Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 26-27/2024
Elias Bejjani/Text & Video: Unveiling the Truth Behind Hezbollah's False "Liberation Day" of South Lebanon on May 25, 2000
Liberation of the South By The Terrorist Hezbollah is a Big Lie/Abu Arz- Étienne Sakr/May 25, 2024
From: Author, Writer and Professor Dr. Mordechai Nisan to Colonel Barakat on the 25th Of May Southern Sad Day
From Colonel Charbel Barakat to Author, Writer and Professor Mordechai Nisan
Drones kill 3 as Israel widens southern Lebanon attacks
South Lebanon: Six Dead in Drone Strikes
Damascus car bomb kills army liaison with Hezbollah
Israeli strike kills two Hezbollah fighters in Syria
Two dead, others wounded in Israeli drone attack on vehicles belonging to Hezbollah in Syria: SOHR
Israeli strike in Naqoura kills 1 as Hezbollah targets Israeli posts
Alaa Moussa to LBCI: Quintet Committee seeks full political commitment to advance with guarantees
Bou Habib: UNHCR Is ‘Trying to Outsmart Us’
Beirut Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elias Audi: The Ambitions of Officials and Outsiders Weakened Lebanon’s Immunity
Legal process: Lebanon nears decision on deporting Syrian prisoners
Beirut Port smuggling attempt: Lebanon blocks import of hazardous substances
Circulating without papers: Lebanon's youth struggle for driving licenses
Summer soirees: Lebanon's festival season continues to shine despite challenges
Gold Bars: Lebanon Imported 32,000 kg in 2023
Sunday cricket an escape for migrant workers in Lebanon
‘Shou Ya Ashta:’ Women Take Center Stage
The Israeli Air Force may have to think twice about taking on Hezbollah

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 26-27/2024
Saudi Arabia appoints first envoy to Syria in more than a decade
Hamas rocket attack from Gaza sets off air raid sirens in Tel Aviv for the first time in months
Hamas says killed, wounded and captured Israeli troops in Gaza tunnel
Israel fights Hamas in Gaza but says ready for new truce talks
Protests erupt in Tel Aviv over hostages held by Hamas
Aid trucks begin entering Gaza under agreement with Egypt to bypass Rafah
Frankly Speaking: Why ICC prosecution in Gaza was justified
Norway hands over papers for diplomatic recognition to the Palestinian prime minister
‘Strong’ Palestinian Authority needed for Mideast peace: EU’s Borrell
Understanding the 1967 borders: A push for a two-state solution
Protests intensify: Hamas announcement sparks Israeli protests and deepens internal dispute
EU Hosts Talks to Strengthen Palestinian Authority for Gaza
Yemen’s Houthi rebels freed over 100 war prisoners, the Red Cross says
Saudi Arabia, Norway host meeting on coordinated approach to recognition of Palestine in Brussels
Ahead of another donor conference for Syria, humanitarian workers fear more aid cuts
Poland scrambles jets to secure airspace from Russian attacks on Ukraine

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on May 26-27/2024
Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute:’Groom These Women’: The Persecution of Christians, April 2024/
The Hamas Chief and the Israeli Who Saved His Life/Jo Becker and Adam Sella/The New York Times/May 26, 2024
End to war remains distant as EU unveils latest help for Ukraine/Dr. Diana Galeeva/Yasar Yakis/Arab News/May 26, 2024
Azerbaijani-Armenian relations are moving forward/Yasar Yakis/Arab News/May 26, 2024
Why Trump should share his presidential ticket with Haley/Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/May 26, 2024
UK General Elections: Risky Move or Strategic Masterstroke?/Ali A. Hamadé/This is Beirut/May 26/2024
Will Justice Deter Israel?/Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 26/2024
The Shifting Equations of the Conflict with Israel/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 26/2024

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 26-27/2024
Elias Bejjani/Text & Video: Unveiling the Truth Behind Hezbollah's False "Liberation Day" of South Lebanon on May 25, 2000
Elias Bejjani/May 25, 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/75168/elias-bejjani-hezbollahs-bogus-liberation-resistance-day-3/
May 25, 2000, marked a pivotal moment in the history of South Lebanon, or so it seemed. The Israeli army withdrew, fulfilling a promise made by then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the lead-up to the Israeli elections. However, what ensued was not a liberation but a betrayal orchestrated by a clandestine deal between Israel, Iran and Syria, leaving the Lebanese residents in South Lebanon, and their army, the South Lebanese Army (SLA), at the mercy of the Iranian terrorist armed  Jihadist proxy, Hezbollah.
Ehud Barak's election pledge, while seemingly noble in its intent, was overshadowed by the murky negotiations that preceded the Israeli Army's withdrawal, betraying its Lebanese allies. Through intermediaries from Germany, Sweden, and Jordan, a secretive deal was struck with the Syrian and Iranian dictatorial regimes, effectively handing over South Lebanon and its residents to Hezbollah's grip. This deal included dismantling the SLA and sealing off gates with Israel, leaving the residents defenceless against Hezbollah's aggression.
Contrary to Hezbollah's claims, the withdrawal did not constitute a liberation. Instead, it was a calculated move orchestrated by political treason and deception rather than genuine emancipation. Hezbollah's annual celebration of May 25th as "Liberation Day" is nothing but a charade built on lies, deception and manipulation.
The reality on the ground was far from liberation. Few day before the Israel Army withdrawal, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, openly threatened the residents of South Lebanon loudly and openly through all media facilities, instilling fear with his chilling warnings of cutting heads and slashing throats in their beds. These criminal and terrorist threats forced many residents to flee, seeking refuge in Israel, where they remain to this day, branded as traitors and denied the right to return to their homes.
Moreover, it is crucial to acknowledge the role of Syrian occupation in Lebanon during that period. The so-called "Liberation Day", of the South Lebanon, was not a result of Hezbollah's heroic efforts, but rather a consequence of geopolitical under the table deceptive deals orchestrated by foreign powers. Syrian occupation coerced forced the alleged-false narrative of liberation without any tangible basis in reality.
As we reflect on the events of May 25, 2000, it's imperative to strip away the facade and recognize the truth behind Hezbollah's false narrative of liberation. The residents of South Lebanon deserve justice, not manipulation and coercion. It's time to shed light on the dark realities obscured by political agendas and honour the resilience of those who were unjustly abandoned to the mercy of terrorism.
Hezbollah currently occupies all of Lebanon, including its southern regions, from which it has been attacking Israel since October 8, 2003, one day after Hamas's criminal and terrorist war against Israel on October 7, 2003.
We strongly believe that the so-called "Liberation Day" of South Lebanon by the terrorist Hezbollah must be cancelled and completely wiped from Lebanese memory.
In conclusion, Hezbollah is a terrorist, criminal, and jihadist military corps entirely affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Nasrallah and the rest of the members of this group openly acknowledge this relationship. Hezbollah declared an attrition war against Israel on October 8 last year under Iranian orders. Lebanon and the Lebanese people had no decision or say in this matter. Consequently, Hezbollah is entirely responsible for the killing, destruction, and assassinations carried out by the State of Israel in retaliation.
Hezbollah occupies Lebanon and is neither Lebanese nor a liberator. It does not represent the Shiites Lebanese community in Parliament but instead holds Lebanon and the Shiites hostage, leading to the deaths of many young people. Hezbollah because of its attrition war against Israel has devastated the south Lebanon regions, displaced 100,000 residents, and caused the destruction of 70 towns and villages.
Hezbollah is a humanitarian disaster, specializing in crime and smuggling, and is more dangerous than any mafia. Therefore, there is no salvation for Lebanon until its political, military, and occupational influence is ended, and all UN Resolutions addressing Lebanon are fully implemented by force.
 
Liberation of the South By The Terrorist Hezbollah is a Big Lie
Abu Arz- Étienne Sakr/May 25, 2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/130103/130103/
The so-called liberation of the South in 2000, is a blatant fabrication perpetuated by Iranian Jihadist proxy, the terrorist Hezbollah. Hezbollah imposed this falsehood on the Lebanese state, which adopted it under duress and falsely commemorated it as an annual official holiday.
We have stated before, and we reiterate now for those who have missed the truth in a country addicted to hypocrisy and political quackery, that what they call liberation of the South was, in fact, a unilateral withdrawal by the State of Israel. The withdrawal was carried out under a bilateral agreement with Hezbollah, mediated by the German government, and at the expense of the South Lebanese Army (SLA).
For a more accurate understanding, we assert that the Free Lebanese Army (South Lebanese Army-SLA) would never have accepted such a withdrawal if it had been led by a commander of the patriotic calibre of General Saad Haddad.
Long live Lebanon.
(Free translation from Arabic by Elias Bejjani)

From: Author, Writer and Professor Dr. Mordechai Nisan to Colonel Barakat on the 25th Of May Southern Sad Day
Dear Charbel,
My memory and heart recall painfully the deception and betrayal in south Lebanon 24 years ago; I don't forget nor forgive. Israel's war is against savage terrorists, but much of the world doesn't want to understand. Maybe Bibi will explain all this to Congress.
Looking forward to our reunion,

From Colonel Charbel Barakat to Author, Writer and Professor Mordechai Nisan
Dear Mordechai
The historical time Israel is going through is very critical. The world needs to understand the importance of defeating terror once for all. Before any real and lasting Peace to maintain there is few conditions to realize on top of all is to accept the fact that Israel is a country to stay and a home to the Jewish People to protect and become the bench mark for prosperity and stability of the region if not the whole world. It is not a matter of local or even worldwide politics or leadership it is a reality to be accepted by the Middle East people once for all and it is up to the Israelis to prove they do not have the option to coexist with terror no matter what is its objective. As for the Arabs they have to understand that wealth and progress will not be there for ever if it is not protected from gangs and terrorists. The example of Lebanon is very clear in this direction. I still hope to witness the end of all the troubles with the less blood shed possible but freedom is a jewel to be protected it can not be left without defense.
Wish you all the best.

Drones kill 3 as Israel widens southern Lebanon attacks
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/May 26, 2024
BEIRUT: Three people, including two civilians, were killed in drone strikes on Sunday as the Israeli army stepped up its attacks on Hezbollah and its ally in southern Lebanon. The first strike, near a UNIFIL site in Naqoura, killed a Hezbollah member later identified as Mohammed Baydoun.
A second Israeli drone targeted a motorcycle in Aita Al-Shaab, killing a civilian named as Rafik Hassan Kassem, and badly injuring another man, Hussein Saleh, who later died from his wounds. Saleh, a mechanic with no political affiliations, used to travel to nearby towns to feed domestic animals left behind by owners who fled the region. Arab News had previously interviewed him. People close to Saleh said that “everyone advised him to stop visiting border villages in fear of being targeted, but he insisted on fulfilling his humanitarian duty.”An Israeli drone also struck Jabal Al-Blat, opposite Israel’s Zar’it settlement, targeting a transmission tower for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV Channel. As hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel entered their 231st day, Khiam village was subjected to heavy Israeli raids, with military drones striking four targets.
In less than 48 hours, Israeli shelling reached the outskirts of Chihine, Majdal Zoun, Kfarhamam in Wadi Hamoul, Zebqine, and Naqoura. Shelling subsequently reached the villages of Rachaya Al-Foukhar, Hamoul, Zebqine, Labbouneh, the Makraba forest, and the eastern outskirts of Khiam.
A fire erupted after a number of shells landed on the outskirts of Rab Al-Thalathine, near Al-Taybeh village. Israeli raids on Aita Al-Shaab in the central sector caused serious damage to property, infrastructure and homes. Hezbollah also announced the deaths of two people in Israeli raids on Aitaroun late on Saturday night. One of the victims was named as Bilal Amin Mourad, a former principal in the Aitaroun public vocational school. Caretaker Minister of Education Abbas Halabi mourned Mourad’s death on Sunday. Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee said that the military struck Hezbollah targets in five regions in southern Lebanon. He said that warplanes raided Hezbollah’s infrastructure and military buildings in Khiam and Aita Al-Shaab, adding that several areas in Khiam, Houla, Markaba and Kfarkila were also bombed. Sirens sounded in Israeli settlements adjacent to the Lebanese border, including Shlomi, Betzet, Hanita, Ras Naqoura in western Galilee, Avivim in the upper Galilee, and Kiryat Shmona and its surroundings.Meanwhile, missiles landed in an Israeli army site near Shlomi.
Israeli Army Radio announced that “two anti-armor missiles were launched from Lebanon toward Margaliot in the Galilee panhandle.”The Israeli Channel 12 said “about 10 missiles were launched from Lebanon toward the Zar’it settlement in the upper Galilee, with no casualties reported.”Hezbollah’s operations targeted “technical systems in the Israeli Al-Abad site with appropriate weapons, striking it directly and completely destroying it.”The militant group also struck “a Merkava tank with a direct missile in the Al-Marj site, destroying it and killing and injuring its members.”
It subsequently targeted the Zibdine site in the Shebaa farms and a building for the Israeli soldiers in the Al-Manara settlement. It also hit two buildings for the Israeli soldiers in the Metula settlement and two other buildings for the Israeli soldiers in the Shtula settlement. MP Mohammed Raad, head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, responded on Sunday to Israeli statements threatening to wage open war on Lebanon, saying: “We know your situation accurately, and we know who you are and we are waiting for you.”In response to those criticizing the attacks in southern Lebanon in support of the Gaza Strip, Raad said: “When criminals take their crimes too far, they don’t spare anyone. That’s why we should prevent the enemy from looking for another target, so we don’t wind up being the other victims.” Referring to the kamikaze drones used to strike Israeli targets, Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, a member of Hezbollah’s Central Council, promised further operations that will “surprise and humiliate the enemy.”He said: “For the first time in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Lebanese planes raid Israeli sites in occupied Palestine.”

South Lebanon: Six Dead in Drone Strikes
This Is Beirut/May 26/2024
Sunday was marked by drone strikes on Naqoura, Aita al-Shaab, Yarun and Houla, killing at least six people. Mohammad Baydoun, a Hezbollah fighter, was killed on Sunday morning in an Israeli drone strike targeting a motorcycle in the Naqoura region, near the headquarters of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). The attack was claimed by the Israeli army, which said it had targeted a Hezb member leaving a military building in Naqoura. Later in the day, two other Hezb members, Rafic Kassem and Hussein Saleh, were killed following a drone attack on Aita al-Shaab. Several civilians were reported injured. In the afternoon, a drone strike on Yaroun also left one person dead, while another on Hula, targeting a motorcycle, left, at least, two person dead and two injured. At the same time, phosphorus shells were fired at Aitaroun and Odaisseh, causing fires. Israeli artillery also bombarded the outskirts of Chihine, Majdel Zoun, Zebqine, Wadi Hamoul and Wadi Hassan. A shell fired by a Merkava tank in Metula hit the village of Kfar Kila. Several Israeli raids also targeted the area near a transmission pole belonging to the Al-Manar channel in Jabal Blat. For its part, the pro-Iranian group claimed responsibility for attacks on the Israeli sites of Jal al-Alam, al-Abad and Zebdine, as well as the battalion’s headquarters at the Liman barracks in Western Galilee. In addition, Israeli army radio announced that it had identified the firing of two anti-tank missiles from Lebanon towards Margaliot in the Galilee, as well as fifteen shots in the direction of Shlomi.Furthermore, Israeli army’s Arabic-speaking spokesman Avichay Adraee announced that the Israeli air force had targeted Hezbollah infrastructure and military buildings in Khiam and Aita al-Shaab on Saturday night. He also claimed, in a post on X, artillery bombardments on Khiam, Hula, Markaba and Kfar Kila.

Damascus car bomb kills army liaison with Hezbollah
Agence France Presse/May 26/2024
A car bomb killed a Syrian officer working with Lebanon's Hezbollah in Damascus Saturday, a war monitor said, with state media reporting one dead without identifying the victim. Bombings targeting military and civilian vehicles, still occur intermittently in the Syrian capital more than 12 years into a devastating civil war. "A Syrian army officer who worked closely with Hezbollah was killed after an explosive device detonated in his car in Damascus," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.The officer hailed from the eastern province of Deir Ezzor province and was tasked with recruiting Syrian fighters for Hezbollah, Abdel Rahman said.State news agency SANA said "one person was killed when an explosive device detonated in a car," in the upscale Mazzeh district, which houses embassies and U.N. offices.It did not provide any other details. The explosion came with regional tensions running high as Israel fights a devastating war against Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. A similar car bombing hit Mazzeh last month without causing any casualties. Hamas ally Hezbollah has exchanged near-daily fire with the Israeli military since the Palestinian group's unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza. Israel has mounted hundreds of air strikes against Hezbollah and other Iran-backed targets in Syria since the civil war broke out in 2011.
The war has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions more.

Israeli strike kills two Hezbollah fighters in Syria
Agence France Presse/May 26/2024
An Israeli drone strike in central Syria killed two fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah on Saturday, a war monitor said."An Israeli drone fired two missiles at a Hezbollah car and truck near the town of Qusayr in Homs province, as they were on their way to al-Dabaa military airport, killing at least two Hezbollah fighters and wounding others," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.It was the third strike against Hezbollah targets in Syria in about a week. On Monday, Israeli strikes in the Qusayr area, which is close to the Lebanese border, killed eight pro-Iranian fighters, said Observatory, a Britain-based monitor with a network of sources in Syria. At least one Hezbollah fighter was among those killed, a source from Hezbollah told AFP at the time. Another strike, on May 18, targeted "a Hezbollah commander and his companion," the Observatory said. It did not report any casualties. Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow its arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the outbreak of the civil war in its northern neighbor, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Hezbollah. The strikes have increased since Israel's war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip began on October 7, when the Iran-backed Palestinian militant group launched an unprecedented attack against Israel. Syria's war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions more since it erupted in 2011 after Damascus cracked down on anti-government protests.

Two dead, others wounded in Israeli drone attack on vehicles belonging to Hezbollah in Syria: SOHR
LBCI/May 26/2024
On Saturday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that an Israeli drone targeted a car and a truck belonging to Lebanon's Hezbollah in the vicinity of Al-Qusayr, a city in the Homs countryside, on their way to Al-Dabaa military airport.
The Observatory said that the strike led fire to erupt in both vehicles. It also noted that there are confirmed reports "about the death of two individuals and the injury of others whose nationalities are unknown, who were in the vehicles."

Israeli strike in Naqoura kills 1 as Hezbollah targets Israeli posts
Naharnet/May 26/2024 
At least one person was reportedly killed Sunday when an Israeli drone targeted a motorcycle in the border town of Naqoura.Hezbollah meanwhile said that it attacked the al-Abbad Israeli post destroying its technical equipment. It also said that it heavily shelled the Jal al-Alam Israeli post "in response to the assassination in Naqoura," achieving "casualties and certain losses." Hezbollah has been exchanging near-daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since Hamas' unprecedented October 7 attack triggered war in Gaza. At least 429 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly militants but also including at least 82 civilians, according to an AFP tally. In Israel, the army says the exchanges of fire have killed at least 11 civilians and 14 soldiers.

Alaa Moussa to LBCI: Quintet Committee seeks full political commitment to advance with guarantees
LBCI/May 26/2024
The Egyptian ambassador to Lebanon, Alaa Moussa, confirmed that the work of the Quintet Committee is ongoing with a clear approach that aligns with Lebanese realities and continues its consultations with various political forces. On LBCI's "Nharkom Said" TV show, Moussa emphasized that the committee's work is always progressing, even if sometimes in small steps, noting that not everything it does is publicly announced. "Our dialogue with the political blocs confirms that they are willing, albeit to varying degrees, to make a breakthrough," he said. Moussa added that all the feedback received following the latest statement was positive and encouraging, prompting the committee to take further steps. He noted that the Quintet is working to overcome obstacles. In addition, he asserted that there is no place for "despair" in political work and that the Quintet is convinced the solution will come from within Lebanon, with the committee only there to assist in this process. "What we have observed is that the lack of trust between the political parties is significant, making them wary of each other," Moussa said. He stressed that the Quintet Committee seeks "full commitment" from the political forces to advance with certain guarantees. Moussa continued, "Therefore, reassurance is linked to the commitment and consensus of the political forces."

Bou Habib: UNHCR Is ‘Trying to Outsmart Us’
This Is Beirut/May 26/2024
On the eve of the 8th Brussels Conference on “Supporting the future of Syria and the region,” Abdallah Bou Habib, the caretaker Minister of Foreign Affairs, declared that there is “no trust in the UNHCR because they are trying to outsmart us,” despite the agency’s critical role in supporting refugees.In an interview with MTV, Bou Habib also claimed that “the eight donor countries have acknowledged the need for safe zones for the return of displaced.”“The Syrian regime has affirmed the right of the displaced to return, and the state is ready to regularize their status, especially regarding military service,” stated the Minister of Foreign Affairs. However, trusting the Syrian regime, which has a well-documented history of human rights abuses and has failed to provide genuine safety guarantees, seems naive.

Beirut Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elias Audi: The Ambitions of Officials and Outsiders Weakened Lebanon’s Immunity
This Is Beirut/26 May 2024
Beirut Greek Orthodox Archbishop Elias Audi considered that “the ambitions of officials, rulers and leaders, and the ambitions of outsiders, have weakened Lebanon’s immunity.”In his Sunday homily, the archbishop mentioned that “leaders and rulers failed to fortify [Lebanon] against envy, hatred, greed and division, and against foreign interventions and diversions that harmed the country’s unity,” which led to the disappointment of the people and their divisions. He added that the absence of a president lost the country its “role, prestige and control over its situation.”
He emphasized, “Here we must express our deep regret at the campaign that targeted the security measures taken by the Ministry of Interior to suppress violations and curb the chaos invading the streets.”“When the government does not do its job, it is criticized, and when it wakes up to its duties, it is confronted,” he commented. “Mismanagement and miscalculation, prioritizing foreign interests over domestic ones, not adhering to the constitution, and not electing a president to take control of the situation have increased its fragility,” Audi continued. He also added that Lebanon is “dislocated, languishing under the weight of political, social, economic, moral and security issues, and the list goes on,” referring to “war, assassinations, arms smuggling, security lapses, the promise of a hot summer, crimes, drugs and other scourges,” considering that “the hollowing out of institutions, the obstruction of the a presidential election and the exchange of accusations weigh the Lebanese down, and make their already burdened life difficult for them.”

Legal process: Lebanon nears decision on deporting Syrian prisoners
LBCI/May 26/2024
Lebanon is on the brink of finalizing the deportation of Syrian prisoners back to Syria. The General Security, tasked by the government and coordinating with the Justice Ministry and the Public Prosecutor's Office, is close to completing a detailed list of these prisoners, including their sentences and crimes committed. In Lebanon, there are approximately 2,500 Syrian inmates, making up about 35% of the total prison population, according to the Interior Ministry. Around 1,900 of them have committed criminal offenses, with 82% yet to be tried. The remaining 600 are political dissidents or accused terrorists, who may fall under the protection of the United Nations Convention Against Torture of 1984, which prohibits the extradition of individuals who may face torture in their home country. Acting Director General of General Security, Major General Elias Al Baysari, affirmed to LBCI that he acknowledged the complexity of the issue. He emphasized that each case is being meticulously reviewed. The designated committee will hold its final meeting next week to prepare a detailed proposal in collaboration with the Public Prosecutor's Office before initiating contact with Syrian authorities. "We will adhere to the agreements between the two countries and international law," Al Baysari stated, underscoring that the aim is not to harm anyone. Convicts in certain cases have the right to appeal and refuse deportation, even in criminal cases, and can choose to accept or reject deportation. Al Baysari noted that amending any treaty or agreement is currently impossible due to the lack of a president in Lebanon. Judicial sources have indicated that Syria has previously not opposed receiving individuals who were ordered for deportation by the Lebanese Public Prosecutor's Office. Consequently, the Lebanese government must prepare its official proposal and discuss it with Syria.

Beirut Port smuggling attempt: Lebanon blocks import of hazardous substances
LBCI/May 26/2024
Lebanese authorities have foiled an attempt to smuggle 104 containers of hazardous materials through Beirut Port. The containers declared as engine cleaning oils, were found void of dangerous and carcinogenic petroleum residues. The incident began a few weeks ago when a shipment of ten containers entered Beirut Port and underwent the necessary customs procedures. Upon inspection, the army, which was verifying the shipment’s documentation, noted that all ten containers were registered under a single trader's name. This raised suspicions due to the unusually large quantity for one trader, especially since a similar shipment had recently entered the port. Additionally, the containers emitted a strong petroleum odor. The army refused entry pending laboratory tests to confirm their contents and intended use. Further investigation by the State Security Office at the port revealed an additional 94 similar containers that had not yet cleared customs. Subsequent laboratory tests conducted by renowned university labs confirmed that the containers did not contain engine oils but rather poor-quality, flammable, and carcinogenic petroleum residues. These materials were being imported cheaply to be mixed with diesel in Lebanon, subsequently sold to mills and incinerators for high profits, circumventing the purchase of higher-priced, specification-compliant diesel from the Energy Ministry-approved importers. Following these findings, Public Prosecutor Jamal Hajjar ordered the re-export of these materials and tasked State Security with monitoring the case. Consequently, a Lebanese trader purchased the materials, and 94 of the 104 containers were re-exported, some to India and others to an Arab country. The re-export of the remaining ten containers is nearing completion after the necessary customs procedures.

Circulating without papers: Lebanon's youth struggle for driving licenses
LBCI/May 26/2024
Thousands of young Lebanese are currently driving without licenses. This situation arose after the Traffic Management Organization halted driving tests in October 2022, leaving many, including those born in 2004, 2005, and 2006, without a driving license. The problem lies in a financial dispute with Inkript, the company responsible for importing biometric cards, which ceased operations due to an outstanding payment of $8 million from the government. However, progress has been made recently toward resolving these issues:
1. Budget allocation: The dispute between the government and Inkript has been initially resolved following a decision by the Traffic Management Organization to include the required amount in its 2024 budget.
2. New application process: A new regulation mandates that anyone needing a driver's license must obtain an application form from driving schools, a procedure that was not enforced previously.
3. Training of examiners: More than 30 officers and inspectors from the Internal Security Forces are currently being trained to form examination committees for driving tests. Additionally, driving school instructors are undergoing training sessions.
4. Examination grounds: Efforts are underway to prepare a testing ground for driving exams. Once biometric cards are available, individuals will be able to apply for licenses online. The Traffic Management Organization will soon introduce a new electronic application system, allowing users to upload their applications and necessary documents via an online platform. For those who passed their driving tests in 2022, before the issuance of the halt, the Traffic Management Organization will start distributing licenses to approximately 2,000 individuals early next week, following the arrival of a new batch of cards. As for drivers needing to renew their licenses, they are currently being issued a temporary paper form instead of a biometric card.
Once the cards are available, these individuals can visit Inkript to have their biometric cards printed using the temporary form. Additionally, the Interior Minister has extended the deadline for license renewals for those whose licenses have expired until the end of June.

Summer soirees: Lebanon's festival season continues to shine despite challenges
LBCI/May 26/2024
Lebanon has an enchanting atmosphere represented by its successful journey with international stars who have illuminated the nights of festivals and concerts, to the extent that these events have become an indispensable part of the country's economy and tourism.
Boosting Tourist Activity
The small country called Lebanon hosts over 100 festivals and entertainment activities - from large international festivals mostly held during the summer tourism season, to artistic, sports, and culinary events, which play a crucial role in attracting both local and foreign visitors to various regions. In turn, these events stimulate economic activity from small snack bars to large restaurants and hotels.
Bringing in Hard Currency
Since Lebanon hosts many competitively priced artistic events (ranging from $20 to $100), the country becomes an attractive factor even for citizens of neighboring countries. Financially, these festivals help bring hard currency into the country and contribute to the state treasury through taxes and fees paid by artists and organizers.
Supporting Local Innovation
When you visit any festival in Lebanon, visitors often notice stands showcasing the work of craftsmen or small business owners, providing an opportunity to promote innovation and creativity while boosting the local economy.
Marketing Lebanese culture
The most important aspect is that festivals reflect Lebanon's cultural image worldwide, and the efficiency of its people working in this field in terms of organization.
Lebanon enjoys this economic strength at a time when many countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia, for example, are outlining plans with the festival and entertainment sector among their priorities. This year, the journey continues as the Ministry of Tourism has begun issuing permits for festivals, which are preparing their programs and inviting guests. So visitors are urged to keep an eye on the programs that each region will launch. It is worth noting that some festivals, like Baalbeck, are planning a symbolic mini-festival due to known security concerns in the area at the moment, but their message is clear: Decades of beauty and joy cannot be stopped by anything.

Gold Bars: Lebanon Imported 32,000 kg in 2023
Liliane Mokbel/This is Beirut/May 26/2024
In 2023, Lebanon imported 31,814 kg of gold bars, valued at $1.9 billion, compared to 16,776 kg in 2022, an increase of 89.6% year-on-year. This marked a record high for Lebanon in terms of the weight and value of gold bar imports over a decade, namely, from 2014 to 2023. According to the research and statistics bureau Information International which relied on the figures of the Customs Directorate, Lebanon imported gold, jewelry and precious stones worth $12,573,686,000 during this period, with gold bars making up 59% of this total amount.Notably, the highest annual quantity of imported gold, apart from 2023, was recorded in 2016. That year, imports reached 25,574 kilograms, of which 19,313 kg were re-exported.
Drop in 2019
Gold imports started to drop from 2019 onwards, coinciding with the onset of the multidimensional crisis. That year, imports amounted to 11,356 kg, while exports exceeded imports, reaching 15,452 kg. In 2020, Lebanon experienced its lowest gold imports, the latter amounting to 10,149 kg, compared to exports of around 20,806 kg. Over the course of a decade (2014-2023), the Country of the Cedars imported 166,785 kg of gold and exported 119,418 kg.
The Jewelry Industry
Lebanese-made simple or fine jewelry pieces are seemingly quite popular overseas. It is worth mentioning that for years, Lebanese jewelry exports have consistently ranked as the country’s top export category, accounting for 22% of Lebanon’s total exports in 2022. This is a substantial proportion in terms of the sector’s profitability and its impact on the country’s economy as a whole. While Lebanon imports gold, silver and precious and semi-precious stones for this particular industry, the true value lies in the design, craftsmanship and manufacturing of the jewelry. In this context, it’s worth mentioning that Princess Charlene of Monaco’s engagement necklace was designed by Lebanese jewelry house, Najib Tabbah, highlighting Lebanon’s presence on the international stage. Furthermore, for the fifth consecutive year, the renowned jewelry house, Mouawad, sponsored the Miss Universe pageant. In terms of domestic trade, the increasing number of jewelers setting up shop in the streets of the capital and its outskirts on an annual basis points to the enduring fascination of Lebanese women with gold and precious stones.

Sunday cricket an escape for migrant workers in Lebanon
Agence France Presse/May 26/2024
In a Beirut car park, migrant workers cheer as their teams face off in a cricket tournament, a moment of respite in crisis-hit Lebanon, where working conditions are often tough. "Sunday we are so happy... We eat together, we laugh together," said cricketer Pradeepa Silva, a 42-year-old Sri Lankan, as she and her teammates prepared coconut rice and other traditional food nearby to share.
"Work is very tiring" and workers are stressed and worried, said Silva, who is employed as a housemaid six days a week and pays for her daughter's university studies back home. Every Sunday, players mainly from Sri Lanka but also from the Philippines, India and Pakistan gather in Beirut's Ashrafieh neighborhood to play cricket -- a little-known sport in Lebanon. Migrant workers are employed under Lebanon’s controversial "kafala" sponsorship system, which rights groups have repeatedly denounced saying that it enables a wide range of abuses. On May 19, several hundred people gathered for a tournament that also brought together traditional food stalls, a DJ playing Bollywood hits and other music, teams from the British and Sri Lankan embassies and young Syrian refugee players. Iris Sagario from the Philippines ran onto the field for the Roaring Lions women's team, wearing an orange and blue shirt with her name printed on the back. "I love cricket," said the 43-year-old, who works as a housekeeper. "I'm very excited to play every Sunday" -- her only day off. After winning their match, Sagario's team broke out into cheers, hugging and high-fiving each other. They went on to take the women's trophy .
'Lord's of Lebanon' -
More than 160,000 migrants from 84 nationalities were in Lebanon last year, according to a report from the International Organization for Migration. With daily bombardment in south Lebanon as Hezbollah and the Israeli army clash amid tensions over the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, some foreign embassies have advised their nationals to leave the country. "At first I was worried" but "my sir (employer) assured me that all is good," said Sagario, who was also in Lebanon in 2006, when Israel and Hezbollah last went to war. "I'm choosing to stay because... I don't know what I'll do if I go back to the Philippines. I want to give financial (help) to my family," she said.
Curious passersby sometimes peered over a tumbledown stone wall to watch the matches. Organizer Fernando Sugath, 52, from Sri Lanka said some players nicknamed the car park they have been using for around two decades "Lord's of Lebanon", a reference to the famous Lord's cricket ground in London, which is known as the "home of cricket". Matches in the car park were halted for five years when the players lost access to the site but resumed in 2022, Sugath said. His team changed its name to the Saint Joseph Cricket Club in honor of the neighboring church that helped them return to the site.
'Let them have some freedom' -
Migrant workers at the cricket match "are very lucky that they've got some good employers who give them the Sunday off," said Sugath, who first came to Lebanon in 1996 as a cleaner and is now an administrative assistant.
Rights groups have long criticized Lebanon's restrictive sponsorship system, saying it facilitates exploitation and leaves migrant workers at the mercy of their employers, amid persistent reports of physical and sexual abuse, unpaid wages and long work hours.
Sugath appealed to all employers to give workers "at least one hour, two hours off on Sunday... Let them have some freedom, let them use the phone, call their families."
As the men's competition kicked off, big hitters began smashing the ball into the trees lining the car park as fielders scrambled for a catch.
Majid Satti, 39, from Pakistan, captains the Eleven Brothers team -- with five players from Pakistan and six from India -- which came runner-up in the men's tournament.
Their two countries have long had a strained relationship, but "we have no issue... we are all like brothers here," said Satti, a concierge who has been in Lebanon for 15 years. Vice-captain Raju Singh, 41, from India, said the players "never think about" politics. An electrician by trade, Singh wore his team's traditional cricket whites, with long white trousers and shoes, and was among those in charge of the coin toss to decide which teams would field or bat first. The Lebanese 500 lira coin he used, valued until 2019 at around 35 US cents , is now worth less than a single cent following Lebanon's economic collapse, during which some migrant workers were abandoned by their employers and others pushed to leave the country. Singh said he loved cricket and traveled almost 30 kilometers each week for the Sunday games. "When we finish (and) we go home, we are waiting for next Sunday," he said.

‘Shou Ya Ashta:’ Women Take Center Stage
This Is Beirut/May 26/2024
Shou Ya Ashta is a 75-minute Lebanese dark comedy that addresses various aspects of gender-based violence against women and girls. The play premieres on May 30 at Le Monnot Theater at 8:30 PM. Written by Wafa’a Halawi and Riad Chirazi, Shou Ya Ashta is produced by Wafa’a Halawi and Michele Fenianos and stars Cynthya Karam, Wafa’a Halawi, Salma Chalabi and Katy Younes. The play offers a poignant exploration of gender-based violence amidst Lebanon’s challenging landscape. Through a blend of humor and introspection, it sheds light on societal issues.
Its title, Shou Ya Ashta, carries a deeper meaning, transcending its seemingly harmless origins. In Lebanese slang, “ashta” refers to a woman deemed attractive, yet the play challenges the objectification inherent in such terms. Based on interviews and a legal review of the text by the National Commission for Lebanese Women (NCLW), this dark comedy delves into the private world of Dr. Jouni, a respected therapist navigating her own challenges, while guiding characters like Nour, Leila and Mira through their journeys of healing and self-discovery. Shou Ya Ashta challenges societal norms. With its witty comedy and compelling narrative, it sparks conversations, inviting audiences to confront their own beliefs about desire, power and self-determination.
The casting brings to life three captivating stories. Nour, a young survivor haunted by past trauma, embarks on a quest for reconciliation. Leila, a middle-aged woman grappling with a failing marriage, confronts her worth and desirability in the face of emotional manipulation. Meanwhile, Mira, an actress navigating the treacherous waters of show business, refuses to be silenced in the face of harassment and manipulation.
Despite Lebanon’s dire situation, artists are refusing to succumb to despair, choosing instead to be catalysts for renewal. As the country grapples with various issues, including social ones, Shou Ya Ashta emerges as a beacon of awareness. It sheds light on the complexities of gender-based violence through a compelling blend of comedy and introspection. Through its witty humor and exploration of diverse characters, the play serves as a wake-up call. Tickets are available at Librairie Antoine branches and online through Antoine Ticketing.

The Israeli Air Force may have to think twice about taking on Hezbollah
Paul Iddon/Business Insider/May 26, 2024
Israel now waging war on three battle fronts — Palestinian territories, Lebanon, and Syria. Hezbollah may have surface-to-air missiles than can threat Israeli aircraft.
A recent Israeli strike appears to have damaged a Iran-made Sayyad-2 missile.
The possibility of missiles will "force" the IDF to be more cautious over Lebanon, an expert said.
Much has been written about Hezbollah's enormous arsenal of surface-to-surface missiles and rockets and the devastation they could unleash against Israel. A recent incident, however, briefly put the spotlight on Hezbollah's lesser-known air defenses.
After the Israeli Air Force targeted Hezbollah sites south of the Lebanese city of Sidon, footage emerged purportedly showing the remains of an Iranian-built Sayyad-2 surface-to-air missile. The Israeli military stated the Hezbollah sites targeted "posed a threat to Israeli aircraft."
Israeli media reported that the footage was "apparently the first public evidence suggesting that Hezbollah has such missiles," as had been previously claimed. Hezbollah has traded tit-for-tat strikes with Israel since Hamas' Oct. 7 terror attacks, but the air defenses suggest Israel's Air Force would face a much greater threat over southern Lebanon than it has in Gaza's skies.
The Sayyad-2 is a medium-range anti-aircraft missile Iran developed by heavily reverse engineering the American RIM-66 Standard Missile, SM-1, Tehran acquired before the 1979 revolution. The Sayyad-2 has a shorter range than its successors. The most advanced, the Sayyad-4B, which Iran developed for its Bavar-373 air defense system, has an estimated range of 186 miles. In October, a Hezbollah-appointed guide showcased some of the group's firepower to visiting journalists and hinted they have long-range air defenses like the Russian S-300. "Do you think we don't have S-300?" he said. "If Iran has S-300, absolutely Hezbollah will take S-300." It's unclear if Iran has tried to transfer the Bavar-373, Iran's domestically-developed equivalent to the S-300, to Hezbollah with its Sayyad 4/4B missiles. "Hezbollah's air defense capabilities are very opaque," Nicholas Blanford, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and author of the 2011 book "Warriors of God: Inside Hezbollah's Thirty-Year Struggle Against Israel," told Business Insider. "More is known about other systems in their arsenal than air defense because Hezbollah very rarely uses it."
"Nevertheless, if Iran possesses or can acquire an air defense system that suits Hezbollah's needs, then it is safe to assume that Hezbollah probably will have it," Blanford said.
The Hezbollah expert also noted that possession of missiles like the Sayyad-2 "certainly raises the threat level" to Israeli aircraft compared to shoulder-fired missiles. He also pointed out that Israel has "always maintained" that any Hezbollah acquisition of advanced air defense systems amounts to a "red line."
Since 2013, Israel has sustained an air campaign in Syria targeting Iranian weapons shipments to Lebanon to prevent Hezbollah from acquiring high-end systems. It has intensified this campaign since the Hamas 10/7 attacks, likely making it more difficult than ever for Iran to transfer weapons to Hezbollah via Syria. During this campaign, Israeli jets have evaded and, at times, destroyed Syria's Russian-built short and medium-range Tor and Pantsir air defenses. The discovery of the Sayyad-2 suggests Iran transferred at least some anti-aircraft missiles to its most valued regional proxy. "It has been reported that Hezbollah possesses Sayyad-2 anti-aircraft missiles previously, and the Israeli strike on Friday solidified those claims," Freddy Khoueiry, a global security analyst for the Middle East and North Africa at the risk intelligence company RANE, told BI. "It was suspected that Hezbollah has been using the Sayyad-2 to shoot down some of Israel's advanced Hermes 900 drones over Lebanon." "Hezbollah has for the past few years boasted of advancing its air-defensive capabilities, and the discovery of Hezbollah's possession of Sayyad-2 demonstrates how much they obtained advanced anti-air systems," Khoueiry said.
Israel has experience destroying formidable air defenses in Lebanon. When it invaded the country in 1982, it launched a coordinated, large-scale suppression of enemy air defense operation against an array of Soviet-built surface-to-air missile batteries Syria had deployed to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Operation Mole Cricket 19 obliterated the Syrian missiles and saw Israel's new F-15 and F-16 fighters dogfight the Syrian Air Force, shooting down 82 Syrian aircraft without losing a single fighter. While Hezbollah is unlikely ever to field a network of anti-aircraft missiles that large, some of its air defenses could nevertheless impact Israeli air operations over Lebanon. "Generally speaking, this will unlikely deter Israel's Air Force from operating over Lebanon but will likely force the Israelis to become more cautious amid Hezbollah's changing tactics and their more advanced capabilities, such as having their fighter jets flying at higher altitudes or using stealthier jets like the F-35," Khoueiry said.
"Israel's Air Force is much more advanced and can bypass these air defenses, maintaining its immense air superiority, but Israeli drones and helicopters operating over Lebanon could be more at risk, especially if the IDF expands its operations in Lebanon."Khoueiry doubts Iran will transfer strategic systems like the Bavar-373 to Lebanon. "It is more likely that Iran can and did transfer medium-sized and range defensive systems to Hezbollah," Khoueiry said. "Larger anti-air defense systems like the Bavar-373 are harder to transfer given their size, but also given that Lebanon's geography is small and Hezbollah would not be able to properly operate them there." The RANE analyst believes that if Iran did deploy the Bavar-373 in the region, it would send it somewhere like Syria, although he estimates that's unlikely at this point. "The discovery of the Sayyad-2 likely hints that Iran has been able to transfer more similar advanced defensive systems that Hezbollah is likely to use in a progressive way as the conflict escalates or in the event of a wider war, especially given the likely limited number they possess," Khoueiry said.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 26-27/2024
Saudi Arabia appoints first envoy to Syria in more than a decade
ARAB NEWS/May 26, 2024
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has appointed Faisal Al-Mujfel as the kingdom’s new ambassador to Syria, the Saudi Press Agency reported. “The honored ambassador extends his thanks to the leadership on the occasion of his appointment as Ambassador to the Syrian Arab Republic,” SPA said. Al-Mujfel is the kingdom's first envoy to Damascus since the closure of the Saudi embassy there in 2012 during the Syrian civil war. Syria reopened its embassy in Riyadh last year and appointed a new ambassador in December.

Hamas rocket attack from Gaza sets off air raid sirens in Tel Aviv for the first time in months
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip/AP/May 26, 2024
Hamas fired a barrage of rockets from Gaza that set off air raid sirens as far away as Tel Aviv for the first time in months on Sunday in a show of resilience more than seven months into Israel's massive air, sea and ground offensive. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage in what appeared to be the first long-range rocket attack from Gaza since January. Palestinian militants have continued to sporadically fire rockets and mortar rounds at communities along the Gaza border since then. Hamas' military wing claimed the attack, and rocket launches could be heard in central Gaza. The Israeli military said eight projectiles crossed into Israel after being launched from the area of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where Israeli forces recently launched an incursion. It said “a number” of the projectiles were intercepted. Earlier, aid trucks had entered Gaza from southern Israel through a new agreement to bypass the Rafah crossing with Egypt after Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side of it earlier this month. But it was unclear if humanitarian groups would be able to access the aid because of ongoing fighting in the area. Egypt refuses to reopen its side of the Rafah crossing until control of the Gaza side is handed back to Palestinians. It agreed to temporarily divert traffic through Israel's Kerem Shalom crossing, Gaza's main cargo terminal, after a call between U.S. President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. But that crossing has been largely inaccessible because of fighting linked to Israel's offensive in the nearby city of Rafah. Israel says it has allowed hundreds of trucks to enter, but United Nations agencies say it is usually too dangerous to retrieve the aid on the other side. The war between Israel and Hamas, now in its eighth month, has killed nearly 36,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its count. Around 80% of the population's 2.3 million people have fled their homes, severe hunger is widespread and U.N. officials say parts of the territory are experiencing famine. Hamas triggered the war with its Oct. 7 attack into Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized some 250 hostages. Hamas is still holding some 100 hostages and the remains of around 30 others after most of the rest were released during a cease-fire last year.
ISRAEL DENIES REPORT OF CAPTURED SOLDIER
Hamas claimed to have captured an Israeli soldier during fighting in northern Gaza and released video late Saturday showing a wounded man being dragged through a tunnel. The Israeli military denied any of its soldiers had been captured, and Hamas did not provide any other evidence to substantiate its claim. In a separate development, the Israeli military said it had detained a suspect over a widely circulated video in which a man dressed as an Israeli soldier threatens mutiny. In the video, the man said tens of thousands of soldiers were ready to disobey Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over his suggestion that Palestinians should govern Gaza after the war and pledged loyalty to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alone. It was not clear if the man was on active duty, or when or where the video was made. Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister’s son, had shared the video on social media, sparking criticism from political opponents. The prime minister’s office released a brief statement condemning all forms of military subordination.
SOUTHERN GAZA IS LARGELY CUT OFF FROM AID
Egypt's state-run Al-Qahera TV aired footage of what it said were trucks entering Gaza through Kerem Shalom. Khaled Zayed, head of the Egyptian Red Crescent in the Sinai Peninsula, which handles the delivery of aid from the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, said 200 aid trucks and four fuel trucks are scheduled to be sent to Kerem Shalom on Sunday. It was not immediately clear if the U.N. was able to retrieve the aid from the Gaza side. Southern Gaza has been largely cut off from aid since Israel launched what it says is a limited incursion into Rafah on May 6. Since then, over 1 million Palestinians have fled the city, with most having already been displaced from other parts of the besieged territory. Northern Gaza is still receiving aid through two land routes that Israel opened in the face of worldwide outrage after Israeli strikes killed seven aid workers in April. A few dozen trucks have also been entering Gaza daily through a U.S.-built floating pier, but its capacity remains far below the 150 trucks a day that officials had hoped for. Aid groups say the territory needs a total of 600 trucks a day to meet colossal humanitarian needs.
NETANYAHU RESISTS PRESSURE TO END WAR
Netanyahu has said Israel must take over Rafah in order to eliminate Hamas' last remaining battalions and achieve its goal of “total victory” over the militants, who have recently regrouped in other parts of Gaza where the military had already operated. Netanyahu faces growing pressure from the Israeli public to make a deal with Hamas to free the remaining hostages, something Hamas has refused to do without guarantees for an end to the war and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have ruled that out. Scuffles broke out between Israeli police and protesters in Tel Aviv on Saturday after thousands gathered to demonstrate against the government and demand the return of the hostages. The protesters called for Netanyahu's resignation and demanded new elections. International pressure is also growing, as the war leaves Israel increasingly isolated on the world stage. Last week, three European countries announced they would recognize a Palestinian state, and the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders. On Friday, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end its military offensive in Rafah. The top United Nations court also said Israel must give war crimes investigators access to Gaza. Israel is unlikely to comply with the orders, and has sharply condemned the ICC's move toward arrest warrants for its leaders. Israel says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense, residential areas.

Hamas says killed, wounded and captured Israeli troops in Gaza tunnel
Agence France Presse/May 26, 2024
The armed wing of Hamas said it had taken "prisoner" at least one Israeli soldier in an ambush on Saturday in the Gaza Strip, a claim Israel denied. The Palestinian militant group targeted Israeli forces in a tunnel in the Jabalia camp and "all their members were killed, wounded or taken prisoner," said Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades. Hamas also broadcast images of a soldier being dragged along the ground, presenting the soldier as a captured Israeli. The images could not be immediately authenticated by AFP. In a statement on Telegram, the Israeli army said it "clarifies that there is no incident in which a soldier was abducted." Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded Rafah on Saturday, as the government dismissed an order by the top U.N. court to halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city. At the same time, renewed international efforts were underway aimed at securing a ceasefire in the war sparked by Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel.

Israel fights Hamas in Gaza but says ready for new truce talks
Agence France Presse/May 26, 2024
Israel's armed forces bombarded Gaza on Sunday, but officials also said diplomatic efforts were expected to resume in coming days towards a truce and hostage release deal. Air strikes and artillery shelling rained down again overnight on northern, central and southern area of Gaza in the more than seven-months-old war sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack. Fighting has centred on the far-southern city of Rafah, where Israel has vowed to destroy the last remaining Hamas battalions despite a chorus of international opposition to a ground invasion of the city. Israel's assault there from early May led Egypt to shut its side of the Rafah border crossing -- but on Sunday, aid trucks from Egypt again rolled into Gaza, this time via the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing. US President Joe Biden said Saturday his administration was engaged in "urgent diplomacy to secure an immediate ceasefire that brings hostages home". Mediator Egypt was also continuing "its efforts to reactivate ceasefire negotiations", said Al-Qahera News, which has links with Egyptian intelligence. Israeli media has said intelligence chief David Barnea had agreed a new framework for talks on a ceasefire in a meeting with America's CIA chief and Qatari mediators in Paris. An Israeli official, requesting anonymity, told AFP on Saturday that "there is an intention to renew these talks this week". However, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told Qatar's Al Jazeera network that so far "there is nothing practical on this issue. It is just talk coming from the Israeli side."
Bodies pulled from rubble -
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under increasing domestic pressure over the fate of the hostages, with demonstrators rallying again in Tel Aviv on Saturday. In recent days, the bodies of seven dead hostages have been retrieved from Gaza, heightening the fear and pain of relatives of the remaining captives. In Tel Aviv, a crowd of several thousands observed a minute of silence Saturday for dead captives. "I feared this moment," Avivit Yablonka, whose brother Chanan was brought back dead from Gaza, told the rally. "I will continue to shout, support, fight and do everything so that all the hostages return home." Hamas meanwhile said Saturday it had taken "prisoner" at least one Israeli soldier in an ambush in Jabalia camp. The claim was denied by the army, which said there was "no incident in which a soldier was abducted". The war broke out after Hamas' October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, a quarter of them soldiers, according to Israeli official figures. Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,903 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The U.N. has warned of looming famine in the besieged territory, where most hospitals are no longer functioning. In the latest fighting, Gaza's civil defence agency said Sunday it had retrieved six bodies after a house was targeted in a strike on Rafah's eastern Khirbet al-Adas neighbourhood. Witnesses said Israeli artillery had also targeted central Rafah's Yibna camp, and that heavy artillery shelling hit the city's Sooq al-Halal and Qishta neighbourhoods. Elsewhere in Gaza, Israeli air strikes targeted the Nuseirat camp, and witnesses said heavy artillery shelling hit northern Gaza. Israeli tanks in Gaza City rained heavy gunfire on targets in the Zeitun and Netzarim area, an AFP reporter said. Israel's military meanwhile said Sunday the arrival of aid had been stepped up, both via a new U.S.-built pier and through its own land crossings, Kerem Shalom and Erez West. "This week, after the pier began operating for the first time, a total of 1,806 pallets of food were transferred in 127 trucks to logistics centres of international aid agencies in the Gaza Strip," it said. "In total, this week, 2,065 humanitarian aid trucks were inspected and transferred through the Kerem Shalom and Erez West crossings, which is almost twice the number in the previous week."U.S. Central Command said Saturday that four U.S. Army vessels supporting the pier broke free of their moorings, and had run aground in heavy seas, with Israel aiding the recovery effort.
Global pushback -
As the bloodiest ever Gaza war grinds on, Israel has faced heavy global pushback over the surging civilian death toll and the destruction of vast swathes of Gaza. In the past week it faced landmark moves from two international courts based in The Hague and from three European governments.Last Monday, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court said he would seek arrest warrants on war crimes charges against Netanyahu and his defence minister as well as against three top Hamas figures. On Wednesday, Ireland, Norway and Spain said they would recognise Palestinian statehood by May 28, a move Israel angrily rejected as a "reward for terrorism". And on Friday, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its Rafah offensive, demanded the release of hostages and urged the "unhindered provision" of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The ICJ ruling came in a case brought by South Africa alleging that Israel's military operation amounts to "genocide".It ruled that Israel must "immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part". Israel has denied any military operations in the Rafah area that "could cause the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population, in whole or in part."

Protests erupt in Tel Aviv over hostages held by Hamas
Daniel Harper/Euro News/May 26, 2024
Scuffles broke out between Israeli police and protesters in Tel Aviv on Saturday. Thousands gathered to demand the government secure the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, keeping up months-long street demonstrations. Demonstrators carried photos of female soldiers abducted by Palestinian militants during the surprise 7 October attack on southern Israel. Protesters also called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resignation and new elections, holding banners that read "stop the war". “We saw the video, we couldn’t stay at home after the government abandoned all these people,” said Hilit Sagi from the group Women Protest for the Return of All Hostages. Seven arrests and at least one injury were reported. Tensions have increased as divisions grow over Netanyahu’s handling of the conflict, amid accusations he is prolonging the war for his own personal political gain. Hamas has continually insisted it will only return the remaining Israeli hostages if Israel agrees to a permanent ceasefire in Gaza - something Netanyahu has ruled out. During the 7 October attack, which left about 1,200 Israelis dead, Hamas took around 250 hostages. Israel claims around 100 hostages remain in Gaza, along with the bodies of 30 more. Hamas freed around half of the hostages in prisoner swaps during a ceasefire in November, while there are reports others have been killed in Israeli fire. "Basically, they are not doing enough for the hostages to come back, either with military force or negotiating," said Snir Dahan, whose niece, Carmel Gat, is a hostage in Gaza. Earlier this week, the bodies of three hostages killed on the day of the attack were recovered from Gaza. The Israeli offensive has resulted in the deaths of over 36,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Thousands more are believed buried under rubble, with tens of thousands wounded. A US military vessel and part of a docking area for aid in Gaza washed up in southern Israel, near Ashdod. US Central Command said four vessels supporting the aid mission broke free from moorings in rough seas. Recovery efforts are under way. US officials aim for the pier to deliver 150 truckloads of aid to Gaza daily, although the need is estimated at 600 truckloads to address the humanitarian crisis.

Aid trucks begin entering Gaza under agreement with Egypt to bypass Rafah
Wafaa Shurafa And Samy Magdy/AP/May 26, 2024
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip)
Aid trucks entered Gaza from southern Israel on Sunday through a new agreement to bypass the Rafah crossing with Egypt after Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side of it earlier this month. But was unclear if humanitarian groups would be able to access the aid because of ongoing fighting in the area. Egypt refuses to reopen its side of the Rafah crossing until control of the Gaza side is handed back to Palestinians. It agreed to temporarily divert traffic through Israel's Kerem Shalom crossing, Gaza's main cargo terminal, after a call between U.S. President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
But that crossing has been largely inaccessible because of fighting linked to Israel's offensive in the nearby city of Rafah. Israel says it has allowed hundreds of trucks to enter, but United Nations agencies say it is usually too dangerous to retrieve the aid on the other side.
The war between Israel and Hamas, now in its eighth month, has killed over 35,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its count. Around 80% of the population's 2.3 million people have fled their homes, severe hunger is widespread and U.N. officials say parts of the territory are experiencing famine. Hamas triggered the war with its Oct. 7 attack into Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized some 250 hostages. Hamas is still holding some 100 hostages and the remains of around 30 others after most of the rest were released during a cease-fire last year. Hamas claimed to have captured an Israeli soldier during fighting in northern Gaza and released video late Saturday showing a wounded man being dragged through a tunnel. The Israeli military denied any of its soldiers had been captured, and Hamas did not provide any other evidence to substantiate its claim. On Sunday, Egypt's state-run Al-Qahera TV aired footage of what it said were trucks entering Gaza through Kerem Shalom. Khaled Zayed, head of the Egyptian Red Crescent in the Sinai Peninsula, which handles the delivery of aid from the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, told The Associated Press that 200 aid trucks and four fuel trucks are scheduled to be sent to Kerem Shalom on Sunday. It was not immediately clear if the U.N. was able to retrieve the aid from the Gaza side. Southern Gaza has been largely cut off from aid since Israel launched what it says is a limited incursion into Rafah on May 6. Since then, over 1 million Palestinians have fled the city, with most having already been displaced from other parts of the besieged territory. Northern Gaza, which has been largely isolated by Israeli troops for months and where the U.N.'s World Food Program says famine is already underway, is still receiving aid through two land routes that Israel opened in the face of worldwide outrage after Israeli strikes killed seven aid workers in April. A few dozen trucks have also been entering Gaza daily through a U.S.-built floating pier, but its capacity remains far below the 150 trucks a day that officials had hoped for. Aid groups say the territory needs a total of 600 trucks a day to meet colossal humanitarian needs. Stormy weather sent a strip of docking and a small U.S. military vessel ashore near the southern Israeli city of Ashdod on Saturday. The U.S. Central Command said four of its vessels were affected by rough seas with two of them anchoring near the pier off the Gaza coast and another two in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must take over Rafah in order to eliminate Hamas' last remaining battalions and achieve its goal of “total victory” over the militants, who have recently regrouped in other parts of Gaza where the military had already operated. Netanyahu faces growing pressure from the Israeli public to make a deal with Hamas to free the remaining hostages, something Hamas has refused to do without guarantees for an end to the war and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have ruled that out. Scuffles broke out between Israeli police and protesters in Tel Aviv on Saturday after thousands gathered to demonstrate against the government and demand the return of the hostages. The protesters called for Netanyahu's resignation and demanded new elections. International pressure is also growing, as the war leaves Israel increasingly isolated on the world stage. Last week, three European countries announced they would recognize a Palestinian state, and the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders. On Friday, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end its military offensive in Rafah. The top United Nations court also said Israel must give war crimes investigators access to Gaza. Israel is unlikely to comply with the orders, and has sharply condemned the ICC's move toward arrest warrants for its leaders. Israel says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense, residential areas.

Frankly Speaking: Why ICC prosecution in Gaza was justified
ARAB NEWS/May 26, 2024
Regional director for Near and Middle East of the International Committee of the Red Cross says the law of armed conflict makes sense if its violators are prosecuted
Fabrizio Carboni discusses ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrant against Israeli’s Netanyahu and Gallant, ICRC efforts to resolve other regional conflicts
DUBAI: On May 20, the International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan applied to the court for arrest warrants to be issued against senior Hamas commanders and for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The International Committee of the Red Cross, one of whose key functions is to call on all parties in a conflict to uphold international humanitarian law, is in favor of prosecutions in cases where individuals have violated the laws of armed conflict. Fabrizio Carboni, the ICRC’s regional director for Near and Middle East, made the above point clear during an appearance on “Frankly Speaking,” the Arab News current affairs program.
“Usually we don’t comment on judiciary matters, especially if they’re related to a conflict where we have a very strong presence and where our staff is present,” he said.
“As a matter of principle, as the ICRC, obviously we believe that the law of armed conflict makes sense if you prosecute the people who violate it. “And so we obviously, beyond the conflict in Gaza, beyond any specific case, we support prosecution.”
He added: “We support national prosecution first, and then international one if the national prosecution doesn’t comply. Now in this case of the ICC, our position is not to comment. We observe.” In the wide-ranging interview, Carboni expressed anger at the trauma being experienced by Palestinian ICRC staff in Gaza, and explained among other things the impact of the Gaza war on other regional conflicts and the ICRC’s ongoing role in resolving them. Palestinian Red Crescent personnel check an ambulance destroyed during Israeli strike in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, on
No matter how big the imbalance of strength between Israel and Hamas, the international humanitarian law applies to both sides, Carboni he told Katie Jensen, the host of “Frankly Speaking.”“There is no hierarchy in this. Parties to a conflict, state or non-state armed group, have obligations. And when we think about this humanitarian obligation, it’s basic. It’s the minimum. “These are not very complex and sophisticated rules — just asking for the civilian population to be spared, just asking for civilians when they are displaced to receive basic assistance, to have access to essential services. It’s really basic humanity.” Hamas broke international humanitarian law on Oct. 7 when its fighters kidnapped and killed civilians in southern Israel. Since then, Israel has been facing the bulk of the same accusation.
Despite the best efforts of the ICRC to compel Israel and Hamas to abide by the rules of war, it suspects both sides are still violating them. Carboni put this down to what he calls “survival narrative.” “Something we don’t often mention is emotions and the fact that all parties in this conflict have a narrative of survival,” he said. “I’m not commenting. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. I’m just seeing this. And when I engage all parties to this conflict, there is a survival narrative.” In November last year, Israel and Hamas agreed to a humanitarian pause in the fighting, which permitted an exchange of prisoners and hostages and allowed aid agencies to get urgently needed supplies into Gaza to help civilians. In this combination image, a convoy of Red Cross vehicles carrying Israelis taken hostage (left frame) by Hamas militants arrive at the Rafah crossing in the southern Gaza Strip on November 30, 2023, as part of a prisoner swap with Palestinian prisoners.  Fighting soon resumed, however, and attempts by interlocutors since at securing a permanent ceasefire have failed. If given the opportunity of another humanitarian pause, Carboni is confident the ICRC can make a significant difference to the lives of Palestinians trapped in Gaza and the hostages still held by Hamas. “We could make a difference for the Palestinian people, because you might have assistance increase significantly during this pause,” he said. “We could have access to many areas safely and assist more Palestinian people. “At the very same time, we could get hostages released. We could get detainees on the Palestinian side released by Israel. And this represents a form of hope.”
Part of the ICRC’s remit is to intercede in hostage negotiations. Carboni said the families of the hostages still held in Gaza are in a “permanent state of torture.” “Unfortunately, we know very little about the fate of the people who were taken hostage,” he said. “It’s part of this political, military environment where you negotiate everything, even things which shouldn’t be negotiated, such as the release of hostages, because (the taking) of hostages is totally prohibited. “You can only imagine the condition of the hostages. You imagine the fighting, you imagine the bombing, you see the situation in Gaza, and you can imagine what the hostages are going through. “And also a word on the families. When you’re a member of a family of a hostage or just a person missing, you don’t know, is he alive, is she alive, dead or not? Is she in good health, not in good health? And this situation for the families is a permanent state of torture. “And I really feel this pain with the families of the hostages. Any family, being Palestinian or Israeli, who doesn’t know where his or her loved one is. And that’s why, as ICRC, we try to push as much as we can to find an answer, to release the hostages now.”
Carboni revealed that a couple of weeks ago, there was hope during two or three days for a ceasefire and release of hostages. “We really thought, a lot of people thought, that we would get there,” he said.
“And then suddenly it all collapsed. And I can tell you that the psychological impact of this failure on the civilian population in Gaza, on the families of the hostages, is devastating.” Meanwhile, according to him, humanitarians are running out of words to describe the misery that the Palestinian people are enduring in Gaza under Israel’s offensive. He underscored the urgency of de-escalation in Gaza, where Israel has been fighting the Palestinian militant group Hamas since Oct. 7 last year.
“There is an urgent need to de-escalate the level of violence,” he said. “What we see today in Gaza is unbearable. “The civilian population, the Palestinian population, is going through a round of misery, which I have difficulty to even describe, because after seven months, eight months, I have the impression we used pretty much all the possible words to describe what they’re going through.
“I’m really concerned, because we don’t have words anymore. I’m afraid that at one stage, the situation of the Palestinian people in Gaza and including the hostages won’t be news anymore, because we are turning in circles, because we don’t see an improvement, because we see no end to this misery.”
Carboni added: “Every time I think about Gaza, I’m thinking about my Palestinian colleagues who are trapped in Gaza. “I’m thinking about their children, I’m thinking about their family, I’m thinking about the fact that they’ve been moved again.
“Most of them were coming from Gaza City. Then they moved to Khan Younis. Then they moved to Rafah. Now they are moving again. And I’m thinking about them.
“I’m thinking about, on the one hand, their courage, and on the other hand, this feeling of not being able to help them, not being able to alleviate their distress, their anxiety, their frustration. “As a father, as a parent, I also connect with my colleagues who have children. It’s now, what, six, seven months that those children are living on a battlefield? Because Gaza is a very special situation. You’re permanently on the battlefield. “You have children who, every day, are hearing bombs. Who’ve seen people being killed, wounded, children seeing their parents helpless.
“So, when I think about Gaza, I think about ICRC’s Palestinian staff, and it gives me the energy, humbles me, and at the same time makes me angry, because I don’t think my colleagues need to go through this.”Asked whether he thought the worst is now over or if there was still potential for a wider regional conflagration emanating from Gaza, Carboni said the spillover has already occurred, raising fears of an unintended escalation. “It’s not that we have to fear a regional conflict happening — it’s happening while we’re talking,” he said. “We have the fighting in Lebanon. We had this night where we had missiles and drones launched from Iran on Israel. The regional conflict is happening.”
Beyond its role as a humanitarian aid agency, Carboni said ICRC plays a critical role in conflict resolution, in the hope that “diplomacy will prevail, politics will prevail, and not the use of force.”However, the violence in Gaza has had a detrimental effect on conflicts elsewhere in the region, including in Yemen, where the Iran-backed Houthi militia has been locked in battle with the UN-recognized Yemeni government since 2014. Since the outbreak of fighting in Gaza, the Houthi militia has mounted attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, ostensibly in solidarity with Palestinians, prompting retaliatory strikes by the US and UK. As a result, the ceasefire between the Houthis and the Yemeni government, which expired in October 2022 but has remained largely intact, has been cast into doubt. Carboni said a prisoner exchange deal could get the stalled process back on track. “The crisis in Gaza shook all the conflicts in the region,” he said. “I see the authorities in Riyadh trying to nevertheless push for this permanent ceasefire and tomorrow a peace agreement. One of the measures which would facilitate, which would build confidence, is to continue the release of detainees.”

Norway hands over papers for diplomatic recognition to the Palestinian prime minister
BRUSSELS (AP)/May 26, 2024
Norway on Sunday handed over diplomatic papers to the Palestinian prime minister in the latest step toward recognizing a Palestinian state, a largely symbolic move that has infuriated Israel. Ireland and Spain made a concerted pledge with Norway to recognize a Palestinian state, a historic move that increases Israel’s isolation more than seven months into its grinding war against Hamas in Gaza. The handover of papers by Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide to the prime minister was made in Brussels, where Mohammad Mustafa is also meeting with foreign ministers of European Union nations and high-level EU officials on Monday to drum up support for the Palestinians. Norway itself is not part of the EU. The diplomatic move by the three nations was a welcome boost of support for Palestinian officials who have sought for decades to establish a statehood in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — territories Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war and still controls. The formal recognition by Norway, Spain and Ireland — which all have a record of friendly ties with both the Israelis and the Palestinians, while long advocating for a Palestinian state — is planned for Tuesday. Some 140 countries — more than two-thirds of the United Nations — recognize a Palestinian state but a majority of the 27 EU nations still do not. Several have said they would recognize it when the conditions are right. The EU, the United States and Britain, among others, back the idea of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel but say it should come as part of a negotiated settlement. Belgium, which holds the EU presidency, has said that first the Israeli hostages held by Hamas need to be freed and the fighting in Gaza must end. Some other government favor a new initiative toward a two-state solution, 15 years after negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed. Sunday's handover of papers came only two days after the United Nations’ top court ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah in the latest move that piled more pressure on the increasingly isolated country.
Days earlier, the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with Hamas officials. The war in Gaza started after Hamas-led militants stormed across the border, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostage. Israel’s ensuing offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and has caused a humanitarian crisis and a near-famine.

‘Strong’ Palestinian Authority needed for Mideast peace: EU’s Borrell
AFP/May 26, 2024
BRUSSELS: A “strong” Palestinian Authority is needed to bring peace in the Middle East, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Sunday alongside Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Mustafa. “A functional Palestinian Authority is in Israel’s interest too, because in order to make peace, we need a strong Palestinian Authority, not a weaker one,” Borrell said. He made the remarks to journalists just before holding talks with Mustafa on how the Palestinian administration can be built up to take over Gaza rule from Hamas. “We see the meeting today as a very important opportunity for us as a government and new government to present our international partners with the outlines of our priorities and plans for the coming period,” Mustafa said. The Palestinian leader said the “first priority” was to support Palestinians in Gaza, especially through a ceasefire, and then “rebuilding the institutions of the Palestinian Authority” in that territory, which Hamas seized control of in 2007. He also called on international partners to press Israel to release Palestinian Authority funding so “we will be ready to reform our institutions... and hopefully together sustain our efforts toward statehood and peace for the region.”
The Brussels meeting, focused on international aid, was being chaired by Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, in connection with the 1993 Oslo Accords that established a series of arrangements between the Palestinians and Israel. Israel is furious with Norway, and also Spain and Ireland, for announcing they will recognize the State of Palestine on Tuesday.

Understanding the 1967 borders: A push for a two-state solution
LBCI/May 26, 2024
As battles continue in Gaza, the pressure, particularly from Arab countries, to cease the fighting and negotiate a two-state solution is intensifying. But what exactly is the significance of the 1967 borders frequently mentioned in these discussions?
On the morning of June 5, 1967, Israel launched a surprise attack on Egypt and Syria, prompting Jordan to intervene in what later became known as the Six-Day War or the Naksa. This war saw significant Israeli advances and the occupation of additional parts of Palestine. The United Nations did not recognize these territorial gains and issued Resolution 242, which called for Israel to withdraw from the territories occupied during the war. The 1967 borders refer to the boundaries as they existed before this war, meaning the proposed Palestinian state would constitute approximately 22% of the historic Palestine, including the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. These borders are central to the Arab Peace Initiative, launched from Beirut in 2002, which reaffirmed the call for Israel to withdraw to the 1967 lines and the principle of land for peace. Despite the passing years, the land remains occupied, and the recognition of a Palestinian state is still a point of contention, even as it garners incremental international support, which remains a sore point for Israel. As Israelis continue to reject the two-state solution and the 1967 borders, Arab nations, particularly Saudi Arabia, are ramping up their push for this resolution. This issue is especially pertinent ahead of the upcoming meeting between several Arab foreign ministers and the French President and in light of the recent Arab summit in Bahrain. Saudi Arabia, leading the charge, has firmly stated that it will not normalize relations with Israel unless a two-state solution is firmly established.

Protests intensify: Hamas announcement sparks Israeli protests and deepens internal dispute
LBCI/May 26, 2024
As Israeli protesters flood towns, their demonstrations dominate television screens and social media, showcasing images of burning fires, clashes, water cannons, and cries for the return of hostages since October 7. Amid this turmoil, Hamas' spokesperson Abu Ubaida shocked Israelis with an announcement that Hamas had killed, captured, and injured Israeli soldiers in Jabalia, northern Gaza. In a rare move since October 7, the Israeli military spokesperson responded to Abu Ubaida's claims, denying the incidents.  However, this did little to convince the Israeli public, who intensified their protests, highlighting Israel's peak internal division and lack of unity, as noted in several reports. The conflict, previously confined to closed-door meetings between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and security officials, spilled into the open.  A video surfaced showing a masked reserve soldier supporting Netanyahu and declaring he would not follow the instructions of the Chief of Staff or the Defense Minister regarding any decision to halt the war in Gaza. Israelis were left with news of more soldiers being captured and woke up to statements that did not promise the imminent return of the October 7 hostages. Despite an announcement of upcoming negotiation sessions next week, insiders indicate no significant progress in the talks. In what some perceive as an attempt to calm the internal situation, the Israeli military has reduced its forces in eastern Rafah amid reports of a potential opening of the Rafah crossing and a possible Israeli withdrawal. The Israeli War Cabinet is currently discussing the prisoner exchange and the war in Gaza against the backdrop of a report highlighting disagreements within the administration. According to a political source, policymakers are against any deal in exchange for a ceasefire while the security establishment warns that continuing the war without ensuring the hostages' return could lead to Israel's downfall from all sides.

EU Hosts Talks to Strengthen Palestinian Authority for Gaza
Marc Burleigh with AFP/This Is Beirut/May 26/2024
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell hosted Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa on Sunday for international talks on building up the Palestinian Authority to eventually take over Gaza rule from Hamas. A “strong” Palestinian Authority is needed to bring peace in the Middle East, Borrell said just before going into the meeting with Mustafa.The talks were being held as efforts were narrowing to try to find a Gaza truce and a hostage-release deal. While the United States is using its influence to halt the Gaza war, moves are starting to take place to try to establish conditions for lasting peace. A key requisite for that is the removal of Hamas as Gaza’s rulers. The only viable option diplomats arrived at is to bolster Mustafa’s Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, so that it can take charge of Gaza. “A functional Palestinian Authority is in Israel’s interest too because in order to make peace, we need a strong Palestinian Authority, not a weaker one,” Borrell said.
Plea for Funds
Mustafa said that Sunday’s meeting was “a very important opportunity” for the Palestinian Authority to outline its priorities and plans. He said that the “first priority” was to support Palestinians in Gaza, especially through a ceasefire, and then “rebuilding the institutions of the Palestinian Authority” in that territory, which Hamas seized control of in 2007. He also called on international partners to press Israel to release Palestinian Authority funds so “we will be ready to reform our institutions… and hopefully together sustain our efforts towards statehood and peace for the region.” The Brussels meeting, focused on international aid, was chaired by Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide, under his country’s key role in the 1993 Oslo Accords that established a series of arrangements between the Palestinians and Israel. “We need to make sure that the Palestinian Authority… has to be able to survive to be strengthened, to improve its capacity to deliver services, to reform, and also to plan for a future return to Gaza,” Barth Eide said.
Israel’s Fury
Represented at the talks, alongside the EU, Norway and the Palestinian Authority, were Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations. Australia, Britain, Canada and Japan also took part. Before the talks, Mustafa held a separate news conference with Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albare to thank him for his country’s announcement recognizing Palestinian statehood. The move by the three European nations addresses “the injustice that has been inflicted on the Palestinian people for decades,” Mustafa said, adding, “We want to have every country in Europe to do the same.”Later on Sunday, Mustafa was to have further talks with Borrell, Barth Eide and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan. On Monday, he will have another meeting in Brussels with the Spanish, Norwegian and Irish ministers. And on Wednesday he will be in Spain. Israel warned Spain, Norway and Ireland that ties with them will face “serious consequences” for their announced recognition of a Palestinian state. A majority of UN member countries recognize Palestinian statehood. European countries are split on the issue. Spain, Norway and Italy will join EU nations Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden in recognizing the State of Palestine.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels freed over 100 war prisoners, the Red Cross says
Samy Magdy/The Associated Press/ May 26, 2024
CAIRO — The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen on Sunday released more than 100 war prisoners linked to the country’s long-running conflict, the International Committee of the Red Cross said. The unilateral release came more than a year after Yemen’s warring sides freed more than 800 prisoners in a major exchange in the country in April last year. The release of 113 prisoners took place Sunday morning in the Houthi-held capital of Sanaa, the Red Cross said in a statement, adding that the released detainees were among those the ICRC visited and assisted regularly in their detention in the Yemeni capital. “We hope this paves the way for further releases, bringing comfort to families eagerly anticipating reunification with their loved ones,” said Daphnee Maret, the ICRC’s head of delegation in Yemen. One of the released detainees with health issues was transferred in an ambulance to his hometown inside Yemen, the ICRC said without elaborating. The release was delayed by a day because of apparent logistical reasons, said Abdul-Qader al-Murtaza, a Houthi official in charge of prisoner exchange talks. Thousands of people are still believed to be held as prisoners of war since the conflict erupted in 2014, with others missing. The Red Cross viewed Sunday’s releases as a “positive step” to revive prisoner exchange negotiations. “We are ready to play our role as a neutral intermediary in facilitating the release, transfer, and repatriation of detainees,” it said. Yemen was plunged into a devastating conflict when the Houthis descended from their northern stronghold and seized Sanaa and much of northern Yemen, forcing the government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition including the United Arab Emirates intervened in 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognized government. The conflict has turned in recent years into a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. More than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, have died in one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.

Saudi Arabia, Norway host meeting on coordinated approach to recognition of Palestine in Brussels
ARAB NEWS/May 26, 2024
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia and Norway hosted a meeting on a coordinated approach to the recognition of Palestine in Brussels on Sunday. The meeting discussed the urgent need to end the war in Gaza and take the necessary steps to implement a two-state solution, Saudi Press Agency reported. It was attended by ministers and representatives of Algeria, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Denmark, Egypt, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Jordan, Latvia, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Palestine, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkiye, the UAE, the UK, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The meeting is a continuation of a previous one on the same subject hosted by Riyadh on April 29 for Arab and European ministers. The conference expressed support for efforts aimed at reaching an immediate ceasefire, releasing prisoners and hostages, ending the war in the Gaza Strip and all illegal unilateral measures and violations in the occupied Palestinian territories including controlling the Rafah crossing, and addressing the catastrophic humanitarian crisis. Concrete steps toward establishing a Palestinian state in the context of the two-state solution, and adopting a political path that supports a sustainable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were also topics of discussion. The meeting stressed the importance of the international community’s recognition of the Palestinian state in order to adopt a comprehensive approach toward a reliable and irreversible path to implementing the two-state solution in accordance with international law and agreed standards, including UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative. This would then lead to a just and lasting solution that meets the rights of the Palestinian people and achieves security in the region, paving the way for normal relations between countries, the meeting heard. The meeting comes before Norway, Spain and Ireland formally recognize a Palestinian state on Tuesday, a largely symbolic move that has infuriated Israel.

Ahead of another donor conference for Syria, humanitarian workers fear more aid cuts
Kareem Chehayeb And Omar Albam, The Associated Press/May 26, 2024
BEIRUT, — Living in a tent in rebel-held northwestern Syria, Rudaina al-Salim and her family struggle to find enough water for drinking and other basic needs such as cooking and washing. Their encampment north of the city of Idlib hasn't seen any aid in six months. “We used to get food aid, hygiene items," said the mother of four. "Now we haven’t had much in a while.”Al-Salim's story is similar to that of many in this region of Syria, where most of the 5.1 million people have been internally displaced — sometimes more than once — in the country's civil war, now in its 14th year, and rely on aid to survive. U.N. agencies and international humanitarian organizations have for years struggled with shrinking budgets, further worsened by the coronavirus pandemic and conflicts elsewhere. The wars in Ukraine and Sudan, and more recently Israel's war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip are the focus of the world's attention. Syria's war, which has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of of 23 million, has long remained largely frozen and so are also efforts to find a viable political solution to end it. Meanwhile, millions of Syrians have been pulled into poverty, and struggle with accessing food and health care as the economy deteriorates across the country’s front lines. Along with the deepening poverty, there is growing hostility in neighboring countries that host Syrian refugees and that struggle with crises of their own. Aid organizations are now making their annual pitches to donors ahead of a fundraising conference in Brussels for Syria on Monday. But humanitarian workers believe that pledges will likely fall short and that further aid cuts would follow. “We have moved from assisting 5.5 million a year to about 1.5 million people in Syria,” Carl Skau, the U.N. World Food Program's deputy executive director, told The Associated Press. He spoke during a recent visit to Lebanon, which hosts almost 780,000 registered Syrian refugees — and hundreds of thousands of others who are undocumented. “When I look across the world, this is the (aid) program that has shrunk the most in the shortest period for time,” Skau said.
Just 6% of the United Nations' appeal for aid to Syria in 2024 has so far been secured ahead of Monday's annual fundraising conference organized by the European Union, said David Carden, U.N. deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria.
For the northwestern region of Syria, that means the U.N. is only able to feed 600,000 out of the 3.6 million people facing food insecurity, meaning they lack access to sufficient food. The U.N. says some 12.9 million Syrians are food insecure across the country. The U.N. hopes the Brussels conference can raise more than $4 billion in “lifesaving aid” to support almost two-thirds of the 16.7 million Syrians in need, both within the war-torn country and in neighboring countries, particularly Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. At last year's conference, donors pledged $10.3 billion — about $6 billion in grants and the rest in loans — just months after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey and much of northern Syria, killing over 59,000 people, including 6,000 in Syria. For northwestern Syria, an enclave under rebel control, aid "is literally a matter of life and death” this year, Carden told the AP during a recent visit to Idlib province. Without funding, 160 health facilities there would close by end of June, he said. The International Rescue Committee’s head for Syria, Tanya Evans, said needs are “at their highest ever," with increasing numbers of Syrians turning to child labor and taking on debt to pay for food and basics.
In Lebanon, where nearly 90% of Syrian refugees live in poverty, they also face flagging aid and increasing resentment from the Lebanese, struggling with their own country's economic crisis since 2019. Disgruntled officials have accused the refugees of surging crime and competition in the job market. Lebanon’s bickering political parties have united in a call for a crackdown on undocumented Syrian migrants and demand refugees return to so-called “safe zones” in Syria. U.N. agencies, human rights groups and Western governments say there are no such areas. Um Omar, a Syrian refugee from Homs, works in a grocery store in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli — an impoverished community that once warmly welcomed Syrian refugees. For her work, she gets to bring home every day a bundle of bread and some vegetables to feed her family of five. They live rent-free in a tent on a plot of land that belongs to the grocery store’s owners. “I have to leave the kids early in the morning without breakfast so I can work,” she said, asking to be identified only by her nickname, Arabic for “Omar’s mother.” She fears reprisals because of heightened hostilities against Syrians. The shrinking U.N. aid they receive does not pay the bills. Her husband, who shares her fears for their safety, used to work as a day laborer but has rarely left their home in weeks. She says deportation to Syria, where President Bashar Assad's government is firmly entrenched, would spell doom for her family.
“If my husband was returned to Syria, he’ll either go to jail or (face) forced conscription,” she explains. Still, many in Lebanon tell her family, "you took our livelihoods,” Um Omar said. There are also those who tell them they should leave, she added, so that the Lebanese "will finally catch a break."
Albam reported from Harbnoush, Syria.

Poland scrambles jets to secure airspace from Russian attacks on Ukraine
Joshua Askew/Euronews/May 26, 2024
Poland scrambles jets to secure airspace from Russian attacks on Ukraine
Poland’s air force has scrambled jets to protect the country's airspace from Russian missiles targeting western Ukraine. Airforce patrols were conducted on Saturday in southeast Poland, which borders war-torn Ukraine. Poland was left unscathed, but a Russian strike on a large DIY store in the northern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv killed 12 people and wounded 43. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the airstrike a "manifestation of Russian madness". Poland's Operational Command announced the defensive operation had ended on Sunday, but said its forces remained vigilant. "Due to the end of long-range missile strikes of the Russian Federation on targets in the western part of Ukraine, the operation of military aviation in Polish airspace has been ended and the deployed forces and resources have returned to standard operational activities," it wrote on X. "The #PolishArmy monitors the situation on the territory of Ukraine on an ongoing basis and remains constantly ready to ensure the safety of Polish airspace." In a statement on Saturday, Poland's military said locals could notice increased noise from Polish and allied aircraft. The statement said the army had taken all necessary measures to secure Poland's airspace. Separately on Saturday, Poland's foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski warned Russia wanted to destabilise Europe. He claimed Moscow was trying to influence the outcome of upcoming European parliamentary elections in June. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has sent security concerns skyrocketing in the region, with eastern European countries fearing a revisionist Kremlin. Warsaw put its forces on alert in March when a Russian missile entered Polish airspace before striking Ukraine’s western Lviv region. Poland has also ramped up its military presence on its western border with Belarus, a staunch ally of Moscow.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on May 26-27/2024
Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute:’Groom These Women’: The Persecution of Christians, April 2024/
ريموند إبراهيم من موقع كايتستون: قائمة مفصلة بأحداث اضطهاد المسيحيين في العديد من الدول خلال شهر نيسان2024
May 26, 20241
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/130122/130122/
On April 26, a Muslim man named Muhammad Shehroz, led a 4-year-old Christian boy, Moosa Masih to a field where he brutally sodomized and then sought to strangle the child to death. — britishasianchristians.org, May 3, 2024, Pakistan.
Even though it is illegal in Pakistan to marry underage girls, the authorities refused to act on the Christian family’s pleas to recover their daughter, due to a birth certificate that had obviously been forged, which claimed she was 18. A court subsequently ruled that, being of age, Ameen had willingly converted to Islam and married a Muslim man. — britishasianchristians.org, April 28, 2014, Pakistan.
“On April 5th, members of the jirga [Pakistani conflict resolution team] forcibly arrived at my residence and coerced me to accompany them to the police station. They threatened to abduct my daughters if I dared to resist,” said the father of Kainat Pervaiz, a 16-year-old Christian girl who was abducted and raped. They coerced him to drop the case in exchange for 50,000 rupees (USD $180) and the proposed marriage of his daughter to her rapist as a form of “compensation.” — britishasianchristians.org, April 28, 2014, Pakistan.
[A] massive riot broke out in an asylum shelter after some Muslims noticed a resident wearing a cross necklace. — medforth.biz, April 13, 2024, Germany.
On April 15, a 16-year-old Muslim stabbed Orthodox Christian bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and four other Christians at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Sydney, Australia. The bishop lost an eye in the attack. Pictured: A police officer outside Christ The Good Shepherd Church on April 16, 2024. (Photo by Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)
The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of April 2024.
The Muslim Slaughter of Christians
Uganda: On Apr. 10, a Muslim man murdered his mother for refusing to leave the Christian faith. Two months earlier, Sulaina Nabirye, a 50-year-old widow, had put her faith in Christ. Immediately, her 31-year-old son, Arajabu Mukiibi, began to pressure her to return to Islam, according to a relative (name withheld for security reasons):
“During the month of Ramadan, she complained of her son pressuring her to stop attending church and revert back to Islam, since he was studying to become an imam at Bugembe Mosque. When she refused to convert back to Islam, he stopped visiting her at her house and threatened to chase or even kill her.”
Due to these threats, the anonymous relative began to visit the mother more often, and was present on Apr. 9, when the son visited. After pretending that he had reconciled himself to his mother’s Christian status, he said that his wife was preparing dinner for them:
“At 7 p.m. he came with food, which he gave to us, and he left. I was praying and fasting, so I did not eat the food. Shortly after eating the food, Sulaina started vomiting, and then followed diarrhea. I tried what I could, but things were worsening, I called a nearby clinic officer who came with medication. He tried to put her on drip, but all was in vain.”
Nabirye died that night, around 2 a.m. The food was discovered to be laced with methanol, a toxic chemical. “Her son did not come to help his mum,” the relative said. “He and his wife who were living close by did not show up. This made me conclude that he is the one who planned the poisoning.”
Muslims, sadly, have poisoned their Christian relatives in Uganda on many occasions over the years.
United Kingdom: On Apr. 11, Ahmed Alil, a Muslim man, stood trial for the Oct. 15, 2023 murder of a 70-year-old pensioner and the attempted murder of his housemate, Javed Nouri, a convert to Christianity. According to the prosecutor, Alil considered Nouri an “apostate” and “therefore somebody who deserved to die.” During the trial, prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford said that Alil, armed with two knives, had kicked open the door of his housemate Nouri’s bedroom while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” then lunged at him, and repeatedly stabbed him. Nouri managed to fight him off and escape Alil, still armed and irate, stormed out of the house and randomly stabbed—six times—a passerby, Terence Carney, 70, who died at the scene. Even though his violence and murder were prompted by his housemate’s apostasy to Christianity, on being arrested, Alil tried to present his behavior as a product of wanting “Palestine to be free from the Zionists.”
Nigeria: Some April headlines from the ongoing Muslim genocide of Christians in the African nation:
Apr. 19: “Twenty-nine Nigerian Christians slaughtered in three-day pogrom”
Apr. 2: “Alleged Fulani Militants Kill Four on Easter Monday in Nigeria”
Apr. 25: “Mother, Baby among Christians Slain in Plateau State, Nigeria. More than 30 killed in Fulani raids.”
Apr. 26: “Three Christians Slain in Benue State, Central Nigeria”
Apr. 29: “Herdsmen Kill at Least Six Christians in Southeast Nigeria. Children among the dead.”
Apr. 29: “ECWA Pastor Slain in Kaduna State, Nigeria. Armed ‘bandits’ ambush him on highway”
Apr. 30: “Slaughter of Christians Continues in Central Nigeria. Scores killed in Benue state since January”
Kenya: On Apr. 9, members of the terrorist group al-Shabaab killed a farmer in a Christian village previously targeted by the Islamic terror group.
Burkina Faso: On Apr. 18, “jihadists” murdered a catechist.
Pakistan: Rape, Forced Conversion, and Abuse of Christians
On Apr. 26, a Muslim man named Muhammad Shehroz, led a 4-year-old Christian boy, Moosa Masih to a field where he brutally sodomized and then sought to strangle the child to death. According to the boy’s father, Shan Masih, Shehroz was known to the family and thus familiar to the trusting boy. As they scoured the region, they heard faint cries from the field, and “When we arrived at the scene, Shehroz was strangling Moosa. If we had been 10 minutes later, we could have lost our son.” Shehroz grabbed his clothes and fled the scene. Discussing this incident, the British Asian Christian Association said that “the brutal assault on a child” is “an all too common occurrence in Pakistan”:
“The disturbing frequency with which Christian children are targeted is especially troubling, given their small minority status in the country. The lamentable truth is that their marginalized status makes them incredibly vulnerable. Adding to this sorrowful reality is the fact that Christians often hold pariah status, further exacerbating their vulnerability. Unfortunately, the police and the courts frequently display reluctance in pursuing justice and often overlook reports of such crimes when Christians are the victims.”
On Apr. 4, a 13-year-old Christian girl, Sania Ameen, was abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, and turned into the second wife of Muhamad Saif, a Muslim. Even though it is illegal in Pakistan to marry underage girls, the authorities refused to act on the Christian family’s pleas to recover their daughter, due to a birth certificate that had obviously been forged, which claimed she was 18. A court subsequently ruled that, being of age, Ameen had willingly converted to Islam and married a Muslim man. The marriage was orchestrated by the assistance of “a Muslim extremist known for his involvement in the conversion of Christian women and encouraging Muslim men to groom these women into marriage,” according to Dr. Adil Ghouri, who is assisting the family:
“Qari Shakir Hussain [a member of an Islamist organization in Pakistan] is notorious for orchestrating illegal conversions of minor Christian girls. He instigates Muslim men to abduct Christian women and brings them to his residence, where he arranges marriages.”
In an interview, Ameen Masih, the abducted girl’s father expressed the harrowing ordeal his family has been experiencing, adding, “All I want is to get my daughter back to me!… Muhammad Saif brandishes weapons and strolls through my street, threatening me. He has warned me that he will kidnap my other daughters if I don’t withdraw the application against him.” Meanwhile, “the police have yet to arrest any of the culprits, leaving Ameen Masih and his family in a state of vulnerability and distress.”
In a separate but similar case, a Christian father revealed in late April that his 15-year-old daughter was kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam and married to her Muslim abductor. According to Salman Masih:
“It’s been nearly two months now that I’m desperately searching for my minor daughter, Muskan. She went missing from home on March 11, but despite my frantic appeals to the police for recovering her, my child is still in the custody of her Muslim abductor, Arsalan Ali.”
Although Masih had filed a report with police within one hour of his daughter’s abduction, they ignored him. When he pressed the matter, and
“After several hours of waiting, I was told that a police team would come to my home the next day, but I would have to pay them 5,000 Pakistani rupees (USD $18) in ‘fuel cost.’ The police’s indifferent attitude helped the accused in moving my daughter to a safe location and carrying out his nefarious act.”
As in the previous case of 13-year-old Sania Ameen, the kidnapper and his accomplices presented forged papers to an indifferent court:
“According to the documents handed to me by the police, the Islamic conversion and Nikah (marriage certificate) were held on the same day Muskan was abducted from home. The next day, Arsalan filed a petition in the court … in the name of Muskan in which stated that she was an adult aged 19 years and had converted and married of her free will.”
The impoverished sanitation worker added that he feared Ali would traffic his daughter for sex:
“Arsalan has a notorious reputation in the neighborhood, and I fear something bad will happen to my child if she is not recovered from his custody. I appeal to the Christian leadership to help me find and save my daughter from exploitation.”On Mar. 31, Easter Sunday, a Muslim man named Muhammad
Suleman abducted Kainat Pervaiz, a 16-year-old Christian girl, at gunpoint. He took her to a vacant resident where all through the night, “Kainat endured unimaginable horrors as she was brutally raped multiple times.” According to the report:
“The next day, the perpetrator brazenly contacted the girl’s father, instructing him to retrieve her from his residence. Despite clear evidence of the assault, confirmed by a Medico Legal Certificate issued by a Government Hospital, the police failed to register an FIR (First Information Report). Shockingly, local authorities did not act to pursue justice.”
Instead, according to the father:
“On April 5th, members of the jirga [Pakistani conflict resolution team] forcibly arrived at my residence and coerced me to accompany them to the police station. They threatened to abduct my daughters if I dared to resist.”
They coerced him to drop the case in exchange for 50,000 rupees (USD $180) and the proposed marriage of his daughter to her rapist as a form of “compensation.” On learning that he could not rely on the authorities for any semblance of justice, he contacted a human rights agency for assistance. Since then, he and his family have received more threats from local supporters of the rapist and were last reported as living in terror. Discussing this case, human rights activist Juliet Chowdhry remarked:
“This appalling incident of kidnapping and rape involved brutal violence and the use of a dangerous weapon. Despite the gravity of the crime, Pakistani police officers attempted to coerce the family into accepting a compromise payment through a jirga, which subsequently pressured them into signing an agreement to forgive the rapist if he married their daughter. This blatant miscarriage of justice, facilitated by both the police and the jirga, highlights the pervasive impunity enjoyed by perpetrators of sexual violence and underscores the urgent need for systemic reform to safeguard the protection and rights of victims. The abysmal conduct of the Pakistani police, particularly in cases involving Christians, has reached a new nadir with this despicable act.”
On Apr. 14, a Muslim security officer named Muhammad Abdul Qadir Khan harassed, drugged and coerced a 13-year-old Christian boy named Saim Masih to participate in Muslim prayers, despite the youth’s repeated refusals. At one point, Muhammad yanked the boy’s cross necklace from around his neck, and hollered, “Stop being a Christian! They are worthless.”
The fearful boy protested, “I cannot offer prayer. I am a Christian, and I don’t know how to perform a Muslim prayer.”
“Don’t worry, I will teach you. Accept Islam, and I will give you money and take you with me to Peshawar to show you its green landscape,” cajoled Muhammad. According to the report:
“Mr. Khan persisted in his demands, urging Saim to pray, convert to Islam, accept money as a gift, and eat the food he had brought with him. Despite Saim’s repeated refusals, Mr. Khan forcefully made him eat some sweets. Siam does not recall what happened after consuming the sweet, but he was later discovered unconscious.”
After a frantic search, Masih’s family and friends discovered him partially conscious behind a building. Although they questioned Khan, police did not arrest him.
Muslim Attacks on Churches, Crosses, and Other Christian Symbols
Australia: On Apr. 15, a 16-year-old youth of Middle Eastern descent, armed with a knife and crying Islam’s war cry, “Allahu akbar!” (“Allah is the greatest!), lunged at and repeatedly stabbed an Orthodox bishop, Mar Mari Emmanuel, as he was delivering a sermon from the pulpit of his church in Sydney. In the scuffle to apprehend the Muslim youth, four other Christians were stabbed. The bishop lost an eye in the attack, which was captured on video as the worship service was livestreaming from the Good Shepherd Church.
In the days after the stabbings, seven other juveniles aged between 15 and 17—who according to police reports adhere to a “religiously motivated violent extremist ideology”—were arrested as part of counter-terrorism raids across southwestern Sydney.
Egypt: On Apr. 23, in al-Fawakhir village, more than 500 Muslims savagely attacked and torched the homes of Christians due to a rumor that a church was to be constructed in the village. According to a report:
“Extremists pelted Coptic homes with stones and chanted [Islamic] slogans [including “Allahu Akbar!”] , setting fire to several houses amidst the screams of women and children. The attack continued for hours before security forces arrived. The magnitude of the fire was such that it could be seen from miles away.”
Although in some instances Muslims tried to prevent Christians from escaping these fires, no casualties were reported. Al-Fawakhir, home to several hundred Christian families, has no church, like most villages in Egypt. As a result, a Coptic priest occasionally visits and holds a prayer service in a Christian home. This caused Muslims to launch a false rumor that the home was going to be converted into a permanent church.
Three days later, on April 26 — a Friday, when Muslims are used to hearing sermons whipping them up against “infidels” during mosque prayers — extremists from another village, al-Kom al-Ahmar, attacked its Christian minority for receiving a permit to construct a church. Discussing these attacks, Adel Guindy, co-founder of Coptic Solidarity and author of A Sword Over the Nile, told Gatestone:
“In an all too familiar development in Egypt’s countryside, Muslims, who may otherwise be content with a low grade life (e.g., no proper hospitals or public services), go into uncontrollable paroxysms at the mere hint that Christians might get a place to pray in—which in itself is no easy feat, as it requires governmental licensing that takes years or even decades to obtain. After fiery incitements, mobs attack Copts’ homes and businesses, all under the watchful eyes of the authorities who are usually, at least in part, complicit. Culprits are seldom, if ever, punished, thus inviting a sickening repeat of the ugly scenario.”
United States: On Apr. 6, Alexander Scott Mercurio, an 18-year-old convert to Islam, was arrested for “planning a suicide attack on multiple churches,” to be carried out on the following day in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. According to the report, “Law enforcement claims that he was going to attack local places of worship with knives, guns and flames.” In the words of FBI Director Christopher Wray,
“The defendant allegedly pledged loyalty to ISIS and sought to attack people attending churches in Idaho, a truly horrific plan which was detected and thwarted by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.”
Germany: On Apr. 12, six Muslim teenagers (two boys and four girls, aged between 13 and 16) were exposed for plotting terror attacks against Christians and churches during Easter, with the hopes of “kill[ing] as many ‘infidels’ as possible.” According to one report,
“[T]he youths wanted to attack ‘Christians (‘unbelievers’) in churches’ and ‘police officers in police stations’ with knives and Molotov cocktails [and, as later revealed, with bombs] in the name of the ISIS. …. [T]he youths were communicating in a common chat group in which they were exchanging plans to attack churches, synagogues, and a local sports club in Iserlohn. Furthermore, the cities Dortmund, Düsseldorf and Cologne were mentioned as possible targets. They were also planning to obtain weapons.”
The father of one of the arrested girls had already been under police investigation due to terrorist financing and illegal possession of weapons. During a house search, police found a machete and a dagger, which the girl had planned on using during the terrorist attacks, according to her chat messages.
On Apr. 19, a massive riot broke out in an asylum shelter after some Muslims noticed a resident wearing a cross necklace. According to the report:
“[S]everal residents, who are of Muslim faith, were outraged by the Christian symbol—a riot broke out. When the security service tried to calm the commotion, around 30 residents attacked the reception centre’s security staff. The violence escalated in one room of the accommodation centre: Several security staff were attacked and more and more residents joined in. Five migrants from the group attacked with bottles and chairs, and there were also attacks with fists…. [O]ne attacker even pulled out a knife. Several police patrols were deployed to calm the crowd.”
On Sunday, Apr. 21, graffiti and trash were found in the St. Mary Chapel in Aachen. Among other things, “Allahu Akbar” was found written on the walls and doors. There were several other attacks on and desecrations of churches (such as here and here).
On Apr. 14 the Passion Trail along the forest path at Tücking, which was set up by the Evangelical Lutheran parish in Hagen-Haspe to commemorate Easter, was found demolished. Once lined with crosses and prayer texts, everything had been destroyed.
Italy: In broad daylight and in front of everyone, an African migrant vandalized a church while praying to Allah and invoking his name. According to the Apr. 21 report,
“‘Asylum seeker’ with spray can and shouting ‘Allah Akbar’ has defaced church of Santi Medici in Martano, Italy, and numerous houses with Arabic writings. Italian residents are afraid because this man goes around armed and terrorizes elderly and children. We need mass deportation.”
Several other (including arson) attacks and desecration of churches in Italy (here, here, and here) also took place.
Finally, on Apr. 3, a pre-trial detention order was issued against three Muslims of Tunisian background for savagely beating another Tunisian for attending a church. According to the report:
“The investigation developed following the complaints made by the victim, a 28-year-old Tunisian man, a legal immigrant on the national territory, who was attacked on the evening of November 12, 2023. Specifically, the three men, after approaching him and accusing him of ‘frequenting the church of Christians,’ threatened him and violently beat him with kicks and punches, snatching a [cross?] necklace from him, before he managed to break free and escape. The victim had to be treated in the local hospital…. [T]he victim had undertaken a conversion to Christianity for some months, attending a local parish and participating in some religious celebrations, which was not accepted by his fellow countrymen of Muslim faith.”
United Kingdom: On April 3, a British church that offers refugee support services was vandalized — and smeared with dog feces (a not uncommon Muslim tactic against churches). There were also at least three arson attacks on churches (here, here, and here).
France: On Sunday, Apr. 14, five Muslim teenagers of Turkish origin, aged between 15 and 17, barged into the Saint-Etienne Cathedral in Metz and interrupted a concert in progress by shouting “Allahu Akbar!” before fleeing.
Many other churches in France—including another Notre Dame, built in the 1600s in Brigolo—went up in flames throughout April (here, here, here, here, here, and here).
Azerbaijan: According to an Apr. 24 report, St. John the Baptist Church in the Armenian town of Susa (or Shushi), which was built in the 1800s, but came under Azerbaijani control in late 2023, has been destroyed without a trace left:
“[T]he Susa church, which was wrapped in scaffolding through much of its time under Azerbaijani control, was demolished in the winter of 2023-24…. Two kilometers south of the erased church, satellite images released in April reveal that an entire [Christian] village appears to have been razed to the ground. Today a large mosque is under construction in the broken soil where a settlement once stood…”
Lebanon: On Apr. 16, an Orthodox church of St. George near Denniye was vandalized with Islamic slogans, including the shehada, “There is no god but Allah.”
Cameroon: During the night of April 2-3, the Mary Queen of Peace sanctuary was desecrated, in the 20% Muslim nation. The vandals destroyed several representations of Mary and Jesus, and totally shattered the 14 Stations of the Cross.
**Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West, Sword and Scimitar, Crucified Again, and The Al Qaeda Reader, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
About this Series
**While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by extremists is growing. The report posits that such persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place irrespective of language, ethnicity, or location. It includes incidents that take place during, or are reported on, any given month.

The Hamas Chief and the Israeli Who Saved His Life
Jo Becker and Adam Sella/The New York Times/May 26, 2024
TEL AVIV, Israel — This is how Dr. Yuval Bitton remembers the morning of Oct. 7. Being jolted awake just after sunrise by the insistent ringing of his phone. The frantic voice of his daughter, who was traveling abroad, asking, “Dad, what’s happened in Israel? Turn on the TV.”
News anchors were still piecing together the reports: Palestinian gunmen penetrating Israel’s vaunted defenses, infiltrating more than 20 towns and military bases, killing approximately 1,200 people and dragging more than 240 men, women and children into the Gaza Strip as hostages.
Even in that first moment, Bitton says, he knew with certainty who had masterminded the attack: Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza and Inmate No. 7333335 in the Israeli prison system from 1989 until his release in a prisoner swap in 2011.
But that was not all. Bitton had a history with Sinwar.
As he watched the images of terror and death flicker across his screen, he was tormented by a decision he had made nearly two decades before — how, working in a prison infirmary, he had come to the aid of a mysteriously and desperately ill Sinwar, and how afterward, the Hamas leader had told him that “he owed me his life.”
The two men had then formed a relationship of sorts, sworn enemies who nevertheless showed a wary mutual respect. As a dentist and later as a senior intelligence officer for the Israeli prison service, Bitton had spent hundreds of hours talking with and analyzing Sinwar, who in the seven months since Oct. 7 has eluded Israel’s forces even as their assault on Gaza has killed tens of thousands and turned much of the enclave to rubble. Now, U.S. officials believe Sinwar is calling the shots for Hamas in negotiations over a deal for a cease-fire and the release of some of the hostages.
Bitton saw that, in a sense, everything that had passed between himself and Sinwar was a premonition of the events now coming to pass. He understood the way Sinwar’s mind worked as well as or better than any Israeli official. He knew from experience that the price the Hamas leader would demand for the hostages might well be one Israel would be unwilling to pay.
And by day’s end, he knew something else: Sinwar’s operatives had his nephew.
THE DAY HE SAVED Sinwar’s life, Bitton was 37, running the dental clinic at the Beersheba prison complex, in the Negev desert of southern Israel. He had taken the job eight years earlier, in 1996, fresh out of medical school, assuming he would be treating guards and other employees.
Instead, he had ended up with a patient roster of some of Israel’s most hardened prisoners, including the Hamas operatives responsible for suicide attacks at a Jerusalem market and a Passover massacre at the Park Hotel, as well as the ultranationalist Israeli who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin for his peacemaking with the Palestine Liberation Organization. There were times when Bitton would be drilling the teeth of one terrorist only to learn that outside the prison walls, another had struck.
“During the day, you would treat them, and at night, you come home and cry,” he said. “That happened many, many nights. Once there was a suicide attack near where my parents lived. Sixteen Jews were killed. Who would not cry at night? When you see a small baby being lifted, who wouldn’t cry?”
He tried to compartmentalize. He told himself that as a doctor, he was bound by his oath to do no harm. And on particularly bad days, he said, he would remind himself of the words that Israel’s primary architect, David Ben-Gurion, had made his mantra in the years after the nation’s founding: “The state of Israel will be judged not by its wealth, nor by its army, nor by its technology, but by its moral character and human values.”
Although some Israeli historians question whether Ben-Gurion always lived by those words, Bitton took them to heart. It was, he thought, what differentiated him from the prisoners he treated.
Prison, Sinwar once told an Italian journalist, is a crucible. “Prison builds you,” he said, gives you time to think about what you believe in — “and the price you are willing to pay” for it.
His rite of passage had begun in 1989, two years after the first intifada erupted, protesting Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. He was 27, with a reputation for extreme brutality, convicted of murdering four Palestinians whom Hamas suspected of collaborating with Israel.
He was born in a refugee camp in southern Gaza, where his parents had been forced to live after what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe, when they were displaced from their homes during the wars surrounding the founding of Israel in 1948. In conversations with fellow prisoners, Sinwar spoke of how his refugee childhood had led him to Hamas.
“Something he always remembered is that all the men in the camp would go to one bathroom, and the women to another,” said Esmat Mansour, a fellow prisoner held from 1993 to 2013 for killing an Israeli settler. “There was a daily line, and you had to wait. And how they distributed food and the humiliation they would undergo. It isn’t something special to him, but it apparently impacted him a lot.”
Sinwar had been recruited by Hamas’ founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who made him chief of an internal security unit known as Al Majd. His job was to find and punish those suspected of violating Islamic morality laws or cooperating with the Israeli occupiers.
In an interrogation after his arrest in 1988, he dispassionately described shooting one man, strangling another with his bare hands, suffocating a third with a kaffiyeh, and choking and punching a fourth before tossing him in a hastily dug grave. Records of the interrogation make clear that, far from being remorseful, Sinwar saw beating confessions out of the collaborators as a righteous duty. One of them, he told interrogators, had even said that “he realized he deserved to die.”
Sinwar continued his campaign against informants from behind bars. Israeli authorities believed he had ordered the beheadings of at least two prisoners he suspected of snitching. Hamas operatives would throw their severed body parts out of the cell doors and tell the guards to “take the dog’s head,” Bitton said.
But if Sinwar was feared by his fellow inmates, he was also respected for his resourcefulness. He tried to escape several times, once surreptitiously digging a hole in his cell floor in hopes of tunneling under the prison and exiting through the visitor center. And he found ways to plot against Israel with Hamas leaders on the outside, managing the smuggling of cellphones into the prison and using lawyers and visitors to ferry messages out.
Often, the message was about finding ways to kidnap Israeli soldiers to trade for Palestinian prisoners. Years later, Sinwar would say that “for the prisoner, capturing an Israeli soldier is the best news in the universe, because he knows that a glimmer of hope has been opened for him.”
“They were formative years,” Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official who serves as an informal spokesperson, said in an interview. “He developed a leadership personality in every sense of the word.”
He also became fluent in Hebrew, taking advantage of an online university program, and devoured Israeli news, to better understand his enemy.
A routine search of his cell yielded tens of thousands of pages of painstakingly handwritten Arabic — Sinwar’s translations of contraband Hebrew-language autobiographies written by the former heads of Israel’s domestic security agency, Shin Bet. According to Bitton, Sinwar surreptitiously shared the translated pages so other inmates could study the agency’s counterterrorism tactics. He liked to call himself a “specialist in the Jewish people’s history.”
“They wanted prison to be a grave for us, a mill to grind our will, determination and bodies,” Sinwar once told supporters. “But, thank God, with our belief in our cause, we turned the prison into sanctuaries of worship and academies for study.”
Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, elects its leaders democratically, and that structure was mirrored behind bars. In each prison, one committee was charged with making quotidian decisions — who slept in the top bunk, what to watch during allotted TV hours — while another meted out punishments to suspected collaborators, and still others oversaw things such as divvying up money sent by Hamas leaders that could be used to purchase food at the commissary.
An elected “emir,” along with members of a high council called the “haya,” ruled over this structure for limited terms. For much of Sinwar’s time in prison, he alternated as emir with Rawhi Mushtaha, a confidant who had been convicted alongside him for killing collaborators. It was Sinwar’s turn in 2004.
AT THE TIME, the episode seemed of little consequence. After all, Bitton said, Sinwar was supposed to be serving four life terms.
As a dentist in Israel, Bitton had also trained in general medicine, and was often called upon to assist the three other prison doctors, stitching up wounds or helping with a tricky diagnosis. So, when he emerged from seeing his dental patients that day in early 2004 to find several clearly perplexed colleagues surrounding a disoriented Sinwar, Bitton did what a doctor does. He joined them.
“What’s going on?” he asked the prisoner.
The two men had met on a number of occasions.
Bitton often wandered back to the prisoners’ wings, partly out of curiosity about how some of Israel’s most fervent enemies thought, and partly because the trust he engendered as a doctor made him a useful intermediary when prison administrators wanted to know what was going on. Just as Sinwar had learned Hebrew, Bitton had taught himself Arabic. He became such a regular presence in the cellblocks that some prisoners suspected, wrongly, that he might be an intelligence plant.
Israeli and Palestinian watchdog groups have periodically published scathing reports on conditions for Palestinian prisoners — overcrowded cells lacking proper sanitation and ventilation, harsh interrogations, and, in some cases, years of solitary confinement and withholding of proper medical care.
Against that backdrop, Mansour said, Bitton stood out. “He treated us like humans.”
“He bought the hearts of the prisoners, truly. He would go into their cells, drink with them and eat with them,” he said. “If there was a problem, he would call and help.”
Lately, Bitton had been working to persuade Sinwar and others to cooperate with Israeli researchers studying suicide bombings. But in the examining room, Sinwar didn’t seem to know him.
“Who are you?,” Bitton recalled him asking.
“It’s me, Yuval.”
“Wow, I’m sorry — I didn’t recognize you,” Bitton said the prisoner replied, before describing his symptoms.
He would stand for prayer and then fall. As he spoke, he seemed to drift in and out of consciousness. But for Bitton, the most telling sign was Sinwar’s complaint of a pain in the back of his neck. Something is wrong with his brain, the dentist told his colleagues, perhaps a stroke or an abscess. He needed to go to the hospital, urgently.
He was rushed to nearby Soroka Medical Center, where doctors performed emergency surgery to remove a malignant and aggressive brain tumor, fatal if left untreated. “If he had not been operated on, it would have burst,” Bitton said.
A few days later, Bitton visited Sinwar in the hospital, together with a prison officer sent to check the security arrangements. They found the prisoner in bed, hooked up to monitors and an IV, but awake. Sinwar asked the officer, who was Muslim, to thank the dentist.
“Sinwar asked him to explain to me what it means in Islam that I saved his life,” Bitton recalled. “It was important to him that I understood from a Muslim how important this was in Islam — that he owed me his life.”
SINWAR RARELY if ever spoke to Israeli prison authorities. But now he began meeting regularly with the dentist, to drink tea and talk.
They would meet back in the cellblocks, two men with strikingly similar features — cropped, prematurely graying hair; dark, quizzically arched eyebrows; high cheekbones. Bitton, a loquacious, easygoing man, often joshed with the other prisoners, getting them to open up about their families or sports. But with Sinwar, the talk was all business and dogma.
“The conversations with Sinwar were not personal or emotional,” he said. “They were only about Hamas.”
Sinwar knew the Quran by heart, and he coolly laid out his organization’s governing doctrines. “Hamas sees the land we live on as the holy land, like, ‘This is ours, you don’t have a right to live in this land,’” Bitton said. “It wasn’t political, it was religious.”
Bitton would press him: Was there no chance, then, for a two-state solution?
Never, Sinwar would say. Bitton would respond: Why not?
Because this is the land of Muslims, not for you — I can’t sign away this land.
In a search of his cell, guards had confiscated a handwritten novel that Sinwar finished at the end of 2004, after the surgery. “You couldn’t make a Hollywood movie about it,” Bitton said, laughing. “But it was about the relationship between men, women and the family in Islam.” At least one copy was smuggled out; The New York Times found a typed PDF in an online library.
The novel, “The Thorn and the Carnation,” is a coming-of-age story that limns Sinwar’s own life: The narrator, a devout Gaza boy named Ahmed, emerges from hiding during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war to a life under Israeli occupation. In their cruelty, the occupiers cause the “chests of youth to boil like a cauldron.” In retaliation, Ahmed’s friends and family attack them with knives, ambush them with Molotov cocktails and hunt collaborators so as to “gouge out the eyes that the occupier sees us with from the inside.”
Weaved throughout is the theme of the unending sacrifice demanded by the resistance. At university, where he is recruited to Hamas, Ahmed becomes infatuated with a woman he sees walking to and from class. “I am not exaggerating when I say that she truly surpasses the full moon,” he says. Yet, their relationship — chaste and proper according to Muslim values — never develops; the reader never even learns the woman’s name.
“I decided to end my love story, if it can even be called a love story,” the narrator says. “I realized that ours is the bitter story of Palestine, for which there is only room for one love … one passion.”
But if Sinwar, unmarried at the time, ever entertained the notion of an alternative path for himself, he did not share his thoughts with Bitton. (Indeed, even after his release from prison and subsequent marriage, he has said very little publicly on the subject of his own family, except to note that “the first words my son spoke were ‘father,’ ‘mother’ and ‘drone.’”)
At Beersheba, Sinwar was unquestionably a prison chieftain, Bitton said, but he didn’t put on airs — a humble ascetic who shared cooking duties and other chores with more junior inmates.
Every week or so, he would make an improvised knafeh, a Palestinian dessert of sweet cheese and shredded pastry drenched in syrup. The prisoners always awaited his knafeh, Bitton said. They really liked it — and so did Bitton, who understood the breaking of bread together as a way to cultivate the relationship.
“I tried it,” he allowed. “Listen: They know how to make knafeh.”
Bitton was under no illusion about whom he was dealing with. A prison assessment that Bitton said he helped compile called Sinwar cruel, cunning and manipulative, an authoritative man with “the ability to carry crowds” who “keeps secrets even inside prison amongst other prisoners.”
Still, there was a certain transactional honesty to their conversations. Each man knew the other had an agenda.
Jut as Bitton probed to better understand the schisms between Hamas and the other Palestinian factions inside the prison, Sinwar returned again and again to the fissures in Israeli society that he read about in the Hebrew news media: between rich and poor, between Sephardic and Ashkenazi, between secular and Orthodox Jews.
“Now, you’re strong, you have 200 atomic warheads,” Sinwar would say. “But we’ll see, maybe in another 10 to 20 years, you’ll weaken, and I’ll attack.”
In 2006, after Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas stunned political observers by winning the largest number of seats in the Palestinian Authority’s legislative elections.
Israeli authorities, worried that the election would help legitimize a group that the United States and European Union had designated a terrorist organization, devised a plan to remind the world of Hamas’ true colors by giving some of its incarcerated leaders a media platform on “60 Minutes” and in an interview with Israeli television. Bitton was tasked with selling the idea to Sinwar, who would have to sign off.
“Speak freely, you can say whatever you want about Israel,” Bitton told Sinwar and other prisoners.
The plan worked, from Bitton’s perspective. When Abdullah Barghouti, who had organized suicide bombings that killed 66 people, was asked on “60 Minutes” whether he regretted his deeds, he readily answered yes. “I feel bad, ’cause the number only 66,” he said.
Sinwar, for his part, tried to use his first and only interview with an Israeli television outlet to send a savvier message. With Bitton looking on, he told the interviewer that Israelis should “be scared” about Hamas’ election victory. But, he added in comments that weren’t aired, much depended on what the Israeli government did next. “From our perspective, we have a right that we’re asking from the Israeli leadership,” he said. “We aren’t asking for the town.”
The next year, to great alarm in Israel, Hamas wrested full control over Gaza in a violent power struggle with Fatah, a secular rival political party.
This was the time, Bitton decided, to channel the relationships he had built with Sinwar and other imprisoned Palestinian leaders into a new role, one that would not leave him feeling so conflicted. He applied to become an officer in the Prison Intelligence Service, and after a short course, he was assigned to Ketziot prison in 2008. The man who “doesn’t understand the motives and roots of their enemy,” he explained, “will not be able to prevent those organizations from doing what they want.”
BITTON WAS quickly thrown into a monumental challenge. Two years earlier, in 2006, an Israeli soldier, Gilad Schalit, had been kidnapped in a daring cross-border raid. Among his captors was none other than Sinwar’s brother.
The kidnapping profoundly shook Israeli society, with its credo that not a single soldier should be left behind. As the Israeli government, working through a back channel with a team of international intermediaries, attempted to negotiate a prisoner swap, Bitton was tasked with using his connections to imprisoned Hamas leaders to glean intelligence on what they would accept.
By 2009, Israel had agreed in principle to exchange 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Schalit. Sinwar “was managing the negotiations from inside the prison with a group of brothers who were also with him,” according to Hamad, the informal Hamas spokesperson, who was involved in the negotiations.
There was only one problem: Despite being on the list, Sinwar didn’t think the deal was good enough, according to Gerhard Conrad, a retired German intelligence officer involved in brokering the Schalit deal.
Sinwar was insisting on freeing “the so-called impossibles,” Conrad said. Those were the men serving multiple life sentences, men such as Barghouti and Abbas al-Sayed, who had masterminded the Passover suicide attack that had killed 30 people at the Park Hotel.
Saleh Arouri, a founder of Hamas’ armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, and a leader of prisoners from the West Bank, approached Bitton. Would he help push against Sinwar’s obstinacy?
Arouri “understood they had to compromise — that we would not release everyone,” Bitton said. “He was more pragmatic.”
Recognizing that the rift between Sinwar and Arouri could potentially be used to advance the Schalit negotiations, Bitton got his bosses to sign off on a plan aimed at deepening the division. At Arouri’s request, prison officials brought together 42 influential West Bank inmates from three separate prisons so that Arouri could win them to his side.
But pressuring Sinwar turned out to be much harder.
Bitton saw what he was up against in 2010, when, amid the stalled Schalit negotiations, Sinwar tried to compel all 1,600 Hamas prisoners to join a hunger strike that would have left many of them dead. The goal wasn’t even to free prisoners, just to release two from long-term solitary confinement. In that moment, Bitton said, he realized there would never be a Schalit deal as long as Sinwar remained in the way.
“He was willing to pay a heavy price for principle,” Bitton said, “even if the price wasn’t proportional to the goal.”
Even after the Schalit negotiators managed to persuade the Israelis in 2011 to release additional prisoners, bringing the total to 1,027 — including some, though not nearly all of the “impossibles” — Sinwar remained opposed.
But by this point, Arouri had been released from prison and was a member of the Hamas negotiating team, led by Ahmad Jabari, a top commander who had led the raid that captured Schalit. Under pressure from Egyptian mediators, the team concluded that this was as good a deal as it was going to get.
Sinwar’s authority had been diluted. But just to be sure, the Israelis put him in solitary confinement until the deal was done. (Arouri was killed in an Israeli airstrike this past January.)
On Oct. 18, 2011, Bitton stood in the yard of Ketziot prison, watching as Sinwar boarded a bus to Gaza. Having witnessed the persuasive power of Sinwar’s leadership up close, Bitton said he had urged the negotiators not to free him. But he was overruled, he said, because Sinwar “didn’t have as much Jewish blood on his hands” as some of the others.
“I thought you need to look at the capabilities of the prisoner to use their abilities against Israel and not just what he did — his potential,” Bitton said.
In news video footage from that day, Sinwar does not look all that pleased either, scowling on a makeshift stage in central Gaza City as Ismail Haniyeh, then leader of Hamas in Gaza, gleefully waves to the thousands gathered to celebrate the prisoners’ release. Hours later, in an interview with Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV, a defiant Sinwar made a promise.
“We shall spare no efforts to liberate the rest of our brothers and sisters,” he said. “We urge the Qassam Brigades to kidnap more soldiers to exchange them for the freedom of our loved ones who are still behind bars.”
“He told us what he was going to do,” Bitton said. “We didn’t want to listen.”
ABOUT 6:30 A.M. Oct. 7, Bitton’s nephew, Tamir Adar, woke up in Nir Oz, a kibbutz less than 2 miles from the Gaza border. Adar, 38, worked as a farmer, and he normally rose early so that he would have time to enjoy the long summer afternoons, drinking beer as he watched his daughter and son splash around in the community pool. That morning, as air raid sirens blared, rockets pierced the sky and sporadic gunfire ricocheted off walls, Adar left his wife and children in their house’s small safe room and went out to join the kibbutz’s armed emergency response team.
At 8:30 a.m., he sent his wife a WhatsApp message: She should not open the safe-room door, not even if he came pleading to be let in. The kibbutz had been overrun.
At 4 p.m., soldiers finally arrived and called residents out of their safe rooms. Adar was nowhere to be found. His mother, Yael, called her brother, Bitton: “Tamir has disappeared.”Roughly 100 Nir Oz residents — a quarter of the population — had been killed or kidnapped in the Hamas raid. The world quickly knew that Adar’s paternal grandmother, 85-year-old Yaffa Adar, was among them, as viral video showed armed militants carrying her to Gaza in a stolen golf cart. It would be three weeks before Israeli officials could confirm that Tamir Adar had been taken hostage, too. Before, his mother worked as the administrator for a school district near the Gaza border. Now, she gave herself over to the hostages’ cause, attending marches and demonstrations to pressure the government into striking a deal with Hamas for their release. “One day you’re hopeful and the next in despair,” she said. “One day you’re crying and the next you’re able to gather yourself.”
She wondered whether she should ask her brother to leverage his connections, but decided against it. “What could I tell him?” she said. “Call Sinwar?”
In the years since the Schalit deal, Bitton had climbed the ranks of the Israeli Prison Service, becoming the head of its intelligence division and then a deputy commander overseeing 12 prisons before retiring in 2021. Sinwar had traced a parallel arc. After his release, he was elected to a role akin to Hamas defense minister. And in 2017, he was elected leader of Hamas in Gaza, overseeing all aspects of life in Gaza.
It hadn’t escaped Bitton’s notice that the Hamas assault came at a time of deep division in Israel, the nation wracked by protests over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts, demanded by the right-wing parties crucial to his political survival, to dilute the power of Israel’s Supreme Court. It was precisely the type of schism that Sinwar had spoken of years before at Beersheba, when he said he would attack at a time of internal strife. Bitton held small hope for his nephew’s release. For Sinwar, the hostages were a means to an end — freeing the Palestinian prisoners left behind in the Schalit deal and putting the Palestinian cause back on the world stage. Even if Sinwar knew who his nephew was, Bitton said, “at the end, he looks at us as Jews.”
Still, in one of their last conversations, on the day Sinwar was freed, the Hamas leader had again thanked him for saving his life. Sinwar had even asked for his phone number, although Bitton had to refuse because prison employees are forbidden to communicate with Hamas leaders on the outside. He believed that Sinwar would feel bound by a kind of code, and that if he was made aware that Hamas held Bitton’s nephew, he at least would not allow him to be mistreated.
“Beyond the fact that we are enemies, at the end of the day, there is also his personal outlook,” Bitton said. “In my opinion, he would treat him the same way I did, saving his life despite being an enemy.”
Several weeks after the Hamas attack, in the hope that Sinwar was still an avid follower of Israeli news media, Bitton decided to give a television interview. In it, he said only that he had been part of a team that had diagnosed Sinwar decades before, and that his nephew was among the hostages. (In other interviews, he similarly downplayed his role, because, he said, he was worried about how he might be perceived by a nation in mourning.)
In late November, Adar’s grandmother was released in a weeklong cease-fire deal that saw 105 of the hostages freed, mostly women and children. What Bitton knew but could not say in his family’s moment of joy was that Sinwar would hold on to military-age men such as Adar until the very end, to guarantee his own survival.
“Can I tell my sister that they’re releasing Yaffa Adar, Tamir’s grandma, and that that will be the last release and Tamir will remain there? I can’t say it, but I know him and I know what he’ll do,” Bitton said. “That’s why I stayed silent, but I’m eating my heart out.”Yet, there was reason to believe that his nephew was still alive. In the wake of Bitton’s TV interview, Israeli intelligence learned that Sinwar was asking about Adar’s well-being, and that subordinates had assured him that he was all right.
It turned out the subordinates had asked after the wrong person. On Jan. 5, the government told the family what new intelligence showed: Wounded while defending his kibbutz, Adar had apparently died not long after being dragged into Gaza, one of at least 35 hostages believed to be dead, among roughly 125 still being held.
Bitton returned to Nir Oz on a sunny winter morning. Blackened buildings peeked out between columnar cactuses, deafening booms from artillery shells interrupted chirping parrots and cooing doves, and an acrid smell still hung in the air. “The smell of death,” Bitton said, wrinkling his nose. Rounding a corner, he stopped. “That’s his blood,” he said, his face tightening in grief as he pointed toward a concrete wall that once hid the kibbutz’s dumpsters, now a dark-stained marker of his nephew’s last stand. And nearby, a small memorial, a fleet of toy tractors.
“Do you see what’s lost?” Bitton said. “It’s like that here. No one remains, just birds and stories.”These days, Bitton meets regularly with the hostages’ families, sharing everything he learned about Sinwar, to help them manage expectations.
In recent weeks, international negotiators have pressed Israel and Hamas to accept a deal that, in its first phase, would see some of the hostages exchanged for many more Palestinian prisoners and a temporary cease-fire, according to officials familiar with the process. But Hamas has held out for a total cessation of hostilities that would leave it in charge of Gaza, a red line for the Israeli government.
“I tell the families not to get their hopes up,” Bitton said. “In this situation, there is no chance.”Bitton and his sister have revisited, over and again, that long-ago day in the prison infirmary. She said they try to laugh at the “absurdity” of it all. “On the one hand, my brother saved a life, and on the other, his sister lost her boy to the same person he saved.”She assures him there was nothing else he could have done.
“These are our values. Yuval never would have acted differently, never, and neither would I,” she said. “But in the end, we were screwed.”
First and foremost by their own government, they said. Hamas is Hamas, as Bitton put it. “With Sinwar, I know he wants to destroy us,” Yael Adar echoed. “My greatest anger is that there was no one to defend our borders.”
Not everyone in Israel seems to see it that way. Sitting together in a cafe in Eilat, a town on the Red Sea where the survivors of Nir Oz were first relocated, brother and sister were approached by a stranger. The woman fixed her gaze on Bitton, apparently recognizing him from his interview on TV. She had a question.
“Why did you save him?” she asked. “Why?”
c.2024 The New York Times Company

End to war remains distant as EU unveils latest help for Ukraine
Dr. Diana Galeeva/Yasar Yakis/Arab News/May 26, 2024
After more than two years of debate, EU states last week adopted a plan to use windfall revenues from seized Russian central bank assets to fund Ukraine’s defense. The 27-nation bloc holds about €200 billion ($217 billion) in Russian central bank assets, which were mostly frozen in Belgium as part of the economic statecraft tactics employed during the Ukraine war.
The plan adopted last week will allow 90 percent of the profits raised from the money to be used by the European Peace Facility, the entity the EU states already use to get recompensed for the ammunition and arms they send to Ukraine. The other 10 percent will be put in the EU budget and is expected to boost Ukraine’s defense industry, in addition to reconstruction. In total, the EU expects the plan to yield €15 billion to €20 billion by 2027.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated in March that, if the deal was finalized swiftly, the first €1 billion could be transferred on July 1. She stressed that “concrete action” would be conducted over the summer months.
The Kremlin responded by stating that the decision violates the norms of the global economic system. Even the well-known British newspaper The Guardian acknowledged that “the move is still laden with legal risk. There is a possibility the money would have to be returned after the war if Russia launched legal action.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has already stated that the EU would feel the “full measure” of Russia’s response following such actions.
It should be remembered that, like the EU and the G7, Russia has also employed economic measures as part of its diplomatic statecraft. President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed a decree allowing the use of US property in Russia as compensation for damages resulting from the seizure of Russian property in the US. Moreover, a Russian court this month ordered the seizure of the accounts, assets, property and shares of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank following a lawsuit against the German banks. According to documents from May 16, a court in St. Petersburg ordered the seizure of €239 million from Deutsche Bank and €93.7 million from Commerzbank. These banks were among the guarantors of a contract with the German company Linde for the construction of a gas processing plant in Russia. However, the project was terminated due to the Western sanctions.
In April, I attended a lecture by a high-level EU decision-maker, who stressed that he knew how to end the Ukraine war within two weeks and that it required the cessation of military aid to Ukraine from the EU. However, it is clear that this would mean Brussels engaging with the Kremlin’s desire that all parties (Kyiv, the EU and the US) accommodate Russia’s “geopolitical and territorial interest.” This is not in the interest of the EU, which supports Ukraine’s demands for peace, including the withdrawal of Russian troops and a return to the country’s 1991 borders, meaning the return of Crimea and the country’s eastern oblasts. In turn, these terms would be flatly unacceptable to the Kremlin.
The war is approaching a phase in which economic statecraft will be used by both sides to apply pressure on the other.
The move to use the profits from frozen Russian assets results from the pressure on EU countries to do more to support Ukraine’s defense after delays in aid from the US and in the context of Russian advances on the battlefield. The most intense battles have been in the east of Ukraine, where Russian forces are putting pressure on the Kurakhove and Pokrovsk fronts in Donetsk and in Kupiansk, which is in the east of the Kharkiv region.
This move also came a few weeks ahead of a high-level peace summit scheduled to be held in Switzerland in June, to which Moscow has not been invited. Clearly, when Moscow is excluded from the negotiations, the peace summit can move productively without Russian obstructionism, but peace cannot actually be achieved until the summit draws up terms that the Kremlin finds acceptable. Therefore, the war is approaching a phase in which economic statecraft, in particular, will be used by both sides to apply pressure on the other.
In her March address, Von der Leyen shared a proposal to increase customs duties on oilseed, grain and derivative products from Russia and Belarus. According to the European leader, this will “prevent the Russian grain from destabilizing the EU market in these products, it will stop Russia from using the revenues from the export of these goods to the European Union and it will ensure that illegal Russian exports of stolen Ukrainian grain do not enter the EU market.” Meanwhile, in Russian government institutions, so-called mirror diplomatic actions and economic tools are already being discussed amid efforts to pressure Moscow’s opponents.
To sum up, recent EU actions indicate the beginning of a new phase in the Ukraine war, where increasing pressure will be applied from both sides. Both Kyiv and Moscow remain firm on their peace demands, each of which cannot be considered by the other side. For this reason, the only option left is for the two sides to put economic pressure on each other, especially as the European strategic policy in the short-term will be weighted toward negative sanctions, including embargoes, boycotts, blacklists, preclusive buying, expropriation and asset freezes. Overall, if the EU wants to end the war, it would need to stop offering aid to Ukraine, representing a failure of its objectives, which it would clearly prefer to avoid.
• Dr. Diana Galeeva is an academic visitor to Oxford University.
X: @Dr_GaleevaDiana

Azerbaijani-Armenian relations are moving forward
Yasar Yakis/Arab News/May 26, 2024
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan last week made an epoch-making statement in his country’s parliament. He surprised many in Armenia by saying that there is no use in opening maps and dreaming of the lands that were once inhabited partly by Armenians. “We cannot go anywhere,” he said, “if we continue to look out of the window and dream that Mount Ararat, which is now in Turkiye, belonged once to Armenia.”
Armenians have lived under various denominations throughout history. The Kingdom of Armenia reached its zenith under Tigranes the Great in the first century B.C. In the early fourth century, it became the first state to adopt Christianity as its state religion. Later, it became successively part of the Byzantine, Sassanid and Muslim hegemonies. It reinstated its independence under the Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia in the 880s. After an interval, an Armenian principality and later a kingdom was established on the Mediterranean coast between the 11th and 14th centuries. In other words, the history of Armenia is like those of many other countries that were formed, flourished and then became smaller as a result of historical facts.
A new era may now be dawning in Azerbaijani-Armenian relations. The first step was taken by Pashinyan ahead of April 24, the anniversary of the 1915 forced relocation of masses of Armenians from Ottoman Constantinople to Syria.
Last week, in his speech to parliament, Pashinyan invited Armenians to stop dreaming of historical Armenia, explaining that the path followed by the country has led it to the present reality. He did not regret the present situation and did not consider it a defeat. He explained: “A state ideology is being developed in Armenia, the core of which is the state, sovereignty and independence.”
Tavush was the place where gunfire was exchanged two years ago between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Now, a new road is being built there and Pashinyan described it as “a path from historic Armenia to real.” With this reference, he implied that Yerevan has abandoned any claim over Nagorno-Karabakh to pursue rapprochement with Azerbaijan.
The historical background of the controversy between Turkiye and Armenia goes back more than a century. When the Ottoman forces were at war on many fronts, an Armenian militia carried out attacks on Turkish military units, cut the army’s communication lines and was accused of stealing ammunition and weapons before delivering them to the Russian units with which the Turks were at war. As if this was not enough, Armenian gangs resorted to a rebellion in the eastern province of Van in the April and May of 1915.
The ruling Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress decided to forcibly relocate the Armenians to Syria. The numbers of those who were relocated and who perished during the relocation are contested. Turkiye was not the only country that resorted to such a measure. During the Second World War, the US relocated American citizens of Japanese origin from their West Coast homes to internment camps in remote areas.
It is easy to preach to the government of Armenia without bearing the responsibility of difficult decisions.
According to the information made available in 1922 by the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul, 817,000 Armenians left Ottoman territory. This figure includes those who merely ceased to be Ottoman citizens. The figures are also controversial regarding those who perished during the relocation. Natural deaths, attacks on the convoys, famines, sicknesses, hardships during the relocation and many other factors resulted in the high number of casualties. The figures vary from one source to another, but one report from 1916 stated that 600,000 Armenians died or were killed during the deportations.
This year’s commemoration was not like an exchange of blame between Turkiye and Armenia. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a statement remembering with respect the Ottoman citizens of Armenian descent who lost their lives and extended his condolences to their descendants. He continued by saying: “It is important to address history under the guidance of wisdom, conscience and science, instead of favoring a radical discourse, marginalization and hate speech … We believe that the way to protect future generations from the spiral of violence and war encircling the world is to build a future together in the light of the lessons we have learned from our common pain.”
In line with this responsible attitude, Pashinyan’s government took concrete steps to solve the border demarcation problem with Azerbaijan. On the day of the commemoration, he still used the words “Medz Yeghern,” meaning “Great Calamity,” but did not elaborate very much.
The transfer of four villages from Armenia to Azerbaijan was agreed on Friday. They are Baghanis Ayrum, Ashaghi Askipara, Kheirimli and Ghizilhajili. The Russian maps are being taken as a basis for the borders.
Two weeks ago, the Lemkin Institute, operating in the US, issued a statement harshly criticizing the comments made by Pashinyan during the commemoration. By doing so, the institute sides with those think tanks that complicate the task of the Armenian government. It is easy to preach to the government without bearing the responsibility of difficult decisions.
Years ago, Pashinyan used to say that Armenian businessmen will conquer the world. This statement is still valid today. Armenian businessmen in Turkiye have a reputation for doing fair business. What is needed is mutual trust.
• Yasar Yakis is a former foreign minister of Turkiye and founding member of the ruling AK Party.
X: @yakis_yasar

Why Trump should share his presidential ticket with Haley
Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/May 26, 2024
Former South Carolina governor and one-time Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has once again captured the nation’s attention with her announcement last week that she would be voting for former President Donald Trump in the November election.
This revelation at an event hosted by the Hudson Institute in Washington marked a significant development in Haley’s political journey since she exited the race for the Republican nomination in March. Her decision reflects a broader narrative about party loyalty, policy priorities and the complex dynamics of intraparty relationships.
At the conservative think tank, Haley said: “As a voter, I put my priorities on a president who’s going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account, who would secure the border, no more excuses. A president who would support capitalism and freedom, a president who understands we need less debt, not more debt.” Despite their contentious past, this statement provided a framework for understanding her decision to endorse Trump.
Haley’s shy endorsement of Trump was not without its reservations. When she ended her presidential bid, she notably refrained from endorsing Trump outright, instead challenging him to earn the votes of those within the Republican Party and beyond who were skeptical of his leadership. “Trump has not been perfect on these policies, I have made that clear many, many times, but (President Joe) Biden has been a catastrophe,” Haley remarked, encapsulating her pragmatic approach to the 2024 election.
Her remarks highlight a critical aspect of contemporary American politics: the balancing act between personal convictions and party loyalty. For Haley, supporting Trump is a strategic choice driven by her broader policy goals and the perceived failures of the current administration.
Haley’s journey in the GOP race was marked by increasing tensions with Trump. As the last significant contender against him, Haley did not shy away from criticizing the former president. In the final weeks of her campaign, she ramped up her attacks, describing Trump as “a disaster” for the Republican Party. Such criticisms underscored her commitment to her policy priorities and her willingness to challenge the status quo within her party. Despite the fierce rivalry, Haley’s eventual decision to partially endorse Trump underscores the often-pragmatic nature of political alliances. Her support is rooted in a broader assessment of policy alignment and the strategic imperatives of party unity as the GOP prepares for the general election.
Haley’s position is significant for several reasons. Firstly, it signals a consolidation of support within the Republican Party, which is crucial for presenting a united front against the Democratic incumbent. Secondly, it reflects the ongoing negotiations within the party between Trump loyalists and those who are more critical of his tenure but still align with broader GOP principles.
Her position also highlights the challenges Republican leaders face in navigating the complex terrain of Trump-era politics. Balancing personal convictions with the strategic need to support the party’s nominee is a delicate task and Haley’s decision is emblematic of this broader struggle.
In the high-stakes world of political campaigns, intraparty rivalries can become as intense as the battles against the opposition. When two candidates from the same party vie for the nomination, the dynamics often shift from camaraderie to confrontation and then back to reconciliation afterward.
Candidates tend to highlight their unique positions on policy issues to stand out, emphasizing ideological differences and visions for the party’s future. They demonstrate resilience and readiness for the general election by demonstrating the ability to withstand and respond to attacks. Critiquing rivals’ weaknesses helps sway undecided voters and solidify their own support base by drawing contrasts.
Haley’s decision to partially endorse Trump underscores the often-pragmatic nature of political alliances.
Once the primary race concludes and a candidate secures the nomination, the focus shifts to party unity. The losing candidate typically publicly endorses the nominee, signaling for their supporters to rally behind the party’s chosen leader. Emphasizing common ground and shared values, they reaffirm their commitment to the party’s broader mission. Participation in the winner’s campaign through joint appearances and fundraising helps mobilize supporters and strengthen the nominee’s position. Private meetings to resolve lingering tensions foster mutual respect and understanding.
A notable example is the 2008 Democratic primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. After a fiercely contested race, the defeated Clinton endorsed Obama and became a vital supporter, even serving as secretary of state in his administration. This transition from adversaries to collaborators was pivotal in consolidating party support and achieving electoral success.
Intraparty rivalries clarify positions, test resilience and prepare candidates for the general election. The shift toward unity through endorsements, shared goals and active support demonstrates the party’s strength and cohesion, ensuring resilience against external challenges.
In his first public comments following Haley’s statement, Trump warmly welcomed his former rival, acknowledging the shared vision that now unites them. On Thursday, Trump said: “Nikki and I share the same ideas and the same thoughts. We had a nasty campaign; it was pretty nasty. But she’s a very capable person and I’m sure she’s going to be on our team in some form. Absolutely.”
Trump’s acknowledgment of the “nasty” campaign reminds the public of the intensity of their previous rivalry. Yet, his affirmation of Haley’s competence and potential role within his team highlights the pragmatic side of political alliances. This gesture is about reconciling with a former opponent and harnessing their skills and influence to strengthen the party’s position.
But what role could Haley play?
While Trump faces crucial decisions about his campaign team, the former US ambassador to the UN is a compelling choice as his running mate for several reasons. Her diverse background and experience can attract minority communities and women, expanding the Republican base and appealing to swing voters. Haley’s tenure as governor and UN ambassador showcases her strong executive and diplomatic skills, complementing Trump’s experience and creating a balanced team.
She also shares Trump’s views on national defense, secure borders, economic freedom and pro-business policies, ensuring a unified policy platform. Her experience on the national stage and communication skills make her an effective campaigner. She can connect with diverse audiences and advocate for conservative values.
Most importantly, Haley’s pragmatic style resonates with independents and moderates, bridging the gap between the party’s base and the broader electorate, which is crucial for winning battleground states.
Choosing Haley would symbolize a bridge-building effort, fostering greater cohesion within the Republican ranks and presenting a united front to voters. She represents the future of the GOP, positioning the party for long-term success and ensuring it remains vibrant and forward-looking.
Haley is a strong candidate for vice president and her selection would enhance party unity, while positioning the GOP for future success. This all makes a compelling case for her inclusion as Trump’s running mate.
• Dalia Al-Aqidi is executive director at the American Center for Counter Extremism.

UK General Elections: Risky Move or Strategic Masterstroke?
Ali A. Hamadé/This is Beirut/May 26/2024
It’s a bombshell! British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak surprised everyone by announcing that UK general elections will be held on July 4, moving them up several months from the original deadline of January 2025.
This unexpected decision has sent shockwaves through government and parliamentary circles, where it was widely believed that Sunak would ask King Charles III to dissolve the Parliament between next October and November.
What is really behind this bold move? Is it a risky gamble or a strategic masterstroke? This question is all the more pertinent given that the Labour opposition currently enjoys a lead of over 20 points in the polls.
Let us recall that the Conservative Party, which came to power in 2010 under David Cameron, has experienced both unparalleled glory and a dramatic fall in public opinion. David Cameron’s resounding victory in 2010, after 13 years of Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, was followed by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s success in leading the Brexit campaign in 2016 and winning, in 2019, the largest Conservative majority in Parliament since the Thatcher era.
However, subsequent dramatic falls were marked by political chaos and instability. Theresa May, appointed in 2016, could only secure a relative majority in Westminster in 2017. Direct and indirect consequences of Brexit, repeated scandals involving Boris Johnson—most notably the Partygate scandal—and Liz Truss’s disastrous governance, which only lasted 44 days, further compounded the situation.
Moreover, the recent global context has only exacerbated these issues: economic problems due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have intensified the struggles.
Thus, the electorate, as it is often the case in most democracies, focuses more on failures and tends to blame the incumbent government for all the woes of the UK, whether it is responsible for them or not. Therefore, Sunak finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, although his record since coming to power is not as disastrous as some claim. Quite the opposite!
Today, the decision to call snap general elections in the UK has surprised many ministers and parliamentarians in the country’s high political spheres. In October 2022, upon taking office, Sunak made five key promises for his governance: to reduce inflation, ensure economic growth, cut public debt, reduce National Health Service (NHS) waiting lists and end illegal immigration.
Despite numerous projections indicating that some of these issues might see improvement by next fall—notably waiting lists, inflation and immigration—Sunak has opted to take the risk of early elections. So, what factors have driven the Prime Minister to make this surprise decision?
The most obvious hypothesis is that Sunak wants to focus his election campaign on economy. Since he took office, annual inflation has dropped from 11.1% in October of 2022 to 2.3% in May of 2024, beating the initial target of 2% by the end of 2025. As for interest rates, they are set to fall in the coming months. Additionally, a responsible yet significant tax cut has recently been implemented, averaging a reduction of £900. Debt of GDP, though still significant, is on a gradual decline: from 102% in 2022 (when Sunak took office) to 97% in 2024, with projections of further reductions. By doing so, Sunak aims to play the economic card, especially since, according to YouGov polls, it is the top concern for British voters.
Sunak is also counting on the element of surprise to unsettle his opponents; first and foremost, the Labour opposition, which is leading in all the polls. The Labour Party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, did not expect early elections and will have to hastily draft its election program, which is already marked by significant internal disagreements. The most notable points of contention concern foreign policy, particularly the approach to Israel in its war in Gaza, the considerable but almost impossible funding of ecological promises, as well as tax promises.
Sunak hopes that the lack of time and the element of surprise will create dissension within the Labour Party, provoking a fratricidal war similar to the one the Conservatives have been experiencing for several years. He also hopes to capitalize on the Labour leader’s lack of charisma, which could be a weakness in televised debates.
Next, Sunak wants to bet on the element of surprise against Reform UK, a far-right party derived from the right wing of the Conservative Party and led by Nigel Farage, which was polling at 12% in YouGov surveys. Reform UK will not have time to organize and run an effective campaign. In fact, Farage has already announced that his party will not participate in the general elections, which works in Sunak’s favor, as he could potentially reclaim a large portion of these votes.
Finally, Sunak is playing it safe by preferring early elections out of fear that things could deteriorate in certain areas. His economic success is a significant argument against the Labour Party, which has historically been weak on the economy during election campaigns. Sunak fears that this issue might not remain the top concern for voters, which could cause him to fall further in the polls. Plus, he does not want to risk a failure of the immigration law concerning Rwanda and the first flight to Kigali (see article dated 05-06-2024). Additionally, projections made in early May by British television channel Sky News assert that Labour would only achieve a relative majority in the next general elections. Sunak clings to this type of projection and will try, as much as possible, to turn the situation around to gain a majority himself, even if it is only a relative one.
While many observers believe that calling early general elections is a very risky gamble for Sunak, he hopes, despite the slim chances, to turn the tables and make it a strategic masterstroke. Faced with numerous inherited problems and never-ending unpopularity, Sunak is trying to improve his chances of winning the next elections, even partially.
Despite internal dissensions within his party, this technocrat has managed to restore a certain stability in the UK and initiated favorable economic change.
He now must demonstrate, in the next month and a half, that Labour is not a viable and credible option, considering they lack real convictions.
The reality is that the opposition capitalizes on Tory failures without proposing a clear and precise alternative plan. Unity around Sunak, although difficult to guarantee, seems essential to highlight the current weaknesses of Labour.
But is it too little, too late? Only time will tell.

Will Justice Deter Israel?
Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 26/2024
Will the International Court of Justice’s decision prevent or deter Israel from continuing its war in Gaza? The answer is no! True, the Court made an important decision when it ordered Israel to halt military operations in Rafah “immediately,” and to keep the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt open. It is legally binding, but there is no mechanism for its implementation.
The verdicts of the ICJ, the most powerful judicial body in the United Nations, are legally binding. Its new decision is very important. However, the ICJ has no enforcement mechanisms, and its decisions cannot be implemented without the help of Washington, which has criticized the decision, the Court, and even the judges. Yes, the decision is important. It isolates Israel further and deals another blow to its reputation. However, it is not enough. Ignoring the decision will not even embarrass Washington. Indeed, Washington has avoided the ICJ for fear that it could go after the US, especially over its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. At the end of the day, Washington has "veto" power in the Security Council.
Despite the decision, Israel, whose politicians have now become hysterical, continues to bomb Gaza and Rafah. So, what is the solution? There are no easy solutions because the facts on the ground matter more than anything else, especially since the battle continues.
It is true that Israel is growing more isolated. Every international judicial decision has gone against it. However, it has military control on the ground, and this is what matters in any negotiation during a war. Meanwhile, Hamas is losing both on the ground and legally, especially after the request issued by the International Criminal Court prosecutor, but it has maintained its political intransigence.
Hamas has not taken any real political steps. It has made no progress on intra-Palestinian reconciliation, the negotiations, or the release of prisoners held in Israeli jails. Nonetheless, it simply seeks to go back to the status quo that had been in place on October 6th.
Doing so will be difficult, regardless of Sinwar’s brinkmanship, which Netanyahu is also pursuing. Indeed, the balance of power is different, as are the facts on the ground. This is a crucial matter that cannot be ignored at all.
Netanyahu, as everyone, including the Americans, now knows, wants to extend his political life. International judicial decisions might push him to take a more aggressive approach, potentially going as far as instigating a devastating war on Lebanon under the pretext of pushing Hezbollah back. Many in Israel support this. Indeed, according to a report our newspaper published yesterday, even Netanyahu's former army commander, General Amiram Levin, voiced his surprise at how weak Netanyahu has been in the face of far-right ministers like Ben Gvir. The general said he believes Ben Gvir should be behind bars, and called him a "dog." However, he has taken a strong stance against the party.
Levin, who was asked to discuss the war and the escalation on the Lebanese border with Netanyahu, given his former role as commander of the Northern Command in the army, has stressed that Hezbollah is Israel’s most dangerous enemy. He says that it must be "addressed before Hamas and any other organization," calling for a preemptive war against Hezbollah, "before it becomes more powerful” and poses what he feared could become “an existential threat.”
Netanyahu has options, whereas Sinwar is isolated and cannot consult anyone publicly. Nevertheless, he has not taken any political steps that could put Israel, and by extension Netanyahu, under pressure. This is a real problem that Hamas has not understood yet, and I doubt they ever will.

The Shifting Equations of the Conflict with Israel
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 26/2024
After 1948, the Arab conflict with Israel was waged with an Arab nationalist outlook and sensibility. Satii al-Husari gave a famous response to those who said Israel had defeated seven Arab armies that year. The late nationalist intellectual believed that the reason for the defeat was precisely the existence of seven Arab armies instead of just one. For years, Arab nationalists have been debating whether Arab unity is a path to liberating Palestine or vice versa, while the debates of the Nasserists and Baathists in the sixties largely revolved around the Palestinian cause and its "betrayal."
Because of the military nationalist regimes’ alliance with the Soviet Union, and their advocacy of a sort of socialism, social horizons, with their ideas and sensibilities, were granted a contained position on the margins of the nationalist pursuit. After the defeat of 1967 in particular, greater emphasis was placed on the narrative of the battle with Israel being a battle against "American imperialism" and the "Arab reactionaries" said to be subservient to it. Palestinian militant factions also began competing to "represent the working class," with factions splitting over supposed doubts regarding the extent to which the other succeeds to do so.Today, on the other hand, two completely different horizons loom over the conflict with Israel. There is the emphasis on Islamism reflected by the leading role played by Hamas aided by Islamic Jihad, as well as their allies and supporters, from Khomeinist Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah to the Houthis ("Ansar Allah") in Yemen and the Shiite factions in Iraq.
There are many other indications of the dominance of Islamism, from the centrality of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in rhetoric intended to galvanize supporters, to the prevalence of religious terminology, drawing inspiration from battles of Islamic history. There are also allusions to the "Brotherhoodism" that some see evidence of in the history of Hamas itself, as well as the various positions expressed by Türkiye and others. We also have the strong Muslim presence in the movement of solidarity in the West and the mobilization of the media pioneered by Al Jazeera...
However, just as the social question had occupied a position on the margins of the Arab nationalist mainstream, we see a horizon that is at once universal, moral, ethical, and legal, taking form on the margin of the Islamist mainstream. Those who sit at this margin are infuriated by the brutality of Israel’s genocidal behavior and the scale of impunity the Jewish state has enjoyed, as well as the military and financial support it receives from Western countries, particularly the United States.
Here, we find the uprooting of the previous stage. The Brotherhood's Islamist movement, as we well know, despised nothing more than they despised Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Baath Party, and no one repressed the Brotherhood like they repressed it. In fact, the term "Arab" is now almost completely absent, whether in narratives of the conflict, commentary about it, or the developments it has precipitated. Just as Islamism overwhelms Arab nationalism, universalist moralism overwhelms the social.
Students from elite universities in the United States are the last people who can be considered to resemble the poor and toiling masses, whether in Gaza or elsewhere. Figures like Bella Hadid and Cate Blanchett replacing the proletariat, Mao, and Guevara, or "human rights" and "values of justice" replacing "the protracted people’s war," all warrant reflection on what could be the eroding clarity of the social dimension of global conflicts.
Further reinforcing these doubts that the great tragedies of our world which are difficult to fit into the so-called "tribal wars" of the United States, do not capture the attention of the conscientious consciousness or its advocates.
Two other concerning matters call for reflecting on these shifts that rarely garner our attention: First, the Islamic-universalist duality is less cohesive than the nationalist-socialist duality that preceded it. Moreover, while the pressure from the Soviet Union maintained the latter, there is no comparable force that can safeguard the unity between the movements that express the most radical and avant-gardist views of sex and gender and an Islamism guided by fatwas and the righteous predecessors. Al Jazeera English, which addresses "Western sympathizers" and conveys a narrative that the Arabic Al Jazeera does not share, does not have the capacity to do so.
Secondly, the Palestinian cause is susceptible to being used, sometimes with good intentions and often malevolently. Nationalists, socialists, Islamists, the moral, and the immoral can all converge around it, mimicking the cloud of Abbasid Khalif Harun al-Rashid. However, that does not guarantee control over the cloud heavy with rain, as this rain could pour down in unpredictable locations. Despite its immense mistakes, the Palestinian Liberation Organization recognized the importance of prioritizing the Palestinian national horizon over others early on, amid criticism of its pragmatism and ideological weakness, then and now, by the dogmatic. While it strove to benefit from these currents, the PLO was not an Arab nationalist, socialist, Islamist, or "social movement." More importantly, it tried very hard, although not always successfully, to avoid becoming Syrian, Iraqi, or Iranian... Thus, the countries recognizing the State of Palestine today are recognizing only this particular nationalism and its right to statehood.