Bersatu's conduct weakening PN, Tuan Ibrahim says

Bersatu's conduct weakening PN, Tuan Ibrahim says

Published: May 23, 2026 11:30 AM
Updated: 1:48 PM



Trailing PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang’s recent salvo against Bersatu, his deputy president, Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, also did not mince his words in his assessment of the actions of Perikatan Nasional component.

The New Straits Times reported him saying that Bersatu's actions appear to be weakening the opposition pact, resulting in purported disruptions in state administrations.

"Political cooperation must be built on trust and solidarity. Efforts should be made to strengthen them, not otherwise," Tuan Ibrahim (above), who is also PN's deputy chairperson, was reported saying.

He pointed to Bersatu's withdrawal of support for its allies in Perlis, its retraction of statutory declarations in Negeri Sembilan, as well as the sacking and suspension of state councillors and deputy speakers in Kelantan and Kedah, lamenting that these incidents do not help the coalition and have disappointed the people.

"I don't want to meddle in Bersatu's disciplinary affairs, but we should be working towards making fewer enemies and more allies," he added.

Tuan Ibrahim also concurred with Hadi's opinion on the need to reevaluate PAS's cooperation with Bersatu, adding that other PAS leaders also shared the same view.

"We do not want history to repeat itself, so we need to be cautious now with Bersatu," he added.


Reinforcing PN’s role

PAS Youth chief Afnan Hamimi Taib Azamudden also supported Hadi's remarks.

Afnan Hamimi Taib Azamudden


In a statement, he said that the current priority is to reinforce PN's role as the strongest check and balance against a government which it claims is increasingly failing to address various public issues, including the rising cost of living, economic pressure, and administrative instability.

He said that the focus of all party leadership and machinery should be collectively directed towards strengthening opposition cooperation and formulating strategies for upcoming political challenges, rather than allowing space for polemics that could weaken public confidence in the coalition.

Yesterday, Hadi stressed that his party remained patient with unilateral actions that he claimed Bersatu had taken.

“We are not disappointed… we are patient, (but) patience has its limits,” he told a press conference in Rusila, Terengganu.

The Marang MP said the unilateral actions include withdrawing support for state governments and perceived failures in maintaining internal party discipline.


Violation of camaraderie

Hadi said the first matter concerned two Negeri Sembilan Bersatu assemblypersons who withdrew their statutory declarations supporting the removal of Menteri Besar Aminuddin Harun over the ongoing dispute between the state nobility.

Hadi described the move as a violation of the camaraderie between both parties, adding that PAS secretary-general Takiyuddin Hassan has sent a letter to Bersatu concerning the matter.

Abdul Hadi Awang


The second issue involved Bersatu’s actions in Perlis, where the party initiated a coup that led to PAS losing the state government.

“We (PAS) took disciplinary action against our assemblypersons, and Bersatu did nothing,” Hadi lamented, referring to the sacking of three PAS elected representatives who were involved.

“We were still patient then because we wanted to maintain PN unity,” he added.

Apart from that, Hadi said the coordination of the Kedah and Kelantan exco and deputy speakers’ posts was also unsatisfactory.

He said Bersatu had requested to sack and replace former party members from those posts, but PAS disagreed, as they had carried out their duties well.

Furthermore, Hadi said Bersatu blocked the expansion of PN because it disagreed with having more parties join the coalition.


Bersatu to review remarks

In a statement soon after, Bersatu said it would review Hadi's warning to the party.

Tun Faisal Ismail Aziz


Bersatu information chief Tun Faisal Ismail Aziz said the party views the remarks seriously, adding that Bersatu will discuss them at its political bureau and supreme council meetings.

"Bersatu is of the view that every matter raised should be examined thoroughly in the spirit of comradeship, mutual understanding and shared responsibility to strengthen PN unity.

"Accordingly, Bersatu will study every matter raised and discuss them in depth at meetings of the political bureau and the supreme council in the near future," Faisal said.

After Hadi's and Bersatu's remarks, Takiyuddin later issued a gag order barring its leaders and members from commenting on developments between PAS and other groups, except with special permission from the party.

"All parties are requested to remain calm and leave such matters to the president and party leadership, who will manage it prudently in the near future,” he said.

Albanese joins coalition of nations calling for an end to Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank

Albanese joins coalition of nations calling for an end to Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank


Australia joins the UK, Italy, France, Germany, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands and New Zealand in condemning illegal settlements


Nino Bucci

Sat 23 May 2026 16.03 AEST


The Israeli government is undermining stability in the West Bank as settler violence reaches unprecedented levels, a coalition of western countries says, as its leaders call for an end to construction of Israeli settlements it says breach international law.

In a joint statement issued on Friday, Anthony Albanese and the leaders of the UK, Italy, France, Germany, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands and New Zealand said:

“Over the past few months, the situation in the West Bank has deteriorated significantly. Settler violence is at unprecedented levels.

“The policies and practices of the Israeli government, including a further entrenchment of Israeli control, are undermining stability and prospects for a two-state solution.

“International law is clear: Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal.”

The statement singled out the E1 Israeli settlement project, which would connect occupied territories in East Jerusalem with another Israeli settlement in the West Bank. According to a tender published by the Israel Land Authority in January and first reported by the Guardian, the project would contain 3,401 housing units.Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who is himself a settler, said when the project was approved in August last year that it would “bury” the idea of a sovereign Palestine.

“Those in the world trying to recognise a Palestinian state will get an answer from us on the ground,” he said at the time.

“Not through documents, not through decisions or declarations, but through facts. Facts of homes, neighbourhoods, roads and Jewish families building their lives.”

Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir were sanctioned last June by the governments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom for inciting extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights.

In the statement the international leaders, including those of the nations known as the E4, said:

“The E1 settlement development would divide the West Bank in two and mark a serious breach of international law.

“Businesses should not bid for construction tenders for E1 or other settlement developments. They should be aware of legal and reputational consequences of participating in settlement construction including the risk of involving themselves in serious breaches of international law.

“We call on the Government of Israel to end its expansion of settlements and administrative powers, ensure accountability for settler violence and investigate allegations against Israeli forces, respect the Hashemite custodianship over Jerusalem’s Holy Sites and the historic status quo arrangements, and lift financial restrictions on the PA and the Palestinian economy.”


The leaders also spoke out against those who supported such settlements, but did not name any Israeli government figures.

“We strongly oppose those, including members of the Israeli government, who argue for annexation and forcible displacement of the Palestinian population,” the leaders said.

“We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to a comprehensive, just and lasting peace based on a negotiated two-state solution in accordance with relevant UN Security Council resolutions where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace and security within secure and recognised borders.”

Chris Bowen, the energy minister, told reporters on Saturday that the statement did not represent a new stance by the Albanese government.

“Look, we’ve been very clear about settlements in the West Bank,” he said.

“This is not a new position for Australia. We’ve joined other countries, sure, that is new, but that is a consistent position that the government has held.”

The Israeli government did not immediately comment on the statement.

In March, a coalition of Australian civil society organisations called for the Albanese government to block the E1 settlement.

Andrew Witheford, the international and crisis campaigner at Amnesty International Australia, said at the time: “We welcome that the Government, along with 20 other countries, last year condemned Israel’s moves to illegally annex the Occupied Palestinian Territory in the West Bank.”

“The time has come to act decisively, before that annexation becomes a brutal reality.”

–with Reuters

Unasked Questions About the War on Iran

Consortium News
Volume 31, Number 138 — Friday, May 22, 2026


Unasked Questions About the War on Iran


The media ignore the evidence as they regurgitate the official narrative that manufactures consent for U.S.-led wars, writes Alison Broinowski

Parts of Tehran under Israeli attack at dawn on Friday, June 13, 2025. (Mehr News Agency/Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)


By Alison Broinowski
Declassified Australia

Most of the Western media refuse to join the dots and explain Israel’s decades-long obsession with defanging Tehran.

The war in Iran is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has planned for four decades. He’s always wanted Israel to extend from Egypt to the Euphrates and in the process have the United States overthrow seven neighbouring countries, the last and latest being Iran.

That was also America’s plot, hatched by the neo-conservative authors at the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 2000. The list of targeted countries, confirmed by U.S. General Wesley Clark in 2007, was based on a proposal published in Israel in 1982.

Ambitious as they were, these long-held intentions have now culminated in the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, which seems sudden but was carefully planned, a former British ambassador claims. U.S. President Donald Trump was not “bounced into it” by Israel: it had been in gestation for months, says Craig Murray, Britain’s ambassador to Uzbekistan between 2002 and 2004.

Afshin Rattansi

@afshinrattansi

General Wesley Clark on how he was told the US was planning to take out 7 countries in 5 years after 9/11. The US' progress on this: -Iraq -Syria -Lebanon -Libya -Somalia -Sudan -Iran The Presidents changed but the neocon agenda to establish Greater Israel and Tel Aviv’s hegemony over the Middle East rolled on uninterrupted. Vote red, vote blue, no matter who, US Presidents have openly acted in Israel’s interests since 9/11.

Quote

Going Underground

@GUnderground_TV

·

11 May

Former US Treasury Official: 9/11 was the US’ new ‘Pearl Harbour’ moment to fight wars in the Middle East to establish GREATER ISRAEL over the last 25 years.’ ‘It was during the George W. Bush administration, that we were hearing about the need to destroy seven countries in x.com/gunderground_t…

0:03 / 3:03

10:22 pm · 11 May 2026

·

15.2K

Views

Well in advance, Trump had weapons ordered for fast delivery from Lockheed Martin, naval ships and troops were moved to the Gulf, and C.I.A. and in several cities Mossad agitators reportedly stirred up Iranians already exasperated by their theocratic rulers and by U.S. sanctions.

If Murray is right, Trump and Netanyahu must have been planning this in their frequent meetings before and since the “12-day war” against Iran last year. Or for longer: Trump has reminded the world that as far back as 1987 he wanted the U.S. to take over some of Iran’s oil, and to go to war for it.

But Trump’s shambolic war shows that he regards everything as a “deal,” and while aggrandising himself, he fails to understand that Iranians don’t accept transactionalism about their country, whoever its leader is.

He appears not to remember that under the shah, Iran was on good terms with Israel and the U.S., until the uprising against the Pahlavis in 1979. He doesn’t mention the C.I.A.’s overthrow in 1953 of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who merely wanted to nationalise Iran’s oil.

Instead of understanding Iran and its people, Trump claims to trust his “gut instinct” about the war, and he regularly gets it wrong.

The state of the president’s mental, cognitive and physical health has been raised again lately by his niece Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist. She observes symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease in Trump, and recalls that his father and her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr., died with dementia.

Other specialists detect signs of “malignant narcissism,” and note that the president’s repeated threats, exaggerations and reversals are more likely to be the results of incapacity than of intent.

Still, Trump’s erratic statements keep attention focussed on him, keeping the world guessing and confused, and his narcissistic self on centre stage.

For Trump, as for Netanyahu, the personal is paramount. Both of them face coming elections (Trump has to face the mid-terms in November while Netanyahu has a general election before the end of the year); both want to stay alive and out of jail; and the continuing war further enriches them, their families and friends.


Plans for War

Visitors on the viewing platform on the World Trade Center’s roof, looking north toward Midtown Manhattan in 1984. (TedQuackenbush / Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 3.0)


Netanyahu’s project ultimately derives from the 1982 Yinon Plan, named after its author, an Israeli diplomat, journalist, and former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. It advocated for Israel to fragment surrounding Arab states along sectarian and ethnic lines (such as breaking up Syria, Iraq and Lebanon) so that Israel could achieve long-term dominance of the Middle East, essentially the Greater Israel Project. It was published in the Hebrew journal Kivunim (“Directions”) as “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s.”

Some of those ideas were built on in a 1996 policy paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” prepared for Netanyahu by American neoconservative strategists. The document argued that Israel should abandon land-for-peace diplomacy and instead pursue a strategy that would weaken or remove hostile regimes in the region, particularly Iraq and Syria. The goal was not mere military victory but a geopolitical restructuring of the Middle East in Israel’s favour.

In 1997 some of the same people involved with that report established the Project for the New American Century think tank, which produced several major reports, especially “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” in the year 2000. It argued for preserving U.S. military preeminence in the Middle East and two other theaters with a “revolution in military affairs” that might be accelerated by a “catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

Just a year later, such an event occurred — 9/11 — leading Congress to quickly pass the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists and the anti-terrorism PATRIOT Act.

Tracking the planning process forward to 2001, a former C.I.A. officer confirms what many conspiracy analysts have suspected for years: that Israel, together with Saudi Arabia, was potentially informed about conspirators in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 before they occurred.

John Kiriakou, a former chief of C.I.A. counter-terrorist operations in Pakistan, points to the involvement of the Saudi royal family in Al-Qaeda’s plan. As well, Kiriakou says that Mossad was thick on the ground on the U.S. east coast in 2001 and Israel knew what was to happen, but did nothing to stop it.

Kiriakou points to the furious response to Riyadh by U.S. agencies on learning of the Saudis’ dominant involvement in 9/11.

It produced three sudden deaths in a week in July 2002: Princes Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz (in hospital after an operation), Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki (in a car accident) and Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir (of thirst in the desert). The latter two were both in their mid-20s, while Ahmed was 43.

Seven months later Mushaf Ali Mir, Pakistan’s air marshal, died in a plane crash in clear weather over the unruly North-West Frontier province, along with his wife and closest confidants.

9/11 researchers have found out a lot more about what two U.S. “allies,” Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, knew in advance of 9/11 and did in support of Al-Qaeda.

U.S. lawyer Gerald Posner’s account is based on Al-Qaeda operative Ali Zubaydah’s claims about his capture and interrogation, and his admissions about his work with Saudi and Pakistani officials. From Guantánamo Bay, where he has been held without charge for more than two decades, he told Posner that both Prince Ahmed and Mushaf Ali Mir, Pakistan’s air marshal, “knew that an attack was scheduled for American soil on that day.” Like Israelis, they did nothing to stop it.

The Report of the 9/11 Commission, which some said was “set up to fail,” read more as a call to arms against Al-Qaeda than a forensic criminal report.

The George W. Bush, Obama and Biden administrations prevented the U.S. Congress from accessing 28 pages from the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after 9/11.

Eventually released by Biden in June 2016, the pages identified Saudi Arabian diplomats, officials, and members of the ruling family as contributors to preparations for the attacks, but not Israelis.

Yet when U.S. President George W. Bush declared “war on terror” in response to 9/11, he realised Netanyahu’s aim for the U.S. to attack Israel’s neighbours. And war, says Israeli journalist Gideon Levy, “is always the first option, not the last one in Israel.”

In New York City’s Ground Zero, Bush pledges on Sept. 14, 2001, days after the attacks, that “the voices calling for justice from across the country will be heard.” Rescue workers chant, “U.S.A, U.S.A.” in response. (Bush Presidential Library/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)

Heavy insider trading was recorded in New York in advance of Sept. 11, including put options on United Airlines, American Airlines and other related stocks.

A majority of those polled by The New York Times in the five years after the attacks on the Twin Towers and Washington thought the government was lying or was hiding something. Even some staff, investigators, and members of the 9/11 Commission knew that senior military officials and C.I.A. Director George Tenet had lied to them, while others’ evidence was suppressed. But their knowledge was excluded from the final report.


Terrorists, Neo-colonialists, Tyrants & War Criminals

This history reveals the need to be sceptical of Washington’s claims about terrorism from 9/11 to today’s war against Iran. “Terror” is repeatedly used as propaganda to manufacture consent for war and to demonise enemies of the West, while what the U.S. and Israel do is not terrorism.

—Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was a war crime, said NATO and its friends: yet the U.S. coalition’s long wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Somalia and Syria were not.

—Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its former territory, was an outrageous land grab: Israel’s annexations of Syria’s Golan and the Palestinians’ West Bank territory were not.

—Hamas’ breakout from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, was terrorism; Israel’s recurrent attacks on Palestinians since 1948 and its ethnic cleansing of Gaza since 2023 were not.

—Hamas and Hezbollah’s retaliation and the Houthis’ attacks are terrorism: Israel’s bombing and occupation of Gaza and southern Lebanon are not.

—Iran’s leaders are murderous tyrants: Israel’s indicted war criminals Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are not.

—Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s IRGC are designated terrorist organisations: the IDF, C.I.A. and Mossad are not.

The U.S. assaults on Venezuela and Iran, to be followed by Cuba, are claimed to be against terrorism or drugs: in fact they are about who controls oil and makes and unmakes governments.

It does not occur to most Americans and Israelis that their own activities are state terror. Instead, they claim a right to defend U.S. hegemony and all Jews’ right to Eretz Israel and greatness as “God’s chosen people.” Palestinians who resist have no such rights and are called subhuman terrorists, and under a new law, Arab Israelis will be executed for terrorism, while Jewish Israelis are not.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis made similar claims about the superiority of their civilisation to justify the Holocaust. No wonder some now detect a resurgence of fascism in the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere. Others observe the sudden rise of anti-Semitism since October 2023. A growing number expect the U.S. war to fail, leaving Israel to do its worst in Iran and Lebanon.

Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis have been added to Al-Qaeda on the list of designated terrorists. The wars that followed culminate in Iran, labelled by Trump a “terrorist regime.” Candidate Trump took Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s advice to “move fast and break things.” He has done it as president. What ends up broken is now the whole world’s concern.

Dr Alison Broinowski AM is an Australian former diplomat, academic and author. Her books and articles concern Australia’s interactions with the world. She is president of Australians for War Powers Reform.

This article is from Declassified Australia.