Ireland calls Israeli demand to move UN troops ‘outrageous’
“It is outrageous that the Israeli Defense Forces have threatened this peacekeeping force,” President Michael Higgins said
“Indeed, Israel is demanding that the entire UNIFIL operating under UN mandates walk away“
Updated 05 October 2024
AFP
DUBLIN: The president of Ireland on Saturday sharply criticized Israel’s demand that UN peacekeepers leave their positions in southern Lebanon.
“It is outrageous that the Israeli Defense Forces have threatened this peacekeeping force and sought to have them evacuate the villages they are defending,” President Michael Higgins said in a statement.
“Indeed, Israel is demanding that the entire UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) operating under UN mandates walk away.”
Ireland accounts for 347 of the 10,000 soldiers serving in the UNIFIL forces, which are charged with maintaining peace in the south of Lebanon.
Earlier Saturday, UNIFIL said it had rejected Israeli demands that it “relocate” some positions ahead of Israeli ground operations against Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Higgins called the demand “an insult to the most important global institution.”
Fighting between Hezbollah and Israel has intensified since the start of ground incursions by Israeli troops in southern Lebanon earlier this week.
Some 1,110 people have died in Lebanon and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes because of the fighting.
Trump says Palestinians would ‘love’ to leave Gaza
Gazans have also denounced Trump’s idea, with residents in the southern city of Rafah telling AFP “we will not leave”
Updated 14 sec ago
AFP
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said Palestinians would “love” to leave their embattled homeland in Gaza and live elsewhere if given an option.
They would “love to leave Gaza,” he told reporters as he signed a raft of initiatives at the White House. “I would think that they would be thrilled.”
“I don’t know how they could want to stay. It’s a demolition site,” he said, more than 15 months after US ally Israel launched a punishing invasion of the territory in retaliation for attacks launched by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Trump spoke as he was due to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the truce with Hamas. He is likely to urge his ally to stick to the deal, parts of which have yet to be finalized.
Trump has previously touted a plan to “clean out” Gaza, calling for Palestinians to move to Egypt or Jordan.
Both countries have flatly rejected this, and on Tuesday their leaders stressed “the need to commit to the united Arab position” that would help achieve peace, according to the Egyptian presidency.
“Well they may have said that, but a lot of people have said things to me,” Trump told the journalists at the White House Tuesday.
Gazans have also denounced Trump’s idea, with residents in the southern city of Rafah telling AFP “we will not leave.”
But Trump appeared undettered.
“If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places, there’s plenty of money in the area for sure, I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had just decades and decades of death,” he said.
When a reporter pressed him on where such places might be, he suggested they could be in Jordan, Egypt or “other places. You could have more than two.”
“You’d have people living in a place that could be very beautiful, and safe and nice. Gaza’s been a disaster for decades.”
When another journalist asked if the United States would pay for such a move, he said that there were “plenty of people that would in the area, they have a lot of money,” and citing Saudi Arabia as one example.
“They have no alternative right now,” he added, when an AFP journalist asked if such a move would amount to forcibly displacing Palestinians.
“They’re there because they have no alternative. What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.... I would think that they would be thrilled to do it.”
“I think they’d love to leave Gaza,” he said. “What is Gaza?“
He said he did “not necessarily” support Israelis moving into the area instead.
“I just support cleaning it up and doing something with it. But it’s failed for many decades. And somebody will be sitting here in ten years or 20 years from now and they’ll be going through the same stuff.”
Assad-era minister turns himself in to new Syria authorities
Mohammed Al-Shaar was an nterior minister from 2011 to 2018 at the height of Syria’s civil war
He was the target of EU sanctions for involvement in 'violence against demonstrators'
Updated 05 February 2025
AFP
DAMASCUS: A former minister under ousted Syrian president Bashar Assad has turned himself in, the interior ministry said Tuesday, making him one of the highest-profile figures captured by the new authorities.
“The minister of interior in the government of the defunct regime, Mohammed Al-Shaar, surrendered himself to the General Security Department,” an interior ministry statement said.
Shaar, the target of US and EU sanctions, was interior minister from 2011 to 2018 at the height of Syria’s 13-year civil war.
The security forces of the new authorities, which toppled the Assad government late last year, had been looking for Shaar and “raided sites where he had been hiding in the past few days,” the interior ministry said.
Since 2011, Shaar has been under European Union sanctions for involvement in “violence against demonstrators” who took to the streets that year to demand democracy.
The government’s brutal crackdown on the peaceful protests sparked a complex civil war that has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.
Shaar was also among top officials, including Assad, who were slapped with US sanctions in 2011.
In 2012, a Lebanese lawyer filed a lawsuit against Shaar, accusing him of having ordered hundreds of killings in Tripoli in 1986 when he was in charge of security in the northern Lebanon port city.
Also in 2012, Shaar survived two bomb attacks.
In December, he sustained light wounds to the shoulder after a deadly suicide bombing at the ministry, a Syrian security source told AFP at the time.
That attack was claimed by Al-Nusra Front, the jihadist precursor of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group which led the lightning rebel offensive that toppled Assad on December 8.
And in July 2012, Shaar narrowly escaped death in a bombing that killed four senior security officials including the defense minister and Assad’s brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat.
Assad himself has fled to Russia, an ally of his defunct government, and some former officials in his administration are also believed to have left Syria.
Jewish population in West Bank keeps rising. Settlers hope Trump will accelerate growth
Gordon’s group projects the Jewish population in the West Bank will surpass 600,000 by 2030. There are roughly 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank
Updated 04 February 2025
AP
BEIT EL, West Bank: The Jewish population in the West Bank grew at twice the rate of the general Israeli population last year, according to an advocacy group that hopes the Trump administration will support policies that help accelerate the growth of settlements in the occupied territory.
The West Bank’s Jewish-settler population rose by roughly 2.3 percent — over 12,000 people — last year, reaching 529,450, according to a report by West Bank Jewish Population Stats.
That was a slight dip from the 2.9 percent growth rate in 2023, but roughly double the 1.1 percent population growth rate inside Israel proper.
The number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank could grow “much higher” under the administration of US President Donald Trump, Baruch Gordon, the director of the group that publishes the data, said Tuesday.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and has built about 130 settlements and dozens of settlement outposts in a bid to cement its control over the territory. The Palestinians seek the area as the heartland of a future state and say the presence of settlements makes independence impossible.
Nearly all of the international community, including the former Biden administration, opposes the settlements as obstacles to peace.
The International Court of Justice ruled in July that the occupation of the West Bank was illegal and said that it violated Palestinians’ right to self-determination. It said Israeli policy in the territories constituted “systemic discrimination” based on religion, race or ethnic origin, and that Israel had already effectively annexed large parts of the territory.
During his first term, Trump broke with the international community and years of American policy. He developed close ties with settler leaders and presented a peace plan that would allow Israel to annex large parts of the West Bank and keep all of its settlements.
That track record has raised hopes among Israel’s settlers that they could be entering a new period of rapid growth. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition is dominated by settler supporters and he has placed a prominent settler leader, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, in charge of settlement planning.
“I think you’re going to see an explosion of the construction here,” Gordon said.
Gordon’s group projects the Jewish population in the West Bank will surpass 600,000 by 2030. There are roughly 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank.
The report does not include east Jerusalem, where it estimates 340,000 Jewish settlers live. Israel says these settlers are residents of neighborhoods of its capital, while the international community considers these areas to be settlements.
Inside the gated settlement of Beit El, on a hilltop abutting several Palestinian villages in the central West Bank, construction is continuing apace. It’s a rapidly developing community, where high-rise luxury condominiums finished last year can now house 300 families and construction workers are working on a new dormitory for a Jewish seminary.
Settlers like Gordon say Israel must keep the territory for security and spiritual reasons. “This is our biblical heartland,” he says.
But critics say the settlement expansion is a recipe for continued conflict. The military last month launched a large-scale operation in the northern West Bank last month, in part as a response to militant attacks on settlements.
The United Nations says over 800 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, triggered Israel’s war in Gaza. It also has reported a jump in settler attacks on Palestinians.
Israel says its military offensives are aimed at militants, but stone throwers and uninvolved civilians have also been killed in the crackdown.
NEW YORK CITY: In December, as Israeli troops mounted a fresh assault on Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, its director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, refused to comply with repeated orders to abandon his pediatric patients.
Just weeks earlier, the Palestinian doctor had buried his 15-year-old son, Ibrahim, in the hospital’s courtyard after he was killed in a drone strike. In November, he suffered shrapnel injuries of his own.
Even as Israeli forces mounted further air attacks around the hospital — claiming it was being used to shelter Palestinian militants — Dr. Abu Safiya refused to abandon his post until he was finally detained.
He was last seen in a now-iconic photograph walking toward a column of Israeli tanks on a debris-strewn street. Reports suggest he is in Israeli custody, although no charges have been brought against him.
A paramedic carries a girl that was rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building to receive medical care at the Ahli Arab hospital. (AFP/File)
“Dr. Hussam is representative of the attack on health care workers,” Dr. Thaer Ahmad, an emergency room physician from Chicago who recently returned from volunteering in Gaza, told a press conference at the UN headquarters in New York City on Jan. 31.
“Even wearing a white coat was deadly,” he said, describing what he witnessed in the embattled enclave. “We have normalized the killing of healthcare workers. That’s not just going to be a problem in Gaza — it’s going to be a problem worldwide. We need Dr. Safiya out.”
Israel has consistently denied deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, claiming that Palestinian militants have used hospitals and residential buildings to store weapons and launch attacks, employing their occupants as human shields.
Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza, some 62,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the latest estimates, and much of the enclave’s infrastructure left in ruins by Israeli bombardment.
Dr. Ahmad was among four American doctors speaking after having returned from Gaza. While war’s horrors are often unfathomable from afar, the visceral realities they described have been burned into their memories forever.
They spoke of treating wounded children, watching Gaza’s healthcare system collapse, and struggling to save lives amid overwhelming destruction.
Palestinians inspect the damage at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital after the Israeli military withdrew from the complex housing the hospital on April 1, 2024. (AFP/File)
In the aftermath of the fragile ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, which came into effect on Jan. 19, the American doctors were at pains to highlight Gaza’s ongoing medical needs and the obstacles that healthcare workers face.
Despite a lull in the fighting, they warned that the suffering would continue and the death toll would rise if aid was not allowed to flow freely. By sharing their accounts, they hoped to encourage a coordinated effort to address the crisis.
Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon who has worked in crisis zones in Ukraine, Haiti, and Zimbabwe, described the impossible situation he encountered. “I’ve never seen a place like Gaza in my life,” he said.
During his brief time volunteering at the European Hospital in Al-Fukhari near Khan Yunis between March and April 2024, Dr. Sidhwa experienced the destruction of Gaza’s medical infrastructure.
He described a constant stream of patients — many of them children — in urgent need of care. Although there were only four operating rooms in the European Hospital, some 250 people needed daily wound care, he said.
Even more grim was the lack of trained medical personnel. According to Dr. Sidhwa, roughly one in 10 healthcare workers in Gaza have fled, and around one in 20 have been killed.
Many of Gaza’s most experienced doctors — those who ran departments and performed complex surgeries — are either dead, detained, or missing. The destruction of both human and physical resources has left the healthcare system on the brink of collapse.
An Israeli soldiers carrying out operations inside Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. (AFP/File)
As a result, several of Gaza’s most vulnerable have been evacuated by foreign governments and aid groups to receive care abroad. However, those who are evacuated are given no guarantee that they and their families will be permitted to return to their homes afterward.
“Under this ceasefire agreement, there is supposed to be a mechanism in place for medical evacuations,” said Dr. Ahmad. “We’ve still not seen that process spelled out.
“Without a second phase of the ceasefire and a clear plan for medical evacuations, we are setting up an illusion of hope for the people of Gaza that will be shattered the moment the fighting resumes.”
Dr. Ahmad said there were gaping holes in the medical evacuation process.
“Under the current ceasefire agreement, we are told that injured combatants will be allowed to exit through the Rafah crossing, but there is no formal process for evacuating children, even though they are equally at risk,” he said.
“If we can let an injured combatant out with three companions then surely we can ensure that children can be evacuated with their caregivers.”
This view shows the infant incubators at the ransacked neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) inside the heavily-damaged Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia. (AFP/File)
Dr. Ayesha Khan, an emergency medicine specialist from Stanford University who also spoke at the press conference, said at least 2,500 children in Gaza are at risk of dying without evacuation or proper care.
“Families are living in constant fear,” she said. “If they manage to get their child out, there is no guarantee they can return, and that uncertainty is causing chaos.
“We know that chaos in a medical system increases mortality by 30 percent. Just by creating confusion, uncertainty, you are creating a 30 percent more effective killing machine.
“And this is exactly where the UN secretary-general, the UN organizations can help, because organizations bring organization and what we are advocating for, very strongly, is to have a centralized process, clear guidelines, and to have COGAT put in writing what is needed, both for what can enter into Gaza and what is needed to exit.”
COGAT is the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories — a unit in the Israeli Ministry of Defense tasked with overseeing civilian policy in the West Bank, as well as facilitating logistical coordination between Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Dr. Khan, who volunteered in Gaza between late Nov. 2024 and early Jan. 2025, described her shock at the severity of the injuries she witnessed, particularly among children.
Palestinian paramedics cry outside Al-Shifa hopsital in Gaza City on October 16, 2023, amid continuing bombardment by Israeli forces of the Hamas-run Plaestinian territory. (AFP/File)
“We had waves of children that even if another bomb was never dropped on Gaza, even if another bullet never hit a child in Gaza, these children would still die, and the reason is because they simply don’t have the adequate nutrition to heal,” she said.
She described the case of one girl whose foot injuries, caused by shrapnel, had gone untreated for months. Without access to basic nutrition or proper medical care, the wounds had festered and become infected.
In Gaza, where sewage-laden streets replace what might have been hospital rooms or secure shelters, these injuries would likely result in amputation — a fate that many children had suffered.
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The doctors emphasized that the lack of essential supplies and equipment — including CT scanners, hospital beds, and even basic medications — was making it almost impossible to provide adequate care.
“The conditions are worse than any hospital I’ve worked in before,” said Dr. Khan.
“We’re talking about hospitals with bullet holes in the walls, operating rooms destroyed, and entire wards rendered useless. You can’t even get a full assessment for patients without risking their lives during transport to another facility.”
Despite these conditions, Dr. Khan also described the resilience she witnessed among Gaza’s medical professionals.
Palestinian paramedic inspects the remains of a destroyed ambulance at the scene of bombardment in Khan Yunis. (AFP/File)
“Eighty percent of the healthcare workers at the hospital I worked in were volunteers,” she said. “These people are living in tents, getting one meal a day, yet they show up to work every single day, putting their lives on the line for their people. They are heroes.”
However, this resolve is being tested by the mounting restrictions, insufficient support, and a lack of international pressure on the parties involved to facilitate a proper aid response.
Dr. Ahmad called on Western medical institutions to take a stand, much like they did for Ukraine, to protect the rights of Palestinian healthcare workers and ensure that medical evacuations are carried out swiftly.
“The international medical community has a responsibility to advocate for these basic rights,” he said. “We cannot stand idly by and let this crisis escalate further. The people of Gaza deserve access to the care they need, and the world must not turn a blind eye.”
Palestinian health professionals like Dr. Abu Safiya, the detained director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, must be free and properly resourced to rebuild Gaza’s health system and deliver the urgently needed care, he said.
Dr. Ayesha Khan, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, and Dr. Mahmooda Syed, the medical doctors with critical-care experience in Gaza Strip hospitals since 7 October discuss immediate priorities for rebuilding Gaza's health system. (Getty Images)
“Palestinians need to lead the response. Palestinians need to be treating Palestinians. And we need to be able to support that. And that’s what we mentioned to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and he firmly believes in that as well.”
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told Arab News that Guterres was “very moved by the eyewitness reports that he heard from the four American doctors.
“They are really a symbol of the sacrifice that people are making in order to help civilians,” he said. “And the secretary-general was vocal that we will continue to push through our people on the ground for more medical evacuations.”
He added: “If they are evacuated for medical reasons, they have a right to come home.”
However, Dr. Mahmooda Syed, an emergency physician who has twice volunteered in Gaza, told the press conference that medical evacuations are only a very temporary solution to the “ongoing, more insidious problem, that is the complete devastation and damage to the infrastructure of Gaza.
People walk outside the heavily-damaged Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia. (AFP/File)
“The roads are destroyed, the water system is destroyed and contaminated, the electricity grid is completely destroyed,” she said. “So, we do need to provide medical care to patients, but we also need to empower the people of Gaza to rebuild and recover their own state.”
The American doctors said they want to see medical needs urgently prioritized.
“The people we met in Gaza — they deserve life,” Dr. Ahmad said. “They deserve to heal. They deserve a future. And we need to make sure they have the chance to live it.”
Libya’s UN Mission forms panel to propose ways to solve election impasse
An UNSMIL statement named the advisory committee’s 13 men and seven women members and said they would meet for the first time next week in Tripoli
The committee’s proposals would be submitted to the Mission “for consideration for the subsequent phase of the political process“
Updated 04 February 2025
Reuters
TRIPOLI: The UN Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) announced on Tuesday it had formed a committee to propose ways to resolve contentious issues hindering the holding of long-awaited national elections.
A political process to resolve more than a decade of conflict in Libya has been stalled since an election scheduled for December 2021 collapsed amid disputes over the eligibility of the main candidates.
Libya has had little peace since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising, and it split in 2014 between eastern and western factions, with rival administrations governing in each area.
An UNSMIL statement named the advisory committee’s 13 men and seven women members and said they would meet for the first time next week in Tripoli.
“The role of the Advisory Committee will be developing technically sound and politically viable proposals for resolving outstanding contentious issues to enable the holding of elections,” said UNSMIL.
UNSMIL said that the committee’s proposals would be submitted to the Mission “for consideration for the subsequent phase of the political process.”
“The Advisory Committee is not a decision-making body or a dialogue forum. It is time-bound and is expected to conclude its work in a short time frame,” the Mission explained.
UNSMIL said members were chosen for professionalism, expertise in legal, constitutional and/or electoral issues; an ability to build compromise and an understanding of Libya’s political challenges.
UNSMIL announce the establishment of the Advisory Committee, as part of its multi-track political initiative announced to the Security Council on 16 December 2024.
The role of the Advisory Committee will be developing technically sound and politically viable proposals for… pic.twitter.com/lEQsjHC1qo
A Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) under Prime Minister Abdulhamid Al-Dbeibah was installed through a UN-backed process in 2021 but the Benghazi-based House of Representatives (HoR) no longer recognizes its legitimacy.
Dbeibah has vowed not to cede power to a new government without national elections.
Many Libyans have voiced skepticism that their political leaders are negotiating in good faith, believing them to be unwilling to bring forward elections that might remove them from their positions of power.
“Libyans are aware of the damaging effects that the current political divisions are having on their country, its unity, sovereignty and stability,” the Mission added.
The HoR was elected in 2014, while in Tripoli there is a High State Council that was formed as part of a 2015 political agreement and drawn from a parliament elected in 2012.
Last month UN Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Hanna Serwaa Tetteh of Ghana as special representative for Libya and head of UNSMIL, succeeding Abdoulaye Bathily of Senegal.
