BEIRUT: Syrian toddler Luay happily explores his grandfather’s modest house near Damascus for the first time. After years as refugees in Lebanon, the three-year-old and his family have returned to their homeland. They are among several thousand Syrians who have made an emotional journey home from Lebanon, where they sought safety from the war that has ravaged their native country since 2011. Worn down by tough economic conditions in Lebanon and seeing regime victories back home as bringing stability, they have taken advantage of return trips coordinated by Lebanese and Syrian authorities.
Last month Luay’s father Rawad Kurdi, 30, his mother, and his baby sister Luliya decided to make the trip themselves. As the sun was rising, they lined up with dozens of other refugees to board buses that would whisk them out of Beirut. With them were more than a dozen suitcases and boxes — everything they could carry from their five years in Lebanon. During a nine-hour wait for the buses to move, Rawad was anxious to end his family’s long exile. “This return is definitive. I will never leave Syria again,” he told AFP.
In 2012, Rawad and his 35 relatives were forced to flee their hometown of Babila southeast of Damascus after fighting broke out between rebels and government forces.
They came to Lebanon. Three years later, some of the elderly family members including Rawad’s father Ahmad returned to Syria, and more have hit the road home since.
Rawad’s return to Babila meant Ahmad, now 70, could finally meet the two grandchildren born in Lebanon after he left. A content look on his face, Ahmad sits with one-year-old Luliya in his lap, as Luay scrambles over the couch in the dimly lit living room. “My home is not worth anything without my children and grandchildren. Now, both I and my home feel alive again,” said Ahmad, his hands stained black from picking eggplants on his nearby land. Although six of his children have already returned to Syria, another three are still living as refugees in Lebanon. One day, he hopes, they can all be reunited back home. “I’d much rather live with my children and grandchildren in war, than them being safe but far away,” he said. Since Syria’s conflict erupted, more than 5 million people have sought refuge in neighboring countries and another 6 million are internally displaced.
But back-to-back military victories this year have put more than two-thirds of Syria under regime control, including Babila and other areas around the capital in the spring.
These wins prompted host countries, like Lebanon, to encourage refugees to move back home. Just under 1 million Syrians are registered as refugees in Lebanon, although the number is likely higher.
This year, Beirut and Damascus began coordinating weekly convoys taking Syrians back home, only if their names are cleared by Syrian security services.
Around 6,000 refugees have gone back to Syria in these coordinated returns since April, according to an AFP tally. Others have remained in exile, fearing Syria’s compulsory military service or stuck in too much debt to leave Lebanon. Rawad said he is exempt from the army because he is overweight.
He wanted to leave in 2015 with his father, but said he was unable to cross the border because he could not afford paying fines he had accrued for overstaying his residency in Lebanon. This September, the Lebanese authorities waived these penalties for those taking part in the coordinated returns, and Rawad decided to bring his family home.
Back in Babila, he gazes at old photos hanging on the wall. “War has changed us so much, and then came emigration, also leaving its marks on our faces and in our eyes,” said the portly tailor in a gray T-shirt and sleeveless black jacket. The fabric workshops he owned in Babila have been looted, but he remains optimistic.
“For now, the future is uncertain — but however long it takes, goodness will only come from this land,” he said. The dream of returning home also kept Rawad from seeking asylum in Europe. “As beautiful, quiet and safe as those countries were, they could never be a substitute for the one where my family, my memories and my neighbors are,” he said. He spends his days with family or wandering the streets of Babila, eager to get to know its streets and homes again. During such a stroll, his phone rings. It is his brother Ayman, who still lives in Lebanon and is hesitating to return. “There is no reason to stay in Lebanon. The war is over,” Rawad reassured him.
From Beirut to Babila, Syrian refugee family returns home
From Beirut to Babila, Syrian refugee family returns home
- Since Syria’s conflict erupted, more than 5 million people have sought refuge in neighboring countries and another 6 million are internally displaced
- Around 6,000 refugees have gone back to Syria in these coordinated returns since April, according to an AFP tally
Iran FM warns against ‘destructive interference’ in Syria’s future
- Abbas Araghchi: Iran ‘considers the decision-making about the future of Syria to be the sole responsibility of the people... without destructive interference or foreign imposition’
BEIJING: Iran’s top diplomat warned Friday against “destructive interference” in Syria’s future and said decisions should lie solely with the country’s people, writing in Chinese state media as he visited Beijing.
Abbas Araghchi touched down in the Chinese capital on Friday afternoon, Iranian state media reported, to begin his first official visit to the country since being appointed foreign minister.
China and Iran were both supporters of ousted Syrian president Bashar Assad.
Assad fled Syria this month after an Islamist-led offensive wrested city after city from his control, with the capital Damascus falling on December 8.
Iran “considers the decision-making about the future of Syria to be the sole responsibility of the people... without destructive interference or foreign imposition,” Araghchi wrote in a Chinese-language article in People’s Daily published on Friday.
He also emphasized Iran’s respect for Syria’s “unity, national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Iran’s supreme leader – a key backer of Assad’s administration – predicted on Sunday “the emergence of a strong, honorable group” that would stand against “insecurity” in Syria.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Syria’s young men would “stand with strength and determination against those who have designed this insecurity and those who have implemented it, and God willing, he will overcome them.”
In People’s Daily, Araghchi said supporting the Syrian people was a “definite principle (that) should be taken into consideration by all the actors.”
Beijing had also built strong ties with Assad – he met President Xi Jinping in China last year, where the two leaders announced a “strategic partnership.”
China has affirmed its support for the Syrian people and has said it opposes terrorist forces taking advantage of the situation to create chaos.
Araghchi’s two-day visit will include talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, according to Iran’s foreign ministry.
China is Iran’s largest trade partner, and a top buyer of its sanctioned oil.
Xi pledged in October to increase ties with Iran during talks with his counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian in Russia on the sidelines of a BRICS summit.
Araghchi told reporters in a video published by Iranian state media as he arrived in Beijing that the visit was taking place “at a very suitable time.”
“Now it is natural that there are sensitive situations, both the region has various tensions, and there are various issues at the international level, also our nuclear issue in the new year will face a situation that needs more consultations,” he said.
“The invitation of our Chinese friends was for this reason, that at the beginning of the new year... we should think together, consult and be ready for the challenges that will come.”
He wrote in his editorial that Iran and China shared the “common view” that calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza was the biggest priority in the Middle East.
Lebanese university students launch donation campaign to aid war-displaced families
- ‘Hardship of war should never be faced alone,’ says student Nour Farchoukh
- More than 1,000 families benefit from food and clothing donations
DUBAI: Three American University of Beirut students have launched a donation campaign to support families across Lebanon displaced by the 13-month war with Israel.
Titled “Hope for our Lebanon,” the campaign distributes food supplies, sanitary boxes, and clothes through a collaboration with ‘Wahad Activism’ charity organization.
Nour Farchoukh, Celine Ghandour, and Kian Azad told Arab News that they provide the aid based on the needs of each family.
“We put snacks or diapers if there are children. We also ask if they need clothes,” said Ghandour, adding that the group depends on people’s in-kind donations.
So far, the donation campaign has reached more than 1,000 families in Baabda, Beirut, Chouf, Batroun, Barouk, and Hazmieh among other areas.
Israel stepped up its military campaign in south Lebanon in late September after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges launched by Hezbollah in retaliation for the war on Gaza.
Over 13 months, the war killed more than 4,000 people across Lebanon, injured over 16,600 people, and displaced 1 million people, according to the latest figures of the Lebanese health ministry.
On Nov. 27, a 60-day ceasefire agreement, brokered by US and France, was signed between Hezbollah and Israel.
Azad said the campaign was still running after the ceasefire, with clothes donations being distributed to orphanages.
“We know that no matter how small the number of families we help, it will still make a difference,” he added.
“Every volunteer and every donation help rebuild Lebanon bit by bit. The hardship of war should never be faced alone,” Farchoukh said.
The three students have invited the community to take part in the initiative through donations or volunteering.
Israeli forces raid north Gaza hospital, health ministry says contact with staff lost
- Kamal Adwan Hospital is one of only three medical facilities on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip
- Israeli forces order dozens of patients and hundreds of others to evacuate the compound
CAIRO/JERUSALEM: Israeli forces raided the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of only three medical facilities on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, on Friday, ordering dozens of patients and hundreds of others to evacuate the compound, officials said.
In separate incidents across Gaza, Israeli strikes killed at least 25 people, medics said. One of those strikes on a house in Gaza City killed 15 people, medics and the civil emergency service said.
The Palestinian health ministry said contact with staff inside the facility, which has been under heavy pressure from Israeli forces for weeks, had been lost.
“The occupation forces are inside the hospital now and they are burning it,” Munir Al-Bursh, director of the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, said in a statement.
The Israeli military said it had made efforts to mitigate harm to civilians and had “facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel prior to the operation” but gave no details.
“Kamal Adwan Hospital serves as a Hamas terrorist stronghold in northern Gaza, from which terrorists have been operating throughout the war,” it said in a statement.
Kamal Adwan, as well as the Indonesia and Al-Awda hospitals, have been repeatedly attacked by Israeli forces, which have been clearing out the northern edge of the Gaza Strip for weeks, Palestinian medical staff say.
Friday’s raid comes a day after the army evacuated the nearby Indonesian Hospital and continued to press Al-Awda Hospital.
Bursh said the army had ordered 350 people inside the facility to leave to a nearby school sheltering displaced families. They included 75 patients, their companions, and 185 medical staff.
Hamas’ Al-Aqsa Television said that hours after the raid, Israeli forces set the hospital ablaze. Footage circulating on Palestinian and Arab media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed smoke rising from the area of the hospital.
There was no Israeli military comment.
Much of the area around the northern towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya has been cleared of people and systematically razed, fueling speculation that Israel intends to keep the area as a closed buffer zone after the fighting in Gaza ends.
Israel denies the claims saying its campaign is to prevent Hamas militants from regrouping.
On Thursday, health officials said five medical staff, including a pediatrician, were killed by Israeli fire at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, where Israeli forces have been operating since October.
In a statement, Hamas held Israel and the United States responsible for the fate of patients, injured people and the medical staff inside the hospital.
Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 45,300 Palestinians, according to health officials in the enclave. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced and much of Gaza is in ruins.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel strikes ‘infrastructure’ on Syria-Lebanon border
- It did not specify whether the strikes were on the Syrian or Lebanese side
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military reported it conducted air strikes on Friday targeting “infrastructure” on the Syrian-Lebanese border near the village of Janta, which it said was used to smuggle weapons to the armed group Hezbollah.
“Earlier today, the IAF (Israeli air force) struck infrastructure that was used to smuggle weapons via Syria to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon at the Janta crossing on the Syrian-Lebanese border,” the military said in a statement.
It did not specify whether the strikes were on the Syrian or Lebanese side, but they came a day after Lebanon’s army accused Israel of “violation of the ceasefire agreement by attacking Lebanese sovereignty and destroying southern towns and villages.”
There is no official crossing point near Janta but the area is known for illegal crossings.
The UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL, has also expressed concern over “continuing destruction” caused by Israeli forces in south Lebanon.
The Israeli military said Friday’s strikes were aimed at preventing weapons falling into the hands of Hezbollah, with whom it fought a land and air war for more than a year until a ceasefire was agreed upon last month.
“These strikes are an additional part of the IDF’s (Israeli military’s) effort to target weapons smuggling operations from Syria into Lebanon, and prevent Hezbollah from re-establishing weapons smuggling routes,” the military said.
“The IDF will continue to act to remove any threat to the state of Israel in accordance with the understandings in the ceasefire agreement.”
The truce went into effect on November 27, about two months after Israel stepped up its bombing campaign and later sent troops into Lebanon following nearly a year of exchanges of cross-border fire initiated by Hezbollah over the war in Gaza.
Israel hospital says woman killed in stabbing attack in coastal city
- Israel’s police said the suspected attacker had been arrested
HERZLIYA, Israel: An Israeli hospital reported that a woman in her eighties was killed after being stabbed in the coastal city of Herzliya on Friday, while police stated that the suspected attacker had been arrested.
“She was brought to the hospital with multiple stab wounds while undergoing resuscitation efforts, but the hospital staff was forced to pronounce her death upon arrival,” Tel Aviv Ichilov hospital said in a statement. Israel’s police said the suspected attacker had been arrested.
