Orban da Zelenskyy a Kiyv per proporre un cessate il fuoco🗞️Rassegna del 03/07/2024

Israele

(REUTERS) Thousands flee their homes as Israeli forces bomb southern Gaza

• Israeli forces bombarded several areas of the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday and thousands of Palestinians fled their homes in what could be part of a final push of Israel's intensive military operations in nine months of war.
• Eight Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded, health officials said. Israel's military said that two soldiers had been killed in battle a day earlier.
• Israel's leaders have said they were winding down the phase of intense fighting against Hamas, the Islamist group that has governed Gaza since 2007, and would soon shift into more targeted operations.
• Later on Tuesday, 17 Palestinians were killed in Israeli tank shelling of a street in the densely populated Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza City in the north of the Strip, medics said. Footage on some Palestinian social media that Reuters was not immediately able to verify showed the scene at a local market, with bread scattered on a floor stained with blood.

(Associated Press) Ultra-Orthodox protest against order to enlist in Israeli military turns violent in Jerusalem

• Thousands of Jewish ultra-Orthodox men clashed with Israeli police in central Jerusalem on Sunday during a protest against a Supreme Court order for them to begin enlisting for military service.
• The landmark decision last week ordering the government to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men could lead to the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition as Israel wages war in Gaza.
• Tens of thousands of men rallied in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood to protest the order. But after nightfall, the crowd made its way toward central Jerusalem and turned violent.Israeli police said protesters threw rocks and attacked the car of an ultra-Orthodox Cabinet minister, pelting it with stones. Water cannons filled with skunk-scented water and police mounted on horses were used to disperse the crowd. But the demonstration was still not under control late Sunday.
• Military service is compulsory for most Jewish men and women in Israel. But politically powerful ultra-Orthodox parties have won exemptions for their followers to skip military service and instead study in religious seminaries.

Ucraina

(REUTERS) Hungary's Orban, in Kyiv, proposes ceasefire to speed up peace talks

• Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Tuesday to consider a ceasefire to accelerate an end to the war with Russia and also said he wanted a big cooperation agreement with Kyiv.
• Orban, who is an outspoken critic of Western military aid to Ukraine, opens new tab and has the warmest relations of any EU leader with Russian President Vladimir Putin, held talks with Zelenskyy during his first trip to Kyiv in more than a decade.
• In brief joint statements to reporters after the talks, Orban said he valued Kyiv's push to promote Zelenskyy's vision of peace at an international summit in June in Switzerland and its aim to hold a second, follow-up summit later this year.
• "I asked the president to think about whether we could reverse the order, and speed up peace talks with making a ceasefire first," Orban said.
• "A ceasefire connected to a deadline would give a chance to speed up peace talks. I explored this possibility with the president and I am grateful for his honest answers and negotiation." Zelenskyy, who spoke before Orban, did not respond to those comments.

(REUTERS) Ukrainian air base under frequent fire as Russia aims at F-16 arrivals

• Explosions reverberated across the pre-dawn sky as Ukrainian air defences fended off a Russian attack on this small city in western Ukraine, home to an important air base and a frequent target of Moscow's strikes.
• Hours after the assault, the tidy streets of Starokostiantyniv had returned to a semblance of normality.
• The first planes are expected to arrive this month, and Ukraine hopes they will boost forces struggling to repel a Russian onslaught along the front line, which includes devastating glide bombs that F-16s could potentially disrupt.
• Officials have not revealed where the F-16s will be based, but Moscow said after the strike on Starokostiantyniv last Thursday that it had targeted airfields it believed would house them.
• Military analysts said the Russians were probably targeting air base infrastructure such as runways and storage facilities to make getting F-16s airborne more difficult, and, when they arrive, the Western jets themselves.

(REUTERS) Netherlands to start F-16 deliveries to Ukraine soon, government says

• The Netherlands will supply Ukraine with the first of 24 promised F-16 fighter jets soon, the outgoing Dutch government said on Monday.
• The necessary permits to deliver the jets to Ukraine have been granted, Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren said in a letter to parliament ahead of a government transition on Tuesday after months of coalition building following an election last year.
• She declined to specify how many planes would be in the first delivery and when they would arrive in Ukraine for security reasons.
• The Dutch government earlier supplied F-16s to a training facility in Romania, where Ukrainian pilots and ground staff are being taught to fly and maintain the planes in battle.

Europa

Paesi Bassi: 

(Associated Press) Dutch king swears in a new government 7 months after far-right party won elections

• The Netherlands has a different prime minister for the first time in 14 years as Dutch King Willem-Alexander swore in the country’s new government Tuesday, more than seven months after elections dominated by a far-right, anti-Islam party.
• Dick Schoof, former head of the Dutch intelligence agency and counterterrorism office, signed the official royal decree at Huis Ten Bosch Palace, saying he “declared and promised” to uphold his duties as the country’s prime minister. The 67-year-old was formally installed alongside 15 other ministers who make up the country’s right-leaning coalition.
• The anti-immigration party of firebrand Geert Wilders won the largest share of seats in elections last year but it took 223 days to form a government.
• The four parties in the coalition are Wilders’ Party for Freedom, outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, the populist Farmer Citizen Movement and the centrist New Social Contract party.
• The formal agreement creating the new coalition, titled “Hope, courage and pride,” introduces strict measures on asylum-seekers, scraps family reunification for refugees and seeks to reduce the number of international students studying in the country.
• For the first time since World War II, the Netherlands is now led by a prime minister who is not aligned with a political party. Before serving as chief of the country’s top intelligence agency, Schoof was previously the counterterror chief and the head of the country’s Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Germania:

(New York Times) German Court Fines Far-Right Politician for Using Nazi Phrase, Again

• For the second time in seven weeks, a German court has convicted the prominent far-right leader Björn Höcke of using a banned Nazi slogan.
• The conviction — at a time when the far right is on the ascent in Europe — is the latest in a series of legal setbacks for Mr. Höcke, the leader of the nationalist Alternative for Germany party in the eastern state of Thuringia.
• After a three-day trial, Mr. Höcke was found on Monday to have willfully ignored the ban on using the banned Nazi slogan — “Everything for Germany” — and was fined 16,900 euros, about $18,100, after using the phrase late last year.
• The decision came after Mr. Höcke was fined 13,000 euros in mid-May for using the slogan during a 2021 campaign speech.
• The judge in the city of Halle found that Mr. Höcke had deliberately directed a crowd of supporters to complete the slogan, which was carved into the knives of the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party.

Politica internazionale

Nord America

USA:

(WSJ) Satellite Images Show Expansion of Suspected Chinese Spy Bases in Cuba

• Images captured from space show the growth of Cuba’s electronic eavesdropping stations that are believed to be linked to China, including new construction at a previously unreported site about 70 miles from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, according to a new report.
• The concern about the stations, former officials and analysts say, is that China is using Cuba’s geographical proximity to the southeastern U.S. to scoop up sensitive electronic communications from American military bases, space-launch facilities, and military and commercial shipping.
• Authors of the CSIS report, after analyzing years’ worth of satellite imagery, found that Cuba has significantly upgraded and expanded its electronic spying facilities in recent years and pinpointed four sites—at Bejucal, El Salao, Wajay and Calabazar.
• While some of the sites described by CSIS, such as the one at Bejucal, have previously been identified as listening posts, the satellite imagery provides new details about their capabilities, growth over the years and likely links with China.
• In its annual threat assessment released in February, the U.S. intelligence community said publicly for the first time that China is pursuing military facilities in Cuba, without providing details.
• The report says that two of the sites near Havana—Bejucal and Calabazar—contain large dish antennas that appear designed to monitor and communicate with satellites. The report notes that while Cuba doesn’t have any satellites, the antennas would be useful for China, which does have a substantial space program
• The most recent of the four sites, still being built and not previously known publicly, is at El Salao, outside the city of Santiago de Cuba in the eastern part of the country and not far from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo.

Medio Oriente

Iran:

(REUTERS) Iran's presidential election: Hardliner Jalili and moderate Pezeshkian face voter apathy

• The zealous anti-Westerner and the low-key moderate hoping to become Iran's next president could struggle to mobilise millions of supporters in Friday's run-off election amid voter apathy about a tightly-controlled contest.
• Over 60% of voters abstained from the June 28 ballot for a successor to Ebrahim Raisi following his death in a helicopter crash, a historic low turnout which critics of the government see as a vote of no confidence in the Islamic Republic.
• Friday's vote will be a tight race between lawmaker Massoud Pezeshkian, the sole moderate in the original field of four candidates, and former Revolutionary Guards member Saeed Jalili.
• Both candidates have sought to engage voters by offering competing visions, with Jalili offering hawkish foreign and domestic policies and Pezeshkian advocating more social and political freedoms. Both pledge to revive the economy, plagued by mismanagement, state corruption, and sanctions reimposed since 2018 over Iran's nuclear programme.
• The clerical establishment needs a high turnout for its own credibility, particularly as it faces regional tension over the war between Israel and Iranian ally Hamas in Gaza, and increased Western pressure over its fast-advancing nuclear programme.
• But growing numbers of Iranians have abstained at elections in recent years. The previous record low turnout was 41% in a parliamentary election in March, while Raisi won in 2021 on a turnout of about 49%, in which authorities disqualified heavy-weight conservative and moderate rivals.