https://arab.news/ya7fd
RAMALLAH: Palestinians on Thursday began counting the cost of the damage inflicted by the Israeli offensive on the Jenin refugee camp and its infrastructure.
The most intense Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank in nearly two decades left a trail of wrecked streets and burned-out cars, and sparked fury across the Arab world.
Palestinian residents encountered scenes of widespread destruction as they emerged from their homes and returned from nearby shelters.
The Israeli offensive destroyed the infrastructure in Jenin camp, killing 12 civilians and wounding 100.
Public Works and Housing Minister Mohammed Ziyara said that a timetable would be set for the reconstruction process.
Infrastructure such as roads needed a short period to repair, up to a maximum of three months, he said.
Buildings required a longer period and might need about nine months, the minister said.
The extent of the damage in the city of Jenin and its camp included four buildings that had been destroyed entirely, and the cost of reconstruction was $1.5 million, Ziyara said.
The number of buildings damaged in a medium or large-scale way but not in a state of collapse amounted to 25, and the cost of reconstruction was $2 million.
The number of partially damaged residential units reached 250 units and the cost of reconstruction was $2.5 million.
The number of damaged commercial and service buildings reached 150 and the cost of reconstruction was $5 million, he said.
Ziyara confirmed that specialized committees assessed the damage and submited reports to the prime minister to provide an overall picture.
The work had been divided into several phases, he said.
Local Government Minister Majdi Al-Saleh said that the size of the initial damage in the Jenin camp was estimated at millions of shekels.
Shami Al-Shami, a prominent leader of the Fatah movement in Jenin, said that UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan had instructed authorities in his country to meet all the needs of the Jenin camp.
He said the UAE pledged to give $15 million to help rebuild the Jenin refugee camp.
The money will be granted to UNRWA, the UN agency that assists Palestinian refugees, to rebuild damaged homes and businesses and for the agency’s services.
The president has requested an assessment of the extent of the damage in the camp and the costs of its rehabilitation, Al-Shami added.
Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh had instructed the Palestinian Authority’s ministries and institutions to provide the necessary budgets for the relief and reconstruction of Jenin camp, said Ibrahim Melhem, a spokesperson for the Palestinian government.
Reconstuction efforts were being planned despite the complex financial crisis faced by the government, Melhem told Arab News.
Rami Al-Junaidi, head of the Workers Union in Hebron Municipality, said that the extent of the destruction caused by the Israeli aggression on Jenin was huge.
“Roads were completely bulldozed and some buildings were about to fall, and rubble filled the streets and impeded movement.”
Palestinian economist Samir Hulileh said that a different type of infrastructure must be built in the Jenin camp.
“Shelters for the citizens to take refuge in from the Israeli bombardment should be included so that we do not see the scene of their forced displacement outside the camp, as in every Israeli military invasion of the camp,” he told Arab News.
Hulileh referred to the financial burden and cost of rebuilding the Jenin camp at a time when both the UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority “are blind to very difficult financial conditions.”
Nasr Abdel Karim, professor of economics at the Arab-American University, told Arab News that there was direct and indirect economic damage in the Jenin camp as the Jenin economy was negatively affected by the Israeli military operation.
Popular campaigns have been launched in the cities of the West Bank to provide relief and support to the people of Jenin and its camp.
Hanadi Al-Barghouti, coordinator of the Ramallah Campaign, highlighted the efforts to support “our people in the Jenin camp.”
He said that the campaign had received a great response.
On the first day of the attack, two trucks arrived in the Jenin camp, and all parcels were distributed to affected families.
On Wednesday, another truck loaded with necessities, including food and supplies, clothes, blankets and medicines and money, was donated.
Bakr Abd Al-Haq, coordinator of the Nablus campaign, said that it came as a response to the scenes of displacement, assaults on families, and calls for relief from the heart of the camp.
He indicated that 57 trucks, buses and vehicles delivered goods. Three of the buses were loaded with medical supplies and others with food, mineral water and children’s supplies.
“The campaign reflects the cohesion and unity on the ground between Jenin and Nablus,” said the coordinator.
“Two years ago in all the incursions and attacks, Jenin was one of the first cities to stand by Nablus. And today it is Nablus’ turn to return part of the gratitude and to deliver a message to the occupation,” he said.
“Jenin is not alone. Nablus is present with aid, standing beside it,” he said.
The US White House, meanwhile, urged its ally Israel to rebuild civilian infrastructure in Jenin.
CAIRO: An airstrike in a Sudanese city on Saturday killed at least 22 people, health authorities said, in one of the deadliest air attacks yet in the three months of fighting between the country’s rival generals.
The assault took place in the Dar es Salaam neighborhood in Omdurman, the neighboring city of the capital, Khartoum, according to a brief statement by the health ministry. The attack wounded an unspecified number of people, it said.
The ministry posted video footage that showed dead bodies on the ground with sheets covering them and people trying to pull the dead from the rubble. Others attempted to help the wounded. People could be heard crying.
The attack was one of the deadliest in the fighting in urban areas of the capital and elsewhere in Sudan. The conflict pits the military against a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces. Last month, an airstrike killed at least 17 people including 5 children in Khartoum.
While the RSF quickly dominated the capital Khartoum and its sister cities Omdurman and Bahri after fighting broke out on April 15, the army has launched air and artillery strikes.
The RSF blamed the military for Saturday’s attack and other strikes on residential areas in Omdurman, where fighting has raged between the warring factions, according to residents. The military has reportedly attempted to cut off a crucial supply line for the paramilitary force there.
A spokesman for the military was not immediately available for comment Saturday.
Two Omdurman residents said it was difficult to determine which side was responsible for the attack. They said the military’s aircraft have repeatedly targeted RSF troops in the area and the paramilitary force has used drones and anti-aircraft weapons against the military.
At the time of the attack early Saturday, the military was hitting the RSF, which took people’s houses as shields, and the RSF fired anti-aircraft rounds at the attacking warplanes, said Abdel-Rahman, one of the residents who asked to use only his first name out of concern for his safety.
“The area is like a hell … fighting around the clock and people are not able to leave,” he said.
The conflict broke out in mid-April, capping months of increasing tensions between the military, chaired by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo. The fighting came 18 months after the two generals led a military coup in October 2021 that toppled a Western-backed civilian transitional government.
The fighting, for which no mediation efforts have succeeded thus far, threatens to drag the country into a wider civil war, drawing in other internal and external actors in the East African nation that lies between the Horn of Africa, Sahel, and Red Sea.
Health Minister Haitham Mohammed Ibrahim said in televised comments last month that the clashes have killed over 3,000 people and wounded over 6,000 others. More than 2.9 million people have fled their homes to safer areas inside Sudan or crossed into neighboring countries, according to UN figures.
“It’s a place of great terror,” Martin Griffiths, the UN humanitarian chief, said of Sudan on Friday. He decried “the appalling crimes” taking place across the country and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.
The conflict has plunged the African country into chaos and turned Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields. Members of the paramilitary force have occupied people’s houses and other civilian properties since the onset of the conflict, according to residents and activists. There were also reports of widespread destruction and looting across Khartoum and Omdurman.
Sexual violence, including the rape of women and girls, has been reported in Khartoum and the western Darfur region, which have seen some of the worst fighting in the conflict. Almost all reported cases of sexual attacks were blamed on the RSF, which hasn’t responded to repeated requests for comment.
On Wednesday, top UN officials including Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, called for a “prompt, thorough, impartial and independent investigation” into the increasing reports of sexual violence against women and girls.
The Sudanese Unit for Combating Violence against Women, a government organization that tracks sex attacks against women, said it documented 88 cases of rape related to the ongoing conflict, including 42 in Khartoum and 46 in Darfur.
The unit, however, said the figure likely represented only 2 percent of the truce number of cases, which means there were a possible 4,400 cases of sexual violence since the fighting began on April 15, according to the Save the Children charity.
“Sexual violence continues to be used as a tool to terrorize women and children in Sudan,” said Arif Noor, director of Save the Children in Sudan. “Children as young as 12 are being targeted for their gender, for their ethnicity, for their vulnerability.”
(With AP and Reuters)
LONDON: A European envoy blasted Israel Saturday over the “proportionality” of the force it uses, as international envoys toured Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank following this week’s deadly raid.
His remarks echoed UN chief Antonio Guterres who on Thursday told reporters “there was an excessive force used by Israeli forces” in its 48-hour operation, the largest Israel has staged in the Palestinian territory for years.
It included air strikes and armored bulldozers ripping up streets.
Jenin is a center for multiple armed Palestinian groups, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the refugee camp a “terrorist nest.”
EU representative to the Palestinian territories Sven Kuehn von Burgsdorff made his comments as he led a delegation of UN officials and diplomats from 25 countries to the camp in the northern West Bank.
“We are concerned about the deployment of weaponry and weapons systems which question the proportionality of the military during the operation,” Kuehn von Burgsdorff said of the operation in which 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed.
“This cycle of violence has to end, it cannot continue. If there is no political solution to the conflict, we are going to stand here in a week’s time, in a month’s time, in a year’s time, with nothing changed,” he added.
As the delegation toured the camp, residents peered out of holes left in the walls by Israeli rockets, and local authorities tested a new camp-wide alarm system to warn of future raids.
Meanwhile, Israel’s UN ambassador called on Guterres to retract his condemnation of the country for its excessive use of force.
UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said the secretary-general conveyed his views on Thursday “and he stands by those views.”
Guterres, angered by the impact of the Israeli airstrikes and attack on the Jenin refugee camp, said the operation left over 100 civilians injured, uprooted thousands of residents, damaged schools and hospitals, and disrupted water and electricity networks. He also criticized Israel for preventing the injured from getting medical care and humanitarian workers from reaching everyone in need.
“I strongly condemn all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror,” Guterres told reporters.
Asked whether this condemnation applied to Israel, he replied: “It applies to all use of excessive force, and obviously in this situation, there was an excessive force used by Israeli forces.”
Haq said Guterres “clearly condemns all of the violence that has been affecting the civilians in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, regardless of who is the perpetrator.”
The UN Security Council discussed Israel’s military operation in Jenin behind closed doors Friday at the request of the UAE and received a briefing from Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari.
Erdan sent a letter to the 15 council members and Guterres before the council meeting saying that over the past year, 52 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, and many attacks were carried out from Jenin or from the area.
“The international community and the Security Council must unconditionally condemn the latest Palestinian terror attacks and hold Palestinian leadership accountable,” he said.
The Security Council took no action.
Jenin camp has been the site of several large-scale raids by the Israeli military this year, but this week’s was the biggest such operation in the West Bank since the second Palestinian “intifada” or uprising of the early 2000s.
The camp’s infrastructure was severely damaged during the raid, which Israel said was targeting militants.
Eight kilometers (five miles) of water pipes and three kilometers of sewage pipes were destroyed, the UN said. More than 100 houses were damaged and a number of schools were also lightly damaged.
The refugee camp in one of the poorest and most densely populated in the West Bank, with some 18,000 people living in just 0.43 square kilometers (0.16 of a square mile).
UN officials on Saturday made a plea for funds to help rebuild the camp.
“To restore services and scale up support to the children, we need cash … our appeal is desperately underfunded,” Leni Stenseth, deputy commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said.
“I would urge you to consider announcing your support for the work we are going to do here in Jenin camp in the coming weeks and months as soon as possible,” she added.
On Thursday Algeria announced $30 million to “help rebuild the Palestinian city of Jenin after the barbaric and criminal attack” by Israel, and the United Arab Emirates, which normalized ties with Israel in 2020, said Wednesday it “will provide $15 million.”
(With AFP and AP)
ANKARA: Following President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s reelection in late May, Turkiye’s foreign policy is in the spotlight once again with the appointment of Hakan Fidan as the country’s new foreign minister.
As Turkiye’s diplomatic leadership undergoes a transition, observers are waiting to see what direction the country will take under Fidan’s guidance.
It is generally believed that little will change, except that Turkiye may take a more assertive stance with an emphasis both on normalization efforts and on institutionalizing a security-guided foreign-policy approach, since Fidan’s doctoral studies focused on the role of intelligence in foreign policy.
The 55-year-old minister is a highly influential figure in Turkiye, having served as the country’s chief of intelligence from 2010 to 2023, orchestrating several reconciliation initiatives with Middle Eastern countries including Syria, Israel, and Egypt.
Renowned for his negotiation skills, Fidan played a direct role in high-level meetings, showcasing his ability to navigate complex geopolitical issues and grasp the intricacies of domestic dynamics in other countries.
Fidan met with the Syrian intelligence chief several times to lay the groundwork for political talks between Damascus and Ankara in 2022, suggesting that further steps may be taken to normalize relations with the Assad regime and to address security concerns related to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Turkiye equates to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
In addition to his experience in hard diplomacy, Fidan previously led the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency, the country’s international aid agency, expanding Turkiye’s soft power through infrastructural and humanitarian assistance in the Balkans, Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia.
His previous role as Turkiye’s representative at the International Atomic Energy Agency also acquainted him with nuclear negotiations involving Iran.
Fidan’s appointment is widely interpreted as a signal of Ankara’s desire to pursue a more active role in regional and global matters.
As foreign minister, Fidan will face the challenge of negotiating with Western powers over several thorny issues, including Sweden’s potential membership of NATO and the delivery of F-16 fighter jets from the US.
On Thursday, Fidan held talks in Brussels with NATO’s top official Jens Stoltenberg. Ankara is insisting that Sweden must align with the recent legal amendments on anti-terror law that Turkiye pushed for, which would allow Swedish authorities to prosecute individuals who support terrorist groups.
“Sweden took some steps concerning legal changes and removing defense-industry restrictions against Turkiye. Those legal changes should now be put into practice,” Fidan said.
Whether Washington will approve the sale of F-16s in return for Turkiye agreeing to Sweden’s ascension is still unclear. Earlier this year, a bipartisan group of senators told US President Joe Biden that Congress should not consider the sale until Turkiye ratifies Sweden’s membership of NATO.
According to Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, Ankara office director of the German Marshall Fund of the US, Fidan is well respected in Washington and in European capitals. “This is an advantage at the outset of his tenure as foreign minister,” he told Arab News.
Recently, Fidan met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in London, where Blinken referred to him as a “colleague of many years.” The situation in Ukraine and NATO’s expansion topped the agenda during their meeting.
Experts do not anticipate any drastic changes in Turkiye’s foreign policy, expecting Fidan to prioritize continuity over major shifts.
“First and foremost, Fidan is Erdogan’s foreign minister, as (his predecessor, Mevlut) Cavusoglu was, and will conduct foreign policy based on the political directives he receives from the president. He was very active in foreign policy as the head of Turkish intelligence and played a role in most key policy areas,” Unluhisarcikli said.
However, given the ongoing depreciation of the Turkish lira and soaring inflation rates, Turkish foreign policy is likely to be closely tied to the country’s economic well-being, which relies heavily on foreign currency.
“I still expect changes in Turkish foreign policy in the upcoming period. Financing the current account deficit will remain a top priority, and this may lead Turkiye to pursue more positive relations with Western allies,” explained Unluhisarcikli.
He also said that, in the short term, assistance from Russia and the Gulf could help address the deficit, but accessing Western financial markets in the medium term would be crucial.
To bolster Turkiye’s strained economy, President Erdogan plans to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE from July 17-19. He is expected to seek direct investments from Gulf countries — initially of approximately $10 billion, potentially rising to $30 billion — particularly in the energy, infrastructure, and defense sectors, according to Reuters.
Independent policy analyst Fuad Shahbazov suggests that, unlike Cavusoglu, Fidan may provide some flexibility.
“Cavusoglu was more concerned about diplomatic etiquette — trying to circumvent harsh rhetoric — but Fidan is a key ally of President Erdogan and a supporter of his conservative and pragmatic foreign policy, even at the cost of partnership with some Western countries,” Shahbazov told Arab News.
Shahbazov acknowledges that Fidan’s portfolio regarding Western and Central Asian networks may be somewhat limited, but believes this will not pose a problem.
“I don’t expect U-turns in diplomatic thaws with Egypt and Israel, as he is the mastermind of the process and will likely follow up on it promptly,” Shahbazov concluded.
The Turkish and Egyptian presidents are set to meet on July 27 in Turkiye.
CAIRO: The Egyptian government is deploying religious institutions to tackle population growth and substance addiction issues.
The recent collaboration with the Egyptian Dar Al-Iftaa aims to rectify religious misunderstandings surrounding family planning.
Dr. Abdel-Fattah El-Gendy, a scholar from Al-Azhar, commented on the initiative in a discussion with Arab News.
He asserted the religious acceptability of birth control, given the motive of spacing pregnancies for reasons such as protecting the mother’s health or allowing her to dedicate adequate time to raising her existing children.
He warned against the misuse of birth control to permanently cease childbirth, which contravenes religious teachings aimed at preserving procreation.
“Birth control is a concept not disregarded in the noble Sunnah, analogous to separation, a practise that was permissible during the time of the Prophet Muhammad,” he said.
“As noted in the narration by Imam Muslim in his Sahih, the Prophet’s companions practised separation with their wives and this practice was not forbidden by the Prophet.”
The government’s engagement with religious advocacy bodies in social issues extends beyond birth control.
The Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population confirmed that it was engaging with imams in the campaign “You Can Be Valued By Others” to encourage recovered addicts to spend their summer vacation away from environments that could potentially trigger relapses.
Dr. Menen Abdel-Maqsoud, secretary-general of the Mental Health and Addiction Treatment Authority, explained to Arab News: “The activities of the campaign include religious seminars presented by a group of imams in all affiliated hospitals and centers — in cooperation with the Ministry of Awqaf.”
He said the goal is to increase religious awareness among patients and support their recovery.
Abdel-Maqsoud added that the campaign fell within the framework of the “100 Days of Health” campaign.
It is initiated through the secretariat for 23 mental health and addiction treatment hospitals and centers, spread across 16 governorates.
The secretariat has also joined hands with cultural and sports clubs to organize various cultural, artistic, sports and religious activities inside and outside of the hospitals and centers.
RIYADH: Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council Jassim Al-Budaiwi said the sixth joint ministerial meeting of strategic dialogue between the Gulf countries and Russia, scheduled to be held in Moscow on Monday, “seeks to strengthen relations and serve the interests of the two sides.”
In a statement on Saturday, Al-Budaiwi said various topics which will be discussed in order to increase cooperation and provide an opportunity to exchange views on a number of regional and international issues.
The secretary-general described relations between the GCC and Russia as “distinguished,” and said the two sides had signed a memorandum of understanding regarding strategic dialogue in November 2011, an indication of their “desire to move toward cementing their links and building strong ties.”
He added that the GCC, through the directives of the leaders of its member states, is “always working to cooperate and build relations with all countries and regional blocs, in an effort to increase and intensify the regional and international presence of the GCC by establishing strategic partnerships with multiple parties of the international community.”