“Israel is, unfortunately, sabotaging the process, trying to stop and trying to spoil it,” he said.

The legislative elections are taking place on 22 May. A presidential election is then also set for 31 July.

The European Union in February asked the Israeli government for permission to send an election observer mission to both.

But they have yet to receive a response from Israel, derailing any chance of sending a fully-fledged mission for the 22 May polls.

Shtayyeh said all the Palestinian political factions have agreed to hold the election, noting there are some 1,400 listed candidates.

Of those, 67 are based in politically charged Jerusalem.

“These people tried to have a meeting, one single meeting, in one of the hotels in Jerusalem, The Ambassador Hotel – Israeli authorities did not allow the meeting to take place,” said Shtayyeh.

He accused the Israeli authorities of blocking all attempts to set up voter-registration stations in the occupied parts of the city.

“This is totally and contrary to the agreements we had signed with Israel,” he said, noting that Palestinians were able to vote in East Jerusalem in elections held in 1996, 2005, and 2006.

“It is going to put us in a very awkward situation because ‘damned if we do and damned if we don’t’,” he added.

He also accused Israel of committing crimes and human rights violations.

Those remarks solicited a rebuke from Spanish centre-right MEP Antonio López-Istúriz White, who chairs the delegation to Israel.

“This is not a TV reality show,” he said to Shtayyeh.

Shtayyeh countered by labeling López-Istúriz White “a pro-Israel lobby”, noting that the crimes have been documented by international organisations.

Israel snipers have shot out the legs of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, also documented by a EUobserver visit in 2019.

Israeli forces have also targeted children, medics and journalists, according to a UN investigation.

Other pro-Israeli MEPs also chimed in.

French liberal MEP Bernard Guetta proposed turning Jordan into Palestine, given a large number of refugees.

Swedish conservative MEP Charlie Weimers cited Bible verses, accusing Palestinians of hypocrisy.

Both were rebuked by Shtayyeh.

“This is really a shocking statement by you, sir,” he said of Guetta.

Meanwhile, some 57 MEPs are piling on the pressure for Israel to grant the EU permission to launch its election observer mission.

All signed a letter demanding Aharon Leshno-Yaar, Israel’s ambassador to the EU, green light the observer mission.

“I hope that we will get a response to it, especially since it was representative of the five biggest parties in the parliament,” said Swedish socialist MEP Evin Incirs, who helped draft the letter.

Incirs said a number of MEPs have also demanded: “an urgent meeting” with EU Parliament president, David Sassoli.

The chair of the European parliament’s delegation to Palestine, Manu Pineda, made similar statements.

He pointed out that the Oslo Accords gave the European Union the obligation to coordinate observer delegations.

But one EU official, who asked not to be named, said it is no longer possible to send a full EU monitoring mission to observe the 22 May elections.

The monitoring requires advance preparation, including security checks.

Instead, a much smaller mission would go, if granted permission.

But it will not be an official EU mission, meaning it cannot make public its reports.

Others fear that some MEPs may also go on their own, and then make statements in the name of the European Parliament.

This month alone, China could import between 867,000 (barrels per day) bpd, according to Reuters’ Refinitiv data, and 900,000 bpd, according to oilfield services company Canary. And then the flow of US oil into China will decline, and it will decline sharply, Reuters’ Clyde Russell wrote this week. The reason as simple as it is worrying. The US crude that has been going into China since July—and reaching major records in terms of volume, with the July daily average alone up 139 percent on the year—was bought much earlier, in April, May, and June. This was oil bought when West Texas Intermediate was trading at multi-year lows. By June it had recovered to about $40, Russell notes, so purchases since then have been more modest.

But here is the worrying part: much of the oil price recovery we’ve seen since this spring was caused by rising Chinese imports, including from the United States. Rising imports are traditionally taken to mean improving demand, but this time this has not been the case entirely. Chinese refiners have been stocking up on crude more because of the historically low prices than to satisfy growing demand.

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In all fairness, oil demand has been seen as recovering pretty faster after the end of the lockdowns there but since China is not an isolated economy, its refining industry needs a recovery elsewhere in Asia and globally, and this has been slow in coming. Now, none other than OPEC is warning that a second wave of Covid-19 infections—already visible in parts of Europe, for example—will further slow down demand recovery, which will unavoidably affect Chinese oil imports.

According to Canary CEO Dave Eberhart, however, China will continue buying a lot of US oil ahead of the US elections. Beijing, Eberhart wrote for Forbes, would want to stay on Trump’s good side as much as possible in case he wins a second term. Reuters’ Russell is of a different opinion: he cites preliminary import estimates that point to a sharp decline in October to 500,000 bpd of US oil flowing into China and a further decline in November. For Russell, it’s all about the price. For Eberhart, it’s also about politics and the trade war.

“While importing US crude often doesn’t make commercial sense for China’s refiners, Beijing has directed them to continue buying as the election approaches—a sign that China knows that the trade issue with Trump will only intensify if the president wins a second term,” Eberhart wrote.

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Yet not everyone agrees that politics will trump the economy. In fact, data from Chinese market research firms suggests private refiners, if not the state giants, may sharply cut their intake of foreign oil this month and next. After all, storage space is finite and Chinese energy companies have been filling it up for months now while demand has been improving but is yet to return to growth mode, even in China with its rebounding economy.

It looks like the dominant opinion is for a decline in Chinese oil imports, from the US and elsewhere, in the coming months, not least because of lower refinery run rates. Reuters reported earlier this week refinery runs are set to be cut by 5-10 percent beginning this month because of a crude oil glut and weak fuel export margins. This would mean more pressure on prices. And this is not all. Some analysts expect that China may start selling the oil it bought on the cheap in the spring. Now that would be really bad news for oil prices.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com