Virus, Israeli occupation shatter Bethlehem’s Christmas festivities

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Updated 24 December 2020
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Virus, Israeli occupation shatter Bethlehem’s Christmas festivities

  • COVID-19 has been a ‘catastrophe,’ affecting hotels, guides, shops, factories, restaurants, tour buses

AMMAN: Life was good for the Hosh family at Christmas last year. Fayez, 62, was making a decent living from his home-based woodcarving shop.

He was producing quality handcrafted statues of the holy family that sold in Bethlehem and nearby Jerusalem souvenir shops.

Tourism was flourishing and his three sons George, Rami, and Richard also had employment. George, the oldest, now 36 years old, was doing well in the home decorations business and his family was looking forward to 2020 as the year when he would finally get married and start his own family.

But all their hopes and dreams were dashed due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

“The stoppage of tourism was not gradual. It came to a screeching stop. Our city, unlike other Palestinian towns, is almost totally dependent on tourism,” Hosh said.

In 2019, a record 1.4 million tourists (20 percent up on 2018) visited the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, built by Queen Helena in the fourth century after her son the Roman Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity.

The COVID-19 pandemic had been a “catastrophe” for Bethlehem, Hosh added, affecting hotels, tour guides, souvenir shops, factories, restaurants, and tour buses.

With no tourists in Bethlehem, Hosh said he would have gone to Jerusalem, where some souvenir shops remained open, but it would have been difficult to get a travel permit from the Israelis.

His wife, Rita, told Arab News that COVID-19 had impacted on the whole family. George’s marriage had been postponed and her sons’ tradition of buying new clothes for the Christmas holiday had this year been abandoned.

The hit on family finances had also curtailed food preparations for the holiday. “It depends on our budget. But anyway, this year no one is coming or going so there is no need to make anything fancy,” she said.

For nearly a year the Hosh family has had virtually no income. The only exception was a one-off payment of 700 shekels ($200) that the Palestinian government gave to Rami from a special fund established to help mitigate financial losses brought about as a result of the global health crisis.

Jack Sara, president of Bethlehem Bible College which runs the Shepherd’s Society charitable organization, told Arab News: “We are trying to help hundreds of families both in terms of food and medicine supplies as well as more costly medical operations for people who have absolutely no money to cover these basic costs.

“We do a lot of visits to people’s homes and we can see how difficult the situation is. The problem isn’t only the pandemic but also the occupation. Our people see no future.

“The situation is unstable and unpredictable, and the economic aftereffects of the coronavirus outbreak make a bad situation even worse,” he said.

Former mayor of Bethlehem, Vera Baboun, told Arab News that unlike previous years the Christmas pageantry, celebrations, and midnight mass would be muted.

“For the first time ever, the Nativity church has zero tourists and pilgrims during the Christmas season and as a result of the lockdown Bethlehem stands lonely without pilgrims or tourists or even local believers,” she said.

Baboun estimated that the COVID-19 pandemic had affected 40 percent of Bethlehemite families whose source of income was directly dependent on tourism and another 40 percent indirectly connected to the sector.

The Hosh family can trace its ancestry in Bethlehem back for decades and has always joined the uplifting Christmas celebrations.

“My sons wanted to attend the tree-lighting ceremony but were prevented in order to avoid the spread of the virus. I am sure for the first time in my living memory we will not be out welcoming the patriarch on Christmas Eve.”

This year the Latin Catholic Church has a new spiritual leader. Pierbattista Pizzaballa was appointed its patriarch on Nov. 6. He will be leading midnight mass in an empty church because of the health regulations.


Australia closes Iran embassy citing deteriorating security environment

Updated 4 sec ago
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Australia closes Iran embassy citing deteriorating security environment

SYDNEY: Australia has suspended operations at its embassy in Tehran due to the deteriorating security environment in Iran and has directed the departure of all Australian officials, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Friday.
Australia’s ambassador to Iran will remain in the region to support the government’s response to the crisis, Wong said.
“We are continuing planning to support Australians seeking to depart Iran, and we remain in close contact with other partner countries,” Wong said in a statement.


Israeli scientists reel after Iranian missile strikes premier research institute

Updated 4 min 9 sec ago
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Israeli scientists reel after Iranian missile strikes premier research institute

  • “It’s a moral victory” for Iran, said Oren Schuldiner

REHOVOT, Israel: For years, Israel has targeted Iranian nuclear scientists, hoping to choke progress on Iran’s nuclear program by striking at the brains behind it.
Now, with Iran and Israel in an open-ended direct conflict, scientists in Israel have found themselves in the crosshairs after an Iranian missile struck a premier research institute known for its work in life sciences and physics, among other fields.
While no one was killed in the strike on the Weizmann Institute of Science early Sunday, it caused heavy damage to multiple labs on campus, snuffing out years of scientific research and sending a chilling message to Israeli scientists that they and their expertise are now targets in the escalating conflict with Iran.
“It’s a moral victory” for Iran, said Oren Schuldiner, a professor in the department of molecular cell biology and the department of molecular neuroscience whose lab was obliterated in the strike. “They managed to harm the crown jewel of science in Israel.”
Iranian scientists were a prime target in a long shadow war
During years of a shadow war between Israel and Iran that preceded the current conflict, Israel repeatedly targeted Iranian nuclear scientists with the aim of setting back Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel continued that tactic with its initial blow against Iran days ago, killing multiple nuclear scientists, along with top generals, as well as striking nuclear facilities and ballistic missile infrastructure.
For its part, Iran has been accused of targeting at least one Weizmann scientist before. Last year, Israeli authorities said they busted an Iranian spy ring that devised a plot to follow and assassinate an Israeli nuclear scientist who worked and lived at the institute.
Citing an indictment, Israeli media said the suspects, Palestinians from east Jerusalem, gathered information about the scientist and photographed the exterior of the Weizmann Institute but were arrested before they could proceed.
With Iran’s intelligence penetration into Israel far less successful than Israel’s, those plots have not been seen through, making this week’s strike on Weizmann that much more jarring.
“The Weizmann Institute has been in Iran’s sights,” said Yoel Guzansky, an Iran expert and senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank. He stressed that he did not know for certain whether Iran intended to strike the institute but believed it did.
While it is a multidisciplinary research institute, Weizmann, like other Israeli universities, has ties to Israel’s defense establishment, including collaborations with industry leaders like Elbit Systems, which is why it may have been targeted.
But Guzansky said the institute primarily symbolizes “Israeli scientific progress” and the strike against it shows Iran’s thinking: “You harm our scientists, so we are also harming  scientific cadre.”
Damage to the institute and labs ‘literally decimated’
Weizmann, founded in 1934 and later renamed after Israel’s first president, ranks among the world’s top research institutes. Its scientists and researchers publish hundreds of studies each year. One Nobel laureate in chemistry and three Turing Award laureates have been associated with the institute, which built the first computer in Israel in 1954.
Two buildings were hit in the strike, including one housing life sciences labs and a second that was empty and under construction but meant for chemistry study, according to the institute. Dozens of other buildings were damaged.
The campus has been closed since the strike, although media were allowed to visit Thursday. Large piles of rock, twisted metal and other debris were strewn on campus. There were shattered windows, collapsed ceiling panels and charred walls.
A photo shared on X by one professor showed flames rising near a heavily damaged structure with debris scattered on the ground nearby.
“Several buildings were hit quite hard, meaning that some labs were literally decimated, really leaving nothing,” said Sarel Fleishman, a professor of biochemics who said he has visited the site since the strike.
Life’s work of many researchers is gone
Many of those labs focus on the life sciences, whose projects are especially sensitive to physical damage, Fleishman said. The labs were studying areas like tissue generation, developmental biology or cancer, with much of their work now halted or severely set back by the damage.
“This was the life’s work of many people,” he said, noting that years’ or even decades’ worth of research was destroyed.
For Schuldiner, the damage means the lab he has worked at for 16 years “is entirely gone. No trace. There is nothing to save.”
In that once gleaming lab, he kept thousands of genetically modified flies used for research into the development of the human nervous system, which helped provide insights into autism and schizophrenia, he said.
The lab housed equipment like sophisticated microscopes. Researchers from Israel and abroad joined hands in the study effort.
“All of our studies have stopped,” he said, estimating it would take years to rebuild and get the science work back on track. “It’s very significant damage to the science that we can create and to the contribution we can make to the world.”


IAEA chief identifies Isfahan as Iran’s planned uranium enrichment site

Updated 15 min 5 sec ago
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IAEA chief identifies Isfahan as Iran’s planned uranium enrichment site

  • Day before Israel launched its military strikes, Iran announced it had built a new uranium enrichment facility, which it would soon equip and bring online
  • Israel’s attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities destroyed one of those plants and put another out of action by killing its power supply

VIENNA: UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi on Thursday identified Isfahan, home to one of Iran’s biggest nuclear facilities, as the location of a uranium enrichment plant that Iran said it would soon open in retaliation for a diplomatic push against it.
The day before Israel launched its military strikes against Iranian targets including nuclear facilities last Friday, Iran announced it had built a new uranium enrichment facility, which it would soon equip and bring online. Tehran did not provide details such as the plant’s location.
Iran’s announcement was part of its retaliation against a resolution passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors declaring Tehran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations over issues including its failure to credibly explain uranium traces found at undeclared sites.
Had it gone online, the new enrichment plant would have been the fourth in operation in Iran. But Israel’s attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities destroyed one of those plants and put another out of action by killing its power supply, the IAEA has said.
“There was an announcement, quite coincidentally, on the eve of the start of the military operation by Israel of a new enrichment facility in Isfahan, precisely, that we were going to be inspecting immediately, but this inspection had to be postponed, we hope, because of the start of the military operation,” Grossi said.
He did not say where exactly in Isfahan the planned plant was, but he said the nuclear complex there is “huge.”
The IAEA has previously reported that Israeli military strikes on Friday damaged four buildings at Isfahan, including the Uranium Conversion Facility that transforms “yellowcake” uranium into the uranium hexafluoride feedstock for centrifuges so that it can be enriched.
Grossi told the BBC on Monday that the “underground spaces” at Isfahan did not seem to have been affected. Officials say those spaces are also where much of Iran’s most highly enriched uranium stock has been stored.
The IAEA has not, however, been able to carry out any inspections since the strikes.


Jordan FM holds talks with French, Irish, Slovak counterparts on Gaza crisis, Iran tensions

Updated 46 min 17 sec ago
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Jordan FM holds talks with French, Irish, Slovak counterparts on Gaza crisis, Iran tensions

  • Ayman Safadi says negotiations between Israel and Iran ‘the only way to protect the region from the expansion of the war’
  • Foreign minister praises France, Saudi Arabia for co-leading efforts to organize global forum on two-state solution

AMMAN: Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi held a series of discussions on Thursday with European counterparts from France, Ireland, and Slovakia, focusing on efforts to end the escalating crises in the Middle East and revive diplomatic paths toward peace.

In Paris, Safadi met with French Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot, with the two ministers stressing the urgent need to de-escalate tensions between Israel and Iran and resume negotiations as “the only way to protect the region from the expansion of the war and its dangerous repercussions.”

Safadi welcomed talks planned for Friday in Geneva between France, Germany, the US, and Iran, expressing hope they would give diplomacy a chance to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue, the Jordan News Agency reported.

Both he and Barrot also called for intensified international efforts to secure a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and ensure the immediate and sufficient delivery of humanitarian aid.

Safadi said the inhumane reality in Gaza, marked by massacres, starvation, and collective suffering, must end, and warned that illegal Israeli measures in the West Bank are further eroding chances of a viable two-state solution.

He reiterated Jordan’s backing of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and called for international recognition of the state of Palestine, saying such a move affirms the “inevitability” of the two-state solution as the only path to a just peace.

Safadi also praised France’s “key” role in co-leading efforts, alongside Saudi Arabia, to organize an international conference on the two-state solution, which had been postponed due to the recent Iran-Israel escalation.

The ministers also addressed the situation in Syria, highlighting the need for a unified approach that supports Syria’s sovereignty, eliminates terrorism, ensures refugee return and lays the groundwork for reconstruction.

They reaffirmed their commitment to Lebanon’s stability and the wider humanitarian mission in Gaza.

In a separate phone call with Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs Simon Harris, Safadi discussed similar themes, with both stressing that ending the war and resuming nuclear negotiations with Iran were essential to resolving broader regional instability.

They called for enhanced UN humanitarian access to Gaza and warned against actions in the West Bank that could jeopardize the two-state solution. Safadi thanked Ireland for its longstanding support of Palestinian statehood and rights in line with international law.

Later in the day, Safadi also held talks with Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar. The pair echoed concerns over regional escalation and underlined the urgency of a ceasefire in Gaza.

Safadi and Blanar also explored ways to deepen ties and expand cooperation between Jordan and the EU, reaffirming a shared commitment to regional peace and security.


Israel changing ‘the world’ with Iran war: Netanyahu

Updated 57 min 17 sec ago
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Israel changing ‘the world’ with Iran war: Netanyahu

  • The Israeli prime minister welcomed ‘all help‘ in destroying the Islamic republic’s nuclear sites, in an apparent nod to the US

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel was “changing the face of the world” in its war with Iran, as he welcomed “all help” in destroying the Islamic republic’s nuclear sites.
“I said that we’re changing the face of the Middle East, and now I say we’re changing the face of the world,” he told public broadcaster Kansas
Seven days into the war, Netanyahu said Israeli forces were ahead of schedule in their offensive against Iranian nuclear and missile sites, but refused to provide a clear timeline for an end to the most intense confrontation in history with arch foe Tehran.
“We are at war. I’m not going to reveal our timeline. I’m not going to tell them (the Iranians) what we’re preparing,” said Netanyahu.
“When you enter a war, you know when it begins, but not when it ends,” he added.
He said Israel had already destroyed “more than half” of Iran’s missile launchers and was “capable of striking all of Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
But, in an apparent nod to key ally the United States, Netanyahu added: “All help is welcome.”
During his interview with Kan, Netanyahu went on to say that US President Donald Trump “will do what is good for for the United States, and I will do what is good for the State of Israel.”
Following the remarks, Trump offered a fresh timeline for a possible US intervention in the conflict, saying in a statement that he would decide whether to attack Iran within the next two weeks due to a “substantial” chance of negotiations.