US’s Gaza aid pier effort hit by repeated setbacks

US’s Gaza aid pier effort hit by repeated setbacks
Ships are seen near a temporary floating pier built to receive humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip in Gaza Beach, in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on May 18, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 21 June 2024
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US’s Gaza aid pier effort hit by repeated setbacks

US’s Gaza aid pier effort hit by repeated setbacks
  • The UN has said it welcomes all efforts to bring in aid, but that land routes are the most important routes for the arrival of assistance

WASHINGTON: The controversial US effort to boost Gaza aid deliveries by building a temporary pier has faced repeated problems, with bad weather damaging the structure and causing other interruptions to the arrival of desperately needed assistance.
More than 4,100 metric tons (nine million pounds) of aid has been delivered via the $230 million pier project so far, but it has only been operational for limited periods, falling short of President Joe Biden’s pledge that it would enable a “massive increase” in assistance reaching Gaza “every day.”
The coastal territory has been devastated by more than eight months of Israeli operations against Palestinian militant group Hamas, uprooting Gaza’s population and leaving them in dire need of aid.
“The Gaza pier regretfully amounted to an extremely expensive distraction from what is truly needed, and what is also legally required,” said Michelle Strucke, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Humanitarian Agenda.
That is “safe and unimpeded humanitarian access for humanitarian organizations to provide aid for a population in Gaza that is suffering historic levels of deprivation,” she said.
US forces have also dropped aid by air, but that plus deliveries via the pier “were never meant to substitute for scaled, sustainable access to land crossings that provided safe access by humanitarian workers to provide aid,” Strucke said.
“Pursuing them took away decision makers’ time, energy, and more than $200 million US taxpayer dollars.”
Biden announced during his State of the Union address in March that the US military would establish the pier and American troops began constructing it the following month, initially working offshore.
But in a sign of issues to come, high seas and winds required construction to be relocated to the Israeli port of Ashdod.
The pier was completed in early May, but weather conditions meant it was unsafe to immediately move it into place, and it was not attached to the Gaza coast until the middle of the month.
High seas caused four US Army vessels supporting the mission to break free of their moorings on May 25, beaching two of them, and the pier was damaged by bad weather three days later, requiring sections to be repaired and rebuilt at Ashdod.
It was reattached to the coast on June 7, but aid deliveries were soon paused for two days due to bad weather conditions.
The pier then had to be removed from the shore and moved to Ashdod on June 14 to protect it from high seas. It was returned to Gaza this week and aid deliveries have now resumed.
Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation research group, said the “pier effort has yet to produce the results that the Biden administration hoped.”
“Aside from the weather issues, it’s been quite expensive and has not fixed the operational challenges of getting aid into Gaza,” he said.
Cohen said that despite the issues with the pier, it does provide another entry point for aid and allows assistance to be brought in even when land crossings are closed — a persistent problem that has worsened the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.
And he said the effort may also help improve future deployments of the military’s temporary pier capability, which was last used operationally more than a decade ago in Haiti.
In addition to weather, the project is facing a major challenge in terms of the distribution of aid that arrives via the pier, which the UN World Food Programme decided to halt while it assesses the security situation — an evaluation that is still ongoing.
That announcement came after Israel conducted a nearby operation earlier this month that freed four hostages but which health officials in Hamas-ruled Gaza said killed more than 270 people.
The UN has said it welcomes all efforts to bring in aid, but that land routes are the most important routes for the arrival of assistance.
Strucke emphasized that “what Gazans need is not the appearance of aid — they need actual aid to reach them.”
Washington “should be very careful not to support actions that may look good on paper to increase routes to provide assistance, but do not result in aid actually reaching Palestinians in need at scale,” she said.


New year hope reigns in a Damascus freed from Assad

New year hope reigns in a Damascus freed from Assad
Updated 26 sec ago
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New year hope reigns in a Damascus freed from Assad

New year hope reigns in a Damascus freed from Assad
  • More than half a million people died in the 13-year civil war as the country split into different regions controlled by various warring parties

DAMASCUS: Umayyad Square in Damascus hummed to the throngs of people brandishing “revolution” flags as Syria saw in the new year with “hope” following 13 years of civil war.
Gunshots rang out from Mount Qasioun overlooking the capital where hundreds of people gazed up at fireworks, an AFP reporter at the square saw.
It was the first new year’s celebration without an Assad in power for more than 50 years after the fall of Bashar Assad in December.
“Long live Syria, Assad has fallen,” shouted some children.
Despite the revelry, soldiers patrolled the streets of Damascus, less than a month after Assad’s rapid demise.
The green, white and black “revolution” flag with its three red stars flies all over the capital.
Such a sight — the symbol of the Syrian people’s uprising against the Assad dynasty’s iron-fisted rule — was unthinkable a month ago.
The revolutionary song “Lift your head, you are a free Syrian” by Syrian singer Assala Nasri rang out loud on Umayyad Square.
“Every year, we aged suddenly by 10 years,” taxi driver Qassem Al-Qassem, 34, told AFP in reference to the tough living conditions in a country whose economy collapsed under Assad.
“But with the fall of regime, all our fears have dissipated,” he added.
“Now I have a lot of hope. But all we want now is peace.”
More than half a million people died in the 13-year civil war as the country split into different regions controlled by various warring parties.
Many families are still waiting for news of loved ones who disappeared under Assad’s rule, during which time tens of thousands of prisoners disappeared.
“I hope that Syria in 2025 will be non-denominational, pluralist, for everyone, without exception,” said Havan Mohammad, a Kurdish student from the northeast studying pharmacy in the capital.


Ocalan: PKK chief held in solitary on Turkish prison island

Ocalan: PKK chief held in solitary on Turkish prison island
Updated 01 January 2025
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Ocalan: PKK chief held in solitary on Turkish prison island

Ocalan: PKK chief held in solitary on Turkish prison island
  • A Marxist-inspired group, the PKK is considered a terror organization by Turkiye, the United States, the European Union and most of Turkiye’s Western allies

ISTANBUL: Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of Kurdish militant group the PKK, is hailed by many Kurds as an icon, but within wider Turkish society many see him as a terrorist who deserves to die.
On Saturday, Ocalan, who has been held in solitary confinement in Turkiye since 1999, received his first political visit in nearly a decade amid signs of a tentative thaw in relations with the Turkish government.
The move came two months after the leader of the far-right MHP, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, offered Ocalan an unprecedented olive branch if he would publicly renounce terror.
In a message sent back with his visitors, two lawmakers from the pro-Kurd opposition DEM party, Ocalan — the man who embodies the decades-long Kurdish rebellion against the Turkish government — said he was “ready” to embrace efforts to end the conflict.
“I am ready to take the necessary positive steps and make the call,” said the 75-year-old former guerrilla, who also received his first family visit in four years on October 23.
During that visit, Ocalan said he had the necessary clout to shift the Kurdish question “from an arena of conflict and violence to one of law and politics.”
Ankara’s tentative bid to reopen dialogue nearly a decade after peace efforts collapsed comes amid a major regional adjustment following the ouster of Syria’s Bashar Assad.

Ocalan founded the PKK — the Kurdistan Workers’ Party — in 1978. It spearheaded a brutal insurgency that has killed tens of thousands in its fight for independence and, more recently, broader autonomy in Turkiye’s mostly Kurdish southeast.
A Marxist-inspired group, the PKK is considered a terror organization by Turkiye, the United States, the European Union and most of Turkiye’s Western allies.
After years on the run, Ocalan was arrested on February 15, 1999 in Kenya following a Hollywood-style operation by Turkish security forces.
He was sentenced to death, but escaped the gallows when Turkiye abolished capital punishment in 2004. He has since been held in an isolation cell on Imrali island in the Sea of Marmara.
For many Kurds, he is hero they call “Apo” (uncle). But Turks often call him “bebek katili” (baby killer) for his ruthless tactics, including the bombing of civilian targets.

Tentative moves to resolve Turkiye’s “Kurdish problem” began in 2008. Several years later, Ocalan got involved in the first unofficial peace talks, approved when Erdogan was premier.
Seen as the world’s largest stateless people, Kurds were left without a country when the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I.
Although most live in Turkiye, where they make up around a fifth of the population, the Kurds are also spread across Syria, Iraq and Iran.
For hard-line nationalists who support the post-Ottoman idea of “Turkishness,” the Kurds simply do not exist.
And not all Kurds back the ideas, let alone the methods, of the PKK.
Led by Hakan Fidan, Erdogan’s spy chief turned foreign minister, the talks raised hopes of ending the insurgency in favor of an equitable solution for Kurdish rights within Turkiye’s borders.
But they collapsed in July 2015, reigniting one of the deadliest chapters in the conflict.
After a suicide attack on pro-Kurdish demonstrators attributed to Islamic State (IS) group jihadists in October 2015, the PKK accused Ankara of collaborating with IS and resumed its violence with a vengeance.
Turkiye’s widescale use of combat drones has pushed most Kurdish fighters into Iraq and Syria, where Ankara has continued raids.
The government has defended its de facto silencing of Ocalan by saying he failed to convince the PKK of the need for peace, raising doubts about how much sway he has over the group.

Ocalan was born on April 4, 1948, one of six siblings in a mixed Turkish-Kurdish peasant family in Omerli village, in Turkiye’s southeast. His mother tongue is Turkish.
He became a left-wing activist while studying politics at university in Ankara, and did his first stint in prison in 1972.
He set up the PKK six years later, then spent years on the run, launching the movement’s armed struggle in 1984.
Taking refuge in Syria, he led the fight from there, causing friction between Damascus and Ankara.
Forced out in 1998 and with the net closing in, Ocalan raced from Russia to Italy to Greece in search of a haven, ending up at the Greek consulate in Kenya, where US agents got wind of his presence and tipped off ally Ankara.
Lured into a vehicle and told he would be flown to the Netherlands, Ocalan was instead handed over to Turkish military commandos and flown home on a private plane to face trial.
 

 


A new year dawns on a Middle East torn by conflict and change

A new year dawns on a Middle East torn by conflict and change
Updated 58 min 44 sec ago
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A new year dawns on a Middle East torn by conflict and change

A new year dawns on a Middle East torn by conflict and change
  • The last year was a dramatic one in the Middle East, bringing calamity to some and hope to others

DAMASCUS: In Damascus, the streets were buzzing with excitement Tuesday as Syrians welcomed in a new year that seemed to many to bring a promise of a brighter future after the unexpected fall of Bashar Assad’s government weeks earlier.
While Syrians in the capital looked forward to a new beginning after the ousting of Assad, the mood was more somber along Beirut’s Mediterranean promenade, where residents shared cautious hopes for the new year, reflecting on a country still reeling from war and ongoing crises.
War-weary Palestinians in Gaza who lost their homes and loved ones in 2024 saw little hope that 2025 would bring an end to their suffering.
The last year was a dramatic one in the Middle East, bringing calamity to some and hope to others. Across the region, it felt foolish to many to attempt to predict what the next year might bring.
In Damascus, Abir Homsi said she is optimistic about a future for her country that would include peace, security and freedom of expression and would bring Syrian communities previously divided by battle lines back together.
“We will return to how we once were, when people loved each other, celebrated together whether it is Ramadan or Christmas or any other holiday — no restricted areas for anyone,” she said.
But for many, the new year and new reality carried with it reminders of the painful years that came before.
Abdulrahman Al-Habib, from the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, had come to Damascus in hopes of finding relatives who disappeared after being arrested under Assad’s rule. He was at the capital’s Marjeh Square, where relatives of the missing have taken to posting photos of their loved ones in search of any clue to their whereabouts.
“We hope that in the new year, our status will be better ... and peace will prevail in the whole Arab world,” he said.
In Lebanon, a tenuous ceasefire brought a halt to fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group a little over a month ago. The country battered by years of economic collapse, political instability and a series of calamities since 2019, continues to grapple with uncertainty, but the truce has brought at least a temporary return to normal life.
Some families flocked to the Mzaar Ski Resort in the mountains northeast of Beirut on Tuesday to enjoy the day in the snow even though the resort had not officially opened.
“What happened and what’s still happening in the region, especially in Lebanon recently, has been very painful,” said Youssef Haddad, who came to ski with his family. “We have great hope that everything will get better.”
On Beirut’s seaside corniche, Mohammad Mohammad from the village of Marwahin in southern Lebanon was strolling with his three children.
“I hope peace and love prevail next year, but it feels like more (challenges) await us,” he said.
Mohammad was among the tens of thousands displaced during more than a year of conflict between Hezbollah and Israel. Now living in Jadra, a town that was also bombarded during the conflict, he awaits the end of a 60-day period, after which the Israeli army is required to withdraw under the conditions of a French and US-brokered ceasefire.
“Our village was completely destroyed,” Mohammad said. His family would spend a quiet evening at home, he said. This year “was very hard on us. I hope 2025 is better than all the years that passed.”
In Gaza, where the war between Hamas and Israel has killed more than 45,500 Palestinians, brought massive destruction and displaced most of the enclave’s population, few saw cause for optimism in the new year.
“The year 2024 was one of the worst years for all Palestinian people. It was a year of hunger, displacement, suffering and poverty,” said Nour Abu Obaid, a displaced woman from northern Gaza.
Obaid, whose 10-year-old child was killed in a strike in the so-called “humanitarian zone” in Muwasi, said she didn’t expect anything good in 2025. “The world is dead,” she said. “We do not expect anything, we expect the worst.”
The war was sparked by the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in which militants killed around 1,200 people and abducted some 250 others.
Ismail Salih, who lost his home and livelihood, expressed hopes for an end to the war in 2025 so that Gaza’s people can start rebuilding their lives.
The year that passed “was all war and all destruction,” he said. “Our homes are gone, our trees are gone, our livelihood is lost.”
In the coming year, Salih said he hopes that Palestinians can “live like the rest of the people of the world, in security, reassurance and peace.”
 

 


Two migrants die off Tunisia, 17 others rescued: National Guard

A 'cayuco' boat with 57 migrants onboard arrives at La Restinga port on the Canary island of El Hierro, on September 14, 2024.
A 'cayuco' boat with 57 migrants onboard arrives at La Restinga port on the Canary island of El Hierro, on September 14, 2024.
Updated 31 December 2024
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Two migrants die off Tunisia, 17 others rescued: National Guard

A 'cayuco' boat with 57 migrants onboard arrives at La Restinga port on the Canary island of El Hierro, on September 14, 2024.
  • Tunisia is a key departure point for irregular migrants seeking to reach Europe. Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt the perilous Mediterranean crossing

TUNIS: Two Tunisian migrants, one of them a five-year-old child, died after their makeshift boat broke down off the country's northern coast, with 17 others rescued, the National Guard has said.
One body was found aboard the vessel, while the dead child was recovered from the water, the National Guard said in a statement Monday.
It said maritime units had responded to a distress call Sunday "about a damaged vessel out at sea that began taking on water", rescuing 17 out of 19 passengers.
"Five were rescued while fighting for their lives after they jumped off the boat," it added.
Four people linked to organising the crossing attempt were arrested, the statement said.
Tunisia is a key departure point for irregular migrants seeking to reach Europe. Each year, tens of thousands of people attempt the perilous Mediterranean crossing.
Italy, whose Lampedusa island is only 150 kilometres (90 miles) from Tunisia, is often their first port of call.
The crossing has seen a spate of recent shipwrecks, exacerbated by bad weather.
On December 18, at least 20 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa died in a shipwreck off the city of Sfax, with five others missing.
On December 12, the coastguard rescued 27 African migrants near Jebeniana, north of Sfax, but 15 were reported dead or missing.
In late October, 15 unidentified bodies were recovered off Mahdia, another key departure point.
And in September, 36 migrants -- 20 Tunisians and 16 Egyptians -- were rescued from a stranded boat near Nabeul.
Since the beginning of the year, the Tunisian human rights group FTDES has counted "between 600 and 700" migrants killed or missing in shipwrecks off Tunisia. More than 1,300 migrants died or disappeared in 2023.
Tunisia is grappling with a number of economic woes, marked by high inflation, unemployment, and sluggish growth.
 

 


France says it struck Daesh positions in Syria

France says it struck Daesh positions in Syria
Updated 31 December 2024
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France says it struck Daesh positions in Syria

France says it struck Daesh positions in Syria
  • Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said French armed forces "remain engaged in battling terrorism in the Levant"

PARIS: French aircraft have bombed Daesh positions in Syria, Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said Tuesday, in its first such strike on the country’s soil since the fall of Bashar Assad.
“Our armed forces remain engaged in battling terrorism in the Levant,” Lecornu wrote on X while on a New Year visit to French UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.
“On Sunday, French air assets carried out targeted strikes against Daesh on Syrian soil,” he added.


The defense ministry told AFP that France’s Rafale fighter jets and US-made Reaper drones “dropped a total of seven bombs on two military targets belonging to Daesh in central Syria.”
France has belonged to the Inherent Resolve international coalition against Daesh since 2014 for Iraq and 2015 for Syria.
French troops involved in the operations are based in the region, including in the UAE.
As Assad’s fall to a shock offensive by Syrian rebels led by a radical Sunni group rapidly reshapes the country, observers fear space could be left for Daesh to regather its strength.
The group has survived in both Iraq and Syria despite the destruction of its so-called caliphate that lasted from 2014-19.
Washington said in mid-December that it had doubled American troop numbers fighting jihadists in Syria, to around 2,000.
Its Central Command (Centcom) — responsible for the Middle East — said it wanted to ensure that IS “does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria.”
Around 2,500 US troops are also deployed in Iraq, according to Washington.