US-Israeli settlers hope to see a second Trump term

Eli, above, part of a cluster of Israeli settlements located in the heart of the West Bank, could become Palestinian sovereign territory under a two-state solution favored by the international community. (AFP)

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Updated 02 November 2024

AFP

November 02, 2024 07:47

US-Israeli settlers hope to see a second Trump term

Recent polls show that a majority of Israelis dream of the days when the former president inhabited the White House
Donald Trump prioritized Israel during his previous term, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem among his other actions

Updated 02 November 2024

AFP

November 02, 2024 07:47

SHILOH, Palestinian Territories: Less than a week before the United States presidential election, Americans living in settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank know exactly who they want to win: Donald Trump.
Recent polls show that a majority of Israelis, 66 percent according to one conducted by Israel’s Channel 12 News, dream of the days when the former president inhabited the White House.
Trump prioritized Israel during his previous term, moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights and helping to normalize ties between Israel and several Arab states under the so-called Abraham Accords.
Now, many Israelis believe Trump will offer yet more support as the country battles Iran-backed militant groups in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as Iran itself.
“I’m proud to tell you that I voted for President Trump,” Eliana Passentin, 50, who moved to Israel from San Francisco as a child, said.
For Passentin, a mother and grandmother, the stakes are higher than for the average Israeli.
For the past 29 years she has lived in Eli, part of a cluster of Israeli settlements located in the heart of the West Bank.
The area has been occupied by Israel since 1967, but it could become Palestinian sovereign territory under a two-state solution favored by the international community.
Passentin is employed by the local regional council.
She recalls how successive administrations in Washington pressured Israel to stop expanding settlements in an attempt to mediate peace between Israelis and Palestinians and reach a two-state solution.
“United States of America, our greatest ally, we thank you, but please understand we know how to run our country,” Passentin said.
In her backyard, with sweeping views of the entire area, Passentin points to nearby Israeli and Palestinian towns.
“I don’t think that Israelis living here are an obstacle to peace. On the contrary, I think that the Israelis living here are building the region for everyone,” she said.
She said the region was a hub for Jews in Biblical times, and claims that under international agreements Israelis have a right to live here.
International law says otherwise, however, and Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal by the international community.
Among Israelis who vote for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling right-wing coalition, 93 percent support Trump’s candidacy, according to the Channel 12 poll.
“Things have changed since October 7,” Passentin said, referring to Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on that day in 2023 which sparked the war in Gaza.
“Now it’s a whole different story — it’s not about Judea and Samaria, it’s about Israel,” she said, using the Biblical terms for the southern and northern West Bank.
“We have a right to defend ourselves... and I think President Trump respects and understands that.”
Gedaliah Blum, 45, a neighbor who was born in New Jersey, also said he voted for Trump based on the question of “what kind of future we want to have here in Israel.”
“Do we want a future that has an embargo threatened on Israel every time we defend ourselves?” he asked.
“Trump is not going to pressure Israel to sign a ceasefire that will let Hamas remain in power in Gaza. They’re not going to push Israel to sign a peace agreement with Lebanon that will allow Hezbollah to remain in power.”
With Kamala Harris in the Oval Office, Israel will be under constant “pressure,” Blum said.
“We’re going to get pressure, we’re going to get embargoes, we’re going to get Iranian money in their pockets. It’s not in the best interest of Israel.”
In the nearby settlement of Shiloh, where an estimated 20 percent of residents hold US citizenship, New York-born Yisrael Medad, 77, said he believed Trump would be good not only for America but also for “America’s friends abroad, including Israel.”
“I think the policies that a Republican candidate such as Trump are promoting are most beneficial for the administration, Congress and the American people,” he said.
On Israel, Medad said he believed that Trump would treat Israel more “fairly in terms of not denying its rights to defend itself... not only in a physical sense but also on the ideological front.”
Referring to a recent incident at a Democratic campaign rally in which Harris did not push back against a demonstrator who said Israel was committing a “genocide” in Gaza, Medad said: “That’s not the type of candidate I want in the White House.”

Topics: US Israel Donald Trump

Border town’s residents rebuild in south Lebanon as Hezbollah leader calls for Israeli withdrawal

Updated 35 sec ago

February 18, 2025 06:22

Border town’s residents rebuild in south Lebanon as Hezbollah leader calls for Israeli withdrawal

Updated 35 sec ago

February 18, 2025 06:22

KHIAM: Sabah Abdullah comes to her hometown in Lebanon every morning and sits next to her destroyed home. She is waiting for experts from Hezbollah’s construction arm to compensate her for the damage caused by the Israel-Hezbollah war that has left her homeless.
The 66-year-old from Khiam now rents a home in the nearby village of Kawkaba and is repairing her small grocery store, which was badly damaged by the 13-month war that ended in late November as a result of a US-brokered ceasefire. The war has left more than 4,000 people dead and over 16,000 wounded in Lebanon and caused damage worth billions of dollars.
“Damage can be compensated but the loss of souls cannot be replaced,” said Abdullah as she sat on a plastic chair in the sun outside her shop.
Israeli forces will remain in parts of southern Lebanon
The 60-day ceasefire that was supposed to end on Jan. 27 — with an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and the militant Hezbollah group ending its armed presence along the border area — was extended until Tuesday. But an Israeli official said on Monday that Israeli forces will remain in five strategic locations in southern Lebanon after the deadline.
One of these locations is the Hamamis hill on the southern outskirts of Khiam. On Monday, bulldozers could be seen from a distance at work building what appeared to be fortifications in an apparent sign that Israel’s military is planning to stay long beyond Tuesday’s deadline.
Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem said in a speech on Sunday that Israel must withdraw fully from Lebanon on Tuesday, adding that “there is no pretext for five points nor other details.” He said the Lebanese state should prevent Israel from staying in the country after Tuesday as stated in the ceasefire deal.
The Israel-Hezbollah war began a day after Hamas carried out its deadly attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 people hostage and triggering the Israel-Hamas war. The Israel-Hezbollah war intensified as of Sept. 23, when Israel expanded its attacks and killed Hezbollah’s longtime top leader and one of its founders, Hassan Nasrallah.
Widespread damage in Khiam
Khiam, one of the largest towns close to the Israeli border, suffered widespread damage, including entire blocks that were turned to piles of debris. Graffiti left behind by Israeli troops could be seen on the walls as well as inside homes. The town’s cemetery suffered severe damage, with many graves blown out.
On Monday, workers were removing debris in different locations in Khiam as many residents come during the day to spend a few hours at their homes and leave before sunset since the town still has no electricity or running water. New poles were being put in place by the country’s state-run electricity company as the infrastructure suffered severe damage.
“In Khiam everyone was martyred,” read a graffiti on a wall in Arabic. “Khiam is Golani’s graveyard,” another one read, referring to Israel’s Golani Brigade.
In a building on the eastern edge of Khiam, a woman showed a journalist a Star of David sprayed in red at the entrance of her apartment. The woman, who asked not to be named for safety reasons, then walked through her apartment, showing a reporter the damage in the sitting room and kitchen.
Abdallah said when she first came to Khiam days after the ceasefire went into effect in late November, she found that hungry cats and dogs inside her badly damaged shop had eaten cakes, croissants and chocolates. The metal door of her shop was blown wide open, she said.
Seeing her home, built by her late father, destroyed saddened her but Abdallah said she is happy that none of her siblings or relatives were hurt during the war.
‘The future is obscure’
Abdallah said that soon after the war ended, Hezbollah’s construction arm Jihad Al-Binaa paid her $12,000, of which $8,000 were to compensate her for lost furniture and $4,000 for a year’s rent.
Abdallah said that since the Israel-Hezbollah war began, she rented a house in Marakaba and had spent most of her savings and was selling some of her jewelry. She said she is now waiting for government experts to visit her and estimate the losses to pay her for rebuilding her two-story house that she shared with her brother.
“I will rebuild my house but the future is obscure. We live close to the border,” Abdallah said, referring to repeated wars with Israel over the past decades.
Another Khiam resident, Dalal Abdallah, said if Israel decides to stay in Lebanon, Israel will be eventually forced to leave again.
“Valuable blood and souls were paid for this land,” she said. “No one should think that we will leave our land.”

Deadline for Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon expires

Updated 41 min 26 sec ago

AFP

February 18, 2025 05:38

Deadline for Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon expires

Israeli troops had started withdrawing Monday from some border villages, but they seemed poised to stay in key areas
Israel’s military said Monday it would remain temporarily ‘in five strategic points’ dotted along the length of the shared border

Updated 41 min 26 sec ago

AFP

February 18, 2025 05:38

BEIRUT: A deadline expired Tuesday for all Israeli troops to leave south Lebanon under a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah, hours after Israel said it planned to remain in five strategic locations.
Israeli troops had started withdrawing Monday from some border villages, according to a Lebanese security official, but they seemed poised to stay in key areas.
“Israeli forces are beginning to withdraw from border villages, including Mais Al-Jabal and Blida, as the Lebanese army advances,” the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
Hezbollah strongholds in south and east Lebanon and south Beirut saw heavy destruction during two months of all-out war and a year of cross-border hostilities initiated by Hezbollah over the Gaza conflict.
Authorities estimate reconstruction costs could reach more than $10 billion, while more than 100,000 remain internally displaced according to United Nations figures.
Despite the devastation, thousands have been waiting eagerly since the November 27 ceasefire to return home, inspect their properties and in some cases search for the dead under the rubble.
“I miss sitting in front of my house, near my roses and having a morning cup of coffee,” said Fatima Shukeir, in her sixties, who plans to return to her border village after more than a year and a half of displacement.
“I miss everything in Mais Al-Jabal, I miss my neighbors. We were separated and I don’t know where they went,” Shukeir said.
Several border towns and villages, including Mais Al-Jabal’s municipality, have called on displaced residents to wait for the Lebanese army to deploy there before coming back, so as to guarantee their “safe” return.
Lebanese television channel LBCI reported Tuesday that the country’s army had moved overnight into Mais Al-Jabal, Blida, Yaroun, Maroun and Mahbib.
Under the ceasefire, brokered by Washington and Paris, Lebanon’s military was to deploy alongside United Nations peacekeepers as the Israeli army withdrew over a 60-day period that was extended to February 18.
Hezbollah was to pull back north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle remaining military infrastructure there.
Hours before the deadline, Israel’s military said Monday it would remain temporarily “in five strategic points” dotted along the length of the shared border in order to “continue to defend our residents and to make sure there’s no immediate threat.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel would do what it has to in order to “enforce” the ceasefire.
“Hezbollah must be disarmed,” he added.
Lebanese authorities have rejected any extension of the withdrawal period, urging sponsors of the deal to pressure Israel to pull out.
Israeli troops are still present in a handful of villages and towns in southeast Lebanon.
“We’ll go to our town and be happy (again), despite the fact that our homes have been destroyed and we lost young people,” Shukeir said.
On Monday, Ramzi Kaiss from Human Rights Watch said “Israel’s deliberate demolition of civilian homes and infrastructure” was making it “impossible for many residents to return.”
Since the cross-border hostilities began in October 2023, more than 4,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the health ministry.
On the Israeli side of the border, 78 people including soldiers have been killed, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, with an additional 56 troops dead in southern Lebanon during the ground offensive.
Around 60 people have reportedly been killed since the truce began, two dozen of them on January 26 as residents tried to return to border towns on the initial withdrawal deadline.
On Monday evening, Lebanon’s government said the state should be the sole bearer of arms, in a thinly veiled message on Hezbollah’s arsenal.
Calls for the Iran-backed group’s disarmament have multiplied since the end of the war that has weakened the group.

Topics: Battlefield Lebanon Lebanon Israel

Syrians return to Homs, ‘capital of the revolution’

Updated 18 February 2025

AFP

February 18, 2025 04:18

Syrians return to Homs, ‘capital of the revolution’

It was in Homs that rebels first took up arms to fight Assad’s crackdown on protests in 2011
Since Assad’s ouster, people have started returning to neighborhoods they fled

Updated 18 February 2025

AFP

February 18, 2025 04:18

HOMS, Syria: Once dubbed the capital of the revolution against Bashar Assad, Homs saw some of the fiercest fighting in Syria’s civil war. Now, displaced people are returning to their neighborhoods, only to find them in ruins.
It was in Homs that rebels first took up arms to fight Assad’s crackdown on protests in 2011.
The military responded by besieging and bombarding rebel areas such as Baba Amr, where US journalist Marie Colvin and French journalist Remi Ochlik were killed in a bombing in 2012.
Since Assad’s ouster, people have started returning to neighborhoods they fled following successive evacuation agreements that saw Assad take back control.
“The house is burned down, there are no windows, no electricity,” said Duaa Turki at her dilapidated home in Khaldiyeh neighborhood.
“We removed the rubble, lay a carpet” and moved in, said the 30-year-old mother of four.
“Despite the destruction, we’re happy to be back. This is our neighborhood and our land.”
Her husband spends his days looking for a job, she said, while they hope humanitarian workers begin distributing aid to help the family survive.
The siege of Homs lasted two years and killed around 2,200 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
During the siege, thousands of civilians and rebels were left with nothing to eat but dried foods and grass.
In May 2014, under an evacuation deal negotiated with the former government, most of those trapped in the siege were evacuated, and two years later, Assad seized the last rebel district of Waer.
“We were besieged... without food or water, under air raids, and barrel bombings,” before being evacuated to the rebel-held north, Turki said.
AFP journalists saw dozens of families returning to Homs from northern Syria, many of them tearful as they stepped out of the buses organized by local activists.
Among them was Adnan Abu Al-Ezz, 50, whose son was wounded by shelling during the siege and who later died because soldiers at a checkpoint barred him from taking him to hospital.
“They refused to let me pass, they were mocking me,” he said with tears in his eyes.
“I knew my house was nearly destroyed, but I came back to the precious soil of Homs,” he said.
While protests and fighting spread across Syria over the course of the 13-year war, Homs’s story of rebellion holds profound symbolism for the demonstrators.
It was there that Abdel Basset Al-Sarout, a football goalkeeper in the national youth team, joined the protests and eventually took up arms.
He became something of a folk hero to many before he joined an Islamist armed group and was eventually killed in fighting.
In 2013, his story became the focus of a documentary by Syrian filmmaker Talal Derki named “The Return to Homs,” which won international accolades.
Homs returnee Abu Al-Moatasim, who remembers Sarout, recounted being detained for joining a protest.
When he saw security personnel approaching in a car, he prayed for “God to drop rocket on us so I die” before reaching the detention center, one of a network dotted around the country that were known for torture.
His father bribed an officer in exchange for his release a few days later, he said.
In Baba Amr, for a time early in the war a bastion of the rebel Free Syrian Army, there was rubble everywhere.
The army recaptured the district in March 2012, following a siege and an intense bombardment campaign.
It was there that Colvin and Ochlik were killed in a bombing of an opposition press center.
In 2019, a US court found Assad’s government culpable in Colvin’s death, ordering a $302.5 million judgment for what it called an “unconscionable” attack that targeted journalists.
Touring the building that housed the press center, Abdel Qader Al-Anjari, 40, said he was an activist helping foreign journalists at that time.
“Here we installed the first Internet router to communicate with the outside world,” he said.
“Marie Colvin was martyred here, targeted by the regime because they did not want (anyone) to document what was happening,” he said.
He described her as a “friend” who defied the “regime blackout imposed on journalists” and others documenting the war.
After leaving Homs, Anjari himself became a rebel fighter, and years later took part in the offensive that ousted Assad on December 8, 2024.
“Words cannot describe what I felt when I reached the outskirts of Homs,” he said.
Now, he has decided to lay down his arms.
“This phase does not call for fighters, it calls for people to build a state,” he said.

Topics: Fall of Assad Syria Homs

Egypt is developing a plan to rebuild Gaza, countering Trump’s call to depopulate the territory

Updated 18 February 2025

February 18, 2025 02:00

Egypt is developing a plan to rebuild Gaza, countering Trump’s call to depopulate the territory

The proposal comes after an international uproar over Trump’s call for the removal of Gaza’s population of some 2 million Palestinians
Egyptian officials have been discussing the plan with European diplomats as well as with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates

Updated 18 February 2025

February 18, 2025 02:00

CAIRO: Egypt is developing a plan to rebuild Gaza without forcing Palestinians out of the strip in a counter to President Donald Trump’s proposal to depopulate the territory so the US can take it over.
Egypt’s state-run Al-Ahram newspaper said the proposal calls for establishing “secure areas” within Gaza where Palestinians can live initially while Egyptian and international construction firms remove and rehabilitate the strip’s infrastructure.
Egyptian officials have been discussing the plan with European diplomats as well as with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, according to two Egyptian officials and Arab and Western diplomats. They are also discussing ways to fund the reconstruction, including an international conference on Gaza reconstruction, said one of the Egyptian officials and an Arab diplomat.
The officials and diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity because the proposal is still being negotiated.
The proposal comes after an international uproar over Trump’s call for the removal of Gaza’s population of some 2 million Palestinians. Trump said the United States would take over the Gaza Strip and rebuild it into a “Riviera of the Middle East,” though Palestinians would not be allowed back.
Palestinians have widely said they will not leave their homeland, while Egypt, Jordan – backed by Saudi Arabia – have refused Trump’s calls for them to take in Gaza’s population. Rights groups have widely said the plan amounts to forced expulsion, a potential war crime. European countries have also largely denounced Trump’s plan. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised the idea and says Israel is preparing to implement it.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in Saudi Arabia on Monday in a tour of the region, has said the United States was up to hearing alternative proposals. “If the Arab countries have a better plan, then that’s great,” Rubio said Thursday on the US radio program “Clay and Buck Show.”
Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper said the proposal is designed to “refute American President Trump’s logic” and counter “any other visions or plans that aim to change the geographic and demographic structure of Gaza Strip.”
Gaza is nearing a critical juncture with the first phase of a ceasefire due to run out in early March. Israel and Hamas must still negotiate a second phase meant to bring a release of all remaining hostages held by the militants, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a long-term halt to the war.
Any reconstruction plan will be impossible to implement without a deal on the second phase, including an agreement on who will govern Gaza in the long term. Israel demands the elimination of Hamas as a political or military force in the territory, and international donors are unlikely to contribute to any rebuilding if Hamas is in charge.
Central in Egypt’s proposal is the establishment of a Palestinian administration that is not aligned with either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority to run the strip and oversee the reconstruction efforts, according to the two Egyptian officials involved in the efforts.
It also calls for a Palestinian police force mainly made up of former Palestinian Authority policemen who remained in Gaza after Hamas took over the enclave in 2007, with reinforcement from Egyptian- and Western-trained forces.
Asked about the possibility of deploying an Arab force in Gaza one Egyptian official and the Arab diplomat said Arab countries would only agree if there were a “clear path” for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected any Palestinian state as well as any role for Hamas or the Western-backed Palestinian Authority in governing Gaza, though he has not put forward any clear alternative.
Hamas has said it is willing to give up power in Gaza. Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif Al-Qanou told The Associated Press on Sunday that the group has accepted either a Palestinian unity government without Hamas’ participation or a committee of technocrats to run the territory. The Palestinian Authority, which governs pockets of the West Bank, has so far opposed any plans for Gaza that exclude it.
The Western diplomat said France and Germany have backed the idea of Arab countries developing a counterproposal to Trump’s plan, and that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi discussed his government’s efforts with the French president in a phone call earlier this month.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty also briefed the German foreign minister and other EU officials on the sidelines of last week’s Munich security conference, one of the Egyptian officials said.
Officials from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan will discuss Egypt’s proposal at a gathering in Riyadh this week, before introducing it to the Arab summit later this month, according to the two Egyptian officials and the Arab diplomat.
Isarel’s 16-month campaign in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack, devastated the territory. Around a quarter million housing units have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN estimates. More than 90 percent of the roads and more than 80 percent of health facilities have been damaged or destroyed. Damage to infrastructure has been estimated at some $30 billion, along with an estimated $16 billion in damaged to housing.
Egypt’s plan calls for a three-phase reconstruction process that will take up to five years without removing Palestinians from Gaza, the Egyptian officials said.
It designates three “safe zones” within Gaza to relocate Palestinians during an initial six-month “early recovery period.” The zones will be equipped with mobile houses and shelters, with humanitarian aid streaming in.
More than two dozen Egyptian and international firms would take part in removing the rubble and rebuilding the strip’s infrastructure. The reconstruction would provide tens of thousands of jobs to Gaza’s population, the officials said.

Topics: War on Gaza Gaza Egypt Israel

Families yearn for an end to PKK-Turkiye war

Updated 18 February 2025

AFP

February 17, 2025 23:42

Families yearn for an end to PKK-Turkiye war

The PKK’s jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan is widely expected to urge followers to lay down their arms in the coming weeks
The new peace efforts are backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, and families on both sides of the divide want it to succeed

Updated 18 February 2025

AFP

February 17, 2025 23:42

DIYARBAKIR, Turkiye: A mother weeping for a teenaged daughter shot dead by a Turkish sniper and a father mourning a son killed by PKK militants are among countless families hoping that a new peace drive can end Turkiye’s four-decade-old Kurdish conflict.
Both live in the Kurdish-majority southeast, where tens of thousands of lives have been lost in violence between the Turkish state and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The new peace efforts are backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, and families on both sides of the divide want it to succeed.

Fahriye Cukur (L) and Mustafa Cukur hold a portrait of their daughter Rozerin, who was killed in 2016 during fierce clashes between militants and security forces in January 2016, during an interview in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, on February 14, 2025. (AFP)

At her home in the city of Diyarbakir, Fahriye Cukur, 63, cannot take her eyes off a picture on the wall of her daughter Rozerin in school uniform. She was killed during clashes between militants and security forces in January 2016.
The collapse of a truce in 2015 sparked a new round of the conflict when many government curfews were imposed, including in the city’s Sur district.
Cukur said her daughter — who was passionate about photography — had gone to Sur during a break in a curfew to collect exam papers from friends. But the authorities suddenly reduced the break from five hours to three and the fighting reignited.
“People were stuck there, including my daughter. She took refuge at the home of an elderly couple, but when she tried to leave, she was shot by a sniper,” her mother told AFP.
The family found out about the death through a news bulletin.

It took five months, several protests and a hunger strike for the grieving parents to get her body back.

A women walks next to the Four-Legged Minaret Mosque where Kurdish lawyer Tahir Elci was shot dead at the historical Sur district in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, on February 14, 2025. (AFP)

Cukur said the authorities had mixed up their teenage daughter with a female PKK fighter, codenamed Roza, who had been hiding in the same district.
They claimed she had been trained in the mountains, but her mother told AFP: “My daughter was never engaged in political activism.
“She loved school, she wanted to become a psychiatrist and help her people,” she added, indicating the “TC” insignia — meaning “republic of Turkiye” — on her school uniform.
The PKK’s jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan is widely expected to urge followers to lay down their arms in the coming weeks.
Many families hope this will end the conflict and spare other families from the pain they live with.
“We can’t forget what happened but we have to hope. I have two more kids: how do I know the same thing won’t happen to them tomorrow?” she said.
Last month, the International Crisis Group said clashes between the militants and Turkish troops were largely confined to northern parts of Iraq and Syria, with violence on Turkish soil at its lowest level since 2015.
“At least we can breathe a bit now,” she said.
“I want the bloodshed to stop. I want a ceasefire. And I am not alone.”

In the nearby province of Mardin, Sehmuz Kaya, a 67-year-old Kurd, recalled how his son Vedat, a police officer, was kidnapped by PKK militants in eastern Turkiye in July 2015.
Vedat Kaya, wearing civilian clothes, was in a car with his brother and four others when militants blocked the road.
“They only kidnapped Vedat,” he told AFP, saying it was months before the family saw a PKK video of him in the Kandil mountains of northern Iraq.
The family tried every possible channel, through the state and the main pro-Kurdish party, to secure his release.
But after six years, they received a devastating call from the authorities, who said he was one of the 13 “Gara martyrs.” The 13, all but one of whom were soldiers or police, had been killed by the PKK in the Gara region of northern Iraq.
“I was devastated,” he said, struggling for words, saying his son had been tortured before his death.
“They have no faith nor conscience. My son was just doing his job,” he said.
Pinned on the ceiling is a huge Turkish flag, and on the walls are photos of Vedat, whose name has been given to a nearby park.
Although he wants peace more than anything, he admitted he has little faith.
“They are not honest,” he snapped, referring to DEM, the main pro-Kurdish party that is relaying messages from Ocalan to the government. He suspects they have ties to the PKK.
“The families of the martyrs are heartbroken. Enough is enough,” he said. “We support the process but we want something real.”

Topics: Turkiye Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) Kurds

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Border town’s residents rebuild in south Lebanon as Hezbollah leader calls for Israeli withdrawal

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Deadline for Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon expires

Deadline for Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon expires

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Syrians return to Homs, ‘capital of the revolution’

Syrians return to Homs, ‘capital of the revolution’

Syria war monitor says tens of thousands flee Homs as militants advance

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Egypt is developing a plan to rebuild Gaza, countering Trump’s call to depopulate the territory

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Families yearn for an end to PKK-Turkiye war

Families yearn for an end to PKK-Turkiye war

Turkish opposition party delegation meets with Kurdish leader in Iraq as part of PKK peace efforts

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