One dead after Ukrainian drone attack on Russia, governor says
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Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
Russia's air attack on Kyiv leaves five people injured, Ukraine's military says
MOSCO: A Russian air attack on Kyiv has left at least five people injured and damaged a residential building, the head of the military administration of the Ukrainian capital, Tymur Tkachenko, said on Monday on the Telegram messaging app.
Al Arabiya
3 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Powerful sister of north korean leader kim rejects south korea's appeasement overture
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – The influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un rebuffed an appeasement overture by South Korea's new liberal government, saying Monday that North Korea has no interests in talks with South Korea, no matter what proposal its rival offers. Kim Yo-jong's comments suggest, again, that North Korea, now preoccupied with its expanding cooperation with Russia, has no intentions of returning to diplomacy with South Korea and the US anytime soon. But experts said North Korea could change its course if it thinks it cannot maintain the same booming ties with Russia when the Russia-Ukraine war nears an end. 'We clarify once again the official stand that no matter what policy is adopted and whatever proposal is made in Seoul, we have no interest in it, and there is neither a reason to meet nor an issue to be discussed with South Korea,' Kim Yo-jong said in a statement carried by state media. It's North Korea's first official statement on the government of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, which took office in early June. In an effort to improve badly frayed ties with North Korea, Lee's government has halted anti-Pyongyang frontline loudspeaker broadcasts, taken steps to ban activists from flying balloons with propaganda leaflets across the border, and repatriated North Koreans who drifted south in wooden boats months earlier. Kim Yo-jong called such steps 'sincere efforts' by Lee's government to develop ties. But she said the Lee government won't be much different from its predecessors, citing what it calls their 'blind trust' to the alliance with the US and attempt to 'stand in confrontation' with North Korea. She mentioned August's annual South Korea-US military drills in August, which North Korea views as an invasion rehearsal. North Korea has been shunning talks with South Korea and the US since leader Kim Jong-un's high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with President Donald Trump fell apart in 2019 due to wrangling over international sanctions. North Korea has since focused on building more powerful nuclear weapons targeting its rivals. North Korea now prioritizes cooperation with Russia by sending troops and conventional weapons to support its war against Ukraine, likely in return for economic and military assistance. South Korea, the US, and others say Russia may give North Korea sensitive technologies that can enhance its nuclear and missile programs. Since beginning his second term in January, Trump has repeatedly boasted of his personal ties with Kim Jong-un and expressed intent to resume diplomacy with him. But North Korea hasn't publicly responded to Trump's overture. In early 2024, Kim Jong-un ordered the rewriting of the constitution to remove the long-running state goal of a peaceful Korean unification and cement South Korea as an invariable principal enemy. That caught many foreign experts by surprise because it was seen as eliminating the idea of shared statehood between the war-divided Koreas and breaking away with his predecessors' long-cherished dreams of peacefully achieving a unified Korea on the North's terms. Many experts say Kim likely aims to guard against South Korean cultural influence and bolster his family's dynastic rule. Others say Kim wants legal room to use his nuclear weapons against South Korea by making it a foreign enemy state, not a partner for potential unification, which shares a sense of national homogeneity.
Arab News
6 hours ago
- Arab News
For the sake of peace, America should recognize Palestine
After an unexpected delay due to Israel's unprovoked attack on Iran last month, the UN will finally convene a crucial high-level meeting in New York this week. Scheduled for Monday and Tuesday at the foreign minister level, the meeting aims to discuss the long-promised but still unrealized political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the two-state solution. The idea is not new. It envisions two states — Israel and Palestine — living side by side in peace. While Israel has been recognized by the global community, including Arab nations and the Palestinians themselves, the state of Palestine still lacks full recognition by the UN Security Council. That recognition is a necessary step before Palestine can be admitted as a full UN member. Three permanent members of the UNSC — France, the UK and the US — have so far blocked that recognition. But change is coming. President Emmanuel Macron, whose government is co-chairing the UN conference with Saudi Arabia, has announced that France will recognize Palestine when the UN General Assembly meets this fall. The UK has expressed similar intentions, conditioned on there being a 'wider plan which ultimately results in a two-state solution.' Without a political horizon for Palestinians and a realistic long-term solution, we will only be kicking the can down the road. Both France and the UK understand the urgent need for an end to the Israeli revenge war on Gaza, accomplishing the release of detainees on both sides, followed immediately by an urgent effort to carry out the more important challenge of finding a political solution. Before the end of September, it is expected that 150 of the UN's 193 member states will have recognized the state of Palestine on the June 4, 1967, borders. This leaves the US as the lone major holdout. Leaders from both major American political parties, including President Donald Trump, have supported the idea of a two-state solution. Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, despite his staunch support for Israel, even visited Ramallah last year and met with senior Palestinian leader Hussein Al-Sheikh. Yet, paradoxically, the US has announced that it does not plan to attend the UN meeting on the two-state solution. The reasons remain unclear. One possibility is that Washington is reacting to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fiery rhetoric. After Macron's announcement, Netanyahu claimed that recognizing Palestine would endanger Israeli security. 'A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel,' he said. 'Let's be clear: the Palestinians do not seek a state alongside Israel; they seek a state instead of Israel.' Nothing could be further from the truth. If any side is attempting to negate the other, it is Israel seeking to erase Palestine, not the other way round. The current Palestinian leadership, based in Ramallah and led by President Mahmoud Abbas, has consistently opposed the Oct. 7 attacks and Hamas' militaristic approach. This leadership favors diplomacy and has long supported the two-state vision, as outlined in the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence. That declaration explicitly envisioned a Palestinian state next to Israel. If any side is attempting to negate the other, it is Israel seeking to erase Palestine, not the other way round. Daoud Kuttab It is important to recall that Netanyahu himself has historically enabled Hamas, seeing it as a tool to divide and weaken the secular Palestinian national movement. The world now recognizes this cynical strategy for what it is. But Western leaders too often ignore this reality. Recognition of Palestine at the UN is not a 'reward for terror.' It is a recognition of an inalienable right: the right of self-determination. That principle is foundational to the very idea of the UN and the international order it represents. If Washington continues to pay lip service to a two-state solution while boycotting discussions intended to realize it, the implications will be stark. The current position suggests that American leaders — whether consciously or not — are aligning themselves with a vision of Jewish supremacy in the Middle East. That is a dangerous path. It will only prolong the conflict and isolate the US from the global consensus, which is increasingly united against apartheid, occupation and permanent discrimination. Palestinians and Israelis have two — and only two — realistic options: two states for two peoples or one democratic state with equal rights for all. All other ideas mean that America (and any other holdouts on Palestinian recognition) support apartheid by not opposing the current situation. As leading Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem stated in a report back in 2011, Israel has been conducting 'a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.' In 1948, Israel expelled 750,000 Palestinians and has refused to allow them to return ever since. Many of those refugees ended up in Gaza and we have seen what the absence of justice for Palestinians has produced. Continuing on this path of ignoring the Palestinian reality and denying the political rights of Palestinians under whatever religious or domestic political consideration will never work. Neither will the fantasy of permanently expelling or suppressing the 7 million Palestinians living between the river and the sea ever succeed. On May 15, 1948, within minutes of its declaration as a state, the US recognized Israel. It is high time that America recognized the other half of the two-state solution. The sooner Washington genuinely embraces the two-state solution and joins the world in recognizing the state of Palestine — including the principle of it being an independent, democratic nation living peacefully alongside Israel — the sooner peace in the Middle East can become a reality.
