Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Signs $10 Billion Deal On Mega-City During Cairo Visit

Agencies
March 5, 2018

Cairo/Riyadh, Mar 5:  Saudi Arabia and Egypt set up a $10 billion joint fund on Sunday to develop a planned mega-city, committing more than 1,000 square kilometres in the south Sinai, as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo.

The deal came at the start of Prince Mohammed's first public trip abroad since becoming heir apparent last year and purging the kingdom's business and political elite in a crackdown on corruption that saw top princes and businessmen detained.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia have strengthened ties since Sisi took power in 2013 after ousting the Muslim Brotherhood, which both countries have banned and designated as a terrorist organisation.

A Saudi official told Reuters that Riyadh's part of the new joint investment fund will be cash to help develop the Egyptian side of NEOM, which Prince Mohammed unveiled last October as part of plans to wean the world's top crude exporter off oil revenues.

The investment deal underlines the strategic ties between the richest Arab state and the most populous.

Cairo supports Riyadh in its fight against Iran-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen, and last year joined a Saudi-led boycott of Gulf state Qatar and agreed to hand over two Red Sea islands to Saudi despite widespread criticism at home.

The day before Prince Mohammed's visit, Egypt's top court dismissed all outstanding legal challenges to the deal on the Red Sea islands.

The Saudi visit comes three weeks ahead of an election where former general Sisi is seeking a second term. He is guaranteed a win in a vote where, critics say, authorities have locked up opponents or forced them to halt election campaigns.

As Egypt tries to keep a lid on any internal unrest, it has sided firmly with Saudi Arabia on key foreign policy issues including the face-off between the Sunni kingdom and its Shi'ite foe Iran.

Egypt eagerly joined Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies last June in a trade and diplomatic boycott of Qatar, whose government and media it accuses of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, hundreds of whose members Cairo has imprisoned and sentenced to death. Doha denies the charges.

The Saudi prince will head to Britain on March 7 following his three-day visit to Cairo and then to the United States, Riyadh's closest Western ally, later in the month.

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News Network
May 6,2024

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The Israeli regime is forcibly evacuating Palestinians from the eastern part of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip amid the prospect of its widely-discouraged ground invasion.

“The estimate is around 100,000 people,” an Israeli military spokesman told journalists on Monday when asked how many people were being evacuated.

International organizations, including the United Nations, have repeatedly warned the regime against invading the city, citing its hosting around 1.5 million Palestinian refugees.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a ground assault on Rafah would “put the final nail in the coffin” for humanitarian aid operations in the Gaza Strip.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also said, “Any ground operation would mean more suffering and death,” with an official saying “It could be a slaughter of civilians.”

Multiple aid agencies, including the Norwegian Refugee Council, have likewise warned against a Rafah offensive.

The NRC said such an invasion “would profoundly exacerbate the already catastrophic levels of need and the humanitarian emergency for millions of civilians with nowhere left to go.”

The official alleged Hamas had killed three Israeli forces on Sunday, attacking them from Rafah.

The evacuation order came a sat least 22 people lost their lives in the regime’s airstrikes killed in Rafah earlier on Monday.

Rafah’s evacuation “is part of our plans to dismantle Hamas,” the Israeli spokesman added, referring to the Palestinian resistance movement that has been defending Gaza in the face of the war.

The Palestinians have fled there from the ravages of a war that the regime began waging against Gaza on October 7, following a retaliatory operation by the coastal sliver’s resistance groups.

At least 34,683 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 78,018 others injured so far during the brutal military onslaught.

On Friday, Hossam Badran, a member of Hamas’ Political Bureau, said Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on carrying out a ground invasion of Rafah was a key stumbling block in negotiations aimed at a truce agreement.

The Israeli premier has said the regime would go ahead with invading the city “with or without” a truce.

Hamas has, however, asserted that the regime has failed to defeat the resistance during the war.

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News Network
April 23,2024

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The genocidal Israeli war on the Gaza Strip has entered its 200th day, with occupation forces killing more Palestinians in defiance of widespread international outcry to end the carnage.

The aggression marked its 200th day on Tuesday with no end in sight to the Israeli war that has so far killed a shocking number of Palestinians and led to a humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli forces have committed three "massacres" over the past 24 hours, killing at least 32 Palestinians and wounding 59 others.

The numbers, it added, bring the Palestinian death toll to more than 34,183, with at least 77,143 injured and an estimated 7,000 missing and presumed dead since early October.

More than 14,500 children and 9,500 women are among those killed, making up over 70 percent of the victims, according to health officials.

Israel waged its brutal US-backed war on the Gaza Strip on October 7 after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

Israel has been carrying out war crimes in Gaza by deliberately starving people and forcing their evacuation, as well as targeting hospitals and schools sheltering displaced Palestinians.

Despite all these atrocities, the regime has failed to achieve its declared objectives of “destroying Hamas” and finding Israeli captives held in Gaza.

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News Network
April 27,2024

The spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces has said it has carried out new operations against American and British targets in retaliation for their aggression on the country.

Brigadier General Yahya Saree said on Friday that Yemen’s naval forces struck a British oil tanker in the Red Sea with missiles.

Saree also said the military also shot down an American MQ-9 drone in Sa’ada province.

He added that the new operations were also a show of solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, amid the Israeli genocide there. 

“The Yemeni Armed Forces salute all the people of Yemen for their faithful response to the call of the fighter leader Sayyed Abdulmalik Badr El-Din Al-Houthi, may Allah protect him, in their unprecedented large-scale interaction in support of our oppressed brothers in the Gaza Strip, affirming support for the Armed Forces in their military operations against the ‘Israeli’ enemy and against the American-British aggression supporting it in the Red and Arabian Seas and the Indian Ocean,” Saree said.

He stressed that the Yemeni armed forces will continue operations in the Red and Arabian Seas as well as the Indian Ocean until the Western-backed Israeli genocide comes to a halt.

Since the start of the brutal campaign in Gaza, the regime has killed more than 34,300 Palestinians and injured over 77,000 others. It has cut off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.

The Yemeni Armed Forces have been targeting Israeli vessels or those “associated” with the occupying regime in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea since October 7, 2023.

The regime ignited its bloody war machine in the besieged Palestinian territory on that October day in response to Operation Al-Aqsa Storm conducted by the resistance movement Hamas.

The maritime attacks have forced some of the world’s biggest shipping and oil companies to suspend transit through one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes.

Tankers are instead adding thousands of miles to international shipping routes by sailing around the continent of Africa rather than going through the Suez Canal.

The pro-Palestine maritime campaign has also prompted airstrikes by the US and its allies on Yemen – in violation of the Yemeni sovereignty and international law.

In consequence, Yemen’s armed forces have declared US and British vessels as legitimate targets.

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