How Syria’s Bab Al-Hawa aid corridor became hostage in a geopolitical game

1 / 3
Years of conflict have plunged millions of Syrians into poverty. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 19 June 2022
Follow

How Syria’s Bab Al-Hawa aid corridor became hostage in a geopolitical game

  • Delivering UN aid directly to opposition-held areas dependent on fragile cross-border mechanism
  • Closing Bab Al-Hawa would “condemn civilians in need to death and hunger,” warns UNSC president

NEW YORK CITY: The four million people in northwest Syria who rely on international aid to survive are unsure whether there will be bread on their tables after July 10. That is when an increasingly fragile UN cross-border mechanism for delivering aid to Syria is set to expire.

Its renewal is up for a vote at the UN Security Council next month amid fears that Russia will use its power of veto to close the last remaining UN-facilitated gateway for aid into Syria, Bab Al-Hawa on the border with Turkey.

Ferit Hoxha, Albania’s permanent representative to the UN and the president of the Security Council for the month of June, told Arab News during a press conference that the closure of the only border crossing would amount to “a condemnation to death, starvation and hunger to millions of people.”

He added: “I hope no one, not Russia nor any other country, would come to that decision: To condemn civilians in need to death and hunger.”

While the world’s media might have stopped counting the numbers of dead and injured in the Syrian conflict, the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure and the largest number of internally displaced people in the world lay bare the fact that the war is far from over.




Ninety percent of Syria's population live below the poverty line, with many families left to scavenge to survive. (AFP file photo)

Syria continues to experience one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with 90 percent of the population living below poverty line. According to the World Food Program, 14.6 million people now need humanitarian assistance to survive, an increase of 1.2 million compared with last year.

The collapsing economy, coupled with a looming global food shortage as a consequence of the war in Ukraine, have added a new layer of complexity to the situation. Now, the WFP warns, the threat of famine is knocking on Syria’s door.




Ninety percent of Syria's population live below the poverty line, with many families left to scavenge to survive. (AFP file photo)

The cross-border mechanism was created in 2014 to allow the delivery of UN humanitarian aid directly to opposition-held areas of Syria. International humanitarian law requires that all aid deliveries should go through the host government.

However, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s tactic of treating humanitarian supplies as a weapon of war prompted the Security Council to resort to approving the use of four aid crossings along the Syrian border: one from Jordan, one from Iraq and two from Turkey.

Until December 2019, the members of the Security Council renewed the mandate for these crossings without much fuss. In January 2020, however, permanent member Russia used its power of veto to force the closure of all but one: Bab Al-Hawa.




A convoy transporting humanitarian aid crosses into Syria from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing on Jan. 18, 2022. (AFP)

If this last remaining crossing is closed — and the fear that this could happen is real — humanitarian agencies say they will be unable to feed more than about 10 percent of those in need. Moreover, finding any alternative to the UN aid operations is nearly impossible.

“The problem is that you have organizations and institutions that have been in emergency mode for 12 years,” said Jomana Qaddour, co-founder of Syria Relief & Development, a humanitarian organization active in northwestern Syria.

“The Syrian crisis has been so consuming and so overwhelming that planning for a massive humanitarian response now — under a totally different umbrella with all the buy-ins from the various different actors, from the local level to international donors — would be really quite a feat.”




A truck carrying aid packages from the World Food Program drives through the town of Hazano in the rebel-held northern countryside of Syria's Idlib province, on May 16, 2022. (Omar Haj Kadour / AFP)

The effects of the war on Ukraine on food security are “systematic, severe and speeding up,” according to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. He has said that the war, combined with other crises, threatens to unleash an unprecedented wave of hunger and destitution, leaving social and economic chaos in its wake.

Lamenting the skyrocketing prices of food and a near doubling of the cost of fertilizers, and the resultant shortages of corn, wheat, rice and other staple crops, Guterres warned that while this year’s food crisis is about lack of access, “next year’s could be about lack of food.”

INNUMBERS

90% of Syrian population lives below the poverty line.

14.6m Syrians are dependent on humanitarian assistance.

While the UN warns that no country will be untouched by looming food shortages, especially those that are already vulnerable, one can only imagine the devastating severity of its effects on a place such as Syria, which has been reeling under similar conditions for the past 12 years of conflict.

In the run-up to the Security Council vote in July, intensive negotiations for a new resolution to extend the cross-border mechanism are continuing behind closed doors, led by Ireland and Norway, according to sources at the Irish mission to the UN.




Civil society activists, aid, and medical and rescue services form a human chain rally on July 2, 2021 calling for the continued passage of humanitarian aid into Syria's rebel-held Idlib. (AFP file)

The two countries are the chief advocates at the UN for humanitarian issues in Syria. Last year at around this time, their ambassadors to the UN, Geraldine Byrne Nason and Mona Juul, were seen rushing back and forth from one UN chamber to another, trying to rally council members around a resolution they had drafted to reauthorize Bab Al-Hawa.

When Russia and the US agreed a compromise on the issue last year, American President Joe Biden hailed it as a diplomatic victory. The vote took place just days after he had held a summit with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, during which the cross-border issue was discussed.

After the successful adoption of Resolution 2585 by the council last year, both leaders commended “the joint work of their respective teams following the US-Russia summit that led to the unanimous renewal of cross-border humanitarian assistance to Syria today in the Security Council.”




An aerial picture shows camps for displaced Syrians in the village of Killi, near Bab al-Hawa by the border with Turkey, in Idlib province, on Jan.9, 2021. (AFP photo)

The US had long asserted that progress on the aid process would open the door to more meaningful engagement with Russia on some of the thornier diplomatic questions relating to Syria, such as the issue of detainees and the forcibly disappeared, the return of refugees, and the work of the constitutional committee.

This time around, however, diplomatic talks between the two major powers have all but ground to a halt following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in February.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, has been investing her personal legacy in seeking an extension to the mandate for Bab Al-Hawa. She touched on the issue during several of the meetings she convened when her country held the presidency of the Security Council in May.




Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, h

She also recently returned from an official trip to Turkey, her second this year, during which she visited the Syrian border to assess the potential consequences should the UN be forced in July to end its humanitarian deliveries to Idlib. She warned that without aid, “babies will die.”

“We have not forgotten Syria,” Thomas-Greenfield said as she vowed to do “everything possible” to ensure the UN mandate to deliver cross-border aid continues and is expanded to meet the growing needs on the ground. She said she would try to reopen discussions with Russian diplomats at the UN in an effort to keep the aid flowing.

The Russian mission at the UN did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but Dmitry Polyanskiy, Moscow’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, recently offered a pessimistic view of the prospects for a revival of diplomacy with Washington, citing the “current geopolitical circumstances.”




An aerial view shows a convoy transporting humanitarian aid parked at customs in Syria after crossing from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing on Jan. 18, 2022. ( AFP)

Russia argues that the cross-border mechanism violates the sovereignty of Syria. With China’s backing, Moscow has lobbied for all aid to be channeled through Assad’s government and blames the humanitarian crisis in the war-torn country on American and European sanctions against the Syrian regime.

Critics of Russia’s stance say Moscow’s priority is not cross-border assistance, and that it seeks to use its power of veto as leverage to gain support for its position on Syria. According to the critics, Russian diplomats at the UN have been linking the vote on the cross-border mechanism to unrelated issues such as sanctions relief, reconstruction efforts and counterterrorism.

While UN chief Guterres has repeatedly asserted that cross-border operations are among the most transparent and scrutinized mechanisms in the world, Russia claims that the aid that flows through them has been benefiting designated terrorist groups in and around Idlib, such as Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham.

Washington declared a victory when the cross-border mechanism was renewed last year, but Qaddour, who in addition to her work with Syria Relief & Development is also a senior fellow with the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council, believes it is Russia that has gained the most from this situation.

She believes it is unlikely that the extension of the Bab Al-Hawa gateway will be vetoed, the reason being that this is a useful political card that has been played repeatedly, and will be played again in the future.




Jomana Qaddour. (Supplied)

In each round of renewals, according to Qaddour, Moscow has been able to extract a variety of concessions from Washington and its allies, such as a UN resolution endorsing certain early recovery projects that were previously contingent on a broader political settlement, as well as a qualified easing of sanctions on the Assad regime.

“This confusion over what the West is actually gaining from these negotiations places them, at a minimum, in a weak position,” Qaddour told Arab News. “And, at the maximum, it does hamper the ability of partners, such as aid organizations, to continue to rely on UN aid.”

The Syrian civil war has presented Putin with an opportunity to re-establish Russia as a powerful player in the region by protecting its ally and defeating what it considers a US-led regime-change campaign.

“Syria was the stage for Russian resurgence,” said Qaddour. “I can’t be optimistic to think that this is going to be a place that Russia abandons with ease. This is something they will continue to absolutely fight for and shape.




Displaced Syrians protest against the regime and its ally Russia at a camp for displaced people in Kafr Lusin near the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey on Sept. 7, 2018. (AFP)

Not that Syria is close to being uppermost on the agenda in Washington, said Qaddour.

“Am I under any illusion that the US or the West are recalculating and going back and putting Syria at the top of their priority list? No. I don’t think that anything indicates such a reprioritization in the US foreign policy circle. Ukraine now dominates everything,” she said.

Meanwhile, even if the aid corridor is not blocked, the northwest of Syria remains one of the most vulnerable areas in the country. Many agree that its ultimate fate lies thousands of miles away in New York, where calls for reforms to the Security Council have become louder since the start of the war in Ukraine — reforms that would allow humanitarian assistance to be delivered to the most vulnerable people without worrying whether it might be blocked by a veto from a permanent member of the council.

 


Israeli security service says 60 Hamas members arrested in West Bank

Updated 4 sec ago
Follow

Israeli security service says 60 Hamas members arrested in West Bank

HEBRON: Israel’s security service said Sunday it had broken up a network of Hamas militants in the occupied West Bank suspected of planning attacks, arresting 60 of the group’s members.
The Shin Bet internal security agency said in a statement that “a significant, complex, and large-scale Hamas infrastructure was exposed” in the West Bank town of Hebron.
It said it broke up 10 militant cells that “operated to carry out attacks in various formats in the immediate time frame.”
Hamas leaders “worked to recruit, arm, and train additional Hamas operatives from the area to carry out shooting and bombing attacks against Israeli targets,” according to the statement.
Shin Bet said the three-month joint operation with the military and police was its biggest investigation in the West Bank “in the past decade.”
It said terrorism charges were being filed against the suspects.
Hamas did not immediately comment on the statement.

US embassy in Bahrain returns to normal operations

Updated 32 min 27 sec ago
Follow

US embassy in Bahrain returns to normal operations

The US Embassy in Bahrain said on Sunday that it has returned to normal staffing and operations, according to a post by the embassy on X.
Shortly before this month’s 12-day war between Israel and Iran, the US military had allowed families of service members in Bahrain to depart the country temporarily.


Gaza rescuers say Israeli forces kill 17, including children

Updated 56 min 14 sec ago
Follow

Gaza rescuers say Israeli forces kill 17, including children

  • The Israeli military issued an evacuation order on Sunday for parts of Gaza City and nearby areas in the territory’s north
  • Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 56,412 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians

Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli air strikes and gunfire killed at least 17 people including three children in the war-stricken Palestinian territory on Sunday.

Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that 16 people died in air strikes at five locations around the Gaza Strip, and another from Israeli fire near an aid distribution center.

The Israeli military said it was not able to comment on the reported incidents but said it was fighting “to dismantle Hamas military capabilities” in a campaign launched in 2023 against the Islamist militant group whose attack on Israel triggered the war.

Restrictions on media in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by rescuers.

Bassal said two children were killed in an air strike on their home in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighborhood in the early morning, and “the house was completely destroyed.”

A member of the family, Abdel Rahman Azzam, 45, said he was at home and “heard a huge explosion at my relative’s house.”

“I rushed out in panic and saw the house destroyed and on fire,” he added.

“We evacuated more than 20 injured people, including two martyrs — two children from the family. The screams of children and women were non-stop,” Azzam said.

“They bombed the house with a missile without any prior warning. This is a horrific crime. We sleep without knowing if we will wake up.”

Elsewhere, Bassal said a drone strike on a tent housing displaced people near the southern city of Khan Yunis killed five people including a child.

He said that other casualties included a young man killed “by Israeli fire this morning while waiting for aid” near a humanitarian distribution center in the southern city of Rafah.

The Israeli military issued an evacuation order on Sunday for parts of Gaza City and nearby areas in the territory’s north, warning of imminent action there.

The military “will operate with intense force in these areas, and these military operations will intensify and expand... to destroy the capabilities of the terrorist organizations,” military spokesman Avichay Adraee said in a statement posted on X.

He told residents to “evacuate immediately south” to Al-Mawasi area on the coast.

The civil defense agency later said an Israeli air strike hit a house in Gaza City, killing three people.

Israel launched its offensive in October 2023 in response to the deadly Hamas attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 56,412 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations considers these figures to be reliable.

After claiming victory in a 12-day war against Iran that ended with a ceasefire on Tuesday, the Israeli military said it would refocus on its offensive in Gaza, where Palestinian militants still hold Israeli hostages.


Trump calls for deal on Gaza war as signs of progress emerge

Updated 29 June 2025
Follow

Trump calls for deal on Gaza war as signs of progress emerge

  • ‘MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!’ Trump wrote on his social media platform
  • The Israeli military on Sunday ordered a mass evacuation of Palestinians in large swathes of northern Gaza

TEL AVIV: US President Donald Trump on Sunday pleaded for progress in ceasefire talks in the war in Gaza, calling for a deal that would halt the fighting in the 20-monthlong conflict as the sides appeared to be inching closer to an agreement.

An Israeli official said plans were being made for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to travel to Washington, D.C., in the coming weeks, a sign there may be movement on a new deal. The official declined to discuss the focus of the visit and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not yet been finalized.

“MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social early Sunday between posts about a Senate vote on his tax and spending cuts bill.

Trump raised expectations Friday for a deal, saying there could be a ceasefire agreement within the next week. Taking questions from reporters, he said, “We’re working on Gaza and trying to get it taken care of.”

Trump has repeatedly called for Israel and Hamas to end the war in Gaza. Despite an eight-week ceasefire reached just as Trump was taking office earlier this year, attempts since then to bring the sides toward a new agreement have failed.

A top adviser to Netanyahu, Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, was set to travel to Washington this week for talks on a ceasefire.

Trump post slams Netanyahu corruption trial

The Gaza message wasn’t the only Middle East-related post by Trump. On Saturday evening, he doubled down on his criticism of the legal proceedings against Netanyahu, who is on trial for alleged corruption, calling it “a POLITICAL WITCH HUNT, very similar to the Witch Hunt that I was forced to endure.”

In the post on Truth Social, he said the trial interfered with talks on a Gaza ceasefire.

“(Netanyahu) is right now in the process of negotiating a Deal with Hamas, which will include getting the Hostages back. How is it possible that the Prime Minister of Israel can be forced to sit in a Courtroom all day long, over NOTHING,” Trump wrote.

The post echoed similar remarks Trump made last week when he called for the trial to be canceled. It was a dramatic interference by an international ally in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state. And it unnerved many in Israel, despite Trump’s popularity in the country.

Israeli military orders new evacuations in northern Gaza

The Israeli military on Sunday ordered a mass evacuation of Palestinians in large swathes of northern Gaza, an early target of the war that has been severely damaged by multiple rounds of fighting.

Col. Avichay Adraee, a military spokesperson, posted the order on social media. It includes multiple neighborhoods in eastern and northern Gaza City, as well as Jabaliya refugee camp.

The military will expand its escalating attacks to the city’s northern section, calling for people to move southward to the Muwasi area in southern Gaza, Adraee said.

After being all but emptied earlier in the war, hundreds of thousands of people are in northern Gaza following their return during a ceasefire earlier this year.

An Israeli military offensive currently underway aims to move Palestinians to southern Gaza so forces can more freely operate to combat militants. Rights groups say their movement would amount to forcible transfer.

A sticking point over how the war ends

The war in Gaza began with Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas in which militants killed 1,200 people and took roughly 250 hostages, about 50 of whom remain captive with less than half believed to be alive.

Israel’s retaliatory response has killed more than 56,000 people, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish between militants and civilians in their count but say more than half of the dead are women and children.

The war has set off a humanitarian catastrophe, displaced most of Gaza’s population, often multiple times, and obliterated much of the territory’s urban landscape.

Talks between Israel and Hamas have repeatedly faltered over one major sticking point, whether the war should end as part of any ceasefire agreement.

Hamas says it is willing to free all the hostages in exchange for a full withdrawal of Israeli troops and an end to the war. Israel rejects that offer, saying it will agree to end the war if Hamas disarms and goes into exile, something the group refuses.


Netanyahu ‘must go’, says former Israeli PM Bennett

Updated 29 June 2025
Follow

Netanyahu ‘must go’, says former Israeli PM Bennett

  • Former PM Naftali Bennett: Netanyahu ‘has been in power for 20 years... that’s too much, it’s not healthy’

JERUSALEM: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must leave office, his predecessor Naftali Bennett has told a televised interview, refusing to say whether he intends to challenge the country’s longest-serving leader in an election.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 that aired on Saturday, former prime minister Bennett said Netanyahu “has been in power for 20 years... that’s too much, it’s not healthy.”

“He bears... heavy responsibility for the divisions in Israeli society,” Bennett said of growing rifts within Israel under Netanyahu, who has a strong support base but also staunch opponents who have demanded his departure including over his handling of the Gaza war since October 2023.

Netanyahu “must go,” said the former prime minister, a right-wing leader who in 2021 joined forces with Netanyahu critics to form a coalition that ousted him from the premiership after 12 consecutive years at the helm.

But the fragile coalition government Bennett had led along with current opposition chief Yair Lapid collapsed after about a year. Snap elections ensued, and Netanyahu again assumed the premiership with backing from far-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties.

Bennett, who has taken time off from politics, has been rumored to be planning a comeback, with public opinion polls suggesting he may have enough support to oust Netanyahu again.

No vote is currently planned before late 2026, however, although early elections are common in Israel.

In his Saturday interview, Bennett claimed credit for laying the groundwork for Israel’s bombardment campaign earlier this month against Iranian nuclear and military sites.

The decision to launch attacks against the Islamic republic “was very good” and “needed,” said Bennett, claiming that the offensive would not have been possible without the work of his short-lived government.

In Gaza, where Israel has waged war since Hamas’s October 2023 attack, Bennett said the military has displayed “exceptional” performance but “the political management of the country” was “a catastrophe, a disaster.”

Criticizing the Netanyahu government’s “inability to decide,” the former prime minister called for an immediate “comprehensive” agreement that would see all remaining hostages freed from Gaza.

“Leave the task of eliminating Hamas to a future government,” said Bennett, who also evaded several questions about whether he intends to run for office.