A senior UN official says the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip has put the Palestinian enclave on a “disastrous trajectory.”
Robert Piper, the humanitarian coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said Thursday thousands of Palestinians remain homeless since Israel does not let construction materials enter the territory.
The enclave of 1.8 million is struggling to emerge from Israel’s 50-day war which severely damaged its infrastructure in the summer of 2014.
Piper said Israel’s restrictions on the entry of construction materials, insufficient international donations and differences among Palestinian factions have hampered Gaza’s reconstruction.
“Progress is continuing on the recovery process, but there’s no change to the underlying fragility of Gaza. It remains on a frankly disastrous trajectory of de-development,” he said.
Piped said the blockade remains “firmly in place” and the Gazan economy is “completely artificially blocked from the market.”
“It’s a blockade that prevents students from getting to universities to further their studies in other places. It’s a blockade that prevents sick people from getting the health care that they need,” he said.
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Published time: 4 Feb, 2016 11:56
(Notice they are all fighting age men — Ziowatch) © Fabrizio Bensch / Reuters
The flow of asylum seekers to Europe threatens the continent’s values while international refugee legislation is “outdated,” Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö said in a harsh parliamentary address, echoing public debate on the country’s migrant crisis.
“Migration is a serious problem,” Niinistö said at Finlandia Hall during the official opening of parliament.
“Europe, Finland, the Western way of thinking and our values have all been challenged by it. This is a stark transformation – just a few years ago we were exporting our values and regarded them as unquestionable, now we are having to consider whether even we ourselves can preserve them. We must safeguard our foundation of European values – there should be no confusion about this,” the president said.
He insisted most migrants are not fleeing immediate danger to their lives.
“The flow of immigration into Europe and Finland is largely a case of migration rather than a flight from immediate danger,” Niinistö said.
“All estimates predict that the flow of people will increase this year. This is challenging the ability of Western democracies to help and also challenging the very structures underlying the idea of Europe.”
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Published time: 4 Feb, 2016 07:32
© Michael Dalder / Reuters More than four in five Germans believe Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government isn’t controlling the refugee crisis, and welcome tougher measures to deal with it, a poll by ARD Deutschlandtrend has suggested.
The vast majority of the country’s citizens disagree with Merkel’s refugee policy, according to the poll conducted last weekend. Asked whether “the federal government has the refugee situation under control,” 81 percent of Germans answered “No,” with just 18 percent saying “Yes.”
Those answering “No” also included members of Merkel’s Christian Social Union, with a notable 67 percent of the party’s voters unhappy with the chancellor’s policies.
Voter support for Merkel’s government dropped from 57 percent in July 2015 to 38 percent on February 2016 – “the worst estimate during the current government’s term,” the pollster said.
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Published time: 4 Feb, 2016 03:31
Bavaria has traditionally “intensive” ties with Russia, the leader of the German state said during his meeting with President Putin in Moscow, promising to foster not only economic relations but also cultural ties and overall trust between the states.
“We think it our duty, the duty of our hearts and souls, to put a bit more trust back into our relations,” Minister-President of Bavaria, Horst Seehofer, told Vladimir Putin as he met with the Russian President on a visit to Moscow on Wednesday.
During the meeting, Putin praised Russian-Bavarian ties and Seehofer’s efforts to maintain business and cultural relationship between Germany and Russia.
“We have a special relationship with Bavaria: the volume of trade and economic relations are very high and Bavaria accounts for 20 percent of all Russian-German economic ties,” Putin said.
The Russian leader noted that some 1,600 companies are engaged with Bavarian firms, ranging from electronic and engineering to construction industry projects.
“Fifty percent of Germany’s investment projects in Russia are of Bavarian origin,” he stressed. Putin also mentioned his telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel who “supports relations between Russia’s regions and Germany.”
JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Jewish teen was sentenced to life in prison and a second teen to 21 years for kidnapping and murdering a Palestinian teen by burning him to death.
The sentences were handed down Thursday afternoon in Jerusalem District Court, where the teens were found guilty in November. They have not been identified because they were minors at the time of the killing of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, 16, of eastern Jerusalem.
One of the teens was convicted of attempted aggravated kidnapping, aggravated assault, attempted arson, murder and abduction for the sake of murder. The other was convicted of murder and abduction for the sake of murder.
A third defendant, Yosef Haim Ben-David, 31, of the Adam settlement in the West Bank, was also found to have carried out the crimes for which he was accused, but the court delayed issuing a sentence while it considers the last-minute submission of an insanity plea claiming that Ben-David was not responsible for his actions at the time of the kidnapping and murder. Ben-David has a history of mental illness and has been under medication for his condition, the original indictment said. His case reportedly will be considered in court on Feb. 11.
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US drone attacks kill 12 in Yemen
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