling temperatures claiming more than 300 lives this month in India, officials have banned daytime cooking in some parts of the drought-stricken country in a bid to prevent accidental fires that have killed nearly 80 more people.

“We call this the fire season in Bihar,” Vyas, a state disaster management official who goes by one name, said. “Strong, westerly winds stoke fires which spread easily and cause great damage.”

The eastern state of Bihar this week took the unprecedented step of forbidding any cooking between 9am and 6pm, after accidental fires exacerbated by dry, hot and windy weather swept through shantytowns and thatched-roof houses in villages and killed 79 people.

People were instead told to cook at night.

Among those who died were 10 children and five adults killed in a fire sparked during a Hindu prayer ceremony in Bihar’s Aurangabad district last week.

Hoping to prevent more fires, officials have also banned the burning of spent crops and religious fire rituals. Anyone defying the ban risks up to two years in jail, the Times of India reported.

Many politicians decried the move, according to the paper.

“[The] government should instead focus on increasing the number of fire tenders and repairing those which are not functional,” said opposition politician Sanjay Mayukh, a member of the right-wing Indian People’s Party (BJP).

Danish Rizwan, a spokesperson for the centre-right Indian People’s Front (HAM), said that “the main reason behind massive fire in rural areas is that huts have rooftops of straw”, urging the government to provide them with alternative housing rather than ban cooking in the day hours.

Much of India is reeling under a weeks-long heat wave and severe drought conditions that have decimated crops, killed livestock and affected at least 330 million Indians – many of them left without enough water for their daily needs.

Rivers, lakes and dams have dried up in parts of the western states of Maharashtra and Gujarat, and overall officials say that groundwater reservoirs are at just 22 percent capacity.

In some areas, the situation is so bad the government has sent tankers of water for emergency relief. Monsoon rains are still weeks away, expected to start only in June.

At least 300 people have died of heat-related illness this month, including 110 in the state of Orissa, 137 in Telangana and another 45 in Andhra Pradesh where temperatures since the start of April have been hovering around 44C.

That is about 4-5C hotter than normal for April, according to state meteorological official YK Reddy. He predicted the situation would only get worse in May, traditionally the hottest month in India.

Huge numbers of farmers have migrated to nearby cities and towns in search of manual labour, often leaving elderly and young relatives behind in parched villages.

This week, more than 150 leading Indian economists, rights activists and academics expressed their “collective anxiety about the enormous suffering of the rural poor” in an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The letter says the official response to the crisis has been “sadly listless, lacking in both urgency and compassion,” and urges Modi to restore funding for a government programme guaranteeing 100 days of paid work a year for the poor and unemployed.

This is the second consecutive year southern India has suffered from a deadly heat wave, after about 2,500 people died in scorching temperatures last year.

{US Republican presidential hopeful brought in through the backdoor as protesters throw raw eggs at police outside hotel.}

Protests have continued for a second day against US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump in California.

On Friday, protesters tried to block the billionaire businessman from making a speech before the Republican Party Convention in the Hyatt Regency hotel in Burlingame.

They chanted obscenities and threw raw eggs at police but they were blocked by a line of police in riot gear.

Several physical altercations, including shoving, could be seen between protesters and police officers, who were using batons to push them back.

“He’s not a uniter, he’s a divider,” one protester told Al Jazeera. “I think he should not run for president, he’s not what America stands for.”

Some protesters infiltrated the hotel building and hung a giant banner reading, “Stop Hate.”

The Secret Service led Trump into the hotel through a rear entrance.

Burlingame Police said five people were arrested in the altercations.

“The protestors here are denouncing Trump as a racist,” Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds said, reporting from Burlingame. “They are denouncing him for his inflammatory comments about Mexican immigrants and his plan to bar all Muslims from entering the United States.”

‘Not the easiest entrance I’ve ever made’

On stage, inside the hotel which was still surrounded by protesters, Trump joked about the protesters who had tried to block his motorcade.

“That was not the easiest entrance I’ve ever made. My wife called and said there are helicopters following you. And then we went under a fence and though a fence,” he said.

“Oh boy, it felt like I was crossing the border actually.”

A day earlier, police in riot gear and on horseback clashed with anti-Trump protesters and about 20 people were arrested.

About 20 people were arrested, said the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

California holds its primary on June 7, and polls show Trump far ahead of his rivals,Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich.

“It probably will be the state that gets Trump either very, very near or over the top” Henry Brady, the dean of Goldman School of Public Policy, told Al Jazeera.

“So it’s the place where everything will become absolutely crystal clear,” he said.

Regardless of who prevails on the Republican side, California, the most populous US state, leans leftward and seems certain to go Democratic in November’s general election.

“This is a very Democratic state, Republicans have about a quarter of the political registration,” Brady said, “So there’s just not many republicans left in this state.”

Front-running Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is popular in California, leading rival Bernie Sanders by about 7 percentage points in recent polls.

No Republican has won California in the general election in 28 years.

{Judge says closure will last until Argentinian capital presents plan to control drug sales and electronic music parties.}

Buenos Aires’ nightclubs have been ordered by a judge to close down in response to the drug-related deaths of five people at a music festival in the city.

The Argentinian capital’s iconic tango milongas and dance get-togethers held at cultural centres are exempt from the ruling by municipal judge Roberto Andrés Gallardo, which otherwise calls for an end to “all commercial activity involving dancing with live or recorded music”.

“Little had been done to control the consumption of drugs in clubs,” he said, citing “a landscape of impunity and lack of state control with respect to nocturnal activities”.

Nightclub owners said they would not follow the ruling, pointing out that the deaths took place at an electronic music festival at an events complex, not a typical nightclub.

“How do you obey a totally unconstitutional order like this one?” Jorge Becco, head of the Buenos Aires chamber of discotheque owners, told local television.

“It’s like shutting the vegetable store because you found food poisoning at the butcher shop.”

‘Nonsense’

The head of the Buenos Aires local government, Horacio Rodriguez Larretta, disagreed with the judge’s decision and even called it “nonsense”.

“There are thousands of people who enjoy themselves in a healthy way every night and we are going to defend them,” he said. “We are asking the judiciary to revoke the ban so we can lift this suspension today.

“We are concerned with addiction, but this doesn’t mean we literally have to close down the whole of the city’s nightlife.”

Judge Gallardo’s ruling said the closure will last until the city government presents a plan for controlling illegal drug sales and irregularities at “electronic music parties”.

The ruling is aimed at venues that play electronic music but said all clubs were being closed while authorities determine which ones feature that genre. The closure then will be enforced only on electronic music venues.

Five people died and five were hospitalised after taking illegal drugs on the first day of the Time Warp music festival on April 16.

{Left-wing protesters clash with AfD party members and police at anti-immigration party’s meeting in Stuttgart.}

German riot police have arrested around 400 protesters trying to block access to the congress of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party, as clashes broke out between party members and left-wing activists in the German city of Stuttgart.

Heavily-armoured riot police used pepper spray to hold off protesters, many dressed in black and masking their faces, as officers escorted AfD members into the congress hall.

Clashes erupted between left-wing activists and AfD delegates, while demonstrators burned tyres and threw firecrackers at journalists and police.

“No rights for Nazi propaganda,” cried one group of demonstrators.

No serious injuries were reported as a result of the clashes and despite the protest and arrests, the conference began as planned on Saturday morning.

Formed three years ago in opposition to eurozone bailouts, the AfD has morphed into an anti-immigration party over the past year. It has kicked out its founder and seized on a record influx of refugees to lure new voters and steal disaffected members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives.

At the moment, the party is represented in half of Germany’s state legislatures.

Polls put AfD at 20 percent in the east, trailing behind Merkel’s Christian Democrats, which means that the party is challenging the Social Democrats. The AfD’s popularity has climbed to 13 percent overall in Germany.

Islam ‘incompatible with German constitution’

Around 2,400 members are expected at the weekend congress, which comes after AfD deputy leader and European parliament member Beatrix von Storch last week caused anger by labelling Islam a “political ideology that is incompatible with the German constitution”.

Von Storch said the congress would call for a ban on Islamic symbols in Germany such as minarets on mosques, the call to prayer and full-face veils for women.

The party’s other policies include a call to deport foreigners convicted of crimes and to reinstate military service for young men. In foreign affairs, the AfD wants to build a better relationship with Russia.

{Air strikes resume in divided Syrian city as fighting between government and rebels escalates.}

The Syrian government has carried out more than a dozen fresh air strikes in Aleppo as the death toll from more than a week of escalating violence continues to soar, according to local sources.

The strikes hit residential neighbourhoods across the opposition-controlled eastern part of the city on Saturday morning, though no immediate information about the number of deaths and injuries was available.

“As I’m talking to you, we can hear air strikes,” Zouhir Al Shimale, a local journalist, told Al Jazeera by telephone, adding that Saturday morning’s strikes hit the areas of Bustan al-Qasr, Zobdia, Ansare, Jazmate and Kalasa.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that at least 244 civilians, including 43 children and 27 women, were killed since violence between government forces and rebel groups flared on April 22.

On Friday night, government forces carried out air strikes in the eastern part of the city, while rebels fired mortars into residential areas into the western, government-controlled side.

On Thursday and Friday alone, at least 44 civilians died in the tit-for-tat attacks, the Syrian Observatory said.

While the Syrian government on Friday announced temporary truces in Damascus and the coastal city of Latakia, a support base for President Bashar al-Assad, Aleppo has been excluded from any cessation of hostilities.

‘Hiding in their homes’

Shimale described the streets as empty as most people stay indoors.

“People are doing nothing other than hiding in their homes,” he said.

“They rush in the morning to buy food and get home as quickly as possible so they aren’t outside when the strikes start. There has been a lot of damage to buildings and cars.”

While some residents have packed their bags and fled, most have not because “the main streets out of Aleppo have been targeted and shelled heavily”, he said.

Several medical facilities have been destroyed in opposition-controlled districts. Among those was the al-Quds hospital, where more than 50 people were killed when government air strikes hit the hospital and the nearby Sukkari neighbourhood earlier this week.

The al-Quds hospital was supported by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which announced that at least 14 staff and patients were killed in that attack.

Al Shimale said there are still a few clinics in the city that offer basic medical services.

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement on Friday that “violence is soaring back to the levels we saw before the cessation of hostilities”, referring to a partial ceasefire that was implemented in late February.

That partial truce fell apart throughout the last week as widespread fighting surged in many regions and opposition negotiators withdrew from talks with the government in Geneva.

Referring to Aleppo, al-Hussein said: “There are deeply disturbing reports of military build-ups indicating preparations for a lethal escalation.”

As the air strikes continue to rain down on the city, local residents are also preparing for more violence.

“Everyone expects it to get much worse,” Shimale said. “We expect more attacks and strikes on the city in the [coming] days.”

Aleppo was Syria’s commercial hub before the war broke out five years ago, home to some two million people.

{Official news agency says 62-year-old admitted to spying for the South Korean and US governments.}

North Korea has sentenced a Korean American man to 10 years hard labour for subversion, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.

Kim Dong Chul, 62, was arrested in North Korea in October and admitted to stealing military secrets and plotting subversion with South Koreans, the North’s official news agency reported.

North Korea has in the past used detained Americans to extract high-profile visits from the United States, with which it has no formal diplomatic relations.

Kim Dong Chul, who previously said he was a naturalised American citizen and was arrested in North Korea in October, admitted to committing “unpardonable espionage” under the direction of the US and South Korean governments and apologised for his crimes, the North’s KCNA news agency said.

“The extraordinary crime I committed was defaming and insulting the republic’s highest dignity and its system and spreading false propaganda aimed at breaking down its solidarity,” the agency quoted him as saying.

Kim said that he was approached by South Korean intelligence officers in 2011 to engage in paid espionage, according to KCNA, adding that he was arrested while receiving a USB stick containing military and nuclear secrets from a source.

A source in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang told the Reuters news agency that diplomats were notified in the morning of the confession and Kim’s comments were similar to the recent confession of another American being held there, Otto Warmbier.

The US State Department said it was aware of the reported incident but had no further details, citing privacy concerns.

Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years hard labor this month for trying to steal a propaganda banner. The North is also holding a Korean-Canadian Christian pastor, who is serving a life sentence for subversion.

Photographs issued by the North’s state news agency showed Kim bowing and wiping away tears.

North Korea faces the prospect of further international isolation after the UN Security Council imposed new sanctions after its fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch in February.

{Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says the best way to resolve the conflict is through direct, bilateral negotiations.}

Palestinians have slammed Israel’s rejection of a French-sponsored initiative to kick-start peace efforts, which have been moribund since April 2014, saying it was tantamount to “a refusal to any proposal that could lead to a resolution to the conflict”.

“Israel is challenging the international community and its adherence to the two state solution,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

“Its occupation is the source of chaos and insecurity.”

In a statement released on Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel is ready to begin talks with the Palestinians immediately without preconditions.

“Israel adheres to its position that the best way to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is direct, bilateral negotiations,” the statement read. “Any other diplomatic initiative distances the Palestinians from direct negotiations.”

The Israeli announcement comes about a month before France holds an international summit of ministers from more than 20 countries, which will discuss ways to relaunch talks between Israelis and Palestinians – neither of whom have been invited to the meeting.

The summit, which will include the “Quartet” of the UN, the EU, Russia and the US, is projected to lay the ground work for an international summit in the second half of 2016, which will be attended by the Israelis and the Palestinians.

{{A spate of attacks}}

The conference is being held against the background of a spate of attacks that have left more than 209 Palestinians and 33 Israelis and foreign nationals dead since October 2015.

As the French initiative took shape, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas decided to hold off on plans to submit a resolution to the UN Security Council condemning Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank.

Shortly after Israel’s announcement, Palestinians said they would “continue to support the realisation of an international peace conference,” according to chief negotiator Sa’eb Erekat.

“The Israeli government’s call for “bilateral negotiations” is not a call for the achievement of the two-state solution, but an attempt at legitimising its settlement enterprise and the imposition of an Apartheid regime,” Erekat said.

He added that the Israeli rejection of the French initiative came just as authorities informed the Palestinians that the army would continue to storm Area A of the West Bank.

The Oslo Accords signed between the two sides divided the West Bank into three zones, with Area A under Palestinian jurisdiction.

Mustafa Barghouti, head of the Palestinian National Initiative, said Israel’s decision proved that “an alternative national strategy that focused on popular resistance and the boycott movement” was essential, in addition to reconciling feuding parties Hamas and Fatah.