Tunisian Parties Call For Dissolution of Parliament, Withdrawal of Confidence from Speaker

President Kais Saeid meets with his South Korea's Interior minister on Tuesday. (dpa)
President Kais Saeid meets with his South Korea's Interior minister on Tuesday. (dpa)
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Tunisian Parties Call For Dissolution of Parliament, Withdrawal of Confidence from Speaker

President Kais Saeid meets with his South Korea's Interior minister on Tuesday. (dpa)
President Kais Saeid meets with his South Korea's Interior minister on Tuesday. (dpa)

The Free Destourian Party urged President Kais Saeid to take urgent action to dissolve the parliament and call on lawmakers to sign a petition to withdraw confidence from Speaker Rached Ghannouchi.

On Monday, the parliament office announced that the parliament was going to hold its plenary sessions, in defiance of Saeid's suspension of the legislature.

The parliament said it wanted to meet to address the serious financial, economic, and social crisis in the country.

Head of the Free Destourian Party Abir Moussi said the petition needs the approval of 109 deputies to dissolve parliament and call for early legislative elections.

She added lawmakers would not reject Saeid's invitation if he took a step toward dismissing Ghannouchi, dissolving parliament, and holding the elections.

Moussi filed a judicial complaint to invalidate the decisions of the frozen parliament and stop the plenary sessions scheduled to begin Wednesday.

She warned that going ahead with the meetings would mark a dangerous precedent in the country given the president's order to suspend parliament in July last year.

Saeid had criticized Ghannouchi's call for parliament to convene. Speaking a National Security Council meeting, he stressed that the law must be respected, noting that "the so-called 'virtual meeting' is illegal because the assembly is frozen."

"The State will only recover through an independent judiciary, which is being challenged by those who desperately trying to stage a coup," charged the president.

Saeid stressed that the Tunisian state is not a "puppet" to be toyed with by national and foreign entities.

He warned against attempts to convene the suspended parliament, saying the state's forces and institutions will confront those who want to tamper with the state and push Tunisians to conflict.



Netanyahu Holds Security Briefing Atop Strategic Syrian Peak

An Israeli military helicopter flies over Mount Hermon on the border between Israel and Syria in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, 17 December 2024. (EPA)
An Israeli military helicopter flies over Mount Hermon on the border between Israel and Syria in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, 17 December 2024. (EPA)
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Netanyahu Holds Security Briefing Atop Strategic Syrian Peak

An Israeli military helicopter flies over Mount Hermon on the border between Israel and Syria in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, 17 December 2024. (EPA)
An Israeli military helicopter flies over Mount Hermon on the border between Israel and Syria in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, 17 December 2024. (EPA)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a security briefing Tuesday atop a strategic Syrian mountain inside the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights that Israel seized this month, the defense minister said.

Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz and the heads of the armed forces and the domestic security agency visited "outposts at the summit of Mount Hermon for the first time since they were seized by the military", Katz's office said.

"The summit of Mount Hermon serves as Israel's eyes for identifying both near and distant threats," the defense minister said.

Netanyahu's office said the meeting took place on the "Hermon ridge" and said the premier "reviewed the (army's) deployment in the area and set guidelines for the future".

The prime minister ordered Israeli troops to seize the buffer zone as longtime strongman Bashar al-Assad's rule collapsed in Syria.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said the Israeli move was a violation of 1974 armistice which set up the zone to separate Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights following the previous year's Arab-Israeli war.

Israel has framed the move as temporary and defensive, with Netanyahu saying it was in response to a "vacuum on Israel's border and in the buffer zone".

Israeli forces have also been operating in areas beyond the buffer zone in Syrian-controlled territory, the military has confirmed.

Katz told the meeting of the importance of "completing preparations... for the possibility of a prolonged presence", the statement said.

He added that the summit of Mount Hermon, home to the world's highest UN observation post at 2,814 meters (9,232 feet) above sea level, provided "observation and deterrence" against both Hezbollah in Lebanon and opposition forces in Damascus.

Israel first occupied the Golan during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the international community as a whole.