EU restarts Rafah border crossing mission, says foreign policy chief Kallas

Short Url
Updated 31 January 2025
Follow

EU restarts Rafah border crossing mission, says foreign policy chief Kallas

  • ‘The EU’s civilian border mission deploys today to the Rafah Crossing at the request of the Palestinians and the Israelis’
  • The crossing would now be run by members of the Palestinian Authority and European monitors

BRUSSELS: The European Union has restarted its civilian mission to monitor the border crossing between Gaza and Egypt at Rafah, a key entry and exit point for the Palestinian territory, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Friday.
Kallas announced on Monday that there was broad agreement among member states’ foreign ministers that the EU Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM) could play a “decisive role” in supporting the ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Hamas group that administers Gaza.
“The EU’s civilian border mission deploys today to the Rafah Crossing at the request of the Palestinians and the Israelis. It will support Palestinian border personnel and allow the transfer of individuals out of Gaza, including those who need medical care,” she posted on X.
Palestinian and Hamas officials said the crossing would now be run by members of the Palestinian Authority and European monitors.
It will be opened for 50 injured militants and 50 wounded civilians, along with individuals escorting them, according to the officials, who said a further 100 people, most likely students, would be allowed through on humanitarian grounds.
A civilian EU mission to help monitor the crossing began work in 2005 but was suspended in June 2007 as a result of Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip.
In its standby mode, the mission had 10 international and eight local staff.
Italy has said it will send seven paramilitary Carabinieri officers to join the Rafah mission in addition to two Italians already there, while Germany’s interior and foreign ministries are discussing sending a German contingent.


Displaced Palestinians fear Israel’s West Bank raids ‘won’t stop’

Updated 2 sec ago
Follow

Displaced Palestinians fear Israel’s West Bank raids ‘won’t stop’

JENIN: Watching her granddaughter sleep in cramped quarters for displaced Palestinians, Sanaa Shraim hopes for a better life for the baby, born into a weeks-long Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces searching for suspected militants have long carried out limited incursions into Jenin refugee camp, where Shraim and about 24,000 other Palestinians normally live.
But with no end in sight to the ongoing military operation across the northern West Bank, “I worry about what will happen, when the children grow up in this reality of constant raids,” said Shraim.
She had already lost her militant son Yusef in a previous Israeli raid, in 2023. More recently, forced to flee the escalating Israeli assault since late January, Shraim has watched her daughter give birth in displacement.
“There have been so many repeated raids, and they won’t stop,” said the stern-faced grandmother, speaking to AFP in a crowded room at a community center in Jenin city where the family have been sheltering for the past month.
The sweeping military operation was launched around the time a ceasefire took hold in the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, a separate Palestinian territory.
Israel has since announced that its troops would remain in Jenin and neighboring camps for up to a year.
’Nothing left’ back home
Shraim and her family are among about 80 displaced residents of Jenin camp sharing the building in the city.
Thaer Mansoura, confined to a wheelchair due to osteoporosis, said he had to be rescued in a cart after army bulldozers tore through the streets around his home.
“We endured it as much as we could, but with so many children — my brothers’ kids, our neighbors’ children, my cousins’ children — we had no choice but to leave,” he told AFP.
Mansoura said his family had remained home for three days as electricity and then phone lines were cut, engulfed by the sound of bombs, gunfire and helicopters, as well as army drone broadcasting calls for residents to “evacuate your homes.”
Now, in the relative safety of the community shelter, he feels “stuck here — there’s no place to return to, nothing left.”
Back in the camp, just five kilometers (three miles) away, the rubble-strewn streets are devoid of people as Israeli soldiers patrol the perimeter on foot or in armored jeeps and personnel carriers.
An AFP correspondent walls riddled with bullet holes, narrow streets littered with concrete slabs and facades torn by army bulldozers, and twisted metal storefronts barely hanging from their hinges.
Awnings blackened by fire stand as a reminder of life in the camp that came to a standstill a little over a month ago, when the Israeli operation began.
In the city center, life has returned despite military presence, with some shops cautiously reopening — a sign of pressing economic concerns for many residents.
“Normally, after an operation, everything shuts down. But this time it is different,” said the manager of one apparel shop who declined to be named.

’The same occupation’
The ongoing Israeli raid is unusual not only in its duration, but also in the rare deployment of tanks to the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Nathmi Turkman, 53, once jailed by Israel, carries a constant reminder of the last time Jenin saw such relentless military activity during the second Palestinian intifada, or “uprising” — a bullet from 2022 still in his flesh.
While Israel maintains that its offensive targets militant groups long active in the northern West Bank, Turkman said that “their bullets don’t differentiate between civilians and fighters.”
Before leaving the camp, he grabbed just one item from his home, a small Eiffel Tower figurine which he chose for its sentimental value.
Now at the community center in Jenin city, Turkman said that for people who did not witness the events of the second intifada, the current Israeli operation “was shocking.”
“But for us, we lived through 2002 with tanks and warplanes,” he said.
“There’s no difference between 2002 and 2024 — it’s all the same occupation.”
In this reality, Shraim fears that her grandchildren will grow up knowing only war and displacement.
On edge, she was startled when the stroller carrying her granddaughter tipped over in a park near the shelter, reacting as though the infant was in mortal danger before realizing she was fine.
“The fear is inside me, and I can’t shake it,” said the grandmother.

A Christian town in Syria keeps the biblical language of Aramaic alive. But it fears for its future

Updated 28 February 2025
Follow

A Christian town in Syria keeps the biblical language of Aramaic alive. But it fears for its future

  • Town’s residents have asked the country’s new leaders for protection after incidents of looting and harassment.
  • The scars of an extremist-linked attack over a decade ago remain

MAALOULA: Church bells echoed across the rocky slopes of this ancient Syrian town on a cold Sunday morning. But few families remained.
Maaloula is one of the world’s few places where residents still speak Aramaic, the language that Jesus is believed to have used. The town is also home to Syria’s two oldest active monasteries. But since the fall of former President Bashar Assad in an insurgent offensive late last year, some residents fear their future is precarious.
After a few dozen people attended Divine Liturgy at the Church of Saint George, some residents sat in its courtyard and spoke of looting and harassment that they believe were targeted at their religious minority.
Father Jalal Ghazal said he woke one morning in January to a loud sound and ran outside to find streams of red liquid. He immediately feared the kind of targeted killing that occurred during the country’s 13-year civil war.
Instead, he discovered that some people had broken into apartments where clergy lived, vandalized them and threw bags of wine bottles from a balcony.
Many Christians in Syria felt they were collectively accused during the long conflict of siding with Assad, who came from the small Alawite sect and portrayed himself as the protector of minorities.
Residents of Christian-majority Maaloula, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Damascus, sent a letter last month to Syria’s new Islamist government under former insurgent leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa, who has promised to protect religious and ethnic minorities.
“We want the guaranteed safe return of the Christians of Maaloula,” it read. “Maaloula is a red line. We will not let anyone encroach on its culture, heritage and sanctities.”
Nothing has changed since then, and the clergy of Maaloula hope for a chance to speak with authorities.
Maaloula still bears the scars of war. What it went through over a decade ago made global headlines and cast a light on Syria’s minorities at a time when anti-government rebels largely became more extremist.
In September 2013, rebels including Al-Qaeda-linked extremists took over the town. About two-thirds of Maaloula’s estimated 3,300 residents fled while fighters abducted 12 nuns.
The nuns were later freed for ransom, and Assad’s forces took back the town, banishing some Muslim residents who were accused of supporting armed opposition groups.
But since Assad’s fall, Maaloula’s Christians said some of those people have returned and carried out acts of vengeance including looting and vandalism. No one has been arrested.
Christians say they have lived in peace with local Muslims and that the perpetrators are unfairly targeting them for what Assad did.
“There are no guarantees,” the priest, Ghazal, said. “What we have to do is to try to reduce these incidents from happening.”
No police officers have been seen in the town recently. All the weapons and munitions in Maaloula’s police station were looted in the celebratory chaos following Assad’s fall.
Sameera Thabet was among many residents who fled that night to Damascus. “We were living in fear, wondering if we were going to get slaughtered again,” she said. “But the next day, we came back after we heard that our houses were being looted.”
Already, the war had left bullet holes in religious symbols and artifacts. Paintings and mosaics of Jesus and other Christian figures had been damaged and defaced.
Now residents and clergymen hope that Syria’s new leaders will protect them and their efforts to pass down Christian tradition and the Aramaic language. Many people who had fled the town have not returned.
Maaloula’s church officials have asked Al-Sharaa’s government for more security. In late December, some security forces came from the capital during the Christmas holiday to protect the Christians who decorated homes and lit a tree in the town square.
“They didn’t stay long. They came for two or three days then left,” a dejected-looking Ghazal said. “But our voices were heard.”
On a summit overlooking the town, Father Fadi Bargeel of the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus lit a candle before examining the long-damaged ruins.
The church overlooks the abandoned remains of a luxury hotel that became a de facto military base for armed rebels.
Bargeel said he’s trying to look to the future. He wants to encourage more people, especially children, to learn Aramaic or become more fluent.
“The moment a child is a born, the Aramaic language would be spoken at home.” he said. “When we started going to school as children, we didn’t know Arabic.” Now the language is mainly taught at home and is spoken more widely by older generations.
Though the town is largely empty, remaining residents try to carry on.
The Christmas tree still stood in the square. A few children fed stray dogs and cats loitering by a bakery.
Thabet said she trusts in God that their fate will be better. Unlike some residents, she has faith that Syria’s new leaders will make the country a civil state that’s inclusive of her and other Christians.
“God who put us on this land will protect us,” she said.


Talks to resume in Cairo on next phase of Israel-Hamas ceasefire

Updated 28 February 2025
Follow

Talks to resume in Cairo on next phase of Israel-Hamas ceasefire

  • Israeli, Qatari and US delegations already in Cairo for ‘intensive’ talks on next stage of the ceasefire

CAIRO: Talks resume in Cairo Friday on a second phase of an Israel-Hamas ceasefire that mediators hope will bring a lasting end to the Gaza conflict, a day after Israel’s military acknowledged its “complete failure” to prevent the 2023 Hamas attack that sparked the war.
Mediator Egypt said Thursday that Israeli, Qatari and US delegations were already in Cairo for “intensive” talks on the next stage of the ceasefire, after a first phase only reached following months of gruelling negotiations.
“The relevant parties have begun intensive talks to discuss the next phases of the truce agreement, amid ongoing efforts to ensure the implementation of the previously agreed understandings,” said Egypt’s State Information Service.
The ceasefire, whose first phase is set to expire on Saturday, has largely halted the fighting that began when Hamas militants broke through Gaza’s security barrier on October 7, 2023, in an attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Israel’s retaliation has killed more than 48,000 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the UN has deemed reliable.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent negotiators to Cairo on Thursday, after Hamas handed over the remains of four hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners under the truce.
An internal Israeli army probe into the October 7 attack, released on Thursday, acknowledged the military’s “complete failure” to prevent it, according to a military official who briefed reporters about the report’s contents on condition of anonymity.
“Too many civilians died that day asking themselves in their hearts or out loud, where was the IDF?” the official said, referring to the military.
A senior military official said at the same briefing that the military acknowledges it was “overconfident” and had misconceptions about Hamas’s military capabilities before the attack.
Following the scathing probe’s release, Israel’s military chief General Herzi Halevi said: “The responsibility is mine.”
Halevi had already resigned last month citing the October 7 “failure.”
During their attack, militants seized dozens of hostages, whose return was a key objective of the war.
Netanyahu vowed to destroy Hamas and to bring home all the hostages, but has faced criticism and protests at home over his handling of the war and the hostage crisis.
A hostage-prisoner swap early Thursday was the final one under the initial stage of the truce that took effect on January 19.
Over the past several weeks, Hamas freed in stages 25 living Israeli and dual-national hostages and returned the bodies of eight others.
It also released five Thai hostages outside the deal’s terms.
Israel, in return, was expected to free around 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.
Israel’s Prison Service said that “643 terrorists were transferred from several prisons across the country” and released on Thursday under the terms of the truce after Hamas returned the bodies of four hostages.
Hours after the handover on Thursday, an Israeli campaign group confirmed “with profound sorrow” the identities of the four bodies.
Ohad Yahalomi, Tsachi Idan, Itzik Elgarat and Shlomo Mansour “have been laid to eternal rest in Israel,” said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
Israel Berman, a businessman and former member of the Nahal Oz kibbutz community where Idan was abducted, said that “until the very last moment, we were hoping that Tsachi would return to us alive.”
Among those freed in exchange was the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli jail, Nael Barghouti, who spent more than four decades behind bars.
He was first arrested in 1978 and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of an Israeli officer and attacks on Israeli sites.
“We were in hell and we came out of hell. Today is my real day of birth,” said one prisoner, Yahya Shraideh.
AFP images showed some freed prisoners awaiting treatment or being assessed at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, after their release.
Several freed Palestinian prisoners were hospitalized following earlier swaps, and the emaciated state of some released Israeli hostages sparked outrage in Israel and beyond.
After the swap, Hamas called on Israel to return to delayed talks on the truce’s next phase.
“We have cut off the path before the enemy’s false justifications, and it has no choice but to start negotiations for the second phase,” Hamas said.


Sudan facing ‘abyss’ unless war ends: UN

Updated 28 February 2025
Follow

Sudan facing ‘abyss’ unless war ends: UN

GENEVA: Sudan is facing the abyss and potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths unless the devastating war in the country ends and aid pours in, the United Nations warned Thursday.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk painted a bleak outlook for Sudan, where famine has already taken hold and millions have fled their homes amid intense fighting between rival forces.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been locked in a brutal conflict between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
“Sudan is a powder keg, on the verge of a further explosion into chaos, and at increasing risk of atrocity crimes and mass deaths from famine,” Turk warned the UN Human Rights Council.
He called the country “the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe.”
“We are looking into the abyss. Humanitarian agencies warn that without action to end the war, deliver emergency aid, and get agriculture back on its feet, hundreds of thousands of people could die.”
Turk said more than 600,000 people were “on the brink of starvation,” with famine reported to have taken hold in five areas, including the Zamzam displacement camp in North Darfur.
Turk said five more areas could face famine in the next three months, while a further 17 are considered at risk.
He said an estimated 8.8 million people had been forced from their homes within Sudan, while 3.5 million more have fled across borders.
“This is the biggest displacement crisis in the world,” he said.
“Some 30.4 million people need assistance, from health care to food and other forms of humanitarian support,” he said.
Presenting his annual report on the human rights situation in Sudan, Turk said some of the acts it documented may constitute war crimes and other atrocity crimes.
Turk said the Sudanese people had endured “unfathomable suffering and pain” since the conflict began, “with no peaceful solution in sight.”
Responding to the report, Sudanese justice minister Muawiya Osman blamed the RSF for starting the war and accused them of having “forced people out of their regions, humiliating them, and trying to cleanse specific regions from their original populations, just like West Darfur.”
He accused the RSF of “blocking humanitarian deliveries” and said the government was committed to “just peace and stability across the country, to address the needs of the Sudanese people, maintain their dignity and end the suffering.”
However, Adama Dieng, the African Union’s special envoy on the prevention of genocide and other mass atrocities, said extreme violence against civilians — by both sides in the conflict — was widespread.
“The war has been characterised by targeting of civilians, including executions, abduction, torture, sexual violence, slavery and sexual slavery, looting of private property, indiscriminate bombardment,” Dieng told the Human Rights Council in a video statement.
“Sexual assault has reached such proportions that there have been reports of women committing mass suicide as the only way to avoid rape.”
Ghana, speaking for the African group, called for a “single, coordinated international effort” to resolve the crisis, but said the “utmost priority is to silence the guns,” paving the way for uninterrupted aid flows.
France said both parties were refusing to respect the fundamental rules of international humanitarian and human rights law.
Britain said the conflict was “wholly unnecessary” and said the perpetrators of abuses needed to be brought to account.


Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan

Updated 28 February 2025
Follow

Israel says to have ‘safety restrictions’ at Al-Aqsa for Ramadan

  • “The usual restrictions for public safety will be in place as they have been every year,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said
  • Only men aged 55 and older and women over 50 were allowed to enter the mosque

JERUSALEM: Israel said Thursday that it will implement what it called “safety restrictions” at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins over the weekend.
During Ramadan, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians come to pray at Al-Aqsa, the third holiest site in Islam located in East Jerusalem — a sector of the Holy City occupied and annexed by Israel.
This year, Ramadan coincides with a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, which has largely halted fighting after a devastating war that left tens of thousands dead in the Palestinian territory.
“The usual restrictions for public safety will be in place as they have been every year,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said in an online briefing to journalists.
Last year, amid the Gaza war, Israeli authorities imposed restrictions on visitors coming to Al-Aqsa, particularly on those Palestinians coming from the occupied West Bank.
Only men aged 55 and older and women over 50 were allowed to enter the mosque compound “for security reasons,” while thousands of Israeli police officers were deployed across Jerusalem’s Old City.
Mencer indicated that precautions would be taken again this year.
“What we cannot, of course, and no country would countenance is people seeking to foment violence and attacks on anyone else,” he said, without detailing this year’s police deployment.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is a symbol of Palestinian national identity.
By longstanding convention, Jews are allowed to visit but not pray in the compound, which they revere as the site of their second temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
In recent years, growing numbers of Jewish ultranationalists have defied the rules, including far-right politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, who publicly prayed there while serving as national security minister in 2023 and 2024.
The Israeli government has said repeatedly that it intends to uphold the status quo at the compound but Palestinian fears about its future have made it a flashpoint for violence.
Last year, Israel allowed Muslims to worship at Al-Aqsa in the same numbers as in previous year despite the war raging in Gaza.