JERUSALEM: President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has set off an increasingly visible battle in the city’s eastern sector — with an emboldened Israel seeking to cement its control over the contested area and Palestinians pushing back to maintain their limited foothold.
In recent weeks, Israel has arrested dozens of Palestinian activists for alleged illegal political activity. It demolished Palestinian shops for failing to have permits, a court has cleared the way for settlers to move in to an Arab neighborhood and the city’s outgoing mayor is trying to close the east Jerusalem operations of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, in turn, has boosted efforts to protect its claim on Jerusalem, attempting to block east Jerusalem Palestinians from selling properties to Jews — a major taboo that it is largely powerless to prevent.
“The change in the US position on Jerusalem under Trump’s administration has unleashed the Israeli hands to increase and escalate its measures that aim to change the features of the city from a Palestinian city to an Israeli one,” said Walid Salem, a Palestinian analyst in Jerusalem. “The Palestinian Authority feels the heat and is stepping up measures to resist this Israeli policy.”
The conflicting claims to east Jerusalem lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel captured the area, home to the city’s most sensitive religious sites, in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it, claiming the entire city as its capital. But the annexation is not internationally recognized, and the Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
A year ago, Trump upended decades of American policy and recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
“We finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” Trump said at the time.
Several months later, he moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thrilling Israel and enraging the Palestinians.
Speaking at the embassy dedication ceremony in May, Netanyahu said: “We are in Jerusalem and we are here to stay.”
Although Trump has said his decision would not determine the city’s final borders, it has been seen by both Israel and the Palestinians as taking sides.
Israel’s hawkish government has been energized by the backing of its American ally in its quest to keep Jerusalem what it considers to be its eternal, undivided capital.
The Palestinians have for years accused Israel of taking steps to fortify its hold on the city, primarily by encircling Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem with Jewish settlements. These settlements, considered by Israel to be neighborhoods of its capital, are now home to over 200,000 Israelis.
Criticism from previous US administrations has often held Israel back in the past. With the reins removed, Israel has carried out a flurry of moves, often jostling with Palestinians along the way.
“Around 300, 000 Palestinian live in east Jerusalem,” said Adnan Husseini, the Palestinian minister of Jerusalem affairs. “They have always resisted the Israeli occupation measures in the city and they always will.”
In an unusual step, Israel arrested the top Palestinian official in Jerusalem this week along with over 30 Palestinian Jerusalemites, accusing them of the rarely enforced offense of serving in the Palestinian security forces in violation of previous agreements with Israel. Most were released on bail, but the governor, Adnan Ghaith, remains in custody.
The arrests appear to have been prompted by the detention of a Palestinian resident of east Jerusalem who allegedly sold property to Jews — a punishable offense under Palestinian law.
That detention was a bold move by the Palestinians because, also according to previous accords, they cannot arrest Jerusalem residents.
The Palestinians have also zeroed in on the Bedouin hamlet of Khan Al-Ahmar. Israel says the West Bank encampment, just outside of Jerusalem, was illegally built and is trying to uproot the village. A planned demolition was postponed following heavy European pressure, but it could still happen at any time.
Critics say the demolition is meant to make way for Israeli settlement homes, a step the Palestinians fear could cut off the West Bank from their hoped-for capital in east Jerusalem.
While Khan Al-Ahmar residents avoided eviction for now, others haven’t. After a lengthy legal battle, Israel’s Supreme Court this month rejected an appeal by residents of the Silwan neighborhood in east Jerusalem who claimed their land was illegally granted to a pro-settler group. The decision could lead to the evictions of hundreds of longtime Palestinian residents.
“A huge mechanism of displacement has been set in motion, allowing settlers and the government to work hand in hand,” said Yudith Oppenheimer, executive director of Ir Amim, an Israeli advocacy group that promotes coexistence in the city.
Israeli police demolished 18 stores in east Jerusalem last week in what it called a “large-scale” operation against illegal structures that it said was prompted by Palestinian residents’ complaints.
Meanwhile, in a move coordinated with the national government, Jerusalem’s municipality plans to evict the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees and shift its services — schools, sanitation and others — over to Israeli authorities.
Jerusalem’s outgoing mayor, Nir Barkat, said a decision by the Trump administration to cut $300 million in funding to UNRWA prompted the move.
The Israeli steps in east Jerusalem come ahead of the promised release of Trump’s long-awaited peace plan. The Palestinians have already said they will oppose it, accusing Trump of being unfairly biased in favor of Israel.
Yitzhak Reiter, a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, said Israel may be trying to skew the American plan toward its vision for the city.
“It seems that this plan will not completely satisfy Israel, let alone the Palestinians,” Reiter said. “The Israeli government is making an attempt to create facts on the ground that will manifest its ideal plans and policies.”
Israel, Palestinians jockey over Jerusalem in Trump era
Israel, Palestinians jockey over Jerusalem in Trump era
- The conflicting claims to east Jerusalem lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- A year ago, Trump upended decades of American policy and recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
Palestinian officials accuse Israeli settlers of mosque arson in West Bank
According to Abdallah Kamil, the governor of Salfit, the attack targeted the Bir Al-Walidain mosque in the village of Marda.
“A group of settlers carried out an attack early this morning by setting fire to the mosque,” Kamil said in a statement.
In addition to the arson, the settlers vandalized the mosque’s walls with “racist graffiti” in Hebrew, he said.
Photographs shared on social media showed slogans spray-painted in black including “Death to Arabs.”
Villagers of Marda confirmed the details, with one resident telling AFP: “They set fire to the entrance of the mosque and wrote Hebrew slogans on its walls.”
Another resident said the fire was extinguished before it could engulf the entire structure.
An AFP photographer at the scene saw villagers gathering at the mosque to assess the extent of the damage.
Governor Kamil alleged that settlers had previously entered the village “under the protection of the Israeli army,” and that similar acts of vandalism and graffiti had been reported in nearby areas.
The Palestinian foreign ministry in Ramallah condemned the incident, calling it a “blatant act of racism” and a reflection of the ” widespread incitement campaigns against our people carried out by elements of the extremist right-wing ruling government” of Israel.
Israeli police and the domestic Shin Bet security agency described the incident as a matter of “great severity.”
They said they would “act decisively to ensure accountability for those responsible,” adding an investigation was underway, with authorities gathering testimony and evidence from the scene.
Violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank has intensified since the war in Gaza began on October 7 last year following Hamas’s attack on Israel.
Since the start of the war, at least 803 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces or settlers, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
In the same period, Palestinian attacks have claimed the lives of at least 24 Israelis in the West Bank, based on Israeli official data.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
US diplomats and hostage envoy in Syria on first visit since Assad ouster
- First group of American diplomats to formally visit Syria in more than a decade since the US shuttered its embassy in Damascus in 2012
WASHINGTON: The first US diplomats to visit Syria since President Bashar Assad’s ouster earlier this month are now in Damascus to hold talks with the country’s new leaders and seek information on the whereabouts of missing American journalist Austin Tice.
Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf, former special envoy for Syria Daniel Rubinstein and the Biden administration’s chief envoy for hostage negotiations, Roger Carstens, made the trip for talks with Syria’s interim leaders, the State Department said early Friday.
The team is also the first group of American diplomats to formally visit Syria in more than a decade since the US shuttered its embassy in Damascus in 2012.
“They will be engaging directly with the Syrian people, including members of civil society, activists, members of different communities, and other Syrian voices about their vision for the future of their country and how the United States can help support them,” the State Department said.
At the top of their agenda will be information about Tice, who went missing in Syria in 2012. And they will push the principles of inclusion, protection of minorities and a rejection of terrorism and chemical weapons that the Biden administration says will be critical for any US support for a new government.
The US has redoubled efforts to find Tice and return him home, saying officials have communicated with the rebels who ousted Assad’s government about the American journalist. Carstens traveled previously to Lebanon to seek information.
Tice, who has had his work published by The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers and others, disappeared at a checkpoint in a contested area west of Damascus as the Syrian civil war intensified.
A video released weeks after Tice went missing showed him blindfolded and held by armed men and saying, “Oh, Jesus.” He has not been heard from since. Assad’s government publicly denied that it was holding him.
The rebel group that spearheaded the assault on Damascus that forced Assad to flee — Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS — is designated a foreign terrorist organization by the United States and others. While that designation comes with a raft of sanctions, it does not prohibit US officials from speaking to its members or leaders.
The State Department said Rubinstein, Leaf and Carstens would meet with HTS officials but did not say if the group’s leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who was once aligned with Al-Qaeda, would be among those they see.
US officials say Al-Sharaa’s public statements about protecting minority and women’s rights are welcomed, but they remain skeptical that he will follow through on them in the long run.
The US has not had a formal diplomatic presence in Syria since 2012, when it suspended operations at its embassy in Damascus during the country’s civil war, although there are US troops in small parts of Syria engaged in the fight against the Islamic State militant group.
The Pentagon revealed Thursday that the US had doubled the number of its forces in Syria to fight IS before Assad’s fall. The US also has significantly stepped up airstrikes against IS targets over concern that a power vacuum would allow the militant group to reconstitute itself.
The diplomats’ visit to Damascus will not result in the immediate reopening of the US embassy, which is under the protection of the Czech government, according to US officials, who said decisions on diplomatic recognition will be made when the new Syrian authorities make their intentions clear.
UN human rights office to send team to Syria next week
- Under Assad, the UN human rights team has not been allowed in Syria for years
- Large-scale refugee returns could overwhelm Syria, UN migration agency chief warns
GENEVA: The UN human rights office will send a small team of human rights officers to Syria next week for the first time in years following the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, UN spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told a press briefing on Friday.
As part of the takeover, rebels have flung open prisons and government offices and raising fresh hopes for accountability for crimes committed during Syria’s more than 13-year civil war.
Under Assad, the UN human rights team has not been allowed in Syria for years, Al-Kheetan said, and has been monitoring abuses remotely.
He said that the team would support human rights issues and help ensure that any power transition is “inclusive and within the framework of international law.” “It is important for us to start establishing a presence,” he said. A UN investigative body also hopes to travel to Syria to secure evidence that could implicate top officials of the former government.
Earlier on Friday, the head of the UN migration agency warned that large-scale returns of refugees to Syria could overwhelm the country and even stoke conflict at a fragile moment with the fall of Assad regime.
The UN refugee agency has estimated that 1 million people will return to Syria in the first six months of 2025. Some European countries have already frozen asylum applications for Syrians.
“We believe that millions of people returning would create conflict within an already fragile society,” Amy Pope, director-general of the International Organization for Migration, told a Geneva press briefing after a trip to Syria.
“We are not promoting large-scale returns. The communities, frankly, are just not ready to absorb the people who are displaced,” she said, calling for support from donors to help stabilize and rebuild the country.
Pope said she was urging governments to “slow down on any plans to sent people back.”
She said some communities could yet flee because of uncertainties about life under the new authorities, led by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group which once had ties to Al-Qaeda.
“We heard from communities, for example, the Christian community, who hasn’t yet left, but are very much worried about the next several months and want to make sure that they don’t become the targets of attack,” Pope said.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
The United States, other Western powers and many Syrians welcomed Assad’s fall, but it is not clear whether HTS will impose strict Islamic rule or show flexibility.
There is widespread apprehension among Syrians that the new administration will gravitate toward hard-line religious rule, marginalizing minority communities and excluding women from public life.
Sweden will no longer fund UNRWA aid agency, minister says
- Nordic country plans to increase its overall humanitarian assistance to Gaza next year
- Sweden’s decision to end funding for UNRWA was in response to the Israeli ban
OSLO: Sweden will no longer fund the UN refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) but instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Nordic country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, told Swedish broadcaster TV4 on Friday.
Israel, which will ban UNRWA’s operations in the country from late January, has repeatedly accused the agency of being involved in the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel that triggered the ongoing war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision to end funding for UNRWA was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channelling aid to the Palestinians via the agency more difficult, Dousa said.
Sweden plans to increase its overall humanitarian assistance to Gaza next year, he added.
“There are several other organizations in Gaza, I have just been there and met several of them,” the minister said, naming the UN World Food Programme as one potential recipient.
The United Nations General Assembly threw its support behind UNRWA this month, demanding that Israel respect the agency’s mandate and “enable its operations to proceed without impediment or restriction.”
The warm Turkish welcome for refugees is ending and Syrians are worried
- Syrian president’s ouster this month has led many in Turkiye to argue that the refugees have no reason to stay
- Some Syrians are panicking about returning to a devastated nation
GAZIANTEP, Turkiye: Turkiye gained renown as a haven for refugees by welcoming more than 3 million Syrians fleeing violence between forces from Bashar Assad ‘s government and a patchwork of rebel groups.
But the Syrian president’s ouster this month has led many in Turkiye to argue that the refugees have no reason to stay, part of the global backlash against migration. Some Syrians are panicking about returning to a devastated nation.
“There’s no work, electricity, or water. There is no leader. Who will it be? I have no idea,” said Mahmut Cabuli, who fled airstrikes by Syrian government forces and violence by rebel groups in his hometown Aleppo a decade ago. “I’m scared and don’t know what the authorities will do.”
‘My children were born here’
Cabuli spent several years in a refugee camp before he found a job at a textile factory in Gaziantep, a southern Turkish city near the Syrian border. After he met another Syrian refugee, they married and had two children.
“My children were born here,” he said. “I am working, thank God. I am happy here. I don’t want to go back now.”
Many Turks baselessly accuse Syrians of taking their jobs and straining health care and other public services. Riots have damaged Syrian-owned shops, homes or cars, including one in July in the central city of Kayseri following allegations that a Syrian refugee sexually assaulted a child. The riots sparked counterprotests in northern Syria.
Turkish authorities said that the alleged perpetrator was arrested and the victim placed under state protection.
“A spark between Syrians and Turkish citizens can immediately cause a big fire, a big flame,” said Umit Yılmaz, the mayor of Sehitkamil, which hosts 450,000 Syrians.
“The Syrians need to be reunited with their homeland immediately,” he said. “I have come to a point where I am even willing to get in my own car and take them away if necessary.”
Was staying in Turkiye temporary or for good?
In 2014, Turkish authorities gave Syrians universal access to health care, education and the right to work by granting them a legal status known as temporary protection.
As a result, Turkiye has taken in more Syrian refugees than any other nation — more than 3.8 million at its peak in 2022, or roughly 60 percent of all the Syrians logged by UN refugee agency UNHCR.
But more recently, anti-refugee sentiment has surged as Turkiye has grappled with problems including persistent inflation — particularly in food and housing — and with high youth unemployment.
“This prolonged stay under temporary protection must end,” said Azmi Mahmutoglu, spokesman for the Victory Party, a right-wing party that has opposed the presence of Syrians in Turkiye and called for their repatriation.
Hundreds of Syrians have gathered at border gates along Turkiye’s 911-kilometer (566 mile) frontier with Syria since Assad’s fall and the returns are expected to accelerate if Syria becomes stable.
Metin Corabatir, director of the Ankara-based Research Center on Asylum and Migration, said most of the departures so far appear to be Syrians checking the situation back in Syria before deciding whether to move their families back.
Muhammed Nur Cuneyt, a 24-year-old Syrian who arrived in 2011 from the northern town of Azaz, was eagerly waiting at one gate on Dec. 10, saying he was grateful to Turkiye for granting refuge but resented hearing anti-Syrian sentiment as his people fought Assad.
“Some were saying ‘Why are the Syrians here? Why don’t you go back and fight with your nation?’” he said.
Are they voluntary returns?
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought ways to encourage the refugees’ voluntary returns — including building housing in Syria close to the Turkish border after Syrian migration helped weaken support for his Justice and Development party.
Erdogan has four more years in office but the main opposition party has a slight lead in polls.
One refugee who returned to Syria said that he had signed a document ending his protected refugee status under Turkish law.
“Would they be allowed to come back to Turkiye? Corabatir said. “Our hope is that it will continue.”
This week, UNHCR said it does not believe that conditions to end Syrian’s refugee status have been met and it still thinks they need protection.
But for Huseyin Basut, the Turkish owner of a pet shop in Gaziantep, Turkiye has done all that it can for the Syrians.
“We did all we could as a country and as citizens,” said Bayut, 52. “Since the war is over, they should return to their homes, build their homes or whatever they need to do and may God help them.”
