Syrian President Assad’s Baath Party clinches control of parliament
Syrian President Assad’s Baath Party clinches control of parliament/node/2551911/middle-east
Syrian President Assad’s Baath Party clinches control of parliament
Syrians in government-held areas were voting on July 15 in their fourth parliamentary election since civil war erupted in 2011, a poll expected to keep President Bashar al-Assad's ruling Baath party in power. (File/AFP)
Syrian President Assad’s Baath Party clinches control of parliament
Elections for 250 parliamentary seats were held Monday at 8,151 centers in government-held areas of the country
The voting was repeated in several districts after election officials said there had been irregularities
Updated 18 July 2024
AP
DAMASCUS: The results of Syria’s parliamentary elections, announced Thursday, showed that President Bashar Assad’s Baath Party has won a majority of seats, as expected.
The elections for 250 parliamentary seats were held Monday at 8,151 centers in government-held areas of the country, but the voting was repeated in several districts — including Aleppo, Latakia, Hama and Daraa — after election officials said there had been irregularities, including voters casting ballots twice.
The heads of some electoral centers were referred to the judiciary for alleged electoral violations.
Altogether, 1,516 candidates were competing for the 250 seats. However, only 65 of those seats were seen as truly up for competition, as the Baath Party and allied parties presented a list of 185 candidates. Typically, all candidates who make it through the Baath Party primaries and appear on the final list win seats.
The results announced Thursday showed that all 185 candidates from the Baath Party and its allies won seats as expected, an increase from the 177 seats won by the coalition in 2020.
Turnout was 38 percent of the 19.3 million eligible voters, election officials said.
Unlike presidential elections, Syrians in the diaspora are not eligible to vote in parliamentary elections.
The head of the Supreme Judicial Committee for Elections, Jihad Murad, who announced the results, said they “reflected the broadest representation of the Syrian people in their various groups and sectors.”
The vote is the fourth since the country’s civil war began in March 2011.
With Assad facing term limits that would end his presidency in 2028, the next parliament is widely expected to try to pass a constitutional amendment to extend his term.
An amendment requires a three-quarters majority, or 188 votes, just over the number of seats held by the Bath Party and its allies. However, nominally independent candidates are also generally seen as loyal to the government.
EU mission in Red Sea says no oil spill from tanker damaged in Houthi attack
The EU mission said the Sounion was still anchored and not drifting
The US military had earlier reported that the tanker appeared to be leaking oil
Updated 18 sec ago
Reuters
DUBAI: The European Union’s mission in the Red Sea said on Wednesday there was no oil spill in the waters near the Greek-flagged tanker hit by a fiery Houthi militant attack off Yemen’s coast.
The mission, called Aspides, added that the Sounion was still anchored and not drifting.
A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the ship was leaking an unidentified substance.
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that the tanker was still on fire in the Red Sea and appeared to be leaking oil.
Reuters could not independently confirm that a leak had occurred.
The Iran-backed Houthis targeted Sounion in multiple attacks near Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah, at one point causing the vessel to erupt in a ball of flames.
The attack set off alarm bells in the environmental community because Sounion is carrying 150,000 tons, or 1 million barrels, of crude oil.
A spill of that size would be one of the largest from a ship in history, threatening to destroy the area’s fishing industry and regional ecosystems, government officials warned.
The Iran-aligned Houthis over 10 months have launched more than 70 attacks on commercial ships in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Those assaults have sunk two vessels, killed at least three crew and disrupted global trade by forcing ships to avoid the vital Suez Canal shortcut.
Israeli soldier’s remains returned from Gaza: army
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the soldier “fell in a heroic battle” and that “the heart of the entire nation grieves over the terrible loss”
Updated 29 August 2024
AFP
JERUSALEM: The remains of an Israeli soldier killed in Hamas’s October 7 attack that triggered the Gaza war have been recovered and returned to his family, the Israeli army said Wednesday.
In an overnight operation “a fallen (Israel Defense Forces) soldier who was abducted on October 7th and held hostage in the Gaza Strip was rescued and returned to the State of Israel,” an army statement said.
“At the request of his family, his name will not be published. We send our deepest condolences to the family and will continue to accompany them.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the soldier “fell in a heroic battle” and that “the heart of the entire nation grieves over the terrible loss.”
Campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said the return of the soldier’s remains offered “important closure” for the family, but demanded a negotiated deal to release those still held captive in Gaza since October 7.
“We must not be misled — the remaining hostages don’t have the luxury of waiting for rescue operations,” the group said in a statement.
Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
The Palestinian militants also abducted 251 people, 103 of whom are still captive in Gaza including 33 the military says are dead.
On Tuesday the Israeli army announced that one hostage, a 52-year-old Israeli Bedouin man, had been rescued from a Gaza tunnel.
On Wednesday, as he left a medical center, the rescued man, Kaid Farhan Alkadi, said international mediators needed to secure a ceasefire.
“Those in Qatar and Egypt need to put an end to this. They travel and return to the negotiations, this is a waste of fuel,” he said.
“You have to sit together until white smoke comes out and be done with it.”
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,534 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
“My joy is not complete because I know that there are other hostages here and there, it doesn’t matter if he is Arab or Jewish,” Alkadi said.
“There is a family waiting for him and they want to be happy, so I hope and pray that there will be an end to this thing.”
The roadblocks slowing ICC prosecutor’s pursuit of justice for Israel-Hamas war crimes
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has asserted the court’s jurisdiction over war crimes charges against Israeli and Hamas leaders
Numerous legal submissions, including from governments, have challenged the ICC’s authority, delaying the court’s ruling
Updated 29 August 2024
ANAN TELLO
LONDON: Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, has urged judges to reject legal challenges disputing the court’s power to issue arrest warrants for Israeli nationals, confirming the warrants are well within the ICC’s purview.
Khan applied for warrants in May for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif — on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Karim Khan, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. (AFP/File)
Haniyeh has since been killed in a suspected Israeli strike in Tehran, while unconfirmed reports suggest Deif was killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza. Sinwar, meanwhile, has been appointed as the militant group’s new political chief.
“It is settled law that the court has jurisdiction in this situation,” Khan wrote in court filings made public on Aug. 23, dismissing legal arguments filed by over 60 governments, organizations and individuals opposing the warrants.
The court’s Pre-trial Chamber was expected to issue a ruling on the warrants by the end of July, but the many submissions have slowed the process. Khan warned that “any unjustified delay in these proceedings detrimentally affects the rights of victims.”
Yemenis lift a large portrait of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh during a rally in Sanaa in support of the Palestinians. Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, presumably by Israelis. (AFP)
Khan requested the arrest warrants to hold accountable those who are alleged to have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel and Israel’s retaliatory operation in the Gaza Strip.
However, in early June, the UK government requested permission to file an “amicus curiae” brief on whether a provision of the 1993 Oslo Accords peace deal could overrule the ICC’s jurisdiction over Israeli nationals.
On September 28, 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (2nd-L) and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat (2nd-R) signed a Palestinian autonomy accord in the West Bank in what has become known as the Oslo Accord. (AFP/File)
As part of the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority agreed it does not have criminal jurisdiction over Israeli nationals. In his 49-page legal brief, Khan said the chamber considered the observations on the Oslo Accords to be an issue of “potential relevance.”
Other governments, including Germany, followed suit, with several also arguing the ICC should wait for Israel to conclude its own internal investigation into the allegations.
In his Aug. 23 legal brief, Khan rejected Israel’s claim that it is carrying out its own investigation into alleged war crimes. He argued that “the available information does not show that Israel is investigating substantially the same conduct as the ICC.
Several governments have pushed for the ICC to wait for Israel to conclude its own internal investigation into war crimes charges raised before the court. (Supplied)
Having initially led the charge against the ICC’s arrest warrants under its previous Conservative administration, Britain’s new Labour government dropped the Oslo challenge in late July, despite pressure from the US and Israel, neither of which is a signatory to the ICC.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, says the right of Palestinians to prosecute war crimes against them “cannot be negotiated away.”
He said a ruling in July by the International Court of Justice, which deemed Israel’s occupation and annexation of the Palestinian territories to be illegal, addressed the argument as to whether the Oslo Accords mean the Palestinians have waived their rights.
A general view shows the land of the Palestinian Kisiya family in the Al-Makhrour area of Beit Jala in Bethlehem, which was seized by Jewish landgrabbers, reportedly aided by Israeli authorities. (AFP)
“It cited Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which says negotiations between occupier and occupied cannot deprive people of rights under the convention — a wise precaution given inherent power imbalances,” Roth told Arab News.
“The court was addressing the issue of Israel’s illegal settlements, but the same logic applies to Palestinians’ right to prosecute war crimes. That is not a right that can be negotiated away, meaning that the recognized state of Palestine has the right to confer that jurisdiction as needed to the International Criminal Court.”
Hamas led a surprise cross-border attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing at least 1,100 people and taking a further 250 hostage — most of them civilians. Israel retaliated with a bombing campaign and ground offensive against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
Family members and supporters of hostages who were kidnapped by Hamas militants during their deadly attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, have been holding continuous protest actions in an effort to bring back the hostages. (REUTERS)
Since the Israeli operation began, at least 40,400 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, civilian infrastructure has been reduced to rubble, and more than 90 percent of the enclave’s population has been displaced.
Israel, which launched its Gaza mission in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack with the stated aim of destroying Hamas and other militant groups, insists it does not target civilians, instead accusing Palestinian militants of using civilians as human shields.
Commenting on the other legal challenge being brought against the ICC, Roth criticized the German government’s argument that the court should wait for Israel to end its operation in Gaza before pursuing arrest warrants
Palestinians bury their dead at a cemetery in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, in this picture taken on February 21, 2024. Continuing Israeli strikes have killed at more than 40,400 Palestinians since Oct. 7, 2023. (AFP Photo/File)
“The German government has gone so far as to claim that the ICC should not prosecute any Israeli while the war in Gaza continues because it is too difficult for Israeli prosecutors to work right now,” he said.
“That is an argument that Germany notably did not make when Putin was charged,” he added, drawing a comparison with attitudes to the arrest warrant issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the alleged abduction of Ukrainian children.
“More to the point, it is wrong. Military prosecutors (around) the world operate during wars.”
For Roth, waiting until the fighting has ended would only encourage further human rights violations. “No one believes that the prosecution of war crimes should wait until all fighting ceases,” he said. “That would only encourage more war crimes.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. (AFP)
He added: “In any event, Israeli prosecutors have been on notice for months that Netanyahu and Gallant were being investigated for their starvation strategy in Gaza, but there has been no public notice of any Israeli investigation of them.
“That is consistent with the longstanding Israeli practice of never prosecuting senior Israeli officials.”
The arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant specifically allege the two Israeli ministers bear responsibility for “starving civilians as a method of warfare” in the Gaza Strip by obstructing the delivery of humanitarian relief.
Infographic showing the drastic drop in hurelief aid entering Gaza. Israel has been accused of obstructing the entry of humanitarian relief as part of a systematic effort to starve Palestinians in the enclav. (AFP/File)
Another legal objection to the warrants concerns equating the actions of Hamas with those of Israel. The German government has rejected any comparison between the two, stressing Israel’s “right and duty to protect and defend its people.”
Nevertheless, if an arrest warrant is issued, Germany, like other ICC member states, would be legally obliged to arrest the two Israeli leaders if they were to enter the EU country.
Despite the current impediments, Roth is hopeful that justice will be delivered to the victims of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“It may still take a month or two for the ICC judges to sort through these arguments, but I anticipate the arrest warrants will be issued in the reasonably near term,” he said.
“At that stage, no one charged will be able to travel to any of the 124 ICC member states which have a duty to arrest them. That lays a foundation of hope that we will see justice done.”
Gaza teen amputee recalls nightmare of losing arms
Updated 28 August 2024
Reuters
GAZA: Teenager Diaa Al-Adini was one of the few Palestinians who found a functioning hospital in war-ravaged Gaza after he was wounded by an Israeli strike. But he did not have much time to recuperate after doctors amputated both of his arms.
Adini, 15, suddenly had to flee the overwhelmed medical facility after the Israeli military ordered people to leave before an attack in its war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas. He made it to an American field hospital.
Scrambling to save your life is especially difficult for Palestinians like Adini, who require urgent medical care but get caught up in the chaos of the war.
Memories of better days provide limited relief from reality in Gaza. Israeli strikes have reduced most of one of the most crowded places on earth to rubble as rows and rows of homes are destroyed.
“We used to swim, challenge each other, and sleep, me and my friend Mohammed Al-Serei. We used to jump in the water and float on it,” said Adini, who walked on a beach with his sister Aya recalling the few distractions from before.
His sister placed a towel over the place where his arms used to be and wiped his mouth.
The strike hit when he was in a makeshift coffee house.
The teenager, who spent 12 days in hospital before he was displaced also lost his aunt, her children and grandchildren in the war.
“As for my arms, I can get other ones fitted but I cannot replace my aunt,” he said.
All Palestinians can do is hope for treatment at the few functional hospitals as they face a humanitarian crisis — severe shortages of food, fuel, power and medicine, as raw sewage increases the chance of disease.
“God willing, I will continue my treatment in the American hospital, and get limbs,” said Adini.
He dreams of being like other children one day — to live a good life, get an education, drive cars and have fun. His sister Aya hopes that he can go back to his camera and iPad.
Iran says Houthis agree to truce so tugboats can reach damaged oil tanker
The Sounion was targeted last week by multiple projectiles off Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah
It was still on fire in the Red Sea and now appears to be leaking oil, a Pentagon spokesman said on Tuesday
Updated 28 August 2024
Reuters
UNITED NATIONS: Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group has agreed to a temporary truce to allow tugboats and rescue ships to reach the damaged Greek-flagged crude oil tanker Sounion in the Red Sea, Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York said on Wednesday.
“Several countries have reached out to ask Ansarullah (the Houthis), requesting a temporary truce for the entry of tugboats and rescue ships into the incident area,” Iran’s UN mission said. “In consideration of humanitarian and environmental concerns, Ansarullah has consented to this request.”
The Sounion was targeted last week by multiple projectiles off Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah. It was still on fire in the Red Sea and now appears to be leaking oil, a Pentagon spokesman said on Tuesday.
The Houthis, who control Yemen’s most populous regions, said they attacked it. The group has been attacking ships in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.
Yemen’s Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam told Reuters on Wednesday there is no temporary truce and the group only agreed on allowing the towing of oil tanker Sounion after several international parties contacted the group.
Pentagon spokesman Air Force Major General Patrick Ryder said on Tuesday that a third party had tried to send two tugs to help salvage the Sounion, but the Houthis threatened to attack them.
Iran’s UN mission responded on Wednesday: “The failure to provide aid and prevent an oil spill in the Red Sea stems from the negligence of certain countries, rather than concerns over the possibility of being targeted.
