Palestinians hail UN condemnation of Israeli detention

Protesters stage a demonstration in support of prisoners in Israeli jails outside the office of the International Committee of the red Cross in Ramallah. (AFP)
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Updated 22 October 2022
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Palestinians hail UN condemnation of Israeli detention

  • Almost 800 Palestinians detained without trial through policy

RAMALLAH: Officials in Palestine have welcomed the UN’s appeal to Israel to end the administrative detention of Palestinian detainees.

Qadri Abu Bakr, head of the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission, lauded the UN move.

He told Arab News that the Palestinian Authority has made similar appeals for several years and has repeatedly urged international organizations and allied countries to pressure Israel into ending the detention practice.

Israel uses administrative detention — imprisoning a person without trial for a period of six months — to clamp down on Palestinian activism, Abu Bakr said.

He lamented that some prisoners had spent almost eight years in administrative detention without trial because detention orders were renewed every six months.

Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, said in a press conference that the UN had repeatedly called on Israel to end the practice of administrative detention, either by releasing or prosecuting detainees.

Dujarric added that the UN was following up on the case of Salah Hammouri, a Palestinian lawyer held by Israel without charge under administrative detention.

The spokesman’s remarks came after independent experts had called on Israel to immediately release Hammouri, who recently ended a 19-day hunger strike in objection to the systematic policy of administrative detention.

Dujarric added: “We are closely following the situation of Mr. Hammouri and other Palestinian administrative detainees held by Israel.

“We are aware that there are about 30 detainees, including him, who recently ended their hunger strike, which had been going on since September. And obviously, we have repeatedly called for Israel to end the practice by either releasing people or charging them when there are grounds to do so.”

Israeli retaliatory measures against Hammouri escalated after following his work with the Conscience Foundation for Prisoner Care and Human Rights.

UN experts also expressed their deep concern about the widespread misuse of administrative and criminal law procedures by Israel, and its use of confidential information against Palestinians, including Hammouri.

Abu Bakr said that there are 780 Palestinian administrative detainees, including at least six minors and two female prisoners. Most of the detainees are held in the Negev and Ofer prisons.

Since 2015, Israeli authorities have issued more than 9,500 administrative detention orders.

Since the beginning of this year, authorities have issued about 1,365 administrative detention orders, including 272 in August alone.

Since late 2011, prisoners in Israel have carried out more than 400 individual strikes.

Abu Bakr said that the prisoners have repeatedly demanded that Israeli authorities bring them to trial.

In a separate development, Israel reportedly intends to allow the Palestinian Authority — for the first time since 2001 — to acquire two civilian helicopters for high-level flights in a move aimed at enhancing President Mahmoud Abbas’ position.

Haaretz reported that Israeli security leaders had objected to such proposals for years on the grounds that the helicopters would be used for smuggling purposes, as happened under former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat.

According to the report, Israeli security officials recommended that the government accept the request of President Abbas as part of steps to strengthen his position within the Palestinian Authority.

According to the plan’s draft, Israel intends to allow the Palestinian Authority to buy two helicopters with money donated by Gulf states.

The two helicopters would be stationed in Jordan, and will remain on standby to transport senior officials from the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinian Authority will be required to request a flight permit when traveling through Israeli airspace, which includes the occupied West Bank.

PA officials currently rent helicopters belonging to the Royal Jordanian Air Force to transport themselves and diplomatic guests between Ramallah and Amman.

Each flight costs them about $100,000, though President Abbas owns a private jet stationed in Amman for his trips around the world.

Israel allowed the late president Arafat to acquire three Soviet-made Mil Mi-8 helicopters following the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 1993.

However, then-Israeli PM Ariel Sharon ordered the helicopters to be destroyed during the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000 after they were allegedly used to smuggle weapons and wanted criminals.

The helicopter pads in both Ramallah and Gaza were destroyed.


Medics struggle to revive Sudan’s hungry with trickle of aid supplies

Updated 6 sec ago
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Medics struggle to revive Sudan’s hungry with trickle of aid supplies

The patients at Alban Jadeed Hospital are in urgent need of help
The real situation could be worse, since fighting has prevented proper data collection in many areas, medics and aid staff say

SHARG ELNIL, Sudan: In a nutrition ward at a hospital in Sudan’s war-stricken capital, gaunt mothers lie next to even thinner toddlers with wide, sunken eyes.
The patients at Alban Jadeed Hospital are in urgent need of help after nearly two years of battles that have trapped residents and cut off supplies, but doctors have to ration the therapeutic milk and other products used to treat them.
The war that erupted in April 2023 from a power struggle between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has created what the United Nations calls the world’s largest and most devastating humanitarian crisis.
About half of Sudan’s population of 50 million now suffer some degree of acute hunger, and famine has taken hold in at least five areas, including several parts of North Darfur State in western Sudan.
The real situation could be worse, since fighting has prevented proper data collection in many areas, medics and aid staff say.
In Sudan’s greater capital, where the cities of Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri are divided by the Nile, the warring factions have prevented deliveries of aid and commercial supplies, pushing the prices of goods beyond most people’s reach.
Alban Jadeed Hospital, in Bahri’s Sharg Elnil district, received more than 14,000 children under five years old suffering from severe acute malnutrition last year, and another 12,000 with a more mild form, said Azza Babiker, head of the therapeutic nutrition department.
Only 600 of the children tested were a normal weight, she said.
The supply of therapeutic formula milk via UN children’s agency UNICEF and medical aid agency MSF is insufficient, Babiker said, as RSF soldiers twice stole the supplies.
Both sides deny impeding aid deliveries.
The sharp reduction of USAID funding is expected to make things worse, hitting the budgets of aid agencies that provide crucial nutritional supplies as well as community kitchens relied upon by many, aid workers say.
The army recently captured Sharg Elnil from the RSF, as part of recent gains it has made across the capital.
Fruit and vegetables have become extremely scarce. “Aside from the difficulty of getting these products in, not all families can afford to buy them,” Babiker said.
Many mothers are unable to produce milk, often due to trauma resulting from RSF attacks, or their own malnutrition, said Raneen Adel, a doctor at Alban Jadeed.
“There are cases who come in dehydrated ... because for example the RSF entered the house and the mother was frightened so she stopped producing breast milk, or she was beaten,” she said.
The RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A lack of nutrition and sanitation has led to cases of blood poisoning and other illnesses, but the hospital has also run out of antibiotics.
“We had to tell the patients’ companions to get (the drugs) from outside, but they can’t afford to buy them,” Adel said.

Jordan’s king says Israel’s resumption of Gaza attacks a ‘dangerous step’

Updated 19 March 2025
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Jordan’s king says Israel’s resumption of Gaza attacks a ‘dangerous step’

PARIS: Jordan’s King Abdullah called on Tuesday for the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza to be restored and for aid flows to resume.
“Israel’s resumption of attacks on Gaza is an extremely dangerous step that adds further devastation to an already dire humanitarian situation,” he said, standing next to French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

Gaza health ministry says one dead among foreign UN staff injured in Israeli strike

Updated 1 min 32 sec ago
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Gaza health ministry says one dead among foreign UN staff injured in Israeli strike

  • Israel's army, however, denied striking the UN building in Gaza

GAZA: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said that a foreign UN worker was killed and five others seriously injured Wednesday by an Israeli strike on their headquarters.
A statement from the health ministry said there was “one death and five severe injuries among foreign staff working for UN institutions... due to the bombing of their headquarters by the occupation in the central governorate a short while ago,” adding they had been taken to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

AFP has not been able to confirm the information with the UN.

Israel's army, however, denied striking the UN building in Gaza.

“Contrary to reports, the IDF (army) did not strike a UN compound in Deir el-Balah,” the army said in a statement, while an army spokesperson told AFP: “I confirm there was no IDF operational activity there and that the IDF didn't strike the UN compound.”


Hamas says open to talks as Israel keeps up Gaza strikes

Updated 19 March 2025
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Hamas says open to talks as Israel keeps up Gaza strikes

  • Hamas is open to talks on getting the ceasefire back on track but will not renegotiate the agreement that took effect on January 19
  • Negotiations have stalled over how to proceed with a ceasefire whose first phase expired in early March

GAZA CITY: Hamas said it remained open to negotiations while calling for pressure on Israel Wednesday to implement a Gaza truce after its deadliest bombing since the fragile ceasefire began in January.
Israel carried out fresh air strikes on Gaza on Wednesday, killing 13 people according to the territory’s civil defense agency, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday’s raids were “only the beginning.”
The United Nations and countries around the world condemned the high civilian death toll in the renewed strikes, which have killed more than 400 people, according to Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Hamas is open to talks on getting the ceasefire back on track but will not renegotiate the agreement that took effect on January 19, an official from the militant group said.
“Hamas has not closed the door on negotiations but we insist there is no need for new agreements,” Taher Al-Nunu told AFP.
“We have no conditions, but we demand that the occupation be compelled to immediately halt its aggression and war of extermination, and begin the second phase of negotiations.”
Negotiations have stalled over how to proceed with a ceasefire whose first phase expired in early March, with Israel and Hamas disagreeing on whether to move to a new phase intended to bring the war to an end.
Instead, Israel and the United States have sought to change the terms of the deal by extending stage one.
That would delay the start of phase two, which was meant to establish a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and was swiftly rejected by Hamas, which demanded full implementation of the original deal.
“There is no need for new agreements in light of the existing agreement signed by all parties,” Nunu said.


Israel and the United States have portrayed Hamas’s rejection of an extended stage one as a refusal to release more Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Netanyahu’s office said he ordered the renewed strikes on Gaza after “Hamas’s repeated refusal to release our hostages.”
In a televised address late Tuesday, the premier said: “From now on, negotiations will take place only under fire... Military pressure is essential for the release of additional hostages.
“Hamas has already felt the strength of our arm in the past 24 hours. And I want to promise you — and them — this is only the beginning.”
The White House said Israel consulted US President Donald Trump’s administration before launching the strikes, while Israel said the return to fighting was “fully coordinated” with Washington.
The intense Israeli bombardment sent a stream of new casualties to the few hospitals still functioning in Gaza and triggered fears of a return to full-blown war after two months of relative calm.
The roads were once again filled with Palestinian civilians on the move as families responded to evacuation warnings from the Israeli army.
“Today I felt that Gaza is a real hell,” said Jihan Nahhal, a 43-year-old from Gaza City, adding some of her relatives were wounded or killed in the strikes.
“Suddenly there were huge explosions, as if it were the first day of the war.”
The Gaza health ministry said the bodies of 413 people had been received by hospitals, adding people were still under the rubble.
A spokeswoman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF said medical facilities that “have already been decimated” by the war were now “overwhelmed.”


Governments in the Middle East, Europe and beyond called for the renewed hostilities to end.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Israel’s raids on Gaza “are shattering the tangible hopes of so many Israelis and Palestinians of an end to suffering on all sides.”
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she told her Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar that the new strikes on Gaza were “unacceptable.”
Both Egypt and Qatar, which brokered the Gaza ceasefire alongside the United States, condemned Israel’s resort to military action.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said the strikes were part of “deliberate efforts to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable and force the Palestinians into displacement.”
Trump has floated a proposal to move Palestinians out of Gaza, an idea rejected by Palestinians and governments in the region and beyond, but embraced by some Israeli politicians.
Israel’s resumption of military operations in Gaza, after it already halted all humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza this month, drew an immediate political dividend for Netanyahu.
The far-right Otzma Yehudit party, which quit his ruling coalition in January in protest at the Gaza ceasefire, rejoined its ranks with its firebrand leader Itamar Ben Gvir again becoming national security minister.
The war began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in 1,218 deaths, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliation in Gaza has killed at least 48,577 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry.
Of the 251 hostages seized during the attack, 58 are still in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.


Trump meets UAE national security adviser, discusses strategic partnership prospects

Updated 19 March 2025
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Trump meets UAE national security adviser, discusses strategic partnership prospects

  • Sheikh Tahnoon is on an official visit to the US where he will meet with senior US administration officials and business leaders

DUBAI: UAE National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al-Nahyan met with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday in the presence of senior US officials.

“Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed and the US President discussed opportunities to strengthen the long-term strategic partnership between the UAE and the US and explored ways to enhance it to serve their shared interests,” the state run WAM news agency reported.

Sheikh Tahnoon is on an official visit to the US where he will meet with senior US administration officials and business leaders.

During his meeting with Trump, Tahnoon affirmed the UAE’s commitment to strengthening economic ties with the US by expanding partnerships.

Sheikh Tahnoon also met with US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and discussed ways to advance bilateral relations and the latest developments on matters of mutual interest.