The European Union (EU), UK, France and Turkey have condemned Israel’s latest approval to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

On December 25 and 26, Israel’s Higher Planning Committee approved the construction of 2,191 housing units in Israeli settlements.

The EU stressed that Israel’s decision undermines the viability of the two-state solution and the possibility of lasting peace in a written statement on Thursday.

“The European Union’s position on Israeli settlement construction and related activities is clear and remains unchanged: all settlement activity is illegal under international law,” the statement reads.

France on Thursday condemned the move and called on the Israeli administration to reconsider the decision which “heightens tensions”.

“The settlements endanger the two-state solution, which is the only solution that would allow for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The UK said the recent decision is “unacceptable and disappointing” and urged Israel to cease such actions.

“Such actions are illegal under international law and call into question Israel’s commitment to any future peace agreement with the Palestinians,” Minister for the Middle East Alistair Burt said.

196 illegal settlements

Early on Friday Turkey’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement rejecting Israel’s “illegal decision” saying that it “carelessly continues to violate international law, especially the relevant UN resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, according to the UN, which forbids states from transferring their citizens to occupied land, as well as a presumptive war crime under the 1998 Statute of Rome that set up the International Criminal Court.

Israel’s Planning Committee approved the nearly 2,200 new housing units a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced early elections for April 2019.

Plans for 82 new homes in the Ofra settlement near Ramallah – where a shooting attack occurred earlier this month – have also reportedly received the green light.

According to Palestinian figures, roughly 640,000 Jewish settlers now live on 196 settlements (built with the Israeli government’s approval) and more than 200 settler outposts (built without its approval) across the occupied West Bank.

The vast majority of the international community considers the West Bank and East Jerusalem as “occupied territories” and consider Israeli settlement-building activity there to be illegal.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process collapsed in mid-2014 due to Israel’s continued refusal to halt West Bank settlement building and accept pre-1967 borders as a basis for a two-state solution.

While Israel’s settlement projects have regularly drawn condemnation from Palestinians and in Europe, the US administration under President Donald Trump has taken a largely uncritical public stand.

According to Michael Lynk, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel has refused to comply with more than 40 UN Security Council resolutions and about 100 General Assembly resolutions.

Suspected Boko Haram fighters have attacked two military bases in northeast Nigeria, and briefly seized the headquarters of a multinational force comprising troops from Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon.

Nigerian authorities reported on Thursday that the fighters overran the multinational joint task force post (MNJTF) which lies in the fishing town of Baga, less than 10km from the Nigerian-Chad border, and sacked a naval base in Mile 3, some 5km from Baga.

A military source who asked not to be identified told the AFP news agency that Nigerian troops were “overpowered and forced to withdraw,” adding that “the terrorists carted away gun trucks, ammunition and multiple rocket launchers from the base.”

According to the source, the fighters from Boko Haram, who have repeatedly struck military outposts in the region in recent months, stormed Baga in several vehicles.

Troops from the two bases withdrew to another naval base at Fish Dam on the shores of Lake Chad, the military source said, adding that they decided not to pursue them to avoid running into an ambush, a strategy Boko Haram often employs against the military.

Nigerian Army Spokesman Sani Usman confirmed the attack, adding that one navy officer was killed.

“The troops along with their Nigerian Navy counterparts put up a very determined fight” all night, he said, adding that “the Nigerian Air Force component has also been mobilised and are engaging the fleeing terrorists.”

Residents of the regional capital Maiduguri reported seeing six fighter jets flying towards Baga on Thursday.

Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from Calabar, Nigeria, said that the fighting around Baga continued on Friday morning.

“The fighters have surrounded Baga town for a number of hours, some are talking about 24 hours, and the battle is ongoing in that area. The army can only confirm that ‘yes, there’s been some fighting, but it has not lost control of this town of Baga’, which is a fishing community.

“Some residents who have fled the town are saying that Boko Haram fighters were deep inside the town. One particular resident was saying that they even led morning prayers this morning in Baga town.

“But the military is not giving many details, only confirming that one personnel was killed, and that they are on a search and rescue in certain areas, an indication that probably some of their soldiers have been dispersed by Boko Haram.

“We were told by a military source that operations in that area are ongoing.”

Millions forced to flee 

In January 2015, Boko Haram overran the same MNJTF base and took control of Baga town.

Idris described those events as “one of the worst Boko Haram massacres in Nigeria.”

“Boko Haram fighters overran that same military base, the multinational joint task force,” he said.”They took over arms and ammunition from that area and massacred more than 1,000 civilians.”

Since Boko Haram launched its campaign in northeast Nigeria in 2009, the armed group has killed at least 27,000 people and forced more than two million to flee their homes.

Nigeria’s military has been fighting the group since then and despite the government’s insistence that it is near defeat, northern Nigeria is still beleaguered by heavy fighting.

Over the years, Boko Haram, which wants to form a breakaway state, has kidnapped thousands of adults and children.

Boko Haram attacks are a major issue for President Muhammadu Buhari as he seeks a second term in the upcoming election in February.

After a recent series of deadly attacks on Nigeria’s military, Buhari and other officials have warned that the group has begun using drones as part of a resurgence.

The Japanese government has made good on years of threats by bolting the International Whaling Commission (IWC), but its decision may also offer a way out of tensions that looked inextricable.

Japan, which calls whaling part of its cultural heritage, said on Wednesday it would withdraw from the seven-decade-old commission which since 1986 has banned commercial killing of the ocean giants.

But while Japan vowed to forge ahead with full-fledged commercial hunts off its coast, it put a halt to its most provocative whaling – annual expeditions to the Antarctic which use an IWC loophole that permits whaling for scientific research.

Australia and New Zealand have been outraged by Japan’s incursions into waters they consider a whale sanctuary and activists harassed the whalers in often dangerous chases.

Patrick Ramage, a veteran watcher of IWC negotiations, called the announcement an “elegantly Japanese solution” that looks on the surface like defiance but will likely mean a much smaller hunt.

“What this provides is a face-saving way out of high seas whaling. And it is difficult to see that as anything other than good news for whales and the commission established to manage and conserve them,” Ramage, programme director for marine conservation at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, told AFP news agency.

Ramage said that the IWC, where Japan will now have observer status, can focus on increasingly serious threats to whales such as climate change, plastic pollution, ship-strikes and accidental net entanglement from the soaring fishing industry.

“It will be a net positive to allow the commission and its member countries to move beyond what has been a disproportionate and warping debate on whaling,” he said.

Norway and Iceland also hunt whales but remain within the IWC, instead formally registering objections to the ban.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which opposes any killing of whales and attempted to stop Japan’s fleet forcibly in the Antarctic, declared victory over Tokyo’s announcement but vowed not to accept any whaling by the three countries.

Mounting obstacles

For Japan, which generally prides itself on its contributions to international organisations, whaling has been a rare space in which it confronts its usual Western allies, with Japanese officials at IWC meetings railing against what they see as cultural imperialism.

While whale meat is rarely eaten in modern Japan, whaling has become a matter of principle for the powerful fishing business and port cities such as Shimonoseki, the home base of conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

But Japan’s whalers also faced serious obstacles outside the IWC. The Nisshin Maru, the world’s only remaining whaler factory ship and flagship in the “scientific” expeditions, is 31 years old and set for replacement.

Japan – adamant that it has always followed the letter of the law – also in 2014 lost a lawsuit filed by Australia at the International Court of Justice, which rejected Tokyo’s argument that its whaling was for science, although the narrow ruling allowed the Japanese government to reconstitute its programme.

And CITES, the global conference that governs wildlife trade to protect endangered species, in October reprimanded Japan for shipments of meat of sei whales, the main type it kills on the high seas.

Japan’s coastal whaling is expected to focus on minkes, the smallest of the great whales whose stocks are widely considered healthy.

Latest shift for IWC?

The Cambridge, England-based IWC was established after World War II to manage whaling, seeking to ensure meat for a hungry Japan and, less successfully, to contain the Soviet Union’s prolific slaughter of whales.

After the IWC voted for the moratorium, Japan sought to pack the commission with allies – often small developing countries with no whaling tradition – but has continuously failed to reach the two-third threshold it needed.

As one of the earliest results of international environmental diplomacy, the IWC has advocates who say it must be preserved.

Peter Stoett, a professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology who has written a book on the IWC, said Japan’s withdrawal marked a setback for the commission which will no longer have universal membership.

But he said Japan’s absence could reorient the IWC once again to focus on science and diplomacy to address climate change and other urgent threats to whales and other cetaceans.

“As dramatic as this is, the major threat to cetaceans today is not coming from harpoons,” Stoett said.

“The end of all whales could come, but that would be because the oceans are just too warm for the ecosystem support structure that they need,” he said.

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