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EU’s Borrell Urges Israel to Facilitate Palestinian Vote

Members of the Palestinian security forces stand guard outside the Legislative Council building in the occupied-West Bank town of Ramallah, on January 16, 202. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP)
Members of the Palestinian security forces stand guard outside the Legislative Council building in the occupied-West Bank town of Ramallah, on January 16, 202. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP)
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EU’s Borrell Urges Israel to Facilitate Palestinian Vote

Members of the Palestinian security forces stand guard outside the Legislative Council building in the occupied-West Bank town of Ramallah, on January 16, 202. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP)
Members of the Palestinian security forces stand guard outside the Legislative Council building in the occupied-West Bank town of Ramallah, on January 16, 202. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP)

The European Union on Saturday welcomed a promise by Palestinian leaders to hold their first elections in 15 years, urging Israel to facilitate the ballots.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said elections would be held in May and July, as part of a warming of ties between his Fatah party and its Islamist rival Hamas.

“This is a welcome development,” said a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, AFP reported.

He said the bloc “stands ready to cooperate with relevant actors to support the electoral process” and urged Israel to “facilitate the holding of these elections throughout the Palestinian territory.”

The statement from Abbas said he expected polls to be held “in all governorates of Palestine, including east Jerusalem,” which was annexed by Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War but is considered occupied territory by much of the international community.

Israel bans all Palestinian Authority activity in east Jerusalem, and there was no indication Israel would allow a Palestinian vote within the city.

The 2005 Palestinian presidential vote saw Abbas elected with 62 percent support to replace the late Yasser Arafat.

In the last Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, Hamas won an unexpected landslide.

The polls resulted in a brief unity government but it soon collapsed and in 2007, bloody clashes erupted in the Gaza Strip between the two principal Palestinian factions, with Hamas ultimately seizing control of Gaza.

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Security Council Extends Arms Embargo on Darfur

FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
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Security Council Extends Arms Embargo on Darfur

FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
FILE PHOTO: Members of the United Nations Security Council gather during a meeting about the situation in Venezuela, in New York, US, February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

The UN Security Council extended an arms embargo on Sudan's Darfur region for another year, after experts said it had been regularly violated amid the ongoing civil war.

In a resolution adopted unanimously, the Council extended until September 12, 2025 the sanctions regime in place since 2005, which is aimed solely at Darfur, AFP reported.

That includes individual sanctions -- asset freezes and a travel ban -- on three people, and an arms embargo.

The "people of Darfur continue to live in danger and desperation and despair ... This adoption sends an important signal to them that the international community remains focused on their plight," said deputy US ambassador Robert Wood.

Though sanctions do not apply to the whole country, their renewal "will restrict the movement of arms into Darfur and sanction individuals and entities contributing to or complicit in destabilizing activities in Sudan," he said.

More than 16 months of war between rival Sudanese generals has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered what the United Nations calls the world's worst internal displacement crisis.

The war pits the army under Sudan's de facto leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against the RSF, led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

The UN and humanitarian organizations fear that the war could degenerate into new ethnic violence, particularly in Darfur.

Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the decision was a "missed opportunity" by the Council to extend the embargo to the whole of Sudan.

China and Russia, permanent members of the Security Council who abstained the last time the embargo was renewed, in 2023, this time voted in favor.

The move "will go some way towards stemming the steady flow of illicit arms into the battlefield and calming down and deescalating the situation on the ground," said deputy Chinese ambassador Dai Bing.

He said the sanctions were "a means, not an end. They must not replace diplomacy."

In their annual report, published in January, experts charged by the Council with monitoring the sanctions regime said the arms embargo had been violated multiple times.