Tuesday, May 14th 2024
Agreement reached on new Israeli government that would rotate prime minister position
Tel Aviv — An agreement has been reached to form a new government in Israel, one that would see the position of prime minister rotate halfway through the government's four year term.
The announcement was made Tuesday afternoon local time, with Likud leader and prime minister Gilad Doron announcing the agreement alongside Hosen leader Shaul Cohen, Kadima leader Benny Latz and Yisraeli Beiteinu leader Evet Volny, the leaders of the four parties who have signed onto form the next government. Under the terms of the agreement, Doron will remain as prime minister until changing positions with Cohen (who is designated as the new foreign minister) in May 2026.
"With this agreement, we hope to end this period of fractiousness and division in our politics." Doron said, referencing the instability that has characterized Israeli politics following the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Golan Heights in December 2022. In the 18 months that followed, Doron has acted in a caretaker capacity after a government failed to be formed after two consecutive elections thanks to the fracture in the "national camp" that had allowed Likud to dominate Israeli politics for the past few decades. Religious Zionist parties, who had grudgingly supported the Ankara Agreement that ended the violent conflicts between Israel and Palestine, broke with Likud over the handover of the Golan Heights (which Israel had occupied since 1967) to control of a United Nations force before its eventual return to Syria, leaving the government and forcing Likud into a minority government supported by opposition parties to carry out the withdrawal.
The absence of any religious parties in the new government is expected to result in the long-delayed end of exemptions for Haredi (or Ultra-Orthodox) Jewish men to avoid service in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), an issue that the government has not acted upon despite rulings from the Supreme Court of Israel that had ruled previous blanket exemptions were unconstitutional. Similar hot-button issues related to the country's military service requirement, including the exemption of Arab Israelis without Palestinian citizenship, are likely to be similarly addressed.
The new government is expected to be ratified by a vote of the Knesset (Israeli parliament) later this week.
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Stray heads to Moscow in bid to ease Eastern European tensions
Tuesday, May 14th, 2024
Secretary of State Paris Stray arrived in Moscow earlier today to meet with Russian President Natalya Romanova and seek to defuse the fraught diplomatic situation in eastern Europe that has resulted from Russia's recent cyberattacks on Ukrainian infrastructure ahead of that country's elections.
Diplomatic relations between Ukraine and Russia (alongside Russia's ally Belarus) have become increasingly chilled during Konanova's administration as the Ukrainian president seeks to move her country away from Russia's orbit and towards integration with the rest of Europe. Repeated cyberattacks by Russian military and intelligence agencies have also alarmed countries like Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all four of whom are members of the European Union and NATO that have had fraught relationships with Russian invasion and occupation within living memory.
Stray visited both Warsaw and the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius before heading to Moscow, reassuring leaders in both countries of the United States' commitment to its NATO allies.
"The United States remains committed to a Europe where nations are free to determine their own destiny." Stray said in Warsaw. "The actions of sections of the Russian military and intelligence agencies has caused deep concern among European leaders, and we hope that this [visit to Russia] will cause a re-evaluation among elements in Moscow that think this is acceptable behavior."
The Russian government has not commented on Stray's visit to neighboring capitals, instead only noting the planned meeting between Stray and Romanova at the Kremlin.
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Walken "deeply moved" in visit to Vietnam
Tuesday, May 14th, 2024
Former president Glen Allen Walken, the only former commander-in-chief to have fought in the Vietnam War, was "deeply moved" upon his first visit back to the country in over five decades.
The former president arrived aboard Air Force Two with Vice President Bobby Tyler and other American diplomats during Tyler's tour of southeast Asia, which will culminate in Tyler's scheduled meeting with Chinese President Shi Xinling. Walken, who has reportedly served as an unofficial advisor for his successor in several areas of American foreign policy, was attached to the trip at President Seaborn's direction to ensure what the White House described as "a continuity in the relationship the United States enjoys the nations of southeastern Asia," which among Washington insiders has been taken as a sign of disagreement on certain foreign policy issues between Seaborn and Tyler.
While the former president only made a brief statement to the press after Tyler's meeting with President Thanh Manh Toan of Vietnam, he was clearly moved by his brief reception and the changes the country had undergone since the end of the war.
"I could never have believed when I flew out of Da Nang [in 1969] that I would ever see this country at peace, and its leaders and citizens alike greeting a former American president as a friend and ally. It's a deeply moving experience, and I'm grateful that I was able to have it."
Tyler and his delegation departed Vietnam for the Philippines, where the vice president will meet with President Paulo Zumel before flying to Beijing. Several members of Congress, from both parties, have criticized the exclusion of Taiwan on the vice president's itinerary, which the White House says is meant to "avoid provocation" with Beijing, which claims Taiwan as part of the People's Republic of China.
Since the end of American involvement in Vietnam, only one sitting president (Matt Santos) has visited Vietnam. In his post-presidential memoirs, Walken disclosed that he had declined an invitation to visit Vietnam while president, writing that "A rush of conflicted feelings and long-buried memories came pouring loose, moving me back in time and space to a place I had been so glad to escape from." The 45th president concluded that he could not "do the American people's business to the degree required" if he had visited the country as president, and so declined to visit (then-Secretary of State Bradley Gilmore travelled to Vietnam instead).