Category: World

This week, as the Forum convenes after a more than two-year gap, Russian businesses and political authorities are explicitly not invited — a consequence both of the Western sanctions that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as the principled stand taken by the Forum. No Russian oligarchs will be jetting in on their private aircraft. No Russian delegations will rub shoulders with their governmental counterparts at the forum’s fresh juice and espresso bars.

Meanwhile, Russia House has been seized by the foundation of Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk and converted into the “Russia War Crimes House,” set to feature photographs taken in Ukraine over the course of the conflict that documents evidence of rapes, executions and other atrocities, along with a series of discussions on Russian human rights abuses.

It’s a symbolic transformation that sets the stage for this week’s proceedings. For the first time in the Forum’s half-century history, the gathering will take place in the shadow of war between nations in Europe. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will deliver the first speech by a head of state on Monday and will participate virtually in a number of other events as well from his war-torn country’s capital. A significant Ukrainian delegation will be physically present in Davos, including the foreign minister, two deputy prime ministers, five parliamentarians and the mayor of Kyiv.

Other headliners include German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who are both expected to speak at length on the crisis in Ukraine. Scholz’s earlier declaration that the war marked a “turning point in history,” or Zeitenwende in German, is being amplified in Davos, with the guiding theme of this year’s gathering focused squarely on how governments and businesses can grapple with “history at a turning point.”

The mood reflects a broader conviction in the West — certainly in the United States — that we are entering a new epoch in global politics. Feb. 24, the date Russia launched its invasion, argued Susan Glasser in her column for the New Yorker, “represents one of those hinge-point moments that happens every decade or two — a transformative event not just for Ukraine and Europe but for Washington, too. American power and purpose will be redefined by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s decision for years to come. There will be a before February 24th and an after.”

But there’s no shortage of other crises, too, many of which are interlocking. Countries are still struggling to recover from the pandemic. While vaccinations still need to be sent to some parts of the world, the turbulent economic head winds spurred by the pandemic have cast a pall over global financial markets and raised fears of recession in the United States, as my colleague Abha Bhattarai reported.

The war in Ukraine only deepened mounting food crises across the developing world, with surging prices for a slate of commodities leading to fuel and grain shortages in countries as disparate as Tunisia and Sri Lanka.

“The return of war, epidemics and the climate crisis, all those disruptive forces have derailed the global recovery,” Klaus Schwab, the Forum’s founder and executive chairman, said in a briefing with journalists last week. “Those issues must be confronted in Davos; the global food crisis, in particular, needs our immediate attention.”

As is its wont, the Forum will try to focus on proactive and positive solutions to these challenges. It sees itself as an indispensable vehicle for collaboration between policymakers and the private sector. The annual gathering — which because of the pandemic is taking place unusually in springtime — gets routinely pilloried by its critics as an elitist talkshop on the mountain, avant-ski. That caricature often obscures the rather genuine commitments and efforts made by the Forum’s participants and organizers, including projects to help “upskill” hundreds of millions of workers in the global economy and a major initiative launched in partnership with U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry that aims to decarbonize the supply chains of some of the world’s biggest companies.

Last year, the Forum framed its programming around the recovery from the pandemic as “the Great Reset,” suggesting that the global experience of the coronavirus presented a narrow window for governments and businesses to “reimagine and reset our world,” as Schwab put it.

The initiative “was an attempt to put policymakers in a positive frame of mind,” Adrian Monck, a managing director of the Forum, told me. But it also stoked a backlash among the Western far right, who linked the idea of the “Great Reset” to a baseless conspiracy theory about global elites planning the pandemic to impose new systems of control on the population.

This week, those gathering in Davos may be confronted by how little power they have to reckon with the world’s many looming crises, from the specter of climate change to the intractable Russia-Ukraine conflict. “There’s no business as usual,” WEF President Borge Brende said last week to reporters. “We just need to now come together and … move into uncharted territories.”

Less than a week after the high court ruling, the Najjars’ house was demolished, marking the start of what activists say will probably be the biggest mass expulsion of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since the 1967 war, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from territories captured by Israel.

The court was unswayed by historical documents presented by advocates for the Palestinians, showing what they said was evidence that the proposal to establish a firing range, decades ago, was meant to prevent Palestinians from claiming the land.

“We had 30 minutes to get out what we could,” said Yusara al-Najjar, who was born in a hand-hewn cave on this same slope in the Negev desert 60 years ago. She looked over the pile of broken blocks and twisted metal that had been her family home and wiped her hands with a slap. “It took no time and our house was gone, again.”

The demolitions have sparked expressions of concern from Washington ahead of a planned June visit to Israel by President Biden, coming at a time of mounting instability in Israel’s coalition government and the recent approval of more than 4,200 new housing units in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price, responding to a question about the high court ruling, beseeched both Israelis and Palestinians to avoid steps that raise tensions. “This certainly includes evictions,” he said.

Israel demolishes Palestinian home in flash-point Jerusalem neighborhood

The European Union urged Israel to halt the demolitions. A United Nations human rights panel warned that the “forcible transfer” of residents would amount to “a serious breach of international and humanitarian and human rights laws.”

The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that the demolitions were in accordance with the high court’s years-long review and its unanimous ruling on behalf of the military.

“The Supreme Court fully accepted the State Of Israel’s position, and ruled that the petitioners were not permanent residents of the area,” the statement said. “The court also noted that the petitioners rejected any attempted compromise offered to them.”

The tug of war for these dry rolling hills south of the biblical city of Hebron began in the 1980s, when Israeli officials laid claim to several areas of the West Bank for the stated reason of creating military training grounds.

This region of 8,000 to 14,000 acres — known in Arabic as Masafer Yatta and in English as the South Hebron Hills — was designated as Firing Zone 918.

“The vital importance of this firing zone to the Israel Defense Forces stems from the unique topographical character of the area, which allows for training methods specific to both small and large frameworks, from a squad to a battalion,” the military said in court documents reported by the Times of Israel.

But human rights activists, both Palestinian and Israeli, contend that the real purpose of many of the firing zones has been to clear away Arab residents and strengthen Israel’s grip on more occupied Palestinian territory. Often, the designation has made way for expanding Israeli settlements, which are considered illegal by most of the international community.

A road trip down Israel’s Route 60 reveals how remote the prospect of a Palestinian state has become

Archived minutes from a 1981 meeting recently found by researchers on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seemed to support that idea. Then-agriculture minister — later prime minister — Ariel Sharon is recorded saying it was important to slow the “expansion of Arab villagers from the hills,” according to a story in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper on the document. “We have an interest in expanding and enlarging the shooting zones there, to keep these areas, which are so vital, in our hands.”

The document was entered as legal evidence.

Israeli officials argued that the residents of eight to 12 small hamlets in Zone 918 — most of them tent-dwelling herders who still wintered in caves dug from the limestone — could not show legal ownership of the land.

What followed was a legal Catch-22. Residents and their advocates repeatedly applied for permits to build houses and string power lines. Military officials, saying no one was allowed to live inside a firing range, denied the applications and then regularly dispatched armed demolition squads to knock down the “illegal” structures.

Officials issued the first eviction orders in 1999 but have since refrained from physically removing families as the legal challenges dragged on. Instead, according to advocates, the repetitive demolitions amount to strategic harassment meant drive the families away.

“I don’t think we’ll see pictures of people being put on trucks, because of the optics,” said Dror Sadot of B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization that has worked on the case. “What we’ll see will just be more repeated demolitions, which will force the community to leave because they can’t live there anymore.”

Over the years, the court has entertained compromises, including one that would allow evicted Palestinians to return to the fields on Jewish holidays and other periods when no military training was likely to take place. Residents rejected those proposals out of hand.

The high court finally brought an end to the challenge on May 5, ruling unanimously for the military and finding that the Palestinian families had failed to prove they had a legal claim to the land or had lived there before it was designated as a firing range.

“There is the law that works for the Jews, but for us it is nonexistent,” said Nidal Younes, head of the Masafer Yatta village council, who noted that a nearby outpost maintained by Israeli settlers is not subject to evictions under the order.

Hope and heartbreak: A road trip down Israel’s Route 60

In her village, Najjar shakes her head at the idea that she is a newcomer to the land where she says her grandparents dug a limestone herder’s shelter in the 1950s and where she was born in 1961.

Now she and her family have been forced back into that cave, which, like many families, they have maintained over the years as a kitchen and extra living space. As the number of Israeli settlers in the area grew, and with them incidents of settler vandalism and physical attacks, they saw it as a refuge from violence.

The simple houses of block and metal roofing they built have all been demolished.

Tending to a batch of traditional labneh cheese under solar-powered lights, Najjar described the most recent unannounced appearance of the bulldozer, escorted by more than a dozen soldiers with automatic weapons.

“They didn’t say why they were here, they gave us no papers,” she said. “But we knew.”

The soldiers instructed the men of the family to stay well away from the house as the women raced to grab clothes and bedding. They struggled with a washing machine. Many of their belongings were still inside when the soldiers told them to stand back.

It took less than two hours for the bulldozer to level two houses and two sheep pens in the village of seven families, Najjar said. In all, the army demolished 20 structures in three villages that day, according to Basel Adra, a Palestinian activist who documents IDF activity in the area.

The IDF has not said when it plans to carry out more demolition orders.

The Information and Culture Ministry previously announced that the policy was “final and non-negotiable.”

“It is just an outside culture imposed on us forcing us to wear a mask and that can create a problem for us while presenting our programs,” said Sonia Niazi, a TV anchor with TOLOnews. In an act of solidarity with female colleagues, the channel’s male personnel covered their faces with masks, including the main evening news reader.

A local media official confirmed his station had received the order last week but on Sunday it was forced to implement it after being told it was not up for discussion. He spoke on condition he and his station remain anonymous for fear of retribution from Taliban authorities.

During the Taliban’s last time in power in Afghanistan from 1996-2001, they imposed overwhelming restrictions on women, requiring them to wear the all-encompassing burqa and barring them from public life and education.

After they seized power again in August, the Taliban initially appeared to have moderated somewhat their restrictions, announcing no dress code for women. But in recent weeks, they have made a sharp, hard-line pivot that has confirmed the worst fears of rights activists and further complicated Taliban dealings with an already distrustful international community.

Earlier this month, the Taliban ordered all women in public to wear head-to-toe clothing that leaves only their eyes visible. The decree said women should leave the home only when necessary and that male relatives would face punishment for women’s dress code violations, starting with a summons and escalating to court hearings and jail time.

The Taliban leadership has also barred girls from attending school after the sixth grade, reversing previous promises by Taliban officials that girls of all ages would be allowed an education.