JERUSALEM: Israel is ready to reopen a crossing point into the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights now that Syrian government forces have regained control from rebels, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Thursday.
But Lieberman, on a visit to the Israeli-held side of the Quneitra crossing, said any resumption of operations at the facility depended on Syria.
“The fact that we have come here, to Alpha Gate, and as far as we are concerned UNDOF forces have begun to operate and patrol with the Israeli military’s assistance, says that we are ready for the crossing to reopen,” he told reporters, in comments distributed by his ministry.
Lieberman was referring to the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, whose monitoring operations in a demilitarized zone established in 1974 between the Israeli-occupied Golan and the Syrian sector were disrupted by Syria’s civil war.
“At the moment, the ball is in the Syrian court,” Lieberman said.
Military police from Russia, a major ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, have been patrolling on the Syrian side of Quneitra, where Lieberman said Syrian police and customs officials were also present.
In the past, Lieberman said, traffic through Quneitra mainly comprised shipments into Syria of apples grown by Druze farmers on the Israeli-controlled Golan — and the entry of brides for partners on both sides of the armistice line.
Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war and fought Syria again on the strategic plateau in a 1973 conflict.
Israel prepared to reopen Golan crossing with Syria — defense chief
Israel prepared to reopen Golan crossing with Syria — defense chief
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- But Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said any resumption of operations at the facility depended on Syria
- Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war
Algeria votes with Tebboune eyeing easy re-election
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ALGEIRS: Algerians began voting on Saturday in a presidential election widely expected to bring a second term for the incumbent Abdelmadjid Tebboune who is hoping for a high turnout.
Tebboune, 78, is heavily favored to see off moderate Islamist Abdelaali Hassani and socialist candidate Youcef Aouchiche.
Polling stations opened at 8:00 am (0700 GMT) and are set to close at 7:00 pm.
Preliminary results could come as early as Saturday night, with the electoral authority, ANIE, bound to announce the official results on Sunday at the latest.
“The winner is known in advance,” political commentator Mohamed Hennad posted on Facebook before voting began, referring to Tebboune.
Tebboune’s opponents stood little chance because of low support and the “conditions in which the electoral campaign took place, which is nothing more than a farce,” Hennad wrote.
The incumbent’s main challenge is to boost the turnout in the North African country, after he won in 2019 with 58 percent of the vote, but amid a record abstention rate of more than 60 percent.
“The president is keen to have a significant turnout,” Hasni Abidi, an analyst at the Geneva-based CERMAM Study Center. “It’s his main issue.”
The low turnout in 2019 followed the Hirak pro-democracy protests, which toppled former president Abdelaziz Bouteflika before they were quashed with ramped-up policing and the jailing of hundreds of people.
Campaign rallies have struggled to generate enthusiasm in the nation of 45 million, partly due to the summer heat.
More than 850,000 Algerians living abroad have been able to vote since Monday.
With young people making up more than half the population, all candidates are targeting their votes with promises to improve living standards and reduce dependence on hydrocarbons.
Tebboune has touted economic successes during his first term, including more jobs and higher wages in the country, Africa’s largest exporter of natural gas.
His challengers have vowed to grant Algerians more freedoms.
Aouchiche says he is committed “to release prisoners of conscience through an amnesty and to review unjust laws,” including on media and terrorism.
Hassani has advocated “freedoms that have been reduced to nothing in recent years.”
Political analyst Abidi said Tebboune should address the major deficit in political and media freedoms as politics is “absent from the scene,” with Algerians having “divorced from current politics” after the Hirak protests ended.
Five years later, rights group Amnesty International said Algerian authorities were “committed to maintaining a zero-tolerance approach toward dissenting opinions.”
Libya’s coast guard intercepts 64 Europe-bound migrants
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- The boat was carrying 64 migrants and was intercepted Friday off the northwestern town of Sirte
CAIRO: Libya’s coast guard intercepted dozens of Europe-bound migrants on a boat and returned them to shore, authorities said Saturday, a few days after a shipwreck off the North African country left nearly two dozen dead or missing.
The boat was carrying 64 migrants and was intercepted Friday off the northwestern town of Sirte, according to the town’s coast guard unit. It posted images on Facebook showing dozens of migrants, including at least one woman and a child, upon their return. The coast guard also set the migrant boat on fire, a procedure aimed at preventing its reuse by traffickers.
On Wednesday, a boat carrying 32 migrants from Egypt and Syria capsized off Libya’s eastern town of Tobruk, leaving 22 missing and presumed dead. The Libyan coast guard said it rescued nine people and recovered one body.
Libya, which has borders with six nations and a longshore on the Mediterranean, plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. Since then, the oil-rich country has emerged as the dominant transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East and seeking better lives in Europe.
Human traffickers in recent years have benefited from the disorder in Libya, smuggling in migrants across the country’s lengthy borders. The migrants are crowded onto ill-equipped vessels, including rubber boats, and set off on risky sea voyages to Europe.
According to the International Organization for Migration’s missing migrants project, at least 434 were reported dead and 611 missing off Libya between January and August this year while more than 14,100 migrants were intercepted and brought back to shore.
The intercepted migrants are held in government-run detention centers rife with abuses, including forced labor, beatings, rapes and torture — practices that amount to crimes against humanity, according to UN-commissioned investigators. The abuse often accompanies attempts to extort money from the families of the imprisoned migrants before releasing them or allowing them to leave Libya on traffickers’ boats to Europe.
Family demands independent probe into Israeli military killing of American
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- Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was “shot in the head” while participating in a demonstration in Beita in the West Bank
- Washington called it a “tragic” event and has pressed its close ally Israel to investigate
JERUSALEM: The family of a Turkish-American woman shot dead while demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank demanded an independent investigation into her death on Saturday, accusing the Israeli military of killing her “violently.”
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was “shot in the head” while participating in a demonstration in Beita in the West Bank on Friday.
“Her presence in our lives was taken needlessly, unlawfully, and violently by the Israeli military,” Eygi’s family said in a statement.
“A US citizen, Aysenur was peacefully standing for justice when she was killed by a bullet that video shows came from an Israeli military shooter.
“We call on President (Joe) Biden, Vice President (Kamala) Harris, and Secretary of State (Antony) Blinken to order an independent investigation into the unlawful killing of a US citizen and to ensure full accountability for the guilty parties.”
The Israeli military said its forces “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them” during the protest.
Eygi was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian organization, and was in Beita on Friday for a weekly demonstration against Israeli settlements, according to ISM.
In recent years, pro-Palestinian demonstrators have frequently held weekly protests against the Eviatar settlement outpost overlooking Beita, which is backed by far-right Israeli ministers.
During Friday’s protest, Eygi was shot in the head, according to the UN rights office and Rafidia hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Turkiye said she was killed by “Israeli occupation soldiers,” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemning the Israeli action as “barbaric.”
Washington called it a “tragic” event and has pressed its close ally Israel to investigate.
But her family has demanded an independent probe.
“Given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate,” her family said.
Her family said Eygi always advocated “an end to the violence against the people of Palestine.”
Israeli settlements in the West Bank — where about 490,000 people live — are illegal under international law.
Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel which triggered the war in Gaza, Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 690 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
At least 23 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, according to Israeli officials.
UN investigator accuses Israel of a ‘starvation campaign’ in Gaza that Netanyahu denies
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- ‘Never in post-war history population been made to go hungry so quickly as 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza,’ UN investigator says
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says accusations of Israel limiting humanitarian aid for people in Gaza ‘outrageously false’
UNITED NATIONS: The UN independent investigator on the right to food accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians during the war in Gaza, an allegation that Israel vehemently denies.
In a report this week, investigator Michael Fakhri claimed it began two days after Hamas’ surprise attack in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people, when Israel’s military offensive in response blocked all food, water, fuel and other supplies into Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said accusations of Israel limiting humanitarian aid were “outrageously false.”
“A deliberate starvation policy? You can say anything — it doesn’t make it true,” he said in a press conference Wednesday.
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Following intense international pressure — especially from close ally the United States — Netanyahu’s government gradually has opened several border crossings for tightly controlled deliveries. Fakhri said limited aid initially went mostly to southern and central Gaza, not to the north where Israel had ordered Palestinians to go.
A professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, Fakhri was appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council as the investigator, or special rapporteur, on the right to food and assumed the role in 2020.
“By December, Palestinians in Gaza made up 80 percent of the people in the world experiencing famine or catastrophic hunger,” Fakhri said. “Never in post-war history had a population been made to go hungry so quickly and so completely as was the case for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.”
Fakhri, who teaches law courses on human rights, food law and development, made the allegations in a report to the UN General Assembly circulated Thursday.
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He claims it goes back 76 years to Israeli’s independence and its continuous dislocation of Palestinians. Since then, he accused Israel of deploying “the full range of techniques of hunger and starvation against the Palestinians, perfecting the degree of control, suffering and death that it can cause through food systems.”
Since the war in Gaza began, Fakhri said he has received direct reports of the destruction of the territory’s food system, including farmland and fishing, which also has been documented and recognized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and others.
“Israel then used humanitarian aid as a political and military weapon to harm and kill the Palestinian people in Gaza,” he claimed.
Israel insists it no longer places restrictions on the number of aid trucks entering Gaza, including food.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Netanyahu cited figures from COGAT, Israel’s military body overseeing aid entry into Gaza, that 700,000 tons of food items had been allowed into Gaza since the war began 11 months ago.
Nearly half of that food aid in recent months has been brought in by the private sector for sale in Gaza’s markets, according to COGAT figures. However, many Palestinians in Gaza say they struggle to afford enough food for their families.
Israel allows trucks of aid through two small crossings in the north and one main crossing in the south, Kerem Shalom. However, since Israel’s invasion of the southern city of Rafah in May, the UN and other aid agencies say they struggle to reach the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom to retrieve the aid for free distribution because Israel’s military operations make it too dangerous.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “beyond catastrophic,” with more than 1 million Palestinians not receiving any food rations in August and a 35 percent drop in people getting daily cooked meals.
The UN humanitarian office attributed the sharp reduction in cooked meals partly to multiple evacuation orders from Israeli security forces that forced at least 70 of 130 kitchens to either suspend or relocate their operations, he said Thursday. The UN’s humanitarian partners also lacked sufficient food supplies to meet requirements for the second straight month in central and southern Gaza, Dujarric added.
He said critical shortages of supplies in Gaza are stem from hostilities, insecurity, damaged roads, and Israeli obstacles and access limitations.
Gaza enters its second school year without schooling. The cost could be heavy for kids’ futures
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- Most of Gaza’s children are caught up helping their families in the daily struggle to survive amid Israel’s devastating campaign
- Humanitarian workers say the extended deprivation of education threatens long-term damage to Gaza’s children
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: This week, when they would normally be going back to school, the Qudeh family’s children stumbled with armfuls of rubble they collected from a destroyed building to sell for use in building graves in the cemetery that is now their home in southern Gaza.
“Anyone our age in other countries is studying and learning,” said 14-year-old Ezz El-Din Qudeh, after he and his three siblings — the youngest a 4-year-old — hauled a load of concrete chunks. “We’re not. We’re working at something beyond our capacities. We are forced to in order to get a living.”
As Gaza enters its second school year without schooling, most of its children are caught up helping their families in the daily struggle to survive amid Israel’s devastating campaign.
Children trod barefoot on the dirt roads to carry water in plastic jerricans from distribution points to their families living in tent cities teeming with Palestinians driven from their homes. Others wait at charity kitchens with containers to bring back food.
Humanitarian workers say the extended deprivation of education threatens long-term damage to Gaza’s children. Younger children suffer in their cognitive, social and emotional development, and older children are at greater risk of being pulled into work or early marriage, said Tess Ingram, regional spokesperson for UNICEF, the United Nations agency for children.
“The longer a child is out of school, the more they are at risk of dropping out permanently and not returning,” she said.
Gaza’s 625,000 school-age children already missed out on almost an entire year of education. Schools shut down after Israel launched its assault on the territory in retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. With languishing negotiations to halt fighting in the Israel-Hamas war, it’s not known when they can return to classes.
More than 90 percent of Gaza’s school buildings have been damaged by Israeli bombardment, many of them run by UNWRA, the UN agency for Palestinians, according to the Global Education Cluster, a grouping of aid organizations led by UNICEF and Save the Children. About 85 percent are so wrecked they need major reconstruction — meaning it could take years before they are usable again. Gaza’s universities are also in ruins. Israel contends that Hamas militants operate out of schools.
Some 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes. They have crowded into the sprawling tent camps that lack water or sanitation systems, or UN and government schools now serving as shelters.
Kids have little choice but to help families
Mo’men Qudeh said that before the war, his kids enjoyed school. “They were outstanding students. We raised them well,” he said.
Now he, his four sons and his daughter live in a tent in a cemetery in Khan Younis after they had to flee their home in the eastern neighborhoods of the city. The kids get scared sleeping next to the graves of the dead, he said, but they have no alternative.
The continual flow of victims from airstrikes and shelling into the cemetery and the plentiful supply of destroyed buildings are their source for a tiny income.
Every day at 7 a.m., Qudeh and his children start picking through rubble. On a recent day of work, the young kids stumbled off the pile of wreckage with what they found. Qudeh’s 4-year-old son balanced a chunk of concrete under his arm, his blonde curly hair covered in dust. Outside their tent, they crouched on the ground and pounded the concrete into powder.
On a good day, after hours of work, they make about 15 shekels ($4) selling the powder for use in constructing new graves.
Qudeh, who was injured in Israel’s 2014 war with Hamas, said he can’t do the heavy work alone.
“I cry for them when I see them with torn hands,” he said. At night, the exhausted children can’t sleep because of their aches and pain, he said. “They lie on their mattress like dead people,” he said.
Children are eager for a lost education
Aid groups have worked to set up educational alternatives — though the results have been limited as they wrestle with the flood of other needs.
UNICEF and other aid agencies are running 175 temporary learning centers, most set up since late May, that have served some 30,000 students, with about 1,200 volunteer teachers, Ingram said. They provide classes in literacy and numeracy as well as mental health and emotional development activities.
But she said they struggle to get supplies like pens, paper and books because they are not considered lifesaving priorities as aid groups struggle to get enough food and medicine into Gaza.
In August, UNRWA began a “back to learning” program in 45 of its schools-turned-shelters that provide children activities like games, drama, arts, music and sports. The aim is to “give them some respite, a chance to reconnect with their friends and to simply be children,” spokesperson Juliette Touma said.
Education has long been a high priority among Palestinians. Before the war, Gaza had a high literacy rate — nearly 98 percent.
When she last visited Gaza in April, Ingram said children often told her they miss school, their friends and their teachers. While describing how much he wanted to go back to class, one boy abruptly stopped in panic and asked her, “I can go back, can’t I?”
“That was just heartbreaking to me,” she said.
Parents told her they had seen the emotional changes in their children without the daily stability provided by school and with compounding traumas from displacement, bombardment and deaths or injuries in the family. Some become sullen and withdrawn, others become easily agitated or frustrated.
Gaza’s schools are packed with homeless families instead of students
The 11-month Israeli campaign has destroyed large swaths of Gaza and brought a humanitarian crisis, with widespread malnutrition and diseases spreading. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health officials. Children are among the most severely affected. Ingram said nearly all of Gaza’s 1.1 million children are believed to need psychosocial help.
Israel says its campaign aims to eliminate Hamas to ensure it cannot repeat its Oct. 7 attack, in which militants killed some 1,200 people in southern Israel and abducted 250 others.
The conflict has also set back education for Palestinian children in the West Bank, where Israel has intensified movement restrictions and carried out heavy raids.
“On any given day since October, between 8 percent and 20 percent of schools in the West Bank have been closed,” Ingram said. When schools are open, attendance is lowered because of difficulties in movement or because children are afraid, she said.
Parents in Gaza say they struggle to give their children even informal teaching with the chaos around them.
At a school in the central town of Deir Al-Balah, classrooms were packed with families, their laundry draped over the stairwells outside. Made of bedsheets and tarps propped on sticks, ramshackle tents stretched across the yard.
“The children’s future is lost,” said Umm Ahmed Abu Awja, surrounded by nine of her young grandchildren. “What they studied last year is completely forgotten. If they return to school, they have to start from the beginning.”