Qatar condemns Israel’s UNRWA ban, will work with Biden administration until ‘last minute’ for Gaza ceasefire deal

Update Qatar condemns Israel’s UNRWA ban, will work with Biden administration until ‘last minute’ for Gaza ceasefire deal
Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani walks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Oman's Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Hamad al-Busaidi at a group picture opportunity during a Joint Ministerial Meeting of the GCC-US Strategic Partnership discussing the humanitarian situation in Gaza, at the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretariat in Riyadh on April 29, 2024. (File/AFP)
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Updated 29 October 2024
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Qatar condemns Israel’s UNRWA ban, will work with Biden administration until ‘last minute’ for Gaza ceasefire deal

Qatar condemns Israel’s UNRWA ban, will work with Biden administration until ‘last minute’ for Gaza ceasefire deal
  • Israeli lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly voted to ban the agency

DOHA: Gaza war mediator Qatar on Tuesday condemned the Israeli parliament’s decision to ban the UN agency for Palestinian refugees from operating in Israel, the Gulf emirate’s foreign ministry said.
Israeli lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly voted to ban the agency, UNRWA, from working in Israel and annexed east Jerusalem.
The lawmakers also passed a measure prohibiting Israeli officials from working with UNRWA and its employees.
“We emphasize that stopping support for UNRWA will have disastrous consequences,” ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari told reporters.
“The international community cannot stand silent in the face of this disregard for its international institutions,” he added.
Qatar, along with the United States and Egypt, has mediated months of negotiations for a deal to end the Gaza war and exchange Israeli hostages held there for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The talks have thus far failed to result in an agreement, with both of the warring parties accusing the other of blocking it.
In a bid to break the deadlock at the tail end of US President Joe Biden’s administration, Washington and Doha last week announced a fresh round of in-person Doha talks that would explore new options.
With the US election around the corner, Ansari told reporters that Qatar did not see “any negative result of the elections on the mediation process itself.”
He added that Qatar believes it is “dealing with institutions and in a country like the United States, the institutions are invested in finding a resolution to this crisis.”
UNRWA has provided essential aid, schooling and health care across the Palestinian territories and to Palestinian refugees elsewhere for more than seven decades.
UNRWA and other humanitarian agencies have accused Israeli authorities of restricting aid flows into Gaza, where almost all of the territory’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once during the war.
The agency itself has suffered heavy losses, with at least 223 of its staff killed and two-thirds of its facilities in Gaza damaged or destroyed since the war began.
In January, Israel accused a dozen of UNRWA’s Gaza employees of involvement in the October 7 attack by Hamas.
A series of probes found some “neutrality related issues” at UNRWA, and determined that nine employees “may have been involved” in the October 7 attack, but found no evidence for Israel’s chief allegations.


US, France, Germany, UK urge ‘de-escalation’ in Syria: joint statement

US, France, Germany, UK urge ‘de-escalation’ in Syria: joint statement
Updated 02 December 2024
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US, France, Germany, UK urge ‘de-escalation’ in Syria: joint statement

US, France, Germany, UK urge ‘de-escalation’ in Syria: joint statement

WASHINGTON: The United States and its allies France, Germany and Britain called Sunday for “de-escalation” in Syria and urged in a joint statement for the protection of civilians and infrastructure.
“The current escalation only underscores the urgent need for a Syrian-led political solution to the conflict, in line with UNSCR 2254,” read a statement issued by the US State Department, referencing the 2015 UN resolution that endorsed a peace process in Syria.

 


Britain ups Gaza aid ahead of donor conference

Britain ups Gaza aid ahead of donor conference
Updated 02 December 2024
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Britain ups Gaza aid ahead of donor conference

Britain ups Gaza aid ahead of donor conference
  • Aid organizations accuse Israel of preventing trucks from entering Gaza in large enough numbers to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in the war-torn territory

LONDON: Britain will provide an additional 19 million pounds ($24 million) in humanitarian aid to Gaza, the international development minister said Monday, calling for Israel to give greater access ahead of a key conference on the conflict.
“Gazans are in desperate need of food, and shelter with the onset of winter,” the minister, Anneliese Dodds, said in a statement as she headed for a three-day visit to the region, including an international conference in Cairo Monday on the Gaza Strip’s aid needs.
“The Cairo conference will be an opportunity to get leading voices in one room and put forward real-world solutions to the humanitarian crisis,” she added.
“Israel must immediately act to ensure unimpeded aid access to Gaza.”

Anneliese Dodds. (AFP file photo)

Aid organizations accuse Israel of preventing trucks from entering Gaza in large enough numbers to alleviate a humanitarian crisis in the war-torn territory.
The new UK funding will be split into 12 million pounds for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the World Food Programme (WFP), and seven million pounds for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), the statement said.
UNRWA announced Sunday it had halted the delivery of aid through the key Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza because of safety fears, saying the situation had become “impossible.”
Britain has committed to spending a total of 99 million pounds this year in humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territories, the government said.
After Dodds’s Cairo stop, the minister is to travel to the Palestinian territories and Israel.
Islamist militant group Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the death of 1,207 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures, which includes hostages killed in captivity.
Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 44,429 in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
 

 


Airstrikes in northwestern Syria kill 25 people, says Syria’s White Helmets

Airstrikes in northwestern Syria kill 25 people, says Syria’s White Helmets
Updated 02 December 2024
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Airstrikes in northwestern Syria kill 25 people, says Syria’s White Helmets

Airstrikes in northwestern Syria kill 25 people, says Syria’s White Helmets
  • The Syria offensive began Wednesday, the same day a truce between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah came into effect

DAMASCUS: The Syrian rescue service known as the White Helmets said early on Monday on X that at least 25 people have been killed in northwestern Syria in airstrikes carried out by the Syrian government and Russia on Sunday.

 


In Blinken call, Turkiye backs moves to ease Syria tension

In Blinken call, Turkiye backs moves to ease Syria tension
Updated 02 December 2024
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In Blinken call, Turkiye backs moves to ease Syria tension

In Blinken call, Turkiye backs moves to ease Syria tension
  • The flareup has also seen pro-Turkish militants groups attacking both government forces and Kurdish YPG fighters in and around the northern Aleppo province over the weekend, a Syrian war monitor said

ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s top diplomat and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Sunday about the “rapidly developing” conflict in Syria where militants have made gains.
Blinken and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan discussed by telephone “the need for de-escalation and the protection of civilian lives and infrastructure in Aleppo and elsewhere,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
The call came after Syrian militants and their Turkish-backed allies launched their biggest offensive in years, seizing control of Syria’s second-largest city Aleppo from forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.
According to a Turkish foreign ministry source, Fidan told Blinken Ankara was “against any development that would increase instability in the region” and said Turkiye would “support moves to reduce the tension in Syria.”
He also said “the political process between the regime and the opposition should be finalized” to ensure peace in Syria while insisting that Ankara would “never allow terrorist activities against Turkiye nor against Syrian civilians.”
The flareup has also seen pro-Turkish militant groups attacking government forces and Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) fighters in and around Aleppo, a Syrian war monitor said.
Turkiye sees the YPG as an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has led a decades-long insurgency against Ankara.
The Syria offensive began Wednesday, the same day a truce between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah came into effect.
More than 400 people have so far been killed in the offensive, most of them combatants, a Syrian war monitor said.
The State Department said the two also discussed “humanitarian efforts in Gaza and the need to bring the war to an end” as well as efforts to secure the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Fidan said Israel “should keep its promises in order for the Lebanon ceasefire to become permanent” and called for a ceasefire in Gaza “as soon as possible.”
The pair also discussed Ukraine and South Caucasus, the source said.

 


Russia says helping Syrian army ‘repel’ insurgents in three northern provinces

Russia says helping Syrian army ‘repel’ insurgents in three northern provinces
Updated 02 December 2024
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Russia says helping Syrian army ‘repel’ insurgents in three northern provinces

Russia says helping Syrian army ‘repel’ insurgents in three northern provinces
  • Russia launched airstrikes on militant targets in Aleppo for the first time since 2016

MOSCOW: Russia on Sunday said it was helping the Syrian army “repel” armed insurgents in three northern provinces, as Moscow seeks to support the government led by its ally Bashar al-Assad.
An Islamist-dominated militant alliance launched an offensive against the Syrian government on Wednesday, with Syrian forces losing control of the city of Aleppo on Sunday, according to a war monitor.
“The Syrian Arab Army, with the assistance of the Russian Aerospace Forces, is continuing its operation to repel terrorist aggression in the provinces of Idlib, Hama and Aleppo,” the Russian military said in a briefing on its website.
“Over the past day, missile and bombing strikes were carried out on places where militants and equipment were gathered,” it said in the same briefing, without saying where or by whom.
It said at least “320 militants were destroyed.”
Russia announced earlier this week that it was bombing militant targets in the war-torn country, with Russian warplanes striking parts of Aleppo — Syria’s second city — for the first time since 2016, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Moscow is Syrian leader Assad’s most important military backer, having turned the tide of the civil war in his favor when it intervened in 2015.