Heritage hotel in Bethlehem 'a challenging project' for Chilean … – Arab News

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RAMALLAH: Chilean businesswoman Elizabeth Kassis has turned her ancestral home in Bethlehem’s Old City into a heritage hotel nearly 80 years after her father emigrated to Chile.
The Kassis Kassa Hotel is the Old City’s first heritage hotel, reflecting both the city’s traditional architecture and its long-standing association with the South American country.
The Palestinian community in Chile is reportedly the oldest outside the Arab world, with around half a million Palestinians moving there since the mid-19th century.

The hotel was officially opened on June 1, and the first group reservation was received on June 8.
“It was an exciting and challenging project that took years to implement,” Kassis, who was born in Chile, told Arab News. “It is rich in cultural history and has been carefully restored to preserve its original beauty and traditional Palestinian architecture.”
The project “will contribute to raising the level of tourism services in Palestine, as it is being implemented in cooperation with Bethlehem Municipality,” Kassis said.
We wanted the guests to get the full experience of what it means to live in a Palestinian house with real neighbors.
Elizabeth Kassis
“I think the experience of being a guest in a Palestinian house is a unique one. We wanted the guests to get the full experience of what it means to live in a Palestinian house with real neighbors.”
Kassis’ father visited Palestine in 1999, looking for ways to boost Bethlehem’s economy. Along with a group of Palestinian businessmen, he implemented a number of small projects at the turn of the century. He returned in 2015 and purchased his old family home. The restoration project began in 2016, led by his daughter.
Kassis said that setting up the hotel has been one of the most rewarding projects she has ever been involved in. In Chile, she managed her family’s farm and bred Arabian and Chilean horses. She has also worked as a TV presenter and is a talented visual artist who has participated in numerous exhibitions, as well as the co-founder of a band called Three Diaspora, which, she explained, “reshapes old songs that arrived in Chile with the first Palestinian immigrants.” The band has released several albums recorded with musicians from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music.
Kassis has traveled extensively, but “found herself” in Palestine. “I want everyone in the diaspora to work for Palestine. I want people to feel, smell, eat, and live Palestine. This is my duty toward Palestine,” she said.
Engineer Raed Othman, who worked with Kassis on the project, told Arab News that Kassis loves Bethlehem and Palestinian heritage in general, and has devoted herself to promoting it to the world.
Bethlehem’s mayor, Hanna Hanania, told Arab News that, through her hotel and other efforts, Kassis is “building bridges” between Palestinian expats and their national heritage, especially the tens of thousands of expatriates from Bethlehem in South America.
He added that, as part of its attempts to attract investors to the city, the municipality plans to develop Al-Najma Street, where the hotel is located.
“The fact that Kassis Hotel is on this street will contribute to enhancing our vision regarding activating the location,” Hanania said.
Fadi Qattan, co-founder of the Kassis project, said the hotel promotes Palestinian heritage and culture through its food and its “beautiful location,” adding that he hoped journalists would visit the hotel and write about Palestinian food to “promote an accurate picture of the life and heritage of Palestinians.”
He continued: “The hotel is the first project wholly owned by an expatriate Palestinian family, which will encourage expatriate Palestinian families to return and invest in Bethlehem.”
 
 
DUBAI: Pope Francis said he rejected the authorization of the burning of the Qur’an in an interview with UAE’s newspaper al-Ittihad on Monday, adding that such acts made him angry.
“Any book considered holy should be respected to respect those who believe in it,” the pope said. “I feel angry and disgusted at these actions”
The remarks are considered the first statement by the head of the Catholic Church about incidents of burning copies of the Quran in Sweden.
“Allowing this is unacceptable and condemned,” he said, stressing that freedom of expression should not be used as an excuse to offend others.
“Our mission is to transform the religious sense into cooperation, fraternity, and tangible acts of goodness.”
A man tore up and burned a Qur’an in Sweden’s capital Stockholm last week, resulting in strong condemnation from several countries. 
While Swedish police have rejected several recent applications for anti-Qur’an demonstrations, courts have over-ruled those decisions, saying they infringed freedom of speech.
On Sunday, an Islamic grouping of 57 states said collective measures are needed to prevent acts of desecration to the Qur’ran and international law should be used to stop religious hatred.
 
(with Reuters)
An Iranian appeals court has jailed for five years prominent activist and journalist Golrokh Iraee who has been held since her arrest at the onset of a protest movement, supporters said Sunday.
Iraee had refused to take part in the appeals court hearing over her sentence for taking part in illegal gatherings and violating national security, saying she did not recognise the legitimacy of the court, rights groups have said.
She was arrested last September in a police raid on her home at the start of the protest movement sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini who had been detained for allegedly violating the strict dress rules for women.
“Golrokh Iraee, who been in Evin prison for 280 days, was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment” by the Tehran court, according to a Twitter account in her name run by supporters.
The court of first instance initially sentenced her to seven years in April.
Well known for her campaigns on issues including stoning sentences and prison conditions, Iraee is the wife of activist Arash Sadeghi who was also arrested during the protest movement but has now been released.
Some activists arrested during Iran’s crackdown on the protest movement have been released over the past few months as the protests abated in intensity.
But prominent women campaigners remain behind bars including the prize-winning Narges Mohammadi, labour rights activist Sepideh Gholian and environmental campaigners Niloufar Bayani and Sepideh Kashani.
Meanwhile, the two women journalists who did most to expose the case of Mahsa Amini — Niloufar Hamedi and Elaheh Mohammadi, also both held since September — are on trial in Tehran on national security charges.
JERUSALEM: Israeli drones struck targets in a militant stronghold in the occupied West Bank early Monday and hundreds of troops were deployed in the area, an incursion that resembled the wide-scale military operations carried out during the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago. Palestinian health officials said at least four Palestinians were killed.
Troops remained inside the Jenin refugee camp early Monday, pushing ahead with the largest operation in the area during more than a year of fighting. It came at a time of growing domestic pressure for a tough response to a series of attacks on Israeli settlers – including a shooting attack last week that killed four people.
Black smoke rose from the crowded streets of the camp as the military pressed on. According to Palestinian media reports, the operation disrupted life for local residents, with electricity cut off in some parts and a military bulldozer seen driving through narrow streets – another reminder of Israel’s incursions during the last uprising. The Palestinians condemned the violence.
Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an army spokesman, said the operation began just after 1 a.m. with an airstrike on a building used by militants for planning attacks. He said the goal of the operation was to destroy and confiscate weapons.
“We’re not planning to hold ground,” he said. “We’re acting against specific targets.”
He said that a brigade-size force – roughly 2,000 soldiers – was taking part in the operation, and that military drones had carried out a series of strikes to clear the way for the ground forces. Although Israel has carried out isolated airstrikes in the West Bank in recent weeks, Hecht said Monday’s series of strikes marked an escalation unseen since 2006 — the end of the Palestinian uprising.
While Israel described the attack as a pinpoint operation, videos on Palestinian social media showed a large tuft of white smoke billowing from a crowded area, with a mosque minaret nearby. Other videos showed a wounded man was brought into a hospital on a stretcher, while another was carried in by a group of men.
According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the military blocked roads within the camp, took over houses and buildings and set up snipers on rooftops. The agency also said the military cut off electricity in large areas of the camp and that army bulldozers caused damage to property.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least three Palestinians were killed and 13 injured early Monday, three of them critically. Hecht said as many as seven militants were believed dead.
In a separate incident, a 21-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the ministry said.
“Our Palestinian people will not kneel, will not surrender, will not raise the white flag, and will remain steadfast on their land in the face of this brutal aggression,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the Palestinian president, said in a statement.
The Jenin camp and an adjacent town of the same name have been a flashpoint as Israeli-Palestinian violence escalated since the spring of 2022. Jenin has long been a bastion for armed struggle against Israel and was a major friction point in the last Palestinian uprising.
In 2002, days after a Palestinian suicide bombing during a large Passover gathering that killed 30 people, Israeli troops launched a massive operation in the Jenin camp. For eight days and nights they fought militants street by street, using armored bulldozers to destroy rows of homes, many of which had been booby-trapped.
Monday’s raid came two weeks after another violent confrontation in Jenin and after the military said a rocket was fired from the area last week, which landed in the West Bank..
“There has been a dynamic here around Jenin for the last year,” Hecht said, defending Monday’s tactics. “It’s been intensifying all the time.”
But there also may have been political considerations at play. Leading members of Israel’s far-right government, which is dominated by West Bank settlers and their supporters, have been calling for a broader military response to the ongoing violence in the area.
“Proud of our heroes on all fronts and this morning especially of our soldiers operating in Jenin,” National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist who recently called for Israel to kill “thousands” of militants if necessary, tweeted. “Praying for their success.”
Monday’s deaths bring the death toll of Palestinians killed this year in the West Bank to 132, part of more than a yearlong spike in violence that has seen some of the worst bloodshed in that area in nearly two decades.
The outburst of violence escalated last year after a spate of Palestinian attacks prompted Israel to step up its raids in the West Bank.
Israel says the raids are meant to beat back militants. The Palestinians say such violence is inevitable in the absence of any political process with Israel and increased West Bank settlement construction and violence by extremist settlers. They see the intensifying Israeli military presence in the area as an entrenchment of Israel’s 56-year open-ended occupation of the territory.
Israel says most of those killed have been militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and also people not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.
Palestinian attacks against Israelis since the start of this year have killed 24 people.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.
CAIRO: Hannibal Qaddafi, son of the late Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, has been moved from a Lebanese prison to hospital in “critical condition,” Dubai-based Al-Hadath TV reported on Sunday.
Qaddafi went on hunger strike last month in protest at his incarceration without trial since 2015.
Citing unidentified sources, Al-Hadath said he had suffered a sharp drop in his blood sugar level.
Qaddafi has been charged in Lebanon with concealing information about the fate of Imam Musa Al-Sadr, a Lebanese Shiite Muslim cleric who disappeared while on a trip to Libya in 1978.
Muammar Qaddafi was captured and killed by rebels in 2011.
 
 
CAIRO: Clashes between Sudan’s army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces intensified on Sunday, as the war in the country’s capital and western regions entered its 12th week with no attempts in sight to bring a peaceful end to the conflict.
Air and artillery strikes as well as small arms fire could be heard, particularly in the city of Omdurman, as well as in the capital Khartoum, as the conflict deepens a humanitarian crisis and threatens to draw in other regional interests.
The RSF said it brought down an army warplane and a drone in Bahri, in statements to which the army did not immediately respond.
“We’re terrified, every day the strikes are getting worse,” 25-year-old Nahid Salah, living in northern Omdurman, said by phone to Reuters.
The RSF has dominated the capital on the ground and has been accused of looting and occupying houses, while the army has focused on air and artillery strikes.
The Sudanese Doctors Union accused the RSF of raiding the Shuhada hospital, one of the few still operating in the country, and killing a staff member.
Army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan last week called on young men to join the fight against the RSF and on Sunday the army posted photos it said were of new recruits.
The Sudanese Doctors Union accused the RSF on Saturday of raiding the Shuhada hospital, one of the few still operating in the country, and killing a staff member. The RSF denied the accusation.
The war has also hit cities in the western Kordofan and Darfur regions, in particular the westernmost city of El Geneina, where the RSF and Arab militias have been accused of ethnic cleansing.
The Combating Violence Against Women Unit, a government agency, said on Saturday it had recorded 88 cases of sexual assault, which it said was a fraction of the likely real total, in Khartoum, El Geneina, and Nyala, capital of South Darfur, with victims in most cases accusing the RSF.
Talks hosted in Jeddah and sponsored by the United States and Saudi Arabia were suspended last month, while a mediation attempt by East African countries was criticized by the army as it accused Kenya of bias.
Last week, army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his deputy on the country’s Sovereign Council Malik Agar expressed openness to any mediation attempts by Turkiye or Russia, though no official efforts have been announced. (Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz in Dubai, Nafisa Eltahir and Adam Makary in Cairo; Writing by Nafisa Eltahir; Editing by David Holmes)
 

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