Beirut blast brings fresh misery to displaced Syrians in Lebanon

A man talks on the phone while seated by the rubble of a destroyed traditional building in the Gemmayzeh neighborhood after a cataclysmic port explosion which devastated Lebanon's capital Beirut. (AFP/File Photo)
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Updated 18 August 2020
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Beirut blast brings fresh misery to displaced Syrians in Lebanon

  • Of the 177 deaths confirmed so far, 43 were Syrians working at the Port of Beirut on the evening of August 4
  • Syrians’ savings in Lebanese banks have drastically lost value since the start of the economic and financial crisis

DUBAI: It was 2012, and Lina Attar Ajami was spending the summer in Canada when a bomb went off near her neighborhood of Rawda in Damascus.

Her father called her immediately and told her not to return to Syria. “You must go to Beirut and find a house and make your life there,” Ajami recalled being told.

She followed his instructions and moved to an apartment in Saifi Village, an upscale neighborhood within walking distance of Gemmayze, the beating heart of Beirut.

“You escape a country for security. You escape a war of nine years in order to give your children security and not let them be exposed to the atrocities of war. But this — the Aug. 4 blast in Beirut — is worse than anything my family went through during the Syrian civil war,” Ajami told Arab News by phone from Beirut.

Even before the blast, Lebanon was in a state of free fall following months of economic and political turmoil marked by mass unemployment, hyperinflation and social unrest.

But the devastation caused by the blast has wreaked unprecedented havoc on the Lebanese capital, leaving an estimated 300,000 homeless and an even larger number of people in need of assistance of some kind.

Of the 177 deaths confirmed so far, 43 were Syrians working at the Port of Beirut, according to a statement from the Syrian Embassy in the Lebanese capital. The UN refugee agency has put the Syrian toll at 34, of which eight bodies are still missing.

The workers were refugees, earning daily as little as 50,000 Lebanese pounds  ($33 at official rate, $6.6 at market rate).

Their bodies, like their existence up until Aug. 4, are unlikely to be accounted for.

Each of their families, living in the blast-devastated capital of a crisis-torn country, has likely lost not only its breadwinner but also its livelihood.




A picture of victims is displayed inside their damaged apartment facing the port of Beirut following the cataclysmic explosion. (AFP)

Ajami’s 12-year-old daughter was severely wounded in the blast. “We live on the 11th floor, so I could see the port. I heard my daughter screaming in the salon. I ran there and found her covered in blood. Blood was all over the walls,” she said.

Ajami’s husband carried his daughter downstairs and dashed off in search of a hospital, but they were full beyond capacity. “People were getting into fights just to get their loved ones admitted,” she said. “It was hell.”

The couple decided to take their daughter to south Beirut, where they found a hospital willing to admit her. She has since undergone two surgeries and is currently recovering.




Volunteers distribute aid supplies to those affected by the cataclysmic explosion in Beirut's port area, on August 12, 2020. (AFP/File Photo)

“There’s nothing more disturbing than thinking you’re in the safety of your home and a sudden blast takes away all the security you thought you had in your adopted country,” Ajami said. “As Syrians, this is our second loss. It’s beyond description.”

The Syrians currently in Lebanon, estimated at 910,000, are a mixture of registered and unregistered refugees, as well as migrant workers and others.

Those who fled Syria because of the civil war kept most, if not all, of their life savings in banks in Lebanon.

The value of their deposits has eroded drastically since the start of the economic and financial crisis.

FASTFACT

Syrians in Lebanon

* At least 34 Beirut blast victims were Syrian workers.

* Lebanon hosts 890,000 Syrian refugees.

* Two-thirds of the refugees live below poverty line.

* Lebanon’s estimated population is 6 million.

“Syrians relocated to Lebanon and placed all their wealth in Lebanese banks, knowing that no other country would agree to open bank accounts for Syrians,” said Ajami. “Their savings have dwindled in real terms as a result of the stringent capital controls.”

According to Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, the Syrian government estimated in January the total amount belonging to Syrians in Lebanese banks at about $45 billion — roughly a quarter of deposits held by Lebanese banks.

That said, many Syrians are content with having survived the blast that shattered Beirut. “I was sure by the time someone asked about me I’d be dead,” said Haidara M., a kickboxing instructor who left Syria in 2016 in search of a better life in the Lebanese capital.

At the time of the blast, caused by a long-neglected stock of ammonium nitrate, Haidara was in the bathroom of his apartment.




Lina Attar Ajami’s apartment, where her 12-year-old daughter was severely wounded in the blast. (Supplied: Lina Attar Ajami)

Freeing himself of the debris that fell on him, he ran out into the middle of a street in the hope that someone would help him. “I’m afraid of dying in a country without any family to bury me,” he told Arab News.

A Syrian who lives in the Lebanese capital and works with an international NGO said: “Syrians living in Beirut have been affected on an emotional level. They fled Syria to Lebanon to live in a safer place, but are now trying to leave Lebanon for the same reason.”

He added: “We still don’t have clear information regarding Syrians living in Lebanon who’ve been affected by the blast. No one knows the names of the 43 Syrians who died at the port.”

One Syrian national who has returned to Damascus following the explosion is Rana Tamimi, who specializes in marketing and communications.

She was allowed to cross the border into Syria after she took a COVID-19 test (for which she paid 150,000 Lebanese pounds) in Beirut and got a negative result.




A general view shows the Moroccan field hospital in Karantina neighbourhood near the port of Beirut, on August 12, 2020. (AFP)

“I moved to Beirut from Damascus eight years ago after a big explosion behind my house in Damascus,” she told Arab News.

“There was a lot of fear in the streets then and I had to leave. The effect of the explosion that happened in Beirut was equal to the sum of the horrors of eight years of war.”

Nimat Bizri, a half Algerian, half Syrian woman married to a Lebanese man who has lived in Lebanon for 24 years, said: “Since the blast, I feel helpless and depressed … The border to Syria has remained closed for three months now due to COVID-19. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel.”

Bizri runs the Social Support Society, an NGO founded in 2006 that provides quality programs and opportunities to Syrian refugees residing in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. It caters to 2,500 students spread over five centers located in different villages.

But Syrians face an altogether new challenge in the wake of the destruction in Beirut. Cases have come to light of discrimination against migrants and refugees trying to access emergency aid.

“No support is being given to Palestinian and Syrian refugees who’ve been working and living in Beirut,” said Bizri. “The Lebanese people haven’t been giving them support since the explosion.”

Dalia Al-Ogaily, a Syrian-Iraqi resident of Beirut who previously lived in Syria, recently joined a group of friends who had volunteered to do social work in different parts of the city.




Survivors of Beirut's August 4 blast are still in shock over a disaster that disfigured their city. The earth-shaking explosion killed 171 people and wounded more than 6,000, a sickening blow to a country already in crisis. (AFP)

“On our way to downtown Beirut, we spotted the Banin Charity Association in action so we offered to help,” she told Arab News.

“Initially they allowed us to help people in the neighborhood by interviewing them and assessing their needs. However, after a few hours, when we ran into a Syrian woman in need, the coordinator of the charity told us not to help her because, according to its policy, it’s meant to help only Lebanese.”

The incident sparked controversy on social media that culminated in the resignation of Fadi Al-Khateeb, a renowned Lebanese basketball player, from his position as the Banin Charity Association’s goodwill ambassador.

Complaints of discrimination against non-Lebanese in aid distribution also prompted Alexandra Tarzikhan, a Syrian human rights lawyer based in Chicago, to comment: “The blast didn’t discriminate when it chose whose lives to take and which houses to destroy.”

In recent years, Gulf Cooperation Council member countries have become the home of many Arab families fed up with their home countries’ poverty, corruption, sectarian politics and conflict.




Firefighters carry the coffin of their colleague Joe Noun, who was killed in Beirut's massive blast, during his funeral at the fire station in Karantina neighbourhood near the port on August 12, 2020. (AFP/File Photo)

Syrians and Lebanese are among the tens of thousands who have chosen to start a new life in the UAE, drawn by the lure of peace and financial security.

Leaving his home in Damascus in 2012 to escape the war, Alaa Krimed lived for two years in Beirut before moving to Dubai.

Now the Syrian-Palestinian is the artistic director of the Sima Dance Co. in Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue.

“I loved Beirut, but I also hated Beirut because I struggled a lot there,” he told Arab News, recalling the need to reapply for residency papers every three months. “The people are wonderful but the government is corrupt, and this is why I moved from Beirut to Dubai.”

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Twitter: @rebeccaaproctor


Israel leader meets visiting US homeland security secretary: PM’s office

Updated 26 May 2025
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Israel leader meets visiting US homeland security secretary: PM’s office

  • The visit comes as Israel ramps up its offensive in the Gaza Strip

JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with visiting US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Jerusalem on Sunday, his office said.
US and Israeli media reported that Trump had sent Noem to Jerusalem following the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington last week.
Noem was accompanied at her meeting with Netanyahu by US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, Netanyahu’s office said in a brief statement Sunday night.
The office added that during the meeting Noem “expressed her unreserved support for the prime minister and the State of Israel.”
The visit comes as Israel ramps up its offensive in the Gaza Strip in what it says is a renewed effort to destroy Hamas.
Earlier in the evening, Noem and Huckabee had visited the city’s Western Wall, where early celebrations for Monday’s “Jerusalem Day” holiday were taking place.
The holiday commemorates what Israel considers Jerusalem’s reunification under its authority after the city’s eastern sector was captured by its forces in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.


’Death is sometimes kinder’: Relatives recount Gaza strike that devastated family

Updated 26 May 2025
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’Death is sometimes kinder’: Relatives recount Gaza strike that devastated family

  • The paediatrician, with no means of transport, ran from the Nasser Hospital to the family house in the city of Khan Yunis, a relative told AFP, only to be met with every parent’s worst nightmare

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Alaa Al-Najjar was tending to wounded children at a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip when the news came through: the home where her own 10 children were staying had been bombed in an Israeli air strike.
The paediatrician, with no means of transport, ran from the Nasser Hospital to the family house in the city of Khan Yunis, a relative told AFP, only to be met with every parent’s worst nightmare.
“When she saw the charred bodies, she started screaming and crying,” said Ali Al-Najjar, the brother of Alaa’s husband.
Nine of her children were killed, their bodies burned beyond recognition, according to relatives.
The tenth, 10-year-old Adam, survived the strike but remains in critical condition, as does his father, Hamdi Al-Najjar, also a doctor, who was also at home when the strike hit.
Both are in intensive care at Nasser Hospital.
When the body of her daughter Nibal was pulled from the rubble, Alaa screamed her name, her brother-in-law recounted.
The following day, under a tent set up near the destroyed home, the well-respected paediatric specialist sat in stunned silence, still in shock.
Around her, women wept as the sounds of explosions echoed across the Palestinian territory, battered by more than a year and a half of war.

The air strike on Friday afternoon was carried out without warning, relatives said.
Asked about the incident, the Israeli military said it had “struck a number of suspects who were identified operating from a structure” near its troops, adding that claims of civilian harm were under review.
“I couldn’t recognize the children in the shrouds,” Alaa’s sister, Sahar Al-Najjar, said through tears. “Their features were gone.”
“It’s a huge loss. Alaa is broken,” said Mohammed, another close family member.
According to medical sources, Hamdi Al-Najjar underwent several operations at the Jordanian field hospital.
Doctors had to remove a large portion of his right lung and gave him 17 blood transfusions.
Adam had one hand amputated and suffers from severe burns across his body.
“I found my brother’s house like a broken biscuit, reduced to ruins, and my loved ones were underneath,” Ali Al-Najjar said, recalling how he dug through the rubble with his bare hands alongside paramedics to recover the children’s bodies.
Now, he dreads the moment his brother regains consciousness.
“I don’t know how to tell him. Should I tell him his children are dead? I buried them in two graves.”
“There is no safe place in Gaza,” he added with a weary sigh. “Death is sometimes kinder than this torture.”
 

 


Israel’s latest strikes in Gaza kill 38 people including a journalist and children

Updated 15 sec ago
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Israel’s latest strikes in Gaza kill 38 people including a journalist and children

  • Local journalist and several family members were killed by an airstrike that hit his house earlier on Sunday
  • Latest deaths resulted from Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in the south, Jabalia in the north and Nuseirat in central Gaza Strip

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Israeli strikes over the past 24 hours killed at least 38 people in Gaza, including children, a local journalist and a senior rescue service official, local health officials said Sunday.

The latest deaths in the Israeli campaign resulted from separate Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in the south, Jabalia in the north and Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, medics said.
In Jabalia, they said local journalist Hassan Majdi Abu Warda and several family members were killed by an airstrike that hit his house earlier on Sunday.
Another airstrike in Nuseirat killed Ashraf Abu Nar, a senior official in the territory’s civil emergency service, and his wife in their house, medics added.
There was no immediate comment by the Israeli military.

The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said that Abu Warda’s death raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, to 220.
In a separate statement, the media office said Israeli forces were in control of 77 percent of the Gaza Strip, either through ground forces or evacuation orders and bombardment that keeps residents away from their homes.

The armed wing of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said in separate statements on Sunday that fighters carried out several ambushes and attacks using bombs and anti-tank rockets against Israeli forces operating in several areas across Gaza.
On Friday the Israeli military said it had conducted more strikes in Gaza overnight, hitting 75 targets including weapons storage facilities and rocket launchers.
Further details emerged of the Palestinian doctor who lost nine of her 10 children in an Israeli strike on Friday.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said 3,785 people have been killed since Israel ended a ceasefire in March.

Israel launched an air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas militants’ cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people by Israeli tallies with 251 hostages abducted into Gaza. Hamas has yet to release the 58 hostages it still holds.
The conflict has killed more than 53,900 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and devastated the coastal strip. Aid groups say signs of severe malnutrition are widespread.
Israel also blocked all food, medicine and fuel from entering Gaza for 2 1/2 months before letting a trickle of aid enter last week, after experts’ warnings of famine and pressure from some of Israel’s top allies.
Israel is pursuing a new US-backed plan to control all aid to Gaza, but the American heading the effort unexpectedly resigned Sunday, saying it had become clear that his organization would not be allowed to operate independently.
The United Nations has rejected the plan. UN World Food Program executive director Cindy McCain told CBS she has not seen evidence to support Israel’s claims that Hamas is responsible for the looting of aid trucks. “These people are desperate, and they see a World Food Program truck coming in and they run for it,” she said.
COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing aid for Gaza, said 107 trucks of aid entered Sunday. The UN has called the rate far from enough. About 600 trucks a day entered during the ceasefire.
Israel also says it plans to seize full control of Gaza and facilitate what it describes as the voluntary migration of its over 2 million population, a plan rejected by Palestinians and much of the international community.
US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Israel on Sunday and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.


Israel’s US ambassador called home over interview remarks

Updated 25 May 2025
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Israel’s US ambassador called home over interview remarks

  • Ambassador Yechiel Leiter accuses opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of levelling “blood libels” at the Israeli leader

JERUSALEM: Israel’s ambassador to Washington is being summoned home on the instructions of a government disciplinary body to discuss comments he made in a podcast interview, the foreign ministry said Sunday.
Ambassador Yechiel Leiter had made an appearance on a podcast run by the right-wing US online media platform PragerU, in which he accused opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of levelling “blood libels” at the Israeli leader.
“The Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Eden Bar-Tal, will summon the ambassador in Washington, Dr. Yechiel Leiter, for a hearing regarding statements he made during a media interview,” a ministry spokesman said in a statement.
The spokesman said the summons was “in accordance with the instructions of the Discipline Department at the Civil Service Commission.”
Although the role of Israeli ambassador to the United States is a political appointment and Leiter was selected by Netanyahu, Israeli diplomats are typically expected to refrain from making political statements.
In the interview with PragerU, Leiter accused “extremists on the left” and the Israeli media of trying to topple Netanyahu’s government.
“It’s the extremists, and there is nothing they won’t do to bring Netanyahu down, and it’s a calumny that needs to be called out,” he said, accusing Netanyahu’s detractors of levelling “blood libels against your own PM.”
Leiter also dismissed as “insanity” claims that the premier was prolonging the war in Gaza to remain in power, adding: “How dare they say something as malicious as that?“
A poll published by Israel’s Channel 12 News on Saturday showed that 55 percent of the public believes Netanyahu is more interested in remaining in power than ending the war or freeing the hostages still held in Gaza.
A former adviser to Netanyahu, Leiter is originally from the United States and lived in a settlement in the occupied West Bank.
His son, Moshe Leiter, was killed in combat in November 2023 in the Gaza Strip.


Why fury over Israeli actions in Gaza and West Bank may lead to EU sanctions

Updated 26 May 2025
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Why fury over Israeli actions in Gaza and West Bank may lead to EU sanctions

  • Calls rise for arms embargo, ICC referrals and greater aid access after Israeli military fire in Jenin forces foreign ministers to scatter
  • Trade deal with Israel under review amid alarm over Gaza famine warnings, West Bank settler violence, international law violations

LONDON: Watching the widely circulated footage of Israeli soldiers firing “warning shots” in the direction of a delegation of foreign diplomats visiting a refugee camp in the Palestinian city of Jenin on Wednesday, it was hard to resist the conclusion that the Israeli military had lost its collective mind.

Luckily, no one was injured in the incident. But in a manner of speaking, Israel shot itself in the foot.

The extraordinary provocation took place as Israel was already facing a rising wave of condemnation — internally and externally — and the threat of international sanctions for its actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

International support for Israel, so unified in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Palestinian militant groups, in which 1,200 Israelis and others were killed and 251 more were taken hostage, has steadily crumbled in the face of outrage after outrage, which collectively have left more than 50,000 Palestinians dead and much of Gaza reduced to uninhabitable rubble.

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Last Tuesday, the day before the shooting incident in Jenin, the European Union announced that it was reviewing its political and economic relations with Israel – no hollow threat from a bloc that is Israel’s biggest trading partner.

“The situation in Gaza is catastrophic,” Kaja Kallas, high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy and vice-president of the European Commission, said on Tuesday.

Earlier that same day, the UN had raised the specter of thousands of babies dying of starvation “in the next 48 hours” if Israel did not allow aid trucks to enter the territory immediately.

Israeli soldiers fired ‘warning shots’ in the direction of European diplomats visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin, in the West Bank, on May 21, forcing them to scatter and sparking diplomatic outrage. (AFP)

Israel, while rejecting the suggestion that mass starvation was imminent, responded by allowing what critics condemned as a wholly insufficient token amount of aid into Gaza.

“The aid that Israel has allowed in is of course welcomed, but it’s a drop in the ocean,” said Kallas. “Aid must flow immediately without obstruction and at scale.”

She had, she added, "made these points also with my talks with Israelis … and regional leaders as well. Pressure is necessary to change the situation.”

And pressure is building up. In an unprecedented move, the EU is now reviewing the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the legal basis for its trade relations with Israel, which entered into force in June 2000.

Illustration posted on the website of the European Coordination Committees and Associations for Palestine, along with a report saying 63 MEPs calling on EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement. 

Pressure for this review has been mounting since May 7, when Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp urged the EU to act, saying “the situation in Gaza compels us to take this step.”

Disturbed by the nightmarish scenes in Gaza and reports of increasing settler violence in the West Bank, his government, he said, “will draw a line in the sand.”

Losing European trade would be a massive blow to Israel’s economy. The EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner – in 2024 34.2 percent of Israel’s imports came from the EU while 28.8 percent of Israel’s exports went to the EU. The total value of the trade in goods between the two in 2024 was o 42.6 billion euros.

“The review will specifically assess Israel’s adherence to the human rights provisions within the deal,” said Caroline Rose, a director at the New Lines Institute focused on defense, security and geopolitical landscapes.

Palestinians transport their belongings as they flee the northern Gaza Strip toward the south, along the coastal al-Rashid road on May 25, 2025. (AFP)

The clause in the agreement that is now under legal scrutiny is Article 2. This states that “Relations between the Parties, as well as all the provisions of the Agreement itself, shall be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles, which guides their internal and international policy and constitutes an essential element of this Agreement.”

Other international measures are under consideration, said Rose, including “imposing a full arms embargo, referring Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC), as advocated by Pakistan, enforcing a ceasefire and humanitarian aid access, sanctioning Israeli officials, supporting recognition of a Palestinian state, dismantling illegal settlements, reforming the UN Security Council veto system, and coordinating global reconstruction aid.”

Rose cautions that “internal divisions within the bloc could stall progress. While 17 member states support the review, countries such as Germany, Hungary, Austria and Italy reportedly oppose it. Germany and Austria, in particular, have resisted punitive measures despite issuing public condemnations.”

People move past destroyed buildings as smoke billows following an Israeli strike in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on May 25, 2025. (AFP)

Germany, bearing the moral weight of the Holocaust, has been a staunch supporter of Israel since its creation in 1948. But now, under new conservative chancellor Friedrich Merz, even Berlin is wavering.

Last week, out of concern for the situation in Gaza and the West Bank, Merz despatched his foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, on a fact-finding mission. Wadephul was among the diplomats scattered by the warning shots fired by the Israeli military on Wednesday, as were senior delegates from countries including France, Belgium, the UK, Italy, Canada, Russia and China. 

All the countries involved have lodged complaints with Israel about the episode, which the Palestinian Authority condemned as a “heinous crime” a “deliberate and unlawful act” which “constitutes a blatant and grave breach of international law.”

Israeli soldiers fired ‘warning shots’ in the direction of European diplomats visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin, in the West Bank, on May 21, forcing them to scatter and sparking diplomatic outrage. (AFP)

The day after the shooting in Jenin, during a visit to Lithuania the German chancellor said “we are very concerned about the situation in the Gaza Strip and also about the intensification of the Israeli army’s military operations there.

“We are urging, above all, that humanitarian aid finally reaches the Gaza Strip without delay, and also reaches the people there, because, as we hear from the United Nations, there is now a real threat of famine.”

On May 13 a study by the Bertelsmann Foundation found that over the past four years Germans had developed an increasingly negative view of Israel. In 2021 46 percent of Germans had a positive view of the country, compared with only 36 percent today, with 38 percent now viewing it negatively. Germany has seen many mass protests since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, which a majority of Germans oppose.

IN NUMBERS:

• 38% Germans who now view Israel negatively.

• 10% Drop in number of Germans who view Israel positively.

Source: Bertelsmann Foundation study

On May 19, two days before the Israeli military’s live-fire intimidation of international diplomats, the UK, France and Canada issued a joint statement condemning the situations in Gaza and the West Bank and strongly opposing the expansion of Israeli military operations in Gaza.

While also calling on Hamas to immediately release the remaining hostages, the statement denounced “the level of human suffering in Gaza” as “intolerable.”

The three nations added: “Yesterday’s announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inadequate. We call on the Israeli Government to stop its military operations in Gaza and immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.”

Palestinians wait to receive aid, in Gaza City, on May 25, 2025. (REUTERS)

Israel, warned the statement, “risks breaching international humanitarian law,” adding: “We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli Government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate. Permanent forced displacement is a breach of international humanitarian law.”

Israel had a right to defend Israelis against terrorism, “but this escalation is wholly disproportionate.”

As a result, “We will not stand by while the Netanyahu government pursues these egregious actions. If Israel does not cease the renewed military offensive and lift its restrictions on humanitarian aid, we will take further concrete actions in response.”

A fire blazes in an olive grove in the village of Salem, east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank on May 25, 2025, after Israeli settlers reportedly started a fire near the road to the Israeli settlement of Alon Moreh, according to eyewitnesses and the local village council. (AFP)

In the West Bank, Israel must also “halt settlements which are illegal and undermine the viability of a Palestinian state and the security of both Israelis and Palestinians.

“We will not hesitate to take further action, including targeted sanctions.”

On May 20, as the death toll from Israeli air strikes over the previous week reached 500, the UK summoned Israel’s ambassador to London, paused talks on a new free-trade agreement, and announced further sanctions against West Bank settlers.

Israel’s operation in Gaza was "incompatible with the principles that underpin our bilateral relationship,” David Lammy, the UK foreign minister, told parliament.

“It is extremism. It is dangerous. It is repellent. It is monstrous, and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”

Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy speaking to MPs during a statement on Israel and the war in Gaza in the House of Commons, in London, on May 20, 2025. (AFP)

All these moves “clearly reflect growing discomfort with Israeli military actions in Gaza but also in the West Bank,” Sir John Jenkins, who served as British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria and as consul-general in Jerusalem, told Arab News.

“This has been crystallized by the issue of humanitarian aid. The UN has not handled this well itself. But it’s a real political problem for Western governments, with significant domestic implications, which is why the UK has also paused trade talks.”

However, he added, “none of this will affect the Israeli decision-making process in the short term, and Western governments will be very reluctant to do anything that helps Hamas.

“But they will be increasingly keen to see a proper plan for the endgame. The question is: How much does the Trump administration support them? The news last week of the shooting of the two Israeli diplomats in Washington will only complicate this calculation.”

 

 

Israel, increasingly isolated, nevertheless remains defiant. “The British Mandate ended exactly 77 years ago,” a spokesperson for its foreign ministry said in response to last week’s criticism from the UK. “External pressure will not divert Israel from its path in defending its existence and security against enemies who seek its destruction.”

Yet in Europe that external pressure is mounting. So much so that, after 20 years of campaigning virtually in the wilderness for “freedom, justice and equality” for Palestinians, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement finally finds its much-criticised methods on the cusp of becoming mainstream.

Founded in 2005, for two decades the Palestinian-led BDS and those who support it have endured international censure, based on an unquestioning acceptance of Israel’s accusation that the organization’s aims are merely a manifestation of antisemitism.

Now, however, as governments in Europe, shocked by Israel’s latest actions and the seemingly deliberate starvation of two million people in Gaza, begin to adopt stances for which BDS has been calling for 20 years, as it marks its 20th anniversary the organisation and its work is being vindicated.

“For the first time ever, even the world’s most complicit governments are being forced – due to people power and moral outrage – to publicly consider accountability measures against Israel,” the BDS said in a statement.

Mourners react next to the body of a Palestinian killed in Israeli strikes, during a funeral at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 23, 2025. (REUTERS)

This was “another clear sign that our collective popular BDS pressure is working. The taboo is broken – sanctions are the way forward to end Israel’s atrocious crimes.”

Nevertheless, the organization continues to be critical of the UK, France and Canada, countries which had spent 19 months “enabling Israel’s genocide with intelligence gathering and other military means.” The statements by the three “are far too late and fall dangerously short of meeting these States’ legal obligations under international law, including the Genocide Convention and the Apartheid Convention.”

BDS says it is now stepping up its campaign to “transform tokenism and empty threats into tangible and effective accountability measures, starting with a two-way military embargo and full-scale trade and diplomatic sanctions.”

 

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, keenly aware as ever of his dependence upon the support of the right-wing extremists in his cabinet, went on the offensive last week.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, he said, were siding with “mass murderers, rapists, baby killers and kidnappers.” Astonishingly, he added, Starmer, Macron and Carney were “on the wrong side of humanity and … the wrong side of history.”

In fact, in the wake of the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, all three countries came out in unequivocal support of Israel, and its right to defend itself.

 

 

What Netanyahu is refusing to acknowledge is that in the eyes of the world, the events of that day do not give Israel a carte blanche.

His apparent determination to continue the war seemingly in order to keep himself in power, and to support the Zionist extremists in his cabinet who want to see Palestine ethnically cleansed, is facing growing criticism within Israel itself.

One of the staunchest critics is Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister from 2006 to 2009, who recently told the BBC that what Israel was doing in Gaza was “close to a war crime.”

Former Palestinian foreign minister Nasser Al-Kidwa appears on a screen as former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert holds a microphone on stage, during the It's Time People’s Peace Summit at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem on May 9, 2025. (AFP)

That earned him a rebuke from a current Israeli minister, but on Friday Olmert intensified his criticism. “A group of thugs … are running the state of Israel these days and the head of the gang is Netanyahu,” he told the BBC World Service.

He added: “Of course they are criticizing me, they are defaming me, I accept it, and it will not stop me from criticizing and opposing these atrocious policies.”

Speaking to Arab News, Ahron Bregman, a former Israeli soldier and a senior teaching fellow in King’s College London’s Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, said: “You don’t have to be an expert on international humanitarian law to conclude that what the Israelis are doing in the Gaza Strip is carrying out terrible war crimes.

“European governments can’t ignore this any longer, as their publics are furious, and, at last, they have started to react.”

 

 

Ideally, he said, “it would be the UN Security Council that instructs Israel to stop the industrial killing in Gaza and the starving of the Gazans, but the Israelis seem confident that US President Donald Trump will not let such a resolution pass.

“But who knows? Sometimes, in war, there are moments which are turning points, moments that push nations of the world over the edge and make them take action to stop wars.”

Bregman believes only two courses of action “would make the Israeli government rethink and change its criminal behaviour in Gaza.”

The first is that European countries should block trade relations with Israel — a step now being seriously considered in the European Union — and impose sanctions on the state.

“You don’t have to be an expert on international humanitarian law to conclude that what the Israelis are doing in the Gaza Strip is carrying out terrible war crimes.

Ahron Bregman, a former Israeli soldier and a senior teaching fellow in King’s College London’s Institute of Middle Eastern Studies

But his second suggestion, coming as it does from a man who served in the Israeli army for six years and took part in the 1982 Lebanon War, shows just how far the actions of the current Israeli government have strayed from what mainstream public opinion in the country now regards as acceptable.

“Young Israelis who fought in Gaza should be stopped when trying to cross into Europe,” he said.

“They should be investigated for their actions in Gaza and arrested if there’s any suspicion of war crimes.”

And, he added, “pilots, who caused most of the damage in Gaza, should be sent automatically for trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.”