DEIR AL-BALAH: Reem Ajour says she last saw her husband and then 4-year-old daughter in March, when Israeli soldiers raided a family home in northern Gaza. She is haunted by those chaotic last moments, when the soldiers ordered her to go – to leave behind Talal and Masaa, both wounded.
Eight months later, the 23-year-old mother still has no answers about their fate. The military says it does not have them. Troops leveled the house where they were staying soon after the raid.
“I am living and dead at the same time,” she said, breaking down in sobs.
Ajour is one of dozens of Palestinians that an Israeli legal group, Hamoked, is helping in their search for family members who went missing after being separated by Israeli soldiers during raids and arrests in the Gaza Strip.
Their cases — a fraction of the estimated thousands who have gone missing during the 14-month-long war — highlight a lack of accountability in how the Israeli military deals with Palestinians during ground operations in Gaza, Hamoked says.
Throughout the war, the military has conducted what amounts to a mass sifting of the Palestinian population as it raids homes and shelters and sends people through checkpoints. Troops round up and detain men, from dozens to several hundreds at a time, searching for any they suspect of Hamas ties, while forcing their families away, toward other parts of Gaza. The result is families split apart, often amid the chaos of fighting.
But the military has not made clear how it keeps track of everyone it separates, arrests or detains. Even if troops transfer Palestinians to military detention inside Israel, they can hold them incommunicado for more than two months – their whereabouts unknown to families or lawyers, according to rights groups.
When people vanish, it’s nearly impossible to know what happened, Hamoked says.
“We’ve never had a situation of mass forced disappearance from Gaza, with no information provided for weeks and weeks to families,” said Jessica Montell, the director of Hamoked. Israel’s High Court of Justice has refused to intervene to get answers, despite Hamoked’s petitions, she said.
Asked by The Associated Press about the cases of Ajour and two other families it interviewed, the Israeli military declined comment.
4-year-old Masaa Ajour was shot, then separated from her mother
The Ajours were sheltering at a home in Gaza City that belonged to Talal’s family after being displaced from their own house earlier in the war. Israeli troops raided the home on March 24, opening fire as they burst in, Ajour said.
Ajour, who was three months pregnant, was shot in the stomach. Talal was wounded in his leg, bleeding heavily. Masaa lay passed out, shot in the shoulder – though Ajour said she saw her still breathing.
As one soldier bandaged the little girl’s wound, another pointed his gun in Ajour’s face and told her to head out of Gaza City.
She said she pleaded that she couldn’t leave Masaa and Talal, but the soldier screamed: “Go south!”
With no choice, Ajour collected her younger son and went down to the street. “It was all in a blink of an eye. It was all so fast,” she said. Still bleeding, she walked for two and a half hours, clutching her son.
When they reached a hospital in central Gaza, doctors treated her stomach wound and found her fetus’ pulse. Weeks later, doctors found the pulse had gone. She miscarried.
Ajour said that several weeks later, a Palestinian released from a prison in southern Israel told her family he had heard her husband’s name called out over a loudspeaker among a list of detainees.
The rumor has kept her hope alive, but the military told Hamoked it had no record of Masaa or Talal being detained.
Another possibility is that they died on the scene, but no one has been able to search the rubble of the family’s building to determine if any bodies are there.
The storming of their building came as Israeli forces were battling Hamas fighters in surrounding streets while raiding nearby Shifa Hospital, where it claimed the militants were based. Troops cleared families out of nearby homes and often then destroyed or set the buildings ablaze, according to witnesses at the time.
The military itself may not know what happened to Ajour’s husband and daughter, said Montell of Hamoked.
“That illustrates a broader problem,” she said.
Ajour and her son now shelter in a tent camp outside the central Gaza town of Zuweida.
Masaa, she said, “was my first joy” — with blond hair and olive-colored eyes, a face “white like the moon.”
Masaa’s fifth birthday was in July, Ajour said, sobbing. “She turned five while she is not with me.”
Does the military document what troops do in Gaza?
Under a wartime revision to Israeli law, Palestinians from Gaza taken to military detention in Israel can be held for over two months without access to the outside world.
Israel says the law is necessary to handle the unprecedented number of detainees as it seeks to destroy Hamas following the Oct. 7 2023, attack on Israel that killed 1,200 and took around 250 people hostage inside Gaza. The military has transferred some 1,770 of its Gaza detainees to civilian prisons, according to rights groups, but it has not revealed the number still in its detention.
Milena Ansari, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said Israel is obligated under international law to document what happens during every home raid and detention. But the military is not transparent about the information it collects on detainees or on how many it is holding, she said.
Hamoked has asked the military for the whereabouts of 900 missing Palestinians. The military confirmed around 500 of them were detained in Israel. It said it had no record of detaining the other 400.
The group petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice seeking answers in 52 cases, including that of Masaa and two other children, where witnesses testified that the missing were handled by troops before their disappearances.
“The judges just dismiss the cases, without even inquiring what measures might be necessary to prevent such cases in the future,” said Montell.
A court spokesperson said it often asks the military to provide additional information but isn’t authorized to investigate if the military says it is not detaining them.
A mother in Gaza hasn’t seen her daughter since Israeli troops raided their home
https://arab.news/b7zxm
A mother in Gaza hasn’t seen her daughter since Israeli troops raided their home
- Ajour is one of dozens of Palestinians that an Israeli legal group
Syrians head home from Turkiye to ‘a better life’ after rebellion
The civil war that grew out of a 2011 uprising against Assad killed hundreds of thousands of people and drove millions abroad
CILVEGOZU, Turkiye: Syrians lined up at the Turkish border on Wednesday to head home after rebels ousted President Bashar Assad, speaking of their expectations for a better life following what was for many a decade of hardship in Turkiye.
“We have no one here. We are going back to Latakia, where we have family,” said Mustafa as he prepared to enter Syria with his wife and three sons at the Cilvegozu border gate in southern Turkiye. Dozens more Syrians were waiting to cross.
Mustafa fled Syria in 2012, a year after the conflict there began, to escape conscription into Assad’s army. For years he did unregistered jobs in Turkiye earning less than the minimum wage, he said.
“Now there’s a better Syria. God willing, we will have a better life there,” he said, expressing confidence in the new leadership in Syria as he watched over the family’s belongings, clothes packed into sacks and a television set.
The civil war that grew out of a 2011 uprising against Assad killed hundreds of thousands of people and drove millions abroad.
Turkiye, which hosts three million Syrians, has extended the opening hours of the Cilvegozu border gate near the Syrian city of Aleppo seized by rebels at the end of November.
A second border gate was opened at nearby Yayladagi in Hatay on Tuesday.
Around 350-400 Syrians a day were already crossing back to rebel-held areas of Syria this year before the opposition rebellion began two weeks ago. The numbers have almost doubled since, Ankara says, anticipating a surge now Assad has gone.
Turkiye has backed Syrian opposition forces for years but has said it had no involvement in the rebel offensive which succeeded at the weekend in unseating Assad after 13 years of civil war.
Around 100 trucks were waiting to cross the border, carrying goods including dozens of used cars. Security forces helped manage the flow of people, while aid groups offered snacks to children and tea and soup to adults.
’OUR OWN PEOPLE’ ARE NOW IN CHARGE
Dua, mother of three children including a baby, is originally from Aleppo and has been living in Turkiye for nine years. She worked in textile workshops and packaging in Bursa but is now returning to Syria due to her husband’s deportation.
“I’m going back for my husband. He didn’t have an ID and was deported when I was eight months pregnant. I can’t manage on my own, so I need to return,” she said.
“My husband hasn’t even met our baby yet. I was born and raised in Aleppo, and I will raise my children there too.”
Elsewhere Haya was waiting to enter Syria with her husband and three children. They have lived in a nearby container camp since devastating earthquakes in February 2023 killed more than 50,000 people in Turkiye and Syria.
“We had good neighbors and good relations, but a container is not a home,” Haya said as she comforted her six-month-old baby and her daughter translated her comments from Arabic.
Syria’s new interim prime minister has said he aimed to bring back millions of Syrian refugees, protect all citizens and provide basic services but acknowledged it would be difficult because the country, long under sanctions, lacks foreign currency.
Mustafa voiced confidence in the new leadership after Assad was ousted by rebels led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate which has since downplayed its jihadist roots.
“Those who have taken power are no strangers. They didn’t come from the United States or Russia. They are our own people. We know them,” he said.
40 migrants missing in Mediterranean, rescued girl tells NGO
- “We assume that she is the only survivor of the shipwreck and that the other 44 people drowned,” said Compass Collective
- The girl told rescuers that the metal boat left from Sfax, Tunisia, but sank in a storm
ROME: More than 40 migrants are feared dead off Italy’s Lampedusa after a lone 11-year-old survivor said the boat she was on capsized, a rescue group said Wednesday.
“We assume that she is the only survivor of the shipwreck and that the other 44 people drowned,” said Compass Collective, which assists in migrant rescue missions in the Mediterranean.
The group’s Trotamar III vessel “heard the calls in the darkness” of the girl Wednesday morning at approximately 2:20 am (0120 GMT) while heading to another emergency.
“The 11-year-old girl, originally from Sierra Leone, had been floating in the water for three days with two improvised life jackets made from tire tubes filled with air and a simple life jacket,” the group said in a statement.
Mauro Marino, a doctor who examined her, told the Repubblica daily that he believed the girl was in the sea for some 12 hours.
The girl told rescuers that the metal boat left from Sfax, Tunisia, but sank in a storm.
“The girl had no drinking water or food with her and was hypothermic, but reactive and oriented,” Compass Collective said.
A spokeswoman for Mediterranean Hope, another charity, told AFP the girl was recuperating in hospital after her rescue.
Group representatives found the girl to be “very tired,” said spokeswoman Marta Bernardini.
Italian news agency ANSA reported that the coast guard and police boats were searching the area on Wednesday where the shipwrecked boat was found.
“They have not yet found bodies nor traces of clothing,” ANSA wrote.
Lebanon says Israeli strike kills one in south
- “An Israeli enemy drone strike on the town of Ainata killed one person and wounded another,” the health ministry said
- A ceasefire came into effect on November 27 and is generally holding
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli strike in the south killed one person on Wednesday, amid a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah after two months of all-out war.
“An Israeli enemy drone strike on the town of Ainata killed one person and wounded another,” the health ministry said in a statement.
Israel stepped up its campaign in Lebanon in late September after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges launched by Hezbollah in support of Hamas following its Palestinian ally’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.
A ceasefire came into effect on November 27 and is generally holding, though both sides have accused the other of repeated violations.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, the Lebanese army will deploy in the south alongside UN peacekeepers as the Israeli army withdraws over a period of 60 days.
Hezbollah is required to withdraw its forces north of the Litani river, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle its military infrastructure in the south.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) reported that UN peacekeepers entered the town of Khiam on Wednesday to “inspect the road and verify the Israeli enemy army’s withdrawal.”
It added that the peacekeepers found the body of a man “in the vicinity of his house” in the border town.
Also Wednesday, the NNA said ambassadors from the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt met with parliament speaker and Hezbollah ally Nabih Berri, who has scheduled a parliament session next month for lawmakers to elect a president.
Crisis-hit Lebanon has been without a president for more than two years amid deadlock between Hezbollah and its allies and their adversaries.
On Monday, representatives of the United States, France, UNIFIL and the Israeli and Lebanese militaries met in the border town of Naqura “to coordinate their support for the cessation of hostilities,” a joint statement said.
“UNIFIL hosted the meeting, with the United States serving as chair, assisted by France, and joined by” the two armies, the statement said.
“This mechanism will meet regularly and coordinate closely to advance implementation of the ceasefire agreement” and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, it added.
The resolution, which ended a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, stated that only Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should carry weapons in the south and demanded that Israeli troops withdraw from Lebanese territory.
Tomb of Assad’s father set on fire in Syria hometown
- Mausoleum also housed the tombs of other Assad family members
QARDAHA, Syria: The tomb of ousted Syrian president Bashar Assad’s father Hafez was torched in his hometown of Qardaha, AFP footage taken Wednesday showed, with militants in fatigues and young men watching it burn.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor told AFP the militants had set fire to the mausoleum, located in the Latakia heartland of Assad’s Alawite community.
AFP footage showed parts of the mausoleum ablaze and damaged, with the tomb of Hafez torched and destroyed.
The vast elevated structure atop a hill has an intricate architectural design with several arches, its exterior embellished with ornamentation etched in stone.
It also houses the tombs of other Assad family members, including Bashar’s brother Bassel, who was being groomed to inherit power before he was killed in a road accident in 1994.
On Sunday, a lightning offensive by militants seized key cities before reaching Damascus and forcing Assad to flee, ending more than 50 years of his family’s rule.
Iran’s Khamenei says toppling of Syria’s Assad was result of US-Israeli plan
- One of Syria’s neighbors also had a role, Khamenei said. He did not name the country but appeared to be referring to Turkiye
- Assad’s overthrow is widely seen as a major blow to the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance”
DUBAI: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that the toppling of Syrian President Bashar Assad was the result of a plan by the United States and Israel.
One of Syria’s neighbors also had a role, he said. He did not name the country but appeared to be referring to Turkiye, which has backed anti-Assad militants.
Assad’s overthrow is widely seen as a major blow to the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” political and military alliance that opposes Israeli and US influence in the Middle East.
“What happened in Syria was mainly planned in the command rooms of America and Israel. We have evidence of this. A neighboring government of Syria was also involved,” Khamenei said in a speech reported by Iranian state media.
The neighbor had a “clear role and continues to do so,” he said.
NATO member Turkiye, which controls swathes of land in northern Syria after several cross-border incursions against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, has been a main backer of opposition groups aiming to topple Assad since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.
Iran spent billions of dollars propping up Assad during the war and deployed its Revolutionary Guards to Syria to keep its ally in power.
Hours after Assad’s fall, Iran said it expected relations with Damascus to continue based on the two countries’ “far-sighted and wise approach” and called for the establishment of an inclusive government representing all segments of Syrian society.
In his speech, Khamenei also said the Iran-led alliance would gain in strength across the entire region.
“The more pressure you exert, the stronger the resistance becomes. The more crimes you commit, the more determined it becomes. The more you fight against it, the more it expands Khamenei said.
“Iran is strong and powerful— and will become even stronger,” he said.
