UAE to sharpen islands strategy

April 22, 2012

UAE

Dubai, April 22: Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Anwar Mohammed Gargash has called on Iran to enter into negotiations with the UAE over the three islands occupied by Tehran and to refrain from using arrogant language.

“The UAE today is not that small baby born on 2nd December 1971, rather it’s a key state with huge potentials,” Gargash reminded, calling on Iran to be a mature state and to take into consideration the “neighbourly relationship” that link the two countries.

“We will remain neighbours forever despite our differences,” the minister told Dubai TV in an interview. The UAE, he affirmed, is a wise, respectable state adopting civilised approaches to restore its right. “We are following a long-patience policy”.

The statement came in the wake of the UAE’s reaction — which analysts considered as “unprecedented in term of its strength” — to a recent visit made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to Abu Mousa Island, which Iran occupied, along with the Greater and Lesser Tunbs, in 1971 on the eve of the birth of the UAE Federation.

Meanwhile, a senior Arab League official said in Cairo that implications of Ahmedinejad’s visit to Abu Mousa will top the agenda of the extraordinary meeting of the Arab foreign ministers on Thursday.

League Deputy Secretary-General Ahmed bin Heli said the foreign ministers would take a common Arab stand on the issue.

In the Dubai TV interview, Gargash said the UAE will adopt a new political strategy in pressing for the demand to solve the issue through peaceful diplomatic channels under the umbrella of the international law. “We are mulling all possible options before us in this respect,” he said, adding that the next phase will see intensive drive for UAE diplomacy.

He emphasised that it’s not in the interest of either the UAE or Iran to escalate the situation because solution to a bilateral problem cannot be reached through provocative statements.

Gargash noted that the UAE’s firm and decisive reaction to the Iranian violation of its sovereignty has nothing to do with what the Iranians were talking about a foreign move. “We are fed up with the record of foreign pressure which the Iranians kept parroting”.

The UAE’s reaction was strong, he went on to say, because Ahmedinejad’s visit to Abu Mousa was an “unprecedented development”.


“It is the first time an Iranian president paid a visit to our occupied islands”. The visit, he indicated, has circumvented a year’s efforts to initiate bilateral negotiations.

The minister said the UAE was shocked by Ahmedinejad’s visit to Abu Mousa island, which undermined Tehran’s credibility.

He attributed the UAE’s surprise to the fact that “the visit was conducted at a time when the two countries reached an understanding on negotiation over the islands. After months of arduous efforts, the two sides had agreed that it was time to solve the problem. The UAE had even named its negotiator and Iran assigned a senior adviser of Ahmedinejad to the mission.

Gargash said the UAE’s claim of ownership to the islands is “based on realistic and tangible historic evidence”.

But he said “the UAE stands ready to risk its historic and legal facts and win or lose at the International Court of Justice”.

Refuting Iran’s allegations of having historic evidences to claim ownership of the islands, Gargash said: “He who has such evidences is supposed to accept international arbitration”.


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News Network
November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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News Network
November 24,2025

israelsyra.jpg

Israeli forces have pushed over the Syrian frontier, erecting a checkpoint and stopping vehicles in the southwestern city of Quneitra, in yet another breach of the Arab country’s sovereignty.

The violation took place on Sunday, when the troops made their way across the border, setting up the outpost near the Ain al-Bayda junction in northern Quneitra, Syrian outlets reported.

According to the al-Ikhbariya paper, an Israeli detachment positioned itself at the junction, halting cars and conducting searches.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that three Israeli military vehicles then moved further into the northern countryside, deploying between the town of Jubata al-Khashab and the villages of Ofaniya and Ain al-Bayda. The agency added that a separate Israeli unit mounted a new incursion in the central region, approaching the villages of Umm Batina and al-Ajraf.

Residents said such activities have surged in recent months, pointing to Israeli advances onto farmland, leveling of extensive forested areas, arrests, and spread of mobile checkpoints.

The Israeli regime began markedly increasing its military aggression against Syria last year.

The escalation coincided with increasingly ferocious onslaughts throughout the country by the so-called Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Takfiri terrorist group, which the government of President Bashar al-Assad had confined to northwestern Syria. The HTS, however, managed to overthrow the government as the Israeli attacks would pummel the country’s civilian and defensive infrastructure.

Various reports have shown that, during the escalation, the regime conducted more than 1,000 airstrikes on the Syrian territory and over 400 ground raids into the south.

Following the collapse of the Assad government, Tel Aviv also widened its grip over the occupied Golan Heights by taking control of a demilitarized buffer zone, in defiance of a 1974 Disengagement Agreement. Earlier this month, senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the buffer zone, prompting expressions of alarm on the part of the United Nations.

The United States, the regime’s biggest ally, has, meanwhile, been fraternizing the HTS head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani amid the widely reported prospect of rapprochement with Tel Aviv.

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