Some Syrian refugees risk returning to opposition-held areas as hostility in host Lebanon grows

FILE - Syrian refugees gather near trucks with their belongings, as they prepare to go back home to Syria as a part of a voluntary return, in the eastern Lebanese border town of Arsal, Tuesday, May 14, 2024. For more than a decade, a steady flow of Syrians have crossed the border from their war-torn country into Lebanon. But anti-refugee sentiment is rising there, and over the past two months, hundreds of Syrian refugees have gone the other way. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)
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Updated 12 June 2024
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Some Syrian refugees risk returning to opposition-held areas as hostility in host Lebanon grows

  • As precarious as the situation is in Lebanon, most refugees still prefer it to northwest Syria, which is controlled by a patchwork of armed groups

IDLIB: For more than a decade, a steady flow of Syrians have crossed the border from their war-torn country into Lebanon. But anti-refugee sentiment is rising there, and in the past two months, hundreds of Syrian refugees have gone the other way.
They’re taking a smugglers’ route home across remote mountainous terrain, on motorcycle or on foot, then traveling by car on a risky drive through government-held territory into opposition-held northwestern Syria, avoiding checkpoints or bribing their way through.
Until this year, the numbers returning from Lebanon were so low that the local government in Idlib run by the insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al Sham had not formally tracked them. Now it has recorded 1,041 people arriving from Lebanon in May, up from 446 the month before. A Turkish-backed local administration overseeing other parts of northwest Syria said arrivals from Lebanon have increased there, too.
Tiny, crisis-wracked Lebanon is the host of the highest per capita population of refugees in the world and has long felt the strain. About 780,000 Syrian refugees are registered with the UN refugee agency there and hundreds of thousands more are unregistered.
For years, and particularly since the country sank into an unprecedented economic crisis in 2019, Lebanese officials have called for the refugees to be returned to Syria or resettled elsewhere. Tensions flared in April when an official with the Christian nationalist Lebanese Forces party, Pascal Suleiman, was killed in what military officials said was a botched carjacking by a Syrian gang.
That prompted outbreaks of anti-Syrian violence by vigilante groups. Lebanese security agencies cracked down on refugees, raiding and closing down businesses employing undocumented Syrian workers.
In hundreds of cases, authorities have deported refugees. The Lebanese government has also organized “voluntary return” trips for those willing to return to government-held areas, but few have signed up, fearing retaliation from Syria’s government and security forces.
As precarious as the situation is in Lebanon, most refugees still prefer it to northwest Syria, which is controlled by a patchwork of armed groups under regular bombing by Syrian government forces. It also suffers from aid cuts by international organizations that say resources are going to newer crises elsewhere in the world.
For Walid Mohammed Abdel Bakki, who went back to Idlib in April, the problems of staying in Lebanon finally outweighed the dangers of return.
“Life in Lebanon was hell, and in the end we lost my son,” he said.
Abdel Bakki’s adult son, Ali, 30, who he said has struggled with schizophrenia, disappeared for several days in early April after heading from the Bekaa valley to Beirut to visit his sister and look for work.
His family eventually found him at a police station in the town of Baabda. He was alive but “his body was all black and blue,” Abdel Bakki said. Some reports by activist groups said he was beaten by a racist gang, but Abdel Bakki asserted that his son had been arrested by Lebanese army intelligence for reasons that are unclear. Ali described being beaten and tortured with electric shocks, he said. He died several days later.
A spokesman for army intelligence did not respond to a request for comment. Faysal Dalloul, the forensic doctor who examined Ali, said he had multiple “superficial” wounds but scans of his head and chest had not found anything abnormal, and concluded that his death was natural.
Abdel Bakki was distraught enough that he borrowed $1,200 to pay smugglers to take him and his 11-year-old son to northwestern Syria, a journey that included an arduous trek through the mountains on foot.
“We spent a week on the road and we were afraid all the time,” he said.
They now stay with relatives in Idlib. Their own house had been damaged in an airstrike and then gutted by thieves.
Mohammad Hassan, director of the Access Center for Human Rights, an nongovernmental organization tracking the conditions of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, said an “orchestrated wave of hate speech and violence against refugees, justified by political leaders” is pushing some to leave out of fear that otherwise they will be forcibly deported.
While Lebanese officials have warned against vigilante attacks on refugees, they also regularly blame Syrians for rising crime rates and called for more restrictions on them.
Hassan said the route from Lebanon to Idlib is “controlled by Lebanese and Syrian smuggling gangs linked with local and cross-border militias” and is not safe.
The route is particularly risky for those who are wanted for arrest in Syria’s government-controlled areas for dodging army service or for real or suspected affiliation with the opposition.
Ramzi Youssef, from southern Idlib province, moved to Lebanon before Syria’s civil war for work. He remained as a refugee after the conflict began.
He returned to Idlib last year with his wife and children, paying $2,000 to smugglers, driven by “racism, pressure from the state, the economic collapse in Lebanon and the lack of security.”
In Aleppo, the family was stopped at a checkpoint and detained after the soldiers realized they had come from Lebanon. Youssef said he was transferred among several military branches and interrogated.
“I was tortured a lot, even though I was outside the country since 2009 and had nothing to do with anything (in the war),” he said. “They held me responsible for other people, for my relatives.”
Syria’s government has denied reports of torture and extrajudicial killings in detention centers and accuses Western governments of launching smear campaigns against it and supporting “terrorists.”
In the end, Youssef was released and sent to compulsory military service. He escaped weeks later and made his way to Idlib with his family.
He said he has not looked back.
“Despite the poverty and living in a tent and everything else, believe me, I’m happy and until now I haven’t regretted that I came back from Lebanon,” he said.


Turkiye arrests leader of far-right party on charges of inciting violence through social media

Updated 22 January 2025
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Turkiye arrests leader of far-right party on charges of inciting violence through social media

  • Ozdag, a 63-year-old former academic, is an outspoken critic of Turkiye’s refugee policies and has called for the repatriation of millions of Syrian refugees

ANKARA, Turkiye: Turkish authorities on Tuesday arrested the leader of a far-right opposition party on charges of inciting violence through a series of anti-refugee posts on social media, his party said.
Umit Ozdag, the leader of Turkiye’s anti-immigrant Victory Party, was detained by police on Monday as part of an investigation into allegations that he insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a speech he delivered a day earlier.
The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s office, however, released Ozdag from custody on charges of insulting the president but subsequently ordered his arrest on charges of “inciting hatred and hostility among the public,” the party said.
Prosecutors presented 11 of the politician’s posts on the social platform X as evidence against him, the party said. The prosecutor’s office also held Ozdag responsible for anti-Syrian refugee rioting that erupted in the central Turkish province of Kayseri last year, during which hundreds of homes and businesses were attacked.
Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul who is seen as a possible candidate to challenge Erdogan in the next elections, criticized Ozdag’s arrest, saying on X that “Everyone knows that this is political meddling in the judiciary.”
Imamoglu, who is a member of Turkiye’s main opposition party, was convicted of insulting members of Turkiye’s electoral board in 2022 and faces a two-year ban from politics if his conviction is upheld by a court of appeals.
Ozdag, a 63-year-old former academic, is an outspoken critic of Turkiye’s refugee policies and has called for the repatriation of millions of Syrian refugees.
The politician was being taken to Silivri prison on the outskirts of Istanbul, according to his party.
Mehmet Ali Sehirlioglu, the party’s spokesman, would temporarily assume leadership of the Victory Party.

 


Yemen Red Sea port capacity down sharply after hostilities, UN says

Julien Harneis, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Yemen. (X @julienmh)
Updated 22 January 2025
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Yemen Red Sea port capacity down sharply after hostilities, UN says

  • Houthis have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since November 2023 in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip

GENEVA: Operations at a Red Sea port in Yemen used for aid imports have fallen to about a quarter of its capacity, a UN official said on Tuesday, adding it was not certain that a Gaza ceasefire would end attacks between the Iran-backed Houthis and Israel.
Houthis have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since November 2023 in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. This has prompted Israel to strike port and energy facilities, including the Red Sea port of Hodeidah.
“(The) impact of airstrikes on Hodeidah Harbor, particularly in the last weeks, is very important,” Julien Harneis, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Yemen told a UN meeting in Geneva on Tuesday via videolink.
Four of the port’s five tugboats needed to escort the large ships bringing imports had sunk, while the fifth was damaged, he said, without attributing blame.
“The civilian crews who man them are obviously very hesitant. The capacity of the harbor is down to about a quarter,” he added, saying the port was used to transit a significant portion of imported aid.
Since a Gaza ceasefire agreement last week, Yemen’s Houthis have said they will limit their attacks on commercial vessels to Israel-linked ships, provided the Gaza ceasefire is fully implemented.
“We are hopeful that sanity will prevail and people will be focused on solutions and peace, but we are nonetheless prepared as a humanitarian community for various degradations,” said Harneis, adding that the agency had contingency plans.
The Iran-aligned Houthis have controlled most of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, since seizing power during 2014 and early 2015.

 


Suspected settlers attacked Palestinian villages hours before Trump rescinded Biden sanctions

Updated 22 January 2025
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Suspected settlers attacked Palestinian villages hours before Trump rescinded Biden sanctions

  • Even before taking office, Trump appears to have pressed Netanyahu to accept a Gaza ceasefire agreement with Hamas that strongly resembled one the Biden administration had been pushing for months
  • On Tuesday, the charred shells of cars lay on the side of the road in Jinsafut and residents surveyed the damage to a burned storage space

JINSAFUT, West Bank: Shortly after suspected Jewish settlers stormed Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank late Monday, setting cars and property ablaze, US President Donald Trump canceled sanctions against Israelis accused of violence in the territory.
The reversal of the Biden administration’s sanctions, which were meant to punish radical settlers, could set the tone for a presidency that is expected to be more tolerant of Israel’s expansion of settlements and of violence toward Palestinians. In Trump’s previous term he lavished support on Israel, and he has once again surrounded himself with aides who back the settlers.
Settler leaders rushed to praise Trump’s decision on the sanctions, which were first imposed nearly a year ago as violence surged during the war in Gaza. The sanctions were later expanded to include other Israelis seen as violent or radical.
Finance Minister and settler firebrand Bezalel Smotrich called it a just decision, saying the sanctions were a “severe and blatant foreign intervention.” In a post on social media platform X, he went on to praise Trump’s “unwavering and uncompromising support for the state of Israel.”
The West Bank’s 3 million Palestinians already live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority administering cities and towns. Smotrich and other hard-line settler leaders want Israel to annex the West Bank and rebuild settlements in Gaza, territories that Israel seized during the 1967 Mideast war.
Palestinians want both territories for a future state and have long viewed the settlements as a major obstacle to peace, while the international community overwhelmingly considers them illegal. There are more than 500,000 settlers in the West Bank who have Israeli citizenship.
Late Monday, dozens of masked men who are widely believed to be settlers marauded through at least two Palestinian villages and attacked homes and businesses, according to officials in Jinsafut and Al-Funduq, which are roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it treated 12 people who were beaten by the men. It gave no details on their condition. Israel’s military said the men hurled rocks at soldiers who had arrived to disperse them, and that it had launched an investigation.
Violence has surged in the West Bank during the Gaza war, so it was not clear if the attack had any link to the inauguration. On Tuesday, meanwhile, Israel launched a deadly raid on the Jenin refugee camp.
Jalal Bashir, the head of Jinsafut’s village council, said that the men attacked three houses, a nursery and a carpentry shop located on the village’s main road. Louay Tayem, head of the local council in Al-Funduq, said dozens of men had fired shots, thrown stones, burned cars, and attacked homes and shops.
“The settlers were masked and had incendiary materials,” said Bashir. “Their numbers were large and unprecedented.”
On Tuesday, the charred shells of cars lay on the side of the road in Jinsafut and residents surveyed the damage to a burned storage space.
Growing impunity, even after Biden’s sanctions
Biden’s executive order against the settlers marked a rare break with America’s closest Middle East ally, and signaled his frustration with what critics say is Israel’s leniency in dealing with violent settlers.
Rights groups say that impunity has deepened since Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz exempted settlers from what is known as administrative detention — Israel’s practice of detaining individuals on security grounds without charge or trial — which is routinely used against Palestinians.
Katz, who freed all Israelis held in administrative detention just last week, said those behind Monday’s attack should be held accountable in Israel’s more transparent criminal justice system.
Palestinian residents, meanwhile, are tried in Israeli military courts.
Biden’s sanctions were aimed at settlers who were involved in acts of violence, as well as threats against and attempts to destroy or seize Palestinian property. They later were broadened to include other groups, including Tzav 9, an activist organization that was accused of disrupting the flow of aid into Gaza by trying to block trucks heading into the territory.
Reut Ben-Chaim, a mother of eight who founded the group and was then slapped with sanctions that crippled her wellness company and prohibited her access to credit cards or banking apps, welcomed Trump’s step.
“We have heard in the last few days that the Trump administration is going to be the most pro-Israel there has been,” she told The Associated Press. “These actions, such as the removal of the sanctions … these are actions that already mark the way forward.”
Support for Israel could clash with wider ambitions
Trump has long boasted of his support for Israel, but he has also pledged to end wars in the Middle East that could require exerting some pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Even before taking office, Trump appears to have pressed Netanyahu to accept a Gaza ceasefire agreement with Hamas that strongly resembled one the Biden administration had been pushing for months.

During his first term, Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights — which it captured from Syria in the 1967 war — and presented a Mideast peace plan that was seen as overwhelmingly favorable to Israel.
He also let settlement construction in the West Bank surge unchecked.
But he seemed at the time to have tapped the brakes on Netanyahu’s plans to annex large parts of the West Bank, something Israel’s far-right settlers have demanded for years. Netanyahu said he temporarily shelved the idea as part of the agreement with the UAE.
 

 


Four wounded in Tel Aviv stabbing attack, attacker killed

Members of Israeli security forces stand guard at the site of a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv on January 21, 2025. (AFP)
Updated 22 January 2025
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Four wounded in Tel Aviv stabbing attack, attacker killed

  • This was the second stabbing attack in Tel Aviv in four days, after another assailant seriously wounded a person on Saturday before being shot by an armed civilian

TEL AVIV: Four people were wounded in a stabbing attack on Tuesday in Tel Aviv while the attacker was killed, Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom said.
The police said an initial investigation “revealed that a terrorist armed with a knife stabbed three civilians on Nahalat Binyamin Street and one civilian on Gruzenberg Street.”
Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv said it had received three stabbing victims, including one in “a serious condition with a knife wound to the neck” who was taken into surgery.
The Nahalat Binyamin street and surrounding neighborhood of Tel Aviv are popular for their restaurants and nightlife.
The area was cordoned off by the police, while an AFP journalist saw the dead body of a man on the street.
This was the second stabbing attack in Tel Aviv in four days, after another assailant seriously wounded a person on Saturday before being shot by an armed civilian.
 

 


UK PM tells Netanyahu peace process ‘should lead’ to Palestinian state

Updated 21 January 2025
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UK PM tells Netanyahu peace process ‘should lead’ to Palestinian state

  • Downing Street: The PM said ‘that the UK stands ready to do everything it can to support a political process, which should also lead to a viable and sovereign Palestinian state’
  • Downing Street: The PM also ‘reiterated that it was vital to ensure humanitarian aid can now flow uninterrupted into Gaza, to support the Palestinians who desperately need it’

LONDON: UK premier Keir Starmer told Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday that any peace process in the Middle East should pave the way for a Palestinian state, Downing Street said.
The two leaders held a call that focused on the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a UK government spokesperson said.
During the conversation, “both agreed that we must work toward a permanent and peaceful solution that guarantees Israel’s security and stability,” the British readout of the call added.
“The prime minister added that the UK stands ready to do everything it can to support a political process, which should also lead to a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.”
Starmer also “reiterated that it was vital to ensure humanitarian aid can now flow uninterrupted into Gaza, to support the Palestinians who desperately need it,” the statement added.
Starmer “offered his personal thanks for the work done by the Israeli government to secure the release of the hostages, including British hostage Emily Damari,” the statement added.
“To see the pictures of Emily finally back in her family’s arms was a wonderful moment but a reminder of the human cost of the conflict,” Starmer added, according to the statement.
A truce agreement between Israel and Hamas to end 15 months of war in Gaza came into effect on Sunday.
The first part of the three-phase deal should last six weeks and see 33 hostages returned from Gaza in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.