WEF speakers explore what lies ahead for Gaza as ceasefire takes hold

UN Relief Chief Tom Fletcher speaks at the World Economic Forum in Davos. (WEF)
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Updated 22 January 2025
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WEF speakers explore what lies ahead for Gaza as ceasefire takes hold

  • UN relief chief says the key priority is to deliver a huge surge of aid into Gaza after weeks of blockages and attacks on convoys
  • Aid agencies and Palestinian National Bank are poised to offer assistance to the embattled Palestinian enclave, session hears

DAVOS: Delivering a huge surge of aid into Gaza is a key priority for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the agency’s head said on Tuesday.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Tom Fletcher said that “millions are in need” in the war-torn territory and that the aid would partly support the ceasefire process.

Fletcher said: “The key priority for us on the humanitarian side now is to get a huge surge of aid into Gaza, partly to support the ceasefire process because it is dependent on this step by step, very complex approach, but more importantly because millions are in need.

“Some 600 trucks entered on Sunday, including 300 up to the north, which needs it so badly, 900 on Monday, and more today.”




A boy chases one of the trucks carrying UNRWA aid coming in from the Kerem Shalom border crossing and arriving in the southern Gaza Strip on January 21, 2025. (AFP)

He described how delivering aid had become “almost impossible in the last few weeks,” with convoys being looted and community organizers assisting the OCHA “taken out by Israeli drones.”

Fletcher said: “We lost 79 out of 80 trucks in one convoy. And then the community organizers who went in with us were then taken out by Israeli drones. So it was becoming almost impossible to deliver a fraction of what we needed to do. Now the ceasefire opens up this window and we’ve got to really show that we can deliver at that massive scale.”

However, he warned that the money would soon run out and that the UN agency needs funding and protection to deliver aid.

Fletcher said: “We’ll need the funding and the protection, which means member states have to start saying: ‘Stop shooting at UN convoys.’

“Last year was the deadliest year to be a humanitarian on record and that was mainly because of Gaza.

“We can’t deliver all these convoys alone. So we need commercial traffic getting into Gaza. And we need innovation as well. In the last 14 months, Gaza has been a laboratory of war and testing new weapons. We now need it to be a laboratory of humanitarian support. Can we use as much ingenuity and innovation in saving lives as in killing people? And that’s a real test.”




Palestinians rush to collect aid, following a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, January 21, 2025. (Reuters)

The OCHA chief said the UN agency was launching a big cash aid initiative on Tuesday, adding: “We’re trying to get direct cash support to a million Palestinian families, mostly headed by women, so that they get to make the choices about where they spend the money.”

Also speaking in Davos, Hashim Shawa, the chairman of the Bank of Palestine, said the institution had been working with all development partners in mobilizing cash assistance programs for decades.

He said: “We’ve been the first to innovate in the digital space. We’ve bought in international investors to help the bank not only remain resilient, but grow.

“We’ve grown 100 branches all over the West Bank and Gaza. We’re now in the UAE, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. We got a license in Cairo. We’re expanding in Cairo, obviously. The day after this war, Egypt is going to play a strategic role in the development of Gaza.




The Chairman of the Bank of Palestine Hashim Shawa. (WEF)

“So we’ve left no stone unturned in terms of providing the international aid organizations with a trusted, well-vetted, high tech, bullet-proof platform, Bank of Palestine, to facilitate all this aid. Half a million beneficiaries a year receive much-needed cash assistance and other forms of aid through their phones, digitally.”

Also participating, Sara Pantuliano, the chief executive of ODI Global, a global affairs think tank, said that recovery and reconstruction in Gaza was not just a matter of money and infrastructure, but death and destruction.

She said that colleagues and friends working in Gaza describe it as having a “sort of moon landscape.”




Palestinians search for their belongings under the rubble of destroyed homes a day after a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas took effect, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP)

She said: “The UN Development Programme estimates that there are 50 million tons of rubble to be removed. And this rubble is mixed with human remains and unexploded ordnance, which means it’s incredibly difficult to deal with it.

“There is an estimate if you had 100 trucks working day in, day out, to try and remove this rubble, making sure that you dispose and bury the bodies that are mixed with the rubble, and carefully so that you don’t detonate more of this unexploded ordnance, it would take 15 years to dispose of the rubble that’s been created to date.”




Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks during WEF annual meeting in Davos on January 21, 2025. (AFP)

Speaking elsewhere at the WEF annual meeting, Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, admitted that his support for the establishment of a Palestinian state had changed somewhat in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that triggered the Gaza war.

The future of the region “includes many ideas, because the idea of the two-state solution is something which, on record, I supported in the past, many times,” Herzog told CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria.

“But I would say that I had a wake-up call following Oct. 7. In the sense that I want to hear my neighbors say how much they object, regret, condemn, and do not accept, in any way, the terrible tragedy of the terror attack of Oct. 7 — and the fact that it cannot be the tool to get there.”

Herzog added: “One has to understand the state of mind of Israelis, to come after such a horror and a national trauma, surrounded by threats from seven different frontiers, and expect Israelis” to agree to withdraw from West Bank settlements.

That “is not realistic at all,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to Israelis. They need to see something that makes sense in terms of their personal security and safety.”

Rather, he believes future talks with Arab nations that include “the Palestinian issue as a focal point in the discussions is something which makes more sense to me.”

 


More Sudanese refugees fleeing as far as Europe, UN refugee agency says

Updated 53 min 30 sec ago
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More Sudanese refugees fleeing as far as Europe, UN refugee agency says

  • Olga Sarrado, UN refugee agency spokesperson, told a press briefing in Geneva that some 484 Sudanese had arrived in Europe in January and February, up 38 percent from the same period last year

GENEVA: Over a thousand Sudanese refugees have reached or attempted to reach Europe in early 2025, the United Nations’ refugee agency said on Friday, citing growing desperation in part due to reduced aid in the region.
Some 12 million people have been displaced by the two-year conflict between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that has fueled what UN officials call the world’s most devastating aid crisis.
While some have recently returned home to Khartoum, millions of others in neighboring countries like Egypt and Chad face tough choices as services for refugees are being cut, including by the United States as part of an aid review.
Olga Sarrado, UN refugee agency spokesperson, told a press briefing in Geneva that some 484 Sudanese had arrived in Europe in January and February, up 38 percent from the same period last year.
Around 937 others were rescued or intercepted at sea and returned to Libya — more than double last year’s figures for the same period, she added.
“As humanitarian aid crumbles and if the war does not abate, many more will have little choice than to join them,” she said.
Migrant deaths hit a record last year, the UN migration agency said, with many perishing on the Mediterranean crossing which is one of the world’s most dangerous.


UN: 36 Israeli strikes in Gaza killed ‘only women and children’

Updated 11 April 2025
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UN: 36 Israeli strikes in Gaza killed ‘only women and children’

  • UN rights office spokesperson warns the military strikes across Gaza were ‘leaving nowhere safe’
  • Israel has said its troops are seizing ‘large areas’ in Gaza and incorporating them into buffer zones cleared of their inhabitants

GENEVA: The United Nations on Friday said it analysis of 36 Israeli strikes in Gaza showed only women and children were killed and decried the human cost of the war.

The UN rights office also warned that expanding Israeli evacuation orders were resulting in the “forcible transfer” of people into ever-shrinking spaces in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani warned the military strikes across Gaza were “leaving nowhere safe.”

“Between 18 March and 9 April 2025, there were some 224 incidents of Israeli strikes on residential buildings and tents for internally displaced people,” she told reporters in Geneva.

“In some 36 strikes about which the UN Human Rights Office corroborated information, the fatalities recorded so far were only women and children,” she said.

“Overall, a large percentage of fatalities are children and women, according to information recorded by our Office,” she added.

Shamdasani cited an April 6 strike on a residential building of the Abu Issa family in Deir al Balah, which reportedly killed one girl, four women, and one four-year-old boy.

She highlighted that even the areas where Palestinians were being instructed to go in the expanding number of Israeli “evacuation orders” were also being subjected to attacks.

“Despite Israeli military orders instructing civilians to relocate to the Al Mawasi area of Khan Younis, strikes continued on tents in that area housing displaced people, with at least 23 such incidents recorded by the Office since 18 March,” she said.

Shamdasani referred to a March 31 order by the Israeli military covering all of Rafah, the southernmost governorate in Gaza, followed by a large-scale ground operation.

Israel has said its troops are seizing “large areas” in Gaza and incorporating them into buffer zones cleared of their inhabitants.

“Large areas are being seized and added to Israel’s security zones, leaving Gaza smaller and more isolated,” Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday.

“Let us be clear, these so-called evacuation orders are actually displacement orders, leading to displacement of the population of Gaza into ever shrinking spaces,” Shamdasani said.

“The permanently displacing the civilian population within occupied territories amounts to forcible transfer, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and it is a crime against humanity.”


WHO: Medicine critically low due to Gaza aid block

Updated 11 April 2025
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WHO: Medicine critically low due to Gaza aid block

  • Lack of medicine making it hard to keep hospitals even partially operational

GENEVA: Medicine stocks are critically low due to the aid block in Gaza, making it hard to keep hospitals even partially operational, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
“We are critically low in our three warehouses, on antibiotics, IV fluids and blood bags,” WHO official Rik Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.


Yemen ‘not a battleground for settling scores,’ says top government official

Updated 11 April 2025
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Yemen ‘not a battleground for settling scores,’ says top government official

  • Brig. Gen. Tariq Mohammed Abdullah Saleh calls for stronger support for Yemeni forces on the ground to restore balance

DUBAI: Yemen is “not a battleground for settling scores, nor part of any external compromises,” a top government official told Asharq Al-Awsat in an exclusive interview.

Brig. Gen. Tariq Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, a member of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council with vice-presidential rank, further emphasized that diminishing the country to a pawn between powerful nations engaged in political play undermines its sovereignty and regional security.

“The world would be making a mistake by accepting Yemen as a bargaining chip in Iranian negotiations,” said Saleh, who also heads the Political Bureau of the National Resistance. He also emphasized Yemen’s strategic importance to global shipping routes.

Saleh has remained largely out of public view since the US intensified its air campaign against the Iran-aligned Houthis to stop the threat they pose to civilian shipping and military vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

He further warned that keeping Yemen “a base for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard” threatens not only Yemenis but also regional and international interests.

But achieving stability in the conflict-ridden country hinges on supporting a national state rooted in constitutional rule and genuine popular consensus, not on short-term geopolitical deals, Saleh added.

He called for stronger support for Yemeni forces on the ground to restore balance, not as a tool for escalation, but because it is a national imperative to protect civilians and preserve hard-won gains.

He said the Yemeni government was in ongoing coordination with international partners and the Saudi-led coalition backing legitimacy in Yemen to secure further assistance for the national struggle.

Cooperation with regional and international partners to bolster the country’s coast guard, particularly in the Red Sea, a strategic artery for global trade, also continues, the Yemeni official said.

Maritime security cannot be separated from national sovereignty, and defending sea lanes was integral to restoring state authority on land and at sea, Saleh said.

On achieving peace in Yemen, Saleh said: “There is no meaning to any settlement that does not subject the Houthis to the Yemeni constitution and the rule of law.” He discounted any notion that the militia group could be accommodated outside a constitutional framework.

“Peace cannot be granted to a group that rejects the state,” he said. “It is forged when the state regains the capacity to enforce the law and protect its citizens.”

For Saleh, forging a peace agreement with the Houthis — whom he describes as a bloodthirsty group with no commitment to national frameworks and an ideology rooted in an enemy state — was virtually nonexistent.

He accused the Houthis of placing their leadership and institutions tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps above Yemen’s state institutions.

“Governance is about managing people’s affairs based on shared frameworks,” Saleh said. “The Houthis do not abide by any of that.”

Saleh has put direct blame on Iran for perpetuating the conflict through its armed proxies, keeping Yemen hostage to violence and rebellion, although Tehran has continually denied its involvement.

Saleh also acknowledged the challenges facing the Presidential Leadership Council, and described the internal disagreements as “natural,” given the complexity of the crisis in Yemen.

“In the end,” he said, “what unites us is greater than any differences.

“Disagreements are natural in any leadership body, particularly in exceptional conditions like Yemen’s,” he said. “But more important is our ability to navigate this diversity and divergence while remaining committed to the national interest.”

 


From Dubai to Osaka to Riyadh: Expos mark decade of global dialogue, says UAE official

Updated 11 April 2025
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From Dubai to Osaka to Riyadh: Expos mark decade of global dialogue, says UAE official

  • UAE, Japan, and Saudi Arabia expos each bring distinct strengths and perspectives, says UAE official
  • Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai will run from April 13 to Oct. 13

DUBAI: The move of expos from Dubai to Osaka and soon to Riyadh presents a “unique opportunity to shape a decade of global engagement” in the Middle East and Asia, according to Shihab Al-Faheem, the UAE pavilion commissioner general.

The sequence of the three locations “offers continuity for themes such as innovation, sustainability, and cultural dialogue,” Al-Faheem said in an interview with Arab News Japan.

“It also strengthens connections between our countries. The UAE, Japan, and Saudi Arabia each bring distinct strengths and perspectives,” he added. “By working together through these global platforms, we can create long-term partnerships that deliver meaningful outcomes for people and the planet.”

Al-Faheem, who is also the UAE’s ambassador to Japan, said the Osaka-Kansai Expo this year carries special meaning for the Gulf country.

The UAE’s first expo journey began in Osaka more than five decades ago, and the commissioner-general explained that returning to Japan was “an opportunity to continue engaging with the world and to contribute to shaping a future grounded in cooperation and collective progress.”

As the baton was passed from Dubai Expo 2020 to Osaka, Al-Faheem said the most important insight the UAE valued was that of creating experiences that are immersive, inclusive and people focused.

“We also learned that strong logistical planning and a flexible, responsive approach are essential to hosting a successful expo,” he told Arab News Japan. “We believe these lessons will resonate with Japan as it welcomes the world in 2025.”

When it comes to the UAE’s participation in Osaka this year, the country’s pavilion will continue its “immersive and multi-sensory journey” giving visitors a chance to “engage on an emotional and intellectual level.”

The UAE Pavilion’s theme is “Earth to Ether,” which expresses the Gulf country’s journey from a heritage rooted in the land to a future defined by innovation.

With sustainability and technology in mind, Al-Faheem said the pavilion uses eco-conscious materials such as Datecrete and palm-based architectural elements to reflect environmental values.

“The content of the pavilion also showcases our leadership in clean energy, smart healthcare, and space technologies,” the ambassador said.

The architectural design draws inspiration from traditional Emirati structures and uses materials from the date palm. Inside the pavilion, visitors will be able to experience stories that reflect the UAE’s values and vision for the future.

Given that the UAE and Japan have both hosted World Expos, Al-Faheem said that this has allowed the two countries to strengthen “an already deep and multifaceted relationship. These global events provide a powerful platform to showcase shared values and to develop partnerships across sectors such as energy, education, culture, and technology.”

The UAE Pavilion at Expo 2025 is expected to honor the relationship between the two countries and create new opportunities for joint initiatives.

Al-Faheem said he hopes that through the upcoming expo, the UAE will be able to deepen people-to-people ties with Japan and to create cultural and educational exchanges.

Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai will run from April 13 to Oct. 13, with an official opening ceremony on April 12.

This article also appears on Arab News Japan