Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Critically ill children leave Gaza through Kerem Shalom crossing

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Nineteen minors, five with cancer, allowed to enter Israel before travelling to Egypt and elsewhere for treatment

A group of critically ill children have been allowed to leave Gaza, the first such medical evacuation since early May when Israel seized control of Rafah, the territory’s sole border crossing with the outside world.

Nineteen minors, including five who have cancer, were allowed to travel through the Kerem Shalom crossing into Israel on Thursday accompanied by relatives, and were to travel to Egypt and further abroad for medical treatment. The Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs said the evacuation was carried out in coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) and officials from the US and Egypt.

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Egyptian scribes suffered work-related injuries, study says

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Higher incidence of damage to hips, jaws and thumbs reveals their writing efforts may have taken a toll

From bad backs to eye strain, office work can take its toll on the body.

But it seems such perils are nothing new: researchers have found Egyptian scribes experienced damage to their hips, jaws and thumbs as a result of their efforts.

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Israel-Gaza war: Israel warns it could take Lebanon ‘back to the Stone Age’ – as it happened

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Yoav Gallant said Israel is preparing for war with Hezbollah but stressed that his government preferred a diplomatic solution

Here are some of the latest images from Israel, where an anti-government demonstration has again attempted to block highways while demanding that Benjamin Netanyahu strike a deal to return Israeli hostages held by Hamas, and to call elections in Israel.

Haaretz reporter Bar Peleg has posted this video, which shows protesters blocking a road by setting a fire.

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US Congress faces growing calls to withdraw Netanyahu invitation: ‘a terrible mistake’

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Notable Israelis add their voices to oppose invite extended by Mike Johnson, which Democrats plan to boycott

A group of prominent Israelis – including a former prime minister and an ex-head of Mossad, the foreign intelligence service – have added their voices to the growing domestic calls in the US for Congress to withdraw its invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to address it next month, calling the move “a terrible mistake”.

The plea, in an op-ed article in the New York Times, argues that the invitation rewards Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, for “scandalous and destructive conduct”, including intelligence failures that led to last October’s deadly Hamas attack and the ensuing bloody war in Gaza which shows no sign of ending.

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Londoner continues epic trans-Africa run after release from South Sudan jail

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Deo Kato detained by security services for three weeks after being arrested near Juba on run from South Africa to UK

A Ugandan-born Londoner on a 9,000-mile run from South Africa to London has been released from jail in South Sudan, his partner has told the Guardian.

Deo Kato had already run more than the length of Africa – the equivalent of more than 200 marathons – when he was arrested near Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on 2 June. His partner and project manager, Alice Light, had no idea where he was, only discovering he was in prison on 17 June.

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‘Whack-a-mole situation’: Algerian officials wrestle with water shortage anger

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State not acting fast enough to build desalination stations to deal with dwindling rainfall and resulting drought, say critics

On 8 June, anger over months of water rationing spilled over in the drought-stricken central Algerian town of Tiaret, where balaclava-wearing demonstrators barricaded roads and burned tyres.

Rationing had been introduced to deal with a drought in parts of Algeria and neighbouring Morocco where the amount of rainfall that had historically replenished critical reservoirs was much reduced. Taps had been running dry for months, forcing people in the region – a semi-arid, high-desert plateau increasingly plagued by extreme heat – to queue to access water.

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Efforts to sell ‘Anglo neighborhoods in Israel’ at LA synagogue erupt in protests

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Pro-Palestinian protesters accuse companies of trying to sell stolen land in the West Bank, and question legality

Efforts to market homes in Israel and stolen land in West Bank to Jewish Americans are continuing to spark protests across North America, with the latest angry confrontations happening outside a synagogue in one of Los Angeles’s most prominent Jewish neighborhoods.

The volatile protest and counter-protest outside a real estate event at the Adas Torah synagogue on Sunday prompted denunciations from Democratic politicians, including Joe Biden, who said protests targeting a house of worship were antisemitic and unacceptable.

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Sudan’s warring factions using starvation as weapon, experts say

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Special rapporteurs working for UN warn famine is imminent and over 25 million people need urgent help

Human rights experts working for the United Nations have accused Sudan’s warring parties of using starvation as a war weapon, amid mounting warnings of imminent famine in the African country.

Sudan plunged into chaos in April last year when simmering tensions between the country’s military and a notorious paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the country.

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Labor group praises Fatima Payman for upholding party ‘principles and policy’ to cross floor

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Exclusive: Labor Friends of Palestine hit out at federal government’s stance as ‘weakening’ commitment to Palestinian statehood

Labor Friends of Palestine have praised Fatima Payman’s decision to cross the floor to support Palestinian statehood as “entirely consistent with Labor principles and policy” and rejected federal Labor’s stance as a “weakening” of its commitment on the issue.

After Anthony Albanese temporarily suspended the senator from caucus, the group wrote to Payman declaring that she had “the support of thousands of rank-and-file ALP members”.

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Javad Zarif, negotiator of Iran nuclear deal, backs reformist presidential candidate

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Fiery former foreign minister enters campaign to elect consensual reformist Masoud Pezeshkian

Javad Zarif, the former foreign minister and probably the Iranian politician best known to the west, has thrown himself into the campaign to elect the reformist Masoud Pezeshkian as the country’s president.

Zarif emerged from academia back to frontline politics to face heckling at public rallies, outright bans from one university and allegations that he is seeking to settle scores with those who thwarted his foreign policy when in office between 2013 and 2021.

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Israeli court rules ultra-Orthodox men must be drafted for military service

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Decision threatens Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government with collapse as Gaza conflict drags on

Israel’s supreme court has ruled that ultra-Orthodox Jewish men must be drafted into military service, a politically explosive decision that threatens the stability of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government.

The unanimous ruling on Tuesday, from an expanded panel of nine judges, upheld an interim decision last month that the state had no authority to offer the current exemption for ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, men. It found that yeshivas – Orthodox seminaries for Torah study – should be ineligible for state subsidies unless students enlisted in the military.

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City of Sydney could tear up contracts with suppliers targeted by boycott Israel campaign

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Mayor Clover Moore says procurement and investment should be examined to potentially ‘put additional pressure towards a ceasefire’ in Gaza

The City of Sydney will consider tearing up contracts with suppliers targeted by the boycott Israel campaign, in a move the lord mayor, Clover Moore, hopes could “put additional pressure towards a ceasefire and an end to the humanitarian crisis” in Gaza.

On Monday night, Moore backed a Greens motion for the council to prepare a report on the council’s investment policy regarding “companies involved in, or profiting from, any human rights violations including the illegal occupation of the settlements in Palestinian territories and the supply of weapons”.

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‘The grey zone’: how IDF views some journalists in Gaza as legitimate targets

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Amid a loosening of Israel’s approach to targeting, a record number of media workers have been killed in Gaza

As Israel’s offensive in Gaza has become the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent history, its military has repeatedly said it is not deliberately targeting the media.

“There is no policy of targeting media personnel,” a senior official said, attributing the record number of journalists killed to the scale and intensity of a bombardment in which so many of Gaza’s civilians have died.

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One in five households in Gaza go whole days without food, draft UN report says

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Latest snapshot also finds half of households have had to sell or swap clothes for food, despite pressure on Israel to improve aid deliveries

More than half of households in Gaza have had to sell or swap their clothes to be able to buy food, the UN is to report, as a high risk of famine remains across the whole of the territory after a new round of violence in recent weeks.

The latest “Special Snapshot” of Gaza from the UN’s hunger monitoring system, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), that will be published on Tuesday also says that one in five of the population – more than 495,000 people – are now “facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity” involving “an extreme lack of food, starvation, and exhaustion”.

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Israeli far-right minister speaks of effort to annex West Bank

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Bezalel Smotrich says he aims to establish sovereignty over occupied territory and thwart a Palestinian state

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has described in explicit terms his active effort to annex the West Bank to Israel, days after the Guardian revealed how the pro-settlement politician and his allies had quietly gained significant new legal powers to that end.

Speaking at a meeting of his Religious Zionism party, Smotrich told colleagues that he was “establish[ing] facts on the ground in order to make Judea and Samaria [an Israeli term for the occupied West Bank] an integral part of the state of Israel”.

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Intense phase of Israel’s war with Hamas nearing end, says Netanyahu

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Israeli PM says he hopes for diplomatic solution to conflict but will solve it in ‘a different way’ if necessary

Israel’s prime minister has said the most intense phase of the assault against Hamas in Gaza is coming to an end, freeing up forces to move to the Lebanese border, where escalating exchanges of fire with the militant group Hezbollah have increased fears of a wider war.

In his first public interview with a Hebrew-language network outlet in more than eight months of conflict, broadcast on Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu also walked back on his commitment to a US-backed ceasefire proposal with Hamas, instead suggesting a more limited offer.

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UK ‘tried to suppress criticism’ of alleged UAE role in arming Sudan’s RSF militia

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Exclusive UK accused of trying to head off condemnation of Gulf ally over alleged aid to forces accused of genocide in Darfur

UK government officials attempted to suppress criticism of the United Arab Emirates and its alleged role in supplying arms to a notorious militia waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Sudan, sources have told the Guardian.

Claims that Foreign Office officials put pressure on African diplomats to avoid criticising the UAE over its alleged military support for Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) will intensify scrutiny of the UK’s relationship with the Gulf state.

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At least 1,300 hajj pilgrims died during extreme heat, Saudi Arabia says

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Riyadh says more than four-fifths did not have permit to make pilgrimage to Mecca, where temperatures hit 51.8C

At least 1,300 people have died during the hajj pilgrimage, which took place during intense heat, Saudi Arabia has said, adding that most of the deceased did not have official permits.

“Regrettably, the number of mortalities reached 1,301, with 83% being unauthorised to perform hajj and having walked long distances under direct sunlight, without adequate shelter or comfort,” the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.

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IDF investigates soldiers who tied Palestinian man to vehicle’s bonnet

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Military says conduct seen in video from occupied West Bank city of Jenin ‘does not conform’ to its values

The Israel Defense Forces have said they are investigating an incident in which soldiers strapped a wounded Palestinian man to the bonnet of a military vehicle during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Saturday.

A video circulating on social media showed a man, variously identified as Mujahid Azmi or Fayyad, from the Jabriyat neighbourhood between the towns of Burqin and Jenin, tied to the front of an off-road vehicle that is seen passing two ambulances.

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US withholding arms shipments, says Netanyahu, days after Washington denies claim – as it happened

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Israeli prime minister told his Cabinet that there had been a ‘dramatic drop’ in US weapons deliveries

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said on Sunday that it had received a report of a distress call from a vessel 96 nautical miles southeast of Nishtun, Yemen, adding that authorities were investigating it.

A drone damaged a merchant ship 65 nautical miles (120km) west of Hodeidah, Yemen, on Saturday. The ship made its way to its next port of call and “all crew members are reported safe”, the UKMTO said in a statement.

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