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PA Denies EU Threatening to Reduce Aid to Palestinians

Head of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission Hanna Nasser delivers an official invitation to EU Representative Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff to observe the elections, last month (WAFA)
Head of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission Hanna Nasser delivers an official invitation to EU Representative Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff to observe the elections, last month (WAFA)
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PA Denies EU Threatening to Reduce Aid to Palestinians

Head of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission Hanna Nasser delivers an official invitation to EU Representative Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff to observe the elections, last month (WAFA)
Head of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission Hanna Nasser delivers an official invitation to EU Representative Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff to observe the elections, last month (WAFA)

The Palestinian Authority has denied that the European Union (EU) threatened to cut aid if the PA cancelled the elections.

Member of the Central Committee of Fatah Hussein Al-Sheikh said, "The Palestinian elections are a Palestinian decision par excellence, and stem from Palestinian national interests, to strengthen the democratic approach with the participation of all Palestinians to enshrine the legitimacy of the fund."

"All the European and other threats are rumored, unfounded, and intentional disturbances,” he added.

Israel's official broadcaster Kan said that European officials had sent a message to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stating that if the parliamentary elections scheduled for May were cancelled, Europe's support for the authority, estimated at €350 million would be cut or reduced.

According to the channel, officials and diplomats said, "The situation in which the European Union and European countries continue to pump millions into the PA without a democratic and reform process, cannot continue.”

Later on, the EU denied reports that it had threatened to reduce aid provided to the Authority if it doesn't hold elections.

"We were surprised by what was reported in some media outlets. There was no comment or statement from the EU on this subject," said the European Union spokesman in Palestine, Shadi Othman.

Elections are scheduled to take place in three phases - legislative on May 22, presidential on July 31 and National Assembly on August 31.

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An Israeli Strike that Killed 3 Lebanese Journalists Was Most Likely Deliberate

A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
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An Israeli Strike that Killed 3 Lebanese Journalists Was Most Likely Deliberate

A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)

An Israeli airstrike that killed three journalists and wounded others in Lebanon last month was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime, an international human rights group said Monday.
The Oct. 25 airstrike killed three journalists as they slept at a guesthouse in southeast Lebanon in one of the deadliest attacks on the media since the Israel-Hezbollah war began 13 months ago.
Eleven other journalists have been killed and eight wounded since then, Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad said.
More than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, and women and children accounted for more than 900 of the dead, according to the Health Ministry. More than 1 million people have been displaced since Israeli ground troops invaded while Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into Israel - and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes.
Human Rights Watch determined that Israeli forces carried out the Oct. 25 attack using an air-dropped bomb equipped with a US produced Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, guidance kit.
The group said the US government should suspend weapons transfers to Israel because of the military´s repeated "unlawful attacks on civilians, for which US officials may be complicit in war crimes."
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the report.
The Biden administration said in May that Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law but that wartime conditions prevented US officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes.
The journalists killed in the airstrike in the southeastern town of Hasbaya were camera operator Ghassan Najjar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida of the Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, and camera operator Wissam Qassim, who worked for Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV.
Human Rights Watch said a munition struck the single-story building and detonated upon hitting the floor.
"Israel’s use of US arms to unlawfully attack and kill journalists away from any military target is a terrible mark on the United States as well as Israel," said Richard Weir, the senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Weir added that "the Israeli military’s previous deadly attacks on journalists without any consequences give little hope for accountability in this or future violations against the media."
Human Rights Watch said that it found remnants at the site and reviewed photographs of pieces collected by the resort owner and determined that they were consistent with a JDAM guidance kit assembled and sold by the US company Boeing.

The JDAM is affixed to air-dropped bombs and allows them to be guided to a target by using satellite coordinates, making the weapon accurate to within several meters, the group said.
In November 2023, two journalists for Al-Mayadeen TV were killed in a drone strike at their reporting spot. A month earlier, Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and seriously wounded other journalists from France´s international news agency Agence France-Presse and Qatar´s Al-Jazeera TV on a hilltop not far from the Israeli border.