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Tent compound rises in Khan Younis as Israel prepares for Rafah offensive

Tent compound rises in Khan Younis as Israel prepares for Rafah offensive
Displaced Palestinians inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a tent camp, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip April 22, 2024. (REUTERS)
Updated 23 April 2024
AP
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Tent compound rises in Khan Younis as Israel prepares for Rafah offensive

Tent compound rises in Khan Younis as Israel prepares for Rafah offensive
  • Israel has said it plans to evacuate civilians from Rafah during an anticipated offensive on the southern city
  • The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians
Updated 23 April 2024
AP
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Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press appear to show a new compound of tents being built near Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip as the Israeli military continues to signal it plans an offensive targeting the city of Rafah.
The tent construction is near Khan Younis, which has been targeted by repeated Israeli military operations over recent weeks. Israel has said it plans to evacuate civilians from Rafah during an anticipated offensive on the southern city, where hundreds of thousands of people have taken refuge during the war, now in its seventh month.
Also Monday, a failed rocket strike was launched at a base housing US-led coalition forces at Rumalyn, Syria, marking the first time since Feb. 4 that Iranian-backed militias have attacked a US facility in Iraq or Syria, a US defense official said. No personnel were injured in the attack, and no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The conflict has sparked regional unrest pitting Israel and the US against Iran and allied militant groups across the Middle East. Israel and Iran traded fire directly this month, raising fears of all-out war.
The war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Israel says militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.
The Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, at least two-thirds of them children and women. It has devastated Gaza’s two largest cities and left a swath of destruction. Around 80 percent of the territory’s population have fled to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave.
The US House of Representatives approved a $26 billion aid package on Saturday that includes around $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza, which experts say is on the brink of famine, as well as billions for Israel. The US Senate could pass the package as soon as Tuesday, and President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.

Life returns to raided West Bank city as Israeli army withdraws

Life returns to raided West Bank city as Israeli army withdraws
Updated 06 September 2024
AFP
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Life returns to raided West Bank city as Israeli army withdraws

Life returns to raided West Bank city as Israeli army withdraws
  • Days of destructive incursions by soldiers backed by armored vehicles and bulldozers
  • Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and its forces regularly make incursions into Palestinian communities
Updated 06 September 2024
AFP

JENIN, Palestinian Territories: The Israeli army withdrew from the city of Jenin and its refugee camp on Friday after a 10-day operation that left 36 dead across the occupied West Bank, witnesses said.

After days of destructive incursions by soldiers backed by armored vehicles and bulldozers, residents who had fled began returning to their homes in the camp, a bastion of Palestinian armed groups fighting against Israel, AFP journalists said.

On August 28, the army launched a military operation in several cities and towns of the northern West Bank including Jenin.

It said in a statement on Friday that Israeli forces “have been conducting counterterrorism activity in the area of Jenin,” without confirming a withdrawal.

“Israeli security forces are continuing to act in order to achieve the objectives of the counterterrorism operation,” the statement said.

Over the course of the operation in Jenin, Israeli forces killed 14 militants, arrested 30 suspects, dismantled “approximately 30 explosives planted under roads” and conducted four aerial strikes, the statement said.

One Israeli soldier was killed in Jenin, where most of the Palestinian fatalities have occurred.

Hamas, whose October 7 attack on southern Israel triggered the ongoing war in Gaza, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have said at least 14 of the dead were militants.

Aziz Taleb, a 48-year-old father of seven, returned to his family home of 20 years to find soldiers had raided it.

“Thank God (the children) left the day before. They went to stay with our neighbors here,” he said.

“If they had stayed, they would have been killed without warning or anything,” he said as he surveyed the damage, glass crunching under his feet.

Many homes in Jenin camp were damaged or destroyed by army bulldozers and pavement was stripped from the roads.

Residents used bulldozers of their own to begin clearing the rubble on Friday after Israeli armored vehicles left, AFP journalists reported.

The early trickle of returning residents turned into a flood, and soon children were playing in the streets.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and its forces regularly make incursions into Palestinian communities, but the latest raids as well as hawkish comments by Israeli officials signaled an escalation, residents said.

Since the Gaza war began on October 7, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 661 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

At least 23 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks in the territory during the same period, according to Israeli officials.

Topics: War on Gaza Israel Gaza Jenin

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Rift over ultra-Orthodox education funding deepens Israeli coalition woes

Rift over ultra-Orthodox education funding deepens Israeli coalition woes
Updated 06 September 2024
Reuters
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Rift over ultra-Orthodox education funding deepens Israeli coalition woes

Rift over ultra-Orthodox education funding deepens Israeli coalition woes
  • The ultra-Orthodox parties have been less vocal about the conduct of the war but have fought hard for benefits for their Haredi community
  • Tensions have run especially high over the recent abolition of an exemption long enjoyed by Haredi men from conscription into the military
Updated 06 September 2024
Reuters

JERUSALEM: Israel’s ultra-Orthodox parties, already at odds with coalition partners over demands to draft young religious men into the army, are again testing the unity of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government with a challenge over education funding.
The latest rift centers on an ultra-Orthodox push for schools in their separate education system to receive the same benefits as state-run schools, especially their “New Horizon” program that adds school hours and sharply hikes teacher pay.
“For a year we have been fighting for the entry of ‘New Horizon’ into ultra-Orthodox institutions. There is no reason for our teachers to be discriminated against,” said ultra-Orthodox Education Minister Haim Biton.
Biton, a member of Shas, one of two Orthodox parties in the right-wing coalition, said they would not quit the government over the issue. But the other ultra-Orthodox party, United Torah Judaism (UTJ), notified the coalition whip that until the funding issue was resolved it would boycott votes in parliament.
Coalition whip Ophir Katz said he was working to avert a showdown ahead of a vote on a 3.4 billion shekel ($918.35 million) budget boost to help fund tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from their homes by rocket fire from Lebanon.
The dispute is the latest of many that have highlighted both the tensions within Netanyahu’s unwieldy coalition through almost two years of near-constant crisis punctuated by mass protests against judicial reforms and the Gaza war.
With a grouping of religious and hard-line nationalist-religious parties and his own right-wing Likud party, Netanyahu controls 64 of parliament’s 120 seats but from the start, relations between ministers have been fractious.
Far-right parties led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have repeatedly shaken the coalition over issues including the handling of the Gaza war, threatening to leave over any move, backed by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, toward a deal to end the conflict.
The ultra-Orthodox parties have been less vocal about the conduct of the war but have fought hard for benefits for their Haredi community, who comprise around 13 percent of the population.
Tensions have run especially high over the recent abolition of an exemption long enjoyed by Haredi men from conscription into the military under a ruling by the Supreme Court, but the education budget has also caused problems.
“The Haredi parties feel that the extreme right secured all of its demands from the government and Ben-Gvir gets whatever he wants from the prime minister, while they are failing,” said Gilad Malach, director of the Israel Democracy Institute’s ultra-Orthodox program.
With Netanyahu’s government likely to face a reckoning at the polls over the security failures that allowed the Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas from Gaza to happen, none of the parties have shown any real inclination to walk out.
But even so, such tensions contain the seeds of future problems, Malach said. “It might begin a process that all parties don’t want right now but that might be the result.”

Topics: Israel

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Tunisian presidential candidate Zammel released from detention, state news agency says

Tunisian presidential candidate Zammel released from detention, state news agency says
Updated 06 September 2024
Reuters
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Tunisian presidential candidate Zammel released from detention, state news agency says

Tunisian presidential candidate Zammel released from detention, state news agency says
  • Ayachi Zammel is one of three candidates approved by Tunisia’s electoral commission to run in a presidential election on Oct. 6
  • Zammel campaign member Mahdi Abdel Jawad described his arrest as a kidnapping
Updated 06 September 2024
Reuters

TUNIS: Tunisian presidential candidate Ayachi Zammel was released from police custody on Friday shortly after he was set free from a previous detention then re-arrested over alleged election-related irregularities, the state news agency TAP reported.

Zammel is one of three candidates approved by Tunisia’s electoral commission to run in a presidential election on Oct. 6 which opposition critics say is rigged in favor of President Kais Saied.

He was arrested on Monday on suspicion of falsifying voter forms. A judge ordered him set free on Thursday. But two lawyers for Zammel, Abdessatar Massoudi and Dalila Ben Mbarek, said he was arrested again immediately after his release from Borj El Amri prison.

On Friday, he was released again on a judge’s orders, TAP said. His case was postponed until Sept. 19.

Zammel campaign member Mahdi Abdel Jawad described his arrest as a kidnapping.

He is accused of falsifying voter forms for next month’s election. Each candidate must submit forms from 10,000 supporters to qualify to stand. He denies the allegation.

Zammel has said he faces restrictions and intimidation because he is a serious competitor to Saied. He has pledged to rebuild democracy, guarantee freedoms and fix Tunisia’s collapsing economy.

Saied was democratically elected in 2019, but then tightened his grip on power and began ruling by decree in 2021 in a move the opposition has described as a coup.

Major political factions say Saied’s years in power have eroded the democratic gains of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution.

Opposition parties and human rights groups have accused the authorities of using arbitrary restrictions to help ensure Saied’s re-election.

Along with Zammel and Saied, politician Zouhair Maghzaoui is approved to run in the election.

Topics: Tunisia Ayachi Zammel kais Saied Zouhair Maghzaoui

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UN mission suspects war crimes in Sudan, calls for peacekeeping force

UN mission suspects war crimes in Sudan, calls for peacekeeping force
Updated 06 September 2024
Reuters
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UN mission suspects war crimes in Sudan, calls for peacekeeping force

UN mission suspects war crimes in Sudan, calls for peacekeeping force
  • Report said that both the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces were responsible for attacks on civilians
Updated 06 September 2024
Reuters

GENEVA: Both sides in Sudan’s civil war have committed abuses on a large scale which may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity, a UN-mandated mission said on Friday, recommending an arms embargo and a peacekeeping force to protect civilians.
The 19-page report by a UN Fact-Finding Mission, based on 182 interviews with survivors, their family members and witnesses, said that both the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were responsible for attacks on civilians and had used torture and carried out arbitrary arrests. “The gravity of these findings underscores the urgent and immediate action to protect civilians,” said the mission’s chair Mohamed Chande Othman, calling for an independent and impartial force to be deployed without delay.
The report is the three-member mission’s first since its creation in October 2023 by the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Civilians in Sudan are facing worsening famine, mass displacement and disease after 17 months of war between the army and the RSF paramilitary.
US-led mediators said last month that they had secured guarantees from both parties at talks in Switzerland to improve access for humanitarian aid, but that the Sudanese army’s absence from the discussions had hindered progress.

Topics: Sudan Unrest

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Iraqi date farmers fight drought to protect national treasure

Iraqi date farmers fight drought to protect national treasure
Updated 06 September 2024
AFP
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Iraqi date farmers fight drought to protect national treasure

Iraqi date farmers fight drought to protect national treasure
  • Dates are Iraq’s second-largest export product after oil, which dominates export revenues and generates more than $120 million
  • The date palm and its bounty are national icons, but they are being battered by drought
Updated 06 September 2024
AFP

Janajah: Bare feet pressed against the rough trunk of a palm tree, his back supported by a metal and fabric harness, Ali Abed begins the climb to the dates above.
In Iraq, the date palm and its bounty are national icons, but they are being battered by drought.
Once known as the country of “30 million palm trees,” Iraq’s ancient date-growing culture had already suffered from upheaval, especially during the 1980-88 war with Iran, before climate change became a major threat.
In the still lush countryside of central Iraq, near Janajah village in Babylon province, hundreds of date palms stand tall and majestic, surrounded by vines and fruit trees.
During harvest season, the branches are heavy with clusters of yellow and red dates.
Rising at dawn to avoid the searing heat, harvesters climb the palms using only their upper body strength, aided by a harness and rope wrapped around the trunk.
“Last year, the orchards and the palm groves were thirsty; we almost lost them. This year, thanks to God, we had good water and a good harvest,” said Abed, a 36-year-old farmer from Biramana, a village a few kilometers (miles) from Janajah.
Once at the top, they pick the ripe dates, filling baskets that are lowered to the ground and emptied into basins, which are then loaded onto lorries.
Abed noted, however, that the harvest is much smaller now — about half of what it used to be. He once collected more than 12 tons but now brings in just four or five.
Abed criticized the lack of government support, saying aerial insecticide campaigns are not enough.
Iraq has spent over a decade trying to revive the date palm, a vital economic asset and national symbol.
Authorities and religious institutions have launched programs and mega-projects to encourage tree planting and growth.
An agriculture ministry spokesperson told the official INA news agency last month that, “for the first time since the 1980s,” the number of date palms had risen to “more than 22 million,” up from a low of just eight million.
During the Iran-Iraq War, palm groves were razed in vast areas along the border to prevent enemy infiltration.
Today, dates are Iraq’s second-largest export product after oil, which dominates export revenues and generates more than $120 million, according to the World Bank.
In 2023, Iraq exported around 650,000 tons of dates, official statistics show.
Yet around Janajah, many palm trees lie dead and decapitated.
“All these palm trees are dead due to the drought; the whole region is suffering,” said 56-year-old farmer Maitham Talib.
“Before, we had water. People irrigated abundantly. Now, we need complicated machinery,” he said, observing the harvest.
The United Nations has labelled Iraq one of the five countries in the world most vulnerable to some of the effects of climate change.
The country has endured four consecutive years of drought, though this year saw some relief with winter rainfall.
Alongside rising temperatures that have hit 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit) in summer and declining rainfall, Iraq also faces falling river levels, blamed on dams built upstream by Iran and Turkiye.
Kifah Talib, 42, lamented the slow devastation wrought by the drought.
“It used to be paradise: apple, pomegranate, citrus trees and vines — everything grew here,” he said.

Topics: Iraq Global warming date palm

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