Category: 2. Middle East

Israeli Knesset Member Yulia Malinovsky held up the keys and the lock of the main door of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) headquarters in East Jerusalem during a parliamentary session yesterday bragging that she had locked the building and even the government could not access it as a result.

Malinovsky, who initiated the legislation to ban the UN agency from Israel and from working with Israeli government bodies, showed…

Ryanair has cancelled all flights to and from Tel Aviv until 31 July, extending the duration of its suspension of flights to Israel, the low cost carrier said yesterday according to Reuters.

Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O’Leary said last week that his airline was “losing patience” with security disruptions at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport and may consider moving aircraft to service alternative destinations.

Ryanair, Europe’s largest low-cost…

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir yesterday vowed to continue expanding illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is preparing to issue an arrest warrant against him.

“I have one clear message to the ICC prosecutor in The Hague: No arrest warrant of any kind will deter me from continuing to work for the people of Israel and the Land of Israel,” the leader of the far-right…

Thousands of desperate Palestinians stormed a United Nations warehouse in central Gaza on Wednesday, with the World Food Programme reporting two possible deaths in the tumult as Israel and the UN traded blame over the deepening hunger crisis.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza, where aid has finally begun to trickle in after a two-month blockade, is dire following 18 months of devastating war. Food security experts say starvation is looming for one in five people.

AFP footage showed crowds of…

Aref Shamtan, 73, preferred to pitch a tent near his destroyed home in northwest Syria rather than stay in a camp for the displaced following longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad’s ouster.

“I feel good here, even among the rubble,” Shamtan said, sipping tea at the tent near his field.

When he and his son returned after Assad’s December 8 overthrow, Shamtan found his village of Al-Hawash, nestled among farmland in central Hama province, badly damaged.

The roof of their house was gone and its walls…

Thousands of Palestinians looted a UN warehouse in Gaza’s Deir el-Balah on Wednesday, AFP footage showed and the UN’s World Food Programme said two people may have died when its warehouse there was broken into.

AFP film showed crowds of Palestinians breaking into a World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse and taking bags and cartons of food supplies as gunshots rang out.

“Hordes of hungry people broke into WFP’s Al-Ghafari warehouse in Deir Al-Balah, Central Gaza, in search of food supplies that…

Israel accused the United Nations Wednesday of seeking to “block” Gaza aid distribution, as the global body said it was doing its utmost to gather the limited assistance greenlighted by Israel’s authorities.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza, where Israel has imposed a two-month aid blockade, is dire, with food security experts saying starvation is looming for one in five people.

“While the UN spreads panic and makes declarations detached from reality, the state of Israel is steadily…

A French court on Wednesday jailed a former Syrian Islamist rebel spokesman to 10 years for his role in atrocities committed in Syria’s civil war in the country’s first universal justice case.

Majdi Nema, a former spokesman of the rebel group Jaish al-Islam, was found guilty by a Paris court of complicity in war crimes, specifically of conscription of minors aged 15 to 18, and helping to prepare war crimes.

“We are relieved,” Marc Bailly, a rights lawyer for Syrian civil groups.

“Today justice…

Thousands gathered in Tel Aviv on Wednesday to support hostages still held in Gaza on the 600th day since the war began, urging a ceasefire to secure their release.

Signs reading “The people with the hostages” were held aloft the packed crowd in the plaza dubbed Hostages Square after darkness fell over the Israeli coastal city.

The meeting point has held regular rallies for the release of hostages since they were seized during Hamas’s attack on Israel that triggered the war on October 7,…