Asked if he would concede a loss to Hillary Clinton, Republican candidate said “I will look at it at the time”.

by Al Jazeera

Donald Trump, the Republican Party nominee for US president, has refused to say that he would accept the election result if he loses, as he clashed with rival Hillary Clinton in their third and final debate.

Declining to be drawn on what he would do, he said: “I will look at it at the time.”

Trump has leaned on an increasingly brazen strategy in the campaign’s closing weeks, including peddling charges that the election will be rigged, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud in previous US presidential contests.

“The biggest issue [from the debate] is his unwillingness to accept the outcome of the election,” the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a prominent civil rights leader and member of the Democratic Party, told Al Jazeera. “That could sabotage the entire American process.”

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Las Vegas, said that it was the first time in three debates that “we saw real policy differences” between the two candidates.

“They argued about them in substantive terms,” Fisher said.

One of the hotly debated topics on stage was immigration, which has been a key issue in Trump’s campaign. He repeated a pledge that if he becomes president, a wall will be built on the Mexico border to stop people entering the country illegally.

After discussing the wars in Syria and Iraq, the discussion turned to refugees in need of protection. While Trump repeated his claim that the US does not know who it is letting into the country, Clinton said: “I am not going to let anyone into this country who is not vetted … but I am not going to slam the door on women and children.”

But D’Angelo Gore, a fact-checker with the website Politifact, told Al Jazeera that both candidates mischaracterised each other’s policy proposals during the debate.

“Trump said that Clinton’s immigration policy was to simply grant amnesty to all the immigrants living in the United States, which is inaccurate,” Gore said. “The reality is that Clinton’s immigration reform is much more comprehensive, including increased border control.”

According to Gore, Clinton’s accusation that Trump wanted to abolish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was also inaccurate, as Trump has thus far only expressed frustration that NATO has not focused enough on “fighting terrorism” as well as the notion that the US carries most of the financial burden.

Wednesday’s face-off at the University of Nevada came as early voting was already under way in more than 30 states – at least 2.1 million voters have cast ballots already.

For Trump, the debate was perhaps his last opportunity to turn around a presidential race that appears to be slipping away.

In an average of national polls , Clinton has a lead at 48.6 percent over Trump’s 42.1 percent.

His predatory comments about women and a flood of sexual assault accusations have increased his unpopularity with women and limited his pathways to victory.

Discussing the sexual assault claims in the debate, Trump said he did not apologise to his wife, because he “didn’t do anything”.

Clinton took the stage with challenges of her own.

While the electoral map currently leans in her favour, she is facing a new round of questions about her trustworthiness, concerns that have trailed her throughout the campaign.

The hacking of her top campaign adviser’s emails revealed a candidate who is averse to apologising, can strike a different tone in private than in public, and makes some decisions only after political deliberations.

When the moderator brought up quotes from a Clinton email released by WikiLeaks in which she seemed to express a stance on trade that differs from what she has said publicly, she quickly deflected the question.

She proceeded to say, “What’s really important about WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans … this has come from the highest levels … from Putin himself … to influence this election”.

UN agency passes resolution that criticises Israeli policies around al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem.

The resolution caused Israel to suspend its cooperation with the agency. (AFP/File)

by Al Jazeera

Palestinian leaders have welcomed a decision by the United Nations cultural agency to adopt a resolution on occupied East Jerusalem that sharply criticises Israeli policies around the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, while Israel says it ignores Jewish ties to the key holy site.

A spokesman for Paris-based UNESCO said on Tuesday that the resolution, which caused Israel to suspend its cooperation with the agency, was adopted without a new vote after being approved at the committee stage last week.

The text, which touches on Israel’s management of Palestinian religious sites, refers throughout to the al-Aqsa mosque compound site in occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City only by its Muslim names: al-Aqsa and al-Haram al-Sharif.

Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is the third-holiest site in Islam. Jews refer to the site as the Temple Mount.

Palestine’s deputy ambassador to UNESCO, Mounir Anastas, told reporters the resolution “reminds Israel that they are the occupying power in East Jerusalem and it asks them to stop all their violations”, including archaeological excavations around religious sites.

The UNESCO resolution also condemned Israel for restricting Muslim access to the site, and for aggression by Israeli police and soldiers, while also recognising Israel as the occupying power.

“By criticising the report for the omission of the words Temple Mount, [Israel] glosses over more than two dozen detailed criticisms of Israeli actions in and around the Old City, which is after all occupied territory,” Al Jazeera’s Paul Brennan, reporting from West Jerusalem, said.

The resolution was submitted by Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar and Sudan – and was originally passed with 24 votes in favour, six against, and 26 abstentions.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said in a statement on Thursday that UNESCO had lost its legitimacy by adopting this resolution.

“The theatre of the absurd at UNESCO continues, and today the organisation adopted another delusional decision which says that the people of Israel have no connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall,” Netanyahu said.

In April, UNESCO also passed a resolution condemning “Israeli aggressions and illegal measures against the freedom of worship and Muslims’ access to the al-Aqsa Mosque”, also failing to mention the site’s Jewish name.

In 2011, the Palestinians were admitted as a member state of the organisation, which led the United States to suspend its payments to UNESCO.

The latest resolutions created unease at the top of the organisation, with Michael Worbs, who chairs UNESCO’s executive board, saying he would have liked more time to work out a compromise.

“We need more time and dialogue between the members of the board to reach a consensus,” he told AFP news agency.

UNESCO chief Irina Bokova had distanced herself from Thursday’s vote, saying in a statement: “Nowhere more than in Jerusalem do Jewish, Christian and Muslim heritage and traditions share space.”

But Riyad al-Maliki, the Palestinian foreign minister, responded to Bokova by describing her comments as “completely unacceptable”.

“The Palestinian government expects Ms Bokova to focus her efforts on implementing the will of member states and preserving Jerusalem from the Israeli systematic colonisation and assault on its Palestinian character,” said Maliki.

Al-Aqsa Mosque is located in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed following its invasion in 1967 – in a move never recognised by the international community – as part of its subsequent military occupation of the West Bank.

Jewish settlers and Zionist organisations have called for complete Jewish control over the mosque compound.

Jewish groups’ incursions into the mosque compound have continuously led to Palestinian protests across the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military and armed settler incursions have resulted in Palestinian deaths and injuries in recent years in particular. Muslim access to the religious site has also been tremendously limited by the army.