PARIS: France’s foreign minister said an international conference for Lebanon raised $1 billion in pledges for humanitarian aid and military support to help the country where war between Hezbollah militants and Israel has displaced a million people, killed over 2,500, and deepened an economic crisis.
Jean-Noël Barrot said: “We have collectively raised $800 million in humanitarian aid and $200 million for the security forces, that’s about $1 billion,” in his closing speech at the Paris conference, which gathered over 70 nations and international organizations.
“We’re up to the challenge,” Barrot said.
The United States pledged to provide about $300 million, he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron had called on participants to bring “massive aid” to support the country, as France promised $100 million.
The United Nations had previously estimated the urgent humanitarian needs in Lebanon to be $426 million.
Germany pledged a total of 96 million euros in humanitarian aid to both Lebanon and neighboring Syria, also deeply affected by escalating violence in the Middle East. Italy announced this week an additional 10 million euros ($10.8 million) in aid for Lebanon.
However, experts warn that delivering aid could be challenging as Lebanon’s growing dependence on informal and cash economy increases lack of transparency and corruption risks.
The Paris conference also aimed at coordinating international support to strengthen Lebanon’s armed forces so they can deploy in the country’s south as part of a potential deal to end the war. Such a deal could see Hezbollah withdraw its forces from the border.
This support to the Lebanese military includes “helping with health care, fuel, small equipment, but also supporting the plan to recruit at least 6,000 additional soldiers and to enable the deployment of at least 8,000 additional soldiers in the south,” Macron said.
Paris also seeks to help restore Lebanon’s sovereignty and strengthen its institutions. The country, where Hezbollah effectively operates as a state within a state, has been without a president for two years while political factions fail to agree on a new one.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in a pre-recorded video, called on Lebanon’s leaders “to take decisive action to ensure the proper functioning of state institutions in order to meet the country’s urgent political and security challenges.”
Acting Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati urged the international community to take action.
“The devastating impact of this war on our nation cannot be overstated, and it has left a trail of destruction and misery in its wake. The Israelis’ aggression has not only caused immense human suffering and loss of lives, but also inflicted severe damage to the country’s infrastructure, economy and social fabric,” Mikati said Thursday in Paris.
In Lebanon, an Israeli airstrike killed early Thursday three Lebanese soldiers, including an officer, as they were evacuating wounded people in southern Lebanon. The Lebanese army said Israeli forces have targeted it on eight occasions since an all-out war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah in September.
The Israeli army apologized for a strike on Sunday that it said mistakenly killed three soldiers, and on Wednesday said it was looking into whether “a number of soldiers of the Lebanese army were accidentally harmed” after it targeted what it says was Hezbollah infrastructure.
Israel in the past month has launched a major aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Lebanon as it says it’s targeting Hezbollah, with strikes hitting the capital, Beirut, and elsewhere.
The International Organization for Migration has said about 800,000 people are displaced, with many now in overcrowded shelters, while others have fled across the border into Syria. Mikati on Thursday estimated the number of displaced people is over 1.4 million, including 500,000 children.
The cash-strapped Lebanese government is ill-prepared to deal with the crisis or the increased demands on its health system. Several have been evacuated because of nearby airstrikes and fears that they might be targeted.
Lebanon’s army has been hit hard by five years of economic crisis. It has an aging arsenal and no air defenses, leaving it in no position to defend against Israeli incursions or confront Hezbollah.
The Lebanese army has about 80,000 troops, around 5,000 of them deployed in the south. Hezbollah has more than 100,000 fighters, according to the militant group’s late leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The militant group’s arsenal, built with support from Iran, is more advanced.
Conference participants also are to discuss how to support the 10,500-soldier-strong UN peacekeeping mission, UNIFIL. European nations including France, Italy and Spain provide a third of its troops.
Italy, which has over 1,000 troops in UNIFIL, is pushing for the peacekeeping force to be strengthened to “be able to face the new situation” on the ground, an Italian diplomat said, speaking anonymously to discuss ongoing talks.
Guterres said Thursday that “attacks on UN peacekeepers are totally unacceptable and are contrary to international law, contrary to international humanitarian law and may constitute a war crime.”
France’s historic links with Lebanon, a former colony, and its influential diplomacy give Paris momentum to coordinate “a proper response to the massive challenge that the war in Lebanon now poses,” said Middle East expert Rym Montaz, editor-in-chief of Carnegie Europe’s blog Strategic Europe.
“What we do know is that without a strengthened Lebanese armed forces and UNIFIL, there can be no sustainable peace and stability at the border between Lebanon and Israel,” Montaz said. “As such, the French efforts are important and crucial for the way forward.”
French foreign minister says conference for Lebanon raised $1 billion in pledges
https://arab.news/4t6gg
French foreign minister says conference for Lebanon raised $1 billion in pledges
- Jean-Noël Barrot said: “We have collectively raised $800 million in humanitarian aid and $200 million for the security forces, that’s about $1 billion”
- The United States pledged to provide about $300 million, he said
Four killed in helicopter crash at Turkish hospital
- Footage from the site showed debris from the crash scattered around the area outside the hospital building
ANKARA: Four people were killed in southwest Turkiye on Sunday when an ambulance helicopter collided with a hospital building and crashed into the ground.
The helicopter was taking off from the Mugla Training and Research Hospital, carrying two pilots, a doctor and another medical worker, the health ministry said in a statement.
Mugla’s regional governor, Idris Akbiyik, told reporters the helicopter first hit the fourth floor of the hospital building before crashing into the ground. No one inside the building or on the ground was hurt. The cause of the accident, which took place during heavy fog, was being investigated.
Footage from the site showed debris from the crash scattered around the area outside the hospital building, with several ambulances and emergency teams at the scene.
Israeli strikes kill 17 Palestinians in Gaza, orders hospital to evacuate
- Eight people, including children, were killed in the Musa Bin Nusayr School that sheltered displaced families in Gaza City
- Palestinians have accused Israel of carrying out acts of ‘ethnic cleansing’ to create a buffer zone
CAIRO: Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 17 Palestinians, eight of them at a school sheltering displaced families in Gaza City, medics said, as the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of a hospital in the north.
Palestinian medics said eight people, including children, were killed in the Musa Bin Nusayr School that sheltered displaced families in Gaza City.
The Israeli military said in a statement the strike targeted Hamas militants operating from a command center embedded inside the school. It said Hamas militants used the place to plan and execute attacks against Israeli forces.
Also in Gaza City, medics said four Palestinians were killed when an airstrike hit a car.
At least five other Palestinians were killed in two separate airstrikes in Rafah and Khan Younis south of the enclave.
In the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, where the army has operated since October, Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said the army ordered staff to evacuate the hospital and move patients and injured people toward another hospital in the area.
Abu Safiya said the mission was “next to impossible” because staff did not have ambulances to move the patients.
The Israeli army has operated in the two towns of north Gaza, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, as well as the nearby Jabalia camp for nearly three months.
Palestinians have accused Israel of carrying out acts of “ethnic cleansing” to depopulate those areas to create a buffer zone.
Israel denies this and says the campaign in the area aimed to fight Hamas militants and prevent them from regrouping. It said its forces have killed hundreds of militants and dismantled military infrastructure since that operation began.
Armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said they killed many Israeli soldiers in ambushes during the same period.
Mediators have yet to secure a ceasefire between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas.
Sources close to the discussions said on Thursday that Qatar and Egypt had been able to resolve some differences between the warring parties but sticking points remained.
Israel began its assault on Gaza after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking over 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel says about 100 hostages are still being held, but it is unclear how many are alive.
Authorities in Gaza say Israel’s campaign has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians and displaced most of the population of 2.3 million. Much of the coastal enclave is in ruins.
As flooding becomes a yearly disaster in South Sudan, thousands survive on the edge of a canal
- More than 379,000 people have been displaced by flooding this year, according to the UN humanitarian agency
- Latest overflowing of the Nile has been blamed on factors including the opening of dams upstream in Uganda
AYOD, South Sudan: Long-horned cattle wade through flooded lands and climb a slope along a canal that has become a refuge for displaced families in South Sudan. Smoke from burning dung rises near homes of mud and grass where thousands of people now live after floods swept away their village.
“Too much suffering,” said Bichiok Hoth Chuiny, a woman in her 70s. She supported herself with a stick as she walked in the newly established community of Pajiek in Jonglei state north of the capital, Juba.
For the first time in decades, the flooding had forced her to flee. Her efforts to protect her home by building dykes failed. Her former village of Gorwai is now a swamp.
“I had to be dragged in a canoe up to here,” Chuiny said. An AP journalist was the first to visit the community.
Such flooding is becoming a yearly disaster in South Sudan, which the World Bank has described as “the world’s most vulnerable country to climate change and also the one most lacking in coping capacity.”
More than 379,000 people have been displaced by flooding this year, according to the UN humanitarian agency.
Seasonal flooding has long been part of the lifestyle of pastoral communities around the Sudd, the largest wetlands in Africa, in the Nile River floodplain. But since the 1960s the swamp has kept growing, submerging villages, ruining farmland and killing livestock.
“The Dinka, Nuer and Murle communities of Jonglei are losing the ability to keep cattle and do farming in that region the way they used to,” said Daniel Akech Thiong, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.
South Sudan is poorly equipped to adjust. Independent since 2011, the country plunged into civil war in 2013. Despite a peace deal in 2018, the government has failed to address numerous crises. Some 2.4 million people remain internally displaced by conflict and flooding.
The latest overflowing of the Nile has been blamed on factors including the opening of dams upstream in Uganda after Lake Victoria rose to its highest levels in five years.
The century-old Jonglei Canal, which was never completed, has become a refuge for many.
“We don’t know up to where this flooding would have pushed us if the canal was not there,” said Peter Kuach Gatchang, the paramount chief of Pajiek. He was already raising a small garden of pumpkins and eggplants in his new home.
The 340-kilometer (211-mile) Jonglei Canal was first imagined in the early 1900s by Anglo-Egyptian colonial authorities to increase the Nile’s outflow toward Egypt in the north. But its development was interrupted by the long fight of southern Sudanese against the Sudanese regime in Khartoum that eventually led to the creation of a separate country.
Gatchang said the new community in Pajiek is neglected: “We have no school and no clinic here, and if you stay for a few days, you will see us carrying our patients on stretchers up to Ayod town.”
Ayod, the county headquarters, is reached by a six-hour walk through the waist-high water.
Pajiek also has no mobile network and no government presence. The area is under the control of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, founded by President Salva Kiir’s rival turned Vice President Riek Machar.
Villagers rely on aid. On a recent day, hundreds of women lined up in a nearby field to receive some from the World Food Program.
Nyabuot Reat Kuor walked home with a 50-kilogram (110-pound) bag of sorghum balanced on her head.
“This flooding has destroyed our farm, killed our livestock and displaced us for good,” the mother of eight said. “Our old village of Gorwai has become a river.”
When food assistance runs out, she said, they will survive on wild leaves and water lilies from the swamp. Already in recent years, food aid rations have been cut in half as international funding for such crises drops.
More than 69,000 people who have migrated to the Jonglei Canal in Ayod county are registered for food assistance, according to WFP.
“There are no passable roads at this time of the year, and the canal is too low to support boats carrying a lot of food,” said John Kimemia, a WFP airdrop coordinator.
In the neighboring Paguong village that is surrounded by flooded lands, the health center has few supplies. Medics haven’t been paid since June due to an economic crisis that has seen civil servants nationwide go unpaid for more than a year.
South Sudan’s economic woes have deepened with the disruption of oil exports after a major pipeline was damaged in Sudan during that country’s ongoing civil war.
“The last time we got drugs was in September. We mobilized the women to carry them on foot from Ayod town,” said Juong Dok Tut, a clinical officer.
Patients, mostly women and children, sat on the ground as they waited to see the doctor. Panic rippled through the group when a thin green snake passed among them. It wasn’t poisonous, but many others in the area are. People who venture into the water to fish or collect water lilies are at risk.
Four life-threatening snake bites cases occurred in October, Tut said. “We managed these cases with the antivenom treatments we had, but now they’re over, so we don’t know what to do if it happens again.”
Syrian Kurdish groups on the back foot as power balance shifts
- Syrian Kurds established autonomy early in civil war, Turkiye views their main group as national security threat
- Syrian Kurdish leader asks Trump to prevent Turkish incursion
QAMISHLI: With hostile Turkish-backed groups mobilizing against them in Syria’s north, and Damascus ruled by a group friendly to Ankara, Syria’s main Kurdish factions are on the back foot as they seek to preserve political gains carved out during 13 years of war.
Part of a stateless ethnic group straddling Iraq, Iran, Turkiye, Armenia and Syria, Kurds have so far been among the few winners of the Syrian conflict, controlling nearly a quarter of the country and leading a powerful armed group that is a key US ally in countering Islamic State.
But the power balance has tilted against them since the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) swept into Damascus this month, toppling President Bashar Assad, two analysts and a senior Western diplomat told Reuters.
The seismic change in Syria is expected to yield deeper Turkish sway just as a change of US administration is raising questions over how long Washington will keep backing the country’s Kurdish-led forces.
For Turkiye, the Kurdish factions represent a national security threat. Ankara views them as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984 and is deemed a terrorist group by Turkiye, the United States and other powers.
The Syrian Kurdish groups “are in deep, deep trouble,” said Aron Lund, a fellow at Century International, a US-based think tank.
“The balance has shifted fundamentally in Syria to the advantage of Turkiye-backed or Turkiye-aligned factions, and Turkiye seems determined to exploit this to the fullest.”
The shift has been reflected in renewed fighting for control of the north, where Turkiye-backed armed groups known as the Syrian National Army (SNA) have made military advances against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Fanar Al-Kait, a senior official in the Kurdish-led regional administration, told Reuters that the ouster of Assad, whose Arab nationalist Baath Party oppressed Kurds for decades, presented a chance to stitch the fragmented country back together.
He said the administration is ready for dialogue with Turkiye, but the conflict in the north showed Ankara had “very bad intentions.”
“This will certainly push the region toward ... a new conflict,” he added.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday he expected foreign states would withdraw support for Kurdish fighters following Assad’s toppling, as Ankara seeks to isolate the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish militia that spearheaded the SDF alliance.
Responding to questions from Reuters, a Turkish official said the root cause of the conflict is “not Turkiye’s view toward the region; it is that the PKK/YPG is a terrorist organization.”
“The PKK/YPG elements must lay down their arms and leave Syria,” the official said.
SDF commander Mazloum Abdi, in a Reuters interview on Thursday, acknowledged the presence of PKK fighters in Syria for the first time, saying they had helped battle Islamic State and would return home in the event a total ceasefire was agreed with Turkiye. He denied any organizational ties with the PKK.
Feminism and Islamism
Meanwhile, in Damascus, the new leadership is showing warmth toward Ankara and indicating it wants to bring all Syria back under central authority — a potential challenge to the decentralization Kurds favor.
While Turkiye provides direct backing to the SNA, it along with other states deems HTS a terrorist group because of its Al-Qaeda past.
Despite this, Ankara is believed to have significant sway over the group. A senior Western diplomat said: “The Turks can clearly influence them more than anyone else.”
HTS leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa told a Turkish newspaper that Assad’s ouster was “not only the victory of the Syrian people, but also the Turkish people.”
The Turkish official said HTS was not and never had been under Ankara’s control, calling it a structure “we were communicating with due to circumstances” and adding many Western states were also doing so.
Syrian Kurdish groups led by the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the affiliated YPG militia took control of much of the north after the uprising against Assad began in 2011. They established their own administration, while insisting their aim was autonomy, not independence.
Their politics, emphasising socialism and feminism, differ starkly from HTS’ Islamism.
Their area grew as US-led forces partnered with the SDF in the campaign against Islamic State, capturing Arab-majority areas.
The Turkiye-backed SNA groups stepped up their campaign against the SDF as Assad was being toppled, seizing the city of Manbij on Dec. 9
Washington brokered a ceasefire, but the SDF has said Turkiye and its allies have not abided by it, and a Turkish defense ministry official said there was no such deal.
US support for the SDF has been a point of tension with its NATO ally, Turkiye. Washington views the SDF as a key partner in countering Islamic State, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned will try to use this period to re-establish capabilities in Syria. The SDF is still guarding tens of thousands of detainees linked to the militant group.
Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said last weekend that Turkiye saw no sign of a Daesh resurgence in Syria. On Friday, Turkiye’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, told his German counterpart during talks in Ankara that alternatives needed to be found for the management of camps and prisons where the detainees are being held.
Separately, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf said on Friday that Washington was working with Ankara and the SDF to find “a managed transition in terms of SDF’s role in that part of the country.”
President Joe Biden’s administration has said that US troops will stay on in Syria, but President-elect Donald Trump could remove them when he takes office on Jan. 20.
Letter to Trump
During his first administration, Trump attempted to pull out of Syria but faced pressure at home and from US allies.
In a Dec. 17 letter to Trump, reviewed by Reuters, top Syrian Kurdish official Ilham Ahmed said Turkiye was preparing to invade the northeast before he takes office.
Turkiye’s plan “threatens to undo years of progress in securing stability and fighting terrorism,” she wrote. “We believe you have the power to prevent this catastrophe.”
Asked for comment, Trump-Vance transition spokesman Brian Hughes said: “We continue to monitor the situation in Syria. President Trump is committed to diminishing threats to peace and stability in the Middle East and to protecting Americans here at home.”
Trump said on Dec. 16 that Turkiye will “hold the key” to what happens in Syria but has not announced his plans for US forces stationed there.
“The Kurds are in an unenviable position,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. “Once Damascus consolidates its power, it will move on the region. The US can’t remain there forever.”
HTS leader Sharaa told British broadcaster the BBC that Kurds were “part of our people” and “there should be no division of Syria,” adding arms should be entirely in the state’s hands.
Sharaa acknowledged one of Turkiye’s main concerns — the presence of non-Syrian Kurdish fighters in Syria — and said: “We do not accept that Syrian lands threaten and destabilize Turkiye or other places.”
He pledged to work through dialogue and negotiations to find “a peaceful formula to solve the problem,” saying he believed initial contacts had been established “between the Kurds in northeastern Syria or the SDF organization.”
Kait, the Kurdish official, said his administration wanted “a democratic Syria, a decentralized Syria, a Syria that represents all Syrians of all sects, religions and ethnicities,” describing these as red lines. The SDF would be “a nucleus of the coming Syrian army,” he added.
SDF commander Abdi, in his Reuters interview, confirmed that contact had been established with HTS to avoid clashes between their forces but said Ankara would try to drive a wedge between Damascus and the Kurdish-led administration.
Still, he said there was strong support from international parties, including the US-led coalition, for the SDF joining “the new political phase” in Damascus, calling it “a great opportunity.”
“We are preparing, after a total ceasefire between us and between Turkiye and the affiliated factions, to join this phase,” he said.
Winter is hitting Gaza and many Palestinians have little protection from the cold
- Nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month Israeli offensive
- The UN warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Winter is hitting the Gaza Strip and many of the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month war with Israel are struggling to protect themselves from the wind, cold and rain.
There is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires, and the tents and patched-together tarps families are living in have grown increasingly threadbare after months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents.
Shadia Aiyada, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah to the coastal area of Muwasi, has only one blanket and a hot water bottle to keep her eight children from shivering inside their fragile tent.
“We get scared every time we learn from the weather forecast that rainy and windy days are coming up because our tents are lifted with the wind. We fear that strong windy weather would knock out our tents one day while we’re inside,” she said.
With nighttime temperatures that can drop into the 40s (the mid-to-high single digits Celsius), Aiyada fears that her kids will get sick without warm clothing.
When they fled their home, her children only had their summer clothes, she said. They have been forced to borrow some from relatives and friends to keep warm.
The United Nations warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter. At least 945,000 people need winterization supplies, which have become prohibitively expensive in Gaza, the UN said in an update Tuesday. The UN also fears infectious disease, which spiked last winter, will climb again amid rising malnutrition.
The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, known as UNRWA, has been planning all year for winter in Gaza, but the aid it was able to get into the territory is “not even close to being enough for people,” said Louise Wateridge, an agency spokeswoman.
UNRWA distributed 6,000 tents over the past four weeks in northern Gaza but was unable to get them to other parts of the Strip, including areas where there has been fighting. About 22,000 tents have been stuck in Jordan and 600,000 blankets and 33 truckloads of mattresses have been sitting in Egypt since the summer because the agency doesn’t have Israeli approval or a safe route to bring them into Gaza and because it had to prioritize desperately needed food aid, Wateridge said.
Many of the mattresses and blankets have since been looted or destroyed by the weather and rodents, she said.
The International Rescue Committee is struggling to bring in children’s winter clothing because there “are a lot of approvals to get from relevant authorities,” said Dionne Wong, the organization’s deputy director of programs for the occupied Palestinian territories.
“The ability for Palestinians to prepare for winter is essentially very limited,” Wong said.
The Israeli government agency responsible for coordinating aid shipments into Gaza said in a statement that Israel has worked for months with international organizations to prepare Gaza for the winter, including facilitating the shipment of heaters, warm clothing, tents and blankets into the territory.
More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry’s count doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, where the militant group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.
Negotiators say Israel and Hamas are inching toward a ceasefire deal, which would include a surge in aid into the territory.
For now, the winter clothing for sale in Gaza’s markets is far too expensive for most people to afford, residents and aid workers said.
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, who was displaced from northern Gaza with her family, said the adults sleep with the children in their arms to keep them warm inside their tent.
“Rats walk on us at night because we don’t have doors and tents are torn. The blankets don’t keep us warm. We feel frost coming out from the ground. We wake up freezing in the morning,” she said. “I’m scared of waking up one day to find one of the children frozen to death.”
On Thursday night, she fought through knee pain exacerbated by cold weather to fry zucchini over a fire made of paper and cardboard scraps outside their tent. She hoped the small meal would warm the children before bed.
Omar Shabet, who is displaced from Gaza City and staying with his three children, feared that lighting a fire outside his tent would make his family a target for Israeli warplanes.
“We go inside our tents after sunset and don’t go out because it is very cold and it gets colder by midnight,” he said. “My 7-year-old daughter almost cries at night because of how cold she is.”
