The Arab League on Sunday accused Israel of “playing with fire” with the new security measures at the Temple Mount compound in the Old City of Jerusalem.
“Jerusalem is a red line,” its chief Ahmed Abul Gheit said in a statement, adding that “no Arab or Muslim will accept violations” against the city’s holy sites.
Deadly clashes have rocked Jerusalem since Israeli authorities installed metal detectors at entrances to the Temple Mount after a July 14 terror attack in which three armed Arab-Israelis emerged from the holy site and shot dead two police officers standing at the Lions Gate, an access point to the compound.
Palestinians view the new security measures as an Israeli attempt to assert further control over the site, the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam. Israel says the detectors are necessary to prevent another incident in which illegal weapons are taken into the compound and turned against Israeli forces.
Abul Gheit accused Israel’s government of “adventurism” and said its moves could trigger a “crisis with the Arab and Muslim world.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday warned of intervention by the Muslim international community over the metal detectors and ensuing clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops.
Speaking to reporters at Ataturk Airport before heading to Saudi Arabia, Erdogan said that the Muslim world will not remain silent over what he called “violations” at the Temple compound.
Clashes between security forces and violent protesters in East Jerusalem and the West Bank on Friday and Saturday left four Palestinians dead. A fifth Palestinian protester was killed Saturday when a petrol bomb he was hurling at security forces detonated prematurely.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Sunday said Israel will manage without security coordination with the Palestinian Authority, apparently confirming reports the Palestinians have suspended their joint efforts with Israel to prevent terror attacks.
“We’ve managed for many years without security cooperation, we’ll manage now as well,” Liberman told the Ynet news website.
The defense minister stressed, however, that the security ties were in the Palestinians’ best interest.
“It’s their decision,” he added. “It’s not that the security coordination is an Israeli need. Before our needs, it’s a Palestinian need first and foremost, and therefore if they want it, it will continue, if they don’t want it, they won’t. It’s their decision.”
Earlier Sunday, Palestinian sources said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had frozen the security ties in protest of the installation of metal detectors at entrances to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the escalating violent clashes between Muslim worshipers and Israel Police that followed.
Abbas announced Friday night that he was suspending all contact with Israel. Palestinian sources later said the ban extended to a freeze on meetings between PA security officials and their Israeli counterparts at all levels, despite initial assessments the PA president would refrain from severing the military ties.
Abbas has not ordered a severance of security ties since he was elected nearly decade ago. Although Israel and the PA have not held peace talks for three years, cooperation between the respective security forces to maintain calm in the West Bank has been ongoing.
In announcing the break in contacts with Israel on Friday, Abbas castigated the deployment of the metal detectors at the Temple Mount compound — placed there by Israel after a July 14 terror attack in which three Arab-Israelis shot dead two Israeli police officers there with guns they had smuggled into the holy site. Abbas called the measures “falsely presented as a security measure to take control over Al-Aqsa mosque.”
Hungary is increasingly becoming an anti-Soros nation in Europe as they see the corruption and chaos that he is responsible for spreading and a new report claims that he and the European Union are trying to ‘Muslimize’ Europe.
The Associated Press reported:
European Union leaders and Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros are seeking a “new, mixed, Muslimized Europe,” Hungary’s anti-migration prime minister said Saturday.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban said during a visit to Romania that Hungary’s border fences, supported by other Central European countries, will block the EU-Soros effort to increase Muslim migration into Europe.
While Hungary opposed taking in migrants “who could change the country’s cultural identity,” Orban said under his leadership, Hungary would remain a place where “Western European Christians will always be able to find security.”
Orban, who will seek a fourth term in April 2018, said Hungary’s opposition parties were no match for his government.
“In the upcoming campaign, first of all we have to confront external powers,” Orban said at a cultural festival in Baile Tusnad, Romania. “We have to stand our ground against the Soros mafia network and the Brussels bureaucrats. And, during the next nine months, we will have to fight against the media they operate.”
These are truly scary times for Europeans as they are on the brink of losing their national identities.
The Syrian Army has regained control over the settlement of al-Dakhilah and the As-Sabhavi gas field located about 18 miles south of Raqqa, the self-proclaimed capital of the Daesh terrorist group, a Syrian military source told Sputnik.
Speaking to Sputnik, a Syrian military source said that militants from the Daesh (ISIL/ISIS/IS) terrorist group were driven out of the settlement of al-Dakhilah and the As-Sabhavi gas field located about 18 miles south of the city of Raqqa in northern Syria.
"The units of the Syrian Arab army regained control over the settlement of al-Dakhilah, the well of as-Sabhavi and the gas field of the same name in the southern vicinity of Raqqa. A large number of members of the IS terrorist group were eliminated," the source said.
The retaken territories are expected to allow government troops to quickly reach the bank of the Euphrates River and continue the offensive in the direction of Raqqa, the so-called "ISIL capital."
The Syrian army and members of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group launched a major ground offensive on Friday aimed at ending the yearslong presence of hundreds of militants in a border area between the two countries.
The offensive was widely expected after negotiations with militants to leave the area failed over the past days. The battle will be fought by Syrian troops and Hezbollah gunmen on the Syrian side of the border while the Lebanese army will likely fight against the militants on the Lebanese side.
On Tuesday, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri said the country's military is preparing a military operation to secure a lawless section of the border with Syria while Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah hinted in a speech last week that a joint operation was in the works with the Lebanese and Syrian militaries to expel insurgents from the border area.
Government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media reported that military operations began early Friday from two fronts on the outskirts of the Lebanese town of Arsal and the Syrian village of Fleeta. Arsal is about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of the Syrian city of Homs.
Although most Americans are aware of the ever increasing tensions between North Korea and the United States, the military is no longer pulling any punches. Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggested Saturday that Americans must be “prepared for the possibility of a military confrontation with North Korea.”
The United States is now declaring the rogue country’s nuclear program an “urgent threat” by Dunford as well. While speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, a gathering of national security officials in Colorado, Dunford said:
“Many people have talked about military options with words like ‘unimaginable. I would probably shift that slightly and say it would be horrific, and it would be a loss of life unlike any we have experienced in our lifetimes, and I mean anyone who’s been alive since World War II has never seen the loss of life that could occur if there’s a conflict on the Korean Peninsula. But as I’ve told my counterparts, both friend and foe, it is not unimaginable to have military options to respond to North Korean nuclear capability. What’s unimaginable to me is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver, Colorado. That’s unimaginable to me. So my job will be to develop military options to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Many experts have also warned that North Korea does have the missile capacity to strike the United States right now, while others are skeptical.
Can North Korea hit the United States with a nuclear weapon? The state of Hawaii certainly is not taking any chances. The island state is currently preparing for the worst – a nuclear attack by North Korea. Hawaii is on schedule to become the first state in the US to test an “attack- warning” system in the event of a North Korean nuclear missile strike. Starting in November, Hawaii’s disaster warning plan will include a new protocol in case of a nuclear attack, CNN affiliate KNHL reports.
Governments across the globe seem intent on starting WW3, and we will probably be the last to know when it happens.
US President Donald Trump's decision to stop arming Syrian rebels is a step in the right direction, but it's too soon to tell if Trump will be able to help bring peace to Syria given the opposition of US Senators to any kind of compromise with Russia.
US President Donald Trump has decided to end a covert CIA program that armed and trained rebels fighting against the Syrian government, officials told the Washington Post on Wednesday.
The program was central to former US President Barack Obama's policyin Syria, which sought to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad. According to the report, Trump took the decision nearly a month ago, after an Oval Office meeting with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and national security adviser H.R. McMaster.
Trump had already decided to end support for Syrian rebels before his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 7, at which the US and Russia agreed on a ceasefire deal in southwest Syria. Last week, Trump said that the US and Russia are working on another ceasefire deal "in a very rough part of Syria."
Trump's change of policy is recognition that after more than six years of war, the policy of regime change in Syria has clearly failed, Russian political commentator Ilya Kharlamov told Radio Sputnik.
"If this information is correct, then Washington is acting in a reasonable and measured way. Under Barack Obama, support for the opposition, which was engaged in armed conflict with the legitimate government in Damascus, became one of the main problems in Russia-US relations with regard to Syria."
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