Chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, Yousef al-Qaradawi, on 8 December said he “never killed anyone or incited anyone to kill” in order to be placed on International police agency Interpol’s “wanted” list. The statement came in response to Interpol’s decision to issue a “red alert” for al-Qaradawi at the behest of the Egyptian government.
“There are those who killed thousands of innocent people at Republican Guard headquarters [in Cairo] and at Rabaa and Nahda squares [areas in Cairo and Giza that saw hundreds of opposition demonstrators killed last year] without any consideration for justice or law,” al-Qaradawi asserted.
The Egypt-born Islamic scholar has been under fire in Egypt for his vocal criticism of last summer’s ouster of Mohamed Morsi – Egypt’s first freely elected president – by the army. Interpol has previously issued red alerts for a number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders at the request of the Egyptian authorities.
ISRAEL INVADING GAZA ‘TO SECURE GAS RESERVES’
Israel’s stated reasons for its latest incursion into Gaza are misleading, according to leading international security journalist and academic Nafeez Ahmed. Israel is less interested in hitting Hamas than in securing the territory’s gas reserves – and keeping Palestinians poor so that revenue from selling the gas does not fall into the “wrong hands”, he says. Israel claims it is trying to prevent Hamas launching rockets into Israel and destroy tunnels used by the group to move around.
However, 1.4 trillion cubic feet of gas worth some $4bn lie beneath the Palestinian territories and according to Ahmed, Israel is terrified that revenue from sales of the gas used by Hamas. According to the Ecologist report, Israel’s defence minister is on record confirmed that military plans to uproot Hamas’ are about securing control of Gaza’s gas reserves.
UN REVEALS ISRAELI LINKS WITH SYRIAN REBELS
Reports by UN observers in the Golan Heights over the past 18 months, submitted to the 15 members of the UN Security Council, detail regular contacts held on the border between IDF officers and soldiers and Syrian rebels, reported said citing Haaretz on 7 December. The observer force, UNDOF, was established in 1974 as part of the separation of forces agreement between Israel and Syria. The agreement set up a buffer zone several kilometres wide. About 1,000 UN observers supervised the implementation of the agreement until 2013, when the Syrian civil war severely reduced the force’s ability to function.
According to the report, after Israel started admitting injured Syrians for medical treatment in Safed and Nahariya hospitals, the Syrian ambassador to the UN complained of widespread cooperation between Israel and Syrian rebels.
RICH COUNTRIES URGED TO TAKE 5% OF SYRIAN REFUGEES
Rich countries should agree to take at least 5 per cent of all Syrian refugees by the end of 2015, aid agencies said as pressure mounts ahead of a major conference on the crisis. At least 3.2 million people have fled Syria since the civil conflict erupted in 2011, putting neighbouring countries under colossal strain. Syrian refugees across the Middle East, some in exile for a fourth winter, face freezing temperatures, hunger and increasing hostility from locals as governments struggle to cope.
The conference in Geneva comes amid concern that the biggest host countries, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, have started restricting access to people fleeing the war. The U.N refugee agency (UNHCR) is calling on countries to make pledges towards resettling 130,000 refugees affected by “the worst humanitarian crisis of our time”.
HAMAS SLAMS KERRY REMARKS ON ‘ANTI-HAMAS’ ARAB BLOC
Palestinian resistance faction Hamas has condemned recent statements by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in which the latter said that some Arab countries were ready to ally with Israel against Hamas. “Kerry’s statements are dreams that will never be realised,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri was reported as saying on 8 December.
He said Hamas was a “liberation movement” devoted to fighting Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land. “Resistance is a legitimate right; any Arab or international alliance [against the resistance] will not break Hamas’ will,” Abu Zuhri said.
CHINA BANS RELIGION IN XINJIANG
China’s Xinjiang region (East Turkestan) has banned the practise of religion in government buildings public schools, businesses or institutions and will fine those who use the Internet to ‘undermine national unity’, in a package of new regulations. The rules, passed by the standing committee of Xinjiang’s parliament, stipulate penalties of between 5,000 and 30,000 yuan ($4,884) for individuals who use the Internet, mobile phones or digital publishing to undermine national unity, social stability or incite ethnic hatred.
Meanwhile, eight Uighurs were sentenced to death penalty along with five people who were given life imprisonment. In such a heavily politicised environment, a fair trial was impossible, said Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for exile group the World Uyghur Congress. “China has not looked at all for the root causes of the incident from the point of view of their own extreme policies,” he was reported as saying. Exiled Uighur groups and human rights activists say the government’s repressive policies in Xinjiang, including controls on Islam, have provoked unrest.
PALESTINIAN MINISTER KILLED BY ISRAELI TROOPS IN WEST BANK
A Palestinian minister died shortly after being hit and shoved by Israeli soldiers during a protest on 10 December in the occupied West Bank, a Reuters photographer who witnessed the incident and a medic said. Ziad Abu Ein, the official in charge of the settlements file at the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) who was in his early 50s, was rushed by ambulance from the scene, in the village of Turmusiya, but died en route to the nearby Palestinian city of Ramallah.
Abu Ein was confronted by a border policemen who grasped him by the neck and held him with one hand. Minutes later the minister began to look faint and fell to the ground clasping his chest. He died on his way to hospital.
MB URGES OPPONENTS FOR NONVIOLENT ANTI-COUP COOPERATION
In an open letter published on 11 December, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said: “Those who sincerely love this dear homeland cannot possibly support those who have been involved in corruption, treachery, oppression, fascism and repression. No patriotic citizen can keep quiet about all this, especially after it all got exposed, as seen and heard by the whole world.”
The Brotherhood called all patriotic politicians and groups, even its opponents, saying: “There is no way to save this homeland except by confronting the bloody junta and the corrupt coup regime. Those who dislike a certain faction on the scene should be fair in their actions. They should certainly not do, aid or accept injustice for that faction. We ask our patriotic brothers who initially sided with the bloody military coup in good faith, is it not time for the honourable to wake up and come back to join the march on the democratic path?”
UK COLLEGE STEPS BACK HOSTING ISLAMOPHOBIA CONFERENCE
An academic conference tackling the alarming rise in Islamophobia in the UK has had to be relocated after Birkbeck College decides not to host the conference organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission. The conference will now be held at an alternative venue. In a statement the organisers said, “The turnaround came after calls on social media by Britain First.
The conference, which is being supported by 19 Muslim and non-Muslim organisations including Stop the War Coalition and Campaign against Criminalising Communities, is due to feature speeches by leading academics in the fields of race relations, Islamophobia, multiculturalism and securitisation, exploring and suggesting responses to the soaring levels of Islamophobia in the UK. IHRC chair Massoud Shadjareh said, “It is staggering to think that an Islamophobia conference held in an academic arena can itself become the victim of institutional Islamophobia at so many levels”, Asian Image reported.