An American MQ-1C Gray Eagle Drone was shot down over eastern Syria.

Its hefty price tag is reported to vary from 20 to 80M in different sources.

[RT]

The Intercept:

On Thursday, lawmakers voted 269-144 on an amendment to prohibit the State Department from citing statistics from the Gaza Health Ministry. The measure is part of the annual State Department appropriations bill.

In total, 62 Democrats joined 207 Republicans in supporting the amendment.

[RT]

International crisis group:

Israel’s threatened termination of a banking waiver would paralyse financial activity in the West Bank, causing an economic meltdown and risking the Palestinian Authority’s collapse – with dire consequences for West Bank Palestinians.

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, issued a three-month waiver for transactions in March, but indicated that he did not plan to extend it further. In addition, he has refused to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA), pursuant to deals the two sides struck in the 1990s.

Background: The Palestinian economy is dependent on Israel: the shekel is Palestine’s de facto currency (though the Jordanian dinar and U.S. dollar are also in use), and Israel is by far its largest import and export market. The shekel began replacing the dinar as the working currency in 1967, when the Israeli army occupied the West Bank.

During the Oslo negotiations in the 1990s, Palestinian leaders agreed to measures that consolidated the shekel’s position. The Paris Protocol signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1994, and later incorporated into the second Oslo accord, requires the PA to use the shekel in its banking transactions with Israel. It also states that the PA may accept certain other currencies as means of payment.


[RT]

Your daily dose of humour.

[RT]

❗️A massive number of families were cruelly forced from their homes in the Al-Shakoush area, west of the city, and the regional park.

This heartless displacement occurred amid a brutal assault by occupation vehicles, which relentlessly fired artillery shells and directed live ammunition at the tents of the displaced.

Photography by Firas Abu Sharkh.

[G&T]

The Washington Institute for Near East Policy: The fourth stage of escalation against ships from Yemen was the most deadly, as a result of expanding the list of targets to include all ships of any company whose ships dock in Israeli ports.

The Houthis feel empowered, not weak, and after enduring months of US-British strikes, they are still setting targets through which companies can send ships to and through the region.

Expectations that attacks from Yemen will continue, and many commercial ships will continue to avoid the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea until 2025 or later, and a ceasefire in Gaza may reduce the severity of attacks.

[G&T]