View From The Hill: Two Years Of A Distant War Have Brought Much Damage To Australian Society

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Alec Ryvchin (centre) joins protestors as the hold placards of Israeli hostages following a press conference marking the two-year anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel. Bianca De Marchi/AAP

BY MICHELLE GRATAN

PROFESSIONAL FELLOW,

UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA

Two years ago, who would have imagined the police and the Palestine Action Group (PAG) would be fighting in court over whether demonstrators should be allowed to rally outside the Sydney Opera House?

Indeed, 24 months ago, who would have thought we’d have (or need) designated “envoys” to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia in Australia?

On Tuesday’s second anniversary of the Hamas atrocities in Israel, it is sobering to reflect how much damage this horrific Middle East conflict, which has cost tens of thousands of lives, most of them Palestinian, has done to Australia’s own society.

In Fitzroy in Melbourne, pro-Palestinian graffiti appeared to mark the anniversary: “Glory to Hamas”, “Oct 7, do it again”, “Glory to the martyrs”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described this as “terrorist propaganda” that was “abhorrent,” saying those responsible “must face the full force of the law”.

On Wednesday, the issue of Sunday’s proposed protest outside the Opera House will be back in court. The police don’t want the protesters’ march to be allowed to end in the tight space at the Opera House, citing dangers to safety.

The lawyer for the PAG said on Tuesday: “If the police application is conceded to, the ramifications for the right to protest in Australia will not be confined to the Opera House, but for a wide variety of protest activities”. The group argues the issue is a constitutional one.

In the past two years, this faraway conflict has done substantial harm to Australia’s social cohesion, raised questions about the future of multiculturalism, and produced serious divisions about where lines should be drawn on limiting free speech and the right to protest. The response of institutions, universities in particular, has been tested and in some cases found wanting.

NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns gave a flavour of the cross pressures when speaking on Sydney radio on Tuesday.

“We’ve moved significant changes to hate speech laws in New South Wales and we’ve done it because we recognise we live in a multicultural community and yes, you’ve got a right to freedom of speech but someone else has a right not to be vilified or hated on the basis of their race or religion. All of those laws are currently being challenged in the High Court because of the implied freedom of political communication.”

As hope, however tentative, is glimmering that the peace plan advanced by United States President Donald Trump just might bring a real breakthrough in this terrible war, the fissures it has produced in Australia seem as sharp as ever.

In two years, the Australian Jewish community has been embattled, with attacks on synagogues and other Jewish places, and many individuals deeply frightened for their own and their families’ safety. Iran’s intervention, behind at least two attacks, sought to stoke division.

In that time, the determination of Palestinian supporters has been steadfast, with regular weekend demonstrations maintained throughout.

The conflict has fractured the Australia-Israel relationship, with the Albanese government increasingly critical of Israel’s unrelenting prosecution of the war, and the Netanyahu government turning on Australia.

This culminated with Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations during the prime minister’s recent trip. The recognition was the end of Labor’s internal journey, which commenced many years before this war began.

The Greens Party have been at the left edge of the political spectrum.

The Australian community was divided about Palestinian recognition: an Essential poll published in late September showed 34% in favour, and 30% against.

The conflict has shattered what used to be a bipartisan Middle East policy, when both main parties strongly supported Israel and also backed a two-state solution for a long-term Middle East settlement.

Over the past two years, the Coalition has been strongly pro-Israel, accusing the Labor government of deserting an ally and failing to deal robustly with antisemitism in this country.

Opposition leader Sussan Ley used her parliamentary speech on Tuesday’s anniversary to home in on the government’s policy towards Israel.

“To our great shame, under the leadership of the Albanese Labor government, Australia has not stood with the people of Israel, nor with the United States, as they have sought to dismantle Hamas and establish the conditions for peace”.

The local rifts that have come to the surface in Australia were there well before October 7 2023. The war caused them to widen dramatically and explode.

Even if, and when, this conflict subsides, it will leave fractures, anger, bitterness and fear within sections of the Australian community.

Whatever healing takes place almost certainly won’t be complete. For governments, federal and state, intractable policy challenges will remain.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

The 5 Big Problems With Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan

Israel launched scores of airstrikes on Gaza City last weekend as Trump foreshadowed a peace plan was on the way. Yousef Al Zanoun/AP

BY IAN PARMETER

RESEARCH SCHOLAR, MIDDLE EAST STUDIES, 

AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

The 20-point plan announced by US President Donald Trump at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes close to living up to Trump’s hype. It is a bold attempt to address all of the issues that need to be resolved if there is to be lasting peace in Gaza.

Could it work? Both sides are tired of the war. Throughout history, quite a number of wars have simply come to an end when both sides were too exhausted to continue. Two-thirds of Israelis want the war to end, and though polling of Palestinians is difficult, they clearly want the devastation and suffering in Gaza to stop, too.

So, this plan, despite its limitations, could come at the right time.

However, there are many outstanding questions about the feasibility of the plan and to what extent it is likely to be successful. Given the Middle East’s violent history, it’s impossible to be optimistic at this point.

Here are five main reasons for concern.

1. Trust is lacking

There’s zero trust between both sides right now. And several aspects of the plan are so vague, there is a big risk both sides could accuse the other of breaking their promises.

The last ceasefire between the two sides only lasted two months before Netanyahu backed out, blaming Hamas for not releasing more hostages before negotiations on the next phase could proceed.
2. The plan is asymmetrical

The deal favours Israel more than it does Hamas. Hamas is essentially being asked to give up all of the remaining Israeli hostages it holds and all of its weapons at the same time, rendering it entirely defenceless.

Hamas, with its lack of trust in Israel and Netanyahu, in particular, may fear the Israeli leader could use this as an opportunity to attack it again without worrying about harming the hostages.

Hamas was also not invited to negotiate the terms of the agreement. And it now faces an ultimatum: accept the terms or Israel will “finish the job”.

Given the asymmetry of the plan, Hamas may decide the risks of accepting it outweigh the potential benefits, despite its offer of amnesty for Hamas fighters who lay down their arms.

Israel is being asked to make some compromises in the plan. But how realistic are these?

For example, the deal envisions a future when the Palestinian Authority (PA) can “securely and effectively take back control of Gaza”. Netanyahu has previously said he would not accept this.

Likewise, it would also be very difficult for Netanyahu to accept “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”, as outlined in the plan. He has firmly rejected this in the past, most recently in his defiant address to the UN General Assembly last week.

3. Important details are lacking

The implementation strategy of the plan is extraordinarily vague. We know nothing at this stage about the “International Stabilisation Force” that would take the place of the Israeli military after it withdraws from Gaza.

Which countries would participate? It would obviously be a mission fraught with danger to the personnel involved. Netanyahu has previously mentioned an Arab force taking over in Gaza, but no Arab states have yet put their hands up for this.

There is also no timeframe in the plan for the Palestinian Authority reforms, nor any details on what these reforms would entail.

Presumably, there would need to be new elections to install a credible leader in place of current President Mahmoud Abbas. But how that would be done and whether the people of Gaza would be able to take part is still unknown.

In addition, the details of the civil authority that would oversee the reconstruction of Gaza are very unclear. All we know is that Trump would appoint himself chair of the “Board of Peace”, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would also somehow be involved.

This board would need the absolute confidence of the Netanyahu government and Hamas to be effective. Trust is always in short supply in the Middle East.

4. No mention of the West Bank

The West Bank is clearly a flashpoint. There are disputes and clashes every day between the Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents, which are only likely to get worse.

Just last month, the Israeli government gave final approval to a controversial plan to build a new settlement that would effectively divide the West Bank in two, making a future, contiguous Palestinian state unviable.

The West Bank must be central to any overall settlement between Israel and Palestine.

5. Israel’s right-wing cabinet remains an obstacle

This could be the ultimate deal breaker: the hardline right-wing members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, have said they will not accept anything less than the complete destruction and elimination of Hamas.

And although Hamas would be disarmed and politically sidelined under this plan, its ideology would remain intact, as would a significant number of its fighters.

So, does it have a chance?

If Hamas accepts Trump’s plan, we could soon have the answers to several of these questions.

But it is going to require a great deal of work by the United States to maintain the pressure on Israel to stick to the deal. The chief Palestinian mediators, Qatar and Egypt, would also need to maintain pressure on Hamas so it doesn’t breach the conditions, as well.

Netanyahu is likely assuming there will be sufficient off-ramps for him to get out of the agreement if Hamas doesn’t live up to it. Netanyahu has already done this once when he backed out of the ceasefire in March and resumed Israel’s military operations.

In his forceful speech to a partially empty UN General Assembly hall last week, Netanyahu didn’t indicate he was thinking of walking away from any of the red lines he had previously set to end the war. In fact, he condemned the states recognising a Palestinian state and vowed, “Israel will not allow you to shove a terror state down our throats.”

Given this, Netanyahu would not have agreed to Trump’s plan at all if the US leader hadn’t put pressure on him. At the same time, Trump said at his news conference with Netanyahu that if Hamas fails to live up to the agreement or refuses to accept it, Israel would have his full backing to finish the job against Hamas.

This promise may be enough for Netanyahu to be able to persuade Smotrich and Ben-Gvir to support the plan – for now.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

‘There’s No Such Thing As Someone Else’s Children’ – Omar El Akkad Bears Witness To The Destruction Of Gaza And The West’s Quiet Assent

BY CLARE CORBOULD

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND

ASSOCIATE HEAD (RESEARCH) OF THE

SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL

SCIENCES, DEAKIN UNIVERSITY

Omar El Akkad does not want you to look away. An award-winning journalist and novelist, El Akkad was born in Egypt, lived as a teenager in Qatar and Canada, and migrated as an adult to the US, where he now lives with his family in the Pacific Northwest.

His essay collection, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, draws on his life, from childhood to new fatherhood. He combines these reflections with a sharp grasp of modern history to examine responses in the west to “the world’s first livestreamed genocide” in Gaza.

Finding that response wanting, he urges readers to watch, listen, reflect and act.

As someone whose parents migrated to the west for the freedoms and opportunities it would afford their children, El Akkad has an acute sense of the past events, ideas and structures that have shaped the present. He pays keen attention to the legacies of colonial rule.

Witnessing history

El Akkad’s descriptions of atrocity are not easy to read. Nor is his blunt demand to do something. Yet the force of his observations and the bite of his prose make it hard to turn away.

His purpose is akin to many famed witnesses in history. Contemporaneous statements about violence often serve later as testimony in determining what happened, who was responsible, and what recompense is due.

Think of George Orwell on propaganda in Spain. Or British journalists Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge exposing famine in 1930s USSR, while other western communists looked away. Or Victor Klemperer’s diaries, published after the war, which tracked how the Nazis twisted everyday speech.

Above all, this kind of testimony guards against future claims of innocence, against the reassuring assertion that “they didn’t know what was going on” or “they were of their time”.

Less well-known to Australian readers may be American journalist Ida B. Wells, but El Akkad’s fire and fury also brought her to mind. In the 1890s, Wells fiercely attacked lynching in her own newspaper, the Memphis Free Speech. She investigated specific instances of ritualised mob violence.

Wells also catalogued how news outlets told those stories. They minced words to protect the perpetrators, while smearing the reputations of the dead, who were always named.

El Akkad also pays close attention the way the violence in Gaza is framed and described. He observes how reporters use the passive voice, which not only hides the names of killers but implies mass death came about by accident or magic. “Palestinian Journalist Hit in Head by Bullet During Raid on Terror Suspect’s Home,” read one Guardian headline, he notes.

Both Wells and El Akkad show how victims of racist and colonial violence are cast as already guilty. With lynching, the pretext was often an accusation of rape, though that was rarely the actual spark. Far more common were disputes between men over land, pay, labour organising, business competition or voting drives.

In the case of Gaza, the media mimics the claims of Israeli politicians, its military and allies of both. They all cast civilians as terrorists or terrorists-in-waiting, even children. The words clean the consciences of onlookers. They launder harm as if it were cash.

Modes of resisting

As the book’s title, which began life as a viral tweet, goes: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

Bearing witness to the atrocities and the gutless responses, El Akkad reminds liberal readers that if Gaza had happened in the past, they would condemn the violence. What’s more, they would imagine that, had they been alive at the time, they would have firmly resisted the wrong or even taken a heroic stance against it.

One blistering passage will hit very close to home for Australian readers:

I read an op-ed in which a writer argues that the model for Palestinian-Israeli coexistence is something like Canada’s present-day relationship with the Indigenous population, and I marvel at the casual, obvious, but unstated corollary: that there is an Indigenous population being colonized, but that we should let this unpleasantness run its course so we can arrive at true justice in the form of land acknowledgments at every Tel Aviv poetry reading.

As well as diagnosing the problem, El Akkad surveys and evaluates modes of resisting what is happening in Gaza. He discards as ineffective the old appeal to westerners’ self-interest. Pointing out that horrors they permit elsewhere will eventually come for them just doesn’t work.

His essays were written between the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and August 2024, when the US presidential campaign was in full swing. Much of his energy goes to addressing the “lesser of two evils” debate about voting in a democracy where the options are far right and, at most, centre-a-bit-left. Only from a relatively protected position, he observes, could one vote for the Democratic Party on the grounds that the other side “would be so much worse”.

Making this case, El Akkad says, rests on a quiet assent to mass death. He calls this a “reticent acceptance of genocide” and asks liberals in the United States (and by implication in other western democracies) to examine their consciences.

The remedying action El Akkad proposes is widespread negation, or “walking away”. People, en masse, must refuse to accept that the meagre promises of the less conservative political parties are the best options on offer.

This will require sacrifices. El Akkad provides examples of people he admires: the writer who refused a prize from an organisation that had been silent about Gaza; the teacher brave enough to talk with teenage students about the intolerable rate of children and civilians (not “noncombatants”) dying. Most starkly, he writes of Aaron Bushnell, the US Air Force veteran, whose last words before setting himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington D.C. were “free Palestine”.

Systematic violence

Like Wells, El Akkad links systematic violence to the structures that underpin the modern world. Chief among them is capitalism. Real change, he suggests, will come when enough of us, to use the old 1960s parlance, “drop out”, though he prefers “negation”, a word that that implies there is something to defy.

It is time, he argues, for a well-educated western citizenry to say “enough”. Our phones are smart enough; we are (collectively) rich and sated enough.

It might be hard at first, but we will learn that “maybe it’s not all that much trouble to avoid ordering coffee and downloading apps and buying chocolate-flavored hummus from companies that abide slaughter”.

Doing so might just halt a genocide. In time, this kind of collective action might also stop other looming calamities, not least climate collapse. El Akkad’s steady focus throughout the book on the death, maiming and immeasurable psychic injury to the children of Gaza makes that case feel urgent.

If that sounds hyperbolic, El Akkad might ask what children you had in mind when you flinched from his diagnosis and prognosis. Your answer likely turns on the location, colour and wealth of the children you have in mind. Children in Tuvalu, for example, know he is not exaggerating.

In one of the book’s most arresting lines, El Akkad asks: “How does one finish the sentence: ‘It is unfortunate that tens of thousands of children are dead, but …’”

Better, he suggests, that we all behave in a way whose ethics is grounded in the claim: “there’s no such thing as someone else’s children.”

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

‘We’ve Proved We Can Do Anything’: The Syrian Women Who Want A Say In Running The Country

BY RUTH MICHAELSON

The feminist activist Ghalia Rahhal recalls with wry laughter her visit to the “blue building” in Idlib three years ago, an office where the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) monitored civil society organisations such as hers. Her colleague at a women’s rights organisation was once called there to hear a list of issues they were banned from working on: child marriage, divorce, and anything related to gender equality.

Rahhal had already survived an assassination attempt in her home town of Kafranbel as well as the murder of her son in Aleppo, leaving her unfazed by pointed questions levelled at her by an official: we heard you were training women in the refugee camps about politics, about equality, he told her with suspicion.

Rahhal instead saw an opportunity for dialogue, wondering if she could capitalise on a chance to speak with the authority that back then ruled only the enclave of Idlib in Syria’s north-west. “Why are you angry that we are teaching them these things?” she asked him. “My goal is not to teach those women to fight you, it’s for women to become decision-makers. We can’t have a displacement camp full of women run by a man, to name just one example.”

She continued her work in secret, providing lectures and training to women so that they would be ready to participate in a transitional government if the opportunity ever presented itself. That opportunity suddenly and unexpectedly arrived last month, when former president Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow as his fearsome regime crumbled.

The Islamist group HTS, which spearheaded the insurgency that ended Assad’s rule, is now the de-facto authority in Syria and has begun touting many of the same ideas it once chastised Rahhal for when she taught them to women displaced by Syria’s bloody civil war.

There is, so far, little clarity about how the new government will rule, particularly when it comes to women. Even so, many see this moment as one of boundless opportunity and say they are ready to dissent against any new authority wanting further control of their lives. Others, such as Rahhal, say they believe the transitional authority made up of HTS appointees simply doesn’t have the same means to crack down on women across the country in the same way they sometimes did when they ruled only a small mountainous enclave.

Many remain hopeful despite mounting unanswered questions, including how the reborn country might approach the sexual violence weaponised in Assad’s prisons, or whether thousands of exiled female activists, along with others who fled for fear of persecution over their gender expression or sexuality, could one day feel safe to return to the new Syria.

A few handpicked to serve in the transitional government have already drawn anger for their comments about women. Obaida Arnout, a spokesperson for the new authority, said women’s “biological and physiological nature” made them unfit for some government jobs.

And Aisha al-Dibs, the new minister for women, said she would not “give room” to any civil society organisations that disagree with her view, citing one “catastrophic” programme eight years ago that she claimed led to a rise in divorce rates.

Both statements sparked a fierce backlash, all of which appeared to chasten the new government. Days later, Maysaa Sabrine, a former deputy at the Syrian central bank, was appointed to head the institution, the first woman to do so in its history. Rahhal views this as part of a push-pull of draconian measures she said she was familiar with under HTS rule, with their repeal labelled as responsiveness to criticism.

Delal Albesh, who has run a centre providing vocational training for women in Idlib for years under HTS, said things in the city had improved and she hoped the new authority would take a similar approach nationwide. Her centre was one of a number of women’s empowerment facilities, providing opportunities to learn new skills so they could enter the job market or treat injuries caused by the Assad regime’s bombardments. She is now looking for an office in the capital, Damascus.

“Since many men were fighters, women didn’t sit back and wait – they worked,” she said. Women had taken on more roles across civil society, she said, particularly after the deadly earthquake that jolted northern Syria and southern Turkey in early 2023, killing an estimated 8,000 Syrians. Her organisation, Zumoruda, found that HTS’s pressure had eased after it registered with the local authorities, allowing it to expand its fieldwork and reach more women.

Her sister, Amina Albesh, who works with the Syrian civil defence group known as the White Helmets, said she didn’t want to talk politics as her organisation has long strived to remain neutral of any ruling authority. But she was confident that women would seize new roles in Syria.

“Many women lost their partners and have done a lot of hard work these past 14 years,” she said, estimating that 70% of the women living in Idlib had been working to provide for their families.

“They are tired,” she said. “But we are against all these statements that women can’t do this or that. We have proved we can do literally anything.” Both sisters said there had been few civil appointments open during HTS’s rule of Idlib, which they felt explained why no women had ever been appointed to leadership roles.

Rahhal remains sceptical about the transitional government’s promises of change. She described examining each new development from her exile in Berlin, comparing it with decisions that HTS took in the past, including when the group operated under the name Jabhat al-Nusra, an offshoot of al-Qaida. Then, she said, their violations were blatant, including a convoy of cars arriving to raid the Mazaya women’s centre she co-founded.

A year prior, an unknown assailant had set Mazaya’s offices on fire, and Rahhal was the target of a car bomb. The activist doesn’t know who planted the bomb, and is still seeking justice for the murder of her son, the journalist Khalid al-Issa, who was killed by an explosive device hidden in his home in Aleppo in 2016. Rahhal believes that some of those involved in his murder could now be in power.

“In general, I don’t trust HTS because I still don’t know whether they are truly changing or they just claim to have changed,” she said. “Are they really changing ideologically, or just for their own interests?”

After she was questioned in the so-called blue building, she said, it didn’t end the pressure on women’s rights organisations, but things did shift. Just like when she was briefly detained by the Hisbah, a local authority for enforcing religious edicts, who accused her of not wearing appropriate clothing but was thereafter dissolved, her detention ended up “causing headaches” for HTS just as much as it bothered Rahhal’s group.

Pressure on women’s rights organisations had become “more politicised” before she left Idlib two years ago, she said. Imams aligned to HTS would preach against the women’s empowerment centres, accusing them of “spreading corruption”, and warning people to be careful around them. Women would be called in for warnings, she said, but the local authority run by HTS was also careful to foster supportive relationships with select female empowerment centres who they felt aligned with their aims.

Still, Rahhal continued her activities to train women to be ready for leadership roles in a future democratic society.

“They prevented this during their rule in Idlib, because without my doing these trainings in secret it would take many years to re-establish a space among women to discuss civil rights, transitional justice and equality,” she said.

“Because I did it in secret before, now I can build from this base – but their plan was to marginalise women so they don’t understand these things and get involved in government.”

She remains encouraged by a few statements from HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, but feels the real tests lie ahead. Rahhal is keeping an eye on those attending the national dialogue where al-Sharaa is expected to dissolve HTS, although preparations have so far proved opaque.

“I don’t want to see 300 versions of Aisha al-Dibs attending, I want to see real representation,” she said.

Rahhal does not expect an invitation, but feels attendance is more than symbolic. “This is the first step towards having real female representation, to make real change,” she said.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Arab Americans Are A Much More Diverse Group Than Many Of Their Neighbors Mistakenly Assume

BY YASMIN MOLL, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Marking April as Arab American Heritage Month – a time to learn about the history, culture and contributions of our nearly 4 million strong community – is gaining traction across the country.

In 2022, Joe Biden made history as the first U.S. president to recognize the month, which he did again in 2023. States such as Illinois and Virginia have passed legislation to make the celebration an annual event, and dozens more have commemorated it.

This recognition is important, given the simplistic ways Arabs are often portrayed in American culture. From TV stations to entertainment media, people of Arab descent are often stereotyped as violent, oppressed or exotic. Nevertheless, as an anthropologist who studies religious and racial dynamics in Arab societies, I am concerned that as the celebration of “Arab American heritage” becomes more mainstream, the diversity and complex stories of Arab Americans’ many different communities may be papered over. In short, Arab Americans are not a monolithic group.
Arab Christians

In 2023, Arab American Heritage Month overlaps with the second half of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. For many in the United States, this overlap seems natural, given how often Islam is conflated with Arab identity. But just as most Muslims around the world are not Arab, not all Arabs are Muslim.

While the 22 countries that make up the Arab League all have Muslim majorities, Christian communities predate Muslim ones in the region. Indeed, Christianity began in the Middle East, with the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, which is revered as Jesus’ birthplace, an important pilgrimage stop for Christians from all over the world. During the first significant wave of Arab immigration to the U.S. in the late 19th century and early 20th century, families more often than not were Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian Christians.

Today, most Americans of Arab descent identify as Christian. While the Arab community in the greater Detroit area, a short drive from where I live and work, is majority Muslim, that sets it apart from many other Arab communities in the U.S.

Arab American Christians are themselves diverse, identifying as Protestants and Catholics, and with a variety of Eastern Christian traditions, such as Antiochian and Coptic Orthodoxy.

Furthermore, some sects of Christianity have become intertwined with specific ethnic identities. For example, some Coptic Christian Egyptian Americans refuse the label “Arab,” even if they grew up speaking Arabic at home or learn the language to connect with their family roots. This refusal is often rooted in Copts’ collective experiences of marginalization in Egypt, where they face many restrictions, including on repairing and building churches.

From Mizrahi Jews to Shiite Muslims

Just as Christianity is an integral yet complex part of Arab heritage, so is Judaism. Arab Jews, often called Mizrahi Jews, have existed since ancient times and helped shape Arab heritage through their philosophical, poetic and political contributions across centuries.

To be sure, Israel’s establishment and its occupation of Palestinian territories has complicated Arab Jewish identities, with new forms of antisemitism becoming more common within many Arab communities. Still, there is growing interest among scholars and Arab American Jews themselves in learning more about this history, as well as the Jewish background of beloved pan-Arab celebrities such as Layla Murad, an iconic midcentury Egyptian actress.

The San Francisco Bay area for generations has been home to the Egyptian Jewish Karaite community. Karaites reject the authority of the rabbinic oral tradition used by more mainstream branches of Judaism such as Reform, Conservative and Orthodox groups in the U.S. Here in the U.S., as in Egypt, members struggle for recognition as a religious minority within a religion that is itself a minority, Judaism.

Arab American Muslims are not a monolithic group, either. Over half identify as Sunni, 16% as Shiite and the rest with neither group, according to a 2017 Pew poll. Of course, the diversity of beliefs and practices within Sunnism and Shiism, the largest two branches of Islam, are themselves present within Arab American Muslim communities as well.

Finally, many Arab Americans identify with no religion at all, or with other faiths beyond the Abrahamic traditions.

Many nations, one box

Arab heritage not only includes a variety of religious traditions, but encompasses a wide range of ethnic and racial identities. It is difficult to make generalizations about Arabs, whose skin tone, facial features, eye colors and hair textures embody the rich histories of human migrations and settlements that characterize western Asia and northern Africa.

The U.S. census erases this internal diversity, however, by categorizing Arabs and other Middle Easterners as “white.” Arab American advocacy groups have long argued that the form’s categories do not reflect the actual experiences of the vast majority of Arab Americans, who are not treated as white in their everyday lives. And Arab identities in the U.S. are becoming only more complex, given the diversity of national backgrounds reflected in the more recent waves of Arab immigration from the 1960s to today.

Complicated identities

Asking that Arabs check the box as “white” also marginalizes Black Arabs. The term Afro Arab is growing as a term of self-description for Black Arab Americans seeking to make space for their multifaceted identities and heritage. Black communities are a part of every Arab country, from Iraq to Morocco.

These dual identities are still fraught, given the pervasiveness of anti-Black racism within some Arab communities, which often stems from the legacies of the trans-Saharan and Ottoman slave trades. An estimated 15% of Tunisians, for example, are descendants of enslaved Black people from sub-Saharan Africa. Tunisia abolished slavery in 1846, two decades before the U.S., yet it passed a law prohibiting racial discrimination only in 2018, making it the first Arab country to do so. Still, Tunisia’s president recently provoked outrage after he gave a racist speech targeting African migrants and Black Tunisians.

Around the world, Black Arabs have consistently criticized such racism, especially after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S., which sparked a regional reckoning with anti-Blackness.

As the Sudanese-American museum curator Isra el-Beshir put it, “I am an African person, who speaks Arabic and who as a result of speaking Arabic has Arab cultural tendencies. But I do not racially identify as an Arab. It’s still murky territory for me that I am trying to navigate.”

500-year journey

In her historical novel “The Moor’s Account,” which won the Arab American Book Award in 2015 and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Laila Lalami recounts the experiences of Al-Zammouri, more commonly known as Estebanico. Based on true accounts, Lalami narrates how he was enslaved and brought to current-day Florida by 16th-century Spanish colonizers. Al-Zammouri’s name reflects his Moroccan hometown: Azemmour, a city famed for its ocean breeze. His identity – Black and Arab; Muslim, then Catholic – reflects the complexity of the Arab world while bringing to light the complex origin stories of America itself.

Ideally, heritage month celebrations will create more opportunities to reflect on stories like Al-Zammouri’s, which portray how rich and diverse Arab American identity is – really, many different identities rolled into just two words. If heritage months are an opportunity to celebrate the diversity of America, the diversity of the Arab community itself should not be overlooked.

Dubai: The Power Of Vision

DAILY TRUST NIGERIA

Dubai Image: Hotels Combined

BY MOHAMMED BELLO YUNUSA

Dubai is not a hidden destination for glamour policymakers, politicians, small and big business people and leaders of countries that are constantly in search of pleasure and money among others. Indeed for global shopping, Dubai is the destination for many including leaders of African countries. My mission to Dubai is to learn and see things for myself. I am curious to know how other nations are governed and other cities outside Nigeria exist.

The first incidence of how other countries are ruled at the material time of writing this was the British Prime Minister Liz Truss’s demonstration of ‘I am in charge.’ In a swift move on the British political chess board, the Prime Minister sacked the Chancellor of the Exchequer mainly because “the mini budget went further and faster than the market expects”. Such a budget was making a negative wave on the economy and that was bad for the citizens and businesses. Truss quickly appointed another to reverse the damaging policies. Thereafter, Truss assumed responsibilities for the prevailing economic and political woes; she resigned! African countries need someone to call the shots and assume responsibilities. Knowing who is in charge of Dubai city did not come to me this vividly.

Sure, I did not come to Dubai to study how it is governed. With knowledge acquisition and dispensing as my trade, I came to Dubai in search of new ideas and perspectives. This is to last for a week. With time limitations, I only had glimpses of the beautiful city. Though the city has a record of sand storms, it lacks the filth of Nigerian cities and the potential for flooding as in Lokoja. There are no uncovered drainage and littered polythene bags.

The small fishing village of the 15th century has become a sprawling city that provides commerce and pleasure to the global population. For shopping, education, health and leisure and other tourist attractions, certainly, Dubai is a place to go. Dubai is a safe and secured city. It is said that you can leave your bag of money on the street and come back for it the following day without a heart attack. On the first day in the city, I ventured into a grocery. The elderly Pakistani shopkeeper volunteered an assurance that I should feel free to go anywhere any time without fear of kidnap, one chance or any harm to my person. A taxi driver confirmed that safety and security in the city at all times do not exist anywhere outside Dubai.

The serenity is inherent in vehicular traffic. The city is extremely neat. The roads are kept clean by appointed persons. However, the streets can be littered with SPA advert handbills. Don’t pick any as you may be led to buying services from the opposite gender. Other than the fact that there is effective separation of vehicular traffic from pedestrians, drivers generally respect pedestrians like their parents. The entire traffic can come to a stand still for only one pedestrian to cross the road. Yet no horn sounds. I am sure people don’t greet people with vehicle horns there.

With the overlaying road network and metro line interchanges, added to massive and exotic building structures, Dubai is a fine example of concrete jungle. All urban services, cables and pipes are well encased in mother earth. Those that cannot be encased are at the rooftop of buildings. Rooftops are places for gas cylinders, air-conditioning engines and swimming pools. In all these I did not see or hear the sound of electricity generators. Yet, bulbs do not blink let alone go off. The electricity is a good manager of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Water supply is as forceful on the thousandth floor as it is on the ground floor. Dubai is a place where city infrastructure works just as the city never sleeps.

Dubai appears to be ahead of its time. Urban development is set to attract new investments. In several places, construction of high rise buildings, commercial or residential, is ongoing. Yet, there are several notices on vacant places as adverts of residential or business places. A place to rent is not an issue for new investors and entrepreneurs. The rate of building development is promoted by the non-payment of tenement rates by property owners. The only tax people pay in the United Arab Emirates is value added tax. This makes workers’ personal income wholly personal.

In this jungle and amazing infrastructural performance, a few houses have flower pots on their balconies in the high rise residential buildings. Along the streets and open spaces, there are few plants. A view of the city from the window of the hotel only reveals limited instances of trees and shrubs in the city. Few plants dot the city. Urban vegetation is a major challenge for the city. With the sand storms, huge possibilities of emissions of pro-climate change gases, the city can be better with increased density of plants and shrubs. The state in collaboration with residents can do something.

The bottom line is that Dubai is safe, secure, functional and economically boisterous though bereft of climate change mitigation item, urban vegetation cover. The wonder is: what are the take homes that leaders and policymakers of Africa bring back? African leaders and policymakers need to add value to their national development from experiences of other countries and even cities. If we cannot think it out, we should be able to copy. This is desirable because of our levels of development and performance. The state of many African cities, including Nigeria is, unfortunately, to say the least, dysfunctional, unsafe and unattractive to investors and enjoyment seekers. It is time for governments to begin to measure the influence of foreign visits, study tours and others by leaders and policymakers on policies, actual development and quality of life in Africa. Experience of other countries must be brought to bear on our vision and activities for the good of our lives.

The development, governance of and service delivery in Dubai is overwhelming and impressive. In the next full travel package to Dubai, do me a favour, pencil me down.

Yunusa is Executive Director, Socioeconomic and Environment Advocacy Centre, Zaria

Treasury Sanctions Six Individuals For Raising Funds In The United Arab Emirates To Support Nigeria’s Boko Haram Terrorist Group

Boko Haram

PRESS RELEASE

WASHINGTON (US DEPT. OF THE TREASURY) — Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated a network of six individuals connected to Nigeria-based terrorist group, Boko Haram. All six were found guilty of establishing a Boko Haram cell in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to raise funds for and provide material assistance to Boko Haram insurgents in Nigeria. OFAC’s action follows arrests, prosecutions, and designations in the UAE in September 2021, demonstrating the commitment of the Emirati government to using judicial measures and targeted financial sanctions to disrupt the flow of funds to these networks.

“With this action, the United States joins the UAE in targeting terrorist financing networks of mutual concern,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury Brian Nelson. “Treasury continues to target financial facilitators of terrorist activity worldwide. We welcome multilateral action on this Boko Haram network to ensure that it is not able to move any further funds through the international financial system.”

OFAC designated Abdurrahman Ado Musa, Salihu Yusuf Adamu, Bashir Ali Yusuf, Muhammed Ibrahim Isa, Ibrahim Ali Alhassan, and Surajo Abubakar Muhammad pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, as amended, which targets terrorists, leaders, and officials of terrorist groups, and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism. The U.S. Department of State designated Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist on November 14, 2013.

BOKO HARAM NETWORK IN THE UAE

The UAE Federal Court of Appeals in Abu Dhabi convicted Abdurrahman Ado Musa, Salihu Yusuf Adamu, Bashir Ali Yusuf, Muhammed Ibrahim Isa, Ibrahim Ali Alhassan, and Surajo Abubakar Muhammad for transferring $782,000 from Dubai to Boko Haram in Nigeria. Salihu Yusuf Adamu and Surajo Abubakar Muhammad were sentenced to life imprisonment for violations of UAE anti-terrorism laws; Abdurrahman Ado Musa, Bashir Ali Yusuf, Muhammed Ibrahim Isa, and Ibrahim Ali Alhassan were sentenced to 10 years in prison, followed by deportation. Today’s designations will prevent these individuals’ funds from being used further to support terrorism.

SANCTIONS IMPLICATIONS

As a result of today’s action, all property and interests in property of the individuals named above, and of any entities that are owned, directly or indirectly, 50 percent or more by them, individually, or with other blocked persons, that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons, must be blocked and reported to OFAC. Unless authorized by a general or specific license issued by OFAC or otherwise exempt, OFAC’s regulations generally prohibit all transactions by U.S. persons or within the United States (including transactions transiting the United States) that involve any property or interests in property of designated or otherwise blocked persons.

Furthermore, engaging in certain transactions with the individuals designated today entails risk of secondary sanctions pursuant to E.O. 13224, as amended. Pursuant to this authority, OFAC can prohibit or impose strict conditions on the opening or maintaining in the United States of a correspondent account or a payable-through account of a foreign financial institution that knowingly conducted or facilitated any significant transaction on behalf of a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

The power and integrity of OFAC sanctions derive not only from its ability to designate and add persons to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN List), but also from its willingness to remove persons from the SDN List consistent with the law. The ultimate goal of sanctions is not to punish but to bring about a positive change in behavior. For information concerning the process for seeking removal from an OFAC list, including the SDN List, please refer to OFAC’s Frequently Asked Question 897 here. For detailed information on the process to submit a request for removal from an OFAC sanctions list, please here.

Sudan Pro-Democracy Group Denounces UN Mediation Efforts

The Sudanese Professionals Association. Image via The Arab Initiatives

BY NOHA ELHENNAWY

CAIRO (AP) — Sudan’s leading pro-democracy group lashed out at the United Nations on Friday, accusing it of failing to safeguard the country’s transition to democracy and being soft on the generals who led last year’s military coup.

The Sudanese Professionals’ Association, which led dozens of protests since the military takeover in October, once again rejected an initiative by the U.N. Mission in Sudan aimed at bringing civilians and the military to the negotiating table.

“Your mission has failed to explicitly condemn the coup,” the group said in a statement. “All your mission’s moves implied a recognition of the coup authorities.”

The coup upended Sudan’s transition to democracy after three decades of repression and international isolation under autocratic President Omar al-Bashir. The African nation has been on a fragile path to democracy since a popular uprising forced the military to remove al-Bashir and his Islamist government in April 2019.

The upheaval in Sudan worsened last month following the resignation of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who was the civilian face of the transitional government over the past two years.

The prime minister, who was ousted in the October coup only to be reinstated a month later under heavy international pressure, stepped down on Jan. 2 after his efforts to reach a compromise failed.

Friday’s statement came as the U.N. mission continued its consultations to find a way out of the ongoing crisis.

“By including the coup perpetrators, your consultations contradict the aspirations of the Sudanese people in a flagrant way,” the SPA said, addressing Volker Perthes, head of the UN Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan, or UNITAMS.

In the same statement, the SPA reiterated its opposition to any new talks or partnerships with the military. The group has insisted that the military must withdraw from politics and allow a fully civilian government to lead the transition.

Since the coup, at least 79 people have been killed and hundreds of others wounded in a widely condemned crackdown on protests, according to the Sudan Doctors Committee, a medical group tracking casualties among protesters.

There were also mass arrests of activists leading the anti-coup protests and allegations of sexual violence, including rape and gang rape, in a Dec. 19 protest in Khartoum, according to the U.N.

Biden Says IS Leader Killed During US Raid In Syria

People inspect a destroyed house following an operation by the U.S. military in the Syrian village of Atmeh, in Idlib province, Syria, Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022. U.S. special operations forces conducted a large-scale counterterrorism raid in northwestern Syria overnight Thursday, in what the Pentagon said was a "successful mission." Residents and activists reported multiple deaths including civilians from the attack. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

BY GHAITH ALSAYED, LOLITA C. BALDOR, BASSEM MROUE AND ZEKE MILLER

ATMEH, SYRIA (AP) — The leader of the violent Islamic State group was killed during an overnight raid in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, President Joe Biden said Thursday.

The raid targeted Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, who took over as head of the militant group on Oct. 31, 2019, just days after leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi died during a U.S. raid in the same area. A U.S. official said he died as al-Baghdadi did, by exploding a bomb that killed himself and members of his family, including women and children, as U.S. forces approached.

He is also known as Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla.

The operation came as IS has been trying for a resurgence, with a series of attacks in the region, including a 10-day assault late last month to seize a prison.

U.S. special forces landed in helicopters and assaulted a house in a rebel-held corner of Syria, clashing for two hours with gunmen, witnesses said. Residents described continuous gunfire and explosions that jolted the town of Atmeh near the Turkish border, an area dotted with camps for internally displaced people from Syria’s civil war.

First responders reported that 13 people had been killed, including six children and four women.

Biden said in a statement that he ordered the raid to “protect the American people and our allies, and make the world a safer place.” He planned to address the American public later Thursday morning.

“Thanks to the skill and bravery of our Armed Forces, we have taken off the battlefield Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi — the leader of ISIS,” Biden said in a statement. He said all Americans involved in the operation returned safely.

The two-story house, surrounded by olive trees in fields outside Atmeh, was left with its top floor shattered and blood spattered inside. A journalist on assignment for The Associated Press and several residents said they saw body parts scattered near the site. Most residents spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The Pentagon did not initially identify the target of the raid. “The mission was successful,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a brief statement. “There were no U.S. casualties.”

Idlib is largely controlled by Turkish-backed fighters but is also an al-Qaida stronghold and home to several of its top operatives. Other militants, including extremists from the rival IS group, have also found refuge in the region.

“The first moments were terrifying, no one knew what was happening,” said Jamil el-Deddo, a resident of a nearby refugee camp. “We were worried it could be Syrian aircraft, which brought back memories of barrel bombs that used to be dropped on us,” he added, referring to crude explosives-filled containers used by President Bashar Assad’s forces against opponents during the Syrian conflict.

The top floor of the low house was almost totally destroyed; a room there had collapsed, sending white bricks tumbling to the ground below.

Blood could be seen on the walls and floor of the remaining structure. A wrecked bedroom had a child’s wooden crib and a stuffed rabbit doll. On one damaged wall, a blue plastic baby swing was still hanging. The kitchen was littered with debris, with a blood splatter on the wall where the door was blown off its hinges. Religious books, including a biography of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad, were in the house.

The opposition-run Syrian Civil Defense, first responders also known as the White Helmets, said 13 people were killed in shelling and clashes that ensued after the U.S. commando raid. They included six children and four women, it said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, also said the strike killed 13 people, including four children and two women. Ahmad Rahhal, a citizen journalist who visited the site, reported seeing 12 bodies.

The Pentagon provided no details on casualties in the raid.

The Observatory said the troops landed in helicopters. Residents and activists described witnessing a large ground assault, with U.S. forces using megaphones urging women and children to leave the area.

Omar Saleh, a resident of a nearby house, said he was asleep when his doors and windows started to rattle to the sound of low-flying aircraft at 1:10 a.m. local time. He ran to open the windows with the lights off, and saw three helicopters. He then heard a man, speaking Arabic with an Iraqi or Saudi accent through a loudspeaker, urging women to surrender or leave the area.

“This went on for 45 minutes. There was no response. Then the machine gun fire erupted,” Saleh said. He said the firing continued for two hours, as aircraft circled low over the area.

Taher al-Omar, an Idlib-based activist, said he witnessed clashes between fighters and the U.S. force. Others reported hearing at least one major explosion during the operation. A U.S. official said that one of the helicopters in the raid suffered a mechanical problem and had to be blown up on the ground. The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the military operation.

The military operation got attention on social media, with tweets from the region describing helicopters firing around the building near Atmeh. Flight-tracking data also suggested that multiple drones were circling the city of Sarmada and the village of Salwah, just north of the raid’s location.

The U.S. has in the past used drones to kill top al-Qaida operatives in Idlib, which at one point was home to the group’s biggest concentration of leaders since the days of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. The fact that special forces landed on the ground suggest the target was believed to be of high value.

A similar attack in Pakistan, in 2011, killed bin Laden.

The Islamic State group has been reasserting itself in Syria and Iraq with increased attacks.

Last month, it carried out its biggest military operation since it was defeated and its members scattered underground in 2019: an attack on a prison in northeast Syria holding at least 3,000 IS detainees. The attack appeared aimed to break free senior IS operatives in the prison.

It took 10 days of fighting for U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces to retake the prison fully, and the force said more than 120 of its fighters and prison workers were killed along with 374 militants. The U.S.-led coalition carried out airstrikes and deployed American personnel in Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the prison area to help the Kurdish forces.

A senior SDF official, Nowruz Ahmad, said Monday that the prison assault was part of a broader plot that IS had been preparing for a long time, including attacks on other neighborhoods in Kurdish-run northeastern Syria and on the al-Hol camp in the south, which houses thousands of families of IS members.

The U.S.-led coalition has targeted high-profile militants on several occasions in recent years, aiming to disrupt what U.S. officials say is a secretive cell known as the Khorasan group that is planning external attacks. A U.S. airstrike killed al-Qaida’s second in command, former bin Laden aide Abu al-Kheir al-Masri, in Syria in 2017.

___

Baldor and Miller reported from Washington and Mroue from Beirut. Associated Press writers Zeina Karam in Beirut and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed reporting.

Houthis, Aid Group: Death Toll From Prison Airstrike Hits 82

People inspect the wreckage of buildings that were damaged by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes, in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022. The coalition fighting in Yemen announced it had started a bombing campaign targeting Houthi sites a day after a fatal attack on an oil facility in the capital of the United Arab Emirates claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. It said it also struck a drone operating base in Nabi Shuaib Mountain near Sanaa. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed)

BY SAMY MAGDY

CAIRO (AP) — The death toll from a Saudi-led coalition airstrike that hit a prison run by Yemen’s Houthi rebels has climbed to at least 82 detainees, the rebels and an aid group said Saturday.

Internet access in the Arab world’s poorest country meanwhile remained largely down as the coalition continued airstrikes on the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, and elsewhere.

The airstrike in the northern Saada province Friday was part of an intense air and ground offensive that marked an escalation in Yemen’s yearslong civil war. The conflict pits the internationally recognized government, aided by the Saudi-led coalition, against the Iranian-backed rebels.

The increase in hostilities follows a Houthi claim of a drone and missile attack that struck inside the United Arab Emirates’ capital earlier in the week. It also comes as government forces, aided by UAE-backed troops and coalition airstrikes, have reclaimed the entire Shabwa province from the Houthis and pressured them in the central Marib province. Houthis there have for a year attempted to take control of its provincial capital.

Ahmed Mahat, head of Doctors Without Borders’s mission in Yemen, told The Associated Press his group counted at least 82 dead and more than 265 wounded in the airstrike.

The Houthis’ media office said rescuers were still searching for survivors and bodies in the rubble of the prison site in Saada on the border with Saudi Arabia.

Saudi coalition spokesman Brig. Gen. Turki al-Malki said the Houthis hadn’t reported the site as needing protection from airstrikes to the U.N. or the International Committee of the Red Cross. He claimed the Houthis’ failure to do so represented the militia’s “usual deceptive approach” in the conflict.

The Houthis used the prison complex to hold detained migrants, mostly Africans attempting to cross through the war-torn country into Saudi Arabia, according to the humanitarian organization Save the Children.

But Mahat, of Doctors Without Borders, said the airstrike hit a different part of the facility housing other types of detainees, and no migrants were killed.

Al-Malki said reports that the coalition targeted the prison were inaccurate and that the coalition would correspond “facts and details” to the U.N. and the ICRC, according to Saudi state-run television.

The Saada attack followed another Saudi-led coalition airstrike Friday at the Red Sea port city of Hodeida that hit a telecommunications center key to Yemen’s connection to the internet. Access to the internet has remained “largely down for more than 24 hours” in the country, advocacy group NetBlocks said Saturday.

The Saada airstrike, one of the deadliest of the war, was not the first to hit a Houthi-run prison. A September 2019 airstrike hit a detention center the southwestern Dhamar province, killing more than 100 people and wounding dozens.

Rights groups have previously documented that the Houthis placing civilian detention centers near military barracks under constant threat of airstrikes.

Friday’s airstrikes have renewed criticism of the coalition from the United Nations and international aid and rights groups, who just days previous had blasted the Houthis for the attack on the Emirates.

Saudi-led coalition airstrikes have hit schools, hospitals and wedding parties, killing an estimated thousands of civilians according to monitoring groups. The Houthis meanwhile have used child soldiers and indiscriminately laid land mines across the country. They also launched cross-border attacks using ballistic missiles and explosives-laden drones on Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The coalition continued its airstrikes on Sanaa and elsewhere Saturday, targeting a Houthi-held military facility and an abandoned headquarters of Yemeni state TV in the capital. The coalition said airstrikes also targeted the Houthis in the contested Harib district in Marib.

And Yemeni forces closely allied with the UAE, known as the Giants Brigades, said they shot down three drones carrying explosives launched by the Houthis on government-held areas in Marib and Shabwa provinces.

The rebels, meanwhile, held a funeral procession in Sanaa for a senior military official killed along with family members in a coalition airstrike last week. Hundreds of Houthi supporters attended the military funeral of Gen. Abdalla Kassem al-Junaid, who headed the Air Academy.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken urged the warring parties to stop the escalation.

“We urge all parties to commit to a peaceful, diplomatic solution to ending the conflict. The Yemeni people deserve to live in peace and determine their own future,” he wrote on Twitter.

The latest escalation comes almost a year after President Joe Biden’s administration announced an end to U.S. support for the coalition and removed the designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group as part of American efforts to end the grinding war.

The Houthi-claimed attack on the UAE on Monday prompted Biden to say that his administration would consider restoring the status of the Iranian-backed rebels as terrorists.

The latest fighting is some of the most intense since the 2018 battle for Hodeida and comes after a year of U.S. and U.N. diplomatic efforts failed to bring the two sides to the negotiating table. On Friday, the U.N. criticized the Houthis for not even allowing the body’s new envoy to visit their territories. Pitched fighting in Marib has remained a major sticking point, as the Houthis attempt to complete their control of the northern half of Yemen.

“The coalition has pulled the stops out to prevent a collapse in Marib and to shift the conflict towards a military equilibrium,” said Peter Salisbury, Yemen expert at the International Crisis Group.

The conflict in the Arab world’s poorest country began in 2014, when the Houthis took Sanaa and much of northern Yemen, forcing the government to flee to the south, then into exile in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-led coalition, backed at the time by the U.S., entered the war months later to try to restore the government to power.

The conflict has since become a regional proxy war that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and fighters. The war also created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, leaving millions suffering from food and medical care shortages and pushing the country to the brink of famine.

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Scuffles At Protest Marking Tunisia’s 2011 Revolution

President Kais Saied of Tnisia

BY BOUAZZA BEN BOUAZZA AND MEHDI EL AREM

TUNIS, TINISIA (AP) — Protestors scuffled with police in Tunisia’s capital on Friday after crowds gathered, in defiance of new COVID-19 restrictions, to mark the 11th anniversary of the revolution that triggered the Arab Spring uprisings.

Police fired water cannon and tear gas at a crowd of several hundred in Tunis. Several protestors were arrested, while some were injured.

On Wednesday, the government re-imposed a nationwide nighttime curfew and announced a ban on public gatherings, citing a spike in coronavirus infections linked to the omicron variant.

Several politicians and civil society activists however have said that the decision was politically motivated, to prevent any commemorative demonstrations of the Jan. 14 anniversary, or anti-government protests.

Last July, Tunisian President Kais Saied abruptly dismissed the government and suspended parliament, taking on sweeping powers. His critics have called the measures a “coup d’etat,” and Saied’s subsequent consolidation of power has sparked large demonstrations both for and against him.

A host of new measures included his decision to move the nation’s official revolution day from Jan. 14 to Dec. 17, marking the date when a Tunisian fruit seller set himself alight in 2010, initially sparking the uprising that would inspire a series of movements in several countries that came to be known as the Arab Spring. In Tunisia, the popular movement led to the overthrow of the country’s long-term, autocratic ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who fled on the night of the 14th.

Saied has said that events following Jan. 14 led to the rise to power of “corrupt” politicians who “stole” the revolution.

“The new regime wants to erase this symbol (of Jan. 14) from the collective memory” said politician Issam Chebbi at a recent press conference ahead of the demonstration.

Despite the government’s ban on gatherings, several hundred demonstrators took to the streets of downtown Tunis but were prevented from entering the city’s main thoroughfare by a heavy police presence and barricades.

“Down with the coup” and “Kaïs you are a coward, the people will not be humiliated” were among the chants shouted by the demonstrators, referring to Saied’s power grab.

“We resisted the coup and we are still resisting it with civilized methods, despite the barbaric means that (Saied) uses against us. The citizens went to the streets empty-handed, unafraid of him” said one protestor at Friday’s demonstration, Ali, who did not wish to give his last name.

Another protestor, Sonia, said: “Why is there all this security presence that made the street look like a military barracks? (Is the government) afraid of us because of coronavirus? Why did the scientific committee choose this date to ban demonstrations?”

“It’s a lie like the one before, Mr. President, your lie is very clear today and it is proof that you are afraid. What we saw today is evidence of your fear” she said.

In September Saied partially suspended the country’s 2014 constitution and gave himself the power to rule by decree. Observers have since warned of democratic backsliding, while rights activists have condemned the arrests of several figures in recent months, including most recently the vice-president of Ennahdha — Tunisia’s largest Islamist party — and former justice minister, Noureddine Bhiri.

Saied announced a road map out of the country’s political crisis last month, starting with a partly-digital national consultation which that will launch Jan. 15. He has said that the consultation will inform the planning of a referendum on political reform, to be held in July, and subsequent parliamentary elections at the end of the year.

9 Nigerians Among 44 Migrants Bombed In Libya

Migrants in Libya. Image via PM News.

PM NEWS
Nine Nigerians were among the 44 migrants killed in an airstrike on a detention centre in Tajoura, Tripoli on Tuesday night.

Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa, the Executive Chairman/CEO, Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM), said some of those killed had been profiled to leave Libya in the coming days.

International Organisation for Migration(IOM) said that more than 180 others staying in the same detention centre were registered to return to their home countries through the UN agency’s voluntary migrant return programme, which helps arrange their documents and transport.

In a statement on Thursday, Dabiri-Erewa condoled with families of the nine Nigerians.

She said it was regrettable that migrants survived a treacherous journey only to be killed in someone else’s war in Libya.

“It is disheartening that nine Nigerians have been identified as victims in the unfortunate incident.

”Nigerians, who were due to be airlifted back to Nigeria, were cut down in their prime,” she said.

The NIDCOM boss reiterated her call for Nigerians, especially the youths, to shun movement into hostile countries.

According to her, if they must travel, they should do so legally with a legitimate mission to those countries.

Dabiri-Erewa prayed for the repose of the souls of all the people, who died in the airstrike and sent condolence messages to the families of the victims.

She noted that more than 13.000 migrants had been brought home so far, from Libya, and expressed appreciation to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), NEMA and other international agencies involved in the evacuation of the migrants.

She, however, called on the UN to hasten up in the protection of other detention centres from such attacks.

IOM has moved around 40,000 migrants out of Libya through the same program me.
The airstrike on the Tajoura centre where at least 600 people were being held, came less than two months after another airstrike landed less than 100 meters from the centre, injuring two people.

Egyptians Vote On Changes That Would Extend El-Sissi's Rule

Voters line up to enter a polling station in Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, April 20, 2019. Egyptians are voting on constitutional amendments that would allow el-Sissi to stay in power until 2030. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

BY SAMY MAGDY

CAIRO (AP) — Egyptians went to the polls Saturday for the first of three days of voting on constitutional amendments that would allow President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to stay in power until 2030 and broaden the military’s role.

Critics have blasted the proposed changes as another major step toward an authoritarian government perhaps even more severe than that of former President Hosni Mubarak, whose nearly three decades of autocratic rule was ended by a popular uprising in 2011.

The nationwide referendum came amid an unprecedented crackdown on dissent in recent years. El-Sissi’s government has arrested thousands of people, most of them Islamists but also prominent secular activists, and rolled back freedoms won eight years ago.

Prominent Egyptian newspaper columnist Abdullah Al Sennawy decried the amendments as a threat to the country’s stability. He said they would increase the government’s grip on power and erode the balance between authorities currently in place.

“Changing the constitution reflects the weakness of the regime. It is a sign that the regime is close to its end, such as what happened in Sudan and Algeria,” he said.

Voting will stretch over a period of three days to allow maximum turnout, which the government is hoping to lend the referendum legitimacy.

Mahmoud el-Sherif, spokesman of the National Elections Authority, said more than 61 million people are eligible to vote. Results were expected within a week, el-Sherif said in a news conference.

Outside a polling center near the Giza Pyramids, around two dozen people, mostly elderly women, lined up waiting to cast their votes. Heavy police and army security was reported at polling stations throughout the country.

Haja Khadija, a 63-year-old housewife, said she came for the “security and stability” of the country. “We love el-Sissi. He did lots of things. He raised our pensions.”

Casting his ballot on Saturday, Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouly urged voters to turn out in high numbers. He said that voting will reflect “the atmosphere of stability and democracy that we are witnessing now.”

State-run TV said el-Sissi voted in Cairo’s Heliopolis district, near the presidential palace. El-Sissi, who has repeatedly said he won’t stay in office any longer than the people want him to, hasn’t commented on the amendments.

Opposition voices have largely been shut out amid the rush to hold the referendum. Pro-government media have led a campaign for weeks calling a “Yes” vote a patriotic duty.

Since early April, the Egyptian capital has been awash with large posters and banners encouraging people to vote in favor of the changes. Most of the posters were apparently funded by pro-government parties, businessmen and lawmakers.

Parliament, packed with el-Sissi supporters, overwhelmingly approved the amendments on Tuesday, with only 22 no votes and one abstention from 554 lawmakers in attendance. The national electoral commission announced the following day that voting would begin on Saturday.

The proposed changes are seen by critics as another step toward authoritarianism. The referendum comes eight years after a pro-democracy uprising ended autocrat Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade rule, and nearly six years after el-Sissi led a popular military overthrow of the country’s first freely elected but divisive Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi.


Two international advocacy groups — Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists — on Saturday urged the Egyptian government to withdraw the amendments.

“Egypt’s autocracy is shifting into overdrive to re-establish the ‘President-for-Life’ model, beloved by dictators in the region and despised by their citizens,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “But it’s a model that recent experience in Egypt and neighboring countries has demonstrated is not built to last.”

The Civil Democratic Movement, a coalition of liberal and left-leaning parties, urged people to participate in the referendum by voting “No.”

The coalition said it used social media to spread its message, noting that it was banned from hanging banners in the streets to call on voters to reject the amendments.

The amendments extend a president’s term in office from four to six years and allow for a maximum of two terms. But they also include an article specific to el-Sissi that extends his current second four-year term to six years and allows him to run for another six-year term in 2024 — potentially extending his rule until 2030.

Novelist Omar Knawy voted “No” in the referendum. He said he opposes most of the changes, especially those that would enable el-Sissi to stay in power beyond his current second four-year term. He also opposes articles that declare the military the “guardian and protector” of the Egyptian state, democracy and the constitution.

“The article related to the military gives it the right to interfere (in politics) at any time, and I am against such article,” he told The Associated Press.

El-Sissi was elected president in 2014, and re-elected last year after all potentially serious challengers were either jailed or pressured to exit the race.

The amendments also allow the president to appoint top judges, while also granting military courts wider jurisdiction in trying civilians.

In the last three years, over 15,000 civilians, including children, have been referred to military prosecution in Egypt, according to Human Rights Watch.

The amendments also introduce one or more vice presidents, revive the senate and enshrine a 25% quota for women in parliament’s lower, legislative chamber. All three had been dropped from Egypt’s constitution after the 2011 revolution.

With The President Gone, Algerian Officials Plot Next Steps

People take the street to celebrate after ailing Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika quit Tuesday April 2, 2019 in Algiers. Bouteflika quit in a statement read on national television after the country's Defense Ministry aggressively called for Bouteflika to "immediately" vacate the office he held for two decades. (AP Photo/Anis Belghoul)

BY AOMAR AUALI

ALGIERS, ALGERIA (AP) — Algeria’s Constitutional Council met Wednesday to confirm President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s resignation, as rattled international partners watch closely to see what’s next for this gas-rich country and key player in the global fight against terrorism.

Algerians woke to a new and uncertain era, after the departure of a man who had ruled Algeria for 20 years and had been a fixture in the Arab world’s political landscape for decades.

A discreet, 77-year-old Bouteflika ally — the upper house of parliament’s president, Abdelkader Bensalah — is expected to take over as interim leader while Algeria plans presidential elections. But that might further anger the protesters who drove Bouteflika from power, and who want to overhaul a political elite seen as secretive and corrupt.

“Our session today is related to establishing the vacancy of the post of president of the republic, following the resignation of Mr. Abdelaziz Bouteflika yesterday,” said Constitutional Council president Tayeb Belaiz as he opened Wednesday’s meeting of the 12-member body.

A much-diminished Bouteflika, 82, appeared on images shown on national television Tuesday night handing his resignation letter to Constitutional Council president Tayeb Belaiz. Bouteflika, who hasn’t spoken publicly to the nation since a 2013 stroke, appeared pale and weak and wore a traditional robe instead of his habitual suits.

Algerian protesters who drove Bouteflika out celebrated his departure with songs and flag-waving in the capital Tuesday night — but it might not be enough to satisfy their demands for an overhaul of the political elite, seen as corrupt and secretive.

Algeria’s Constitution says that when a president dies or resigns, the Constitutional Council confirms the leader’s absence and both houses of parliament convene. The president of the upper house is named as interim leader for 90 days while a presidential election is organized.

The upper house has been led for the past 17 years by Bensalah, a one-time journalist and former ambassador who has held senior political positions for the past 25 years but has kept a low profile, rarely giving interviews or appearing at public events.

He’s known as a politician who works behind the scenes to strike compromises and solve problems, and who avoids controversial debates — and is very much part of the political elite.

Demonstrators worry that those who would play a role in the political transition are too close to the distrusted power structure, including Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui, accused of contributing to fraud in the last presidential election in 2014 and cracking down on past protests.

New protests are already planned for Friday, after six straight Fridays of mass, peaceful gatherings that surprised the entrenched leadership by their strength and persistence.

However, the protest movement doesn’t have a single, unifying alternative to the current political system.

Another question is what the influential military and Bouteflika’s entourage will do next. Military chief of staff Ahmed Gaid Salah appeared to trigger Bouteflika’s departure by pushing to get him declared unfit for office.

Countries around the world are watching Algeria’s political crisis, wondering whether a transfer of power could impact gas and oil deliveries to Europe, Cuba and around Africa — or crucial security cooperation with Europe and the U.S.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned against foreign interference in Algerian politics and said Wednesday that “we hope the internal processes in that country ... will by no means affect the friendly nature of our relations.” Algeria’s foreign minister recently visited Russia, and the countries have been economic and geopolitical allies since the Soviet era.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian expressed hope that Algerians would “pursue this democratic transition in the same spirit of calm and responsibility” that has marked the protests that drove Bouteflika from office. France, Algeria’s former colonial ruler and a key trading partner, had come under fire for seeming to support Bouteflika earlier in the movement.

The U.S. State Department, which has expressed support for the peaceful protests, said it’s now up to Algerians to decide the next steps. Since fighting an Islamist insurgency in the 1990s, Algeria has cooperated closely with the U.S. and Europe against terrorism.

In Sudan, organizers behind months of anti-government demonstrations expressed hope that Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir would follow Bouteflika’s footsteps.

Sarah Abdel-Jaleel, a spokeswoman for the Sudanese Professionals Association, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Bouteflika’s resignation shows the “success of peaceful resistance within Africa.” She says it “definitely gives us all hope and reassurance that we must continue.”

Angela Charlton in Paris, and Samy Magdy in Cairo, contributed to this report.