SUMMARY:Nearly 4 million people in Kashmir have been confined to their homes in a total communications blackout since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modistripped the primarily Muslim state of its semi-autonomous status 13 days ago. Amna Nawaz reports and talks to Surabhi Tandon, special correspondent for France 24, about how civilians are handling the situation and why there hasn’t been more resistance.
IMHO: I have a philosophy that 'friends don't let friends drive drunk' taken from MADD and applied to the Israel-Palestinian issue. Israel's policy and actions in regard to Palestine will NOT end the world's longest war. Israel is 'drunk' on religious doctrine, and if the USA is truly a friend we should not be enablers to their drunkenness.
This issue can ONLY be ended when the PEOPLE of both Israel and Palestine tell their respective governments to STOP.
SUMMARY: President Trump talked during his campaign of moving the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, seeming to favor Israel in his policy stances. But more recent comments suggest the administration could be more in line with long-standing American policy based on the two-state solution. What's ahead for Mideast policy? Special correspondent Martin Seemungal reports from Jerusalem.
MARTIN SEEMUNGAL, special correspondent:Jerusalem's Old City is defined by divisions, four quarters, Armenian, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish, a legacy of conquests and occupations dating back thousands of years.
Israeli soldiers captured East Jerusalem and the Old City from Jordan in the Six-Day War of 1967. Today, Israeli soldiers still control the streets of the Old City and the thousands of Palestinians who live here. It is a tense, often volatile place.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I love Israel. I love Israel.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: Enter Donald Trump:
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We will move the American Embassy.
MARTIN SEEMUNGAL: Promising to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem during his campaign.
Jerusalem's mayor, Nir Barkat, welcomes the news with open enthusiasm.
His vice mayor, Yitzhak Pindrus, says it is long overdue.
YITZHAK PINDRUS, Vice Mayor of Jerusalem: Jerusalem is the capital, capital of Israel, the capital of the Jewish nation. It was that for thousands of years. It's not something that's going to change. And I'm comfortable with that, and I would be very happy if the embassy will move here.
MARTIN SEEMUNGAL:No nation on Earth officially recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. To understand why, you have to go back beyond the '67 war.
The United Nations' 1947 partition created Jewish and Arab states, putting Jerusalem under international control. Israel captured a large part of Jerusalem in 1948, and divided Israeli West Jerusalem from a Palestinian East Jerusalem with a Green Line.
Despite declaring West Jerusalem as its capital, no country moved embassies there. This is the old Green Line that split Jerusalem in two. Israel annexed the eastern side of the city in the 1980s, illegally, according to international law. And ever since, it's been trying to erase that sense of division. But the reality remains West Jerusalem is predominately Jewish, East Jerusalem is predominantly Muslim.
Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. And Donald Trump's promise to move the embassy to Jerusalem has angered Palestinians.
Hanan Ashrawi is a senior member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
HANAN ASHRAWI, Palestinian Liberation Organization: This is an irresponsible and dangerous move. Don't even think about it, because you will be inflaming feelings. You will be turning this into a religious conflict. You will be starting a whole new cycle of violence. The U.S. will be seen as complicit.
SUMMARY: In a surprise vote, the Colombian people narrowly rejected the peace deal with guerrilla group FARC that would have ended Latin America's longest running conflict. After the vote, Colombia's president and the top FARC commander both appealed for calm and reiterated their support for peace. William Brangham speaks with Bernard Aronson, U.S. Special Envoy for Colombian Peace Process.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now to a major upset in South America.
Yesterday, voters in Colombia rejected a peace deal between their government and the largest rebel group, known as the FARC. It was hoped the deal would put an end to 50-plus years of conflict that's left hundreds of thousands of people dead.
William Brangham has the latest.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Sunday's stunning outcome in Colombia touched off celebrations in parts of Bogotá. Voters narrowly rejected a peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, this despite predictions it would win easily.
CLAUDIA, ‘No' Supporter (through translator): We have all been victims of the FARC and this victory is calling to the government to renegotiate the agreements, not to hand over the country to the FARC. It's very emotional. This is what Colombia wants.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: But yes-voters complained opponents of the peace deal were misguided.
ANTONIO SANGUINO, ‘Yes' supporter (through translator): Fifty percent of the people who went out to vote allowed themselves to be convinced by a message of hate, a message of revenge, a message of keeping us in the past.
SUMMARY: In an article that consumes the entirety of this week's New York Times Magazine, Scott Anderson aims to tell a story of great breadth and timeliness, how the current conflicts in the Middle East arose, and how they might evolve from here. Hari Sreenivasan discusses with Anderson how the writer leveraged six individual voices to illustrate the narrative of these immensely complex hostilities.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): The last five years of tumult in the Middle East defy easy explanations. Revolutions that began with much hope in early 2011 have evolved into disaster in places like Syria and Libya and led to political upheaval and repression in Egypt.
In Iraq, the American-led war that began in 2003 has morphed into a many-sided conflict that has once again brought America back into the fight there and in Syria.
Caught in the middle, millions of people whose lives have been upended.
An attempt to capture in part the story of this cataclysmic time comes now from journalist Scott Anderson and photographer Paolo Pellegrin, whose work “Fractured Lands” comprises the entirety issue of this Sunday's “New York Times Magazine.”
And Scott Anderson joins me now.
You're telling one bigger story, and you're using six different voices to get at it.
SCOTT ANDERSON, Contributing Writer, The New York Times Magazine: Right.
HARI SREENIVASAN: But the big thesis in a nutshell.
SCOTT ANDERSON:I wanted to tell this kind of broad story of how we got here, and to a degree where we might be headed next. And to tell this story, I really needed to focus in on people.
HARI SREENIVASAN: One of the characters that you focus on in Iraq is so compelling. It's a young woman who ends up — she was working for the CPA for a little while, the Provisional Authority. Tell us about her arc now.
SCOTT ANDERSON: Right.
Yes. Khulood al-Zaidi, she was — she's from a provincial town in Southern Iraq from a Shia family. When the Americans invaded in 2003, she heard the talk of democracy and human rights and women's empowerment that the CPA was talking about. She became an instant convert. She worked for the CPA.
And then, when the Americans left, she was stranded on the beach, so to speak. And she tried to continue doing work. She received many death threats from the militias, finally ended up having to go into exile in Jordan. And just in the last — about six months, she joined the migrant exodus to Europe.
So, now she and one of her sisters are living in a little town in Austria, and they have been given asylum and they're going to start a university in September.
COMMENT: Good luck Vice President Biden. But as I have said so many times in the past, this conflict will NOT be solved by outsiders (including U.S.). It can ONLY be solved by THE PEOPLE of both Israel and Palestine when they tell their respective governments to stop.
SUMMARY: On Tuesday, Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel to begin two days of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders currently mired in a deep and violent impasse. Biden also hopes to mend the relations between the Obama White House and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Judy Woodruff talks to Tom Friedman of the New York Times for his take on why the peace talks won't work.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): We return to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and tonight begin a series of occasional conversations we're calling The Long Divide.
Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel today, not far from the scene of one stabbing attack, where he began two days of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders mired in a deep and violent impasse.
Biden is also the latest top American official trying to repair relations between the Obama White House and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
We launch this series now with New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman.
Tom Friedman, welcome back to the program.
THOMAS FRIEDMAN, The New York Times: Great to be with you, Judy. Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF:So, you wrote a column saying flatly that the peace process is dead. Why do you believe that?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN: Because it's dead.
It's actually been dead for a while. I just called it by its real name. It's clear to me, Judy, that both sides have conspired. This was like “Murder on the Orient Express.” There were so many stab wounds in this body, hard to tell exactly which one was the fatal blow.
But you now have near approaching 500,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and depending on where you define the border. Remember, it took 50,000 Israeli soldiers and police to remove peacefully 8,000 settlers from Gaza.
So, imagine if you're talking about, you know, 400,000 to 500,000. And on the Palestinian side, you have had some really bad developments. In the last Israeli-Palestinian war, Hamas fired a rocket that landed basically on the outskirts of Israel's only international airport, basically, or major international airport, Lod.
And the U.S. FAA ordered for one day all American flights canceled. That was a message to all Israelis. Imagine if the Palestinians had the West Bank and could close their only airport.
And, also, Salam Fayyad or the — sorry — the — Abu Mazen, the Palestinian president, he released — he fired, basically, Salam Fayyad, the one Palestinian prime minister who said, we need to build our institutions, and if we do what the Zionists did and we build our state institutionally, getting a state will just be a formality.
He got fired.
JUDY WOODRUFF:So, you're saying there are a few people trying to do the right thing, but they're not being listened to? What's the problem?
THOMAS FRIEDMAN:Yes. There are a lot of people trying to do the right — wrong thing, and they have been really empowered lately.
My criticism of Netanyahu is not that Israel should get out of the West Bank tomorrow. I get it. It's a dangerous neighborhood. You know, I have always felt, to understand Israel, to write about Israel, you have to keep three thoughts in your head at the same time and their intention.
One is that Israel is an amazing place. It's really built an amazing society in its short history. Second, Israel does some bad stuff in the West Bank. And, third, Israel lives in a really dangerous neighborhood. And you have got to keep all three of those in your head at the same time.
My critique of Netanyahu is this. Why would you make a bad situation worse by putting Jews in the middle of Palestinian areas in the West Bank, highly densely populated Palestinian areas, that if there were to be a deal, that would have to be ceded to a Palestinian state?
SUMMARY: Why did Saudi Arabia execute a prominent Shiite cleric if it knew that it would inflame tensions with Iran? Judy Woodruff gets analysis of what that rivalry means for the region from Vali Nasr of John Hopkins University and Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now we return to the tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
I’m joined by Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute. And we welcome you both.
Randa Slim, to you first, why did the Saudis execute this cleric whom they had imprisoned already for several years?
RANDA SLIM, Middle East Institute: This is a crisis that needs to be looked at through the context of an ongoing rivalry for power between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
And this execution is a message from the Saudis to Iran, but also it’s a message to its own domestic constituency. But I think the crisis that has been caused by this execution is primarily driven by domestic factors.
We have two regimes in this case in Saudi Arabia and Iran that are acting out of fear and out of feelings of insecurity about the long-term stability of the regime. And they are using this crisis as a way to consolidate power and support internally and to send messages also regionally.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Vali Nasr, the Saudis had to know that this would inflame and anger Iran.
VALI NASR, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University: Yes, they did.
And this came after another crisis which followed the death of several hundred Iranian pilgrims during a tragedy in Mecca last year. The relations got very tense. Both sides accused one another of bad intentions. And Iran had also warned about the killing of this cleric, and so had the United States.
And the killing of a cleric, particularly Shia Islam, is not a trivial matter. And the Saudis knew that this — killing a Shia cleric is not like killing any other Shia activist. And I think Randa is absolutely correct that there was a domestic factor. This execution case came a few days after the Saudis announced their first austerity package internally as a consequence of reduction of oil prices.
It also came regionally right after the United States first included Iran in the Vienna process. And then the Shia government in Iraq, with American and Iranian support, recaptured Ramadi. It looked like the Iranians were actually on much of an upswing in the region than the Saudis were. So, it’s also a signal. In addition to the domestic policy, it’s a signal to the United States as well.
SUMMARY: As the diplomatic fallout continues over Saudi Arabia’s execution of a prominent Shiite cleric and the ensuing destructive protests, how does Iran see the crisis? William Brangham talks to Thomas Erdbrink of The New York Times.
SUMMARY: Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told his military to prepare for a possible "full scale" invasion from Russia. That warning came a day after fighting resumed in Eastern Ukraine, with casualties of 25 dead and dozens more injured. Gwen Ifill talks to David Herszenhorn of The New York Times about the ongoing tensions and failing cease-fire.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko told his military today to prepare for a possible full-scale invasion from Russia. The remarks came one day after a new outbreak of fighting in Eastern Ukraine, which claimed the lives of more than 25 people and injured dozens more.
Speaking to the Ukrainian Parliament, Poroshenko described what he called a colossal threat of the resumption of large-scale hostilities by Russian and terrorist forces. And he said, contrary to Moscow’s denials, those Russian troops are in rebel-controlled areas.
PRESIDENT PETRO POROSHENKO, Ukraine (through interpreter): In Ukrainian territory, there are 14 Russian battalions, tactical groups that include over 9,000 Russian military servicemen. The concentration of Russian servicemen along the national border with Ukraine is 1.5 times bigger than a year ago.
The military must be ready as much for a renewal of an offensive by the enemy in the Donbass as they are for a full-scale invasion along the whole length of the border with Russia. We must be truly ready for this.
GWEN IFILL: A cease-fire signed in February has been steadily crumbling, as international monitors report regular violations.
David Herszenhorn of The New York Times has been following the story from Moscow.
Those were pretty strong words from Petro Poroshenko today, David. And they were backed up from what NATO — by what NATO has been saying as well.
DAVID HERSZENHORN, The New York Times: There’s no question, Gwen.
What we see is that we have entered a very tense, in fact, obviously quite dangerous period of time, where Ukraine’s Western allies, especially France and Germany, have become extremely frustrated by the slow pace, the failure actually to implement that Minsk 2 cease-fire accord signed back in February.
And so what we see is an increase in hostilities, as both sides are trying to show that the other is responsible for these violations, for the increase in violence and for the failure to move forward with political compromises need for a long-term settlement.
SUMMARY: In Ukraine, religion is another battlefront in the conflict between pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine supporters. Special correspondent Kira Kay reports on the political pressures that have divided congregations.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): We turn again now to a country which has dominated headlines for much of the last year, Ukraine.
While much has been reported about the overthrow of its former leader, new government, annexation of Crimea, the Russian incursions into the country, tonight, special correspondent Kira Kay brings us a story on the less-known battle that’s happening in the former Soviet republic over religion.
The story was produced in partnership with the Bureau for International Reporting.
KIRA KAY (special correspondent): In the Western Ukrainian village of Butyn sits a picturesque blue church. It has survived two World Wars and the communist and atheist Soviet Union.
Now, in 2014, with its nation gripped in war, Saint Nicholas has become another battlefront in the conflict, one of beliefs and even political influence. It used to belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, the country’s largest denomination, with a direct link to Russia’s own politically influential Orthodox Church.
But villagers in Butyn say it all began to unravel when their priest refused to pray for the protesters, who were calling for the overthrow of a pro-Russian president in Kiev’s city center a year ago.
SVETLANA EVGENIEVNA, Ukraine (through interpreter): That was my child there. They were students and children of other parents that were residents of our village. That was the last straw.
KIRA KAY: Svetlana Evgenievna and her neighbors felt they had to remove their priest.
SVETLANA EVGENIEVNA (through interpreter): There was a gathering of the village. There were shouts and quarrels, and we weren’t sure what to do. One man proposed a referendum, how many for and how many against?
JOHN LARSON (NewsHour): As we said, Hari Sreenivasan has been at the Aspen Ideas Festival. He interviewed the former American Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. Their conversation focused on the crisis in Ukraine and its impact on U.S-Russian relations.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): For someone watching right now, what’s happening on the ground there? We’re seeing these pushes from the Ukrainian government to try to quell the unrest. We saw a cease fire, now were seeing the end of that cease fire. What is President Poroshenko trying to do?
MICHAEL MCFAUL: Well the first thing that’s happening there is a giant and needless tragedy and I want to start with that because we sometimes quickly get in. We talk about the conflict and kind of rating the conflict. This is one that didn’t need to happen. Ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians have lived side by side for long a time.
This was all fabricated by bad leadership and bad decisions and now you have hundreds of people dying in a place that had been peaceful for a long time. That’s frustrating to me for somebody who worked on the effort to try to make Ukraine and Russia better with the United States.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Late today, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations proposed sending an urgent independent and credible mediation mission to help resolve Ukraine’s crisis.
However, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin dismissed the idea, saying he was against imposed mediation.
Our Jeffrey Brown takes a closer look at the tensions escalating between Russia and Ukraine.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And to do that, I’m joined by Dimitri Simes, president for the Center for the National Interest, a foreign policy think tank, and Angela Stent, director of the Center of Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University. Her latest book is “The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the 21st Century.”
SUMMARY: Two rockets exploded in an area of Beirut controlled by Hezbollah, raising new concerns about the spread of the Syrian conflict into Lebanon and the region. Jeffrey Brown talks to Margaret Warner from Beirut about Hezbollah's support for the Assad regime and the country's history of strife and its remaining sectarian tensions.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And we return to the bloody civil war in Syria.
Today, U.S. Sen. John McCain became the highest-ranking American official to enter Syria since the start of fighting there. He crossed the Turkish border accompanied by a Free Syrian Army general.
Meanwhile, a fierce battle continues in the strategically critical town of Qusayr, with Hezbollah sending fighters from its home base in Lebanon to support the regime of Syrian President Assad. And, yesterday, two rockets exploded in an area of Beirut controlled by Hezbollah. That raised new concerns about the spread of the Syrian conflict into the larger region.
Margaret Warner is in Beirut. And we spoke earlier today.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
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