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The Joint List's Tibi had been in touch with Blue and White in recent weeks regarding a possible minority government. He believes that the timing of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement that the settlements do not violate international law is not coincidental. According to Tibi, President Donald Trump did not hide the fact that he favored Netanyahu in the September elections in Israel. With his friend in Jerusalem still in distress, why not give Netanyahu a little push to help him in the competition for right-wing votes? “This is an election gift from a president undergoing an impeachment inquiry to a prime minister who was toppled,”

it seems that annexation of the Jordan Valley is on its way, with the encouragement of the Trump administration

The corruption of both US and Iraqi officials during the US occupation is well documented. UN Security Council resolution 1483 established a $20 billion Development Fund for Iraq using previously seized Iraqi assets, money left in the UN’s “oil for food” program and new Iraqi oil revenues. An audit by KPMG and a special inspector general found that a huge proportion of that money was stolen or embezzled by US and Iraqi officials.

According to Al Jazeera, “protesters are demanding the overthrow of a political class seen as corrupt and serving foreign powers while many Iraqis languish in poverty without jobs, healthcare or education.” Only 36% of the adult population of Iraq have jobs, and despite the gutting of the public sector under US occupation, its tattered remnants still employ more people than the private sector, which fared even worse under the violence and chaos of the US's militarized shock doctrine.

The US Congress also budgeted $18.4 billion for reconstruction in Iraq in 2003, but apart from $3.4 billion diverted to "security," less than $1 billion of it was ever disbursed. Many Americans believe US oil companies have made out like bandits in Iraq, but that’s not true either. The plans that Western oil companies drew up with Vice President Cheney in 2001 had that intent, but a law to grant Western oil companies lucrative “production sharing agreements” (PSAs) worth tens of billions per year was exposed as a smash and grab raid and the Iraqi National Assembly refused to pass it.

Ayad Allawi and the INA were the instrument for the CIA’s hopelessly bungled military coup in Iraq in 1996. The Iraqi government followed every detail of the plot on a closed-circuit radio handed over by one of the conspirators and arrested all the CIA’s agents inside Iraq on the eve of the coup. It executed thirty military officers and jailed a hundred more, leaving the CIA with no human intelligence from inside Iraq.

Allawi and the INA are still involved in the horse-trading for senior positions after every election, despite never getting more than 8% of the votes - and only 6% in 2018.

The cost of rebuilding Mosul, Fallujah and other cities and towns is conservatively estimated at $88 billion. But despite $80 billion per year in oil exports and a federal budget of over $100 billion, the Iraqi government has allocated no money at all for reconstruction. Foreign, mostly wealthy Arab countries, have pledged $30 billion, including just $3 billion from the US, but very little of that has been, or may ever be, delivered.

To diminish Iranian capabilities being shipped to Hezbollah and other Iranian militias working to open a low-intensity military front threatening Israel’s northern border; To maintain Israel’s freedom of action and air supremacy in its neighborhood and the Middle East in general by minimizing Syrian military capabilities, more specifically anti-aircraft missile sites and their support systems; and To send a message of deterrence to three main actors in the region: Assad’s regime, Iran and its emissaries, and Russia.

air raids weaken the Syrian army’s capabilities; distract Assad’s capabilities from coping with opposition forces, ISIS, and al-Qaida in the north and east of Syria; and keep this war-ridden country in grave economic instability.

Israel also reportedly targeted significant air defense capabilities, especially surface-to-air missiles, that threaten Israel’s strategic dominance over Lebanese and Syrian airspace

Israel hopes its strikes will push Tehran to abandon its project in Syria. But Iran has shown no willingness so far to consider this. Instead, it has simply worked to make its arms shipments more difficult to detect. The search-and-destroy campaign demands excellent intelligence capabilities on Israel’s part to uncover clandestine shipments sent by air or land to Syria through Iraq. Fine-grained intelligence is also necessary to allow the airstrike to be effective and to minimize collateral damage and casualties. This poses a great challenge to Israel because, in time, Iran and its Syrian counterparts can find new, creative ways to mask their supply chain to Syria and avoid detection

Israeli raids in November sent a clear message to Moscow that unless the Iranian element is taken out of the equation, Syria will remain an unstable battleground. The raids are also a reminder of Russia’s commitment to Israel to keep the Iranian Quds Forces outside of the 50-mile radius from Israel’s border. These raids underscore that, if the Russians cannot uphold their side of this understanding, then Israel will wreak havoc in Syria. Putin seeks a political resolution and stability in Syria, and the Russians understand that Syria has no prospect of recovery from its civil war amid the constant friction between Israel and Iran.

As Iran faces unrest at home—and amid major popular demonstrations in Iraq—Israel is willing to match or even exceed Iran’s aggressive moves. For Khamenei, the prospect of large investments repeatedly being destroyed in Syria may be a difficult one, politically, as his domestic economy plummets. The contrast between these recent raids, which reportedly killed 16 Iranians, and the relative lack of an Iranian reaction highlights that it is difficult for Iran to respond in kind to Israeli escalations.

as Israel works to diminish the Syrian state’s military capabilities, it risks merely pushing the Assad regime deeper into its dependency on Iran

while Russia has been fast to criticize Israel for its strikes in Syria, it may quietly prefer to see Israel doing the dirty work of lessening Iranian power there. While they are partners in upholding the Assad regime, in some ways the Russians and Iranians are competitors in Syria, especially when looking toward state-rebuilding. Should Israeli strikes push the Iranians to play less of a role, the Russians would be the first to fill the void they would leave. Further, Israeli strikes in Syrian military facilities create business opportunities for the Russian arms industry. The Syrian regime will need to replace its destroyed weapons systems, and Russian manufacturers stand ready to supply new ones. Russia, while publicly opposed to Israeli strikes, might actually benefit from a laissez-faire policy toward these attacks.

While previous raids mostly damaged buildings and infrastructure, Israel probably expected this raid to inflict Iranian casualties, thus raising the stakes of the conflict.

When the fight between Iran and Israel in Syria moves closer to the Iraqi border, Israeli airstrikes become riskier, Iranian intelligence capabilities become stronger, and Iran’s ability to deny responsibility for missile launches becomes greater.

Iran cannot really be deterred by threats to the integrity of the Syrian state because it views the Assad regime only as a useful path by which it can increase its regional power

Given the gaps in its strategic messaging, Israeli deterrence, in and of itself, will likely not produce the total Iranian withdrawal for which Israel is hoping. The pressures Iran faces by demonstrations at home and in Iraq are perhaps the likelier trigger for Tehran to reconsider its strategy

On Nov. 10, Jordan recovered from Israel the Baqoura lands in the Jordan Valley by refusing to renew a 25-year lease under a peace agreement between the two countries. A day later, Abdullah publicly prayed in his military uniform.

According to analysts who spoke to Al-Monitor, the source of the tension lies far beyond the borders of the Middle East. It has to do with the US administration proposing its "deal of the century," which favors Israel at the expense of the peace process it purports to further. Jordan sees the two-state solution as a fair solution consistent with its interests.

Kotov’s trial comes in the context of high tensions between Jordan and Israel, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressing his intention to annex the Jordan Valley and repeated Israeli violations of Jordanian sovereignty over holy sites including incursions into Al-Aqsa Mosque, settlement expansion and the administrative detention of Jordanian citizens in Israel.

“Jordan deals with Israel based on political and economic issues. It is at odds with Israel regarding the Palestinian cause but is moving forward with bilateral economic projects.”

Jordan has a strong relationship with members of the US Congress, but not with the administration. Abdullah has met President Donald Trump only once because of his position toward Israel.

A quarter of a century after the signature of the peace agreement between Jordan and Israel on Oct. 26, 1994, their relationship remains lukewarm amid popular and parliamentary demands pressuring the Jordanian regime to end it.

Jordan is courting the European Union to condemn Israel’s violations and face the US bias toward Israel

“Haftar practically ran away when he was expected to sign the document. This showed a lack of respect to his hosts and is a blow to Russia’s reputation.”

A Turkish official with knowledge of the Moscow meeting said a ceasefire could enable Turkey and Russia to cooperate in the exploration of oil and gas. It would also protect a maritime agreement Turkey extracted from the Tripoli-based government in return for military assistance, the person said. That deal is disputed by Greece and other European countries who fear Turkish and Russian encroachment into Mediterranean waters.

Relatively minor actors when the Arab protests erupted a decade ago, Moscow and Ankara are staging a dramatic shift in influence in the region.

Neither side had bothered beforehand to consult the Libyans, Egypt, the U.A.E, or UN, which had been working on a ceasefire since April

Haftar started his offensive with the backing of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, who saw him as irksome ally but the best bet for a strong leader in the tumultuous North African oil state. It evolved into a proxy war with Russia sending mercenaries to fight for Haftar and Turkey supporting Sarraj’s Tripoli-based government.It would only be a matter of time before Putin and Erdogan made a deal to carve out their interests — much as they’ve done in Syria — then strong-arm their clients into a truce, a Russian official told Bloomberg early this year.

the U.S. appears to have been outmaneuvered by Russia in yet another Middle East conflict

Erdogan, who has obtained parliamentary approval for a large-scale military intervention, responded to Haftar’s walk-out by threatening to teach him a “lesson.” One Turkish official wasn’t ruling out the use of Turkey’s F-16 jets.

The Israeli right needed to divide the public against one another, blame someone for problems and sow fear, and they used antisemitism to generate it. This felt uncomfortable and urgent at the time, but I also knew that Israel had a long way to go before it was truly unsafe for Jews, even the most left-wing of us.

Obama had received the vast majority of American Jewish votes both in 2008 and 2012, but when Netanyahu came to Congress, he deliberately positioned himself not only as the chief representative of a foreign country, but also as the spokesperson for the Jewish people worldwide.

Implicit in Netanyahu’s attempt to equate all Jews with the Israeli government is the antisemitic “dual loyalty” trope: the idea that Jewish people are less loyal to our home countries than our neighbors, and that our real place is in Israel — not in the countries where we live, hold citizenship, and raise our families. For Netanyahu to make explicit this this trope made American Jews less safe.

Eighteen months later, Donald Trump was elected president and filled the White House with bona fide white nationalists. While Netanyahu and his right-wing supporters celebrated, my understanding of antisemitism shifted from a theoretical or metaphorical one into a real panicked feeling of threat in my body.

It didn’t take long for Trump to start echoing Netanyahu’s dual loyalty smear as part of his strategy to activate white nationalists as his ideological base. At a White House Hanukkah party, in front of a room full of Jewish Americans, Trump spoke about support for “your country” — meaning Israel. He has repeated this claim to American Jews several times throughout his presidency.

The narrative of “replacement” is not a metaphor. It is a conspiracy theory, widely believed by white nationalists, that Jews are attempting to literally replace the supposedly “real” Americans — white Christians — with immigrants and people of color. In Trump’s America, Jews are the evil globalists, seen as the secret masterminds behind movements like Dream Defenders and Black Lives Matter. It is this theory of replacement that Robert Bowers, who carried out the mass shooting in Pittsburgh just a little over a year later, cited as the reason Jews should be killed.

I am an outspoken left-wing Israeli-American Jew living in the United States and I am not safe. When Netanyahu and his ilk confidently speak for all Jews, when they use antisemitism themselves and provide cover for white nationalists to do the same, they are putting my life at risk

When more airtime is given at the AIPAC conference to the threat posed by Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s sympathies to the Palestinian cause than to growing numbers of white nationalists with automatic weapons in America, I am less safe

we must recognize that equating all Jews with the state and government of Israel is antisemitism, and it has to stop. American Jews are not Israelis, they are American. Period. Some support Israel, some loath Israel, some could not point to Israel on a map. Netanyahu makes all of us less safe when he claims to represent a people who have and want nothing to do with him or the state he represents.

The second thing that needs to happen is for new Israeli leaders to be seen and heard on the world stage, making it clear that far-right politicians are not the true representatives of the Israeli people. Not all Israelis are ethnic supremacists. Not all Israelis are Trump supporters. Not all Israelis are white. Not all Israelis are Jews.

Zero Mass isn’t going to rival bulk water processors any time soon. It will initially only be able to produce up to 2.3 million litres annually - about the volume of a typical Olympic swimming pool. The technology is still much more expensive than desalination for the same output of water. So Zero Mass’s will be in the same bracket as imported, high-end brands such as Evian and Fiji

The rectangular boxes - measuring around 2.4 meters (8 feet) by 1.2 meters - absorb water vapour and extract it using solar energy. Although they can operate almost anywhere the sun shines, Dubai’s hot and humid climate makes the emirate a prime location, according to Cody Friesen, founder of Zero Mass

The panels have dust filters and use a chemical compound that only captures water molecules, ensuring the water is purified even when the air is polluted.

Gulf nations want to reduce their heavy dependence on food imports, especially with the coronavirus pandemic disrupting global supply chains. This month the UAE imported 4,500 dairy cows from Uruguay to boost milk production. It’s also trying to farm rice locally, the success of which will largely depend on using sustainable amounts of water.

Water-from-air is only suitable for farming in enclosed environments such as warehouses

“With hydroponics, it’s a huge advantage to be using very pure water to begin with,” said Wahlgren. “If you’re using desalinated water, there’s still quite a large salt component, which can be harmful to the plants.”

Today’s tensions stem, in many ways, from the original foundations of the odd-couple relationship: an oil-for security bargain that always sought, but never fully managed, to bridge the divide between a liberal democracy and a conservative religious monarchy

Some experts believe U.S.-Saudi ties will ultimately weather the storm, as they always have, because of the need for a large, wealthy, and anti-Iran anchor for U.S. interests in the Middle East

“But we don’t need the Saudis anymore—this comes in a very different geopolitical environment than previous crises.”

Saudi Arabia was one of the only countries in the world that continued to receive U.S. Lend-Lease aid after the end of the war.

essentially underwriting the security of an oil-rich desert sheikdom to keep oil supplies flowing—and to keep the Soviets out of the Middle East.

Roosevelt had met Ibn Saud hoping for Saudi support for a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, which the king vehemently opposed, and the U.S. president—in Saudi eyes—gave his word not to press the matter. But Truman, Roosevelt’s successor, eventually supported the creation of Israel, sowing years of distrust and cries of betrayal in Saudi Arabia

“In my conversations with the king, the crown prince, and the deputy crown prince, they favored the effort to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But they wanted more: They wanted us to push on Iran’s actions in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, and we didn’t do that.”

The Iranian revolution, as well as an assault that same year on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, terrified Saudi leadership, who saw how vulnerable their own position was. The revolution, by removing the shah and creating permanent enmity with the United States, left Saudi Arabia as America’s main linchpin in the Middle East, all the bad blood from the oil embargo notwithstanding

Fearful of being toppled by religious radicals, Saudi leaders embraced a much more conservative line and empowered hard-line religious leaders in their own country, the first steps toward a decadeslong program to export the austere Wahhabi brand of Islam particular to the kingdom. Soon, wealthy Saudis, including one Osama bin Laden, started funding the Muslim mujahideen who were fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that began the same year as the Iranian revolution. Two decades later, that Saudi lurch toward a harsher official line on religion would end up creating the biggest crisis yet in the special relationship.

“The relationship never really recovered from 9/11,”

the George W. Bush administration, despite vehement Saudi objections, decided to invade Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. Saudis feared that would open the door to greater Iranian influence on their doorstep, as in fact happened.

“There’s no question that the Arab Spring unsettled the U.S. relationship with the Saudis. For them, the U.S. response [to calls for reform in the Arab world] was way too sympathetic, and the relationship cooled,”

“King Abdullah was very respectful and liked Obama personally, but there were things they couldn’t understand,” said Westphal, who was present for three of Obama’s record four trips to Saudi Arabia. “‘Why are you supporting Maliki, who is essentially handing over his country to the Iranians? How can you not depose Assad?’”

Since 1979, Saudi leaders had seen Iran as the gravest threat to the region and their own security, and U.S. efforts to reach a nuclear deal while seemingly letting Iran continue its destabilizing behavior in the region unsettled the Saudis.

In the end, the United States and Saudi Arabia patched up the dispute, and the oil embargo ended by the spring of 1974. But the scars it left were deep and long-lasting, permanently damaging Saudi Arabia’s image in American popular opinion, and leaving deep-rooted fears that the Saudis could and would use their oil weapon to damage U.S. interests—a fear that has persisted even though the nature of the Saudi oil threat has changed.

Saudi leaders famously rolled out the red carpet, and a glowing orb, for Trump’s first overseas trip as president. It seemed a surprising about-face after Trump’s attacks on Muslims, and repeated attacks on Saudi Arabia, on the campaign trail, when he accused the kingdom of carrying out 9/11, criticized it for sponging off American protection, and threatened an economic boycott. Saudi leaders were happy to overlook Trump’s comments, eager to forge ties with an untested and unorthodox president before other foreign leaders could. “Washington is like Rome in the Roman Empire, and we are like a satellite state—you pay homage to the emperor,” Shihabi said. “You could put a monkey in the White House, and we’d pay homage.”

The playbook that has reliably worked since 1945 to ground the bilateral ties in personal relationships with the president now seems to be backfiring. Mohammed bin Salman, reviled by many in Congress for his alleged role in the Khashoggi killing, as well as other continued human rights abuses inside Saudi Arabia and in Yemen, is seen as being exceptionally close to Kushner and Trump. Riding the coattails of a historically unpopular, already-impeached president isn’t the best way to improve Saudi Arabia’s image.

Despite decades of close economic ties and military and counterterrorism cooperation, Saudi Arabia never seemed to plant deep roots in the United States that would institutionalize the relationship beyond kings, generals, and presidents. This meant when tensions flared up between the two countries, Riyadh didn’t have many outside allies to come to its defense in Washington

Mohammed bin Salman’s foreign-policy excesses: the disastrous war in Yemen, the bizarre virtual kidnapping of Lebanon’s prime minister to pressure Iran and Hezbollah, and an embargo on Qatar, its small neighbor and a key U.S. military partner. At home, there was the regular drumbeat of reports on human rights violations, plus a $100 billion shakedown on wealthy political rivals to consolidate power under the guise of an anti-corruption campaign.

As long as they’ve been a country—they’re so young—they really don’t know what their place in the world would be like without the backing of the United States,”

Unlike in 1973, when Saudi Arabia used the oil weapon to jack up oil prices and hurt the United States, this time crashing oil prices did the trick. U.S. shale producers need oil prices above $40 a barrel to break even; the Russian-Saudi price war sent the price of oil to $25 and then into the single digits, ensuring a wave of bankruptcies and economic hardship from Texas to North Dakota.

“The Saudis have a deep problem with the Democrats, and that’s been clear for a long time. Now they have spoiled their relationship with Republicans,”

In the summer of 2019, when Iranian attacks on oil tankers near the Persian Gulf threatened the flow of oil, Trump’s response was to tell allies such as Japan and South Korea to protect their own ships, questioning why the United States should continue to carry out a mission it’s done for decades unless other countries coughed up cash. That fall, key Saudi oil facilities were attacked, allegedly by Iran, knocking out 5 percent of global oil production in a matter of minutes. The U.S. response, other than a Trump tweet, was to do nothing.

The bitter recriminations during this spring’s oil price war, coming on the heels of the Khashoggi murder, the continued war in Yemen, and other Saudi missteps, give many observers reason to believe that the relationship is due for a fundamental rethink.

as long as the United States continues to view Iran as a major threat, close relations with Saudi Arabia will have a strong appeal

ISIS appears to have attracted much more support from water-deprived communities than from their better-resourced peers

Hussein torched some of southern Iraq’s most bountiful date plantations for fear that Iranian saboteurs might use them as cover to attack oil facilities around Basra. Where once 12 million palm trees stood, there’s now just miles of dusty scrubland laced with oil spills

Years of below average rains in the Kurdish region and Nineveh governorate, the only parts of Iraq where rain-fed agriculture was historically possible, had increased the country’s dependence on the Euphrates and Tigris, the Fertile Crescent’s two great rivers. At the same time, upstream Turkey and Iran were relentlessly damming them and their tributaries. Turkey has built over 600 large dams, including dozens of major ones near the Iraqi and Syrian borders. The Tigris and Euphrates’ combined flow in southern Iraq has subsequently shrunk so much that the Persian Gulf now barrels up to 45 miles upriver at high tide (the rivers used to project freshwater up to 3 miles out to sea).

the jihadists expertly exploited the desperation in Iraq’s agricultural heartland by rationalizing its inhabitants’ woes. They spread rumors that the Shia-dominated government was delaying crop payments and cutting off water to Sunni farmers. In fact, the lack of rain wasn’t due to climate change, but really a man-made ploy designed to drive Sunni landowners from their rich fertile fields, their emissaries suggested. Broke and unable to deal with their fast changing environment, many farmers ate it up.

By 2011, much of the Iraqi countryside was in desperate financial straits. Some 39 percent of people in rural areas were living in poverty, according to the World Bank. That’s two and a half times the country’s urban rate. Almost half lacked safe drinking water. The problems were so devastating in 2012-13 that tens of thousands of villagers ditched their fields altogether, preferring to try their luck in the slum districts of nearby cities instead.

Some 39 percent of those polled in Salahaddin cited drought as a reason for their displacement. Studies from neighboring Syria, large parts of which enjoy similar conditions to northern and western Iraq, suggest that anthropogenic climate change has tripled the probability of long, debilitating droughts.

When severe water shortages killed off countless livestock in 2011-12, jihadists descended on the animal markets to size up the frantic farmers, many of whom were trying to sell off their remaining cows and sheep before they too succumbed to drought. “They just watched us. We were like food on the table to them,”

After several years of energetic groundwater extraction near the oil refining town of Baiji, Samir Saed’s two wells ran dry in early 2014, forcing him to lay off the two young men he employed as farm laborers. Jobless and angry, he suspects they soon joined ISIS

water was becoming a resource that in some parts of Iraq only wealthier landowners could afford

The jihadists adopted scorched earth tactics as they were beaten back, laying waste to hundreds of thousands of acres of prime farmland. And so for returning farmers, climate change and shoddy governance are now among the least of their worries. ISIS fighters ripped up buried irrigation pipes to mold makeshift mortars. They poisoned wells, blew up water canals, and carted off everything that was of any value, notably generators, tractors, and water pump parts.

More or less broke after the oil price crash, the Iraqi state can’t afford to pay farmers for crops they’ve delivered to state silos, let alone cover the multi-billion dollar agricultural clean up bill

Turkey has almost finished building the Ilisu Dam, which threatens to further cut the Tigris’ flow when it comes online, probably next year. Hotter temperatures are evaporating more and more surface water—up to six feet worth in Iraq’s lakes every year, according to Nature Iraq, a local NGO. As Baghdad’s relations with the upstream Kurdish region deteriorate, farmers might once more bear the brunt of the dispute. Kurdish authorities have cut off water to mostly Arab areas on several occasions in the past

If Iraq can’t get a grip on its crumbling environment, the next war might not be far off.

a series of shared behavioral patterns. The personas identified by The Daily Beast were generally contributors to two linked sites, The Arab Eye and Persia Now; had Twitter accounts created in March or April 2020; presented themselves as political consultants and freelance journalists mostly based in European capitals; lied about their academic or professional credentials in phony LinkedIn accounts; used fake or stolen avatars manipulated to defeat reverse image searches; and linked to or amplified each others’ work. 

In February, two websites, The Arab Eye and Persia Now, were registered on the same day and began to acquire a host of contributors. 

both sites share the same Google Analytics account, are hosted at the same IP address, and are linked through a series of shared encryption certificates

Persia Now lists a non-existent London mailing address and an unanswered phone number on its contact form. The apparent editors of the outlets, Sharif O'Neill and Taimur Hall, have virtually no online footprints or records in journalism.

placed articles critical of Qatar and supportive of tougher sanctions on Iran in conservative North American outlets like Human Events and conservative writer Andy Ngo’s The Post Millennial, as well as Israeli and Middle Eastern newspapers like The Jerusalem Post and Al Arabiya, and Asian newspapers like the South China Morning Post.

constant editorial lines like arguing for more sanctions on Iran or using international leverage to weaken Iran’s proxy groups in Lebanon and Iraq. The personas are also big fans of the United Arab Emirates and have heaped praise on the Gulf nation for its “exemplary resilience” to the COVID-19 pandemic, its “strong diplomatic ties” to the European Union, and supposedly supporting gender equality through the Expo 2020 in Dubai.

criticizing Facebook for its decision to appoint Tawakkol Karman, a 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, to its oversight board. Media outlets in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates have criicized the appointment of Karman, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated Islah Party in Yemen, for her association with the group.

None of the Twitter accounts associated with the network ever passed more than a few dozen followers, but a few still managed to garner high profile endorsements for their work. An article by “Joyce Toledano” in Human Events about how Qatar is “destabilizing the Middle East” got a shout-out from Students for Trump co-founder Ryan Fournier’s nearly million-follower Twitter account and French senator Nathalie Goulet high-fived Lin Nguyen’s broadside about Facebook and Tawakkol Karman.

All of the stolen avatars were mirror image reversed and cropped from their originals, making them difficult to find through common Google reverse image searches

On her LinkedIn page, “Salma Mohamed” claimed to be a former reporter for the AP based in London, though no public record of an AP journalist matching Salma Mohamed’s description is available.

Another persona, Amani Shahan, described herself in bios for Global Villages and Persia Now as being a contributor to and “ghostwriting articles” for The Daily Beast. No one by that name has ever written for The Daily Beast and The Daily Beast does not employ ghostwriters. (Shahan also referred to herself with both male and female pronouns in different author bios.) 

fresh controversies — over previously acquired objects, including Dead Sea Scroll fragments found to be fake and items from Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt — have continued to dog the museum

the museum is discussing the return to Iraq of another 8,106 pieces. Hobby Lobby acquired them so haphazardly for the museum, he says, that it may never be known how they came onto the market

ome of these items may have even come from Iraq's national museum, which was looted after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 and troops failed to protect cultural sites

Hobby Lobby acquired the items, most of them clay tablets, between 2009 and 2014 from sources in the U.S., the U.K. and Israel. Another 5,000 items, Egyptian papyri and textiles, acquired during the same period, also lack proper documentation

between 5% and 10% of the roughly 8,000 objects now being returned to Iraq are fake

The Museum of the Bible's latest issue is over an ancient Jewish prayer book from Afghanistan. The museum says it was "legally exported" from the U.K. and "acquired in good faith" with provenance information dating from the 1950s. Now, Kloha says, museum staff believe the book was taken out of Afghanistan after 1998 — decades after a UNESCO convention made it illegal to export antiquities without government approval. The Taliban, which controls many parts of the country today, is accused of widespread trafficking in antiquities.

The U.S. government's 2017 complaint against Hobby Lobby notes that Green was stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2010 while carrying a $1 million Bible without a customs declaration. The following year, U.S. Customs agents seized misidentified cuneiform tablets being shipped to Hobby Lobby from the United Arab Emirates.

the museum's reputation among scholars has made it difficult to arrange loans of works from other institutions

Iraqi's ambassador to the U.S., Fareed Yasseen, tells NPR that he would personally like to see Iraqi artifacts exposed to as wide an audience as possible. "To me, the Elgin Marbles should be in Greece, not in the British Museum, because a lot of people will see them in Greece," he says. "But if you look at the massive winged bulls [from ancient Iraq] you have in the British Museum ... or the Louvre, I mean honestly, if they were in Iraq, so few people would go there to see them. To be fair, looking at the issue as a world citizen, if you will, these are part of all our heritage. Anybody who has read the Bible can relate, right?"

The Israelis have been digging and removing dirt from the tunnel for 12 years. In the 1980s, excavations caused cracking in a building in the Muslim quarter of the old city, which is overhead.

Each of the two has gone to great pains to show who was there first. This year, for example, Palestinians boycotted Israel's celebration of the 3,000th anniversary of Jerusalem, saying it was a Judeo-centric view of the holy city.

There is much confusion about whether the tunnel runs under the Dome of the Rock. Israel insists it does not, but runs near it along the Western Wall. Palestinians suspect it runs underneath, or that additional tunnels do.

Israel says the tunneling allows more tourists to pass through. Only 400 tourists used to be able to pass through each day. Now, Israel expects to bring in 1,500 per day - and $5,000 per day in visitor fees

For some Arabs, the mere memory of that - and the fact that an extremist Jewish group was caught plotting to blow up the mosques - is enough to arouse suspicion about the recent digging. To Palestinian archaeologists, there is no proof, however, that the tunnel dates to the Hasmonean/Jewish period.

Says Mr. Netanyahu: "We are literally touching the bedrock of our existence."

Tensions escalated this year, as the U.S.-brokered negotiations between Ethiopia and Egypt unraveled and new talks mediated by the African Union began

The Ethiopian government does broadly engage in “computational propaganda,” according to a 2019 report from the Oxford Internet Institute. Agencies there use human-run social media accounts to spread pro-government propaganda, attack the opposition, and troll users. The same goes for the Egyptian government.

Social media users from the two countries frequently collide on the Internet, but seem to do so most often on Adel el-Adawy’s Twitter page: As a member of a prominent Egyptian political dynasty, a professor at the American University in Cairo, and the most visible disseminator of the Egyptian perspective on the dam in English, he has amassed a significant following. Adawy, whose pinned tweet is a picture of himself shaking hands with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, posts frequently about the Nile and Ethiopian affairs, especially when things get sticky.

It’s possible that the engagement is coming from concerned Ethiopians at home and abroad, at the encouragement but not the behest of Ethiopian officials. “I have friends who joined Twitter just for the sake of this. It’s highly emotional and nationalistic,” said Endalkachew Chala, an Ethiopian communications professor at Hamline University in Minnesota.

Construction of the dam was completed in July, and the filling of its reservoir started soon after amid heavy rains but before an agreement between Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan was signed. The U.S. government, a top source of aid for both Ethiopia and Egypt, said in August that it would halt some aid to Ethiopia over what it saw as a unilateral move to progress with the dam.

For both countries—Egypt since the 2011 fall of Mubarak and Ethiopia since the 2012 death of strongman Prime Minister Meles Zenawi—national identity has been in flux

the first known time these kinds of digital tools have been used by people from one African country against people from another, said Gilbert Nyandeje, founder and CEO of the Africa Cyber Defense Forum. “It only means one thing. It means we should expect this more and more.”

at the core of Egyptian identity is the Nile, so bolstering nationalism means defending the Nile, too. And officials have encouraged this outlook: One sleekly produced video shared on Facebook by the Ministry of Immigration and Egyptian Expatriates Affairs warned, “More than 40 million Egyptians are facing the threat of drought and thirst.… The cause of water shortage is Ethiopia building a dam five times bigger than its needs.”

a show of vulnerability rare in Arab power politics. But the strategy has helped garner global sympathy for Egypt, even as its Nile claims are framed by Ethiopia as the result of unjust colonial-era agreements in which Egypt’s interests were represented by British colonizers.

the dam provided a unifying issue around which Ethiopians of all ethnic backgrounds could rally. “We do have a lot of divisions—ideological, ethnic, tribal, religious,” said Chala, the Ethiopian professor. “But even though we have these bitter divisions, Ethiopians have overwhelmingly supported this Nile dam especially on social media.”

Ethiopian officials, meanwhile, continue to encourage Ethiopians to post about the dam online and often use the #ItsMyDam hashtag in their own social media posts. This use of social media to rally around the dam has also meant that Ethiopia’s massive global diaspora can get involved, without having to worry about frequent in-country Internet shutdowns that otherwise curtail online movements there.

The thousands of Ethiopian refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants living in Egypt are now facing greater pressure and harassment from Egyptian citizens and authorities since the dam tensions started to heat up

in Ethiopia, it has meant that any domestic criticism of the dam from an environmentalist point of view—namely, that it could disrupt ecosystems and biodiversity, even within Ethiopia—is met with derision

for both countries, surging nationalist sentiment means that it’s harder for officials to agree to, and for the public to accept, compromise

the main sticking points now are related to dispute resolution, drought contingency plans, and future upstream projects. And yet, much of the online rhetoric remains maximalist, even rejecting items that have already been unanimously decided—such as the existence of an Ethiopian Nile dam in any form—raising the possibility that the online tensions and attacks may not subside anytime soon

The widely reproduced claim that 2 to 3 million people were driven into extreme poverty by the 2006–2009 drought was drawn, extraordinarily, from analyses by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) of pre-drought poverty levels.[4] The claim that around 1.5 million people were displaced was derived from a single humanitarian news bulletin, seemingly on the basis of a misreading of the UN’s estimate of those affected—not displaced—by the drought. Using Syrian government numbers, the UN actually reported drought-period displacement to be around 40,000–60,000 families.

A presidential decree in 2008, which tightened restrictions on land sales across the northeastern-most province of Hasakah, led to the extensive loss of land rights and was credited by some organizations as a key factor in the increased migration from northeast Syria prior to the war

during 2008–2009 rural Syria was hit by triple-digit increases in the prices of key agricultural inputs. In May 2008 fuel subsidies were halved, leading to an overnight 342 percent spike in the price of diesel. And then in May 2009 fertilizer subsidies were removed, causing prices to rise anywhere from 200 to 450 percent. The fuel subsidy cuts had particularly devastating economic consequences, especially for farmers reliant on cheap fuel for groundwater irrigation.

The fact that a number of neighboring countries experienced equivalent precipitation declines during 2006–2009—or in Iraq’s case an even larger decline—but no comparable migration crises, suggests at the very least that the migration from Syria’s northeast must have been caused more by these Syria-specific factors than by the drought.

Proponents of the climate conflict thesis typically claim that drought-induced displacement caused a “population shock” within Syria’s urban peripheries, exacerbating pre-existing socio-economic pressures. Yet Syria’s cities grew rapidly throughout the decade before the civil war, not only during the drought years. By our calculations, excess migration from the northeast during 2008–2009 amounted to just 4–12 percent of Syria’s 2003–2010 urban growth (and this excess migration was not all triggered by drought)

As Syria’s pre-eminent breadbasket region—the heartland of strategic crop production—Hasakah was particularly vulnerable to economic liberalization and the withdrawal of input supports. No other region of the country was so dependent on groundwater for irrigation, a factor that made it particularly vulnerable to fuel price increases. Hasakah’s groundwater resources were also exceptionally degraded, even by Syrian standards

a deep and long-term structural agrarian crisis

it is evident that northeastern Syria’s agrarian troubles—and especially those in the province of Hasakah—went all the way back to 2000, and indeed earlier. Production of the two main government-designated strategic crops, wheat and cotton, was in decline in Hasakah from the early 2000s onward. Land and settlements were being abandoned there well before the drought. Net out-migration from Hasakah during this period was higher than from any other province. And the reasons for this lay not in the drought but in the contradictions of Syrian development.

an agrarian socialist development program, promoting rapid expansion of the country’s agricultural sector and deploying Soviet aid and oil income to this end. Among other elements, this program involved heavy investment in agricultural and especially water supply infrastructure, low interest loans for private well drilling, price controls on strategic crops at well above international market value, the annual wiping clean of state farm losses and, as already indicated, generous input subsidies

Environmentally, the model relied above all on the super-exploitation of water resources, especially groundwater—a problem which by the early 2000s had become critical. And economically, Syrian agriculture had become highly input dependent, reliant on continuing fuel subsidies in particular.

as Marwa Daoudy concludes in her new book on the subject, there is “little evidence” that “climate change in Syria sparked popular revolt in 2011”—but “a lot of evidence” that “suggests it did not.”

Irrespective of any drought impacts, these developments essentially occurred when the props that had until then artificially maintained an over-extended agricultural production system—oil export rents, a pro-agrarian ideology and their associated price controls—were suddenly and decisively removed.

Within just a few short years, Syria embraced principles of economic liberalization, privatized state farms, liberalized trade and reduced price control levels. At the same time domestic oil production and exports fell rapidly, thus undermining the regime’s rentier foundations and its capacity to subsidize agriculture

The region was also deeply affected by intense irrigation development and over-abstraction of groundwater resources within Turkey

It was Ba’athist state policies which had turned Hasakah into a region of wheat monoculture, failed to promote economic diversification and facilitated cultivation ever deeper into the badiya (the desert) while over-exploiting surface and groundwater resources. Moreover, these measures were taken partly for strategic and geostrategic reasons, bound up with regime interests in expanding and consolidating Hasakah’s Arab population (its project of Arabization), in controlling and excluding the province’s Kurdish population and in extending its control and presence within a strategically sensitive borderland and frontier region. During the heyday of Ba’athist agrarian development, Hasakah’s population and agricultural sector expanded like in no other area. With the collapse of this development model, rural crisis and out-migration were the inevitable result.

After an initial reluctance to acknowledge the depth of the crisis in the northeast, the government eventually embraced the climate crisis narrative with gusto. The drought was “beyond our powers,” claimed Asad. The drought was “beyond our capacity as a country to deal with,” claimed the Minister of Agriculture. “Syria could have achieved [its] goals pertaining to unemployment, poverty and growth if it was not for the drought,” proclaimed Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah al-Dardari.[12] Indeed, as the International Crisis Group reported, the Asad regime would regularly take diplomats to the northeast and tell them, “it all has to do with global warming,” blaming what was in essence a state-induced socio-ecological crisis on climatic transformations beyond its control.[13] This shifting of blame is essentially how the Syria climate crisis narrative began.

Official UN reports on the crisis in the northeast, which were produced in collaboration with the Syrian regime, were predictably drought-centric, barely mentioning any factors other than drought, omitting any criticisms of government policy and ignoring the existence of a discriminated-against Kurdish minority

International media reports on the subject were similarly focused on  drought, no doubt partly because of media preferences for simplified and striking narratives, but also because they relied upon UN sources and took these at their word

The climate crisis narrative reached its apogee in 2015, in the run-up to the UN Paris conference on climate change, when countless politicians and commentators turned to the example of Syria to illustrate the urgency of international action to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

regurgitated as a statement of fact in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and by Western liberal politicians and eco-socialist campaigners alike

climate change is also much more than a physical reality and looming environmental threat: It is simultaneously an object of discourse, debate and rhetoric, a potent meta-narrative that can be invoked for explanation, legitimation, blame avoidance and enrichment.

climate change is already regularly invoked to questionable ends across the Middle East and North Africa. It is used to explain away ecological catastrophes actually caused by unsustainable agricultural expansion, to make the case for investment in new and often unnecessary mega-projects, to obscure state mismanagement of local environmental resources and to argue against the redistribution of such resources to oppressed and minority groups

blaming climate change is often a distraction from the real causes of socio-ecological crisis

The defining slogan of Lebanon’s uprising — “all of them means all of them” (kellon yani kellon) — called out the country’s entire ruling class, which includes Hezbollah. One pointed variation on the slogan was “All of them means all of them, and Nasrallah is one of them.”

Hezbollah’s attacks on the demonstrators were not only physical but rhetorical, framing the popular revolt as part of a foreign plot against Hezbollah and its regional allies in the “Axis of Resistance” — accusations that were “met with ridicule

Hezbollah is “now viewed by many demonstrators as part of the corrupt and morally bankrupt political establishment that must be replaced,”

The Lebanese writer and podcaster Joey Ayoub captures the Orwellian upside-down-ness of this ideological sleight of hand in his formulation “Hezbollah’s Resistance™ against resistance.”[33] Hezbollah, he shows, tries to have it both ways: on the one hand, defending the status quo and maintaining Lebanon’s “sectarian-capitalist structures,” while at the same time banking on its membership in the so-called “Axis of Resistance.” That is, posturing as a force for “resistance” — a zombie category amid Lebanon’s current political landscape — while attacking people engaged in actual resistance to the ruling system and undermining progressive social movements.

Tehran also intervened politically, maneuvering to keep Iraqi Prime Minister Abdel Abdul Mahdi in power in the face of demands from protesters that he step down.[66] (Mahdi eventually did resign, in late November 2019 — a major victory for the protest movement that Tehran endeavored to circumvent.)

The protests that erupted in Iraq in October 2019 were arguably the “biggest grassroots socio-political mobilization” in the country’s history.[37] At root, that mobilization was “about the poor, the disempowered and the marginalized demanding a new system,” notes the Iraqi sociologist Zahra Ali.[38] The Tishreen (October) uprising, as it came to be known, quickly spread to “cities and towns across central and southern Iraq”[39] and eventually “engulfed virtually the whole country (though they were most concentrated in Baghdad and the Shia-dominated southern governorates).”

the 2019 protests represented “the most serious challenge yet to the post-2003 political order,” the Iraq scholar Fanar Haddad observes

the movement “classified itself as a ‘revolution’ in terms of discourse, demands, and objectives.” “[E]ven if the current movement fails to achieve a political revolution,” Haddad argues, “and even if it is not a revolution, it is undoubtedly a revolutionary movement that has already achieved a cultural revolution.”

As Berman, Clarke, and Majed note: A movement demanding wholesale political change represented a real threat to the system of cronyism and rapaciousness that has enriched Iraq’s politicians over the last two decades, and these elites quickly mobilized an array of state and non-state security agents in an attempt to quash this challenge.[54] Mohammad al Basri, a figure affiliated with Iraq’s paramilitary Popular Mobilization Units, expressed this mindset with rare bluntness: “Do they really think that we would hand over a state, an economy, one that we have built over 15 years? That they can just casually come and take it? Impossible! This is a state that was built with blood.”

Iran is deeply implicated in this counter-revolutionary repression — both indirectly, as the chief political ally and patron of the Iraqi government over the last 15 years, and directly, through the web of militias and paramilitary forces coordinated by the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which have opened fire on protesters

The parallels between the Iraqi and Lebanese revolts are manifold, starting with their timing: mass protests engulfed both countries starting in October 2019. Iraqi and Lebanese protesters were conscious of the connections between their struggles: “in the different protest squares people are shouting: ‘One revolution, from Baghdad to Beirut,’” notes Sami Adnan, an activist in Baghdad with the group Workers Against Sectarianism.[34] It’s also important to see the two upheavals in their wider regional context, as part of the “second wave” of Arab uprisings that also included momentous popular movements in Algeria and Sudan — or, as some argue, the uprisings that have been ongoing across the Middle East and North Africa since December 2010.

Iraqi protesters weren’t just rebelling against Iran’s local allies, but against Iran itself. Protesters in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square smashed banners of Khamenei with their shoes.[67] Others put up a white banner with red Xs drawn through photographs of Khamenei and Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, the architect of Iran’s regional policy.[68] “Images of Ayatollah Khomeini were removed from cities like Najaf, and pro-Iran political parties with prominent militias that were involved in the violence against the protesters had their branch offices attacked and burned,” Alkinani notes.[69] Most spectacularly, protesters set fire to the Iranian consulate in Karbala and Najaf amid chants of “Iran out of Iraq”.[70]

in the face of popular uprisings expressing emancipatory demands, Iran sides not with the protesters but with the ruling establishments they’re protesting against

Iran’s official narrative is that its role in Syria is all about fighting terrorism — specifically Al Qaeda and ISIS. But this is a classic case of reading history backwards. In fact, Iran rushed to the defense of the Assad regime as soon as the uprising began — when there was no Al Qaeda or ISIS presence whatsoever (the only jihadists were the ones the regime intentionally let out of its prisons as part of its jihadization strategy).[78] “From the very moment Assad faced popular protests, the Quds Force and Tehran were ready to do all they could to save the rule of the Baath Party,” notes Arash Azizi. Indeed, the Islamic Republic’s emissaries “were pushing on Assad to suppress the uprising mercilessly.”[79] And that is precisely what the regime did

The Islamic Republic’s “first reaction” to the demonstrations in Syria “was to open its own playbook and show Assad pages from the post-election protests in 2009,” he observes. “Decision-makers appear to have hoped that Assad would use enough brute force — arrests, beatings, and a limited amount of killings — to spread fear and quickly re-establish control.”

Iran helped flip the script and present the Syrian protests not as part of the wave of Arab uprisings — which it decidedly was — but as a foreign-inspired terrorist plot. This rhetorical framing was awkward for the Islamic Republic, which had voiced support for other Arab uprisings — those in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Libya. This put Tehran in a bind, praising the people of the region for rising up against the dictators that oppressed them but siding with the dictator in Syria.[84] Amin Saikal characterizes this Syrian exception as “an intervention that ran counter to Tehran’s declared rhetoric of supporting the downtrodden masses.”

the Islamic Republic intensified its support for the Assad regime in 2011 but its stalwart support for the dynastic dictatorship in Damascus goes back several decades — and while the Assad regime exponentially heightened its level of repression in 2011, violence has been at the very core of its rule throughout

“[t]he ‘revolutionary’ slogans of Iran’s ‘resistance’ are empty rhetoric that merely back whatever policies benefit the corrupt ruling elite in Tehran.”

the so-called Axis of Resistance, “ostensibly dedicated to furthering the emancipatory aspirations of the Arab and Muslim masses,” has in reality “played a critical role in containing regional revolution and preventing the emergence of a more democratically oriented regional order.”

The Islamic Republic “sounds more and more like those same sclerotic rulers it once railed against,” Daragahi observes — “suspicious of any new development that threatens the status quo it dominates.”

We need to retire zombie categories — like that of Iran as a “revolutionary” force in the Middle East, and the fiction of the “Axis of Resistance”

Both the Islamic Republic and the Saudi Kingdom play counter-revolutionary roles in the Middle East. They are competing counter-revolutionary powers, each pursuing its counter-revolutionary agenda in its respective sphere of influence within the region.

The Tunisian Coast Guard picked up 31 Tunisian youths on Sunday, a day after stopping three attempted crossings and seizing five small boats and a large sum of money. A total of 188 migrants, 56 of whom were Tunisian, were saved, while 11 other attempts to embark on the journey to Europe were stopped, according to the Interior Ministry.

dozens of migrants, most of them from Tunisia, reached the Italian island of Sardinia over the weekend

Police described the airport fire as “minor” and said it took place at an extension of the international airport that is still under construction

Police said the other blast struck three petroleum transport tankers near a storage facility for the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. in the Musaffah area. The neighborhood, 22 kilometers (13 miles) from the center of Abu Dhabi city, also has an oil pipeline network and 36 storage tanks, from which transport trucks carry fuel nationwide.

Yemen’s government-aligned forces, aided by the UAE-backed Giants Brigades and with help from Saudi airstrikes, reclaimed the entire southern province of Shabwa from the Houthis earlier this month and made advances in nearby Marib province.

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in visits the UAE. During the president’s meeting with Emirati Prime Minister and Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum on Sunday, the two countries reportedly reached a preliminary deal valued at some $3.5 billion sell mid-range South Korean surface-to-air missiles to the UAE.

The Houthis have used bomb-laden drones to launch crude and imprecise attacks aimed at Saudi Arabia and the UAE over the course of the war. The group has also launched missiles at Saudi airports, oil facilities and pipelines, as well as used booby-trapped boats for attacks in key shipping routes.

The war has killed 130,000 people in Yemen - both civilians and fighters - and has exacerbated hunger and famine across the impoverished country

while suspicion likely would fall on the Houthis, Iraqi-based militias also have threatened the Emiratis with attacks

“The attack is another reminder of the highly complex missile and drone threat faced by the UAE and the region’s other main oil producers,”

Ansari touted his government’s role as a global mediator, claiming a secret meeting between Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani and the Taliban’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada marked a “breakthrough.”It was the first known contact between the Taliban’s top leader with a non-Afghan official, Ansari said, adding that Qatar has sought to encourage the hard-line Islamist group on human rights, in particular those of women and girls. “We found that the more they engage, the more they are willing to listen,” Ansari said.

His case has become a central topic at COP27 — especially after an Egyptian lawmaker confronted his younger sister, Sanaa Seif, at a news conference discussing his case.

a lawyer in Cairo has since filed a case against Seif, accusing her of “conspiring with foreign agencies hostile to the Egyptian state” and “spreading false news,” among other allegations. The filing alone does not ensure the case will be pursued, but the family said it amounts to an intimidation tactic after Seif’s outspoken support of her brother at the international conference, where Egypt hoped human rights issues would not take center stage.

the message #FreeAlaa has spread throughout the conference, garnering support from climate activists. On Thursday, some attendees dressed in white — the color of prison uniforms in Egypt — and gathered for a protest over climate justice and to express solidarity with political prisoners here.

The protests would be unthinkable anywhere in Egypt outside the U.N.-controlled zone at COP27 due to tight restrictions on public gatherings.

On Thursday, the siblings’ mother — who has waited outside each day this week for a letter from her son — was asked to leave the area of the Wadi el-Natrun prison complex outside Cairo where he is being held.The family’s lawyer, Khaled Ali, then announced on social media that he has been approved to visit Abdel Fattah and was on his way to the facility — his first visit since early 2020. When he arrived, he said, prison officials refused him entrance to the facility — saying the permission letter he received that morning was dated the day before.

The family, who last heard from him in a letter last week that he would stop drinking water on Sunday, has repeatedly warned that he could die before the conference ends next week. Seif said Wednesday that she does not know if he is still alive.

Several world leaders, including British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, raised his case directly with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi. Under the terms of his sentencing, the presidency is the only office with the authority to pardon him. But despite days of demands, his family has still not had proof of life or seen any indication he may be released.

U.N. Human Rights High Commissioner Volker Türk called on Egypt to immediately release Abdel Fattah. “No one should be detained for exercising their basic human rights or defending those of others,” he said. “I also encourage the authorities to revise all laws that restrict civic space and curtail the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association.”