World

Israel said Tuesday it has reached a US-brokered agreement with Lebanon to settle their long-disputed maritime border, hailing a “historic achievement” that potentially unlocks significant offshore gas production for both countries.  

Negotiations between the neighbouring countries, which are still technically at war, had suffered repeated setbacks since their launch in 2020 but gained momentum in recent weeks with both sides eyeing revenue from potentially rich Mediterranean gas fields.

US envoy Amos Hochstein floated a proposed final agreement earlier this month that was accepted by Israel, but Lebanon sought some adjustments. 

Israel said last week it intended to reject the changes sought by Lebanon, even if that made a deal impossible, but negotiations continued, culminating in what both sides described as acceptable final terms. 

“Israel and Lebanon have reached an historic agreement settling the maritime dispute,” said a statement from Israel Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s office, in which he hailed “an historic achievement that will strengthen Israel’s security”.

Lebanon’s presidency said the proposed final text submitted by Hochstein was “satisfactory to Lebanon” and voiced hope that “the agreement on the demarcation will be announced as soon as possible”.

Lebanon’s chief negotiator, Elias Bou Saab, said that “today we have come to a solution that satisfies both parties.”

A major source of friction at the talks was the Karish gas field, which Israel insisted fell entirely within its waters and was not a subject of negotiation. 

Lebanon reportedly claimed part of the field and Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militant group that holds huge sway in Lebanon, threatened attacks if Israel began production at Karish. 

Israel has said production would begin at Karish as soon as possible, regardless of Lebanon’s demands. 

– Israel election issue –

On Sunday, London-listed firm Energean began testing the pipeline linking Karish to the Israeli coast, a key step before production can begin.

The US text has not been made public but under terms leaked to the press all of the Karish field would fall under Israeli control, while another potential gas field, Qana, would be divided but its exploitation would be under Lebanon’s control.

French company Total would be licensed to search for gas in the Qana field, and Israel would receive a share of future revenues.

Bou Saab said Lebanon will “get its full rights from the Qana field”, and Israel might receive compensation through Total. There will be no direct partnership in gas exploration or exploitation between the two enemy states, he said.

The Israeli premier has said his government is committed to exporting more gas to Europe to help replace Russian deliveries hit by the war in Ukraine. 

But Israel’s November 1 general election has overshadowed the recent phases of the negotiations. 

Right-wing opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, charged that Lapid had “capitulated” to Hezbollah by moving forward with an agreement. 

It is not clear if Netanyahu, who remains determined to reclaim the premiership he held from 2009-2021, has seen the deal’s proposed terms.

But he has vowed that the hawkish government he hopes to form next month with his far-right and religious allies will not be bound by any agreement with Lebanon.

The French government on Tuesday threatened to forcibly break blockades of refineries and oil depots, which have been paralysed by striking workers, as motorists continued to besiege petrol stations in the hope of filling their tanks.

Around a third of France’s service stations were still low on, or out of, petrol as strike action at energy giant TotalEnergies and other oil majors entered its third week and wage talks stalled.

Government ministers and President Emmanuel Macron have urged a negotiated resolution to the crisis, but on Tuesday government spokesman Olivier Veran threatened force to end the blockades which have paralysed several of France’s refineries and oil depots.

If blockades were not ended “immediately”, Veran told the RTL broadcaster, “we will step in, which means we could intervene to lift them”.

The government could then “requisition qualified personnel” to ensure that the situation can go “back to normal”, he said.

He said ongoing action by the hard-left CGT union at TotalEnergies installations was “excessive and out of line”.

The oil giant’s management “is right to demand that blockades be lifted before there can be negotiations”, Veran said.

Also on Tuesday, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called breaking up the blockades “the only solution”.

Once access to refineries and depots was free, it would take around two weeks for the fuel situation to return to normal, Veran said.

But stoppages continued at several refineries, including at France’s biggest near Le Havre in the north of the country, after strikers at TotalEnergies Tuesday voted to extend their action.

“We are still waiting for details from management on what they want to negotiate on,” Eric Sellini, coordinator for the CGT union at the oil major, told AFP.

– ‘What a mess’ –

Unions at the French branch of Esso-ExxonMobil on Tuesday also renewed their strike call, rejecting a pay offer by management.

Motorists formed long queues outside petrol stations from early Tuesday. In central Paris, traffic slowed as waiting cars blocked roads, cycle paths and pedestrian crossings, hoping to be served before the pumps went dry.

Many used social media to exchange tips. One post in a Facebook group Monday said that a local BP service station would be resupplied “at 2:30 pm”. Another replied: “It’s now 2:37 pm and they’re out of diesel.” 

Another user reacted: “What a mess.”

The petrol crisis comes at a time of high energy prices and inflation that are sapping French households’ purchasing power.

The left-wing opposition coalition Nupes has called for a “March against a high cost of living” in Paris and elsewhere on Sunday.

At the weekend, several prominent French people came out in support of the initiative, including this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Annie Ernaux.

Opposition politicians on the left were quick to criticise the government’s hardening stance Tuesday.

“With this government, when dialogue stalls, it’s threats for the wage earners and caresses for the bosses. And yet, it’s management that let the situation deteriorate,” tweeted Manuel Bompard, a deputy for the leftwing LFI party.

“They act as if ordinary people don’t matter,” said fellow LFI member Francois Ruffin.

Jordan Bardella, president of the farright RN party, said the government had failed to anticipate the crisis, adding that “super profits at Total and the salary of the chairman” made worker demands “not unreasonable”.

But Gilles Platret, vice president of the conservative LR party, backed the government’s tougher stance, saying strikers were “taking an entire country hostage”.

TotalEnergies posted a profit of $5.7 billion in the second quarter of the year, more than double the year-earlier figure.

CEO Patrick Pouyanne’s total compensation package was 5.9 million euros ($5.7 million) in 2021, up 52 percent from the previous year’s, according to the group’s annual report.

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Rights groups voiced alarm Tuesday over the extent of an Iranian crackdown on a Kurdish-populated city that has become a hub for protests, as oil refinery workers pressed strikes in a new tactic.

Iran’s clerical authorities have been shaken by over three weeks of protests that erupted after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year old Iranian of Kurdish origin, who had been arrested by the notorious morality police.

Despite the use of brutal force by the authorities that activists say has left dozens dead, and led to hundreds of arrests, there is so far no sign of the protest movement coming to an end.

Protests have been especially intense in the city of Sanandaj in the western province of Kurdistan, Amini’s home region, where rights groups fear heavy casualties and accuse authorities of resorting to shelling of neighbourhoods.

The Norway-based Hengaw rights groups said an Iranian warplane had arrived at the city’s airport overnight and buses carrying special forces were on their way to the city from elsewhere in Iran.

It warned locals were having problems sending video evidence of events due to internet restrictions but said a seven-year-old had been killed on Sunday night. AFP could not immediately verify the claims.

Amnesty International said it was “alarmed by the crackdown on protests in Sanandaj amid reports of security forces using firearms and firing teargas indiscriminately, including into people’s homes.”

“Iranian authorities continue to disrupt internet and mobile networks to hide their crimes,” it said in a statement.

– ‘All together!’ –

The New-York based Center for Human Rights in Iran said there was a risk of a similar situation in Sistan-Baluchistan province in the southeast where activists say over 90 people have been killed since September 30.

“The ruthless killings of civilians by security forces in Kurdistan province, on the heels of the massacre in Sistan-Baluchistan province, are likely preludes to severe state violence to come,” said its director Hadi Ghaemi.

Analysts have said these protests are proving particularly challenging for the authorities under supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 83, due to their duration and multi-faceted nature ranging from street demonstrations to individual acts of defiance.

In a new development on Monday, protests spread to Iran’s oil refineries with videos showing striking workers burning tyres and blocking roads outside the Asalouyeh petrochemical plant in the southwest.

They could also be heard shouting slogans including “Death to the dictator” and “Don’t be scared, we are all together!”.

Similar actions were reported at other facilities including Abadan in the west where the Oslo-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR) said a strike was already in progress on Tuesday.

University campuses and even school classrooms have also seen regular protests, with students at the Amir Kabir University of Technology in Tehran on Monday shown chanting anti-regime slogans.

In a video shared by the 1500tasvir social media channel that monitors protests and police violations, students at the Tehran Art University were shown spelling out the Persian word for blood — “khun” — in a human chain.

– ‘Vain effort to silence’ –

The crackdown on the protests sparked by Amini’s death on September 16 has claimed at least 95 lives, according to IHR.

Activists say that among those who died in the protests are two teenage girls, Nika Shakarami and Sarina Esmailzadeh, whose families say were killed by security forces after being detained. Authorities insist they died in falls.

Another 90 people were killed by the security forces in Iran’s far southeastern city of Zahedan from September 30 after the protests sparked by the alleged rape of a teenage girl by a police chief in the Sistan-Baluchistan province, said IHR, citing the UK-based Baluch Activists Campaign.

UNICEF executive director Catherine Russel said “we are extremely concerned by continuing reports of children and adolescents being killed, injured and detained amid the ongoing public unrest in Iran.”

The crackdown has prompted international condemnation with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan telling Iran the “world is watching” and “will hold responsible those using violence in a vain effort to silence” protesters.

The UK on Monday said it had imposed sanctions on Iran’s morality police, the unit which arrested Amini and enforces strict dress rules for women including the compulsory headscarf.

Iran said it has summoned the British ambassador to protest against the “baseless” sanctions.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said on Tuesday that five French citizens are currently being held in Iran, in comments implying that one of the nine foreigners Iran has said it is holding over links to the protests is French.

The United States and other G7 powers will hold crisis talks Tuesday on Russia’s recent bombing blitz across Ukraine that Kyiv’s allies said was a mark of desperation and a turning point in the war.

Their meeting comes a day after Russian missiles rocked the Ukrainian capital for the first time in months. A defiant President Volodymyr Zelensky responded by warning Moscow that his country “cannot be intimidated”.

Moscow’s forces rained more than 80 missiles on cities across Ukraine on Monday, according to Kyiv.

Ukraine’s emergency services said on Tuesday that the overall toll had risen to 19 dead and more than 100 people wounded.

The United Nations said on Tuesday the wave of attacks may have violated the laws of war and would amount to war crimes if civilians were deliberately targeted.

“These strikes may have violated the principles of the conduct of hostilities under international humanitarian law,” Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the UN human rights office, told reporters in Geneva, adding that intentionally targeting civilians and civilian objects, “amounts to a war crime”.

Monday’s mass barrage came in apparent retaliation for an explosion on Saturday that damaged a key bridge linking Russia to Crimea, a peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukraine for the bridge blast and warned of “severe” responses to any further attacks.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the strikes on Monday showed Moscow was “desperate” after a spate of embarrassing military setbacks.

Turkey on Tuesday called for a viable ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine “as soon as possible”.

Speaking in a televised interview, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also called for a “just peace” based on Ukraine’s territorial integrity. 

Ukrainian officials said Russia had fired another four missiles into the county on Tuesday, all of which were shot down by air defences.

At an urgent meeting of the UN General Assembly on Monday — called to debate Moscow’s declared annexation of four partly occupied Ukrainian regions — Ukrainian ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya branded Russia a “terrorist state”, noting his own immediate family had come under attack on Monday.

“Unfortunately, you can hardly call for a stable and sane peace as long as an unstable and insane dictatorship exists in your vicinity,” he said. 

– ‘Stay the course’ –

Zelensky and G7 leaders were set to convene via video link at 2:00 pm (1200 GMT) on Tuesday to discuss the latest Russian attacks.

The office of UK Prime Minister Liz Truss said she would use the gathering “to urge fellow leaders to stay the course”.

“Nobody wants peace more than Ukraine. And for our part, we must not waver one iota in our resolve to help them win it.”

German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told reporters on Monday that Chancellor Olaf Scholz had spoken with Zelensky and assured him “of the solidarity of Germany and the other G7 states”.

French President Emmanuel Macron convened his defence and foreign affairs ministers over the strikes, which he said signalled “a profound change in the nature of this war”.

US President Joe Biden condemned Monday’s attacks in stark terms, saying they demonstrated “the utter brutality” of Putin’s “illegal war”.

In a statement, the White House said Biden had spoken to Zelensky and had pledged to furnish Ukraine with “advanced air defence systems”. 

Ahead of Monday’s General Assembly session, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the latest attacks as an “unacceptable escalation of the war”, his spokesman said.

Though Russia’s UN representative Vasily Nebenzya did not directly address the missile strikes at the session, he defended his country’s annexation of Ukrainian regions, saying the aim was “to protect our brothers and sisters in eastern Ukraine”.

– ‘In an instant… it’s death’ –

Putin meanwhile was due to meet the head of the UN’s nuclear energy watchdog, Rafael Grossi, in Saint Petersburg on Tuesday to discuss the Russian-controlled nuclear plant in the Ukrainian region of Zaporizhzhia.

Moscow recently said it had transferred control of the plant to Russia and fighting around the facility for months has raised fears of a nuclear accident.

And on Wednesday, Putin was to meet Turkish leader President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a summit in the Kazakh capital Astana, a Turkish official told AFP.

Residents across Ukraine expressed shock and rage after Monday’s barrage.

In Dnipro, Ukraine serviceman Maxim was on leave from the front lines for the first time in six months to celebrate his wife’s birthday when Russian missiles slammed into the central Ukrainian city, damaging their home.

“We are fighting on the front exactly to protect these places” far from enemy lines, he said. “But they still manage to hit them.”

The strike, he said, had made him more determined than ever to repel the Russian forces in northeastern Ukraine.

Since Russia launched its invasion on February 24, more than 7.6 million Ukrainians have become refugees in other European states, while another nearly seven million people have been displaced within the country.

Monday’s missile strikes prompted a fresh warning from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees that more people could soon be forced to flee their homes.

Devastated families in Thailand gathered Tuesday for the cremation of their loved ones, killed in a nursery massacre that claimed 36 lives — including 24 children.

The kingdom has been stunned by the tragedy in northeastern Na Klang province, one of the worst mass killings in its history, with flags at half-mast and King Maha Vajiralongkorn visiting the families of the victims.

At Wat Rat Samakee temple in Na Klang, chanting monks began the ceremony as the exhausted and grieving close-knit rural community prepared to say a final goodbye to 19 of those killed.

“An incident like this shouldn’t have happened,” said Thanakorn Nueangmatcha, 39, ahead of the funeral at the temple.

“They were only children.”

Other victims of the attack — perpetrated by a former police officer, who went on to kill his wife and her child before taking his own life — will be cremated at other temples in the area.

At Wat Rat Samakee, incense and the fading scent of hundreds of flower bouquets hung in the air as volunteers continued to prepare the adjacent area for the cremations.

The funerals, sponsored by the royal household, will end three days of rites that began Saturday.

Tuesday’s mass ceremony is highly unusual — bodies are normally cremated alone — but the area’s small local temples have been overwhelmed by the number of victims.

Temporary furnaces have also been set up at other nearby temples, local media reported.

– ‘The old way’ –

The reeling community came together on Monday once again as volunteers, soldiers, and officials mixed cement and spread gravel to prepare a field inside the temple complex for the cremations.

They were working to build the pyres in the style of Thailand’s northeast, said Maemon Meeyuan, a grandmother of one of the victims.

“We’re doing it the old way,” she told AFP Monday.

Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-Cha has ordered an investigation, with police stating that they intend to interview some 180 witnesses.

The attacker, 34-year-old former police sergeant Panya Khramrab, was dismissed from his post earlier this year on a drugs charge with locals claiming they suspected he was a methamphetamine addict.

However, preliminary tests found he did not have drugs in his system at the time of the assault.

At the temple ahead of the funeral, 75-year-old Komma Charoenchai said he was “still shocked” by the nursery assault.

But he said the community must “let the authorities handle the matter.”