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THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 29, 2016 • T H I S D AY
INTERNATIONAL
email:foreigndesk@thisdaylive.com
Israel’s Elder Statesman, Shimon Peres, Dies at 93 Former Israeli president and elder statesman Shimon Peres, a joint winner of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize and an influential figure in Israeli politics for 70 years, died in hospital yesterday at the aged of 93, two weeks after suffering a massive stroke. A convinced campaigner for Middle East peace who remained energetic until his final days, Peres was mourned by world leaders and praised for his tireless engagement. U.S. President Barack Obama said:“A light has gone out”.“There are few people who we share this world with who change the course of human history, not just through their role in human events, but because they expand our moral imagination and force us to expect more of ourselves,” Obama said in a statement.“My friend Shimon was one of those people.” Despite decades of rivalry with Peres, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a right-winger who defeated the then-Labour Party leader in a 1996 election, praised him as a stalwart of the center-left and a visionary. “There were many things we agreed upon, and the number grew as the years passed. But we had disagreements, a natural part of democratic life,” Netanyahu said after holding a minute’s silence at a specially convened cabinet meeting. “Shimon won international recognition that spanned the globe. World leaders wanted to be in his proximity and respected him. Along with us, many of them will accompany him on his last journey to eternal rest in the soil of Jerusalem.” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement saying he had sent a condolence letter to the family expressing his “sadness and regret” and praising Peres’s“intensive efforts to reach out for a lasting peace ... until the last days”. It was not clear if he would attend Peres’s funeral, which will take place on Friday at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl cemetery, in a section dedicated to “Great Leaders of the Nation”. In the Gaza Strip, Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for
the enclave’s Hamas Islamist rulers, said: “The Palestinian people are happy over the departure of this criminal, who was involved in many crimes and in the bloodshed of the Palestinian people.” Obama, Britain’s Prince Charles and former U.S. president Bill Clinton are among those expected to attend, Israeli radio reported, although Israel’s Foreign Ministry could not immediately confirm the attendance list. French President Francois Hollande also confirmed he would attend, alongside his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy. The announcement of the death was made at the Tel Hashomer hospital by his son Chemi and son-in-law Rafi Walden. “His life ended abruptly when he was still working on his great passion, strengthening the country and striving for peace. His legacy will remain with us all,”said Walden, who was also Peres’s personal physician. Polish-born Peres, whose family moved to then British-ruled Palestine in the 1930s, was part of almost every major political development in Israel since its founding in 1948. He served in a dozen cabinets and was twice prime minister, though he never won a general election, struggling to connect with ordinary voters. He was first elected to Israel’s parliament in 1959 and barring a brief interlude in early 2006, held his seat for 48 years, until he became president in 2007. In every role he undertook - from forging Israel’s defense strategy in the 1950s to running his eponymous peace foundation - Peres was known for his energy and enthusiasm, even recording jokey YouTube videos into his 90s. “Optimists and pessimists die the same way,” he said. “They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist.” He shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with the late former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for reaching an interim peace deal in 1993, the Oslo Accords, which never turned
Aleppo Bombardments Hit Bakery, Hospital A bakery and major hospital were hit in bombardments of rebel-held eastern Aleppo early on Wednesday, residents said, as Syrian government forces pressed their Russian-backed campaign to retake the whole city. “The warplane flew over us and directly started dropping its missiles on this hospital... at around 4 a.m.,” Mohammad Abu Rajab, a radiologist at the largest trauma hospital in the city’s rebel-held sector, told Reuters. “The rubble fell in on the patients in the intensive care unit.” The strikes also hit the hospital’s oxygen and power generators, and patients were
transferred to another hospital in the area, medical workers at the M10 hospital said. A bakery in another rebel-held district was hit around 3 a.m., as people lined up to collect bread, residents said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said the bakery in the al-Maadi neighborhood had been hit by artillery shelling, killing at least six people. Over 250,000 civilians are thought to be besieged in the rebel-held sector of Aleppo, where intensive bombing by government forces and their allies has killed hundreds of people since a ceasefire collapsed last week.
into a lasting treaty. Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by an Israeli ultranationalist who opposed the interim accords, and it was Peres who took over as prime minister after Rabin’s death. Peres is widely seen as having gained nuclear capabilities for Israel by procuring the Dimona reactor from France while defense ministry director-general in the
1950s. As defense minister, he oversaw the 1976 Israeli rescue of hijacked Israelis at Entebbe airport in Uganda. In the Arab world, his legacy is tainted by the 1996 shelling of a United Nations compound in the village of Qana in southern Lebanon during an Israeli offensive. More than 100 civilians sheltering there were killed. Peres was prime minister at the time
and Israel said its forces had been aiming at militants firing rockets nearby. Peres was also seen to have done little to rein in the expansion of Israeli settlements on land captured during the 1967 Middle East war, even if he was not an active proponent of a policy that Obama has described as an obstacle to peace. From 2007, when he was elected president at the second
attempt, Peres played more of a ceremonial role, trying to raise Israel’s profile internationally while advocating for peace through his foundation. He stepped down as president in 2014. Despite the influence he has had on Israel’s landscape, his death is not expected to have an impact on the already dim prospects for a return to peace talks with the Palestinians.
FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY
First Lady Michelle Obama hugs former President George W. Bush as she arrives with President Obama and former first lady Laura Bush for the dedication of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington… weekend
‘Malaysian Flight MH17 Downed by Russian-made Missile’ Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a missile fired from a launcher brought into Ukraine from Russia and located in a village held by pro-Russian rebels, international prosecutors said yesterday. The findings counter Moscow’s suggestion that the passenger plane, en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur in July 2014, was brought down by Ukraine’s military rather than the separatists. All 298 people on board, most of them Dutch, were killed. The conclusions were based on thousands of wiretaps, photographs, witness statements and forensic tests during more than two years of inquiries into
an incident which led to a sharp rise in tensions between Russia and the West. Among the key findings were: the plane was hit by a Russian-made Buk-9M38 missile; the missile was fired from the rebel-held village of Pervomaysk in eastern Ukraine; and the launcher was transported into Ukraine from Russia. “This Buk trailer came from the territory of the Russian Federation, and after the launch it was returned again to the territory of the Russian Federation,” said Wilbert Paulissen, chief investigator with the Dutch national police. The Ukrainian government
said the findings pointed to Russia’s “direct involvement”. Russia - which has always denied Moscow or pro-Russian rebels were responsible - rejected the prosecutors’ conclusions, saying they were not supported by technical evidence and the inquiry was biased. Earlier on Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said its radar data had “identified all flying objects which could have been launched or were in the air over the territory controlled by rebels at that moment”. “The data is clear-cut ... there is no rocket. If there was a rocket, it could only have been
fired from elsewhere,” he said. The investigators, from the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia and Ukraine, said they had not had access to Moscow’s radar images but would gladly include a Russian contribution to the inquiry. Ukrainian and Western officials, citing intelligence intercepts, have long blamed the pro-Russian rebels for the incident, which played a big part in a decision by the European Union and United States to impose sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict and has damaged Dutch-Russian economic ties.
Norway Appeals Court Rejects Snowden’s Extradition Lawsuit A Norwegian appeals court has rejected a lawsuit from fugitive former U.S. spy contractor Edward Snowden against the Norwegian government, upholding the verdict of a lower court, it said yesterday. Snowden’s law firm said in April he would take Norway to court to secure free passage to the Nordic country to receive a free speech award, but the Oslo District Court dismissed
the case in June. “The court of appeal has -- like the district court -concluded that the lawsuit must be rejected,” it said on Wednesday, adding that the justice ministry could not be compelled to issue an advance decision on whether or not to extradite. Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked details about the
U.S. government’s massive surveillance programs, was granted asylum in Russia, which borders Norway, after fleeing the United States in 2013. Supporters see him as a whistleblower who boldly exposed government excess. But the U.S. government has filed espionage charges against him for leaking intelligence information.
Snowden had been invited to Norway to receive an award from the local branch of writers’ group PEN International, but worried that he would be handed over to the United States, his lawyers have said. “Sadly, this was not entirely unexpected,”chairman William Nygaard of PEN Norway told Reuters. “We will of course appeal to the supreme court.”