Islamic Jihad says only way to free Israeli hostages is Gaza withdrawal, prisoner deal
Islamic Jihad says only way to free Israeli hostages is Gaza withdrawal, prisoner deal/node/2531041/middle-east
Islamic Jihad says only way to free Israeli hostages is Gaza withdrawal, prisoner deal
The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad said on Saturday the only way to return Israeli hostages is through Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, ending its offensive and reaching a deal for exchanging Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners. (Reuters/File)
Islamic Jihad says only way to free Israeli hostages is Gaza withdrawal, prisoner deal
The spokesman of Al-Quds Brigades made the remarks in a video posted on Telegram
Islamic Jihad is a smaller ally of Hamas
Updated 15 June 2024
Reuters
CAIRO: The armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad said on Saturday the only way to return Israeli hostages is through Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, ending its offensive and reaching a deal for exchanging Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
The spokesman of Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian group, made the remarks in a video posted on Telegram.
Islamic Jihad is a smaller ally of the militant Islamist group Hamas, which led a rampage in southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and over 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. More than 100 hostages are believed to remain captive in Gaza, although at least 40 have been declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities.
At least 37,296 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign to eliminate Hamas, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Israel launches ‘significant’ military operation in West Bank, at least eight Palestinians killed
Updated 15 sec ago
“We are acting systematically and resolutely against the Iranian axis wherever it extends its arms – in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu said The military said soldiers, police and intelligence services had begun a counter-terrorism operation in Jenin
JERUSALEM/RAMALLAH: Israeli security forces backed by helicopters raided the volatile West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday, killing at least eight Palestinians in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a “large-scale and significant military operation.” The action, launched a day after US President Donald Trump declared he was lifting sanctions on ultranationalist Israeli settlers who attacked Palestinian villages, was announced by Netanyahu as a new offensive against Iranian-backed militants. “We are acting systematically and resolutely against the Iranian axis wherever it extends its arms – in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu said. Judea and Samaria are terms Israel uses for the occupied West Bank. The move into Jenin, where the Israeli army has carried out multiple raids and large-scale incursions over recent years, comes only two days after the start of a ceasefire in Gaza and underscores the threat of more violence in the West Bank. The military said soldiers, police and intelligence services had begun a counter-terrorism operation in Jenin. It follows a weeks-long operation by Palestinian security forces in self-rule areas of the West Bank to reassert control in the adjacent refugee camp, a major center of armed militant groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both of which get support from Iran. Gaza-based Hamas, which has expanded its reach in the West Bank over recent years, called on Palestinians in the territory to escalate fighting against Israel. As the operation began, Palestinian security forces withdrew from the refugee camp and the sound of heavy gunfire could be heard in mobile phone footage shared on social media. Palestinian health services said at least eight Palestinians were killed and 35 wounded as the Israeli raid began, a week after an Israeli air strike in the Jenin refugee camp killed at least three Palestinians and wounded scores more. Since the October 2023 start of the war in Gaza, hundreds of Palestinians and dozens of Israelis have been killed in the West Bank and Israel and thousands of Palestinians have been detained in regular Israeli raids.
PROTECTING SETTLERS Hard-line pro-settler Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has responsibility for large parts of Israeli policy in the West Bank, said the operation was the start of a “strong and ongoing campaign” against militant groups “for the protection of settlements and settlers.” Smotrich earlier welcomed Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on settlers accused of violence against Palestinians and said he looked forward to cooperating with the new administration in expanding settlements. Around 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, land Israel captured in 1967. Most countries consider Israel’s settlements on territory seized in war to be illegal. Israel disputes this, citing historical and biblical ties to the land. The internationally recognized Palestinian Authority has limited self-rule over some territory in the West Bank under Israeli military occupation. In the days leading up to the Israeli military operation, Palestinians throughout the West Bank said multiple roadblocks had been set up throughout the territory, where violence has resurged since the start of the war in Gaza. Late on Monday, bands of Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians, smashing cars and burning property, near the village of Al-Funduq, an area where three Israelis were killed in a shooting earlier this month. The military said it had opened an investigation into the incident, which it said involved dozens of Israeli civilians, some in masks. The Palestinian Authority condemned the settler attack in Al-Funduq as well as the sudden appearance of multiple new barriers and roadblocks, which it said were aimed at “dismembering the West Bank.” “We call on the new American administration to intervene to stop these crimes and Israeli policies that will not bring peace and security to anyone,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ office said in a statement.
Key priority is to deliver huge surge of aid into Gaza: UN’s relief chief
Delivering aid had become ‘almost impossible in the last few weeks,’ Fletcher said
OCHA needs funding and protection to deliver aid, he added
Updated 58 min 52 sec ago
Zaynab Khojji
DAVOS: Delivering a huge surge of aid into Gaza is a key priority for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the agency’s head said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Tom Fletcher said that “millions are in need” in the war-torn territory and that the aid would partly support the ceasefire process.
Fletcher said: “The key priority for us on the humanitarian side now is to get a huge surge of aid into Gaza, partly to support the ceasefire process because it is dependent on this step by step, very complex approach, but more importantly because millions are in need.
“(Some) 600 trucks (entered) on Sunday, including 300 up to the north which needs it so badly, 900 on Monday and more today.”
A boy chases one of the trucks carrying UNRWA aid coming in from the Kerem Shalom border crossing and arriving in the southern Gaza Strip on January 21, 2025. (AFP)
He described how delivering aid had become “almost impossible in the last few weeks,” with convoys being looted and community organizers assisting the OCHA “taken out by Israeli drones.”
Fletcher said: “We lost 79 out of 80 trucks in one convoy. And then the community organizers who went in with us were then taken out by Israeli drones. So it was becoming almost impossible to deliver a fraction of what we needed to do. Now the ceasefire opens up this window and we’ve got to really show that we can deliver at that massive scale.”
However, he warned that the money would soon run out and that the UN agency needs funding and protection to deliver aid.
Fletcher said: “We’ll need the funding and the protection, which means member states have to start saying ‘Stop shooting at UN convoys.’
“Last year was the deadliest year to be a humanitarian on record and that was mainly because of Gaza.
“We can’t deliver all these convoys alone. So we need commercial traffic getting into Gaza. And we need innovation as well. You know, in the last 14 months Gaza has been a laboratory of war and testing new weapons. We now need it to be a laboratory of humanitarian support. You know, can we use as much ingenuity and innovation in saving lives as in killing people? And that’s a real test.”
Palestinians rush to collect aid, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, January 21, 2025. (Reuters)
The head of the OCHA said that the UN agency was launching a big cash aid initiative on Tuesday, adding: “We’re trying to get direct cash support to a million Palestinian families, mostly headed by women, so that they get to make the choices about where they spend the money.”
The Chairman of the Bank of Palestine Hashim Shawa said that the institution had been working with all development partners in mobilizing cash assistance programs for decades.
He said: “We’ve been the first to innovate in the digital space. We’ve bought in international investors to help the bank not only remain resilient, but grow.
“We’ve grown 100 branches all over the West Bank and Gaza. We’re now in the UAE, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. We got a license in Cairo. We’re expanding in Cairo, obviously. The day after this war Egypt is going to play a strategic role in the development of Gaza.
The Chairman of the Bank of Palestine Hashim Shawa. (WEF)
“So we’ve left no stone unturned in terms of providing the international aid organizations (with) a trusted, well-vetted, high tech, bullet-proof platform, Bank of Palestine, to facilitate all this aid. Half a million beneficiaries a year receive much-needed cash assistance and other forms of aid through their phones, digitally.”
Sara Pantuliano, the chief executive of ODI Global, a global affairs think tank, said that recovery and reconstruction in Gaza was not just a matter of money and infrastructure, but death and destruction.
She said that colleagues and friends working in Gaza describe it as having a “sort of moon landscape.”
Palestinians search for their belongings under the rubble of destroyed homes a day after a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas took effect, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP)
She said: “The UNDP (UN Development Programme) estimates that there are 50 million tonnes of rubble to be removed. And this rubble is mixed with human remains and unexploded ordnance, which means it’s incredibly difficult to deal with it.
“There is an estimate if you had 100 trucks working day in, day out, to try and remove this rubble, making sure that you dispose and bury the bodies that are mixed with the rubble, and carefully so that you don’t detonate more of this unexploded ordnance, it would take 15 years to dispose of the rubble that’s been created to date.”
Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says death toll at 47,107
The health ministry is finding more dead, as the truce has allowed people to comb the ruins
The bodies of 72 people “arrived at hospitals... over the past 24 hours,” the ministry said
Updated 21 January 2025
AFP
GAZA STRIP: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Tuesday that 47,107 people had been killed in the Israel-Hamas war, with the toll continuing to rise in spite of a ceasefire as new bodies were found under the rubble.
The ceasefire has held since going into effect on Sunday, bringing a halt to more than 15 months of fighting in the Palestinian territory.
But the health ministry is finding more dead, as the truce has allowed people to comb the ruins. Other people have died from wounds received before the fighting stopped, with the territory’s health system devastated by the war.
The bodies of 72 people “arrived at hospitals... over the past 24 hours,” the ministry said in a statement.
“A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulances and civil protection teams are unable to reach them,” it added.
The ministry said the number of wounded had reached 111,147 since the start of the war on October 7, 2023.
The ministry called on the families of people killed or missing in the war to register online to aid in the identification of bodies and to compile a more accurate death toll.
Israel has regularly questioned the credibility of the ministry’s figures, although the United Nations deems them reliable.
A study in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet published in early January estimated that the number of deaths during the first month of the war was around 40 percent higher than the official ministry figure.
France issues new arrest warrant for Syria’s Assad: source
Assad is held responsible in the warrant issued on Monday as “commander-in-chief of the armed forces” for a bombing Daraa in 2017
The French judiciary considers that Assad ordered and provided the means for this attack
Updated 21 January 2025
AFP
PARIS: Two French investigating magistrates have issued an arrest warrant against ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad for suspected complicity in war crimes, the second such move by France’s judicial authorities, a source said on Tuesday.
Assad, who was ousted late last year in a lightning offensive by Islamist forces, is held responsible in the warrant issued on Monday as “commander-in-chief of the armed forces” for a bombing in the Syrian city of Daraa in 2017 that killed a civilian, a source close to the case, asking not to be named, told AFP.
This mandate was issued as part of an investigation into the case of Salah Abou Nabout, a 59-year-old Franco-Syrian national and former French teacher, who was killed on June 7, 2017 following the bombing of his home by Syrian army helicopters.
The French judiciary considers that Assad ordered and provided the means for this attack, according to the source.
Six senior Syrian army officials are already the target of French arrest warrants over the case in an investigation that began in 2018.
“This case represents the culmination of a long fight for justice, in which I and my family believed from the start,” said Omar Abou Nabout, the victim’s son, in a statement.
He expressed hope that “a trial will take place and that the perpetrators will be arrested and judged, wherever they are.”
French authorities in November 2023 issued a first arrest warrant against Assad over chemical attacks in 2013 where more than a thousand people, according to American intelligence, were killed by sarin gas.
While considering Assad’s participation in these attacks “likely,” public prosecutors last year issued an appeal against the warrant on the grounds that Assad should have immunity as a head of state.
However, his ouster has now changed his status and potential immunity. Assad and his family fled to Russia after his fall, according to Russian authorities.
Iraq parliament adopts revised bill after outcry over underage marriage
The amendment to the 1959 Personal Status Law allows people to choose between religious or civil regulations for family matters
An earlier version of the amendments faced a backlash from feminists and civil society groups
Updated 21 January 2025
AFP
BAGHDAD: Iraq’s parliament passed into law on Tuesday a revised bill that had sparked outrage over fears it rolled back women’s rights and permitted underage marriage.
The parliament said on its website that it had adopted “the proposal to amend the Personal Status Law,” as well as “the second amendment of the general amnesty law.”
The amendment to the 1959 Personal Status Law allows people to choose between religious or civil regulations for family matters such as marriage, inheritance, divorce and child custody.
An earlier version of the amendments faced a backlash from feminists and civil society groups over fears it would lower the minimum age for Muslim girls to marry to as young as nine years old.
But a revised version reinstated clauses of the old law that set the age of marriage at 18 — or 15 with the consent of legal guardians and a judge, MP Mohamed Anouz told AFP.
Under the new amendment, couples can opt for Shiite Muslim or Sunni Muslim rules, and clerics and lawyers will have four months to establish community-specific regulations.
In October, Amnesty International warned the amendments could strip women and girls of protections regarding divorce and inheritance.
The parliament also passed a general amnesty law that had sparked disagreements between political blocs. The law grants retrials to those convicted of a number of crimes.
The Taqadom party, the most influential Sunni bloc, welcomed the adoption of the amnesty law.
Iraq’s Sunni community has been the main proponent of revisiting the law, pushing for it to include a full review of all convictions on terror charges.
The law excludes convictions for “terrorist crimes” that resulted in the death of a person or “permanent disability,” or that involved fighting the Iraqi security forces or “sabotage of institutions,” according to Anouz.
But it does allow the judiciary to reopen investigations and start new trials for those who say they confessed “under torture” or were convicted based on “information provided by a secret informer,” Anouz explained.
In recent years, Iraqi courts have ordered hundreds of executions in terror cases, proceedings that rights groups say often lack due process or in which confessions suspected to have been extracted through torture are admissible.
In a country plagued by endemic corruption, those accused of embezzling public funds can also benefit from the amnesty law if they repay the stolen money, Anouz said.
A previous 2016 amnesty reportedly covered 150,000 people.
The new amnesty law excludes rape, incest and human trafficking.
The laws passed Tuesday, each endorsed by the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities, were adopted in one package, with political parties agreeing to avoid any blockage.
But several lawmakers denounced irregularities in the voting process, with some threatening to go to court to have Tuesday’s session invalidated.
MP Nour Nafe claimed the parliament passed the personal status law and the general amnesty “without a vote.”
The MPs “did not raise their hands,” she said on X, adding that some lawmakers had left the room in response to the “farce.”
