GAZA: The Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins Monday in Gaza with no truce in sight, as fighting rages between Israeli forces and Hamas militants and a dire humanitarian crisis grips the besieged Palestinian territory.
A Spanish charity ship with food aid prepared to sail from Cyprus to the coastal Gaza Strip, where the UN has repeatedly warned of famine.
Aid groups say only a fraction of the supplies required to meet basic humanitarian needs have been allowed into Gaza since October, when Israel placed it under near-total siege.
About 370 kilometers (230 miles) from Cyprus across the Mediterranean Sea, Mohammed Harara stood on the shores of Gaza, hoping for the aid to arrive.
“I’ve been waiting since this morning, because tomorrow is the start of the holy month of Ramadan and the situation is very tragic,” he said.
The non-governmental group Open Arms said its boat would tow a barge with 200 tons of food, which its partner the US charity World Central Kitchen would then unload on Gaza’s shores.
It was expected to depart “within the coming hours,” Cypriot government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis told Cyprus News Agency.
Jordanian, US, French, Belgian and Egyptian planes parachuted aid into northern Gaza on Sunday, but the United Nations’ aid coordinator for the area has said boosting supply by land is the best way to get assistance to the territory’s 2.4 million people.
Aid airdrops
Some of the airdropped food packages smashed open on impact, leaving residents picking through the dirt to salvage what they could, AFPTV images showed.
The war started by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel has killed 31,045 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, where vast swathes have been reduced to a bombed-out wasteland.
Weeks of talks involving US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have aimed for a six-week truce and the release of many of the hostages taken on October 7 that militants are still holding. In return, Israel would free Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails.
The aim had been to halt the fighting by the start of Ramadan.
Both sides have blamed each other for failing to reach a truce deal, after Israel demanded a full list of surviving hostages and Hamas called for Israel to pull out all its troops from Gaza.
A source with knowledge of the truce talks told AFP that “there will be a diplomatic push especially in the next 10 days” with a view to securing a deal within the first half of Ramadan.
The holy month this year is “all pain,” said Ahmed Kamis, 40, in Rafah, where around 1.5 million people have tried to find refuge but are still at risk from Israeli bombing.
Israel has also threatened to launch a ground operation into the southern city.
In Washington, President Joe Biden, who faces growing criticism for his steadfast support of Israel as the civilian death toll in Gaza soars, issued a statement marking the start of Ramadan.
“This year, it comes at a moment of immense pain,” Biden said.
“As Muslims gather around the world over the coming days and weeks to break their fast, the suffering of the Palestinian people will be front of mind for many. It is front of mind for me,” Biden added.
In Saudi Arabia, King Salman called in his Ramadan message for the international community to “uphold its responsibilities to put an end to these heinous crimes and ensure the establishment of safe humanitarian and relief corridors.”
In a message of his own, UN chief Antonio Guterres expressed his “solidarity and support to all those suffering from the horrors in Gaza. In these trying times, the spirit of Ramadan is a beacon of hope, a reminder of our shared humanity.”
Growing Israel-US tensions
Biden on Saturday stressed his growing impatience with Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling broadcaster MSNBC that the Israeli leader “must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken.”
At this stage, said Biden, Netanyahu’s approach to the war was “hurting Israel more than helping Israel.”
Netanyahu, under pressure from desperate families of hostages still held in Gaza as well as critics of his government, on Sunday rejected Biden’s comments and said most Israelis back “the action that we’re taking to destroy the remaining terrorist battalions of Hamas.”
He said Israel’s military had killed “at least 13,000 terrorist fighters,” but did not give details on how the figure was derived.
Hamas’s attack that started the war resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to Israeli official figures.
The militants also took around 250 hostages, dozens of whom were released during a week-long truce in November. Israel believes that 99 hostages still in militants’ hands remain alive and 31 have died.
The UN has reported particular difficulty in accessing northern Gaza for deliveries of food and other aid.
What is available in the south is sold at exorbitant prices, residents say, making this Ramadan like no other.
Israel-Hamas war rages in besieged Gaza as Ramadan begins
https://arab.news/mx5sf
Israel-Hamas war rages in besieged Gaza as Ramadan begins
- A Spanish charity ship with food aid prepared to sail from Cyprus to the coastal Gaza Strip
- Some of the airdropped food packages smashed open on impact, leaving residents picking through the dirt
Netanyahu says 6 more hostages to be freed next week
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Sunday that another six hostages would be released in the coming week, after talks with Hamas.
Three would be released on Thursday and another three on Saturday, said a statement from his office, adding that Netanyahu would allow Palestinians to return to the north of Gaza from Monday.
Trump’s Palestinian refugee idea falls flat with Jordan and confounds a Senate ally
- Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel but support the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War
- Both Egypt and Jordan also have perpetually struggling economies and their governments, as well as those of other Arab states, fear massive destabilization of their own countries and the region from any such influx of refugees
DORAL, Florida: President Donald Trump’s push to have Egypt and Jordan take in large numbers of Palestinian refugees from besieged Gaza fell flat with those countries’ governments and left a key congressional ally in Washington perplexed on Sunday.
Fighting that broke out in the territory after ruling Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023 is paused due to a fragile ceasefire, but much of Gaza’s population has been left largely homeless by an Israeli military campaign. Trump told reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One that moving some 1.5 million people away from Gaza might mean that “we just clean out that whole thing.”
Trump relayed what he told Jordan’s King Abdullah when the two held a call earlier Saturday: “I said to him, ‘I’d love for you to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess.’”
He said he was making a similar appeal to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi during a conversation they were having while Trump was at his Doral resort in Florida on Sunday. Trump said he would “like Egypt to take people and I’d like Jordan to take people.”
Egypt and Jordan, along with the Palestinians, worry that Israel would never allow them to return to Gaza once they have left. Both Egypt and Jordan also have perpetually struggling economies and their governments, as well as those of other Arab states, fear massive destabilization of their own countries and the region from any such influx of refugees.
Jordan already is home to more than 2 million Palestinian refugees. Egypt has warned of the security implications of transferring large numbers of Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, bordering Gaza.
Trump suggested that resettling most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million could be temporary or long term.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said Sunday that his country’s opposition to what Trump floated was “firm and unwavering.” Some Israel officials had raised the idea early in the war.
Egypt’s foreign minister issued a statement saying that the temporary or long-term transfer of Palestinians “risks expanding the conflict in the region.”
Trump does have leverage to wield over Jordan, which is a debt-strapped, but strategically important, US ally and is heavily dependent on foreign aid. The US is historically the single-largest provider of that aid, including more than $1.6 billion through the State Department in 2023.
Much of that comes as support for Jordan’s security forces and direct budget support.
Jordan in return has been a vital regional partner to the US in trying to help keep the region stable. Jordan hosts some 3,000 US troops. Yet, on Friday, new Secretary of State Marco Rubio exempted security assistance to Israel and Egypt but not to Jordan, when he laid out the details of a freeze on foreign assistance that Trump ordered on his first day in office.
Meantime, in the United States, even Trump loyalists tried to make sense of his words.
“I really don’t know,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, when asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” about what Trump meant by the ”clean out” remark. Graham, who is close to Trump, said the suggestion was not feasible.
“The idea that all the Palestinians are going to leave and go somewhere else, I don’t see that to be overly practical,” said Graham, R-S.C. He said Trump should keep talking to Mideast leaders, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and officials in the United Arab Emirates.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about. But go talk to MBS, go talk to UAE, go talk to Egypt,” Graham said. “What is their plan for the Palestinians? Do they want them all to leave?”
Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel, also announced Saturday that he had directed the US to release a supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. Former President Joe Biden had imposed a hold due to concerns about their effects on Gaza’s civilian population.
Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel but support the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. They fear that the permanent displacement of Gaza’s population could make that impossible.
In making his case for such a massive population shift, Trump said Gaza is “literally a demolition site right now.”
“I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location,” he said of people displaced in Gaza. “Where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
Syria monitor says 35 people summarily executed in three days
- Most of those executed are former officers in the toppled Assad government who had presented themselves in centers set up by the new authorities, according to the Britain-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria
DAMASCUS: Fighters affiliated with Syria’s new Islamist leaders have carried out 35 summary executions over 72 hours, mostly of Assad-era officers, a war monitor said Sunday.
The authorities, installed by the rebel forces that toppled longtime president Bashar Assad last month, said they had carried out multiple arrests in the western Homs area over unspecified “violations.”
Official news agency SANA said the authorities on Friday accused members of a “criminal group” who used a security sweep to commit abuses against residents, “posing as members of the security services.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said that “these arrests follow grave violations and summary executions that had cost the lives of 35 people over the past 72 hours.”
It also said that “members of religious minorities” had suffered “humiliations.”
Most of those executed are former officers in the toppled Assad government who had presented themselves in centers set up by the new authorities, according to the Britain-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.
“Dozens of members of local armed groups under the control of the new Sunni Islamist coalition in power who participated in the security operations” in the Homs area “have been arrested,” the Observatory said.
It added that these groups “carried out reprisals and settled old scores with members of the Alawite minority to which Bashar Assad belongs, taking advantage of the state of chaos, the proliferations of arms and their ties to the new authorities.”
The Observatory listed “mass arbitrary arrests, atrocious abuse, attacks against religious symbols, mutilations of corpses, summary and brutal executions targeting civilians,” which it said showed “an unprecedented level of cruelty and violence.”
Civil Peace Group, a civil society organization, said in a statement that there had been civilian victims in multiple villages in the Homs area during the security sweep.
The group “condemned the unjustified violations” including the killing of unarmed men.
Since seizing power, the new authorities have sought to reassure religious and ethnic minorities in Syria that their rights would be upheld.
Members of Assad’s Alawite minority have expressed fear of retaliation over abuses during his clan’s decades in power.
US says ceasefire agreement between Lebanon, Israel to continue until February 18
- Lebanon confirms adhering to the extended ceasefire agreement, says Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati
- Israeli forces killed 22 people in south Lebanon on Sunday as a deadline for their withdrawal passed
WASHINGTON: The US said on Sunday that the agreement between Lebanon and Israel would remain in effect until Feb. 18, after Israel said on Friday it would keep troops in the south beyond the Sunday deadline set out in a US-brokered ceasefire that halted last year’s war with Hezbollah.
“The arrangement between Lebanon and Israel, monitored by the United States, will continue to be in effect until February 18, 2025,” the White House said in a statement.
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said in a statement early on Monday that Lebanon confirmed it will continue to adhere to the extended ceasefire agreement.
Israeli forces killed 22 people in south Lebanon on Sunday as a deadline for their withdrawal passed and thousands of people tried to return to their homes in defiance of Israeli military orders, Lebanese authorities said.
Lebanon’s US-backed military, which reported one of its soldiers among those killed by Israeli forces on Sunday, has accused Israel of procrastinating in its withdrawal.
The Hezbollah-Israel conflict was fought in parallel with the Gaza war, and peaked in a major Israeli offensive that uprooted more than a million people in Lebanon and left the Iran-backed group badly weakened.
Israel has not said how long its forces would remain in the south, where the Israeli military says it has been seizing Hezbollah weapons and dismantling its infrastructure.
Israel said its offensive against Hezbollah aimed to secure the return home of tens of thousands of Israelis who were forced to leave homes at the border by Hezbollah rocket fire.
Hezbollah opened fire in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas at the start of the Gaza war on Oct. 8, 2023.
The White House on Sunday also said the governments of Lebanon, Israel and the US would begin negotiations for “the return of Lebanese prisoners captured after October 7, 2023.”
Arab League says any plan to uproot Palestinians from Gaza would be ‘ethnic cleansing’
- The regional bloc was reacting to US President Trump's suggestion to “clean out” the Gaza Strip and move its population to Egypt and Jordan
- Egyptian President El-Sisi has repeatedly warned that any planned displacement would threaten Egypt’s national security
CAIRO: The Arab League on Sunday warned against “attempts to uproot the Palestinian people from their land,” after US President Donald Trump suggested a plan to “clean out” the Gaza Strip and move its population to Egypt and Jordan.
“The forced displacement and eviction of people from their land can only be called ethnic cleansing,” the regional bloc’s general secretariat said in a statement.
“Attempts to uproot the Palestinian people from their land, whether by displacement, annexation or settlement expansion, have been proven to fail in the past,” the statement added.
Earlier Sunday, Egypt vehemently expressed its objection to Trump's suggestion.
Cairo’s foreign ministry in a statement expressed Egypt’s “continued support for the steadfastness of the Palestinian people on their land.”
It “rejected any infringement on those inalienable rights, whether by settlement or annexation of land, or by the depopulation of that land of its people through displacement, encouraged transfer or the uprooting of Palestinians from their land, whether temporarily or long-term.”
After 15 months of war, Trump said Gaza had become a “demolition site” and he would “like Egypt to take people, and I’d like Jordan to take people.”
Moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be done “temporarily or could be long term,” he said.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023 both countries have warned of plans to displace Palestinians from Gaza into neighboring Egypt and from the West Bank into Jordan.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, with whom Trump said he would speak on Sunday, has repeatedly warned that said displacement would aim to “eradicate the cause for Palestinian statehood.”
El-Sisi has described the prospect as a “red line” that would threaten Egypt’s national security.
The Egyptian foreign ministry on Sunday urged the implementation of the “two-state solution,” which Cairo has said would become impossible if Palestinians were removed from their territories.
