Palestinian Mission to the UK hails fund’s Israeli assets divestment
In a statement, the Palestinian Mission to the UK has hailed the 80 million British pounds ($102m) divestment by the country’s biggest private pension fund from Israeli assets.
“We welcome this principled policy as it moves us a step closer to peace and justice in the region,” it said, referring to the move by Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), and urged others to also “adopt an ethical investment policy in line with domestic and international law” and follow the fund’s “principled and effective” decision.
USS manages investments worth 79 billion pounds ($100.8bn) in total and has more than 500,000 members.
The Palestinian Mission to the UK welcomes the divestment by the UK's biggest private pension fund from Israeli assets. This step moves us closer to justice and peace in #Palestine🇵🇸
Full statement: https://t.co/JZgJvxRajK pic.twitter.com/ECq1pFgj8s
— Palestine in the UK (@PalMissionUK) August 9, 2024
‘No more delays, the fighting must stop now’: UK foreign secretary
David Lammy has issued a statement welcoming the mediators’ efforts for the renewal of talks next week to agree to a ceasefire deal.
The foreign secretary said the UK “fully endorses” Thursday’s statement by Egypt, Qatar and the US “calling for the immediate resumption of ceasefire negotiations and a hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas”.
“There can be no more delays, the fighting must stop now” while demanding “all hostages still cruelly detained by Hamas must be released,” Lammy said, also calling for “the urgent delivery of unfettered aid into Gaza”.
The foreign secretary said that it was in the “long-term interests” of Israelis, Palestinians, and other parties to agree to the deal on the table “urgently”.
Still not mentioning the 10,000 cruelly detained Palestinians in Israeli torture camps nor the brutal illegal occupation of the West Bank which is slowly turning into another Gaza.
US National Security Council spokesman rebukes Israeli finance minister as ‘dead wrong,’ amid push for ceasefire talks
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/09/politics/kirby-israeli-finance-minister-reaction/index.html
John Kirby, the spokesman for the US National Security Council, issued a stark rebuke Friday of the Israeli finance minister over comments undercutting a ceasefire proposal between Israel and Hamas, calling Bezalel Smotrich’s comments “dead wrong.”
“Some critics, like Mr. Smotrich, for example, have claimed that the hostage deal is a surrender to Hamas, or that hostages should not be exchanged for prisoners,” Kirby said. “Mr. Smotrich essentially suggests that the war ought to go on indefinitely without pause and with the lives of the hostages of no real concern at all – his arguments are dead wrong. They’re misleading the Israeli public.”
Not as much as you have been misleading the US public...
Chances of Netanyahu agreeing to ceasefire ‘almost always been nil’
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, says the US does not want a wider regional escalation so close to its elections in November.
The fact that Washington – alongside other mediating countries – is pushing for Gaza ceasefire talks to happen on Thursday is a sign it wants to put as much pressure on Iran as possible and to delay a potential strike on Israel, he said.
Bishara added, however, that the chances of Netanyahu agreeing to a ceasefire “has almost always been nil”. He said not only is Netanyahu “ideologically and personally invested in war” but the conflict also keeps his Israeli government coalition together.
Hamas, he said, will want real guarantees that the war will not continue, that reconstruction will be allowed to take place and Israeli soldiers will withdraw from the enclave.
