Your MENA NewsDrops 🗞💧
Saudi's ceasefire proposal to the Houthis, threats to kill the UN's Khashoggi investigator, the Israeli elections, and more!
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🇸🇦🇾🇪 Saudi Arabia proposed a ceasefire plan to Yemen’s Houthis, which includes restarting UN-led political negotiations between the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the Houthis.
The agreement 🤝 would also re-open Sana’a airport and the port of Hodeidah, Yemen’s main port, allowing fuel and food imports again. However, the Houthis rejected the proposal 📃 as it failed to address their demand to completely lift the blockade of ports and airports.
🇮🇱🇵🇸 An Israeli court ordered the eviction of 28 Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem, giving the residents until May to leave their homes 🏡 to allow Jewish settlers to move in.
🇵🇸 For the 10th Friday in a row, Palestinians in Umm al-Fahm protested against the Israeli police’s failure to stem the rising tide of violence 🔫 in Arab communities, where murders are rarely investigated and seen as a tribal issue.
The Umm al-Fahm protest movement accuses the Israeli police 👮 of intentionally using ‘divide and conquer’ tactics to encourage systemic Palestinian-on-Palestinian crime to further subject Arab communities in Israel to violence and oppression.
🇹🇷 A top Turkish prosecutor demanded the dissolution of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a left-wing opposition party, over alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is designated as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the US and the EU. Here’s how the HDP is being pressured:
👉🏻 The Turkish police detained HDP officials.
👉🏻 A case to officially ban the HDP was opened.
👉🏻 An HDP politician was expelled from parliament.
🇹🇷 2 days later, Turkey withdrew from the 2011 Istanbul Convention, leading women to take the streets to protest 🪧 the decision. The Convention, signed by 45 countries and the EU, requires governments to adopt legislation to protect women from domestic violence, including marital rape and female genital mutilation.
🇸🇦 In a UN meeting in Geneva, a senior Saudi official issued a death threat 🔪against the UN investigator in charge of the probe into Jamal Kashoggi’s murder, Agnes Callamard, threatening to have her ‘‘taken care of’’.
🇶🇦 Qatar passed a law setting the new minimum wage at 1,000 Qatari riyals ($275) as part of a series of reforms to its ‘kafala’ system, under which migrant workers are tied to their employer, or sponsor, which leads to abuse and exploitation.
🗞 Here’s a great article to understand the impact of the kafala system on migrant workers in the Gulf: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/mar/23/alone-oman-covid-worsens-abuse-trafficked-women-africa
🇮🇱 Israel held its fourth general election in less than two years following the collapse of the Netanyahu-Gantz coalition, triggered by disagreements over the management of COVID-19 and by the government’s failure to agree on a budget in December 2020.
After almost 90% of the votes were counted, results show that Netanyahu’s right wing bloc is on course to win 59 seats, falling 2 seats short of the 61-seat majority they need.
However, the Ra'am party, a small Arab party led by Mansour Abbas, may be the kingmaker as the latest count indicated it would cross the threshold to get into parliament. Alternatively, a fifth election will be held if neither side manages to form a coalition.
Congrats! You’re all caught up with this week’s most important international affairs news in the Middle East and North Africa 🌍. We will be back with more next week 👋.
✏️ Written by Zoe Ciaccio and Isabel Hendy.
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