Middle East & North Africa

22 Oct 2019; MEMO: US forces that crossed into Iraq as part of a pull-out from Syria do not have permission to stay and can only be there in transit, the Iraqi military said yesterday.

The Iraqi statement, reported by Reuters, contradicts the Pentagon’s announcement that all of the nearly 1,000 troops withdrawing from northern Syria are expected to move to western Iraq to continue the campaign against Daesh militants and “to help defend Iraq”.

22 Oct 2019; MEMO: Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and his Kuwaiti counterpart Sheikh Jaber Al Mubarak Al Hamad Al Sabah yesterday attended an event held for the signing of deals worth $1.09 billion to fund the second phase of the Sinai development programme, state-run newspaper Al-Ahram reported.

Included in the deals is a $86 million project to carry out an infrastructure project at Al-Nafaq Road in the coastal resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh.

22 Oct 2019; MEMO: Israeli occupation authorities are planning to steal about 700 dunams (173 acres) for the expansion of a nearby illegal settlement in Qaryout Village, south of the West Bank city of Nablus, Wafa news agency reported yesterday.

DAMASCUS, Oct. 22 (Xinhua) -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met with Syrian soldiers in the country's largest rebel bastion in Idlib province Tuesday, state TV reported.

The president met with the Syrian soldiers on the front line in the town of Habit in Idlib countryside, said the report with no further details.

It's the president's first declared trip to Idlib, which is the last major rebel stronghold in the country.

BEIRUT (AP) — The crowd hurled potatoes that thudded on the sides of the hulking U.S. armored vehicles. “What happened to Americans?” one man shouted in English up at the sole U.S. soldier visible on the back of a vehicle. The soldier stared silently straight ahead, away from the show of fury.

It was yet another indignity in a U.S. withdrawal that has been carried out over the past two weeks with more haste and violence than expected — and which may now be partially reversed.

Jerusalem; 22 Oct 2019 (UMM): Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to secure a majority to form a coalition government in Israel.

“In the past weeks I made every effort to bring Benny Gantz to the negotiating table, every effort to establish a broad national government, every effort to avoid another election,” said Netanyahu.

21 Oct 2019; MEMO: The Israeli Knesset Research and Information Centre has revealed a huge gap between the government’s funding of Jewish and Arab students at Israeli schools, Arab48 reported yesterday.

According to the Development and Efficiency Index at the Israeli Education Ministry, the Israel students are divided into four classifications: weak, weak-intermediate, intermediate-strong and strong.

21 Oct 2019; MEMO: The UAE has released $700 million in previously frozen funds to Iran, in a bid to improve relations between the two countries. A member of the parliament in Tehran hailed the move yesterday.

DOHUK, Iraq/KABUL (Reuters) - The Pentagon is considering keeping some U.S. troops near oilfields in northeastern Syria alongside Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to help deny oil to Islamic State militants, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Monday.

U.S. troops are crossing into Iraq as part of a broader withdrawal from Syria ordered by President Donald Trump, a decision that allowed Turkey to launch an offensive against the SDF which for years was a U.S. ally battling Islamic State.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon’s cabinet is expected to halve ministers’ wages on Monday among other reforms in a bid to ease an economic crisis and defuse the biggest protests against the ruling elite in decades.

Across the country, people blocked roads for a fifth day. Schools, banks and businesses closed. Hundreds of thousands of people have flooded the streets, furious at a political class they accuse of pushing the economy to the point of collapse.