ALEPPO: Syrian escapees from Daesh languished for hours on the sizzling concrete pavements at Aleppo’s main bus station, their faces gaunt and eyes rimmed by dark circles.
Just six months ago, the Ramussa station was the main transit point for thousands of people bussed out of second city Aleppo as part of a landmark evacuation deal.
Now, buses are starting to trickle through again — this time carrying traumatized families fleeing Daesh’s dwindling territory to regime-held zones in the rest of the country.
“It’s a miracle that we’re here,” said Umm Hammoud, 45, who fled Daesh’s bastion city Raqqa with her 10 children aboard a pickup truck.
She spoke to AFP while waiting for a bus to take her to Syria’s third city Homs, where she will be reunited with long-lost relatives.
Before Syria’s civil war started in 2011, it took Umm Hammoud just two hours to make the 200-km westward bus trip from her native Raqqa to Aleppo.
This time, it took her and her family a month.
“We fled Raqqa at the beginning of Ramadan after each paying 150,000 Syrian pounds,” or around $300, Umm Hammoud told AFP.
She recounted a terrifying journey delayed by heavy airstrikes on terrorist-held villages and difficulty negotiating with smugglers.
“When we got here, we could barely believe that we survived,” she said as she struggled to soothe her wailing six-month-old in the scorching heat.
Umm Hammoud and her family skirted land mines, airstrikes, and a Daesh patrol unit tracking down anyone trying to flee the city.
But when they reached Aleppo, they did not find the bustling commercial metropolis they had once known.
Previously Syria’s industrial hub, Aleppo had been ravaged by four years of battles between opposition groups and the army before the December evacuation deal allowed the military to retake full control.
“I visited Aleppo as a child with my parents. We’d eat at restaurants, it was beautiful,” Umm Hammoud recalled, her voice cracking.
Much of the city is now in ruins, a shadow of its former self — like the Ramussa station.
For months, opposition fighters and regime battled hard over the bus station to gain access to the route leading out of Aleppo to other regime-controlled parts of Syria.
When the evacuation deal was reached, thousands of opposition fighters and civilians were bussed out of the then-snowy streets of Aleppo via Ramussa.
The station reopened in July, but the main garage remains almost empty save for a few charred cars and mangled metal barricades.
Ticketing offices that were once teeming with customers are mostly abandoned.
“In the past, there was a bus leaving every 30 minutes. It used to be packed here,” said Mohammed, a ticketing officer at Al-Eman bus company, one of the few that returned to Ramussa when it reopened.
Now, officials estimate that no more than 15 buses pass through daily, their passengers in dire conditions.
“There are sick people that haven’t taken any medicine in years. The children arriving are famished,” Mohammed said.
“Sometimes they spend 24 hours just waiting” for the next bus, he said.
Elderly shepherd Abbud Al-Sayah was waiting in Ramussa for a bus west to Latakia, a regime bastion on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.
He fled Raqqa province three months ago as the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) battled across the arid farmland there to reach its provincial capital.
“I lived in the desert and took care of a flock of sheep with some relatives,” Sayah, wearing thick glasses, told AFP.
Ruqaya, 66, had traveled the farthest to reach Aleppo.
She crossed nearly 400 km from the Daesh-held town of Mayadeen near Syria’s eastern border with Iraq.
Mayadeen has been battered by airstrikes from the US-led coalition battling Daesh in Syria and Iraq, and Ruqaya said she was lucky to have survived.
It cost her family more than $3,700 to be smuggled out, and their four-day journey turned into a macabre tour of towns and cities devastated by Syria’s six-year war.
“We went from one scene of wreckage to another. Tabqa (west of Raqqa) was totally ravaged,” the mother of five said.
“In Aleppo, which was once a paradise, I saw the hospital where one of my sons used to work. It was completely flattened,” she said.
“Why all this destruction? Why are you chasing people from their homes?”
For families fleeing Daesh, a way station in Aleppo
For families fleeing Daesh, a way station in Aleppo
US senator slams Biden administration for not punishing Israel over Gaza aid
- Washington had threatened to suspend military support if aid not increased
- Elizabeth Warren: Failure to hold Israel to account a ‘grave mistake’ that ‘undermines American credibility worldwide’
LONDON: Progressive US Sen. Elizabeth Warren has criticized the Biden administration’s failure to punish Israel after Washington delivered an ultimatum last month on improving aid deliveries to Gaza.
The Democratic senator endorsed a joint resolution of disapproval in Congress after the State Department said it would not take punitive action against Israel, The Guardian reported.
Official Israeli figures show that the amount of aid reaching Gaza has dropped to the lowest level in 11 months, despite the White House’s 30-day ultimatum threatening the loss of military support to Israel if aid was not increased.
The deadline expired on Tuesday as international humanitarian groups warned that Israel had fallen far short of Washington’s stated aid targets. Food security experts also warned that famine is likely imminent in parts of Gaza.
The State Department claimed that Israel was making limited progress on aid and was not blocking relief, meaning it had not violated US law.
Warren, senator for Massachusetts, said in a statement: “On Oct. 13, the Biden administration told Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu that his government had 30 days to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza or face the consequences under US law, which would include cutting off military assistance.
“Thirty days later, the Biden administration acknowledged that Israel’s actions had not significantly expanded food, water and basic necessities for desperate Palestinian civilians.
“Despite Netanyahu’s failure to meet the United States’ demands, the Biden administration has taken no action to restrict the flow of offensive weapons.”
The joint resolution of disapproval endorsed by Warren can enable Congress to overturn decisions by the president, if passed by the House and Senate.
Bernie Sanders, the independent senator for Vermont, said next week he will bring new joint resolutions of disapproval to block specific weapon sales to Israel.
“There is no longer any doubt that Netanyahu’s extremist government is in clear violation of US and international law as it wages a barbaric war against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” he said.
On Thursday, 15 senators and 69 Congress members announced efforts to pressure the Biden administration to hold Israeli Cabinet members to account.
The plan targets Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir for the rise in Israeli settler violence, settlement-building and destabilization across the West Bank.
Warren described the Biden administration’s failure to hold Israel to account as a “grave mistake” that “undermines American credibility worldwide.”
She added: “If this administration will not act, Congress must step up to enforce US law and hold the Netanyahu government accountable through a joint resolution of disapproval.”
Film’s ‘search for Palestine’ takes center stage at Cairo festival
- The tale of a distinctly Palestinian road trip — through refugee camps and Israeli checkpoints
CAIRO: The tale of a distinctly Palestinian road trip — through refugee camps and Israeli checkpoints — takes center stage in director Rashid Masharawi’s latest film, which debuted at this year’s Cairo International Film Festival.
“It’s a search for home, a search for Palestine, for ourselves,” Masharawi told AFP on Wednesday after the world premiere of his new film “Passing Dreams.”
It kicked off the Middle East’s oldest film festival, which opened with a traditional dabkeh dance performance by a troupe from the war-torn Gaza Strip.
Masharawi’s film follows Sami, a 12-year-old boy, and his uncle and cousin on a quest to find his beloved pet pigeon, which has flown away from their home in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
Told that pigeons always return to their birthplace, the family attempts to “follow the bird home” — driving a small red camper van from Qalandia camp and Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank to the Old City of Jerusalem and the Israeli city of Haifa.
Their odyssey, Masharawi says, becomes a “deeply symbolic journey” that represents an inversion of the family’s original displacement from Haifa during the 1948 war that led to the creation of the State of Israel — a period Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.”
“It’s no coincidence we’re in places that have a deep significance to Palestinian history,” the director said, speaking to AFP after a more intimate second screening on Thursday.
The bittersweet tale is a far cry from Masharawi’s other project featured at the Cairo film festival: “From Ground Zero.”
The anthology, supervised by the veteran director, showcases 22 shorts by filmmakers in Gaza, shot against the backdrop of war.
For that project, Masharawi — who was the first Palestinian director officially selected for the Cannes Film Festival for his film “Haifa” in 1996 — “wanted to act as a bridge between global audiences” and filmmakers on the ground.
In April, he told AFP the anthology intended to expose “the lie of self-defense,” which he said was Israel’s justification for its devastating military campaign in Gaza.
The war broke out following Palestinian militant group Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in 1,206 deaths, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel has since killed more than 43,700 people in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-controlled territory’s health ministry.
“As filmmakers, we must document this through the language of cinema,” Masharawi said, adding that filmmaking “defends our land far better than any military or political speeches.”
Speaking to an enthralled audience, the 62-year-old director — donning his signature fedora — called for change in Palestinian filmmaking.
“Our cinema can’t always only be a reaction to Israeli actions,” he said.
“It must be the action itself.”
A self-taught director born in a Gaza refugee camp before moving to Ramallah, Masharawi is intimately familiar with the “obstacles to filmmaking under occupation” — including “separation walls, barriers, who’s allowed to go where.”
Like the family in the film, “you never know if authorities will let you get to your location,” he said, especially since Masharawi refuses “on principle” to seek permits from Israeli authorities.
Instead, his crew often resorts to makeshift schemes — including “smuggling in” actors from the West Bank who do not have permission to visit Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
“If you ask (Israeli authorities) for permission to shoot in Jerusalem, you’re giving them legitimacy that Jerusalem is theirs,” he said Thursday to raucous applause from audience members, many of them draped in Palestinian keffiyehs.
Organizers canceled the Cairo film festival last year after calls for the suspension of artistic and cultural activities across the Arab world in solidarity with Palestinians.
But this week, keffiyehs have dotted the red carpet, while audience members wore pins bearing the Palestinian flag and the map of historic Palestine.
Festival president Hussein Fahmy voiced solidarity “with our brothers in Gaza and Lebanon,” where Israel’s bombing campaign and ground offensive have killed 3,360 people.
Pride of place, Fahmy said, has been given to Palestinian cinema, with a handful of films showing during the festival and a competition to crown a winner among the 22 filmmakers in “From Ground Zero.”
vid-bha/smw
Strike hits south Beirut after Israel evacuation call
- Israeli drone fires two missiles at the Beirut suburb of Ghobeiry before the air force carried out a ‘very heavy’ strike
- Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its air campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops
BEIRUT: An air strike hit the Lebanese capital’s southern suburbs on Friday, sending plumes of grey smoke into the sky after the Israeli military called for people to evacuate, AFPTV images showed.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said an Israeli drone fired two missiles at the Beirut suburb of Ghobeiry before the air force carried out a “very heavy” strike that levelled a building near municipal offices.
The evacuation order posted on X by Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee told residents to leave, warning of imminent strikes.
“All residents in the southern suburbs, specifically ... in the Ghobeiry area, you are located near facilities and interests affiliated with Hezbollah,” Adraee said in his post.
“For your safety and the safety of your family members, you must evacuate these buildings and those adjacent to them immediately.”
His post included maps identifying buildings in the area near Bustan High School.
Repeated Israeli air strikes on south Beirut have led to a mass exodus of civilians from the Hezbollah stronghold, although some return during the day to check on their homes and businesses.
NNA also reported pre-dawn strikes on the southern city of Nabatieh.
The Israeli military said it had struck “command centers” of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force and launchers used to fire rockets at Israel on Thursday.
It said that over the past day, the air force had struck more than 120 targets across Lebanon, including weapons storage facilities, command centers and a large number of rocket launchers.
Since September 23, Israel has ramped up its air campaign in Lebanon, later sending in ground troops following almost a year of limited, cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah over the Gaza war.
Lebanese authorities say that more than 3,380 people have been killed since October last year, when Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire.
The conflict has cost Lebanon more than $5 billion in economic losses, with actual structural damage amounting to billions more, the World Bank said on Thursday.
Israel’s warfare in Gaza consistent with genocide, UN committee finds
- Committee’s report states ‘Israeli officials have publicly supported policies that strip Palestinians of the very necessities required to sustain life’
- It raises ‘serious concern’ about Israel’s use of AI to choose targets ‘with minimal human oversight,’ resulting in ‘overwhelming’ casualties among women and children
NEW YORK: Israel’s methods of warfare in Gaza, including the use of starvation as a weapon, mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions deliberately inflicted on Palestinians in the territory, are consistent with the characteristics of genocide, the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices said in a report published on Thursday.
“Since the beginning of the war, Israeli officials have publicly supported policies that strip Palestinians of the very necessities required to sustain life: food, water and fuel,” the committee said.
Statements from Israeli authorities and the “systematic and unlawful” blocking of humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza make clear “Israel’s intent to instrumentalize life-saving supplies for political and military gains,” it added.
The committee, the full title of which is the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the Occupied Territories, was established by the UN General Assembly in 1968 to monitor the human rights situation in the occupied Golan heights, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. It comprises the permanent representatives to the UN from three member states, currently Malaysia, Senegal and Sri Lanka, who are appointed by the president of the General Assembly.
Its latest report, which covers the period from October 2023 to July 2024, mostly focuses on the effects of the war in Gaza on the rights of Palestinians.
“Through its siege over Gaza, obstruction of humanitarian aid, alongside targeted attacks and killing of civilians and aid workers, despite repeated UN appeals, binding orders from the International Court of Justice and resolutions of the Security Council, Israel is intentionally causing death, starvation and serious injury, using starvation as a method of war and inflicting collective punishment on the Palestinian population,” the committee said.
The “extensive” Israeli bombing campaign has wiped out essential services in Gaza and caused an “environmental catastrophe” that will have “lasting health impacts,” it adds.
By early 2024, the report says, more than 25,000 tonnes of explosives, equivalent to two nuclear bombs, had been dropped on Gaza, causing “massive” destruction, the collapse of water and sanitation systems, agricultural devastation and toxic pollution. This has created a “lethal mix of crises that will inflict severe harm on generations to come,” the committee said.
The report notes “serious concern” about Israel’s use of artificial intelligence technology to choose its targets “with minimal human oversight,” the consequence of which has been “overwhelming” numbers of deaths of women and children. This underscores “Israel’s disregard of its obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants and take adequate safeguards to prevent civilian deaths,” it adds.
In addition, Israel’s escalating censorship of the media and targeting of journalists are “deliberate efforts” to block global access to information, the committee found, and the report states that social media companies have disproportionately removed “pro-Palestinian content” in comparison with posts inciting violence against Palestinians.
The committee also condemned the continuing “smear campaign” and other attacks on the reputation of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, and the wider UN.
“This deliberate silencing of reporting, combined with disinformation and attacks on humanitarian workers, is a clear strategy to undermine the vital work of the UN, sever the lifeline of aid still reaching Gaza, and dismantle the international legal order,” it said.
It called on all states to honor their legal obligations to stop and prevent violations of international law by Israel, including the system of apartheid that operates in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and to hold Israeli authorities accountable for their actions.
“Upholding international law and ensuring accountability for violations rests squarely on member states,” the committee said.
Failure to do this weakens “the very core of the international legal system and sets a dangerous precedent, allowing atrocities to go unchecked.”
The committee will officially present its report to the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly on Monday.
Israel’s attorney general tells Netanyahu to reexamine extremist security minister’s role
- National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir criticized for interfering in police matters
JERUSALEM, Nov 14 : Israel’s Attorney General told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reevaluate the tenure of his far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, citing his apparent interference in police matters, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Thursday.
The news channel published a copy of a letter written by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara in which she described instances of “illegitimate interventions” in which Ben-Gvir, who is tasked with setting general policy, gave operational instructions that threaten the police’s apolitical status.
“The concern is that the government’s silence will be interpreted as support for the minister’s behavior,” the letter said.
Officials at the Justice Ministry could not be reached for comment and there was no immediate comment from Netanyahu’s office.
Ben-Gvir, who heads a small ultra-nationalist party in Netanyahu’s coalition, wrote on social media after the letter was published: “The attempted coup by (the Attorney General) has begun. The only dismissal that needs to happen is that of the Attorney General.”
