The maritime alliance wants to counter threats that the Yemeni rebel group says are a response to Israeli ‘crimes’ in Gaza.
Greece will send a warship to support a United States-led naval coalition in the Red Sea, becoming the latest country to join the alliance to counter threats from Yemen’s Houthis.
Defence Minister Nikos Dendias announced the move in a televised address on Thursday, saying Greece, as a major shipping nation, has a “fundamental interest” in addressing the “massive threat” to maritime transport.
The naval task force, announced by the US on Tuesday, initially listed 10 member nations to help patrol the waters to deter the Iran-aligned Houthis, who have attacked more than a dozen vessels they claim were linked to Israel amid the war on Gaza.
The Houthis say they will halt their attacks only if Israel’s “crimes in Gaza stop”.
The original members of the Red Sea task force – called Operation Prosperity Guardian – include the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain.
Since then, Denmark has also joined the alliance, according to the Reuters news agency. Meanwhile, the European Union member states have agreed to contribute through the European Naval Force.
Australia stopped short of committing its warships to the alliance but said on Thursday it would send 11 military personnel to support the mission.
‘Will not stand idly by’
Despite the Western show of force, the Houthis have promised to continue their attacks on vessels travelling to or from Israel for as long as the Gaza war goes on, saying operations will not cease even if the US mobilises “the entire world”.
On Wednesday, Houthi leader Abdel-Malik al-Houthi warned the group would not hesitate to strike US warships if Washington targeted it.
“We will not stand idly by if the Americans are tempted to escalate further and commit foolishness by targeting our country or waging war against it,” al-Houthi said in a televised speech.
“Any American targeting of our country will be targeted by us, and we will make American battleships, interests, and navigation a target for our missiles, drones, and military operations,” he added.
In recent months, Houthi drone attacks and attempted hijackings have pushed more than a dozen shipping firms to suspend operations in the Red Sea, through which 12 percent of all global trade passes.
On Thursday, the foreign minister of Egypt, which has not formally joined the maritime coalition, said countries on the Red Sea have a responsibility to protect the contentious waters and that Cairo would do its part to ensure “freedom of navigation”.
“We continue to cooperate with many of our partners to provide suitable conditions for the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea,” said Sameh Shoukry at a news conference.
UN rights office calls for investigation into ‘possible war crime’ amid reports Israeli forces allegedly ‘executed’ 11 Palestinian men in Gaza.
The United Nations human rights office has called for an independent inquiry into allegations that Israeli forces “summarily executed” at least 11 Palestinian men in Gaza in what it called “a possible war crime”.
“The Israeli authorities must immediately institute an independent, thorough and effective investigation into these allegations, and if found to be substantiated, those responsible must be brought to justice and measures implemented to prevent any such serious violations from recurring,” said the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in a statement on Wednesday.
Al Jazeera spoke to several witnesses to Tuesday’s raid during which Israeli troops allegedly surrounded and stormed a residential building, going floor to floor to separate the men from the women and children, and then shooting dead 11 of the men in front of their family members. The men were in their 20s and 30s, survivors said.
“They saw us, men and their wives and children. My brother-in-law tried to speak and explain all in the house are civilians, but they shot him dead,” one survivor told Al Jazeera of the attack on families who were sheltering in al-Adwa building in Gaza City’s Remal neighbourhood.
The soldiers “forced their way into every home, killed the men and detained the women and children. We do not know their whereabouts. They did the same on every floor. All women were rounded up in one room. By the time they reached us on the sixth floor, they started shooting all men,” a woman said, adding that her father-in-law and son were shot and killed instantly.
Survivors also said that the Israeli soldiers also attacked the women and children after ordering them into a room in the residential block also known as Annan building.
“The Israeli soldiers rounded up all the women in one room, then fired three mortar shells on us, then kept shooting their machine guns at us,” a wounded woman said.
“I was hit with a bullet in my hand, my daughter in her head, my younger daughter was killed and my son is blind. My husband was executed in cold blood. All my other daughters suffered severe injuries, broken bones and flesh torn open. We were all hit by bullets or shrapnel,” she added.
Analyst Tamer Qarmout, an assistant professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, welcomed the UN call for an investigation into the “unlawful killings”, telling Al Jazeera that the key issue is how such probes are going to be conducted.
None of the entities that could investigate alleged Israeli crimes against Palestinians is currently allowed into the Gaza Strip, Qarmout noted.
Other witnesses recalled that the men were forced to strip before being shot, and one man said that “even young boys were not spared. They were all battered and bludgeoned. They suffered broken bones and are in hospital.”
There has been no comment from the Israeli military on the attack.
Islamabad, Pakistan – A recent deadly suicide attack on a military post in northwest Pakistan has raised fears of the return of armed rebellion in the country’s tribal regions that have seen a dramatic rise in armed attacks this year.
A little-known group, Tehreek-e-Jihad Pakistan (TJP), claimed the December 12 bombing in Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan. At least 23 soldiers were killed and another 34 injured in the car bomb attack.
The attacks by the TJP have brought back memories of the series of deadly attacks carried out by armed groups led by the Pakistan Taliban, known by the acronym TTP, in late 2000.
But why have attacks on security forces increased and how are the Pakistani government and the military planning to handle it?
What explains the surge in the attacks?
The first 11 months of the year witnessed 664 attacks of varying nature and size across the country, an increase of 67 percent from the corresponding duration in 2022, according to the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS), an Islamabad-based research organisation.
But the bulk of the attacks have targeted two provinces – Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the northwest and Balochistan in the southwest.
Almost 93 percent of the total attacks took place in these two provinces, with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the worst affected province, witnessing 416 attacks since November 2022 when the TTP walked out of the ceasefire with the government.
Pakistan Taliban’s ideology is aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which currently rules the war-torn country. However, the groups have different goals and they operate independently.
Family members of the victims of a suicide bombing in Peshawar weep as they take part in a march on February 1 denouncing armed attacks. [Muhammad Sajjad/AP Photo]
In January, at least 100 people, mostly policemen, were killed in the worst attack of the year, when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a mosque in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The attack was claimed by a TTP splinter group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar.
The genesis for the spike in the violence, analysts say, could be traced back to the unilateral decision by the Pakistan Taliban to end the ceasefire last year. The armed group has asserted that its attacks were in response to the renewed military operations in the region.
Among their main demands include the release of its members and the reversal of the merger of the tribal region with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. A stricter imposition of Islamic laws is also one of the demands.
The Pakistani army has conducted multiple operations to eliminate the group since 2002 but struggled to achieve its goal as fighters have used the porous border to find safe haven in Afghanistan.
Since its founding in 2007, the TTP has targeted both civilians as well as law enforcement personnel, resulting in thousands of deaths. Their deadliest attack came in December 2014, when they targeted the Army Public School (APS) in Peshawar, killing more than 130 students.
The TTP also claimed responsibility for shooting Malala Yousafzai in 2012. Yousafzai went on to win the Noble Prize for Peace in 2015 and is currently a globally renowned girls’ education activist.
The most disconcerting aspect of TJP lies in its implementation of suicide attacks.
by Abdul Sayed, a Sweden-based researcher
The group remains banned in Pakistan and has been designated a “terrorist” group by the United States. Formed to unify like-minded groups in the region, the TTP stepped up attacks in response to Pakistani military operations launched to flush out foreign fighters fleeing the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
In response to the APS attack, the Pakistani military launched a large-scale military operation, titled Zarb-e-Azb, against the armed groups. While the Pakistani army claimed it was able to achieve its objective, the military operation was harshly criticised by the local population as well as human rights organisations.
The military was accused of adopting scorched earth tactics and carrying out enforced disappearances of individuals accused of having links with the TTP. Many of those arrested were tried in a military court, which is considered contrary to international law.
Which groups have sought to claim responsibility for the recent attacks?
With the return of the Taliban government in Afghanistan in August 2021, which has had historical links with the Pakistani security establishment, it was believed that managing the TTP would become easier.
A month after the Taliban took over Kabul, it helped facilitate the meeting between the Pakistani military with the TTP for both sides to engage in a ceasefire talk, a decision endorsed and pushed by Imran Khan, Pakistan’s then-prime minister.
Subsequently, over the next few months, a tentative ceasefire led to the release of senior TTP leaders imprisoned by Pakistan. It also facilitated the resettlement of hundreds of TTP fighters and their families back to Pakistan. Some of their leaders had been released as part of peace deals with previous Pakistani governments.
However, low-scale skirmishes between the two sides continued well into 2022, with both sides accusing each other of violating the agreement.
The January 31 suicide blast targeting a mosque inside a police facility was one of the deadliest attacks on Pakistani security forces in recent years. [Muhammad Zubair/AP Photo]
Despite repeated meetings, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the growing distrust between the two sides increased. The removal of Khan as prime minister in April 2022, followed by the retirement of army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa in November 2022, did not help the cause. The TTP announced a unilateral end to the ceasefire days after Bajwa retired.
The emergence of an obscure TJP, believed to be affiliated with the TTP, has further raised concerns among policymakers. TJP has been behind at least seven major attacks this year, including the latest one in Dera Ismail Khan.
The group targeted a Pakistani Air Force airbase in Mianwali city in November and in another attack this year in Zhob city of Balochistan it killed at least 14 army personnel.
According to researchers who study different armed groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, TJP remains an “enigmatic organisation”.
The group, which has carried out several attacks this year, is shrouded in mystery regarding its leadership, members, and locations. The main source of information about the TJP is derived from its media releases. The group claims it was formed to “wage jihad against Pakistan with the aim of transforming the country into an Islamic state”.
Abdul Sayed, a Sweden-based researcher on armed groups in South and Central Asia, said the TTP officially recognised TJP as a fellow armed organisation in July 2023. Pakistani authorities also assert that TJP is linked to TTP.
“However, as of now, there is a lack of concrete evidence to substantiate any clandestine connections between the two groups,” Sayed told Al Jazeera.
The most disconcerting aspect of TJP, he said, lies in its implementation of suicide attacks.
“In the attacks claimed by the TJP, a group of four to seven suicide bombers conduct assaults on security force camps under the cover of darkness. This strategy has propelled the conflict between militants and security forces in Pakistan to an exceptionally destructive level,” Sayed added.
Two of the most violent attacks this year were carried out by the regional affiliate of ISIL (ISIS), the Islamic State in Khorasan Province or ISKP (ISIS-K). In July, it targeted a political rally in Bajaur, a tribal district neighbouring Afghanistan, killing more than 60 people. It was also behind a major blast in Mastung city of Balochistan in September that killed more than 50 people.
While the ISKP chose to target civilians in the few attacks it conducted, the TTP and the TJP have singled out security personnel.
Abdul Basit, a research fellow at S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said the tactic of targeting law enforcement personnel worked on multiple levels, as it helped demoralise the forces, as well as help create terror and air of insecurity.
Why has Pakistan been unable to control the increase in violence?
For many counterterrorism analysts and observers of the violence in the region, one of the key failings of the Pakistani government was its inability to formulate a “coherent and cogent” policy towards Afghanistan, which they believe has led to the current situation.
Elaborating on this, Basit said the Pakistani army’s strategy was based on “assumptions and hope” that after the Kabul takeover by the Taliban, it would be able to control the TTP from perpetrating its attacks in Pakistan.
Basit said fundamentally, the combination of having counterproductive Afghan policies as well as the inability to build counterterrorism capacity, the government was unable to prepare itself for the battle it is faced with now.
“Pakistan spent a lot of time seeking peace talks, but … it was not proactive in eliminating the threat. But with ceasefire ending, Pakistan is in firefighting mode,” he said.
“Now, the best they can hope for is damage limitation.”
In counterterrorism, public support is critical but in the areas which have seen long bouts of fight, such as here in Pakistan, the sentiment is hostile towards both the military as well as the rebel fighters
by Abdul Basit, a research fellow at S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore
The peace talks Basit is referring to was endorsed by the Pakistani government under former Prime Minister Khan in late 2021, when the military engaged with the TTP. Those talks were facilitated by the Afghan Taliban. The TTP demanded the reversal of the merger of tribal districts as well as the imposition of its interpretation of Islamic law. But both demands were rejected by the then government.
The Pakistani side urged for the disbanding of the armed group, a demand which was never met.
Khan was a vocal opponent of the US-led drone strikes targeting TTP fighters in Pakistan’s tribal region bordering Afghanistan, as those attacks collaterally caused loss of civilian lives.
Basit, the Singapore-based expert, said the current situation, which sees almost daily skirmishes between Pakistani troops and TTP fighters, does not allow for any large-scale operation, for which he said the government lacks the capacity as well as the public goodwill. The researcher said the resettlement of TTP in Pakistan in early 2022 was seen as a very unpopular decision, resulting in public protests.
“In counterterrorism, public support is critical but in the areas which have seen long bouts of fight, such as here in Pakistan, the sentiment is hostile towards both the military as well as the rebel fighters,” Basit said.
Pakistan in the past has engaged in dialogue with the fighter group on numerous occasions, with at least five major peace agreements between 2007 and 2014, none of which lasted more than a few months.
The Pakistani military launched several operations in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and tribal areas against the TTP during the same period.
With the government having tried both military operations as well as dialogues, Amina Khan, director of the Centre for Afghanistan, Middle East & Africa (CAMEA) at the Institute of Strategic Studies (ISSI) in Islamabad, concurs with Basit on the point that the government never had clarity on how it wanted to approach its policy against the TTP.
“We do not know whether Pakistan wants to engage with them in a dialogue, or to start a kinetic operation against them,” she told Al Jazeera, adding that there is a lack of agreement among stakeholders in the country on the issue.
What options does Pakistan have now?
Senior Pakistani civilian and military leaderships have conducted multiple high-level meetings with their Afghan counterparts in Islamabad and Kabul this year.
Pakistan has repeatedly alleged that Afghan soil is being used to harbour fighters, who carry out cross-border attacks, a charge the Taliban vehemently denies. After the Dera Ismail Khan attack, Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesperson for the interim government, repeated the defence, saying there is no threat emanating from Afghan soil to any of its neighbours.
“Every incident in Pakistan should not be linked to Afghanistan. This incident [Dera Ismail Khan attack] happened hundreds of kilometres away from our country. There are security forces and intelligence there [in Pakistan], and they should be cautious about their duties,” Mujahid said last week.
In October, Pakistan decided to expel more than 1.5 million Afghans allegedly living without documents raising further tension with the Taliban administration.
Pakistani officials on numerous occasions this year also threatened to conduct cross-border attacks on TTP hideouts in Afghanistan. However, no attacks have been confirmed from either Pakistan or the Taliban government.
Sayed, the Sweden-based scholar, said the Taliban views the increasing attacks by fighters in Pakistan as an internal matter, attributing it to Pakistan’s policies resulting from its involvement in the so-called “war on terror” led by the US.
Basit, the researcher, said “choosing bravado” would be a wrong lesson from the increasing violence in the country, and waging cross-border attacks in Afghanistan would be a bad idea.
He, however, supported the idea of conducting targeted operations within Pakistan.
“You must blunt the sharp edge of the knife, first and foremost, for which you will need to use force. However, priority should be focused on internal issues and to dismantle the network of these fighters in the country. The process must be about containment, downgrading, and then eliminating,” Basit said.
However, Khan, the director at ISSI, said she was firmly of the opinion that the avenues for dialogue must remain open.
“I feel that dialogue is essential, and it must continue,” she said.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin has committed to spending a post-Cold War record $157bn fighting Ukraine and securing Russia next year – a 70 percent increase on this year’s defence budget.
But Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy has failed to secure $61.4bn from the US and $76.6bn from the European Union, among his staunchest allies, riven by internal disagreements over spending.
During lengthy press conferences over the past several days about the wartime issues facing them both, the confidence exuded by Russia’s president clearly outshone the mere faith expressed by Ukraine’s.
A Ukrainian summer counteroffensive that petered out without significant territorial gains has divided allied generals, as Russian forces have in recent weeks crept forward on the eastern front, putting Ukraine back on the defensive.
“Practically, along the entire line of contact, our armed forces are, shall we say, modestly improving their position. Virtually all are in an active stage of action,” said Putin in his annual, end-of-year press conference at the International Trade Centre in Moscow on December 14, departing from his traditionally reserved assessment of the front.
Three days later, he told a meeting of his United Russia Party: “Russia will either be a sovereign, self-sufficient power, or it will not be at all,” returning to his pre-war rhetoric of “denazifying” and “demilitarising” Ukraine – code for installing a puppet regime in Kyiv and rendering Ukraine a defenceless buffer zone between Russia and NATO.
On December 19, by contrast, Zelenskyy fielded embarrassing questions on why congressional Republicans in Washington and a Russophilic Hungary in the EU have stymied the political process of military aid approval.
“I am confident that the United States will not let us down and that what we have agreed upon with the United States will be fully implemented,” he said.
“As for the [EU’s] 50 billion euros, I’m confident that a decision will be made in the very near future when they convene. It has been arranged in a way that … there are other mechanisms in place to ensure that Ukraine receives these 50 billion.”
The EU is proposing to commit 50 billion euros in financial aid to Ukraine over the next four years, as well as a separate 20 billion in military aid next year – a total of $76.6bn.
Putin’s determination was put into perspective in a report by the newspaper Bild on December 14, in which an unnamed Russian source described plans to overrun the remaining areas of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions and to capture much of Kharkiv by the end of 2024. If successful in the latter, it would roll back enormous Ukrainian counteroffensive gains in September last year.
The source described second-stage plans to take large parts of the Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions and to advance as far as Kharkiv city by the end of 2025 and 2026.
A savage war
Far from the presidents’ decorous press conferences, a war now largely eclipsed in the media is being savagely fought with staggering loss of life.
Ukrainian marines who have taken part in operations across the Dnipro river in Kherson told the New York Times they amounted to a “suicide mission”.
They described high casualty rates and shelling so intense from Russian positions that they had been unable to recover the bodies of their comrades from the shallows of the Left Bank for two months. Nor have they been able to ferry the wounded back to base camps across the river.
“There are no positions. There is no such thing as an observation post or position,” said one soldier. “It is impossible to gain a foothold there. It’s impossible to move equipment there … It’s not even a fight for survival,” he said. “It’s a suicide mission.” Ukraine’s general staff said they would withhold comment until a later date.
Ukraine is believed to have succeeded in placing a small force of 200 to 300 soldiers on the Left Bank over the past two months.
“These difficulties are to be expected for what is an economy-of-force operation with limited positions,” said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
The Ukrainian vanguard could be setting conditions for a more secure bridgehead and a launch of operations across the Dnipro, the ISW said. Suppressing Russian artillery on the left bank would enable civilians who fled the Ukraine-controlled right bank of the Dnipro to return.
Russia, too, is suffering huge losses on this front.
On December 15, British defence intelligence reported “exceptionally heavy losses” among the newly formed Russian 104th Air Assault Division, during its inaugural operation in Kherson. The unit was sent to dislodge the Ukrainian bridgehead after marines failed to do so for two months.
Two days later, Ukraine’s armed forces said 1,250 Russian soldiers had been “liquidated” in 24 hours, a staggering number compared with normal casualty rates. With them, 25 armoured personnel carriers and 19 tanks had reportedly been destroyed.
Ukrainian authorities did not specify where these highly attritional battles had taken place, but the general staff said Russian assaults continued against Kupiansk, Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Marinka – all on the eastern front – and Novopokrovka and Robotyne on the southern front.
Ukraine’s head of ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Russia had lost 8,000 troops on the eastern front alone in the first half of December.
Ukraine’s high batting average
For Ukraine, there are shafts of light amid the gloom of a counteroffensive that did not deliver the expected results.
Ukraine has defended itself from a Russian drone onslaught devastatingly well.
On December 13, it was reported that Ukrainian air defences had downed all 10 Iranian Shahed drones and 10 guided missiles of unspecified types that targeted Kyiv. The following day, they shot down 41 of 42 drones launched into Ukraine as well as all 14 drones and both missiles launched the day after that.
On December 16, Ukraine shot down 30 out of 31 drones, all 20 Shahed drones launched on December 17, and 18 out of 19 drones launched on December 20. That represents a 98 percent kill rate for the week.
Russia targeted Ukrainian energy and water infrastructure last winter, in a bid to break popular will to support the war. Last week, Ukrainian Air Force spokesman Yuri Ignat said Russia now had enough drones to attack Ukraine every day from various directions – something Russia has practically been doing for much of the autumn.
Keeping the numbers up
Even if it receives all the $138bn it hopes for in military aid next year, Ukraine faces serious munitions and manpower concerns.
Zelenskyy said his military chiefs have proposed lowering the mobilisation age from 27 to 25 to put up to half a million more people in uniform next year, suggesting high attrition to the roughly million-strong force Ukraine had at the beginning of the invasion.
Putin, by contrast, said he had 617,000 troops across the front, some 200,000 more than Ukrainian military intelligence had estimated in September.
There are also problems with ammunition.
Ukrainian Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi, who leads the forces spearheading the front’s most important counteroffensive, told Reuters at Robotyne in Zaporizhia that Ukraine was scaling back some operations because of shortages of ammunition “across the entire front line”.
“The volumes that we have today are not sufficient for us today … We’re replanning tasks that we had set for ourselves and making them smaller because we need to provide for them,” he said, without providing details.
Winter solstice 2023 will mark the day with the fewest sunlight hours and coincides with the Ursid meteor shower.
After weeks of dwindling daylight, Friday marks the longest night of the year and the day with the fewest light of the year. The event is known as winter solstice as it marks the start of winter in the northern hemisphere.
The event will also be a turning point for longer hours of daylight in the northern hemisphere, a phenomenon that has been tied to various cultural and folkloric beliefs in ancient times.
Here’s what to know about the 2023 winter solstice and how it is celebrated in different communities.
What is winter solstice and what happens during it?
December’s winter solstice is when the northern half of the Earth is tilted furthest away from the sun, making it the “astronomical” first day of winter.
The northern hemisphere will experience the fewest hours of sunlight, making it the shortest day of the year while the night is the longest.
The duration of daylight will vary across countries. In the United Kingdom’s London, the day is expected to last seven hours and 49 minutes, more than eight hours shorter than the longest day of the year.
The event will also coincide with the peak of the Ursid meteor shower – an annual display that occurs over the northern hemisphere when the Earth passes through debris left by the comet 8P/Tuttle.
Every day after the winter solstice will grow longer in the northern hemisphere until its summer solstice, or the longest day of the year, between June 20 and 22.
Solstice comes from a Latin word translating to “sun stands still”.
When is the winter solstice?
This shortest day of the year will occur on December 22, while the exact moment of the solstice will occur at 03:27 GMT – at this point, the Earth’s axis will be furthest from the sun.
This shift in axial tilts as the Earth orbits around the sun allows the world to experience varying degrees of sunlight on different days. Otherwise, the sun would remain directly above the equator and shed the same amount of light on the Earth throughout the year.
(Al Jazeera)
Is it also the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere?
The summer solstice in the southern hemisphere occurs at the same time as the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere.
Seasons of the northern and southern hemispheres are reversed, so countries such as Brazil and New Zealand will be experiencing the longest day of the year.
The winter solstice in the northern hemisphere can occur between December 20 to 23 but often falls on December 21 or 22.
The last time it occurred on December 23 was in 1903, while its next appearance on that date will be in 2303.
Three interesting facts about winter solstice
Although the solstice is said to mark the astronomical start of winter, the winter season or its meteorological first day occurs on a different date and is based on temperature records.
Standing outside at noon on December 22 will cast the longest shadow of the entire year.
At the moment of the winter solstice, the sun appears directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, which is located 23 degrees south of the equator.
What is winter solstice celebrated for?
Several cultures celebrate the winter solstice in different ways which tends to be rooted in almost supernatural or folkloric significance of the day in ancient times. Today, we understand the event in more scientific terms but people continue to enjoy old traditions.
For ancient people, the gradual increase in daylight hours after winter solstice marked a time of rebirth.
People in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden hold a multiday feast to celebrate Juul, or Yule, when ancient people would welcome the return of the Sun God. Scandinavians burn a Yule log to honour the God Thor, who was tasked with returning the sun’s warmth.
In Finnish myth, the waning daylight in the lead-up to the winter solstice is caused by a powerful and evil witch that holds the sun and the moon captive inside a mountain.
For people in Iran, winter solstice or the “Yalda festival” marks the day when Mithra, an angel of light, was thought to have been born.
In China, winter solstice is the “Dongzhi festival” when winter’s darkness begins to give way to light. Families eat special foods such as rice balls called tang yuan.
In the United Kingdom, people visit Stonehenge to catch the rays of the sunrise as they fall between the stones.
Tensions between the two countries have risen this year, with China attempting to disrupt Filipino ship resupply missions.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has urged Manila to “act with caution” over the hotly-contested South China Sea as his Philippines counterpart Enrique Manalo noted the need for dialogue between the two countries.
Tension between Beijing and Manila over the waterway has risen in recent months, particularly in the Scarborough Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal where Manila has accused the Chinese Coast Guard of dangerous actions against Filipino boats during regular resupply missions to sailors on the Sierra Madre, which was grounded there in 1999.
Manila has lodged dozens of diplomatic protests over China’s behaviour and earlier this month, summoned the Chinese ambassador after a collision between Chinese and Filipino vessels.
Wang and Manalo spoke by phone on Wednesday with China’s Foreign Ministry releasing a five-paragraph readout of the discussions – noting that Manalo had talked about Manila’s views on Second Thomas Shoal – but alleged that any spike in tensions was Manila’s fault.
“The root cause is that the Philippines has changed its policy stance so far, reneged on its commitments, continued to provoke and cause trouble at sea, and undermined China’s legitimate and legitimate rights,” the statement said. “China-Philippines relations are at a crossroads. Faced with the choice of where to go, the Philippines must act with caution.”
Second Thomas Shoal lies about 195km (121 miles) from the western Philippine island of Palawan and more than 1,000km (621 miles) from China’s southern Hainan island.
Beijing seized Scarborough Shoal from Manila after a months-long standoff in 2012. The shoal lies about 220km (137 miles) off the coast of the Philippines and falls within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ), according to international maritime law.
In a brief statement, Manalo described the call with Wang as a “frank and candid exchange”.
“We ended our call with a clearer understanding of our respective positions on a number of issues,” he said in the statement. “We both noted the importance of dialogue in addressing these issues.”
China claims almost the entire South China Sea under its so-called nine-dash line.
After the Scarborough Shoal incident, Manila took its case to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
The court ruled in 2016 that China’s claims had no legal basis but Beijing has ignored the ruling, doubling down on its claim by building artificial islands, establishing military installations and deploying its coast guard, maritime militia and commercial fishing fleet to the waters.
Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam also claim parts of the sea and the latter two have also reported incidents with Chinese vessels.
Since Ferdinand Marcos Jr became the Philippines’s president in 2022, the country has revived its once close relationship with the United States, expanding a defence pact giving Washington access to more of its military bases.
In the call, Wang said Beijing was committed to dialogue but also issued a warning.
“If the Philippines misjudges the situation, insists on going its own way, or even colludes with malicious external forces to continue causing trouble and chaos, China will definitely safeguard its rights in accordance with the law and respond resolutely,” he said in the statement.
As the war enters its 666th day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Thursday, December 21, 2023.
Fighting
Nine people, including four children, were injured in Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, as Russia also targeted the capital Kyiv, the second-largest city of Kharkiv and other regions with drones and missiles. Ukraine’s Air Force said air defence systems destroyed 18 out of 19 Russian attack drones and that Russia fired two surface-to-air guided missiles at Kharkiv. No casualties were reported.
Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Shtupun acknowledged that Russian forces were gaining ground around the industrial city of Avdiivka. Sthupun told Ukrainian television the Russians had “advanced by one and a half to two kilometres [0.3 to 1.2 miles] in some places” since October 10, but it had “cost them a lot”.
The evening update from the Ukrainian General Staff reported 89 incidents of Russian ground attacks on seven sections of a front line that extends for about 1,000km (600 miles). There were 31 attacks near Avdiivka, it added.
Ukraine’s Armed Forces are taking up a more defensive posture after a months-long counteroffensive failed to achieve a significant breakthrough, the United Kingdom’s Defence Ministry said in its latest assessment of the war. It said Ukraine was improving field fortifications along the front line.
Politics and diplomacy
The Kremlin said there was no current basis for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine and that Kyiv’s proposed peace plan was absurd because it excluded Russia. “We really consider that the topic of negotiations is not relevant right now,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called for a “severe” response to foreign agents who try to help Ukraine by engaging in sabotage in Russia.
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich lost his attempt at the European Union’s top court to overturn the sanctions the EU imposed on him after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
German federal prosecutors said they aim to seize more than 720 million euros ($789 million) from an unnamed Russian bank it suspects of trying to violate Western sanctions.
Ukraine’s biggest mobile operator Kyivstar said it had fully restored its services in the country and overseas following a huge cyberattack last damaged IT infrastructure and affected air raid alert systems. More than half of Ukraine’s population are Kyivstar subscribers.
A Russian court fined Google 4.6 billion roubles ($50.84m) for failing to delete so-called “fake” information about the war in Ukraine and other topics, according to the state TASS news agency.
Yekaterina Duntsova, a 40-year-old independent politician, has declared her intention to run in Russia’s 2024 presidential election [Vera Savina/AFP]
Yekaterina Duntsova, a 40-year-old former broadcast journalist, put her name forward to stand in Russia’s presidential election on a platform “for peace and democratic processes”. Duntsova has previously called for an end to the war in Ukraine and the release of political prisoners including opposition leader Alexey Navalny. The 40-year-old needs 300,000 signatures from across Russia by January 31 to support her candidacy. Vladimir Putin is expected to win in a landslide.
Weapons
Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s minister for strategic industries, said Kyiv plans to manufacture 1 million reconnaissance and attack drones as well as more than 11,000 medium- and long-range attack drones next year. The figure includes at least 1,000 drones with a range of more than 1,000km (620 miles), he said.
Japan is considering allowing Patriot missile transfers to Ukraine, according to a report in Nikkei.
Melbourne, Australia – In October this year, a referendum to establish an Indigenous “Voice to Parliament” in the Australian Constitution was heavily defeated at the polls.
Had the vote passed, an advisory group would have been established to make recommendations to the federal government to alleviate the social and economic inequalities experienced by Indigenous people.
In the referendum, 60 percent of Australians voted against the proposal in a campaign marred by disinformation and public racism.
Still, 25-year-old Jordan Edwards remains pragmatic.
“You can’t lose something you never had,” he told Al Jazeera.
The Gunditjmara, Waddawurrung and Arrernte man is a newly-appointed member in the southern state of Victoria’s First Peoples’ Assembly.
Similar to the proposed Voice to Parliament, the First Peoples’ Assembly was established in 2020 to advance treaty negotiations with the state government.
Separate from the federal government, Australian states have the capacity to introduce such initiatives, despite the failure of the national referendum. Currently, only Victoria and Queensland have committed to the treaty process.
Edwards also acts as the Youth Voice convener, engaging with Indigenous young people around the state to educate them about a process that aims to secure an agreement between local Indigenous groups, known as “traditional owners” and the government, which would allow some self-determination and decision making on matters affecting the community, including land use and resources.
Australian Rock group Yothu Yindi has long called for a treaty between Australian governments and Indigenous people [File: AP]
Edwards says it is important that Indigenous young people are included in these conversations.
“I think for young people, [treaty] always been an Elders’ fight, or their parents’ fight. And now, realising that’s on our doorstep, I think we need to grapple with that conversation,” he said.
Looking to the future
Calls for a treaty between Indigenous Australians and both state and federal governments have been echoing for decades, including in the 1991 hit song Treaty, by Indigenous band Yothu Yindi.
Unlike Canada and New Zealand, the British colonial powers did not form treaties with Indigenous people in Australia, instead declaring the land “terra nullius” – nobody’s land – a legal fiction that took more than 200 years to be overturned.
Victoria’s state government committed to establishing a treaty process in 2018, which is set to be cemented in 2024. Edwards says a treaty is important for Indigenous communities and could especially affect young people into the future.
“They are our largest demographic in our population. So, we actually need young people there because it will affect them as a majority,” he said.
While non-Indigenous Australia has an ageing population, Indigenous communities have far more younger people. A 2021 census showed there were 60,000 Indigenous people in Victoria, with about half of them under the age of 25.
Edwards’s focus on young people is shared by Esme Bamblett who is also an elected member of the First Peoples Assembly and the Elders’ Voice convener.
“We need to think about seven generations’ time,” she told Al Jazeera.
“Personally, in seven generations’ time, I’d like my children and my descendants to have generational wealth, I want them to have every opportunity just like everybody else. I want them to know that they are strong and to be proud of who they are and have a strong identity as Aboriginal people.”
A traditional smoking ceremony took place ahead of the Yoorrook Commission [Ali MC/Al Jazeera]
Bamblett said the inclusion of an Elders’ Voice at a parliamentary level was important not only to highlight the challenges Indigenous elders face but also to reflect Indigenous cultural protocols.
“A very important part of our culture has been respect for our elders,” she said.
“The heads of all the families were the Elders, and the Elders would get together and they would then decide on issues and actions and there would be a consensus of opinion about what would happen. You learn from a very young age to respect your elders, and to listen to them.”
Indigenous people had lived on the continent now known as Australia for more than 65,000 years, when the British sailed into Botany Bay in 1788.
Their declaration of “terra nullius” paved the way for violent colonisation in the 1800s and punitive assimilation policies that removed Indigenous children from their families well into the late 20th century. Known as the Stolen Generations, this attempt at assimilation was buttressed by strict immigration laws which excluded non-Europeans, known as the “White Australia” policy.
Those policies’ negative legacy continues to be felt by the more than 30 Indigenous nations that live in the state of Victoria.
“Out-of-home care, the incarceration rates, unemployment – all these things have really impacted on our mob [communities],” Bamblett told Al Jazeera.
“And there’s a lot of our elders who are caring for their grandchildren.”
Truth for change
Similar to the structure of the proposed – and defeated – Voice to Parliament, Victoria’s First Peoples’ Assembly is made up of 32 members elected by local Indigenous communities who each represent the concerns and cultures of traditional owner groups.
First Peoples’ Assembly Co-Chair Ngarra Murray told Al Jazeera that Indigenous people needed to be “in the driver’s seat when it comes to the issues that affect us”.
“To be able to distil and articulate the views of our communities is powerful in itself and provides us with a strong platform to advocate for and against certain policies and practices that affect our communities,” she said.
Victoria Police Chief Shane Patton publicly apologised for the systemic racism experienced by Indigenous people at the hands of the police when he appeared at the Yoorrook Justice Commission [Ali MC/Al Jazeera]
Murray – who is from the Wamba Wamba, Yorta Yorta, Dhudhuroa and Dja Dja Wurrung peoples – said self-determination was vital if the impacts of colonisation were to be rectified.
“We are the experts on our own lives, we just need the freedom and the power to make the decisions about our culture, communities and country,” she said.
Alongside the First Peoples’ Assembly and treaty negotiations, a truth and justice commission has also been established to investigate both historical and ongoing injustices against Indigenous people since colonisation.
Yoorrook – meaning “truth” in the Wemba Wemba/Wamba Wamba language of northeastern Victoria – has a mandate to establish an official record on the impact of colonisation and make recommendations to address the ongoing challenges facing Indigenous people.
Professor Eleanor Bourke, a Wergaia/Wamba Wemba Elder and Chair of Yoorrook, told Al Jazeera that the truth-telling process was vital in the fight for change.
“Telling the truth about injustice can help build shared understanding,” she said. “But understanding on its own is not enough. We must also create transformative change. Being heard is the first step.”
Yoorrook’s most recent report, Yoorrook for Justice, investigated the links between child welfare and adult imprisonment and found there was a direct “pipeline” between the two.
The report also said that without major reforms, First Nations’ children would continue to be at greater risk of entering the child protection and criminal justice systems from birth.
Nationally, Indigenous children are 11.5 times more likely to be in state welfare than non-Indigenous children, while Indigenous adults are 14 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous adults.
“The report found that First Peoples faced racism and injustice at almost every turn across both systems and made strong recommendations for reform,” Bourke told Al Jazeera.
“Yoorrook is still waiting to see when, and how, the Victorian government will respond. There were promising signs of progress during the inquiry process. This includes commitments by government to improve the state’s bail laws, to repeal public drunkenness laws and to raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility.”
‘Confronting and raw’
The Yoorrook for Justice inquiry began in 2021 and held 27 days of hearings. Notably, Victoria Police Chief Shane Patton publicly apologised for the systemic racism experienced by Indigenous people at the hands of the police, and then-premier Daniel Andrews said that the over-representation of Indigenous people in child protection and prison was “a source of great shame”.
Alongside the investigation into the impact of government systems, Yoorrook also hears personal stories from First Nations community members.
Members of the First Peoples’ Assembly on the steps of Victoria’s parliament house [Ali MC/Al Jazeera]
These can include personal experiences of racism, the justice system and historical family narratives.
Such intimate stories are heard by “truth receivers” such as Lisa Thorpe.
“There is a mixture of stories we are hearing but they are almost always confronting and raw, and involve trauma,” she told Al Jazeera.
“People who’ve been through the criminal justice system, who’ve been mistreated in jail, who’ve had children taken off them, who’ve only just survived – these are the stories we are hearing. Many of these stories I’ve heard before but never in an official way like this.”
Thorpe, who is from the Gunnai, Gunditjmara, Wamba Wemba, Boonwurrung and Dja Dja Wurrung nations, also said that such stories were emanating directly from her family and community.
“So many of the stories I hear affect me personally, I relate to them or they are stories of people I love and care about,” she said. “But hearing them is also part of healing for me.”
While the failure of the Voice to Parliament was deeply disappointing to many around the nation, Indigenous people are demonstrating a resilience and fortitude to address the challenges of colonisation and hold the government to account.
Like Jordan Edwards and Esme Bamblett, Thorpe hopes the initiatives of the First Peoples’ Assembly, treaty negotiations and the Yoorrook Justice Commission will bring about a fairer future for her children and the generations of Indigenous Australians to come.
“Yoorrook has an opportunity to make real change, to hold the government to account and question the systems causing injustice to our people,” she said.
“My one goal is to make life better for my children than it was for me. This is a real opportunity to contribute and make positive change for the next generation and there might not be another opportunity like this again.”
“There is no safe place in Gaza.” Al Jazeera correspondent, Hani Mahmoud reports as a missile strike hits behind him in Rafah. He continued to report as people ran in fear from the site, close to a hospital in a densely populated residential area.
At least 20,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Israel began bombarding the enclave more than 10 weeks ago, according to Palestinian officials.
At least 8,000 children and 6,200 women are among those killed, Gaza’s Government Media Office said on Wednesday.
The grim milestone was passed as the United Nations Security Council postponed a key vote on a bid to boost humanitarian aid for Gaza for the third time to avoid a veto from the United States, which traditionally shields its ally Israel from UN action.
Since a seven-day truce collapsed on December 1, the war has entered a more intensive phase with ground combat previously confined to the northern half of the territory now spread across its length.
When asked about the ever-growing casualty count, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it is “clear that the conflict will move and needs to move to a lower intensity phase”.
“We expect to see and want to see a shift to more targeted [Israeli] operations with a smaller number of forces that’s really focused in on dealing with the leadership of Hamas, the tunnel network and a few other critical things,” he said. “And as that happens, I think you’ll see as well the harm done to civilians also decrease significantly.”
Air strikes continued across Gaza on Wednesday with at least 46 people killed and dozens wounded in Israeli attacks on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, according to the enclave’s Ministry of Health.
In Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where hundreds of thousand of people have been pushed since early December by Israel’s continued onslaught, air strikes hit a building near a hospital close to an Al Jazeera crew reporting live on air, killing at least 10 people.
“More air strikes are conducted, more victims fall due to the expansion of the Israeli military operations in the areas that are supposed to be safe zones where the majority of Gazans have been urged to flee,” Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said in reporting from Rafah.
“The air strike took place in an area considered to be very densely populated, and it’s a miracle that no more than this number of people were killed,” he added.
Key Security Council vote postponed
The UN Security Council vote on a bid to boost aid to the Gaza Strip and ask the UN to monitor humanitarian aid deliveries there has been delayed at the request of the US, diplomats said.
According to the United Arab Emirates envoy to the UN, Lana Nusseibeh, the vote will take place on Thursday.
“Everyone wants to see a resolution that has impact and is implementable on the ground, and there are some discussions going on on how to make that possible,” Nusseibeh, whose country drafted the resolution, told reporters in New York.
The text aims to dilute Israel’s control over all humanitarian aid deliveries to the 2.3 million people of Gaza. The initial text has been reportedly modified to soften calls to end the fighting in Gaza to avoid yet another veto from the US.
“We want to make sure that the resolution … doesn’t do anything that could actually hurt the delivery of humanitarian assistance, make it more complicated. That’s what we’re focused on,” Blinken told reporters on Wednesday. “I hope we can get to a good place.”
Currently, Israel monitors the limited humanitarian aid and fuel deliveries to Gaza via the Rafah crossing from Egypt and the Israel-controlled Karem Abu Salem crossing, known as Kerem Shalom in Hebrew.
On Wednesday, the first aid convoy entered Gaza directly from Jordan with 750 metric tonnes of food. The World Food Programme said half of Gaza’s population is starving and only 10 percent of the food required has entered Gaza since the war began on October 7.
The US and Israel oppose a ceasefire, believing it would benefit only Hamas. Washington instead supports pauses in fighting to protect civilians and allow the release of captives taken by Hamas.
Hamas leader in rare visit to Egypt
Separately on Wednesday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh paid his first visit to Egypt for more than a month in a rare personal intervention in diplomacy amid hopes that the Palestinian group and Israel could agree terms for another truce.
Haniyeh arrived in the Egyptian capital to meet with Cairo’s spy chief and other Egyptian officials who are acting as key mediators. Meanwhile, Israeli officials have indicated in talks with US and Qatari representatives that they could be open to a truce.
The Hamas leader last travelled to Egypt in early November before the announcement of the only pause in the fighting so far, a weeklong truce that saw the release of about 110 of 240 captives taken by Hamas into Gaza on October 7.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed group that is also holding captives in Gaza, said its leader would also visit Egypt in the coming days to discuss a possible end to the war.
A source briefed on the negotiations said envoys were discussing which of the captives still held by Palestinian groups could be freed in a new truce and what prisoners Israel might release in return, the Reuters news agency reported.
But there remains a huge gulf between the two sides’ publicly stated positions on any halt to the fighting. Hamas rejects any further temporary pause and says it will discuss only a permanent ceasefire. Israel has ruled that out and says it will agree only limited humanitarian pauses until Hamas is defeated.
US President Joe Biden said he did not expect an Israel-Hamas deal for the release of captives held in Gaza to be struck soon.
“We’re pushing,” Biden told reporters during a trip to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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