Wednesday 24th of April 2024
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Oil my love...

In a letter to the editor, Richard Cox suggested the Sydney Morning Herald did a feature for a week on Darfur and the terrible state of affair in that region.... I could not agree with you more, Richard ...... And there are many other places in Africa where similar problems have happened and are still happening. For example "Western Sahara" that was liberated by its own people fighting the colonial Spanish in the 1970s were mostly reoccupied by Morocco soon after... Here, Morocco has built a wall longer than the great wall of china dividing that country in a great vertical coastal half for itself and leaving only desert and refugee camps on the border with Algeria for the people of Western Sahara... Now the complicated thing is that Algeria is considered to be mostly a fundamentalist state while Morocco is a moderate Muslim state very friendly with the west. It is an indication that no one cares about these people—not even the great CIA fact book on countries of the world has a reference for that country, except on the map margins of other countries like Morocco... In the fight against the Spanish, Algeria provided weapons to the Western Saharians, including mines of all sorts from personal to anti tank.. throughout the wall which at times is made of 5 or six rows of stone wall, and on either side the site is also peppered with anti-personal mines placed by the Moroccan army... So many people have lost limbs etc... Many people have lived in these border camps since the 1970s and receive food from the UN via a few sources... The other crucial factor is that Western Sahara costal region is full of oil... and... yes we know... Did I forget to mention the manufacturer of the mines?... Yes we know....

of peace and bribes...


by Finian Cunningham
Morocco becomes the latest Arab nation to declare “historic normalization” of ties with Israel in deference to President Trump’s supposed “visionary” peace plan for the Middle East.

In a few weeks, Donald J. Trump is likely to be finally turfed out of the White House as his tenuous legal challenges to the presidential election fizzle and flounder. With an eye on leaving some kind of “legacy,”Trump wants to go down in history as the great peace deal-maker in the Middle East.

The last few months have seen frenetic efforts to get Arab nations to normalize ties with Israel. Morocco this week became the fourth nation to do so, following in the steps of the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Bahrain. (Egypt and Jordan had already done so back in 1979 and 1994.) However, most of the 22-nation Arab League still refuses to open relations with Israel owing to long-standing support for Palestinian national rights.

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, the supposed brainchild behind the president’s Abraham Accords peace plan, declared that the recognition of Israel by Morocco was another landmark move towards settling the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict over Palestine.

Trouble is Trump’s peace vision comes with a lot of arm-twisting, bribery, and sowing of wider tensions in the region.

Morocco has recognized Israel at a price. The Trump administration induced the move by granting its recognition of Morocco’s territorial claims over the Western Sahara. The area is contested by a separatist group, the Polisario Front, which declares it as the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Only a month ago, the group announced the end of a 29-year ceasefire with Morocco. The ostensible peace overture solicited by the Trump administration is thus inciting a war in the Maghreb region which could draw in surrounding countries Mauritania and Algeria, both of which are allied with the Western Sahara’s Polisario Front.

Trump’s “art of the deal” is less about upholding principles of international law and national rights and more about grubby expedience to get to his bottom line. Just as in his former life as a New York City real-estate magnate, it’s all about greasing palms and bending rules to come out on top.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/509417-trump-mideast-peace-morocco-israel/

 

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MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Washington's recognition of Morocco's sovereignty over the disputed region of Western Sahara is a violation of the international law, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Friday.

"This is a violation of international law. There are relevant resolutions, there is a UN mission for holding a referendum in Western Sahara. Everything that Americans currently do is a unilateral decision that goes beyond international law and decisions of the United Nations Security Council's resolution, which Americans themselves supported", Bogdanov told reporters.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump announced that he had brokered a peace deal between Israel and Morocco and granted the latter the recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara, which is contested by the Polisario Front, the movement behind the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/202012111081429392-moscow-says-us-recognition-of-moroccos-sovereignty-over-western-sahara-violates-intl-law/