Sabtu, 22 Mei 2021
How children in both Israel and Gaza experienced the conflict - BBC News - BBC News
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiK2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnlvdXR1YmUuY29tL3dhdGNoP3Y9LWNPeG1WeE9ZWEHSAQA?oc=5
2021-05-22 10:57:07Z
52781577069323
Joe Biden says two-state solution only route to peace as Israel-Hamas ceasefire holds - Sky News
US President Joe Biden has said a two-state solution is the only answer to resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people.
Speaking at a White House news conference, Mr Biden said that he was praying that the current ceasefire between Israel and Hamas would hold.
The US administration worked in the background, along with Egypt, to secure an end to the conflict which lasted 11 days.
Some 248 Palestinians - including 66 children - died, while 12 people in Israel died.
The ceasefire came into effect at 2am local time - 12am UK time - on Friday.
Mr Biden has said that the US will work with the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority, and not Hamas, in order to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Since the ceasefire, the United Nations has sent 13 trucks with food, COVID vaccines and other medical supplies into Gaza, with $18.6m (£13.1m) in emergency humanitarian aid allocated to the region.
The US has said it will also help Israel replenish its supply of interceptor missiles.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened a "new level of force" if Hamas launches any attacks following the ceasefire.
"If Hamas thinks we will tolerate a drizzle of rockets, it is wrong," he warned.
Mr Biden, speaking at the White House, added: "Let's get something straight here: until the region says unequivocally they acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state, there will be no peace.
"I'm praying this ceasefire will hold. I take Bibi [Benjamin] Netanyahu - when he gives me his word - I take him at his word. He's never broken his word to me."
Follow the Daily podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker
The ceasefire faced its first test on Friday afternoon, when tens of thousands of Palestinians attended Friday Prayers at Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem - where tensions first began.
Some threw stones at Israeli police, who fired stun grenades and tear gas in return, in an echo of the scenes that triggered the 11-day conflict.
Twenty Palestinians were arrested at the gates, although it is unclear what started the clashes at the mosque compound - a holy site for both Muslims and Jews - who refer to it as the Temple Mount.
An Israeli Police foreign spokesman claimed "hundreds of people threw rocks and petrol bombs at police officers", saying Israeli forces "dispersed rioters".
There were similar clashes in the West Bank.
Sky News correspondent Mark Stone, who is in the region, said the elusive two-state solution was as far away as ever but that both sides were likely to gain politically.
Following the end of the conflict, people in Gaza who were sheltering in UN schools have since left the facilities.
From a peak of 66,000 people crammed into the shelters, fewer than 1,000 remain, according to a UN spokesperson.
Rescue workers have been recovering bodies, including one of a three-year-old girl, according to the Red Crescent emergency services.
The 11 days of fighting in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank were the worst seen in the region since 2014.
Hamas and other militant groups fired more than 4,000 rockets at Israeli cities, with Israel conducting hundreds of airstrikes.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMieWh0dHBzOi8vbmV3cy5za3kuY29tL3N0b3J5L2pvZS1iaWRlbi1zYXlzLXR3by1zdGF0ZS1zb2x1dGlvbi1vbmx5LXJvdXRlLXRvLXBlYWNlLWFzLWlzcmFlbC1oYW1hcy1jZWFzZWZpcmUtaG9sZHMtMTIzMTMyNjHSAX1odHRwczovL25ld3Muc2t5LmNvbS9zdG9yeS9hbXAvam9lLWJpZGVuLXNheXMtdHdvLXN0YXRlLXNvbHV0aW9uLW9ubHktcm91dGUtdG8tcGVhY2UtYXMtaXNyYWVsLWhhbWFzLWNlYXNlZmlyZS1ob2xkcy0xMjMxMzI2MQ?oc=5
2021-05-22 05:09:45Z
52781577069323
UFOs laughed off by Joe Biden ahead of bombshell Pentagon report - ‘Ask Obama!’ - Daily Express
Mr Obama appeared on the Late Late Show, hosted by James Corden, and said there are UFOs sightings that defy explanation.
He said on the programme: “What is true, and I'm actually being serious here, is that there are, there's footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don't know exactly what they are.
“We can't explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern.
“And so, you know, I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMieWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmV4cHJlc3MuY28udWsvbmV3cy93b3JsZC8xNDM5NjU4L3Vmby1uZXdzLUpvZS1iaWRlbi1iYXJhY2stb2JhbWEtcGVudGFnb24tcmVwb3J0LWNvbmdyZXNzLXVzLWludGVsbGlnZW5jZS1vbnTSAX1odHRwczovL3d3dy5leHByZXNzLmNvLnVrL25ld3Mvd29ybGQvMTQzOTY1OC91Zm8tbmV3cy1Kb2UtYmlkZW4tYmFyYWNrLW9iYW1hLXBlbnRhZ29uLXJlcG9ydC1jb25ncmVzcy11cy1pbnRlbGxpZ2VuY2Utb250L2FtcA?oc=5
2021-05-22 04:55:14Z
CBMieWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmV4cHJlc3MuY28udWsvbmV3cy93b3JsZC8xNDM5NjU4L3Vmby1uZXdzLUpvZS1iaWRlbi1iYXJhY2stb2JhbWEtcGVudGFnb24tcmVwb3J0LWNvbmdyZXNzLXVzLWludGVsbGlnZW5jZS1vbnTSAX1odHRwczovL3d3dy5leHByZXNzLmNvLnVrL25ld3Mvd29ybGQvMTQzOTY1OC91Zm8tbmV3cy1Kb2UtYmlkZW4tYmFyYWNrLW9iYW1hLXBlbnRhZ29uLXJlcG9ydC1jb25ncmVzcy11cy1pbnRlbGxpZ2VuY2Utb250L2FtcA
Jumat, 21 Mei 2021
Hamas claims victory as Gaza celebrates ceasefire - Al Jazeera English
The Gaza Strip experienced another sleepless night on Friday, but this time, it was not because of the intense Israeli bombardment that the besieged coastal territory was subjected to for the past 11 days.
Instead, tens of thousands poured into the streets, celebrating the ceasefire agreed upon by Israel and Palestinian armed groups, chanting in support of the resistance.
Mosques sounded the Eid al-Fitr prayers, a week after the holiday and sweets were passed around in a celebration that had been postponed by death and destruction. People also took the chance to visit those whose relatives had been killed.
The ceasefire celebrations extended to several cities within the occupied West Bank and Palestinian neighbourhoods in occupied East Jerusalem, with many praising the armed groups and the steadfastness of the Palestinians in Gaza.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, 248 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s latest offensive, including 66 children and 39 women. At least 1,910 others were wounded. More than 90,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes, and much of Gaza’s infrastructure and many civilian buildings were badly damaged or completely levelled.
On the Israeli side, 12 people were killed, including three foreign workers.
The ceasefire, brokered by mediator Egypt, saw the “mutual and unconditional” cessation of hostilities between the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups that began at 2am on Friday (23:00 GMT on Thursday).
No terms were officially given, and Israel’s security cabinet said it had voted unanimously in favour of a “mutual and unconditional” Gaza truce.
However, Hamas spokesperson Abdel-Latif al-Qanou told Al Jazeera the armed groups had imposed their own conditions.
He said they included an end to forced expulsions of Palestinian families in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah and to incursions by Israeli security forces into the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
“Israel has withdrawn in the face of the armed resistance, and did not obtain any of its objectives it said it would when it launched its offensive,” al-Qanou said.
For now, the ceasefire is holding, although Israeli forces raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Friday yet again, firing rubber-coated steel bullets and sound grenades.
“Israel is now being tested, and the resistance groups in Gaza are watching how it will react,” al-Qanou said.
“This ceasefire is but a pause, a chance to gain more strength to confront any further Israeli aggression.”
‘Embarrassing ceasefire’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the offensive has dealt Hamas a “blow it cannot imagine”, going so far as to say it has “changed the equation” and set back Hamas for years.
Netanyahu said the Israeli military had destroyed Hamas’s tunnel network in Gaza, as well as many rocket factories and stores, and he claimed that more than 200 Palestinian fighters had been killed – including 25 senior figures.
However, many Israeli politicians slammed the ceasefire as a humiliating capitulation to Hamas.
New Hope party leader Gideon Sa’ar called the ceasefire “embarrassing,” and lamented that even “with the best intelligence and air force in the world, Netanyahu managed to get from Hamas a ‘ceasefire with no conditions’.”
Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right member of Knesset, said, “the embarrassing ceasefire is a grave capitulation to terror and to Hamas’s impositions.”
Avigdor Lieberman, who quit his position as defence minister in 2018 after Israel agreed to an Egypt-mediated deal following two days of intense fighting in Gaza, called the ceasefire “another failure of Netanyahu”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures during a briefing to ambassadors to Israel at the Hakirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, May 19, 2021 [Sebastian Scheiner/AP Photo]‘Unprecedented Palestinian support’
Adnan Abu Amer, a Palestinian political analyst based in Gaza, said the general consensus among Palestinians is that Hamas has won this round of fighting, both on the military and political front.
“Despite the offensive running for 11 days and comparatively causing little material damage to the Israeli side, Hamas has nevertheless inflicted a heavy blow to the image of Israel around the world – this time, more than the last war in 2014,” he told Al Jazeera.
“This is due to the fact that the escalation did not stem from the Gaza Strip and the blockade, but rather from the collective issue – supported by the Islamic, Arab, and majority of the international community – that is imperative to the Palestinian cause, that of Jerusalem.”
Hamas and other Palestinian groups in Gaza fired thousands of rockets into Israel across the 11 days. Long-range missiles fired by armed groups in Gaza led to the shutting down of two main airports.
Palestinian worshippers gather before Israeli forces raid Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Friday [Ahmad Gharabli/AFP]“[This rhetoric] undermines whatever rise in support Palestinians have for Hamas after every offensive,” Abu Amer said.
“This time, we’ve seen unprecedented Palestinian support [for the resistance] across the country, affirming that Israeli policies in Gaza are also an extension of policies in Jerusalem, the West Bank and against the Palestinians living within the 1948 territories,” he said.
“Before the Palestinians in these territories would come out in candle-lit vigils in solidarity with Gaza, but this time, they represented a clear part of the resistance against Israel,” Abu Amer said.
A general strike was carried out by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians on Monday across all territories. In the occupied West Bank, at least 28 Palestinians were killed in protests spanning several days against the Israeli army, the ministry of health said, with thousands more wounded.
For now, Hamas and Israel clearly want a ceasefire, no matter how shaky, Abu Amer concluded. The Gaza Strip is in need of a break following the severe Israeli pummelling.
For Palestinians in Gaza, the ceasefire is but a respite, and represents hope that the continuing struggle of daily life suffered as a result of the crippling blockade on the coastal enclave will end, sooner or later.
“As with any movement that exposes the crimes of Zionism and challenges the European and US-backed narrative, global solidarity is sweet, but the most important victory in my opinion is that it has diminished the possibility that Israel will be sitting on our chests for a long time,” Mahmoud Qudaih, a Palestinian social media user from Khan Younes said.
“We bury our martyrs and we take a breath to go on, because the war of liberation continues and does not stop.”
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiWmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFsamF6ZWVyYS5jb20vbmV3cy8yMDIxLzUvMjEvaGFtYXMtY2xhaW1zLXZpY3RvcnktYXMtZ2F6YS1jZWxlYnJhdGVzLWNlYXNlZmlyZdIBXmh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFsamF6ZWVyYS5jb20vYW1wL25ld3MvMjAyMS81LzIxL2hhbWFzLWNsYWltcy12aWN0b3J5LWFzLWdhemEtY2VsZWJyYXRlcy1jZWFzZWZpcmU?oc=5
2021-05-21 21:15:32Z
52781577069323
Palestinian fury exposes Netanyahu’s illusions - Financial Times
Barely a fortnight ago, few Israelis would have queried one of the crowning achievements of Benjamin Netanyahu’s three-decade political career: the prime minister’s capacity to keep the Palestinians cornered while cementing Israel’s best relations with its Arab neighbours in the country’s 73-year existence.
Through his laser sharp-focus on Iran, Netanyahu last year reached a historic peace agreement with the United Arab Emirates, the influential Gulf state, and there were signs of a move towards more open ties with the prize catch, Saudi Arabia.
Israelis were safe and prosperous at home, Netanyahu told voters, and welcomed among neighbours who were once foes.
But he had not counted on Mustafa Jaber and thousands of young Palestinian men in occupied East Jerusalem, the crucible of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. By early May, Jaber, a garrulous musician from the Old City’s Muslim quarter, was facing off against Israeli police in the compound of the third holiest site in Islam, al-Aqsa mosque.
It was the holy month of Ramadan, and Israel’s extremist rightwing, egged on by Netanyahu’s allies, was particularly aggressive, repeating vows to evict Arabs from East Jerusalem, and to assert Israeli dominance over the compound that houses the mosque, which is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount.
Three nights in a row, Jaber slept inside the grounds, collecting rocks and building barricades. In the mornings, he fought riot police trying to clear him and hundreds of his friends out. In the blaze of stun grenades, tear gas and police beatings, Jaber says he finally found purpose in his hitherto aimless life: “To protect al-Aqsa from the occupation,” he says, bleary-eyed on his Jewish fiancé’s terrace, his twin brother hospitalised by a rubber bullet.
As the clarion call to protect al-Aqsa, one of the most emotive and symbolic sites of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, resonated across all the land that Israel controls, Netanyahu’s illusion — that the country can be at peace without resolving the Palestinian conflict — was shattered.
Suddenly, Israel was fighting a Palestinian revolt on three different fronts: Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza was firing thousands of rockets at Israeli cities and towns; widespread communal strife erupted between Palestinians with Israeli nationality and their Jewish neighbours; and in the occupied West Bank, thousands of protesters clashed with Israeli soldiers.
The ferocity of the Palestinian anger caught Israel by surprise. As late as April, much of the military and diplomatic establishment was focused on Iran, especially as US President Joe Biden had pledged to rejoin the 2015 nuclear accord Tehran signed with world powers.
For four years during Donald Trump’s presidency, Netanyahu basked in the support of an unabashedly pro-Israeli US administration that isolated the Palestinians while pursuing the most aggressive policies against Iran in decades.
Throughout, the West Bank was quiet. Factional infighting and inertia dulled a Palestinian leadership that appeared impotent while Trump tacitly supported Netanyahu’s threats to annex swaths of the occupied territory. The last Palestinian election was in 2006 and Mahmoud Abbas, the 85-year-old head of the Palestinian Authority, postponed this month’s planned poll.
“Israel thought they will ‘Israelise’ the Palestinians inside and they will domesticate the Palestinians in the West Bank under occupation and that they will separate Gaza forever,” says Mustafa Barghouti, an influential member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. “They failed in all three facts, and now the Palestinians all over now have one goal — the end of Israeli apartheid — which is unprecedented since 1948.”
After 11 days of violence, any Israeli hopes that the Palestinian issue could be contained behind walls and barriers as Israel expanded settlements — which most of the world consider illegal — in the West Bank and kept impoverished Gaza isolated under a blockade have been dashed.
“The Palestinian issue must be resolved on merit but also because there is a strategic and political carry-over. If Palestinians obtain their state and their rights, you also take away oxygen from some of the most explosive issues in the region. Israel rejects this perspective,” says Emile Hokayem, a Middle East expert at the International Institute for Security Studies. “It’s a fallacy to pretend Iran is the only strategic concern, just as it is a fallacy to say that this conflict proves that Iran is a secondary matter.”
Elusive victory
With a tentative ceasefire in place with Hamas on Friday, the Israeli military is left questioning its own assessments that it had deterred the militants from ever launching barrages of long-range rockets into Israel. For seven years it relied on a policy dubbed “mowing the lawn”, where Israel delivered warnings to the militant group with limited, strategic air strikes every time an escalation loomed.
But Hamas, which has capitalised on Abbas’s unpopularity and the PA’s weakness to broaden its support, once again proved it was willing to take on one of the world’s best equipped militaries as the most ferocious fighting since 2014 broke out.
In Gaza, Palestinians experienced the terrifying might of Israel’s air force. Bombs toppled multi-story buildings. Missiles targeted what the military described as networks of tunnels built underneath roads and homes, devastating infrastructure already decrepit after more than a decade of a blockade and three wars.
More than 240 Palestinians were killed, more than 100 of them women and children, according to health officials. Forty-two died in a single incident where three buildings collapsed. Israel said their deaths were “unintended”, saying the apartment buildings crumbled after their foundations were weakened by an air strike targeting tunnels.
But victory has proven elusive, as in previous wars. Israel was unable to stop Hamas from launching more than 4,000 homemade rockets deep into the Jewish state. The Knesset was briefly shuttered, flights rerouted to an airport far from Hamas’ reach, and the streets of Tel Aviv, the financial capital, were deserted for days. Twelve Israelis, including two children, were killed by Hamas rocket fire.
“How do you measure success or failure? On one hand, you have the most powerful military empire in the entire region, and on the other hand, a terrorist organisation that has only one thing — rockets, and rather primitive ones,” says Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, who sent ground troops into Gaza in 2009. “The fact is that Hamas successfully intimidated almost the entire country — we were sitting in the middle of the night in Tel Aviv in shelters.”
For Hamas, the relentless Israeli bombardment may prove to be a tactical setback. Much of its network of tunnels, dubbed the Gaza Metro and designed to shuttle fighters and weapons around undetected, has been destroyed.
Israel also killed several senior commanders. But it failed to net its most wanted target, Hamas’ military chief Mohammed Deif. He had already lost his wife, two children, an eye and a hand to eight failed assassination attempts — and survived two more this week.
Yet Israel has no good options to deal with Hamas, says David Makovsky, expert on Arab-Israel relations at The Washington Institute. “The Israelis have not wanted to go in there because it’s bloody work, and they don’t want to lose a lot of people [or have] house-to-house conflict,” he says.
Israel may have reinforced its deterrence for a while, but conflict will erupt again in the future, he adds. “It’s bound to keep reoccurring.” Makovsky says.
Although battered and bloodied, Hamas is claiming the symbolic victory of dealing a blow to the Jewish state, reinforcing its boasts of being the leader of the Palestinian struggle as more moderate voices are dimmed by internal squabbles and Israel’s actions.
‘I thought we were safe’
With Operation Guardians of the Wall, the Israeli military’s nickname for its air campaign, on hold, Netanyahu must now turn to the risks within Israel’s walls. The rallying cry of “Protect al-Aqsa” sparked a phenomenon the Jewish state had never encountered on such a scale — Jews and minority Israeli Arabs turning on their neighbours.
In communal violence that spread to nearly all of Israel’s mixed cities, Jewish and Arab mobs took over the streets at night, burning cars and homes, assaulting each other and, in scattered cases, innocent passers-by.
“I don’t know what to think — the people in our building tried to kill us,” says Keren Eschar, a Jewish mother in the city of Lod, the epicentre of the violence. Arab men burnt her children’s kindergarten and synagogue. “We were good neighbours, but now, I don’t know any more — we were never scared of them,” she says. “I always thought we were safe.”
Police struggled to restore order, even as thousands of reinforcements were deployed.
Rightwing Jewish settlers streamed in from the West Bank carrying weapons, their chants of “Death to Arabs” broadcast live on social media. Arabs knocked on car windows in Jaffa and East Jerusalem, asking an ominous question: “Jew or Arab?”
At least two people were killed, an Arab and a Jew, in separate incidents. Dozens were hospitalised, hundreds arrested. Israeli police said eight in 10 of those detained were Arabs, who make up a fifth of the population, a statistic that will fuel the sense of discrimination the minority group has long complained of.
The trigger for the Arab-Israeli anger was al-Aqsa, where Jaber, the musician, and his friends were holed up for days. Just as images of the police’s heavy-handed tactics against Palestinians in East Jerusalem flooded the news, Arab-Israelis were starting their annual pilgrimage to the mosque for the holiest night of Ramadan, Laylat al-Qadr.
As their buses drove up the hills to Jerusalem, police set up roadblocks, saying they were looking for agitators. About 90,000 made it to the mosque, some of them walking up the steep slopes. The rest fumed.
“The reason that the protests were so wide is because they touched upon religion during the holiest month, and on top of that, the holiest day,” says Diana Buttu, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who worked on past, failed peace talks. “That’s why we are seeing these protests spread so fast, and so far — just like they did in 2000.” That was the year of former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s provocative walk on the Temple Mount that triggered the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising.
With tension soaring, Hamas fired rockets towards Jerusalem. Israel responded with force. As Israel bombed Gaza, the communal violence in Israel erupted and Palestinians in the West Bank staged their largest protests in years. “I don’t like to use the word ‘intifada’, but we are seeing things close to spiralling out of control,” an Israeli security official said this week.
Just two days later, as the ceasefire with Hamas was being hammered out, with Israel under mounting pressure from the Biden administration, Netanyahu sought to move the conversation back to Iran. “While we’re fighting on various fronts, the true backer of much of this aggression is Iran,” he told Heiko Maas, Germany’s foreign minister.
But that does not wash with Palestinians who insist they are fighting their struggle, one which will only end when they have their rights, the occupation is lifted and their nation is born.
“We are reclaiming our voice and narrative,” says Mariam Barghouti, an activist in the West Bank. “Before you speak about any diplomatic solution [to the conflict], address the apartheid, address the military violence, address the settler violence, address the Gaza siege . . . Before those are addressed, you are just talking.”
Additional reporting by Katrina Manson in Washington
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiP2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzE4NGViMThjLWU2MTctNGRmZi04NzgzLTkxZmRkMDk4MWFmOdIBP2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50LzE4NGViMThjLWU2MTctNGRmZi04NzgzLTkxZmRkMDk4MWFmOQ?oc=5
2021-05-21 18:10:35Z
52781577069323
Palestinians and Israeli police clash at Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque hours after Gaza truce - Guardian News
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiK2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnlvdXR1YmUuY29tL3dhdGNoP3Y9TFJEZ2VmWHJ6NFXSAQA?oc=5
2021-05-21 17:28:09Z
52781577069323
Beijing rebuffs Pentagon requests for high-level military talks - Financial Times
Beijing has rebuffed the Pentagon’s requests for talks between China’s top officer and the new US defence secretary, complicating bilateral relations at a time of heightened tensions between the world’s two most powerful militaries.
Lloyd Austin, US defence secretary, has made three requests to speak to General Xu Qiliang, vice-chair of the Central Military Commission and a politburo member who is China’s most senior military officer. But China has refused to engage, according to three people briefed on the impasse.
US officials have said that they do not want to hold high-level meetings with China just for the sake of it, particularly after the countries’ top foreign policy officials engaged in a public diplomatic spat in Alaska in March.
But the Biden administration thinks it is important for Austin to talk to Xu because of the rising tensions in the Indopacific. The two militaries are increasingly coming into closer contact, particularly in the South China Sea as the Chinese navy and air force conduct aggressive activity near Taiwan.
“The Chinese military has not been responsive,” a US defence official told the Financial Times about the requests for a call between Austin and Xu.
In addition to the stand-off over Austin’s request, General Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has not talked to his counterpart since early January before Joe Biden was sworn in, according to a second official.
Since Biden has taken office, the countries have sparred over everything from the repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang to China’s military activity around Taiwan. China has attacked the US as an imperial power.
China flew a record number of fighters and bombers into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone in March, hours after a US official told the FT that President Xi Jinping was flirting with trying to seize Taiwan. While some experts think the threat is less severe, many view Taiwan as a dangerous hotspot.
Earlier this year, Chinese warplanes simulated missile attacks on the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier near Taiwan. China has also been assertive around the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea that are administered by Japan but claimed by Beijing.
Austin had planned to travel to Singapore in June for the Shangri-La defence forum, which Chinese defence minister Wei Fenghe was expected to attend. The event was cancelled this week over Covid-19 concerns.
The US defence official said there had been discussion about a meeting with Wei in Singapore. But he said Austin, the fourth-ranking US cabinet member, opted against a meeting in favour of pushing for a call with Xu, who outranks Wei in the Chinese political and military system.
“We believe the appropriate counterpart is the vice-chair of the Central Military Commission,” the US official said.
Jim Mattis met Xu in Beijing in 2018 when he was defence secretary under President Donald Trump. But China almost always offers up its defence minister instead. This has increasingly frustrated the US because he has little power in the Chinese system and does not serve on the 25-member politburo that rules China.
The White House is split over how Austin should handle the situation. Some National Security Council officials are opposed to Austin dealing with Wei. Another group are less resistant, but want Austin to use any meeting or call to tell Wei that he would only hold talks with the CMC vice-chair.
The NSC declined to comment. The first defence official confirmed that there had been divisions, but declined to provide any details. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not response to a request for comment.
Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund, said it was important for the Pentagon to be able to engage with real military decision makers, and pointed out that the CMC exercises command authority over the PLA.
“To address growing US concerns about China’s military operations and risk reduction measures to avoid collisions between US and Chinese forces that are operating in close proximity, the focus should be on the CMC,” she said.
While some officials and experts said Austin should insist on talking to Xu, others said it was important that the US open a line of communication with the Chinese military even if Beijing continued to stonewall over arranging a call with the CMC vice-chair.
Heino Klinck, a former Pentagon Asia official who spent years as a defence attaché in China, said it had always been challenging agreeing protocol for meetings with China due to the different structures of the two militaries.
“Given the situation with Taiwan and other issues such as the East China Sea and South China Sea, as well as attempted Chinese coercion of our key allies and partners such as Australia, it is important to have clear communication,” Klinck said.
“We need to be conveying to the Chinese what our own red lines are because they convey theirs.”
Follow Demetri Sevastopulo on Twitter
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiP2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50L2M4MmNjYjA4LWMwZmMtNDY4Zi04OTdmLTZiYWI3MzUwNDg1ZNIBP2h0dHBzOi8vYW1wLmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50L2M4MmNjYjA4LWMwZmMtNDY4Zi04OTdmLTZiYWI3MzUwNDg1ZA?oc=5
2021-05-21 15:03:37Z
52781609780761
Langganan:
Komentar (Atom)