Palestinians return to north Gaza after breakthrough on hostages

DAMASCUS: The lifting of economic sanctions on the Syrian Arab Republic will allow the government to begin work on daunting tasks that include fighting corruption and bringing millions of refugees home, Hind Kabawat, the minister of social affairs and labor, told The Associated Press on Friday.

Kabawat is the only woman and the only Christian in the 23-member cabinet formed in March to steer the country during a transitional period after the ouster of former President Bashar Assad in December.
Her portfolio will be one of the most important as the country begins rebuilding after nearly 14 years of civil war.
She said moves by the US and the EU in the past week to at least temporarily lift most of the sanctions that had been imposed on Syria over the decades will allow that work to get started.
Before, she said, “we would talk, we would make plans, but nothing could happen on the ground because sanctions were holding everything up and restricting our work.”
With the lifting of sanctions, they can move to “implementation.”
One of the first programs the new government is planning to launch is “temporary schools” for the children of refugees and internally displaced people returning to their home areas.
Kabawat said that it will take time for the easing of sanctions to show effects on the ground, particularly since unwinding some of the financial restrictions will involve complicated bureaucracy.
“We are going step by step,” she said.
“We are not saying that anything is easy — we have many challenges — but we can’t be pessimistic. We need to be optimistic.”
The new government’s vision is “that we don’t want either food baskets or tents after five years,” Kabawat said, referring to the country’s dependence on humanitarian aid and many displacement camps.
That may be an ambitious target, given that 90 percent of the country’s population currently lives below the poverty line, according to the UN.
The civil war that began in 2011 also displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million people.
The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates that about half a million have returned to Syria since Assad was ousted.
But the dire economic situation and battered infrastructure have also dissuaded many refugees from coming back.
The widespread poverty also fed into a culture of public corruption that developed in the Assad era, including solicitation of bribes by public employees and shakedowns by security forces at checkpoints.
Syria’s new leaders have pledged to end corruption, but they face an uphill battle. Public employees make salaries far below the cost of living, and the new government has so far been unable to make good on a promise to hike public sector wages by 400 percent.
“How can I fight corruption if the monthly salary is $40 and that is not enough to buy food for 10 days?” Kabawat asked.
Syria’s new rulers, led by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, have been under scrutiny by Western countries over the treatment of Syrian women and religious minorities.
In March, clashes between government security forces and pro-Assad armed groups spiraled into sectarian revenge attacks on members of the Alawite sect to which Assad belongs. Hundreds of civilians were killed.
The government formed a committee to investigate the attacks, which has not yet reported its findings.
Many also criticized the transitional government as giving only token representation to women and minorities.
Apart from Kabawat, the Cabinet includes only one member each from the Druze and Alawite sects and one Kurd.
“Everywhere I travel … the first and last question is, ‘What is the situation of the minorities?’” Kabawat said.
“I can understand the worries of the West about the minorities, but they should also be worried about Syrian men and women as a whole.”
She said the international community’s priority should be to help Syria build its economy and avoid the country falling into “chaos.”
Despite being the only woman in the Cabinet, Kabawat said “now there is a greater opportunity for women” than under Assad and that “today there is no committee being formed that does not have women in it.”
“Syrian women have suffered a lot in these 14 years and worked in all areas,” she said.
“All Syrian men and women need to have a role in rebuilding our institutions.”
She called for those wary of President Al-Sharaa to give him a chance.
The West has warmed to the new president — particularly after his recent high-profile meeting with US President Donald Trump.

LONDON: A medical charity has written to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pleading with him to allow two severely ill children from Gaza to be flown to the UK for lifesaving treatment.

One of the children, three-year-old Haitham, was badly burned when an Israeli airstrike hit the family home, killing his father and pregnant mother, Sky News reported.

He has been left with burns across 35 percent of his body and is being treated in Nasser hospital, the last working medical facility in southern Gaza.

British surgeon Dr. Victoria Rose, who is treating Haitham, said she is worried he might not survive because the hospital no longer has the resources to look after him properly.

“It’s a massive burn for a little guy like this,” Rose said. “He’s so adorable. His eyelids are burnt. His hands are burnt. His feet are burnt.”

Referring to the renewed violence in Gaza, she said: “Every time I come, I say it’s really bad, but this is on a completely different scale now. It’s mass casualties. It’s utter carnage.

“We are incapable of getting through this volume. We don’t have the personnel. We don’t have the medical supplies. And we really don’t have the facilities.

“We are the last standing hospital in the south of Gaza. We really are on our knees now.”

Haitham’s grandfather, Hatem Karara, said Haitham had also suffered internal bleeding.

He said: “What did these children do wrong to suffer such injuries. To be burned and bombed? We ask God to grant them healing.”

The second child identified by the UK-based charity Project Pure Hope is one-year-old Karam, who is suffering from a rare birth defect in which nerves are missing from parts of the bowel.

His protruding intestine could easily be operated on with the right skills and equipment available in the UK.

An initial operation was carried out in Rafah, but when his family was forced to flee to Khan Younis, Karam’s condition worsened, his mother Manal Nayef Mostafa Adra said.

She said a foreign doctor told her that the surgery needs to be redone outside of Gaza.

Omar Dinn, co-founder of Project Pure Hope, said the charity would fully fund bringing the children to the UK.

He said the UK government had made strong statements recently condemning Israel’s killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the blocking of aid supplies, and now had the opportunity to act.

“We’re giving them an action, which is the ability to allow two more children to come to the UK for privately funded medical treatment and to save their lives,” he said.

“If we don’t act for these two children now, it’s very likely that the outcome will be nothing but death.”

Two girls from Gaza with serious health conditions were flown to the UK earlier this month for specialist treatment. But only three Palestinian children have been allowed into the UK for healthcare since Israel launched its devastating offensive in Gaza 20 months ago.

Of the nearly 54,000 Palestinians killed in the war, 16,000 have been children.