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France admits soldiers have deserted to ISIS, including ex-elite special forces and French foreign legionnaires

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French soldiers take a break in a gymnasium at the Command Center of France's national security alert system Vigipirate on Jan. 21. in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, west of Paris. AFP PHOTO/KENZO TRIBOUILLARD

French soldiers take a break in a gymnasium at the Command Center of France’s national security alert system Vigipirate on Jan. 21. in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, west of Paris. AFP PHOTO/KENZO TRIBOUILLARD

by Henry Samuel, The Telegraph

Several French former soldiers have joined the ranks of jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq, the country’s government confirmed on Wednesday, as it outlined a series of new anti-terrorism measures following the Islamist attacks in Paris.

Most of the ex-soldiers, reportedly numbering around 10 and including former paratroopers and French foreign legionnaires, are said to be fighting on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Most worrying is the reported presence of an ex-member of France’s elite First Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment, considered one of Europe’s most experienced special forces units and which shares the “Who Dares Wins” motto of the SAS.

The unnamed individual, of North African origin, had received commando training in combat, shooting and survival techniques. He served for five years before joining a private security company for which he worked in the Arabian peninsula, where he was radicalised before heading for Syria, according to L’Opinion, a news website.

One of the defectors had become the leader of a group of a dozen or so French-born Islamists operating in the Syrian region of Deir Ezzor who had all received combat training, reported Radio France International, or RFI.

Others, apparently in their twenties, were explosive experts. Some were Muslim converts while others were radicalised French from an “Arab-Muslim” background, said RFI.

Jean-Yves Drian, the French defence minister, confirmed the existence of a handful of ex-French military personnel among jihadist fighters in the Middle East, but tried to play down their presence, saying the phenomenon was “extremely rare”.

However, they will raise fears over the risk of a French version of the 2009 gun rampage at Fort Hood, the U.S. military base in Texas, where Nadal Hasan, a U.S. army major who turned to radical Islam, killed 13 servicemen scheduled to leave for Afghanistan.

Drian said that the French armed forces’ internal security and protection unit, DPSD, would “reinforce its vigilance and see its means increased.”

News of the defections came as Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, unveiled anti-terrorism measures worth over $600 million after France’s worst Islamist attack in which 17 people were killed earlier this month.

It coincided with a government pledge to cut 7,500 fewer defence jobs in the next five years than previously planned.

Valls said 2,680 new jobs would be created to fight terrorism by 2018 – around half in intelligence.

France now has to monitor almost 3,000 people involved in “terrorist networks” following a 130 per cent jump in those linked to jihadists in Iraq and Syria in the past year, he said.

An extra 60 Muslim clerics would be recruited to work with potential militants in France’s overcrowded prisons, while five units would be created to isolate radicalized inmates.

Valls said the idea of stripping offenders of certain civic rights – a measure mirroring a post-war law barring Nazi collaborators from voting, holding office or working for the state – would be debated.

Other moves included the creation of “cyberpatrols” to track jihadists and recruitment online and the launch of a website dedicated to countering Islamist indoctrination.

The decision to boost web surveillance came after a group of hackers loyal to Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, broke into the Twitter account of Le Monde.

The attack by the Syrian Electronic Army forced Le Monde to suspend temporarily its Twitter account, which has 3.3 million followers, but the paper later said it had regained control of its computers, adding: “We apologize for any fraudulent posts on our behalf.”

Before that, the hackers managed to post messages including: “Je ne suis pas Charlie” (I am not Charlie). This was reference to the now famous “Je suis Charlie” message brandished by millions in tribute to the 12 people killed at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical weekly, earlier this month.

They were shot dead by Cherif and Said Koachi, two French brothers of Algerian origin with links to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The same week, Amedy Coulibaly, a home-grown Islamist, killed a police officer and four hostages at a Jewish supermarket east of Paris. Four men aged 22 to 28 were placed under formal investigation yesterday over the Coulibaly killings.

U.S drone strikes killed at least 874 people in hunt for 24 terrorists

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© flickr.com/ doctress neutopia

© flickr.com/ doctress neutopia

by Sputnik News

U.S. drone strikes that hit their intended targets only 21% of the time have resulted in the killings of hundreds of civilians, including children, in America’s hunt for terrorists in Yemen and Pakistan.

According to a data analysis by human rights group Reprieve, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan killed as many as 221 people, including 103 children, in the hunt for just four men on President Barack Obama’s secret Kill List, the Express Tribune reported. The Kill List is a covert program that selects individual targets for assassination and requires no public presentation of evidence or judicial oversight.

Three of those targets are believed to still be alive, while the fourth died from natural causes.

Drone strikes carried out by the Obama administration may have killed as many as 1,147 people during attempts to kill 41 men in Yemen and Pakistan, accounting for 25 percent of all drone strike casualties in both countries, according to Reprieve’s report.

Each man was targeted and/or reported killed more than three times on average before they were actually killed. In one instance, a person was targeted seven times before eventually being killed. Two others were killed six times and one is believed to still be alive today.

“Drone strikes have been sold to the American public on the claim that they’re ‘precise’. But they are only as precise as the intelligence that feeds them,” Reprieve’s Jennifer Gibson, who headed the study, told the Express Tribune. “There is nothing precise about intelligence that results in the deaths of 28 unknown people, including women and children, for every ‘bad guy’ the U.S. goes after.”

In Pakistan, 24 men were reported killed or targeted multiple times. Missed strikes on these men killed 874 other people, and account for 35 percent of all confirmed civilian casualties in Pakistani drone strikes. They also resulted in the deaths of 142 children. Each person was reported killed an average of three times, the Express Tribune reported, citing Reprieves’ data analysis.

U.S. drone strikes targeting terrorists in Yemen and Pakistan have killed hundreds of unarmed civilians, including children, according to a data analysis by human rights organization Reprieve. © AP PHOTO/ B.K. BANGASH

From 2004 to 2013, 142 Pakistani children were killed in the pursuit of 14 high-value targets. Only six of those children died in strikes that successfully hit their target.

“Said another way, the US had only a 21 percent accuracy rate in killing their intended target when children were present,” the report stated. “On average, almost nine children lost their lives in attempts to kill each of these 14 men.”

The data analysis examined the intersection between the Kill List and the drone program in Pakistan and Yemen to identify “multiple kills,” or instances in which people have been reported targeted and/or killed by an air strike multiple times.

The human rights organization acknowledged, however, that obtaining verified numbers was near impossible due to the secrecy of the Kill List and drone program.

France grants French citizenship to Muslim man who saved lives at kosher grocery in Paris

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French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, left, and French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, center, award citizenship to Lassana Bathily during a ceremony in Paris, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015. Bathily, a Muslim employee born in Mali, has been granted French citizenship and honored as a hero by France’s authorities for saving lives during the attack of a kosher supermarket in Paris. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) (The Associated Press)

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, left, and French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, center, award citizenship to Lassana Bathily during a ceremony in Paris, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015. Bathily, a Muslim employee born in Mali, has been granted French citizenship and honored as a hero by France’s authorities for saving lives during the attack of a kosher supermarket in Paris. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena) (The Associated Press)

by AP

Paris: French authorities have honored a Mali-born employee who saved lives at the kosher supermarket attacked by terrorists as a hero and granted him French citizenship.

Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve praised Muslim, 24, for his “courage” and “heroism” during a ceremony Tuesday in the presence of Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

Cazeneuve said Bathily’s “act of humanity has become a symbol of an Islam of peace and tolerance.”

Bathily was in the store’s underground stockroom when gunman Amedy Coulibaly burst in upstairs on January 9 and killed four people. He turned off the stockroom’s freezer and hid a group of shoppers inside before sneaking out through a fire escape to speak to police and help them with their operation to free the 15 hostages and kill the attacker.

Obama warns U.S Congress against new Iran sanctions

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Barack Obama

by Al-Akhbar

US President Barack Obama warned Congress on Tuesday that any move to impose new sanctions on Iran could scupper delicate negotiations aimed at reaching a comprehensive nuclear agreement.

“New sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails,” Obama said in his State of the Union address to the Republican-controlled Congress.

As some lawmakers maneuver to try to draft a bill slapping new sanctions on Iran, Obama renewed his vow to veto any such legislation.

Talks between global powers and Iran to rein in its disputed nuclear program resumed last weekend in Geneva, with a new deadline looming at the end of June.

Negotiators, however, have said they would like to see a framework deal in place sometime in March, after two previous deadlines for a historic accord were missed.

“Between now and this spring, we have a chance to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that prevents a nuclear-armed Iran,” Obama told US lawmakers.

Such a deal would also secure “America and our allies, including Israel, while avoiding yet another Middle East conflict.”

The US president warned “there are no guarantees that negotiations will succeed,” and vowed to “keep all options on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran.”

But he warned new sanctions would “alienate” the United States from its allies and ensure that “Iran starts up its nuclear program again.”

“It doesn’t make sense. That is why I will veto any new sanctions bill that threatens to undo this progress,” Obama said, referring to an interim accord under which Tehran has frozen its uranium enrichment in return for limited sanctions relief.

Earlier in January, the US ambassador to the United Nations also stressed beefing up sanctions would isolate the United States in its strategy to address Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and weaken joint international pressure.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is another politician who has called on US senators to avoid introducing any new sanctions, saying that existing sanctions have led to the ongoing talks with Iran over its nuclear program, “and those talks at least have a prospect of success.”

Meanwhile, some Iranian lawmakers are considering a push toward resuming unlimited uranium enrichment if the United States imposes new sanctions on Tehran.

On January 15, in a speech in the Iranian religious city of Qom, Parliament speaker Ali Larijani warned the world powers they “cannot haggle with us,” saying they must “make correct use of the opportunities offered to them.”

“Recently some deputies have been considering a bill stipulating that Iran will pursue its activities at whatever level of enrichment… if the West decides to impose new sanctions,” he warned.

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Jawad Zarif held intensive talks on January 14 and they discussed the main issues of the previous round of negotiations between Iran and world powers.

A new round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program has started on January 18 in Geneva. The talks is at the deputy foreign ministerial level and aimed at finding a deal on the number and type of uranium-enriching centrifuges of Iran and the process for relieving sanctions against the country.

The West suspects Tehran may be trying to develop a nuclear weapon capability.

Iran denies it is seeking a bomb and says its nuclear program is solely aimed at producing atomic energy to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels, requiring a massive increase in its ability to enrich uranium.

(AFP, Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)

Noam Chomsky: Obama's drone program 'the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times'

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Famed linguist takes aim at western hypocrisy on terrorism.

Noam Chomsky speaking in May, 2014. (Photo: Chatham House/fickr/cc)

Noam Chomsky speaking in May, 2014. (Photo: Chatham House/fickr/cc)

by Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams

World-renowned linguist and scholar Noam Chomsky has criticized what he sees as Western hypocrisy following the recent terror attacks in Paris and the idea that there are two kinds of terrorism: “theirs versus ours.”

In an op-ed published Monday at CNN.com, Chomsky notes how the deadly attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a supermarket last week sparked millions to demonstrate under the banner “I am Charlie” and prompted inquiries “into the roots of these shocking assaults in Islamic culture and exploring ways to counter the murderous wave of Islamic terrorism without sacrificing our values.”

No such inquiry into western culture and Christianity came from Anders Breivik’s 2011 attack in Norway that killed scores of people.

Nor did NATO’s 1999 missile strike on Serbian state television headquarters that killed 16 journalists spark “Je Suis Charlie”-like demonstrations. In fact, Chomsky writes, that attack was lauded by U.S. officials.

That civil rights lawyer Floyd Abrams described the Charlie Hebdo attack as “the most threatening assault on journalism in living memory,” is not surprising, Chomsky writes, when one understands “‘living memory,’ a category carefully constructed to include Their crimes against us while scrupulously excluding Our crimes against them—the latter not crimes but noble defense of the highest values, sometimes inadvertently flawed.”

Other omissions of attacks on journalists noted by Chomsky: Israel’s assault on Gaza this summer whose casualties included many journalists, and the dozens of journalists in Honduras that have been killed since the coup in 2009.

Offering further proof of what he describes as western hypocrisy towards terrorism, Chomsky takes at aim at Obama’s drone program, which he describes as “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times.”

It “target[s] people suspected of perhaps intending to harm us some day, and any unfortunates who happen to be nearby,” he writes.

‘Tell us who pays you’: Tony Blair pressured over alleged paymasters

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Tony Blair pictured at the Munich Security Conference 2014. (Photo: Marc Müller/cc)

Tony Blair pictured at the Munich Security Conference 2014. (Photo: Marc Müller/cc)

by RT

Conservative MPs will launch a campaign on Monday to force Tony Blair to reveal how much he earns and who pays him.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen is tabling an Early Day Motion (EDM) in the House of Commons, demanding that former prime ministers be bound by the same rules of transparency and oversight as serving politicians.

While the EDM is unlikely to be passed by parliament, it follows growing concern over Blair’s work for authoritarian governments and controversial corporations.

Blair’s business transactions have been linked to the governments of Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan – all three of which are widely known for their human rights abuses.

“Tony Blair has embarked on a career of personal enrichment and has blurred the lines between his public and private interests,” Bridgen told The Sunday Times.

“No other former prime minister has gone to work for other sovereign states. Mr Blair is still in public life, but is not bound by its principles, and that needs to be changed,” he added.

Blair, who was last year awarded GQ’s Philanthropy Award, has come under intense scrutiny as he has been linked to a string of authoritarian regimes and less-than-ethical companies.

A consortium of energy companies, including BP, hired him last year to work on a new gas pipeline which will go from Azerbaijan to Italy via Turkey.

The project has come under fierce criticism for the environment destruction it may cause and for the wealth it will give Azerjaijan’s controversial leader, Ilham Aliyev.

Aliyev, whose government has imprisoned bloggers and journalists, was compared to a mafia don from The Godfather by US diplomats in a Wikileaks cable published in 2010.

The former prime minister’s consultancy, Tony Blair Associates, reportedly earns £7 million a year for advising Kazakhstan’s strongman president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Nazarbayev’s government has been accused of human rights abuses after its courts forcibly closed much of the country’s independent media and his troops massacred dozens of striking oil workers at a peaceful protest in Zhanaozen, in western Kazakhstan, in December 2011.

As if the list of unscrupulous customers wasn’t long enough already, Tony Blair Associates has also been linked to a Saudi Arabian oil company founded by the son of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah.

A leaked contract, which emerged last November, showed that Blair had been hired by PetroSaudi to help facilitate a deal between the oil firm and Chinese state officials.

Blair, who also serves as a Special Envoy for the Middle East Quartet, was reportedly paid £41,000 a month to carry out these duties, and took a 2 percent cut from each successfully orchestrated deal.

Since leaving office in 2007, Blair has amassed millions of pounds in fees collected through his consultancy firm.

Some have speculated that the former prime minister’s personal fortune could amount to £100 million, but he has implied it is closer to £20 million.

This figure will raise eyebrows, however, as it is reported his personal expenses run into the millions.

Blair’s private jet alone is worth £30 million and reportedly costs £7,000 for every hour it is in the air.

Since leaving government Blair has also claimed a taxpayer-funded allowance for ex-prime ministers, in addition to other state subsidies.

A Freedom of Information request in 2012 revealed Blair was costing the taxpayer £400,000 a year in pensions, public duties allowances and security costs.

Richest 1% wealthier than the rest of the world combined

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Dollars

by teleSUR

In new report released to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam reveals that inequality is rising to staggering levels.

The spotlight will be on the world’s richest and most powerful as they gather in a billionaire’s playground in Switzerland this week, as a new report reveals that by next year 1 percent of the world’s population will own more wealth than the other 99 percent.

Anti-poverty charity Oxfam released its latest report “Wealth: Having it all and wanting more” Monday just days ahead of the World Economic Forum, whose annual meeting in ski resort Davos aims to set the global agenda for issues ranging from the global economy to climate change.

Executive director of Oxfam International, Winnie Byamyima, who will be co-chairing the event, has assured that she will use her position to draw attention to rising inequality as she did last year when her charity revealed that the richest 85 people in the world hold the same wealth as the poorest 50 percent.

“Do we really want to live in a world where the 1 percent own more than the rest of us combined? The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast,” Byamyima said.

“In the past 12 months we have seen world leaders from President Obama to Christine Lagarde talk more about tackling extreme inequality but we are still waiting for many of them to walk the walk. It is time our leaders took on the powerful vested interests that stand in the way of a fairer and more prosperous world,” she added.

The report examines how extreme wealth is passed down generations and how policies stay favorable to the interests of the wealthy. More than one-third of the 1,645 billionaires listed by Forbes inherited some or all of their riches.

Furthermore, the report details the massive sums billionaires spend on lobbying Washington and Brussels policy makers to protect their interests.

Twenty percent of the richest have interests in the financial and insurance sectors, a group which saw its cash wealth increase by 11 percent March 2013 to March 2014. These billionaires spent US$550 million lobbying policy makers in 2013.

During the 2012 U.S. elections, the financial sector also gave US$571 million in campaign contributions.

Freedom of speech: Long-time presenter Jim Clancy leaves CNN after ‘anti-Israel’ Twitter rant

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Jim Clancy

by RT

Veteran US TV journalist Jim Clancy has abruptly left the international news broadcaster after 34 years, following a seemingly tangential Twitter argument over Charlie Hebdo that escalated to a verbal war between Clancy and pro-Israel social media users.

“Jim Clancy is no longer with CNN. We thank him for more than three decades of distinguished service, and wish him nothing but the best,” said a terse statement from the Atlanta-headquartered network, which had sent Clancy as a reporter to Beirut, London, and Berlin before making him a senior anchor and contributor.

Although neither Clancy nor CNN revealed the reasons for the departure, almost all media outlets connected it with a somewhat incoherent Twitter spat that began in the wake of the fatal attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French magazine.

“The cartoons NEVER mocked the Prophet. They mocked how the COWARDS tried to distort his word. Pay attention,” tweeted Clancy on January 7 – from an account that has since been deleted – referring to the magazine’s editorial output.

The ironically-named anonymous pro-Israeli blogger Elder of Ziyon, and Oren Kessler, a Jewish-American Middle East analyst, both piped in with comments contradicting Clancy, saying that there had been explicitly anti-religious cartoons, and reminding the journalist that the magazine had been previously targeted by Islamists.

The debate then took an odd turn, with Clancy tweeting “Hasbara” – the name for Israel’s policy of spreading its message through mass media.

“This is great, a pro-Israel voice try [sic] to convince us that cartoonists were really anti-Muslim, and that’s why they were attacked. FALSE. These accounts are part of a campaign to do PR for Israel(including “Jews Making News”) but not HR (Human Rights.),” read one tweet.

Despite being met with incomprehension, Clancy then mysteriously tweeted “It’s called satire” before launching into a series of general anti-Israeli comments.

Several included mentions of Israeli officials being tried at the International Criminal Court, as well as Israeli settlements – a subject Clancy has covered extensively.

Perhaps the most offensive and telling tweet read “It’s my Friday night” – this was actually a Wednesday – and said “the Hasbara team need to pick on some cripple on the edge of the herd.”

The seemingly unprovoked outpouring sparked the ire of the Ruderman Family Foundation, a Jewish disabled people’s foundation.

Its head, Jay Ruderman, wrote an open letter to CNN, calling Clancy’s remarks “appalling” and asking why “in this day and age a senior anchor at CNN, a world leader in the media, would use a word such as ‘cripple,’ which is a derogatory term for people with disabilities.”

More and more media outlets picked up on the story, and Clancy first deleted several of the more inflammatory posts, and then eventually his account. However, screenshots of the tweets had been saved by Gawker and several other outlets.

By Friday, Clancy’s biography had been taken off the CNN website, and the journalist wrote a goodbye letter, saying “CNN has been a family to my own family,” and thanking it for providing “great adventures and achievements.”

Mali declared free of Ebola

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West African country says no new cases of infections have been registered after 42-day period signaling end of outbreak.

The outbreak has killed more than 8,400 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia [AFP]

The outbreak has killed more than 8,400 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia [AFP]

by Al Jazeera

Mali’s government and the United Nations have declared the West African nation free of Ebola following a 42-day period without a new case of the deadly virus.

“I declare on this day, January 18, 2015, the end of the end of the Ebola epidemic in Mali,” Ousmane Koné said in a statement in which he thanked the country’s health workers and international partners for their work to halt the outbreak.

The country “had come out” of the epidemic, confirmed Ibrahima Soce Fall, the head of the Malian office of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER).

Countries must report no new cases for 42 days – or two incubation periods of 21 days – to be declared Ebola-free.

Mali recorded seven deaths caused by the Ebola outbreak that began just over a year ago

According to World Health Organisation (WHO) data the worst epidemic of the viral haemorrhagic fever on record has killed more than 8,400 people, mostly in neighbouring Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

At least 21,296 people have so far been infected with the virus, the WHO has said,

Mali’s last infected patient recovered and left hospital early last month. At one point health officials had been monitoring more than 300 contact cases.

Mali became the sixth West African country to record a case of Ebola when a two-year-old girl from Guinea died in October. It was close to being declared Ebola free in November before a second wave of infections.

17 Journalists Killed in Media’s Deadliest Year in Palestine by Israel

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media-death

by Al-Akhbar

2014 was the deadliest ever for journalists working in the Palestinian territories, a Gaza-based watchdog said on Thursday, months after a bloody war in the besieged enclave claimed the lives of more than 2,310 Gazans.

Meanwhile, a UN senior official on Thursday called on Israel to “immediately” unlock millions of dollars in taxes owed to the Palestinian Authority (PA) that were withheld after it decided to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the late December.

“2014 was a black year for freedom of the press in Palestine… and it was the worst and bloodiest,” the Gaza Center for Press Freedom said in its annual report.

The report accused Israel of committing 295 separate “violations of press freedom” across the occupied Palestinian territories.

These resulted in the deaths of 17 journalists during the deadly war in July and August, including that of an Italian photographer working for Associated Press.

The report revealed Israel arrested or detained an unspecified number of journalists, denied freedom of movement to local media workers wanting to leave the blockaded Gaza Strip, and partially or completely destroyed 19 buildings housing editorial operations during its bombardment of the territory during the conflict.

According to the Gaza Center for Press Freedom, the PA also committed 82 violations of press freedom, including arresting or summoning 28 journalists, and injuring or assaulting 26 more.

For 51 days this summer, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip — by air, land and sea — with the stated aim of ending rocket fire from the coastal enclave.

According to estimates based on preliminary information, as many as 96,000 Palestinian homes were damaged or destroyed during the days of hostilities, a higher figure than was previously thought.

Withheld tax revenues

On Thursday, UN Assistant Secretary-General Jens Anders Toyberg-Frandzen called on Israel to resume the transfer of $127 million tax revenues that were withheld after the PA decided to join the ICC.

He told the Security Council that the freeze of tax funds imposed on January 3 was in violation of the Oslo agreements between Israel and the PA.

The council’s monthly meeting on the Middle East was the first on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the failure of a Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations Security Council in December.

On Thursday’s meeting, chief Palestinian delegate Riyad Mansour called the withholding of Palestinian tax revenues a “blatant act of reprisal and theft of Palestinian funds” and condemned Israel’s “rabid settlement colonization.”

The Israeli side has also condemned Palestinian moves, with Ambassador Ron Prosor accusing Palestinians of “running away from negotiations” and obstructing the peace process.

The United States and the European Union have criticized Israel’s retaliatory move in response to the Palestinian application to join the ICC, which could investigate war crimes complaints against Israel.

Israel-Sweden encounter

Meanwhile, Israel said on Thursday that Sweden’s foreign minister was not welcome for an official visit in the country, with relations strained over Stockholm’s recognition of Palestine.

The minister, Margot Wallstroem, last week postponed a trip to Israel indefinitely, with Israeli media reports suggesting that Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman did not want to meet her.

Sweden’s decision in October to recognize the state of Palestine — the first major EU nation to do so — infuriated Israel, which temporarily recalled its ambassador to Stockholm.

“Do not wait to travel to Israel until the Swedish foreign minister comes here, because that could take a long time,” Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon told public broadcaster Swedish Radio.

“The Swedish foreign minister would not have been given any official meetings in Israel if she had traveled here. What Sweden did was an utterly unfriendly action,” Nahshon added.

Wallstroem considered making the trip without official meetings but would have been without a security detail during the commemoration of Swedish Holocaust hero Raoul Wallenberg and other events, the radio said, without giving sources.

“It is basically an insult,” Per Joensson, an editor with the Swedish Institute for International Affairs, told AFP.

“That is not a way to treat a sovereign foreign minister, unless you really want to punish her.”

Despite the furore, Sweden said Wallstroem would visit Israel after its March 17 legislative elections.

(AFP, Reuters, Al-Akhbar)

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