TUNIS: Tunisia has long been seen as a pioneer for women’s rights in the Arab world, but on the eve of presidential elections, women are calling this reputation into question.
“Men promise a lot to women. But when Mr. Moustache arrives in power, nothing happens,” said Feryel Charfeddine, head of Calam, an association fighting violence against women.
Whether they be passionate activists, laywomen or former elected officials, many women say they do not expect “much” from the polls that start with the first voting round on September 15.
“I’m not a pessimist, I’m a realist,” said Charfeddine, who is alarmed by what she sees every day on the ground: increased violence, diminished rights and social conservatism.
“Women aren’t interested in politics anymore. Unconsciously, they know that it’s the same patriarchal system that endures,” she said.
Women played a prominent role in the protests that toppled longstanding dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011 and they were a courted group in previous post-revolution elections.
But they have been largely absent from the 2019 presidential campaign, which has focused heavily on security and economic issues.
Nor are they well represented in the large pool of presidential hopefuls, with just two women standing out of 26 candidates.
One is staunch anti-Islamist Abir Moussi, the other a former minister, Salma Elloumi.
“They’re part of the alibi,” said lawyer Bochra BelHajj Hmida, who was elected to parliament in 2014 but is stepping back from politics.
“I had a very, very rich experience, but I’m leaving politics without regret,” she told AFP.
While in office, Hmida helped spearhead an inheritance equality law, facing fierce backlash from some sides for her position on the hotly debated issue.
“Men expect women in politics to be the least disruptive as possible, that they don’t debate and especially that they don’t make decisions. I lost a lot of male friendships,” she said.
She noted as well a lack of female solidarity, saying it’s “as if there was only one spot to win and you have to fight each other for it.”
The sometimes taxing environment can dissuade engagement.
“Women don’t feel supported and there is no willingness of political parties to change that,” said Zyna Mejri, a young activist.
Tunisia has been considered relatively progressive on women’s rights in the Arab and Muslim world since its independence in the 1950s, adopting in 1956 a Personal Status Code that abolished polygamy and changed divorce law.
Beji Caid Essebsi, Tunisia’s first president elected democratically by a nationwide vote in 2014, boasted of having been carried to power by the female electorate.
He oversaw the passing of several key texts, including a law on violence against women and the repeal of a circular banning women from marrying non-Muslims.
“It’s true that we’re way better off, but we still have a lot to do,” Mejri said.
“We can have every day a new great law about equality, but the problem is the enforcement of that law,” she added, noting that “it’s also about changing the mind of Tunisian society.”
“Schizophrenia,” Charfeddine calls it, pointing to the gap between the country’s progressive image of the society’s strong conservatism.
Hmida often collided with the aggression of young men that did not understand her fight for equality.
But she remains convinced of the need for debate and says she has at times shifted her point of view.
“When I managed to establish a dialogue with some of these young people, it also opened my eyes... I became aware of their frustration, of the way they think the ‘bourgeois’ look at them,” she said.
The question of whether Tunisian society is “ready” for more equality infuriates Yosra Frawes, head of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women (AFTD).
“It’s not even a question, equality is a universal principle,” she said, noting however that she sees “an enormous setback” for women’s rights in the country.
She cites growing difficulties regarding sexual and reproductive rights, less access to health care — particularly in rural areas — and the impoverishment of women.
According to a recent AFTD study, women make up more than 80 percent of Tunisia’s agricultural workforce, a sector the association denounced as precarious and “exploitative.”
Tunisian women absent from presidential campaign
Tunisian women absent from presidential campaign
- Tunisia has been considered relatively progressive on women’s rights in the Arab and Muslim world since its independence in the 1950s
Hamas military arm releases new video of Israeli hostage in Gaza
- The family of hostage soldier Edan Alexander, 20, declined to comment but permitted the 3-1/2 minute video to be published
- The video shows a pale-looking Alexander sitting in a dark space against a wall
JERUSALEM: Palestinian militant group Hamas published a video of an Israeli-American hostage on Saturday, in which he pleads for US President-elect Donald Trump to secure his release from captivity.
The family of hostage soldier Edan Alexander, 20, declined to comment but permitted the 3-1/2 minute video to be published. Alexander was abducted to Gaza during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on southern Israel.
The video shows a pale-looking Alexander sitting in a dark space against a wall, identifying himself, addressing his family, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump. It is unclear whether his statement was scripted by his captors.
Netanyahu said in a statement that the video was cruel psychological warfare and that he had told Alexander’s family in a phone call that Israel was working tirelessly to bring the hostages home.
Around half of the 101 foreign and Israeli hostages still held incommunicado in Gaza are believed to still be alive.
Hamas leaders were expected to arrive in Cairo on Saturday for ceasefire talks with Egyptian officials to explore ways to reach a deal that could secure the release of hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners.
The fresh bid comes after Washington said this week it was reviving efforts toward that goal.
The Hostages Families Forum urged the administrations of both outgoing US President Joe Biden and Trump — who takes office in January — to step up efforts in order to secure a hostage release.
“The hostages’ lives hang by a thread,” it said.
World Central Kitchen says pausing Gaza operations after Israeli strike
- WCK in a statement said it “had no knowledge that any individual in the vehicle had alleged ties to the October 7 Hamas attack“
- “All three men worked for WCK and they were hit while driving in a WCK jeep in Khan Yunis,” Bassal said
GAZA: US charity World Central Kitchen said Saturday it was “pausing operations in Gaza at this time” after an Israeli air strike hit a vehicle carrying its workers.
The Israeli military confirmed that a Palestinian employee of WCK was killed in a strike, accusing the worker of being a “terrorist” who “infiltrated Israel and took part in the murderous October 7 massacre” last year.
WCK in a statement said it “had no knowledge that any individual in the vehicle had alleged ties to the October 7 Hamas attack,” and did not confirm any deaths.
Earlier Saturday, Gaza civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that five people were killed, including “three employees of World Central Kitchen,” in the strike in the main southern city of Khan Yunis.
“All three men worked for WCK and they were hit while driving in a WCK jeep in Khan Yunis,” Bassal said, adding that the vehicle had been “marked with its logo clearly visible.”
WCK confirmed a strike had hit its workers, but added: “At this time, we are working with incomplete information and are urgently seeking more details.”
The Israeli army statement said representatives from the unit responsible for overseeing humanitarian needs in Gaza had “demanded senior officials from the international community and the WCK administration to clarify the issue and order an urgent examination regarding the hiring of workers who took part in the October 7 massacre.”
It also said its strike in Khan Yunis had hit “a civilian unmarked vehicle and its movement on the route was not coordinated for transporting of aid.”
In April, an Israeli strike killed seven WCK staff — an Australian, three Britons, a North American, a Palestinian and a Pole.
Israel said it had been targeting a “Hamas gunman” in that strike, but the military admitted a series of “grave mistakes” and violations of its own rules of engagement.
The UN said last week that 333 aid workers had been killed since the start of the war in October of last year, 243 of them employees of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
Palestinian militants’ October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 44,382 people in Gaza, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
Israel hits Hezbollah targets in Lebanon days into fragile truce
- The army said it had also struck “military infrastructure” on the Syria-Lebanon border, where it accused Hezbollah of smuggling weapons in violation of the truce
- Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported “continued violations of the ceasefire” by Israel
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military carried out air strikes in Lebanon Saturday against Hezbollah activities that it said “posed a threat,” days into a fragile ceasefire between it and the Iran-backed group.
The army said it had also struck “military infrastructure” on the Syria-Lebanon border, where it accused Hezbollah of smuggling weapons in violation of the truce.
In a speech this week announcing his government was ready to accept a ceasefire after more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned that Israel would maintain “full military freedom of action” in the event of any breach.
In a statement on Saturday, the military listed four separate strikes in Lebanon on facilities, weapons and vehicles belonging to Hezbollah, saying it had acted “against activities in Lebanon that posed a threat to the State of Israel, violating the ceasefire understandings.”
Lebanon’s health ministry said that an Israeli “strike on a car in Majdal Zoun wounded three people including a seven-year-old child.”
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported “continued violations of the ceasefire” by Israel, including an incident in which an Israeli tank “crushed a number of cars and surrounded some families” who were later evacuated by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Separately, Israel’s military said it had launched a “strike on military infrastructure sites adjacent to border crossings between Syria and Lebanon that were actively used by Hezbollah to smuggle weapons,” adding that the alleged smuggling took place after the ceasefire took effect.
The ceasefire deal, which was intended to end more than a year of cross-border exchanges of fire and two months of all-out war, went into effect early on Wednesday.
As part of the terms of the agreement, the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers will deploy in southern Lebanon as the Israeli army withdraws over a period of 60 days.
Hezbollah is also meant to withdraw its forces north of the Litani river, approximately 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle its military infrastructure in southern Lebanon.
On Friday, the group’s chief Naim Qassem vowed to cooperate with the Lebanese army “to implement the commitments of the agreement.”
NNA reported that army chief Joseph Aoun met US Major General Jasper Jeffers to discuss “the general situation and coordination mechanisms between concerned parties in the south.”
The US military’s Central Command said Jeffers arrived in Beirut this week “to serve as co-chair for the implementation and monitoring mechanism of the cessation of hostilities.”
According to Lebanon’s health ministry, at least 3,961 people have been killed in the country since October 2023 as a result of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, most of them in recent weeks.
On the Israeli side, the hostilities have killed at least 82 soldiers and 47 civilians, authorities say.
Israel stepped up its campaign in south Lebanon in late September after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah in support of its ally Hamas following the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.
West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief
- MI6 head Richard Moore cites ‘terrible loss of innocent life’
- ‘In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state’
LONDON: The West has “yet to have a full reckoning with the radicalizing impact of the fighting, the terrible loss of innocent life in the Middle East and the horrors of Oct. 7,” the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6 has warned.
Richard Moore made the comments in a speech delivered to the British Embassy in Paris, and was joined by his French counterpart Nicolas Lerner.
Moore said: “In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state. And the impact on Europe, our shared European home, could hardly be more serious.”
Daesh is expanding its reach and staging deadly attacks in Iran and Russia despite suffering significant territorial setbacks, he added, warning that “the menace of terrorism has not gone away.”
In October last year, Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, said his agency was monitoring for increased terror risks in the UK due to the Gaza war. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in over a year of fighting.
In Lebanon, a 60-day truce agreed this week between Hezbollah and Israel brought an end to a conflict that has killed thousands of Lebanese civilians.
Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say
- Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City
The Israeli military said it killed a Palestinian it accused of involvement in Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel in a vehicle strike in Gaza, and is investigating claims that the individual was an employee of aid group World Central Kitchen.
At least 32 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across Gaza overnight and into Saturday, with most casualties reported in northern areas, medics told Reuters.
Later on Saturday medics said seven people were killed when an Israeli air strike targeted a vehicle near a gathering of Palestinians receiving aid in the southern area of Khan Younis south of the enclave.
According to residents and a Hamas source, the vehicle targeted near a crowd receiving flour belonged to security personnel responsible for overseeing the delivery of aid shipments into Gaza.
Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City, according to a statement from the Gaza Civil Defense and the official Palestinian news agency WAFA early on Saturday.
The Gaza Civil Defense also reported that one of its officers was killed in attacks in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, bringing the total number of civil defense workers killed since October 7, 2023, to 88.
Earlier on Saturday, WAFA reported that three employees of the World Central Kitchen, a US-based, non-governmental humanitarian agency, were killed when a civilian vehicle was targeted in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
The World Central Kitchen has not yet commented on the incident.
