Greek tanker crippled by Houthi militants starts oil transfer
Updated 07 November 2024
AFP
ATHENS: A Greek oil tanker crippled by Yemen’s Houthi militants and towed to avert an environmental disaster began transferring its cargo of over a million barrels on Thursday, the state-run ANA news agency said.
The Sounion caught fire and lost power after being attacked on August 21 off the coast of Hodeidah, a Houthi-held port city.
The following day its 25-strong crew was rescued. The rebels claimed to have detonated charges on the ship’s deck, sparking new fires.
ANA said the Sounion had begun transferring its cargo of 150,000 tons of crude to another tanker, Delta Blue, at a “safe anchorage” in the port of Suez.
“The vessel is at Suez, and as it’s at a safe anchorage, we are no longer monitoring it,” a source at Greece’s merchant marine ministry told AFP.
Citing ministry sources, ANA said the operation began on Thursday and will last between three and four weeks.
In September, EU maritime safety body Aspides said the Sounion was not under its protection at the time of the attack.
The ship’s original course “was a bit of a mystery,” the ministry source told AFP. “We were told it was heading from Iraq to Singapore. If that were the case, how did it end up in the Red Sea?“
The operation to tow the vessel to safety in September required a tugboat escorted by three frigates, helicopters and a special forces team, ANA said.
Had the vessel broken up or exploded, it could have caused an oil spill four times larger than that caused by the Exxon Valdez in 1989 off Alaska, experts had warned.
The EU naval force was formed in February to protect merchant vessels in the Red Sea from attacks by Houthis.
The Houthis have waged a campaign against international shipping to show solidarity with Hamas in its war with Israel in the Gaza Strip.
They have been firing drones and missiles at ships in the vital commercial route, saying they are targeting vessels linked to Israel, the US and Britain.
The United States, with the support of allies led by Britain, has carried out repeated air strikes on rebel bases in Yemen.
Houthi drones target Israel amid Gaza tensions, attack fails
Updated 12 sec ago
Arab News
DUBAI: The Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen claimed responsibility for launching six drones toward Israel on Tuesday evening, targeting Haifa, the Negev Desert, Eilat, and Beersheba.
The Israeli military said at least one drone was intercepted off the coast of Eilat, while the others likely fell short. No damage or casualties were reported.
Though the attack failed, it highlights the Houthis’ continued efforts to project force beyond Yemen amid regional tensions linked to the Gaza conflict.
Yemen appeals for urgent global aid as hunger crisis deepens
Yemen’s UN envoy Abdullah Al-Saadi said the loss of oil revenues, which once made up 70 percent of public income, has crippled state services and worsened living conditions for millions
Updated 3 min 17 sec ago
Arab News
DUBAI: Following the UN warning that food insecurity in Yemen has reached “disastrous” levels, the country’s government told the Security Council it is on the brink of economic collapse and urgently needs international support to avert further humanitarian catastrophe.
Yemen’s UN envoy Abdullah Al-Saadi said the loss of oil revenues, which once made up 70 percent of public income, has crippled state services and worsened living conditions for millions already struggling with hunger and displacement, state news agency SABA reported on Tuesday.
Nearly half of Yemen’s children under five suffer acute malnutrition, with many already dying in displacement camps, the UN said. The government warned that the economic crisis, compounded by conflict, climate shocks, and declining aid, is pushing more people toward famine and eroding any prospects for recovery.
Al-Saadi urged donor nations and organizations to step up funding ahead of a planned international food security conference in October, saying Yemen “stands on the threshold of a difficult phase” and cannot stabilize without sustained external assistance.
Palestinian mother ‘destroyed’ after image used to deny Gaza starvation
For Najjar, the fact that her family’s reunion got caught up in a misinformation campaign was devastating
Updated 13 August 2025
AFP
MONTREAL: Palestinian-Canadian Faiza Najjar was able to leave Gaza last year, but could not bring her four adult daughters with her. She watched from a distance as food shortages in the territory worsened.
From Canada, where she lives with her six other children, Najjar pursued a months-long effort to get those she had left out of Gaza.
She finally embraced her daughters and seven grandchildren when they arrived at Toronto’s airport last month.
But when clips of the emotional reunion were posted on social media, pro-Israeli accounts mocked her physical appearance saying it disproved claims of starvation in Gaza.
“As a mother it just destroyed me,” Najjar, 50, told AFP.
Najjar did not claim that she went hungry while in Gaza.
But as recently as this past weekend a post viewed more than 300,000 times across multiple platforms ridiculed her, erroneously implying she had just left Gaza.
“Did you see what that woman looked like?” the poster said, pointing out Najjar does not look undernourished.
United Nations agencies have warned that famine was unfolding in Gaza, with Israel severely restricting the entry of aid. Images of sick and emaciated Palestinian children have drawn international outrage.
The allegation has been denied by Israel. “There is no starvation in Gaza,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month.
The ridicule Najjar faced is part of a broader trend.
Israeli anchors on the country’s right-wing Channel 14 — sometimes described as the Hebrew Fox News — have laughed at “obese” mothers, alleging they steal their children’s food.
For Najjar, the fact that her family’s reunion got caught up in a misinformation campaign was devastating.
“After all the suffering, and losing everything, and nearly dying, some people still had the heart to mock them,” she said, referring to her family.
“My daughters lived there and their children went to sleep hungry...with bombs outside their tents,” Najjar said.
Pro-Israeli commentators online also focused on her grandchildren’s apparently healthy appearance.
Najjar told AFP they received medical treatment, including renourishment, at a hospital in Jordan before flying to Canada.
Mert Can Bayar, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for an Informed Public at the University of Washington, said the posts targeting Najjar are “just one little piece” of a misleading online narrative.
Toronto’s Mayor Olivia Chow removed a video she had posted on Instagram in which she welcomed arriving Palestinians because of abusive comments directed at the family.
Comments on Chow’s video also cited the family’s physical appearance to broadly dismiss claims of starvation in Gaza.
X’s chatbot Grok also misidentified a 2025 AFP photo of an emaciated child in Gaza, incorrectly saying it was taken in Yemen seven years ago, fueling further claims that reports of starvation in Gaza have been fabricated.
Valerie Wirtschafter, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think-tank, said the claims were reminiscent of falsehoods that emerged weeks into the war alleging Palestinians had posed as so-called crisis actors and staged their injuries.
Wirtschafter said the hoax narrative “deflects from the real humanitarian harms that are happening right now.”
Israel’s offensive has killed at least 61,430 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, figures the United Nations deems reliable.
Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the war, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Forty-nine of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas are still held in Gaza, including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.
When Najjar left Gaza last year, her daughters — all in their 20s — did not have Canadian citizenship.
With the family separated, she lived with crippling fear at the prospect of receiving word that they had been killed.
While her daughters now have citizenship and are in Canada with their children, her sons-in-law remain in Gaza, where the UN’s Integrated Food Security Phase Classification says “widespread starvation, malnutrition, and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths.”
“I just want the world to know the crisis is real,” Najjar told AFP. “Denial is deadly.”
UN chief alleges credible evidence of sexual violence by Israeli forces
Guterres voiced grave concern over reported violations against Palestinians in Israeli prisons
The UN chief warns Israeli forces could be listed as sexual violence offenders in a UN report
Updated 36 min 25 sec ago
AP
UNITED NATIONS: The UN chief warned Israel that the United Nations has “credible information” of sexual violence and other violations by Israeli forces against detained Palestinians, which Israel’s UN ambassador dismissed as “baseless accusations.”
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a letter to Ambassador Danny Danon that he is “gravely concerned” about reported violations against Palestinians by Israeli military and security forces in several prisons, a detention center and a military base.
Guterres said he was putting Israeli forces on notice that they could be listed as abusers in his next report on sexual violence in conflict “due to significant concerns of patterns of certain forms of sexual violence that have been consistently documented by the United Nations.”
Danon, who circulated the letter and his response Tuesday, said the allegations “are steeped in biased publications.”
“The UN must focus on the shocking war crimes and sexual violence of Hamas and the release of all hostages,” he said.
Danon was referring to the militant group’s surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, where some 1,200 people were killed and about 250 taken hostage. Israeli authorities said women were raped and sexually abused.
The Hamas attack triggered the ongoing war in Gaza, which has killed more than 61,400 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters or civilians but that about half were women and children.
Danon stressed that “Israel will not shy away from protecting its citizens and will continue to act in accordance with international law.”
Because Israel has denied access to UN monitors, it has been “challenging to make a definitive determination” about patterns, trends and the systematic use of sexual violence by its forces, Guterres said in the letter.
He urged Israel’s government “to take the necessary measures to ensure immediate cessation of all acts of sexual violence, and make and implement specific time-bound commitments.”
The secretary-general said these should include investigations of credible allegations, clear orders and codes of conduct for military and security forces that prohibit sexual violence, and unimpeded access for UN monitors.
In March, UN-backed human rights experts accused Israel of “the systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence.”
The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory said it documented a range of violations perpetrated against Palestinian women, men, girls and boys and accused Israeli security forces of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian detainees.
At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at the UN Human Rights Council, which commissioned the team of independent experts, as an “anti-Israel circus” that “has long been exposed as an antisemitic, rotten, terrorist-supporting, and irrelevant body.” His statement did not address the findings themselves.
How Israeli raids, settler violence and annexation plans are driving the West Bank toward crisis
UN agencies warn of escalating violence in the West Bank, including unlawful killings, injuries, and mass displacement of Palestinians
Planned settlement expansion could split the occupied territory, undermine a contiguous Palestinian state, and violate international law
Updated 12 August 2025
ANAN TELLO
LONDON: While global attention remains focused on the war in Gaza, the occupied West Bank has been sliding deeper into crisis, largely out of sight. Israeli military raids and settler violence against Palestinians have escalated sharply, intensifying tensions across the territory.
The UN Human Rights Office has warned of growing settler violence “with the acquiescence, support, and in some cases participation of Israeli forces.”
In a July 30 statement, the UN agency described “a pattern of the use of unnecessary and disproportionate force that resulted in the unlawful killing and injury of Palestinians” in the West Bank.
The report further alleged that Israeli authorities are pursuing a wider strategy of displacement and annexation — claims the government rejects, insisting instead that its actions are a response to security threats posed by Palestinian militants.
Israeli military raids and settler violence against Palestinians have escalated sharply. (AFP)
“State policy and legislative actions appear aimed at emptying certain areas of the West Bank of the Palestinian population, advancing the settlement enterprise, and consolidating the annexation” of large parts of the territory, the statement added.
That warning was followed almost immediately by a significant political development, as Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Defense Minister Israel Katz publicly declared that the current moment offered an opportunity to annex the West Bank — a move long opposed by much of the international community.
“Ministers Katz and Levin have been working for many years to implement Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” their offices said in a joint statement on July 31, using the biblical name for the West Bank. “At this very moment, there is a moment of opportunity that must not be missed.”
The statement did not explain why now is the right opportunity, but it came on the heels of recent announcements by Western governments, including France and the UK, that they are prepared to recognize a Palestinian state.
Just two days earlier, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that the UK would recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September unless Israel moved to end the crisis in Gaza, commit to a ceasefire, and revive a two-state solution.
In its report, titled “Our Genocide,” B’Tselem warned that the assault on Gaza is inseparable from escalating violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. (AP)
“There is an understandable focus on Gaza given the genocide that is going on, the horrific amount of destruction, loss of life, the starvation of a civilian population,” Chris Doyle, director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding, told Arab News.
“Of course, that is far, far worse than anything that is currently happening in the West Bank.” But, he warned, the difference in scale does not diminish the danger.
“I think what is scary about the West Bank is that many Palestinians there feel that they are next — that what has happened in Gaza will be happening to them.”
That fear is not unfounded.
“We’ve already seen an uptick in Israeli military operations, particularly in the north of the West Bank, inside refugee camps,” said Doyle.
“We’ve seen demolitions at record levels, record levels of settler violence, all helped by the Israeli military, and the forced displacement of so many communities.”
He added that ultra-nationalist elements within the Israeli government, “particularly those who are really engaged with the ultra-nationalist settler movement,” are “doing everything they can to exploit the situation in Gaza to push forward with their plans in the West Bank.”
That concern is echoed by Israeli rights group B’Tselem, which warned in July of “clear and imminent danger that the genocide will not remain confined to Gaza.”
In its report, titled “Our Genocide,” B’Tselem warned that the assault on Gaza is inseparable from escalating violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and within Israel.
Indeed, violence in the West Bank has spiked since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza, and escalated further after Israel launched Operation Iron Wall on Jan. 21, which the Israeli government says is aimed at tackling militant groups in the territory’s north.
B’Tselem warned in July of “clear and imminent danger that the genocide will not remain confined to Gaza.” (Reuters)
International monitors, including the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Human Rights Watch, say the campaign has become increasingly indiscriminate, killing numerous noncombatants, including children.
Save the Children reports at least 224 children were killed by Israeli forces or settlers between January 2023 and early 2025. OCHA says that from Oct. 7, 2023, to mid-July 2025, some 968 Palestinians — including 204 children — were killed in the West Bank.
Civilians killed during this period include foreign nationals, such as Palestinian-American Khamis Al-Ayyad, whose family is seeking an investigation into his death in a settler attack on July 31.
UN figures show around 40,000 Palestinians have been displaced — the largest such movement since the 1967 war — most of them from three refugee camps in Jenin and Tulkarem.
Settler violence and military-imposed access restrictions have uprooted more than 2,200 more.
INNUMBERS
• 40k Palestinians forcibly displaced from northern West Bank from January through June.
• 2.2k+ Displaced by settler attacks and access restrictions during the same period.
• 6,463 Displaced by Israeli home demolitions between Oct. 7, 2023, and May 31, 2025.
(Source: OCHA)
House demolitions are also climbing. A new directive by the Israeli Civil Administration allows the military to raze Palestinian structures and expel around 1,200 residents from long-inhabited areas.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned such actions could constitute “forcible transfer, which is a war crime.”
The UN agency said in late June that such actions “could also amount to a crime against humanity if committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.”
Israel says demolitions target unpermitted buildings, though Palestinians and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs note that such permits are nearly impossible to obtain.
In June, the UN recorded the highest monthly injury toll from settler attacks in over 20 years. OHCHR counted 757 such attacks in the first seven months of 2025 — a 13 percent rise compared to the same period last year.
House demolitions are also climbing. (AFP)
UN General Assembly President Philemon Yang called these developments “a critical moment in the long history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
On July 28, he warned that “while the situation in Gaza is dramatic, we must not lose sight of the deeply concerning and equally urgent situation in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
Indeed, on Aug. 6, the Israeli government discussed building thousands of new housing units in the E1 area, east of occupied East Jerusalem. The project would link the Ma’ale Adumim settlement to Jerusalem, effectively bisecting the West Bank and isolating Palestinian communities.
“Not only would implementing the E1 doomsday settlement project split the West Bank into north and south, but also cement the separation of Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, as well as displacing around 12,500 Palestinians,” said Doyle.
Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Defense Minister Israel Katz publicly declared that the current moment offered an opportunity to annex the West Bank. (AFP)
“All of this, therefore, amounts to an extremely serious situation in the West Bank, which already exists under a regime of apartheid, where Israeli Jewish citizens of the State of Israel in settlements enjoy superior rights to Palestinians who are their neighbors.”
The E1 plan, stalled since 2021 under US and EU pressure, envisions building more than 3,000 homes to the east of Jerusalem and is widely seen as a death blow to a future contiguous Palestinian state.
In a joint statement in July, 31 Western nations, including the UK and France, announced their “strong opposition” to the project, calling it “a flagrant breach of international law” that would “critically undermine the two-state solution.”
However, the international community should be doing far more, said Doyle.
He warned that the escalating situation in the West Bank “does point to a fundamental failure of the international community, not just over the last 21-22 months, but actually over decades, to put an end to the settlement project — to reverse it.
“All of this, of course, has now been ordered by the International Court of Justice that says that Israel must withdraw from the settlements and pay reparations. And it is incumbent upon international actors to back that up and to take action to ensure that they are in no way complicit with Israel’s regime of occupation.”
Will the world act to prevent the West Bank becoming another Gaza? (Reuters)
The ICJ ruled in July 2024 that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem is illegal under international law. It found that Israeli settlements and use of natural resources in the occupied Palestinian territories are unlawful.
The court ordered Israel to end its occupation, dismantle settlements, provide full reparations to Palestinians, and facilitate the return of displaced people.
With the West Bank facing ever-increasing violence, mass displacement, and aid restrictions, the question looms: Will the world act to prevent it becoming another Gaza?
