Qatari PM and UN chief discuss Gaza developments during call
They also discussed the latest developments in the Middle East region
Updated 12 May 2024
Arab News
LONDON: Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday discussed developments in the Gaza Strip and the occupied Palestinian territories, state news agency QNA reported.
During the phone call, they particularly focused on joint mediation efforts to end the war, release prisoners and detainees, and bring humanitarian aid in a sustainable manner to all areas of the besieged enclave.
They also discussed the latest developments in the Middle East region.
Meanwhile, Sheikh Mohammed received a delegation of members of the US Congress, which included Democrat Derek Kilmer ad Republicans Dave Joyce and Lance Gooden during their visit to Doha.
The meeting discussed the close strategic relations between Qatar and the US and ways to support and develop them, as well as the conflict in Gaza.
Airline pilots, crews voice concerns about Middle East routes
Some pilots, crew unions worry about certain Middle Eastern flight routes — letters to airlines, regulators
Passenger rights groups demand transparency on flight paths over conflict zones
Updated 5 sec ago
Reuters
LONDON: In late September, an experienced pilot at low-cost European airline Wizz Air felt anxious after learning his plane would fly over Iraq at night amid mounting tensions between nearby Iran and Israel. He decided to query the decision since just a week earlier the airline had deemed the route unsafe. In response, Wizz Air’s flight operations team told him the airway was now considered secure and he had to fly it, without giving further explanation, the pilot said. “I wasn’t really happy with it,” the pilot, who requested anonymity from fear he could lose his job, told Reuters. Days later, Iraq closed its airspace when Iran fired missiles on Oct. 1 at Israel. “It confirmed my suspicion that it wasn’t safe.” In response to Reuters’ queries, Wizz Air said safety is its top priority and it had carried out detailed risk assessments before resuming flights over Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. Reuters spoke to four pilots, three cabin crew members, three flight security experts and two airline executives about growing safety concerns in the European air industry due to escalating tensions in the Middle East following Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023, that prompted the war in Gaza. The Middle East is a key air corridor for planes heading to India, South-East Asia and Australia and last year was criss-crossed daily by 1,400 flights to and from Europe, Eurocontrol data show. The safety debate about flying over the region is playing out in Europe largely because pilots there are protected by unions, unlike other parts of the world. Reuters reviewed nine unpublished letters from four European unions representing pilots and crews that expressed worries about air safety over Middle Eastern countries. The letters were sent to Wizz Air, Ryanair, airBaltic, the European Commission and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) between June and August. “No one should be forced to work in such a hazardous environment and no commercial interests should outweigh the safety and well-being of those on board,” read a letter, addressed to EASA and the European Commission from Romanian flight crew union FPU Romania, dated Aug. 26. In other letters, staff called on airlines to be more transparent about their decisions on routes and demanded the right to refuse to fly a dangerous route. There have been no fatalities or accidents impacting commercial aviation tied to the escalation of tensions in the Middle East since the war in Gaza erupted last year. Air France opened an internal investigation after one of its commercial planes flew over Iraq on Oct. 1 during Tehran’s missile attack on Israel. On that occasion, airlines scrambled to divert dozens of planes heading toward the affected areas in the Middle East. The ongoing tensions between Israel and Iran and the abrupt ousting of President Bashar Assad by Syrian rebels at the weekend have raised concerns of further insecurity in the region. The use of missiles in the region has revived memories of the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 and of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 en route from Tehran in 2020. Being accidentally shot-down in the chaos of war is the top worry, three pilots and two aviation safety experts told Reuters, along with the risk of an emergency landing. While airlines including Lufthansa and KLM no longer fly over Iran, carriers including Etihad, flydubai, Aeroflot and Wizz Air were still crossing the country’s airspace as recently as Dec. 2, data from tracking service FlightRadar24 show. Some European airlines including Lufthansa and KLM allow crew to opt-out of routes they don’t feel are safe, but others such as Wizz Air, Ryanair and airBaltic don’t. AirBaltic CEO Martin Gauss said his airline meets an international safety standard that doesn’t need to be adjusted. “If we start a right of refusal, then where do we stop? the next person feels unhappy overflying Iraqi airspace because there’s tension there?” he told Reuters on Dec. 2 in response to queries about airBaltic flight safety talks with unions. Ryanair, which intermittently flew to Jordan and Israel until September, said it makes security decisions based on EASA guidance. “If EASA says it’s safe, then, frankly, thank you, we’re not interested in what the unions or some pilot think,” Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary told Reuters in October, when asked about staff security concerns. EASA said it has been involved in a number of exchanges with pilots and airlines on route safety in recent months concerning the Middle East, adding that disciplining staff for raising safety concerns would run counter to a “just culture” where employees can voice worries. Insufficient reassurances One Abu Dhabi-based Wizz Air pilot told Reuters he was comfortable flying over the conflict-torn region as he believes the industry has a very high safety standard. But for some pilots and crew members working at budget airlines, the reassurances of the companies are insufficient. They told Reuters pilots should have more choice in refusing flights over potentially dangerous airspace and requested more information about airline security assessments. “The fact that Wizz Air sends emails asserting that it’s safe is irrelevant to commercial employees,” read a letter from FPU Romania to Chief Operating Officer Diarmuid O’Conghaile, dated Aug. 12. “Flights into these conflict areas, even if they are rescue missions, should be carried out by military personnel and aircraft, not by commercial crews.” Mircea Constantin, a former cabin crew member who represents FPU Romania, said Wizz Air never gave a formal response to this letter and similar ones sent earlier this year, but did send security guidance and updates to staff. A pilot and a cabin crew member, who declined to be named for fear of retaliatory action, said they got warnings from their employers for refusing to fly on Middle Eastern routes or calling in sick.
Congested skies Last month, 165 missiles were launched in Middle Eastern conflict zones versus just 33 in November 2023, according to the latest available data from Osprey Flight Solutions. But airspace can only be enforcably restricted if a country chooses to shut it down, as in the case of Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Several airlines have opted to briefly suspend flights to places like Israel when tension rises. Lufthansa and British Airways did so after Iran bombarded Israel on April 13. But this limits the airspace in use in the already congested Middle Eastern skies. Choosing to fly over Central Asia or Egypt and Saudi Arabia to avoid Middle Eastern hot spots is also more costly as planes burn more fuel and some countries charge higher overflight fees. Flying a commercial plane from Singapore to London-Heathrow through Afghanistan and Central Asia, for instance, cost an airline $4,760 in overflight fees, about 50 percent more than a route through the Middle East, according to two Aug. 31 flight plans reviewed by Reuters. Reuters could not name the airline as the flight plans are not public. Some private jets are avoiding the most critical areas. “At the moment, my no-go areas would be the hotspot points: Libya, Israel, Iran, simply because they’re sort of caught up in it all,” said Andy Spencer, a Singapore-based pilot who flies private jets and who previously worked as an airline pilot. Spencer, who has two decades of experience and flies through the Middle East regularly, said that on a recent flight from Manila to Cuba, he flew from Dubai over Egypt and north through Malta before refueling in Morocco to circumvent Libyan and Israeli airspace. EASA, regarded by industry experts as the strictest regional safety regulator, issues public bulletins on how to fly safely over conflict zones. But these aren’t mandatory and every airline decides where to travel based on a patchwork of government notices, third-party security advisers, in-house security teams and information sharing between carriers, leading to divergent policies. Such intelligence is not usually shared with staff. The opacity has sown fear and mistrust among pilots, cabin crew and passengers as they question whether their airline has missed something carriers in other countries are aware of, said Otjan de Bruijn, a former head of European pilots union the European Cockpit Association and a pilot for KLM. “The more information you make available to pilots, the more informed a decision they can make,” said Spencer, who is also an operations specialist at flight advisory body OPSGROUP, which offers independent operational advice to the aviation industry. When Gulf players like Etihad, Emirates or flydubai suddenly stop flying over Iran or Iraq, the industry sees it as a reliable indicator of risk, pilots and security sources said, as these airlines can have access to detailed intelligence from their governments. Flydubai told Reuters it operates within airspace and airways in the region that are approved by Dubai’s General Civil Aviation Authority. Emirates said it continuously monitors all routings, adjusting as required and would never operate a flight unless it was safe to do so. Etihad said it only operates through approved airspace. Passenger rights groups are also asking for travelers to receive more information. “If passengers decline to take flights over conflict zones, airlines would be disinclined to continue such flights,” said Paul Hudson, the head of US-based passenger group Flyers Rights. “And passengers who take such flights would do so informed of the risks.”
A mother in Gaza hasn’t seen her daughter since Israeli troops raided their home
Ajour is one of dozens of Palestinians that an Israeli legal group
Updated 56 min 50 sec ago
AP
DEIR AL-BALAH: Reem Ajour says she last saw her husband and then 4-year-old daughter in March, when Israeli soldiers raided a family home in northern Gaza. She is haunted by those chaotic last moments, when the soldiers ordered her to go – to leave behind Talal and Masaa, both wounded.
Eight months later, the 23-year-old mother still has no answers about their fate. The military says it does not have them. Troops leveled the house where they were staying soon after the raid.
“I am living and dead at the same time,” she said, breaking down in sobs.
Ajour is one of dozens of Palestinians that an Israeli legal group, Hamoked, is helping in their search for family members who went missing after being separated by Israeli soldiers during raids and arrests in the Gaza Strip.
Their cases — a fraction of the estimated thousands who have gone missing during the 14-month-long war — highlight a lack of accountability in how the Israeli military deals with Palestinians during ground operations in Gaza, Hamoked says.
Throughout the war, the military has conducted what amounts to a mass sifting of the Palestinian population as it raids homes and shelters and sends people through checkpoints. Troops round up and detain men, from dozens to several hundreds at a time, searching for any they suspect of Hamas ties, while forcing their families away, toward other parts of Gaza. The result is families split apart, often amid the chaos of fighting.
But the military has not made clear how it keeps track of everyone it separates, arrests or detains. Even if troops transfer Palestinians to military detention inside Israel, they can hold them incommunicado for more than two months – their whereabouts unknown to families or lawyers, according to rights groups.
When people vanish, it’s nearly impossible to know what happened, Hamoked says.
“We’ve never had a situation of mass forced disappearance from Gaza, with no information provided for weeks and weeks to families,” said Jessica Montell, the director of Hamoked. Israel’s High Court of Justice has refused to intervene to get answers, despite Hamoked’s petitions, she said.
Asked by The Associated Press about the cases of Ajour and two other families it interviewed, the Israeli military declined comment.
4-year-old Masaa Ajour was shot, then separated from her mother
The Ajours were sheltering at a home in Gaza City that belonged to Talal’s family after being displaced from their own house earlier in the war. Israeli troops raided the home on March 24, opening fire as they burst in, Ajour said.
Ajour, who was three months pregnant, was shot in the stomach. Talal was wounded in his leg, bleeding heavily. Masaa lay passed out, shot in the shoulder – though Ajour said she saw her still breathing.
As one soldier bandaged the little girl’s wound, another pointed his gun in Ajour’s face and told her to head out of Gaza City.
She said she pleaded that she couldn’t leave Masaa and Talal, but the soldier screamed: “Go south!”
With no choice, Ajour collected her younger son and went down to the street. “It was all in a blink of an eye. It was all so fast,” she said. Still bleeding, she walked for two and a half hours, clutching her son.
When they reached a hospital in central Gaza, doctors treated her stomach wound and found her fetus’ pulse. Weeks later, doctors found the pulse had gone. She miscarried.
Ajour said that several weeks later, a Palestinian released from a prison in southern Israel told her family he had heard her husband’s name called out over a loudspeaker among a list of detainees.
The rumor has kept her hope alive, but the military told Hamoked it had no record of Masaa or Talal being detained.
Another possibility is that they died on the scene, but no one has been able to search the rubble of the family’s building to determine if any bodies are there.
The storming of their building came as Israeli forces were battling Hamas fighters in surrounding streets while raiding nearby Shifa Hospital, where it claimed the militants were based. Troops cleared families out of nearby homes and often then destroyed or set the buildings ablaze, according to witnesses at the time.
The military itself may not know what happened to Ajour’s husband and daughter, said Montell of Hamoked.
“That illustrates a broader problem,” she said.
Ajour and her son now shelter in a tent camp outside the central Gaza town of Zuweida.
Masaa, she said, “was my first joy” — with blond hair and olive-colored eyes, a face “white like the moon.”
Masaa’s fifth birthday was in July, Ajour said, sobbing. “She turned five while she is not with me.”
Does the military document what troops do in Gaza?
Under a wartime revision to Israeli law, Palestinians from Gaza taken to military detention in Israel can be held for over two months without access to the outside world.
Israel says the law is necessary to handle the unprecedented number of detainees as it seeks to destroy Hamas following the Oct. 7 2023, attack on Israel that killed 1,200 and took around 250 people hostage inside Gaza. The military has transferred some 1,770 of its Gaza detainees to civilian prisons, according to rights groups, but it has not revealed the number still in its detention.
Milena Ansari, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said Israel is obligated under international law to document what happens during every home raid and detention. But the military is not transparent about the information it collects on detainees or on how many it is holding, she said.
Hamoked has asked the military for the whereabouts of 900 missing Palestinians. The military confirmed around 500 of them were detained in Israel. It said it had no record of detaining the other 400.
The group petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice seeking answers in 52 cases, including that of Masaa and two other children, where witnesses testified that the missing were handled by troops before their disappearances.
“The judges just dismiss the cases, without even inquiring what measures might be necessary to prevent such cases in the future,” said Montell.
A court spokesperson said it often asks the military to provide additional information but isn’t authorized to investigate if the military says it is not detaining them.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Tuesday condemned what it called Israel’s seizure of Syrian territory, saying it was a “grave breach” of international law that Israeli troops had moved into a demilitarized zone inside Syria after Damascus fell to opposition forces last week.
After the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday ended 54 years of rule by the Assad family, Israeli troops moved into the demilitarized zone set up after the 1973 Middle East war, saying the incursion was a temporary measure to ensure border security. Israel aims to impose a “sterile defense zone” in southern Syria that would be enforced without a permanent troop presence, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday, as the military said a wave of air strikes had destroyed the bulk of Syria’s strategic weapons stockpiles.
Over the past 48 hours, the Israeli military said jets had conducted more than 350 strikes on targets including anti-aircraft batteries, military airfields, weapons production sites, combat aircraft and missiles. In addition, missile vessels struck the Syrian naval facilities of Al-Bayda port and Latakia port, where 15 Syrian naval vessels were docked.
“Pakistan condemns in the strongest possible terms, Israeli aggression against Syria and its illegal seizure of the Syrian territory,” Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said in a statement. “This assault on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria is a grave breach of international law.”
She said Israel’s actions were a “dangerous” development in the already volatile Middle East region and violated United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, urging the international community, including the UNSC, to take immediate steps against Israel’s “repeated violations of aggression” against regional countries.
“Pakistan expresses full support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria and rejects Israeli acquisition of territory by force,” she said.
“We reaffirm our support for the UNSC Resolution 497, which declares Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights null and void and without international legal effect.”
The hilly, 1,200-square-kilometer (460 square-mile) Golan Heights is a fertile and strategic plateau that overlooks Israel’s Galilee region as well as Lebanon, and borders Jordan. The Heights were part of Syria until 1967, when Israel captured most of the plateau in the Six-Day War, occupying it and annexing it unilaterally in 1981. That annexation was not recognized by most countries. Syria still holds part of the Golan and has demanded that Israel withdraw from the rest of it. Israel has refused, citing security concerns.
Assad exit puts US at perilous crossroads in Syria
Since the presidency of Barack Obama, the United States has walked a fine line on Syria that critics often derided as a non-policy
The Islamist movement Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which has now led Assad's ouster, traces its roots to Syria's Al-Qaeda branch and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States
Updated 11 December 2024
AFP
WASHINGTON: For more than a decade, the United States has sought to keep out of Syria's political debacle, seeing no viable partner. Islamist rebels' toppling of strongman Bashar al-Assad has forced a change of tune -- and a debate over just what US interests are.
Donald Trump, who returns to the White House in little more than a month, on the eve of Assad's fall called Syria "a mess" and stated in his plain-speaking style that the United States should not be involved.
Joe Biden's administration, after putting Syria on the backburner in a turbulent region, has offered a tacit rebuttal by stating that clear US interests are at stake -- including preventing Syria from fragmenting and avoiding a resurgence of the Daesh extremist group.
Steven Cook, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump's and Biden's statements could be combined and "together they make a kind of decent policy."
The United States needs to address real concerns about the Daesh group and Al-Qaeda but "as far as getting involved in arranging the politics of Syria, I think that no good can come from it," Cook said.
Since the presidency of Barack Obama, the United States has walked a fine line on Syria that critics often derided as a non-policy.
The United States questioned the legitimacy of Assad, demanding accountability for brutality in one of the 21st century's deadliest wars, but stopped short of prioritizing his departure due to suspicions about the main rebels.
The Islamist movement Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which has now led Assad's ouster, traces its roots to Syria's Al-Qaeda branch and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.
Since Obama's time, the United States instead has allied itself in Syria with a smaller fighting force of the Kurdish minority -- over strenuous objections of neighboring Turkey, which backs HTS -- with a narrow mission to counter the Daesh group. Some 900 US troops remain in Syria.
Assad fell in a lighting surprise offensive as his protector Russia is bogged down in its invasion of Ukraine and after Israel's military heavily degraded Assad's other key supporters -- Iran and Lebanese militia Hezbollah.
How to deal with Islamists?
Robert Ford, the last US ambassador to Syria, helped spearhead the terrorist designation of HTS in 2012 but said that the group since then has not attacked US or Western targets and has instead fought Al-Qaeda and Daesh forces.
Ford also pointed with hope to post-victory statements by rebel chief Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, including welcoming international monitoring of any chemical weapons that are discovered.
"Can you imagine Osama bin Laden saying that?" said Ford, now a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
"I'm not saying 'trust Jolani.' He's obviously authoritarian. He's obviously an Islamist who doesn't believe that Christians have an equal right to power as Muslims. But I sure as hell want to test him on some of these things," Ford said.
He said that the United States should encourage HTS, as well as other Syrian actors, to reach out and reassure the country's diverse communities including Christians, Kurds and Alawites -- the sect of the secular-oriented Assad.
Beyond that, Washington should take a back-seat and let Syrians sort out their future, he said.
"We should learn from the experience in Iraq that trying to impose exiles on a population traumatized by a brutal dictatorship and war is not a recipe for success," Ford said.
Outgoing Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday offered US recognition to a future government that is "credible, inclusive and non-sectarian."
Weighing terrorist label
Trump in his first term, at the urging of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, abruptly said he would pull troops out of Syria. He backtracked after intense criticism at home and appeals from French President Emmanuel Macron, who pointed to the risk of Daesh filling the vacuum.
Trump has not indicated how he would change Syria policy this time. But he has shown no reluctance in the past to negotiate with foreign adversaries on the US blacklist, from Afghanistan's Taliban to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said there was no legal restriction on US contact with designated terrorists, although he indicated there was no direct dialogue with HTS.
Natasha Hall, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Syria could face "devastating economic and humanitarian consequences" unless the United States reconsiders the terrorist designation of HTS, which impedes aid groups.
"That said," she said, "if there isn't sort of an established framework for negotiations and good behavior now, before that designation is lifted, that could potentially also be a major mistake down the line for Syria's future."
Humanitarian aid to North Gaza mostly blocked for the last 2 months, UN says
Sigrid Kaag, the senior UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters after briefing the UN Security Council behind closed doors Tuesday afternoon that civilians trying to survive in Gaza face an “utterly devastating situation”
Updated 11 December 2024
AP
UNITED NATIONS: Humanitarian aid to North Gaza, where Israel launched a ground offensive on Oct. 6, has largely been blocked for the past 66 days, the United Nations said Tuesday. That has left between 65,000 and 75,000 Palestinians without access to food, water, electricity or health care, according to the world body.
In the north, Israel has continued its siege on Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya with Palestinians living there largely denied aid, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, said. Recently, it said, about 5,500 people were forcibly displaced from three schools in Beit Lahiya to Gaza City.
Adding to the food crisis, only four UN-supported bakeries are currently operating throughout the Gaza Strip, all of them in Gaza City, OCHA said.
Sigrid Kaag, the senior UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters after briefing the UN Security Council behind closed doors Tuesday afternoon that civilians trying to survive in Gaza face an “utterly devastating situation.”
She pointed to the breakdown in law and order and looting that has exacerbated a very dire situation and left the UN and many aid organizations unable to deliver food and other humanitarian essentials to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in need.
Kaag said she and other UN officials keep repeatedly asking Israel for access for convoys to North Gaza and elsewhere, to allow in commercial goods, to reopen the Rafah crossing from Egypt in the south, and to approve dual-use items.
Israel’s UN mission didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment
The UN has established the logistics for an operation across Gaza, she said, but there is no substitute for political will that humanitarians don’t possess.
“Member states possess it,” Kaag said. And this is what she urged Security Council members and keeps urging the broader international community to press for — the political will to address Gaza’s worsening humanitarian crisis.
