Israel, Hamas must ‘de-escalate, allow humanitarians to operate,’ ICRC DG Robert Mardini tells Arab News

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Updated 07 December 2023
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Israel, Hamas must ‘de-escalate, allow humanitarians to operate,’ ICRC DG Robert Mardini tells Arab News

Israel, Hamas must ‘de-escalate, allow humanitarians to operate,’ ICRC DG Robert Mardini tells Arab News
  • Senior official of International Committee of the Red Cross doubles down on calls to warring sides to respect Geneva Conventions
  • Expresses gratitude for strong Saudi support in Gaza and Sudan, wants humanitarian partnership to climb new heights

RIYADH: Despite the daily efforts of the International Committee of the Red Cross to “step up, to scale up, to send more people on the ground in Gaza,” humanitarians “can only do so much,” according to Robert Mardini, the ICRC’s director general.

He made the comment in the course of an interview on Tuesday with Arab News in Riyadh, where he held a meeting with officials from the Saudi aid agency KSrelief.

“We cannot cope with this magnitude of needs and we want the parties in the conflict, the Israeli side and the Hamas side, to de-escalate and to create the conditions for humanitarians to be able to operate at the level that is required,” Mardini said.

He added that the current level and intensity of fighting in Gaza makes humanitarians’ ability to operate at the levels required “impossible.”

He said: “No meaningful humanitarian response is possible under the current circumstances. This is why we have to, in parallel to doing everything we can to step up the humanitarian response, double down on repeating and reiterating our calls to the parties in the conflict to respect their obligations under the rules of war, the Geneva Conventions.”

Mardini made it clear that as humanitarians, the ICRC will continue to push the limits of the possible to “make a difference for the people in Gaza.”

But while efforts will continue, Mardini said the ICRC can only do so much, “and the responsibility lies within the parties in the conflict.”

He added: “They have the obligations under the Geneva Conventions to protect civilians, to do everything they can to protect civilians, and to de-escalate the conflict; to ensure that there are regular humanitarian pauses to allow humanitarian supplies to get into the Gaza Strip; and to allow humanitarian workers to be able to deliver much-needed humanitarian support to the people in Gaza, and also to give respite to the civilian population, who are living in disastrous conditions, in constant fear of violent death.”

Mardini has no doubt about the immediate requirements: A de-escalation of the conflict, regular humanitarian pauses, and better conditions for civilians.

He said all people in Gaza today were traumatized by what is happening.




Palestinians wounded in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip arrive at a hospital in Rafah. (AP)

When asked about what needs to take place to alleviate the suffering of people in Gaza, he said that humanitarian goods were critical.

“Even before the conflict started on Oct. 7, on average 400 to 500 or 600 trucks a day were getting into the Gaza Strip at the time where it was more or less normal life,” Mardini said.

Now, after nearly two months of fighting, “people (are) being torn apart with thousands killed, tens of thousands severely injured,” and the needs of the region are much greater.

He added: “So, definitely, 200 trucks, which was the maximum reach during the seven-day truce, is only a small fragment, and it’s a drop in an ocean of needs. Trucks alone will not save the people of Gaza.

“What the people of Gaza need now is going back to a normal life, is more respite, is the de-escalation of the conflict. And it’s a political solution that is needed to avoid additional loss of life, and desperation and despair.”

Mardini stressed that although the ICRC is currently trying to receive reasonable security guarantees, “it’s very tough because today, really nowhere is safe in Gaza.”

He said: “Our own teams were in the line of fire. The teams of the Palestine Red Crescent Society were also caught in the line of fire. Many other humanitarians from UNWRA, MSF, also lost their lives in the line of duty.”

Mardini underlined the gravity of the humanitarian situation, adding that the ICRC has a full surgical team working in the European Hospital of Gaza with Palestinian doctors and nurses.

He said: “The testimonies they are giving us are terrifying and horrifying, you know. The sheer number of mass casualties is totally unprecedented.”




Robert Mardini, director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross, being interviewed by Arab News Assistant Editor-in Chief Noor Nugali. (AN Photo/Abdulrhman Bin Alshuhub)

According to the Hamas-run government media office in Gaza, fighting has claimed more than 16,000 lives since the start of the war. While a humanitarian pause was reached on Nov. 24, it ended on Dec. 1, with Israeli forces resuming combat operations.

Mardini said: “The resumption of the fighting in the Gaza Strip is taking its toll on the civilian population, which has been through impossible hardship over the past almost two months.”

Mardini described the testimonies he has heard from ICRC colleagues on the ground in the Gaza Strip operating in a hospital and supporting the Palestine Red Crescent Society volunteers as “horrendous.”

He added: “People are living in difficult circumstances. The families have been separated. Thousands are getting into hospitals.”

He said that hospitals were so overcrowded with the sick, injured, and those seeking shelter that treatment had become difficult. He added that such overcrowding, complicated by shortages of water and medicine, may lead to the spread of disease.

“Doctors are facing impossible choices of who to save, who will make it, who won’t be able to make it, because of the very limited medical supplies, the lack of fuel,” he said.

He added that civilians were in areas, “the so-called safe zones,” adding that “(they) are not really safe, because there are no safe places in the Gaza Strip today.”

Commenting on his meeting with Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah, KSrelief’s supervisor general, during which they discussed the situation in Gaza, he said: “The King Salman Center is a very solid partner of ICRC.

“We have discussed ways and means to step up the humanitarian response. I expressed also our gratitude at ICRC for the very strong support of the King Salman Center, which has recently contributed through funding for our humanitarian endeavors in the Gaza Strip, as it did several months ago to our work in Sudan.”

When asked about the application of the law of armed conflict, which was put in place to set the conduct of military operations and provide protection for the victims of conflict, Mardini asserted that “the law of armed conflict actually works.”

He said: “We have a demonstration of this every day. Every day, an ICRC surgeon is able to save a life.




Commenting on his meeting with Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeeah, KSrelief’s supervisor general, Mardini, right, said: “I expressed also our gratitude at ICRC for the very strong support of the King Salman Center, which has recently contributed through funding for our humanitarian endeavors in the Gaza Strip.” (Supplied)

“Every day, a Palestine Red Crescent volunteer is able to evacuate the severely injured from our hospital to the other. Every day. And we have seen this over the past seven days. The ICRC managed to facilitate the release of hostages in Gaza and Palestinian detainees in Israel to their families in Ramallah.

“These are the laws of war in action. These are the laws of war working.”

Elaborating on the point, he said that when the law of armed conflict works, it “prevents harm from happening in the first place … The laws of war are the ultimate safety net to uphold dignity in war. They should be supported; they should be respected by parties in the conflict.”

Discussing the role of the ICRC in aiding hostage situations, he described the agency as a “neutral intermediary.”

In its role as a neutral intermediary, the ICRC over several days transferred hostages held in Gaza to Israeli authorities and ultimately their families, and transfer Palestinian detainees to authorities in the West Bank, to be reunited with their families.

He said: “I have to hope that the two parties will continue to negotiate for further releases of hostages and Palestinian detainees. And we are certainly ready to renew these types of operations, of course, provided the conditions are acceptable for the safety of hostages and detainees, and our own staff.”

He added: “We need to keep hope alive. I think it’s important civilians, on both sides of this front line, still have hope. And they deserve better conditions than they have today.”


Sudan’s RSF chases civilians out of villages in violent raids

Sudan’s RSF chases civilians out of villages in violent raids
Updated 2 sec ago
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Sudan’s RSF chases civilians out of villages in violent raids

Sudan’s RSF chases civilians out of villages in violent raids
NEW HALFA: Salma Abdallah was recuperating from a caesarean section and tending to her one-month old baby when soldiers from the Rapid Support Forces barged into her home in Sudan’s eastern El Gezira state late last month.
They accused her of loyalty to the army and its allies, their rivals in an 18-month war. “They said ‘You killed us, so today we’ll kill you and rape your girls,’” she told Reuters, sheltering under a makeshift sheet in the town of New Halfa, where she arrived after walking for days on foot with her elderly mother and children.
She said the soldiers chased them out of their village with whips and later shot at them on motorcycles, which two other victims of the attack also mentioned.
Reuters spoke to 13 victims of a series of intense, violent raids in eastern Gezira over the past two weeks, which affected at least 65 villages and towns according to activists.
The UN says some 135,000 people have been displaced, largely to Kassala, Gedaref, and River Nile states, which are already packed with many of the almost 10 million internally displaced by the devastating war that broke out in April 2023.
“I am shocked and deeply appalled that human rights violations of the kind witnessed in Darfur last year ... are being repeated in El Gezira State. These are atrocious crimes,” said the UN’s top official in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, referring to attacks last year that prompted accusations of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity from the United States and others.
The war has unleashed hunger across the country, erased most signs of a functioning state in RSF-held areas, and prompted fears of fragmentation.
Both sides are accused of hindering much needed international assistance.
Spokespersons from the RSF and Sudanese army did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

REVENGE ATTACKS
Though El Gezira state has been subject to a violent looting campaign since the RSF took control in December, the defection of its chief in the state unleashed a series of revenge attacks.
The Wad Madani Resistance Committee, a pro-democracy group, named 169 people killed since the violence began on Oct. 20, though in a statement it said there were hundreds more.
The UN’s human rights office said last week that there were at least 25 cases of sexual violence, including an 11 year-old girl who died as a result. The office also said that the RSF had confiscated Internet devices in at least 30 villages, and cited reports they had burnt fields of crops.
The worst incident was in Al-Sireha, where the committee said 124 people were killed on Oct. 25.
Video verified by Reuters showed RSF soldiers lining up men, many of them elderly, and some in blood-splattered clothes, forcing them to bleat.
The RSF has denied ordering both attacks, and said the attacks in Gezira were the result of the army arming local communities.
The army has responded by emphasising popular resistance campaigns, though there has been little evidence of widescale arming of civilians in Gezira.
The Sudanese Human Rights Monitor warned the army against “leaving civilians ... exposed to direct and disproportionate confrontations with the RSF,” which it criticized for not fulfilling promises to protect civilians.
Hashim Bashir, a man disabled after his leg was amputated prior to the war, said RSF soldiers threw him out of his home in Al-Nayb village.
“They are very vicious... If you survive their gunshots, they hit you in your head. If you survive that, they beat you with a whip,” he said, showing scars on his functioning leg.
His niece, Faiza Mohammed, said the RSF soldiers allowed them to take nothing with them, even identifying documents.
“I hid under the bed, but they got me, beat me, and pulled my earring straight off my ear,” she said.

‘War ruined me’: Lebanon’s farmers mourn lost season

‘War ruined me’: Lebanon’s farmers mourn lost season
Updated 14 min 9 sec ago
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‘War ruined me’: Lebanon’s farmers mourn lost season

‘War ruined me’: Lebanon’s farmers mourn lost season
  • Agricultural regions in Lebanon have been caught in the crossfire since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah ramped up in October last year, a full-scale war breaking out on September 23

BEIRUT: Lebanese farmer Abu Taleb briefly returned to his orchard last month to salvage an avocado harvest but ran away empty handed as soon as Israeli air raids began.
“The war broke out just before the first harvest season,” said Abu Taleb, displaced from the village of Tayr Debba near the southern city Tyre.
“When I went back in mid-October, it was deserted... it was scary,” said the father of two, who is now sheltering in Tripoli more than 160 kilometers to the north and asked to be identified by a pseudonym because of security concerns.
Abu Taleb said his harvesting attempt was interrupted by an Israeli raid on the neighboring town of Markaba.
He was forced back to Tripoli without the avocados he usually exports every year.
Agricultural regions in Lebanon have been caught in the crossfire since hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah ramped up in October last year, a full-scale war breaking out on September 23.
The UN’s agriculture agency, FAO, said more than 1,909 hectares of farmland in south Lebanon had been damaged or left unharvested between October last year and September 28.
The conflict has also displaced more than half a million people, including farmers who abandoned their crops just when they were ready to harvest.
Hani Saad had to abandon 120 hectares of farmland in the southern region of Nabatiyeh, which is rich in citrus and avocado plantations.
“If the ceasefire takes place within a month, I can save the harvest, otherwise, the whole season is ruined,” said Saad who has been displaced to the coastal city of Jounieh, north of Beirut.
When an Israeli strike sparked a fire in one of Saad’s orchards, he had to pay out of his own pocket for the fuel of the fire engine that extinguished the blaze.
His employees, meanwhile, have fled. Of 32 workers, 28 have left, mainly to neighboring Syria.


Israeli strikes have put at least two land crossings with Syria out of service, blocking a key export route for produce and crops.
Airlines have suspended flights to Lebanon as insurance costs soar.
This has dealt a deadly blow to agricultural exports, most of which are destined for Gulf Arab states.
Fruit exporter Chadi Kaadan said exports to the Gulf have dropped by more than 50 percent.
The supply surplus in the local market has caused prices to plummet at home, he added.
“In the end, it is the farmer who loses,” said Saad who used to earn $5000 a day before the war started.
Today, he barely manages $300.
While avocados can stay on the tree for months, they are starting to run out of water following Israeli strikes on irrigation channels, Saad said.
Citrus fruits and cherimoyas have already started to fall.
“The war has ruined me. I spend my time in front of the TV waiting for a ceasefire so I can return to my livelihood,” Saad told AFP.
Gaby Hage, a resident of the Christian town of Rmeish, on the border with Israel, is one of the few farmers who decided to stay in south Lebanon.
He has only been able to harvest 100 of his 350 olive trees, which were left untended for a year because of cross-border strikes.
“I took advantage of a slight lull in the fighting to pick what I could,” he told AFP.
Hage said agriculture was a lifeline for the inhabitants of his town, which has been cut off by the war.
Ibrahim Tarchichi, president of the farmers’ union in the Bekaa Valley, which was hit hard by the strikes, believes that agriculture in Lebanon is going through the “worst phase” of its recent history.
“I have experienced four wars, it has never been this serious,” he said.


Israeli settlers burn cars in West Bank attack

Israeli settlers burn cars in West Bank attack
Updated 5 min 4 sec ago
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Israeli settlers burn cars in West Bank attack

Israeli settlers burn cars in West Bank attack
  • Governor of Ramallah and Al-Bireh Laila Ghannam: ‘Attacks are increasing because of impunity’ for attackers
  • Some 490,000 settlers live in settlements considered illegal under international law in the West Bank

AL-BIREH: Israeli settlers torched nearly 20 cars early Monday in the occupied West Bank city of Al-Bireh, near Ramallah, according to the Palestinian Civil Defence and an Israeli security source.
An AFP journalist saw several cars completely charred, and the blackened facade of the five-story building outside which they were parked.
An alert rang “at 3:30am (0130 GMT) signalling that settlers entered the area and committed acts of vandalism,” said Rami Omar, head of the local civil defense office.
An Israeli security official told AFP notification of the incident came at 4:00 am and soldiers were sent who arrived on site after the settlers had gone.
The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said 19 vehicles had been burned by settlers.
Israeli police, soldiers and Shin Bet security agency officers collected evidence in Al-Bireh for the investigation, the official added.
Israeli authorities did not yet know where the settlers came from and what their motives were.
Ihab Al-Zabin, a resident of the damaged building, told AFP he saw the arsonists run away toward the nearby Israeli settlement of Beit El.
Zabin said he saw around 10 people he identified as settlers “pouring liquids on vehicles in front of the building and then setting them on fire.”
“I yelled from my apartment, and at that moment they ran away,” he said. “When I went down with my neighbors to put out the fire, settlers shot toward us.”
Abdullah Abu Rahmah from the Palestinian Commission against Settlements told AFP that the attackers belong to a group of arsonists who have attacked other nearby villages in the past.
Laila Ghannam, governor of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, told journalists at the scene “there could have been a massacre in this building,” which residents say housed more than 60 people.
“Attacks are increasing because of impunity” for attackers, she said.
Violence in the West Bank has soared since Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 last year triggered war in the Gaza Strip.
The UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) said in August: “Between 1 and 28 October, OCHA documented nearly 270 settler-related incidents affecting Palestinians and their property.”
Some 490,000 settlers live in settlements considered illegal under international law in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
The territory is home to three million Palestinians.


Iran slams US deployment of B-52 bombers as ‘destabilizing’

Iran slams US deployment of B-52 bombers as ‘destabilizing’
Updated 51 min 59 sec ago
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Iran slams US deployment of B-52 bombers as ‘destabilizing’

Iran slams US deployment of B-52 bombers as ‘destabilizing’
  • The US military announced on Saturday the deployment of B-52 bombers to the Middle East as a warning to Iran which has vowed to respond to Israeli strikes on its military sites on October 26

Tehran: Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei on Monday criticized what he called the United States’ “destabilizing presence” after the deployment of B-52 bombers in the region.
“We have always believed that the presence of America in the region is a destabilising presence,” said Baghaei told a news conference in response to a question about the deployment, adding that it “will not deter (Iran’s) resolve to defend itself.”
The US military announced on Saturday the deployment of B-52 bombers to the Middle East as a warning to Iran which has vowed to respond to Israeli strikes on its military sites on October 26.
Israel’s attack was in retaliation for an October 1 Iranian missile barrage, itself retaliation for the killing of Iran-backed militant leaders and a Revolutionary Guards commander.
At least four soldiers were killed in the strikes which also caused “limited damage” to a few radar systems, officials said at the time. Iranian media also reported that a civilian was killed.
Baghaei said Iran’s response would be “definite and decisive.”
He added that Iran supported “all initiatives and efforts” to push for a ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon, where Israel is at war with the Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah armed groups, respectively.
Israel said its October 26 attack targeted Iran’s defense capabilities and missile production, but Tehran said its missile production remained intact.
On Monday, President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran had missiles so Israel “wouldn’t dare attack us.”
During the news conference, Baghaei said Iran’s official position against changing the nuclear doctrine and pursuing atomic weapons remained the same.
Citing a recent speech by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Baghaei said the Islamic republic would be “equipped with everything necessary to defend” itself.


Egypt, Iran foreign ministers discuss rising Middle East tensions

Egypt, Iran foreign ministers discuss rising Middle East tensions
Updated 04 November 2024
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Egypt, Iran foreign ministers discuss rising Middle East tensions

Egypt, Iran foreign ministers discuss rising Middle East tensions

CAIRO: Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty has reiterated to his Iranian counterpart the urgency of de-escalating Middle East tensions in order to avert a regional war.

During a phone call with Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, Abdelatty discussed his country’s concerns about the possibility of a full-scale regional war amid rising tensions.

Araghchi was in Cairo last month for the first visit to Egypt by a key Iranian official in around a decade. His trip was focused on efforts to de-escalate Israel’s conflicts with Gaza and Lebanon.