GENEVA: The head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) on Monday called on partners to fight back against efforts by Israel to have the organization disbanded as it provides humanitarian assistance to Gaza and across the region.
“Israel has long been critical of the agency’s mandate. But it now seeks to end UNRWA’s operations, dismissing the agency’s status as a United Nations entity supported by an overwhelming majority of member states,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said at a meeting of the agency’s advisory commission in Geneva.
“If we do not push back, other UN entities and international organizations will be next, further undermining our multilateral system.”
The Israeli diplomatic mission in Geneva had no immediate comment.
Lazzarini said the agency, which has provided essential aid to Gazans throughout Israel’s offensive, was “staggering under the weight of relentless attacks.”
“In Gaza, the agency has paid a terrible price: 193 UNRWA personnel have been killed,” he said.
“More than 180 installations have been damaged or destroyed, killing at least 500 people seeking United Nations protection...Our premises have been used for military purposes by Israel, Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups.”
Lazzarini said the agency was being subjected to a “concerted effort” to dismantle it, including through legislative initiatives threatening to evict the agency from its compound and labelling UNRWA as a terrorist organization.
Several countries halted their funding to UNRWA following accusations by Israel that some of the agency’s staff were involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Most donors have since resumed their funding.
Lazzarini said that UNRWA still lacked the necessary resources to fulfil its mandate.
“The agency’s ability to operate beyond August will depend on member states disbursing planned funds and providing new contributions to the core budget,” he said.
Established in 1949 following the first Arab-Israeli war, UNRWA provides services including schooling, primary health care and humanitarian aid in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
UNRWA chief urges pushback against efforts to disband Palestinian agency
https://arab.news/2878y
UNRWA chief urges pushback against efforts to disband Palestinian agency
- UNRWA’s Philippe Lazzarini: ‘If we do not push back, other UN entities and international organizations will be next, further undermining our multilateral system’
- Several countries halted their funding to UNRWA following accusations by Israel that some of the agency’s staff were involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack
South Sudan says US deportees under government care
Only one of them is from South Sudan. The administration of US President Donald Trump is trying to move unwanted migrants to third countries as some nations refuse to accept returnees.
The rest comprise two people from Myanmar, two from Cuba, and one each from Vietnam, Laos and Mexico.
The decision has been fought in American courts.
“They are currently in Juba under the care of the relevant authorities, who are screening them and ensuring their safety and well-being,” the South Sudanese foreign ministry statement said late Tuesday.
It did not give details, but said the “careful and well-studied decision” was part of “ongoing bilateral engagement.”
“South Sudan responded positively to a request from the US authorities as a gesture of goodwill, humanitarian cooperation, and commitment to mutual interests,” it added.
United Nations experts, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the UN, have criticized the move.
“International law is clear that no one shall be sent anywhere where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to ... torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life,” 11 independent UN rights experts said in a statement.
The deportees left the United States for South Sudan in May but their flight ended up in Djibouti when a US district court imposed a stay on third-country deportations. That ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court earlier this month.
The group arrived in South Sudan on June 5 with an official, speaking on condition of anonymity, saying they had been returned by US Marines.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Apuk Ayuel Mayen said Juba maintains a strong commitment to its people, including “its nationals returning under any circumstances” and “persons with recognized links to South Sudan.”
Simmering rivalry between South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and his vice president Riek Machar boiled over into open hostilities in March.
The tensions have raised fears of a return to full-scale war in the world’s youngest country, where a civil war killed some 400,000 people in 2013-2018.
Ghost camp: Israeli operations in West Bank push wave of Palestinians from their homes
- Israeli operations are pushing tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians out of their homes
- Around 40,000 residents from the Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps have been displaced by the military operation this year
TULKARM: Malik Lutfi contemplated which of his family’s belongings to salvage in the few moments he was given while Israeli troops carried out home demolitions in the Tulkarm refugee camp where he grew up in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Now 51, the father of six has rented a small room in the nearby city of Tulkarm, but without access to his electronic repair shop in the cordoned-off camp, he has no income to meet the rent, sparking anxiety about his family’s future.
With bulldozers roaring outside, he said: “They kicked us out six months ago and we are still out. When you go back you try to bring anything you can, but in two hours with only our hands, you cannot bring many things.”
He said he knew many families in a worse situation even than his, pushed to living in crowded schools or on patches of farmland.
“We are waiting for help,” he said.
Israeli operations are pushing tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians like Lutfi out of their homes, says B’Tselem, the independent Israeli human rights information center for the occupied territories.
Around 40,000 residents from the Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps have been displaced by the military operation this year, B’Tselem said.
Israel says it is acting against flashpoints of militancy, including the northern cities of Tulkarm and Jenin.
“This requires the demolition of buildings, allowing the forces to operate freely and move unhindered within the area,” an Israeli military spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The decision to demolish these structures is based on operational necessity and was made only after considering alternative options,” the statement said.
Israeli demolitions have drawn widespread international criticism and coincide with heightened fears among Palestinians of an organized effort by Israel to formally annex the West Bank, the area seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
Reuters witnesses this week saw bulldozers plowing through buildings and wide, new roads lined by rubble that bulldozers had carved out by demolishing concrete homes. Residents piled chairs, blankets and cooking equipment onto trucks.
Tulkarm’s governor Abdullah Kamil said in recent weeks the destruction had intensified, with 106 homes and 104 other buildings in the nearby Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps destroyed.
“What is happening in Tulkarm is an Israeli political decision, the issue has nothing to do with security,” Kamil, the Palestinian governor, said. “There is nothing left in the camp, it has become a ghost camp.”
Israel’s northern West Bank operation which began in January has been one of the biggest since the Second Intifada uprising by Palestinians more than 20 years ago, involving several brigades of troops earlier this year backed by drones, helicopters and, for the first time in decades, heavy battle tanks.
SIMMERING SITUATION
As efforts ramp up in Washington and Qatar to secure a Gaza ceasefire deal, some international officials and rights groups say they are also worried about the simmering situation for Palestinians in the West Bank.
“In the northern West Bank, Israel has begun replicating tactics and combat doctrines honed in its current offensive on Gaza,” said Shai Parnes, public outreach director at B’Tselem.
“This includes increased ... widespread and deliberate destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, and forced displacement of civilians from areas designated by the military as combat zones.”
Israeli hard-liners inside and outside the government have called repeatedly for Israel to annex the West Bank, a kidney-shaped area around 100 kilometers (62 miles) long that Palestinians see as the core of a future independent state, along with Gaza and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Israeli government ministers deny that the West Bank operation has any wider purpose than battling militant groups. The Israeli military in its statement said it was following international law and targeting militancy.
Kamil, the Palestinian governor, said displacement was putting pressure on a community already reeling economically, with thousands sheltering in mosques, schools and overcrowded homes with relatives.
Returning for the first time in six months, Lutfi said he was shocked at the scale of damage.
“Most people when they come back to look at their homes, they find them destroyed, the destruction that meets them is enormous: wide streets, destroyed infrastructure and electricity,” he said. “If we want to rebuild, it will take a long time.”
Gaza doctors say Israel’s killing of a prominent colleague leaves a hard-to-fill void
- More than 1,400 Palestinian health workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, according to the United Nations
JERUSALEM: When the onetime director of a Gaza Strip hospital was killed by an Israeli airstrike last week, he joined a growing list of prominent Palestinian doctors who have died during 21 months of war that has devastated the territory’s health system.
The death of Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan, a 49-year-old cardiologist, was described by colleagues as a major blow personally and professionally, leaving another void in Gaza’s medical establishment that will not be easily replaced.
“He was one of two cardiologists, so by losing Dr. Marwan, thousands of people will lose and suffer,” said Mohammed Abu Selmia, a close friend of his for 15 years, and the director of Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility.
A photograph from 2022 shows Abu Selmia, Al-Sultan and 30 other leading doctors and medical experts in Gaza, all faculty smiling after the graduation of medical school students from Islamic University in Gaza City. At least five of those veteran doctors, mentors to the next generation, are now dead – each killed by Israeli airstrikes, except for one who died while in captivity in Israel.
Al-Sultan and three other specialists in the 2022 photo who were killed in airstrikes died during off-duty hours, though it is not clear if these were targeted killings.
When asked why Al-Sultan’s building was attacked last Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had struck a “key terrorist” from Hamas, without elaborating. The military said it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals” and that the “the incident is under review.”
It will take years to educate a new generation of surgeons and other specialists to replace the ones killed during the war between Hamas and Israel, Abu Selmia said. For now, hospitals have too few experts to provide urgent care at a time of extraordinary need, he said.
Hospitals across Gaza also face supply shortages amid steady Israeli bombardment that is resulting in a high number of wounded people seeking treatment on a near-daily basis.
A health care system in crisis
More than 1,400 Palestinian health workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, according to the United Nations.
The Israeli military has raided or laid siege to hospitals throughout the war, accusing Hamas of using them as command centers and to hide fighters, though it has only provided evidence for some of its claims. The World Health Organization has documented nearly 700 attacks on health care facilities during the war.
Al-Sultan gained respect and notoriety within Gaza’s medical community because he refused to leave his hospital in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahiya, even when it came under attack. He was outspoken on social media about the dangers health workers faced in the hospital under Israeli bombardment and siege.
Al-Sultan was the last director of the Indonesian Hospital, the largest in northern Gaza before the Israeli military forced it to close in early June because of military operations around it.
In May, Al-Sultan described the difficult situation health workers at his facility faced. “We will keep holding on for our patients, for our jobs and our people,” he said in a video posted online by his hospital’s backers.
Al-Sultan had plenty of opportunities to practice medicine in other countries, said Dr. Mohammed Al-Assi, who studied with him in Jordan. But he decided to go home to serve in Gaza in 2019. Al-Assi, inspired by his friend, followed him.
When he heard the news of his killing, Al-Assi was shattered. “I’m wondering as any doctor would, was it his fault that he was helping people?”
Other former colleagues were similarly overwhelmed by news of Al-Sultan’s death.
“A wave of emotion hit me as I suddenly remembered our last video call — how he kept asking me about me and my family when it should have been the other way around,” said Dr. Emad Shaqoura, a former vice dean of the medical faculty at Islamic University who is now in the UK
The missile that killed Al-Sultan struck the third-floor apartment he was renting with his family in the Gaza City neighborhood of Tal Al-Hawa, witnesses and doctors said. His wife, a daughter, and son-in-law were also killed.
Another daughter, Lubna Al-Sultan, said the missile crashed into his room around 2 p.m., leaving other units in the building intact. The Al-Sultan family had been displaced from their home.
“It was not collateral damage,” said Dr. Hadiki Habib, chairman of the Indonesian humanitarian organization that built and funded the Indonesian hospital.
The day before he was killed, Al-Sultan spoke with Abu Selmia about how they would prepare a new schedule for cases and treatment. He was one of two doctors left capable of performing a procedure to diagnose and treat heart problems, said Abu Selmia.
“Dr. Marwan was the trainer and mentor for all those students in Shifa Hospital and in the entirety of Gaza City,” Abu Selmia said.
Other prominent doctors in Gaza have also been killed
In the 2022 photo of Islamic University’s faculty of medicine, four other members are also no longer alive.
— Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, once the head of Shifa’s orthopedics department, died in Israeli detention, allegedly of ill-treatment, according to Palestinian authorities and advocacy groups. An independent autopsy on his body, which has not been returned to his family, has not been conducted. His wife said repeated requests to return his body have not been answered.
— Dr. Hammam Alloh, a kidney expert, was killed at home with his family by an airstrike in November 2023.
— Dr. Mohammed Dabbour, Gaza’s first cancer pathologist, was killed in an airstrike on October 2023, along with his father and son.
— Dr. Rafat Lubbad, head of internal medicine at Shifa and one of few specialists in autoimmune diseases, was killed in November 2023, along with 7 family members, in Gaza City.
Hospitals overwhelmed with casualties
Only 17 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain operational, according to the WHO, which says that all are struggling with severe supply shortages. Of the hospitals that are functioning, only 12 provide services beyond basic emergency care.
Conditions in northern Gaza, where Al-Sultan lived and worked, are particularly dire. The area has been site of some of the most intense Israeli military operations since the start of the war, and although there were many evacuation orders, many of its residents remain.
Abu Selmia considers what the future might hold for the doctors still alive and forever smiling in that 2022 medical school graduation photo. There are barely enough of them to tend to the vast numbers of sick and wounded, he said.
But he holds on to some small hope.
Al-Sultan’s son, Ahmed, is a medical student. “God willing, he will follow his father’s footsteps.”
Tunisia hands lengthy prison terms to top politicians and former security officials
- A total of 21 were charged in the case, with 10 already in custody and 11 having fled the country
TUNIS: A Tunisian court on Tuesday handed jail terms of 12 to 35 years on high-profile politicians, including opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi and former security officials, a move that critics say underscores the president’s use of the judiciary to cement authoritarian rule.
Among those sentenced on charges of conspiring against the state in the major mass trial, were Nadia Akacha, the former chief of staff to President Kais Saied, local radio Mosaique FM said. Akacha who fled abroad received 35 years.
Ghannouchi, 84, veteran head of the Islamist-leaning Ennahda party, was handed a 14-year term.
Ghannouchi who was the speaker of the elected parliament dissolved by Saied, has been in prison since 2023, receiving three sentences of a total of 27 years in separate cases in recent months.
A total of 21 were charged in the case, with 10 already in custody and 11 having fled the country.
The court sentenced former intelligence chief Kamel Guizani to 35 years, former Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem to 35 years, and Mouadh Ghannouchi, son of Rached Ghannouchi, to 35 years. All three have fled the country.
Saied dissolved the parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree, then dissolved the independent Supreme Judicial Council and sacked dozens of judges, a move that opposition called a coup which undermined the nascent democracy that sparked in 2011 the Arab Spring uprisings.
Saied rejects the accusations and says his steps are legal and aim to end years of chaos and corruption hidden within the political elite.
Most opposition leaders, some journalists, and critics of Saied have been imprisoned since he seized control of most powers in 2021.
This year, a court handed jail terms of 5 to 66 years to opposition leaders, businessmen and lawyers on charges of conspiring as well, a case the opposition says is fabricated in an attempt to stamp out opposition to the president.
Human rights groups and activists say Saied has turned Tunisia into an open-air prison and is using the judiciary and police to target his political opponents.
Saied rejects these accusations, saying he will not be a dictator.
‘Hostage,’ Eli Sharabi’s memoir about life in Hamas captivity, is coming to the US
- Sharabi reveals how his faith gave him the resilience to endure the horrific conditions and overcome mental anguish
NEW YORK: A memoir by an Israeli man held in captivity for more than a year by Hamas is coming out this fall in the US Eli Sharabi’s “Hostage,” written in Hebrew and already a bestseller in Israel, is the first published memoir by anyone kidnapped by Hamas during the deadly surprise attack of Oct. 7, 2023. Harper Influence, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, announced Tuesday that the English-language edition of his book will come out this Oct. 7, the 2-year anniversary.
Sharabi, 53, was released in early February and has said that he had shrunk to under 100 pounds — less than the weight of his youngest daughter, who was killed along with his wife and older daughter. More than 1,000 were killed in the attack and more than 200 taken hostage.
“It was important to me that the story come out as quickly as possible, so that the world will understand what life is like inside captivity,” Sharabi said in a statement. “Once they do, they will not be able to remain indifferent. But I also want readers to know that even in the darkest of times, you can always seek out the light and choose humanity.”
According to Harper Influence, Sharabi writes about his experience with his captors in “stark, unflinching prose, detailing the relationships the hostages formed with one another, including Alon Ohel, still a hostage in Gaza, with whom Sharabi formed an unbreakable father-son bond.”
“Along the way, Sharabi reveals how his faith gave him the resilience to endure the horrific conditions and overcome mental anguish,” the announcement reads in part.
