Gaza cultural heritage brought to light in Geneva

This photograph shows amphorae and jars during an exhibition on protection of cultural property in case of conflict entitled “Heritage in Peril” at the Art and History Museum in Geneva on Oct. 3, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 05 October 2024
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Gaza cultural heritage brought to light in Geneva

  • Amphoras, statuettes, vases, oil lamps and figurines are among the 44 objects unearthed in Gaza going on show in the “Patrimony in Peril” exhibition at the Museum of Art and History
  • “It’s a part of Gaza’s soul. Its identity, even,” Beatrice Blandin, the exhibition’s curator, said

GENEVA: Archaeological treasures from the Gaza Strip are going on display in Geneva, with the Swiss city protecting the heritage of a territory devastated by a year of war.
Amphoras, statuettes, vases, oil lamps and figurines are among the 44 objects unearthed in Gaza going on show in the “Patrimony in Peril” exhibition at the Museum of Art and History (MAH).
“It’s a part of Gaza’s soul. Its identity, even,” Beatrice Blandin, the exhibition’s curator, told AFP. “Heritage is really the history of this strip of land, the history of the people who live there.”
The artefacts are from a collection of more than 530 objects that have been stored in crates in a secure warehouse in Geneva since 2007, unable to return to Gaza.
The exhibition, which runs from Saturday until February 9, also includes artefacts from Sudan, Syria and Libya.
It was staged to mark the 70th anniversary of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
The exhibition looks at the responsibility of museums in saving such property from damage, looting and conflict, reminding visitors that deliberately destroying heritage is a war crime.
“The forces of obscurantism understand that cultural property is what is at stake for civilization, because they have never stopped wanting to destroy this heritage, as in Mosul,” said Geneva city councillor Alfonso Gomez — a reference to the northern Iraqi city captured by the Islamic State jihadist group in 2014.
MAH director Marc-Olivier Wahler told AFP: “Unfortunately, in the event of conflict, many aggressors attack cultural heritage because it is obviously erasing the identity of a people, erasing its history.”
Thankfully, “there are museums, rules and conventions that protect this heritage.”
Since Israel’s offensive in Gaza began following the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, cultural sites in the Palestinian territory have paid a heavy price, says the United Nations’ cultural organization.
UNESCO has verified damage to 69 sites: 10 religious sites, 43 buildings of historical and/or artistic interest, two depositories of movable cultural property, six monuments, one museum and seven archaeological sites.
At a time when Palestinian cultural heritage is “the victim of unprecedented destruction, the patrimonial value of the Gazan objects held in Geneva seems greater than ever,” said the MAH.
Some of the objects belonged to the Palestinian Authority. The rest belonged to the Palestinian entrepreneur Jawdat Khoudary, but he later gave ownership of them to the PA in 2018.
These artefacts, evoking daily, civil and religious life from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman era, arrived in Geneva in 2006 to be shown at the “Gaza at the Crossroads of Civilizations” exhibition, inaugurated by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
They had been meant to form the foundation of an archaeological museum to be built in Gaza.
Instead, they were stuck in Geneva for 17 years, the conditions for their safe return having never been met.
“At the time when the objects were due to leave, Hamas took over the Gaza Strip and there were geopolitical tensions between Palestine and Israel,” said Blandin.
This “coincidence of circumstances,” she said, ultimately saved the artefacts: the rest of Khoudary’s private collection, which remained in Gaza, has been “totally destroyed” since October 7 last year.
Following a new cooperation agreement signed last September between the Palestinian Authority and Geneva, the Swiss city has committed to looking after the artefacts for as long as necessary.
The MAH also served as a refuge, in 1939 when the Spanish Republicans evacuated by train the greatest treasures from the Museo del Prado in Madrid and several other major collections.
And last year, Geneva hosted an exhibition of Ukrainian works of art.
According to the Swiss Museums Association, Switzerland, along with counterparts in other countries, has also been able to help more than 200 museums in Ukraine preserve their collections after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.


Erdogan, Syria’s Sharaa hold talks in Istanbul

Updated 3 sec ago
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Erdogan, Syria’s Sharaa hold talks in Istanbul

Video footage on Turkish television showed Erdogan shaking hands with Sharaa
The two countries’ foreign ministers also attended the talks

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was holding talks with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Istanbul on Saturday, news channel CNN Turk and state media said, broadcasting video of the two leaders greeting each other.

The visit comes the day after US President Donald Trump’s administration issued orders that it said would effectively lift sanctions on Syria. Trump had pledged to unwind the measures to help the country rebuild after its devastating civil war.

Video footage on Turkish television showed Erdogan shaking hands with Sharaa as he emerged from his car at the Dolmabahce Palace on the shores of the Bosphorus Strait in Turkiye’s largest city.

The two countries’ foreign ministers also attended the talks, as well as Turkiye’s defense minister and the head of the Turkish MIT intelligence agency, according to Turkiye’s state-owned Anadolu news agency.

The Syrian delegation also included Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra, according to Syrian state news agency SANA.

MIT chief Ibrahim Kalin and Sharaa this week held talks in Syria on the Syrian Kurdish YPG militant group laying down its weapons and integrating into Syrian security forces, a Turkish security source said previously.

US strike on Yemen kills Al-Qaeda members: Yemeni security sources

Updated 26 min 10 sec ago
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US strike on Yemen kills Al-Qaeda members: Yemeni security sources

  • “Five Al-Qaeda members were eliminated,” said a security source in Abyan
  • Washington once regarded the group as the militant network’s most dangerous branch

DUBAI: Five Al-Qaeda members have been killed in a strike blamed on the United States in southern Yemen, two Yemeni security sources told AFP on Saturday.

“Residents of the area informed us of the US strike... five Al-Qaeda members were eliminated,” said a security source in Abyan province, which borders the seat of Yemen’s internationally-recognized government in Aden.

“The US strike on Friday evening north of Khabar Al-Maraqsha killed five,” said a second source, referring to a mountainous area known to be used by Al-Qaeda.

The second security source added that, though the names of those killed in the strike were not known, it was believed one of Al-Qaeda’s local leaders was among the dead.

Washington once regarded the group, known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as the militant network’s most dangerous branch.

Born in 2009 from the merger of Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni and Saudi factions, AQAP grew and developed in the chaos of Yemen’s war, which since 2015 has pitted the Iran-backed Houthi militants against a Saudi-led coalition backing the government.

Earlier this month, the United States agreed a ceasefire with the Houthis, who have controlled large swathes of Yemen for more than a decade, ending weeks of intense American strikes on militant-held areas of the country.

The Houthis began firing at shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in November 2023, weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, prompting military strikes by the US and Britain beginning in January 2024.

The conflict in Yemen has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, although fighting decreased significantly after a UN-negotiated six-month truce in 2022.


Iraq seeks deal to swap kidnapped academic for jailed Iranian

Updated 23 min 58 sec ago
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Iraq seeks deal to swap kidnapped academic for jailed Iranian

  • Iraqi officials are working on a deal to release kidnapped Israeli academic Elizabeth Tsurkov in exchange for an Iranian jailed for murdering an American civilian
  • Tsurkov was kidnapped in March 2023 allegedly by paramilitary group Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq

BAGHDAD: Baghdad is working on a deal to free kidnapped Israeli-Russian academic Elizabeth Tsurkov in exchange for an Iranian jailed in Iraq for murdering a US civilian, security sources said Saturday.
The deal depends on US approval, the senior Iraqi security officials told AFP, asking to remain anonymous because the matter is considered sensitive.
Tsurkov, a doctoral student at Princeton University, was kidnapped in Baghdad in March 2023.
There was no claim of responsibility for her abduction, but Israel accused Iraq’s powerful Kataeb Hezbollah of holding Tsurkov.
The Iran-backed armed faction has implied it was not involved.
Iraq has been working to solve the issue which “depends on the Americans’ approval for the release of the Iranian accused of killing an American citizen,” a senior security source said.
The three Iraqi sources said that Washington has not yet agreed to this.
“The Americans have not yet agreed to one of the conditions, which is the release of the Iranian who is being held for killing an American citizen,” one official said.
Iraq is both a significant ally of Iran and a strategic partner of the United States, and has for years negotiated a delicate balancing act between the two foes.
The Iranian and another four Iraqis were sentenced to life in prison in Iraq for murdering American civilian Stephen Troell, who was shot dead in Baghdad in November 2022.
In December last year, the US Justice Department announced that a “complaint was unsealed... charging” Iranian Mohammad Reza Nouri, “an officer” in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), with allegedly orchestrating the killing.
Tsurkov, who is likely to have entered Iraq on her Russian passport, traveled to the country as part of her doctoral studies.
Security and diplomatic sources have told AFP they do not rule out the possibility that she may have been taken to Iran.
In November 2023, Iraqi channel Al Rabiaa TV aired the first hostage video of Tsurkov since her abduction.
AFP was unable to independently verify the footage or to determine whether she spoke freely in it or under coercion.


British Airways cancels Israel flights until August

Updated 40 min 16 sec ago
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British Airways cancels Israel flights until August

  • UK carrier suspended route to Tel Aviv after Houthi attack on Ben Gurion Airport in May
  • Air France flights remain suspended but Delta, Aegean flights recommenced this week

LONDON: There will be no British Airways flights from the UK to Israel until at least August, the airline has said.

BA cited security concerns for the decision, having suspended flights to Tel Aviv in May following a Houthi missile attack that injured six people at Ben Gurion International Airport. The airline subsequently evacuated staff staying in the city to the Austrian capital Vienna.

A BA spokesman said in a statement: “We continually monitor operating conditions and have made the decision to suspend our flights to and from Tel Aviv, up to and including 31 July. We’ve apologised to our customers for the inconvenience.”

A message on the airline’s website for the route reads: “Sorry, we have no flights available. Please edit your search to find other routes.” The next scheduled flight from London to Tel Aviv is on Aug. 1.

Air France has halted flights in and out of Israel until at least May 26. Greek airline Aegean resumed flights to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, while US carrier Delta commenced daily flights from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Ben Gurion on Monday.  Both had suspended their routes following the Houthi attack.


African Union urges permanent ceasefire in Libya after clashes

Updated 3 min 26 sec ago
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African Union urges permanent ceasefire in Libya after clashes

  • Libya is split between the UN-recognized government in Tripoli, led by Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah
  • The clashes were sparked by the killing of an armed faction leader by a group aligned with Dbeibah’s government

ADIS ABABA: The African Union called for a permanent ceasefire in Libya on Saturday after deadly clashes in the capital earlier this month and demonstrations demanding the prime minister’s resignation.

The latest fighting in the conflict-torn North African country pitted an armed group aligned with the Tripoli-based government against factions it has sought to dismantle, resulting in at least eight dead, according to the United Nations.

Despite a lack of a formal ceasefire, the clashes mostly ended last week, with the Libya Defense Ministry saying this week that efforts toward a truce were “ongoing.”

On Saturday, the AU’s Peace and Security Council condemned the recent violence, calling for an “unconditional and permanent ceasefire.”

In a statement on X, the council urged “inclusive, Libyan-led reconciliation,” adding that it “appeals for no external interference.”

Libya is split between the UN-recognized government in Tripoli, led by Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah, and a rival administration in the east.

The country has remained deeply divided since the 2011 NATO-backed revolt that toppled and killed longtime leader Muammar Qaddafi.

The clashes were sparked by the killing of an armed faction leader by a group aligned with Dbeibah’s government — the 444 Brigade, which later fought a third group, the Radaa force that controls parts of eastern Tripoli and the city’s airport.

It came after Dbeibah announced a string of executive orders seeking to dismantle Radaa and dissolve other Tripoli-based armed groups but excluding the 444 Brigade.