BEIRUT: Almost 300 Syrian refugees left Arsal in Lebanon on Thursday and returned to western Qalamoun in Syria under the supervision of the UN refugee agency UNHCR.
In April, about 3,000 Syrian refugees in the Arsal camps registered with the committee organizing their return. They asked to return to their towns in western Qalamoun within the framework of a reconciliation with the Syrian authorities.
The lists of names were submitted to the Lebanese General Security, which in turn communicated with the Syrian authorities and awaited Syrian approval.
Arsal Mayor Basil Hujairi told Arab News: “Syria’s initial approval allowed the return of 3,000 people, but the lists that returned from Syria included only 294 names; some of them were not granted permits for their families to return with them, so they preferred to stay in the camp and wait for a permit that included all members of their families.”
Hujairi said: “The Syrian authorities requested that refugees return in groups. Lebanon is awaiting Syria’s decision to approve the entry of the second group of Syrian refugees after the General Security receives Syria’s written approval.
“Until now, no time has been specified for the return of the second group,” he said.
The returning refugees gathered since early morning at the checkpoint in Wadi Hamid, which separates Arsal from the Jurud Arsal area that overlaps with Syrian territory. They carried their belongings as well as tents.
They loaded their belongings along with their family members in cars used earlier when they fled to Lebanon. The municipality of Arsal also provided returnees with pickup trucks that carried them to the Syrian border.
The Lebanese General Security scrutinized the returnees’ documents under the supervisory umbrella of the Lebanese army and the internal security forces.
The General Security Directorate said that it had “secured the voluntary return of 294 Syria refugees,” and that “their return was carried out in coordination with the UNHCR and in its presence after having directly communicated with those who wished to return.”
However, UNHCR spokesperson Lisa Abou Khaled told Arab News: “The UNHCR did not have an organizing role, but was answering the questions of returning refugees.
“We have coordinated with the Lebanese Red Cross and a civil society association to vaccinate children and provide necessary medicines to sick people with the most urgent needs,” she said.
The UNHCR team in Syria was trying “to reach western Qalamoun in order to keep pace with the returnees and is still waiting for the Syrian authorities’ approval to be allowed entry to the area, but the approval has not yet come,” Abou Khaled said.
She said the returnees’ demands were focused on “securing documents like birth certificates, divorce papers, marriage contracts, or death documents as well as securing school documents so that their children can go to schools in Syria.”
The return journey to Fleita and the western villages of Qalamoun took about an hour.
Hujairi said: “Before they are sent to their towns, returnees will be received by the Syrian authorities at schools until border security measures are completed.”
About 50,000 Syrian refugees remain in and around Arsal, according to witnesses, while refugees registered with UNHCR number about 40,000.
Khaled Abdul Aziz, a Syrian who heads the returnees’ committee and who returned on Thursday with the first group, said: “Ninety-nine percent of the returnees’ houses are undamaged and unaffected by the war.”
Nevertheless, voluntary repatriation in the framework of a reconciliation with the Syrian regime will not include refugees from Al-Qusayr and its surroundings. They remained in their tents in Arsal, watching as others packed and left to return to Syria.
Most of those interviewed by Arab News agreed that such a return was “inconceivable.”
Abu Mohammed, who heads the Iwaa Al-Ward refugee camp in Arsal, said those who were not allowed to return to Syria would organize a peaceful sit-in on Friday at the Molham School in Arsal with the approval of the Lebanese authorities.
“We are watching returnees and what will become of them and do not wish to be the scapegoat; Al-Qusayr is a special case,” he said. “In our sit-in, we will declare that we will hold on to our Syrian identity and reject resettlement. We wish to leave Lebanon under UN protection and we want a decent means of livelihood.”
Abu Mohammed said that a number of villages in Al-Qusayr’s countryside had been destroyed.
“Some of us did not bring their land or real estate ownership documents, but it is possible to obtain new ones inside Syria,” he said, “We hope to return to Syria before a year passes, which is the extended duration for proving real estate ownership according to Syria’s new Law No. 10.”
Abou Khaled said that the UNHCR is keen to avoid separating families.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs will continue to freeze the renewal of UNHCR staff residency permits,” she said.
“This freeze has affected 19 employees — some of whom are senior staff — whose residencies expired about a week ago and are still in Lebanon anticipating developments,” she said.
Earlier this month, caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil ordered a freeze on the renewal of UNHCR staff residency permits and accused them of obstructing the return of refugees.
The UNHCR denied this accusation and said it supported the return of refugees when conditions were safe.
Major international donors to Lebanon expressed their dissatisfaction with what they deemed “false accusations against the UNHCR.”
Reuters quoted a senior Lebanese official saying his country would resume granting residency permits to UNHCR staff once they and other UN bodies provided “a clear plan for the repatriation of Syrian refugees.”
Hadi Hachem, Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry chief of Cabinet, said that Lebanon hoped to sit down with the UNHCR, UN agencies and relevant members of the international community to come up with a “clear, gradual plan for the return.”
He said: “Gebran Bassil will amend his decision and visas will come back when this meeting takes place and the return plan is on the right track.”
294 Syrians leave refugee camps in Lebanon to return home
294 Syrians leave refugee camps in Lebanon to return home
- UNHCR monitors the situation and awaits restoration of residency permit renewal process
- The returning refugees gathered since early morning at the checkpoint in Wadi Hamid, which separates Arsal from the Jurud Arsal area that overlaps with Syrian territory.
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 — EGY
Cairo, Nov 15, 2024 : 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.”
Israeli forces demolish Palestinian Al-Bustan community center in Jerusalem
- Al-Bustan Association functioned as a primary community center in which Silwan’s youth and families ran cultural and social activities
LONDON: Israeli forces demolished the office of the Palestinian Al-Bustan Association in occupied East Jerusalem’s neighborhood of Silwan, whose residents are under threat of Israeli eviction orders.
The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Culture condemned on Thursday the demolition of Al-Bustan by Israeli bulldozers and a military police force.
The ministry said that “(Israeli) occupation’s arrogant practices against cultural and community institutions in Palestine, and specifically in Jerusalem, are targeting the Palestinian identity, in an attempt to obliterate it.”
Founded in 2004, the Al-Bustan Association functioned as a primary community center in which Silwan’s youth and families ran cultural and social activities alongside hosting meetings for diplomatic delegations and Western journalists who came to learn about controversial Israeli policies in the area.
Al-Bustan said in a statement that it served 1,500 people in Silwan, most of them children, who enrolled in educational, cultural and artistic workshops. In addition to the Al-Bustan office, Israeli forces also demolished a home in the neighborhood belonging to the Al-Qadi family.
Located less than a mile from Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem’s southern ancient wall, Silwan has a population of 65,000 Palestinians, some of them under threat of Israeli eviction orders.
In past years, Israeli authorities have been carrying out archaeological digging under Palestinian homes in Silwan, resulting in damage to these buildings, in search of the three-millennial “City of David.”
