DOUMA, Syria: A few dozen protesters gathered in the Syrian city of Douma on Wednesday demanding answers about the fate of four prominent activists abducted more than a decade ago.
Holding up photographs of the missing activists, the demonstrators called on Syria’s new rulers — the Islamist-led rebels who seized power last month — to investigate what happened to them.
“We are here because we want to know the whole truth about two women and two men who were disappeared from this place 11 years and 22 days ago,” said activist Yassin Al-Hajj Saleh, whose wife Samira Khalil was among those abducted.
In December 2013, Khalil, Razan Zeitouneh, Wael Hamada and Nazem Al-Hammadi were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen from the office of a human rights group they ran together in the then rebel-held city outside Damascus.
The four played an active role in the 2011 uprising against Bashar Assad’s rule and also documented violations, including by the Islamist rebel group Jaish Al-Islam that controlled the Douma area in the early stages of the ensuing civil war.
No group has claimed the four activists’ abduction and they have not been heard from since.
Many in Douma blame Jaish Al-Islam but the rebel group has denied involvement.
“We have enough evidence to incriminate Jaish Al-Islam, and we have the names of suspects we would like to see investigated,” Hajj Saleh said.
He said he wanted “the perpetrators to be tried by the Syrian courts.”
The fate of tens of thousands of people who disappeared under the Assads’ rule is a key question for Syria’s interim rulers after more than 13 years of devastating civil war that saw upwards of half a million people killed.
“We are here because we want the truth. The truth about their fate and justice for them, so that we may heal our wounds,” said Alaa Al-Merhi, 33, Khalil’s niece.
Khalil was a renowned activist hailing from the Assads’ Alawite minority who was jailed from 1987 to 1991 for opposing their iron-fisted rule.
Her husband is also a renowned human rights activist who was detained in 1980 and forced to live abroad for years.
“We as a family seek justice, to know their fate and to hold those resposible accountable for their actions,” she added.
Zeitouneh was among the 2011 winners of the European parliament’s human rights prize, A lawyer, she had received threats from both the government and the rebels before she went missing. Her husband Hamada was abducted with her.
Protesting was unthinkable just a month ago in Douma, a former rebel stronghold that paid a heavy price for rising up against the Assads.
Douma is located in Eastern Ghouta, an area controlled by rebel and jihadist factions for around six years until government forces retook it in 2018 after a long and bloody siege.
The siege of Eastern Ghouta culminated in a devastating offensive by the army that saw at least 1,700 civilians killed before a deal was struck that saw fighters and civilians evacuated to northern Syria.
Douma still bears the scars of the civil war, with many bombed out buildings.
During the conflict, all sides were accused of abducting and summarily executing opponents.
11 years on, Syria protesters demand answers on abducted activists
https://arab.news/gca2a
11 years on, Syria protesters demand answers on abducted activists
- No group has claimed the four activists’ abduction and they have not been heard from since
Cholera outbreak in Sudan capital kills 70 in 2 days: health ministry
- Health ministry for Khartoum State said it had recorded 942 new infections and 25 deaths on Wednesday
- Army-backed government announced last week that it had dislodged RSF fighters from their last positions in Khartoum State
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: A cholera outbreak in Sudan’s capital has killed 70 people in two days, health officials said, as Khartoum battles a fast-spreading epidemic amid a collapse of basic services.
The health ministry for Khartoum State said it had recorded 942 new infections and 25 deaths on Wednesday, following 1,177 cases and 45 deaths on Tuesday.
The surge in infections comes weeks after drone strikes blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) knocked out the water and electricity supply across the capital.
The army-backed government announced last week that it had dislodged RSF fighters from their last positions in Khartoum State two months after retaking the heart of the capital from the paramilitaries.
Greater Khartoum had been a battleground for much of the previous two years, and suffered massive damage to housing and infrastructure.
The cholera outbreak has piled further pressure on an already overwhelmed health care system.
The federal health ministry reported 172 deaths in the week to Tuesday, 90 percent of them in Khartoum State.
Authorities say 89 percent of patients in isolation centers are recovering, but warn that deteriorating environmental conditions are driving a surge in cases.
The war between the paramilitaries and the regular army has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced 13 million in what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Up to 90 percent of hospitals in the conflict’s main battlegrounds have been forced out of service by the fighting.
Israel authorizes more Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank
- They would include new settlements and the legalization of outposts already built without government authorization
JERUSALEM: Israel said Thursday it would establish 22 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
They would include new settlements and the legalization of outposts already built without government authorization.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and the Palestinians want it to be the main part of their future state.
Thousands storm aid warehouse in Gaza as hunger crisis deepens
- The humanitarian situation in Gaza is dire following 18 months of devastating war
- Food security experts say starvation is looming for one in five people
DEIR EL-BALAH, Palestinian Territories: Thousands of desperate Palestinians stormed a United Nations warehouse in central Gaza on Wednesday, with the World Food Programme reporting two possible deaths in the tumult as Israel and the UN traded blame over the deepening hunger crisis.
The humanitarian situation in Gaza, where aid has finally begun to trickle in after a two-month blockade, is dire following 18 months of devastating war. Food security experts say starvation is looming for one in five people.
AFP footage showed crowds of Palestinians breaking into a WFP warehouse in Deir Al-Balah and taking bags of emergency food supplies as gunshots rang out.
“Hordes of hungry people broke into WFP’s Al-Ghafari warehouse in Deir Al-Balah, Central Gaza, in search of food supplies that were pre-positioned for distribution,” WFP said in a statement on X.
“Initial reports indicate two people died and several were injured in the tragic incident,” WFP said, adding that it was still confirming details.
Israel accused the United Nations Wednesday of seeking to block Gaza aid distribution, as the global body said it was doing its utmost to facilitate distribution of the limited assistance greenlit by Israel’s authorities.
The issue of aid has come sharply into focus amid starvation fears and intense criticism of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private US-backed aid group that has bypassed the longstanding UN-led system in the territory.
Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon told the Security Council that aid was entering Gaza by truck – under limited authorization by Israel at the Kerem Shalom crossing – and via a “new distribution mechanism developed in coordination with the US and key international partners.”
Danon was referring to the GHF operation, which he accused the UN of “trying to block,” saying it was “using threats, intimidation and retaliation against NGOs that choose to participate in the new humanitarian mechanism.”
The UN said 47 people were injured Tuesday when thousands of Palestinians rushed a GHF site. A Palestinian medical source reported at least one death.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, reiterated the world body’s opposition to coordinating with GHF.
“We will not participate in operations that do not meet our humanitarian principles,” Dujarric said.
He said the UN was doing all it could to send aid, adding that since last week 800 truckloads were approved by Israel but fewer than 500 made it into Gaza.
As the war entered its 600th day Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the offensive had “changed the face of the Middle East.”
He said it had killed tens of thousands of militants including Mohammed Sinwar, Hamas’s presumed Gaza leader and the brother of Yahya – slain mastermind of the October 2023 attacks that sparked the Gaza war.
Israeli media said Sinwar was targeted by strikes in southern Gaza earlier this month. His brother was killed in October 2024.
In Washington, US envoy Steve Witkoff expressed optimism about a possible ceasefire, saying he expected to propose a plan soon.
“I have some very good feelings about getting to a... temporary ceasefire, and a long-term resolution, a peaceful resolution of that conflict,” he said.
But Gazans remained pessimistic.
“Six hundred days have passed and nothing has changed. Death continues, and Israeli bombing does not stop,” said Bassam Daloul, 40.
“Even hoping for a ceasefire feels like a dream and a nightmare.”
Israel stepped up its military offensive earlier this month, while mediators push for a still elusive ceasefire.
In Tel Aviv, hundreds of people called for a ceasefire, lining roads at 6:29 am – the exact time the unprecedented October 7 attack began.
Relatives of hostages held since that attack also gathered in Tel Aviv.
“I want you to know that when Israel blows up deals, it does so on the heads of the hostages,” said Arbel Yehud, who was freed from Gaza captivity in January.
“Their conditions immediately worsen, food diminishes, pressure increases, and bombings and military actions do not save them, they endanger their lives.”
Out of 251 hostages seized during the October 7 attack, 57 remain in Gaza including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Some 1,218 people were killed in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Wednesday at least 3,924 people had been killed in the territory since Israel ended the ceasefire on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 54,084, mostly civilians.
At last, Syrians enjoy mouth-watering fruits of freedom
- Pineapples, kiwis and mangoes reappear for public sale after decades on the black market
DAMASCUS: Once, if you saw what looked like a pineapple in a Damascus market, it was more likely to be a hand grenade. Now, after decades of poverty and repression under the Assad dynasty, imported fruit is making mouths water again.
Before Bashar Assad was ousted last December, pineapples, kiwis and mangoes were available only on the black market, and only to Syria’s wealthiest. “We used to smuggle them in from Lebanon with the help of taxi drivers, like petrol and diesel,” said Marwan Abu Hayla, 46, a fruit seller at Shaalan market in the Syrian capital. “Now we can put them on display. The era of pineapple-phobia is over.”
Prices have also plunged. Another fruit seller, Ahmed Al-Hareth, 45, said bananas used to cost the equivalent of a public employee’s monthly salary. Now a kilo of pineapple is down from 300,000 Syrian pounds, about $23, to $4.
One practical problem remains. “Pineapple is for everyone,” said medical student Nour Abed Al-Jabbar. “Even if some people don’t know how to peel it.”
Why Western nations are threatening ‘concrete actions’ against Israel for its Gaza offensive
- Israel’s latest operation and weeks-long aid blockade have sparked unprecedented calls for sanctions from key Western allies
- Spain has called for a freeze on arms deliveries to Israel, the UK has sanctioned West Bank settlers, and the EU is reviewing its relations
LONDON: On Friday, pediatrician Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar, one of a dwindling number of doctors still working in Gaza, left home as usual for another distressing shift in the war-battered Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis.
As she cared for babies and children who had been wounded in air attacks over the previous days, a missile struck her home, killing nine of her own ten children.
Their father, also a doctor, was badly injured in the attack. The couple’s only surviving child, an 11-year-old boy, was brought to his mother’s hospital, where his life was saved on the operating table.
That same day, more than 50 people, including many young members of a single family, were killed in Jabalia in the north of Gaza.
The poet and author Mosab Abu Toha, who earlier this month won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of essays in The New Yorker magazine, portraying the “physical and emotional carnage in Gaza,” happened to be near the scene.
His harrowing photograph of a dead girl, perhaps only two years old, with most of her head missing, has been viewed tens of thousands of times on X. The eyes of the medic tenderly carrying her body from the rubble of her home told their own story.
Incidents such as these, and the wider humanitarian emergency resulting from renewed violence and a weeks-long aid embargo, appear to have pushed many in the international community to consider the imposition of sanctions on Israel.
Last week, the EU, Israel’s biggest trading partner, announced it was reviewing the EU-Israel Association Agreement, in particular Article 2, which states that the relationship “shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles.”
Also last week, the UK, France and Canada issued a joint statement condemning the situations in Gaza and the West Bank, denouncing “the level of human suffering in Gaza” as “intolerable.”
Warning that Israel was risking “breaching international humanitarian law,” it added: “We will not stand by while the Netanyahu government pursues these egregious actions.”
Then came the unprecedented threat: “If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.”
In response to these calls for “concrete actions,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a blistering attack on the leaders of the UK, France and Canada, saying that they had “effectively said they want Hamas to remain in power.”
He also accused them of siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers.”
Israel began military operations in Gaza in retaliation for the unprecedented Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, which resulted in some 1,200 deaths, the majority of them civilians, and about 250 people being taken hostage.
Eighteen months on, at least 54,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, have been killed in Gaza, according to local health officials, while all but a handful of the hostages have been released or killed in the crossfire.
On Monday, at a summit in Madrid of European and Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, Spain’s foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares called for an arms embargo on Israel and sanctions against individuals “who want to ruin the two-state solution forever.”
Speaking before the meeting, Albares said that humanitarian aid must enter Gaza “massively, without conditions and without limits, and not controlled by Israel,” describing the Strip as humanity’s “open wound.”
“Silence in these moments is complicity in this massacre,” he added.
Saudi Arabia has long called on the US and other Western nations to freeze arms shipments to Israel in response to its restrictions on the flow of humanitarian aid into the embattled enclave.
Also on Monday, more than 800 lawyers, academics and retired senior judges in the UK signed an open letter expressing “our deep concern over the worsening catastrophe in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
They urged the British government to meet its “fundamental international legal obligations … to take all reasonable steps within (its) power to prevent and punish genocide (and) to ensure respect for international humanitarian law.”
Israel’s attacks “are quite clearly and blatantly in disregard of international law, and are just becoming unacceptable,” Guy Goodwin-Gill, emeritus professor of international refugee law at the University of Oxford and one of the letter’s signatories, told Arab News.
What happens next, he said, “depends to a certain extent upon the willingness of other states to come to the party.”
The US seems unlikely to single out Israeli leaders for sanctions and would almost certainly veto any proposed action by the UN Security Council.
“But I think the UK could impose financial and immigration sanctions, not only on Israeli ministers and officials suspected of involvement in the unlawful conduct but, in my personal view, it should consider imposing visas on all Israelis,” Goodwin-Gill said.
“Given the extent of conscription in the country, all Israelis have been potentially involved in the actions of the military on the ground — the tank commanders, the soldiers, and the air force pilots in particular.
“I think they should be subject to a visa requirement, subject to inquiries about what they were doing during the war.”
The Israeli government’s standard response to any criticism is to accuse its critics of antisemitism. The signatories nevertheless decided to speak out.
“I think there was an apprehension about being labeled antisemitic,” Goodwin-Gill said.
“But I think that is disappearing with the continuing violations of international humanitarian law that are going on and on, and in the face of evident desire on the part of some in the Israeli government to bring about the destruction of Gaza, the destruction of the aim of a two-state solution, and the end of the prospect of any self-determination for Palestinians.”
In addition to the events in Gaza, “the extent to which settlers are invading the West Bank and assaulting Palestinians, not only with the passive support of the Israel Defense Forces, but also being armed by them, is beginning to put people on notice that the label of ‘antisemitism’ is not going to stick this time.”
It isn’t just the UK’s legal community that is breaking cover to openly criticize Israel’s actions. On Wednesday, 380 writers, musicians and organizations signed a letter accusing the Israeli government of genocide and calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
“The government of Israel has renewed its assault on Gaza with unrestrained brutality,” the letter read.
“Public statements by Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir openly express genocidal intentions. The use of the words ‘genocide’ or ‘acts of genocide’ to describe what is happening in Gaza is no longer debated by international legal experts or human rights organizations.”
On May 7, a statement signed by more than 30 UN human rights special rapporteurs and independent experts condemned what is happening in Gaza as “one of the most ostentatious and merciless manifestations of the desecration of human life and dignity.”
They added: “While states debate terminology — is it or is it not genocide? — Israel continues its relentless destruction of life in Gaza, through attacks by land, air and sea, displacing and massacring the surviving population with impunity.
“No one is spared — not the children, persons with disabilities, nursing mothers, journalists, health professionals, aid workers, or hostages. Since breaking the ceasefire, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians, many daily — peaking on March 18, 2025, with 600 casualties in 24 hours, 400 of whom were children.”
The signatories of Wednesday’s letter wrote: “We refuse to be a public of bystander-approvers. This is not only about our common humanity and all human rights; this is about our moral fitness as the writers of our time, which diminishes with every day we refuse to speak out and denounce this crime.”
The British government has not yet spelled out what “concrete actions” it might take against the Israeli government.
So far it has imposed sanctions only on several settler leaders, accused of “engaging in, facilitating, inciting or providing support for activity which amounts to a serious abuse of the right of individuals not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” and who have “threatened and perpetrated acts of aggression and violence against Palestinian individuals in the West Bank.”
Several organizations “involved in facilitating, inciting, promoting and providing logistical and financial support for the establishment of illegal outposts and forced displacement of Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” have also been sanctioned.
In all cases the named individuals and organizations have been subjected to “asset freeze, director disqualification sanction, and travel bans.”
In reality, said Michael O’Kane, senior partner at UK law firm Peters & Peters and co-founder of legal guidance website Global Sanctions, it is “very unlikely” that any of those sanctioned so far actually have any assets in the UK, and “that is true of the vast majority of people who are sanctioned by the UK government.
“If you take Russia as an example, there are over 2,000 people on the sanctions list, and I suspect only a very small percentage of them have any assets in the UK.”
Such sanctioning is, however, more than merely tokenistic.
“This is what’s called ‘signaling,’” O’Kane told Arab News. “The government is saying: ‘By sanctioning you, we are signaling to you and to the wider world that we consider your conduct to be unacceptable, a breach of international norms.’”
However, there have been increasing calls for targeted financial sanctions to be imposed on members of Netanyahu’s government, in particular national security minister Ben-Givr and finance minister Smotrich.
“If things continue to go in the same direction in Gaza, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of that happening,” O’Kane said.
There is also the possibility that the UK government could tighten restrictions on the export of arms to Israel.
In September last year the government suspended about 30 export licenses “for items used in the current conflict in Gaza … following a review of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law.”
However, more than 300 arms licenses remain unaffected. A case brought by the Palestinian rights organization Al-Haq, challenging the government’s decision to allow the export of components for F-35 fighter aircraft to continue, is under review in the UK’s High Court.
The government’s lawyers told the court this week that “no evidence has been seen that Israel is deliberately targeting civilian women or children.”
At the start of the case on May 13, Raza Husain KC, the lawyer acting for Al-Haq, told the court that, on the contrary, “acts of annihilation have been accompanied by persistent genocidal, dehumanizing and even celebratory statements made at all levels of the Israeli military and political structure, including such figures, I regret to say, as the prime minister, president, minister of defense, minister of national security, and minister of finance.”
Even if nothing comes of the threats by the EU, the UK and Canada to directly target Israeli ministers, the combined outrage at Israel’s behavior is creating political momentum behind a joint French-Saudi international conference that will open on June 17 at the UN in New York.
Anne-Claire Legendre, the French president’s adviser, told a preparatory meeting at the UN on May 23 that “faced with facts on the ground, the prospect of a Palestinian state must be maintained.
“Irreversible steps and concrete measures for its implementation are necessary. This is the purpose of the international conference to be held in June.”
