Archives for December 2023

JERUSALEM: Palestinians said they felt “no joy” this Christmas as Israel bombed Gaza on Monday, with no end in sight to the war that Hamas says has claimed more than 20,000 lives.

Festivities were effectively scrapped in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, revered as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, with few worshippers or tourists on the usually packed streets.

In the besieged Gaza Strip, the Hamas-run ministry of health said early Monday Israeli strikes had killed at least 18 people in the southern city of Khan Yunis, the centre of recent fighting.

At a hospital in the city, Fadi Sayegh — whose family has previously received permits to travel to Bethlehem for celebrations — said he would not be celebrating Christmas this year.

“There is no joy. No Christmas tree, no decorations, no family dinner, no celebrations,” he said while undergoing dialysis. “I pray for this war to be over soon.”

Sister Nabila Salah from the Catholic Holy Church in Gaza — where two Christian women were killed by an Israeli sniper earlier this month according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem — struck a sombre tone.

“All Christmas celebrations have been cancelled,” she told AFP. “How do we celebrate when we are… hearing the sound of tanks and bombardment instead of the ringing of bells?”

The war broke out when Hamas fighters attacked southern Israel on October 7 and killed about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, and seized 250 hostages, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas in response and its military campaign, which has included massive aerial bombardment. The campaign has killed 20,424 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

Pope Francis kicked off global Christmas celebrations on Sunday with a call for peace.

“Our heart goes to Gaza, to all people in Gaza but a special attention to our Christian community in Gaza who is suffering,” the Catholic leader said.

Just ahead of Christmas, the Hamas-run health ministry said at least 70 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on Sunday at the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza.

Health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said the “toll is likely to rise” as many families were thought to be in the area at the time of the strike.

In a separate incident, the ministry said 10 members of one family were killed in an Israeli strike on their house in the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza.

AFP was unable to independently verify either toll.

Vast areas of Gaza lie in ruins and its 2.4 million people have endured dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine due to an Israeli siege, alleviated only by the limited arrival of aid trucks.

Eighty per cent of Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN, many fleeing south and now shielding against the winter cold in makeshift tents.

The head of the UN refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, called for an end to the suffering.

“A humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza is the only way forward,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “War defies logic and humanity, and prepares a future of more hatred and less peace.”

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also renewed calls for a ceasefire, saying: “The decimation of the Gaza health system is a tragedy.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday the war was exacting a “very heavy price”, as the death toll of soldiers killed in the conflict continued to mount.

“But we have no choice but to keep fighting,” he said, adding: “This will be a long war.”

The army said Monday two more soldiers had been killed, taking to 17 the number of troops killed since Friday and 156 since Israel’s ground assault began on October 27.

Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus indicated that forces were close to gaining control in northern Gaza and that now “we focus our efforts against Hamas in southern Gaza”.

Two freed detainees and a medic said Sunday that Palestinians held by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip had suffered torture, a charged denied by the military.

The two men were among hundreds detained by Israeli forces over alleged links with Hamas during Israel’s ground offensive.

About 20 men released from Israeli custody “have bruises and marks of blows on their bodies”, Marwan al-Hams, hospital director in the southern city of Rafah, told AFP.

PALU: The death toll following the explosion of a smelting furnace at a Chinese-owned nickel plant on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island rose to 18 on Tuesday, as police ordered the plant to stop operations until an investigation into the incident is completed.

The accident, which occurred on Sunday, was the latest in a series of deadly incidents at nickel smelting plants in Indonesia that are part of China’s ambitious transnational development program known as the Belt and Road Initiative.

Four Chinese and nine Indonesian workers died instantly on Sunday when the furnace exploded while they were repairing it, said Central Sulawesi police chief Agus Nugroho. Three more victims died a day later while being treated at a local hospital.

Two more workers died on Tuesday at the hospital, bringing the total number of fatalities to 18, including eight workers from China, said Deddy Kurniawan, a spokesperson for PT Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, known as PT IMIP, the parent company of PT Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel, where the accident occurred.

The plant is in the Bahodopi neighborhood of Morowali Regency.

“We have ordered PT Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel to stop its operation until our entire investigation is completed,” said Nugroho, the police chief, adding that authorities had set up a team to determine whether negligence by the company led to the deaths.

The blast was so powerful it demolished the furnace and damaged parts of the side walls of the building, Nugroho said.

PT IMIP said in a statement on Sunday that the furnace was under maintenance and not operating at the time of the accident. However, “residual slag in the furnace” came in contact “with flammable items,” causing the furnace walls to collapse and the remaining steel slag to flow out.

Rescuers extinguished the fire and evacuated workers after a nearly four-hour operation, Kurniawan said.

About 44 workers are still being treated at a hospital and the company’s clinic on Tuesday with serious to minor injuries, including 11 Chinese nationals, Kurniawan said.

In a news briefing on Monday, Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning expressed condolences for the victims and said that China is “saddened by the casualties caused by the accident.”

She said her ministry is working closely with authorities in Indonesia and has instructed the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta to assist in the aftermath, including ensuring medical treatment is provided to the injured and helping to determine the cause of the accident.

It was the third deadly incident this year at Chinese-owned nickel smelting plants in Central Sulawesi province, which has the largest nickel reserves in Indonesia.

Two dump truck operators were killed when they were engulfed by a wall of black sludge-like material following the collapse of a nickel waste disposal site in April.

In January, two workers, including a Chinese national, were killed in riots that involved workers of the two nations at an Indonesia-China joint venture in neighboring North Morowali regency.

Last year, a loader truck ran over and killed a Chinese worker while he was repairing a road in PT IMIP’s mining area, and an Indonesian man burned to death when a furnace in the company’s factory exploded.

Nearly 50% of PT IMIP’s shares are owned by a Chinese holding company, and the rest are owned by two Indonesian companies. It began smelter operations in 2013 and is now the largest nickel-based industrial area in Indonesia.

BETHLEHEM: The typically bustling biblical birthplace of Jesus resembled a ghost town Sunday after Christmas Eve celebrations in Bethlehem were called off due to the Israel-Hamas war.

The festive lights and Christmas tree that normally decorate Manger Square were missing, as were the throngs of foreign tourists and jubilant youth marching bands that gather in the West Bank town each year to mark the holiday. Dozens of Palestinian security forces patrolled the empty square.

“This year, without the Christmas tree and lights, there’s just darkness,” said Brother John Vinh, a Franciscan monk from Vietnam who has lived in Jerusalem for six years.

Vinh said he always comes to Bethlehem to mark Christmas, but this year was especially sobering. He gazed at a nativity scene in Manger Square with a baby Jesus wrapped in a white shroud, reminiscent of the thousands of children killed in the fighting in Gaza.

Barbed wire surrounded the scene, the grey rubble reflecting none of the joyous lights and bursts of color that normally fill the square during the Christmas season. Cold, rainy weather added to the grim mood.

The cancellation of Christmas festivities was a severe blow to the town’s economy. Tourism accounts for an estimated 70% of Bethlehem’s income — almost all of that during the Christmas season.

With many major airlines canceling flights to Israel, few foreigners are visiting. Local officials say over 70 hotels in Bethlehem were forced to close, leaving thousands of people unemployed.

Gift shops were slow to open on Christmas Eve, although a few did once the rain had stopped pouring down. There were few visitors, however.

“We can’t justify putting out a tree and celebrating as normal when some people (in Gaza) don’t even have houses to go to,” said Ala’a Salameh, one of the owners of Afteem Restaurant, a family-owned falafel restaurant just steps from the square.

Salameh said Christmas Eve is usually the busiest day of the year.

“Normally, you can’t find a single chair to sit on, we’re full from morning till midnight,” said Salameh. On Sunday morning, just one table was taken, by journalists taking a break from the rain.

Under a banner that read “Bethlehem’s Christmas bells ring for a cease-fire in Gaza,” a few teenagers offered small inflatable Santas, but no one was buying.

Instead of their traditional march through the streets of Bethlehem, young scouts stood silently with flags. A group of local students unfurled a massive Palestinian flag as they stood in silence.

An organist with the Church of the Nativity choir, Shukry Mubarak, said the group changed much of the traditional Christmas musical repertoire from joyful holiday songs to more solemn hymns in minor keys.

“Our message every year on Christmas is one of peace and love, but this year it’s a message of sadness, grief, and anger in front of the international community with what is happening and going on in the Gaza Strip,” Bethlehem’s mayor, Hana Haniyeh, said in an address to the crowd.

Dr. Joseph Mugasa, a pediatrician, was one of the few international visitors. He said his tour group of 15 people from Tanzania was “determined” to come to the region despite the situation.

“I’ve been here several times, and it’s quite a unique Christmas, as usually there’s a lot of people and a lot of celebrations,” he said. “But you can’t celebrate while people are suffering, so we are sad for them and praying for peace.”

More than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 50,000 wounded during Israel’s air and ground offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers, according to health officials there, while some 85% of the territory’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced.

The war was triggered by Hamas’ deadly assault on Oct. 7 on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took more than 240 hostages.

The Gaza war has been accompanied by a surge in West Bank violence, with some 300 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire.

The fighting has affected life across the Israeli-occupied territory. Since Oct. 7, access to Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns in the West Bank has been difficult, with long lines of motorists waiting to pass military checkpoints. The restrictions have also prevented tens of thousands of Palestinians from exiting the territory to work in Israel.

Amir Michael Giacaman opened his store, “Il Bambino,” which sells olive wood carvings and other souvenirs, for the first time since Oct. 7. There have been no tourists, and few residents have money to spare because those who worked in Israel have been stuck at home.

“When people have extra money, they go buy food,” said his wife, Safa Giacaman. “This year, we’re telling the Christmas story. We’re celebrating Jesus, not the tree, not Santa Claus, she said, as their daughter Mikaella ran around the deserted store.

The fighting in Gaza was on the minds of the small Christian community in Syria, which is coping with a civil war now in its 13th year. Christians said they were trying to find joy, despite the ongoing strife in their homeland and Gaza.

“Where is the love? What have we done with love?” said the Rev. Elias Zahlawi, a priest in Yabroud, a city about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Damascus. “We’ve thrown God outside the realm of humanity and unfortunately, the church has remained silent in the face of this painful reality.”

Some tried to find inspiration in the spirit of Christmas.

Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, arriving from Jerusalem for the traditional procession to the Church of the Nativity, told the sparse crowd that Christmas was a “reason to hope” despite the war and violence.

The pared-down Christmas was in keeping with the original message of the holiday and illustrated the many ways the community is coming together, said Stephanie Saldaña, who is originally from San Antonio, Texas, and has lived in Jerusalem and Bethlehem for the past 15 years with her husband, a parish priest at the St Joseph Syriac Catholic Church.

“We feel Christmas as more real than ever because we’re waiting for the prince of peace to come. We are waiting for a miracle to stop this war,” Saldaña said.