Israel has revoked the VIP status of Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki, reportedly due to his support for the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Authority’s top diplomat was reportedly detained at the crossing between Jordan and the West Bank because his VIP card had been revoked by the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service.
Al-Maliki was returning from a meeting at the Hague with the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, when he was stopped. He reportedly told Bensouda that the ICC will have full Palestinian cooperation.
Bensouda announced this month that she would formally investigate alleged war crimes perpetrated by Israel during the 2014 war against the terror group Hamas. The move was welcomed by Ramallah and denounced by Jerusalem.
President Reuven Rivlin met in Jerusalem with Tor Wennesland, the new UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.
The two discussed current regional challenges and the coronavirus pandemic. Rivlin and Wennesland also spoke about the opportunities created by the US-brokered Abraham Accords that resulted in Israel’s normalization of relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain Sudan and Morocco.
The Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process represents the United Nations in diplomatic efforts pertaining to the Middle East.
Large scale hostilities could break out between Israel and Hezbollah if the Iranian proxy terror group continues its arms buildup along the northern border, Ambassador Gilad Erdan told the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in a written report.
“The IDF recorded and reported 269 incidents of crossing the Blue Line into Israel, 274 cases of presence of armed individuals who do not belong to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), and 13 incidents of rock throwing across the Blue Line towards Israel,” Erdan wrote in a missive sent to US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield ahead of the UNSC’s closed door session on rising tensions at the border.
He urged the UNSC to act to ensure that Hezbollah is disarmed and the UN peacekeeper mission is empowered to freely monitor that border for violation of Resolution 1701, which set the ceasefire terms that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
UNSC 1701 calls for Hezbollah to be disarmed and for the Lebanese Army to be the country’s only military force.
Israel is not going to experience another wave of coronavirus, according to Prof. Nachman Ash, as the number of daily cases dropped below 350, the lowest level since November.
The R rate, or reproduction rate, also continued to decrease, standing at 0.62. The figure reflects how many people each coronavirus carrier infects on average. When the number is lower than 0.8 the disease is considered to be receding.
Meanwhile, over 4.5 million Israelis have been fully vaccinated, while 5.1 million people have been given one jab.
Accordingly, most of the restrictions limiting the ability of Israelis to travel abroad have been canceled. Ash, Israel’s coronavirus czar, emphasized that authorities are doing everything possible to avoid the spread of new variants of the contagion by requiring all those who enter the country to provide negative coronavirus tests. Greater efforts are also being made to enforce the mandatory quarantine for all returnees who are not fully vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19.
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