Middle East & North Africa

13 Oct 2021; MEMO: Former chief of the Israeli foreign intelligence service (Mossad), Yossi Cohen, said yesterday that Iran is not close to obtaining a nuclear bomb, contradicting claims by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and others that Tehran is on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power.

"I think that at the end of the day, Iran is not close to reaching any nuclear weapons. It is no closer than before, and that's thanks to the great effort we made," Cohen said at the Jerusalem Post Conference.

13 Oct 2021; MEMO: The death of businessman Khaled Al-Adawy is "considered premeditated murder" as he was forcibly disappeared, tortured, and denied medical treatment, the Egyptian Network for Human Rights said in a statement.

Khaled, 51, owned the Pancho Readymade Garments Factory from which he was arrested in July and taken to the National Security headquarters where he was interrogated, beaten, tortured by electric shock, and verbally humiliated.

13 Oct 2021; MEMO: Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that FIFA President Gianni Infantino had suggested organising the 2030 FIFA World Cup in Israel in partnership with other countries in the region, led by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Bennett met Infantino in his office in Jerusalem on the first visit by a FIFA president to Israel, his office said in a statement.

13 Oct 2021; MEMO: Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett claimed on Monday that Iran has been working to build an army in the Golan Heights, but Israel will continue to "roll up the Iranian presence in Syria," Israeli media reported.

Bennett was speaking at the Makor Rishon newspaper conference, and said: "The Golan Heights is Israel, period."

13 Oct 2021; MEMO: Hamas has rejected an Egyptian proposal to form a unity government with Fatah, citing previous unity agreements foiled by the secular Palestinian movement.

In remarks made to Arabi Post yesterday, Hamas spokesman Abdul-Latfi Al-Qanou said: "Hamas' vision is to reevaluate the national temporary mechanisms. It had been proposed to end the internal division."

13 Oct 2021; MEMO: Extremist Israeli settlers yesterday uprooted 900 olive and apricot saplings and stole olive crops in the village of Sebastia of the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, Wafa news agency reported.

Settlers also uprooted 70 trees in Masafer Yatta, south of the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

Palestinian sources reported to Wafa that settlers vandalised Palestinian-owned property in several northern West Bank towns.

TEHRAN, Oct 12 (NNN-IRNA) – The speaker of Iran’s parliament said here yesterday that, any dialogue regarding the 2015 nuclear agreement must lead to the lifting of the sanctions against Iran.

“The United States withdrew from the agreement during the Trump era, and it was surprising that the world did not react well to the U.S. move,” Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said in a meeting with visiting President of Swiss National Council, Andreas Aebi, as quoted by semi-official Mehr news agency.

DOHA, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Qatar believes that recognising the Taliban government in Afghanistan is not a priority now, and that the focus should be on engaging with the new administration and addressing humanitarian issues, a senior Qatari official said on Tuesday.

Mutlaq Al-Qahtani, special envoy of the Qatari foreign minister, urged other countries to engage more deeply with the Taliban as Afghanistan's de facto authority, while urging the Islamist movement to act as a "responsible" administration and respect the right of women to work and girls to attend school.

BEIRUT, Oct 12 (Reuters) - A probe into the catastrophic Beirut port explosion was frozen on Tuesday for the second time in less than three weeks after two politicians wanted for questioning filed a new complaint against the lead investigator, Judge Tarek Bitar.

The investigation has been facing obstacles since Bitar sought to question some of the most powerful people in Lebanon on suspicion that they knew about the stored chemicals that exploded but did nothing to avert the disaster.

AMMAN, Oct. 12 (Xinhua) -- The specialised technical committees from Jordan and Israel on Tuesday held a meeting which resulted in signing an additional water purchase agreement.

Under the agreement, Jordan can annually buy additional 50 million cubic meters of water from Israel, the Jordanian Water Ministry said in a statement.

According to the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, Jordan can annually receive 50 million cubic meters of water from Lake Tiberias, it said.