Category: 2. Middle East

President Donald Trump has slashed US aid and vowed a major rethink on helping the world. A controversial effort to bring food to Gaza may offer clues on what’s to come.

Administered by contracted US security with Israeli troops at the perimeter, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is distributing food through several hubs in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

An officially private effort with opaque funding, the GHF began operations on May 26 after Israel completely cut off supplies into Gaza for…

The United Nations condemned Friday a group of “armed individuals” for raiding warehouses in the Palestinian territory of Gaza and looting large amounts of medical supplies.

The group “stormed the warehouses at a field hospital in Deir al-Balah, looting large quantities of medical equipment, supplies, medicines, nutritional supplements that was intended for malnourished children,” said Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The stolen aid had been brought…

The mother of jailed Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah is close to death after 242 days on hunger strike, her daughter warned Friday.

Laila Soueif, 69, was hospitalised Thursday in London with “critically low” blood sugar, having resumed her full hunger strike last week.

Doctors gave “her proteins that help the body produce glucose”, her anxious daughter Sanaa Seif said outside St Thomas hospital in London.

“It worked for a couple of hours” but the “bottom line is, we’re losing her,…

The Sarajevo Declaration of the Gaza Tribunal, a “people’s tribunal” established as an independent initiative to investigate Israel’s ongoing war crimes in Gaza, yesterday condemned the Israeli “regime” and its actions.

Over the last three days, sessions have been held at the International University of Sarajevo on the political economy of genocide and Gaza’s destruction, the crime of starvation, the role of the international system in the age of…

One Palestinian civilian was killed and at least 20 others were injured this morning when Israeli occupation forces opened fire at people seeking food aid near US-run distribution points in the Gaza Strip.

A reporter for the Palestinian Information Centre (PIC) said that Rateb Jawda was shot dead when Israeli forces opened fire at desperate civilians seeking aid in the northwest of Rafah.

According to local sources, tens of thousands of citizens started at dawn…

The United Arab Emirates, a major oil exporter, began mandatory emissions monitoring for companies on Friday under a new law targeting climate change.

Greenpeace hailed the move, a first for the Middle East but already in place in dozens of countries worldwide, as a “bold leap toward regional climate leadership”.

The UAE, one of the world’s top oil exporters, neighbours several oil-rich countries including Saudi Arabia and Iran along with Qatar, a leading gas producer.

Under the new law,…

In a move universally condemned by humanitarian organisations, Israel has begun constructing a parallel regime of control and aid distribution in Gaza, outsourcing food supplies to foreign security firms and fringe local collaborators after the UN and established Palestinian institutions refused to legitimise what critics describe as a system of militarised starvation and forced displacement.

A US military contractor, Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), has signed an…