Tag: Humanitarian crises

Chants of ‘shame on you’ greet guests at White House correspondents’ dinner shadowed by war in Gaza

WASHINGTON — An election-year roast of President Joe Biden before journalists, celebrities and politicians at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner Saturday butted up against growing public discord over the Israel-Hamas war, with protests outside the event condemning both Biden’s handling of the conflict and the Western news’ media coverage of it.

Biden, like most of his predecessors, used the glitzy annual White House Correspondents’ Association banquet to jab at his rival, Donald Trump. He followed the jokes with solemn warnings about what he said would happen if Trump won the presidency again.

With hundreds of protesters rallying against the war in Gaza outside the event and concerns over the conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the perils for journalists covering the conflict, the war hung over this year’s event. But speakers inside made only passing mention of the conflict despite some having to run a gauntlet of demonstrators. Biden’s speech, which lasted around 10 minutes, made no mention of the ongoing war or the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

“Shame on you!” protesters draped in the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh cloth shouted, running after men in tuxedos and suits and women in long dresses who were holding clutch purses as guests hurried inside for the dinner.

Chants accused U.S. journalists of undercovering the war and misrepresenting it. “Western media we see you, and all the horrors that you hide,” crowds chanted at one point.

Other protesters lay sprawled motionless on the pavement, next to mock-ups of flak vests with “press” insignia.

Ralliers cried “Free, free Palestine.” They cheered when at one point someone inside the Washington Hilton — where the dinner has been held for decades — unfurled a Palestinian flag from a top-floor hotel window.

Criticism of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s six-month-old military offensive in Gaza has spread through American college campuses, with students pitching encampments in an effort to force their universities to divest from Israel. Counterprotests back Israel’s offensive and complain of antisemitism.

Biden’s motorcade Saturday took an alternate route from the White House to the Washington Hilton than in previous years, largely avoiding the crowds of demonstrators.

Biden’s speech before nearly 3,000 people was being followed by entertainer Colin Jost from “Saturday Night Live.” Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Hamm and Chris Pines were among other stars.

Kelly O’Donnell, president of the correspondents’ association, opened the event by reminding the audience of the important work that journalists do but noting that the dinner is happening at “a complex moment for our nation,” and in a decisive election year.

O’Donnell went on to list the scores of journalists who have been imprisoned across the world, including Americans Evan Gershkovich and Austin Tice. The families of those journalists were in attendance as they have been at previous dinners. She briefly mentioned journalists killed in the war between Israel and Hamas.

Biden began his roast with a direct focus on Trump, calling him “sleepy Don,” in reference to a nickname Trump had given the president previously. He went on to note that despite being similar in age, the two presidential hopefuls have little else in common.

“My vice president actually endorses me,” Biden said. Former Vice President Mike Pence has refused to endorse Trump’s reelection bid.

The president made a grim speech about what he believes is at stake this election, saying that another Trump administration would be even more harmful to America than his first term. “We have to take this serious — eight years ago we could have written it off as ‘Trump talk’ but not after January 6,” Biden told the audience, referring to the supporters of Trump who stormed the Capitol after Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election.

Law enforcement, including the Secret Service, have instituted extra street closures and other measures to ensure what Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said would be the “highest levels of safety and security for attendees.”

The agency was working with Washington police to protect demonstrators’ right to assemble, Guglielmi said. However, “we will remain intolerant to any violent or destructive behavior.”

Protest organizers said they wanted to bring attention to the high numbers of Palestinian and other Arab journalists killed by Israel’s military since the war began in October.

More than two dozen journalists in Gaza wrote a letter last week calling on their colleagues in Washington to boycott the dinner altogether.

“The toll exacted on us for merely fulfilling our journalistic duties is staggering,” the letter states. “We are subjected to detentions, interrogations, and torture by the Israeli military, all for the ‘crime’ of journalistic integrity.”

One organizer complained that the White House Correspondents’ Association — which represents the hundreds of journalists who cover the president — largely has been silent since the first weeks of the war about the killings of Palestinian journalists. WHCA did not respond to request for comment.

According to a preliminary investigation released Friday by the Committee to Protect Journalists, nearly 100 journalists have been killed covering the war in Gaza. Israel has defended its actions, saying it has been targeting militants.

“Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price— their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth,” CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna said in a statement.

Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, a U.S.-based Palestinian advocacy group that helped organize the letter from journalists in Gaza, said “it is shameful for the media to dine and laugh with President Biden while he enables the Israeli devastation and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.”

In addition, Adalah Justice Project started an email campaign targeting 12 media executives at various news outlets — including The Associated Press — expected to attend the dinner who previously signed onto a letter calling for the protection of journalists in Gaza.

“How can you still go when your colleagues in Gaza asked you not to?” a demonstrator asked guests heading in. “You are complicit.”

___ Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo, Aamer Madhani and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.

Source link

April 27, 2024
Israeli military tells Palestinians not to return to north Gaza after witnesses say troops killed 5

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The Israeli military renewed warnings on Monday for Palestinians not to return to northern Gaza, a day after witnesses and medical officials said Israeli troops opened fire and killed five people among throngs of displaced residents trying to walk back to their homes in the devastated area.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were driven from the north after Israeli forces first launched their offensive there soon after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. In the months of fighting since, vast parts of the north have been flattened, including much of Gaza City. After months of Israeli restrictions on aid to the north, some 300,000 who remained there are on the brink of famine, according to the United Nations.

Still, many Palestinians have wanted to go back, saying they are sick of the conditions they endured in displacement. For months, families have been crammed into tent camps, schools-turned-shelters and homes of relatives throughout the south of the Gaza Strip. Some also fear remaining in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town, as Israel says it plans to attack it eventually to root out Hamas.

Late Monday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met with top officials to work on preparations for the Rafah invasion, his office said. The international community, including the United States, have voice strong objections to the planned offensive, saying it will endanger the estimated 1.4 million Palestinians sheltered in Rafah.

Gallant’s office said Monday’s meeting included plans for evacuating civilians and expanding deliveries of food and medical equipment to Gaza.

Israel, which has reduced the number of its troops across Gaza, has repeatedly rejected calls to let Palestinians back to the north of the territory, saying Hamas militants continue to operate there. The military says it has loosened the militants’ control over the north, but it is still carrying out airstrikes and raids against what it says are reorganizing militants. Last month, Israeli troops raided Gaza’s main hospital, Shifa, in two weeks of fighting that left the facility in ruins.

Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that Palestinians should stay in southern Gaza because the north is a “dangerous combat zone.”

People appeared to be heeding the new warning, especially after Sunday’s shootings.

On Sunday, thousands of Palestinians tried going up Gaza’s coastal road back to the north, most on foot and some on the backs of donkey carts. Some said they had heard rumors that Israeli troops were allowing people to enter the north.

“We want our homes. We want our lives. We want to return, whether with a truce or without a truce,” said Um Nidhal Khatab, who was among those trying to return home.

Several witnesses said Israeli troops opened fire as the crowds neared checkpoints at Wadi Gaza, the line that the military has drawn separating northern Gaza from the rest of the territory. Five people were killed and 54 wounded, according to officials at nearby Awda Hospital in central Gaza, where the casualties were brought.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment. It was not clear what triggered the shooting.

Farida Al-Ghoul, 27, said that as she and her family neared the checkpoint, she saw a woman rushing back with blood on her telling them not to continue. Ignoring her, they kept going ahead, but soon there was heavy gunfire and shelling around them. She said she saw Israeli troops shooting.

She and another witness said the troops were letting some women and children through to go north but opened fire when some young men tried to pass.

“People on the side were falling down,” al-Ghoul said. “When we saw these scenes, we decided to turn back and never try again.”

Karam Abu Jasser said he, his wife and four children, were among the crowd and they heard gunshots and shelling from up ahead at the checkpoint. “People were panicked, especially women and children. There were many women and children. We ran away,” Abu Jasser said, speaking from a shelter in central Gaza.

He said his family wanted to return home to the Jabalia refugee camp in the north, even though they know their house was hit and damaged.

“We’ll have to live in a tent, but it will be at our home,” he said. “There is bombing everywhere in Gaza. If we will die, it’s better to die in our home.”

The return of the population to northern Gaza has been a key sticking point between Israel and Hamas in negotiations underway for a cease-fire deal that would bring the release of hostages taken by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack.

Israel wants to try to delay the return to prevent militants from regrouping in the north, while Hamas says it wants a free flow of returnees, a full withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Gaza and an end to the war.

“The permanent ceasefire is the only guarantee to protect our people and stop the flow of blood and massacres,” Izzat al-Risheq, a top Hamas official, said in a statement.

The war has had a staggering toll on civilians in Gaza, with most of the territory’s 2.3 million people displaced by the fighting and living in dire circumstances, often in tents and with little food and no end in sight to their misery. Large swaths of the urban landscape have been damaged or destroyed, leaving many displaced Palestinians with nowhere to return to.

Six months of fighting in Gaza have pushed the tiny Palestinian territory into a humanitarian crisis, leaving more than 1 million people on the brink of starvation.

Famine is said to be imminent in the hard-hit north, where aid has struggled to reach because of the fighting. Israel has opened a new crossing for aid trucks into the north as it ramps up aid deliveries to the besieged enclave. However, the United Nations says the surge of aid is not being felt in Gaza because of persistent distribution difficulties.

The U.N. food agency on Monday said it managed to deliver fuel and wheat flour to a bakery in isolated Gaza City in the north for the first time since the war started.

The conflict started on Oct. 7, when Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, in a surprise attack and incursion into southern Israel. Around 250 people were seized as hostages by the militants and taken to Gaza. A deal in November freed about 100 hostages, leaving about 130 in captivity, although Israel says about a quarter of those are dead.

Israeli bombardments and ground offensives in Gaza have killed more than 33,700 Palestinians and wounded over 76,200, the Gaza Health Ministry says. Women and children make up around two-thirds of the dead, according to the ministry, whose count doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants.

Israel says it has killed over 12,000 militants during the war, but it has not provided evidence to back up the claim.

___

Magdy reported from Cairo.

___

Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Source link

April 15, 2024
Creation of transitional council that will select Haiti’s next prime minister is imminent, US says

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The creation of a transitional council responsible for choosing Haiti’s next leaders is imminent, a U.S. diplomat said Wednesday during a heated forum about Haiti’s spiraling crisis.

The nine-member council could be formally established in Haiti as early as this week, Brian A. Nichols, U.S. assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, said at a New York-based event organized by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Officials are eager to see the council in place as Haiti staggers under a power vacuum, with the prime minister locked out of a country suffering relentless gang violence that has choked the Port-au-Prince capital and surrounding communities, forcing more than 53,000 people to flee the area in recent weeks.

Haiti’s main seaport and airport remain closed, cutting off critical aid as experts warn that hunger and illnesses are skyrocketing.

“There is no greater humanitarian crisis in the world today than what is going on in Haiti,” Nichols said.

Gangs began attacking key government institutions across Port-au-Prince on Feb. 29, opening fire on the main international airport that remains closed and storming police stations and Haiti’s two biggest prisons, releasing more than 4,000 inmates.

The U.N. Human Rights Office has called the situation “cataclysmic,” noting more than 1,550 people have been killed and more than 800 injured as of late March.

The creation of the transition council, which will have seven members with voting powers to choose Haiti’s next prime minister and Cabinet, is not expected to immediately solve the country’s deep-rooted troubles.

Nichols said there’s not just “one single thing” needed to solve the country’s problems.

During the hourlong forum, Nichols came under fire by Monique Clesca, a Haitian writer and member of the Montana Group, a coalition of civil, business and political leaders that was awarded a position on the transitional council.

She criticized the U.S. for having supported Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who she accused of being incompetent and responsible for the country’s deteriorating conditions. Henry was installed as an interim leader with the backing of the international community following the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

Haiti’s most powerful gangs also have opposed Henry, noting that he was not democratically elected, and he has promised to resign once the council is created.

“You dropped him like a hot potato,” Clesca told Nichols as she questioned why the U.S. ever supported Henry in the first place. “If we are going forward … we have to think about that policy. Was it bad? What can we learn from it? Can we admit that there was a failure?

The country’s gangs started launching large-scale attacks against government targets while Henry was in Kenya in February to push for the U.N.-backed deployment of a police force from the East African country. He has been locked out of the country since then, as the violence has forced the closure of major ports of entry.

Panelists in New York were asked why the gangs that control 80% of Port-au-Prince were not involved in negotiations or the creation of a transitional council.

“Having a broad, inclusive dialogue among all segments of society is certainly something that is worth doing,” Nichols said, but he said that the interest of the gangs “cannot be put ahead of ordinary, law-abiding citizens.”

He said solutions are needed to target why people join gangs in the first place. “There has to be access to education and job opportunities and training programs,” he said.

Clesca added that there’s a need to change social identity so that it focuses more on school and jobs.

Also on the panel was Garry Pierre-Pierre, founder of the Brooklyn-based online news site The Haitian Times. He alleged that Haitian politicians and the country’s elite have long secretly backed gangs to serve their interests, and he lamented that the Haitian diaspora has not been adequately consulted amid the crisis.

“Security is a short-term problem that can be dealt with,” he said. “But stitching back Haitian society, that’s going to be a real challenge.”

Source link

April 10, 2024
Does Israel’s attack on aid workers mark a turning point for its allies?

The killing of international aid workers with World Central Kitchen (WCK) sparks strongest Western reaction to date.

After six months of war and more than 33,000 Palestinians in Gaza killed, it was Israel’s killing of international aid workers this week that triggered the West’s most furious response to date.

Israel has faced sharp criticism since Monday’s attack on a World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid convoy in Gaza – with even the United States joining the global chorus of condemnation.

So how have events this week affected Israel’s international standing?

Presenter: James Bays

Guests:

Nour Odeh – Palestinian political analyst

Gideon Levy – Columnist for Haaretz newspaper in Tel Aviv

Chris Doyle – Director at the Council for Arab-British Understanding in London

Source link

April 6, 2024
State Farm discontinuing 72,000 home policies in California in latest blow to state insurance market

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — State Farm will discontinue coverage for 72,000 houses and apartments in California starting this summer, the insurance giant said this week, nine months after announcing it would not issue new home policies in the state

The Illinois-based company, California’s largest insurer, cited soaring costs, the increasing risk of catastrophes like wildfires and outdated regulations as reasons it won’t renew the policies on 30,000 houses and 42,000 apartments, the Bay Area News Group reported Thursday.

“This decision was not made lightly and only after careful analysis of State Farm General’s financial health, which continues to be impacted by inflation, catastrophe exposure, reinsurance costs, and the limitations of working within decades-old insurance regulations,” the company said in a statement Wednesday.

“State Farm General takes seriously our responsibility to maintain adequate claims-paying capacity for our customers and to comply with applicable financial solvency laws,” it continued. “It is necessary to take these actions now.”

The move comes as California’s elected insurance commissioner undertakes a yearlong overhaul of home insurance regulations aimed at calming the state’s imploding market by giving insurers more latitude to raise premiums while extracting commitments from them to extend coverage in fire-risk areas, the news group said.

The California Department of Insurance said State Farm will have to answer question from regulators about its decision to discontinue coverage.

“One of our roles as the insurance regulator is to hold insurance companies accountable for their words and deeds,” Deputy Insurance Commissioner Michael Soller said. “We need to be confident in State Farm’s strategy moving forward to live up to its obligations to its California customers.”

It was unclear whether the department would launch an investigation.

Last June, State Farm said it would stop accepting applications for all business and personal lines of property and casualty insurance, citing inflation, a challenging reinsurance market and “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure.”

The company said the newly announced cancellations account for just over 2% of its California policies. It did not say where they are located or what criteria it used to determine that they would not be renewed.

Source link

March 21, 2024
Another top donor says it will resume funding the UN agency for Palestinians as Gaza hunger grows

NICOSIA, Cyprus — Another top donor to the U.N. agency aiding Palestinians said Saturday that it would resume funding, weeks after more than a dozen countries halted hundreds of millions of dollars of support in response to Israeli allegations against the organization.

Sweden’s reversal came as a ship bearing tons of humanitarian aid was preparing to leave Cyprus for Gaza after international donors launched a sea corridor to supply the besieged territory facing widespread hunger after five months of war.

Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides told reporters late Saturday that the ship would depart “within the next 24 hours.” World Central Kitchen founder José Andrés told The Associated Press that all necessary permits, including from Israel, had been secured, and circumstances delaying departure were primarily weather-related.

Sweden’s funding decision followed similar ones by the European Union and Canada as the U.N. agency known as UNRWA warns that it could collapse and leave Gaza’s already desperate population of more than 2 million people with even less medical and other assistance.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is devastating and the needs are acute,” Swedish development minister Johan Forssell said, adding that UNRWA had agreed to increased transparency and stricter controls. Sweden will give UNRWA half of the $38 million funding it promised for this year, with more to come.

Israel had accused 12 of UNRWA’s thousands of employees of participating in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel that killed 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. Countries including the United States quickly suspended funding to UNRWA worth about $450 million, almost half its budget for the year. The U.N. has launched investigations, and UNRWA has been agreeing to outside audits to win back donor support.

On the eve of Ramadan, hungry Gaza residents scrambled for packages of food supplies dropped by U.S. and Jordanian military planes — a method of delivery that humanitarian groups call deeply inadequate compared to ground deliveries. But the daily number of aid trucks entering Gaza since the war has been far below the 500 that entered before Oct. 7 because of Israeli restrictions and security issues.

People dashed through devastated Gaza City neighborhoods as the parachuting aid descended. “I have orphans, I want to feed them!” one woman cried.

“The issue of aid is brutal and no one accepts it,” said another resident, Momen Mahra, claiming that most airdropped aid falls into the sea. “We want better methods.”

The U.S. military said that its planes airdropped more than 41,000 “meal equivalents” and 23,000 bottles of water into northern Gaza, the hardest part of the enclave to access.

The Health Ministry in Gaza said that two more people, including a 2-month-old infant, had died as a result of malnutrition, raising the total dying from hunger in the war to 25. Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said the toll included only people brought to hospitals.

Overall, the ministry said at least 30,878 Palestinians have been killed since the war began. It doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its tallies but says women and children make up two-thirds of the dead. The ministry is part of the Hamas-run government, and its figures from previous wars have largely matched those of the U.N. and independent experts.

The opening of the sea delivery corridor, along with the airdrops, showed increasing frustration with Gaza’s humanitarian crisis and a new willingness to work around Israeli restrictions. The sea corridor is backed by the EU together with the United States, the United Arab Emirates and other involved countries. The European Commission has said that U.N. agencies and the Red Cross will also play a role.

President Joe Biden said Saturday that he believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “hurting Israel more than helping Israel” in how he is approaching its war against Hamas in Gaza. Speaking to MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart, the U.S. leader expressed support for Israel’s right to pursue Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack, but said of Netanyahu “he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken.”

The ship belonging to Spain’s Open Arms aid group was expected to make a pilot voyage to test the corridor as early as this weekend. The ship has been waiting at Cyprus’s port of Larnaca. Israel has said it welcomed the maritime corridor but cautioned that it would need security checks.

Open Arms founder Oscar Camps has said the ship pulling a barge with 200 tons of rice and flour would take two to three days to arrive at an undisclosed location where World Central Kitchen was constructing a pier to receive it.

Biden separately has announced a plan to build a temporary pier in Gaza to help deliver aid, underscoring how the U.S. has to go around Israel, its main Middle East ally and the top recipient of U.S. military aid. Israel accuses Hamas of commandeering some aid deliveries.

United States officials said it will likely be weeks before the pier is operational. The executive director of the U.S. arm of medical charity Doctors Without Borders, Avril Benoit, in a statement criticized the U.S. plan as a “glaring distraction from the real problem: Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate military campaign and punishing siege.”

Sigrid Kaag, the U.N. senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, has said air and sea deliveries can’t make up for a shortage of supply routes on land.

Meanwhile, efforts to reach a cease-fire before Ramadan appeared stalled. Hamas said Thursday that its delegation had left Cairo until next week.

International mediators had hoped to alleviate some of the immediate crisis with a six-week cease-fire, which would have seen Hamas release some of the Israeli hostages it’s holding, Israel release some Palestinian prisoners and aid groups be given access for a major influx of assistance into Gaza.

Palestinian militants are believed to be holding around 100 hostages and the remains of 30 others captured during the Oct. 7 attack. Several dozen hostages were freed in a weeklong November truce.

In Lebanon, state media said five people were killed and at least nine injured by an Israeli airstrike on a house in the town of Khirbet Selm in the country’s south.

Near-daily clashes have been happening in the Lebanon-Israel border area between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israeli forces in the past five months.

Israeli strikes have killed abound 300 people there, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups, but also including about 40 civilians. On the Israeli side, at least nine soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed.

___

Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

Source link

March 9, 2024
Could today’s global conflicts bring World War III closer?

Global wars are raging with major powers in the East and West often arming opposing sides.

Wars are raging around the world, and many conflicts are pitting East against West, as each side supplies arms to countries they support.

Meanwhile, the United Nations has been accused of weakness – paralysed by vetoes held by the major powers.

So, could these global conflicts bring us closer to World War III?

Presenter: Tom McRae

Guests:

Chris Hedges – former Middle East Bureau chief for the New York Times

Scott Lucas – professor of International Politics, Clinton Institute, University College Dublin

Huiyao Henry Wang – founder and president, Center for China and Globalization

Source link

February 1, 2024
Myanmar military government pardons more than 9,000 prisoners

Annual amnesty marking Independence Day takes place during crisis in the north that poses threat to military rulers.

Myanmar’s military government has pardoned more than 9,000 prisoners, including 114 foreign nationals, to mark the country’s Independence Day.

Friends and families of prisoners gathered outside the high-security Insein Prison in the commercial capital Yangon as the releases were set to start on Thursday and expected to take place over several days.

The identities of those slated for release were not yet known, and there was no indication that any political prisoners would be freed.

Thursday’s announced amnesty, part of an annual release, comes as the government faces a crisis in the country’s north, where ethnic armed groups have captured military and border posts, threatening to block trade with China.

Against this roiling backdrop, the Independence Day celebrations were devoid of the usual pomp and circumstance, and military chief Min Aung Hlaing was notably absent from the proceedings. In a statement, his administration said 9,652 prisoners would be freed.

The military came to power in a coup in February 2001 after ousting civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, brutally suppressing protests and cracking down on all forms of dissent.

Suu Kyi, 78, is currently in prison, sentenced to 33 years on an array of politically motivated charges from corruption to flouting COVID-19 restrictions. Her party was dissolved last year after failing to comply with tough new party registration laws.

Since the power grab, military leaders have been accused of murdering dozens of prisoners and covering up their deaths as escape attempts. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) monitoring group, more than 25,730 people were arrested for opposing the coup, and almost 20,000 are still in detention.

The AAPP reports that at least 4,277 civilians, including pro-democracy activists, have been killed by security forces. In 2022, the generals drew international condemnation after executing four pro-democracy leaders and activists in the country’s first use of the death penalty in decades.

Source link

January 4, 2024
Israel says Gaza war is like WWII. Experts say it’s ‘justifying brutality’

Israel’s campaign of relentless bombardment against the Gaza Strip had been raging for three weeks when the country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked to address the heavy civilian death toll in the Palestinian enclave.

Netanyahu, who had earlier evoked the 9/11 attacks on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in 2001 to describe the deadly Hamas assault on southern Israel on October 7, looked to the second world war for validation, on this occasion.

The hawkish Israeli premier referred to the time in 1945 – he mistakenly mentioned 1944 – when a British air raid, which had been targeting a Gestapo site, erroneously hit a school in Copenhagen killing 86 children. “That is not a war crime,” he told reporters. “That is not something you blame Britain for doing. That was a legitimate act of war with tragic consequences that accompany such legitimate actions.”

Since then, the Allied campaign against Nazi Germany and Japan during World War II has become something of an historical precedent for an Israeli state seeking to justify the large-scale killings of the people of Gaza as it ostensibly pursues Hamas fighters. Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Tzipi Hotovely, has compared Israel’s campaign with the devastating Allied bombing of Dresden, which, conducted over three nights in 1945, was intended to force the Nazis into surrender, and led to the deaths of some 25,000-35,000 Germans. Non-state affiliated advocates of Israel have also drawn similar comparisons.

Yet, these attempts erase the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land during the creation of Israel in 1948, the destruction of 500 towns and villages at the time, and the subsequent illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. They also ignore how World War II led to a new international law regime, and serve to dehumanise Palestinians while justifying Israel’s decades-long violence and discrimination — described by many international rights groups as akin to apartheid — against Palestinians, say historians and analysts.

Israeli historian and socialist activist Ilan Pappé told Al Jazeera that these efforts by Israel are aimed “as a justification for its brutal policies towards” Palestinians and that they represent an old playbook used by the country.

He cited the instance when former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin compared the then-leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, to Hitler, and war-torn Beirut to Berlin, following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

“I feel as a prime minister empowered to instruct a valiant army facing ‘Berlin’ where, amongst innocent civilians, Hitler and his henchmen hide in a bunker deep beneath the surface,” Begin said in a telegram to then-United States President Ronald Reagan in early August 1982.

But Begin’s words prompted criticism from many in his own country, with Israeli novelist Amos Oz writing that “the urge to revive Hitler, only to kill him again and again, is the result of pain that poets can permit themselves to use, but not statesmen”.

Reaching into the past to legitimise modern-day conflicts can also be ahistorical. Scott Lucas, a specialist in US and British foreign policy at the University of Birmingham, said the relentless use of World War II by Israel and its supporters to mitigate criticism of its bloody war on Gaza suggests that Israel wants to “wish away the post-1945 pledge – by lawyers, NGOs, activists and politicians – to say we need a better system so civilians do not suffer needlessly in war zones”.

He added that Israel’s decision to opt out of membership of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its attempts to “actively … undermine [the authority] of the United Nations”, founded after the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, make its claims to be part of an Allied-like struggle disingenuous.

Israel has repeatedly accused the UN’s agencies and its officials, including Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, of bias because they have called for a ceasefire. Meanwhile, Israeli bombs have killed more UN staff members in Gaza since October 7 than in any conflict in the history of the organisation.

“Civilians will be killed in wartime,” Lucas acknowledged, but added that Israel appeared to be breaching the international law requirement of proportionality. In essence, a military whose war leads to civilian deaths, including through attacks on hospitals, schools and shelters – targets Israel has repeatedly struck during this war – must be able to show proportionate military gains through those strikes. That’s a bar Israel hasn’t met, according to many experts.

“You are currently having an excessive number of civilians who are being killed because there are not adequate protections that are being applied by the power that is carrying out the attack,” Lucas said. “And that’s what the Israelis should be judged by. Bringing in World War II and other narratives is [just] peripheral.”

Israel’s supporters continue to argue that the parallel with World War II holds. Jake Wallis Simons, editor of the London-based Jewish Chronicle, said that there were “two points of similarity” between the conflicts.

“The first is a sense of existential threat both during World War II and in the attacks by Hamas upon Israel,” claimed Wallis Simons. “The other is the nature of the aggressor.” He described Hamas’s actions as “barbarism”.

But UN experts, international human rights groups and many nations around the world have warned that it is Israel’s actions since October 7 – more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, and almost the entire population of 2.3 million people has been displaced – that could constitute modern-day genocide. Earlier this week, Human Rights Watch accused Israel of using food as a weapon of war. Israel has maintained a blockade on Gaza since 2007, and since the start of the current war, has made it even more difficult for aid to enter the Strip. Right at the start of the current war, Israel also imposed a strict block on the entry of fuel and water – a restriction it has largely kept in place.

Against that backdrop, it’s useful for Israel to project World War II onto the conflict with Palestine, suggested German-Palestinian academic Anna Younes. It helps Israel dehumanise Palestinians and blunts sensitivity towards their suffering.

“By conflating Israel with Jewishness, it’s easy to project Nazism … onto Palestinians, but also onto all of their supporters,” Younes told Al Jazeera. “Nazism has thus become a globalised Eurocentric rhetorical vessel for everything … which doesn’t deserve empathy and context, and is free to be killed.”

Source link

December 23, 2023
Photos: Gaza humanitarian conditions near collapse as Israeli attacks widen

Israel’s widening air and ground offensive in southern Gaza has displaced tens of thousands more Palestinians and worsened the territory’s already dire humanitarian conditions, with the fighting preventing the distribution of food, water and medicine outside a sliver of southern Gaza and new military evacuation orders squeezing people into ever-smaller areas of the south.

As the focus of the ground offensive moves down the Gaza Strip and into the second-largest city of Khan Younis, it is further shrinking the area where Palestinians can seek safety and pushing large numbers of people, many of whom have been forced to flee multiple times, towards the sealed-off border with Egypt.

While Israeli forces ordered residents to evacuate Khan Younis, much of the city’s population remains in place, along with large numbers who were displaced from northern Gaza and are unable to leave or are wary of fleeing to the disastrously overcrowded far south.

The United Nations says some 1.87 million people — more than 80 percent of the population of 2.3 million — have already fled their homes. Almost the entire population is now crowded into southern and central Gaza, dependent on aid.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that public order in Gaza could soon break down amid the complete collapse of the humanitarian system.

“The situation is fast deteriorating into a catastrophe with potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region. Such an outcome must be avoided at all costs.”

Bushra Khalidi, a Ramallah-based legal expert and rights campaigner with international aid charity Oxfam, warned that Israel’s push to relocate Palestinians in Gaza to a small area in the south is making it impossible to deliver aid and driving up the risk of disease.

“Squeezing people into a space that is basically as big as London’s Heathrow airport … is inhumane and makes it impossible to distribute aid to people,” Khalidi told Al Jazeera. “Gaza was already overpopulated … 1701932348 we’re talking about 1.8 million people in an airport.”

Khalidi added that cholera and gastroenteritis are rapidly spreading due to the congested conditions.

Israel’s offensive has killed at least 16,248 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7. In Israel, the official death toll stands at about 1,200.

Source link

December 6, 2023
US declares warring factions in Sudan have committed war crimes

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urges the military and rival paramilitary RSF to ‘stop this conflict now’.

The United States has determined that warring factions in Sudan have committed war crimes, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said, as Washington increases pressure on the army (SAF) and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to end fighting that has caused a humanitarian crisis.

The US also found that the RSF and their allied militias committed crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, Blinken said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The expansion of the needless conflict between RSF and the SAF has caused grievous human suffering,” Blinken said.

He urged both sides to “stop this conflict now, comply with their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law, and hold accountable those responsible for atrocities.”

The RSF has been accused of orchestrating an ethnic massacre in West Darfur, 20 years after the region was the site of a genocidal campaign.

A Chadian cart owner transports belongings of Sudanese people who fled the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region [File: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters]

In the capital, Khartoum, residents have accused the paramilitary of rape, looting and imprisoning civilians.

Meanwhile, the army’s air and artillery attacks on residential neighbourhoods where the RSF has strongholds could be considered violations of international law, according to experts.

Residents, experts and aid groups have told Al Jazeera of growing fears that the next major battle in Sudan’s civil war could spiral into an all-out ethnic war.

While the US’s conclusion comes after a lengthy legal process and analysis, it does not carry any punitive measures. The US has imposed several rounds of sanctions since the war broke out in mid-April, however.

The war, which has killed more than 10,000 people and displaced another 6.5 million, broke out over disagreements about plans for a political transition and the integration of the RSF into the army, four years after former ruler Omar al-Bashir was deposed in an uprising.

Countless rounds of US-and-Saudi brokered peace talks have failed over the last few months.

Source link

December 6, 2023
WFP suspends food distribution in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen

UN agency pauses general food distribution in north Yemen due to limited funding and disagreements with the group.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says it is suspending food distribution in Houthi-controlled areas of northern Yemen due to a dip in funding and disagreements with the group over how to focus on the poorest there.

The WFP announced the decision on Tuesday, saying it came after consultations with donors and more than a year of negotiations which failed to come to an agreement on reducing the number of people in need of aid to 6.5 million from 9.5 million.

The poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula has faced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises since the outbreak of the Yemen war between the Saudi-backed government and the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, who seized the capital Sanaa and large swaths of territory in 2014.

Yemenis present documents to receive food rations by a local charity in Sanaa [File: Hani Mohammed/AP]

Food stocks in Houthi-controlled areas “are now almost completely depleted and resuming food assistance, even with an immediate agreement, could take up to as long as four months due to the disruption of the supply chain”, the United Nations agency said in a statement.

It said the WFP would nonetheless maintain “its resilience and livelihoods, nutrition, and school feeding programmes … for as long as the agency has sufficient funding and the cooperation of the authorities” in Sanaa.

Food distribution in government-controlled areas of Yemen will continue, targeting “the most vulnerable families, aligning with resource adjustments announced last August,” the statement said.

Houthi officials did not issue an immediate comment on the agency’s decision.

Since 2014, the war in the country of 30 million people has led directly or indirectly to hundreds of thousands of deaths and has displaced millions.

A fragile calm has prevailed since a UN-negotiated ceasefire in April 2022, but the population suffers from reduced humanitarian aid, upon which it depends heavily.

Last year, the WFP reduced rations in the country due to depleted funding caused by global inflation, which rose after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Source link

December 5, 2023
‘Palestine will never die’

“A cataclysmic event in human history” Rapper and activist Lowkey released a new track to show solidarity with Gaza.

Source link

December 4, 2023
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon mourn, fear for family in war-torn Gaza

Tripoli, Lebanon – When the humanitarian pause started in Gaza, Fatmeh Abu Swareh hadn’t heard from her daughter Wafaa in nearly two weeks.

“I’m not sleeping. I sit here at 3am and cry. I cry all night… all day,” she said a few days before the pause in her living room in Beddawi, a Palestinian refugee camp northeast of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city.

She feared the worst for her daughter and four grandchildren. Once the pause was implemented, Wafaa finally got through to her mother, but things are still tough.

“My daughter doesn’t have food or anything to drink,” she said. “Even with the truce, they’re scared of the [Israeli] planes.”

More than 15,000 people have been killed by Israel in Gaza since October 7, including at least 6,000 children. The Israeli assault was ostensibly in retribution for a Hamas-led attack into Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and captured more than 200.

Fatmeh Abu Swareh hasn’t been able to sleep for weeks [Rita Kabalan/Al Jazeera]

The Palestinian death toll is certainly higher than 15,000 as there are likely thousands of people still missing under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

Checking for new ‘martyrs’ daily

Some 210,000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon, most still in the refugee camps set up for their forebears who arrived during the Nakba in 1948, fleeing violent Zionist gangs.

Beddawi has about 20,000 people living in it, all of them transfixed by the news coming out of Gaza since October 7.

The news has deeply impacted everyone, with physical and emotional signs of stress proliferating. It has also boosted national pride, with a huge uptick in sales of Palestinian flags and keffiyehs.

Everyone is suffering, but especially those with family in Gaza. Ducking into a clothing shop to get away from the noisy street outside, Ossama Najjar, 47, stood with his back to the enticingly stacked jeans.

Ossama Najjar has lost count of the family members killed in Gaza [Rita Kabalan/Al Jazeera]

He’s not interested. He has lost count of the family members lost in Gaza, he said.

“Every day, I look online for the Ministry of Health lists with names of people from the Najjar family who were martyred,” he said. Among the dead were a cousin and an uncle.

Mustafa Abu Harb worries often about his own uncle and cousin in Gaza. The clean-shaven Fatah official for north Lebanon sits in his office with framed photos of Yasser Arafat and his successor as Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, over his shoulders.

“I’m talking to you here but my heart is there with my uncle and cousin,” he said from behind his desk, slumping slightly in his crisp blue shirt and grey blazer.

“They’re killing the future generations of Palestine,” he said, fighting back tears.

Fatah member Ahmad Hasan Alaaraj, also in the office, lost six family members in Gaza since October 7.

Mustafa Abu Harb, Fatah official, at his office in Baddawi [Rita Kabalan/Al Jazeera]

He was overcome by emotion several times while Abu Harb spoke and was only able to add: “Most people here have someone [in Gaza].”

Generational communal pain, solidarity

On a normal day, Najjar works in aluminium. But since October 7, “No one is working,” he said animatedly, his brow covered in sweat despite the sun beginning to set on this cool autumn afternoon.

“All our attention is on Gaza. Everything on Facebook is Gaza.”

While many others in Beddawi have lost relatives, even those without family in Gaza are suffering.

Dr Ali Wehbe, Palestinian Red Crescent director in north Lebanon, said the constant news barrage of death and destruction in Gaza was impacting his patients. From his office in the Safad Hospital, he said many patients now had high blood pressure while others reported increased psychological distress.

Wehbe doesn’t have family in Gaza but has colleagues he studied with overseas and are now on the ground there, and he worries about them.

Dr Ali Wehbe, Palestinian Red Crescent director in north Lebanon, at Safad Hospital [Rita Kabalan/Al Jazeera]

“We were in touch but then the electricity went out,” he said.

The feelings of helplessness have also manifested in an uptick in national solidarity.

At a small bridal shop in the camp, Nadia Mahmoud Moussa stood next to a tapestry shaped like Palestine, each region embroidered in a pattern representing local traditions.

Moussa pointed to a turquoise section, decorated with flowers and small pink, grey, blue and orange lozenges. “Here’s Gaza,” she said.

Before October 7, Moussa sold bridal dresses and hired out musical troupes to perform Palestinian traditions like the dabkeh, a Levantine folk dance, or zaffeh, an animated singing, drumming and dancing procession performed at weddings.

Black dresses embroidered in traditional Palestinian tatreez still hang from racks in her shop but now her big sellers are keffiyehs and Palestinian flags as people sought to express their solidarity by displaying national symbols.

A map of historic Palestine in stitches at Nadia Mahmoud Moussa’s shop [Rita Kabalan/Al Jazeera]

“We’re all living this pain,” she said. “We pray for patience and resilience. From kids to the elderly, we are now learning what it means to be martyrs.”

Back in Abu Swareh’s living room, she wipes away tears between pained sentences. Her daughter has already had at least one brush with death, she said, when the house next to hers was hit by an Israeli attack.

“It destroyed the whole house,” Abu Swareh said.

Even if her daughter and grandchildren survive the attacks, there is an extreme lack of food and water, which has led her daughter and her family to resort to drinking saltwater.

A less-than-ideal ceasefire

On Friday, November 24, a humanitarian pause between Israel and Hamas went into effect. As Israel and Hamas traded captives and prisoners, the pause has been extended twice, most recently on Wednesday evening.

A mural on a building in Beddawi was painted during the first intifada. Renovations avoided painting over it to keep it intact [Rita Kabalan/Al Jazeera]

Asked if the pause provided any relief, Najjar was dismissive. “There’s supposed to be aid coming in but there’s still no food or water or help on the ground,” he said. “And with the winter conditions, it’ll only get worse.”

Najjar said the images he’s seen in the media recall other humanitarian catastrophes like Yemen and Somalia.

“I hope the Arab countries, the West, and the rest of the world start to genuinely support Gaza,” he added. “Right now, it’s all talk.”

Back at the Abu Swareh residence on Thursday, Fatmeh knew her relief counted for little as the fighting could restart at any moment. Furthermore, the acts of aggression haven’t entirely stopped, she said. “Today, they shot at them from [Israeli] ships in the sea.”

Reports from Palestinian media said Israeli navy boats shot missiles at the coast of Gaza.

Nearby, sat Fatmeh’s son, Mohammad. He sat quietly until his mother encouraged him to speak. He started, but laboured over his words, choosing them carefully.

“This ceasefire is meaningless,” he eventually said. “It’s a ceasefire without a ceasefire.”

On the morning of Friday, December 1, fighting resumed in Gaza.

Additional reporting by Rita Kabalan in Beirut.

Clogs with the Palestinian tatreez at Nadia Mahmoud Moussa’s shop [Rita Kabalan/Al Jazeera]

Source link

December 1, 2023
Photos: No end to Palestinian suffering with no end to Israel’s war on Gaza

Israeli air raids have killed many Palestinians at the al-Fakhoora School, run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), in the Jabalia refugee camp and another school in Tal al-Zaatar, also in northern Gaza.

At least 50 people were killed in the attack on the al-Fakhoora School, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said on Saturday. It said the two attacks killed and injured hundreds of people, with a combined estimated death toll of 200.

Several hundred people were believed to have taken shelter at both schools, fleeing the non-stop Israeli attacks. The attack on al-Fakhoora is believed to have taken place in the early hours of the morning, while the attack on Tal al-Zaatar took place later in the day.

The Israeli military had told Palestinians to move from north Gaza for their safety, but deadly air raids continued to hit central and southern areas of the narrow coastal territory.

According to United Nations figures, about 1.6 million people have been displaced inside Gaza in six weeks of fighting. The Israeli army’s relentless air and ground campaign has since killed at least 12,000 people, including 5,000 children, according to Palestinian officials.

Source link

November 18, 2023
‘We have nothing’: Families seek safety from bombs inside Gaza hospitals

As bombs rain down upon neighbourhoods and refugee camps in Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian families are setting up temporary homes in an unlikely place: hospital common areas.

Tents are popping up in hospital corridors, parking lots and courtyards, as families seek safety in and around medical facilities — places that should be protected under international humanitarian law.

It is only the latest sign of the new reality as the Israel-Hamas war reaches its 29th day on Saturday, with growing fears of medical supply shortages and explosions disrupting the vital health services unfolding at hospitals and clinics.

With only cloth walls for privacy, families inside the tents are going about their daily routines, sleeping, eating and trying to reestablish a sense of normalcy.

These tents began to appear only days after the war broke out on October 7. Not only do they serve as temporary shelter for those escaping death and destruction in residential areas, but some also act as makeshift surgeries and emergency rooms as the Palestinian death toll soars past 9,000.

Injured Palestinians rest in a tent set up outside a hospital in the Deir el-Balah area of the central Gaza Strip on October 16 [Adel Hana/AP Photo]

Women and children comprise a mass majority of the hospital inhabitants. Privacy is a distant memory, and the challenges of living in a hospital are manifold. Food, clean water and toilet facilities are severely rationed and available only sporadically: once or twice a day.

A seven-member family sheltering in a tent spoke anonymously to Al Jazeera about their hardship. They mentioned that they lack protection from the nearby shelling and the debris it raises, as well as from the biting cold at night.

“Overnight, from having everything, we now have nothing,” one of the family members said.

Families like theirs also face the heightened possibilities of infection and contact with toxic chemicals, as medical treatment continues in other tents nearby.

At the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, displaced families take shelter on benches and tile floors to escape the bombing, on October 29 [Mohammed Salem/Reuters]

A lack of medical supplies

Health facilities across Gaza have reported shortages of medical supplies. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the scarcity has become a grave problem for both medical personnel and patients, causing the quality of healthcare to deteriorate rapidly.

The shortage of anaesthesia has become glaringly apparent at the Al-Shifa Hospital, the biggest health facility in Gaza, established in 1946. Doctors there are reportedly forced to perform surgery on patients without medicine to dull their pain, causing them indescribable agony.

Intensive care units or ICUs, meanwhile, have too few beds to accommodate the hundreds of patients with severe injuries. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, spaces for such cases have been exhausted since mid-October.

The Indonesian Hospital, serving over 150,000 residents in northern Gaza, is on the brink of ceasing its operations, raising alarm among health officials.

The Al-Shifa Hospital is also on the verge of a complete shutdown. The hospital, which provides critical health services to central Gaza, may soon be unable to admit more patients or treat injuries.

With only 546 beds, it is now treating over 1,000 injured people. The hospital has even resorted to conducting surgery in its yards, using the sun to light the medical procedures due to the lack of electricity and fuel.

“The hospital is expected to go completely dark within hours,” Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesperson for the Health Ministry, warned on Wednesday.

An additional 50,000 to 60,000 people are taking shelter in the hospital’s yards.

Al-Qudra said that Gaza’s health sector faces catastrophe unless fuel and medical supplies reach the besieged enclave. He called on Egypt to facilitate the urgent delivery of medical aid to Gaza.

On October 21, 20 trucks with health supplies and other necessary goods crossed into Gaza from Egypt for the first time, beginning the flow of humanitarian assistance.

But aid has been slow to arrive, in part due to ongoing Israeli bombing in the border area.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has said as well that the international aid allocated for Gaza’s health sector barely covers its essential operations and falls short of its most dire needs.

Palestinians gather at the site of a blast after a convoy of ambulances was struck outside the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on November 3 [Mohammed al-Masri/Reuters]

Health facilities facing bomb blasts

Attacks on or near medical facilities and workers have also dealt a severe blow to Gaza’s healthcare system since the war began.

Palestinian officials have blamed Israeli air strikes for explosions at several healthcare centres, including the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in the south and the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza City, resulting in hundreds of deaths.

Israel’s military has also acknowledged striking ambulances, alleging that one of the vehicles in a medical convoy on Friday was “being used by a Hamas terrorist cell”. Al-Qudra said “a big number” of health workers were killed in the blast.

An estimated 25 ambulances have been hit, and 136 healthcare workers killed, since the start of the war.

The Health Ministry and Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) have called for medical facilities and first responders to be protected from the violence, in accordance with international law.

Article 18 of the Geneva Convention specifies that civilian hospitals should “in no circumstances be the object of attack”. Medical transport is likewise protected under humanitarian law.

Nevertheless, medical institutions in Gaza have continued to face fire. On October 29, PRCS said it received a notification from Israeli forces to evacuate the Al-Quds Hospital in the Tal al-Hawa area of Gaza City, ahead of a planned bombing there.

The hospital housed hundreds of patients and an estimated 12,000 displaced Palestinians.

The Government Media Office in Gaza and the Health Ministry have characterised such attacks as “war crimes”, calling for accountability.

Exhaustion among health workers

The continued violence has also increased concerns for the mental and physical wellbeing of healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses, administrative staff and rescue crews.

Working around the clock, some are facing extreme exhaustion. Others are suffering psychological fatigue from treating gruesome injuries or the frustration of lacking resources.

“Before the war, we would be responsible for alleviating the stress and trauma of the sick and injured, but now it is us who need an outlet for our exhausted bodies and spirits,” said nurse Huda Shokry from the Al-Daraj Medical Complex.

Still, Dr Ahmed Ghoul, an emergency room supervisor at Al-Daraj, told Al Jazeera that the professionals he works with are dedicated to caring for their patients.

“Despite the shortage of nearly everything necessary to effectively do our jobs, we do not leave our rooms, day or night, except for quick toilet breaks,” he said.

“We have lost track of the days of the week because we are more concerned with the thousands of injured individuals than over time.”

Doctors like Ghoul have no place to sleep even if they have the chance to. Their personal rooms have been converted into patient treatment areas, and their beds are used for surgery and emergency care.

Hospital kitchens, meanwhile, have largely stopped functioning. They lack the basic resources to prepare meals for staff or patients.

“We have grown weary of what we have been witnessing,” Shokry told Al Jazeera. “Being a doctor in the war in Gaza means losing one’s sense of fear and exhaustion.”

“It is impossible to maintain a normal psyche or even emotions.”

Source link

November 3, 2023
Israeli air attacks kill 30 in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp: Civil defence

The bodies were recovered from under bombed buildings, most of them women and children, civil defence in Gaza said.

Thirty bodies, most of them women and children, have been recovered from underneath the ruins of bombed buildings in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp, the civil defence unit there told Al Jazeera.

Gaza’s Ministry of Interior said there were many casualties following an Israeli air attack late on Sunday on a residential building in the largest of eight refugee camps in the strip.

At least 27 people were also injured, with hospitals saying they are struggling to treat the wounded.

“We are suffering from an acute shortage of medicines and medical equipment,” the director of the Indonesian Hospital in North Gaza told Al Jazeera.

Israel has continued to bomb the Gaza Strip for more than two weeks in response to an incursion by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7. The strike on the camp comes as the death toll in Gaza climbed to 4,651 and the number of injured to 14,245 since the Hamas attack, according to the besieged enclave’s health ministry.

‘We will never be safe’

The densely populated Jabalia camp is also home to three schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

Some of these schools have been converted into shelters for hundreds of displaced families.

There were also earlier bombardments of the camp by Israel. Amnesty International reports that on October 9, Israeli air attacks hit a market in the camp, one of the busiest areas in Gaza with a yet-unknown number of people killed in the attacks.

One resident of the camp who survived them says the events of the last two weeks have changed everything.

“For me,” Asmaa Tayeh, a young writer told Al Jazeera, “I believe we will never be safe even after the war is over. In fact, I will never feel free as long as Palestine is occupied and its people terrorised.”

The first shipments of aid arrived in the Gaza Strip on Saturday and Sunday but aid groups say it is a fraction of what is needed as thousands remain trapped.

Before October 7, several hundred aid trucks arrived in Gaza each day.

Source link

October 22, 2023
Israel tells citizens to leave Egypt, Jordan ‘as soon as possible’

National Security Council raises threat levels for Middle Eastern countries as Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza.

Israel has called on its citizens to immediately leave Egypt and Jordan, and to try and avoid travelling to other regional countries, as tensions flare over its war in Gaza.

“Israel’s National Security Council raises its travel warnings for Egypt (including Sinai) and Jordan to level 4 (high threat): recommendation not to travel to these countries and for those staying there to leave … as soon as possible,” the country’s National Security Council said in a statement on Saturday.

It also raised the threat level for Morocco to a “3” and advised Israelis to avoid non-essential travel.

Local media said the council’s announcement was due to fears that Israeli travellers would be targets of those angry at the continuing war on Gaza that began after a Hamas onslaught on October 7.

Israel is readying for a ground assault on Gaza, after two weeks of aerial attacks on the besieged Strip that have killed more than 4,100 Palestinians. About 1,400 people have also been killed in Israel.

“Due to the continuation of the war, further significant aggravation has been detected in protests against Israel in recent days in various countries of the world, with an emphasis on Arab countries in the Middle East, alongside displays of hostility and violence against Israeli and Jewish symbols,” the statement said.

The notice comes just days after Israel recalled its diplomats from Turkey as a security precaution following an earlier request for its citizens to leave as well.

The statement also recommended Israelis avoid staying in other Arab countries, including Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. And it suggested Israelis also not travel to countries including Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Maldives.

Source link

October 21, 2023
Colombia awards medals for rescue of children 40 days in jungle

Colombian President Gustavo Petro also awarded medal to military rescue dog, Wilson, who went missing during the search for the children.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has awarded medals to Indigenous and military rescuers who took part in an operation to find four children who were lost for 40 days in the jungle after surviving a plane crash in the country’s Amazon region.

The children, aged one through to 13, survived the crash that killed their mother, the pilot and another adult on May 1. The children were eventually found on June 9 by volunteers from the Indigenous Muruy people following a large and complex search operation.

“More than the medals, which are symbolic… the great prize, the great reward, is called life,” President Petro said at the ceremony in the capital Bogota on Monday where members of the rescue mission were given medals of the Order of Boyaca – the second highest distinction in the armed forces and the highest for civilians.

The children – Lesly, Soleiny, Tien Norie and Cristin, aged 13, nine, five and one, respectively – survived for weeks in the deep jungle thanks to skills they learned being members of one of Colombia’s Indigenous communities.

Petro said the children had been guided by “ancestral” knowledge and praised the collaboration with Indigenous members of the search team for “teaching all of Colombia how, being united, we can find life”.

“Now there is no debate about whether Western or traditional wisdom is more important,” Petro said of the rescue efforts. “Together, they brought the children back.”

Indigenous people who took part in the rescue of the four children attend an award ceremony led by Colombian President Gustavo Gustavo Petro, in Bogota, Colombia June 26 2023 [Vannessa Jimenez/Reuters]

“The military with its satellites, and the Indigenous people with their potions – including ayahuasca – and invoking the spirits of the jungle, together, found life,” he added.

The children were reported to be recovering satisfactorily at a military hospital in Bogota.

A military rescue dog, Wilson, who went missing himself during the operation, was also awarded one of the medals. Though efforts to find Wilson continued after the children were found, his rescue is now unlikely, a military official told local media.

General Pedro Sanchez, leader of the rescue operation, said monuments would be built to remember the legacy of the six-year-old Belgian Malinois shepherd.

Wilson has not been seen since May 18, when he raced away from the search party following a scent. The military has said searchers followed Wilson’s paw-prints, which led them into the general area where the children were eventually found three weeks later by four of the Indigenous volunteers.

Source link

June 26, 2023
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 479
As the war enters its 479th day, these are the main developments.
This is the situation as it stands on Saturday, June 17, 2023.

Fighting
- The Commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said the situation in the east of the country remains “tense” and plans for the ongoing counteroffensive against Russian forces need to be adjusted. “Despite the advance of our troops in the south and the loss of territory and settlements in this direction, the enemy continues to move some of the most combat-capable units to the Bakhmut direction, combining these actions with powerful artillery fire and strikes by assault and army aircraft on the positions of our troops,” he said.
- Russia’s defence ministry said its forces repelled numerous attempts by Ukrainian forces in their ongoing counterattacks over the last 24 hours and inflicted significant losses in the south Donetsk and Donetsk directions. More than 500 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and five tanks were destroyed, the ministry said.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin again rejected reports of Ukrainian counteroffensive successes on the front lines in Ukraine, saying that at “no point have they achieved their goals”. He also said Ukraine will soon run out of its own military equipment and will be totally reliant on the West.
- Ukraine will send several dozen combat pilots to train on US-made F-16 fighter jets, Ukrainian air force spokesman Yuriy Ihnat said. NATO members the Netherlands and Denmark are leading efforts in an international coalition to train pilots and support staff, maintain aircraft and ultimately supply the F-16s.
- A team of legal experts assisting Ukraine’s prosecutors said that preliminary findings made it “highly likely” that the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine was caused by explosives planted by Russia.
Politics
- Putin proclaimed the end of “neo-colonialism” in international politics and praised Russia’s economic strategy following its ruptured ties with the West. “The ugly neo-colonial system of international relations has ceased to exist, while the multi-polar global order is strengthening,” he said at an annual economic forum in Saint Petersburg.
- Putin confirmed that Russia has sent nuclear arms to its ally Belarus. He also said that Russia could “theoretically” use nuclear weapons if there was a threat to its territorial integrity or existence.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called it “ironic” that Putin had placed Russian nuclear arms in Belarus when Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine as an action to prevent Kyiv from obtaining nuclear weapons.
- The White House denounced the comments from Putin on the possible use of nuclear weapons, adding that the US had made no adjustments to its own nuclear posture in response to the rhetoric.
- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia is ready for further talks on nuclear arms control, the Interfax news agency reported.
- A delegation of African leaders visited Kyiv on a peace mission where they called on Russia and Ukraine to de-escalate and negotiate. Shortly after their arrival, air raid sirens sounded across Ukraine as Russian missiles were detected. “The launching of the missiles today does not deter us and has not stopped us from continuing to call for de-escalation,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ruled out peace talks with Russia until a full withdrawal of Moscow’s forces from Ukraine.
- United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan told Putin that his nation wished to strengthen ties with Russia. The Gulf state has not joined the West in placing sanctions on Moscow and has maintained what it says is a neutral position on the Ukraine war.
- German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said NATO allies may be ready to remove hurdles from Ukraine’s path to joining the NATO military alliance amid reports that the US is open to allowing Kyiv to forgo a formal candidacy process.
- Turkey and Hungary must ratify Sweden’s NATO membership before the alliance meets at a summit in July, France said, adding that any further delays were not understandable and risked the security of the 31-member alliance.
- US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also urged Turkey’s new defence minister to approve Sweden’s NATO membership.
- Putin said there was a “serious danger” that NATO could be pulled further into the Ukraine conflict.
- Canada said it would bolster its force in Latvia as part of NATO with the deployment of 15 Leopard 2A4M tanks.
- Russia’s foreign ministry said it summoned the Australian ambassador after authorities in Australia cancelled the lease of a land plot where a new Russian embassy complex was being built in Canberra.
Humanitarian aid
- The United Nations estimates an “extraordinary” 700,000 people require drinking water in eastern Ukraine following the collapse of the Kakhovka dam.
- The US will provide an additional $205m in humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, Secretary of State Blinken said.
- It is unlikely that Russia will quit the Black Sea grain deal before it comes up for renewal on July 17, Russian media reported. But Russian officials said they see no grounds to extend the agreement beyond that date. “How can you extend something that doesn’t work?” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
Source link
June 16, 2023