Region

Tuesday, December 24, 2024 | Daily Newspaper published by GPPC Doha, Qatar.
×
Subscribe now for Gulf Times
Personalise your news and receive Newsletters!
By signing up with an email address, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy .
Your email exists

Region

Palestinian children inspect the remains of a car in the aftermath of an Israeli strike, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip Monday

'Gaps have narrowed in Gaza truce talks'

Gaps between Israel and Palestinian resistance movement Hamas over a possible Gaza ceasefire have narrowed, according to Israeli and Palestinian officials' remarks Monday, though crucial differences have yet to be resolved.A fresh bid by mediators Qatar, Egypt and the US to end the fighting and release Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners has gained momentum this month, though no breakthrough has yet been reported.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday said progress had been made in hostage negotiations with Hamas in Gaza but that he did not know how much longer it would take to see the results.A Palestinian official familiar with the talks said while some sticking points had been resolved, the identity of some of the Palestinian prisoners to be released by Israel in return for hostages had yet to be agreed, along with the precise deployment of Israeli troops in Gaza.His remarks corresponded with comments by the Israeli diaspora minister, Amichai Chikli, who said both issues were still being negotiated. Nonetheless, he said, the sides were far closer to reaching agreement than they have been for months."This ceasefire can last six months or it can last 10 years, it depends on the dynamics that will form on the ground," Chikli told Israel's Kan radio. Much hinged on what powers would be running and rehabilitating Gaza once fighting stopped, he said.The duration of the ceasefire has been a fundamental sticking point throughout several rounds of failed negotiations. Hamas wants an end to the war, while Israel wants an end to Hamas' rule of Gaza first."The issue of ending the war completely hasn't yet been resolved," said the Palestinian official.Israeli minister Zeev Elkin, a member of Netanyahu's security cabinet, told Israel's Army Radio that the aim was to find an agreed framework that would resolve that difference during a second stage of the ceasefire deal.Chikli said the first stage would be a humanitarian phase that will last 42 days and include a hostage release.At least 24 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes Monday, medics said.Among the dead were four Palestinians killed when an Israeli airstrike hit a group of Palestinians tasked with protecting aid trucks into Gaza, medics said.One of Gaza's few still partially functioning hospitals, on its northern edge, an area under intense Israeli military pressure for nearly three months, sought urgent help after being hit by Israeli fire.Palestinians accuse Israel of seeking to permanently depopulate northern Gaza to create a buffer zone, which Israel denies.On Monday, the United Nations' aid chief, Tom Fletcher, said Israeli forces had hampered efforts to deliver much-needed aid in northern Gaza.


Mahmud Khaled Ajaj, 30, reacts while standing before a destroyed apartment building in the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees south of Damascus.

In ruined homes, Palestinians recall former Syria leader’s torture

School lessons ended in Syria’s biggest Palestinian refugee camp on October 18, 2012, judging by the date still chalked up on the board more than a decade later.“I am playing football”; “She is eating an apple”; “The boys are flying a kite” are written in English.Outside, the remaining children in the Damascus suburb of Yarmuk now play among the shattered ruins left by Syria’s years of civil war.And as the kids chase through clouds of concrete dust, a torture victim — freed from jail this month when rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad’s government — hobbles through the rubble.“Since I left the prison until now, I sleep one or two hours max,” 30-year-old Mahmud Khaled Ajaj said.Since 1957, Yarmuk has been a 2.1-square-kilometre (519-acre) “refugee camp” for Palestinians displaced by the founding of the modern Israeli state.SHATTERED CITYLike similar camps across the Middle East, over the decades it has become a dense urban community of multi-storey concrete housing blocks and businesses.According to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, at the start of Syria’s conflict in 2011 it was home to 160,000 registered refugees. Rebellion, air strikes and a siege by government forces had devastated the area and left by September this year only 8,160 people still clinging to life in the ruins.With Assad’s fall, more may return to reopen the damaged schools and mosques, but many like Ajaj will have terrible tales to tell of Assad’s persecution.The former Free Syrian Army rebel fighter spent seven years in government custody, most of it at the notorious Saydnaya prison, and was only released when Assad’s rule ended on December 8.Ajaj’s face is still paler than those of his neighbours, who are tanned from sitting outside ruined homes, and he walks awkwardly with a back brace after years of beatings. At one point, a prison doctor injected him in the spine and partly paralysed him — he thinks on purpose — but what really haunts him was the hunger in his packed cell. “My neighbours and relatives know that I had little food, so they bring me food and fruit. I don’t sleep if the food is not next to me. The bread, especially the bread,” he said. “Yesterday, we had bread leftovers,” he said, relishing being outside after his windowless group cell, and ignoring calls from his family to come to see a concerned aunt.“My parents usually keep them for the birds to feed them. I told them: ‘Give part of them to the birds and keep the rest for me. Even if they are dry or old I want them for me’.” As Ajaj spoke to AFP, two passing Palestinian women paused to see if he had any news of missing relatives since Syria’s ousted leader fled to Russia.The International Committee of the Red Cross has documented more than 35,000 cases of disappearances under Assad’s rule.Ajaj’s ordeal was extreme, but the entire Yarmuk community has suffered on the frontline of Assad’s war for survival, with Palestinians roped into fighting on both sides.The graveyard is cratered by air strikes. Families struggle to find the tombs of their dead amid the devastation. The scars left by mortar strikes dot empty basketball courts.Here and there, bulldozers are trying to shift rubble and the homeless try to scavenge re-usable debris. Some find work, but others struggle with trauma.Haitham Hassan al-Nada, a lively and wild-eyed 28-year-old, invited an AFP reporter to run his hand over lumps he says are bullets still lodged in his skull and hands. His father, a local trader, supports him and his wife and two children after Assad’s forces shot him and left him for dead as a deserter from the government side.Nada told AFP he fled service because, as a Palestinian, he did not think he should have to serve in Syrian forces. He was caught and shot multiple times, he said.“They called my mother after they ‘killed’ me, so she went to the airport road, towards Najha. They told her ‘This is the dog’s body, the deserter’,” he said.“They didn’t wash my body, and when she was kissing me to say goodbye before they buried me, suddenly and by God’s power, it’s unbelievable, I took a deep breath.” After Nada was released from hospital, he returned to Yarmuk and found a scene of devastation.

SIGN UP FOR THE GULF TIMES NEWSLETTER
Our biggest stories, delivered to your inbox every day.
See all newsletters.

By signing up you agree to our User Agreement (including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions), our Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement and to receive marketing and account-related emails from GULF TIMES. You can unsubscribe at any time.