Convoy arrives in Libya en route to Gaza to challenge Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid
Convoy arrives in Libya en route to Gaza to challenge Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid/node/2604085/middle-east
Convoy arrives in Libya en route to Gaza to challenge Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid
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Activists, heading towards Gaza by land with the aim of breaking the siege on the Palestinian territory, are greeted by Libyans in Tripoli's Martyrs Square on June 11, 2025, one day after crossing into Libya from Tunisia. (AFP)
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Activists, heading towards Gaza by land to break the siege on the war-battered territory, wave the Palestinian and Tunisian flags as they arrive in Zawiyah, about 45 kilometres west of the Libyan capital Tripoli, on June 10, 2025. (AFP)
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Tunisians welcome the Sumoud convoy, heading towards Gaza by land to break the siege on the Palestinian territory, in the southeastern coastal Tunisian city of Ben Guerdane, near the Ras Jdir border point late on June 9, 2025, before they crossing into Libya. (AFP)
Convoy arrives in Libya en route to Gaza to challenge Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid
PM Abdul Hamid Dbeibah hails the effort as a fraternal humanitarian initiative that Libyans embraced in solidarity
This is another example of Libya’s commitment and generosity in support of the people of Gaza under siege and attack
Updated 12 June 2025
AP
ZAWIYA, LIBYA: A convoy carrying hundreds of activists has arrived in Libya after driving from Algeria and crossing through Tunisia on its way to the Gaza Strip to challenge Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid on the territory.
The convoy is made up of at least 1,500 people, including activists and supporters from Algeria and Tunisia, with more expected to join from Libya.
The group arrived in Zawiya city in Libya Tuesday and plans to reach Gaza via Egypt’s Rafah Crossing, traveling by cars and buses. It drove through the Libyan cities of Tripoli, Misrata, Sirte, and Benghazi to reach the Saloum Crossing which borders Egypt. It is expected to soon reach Cairo before heading to the Rafah Crossing.
Jamila Sharitah, an Algerian participant, said Tuesday that authorities in Tunisia and Libya have been cooperative with the convoy, helping facilitate their smooth journey. Zayed Al-Hamami, another participant, said the convoy aims to push for reopening crossings and allowing aid into the Gaza Strip.
“There are land, sea and air convoys that will arrive in Gaza despite the restrictions,” said convoy organizer Terkiya Shayibi. She added that violent responses against the convoy will not frighten them.
Israel’s military seized a Gaza-bound aid boat with Greta Thunberg and about a dozen other activists on board on Monday, enforcing a longstanding blockade of the Palestinian territory that has been tightened during the Israel-Hamas war. Israeli forces deported Thunberg on Tuesday.
The activists on the boat began their journey to protest Israel’s military campaign in Gaza — one of the deadliest and most destructive wars since World War II — as well as the blocking of humanitarian aid. Experts have warned of famine in the territory of over 2 million people unless the blockade is lifted and Israel ends its military offensive.
It’s not clear whether members of the convoy were able to cross into Egypt as of Wednesday night. However, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement that any foreign delegations need to obtain prior approvals before visiting the border area adjacent to Gaza, which includes Arish city and the Rafah border crossing.
Regulatory procedures include obtaining visas or prior permits from Egyptian embassies abroad or foreign embassies in Cairo, and submitting requests to the Egyptian foreign ministry.
“Egypt affirms, in this regard, that no requests or invitations will be considered or responded to if submitted outside the framework specified by the regulatory provisions and the established mechanism in this matter,” the statement read.
Netanyahu says Israel has ‘work’ to do to win over Gen Z
A recent Gallup poll also showed only six percent of 18 to 34-year-olds in the United States had a favorable opinion of Netanyahu
Updated 20 August 2025
AFP
LONDON: Israel has “work” to do in winning over young people in the West as polls show collapsing support, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted to a UK-based podcast in an interview aired Wednesday.
Protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza have become increasingly common in capitals across the West, attracting large numbers of young people.
A recent Gallup poll also showed only six percent of 18 to 34-year-olds in the United States had a favorable opinion of Netanyahu and just nine percent approved of Israel’s military action in Gaza.
On the “Triggernometry” podcast, Netanyahu was asked whether Israel could lose the backing of Western governments once “Gen Z” — those born between around 1997 and 2012 — assumes power.
“If you’re telling me that there’s work to be done on Gen Z and across the West, yes,” he responded.
But he said opposition to Israel among Gen Z stemmed from a wider campaign against the West and repeated his unproven claim of an orchestrated plot against Israel and the West, without saying who was behind it.
Israel’s defense minister approved a plan on Wednesday for the conquest of Gaza City and authorized the call-up of around 60,000 reservists, piling pressure on the Palestinian militant group Hamas as mediators push for a ceasefire.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Israel’s offensive has killed at least 62,122 Palestinians, most of them civilians, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said, in figures the United Nations deem reliable.
Since returning to the White House in January, US President Donald Trump has offered Israel ironclad support.
Netanyahu told the podcast, which bills itself as promoting free speech with “open, fact-based discussion of important and controversial issues,” that Trump “has proven an exceptional, exceptional friend of Israel, an exceptional leader.”
“I think we’ve been very fortunate to have a leader in the United States who doesn’t act like the European leaders, who doesn’t succumb to this stuff,” he added, referring to countries including France and the UK that have vowed to recognize a Palestinian state.
US-led coalition captures a senior Daesh member in Syria
Two years ago, Daesh announced that a man called Abu Hafs Al-Hashemi Al-Qurayshi was named as its new leader after Turkish authorities killed his predecessor
Updated 20 August 2025
AP
BEIRUT: A US-led coalition captured a senior member of the Daesh group in northwest Syria on Wednesday, state media and a war monitor reported. It was not immediately clear if the man is the Daesh supreme leader.
Abu Hafs Al-Qurayshi, an Iraqi citizen and Daesh commander, was detained during a pre-dawn operation that included landing troops from helicopters in the town of Atmeh, near the Turkish border. Another Iraqi citizen was killed, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The US military did not respond to a request for comment.
The Observatory said the man captured had a French-speaking woman with him, and it was not immediately clear if she was taken by the US force or by Syrian security forces who later cordoned the area.
Two years ago, Daesh announced that a man called Abu Hafs Al-Hashemi Al-Qurayshi was named as its new leader after Turkish authorities killed his predecessor.
Syrian state TV on Wednesday quoted an unnamed security official as saying the Iraqi man targeted in the operation is known as Ali, adding that his real name is Salah Noman. It said Noman was living in an apartment with his wife, son and mother. It said he was killed in the raid.
There was no immediate clarification for the difference in names reported by state media and the war monitor.
UN counter-terrorism chief Vladimir Voronkov told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that while multiple leaders of the Daesh have perished in the past few years, “the group has managed to retain its operational capacity.”
“There is no indication that the killing of its deputy leader in charge of operational planning, which resulted from counter-terrorism operations in Iraq in March, will be any different,” he said, citing unnamed countries as saying the extremist group may recover from such a loss within six months.
Acting US Ambassador Dorothy Shea made no mention of Wednesday’s arrest, but said the Trump administration has intensified counter-terrorism operations globally, including targeting the Daesh, also known as ISIL, and Al-Qaeda’s leadership, infrastructure, and financial networks.
Daesh broke away from Al-Qaeda more than a decade ago and attracted supporters from around the world after it declared a so-called caliphate in 2014 in large parts of Syria and Iraq. Despite its defeat in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, Daesh militants still carry out deadly attacks in both countries and elsewhere.
Al-Qurayshi is not the real name of Daesh leaders but comes from Quraish, the name of the tribe to which Islam’s Prophet Muhammad belonged. Daesh claims its leaders hail from the tribe, and “al-Qurayshi” is part of their nom de guerre.
Palestinian Authority condemns Israel’s approval of key West Bank settlement
E1 project has no purpose other than to sabotage political solution, rights group says
Updated 20 August 2025
AP AFP
TEL AVIV: The Palestinian Authority has slammed Israel’s approval of a key settlement project in the occupied West Bank, saying it undermined the chances of a two-state solution.
The approval of the project in the area known as E1 “fragments ... geographic and demographic unity, entrenching the division of the occupied West Bank into isolated areas and cantons that are disconnected from one another, turning them into something akin to real prisons,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Israel gave final approval Wednesday for the controversial settlement project that would effectively cut the territory in two, and that Palestinians and rights groups say could destroy hopes for a future Palestinian state.
Settlement development in E1, an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, has been under consideration for more than two decades, but was frozen due to US pressure during previous administrations.
The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a former settler leader, cast the approval as a rebuke to Western countries that announced their plans to recognize a Palestinian state in recent weeks.
“The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not with slogans but with actions,” he said on Wednesday.
“Every settlement, every neighborhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.”
A German government spokesperson commenting on the announcement said that settlement construction violates international law and “hinders a negotiated two-state solution and an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and has vowed to maintain open-ended control over the occupied West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem, and the war-ravaged Gaza Strip — territories Israel seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for their state.
Israel’s expansion of settlements is part of an increasingly dire reality for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as the world’s attention focuses on the war in Gaza.
There have been marked increases in attacks by settlers on Palestinians, evictions from Palestinian towns, Israeli military operations, and checkpoints that choke freedom of movement, as well as several Palestinian attacks on Israelis.
More than 700,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The location of E1 is significant because it is one of the last geographical links between the major West Bank cities of Ramallah, in the north, and Bethlehem, in the south.
The two cities are 22 km apart, but Palestinians traveling between them must take a wide detour and pass through multiple Israeli checkpoints, spending hours on the journey.
The hope was that, in an eventual Palestinian state, the region would serve as a direct link between the cities.
“The settlement in E1 has no purpose other than to sabotage a political solution,” said Peace Now, an organization that tracks settlement expansion in the West Bank.
“While the consensus among our friends in the world is to strive for peace and a two-state solution, a government that long ago lost the people’s trust is undermining the national interest, and we are all paying the price.”
If the process proceeds quickly, infrastructure work in E1 could begin within the next few months, and construction of homes could commence around a year later. The plan includes around 3,500 apartments that would surround the existing settlement of Maale Adumim. Smotrich also hailed the approval, during the same meeting, of 350 homes for the settlement of Ashael near Hebron.
Israel’s government is dominated by religious and ultranationalist politicians, like Smotrich, with close ties to the settlement movement.
The finance minister has been granted Cabinet-level authority over settlement policies and vowed to double the settler population in the West Bank.
How religious extremism and settler attacks are eroding the Christian presence in Israel and the West Bank
Christian communities in Israel and the West Bank report increasing harassment and attacks by extremist settlers
Church leaders warn that unchecked hostility against religious minorities undermines centuries of coexistence
Updated 20 August 2025
GABRIELE MALVISI
LONDON: Harassment, violence and displacement have become a daily reality for Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, where attacks by Israeli settlers — allegedly with the protection or tacit approval of the army and government — have spread unchecked.
Religious minorities, including the West Bank’s various Christian denominations, have not been spared amid the violence. On Aug. 7, settlers illegally seized land belonging to the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Abba Gerasimos of the Jordan in Jericho.
Just days earlier, another group stormed Taybeh, the only entirely Christian village in the West Bank, home to Greek Orthodox, Melkite and Catholic residents. Masked and armed, the assailants reportedly set vehicles ablaze, sprayed graffiti and released livestock.
Settler abuse is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities. (Reuters)
It was the second such raid in as many weeks. A fortnight earlier, settlers had torched the ancient Church of Saint George and desecrated its adjoining graveyard.
“They have always done this around the village, but nowadays they dare to go inside,” Buthina Khoury, a Greek Orthodox filmmaker who grew up in Taybeh, told Arab News. “My cousin the other day opened her window and she saw the settler just outside her house, just in the backyard of her house.”
Although nobody was killed in these raids, attacks such as these reflect a pattern of escalating settler abuse that is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities.
The same week, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved a highly controversial plan to advance 3,401 new housing units in the E1 settlement, a move that would split the West Bank in two and sever it from East Jerusalem.
These settlements are deemed illegal under international law and would make any future contiguous Palestinian state even harder to realize.
The move, widely condemned by the international community, risks deepening an already volatile situation, further entrenching a dynamic in which nationalist and colonialist ideologies are intertwined with Jewish religious extremism.
“The whole situation has been very, very critical and very sensitive, and what’s happening in the rest of Palestine, it affects Taybeh as well,” said Khoury. “They are trying to turn our life into misery.”
For decades, Taybeh — a village mentioned in the Gospel of John where Jesus is said to have stayed before his entry into Jerusalem and eventual death on the cross — had been largely spared from settler violence. That is now changing.
Recent attacks have drawn international figures to the village, including Roman Catholic Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. But Khoury says such visits do little to change the reality on the ground.
Parish priest of the Church of the Holy Family, father Gabriele Romanelli, receives medical attention. (Reuters)
“What happened in Taybeh is the least compared to what happened to the villages and towns nearby,” she said, adding that such visits “do nothing” but “show a fake solidarity.”
Christian minorities such as Khoury’s, arguably more at risk than any other Palestinian community, have steadily dwindled in the West Bank.
In 1922, in what was then Mandatory Palestine, Christians made up about 11 percent of the population. Today they account for less than 1 percent. Bethlehem, once 85 percent Christian, is now home to just 10 percent.
A 2020 study by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Philos Project found that political instability, residency permit restrictions for married couples and clergy, frustration with the stalled peace process and economic hardship were drivers of this decline.
About 40 percent of Christian respondents also reported feeling discriminated against by fellow Palestinians.
Khoury said the situation has shifted dramatically since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel triggered the war in Gaza. Violence has simultaneously escalated in the West Bank, and Christians are being used to fuel a narrative of division.
Indeed, Khoury said Israeli policies had been designed to drive a wedge between religious groups. “It’s the policy of every occupier,” she said. “We Palestinian Christians or Palestinian Muslims — we don’t feel separate from each other.”
Regardless of any deliberate effort to divide Palestinians along these lines, Khoury said settlers are not targeting Christians solely for their religious identity, but rather aiming to purge the West Bank of any and all non-Jewish peoples.
A recent report by the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue documented 111 cases of harassment in 2024, with physical assaults being the most common. (Reuters)
The UN has recorded a sharp rise in settler violence this year. In the first half of 2025 alone, it documented in excess of 700 attacks — more than triple the number for all of 2023.
Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 11, Israeli authorities also “punitively demolished or sealed 23 homes and four other structures,” displacing about 140 people, including 57 children — the highest level of displacement in such a short period since 2009.
The monthly average of Palestinians injured by settlers also doubled in June and July to about 100, compared with 49 per month in the first five months of the year.
But the pressures faced by Christians are not confined to the occupied territories. Within Israel itself, Christian communities — long perceived as relatively secure — are reporting a surge in harassment and hostility.
“In recent years, the Christian community in the Holy Land has faced a rise in violence and intimidation, targeting both clergy and faithful,” Bishop William Shomali, patriarchal vicar for Jerusalem and Palestine, told Arab News.
“These incidents reflect a growing climate of hostility that threatens peaceful coexistence and religious freedom.”
Shomali, a Catholic who grew up in the Christian-majority town of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, said members of the clergy had been spat on by Jewish extremists while walking in religious attire or during processions in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The UN has recorded a sharp rise in settler violence this year. (Reuters)
Church walls and properties have been vandalized with hateful graffiti in Hebrew. Often filmed and shared online, these acts, he said, “express clear contempt for the Christian presence in the Holy City.”
Attacks against Christians in Israel have risen sharply in recent months, shaped in part by the post-Oct. 7 political climate.
A recent report by the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue — a Jerusalem-based interreligious organization promoting ties between Jews, Christians and Muslims — documented 111 cases of harassment in 2024, with physical assaults being the most common.
The figure, almost certainly an undercount given the community’s reluctance to report such incidents, marks a 30 percent increase compared with 2023.
“The problem is much bigger and wider than that,” Hannah Bendcowsky, the center’s program director, told Arab News.
“We’re talking about the legitimizing of violence toward minorities, the normalization of violence and anti-Christian attacks, the lack of condemnation from authorities, and the lack of proper reaction from police forces.”
These actions, she said, not only endanger the Christian community but have long-term consequences for Israeli society as a whole.
While Israel’s Christian population grew slightly in 2023 — by about 0.6 percent — Bendcowsky warned that persistent harassment is fueling what she called a “slow emigration.”
Bishop Shomali described an “emotional shift” since Oct. 7 that has provoked a “noticeable increase in hatred and mistrust” across the region. (Reuters)
The community numbers about 180,000 people — around 80 percent of them Arab Christians. Yet they experience what she described as a “double minority” status — marginalized as both Christians and Palestinians within Israeli society.
“The main question is, when an Israeli meets a Palestinian Christian, what do they see? A Palestinian or a Christian? Or I should be more accurate. When they meet a Palestinian Christian, when do they see him as a Christian and when do they see him as a Palestinian?”
Bendcowsky said longstanding religious tensions have been deliberately instrumentalized by Israeli leaders since Oct. 7, deepening polarization and mistrust that extend beyond minorities to affect Israeli Jewish communities as well.
She emphasized the need for a broader contextual understanding of these incidents to fully grasp the wider dynamics affecting the Christian community, whereby some attacks can be deemed anti-Palestinian while others distinctly anti-Christian.
“We do relate to the attacks of settlers, but I would say that it’s a different kind of attack,” she said.
“The harassment we see in Jerusalem and in Israel against Christians is anti-Christian. So it’s not because they are Palestinian, but it’s because they’re Christian. And most of the people being attacked are not Palestinians. They’re foreign Christians.
“While the incident in Taybeh is not anti-Christian per se, it’s anti-Palestinian. And this is part of a wider phenomena that, to my understanding, is ignored by the international community.”
Khoury said settlers are not targeting Christians solely for their religious identity, but rather aiming to purge the West Bank of any and all non-Jewish peoples.(Reuters)
Bishop Shomali described an “emotional shift” since Oct. 7 that has provoked a “noticeable increase in hatred and mistrust” across the region.
“What used to be a tense coexistence has now turned into a more hostile and polarized atmosphere,” he said. “People express fear, sadness and a sense of loss — not only of physical safety but also of hope for peaceful relations.”
While much remains to be done to address the situation in the West Bank, some local efforts have emerged to curb harassment in Israel. Jewish volunteers have begun accompanying Christian clergy and pilgrims during major processions in Jerusalem, documenting incidents of spitting or other abuse and reporting them to the police.
“There is a growing sense that the Israeli police are now more seriously committed to addressing specific issues, particularly the spitting incidents and anti-Christian graffiti in Jerusalem,” said Shomali.
However, he cautioned that while these measures are “meaningful and appreciated,” they remain limited in scope, addressing the problem within Israel without tackling the broader context that has fostered instability and mistrust for decades.
For Shomali, the heart of the issue lies deeper than religious tensions.
While Israel’s Christian population grew slightly in 2023 — by about 0.6 percent — Bendcowsky warned that persistent harassment is fueling what she called a “slow emigration.” (AFP)
“Interreligious dialogue, though valuable, cannot by itself resolve the deeper and more complex issue of the land’s ownership,” he said.
“The core of the conflict lies in two national narratives — Palestinian and Jewish — that are often contradictory and deeply rooted in historical, political and religious claims.
“Religion is not just a spiritual identity in this context; it is interwoven into each narrative, which makes compromise particularly difficult to achieve.”
NEW YORK CITY: Daesh remains an active and dangerous presence in the Middle East, the UN warned on Wednesday, as the group works to rebuild its operations in Syria and Iraq, even after the loss of senior leaders.
Vladimir Voronkov, the UN’s counterterrorism chief, told the Security Council that Daesh has maintained its operational capacity in the region and continues to exploit instability, especially in the Badia region of Syria and parts of the country under the control of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham.
“Daesh continues to exploit security gaps, engage in covert operations and incite sectarian tensions in Syria,” Voronkov said as he presented Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s 21st report on the threat posed by the terrorist organization.
The group also remains active in Iraq, he added, where it seeks to destabilize local authorities and reclaim influence.
The humanitarian and security situations in northeastern Syria remain “deeply concerning,” Voronkov warned, particularly in the camps and detention facilities that hold suspected terrorists and their families.
“The secretary-general’s concern about stockpiles of weapons falling into the hands of terrorists has, unfortunately, materialized,” he said.
In Afghanistan, Daesh-Khorasan continues to pose one of the most serious terrorist threats to Central Asia and beyond, through ongoing attacks against civilians, minority groups and foreign nationals, while leveraging dissatisfaction with the de facto authorities.
Despite the ongoing threats in the Middle East, Africa remains the region experiencing the highest intensity of Daesh-related activity, Voronkov said, with violence escalating in West Africa and the Sahel.
There has been a resurgence of Daesh in the Greater Sahara, while Daesh-West Africa Province has emerged as a key source of propaganda that is attracting foreign fighters, primarily from within the region.
In Libya, arrests have revealed the logistical and financial networks linked to the group and connected to the Sahel. In Somalia, a large-scale Daesh attack in Puntland early this year involving foreign fighters prompted a military counteroffensive that killed 200 militants and resulted in more than 150 arrests.
“Though weakened, Daesh still benefits from regional support networks,” Voronkov said.
Assistant Secretary-General Natalia Gherman, executive director of the Counter-Terrorism Committee’s Executive Directorate, or CTED, echoed the concerns. She noted that Daesh-Somalia’s role as a global logistical hub has been growing recently, though counteroffensives had degraded some of its operational capabilities.
Daesh continues to exploit instability in Africa, she added, where more than half of the world’s terrorism-related fatalities now occur. In the Lake Chad Basin region, for example, the group has received foreign money, drones, and expertise on improvised explosive devices.
Gherman also highlighted the growing use by Daesh of emerging technologies and financial innovations, as terrorist groups increasingly leverage encrypted platforms, artificial intelligence, and cross-border financial systems to raise funds, spread propaganda and recruit new members.
In response to these evolving threats, CTED has visited countries across Europe and Africa, including Somalia, Chad, Cameroon, Hungary and Malta, to assess local capacities and provide tailored support.
The EU-UN Global Terrorism Threats Facility has helped implement legislative reforms and capacity building in countries such as Iraq, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria and Tajikistan.
Voronkov urged member states to invest more in long-term strategies for prevention, rather than focusing only on killing or capturing the leaders of terrorist groups. He said effective counterterrorism efforts must address the root causes of radicalization, while complying with the requirements of international law.
He raised concerns in particular about detention camps in northeastern Syria, where tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children, continue to be held in unsafe and undignified conditions, risking further radicalization.
Gherman said that CTED is helping states address such challenges through the adoption of principles for tackling the use of drones, financial tech and artificial intelligence for terrorism purposes.
Despite the geopolitical and resource-related constraints, both of the officials emphasized the need for sustained international collaboration on the issue.
“The persistence of the threat posed by Daesh, despite national and international efforts, underscores the urgency of sustained global counterterrorism cooperation,” said Voronkov.
