Palestinians: Our ‘Nakba’ in 2023 is worst ever

Palestinians: Our ‘Nakba’ in 2023 is worst ever
Palestinians hold symbolic keys during a rally in the West Bank city of Nablus, marking the 76th anniversary of the ‘Nakba’ or ‘Catastrophe’ of the creation of Israel, which sparked the exodus of Palestinians in 1948. (AFP)
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Updated 15 May 2024
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Palestinians: Our ‘Nakba’ in 2023 is worst ever

Palestinians: Our ‘Nakba’ in 2023 is worst ever
  • Thousands protest in West Bank, waving Palestinian flags, wearing keffiyeh scarves and holding up symbolic keys as reminders of long-lost family homes

GAZA: As the Gaza war raged on, Palestinians on Wednesday marked the anniversary of the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of mass displacement during the creation of the state of Israel 76 years ago.

Thousands marched in cities across the Israeli-occupied West Bank, waving Palestinian flags, wearing keffiyeh scarves and holding up symbolic keys as reminders of long-lost family homes.

Inside the besieged Gaza Strip, where the Israel-Hamas war has ground on for more than seven months, scores more died in the fighting sparked by the Hamas attack of Oct. 7.

“Our ‘Nakba’ in 2023 is the worst ever,” said one displaced Gaza man, Mohammed Al-Farra, whose family fled their home in Khan Younis for the coastal area of Al-Mawasi. 

“It is much harder than the Nakba of 1948.”

Palestinians everywhere have long mourned the events of that year when, during the war that led to the establishment of Israel, around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes.

But 42-year-old Farra, whose family was then displaced from Jaffa near Tel Aviv, said the current war is even harder.

“When your child is accustomed to all the comforts and luxuries, and suddenly, overnight, everything is taken away from him ... it is a big shock.”

Thousands marched in the West Bank city of Ramallah, as well as in Nablus, Hebron and elsewhere, carrying banners denouncing the occupation and protesting the war in Gaza.

“There’s pain for us, but of course more pain for Gazans,” said one protester, Manal Sarhan, 53, who has relatives in Israeli jails that have not been heard from since Oct. 7. “We’re living the Nakba a second time.” 

Commemorations and marches — held a day after Israel’s Independence Day — come as the Gaza war has brought a massive death toll and the forced displaced of most of the territory’s 2.4 million people.

A devastating humanitarian crisis has plagued the territory, with the UN warning of looming famine in the north.


Israeli strike targets residential building in Syria’s Damascus, say state media

Updated 4 sec ago
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Israeli strike targets residential building in Syria’s Damascus, say state media

Israeli strike targets residential building in Syria’s Damascus, say state media
Preliminary reports indicated that the strike had resulted in injuries among civilians

CAIRO: An Israeli strike targeted a residential building in the Mezzah suburb west of the Syrian capital Damascus, Syria’s state news agency reported on Tuesday.
Preliminary reports indicated that the strike had resulted in injuries among civilians, Syrian state media reported.
State media earlier reported that Syria’s air defenses had intercepted “hostile” targets in the vicinity of Damascus.
Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years but has ramped up such raids since last year’s Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian group Hamas on Israeli territory that sparked the Gaza war.

Netanyahu threatens Lebanon with destruction ‘like Gaza’

Netanyahu threatens Lebanon with destruction ‘like Gaza’
Updated 16 min 38 sec ago
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Netanyahu threatens Lebanon with destruction ‘like Gaza’

Netanyahu threatens Lebanon with destruction ‘like Gaza’
  • “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza,” Netanyahu said
  • “I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end“

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Lebanon Tuesday it could face destruction “like Gaza” as Israel ramps up its ground offensive against Hezbollah along the southern section of the Lebanese coast.
Netanyahu’s stark warning came as the Israeli military deployed more troops and urged civilians in coastal areas to evacuate.
“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza,” Netanyahu said in a video address directed to the people of Lebanon.
“I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”
Hezbollah earlier said it fired rockets at the Israeli port city of Haifa, after the Israeli military reported 85 projectiles crossing from Lebanon.
Israel expanded operations in Lebanon nearly a year after Hezbollah began exchanging fire in support of its ally, Hamas, following the Palestinian group’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
While battling Hamas in Gaza, Israel has vowed to secure its northern border with Lebanon to allow tens of thousands of Israelis displaced by Hezbollah’s cross-border fire to return home.
Both Hamas and Hezbollah have pledged no let-up against Israel, and on Tuesday Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said the group would make it impossible for Israelis to return to the north.
Israel launched a wave of strikes against Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon on September 23, leaving at least 1,150 people dead since then and forcing more than a million people to flee.
Israeli attacks have mainly targeted Hezbollah strongholds in southern and eastern Lebanon, as well as south Beirut.
While the coast has not been spared, Israel’s latest evacuation warning suggests it is extending its offensive northwards.
On its Telegram channel, the Israeli military said its 146th Division began “limited, localized, targeted operational activities” against Hezbollah targets and infrastructure in southwestern Lebanon.
A day earlier, the military had warned people to stay away from the the southern part of Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast, with a spokesman saying Israel would “soon operate in the maritime area against Hezbollah’s terrorist activities” south of the Awali river.
In Sidon, fishermen stayed ashore and the seafood market was unusually quiet.
“Fishing was the way we supported our children. If we don’t go out to sea, we won’t be able to feed ourselves,” said fisherman Issam Haboush.
The Israeli military said it hit Hezbollah’s south Beirut bastion, where a strike last month killed the militant group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah later said it repelled Israeli troops who “infiltrated from behind” a UN peacekeepers’ position in the southern border village of Labboune.
Hezbollah’s deputy leader said despite Israel’s “painful” strikes, the group’s leadership structure was in order and its military capabilities were “fine.”
“Netanyahu says he wants to bring back” the displaced to their homes in northern Israel, Qassem said.
But “we say that many more residents will be forced to flee” their homes, he warned.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant later said Hezbollah “is a battered and broken organization, without significant command and fire capabilities, with a disintegrated leadership following the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah.”
Netanyahu on Tuesday said Israeli forces “took out thousands of terrorists, including Nasrallah himself and Nasrallah’s replacement and the replacement of his replacement.”
The expansion in the fighting came a day after Israelis and people around the world marked the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
For families of the bereaved, as well as relatives of 251 people taken hostage into Gaza, the pain was especially acute.
Of the total number, 97 hostages are still being held, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures, which include hostages killed in captivity.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 41,965 people in Gaza, most them civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry that the United Nations has described as reliable.
Weakened but not crushed after a year of war, Hamas was defiant, with Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, saying the group would “keep up the fight in a long war of attrition, one that is painful and costly for the enemy.”
He said scores of people taken hostage into Gaza last year were enduring a “very difficult” situation.
A senior Hamas official has acknowledged “several thousand fighters from the movement and other resistance groups died in combat.”
A year since the start of Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, swathes of the territory have been reduced to rubble, and nearly all its 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that after a year of war, civilians in Gaza were still living in ramshackle shelters and struggling to find food, even as the Israeli military shifted its focus to its Lebanon offensive.
“They still can’t return to their homes. They still don’t know whether their homes are standing,” ICRC spokeswoman Sarah Davies told AFP in an online interview from Gaza.
On Tuesday, the territory’s civil defense agency said an Israeli strike on a refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip killed at least 17 people.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said the war had turned Gaza into a “graveyard.”
Many in Gaza just want the war to end.
“I have grown old while watching my children hungry, scared, having nightmares and screaming day and night from the sound of the bombing and shells,” said Israa Abu Matar, a 26-year-old displaced woman.


Russia to reopen embassy in Yemen’s Aden early next year

Russia to reopen embassy in Yemen’s Aden early next year
Updated 57 min 12 sec ago
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Russia to reopen embassy in Yemen’s Aden early next year

Russia to reopen embassy in Yemen’s Aden early next year
  • Charge d’Affaires of the Russian Embassy in Yemen Evgeny Kudrov and Yemen’s FM Shaya Al-Zindani said the embassy would reopen at the beginning of next year
  • Kudrov also expressed his government’s support for the internationally recognized government of Yemen

AL-MUKALLA: Russia will reopen its embassy in Aden, Yemen’s interim capital, in early 2025. Coming nearly a decade after it closed, the news has boosted hopes for the reintroduction of foreign diplomatic missions in the southern city.

During a meeting in Riyadh on Tuesday, Charge d’Affaires of the Russian Embassy in Yemen Evgeny Kudrov and Yemen’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Shaya Al-Zindani said the embassy would reopen “at the beginning” of next year.

Kudrov also expressed his government’s support for the internationally recognized government of Yemen.

An official at the Yemen Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who asked to remain anonymous, said Russia had taken “serious” steps toward reopening the embassy. He added that India and some Gulf Cooperation Council states might follow suit by opening embassies in Aden.

Foreign diplomatic missions in Sanaa, Yemen’s official capital, were closed when the Houthis took power in the country a decade ago.

The city of Aden has experienced relative calm in recent years following the formation of the Presidential Leadership Council, which brought together rival Yemeni factions.

Shortly after being liberated from the Houthis in mid-2015 it experienced anarchy, with explosions, assassinations and bloody clashes. However, the Yemeni government says it is now safe and that security and military forces are willing to protect foreign diplomatic missions that relocate there. 

Russia’s announcement came a day after the Kremlin denied a Wall Street Journal report claiming that arms dealer Viktor Bout, released from the US during a prisoner swap in 2022, is negotiating a deal with the Yemen Houthi militia to provide them with small arms, including Kalashnikov assault rifles.

Last month, US Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking expressed concern over news reports that Russia was in talks with the Houthis about supplying them with advanced anti-ship missiles.

Meanwhile, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Monday sanctioned Hamed Abdullah Hussein Al-Ahmer, a Yemeni MP and banking, oil, and telecom tycoon, as well as several other individuals and businesses, for their support of Hamas.

According to OFAC, Al-Ahmer, who is based in Turkey, is a major Hamas supporter and an agent for the group’s investments, which have which generated over half a billion US dollars.

Al-Ahmer is president of the Istanbul-based League of Parliamentarians for Al-Quds, which was founded in 2015 and operates banking, oil, media and telecom businesses in Yemen, Turkey and elsewhere.

“He is a key member of Hamas’ once-secret investment portfolio, which at its peak managed over $500 million worth of assets enabling Hamas’s leaders to live in luxury outside the Palestinian territories despite the real humanitarian needs of the people of Gaza,” the OFAC said.

Al-Ahmer has not officially responded to the US sanctions but on Monday, the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, he appeared on video expressing his support for the “resistance” of people in Palestine and Lebanon.

“We applaud the Palestinian and Gazan people’s resilience in the face of an attack by the Zionist destruction machine, which is supported by America and Europe,” he said.


Turkish lawmakers discuss Mideast in closed session after Erdogan’s Israel claim

Turkish lawmakers discuss Mideast in closed session after Erdogan’s Israel claim
Updated 08 October 2024
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Turkish lawmakers discuss Mideast in closed session after Erdogan’s Israel claim

Turkish lawmakers discuss Mideast in closed session after Erdogan’s Israel claim
  • Israel has also not commented publicly on Tuesday’s closed-door parliamentary session in Ankara
  • Foreign and defense ministers made presentations at the closed-door session on the risk of the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon widening further

ANKARA: Turkiye’s lawmakers held a closed-door session on Tuesday to discuss the spread of war in the Middle East, a week after President Tayyip Erdogan made an unsubstantiated claim that Israel eventually aimed to encroach on Turkish territory.
Israel has not publicly responded to Erdogan’s claim, which analysts and opposition lawmakers say is far-fetched and is intended primarily to deflect public attention away from Turkiye’s economic woes.
Israel has also not commented publicly on Tuesday’s closed-door parliamentary session in Ankara, which is titled “Israel’s occupation of Lebanon and developments in the region.”
Foreign and defense ministers made presentations at the closed-door session — which was requested by the opposition — on the risk of the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon widening further.
NATO member Turkiye is among the world’s sharpest critics of what it calls Israel’s illegal and reckless wars with armed groups Hamas and Hezbollah. It halted trade with Israel and applied to join a genocide case against it at the World Court.
Israel rejects the genocide case and Turkiye’s criticism, saying it is locked in an existential struggle with militant Islamist groups backed by Iran that are sworn to Israel’s destruction.
Last week Erdogan told parliament that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was acting out his dream of a “utopia” and “promised land” for Israel.
“After Lebanon, the next place on which Israel will set its eyes will be our homeland,” he told parliament’s opening session, attended by dozens of foreign ambassadors and his cabinet, without providing evidence.

CHAOS AT BORDERS
Devlet Bahceli, leader of Erdogan’s main ally MHP, said on Tuesday it was “likely that chaos in neighboring countries will reach our borders and that Israel will harass Turkiye” in the near future.
But Ozgur Ozel, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), dismissed such talk.
“It’s unreasonable to think Netanyahu will conduct an assault on Turkiye, which is a NATO member and has a great army,” Ozel told his party.
Later, after hearing the ministers’ presentation, Ozel said he had not been convinced by them about any alleged Israeli threat against Turkiye.
“They didn’t say anything that we don’t know,” he said, reiterating his view that Erdogan had raised the issue in order to stop Turks focusing on “unemployment, inflation, poverty and high prices.”
Polls show Turks strongly back the government’s hard line on Israel.
Some Turkish protesters in recent days — marking the anniversary of the beginning of the war on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel — demanded that Erdogan take more action.
Critics have raised questions over whether Turkiye is still effectively shipping goods to Israel despite the May trade ban, given official data show exports to Palestinian territories have leapt six-fold so far this year.


US slaps sanctions on Sudan paramilitary leader

US slaps sanctions on Sudan paramilitary leader
Updated 08 October 2024
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US slaps sanctions on Sudan paramilitary leader

US slaps sanctions on Sudan paramilitary leader
  • Algoney Hamdan Dagalo Musa was sanctioned “for his involvement in RSF efforts to procure weapons and other military materiel,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said
  • His actions have fueled war in Sudan “and brutal RSF atrocities against civilians”

WASHINGTON: The United States on Tuesday announced sanctions against a senior leader in war-torn Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for his role in obtaining weapons for the paramilitary organization.
Tens of thousands of people have died and millions have been displaced since war broke out in April 2023 between Sudan’s army and the RSF after their head generals refused a plan to integrate.
Algoney Hamdan Dagalo Musa was sanctioned “for his involvement in RSF efforts to procure weapons and other military materiel that have enabled the RSF’s ongoing operations in Sudan,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
His actions have fueled war in Sudan “and brutal RSF atrocities against civilians, which have included war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing,” Miller said.
The US Treasury said that as a result of such sanctions “all property and interests in property of the designated persons... that are in the United States or in the possession or control of US persons are blocked and must be reported.”
The United States has led diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting in Sudan but has seen limited success and leverage, with RSF commanders unlikely to hold major assets in the West that would be affected by sanctions.