Jailed Iranian Nobel laureate urges action against ‘oppression’ of women

Jailed Iranian Nobel laureate urges action against ‘oppression’ of women
A protester holds a placard as she takes part in a march on the second anniversary of a protest movement sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, arrested for allegedly violating the dress code for women at Place de la Bastille, in Paris on September 15, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 16 September 2024
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Jailed Iranian Nobel laureate urges action against ‘oppression’ of women

Jailed Iranian Nobel laureate urges action against ‘oppression’ of women

PARIS: Jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi on Monday urged the international community to act to end the “oppression” of women in Iran, two years after the start of a women-led protest movement.
“I call on international institutions and people around the world... to take active action. I urge the United Nations to end its silence and inaction in the face of the devastating oppression and discrimination by theocratic and authoritarian governments against women by criminalizing gender apartheid,” she said in a letter written in Tehran’s Evin prison on Saturday and published by her foundation on Monday.


Israel army says encircles Gaza’s Jabaliya as Hamas rebuilds

Israel army says encircles Gaza’s Jabaliya as Hamas rebuilds
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Israel army says encircles Gaza’s Jabaliya as Hamas rebuilds

Israel army says encircles Gaza’s Jabaliya as Hamas rebuilds
GAZA: The Israeli military said Sunday its forces surrounded the Jabaliya area of northern Gaza in response to indications Hamas was rebuilding despite nearly a year of strikes and fighting.
“The troops of the 401st Brigade and the 460th Brigade have successfully encircled the area and are currently continuing to operate in the area,” the military said in a statement.
The military said it had intelligence indicating the “presence of terrorists and terror infrastructure in the area of Jabaliya... as well as efforts by Hamas to rebuild its operational capabilities in the area.”
“Prior to and during the operation, the IAF (air force) struck dozens of military targets in the area to assist IDF (army) ground troops,” the military said, adding targets hit were weapons storage facilities, underground infrastructure sites and other militant infrastructure sites.
Gaza civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that multiple strikes rocked Jabaliya through the night and there were many casualties.
Israeli forces have bombarded Jabaliya regularly since the war in Gaza started, displacing almost all of its residents.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel.

UAE delivers $100 mln humanitarian aid for Lebanon

UAE delivers $100 mln humanitarian aid for Lebanon
Updated 51 sec ago
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UAE delivers $100 mln humanitarian aid for Lebanon

UAE delivers $100 mln humanitarian aid for Lebanon
  • UAE dispatches aircraft carrying 40 tonnes of urgent medical aid to Lebanon
  • Aid campaign held in collaboration with WHO

DUBAI: The UAE has launched a $100 million relief campaign to support the people of Lebanon amid the ongoing Israeli escalation, state news agency WAM reported. 

Under the name “UAE stands with Lebanon”, the country, in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO), dispatched on Friday an aircraft carrying 40 tonnes of urgent medical aid to Lebanon.

Reem bint Ebrahim Al Hashimy, Minister of State for International Cooperation, said the flight reflects UAE’s commitment to support the war-impacted communities. 

She highlighted the UAE’s vision to provide all possible humanitarian aid to meet critical needs of the most vulnerable. 

Meanwhile, the UAE has continued to provide humanitarian and relief assistance to residents of the Gaza Strip as part of “Operation Chivalrous Knight 3”.

On Friday, it secured shelter tents and essential supplies for displaced families in Gaza.

As part of the relief campaign, the UAE has also set up a floating hospital in Egypt’s Al-Arish and another field hospital in Rafah to provide medical services for the injured Palestinians amid the war on Gaza.


After a year of war, Gazans wonder how to deal with tons of rubble

After a year of war, Gazans wonder how to deal with tons of rubble
Updated 23 min 17 sec ago
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After a year of war, Gazans wonder how to deal with tons of rubble

After a year of war, Gazans wonder how to deal with tons of rubble
  • Year of war generates at least 42 million tons of rubble
  • Piled up, rubble would fill Great Pyramid of Giza 11 times

KHAN YOUNIS: In the ruins of his two-story home, 11-year-old Mohammed gathers chunks of the fallen roof into a broken pail and pounds them into gravel which his father will use to make gravestones for victims of the Gaza war.
“We get the rubble not to build houses, no, but for tombstones and graves — from one misery to another,” his father, former construction worker Jihad Shamali, 42, says as he cuts through metal salvaged from their home in the southern city of Khan Younis, damaged during an Israeli raid in April.
The work is hard, and at times grim. In March, the family built a tomb for one of Shamali’s sons, Ismail, killed while running household errands.
But it is also a tiny part of the efforts starting to take shape to deal with the rubble left by Israel’s military campaign to eliminate Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The United Nations estimates there is over 42 million tons of debris, including both shattered edifices that are still standing and flattened buildings.
That is 14 times the amount of rubble accumulated in Gaza between 2008 and the war’s start a year ago, and over five times the amount left by the 2016-17 Battle of Mosul in Iraq, the UN said.
Piled up, it would fill the Great Pyramid of Giza — Egypt’s largest — 11 times. And it is growing daily.
The UN is trying to help as Gazan authorities consider how to deal with the rubble, three UN officials said.
A UN-led Debris Management Working Group plans a pilot project with Palestinian authorities in Khan Younis and the central Gazan city of Deir El-Balah to start clearing roadside debris this month.
“The challenges are huge,” said Alessandro Mrakic, the Gaza Office head for the United Nations’ Development Programme (UNDP) which is co-chairing the working group. “It’s going to be a massive operation, but at the same time, it’s important that we start now.”
Israel’s military has said Hamas fighters hide among civilians and that it will strike them wherever they emerge, while also trying to avoid harming civilians.
Asked about the debris, Israel’s military unit COGAT said it aimed to improve waste-handling and would work with the UN to expand those efforts. Mrakic said coordination with Israel was excellent but detailed discussions on future plans were yet to take place.

Tents amid the ruins
Israel began its offensive after Hamas militants entered Israel on Oct. 7 last year, killed about 1,200 Israelis and took over 250 people hostage.
Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in a year of conflict, Palestinian health authorities say.
On the ground, wreckage is piled high above pedestrians and donkey carts on dusty narrow paths that were once busy roads.
“Who is going to come here and clear the rubble for us? No-one. Therefore, we did that ourselves,” taxi driver Yusri Abu Shabab said, having cleared enough debris from his Khan Younis home to erect a tent.
Two-thirds of Gaza’s pre-war structures — over 163,000 buildings — have been damaged or flattened, according to UN satellite data. Around a third were high-rise buildings.
After a seven-week war in Gaza in 2014, UNDP and its partners cleared 3 million tons of debris — 7 percent of the total now. Mrakic cited an unpublished preliminary estimate that it would cost $280 million to clear 10 million tons, implying around $1.2 billion if the war stopped now.
A UN estimate from April suggested it would take 14 years to clear the rubble.

Concealed bodies
The debris contains unrecovered bodies, as many as 10,000 according to the Palestinian health ministry, and unexploded bombs, Mrakic said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says the threat is “pervasive” and UN officials say some of the debris poses a big injury risk.
Nizar Zurub, from Khan Younis, lives with his son in a home where only a roof remains, hanging at a precarious angle.
The United Nations Environment Programme said an estimated 2.3 million tons of debris might be contaminated, citing an assessment of Gaza’s eight refugee camps, some of which have been hit.
Asbestos fibers can cause larynx, ovarian and lung cancer when inhaled.
The World Health Organization has recorded nearly a million cases of acute respiratory infections in Gaza in the past year, without saying how many are linked to dust.
WHO spokesperson Bisma Akbar said dust was a “significant concern,” and could contaminate water and soil and lead to lung disease.
Doctors fear a rise in cancers and birth defects from leaking metals in coming decades. Snake and scorpion bites and skin infections from sandflies are a concern, a UNEP spokesperson said.

Land and equipment shortages
Gaza’s rubble has previously been used to help build seaports. The UN hopes now to recycle a portion for road networks and bolstering the shoreline.
Gaza, which had a pre-war population of 2.3 million crammed into an area 45 km (28 miles) long and 10 km wide, lacks the space needed for disposal, the UNDP says.
Landfills are now in an Israeli military zone. Israel’s COGAT said they were in a restricted area but that access would be granted.
More recycling means more money to fund equipment such as industrial crushers, Mrakic said. They would have to enter via crossing points controlled by Israel.
Government officials report fuel and machinery shortages because of Israeli restrictions that slow clear-up efforts. The UNEP spokesperson said prolonged approval processes were a “major bottleneck.”
Israel did not specifically comment on allegations it was restricting machinery.
The UNEP says it needs owners’ permission to remove debris, yet the scale of destruction has blurred property boundaries, and some property records have been lost during the war.
Several donors have expressed interest in helping since a Palestinian government-hosted meeting in the West Bank on Aug. 12, Mrakic said, without naming them.
A UN official, requesting anonymity to avoid undermining ongoing efforts, said: “Everybody’s concerned whether to invest in rebuilding Gaza if there is no political solution in place.”


Lebanese worldwide fear for their homeland and loved ones as violence escalates

Lebanese worldwide fear for their homeland and loved ones as violence escalates
Updated 06 October 2024
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Lebanese worldwide fear for their homeland and loved ones as violence escalates

Lebanese worldwide fear for their homeland and loved ones as violence escalates
  • The current military escalation unfolds amid fears that fighting could spread in the region and comes as the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza nears the grim one-year mark

It was a year ago when Jomana Siddiqui visited Lebanon, where her father was born — and is now buried. She planned to return there soon; this time, she thought, she would take her two teenage daughters.
Instead, Siddiqui, who lives in California, now worries about relatives there. As she watches from afar the violence and the recent escalation in Israel’s military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Siddiqui thinks about the people she met during her visit, the kindness and generosity she encountered.
She thinks about her father’s grave — when, or if, she will get to visit it again. Her voice cracks with emotions. It’s been gut-wrenching, she said.
“It’s like the universal story of the Lebanese people,” she said. “They have to keep leaving and not knowing when they can come back.”
From the United States to South Africa, Cyprus, Brazil and beyond, many members of Lebanon’s far-flung and large diaspora are contending with the ripples of the violence — grieving, gripped by fear for loved ones and for their homeland, trying to find ways to help.
Some 1,400 Lebanese, including civilians and fighters of the militant group Hezbollah, have been killed and some 1.2 million driven from their homes since Israel escalated its strikes in late September, saying it aims to push Hezbollah away from the countries’ shared border.
For Lina Kayat, who moved to South Africa almost 36 years ago but still has a big family in Lebanon, the violence and tensions there have echoes of earlier turbulent chapters.
“We lived through a civil war for a long time; I was like seven years old,” she said. “It feels like history repeating itself. ... It’s the unknown of who is going to get killed next.”
Kayat, who lives in South Africa’s coastal city of Durban, speaks daily to her family, including her mother and her sister.
“They are very scared and very worried about what is going to happen,” she said.
Generations of Lebanese have grappled with whether to leave to seek better opportunities or escape various times of tumult — from a 15-year-old civil war to military occupations, bombings and political assassinations — or stay in a Lebanon that despite its numerous scars retains its allure for many. Lebanon — home to multiple religious groups, including Christians and Sunni and Shiite Muslims — takes pride in its large emigrant communities, which include successful businessmen and celebrities of Lebanese heritage.
The current military escalation unfolds amid fears that fighting could spread in the region and comes as the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza nears the grim one-year mark.
“It happening on top of Gaza is almost too much to bear,” said James Zogby, president of the Washington D.C.-based Arab American Institute.
“It almost makes you physically ill just trying to fathom the extent of the trauma,” added Zogby, whose father was born in Lebanon.
Already, Lebanon had been on edge and struggling under the weight of an economic meltdown, the fallout from a massive 2020 port explosion and other crises. It’s been without a president for two years.
Against such a somber backdrop, Zogby wonders what will become of the displaced.
“Who’s going to care for them? Where do the health services come from ... when the country is already as overstretched as it is and on the verge of collapse?” he said. “At what point does it finally collapse? And who will care?”
Fueling the pain, he said, is his anger at the US response to the devastation in Gaza and now the escalation in Lebanon.
“There’s a sense of powerlessness, a sense of almost despair that, you know, it can get out of control. And as long as nothing here happens to restrain it, it will get worse.”
Akram Khater, director of the Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University, said that since the earliest diaspora, Lebanese who left have been contributing heavily to the economic well-being of Lebanon, sending large amounts of remittances.
Watching the escalation in Lebanon, where he was born and raised, has been re-traumatizing, he said.
“I find myself amidst a swirl of emotions that are unresolved and that derive from this recurring nightmare,” he said. “Yet, even amidst this our community comes together to create solidarity and provide solace and comfort for each other.”
Recently, hundreds of Lebanese flags filled the night sky in Dearborn, Michigan, as some attended a rally to support Lebanon and protest the Israeli offensive there.
At Sao Paulo’s international airport, two Lebanese brothers who’ve been living in Brazil, recently had a solemn reunion. They said eight of their loved ones — their sister, brother-in-law, four of their nephews and two of their nephews’ children — were killed in Lebanon in one of the attacks.
Hussein Zeineddine, one of the brothers, had been on vacation with his family in southern Lebanon when the area was hit by Israeli attacks, he told The Associated Press. He and his family moved to a safer location until they could book flights back to Brazil. “My wife was crying and asking us to leave. We left just with basic items. And then, shortly after, my sister’s house was bombed,” he said after his arrival.
“It will be tough here. But it will be tougher for people there,” he said.
In Cyprus, Rosaline Ghoukassian said the overwhelming majority of Lebanese don’t want this war. She relocated to Cyprus with her husband Raffi Garabedian and their daughter Maria after the 2020 ammonium nitrate explosion in Beirut’s port that killed more than 200 people. She said she’d been disenchanted with Lebanon’s political leadership and also lamented Hezbollah’s influence.
“We knew this was coming,” she said. “The problem is in Lebanon. ... Because we don’t have a good government.”
Their decision to leave Lebanon was never about money but safety, as their daughter explained in a letter she wrote in class in Cyprus: “I don’t want to go there because I was saved in the explosion, and I don’t want to go live there because I don’t want to die.”
The family chose to stay.
“I’m not here to make thousands of euros. No. I’m here just to live. To be happy, to be safe. This is what I want. To live,” Garabedian said.
Hezbollah began firing into Israel the day after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which the militants killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 others hostage. Since then, Israel’s military response in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.
Back in California, Siddiqui said coping with it all has been challenging.
“You grab the phone; you hesitate to open it because you’re afraid of what you’re going to see, but you kind of have to.”
She talks to friends and others in her circle who can relate.
“We all feel kind of sad, depressed, helpless, rundown,” she said. “We can do things like fundraise and donate and protest or anything like that, but at the end of the day, it still weighs on you.”


A displaced family’s year of fleeing across the devastated Gaza Strip

A displaced family’s year of fleeing across the devastated Gaza Strip
Updated 06 October 2024
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A displaced family’s year of fleeing across the devastated Gaza Strip

A displaced family’s year of fleeing across the devastated Gaza Strip
  • Israel’s war on Gaza has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza — 1.9 million of its 2.3 million Palestinians

DEIR AL-BALAH: Ne’man Abu Jarad sat on a tarp on the ground. Around him, canvas sheets hung from cords, forming the walls of his tent. For the past year, Ne’man; his wife, Majida; and their six daughters have trekked the length of the Gaza Strip, trying to survive as Israeli forceswreaked destruction around them.
It’s a far cry from their house in northern Gaza — a place of comforting routine, of love, affection and safety. A place where loved ones gathered around the kitchen table or on the roof on summer evenings amid the scent of roses and jasmine flowers.
“Your house is your homeland. Everything good in our life was the home,” Ne’man said. “Everything in it, whether physical or intangible — family, neighbors, my siblings who were all around me.
“We are missing all that.”
The Abu Jarad family lost that stability when Israel launched its war on Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
They did exactly as the Israelis ordered in the devastating weeks and months of war that followed. They obeyed evacuation calls. They moved where the military told them to move. Seven times they fled, and each time, their lives became more unrecognizable to them, crowding with strangers in a school classroom, searching for water in a vast tent camp or sleeping on the street.


The Associated Press traced the family’s journey as they were driven from their home. Israel’s war has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza — 1.9 million of its 2.3 million Palestinians — and killed more than 41,600 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Like the Abu Jarads, most families have been uprooted multiple times.
For this family, the journey has taken them from a comfortable middle-class life to ruin.
Before the war: A cozy life
Living at the northernmost end of Gaza, most days before the war in Beit Hanoun were simple. Ne’man headed out each morning to work as a taxi driver. Majida got their daughters off to school. Their youngest, Lana, had started first grade. Hoda, the 18-year-old, was in her first year at university. The eldest, Balsam, just had her first baby.
Majida spent much of her day doing housework — her face lights up when she talks about her kitchen, the center of family life.
Ne’man had planted the garden with a grapevine and covered the roof with potted flowers. Watering them in the evenings was a soothing ritual. Then, the family and neighbors would sit on the front stoop or the roof to chat.
“The area would always smell nice,” he said. “People would say we have perfume because of how beautiful the flowers are.”
Oct. 7: The attack
On the morning of Oct. 7, the family heard Hamas rockets firing and news of the militants’ attack into southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 250 kidnapped.
The Abu Jarads knew that the Israeli response would be swift and that their house, only about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the border fence with Israel, would be on the front line.
By 9 a.m., Ne’man and Majida, their six daughters, and Ne’man’s sister packed up what they could and fled, as the Israeli military issued one of its first evacuation orders.
“It makes no sense to be stubborn and stay,” Majida said. “It is not about one person. I am part of a family and have girls.”
Oct. 7-13: Staying with Majida’s parents
Like many, the family tried, at first, to stay close to home. They went to stay with Majida’s parents, in Beit Lahiya about a kilometer (.6 miles) away.
“The place was very comfortable, to be honest. I felt like I was at home,” Majida said. “But we were living in fear and terror.”
Already, Beit Lahiya was being heavily bombarded. Over the six days they were there, at least nine Israeli strikes hit the town, killing dozens, according to the conflict monitor Airwars. Entire families were killed or wounded under the rubble of their homes.
As the explosions got closer, shrapnel pierced water tanks at Majida’s parents’ home. Windows shattered as the family huddled inside.
It was time to move again.
Oct. 13-15: Refuge at a hospital
When they arrived at Al-Quds hospital, the family saw for the first time the scale of displacement.
The building and its grounds were packed with thousands of people. All around northern Gaza, families took refuge in hospitals, hoping they’d be safe.
The family found a small space on the floor, barely enough room to spread their blanket amid the frantic medical staff struggling with the wounded.
It was a black night and there were strikes, Majida remembers. “The martyrs and wounded were strewn on the floor,” she said.
The day after they arrived, a strike smashed into a house a few hundred meters away, killing a prominent doctor and some two dozen members of his family, many of them children.
The Israeli military ordered all civilians to leave northern Gaza, setting in motion a wave of hundreds of thousands of people heading south across Wadi Gaza, the stream and wetlands that divide the north from the rest of the strip.
The family joined the exodus.
Oct. 15-Dec. 26: A cramped school
The family walked 10 kilometers (6 miles) until they reached the UN-run Girls’ Preparatory School in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Every classroom and corridor was packed with families from the north. Majida, the daughters and Ne’man’s sister found a tiny space in a classroom already housing more than 100 women and children. For privacy in the cramped conditions, Ne’man moved in with the men in tents outside, in the schoolyard.
This was their home for more than 10 weeks. Majida and the girls slept curled up on the floor, without enough space even to extend their legs. As winter set in, there weren’t enough blankets.
The bathrooms were the worst part, Majida said. Only a few toilets served thousands of people. Getting a shower was a miracle, she said. People went weeks unable to bathe. Skin diseases ran rampant.
Every day, the daughters went at dawn to wait in line at the few bakeries still working and came back in the afternoon, sometimes with only one flatbread. One day, Ne’man and his daughters walked 5 kilometers (3 miles) to the town of Deir Al-Balah, looking for drinkable water.
“If it wasn’t for the kind people in Deir Al-Balah who took pity on us and gave us half a gallon, we could have returned with nothing,” Ne’man said.
As strikes continued, the family decided to go as far as possible, trekking 20 kilometers (12 miles) to Rafah, at Gaza’s southernmost end.
Dec. 26-May 14: Life in a tent
The Abu Jarads weren’t the only ones: As Israeli evacuation orders ate away at more and more of Gaza, nearly half of the population crammed into Rafah.
Here, the family had their first taste of living in a tent.
They set up amid the massive sprawl of tens of thousands of tents on Rafah’s outskirts, near UN aid warehouses known as “the barracks.”
“In the winter, it was hell, water drenched us,” Majida said. “We slept on the ground, nothing under us, and no covers.”
They had no money to buy food in the markets, where prices soared. The youngest girls got sick with colds and diarrhea, and there was no nearby pharmacy to buy medicine. The family survived completely off UN handouts of flour and other basics.
“To buy one tomato or cucumber and find it in the tent was like a dream,” Ne’man said.
Like so many others, they’d believed Rafah was the last safe place in Gaza.
It was not.
In the first week of May, Israel ordered the evacuation of all of Rafah. Then its troops pushed into the city. Bombardment intensified.
Ne’man and Majida tried to stay as long as possible. But an airstrike hit nearby, he said, killing four of Ne’man’s cousins and a young girl.
May 16-Aug. 16: “Humanitarian zone”
Palestinians who’d packed into Rafah — more than 1 million — all streamed out again, fleeing the Israeli offensive.
They scattered across southern and central Gaza. New tent cities filled beaches, fields, empty lots, schoolyards, cemeteries, even dumpsites – any open space.
The Abu Jarads moved by foot and donkey cart until they reached a former amusement park known as Asdaa City. Now its Ferris wheel stood above a landscape of tents stretching as far as the eye could see.
Here, in Muwasi, a barren area of dunes and fields along the coast, Israel had declared a “humanitarian zone” – though there was little aid, food or water.
Every amenity once taken for granted was a distant memory. Now the kitchen was a pile of sticks for kindling and two rocks for setting a pot over the fire. No shower, only the occasional bucket of water. Soap was too expensive. Only a draped sheet separated them from their neighbors. Everything was filthy and sandy. Large spiders, cockroaches and other insects crept into the tent.
Aug. 16-26: Fleeing to the sea
Even the “humanitarian zone” was unsafe.
A raid by Israeli troops less than a kilometer (half-mile) away forced Majida and Ne’man to uproot their family once more. They headed toward the Mediterranean coast, not knowing where they’d stay.
Fortunately, they said, they found some acquaintances.
“God bless them, they opened their tent for us and let us live with them for 10 days,” Ne’man said.
Late August: Moving again, no end in sight
When they returned to Muwasi, the Abu Jarads found their tent had been robbed – their food and clothes, all gone.
Since then, the weeks blur together. The family finds survival itself loses meaning in a conflict that seems to have no end.
Food has become even harder to find as supplies entering Gaza drop to their lowest levels of the war.
Israeli drones buzz overhead constantly. The mental strain wears on everyone.
One day, Ne’man said, his youngest daughter, Lana, told him, “You stopped loving me. Because now when I come near you, you say you are fed up and tell me to stay away.”
He kept telling her, “No, darling, I love you. I just can’t bear it all.”
They all dream of home. Ne’man said he learned that his brother’s house next door was destroyed in a strike, and his own home was damaged. He wonders about his flowers. He hopes they survived — even if the house is gone.
The difference between then and now, Majida said, is “the difference between heaven and earth.”
Far from the warmth and affection of home, the Abu Jarads feel themselves surrendering to despair.
“We are jealous,” Majida said. “Jealous of who? Of the people who were killed. Because they found relief while we are still suffering, living horrors, torture and heartbreak.”