AMMAN: Palestinian political figure Nasser Al-Qudwa has said that he has “crossed the river” and will not reverse his plans to run on a list outside his own Fatah movement in the country’s elections.

When Arab News asked whether he will continue his “Democratic Assembly” if imprisoned leader Marwan Barghouti does not support him, he said: “There is no turning back.”

Al-Qudwa added: “There is a natural meeting between this movement and that of the imprisoned leader Marwan Barghouti, including that he leads this movement.

“Sure, the results might be different if he doesn’t support it, but we are moving in a direction that makes it difficult to retreat.

“We have crossed the river and there is no turning back.”

In his first-ever press conference that was open to journalists, the former Palestine envoy to the UN and foreign minister warned of the difficulties facing Palestinians. He said that there are normal duties during a national liberation movement and a different set following the end of a conflict.

“We have a mix of both, while national liberation is our priority. We need to deal with day-to-day issues that are the needs of our people.

“We have to deal with issues such as health, education and good governance.”

Al-Qudwa said that Israel’s actions in the region represent greed and an unwillingness to compromise.

“They want everything. They are not even saying ‘we just want the settlements or the Jordan valley.’ They want everything.”

Governments and international bodies retracting their support for Palestinian statehood is another cause for concern, he added.

“Initially, they were saying we support the two-state solution. Now Europe and others are saying we support a negotiated two-state solution.”

Al-Qudwa said that negotiations should be restricted to dealings between the occupied Palestinian state and Israel, and not on whether there should be a Palestinian state.

He also rejected out of hand the idea of a single state, warning that it represents a dangerous notion of “Greater Israel.”

Al-Qudwa said that he has not taken any positions in the Palestinian government for 15 years, and that he has no plans to take any money from outside Palestinian circles.

“What we can raise from ordinary people and those who are well-to-do is enough, especially if there is no one stealing the money,” he said.

Despite taking a different track, Al-Qudwa has been careful to avoid burning bridges with other longtime Palestinian political figures.

“I am still a member of Fatah,” he said.

He also refused to address rumors that he was threatened several times during his last meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

“It was a closed meeting and what happens in closed meetings stays in those meetings.”

However, he did say that the position of the president was “not very democratic.”

While Al-Qudwa is counting on the support of fellow Fatah central committee member Marwan Barghouti, he rejected any cooperation with the UAE-based renegade Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan.

“It is difficult to be with Dahlan, because the Palestinian people have rejected the position of the UAE,” he said in reference to the recent normalization pact that the UAE signed with Israel.

Palestinian legislative elections are due to take place on May 22, followed two months later by presidential elections, and then the convening of the PLO’s National Council at the end of summer.

ROME/BAGHDAD: Pope Francis on Friday called for an end to extremism, violence and corruption as his historic visit to Iraq got underway.
He began the first-ever papal trip to the country by meeting government officials in Baghdad, before traveling to a church where Christians were massacred by militants in 2010.
He was greeted at Baghdad’s International Airport by Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi and treated to a display of traditional dancing.
He then met President Barham Salih at the Presidential Palace, where he delivered a strongly worded speech highlighting the problems that continued to blight the country.

“May the clash of arms be silenced,”  he said. “Enough of violence, extremism, factions, intolerance. Iraq has suffered the disastrous effects of wars, the scourge of terrorism and sectarian conflicts often grounded in a fundamentalism incapable of accepting the peaceful coexistence of different ethnic and religious groups.”
The pope, referring to the outside influences often blamed for destabilizing Iraq, said the international community must provide help “without imposing ideologies” and urged Iraqi officials to “combat the scourge of corruption, misuse of power and disregard for law.”

His visit comes as Iraq attempts to claw its way to stability after years of sectarian conflict, the Daesh occupation, chronic corruption, and widespread anger at government officials for failing to provide basic services. Iraq’s Christian population has also dwindled, with many fleeing overseas to build new lives.
But the pope hailed Iraq as a “cradle of civilization,” despite its many problems, and believed that all the crises it faced could be overcome by building a society based on fraternity, solidarity and concord.
He said that Iraq, with its varied religions, culture and ethnicities, could show that diversity should lead to harmony within society rather than conflict.

He drew attention to the Yazidi sect, many of whom were murdered by Daesh in 2014, and called them “innocent victims of senseless and brutal atrocities, persecuted and killed for their religion, and whose very identity and survival was put at risk.”
He said room should be made for all those who wanted to build up Iraq in a way that included the participation of all political, social and religious groups.
The Catholic Church in Iraq, he added, wanted to cooperate constructively with other religions in serving the cause of peace.

He traveled across the city in an armored black BMWi750 rather than the popemobile normally used for foreign visits. The motorcade included dozens of police on motorcycles.
Iraq’s security situation was the greatest threat as to whether the visit would go ahead, along with the challenges brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. But concerns over Daesh sleeper cells and recent rocket attacks on US bases by Iran-backed militants failed to deter him.
At Our Lady of Salvation church, he paid tribute to the 58 people who were killed in an extremist attack in 2010, one of the deadliest targeting Christians.
“We are gathered in this Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation, hallowed by the blood of our brothers and sisters who here paid the ultimate price of their fidelity to the Lord and his Church,” he said.
On Saturday the pope will meet Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani in Najaf, and visit the birthplace of Prophet Abraham in Ur.

CAIRO: Hussein Badreddin Al-Houthi, the eponymous founder of Yemen’s Houthi militia, gave a sermon on Jan. 17, 2002, in which he coined the slogan “God is greater, death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam.” It is a slogan that the Houthis, known formally as Ansar Allah, say should not be taken literally, yet has gained currency among the militia’s members since Hussein Badreddin’s death.

Abdul-Malik Badreddin Al-Houthi, who became Ansar Allah’s leader following his brother’s death in 2004, is known to be the mastermind behind the group’s bloody insurgency and the 2015 capture of Sanaa. He has long espoused Hussein Badreddin’s toxic opinions, including his antipathy towards America, Israel and the Arab states he viewed as collaborators of the West.

And yet, despite the obvious extremist overtones of the slogan, echoing the venomous rhetoric of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Joe Biden’s new US administration has chosen to scrap the Houthis’ label as a foreign terrorist organization — a designation it was given just days before the Trump administration left office.

This week it emerged that the Biden administration has gone a step further, sending negotiators to meet with Houthi representatives in Oman. The stated objective was to open avenues towards peace between the Iran-backed occupiers of Sanaa and the UN-recognized Yemeni government in Aden.

According to Reuters, Timothy Lenderking, the lead US envoy on the Yemen crisis, met with Houthi chief negotiator Mohammed Abdul-Salam in Muscat on Feb. 26.

With much of northwest Yemen on the brink of famine, and renewed US engagement with Tehran firmly on the cards, the new administration has made no secret of its desire to reach a non-military solution to the grinding conflict.

These talks are going ahead in spite of the fact that Houthi thoughts and actions reflect the very definition of a global terrorist entity — from its unapologetically open attacks on civilians to its ideological fanaticism, well documented in its leaders’ sermons and writings.

As far back as March 8, 2002, Hussein Badreddin gave a sermon in Yemen’s northern Saada province calling for acts of terrorism against non-Muslims. In a pamphlet, titled “Terrorism and Peace,” he falsely claimed: “Muslims, this is what the Holy Quran states. Believers, you must do everything you can to terrorize the enemies of God.

“This is legitimate terrorism. But instead of talking about legitimate terrorism, we are the ones listening to the media and leaders, and allowing the word (terrorism) to echo in its American meaning and not in its Quranic meaning.”

In the same inflammatory sermon, Hussein Badreddin identified non-Muslims as the root of all evil and America as a terrorist entity. 

“We must always talk about the Jews and the Christians just as God spoke about them in the Holy Quran, that they are the sources of evil, and those who have them are the sources of corruption, and that they are the ones who seek corruption on Earth,” he falsely claimed, arguing it is necessary “to firmly establish in the minds of Muslims that the US is a terrorist, that the US is evil, that Jews and Christians are evil so that they will not precede us.”

Hussein Badreddin also voiced virulently anti-Semitic views about Israel and displayed a puritanical attitude toward women’s education, viewing the latter as a Zionist conspiracy against Muslims.

In another of his sermons, published in a December 2001 pamphlet titled “Who are we and who are they,” he sounded the false warning that educated women “will eventually learn how to become a woman that is far from giving birth to a true Muslim Arab, far from giving birth to and raising Muslim heroes. She will rather raise Zionist soldiers and give birth to a society and generations who will become their servants.”

In a December 2001 sermon, titled “Loyalty and hostility,” Hussein Badreddin made the baseless claim that confrontation with the West was a religious duty, because Jewish and Christian culture corrupted young Muslims: “When a person becomes corrupt, lets their children become corrupt, or corrupts others, they are considered recruiters for the service of the US and Israel, and the service of Jews and Christians. This proves their keenness to get what they want, and for their corruption to reach every house and every person, just as the devil wants. This is the devil’s plan.”

In many of his sermons and writings, Hussein Badreddin spoke highly of Iran’s Shiite theocracy and the Lebanese Hezbollah, which he once called “the most important masters of jihad in this world.”

Abdul-Malik, the current leader, is cut from the same cloth. Like his late brother, he has accused Gulf Arab states of aligning with the US and Israel. During a Sept. 20, 2020, sermon, he described the Abraham Accords, under which the UAE and Bahrain established formal diplomatic relations with Israel, as “an allegiance with the enemies of Islam.”

In another sermon a month earlier, Abdul-Malik recycled his brother’s false belief that jihad against the US and its allies is a sacred duty. To tell it in his own words: “Our stance in confronting the brutal American, Saudi, Emirati, Zionist aggression against our country is a principled stance on the grounds of our faith and religious affiliation. By virtue of our faith’s identity, it is a sacred jihad, a religious, human and patriotic duty, and whoever disregards this duty, or betrays this stance, they are then betraying and misusing their faith’s identity.”

On Jan. 3, 2020, then-US President Donald Trump authorized the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)’s extraterritorial Quds Force, and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, chief of Iraqi’s Shiite paramilitia group Kataib Hezbollah. The two men were killed in a US drone strike as their convoy left Baghdad airport.

Tehran and its Iraqi proxies have since hit back with rockets and ballistic missiles on US-led coalition targets in Iraq, killing several Western military personnel and civilian contractors and further destabilizing the country.

In a sermon delivered on Aug. 20, 2020, Abdul-Malik was unstinting in his approval of the indiscriminate attacks, saying: “We commend the escalation of the resistance operations against the American presence in Iraq.

“At this late stage, the Americans wanted to return to Iraq, to establish their colonizer status again, and to take charge once more. Matters have escalated after their heinous and dreadful crime of assassinating the two martyrs Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis in Iraq.”

Unsurprisingly, the Houthi slogan, “God is greater, death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam,” has the same violent ring today as it did when Hussein Badreddin coined it in January 2002 — just four months after Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks on the US.

Marking the anniversary of the slogan’s first public utterance, Abdul-Malik reminded the Houthis that it was his late brother’s contention that hostility towards Jews and Christians was a religious imperative.

“The Holy Quran provided us with an accurate, precise, real, and certain assessment of our enemies represented by the team of evil, treacherous, deceptive, hateful and hostile people of the book (Jews and Christians),” Abdul-Malk said, trying to justify the havoc Iran-backed militias have caused on religious grounds.

“Their plans, stances, provisions, and methods, will be based on the premise that they do not wish us — the Muslim community — well.”

As the US re-examines its stance on Iran and its radical Shiite proxies throughout the Middle East, the idea that sanctions relief, negotiations or alternative designations can get the Houthi leadership to change its spots seems dangerously naive at best.

DAMASCUS: Syria has seen a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections since mid-February but lockdown options remain limited due to the country’s dire economic situation, a member of the country’s coronavirus advisory committee said on Thursday.
“Starting February 10th or around that time we started seeing a spike in cases,” Dr. Nabough al-Awa told Reuters.
“I don’t have accurate percentages as I’m only one doctor… but I also talk to my colleagues. If I was seeing in my clinic two or three cases a day last year now I am seeing five or six.”
The health ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
On Monday it started administering COVID-19 vaccinations to frontline healthcare workers and said the country was experiencing a rise in infections. It gave no further details.
Syria has officially recorded a total of 15,753 cases and 1,045 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Actual numbers are expected to be much higher owing to the government’s limited testing capability.
The government imposed a nationwide curfew when the pandemic first hit last year but restaurants, shops and schools re-opened as that lockdown was gradually eased starting from May. Mask wearing is required in government offices and on crowded public transport.
One relief worker said the number of people seeking oxygen tanks spiked around a week ago but was now stabilising again.
Several schools in Damascus have had to shut classes in the past week due to the rise in cases amongst students.
Online learning remains difficult in a conflict-ridden country where internet and electricity supply is not stable.
Awa said adding to the problem was the fact that most schools in Syria don’t have access to functional bathrooms, and soap and sanitation facilities, which if provided could decrease the number of infections.
“These things could help reduce numbers if closure is difficult,” Awa said.
“It’s still not too late to act but the problem is we have to admit that we are being subjected to a severe spike.”

ROME / MEXICO CITY: Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, will become the first pontiff ever to set foot in Iraq, where he hopes to encourage the dwindling Christian community to remain in their ancient homeland while also extending a hand of friendship to the Islamic world.

The three-day “pilgrimage” comes despite a recent spike in coronavirus cases in Iraq and an upsurge in violence. Francis arrives just days after a rocket attack on the Ain al-Assad base in Iraq’s western desert, which hosts US-led coalition troops.

One civilian contractor was killed in Wednesday’s barrage, which the US has blamed on Iran-backed militias. Benedict XVI, who resigned as pontiff eight years ago, warned in an interview on Monday that the visit is “a dangerous trip: for reasons of security and for coronavirus.”

Confirming the visit was still going ahead in his weekly address on Wednesday, Francis said: “For a long time I have wanted to meet these people who have suffered so much. I ask you to accompany this apostolic journey with your prayers so that it may take place in the best possible way and bear the hoped-for fruits.

“The Iraqi people are waiting for us, they were waiting for Saint John Paul II, who was forbidden to go. One cannot disappoint a people for the second time. Let us pray that this journey will be successful.”

This is Francis’ first trip abroad in about 15 months due to the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent restrictions on movement. Although the 84-year-old Argentine pontiff and his entourage have all been vaccinated against COVID-19, no such inoculation campaign has taken place in Iraq. The majority of the country will be under strict lockdown during his visit and movement between provinces will be restricted.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the pope said he would be traveling in an armored vehicle — not his usual white ‘popemobile’ — and that he would not be meeting crowds, except those attending Mass in the northern Kurdish city of Erbil on Sunday.

“This is a particular situation, that’s why the transports will all be in a closed vehicle, meaning it will be complicated to see the pope on the streets,” Matteo Brunei, the spokesman, said in a press briefing attended by Arab News. “There will be a number of meetings but none will be more than a few hundred people.”

Francis touches down in Baghdad on Friday, where he will be welcomed at the airport by Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, the Iraqi prime minister, in the first meeting between a pope and an Iraqi PM since 2008.

He will then head to the presidential palace for a private meeting with President Barham Salih, who will introduce him to local political and religious authorities. Salih has met the pope in Rome on two occasions: the first time on Nov. 24, 2018, and against on Jan. 25 last year.

In the afternoon, Francis will meet with the Christian community at the Syrian Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, where at least 47 Christians died in a Daesh attack in 2010. At the church, restored in 2012, he will be welcomed by Patriarch Joseph Younan.

Perhaps the most keenly anticipated leg of the visit falls on Saturday, when Francis travels to Najaf, the shrine city where Imam Ali, the fourth Islamic caliph, is buried. Here Francis will meet with the 90-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiites.

Francis became the first pope to visit the Arabian Peninsula two years ago when he met with Sunni cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar, in Abu Dhabi. There, the two faith leaders signed a document on “human fraternity for world peace” and issued a joint call for freedom of belief.

Saturday’s visit to Najaf will be the first face-to-face meeting between a Catholic pontiff and a Shiite ayatollah. The meeting at Al-Sistani’s modest home is billed as “a courtesy visit” — so no joint declaration is expected, although a verbal statement is likely. It will nevertheless mark a symbolic moment whereby the pope extends a hand of friendship to the other main branch of Islam.

There are significant geopolitical undertones, however. Al-Sistani is widely seen as a counterweight to Iran’s influence in Iraq and among Shiites as a whole. By meeting with him, Francis is effectively recognizing Sistani as the pre-eminent voice of Shiite Islam over his powerful rival, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Al-Sistani commands immense respect among Iraq’s Shiite majority. Thousands of young men heeded his 2014 fatwa to take up arms against Daesh when the group made lightning advances in the country’s north. His sermons, often delivered through representatives, can have far-reaching political consequences.

A show of solidarity from Al-Sistani now might also give Iraq’s Christians a measure of protection from Iraq’s marauding Shiite militias, which have terrorized Christian families and prevented many from returning home from internal displacement.

Following his meeting with Al-Sistani, Francis will visit the ancient city of Ur in the present-day southern province of Dhi Qar, considered in the Bible to be Abraham’s birthplace.

There, an interreligious meeting is scheduled with representatives of all faiths present in Iraq, including the Yazidis — an ancient culture brought to brink of annihilation by Daesh fanatics when the militant group launched a campaign of slaughter and rape in their homeland of Sinjar in August 2014.

On Saturday afternoon, Francis will celebrate Mass in Baghdad’s Chaldean cathedral — a first in the Chaldean rite for a pontiff of the Catholic Church — together with Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, patriarch of the Chaldeans.

On Sunday Francis will then reach Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, where he will be welcomed by the autonomous region’s President Nechirvan Barzani and Prime Minister Masrour Barzani. Although security is far better in Erbil compared to other Iraqi cities, Western targets came under rocket attack there in mid-February.

The Sunni Muslim-majority Kurdistan Region has long been considered a sanctuary for Iraq’s persecuted ethno-religious minorities. During the war with Daesh, tens of thousands of Christians and Yazidis fled to hastily built displacement camps behind Peshmerga lines. Slow reconstruction efforts and ongoing security concerns have left many waiting impatiently to return.

From Erbil, Francis will fly by helicopter to Nineveh’s provincial capital Mosul, which from 2014 to 2017 was the de facto capital of Daesh’s self-proclaimed caliphate. Huge areas of the once flourishing commercial hub were leveled in the US-led coalition’s flight to reclaim the city, and many of its precious religious artifacts were vandalized by Daesh fanatics.

Here Francis will pray to honor the victims in the Square of the Four Churches — Syro-Catholic, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox and Chaldean. Francis will be welcomed there by Mosul’s Archbishop Najib Mikhael Moussa and the local governor.

He will then fly by helicopter to Qaraqosh, a Christian-majority city where on Aug. 6-7, 2014, about 45,000 people were expelled by Daesh hordes. He will say the Angelus Sunday prayer in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, which was badly damaged by Daesh and used as a shooting range.

Mass at Franso Hariri stadium in Erbil will be Francis’ last appointment in Iraq. He is then scheduled to fly back to Rome from Baghdad on Monday.