JERUSALEM (AP) — A charismatic Arab politician, who confidently jousts with Jewish rivals on TV and wants to build a broad Arab-Jewish "alliance of the disadvantaged," has emerged as one of the biggest surprises of Israel's election campaign.

Ayman Odeh, a 40-year-old lawyer, heads the Joint List, a recently established alliance of four small, largely Arab-backed parties. He believes the unprecedented union could dramatically increase Arab turnout at the polls and clout in Israel's parliament, transforming national politics.

Odeh's inclusive leadership style also signals a new confidence among younger Arabs, less conflicted than their parents and grandparents about their place in Israel, analysts say.

Odeh burst onto the national scene last week in a TV debate ahead of March 17 parliament elections. Ultranationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman repeatedly tried to provoke Odeh, the only Arab at the table, claiming Arab politicians "represent terror groups" seeking to destroy Israel from within and berating him as a "fifth column."

Odeh didn't take the bait. Smiling, he noted that his alliance is running well ahead of Lieberman's struggling faction, with polls predicting it could emerge as the third largest group in parliament.

Debating in fluent if accented Hebrew, Odeh said he is deeply rooted in the region and casually underscored his ties to the Holy Land by citing from the Old Testament's Book of Proverbs: "He who digs a pit (for others) will fall into it."

That was also a dig at Lieberman who had successfully pushed legislation last year to raise the threshold for entry to parliament — a move Arab politicians suspect was meant to keep their small parties out of parliament. It seems to have backfired, instead prompting Odeh's Arab-Jewish Hadash party and the three Arab parties to band together into something that may be greater than the sum of its parts.

The alliance has galvanized Arab voters, with polls saying turnout could be several percentage points higher than in 2013, when just 56 percent of eligible Arabs voters cast ballots, about 10 points below the national average.

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In this Sunday, March 1, 2015 photo, Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List, an alliance of four small A …

The Joint List, latest polls say, seems set to win 13 seats in the fractured 120-member Knesset, coming in third behind the center-left Zionist Union and the rightist Likud Party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Odeh has said his goal is 15 seats.

A strong showing of the Joint List would make it harder for Netanyahu to build a ruling coalition — and bringing down the premier is one of Odeh's main goals. However, he says the Joint List would also not formally join a coalition with the Zionist Union, led by Netanyahu's two main challengers, Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni.

"The agenda of any government will be a Zionist agenda. It will continue with the occupation, it will continue with the settlements," Odeh told The Associated Press. "We can't be part of such a government."

Indeed, no Arab party has ever been formally in an Israeli coalition — although they have been critical to propping up center-left governments of the past. This time, with a perhaps bigger bloc in parliament, the Arabs' tacit backing would be especially crucial for the center-left to be able to unseat Netanyahu.

For now, Odeh hopes the Joint List could lead the parliamentary opposition and that its legislators would be able to demand membership in important committees.

Mainly, Odeh wants to build an "alliance of the disadvantaged" among Arabs and Jews. He said arguments about Israel's nature — a Jewish state or a state for all its citizens — fail to recognize the more meaningful division, between rich and poor.

"This is a state of the tycoons against all the disadvantaged in the country," he said.

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In this Sunday, March 1, 2015 photo, Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List, an alliance of four small A …

In the TV debate, he urged Arieh Deri, head of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, to join forces on shared concerns.

Shas supporters, many low-income, are typically hard-line on Palestinian statehood, but Odeh argued that such differences shouldn't prevent ad hoc alliances. Deri said he is open to the idea.

Such pragmatism appeals to many Arab voters, seemingly more concerned about winning equal rights in Israel than seeing a Palestinian state established next door.

Israel's Arab citizens, who make up about 20 percent of a population of 8.2 million, are descendants of Palestinians who remained in their homes during the Mideast war over Israel's 1948 creation, when many others fled or were expelled. They retain ties with Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in 1967, and strongly identify with dreams to set up a Palestinian state in those territories.

But domestic concerns are often more powerful, with Arabs in Israel complaining of long-standing official discrimination.

"We want the Joint List to work on all our problems, to represent our issues in the Knesset," said Dina Mahameed, a 32-year-old nurse from the town of Umm al-Fahm, citing better job opportunities as one of her priorities.

The Joint List, established in January, has cobbled together a shared platform, despite deep differences between socialists, Palestinian nationalists and traditional Islamists on issues such as the role of women and religion in society.

Odeh's Hadash is a veteran socialist party in Israel that emphasizes Arab-Jewish cooperation.

Odeh grew up in a Muslim family but describes himself as someone who has transcended the narrow confines of ethnicity and religion that still loom large in the region. The only Muslim in a Christian school, he proudly notes he got an A in New Testament studies on his high school final exams.

At age 23, he was elected to the municipal council of the Arab-Jewish port city of Haifa. In 2006, he became secretary-general of Hadash.

Meeting with Jewish activists from Hadash this week, he tried to allay concerns that the new alliance would dilute the party's principles, such as gender equality.

Avraham Burg, a former parliament speaker from the center-left Labor Party who endorsed Hadash this year, said he was initially skeptical about the Joint List but is now keeping an open mind, based on assurances from Odeh.

Danny Danon, a senior member of Netanyahu's Likud Party, is waiting to see what policies the Joint List pursues.

He noted that one of the Joint List's leading members is Haneen Zoabi who has expressed understanding for Palestinian militants who kidnapped and killed three Israeli teens last year, comments that outraged many Israelis. If Odeh follows "the path of Zoabi, you will find us fighting his platform," Danon said.

Burg said the Joint List can transform politics, provided it doesn't fall apart after the elections.

"We will witness a new landscape for the entire democratic camp in Israel in which Israeli Arabs are no longer excluded as pariahs," he predicted.

Benghazi (Libya) (AFP) - Libya's National Oil Co declared force majeure Wednesday at 11 oil fields after attacks by Islamists, a legal step protecting it from liability if it cannot fullfil contracts for reasons beyond its control.

Islamist militants seized Al-Bahi and Al-Mabrouk fields on Tuesday and were heading for a third one, at Al-Dahra, said a spokesman for the Libyan oil industry's security service.

Violence and a slowdown at export terminals have already forced a shutdown at Al-Bahi and Al-Mabrouk, about 310 miles (500 kilometres) east of Tripoli, for the past several weeks.

An attack on the sites in February killed 11 people and all staff were evacuated.

Libya has been awash with weapons since the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed Kadhafi, and opposing militias have since been battling for control of its cities and oil wealth.

It has two rival governments and parliaments -- those recognised by the international community sitting in the far east of the country and the others in the capital.

On Tuesday, security chief Colonel Ali al-Hassi said militia warplanes had attacked the major export terminal at Al-Sidra but were driven off without hitting their targets.

In response, planes of the internationally recognised authorities struck Tripoli's militia-controlled Mitiga airport without causing any casualties.

Seoul (AFP) - The US ambassador to South Korea, Mark Lippert, was injured in an attack by a blade-wielding assailant Thursday in Seoul, police and television reports said.

The YTN news channel, citing witnesses and police sources, said a man with a blade concealed in his right hand attacked Lippert as he was attending a breakfast function at the Sejong Cultural Institute in central Seoul.

Video footage, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, showed the ambassador being rushed out of the building holding one hand to his bleeding right cheek, with his other hand smeared with blood.

Lippert, 42, was bundled into a police car and rushed to hospital, where a US embassy spokesman said he was in a "stable" condition.

Security staff and police officers were seen jumping on the assailant, who was dressed in traditional Korean clothes and reportedly shouted an anti-war slogan as he lashed out at the envoy.

The United States and South Korea launched annual joint military exercises this week, triggering a surge in tensions with North Korea.

Nearly 30,000 US troops are permanently stationed in South Korea and the US would assume operational command in the event of an armed conflict with the North.

Lippert, a former US assistant secretary of defense for Asian affairs, took up his post in South Korea in October last year.

Some television reports said the attacker was known to police and had previously assaulted the Japanese ambassador to Seoul in 2010.

US says 'tough challenges' remain in Iran nuclear talks

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U.S. pushes on with talks for Iran nuclear deal

Montreux (Switzerland) (AFP) - The United States said Wednesday tough challenges remained to seal a nuclear deal with Iran, vowing not to be distracted by external politics in its quest to stop Tehran acquiring the atomic bomb.

Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif wrapped up three days of "intense" nuclear negotiations in the Swiss lakeside town of Montreux with still no deal, as a March 31 deadline for a framework agreement looms.

"We've made some progress from where we were and important choices need to be made," Kerry told reporters after the talks, with a senior State Department official adding that "tough challenges" had yet to be resolved.

Zarif sounded more optimistic, telling Iranian news agency ISNA that "despite existing differences, a final deal is not too far off."

But he warned that the thorny issue of sanctions, which Iran wants lifted, risked torpedoing the deal.

"The Western countries, and especially the United States, must decide whether they want a nuclear deal or to continue the sanctions," he said.

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Iran denies it is trying to produce atomic weapons and insists the Bushehr reactor and its other nuc …

- Iran hits back at Israel -

Speaking a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stridently criticised an agreement he said would not stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, Kerry stressed that the purpose of negotiations was to "get the right deal, one that can withstand scrutiny".

Netanyahu warned in his dramatic speech to the US Congress Tuesday that an agreement that was "supposed to prevent nuclear proliferation would instead spark a nuclear arms race in the most dangerous part of the planet."

Kerry said that "any deal we reach would give us the intrusive access and verification measures necessary to confirm that Iran's nuclear facilities are indeed on a peaceful path.

"That would allow us to promptly detect any attempt to cheat or break out and then to respond appropriately."

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US Secretary of State John Kerry (left) and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif resumed ne …

He cautioned that the so-called P5+1 countries -- the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany -- negotiating with Iran would not "be distracted by external factors or politics".

Zarif meanwhile told Iranian state television the sides had made progress on the issue of its Fordo nuclear plant, but still had a way to go on Arak.

The world powers negotiating with Iran want to block the country from enriching uranium at Fordo, and from developing weapons-grade plutonium at its unfinished Arak reactor, a senior US official said last week.

Kerry flew to Riyadh later Wednesday to brief US Gulf allies on the emerging deal and plans to meet in Paris on Saturday with his British, French and German counterparts.

And despite the political drama around Netanyahu's speech, US President Barack Obama shrugged off the address, saying it was nothing new.

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Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of the US Congress in Washi …

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, meanwhile, responded that Israel creates the "greatest danger" in the region.

The Iranian foreign ministry denounced what it called Netanyahu's "continuous lie-spreading about the goals and intentions behind Iran's peaceful nuclear programme".

The growing rapprochement between the United States and its old foe after more than three decades of enmity has raised alarm not just in Israel, but also among US allies in the Gulf who remain wary of Shiite Iran's bid to spread its influence in the Middle East.

In a rare admission on Tuesday, the US military's top officer General Martin Dempsey said Iran's help in an Iraqi offensive to recapture the town of Tikrit could be "a positive thing" providing it did not fuel added sectarianism.

- Talks gather pace -

But US officials insist that even if there is a nuclear deal with Iran, they will not turn a blind eye to the other activities of the country, still branded by Washington as the number one state sponsor of terrorism.

"Regardless of what happens with the nuclear file, we will continue to confront aggressively Iranian expansion in the region, Iranian aggressiveness in the region," a State Department official said.

The next two-way talks between Iran and the United States will be held on March 15, most likely in Geneva, although the venue has not been confirmed.

P5+1 negotiations at political director level will continue in Montreux on Thursday, and a team from the UN atomic watchdog will hold talks in Tehran next week.

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Same-Sex Rulings Stop All Marriages in Parts of Alabama

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Alabama's stand against same-sex marriage regained ground Wednesday after the state's highest court ruled that its ban remains legal, despite federal court pressure to begin issuing licenses to gays and lesbians. But advocates said they're not giving up either — and that the justices in Montgomery will find themselves on history's losing side.

The Alabama Supreme Court ordered county probate judges to uphold the state ban pending a final ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which hears arguments in April on whether gay couples nationwide have a fundamental right to marry and whether states can ban such unions.

Stuck between the state's highest court and a series of federal rulings, many probate judges were at a loss early Wednesday. Mobile County, one of the state's largest, initially announced that it wouldn't issue licenses to anyone, straight or gay.

By mid-day, gay rights advocates couldn't find a single county still granting licenses to same-sex couples.

Dean Lanton said he and his partner, Randy Wells, had planned to wed in Birmingham on Aug. 12, the anniversary of their first date, but now might have to get married out of state because of the decision.

"It was a punch in the gut. It was out of the blue," said Lanton, 54. "It's just Alabama politics, deja vu from the 1960s."

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Ben Cooper, chairman of Equality Alabama pauses after speaking to the media about the decision to ha …

Montgomery County Probate Judge Steven Reed, a Democrat and one of the first to issue gay-marriage licenses following a January ruling by U.S. District Judge Callie Granade in Mobile, said he was duty-bound to turn gays and lesbians away again, for now. But he also suggested that he would join a new round of appeals.

"I feel pretty safe in saying we will be filing something with the court," Reed told The Associated Press. "I don't think we'll be at the end of it regardless of what we do, until the (U.S.) Supreme Court rules."

The all-Republican court ruled 7-1 that Alabama's 68 probate judges must stop issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, despite a ruling by Granade that the ban is unconstitutional.

They gave probate judges five days to respond if they believe otherwise, but speaking out could be politically risky in the deeply conservative state, where Alabama's justices and probate judges must run for office after each term.

Before Tuesday's ruling, 48 of the state's 67 counties were acknowledging that Alabama had become the 37th U.S. state where gays can legally wed, according to the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for gay marriage nationwide. By Wednesday afternoon, the group couldn't find any county issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

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FILE - In this Feb. 9, 2015, file photo, Shanté Wolfe, left, and Tori Sisson, right, wait for their …

Same-sex couples will likely appeal up to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary to block the latest state supreme court ruling, said Ben Cooper, chairman of Equality Alabama. "It's important to understand that this is not nearly the end of this," he said.

Last month, the top court declined to stay Granade's order, with only Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissenting. But the state justices didn't accept that as a warning of eventual defeat.

"The Alabama Supreme Court has now demonstrated a willingness to defy and nullify a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and the federal district court for the southern district of Alabama," said David Kennedy, who represented the couple whose case resulted in Granade's ruling.

The 134-page decision did not explicitly invalidate the marriages of hundreds of same-sex couples in recent weeks, but described their licenses as "purported." It said the state doesn't discriminate because it bans both men and women from marrying people of the same sex. It called this rational, because it encourages ties "between children and their biological parents." It dismissed the argument that anyone in love should be able to wed, saying that if so, polygamy would be legal.

At the Jefferson County Courthouse in Birmingham, where about 200 same-sex couples received wedding licenses the first day they were issued and ministers performed marriage ceremonies in the park outside, probate workers said Wednesday that only opposite-sex licenses were now available.

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In this Feb. 17, 2015, file photo, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore poses in front the the American f …

Two women who came in for a license unaware of the decision were refused, said a worker who spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn't authorized to release information to the news media.

Alabama has done more than any other state to resist same-sex unions, Human Rights Campaign Legal Director Sarah Warbelow said.

"It really is an outlier at this point," she said. "Most states, when they were instructed by the federal government to issue marriage licenses, have done so quietly and in stride."

But Elmore County Probate Judge John Enslen, who had refused Granade's order, applauded the state's justices on his Facebook page, saying he's "saddened for my nation that the word 'marriage' has been hijacked by couples who cannot procreate."

Chief Justice Roy Moore, who had told probate judges to ignore Granade's initial order, recused himself.

Justice Greg Shaw was alone in full dissent. He called it "unfortunate" that federal courts refused a delay pending a final U.S. Supreme Court ruling, but said his fellow justices have created more confusion by "venturing into unchartered waters."

The Southern Baptist-affiliated Alabama Citizens Action Program and the Alabama Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, had asked for Tuesday's ruling, "concerned about the family and the danger that same-sex marriage will have," said Joe Godfrey, executive director of ACAP.

But an attorney for couples who sued said the state justices showed "callous disregard" for their rights.

"Even as nationwide marriage equality is on the horizon, the Alabama Supreme Court is determined to be on the wrong side of history," said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

Tuesday's state high court decision seems to have rebuilt the barrier.

"It's very frustrating. I had done made up my mind we were going to issue the licenses and I thought that was it," said Probate Judge Leon Archer in rural Tallapoosa County, which also stopped issuing marriage licenses to gay couples Wednesday. "And I think that is going to be the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in June."

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Associated Press Writer Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.