UNITED NATIONS/DOUMA: The UN Security Council will hold a closed-door meeting on Thursday to discuss an appeal from UN aid officials for a month-long humanitarian cease-fire in Syria, diplomats said.
Sweden and Kuwait requested the meeting of the top UN body on Wednesday as Syrian government forces continued to shell rebel-held Eastern Ghouta, killing scores in some of the worst bloodshed in years.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Panos Moumtzis, has called for a month-long cease-fire to allow aid convoys to reach civilians in Eastern Ghouta.
“We are particularly concerned about attacks against civilians and civilian objects, such as hospitals. These attacks further compound civilian suffering, and are leading to large numbers of new displacements,” said Swedish Ambassador Olof Skoog.
Senior UN aid official Ursula Mueller told the council last month that the Syrian government blocked all aid convoys to besieged areas in January.
“There has been no progress on cross-line humanitarian access for the UN and its partners to besieged and hard to reach areas,” said the Swedish ambassador.
“A humanitarian cease-fire would enable the delivery of life-saving assistance and the evacuation of hundreds of critically ill patients urgently needing medical treatment” in Eastern Ghouta, he said.
More than 13.1 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian aid including 6.1 million who have been displaced within the country.
Meanwhile in Syria, renewed government strikes killed 32 civilians on Wednesday in a rebel-held enclave near Damascus, where overwhelmed medics were still treating survivors of the Syrian conflict's bloodiest day in months.
The district of Eastern Ghouta, controlled by rebel factions, suffered some of its worst bloodshed in years on Tuesday, when 80 civilians were killed.
Regime warplanes returned Wednesday morning for fresh strikes on the enclave, with the death toll climbing to 32 civilians including a dozen children, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Among them was the young daughter of Abu Raad, a shell-shocked man from Eastern Ghouta.
"Now the rescue workers are searching for my second daughter but can't find her. What do I do?" he cried.
Tuesday's toll of 80 dead was "the highest civilian toll in Syria in nearly nine months, and one of the bloodiest days for Eastern Ghouta in several years," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Nineteen children and 20 women are among the dead, and around 200 were wounded, said the Britain-based war monitor.
The deadliest raids hit Beit Sawa and Hammuriyeh, the Observatory said.
In Hammuriyeh, a young man stared at the bodies of five children, including his younger brother, killed in an air strike.
"I saw them filling up water, and a few minutes later the airplane hit. I came back and found all five dead," he said.
Civilians had been bracing for more raids as the regime appeared intent on ratcheting up the pressure on Eastern Ghouta, a rebel pocket on the capital's doorstep.
"Please break up all gatherings and clear the streets," blared an announcement from mosque minarets in Douma.
In apparent retaliation, rebel rocket fire on a government-controlled suburb of Damascus killed one child an wounded two people, state news agency SANA reported.
Citing a police source, SANA said the shells were launched from Eastern Ghouta.
Home to an estimated 400,000 people, the Eastern Ghouta region has been included in a de-escalation deal that was meant to bring calm.
But the bombardment has increased in recent days, including with suspected chlorine-filled munitions.
On Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said "all indications" pointed to the Syrian government's use of chlorine weapons in Syria.
"All indications... tell us today that chlorine is being used by the regime at present in Syria," he told BFM television.
Chlorine is suspected of having been used on two occasions this month alone on Eastern Ghouta.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said a fact-finding mission mandated "to establish the facts surrounding allegations of the use of toxic chemicals... is investigating all credible allegations."
The world's chemical watchdog voiced "grave concern" over the new reports.
The US State Department said on Monday it had recorded six suspected chemical attacks in Syria in the past 30 days.
Syria has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons.
On Wednesday, the Syrian army said it intercepted an Israeli attack on a military position in Jamraya, northwest of Damascus.
Jamraya is home to several military positions and a branch of the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, suspected of playing a leading role in chemical weapons production.
An Israeli air strike hit the facility in May 2013.
"This morning, Israeli warplanes fired several missiles from Lebanese airspace on one of our military positions in the Damascus countryside," said an army statement carried by state media.
"Our air defence systems blocked them and destroyed most of them."
The Observatory said an arms depot in Jamraya had been hit, but it could not confirm whether research facilities had been damaged.
The de-escalation zones, according to the UN's regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, were not doing enough to stem the violence.
"There is a misperception that de-escalation areas have resulted in peace and stability," Panos Moumtzis told reporters in Beirut.
"Eastern Ghouta is a de-escalation area. If anything, there has been a serious escalation... The conflict in Syria is far from over," Moumtzis said.
He said the situation had grown more dire because of the multiple fronts raging at the same time.
"It's the first time -- between Eastern Ghouta, Idlib, Afrin -- we have multiple fronts with people in extreme danger without a view to a solution," he said.
"Now, we feel we've reached a breaking point."
More than 340,000 people have been killed and millions displaced since the conflict in Syria erupted in March 2011.
UN Security Council to discuss Syria humanitarian truce as new air strikes kill 32
UN Security Council to discuss Syria humanitarian truce as new air strikes kill 32
Israeli strike on Lebanese army center kills soldier, wounds 18 others
- It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes that have killed over 40 Lebanese troops
- Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister condemned it as an assault on US-led ceasefire efforts
BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on a Lebanese army center on Sunday killed one soldier and wounded 18 others, the Lebanese military said.
It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes that have killed over 40 Lebanese troops, even as the military has largely kept to the sidelines in the war between Israel and Hezbollah militants.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has said previous strikes on Lebanese troops were accidental and that they are not a target of its campaign against Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, condemned it as an assault on US-led ceasefire efforts, calling it a “direct, bloody message rejecting all efforts and ongoing contacts” to end the war.
“(Israel is) again writing in Lebanese blood a brazen rejection of the solution that is being discussed,” a statement from his office read.
The strike occurred in southwestern Lebanon on the coastal road between Tyre and Naqoura, where there has been heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip ignited the war there. Hezbollah has portrayed the attacks as an act of solidarity with the Palestinians and Hamas. Iran supports both armed groups.
Israel has launched retaliatory airstrikes since the rocket fire began, and in September the low-level conflict erupted into all-out war, as Israel launched waves of airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon and killed Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and several of his top commanders.
Israeli airstrikes early Saturday pounded central Beirut, killing at least 20 people and wounding 66, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. Hezbollah has continued to fire regular barrages into Israel, forcing people to race for shelters and occasionally killing or wounding them.
Israeli attacks have killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. The fighting has displaced about 1.2 million people, or a quarter of Lebanon’s population.
On the Israeli side, about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed by bombardments in northern Israel and in battle following Israel’s ground invasion in early October. Around 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from the country’s north.
The Biden administration has spent months trying to broker a ceasefire, and US envoy Amos Hochstein was back in the region last week.
The emerging agreement would pave the way for the withdrawal of Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops from southern Lebanon below the Litani River in accordance with the UN Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war. Lebanese troops would patrol the area, with the presence of UN peacekeepers.
Lebanon’s army reflects the religious diversity of the country and is respected as a national institution, but it does not have the military capability to impose its will on Hezbollah or resist Israel’s invasion.
EU’s Borrell urges pressure on Israel, Hezbollah to accept US ceasefire proposal
- The EU’s foreign policy chief warned that Lebanon was “on the brink of collapse”
BEIRUT: The European Union’s foreign policy chief called on Sunday during a visit to Beirut for pressure to be exerted on both the Israeli government and on Lebanon’s Hezbollah to accept a US ceasefire proposal.
Speaking at a news conference in Beirut, Josep Borell also urged Lebanese leaders to pick a president to end a two-year power vacuum in the country, and he pledged 200 million euros in support for Lebanon’s armed forces.
Lebanon on 'brink of collapse'
The EU’s foreign policy chief warned that Lebanon was “on the brink of collapse” after Israel launched an intense air campaign two months ago following nearly a year of clashes with Hezbollah.
“Back in September I came and was still hoping we could prevent a full-fledged war of Israel attacking Lebanon. Two months later Lebanon is on the brink of collapse,” Josep Borrell told reporters in Beirut.
Israeli army orders Gaza City suburb evacuated, spurring new displacement wave
- Israeli military blames Hamas rocket fire for renewed evacuation directive
- Palestinians say hospitals in north Gaza barely functioning
CAIRO: The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders to residents in areas of an eastern Gaza City suburb, setting off a new wave of displacement on Sunday, and a Gaza hospital director was injured in an Israeli drone attack, Palestinian medics said.
The new orders for the Shejaia suburb posted by the Israeli army spokesperson on X on Saturday night were blamed on Palestinian militants firing rockets from that heavily built-up district in the north of the Gaza Strip.
“For your safety, you must evacuate immediately to the south,” the military’s post said. The rocket volley on Saturday was claimed by Hamas’ armed wing, which said it had targeted an Israeli army base over the border.
Footage circulated on social and Palestinian media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed residents leaving Shejaia on donkey carts and rickshaws, with others, including children carrying backpacks, walking.
Families living in the targeted areas began fleeing their homes after nightfall on Saturday and into Sunday’s early hours, residents and Palestinian media said — the latest in multiple waves of displacement since the war began 13 months ago.
In central Gaza, health officials said at least 10 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the urban camps of Al-Maghazi and Al-Bureij since Saturday night.
Hospital director wounded by gunfire
In north Gaza, where Israeli forces have been operating against regrouping Hamas militants since early last month, health officials said an Israeli drone dropped bombs on Kamal Adwan Hospital, injuring its director Hussam Abu Safiya.
“This will not stop us from completing our humanitarian mission and we will continue to do this job at any cost,” Abu Safiya said in a video statement circulated by the health ministry on Sunday.
“We are being targeted daily. They targeted me a while ago but this will not deter us...,” he said from his hospital bed.
Israeli forces say armed militants use civilian buildings including housing blocks, hospitals and schools for operational cover. Hamas denies this, accusing Israeli forces of indiscriminately targeting populated areas.
Kamal Adwan is one of three hospitals in north Gaza that are barely operational as the health ministry said the Israeli forces have detained and expelled medical staff and prevented emergency medical, food and fuel supplies from reaching them.
In the past few weeks, Israel said it had facilitated the delivery of medical and fuel supplies and the transfer of patients from north Gaza hospitals in collaboration with international agencies such as the World Health Organization.
Residents in three embattled north Gaza towns — Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun — said Israeli forces had blown up hundreds of houses since renewing operations in an area that Israel said months ago had been cleared of militants.
Palestinians say Israel appears determined to depopulate the area permanently to create a buffer zone along the northern edge of Gaza, an accusation Israel denies.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,000 people, uprooted nearly all the enclave’s 2.3 million population at least once, according to Gaza officials, while reducing wide swathes of the narrow coastal territory to rubble.
The war erupted in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023 in which gunmen killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Iran to hold nuclear talks with three European powers in Geneva on Friday, Kyodo reports
- A senior Iranian official confirmed that the meeting would go ahead next Friday
DUBAI: Iran plans to hold talks about its disputed nuclear program with three European powers on Nov. 29 in Geneva, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported on Sunday, days after the UN atomic watchdog passed a resolution against Tehran.
Iran reacted to the resolution, which was proposed by Britain, France, Germany and the United States, with what government officials called various measures such as activating numerous new and advanced centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium.
Kyodo said Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s government was seeking a solution to the nuclear impasse ahead of the inauguration in January of US President-elect Donald Trump.
A senior Iranian official confirmed that the meeting would go ahead next Friday, adding that “Tehran has always believed that the nuclear issue should be resolved through diplomacy. Iran has never left the talks.”
In 2018, the then-Trump administration exited Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six major powers and reimposed harsh sanctions on Iran, prompting Tehran to violate the pact’s nuclear limits, with moves such as rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output.
Indirect talks between President Joe Biden’s administration and Tehran to try to revive the pact have failed, but Trump said in his election campaign in September that “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal.”
Israel cracks down on Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza
- Israeli authorities have opened more incitement cases against Palestinian citizens during the war in Gaza than in the previous five years combined
UMM AL-FAHM, Israel: Israel’s yearlong crackdown against Palestinian citizens who speak out against the war in Gaza is prompting many to self-censor out of fear of being jailed and further marginalized in society, while some still find ways to dissent — carefully.
Ahmed Khalefa’s life turned upside down after he was charged with inciting terrorism for chanting in solidarity with Gaza at an anti-war protest in October 2023.
The lawyer and city counselor from central Israel says he spent three difficult months in jail followed by six months detained in an apartment. It’s unclear when he’ll get a final verdict on his guilt or innocence. Until then, he’s forbidden from leaving his home from dusk to dawn.
Khalefa is one of more than 400 Palestinian citizens of Israel who, since the start of the war in Gaza, have been investigated by police for “incitement to terrorism” or “incitement to violence,” according to Adalah, a legal rights group for minorities. More than half of those investigated were also criminally charged or detained, Adalah said.
“Israel made it clear they see us more as enemies than as citizens,” Khalefa said in an interview at a cafe in his hometown of Umm Al-Fahm, Israel’s second-largest Palestinian city.
Israel has roughly 2 million Palestinian citizens, whose families remained within the borders of what became Israel in 1948. Among them are Muslims and Christians, and they maintain family and cultural ties to Gaza and the West Bank, which Israel captured in 1967.
Israel says its Palestinian citizens enjoy equal rights, including the right to vote, and they are well-represented in many professions. However, Palestinians are widely discriminated against in areas like housing and the job market.
Israeli authorities have opened more incitement cases against Palestinian citizens during the war in Gaza than in the previous five years combined, Adalah’s records show. Israeli authorities have not said how many cases ended in convictions and imprisonment. The Justice Ministry said it did not have statistics on those convictions.
Just being charged with incitement to terrorism or identifying with a terrorist group can land a suspect in detention until they’re sentenced, under the terms of a 2016 law.
In addition to being charged as criminals, Palestinians citizens of Israel — who make up around 20 percent of the country’s population — have lost jobs, been suspended from schools and faced police interrogations posting online or demonstrating, activists and rights watchdogs say.
It’s had a chilling effect.
“Anyone who tries to speak out about the war will be imprisoned and harassed in his work and education,” said Oumaya Jabareen, whose son was jailed for eight months after an anti-war protest. “People here are all afraid, afraid to say no to this war.”
Jabareen was among hundreds of Palestinians who filled the streets of Umm Al-Fahm earlier this month carrying signs and chanting political slogans. It appeared to be the largest anti-war demonstration in Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. But turnout was low, and Palestinian flags and other national symbols were conspicuously absent. In the years before the war, some protests could draw tens of thousands of Palestinians in Israel.
Authorities tolerated the recent protest march, keeping it under heavily armed supervision. Helicopters flew overhead as police with rifles and tear gas jogged alongside the crowd, which dispersed without incident after two hours. Khalefa said he chose not to attend.
Shortly after the Oct. 7 attack, Israel’s far-right government moved quickly to invigorate a task force that has charged Palestinian citizens of Israel with “supporting terrorism” for posts online or protesting against the war. At around the same time, lawmakers amended a security bill to increase surveillance of online activity by Palestinians in Israel, said Nadim Nashif, director of the digital rights group 7amleh. These moves gave authorities more power to restrict freedom of expression and intensify their arrest campaigns, Nashif said.
The task force is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a hard-line national security minister who oversees the police. His office said the task force has monitored thousands of posts allegedly expressing support for terror organizations and that police arrested “hundreds of terror supporters,” including public opinion leaders, social media influencers, religious figures, teachers and others.
“Freedom of speech is not the freedom to incite ... which harms public safety and our security,” his office said in a statement.
But activists and rights groups say the government has expanded its definition of incitement much too far, targeting legitimate opinions that are at the core of freedom of expression.
Myssana Morany, a human rights attorney at Adalah, said Palestinian citizens have been charged for seemingly innocuous things like sending a meme of a captured Israeli tank in Gaza in a private WhatsApp group chat. Another person was charged for posting a collage of children’s photos, captioned in Arabic and English: “Where were the people calling for humanity when we were killed?” The feminist activist group Kayan said over 600 women called its hotline because of blowback in the workplace for speaking out against the war or just mentioning it unfavorably.
Over the summer, around two dozen anti-war protesters in the port city of Haifa were only allowed to finish three chants before police forcefully scattered the gathering into the night. Yet Jewish Israelis demanding a hostage release deal protest regularly — and the largest drew hundreds of thousands to the streets of Tel Aviv.
Khalefa, the city counselor, is not convinced the crackdown on speech will end, even if the war eventually does. He said Israeli prosecutors took issue with slogans that broadly praised resistance and urged Gaza to be strong, but which didn’t mention violence or any militant groups. For that, he said, the government is trying to disbar him, and he faces up to eight years in prison.
“They wanted to show us the price of speaking out,” Khalefa said.
