KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Falasteen Abdulati mourns her vanished good life as a wedding photographer as she wearily queues day after day for scarce drinking water in a rubble-strewn street in south Gaza, fearing for the future of her children.
The mother of seven is one of over two million Gazans who struggle to survive in the eighth month of an Israeli siege and invasion triggered by a cross-border Hamas attack, with food, drinking water, medical care and safe shelter hard to find.
"I'm a wedding photographer. Someone like me should be going out and living well and spending money on their children," Abdulati, 35, said, laboriously filling a few buckets with water from a battered barrel in the city of Khan Younis.
"Our life has (been reduced) to the simplest needs. It is work and exhaustion. Nothing else. The dream that I had as a wedding photographer to open a studio and to get cameras and to make people happy, is lost. My dream is lost."
She continued: "Every morning we wake up at 7 o’clock and of course the first thing we think about is water," she said. "We come here and wait in the long queue, just to fill up four buckets with water. Other than that, our shoulders hurt. There are no men to carry it for us. There is no one but us. Women are the ones working these days."
Israel's assault on the tiny, heavily urbanised coastal enclave has displaced over three-quarters of the 2.3 million Palestinian population and demolished its infrastructure.
"The future of my children that I worked tirelessly for is lost. There are no schools (functioning), no education. There is no more comfort in life," said Abdulati.
"No safety," she added, referring to the threat of shelling or raids that Israel says target Hamas militants holed up in densely-packed residential neighbourhoods.
Abdulati, dressed in a body-length robe and head-covering, said the upheaval of war had turned the lives of Gaza women upside down. "Women are now like men. They work hard just like men. They're no longer comfortable at home."
Her husband is hospitalised with war injuries.
Breathing heavily, she lugged her buckets along a shattered, sand-covered street and up a dingy flight of cement stairs into the family flat. There she heated up the fresh water over a makeshift fire stove in a cluttered, cramped room dark for lack of electricity, watched intently by her young children.
"We are suffering due to a lack of gas because the border crossings are shut," she said, referring to Israel's siege that has severely restricted humanitarian aid shipments into Gaza.
"The water that I filled up must be rationed. I heat it up so I can wash the children, in addition to doing the dishes and washing clothes. The four buckets I can get per day are just not enough. I have to go back again and again."
From wedding photographer to water queue: Gaza mother mourns lost dream life
https://arab.news/zyhcf
From wedding photographer to water queue: Gaza mother mourns lost dream life
- The mother of seven is one of over two million Gazans who struggle to survive in the eighth month of an Israeli siege
- "I'm a wedding photographer. Someone like me should be going out and living well and spending money on their children," Abdulati said
Egypt recovers antiquities smuggled to Australia: ministry
- Officials say Egypt has successfully retrieved around 30,000 smuggled artefacts over the past decade
CAIRO: Egypt’s antiquities ministry said Sunday it had retrieved 21 artefacts, including a funerary figurine and an eye of Horus amulet, that had been smuggled illegally to Australia.
Most of the items had been “on display at a renowned auction house in Australia, before it became clear that there were no proper ownership documents,” Supreme Council of Antiquities chief Mohamed Ismail Khaled said.
The collection, which also included a fragment of a wooden sarcophagus, was handed over to the Egyptian embassy in Canberra.
Officials did not say how or when the pieces had been smuggled out of the country.
Such thefts are not uncommon, however.
During the 2011 uprising that ousted Egypt’s longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak, looters ransacked museums and archaeological sites, spiriting away thousands of priceless pieces.
Many of the stolen artefacts later appeared on the international market or ended up in private collections.
Officials say Egypt has successfully retrieved around 30,000 smuggled artefacts over the past decade.
Six years ago, the country’s embassy in Australia also received a long-lost fourth and final part of a stone stela dating back to the fourth century BC.
The stela, or information slab, disappeared from an excavation site in Luxor in 1995.
Known as the Sheshn Nerfertem stela, it was smuggled in pieces to Switzerland, from where three pieces were repatriated in 2017.
The now-complete stela, and the artefacts repatriated from Australia, are now “at the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir for restoration in preparation for display in a temporary exhibition,” the antiquities ministry said.
Beirut’s choice: Prime minister urges citizens to shape their city’s future
- Fierce contest as Lebanon holds the third round of municipal and mayoral elections
BEIRUT: Lebanon held the third round of municipal and mayoral elections on Sunday.
Sunday’s vote was held in the governorates of Beirut, Bekaa, and Baalbek-Hermel.
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam inspected the central operations room overseeing the electoral process at the Ministry of Interior and across various electoral centers in Beirut.
Defense Minister Michel Menassa and Interior Minister Ahmad Hajjar accompanied him.
After casting his ballot in Beirut, Salam said that the elections provided an opportunity for citizens to express their true wishes for the city and voiced hope for a high voter turnout.
He stated that the people of Beirut should not miss the chance to decide what kind of city they want.
“I urge them to participate in the elections in large numbers.”
Salam affirmed that the people of Beirut “are capable of ensuring representation for everyone in the municipal council.”
He said that the new municipal council is not obligated to support the government’s efforts; instead, it is the government’s responsibility to meet all the needs of the people of Beirut.
He added: “This is a developmental choice par excellence.”
In an afternoon appeal, Salam repeated his call for voters to cast their ballots, stating that the voter turnout in Beirut remained low.
MPs supporting the parties’ list in Beirut expressed concern about the low turnout during the day.
Security and military forces deployed personnel to assure the safety of polling stations and the routes leading to them.
The Lebanese Army Command announced that an army unit in Baalbek and the Douris area arrested four people found in possession of combat pistols, a quantity of hashish, and captagon pills.
In an official statement, the Army Command warned citizens “against creating trouble, firing guns, and endangering the lives of others.”
It also suspended “all gun licenses in the governorates where elections are being held for 48 hours,” stressing that it “will not hesitate to pursue and arrest all those who disrupt security across all Lebanese territory.”
During the voting process, Israeli reconnaissance planes flew over Beirut.
As the southern governorates and Nabatieh prepare for the final round of parliamentary elections on Sunday, an Israeli drone targeted a Rapid car on Sunday on Beit Yahoun Road near a Lebanese army checkpoint, wounding the driver and a soldier manning the checkpoint.
Sunday’s elections were described as “fierce,” with intense competition between political party lists and civil society.
Voters extensively crossing out party candidates cast doubt on the parties’ ability to maintain public support and raised concerns over Beirut’s ability to uphold its model of coexistence.
For example, Sunni voters were striking off Shiite candidates affiliated with Hezbollah and the Amal Movement, as well as Christian candidates affiliated with the Lebanese Forces and their allies.
The capital experienced intense competition between two main lists: the “Beirut Unites Us” list, which includes candidates from political parties with significant discord, under the slogan “Preserving Equal Representation of Muslims and Christians,” and the “Beirut Madinati” list, supported by Change deputies.
The Forces of Change is a parliamentary bloc that comprises multiple reformist parties and independent MPs.
Other lists were also running in the electoral race.
They include a list of candidates affiliated with the Future Movement, which suspended its political activity, and candidates of the Islamic Group, as well as other civilian lists.
The civilian voter turnout remained low until 2 p.m., not exceeding 13 percent.
Voters affiliated with Hezbollah, the Amal Movement, and the Al-Ahbash Association were expected to arrive at polling centers in groups before voting concluded at 7 p.m., aiming to tip the balance in favor of their party list.
Abu Al-Abed Al-Nuri, a voter in one of the Al-Mazraa electoral centers, said that “he composed his list by himself, choosing only Sunni candidates.
“All parties have wronged Beirut and caused disastrous consequences; however, they have now united and insist on sharing the benefits while ignoring our demands and problems,” he added.
MP Fouad Makhzoumi said: “We are trying to impose equal representation in voting.”
MP Hagop Terzian from the Free Patriotic Movement bloc stated: “Parties are not from Mars; they are part of Beirut and have allied to ensure equal representation.”
Hezbollah MP Amin Sherri said: “We insist on equal representation. Cross-outs are Beirut’s enemy.”
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea urged voters in Beirut to support the parties’ list “because the elections in Beirut reflect on coexistence in Lebanon, as it is the capital that represents the country’s main face.”
Competition for municipal seats was also fierce in the Bekaa, particularly in Zahle and Baalbek, raising voter turnout to 30 and 40 percent during the day.
Several people, including two members of the Internal Security Forces’ Information Branch, were injured in Zahle during a raid conducted by a patrol from the branch, supported by a Lebanese Army unit, on a Hezbollah electoral office in the area on suspicion of bribery.
Around 15 young men were present at the site during the raid.
The permits of several representatives for the non-partisan Change list in the city of Baalbek disappeared.
It was revealed that the person who hid the permits — and who was arrested by the security forces — was working for the Hezbollah list in the area.
At least 3 killed in blast targeting police station in eastern Syria
CAIRO: At least three people were killed when a blast targeted a police station in the eastern Syrian town of Al-Mayadeen on Sunday, the state news agency said, citing a security source.
The explosion also injured several people, the report said, without providing further details.
Israel says retrieved official Syrian archive on executed spy Eli Cohen
- Eli Cohen was discovered by Syrian intelligence and publically hanged in Damascus on May 18, 1965
- Among the items recovered are a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours before his execution, audio recordings and files from his interrogations
JERUSALEM: Israel announced on Sunday that it had retrieved the official Syrian archive on famed spy Eli Cohen — a cache of 2,500 documents, photographs and personal effects linked to the Mossad agent executed in Damascus in 1965.
“In a complex covert operation by the Mossad, in cooperation with a strategic partner service, the official Syrian archive on Eli Cohen was brought to Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement, referring to the country’s external intelligence agency.
“The trove contains thousands of items that had been kept under tight security by Syrian intelligence for decades,” the statement added.
Cohen, who developed close ties with high-level political and military figures in Syria as part of a four-year espionage operation, was eventually discovered by Syrian intelligence.
He was publically hanged in Damascus on May 18, 1965.
Cohen’s story was dramatized in the Netflix minizeries “The Spy,” starring the British actor Sacha Baron Cohen.
The prime minister added that retrieving the archive reflected Israel’s “unwavering commitment to bringing back all our missing, prisoners, and hostages.”
The statement was an apparent reference both to the 58 captives, dead and alive, being held by Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, as well as the announcement last week that Israel had retrieved from Syria the body of a soldier missing for 43 years, also in a covert Mossad operation.
Sunday’s statement said that the recovery of the items came after “decades of Mossad intelligence, operational, and technological effort to find every scrap of information about Eli Cohen in the quest to shed light on his fate and discover the location of his burial.”
Over the years, multiple operations have been carried out to that end, the statement said, including “inside enemy states.”
Mossad director David Barnea said in the statement that recovering the archive was a “significant achievement,” and “another step toward locating our man in Damascus’ burial place.”
Among the items recovered are a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours before his execution, audio recordings and files from his interrogations and those of his sources, letters he wrote to family members in Israel and photographs from his clandestine mission in Syria.
Additionally, the cache included belongings taken from his home after his arrest, including forged passports and photographs of him with senior Syrian military and government officials, as well as notebooks and diaries listing Mossad tasks.
Also discovered was a file labelled “Nadia Cohen,” detailing Syrian intelligence monitoring of Cohen’s wife’s campaign to free her husband.
In a special meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu and Barnea shared the trove of items with Nadia Cohen, the statement said.
Israel army says 2 projectiles launched from Gaza after air raid sirens sound
- One projectile was intercepted and the other fell in an open area
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said two projectiles were launched from the Gaza Strip on Sunday, shortly after it announced it had commenced “extensive ground operations” across the besieged Palestinian territory.
“Following the sirens that sounded in Kissufim, two projectiles were identified crossing into Israel from the central Gaza Strip,” the army said, adding one was intercepted and the other fell in an open area.
