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Former defense minister Yaalon accuses Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Gaza

Former Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon joins anti-government protesters and supporters of Israelis held hostage in Gaza during a sit-in calling for their release near the prime minister's residence in Jerusalem on October 28, 2024. (AFP)
Former Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon joins anti-government protesters and supporters of Israelis held hostage in Gaza during a sit-in calling for their release near the prime minister's residence in Jerusalem on October 28, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 01 December 2024
AFP
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Former defense minister Yaalon accuses Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Gaza

Former defense minister Yaalon accuses Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Gaza
  • ‘There is no more Beit Lahia, no more Beit Hanoun, the army intervenes in Jabalia and in reality the land is being cleared of Arabs’
Updated 01 December 2024
AFP
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JERUSALEM: Israel’s former defense minister Moshe Yaalon on Saturday accused the Israeli army of “ethnic cleansing” in the Gaza Strip, sparking an outcry in the country.
“The road we are being led down is conquest, annexation and ethnic cleansing,” Yaalon said in an interview on the private DemocratTV channel.
Pressed on the “ethnic cleansing” appraisal, he continued: “What is happening there? There is no more Beit Lahia, no more Beit Hanoun, the army intervenes in Jabalia and in reality the land is being cleared of Arabs.”
The north of the Gaza Strip, which includes the areas Yaalon mentioned, has been the target of an Israeli offensive since October 6 aimed at preventing the Palestinian militant group Hamas from regrouping.
Yaalon, 74, was the head of the Israeli army between 2002 and 2005, just before Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.
He served as defense minister and deputy premier before resigning in 2016 over disagreements with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
There was immediate anger in Israel at his comments.
Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said it was a “shame” for Israel to “have had such a figure as army chief and defense minister.”
Netanyahu’s Likud party, to which Yaalon once belonged, slammed his “empty and dishonest remarks,” calling them “a gift to the ICC and to the camp of Israel’s enemies.”
The statement was a reference to the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and his ex-defense minister Yoav Gallant on suspicion of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
The war in the Palestinian territory erupted after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in 1,207 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 44,382 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the UN considers reliable.
Earlier this month, a UN special committee pointed to “mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions intentionally imposed on Palestinians.”
Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza was “consistent with the characteristics of genocide,” the committee said, in the first use of the word by the UN in the context of the current war in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the United Nations assessment as “anti-Israel fabrications.”

Topics: War on Gaza Palestine Gaza US

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Hamas releases hostage video claiming to show living hostage

Hamas releases hostage video claiming to show living hostage
Updated 4 sec ago
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Hamas releases hostage video claiming to show living hostage

Hamas releases hostage video claiming to show living hostage
Updated 4 sec ago
In the video a man who introduces himself as Matan Zangauker, 24, can be seen pleading with the Israeli leaders to make a deal
Hamas has released several videos of hostages begging to be released

JERUSALEM: Hamas released a video claiming to show Israeli hostage Matan Zangauker in captivity on Saturday.
In the video a man who introduces himself as Matan Zangauker, 24, can be seen pleading with the Israeli leaders to make a deal that would bring captives being held by Hamas in Gaza back to Israel.
Mediating countries, including Qatar, see increased momentum for a possible deal that could allow the 100 hostages being held in Gaza to be released in exchange for scores of Palestinian prisoners, after Israel signed a landmark ceasefire deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon last month.
Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy has traveled to Qatar and Israel to try to kickstart the US president-elect’s diplomatic push for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal before he takes office on Jan. 20, a source briefed on the talks told Reuters.
Hamas has released several videos of hostages begging to be released over the course of the war as it enters its fifteenth month, but Israeli officials have dismissed the short, edited clips as psychological propaganda meant to put pressure on the government.
The Hostage Families Forum, which represents hostage family members, called the video “proof of life” and said that it “provides further evidence that after more than 420 days in captivity, there are hostages still alive and enduring severe suffering.”

Syrian insurgents have reached suburbs of Damascus, activists say

Syrian insurgents have reached suburbs of Damascus, activists say
Updated 35 sec ago
Reuters
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Syrian insurgents have reached suburbs of Damascus, activists say

Syrian insurgents have reached suburbs of Damascus, activists say
  • The pace of events has raised fears of a fresh wave of regional instability, with Qatar saying it threatens Syria’s territorial integrity
  • Syria’s civil war, which erupted in 2011, dragged in big outside powers, created space for militants to plot attacks around the world
Updated 35 sec ago
Reuters

AMMAN/BEIRUT: Syrian militants readied to press their lightning advance on Saturday as government forces buttressed collapsing frontlines and bombarded the insurgents’ positions around Homs, in a bid to save President Bashar Assad’s 24-year rule.

Since the militants’ sweep into Aleppo a week ago, government defenses have crumbled across the country at dizzying speed as insurgents seized a string of major cities and rose up in places where the rebellion had long seemed over.

Besides capturing Aleppo in the north, Hama in the center and Deir Ezzor in the east, militants rose up in southern Suweida and Daraa, saying on Friday they had taken control of the two cities and posting videos showing insurgent celebrations there.

Syria’s military said it was carrying out airstrikes around Hama and Homs and reinforcing on that front. It also said it was repositioning around Daraa and Suweida, without acknowledging their capture by militants.

The pace of events has stunned Arab capitals and raised fears of a fresh wave of regional instability, with Qatar saying on Saturday it threatened Syria’s territorial integrity.

Syria’s civil war, which erupted in 2011 as an uprising against Assad’s rule, dragged in big outside powers, created space for jihadist militants to plot attacks around the world and sent millions of refugees into neighboring states.

Western officials say the Syrian military is in a difficult situation, unable to halt militant gains and forced into retreat.

Assad had long relied on allies to subdue the militants, with Russian warplanes bombing from the skies while Iran sent allied forces including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraqi militia to bolster the Syrian military and storm insurgent strongholds.

But Russia has been focused on the war in Ukraine since 2022 and Hezbollah’s leadership has been decimated this year in its own grueling war with Israel.

Russia on Friday urged its nationals to leave the country. Iran evacuated families of diplomats from Syria, an Iranian official said.

Hezbollah has sent some “supervising forces” to Homs on Friday but any significant deployment would risk exposure to Israeli airstrikes, Western officials said. Israel attacked two Lebanon-Syria border crossings on Friday, Lebanon said.

Iran-backed Iraqi militias are on high alert, with thousands of heavily armed fighters ready to deploy to Syria, many of them amassed near the border. But they have not yet been ordered to cross, two of their commanders said. Iraq does not seek military intervention in Syria, a government spokesman said on Friday.

BATTLE FOR HOMS

The militants said they were “at the walls” of Homs after taking the last village on its northern outskirts late on Friday, a day after seizing nearby Hama following a brief battle outside the city.

Inside Homs, a resident said the situation had felt normal until Friday, but had grown more tense with the sound of airstrikes and gunfire clearly audible and pro-Assad militia groups setting up checkpoints.

“They are sending a message to people to keep in line and that they should not get excited and not expect Homs to go easily,” the resident said.

Seizing Homs, a key crossroads between the capital and the Mediterranean, would cut off Damascus from the coastal stronghold of Assad’s minority Alawite sect, and from a naval base and air base of his Russian allies there.

Militants outside Homs came under intense bombardment overnight and the military and its allies were attempting to dig in for a defense of the city, both sides said.

A Syrian military officer said there was a lull in fighting on Saturday morning after a night of intense airstrikes on the militants.

A coalition of militant factions that include the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) made a last call on forces loyal to Assad’s government in Homs to defect.

Ahead of the militant advance, thousands of people fled Homs toward the coastal regions of Latakia and Tartus, strongholds of the government, residents and witnesses said.

“Homs is the key. It will be very hard for Assad to make a stand but if Homs should fall, the main highway from Damascus to Tartus and the coast will be closed, cutting the capital off from the Alawite Mountains,” said Jonathan Landis, a Syria specialist at the University of Oklahoma.

“But the Syrian army won’t fight. No one wants to die for Assad and his regime,” he added.

Taking Daraa and Suweida in the south could allow a concerted assault on the capital, the seat of Assad’s power, military sources said.

Militant sources said on Friday the military had agreed to make an orderly withdrawal from Daraa under a deal giving army officials safe passage to the capital Damascus, about 100km north.

Daraa, which had a population of more than 100,000 before the civil war began 13 years ago, holds symbolic importance as the cradle of the uprising. It is the capital of a province of about one million people, bordering Jordan.

In the east, a US-backed alliance led by Syrian Kurdish fighters captured Deir El-Zor, the government’s main foothold in the vast desert, on Friday, three Syrian sources said, jeopardizing Assad’s land connection to allies in Iraq.

Russian bases in Syria threatened by insurgent advance, say Moscow’s war bloggers

Russian bases in Syria threatened by insurgent advance, say Moscow’s war bloggers
Updated 07 December 2024
Reuters
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Russian bases in Syria threatened by insurgent advance, say Moscow’s war bloggers

Russian bases in Syria threatened by insurgent advance, say Moscow’s war bloggers
  • Rapid advances by the insurgents threaten to undermine Russia’s geopolitical clout in the Middle East
  • Russian war bloggers say the most immediate threat is to the future of Russia’s Hmeimim air base in Syria’s Latakia province and to its naval facility at Tartous on the coast
Updated 07 December 2024
Reuters

DAMASCUS: Two strategically-important Russian military facilities in Syria and Moscow’s very presence in the Middle East are under serious threat from rapidly advancing insurgents, Russian war bloggers have warned.
With Russian military resources mostly tied down in Ukraine where Moscow’s forces are rushing to take more territory before Donald Trump comes to power in the US in January, Russia’s ability to influence the situation on the ground in Syria is far more limited than in 2015 when it intervened decisively to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Rapid advances by the insurgents threaten to undermine Russia’s geopolitical clout in the Middle East and its ability to project power in the region, across the Mediterranean and into Africa. They also risk dealing an embarrassing setback to President Vladimir Putin, who casts Russia’s intervention in Syria as an example of how Moscow can use force to shape events far away and compete with the West.
But Russian war bloggers, some of whom are close to the Russian Defense Ministry and whom the Russian authorities allow greater freedom to speak out than the military, say the most immediate threat is to the future of Russia’s Hmeimim air base in Syria’s Latakia province and to its naval facility at Tartous on the coast.
The Tartous facility is Russia’s only Mediterranean repair and replenishment hub, and Moscow has used Syria as a staging post to fly its military contractors in and out of Africa.
Influential Russian war blogger “Rybar,” who is close to the Russian Defense Ministry and has over 1.3 million followers on his Telegram channel, said Moscow’s forces were facing a grave threat.
“In reality we need to understand that the insurgents will not stop,” Rybar warned.
“They will try to inflict the maximum defeat and the maximum reputational and physical damage on the representatives of the Russian Federation (in Syria) and in particular to destroy our military bases.”
Relying on the Syrian army alone was a lost cause, he added, saying it would continue to fall back unless properly supported by the Russian air force and specialists.
The Russian Defense Ministry could not be reached for comment on a non-working day. The Russian Embassy in Damascus has advised Russian nationals to leave Syria.
Asked on Saturday in Doha about the fate of the Russian bases, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he was “not in the business of guessing” what would happen, but said Moscow was doing all it could to prevent “terrorists” from prevailing.
He said he was not worried about how events in Syria would affect his own reputation or that of Russia, but was worried about the fate of the Syrian people.

RUSSIAN FORCES BADLY EXPOSED, SAYS BLOGGER
The Russian air force has been helping government forces launch air strikes against insurgents and the Kremlin has said it still supports Assad and is analizing the situation to see what help is needed to stabilize the situation.
However, Russia’s “Fighterbomber” war blogger, who has over 500,000 followers, said Moscow’s forces in Syria were badly exposed and that losing the Hmeimim air base would mean losing the ability to carry out air strikes which he said was 75 percent of Moscow’s capabilities there.
“The Hmeimim airfield is not a multi-story industrial project with basements. It is a field with lightly assembled buildings on top, which will cease to function as soon as the enemy gets within artillery or drone flight range,” he said.
“The situation with the naval base in Tartous is about the same. Of course, it can be defended and held for quite a long time if there is someone and something to do it, but it will either not be able to function at all, or in a very limited way.”
Nor, he warned, would a full evacuation of all of Russia’s military equipment be possible if it became necessary.
“Therefore, the main task of our forces in Syria is to prevent the enemy from entering Latakia, even if we have to temporarily give up the rest of the territory.”
With over 600,000 followers, war blogger “Starshe Eddi” said Russia had paid a heavy price for a foothold in Syria.
“Ten years there, dead Russian soldiers, billions of roubles spent and thousands of tons of ammunition expended — they must be compensated somehow and somehow,” he wrote.
“The only thing that can...give us a chance to compensate for the current failure and the resources we have used up is our retention of the Latakia and Tartous provinces.”
Igor Girkin, a prominent Russian ex-militia commander who fought in Ukraine and who is serving a four-year jail term after accusing Putin and the army’s top brass of mistakes in the Ukraine war, said Moscow’s position in Syria had always been exposed from a reinforcement and supply point of view.
“Now our enemies have naturally decided to take advantage of our weakness at the moment when we are busy on the Ukrainian front,” he wrote from prison.
“We are overstretched. The defeat of the Syrian side will also be our defeat.”

Topics: Syria Russian military Latakia Hmeimim air base

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Syrian insurgents have reached suburbs of Damascus, activists say

Source close to Hezbollah says sent 2,000 fighters to Syria

Source close to Hezbollah says sent 2,000 fighters to Syria
Updated 07 December 2024
AFP
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Source close to Hezbollah says sent 2,000 fighters to Syria

Source close to Hezbollah says sent 2,000 fighters to Syria
  • The source said that since the Islamist-led militant offensive began last week, Hezbollah has not taken an active part in the fighting
  • The group’s fighters had been sent “to defend its positions” in the mountains along the Syria-Lebanon border
Updated 07 December 2024
AFP

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Hezbollah has sent 2,000 fighters into Syria, a source close to the armed group said on Saturday, as ally Damascus reels from a militant offensive that has seized major cities.
The Iran-backed group, which has fought alongside the forces of President Bashar Assad during Syria’s war since 2011, “sent 2,000 fighters to the Qusayr area” near the Lebanese border, the source told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The source said that since the Islamist-led militant offensive began last week, Hezbollah has not taken an active part in the fighting.
The group’s fighters had been sent “to defend its positions” in the mountains along the Syria-Lebanon border, the source said, adding that Hezbollah “has not yet participated in any battles.”
The militant coalition in Syria has already seized two of Syria’s main cities, Aleppo in the north and Hama in the center.
They launched their offensive on November 27, the same day that a ceasefire took effect in the war between Hezbollah and Israel, which has left the Lebanese group weakened.
On Saturday, militant forces were at the gates of the key central city of Homs and were advancing toward the capital Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
The source said Hezbollah sent “150 military advisers to Homs, to help the Syrian army if it decides to defend” the city.
Since 2013, Hezbollah has openly backed Assad’s forces.
Hezbollah fighters helped Assad regain territory lost earlier in the civil war, which broke out in 2011 after the repression of anti-government protests.
The Lebanese group supported Syrian government forces as they seized Qusayr city from militant control in 2013, with Hezbollah later setting up a military base and training camp there.
But as the war in Syria had been largely dormant until last week, Hezbollah has “withdrawn the majority of its fighters over the past two years,” said the source.
It did keep military advisers in Aleppo and Hama, the source said, without specifying whether they had left before the militant forces captured the two cities in recent days.
Russia and Iran have also intervened in the war to prop up Assad’s rule and help his forces claw back territory.
Tehran on November 28 announced that one of its Revolutionary Guards generals had been killed in the fighting in Aleppo.

Topics: Syria Hezbollah Israel Lebanon President Bashar Al-Assad Qusayr

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Yemen can’t wait ‘forever’ for peace roadmap, UN envoy says

Yemen can’t wait ‘forever’ for peace roadmap, UN envoy says
Updated 07 December 2024
AFP
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Yemen can’t wait ‘forever’ for peace roadmap, UN envoy says

Yemen can’t wait ‘forever’ for peace roadmap, UN envoy says
  • Any chance of implementing a roadmap has effectively been put on hold by escalating regional crises sparked by the war in Gaza
  • Although preparatory discussions are continuing with all sides, “obviously... it cannot stay like this forever,” Grundberg said
Updated 07 December 2024
AFP

MANAMA: Yemen’s warring parties and beleaguered people cannot wait indefinitely for a roadmap to peace before the country slips back to war, the UN special envoy told AFP.
Hans Grundberg insisted it was “still possible” to solve the conflict in impoverished Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthi militants control much of the country.
But any chance of implementing a roadmap has effectively been put on hold by escalating regional crises sparked by the war in Gaza.
Although preparatory discussions are continuing with all sides, “obviously... it cannot stay like this forever,” Grundberg said in an interview at the Manama Dialogue conference in Bahrain.
“At a certain point, there is an expected delivery that the parties want to see happen. And if that doesn’t take place, you risk losing the necessary momentum that you have, and that danger is clear.”
He added: “There are belligerent voices in the region. What I’m saying is, don’t go down that road — it’s possible to settle this conflict.”
Yemen has been at war since March 2015, when a Saudi-led coalition began a campaign to dislodge the Houthis who had seized control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, months earlier.
A UN-brokered ceasefire in April 2022 calmed fighting and in December last year, even after the Israel-Hamas war had started, the warring parties committed to a peace process.
But US and British strikes on Houthi targets in January, after the militants began attacking shipping on the vital Red Sea trade route, “complicated the mediation space tremendously.”
“On the basis of that, we have not been able to take the step forward from the commitments that were agreed to in 2023 to the assigned roadmap,” Grundberg said.
The UN envoy said it’s not “possible to move forward with the roadmap right now, because I don’t think that the implementation of that roadmap would be possible.”
But he added: “I still believe that the foundation for a roadmap in Yemen is there because the conflict between Yemenis is solvable.
“However, the complicating factor now is the regional destabilization, where Yemen has become an integral part through the attacks in the Red Sea.”
Grundberg said the roadmap is “not a magic wand” for Yemen, which has been plunged into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises with two-thirds of the population dependent on aid.
The roadmap is intended as a structure for implementing humanitarian and economic commitments, and steps toward a permanent ceasefire and political process, over a nominal period of three years.
“So here I think the responsibility that lies on our side is to ensure that this momentum is upheld and that the parties understand the necessity to... trust in the fact that this is possible to achieve,” Grundberg said.
“If not, the consequences are known. If you slip back into a violent confrontation internally, I think the consequences of that are pretty well known and I don’t think that they would be in favor of anyone.”
He added: “I would guess that the Yemeni people should be impatient as a whole. I think that they have been waiting for peace for far too long.
“Everyone wants this to come to an end.”

Topics: Yemen UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg Houthis

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