Posted on

New survey shows Palestinian support for Hamas

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — A recent wartime opinion poll among Palestinians shows a rise in support for Hamas, which appears to have ticked up even in the devastated Gaza Strip, and an overwhelming rejection of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas, with nearly 90% saying he must resign. The findings by a Palestinian pollster signal more difficulties ahead for the Biden administration’s postwar vision for Gaza and raise questions about Israel’s stated goal of ending Hamas’ military and governing capabilities.

Washington has called for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, currently led by Abbas, to eventually assume control of Gaza and run both territories as a precursor to statehood. U.S. officials have said the PA must be revitalized, without letting on whether this would mean leadership changes.

The PA administers pockets of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and has governed Gaza until a takeover by Hamas militants in 2007. The Palestinians have not held elections since 2006 when Hamas won a parliamentary majority.

RELATED STORIES
FILE - In this Jan. 22, 2020, file photo, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks after a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Palestinian President Abbas said early Friday, April 30, 2021, that the main factions have agreed to delay the first elections planned in 15 years, citing a dispute with Israel over voting in east Jerusalem. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed, File)
Abbas delays Palestinian elections; Hamas slams ‘coup’
FILE - A Palestinian Hamas supporter attends a protest against Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip, in Gaza City, on March 3, 2008. In the three and a half decades since it began as an underground militant group, Hamas has pursued a consistently violent strategy aimed at rolling back Israeli rule. Despite bringing enormous suffering to both sides of the conflict, it has made steady progress. But its stunning incursion into Israel over the weekend marks its deadliest gambit yet, and the already unprecedented response from Israel threatens to bring an end to its 16-year rule over the Gaza Strip. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra, File)
What is Hamas? The group that rules the Gaza Strip has fought several rounds of war with Israel
Palestinians look for survivors of the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Rafah on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali)
Israel and the US show sharp divisions over mounting casualties and the future of war against Hamas

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, has soundly rejected any role for the PA in Gaza and insists Israel must retain open-ended security control there. Arab allies of the U.S. have said they’ll only get involved in post-war reconstruction if there’s a credible push toward a two-state solution, which is unlikely under the Netanyahu government dominated by opponents of Palestinian statehood. With survey results indicating a further erosion of the PA’s legitimacy, at a time when there’s no apparent path toward restarting credible negotiations on Palestinian statehood, the default for postwar Gaza is an open-ended Israeli occupation, pollster Khalil Shikaki said. “Israel is stuck in Gaza,” Shikaki told The Associated Press ahead of the publication of the survey’s results by his Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, or PSR. “Maybe the next (Israeli) government will decide that Netanyahu is not right in putting all these conditions, and they might decide to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza. But the default for the future, for Israel and Gaza, is that Israel is in full reoccupation of Gaza.” The survey was conducted from Nov. 22 to Dec. 2 among 1,231 people in the West Bank and Gaza and had an error margin of 4 percentage points. In Gaza, poll workers conducted 481 in-person interviews during a weeklong cease-fire that ended Dec. 1. Shikaki, who runs regular polls, said the error margin was one percentage point higher than usual because of disruptions caused by the mass displacement of residents during the Israel-Hamas war. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had fled fierce fighting in northern Gaza, and poll workers only conducted interviews in central and southern Gaza, including among displaced people, because they could not reach the north during the cease-fire. The survey provided insights about Palestinian views of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and other Gaza militants in southern Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed, most of them civilians. More than 18,400 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed in a sustained bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza during Israel’s subsequent war on Hamas, now in its third month. Shikaki said that Gaza residents are more critical of Hamas than those in the West Bank, that support for Hamas typically spikes during periods of armed conflict before leveling out, and that even now most Palestinians do not back the militant group. Despite the devastation, 57% of respondents in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank believe Hamas was correct in launching the October attack, the poll indicated. A large majority believed Hamas’ claims that it acted to defend a major Islamic shrine in Jerusalem against Jewish extremists and win the release of Palestinian prisoners. Only 10% said they believed Hamas has committed war crimes, with a large majority saying they did not see videos showing the militants committing atrocities. The videos, along with extensive eyewitness testimony and reporting by The Associated Press and others, show that hundreds of civilians in southern Israel, including women and children, were abducted or gunned down inside their own homes. There have also been accounts of widespread sexual violence. But while Israeli media coverage has focused intensely on the attack in the weeks since, Palestinian outlets have been fixated on the war in Gaza and the suffering of civilians there. Shikaki said the most popular politician remains Marwan Barghouti, a prominent figure in Abbas’ Fatah movement who is serving multiple life terms in an Israeli prison for his alleged role in several deadly attacks during the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago. In a two-way presidential race, Ismail Haniyeh, the exiled political leader of Hamas, would trounce Abbas while in a three-way race, Barghouti would be ahead just slightly, the pollster said. Overall, 88% want Abbas to resign, up by 10 percentage points from three months ago. In the West Bank, 92% called for the resignation of the octogenarian who has presided over an administration widely seen as corrupt, autocratic and ineffective. At the same time, 44% in the West Bank said they supported Hamas, up from just 12% in September. In Gaza, the militants enjoyed 42% support, up slightly from 38% three months ago. Shikaki said support for the PA declined further, with nearly 60% now saying it should be dissolved. In the West Bank, Abbas’ continued security coordination with Israel’s military against Hamas, his bitter political rival, is widely unpopular. Netanyahu has attacked Abbas for years, alleging he was enabling anti-Israeli incitement in the West Bank, while at the same time permitting regular Qatari support payments to Gaza that strengthened Hamas. Critics of Netanyahu’s overall approach say it was aimed at preventing negotiations on Palestinian statehood. The poll also signaled widespread frustration with the international community, particularly the United States, key European countries and even the United Nations, which has pushed for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza. “The level of anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism is huge among Palestinians because of the positions they have taken regarding international humanitarian law and what is happening in Gaza,” Shikaki said.

Posted on

US Navy faces its most intense combat since World War II……… US military destroys 7 Houthi radars

ABOARD THE USS LABOON IN THE RED SEA (AP) — The U.S. Navy prepared for decades to potentially fight the Soviet Union, then later Russia and China, on the world’s waterways. But instead of a global power, the Navy finds itself locked in combat with a shadowy, Iran-backed rebel group based in Yemen. The U.S.-led campaign against the Houthi rebels, overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, has turned into the most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II, its leaders and experts told The Associated Press. The combat pits the Navy’s mission to keep international waterways open against a group whose former arsenal of assault rifles and pickup trucks has grown into a seemingly inexhaustible supply of drones, missiles and other weaponry. Near-daily attacks by the Houthis since November have seen more than 50 vessels clearly targeted, while shipping volume has dropped in the vital Red Sea corridor that leads to the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean. The Houthis say the attacks are aimed at stopping the war in Gaza and supporting the Palestinians, though it comes as they try to strengthen their position in Yemen. All signs suggest the warfare will intensify — putting U.S. sailors, their allies and commercial vessels at more risk. “I don’t think people really understand just kind of how deadly serious it is what we’re doing and how under threat the ships continue to be,” Cmdr. Eric Blomberg with the USS Laboon told the AP on a visit to his warship on the Red Sea. “We only have to get it wrong once,” he said. “The Houthis just have to get one through.”

US military destroys 7 Houthi radars

The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) stated on Saturday that its forces managed to destroy seven Houthi radars that were used “to target maritime vessels and endanger commercial shipping.” The announcement comes after two vessels were attacked by the militias during the week. In addition, the US military shattered two maritime drones and one aerial drone in the Red Sea. NN: One day soon you will wake up to a US warship in flames and $160 WTI oil

Posted on

Musk’s $56 Billion Pay Day

  • Proposal passes with 72% of votes, just shy of 2018 percentage
  • Shareholders also sign off on moving legal domicile to Texas

Tesla Inc. investors re-approved Elon Musk’s compensation and cleared the company moving its legal home to Texas, offering votes of confidence in the chief executive despite a sales slump and falling stock price.The proposal to ratify an award of stock options worth up to $55.8 billion passed with around 72% of votes cast in favor, Tesla said in a regulatory filing Friday. That’s roughly one percentage point shy of the support Musk received when the company first proposed the pay package in 2018. The pay vote is only advisory and doesn’t guarantee Musk will get his stock options. A Delaware judge voided the payout in January, and Tesla is expected to appeal. If that fails, moving the company’s incorporation to Texas allows the board to revive the pay package in a new state with potentially more favorable courts. Musk’s pay vote was widely seen as a referendum on the CEO’s leadership and frustration with Tesla’s corporate governance. The CEO oversees six companies and is prone to distractions and abrupt strategy shifts — he ordered up Tesla’s biggest layoffs ever earlier this year, only to rehire some workers weeks later. Tesla shares rose as much as 1.5% before the start of regular trading. The stock fallen 27% this year, costing the company almost $208 billion in market capitalization. Shareholders also reelected James Murdoch and Kimbal Musk to Tesla’s eight-member board. Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has been a Tesla director since 2017. Kimbal Musk, younger brother to Elon, has been on the board since 2004.At the company’s Austin headquarters, shareholders cheered as Musk, wearing a black Cybertruck t-shirt, walked on stage. He leapt into the air as investors chanted his name, telling the crowd: “Hot damn, I love you guys.” Musk hinted during a presentation that the company was working on three new models, flashing images of mystery vehicles renderings under white sheets, as he has in years past. He said Tesla’s Supercharger network was growing and that he just approved plans to boost production of Semi trucks. He said Tesla’s weekly output of Cybertrucks hit a record of 1,300 in a week. “A lot of people said Cybertruck was fake, never going to come out,” Musk said. “Now we’re shipping a lot of Cybertrucks.” When asked what he was going to do with his billions, Musk noted the pay package is comprised of stock options and that he’d have to hang onto them for five years. “I can’t cut and run, nor would I want to,” he said. Some investors were worried Musk would leave the company if the award wasn’t reapproved. Musk has threatened to develop products outside of Tesla if he doesn’t attain at least a 25% equity stake. He owns about 13% of the shares now, and exercising the options in his compensation deal would boost his holding to roughly 21%. Tesla pulled out all the stops in an effort to persuade shareholders to support both Musk’s pay package and the move to Texas, setting up a dedicated website and running ads on X, Musk’s social media platform. In recent days, Tesla investors, engineers and current and former executives also took to X to voice their support for Musk and his leadership. Some major investors, including Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, had said they planned to vote against the measure. When Delaware Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick voided the pay package early this year, she pointed to board director conflicts of interest and the company’s failure to properly disclose terms of the plan. The second shareholder vote may bolster Tesla’s chances with a forthcoming appeal. McCormick will hear arguments July 8 on disputed lawyer fees in the case. Once McCormick decides on the fees, she’ll issue a final ruling. Musk then has 30 days to appeal it to the Delaware Supreme Court. Late Thursday, Tesla issued a press release confirming that the company was now incorporated in Texas. The certificate of conversion was visible on the Texas Secretary of State website. Tesla shareholders re-approving the same compensation plan for Musk as in 2018 is unlikely to carry much weight because Texas courts are legally obligated to honor the Delaware court’s decision, according to Charles Elson, a retired University of Delaware professor and corporate governance expert. The board may have to make substantial changes to the plan, and shareholders would then have to vote on Musk’s compensation once more, Elson said. Then, if an investor wanted to then challenge it, they would have to sue in Texas, which is just getting its business courts off the ground.

Posted on

US consumer confidence worsens further in June

The Consumer Sentiment Index in the United States declined 5.1% in June compared to the month prior to stand at 65.6, a preliminary report released by the University of Michigan showed on Friday. However, the figure climbed by 2.2% on an annual level. The Current Economic Conditions Index tumbled 10.2% in the reported period compared to April and fell by 9.3% from June 2023, amounting to 62.5 points. The Index of Consumer Expectations decreased by 1.7% on a monthly basis but grew by 10.6% on a yearly basis, coming in at 67.6. “Year-ahead inflation expectations were unchanged this month at 3.3%, above the 2.3-3.0% range seen in the two years prior to the pandemic. Long-run inflation expectations inched up from 3.0% last month to 3.1% this month,” it was specified in the report.

Posted on

Iraq oil minister reports progress in talks with Kuridsh officials on northern exports

BAGHDAD, June 9 (Reuters) – Iraq’s Oil Minister Hayan Abdel-Ghani said there has been progress in talks with Kurdistan region officials and representatives of international companies operating there for a deal to resume oil exports via a pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. “We have a progress in today’s talks and we expect to reach an understanding in (a) few days,” Abdel-Ghani said in an interview with the state owned Iraqiya TV on Sunday. The Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline that once handled about 0.5% of global oil supplies has been stuck in limbo for more than a year after its closure, as legal and financial hurdles impede the resumption of flows from the region. Sunday’s meeting in Baghdad, attended by Iraq’s oil minister Hayan Abdul Ghani and officials from the Kurdistan region’s ministry of natural resources, comes after a call by Iraq’s oil ministry last month for Kurdish authorities and international energy companies to meet and discuss restarting the exports. “The meeting is still going on to discuss issues that prevent the resumption of oil exports,” said a senior oil ministry official on condition on anonymity due to the sensitivity of talks. “It’s still early to say a final deal is possible to reach but we can say the talks have positive aspects.”
The talks are expected to focus on the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) production-sharing energy contracts, which Baghdad wants to amend, and the oil production costs that the foreign oil companies claim for oil produced in the Kurdistan region, said the official.
If we have any hope of reducing the damages from climate change over the next couple of decades, methane is a key. Iraq had blamed foreign companies, alongside the Iraqi Kurdish authorities, for the delay in restarting crude exports because they had so far not submitted their contracts to the federal oil ministry for revisions. It was not clear if the Kurdish delegates and the foreign firms have accepted the provision to the oil ministry of their contracts during Sunday’s meeting.
Posted on

Morningstar Says Oil Prices Look Weak

 Morningstar analysts noted that, on a quarterly basis, oil prices look weak. The analysts revealed in the report that they expect “continued weakness, with $65-$70 a barrel (WTI) a likely possibility in 2024, if not lower”. “We see the OPEC+ production cut extensions as a sign of weakness, not strength. Most of the extension deadlines were pushed back a year to the end of 2025,” the analysts added in the report. “Further, Saudi Arabia just sold $11 billion in stock in state-run Aramco, indicating both its need for cash to fund Vision 2030 efforts and its inability to defend oil prices,” they went on to state. In the report, the analysts said OPEC’s “complex meeting outcome from June 2 should not obscure our view that it still operates from a position of weakness in an oversupplied market”. The analysts highlighted in the report that the group has three separate cuts in progress, totaling 5.86 million barrels per day. “A groupwide cut of about two million barrels per day was originally set to expire at the end of 2024 but was extended to the end of 2025,” they pointed out. “Similarly, a 1.7 million barrels per day voluntary cut by certain members was also extended to the end of 2025, from the end of 2024. Finally, a second 2.2 million barrels per day voluntary cut by certain members was extended in full for another quarter. It was initially due to expire at the end of June, before gradually being phased out by September 2025,” they added. “Importantly, OPEC’s announcement signaled that the monthly increases phasing out the production cut can be ‘paused or reversed subject to market conditions’. In other words, we could see the 2.2 million barrels per day reversal placed on hold, if the market remains oversupplied,” they went on to state. The Morningstar analysts said in the report that the extensions look “particularly weak when OPEC is assuming about 2.25 million barrels per day of oil demand growth in 2024, while the International Energy Agency is less than half of that at 1.06 million barrels per day”. “Further, the IEA and EIA have been cutting demand growth forecasts for 2024, while OPEC’s forecast remains unchanged since the start of 2024,” they added. “In other words, OPEC’s own demand forecast looks potentially stale and even if OPEC believes it remains accurate, it has now been undercut by the extensions of production cuts,” they continued. “If OPEC really expects consumption growth will exceed two million barrels per day there wouldn’t be a strong case to extend supply cuts,” the analysts went on to note. In a report sent to Rigzone by the Macquarie team on Wednesday, Macquarie strategists revealed that they are “structurally bearish [on] crude oil”. The strategists outlined in the report that a summer rally is possible but warned that the market “may look past it” and that “draws could disappoint”. They also warned that surpluses in the second half of 2024 and 2025 create a risk of a “large price correction”. In the report, the strategists outlined that positive price drivers include geopolitics, adding that supply risk is low but not zero and that a Trump election could re-introduce Russia supply risk. The potential for another unusually hot summer and the possibility of cyclical demand upside emerging next year were also touted as positive price drivers. Highlighting negative price drivers in the report, the strategists flagged the “OPEC+ decision and falling compliance”, as well as “U.S. election year tactics” and “continuing non-OPEC growth, U.S. and elsewhere, through 2025”. The strategists also flagged China demand being “less sensitive to economic growth, esp. diesel” as a negative price driver in the report. NN: The coming war will give us $150 Brent.

Posted on

Israeli forces destroy explosives stockpile in Rafah…. hidden in tunnels under residential area

The Israeli military says its 162nd division is continuing operations in the Rafah area in southern Gaza, eliminating a number of terrorists and locating weapons and underground tunnel shafts. Troops from the Nahal Brigade also found and destroyed several explosives stockpiled by Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces says in a statement. Also in southern Gaza, Maglan commandoes called in an airstrike to down a drone they had identified moving towards them, the military adds. In the center of the Strip, troops from the IDF’s 99th division identified a number of Hamas operatives in a building in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood, calling in an airstrike, according to the statement. The IDF says that artillery and aircraft also destroyed the sites from which several rockets were fired toward Israeli communities last night.

Posted on

Biden wanders away at G7 summit before being pulled back by Italian PM…. White House Correspondents Push Back After Joe Biden Grouses Over Reporters Not “Playing By The Rules”

President Biden started to wander off during a skydiving demonstration at the G7 summit in southern Italy Thursday, with the host nation’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni pressed into action to pull him back toward the group. As the leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies applauded the evening parachuting presentation, the 81-year-old US president’s attention visibly wandered away from where the others were looking. Biden appeared to miss the action happening right in front of him as he shuffled a few steps away from his fellow heads of government, turned the other way and appeared to say something to an officer packing a parachute.

White House Correspondents Push Back After Joe Biden Grouses Over Reporters Not “Playing By The Rules”

The White House Correspondents’ Association is objecting to the notion that reporters agreed to any restrictions on the types of questions they could ask of President Joe Biden at a press conference earlier today at the G7 summit in Italy. Appearing at the press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Biden took a question from Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove. Wingrove asked the president if he would give his assessment of Hamas’ response to the latest ceasefire proposal. “Do you believe that they are trying to work towards a deal or is this response against a deal?” Wingrove asked. Biden responded, “I wish you guys would play by the rules a little bit. I’m here to talk about a critical situation in Ukraine and you asked me about another subject.” Earlier in the press conference, Colleen Long of the Associated Press asked a Ukraine-related question and another one about his son Hunter’s conviction. The president said he would answer the question about Hamas in detail later, but said that, when it comes to the ceasefire deal, “the biggest hangup so far is Hamas refusing to sign on even though they have submitted something similar. Whether it comes to fruition remains to be seen. ”NBC News’ Kelly O’Donnell, the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, later issued a statement pushing back on the notion that reporters had agreed to a set of “rules” on what could be asked. “The White House Correspondents’ Association believes it is in the public interest to make clear that at a presidential press conference, at home or abroad, there are no preconditions regarding question topics.

NN: pitiful
Posted on

Nasrallah now realizes the IDF can kill him….. and will

Approximately 250 rockets were launched on Wednesday towards northern Israel, disrupting the holiday calm with successive alerts. Rockets that exploded in open areas caused fires. In the city of Tiberias, a siren was activated for the first time since October. These launches come after the assassination of senior Hezbollah official Sami Taleb Abdullah, whose rank was equivalent to a brigadier general in the IDF.  For the past 20 years, Abdullah had led rocket fire toward Kiryat Shmona, the Galilee panhandle, and the Golan Heights. He is the highest-ranking Hezbollah commander to have been killed so far in the war. Abdullah was also active during the Second Lebanon War, serving as a brigade commander and developing rockets in the region.  Yesterday, following attacks on Kfar Blum and after recent intelligence gathering on him, the IDF precisely assassinated Taleb using a fighter jet. The operation was led by the Northern Command chief in collaboration with the Intelligence Directorate and the Air Force. “The powerful elimination worries Hezbollah members. They now understand that the IDF knows much more about them than we do. Additionally, the operation indicates that Hezbollah’s field security is not airtight and that the organization’s intelligence system has been penetrated to such an extent that we were able to eliminate such an important sector commander. The IDF managed to infiltrate their networks and systems and identify the right people for elimination,” says Professor Amatzia Baram, suggesting that this also impacts the leader of the terrorist organization. He further added, “[Hezbollah Secretary-general Hassan] Nasrallah realizes that the IDF has the ability to kill him whenever it wants, and I believe this worries him quite a bit. Contrary to popular belief, Nasrallah is not a suicidal Shiite yearning for death (martyrdom). He understands that he would be next in line to die if a full-scale war breaks out. This poses a significant danger for him. Additionally, the elimination is a significant success in the psychological warfare against the terrorist organization, as it leads to great concern among the commanders, who know they could be next.” The professor also referred to the possible responses from the terrorist organization following the significant assassination.  “The last time we eliminated senior Hezbollah commanders, the terrorist organization increased the amount of fire as a ‘punishment’ and fired more rockets and missiles at Israel,” he said. “However, they did not cross the unspoken red lines set in the limited war.” NN Blog:

does he know he is dead yet?

 

Posted on

Powell: Fed not contemplating rate hikes

United States Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell stated on Wednesday that the financial institution is currently not contemplating rate hikes for the moment as the central bankers “think that with restrictive policy, the economy will weaken.” “We think policy is restrictive and ultimately, eventually you will see weakening in economy. No one on committee has rate hikes as base case,” Powell added during a post-FOMC press conference. However, the policymaker emphasized that even if today’s inflation report was “encouraging,” it comes after several that weren’t. “One reading is just one reading, don’t want to be too motivated by that.” NN: Like I said its all up for grabs.