Yemeni leader urges military action to stop Houthis’ Red Sea attacks
Dozens of Yemeni activists, attorneys, and journalists appealed to Houthis to save well-known judge who is facing death due to “appalling circumstances” in prison
Updated 28 January 2024
Saeed Al-Batati
AL-MUKALLA: Rashad Al-Alimi, chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, has urged the international community to provide military assistance to his government in order to free the country’s Red Sea coast from the Houthis, warning that US and UK “defensive” strikes will not end threats to the international shipping lane.
“Defensive operations are not the solution. The solution is to eliminate the Houthi military capabilities and also partner with the legitimate government to control these areas,” Al-Alimi said during a press conference in Riyadh on Saturday.
Al-Alimi added that his government’s military actions would weaken the Houthis and force them to embrace peace attempts to end the conflict.
He said that the Houthis reject UN-brokered peace proposals and have targeted ships in the Red Sea because they feel they are powerful.
“We seek support for the legitimate government, not for conflict, and we do not call for war, but rather to push the Houthis to enter discussions,” Al-Alimi said.
The Houthis have conducted dozens of drone and missile attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea, Bab Al-Mandab, and the Gulf of Aden as part of their ban on all ships going toward Israel.
The Houthis claim that their acts are in solidarity with the Palestinian people and to press Israel to end its campaign in Gaza.
Separately, dozens of Yemeni human rights activists, attorneys, and journalists appealed to the Iran-backed Houthis, as well as local and international rights organizations, on Sunday to save a well-known judge who is facing death due to “appalling circumstances” in a notorious Houthi prison facility in Sanaa.
In a joint online petition, more than 50 Yemenis, including famous activists, said that Judge Abdul Wahab Qatran informed his family in a short call with his son that he was “dead” and that the Houthis held him in solitary confinement.
“This is an appeal to all forces of conscience and humanity inside and outside Yemen for serious and influential solidarity with Judge Abdul Wahab Qatran, who says, ‘I am dead,’ from his solitary cell in the Political Security Prison in Sana’a, according to a 20-second phone call with his son,” the activists said in their appeal.
Earlier this month, armed Houthis raided Qatran’s home in Sanaa, momentarily detaining and abusing his family before kidnapping him, hours after he condemned the Houthis for assaulting a local journalist who sought his salary and the reopening of his closed radio station.
Qatran has long been renowned for fiercely criticizing the Houthis for neglecting to pay thousands of public workers and for failing to restore basic facilities in regions under their control.
In Sanaa, hundreds of Hada tribesmen from the province of Dhamar staged a rare demonstration on Saturday, demanding that the Houthis release the leader of the Teachers Club Union, Abu Zaid Al-Kumaim.
The tribesmen gathered in Sanaa’s Al-Sabeen to persuade the Houthis to free Al-Kumaim, a member of their tribe.
Mohammed Al-Kumaim, a Yemeni military expert and a member of the tribe, told Arab News that his tribe gathered in Sanaa after the Houthis broke a promise to free Abu Zaid Al-Kumaim months ago, and that the Houthis agreed to release him again on Saturday.
In October, the Houthis kidnapped the Union leader in Sanaa after urging hundreds of teachers to go on strike to urge the Houthis to pay their wages.
In contrast to their violent repression of peaceful rallies by ordinary Yemenis, the Houthis seldom crush protests by strong tribesmen to prevent revolt, experts say.
Palestinian Authority suspends broadcast of Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV temporarily
The authority accuses the broadcaster of sowing division in the Middle East and Palestine
The authority says Al-Jazeera was airing 'inciting material' from Jenin camp in the West Bank
Updated 19 sec ago
Reuters
CAIRO: The Palestinian Authority suspended the broadcast of Qatar’s Al-Jazeera TV temporarily over “inciting material,” Palestinian official news agency WAFA reported on Wednesday.
A ministerial committee that includes the culture, interior and communications ministries decided to suspend the broadcaster’s operations over what they described as broadcasting “inciting material and reports that were deceiving and stirring strife” in the country.
The decision isn’t expected to be implemented in Hamas-run Gaza where the Palestinian Authority does not exercise power.
Al-Jazeera TV last week came under criticism by the Palestinian Authority over its coverage of the weeks-long standoff between Palestinian security forces and militant fighters in the Jenin camp in the occupied West Bank.
Fatah, the faction which controls the Palestinian Authority, said the broadcaster was sowing division in “our Arab homeland in general and in Palestine in particular.” It encouraged Palestinians not to cooperate with the network.
Israeli forces in September issued Al-Jazeera with a military order to shut down operations, after they raided the outlet’s bureau in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
10 killed as Israeli airstrike targets shelter for displaced families in Gaza, medics say
Israel has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians in the war in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave
Updated 02 January 2025
AFP
CAIRO: An Israeli airstrike killed at least 10 Palestinians in a tent encampment sheltering displaced families in southern Gaza Strip early on Thursday, medics said.
The 10 people, including women and children, were killed in a tent in Al-Mawasi, designated as a humanitarian area in western Khan Younis, according to the medics.
Fifteen people were also wounded, the medics added. The Israeli military has not immediately commented.
Israel has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians in the war in Gaza, according to health officials in the Hamas-run enclave. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced and much of the tiny coastal strip is in ruins.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and another 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
11 years on, Syria protesters demand answers on abducted activists
No group has claimed the four activists’ abduction and they have not been heard from since
Updated 02 January 2025
AFP
DOUMA, Syria: A few dozen protesters gathered in the Syrian city of Douma on Wednesday demanding answers about the fate of four prominent activists abducted more than a decade ago.
Holding up photographs of the missing activists, the demonstrators called on Syria’s new rulers — the Islamist-led rebels who seized power last month — to investigate what happened to them.
“We are here because we want to know the whole truth about two women and two men who were disappeared from this place 11 years and 22 days ago,” said activist Yassin Al-Hajj Saleh, whose wife Samira Khalil was among those abducted.
In December 2013, Khalil, Razan Zeitouneh, Wael Hamada and Nazem Al-Hammadi were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen from the office of a human rights group they ran together in the then rebel-held city outside Damascus.
The four played an active role in the 2011 uprising against Bashar Assad’s rule and also documented violations, including by the Islamist rebel group Jaish Al-Islam that controlled the Douma area in the early stages of the ensuing civil war.
No group has claimed the four activists’ abduction and they have not been heard from since.
Many in Douma blame Jaish Al-Islam but the rebel group has denied involvement.
“We have enough evidence to incriminate Jaish Al-Islam, and we have the names of suspects we would like to see investigated,” Hajj Saleh said.
He said he wanted “the perpetrators to be tried by the Syrian courts.”
The fate of tens of thousands of people who disappeared under the Assads’ rule is a key question for Syria’s interim rulers after more than 13 years of devastating civil war that saw upwards of half a million people killed.
“We are here because we want the truth. The truth about their fate and justice for them, so that we may heal our wounds,” said Alaa Al-Merhi, 33, Khalil’s niece.
Khalil was a renowned activist hailing from the Assads’ Alawite minority who was jailed from 1987 to 1991 for opposing their iron-fisted rule.
Her husband is also a renowned human rights activist who was detained in 1980 and forced to live abroad for years.
“We as a family seek justice, to know their fate and to hold those resposible accountable for their actions,” she added.
Zeitouneh was among the 2011 winners of the European parliament’s human rights prize, A lawyer, she had received threats from both the government and the rebels before she went missing. Her husband Hamada was abducted with her.
Protesting was unthinkable just a month ago in Douma, a former rebel stronghold that paid a heavy price for rising up against the Assads.
Douma is located in Eastern Ghouta, an area controlled by rebel and jihadist factions for around six years until government forces retook it in 2018 after a long and bloody siege.
The siege of Eastern Ghouta culminated in a devastating offensive by the army that saw at least 1,700 civilians killed before a deal was struck that saw fighters and civilians evacuated to northern Syria.
Douma still bears the scars of the civil war, with many bombed out buildings.
During the conflict, all sides were accused of abducting and summarily executing opponents.
How two civilian deaths highlighted the tragic toll of Middle East conflict
Mohamad Nasrallah, 18, died in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut while Gevara Ebraheem, 11, died in a Hezbollah rocket attack on Majdal Shams
The death of these two young people has come to symbolize the loss of a generation’s potential amid the Israel-Hezbollah conflict
Updated 02 January 2025
Jonathan Gornall
LONDON: As Israeli air attacks on Beirut’s southern suburbs intensified, 18-year-old university student Mohamad Nasrallah left his home and sought refuge in the more northerly neighborhood of Hamra, near the Lebanese American University where he was studying.
On Sept. 26, Mohamad and his sister, Mirna, made the fatal decision to return briefly to their home to collect some belongings.
Later, it emerged they had returned to collect some items to donate to the many displaced Lebanese who had fled north to escape the anticipated Israeli ground invasion, which would begin on Oct. 1.
While they were there, their building was hit by an Israeli airstrike, killing Mohamad and seriously injuring his sister.
Israeli security forces and medics transport casualties along with local residents, at a site where a Hezbollah rocket from Lebanon fell in Majdal Shams village in the Israeli-annexed Golan area on July 27, 2024. (AFP file)
Two months earlier, on July 27, an Iranian-made Falaq-1 rocket with a 50 kg warhead had struck the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.
The rocket landed on a soccer pitch, killing 12 children enjoying a Saturday evening game and injuring dozens more.
Hezbollah has always denied its role in the attack, although it seems certain that the missile was fired from southern Lebanon and had overshot its intended target — an Israeli military base a few kilometers north of Majdal Shams.
The following day, 11 of the 12 victims, aged 11 to 16, were buried in their white coffins.
Druze women mourn near the coffin of a loved one in Majdal Shams village in the Israeli-annexed Golan area on July 28, 2024, a day after a Hezbollah strike from Lebanon. (AFP file photo)
Initially, there had been hopes that the twelfth victim, 11-year-old Gevara Ebraheem, had somehow survived the blast.
For 24 hours he had been considered missing, even after the family discovered that he had not, as they were at first told, been taken alive to Ziv Medical Center in nearby Safed.
In fact, as Israeli authorities revealed that Sunday evening, after a painstaking examination of the scene, forensic investigators had concluded that the small child had been virtually obliterated by the blast.
Hundreds of mourners attended Gevara’s funeral the following day, when Majdal Shams received a visit from Israel’s then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who pledged the children’s deaths would be avenged.
Druze women mourn near the coffins of young people in Majdal Shams village in the Israeli-annexed Golan area on July 28, 2024, a day after a Hezbollah strike from Lebanon. (AFP file photo)
“There’s no difference between a Jewish child who was murdered in the south of Israel on Oct. 7 and a Druze child who was murdered in the Golan Heights,” he told mourners at Gevara’s funeral.
He added: “It’s the same thing, these are our children … Hezbollah will pay a price for this.”
Not everyone shared Gallant’s wish for vengeance. Nabeeh Abu Saleh, a paramedic who had rushed to the scene of the attack to find his nephew among the dead, told the Associated Press: “We buried our children. We don’t want retaliation.
“We have families in Lebanon, in Syria, and we have brothers here.”
Nevertheless, just three days later, senior Hezbollah member Fuad Shukr, deemed responsible for the Majdal Shams attack, was killed, along with an Iranian military adviser, in a targeted Israeli airstrike on his residential building in Beirut.
Also reported killed were his wife, two other women, and two children.
A banner bearing the image of slain Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr is seen at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the Haret Hreik neighborhood in Beirut's southern suburbs on November 21, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah. (AFP)
In one sense, it might seem invidious to highlight just two deaths out of the tens of thousands that have occurred in Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon since the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
But in the face of so much death, there is a danger of succumbing to the proverb attributed to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin — that one death is a tragedy, but thousands merely a statistic — and losing sight of the individual suffering behind each number.
Although they lived lives separated by birth, borders, and beliefs, Mohamad Nasrallah and Gevara Ebraheem share one thing in common — in death, they were mourned as individuals by families, friends, and communities.
What is more, as young people whose hopes, dreams, and potential have been violently cut short, they must also be grieved as representatives of a lost future.
While Gevara meant everything to his surviving parents and younger brother, few details have emerged about his life.
Residents of the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan carry the coffin of 11-year-old Guevara Ibrahim on July 29, 2024, two days after a Hebollah rocket attack that killed him and 11 others. (AFP file photo)
A photograph released by his family shows a happy boy, as mad about soccer as any child his age. In it, he sports Real Madrid’s 23-24 home kit. In another photograph, held aloft by mourners at his funeral, Gevara, smiling broadly, is wearing a red Zeus club football top.
But like all children in the region whose futures hang daily in the balance, it is clear that Gevara was both aware of the precarious and volatile nature of the world around him, and yearned desperately for better days ahead.
IN NUMBERS
• $8.5 billion Cost of Lebanon’s physical damage and economic losses caused by conflict.
• 6.6% Reduction’s of Lebanon real GDP growth in 2024 due to conflict.
According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, just days after the start of the Gaza war, the 10-year-old posted a simple but moving plea on Facebook: “We don’t want war,” he wrote. “We want to live in peace.”
Gevara would be granted only the peace of the grave. The path in life that he might have taken, and the light he might have been able to bring to the world, will now never be known.
But his death is no less poignant than that of Mohamad Nasrallah, whose future was already more clearly defined.
On Dec. 10, Mohamad’s friends and family gathered on the Beirut campus of the Lebanese American University to pay tribute to one of its brightest students, as he was described in a report on the memorial published on the university’s website on Dec. 17.
Residents in the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights celebrate on December 9, 2024, after fighters declared that they have taken the Syrian capital in a lightning offensive, sending President Bashar al-Assad fleeing and ending five decades of Baath rule in Syria. (AFP file)
Mohamad, a business student with dreams of establishing a startup, “had already accomplished so much” and “had built strong friendships at LAU and everywhere he went.”
The memorial was attended by Mohamad’s father Ali, mother Fadia, and sisters Dana, Sally, and Mirna, who was still recovering from her injuries.
Dana, Mohamad’s eldest sister, 10 years his senior, recalled how her brother had been determined to graduate top of his class and be selected as his year’s commencement speaker.
“Our brother and his ambitions were larger than life,” she said. That she was addressing his classmates instead at his memorial “brought her to tears,” the LAU reporter wrote.
Some of Mohamad’s many friends also spoke at the memorial. Angelina El Zaghir beseeched her fellow classmates to “speak his name and carry forward his life, dreams, and love, because Mohamad would have wanted us to.”
Dani Taan pledged to make his best friend proud.
A woman from the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights waves to her relative across the fence in the UN-patrolled buffer zone separating Israeli and Syrian forces on December 17, 2024. (AFP file photo)
Mohammad Shouman said he took strength from “looking around and seeing that my tears are part of a collective well, which pours water from your martyrdom and hope from your existence.”
It fell to Dr. Raed Mohsen, the university’s dean of students and co-founder of the Lebanese Association for Mediation and Conciliation, to urge Mohamad’s fellow students to embrace that hope and reject despair.
“Witnessing your resolve to strive for a better future offers us some consolation,” he said. “We can see Mohamad’s unfaltering spirit in every one of you.”
As 2024 draws to a close, it is a message that will resonate with thousands of families across the region, each one mourning their own Mohameds and Gevaras and hoping against hope that 2025 will mark the beginning of that better future.
Tens of thousands of people in Istanbul protest Gaza war
Demonstrators waved Turkish and Palestinian flags and chanted “Free Palestine” in the protest
Bilal Erdoğan, the son of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, addressed the crowd, urging support for Gaza and condemning Israel’s actions
Updated 01 January 2025
AP AFP
ISTANBUL/JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of people gathered on Istanbul’s Galata Bridge on New Year’s Day on Wednesday to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Demonstrators waved Turkish and Palestinian flags and chanted “Free Palestine” in the protest, organized by the National Will Platform, a coalition of more than 300 pro-Palestinian and Islamic groups.
Bilal Erdoğan, the son of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, addressed the crowd, urging support for Gaza and condemning Israel’s actions there.
He referred to the recent ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad by rebel forces.
“Muslims in Syria were determined, patient and they achieved victory. After Syria, Gaza will emerge victoriously from the siege,” he said.
Drone video showed thousands of people filling the bridge and the adjacent Eminönü and Sirkeci districts.
President Erdoğan has been a fierce critic of the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military said two projectiles were fired from Gaza on Wednesday in the first minutes of the new year, one of which was intercepted while the other landed in an open area.
Alert sirens sounded around midnight (2200 GMT) in the western Negev, the Israeli military said, and “two projectiles were identified crossing from the central Gaza Strip into Israeli territory.”
“One projectile was successfully intercepted and the second projectile fell in an open area,” the army said on Telegram.
The military said it has intercepted several rockets fired from northern Gaza in recent days.
Since October, Israeli operations in Gaza have focused on the north, with officials saying their land and air offensive aims to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 45,500 people in Gaza.
