Palestinian factions begin dialogue in Cairo

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hands the election decree to Chairman of the Palestinian Central Election Committee Hana Naser in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank January 15, 2021. (Palestinian President Office (PPO)/Handout via Reuters)
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Updated 09 February 2021
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Palestinian factions begin dialogue in Cairo

  • Comprehensive national dialogue in Egypt aims to build consensus ahead of elections

CAIRO: Palestinian factions met in Cairo on Monday to discuss reconciliation and explore mechanisms for holding elections.

There are 14 factions taking part. They include delegations from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah.

PFLP political bureau member Jamil Mizher said: “We are in a round of great importance with regards to the comprehensive national dialogue in Cairo. The Palestinian people, at home and abroad, have high hopes for the results of the dialogue. If all the parties have the real will, we can move forward to put an end to this black division and we can regain national unity.”

He said it was important to put all disputes on the table to reach a national consensus that would pave the way for a new era of the Palestinian struggle, whereby all factions could take part to reestablish the Palestinian political system.

“There are obstacles and hurdles,” he added. “We hope that everyone puts aside all the disputes and conflicts and not to allow foreign interference so we can reach an agreement that would spare the Palestinian people the ravages of the catastrophic division.”

Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said the movement’s delegation included Saleh Al-Arouri, who is deputy head of the political bureau, Yahya Sinwar, Dr. Khalil al-Hayya, Izzat al-Rishq, Hussam Badran, Muhammad Nazzal, and Ruhi Mushtaha.

Al-Hayya said: “The Palestinian national powers have high hopes and an expanded vision to remove the obstacles hindering the electoral process whether regarding the judicial dimension or freedoms or other issue.”

The Islamic Jihad delegation is led by Dr. Muhammad Al-Hindi, who is head of the political department. It also includes Dr. Anwar Abu Taha, Sheikh Nafez Azzam and Khaled Al-Batsh.

Sources said the Fatah delegation was headed by Jibril Rajoub and included Azzam Al-Ahmad, Rouhi Fattouh, Ahmed Helles and Samir Al-Rifai.

The agenda for the meeting, which Cairo called for, includes discussing the mechanism for holding legislative elections, legal and technical measures related to the electoral process, issues concerning the constitutional court and elections court, means of guaranteeing personal freedoms, and list formation.

Daoud Shehab, who is leader of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, said: “We are going to Cairo with a national vision, mainly based on the need for Palestinians to agree on a political program. What is more important than going to the elections is to agree on a political program. Unless we agree on a political program, the elections would be a new attempt or just an attempt to reproduce the previous phase with all its negative aspects.”

He added that Islamic Jihad’s stance toward participating in elections would be determined after this round of dialogue had concluded.

“We went to Cairo with a national vision that includes the separation between the authority and the organization, in addition to the separation between the legislative council elections and the national council elections.”

The last Palestinian Legislative Council election was held 15 years ago and was halted due to divisions between Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Fahd Soliman, who is deputy secretary-general of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said that all parties at the dialogue had the intention of holding elections.

What would be discussed at the meeting were the mechanisms guaranteeing the transparency and smoothness of the electoral process as well as the means of monitoring the elections, he added.

He told Al-Ghad TV there was consensus at the popular and factional level to hold elections, saying polls represented the cornerstone of what had been agreed on and that the Cairo meeting would discuss this issue in detail.

The factions are also due to discuss holding the elections in Jerusalem, an issue that has not been settled with the Israelis yet.


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

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

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 3 min 2 sec ago
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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 12 min 42 sec ago
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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 39 min 41 sec ago
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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 8 min 54 sec ago
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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.