RAFAH: It took 10 years and three rounds of in vitro fertilization for Rania Abu Anza to become pregnant, and only seconds for her to lose her five-month-old twins, a boy and a girl.
An Israeli strike hit the home of her extended family in the southern Gaza city of Rafah late Saturday, killing her children, her husband and 11 other relatives and leaving another nine missing under the rubble, according to survivors and local health officials.
She had woken up at around 10 p.m. to breastfeed Naeim, the boy, and went back to sleep with him in one arm and Wissam, the girl, in the other. Her husband was sleeping beside them.
The explosion came an hour and a half later. The house collapsed.
“I screamed for my children and my husband,” she said Sunday, as she sobbed and cradled a baby’s blanket to her chest. ”They were all dead. Their father took them and left me behind.”
She closed her eyes, leaned her head against the wall and patted the bundle in a calming gesture that, finally, she’d had the chance to give.
Israeli airstrikes have regularly hit crowded family homes since the start of the war in Gaza, even in Rafah, which Israel declared a safe zone in October but is now the next target of its devastating ground offensive.
The strikes often come without warning, usually in the middle of the night.
Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on the Hamas militant group because it positions fighters, tunnels and rocket launchers in dense residential areas. But the military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.
The military on Sunday didn’t comment on this attack but said it “follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
Of the 14 people killed in the Abu Anza house, six were children and four were women, according to Dr. Marwan Al-Hams, director of the hospital where the bodies were taken. In addition to her husband and children, Rania also lost a sister, a nephew, a pregnant cousin and other relatives.
Farouq Abu Anza, a relative, said about 35 people were staying at the house, some of whom had been displaced from other areas. He said they were all civilians, mostly children, and that there were no militants among them.
Rania and her husband, Wissam, both 29, spent a decade trying to get pregnant. Two rounds of IVF had failed, but after a third, she learned she was pregnant early last year. The twins were born on Oct. 13.
Her husband, a day laborer, was so proud he insisted on naming the girl after himself, she said.
“I didn’t get enough of them,” she said. “I swear I didn’t get enough of them.”
Less than a week earlier, Hamas-led militants had stormed into southern Israel in a surprise attack, rampaging through communities, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and taking around 250 hostages, including children and a newborn.
Israel responded with one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history. The war has killed over 30,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Around 80 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes, and a quarter of the population faces starvation.
The ministry said last month that more than 12,300 Palestinian children and young teens had been killed in the war, about 43 percent of the overall toll. Women and children together make up three quarters of those killed. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its tallies.
Israel claims to have killed over 10,000 Hamas fighters but has not provided evidence.
For the children who survive, the war has made life hellish, humanitarian workers say, with some in northern Gaza beyond the reach of care.
“The sense of helplessness and despair among parents and doctors in realizing that lifesaving aid, just a few kilometers away, is being kept out of reach, must be unbearable, but worse still are the anguished cries of those babies slowly perishing under the world’s gaze,” UNICEF regional director Adele Khodr said in a statement Sunday.
Until Saturday, the Abu Anza family had been relatively fortunate. Rafah has been spared the immense destruction of northern Gaza and the southern city of Khan Younis, where Israeli tanks and ground troops have fought militants block by block after waves of airstrikes.
Rafah is also in the shrinking area of Gaza where humanitarian aid can still be delivered.
But Israel has said Rafah will be next, and the roughly 1.5 million people who have sought refuge there will be relocated, without saying where.
“We have no rights,” Rania said. “I lost the people who were dearest to me. I don’t want to live here. I want to get out of this country. I’m tired of this war.”
After 10 years of trying, a Palestinian woman had twins. An Israeli strike killed them both
https://arab.news/2zqtr
After 10 years of trying, a Palestinian woman had twins. An Israeli strike killed them both
- An Israeli strike hit the home of her family in Rafah, killing her children, her husband and 11 other relatives
Egypt troops to join African Union Somalia mission: Foreign minister
- Egypt and Somalia have grown closer amid tensions with Ethiopia over recognition of Somaliland
CAIRO: Egypt will contribute troops to an African Union Somalia peacekeeping mission, its foreign minister said on Monday, as ties between the two countries grow closer amid tensions with Ethiopia over recognition of Somaliland.
“Egypt has decided to participate in the mission based on the Somali government’s request and welcoming of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council,” said Badr Abdelatty during a press conference in Cairo to mark a visit by the Somali foreign minister.
The African Union stabilization and support mission, known as AUSSOM, will replace an anti-terror mission ending this year.
A dispute between Ethiopia and Somalia broke out this year over Addis Ababa’s plan to build a port in the breakaway region of Somaliland, which had drawn in regional powers and threatened to further destabilize the Horn of Africa.
After talks mediated by Turkiye, Somalia and Ethiopia said they would work together to resolve the issue.
“We spoke about the situation in Somalia and Egypt’s support of Somalia imposing its authority and sovereignty on all Somali national land and the refusal of any directives or unilateral moves that touch the unity, sovereignty and security of Somalia,” Abdelatty added.
The spat has drawn Somalia closer to Egypt, which criticized the Somaliland deal and has been at odds with Ethiopia for years over Addis Ababa’s construction of a hydro dam on the river Nile.
Following the signing of a joint security pact, Egypt has delivered weapons and ammunition, including anti-aircraft guns and artillery, to Somalia.
Palestinian victims of Gaza conflict file case against British oil giant BP
- Claimants accuse company of violating human rights laws, fueling Israeli war machine
- Legal notice also accuses BP of complicity in alleged war crimes
LONDON: Palestinians affected by the ongoing conflict in Gaza have initiated legal action against British oil giant BP, alleging its involvement in supplying crude oil to Israel facilitates human rights abuses.
The claimants submitted a legal notice accusing the company of violating international human rights laws and its own corporate policies, The Guardian reported on Monday.
At the heart of the dispute is the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, operated by BP, which carries oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia and Turkey to Israel. It reportedly supplies 28 percent of Israel’s crude oil, a critical resource for its military operations.
According to the claim, oil refined from the pipeline is being used to fuel jets, tanks and bulldozers.
“Israel relies heavily on crude oil and refined petroleum imports to run its large fleet of fighter jets, tanks and other military vehicles and operations, as well as the bulldozers implicated in clearing Palestinian homes and olive groves to make way for unlawful Israeli settlements,” the notice said.
“Some fuel from refineries goes directly to the armed forces, while much of the rest appears to go to ordinary gas stations where military personnel can refuel their vehicles under a government contract.”
The claimants want to take the case to a British court, citing BP’s UK headquarters and the claimants’ British ties.
The legal action argues that BP’s operations breach the UN’s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which require companies to avoid contributing to human rights violations.
It also accuses BP of complicity in alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, drawing attention to findings by a UN commission that Israel has committed war crimes during the conflict in Gaza.
The lead claimants include Palestinians who have suffered devastating personal losses during the war, including a British citizen who has lost 16 family members in airstrikes. Others face dire humanitarian conditions, displacement and lack of access to essential medical care.
The legal team stressed the physical and psychological harm endured by the claimants, including amputations and loss of loved ones and said they hoped the case would set a precedent for corporate accountability in conflict zones.
BP has not issued a public response to the claims or responded to media requests for comment.
Oxfam raises alarm over worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza
- Only 12 trucks delivered food in North Gaza since October, says aid group
UNITED NATIONS: Just 12 trucks distributed food and water in northern Gaza in two-and-a-half months, aid group Oxfam said on Sunday, raising the alarm over the worsening humanitarian situation in the besieged Palestinian territory.
“Of the meager 34 trucks of food and water given permission to enter the North Gaza governorate over the last 2.5 months, deliberate delays and systematic obstructions by the Israeli military meant that just twelve managed to distribute aid to starving Palestinian civilians,” Oxfam said in a statement, in a count that included deliveries through Saturday.
“For three of these, once the food and water had been delivered to the school where people were sheltering, it was then cleared and shelled within hours,” Oxfam added.
Israel, which has tightly controlled aid entering the Hamas-ruled territory since the outbreak of the war, often blames what it says is the inability of relief organizations to handle and distribute large quantities of aid.
In a report focused on water, New York-based Human Rights Watch on Thursday detailed what it called deliberate efforts by Israeli authorities “of a systematic nature” to deprive Gazans of water, which had “likely caused thousands of deaths ... and will likely continue to cause deaths.”
They were the latest in a series of accusations leveled against Israel — and denied by the country — during its 14-month war against Palestinian Hamas militants.
Oxfam said that it and other international aid groups had been “continually prevented from delivering lifesaving aid” in northern Gaza since Oct. 6 this year, when Israel intensified its bombardment of the area.
“Thousands of people are estimated to still be cut off, but with humanitarian access blocked it’s impossible to know exact numbers,” Oxfam said.
“At the beginning of December, humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza were receiving calls from vulnerable people trapped in homes and shelters that had completely run out of food and water.”
Oxfam highlighted one instance of an aid delivery in November being disrupted by Israeli authorities.
“A convoy of 11 trucks last month was initially held up at the holding point by the Israeli military at Jabalia, where some food was taken by starving civilians,” it said.
“After the green light to proceed to the destination was received, the trucks were then stopped further on at a military checkpoint. Soldiers forced the drivers to offload the aid in a militarized zone, which desperate civilians had no access to.”
The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Thursday asking the International Court of Justice to assess Israel’s obligations to assist Palestinians.
Mobile cinema brings Tunisians big screen experience
- Mobile cinemas have long existed in other countries, but Heraghi said CinemaTdour was “unique” for turning a truck into a full-fledged theater
DJEMMAL, Tunisia: Like many of his fellow Tunisians, 23-year-old Amine Elhani has never been to the cinema, but now, thanks to a mobile theater touring the country, he can finally enjoy the big screen.
The bright red truck of CinemaTdour, or “moving cinema,” has transformed parking lots and factory grounds in underserved towns and neighborhoods across the North African country into pop-up theaters.
In the central town of Djemmal, dozens of workers unloaded the expandable truck, easily setting up a fully equipped outdoor movie theater with 100 seats.
“The screen is huge, and the sound effects are amazing,” said Elhani, who had so far only watched films on his phone or computer.
He had “never had the chance to go to a movie theater,” he told AFP.
“It’s a fantastic experience, especially because I’m watching with friends.”
Movie theaters are scarce in Tunisia, numbering at just 15 and largely concentrated in major urban hubs.
Recognizing this gap, CinemaTdour was launched in May by private cultural network Agora and nonprofit Focus Gabes, with funding from private donors.
“We wanted a way to reach as many viewers as possible, in a short time and on a limited budget, while offering them an authentic cinematic experience,” project director Ghofrane Heraghi told AFP.
Mobile cinemas have long existed in other countries, but Heraghi said CinemaTdour was “unique” for turning a truck into a full-fledged theater.
Without government funding, CinemaTdour relies heavily on partnerships with private companies to cover costs like film rights, maintenance and staffing.
The truck itself was purchased on credit for about one million Tunisian dinars ($315,000), Heraghi said, with annual operating expenses of around 500,000 dinars.
For 10 days in Djemmal, residents could watch films for free thanks to a partnership with German car parts manufacturer Draxlmaier, which has a factory in the town.
Jihene Ben Amor, Draxlmaier’s communications manager in Tunisia, said the company wanted to “contribute to the development” of remote and underserved regions where it operates.
For many workers, earning up to 1,000 dinars a month, the cost of tickets and the journey to a main city with a movie theater can be prohibitive.
“Having this cinema right outside their workplace also gives workers a sense of pride and belonging,” said Ben Amor.
After Djemmal, CinemaTdour set up in Hay Hlel, an impoverished neighborhood of the capital Tunis.
Many children gathered around the pop-up theater, eager for their turn.
Yomna Warhani, 11, was beaming with excitement, anticipating her first ever movie screening.
“I can’t wait to see what it’s like inside and what films they’ll show,” she said.
Nejiba El Hadji, a 47-year-old mother of four, said: “It’s not just the kids who are thrilled, believe me.”
To her, the mobile cinema was a rare source of joy in an otherwise bleak environment.
“We have nothing here, no cultural centers and no entertainment, just the streets,” said Hadji.
“People say our kids are lost, but no one does anything about it.”
CinemaTdour’s two-week stay in Hay Hlel was funded by the World Health Organization, with screenings themed on mental health, smoking and drug abuse, and violence against women.
The shows were tailored for younger audiences as well as for viewers with hearing or visual impairments.
Heraghi, the project head, said that “what drives us is the social impact of culture.”
“We want to break stereotypes, shift mindsets, and promote values like social cohesion and community spirit.”
In just a few months, CinemaTdour has reached more than 15,000 people, including 7,500 in the southern oasis town of Nefta where a month of free screenings was sponsored by a date exporter.
The project now hopes to secure funding for additional trucks to expand its activities across the country.
But Heraghli has even bigger aspirations, she said, “taking it to Algeria, Libya, and maybe even across Africa.”
2024 Year in Review: How outrage at Israel’s actions in Gaza fueled global solidarity with Palestine
2024 Year in Review: How outrage at Israel’s actions in Gaza fueled global solidarity with Palestine
- Mass protests took place in cities around the globe in 2024, with demonstrators accusing Israel of genocide
- Several nations recognized Palestine as a sovereign state, challenging Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank
LONDON: When Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the world was appalled by the savagery of an assault that left more than 1,200 Israelis and people of other nationalities dead, and saw some 250 taken hostage.
At that moment, Israel had the unbridled sympathy of the Western world. But within days that sympathy had all but evaporated, swept away by rising disgust at the slaughter unleashed in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces.
By Oct. 24, 2023, just 17 days after the Hamas-led attack, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was urging the UN Security Council to rein in Israel. He had “condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented acts of terror by Hamas in Israel.”
But now, he said, “those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people” being meted out by Israel in Gaza. “Even war has rules,” he added.
By then, more than a million Palestinians had already been displaced and 5,000 had been killed, according to Gaza’s health authorities, including more than 1,100 women and 2,000 children, along with journalists, medics, and first responders.
Even before Guterres spoke out, thousands appalled by Israel’s behavior had already begun to take to the streets in Western capitals to express their horror and offer their moral support to the Palestinian people.
Some of the first protests took place in the UK, on Oct. 15, just a week after the Hamas-led attack. In London, thousands rallied in response to a plea by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and marched on Downing Street, home of the British prime minister.
Many carried Palestinian flags and banners with messages including “Free Palestine — end Israeli occupation” and “Stop bombing Gaza.”
The BBC’s headquarters in Portland Place, central London, was daubed in red paint, symbolising what activists called the broadcaster’s “complicity in Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people through biased reporting.”
In Parliament and in some sections of the media, the protestors were immediately accused of antisemitism and of supporting Hamas. One protestor, interviewed in London by Reuters, made the purpose of the protests crystal clear.
“This is not about Hamas,” she said. “This is about protecting Palestinian lives.”
The protests spread like wildfire to other cities and campuses throughout the UK and then to Europe, the Middle East and Asia. By the end of October, demonstrations had erupted in Copenhagen, Rome, Stockholm, and Wellington.
In France, despite a ban on pro-Palestinian rallies, protests still braved arrest to make their voices heard in Paris and Marseille.
The protests were no flash in the pan, either. Into the new year and up until today, they have kept on coming.
As the death toll in Gaza mounted, reaching 30,000 by March 2024, it was not long before the outrage spread to the US, where on March 20 NBC reported that “in cities across the country, highways have been blocked, trains have been delayed and sections of college campuses have been shut down by hundreds of thousands of people who have taken to the streets … protesting Israel’s invasion of Gaza.”
A week later, on March 27, a Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans opposed Israel’s military action in Gaza.
During a speech on the election campaign trail in North Carolina, President Joe Biden was interrupted by protesters demanding a US intervention to end the suffering of the Palestinians. Their shouts turned to cheers when the president heard them out and then said: “They have a point. We need to get a lot more care into Gaza.”
Dismay at the administration’s failure to rein in Israel, especially among the influential Arab American community in some key swing states, may well have cost Biden’s VP Kamala Harris the presidency.
Everywhere, alarmed by the strength of global feeling provoked by the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, the pro-Israel lobby rallied. Unable to defend Israel’s actions in Gaza, instead it went on the attack.
The protests, they said, were not pro-Palestinian or even anti-Israel, but antisemitic — an allegation that is frequently leveled at anyone who has criticised Israel’s behavior in Gaza and the West Bank.
In the UK, the lengths to which the pro-Israel lobby was prepared to go to distract attention away from the cause of the protests became evident after an extraordinary episode in April.
The media rushed to report the claims of Gideon Falter, the chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, that he had accidentally stumbled into the path of a pro-Palestinian protest and had then been threatened with arrest because his “openly Jewish” appearance was antagonising the marchers.
The incident was filmed, and selectively edited, by the CAA. But when the full footage later emerged it became clear that Falter had deliberately tried to provoke demonstrators by pushing past police officers and walking in the path of the demonstration.
In the US, wealthy Jewish donors banded together to attack universities for allowing pro-Palestinian protests on their campuses. According to a report by CNBC, even as protests were taking off in the US in late October 2023, billionaire supporters of Ivy League schools including Harvard, Yale, and Penn threatened to withdraw funding.
By January 2024, the wealthy donors had successfully hounded out of office two high-profile leaders, Harvard president Claudine Gay and Penn president Liz Magill, both of whom resigned.
In an op-ed published in the Guardian in January 2024, Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, wrote that “as a Jew, I also cannot help but worry that the actions of these donors — many of them Jewish, many from Wall Street — could fuel the very antisemitism they claim to oppose, based on the age-old stereotype of wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world.”
The determined assault on the defenders of Palestine by the Jewish lobby has continued unabated. In the UK last week, the head of the British Medical Association was accused by campaign group Labour Against Antisemitism of creating “a hostile environment” for Jewish doctors, and is now under investigation by her own organization.
Dr. Mary McCarthy’s “offense” was to have reposted a message on her X account that described the conflict in Gaza as “a holocaust.”
Over in Ireland, it was reported last week that Israel is to close its embassy in Dublin, accusing the Irish government of “extreme anti-Israel policies” and “crossing every red line.” In May, Ireland, followed quickly by Spain, Norway, and Slovenia, had recognized Palestine as an independent, sovereign state.
In July, the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe wrote of his alarm that “nine months into the Israeli genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip,” Israel’s “parallel attack on freedom of speech on Palestine is continuing with intensity, making it difficult for the general public to appreciate the reality in Palestine beyond the manipulated and distorted coverage offered by mainstream media.”
All over the Global North, universities had “ousted students simply for being members of outfits such as Students for Justice in Palestine. They even disinvited academics or authors who dared to criticize Israel.
“Similar actions were taken against journalists and people in public services, even those who accompanied their criticism with a condemnation of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023.”
It was, he added in an article published in the Palestine Chronicle, “clear that we are facing a coordinated campaign led by the pro-Israeli lobby and aimed at continuing the historical denial of the ongoing Nakba.”
That denial, however, appears to be falling on deaf ears.
In recent weeks, thousands have continued to protest on the streets of London and other Western capitals. The UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign has even announced plans for its first national demonstration of 2025.
On Jan. 18, it said, “we will march through London once again to demand an end to Israel’s genocide in Palestine.”
It added: “It is vital we continue to take to the streets in huge numbers to demand an end to British complicity in Israel’s genocide and apartheid, including through an end to all arms trade with Israel.”
As 2024 has seen an extraordinary outpouring of global outrage at the death and destruction being wrought by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, so 2025 will see no let-up in the calls for Israel to be held to account.
