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Israel destroys 1,000 Arab homes in Negev region

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A bulldozer demolishes a house in Jabel Mukaber, a Palestinian suburb of East Jerusalem, on February 5, 2014. | Photo: Reuters

A bulldozer demolishes a house in Jabel Mukaber, a Palestinian suburb of East Jerusalem, on February 5, 2014. Photo: Reuters

by teleSUR

Demolition policy has long been used by Israel to intimidate Palestinians and their families.

Israeli authorities have destroyed 1,000 Arab homes in the southern region of the Negev in 2014 alone, according to news reports on Monday.

“Israeli security institutions destroyed Arab houses in order to put pressure on Arabs to leave their lands,” said Usama al-Uqaibi, the head of the Islamic Movement in South Israel. “They destroy the Palestinians and their properties,” he added, according to the Turkish news agency Anadolu and the Middle East Monitor.

Israel has long had a demolition policy used to intimidate Palestinians and their families by destroying their homes. It was last officially in effect over a decade ago during the Second Intifada when, according to Israeli officials, it discouraged acts of “extremism,” such as suicide bombing, by threatening to retaliate against their families.

However, the Israeli defense minister stopped employing the policy as a means to address such actions in 2005, after violence receded and people began to question the legitimacy and efficacy of the demolitions, according to The New Republic.

According to Palestinian officials, the practice of demolitions have remained, particularly in towns across the Negev region. However the practice is being used instead to intimidate Arabs off what Israel considers to be its land, even though many Palestinians have been living there for over 60 years.

Al-Uqaibi said the Palestinians in Negev would continue their resistance against Israeli forces and remain on their land.

Demolitions were also used earlier this year after two Palestinian men entered a synagogue in Jerusalem and stabbed several worshipers. Though the assailants were killed by police at the scene of the crime, officials also demolished the homes of their families the next day. This has raised concerns that the controversial deterrence policy would officially resume.

At the beginning of the month, the Israeli Supreme Court heard arguments demanding an end to the demolitions, but it has yet to rule on the matter.

Tensions have increased again in the region after Israel broke a ceasefire agreement on Friday and fired into Gaza, reportedly hitting Hamas targets. Israeli officials said the airstrikes were in response to rockets launched from Gaza into an uninhabited region in the south of Israel.

On Monday, Israeli officials reported that more rockets were fired out of Gaza into the Mediterranean Sea.

UAE's first nuclear plant to start in 2017

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Soaring energy use and inadequate gas supplies have spurred the UAE to look to nuclear power. Photo: Shutterstock

Soaring energy use and inadequate gas supplies have spurred the UAE to look to nuclear power. Photo: Shutterstock

by Al Akhbar

The first of four nuclear reactors being built by the United Arab Emirates will become operational in 2017 and the rest will be fully functional by 2020, an official said Monday.

“When they are fully operational in 2020, they will generate 25 percent of UAE power needs,” the CEO of the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corp (ENEC), Mohammed al-Hammadi, told an energy conference in Abu Dhabi.

Hammadi said that 61 percent of the first reactor has been completed and it is slated to start production in 2017, while work is underway on the second and third reactors as the site is being prepared for the fourth. The second reactor will come on line in 2018, the third the following year and the last in 2020.

ENEC’s CEO added that his firm has signed a $3 billion contract with international firms to provide fuel for the plants over 15 years.

In 2009, an international consortium led by the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp won a $20.4 billion (15.8 billion euro) deal to build four nuclear power plants in Baraka, west of Abu Dhabi. Under the biggest single contract Seoul has ever won abroad, South Korean firms including Samsung, Hyundai and Doosan Heavy Industries are building the four 1,400-megawatt reactors.

Also in 2009, UAE signed an agreement with the United States on nuclear cooperation, paving the way for the Gulf state to acquire nuclear technology.

According to Hamadi, another five percent of UAE electricity needs will be provided by renewable energy sources by 2020, helping the Gulf state to cut 12 million tons of carbon emissions.

Oil-rich UAE, pumping 2.8 million barrels per day of crude oil, opened the world’s largest operating plant of concentrated solar power in Abu Dhabi in March, which has the capacity to provide electricity to 20,000 homes.

Progress in UAE’s nuclear program comes at a time when Iran and world powers are negotiating to end a standoff over Tehran’s nuclear goals. The Islamic Republic insists that its program is for peaceful purposes, aiming at producing atomic energy to reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.

However, the West and Israel insist the fuel could be enriched to produce a bomb. Consequently, they imposed international sanctions on Iran that have crippled the country’s economy.

Unlike Iran, the UAE is a key Western ally and has avoided international scrutiny over its program.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

In latest attack on Palestinian heritage, Israel reopens museum in old mosque

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Palestinians praying under a mosque in Gaza destroyed in the 51-day Israeli summer offensive. Photo: Anadolu

Palestinians praying under a mosque in Gaza destroyed in the 51-day Israeli summer offensive. Photo: Anadolu

by Al Akhbar

In the latest Israeli efforts to stifle Palestinian culture, authorities in the Israeli-occupied city of Beersheba recently converted a historical mosque into an Islamic museum, despite the fact that 10,000 local Palestinian Muslims have nowhere to pray, locals said.

Locals told Ma’an news agency that an exhibit showcasing a collection of Muslim prayer rugs was recently opened in the building that was formerly the Great Mosque of Beersheba, which was once used regularly as a house of worship before the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land in 1948.

The exhibit, which locals say has no Arab or Muslim member on the technical supervisory team, will continue until June 2015.

The move comes after decades of protest from the area’s 10,000-strong Palestinian Muslim community, composed primarily of local Bedouins whose ancestors survived the Israeli expulsions as well as Palestinian with Israeli citizenship who have moved to the city from other parts of the country.

Representatives of the community have long petitioned Israeli authorities to allow them to open the mosque for daily prayers or at least once a week for Friday prayers. However, their demands were repeatedly rejected.

The Great Mosque of Beersheba, a town originally known as Bir al-Sabaa, was built in 1906 during the Ottoman era with donations collected from the Bedouin residents of the Negev.

It remained an active mosque until the Israelis occupied the city in 1948 and turned it into a detention center and headquarters for a magistrate court, following the expulsion of Beersheba’s approximately 6,000 Palestinian residents, most of whom fled to Gaza.

Thousands of Jewish immigrants were subsequently brought in to populate the city, while the Palestinian refugees were never allowed to return, despite many of them living only kilometers away.

In 1953, the Israeli authorities turned a portion of the mosque into a museum, which was recognized in 1987 by the Israeli department of archeology as the Negev Museum.

In 1992, the museum was shut down because the building had become vulnerable. However, it was retrofitted recently, paving the way for its reuse.

On December 10, Israel resumed excavations in a Muslim graveyard in West Jerusalem as part of the “Museum of Tolerance” project.

So far in 2014, Israel has demolished more than 543 Palestinian structures and displaced at least 1,266 people, according to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions estimates that Israeli authorities have demolished about 27,000 Palestinian structures in the West Bank since 1967.

A recent statement from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiation Affairs department said that “despite its small size, Palestine has an abundance of historical, religious and cultural heritage sites. Every inch of this land has a story to tell, every hill the scene of a battle, and every stone a monument or a tomb. One cannot understand the geography of Palestine without knowing its history and one cannot understand its history without understanding its geography.”

But Israel has systematically tried to obliterate, annex and confiscate Palestinian sites as it seeks to strip the land it occupies of its Palestinian identity.

Palestinians accuse Israel of heritage theft as Israeli authorities, besides taking over Palestinian lands and properties, deliberately target sites that have historical importance and provide evidence of Palestinian heritage and culture.

Following Israel’s summer offensive against Gaza, many of Strip’s ancient sites, including houses of worship, tombs and cemeteries, were left in ruins.

Gaza’s historic mosques, dating back to the time of the first Islamic caliphs and the Ottoman Empire, were the worst affected.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, Israel targeted mosques on purpose, partially damaging 130 mosques and completely destroying 73.

The destruction of Gaza’s ancient mosques has brought the total losses incurred by the religious affairs ministry to an estimated $50 million.

Gaza’s only three churches were also damaged during the latest conflict, including the oldest church in the Gaza Strip, the Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, which dates back to the 1150s.

Moreover, settler violence against Palestinians and their property is also systematic and often abetted by Israeli authorities, who rarely intervene in the violent attacks or prosecute the perpetrators.

On November 12, a group of Israeli settlers broke in and torched a mosque in the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Witnesses, who went to the mosque at around 4:40 am to perform dawn prayers, said the settlers burnt 12 copies of the Qur’an, Islam’s holy book, and set the carpets of the first floor of the two-story building on fire.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there were at least 399 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in 2013.

Israeli authorities have also allowed Zionist settlers to take over homes in Palestinian neighborhoods both in annexed East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and announced plans to build thousands of settlements strictly for Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem while ignoring Palestinian residents.

In addition, Israeli settlers and military forces also regularly sabotage, burn and uproot hundreds of thousands of olive trees, which are highly symbolic for the Palestinian community.

In order to build its apartheid wall and infrastructure for Israeli-only settle­ments, Israeli bulldozers plowed down more than 800,000 olive trees in the West Bank, the equivalent of bulldozing all of New York City’s Central Park 33 times.

Israeli tourism

Besides destroying historical sites, Israel encroaches on Palestinian spaces and heritage in the name of tourism.

Following its expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, Israel rewrote maps, changed the names of Palestinian towns and streets, and tailored their own versions of history very early on so as to counter future generation of Palestinians.

On Sunday, the Israeli parliament’s finance committee voted through $3.3 million to build a tourist center in a settlement in the occupied West Bank, a statement said.

The money is for a project at the Barkan settlement in the north of the Palestinian territory, the Knesset statement said.

According to the Palestinian Authority (PA), besides it being an effective tool in oppressing the Palestinian narrative and rewriting history, tourism is one of the basic grounds upon which the Israeli economy is built.

Palestinian tour guides or transportation companies haven’t been able to enter the Israeli-occupied territories since 2000. From over 240 tourist guides licensed to work all over Palestine before occupation, only 42 have permits to guide in Israel, which are renewed periodically and without guarantee.

In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, the PA says Israel collects about 90 percent of revenue related to pilgrims and tourists.

Sunday’s vote came less than three months before a snap general election on March 17 backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but denounced by the opposition.

Centrist Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid, sacked by Netanyahu as finance minister on December 2, called Sunday’s finance committee vote “electoral corruption.”

“Netanyahu wants to please the settler lobby before the elections,” he told the private television station Channel 10.

The expansion of Israeli settlements remains a major stumbling block to peace with the Palestinians. According to international law, settlements on occupied land are illegal.

In November, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Israel will never agree to limit its illegal settlement building in annexed East Jerusalem, a day after the PLO said in a statement on Independence Day that the “possibility of a two-state solution is quickly fading away” because of Israel’s settlement plans.

According to the PLO, between 1989 and 2014, the number of Israeli settlers on Palestinian land soared from 189,900 to nearly 600,000. These settlements, meanwhile, are located between and around Palestinians towns and villages, making a contiguous state next to impossible.

While major Palestinian cities have boomed in the past 26 years, Israeli confiscation of land in border regions has continued unabated.

According to a UN report published in early December, the PA lost at least $310 million in customs and sales tax in 2011 as a result of importing from or through Israeli-occupied territories.

Last year, the World Bank estimated that Israeli control over Area C – the 61 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli military control – costs the Palestinian economy around $3.4 billion annually, or more than one-third of the Palestinian Authority’s GDP.

The roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict date back to 1917, when the British government, in the now-infamous “Balfour Declaration,” called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Zionist state – a move never recognized by the international community.

In November 1988, Palestinian leaders led by Arafat declared the existence of a State of Palestine inside the 1967 borders and the State’s belief “in the settlement of international and regional disputes by peaceful means in accordance with the charter and resolutions of the United Nations.”

Heralded as a “historic compromise,” the move implied that Palestinians would agree to accept only 22 percent, believed to have become 17 percent after massive Israeli settlement building, of historic Palestine in exchange for peace with Israel.

On the 26th anniversary of the treaty’s signing, the PLO said in a statement in November that despite the 1988 ‘“compromise,” Israel had since failed to be “a partner in peace,” adding that the Israeli expansion and colonization of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has dimmed the prospect of a two-state solution.

“Israel responded by colonizing more of our land and entrenching its control over the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. The possibility of a two-state solution is quickly fading away,” the statement read.

(Al-Akhbar, AFP, Ma’an)

Pakistan to execute 500 terror convicts

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The decision to reinstate the death penalty for terror cases following a school massacre is condemned by human rights groups.

The feet of a victim of a Taliban attack in a school are tied together at a local hospital in Peshawar — AP

The feet of a victim of a Taliban attack in a school are tied together at a local hospital in Peshawar — AP

by Sky News

Pakistan plans to execute around 500 militants after the government lifted a moratorium on the death penalty in terror cases.

It comes after Taliban gunmen killed 149 people, including 133 children, in a school massacre in the northwestern city of Peshawar last week.

Six militants have been hanged since Friday amid rising public anger over the slaughter.

Around nine gunmen stormed the army-run school on 16 December taking teachers and students hostage and killing them in classrooms.

After the deadliest terror attack in Pakistani history, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ended the six-year moratorium on the death penalty, reinstating it for terrorism-related cases.

“Interior ministry has finalised the cases of 500 convicts who have exhausted all the appeals, their mercy petitions have been turned down by the president and their executions will take place in coming weeks,” a senior government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Of the six hanged so far, five were involved in a failed attempt to assassinate the then-military ruler Pervez Musharraf in 2003, while one was involved in a 2009 attack on army headquarters.

Police, troops and paramilitary Rangers have been deployed across the country and airports and prisons put on red alert as the executions take place and troops intensify operations against Taliban militants in northwestern tribal areas.

Mr Sharif has ordered the attorney general’s office to “actively pursue” capital cases currently in the courts, a government spokesman said.

The decision to reinstate executions has been condemned by human rights groups, with the United Nations also calling for it to reconsider.

Human Rights Watch described the executions “a craven politicised reaction to the Peshawar killings” and demanded that no further hangings be carried out.

Pakistan began its de facto moratorium on civilian executions in 2008, but hanging remains on the statute books and judges continue to pass death sentences.

Before Friday’s resumption, only one person had been executed since then – a soldier convicted by a court martial and hanged in November 2012.

Pakistan executes convicts Dr Usman, Arshad Mehmood in Faisalabad after Peshwar attack

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hanging

by Mateen Haider, Dawn

Faisalabad: Aqeel alias Dr Usman and Arshad Mehmood have been executed in Faisalabad on Friday night, in the first capital punishment carried out in the country since Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif lifted the moratorium on the death penalty, sources said.

Usman a former soldier of the army’s medical corps, was executed in relation to an attack on the headquarters of the Pakistan Army in 2009 in Rawalpindi. Arshad Mehmood, was executed for an assassination attempt on former military ruler, General (retd.) Pervez Musharraf.

“Aqeel alias Usman and Arshad were hanged in Faisalabad Jail at 9:00 pm,” a Punjab govt source told Reuters.

Security had been tightened at Faisalabad’s central and district prisons ahead of the executions.

The black warrant for Dr Usman was signed by Army Chief General Raheel Sharif late on Thursday night.

The prime minister had lifted the moratorium a day after terrorists attacked Peshawar’s Army Public School, killing 141 people, most of them children.

Earlier on Friday, the UN human rights office had made an appeal to refrain from resuming executions, saying this would not stop terrorism and might even feed a “cycle of revenge”.

“To its great credit, Pakistan has maintained a de facto moratorium on the death penalty since 2008, and we urge the government not to succumb to widespread calls for revenge, not least because those at most risk of execution in the coming days are people convicted of different crimes, and can have had nothing to do with Wednesday’s premeditated slaughter,” UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said.

Eleven soldiers had lost their lives in the Oct 10, 2009 attack when 10 heavily armed militants wearing suicide vests stormed the army’s General Headquarter (GHQ) holding off commandos for hours.

Dr Usman, who was caught injured during the Oct 10 raid on the army headquarters by militants, was sentenced to death in 2011 by a military court which had awarded prison terms to others in the GHQ attack case.

A retired soldier, Imran Siddiq, was awarded life imprisonment in the case at the time whereas three civilians — Khaliqur Rehman, Mohammad Usman and Wajid Mehmood — were given life terms while two others, Mohammad Adnan and Tahir Shafiq (both civilians), were given eight and seven years jail sentence respectively.

Apart from Dr Usman, who was caught during the attack, other serviceman and five civilians were found guilty of abetment.

Their trial by the military court, which was headed by a brigadier, had lasted over five months and had taken place at an undisclosed location.

Mehmood, who was a trooper, was among the five sentenced to be hanged for their role in an Al Qaeda-inspired assassination attempt on Musharraf’s life in late 2003.

Musharraf, who was in power at the time, narrowly escaped the bid when two suicide car bombers rammed his motorcade on Dec 25, 2003, in Rawalpindi. Fifteen people were killed in that attack.

It was the second attempt on Musharraf’s life that month, and several soldiers, air force personnel and militants were arrested after the two attacks.

Mehmood and civilians Zubair Ahmed, Rashid Bhatti, Rashid Qureshi, Ghulam Sarwar and Akhlaque Ahmed were convicted in the case.

WHO: one million people wounded in Syria as diseases continue to spread

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A medic stitches the head of a wounded Syrian boy at a makeshift clinic after a mortar reportedly fell in the besieged rebel town of Douma, 13 kilometers (eight miles) northeast of Damascus, on November 11, 2014. AFP/ Abd Doumany

A medic stitches the head of a wounded Syrian boy at a makeshift clinic after a mortar reportedly fell in the besieged rebel town of Douma, 13 kilometers (eight miles) northeast of Damascus, on November 11, 2014. AFP/ Abd Doumany

One million people have been wounded during the nearly four-year old Syrian war, and diseases are spreading as regular supplies of medicine fail to reach patients, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Syria representative said.

A plunge in vaccination rates from 90 percent before the war to 52 percent this year and contaminated water has added to the woes, allowing typhoid and hepatitis to spread, Elizabeth Hoff said in an interview late on Thursday.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in Syria’s conflict, which began in March 2011 with popular protests against President Bashar al-Assad and spiraled into a war.

“In Syria, they have a million people injured as a direct result of the war. You can see it in the country when you travel around. You see a lot of amputees,” said Hoff. “This is the biggest problem.”

She said a collapsed health system, where over half of public hospitals are out of service, has meant that treatments for diseases and injuries are irregular.

“What has been a problem is the regularity of supply,” she said. “The (government) approvals are sporadic.”

Hoff said that Assad’s government – which demands to sign off on aid convoys – is still blocking surgical supplies, such as bandages and syringes, from entering rebel-held areas, arguing that the equipment would be used to help insurgents.

Syrian officials could not be reached for comment on Thursday or Friday.

More than 6,500 cases of typhoid were reported this year across Syria and 4,200 cases of measles, the deadliest disease for Syrian children, Hoff said.

There was just one reported case of polio, which can paralyze children within hours, in 2014 following a vaccination drive. However, other new diseases appeared, including myiasis, a tropical disease spread by flies which is also known as screw-worm, with 10 cases seen in the outskirts of Damascus.

Syrian activists in the Eastern Ghouta district of Damascus said that tuberculosis was also spreading due to poor sanitary conditions and a government siege on the area, blocking aid.

The United Nations called on Thursday for more than $8.4 billion to help nearly 18 million people in need in Syria and across the region in 2015.

Hoff said that the WHO delivered more than 13.5 million treatments of life-saving medicines and medical supplies in 2014, up nearly threefold from the year before.

However, Hoff added that “the needs are not possible to believe,” saying that the problems were growing at an even faster pace with poor water access and deepening poverty worsening the health crisis.

A UN refugee agency (UNHCR) report published in mid-November shows that about 7.2 million people have been displaced within Syria, many without food or shelter as winter has started.

The report also estimates that some 3.3 million Syrian refugees live abroad, most of them living in squalid informal camps, exposed to the heat of summer and cold of winter.

(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)

UN agencies appeal for $8.4 million to address Syrian refugee crisis

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Displaced Syrian children stand in muddy water after heavy rains in the Bab al-Salama camp for people fleeing the violence in Syria on December 11, 2014, on the border with Turkey. AFP / Baraa al-Halabi

Displaced Syrian children stand in muddy water after heavy rains in the Bab al-Salama camp for people fleeing the violence in Syria on December 11, 2014, on the border with Turkey. AFP / Baraa al-Halabi

by Al Akhbar

The UN appealed on Thursday for $8.4 billion to provide emergency aid and longer-term help to nearly 18 million people in Syria and across the region hit by the drawn-out conflict.

Meanwhile, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF appealed for $900 million to help children affected by the war in Syria.

For the first time, the United Nations’ appeal includes funding for life-saving food, shelter and other humanitarian aid, as well as development support, as the bloody war in Syria heads towards a fifth year.

UN agencies said at the appeal launch in Berlin that $2.9 billion (2.4 billion euros) were needed to help 12.2 million people inside Syria in 2015.

A further $5.5 billion is eyed for Syrians who have sought refuge in neighboring countries and for more than a million people in host communities, it said.

The Berlin appeal for Syria is slightly higher than an indicative amount announced in Geneva earlier this month, which did not include funding needs of neighboring countries.

The UN is planning for up to 4.3 million refugees in countries neighboring Syria by the end of 2015, it added.

“For those that think that this is a lot of money, I don’t remember any bailout of any medium-sized bank that has cost less than this,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told reporters.

He warned that refugees and people displaced inside Syria had exhausted their savings and that host countries were at “breaking point.”

United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said Syria had slumped from a middle income country to struggling with widespread poverty.

“People affected by conflict need food, shelter, water, medicine and protection. But they also need support in rebuilding their livelihoods, maintaining education and health services and rebuilding fragmented communities,” Amos, UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said.

“The conflict in Syria is not only destroying people’s lives today but will continue to erode their capacity to cope far into the future if we don’t take a more holistic approach now,” she added.

Germany hosted an international conference on the Syrian refugee crisis in October which vowed to extend long-term financial aid to countries such as Lebanon and Jordan struggling under the influx of millions of Syrian refugees.

“The humanitarian crisis in Syria and the neighboring countries poses a threat to the stability of the whole region,” Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Thursday.

“This is a call to the solidarity of all nations, and my country is willing to do its part,” he added.

UNICEF asks for $900 million for Syrian children

The appeal comes hours after the UNICEF said it needs more than $900 million to help children affected by the war in Syria next year, and appealed to donors for support.

“The Syria crisis represents the biggest threat to children of recent times,” UNICEF’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, Maria Calivis, said ahead of the major UN appeal for Syrian refugees. “By the end of 2015, the lives of over 8.6 million children across the region will have been torn apart by violence and forced displacement.”

Calivis said the agency’s plans for next year include doubling both the number of Syrian children with access to safe water and sanitation, and the number with access to education.

The agency will continue vaccination campaigns against polio, she said, and deliver care including cash grants and winter clothing to the families of some 850,000 children affected by the conflict.

“These commitments – costed at $903 million (732 million euros) – represent the bare minimum,” she said, calling on supporters “to help us make these commitments a reality.”

Earlier in December, UNICEF declared 2014 a devastating year for children with as many as 15 million caught in conflicts in Palestine, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Central African Republic, and Ukraine.

A UN panel investigating war crimes in Syria cited in a report in November cases of abductions, rape and other forms of sexual and physical violence against women and children, including the forced recruitment of minors by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

The UN report also said that the US-led airstrikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq “have led to some civilian casualties,” including scores of children.

Syria’s conflict, which evolved from mass demonstrations against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to a war that has left more than 200,000 dead, has forced more than half of the country’s population to flee their homes.

A UN refugee agency (UNHCR) report published mid November shows that about 13.6 million people have been displaced by conflict in Syria and Iraq, many without food or shelter as winter starts. The 13.6 include 7.2 million displaced within Syria, in addition to the estimated 3.3 million Syrian refugees abroad.

On December 9, the World Food Program (WFP) announced that the UN will resume food aid to Syrian refugees in neighboring countries, following a campaign to raise funds for a halted program offering food vouchers.

The announcement came after a campaign by the WFP seeking funds to cover a $64 million shortfall which had forced the agency to suspend the program at the beginning of December.

Amnesty International announced this month that wealthy nations have only taken in a “pitiful” number of the millions of refugees uprooted by Syria’s conflict, placing the burden on the country’s ill-equipped neighbors.

“Around 3.8 million refugees from Syria are being hosted in five main countries within the region: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt,” said Amnesty.

“Only 1.7 percent of this number have been offered sanctuary by the rest of the world,” the rights group added.

It is worth noting that the US House of Representatives adopted a $584.2 billion annual defense spending bill on December, which includes emergency funding for military operations against ISIS and training and equipping the so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels. However, it doesn’t include providing any humanitarian assistance to Syrian refugees.

The US annual defense bill could secure WFP’s humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees for roughly 700 years.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

Israel detains Palestinian student, child as house demolitions continue

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Debris of a Palestinian building demolished by Israeli forces in annexed East Jerusalem on December 01, 2014. Anadolu / Salih Zeki Fazlıoğlu

Debris of a Palestinian building demolished by Israeli forces in annexed East Jerusalem on December 01, 2014. Anadolu / Salih Zeki Fazlıoğlu

by Al Akhbar

Israeli forces detained a 17-year-old student and an 11-year-old child in Jerusalem, witnesses told Ma’an news agency Wednesday, as Israeli demolition orders could leave 70 Palestinians homeless.

That same day, Israeli soldiers arrested a former Palestinian prisoner who had been previously been released as part of a prisoner swap deal.

According to witnesses, Israeli forces detained Dalia Murad Mohammed Qarawi, 17, while she was on her way home from school in annexed East Jerusalem.

Israeli forces claimed Qarawi sprayed “a substance” on a police vehicle and was thus taken for interrogation at an Israeli police station on Salah al-Din street.

Meanwhile, 11-year-old Baraa Issam Shahin was detained by Israeli forces on Ein al-Luza street in the Silwan neighborhood of annexed East Jerusalem and was taken to the Russian Compound detention center in West Jerusalem for interrogation.

It is still unclear why Shahin was detained.

Early December, Israeli forces detained two Palestinian children, 8 and 12, also in Silwan.

Unrest has gripped Jerusalem and the West Bank on an almost daily basis for the past five months, flaring up after a group of Zionist settlers kidnapped and burned a young Palestinian to death because of his ethnicity, and worsened by the deadly Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in July and August.

In late November, executive director of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) Abdullah al-Zaghari said Israeli forces detained nine-month-old Balqis Ghawadra and two-year-old Baraa Ghawadra during a visit to see their jailed father. The two children were released the following day.

At least 600 Palestinian children have been arrested in annexed Jerusalem alone since last June.

According to a recent report by the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC), nearly 40 percent of these children have been subjected to sexual abuse during arrest or investigation by the Israeli authorities.

At least 300 minors are currently behind bars.

Around 95 percent of detained children were subjected to beatings and torture by Israeli security personnel while in detention, while many were forced to make confessions under duress and undergo unfair trials, said Issa Qaraqe, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) committee on detainees.

More than 10,000 Palestinian minors in the occupied West Bank and annexed Jerusalem have been held by the Israeli army for varying periods since 2000, a PLO official said last month.

According to the UN children’s fund (UNICEF), over the past decade, Israel has detained “an average of two children each day.”

In its 2013 report, UNICEF added that Israel was the only country in the world where children were “systematically tried” in military courts and gave evidence of practices it said were “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.”

A report by Defense for Children International (DCI) published in May 2014 revealed that Israel jails 20 percent of Palestinian children it detains in solitary confinement.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces on Wednesday arrested Ibtisam al-Issawi, 46, during a raid on her home in the Jabal al-Mukkabir neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem.

The head of a Palestinian committee dedicated to prisoners’ and detainees’ families, Amjad Abu Asab, told Ma’an that Israeli forces raided Issawi’s house before arresting her and taking her to the Russian Compound detention center.

Abu Asab added that Issawi was released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal after spending 10 years in Israeli jails, and that she is married and has six children.

Issawi is one of more than 70 former prisoners released in the 2011 exchange that have been re-detained by Israel since the summer.

The deal traded Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas fighters on the Gaza Strip border in 2006, for 1,027 Palestinians and Palestinian with Israeli citizenship being held in Israeli jails.

The detention and retrial of the released prisoners is a breach of the deal and could potentially have wide-reaching consequences for other freed detainees.

More than 6,500 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli jails.

On Wednesday, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said 21 Palestinian women, including three minors, are currently held in Israeli jails.

Israel threatens to demolish 62 percent of Silwan houses

Also in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, Israeli forces delivered Wednesday demolition orders to 11 Palestinian houses, some as old as 30 years, saying they have been built “without permits.”

Fakhri Abu Diab, a member in the committee for the Defense of Silwan Lands and Estates, told Ma’an that at least 70 people will become homeless if the houses get demolished.

Abu Diab said that in the past few days more and more orders have been delivered, and even in some cases to houses that were built before the 1967 occupation of Jerusalem.

Moreover, Abu Diab accused the Israeli authorities of seeking to displace Palestinian residents in order to take over the neighborhood, adding that over 62 percent of houses in Silwan are under the threat of demolition.

So far in 2014, Israel has demolished more than 543 Palestinian structures and displaced at least 1,266 people, according to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).

Local and international watchdogs have widely criticized Israel’s home demolition policy, saying that it contributes to a cycle of violence and merely inflicts collective punishment on family members.

Besides demolishing Palestinian properties, Israeli authorities have allowed Zionist settlers to take over Palestinian homes, have announced plans to build thousands of settlements strictly for Israeli settlers, and have generally looked the other way at rising violence by Zionist settlers against Palestinians.

According to Abu Diab, many Israeli settlers build houses without permits but none received demolition orders.

More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law.

Jerusalem Palestinians also face discrimination in all aspects of life including housing, employment, and services, and although they live within territory Israel has unilaterally annexed, they lack citizenship rights and are instead classified only as “residents” whose permits can be revoked if they move away from the city for more than a few years.

Similarly, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank suffer from the demolition policy.

In May, the European Union missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah urged Israel to halt home demolitions in Area C of the occupied West Bank, describing such actions as “forced transfer of population.”

Israeli authorities rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in the Israeli-occupied areas, including in Area C, which amounts to 80 percent of the total land area.

The World Bank estimated in 2013 that Israeli control over Area C costs the Palestinian economy around $3.4 billion annually, or more than one-third of the Palestinian Authority’s GDP.

According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the Israeli authorities have demolished at least 27,000 Palestinian structures in the West Bank since 1967.

The roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict date back to 1917, when the British government, in the now-infamous “Balfour Declaration,” called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Zionist state – a move never recognized by the international community.

(Al-Akhbar, Ma’an)

Pakistan Taliban storm Peshawar school, 130 killed

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The feet of a victim of a Taliban attack in a school are tied together at a local hospital in Peshawar — AP

The feet of a victim of a Taliban attack in a school are tied together at a local hospital in Peshawar — AP

by BBC

At least 126 people, mostly children, have been killed in a Taliban assault on an army-run school in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, officials say.

Five or six militants are said to have entered the building. Five are reported to have been killed, at least one of them in a suicide blast.

The army says most of the school’s 500 students have been evacuated. It is not clear how many are being held hostage.

The attack is being seen as one of the worst yet in Pakistan.

The BBC’s Aamer Ahmed Khan in Islamabad says the killing of schoolchildren has caused unprecedented shock.

Thousands of Pakistanis have been killed in militant violence in recent years.

A spokesman for the militants says the school was targeted in response to army operations.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters are thought to have died in a recent military offensive in North Waziristan and the nearby Khyber area.

A student cries on a man’s shoulder, after he was rescued from the Army Public School – Reuters

Many of the casualties were reportedly caused by a suicide blast. At least 80 of the dead are said to be children.

The attack started at 10:00 local time (05:00 GMT). Mudassir Awan, a worker at the school, said he saw six people scaling the walls of the school.

“We thought it must be the children playing some game,” he told Reuters news agency. “But then we saw a lot of firearms with them.

“As soon as the firing started, we ran to our classrooms,” he said. “They were entering every class and they were killing the children.”

A school worker and a student interviewed by the local Geo TV station said the attackers had entered the Army Public School’s auditorium, where a military team was conducting first-aid training for students.

Locals said they also heard the screams of students and teachers. The dead are said to include teachers, as well as a paramilitary soldier.

Gunfire and loud explosions were heard as security forces hunted down the militants.

Ambulances have been carrying the injured to nearby hospitals. A helicopter is also in the area. Major roads in Peshawar in the city have been sealed off.

A doctor at the local Lady Reading hospital said many of the students were in “very bad condition”, with severe head wounds.

Frantic parents are gathering at hospitals to find out if their children are safe.

The school is at the edge of a military cantonment in Peshawar, which has seen some of the worst of the violence during a Taliban insurgency in recent years.

Many of the students were the children of military personnel. Most of them would have been aged 16 or under.

Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who has just arrived in Peshawar, described the attack as a “national tragedy”.

The Pakistani opposition politician and former cricket captain Imran Khan condemned the attack as “utter barbarism”.

Palestine to submit UN resolution for ending Israeli occupation

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PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat (right), is due to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry within the coming days to discuss ending Israeli occupation. (AFP/File)

PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat (right), is due to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry within the coming days to discuss ending Israeli occupation. (AFP/File)

by Ma’an News Agency

PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said Sunday that a resolution to end the Israeli occupation will be submitted to the UN Security Council “in the coming few hours, or maybe on Monday.”

Erekat told the official Palestinian radio station that he would meet US Secretary of State John Kerry in a European capital in the coming two days.

“We want a clear and specific resolution for a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, resolving all the final status issues, releasing all detainees and refugees and labeling settlement activity illegal and should be stopped immediately, including in Jerusalem,” Erekat said.

Kerry left early Sunday for a series of meetings in Europe seeking to head off an end-of-year UN showdown over the Palestinian bid for statehood.

His first stop was to be Rome where he will meet separately with both Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Diplomats say negotiations on a UN resolution to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects are making little headway, with Europeans waiting for a US response to proposals.

Jordan last month circulated a draft Palestinian text to the Security Council setting November 2016 as a deadline for the end of the Israeli occupation.

But the text ran into opposition from the United States, which has veto power, and other countries that felt it lacked balance, diplomats said. It was never put to a vote.

France stepped in last month to try to cobble together along with Britain and Germany a resolution that would win consensus at the 15-member council.

And the Palestinians have said they would like a draft resolution to go to a vote before the end of the year.

The text would call for a return to negotiations with a view to achieving a two-state solution by which Israel and a Palestinian state would co-exist.

Negotiations have hit hurdles over whether to include a two-year deadline for talks on a final settlement to be completed.

France is also proposing to host an international conference to launch the new peace track.

Window of opportunity

Supporters of a UN resolution are now hoping to win US backing or at least ensure Washington will not oppose the measure — which would be the first text adopted by the council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 2009.

“There is a window of opportunity,” said a European diplomat. “There is a willingness from the Americans to consider options at the UN.”

Kerry led dogged efforts earlier this year to try to reach an Israeli Palestinian peace deal, but the bid collapsed amid bitter recriminations by both sides.

Relations between the US and Israel have been uneasy since, amid a series of spats and behind-the-scenes name-calling.

Kerry is due to meet Lavrov on Sunday, shortly after arriving in Rome. Talks with Netanyahu follow on Monday, after which the top US diplomat is expected to travel on within Europe although no stops have yet been announced.

Russia responded angrily on Saturday to news that US senators had passed a bill calling for fresh sanctions against Moscow and the supply of lethal military aid to Ukraine.

The eight-month conflict in Ukraine between government forces and pro-Russian separatists has left at least 4,634 dead and 10,243 wounded, while displacing more than 1.1 million people, according to the United Nations.

Deputy Russian foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said however the main focus of the Rome meeting — the 17th between the two diplomats this year — would be the Middle East.

The talks come as European parliaments in Britain, France, Spain, Ireland and Portugal have asked their governments to recognize Palestinian statehood — a move that would bypass negotiations.

And the campaign for snap Israeli elections in March is also complicating the regional political landscape.

“There are a lot of different folks pushing in different directions out there, and the question is can we all pull in the same direction,” Kerry said Friday, when asked about his meeting with Netanyahu.

“We’re trying to figure out a way to help defuse the tensions and reduce the potential for more conflict, and we’re exploring various possibilities to that end.”

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