JERICHO, Palestine: Mamoun Jasr has grown hundreds of date palms near Jericho, but now the farmer fears being marooned on a scrap of Palestinian land if Israel forges ahead with its plans to annex the Jordan Valley.
A qualified accountant, Jasr has spent the past decade on an ambitious mission to learn how to cultivate his fields as an “act of resistance” against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
His palm grove now boasts 1,300 trees planted near the oasis city of Jericho, home to 20,000 Palestinians.
But the nearby area is also dotted with Israeli settlements, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says will be annexed along with the fertile Jordan Valley.
When Netanyahu unveiled a map of his plans in September, the premier pointed to a long blue zone to be annexed, leaving a brown speck in the middle: Jericho.
The idea of leaving the city under Palestinian rule, while the surrounding territory becomes Israeli, was also included in a broader US peace plan published in January.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War and more than 450,000 settlers now live alongside 2.8 million Palestinians.
Netanyahu said the government could put the annexation plans in motion from July 1, despite vocal opposition from a host of countries and the United Nations.
“Jericho will become an enclave,” said Jasr, inspecting his palm trees as they cast shadows across the plain, worried like many Palestinians that the Israeli proposals will leave him stranded.
The 50-year-old currently divides his time between his office in the city of Qalqilya, in the northern West Bank, and his farmland near the Jordanian border.
“Who knows if I will be able to leave to sell my dates? And who knows if I will be able to return to the ‘island of Jericho’ if I need to go to Qalqilya?” he asked.
The full details of Israel’s annexation plans remain unknown, with some observers predicting that Netanyahu could first annex only a few settlements and hold off initially on the wider Jordan Valley.
Even so, the uncertainty and fears that Jericho will become isolated are unsettling farmers here.
“What will happen to residents whose land is located outside? What type of permit will Israel give them to go and cultivate it?” said Judeh Aseed, from Jericho’s agricultural union.
“If we leave our fields for even one or two days without anyone taking care of them, they will become unworkable,” he added.
The land needs regular irrigation, Aseed said, raising concerns Israel could prevent Palestinian farmers from watering or fertilizing their land.
Jericho’s mayor, Salem Ghrouf, predicated annexation would trigger a “major economic problem” as many residents would lose their work.
“Jericho is the heart of the Jordan Valley and depends on surrounding villages, whose residents come and do their shopping and work,” he said.
For Ghrouf, trying to do a deal to grant Palestinian farmers access to their land after annexation would amount to capitulation to Israel.
“Jericho is part of Palestine and cannot be separated under any circumstances,” he said.
Meanwhile, Jasr remains uneasy and expects Israeli soldiers to arrive on his land imminently — and not for the first time.
Five years ago, he was served an expulsion notice by the Israeli army which claimed his date palms stood on Israeli land.
Jasr challenged the order in Israel’s supreme court and won, but he worries he will be unable to withstand annexation.
“If the army comes back, this time I have no chance,” he said. “I put all my money into this farm and now I’m scared of losing everything.”
Jericho Palestinians fear isolation in Israeli annexation
https://arab.news/r8npy
Jericho Palestinians fear isolation in Israeli annexation
- Netanyahu said the government could put the annexation plans in motion from July 1
- Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War and more than 450,000 settlers now live alongside 2.8 million Palestinians
Doctor at Brown University deported to Lebanon despite US judge’s order
- While in Lebanon, the US consulate issued Alawieh an H-1B visa authorizing her entry into the United States to work at Brown University, the lawsuit said. Such visas are reserved for people from other countries who are employed in specialty occupations
- Alawieh, a Lebanese citizen who lives in Providence, was detained on Thursday after arriving at Logan International Airport in Boston after traveling to Lebanon to see relatives, according to a lawsuit filed by her cousin, Yara Chehab
BOSTON, March 16 : A Rhode Island doctor who is an assistant professor at Brown University’s medical school has been deported to Lebanon even though a judge had issued an order blocking the US visa holder’s immediate removal from the country, according to court papers.
The expulsion of Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, is set to be the focus of a hearing on Monday before a federal judge in Boston, who on Sunday demanded information on whether US Customs and Border Protection had “willfully” disobeyed his order.
US District Judge Leo Sorokin, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, said he had received a “detailed and specific” timeline of the events from an attorney working on Alawieh’s behalf that raised “serious allegations” about whether his order was violated.
The agency has not said why she was removed. But her expulsion came as Republican US President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to sharply restrict border crossing and ramp up immigration arrests.
A CBP spokesperson, Hilton Beckham, in a statement said migrants bear the burden of establishing admissibility and that the agency’s officers “adhere to strict protocols to identify and stop threats.”
Alawieh, a Lebanese citizen who lives in Providence, was detained on Thursday after arriving at Logan International Airport in Boston after traveling to Lebanon to see relatives, according to a lawsuit filed by her cousin, Yara Chehab.
She had held a visa to be in the United States since 2018, when she first came to complete a two-year fellowship at Ohio State University before then completing a fellowship at the University of Washington and then moving to the Yale-Waterbury Internal Medicine Program, which she completed in June.
While in Lebanon, the US consulate issued Alawieh an H-1B visa authorizing her entry into the United States to work at Brown University, the lawsuit said. Such visas are reserved for people from other countries who are employed in specialty occupations.
Despite that visa, CBP detained her at the airport for reasons her family members have still not been provided, according to the lawsuit, which argued her rights were being violated.
In response to the lawsuit, Sorokin on Friday evening issued orders barring Alawieh’s removal from Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice to the court and requiring her to be brought to a court hearing on Monday.
Yet according to the cousin’s attorneys, after that order was issued, Alawieh was flown to Paris, where she was then set to board a flight for Lebanon that had been scheduled for Sunday.
Sorokin on Sunday directed the government to provide a legal and factual response by Monday morning ahead of the previously scheduled hearing and to preserve all emails, text messages and other documents concerning Alawieh’s arrival and removal.
Concerns have also been raised in other cases about whether the Trump administration is complying with court rulings blocking parts of its agenda.
The Trump administration on Sunday said it has deported
hundreds of Venezuelans
to El Salvador under seldom-used wartime powers, despite a federal judge’s order temporarily barring such deportations.
Sudanese police accuse RSF paramilitaries after 11 bodies found at bottom of a well in Khartoum
- The bodies of 11 people were recovered Saturday from the deep well in the Fayhaa neighborhood of the city
- Police say the victims were killed by paramilitary by the paramilitary RSF when itwas controlling the area
CAIRO: Sudanese authorities said Sunday many bodies have been found at the bottom of a well in the capital, Khartoum, a few days after the military cleared the area from a notorious paramilitary group.
The bodies of 11 people, including women and children, were recovered Saturday from the deep well in the Fayhaa neighborhood of the city, according to police.
Col. Abdul-Rahanan Mohamed Hassan, head of the civil defense’s field team in Khartoum, said a search of the the area was mounted after residents reported that they found a dead body in the well.
“We found inside this well different characters (bodies), males and females, adults and children,” Hassan said, adding that authorities were still searching the well.
Police say the victims were killed by the Rapid Support Forces before being thrown into the well when the paramilitary force was controlling the area. The military retook the area earlier this month as part of its sweeping advances in Khartoum and its sister city of Omdurman.
There was no immediate comment from the RSF.
Afraa Al-Hajj Omar, a resident of the nearby Hajj Youssef neighborhood, said that the RSF killed many people in the area and their bodies were left for days in the streets. She said many bodies were thrown in the well. “They robbed us, beat us, and tortured us,” she said.
Sudan was plunged into chaos in April 2023 when simmering tensions between the military and the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into open warfare across the country.
At least 20,000 people have been killed, though the number is likely far higher. The war has driven more than 14 million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine.
The fighting, which wrecked Khartoum and other urban areas has been marked by atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in the western region of Darfur, according to the United Nations and international rights groups.
The war has intensified in recent months, with the military making steady advances against the RSF in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country.
Syria’s new rulers seek aid boost at EU conference
- Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani is expected to take part in the event, along with dozens of European and Arab ministers and representatives of international organizations
BRUSSELS: The interim government in Damascus will take part on Monday in an annual international conference to gather aid pledges for Syria, facing dire humanitarian problems and an uncertain political transition after the fall of Bashar Assad.
The conference has been hosted by the European Union in Brussels since 2017 — but took place without the government of Assad, who was shunned for his brutal actions in a civil war that began in 2011.
After Assad’s overthrow in December, EU officials hope to use the conference as a fresh start, despite concerns about deadly violence this month that pitted the new, Islamist rulers against Assad loyalists.
“This is a time of dire needs and challenges for Syria, as tragically evidenced by the recent wave of violence in coastal areas,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said.
But she said it was also “a time of hope,” citing an agreement struck on March 10 to integrate the Kurdish-led and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which control much of Syria’s northeast, into new state institutions.
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, the group that toppled Assad, is designated as a terrorist organization by the United Nations. But EU officials want to engage with the new rulers as long as they stick to pledges to make the transition inclusive and peaceful.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani is expected to take part in the event, along with dozens of European and Arab ministers and representatives of international organizations.
EU officials say the conference is particularly important as the United States under President Donald Trump is making huge cutbacks to humanitarian and development aid programs.
Last year’s conference yielded pledges of 7.5 billion euros ($8.1 billion) in grants and loans, with the EU pledging 2.12 billion for 2024 and 2025.
About 16.5 million people in Syria require humanitarian assistance, with 12.9 million people needing food aid, according to the EU.
The destruction from the war has been compounded by an economic crisis that has sent the Syrian pound tumbling and pushed almost the entire population below the poverty line. ($1 = 0.9192 euros)
Families of Syrians who disappeared during its civil war say the search must go on
- A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the interim government led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared
DARAA, Syria: Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the country’s 14-year civil war gathered in the city of Daraa on Sunday to urge the newly installed interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.
The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared during the war, many of them detained by former President Bashar Assad’s network of intelligence agencies as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist Daesh group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing.
When rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham overthrew Assad in December, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government’s dungeons. Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.
On Sunday, the 14th anniversary of the countrywide uprisings that spiraled into civil war, Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government’s security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn’t heard from him since.
Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad’s ouster, trying to figure out her father’s whereabouts.
“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she said. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”
A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the interim government led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared. The commission also urged the new government to pursue perpetrators.
Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with Al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.
Syria’s civil war began after Assad crushed largely peaceful protests in 2011, one of the popular uprisings against Arab rulers known as the Arab Spring. Half a million people were killed during the conflict, and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.
Yemen rebel leader calls for ‘million-strong’ rally after deadly US strikes
- The Houthis have repeatedly targeted international shipping in the Red Sea, sinking two vessels, in what they call acts of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel has been at war with Hamas, another Iranian ally
- US officials on Sunday vowed further strikes until the Houthis stop attacking Red Sea shipping
SANAA: The leader of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Sunday called for a “million-strong” march of defiance after deadly US strikes hit the capital, Sanaa, and other areas.
“I call on our dear people to go out tomorrow on the anniversary of the Battle of Badr in a million-strong march in Sanaa and the rest of the governorates,” Abdulmalik Al-Houthi said in a televised address, referring to a celebrated military victory by the Prophet Muhammad.
