SHATI CAMP, GAZA: Abd Al-Kari Al-Far arrived at the aid distribution center to collect the food basket he receives from the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency every three months.
Inside there was flour, rice, sugar, lentils and oil, enough basic ingredients to feed him and his family.
“I need this help. Al-Far told Arab News. “It’s not a big deal for many people, but I do not work regularly. This helps me feed my family and my children.”
But Al-Far fears his journey this week to collect the goods in the Shati refugee camp may be his last.
The US has decided to freeze more than half of its first tranche of funding for 2018 to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Aid workers warn that the cut will have a devastating effect on the 5 million people it helps in both the Palestinian territories and Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.The impact is expected to be most severe in Gaza. The territory has been left utterly destitute by an Israeli blockade, a series of brutal wars, and the infighting between between Hamas which rules, Gaza and Fatah, which controls the West Bank. The increased levels of poverty has raised the demand on the services provided by UNRWA.
“I do not know that I will be able to get it again,” Al-Far said, of his supplies. “The (UNRWA) staff here say that the reality is difficult.”
The US State Department said on Tuesday that it would only pay $60 million of an initial $125 million in voluntary contributions to UNRWA for 2018. The money is mainly to pay salaries in schools and health facilities in Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza.
US officials insisted the cut in funding was not to punish Palestinian leaders, who have been enraged by Donald Trump’s decision last month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Some members of Trump’s team even called for a complete halt of the funding.
The officials said they want other countries to contribute and for the agency to be reformed. Belgium has already stepped in, offering $23 million.
Matthias Schmale, the UNRWA director in Gaza, told Arab News that the agency provides assistance to one million Palestinian refugees in the territory.
He said they were already struggling as the budget has been declining for years.
“We are extremely worried,” Schmale said. “We are trying to keep our basic services open.”
He said they would ask their other donors to supply their money earlier than normal “while we organize a massive fundraising campaign to replace this cut.”
Even if Washington provided the additional $65 million, the $125 million total would be well below the $360million that the US was expected to provide UNRWA through the whole year, Schmale said.
Fearing the knock-on effects of the budget cut, businesses in Gaza said they would strike on Monday to protest against the “catastrophic collapse” of the economy in the territory.
“The economic situation has been directly affected by the sharp decline in the purchasing power of the Gazans, the decline in the commercial and purchasing sector and the decrease in imports,” Maher Tabbaa, director of public relations at the Palestinian Chamber of Commerce, told Arab News
He said that at the main Kerem Shalom crossing into Israel imports had decreased by more than 40 percent in 2017.
A Palestinian police spokesman in Gaza, Ayman Al-Batniji, said around 100,000 Palestinians were arrested in 2017 because of unpaid debts.
Unemployment rates in Gaza have reached 46 percent overall and 67 percent among graduates. Household food insecurity in Gaza has risen to 50 percent according to aid agencies.
Rahma Dabban, a widow and mother of five, had her financial assistance from UNRWA suspended last year leaving her with just her food basket.
“I am a refugee from a refugee family,” Dabban said. “It is not my responsibility to look for funding. This is the role of states. What I know is that I want to live and that I can feed my children. They can stop it, but they must allow us to establish our state on our land.”
UNRWA was set up by the UN General Assembly in 1949 to provide assistance and protection to Palestinian refugees who had been forced to flee their homes by the war that led to the creation of Israel.
There are now 5 million registered Palestine refugees in the region.
UNRWA’s services include education, health care, aid provision, social services, running the refugee camps’ infrastructures and financial services.
“When they created us, the decision 70 years ago, based on a promise to Israelis and Palestinians to create two states, half of that promise has fulfilled,” Schmale said
“The decision says UNRWA should support the refugees until their state is created, there is no sense that we should be moved to another organization, when the promise the international community has given to the refugees has not been fulfilled.”
‘I need this help’ — Destitute Gazans plea for aid to continue after US funding cut
‘I need this help’ — Destitute Gazans plea for aid to continue after US funding cut
Syrians protest after video showing attack on Alawite shrine: monitor, witnesses
- State news agency SANA said police in central Homs imposed a curfew from 6:00 p.m. (1500 GMT) until 8:00 am on Thursday
- Syria’s new authorities said the video footage was “old” and that “unknown groups” were behind the incident
DAMASCUS: Angry protests broke out Wednesday in several areas of Syria after a video circulated showing an attack on an Alawite shrine in the country’s north, a war monitor and witnesses said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said large demonstrations took place in the coastal cities of Tartus and Latakia, provinces that are the heartland of the Alawite minority which deposed ruler Bashar Assad hails from.
The Britain-based Observatory also reported protests in parts of the central city of Homs and other areas including Qardaha, Assad’s hometown.
Witnesses told AFP demonstrations broke out in Tartus, Latakia and nearby Jableh.
Images from Jableh showed large crowds in the streets, some chanting slogans including “Alawite, Sunni, we want peace.”
State news agency SANA said police in central Homs imposed a curfew from 6:00 p.m. (1500 GMT) until 8:00 am on Thursday, while local authorities in Jableh also announced a nighttime curfew.
The Observatory said the protests erupted after a video began circulating earlier Wednesday showing “an attack by fighters” on an important Alawite shrine in the Maysaloon district of Syria’s second city Aleppo.
It said five workers were killed, adding that the shrine was set ablaze.
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said the exact date of the video was unknown.
He said it was filmed early this month, after militants led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham launched a lightning offensive and seized control of major cities including Aleppo on December 1, ousting Assad a week later.
AFP was unable to independently verify the footage or the date of the incident.
Syria’s new authorities said the video footage was “old” and that “unknown groups” were behind the incident.
The footage showing “the storming and attack” of the shrine in Aleppo is “old and dates to the time of the liberation” of the northern Syrian city earlier this month, an interior ministry statement said, adding that the attack was carried out by “unknown groups” and that “republishing” the video served to “stir up strife among the Syrian people at this sensitive stage.”
Hamas says ‘new’ Israeli conditions delaying agreement on Gaza ceasefire
- “Occupation has set new conditions concerning withdrawal (of troops), the ceasefire, prisoners, and the return of displaced people,” Hamas said
JERUSALEM: Hamas accused Israel on Wednesday of imposing “new conditions” that it said were delaying a ceasefire agreement in the war in Gaza, though it acknowledged negotiations were still ongoing.
Israel has made no public statement about any new conditions in its efforts to secure the release of hostages seized on October 7, 2023.
Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, have taken place in Doha in recent days, rekindling hope for a truce deal that has proven elusive.
“The ceasefire and prisoner exchange negotiations are continuing in Doha under the mediation of Qatar and Egypt in a serious manner... but the occupation has set new conditions concerning withdrawal (of troops), the ceasefire, prisoners, and the return of displaced people, which has delayed reaching an agreement,” the Palestinian militant group said in a statement.
Hamas did not elaborate on the conditions imposed by Israel.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told parliament that there was “some progress” in the talks, and on Tuesday his office said Israeli representatives had returned from Qatar after “significant negotiations.”
Last week, Hamas and two other Palestinian militant groups — Islamic Jihad and the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — said in a rare joint statement that a ceasefire agreement was “closer than ever,” provided Israel did not impose new conditions.
Efforts to strike a truce and hostage release deal have repeatedly failed over key stumbling blocks.
Despite numerous rounds of indirect talks, Israel and Hamas have agreed just one truce, which lasted for a week at the end of 2023.
Negotiations have faced multiple challenges since then, with the primary point of disagreement being the establishment of a lasting ceasefire in Gaza.
Another unresolved issue is the governance of post-war Gaza.
It remains a highly contentious issue, including within the Palestinian leadership.
Israel has said repeatedly that it will not allow Hamas to run the territory ever again.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week, Netanyahu said: “I’m not going to agree to end the war before we remove Hamas.”
He added Israel is “not going to leave them in power in Gaza, 30 miles from Tel Aviv. It’s not going to happen.”
Netanyahu has also repeatedly stated that he does not want to withdraw Israeli troops from the Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of land cleared and controlled by Israel along Gaza’s border with Egypt.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, during which militants seized 251 hostages.
Ninety-six of them are still being held in Gaza, including 34 the army says are dead.
The attack resulted in 1,208 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 45,361 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills
- Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war
- Stimulant has flooded the black market across the region in recent years
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar Assad.
Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war, effectively turning it into a narco state under Assad.
“We found a large quantity of captagon, around one million pills,” said a balaclava-wearing member of the security forces, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Osama, and whose khaki uniform bore a “public security” patch.
An AFP journalist saw forces pour fuel over and set fire to a cache of cannabis, the painkiller tramadol, and around 50 bags of pink and yellow captagon pills in a security compound formerly belonging to Assad’s forces in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district.
Captagon has flooded the black market across the region in recent years.
“The security forces of the new government discovered a drug warehouse as they were inspecting the security quarter,” said another member of the security forces, who identified himself as Hamza.
Authorities destroyed the stocks of alcohol, cannabis, captagon and hashish in order to “protect Syrian society” and “cut off smuggling routes used by Assad family businesses,” he added.
Syria’s new rulers have yet to spell out their policy on alcohol, which has long been widely available in the country.
Since a militant alliance toppled Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, Syria’s new authorities have said massive quantities of captagon have been found in former government sites around the country, including security branches.
AFP journalists in Syria have seen fighters from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) set fire to what they said were stashes of captagon found at facilities once operated by Assad’s forces.
Security force member Hamza confirmed Wednesday that “this is not the first initiative of its kind — the security services, in a number of locations, have found other warehouses... and drug manufacturing sites and destroyed them in the appropriate manner.”
Maher Assad, a military commander and the brother of Bashar Assad, is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Experts believe Syria’s former leader used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
Jordan in recent years has cracked down on the smuggling of weapons and drugs including captagon along its 375-kilometer (230-mile) border with Syria.
UK to host Israel-Palestine peace summit
- PM Starmer drawing on experience working on Northern Ireland peace process
- G7 fund to unlock financing for reconciliation projects
LONDON: The UK will host an international summit early next year aimed at bringing long-term peace to Israel and Palestine, The Independent reported.
The event will launch the International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace, which is backed by the Alliance for Middle East Peace, containing more than 160 organizations engaged in peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who worked on the Northern Ireland peace process, ordered Foreign Secretary David Lammy to begin work on hosting the summit.
The fund being unlocked alongside the summit pools money from G7 countries to build “an environment conducive to peacemaking.” The US opened the fund with a $250 million donation in 2020.
As part of peacebuilding efforts, the fund supports projects “to help build the foundation for peaceful co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians and for a sustainable two-state solution.”
It also supports reconciliation between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel, as well as the development of the Palestinian private sector in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Young Israelis and Palestinians will meet and work together during internships in G7 countries as part of the scheme.
Former Labour Shadow Middle East Minister Wayne David and ex-Conservative Middle East Minister Alistair Burt said the fund is vital in bringing an end to the conflict.
In a joint piece for The Independent, they said: “The prime minister’s pledge reflects growing global momentum to support peacebuilding efforts from the ground up, ensuring that the voices of those who have long worked for equality, security and dignity for all are not only heard, but are actively shaping the societal and political conditions that real conflict resolution will require.
“Starmer’s announcement that the foreign secretary will host an inaugural meeting in London to support peacebuilders is a vital first step … This meeting will help to solidify the UK’s role as a leader in shaping the future of the region.”
The fund is modeled on the International Fund for Ireland, which spurred peacebuilding efforts in the lead-up to the 1999 Good Friday Agreement. Starmer is drawing inspiration from his work in Northern Ireland to shape the scheme.
He served as human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board from 2003-2007, monitoring the service’s compliance with human rights law introduced through the Good Friday Agreement.
David and Burt said the UK is “a natural convener” for the new scheme, adding: “That role is needed now more than ever.”
They said: “The British government is in a good position to do this for three reasons: Firstly, the very public reaching out to diplomatic partners, and joint ministerial visits, emphasises the government turning a page on its key relationships.
“Secondly, Britain retains a significant influence in the Middle East, often bridging across those who may have differences with each other. And, thirdly, there is the experience of Northern Ireland.
“Because of his personal and professional engagement with Northern Ireland, Keir Starmer is fully aware of the important role civil society has played in helping to lay the foundations for peace.”
Erdogan announces plans to open Turkish consulate in Aleppo
- Erdogan also issued a stern warning to Kurdish militants in Syria
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Wednesday that Turkiye will soon open a consulate in Syria's Aleppo.
Erdogan also issued a stern warning to Kurdish militants in Syria, stating they must either "lay down their weapons or be buried in Syrian lands with their weapons."
The remarks underscore Turkiye's firm stance on combating Kurdish groups it views as a threat to its national security.
