Donors pledge over $2 billion for Gaza at Kuwait conference

A displaced Palestinian man drives a car damaged during Israel's military offensive as he flees Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip May 12, 2024. (Reuters)

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Updated 12 May 2024

AFP

May 12, 2024 16:55

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Donors pledge over $2 billion for Gaza at Kuwait conference

A displaced Palestinian man drives a car damaged during Israel's military offensive as he flees Rafah, in southern Gaza.

The conference said the funds would be dispersed over two years, with the possibility of an extension
The initiative is designed “to mobilize efforts to support life-saving humanitarian interventions in the Gaza Strip”

Updated 12 May 2024

AFP

May 12, 2024 16:55

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KUWAIT CITY: A conference of international donors in Kuwait pledged over $2 billion in aid to Gaza Sunday as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an “immediate” ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
The conference, organized by the International Islamic Charitable Organization (IICO) and UN humanitarian coordination agency OCHA, said the funds would be dispersed over two years, with the possibility of an extension.
The initiative is designed “to mobilize efforts to support life-saving humanitarian interventions in the Gaza Strip, and to support the prospects for early recovery for the population,” IICO general manager Bader Saud Al-Sumait said.
It would be applied on five different tracks — “life-saving interventions, shelter, health, education, and economic empowerment,” Sumait said as he read the conference’s final statement.
Guterres urged an immediate halt to the war, the return of hostages held in Gaza and a “surge” in humanitarian aid to the besieged Palestinian territory.
“I repeat my call, the world’s call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages and an immediate surge in humanitarian aid,” Guterres said in a video address.
“But a ceasefire will only be the start. It will be a long road back from the devastation and trauma of this war,” he added.
Israeli strikes on Gaza continued on Sunday after it expanded an evacuation order for Rafah despite an international outcry over its military incursion into eastern areas of the city, effectively shutting a key aid crossing.
“The war in Gaza is causing horrific human suffering, devastating lives, tearing families apart and rendering huge numbers of people homeless, hungry and traumatized,” Guterres said.
Meeting Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Meshal Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, the UN chief accepted an honorary shield “on behalf of the United Nations, and especially on behalf of the almost 200 members of the UN that were killed in Gaza.”
On Friday in Nairobi, Guterres warned that Gaza faced an “epic humanitarian disaster” if Israel launched a full-scale ground operation in Rafah.
Gaza’s bloodiest-ever war began following Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a retaliatory offensive that has killed more than 35,034 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

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Israeli assault sends terrified Palestinians fleeing north Gaza

Updated 12 sec ago

AFP

October 23, 2024 00:24

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Israeli assault sends terrified Palestinians fleeing north Gaza

Updated 12 sec ago

AFP

October 23, 2024 00:24

GAZA CITY: Trapped for days as Israeli forces unleashed a sweeping assault, then rounded up and searched by troops who told them to leave, thousands of war-weary Palestinians have fled north Gaza.

Online videos verified by AFP showed dozens of displaced Gazans funnelling on Monday into a checkpoint manned by soldiers in Jabalia, the focus of the massive Israeli military operation since early October.

Walking past an Israeli tank on a rubble-strewn dirt road, they were checked before being allowed through in a single file.

Paramedic Nevin Al-Dawasah said she was trapped for 16 days in a shelter for displaced people in the Jabalia refugee camp.

Eventually, she told AFP, an Israeli army drone equipped with loudspeakers was “telling us that the Israel Defense Forces were asking us to evacuate.”

“We responded and... evacuated the shelter, but suddenly there was shelling” that killed some people and wounded others, said Dawasah.

She said she felt compelled to take videos of the wounded because “there are no journalists in the north,” already ravaged by successive Israeli operations during more than a year of war triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

The Gaza civil defense agency said last week that at least 400 people have been killed in the ongoing Israeli assault, which began on October 6.

The military says it is targeting Hamas militants who have regrouped in the area.

Though not a formal Israeli policy, analysts have told AFP that proposals for a full siege of northern Gaza to close in on militants were gaining traction.

And some members of the Israeli government have openly called for the resettlement of the Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in 1967 and maintained troops and settlements there until 2005.

Many Palestinians in northern Gaza said they felt trapped and powerless amid the widespread destruction and soaring deaths.

Saida, 46, has fled with her mother and four children from a UN school-turned-shelter in Jabalia.

She said Israeli soldiers made her wait three hours at a checkpoint and detained her son.

“They took my 15-year-old son, Amjad, and forced him to strip naked,” Saida, who gave her first name only for security reasons, told AFP by phone.

She said the troops were “questioning him and asking if he knew anyone from Hamas.”

Dawasah also said she had to pass through an Israeli checkpoint as she was leaving Jabalia.

“When we left the shelter, the Israeli occupation set up checkpoints and separated the women and men on each side and searched them,” she said.

More checkpoints have been set up on main roads, often surrounded by tanks and armored vehicles. Fleeing Palestinians also saw observation towers equipped with cameras and automatic weapons.

“They were telling us to go... and saying we deserve to be beaten. They repeated it more than hundred times from the top of the tank,” said Dawasah, who added that she saw several men being detained.

“We were very afraid.”

The Hamas government has downplayed the scale of the displacement, claiming most Palestinians have stayed in the north.

Government spokesman Ismail Thawabteh told AFP that “only a small number of citizens” were responding to the army’s calls to evacuate.

“The (Israeli) occupation is killing many displaced young men and arresting them in humiliating ways,” he said.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, estimates that about 400,000 people remain in Gaza’s north, which includes Gaza City.

UNRWA spokeswoman Louise Wateridge said on Monday that “tens of thousands of people have been displaced from northern areas” including Jabalia to Gaza City or other parts of the territory’s north spared the worst of the violence.

The Hamas government media office urged international action to “stop the crimes of forced displacement, ethnic cleansing and massacres being carried out” in northern Gaza.

Frequent Israeli shelling and damaged roads have made it nearly impossible for paramedics and ambulances to reach the wounded and dead.

“We have injuries and martyrs every moment,” said civil defense paramedic Motaz Ayoub.

But “anyone who is injured continues to bleed until they die,” Ayoub told AFP.

With little access to the besieged north, already dire shortages have been made worse.

The Palestinian health ministry reported that all hospitals in northern Gaza but one were out of service.

The only medical facility still only partially functioning in the area affected by the Israeli assault has “no medicine or medical supplies,” said Kamal Adwan hospital director Hossam Abu Safia.

“People are being killed in the streets, and we can’t help them. Bodies are lying on the streets.”

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Topics: War on Gaza

Israel confirms killing Hashem Safieddine, potential successor of slain Hezbollah chief Nasrallah

Updated 4 min 35 sec ago

AFP

October 22, 2024 23:15

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Israel confirms killing Hashem Safieddine, potential successor of slain Hezbollah chief Nasrallah

The Israeli army also confirmed the killing of Ali Hussein Hazima, the head of Hezbollah’s Intelligence Directorate

Updated 4 min 35 sec ago

AFP

October 22, 2024 23:15

JERUSALEM: Israel’s army confirmed Tuesday it “eliminated” Hezbollah’s Hashem Safieddine, apparent successor of slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, in a strike in a southern Beirut suburb three weeks ago.
“It can now be confirmed that in an attack approximately three weeks ago, Hashem Safieddine, the head of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, and Ali Hussein Hazima, the head of Hezbollah’s Intelligence Directorate, were killed along with other Hezbollah commanders,” the army said in a statement.
Hezbollah has not yet issued a statement regarding the claim.
On October 8, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the military has “taken out” Safieddine, without specifically naming him.
In an address to the people of Lebanon, Netanyahu said Israeli forces “took out thousands of terrorists, including (Hezbollah leader Hassan) Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement and the replacement of his replacement.”
Late on Tuesday, the army said that Israel’s air force “conducted a precise, intelligence-based strike on Hezbollah’s main intelligence headquarters,” in the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, Hezbollah’s stronghold in the Lebanese capital three weeks ago.
The statement added that over 25 Hezbollah militants were present in the headquarters during the strike, “including Bilal Saib Aish, who was in charge of aerial intelligence gathering.”
A member of Hezbollah’s decision-making body and a distant relative of Nasrallah, Safieddine was out of contact since Israeli strikes on Beirut weeks ago, a high-level Hezbollah source said at the time.
A source close to Hezbollah told AFP in early October that the deeply religious cleric Safieddine, who had good relations with Hezbollah backer Iran, was the “most likely” candidate for the party’s top job.
Grey-bearded and bespectacled, Safieddine bore a striking resemblance to his distant cousin Nasrallah, but was several years his junior, aged in his late 50s or early 60s.
“We have reached Nasrallah, his replacement and most of Hezbollah’s senior leadership,” the Israeli army’s chief Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said in a statement late on Tuesday after the confirmation of Safieddine’s death.
After nearly a year of war with Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza, Israel shifted its focus to Lebanon in late September, vowing to secure its northern border threatened by cross-border fire from Hamas’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah.
Israel ramped up its air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds around the country and sent in ground troops late last month, in a war that has killed at least 1,552 people since September 23, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures.
The Israeli military issued new calls for residents to evacuate areas in the southern suburbs of capital Beirut on Tuesday evening, warning of imminent attacks.
In recent days the military has targeted Hezbollah’s financial assets across the country.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, has continued to fire rockets and missiles at Israel.
“As of 23:00 (2000 GMT), approximately 140 projectiles that were fired by the Hezbollah terrorist organization have crossed from Lebanon into Israel today,” the military said in a statement late on Tuesday.

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Topics: Battlefield Lebanon Hashem Safieddine Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah Israel

Israel defence minister says US should stand with Israel when it attacks Iran

Updated 22 October 2024

AFP

October 22, 2024 19:29

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Israel defence minister says US should stand with Israel when it attacks Iran

Updated 22 October 2024

AFP

October 22, 2024 19:29

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told visiting US top diplomat Antony Blinken that his government expects Washington’s support when it attacks Iran in response to a missile strike earlier this month.
“The United States’ stance with Israel following our attack on Iran will strengthen regional deterrence and weaken the axis of evil,” Gallant said according to a statement from his office, referring to Tehran-aligned armed groups in the Middle East, after Israel has vowed retaliation for the October 1 missile attack.

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Topics: War on Gaza Israel Iran

The little airline that could — Lebanon’s national carrier braves Israeli airstrikes

Updated 22 October 2024

AP

October 22, 2024 22:05

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The little airline that could — Lebanon’s national carrier braves Israeli airstrikes

Middle East Airlines is the only commercial airline still operating out of the Beirut airport
Capt. Mohammed Aziz said the airline has received assurances that Israel won’t target its planes or the airport as long as they are used solely for civilian purposes

Updated 22 October 2024

AP

October 22, 2024 22:05

BEIRUT: Since Israel began bombarding Beirut’s southern suburbs as part of its offensive against the Hezbollah militant group, Lebanon’s national air carrier has become a local icon simply by continuing to do its job.
Middle East Airlines is the only commercial airline still operating out of the Beirut airport, located on the coast next to the densely-populated suburbs where many of Hezbollah’s operations are based.
Unlike the bruising monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, in which an Israeli strike almost immediately took Lebanon’s only commercial airport out of commission, it has not been targeted in the current conflict.
Capt. Mohammed Aziz, adviser to MEA chairman Mohamad El-Hout, said the airline has received assurances that Israel won’t target its planes or the airport as long as they are used solely for civilian purposes. The carrier conducts a risk assessment each day to determine if it’s safe to fly, he said.
“As long as you see us operating, it means our threat assessment says that we can operate,” Aziz said. “We will never jeopardize the life of anyone.”
Still, the sight of jetliners rising and descending as fire and clouds of smoke blacken the Beirut skyline can be alarming.
Some of the most dramatic images making the rounds on social media depicting jets landing in fiery hellscapes have been AI-generated. And, Aziz said, the plumes of smoke that appear in news footage are often farther away from the airport than they appear.
Still, some strikes have landed too close for comfort. On Monday night, one hit the coastal area of Ouzai, about 200 meters (650 feet) from one of the runways. There were no planes in the area at the time.
Since the escalation began, many embassies have chartered extra commercial flights to get their citizens out. Other flights have carried Lebanese citizens to nearby destinations like Turkiye and Cyprus to wait out the conflict.
The number of daily MEA flights ranges from 32 to 40 — not much below the usual number for this time of year, Aziz said. The difference: now the flights usually depart Beirut full and return two-thirds or three-quarters empty.
While many Lebanese have fled, others continue to fly in and out for business or family reasons.
Elie Obeid, a business consultant, was scheduled to fly to Brussels this month for a seminar. After his original flight on Turkish Airlines was canceled, he booked on MEA.
As his return flight was landing Saturday, heavy airstrikes were underway in the surrounding area. Onboard, Obeid was unaware of what was happening until the plane landed and he opened his phone to a barrage of messages.
He said he had mixed feelings about the experience.
“I do appreciate the fact that they are still flying, since that’s our only connection with the outer world currently,” he said. “But at the same time it is very risky. We should have been told that strikes were happening, and maybe even they could have told the pilot to request to land in Cyprus for a while until the strikes ended.”
John Cox, a US-based former airline pilot who is now an aviation-safety consultant, said when there’s a potential threat, it’s the captain’s call whether or not to proceed, and it’s not unusual for passengers to be left in the dark.
Telling them about a threat they can’t control “doesn’t really do any good, and it stresses them out. So, I would be very hesitant to do that,” he said.
But, he added, “I’m not sure that I want to fly into an area of open conflict like that with passengers on board.”
It is “pretty unusual,” Cox said, for a commercial airline to decide that operating in an active war zone is an “acceptable level of risk.”
“When you’re in an area with ongoing military operations there’s an awful lot of variables,” he said. “Even just keeping the airplanes ... so that they’re not in the same airspace at the same time, that becomes very difficult.”
Aziz said the airline is in “continuous coordination” with the Lebanese government and security agencies, and attempts to mitigate the risk by spacing out flights so the airport is not too crowded at any given time. About 20 percent of its fleet is parked outside of Lebanon to reduce potential damage.
They have also taken measures to adjust for the frequent GPS jamming that is used by Israel to ward off missile and drone attacks but also disrupts civilian navigation technology.
Other airlines have different considerations, Aziz said. Their trips to Lebanon might be “one flight out of 200 or 300 flights per day, so spending two or three hours a day just to make a risk assessment for one flight is a waste of time for them,” he said.
“But for us it’s a necessity, because if we don’t do it we’ll stop operation completely.”
He added, “It’s our duty, of course, to maintain this link between Lebanon and the outside world.”
For many, having that link is a comfort — even if the journey might be harrowing.
Marie-Jose Daoud, editor-in-chief of an online journalism platform, flew to Cyprus with her parents a few days after the massive strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
As they were waiting for their flight, she saw on the news that the Israeli military had issued evacuation notices for two areas close to the airport. Soon after, she heard the muffled sounds of airstrikes through the airport’s soundproofed walls.
As the plane took off, the crew and most of the passengers remained calm. One man pointed out the window to show his young son the smoke rising. The plane made it safely to Cyprus.
Daoud said her parents want to return home despite the risks, so she is traveling back with them in a few days. She plans to leave again soon after, but she knows she can “come back at a day’s notice” if her family needs her.
“As long as the airport is open, I know that (MEA) are going to be flying,” she said.

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Topics: Battlefield Lebanon Lebanese Middle East Airlines (MEA) Lebanon Israel

UN envoy urges Houthis to free abducted aid workers, civil society members

Updated 22 October 2024

Saeed Al-Batati

October 22, 2024 19:54

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UN envoy urges Houthis to free abducted aid workers, civil society members

Houthis have ignored calls for the release of the abducted workers, accusing them of using their work with aid organizations to spy for the US and Israel
Despite repeated threats to escalate their attacks on ships, UK marine security agencies that document Houthi attacks have not reported any new attacks

Updated 22 October 2024

Saeed Al-Batati

October 22, 2024 19:54

AL-MUKALLA: Hans Grundberg, the UN envoy to Yemen, has reiterated his call on the Houthis to release abducted UN agency employees, alongside members of international human rights and aid organizations, and members of Yemeni civil society.

Grundberg’s office announced on Tuesday that he had returned from a visit to Egypt, where he discussed peace efforts in Yemen, the Houthis’ abduction of Yemeni workers with UN agencies, international organizations, and diplomatic missions, as well as their decision to prosecute them, and the militia’s attacks on ships with Egyptian officials and Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

“He voiced serious concern regarding the recent referrals of certain detainees to 'criminal prosecution’ and renewed his urgent call for their immediate and unconditional release, stressing that such actions erode trust and jeopardize the broader peace process,” Grundberg’s office said in a statement.

The Houthis have abducted at least 70 Yemeni employees from US agencies in Yemen, foreign diplomatic missions, and international development and aid organizations in Sanaa and other militia-controlled Yemeni cities, sparking international outrage and condemnation.

The Houthis ignored calls for the release of the abducted workers, accusing them of using their work with aid organizations to spy for the US and Israel.

Yemeni human rights activists and lawyers said last week that the Houthis would begin prosecuting six former and current Yemeni employees of the US Embassy in Sanaa, the US-funded USAID, and an American English Language Institute who were abducted in 2021.

The Yemeni Journalists’ Syndicate said on Monday that the Houthis have forcibly disappeared Mohammed Al-Mayahi, who was abducted from his home in September, and have refused to provide information about his health or allow people to see or contact him.

The syndicate said that the Houthis subjected Al-Mayahi to “retaliatory measures” for criticizing them, and demanded that they release him and other journalists in their custody.

“The syndicate expresses its deep concern about journalist Al-Mayahi’s disappearance and other forcibly disappeared journalists, and calls for an end to the ongoing disappearances and their immediate release,” it said in a statement.

In another development, the militia claimed on Tuesday to have launched a “hypersonic” ballistic missile at Israel’s capital, an attack that the Israeli military has not confirmed.

Yahya Sarea, a Houthi military spokesperson, said in a televised statement that their missile forces fired a Palestine-2 hypersonic ballistic missile at a military base in Tel Aviv, claiming that the missile reached its targets after “evading” US and Israeli air defenses.

He said that the missile attacks on Tel Aviv are in support of the people of Lebanon and Palestine against Israel, and vowed to continue attacking Israeli cities until Israel ceases military operations in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon.

Israel’s military reported no new attacks on Israeli cities by the Houthis on Tuesday.

Since November, the Houthis have seized a commercial ship and its crew, sunk two others, and fired hundreds of ballistic missiles, drones, and drone boats at commercial and military vessels in international shipping lanes off Yemen, as well as missiles and drones at Israeli cities, in what the militia claims is a campaign to put pressure on Israel to end its war in Gaza.

Two missile and drone attacks on Israeli cities prompted the Israeli military to launch retaliatory airstrikes on power stations, ports, and fuel storage tankers in the Houthi-held city of Hodeidah in July and September.

Despite repeated threats to escalate their attacks on ships, UK marine security agencies that document Houthi attacks have not reported any new attacks in the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden since Oct. 10, indicating another lull in Houthi attacks.

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Topics: Yemen United Nations (UN) Hans Grundberg Houthis Ahmed Aboul Gheit

Donors pledge over $2 billion for Gaza at Kuwait conference

Donors pledge over $2 billion for Gaza at Kuwait conference

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Donors pledge over $2 billion for Gaza at Kuwait conference

Donors pledge over $2 billion for Gaza at Kuwait conference

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