Middle East Experience

More than a year after his son was killed by Israeli forces in disputed circumstances in the occupied West Bank, Mustafa Erekat is still seeking his remains..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: Israel continues to hold bodies as bargaining chips

Around 60 per cent of the neighbourhood’s area of 15 million square feet is covered by verdant greenery..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: Dubai’s Al Barari exudes idyllic charm, multiculturism

Azerbaijan on Tuesday shut down the office of the representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Baku, Iranian state media reported.Azeri authorities shut down the mosque and office of Ali-Akbar Ojaghnejad, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said, without providing further details.The Iranian embassy in Baku later on Tuesday denied the closure of Ojaghnejad’s office, saying that only a congregation hall affiliated with the office has been closed due to COVID-19 related restrictions, Tasnim reported.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Tensions between Tehran and Baku have risen over the past week.Azeri President Ilham Aliyev last week criticized Iran for holding military drills near his country’s borders.“Every country can carry out any military drill on its own territory. It’s their sovereign right. But why now, and why on our border?” Aliyev said in an interview published Monday with Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.In response, Iran said the drills near the border with Azerbaijan were a “question of sovereignty.”Despite Aliyev’s criticism, the Iranian army started military exercises near the country’s border with Azerbaijan on Friday.Iran and Azerbaijan share a border of around 700 kilometers (430 miles).Iran is wary of Azerbaijan’s relations with Israel, which is a major supplier of arms to Baku. Tehran is also wary over nationalists in Turkey and Azerbaijan fanning separatist tendencies among its sizeable ethnic Azeri population.Read more:Iran’s Supreme leader Khamenei defends military drills near Azerbaijan borderTurkey plans military drills with Azerbaijan after Iran’s army exercises near borderIran to hold military drill near border with Azerbaijan amid Tehran-Baku tensionsIran begins war games near border, despite criticism from Azerbaijan
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Azerbaijan shuts down office of Khamenei’s representative in Baku: Iranian media

Egypt is finalizing arrangements to start supplying gas to Lebanon soon under a plan to help ease Lebanon’s power crisis, the two countries’ energy ministers said after meeting on Tuesday.Under an agreement announced last month, Egypt will supply natural gas to Lebanon via a pipeline that passes through Jordan and Syria to help to boost Lebanon’s electricity output. The deal, agreed by all four countries, is part of a US-backed plan to address Lebanon’s power shortages.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Lebanese Energy Minister Walid Fayad said on Tuesday that Egypt could provide more gas than originally anticipated if necessary but gave no details.“Egypt offered ... helping in the energy sector through the possibility of offering extra quantities of gas,” Fayad said at a joint press briefing with Egyptian Petroleum Minister Tarek El Molla in Cairo after their meeting.“We will have another discussion on this,” Fayad said, without elaborating.Molla said that the two countries agreed on a roadmap for the gas supplies.“God willing, we can finish the measures related to the deal within the few coming weeks,” Molla said, but did not say when supplies would begin.Life in Lebanon has been paralyzed by the crisis, which has deepened as supplies of imported fuel have dried up. It is part of a wider financial crisis that has sunk the Lebanese currency by 90 percent since 2019.The energy plan, however, is complicated by US sanctions on the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. Lebanese officials have called on Washington to grant an exemption.Read more: Egypt’s natural gas to reach Lebanon by year-end: Minister
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Egypt close to finalizing arrangements for gas supplies to Lebanon

Among the candidates running in Iraq’s general elections this week is the leader of one of the most hard-line and powerful militias with close ties to Iran who once battled US troops.Hussein Muanis joins a long list of candidates from among Iran-backed Shiite factions vying for parliament seats. But he is the first to be openly affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades, signaling the militant group’s formal entry into politics.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.The group is on a US list of terrorist organizations and is accused by US officials of targeting American forces in Iraq. Muanis himself was jailed by the Americans for four years from 2008 to 2012 for fighting US troops.“Our entrance into politics is a religious obligation. I battled the occupiers militarily and now I will battle them politically,” he said, speaking to The Associated Press recently in his office in central Baghdad.Muanis, 50, says he has given up his militia fatigues in favor of politics. He now heads a political movement called “Harakat Huqooq,” or Rights Movement, which is fielding 32 candidates and an electoral program stressing the departure of US troops from Iraq.The Kataib Hezbollah group has been struck by US forces near the Iraq-Syria border several times. In December 2019, the US carried out strikes targeting military sites belonging to the group after blaming it for a rocket barrage that killed a US defense contractor at a military compound near Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Around 20 militiamen were killed.Harakat Huqooq’s campaign advertisements decorate the streets of Shiite dominated areas in Baghdad and southern Iraq.Iraq is holding elections on Oct. 10, the fifth parliamentary vote since the US-led invasion that ousted dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, which shifted the country’s power base from minority Arab Sunnis to majority Shiites. The vote was brought forward by one year in response to mass protests that broke out in late 2019 over endemic corruption, poor services and unemployment.While a new electoral law has allowed more independents to run, Shiite groups continue to dominate the electoral landscape with a tight race expected between pro-Iran parties and their militias — the largest of which is the Fatah alliance — and the political bloc of Shiite nationalist heavyweight Moqtada al-Sadr, the biggest winner in the 2018 elections.The Fatah alliance includes leaders associated with the paramilitary Popular Mobilization Units, an umbrella group for mostly pro-Iran state-sanctioned militias, including Kataib Hezbollah. But the group has lost some popularity following the 2019 protests, with activists accusing hard-line armed factions of brutally suppressing protesters by using live ammunition and tear gas to disperse crowds.Protesters demanding change and reform were also often railing against Iran’s heavy-handed interferences in Iraqi politics. More than 600 were killed and thousands injured during the months-long protests.Analysts say the entry of Kataeb Hezbollah — the group is separate from the Lebanese group of the same name — might be an attempt by Iran to strengthen its allies inside Iraq’s parliament.Bassam al-Qazwini, a Baghdad-based political analyst, said after the 2019 protest movement Iran pushed for hard-liners to go into politics.“Harakat Huqooq opens the door for hard-line factions to enter the realm of politics and the parliament building,” he said, adding that he did not expect them to win a lot of seats.Muanis, a slender man who sports a light beard, said his reasons for entering politics is the people’s disappointment with the current political situation and politicians’ failure to implement reform.“So we are participating in order to bring about change,” he said. If he wins, he says he will work from inside parliament on “regaining Iraqi sovereignty by having the occupier leave,” he said of the Americans.Asked about the proliferation of arms outside state control, he said: “Whenever the occupation is no longer there then we can discuss it. Then there would be no need to bear arms.”Read more: If you want change, participate in the elections: Iraq’s PM Mustafa al-Kadhimi
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Iraq’s Iran-backed militias seek to consolidate political power in vote

The Israeli Mossad has carried out two security operations last month in Lebanon and Syria in search of its lost pilot Ron Arad’s remains, sources told Al Arabiya.The sources added that DNA has been taken from a body buried in the Lebanese village of Nabi Sheet in the Bekaa valley, to examine the possibility that it was Arad’s remains.For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Many years have passed since Israel lost its pilot, Ron Arad, whose plane was shot down over Lebanese territory in 1986, but Tel Aviv has not stopped seeking information about his fate, especially since his case is still attracting the attention of the Israeli public.The source added that the second operation, which was carried out in Syria, included the kidnapping of a retired Iranian officer and interrogation regarding the pilot’s case before he was later released.In addition, the sources indicated that it is not excluded that Iran may have tried to respond in Cyprus to this development.Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, on Monday, that the Mossad had carried out an operation to obtain new information about Ron Arad.He added in a speech before the parliament that intelligence agents have “carried out a large-scale and daring operation” in an effort to find out the fate of the long-missing pilot.Arad was taken out of the plane that was shot down over Lebanon, during a mission in 1986.He was first captured by the Lebanese Amal Movement fighters, but information about him was later cut off, while it was widely believed that he would not be alive.The fate of the pilot has always attracted strong public interest in Israel, whose leaders have vowed over the years to reveal what happened to him, without result.Read more:Bennett spokesman accuses Iran of planning attacks against Israelis living in CyprusIsrael is ready to solve dispute with Lebanon over sea border: Energy minister
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Israel has conducted operations in Lebanon, Syria in search of pilot’s remains

Students pledge their lives to serve the community at virtual White Coat Ceremony..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: New batch of health professionals take oath at Gulf Medical University

The European Union is ready to support the Lebanese government’s plan to rescue the debt-ridden country from its worst economic and financial crisis in history, the EU Ambassador to Lebanon Ralph Tarraf said Tuesday..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: EU ready to support govt’s economic rescue plan: EU envoy

The UN special envoy for Yemen met Tuesday with the prime minister of the country’s internationally recognized government in the port city of Aden, officials said.Hans Grundberg landed in Aden in his first visit to the war-scarred country since taking up his post last month, according to the UN mission in Yemen.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.He met with Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed in Mashiq Palace, the mission said in a tweet. Aden serves as interim capital since the civil war erupted seven years ago.They discussed the latest political developments, and the UN envoy reiterated the importance of the Riyadh Agreement, which ended the fighting between government forces and United Arab Emirates-backed southern separatists, the mission said.Grundberg also met with Aydarous al-Zubaidi, the head of the separatists’ Southern Transitional Council, according to the council.Saeed said the government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi “supports ... any political settlement ending the suffering of Yemenis,” according to Yemen’s official SABA news agency.The Prime Minister accused the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels of undermining a political settlement with “military escalation and targeting civilians and displaced people,” SABA reported.Grundberg met last month with Houthi chief negotiator Mohammed Abdul-Salam in Oman’s capital, Muscat.“It is imperative that all efforts are directed towards revitalizing a political process that can produce lasting solutions that meet the aspirations of Yemeni women and men,” Grundberg said at the time.The UN envoy’s efforts come amid an escalation in fighting around the crucial city of Marib, which the Houthi rebels have been trying for months to capture from government forces.Yemen has been convulsed by civil war since 2014, when Iran-backed Houthi rebels took control of the capital of Sanaa and much of the northern part of the country, forcing Hadi’s government to flee to the south, then to Saudi Arabia.The war has killed more than 130,000 people and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.Read more: Saudi FM meets with UN Special Envoy for Yemen in Riyadh
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: UN envoy visits Yemen for talks with PM, separatists

A new study finds that men prefer cooler temperatures than women because of an evolutionary phenomenon that segregates males from females in periods that they don't need each other.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Why do men and women have different temperature preferences? - study