Tag Archives: Middle East

U.S.-backed Syrian force launches battle to capture Raqqa from Islamic State

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) spokesman Talal Silo speaks during a press conference in Hukoumiya village in Raqqa, Syria June 6, 2017.REUTERS/Rodi Said

By Rodi Said and Tom Perry

HUKOUMIYA, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) – The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Tuesday it had launched a battle to capture Raqqa, Islamic State’s de facto Syrian capital, piling pressure on the jihadists whose self-declared caliphate is in retreat across Syria and Iraq.

SDF spokesman Talal Silo told Reuters the operation started on Monday and the fighting would be “fierce because Daesh (Islamic State) will die to defend their so-called capital”.

The assault overlaps with the final stages of the U.S.-backed attack to recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State. It follows months of advances to the north, east and west of Raqqa by the SDF, which includes Arab and Kurdish militias.

Islamic State captured Raqqa from rebel groups in 2014 and has used it as an operations base to plan attacks in the West. Silo said the assault had begun from the north, east and west of the city, which is bordered to the south by the River Euphrates.

The commander of the Raqqa campaign, Rojda Felat, told Reuters SDF fighters were attacking the al-Mishlab district at the city’s southeastern outskirts, confirming an earlier report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“The coalition has a big role in the success of the operations. In addition to warplanes, there are coalition forces working side by side with the SDF,” Silo said by phone from the Hukoumiya farms area, 10 km (6 miles) north of Raqqa, where the SDF later declared the start of the assault.

A Reuters witness at the location could hear the sound of heavy shelling and air strikes in the distance.

An Arab group in the SDF, the Syrian Elite Forces, which was established in February, had entered al-Mishlab with coalition air support, its spokesman Mohammed al-Shaker said by phone.

“The Syrian Elite Forces one or two hours ago entered the first quarter of Raqqa, which is al-Mishlab quarter, via the eastern front,” he said.

The U.S.-led coalition said the fight for Raqqa would be “long and difficult” but would deliver a “decisive blow to the idea of ISIS (Islamic State) as a physical caliphate”.

“It’s hard to convince new recruits that ISIS is a winning cause when they just lost their twin ‘capitals’ in both Iraq and Syria,” a coalition statement cited Lt. Gen Steve Townsend, the coalition commanding general, as saying.

“We all saw the heinous attack in Manchester, England,” said Townsend. “ISIS threatens all of our nations, not just Iraq and Syria, but in our own homelands as well. This cannot stand.”

“Once ISIS is defeated in both Mosul and (Raqqa), there will still be a lot of hard fighting ahead,” he said.

Security officials in the West have warned of increased threat of attacks such as last month’s Manchester suicide bombing and Saturday’s attack in London as Islamic State loses ground in Syria and Iraq. Both attacks were claimed by Islamic State.

AIR STRIKES

The Observatory said the SDF had captured some buildings in the al-Mishlab area, and that Islamic State fighters had withdrawn from parts of the district. The Observatory also said an attack was underway against a military barracks, Division 17, on the northern outskirts of Raqqa.

The U.S.-led coalition has said 3,000-4,000 Islamic State fighters are thought to be holed up in Raqqa city, where they have erected defenses against the anticipated assault. The city is about 90 km (56 miles) from the border with Turkey.

The SDF includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia.

Fighting around Raqqa since late last year has displaced tens of thousands of people, with many flooding camps in the area and others stranded in the desert.

The U.N. human rights office has raised concerns about increasing reports of civilian deaths as air strikes escalate.

The Raqqa campaign has “resulted in massive civilian casualties, displacement and serious infrastructure destruction” so far, it said in a May report. Islamic State militants have also reportedly been preventing civilians from leaving, it said.

The U.S.-led coalition says it tries to avoid civilian casualties in its bombing runs in Syria and Iraq and investigates any allegations.

The Raqqa campaign has been the source of tension between the United States and Turkey, which fears growing Kurdish influence in northern Syria and has lobbied Washington to abandon its Kurdish YPG allies.

The YPG has been the main partner for the United States in its campaign against Islamic State in Syria, where the group is also being fought in separate campaigns waged by the Russian-backed Syrian government and Free Syrian Army rebel groups.

The United States last week said it had started distributing arms to the YPG to help take Raqqa.

The SDF has said it will hand control of Raqqa to a civilian council from the city after its capture, echoing the pattern in other areas the SDF took from Islamic State.

Speaking alongside Silo at the news conference, an official with the Raqqa civilian council said it would take control of the city from the “liberating forces”.

The SDF and YPG control a swathe of northeastern Syria from the Iraqi border to the city of Manbij on the western banks of the Euphrates. The main Kurdish groups and their allies have established autonomous administration in the areas under their control, which they aim to preserve in any peace deal.

(Reporting by Rodi Said in Syria, Tom Perry and Ellen Francis in Beirut; Additional reporting by Mahmoud Mourad in Cairo; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Kuwait seeks to mediate Arab crisis over Qatar

An Eikon ship-tracking screen shows tanker traffic around Qatar over the last seven days in this June 6, 2017 illustration photo. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration

By Tom Finn and Sylvia Westall

DOHA/DUBAI (Reuters) – Kuwait’s ruler will travel to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, hoping to heal a damaging rift between Qatar and powerful Arab states over the former’ s alleged support of Islamist militants and of political and religious rival Iran.

Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber al-Sabah will meet with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and seek to resolve the worst infighting among the Arab world’s strongest and richest powers in decades.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain severed relations with Qatar and closed their airspace to commercial flights on Monday.

In a sign of the potential consequences for the Qatari economy, a number of banks in the region began stepping back from business dealings with Qatar. Saudi Arabia’s central bank advised banks in the kingdom not to trade with Qatari banks in Qatari riyals, sources said.

Oil prices also fell on concern that the rift would undermine efforts by OPEC to tighten production.

Qatar and the other Arab states fell out over Doha’s alleged support for Islamist militants and Shi’ite Iran — charges Qatar has called baseless.

It said, however, that it would not retaliate and hoped Kuwait would help resolve the dispute.

Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani told Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV that Qatar wants to give Kuwait’s ruler the ability to “proceed and communicate with the parties to the crisis and to try to contain the issue”.

Qatar’s leader, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, spoke by telephone overnight with his counterpart in Kuwait and, in order to allow Kuwait to mediate, decided to put off a planned speech to the nation, the foreign minister said.

Qatar has for years parlayed its enormous gas wealth and media influence into a broad influence in the region. But Gulf Arab neighbors and Egypt have long been irked by its maverick stances and support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which they regard as a political enemy.

Yemen, Libya’s eastern-based government and the Maldives – close allies of Qatar’s adversaries in the spat – also cut ties.

The United States, Russia, France, Iran and Turkey have all called for the row to be resolved through dialogue.

BANKS SHUN QATAR, FLIGHTS DIVERTED

Tightening pressure, Saudi Arabia’s aviation authority revoked the license of Qatar Airways and ordered its offices to be closed within 48 hours, a day after the kingdom, the UAE and Bahrain closed their airspace to Qatari commercial flights.

Flight tracker websites showed Qatar Airways flights taking a circuitous route mostly over Iran to avoid their neighbors.

Some Saudi Arabian and UAE commercial banks were also shunning Qatari banks, holding off on letters of credit, banking sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

With an estimated $335 billion of assets in its sovereign wealth fund and its gas exports earning billions of dollars every month, Qatar, however, has enough financial power to protect its banks.

Qatar’s stock market rebounded in early trade on Tuesday after plunging the previous day but the Qatari riyal fell against the U.S. dollar.

Kuwait’s emir, who has spent decades as a diplomat and mediator in regional disputes, hosted Sheikh Tamim last week as the crisis began brewing.

Monday’s decision forbids Saudi, UAE and Bahraini citizens from traveling to Qatar, residing in it or passing through it, instructing their citizens to leave Qatar within 14 days and Qatari nationals were given 14 days to leave those countries.

The measures are more severe than during a previous eight-month rift in 2014, when Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE withdrew their ambassadors from Doha, again alleging Qatari support for militant groups.

The United Arab Emirates said Qatar needed to carry out specific confidence-building measures and change its behavior.

“After previous experiences with the brother state, we need a frame for the future that will consolidate the security and the stability of the region,” UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash wrote on Twitter overnight.

“We need to rebuild trust after broken pledges, we need a guaranteed roadmap,” he wrote.

But Qatari state TV broadcast images of Sheikh Tamim embracing the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi — whose stay in Doha has for years irked Gulf states – as part of an annual Ramadan reception with Islamic clerics on Monday.

(Reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo, Aziz El Yaakoubi, Tom Arnold, Hadeel Al Sayegh, William Maclean and Celine Aswad in Dubai, Writing by Noah Browning, Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Kurdish YPG says ‘major operation’ on Syria’s Raqqa to start in days

FILE PHOTO: Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters hold up their weapons in the north of Raqqa city, Syria February 3, 2017. Picture taken February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Rodi Said/File Photo

By Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A U.S.-backed operation by Syrian forces to capture Islamic State’s Syrian “capital” of Raqqa will start in the next “few days”, the spokesman for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia said on Saturday.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias backed by the U.S.-led coalition, has been encircling Raqqa since November in a multi-phased campaign to drive Islamic State from the city where it has planned attacks on the West.

The assault on Raqqa will pile more pressure on Islamic State’s self-declared “caliphate” with the group facing defeat in the Iraqi city of Mosul and being forced into retreat across much of Syria, where Deir al-Zor is its last major foothold.

“The forces reached the outskirts of the city, and the major operation will start … in the coming few days,” YPG spokesman Nouri Mahmoud told Reuters by phone.

He was confirming a report citing the spokeswoman for the Raqqa campaign, Jihan Sheikh Ahmed, as indicating a new phase to storm Raqqa would start in the “coming few days”. The remarks made in an interview with a local media outlet were circulated by an SDF-run Whatsapp group.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State said it would not comment on the timeline for the next phase of operations to retake the Syrian city, located on the River Euphrates some 90 km (56 miles) from the Turkish border.

The spokesman, Colonel Ryan Dillon, said the SDF were “advancing closer and closer every day”, having moved to within 3 km (less than two miles) of Raqqa to the north and east.

To the west, the SDF were less than 10 km (six miles) away, he said in an email interview.

The United States said on Tuesday it had started distributing arms to the YPG to help take Raqqa, part of a plan that has angered NATO-ally Turkey, which is worried by growing Kurdish influence in northern Syria.

Turkey views the YPG as the Syrian extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has fought an insurgency in southeast Turkey since 1984 and is considered a terrorist group by the United States, Turkey and Europe.

The U.S.-led coalition has said some 3,000 to 4,000 Islamic State fighters are thought to be holed up in Raqqa city, where they have erected defenses against the anticipated assault.

The U.S.-led coalition has provided air support and special forces to help the SDF operations near Raqqa.

“The battle will not be easy,” Mahmoud said. “Of course (IS) has tunnels, mines, car bombs, suicide bombers, and at the same time it is using civilians as human shields.”

Once Raqqa falls, Deir al-Zor province in eastern Syria will be Islamic State’s last major foothold in Syria and Iraq.

“Daesh will resist because Raqqa is its capital and if Raqqa goes that means the entire caliphate is gone,” Mahmoud said.

(Reporting by Tom Perry; Editing by Helen Popper)

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to revive travel ban

A picture of the travel advisory page of Qatar Airways advising passengers bound for the United States from seven newly banned majority Muslim countries that they need to have either a U.S. green card or diplomatic visa, January 28, 2017 in London, Britain. Picture taken January 28, 2017. REUTERS/Russell Boyce

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive his plan to temporarily ban travelers from six Muslim-majority nations after it was blocked by lower courts that found it was discriminatory.

In deciding whether to allow the ban to go into effect, the nine justices are set to weigh whether Trump’s harsh election campaign rhetoric can be used as evidence that the order was intended to discriminate against Muslims.

The administration filed emergency applications with the nine high court justices seeking to block two different lower court rulings that went against Trump’s March 6 order barring entry for people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the U.S. government implements stricter visa screening.

The move comes after the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on May 25 upheld a Maryland judge’s ruling blocking the order.

The administration also filed a separate appeal in that case.

“We have asked the Supreme Court to hear this important case and are confident that President Trump’s executive order is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe and protect our communities from terrorism,” Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the legal groups challenging the ban, tweeted in response: “We’ve beat this hateful ban and are ready to do it again.”

At least five votes are needed on the nine-justice court in order to grant a stay. The court has a 5-4 conservative majority, with Justice Anthony Kennedy – a conservative who sometimes sides with the court’s four liberals – the frequent swing vote. Another of the court’s conservatives, Neil Gorsuch, was appointed by Trump this year.

If the government’s emergency requests are granted, the ban would go into effect immediately.

The court first has to act on whether to grant the emergency applications, which could happen within a fortnight. Then, the justices will decide whether to hear the government’s full appeal. The Supreme Court is not required to hear the case but is likely to due to its importance and the fact that the request is being made by the U.S. government.

The Justice Department has asked the court to expedite the case so that the justices could hear it at the beginning of their next term, which starts in October. That means, if the court allows the ban to go into effect, the final decision would be issued long after the 90 days has elapsed.

In the court filings, Acting Solicitor General Jeff Wall highlighted the unprecedented nature of courts second-guessing the president on national security and immigration.

“This order has been the subject of passionate political debate. But whatever one’s views, the precedent set by this case for the judiciary’s proper role in reviewing the president’s national-security and immigration authority will transcend this debate, this Order, and this constitutional moment,” he wrote.

In its 10-3 ruling, the appeals court in Virginia said the challengers, including refugee groups and others represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, were likely to succeed on their claim that the order violated the U.S. Constitution’s bar against favoring or disfavoring a particular religion.

The government had argued that the court should not take into account Trump’s comments during the 2016 U.S. presidential race since he made them before he took office on Jan. 20. But the appeals court rejected that view, saying they shed light on the motivations behind Trump’s order.

During the campaign, Trump campaign called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

His administration has argued that the travel ban is needed to prevent terrorism in the United States.

Federal courts in both Maryland and Hawaii issued rulings suspending key parts of the ban. The appeals court in Virginia upheld the Maryland ruling. A San Francisco-based appeals court is currently considering the Hawaii case.

The administration is asking the Supreme Court to throw out the injunction imposed in both cases.

The March ban was Trump’s second effort to implement travel restrictions on people from several Muslim-majority countries through an executive order. The first, issued on Jan. 27, led to chaos and protests at airports and in major U.S. cities before it was blocked by courts.

The second order was intended to overcome the legal issues posed by the original ban, but it was blocked by judges before it could go into effect on March 16.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Sue Horton, Christian Schmollinger, Shr Navaratnam and Michael Perry)

Islamic State fighters seal off Mosul mosque preparing for last stand

A member of the Iraqi rapid response forces fires a mortar shell against Islamic State militants positions in western Mosul, Iraq May 31, 2017. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Islamic State militants have closed the streets around Mosul’s Grand al-Nuri Mosque, residents said, apparently in preparation for a final showdown in the battle over their last major stronghold in Iraq.

Dozens of fighters were seen by residents taking up positions in the past 48 hours around the medieval mosque, the site where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamist caliphate in July 2014.

Islamic State’s black flag has been flying from the mosque since the militants captured Mosul and seized swathes of Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014.

U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces retook eastern Mosul in January and began a new push on Saturday to capture the group’s remaining enclave in western Mosul, comprising of the Old City center where the mosque is located, and three adjacent districts alongside the western bank of the River Tigris.

The fall of the city would, in effect, mark the end of the Iraqi half of the self-styled caliphate. Meanwhile in Syria, Kurdish forces backed by U.S.-air strikes are beseiging Islamic State forces in the city of Raqqa, the militants’ de facto capital in that country.

SYMBOLIC FOCUS

Up to 200,000 people still live in harrowing conditions behind Islamic State lines in Mosul, running low on food, water and medicine, and with difficult access to hospitals, the United Nations said on Sunday.

The Grand al-Nuri Mosque has become a symbolic focus of the campaign, with Iraqi commanders privately saying they hope to capture it during Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month which started over the weekend in Iraq.

“Daesh’s fighters know that the mosque is the most important target and they are preparing for a major battle there,” said Hisham al-Hashemi, who advises several Middle East government including Iraq’s on Islamic State affairs.

But a battle in or near the mosque would put the building and its famed leaning minaret at risk, experts have said.

The minaret, several feet off the perpendicular and standing on humid soil, is particularly vulnerable as it has not been renovated since 1970. Its tilt gave the landmark its popular name – al-Hadba, or the hunchback.

The Mosul offensive, now in its eighth month, has taken much more time than expected as Islamic State is fighting in the middle of civilians and using them as human shields.

Over the past few days, the militants ordered dozens of families living in the Zanjili district to move into the Old City to prevent them from escaping toward the Iraqi forces trying to advance from the northern side, a resident said.

Government forces have been dropping leaflets over the districts telling families to flee but the intensity of the fighting has prevented people from escaping.

The militants been countering the offensive with suicide car and motorbike bombs, snipers, booby-traps and mortar fire.

About 700,000 people, about a third of the pre-war city’s population, have already fled, seeking refuge either with friends and relatives or in camps.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Syrian rebels say U.S., allies sending more arms to fend off Iran threat

FILE PHOTO: Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) ride on a tank during a battle with Islamic State militants, at Um Jaris village on the Iraqi border with Syria, Iraq May 29, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

By Tom Perry, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Maher Chmaytelli

BEIRUT/AMMAN/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Syrian rebels say the United States and its allies are sending them more arms to try to fend off a new push into the southeast by Iran-backed militias aiming to open an overland supply route between Iraq and Syria.

The stakes are high as Iran seeks to secure its influence from Tehran to Beirut in a “Shi’ite crescent” of Iranian influence through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, where Sunni Arab states have lost out in power struggles with Iran.

Tensions escalated in the southeastern region of Syria, known as the Badia, this month when government forces supported by Iraqi Shi’ite militias deployed in a challenge to rebels backed by President Bashar al-Assad’s enemies.

This has coincided with a march toward the Syrian border by Shi’ite militias from Iraq. They reached the frontier adjoining northern Syria on Monday. A top Iraqi militia commander said a wider operation to take the area from Sunni jihadist Islamic State would start on Tuesday and this would help Syria’s army.

While in Iraq the United States has fought alongside Iranian-backed Iraqi government forces and Shi’ite militias against Islamic State, in Syria Washington has lined up against Assad’s Iranian-backed government and wants to block a further expansion of Iranian influence, with its regional allies.

The sides are vying for pole position in the next major phase of the fight against Islamic State: the battle to dislodge it from the eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zor where many of the jihadists have relocated from Raqqa and Mosul.

Several rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner operate in the sparsely populated Badia, where they captured swathes of territory from Islamic State this year. U.S. air strikes on May 18 targeted Iran-backed fighters who had moved into the area.

Also in May, Damascus declared both the Badia and Deir al-Zor priorities of its campaign to re-establish its rule over Syria, which has been shattered by six years of war that have killed hundreds of thousands of people. The government is being helped by both Iran and Russia, while the opposition has been helped by the West and regional states which oppose Assad.

Rebels said military aid has been boosted through two separate channels: a program backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), known as the MOC, and regional states including Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and one run by the Pentagon.

“There has been an increase in the support,” said Tlass Salameh, head of the Jaish Usoud al-Sharqiya, one of the FSA groups backed via the CIA-backed program. “There’s no way we can let them open the Baghdad-Damascus highway,” he said.

A senior commander of a Pentagon-backed group, Maghawir al-Thawra, told Reuters a steady flow of weapons had arrived at their base near the Iraqi border since the pro-Damascus forces began deploying this month.

He said efforts to recruit and train local fighters from Deir al-Zor had accelerated at their garrison at Tanf, on the highway some 20 km (12 miles) from the Iraqi border.

“The equipment and reinforcements come and go daily … but in the last few weeks they have brought in more heavy military vehicles, TOW (missiles), and armored vehicles,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Two armored vehicles newly delivered to the Tanf garrison were shown in photos sent to Reuters from a rebel source. A video showed fighters unpacking mortar bombs.

In a written response to emailed questions from Reuters, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition did not say if coalition support to Maghawir al-Thawra had increased.

Colonel Ryan Dillon said coalition forces were “prepared to defend themselves if pro-regime forces refuse to vacate” a de-confliction zone around Tanf.

“The coalition has observed pro-regime forces patrolling in the vicinity of the established de-confliction zone around the Tanf training site in Syria … Pro-regime patrols and the continued armed and hostile presence of forces inside the … zone is unacceptable and threatening to coalition forces.”

U.S. jets this week dropped leaflets on pro-government forces instructing them to pull out of the Tanf area to the Zaza junction further from the border. The leaflets were obtained by Hammurabi Justice, a Maghawir-linked website.

The Syrian army could not be reached for comment.

A commander in the military alliance fighting in support of Assad told Reuters the deployment of government forces and pro-Damascus Iraqi fighters in the Badia would “obstruct all the plans of the MOC, Jordan and America”.

The commander, a non-Syrian, said Assad’s enemies were committed to blocking “what they call the (Shi’ite) Crescent”. But, he said, “Now, our axis is insistent on this matter and it will be accomplished.”

The Iraqi Badr militia said its advance to the Syrian border would help the Syrian army reach the border from the other side. “The Americans will not be allowed to control the border,” its leader, Hadi al-Amiri, told al-Mayadeen TV.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Israeli documents from days after war have familiar ring 50 years on

A researcher scans declassified documents for Akevot, an Israeli NGO researching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem May 10, 2017. Picture taken May 10, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Within days of capturing East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, Israel was examining options about their future ranging from Jewish settlement-building to the creation of a Palestinian state.

As the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the war nears on June 5, recently unearthed documents detailing the post-war legal and diplomatic debate have a familiar ring, and underline how little progress has been made towards resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Akevot, an Israeli NGO researching the conflict, has spent thousands of hours over two years gaining access to declassified, often dog-eared, documents and building a digital record of them.

The group’s aim in obtaining the files, at a time when the Israel State Archives has restricted access to its resources as it conducts its own digitization project, is to ensure that primary sources of conflict decision-making remain accessible to researchers, diplomats, journalists and the wider public.

“One of the things we realized early on was that so many of the policies related to current day Israeli government activities in the occupied territories have roots going back to the very first year of occupation,” said Lior Yavne, founder and director of Akevot.

“Policies that were envisaged very early on, 1967 or 1968, serve government policies to this day.”

In six days of war, Israel’s army seized 5,900 square km (2,280 square miles) of the West Bank, the walled Old City of Jerusalem and more than two dozen Arab villages on the city’s eastern flank.

On other fronts it conquered the Golan Heights from Syria, and Sinai and the Gaza Strip from Egypt.

But for the Israeli prime minister’s office, the foreign ministry and assorted legal advisers, the thorniest questions surrounded how to handle the unexpected seizure of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the 660,000 Palestinians living there.

“THE WAR NEVER ENDED”

A little over a month after the war ended on June 10, 1967, senior foreign ministry officials had drafted a set of seven possibilities of what to do with the West Bank and Gaza.

They considered everything from establishing an independent, demilitarized Palestinian state with its capital as close as possible to Jerusalem, to annexing the entire area to Israel or handing most of it over to Jordan.

The authors explained the need to move rapidly because “internationally, the impression that Israel maintains colonial rule over these occupied territories may arise in the interim”.

While the document analyses in detail the idea of an independent Palestinian state, it presents most positively the case for annexation, while also making clear its “inherent dangers”.

Option four, listed as “the graduated solution”, is the one perhaps closest to what exists to this day: a plan to establish a Palestinian state only once there is a peace agreement between Israel and Arab nations.

“The Six-Day War actually never ended,” said Tom Segev, a leading Israeli historian and author of “1967 – Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East”.

“The seventh day has lasted ever since for the last 50 years. And it is affecting both us and the Palestinians … every day, every minute.”

SETTLEMENTS

Perhaps the trickiest and most legally nuanced discussions were around Israel’s responsibilities under international law, and whether it could build settlements.

Palestinians and many countries consider Israel’s settlements on occupied land they seek for a state as illegal. Israel disputes this, citing historical, biblical and political links to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as security considerations.

After the 1967 war, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and considers all of Jerusalem as its “indivisible and eternal capital”, a status that has not won international recognition. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestine.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Israel has consistently violated U.N. resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention in its actions in occupied territory, particularly in Jerusalem.

“All these measures … can’t change the fact that Jerusalem is an occupied city, just like the rest of Palestinian lands,” he said.

Theodor Meron, one of the world’s leading jurists who was then legal adviser to the foreign ministry, wrote several memos in late 1967 and early 1968 laying out his position on settlements.

In a covering letter to one secret memo sent to the prime minister’s political secretary, Meron said: “My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention”.

Meron, who now lives in the United States, set his arguments out over several pages, but they boiled down to the fact that Israel was a signatory to the Geneva Convention which prohibits transferring citizens of an occupying state onto occupied land.

“…any legal arguments that we shall try to find will not counteract the heavy international pressure that will be exerted upon us even by friendly countries which will base themselves on the Fourth Geneva Convention,” he wrote.

The only way he could see settlements being legally justified – and even then he made clear he didn’t favor the argument – was if they were in temporary camps and “carried out by military and not civilian entities”.

While in the early years settlements were militaristic and often temporary, the enterprise now has full government backing, houses some 350,000 civilians in the West Bank and has all the hallmarks of permanence.

Meron declined to respond to specific questions from Reuters.

But in an article this month in the American Journal of International Law, he expressed concern about “the continued march toward an inexorable demographic change in the West Bank” and the appointment by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration of an ambassador to Israel who has raised funds for settlements.

There is, Meron wrote in the journal, a growing perception in the international community that “individual Palestinians’ human rights, as well as their rights under the Fourth Geneva Convention, are being violated.”

NAMES

Immediately after the war, almost no element of Israel’s land seizure went unexamined, whether by the military, the prime minister’s office, the foreign ministry, naming committees or religious authorities.

In a memo on June 22, 1967, Michael Comay, political adviser to the foreign ministry, wrote to the ministry’s deputy director-general saying they needed to be careful about using phrases like “occupied territories” or “occupying power” because they supported the International Committee of the Red Cross’s view that the local population should have rights under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

“There are two alternatives: Using the term TERRITORIES OF THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT or TERRITORIES UNDER ISRAEL CONTROL,” he wrote. “Externally, I prefer the second option.”

Even now, the government avoids talking about occupation, instead suggesting that the West Bank is “disputed territory”.

(Additional reporting by Rinat Harash in Jerusalem and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mike Collett-White)

Russia fires cruise missiles at Islamic State targets from Mediterranean

A still image taken from a video footage and released by Russia's Defence Ministry shows bombs hitting what Defence Ministry said were Islamic State targets near the Syrian city of Palmyra. Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation/via REUTERS TV

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian warship and submarine have fired four cruise missiles from the Mediterranean at Islamic State targets near the Syrian city of Palmyra, the Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

The strike, which Russian news agencies said was the first of its kind since November, was carried out by the frigate “Admiral Essen” and the submarine “Krasnodar,” and targeted militants and equipment in an area east of Palmyra.

The defense ministry said the hardware and forces struck had previously been deployed by Islamic State in Raqqa.

“All targets were destroyed,” it said in a statement.

Russia had warned the United States, Turkey and Israel before launching the missiles, the ministry said.

It did not say when the strike took place, but Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had personally told President Vladimir Putin about the military action late on Tuesday.

The last time Russia fired Kalibr cruise missiles from its ships at militant targets in Syria was in November last year, the RIA news agency said.

Separately, photographs published on Wednesday by Turkish bloggers for their online Bosphorus Naval News project showed a Russian Syria-bound ship passing through the Bosphorus carrying a consignment of military trucks.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova/Dmitry Solovyov/Jack Stubbs; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Civilians lack food, water, medicine as Mosul battle mounts: U.N.

A view of a part of western Mosul, Iraq May 29, 2017. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

By Maher Chmaytelli

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of civilians in parts of Mosul held by Islamic State are struggling to get food, water and medicine, the United Nations said, days into a new push by U.S.-backed Iraqi government troops to take the northern city.

Up to 200,000 people still live behind Islamic State lines in Mosul’s Old City and three other districts, U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator Lise Grande told Reuters late on Sunday.

She spoke a day after Iraq’s army said it had launched a new offensive to take the militant zones on the western side of the Tigris river.

Progress has been slow, an Iraqi government adviser told Reuters, also late on Sunday. “The fighting is extremely intense … the presence of civilians means we have to be very cautious,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

People who had managed to get out of the militant areas “report a dramatic situation including lack of food, limited water and severe shortages of medicines,” Grande said by phone.

“We know that there have been health facilities in these areas, but we don’t know whether they are still functioning.”

Government forces have been dropping leaflets over the districts telling families to flee – but many have remained fearing getting caught in the cross-fire.

“We have been informed by authorities that the evacuation is not compulsory … If civilians decide to stay … they will be protected by Iraqi security forces,” said Grande.

“People who choose to flee will be directed to safe routes. The location of these will change depending on which areas are under attack and dynamics on the battlefield,” she added.

The latest Iraqi government push is part of a broader offensive in Mosul, now in its eighth month. It has taken longer than planned as the militants are dug in among civilians, retaliating with suicide car and motorbike bombs, booby traps, snipers and mortar fire.

Its prime target is the medieval Grand al-Nuri mosque with its landmark leaning minaret in Mosul’s Old City, where Islamic State’s black flag has been flying since mid-2014.

The fall of Mosul would, in effect, mark the end of the Iraqi half of the “caliphate” declared nearly three years ago by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a speech at the mosque.

About 700,000 people, about a third of the pre-war city’s population, have already fled, seeking refuge either with friends and relatives or in camps.

(Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Iran says it has built third underground ballistic missile factory

FILE PHOTO: An Iranian national flag flutters in Tehran April 15, 2011. REUTERS/STR/File Photo

By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran has built a third underground ballistic missile production factory and will keep developing its missile program, the semi-official Fars news agency quoted a senior commander of the elite Revolutionary Guard as saying.

The development is likely to fuel tensions with the United States in a week when President Donald Trump, on his first foreign trip, has called Iran a sponsor of militant groups and a threat to countries across the Middle East.

“Iran’s third underground factory has been built by the Guards in recent years … We will continue to further develop our missile capabilities forcefully,” Fars quoted Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the Guard’s airspace division, as saying.

Since taking office in January, Trump has imposed new sanctions on Iran in response to its recent missile launches, putting Tehran “on notice”.

Iran has reacted defiantly. Newly re-elected pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday: “Iran does not need the permission of the United States to conduct missile tests”.

Iran’s Sunni Muslim Gulf neighbors and its arch-enemy Israel have expressed concerns over Tehran’s ballistic missile program, seeing it as a threat to regional security.

In 2015, Iranian state TV aired footage of underground tunnels with ready-to-fire missiles on the back of trucks, saying the facility was one of hundreds of underground missile bases around the country.

“It is natural that our enemies America and the Zionist regime (Israel) are angry with our missile program because they want Iran to be in a weak position,” Hajizadeh said.

Most nuclear-related sanctions on Iran were lifted last year after Tehran fulfilled commitments under a 2015 deal with major powers to scale back its nuclear program – an agreement that Trump has frequently criticized as being too soft on Tehran. But Iran remains subject to a U.N. arms embargo and other restrictions.

Two months after implementation of the deal, the Guards test-fired two ballistic missiles that it said were designed to be able to hit Israel.

Iran says its missile program is not in defiance with a U.N. resolution that calls on it to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to eight years.

“Along with improving our defense capabilities, we will continue our missile tests and missile production. The next missile to be produced is a surface-to-surface missile,” said Hajizadeh, without elaborating.

In retaliation for the new U.S. sanctions over its ballistic missile program, Iran this month added nine American individuals and companies to its own list of 15 U.S. companies for alleged human rights violations and cooperation with Israel.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)