Middle East & North Africa

17 Dec 2020; MEMO: The UAE's tourism hotspot Dubai has witnessed a "remarkable tourism boom in the past two weeks" with more than 50,000 Israelis making the journey to visit it, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

17 Dec 2020; MEMO: Two thirds of Palestinians want Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to resign over his latest decision to resume security cooperation with Israel, a recent poll conducted in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip found.

BEIRUT, Dec 17 (NNN-NNA) – Lebanese Prime Minister-designate, Saad Hariri, yesterday expressed his insistence, to investigate the whole truth behind the explosions of Beirut’s port, according to a statement by Hariri’s office.

“I assured the Patriarch, of our determination to know the truth, and our affirmation of the right of all Lebanese, and in the first place the right of the victims and their families, to know who was responsible for the port’s crime,” Hariri said, during his visit to Maronite Patriarch, Bechara al-Rahi.

17 Dec 2020; MEMO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he had chosen deputy head of Mossad to be the next chief of the Israeli spy agency without the knowledge of his coalition partner Defence Minister and Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz, local media reported.

Following the announcement, Gantz hailed the Mossad official's experience, he voiced his fury at not being consulted ahead of the decision.

ADEN, Dec 17 (NNN-SABA) – Forces loyal to Yemen’s government and other military units of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), today completed redeployment plans in the country’s southern part, under Saudi Arabia-led coalition’s supervision.

Local military officials said, “The process of redeployment warring troops was completed successfully, under the auspices of observers of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition.”

“The Saudi-led coalition succeeded in ending military escalation in the strategic southern regions and reunited its two nominal allies,” the official said.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist ally said Turkey’s pro-Kurdish HDP party, the country’s third biggest, should be banned for separatism - a move the HDP’s co-leader condemned on Thursday as a bid to silence six million voters.

Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahceli has long been a fierce critic of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and, like Erdogan, accuses it of ties to militants who have fought a 36-year-old insurgency in southeast Turkey.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Rebellious soldiers used government tanks to attack their former comrades in a military base in the first chaotic days of Ethiopia’s month-long war in the region of Tigray, according to two soldiers caught in what they described as a 10-day siege.

Forces still loyal to Tigray’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), surrounded the Sero base near the northern border with Eritrea on Nov. 4, according to the two men. Within days, food and water were running low, forcing those inside to ration supplies, they said.

RIYADH, Dec. 17 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia started on Thursday the COVID-19 vaccination process.

The Health Ministry tweeted that Health Minister Tawfiq al-Rabiah received the vaccine.

Al-Rabiah tweeted, "In the last nine months, I was observing with concern the number of cases, today I will happily observe the number of people who will get the vaccine."

The kingdom received on Wednesday the first shipment of the vaccine. More than 150,000 individuals registered to receive the free-of-charge vaccine.

DAMASCUS, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- Syrian health authorities have activated an emergency hospital established recently to deal with the increasing number of patients, Ahmad al-Dumairia, the head of Syrian hospitals, told Xinhua on Wednesday.

Established at a tennis court inside the Faiha sports stadium north of Syrian capital Damascus, the emergency hospital is equipped with 120 beds, 300 oxygen cylinders as well as 50 Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machines, in addition to a qualified and trained medical team to receive the COVID-19 cases.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Israel will begin rolling out a major coronavirus vaccination campaign next week after the prime minister reached out personally to the head of a major drug company. Millions of Palestinians living under Israeli control will have to wait much longer.