UN has tools to help Palestinians but needs a stronger will, says envoy

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the UN, addressing the UN’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) on Thursday. (Palestinian UN Mission via Twitter)
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Updated 05 February 2021
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UN has tools to help Palestinians but needs a stronger will, says envoy

  • As world tries to build back better after pandemic, he asks ‘that Palestine not be the exception to these lofty goals’
  • Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People sets out its plans for the year ahead

NEW YORK: Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the UN, on Thursday called for a renewed show of will from the international community to tackle the problems his people continue to face.

He said that the tools for achieving peace in the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis — namely UN resolutions — set out the terms of reference for a just solution with global backing, but “what is the missing is the will.”

“We appeal today for the will to learn from past mistakes and avert repeated failures; the will to uphold the law in all circumstances,” he said.

His comments came as he addressed the UN’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP), which had gathered to set out its plans for the year ahead. The program was unanimously adopted during what was its first meeting since its yearly mandate was renewed by the UN General Assembly.

The committee works to raise global awareness of the plight of Palestinians and highlight the daily challenges they face under occupation. To do this it organizes international conferences, hosts training programs for Palestinians at the UN headquarters in New York, liaises with civil-society organizations, and in November each year leads the observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.

The UN General Assembly established CEIRPP in 1975 and tasked it with recommending “a program of implementation” that would enable the Palestinian people to exercise “their inalienable rights to self-determination, independence and sovereignty; and to return to their homes and property from which they had been displaced.”

This was its 402nd meeting and, as Guyana’s representative put it: “Those who created the committee did not envision that more than a generation later a just and lasting solution for Palestine would still not be achieved.”

It came just weeks after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced plans for the first parliamentary and presidential elections for 15 years in the West Bank, Gaza and occupied East Jerusalem.

In his opening remarks, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said these elections will give renewed legitimacy to Palestinian national institutions.

“Elections are a vital part of building a democratic Palestinian State founded on the rule of law, with equal rights for all,” he said. “The committee’s support to these efforts will be crucial.”

The effects of the pandemic on Palestinians have been severe, especially in Gaza which has been under blockade for more than a decade.

Guterres joined the committee’s chairman, Senegalese ambassador Cheikh Niang, and its vice-chairs in urging Israel to make COVID-19 vaccines available to Palestinians, including prisoners and detainees, in keeping with its international obligations.

Committee members reiterated their commitment to a two-state solution based on pre-1967 borders, in line with international law and UN resolutions, with Jerusalem as the capital of both states and Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace and security.

A recent call by Abbas for an international peace conference, held under the aegis of the UN and an expanded Middle East Quartet that includes regional players in addition to the current participants (the UN, the EU, the US and Russia), was also hailed as a positive step.

Guterres stressed the importance of the role of CEIRPP in mobilizing international opinion and assisting efforts to resume peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis. He also urged both sides in the conflict to refrain from any unilateral acts that might jeopardize the possibility of restarting negotiations.

Niang asked: “Do we still need to recall that Israeli settlements in occupied areas are illegal under international law?”

He added that the international community has condemned the recent announcement by Israeli authorities that they plan to build 800 new housing units in the West Bank, in addition to 12,000 units announced in 2020, and the retroactive “regularization,” under Israeli law, of two additional illegal outposts.

He also noted that “a new road was opened in Jerusalem region which separates Palestinians and Jewish settlers. (It) was called Apartheid Road, even by Israeli media and (Israeli) human rights groups.”

Such moves by Israel, combined with the “catastrophic” situation in Gaza, “sap the trust between parties,” Niang said.

Only a just and lasting solution to the conflict, he concluded, “would allow us to face the challenges we’re facing beyond the Middle East: terrorism, violence, poverty and exclusion.”

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) continues to face serious financial difficulties after former President Donald Trump withdrew US financial support to the agency.

His successor, Joe Biden, has pledged to restore aid but the committee urged all UN member states to ensure the agency has sufficient and sustainable resources to “attract international solidarity to the Palestinian people.” A meeting with the head of UNRWA Philippe Lazarini will take place this month to discuss the issue.

“Your principled solidarity is deeply appreciated and needed now more than ever,”  Mansour, the Palestinian envoy, told the committee.

“As the international community confronts the COVID-19 pandemic and an array of other crises, from poverty and hunger to climate change to conflict, and the grave humanitarian, socioeconomic and security consequences, the goal of building back better must be broad and inclusive. We appeal that Palestine not be the exception to these lofty goals.”

The CEIRPP represents the essence of multilateralism and a commitment to international law as the keys for resolving the conflict, he said.

“The foresight of those who preceded us and established the committee in 1975 should be recognized, for long before us they sought peaceful diplomatic means in a spirit of dialogue, collective responsibility and action as the path for a just solution,” he added.

“That same spirit is what is most needed today and is being widely summoned to tackle other urgent global issues, based on the rule of law and our common values and goals.

“There are those who say that the problems are too many, the obstacles too great, and that now is not the time for grand initiatives for peace. Such views contradict the mandate and purpose of this committee and, indeed, the purposes and principles of the UN.

“For those denied their freedom, rights and dignity — the essence of human existence and survival — nothing is more urgent. How can we ever say that the time is not right to protect human rights, to end conflict and make peace?”


Suspected Somali pirates seize a new Yemeni fishing boat in second recent attack

Updated 56 min 51 sec ago
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Suspected Somali pirates seize a new Yemeni fishing boat in second recent attack

  • Piracy off the Somali coast peaked in 2011 when 237 attacks were reported

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Suspected Somali pirates have seized another Yemeni fishing boat off the Horn of Africa, authorities said.
In a statement late Tuesday, a European naval force known as EUNAVFOR Atalanta said the attack targeted a dhow, a traditional ship that plies the waters of the Mideast, off the town of Eyl in Somalia.
It said the attack Monday remained under investigation. It comes 10 days after another pirate attack on another Yemeni fishing boat which ultimately ended with the pirates fleeing and the mariners on board being recovered unhurt.
Piracy off the Somali coast peaked in 2011 when 237 attacks were reported. Somali piracy in the region at the time cost the world’s economy some $7 billion — with $160 million paid out in ransoms, according to the Oceans Beyond Piracy monitoring group.
The threat was diminished by increased international naval patrols, a strengthening central government in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, and other efforts.
However, Somali pirate attacks have resumed at a greater pace over the last year, in part due to the insecurity caused by Yemen’s Houthi rebels launching their attacks in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
In 2024, there were seven reported incidents off Somalia, according to the International Maritime Bureau.


After decades in exile, Syria’s Jews visit Damascus

Updated 19 February 2025
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After decades in exile, Syria’s Jews visit Damascus

  • The new authorities have said all of Syria’s communities will play a role in their country’s future
  • The synagogues and Jewish school in the Old City remained relatively well-preserved

DAMASCUS: For the first time in three decades, Rabbi Joseph Hamra and his son Henry read from a Torah scroll in a synagogue in the heart of Syria’s capital Damascus, carefully passing their thumbs over the handwritten text as if still in awe they were back home.
The father and son fled Syria in the 1990s, after then-Syrian president Hafez Assad lifted a travel ban on the country’s historic Jewish community, which had faced decades of restrictions including on owning property or holding jobs.
Virtually all of the few thousand Jews in Syria promptly left, leaving less than 10 in the Syrian capital. Joseph and Henry — just a child at the time — settled in New York.
“Weren’t we in a prison? So we wanted to see what was on the outside,” said Joseph, now 77, on his reasons for leaving at the time. “Everyone else who left with us is dead.”
But when Assad’s son and successor as president Bashar Assad was toppled in December, the Hamra family began planning a once-unimaginable visit to Damascus with the help of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US-based advocacy group.
They met with Syria’s deputy foreign minister at the ministry, now managed by caretaker authorities installed by the Islamist rebels who ousted Assad after more than 50 years of family rule that saw itself as a bastion of secular Arab nationalism.
The new authorities have said all of Syria’s communities will play a role in their country’s future. But incidents of religious intolerance and reports of conservative Islamists proselytizing in public have kept more secular-minded Syrians and members of minority communities on edge.
Henry Hamra, now aged 48, said Syria’s foreign ministry had now pledged to protect Jewish heritage.
“We need the government’s help, we need the government’s security and it’s going to happen,” he said.
Walking through the narrow passages of the Old City, a UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site, Henry and Joseph ran into their onetime neighbors — Palestinian Syrians — and later marveled at hand-painted Hebrew lettering at several synagogues.
“I want to see my kids come back and see this beautiful synagogue. It’s a work of art,” said Henry.
But some things were missing, he said, including a golden-lettered Torah from one of the synagogues that was now stored in a library in Israel, to where thousands of Syrian Jews fled throughout the 20th century.
While the synagogues and Jewish school in the Old City remained relatively well-preserved, Syria’s largest synagogue in Jobar, an eastern suburb of Damascus, was reduced to rubble during the nearly 14-year civil war that erupted after Assad’s violent suppression of protests against him.
Jobar was home to a large Jewish community for hundreds of years until the 1800s and the synagogue, built in honor of the biblical prophet Elijah, was looted before it was destroyed.


Lebanon official media says Israeli strike kills one in south

Updated 19 February 2025
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Lebanon official media says Israeli strike kills one in south

BEIRUT: Lebanese official media said Israel struck a southern town on Wednesday, killing one person, a day after Israeli troops withdrew from most of the border area apart from five points.
"An enemy drone struck a vehicle... in the town of Aita al-Shaab," near the southern border, the official National News agency said, reporting one person was killed.


Israel army says charges five soldiers for abusing Palestinian detainee

Updated 19 February 2025
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Israel army says charges five soldiers for abusing Palestinian detainee

  • The detention center near the Israeli border with Gaza was created to hold detainees from the Palestinian territory early in Israel’s war with Hamas

Jerusalem: The Israeli military said Wednesday it had filed charges against five reservist soldiers for abusing a Palestinian detainee in July last year.
“Today, the military prosecution has filed an indictment against five reservist soldiers under the charges of causing severe injury and abuse under aggravating circumstances... against a security detainee held in the Sde Teiman detention facility,” it said in a statement, referring to a site used to hold Gazans since the war began.
“The indictment charges the accused with acting against the detainee with severe violence, including stabbing the detainee’s bottom with a sharp object, which had penetrated near the detainee’s rectum,” the statement said.
It added “the acts of violence have caused severe physical injury to the detainee, including cracked ribs, a punctured lung and an inner rectal tear.”
It said the incident took place on July 5, 2024, following an instruction to conduct a search of the detainee during which he was “blindfolded, and cuffed at the hands and ankles.”
The detention center near the Israeli border with Gaza was created to hold detainees from the Palestinian territory early in Israel’s war with Hamas, sparked by the militant group’s unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack.
Earlier this month, an Israeli military court sentenced a soldier to seven months in prison after he admitted to “severely abusing” Palestinians at the same detention facility.


Baghdad-Beirut flights sell out ahead of Nasrallah funeral

Updated 19 February 2025
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Baghdad-Beirut flights sell out ahead of Nasrallah funeral

  • Beirut airport will close for four hours during the funeral

BAGHDAD: Flights from Baghdad to Beirut are nearly at capacity as airlines increase services ahead of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral, officials said.
The pro-Iran group has called for a huge turnout when Nasrallah, killed in a September Israeli strike, is laid to rest in the Lebanese capital on Sunday.
“Iraqi Airways will increase its flights to Beirut from one flight a day to two, starting on February 20,” said transport ministry spokesperson Maytham Al-Safi, citing heightened demand ahead of the funeral.
An Iraqi airline official told AFP that “all seats on Iraqi Airlines flights from Baghdad to Beirut are booked.”
A source from Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines (MEA) reported increased flights between Baghdad and Beirut from Friday to Tuesday.
The airlines’ websites show that Iraqi Airways flights are fully booked until Sunday, with MEA nearly sold out.
Iraqi lawmakers and officials are expected to attend Nasrallah’s funeral privately, an Iraqi official said.
Representatives from pro-Iran Iraqi factions, Hezbollah’s longstanding allies in the Tehran-led “axis of resistance,” are also expected to participate.
Beirut airport will close for four hours during the funeral.
Hezbollah has said 79 countries would be involved in the commemoration, either officially or through “popular” support.
Sunday’s funeral will also honor Hashem Safieddine, a senior Hezbollah figure who had been chosen to succeed Nasrallah, before he was killed in an Israeli strike in October.
After decades at the helm of the group once seen as invincible, the killing of the charismatic Nasrallah sent shock waves across Lebanon and the wider region.
Since Nasrallah’s death, portraits of him, either alone or alongside other slain pro-Iran commanders, have been displayed throughout Baghdad and other areas of the Shiite-majority country.
On Sunday afternoon, thousands are expected to attend a “symbolic” procession for Nasrallah in Baghdad’s northwestern neighborhood of Kadhimiya, which is home to a Shiite shrine.