Yemen Houthis claim responsibility for drone attack on Tel Aviv
An Israeli official said the military was still investigating why the drone did not trigger the alarm
Updated 19 July 2024
Reuters AFP
TEL AVIV: A long-range Iranian-made drone hit the center of Tel Aviv in the early hours of Friday in an attack claimed by the Yemen-based Houthi militia that killed one man and wounded four others, the Israeli military and emergency services said.
The explosion, which footage shared on social media suggested came from the sea and did not trigger air raid alarms, occurred hours after the Israeli military confirmed it had killed a senior commander of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon.
Chief spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the military assessed that the drone, which hit a building near the beachfront close to US Embassy premises in Tel Aviv, was an upgraded Iranian-made Samad-3 model.
“Our estimation is that it arrived from Yemen to Tel Aviv,” he told a press briefing.
A spokesman for the Houthis, which like Hezbollah are aligned with Iran, said the group had attacked Tel Aviv with a drone and would continue to target Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza war.
The attack, which took place ahead of a visit to Washington by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week, is likely to fan fears about further fallout from the Gaza war as the Houthis and other Iranian proxies side with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant met military commanders to review air defenses and said the country had to be ready for all scenarios. “We must be prepared for defensive and offensive actions,” he said, according to a statement from his office.
An Israeli official said the military was still investigating why the drone did not trigger the alarm, but initial reports suggested the aircraft was identified but the sirens were not sounded due to human error.
“We’re talking about a large UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) that can fly large distances,” the military official told journalists after the strike.
The military said air patrols had been increased to protect Israeli airspace but said it had not ordered new civil defense measures. The mayor of Tel Aviv said the city, Israel’s economic center, had been moved to a state of heightened alert.
In the hours following Friday’s attack, sirens sounded repeatedly in areas close to the border with Lebanon and Israeli air defenses intercepted at least one aerial target that crossed into Israel.
“Operation achieved its goals”
Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree called Tel Aviv a primary target “within the range of our weapons.”
He said the strike was carried out using a new drone called “Yafa,” which he said was capable of bypassing interception systems and undetectable by radars.
“The operation has achieved its goals successfully,” Saree said in a televised speech.
Israel’s emergency services said the body of a 50 year-old man was found in an apartment close to the explosion and four people were taken to hospital with slight shrapnel injuries. Four others were treated for shock. All of them were later released, health services said.
Israel has been exchanging daily missile and artillery fire with Hezbollah along its northern border and in southern Lebanon since the start of the war in Gaza, prompting fears of a wider regional conflict if the situation escalates.
The Houthis have also stepped up attacks against Israel and Western targets, saying they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians, after Israel invaded the Gaza Strip following last year’s attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel.
Hamas-led fighters stormed Israeli towns on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, nearly 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, according to health authorities in the enclave.
Israeli airstrikes kill 16 in Gaza, including 4 children, Palestinians say
A strike early Monday flattened a home in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza
Updated 16 September 2024
AP
Palestinian officials say Israeli airstrikes have killed 16 people in the Gaza Strip, including five women and four children.
A strike early Monday flattened a home in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 10 people, including four women and two children.
The Awda Hospital, which received the bodies, confirmed the toll and said another 13 people were wounded. Hospital records show that the dead included a mother, her child and her five siblings.
Another strike on a home in Gaza City killed six people, including a woman and two children, according to the Civil Defense, first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government.
Israel says it only targets militants and accuses Hamas and other armed groups of endangering civilians by operating in residential areas. The military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.
The Gaza Health Ministry says over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered the war nearly a year ago. It does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its count but says a little over half of those killed were women and children. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Nightlife now rules in Iraq’s former Daesh bastion
Mines had to be cleared before homes, infrastructure and roads could be rebuilt to allow hundreds of thousands of people to return to what is now a metropolis of 1.5 million people
Updated 16 September 2024
AFP
MOSUL, Iraq: If they had tried to do this a few years ago, the group of Iraqi women enjoying a night out in Mosul would probably have risked severe punishment.
The northern city was under the harsh rule of the Daesh group until the terrorists were ousted from their last major Iraqi bastion in 2017.
Seven years later, Mosul’s streets truly come alive at nightfall, and residents are rediscovering the art of having a good time.
Amira Taha and her friends have come to a restaurant with their children, to enjoy food and live music — complete with crooners — on a night out that would have been unthinkable under Daesh rule.
“There has been enormous change in Mosul,” Taha tells AFP. “We now have freedom and nights out like this have become common” because of “the very stable security situation.”
The city has new restaurants to go to, pleasure cruises on the river Tigris, and amusement parks that draw families keen to take advantage of the newfound stability.
Dressed in an electric blue suit, the 35-year-old mother says “people wanted to open up (to the world) and enjoy themselves.”
On the stage, three Iraqi singers in suits and slicked-back hair take it in turns to entertain the diners with Iraqi and Arab pop songs.
The orchestra includes an electric organist, a violinist, and a musician playing the darbouka, a goblet-shaped drum.
When the terrorists took Mosul in 2014 they imposed a reign of sheer terror.
Music was banned, as were cigarettes. Churches and museums were ransacked, and Daesh staged public stonings and beheaded perceived wrongdoers.
Even after Mosul was retaken in 2017 in a destructive and lengthy fight by Iraqi and international coalition forces, it took several years for its citizens to emerge from years of trauma.
Entire neighborhoods were devastated, and reconstruction became a lengthy process.
Mines had to be cleared before homes, infrastructure and roads could be rebuilt to allow hundreds of thousands of people to return to what is now a metropolis of 1.5 million people.
In the past, Taha says, “people would go home, shut their doors and then go to bed” because of fears over security.
But now, all around her on the restaurant’s lawns, families are seated at most of the tables.
Sometimes the men and women puff on water pipes as their children clap and dance.
Overlooking the restaurant is a brand new bridge spanning the Tigris, a proud symbol of a Mosul being reborn.
Other cities in Iraq are in a similar situation, enjoying a return to normality after decades marked by war, sectarian violence, kidnappings, political conflict and extremism.
Ahmed — who goes by only his first name — opened a restaurant called “Chef Ahmed the Swede” in June, after spending “half of my life” in Sweden and taking a gamble.
Now he serves between 300 and 400 diners every day, Ahmed tells AFP.
“I’d always dreamt of coming back and starting my own business,” says the proprietor, who is in his forties.
“People want to go out, they want to see something different,” he says.
At Ahmed’s, diners can choose from dishes inspired by Scandinavian and European cuisines, alongside old favorites such as pastas, pizzas and grilled meats.
Khalil Ibrahim runs an amusement park on the banks of the river.
“The city has seen radical changes over the past few years,” he says. “We’ve gone from destruction to reconstruction.”
Friday is the first day of the weekend, and the evening is pierced by the happy shrieks and laughter of children in dodgem cars, the Ferris wheel and other attractions.
“People used to go home early,” Ibrahim tells AFP. “But now they’re still arriving even at midnight.”
His park opened in 2011, but it was “completely destroyed” in the war.
“We started again from scratch” with the help of private funding, he says.
As Mosul was still emerging from its terrorist nightmare, another tragedy befell the city.
In 2019 around 100 people, mostly women and children, died when a ferry taking families across the river to a leisure park capsized.
But today, pleasure boats ply the Tigris by night, their passengers admiring the riverbank lights of the restaurants and their reflection in the dark waters.
In small cafes, clients play dominoes or cards as they have a smoke.
“We’re comfortable here. We can breathe. We have the river, and that’s enough for us,” says day laborer Jamal Abdel Sattar.
“Some shops stay open until three in the morning, and some never close,” he adds. “When people got their first taste of security, they began to go out again.”
Will new residency rules rob Syrian children in Lebanon of their futures?
Two governorates require children to have a valid residency permit prior to registering for new academic year
The development come as Lebanon itself remains mired in crisis, with the specter of an all-out war looming
Updated 16 September 2024
Nadia Al-Faour
DUBAI: Authorities in Lebanon are imposing new restrictions that could deny thousands of displaced children access to an education. The measures come against a backdrop of mounting hostility toward war-displaced Syrians who currently reside in Lebanon.
The development comes as hostilities on the Lebanon-Israel border show no sign of abating, deepening sectarian divides and compounding the economic and political crises that have kept the country on hold.
This summer, at least two municipalities in Lebanon have announced that Syrian children wishing to enroll at schools in their districts must have a valid residency permit prior to registering for the new academic year.
In this photo taken in 2016, Syrian refugee children attend class in Lebanon's town of Bar Elias in the Bekaa Valley. (AFP/File)
Al-Qaa municipality in the Baalbek-Hermel governorate issued a statement declaring Syrian students were not eligible to register unless they and their families had legal residency permits issued by the Lebanese General Security.
In a recent interview with Alhurra news agency, Nabil Kahala, the mayor of Sin El-Fil, a suburb east of Beirut, said the measures prohibit Syrians from registering in schools unless they have legal residency.
“It is not enough for a displaced Syrian to have a document proving his registration with the UN,” said Kahala. “We require a residency issued by the Lebanese General Security in order to be able to rent a home, work, and enroll his children in schools.”
Any school that violates this decision “will be reported to the relevant authorities,” he said, stressing that “this measure is not racist, but rather is an implementation of Lebanese laws.”
Due to the red tape and stringent criteria for the renewal of Lebanese residency permits, only around 20 percent of displaced Syrians have valid residency status in Lebanon.
As some 80 percent are unable to obtain these documents, the measures have effectively barred Syrian children in these areas from attending school, depriving them of their right to an education.
A stringent Lebanese residency requirement has barred many Syrian children from attending school, depriving them of their right to an education. (AFP)
Under international law, all children have the right to an education, free from discrimination, irrespective of their immigration or refugee status.
In December 2023, foreign donors including the EU gave the Lebanese government 40 million euros to support the education sector and ensure vulnerable children would continue to have access to schools. The conditions of this aid appear to be going unmet.
“The Lebanese government should ensure all children, regardless of nationality or status, can register for school and are not denied the right to an education,” Michelle Randhawa of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Division at Human Rights Watch said in a recent statement.
In an interview with L’Orient-Le Jour on Aug. 13, Lebanese Minister of Education Abbas Halabi said his ministry remained committed to the core principle of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and that all children, regardless of nationality or status, would be registered for school.
A stringent Lebanese residency requirement has barred many Syrian children from attending school, depriving them of their right to an education. (AFP)
The Lebanese government has previously imposed laws making it difficult for Syrians to obtain legal status. The UN refugee agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, also ceased its formal registration of Syrians in 2015 after complying with a Lebanese government order.
New laws include rules imposed on Lebanese citizens not to employ, shelter, or provide housing to Syrians residing in the country illegally. Those found breaking these rules can face arrest.
It is not just displaced Syrians who are struggling to access basic services in Lebanon. In the throes of myriad crises and without a functioning government, many Lebanese citizens are unable to obtain a decent education.
Since 2019 Lebanese have suffered from a financial meltdown described by the World Bank as one of the planet’s worst since the 1850s. To make matters worse, cross-border skirmishes between Israel and Lebanon-based militant groups have killed at least 88 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah combatants but also 10 civilians, since the eruption of war in Gaza in October last year.
Only around 20 percent of displaced Syrians have valid residency status in Lebanon, enabling them to attend school. (AFP)
With more than 80 percent of the population pushed below the poverty line, initial sympathy for the thousands of migrants and refugees who fled violence, persecution, and poverty in Syria has since waned.
The forcible deportation of Syrians has now become commonplace, in defiance of aid agencies who say Lebanese authorities have a duty not to endanger the safety of refugees — a principle known as non-refoulement.
Besides the new set of regulations issued by Lebanese authorities, the increasingly hostile rhetoric of some politicians has also fanned the flames of anti-Syrian sentiment, leading to outbreaks of inter-communal violence.
INNUMBERS
• 470,000 School-aged Syrian refugees in Lebanon registered by the UN.
• 20% Proportion of Syrians living in Lebanon with valid residency status.
In July, Samir Geagea, leader of the Lebanese Forces political party, called on the Ministry of Education to make schools ask students to provide the appropriate identification papers to register for the new academic year.
Geagea said all foreign students, especially Syrians, should have valid residency permits in order to register.
Dubbing the Syrian children an “existential threat,” the Free Patriotic Movement also issued a statement, saying: “We call on the Ministry of Education and owners of private schools and institutes to immediately stop the registration of any Syrian student in the country illegally.”
Faisal, a Syrian living in Lebanon without a residency permit, has been trying to find a way to enroll his 8-year-old son at school. Back in 2014, when he first arrived in Lebanon, he said services were readily available and the atmosphere more welcoming.
Syrian children run amidst snow in the Syrian refugees camp of al-Hilal in the village of al-Taybeh near Baalbek in Lebanon's Bekaa valley on January 20, 2022. (AFP)
“It was a little easier back then,” Faisal, who did not give his full name to avoid legal repercussions, told Arab News. “There was no hostility as you encounter nowadays. It’s a struggle and I am under constant stress of being found out, then getting deported.”
Faisal says he is able to scrape a meager living by working multiple jobs with Lebanese employers who are willing to defy the law and pay cheap Syrian laborers “under the table.”
He added: “I don’t want my son to grow up without an education and have to end up living like me. I want him to speak languages; I want him to know how to read and write properly; I want him to be able to have a chance at a good life.”
There are around 1.5 million Syrians in Lebanon, according to Lebanese government figures. Of these, the UNHCR has registered just 800,000.
Every year, local and international humanitarian organizations attempt to put pressure on the Ministry of Education to pass some laws to allow more undocumented Syrian children to obtain an education.
Lebanese law, however, is not the only barrier.
According to the 2023 Vulnerability Assessment of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon, conducted by the UNHCR, the UN Children’s Fund, and the World Food Programme, some of the biggest obstacles to Syrian children gaining an education in Lebanon include the cost of transport, fees and entry requirements, and the impact of poverty on school attendance.
Syrian refugee children play while helping tend to their family's sheep at a camp in the agricultural plain of the village of Miniara, in Lebanon's northern Akkar region, near the border with Syria, on May 20, 2024. (AFP)
Indeed, many Syrian children are forced to drop out of school in order to work to support their families, while daughters are frequently married off at a young age so that households have fewer mouths to feed.
Those lucky enough to find a school place and who have the means to attend can face discrimination, taunting and bullying from their classmates.
“My son was a joyful, bubbly child growing up, but I noticed he started becoming withdrawn after attending the private school I scrounged to get him enrolled in,” said Faisal. His son was being bullied by his classmates who called him a “lowly Syrian,” he said.
US not putting enough pressure on Israel to stop the war, Hamas official says
Updated 15 September 2024
AFP
ISTANBUL: A senior Hamas official said on Sunday that the group wants “joint Palestinian rule” in Gaza once war ends in the besieged territory.
“Clearly, we said that the next day must be Palestinian ... the day after the battle is a Palestinian day,” Osama Hamdan said during an interview in Istanbul.
He said that the Palestinian movement had ample resources to continue fighting Israel despite losses sustained over more than 11 months of war in Gaza.
“The resistance has a high ability to continue,” Hamdan said.
Hamas official Osama Hamdan speaks during an interview with AFP in Istanbul on September 15, 2024. (AFP)
“There were martyrs and sacrifices ... but in return, there was an accumulation of experiences and the recruitment of new generations into the resistance.”
His comments came less than a week after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told journalists that Hamas, whose Oct. 7 attack triggered the war, “no longer exists” as a military formation in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched retaliatory military operations to destroy Hamas after the group’s surprise attack on southern Israel.
The Israeli military campaign has killed at least 41,206 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not provide breakdowns of civilian and militant deaths.
Netanyahu is facing mounting domestic pressure to seal a deal in which hostages would be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Israel’s announcement this month that the bodies of six hostages had been recovered from a tunnel in Gaza after they were “executed’ by Hamas spurred an outpouring of grief and anger, leading to a brief general strike and large-scale demonstrations that continued in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Saturday night.
But months of negotiations aimed at securing a truce have apparently stalled.
In the interview on Sunday, Hamdan said the US, Israel’s most crucial military backer, was not doing enough to force concessions from Netanyahu that would end the bloodshed.
“The American administration does not exert sufficient or appropriate pressure on the Israeli side,” Hamdan said.
“Rather, it is trying to justify the Israeli side’s evasion of any commitment.”
During two press conferences after officials announced the deaths of the six hostages earlier this month, Netanyahu said it was Hamas who refused to compromise and vowed “not to give in to pressure” on remaining sticking points.
He also said Israel’s military campaign had killed “no less than 17,000” Hamas militants.
Israeli border officer wounded in Jerusalem stabbing attack: police
The attack took place near the Damascus Gate in the historic walls of the Old City
“Border Police officers engaged with the terrorist, neutralized him with gunfire, and concluded the attack swiftly,” the police said
Updated 15 September 2024
AFP
JERUSALEM: An Israeli border police officer was wounded in a stabbing attack on Sunday evening at a gate to Jerusalem’s Old City, police said.
The attack took place near the Damascus Gate in the historic walls of the Old City.
“The stabbed officer was lightly wounded and was evacuated for medical treatment,” the force said in a statement.
“Border Police officers engaged with the terrorist, neutralized him with gunfire, and concluded the attack swiftly,” the police said.
Tensions between Palestinians and Israeli Jews are frequent in the Old City and have only heightened since the start of the Gaza war more than 11 months ago.
In a separate statement, Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service said the 20-year-old officer had an injury to his upper body.
“The terrorist, who attempted to flee into the Old City, was neutralized,” the police said.
Police and border forces were on the scene and investigating the incident, it added.
Jerusalem, and in particular the Old City, is a holy city for the three Abrahamic religions and remains a key issue at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel claims Jerusalem as its indivisible capital, but the United Nations and the international community consider Israel’s annexation of east Jerusalem to be illegal.
Palestinians aspire to make occupied east Jerusalem, which includes the walled Old City and its holy sites, the capital of a future independent state.
