Erdogan calls Israel 'fascist, racist' -  Israel downs Syrian jet as Golan heats up

GOLAN HEIGHTS: A picture taken yesterday from Tal Saki hill shows smoke rising above buildings across the border in Syria. — AFP

UNITED NATIONS/ISTANBUL/ JERUSALEM: US envoy to the United Nations Nikki Haley yesterday slammed Arab and Islamic states for talking a lot about supporting the Palestinians but not giving more money to help, calling out countries like Egypt, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Haley listed how much those countries, along with Algeria, Tunisia, Pakistan, Oman and Turkey, had given - or not given - to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which helps Palestinian refugees. Washington, long the biggest donor, cut its aid to $60 million from a promised $365 million this year.

"No group of countries is more generous with their words than the Palestinians' Arab neighbors, and other OIC member states," Haley told a UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East, citing the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. "But all of the words spoken here in New York do not feed, clothe, or educate a single Palestinian child. All they do is get the international community riled up," she said.

"Where are the Arab countries when it comes to encouraging reconciliation between Palestinian factions, which is essential to peace? Where are the Arab countries when it comes to denouncing Hamas terrorism? Where are the Arab countries when it comes to supporting compromises that are necessary for peace?" Haley said.

Haley highlighted American assistance to the Palestinians, saying that in addition to aid to UNRWA, Washington provided $300 million in bilateral aid last year, and "over six billion - with a B - dollars in bilateral assistance to Palestinians" since 1993. "How much have the Arab countries - some of whom are wealthy countries - how much have they given to the Palestinians?" she asked.

Haley also called out China and Russia for talking "a big game about the Palestinian cause" but providing only $350,000 and $2 million respectively to UNRWA in 2017. "It is time for the regional states in particular to step up and really help the Palestinian people, instead of just making speeches thousands of miles away," said Haley. US President Donald Trump withheld UNRWA aid after questioning its value and saying the Palestinians needed to agree to renew peace talks with Israel, while the State Department said UNRWA needed to make unspecified reforms.

There are gaping divisions between Washington and the Palestinian leadership that have widened since Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December and moved the US Embassy there, overriding decades of US policy. Haley said that if the Arab countries "really cared" they would tell Palestinian leaders "how foolish they look for condemning a peace proposal they haven't even seen yet".

Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday called Israel a "fascist" state while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Turkey was becoming a "dark dictatorship" as the rivals engaged in a new war of words over a controversial law. Turkey has led condemnation in the Islamic world of a hotly debated new law adopted by the Knesset last week defining Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. The spat is just the latest tension between the two leaders that threatens to derail a normalization in relations between Israel and one of its few Muslim partners.

In his first reaction to the law, Erdogan did not mince words, likening Israel's leadership to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and even drawing parallels between racial policy in Nazi Germany and modern Israel. "This measure has shown without leaving the slightest room for doubt that Israel is the world's most Zionist, fascist and racist state," Erdogan said in a speech to his ruling party. Erdogan claimed there was "no difference between Hitler's obsession with the Aryan race and Israel's understanding that these ancient lands are meant only for Jews". "The spirit of Hitler, which led the world to a great catastrophe, has found its resurgence among some of Israel's leaders," he added. The Nazis killed around six million Jews in the Holocaust during World War II.

But Netanyahu hit back with characteristic speed, lashing out at Erdogan for Turkey's campaigns inside Kurdish-held areas of northern Syria and its mass crackdown after the 2016 failed coup. "Erdogan is massacring Syrians and Kurds and has imprisoned tens of thousands of his citizens," Netanyahu said in a statement. "Turkey under Erdogan is becoming a dark dictatorship, while Israel is meticulously maintaining equal rights for all its citizens, before and after the law."

The legislation makes Hebrew the national language of Israel and defines the establishment of Jewish communities as being in the national interest. Arabic, previously considered an official language, was downgraded to one with a "special status". The law does not specify equality and Israel's democratic character, implying that the country's Jewish nature comes first, analysts said. Arab citizens account for 17.5 percent of Israel's population of more than eight million.

Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin then hit back at Netanyahu, saying the prime minister of Israel - which he described as a "Zionist apartheid state built on racism, occupation and displacement - (was in) no position to lecture our president on human rights". Kalin said the Israeli law was "a shameless attempt to institutionalize discrimination against the Palestinian people" while Turkey's criticism was "a universal call for justice and peace".

Separately, Israel said it shot down a Syrian warplane that crossed into the occupied Golan Heights yesterday, but Damascus said the jet was fired on as it took part in sorties against rebels within Syria. The incident added new fuel to weeks of tensions over the Golan, a strategic plateau between the two old enemies and where Israel has been on high alert as Syrian government forces, supported by Russia, close in to regain rebel-held ground. Israel worries Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad may defy a 1974 UN armistice that demilitarized much of the Golan, or let his Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah reinforcements deploy there. Netanyahu said the Syrian jet had been in "gross violation of the separation of forces between us and Syria". Israel "took appropriate action" he said.

For the second time in as many days, Israeli sirens sounded on the Golan and witnesses saw the contrails of two missiles flying skyward. The military said it fired Patriot interceptor missiles at a Syrian Sukhoi jet that crossed 2 km into Israeli-controlled air space, after first trying to warn it off. UN peacekeepers "observed burning debris falling from an aircraft" some 10 km inside Syrian territory southeast of the Golan buffer zone, their agency said in a statement. The warplane's pilot was killed, a non-Syrian source close to the Syrian government told Reuters.

The source said the plane fell in a pocket of territory held by Islamic State-affiliated forces adjoining the occupied Golan Heights. The Syrian army is advancing into this pocket to try to bring the whole of southwest Syria back under its control. Syrian state media said the plane was targeted by Israel and hit while conducting raids in Syrian-controlled air space. "The Israeli enemy confirms its support for the armed terrorist groups," the official news agency SANA quoted a military source as saying. Lebanon's pro-Damascus TV station Al-Mayadeen said the plane fell 15 km inside Syrian territory and did not enter the air space of the occupied Golan.

The spiralling Israeli-Syrian tensions have spurred intercession by Moscow, which sent Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and its top general on Monday for talks with Netanyahu. Israeli officials said Netanyahu rebuffed as insufficient a Russian offer to keep Iranian forces 100 km from the Golan lines. Nickolay Mladenov, a UN envoy for the Middle East, warned yesterday of "a disturbing trajectory of increasingly frequent and dangerous confrontations" between Israel and Syria. "I call on all parties to abide by all the provisions of the 1974 agreement," he told the UN Security Council. - Agencies