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GAZA CITY: At the beginning of Ramadan in the Gaza Strip, market activity surges as shoppers rush to buy food and household items, defying deteriorating economic conditions caused by the Israeli blockade.
Large crowds of pedestrians and queues of cars can be seen in and around market areas, with grocery and household stores packed with customers.
Merchants and store owners see the month of Ramadan as an opportunity to revive their businesses, increase demand from Palestinian consumers and compensate for long periods of stagnation and poor economic conditions.
“There is no improvement in the economic situation in the Gaza Strip, but most people tend to save part of their money and salaries for the month of Ramadan to purchase their needs, which enhances the purchasing movement,” Mohammed Abu Jbara, a shop owner in Gaza, told Arab News.
“We seek to provide larger quantities of foodstuffs related to the month of Ramadan in particular, due to the increased demand about a month before the advent of the month,” he added.
Despite the Gaza Strip suffering from a deteriorating economy due to the Israeli blockade since mid-2007, as well as the high unemployment rate and dependence of Gazans on food aid from international institutions, the month of Ramadan remains a an opportunity to restore the economy as part of the area’s recovery.
Those fasting in Ramadan focus on foodstuffs to prepare daily meals for iftar, and women are interested in buying home and kitchen supplies from household appliances stores. The sale of meat of all kinds, fresh and frozen, also surges during the holy month, while clothing and other sectors see a decline before a revival ahead of Eid Al-Fitr.
“When I got my salary at the beginning of the month, I kept more than half of it to buy the needs for the month of Ramadan. The expenses in this month increase to at least double,” said Dia Saadi, 45, who was shopping for his family.
He added: “Even those with limited incomes cannot bypass the month of Ramadan and not buy their own needs. There are unavoidable requirements for the family and those who are fasting.”
Public transportation and sweet shops also see a sharp rise in activity during the holy month.
“Transportation increases dramatically, sometimes up to three times more than normal days. We suffer most of the year, and we wait for events in order to get some money by working in the month of Ramadan in particular.” Ammar Daban, 30, a taxi driver, told Arab News.
Payments by the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas government in Gaza for the monthly salaries of employees also contributed to the increase in spending.
Othman Abu Al-Nada, the official in charge of the Al-Nada dairy factory, said that product sales had increased by 70 percent in the lead-up to Ramadan.
Economists agree that the holy month is an opportunity for the deteriorating Palestinian economy to experience a short-term revival.
Hamed Jad, an economic journalist, told Arab News: “Ramadan is a great opportunity for food merchants. There is a significant and noticeable purchasing movement this year, more than a week ago before the start of the month.”
He added: “The economic reality of the Gaza Strip has been very difficult for years, and many merchants have been waiting for occasions such as the month of Ramadan in order to enhance the purchasing movement and increase their deteriorating income as a result of the blockade.”
BEIRUT: Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad arrived in Algeria on Saturday for an official visit, Syrian state media reported.
Mekdad’s visit reinforces Damascus’ openness to the Arab world after it was isolated for more than a decade, and the minister will be welcomed by Algerian foreign minister, Ahmed Ataf, Algerian state radio said.
JERUSALEM: Christian worshippers thronged the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem on Saturday to celebrate the ceremony of the “Holy Fire,” an ancient, mysterious ritual that has sparked tensions this year with the Israeli police.
In the annual ceremony that has persisted for over a millennium, a flame — kindled in some miraculous way in the heart of Jesus’ tomb — is used to light the candles of fervent believers in Greek Orthodox communities near and far. Little by little, the darkened church is irradiated by tiny patches of light, which eventually illuminate the whole building as the resurrection of Jesus is proclaimed. Chartered planes then ferry the flickering lanterns to Russia, Greece and beyond with great fanfare.
Many trying to get to the church — built on the site where Christian tradition holds that Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected — were thrilled to mark the pre-Easter rite in the city where it all started. But for the second consecutive year, Israel’s limits on event capacity dimmed some of the exuberance.
“It is sad for me that I cannot get to the church, where my heart, my faith, wants me to be,” said 44-year-old Jelena Novakovic from Montenegro.
Israel has capped the ritual — normally an experience of being squeezed among multilingual, suffocating crowds — to just 1,800 people. The Israeli police say they must be strict because they’re responsible for maintaining public safety. In 1834, a stampede at the event claimed hundreds of lives. Two years ago, a crush at a packed Jewish holy site in the country’s north killed 45 people. Authorities say they’re determined to prevent a repeat of the tragedy.
But Jerusalem’s Christian minority — mired in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and caught between Jews and Muslims — fear Israel is using the extra security measures to alter their status in the Old City, providing access to Jews while limiting the number of Christian worshippers.
Israeli authorities and church officials have publicly quarreled over the crowd constraints for the past week. The Greek Orthodox patriarchate has lambasted the restrictions as a hindrance of religious freedom and called on all worshippers to flood the church despite Israeli warnings.
As early as 8 a.m., Israeli police were already turning back most worshippers from the gates of the Old City — including foreign tourists who flew from Europe and Palestinian Christians who traveled from across the West Bank — directing them to an overflow area with a livestream.
Angry pilgrims and clergy jostled to get through while police struggled to hold them back, allowing only a trickle of ticketed visitors and local residents near the church. Metal barricades sealed off alleys leading to the Christian Quarter. Over 2,000 police officers swarmed the stone ramparts.
A few Palestinian teenagers from the neighborhood saw a chance to make a buck, promising tourists they’d get them into the church for some 200 shekels ($54) but leading them only to a nearby courtyard before asking for more money.
Ana Dumitrel, a Romanian pilgrim surrounded by police outside the Old City, said she came to pay tribute to her late mother, whose experience witnessing the holy fire in 1987 long inspired her.
“I wanted to tell my family, my children, that I was here as my mom was,” she said, straining to assess whether she had a chance.
The dispute comes as Christians in the Holy Land — including the head of the Roman Catholic church in the region as well as local Palestinians and Armenians — say that Israel’s most right-wing government in history has empowered Jewish extremists who have escalated their vandalism of religious property and harassment of clergy. Israel says it’s committed to ensuring freedom of worship for Jews, Christians and Muslims and portrays itself as an island of tolerance in the Middle East.
The friction over Saturday’s Orthodox Easter ritual has been fueled in part by a rare convergence of holidays in Jerusalem’s bustling Old City. A few hundred meters away from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Muslims fasting for the 24th day of the holy month of Ramadan were gathering for midday prayers at the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. Earlier this week, tens of thousands of Jews flocked to the Western Wall for a mass prayer during the Passover holiday.
Tensions surged last week, when an Israeli police raid on the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Jerusalem’s most sensitive site, set off unrest in the contested capital and ignited Muslim outrage around the world. The mosque stands on a hilltop that is the holiest site for Jews, who revere it as the Temple Mount.
Israel captured the Old City, along with the rest of the city’s eastern half, in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed it in a move not internationally recognized. Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for state.
In the limestone passageways on Saturday, Christians pushed back by police were trying to cope with their disappointment. Cristina Maria, a 35-year-old who traveled from Romania to see the light kindled from the holy fire, said there was some consolation in the thought that the flame was symbolic, anyway.
“It’s the light of Christ,” she said, standing between an ice cream parlor and a dumpster in the Old City. “We can see it from here, there, anywhere.”
Sanaa: Scores of prisoners of war, including Saudis, were freed on Saturday as part of a cross-border exchange between the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen and Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
The flights connecting Saudi Arabia and Houthi-held territory in Yemen were part of a multi-day transfer involving nearly 900 detainees that comes amid peace talks which have raised hopes for an end to Yemen’s eight-year-old war.
The first flight of the day took off from the southern Saudi city of Abha before 9 am (0600 GMT), headed for Yemen’s Houthi-held capital Sanaa with 120 Houthi militia prisoners, ICRC public affairs and media adviser Jessica Moussan said.
It was followed by a flight from Sanaa carrying 20 former detainees, among them 16 Saudis and three Sudanese.
Sudan is part of the Saudi-led coalition and has provided ground troops for the fighting.
In addition, 100 Houthis were due to be flown on three flights to Sanaa from Mokha on the Red Sea coast, a town held by Yemen’s coalition-backed government.
An AFP journalist in Abha said at least three buses brought the prisoners onto the tarmac at Abha airport, which has previously come under attack from Houthi drones and missiles.
Wheelchairs were positioned near the buses to take some of the prisoners to the plane.
On Friday, 318 prisoners were transported on four flights between government-controlled Aden and Sanaa, reuniting with their families ahead of next week’s Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Fitr.
The total number of prisoners of war on both sides is unknown.
The ongoing exchange is a confidence-building measure coinciding with an intense diplomatic push to end Yemen’s war, which has left hundreds of thousands dead from the fighting as well as knock-on effects like food insecurity and lack of access to health care.
The Saudi exit strategy appears to have taken new impetus from a landmark rapprochement deal announced with Iran last month.
The China-brokered agreement calls for the Middle East heavyweights to fully restore diplomatic ties following a seven-year rupture, and has the potential to remake regional ties.
Saudi Arabia is also pushing for the reintegration into the Arab League of Iran ally Syria, more than a decade after its suspension over President Bashar Assad’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests.
On Friday, the kingdom hosted top diplomats from eight other Arab countries in the Red Sea city of Jeddah for talks on Syria, then issued a statement highlighting the “importance of having an Arab leadership role in efforts to end the crisis.”
In Yemen, active combat has reduced over the past year following a UN-brokered truce that officially lapsed in October but has largely held.
A week ago, a Saudi delegation traveled to Sanaa, held by the Houthis since 2014, for talks aimed at reviving the truce and laying the groundwork for a more durable cease-fire.
The delegation, led by ambassador Mohammed Al-Jaber, left Sanaa late on Thursday without a finalized truce but with plans for more talks, according to Houthi and Yemeni government sources.
KHARTOUM: Sudan’s main paramilitary group said it had seized the presidential palace, the army chief’s residence and Khartoum international airport on Saturday in an apparent coup attempt but the military said it was fighting back.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which accused the army of attacking them first, also said they had taken over the airports in the northern city of Merowe and in El-Obeid in the west.
The situation on the ground was unclear. The army said it was fighting the RSF at sites the paramilitaries said they had taken. The army also said it had taken some RSF bases and denied that the RSF had taken Merowe airport.
A major confrontation between the RSF and the army could plunge Sudan into widespread conflict as it struggles with economic breakdown and tribal violence, and could also derail efforts to move toward elections.
The clashes follow rising tensions between the army and the RSF over the integration of the RSF into the military and who should oversee the process. The disagreement has delayed the signing an internationally-backed agreement with political parties on a transition to democracy.
On Saturday, the RSF accused the army of carrying out a plot by loyalists of former strongman President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir — who was ousted in 2019 — and attempting a coup itself.
The RSF is headed by former militia leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti. He has been deputy leader of Sudan’s ruling Sovereign Council headed by army General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan since 2019.
The army said the Sudanese air force was conducting operations against the RSF. Footage from broadcasters showed a military aircraft in the sky above Khartoum, but Reuters could not independently confirm the material.
Gunfire could be heard in several parts of Khartoum and eyewitnesses reporting shooting in adjoining cities.
A Reuters journalist saw cannon and armored vehicles deployed in the streets of the capital and heard heavy weapons fire near the headquarters of both the army and RSF.
TV footage showed smoke rising over several areas of Khartoum.
Doctors said at least three civilians had been killed.
Clashes were also taking place at the headquarters of Sudan’s state TV, said an anchor who appeared on screen.
The Sudanese armed forces spokesman told the Al Jazeera Mubasher television station that the army would respond to any “irresponsible” actions, as its forces clashed with the RSF in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country.
Brig.-General Nabil Abdallah said there was a heavy presence of RSF troops at the TV headquarters in Khartoum.
GUNFIRE
Eyewitnesses reported gunfire in many other parts of the country outside the capital. Those included heavy exchanges of gunfire in Merowe, eyewitnesses told Reuters.
Eyewitnesses said clashes had also erupted between the RSF and army in the Darfur cities of El Fasher and Nyala.
International powers — the US, Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Nations and the European Union — all called for an end to the hostilities.
Civilian political parties that had signed an initial power-sharing deal with the army and the RSF also called on the two sides to end the violence.
The army said the RSF had tried to attack its troops in several positions.
The RSF, which analysts say is 100,000 strong, said its forces were attacked first by the army, saying in a statement earlier on Saturday that the army surrounded one of its bases and opened fire with heavy weapons.
Hemedti’s RSF evolved from so-called janjaweed militias that fought in a conflict in the 2000s in the Darfur region. An estimated 2.5 million people were displaced and 300,000 killed in the conflict. International Criminal Court prosecutors accused government officials and janjaweed commanders of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
Hemedti had put himself at the forefront of a planned transition toward democracy, unsettling fellow military rulers and triggering a mobilization of troops in the capital Khartoum.
The rift between the forces came to the surface on Thursday, when the army said that recent movements, particularly in Merowe, by the RSF were illegal.
The RSF, which together with the army overthrew Bashir four years ago, began redeploying units in Khartoum and elsewhere amid talks last month on its integration into the military under a transition plan that would lead to new elections.
RAMALLAH: A massive Israeli security presence lined the streets of Jerusalem as up to 250,000 Palestinian Muslims performed the fourth and probably final Friday prayer of Ramadan at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
More than 3,200 police, border police and Shin Bet security agents were deployed on roads leading to the mosque.
Authorities allowed women of all ages, men over the age of 55 and children under 12 to enter Jerusalem from the West Bank without permits to perform Friday prayers.
Ramadan is a rare chance for many Palestinians to visit Jerusalem and pray at Al-Aqsa. For many, this was their first time in the city.
Ahmed Khassib, 51, from Ramallah, told Arab News: “I am delighted to be able to perform the fourth Friday prayer of Ramadan at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
“I cannot obtain a permit to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque except on Fridays during Ramadan, so I wait for this opportunity throughout the year.”
Praying at the mosque, Khasib said, “carries a message that Al-Aqsa is for Muslims.”
During his Friday sermon, Sheikh Ekrimeh Sabri, the imam of Al-Aqsa Mosque, told worshippers: “You who came to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque from all parts of holy Palestine, you who have crossed the unjust military checkpoints, your march to the blessed Aqsa for the evening prayer and Taraweeh prayers is to remind the 2 billion Muslims of the world of the captive Al-Aqsa.”
Abd Al-Salam Abu Askar, a Palestinian from the Gaza Strip who lives in Ramallah, told Arab News that inflammatory comments about Al-Aqsa by far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had made Palestinians more determined to challenge Israeli restrictions on worshipping there.
When they felt the mosque was in danger, he said, they flocked to it during Ramadan, especially on Fridays.
“If the military checkpoints surrounding the city of Jerusalem allowed all citizens of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to visit Al-Aqsa, the number of worshippers would exceed half a million today,” Abu Askar said.