Palestinians Gather for Minister’s Funeral as Reports Conflict Over His Death

Large crowds gathered for the funeral of Palestinian Cabinet Minister Ziad Abu Ein, who died Wednesday after a scuffle with Israeli forces at a West Bank protest. Abu Ein was among about 100 activists planting olive trees and protesting an Israeli settlement, when Israeli soldiers and policemen fired tear gas, leading to a confrontation during which a policeman shoved Abu Ein and grabbed him by the neck. He died on the way to the hospital. Israeli and Palestinian officials issued differing accounts of the results of an autopsy on Abu Ein. While pathologists agreed Abu Ein died of a coronary blockage brought on by a hemorrhage, Palestinian doctors said the bleeding was caused by a blow, and Israeli doctors said it was likely caused by stress, saying he was more sensitive due to a pre-existing heart condition. Israeli officials have vowed to investigate the incident, and have appealed for calm.

Syria-Iraq

Al Jazeera reporter Mahran Al Deeri died Wednesday in a car accident while trying to escape government fire in the Daraa province village of al-Sheikh Maskin, where he was covering the Syrian conflict. The United Nations reported a donation of $104 million from Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has helped to restore the World Food Program’s food voucher program to Syrian refugees. Meanwhile, a U.S. official said though the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State militants is united in its strategy in Iraq, divisions remain over how to deal with Syria. A BBC and International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) investigation has found that extremist groups, including the Islamic State and al Qaeda, killed more than 5,000 people in November, with 80 percent of the deaths in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Nigeria.

Headlines

• A top al Qaeda leader in Yemen has blamed the United States for the death of two hostages after a failed rescue mission meanwhile al Qaeda claimed an attack Thursday on a U.S.-Yemeni air base in the southern Lahj province.
• Former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, of the centrist Hatnuah party, and opposition leader Isaac Herzog, of the center-left Labor party, have agreed to run a joint ticket to challenge Prime Minister Netanyahu in upcoming Israeli elections.
• Prime Minister Thinni of Libya’s recognized government has vowed to retake the capital of Tripoli from a rival government and is seeking to control the country’s oil revenue.

Arguments and Analysis

‘Reading the Saudi Tea Leaves in Yemen’ (Danya Greenfield and Owen Daniels, Atlantic Council)

“The situation on the ground is more complicated than this rhetoric would suggest for several reasons. For one, the simplified Sunni-Shia narrative of Iranian influence is complicated by differences between the Houthis’ Zaydism, which has traditionally shared an amicable relationship with the country’s majority Shaf’i population, and Persian Twelver Shiism. Secondly, a lack of concrete evidence makes the real extent of Iranian influence unclear. There is broad consensus among Yemen’s political class—and a great deal of anecdotal evidence—that Iran supports the Houthi movement, but how extensively remains unclear. Is it just ideological support and nominal funding or is it more operational, including training, provision of weapons, political strategy, technical assistance, and strategic communications support? Tehran was indeed quick to applaud the Houthi capture of Sana’a and trumpet its own influence over another Arab capital. But while the Houthis have welcomed moral and material support, they strongly deny that they are Iranian agents or that they aspire to run the government. They seem largely content to bolster the country’s weak security apparatus with their own fighters while challenging al-Qaeda and tribal enemies in the center provinces.”

‘Repercussions of the Syrian Refugee Crisis for Lebanon’ (Lina Khatib, Carnegie Middle East Center)

“Eighty-six percent of refugees are concentrated in impoverished neighborhoods where a majority of marginalized Lebanese reside (66 percent of vulnerable Lebanese). Some areas of Lebanon have also become overpopulated. In fact, the population of some towns in the Bekaa and the North has doubled. For example, Arsal–the scene of recurrent clashes in the vicinity of refugee camps–now has a population of 40,000 Syrians and 35,000 Lebanese. Meanwhile, less than one-third of external pledges for Lebanon in assistance to refugees have been honored, according to Amnesty International.

Faced with this situation, refugees have started looking for work, but have been accused of stealing jobs from the locals. As a counter-measure, the Lebanese government has restricted the freedom of work for refugees in Lebanon, leaving many of them in the throes of the informal economy. One-third of Syrian refugee men are currently unemployed, while the average salary of those working accounts for only 40 percent of the minimum wage. The situation is even worse for women, and that is not to mention exploitation and abuse.”

‘Turkish women’s rights beyond Islamists and secularists’ (Yüksel Sezgin, The Washington Post)

“Turkey before the 2002 election of the AKP was no feminist utopia. In 2001, under the rule of a secular coalition government led by the social democrat Bulent Ecevit, Turkey ranked only 81 out of 175 countries in the United Nations Development Program’s Gender-related Development Index, which measures the gender gap in human development in terms of health, education and income. Turkey lagged behind not only the Western European democracies but also such Muslim-majority states as Saudi Arabia (68), Lebanon (70), Jordan (75) and Tunisia (76). Similarly, according to the UNDP’s 2001 Gender Empowerment Measure, which captures inequality in key areas of economic and political participation and decision-making, Turkey ranked 66 out of 70 states, again coming behind such countries as Namibia (29), Botswana (31), Malaysia (45) and Pakistan (58).”

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