Gaza war in its 12th month with truce hopes slim

Gaza war in its 12th month with truce hopes slim
A Palestinian civil defence member stands near a building on fire that was hit by Israeli bombardment in the Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in the north of Gaza City on September 3, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 08 September 2024
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Gaza war in its 12th month with truce hopes slim

Gaza war in its 12th month with truce hopes slim
  • The chances of a truce that would swap Palestinian prisoners jailed by Israel for hostages held by Hamas appeared slim, with both sides sticking doggedly to their positions
  • According to the United Nations human rights office, most of the dead are women and children

The war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza entered its 12th month Saturday with little sign of respite for the Palestinian territory or hope for Israeli hostages still held there.
The chances of a truce that would swap Palestinian prisoners jailed by Israel for hostages held by Hamas appeared slim, with both sides sticking doggedly to their positions.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have all been mediating in an effort to bring about a ceasefire in the war, which authorities in Gaza say has killed at least 40,939 people.
According to the United Nations human rights office, most of the dead are women and children.
Of the 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the attack, 97 remain in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Scores were released during a one-week truce in November.
Israel’s announcement last Sunday that the bodies of six hostages including a US-Israeli citizen had been recovered shortly after being killed sparked grief and anger in Israel.
Thousands of demonstrators rallied on Saturday evening in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities, demanding the government secure the release of hostages.
They carried banners that read “The blood is on your hands” and “Who’s next.”
International pressure to end the war was further underlined by Friday’s fatal shooting in the occupied West Bank of Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who was demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the territory.
Eygi’s family demanded an independent investigation into her death, saying her life “was taken needlessly, unlawfully, and violently by the Israeli military.”
The UN rights office said Israeli forces killed Eygi, 26, with a “shot in the head.”
Turkiye said she was killed by “Israeli occupation soldiers,” while the United States called her death “tragic” and pressed Israel to investigate.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan denounced Israel as a “barbaric” state and urged Muslim nations to forge an “alliance” against Israel, saying: “It is an Islamic duty for us to stand against Israel’s state terror. It is a religious duty.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz responded by saying that Erdogan “continues to throw the Turkish people into the fire of hatred and violence for the sake of his Hamas friends.”
Around 490,000 people live in Israeli settlements — illegal under international law — in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in 1967.
Since Hamas’s October 7 attack, Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 690 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Israel says at least 23 Israelis, including members of the security forces, were killed during the same period in Palestinian attacks.
Eygi’s killing came on the day Israeli forces withdrew from a deadly 10-day raid in the West Bank city of Jenin, where AFP journalists reported residents returning home to widespread destruction.
The pullout came with Israel at loggerheads with the United States over talks to forge a truce in the Gaza war.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said “90 percent is agreed” and urged Israel and Hamas to finalize a deal. Netanyahu denied this, telling Fox News: “It’s not close.”
Hamas is demanding Israel’s complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, saying the group agreed months ago to a proposal outlined by US President Joe Biden.

AFP reporters said air strikes and shelling rocked Gaza on Saturday, killing at least 17 people according to civil defense officials, the Palestinian Red Crescent and witnesses.
Among those who died were a woman and a child in an air strike north of Gaza City, while four people were killed in another strike targeting a flat in Bureij camp.
In the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, the civil defense said an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people killed at least three people and wounded more than 20.
Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, a Hamas ally, also exchanged fire.
Hezbollah had announced a string of attacks on Israeli troops and positions near the border on Saturday, while Israel’s military said it had intercepted missiles detected crossing from Lebanon and struck a Hezbollah launch site in the country’s south.
Lebanon’s health ministry said three emergency personnel were killed and two others wounded in an Israeli attack on a civil defense team putting out fires in south Lebanon.
Hezbollah later announced retaliatory rocket fire targeting a town in northern Israel “in response to the enemy attacks... and particularly the attack” that killed the emergency workers.


Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps

Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps
Updated 18 February 2025
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Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps

Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps
  • The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups

JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of Palestinians living in refugee camps in the occupied West Bank have left their homes as a weeks-long Israeli offensive has demolished houses and torn up vital infrastructure in the heavily built up townships, Palestinian authorities said.
Israeli forces began their operation in the refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Jan. 21, deploying hundreds of troops and bulldozers that demolished houses and dug up roads, driving almost all of the camp’s residents out.
“We don’t know what’s going on in the camp but there is continuous demolition and roads being dug up,” said Mohammed Al-Sabbagh, head of the Jenin camp services committee.

An Israeli army excavator demolishes a residential building in the Tulkarem camp for Palestinian refugees during an ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)

The operation, which Israel says is aimed at thwarting Iranian-backed militant groups in the West Bank, has since been extended to other camps, notably the Tulkarm refugee camp and the nearby Nur Shams camp, both of which have also been devastated. The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups. They have been raided repeatedly by the Israeli military but the current operation, which began as a ceasefire was agreed in Gaza, has been on an unusually large scale. According to figures from the Palestinian Authority, around 17,000 people have now left Jenin refugee camp, leaving the site almost completely deserted, while in Nur Shams 6,000 people, or about two thirds of the total, have left, with another 10,000 leaving from Tulkarm camp.
“The ones who are left are trapped,” said Nihad Al-Shawish, head of the Nur Shams camp services committee. “The Civil Defense, the Red Crescent and the Palestinian security forces brought them some food yesterday but the army is still bulldozing and destroying the camp.” The Israeli raids have demolished dozens of houses and torn up large stretches of roadway as well as cutting off water and power, but the military has denied forcing residents to leave their homes.
“People obviously have the possibility to move or go where they want, if they will. But if they don’t, they’re allowed to stay,” Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters.
The operation began as Israel moved to banish the main UN Palestinian relief organization UNRWA from its headquarters in East Jerusalem and cut it off from any contact with Israeli officials.
The ban, which took effect at the end of January, has hit UNRWA’s work in the West Bank and Gaza, where it provides aid for millions of Palestinians in the refugee camps.
Israel has accused UNRWA of cooperating with Hamas and said some UNRWA workers even took part in the Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that set off the 15-month war in Gaza.

 


More than one million Syrians return to their homes: UN

People walk past shops in Homs on February 10, 2025. (AFP)
People walk past shops in Homs on February 10, 2025. (AFP)
Updated 19 February 2025
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More than one million Syrians return to their homes: UN

People walk past shops in Homs on February 10, 2025. (AFP)
  • “Since the fall of the regime in Syria we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees

GENEVA: More than one million people have returned to their homes in Syria after the overthrow of Bashar Assad, including 280,000 refugees who came back from abroad, the UN said on Tuesday.
Assad was toppled in December in a rebel offensive, putting an end to his family’s decades-long grip on power in the Middle Eastern country and bookmarking a civil war that broke out in 2011, with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions from their homes.
The Islamist-led rebels whose offensive ousted Assad have sought to assure the international community that they have broken with their past and will respect the rights of minorities.
“Since the fall of the regime in Syria we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote on the X social media platform.
“Early recovery efforts must be bolder and faster, though, otherwise people will leave again: this is now urgent!” he said.
At a meeting in Paris in mid-February, some 20 countries, including Arab nations, Turkiye, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan agreed at the close of a conference in Paris to “work together to ensure the success of the transition in a process led by Syria.”
The meeting’s final statement also pledged support for Syria’s new authorities in the fight against “all forms of terrorism and extremism.”
 

 


Israeli military says it struck weapons belonging to former Syrian administration in southern Syria

Israeli military says it struck weapons belonging to former Syrian administration in southern Syria
Updated 19 February 2025
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Israeli military says it struck weapons belonging to former Syrian administration in southern Syria

Israeli military says it struck weapons belonging to former Syrian administration in southern Syria

CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it struck weapons which it said belonged to the former Syrian administration in southern Syria.

 


Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara

Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara
Updated 18 February 2025
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Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara

Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara
  • France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining its ties with Morocco

ALGIERS: Algeria on Tuesday denounced a visit by French Culture Minister Rachida Dati to Western Sahara, after Paris recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory, as “objectionable on multiple levels.”
The vast desert territory is a former Spanish colony largely controlled by Morocco but claimed for decades by the Algeria-backed Polisario Front.
Dati, who described her visit as “historic,” launched with Moroccan Culture Minister Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid a French cultural mission in the territory’s main city, Laayoune.
An Algerian foreign ministry statement posted on social media Tuesday said the visit “reflects blatant disregard for international legality by a permanent member of the UN Security Council.”
“This visit reinforces Morocco’s fait accompli in Western Sahara, a territory where the decolonization process remains incomplete and the right to self-determination unfulfilled,” it said.
Dati’s trip, a first for a French official, “reflects the detestable image of a former colonial power in solidarity with a new one,” the statement added.
The United Nations considers Western Sahara to be a “non-self-governing territory” and has had a peacekeeping mission there since 1991, whose stated aim is to organize a referendum on the territory’s future.
But Rabat has repeatedly rejected any vote in which independence is an option, instead proposing autonomy under Morocco.
France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining its ties with Morocco.
But in July, French President Emmanuel Macron said Rabat’s autonomy plan was the “only basis” to resolve the Western Sahara dispute.
Algeria has backed the separatist Polisario Front and cut diplomatic relations with Rabat in 2021 — the year after Morocco normalized ties with Israel under a deal that awarded it US recognition of its annexation of the Western Sahara.
In October, the UN Security Council called for parties to “resume negotiations” to reach a “lasting and mutually acceptable solution” to the Western Sahara dispute.
In November 2020, the Polisario Front said it was ending a 29-year ceasefire with Morocco after Moroccan troops were deployed to the far south of the territory to remove independence supporters blocking the only road to Mauritania.
The Polisario Front claims the route is illegal, arguing that it did not exist when the ceasefire was established in 1991.
 

 


Kurdistan region’s pipeline restart ready to go, foreign minister says

Kurdistan region’s pipeline restart ready to go, foreign minister says
Updated 18 February 2025
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Kurdistan region’s pipeline restart ready to go, foreign minister says

Kurdistan region’s pipeline restart ready to go, foreign minister says
  • Baghdad has periodically withheld the Kurdistan region’s share of the federal budget to try to stop it from exporting oil independently

BAGHDAD: A major pipeline connecting Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region to Turkiye is ready to reopen and resume exports, the Kurdish foreign minister said on Tuesday, potentially ending a dispute between Baghdad and Irbil that led to the closure of the pipeline in 2023.
Foreign Minister Safeen Dizayee declined to say when the pipeline would reopen but said it would mark a turning point in relations between Kurdistan and Baghdad.
Iraq’s oil minister said on Monday the Iraq-Turkiye pipeline (ITP) will resume next week.
“All arrangements that were set on the table have been agreed to, with the aim to prepare for re-exports. There shouldn’t be any hiccups. The legal aspects have been met, the technical aspects are in place,” Dizayee told Reuters by phone. “The button just has to be pushed to increase production and then re-export.”
The oil flows were halted by Turkiye in March 2023 after the International Chamber of Commerce ordered Ankara to pay Baghdad damages of $1.5 billion for unauthorized pipeline exports by the Kurdistan Regional Government between 2014 and 2018.
Negotiations to restart the pipeline have been ongoing, with US officials participating in some of the talks.
Resuming oil exports will boost the Kurdistan region’s budget, Dizayee said.
“This means Kurdistan will benefit from the federal budget and hopefully this will end the saga of (civil servants’) salaries coming or not coming, received in dribs and drabs,” Dizayee said.
Baghdad has periodically withheld the Kurdistan region’s share of the federal budget to try to stop it from exporting oil independently.
Oil producers in the Kurdistan region have had to wind down production without an export route. It will likely take some time for them to restart their oil wells and for the pipeline to use its full capacity. Before it was shut down, it transported around 450,000 barrels per day.
“They’ve invested a lot. It was a risk they took and it must pay off. They [the companies] need assurances that their investment will not be down the drain,” Dizayee said. “Compensation is something that needs to be discussed.”
An international consultancy will be brought in to do an assessment of the cost of production, expenses, cost recovery and the production sharing agreements, he said.