Downfall of Syria’s Assad marks end of an era

Demonstrators trample a carpet with a design showing President Bashar Al-Assad during a protest. (AFP)
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Updated 09 December 2024
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Downfall of Syria’s Assad marks end of an era

  • What began as a bloodless coup by Hafez Assad in 1970 has ended with his son Bashar fleeing the country
  • Bashar Assad “inherited and built upon” the record of brutal repression that was part of his father’s long rule

LONDON: In scenes reminiscent of every violent regime change in the Middle East’s recent history, on Saturday afternoon jubilant crowds in the Jaramana suburb of Damascus toppled a statue of Hafez Assad, founder of the family regime that, until this weekend, had ruled Syria for over half a century.
The beheading of the larger-than-life bust, captured in shaky smartphone footage, spoke volumes about the roots of the crisis that is now engulfing Syria.
President Bashar Assad, who fled Syria and was granted asylum along with his family by Russia on Sunday, inherited an autocratic system that his father had forged out of the chaos that was the Syrian political landscape for two decades after the country gained its independence in 1949.
Together with Lebanon, Syria, an Ottoman province since the early 16th century, was occupied by France in 1919 after the defeat of the empire in the First World War, and in 1923 became a French mandate under the auspices of the League of Nations.
The mandate triggered a multifactional revolt against French rule, which raged from 1925 to 1927 until it was finally put down by overwhelming French military force.




Bashar Assad fled to Russia on Saturday as rebels took the Syrian capital. (AFP/File)


A complex but relatively peaceful two decades followed until, in the wake of the Second World War, Syria finally won its long-promised independence in 1946.
But the golden era anticipated by Syrians failed to dawn. From 1949 to 1970, the country was wracked by a series of 20 military coups, or attempted coups.
To Syrians and international observers alike, it seemed that Syria was doomed to basket-case status. But waiting in the wings was a man who, in time, would appear to be the answer to the troubled nation’s prayers.
By all accounts, Hafez, born on Oct. 6, 1930, one of 11 children of a poor Alawite farming family, never wanted to be a dictator, or even be involved in politics.
Instead, he wanted to become a doctor, a dream that foundered on the inability of his father, Ali Sulayman, to pay for his tuition (Sulayman would later adopt his local nickname, Al-Assad, “the lion,” as his family’s surname.)
Instead, in 1950 Hafez enrolled in the fee-free Homs Military Academy, learned to fly, joined the Syrian Air Force — and found himself embroiled in the febrile atmosphere of plot and counterplot that prevailed within the military establishment.




Hafez Al-Assad and his wife Anisseh posing for a family picture with his children (L to R) Maher, Bashar, Bassel, Majd and Bushra. (AFP)


In 1955, President Adib Al-Shishakli was overthrown in a military coup that saw the return of civilian government in Syria. For the next few years, Hafez saw active service, training on MiG fighters in Russia and flying air defense missions during the Suez crisis.
Following the formation by Syria and Egypt of the short-lived United Arab Republic in 1958, the air force officer became increasingly politicized, so much so that in March 1963 he played a prominent role in the Ba’athist military coup against Syrian President Nazim Al-Kudsi.
By now, Hafez was in charge of the Syrian Air Force and a member of both the Syrian Regional Command of the Ba’ath Party and the Military Committee, a powerful Ba’athist group within the Syrian military establishment.

KEY DATES OF ASSAD FAMILY RULE

• Oct. 6, 1930: Hafez Assad, son of a poor farmer, is born in Qardaha in northwest Syria.

• 1950: Hafez Assad enters Homs Military Academy.

• February 1966: Hafez Assad appointed defense minister after military coup.

• Nov. 12, 1970: Hafez Assad leads bloodless coup, becoming president of Syria in March 1971.

• June 10, 2000: Hafez Assad dies and is succeeded by his son, Bashar Assad.

• 2012: Protests against Assad’s oppressive regime escalate into civil war.

• Dec. 6, 2024: Era of Assad dynasty ends as Damascus is seized by rebels and Bashar flees to Russia.

In February 1966, the Military Committee overthrew the Ba’ath Party’s ruling National Command, and Hafez was appointed minister of defense by coup leader Salah Jadid, chief of staff of the Syrian army.
For Jadid, the appointment would prove to be a disastrous miscalculation. On Nov. 12, 1970, Hafez mounted his own bloodless coup. At first, at least, his “Corrective Revolution” (Al-Thawra Al-Tashihiyya) appeared to promise a fresh start for all Syrians.
In the words of Patrick Seale, author of the 1988 biography “Assad of Syria: The Struggle for The Middle East,” Hafez’s rule began “with an immediate and considerable advantage: the regime he displaced was so detested that any alternative came as a relief.




Hafez’s basic accomplishment “was to transform the Syrian political order from a coup-ridden, postcolonial, semi-state into a veritable model of all authoritarian stability.” (AFP/File)


“As it was an open secret that he was more liberal than Salah Jadid, his victory ushered in a political honeymoon. People were long to breathe more freely.”
Hafez’s basic accomplishment, according to an assessment of his legacy published in 2005 by the Brookings Institution, “was to transform the Syrian political order from a coup-ridden, postcolonial, semi-state into a veritable model of all authoritarian stability.”
In the process, he established a power structure that defined “fundamental political choices” for his son.
By the time of his death in June 2000, the victim of a cardiac arrest at the age of 69, for 30 years Syria had been in the grip of “a highly developed and coercive police state apparatus,” designed to “put down perceived, potential, and real threats to the regime.”


As a result, “an ongoing record of brutal repression remains an important and inescapable part of Assad’s legacy” — and one that his son would inherit and build upon.
Like his father before him, Bashar sought a career in medicine, studying in Damascus and working as a doctor in the Syrian army before moving to the UK in the 1990s to train as an ophthalmologist.
He was never expected to enter the family business. His father was grooming his eldest son, Bassel, as his successor, but this plan was derailed when Bassel died in a car crash in 1994.




Syrian fighters set alight a picture of  Bashar Al-Assad. (AFP)


Bashar was recalled to Syria, where he entered the military academy in Homs and spent the next six years preparing to succeed his father, surrounding himself with loyal Ba’athist and Alawite supporters in the party and the military.
As the only candidate for the presidency after his father’s death on June 10, 2000, 34-year-old Bashar was a shoo-in — once the Syrian constitution had been amended to lower the age limit for the job from 40.
From the outset, Bashar followed his father’s lead. His first task was to prove himself equal to the job by cracking down ruthlessly on the outbreak of dissent that followed his father’s death.
The demands of protesters, characterized as the “Damascus Spring,” were articulated by the “Statement of 99,” a manifesto signed by intellectuals calling for a new era of freedom of speech and an end to state oppression and imprisonment of political opponents.
Multiple arrests and crackdowns brought about the demise of the Damascus Spring, but the seeds it had sown were only dormant, not dead.




Hafez Al-Assad's sons Maher (R) and Majed (3rd R), his brother Jami (2nd R), son-in-law Syrian General Assef Shawkat (2nd L), and Syrian Baath Party Deputy Secretary General Abdallah al-Ahmar (L). (AFP)


In March 2011, as part of the so-called Arab Spring, a series of mass pro-democracy protests broke out across Syria, with demonstrators demanding the end of the Assad regime.
The protests were met with a brutal crackdown, prompting a descent into what the UN officially declared to be a civil war in June 2012 — a war that has drawn in multiple different players, including Daesh and Al-Qaeda.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, by March this year, 13 years on from the start of the seemingly endless war, Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people. Among them are more than 164,000 civilians, including over 15,000 women and 25,000 children, with millions more displaced from their homes.
In its desperate bid to cling on to power, the Assad regime had used a range of barbaric weaponry, including crude but indiscriminately deadly “barrel bombs,” dropped on civilians from helicopters.
In breach of international law, the regime had also regularly deployed chemical weapons, including the neurotoxin sarin, against civilians and armed factions alike.
In 2012, in a deal to stave off threatened air attacks by the US, brokered by his ally Russia, Assad promised to give up his chemical weapons and join the Chemical Weapons Convention.




Portraits of people allegedly killed during the 1982 Hama massacre. (AFP/File)


But only the following year, in August 2013, shocking photographs emerged of child victims of chemical attacks that had been carried out against areas held by militant groups in the eastern suburbs of Damascus.
Last month, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons revealed that Assad’s pledges to hand over all such weapons had still not been met.
As Western sanctions imposed in the wake of state violence in 2011 bit deeper, the Assad regime became, in effect, a narco-state, increasingly dependent for cash flow on sales of the drug Captagon, which has devastated the lives of so many young people and their families across the Middle East.
As an Arab News Deep Dive published in February 2023 revealed, “the vast majority of the tens of millions of pills flooding the Arabian Peninsula every year are manufactured on the doorstep, mainly in Syria and with the active involvement of the regime of President Bashar Assad.”
Caroline Rose, a senior analyst at New Lines, told Arab News there was no doubt that Captagon was “being produced and trafficked by an array of individuals that are very close to the Assad regime, some of them cousins and relatives of regime members.”
Most notable among them, she said, was Bashar’s brother, Maher, affiliated with production and smuggling efforts in his role as commander of the Fourth Armored Division, a military unit whose primary mission was to protect the Syrian regime from internal and external threats.




People celebrate with anti-government fighters at Umayyad Square in Damascus. (AFP)


Since the start of the Syrian civil war a decade ago, what had begun as a trickle of captagon into the region had turned into a flood. Facing global sanctions that have left it desperate for revenue, the Syrian regime has gone into the drug-manufacturing business, working with Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Lebanon to smuggle industrial quantities of captagon into Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, by land, sea and air.
According to a report published in April 2022 by Washington think tank the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, war-torn Syria had become “the hub for industrial-sized production.” It added that “elements of the Syrian government are key drivers of the Captagon trade, with ministerial-level complicity in production and smuggling, using the trade as a means for political and economic survival amid international sanctions.”




Era of Assad dynasty ends as Damascus is seized by rebels and Basher Assad flees to Russia. (AFP/File)


In a statement in August 2012, US President Barack Obama said Bashar “has lost legitimacy (and) needs to step down. So far, he hasn’t gotten the message, and instead has doubled down in violence on his own people.”
He added: “The international community has sent a clear message that rather than drag his country into civil war he should move in the direction of a political transition. But at this point, the likelihood of a soft landing seems pretty distant.”
Today, with Bashar showing up in Moscow and Damascus in the hands of the rebels, Syrians can only pray that, with the Assad dynasty seemingly out of power after half a century of tyranny, their traumatized country’s long overdue soft landing is, finally, imminent.

 


’Ghost camp’: Israeli operations in West Bank push wave of Palestinians from their homes

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’Ghost camp’: Israeli operations in West Bank push wave of Palestinians from their homes

TULKARM: Malik Lutfi contemplated which of his family’s belongings to salvage in the few moments he was given while Israeli troops carried out home demolitions in the Tulkarm refugee camp where he grew up in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Now 51, the father of six has rented a small room in the nearby city of Tulkarm, but without access to his electronic repair shop in the cordoned-off camp, he has no income to meet the rent, sparking anxiety about his family’s future.
With bulldozers roaring outside, he said: “They kicked us out six months ago and we are still out. When you go back you try to bring anything you can, but in two hours with only our hands, you cannot bring many things.”
He said he knew many families in a worse situation even than his, pushed to living in crowded schools or on patches of farmland.
“We are waiting for help,” he said.
Israeli operations are pushing tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians like Lutfi out of their homes, says B’Tselem, the independent Israeli human rights information center for the occupied territories.
Around 40,000 residents from the Tulkarm, Nur Shams and Jenin refugee camps have been displaced by the military operation this year, B’Tselem said.
Israel says it is acting against flashpoints of militancy, including the northern cities of Tulkarm and Jenin.
“This requires the demolition of buildings, allowing the forces to operate freely and move unhindered within the area,” an Israeli military spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The decision to demolish these structures is based on operational necessity and was made only after considering alternative options,” the statement said.
Israeli demolitions have drawn widespread international criticism and coincide with heightened fears among Palestinians of an organized effort by Israel to formally annex the West Bank, the area seized by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
Reuters witnesses this week saw bulldozers plowing through buildings and wide, new roads lined by rubble that bulldozers had carved out by demolishing concrete homes. Residents piled chairs, blankets and cooking equipment onto trucks.
Tulkarm’s governor Abdullah Kamil said in recent weeks the destruction had intensified, with 106 homes and 104 other buildings in the nearby Tulkarm and Nur Shams camps destroyed.
“What is happening in Tulkarm is an Israeli political decision, the issue has nothing to do with security,” Kamil, the Palestinian governor, said. “There is nothing left in the camp, it has become a ghost camp.”
Israel’s northern West Bank operation which began in January has been one of the biggest since the Second Intifada uprising by Palestinians more than 20 years ago, involving several brigades of troops earlier this year backed by drones, helicopters and, for the first time in decades, heavy battle tanks.

SIMMERING SITUATION
As efforts ramp up in Washington and Qatar to secure a Gaza ceasefire deal, some international officials and rights groups say they are also worried about the simmering situation for Palestinians in the West Bank.
“In the northern West Bank, Israel has begun replicating tactics and combat doctrines honed in its current offensive on Gaza,” said Shai Parnes, public outreach director at B’Tselem.
“This includes increased ... widespread and deliberate destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, and forced displacement of civilians from areas designated by the military as combat zones.”
Israeli hard-liners inside and outside the government have called repeatedly for Israel to annex the West Bank, a kidney-shaped area around 100 kilometers (62 miles) long that Palestinians see as the core of a future independent state, along with Gaza and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Israeli government ministers deny that the West Bank operation has any wider purpose than battling militant groups. The Israeli military in its statement said it was following international law and targeting militancy.
Kamil, the Palestinian governor, said displacement was putting pressure on a community already reeling economically, with thousands sheltering in mosques, schools and overcrowded homes with relatives.
Returning for the first time in six months, Lutfi said he was shocked at the scale of damage.
“Most people when they come back to look at their homes, they find them destroyed, the destruction that meets them is enormous: wide streets, destroyed infrastructure and electricity,” he said. “If we want to rebuild, it will take a long time.”

Gaza doctors say Israel’s killing of a prominent colleague leaves a hard-to-fill void

Updated 35 min 26 sec ago
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Gaza doctors say Israel’s killing of a prominent colleague leaves a hard-to-fill void

  • More than 1,400 Palestinian health workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, according to the United Nations

JERUSALEM: When the onetime director of a Gaza Strip hospital was killed by an Israeli airstrike last week, he joined a growing list of prominent Palestinian doctors who have died during 21 months of war that has devastated the territory’s health system.
The death of Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan, a 49-year-old cardiologist, was described by colleagues as a major blow personally and professionally, leaving another void in Gaza’s medical establishment that will not be easily replaced.
“He was one of two cardiologists, so by losing Dr. Marwan, thousands of people will lose and suffer,” said Mohammed Abu Selmia, a close friend of his for 15 years, and the director of Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical facility.
A photograph from 2022 shows Abu Selmia, Al-Sultan and 30 other leading doctors and medical experts in Gaza, all faculty smiling after the graduation of medical school students from Islamic University in Gaza City. At least five of those veteran doctors, mentors to the next generation, are now dead – each killed by Israeli airstrikes, except for one who died while in captivity in Israel.
Al-Sultan and three other specialists in the 2022 photo who were killed in airstrikes died during off-duty hours, though it is not clear if these were targeted killings.
When asked why Al-Sultan’s building was attacked last Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had struck a “key terrorist” from Hamas, without elaborating. The military said it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals” and that the “the incident is under review.”
It will take years to educate a new generation of surgeons and other specialists to replace the ones killed during the war between Hamas and Israel, Abu Selmia said. For now, hospitals have too few experts to provide urgent care at a time of extraordinary need, he said.
Hospitals across Gaza also face supply shortages amid steady Israeli bombardment that is resulting in a high number of wounded people seeking treatment on a near-daily basis.
A health care system in crisis
More than 1,400 Palestinian health workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October 2023, according to the United Nations.
The Israeli military has raided or laid siege to hospitals throughout the war, accusing Hamas of using them as command centers and to hide fighters, though it has only provided evidence for some of its claims. The World Health Organization has documented nearly 700 attacks on health care facilities during the war.
Al-Sultan gained respect and notoriety within Gaza’s medical community because he refused to leave his hospital in the northern Gaza city of Beit Lahiya, even when it came under attack. He was outspoken on social media about the dangers health workers faced in the hospital under Israeli bombardment and siege.
Al-Sultan was the last director of the Indonesian Hospital, the largest in northern Gaza before the Israeli military forced it to close in early June because of military operations around it.
In May, Al-Sultan described the difficult situation health workers at his facility faced. “We will keep holding on for our patients, for our jobs and our people,” he said in a video posted online by his hospital’s backers.
Al-Sultan had plenty of opportunities to practice medicine in other countries, said Dr. Mohammed Al-Assi, who studied with him in Jordan. But he decided to go home to serve in Gaza in 2019. Al-Assi, inspired by his friend, followed him.
When he heard the news of his killing, Al-Assi was shattered. “I’m wondering as any doctor would, was it his fault that he was helping people?”
Other former colleagues were similarly overwhelmed by news of Al-Sultan’s death.
“A wave of emotion hit me as I suddenly remembered our last video call — how he kept asking me about me and my family when it should have been the other way around,” said Dr. Emad Shaqoura, a former vice dean of the medical faculty at Islamic University who is now in the UK
The missile that killed Al-Sultan struck the third-floor apartment he was renting with his family in the Gaza City neighborhood of Tal Al-Hawa, witnesses and doctors said. His wife, a daughter, and son-in-law were also killed.
Another daughter, Lubna Al-Sultan, said the missile crashed into his room around 2 p.m., leaving other units in the building intact. The Al-Sultan family had been displaced from their home.
“It was not collateral damage,” said Dr. Hadiki Habib, chairman of the Indonesian humanitarian organization that built and funded the Indonesian hospital.
The day before he was killed, Al-Sultan spoke with Abu Selmia about how they would prepare a new schedule for cases and treatment. He was one of two doctors left capable of performing a procedure to diagnose and treat heart problems, said Abu Selmia.
“Dr. Marwan was the trainer and mentor for all those students in Shifa Hospital and in the entirety of Gaza City,” Abu Selmia said.
Other prominent doctors in Gaza have also been killed
In the 2022 photo of Islamic University’s faculty of medicine, four other members are also no longer alive.
— Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, once the head of Shifa’s orthopedics department, died in Israeli detention, allegedly of ill-treatment, according to Palestinian authorities and advocacy groups. An independent autopsy on his body, which has not been returned to his family, has not been conducted. His wife said repeated requests to return his body have not been answered.
— Dr. Hammam Alloh, a kidney expert, was killed at home with his family by an airstrike in November 2023.
— Dr. Mohammed Dabbour, Gaza’s first cancer pathologist, was killed in an airstrike on October 2023, along with his father and son.
— Dr. Rafat Lubbad, head of internal medicine at Shifa and one of few specialists in autoimmune diseases, was killed in November 2023, along with 7 family members, in Gaza City.
Hospitals overwhelmed with casualties
Only 17 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain operational, according to the WHO, which says that all are struggling with severe supply shortages. Of the hospitals that are functioning, only 12 provide services beyond basic emergency care.
Conditions in northern Gaza, where Al-Sultan lived and worked, are particularly dire. The area has been site of some of the most intense Israeli military operations since the start of the war, and although there were many evacuation orders, many of its residents remain.
Abu Selmia considers what the future might hold for the doctors still alive and forever smiling in that 2022 medical school graduation photo. There are barely enough of them to tend to the vast numbers of sick and wounded, he said.
But he holds on to some small hope.
Al-Sultan’s son, Ahmed, is a medical student. “God willing, he will follow his father’s footsteps.”


Tunisia hands lengthy prison terms to top politicians and former security officials

Updated 09 July 2025
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Tunisia hands lengthy prison terms to top politicians and former security officials

  • A total of 21 were charged in the case, with 10 already in custody and 11 having fled the country

TUNIS: A Tunisian court on Tuesday handed jail terms of 12 to 35 years on high-profile politicians, including opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi and former security officials, a move that critics say underscores the president’s use of the judiciary to cement authoritarian rule.
Among those sentenced on charges of conspiring against the state in the major mass trial, were Nadia Akacha, the former chief of staff to President Kais Saied, local radio Mosaique FM said. Akacha who fled abroad received 35 years.
Ghannouchi, 84, veteran head of the Islamist-leaning Ennahda party, was handed a 14-year term.
Ghannouchi who was the speaker of the elected parliament dissolved by Saied, has been in prison since 2023, receiving three sentences of a total of 27 years in separate cases in recent months.
A total of 21 were charged in the case, with 10 already in custody and 11 having fled the country.
The court sentenced former intelligence chief Kamel Guizani to 35 years, former Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem to 35 years, and Mouadh Ghannouchi, son of Rached Ghannouchi, to 35 years. All three have fled the country.
Saied dissolved the parliament in 2021 and began ruling by decree, then dissolved the independent Supreme Judicial Council and sacked dozens of judges, a move that opposition called a coup which undermined the nascent democracy that sparked in 2011 the Arab Spring uprisings.
Saied rejects the accusations and says his steps are legal and aim to end years of chaos and corruption hidden within the political elite.
Most opposition leaders, some journalists, and critics of Saied have been imprisoned since he seized control of most powers in 2021.
This year, a court handed jail terms of 5 to 66 years to opposition leaders, businessmen and lawyers on charges of conspiring as well, a case the opposition says is fabricated in an attempt to stamp out opposition to the president.
Human rights groups and activists say Saied has turned Tunisia into an open-air prison and is using the judiciary and police to target his political opponents.
Saied rejects these accusations, saying he will not be a dictator.


‘Hostage,’ Eli Sharabi’s memoir about life in Hamas captivity, is coming to the US

Updated 09 July 2025
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‘Hostage,’ Eli Sharabi’s memoir about life in Hamas captivity, is coming to the US

  • Sharabi reveals how his faith gave him the resilience to endure the horrific conditions and overcome mental anguish

NEW YORK: A memoir by an Israeli man held in captivity for more than a year by Hamas is coming out this fall in the US Eli Sharabi’s “Hostage,” written in Hebrew and already a bestseller in Israel, is the first published memoir by anyone kidnapped by Hamas during the deadly surprise attack of Oct. 7, 2023. Harper Influence, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, announced Tuesday that the English-language edition of his book will come out this Oct. 7, the 2-year anniversary.
Sharabi, 53, was released in early February and has said that he had shrunk to under 100 pounds — less than the weight of his youngest daughter, who was killed along with his wife and older daughter. More than 1,000 were killed in the attack and more than 200 taken hostage.
“It was important to me that the story come out as quickly as possible, so that the world will understand what life is like inside captivity,” Sharabi said in a statement. “Once they do, they will not be able to remain indifferent. But I also want readers to know that even in the darkest of times, you can always seek out the light and choose humanity.”
According to Harper Influence, Sharabi writes about his experience with his captors in “stark, unflinching prose, detailing the relationships the hostages formed with one another, including Alon Ohel, still a hostage in Gaza, with whom Sharabi formed an unbreakable father-son bond.”
“Along the way, Sharabi reveals how his faith gave him the resilience to endure the horrific conditions and overcome mental anguish,” the announcement reads in part.


Palestinian teen dies from head injury after Israeli forces opened fire

Updated 08 July 2025
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Palestinian teen dies from head injury after Israeli forces opened fire

  • Ahmed Al-Awiwi, 19, from Hebron, was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers about six months ago
  • He underwent brain surgery, but his health worsened, leading to his death on Tuesday evening

LONDON: A Palestinian teen died of his wounds six months after being shot when Israeli forces opened fire in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian Ministry of Health announced on Tuesday.

Ahmed Al-Awiwi, a 19-year-old from the city, was shot in the head by Israeli forces during confrontations in Bab Al-Zawiya, which erupted after settlers stormed the area.

Al-Awiwi was admitted to Al-Ahli Hospital a week ago to undergo brain surgery. Subsequently, his health worsened, leading to his death on Tuesday evening, the ministry added.

This week, Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in the West Bank. Wissam Ghassan Hasan Ishtiya, 37, was shot on Sunday by Israeli forces in Salem, a village east of Nablus, after they stormed the area and surrounded two houses, firing live ammunition. Qusay Nasser Mahmoud Nassar, 23, also from Salem, was killed by Israeli fire.

Since late 2023, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank, and 7,000 injured. Israeli forces conduct daily raids on villages and towns in the Palestinian territories, where they have maintained a military occupation since June 1967.