Islamic nations slam Israel and each other's ties to it
Dubai, May 16: A league of Muslim nations on Sunday demanded that Israel halt attacks killing Palestinian civilians amid heavy fighting between it and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, even as fissures between countries over their recognition of Israel emerged.
A statement by the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation hewed closely to previous ones issued by the Saudi-based group, including backing the decades-old call for Palestinians to have their own nation with East Jerusalem as its capital.
However, recent normalization deals between Israel and some nations in the group as well as their own concerns about Hamas saw diplomats at points instead criticize each other.
The massacre of Palestinian children today follows the purported normalization, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said. This criminal and genocidal regime has once again proven that friendly gestures only aggravate its atrocities.
The past week has seen some of the worst violence across Israel and the Palestinian territory since the 2014 war in Gaza, with militants launching missiles and Israel pounding the blockaded coastal strip home to 2 million people with heavy fire. At least 188 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza with 1,230 people wounded. Eight people in Israel have been killed.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation statement called on Israel to respect Muslims' access to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, as well as stop settlers from forcibly evicting Palestinian families from their homes.
The plight of the Palestinian people is the bleeding wound of the Islamic world today, Afghan Foreign Minister Mohammad Haneef Atmar said.
But the videoconference meeting saw some delegates instead turn their fire toward countries like Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, Muslim nations which reached normalization deals last year to recognize Israel. While Egypt and Jordan earlier reached peace deals, supporters of the Palestinians criticized the new countries for recognizing Israel before the formation of an independent Palestinian state.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu joined Zarif in criticizing the normalization, though Israel maintains diplomatic ties with Ankara.
There are a few who have lost their moral compass and voiced support for Israel, he said. If there are half-hearted statements within our own family, how could we criticize others? Who will take our words seriously?
Zarif also accused Israel of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Make no mistake: Israel only understand the language of resistance and the people of Palestine are fully entitled to their right to defend themselves, Zarif said.
Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in 2007, didn't take part in the meeting, which came before consultations at the United Nations over the crisis.
Across the Arabian Peninsula, reactions to the fighting similarly has been mixed. In Qatar, home to the Al-Jazeera satellite network, hundreds turned out late Saturday night to listen to a speech by Hamas' top leader Ismail Haniyeh. Kuwait's parliament speaker reportedly spoke with Haniyeh on Saturday, as did Qatar's foreign minister.
Meanwhile, in Bahrain and the UAE, government-linked media hasn't been covering the current flare-up of violence nonstop like other networks in the region.
There are murmurs of dissent though. In Bahrain, civil society groups signed a letter urging the kingdom to expel the Israeli ambassador. In the UAE, where political parties and protests are illegal, Palestinians have expressed their anger quietly, worried about losing their residency permit. Some Emiratis also have expressed concerns.
The region's only democracy," tweeted the Emirati writer and political analyst Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi in writing about Israel's strike on a Gaza building that housed the offices of The Associated Press and Al-Jazeera.
Hussein Ibish, a senior scholar at the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute, said most Gulf Arab leaders fear Hamas' rocket fire as "cynical, dangerous, unnecessarily provocative and endangering Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza alike. That takes the pressure off those Gulf leaders to respond, unlike in other confrontations involving the Al-Aqsa Mosque or when Israeli settlers force Arab families out of their homes, he said.
There won't be much sympathy for what is widely viewed in the Gulf as Israel's heavy-handed and disproportionate retaliation," Ibish wrote, "but it will be much easier for Gulf leaders and many citizens to regard the exchange as a tragic conflagration at the expense of ordinary people brought about by two leaderships over which they have neither control nor responsibility.
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Balendra Shah's RSP makes history, registers landmark victory in Nepal elections
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Kathmandu (PTI): Rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah's RSP is all set to form the next government in Nepal after securing sweeping victory in crucial general elections on Saturday, decimating the established parties in the politically fragile nation.
Popularly known as Balen, the 35-year-old prime ministerial candidate of the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) defeated four-time prime minister KP Sharma Oli, the chair of Nepal's legacy party, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) -- CPN-UML -- by a huge margin of about 50,000 votes in Jhapa-5 constituency.
Balen, 35, secured 68,348 votes against 74-year-old Oli's 18,734, the Election Commission (EC) said.
He is expected to be the next prime minister of Nepal, reflecting a public mood of rejection of established parties. The RSP, which was formed in 2022 by Ravi Lamichhane, has won 72 seats out of the 90 seats for which results were declared by 9:30 pm, according to the Election Commission (EC).
RSP's seats include a clean sweep in all 10 constituencies of Kathmandu district even as it is leading in 52 seats across the country, the EC data showed.
Legacy parties failed to convince voters for whom the major issues included fighting corruption and an end to nepotism apart from a generational change in political leadership of the Himalayan nation.
The Nepali Congress (NC) won 10 and was leading in eight seats; the CPN-(UML) won just four seats and is leading in eight; the Nepali Communist Party (NCP) won two seats and is leading in five, the Shrama Shakti Party (SSP) was leading in three seats, and the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) won one seat, the EC data showed. Among the winners is one independent.
Nepal witnessed about 60 per cent voter turnout during the March 5 elections to the House of Representatives. The counting of votes started late Thursday night and as of 9:30 pm Saturday, counting was in progress in the remaining of the total 165 constituencies, the Election Commission said.
The election was being closely watched by India, which is hoping for a stable government in the politically fragile Himalayan nation to take forward the developmental partnership between the two sides.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday congratulated the people and government of Nepal for the successful conduct of elections. “It is heartening to see my Nepali sisters and brothers exercise their democratic rights so vibrantly. This historic milestone is a proud moment in Nepal's democratic journey,” Modi said in a post on X.
Modi also said that as a close friend and neighbour, India remains steadfast in its commitment to working closely with the people of Nepal and its new government to scale new heights of shared peace, progress and prosperity.
Oli, who too was projected as the PM face of the CPN-UML, wished Balen for a full five year tenure for his government in the Himalayan nation that has seen 14 governments in the last 18 years.
“Balen babu, congratulations for the victory. I wish your five year tenure be trouble free, successful and hearty congratulations,” Oli wrote in his social media post and attached a 2022 photo showing him gifting a tabla to Balen after the rapper-turned-politician won Kathmandu mayor's election as an independent.
The RSP, which projected Balendra Shah 'Balen' as its prime ministerial candidate and had organised its first election campaign in Janakpur in Madhesh, is heading towards a clean sweep of the province.
‘Balen’, as he is popularly known, projected himself as the “son of Madhesh” during the campaign, with the party launching the campaign with 'Ab ki bar Balendra Sarkar' (This time there will be Balendra’s government) tagline.
Of the total 32 seats in eight districts of Madhesh province, the RSP has won eight and is leading in 22 other constituencies, the EC said.
The party is also making a clean sweep in the Kathmandu Valley winning all 10 seats of Kathmandu district and two in Bhaktapur and two in Lalitpur district.
The party is also leading in the remaining one seat of the Kathmandu Valley with a huge margin, possibly as a result of a massive road show led by Balen in all 15 constituencies on the last day of the election campaign.
RSP chairman Lamichhane won with a huge margin from Chitwan-2 constituency, marking his third consecutive victory with 54,402 votes against his nearest rival NC's Mina Kumari Kharel, who received 14,564 votes.
According to the Election Commission, former prime minister and NCP leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda won from Rukum Purba district by securing 10,240 votes against his rival Lilamani Gautam of CPN-(UML), who got 3,462 votes.
RPP's Gyanendra Shahi won from the Jumla constituency of Karnali province by defeating his closest rival Naresh Bhandari of the NCP and became the only candidate of the pro-monarchist RPP to have secured a seat in the House of Representatives.
The election also saw 10 women candidates win, nine of them from the RSP while one from NC.
Meanwhile, the RSP is also leading in proportional voting system with the party bagging 474,266 votes followed by Nepali Congress with 160,384. The CPN (UML) has received 127,841, Nepali Communist Party 65,363, the RPP 34,154, and Shrama Shakti Party 17,437 votes till now.
Out of a total of 275 members of the Parliament, 165 are being elected through direct voting, while the remaining 110 through a proportionate method.
Around 3,400 candidates were vying for 165 seats under direct voting, and 3,135 candidates for 110 seats through proportionate voting.
The Gen Z youth, through their two-day intensified protests on September 8 and 9 last year, ousted Prime Minister Oli of the CPN-(UML), who was heading a coalition government with the backing of Nepali Congress that enjoyed nearly two-thirds majority support.
Though Balen was a popular choice to lead the interim government after Oli's ouster, he declined to lead the interim administration, saying he would prefer to contest the parliamentary election for a full term.
In January, he joined the RSP and was soon declared the party's prime ministerial candidate.
The major issues raised by Gen Z before and during the election campaign were anti-corruption, good governance, an end to nepotism, generational change in political leadership, etc.
Sunil Babu Pant, former MP and a political analyst, said, “The victory of Rastriya Swatantra Party in the March 5 elections and the expectation that Balen Shah could emerge as Nepal's next Prime Minister reflects the people's deep rooted frustration with the old political order and their hope for a new direction.”
“As Balen assumes the country's leadership, his first responsibility must be to demonstrate that corruption will not be tolerated under any circumstances,” he said.
Balen will also face a complex geopolitical challenge, Pant said, adding, “He must prove that he is not a puppet of any external power, western or otherwise. Nepal's leadership must carefully balance relations with all global actors and pursue an independent foreign policy that prioritises the national interest.”
