Sleepless nights for mothers of Palestinians jailed in West Bank

BERLIN: Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday welcomed the release of two German-Israeli hostages captured by Palestinian militants in the October 7, 2023 attack and urged the release of all remaining captives.
Earlier, militants in Gaza freed five Thai and three Israeli hostages, among them two German-Israeli dual nationals, 80-year-old Gadi Moses and 29-year-old Arbel Yehud.
“We are relieved and rejoice with all the hostages who have been released,” Scholz said in a post on the social media platform X.

“All of the hostages must be released and all mortal remains of the deceased returned to the families.”
Thursday’s exchange is the third to take place under the current Gaza ceasefire.
Israel is to release 110 prisoners, including 30 minors, in exchange for the three Israelis, said the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also hailed the “blessing” of the release of Moses and Yehud, who she said had been “tormented by Hamas until the end.”
“Their strength moves me deeply,” she wrote in an X post in German and Hebrew, but added that “both have lost close relatives through cruel Hamas terror” and that their “worlds... are no longer the same.”
She said a second phase for the ceasefire was essential.
During the current first phase of the deal, the terms of the second phase are to be negotiated, with the aim of freeing the last hostages in Gaza and bringing the war to a definitive end.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he had written to Moses’s and Yehud’s families to share his “deep joy” at the news of their release.
“We can scarcely imagine what Arbel Yehud and Gabi Moses have been through,” Steinmeier said.

GENEVA: The UN human rights chief appealed on Thursday for $500 million in funding for 2025 to support its work investigating human rights abuses around the world, from Syria to Sudan, warning that lives hang in the balance.
The UN human rights office (OHCHR) has been grappling with chronic funding shortages that many expect will be exacerbated by cuts to US foreign aid by President Donald Trump.
US funding for OHCHR has gone to monitoring human rights violations in northern Ethiopia after the 2020-2022 civil war and peace-building programs in Colombia, the US Agency for International Development website showed.
The annual appeal is for donations beyond the allocated UN funds from member states’ fees, which make up just a fraction of the office’s needs.
“In 2025, we expect no let-up in major challenges to human rights,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk told member states in a speech at the UN in Geneva.
“I am very concerned that if we do not reach our funding targets in 2025, we will leave people ... to struggle and possibly fail, without adequate support,” he said.
He said any shortfall would mean more people remain in illegal detention; governments could continue with discriminatory policies; violations may go undocumented; and human rights defenders could lose protection.
“In short, lives are at stake,” he said, adding that his office last year helped release over 3,000 people in arbitrary detention and supported more than 10,000 survivors of modern slavery and over 49,000 survivors of torture and their families.
A number of countries including the European Union voiced support for OHCHR’s work in the meeting, with China saying it was willing to continue voluntary funding, which in previous years has amounted to about $4 million.
The human rights office gets about 5 percent of the regular UN budget, but the majority of its funding comes voluntarily in response to its annual appeal.
Western states typically give the most, with the United States donating $35 million last year, or about 15 percent of the total received in 2024, followed by the European Commission, UN data from end-November showed. Still, the office received only about half of the $500 million it sought last year.