Middle Orient

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) yesterday warned that Saudi Arabian Airlines would lose billions of dollars as a result of the slump in air travel, Arabi21 reported.

To help prevent a U.S.-Iran war in their neighborhood, the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council have called for diplomacy. They have reached out to Iranian officials to de-escalate. And they have provided Tehran with humanitarian assistance to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

The recent deployment of Syrian army Fourth Division troops to Daraa is yet another reminder of the deadly unrest ongoing in southwestern Syria. Sent to pacify Mazayreeb following an unprecedented armed attack after which several soldiers were publicly executed, Daraa’s western countryside still regularly witnesses violent unrest including assassinations, hit-and-run …

In a dramatic statement delivered yesterday in Ramallah and broadcast on Palestine TV, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared an end to all agreements signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and both Israel and the United States.

By halting the security crackdown on Hamas, Abbas would be paving the way for terrorists to kill him and his associates in the West Bank, as they had already begun to do in 2007 in the Gaza Strip, and possibly again in a coup in 2014.

Israel carried out a cyber terrorist attack that caused disruption at an Iranian port this month, the Washington Post reports.

Al-Qaida-linked fighters attacked Syrian government positions Sunday on the edge of the country’s last rebel stronghold, triggering intense clashes that killed nearly three dozen combatants across both sides, opposition activists said.

Counter terrorism police are investigating whether sleepers from Islamic State have been reactivated to carry out attacks around Europe.

An Israeli district court on Monday convicted a Jewish extremist of murder in a 2015 arson attack that killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents, a case that had sent shock waves through Israel and helped fuel months of Israeli-Palestinian violence.

The Iraqi army launched operation Desert Lions to pursue ISIS remnants across the Jazirah desert north of the Anbar, south of the Nineveh and west of the Salaheddine provinces all the way to the border with Syria.