LONDON: She has just turned 17, but already she is a media darling. With her mane of curly hair and defiant expression, Ahed Tamimi has reawakened the world to the plight of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.
Tamimi is due to go on trial on Tuesday in an Israeli military court, accused of slapping and kicking an Israeli soldier. The incident, which happened on Dec.15, might have remained below the radar as one of many such altercations in the occupied territories had Tamimi’s mother, Nariman, not filmed it and posted footage on social media, where it went viral.
The case has created a global media storm, with many references to David and Goliath helping to revive interest in the broader Palestinian struggle.
Tamimi was arrested along with her mother and cousin Nour, and despite her youth (she was 16 at the time and, indeed, is still a minor now), she was denied bail and has been in custody since.
Her trial was set first for Jan. 31 — coincidentally, her 17th birthday — then Feb. 6 and now, Feb. 13.
She has been hailed a hero for bravely standing up to the occupying forces in Nabi Saleh, the West Bank village squeezed between an Israeli settlement and an Israeli military checkpoint which is home to the Tamimi family.
The UN office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has criticized Israeli authorities for their handling of the case, while the EU has expressed concern over the detention of minors. Tamimi is one of an estimated 300 underage inmates in Israeli detention — an often-forgotten statistic until her case was highlighted by the media.
More than 1.7 million people have signed an online petition demanding her release and Tamimi’s father, Bassem, said he has welcomed “hundreds” of observers and supporters from as far away as Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, Argentina and Colombia.
He tells his daughter’s story, explains the reality of living under occupation and states his own political views, which include his preference for a single, bi-national state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians.
But to suggest that Palestinians are exploiting Tamimi’s story would be wrong, said Rosemary Hollis, professor of Middle East Policy Studies at City University in London and former director of the Olive Tree Scholarship Programme for Palestinians.
“To be sell-able and grab attention on social media, there has to be an element of appeal above and beyond the plain story of conflict, But there is no proof that this (Tamimi’s case) is being manipulated in a propaganda effort,” she said.
“This is a story that has been going on since 1967. There is a perception that people are fed up with it, especially when there is Syria, where the suffering is of another order.
“The media needs a hook because it gives people access to the broader story, but that doesn’t make this a conspiracy.
“In the past two years, the situation for Palestinians has worsened. The Israelis require the Palestinian police force to prevent acts of violence by any Palestinian against all Israelis, but they don’t trust them to do the job. So the Israelis conduct their own security raids and Palestinians live in constant fear of them.”
It was in just such a middle-of-the-night raid at her home that Tamimi was arrested in December.
She is accused of assault and incitement — offenses that could see her jailed for years. Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, denies the high profile attained by the case will harm Israel.
“Those who are against Israel will be against it if she is brought to court or if she is not,” he said.
He also played down the findings of a recent Pew poll that indicated younger, liberal Americans are less supportive of Israel’s narrative than older generations. He portrayed young liberals as naive and said he expects their views to change as they get older, but added that Israel needs to work “very, very hard not to lose these people.”
However, the Israelis are sufficiently worried about this emerging new “poster girl” for the Palestinian cause that one official recently revealed that there had been a parliamentary investigation into whether Ahed and her equally fair-haired, blue-eyed Tamimi relatives were from a “real” Palestinian family.
Ahed’s gender is another factor. Hollis sees similarities with how Israel has regarded Palestinian women, particularly since the second intifada, when women began to take part in suicide bombings.
“The Israelis said the women must have shamed themselves in some way — had an affair or got pregnant, so that a martyr’s death was preferable. A woman could not be a fighter.”
Tamimi trial revives global interest in ‘David and Goliath’ narrative
Tamimi trial revives global interest in ‘David and Goliath’ narrative
OpenAI’s ChatGPT faces massive outage with thousands of users impacted
BENGALURU, India: Microsoft-backed OpenAI said on Friday night it is facing an issue that has resulted in its popular chatbot ChatGPT being unavailable.
The company said in a statement on its website that it was investigating the issue and working to restore functionality as soon as possible.
Over 19,403 users had been impacted by the outage as of 7:13 p.m. ET (0013 GMT on Saturday), according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
OpenAI did not immediately responded to a request for comment.
Syrian state news agency reports Israeli strike in Aleppo region
- The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported that the strikes had targeted military installations
DAMASCUS: Syrian state media reported an Israeli strike Saturday on the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib that injured soldiers and caused damage.
“At around 00:45 after midnight, the Israeli army launched an air aggression from the direction of southeast Aleppo, targeting a number of sites in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib,” the official SANA news agency said.
The report added that the attack had “resulted in the injury of a number of soldiers and some material losses,” without providing further details.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported the strikes had targeted military installations.
The war monitor also said members of the Iranian revolutionary guards and pro-Tehran factions were based in the area.
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Hezbollah.
The Israeli military has intensified its strikes on Syria since it launched its war on Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on the strikes but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence in Syria.
UK government appoints former Blair negotiator Jonathan Powell as national security adviser
- Powell, who was chief of staff to former PM Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007, was an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process
- He faced criticism for his part in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq
LONDON: The UK’s Labour government has appointed Jonathan Powell, an architect of the Northern Ireland peace process, as its new national security adviser.
Powell, who served as chief of staff to former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair for a decade between 1997 and 2007, was deeply involved in the UK’s decision to participate in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
In 2014, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron appointed him the UK’s special envoy to Libya, in an attempt to promote dialogue between rival factions embroiled in the nation’s civil war.
Many political figures in the UK welcomed Powell’s latest appointment at a time of escalating international conflicts. Some expressed hopes that he will be able to help British authorities forge a positive relationship with Donald Trump when he takes over as US president in January.
However, Powell faced criticism for his role in the UK government’s decision to join the invasion of Iraq two decades ago, and for later promoting the need to engage in dialogue with extremist groups. In 2014, at the height of Daesh’s bloody occupation of large swaths of Iraq and Syria, he argued that UK authorities should open channels of communication with them.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Powell’s experience of negotiating the Northern Ireland peace agreement and his other work related to some of the world’s most complex conflicts make him “uniquely qualified to advise the government on tackling the challenges ahead, and engage with counterparts across the globe to protect and advance UK interests.”
Powell said he was honored to be given the role at a time when “national security, international relations and domestic policies are so interconnected.”
Trump’s shunning of transition planning may have severe consequences, governance group says
- Trump's transition team have yet to sign agreements required by the Presidential Transition Act, which mandates that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations
- The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees
WASHINGTON: A good-governance group is warning of severe consequences if President-elect Donald Trump continues to steer clear of formal transition planning with the Biden administration — inaction that it says is already limiting the federal government’s ability to provide security clearances and briefings to the incoming administration.
Without the planning, says Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, “it would not be possible” to “be ready to govern on day one.”
The president-elect’s transition is being led by Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive who led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term. They said last month that they expected to sign agreements beginning the formal transition process with the Biden White House and the General Services Administration, which acts essentially as the federal government’s landlord.
But those agreements are still unsigned, and the pressure is beginning to mount.
The delay is holding up the federal government’s ability to begin processing security clearances for potentially hundreds of Trump administration national security appointees. That could limit the staff who could work on sensitive information by Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.
It also means Trump appointees can’t yet access federal facilities, documents and personnel to prepare for taking office.
The agreements are required by the Presidential Transition Act, which was enacted in 2022. They mandate that the president-elect’s team agree to an ethics plan and to limit and disclose private donations.
In that act, Congress set deadlines of Sept. 1 for the GSA agreement and Oct. 1 for the White House agreement, in an effort to ensure that incoming administrations are prepared to govern when they enter office. Both deadlines have long since come and gone.
Stier, whose organization works with candidates and incumbents on transitions, said on a call with reporters on Friday that a new administration “walks in with the responsibility of taking over the most complex operation on the planet.”
“In order to do that effectively, they absolutely need to have done a lot of prework,” he said, adding that Trump’s team “has approached this in a, frankly, different way than any other prior transition has.”
“They have, up until now, walked past all of the tradition and, we believe, vital agreements with the federal government,” Stier said.
In a statement this week, Lutnick and McMahon said Trump was “selecting personnel to serve our nation under his leadership and enact policies that make the life of Americans affordable, safe, and secure.” They didn’t mention signing agreements to begin the transition.
A person familiar with the matter said that the congressionally mandated ethics disclosures and contribution limits were factors in the hesitance to sign the agreements.
Trump transition spokesperson Brian Hughes said Friday that the team’s “lawyers continue to constructively engage with the Biden-Harris Administration lawyers regarding all agreements contemplated by the Presidential Transition Act.”
“We will update you once a decision is made,” Hughes said.
The Trump team’s reluctance has persisted despite Biden’s White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients, reaching out to Lutnick and McMahon to reiterate the important role the agreements with the Biden administration and GSA play in beginning a presidential transition.
“We’re here to assist. We want to have a peaceful transition of power,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “We want to make sure they have what they need.”
The unorthodox approach to the presidential transition process recalls the period immediately after Trump’s Election Day victory in 2016. Days later, the president-elect fired the head of his transition team, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and tossed out a transition playbook he’d been compiling.
But Stier said that, even then, Trump’s team had signed the initial agreements that allowed the transition to get started — something that hasn’t happened this time.
“The story’s not finished. But they’re late,” he said. “And even if they manage to get these agreements in now, they’re late in getting those done.”
UN probe says women, children comprise the majority of Gaza war dead
- The report detailed a raft of violations of international law since Oct. 7
GENEVA: The UN on Friday condemned the staggering number of civilians killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, with women and children comprising nearly 70 percent of the thousands of fatalities it had managed to verify.
In a fresh report, slammed by Israel, the United Nations human rights office (OHCHR) detailed a raft of violations of international law since Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack in Israel sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.
Many could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even “genocide,” it warned, demanding international efforts to prevent “atrocity crimes” and ensure accountability.
“Civilians in Gaza have borne the brunt of the attacks, including through the initial ‘complete siege’ of Gaza by Israeli forces,” the UN said.
“Conduct by Israeli forces has caused unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness and disease.”
It pointed to “the Israeli government’s continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement.”
Israel’s mission to the UN in Geneva “categorically” rejected the report, decrying “the inherent obsession of OHCHR with the demonization of Israel.”
“Gaza is now a rubble-strewn landscape,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN rights office’s activities in the Palestinian territories, said via video-link from Amman.
“Within this dystopia of destruction and devastation, those alive are left injured, displaced and starving.”
Friday’s report also found that Hamas and other armed groups had committed widespread violations that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including seizing hostages, killings, torture and sexual violence.
Those violations, it said, were especially committed in connection with the October 7, 2023 attack, which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly of civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
The report also tackled the contentious issue of the proportion of civilians among the nearly 43,500 people killed in Gaza so far, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian territory.
UN agencies have been relying on death tolls provided by the authorities in Hamas-run Gaza due to lack of access. This has sparked harsh criticism from Israel but the UN has repeatedly said the figures are reliable.
The rights office said it had now managed to verify around 10,000 of the more than 34,500 people reportedly killed during the first six months of the war.
“We have so far found close to 70 percent to be children and women,” Sunghay said, highlighting the stringent verification methodology that requires at least three separate sources.
He said the findings indicated “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.”
He said 4,700 of the verified fatalities were children and 2,461 were women.
The rights office found that about 80 percent of all the verified deaths in Gaza had occurred in Israeli attacks on residential buildings or similar housing.
Children between the ages of five and nine made up the largest group of victims, with the youngest victim a one-day-old boy and the oldest a 97-year-old woman, it said.
Israel says its operations in Gaza target militants and are in line with international law.
But Friday’s report stressed that the verified deaths largely Gaza’s demographic makeup rather than that of combatants.
This, it said, clearly “raises concerns regarding compliance with the principle of distinction and reflect an apparent failure to take all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life.”
UN rights chief Volker Turk called on all countries to work to halt the violations and to ensure accountability, including through universal jurisdiction.
“It is essential that there is due reckoning with respect to the allegations of serious violations of international law through credible and impartial judicial bodies,” he said.
“The violence must stop immediately, the hostages and those arbitrarily detained must be released, and we must focus on flooding Gaza with humanitarian aid.”
