CAIRO: The UN and individual donors are rushing food to a desperate corner of northern Yemen where starving villagers were found to be living off leaves. Aid officials are searching for ways to ensure aid reaches those in need amid alarm that the country’s hunger crisis is worsening beyond the relief effort’s already strained capabilities.
The aid push was directed at a district called Aslam where earlier this month The Associated Press found some families eating leaves. But in a sign of the difficulties in tracking Yemen’s near-famine, conditions appeared to be as bad or worse in a neighboring district, Khayran Al-Maharraq.
On a recent day, Shouib Sakaf buried his 3-year-old daughter, Zaifa, the fifth child known to have died in the district this year from malnutrition-related illness. Sakaf prayed over a grave marked by piles of stones and tangled, dry branches from the surrounding mountain shrubs.
Zaifa was as old as Yemen’s civil war, waged between rebels known as Houthis and a coalition led by Saudi Arabia. Born in the war’s early days, Zaifa succumbed to the humanitarian crisis it has caused — widespread hunger, the collapse of the economy and the breakdown of the health system. In her final weeks, she wasted away, her ribs protruding, her face and feet swollen. At a local medical facility which did not have enough supplies, her father was told she had to be taken to a hospital further away to treat kidney complications. He had no way to pay for transportation there.
“Death came at 2:30 p.m.,” Sakaf said with a deep sigh. “Then we left.”
UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock issued a dire warning to the Security Council on Friday, ahead of the world body’s General Assembly, saying, “We are losing the fight against famine” in Yemen.
“We may now be approaching a tipping point, beyond which it will be impossible to prevent massive loss of life as a result of widespread famine across the country,” he said. “We are already seeing pockets of famine-like conditions, including cases where people are eating leaves.”
Across Yemen, around 2.9 million women and children are acutely malnourished; another 400,000 children are fighting for their lives, in the same condition as Zaifa was. This year, the UN and humanitarian groups provided assistance to more than 8 million of the most vulnerable Yemenis who don’t know when their next meal will come. That is a dramatic expansion from 2017, when food was reaching 3 million people a month in the country of nearly 29 million.
Lowcock spoke after the AP alerted UN relief officials to the villagers in Aslam district, an isolated area in Hajjah province.
After the AP report, activists launched an online campaign called: “Rescue Aslam” with bank account details to collect donations. Some 30 food baskets financed by individual donors were distributed over the past days.
The UN’s World Food Program carried out an investigation in Aslam and found that aid hasn’t been reaching all targeted beneficiaries. It has since sent trucks carrying 10,000 food packages to the district, each meant to feed one family for a month. Distribution of the aid is still pending the finalization of registration lists.
Getting relief to those in need has been complicated because international agencies are required to work from lists that are often compiled by local Houthi authorities. Critics accuse those authorities of favoritism in putting together the lists.
Stephen Anderson, the director of the WFP, said there is a “retargeting exercise” underway to make sure that “the poorest and hungriest and most marginalized people, wherever they are, are targeted first.”
The agency is introducing a biometric registration to establish a database of beneficiaries, including their finger prints to avoid forgery and duplications.
Anderson said the system “will help give us an assurance” that situations like those in Hajjah are prevented or at least minimized.
A senior relief official said local authorities have resisted implementing biometric registration and the main Houthi-run aid body, known by the acronym NAMCHA, has sought to do registration and control the database. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears of problems with authorities.
The conflict in Yemen began with the 2014 takeover of the capital, Sanaa, by the Houthis, an Iranian-backed Shiite movement that toppled the internationally recognized government.
The conflict has left more than 10,000 civilians dead, driven millions from their homes and sparked a cholera epidemic.
UN rushes aid to hunger-stricken Yemeni district
UN rushes aid to hunger-stricken Yemeni district
- The aid push was directed at a district called Aslam where earlier this month some families were found eating leaves to survive
- Getting relief to those in need has been complicated because international agencies are required to work from lists that are often compiled by local Houthi authorities
Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli strike kills 7 in West Bank
- The strike occurred in the village of Tamun in northern West Bank, organization says
- Israeli said its forces were involved in a ‘counterterrorism operation’ in the area
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: The Palestinian Red Crescent said an Israeli drone strike in a village in the occupied West Bank killed at least seven people on Wednesday, while the military said it had struck an “armed cell.”
“An Israeli strike in the village of Tamun in the northern West Bank killed seven people,” the group said in a statement.
The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said eight people had been killed.
The Israeli military told AFP its forces were involved in a “counterterrorism operation” in the area.
As part of the operation, an Israeli “aircraft, with the direction of ISA (security agency) intelligence, struck an armed terrorist cell in the area of Tamun,” the military said in a statement.
Violence has soared throughout the West Bank since the war between Hamas and Israel broke out in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 870 Palestinians, including many militants, in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
At least 29 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military raids in the territory over the same period, according to official Israeli figures.
First Gaza aid ship arrives at Egypt’s El-Arish port since ceasefire
CAIRO: A Turkish ship docked at Egypt’s El-Arish on Wednesday, delivering the first aid destined for Gaza through the port since a fragile ceasefire went into effect, a Turkish official and Egyptian sources said.
“We are prepared to heal the wounds of our Gazan brothers and sisters and to meet their temporary shelter needs,” Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya posted on X on Wednesday.
The ship was loaded with 871 tons of humanitarian aid, including 300 power generators, 20 portable toilets, 10,460 tents and 14,350 blankets, according to Yerlikaya.
A team from the Egyptian Red Crescent received the Turkish aid to make the necessary arrangements for its delivery to the Strip, a source at the port, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of the Gaza Strip, said.
Two staff from the Egyptian Red Crescent also confirmed its arrival.
Since the start of the truce in the Palestinian territory, hundreds of truckloads of aid have entered Gaza while some has been airlifted in.
The truce between Israel and Hamas came after more than 15 months of war sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Syria’s Sharaa: jihadist to interim head of state
DAMASCUS: In less than two months, Syria’s Ahmed Al-Sharaa has risen from rebel leader to interim president, after his Islamist group led a lightning offensive that toppled Bashar Assad.
Sharaa was appointed Wednesday to lead Syria for an unspecified transitional period, and has been tasked with forming an interim legislature after the dissolution of the Assad era parliament and the suspension of the 2012 constitution.
The former jihadist has abandoned his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani, trimmed his beard and donned a suit and tie to receive foreign dignitaries since ousting Assad from power on December 8.
The tall, sharp-eyed Sharaa has held a succession of interviews with foreign journalists, presenting himself as a patriot who wants to rebuild and reunite Syria, devastated and divided after almost 14 years of civil war.
Syria’s new authorities also announced Wednesday the dissolution of armed factions, including Sharaa’s own Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.
Since breaking ties with Al-Qaeda in 2016, Sharaa has sought to portray himself as a more moderate leader, and HTS has toned down its rhetoric, vowing to protect Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities.
But Sharaa has yet to calm misgivings among some analysts and Western governments that still class HTS as a terrorist organization.
“He is a pragmatic radical,” Thomas Pierret, a specialist in political Islam, told AFP.
“In 2014, he was at the height of his radicalism,” Pierret said, referring to the period of the war when he sought to compete with the jihadist Daesh group.
“Since then, he has moderated his rhetoric.”
Born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia, Sharaa is from a well-to-do Syrian family and was raised in Mazzeh, an upscale district of Damascus.
In 2021, he told US broadcaster PBS that his nom de guerre was a reference to his family’s roots in the Golan Heights. He said his grandfather was among those forced to flee the territory after its capture by Israel in 1967.
According to the Middle East Eye news website, it was after the September 11, 2001 attacks that he was first drawn to jihadist thinking.
“It was as a result of this admiration for the 9/11 attackers that the first signs of jihadism began to surface in Jolani’s life, as he began attending secretive sermons and panel discussions in marginalized suburbs of Damascus,” the website said.
Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he left Syria to take part in the fight.
He joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, and was subsequently detained for five years, preventing him from rising through the ranks of the jihadist organization.
In March 2011, when the revolt against Assad’s rule erupted in Syria, he returned home and founded Al-Nusra Front, Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda.
In 2013, he refused to swear allegiance to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who would go on to become the emir of the Daesh group, and instead pledged his loyalty to Al-Qaeda’s Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
A realist in his partisans’ eyes, an opportunist to his adversaries, Sharaa said in May 2015 that he, unlike Daesh, had no intention of launching attacks against the West.
He also proclaimed that should Assad be defeated, there would be no revenge attacks against the Alawite minority that the president’s clan stems from.
He cut ties with Al-Qaeda, claiming to do so in order to deprive the West of reasons to attack his organization.
According to Pierret, he has since sought to chart a path toward becoming a credible statesman.
In January 2017, Sharaa imposed a merger with HTS on rival Islamist groups in northwestern Syria, thereby taking control of swathes of Idlib province that had been cleared of government troops.
In areas under its grip, HTS developed a civil administration and established a semblance of a state in Idlib province, while crushing its rebel rivals.
Throughout this process, HTS faced accusations from residents and human rights groups of brutal abuses against those who dared dissent, which the United Nations has classed as war crimes.
Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli strike kills 7 in West Bank
- Palestinian Red Crescent: ‘An Israeli strike in the village of Tamun in the northern West Bank killed seven people’
- Israeli said that its forces were involved in a ‘counterterrorism operation’ in the area
RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: The Palestinian Red Crescent said an Israeli drone strike in a village in the occupied West Bank killed at least seven people on Wednesday, while the military said it had struck an “armed cell.”
“An Israeli strike in the village of Tamun in the northern West Bank killed seven people,” the group said in a statement.
The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said eight people had been killed.
The Israeli military told AFP its forces were involved in a “counterterrorism operation” in the area.
As part of the operation, an Israeli “aircraft, with the direction of ISA (security agency) intelligence, struck an armed terrorist cell in the area of Tamun,” the military said in a statement.
Violence has soared throughout the West Bank since the war between Hamas and Israel broke out in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 870 Palestinians, including many militants, in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
At least 29 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military raids in the territory over the same period, according to official Israeli figures.
Palestinians’ return to northern Gaza complicates Netanyahu’s war aims
- “There is no war to resume,” said Ofer Shelah, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank
- The “total victory” envisioned by Netanyahu remains elusive
TEL AVIV: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed 15 months ago that Israel would achieve “total victory” in the war in Gaza — by eradicating Hamas and freeing all the hostages. One week into a ceasefire with the militant group, many Israelis are dubious.
Not only is Hamas still intact, there’s also no guarantee all of the hostages will be released. But what’s really raised doubts about Netanyahu’s ability to deliver on his promise is this week’s return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to their homes in northern Gaza. That makes it difficult for Israel to relaunch its war against Hamas should the two sides fail to extend the ceasefire beyond its initial six-week phase.
“There is no war to resume,” said Ofer Shelah, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank. “What will we do now? Move the population south again?”
“There is no total victory in this war,” he said.
‘Total victory’ is elusive
Israel launched its war against Hamas after the militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and roughly 250 were taken hostage. Within hours, Israel began a devastating air assault on Gaza, and weeks later it launched a ground invasion.
Israel has inflicted heavy losses on Hamas. It has killed most of its top leadership, and claims to have killed thousands of fighters while dismantling tunnels and weapons factories. Months of bombardment and urban warfare have left Gaza in ruins, and more than 47,000 Palestinians are dead, according to local health authorities who don’t distinguish between militants and civilians in their count.
But the “total victory” envisioned by Netanyahu remains elusive.
In the first phase of the ceasefire, 33 hostages in Gaza will be freed, nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel will be released, and humanitarian aid to Gaza will be vastly increased. Israel is also redeploying troops to enable over 1 million Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza.
In the second phase of the ceasefire, which the two sides are expected to begin negotiating next week, more hostages would be released and the stage would be set for a more lasting truce.
But if Israel and Hamas do not agree to advance to the next phase, more than half of the roughly 90 remaining hostages will still be in Gaza; at least a third of them are believed to be dead.
Despite heavy international and domestic pressure to develop a postwar vision for who should rule Gaza, Netanyahu has yet to secure an alternative to the militant group. That has left Hamas in command.
Hamas sought to solidify that impression as soon as the ceasefire began. It quickly deployed uniformed police to patrol the streets and staged elaborate events for the hostages’ release, replete with masked gunmen, large crowds and ceremonies. Masked militants have also been seen along Gaza’s main thoroughfares, waving to and welcoming Palestinians as they head back home.
A Hamas victory?
Despite the scale of death and destruction in Gaza — and the hit to its own ranks — Hamas will likely claim victory.
Hamas will say, “Israel didn’t achieve its goals and didn’t defeat us, so we won,” said Michael Milshtein, an Israeli expert on Palestinian affairs.
The return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza is an important achievement for Hamas, Milshtein said. The group long insisted on a withdrawal of Israeli troops and an end to war as part of any deal — two conditions that have effectively begun to be realized.
And Hamas can now reassert itself in a swath of the territory that Israel battled over yet struggled to entirely control.
To enable Palestinians to return to northern Gaza, Israel opened the Netzarim corridor, a roughly 4-mile (6-kilometer) military zone bisecting the territory. That gives Hamas more freedom to operate, while taking away leverage that would be difficult for Israel regain even if it restarted the war, said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli general who had proposed a surrender-or-starve strategy for northern Gaza.
“We are at the mercy of Hamas,” he said in an interview with Israeli Army Radio. “The war has ended very badly” for Israel, he said, whereas Hamas “has largely achieved everything it wanted.”
Little appetite to resume war
President Donald Trump could play an important role in determining the remaining course of the war.
He has strongly hinted that he wants the sides to continue to the second phase of negotiations and shown little enthusiasm for resuming the war. A visit by his Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, to Israel this week and a visit to the White House next week by Netanyahu will likely give stronger indications of where things are headed.
In announcing the ceasefire, Netanyahu said Israel was still intent on achieving all the war’s goals. He said Israel was “safeguarding the ability to return and fight as needed.”
While military experts say Israel could in practice relaunch the war, doing so will be complicated.
Beyond the return of displaced Palestinians, the international legitimacy to wage war that it had right after Hamas’ attack has vanished. And with joyful scenes of freed hostages reuniting with their families, the Israeli public’s appetite for a resumption of fighting is also on the decline, even if many are disappointed that Hamas, a group that committed the deadliest attack against Israelis in the country’s history, is still standing.
An end to the war complicates Netanyahu’s political horizon. The Israeli leader is under intense pressure to resume the war from his far-right political allies, who want to see Hamas crushed. They envision new Jewish settlements in Gaza and long-term Israeli rule there.
One of Netanyahu’s coalition partners already resigned in protest at the ceasefire deal and a second key ally has threatened to topple the government if the war doesn’t resume after the first phase. That would destabilize the government and could trigger early elections.
“Where is the total victory that this government promised?” Itamar Ben-Gvir, the former Cabinet minister who quit the government over the ceasefire said Monday.
Israel Ziv, a retired general, said restarting the war would require a new set of goals and that its motivations would be tainted.
“The war we entered into is over,” he told Israeli Army Radio. “Other than political reasons, I don’t see any reason to resume the war.”
