Turkiye closes Syria border after violence flares in both countries
Turkiye responded to the unrest by closing the Bab al Hawa border crossing
Erdogan said a meeting with Assad was possible to help restore bilateral relations
Updated 02 July 2024
Reuters
AMMAN/ISTANBUL: Turkiye closed its main border crossings into northwest Syria on Tuesday after Turkish troops came under fire from Syrians angered by violence against their compatriots in Turkiye, a Syrian opposition source and residents said.
In Turkiye, police detained 474 people involved in attacks targeting the Syrian community across the country overnight, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said, in spreading unrest that began late on Sunday.
Properties and vehicles owned by Syrians were vandalized and set on fire in the central city of Kayseri, stoked by social media reports that a Syrian man had sexually abused a female child relative. Yerlikaya said the incident was being investigated.
The violence spread to the provinces of Hatay, Gaziantep, Konya, Bursa and an Istanbul district, Turkiye’s MIT intelligence agency said in a statement. There were social media reports of some injuries among Syrians.
Subsequently, hundreds of angry Syrians took to the streets in several towns in the rebel-held northwest Syria, an area where Turkiye maintains thousands of troops and has carved out a sphere of influence that has stopped Syrian President Bashar Assad from regaining control.
Late on Monday, Turkiye responded to the unrest by closing until further notice the Bab al Hawa border crossing, a main trade and passenger conduit for more than 3 million inhabitants, along with Bab al Salam and other smaller crossings, a border official told Reuters.
The Syrian border city of Afrin was the scene of the most violent clashes, with at least four people killed in an exchange of fire between armed protesters and Turkish troops. Elsewhere, there were skirmishes and armed clashes, with civilians hurling stones at Turkish convoys in several towns, and tearing down the Turkish flag on some offices.
Several Turkish officials described the unrest in Syria as “provocations,” with the Foreign Ministry saying: “It is wrong to use the sad events that took place in Kayseri ... as the basis for some provocations beyond our borders.”
In a speech on Tuesday, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan blamed the “chaos plan” on groups associated with terrorist organizations, and vowed to reveal the “dirty hands” behind the recent incidents.
“We know who is playing in these games staged with the remnants of the terrorist organization. Neither us, nor our Syrian brothers, will fall into this sly trap...we will not give in to racist vandalism,” Erdogan said following the cabinet meeting.
Erdogan said more than 670,000 people have returned to areas in northern Syria, where Turkiye has been operating to create safe zones over the past decade.
He added, the refugee issue will be solved humanely and morally in line with the economic realities of Turkiye, which is hosting more than 3 million Syrian war refugees.
Erdogan said last Friday a meeting with Assad was possible to help restore bilateral relations. Turkiye severed ties with Syria after the 2011 Syrian civil war and supported rebels looking to oust Assad.
UAE-led operation uncovers environmental crime, with $32 million worth of items seized, 25 suspects arrested
Updated 10 sec ago
Arab News
DUBAI: The UAE led an operation that has uncovered vast environmental crimes in the Amazon Basin, with $32 million worth of items seized and 25 suspects arrested.
Operation ‘Green Justice’ was to target the regional network of environmental criminal activities in the Amazon Basin.
It has dealt a serious blow to organised crime groups in the Amazon Basin, state-run WAM reported.
Regional law enforcement agencies from UAE, Brazil, Peru, and Colombia, along with UNODC and the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) supported and participated in the operation.
The mission, also coordinated by the International Initiative of Law Enforcement for Climate (I2LEC), seized 2.4 tonnes of items related to illegal wildlife and marine catches, 37 illegal fishing equipment, 229 illegal mining equipment, and more than 10,498 cubic metres of illicitly cut wood. The illicit goods were estimated to be worth more than $32 million.
The 25 suspects were charged with various environmental crimes, WAM added.
’Bulldozed and shelled’: Gaza’s farming sector ravaged by war
Israel has killed at least 38,098 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry
Updated 07 July 2024
AFP
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Tank tracks still fresh on his field in southern Gaza’s coastal area of Al-Mawasi, Nedal Abu Jazar lamented the damage war has wrought on his trees and crops.
“Look at the destruction,” the 39-year-old farmer told AFP, holding an uprooted tomato plant.
He pointed to his greenhouse’s metal frame and its white plastic sheeting strewn across the plot, inside an area designated a humanitarian zone by the Israeli army.
“People were sitting peacefully on their farmland ... and suddenly tanks arrived and fired at us, and then there were (air) strikes.”
Abu Jazar said the Israeli operation in late June destroyed about 40 dunams (10 acres) of land and killed five laborers.
His is not an isolated case. Across Gaza, 57 percent of agricultural land has been damaged since the war began, according to a joint assessment published in June by the UN’s agriculture and satellite imagery agencies, FAO and UNOSAT.
The damage threatens Gaza’s food sovereignty, Matieu Henry of the Food and Agriculture Organization told AFP, because 30 percent of the Palestinian territory’s food consumption comes from agricultural land.
“If almost 60 percent of the agricultural land has been damaged, this may have a significant impact in terms of food security and food supply.”
The Gaza Strip exported $44.6 million worth of produce in 2022, mainly to the West Bank and Israel, with strawberries and tomatoes representing 60 percent of the total, according to FAO data.
That number fell to zero after the October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 38,098 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
The damage assessment on the agricultural land comes as the UN’s hunger monitoring system estimated in June that 96 percent of Gaza faces high levels of acute food insecurity.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army said it “does not intentionally harm agricultural land.”
In a statement, it said Hamas “often operates from within orchards, fields and agricultural land.”
The impact is worse in the Palestinian territory’s north, where 68 percent of agricultural land is damaged, although the southern area encompassing parts of Al-Mawasi has seen the most significant increase in recent months due to military operations.
UNOSAT’s Lars Bromley told AFP the damage is generally “due to the impact of activities such as heavy vehicle activity, bombing, shelling, and other conflict-related dynamics, which would be things like areas burning.”
Near the southern city of Rafah, 34-year-old farmer Ibrahim Dheir feels helpless after the destruction of 20 dunams (five acres) of land he used to lease, and all his farming equipment with it.
“As soon as the Israeli bulldozers and tanks entered the area, they began bulldozing cultivated lands with various trees, including fruits, citrus, guava, as well as crops like spinach, molokhia (jute mallow), eggplant, squash, pumpkin and sunflower seedlings,” he said, before listing more damage in a testimony of the area’s past agricultural abundance.
Dheir, whose family exported its produce to the West Bank and Israel, now feels destitute.
“We used to depend on agriculture for our livelihood day by day, but now there’s no work or income.”
Farmer Abu Mahmoud Za’arab also finds himself with “no source of income.”
The 60-year-old owns 15 dunams (3.7 acres) of land on which crops and fruit trees used to grow.
“The Israeli army passed through the land, completely wiping out all trees and crops,” he told AFP.
“They bulldozed and shelled the land, turning it into barren pits.”
The harm done to farmland in Gaza will last far beyond tank tracks and explosions, said Bromley of UNOSAT.
“With modern weaponry, a certain percentage is always going to fail. Tank shells won’t explode, artillery shells won’t explode ... so clearing that unexploded ordnance is a massive task,” he said.
It will require “probing every centimeter of the soil before you can allow the farmers back onto it.”
Despite the risks, Dheir wants to return to farming.
“We want the war to stop and things to return to how they were so we can farm and cultivate our lands again.”
ATHENS, Greece: Iran reformist Masoud Pezeshkian’s victory over his hardline rival Saeed Jalili in the country’s presidential runoff on Saturday offers Iranians desperate for change a sliver of hope, according to political observers.
While many Iranians are too disillusioned with their government to feel optimistic, some believe Pezeshkian’s win points to the possibility of reform in the midst of economic turmoil, corruption, and crackdowns on dissent.
The first round of elections began on June 28, just over a month after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash.
Newly-elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian gestures during a visit to the shrine of the Islamic Republic's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran on July 6, 2024.(AFP)
However, the election failed to generate more than 50 percent of votes for any candidate, with the lowest turnout since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Videos circulating on social media platforms, including X, showed almost empty polling stations across the country.
“How can you, while holding a sword, gallows, weapons, and prisons against the people with one hand, place a ballot box in front of the same people with the other hand, and deceitfully and falsely call them to the polls?” Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian human rights activist and Nobel laureate, said in a statement from Evin Prison.
BIO
Name: Masoud Pezeshkian
Year of birth: 1954
City of birth: Mahabad, Iran
Occupation: Heart surgeon
The underwhelming turnout is part of a trend that began four years ago with the country’s 2020 parliamentary election, according to Ali Vaez, Iran Project director at the International Crisis Group (ICG).
“This clearly shows that the majority of the Iranian people have given up on the ballot box as a viable vehicle for change,” he told Arab News.
“The head-to-head between Jalili and Pezeshkian in the second round was a contest between two opposite ends of the spectrum acceptable to the system: Jalili’s hard-line, ideological approach and Pezeshkian’s moderate, liberal stance created intense polarization, seemingly driving a higher voter turnout. Jalili embodies confrontational foreign policy and restrictive social policies, while Pezeshkian advocates for moderate reforms and diplomatic engagement.”
Iran's presidential election candidate Saeed Jalili, a hard-line former nuclear negotiator, casts his vote for the presidential runoff election at a polling station in Qarchak near Tehran on July 5, 2024. (AP)
Political analysts voiced cautious optimism in the wake of Pezeshkian’s victory.
“Pezeshkian prevailed in an election where just 50 percent of voters went to the polls. He lacks the mandate enjoyed by Iran’s previous reform-minded presidents. But boycotting is what made his candidacy possible,” Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder and CEO of the UK-based Bourse & Bazaar Foundation think tank, said on X on Saturday.
Iranian expatriates in Kuwait cast their votes at the Gulf country’s embassy in a closely watched presidential election. (AFP)
“Both voters and non-voters had an influence on this remarkable outcome. The turnout was high enough to push Pezeshkian into office, but low enough to deny the (Iranian regime) legitimacy and to maintain political pressure for more significant change.”
Some Iranians have said that while they do not have any great expectations for Pezeshkian’s governance, their decision to vote for him was motivated by the desire for change, however small.
A woman casts her vote for the presidential election in a polling station at the shrine of Saint Saleh in northern Tehran on July 5, 2024. (AP)
“The reason for my vote is not that I have any special hopes for his government, no. I voted because I believe that society’s explosive desire for change is now so strong and ready to erupt that even if a small opportunity is provided, society itself … will change many things for the better,” Iranian journalist and Sadra Mohaqeq, who voted for Pezeshkian, said on Friday.
Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon whose political career includes a tenure as the Iranian health minister, will be the first reformist to assume the office of president in Iran since 2005. His promises include efforts to improve relations with the West and a relaxation of Iran’s mandatory headscarf law.
With both Azeri and Kurdish roots, he also supports the rights of minorities in Iran. Minority groups often bore the brunt of state-sanctioned violence in the wake of the 2022-2023 protests sparked by the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini in police custody.
Supporters hold portraits of Iran's newly-elected president Masoud Pezeshkian visits the shrine of the Islamic Republic's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran on July 6, 2024. (AFP)
After Amini’s death, Pezeshkian said that it was “unacceptable in the Islamic Republic to arrest a girl for her hijab and then hand over her dead body to her family.”
However, just days later, amid nationwide protests and brutal crackdowns by the government, he warned protesters against “insulting the supreme leader.” For even the most optimistic of Iran observers, it is clear that Pezeshkian still answers to the country’s head of state.
“Despite being a reformist, Pezeshkian is loyal to the supreme leader of Iran, and reformists in Iran generally cannot pursue reforms that challenge the vision, goals, and values of the Islamic Revolution. The ultimate authority doesn’t rest with President-elect Pezeshkian but with (Supreme Leader Ali) Khamenei,” Mohammed Albasha, senior Middle East analyst for the US-based Navanti Group, told Arab News.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei votes during the presidential election in Tehran, on July 5, 2024. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA/Handout via REUTERS)
Furthermore, even if Pezeshkian proves willing to strongly push for reforms, the Iranian political environment is still dominated by hardliners.
Vaez said: “Given Pezeshkian’s relatively low votes, the continued conservative dominance of other state institutions, and the limits of presidential authority, Pezeshkian will face an uphill battle in securing the greater social and cultural rights at home and diplomatic engagement abroad he’s emphasized in debates and on the campaign trail.”
While Pezeshkian has expressed support for domestic reforms and improved international relations, he has also voiced his unequivocal support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
He has condemned the former Trump administration’s decision to label the IRGC as a terrorist organization and has worn the IRGC uniform in public meetings.
Opinion
This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)
It is unclear how Pezeshkian will reconcile a desire for ties with the West with his views, particularly given that the IRGC has been designated as a terrorist group by the US, Sweden, and Canada.
An increased push for improved ties with the West may also draw the ire of the Islamic Republic’s strongest military and economic allies, such as China and Russia.
However, Pezeshkian may not have much choice in the matter, regardless of his own aspirations.
“The president in Tehran is primarily responsible for implementing the daily agenda, not setting it. Nuclear policy, regional alliances, and relations with the West are dictated by the supreme leader and the Revolutionary Guard,” the Navanti Group’s Albasha said.
This handout picture taken on November 19, 2023, shows Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with Hossein Salami (center), head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the corps' aerospace division, (R) during a visit at the IRGC aerospace achievement exhibition in Tehran. (KHAMENEI.IR handout/ AFP)
Though not the head of state, Pezeshkian will undoubtedly have some influence over Iran’s domestic and foreign policies, as well as economic policy.
The government of Iran’s last reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, was characterized by some liberalization, including freedom of expression, a free market economy, and improved diplomatic relations with other countries.
Only time will tell how much change Pezeshkian is willing, or able, to bring about.
Pezeshkian’s election win is not a turning point, ICG’s Vaez said, but “another twist in the complex political dynamics of a system that remains split between those who want the 1979 revolution to mellow and those who want it to remain permanent.”
Egypt to host Israeli, US delegations for Gaza ceasefire talks, says Al Qahera TV
Updated 06 July 2024
Reuters
CAIRO: Egypt’s state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said on Saturday that the country will host Israeli and US delegations to discuss “outstanding issues” in a possible Gaza ceasefire agreement.
Citing a senior official, Al Qahera News said Egypt is conducting talks with the Palestinian faction Hamas to conclude ceasefire and hostages-for-prisoners swap deals.
Hamas in Gaza says 16 killed in strike on UN school
The Israeli military said in a statement it “struck several terrorists operating in structures located in the area of UNRWA’s Al-Jawni school”
Updated 06 July 2024
AFP
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: The Hamas authorities in Gaza said an Israeli strike on Saturday on a UN-run school where thousands of displaced were sheltering killed 16 people.
Israel’s military said its aircraft had targeted “terrorists” operating around the Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat, central Gaza.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which condemned the strike as an “odious massacre,” said 50 injured were taken to hospital from the school.
Some 7,000 people were sheltering in the school at the time of the attack, the Hamas government press office said. Dozens of people scrambled through the rubble after the strike to find survivors.
The press office said the school was run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and most of the casualties were “children, women, and elderly.”
“This is the fourth time they have targeted the school without warning,” said one woman, Samah Abu Amsha, who told how some children were killed as they read the Qur’an in a class when the missile hit.
“Shrapnel flew at me inside the classroom and the children were injured,” she told AFP.
Hamas called the attack “a new massacre and crime committed by this criminal enemy as part of its war of genocide against our Palestinian people.”
The Israeli military said in a statement it “struck several terrorists operating in structures located in the area of UNRWA’s Al-Jawni school.”
“This location served as a hideout and operational infrastructure from which attacks against IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip were directed and carried out,” it added, insisting that “steps were taken in order to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
Israel has agreed to meetings with mediators on a ceasefire initiative but has kept up its offensive in the territory that started on October 7 after the Hamas attack on southern Israel.
UNRWA said two of its workers were killed in a strike at Al-Bureij, also in central Gaza, early Saturday. The agency has a major food warehouse in the district.
The Al-Aqsa hospital said nine other bodies were brought to its morgue from the strike.
The UN agency said 194 of its workers have now been killed since the war started.
An UNRWA spokesperson said that since the war began, more than half of the agency’s facilities have been hit and many were shelters. “As a result at least 500 people sheltering in those facilities have been killed,” the spokesperson told AFP.
Paramedics said 10 people, including three journalists, died in another strike on a house in Nuseirat on Saturday.
“Absolutely no place in the Gaza Strip is safe,” said civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
The war began with the October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Hamas militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the military says are dead.
In response, Israel has carried out a military offensive that has killed at least 38,098 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry there.
