Charity urges Starmer to allow 2 children from Gaza entry to UK for lifesaving treatment
Surgeon fears Haitham, 3, could die from severe burns from an Israeli airstrike if he remains in the territory
Project Pure Hope says UK govt should act to save the children after recently condemning Israel’s military campaign
Updated 30 May 2025
Arab News
LONDON: A medical charity has written to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pleading with him to allow two severely ill children from Gaza to be flown to the UK for lifesaving treatment.
One of the children, three-year-old Haitham, was badly burned when an Israeli airstrike hit the family home, killing his father and pregnant mother, Sky News reported.
He has been left with burns across 35 percent of his body and is being treated in Nasser hospital, the last working medical facility in southern Gaza.
UK charity calls on government to rescue two children in Gaza.
Our special correspondent @AlexCrawfordSky spoke with doctors treating Haitham who are worried he might not survive.
British surgeon Dr. Victoria Rose, who is treating Haitham, said she is worried he might not survive because the hospital no longer has the resources to look after him properly.
“It’s a massive burn for a little guy like this,” Rose said. “He’s so adorable. His eyelids are burnt. His hands are burnt. His feet are burnt.”
Referring to the renewed violence in Gaza, she said: “Every time I come, I say it’s really bad, but this is on a completely different scale now. It’s mass casualties. It’s utter carnage.
“We are incapable of getting through this volume. We don’t have the personnel. We don’t have the medical supplies. And we really don’t have the facilities.
“We are the last standing hospital in the south of Gaza. We really are on our knees now.”
Haitham’s grandfather, Hatem Karara, said Haitham had also suffered internal bleeding.
He said: “What did these children do wrong to suffer such injuries. To be burned and bombed? We ask God to grant them healing.”
The second child identified by the UK-based charity Project Pure Hope is one-year-old Karam, who is suffering from a rare birth defect in which nerves are missing from parts of the bowel.
His protruding intestine could easily be operated on with the right skills and equipment available in the UK.
An initial operation was carried out in Rafah, but when his family was forced to flee to Khan Younis, Karam’s condition worsened, his mother Manal Nayef Mostafa Adra said.
She said a foreign doctor told her that the surgery needs to be redone outside of Gaza.
Omar Dinn, co-founder of Project Pure Hope, said the charity would fully fund bringing the children to the UK.
He said the UK government had made strong statements recently condemning Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the blocking of aid supplies, and now had the opportunity to act.
“We’re giving them an action, which is the ability to allow two more children to come to the UK for privately funded medical treatment and to save their lives,” he said.
“If we don’t act for these two children now, it’s very likely that the outcome will be nothing but death.”
Two girls from Gaza with serious health conditions were flown to the UK earlier this month for specialist treatment. But only three Palestinian children have been allowed into the UK for healthcare since Israel launched its devastating offensive in Gaza 20 months ago.
Of the nearly 54,000 Palestinians killed in the war, 16,000 have been children.
The blazes in the coastal province of Latakia broke out amid an intense heatwave across the region
UN humanitarian agency says fires destroyed about 100 square kilometers of forest and farmland
Updated 11 sec ago
AFP
DAMASCUS: Syria’s civil defense agency on Sunday said wildfires in the country’s west, which have burned vast tracts of forest and farmland and forced evacuations, had been brought under control after 10 days. In a statement on Facebook, the agency said that “with the spread of the fires halted and the fire hotspots brought under control on all fronts” on Saturday, teams on the ground were working to cool down the affected areas while monitoring any signs of reignition. The blazes in the coastal province of Latakia broke out amid an intense heatwave across the region. The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said they destroyed about 100 square kilometers of forest and farmland. As the fires raged, Syrian emergency workers faced tough conditions including high temperatures, strong winds, rugged mountainous terrain and the danger of explosive war remnants. This all comes in a country worn down by years of conflict and economic crisis. In a post on X, the Syrian minister for emergencies and disaster management, Raed Al-Saleh, said that with help from Turkish, Jordanian, Lebanese, Qatari and Iraqi teams, firefighters had “managed to halt the spread of the fire on all fronts, which is the most important step toward containing the wildfires.” The “situation is the best it has been in the past 10 days,” Saleh said late Saturday. “There are still threats due to wind activity, but we are working to prevent any renewed expansion of the fires,” the minister added. The civil defense agency said rescue teams were carrying out “operations to open pathways and firebreaks within the forests... in order to reduce the chances of fire spreading in case of reignition.” Authorities have not reported any casualties, but several towns in Latakia province have been evacuated as a precaution. Nearly seven months after the ousting of longtime ruler Bashar Assad, Syria is still reeling from more than a decade of civil war that ravaged the country’s economy, infrastructure and public services. With man-made climate change increasing the likelihood and intensity of droughts and wildfires worldwide, Syria has also been battered by heatwaves and low rainfall. In June, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said that Syria had “not seen such bad climate conditions in 60 years.”
59 Palestinians in Gaza killed by Israeli airstrikes or shot dead while seeking aid
The Red Cross said its field hospital saw its largest influx of dead in more than a year of operation after the shootings
Updated 13 July 2025
AP
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: At least 31 Palestinians were fatally shot on their way to an aid distribution site in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, while Israeli airstrikes killed at least 28 Palestinians including four children, Palestinian hospital officials and witnesses said.
There were no signs of a breakthrough in ceasefire talks following two days of meetings between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump had said he was nearing an agreement between Israel and Hamas that would potentially wind down the war.
The 31 Palestinians shot dead were on their way to a distribution site run by the Israeli-backed American organization Gaza Humanitarian Foundation near Rafah in southern Gaza, hospital officials and witnesses said.
The Red Cross said its field hospital saw its largest influx of dead in more than a year of operation after the shootings, and that the overwhelming majority of the more than 100 people hurt had gunshot wounds.
Airstrikes in central Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah killed 13 including the four children, officials at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said. Fifteen others were killed in Khan Younis in the south, according to Nasser Hospital. Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Intense airstrikes continued Saturday evening in the area of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza.
Israelis rallied yet again for a ceasefire deal. “Arrogance is what brought the disaster upon us,” former hostage Eli Sharabi said of Israeli leaders.
Teen’s first attempt to pick up food ends in death
The 21-month war has left much of Gaza’s population of over 2 million reliant on outside aid while food security experts warn of famine. Israel blocked and then restricted aid entry after ending the latest ceasefire in March.
“All responsive individuals reported they were attempting to access food distribution sites,” the Red Cross said after the shootings near Rafah, noting the “alarming frequency and scale” of such mass casualty incidents.
Israel’s military said it fired warning shots toward people it said were behaving suspiciously to prevent them from approaching. It said it was not aware of any casualties. The GHF said no incident occurred near its sites.
Abdullah Al-Haddad said he was 200 meters from the aid distribution site run by the GHF close to the Shakoush area when an Israeli tank started firing at crowds of Palestinians.
“We were together, and they shot us at once,” he said, writhing in pain from a leg wound at Nasser Hospital.
Mohammed Jamal Al-Sahloo, another witness, said Israel’s military had ordered them to proceed to the site when the shooting started.
Sumaya Al-Sha’er’s 17-year-old son, Nasir, was killed, hospital officials said.
“He said to me, ‘Mom, you don’t have flour and today I’ll go and bring you flour, even if I die, I’ll go and get it,’” she said. “But he never came back home.”
Until then, she said, she had prevented the teenager from going to GHF sites because she thought it was too dangerous.
Witnesses, health officials and UN officials say hundreds have been killed by Israeli fire while heading toward GHF distribution points through military zones off limits to independent media. The military has acknowledged firing warning shots at Palestinians who it says approached its forces in a suspicious manner.
The GHF denies there has been violence in or around its sites. But two of its contractors told The Associated Press that their colleagues have fired live ammunition and stun grenades as Palestinians scramble for food, allegations the foundation denied.
In a separate effort, the UN and aid groups say they struggle to distribute humanitarian aid because of Israeli military restrictions and a breakdown of law and order that has led to widespread looting.
The first fuel – 150,000 liters – entered Gaza this week after 130 days, a joint statement by UN aid bodies said, calling it a small amount for the “the backbone of survival in Gaza.” Fuel runs hospitals, water systems, transport and more, the statement said.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people in their Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that sparked the war and abducted 251. Hamas still holds some 50 hostages, with at least 20 believed to remain alive.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 57,800 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry, under Gaza’s Hamas-run government, doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count. The UN and other international organizations see its figures as the most reliable statistics on war casualties.
Iran says it would resume nuclear talks with US if guaranteed no further attacks
Following the US strikes, Iran suspended cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, which led to the departure of inspectors
Top Iran envoy says that under Iranian law, the country will answer the agency’s request for cooperation ‘case by case’
Updated 13 July 2025
AP
Iran’s foreign minister said Saturday that his country would accept a resumption of nuclear talks with the US if there were assurances of no more attacks against it, state media reported.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a speech to Tehran-based foreign diplomats that Iran has always been ready and will be ready in the future for talks about its nuclear program, but, “assurance should be provided that in case of a resumption of talks, the trend will not lead to war.”
Referring to the 12-day Israeli bombardment of Iran’s nuclear and military sites, and the US strike on June 22, Araghchi said that if the US and others wish to resume talks with Iran, “first of all, there should be a firm guarantee that such actions will not be repeated. The attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities has made it more difficult and complicated to achieve a solution based on negotiations.”
Following the strikes, Iran suspended cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog, which led to the departure of inspectors.
Araghchi said that under Iranian law, the country will answer the agency’s request for cooperation “case by case,” based on Iran’s interests. He also said any inspection by the agency should be done based on Iran’s “security” concerns as well as the safety of the inspectors. “The risk of proliferation of radioactive ingredients and an explosion of ammunition that remains from the war in the attacked nuclear sites is serious,” he said.
He also reiterated Iran’s position on the need to continue enriching uranium on its soil. US President Donald Trump has insisted that cannot happen.
Israel claims it acted because Tehran was within reach of a nuclear weapon. US intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency had assessed Iran last had an organized nuclear weapons program in 2003, though Tehran had been enriching uranium up to 60 percent – a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in an interview published Monday said the US airstrikes so badly damaged his country’s nuclear facilities that Iranian authorities still have not been able to access them to survey the destruction.
Why BCG’s involvement in Gaza marks an all-time low for consulting firms
FT investigation examined Boston Consulting Group’s role in Gaza aid planning, including plans for Palestinian relocation
BCG has disavowed the work and fired two senior partners — but the scandal sheds light on the wider industry’s irresponsibility
Updated 13 July 2025
ANAN TELLO
LONDON: A Financial Times investigation, published on July 4, found that a consulting firm connected to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation secured a multimillion-dollar contract to help shape the initiative and a proposal for the possible “relocation” of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
The Boston Consulting Group was found to have played a central role in designing and managing the US- and Israeli-backed project, which aimed to replace the UN as the primary coordinator of humanitarian aid in Gaza.
Amid growing criticism, BCG denied any ongoing involvement in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. In a June 7 statement, the firm said it initially provided “pro bono support” in October 2024 to help launch “an aid organization intended to operate alongside other relief efforts.”
BCG has faced heavy scrutiny for its role in Gaza’s postwar reconstruction, mainly through its work with the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. (AFP file)
The firm said two senior US-based partners who led the initiative “failed to disclose the full nature of the work” and later engaged in “unauthorized” activities outside the firm’s oversight.
“Their actions reflected a serious failure of judgment and adherence to our standards,” the firm said. “We are shocked and outraged by the actions of these two partners. They have been exited from the firm.
“BCG disavows the work they undertook. It has been stopped, and BCG has not and will not be paid for any of their work.”
The company emphasized it is strengthening internal controls to prevent future breaches. “We deeply regret that in this situation we did not live up to our standards,” the statement said. “We are committed to accountability for our failures and humility in how we move forward.”
FAST FACTS:
• A Financial Times investigation examined BCG’s role in Gaza aid planning, including controversial proposals for Palestinian relocation.
• BCG disavowed the work and fired two senior partners, but documents suggest deeper involvement and lapses in internal oversight.
• The scandal underscores wider concerns about consulting firms’ ethics, with similar controversies involving PwC, KPMG, EY and McKinsey.
Following the FT story, BCG issued another statement on July 6 disputing aspects of the reporting. “Recent media reporting has misrepresented BCG’s role in post-war Gaza reconstruction,” the firm said.
BCG reiterated that the initiative was not an official company project and was carried out in secret. “Two former partners initiated this work, even though the lead partner was categorically told not to,” the statement read.
“This work was not a BCG project. It was orchestrated and run secretly outside any BCG scope or approvals. We fully disavow this work. BCG was not paid for any of this work.”
Buildings that were destroyed during the Israeli ground and air operations stand in northern of Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel on July 10, 2025. (AP Photo)
However, individuals familiar with “Aurora” told the FT that BCG’s involvement ran deeper. The report revealed that BCG created a financial model for Gaza’s postwar reconstruction that included scenarios for mass displacement.
This revelation intensified scrutiny of the consulting industry’s ethical boundaries.
“Consulting companies… are held to a higher standard of professionalism and ethics than other lines of work,” Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg, the Gulf Cooperation Council assistant secretary-general for political affairs and negotiation, wrote in an April opinion piece for Arab News.
He warned that without corrective action, major firms risk alienating clients.
Displaced Palestinians carrying relief supplies from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) return from aid distribution centers in Rafah to their tents in the southern Gaza Strip on May 29, 2025. (AFP)
ndeed, in recent years, top consulting firms like McKinsey, PwC, KPMG, and EY have faced growing scrutiny for putting profit over ethics, with scandals revealing conduct lapses worldwide.
McKinsey, for instance, faced heavy backlash for its role in the US opioid crisis. The firm was accused of helping Purdue Pharma and other manufacturers to aggressively market addictive painkillers, including OxyContin, The New York Times reported.
Aluwaisheg noted in his op-ed that some of these ethical lapses “are quite common throughout the consulting business.”
However, he added, “big firms are more likely to commit them,” citing sprawling operations that limit senior management oversight.
The industry’s core business model may be the issue: consulting firms adopted law firms’ high-fee model for expert advice — without their legal liability.
Despite this, demand for consulting services remains high. Aluwaisheg believes governments and businesses will continue to need outside expertise.
People walk by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) New York headquarters. (AFP)
Still, accountability concerns have prompted some governments to take action. In February, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund banned PwC from taking on new advisory and consulting contracts for one year.
Some media outlets reported that the decision was related to an ethical violation tied to an alleged recruitment of a senior-level employee from the client’s side. The suspension did not impact PwC’s auditing work.
These events highlight ongoing concerns over consulting firms’ roles in controversial actions. In April 2024, KPMG’s Dutch arm was fined $25 million after over 500 staff cheated on internal training exams, Reuters reported.
Yet the BCG case may represent a new low for the industry.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s model bypassed traditional organizations like the UN, restricted aid distribution to limited sites under Israeli oversight and relied on private security contractors. This move has had deadly consequences.
According to Gaza’s health authority, at least 740 Palestinians have been killed and almost 4,900 injured while attempting to reach aid centers, drawing condemnation from humanitarian organizations and UN officials.
Displaced Palestinians look around on alert in the wake of gunfire shots as they receive food packages from a US-backed foundation pledging to distribute humanitarian aid in western Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 27, 2025. (AFP)
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher called the initiative a “fig leaf for further violence and displacement” of Palestinians in the war-torn enclave.
In a July 10 letter to the FT editor, BCG’s CEO Christoph Schweizer pushed back against the allegations that his firm endorsed or profited from projects related to Gaza.
“None of that is true,” Schweizer wrote, adding that “a few people from BCG were involved in such work. They never should have been.”
Adding another layer to the controversy, FT reported on July 6 that staff from the Tony Blair Institute were also implicated in postwar planning that included scenarios for mass Palestinian displacement — despite being prominent advocates for peace in the Middle East.
Christoph Schweizer, CEO of Boston Consulting Group. (Supplied)
The plan, seen by the FT, imagined Gaza as a regional economic hub, complete with a “Trump Riviera” and “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone,” based on financial models developed by BCG.
While the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change denied authoring “The Great Trust” blueprint, it acknowledged two staff joined Gaza planning calls and chats. It also denied backing population relocation.
Arab News approached the TBI for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Nevertheless, its involvement has triggered additional concerns about the ethics of postwar reconstruction planning and the role of consulting firms in shaping policies with far-reaching humanitarian consequences.
Syrian, Israeli officials meet in Baku: Diplomatic source in Damascus
Meeting marked major step for two countries which have been foes for decades
Updated 12 July 2025
AFP
DAMASCUS: A Syrian and an Israeli official met face to face in Baku Saturday on the sidelines of a visit to Azerbaijan by President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, a diplomatic source in Damascus said.
The meeting marked a major step for the two countries which have been foes for decades, and comes after Israel initially cold-shouldered Al-Sharaa’s administration as jihadist because of his past links to Al-Qaeda.
“A meeting took place between a Syrian official and an Israeli official on the sidelines of Al-Sharaa’s visit to Baku,” the source said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Israel is a major arms supplier to Azerbaijan and has a significant diplomatic presence in the Caucasus nation which neighbors its arch foe Iran.
Al-Sharaa himself did not take part in the meeting, which focused on “the recent Israeli military presence in Syria,” the source added.
After the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December, Israel carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria to prevent key military assets falling into the hands of the Islamist-led interim administration headed by Al-Sharaa.
It also sent troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone that used to separate the opposing forces in the strategic Golan Heights, from which it has conducted forays deeper into southern Syria.
Al-Sharaa has said repeatedly that Syria does not seek conflict with its neighbors, and has instead asked the international community to put pressure on Israel to halt its attacks.
His government recently confirmed that it had held indirect contacts with Israel seeking a return to the 1974 disengagement agreement which created the buffer zone.
Late last month, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Israel was interested in striking a peace and normalization agreement with Syria.
A Syria government source quoted by state media responded that such talk was “premature.”
After meeting Al-Sharaa in Riyadh in May, US President Donald Trump told reporters he had expressed hope that Syria would join other Arab states which normalized their relations with Israel.
“(Al-Sharaa) said yes. But they have a lot of work to do,” Trump said.
During his visit to Baku, Al-Sharaa held talks with his counterpart Ilham Aliyev, the two governments said.
Azerbaijan announced it would begin exporting gas to Syria via Turkiye, a key ally of both governments, a statement from the Azerbaijani presidency said.
