Syria: West’s ‘good’ jihadists slaughter innocents Since December, when the Islamist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) swept to power in Damascus, European diplomats and Arab leaders have been meeting the now besuited ex-ISIS, ex-Al Qaeda commander al-Jolani in order to launder the new regime’s image, with the help of the press. Now we see the real face of their friends in Damascus. Since Friday, fighters loyal to the al-Jolani regime have swept through coastal villages, towns and cities, carrying out a pogrom that has left over 1,200 Alawite civilians dead so far; men, women and children killed for being Alawites.
The mood in Egypt and the threat of Palestinian displacement The Palestinian issue has reignited Egyptian politics. Since Trump proposed the plan to relocate Palestinians from Gaza to Sinai, it has become the main preoccupation of the Egyptian public and the most important topic of conversation, in café discussions among friends, on social media, in the workplaces and at school.
Trump: US to ‘take over’ Gaza, expel 2 million and create ‘Riviera of the Middle East’ – real estate tycoon proposes a new Nakba Late on 4 February, in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump proposed that the US should take over Gaza and force the whole of its population (2 million Palestinians) to relocate to other “plots of land” (in Jordan and Egypt) so that the area could be rebuilt as an international enclave, which he described would be “like the Riviera of the Middle East”.
