JEDDAH: Bahrain’s Interior Minister has said that Qatar poses a threat to the security of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries due to its political interference and “harboring extremist and terrorist elements.”
In an interview with the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al-Khalifa also referred to the Iranian interference in the domestic affairs of Bahrain.
With regard to the Qatari intervention in Bahrain, Sheikh Rashid pointed out that “Qatar continues to interfere in the domestic affairs of Bahrain and spies on its security and military forces, which threatens Bahraini national security.”
Shaikh Rashid added that Qatar has continued to naturalize Bahraini families, which affects Bahrain’s social security.
“Qatar also blocked a project to build a bridge between Bahrain and Qatar. It did not deliver its share in the Gulf support program, like its GCC counterparts. It banned the export of gas to Bahrain. We were forced to contract with Russia to import it,” Shaikh Rashid said.
He also stressed that Qatar’s serious threats to the security of its neighbors exceeded the limits of national sovereignty. “It affected the strength and homogeneity of the security front of the GCC states in light of the challenges facing the region.”
He also mentioned that the four countries that boycotted Qatar — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain — took this position in order to preserve security and stability.
The minister stressed that Iran was guilty of “the export of intellectual and sectarian extremism to create a base in Bahrain.”
He pointed to “Tehran’s export of extremist ideology, smuggling of weapons and explosives, transfer of explosives technology, and training of Bahraini persons on how to use weapons, explosives and field skills.”
He pointed out that these interventions include the continued hostile statements by the Iranian officials.
“Iran’s satellite channels and all means of media are working around the clock to spread hatred, dissemination of rumors and distorting facts to serve its agenda in the region.”
Shaikh Rashid said however that the security situation in Bahrain today is generally safe and stable.
“To indicate that the security situation is stable, we are receiving larger numbers of visitors than any time. This is the best witness to the ... safe situation in the country.”
Bahrain interior minister: Qatar govt policy threatens GCC security
Bahrain interior minister: Qatar govt policy threatens GCC security
Tens of thousands of people in Istanbul protest Gaza war
- Demonstrators waved Turkish and Palestinian flags and chanted “Free Palestine” in the protest
- Bilal Erdoğan, the son of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, addressed the crowd, urging support for Gaza and condemning Israel’s actions
ISTANBUL/JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of people gathered on Istanbul’s Galata Bridge on New Year’s Day on Wednesday to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Demonstrators waved Turkish and Palestinian flags and chanted “Free Palestine” in the protest, organized by the National Will Platform, a coalition of more than 300 pro-Palestinian and Islamic groups.
Bilal Erdoğan, the son of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, addressed the crowd, urging support for Gaza and condemning Israel’s actions there.
He referred to the recent ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad by rebel forces.
“Muslims in Syria were determined, patient and they achieved victory. After Syria, Gaza will emerge victoriously from the siege,” he said.
Drone video showed thousands of people filling the bridge and the adjacent Eminönü and Sirkeci districts.
President Erdoğan has been a fierce critic of the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
Meanwhile, Israel’s military said two projectiles were fired from Gaza on Wednesday in the first minutes of the new year, one of which was intercepted while the other landed in an open area.
Alert sirens sounded around midnight (2200 GMT) in the western Negev, the Israeli military said, and “two projectiles were identified crossing from the central Gaza Strip into Israeli territory.”
“One projectile was successfully intercepted and the second projectile fell in an open area,” the army said on Telegram.
The military said it has intercepted several rockets fired from northern Gaza in recent days.
Since October, Israeli operations in Gaza have focused on the north, with officials saying their land and air offensive aims to prevent Hamas from regrouping.
The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 45,500 people in Gaza.
Israel’s former defense chief Gallant quits politics
- Yoav Gallant was fired from the Israeli government in November after disagreements over the conduct of the war in Gaza
JERUSALEM: Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who had often taken an independent line against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government allies, said on Wednesday he was resigning from parliament.
Gallant was fired from the government in November by Netanyahu, after months of disagreements over the conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza, but kept his seat as an elected member of the Knesset.
“Just as it is on the battlefield, so it is in public service. There are moments in which one must stop, assess and choose a direction in order to achieve the goals,” Gallant said in a televised statement.
Gallant had often broken ranks with Netanyahu and his coalition allies of far-right and religious parties, including over exemptions granted to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from serving in the conscript military — a hot button issue.
In March 2023, Netanyahu fired Gallant after he urged a halt to a highly contested government plan to cut the Supreme Court’s powers. His dismissal triggered mass protests and Netanyahu backtracked.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Gallant and Netanyahu, along with a Hamas leader, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict, which Israel has contested.
Israeli strikes kill 12 in Gaza as war grinds into the new year with no end in sight
- One strike hits home in Jabaliya area of northern Gaza, killing seven people
- Israel’s air and ground offensives have killed over 45,000 Palestinians since 2023
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza: Israeli strikes killed at least 12 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, mostly women and children, officials said Wednesday, as the nearly 15-month war ground on into the new year with no end in sight.
One strike hit a home in the Jabaliya area of northern Gaza, the most isolated and heavily destroyed part of the territory, where Israel has been waging a major operation since early October. Gaza’s Health Ministry said seven people were killed, including a woman and four children, and at least a dozen other people were wounded.
Another strike overnight in the built-up Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza killed a woman and a child, according to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the bodies.
The military said militants fired rockets at Israel from the Bureij area overnight and that its forces responded with a strike targeting a militant. The military also issued evacuation orders for the area that were posted online.
A third strike early Wednesday in the southern city of Khan Younis killed three people, according to the nearby Nasser Hospital and the European Hospital, which received the bodies.
The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and abducting around 250. About 100 hostages are still held in Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It says women and children make up more than half the fatalities but does not say how many of those killed were militants.
The Israeli military says it only targets militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in dense residential areas. The army says it has killed 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war has caused widespread destruction and displaced some 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, many of them multiple times.
Hundreds of thousands are living in tents on the coast as winter brings frequent rainstorms and temperatures drop below 10 degrees Celsius (50 F) at night. At least six infants and another person have died of hypothermia, according to the Health Ministry.
American and Arab mediators have spent nearly a year trying to broker a ceasefire and hostage release, but those efforts have repeatedly stalled. Hamas has demanded a lasting truce, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu has vowed to keep fighting until “total victory” over the militants.
Israel sees net departure of citizens for a second year
More than 82,000 Israelis moved abroad in 2024 and only 33,000 people immigrated to the country, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics said. Another 23,000 Israelis returned after long periods abroad.
It was the second year in a row of net departures, a rare occurrence in the history of the country, which was founded by immigrants from Europe and actively encourages Jewish immigration. Many Israelis, looking for a break from the war, have moved abroad, leading to concern about whether it will drive a “brain drain” in sectors like medicine and technology.
Last year, 15,000 fewer people immigrated to Israel than in 2023. The Bureau of Statistics changed its reporting methods in mid-2022 to better track the number of Israelis moving abroad.
Military blames ‘weakening of discipline’ in death of archaeologist who entered Lebanon with troops
In a separate development, the Israeli military blamed “operational burnout” and a “weakening of discipline and safety” in the death of a 70-year-old archaeologist who was killed in southern Lebanon in November along with a soldier while visiting a combat zone.
According to Israeli media reports, Zeev Erlich was not on active duty when he was shot, but was wearing a military uniform and had a weapon. The army said he was a reservist with the rank of major and identified him as a “fallen soldier” when it announced his death.
Erlich was a well-known West Bank settler and researcher of Jewish history. Media reports at the time of his death said he entered Lebanon to explore an archaeological site. The family of the soldier who was killed with him has expressed anger over the circumstances of his death.
The military launched an investigation after the two were killed in a Hezbollah ambush. A separate probe is looking into who allowed Erlich to enter.
The military said the entry of civilians who are not military contractors or journalists into combat zones is not widespread. Still, there have been multiple reports of Israeli civilians who support a permanent Israeli presence in Gaza or Lebanon entering those areas.
Syrian civil war killed more than 528,500: monitor
- Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says 6,777 people, more than half of them civilians, were killed in 2024
- The overall toll includes thousands killed since 2011 that were only confirmed dead recently
DAMASCUS: More than 528,500 people were killed in the Syrian civil war, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said on Wednesday.
The overall toll includes thousands killed since 2011 that were only confirmed dead recently, with access to detention centers and mass graves easier following the rebel overthrow of Bashar Assad.
The Britain-based monitory said 6,777 people, more than half of them civilians, were killed in 2024 in fighting in Syria.
AFP was unable to independently verify these figures.
Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011 after the government brutally repressed pro-democracy protests triggering a devastating conflict that pushed millions to flee abroad and drew in foreign powers.
Last year, 3,598 civilians, including 240 women and 337 children were killed across Syria, according to the Observatory.
In addition, 3,179 combatants were killed, the monitor said, including soldiers from “the old regime,” but also “Islamist armed groups” and jihadists.
In 2023, the Observatory reported 4,360 people killed, including nearly 1,900 civilians.
In December, Islamist-led rebels overthrew Assad, seizing power in a rapid offensive that ended more than 50 years of the family’s iron-fisted rule.
Since 2011, the monitor with a network of sources inside Syria has recorded more than 64,000 deaths in Assad’s prisons “due to torture, medical negligence or poor conditions” in the jails.
Gaza population down by 6 percent since start of war — Palestinian statistics bureau
- Around 45,500 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, have been killed since the war began but another 11,000 are missing
JERUSALEM: The population of Gaza has fallen 6 percent since the war with Israel began nearly 15 months ago as about 100,000 Palestinians left the enclave while more than 55,000 are presumed dead, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).
Around 45,500 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, have been killed since the war began but another 11,000 are missing, the bureau said, citing numbers from the Palestinian Health Ministry.
As such, the population of Gaza has declined by about 160,000 during the course of the war to 2.1 million, with more than a million or 47 percent of the total children under the age of 18, the PCBS said.
It added that Israel has “raged a brutal aggression against Gaza targeting all kinds of life there; humans, buildings and vital infrastructure... entire families were erased from the civil register. There are catastrophic human and material losses.”
Israel’s foreign ministry said the PCBS data was “fabricated, inflated, and manipulated in order to vilify Israel.”
Israel has faced accusations of genocide in Gaza because of the scale of death and destruction.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ highest legal body, ruled last January that Israel must prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians, while Pope Francis has suggested the global community should study whether Israel’s Gaza campaign constitutes genocide.
Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide, saying it abides by international law and has a right to defend itself after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 killed 1,200 Israelis and precipitated the current war.
The PCBS said some 22 percent of Gaza’s population currently faces catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity, according to the criteria of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global monitor.
Included in that 22 percent are some 3,500 children at risk of death due to malnutrition and lack of food, the bureau said.
