Empty chairs for hostages as Israel at war marks Passover

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Ultra-Orthodox Jews take part in the "Mayim Shelanu" ceremony in which water is collected from a natural spring for the preparation of matza, the traditional unleavened bread eaten during the upcoming Jewish holiday of Passover, near Jerusalem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, April 21, 2024. (REUTERS)
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Updated 23 April 2024
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Empty chairs for hostages as Israel at war marks Passover

  • Israel has killed 34,151 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry

JERUSALEM: Jewish people marked Monday the start of Passover, a celebration of freedom, and around many holiday tables in Israel chairs stood empty for hostages still held captive in Gaza.
The week-long Jewish festival, also known in Hebrew as the “holiday of freedom,” celebrates the Israelites’ liberation from Egyptian slavery, as told in the Bible.
Passover is traditionally observed with a seder: a holiday feast when families eat symbolic foods and read the Haggadah.
The more than millennium-old text recounts the Exodus and Jewish people’s ties to, and their yearning to return to, the Holy Land.




Members of the Samaritan sect take part in the traditional Passover sacrifice ceremony on Mount Gerizim near Nablus, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, April 22, 2024. (REUTERS)

For many this year, Passover will be stained by absence and anguish; particularly the relatives of the hostages, grieving families and more than 120,000 Israelis displaced from their homes in the north and south of the country because of the war in the Gaza Strip.
“All of the symbolic things we do at the seder will take on a much more profound and deep meaning this year,” said Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh is one of the hostages.
“The bread of affliction, the bitter herbs, the saltwater that represents the tears of the Jewish people when they were in captivity, in slavery.”
For days, Israeli Jews have been making preparations for the holiday: fastidious house cleaning, burning leavened goods eschewed during Passover, and copious food shopping.




A pickup truck pulling a cart loaded with mattresses and furniture moves past destroyed buildings in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on April 22, 2024 amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)

But the holiday mood has been dampened by more than six months of war in Gaza, with many Israelis serving in the military away from home.
Above all, the continuing captivity of 129 hostages abducted by Palestinian militants on October 7 has cast a pall over Passover.
On that day, Gaza-based militants launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of 1,170 people, Israelis and foreigners, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also abducted some 250 people during the attack.
Israel’s retaliatory invasion of the Gaza Strip has killed 34,151 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Neither military force nor indirect negotiations with Hamas have yet succeeded in bringing the remaining hostages home.
“Everything is deadlocked and nobody knows how to move forward, on our side and on the Hamas side,” said Gershon Baskin, an Israeli activist who has mediated between Israel and Hamas for more than a decade to free hostages in Gaza.
“We’re held hostage by our government and held hostage by Hamas,” he said. “There is no freedom this year.”
For many relatives of the captives, this Passover will not be joyous.
“How can we celebrate such a holiday while ... people are still without their freedom, still waiting to be liberated?” asked Mai Albini. His grandfather Chaim Peri was taken hostage on October 7.
Hundreds took their discontent to the street, burning a symbolic seder table in protest outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house on Monday evening.
“He doesn’t want the hostages back because he doesn’t want the war to end or he’ll go to prison,” said protester Guy Ben Dror in the coastal town of Caesarea.

Tzohar, a rabbinic group, the Hostage and Missing Family Forum and President Isaac Herzog have all urged families to leave an empty chair at their seder table, with the picture of a hostage on it.
“There is great hardship” this Passover, said Tzohar’s head rabbi, David Stav.
“Even at the most traditional seder night, the practice is that we also mention that which is missing and difficult.”
The Hostage and Missing Family Forum published a special edition of the Haggadah that “integrates new hopes, and introduces inspiring messages of contemporary spirit.”
It contains contributions from hostages’ relatives, a former chief rabbi of Israel, and Rita, a prominent Iranian-Israeli singer.
It has sold more than 250,000 copies in Israel and abroad, said Itay Shenberger, who heads the Haggadah project.
“It’s basically all the stock we had,” he said. The proceeds go to the forum’s efforts to secure the hostages’ release.

Many families will mark Passover away from home, driven out by fighting between Israel and militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah that has turned northern and southern border communities into ghost towns.
Around 60,000 Israelis from the north and almost an equal number from southern Israel remain internally displaced, according to official figures.
Hotels still house more than 26,000 displaced, many of whom will hold seders there.
Kibbutz Beeri, one of the hardest hit communities in the October 7 attack, will hold a communal seder in the Tel Aviv plaza that has become the epicenter of the hostage protests.
Nisan Zeevi, an entrepreneur from Kfar Giladi kibbutz near the Lebanese border, said his family has been “uprooted from our homes” for more than half a year.
Political leaders have given them no hint as to when they might return, he said.
“We’re not celebrating Passover in a normal way,” Zeevi said. Like the biblical Israelites, he added, this year they will “wander in the desert.”

 


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.
 

 


Kurdistan region’s pipeline restart ready to go, foreign minister says

Updated 18 February 2025
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Kurdistan region’s pipeline restart ready to go, foreign minister says

  • Baghdad has periodically withheld the Kurdistan region’s share of the federal budget to try to stop it from exporting oil independently

BAGHDAD: A major pipeline connecting Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region to Turkiye is ready to reopen and resume exports, the Kurdish foreign minister said on Tuesday, potentially ending a dispute between Baghdad and Irbil that led to the closure of the pipeline in 2023.
Foreign Minister Safeen Dizayee declined to say when the pipeline would reopen but said it would mark a turning point in relations between Kurdistan and Baghdad.
Iraq’s oil minister said on Monday the Iraq-Turkiye pipeline (ITP) will resume next week.
“All arrangements that were set on the table have been agreed to, with the aim to prepare for re-exports. There shouldn’t be any hiccups. The legal aspects have been met, the technical aspects are in place,” Dizayee told Reuters by phone. “The button just has to be pushed to increase production and then re-export.”
The oil flows were halted by Turkiye in March 2023 after the International Chamber of Commerce ordered Ankara to pay Baghdad damages of $1.5 billion for unauthorized pipeline exports by the Kurdistan Regional Government between 2014 and 2018.
Negotiations to restart the pipeline have been ongoing, with US officials participating in some of the talks.
Resuming oil exports will boost the Kurdistan region’s budget, Dizayee said.
“This means Kurdistan will benefit from the federal budget and hopefully this will end the saga of (civil servants’) salaries coming or not coming, received in dribs and drabs,” Dizayee said.
Baghdad has periodically withheld the Kurdistan region’s share of the federal budget to try to stop it from exporting oil independently.
Oil producers in the Kurdistan region have had to wind down production without an export route. It will likely take some time for them to restart their oil wells and for the pipeline to use its full capacity. Before it was shut down, it transported around 450,000 barrels per day.
“They’ve invested a lot. It was a risk they took and it must pay off. They [the companies] need assurances that their investment will not be down the drain,” Dizayee said. “Compensation is something that needs to be discussed.”
An international consultancy will be brought in to do an assessment of the cost of production, expenses, cost recovery and the production sharing agreements, he said.