Turkiye buries activist shot in West Bank/node/2571326/middle-east
Turkiye buries activist shot in West Bank
Update
Turkey’s Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz, Parliament Speaker Numan Kurtulmus and main opposition Republican People’s Party leader Ozgur Ozel attend a funeral ceremony of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi in Didim, in the western Aydin province on Sept. 14, 2024. (Reuters)
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi’s body, wrapped in the Turkish flag and carried by uniformed officers, arrived at its final resting place in the Aegean town of Didim
Eygi was shot while taking part in a demonstration on September 6 in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, near Nablus
Updated 14 September 2024
AFP
DIDIM, Turkiye: Mourners gathered in southwest Turkiye on Saturday for the funeral of a US-Turkish activist, who was shot dead while protesting Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The killing last week of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi has sparked international condemnation and infuriated Turkiye, further escalating tensions over the war in Gaza that began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Eygi’s body, wrapped in the Turkish flag and carried by uniformed officers, arrived at its final resting place in the Aegean town of Didim.
A picture of Eygi was placed near the coffin during the funeral at the local mosque.
A large crowd gathered during the prayers including Eygi’s family, members of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-rooted AKP party, and activists advocating the Palestinian cause.
Protesters chanted slogans near the mosque showing their support for Palestinians.
Eygi was shot while taking part in a demonstration on September 6 in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, near Nablus.
She was a human rights activist and volunteer for the International Solidarity Movement, which calls for resisting the oppression of Palestinians using non-violent methods.
Her family wanted Eygi to be buried in Didim, where her grandfather lives and her grandmother has been laid to rest. She was a frequent visitor to the seaside resort.
Ankara said this week it was probing her death and pressed the United Nations for an independent inquiry.
Turkiye said it was also planning to issue international arrest warrants for those responsible for Eygi’s death, depending on the findings of its investigation.
The Israeli military has said it was likely Eygi was hit “unintentionally” by forces while they were responding to a “violent riot,” and said it is looking into the case.
President Erdogan himself did not show up in Didim but he sent his vice president, foreign, interior and justice ministers.
Opposition CHP party chief Ozgur Ozel attended the funeral.
The United Nations said Eygi had been taking part in a “peaceful anti-settlement protest” in Beita, the scene of weekly demonstrations.
Israeli settlements, where about 490,000 people live in the West Bank, are illegal under international law.
The young woman’s body arrived in Istanbul Friday from Tel Aviv, before being transferred to Turkiye’s third-biggest city Izmir, where an autopsy was carried out.
Initial findings from that autopsy revealed a bullet hit her in the head, and the cause of Eygi’s death was defined as “skull fracture, brain haemorrhage and brain tissue damage,” state-run TRT television reported.
The report overlapped with an initial autopsy carried out by three Palestinian doctors, which concluded that a bullet passed directly through the victim’s skull.
Her mother, Rabia Birden, on Friday urged Turkish officials to pursue justice.
“The only thing I ask of our state is to seek justice for my daughter,” she was quoted as saying by Anadolu news agency.
Her father, Mehmet Suat Eygi, paid tribute to his daughter in Didim, telling AFP that she was a “very special person.”
“She was sensitive to human rights, to nature, to everything,” he said.
US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for Israel to provide “full accountability” for Eygi’s death.
Erdogan has vowed to ensure “that Aysenur Ezgi’s death does not go unpunished.”
Her death has further inflamed tensions between Turkiye and Israel.
Erdogan has become one of the most strident critics in the Muslim world of Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
He has accused the government of “state terrorism” — branding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “butcher of Gaza” while suspending all imports and exports to Israel.
Will re-election of Donald Trump open pathways to Middle East peace?
Political consultants believe president-elect’s rapport with Israeli PM positions him uniquely to influence regional dynamics
Jeff Davis and Thom Serafin unpacked the ramifications of the US election results on The Ray Hanania Radio Show
Updated 6 sec ago
RAY HANANIA
CHICAGO: The re-election of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States is expected to open pathways to peace in the Middle East, according to predictions from two prominent political consultants from both the Republican and Democratic parties.
Republican strategist Jeff Davis, president of Victory Media Inc., and Democratic consultant Thom Serafin suggested on Thursday that Trump’s leverage and strong relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could facilitate a ceasefire with the Palestinians and potentially pave the way for support from Saudi support.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump waves as he walks with former first lady Melania Trump at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center on Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida. (AP)
Appearing on The Ray Hanania Radio Show, both consultants agreed that Trump’s rapport with the Israeli leadership and his previous initiatives in the region, including the Abraham Accords, position him uniquely to influence Middle East dynamics.
“(Trump) is well respected, especially in Israel. When he was president last time, Jerusalem became the capital,” Serafin said. “There’s a lot of good blood there. He thought they were coming to an accord where they would have the long-term peace at the time.”
Trump’s first term saw the official US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, marked by the controversial relocation of the US Embassy in 2018. Concurrently, he spearheaded the Abraham Accords, paving the way for normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain and later Morocco.
This photo taken on September 15, 2020, shows US President Donald Trump with Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani (L), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (3R) and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan with the historic Abraham Accords document at the White House in Washington, DC. (AFP)
Although these accords encountered resistance from some neighboring Arab nations, they laid the groundwork for potential US-mediated discussions between Riyadh and Tel Aviv. However, that prospect was cut short following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel and the subsequent escalation in Gaza, dashing hopes for a new era of Middle East peace and stability.
“Everything blew up on Oct. 7 when they were, (rather) they thought they were getting very, very close (to a deal). But you need somebody who’s full-time there and goes toe to toe with Netanyahu. And I think Trump is the guy who could do that,” he said.
Serafin, who has an extensive background in media and political consultancy, having worked as press secretary on several US Senate election campaigns and served on the staffs of Senator Alan Dixon and Representative Dan Rostenkowski, highlighted the significance of the hostages held by Hamas as a key element in negotiating peace with regional powers, including Iran and its proxies.
In this photo taken on October 24, 2024, relatives of hostages taken captive in the Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants during the October 7, 2023 attacks protest outside the Israeli prime minister's residence in central Jerusalem, calling for action to release the hostages. (AFP)
“If he’s capable of reaching the Israelis, and I think he is, that’s the key,” he said. “If you can get Israel to be accommodating to what he needs to do, you can bring peace, at least ceasefire, to that part of the world.”
Since October last year, escalating violence in the Middle East has spread from Gaza to Lebanon, drawing diplomats worldwide into urgent efforts to mediate a solution.
INNUMBERS
• 2,600 Trump’s margin of victory over Harris in Arab-majority Michigan suburb of Dearborn.
• 17,400 Joe Biden’s margin of victory over Trump in the same city in 2020.
The conflict, driven by clashes involving Iran-backed groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, has seen limited restraint from Israeli officials, further fueling tensions. This crisis has also taken center stage in the US election season, especially among Arab Americans some of whom view the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the situation as a betrayal, given their community’s crucial support for the Democrats’ 2020 win.
Davis noted that while many Arab Americans declined to endorse Harris due to her stance on the conflict, Trump garnered substantial support within the community resulting in his re-election on Tuesday, but still has “some way to go” to fully solidify these ties.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, right, looks on as local Muslim leaders speak during a campaign rally on Oct. 26, 2024, in Novi, Michigan. (AP)
He pointed to Michigan’s Arab-majority Dearborn as a case in point, where Trump won 42.5 percent of the Arab American vote compared to Harris’s 36.3 percent. Notably, anti-war critic Dr. Jill Stein drew 18.3 percent in the area, reflecting broader discontent within the community.
“Let’s talk about Michigan a little bit. Because of the population centers in Michigan being Arab American and how Trump did well there. And he did well there, but he won those areas,” Davis said.
Analyzing data from Dearborn, he noted that Trump still has ground to cover with the Arab American community, acknowledging that Stein’s appeal in Dearborn was significantly stronger than her national average.
Davis, a seasoned Republican strategist who has advised campaigns across several battleground states, emphasized that although Stein’s Green Party did not reach the 5 percent threshold needed for major party status, Trump’s support within the Arab American community was bolstered by endorsements from figures like former Democrat Dr. Bishara Bahbah and Dr. Massad Boulos, father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany.
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, second right, greets local Muslim leaders during a campaign rally in Novi, Michigan on Oct. 26, 2024. (AP)
Both Davis and Serafin noted that Trump made unexpected inroads into traditional Democratic voter bases, securing 45 percent of the Hispanic vote and nearly 27 percent of the Black vote. Surprising many experts, Trump’s success in gaining support from key demographics enabled him to outpace Harris in critical swing states. However, the two consultants emphasized that Harris’s primary setback was her struggle to connect with voters on a personal level.
“I recall that old phrase, ‘I feel your pain.’ She did not exhibit that on the campaign trail,” Serafin said. “She had the joy and all these other things, but ironically, she wasn’t feeling the pain of the average voter that was struggling.”
He argued that Harris’ lack of empathy during the campaign failed to fully address concerns around the economy and rising inflation.
“Everything I learned in college, over the last 50 years, 60 years in life, is (that) inflation is the hidden pain, hidden taxation. You know, all of a sudden you get your hundred-dollars paycheck every week, but the bills are getting higher and higher. You just can’t meet ends,” Serafin added.
Polling throughout the campaign, including an Arab News/YouGov survey, consistently highlighted economic concerns as top priorities for voters, also among Arab Americans, who indicated them as nearly on par with foreign policy issues in the Middle East.
Davis and Serafin also contended that media coverage frequently misrepresented Trump’s statements, including attributing to him a comedian’s reference to Puerto Rico as a “garbage island,” or claims that Trump suggested aiming guns at Liz Cheney.
In reality, Trump was not present when the comedian made his remark, and his statements on Cheney referred to her lack of military experience, not an incitement to violence.
The consultants also said that Democratic efforts to emphasize Trump’s legal battles, many of which originated from the Democrat-led Department of Justice, further deepened the polarization, arguably contributing to his game. Trump currently faces multiple felony charges related to fraud, election interference and obstruction.
“Every time they called him the felon, I thought to myself, what a mistake. Because everybody knows he’s only a felon because the Democrats wanted him to be one. It wasn’t because he was legitimately a felon,” Serafin said. “And, so, I thought that was always a mistake when she called him that way and some other people. After a while, they stopped doing that because they probably tested that term, and it was backfiring.”
Both Davis and Serafin believe these cases may be dismissed, setting the stage for another four years under Trump’s leadership — one that will inherit a divided domestic landscape and face the immense challenge of upholding his promise to end the conflict that has claimed nearly 50,000 lives, while working toward the peace and stability long desired in the Middle East.
Serafin and Davis shared their insights on The Ray Hanania Radio Show, aired Thursday on the US Arab Radio Network in Michigan and sponsored by Arab News.
For more information or to listen to past shows, visit ArabNews.com/rayradioshow.
Hungry Palestinians in northern Gaza search for food in rubble of destroyed homes
The US says Israel must allow a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying food and other supplies. Israel has fallen far short
Updated 09 November 2024
AP
JERUSALEM: With virtually no food allowed into the northernmost part of Gaza for the past month, tens of thousands of Palestinians under Israeli siege are rationing their last lentils and flour to survive.
As bombardment pounds around them, some say they risk their lives by venturing out in search of cans of food in the rubble of destroyed homes.
Thousands have staggered out of the area, hungry and thin, into Gaza City, where they find the situation a little better.
One hospital reports seeing thousands of children suffering from malnutrition. A nutritionist said she treated a pregnant woman wasting away at just 40 kilograms (88 pounds).
“We are being starved to force us to leave our homes,” said Mohammed Arqouq, whose family of eight is determined to stay in the north, weathering Israel’s siege. “We will die here in our homes.”
Medical workers warn that hunger is spiraling to dire proportions under a monthlong siege on northern Gaza by the Israeli military, which has been waging a fierce campaign since the beginning of October.
The military has severed the area with checkpoints, ordering residents to leave.
Many Palestinians fear Israel aims to depopulate the north long term.
On Friday, experts from a panel that monitors food security said famine is imminent in the north or may already be happening.
The growing desperation comes as the deadline approaches next week for a 30-day request the administration of President Joe Biden gave Israel: raise the level of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza or risk possible restrictions on US military funding.
The US says Israel must allow a minimum of 350 trucks a day carrying food and other supplies. Israel has fallen far short.
In October, 57 trucks a day entered Gaza on average, according to figures from Israel’s military agency overseeing aid entry, known as COGAT. In the first week of November, the average was 81 a day.
The UN puts the number even lower — 37 trucks daily since the beginning of October.
It says Israeli military operations and general lawlessness often prevent it from collecting supplies, leaving hundreds of truckloads stranded at the border.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel had made some progress by announcing the opening of a new crossing into central Gaza and approving new delivery routes.
But he said Israel must do more.
“It’s not just sufficient to open new roads if more humanitarian assistance isn’t going through those roads,” he said.
Israeli forces have been hammering the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabaliya refugee camp.
Witnesses report intense fighting between troops and militants.
A trickle of food has reached Gaza City.
However, as of Thursday, nothing entered the towns farther north for 30 days, even as an estimated 70,000 people remain there, said Louise Wateridge, spokesperson for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, speaking from Gaza City.
The government acknowledged in late October that it hadn’t allowed aid into Jabaliya because of military “operational constraints” in response to a petition by Israeli human rights groups. On Saturday, COGAT said it allowed 11 trucks of food and supplies into Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya. But Alia Zaki, a spokeswoman for the WFP, said Israeli troops at a checkpoint forced the convoy to unload the food before it could reach shelters in Beit Hanoun.
It was not clear what then happened to the supplies.
Palestinians in the north described a desperate daily struggle to find food, water, and safety as strike-level buildings, sometimes killing whole families.
Arqouq said he goes out at night to search bombed-out buildings: “Sometimes you find a half-empty package of flour, canned food, and lentils.”
He said his family relies on help from others sheltering at a Jabaliya school, but their food is also running low.
“We are like dogs and cats searching for their food in the rubble,” said Um Saber, a widow.
She said she and her six children had to flee a school-turned-shelter in Beit Lahiya when Israel struck it. Now they live in her father-in-law’s home, stretching meager supplies of lentils and pasta with 40 others, mostly women and children.
Ahmed Abu Awda, a 28-year-old father of three living with 25 relatives in a Jabaliya house, said they have a daily meal of lentils with bread, rationing to ensure children eat.
“Sometimes we don’t eat at all,” he said.
Lubna, a 38-year-old mother of five, left food behind when fleeing as strikes and drone fire pummeled the street in Jabaliya.
“We got out by a miracle,” she said from Beit Lahiya, where they’re staying.
Her husband scavenged flour from destroyed homes after Israeli forces withdrew around nearby Kamal Adwan hospital, she said. It’s moldy, she said, so they sift it first.
Her young daughter, Selina, is visibly gaunt and bony, Lubna said.
The offensive has raised fears among Palestinians that Israel seeks to empty northern Gaza and hold it long-term under a surrender-or-starve plan proposed by former generals.
Witnesses report Israeli troops going building to building, forcing people to leave toward Gaza City.
On Thursday, the Israeli military ordered new evacuations from several Gaza City neighborhoods, raising the possibility of a ground assault there.
The UN said some 14,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering there.
Food and supplies are also stretched for the several hundred thousand people in Gaza City.
Much of the city has been flattened by months of Israeli bombardment and shelling.
Dr. Rana Soboh, a nutrition specialist at Gaza City’s Patient Friend Benevolent Hospital, said she sees 350 cases of moderate to severe acute malnutrition daily, most from the north and also from Gaza City.
“The bone of their chest is showing, the eyes are protruding,” she said, and many have trouble concentrating.
“You repeat something several times so they can understand what we are saying.”
She cited a 32-year-old woman shedding weight in her third month of pregnancy — when they put her on the scale, she weighed only 40 kg.
“We are suffering, facing the ghost of famine hovering over Gaza,” Soboh said.
Even before the siege in the north, the Patient Friend hospital saw a flood of children suffering from malnutrition — more than 4,780 in September compared with 1,100 in July, said Dr. Ahmad Eskiek, who oversees hospital operations.
Soboh said staff get calls from Beit Lahiya and Jabaliya pleading for help: “What can we do? We have nothing.”
She had worked at Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north but fled with her family to Gaza City. Now, they stay with 22 people in her uncle’s two-bedroom apartment.
On Thursday, she had had a morsel of bread for breakfast and later a meal of yellow lentils.
As winter rains near, new arrivals set up tents wherever they can.
Some 1,500 people are in a UN school already heavily damaged in strikes that “could collapse at any moment,” UNRWA spokesperson Wateridge said.
With toilets destroyed, people try to set aside a classroom corner to use, leaving waste “streaming down the walls of the school,” she said.
She said that others in Gaza City move into the rubble of buildings, draping tarps between layers of collapsed concrete.
“It’s like the carcass of a city,” she said.
Child, pregnant woman among 7 killed in Israeli strikes on Tyre
PM Mikati gains support in efforts to end Lebanon conflict on eve of OIC summit
Israel accused of ‘scorched-earth policy’ after 22 border towns devastated
Updated 09 November 2024
NAJIA HOUSSARI
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Health Ministry said on Saturday that seven people, including a child and a pregnant woman, were killed and 46 others injured in Israeli strikes on the southern city of Tyre the previous day, with rescuers still searching for those missing under the rubble.
Repeated airstrikes on the city’s neighborhoods brought down buildings, trapping residents.
The strikes hampered civil defense rescue efforts during the night. Rescuers resumed work early on Saturday in search of the missing.
Israeli airstrikes on the city of Nabatieh devastated one of the country’s most important heritage homes owned by the late former minister Rafiq Shaheen.
Another heritage home belonging to Kamal Daher, which previously served as the headquarters for the Cultural Council of South Lebanon, was also destroyed.
Airstrikes targeting the western Bekaa region killed six people.
Hezbollah continued its military operations, and Israeli media reported in the afternoon that several rockets landed in Metula, damaging a house.
The group said it targeted a military gathering on the border of the settlement.
Airstrikes on the south continued along with Hezbollah’s responses.
Mohammed Shamseddine, a researcher from Information International, said that Israel had so far destroyed 22 border towns out of 29 locations along the 120 km front stretching from Ras Al-Naqoura in the west, through the western and central sectors, and reaching the Shebaa farms in the east, near the Syrian border.
Shamseddine accused Israel of “adopting a scorched-earth policy in these areas.”
He said Israel was “destroying everything and leaving no signs of life to prevent residents from returning to any potential settlement in the future.”
Shamseddine estimated that up to 44,000 housing units had been destroyed, with the cost of reconstruction reaching $4.2 billion.
Hostilities continued as the Supreme Islamic Shariah Council emphasized Lebanon’s need to “restore its decision, role, power, and status, and implement the constitution and the Taif agreement.”
The council said that it stands by “caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s efforts to overcome the ordeal faced by Lebanon and contain the consequences of the Israeli aggression against the country.”
The council’s stance came on the eve of Miktai’s departure for Riyadh to take part in the extraordinary summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Saudi Arabia is convening the talks to address Israel’s aggression in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as the resulting devastation.
The Shariah Council, which includes all Sunni segments, called for “the need to live within the state, accept the idea of the state, respect its laws and constitution, and subject oneself to its authority.”
The council said that “outside the state, we are conflicting groups, communities, and tribes,” adding that “the state of the constitution, institutions, and human dignity can save Lebanon and restore its economic stability, advancement, and prosperity.”
The council, led by Lebanon’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian, met on Saturday with Mikati.
It called on the UN Security Council to “secure an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon, compel Israel to implement the ceasefire, and apply the UN Charter, which calls for pacific settlement of disputes.”
It added that Israel no longer abided by the charter, and should lose its UN membership.
The Shariah Council urged “the Security Council to answer the Lebanese state’s call and immediately implement UN Resolution 1701 in full, thereby ensuring the end of the war and enabling the Lebanese armed forces to exercise their national right to defend Lebanon, while providing them with all the capabilities and possibilities to fulfill this role.”
The council criticized Hezbollah’s support indirectly, saying that “what has happened and is still happening now is a challenging test that we hope we have learned from, as it has led to the destruction of the whole country.”
The council urged “the state, with all its institutions, and all Lebanese to support the displaced people, provide them with resilience and health care means, and preserve civil peace.”
Israeli hostilities against Lebanon escalated in the past 24 hours.
A video featuring several Israeli soldiers invading houses in southern Lebanon was shared on social media, prompting widespread anger among Lebanese.
Israeli media reported on Saturday afternoon that explosions were heard after sirens sounded in the Krayot and Western Galilee, adding that Hezbollah fired 10 rockets targeting Nahariya, Acre, and Krayot.
Hezbollah said that it shot down a Hermes 450 drone with a surface-to-air missile over Deir Seriane and that Israeli warplanes attacked the town.
The southern suburbs of Beirut and the southern region experienced intense Israeli assaults from Friday night into early Saturday.
For two hours, 14 airstrikes targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Targeted locations included Hadath, Burj Al-Barajneh, Haret Hreik, and the Al-Jamous neighborhood, with operations extending to the area surrounding the Lebanese University building in Hadath.
Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said that the “airstrikes, guided by precise intelligence from the military intelligence agency, targeted command centers, a weapons production site, and other infrastructure belonging to the terrorist organization Hezbollah in the southern suburbs of Beirut.”
The assertion made by the Israeli army that it avoids targeting civilians by issuing prior evacuation warnings did not hold for the southern region, particularly in Tyre.
Jordan jumps to 27th place on global cybersecurity index
Jordan scored 98.6 percent on the 2024 index, up from 71 percent in 2020
Updated 09 November 2024
Arab News
LONDON: Jordan jumped to 27th on the latest Global Cybersecurity Index, up from 71st position four years earlier, the head of its National Cybersecurity Center said on Saturday.
Speaking at the Jordan Economic Forum, Bassam Maharmeh attributed the improvement to the introduction of a cybersecurity law in 2019 and the establishment of the NCC. He also highlighted the importance of cybersecurity amid Jordan’s digital transformation.
Jordan scored 98.6 percent on the 2024 index, up from 71 percent in 2020, putting it in the “T1 — Role-modeling” category.
Forum president Mazen Hamoud said the progress made would enhance Jordan’s appeal among investors and boost private sector confidence.
A 2023 report by the International Monetary Fund said there had been more than 20,000 cyberattacks on the global financial sector in the past two decades, with losses of more than $12 billion.
The NCC provides round-the-clock monitoring of data traffic and advanced services like penetration testing and emergency response. It also supports institutions and fosters youth engagement through training camps and competitions, the Jordan News Agency reported.
The rise through the 2024 rankings was the result of a unified effort involving the Ministry of Education, universities and the Central Bank of Jordan, the report said.
While Syrian refugees don’t want to return, officials in Lebanon and Syria see exodus as opportunity
According to the UN refugee agency, more than 470,000 people — around 70 percent of them Syrian — have crossed the border since the escalation in Lebanon began in mid-September
Lebanon’s General Security agency estimates more than 550,000 people have fled, most of them Syrian
Updated 09 November 2024
AP
BEIRUT: Hundreds of thousands of Syrians refugees have returned to their country since Israel launched a massive aerial bombardment on wide swathes of Lebanon in September. Many who fled to Lebanon after the war in Syria started in 2011 did not want to go back.
But for officials in Lebanon, the influx of returnees comes as a silver lining to the war between Israel and Hezbollah that has killed more than 3,000 people and displaced some 1.2 million in Lebanon. Some in Syria hope the returning refugees could lead to more international assistance and relief from western sanctions.
’I wasn’t thinking at all about returning’
Nisreen Al-Abed returned to her northwest Syrian hometown in October after 12 years as a refugee in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. The airstrikes had been terrifying, but what really worried her was that her 8-year-old twin daughters need regular transfusions to treat a rare blood disorder, thalassemia.
“I was afraid that in Lebanon, in this situation, I wouldn’t be able to get blood for them,” Al-Abed said.
During their dayslong journey, Al-Abed and her daughters were smuggled from government-held to opposition-held territory before reaching her parent’ house. Her husband remained in Lebanon.
“Before these events, I wasn’t thinking at all about returning to Syria,” she said.
According to the UN refugee agency, more than 470,000 people — around 70 percent of them Syrian — have crossed the border since the escalation in Lebanon began in mid-September. Lebanon’s General Security agency estimates more than 550,000 people have fled, most of them Syrian.
Most of the returnees are in government-controlled areas of Syria, according to UNHCR, while tens of thousands have made their way to the Kurdish-controlled northeast and smaller numbers to the opposition-controlled northwest.
Political leaders in Lebanon, which was hosting an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees before the recent wave of returns, have been calling for years for the displaced to go home, and many don’t want the refugees to return.
Lebanon’s caretaker Minister of Social Affairs Hector Hajjar told Russia’s Sputnik News last month that the war in Lebanon could yield “a positive benefit, an opportunity to return a large number of displaced Syrians to their country, because the situation there is now better than here.”
A political opening for Syria?
Officials in Damascus point to increasing economic pressure from the masses fleeing Lebanon as an argument for loosening western sanctions on President Bashar Assad’s government.
Syria was already suffering from spiraling inflation, and the sudden influx of refugees has driven prices up even more, as have Israeli strikes on border crossings that have slowed legal cross-border trade and smuggling.
“Everyone knows that Syria is suffering from difficult economic conditions: hyperinflation, import inflation, and an economic blockade,” said Abdul-Qader Azzouz, an economic analyst and professor at Damascus University. The influx of refugees just “increases the economic burden,” he said.
Alaa Al-Sheikh, a member of the executive bureau in Damascus province, urged the US to lift sanctions on Syria because of the huge number of arrivals.
“The burden is big and we are in pressing need of international assistance,” she said.
Rights groups have raised concerns about the treatment of returning refugees. The Jordan-based Syrian think tank ETANA estimates at least 130 people were “arbitrarily arrested at official border crossings or checkpoints inside Syria, either because they were wanted for security reasons or military service,” despite a government-declared amnesty for men who dodged the draft.
Joseph Daher, a Swiss-Syrian researcher and professor at the European University Institute in Florence, noted the number of arrests is small and that Assad’s government might not view the returnees as a threat because they are mostly women and children.
Still, Daher labeled government attempts to show the returning refugees are welcome as “propaganda,” saying, “they’re unwilling and not ready in terms of economics or politics to do it.”
UNHCR head Filippo Grandi said this week that his agency is working with the Syrian government “to ensure the safety and security of all those arriving,” and he urged donors to provide humanitarian aid and financial assistance to help Syria recover after 13 years of war.
A temporary return
UNHCR regional spokeswoman Rula Amin said if people leave the country where they are registered as refugees, they usually lose their protected status.
Whether and how that will be applied in the current situation remains unclear, Amin said, underscoring the exodus from Lebanon took place “under adverse circumstances, that is under duress.”
“Given the current situation, the procedure will need to be applied with necessary safeguards and humanity,” she said.
Jeff Crisp, a visiting research fellow at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Center and a former UNHCR official, said he believes Syrians are entitled to continued international protection “because of the grave threats to their life and liberty in both countries.”
Some refugees have entered Syria via smuggler routes so their departure from Lebanon is not officially recorded, including Um Yaman, who left Beirut’s heavily bombarded southern suburbs with her children for the city of Raqqa in eastern Syria.
“When I went to Syria, to be honest, I went by smuggling, in case we wanted to go back to Lebanon later when things calm down, so our papers would remain in order in Lebanon,” she said. She asked to be identified only by her honorific (“mother of Yaman”) to be able to speak freely.
If the war in Lebanon ends, Um Yaman said, they may return, but “nothing is clear at all.”
