Tag Archives: Middle East

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to revive travel ban

A picture of the travel advisory page of Qatar Airways advising passengers bound for the United States from seven newly banned majority Muslim countries that they need to have either a U.S. green card or diplomatic visa, January 28, 2017 in London, Britain. Picture taken January 28, 2017. REUTERS/Russell Boyce

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive his plan to temporarily ban travelers from six Muslim-majority nations after it was blocked by lower courts that found it was discriminatory.

In deciding whether to allow the ban to go into effect, the nine justices are set to weigh whether Trump’s harsh election campaign rhetoric can be used as evidence that the order was intended to discriminate against Muslims.

The administration filed emergency applications with the nine high court justices seeking to block two different lower court rulings that went against Trump’s March 6 order barring entry for people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the U.S. government implements stricter visa screening.

The move comes after the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on May 25 upheld a Maryland judge’s ruling blocking the order.

The administration also filed a separate appeal in that case.

“We have asked the Supreme Court to hear this important case and are confident that President Trump’s executive order is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe and protect our communities from terrorism,” Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement.

The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the legal groups challenging the ban, tweeted in response: “We’ve beat this hateful ban and are ready to do it again.”

At least five votes are needed on the nine-justice court in order to grant a stay. The court has a 5-4 conservative majority, with Justice Anthony Kennedy – a conservative who sometimes sides with the court’s four liberals – the frequent swing vote. Another of the court’s conservatives, Neil Gorsuch, was appointed by Trump this year.

If the government’s emergency requests are granted, the ban would go into effect immediately.

The court first has to act on whether to grant the emergency applications, which could happen within a fortnight. Then, the justices will decide whether to hear the government’s full appeal. The Supreme Court is not required to hear the case but is likely to due to its importance and the fact that the request is being made by the U.S. government.

The Justice Department has asked the court to expedite the case so that the justices could hear it at the beginning of their next term, which starts in October. That means, if the court allows the ban to go into effect, the final decision would be issued long after the 90 days has elapsed.

In the court filings, Acting Solicitor General Jeff Wall highlighted the unprecedented nature of courts second-guessing the president on national security and immigration.

“This order has been the subject of passionate political debate. But whatever one’s views, the precedent set by this case for the judiciary’s proper role in reviewing the president’s national-security and immigration authority will transcend this debate, this Order, and this constitutional moment,” he wrote.

In its 10-3 ruling, the appeals court in Virginia said the challengers, including refugee groups and others represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, were likely to succeed on their claim that the order violated the U.S. Constitution’s bar against favoring or disfavoring a particular religion.

The government had argued that the court should not take into account Trump’s comments during the 2016 U.S. presidential race since he made them before he took office on Jan. 20. But the appeals court rejected that view, saying they shed light on the motivations behind Trump’s order.

During the campaign, Trump campaign called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

His administration has argued that the travel ban is needed to prevent terrorism in the United States.

Federal courts in both Maryland and Hawaii issued rulings suspending key parts of the ban. The appeals court in Virginia upheld the Maryland ruling. A San Francisco-based appeals court is currently considering the Hawaii case.

The administration is asking the Supreme Court to throw out the injunction imposed in both cases.

The March ban was Trump’s second effort to implement travel restrictions on people from several Muslim-majority countries through an executive order. The first, issued on Jan. 27, led to chaos and protests at airports and in major U.S. cities before it was blocked by courts.

The second order was intended to overcome the legal issues posed by the original ban, but it was blocked by judges before it could go into effect on March 16.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Sue Horton, Christian Schmollinger, Shr Navaratnam and Michael Perry)

Islamic State fighters seal off Mosul mosque preparing for last stand

A member of the Iraqi rapid response forces fires a mortar shell against Islamic State militants positions in western Mosul, Iraq May 31, 2017. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Islamic State militants have closed the streets around Mosul’s Grand al-Nuri Mosque, residents said, apparently in preparation for a final showdown in the battle over their last major stronghold in Iraq.

Dozens of fighters were seen by residents taking up positions in the past 48 hours around the medieval mosque, the site where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamist caliphate in July 2014.

Islamic State’s black flag has been flying from the mosque since the militants captured Mosul and seized swathes of Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014.

U.S.-backed Iraqi government forces retook eastern Mosul in January and began a new push on Saturday to capture the group’s remaining enclave in western Mosul, comprising of the Old City center where the mosque is located, and three adjacent districts alongside the western bank of the River Tigris.

The fall of the city would, in effect, mark the end of the Iraqi half of the self-styled caliphate. Meanwhile in Syria, Kurdish forces backed by U.S.-air strikes are beseiging Islamic State forces in the city of Raqqa, the militants’ de facto capital in that country.

SYMBOLIC FOCUS

Up to 200,000 people still live in harrowing conditions behind Islamic State lines in Mosul, running low on food, water and medicine, and with difficult access to hospitals, the United Nations said on Sunday.

The Grand al-Nuri Mosque has become a symbolic focus of the campaign, with Iraqi commanders privately saying they hope to capture it during Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month which started over the weekend in Iraq.

“Daesh’s fighters know that the mosque is the most important target and they are preparing for a major battle there,” said Hisham al-Hashemi, who advises several Middle East government including Iraq’s on Islamic State affairs.

But a battle in or near the mosque would put the building and its famed leaning minaret at risk, experts have said.

The minaret, several feet off the perpendicular and standing on humid soil, is particularly vulnerable as it has not been renovated since 1970. Its tilt gave the landmark its popular name – al-Hadba, or the hunchback.

The Mosul offensive, now in its eighth month, has taken much more time than expected as Islamic State is fighting in the middle of civilians and using them as human shields.

Over the past few days, the militants ordered dozens of families living in the Zanjili district to move into the Old City to prevent them from escaping toward the Iraqi forces trying to advance from the northern side, a resident said.

Government forces have been dropping leaflets over the districts telling families to flee but the intensity of the fighting has prevented people from escaping.

The militants been countering the offensive with suicide car and motorbike bombs, snipers, booby-traps and mortar fire.

About 700,000 people, about a third of the pre-war city’s population, have already fled, seeking refuge either with friends and relatives or in camps.

(Reporting by Maher Chmaytelli; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Syrian rebels say U.S., allies sending more arms to fend off Iran threat

FILE PHOTO: Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) ride on a tank during a battle with Islamic State militants, at Um Jaris village on the Iraqi border with Syria, Iraq May 29, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

By Tom Perry, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Maher Chmaytelli

BEIRUT/AMMAN/BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Syrian rebels say the United States and its allies are sending them more arms to try to fend off a new push into the southeast by Iran-backed militias aiming to open an overland supply route between Iraq and Syria.

The stakes are high as Iran seeks to secure its influence from Tehran to Beirut in a “Shi’ite crescent” of Iranian influence through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, where Sunni Arab states have lost out in power struggles with Iran.

Tensions escalated in the southeastern region of Syria, known as the Badia, this month when government forces supported by Iraqi Shi’ite militias deployed in a challenge to rebels backed by President Bashar al-Assad’s enemies.

This has coincided with a march toward the Syrian border by Shi’ite militias from Iraq. They reached the frontier adjoining northern Syria on Monday. A top Iraqi militia commander said a wider operation to take the area from Sunni jihadist Islamic State would start on Tuesday and this would help Syria’s army.

While in Iraq the United States has fought alongside Iranian-backed Iraqi government forces and Shi’ite militias against Islamic State, in Syria Washington has lined up against Assad’s Iranian-backed government and wants to block a further expansion of Iranian influence, with its regional allies.

The sides are vying for pole position in the next major phase of the fight against Islamic State: the battle to dislodge it from the eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zor where many of the jihadists have relocated from Raqqa and Mosul.

Several rebel groups fighting under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) banner operate in the sparsely populated Badia, where they captured swathes of territory from Islamic State this year. U.S. air strikes on May 18 targeted Iran-backed fighters who had moved into the area.

Also in May, Damascus declared both the Badia and Deir al-Zor priorities of its campaign to re-establish its rule over Syria, which has been shattered by six years of war that have killed hundreds of thousands of people. The government is being helped by both Iran and Russia, while the opposition has been helped by the West and regional states which oppose Assad.

Rebels said military aid has been boosted through two separate channels: a program backed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), known as the MOC, and regional states including Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and one run by the Pentagon.

“There has been an increase in the support,” said Tlass Salameh, head of the Jaish Usoud al-Sharqiya, one of the FSA groups backed via the CIA-backed program. “There’s no way we can let them open the Baghdad-Damascus highway,” he said.

A senior commander of a Pentagon-backed group, Maghawir al-Thawra, told Reuters a steady flow of weapons had arrived at their base near the Iraqi border since the pro-Damascus forces began deploying this month.

He said efforts to recruit and train local fighters from Deir al-Zor had accelerated at their garrison at Tanf, on the highway some 20 km (12 miles) from the Iraqi border.

“The equipment and reinforcements come and go daily … but in the last few weeks they have brought in more heavy military vehicles, TOW (missiles), and armored vehicles,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Two armored vehicles newly delivered to the Tanf garrison were shown in photos sent to Reuters from a rebel source. A video showed fighters unpacking mortar bombs.

In a written response to emailed questions from Reuters, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition did not say if coalition support to Maghawir al-Thawra had increased.

Colonel Ryan Dillon said coalition forces were “prepared to defend themselves if pro-regime forces refuse to vacate” a de-confliction zone around Tanf.

“The coalition has observed pro-regime forces patrolling in the vicinity of the established de-confliction zone around the Tanf training site in Syria … Pro-regime patrols and the continued armed and hostile presence of forces inside the … zone is unacceptable and threatening to coalition forces.”

U.S. jets this week dropped leaflets on pro-government forces instructing them to pull out of the Tanf area to the Zaza junction further from the border. The leaflets were obtained by Hammurabi Justice, a Maghawir-linked website.

The Syrian army could not be reached for comment.

A commander in the military alliance fighting in support of Assad told Reuters the deployment of government forces and pro-Damascus Iraqi fighters in the Badia would “obstruct all the plans of the MOC, Jordan and America”.

The commander, a non-Syrian, said Assad’s enemies were committed to blocking “what they call the (Shi’ite) Crescent”. But, he said, “Now, our axis is insistent on this matter and it will be accomplished.”

The Iraqi Badr militia said its advance to the Syrian border would help the Syrian army reach the border from the other side. “The Americans will not be allowed to control the border,” its leader, Hadi al-Amiri, told al-Mayadeen TV.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Israeli documents from days after war have familiar ring 50 years on

A researcher scans declassified documents for Akevot, an Israeli NGO researching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem May 10, 2017. Picture taken May 10, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Within days of capturing East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, Israel was examining options about their future ranging from Jewish settlement-building to the creation of a Palestinian state.

As the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the war nears on June 5, recently unearthed documents detailing the post-war legal and diplomatic debate have a familiar ring, and underline how little progress has been made towards resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Akevot, an Israeli NGO researching the conflict, has spent thousands of hours over two years gaining access to declassified, often dog-eared, documents and building a digital record of them.

The group’s aim in obtaining the files, at a time when the Israel State Archives has restricted access to its resources as it conducts its own digitization project, is to ensure that primary sources of conflict decision-making remain accessible to researchers, diplomats, journalists and the wider public.

“One of the things we realized early on was that so many of the policies related to current day Israeli government activities in the occupied territories have roots going back to the very first year of occupation,” said Lior Yavne, founder and director of Akevot.

“Policies that were envisaged very early on, 1967 or 1968, serve government policies to this day.”

In six days of war, Israel’s army seized 5,900 square km (2,280 square miles) of the West Bank, the walled Old City of Jerusalem and more than two dozen Arab villages on the city’s eastern flank.

On other fronts it conquered the Golan Heights from Syria, and Sinai and the Gaza Strip from Egypt.

But for the Israeli prime minister’s office, the foreign ministry and assorted legal advisers, the thorniest questions surrounded how to handle the unexpected seizure of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the 660,000 Palestinians living there.

“THE WAR NEVER ENDED”

A little over a month after the war ended on June 10, 1967, senior foreign ministry officials had drafted a set of seven possibilities of what to do with the West Bank and Gaza.

They considered everything from establishing an independent, demilitarized Palestinian state with its capital as close as possible to Jerusalem, to annexing the entire area to Israel or handing most of it over to Jordan.

The authors explained the need to move rapidly because “internationally, the impression that Israel maintains colonial rule over these occupied territories may arise in the interim”.

While the document analyses in detail the idea of an independent Palestinian state, it presents most positively the case for annexation, while also making clear its “inherent dangers”.

Option four, listed as “the graduated solution”, is the one perhaps closest to what exists to this day: a plan to establish a Palestinian state only once there is a peace agreement between Israel and Arab nations.

“The Six-Day War actually never ended,” said Tom Segev, a leading Israeli historian and author of “1967 – Israel, the War, and the Year that Transformed the Middle East”.

“The seventh day has lasted ever since for the last 50 years. And it is affecting both us and the Palestinians … every day, every minute.”

SETTLEMENTS

Perhaps the trickiest and most legally nuanced discussions were around Israel’s responsibilities under international law, and whether it could build settlements.

Palestinians and many countries consider Israel’s settlements on occupied land they seek for a state as illegal. Israel disputes this, citing historical, biblical and political links to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as security considerations.

After the 1967 war, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and considers all of Jerusalem as its “indivisible and eternal capital”, a status that has not won international recognition. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestine.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Israel has consistently violated U.N. resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention in its actions in occupied territory, particularly in Jerusalem.

“All these measures … can’t change the fact that Jerusalem is an occupied city, just like the rest of Palestinian lands,” he said.

Theodor Meron, one of the world’s leading jurists who was then legal adviser to the foreign ministry, wrote several memos in late 1967 and early 1968 laying out his position on settlements.

In a covering letter to one secret memo sent to the prime minister’s political secretary, Meron said: “My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention”.

Meron, who now lives in the United States, set his arguments out over several pages, but they boiled down to the fact that Israel was a signatory to the Geneva Convention which prohibits transferring citizens of an occupying state onto occupied land.

“…any legal arguments that we shall try to find will not counteract the heavy international pressure that will be exerted upon us even by friendly countries which will base themselves on the Fourth Geneva Convention,” he wrote.

The only way he could see settlements being legally justified – and even then he made clear he didn’t favor the argument – was if they were in temporary camps and “carried out by military and not civilian entities”.

While in the early years settlements were militaristic and often temporary, the enterprise now has full government backing, houses some 350,000 civilians in the West Bank and has all the hallmarks of permanence.

Meron declined to respond to specific questions from Reuters.

But in an article this month in the American Journal of International Law, he expressed concern about “the continued march toward an inexorable demographic change in the West Bank” and the appointment by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration of an ambassador to Israel who has raised funds for settlements.

There is, Meron wrote in the journal, a growing perception in the international community that “individual Palestinians’ human rights, as well as their rights under the Fourth Geneva Convention, are being violated.”

NAMES

Immediately after the war, almost no element of Israel’s land seizure went unexamined, whether by the military, the prime minister’s office, the foreign ministry, naming committees or religious authorities.

In a memo on June 22, 1967, Michael Comay, political adviser to the foreign ministry, wrote to the ministry’s deputy director-general saying they needed to be careful about using phrases like “occupied territories” or “occupying power” because they supported the International Committee of the Red Cross’s view that the local population should have rights under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

“There are two alternatives: Using the term TERRITORIES OF THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT or TERRITORIES UNDER ISRAEL CONTROL,” he wrote. “Externally, I prefer the second option.”

Even now, the government avoids talking about occupation, instead suggesting that the West Bank is “disputed territory”.

(Additional reporting by Rinat Harash in Jerusalem and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Mike Collett-White)

Russia fires cruise missiles at Islamic State targets from Mediterranean

A still image taken from a video footage and released by Russia's Defence Ministry shows bombs hitting what Defence Ministry said were Islamic State targets near the Syrian city of Palmyra. Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation/via REUTERS TV

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian warship and submarine have fired four cruise missiles from the Mediterranean at Islamic State targets near the Syrian city of Palmyra, the Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

The strike, which Russian news agencies said was the first of its kind since November, was carried out by the frigate “Admiral Essen” and the submarine “Krasnodar,” and targeted militants and equipment in an area east of Palmyra.

The defense ministry said the hardware and forces struck had previously been deployed by Islamic State in Raqqa.

“All targets were destroyed,” it said in a statement.

Russia had warned the United States, Turkey and Israel before launching the missiles, the ministry said.

It did not say when the strike took place, but Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu had personally told President Vladimir Putin about the military action late on Tuesday.

The last time Russia fired Kalibr cruise missiles from its ships at militant targets in Syria was in November last year, the RIA news agency said.

Separately, photographs published on Wednesday by Turkish bloggers for their online Bosphorus Naval News project showed a Russian Syria-bound ship passing through the Bosphorus carrying a consignment of military trucks.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova/Dmitry Solovyov/Jack Stubbs; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Civilians lack food, water, medicine as Mosul battle mounts: U.N.

A view of a part of western Mosul, Iraq May 29, 2017. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

By Maher Chmaytelli

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of civilians in parts of Mosul held by Islamic State are struggling to get food, water and medicine, the United Nations said, days into a new push by U.S.-backed Iraqi government troops to take the northern city.

Up to 200,000 people still live behind Islamic State lines in Mosul’s Old City and three other districts, U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator Lise Grande told Reuters late on Sunday.

She spoke a day after Iraq’s army said it had launched a new offensive to take the militant zones on the western side of the Tigris river.

Progress has been slow, an Iraqi government adviser told Reuters, also late on Sunday. “The fighting is extremely intense … the presence of civilians means we have to be very cautious,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

People who had managed to get out of the militant areas “report a dramatic situation including lack of food, limited water and severe shortages of medicines,” Grande said by phone.

“We know that there have been health facilities in these areas, but we don’t know whether they are still functioning.”

Government forces have been dropping leaflets over the districts telling families to flee – but many have remained fearing getting caught in the cross-fire.

“We have been informed by authorities that the evacuation is not compulsory … If civilians decide to stay … they will be protected by Iraqi security forces,” said Grande.

“People who choose to flee will be directed to safe routes. The location of these will change depending on which areas are under attack and dynamics on the battlefield,” she added.

The latest Iraqi government push is part of a broader offensive in Mosul, now in its eighth month. It has taken longer than planned as the militants are dug in among civilians, retaliating with suicide car and motorbike bombs, booby traps, snipers and mortar fire.

Its prime target is the medieval Grand al-Nuri mosque with its landmark leaning minaret in Mosul’s Old City, where Islamic State’s black flag has been flying since mid-2014.

The fall of Mosul would, in effect, mark the end of the Iraqi half of the “caliphate” declared nearly three years ago by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a speech at the mosque.

About 700,000 people, about a third of the pre-war city’s population, have already fled, seeking refuge either with friends and relatives or in camps.

(Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Iran says it has built third underground ballistic missile factory

FILE PHOTO: An Iranian national flag flutters in Tehran April 15, 2011. REUTERS/STR/File Photo

By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran has built a third underground ballistic missile production factory and will keep developing its missile program, the semi-official Fars news agency quoted a senior commander of the elite Revolutionary Guard as saying.

The development is likely to fuel tensions with the United States in a week when President Donald Trump, on his first foreign trip, has called Iran a sponsor of militant groups and a threat to countries across the Middle East.

“Iran’s third underground factory has been built by the Guards in recent years … We will continue to further develop our missile capabilities forcefully,” Fars quoted Amirali Hajizadeh, head of the Guard’s airspace division, as saying.

Since taking office in January, Trump has imposed new sanctions on Iran in response to its recent missile launches, putting Tehran “on notice”.

Iran has reacted defiantly. Newly re-elected pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday: “Iran does not need the permission of the United States to conduct missile tests”.

Iran’s Sunni Muslim Gulf neighbors and its arch-enemy Israel have expressed concerns over Tehran’s ballistic missile program, seeing it as a threat to regional security.

In 2015, Iranian state TV aired footage of underground tunnels with ready-to-fire missiles on the back of trucks, saying the facility was one of hundreds of underground missile bases around the country.

“It is natural that our enemies America and the Zionist regime (Israel) are angry with our missile program because they want Iran to be in a weak position,” Hajizadeh said.

Most nuclear-related sanctions on Iran were lifted last year after Tehran fulfilled commitments under a 2015 deal with major powers to scale back its nuclear program – an agreement that Trump has frequently criticized as being too soft on Tehran. But Iran remains subject to a U.N. arms embargo and other restrictions.

Two months after implementation of the deal, the Guards test-fired two ballistic missiles that it said were designed to be able to hit Israel.

Iran says its missile program is not in defiance with a U.N. resolution that calls on it to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to eight years.

“Along with improving our defense capabilities, we will continue our missile tests and missile production. The next missile to be produced is a surface-to-surface missile,” said Hajizadeh, without elaborating.

In retaliation for the new U.S. sanctions over its ballistic missile program, Iran this month added nine American individuals and companies to its own list of 15 U.S. companies for alleged human rights violations and cooperation with Israel.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Israel marks 50 years of ‘united Jerusalem’, but city struggles

A crow flies past as Jewish school children gather at a look-out point on the Armon Hanatziv Promenade in Jerusalem May 11, 2017. Picture taken May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Amir Cohen

By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A half-century after Israel captured East Jerusalem, the holy city remains deeply divided by politics, religion and ethnicity – and struggling with grim economic realities.

A treasure fought over for millenia, it is also one of the poorest ‮areas under Israeli control‬. About 45 percent of Jerusalem’s nearly 900,000 people live below the poverty line, compared with 20 percent of Israel’s national population.

The poorer groups in Jerusalem are the fastest-growing: ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredim, who make up a fifth of the population and Palestinians, who comprise more than a third.

Many young, secular and educated Jewish residents are opting to leave, alienated by the religious atmosphere and high living costs, said the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research (JIIS) think tank.

After the 1967 Middle East war, Israel annexed the Arab east of the city to the Jewish west to create what it regards as its united, eternal capital. Palestinians in East Jerusalem complain of second-class status and official neglect.

“Jerusalem is a city that faces substantial challenges economically and that is partly because of the population that it houses,” said Naomi Hausman, an economics professor at the Hebrew University.

Israel is this week celebrating the 50th anniversary of the capture of East Jerusalem. Its claim to the whole of the city as its indivisible capital has not won international recognition.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a state they seek to establish in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza.

About 80 percent of Jerusalem’s Palestinians and about half the Haredim live below the poverty line.

Haredi men generally dedicate themselves to religious study and few Palestinian women have jobs.

Only 58 percent of Jerusalem Jews are in employment compared with 64 percent nationally, and just 40 percent of the Palestinian population work, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).

Each year, about 8,000 more people leave Jerusalem than move to the city, according to CBS data, with much of the exodus made up of young Jewish people frustrated by the high cost of living and lack of job opportunities.

Ilana Butrimovitz left San Francisco for Jerusalem but spent barely a year there before moving away.

“I feel more free in Tel Aviv, not to mention the night-life and the beach,” said the 30-year-old chef. “The vibe is better and there are more job opportunities for young people.”

Jerusalem’s light rail line threads its way through the city’s contrasting zones – past Haredi neighbourhoods where men in black garb walk the stone alleyways, by downtown cafes and pubs, alongside the walled Old City and to a sprawling new business quarter.

“It’s a city where everyone knows how to live together in equilibrium on a daily basis. There are also, obviously, divisions and surely the east-west division is the biggest,” said Hausman.

“DEAD END”

Palestinian men are often employed on the bottom rungs of the labour market ladder, according to the JIIS.

“It’s a dead end for us,” said Hussam, a 28-year-old Palestinian lawyer in East Jerusalem. “Plain and simple: no, we do not have the same opportunities as Israelis.”

Israeli businesses are often reluctant to employ Arabs, Hussam said, and some jobs are off limits for Jerusalem’s Palestinians, who do not hold full Israeli citizenship, but are designated “permanent resident”.

Some public sector jobs require full citizenship, and some employers want staff who have served in the Israeli military.

“It fills one with despair, with anger, with frustration,” said Hussam, adding that he planned to leave for Europe.

Residential and business taxes in the city are among Israel’s highest, meaning higher-earning residents are propping up the poorer ones.

“Dynamically, doing this local redistribution is extremely problematic for a city, it can cause the city to attract more and more non-working and low-skill types until the city is in a poverty trap,” Hausman said.

Maya Chosen, senior researcher at the JIIS, said Israeli authorities were finally acknowledging they needed to intervene.

Since 2016, Israel has allocated almost a billion shekels (around $250 million) to a five-year plan to improve the business environment and expand tourism. One goal is to boost the city’s high-tech sector and entice more start-ups to move there.

“They are trying to draw stronger populations, engineers, upper-middle class, to balance the weaker populations in Jerusalem,” said Tzah Berki, senior vice president at Dun & Bradstreet Israel.

Between 2012 and 2015, high-tech investment in Jerusalem more than quadrupled to $243 million, according to the JIIS.

The Palestinians of East Jerusalem say they have seen little of the benefits.

“It’s just not on the radar of East Jerusalem’s residents,” said Nisreen Alyan, head of the Jerusalem Programme at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).

“There is barely a school that teaches IT in East Jerusalem. In terms of location, the companies are inaccessible and most East Jerusalem residents don’t speak Hebrew.” The drop-out rate among high school seniors is 30 percent.

Only 10 percent of the municipality’s budget goes to East Jerusalem, Alyan said.

Jerusalem’s mayor, former high-tech entrepreneur Nir Barkat, does not dispute there is a gap between the west and east. But he says it is a result of a shortage of funds and bureaucratic red tape going back decades to when the east was under Jordanian rule.

“It’s not politics, it’s poor management and we’re catching up,” he told Reuters.

Youssef Qarain, a 73-year-old barber in East Jerusalem, recalls the day when the 1967 war broke out. Fifty years later, he sees little chance of Palestinian prospects improving.

“Simply, when you are under occupation, what can you hope for?” asked Qarain.

(This story has been refiled to fix paragraph two reference to Israeli areas.)

(Additional reporting by Lee Marzel, Sinan Abu Mayzer and Suheir Sheikh; Editing by Luke Baker, Jeffrey Heller and Andrew Roche)

Syrian force urges Raqqa jihadists to surrender by end-May

FILE PHOTO: A Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter inspects a damaged building inside Tabqa military airport after taking control of it from Islamic State fighters, west of Raqqa city, Syria April 9, 2017. REUTERS/Rodi Said/File Photo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A U.S.-backed alliance of Syrian militias promised on Thursday that no harm would come to Islamic State fighters in Raqqa who turned themselves in by the end of the month, calling on them to lay down their arms ahead of an expected assault on the city.

The Syrian Democratic Forces, which groups Kurdish and Arab fighters, has advanced to within a few kilometers (miles) of Raqqa city at the nearest point, in an offensive that got underway in November to encircle and capture the city.

The SDF, which includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia, said earlier this month it expects to launch the final assault on Raqqa in early summer. YPG and SDF officials had previously given April start dates for the assault, but these slipped.

The U.S.-led coalition has not declared any time frame for the final assault on Raqqa city, which has served as Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria since the group declared its cross-border “caliphate” in 2014.

In a statement, the SDF said a May 15 appeal for militants to turn themselves in within 10 days had achieved “positive results”, and the deadline would now be extended until May 31 based on “requests from the noble people of Raqqa”.

The SDF said it would guarantee the lives of militants who turn themselves in regardless of their position, “paving the way for the settlement of their situation”. The safety of their families was also guaranteed, it says.

The SDF statement issued by spokeswoman Jihane Sheikh Ahmad said the extension would “allow the greatest number possible of those who were deceived or forced to join to benefit from this opportunity”.

The U.S.-led coalition says some 3,000 to 4,000 Islamic State fighters are thought to be holed up in Raqqa city where they continue to erect defenses against the anticipated assault.

The six-year-long Syrian war has allowed IS to seize swathes of Syria, where the group faces separate campaigns by the U.S.-backed SDF, the Russian-backed Syrian military, and Free Syrian Army rebels backed by the United States.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Toby Chopra)

New bridge reunites Mosul as Iraqi forces gear up for final assault

A new floating bridge installed by Iraqi military engineers that reconnects two halves of Mosul is seen in the Hawi al-Kaneesa area, south of Mosul, Iraq May 24, 2017. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraqi military engineers installed a new floating bridge across the Tigris river on Wednesday, reconnecting the two halves of Mosul to facilitate troop deployments ahead of a final assault to dislodge Islamic State.

All five bridges connecting the two sides of the city bisected by the Tigris were struck by the U.S.-led coalition in order to hinder the militants’ movements in the early stages of the campaign to retake Mosul last year.

Seven months on, Iraqi forces have removed Islamic State from all but a pocket of territory in the western half of Mosul, including the Old City, where the militants are expected to make their last stand.

It is set to be the most complex battleground yet.

“This floating bridge is very important for deploying reinforcements to the west side rapidly to build up adequate forces to sweep the Old City soon,” Colonel Haitham al-Taie told Reuters.

Taie said the bridge in the Hawi al-Kaneesa area would also spare fleeing civilians from making a long journey to the nearest crossing point, about 30 km (20 miles) south of Mosul.

The United Nations said last week up to 200,000 more people may flee as Iraqi forces push to retake the rest of the city.

The militants are effectively holding hundreds of thousands of civilians hostage as human shields to slow their advance.

(Reporting by Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Isabel Coles; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)