https://arab.news/wn6n6
RABAT: Chad opened on Wednesday a consulate in Western Sahara, joining African and Arab countries that have established diplomatic missions there in a sign of support for Morocco’s claim to the disputed territory.
Morocco considers Western Sahara its own territory, but the Algeria-backed Polisario Front wants to establish its own state there.
So far 29 countries have opened consulates in Western Sahara cities of Layoune and Dakhla in full support of Morocco’s sovereignty over the territory.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands: The International Criminal Court unsealed arrest warrants Friday for six men allegedly linked to a brutal Libyan militia blamed for multiple killings and other crimes in a strategically important western town where mass graves were discovered in 2020.
Libya has been in political turmoil since a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. Since then, Libya has been split between rival administrations in the east and the west, each backed by militias and foreign governments.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said his investigation has gathered evidence “indicating that Tarhunah residents have been subjected to crimes amounting to war crimes, including murder, outrages upon personal dignity, cruel treatment, torture, sexual violence, and rape.”
The court unsealed warrants against six men: Abdelrahim Al-Kani, Makhlouf Douma, Nasser Al-Lahsa, Mohammed Salheen, Abdelbari Al-Shaqaqi and Fathi Al-Zinkal.
Khan said that three of the suspects were leaders or senior members of the Al Kaniyat militia that controlled Tarhunah from at least 2015 to June 2020, and three others were Libyan security officials associated with the militia at the time of the alleged crimes.
Warrants for four of the suspects were issued in April 2023 and two more in July of that year but were kept under seal.
“It is now my view that arrest and surrender can be achieved most effectively through the unsealing of these warrants,” Khan said in a statement.
The mass graves were found in Tarhunah after the militia’s withdrawal following the collapse of a 14-month campaign by military commander Khalifa Haftar to wrest control of Tripoli from an array of militias allied with the former UN-recognized government.
The ICC does not have a police force and relies on cooperation from its 124 member states to enforce arrest warrants. Khan said his office is “seeking to work closely with Libyan authorities so that these individuals can face the charges against them in a court of law” and working with court officials to seek their arrest.
The court opened an investigation in Libya in 2011 at the request of the UN Security Council. It quickly issued warrants for suspects including former dictator Qaddafi, but he was killed before he could be detained and sent for trial. Qaddafi’s son, Seif Al-Islam Qaddafi, also is wanted by the court.
TULKARM: The ruins of a coffee shop in the West Bank city of Tulkarm show the force of the airstrike on Thursday night that killed a senior local commander of the militant group Hamas — and at least 17 others.
The strike in Tulkarm’s Noor Shams refugee camp, one of the most densely populated in the occupied West Bank, destroyed the ground floor shop entirely, leaving rescue workers picking through piles of concrete rubble with the smell of blood still hanging in the air.
Two holes in an upper-level show where the missile penetrated the three-story building before reaching the coffee shop, where a mechanical digger was clearing rubble.
The strike by the Israeli air force was the largest seen in the West Bank during operations that have escalated sharply since the start of the war in Gaza almost a year ago and one of the biggest since the second “intifada” uprising two decades ago.
What’s happening in Gaza is spreading to Tulkarm, with the targeting of civilians, children, women and elders.
Faisal Salam, Community leader
“We haven’t heard this sound since 2002,” said Nimer Fayyad, owner of the cafe, whose brother was killed in the strike.
“The missiles targeted a civilian building, and a family was wiped from the civil registry. What was their fault?
“There is no safe place for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves.”
Residents said the strike occurred after a rally by armed fighters in the middle of the camp.
When the rally ended, some went to the coffee shop.
The Israeli military said the strike killed Zahi Yaser Abd Al-Razeq Oufi, head of the Hamas network in Tulkarm, a volatile city in the northern West Bank that has seen repeated clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian fighters.
It said the attack joined “a number of significant counterterrorism activities” conducted in the area since the start of the war.
Residents said another commander from Islamic Jihad was also killed, but there was no immediate confirmation from either faction.
But Palestinian emergency services said at least 18 people had died in all, including a family of five in an apartment in the same building.
The missiles penetrated the ceiling and their kitchen floor, leaving many of the cabinets incongruously intact.
With the first anniversary approaching of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the strike on Tulkarm underlined how widely the war has now spread.
As well as fighting in Gaza, now vastly reduced to rubble, Israeli troops are engaged in southern Lebanon while parts of the West Bank, which has seen repeated arrest sweeps and raids, have in recent weeks come to resemble a full-blown war zone.
Flashpoint cities in the northern West Bank, like Tulkarm and Jenin, have suffered repeated large-scale operations against Palestinian militant groups that are deeply embedded in the area’s refugee camps.
“What’s happening in Gaza is spreading to Tulkarm, with the targeting of civilians, children, women and elders,” said Faisal Salam, head of the camp refugee council.
More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank over the past year, many of them armed fighters but many also unarmed youths throwing stones during protests or civilian passersby.
At the same time, dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed in the West Bank and Israel by Palestinians, most recently in Tel Aviv, where two Palestinians killed seven people from the West Bank with an automatic weapon.
PARIS: Humanitarian aid must be allowed into Gaza, where life is becoming “impossible” for the population, the Medecins Sans Frontieres charity urged on Friday.
On her return from southern Gaza, the organization’s president for France, Isabelle Defourny, said aid deliveries needed to be “sufficient to address the emergencies” suffered by the civilian population there.
“We have said again and again that the Gaza Strip has become uninhabitable, but now it’s becoming impossible to live there,” she said.
More than 2 million people were living “virtually outdoors,” she said, with only plastic sheets for cover.
“As cold weather approaches, this is going to go very badly,” she said, adding that current humanitarian aid had been “in no way sufficient.”
The comments came ahead of the first anniversary of Palestinian militant group Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which triggered the ongoing war in Gaza.
Ongoing Israeli bombardments and the continuing destruction of infrastructure had left formerly busy transport routes in ruins, Defourny said.
MSF called on Israel to reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt to allow aid and basic foodstuffs to get through, she said.
Cogat, an Israeli government agency, said this week that aid was getting into Gaza continuously, and more than a million tons had been delivered in total since the start of the war, but Defourny said this was still insufficient.
On Thursday, MSF had already reiterated its call for Israel to open “vital land borders” with Gaza.
In a statement, it also called for a “sustained ceasefire” and an immediate end “to the mass killing of civilians.”
DUBAI: After almost 18 months of war, fighting in Sudan is escalating as seasonal rains end with the army using intensified airstrikes and allied fighters to shore up its position ahead of a likely surge by the rival Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.
An uptick in fighting will aggravate an already dire humanitarian crisis in which famine has been confirmed and over 10 million people — one-fifth of the population — are displaced, more than anywhere else in the world.
UN agencies have often been unable to deliver aid.
“There won’t be a decisive breakthrough,” said a senior Western diplomat in the region.
“What we expect to come into the fall more and more is much more fragmentation, to see more armed groups getting involved ... And this will make the situation in general much more difficult.”
The RSF has had the upper hand during much of the conflict but last week the army launched its biggest offensive yet in Khartoum, advancing across a key bridge over the Nile.
The RSF has had the upper hand during much of the conflict but last week the army, after shunning US-led talks in Switzerland, launched its biggest offensive yet in Khartoum, advancing across a key bridge over the Nile.
In Darfur, former rebel groups and volunteers from displacement camps have rallied to defend the densely populated city of Al-Fasher, the army’s last holdout in the western region, against waves of RSF attacks.
Two army sources said the army had worked for months to replenish weaponry, including drones and warplanes, and train new volunteers to strengthen its position on the ground before any negotiations.
Three residents in the capital, which is made up of Khartoum and its adjoining cities of Omdurman and Bahri, said that in recent days, the army had been carrying out more air bombardments with more drones and fighter jets than before.
While the army has used its superior air power at the end of the rainy season to pound RSF-held territory in the capital, Darfur and El Gezira state, the RSF’s more effective ground troops are expected to regain an edge as the dry season starts and roads become more passable.
On Monday, the RSF released a video with its fighters promising a “hot winter” for its rivals in Sennar, where the rains had slowed its progress earlier.
Witnesses there and in the capital reported heavy fighting on Thursday.
Both sides have reinforced militarily as the conflict in Africa’s third largest country by land area has deepened, drawing on material support from foreign backers, diplomats and analysts say.
The war began in April 2023 as the army and the RSF jostled to protect their power and wealth ahead of a planned political transition toward civilian rule and free elections.
The RSF, which has its roots in the so-called Janjaweed militias that helped the government crush a rebellion in Darfur in the early 2000s, quickly occupied much of the capital before consolidating its grip on Darfur and seizing El Gezira state, south of Khartoum.
Earlier this year, the army gained ground in Omdurman after acquiring Iranian drones.
But it showed little sign of building on the advance before the surprise offensive it began last week on the day that its commander, General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, told the UN that the RSF had to withdraw and lay down its arms for there to be peace.
The army now has control of the capital’s Halfaya bridge, allowing it to build a foothold in Bahri from its bases in Omdurman.
It has also weathered heavy clashes and sniper fire to advance across another Nile bridge that leads to the heart of the capital, military sources and witnesses said.
For months, the RSF has besieged Al-Fasher, which is crammed with some 1.8 million residents and displaced people. Activists and diplomats have warned of ethnically charged bloodletting if the city falls after similar violence that was blamed on the RSF and its allies elsewhere in Darfur.
Two witnesses in Al-Fasher said that the RSF had been shelling large areas of the city as the army responded with air strikes.
The battle has dragged on as non-Arab former rebel groups and volunteers from displacement camps who are better equipped for ground combat than the army fight to protect themselves and their families, the witnesses said.
A local group representing displaced people in Darfur said this week that the fighting had exacerbated the humanitarian situation in two dozen camps across the Darfur region, “all of which suffer from a lack of the most basic daily necessities,” and that disease and starvation were spreading.
Aid workers and human rights activists say there has been little increase in humanitarian relief despite pledges by both sides to improve access to aid.
Sudan, often overlooked amid armed conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere, received some diplomatic attention at the UN General Assembly last week.
But USAID Deputy Administrator Isobel Coleman said there had been little progress getting outside players to stop fueling the war.
“Both of the actors in this conflict, both sides of this, have outside support which they believe is going to tip the scales to their advantage,” she said.
WASHINGTON: As Israel pounded northern Gaza with air strikes last October and ordered the evacuation of more than a million Palestinians from the area, a senior Pentagon official delivered a blunt warning to the White House.
The mass evacuation would be a humanitarian disaster and could violate international law, leading to war crime charges against Israel, Dana Stroul, then the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, wrote in an Oct. 13 email to senior aides to President Joe Biden. Stroul was relaying an assessment by the International Committee of the Red Cross that had left her “chilled to the bone,” she wrote.
As the Gaza war nears its first anniversary and the Middle East teeters on the brink of a wider war, Stroul’s email and other previously unreported communications show the Biden administration’s struggle to balance internal concerns over rising deaths in Gaza with its public support for Jerusalem following the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people.
Reuters reviewed three sets of email exchanges between senior US administration officials, dated Oct. 11 to 14, just days into the crisis. The fighting has led to more than 40,000 deaths in Gaza and spurred US protests led by Arab-Americans and Muslim activists.
The emails, which haven’t been reported before, reveal alarm early on in the State Department and Pentagon that a rising death toll in Gaza could violate international law and jeopardize US ties in the Arab world. The messages also show internal pressure in the Biden administration to shift its messaging from showing solidarity with Israel to including sympathy for Palestinians and the need to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza.
A ceasefire deal remains elusive, despite months of US-brokered negotiations. Much of Gaza is now a wasteland. And the risk of a regional war with Iran looms after Israel’s attacks on military targets in Lebanon and last week’s assassination of Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Top Biden administration officials say they believe White House pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in those early days made a difference, preventing an even worse disaster. In private talks, the White House asked Israel to delay its ground offensive to give more time for aid groups to prepare help for displaced people and to give Israel more time to strike a deal with Hamas, administration officials told reporters in background briefings at the time.
But Washington was slow to address the suffering of Palestinians, said three senior US officials involved in the decision-making process. And while the ground invasion was ultimately delayed by about 10 days, the three officials attributed the pause more to operational preparations by the Israeli military than US pressure.
After publication of this story, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said the emails show that “unfolding humanitarian disaster in Gaza was painfully clear from the earliest days of the war, with key experts warning that international standards were being violated” and that “valid concerns” were overridden by the White House.
In response to questions about the emails, the White House said, “The US has been leading international efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza” and “this is and will continue to be a top priority.” It added that before US “engagement, there was no food, water, or medicine getting into Gaza.”
Both Israeli and Hamas leaders are being investigated for alleged war crimes in the wake of the Hamas attacks. In June, a UN commission concluded there was credible evidence that Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups committed war crimes including torture and taking hostages. The commission also found evidence of Israeli war crimes from the country’s use of massive explosives in Gaza in the first months of the war.
The Biden administration and Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign remain caught between two powerful constituencies – pro-Israel Democrats and younger, pro-Palestinian progressives. Harris’ Republican rival, former President Donald Trump, says he would “settle” the war “fast” if he wins November’s presidential election, without detailing how. But foreign policy analysts say the election is unlikely to alter US policy toward Israel significantly, given both parties’ long support for the country.
The emails reviewed by Reuters show a scramble inside the Biden administration to warn the White House of the impending crisis – and the White House’s initial resistance to a ceasefire in the early, chaotic days of war. The three sets of email exchanges began on Oct. 11, during Israel’s fifth day of air strikes after the Hamas incursion.
“LOSING CREDIBILITY”
Early on, concerns grew inside the administration about America’s image with its Arab allies.
After Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza’s hospitals, schools and mosques, the US State Department’s top public diplomacy official, Bill Russo, told senior State officials that Washington was “losing credibility among Arabic-speaking audiences” by not directly addressing the humanitarian crisis, according to an Oct. 11 email. Gaza’s health authorities reported that day a death toll of about 1,200.
As Israel defended the strikes, saying Hamas was using civilian buildings for military purposes, Russo wrote that US diplomats in the Middle East were monitoring Arab media reports that accused Israel of waging a “genocide” and Washington of complicity in war crimes.
“The US’s lack of response on the humanitarian conditions for Palestinians is not only ineffective and counterproductive, but we are also being accused of being complicit to potential war crimes by remaining silent on Israel’s actions against civilians,” Russo wrote.
At the time, emergency workers were struggling to save people buried under rubble from Israel airstrikes and the world’s sympathies were beginning to shift from murdered Israelis to besieged Palestinian civilians.
Addressing State Department leaders, Russo urged quick action to shift the administration’s public stance of unqualified support for Israel and its military operation in Gaza. “If this course is not quickly reversed by not only messaging, but action, it risks damaging our stance in the region for years to come,” he wrote. Russo resigned in March, citing personal reasons. He declined to comment.
The State Department’s top Middle East diplomat, Barbara Leaf, forwarded Russo’s email to White House officials including Brett McGurk, Biden’s top adviser for Middle East affairs. She warned that the relationship with Washington’s “otherwise would-be stalwart” Arab partners was at risk due to the kinds of concerns raised by Russo.
McGurk replied that if the question was whether the administration should call for a ceasefire, the answer was “No.” He added, however, that Washington was “100 pct” in favor of supporting humanitarian corridors and protecting civilians. McGurk and Leaf declined to comment for this story.
Following Russo’s email, the public US stance remained largely unchanged for the next two days, a review of public comments shows. US officials continued to emphasize Israel’s right to defend itself and plans to provide Jerusalem with military aid.
“PUMP THE BREAKS”
On Oct. 13, two days after Russo’s email, Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets over northern Gaza, warning one million residents to leave their homes. Netanyahu gave residents 24 hours to flee as Israeli troops backed by tanks began a ground assault inside the Hamas-run territory of 2.3 million people. He vowed to annihilate Hamas for its attack.
The evacuation order alarmed aid agencies and the United Nations. By then, Israel’s air strikes had razed entire districts. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva issued a statement saying Israel’s order was “not compatible with international humanitarian law” because it would cut off food, water and other basic needs in Gaza. Privately, in a phone conversation that day with Stroul, ICRC Middle East director Fabrizio Carboni was more pointed, the emails show.
“ICRC is not ready to say this in public, but is raising private alarm that Israel is close to committing war crimes,” Stroul said in her Oct. 13 email, describing the conversation. Her email was addressed to senior White House officials including McGurk, along with senior State and Pentagon officials. “Their main line is that it is impossible for one million civilians to move this fast,” Stroul wrote. One US official on the email chain said it would be impossible to carry out such an evacuation without creating a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
Asked about Carboni’s phone call with Stroul, the ICRC said it “constantly works with parties to armed conflicts and those who have influence with them to increase the respect for the laws of war in order to prevent civilian suffering in conflict. We consider such conversations to be strictly confidential.”
Publicly, the White House was expressing measured support for Israel’s plans. A White House spokesperson told reporters that such a huge evacuation was a “tall order” but that Washington would not second-guess Israel. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said US military aid would continue flowing to Israel.
Privately, some senior US officials were concerned there was no safe way out of densely populated Gaza, several senior US officials told Reuters. Israel had imposed a blockade. Its southern neighbor, Egypt, would not open its borders as part of its long-standing policy to prevent a mass resettlement of Palestinians. Some Palestinians who fled northern Gaza were killed when Israel bombed cars and trucks.
In an email replying to Stroul, McGurk said Washington might be able to persuade Israel to extend the deadline for Palestinians to evacuate beyond 24 hours, saying the administration “can buy some time.” But the Red Cross, the UN and aid agencies should work with Egypt and Israel to prepare for the evacuation, he wrote.
McGurk, a long-time Iraq expert, likened the situation to the US-led military operation against Daesh militants in Mosul from 2016 to 2017, an assault that left the Iraqi city in ruins. He said the military and humanitarian strategy in the Mosul assault had been planned hand in hand. Two officials on the email chain replied that it would be impossible to put in place the necessary infrastructure with so little time. One reminded McGurk that the Mosul operation was the result of much longer planning. Humanitarian groups had months to set up and provide support for displaced civilians.
“Our assessment is that there’s simply no way to have this scale of a displacement without creating a humanitarian catastrophe,” Paula Tufro, a senior White House official in charge of humanitarian response, wrote in the email. It would take “months” to get structures in place to provide “basic services” to more than a million people. She asked that the White House tell Israel to slow its offensive.
“We need GOI (Government of Israel) to pump the brakes in pushing people south,” Tufro wrote.
Andrew Miller, then the deputy assistant secretary at the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, urged his colleagues to act fast.
“If we’re inclined to weigh in with the Israelis to dissuade them from seeking mass evacuations, we will have to do it soon, at a high level and at multiple touch points,” Miller wrote. He resigned in June, citing family reasons.
Biden’s public comments on Gaza had largely given Netanyahu a free hand against Hamas. At the time, Biden faced only scattered protests from the left wing of the Democratic Party over his support for Israel’s counterattack. Israel’s likening of the Hamas assault to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington resonated widely in the US
The administration’s public stance began to change on Oct. 13. At a news conference in Doha, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for the first time publicly recognized the “suffering of Palestinian families in Gaza.” Washington was in constant talks with the Israelis and aid groups to help civilians in Gaza, he said.
The next day, Oct. 14, Biden’s rhetoric shifted. He said in a speech that he was urgently prioritizing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and directed his team to help surge relief into the war zone. It is unclear if the emails by Russo and others influenced the statements from Blinken and Biden.
Although Israel began sending infantry into Gaza on Oct. 13, a large-scale ground invasion didn’t begin until Oct. 27. Sources familiar with the matter said at the time that Washington advised Israel to hold off, mainly to give time for diplomacy to free Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
From the early days of the conflict, the US stressed that Israel has a right to defend itself but that how it does so matters, a State Department spokesperson said in response to questions for this story. “Israel has a moral imperative to mitigate the harm of its operations to civilians, something we have emphasized both publicly and privately,” the spokesperson said.
Stroul and Tuffro declined to comment. In a statement, Miller said the administration was “concerned about the humanitarian implications of a mass evacuation.” He added that “Israeli military plans were very inchoate at that stage and we were trying to develop a better understanding” of Israel’s “strategy and objectives.”
WEAPONS EXPEDITED
As US officials assessed the humanitarian crisis, Israel pressed Washington for more arms.
On Oct. 14, a senior Israeli Embassy official in Washington urged the State Department to accelerate shipment of 20,000 automatic rifles for the Israeli National Police, according to the emails.
Israeli senior defense adviser Ori Katzav apologized in an Oct. 14 email to his State Department counterpart for disturbing her on the weekend but said the rifle shipment was “very urgent” and needed US approval. Christine Minarich – an official at the State Department division that approves arms sales, the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls – told Katzav the rifles would not be approved in the next 24 to 48 hours. Such large weapons shipments can take time, requiring State Department approval and notification to Congress.
Katzav and the Israeli Embassy declined to comment.
Jessica Lewis, then the assistant US secretary for political and military affairs, forwarded Minarich’s email and Israel’s request for the rifles to the State Department’s Democracy, Labor and Human Rights (DRL) bureau. DRL reviews potential US weapon sales to ensure they aren’t sent to militaries involved in rights abuses.
Lewis asked the bureau to expedite its review and “urgently” explain any opposition to specific arms packages for Israel, according to the emails. Lewis resigned in July.
Christopher Le Mon, deputy assistant secretary at DRL, recommended denying more than a dozen arms packages, including grenade launchers, gun parts, rifles and spare rifle parts. In a reply to Lewis, he cited concerns about the “conduct” of specific Israeli National Police units, including the elite Yamam border patrol unit.
Le Mon wrote that there were “numerous reports” of Yamam’s involvement in “gross violations of human rights.” DRL raised objections against 16 separate arms packages for Israel, according to the email and a source familiar with the matter. Nearly all the shipments went ahead despite the bureau’s objections, the source said. Yamam’s missions eventually included a June 8 rescue of four Israeli hostages that Gaza health officials say killed more than 200 Palestinians.
Minarich, Le Mon, Lewis and the Israeli Embassy declined to comment.
Washington has sent to Israel large numbers of munitions since the Gaza war began, according to several US officials with knowledge of the matter, including thousands of precision-guided missiles and 2,000-pound bombs that can devastate densely populated areas and have been used to collapse tunnels and bunkers.
Some rights groups blame the use of those weapons for civilian deaths. Amnesty International cited at least three incidents from Oct. 10 to January 2024 involving US-supplied weapons that it said killed civilians, including women and children, in “serious violations” of international humanitarian law. In July, it warned of US complicity in what it said was Israel’s unlawful use of US weapons to commit war crimes – an accusation the US has rejected.
A State Department report in May said Israel may be violating international law using US weapons, but said it could not say so definitively due to the chaos of war and challenges in collecting data.
An Israeli Embassy spokesperson rejected accusations that Israel has targeted civilians. “Israel is a democracy that adheres to international law,” the spokesperson said.
