Key Palestine questions stay unresolved as Israel-Hamas fighting in Gaza ends

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Updated 22 May 2021
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Key Palestine questions stay unresolved as Israel-Hamas fighting in Gaza ends

  • Amid Israeli bombardment, Hamas is thought to have retained a significant missile arsenal
  • Abraham Accords between some Arab states and Israel likely to come under heightened scrutiny

DUBAI: As an Egypt-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect early on Friday morning, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were again left surveying the devastation wrought by 11 days of intense air and artillery bombardment.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres lamented the “senseless cycle of bloodshed, terror and destruction,” adding that the hostilities had caused serious damage to vital civilian infrastructure in Gaza, which he described as “hell on earth” for children.

Even so, there is widespread relief that the conflict, in which at least 232 Palestinians and 12 Israelis were killed, has ended after less than two weeks — compared with the seven weeks of the 2014 ground incursion which left more than 2,000 dead — and that the latest hostilities, for the most part, did not spread into the West Bank.




Palestinian artist Bilal Khaled draws on an unexploded device in Gaza City on May 20, 2021. (AFP)

In both the West Bank and Gaza, political and diplomatic processes are deadlocked. In April, President Mahmoud Abbas postponed legislative and presidential elections in the Palestinian territories. Most observers believe he did so for fear that Hamas would win. Abbas was elected in 2005 but has ruled by decree for more than a decade since his last mandate expired.

Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip since shortly after the last elections in 2006. It has steadfastly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Both its political and military arms are categorized as a terrorist organization by the US and European Union.

“The peace camp needs to be rebuilt from the ground up,” Taufiq Rahim, a senior fellow in international security at the New America think tank, told Arab News. “Too many in Israel view calm as peace when, in reality, it is simply a state of prolonged injustice for Palestinians.”

Meanwhile, the status of East Jerusalem remains unresolved, and Israel’s settlement of the West Bank — which it captured along with the Gaza Strip in 1967 — continues.

Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a former chairman of the Arab Council for Social Sciences, says it is clear that Israeli settlers instigated the most recent outbreak of violence, which started in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

“The government of Israel could have controlled it, but apparently encouraged it,” he told Arab News. “This is consistent with patterns of aggression that we have seen over the past seven years of clashes.”




Hamas' political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh addresses supporters in Qatar in May, 2021. (AFP)

Other experts highlighted the fact that Palestinian protests and discontent spread to Arab neighborhoods inside Israel. Fighting broke out in Israeli and Arab towns including Jaffa, Ramleh and Lod, in the course of which Palestinian and Hamas flags were raised and synagogues and hospitals attacked.

Those towns and others, such as Haifa, Nazareth and Acre, have sizeable Arab populations — the descendants of those who stayed inside the so-called Green Line when the state of Israel was created in 1948. Many have Israeli citizenship and the right to vote in Israeli elections.

“This crisis has brought the conflict back to its roots, which are in the dispossession of the refugees in 1948,” Nadim Shehadi, an associate fellow at Chatham House, told Arab News. “Protests on this scale inside Israel have not been seen (before), even during the second intifada.”

That uprising gripped much of the Gaza Strip and West Bank from 2000 to 2005, during which time there were only sporadic incidents of violence in these towns. In 2021 that changed.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was forced to declare a state of emergency in Lod, the first time such powers have been invoked in a town inside Israel since 1966, according to Israeli media.

Illustrating the complexity of the situation, in one incident the clashes seemed in part to have been provoked by the death of an Arab man and his child after a rocket fired by Hamas from inside Gaza destroyed his car.

Hamas — which has widespread support throughout the Palestinian territories — remains in a combative mood.

“The whole world should know that our hands are on the trigger and we will continue to grow the capabilities of this resistance,” a Hamas spokesman told Reuters shortly before the ceasefire.

The scale of those capabilities has come as a surprise to many. Analysts speaking to Arab News highlighted the group’s apparently large arsenal of missiles and drones and, perhaps, fabrication capabilities created with Iranian help as major developments.

Over the 11 days of fighting this month, Hamas is estimated to have fired more than 4,300 missiles into southern and central Israel, a far more intensive barrage than in the 2014 conflict and heavier than Hezbollah’s bombardment from Lebanon during the 2006 war.

Israeli officials said that 90 percent of the incoming volleys were intercepted by the Iron Dome air-defense system, but believe that thousands more missiles still remain in the Hamas arsenal. The Iron Dome system, which has been deployed since 2011 and maintained by US funding of $1.6 billion, was used in previous conflicts, but Hamas had never fired so many rockets simultaneously.

The Israeli military (IDF) said that as many as one in seven of the missiles fired by Hamas landed inside Gaza itself and accused Hamas of indiscriminate targeting of civilians there and inside Israel.




This handout satellite image released by Maxar Technologies shows a closer view of a burning storage tank in Ashkelon Southern Israel on May 12, 2021. (AFP)

“The attacks (by Hamas) in Gaza by themselves have revealed a level of preparation that exceeded expectations in terms of the quantity and quality of missiles, with respect to their range, ability to head deep into Israel territory, and the variety of the weapons on hand, such as drones,” Riad Kahwaji, a UAE-based defense analyst, told Arab News. “All of these make the latest round of violence unique.”

In the longer term, the status of the Abraham Accords — a major agreement signed by Israel, the UAE and the US in August last year — is likely to come under scrutiny. Shortly after the deal was signed, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco also recognized Israel formally.

The UAE has gone on to sign a series of investment agreements with Israel and opened direct air links. Both Israel and the UAE have opened embassies in their respective countries.




Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during an emergency meeting of the Fatah Central Committee and the PLO Executive Committee in the occupied West Bank City of Ramallah, on May 12, 2021. (AFP)

Critics of Hamas and its links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran say that the group amassed its missile arsenal and initiated the fighting specifically to undermine the Abraham Accords, which all of them view as a threat. Bassem Eid, a human rights activist, has said Hamas sought to exploit a local dispute in East Jerusalem in order to undermine the Abraham Accords.

There is certainly no denying that the 11 days of fighting were a testing time for the accord.

“The hope and the fanfare surrounding the signing of the agreement petered out with the smoke from Gaza,” said Dr. Albadr Al-Shateri, a former professor of politics at the National Defense College in Abu Dhabi. “The conflict, far from re-establishing Israel’s (strength), exposed its vulnerabilities.”




Onlookers gather around charred vehicles hit by rockets launched by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon on the border with the Palestinian coastal enclave on May 16, 2021. (AFP)

Going forward, he believes the US, Europe, and the GCC countries can assist in improving Palestinian lives in the Occupied Territories and within Israel. “More investment to provide jobs, rebuilding the infrastructure, and improvement of the health and educational systems, among other things, will help to create the conditions for a negotiated settlement,” he told Arab News.

According to New America’s Rahim, while Israel has developed deeper relationships in the Arab world, public opinion in the US is likely to be critical, given the apparent shift in the sentiments of politicians and the wider population there.

The reality of the situation is that there is a vacuum in new leadership in both Israel and Palestine, with radicals on both sides being the only actors visible on the horizon at present, he told Arab News.

“There needs to be new leaders in both Palestine and Israel who can imagine coexistence rather than conflict as a potential future.”

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Twitter: @CalineMalek


Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps

Updated 19 February 2025
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Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps

  • The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups

JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of Palestinians living in refugee camps in the occupied West Bank have left their homes as a weeks-long Israeli offensive has demolished houses and torn up vital infrastructure in the heavily built up townships, Palestinian authorities said.
Israeli forces began their operation in the refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Jan. 21, deploying hundreds of troops and bulldozers that demolished houses and dug up roads, driving almost all of the camp’s residents out.
“We don’t know what’s going on in the camp but there is continuous demolition and roads being dug up,” said Mohammed Al-Sabbagh, head of the Jenin camp services committee.

An Israeli army excavator demolishes a residential building in the Tulkarem camp for Palestinian refugees during an ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)

The operation, which Israel says is aimed at thwarting Iranian-backed militant groups in the West Bank, has since been extended to other camps, notably the Tulkarm refugee camp and the nearby Nur Shams camp, both of which have also been devastated. The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups. They have been raided repeatedly by the Israeli military but the current operation, which began as a ceasefire was agreed in Gaza, has been on an unusually large scale. According to figures from the Palestinian Authority, around 17,000 people have now left Jenin refugee camp, leaving the site almost completely deserted, while in Nur Shams 6,000 people, or about two thirds of the total, have left, with another 10,000 leaving from Tulkarm camp.
“The ones who are left are trapped,” said Nihad Al-Shawish, head of the Nur Shams camp services committee. “The Civil Defense, the Red Crescent and the Palestinian security forces brought them some food yesterday but the army is still bulldozing and destroying the camp.” The Israeli raids have demolished dozens of houses and torn up large stretches of roadway as well as cutting off water and power, but the military has denied forcing residents to leave their homes.
“People obviously have the possibility to move or go where they want, if they will. But if they don’t, they’re allowed to stay,” Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters.
The operation began as Israel moved to banish the main UN Palestinian relief organization UNRWA from its headquarters in East Jerusalem and cut it off from any contact with Israeli officials.
The ban, which took effect at the end of January, has hit UNRWA’s work in the West Bank and Gaza, where it provides aid for millions of Palestinians in the refugee camps.
Israel has accused UNRWA of cooperating with Hamas and said some UNRWA workers even took part in the Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that set off the 15-month war in Gaza.

 


Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps

Updated 18 February 2025
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Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps

  • The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups

JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of Palestinians living in refugee camps in the occupied West Bank have left their homes as a weeks-long Israeli offensive has demolished houses and torn up vital infrastructure in the heavily built up townships, Palestinian authorities said.
Israeli forces began their operation in the refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Jan. 21, deploying hundreds of troops and bulldozers that demolished houses and dug up roads, driving almost all of the camp’s residents out.
“We don’t know what’s going on in the camp but there is continuous demolition and roads being dug up,” said Mohammed Al-Sabbagh, head of the Jenin camp services committee.

An Israeli army excavator demolishes a residential building in the Tulkarem camp for Palestinian refugees during an ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)

The operation, which Israel says is aimed at thwarting Iranian-backed militant groups in the West Bank, has since been extended to other camps, notably the Tulkarm refugee camp and the nearby Nur Shams camp, both of which have also been devastated. The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups. They have been raided repeatedly by the Israeli military but the current operation, which began as a ceasefire was agreed in Gaza, has been on an unusually large scale. According to figures from the Palestinian Authority, around 17,000 people have now left Jenin refugee camp, leaving the site almost completely deserted, while in Nur Shams 6,000 people, or about two thirds of the total, have left, with another 10,000 leaving from Tulkarm camp.
“The ones who are left are trapped,” said Nihad Al-Shawish, head of the Nur Shams camp services committee. “The Civil Defense, the Red Crescent and the Palestinian security forces brought them some food yesterday but the army is still bulldozing and destroying the camp.” The Israeli raids have demolished dozens of houses and torn up large stretches of roadway as well as cutting off water and power, but the military has denied forcing residents to leave their homes.
“People obviously have the possibility to move or go where they want, if they will. But if they don’t, they’re allowed to stay,” Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters.
The operation began as Israel moved to banish the main UN Palestinian relief organization UNRWA from its headquarters in East Jerusalem and cut it off from any contact with Israeli officials.
The ban, which took effect at the end of January, has hit UNRWA’s work in the West Bank and Gaza, where it provides aid for millions of Palestinians in the refugee camps.
Israel has accused UNRWA of cooperating with Hamas and said some UNRWA workers even took part in the Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that set off the 15-month war in Gaza.

 


More than one million Syrians return to their homes: UN

People walk past shops in Homs on February 10, 2025. (AFP)
Updated 19 February 2025
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More than one million Syrians return to their homes: UN

  • “Since the fall of the regime in Syria we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees

GENEVA: More than one million people have returned to their homes in Syria after the overthrow of Bashar Assad, including 280,000 refugees who came back from abroad, the UN said on Tuesday.
Assad was toppled in December in a rebel offensive, putting an end to his family’s decades-long grip on power in the Middle Eastern country and bookmarking a civil war that broke out in 2011, with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions from their homes.
The Islamist-led rebels whose offensive ousted Assad have sought to assure the international community that they have broken with their past and will respect the rights of minorities.
“Since the fall of the regime in Syria we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote on the X social media platform.
“Early recovery efforts must be bolder and faster, though, otherwise people will leave again: this is now urgent!” he said.
At a meeting in Paris in mid-February, some 20 countries, including Arab nations, Turkiye, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan agreed at the close of a conference in Paris to “work together to ensure the success of the transition in a process led by Syria.”
The meeting’s final statement also pledged support for Syria’s new authorities in the fight against “all forms of terrorism and extremism.”
 

 


Israeli military says it struck weapons belonging to former Syrian administration in southern Syria

Updated 19 February 2025
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Israeli military says it struck weapons belonging to former Syrian administration in southern Syria

CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it struck weapons which it said belonged to the former Syrian administration in southern Syria.

 


Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara

Updated 18 February 2025
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Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara

  • France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining its ties with Morocco

ALGIERS: Algeria on Tuesday denounced a visit by French Culture Minister Rachida Dati to Western Sahara, after Paris recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory, as “objectionable on multiple levels.”
The vast desert territory is a former Spanish colony largely controlled by Morocco but claimed for decades by the Algeria-backed Polisario Front.
Dati, who described her visit as “historic,” launched with Moroccan Culture Minister Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid a French cultural mission in the territory’s main city, Laayoune.
An Algerian foreign ministry statement posted on social media Tuesday said the visit “reflects blatant disregard for international legality by a permanent member of the UN Security Council.”
“This visit reinforces Morocco’s fait accompli in Western Sahara, a territory where the decolonization process remains incomplete and the right to self-determination unfulfilled,” it said.
Dati’s trip, a first for a French official, “reflects the detestable image of a former colonial power in solidarity with a new one,” the statement added.
The United Nations considers Western Sahara to be a “non-self-governing territory” and has had a peacekeeping mission there since 1991, whose stated aim is to organize a referendum on the territory’s future.
But Rabat has repeatedly rejected any vote in which independence is an option, instead proposing autonomy under Morocco.
France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining its ties with Morocco.
But in July, French President Emmanuel Macron said Rabat’s autonomy plan was the “only basis” to resolve the Western Sahara dispute.
Algeria has backed the separatist Polisario Front and cut diplomatic relations with Rabat in 2021 — the year after Morocco normalized ties with Israel under a deal that awarded it US recognition of its annexation of the Western Sahara.
In October, the UN Security Council called for parties to “resume negotiations” to reach a “lasting and mutually acceptable solution” to the Western Sahara dispute.
In November 2020, the Polisario Front said it was ending a 29-year ceasefire with Morocco after Moroccan troops were deployed to the far south of the territory to remove independence supporters blocking the only road to Mauritania.
The Polisario Front claims the route is illegal, arguing that it did not exist when the ceasefire was established in 1991.