Spagna, Norvegia e Irlanda riconoscono lo Stato Palestinese🗞️Rassegna del 23/05/2024

Israele

(New York Times) Spain, Norway and Ireland Recognize a Palestinian State, a Blow to Israel

• Spain, Norway and Ireland said on Wednesday that they would recognize an independent Palestinian state, a rebuke to Israel that, though largely symbolic, reflected dwindling international patience with its military offensive in Gaza and its decades of occupation of Palestinian territories.
• The moves will likely have little immediate effect on conditions for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank or in Gaza [...] But the announcements made clear the view in a growing number of capitals that Palestinian sovereignty cannot wait for a permanent peace deal with Israel, whose right-wing government largely opposes a Palestinian state.
• “Palestinians have a fundamental, independent right to an independent state,” Jonas Gahr Store, the prime minister of Norway, said at a news conference in Oslo announcing the decision, which will go into effect on Tuesday. Spain’s decision will take effect the same day, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said, adding that Spain had been forced to act because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel did not have a plan for long-term peace with the Palestinians. [...] Prime Minister Simon Harris of Ireland said at a news conference that he was confident that other countries would soon join them in recognizing Palestinian statehood.
• Palestinian leaders based in the West Bank welcomed the announcements. “We believe it will help preserve the two-state solution and give Palestinians hope that they will have their own state side by side with Israel in peace and security,” Ziad Abu Amr, a senior Palestinian official, said in an interview.

(New York Times) Israel’s finance minister says he will withhold tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority.

• Israel will not transfer much-needed funds to the Palestinian Authority in the wake of the decision by three European countries to recognize a Palestinian state, the country’s finance minister said on Wednesday [...]
• The decision by the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich [...] threatened to push the Palestinian government into a deeper fiscal crisis. He said in a statement that he had informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would no longer send tax revenues to the authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank in close cooperation with Israel.
• Israel also recalled its ambassadors from Spain, Ireland and Norway for consultations on Wednesday morning. Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, said he had summoned the countries’ envoys to Israel for a “severe scolding” following “their governments’ decision to award a gold medal to Hamas terrorists.”
• Under decades-old agreements, Israel collects customs and import taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Those revenues constitute most of the Palestinian budget, particularly as international aid has declined. The Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority is already in a severe financial crisis following tightened Israeli restrictions on its funding and a depressed West Bank economy stemming from the war. This month, it managed to pay only 50 percent of the salaries of tens of thousands of civil servants.

Ucraina

UK-USA-Russia-Cina:

(The Kyiv Independet) UK defense secretary: Intelligence has evidence of Chinese lethal aid to Russia

• The U.S. and U.K. have evidence that China is supplying or about to supply lethal aid to Russia [for the war in Ukraine], British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said on May 22, Reuters reported.
• Speaking at the London Defense Conference, Shapps said he was declassifying new intelligence to reveal the "quite significant" development and called on the world to "wake up" to the threat it poses.
• U.S. officials have previously warned China against providing Russia with lethal military aid and urged Beijing to use its influence over Moscow to help end the war, though Shapps latest comments suggest those warnings are going unheeded.
• "That recent visit we saw, the… 64% increase in trade that we've seen between the two countries, reveals that there is actually a much deeper relationship there," Shapps said, as reported by Press Association.
• Shapps did not elaborate on the specifics of the lethal aid he was referring to.

Europa

UK:

(Associated Press) British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sets July 4 election date to determine who governs the UK

• British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday set July 4 as the date for a national election that will determine who governs the U.K., choosing a day of good economic news to urge voters to give his governing Conservatives another chance [the announcement came the same day official figures showed inflation in the U.K. had fallen sharply to 2.3%, its lowest level in nearly three years on the back of big declines in domestic bills]
• Speculation about an imminent election mounted after Sunak called a Cabinet meeting for Wednesday afternoon – rather than the usual Tuesday – and Foreign Secretary David Cameron flew back early from a trip to Albania to attend.
• The election will be held against the backdrop of a cost-of-living crisis and deep divisions over how to deal with migrants and asylum seekers making risky English Channel crossings from Europe.
• Voters across the United Kingdom will choose all 650 members of the House of Commons for a term of up to five years. The party that commands a majority in the Commons, either alone or in coalition, will form the next government and its leader will be prime minister. Labour leader Keir Starmer, a former chief prosecutor for England and Wales, is the current favorite.

Polonia:

(Reuters) Poland buys US radar systems to monitor its north-eastern borders

• Poland signed an agreement with the United States for the delivery of a $960 million airspace reconnaissance system to monitor its north-eastern borders, defence minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Wednesday.
• Under the contract, Poland will receive four aerostats, or moored balloons, which will be stationed at posts along the eastern and north-eastern borders of Poland, assisting Poland's Air Defence System and Coastal Observation System. The contract also provides for related logistics and programme support. The system will be delivered and fully operative by 2027, said Kosiniak-Kamysz.
• According to the head of Poland’s Armament Agency, General Artur Kuptel, describing the system in Polish media earlier this month, radars suspended from the tethered balloons will monitor the sky as far as Ukraine, Belarus, and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad from Polish air space. They have the ability to detect a wide range of objects, such as missiles, aircraft, drones and surface vessels in a range of over 300 km.

Germania:

(POLITICO) German far right’s problems deepen after SS remarks

• Maximilian Krah, the scandal-plagued lead candidate in the EU election for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, announced Wednesday that he will stop campaigning and step down from his party’s leadership board [...]
• Krah’s announcement came a day after France’s National Rally, the party of Marine Le Pen, said it wouldn’t sit alongside the AfD party in the next European Parliament. The French decision followed an interview with Krah in the Italian daily La Repubblica in which the AfD lead candidate said he would “never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal,” [...]
• The internecine conflict appears to have forced AfD leaders to stop Krah from campaigning ahead of the EU election. But Krah technically remains the AfD’s top candidate no matter how badly the party’s national leaders wish to see him go for the simple reason that it’s too late to remove him from the ballot, creating a quandary for party leaders.
• The party has been beset by one scandal after another in recent months, contributing to a slide in polls, with much of scrutiny involving Krah. In April, German police arrested one of Krah’s parliamentary aides over allegations he spied for China. Shortly after that, German public prosecutors in the city of Dresden initiated preliminary investigations over allegations that Krah had accepted payments from Russia and China “for his work as an MEP. 

Politica internazionale

Asia e Pacifico

Vietnam:

(Reuters) Vietnam appoints top policeman as country's new president

• Vietnam's parliament elected police minister To Lam as the state president on Wednesday, in a move analysts see as a "stepping stone" for Lam to bid later for the position of chief of the ruling Communist Party, the country's top job.
• Lam's election followed the appointment on Monday by Vietnam's National Assembly of its new chairman, former deputy Tran Thanh Man, possibly bringing to a temporary end two-months of heightened political turbulence which saw the exit of three of Vietnam's top five leaders over unspecified wrongdoings.
• In line with normal procedures in the tightly-controlled one-party state, lawmakers voted unanimously on a resolution that approved Lam's election after a secret ballot about him, the only candidate for the job. That followed his nomination by the Communist Party last week.
• As head of the public security ministry, Lam, 66, has been a crucial figure in a sweeping anti-graft campaign, known as "blazing furnace", which is aimed at rooting out widespread corruption but has also been seen by critics as a tool to sideline opponents during political infighting.