Human Rights

11 Mar 2023; MEMO: During a conference held in Rome on Wednesday and Thursday, the Vatican reiterated the importance of free access and worship in all holy places in Jerusalem.

The conference was held by the Joint Working Group for Dialogue, the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue and the Palestinian Commission for Interreligious Dialogue.

Sheikh Mahmoud Al-Habbash, religious affairs advisor to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, headed the PA delegation.

10 Mar 2023; MEMO: Saudi scholar Emad Al-Moubayed has said he fled the kingdom because "all doors closed for the affirmation of truth and rejection of wrongdoing."

10 Mar 2023; MEMO: Britain will pay France around £480 million ($577 million) over the next three years to help clamp down on migrants travelling to Britain in small boats, helping to fund more patrols and enhanced technology, Reuters reports.

The new deal was announced by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron during a summit designed to reset ties after years of bickering over Brexit.

10 Mar 2023; MEMO: Israel's Air Force reinstated a reservist officer who had been dismissed for allegedly trying to orchestrate walkouts from training flights to protest the government's planned judicial change, the military said on Friday, Reuters reports.

9 Mar 2023; MEMO: Thousands of Israelis, on Thursday, are expected to participate in the "Day of Resistance" rallies to protest the Israeli government plan to introduce judicial changes, seen by the opposition as an attempt to reduce the powers of the judicial authority in favour of the executive authority, Anadolu News Agency reports.

The main rally is taking place in central Tel Aviv this afternoon, where nearly 3,000 Israeli police personnel are deployed to prevent protesters from blocking roads.

9 Mar 2023; MEMO: Greece has sentenced a fisherman to 280 years in prison for steering a migrant boat in rough waters, finding him guilty on charges of human trafficking.

The 45-year-old Egyptian man, identified as H Elfallah, was with his 15-year-old son on board a battered former fishing vessel holding 500 migrants making their way across the Mediterranean in November last year.

9 Mar 2023; MEMO: The United States has released a Saudi Arabian engineer who was imprisoned for more than 20 years at Guantanamo Bay military prison, Al Jazeera reports.

According to the report, the US Department of Defence said that Ghassan Al Sharbi, 48, was returned to Saudi Arabia after a review board determined, in February 2022, that his detention "was no longer necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the national security of the United States".

9 Mar 2023; MEMO: The Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee of the Israeli Knesset approved, on Thursday, a Bill that cancels parts of the 2005 Disengagement Law, which led to the evacuation of four settlements in the northern West Bank.

The Bill would repeal the clauses of the Disengagement Law that ban Israelis from living in the region where the four settlements of Homesh, Ganim, Kadim and Sanur previously stood in the northern Occupied West Bank.

8 Mar 2023; MEMO: Troops from several elite military units in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have joined the protests against the overhaul of the judicial system planned by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, local media have reported.

8 Mar 2023; MEMO: Commenting on the violent settler attack on the occupied West Bank village of Huwara last week, Amnesty International has said that "impunity reigns for perpetrators of settler violence" against Palestinians.

"Under Israel's apartheid system, impunity reigns," Amnesty International's Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Heba Morayef, said.