Jordanian energy commission, US solar foundation sign MoU
Marks lauded Jordan’s significant role in leading green education, innovation in the Middle East
Updated 15 July 2024
Arab News
AMMAN: Jordan’s Arab Renewable Energy Commission — AREC — and the American Solar Car Challenge Foundation — ASC — have entered into a memorandum of understanding to promote innovative initiatives aimed at enhancing vocational education in the Arab world.
The partnership is designed to contribute to sustainable development and generate productive green job opportunities for recent graduates, Jordan News Agency reported on Monday.
The MoU was signed in Dallas by ASC Founder Lehman Marks and AREC Secretary-General Mohammad Al-Ta’ani.
Marks lauded Jordan’s significant role in leading green education and innovation in the Middle East, noting the country’s extensive experience with renewable energy and electric vehicles.
Al-Ta’ani stressed the MoU’s importance in supporting Jordan’s efforts toward creative and innovative technical and vocational green education, as well as in creating more job opportunities.
He highlighted Jordan’s internationally recognized leadership in sustainable development as a model of stability and energy security.
Additionally, an international solar car race is scheduled to be held in Jordan in September 2025, organized in collaboration between ASC and AREC, featuring teams from Arab and foreign countries.
New weather alert after 14 killed by lightning strikes as storms lash Yemen
Updated 19 sec ago
Saeed Al-Batati
AL-MUKALLA: Weather chiefs in Yemen issued a new warning on Tuesday after 14 people were killed by lightning strikes in the northern province of Hajjah.
Lightning killed three people during thunderstorms in Abbes, three in Kuhlan Affar and eight more in other parts of the province. The National Center of Meteorology said there would be severe weather conditions over the next 24 hours.
Heavy rain since July has caused flash floods that have killed over 100 people and displaced many more in Hodeidah, Ibb, Hajjah, Sanaa, Marib, and other provinces. At least 600 people were injured by flooding in Hodeida and Marib alone, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said, and 13 people were still missing in Hodeida and Taiz.
It said a total of 38,285 families — nearly 268,000 people — had lost their homes. “Public infrastructure, including schools, roads, and health facilities, have been affected. Livelihoods that were already hanging by a thread have been swept away,” OCHA said. “Severe weather is expected to persist into September, with additional alerts for heavy rainfall.”
Yemen suffers from severe floods triggered by torrential rainfall nearly every year. The University of Notre Dame’s Global Adaptation Initiative ranks Yemen as one of the region’s most climate-vulnerable countries. In recent years it has experienced an increase in the frequency and intensity of rainfall due to climate change, stimulated by atmospheric circulation in the Indian Ocean.
The country also suffered heavy flooding in 2019, 2020 and 2021.
How Gaza war has set back Palestinian agriculture, deepened hunger crisis
More than half of Gaza’s cropland and a third of its greenhouses have been destroyed by the conflict, contributing to malnutrition
FAO says the devastation of Gaza’s agriculture has led to severe food insecurity, with 1 in 5 Gazans facing extreme hunger
Updated 27 min 3 sec ago
Rebecca Anne Proctor
DUBAI: Before the war, Mohamed El-Yaty, 39, a farmer from Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, used to wake up and set to work at 6am, take a break at noon, return to his fields after Asr prayer around 4pm, and then work until Maghrib prayer after 7pm.
His entire life revolved around the routine of farming. But since the conflict in Gaza began on Oct. 7 last year, El-Yaty has been able to farm only about half his land, drastically reducing his yields of eggplants, cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes.
“Before the war, we had food — it was available and accessible,” he told an official from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. “Meat, vegetables, everything was available. Good food. Today, everything is canned.”
El-Yaty said he has lost 22 members of his family over the course of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas — a war that has killed at least 40,000 Gazans, according to the local health ministry.
Even before the present crisis, up to 1.8 million people — one third of the Palestinian population — were considered food insecure. (AFP)
Many of the greenhouses that El-Yaty had tended on his 13 dunams of land — equivalent to about 13,000 square meters — have been destroyed by shelling. “My home was at my farm,” he said. “In the morning, my workers and I would harvest and plant, and we were 100 percent happy.”
Gaza was once largely self-sufficient in vegetables, dairy products, poultry and fish. It also produced a large amount of the fruit and red meat that its population consumed. Now the conflict has all but destroyed the enclave’s agrifood system, leading to poor nutrition and food insecurity.
A recent analysis by the FAO using satellite imagery found widespread damage to agricultural infrastructure throughout Gaza, including the destruction of at least 57 percent of its cropland, damage to 33 percent of its greenhouses, and significant damage to wells and solar panels.
Additionally, drastic shortages of water and fodder have resulted in the death of approximately 70 percent of the enclave’s livestock since October, while about 70 percent of Gaza’s fishing vessels have been destroyed.
Electricity shortages have also disrupted refrigeration, irrigation and incubation devices, severely affecting agricultural livelihoods. Today, only small-scale farming, fishing and animal husbandry continues — and only when security allows.
“Before the hostilities, a protracted conflict and frequent escalations in the Gaza Strip had already eroded the Gazan economy and the long-term sustainability of various sectors, including agriculture,” Abdulhakim Elwaer, FAO’s assistant director-general and regional representative for the Near East and North Africa, told Arab News.
Damage to agricultural infrastructure over the course of this latest conflict will have a long-term impact on Gaza’s post-war recovery. FAO figures suggest that up to 10 percent of the pre-war population had relied on agriculture as a main source of income.
“According to a recent World Bank report, this conflict will have lasting effects on the impacted populations in Gaza and the West Bank far beyond what can be captured in numbers alone,” Elwaer said.
Due to restrictions imposed by Israel on the delivery of humanitarian aid, Palestinians are not receiving sufficiently nutritious fresh food. (AFP)
Yousef Al-Masri, 53, a farmer from Khan Younis, lost his home in the fighting, forcing him to move to a place of safety three kilometers from his land.
Before Oct. 7, Al-Masri grew peppers, eggplants, cabbage, tomatoes and corn on his farm. Not only was it his main source of income — it was also a source of pride, dignity and identity. The war has robbed him of that role.
“Our conditions are very difficult in terms of everything: Electricity, water, houses,” Al-Masri told the FAO. “What more can I say … we are not going to find food — this agricultural season is gone. Next season we won’t find anything to grow.”
INNUMBERS
• 57% Gaza’s cropland damaged by the conflict (UN).
• 20% Gazans expected to face extreme hunger due to food insecurity.
Even before the present crisis, up to 1.8 million people — one third of the Palestinian population — were considered food insecure.
Of these, 1.5 million were severely food insecure, and 1.2 million of them were in the Gaza Strip, according to a 2023 report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Food insecurity was driven by high rates of poverty resulting from unemployment, which was in part due to Israeli restrictions on freedom of movement, as well as high prices for food and recurrent economic shocks.
The conflict has all but destroyed Gaza’s agrifood system, leading to poor nutrition and food insecurity. (AFP)
According to data published by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification global initiative on June 25, about 96 percent of the population of Gaza will encounter high levels of acute food insecurity by September.
Under the present conditions, nearly half a million people are at risk of starvation, meaning that one in five Gazans already face extreme hunger and more than 20 percent are going entire days and nights without eating.
Due to restrictions imposed by Israel on the delivery of humanitarian aid, consisting of predominantly non-perishable canned goods, Palestinians are not receiving sufficiently nutritious fresh food.
In recognition of this nutritional shortage, the FAO, supported by the governments of Belgium, Italy and Norway, is delivering barley fodder to feed Gaza’s surviving livestock and increase milk production.
Gaza was once largely self-sufficient in vegetables, dairy products, poultry and fish. (AFP)
“Gazan farmers are ready to restart production given access to necessary inputs like seeds, plastic sheds for greenhouses, fodder, animal vaccines, fish feed and fuel,” Elwaer told Arab News.
The FAO’s priority, he said, “is importing and distributing fodder to sustain the 30,000 small ruminants still alive in Gaza, crucial for milk production essential for children’s nutrition and growth.”
The UN agency is also helping Gazan farmers to resume vegetable, meat and fish production, vital for food security and balanced nutrition, by scaling up efforts to deliver essential food production inputs.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, ongoing settler violence, raids, property destruction and the confiscation of land has undermined agricultural activity, already hindered by limited access to natural resources, markets and essential services. This has led to an increased dependency on food imports.
But since Israel stopped issuing work permits after Oct. 7, Palestinians who previously traveled every day to work on Israeli farms have instead begun tilling the land in the West Bank.
About 200,000 Palestinians from the West Bank worked in Israel, legally or illegally, prior to the conflict, according to the Palestinian General Confederation of Labor. Many lost their livelihoods literally overnight.
The FAO’s priority “is importing and distributing fodder to sustain the 30,000 small ruminants still alive in Gaza, crucial for milk production essential for children’s nutrition and growth.” (FAO)
Working in agriculture in the West Bank has enabled many to make a living while also protecting their land from the encroachment of illegal Israeli settlements.
“It’s a very useful job and, above all, safe,” Hussein Jamil, a Palestinian farmworker in the West Bank, told the AFP news agency.
“We are independent and peaceful. It’s much better than working in Israel. Here we work on our land.”
US official says Netanyahu remarks ‘not constructive’ to Gaza truce
“Maximalist statements like this are not constructive to getting a ceasefire deal across the finish line,” said the senior official
Netanyahu said that Israel would insist on maintaining control of the Philadelphi Corridor between Gaza and Egypt which Israeli forces seized from Hamas
Updated 2 min 42 sec ago
AFP
DOHA: A US official on Tuesday criticized “maximalist” remarks attributed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on maintaining control of the Gaza-Egypt border, saying it was not helpful to reaching a ceasefire with Hamas.
“Maximalist statements like this are not constructive to getting a ceasefire deal across the finish line,” said the senior official traveling with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the Middle East, requesting anonymity to talk about sensitive discussions.
Such remarks “certainly risk the ability of implementing-level, working-level and technical talks to be able to move forward (once) both parties agree to a bridging proposal,” he said.
The official said that Blinken stood by his public statement in Tel Aviv on Monday that Netanyahu had agreed to a US proposal to bridge the gaps on a ceasefire laid out on May 31 by President Joe Biden.
Netanyahu, in reported remarks to families of victims of attacks, said that Israel would insist on maintaining control of the Philadelphi Corridor between Gaza and Egypt which Israeli forces seized from Hamas in the more than 10-month war.
“We saw the prime minister’s comments, especially on some of these items. We’re not going to negotiate in public,” the US official said.
The official said that such “technical” issues would need to be ironed out in further discussions.
“The only thing Secretary Blinken and the United States are convinced of is the need for getting the ceasefire deal across the finish line,” the official said.
“There will be additional conversations on technical specifics, many of which of course are being discussed in the press, which is certainly not helpful to the process,” he said.
The United States expects diplomacy to move forward this week between Israel and Hamas on reaching a ceasefire, despite uncertainties in particular on Hamas’s response, the official said.
“We fully expect this process to continue into this week,” the official said, without confirming any formal meeting this week involving Israel and Hamas.
The White House last week, when presenting the bridging proposal in Doha, said that it expected new talks on finalizing the deal to take place later this week in Cairo.
Blinken arrived in Doha late Tuesday for talks with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, after meeting the leaders of Egypt and Israel.
Blinken arrives in Qatar on mission to broker Gaza ceasefire deal
Blinken met earlier in the day in Cairo with Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi
Top diplomat’s visit to the region also included meetings in Israel on Monday
Updated 20 August 2024
Reuters
DOHA: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Doha on Tuesday on the next leg of a diplomatic effort to secure a Gaza ceasefire and a hostage release deal as major areas of dispute remained between Israel and Hamas.
Blinken met earlier in the day in Cairo with Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, whose country has been helping mediate the on-off Gaza talks for months along with the US and Qatar.
El-Sisi said after their meeting that it was time to put an end to the 10-month-old war in Gaza and warned of the conflict expanding in the region.
Blinken’s visit to the region also included meetings in Israel on Monday. He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted a US “bridging proposal” aimed at narrowing the gaps between the two sides after talks last week paused without a breakthrough, and urged Hamas to accept it too.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters traveling with Blinken that the US expects the ceasefire talks to continue this week.
The Palestinian militant group has not explicitly rejected the proposal. But Hamas said it overturns what was previously agreed, without specifying how, and accused Israel and its US ally of spinning out negotiations in bad faith.
At stake is the fate of tiny, crowded Gaza, where Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 40,000 people since October according to Palestinian health authorities, and of the remaining hostages being held there.
The war in Gaza began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and abducting about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
On Tuesday, Israel’s military said it had recovered the bodies of six hostages from southern Gaza. According to Israeli authorities, 109 hostages now remain in the Palestinian territory, of whom around a third are believed to be dead.
In Gaza, Israeli forces battled Hamas-led militants in central and southern areas, and Palestinian health authorities said at least 39 people had been killed on Tuesday in Israeli strikes, including on a school housing displaced people.
Israel’s military said it had struck Hamas militants embedded in the school.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said on Tuesday it was still waiting for polio vaccines to arrive after the disease was discovered in the territory, where most people now live in tents or shelters without proper sanitation. It echoed a call by the UN last week for a ceasefire to allow the vaccination campaign. Proposal
Blinken has called the latest push for a deal “probably the best, possibly the last opportunity,” and said his meeting with Netanyahu was constructive. He also said it was incumbent on Hamas to accept the bridging proposal.
Officials from the US, Hamas, Israel, Egypt or Qatar have not spelled out what is in the proposal or how it differs from previous versions.
Hamas rejected US comments that it was backing away from a deal, saying Egyptian and Qatari mediators knew it had dealt positively toward the negotiations and that it was Netanyahu who had obstructed an agreement with new demands.
It said it was still committed to terms it agreed with mediators in July based on a proposal made by the US in May. Netanyahu denies obstructing a deal
Months of on-off talks have circled the same issues, with Israel saying the war can only end with the destruction of Hamas as a military and political force and Hamas saying it will only accept a permanent, not temporary, ceasefire.
There are disagreements over Israel’s continued military presence in Gaza, particularly along the border with Egypt, the free movement of Palestinians inside the territory and the identity and number of Palestinian prisoners to be freed in a swap.
Egypt is particularly focused on a security mechanism for the Philadelphi Corridor, the narrow border strip between Egypt and Gaza that Israeli forces seized in May.
Both Hamas and Egypt are opposed to Israel keeping troops there, but Netanyahu has insisted they are needed to stop weapons being smuggled into Gaza. The senior US official disputed an Axios report that quoted Netanyahu as saying he may have convinced Blinken on the point.
Egyptian security sources said the US has proposed an international presence in the area, a suggestion the sources said could be acceptable to Cairo if it was limited to a maximum of six months.
“The ceasefire in Gaza must be the beginning of broader international recognition of the Palestinian state and the implementation of the two-state solution, as this is the basic guarantor of stability in the region,” El-Sisi said after meeting Blinken.
Bloc’s ships have destroyed 22 Houthi drones and missiles
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea has not claimed credit for fresh assaults on any ships since Aug. 7
Updated 20 August 2024
Saeed Al-Batati
AL-MUKALLA: The EU naval mission in the Red Sea has said that its warships have provided security to 300 ships while traveling in commerce routes off Yemen and have destroyed 22 drones, drone boats, and ballistic missiles launched by the Yemeni militia during the past six months.
No new assaults on ships have been claimed by the Houthis in the last two weeks, indicating another pause in their campaign.
On Monday the EU naval mission, known as EUNAVFOR ASPIDES, said in a post on X: “As we reach the six-month milestone since the initiation of the operation, we remain committed to our mission and the core values of the European Union.”
The EU announced it was launching a naval mission based in the Red Sea on Feb. 19 to safeguard ships traveling through the important maritime channel from Houthi drone, missile, and drone boat strikes.
Since November, the Houthis have seized one commercial ship, sunk two others, and fired hundreds of drones, ballistic missiles, and remotely controlled boats at ships in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Indian Ocean in a campaign that the Yemeni militia claims is intended to put pressure on Israel to end its war in the Gaza Strip.
Despite the Houthis’ continuous threats of vengeance, assaults on ships have significantly decreased since July 20, when Israel launched airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen’s western province of Hodeidah for the first time.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea has not claimed credit for fresh assaults on any ships since Aug. 7.
The Yemeni militia claimed that they postponed their response to the Israeli operation in Hodeidah in order to make it “more effective.”
This comes as Rashad Al-Alimi, head of the internationally recognized Yemeni government’s Presidential Leadership Council, accused the Houthis on Tuesday of undermining efforts to end the war on the country and attempting to bankrupt his government.
Speaking in the southern city of Aden after accepting foreign ambassador-designate credentials to Yemen, Al-Alimi urged the international community to punish the Houthis for attacking ships in the Red Sea and elsewhere, cracking down on civil society and aid organizations, and impeding peace talks.
“The peace process has remained stalled because of the militia’s intransigence and its preference of the interests of its supporters over the interests of the Yemeni people,” he said.
Meanwhile, 14 people were killed by lightning in Yemen’s northern province of Hajjah, as the National Center of Meteorology warned on Tuesday of severe weather in the following 24 hours.
According to the Houthi-run Saba news agency, lightning killed three people in Abbes, three more in Kuhlan Affar, and eight more in other regions of Hajjah over the past several days.
Heavy rains caused flash floods in Hodeidah, Ibb, Hajjah, Sanaa, Marib, and other Yemen provinces, killing over 100 people and displacing hundreds more since late last month.
