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Palestinians Must Find New Path from Israeli Rule After War, Top Official Says
Hussein Al-Sheikh, Secretary General of the Executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), speaks during an interview with Reuters, in Ramallah in the West Bank December 16, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Immediately after Israel’s war in Gaza ends, all Palestinian factions including Hamas must take a serious look at the failure of their policies to achieve freedom for their people, a top Palestinian Authority official said.
Hussein al-Sheikh, 63, said war in Gaza after the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel meant Hamas should make a “serious and honest assessment and reconsider all its policies and all its methods” once fighting subsides.
Sheikh, the general secretary of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Liberation Organization, is seen by some as a potential successor. His comments were the first time a senior PLO leader has talked publicly about Hamas tactics since the Oct. 7 attacks.
Sheikh also acknowledged the political path under Oslo peace accords was faltering and as it currently stands would not achieve the ambition of the Palestinian people for the establishment of a Palestinian state within pre-1967 borders.
Sheikh and Abbas met senior White House aide Jake Sullivan in Ramallah on Friday. The Palestinians told him a new international effort was needed to persuade Israel of a comprehensive solution that includes the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem, Sheikh told Reuters.
“There must be a single Palestinian government governing the Palestinian homeland,” Sheikh told Reuters on Saturday in a rare interview in sleek offices adorned with portraits of Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Despite offering welcome verbal backing for a Palestinian state in the meetings, Sheikh said, Washington had not proposed concrete mechanisms or political initiatives. He reiterated a call by Abbas for an international peace conference to forge a new route.
A senior U.S. official said this week the idea of a conference had been discussed with partners, but the proposal was still at a preliminary stage.
LEGITIMATE REPRESENTATIVE
U.S. President Joe Biden has sent a series of top officials to the West Bank to meet Abbas and Sheikh, seeking to revamp the moribund Palestinian Authority to take charge of Gaza once the war is over and unify the administration of the enclave and the West Bank.
Visiting U.S. officials have discussed the need for reforms to combat corruption, hand over broader executive powers to the prime minister and introduce new blood into the Palestinian Authority.
Despite the U.S. efforts, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that he would not allow the Palestinian Authority to run Gaza after the war and suggested Israel would occupy it instead.
Sheikh said the Palestinian Authority was the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and would be ready to take control of Gaza after the war.
However, he recognized that the unpopular Palestinian Authority, which many Palestinians see as corrupt, undemocratic and out of touch, needed to reassess its role. Hamas by contrast has grown in popularity since the attacks, both in Gaza and the West Bank, a Palestinian poll showed this week.
Referring to Hamas, which has fought five wars against Israel since 2008, Sheikh said “it is not acceptable for some to believe that their method and approach in managing the conflict with Israel was the ideal and the best.
“After all this (killing) and after everything that’s happening, isn’t it worth making a serious, honest and responsible assessment to protect our people and our Palestinian cause?
“Isn’t it worth discussing how to manage this conflict with the Israeli occupation?”
Sheikh said 60% of Gaza was destroyed and it would cost $40 billion to rebuild over decades.
The 1993 Oslo peace accords with Israel were partially successful, he said, in that they gave Palestinians an identity and led to the repatriation of two million refugees to the West Bank and Gaza from countries they fled to during the 1948 and 1967 wars with Israel.
He said the PA has been weakened by Israel’s military raids and expansion of settlements.
Abbas promoted Sheikh last year. His new role effectively makes him the second most powerful man in the PLO, an umbrella for non-Islamist Palestinian factions that does not include Hamas.
He is deeply unpopular among Palestinians partly thanks to his liaison role with the Israeli military. Opinion polls give him about 3% support.
In response to a request for comment, Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Sheikh was “on the side of the Israeli civil administration, and him attacking the Palestinian resistance isn’t surprising”.
Sheikh said it was his job to work with Israel to reduce the suffering of Palestinians.
The post Palestinians Must Find New Path from Israeli Rule After War, Top Official Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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