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Israel’s prime minister, pushing to dismiss internal security chief Ronen Bar, alleged on Monday there had been an attempt to bring down his government after Israeli media reported Bar’s agency spent months probing far-right infiltration of the police.The police are under the supervision of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. The minister opposed a ceasefire in Gaza but rejoined the government last week when Israel resumed intensive bombing of the Palestinian territory in its war against Hamas.In his latest accusation against Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Bar of investigating Ben Gvir without his approval.Netanyahu is pressing ahead with proceedings to sack Bar, a move which the Supreme Court blocked on Friday and has sparked protests around Israel.”The claim that the prime minister authorised Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar to gather evidence against minister Itamar Ben Gvir is yet another exposed lie,” Netanyahu said.”The document that was published, which shows an explicit directive from the head of Shin Bet to collect evidence against the political echelon, resembles dark regimes, undermines the foundations of democracy and aims to bring down the right-wing government”, Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.The accusation came the day after Netanyahu’s government began proceedings to sack Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and two days after it attempted to fire Bar. The Supreme Court froze Bar’s dismissal the same day.Ben Gvir reacted on X, calling Bar a “criminal” and a “liar, who is now trying to deny his attempt to conspire against elected officials in a democratic country, even after the documents were revealed to the public and the world.”Before his election to parliament four years ago, Ben Gvir was long known for his anti-Arab rhetoric and had found inspiration in the late, extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach movement is banned in Israel.The unprecedented efforts to dismiss the Shin Bet chief and now the attorney general have widened divisions in Israel as it resumes its military operations in the Gaza Strip. Demonstrators in a reignited protest movement have accused the prime minister of threatening democracy.Netanyahu has cited an “ongoing lack of trust” in Bar and insists it is up to the government who will lead Shin Bet.- Adversary of the far-right -Bar’s denunciations of what he termed “Jewish terrorism” in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and his warnings to Ben Gvir not to enter Jerusalem’s sensitive Al-Aqsa mosque compound were among the factors that placed him at odds with Netanyahu’s far-right ministers.The Supreme Court froze Bar’s dismissal after several appeals were filed, including by opposition leader Yair Lapid’s centre-right Yesh Atid party.The opposition’s appeal highlighted what critics see as the two main reasons Netanyahu moved against Bar.The first was his criticism of the government over the security failure that allowed Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the deadliest day in the country’s history.The second was what the opposition appeal said was a Shin Bet investigation into Netanyahu’s close associates on suspicion of receiving money linked to Qatar.Netanyahu’s office has dismissed the accusations as “fake news”.Israel’s cabinet passed a vote of no confidence on Sunday against Baharav-Miara, the first step in a process to dismiss her.Netanyahu’s office pointed to “significant and prolonged differences between the government and the government’s legal adviser,” a key part of the attorney general’s job.Following the Supreme Court’s initial ruling in the Bar case, Baharav-Miara said Netanyahu could not name a new internal security chief and was “prohibited to take any action that harms” his position.

American and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to discuss a partial ceasefire in Ukraine on Monday, a day after US-Ukraine talks there and as President Donald Trump pushes to quickly end the war.The US and Russian teams huddled behind closed doors at a luxurious hotel in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, with a possible revival of a 2022 Black Sea ceasefire on the table.The Ukrainian team, which held talks with United States officials in the same venue on Sunday, is expecting a second meeting with the Americans on Monday, a source in Kyiv told AFP, a sign that progress may have been made.Trump is pressing for a rapid end to the three-year war and hopes the latest round of talks in Riyadh could pave the way for a breakthrough.Earlier this month in Jeddah — days after President Volodymyr Zelensky’s White House dressing-down by Trump — Ukraine agreed to a US-proposed, 30-day ceasefire that was then rejected by Russian President Vladimir Putin.Officials are now studying a possible resumption of the Black Sea Initiative, a year-long agreement that allowed millions of tonnes of grain and other food exports to be shipped from Ukraine’s ports.”The issue of the Black Sea Initiative and all aspects related to the renewal of this initiative is on the agenda today,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in his daily briefing.”This was President Trump’s proposal and President Putin agreed to it. It was with this mandate that our delegation travelled to Riyadh.”The two sets of talks were originally planned to take place simultaneously to enable shuttle diplomacy, with the United States going back and forth between the delegations.The US team is being led by Andrew Peek, a senior director at the White House National Security Council, and senior State Department official Michael Anton, a source familiar with the matter told AFP.Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who heads the Ukrainian team, said the first round of talks that finished late on Sunday was “productive and focused”.”We addressed key points including energy,” Umerov said on social media.Trump envoy Steve Witkoff has voiced optimism that any agreement struck would pave the way for a “full-on” ceasefire.”I think you’re going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress, particularly as it affects a Black Sea ceasefire on ships between both countries. And from that you’ll naturally gravitate to a full-on shooting ceasefire,” he told Fox News.- ‘Only at the beginning’ -But the Kremlin has downplayed expectations of a rapid resolution.”We are only at the beginning of this path,” Peskov told Russian state TV on Sunday, adding: “There are difficult negotiations ahead.”Putin rebuffed the joint US-Ukrainian call for a full and immediate 30-day pause, proposing instead a halt in attacks on energy facilities.Moscow pulled out of the Black Sea Initiative — brokered by Turkey and the United Nations — in 2023, accusing the West of failing to uphold its commitments to ease sanctions on Russia’s own exports of farm produce and fertilisers.A senior Ukrainian official previously told AFP that Kyiv would propose a broader ceasefire, covering attacks on energy facilities, infrastructure and naval strikes.Both sides launched fresh drone attacks on the eve of the negotiations.- Deadly attack on Kyiv -Ukrainian officials said a Russian drone attack overnight Saturday killed three civilians in Kyiv, including a five-year-old girl and her father.AFP reporters in the capital saw emergency workers treating the wounded early Sunday in front of damaged residential buildings hit in the strike.Deadly strikes on the well-protected city are rarer than elsewhere in the country.Moscow heads into the Saudi talks after a rapprochement with Washington under Trump that has boosted confidence in the Kremlin.Peskov said Sunday that the “potential for mutually beneficial cooperation in a wide variety of spheres between our countries cannot be overstated”.”We may disagree on some things but that does not mean we should deprive ourselves of mutual benefit,” he added.

France’s main Jewish association on Monday distanced itself from an unprecedented invitation for two key figures in the French far right to attend a conference this week in Israel on the fight against anti-Semitism.Jordan Bardella, party leader of the National Rally (RN), and his fellow MEP Marion Marechal, who leads another far-right movement and is the niece of three-time RN presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, have been invited by the Israeli government to attend the conference on March 26 and 27.Bardella will be the first RN leader to visit Israel while Marechal, also the granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen who co-founded the RN as the National Front (FN), will be the first member of the Le Pen family to visit Israel.This invitation “has come from Israel” and “does not involve the Jewish institutions of France”, said Yonathan Arfi, head of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), the main umbrella association of French Jewish groups.Arfi told the RMC broadcaster that French Jewish institutions had traditionally held a position of “distrust towards the National Rally” motivated by “historical reasons”.He stressed the need for “critical distance” towards the RN, and said the fight against anti-Semitism “cannot be exploited politically”.”Today, we feel that this issue is being used to present a new RN in a strategy to take power,” he said.Since the attack led by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, the RN has sought to portray itself as a bulwark against anti-Semitism.Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died earlier this year, was known for his anti-Semitic remarks including declaring in 1987 that the Nazi gas chambers used to exterminate Jews were “just a detail in the history of World War II”.Marine Le Pen, who is eager to stand for the presidency for a fourth time in 2027, has moved emphatically to distance the movement from her father’s legacy. But critics accuse it of remaining inherently racist.Bardella, himself subsequently interviewed by RMC, in turn accused Arfi of “playing politics” and said his comments “ignore reality.” Arguing that many French Jews had voted for the RN in 2024 legislative elections, he said that the RN is “no longer the National Front” whose co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen was thrown out of the party by his daughter Marine for his anti-Semitism.France is home to an estimated 500,000 Jews, making it the world’s third-largest Jewish population, after Israel and the United States, according to the World Jewish Congress.

US and Russian officials opened talks in Saudi Arabia on Monday on a partial ceasefire in the Ukraine war, a day after delegates from Washington and Kyiv had their own discussions.US President Donald Trump is pushing for a rapid end to the three-year war and hopes talks in Riyadh could pave the way for a breakthrough.Both sides have proposed different plans for temporary ceasefires, but cross-border attacks have meanwhile continued unabated.Originally planned to take place simultaneously to enable shuttle diplomacy — with the United States going back and forth between the delegations — the talks are now taking place one after the other.Russia’s TASS news agency said at around 0730 GMT that the US-Russian talks had begun.The meeting between the Ukrainian team, led by defence minister Rustem Umerov, and the Americans finished up late Sunday night.”The discussion was productive and focused — we addressed key points including energy,” Umerov said on social media, adding Ukraine was working to make its goal of a “just and lasting peace” a reality.Trump envoy Steve Witkoff voiced optimism that any agreement struck would pave the way for a “full-on” ceasefire.”I think you’re going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress, particularly as it affects a Black Sea ceasefire on ships between both countries. And from that you’ll naturally gravitate to a full-on shooting ceasefire,” he told Fox News.- ‘Only at the beginning’ -But the Kremlin on Sunday downplayed expectations of a rapid resolution.”We are only at the beginning of this path,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state TV.He said there were many outstanding questions over how a potential ceasefire might be implemented.Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected a joint US-Ukrainian call for a full and immediate 30-day pause, proposing instead a halt in attacks only on energy facilities.”There are difficult negotiations ahead,” Peskov said in the interview, published on social media.Peskov said the “main” focus in its talks with the United States would be a possible resumption of a 2022 Black Sea grain deal that ensured safe navigation for Ukrainian farm exports via the Black Sea.”On Monday, we mainly intend to discuss President Putin’s agreement to resume the so-called Black Sea initiative, and our negotiators will be ready to discuss the nuances around this problem,” Peskov said.Moscow pulled out of the deal — brokered by Turkey and the United Nations — in 2023, accusing the West of failing to uphold its commitments to ease sanctions on Russia’s own exports of farm produce and fertilisers.A senior Ukrainian official previously told AFP that Kyiv would propose a broader ceasefire, covering attacks on energy facilities, infrastructure and naval strikes.Both sides launched fresh drone attacks on the eve of the negotiations.- Deadly attack on Kyiv -Ukrainian officials said a Russian drone attack overnight Saturday killed three civilians in Kyiv, including a five-year-old girl and her father.AFP reporters in the capital saw emergency workers treating the wounded early Sunday in front of damaged residential buildings hit in the strike.Deadly strikes on the well-protected city are rarer than elsewhere in the country.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged his country’s allies to put fresh pressure on Russia.”New decisions and new pressure on Moscow are needed to bring an end to these strikes and this war,” he posted on social media on Sunday.Moscow heads into the Saudi talks after a rapprochement with Washington under Trump that has boosted confidence in the Kremlin.Peskov said Sunday that the “potential for mutually beneficial cooperation in a wide variety of spheres between our countries cannot be overstated”.”We may disagree on some things but that does not mean we should deprive ourselves of mutual benefit,” he added.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) denounced on Monday the “extremely precarious” situation of Palestinians displaced by the ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank.According to the United Nations, some 40,000 residents have been displaced since January 21, when the Israeli army launched an operation targeting Palestinian armed groups in the north of the territory.The West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, is home to about three million Palestinians as well as nearly 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are illegal under international law.The Israeli operation started two days after a truce agreement came into effect in the Gaza Strip between the Israeli military and the Palestinian territory’s Hamas rulers.The situation of the displaced Palestinians is “extremely precarious”, said MSF, which is operating in the area.Palestinians “are without proper shelter, essential services, and access to healthcare”, the NGO said.”The mental health situation is alarming.”In a statement to AFP, the Israeli military (IDF) said it had been operating “against all terrorist organizations, including Hamas, in a complex security reality”.”The IDF follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate harm to uninvolved individuals,” the statement said.MSF said the scale of forced displacement and destruction of camps “has not been seen in decades” in the West Bank.”People are unable to return to their homes as Israeli forces have blocked access to the camps, destroying homes and infrastructure,” said MSF Director of Operations Brice de la Vingne.”Israel must stop this, and the humanitarian response needs to be scaled up.”Dubbed “Iron Wall”, the Israeli operation is primarily targeting three refugee camps — Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams — and defence minister Israel Katz said in February it would last several months.”I have instructed (the soldiers) to prepare for a prolonged stay in the evacuated camps for the coming year, and not to allow the return of their residents or the resurgence of terrorism,” he said in a statement.