Category: World

US airdrops food into Gaza in move criticised by aid groups | Israel War on Gaza News

United States military cargo planes have air-dropped food into Gaza, in the first of series of aid drops as humanitarian groups criticise Israel for blocking access to the besieged and bombarded strip.

The US, together with Jordan’s air force, “conducted a combined humanitarian assistance airdrop into Gaza … to provide essential relief to civilians affected by the ongoing conflict”, US Central Command said in a statement on Saturday.

The C-130 planes “dropped over 38,000 meals along the coastline of Gaza allowing for civilian access to the critical aid”, it added, as the enclave faces a humanitarian crisis after almost five months of war.

US President Joe Biden had announced a day earlier that the US would airdrop aid there after more than 100 Palestinians were killed on Thursday in northern Gaza while queuing for aid.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Friday that the US will carry out multiple airdrops in the next few weeks, which will be coordinated with Jordan.

Kirby said the airdrops have an advantage over trucks because planes can move aid to a particular area quickly. However, in terms of volume, the airdrops will be “a supplement to, not a replacement for moving things in by ground”, he added.

The Biden administration is also considering shipping aid by sea from Cyprus, according to a US official.

Since Israel’s war began on October 7 following Hamas’s attack, Israel has barred the entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies, except for a tiny trickle of aid entering the south from Egypt at the Rafah crossing and Israel’s Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing.

‘The US is weak’

The US’s move has been criticised as inefficient and simply a public relations move by members of international aid organisations.

“The airdrops are symbolic and designed in ways to appease the domestic base,” Dave Harden, former USAID director to the West Bank, told Al Jazeera. “Really what needs to happen is more crossings [opening] and more trucks going in every day?”

“I think the United States is weak and that’s really disappointing to me,” Harden added. “The US has the ability to compel Israel to open up more aid and by not doing that we’re putting our assets and our people at risks and potentially creating more chaos in Gaza.”

UK-based charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) echoed Harden’s statement, telling Al Jazeera in a statement that the US, the UK and others should instead work to “ensure that Israel immediately opens all crossings into Gaza for aid.”

Oxfam also blasted the Biden administration’s plans, labelling the effort an attempt to assuage the guilty consciences of US officials.

“While Palestinians in Gaza have been pushed to the absolute brink, dropping a paltry, symbolic amount of aid into Gaza with no plan for its safe distribution would not help and be deeply degrading to Palestinians,” Scott Paul, who leads Oxfam’s US government advocacy work, said in a statement on X.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry also criticised the US for acting as a “weak, marginal state” unable to secure aid to Palestinians.

US Senator Bernie Sanders, however, welcomed the US’s move.

“I applaud President Biden for understanding that there is a dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” Sanders said on X.

Mahjoob Zweiri, the director of the Gulf Study Centre in Doha, told Al Jazeera the international community is not putting enough pressure on Israel to allow the waiting aid trucks to enter Gaza by land.

“Why not send food in through Karem Abu Salem?” Zweiri said. “There are 2,000 trucks waiting to get into Gaza” at border crossings, he said, while food and medicines pile up for months past their expiry dates.

“Why isn’t the international community not putting enough effort into delivering aid in an organised manner?” he asked.



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Rubymar cargo ship earlier hit by Houthis has sunk, Yemeni government says | Israel War on Gaza News

The UK-owned bulk carrier was struck on February 18 with multiple missiles resulting in an oil slick in the Red Sea.

The cargo ship Rubymar, which was abandoned in the southern Red Sea after being targeted by Houthi rebels last month, has sunk, according to Yemen’s internationally recognised government.

“The MV Rubymar sank last night, coinciding with weather factors and strong winds at sea,” a crisis cell of Yemen’s government in charge of the case said in a statement on Saturday.

A military official, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity as no authorisation was given to speak to journalists, confirmed the incident. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre (UKMTO), which watches over Middle East waterways, separately also acknowledged the Rubymar’s sinking, AP reported.

The Rubymar, a Belize-flagged, United Kingdom-owned cargo ship which transported combustible fertilisers, was hit by missiles on February 18 while sailing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. The crew then abandoned the vessel and evacuated to safety.

Yemen’s Houthis – who say they have been targeting ships linked to Israel, the United States and the UK in an attempt to pressure them to end Israel’s war on Gaza – claimed responsibility for the attack.

Rubymar’s sinking marks the first vessel lost since the Iran-backed Houthis began targeting commercial shipping in November.

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, head of the Houthi supreme revolutionary committee, said that the group held British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his government responsible for the vessel sinking because of their support for the “genocide” and “siege” in Gaza.

“Sunak has a chance to recover the Rubymar by allowing aid trucks into Gaza,” he added in a post on the social media platform X late on Saturday.

Potential ‘environmental catastrophe’

Yemen’s government statement said the ship sunk on Friday night and warned of an “environmental catastrophe”.

Yemen’s internationally recognised government is based in the southern port of Aden, while the Houthis control much of the north and other large centres.

The ship was carrying more than 41,000 tonnes of fertiliser when it came under attack, the US military’s Central Command previously said.

On Monday, a Yemeni government team visited the Rubymar and said it was partially submerged and could sink within a couple of days.

The US military previously said the attack had significantly damaged the freighter and caused an 18-mile (29km) oil slick.

The Houthi attacks launched against shipping vessels affiliated with Israel are a response to Israel’s war on Gaza, the group has said.

The attacks have disrupted international trade on the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia.

Rerouting vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, the Cape Peninsula in South Africa, can add up to two weeks to a shipment’s journey and between 3,000 and 6,000 extra nautical miles (between 5,556 and 11,112km).

In response to the attacks on ships, the US and UK began launching strikes against targets in Yemen in January. The US also renamed the Houthis a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) entity.

The attacks and counter-attacks have stoked fears that Israel’s war on Gaza could spread, destabilising the wider Middle East.

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Conservatives dominate Iran’s parliament, assembly elections | Elections News

Tehran, Iran – A range of conservative candidates have swept the parliamentary and religious assembly elections in Iran as the country faces political and economic challenges.

Final vote counting is under way after millions went to the polls on Friday to select 290 lawmakers and 88 members of the Assembly of Experts, a body tasked with choosing the supreme leader made up entirely of Islamic scholars.

Official preliminary results from Tehran on Saturday indicate that ultraconservatives Mahmoud Nabavian and Hamid Resaee have topped the list of 30 representatives, followed by 35-year-old state television host turned first-time lawmaker, Amir Hossein Sabeti.

Parliament chief Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf finished fourth, and only a handful of his sponsored candidates ascended. Longtime lawmaker Mojtaba Zonnour grabbed a seat in the holy Shia city of Qom.

Few reformist or moderate voices managed to secure entry into parliament, marking the second parliamentary election in which they were largely absent.

Veteran lawmaker Masoud Pezeshkian was among few moderates who managed to get approved by the constitutional watchdog Guardian Council and secure votes, and will represent Tabriz in the 12th parliament.

Ali Motahari, conservative former parliamentarian and son of renowned late scholar Morteza Motahari, who has become a more moderate politician compared with other legislators, failed along with most members of his 30-strong list for Tehran to come close to securing a seat.

People vote in Iran’s parliamentary elections [Maziar Motamedi/Al Jazeera]

President Ebrahim Raisi comfortably renewed his place at the Assembly of Experts for a third time, securing more than 82 percent of the vote in the South Khorasan province located in eastern Iran.

The president was initially running without any opponent after the Guardian Council disqualified other candidates, but one candidate ended up changing his district to ceremonially run against Raisi for a place in the sixth term of the assembly, which will last till mid-3032.

Ultraconservative Ahmad Khatami, a current imam of Friday prayers in Tehran, has again secured a place at the assembly from the province of Kerman, and Mohammad Saeedi is Qom’s representative.

Local media said with over 834,000 votes, Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem, the supreme leader’s representative in Tabriz, recorded the highest number of votes ever for an assembly winner, emerging victorious in the province of East Azerbaijan.

Sadegh Amoli Larijani, a senior member of the influential Larijani family and current head of the top arbitration body known as the Expediency Council, was perhaps the most notable snub from the assembly.

Candidates have until Thursday to formally declare any complaints, Guardian Council spokesman Tahan Nazif said on Saturday.

All about turnout

The elections were held across 59,000 voting stations across Iran, with 6,800 in the province of Tehran, which includes the capital and several surrounding cities.

The Ministry of Interior extended voting time three times, until midnight on Friday, sending text messages to voters that a “rush” of people at polling stations has kept them open.

But many conversations surrounding the elections, whether for or against, were marked by discussions around low turnout in the first elections since the country’s 2022-2023 nationwide protests and as Iran’s economy – squeezed by United States sanctions – has continued to grapple with high inflation.

Results are not final yet, but state-linked media reported on Saturday that some 25 million Iranians voted, which they hailed as a “huge defeat” for what they called a campaign to boycott the elections run by anti-establishment elements.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Saturday thanked Iranians for their “glorious” participation in the elections in a statement, saying it was a “decisive response to enemies”.

That number would put turnout at about 40 percent of 61.2 million eligible voters, roughly on par with the 2020 election which had put lawmakers into parliament with a 42-percent turnout, the lowest in the history of Iran since the country’s 1979 revolution.

In Tehran, a city with some 7.7 million eligible voters, roughly a quarter are believed to have voted, pending final results.

Iran’s currency, the rial, continued to fall on Saturday, extending a downward trend since the start of 2024 that has in part reflected concerns over expanding military confrontations between the “axis of resistance” supported by Iran across the region and the coalition led by the US.

The rial hit a low of around 600,000 per the US dollar in the open market at the start of the Iranian week on Saturday, a figure it had dipped to in late February 2023 before regaining some ground.

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Protecting climate refugees requires a legal definition | Climate Crisis

During the UN Climate Conference (COP28) in Dubai last year, the terms “climate migrants” and “climate refugees” echoed loudly across meeting rooms and panels. These labels were passionately used by high-ranking UN officials, external stakeholders, scholars and activists grappling with the consequences of climate change.

During a panel discussion, I emphasised that these terms hold no legal weight and inquired about the need for specific legal protections for those affected by climate-induced displacement. My question was quickly shut down by the panel organisers, surprising attendees.

My thoughts ran quickly to the many people displaced by climate change I knew: the Ecuadoran refugees who arrived in New York, seeking sanctuary from environmental turmoil at home, the women in the Sundarban islands of West Bengal facing climate-driven disasters but unable to relocate, and many of my neighbours in Brooklyn, who have experienced recurrent home destruction due to heavy rainfall. All of them do not have any form of international legal protection that can guarantee them dignified life.

Sadly, the dismissive response at COP28 reflects a larger pattern of denial. Legally defining “climate refugees” has been fiercely debated globally on many accounts. Critics often argue that attributing migration solely to climate change oversimplifies a complex web of influences on human mobility. They claim that these terms diminish the role of institutional and human responses, and social conditions in transforming environmental stressors into crises.

Thus, this complexity makes it impossible to distinguish between climate refugees and economic migrants. Ironically, this argument actually persists alongside predictions that estimate a possible 1.2 billion people (PDF) might be displaced by 2050 due to climate-change-related hazards.

After COP28, this recurring chorus echoed in my mind: “No legal changes are needed; we have it covered with UN initiatives like the 2018 Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration”, which commits (PDF) parties to creating “conducive political, economic, social and environmental conditions for people to lead peaceful, productive and sustainable lives in their own country and to fulfil their personal aspiration”.

Under its second objective, the compact emphasises the need for cohesive approaches in handling migration challenges amid both sudden and gradual natural disasters, urging the integration of displacement concerns into disaster preparedness strategies.

Let us pause for a moment. While these policies project preparedness, they fall remarkably short in offering robust legal recognition and protections to those facing climate crises and the need to move – including the groups and individuals in the examples I shared earlier.

This absence of a specific legally defined framework poses hurdles for individuals seeking migration status due to climate change impacts.

Calls to establish international legal frameworks tailored to address migration needs arising from environmental factors have been equated with opening Pandora’s box. Some suggest this could challenge the 1951 Refugee Convention, which defines the term “refugee” strictly along the lines of “fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”

They worry an unravelling that would add climate and environmental movement protection might destabilise our already fragile global commitments to upholding all refugee rights. They warn that this opening might overshadow the plight of those fleeing persecution and conflicts.

My sympathy for this concern runs deep. I agree that this critique deserves careful consideration. But here is the crux: The urgency to address climate-induced humanitarian crises shouldn’t be paralysed by the complexities of diplomacy or the fear of potential aftershocks.

Let us be clear: The pains of any form of persecution, and seeking refuge from conflicts demand immediate action. But we should not allow these complexities to shroud the urgency of rethinking international agreements.

International agreements are reviewed all the time, so doing so regarding climate change realities would be no different. Think about the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – the first legally binding treaty signed by 154 countries committing to reduce atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”.

Its outcome has been far from satisfactory, but it placed us on track to formulating the Paris Agreement in 2015, and finding ways to make common progress in addressing climate change.

Similarly, when it comes to a legal framework for climate refugees, maybe we will not negotiate binding conventions today, maybe not tomorrow. But we can start thinking – or rethinking – them now.

The time has come to envision a sensible and sustainable course towards protection for vulnerable populations grappling with the effects of climate change and environmental disasters, while safeguarding existing refugee statuses. This calls for a collective effort, uniting those directly affected by climate change, alongside scholars, activists, international organisations, and government representatives, to rethink, conceptually and legally, the implications of creating a radically different approach.

Being mindful of the multilayered challenges of slow-onset climate change could help develop a spectrum of strategies, intertwining migration management, refugee protection, and environmental solutions for those who stay and/or return. Our overarching aim should be to prevent the heartbreaking displacement of people from their homes involuntarily, while also ensuring the human rights of those who have no choice but to leave or are already displaced.

These strategies align with previous agreements, but they also call upon us to collectively reimagine and address the evolving needs and diverse vulnerabilities of both humanity and the planet.

Human rights-based approaches and explicit legal frameworks are essential for enforcing claims at all levels of governance and providing access to sustainable environmental justice. Fear cannot lead our decisions. Upholding human rights should be the compass guiding us through this intricate political and climate landscape.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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Norway gives Arctic foxes a helping hand amid climate woes | Climate

One by one, the crate doors swing open and five Arctic foxes bound off into the snowy landscape.

But in the wilds of southern Norway, the newly freed foxes may struggle to find enough to eat, as the effects of climate change make the foxes’ traditional rodent prey more scarce.

In Hardangervidda National Park, where the foxes have been released, there has not been a good lemming year since 2021, conservationists said.

That is why scientists breeding the foxes in captivity have also been maintaining more than 30 feeding stations stocked with dog food kibble across the alpine wilderness – a rare and controversial step in conservation circles.

“If the food is not there for them, what do you do?” asked conservation biologist Craig Jackson of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, which has been managing the fox programme on behalf of the country’s environment agency.

That question will become increasingly urgent as climate change and habitat loss push thousands of the world’s species to the edge of survival, disrupting food chains and leaving some animals to starve.

While some scientists have said it is inevitable that more feeding programmes to prevent extinctions will become necessary, others have questioned whether it makes sense to support animals in landscapes that can no longer sustain them.

As part of the state-sponsored programme to restore Arctic foxes, Norway has been feeding the population for nearly 20 years, at an annual cost of about 3.1 million Norwegian krone  ($293,000) and it has no plans to stop anytime soon.

Since 2006, the programme has helped to boost the fox population from as few as 40 in Norway, Finland, and Sweden, to about 550 across the Scandinavian Peninsula today.

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Chad interim leader Deby confirms plan to run for president in May | Elections News

The announcement comes days after the military chief’s main rival was killed in murky circumstances.

Chad’s military leader has said that he will run in the country’s long-awaited presidential elections in May, just three days after his chief rival was killed in suspicious circumstances.

“I, Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, am a candidate for the 2024 presidential election under the banner of the For a United Chad coalition,” Deby said in a speech on Saturday.

The vote will mark the end of three years of military rule in the politically charged Central African country.

Deby took power after his father and longtime ruler, Idriss Deby Itno, died fighting rebels in the country’s north in April 2021.

The younger Deby promised a return to civilian rule, as well as elections, but the leader extended the transition by two years, despite loud objections from opposition parties.

Last week, the country’s elections agency finally announced that the vote would be held on May 6, following a December referendum promising to amend the constitution.

“Mahamat Idriss Deby said it was not his intention to run for president. He said his focus when he took over from his father when he was killed on the front lines was to stabilise Chad, to ensure that the institutions of governance continue as well as to provide peace and stability to the country and the region,” Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris noted, reporting from Chad’s capital N’Djamena on Saturday.

“Now, he has been endorsed by a coalition of more than 220 political parties and associations.

“But that declaration has been overshadowed by events of the past weeks, which include the raid on the main opposition political party headquarters, the demolition of the party headquarters and the killing of its leader, as well as the arrest of several other members of the political party. Many people feel that that could affect the credibility of the elections on May 6,” Idris said.

A man casts his vote at a polling station during the constitutional referendum in N’Djamena, on December 17, 2023 [File: Denis Sassou Gueipeur/AFP]

Deby’s candidacy confirmation has come just days after one of his main opponents was killed in a military operation in the capital N’Djamena.

Yaya Dillo Djerou, a cousin of president Deby, died on Wednesday after troops attacked the office of his Socialist Party Without Borders (PSF).

PSF officials have accused soldiers of killing Dillo in an “execution” before the May vote, in which he planned to run. Several people were injured in the attacks.

In a statement on Friday, Human Rights Watch called for an investigation into the killing of the politician, known simply as Yaya Dillo, and questioned how ready N’djamena was for free and fair elections.

“The circumstances of Yaya Dillo’s killing are unclear, but his violent death highlights the dangers facing opposition politicians in Chad, particularly as elections approach,” Lewis Mudge of HRW said.

“The prime minister and other key national figures should publicly call for an independent investigation into his death with an eye toward ensuring greater accountability before the election,” Mudge added, referring to Prime Minister Succes Masra.

Chadian authorities have rejected the accusations against them, saying Dillo “opposed his arrest” and fired on security forces.

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Europe risks losing credibility over silence on Israel’s war on Gaza: MP | Israel War on Gaza News

Europe risked any credibility to speak on Russia’s actions in Ukraine if it remained silent on Gaza, according to a Belgian member of parliament, who is among the more than 200 lawmakers who have signed a letter calling for an arms embargo on Israel.

“We are so hypocritical in Europe to speak about international law when we speak about Ukraine and Russia, [but] if we don’t have the same [views] when we speak about the Palestinians, we will not have any credit in the future to speak about [it],” Simon Moutquin, a Belgian member of parliament, told Al Jazeera in an interview on Saturday.

More than 200 legislators from countries, which fund Israel militarily, on Friday called for their countries to stop selling weapons to Tel Aviv citing “violations of international law” as Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 30,000 people, most of them civilians.

In a letter signed by parliamentarians from 13 countries, the lawmakers announced that they would not be “complicit” and would take “immediate coordinated action” in their respective legislatures to stop their governments from arming Israel.

The Belgian member of parliament said that his own country had to act to stop Israel as well, citing a “risk of genocide” if countries continue to fund Tel Aviv’s war on Gaza.

“As a signatory country of the Convention Against Genocide, [Belgium has] a legal and moral obligation to act and prevent the risk of genocide, so I think this letter … is a good first step, but we need to go further,” said Moutquin, who raised concerns about an internal split in the European Union that has seen the bloc struggle to address Israel’s war on Gaza cohesively.

Continued military funding for Israel amid Gaza war

The United States is by far the biggest funder of the Israeli military, providing roughly $3bn in aid annually. Presently, US lawmakers are debating an additional $14bn to support Tel Aviv’s operations in Gaza.

Washington sent guided-missile carriers and F-35 fighter jets, as well as other military equipment to Tel Aviv in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, and Tel Aviv’s subsequent declaration of war on the Gaza Strip. Some 68 percent of Israel’s weapons imports between 2013 and 2022 came from the US.

Tel Aviv also relies on German weapon imports, primarily air defence systems and communications equipment. In total, Germany provides 28 percent of Israel’s military imports, although that rose nearly tenfold between 2022 and 2023 after Berlin ramped up sales to Israel in November.

The United Kingdom, Canada, France and Australia among others also provide military support to Israel.

However, following an International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that found Israel may “plausibly” be committing genocide in Gaza and that ordered Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza, some countries have stopped exporting arms to Tel Aviv.

In the Netherlands, a court in February ruled that exports of parts for military fighter jets be halted after rights groups sued the government. Similarly, Belgium, Spain and Japan have also ceased military cooperation with Tel Aviv in recent weeks.

Legislators in donor countries ‘take a stand’

An arms embargo on Israel is a legal necessity, the legislators said in the open letter, citing the ICJ’s February ruling.

“Our bombs and bullets must not be used to kill, maim, and dispossess Palestinians,” they said. “But they are: we know that lethal weapons and their parts, made or shipped through our countries, currently aid the Israeli assault on Palestine that has claimed over 30,000 lives across Gaza and the West Bank.”

Largely from France, Australia, Spain, Turkey and Brazil, the representatives accused Israel of defying international law by not only continuing its war on Gaza, but also ramping up plans for an invasion of Rafah, the last enclave that is housing more than 1.5 million Palestinians displaced by the war.

“Today, we take a stand,” the letter further read. “We will take immediate and coordinated action in our respective legislatures to stop our countries from arming Israel.”

Legislators from Germany, Portugal, the US, Ireland, Netherlands, Canada, Belgium and the UK were also signatories to the missive.

At least 30,228 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, most of them children and women. Aid is barely flowing in, causing deaths from starvation and dehydration. The UN has warned that invading Rafah will be “the nail in the coffin” of the humanitarian crisis in the strip.

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Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan re-arrested days after release | Media News

Aasif Sultan, a former editor of Kashmir Narrator magazine, has been re-arrested under ‘anti-terror’ law days, two days after his release following five years in jail.

A Kashmiri journalist, who was released after spending more than five years in jail earlier this week, has been re-arrested by police in another case under India’s stringent “anti-terror” law, according to his lawyer.

Aasif Sultan, 36, has been sent to a five-day police remand after he was produced in a court in the city of Srinagar on Friday, Adil Abdullah Pandit, Sultan’s lawyer, told Al Jazeera.

Pandit said that Sultan was arrested on Thursday in a 2019 case regarding violence inside the central jail in Srinagar under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which international rights groups have described as a “draconian” law. Srinagar is the largest city and summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir.

Rights activists have said getting bail under a UAPA case is nearly impossible, which means Sultan could stay in jail without trial indefinitely.

The case is related to “the sections of rioting, unlawful assembly, endangering human life, attempt to murder under Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 13 of UAPA for advocating, abetting or inciting unlawful activity”, according to the lawyer.

At the time of the violence, Sultan was already lodged in jail. The riots inside the jail had erupted over a move by authorities to shift prisoners to jails outside Indian-administered Kashmir. Hundreds of Kashmiris have been lodged in jails in other parts of India, making it difficult for families to meet their relatives.

‘Harbouring militants’

Sultan worked as an assistant editor for a Srinagar-based English magazine, Kashmir Narrator, which is now defunct, when he was arrested in September 2018 on allegations of “harbouring militants”.

His family has denied the allegations, saying he was being targeted for his work as a journalist.

On February 27 he was released from a jail in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh about 1,400km (870 miles) away.

But the brief joy for his family in Batamaloo locality in Srinagar turned into grief on Thursday when Sultan was re-arrested.

“He saw his five-and-half-year-old daughter for the first time since his 2018 arrest. His daughter is asking about him and we don’t know how long this fight can be,” one of Sultan’s relatives told Al Jazeera on the conditions of anonymity, referring to the difficulty in securing bail under the UAPA.

“He looked very weak and wanted to rest. His blood pressure was also unstable. When we asked the police, they said he was accused in another case.”

Sultan was able to secure bail in the 2018 case in April 2022, when a court said that investigation agencies had failed to establish his links with any armed group. There has been an armed rebellion in Kashmir against Indian rule since the 1980s.

But authorities immediately charged him under the Public Safety Act (PSA), a law under which a person can be jailed for up to two years, without a trial. Amnesty International has termed it a “lawless law”.

Sultan’s release on Tuesday came more than two months after the Jammu and Kashmir High Court quashed his detention order under the PSA.

Laxmi Murthy, co-founder of Free Speech Collective, an organisation that advocates freedom of expression, said, “The re-arrest of Aasif Sultan is another example of ‘lawfare’ or the (mis)use and overuse of draconian laws to harass journalists.”

“Since the process is punishment, Aasif Sultan will have to spend the next few years of his life proving his innocence.”

Since India scrapped Kashmir’s special status in 2019 and imposed central rule, authorities have cracked down on free speech under which multiple journalists and activists have been arrested — mostly under “anti-terror” laws such as the UAPA.

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In Lydd, Palestinians fear tinderbox of Israel’s war, threat of expulsion | Israel War on Gaza News

Lydd, Israel – One week after Israel began bombing Gaza last October, Ghassan Mounayer received a call from the Israeli police.

An officer warned him not to write any critical Facebook posts about the war or call for demonstrations in Lydd [Lod in Hebrew], where Palestinian citizens of Israel like Mounayer live alongside Jewish Israelis.

“They said, ‘We’re watching your Facebook’, and not to write anything ‘Satanic’,”  said Mounayer, who is a human rights activist. “I said, ‘Do you have any examples of posts like this?’ He said, ‘Don’t be smart. You are being watched’.”

Since Israel launched its war on Gaza following Hamas’s deadly attack on October 7, tensions in mixed Palestinian and Israeli cities have approached boiling point. But few places are as tense as Lydd, a city run by far-right Mayor Yair Revivo and where relations between Palestinians and Israeli Jews have been fraught for years.

Palestinian activists say they fear for their lives, living in the shadow of the Israeli authorities and heavily armed Jewish Israeli citizens, many of whom belong to supremacist movements. They are warning that the city could “explode” into conflict and lead to the persecution and even expulsion of Palestinian residents.

“Palestinians know that Israelis are looking for any situation to kill us or arrest us, because right now it is war time,” Mounayer told Al Jazeera.

“Israel is just a democracy for Jewish Israelis and many Jewish Israelis want us to leave Lydd and go to Arab villages.”

‘Living under constant threat’

Palestinians in Lydd make up about 27 percent of the city’s population, many of whom live in urban and impoverished neighbourhoods and whose families have lived in Lydd for generations, pre-dating the Nakba or catastrophe, when 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted from their homes and villages during the creation of Israel.

Some are the children and grandchildren of Palestinians who fled the village of Majdal, which is roughly 62km (38 miles) from Lydd, during the Nakba. Others from Majdal – now called Ashkelon in Israel – went to Gaza. Entire Palestinian families remain split between Lydd and Gaza today.

Maha al-Nakeeb, a Palestinian human rights lawyer in Lydd, has lost 16 of her relatives in Israel’s relentless bombing campaign in Gaza. Despite the trauma, she has refrained from commenting or critiquing the war on social media out of fear that she could be arrested.

In the first two weeks after October 7, at least 100 Palestinian citizens of Israel were arrested for social media posts expressing sympathy or anger over Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 30,000 people to date, the vast majority of whom are children and women. Thousands more are lost under the rubble of the war, presumed dead.

“Palestinians are living under constant threat … all Arabs here live in fear,” al-Nakeeb told Al Jazeera. “The Israelis want us to think that we live in their house. That this city – this place – does not belong to us.”

Mounayer added that Israel has historically tried to punish or crush expressions of solidarity between Palestinians who live in Israel and those who live in the occupied territories. He added that Palestinians in Lydd are holding in their anger over all the reports of Israeli atrocities coming out of Gaza.

“Israel does not want us to feel solidarity with our brothers and sisters. They don’t want us to ask for collective rights,” he said.

‘We are not treated as citizens’

Israeli extremists have long viewed Lydd – and other mixed cities – as a battleground on which they are fighting to increase their numbers and gradually erase Palestinian existence.

This is the explicit mission of Garin Torani, or Biblical Seeds, an Israeli supremacist group that intentionally settles in Palestinian neighbourhoods across Israel. With most Palestinians unable to acquire building permits, members from this group and other far-right Israelis exploit this discriminatory policy to build new homes in heavily populated Palestinian districts.

When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pulled Israeli troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005, many settlers relocated to Lydd and other mixed cities. Illegal settlers from the occupied West Bank have also strategically relocated to Lydd to “Judaise” the city, often resulting in acute gentrification and soaring tensions with Palestinians.

But whenever a dispute erupts, the security forces and Mayor Revivo solely protect Jewish Israelis, according to Nisrine Shehada, a Palestinian activist in Lydd.

“We are citizens of this state, but we are never treated as citizens,” she told Al Jazeera from her office.

Shehada recalled Lydd’s solidarity protests with the Palestinians who were being expelled from Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem and attacked in Al-Aqsa Mosque in May 2021.

Back in Lydd, far-right Jewish Israelis responded to the protests by attacking and shooting at a group of Palestinians on May 10. They killed 32-year-old Musa Hassuna, a Palestinian resident in the city.

After the incident, protests escalated as did ethnic violence between Israelis and Palestinians. A Jewish Israeli man, Yigal Yehoshua, was killed by a Palestinian mob a week later.

According to Human Rights Watch, Israeli authorities handled the killings of Hassuna and Yehoshua very differently. All Jewish Israeli suspects were released on bail within just two days of Hassuna’s killing and were then later cleared of all charges. However, eight Palestinian men were swiftly arrested in connection with Yehoshua’s killing and accused of “murder” and “terrorism”.

Police also failed to protect Palestinians from violence by far-right Jewish Israeli groups and arrested 120 Palestinians in Lydd, compared with just 34 Jewish Israelis.

“The protests were understandable and expected, but the government made all Palestinians pay a price for it,” said al-Nakeeb.

‘We know they want to kick us out’

Palestinian residents of Lydd told Al Jazeera that they do not want any confrontations with far-right Jewish Israelis in the city, despite Israel’s continuing atrocities in Gaza. Many fear that Palestinian communities could be gunned down or expelled from the city altogether if tensions boil over.

Since October 7, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has handed out thousands of assault rifles and other weapons to Jewish Israelis across the country and to illegal settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories. Many people walk around openly carrying these weapons in Lydd.

“Israel distributed guns like they were candies here,” al-Nakeeb told Al Jazeera.

The tense political climate, coupled with the arming of civilians, has compelled moderate Jewish Israeli and Palestinian community leaders to form a committee. Their mission is to deffuse communal tensions and avoid conflict.

Shehada is part of this committee, which frequently attempts to dispel fake news in the hope of maintaining a cautious calm in Lydd. Despite cooperating with Jewish Israeli colleagues, she explained that she does not have any close Jewish Israeli friends.

“I never heard anyone in the committee say that we should all live together in peace and love. Everyone is just really scared and we need calm in our respective neighbourhoods,” she told Al Jazeera.

But with Islam’s fasting month of Ramadan approaching next week, the committee’s efforts could be in vain. Most years, during the holy month, Israeli authorities tend to crack down on Palestinian worshippers going to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Violence in the mosque could trigger a new deadly conflict in Lydd.

“If we see problems in Al-Aqsa, it’ll spark a war,” Shehada said. “We all know what could happen. “We know [Israeli extremists] want to kick Palestinians out.”

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UN sees ‘large number of gunshot wounds’ after Israel’s ‘flour massacre’ | Israel War on Gaza News

A United Nations team and medical officials have reported seeing “a large number” of gunshot wounds among Palestinians in Gaza after Israeli troops opened fire near an aid convoy, which has triggered global condemnation and calls for justice.

Their claims confirm numerous testimonies by witnesses that Israeli gunfire killed and wounded scores of Palestinians desperately seeking food aid on Thursday, contradicting Israel’s initial claims people were hurt due to a stampede and trampling.

At least 117 Palestinians were killed and more than 750 wounded during the “flour massacre” at the Nabulsi Roundabout on the southwestern side of Gaza City, after Israeli troops opened fire on the crowd.

On Friday a UN team visited some of the wounded in Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, and saw a “large number of gunshot wounds”, UN chief Antonio Guterres’ spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.

The hospital received 70 of the dead, and about 200 wounded were still there during the team’s visit, Dujarric said.

He was not aware of the team examining those killed, but said that “from what they saw in terms of the patients who were alive getting treatments is that there was a large number of gunshot wounds”.

Georgios Petropoulos of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said he had seen people with gunshot wounds sustained during the deadly attack.

“It is one day after the tragic events at the Beach Road checkpoint, where hundreds of people lost their lives and were injured,” Petropoulos said in a video report, standing in front of al-Shifa Hospital.

“We have seen people with gunshot wounds. We have seen amputees, and we have seen children as young as 12 that were injured yesterday [Thursday],” he said in the video shared on X early on Saturday.

“These events cannot be allowed to go on.”

Majority of the injured hit by gunfire

The head of a Gaza City hospital that treated some of the Palestinians wounded in the bloodshed said on Friday that more than 80 percent of the injured had been struck by gunfire, suggesting there was heavy shooting by Israeli troops.

Mohammed Salha, the acting director of Al-Awda Hospital, told The Associated Press that of the 176 wounded brought to the facility, 142 had gunshot wounds and the other 34 showed injuries from a stampede.

He could not address the cause of death of those killed, because the bodies were taken to government-run hospitals to be counted.

Dr Hussam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said all the casualties it admitted were hit by “bullets and shrapnel from occupation forces”, referring to Israel.

The majority of the injured taken there had gunshot wounds in the upper part of their bodies, and many of the deaths were from gunshots to the head, neck or chest, he said.

The bloodshed underscored how the chaos of Israel’s almost five-month-old offensive has crippled the effort to bring aid to Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, a quarter of whom the United Nations says face starvation.

Intimidation

The Israeli version of events changed over the course of the day.

Reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith said the Israeli military “initially tried to pin the blame on the crowd”, saying that dozens were hurt as a consequence of being crushed and trampled in a stampede when aid trucks arrived.

“And then, after some pushing, the Israelis went on to say that their troops felt threatened, that hundreds of troops approached their troops in a way they posed a threat to them so they responded by opening fire,” Smith added. However, they didn’t explain how those people posed a threat.

Witnesses insisted that the stampede happened only after Israeli troops started firing at people looking for food.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor based in Gaza said Israeli forces intentionally opened fire on the crowd of aid recipients to “intimidate” anyone struggling to get a handful of food.

The human rights monitor published a report on Thursday stating that evidence shows that dozens of victims suffered gunshot wounds, “rather than being run over or crushed, in contrast to what the Israeli army spokesman claimed”.

Footage released by the Israeli army includes audible evidence of gunfire coming from Israeli tanks positioned near the coast, it said.

The group identified the bullets’ distinct sound audible in the footage as 5.56 bullets coming from an automatic weapon used by the Israeli army.

The majority of those present at the scene, including those who had initially been far from the aid trucks, are seen in the video fleeing from the trucks and running in the opposite direction, it added.

“This indicates that the danger did not originate from the trucks themselves or from the surrounding crowd of people, but rather from an outside source that terrified everyone in the area, both close to and far away from the trucks,” the monitor said.

“Furthermore, the video clip released by the Israeli army does not depict any ramming operations, which aligns with numerous survivors’ accounts of being shot in the back as they attempted to flee the scene.”

Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, on Friday said that “a famine is almost inevitable” in Gaza unless things change.

Laerke cited the near-total closure of commercial food imports, the “trickle of trucks” coming in with food aid, and the “massive access constraints” to moving around inside Gaza.

The United Nations has particularly cited restrictions on access to northern Gaza, where residents have been reduced to eating animal fodder and even leaves.

Human Rights Watch earlier this week said Israel was violating the orders of the International Court of Justice by blocking aid to Palestinians who are facing near-famine conditions after nearly five months of Israeli bombardment that has killed more than 30,000 people, most of them children and women.

“The Israeli government is starving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, putting them in even more peril than before the World Court’s binding order,” Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said on February 26.

“The Israeli government has simply ignored the court’s ruling, and in some ways even intensified its repression, including further blocking lifesaving aid.”

The UN refugee agency, UNRWA, has also raised concerns against Israel’s blocking of aid.



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