Several Blue Helmets have been wounded in the crossfire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movemen
The Security Council first established UNIFIL in 1978 after Israel invaded south Lebanon
Updated 24 August 2024
AFP
UN BASE 964: On the deserted border between Lebanon and Israel, Spanish UN peacekeepers have for more than 10 months effectively been caught in a war zone.
Several Blue Helmets have been wounded in the crossfire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, which has also left dozens of Lebanese civilians dead in fallout from the war between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.
“Sometimes we need to shelter because of the shelling... sometimes even inside the bunkers,” said Alvaro Gonzalez Gavalda, a Blue Helmet at Base 964 of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
To reach the base, AFP journalists escorted in a UNIFIL convoy passed through virtually deserted villages. Only the occasional grocer or automotive repair shop were still open along the road where fields have been left charred by bombardment.
The base, surrounded by barbed wire and protected with heavy stone-filled berms, is not far from the town of Khiam, where dozens of houses have been destroyed or damaged, about five kilometers (three miles) from the border.
Over a wall that marks the frontier, the Israeli town of Metula is clearly visible. It has also been emptied of residents, as have other communities on both sides of the boundary.
From a watchtower, binoculars help the peacekeepers see further — into the Golan Heights annexed by Israel. The area has been a frequent target of Hezbollah fire.
Spanish Lt. Col. Jose Irisarri said their mission, under Security Council Resolution 1701, is to “control the area” and help the Lebanese government and armed forces establish control south of the Litani River, which is around 30 kilometers from the border with Israel.
The resolution ended a war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
It called for all armed personnel to pull back north of the Litani, except for Lebanese state security forces and United Nations peacekeepers.
While Hezbollah has not had a visible military presence in the border area since then, the group still holds sway over large parts of the south.
When Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip attacked Israel on October 7, triggering war with Israel, Hezbollah opened what it calls a “support front” a day later, launching rockets and other fire from southern Lebanon against Israeli positions.
Israel has hit back with air strikes and artillery fire.
“Some of these villages are completely empty. There is no one living there because of the risk and the constant attacks they are suffering,” Irisarri said.
The Security Council first established UNIFIL in 1978 after Israel invaded south Lebanon. Its mission was expanded after the 2006 war.
Now, with fears of a wider regional war in which Lebanon would be on the front line, the UN’s Under Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix said UNIFIL’s role is “more important than ever.”
Spain’s contingent of 650 soldiers, based at several positions, are among around 10,000 troops from 49 countries in the mission.
“It’s the only liaison channel between the Israeli side and the Lebanese side in all its components, such as Hezbollah,” Lacroix told AFP in early August.
UNIFIL’s mandate expires at the end of August and Lebanon has asked for its renewal.
Cross-border violence since the Gaza war started has killed 601 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also including at least 131 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
The Israeli authorities have announced the deaths of at least 23 soldiers and 26 civilians since the fighting began, including in the annexed Golan Heights.
The Spaniards don’t just limit themselves to their core mission. They also give “support and some help” to the local population, Irisarri said.
As an example, he said their psychological team assists students with special needs.
AFP was unable to visit the school during its tour on Friday, after the Spanish contingent raised the security level following exchanges of fire in the area.
Israeli strikes in Lebanon’s south on Friday killed seven Hezbollah fighters and a local child, according to Hezbollah and Lebanon’s health ministry. Israel said its military aircraft had hit “terrorist” targets.
The peacekeepers have little time to rest, but have the company of two adopted dogs.
When they do have leisure time, “we go to the gym to keep fit and also we enjoy watching movies and talking to some friends,” said Gavalda.
He has been in Lebanon since May.
“We miss our families,” but Internet enables them to stay in touch almost daily, Gavalda said.
Surrounded by death, the soldiers have set up on their grounds a small statue of the Virgin Mary inside a protective glass case.
Yemen’s Houthis attacked US warships with drones, missiles: Pentagon
The ships “were attacked by at least eight one-way attack uncrewed aerial systems,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder told journalists
Updated 5 sec ago
AFP
WASHINGTON: Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeted two US destroyers with drones and missiles as they transited the Bab Al-Mandab Strait, but the warships defeated the attacks, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
The ships “were attacked by at least eight one-way attack uncrewed aerial systems, five anti-ship ballistic missiles and three anti-ship cruise missiles, which were successfully engaged and defeated,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder told journalists of the Monday attacks.
UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees warns that the amount of emergency humanitarian supplies entering the territory ‘is at its lowest level in months’
Jordanian Armed Forces have carried out 123 airdrops of emergency aid to Gaza since war began, and a further 266 in joint efforts with other countries
Updated 7 min 41 sec ago
Arab News
LONDON: Jordan’s air force carried out its latest delivery of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
It came as the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees said the amount of emergency supplies entering the enclave is lower than it has been for months.
Royal Jordanian Air Force C130 Hercules aircraft dropped crates of food, drinking water and medical supplies, the Jordan News Agency reported. Since the war began in October last year, the Jordanian Armed Forces have completed 123 airdrops of emergency aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and a further 266 as part of joint efforts with countries including France and the UK.
Humanitarian officials consider land convoys to be the most effective way of delivering emergency supplies to help ease the humanitarian crisis, but Jordan has resorted to airdrops because of Israeli army restrictions on access to the Gaza Strip that have been in place since last year.
Also on Tuesday, Louise Wateridge, an emergencies officer with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, warned that “aid entering the Gaza Strip is at its lowest level in months.”
On Monday, during the Extraordinary Arab-Islamic Summit in Riyadh, Jordan’s King Abdullah called for “a humanitarian bridge to break the siege imposed on the people in the Gaza Strip and deliver emergency aid to the sector that is suffering a humanitarian disaster.”
He said that finding “a real political horizon to resolve the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution” remains the “only way to achieve peace, stability and security in the region.”
TEHRAN: Iranian bank cards can now be used in Russia, state television reported, as the two countries linked their banking systems in the latest bid to counteract sanctions.
Iranian banks have been excluded since 2018 from the SWIFT international financial messaging service, which governs the vast majority of trans-actions worldwide.
The move is part of a raft of sanctions that were re-imposed on Iran after the US withdrew from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
Iranian bank cards can now be used in Russia, state television channel IRINN said on Monday, showing the withdrawal of money using an Iranian bank card from an ATM in Russia.
The operation was made possible by connecting Iran’s interbank network Shetab to its Russian equivalent Mir, the channel said.
Iranians can currently withdraw money in Russia, and will in the future be able to use their cards to pay for in-store purchases, it added.
“The plan is also going to be implemented in other countries that have a wide range of financial and social interactions with Iran, for example Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkiye,” it said.
Both Iran and Russia have sought to counteract the effects of sanctions on their economies.
Lebanese artists struggle to keep creativity alive in a nation at war
Artists use their work as an outlet for the frustration and despair they feel
Updated 58 min 29 sec ago
Reuters
BEIRUT: As Israel presses a deadly offensive against armed group Hezbollah in his home country, Lebanese artist Charbel Samuel Aoun wrestles with the role of art in a country engulfed in conflict.
“Does art still have a place in such a crisis?” said Aoun, a 45-year-old mixed media painter and sculptor.
Lebanon has historically played a central role in the Arab world’s artistic scene, serving as a vibrant hub for visual arts, music and theater, blending traditional and contemporary influences.
Now, Lebanese artists are using their work as an outlet for the frustration and despair they feel after a year-long Israeli offensive that has killed more than 3,200 people, the vast majority of them since September.
Aoun’s pieces are a direct reflection of Lebanon’s back-to- back crises. In 2013, he began gathering dust from Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon to create a series of layered paintings, before moving on to explore other mediums.
Now, he says the darkness and hopelessness of the war — and the debris left behind by Israel’s intense bombing campaign across Lebanon’s south, east and Beirut’s southern suburbs — has revived his desire to work with dust.
“You either stop everything or keep going with the little that still has meaning,” he said.
Two of his exhibitions have been canceled due to the war. While he once lived on the income from his art, he now also relies on selling honey from his beehives, which he first set up as a project to create art from beeswax.
“I can no longer rely on the art market,” he said.
Galleries across Beirut have shut down in recent months, with owners saying there was no demand to buy art at this time. Lebanon’s famed modern art museum, the Sursock Museum, has moved its collections to underground storage.
Lebanese singer and musician Joy Fayad has grappled with the emotional toll of the conflict — which made it difficult for her to perform for months.
“It limited my creativity, it was like I shut down. I couldn’t give to others, nor to myself,” Fayad, 36, said.
Instead, she threw her energy into songwriting. One line in a new song reads: “You are from the downtrodden people, whose word has been silenced, and by their weapons, you are paying the price with your blood.”
She recently began performing again, singing for displaced and refugee children in Lebanon at a charity event north of Beirut.
“They’re changing the atmosphere, having fun after such a difficult period,” she said, especially for those who became accustomed to the sound of bombs instead of beats.
How Israeli far-right violations of East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa compound are growing in scope and severity
Jews and other non-Muslims may visit Al-Aqsa but must not pray there or display religious symbols
In recent years, the restrictions have been increasingly flouted by hardline religious nationalists, prompting violence
Updated 56 min 49 sec ago
Jonathan Gornall
LONDON: As feared, they came in their thousands, swarming into the Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem at the height of the week-long Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.
On Sunday, Oct. 20, while the world’s attention was focused on the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, more than a thousand Israeli settlers occupied the Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem. Over the next two days, thousands more followed.
Inside, protected by police who prevented Muslims from entering, they performed Jewish religious rituals in defiance of the longstanding status quo at the Haram Al-Sharif, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
A member of the Israeli security forces and Palestinians waiting near the Lion's Gate scuffle as they wait to enter the Al-Aqsa mosque compound to attend the last Friday noon prayer of Islam's holy fasting month of Ramadan, on April 5, 2024. (AFP)
The forced entries over three days, the latest in a series of provocative acts orchestrated by far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, came as no surprise to Ir Amim, an Israeli human rights organization that works “to render Jerusalem a more equitable and sustainable city for the Israelis and Palestinians who share it.”
On the eve of the Jewish High Holiday season, Ir Amim (“City of Nations” in Hebrew) issued a report revealing that 2024 was already “a record year in terms of the scope and severity of Israel’s violations of the status quo on the Mount.”
It warned that the situation “is particularly dangerous given that undermining the status quo on the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount is liable to escalate into another front of violence” and added that the Israeli government’s “distorted priorities regarding the management of the war in Gaza and the north are also reflected in its conduct on the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount.”
FASTFACTS
• Jews, other non-Muslims may visit Al-Aqsa compound in East Jerusalem, but may not pray there or display religious symbols.
• In recent years, the restrictions have been increasingly flouted by hardline religious nationalists, prompting violent reactions.
In January 2023, nine months before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Ben Gvir staged one of his controversial visits to the site, ignoring warnings from other Israeli politicians that he risked provoking violence and saying that he would not “surrender to the threats of Hamas.”
According to Hamas, it was repeated provocations such as those orchestrated by Ben Gvir that led to the Oct. 7 attack, which it codenamed “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.” About 1,200 Israelis were killed and some 250 others kidnapped during the coordinated attack by Palestinian militant groups. The subsequent Israeli military retaliation has, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, left nearly 42,000 Palestinians dead and more than 92,000 injured.
Israeli men pray on the Mount of Olives overlooking the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, where Muslim devotees participate in their Friday Noon prayer, in Jerusalem on March 29, 2024. (AFP)
Resolving the thorny status of Jerusalem is viewed as an important prerequisite to peace. On Monday, Arab and Muslim leaders concluded a landmark summit in Riyadh with a unified demand for Israel to withdraw from all occupied Palestinian territories.
The summit’s closing statement stressed that East Jerusalem is the “eternal capital of Palestine,” and rejected any Israeli decisions aimed at “Judaizing” it, considering such measures “null, void and illegitimate under international law.”
The leaders of 57 nations said they considered “Al-Quds Al-Sharif a red line for the Arab and Islamic nations,” and reaffirmed their “absolute solidarity in protecting the Arab and Islamic identity of occupied East Al-Quds and in defending the sanctity of the holy Islamic and Christian sites therein.”
Israeli police take position during clashes with Palestinians on Laylat al-Qadr during the holy month of Ramadan, at Jerusalem's Old City, May 8, 2021. (REUTERS)
For Muslims, the mosque compound is the third-holiest site in Islam. As the Temple Mount, it also holds great significance for Jews, who believe it was the site of both the First Temple, destroyed by Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar II in 587 B.C., and the Second Temple, built in the first century B.C. and destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70.
For decades, a delicate status quo has preserved the balance of interests at the site, which has been a waqf — an Islamic religious endowment — since the 12th century. Since 1948, the site has been managed by the Jordanian-appointed Jerusalem Islamic Waqf and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs Council, known simply as the Waqf.
By international agreement, the Waqf has retained responsibility for the site ever since, although since the occupation of the Old City of Jerusalem by Israel after the Six Day War in 1967, Israeli forces have controlled access to it.
Challenging the status quo on the Temple Mount is a dangerous, unnecessary, and irresponsible act, says Yoav Gallant, Israel’s former defense minister. (AFP)
The compound has always been open for Jews to visit during specified hours, but they are not allowed to pray there or display religious symbols.
Ironically, said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and founder of nongovernmental organization Terrestrial Jerusalem, it was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who “best defined this core understanding in 2015 when he said: ‘Muslims pray at the Temple Mount; non-Muslims visit the Temple Mount’.”
Seidemann added: “Until 2017, Netanyahu reasonably maintained the status quo. But since then, he has incrementally allowed Jewish prayer, while disingenuously asserting that Israel is committed to maintaining the status quo.
“That was, and is, a lie.”
Israeli police confronts Palestinians at al Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem, Monday, Feb. 18, 2019. (AP)
The UN Security Council has repeatedly had cause to rebuke Israel for undermining the status quo, and last month the Waqf issued a joint statement with the Supreme Islamic Authority and the Palestinian Fatwa House accusing Israel of an “extremely dangerous escalation” by allowing settlers free rein in the compound.
In the past, said Seidemann, “many hundreds of Israelis, many Jewish, visited the mosques daily without incident. They came as guests and were treated as guests.
“But today’s visitors are best represented by Ben Gvir. He visits as the proprietor and treats the Muslims as his tenants.
“Jewish visits to the Mount no longer have anything to do with piety, and everything to do with ultra-nationalist religious triumphalism.”
He added: “Commencing with the new Netanyahu government, the veil has been ripped away. The violation of the status quo is both so blatant and consistent it cannot be denied.”
During Ramadan this year, “some of these new developments were temporarily suspended. That required a lot of discrete negotiations, leading to public safety being vested in security people with cool heads and steady hands.
“This year, as an exception, it was the quietest Ramadan in memory. Nothing stabilizes Jerusalem as much as the pursuit of the status quo in good faith.”
But following the end of Ramadan in April, said Ir Amim researcher Aviv Tatarsky, “Israel again imposed harsh restrictions on Muslim entry to Al-Aqsa, reverting to the unprecedented measures implemented after Oct. 7 and the subsequent outbreak of the war.”
Muslim worshippers under the age of 40 “are consistently denied access to the Mount by the police, even during Muslim prayer times.
“The most stringent restrictions are imposed during Jewish visits, which ultimately translates into a ban on Muslim entry while Jews conduct prayer unencumbered on the Mount.”
This systematic exclusion of Muslims from their place of worship during Jewish visits, he said, “is not only a breach of Muslim worship rights and the status quo, but also contributes to heightened tensions in an already volatile climate.”
According to Ir Amim, this past year there has been an up to 20 percent increase in the number of Jewish visits to the Mount, with over 50,000 recorded since the beginning of the Hebrew year in September 2023, surpassing the previous annual record.
But this figure refers to the number of visits, and not unique visitors, and what it reflects is an increasing number of visits primarily by “a small, albeit vocal, segment of the population alongside government supporters,” pushing for an increased Jewish presence on the Mount.
“This reality directly contradicts the Israeli government’s attempts to justify changes to the arrangements as a result of ‘pressure from below’,” said Tatarsky.
“The vast majority of the Jewish public remains uninterested in praying at the Holy Compound, while the erosion of the status quo is entirely the work of the government in service to a fringe extremist group.”
Israel’s Heritage Ministry recently announced its intention to fund Jewish visits to the compound with a budget of 2 million shekels (about $530,000.)
“The Temple movements, which are behind the Jewish tours and visits to the Mount, require government funding to sustain their activities,” said Tatarsky.
“Thus, the new budget constitutes a calculated government effort to manufacture further challenges to the status quo, aiming to engineer the Israeli public in service to its goals.”
Ir Amim has made a number of recommendations for maintaining the status quo. These include allowing unrestricted Muslim access to the Mount and, “if the police find it difficult to manage the simultaneous presence of Muslim worshippers and Jewish visitors, the entry of Muslims should take precedence,” it says, adding: “Muslim worship rights trump non-Muslim visiting rights.”
In addition, it says, Israel must prevent any Jewish prayer or worship activity on the Mount, prohibit government ministers from speaking against the status quo and visiting the Mount, and cancel the allocation of all funds to the Jewish Temple movements.
“Even after years of activity by the Temple movements, only a small minority of the Jewish public visits the Temple Mount,” said Tatarsky. “The government is ultimately promoting the interests of a fringe extreme Jewish group, while severely harming millions of Muslim residents and Israel’s relations with Arab countries, especially Jordan.”
In the past, Jewish extremists have made no secret of their wish to destroy the mosque and replace it with a “Third Temple.” This ambition is enshrined in the Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy, which includes the entreaty “that the Temple be rebuilt speedily in our days.”
Over the decades, the mosque has been the target of arson and bomb attacks. In 1990, 20 Muslims were killed and dozens more wounded in clashes provoked by an attempt by an extremist Jewish group to lay a symbolic cornerstone for the “Third Temple” in the Al-Aqsa compound.
In recent years, extremist groups, encouraged by Ben Gvir and other right-wing politicians, have stepped up the campaign to see a third temple built on the site. Ben Gvir, who has made multiple provocative visits to the Mount, has insisted Jews should be allowed to pray on the site, a position denounced by some Israeli politicians and rabbis.
A threat made by Ben Gvir in August to build a synagogue at the Al-Aqsa compound drew condemnations from several Israeli officials.
A statement from Netanyahu’s office reiterated that “there (was) no change” to the existing policy.
