Tag: Middle East

‘Flour massacre’: Lifesaving aid becomes a deadly struggle in Gaza

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At least 112 Palestinians were killed and more than 750 others were injured on Thursday after Israeli troops opened fire on civilians gathered at a convoy of food trucks southwest of Gaza City, Palestinian health officials said. Israel denied it was to blame, saying that many victims were run over by aid trucks in a rush to obtain food. The massacre comes as the UN warns of an “almost inevitable famine” in the besieged Palestinian enclave amid increasing reports of children dying of starvation.

At dawn on Thursday morning in Gaza City, photographer Mohammed Hajjar got word that trucks carrying food had finally made it into the capital of the besieged Palestinian enclave.

At 4am he went with his brother to the neighbouring Al-Rashid street to try and obtain what they could for their family, he told FRANCE 24 by phone.

They managed to get hold of one 25kg bag of flour and a box of pasta and cooking oil – food supplies, he told FRANCE 24, that would barely last his family a week.

Mohammed currently lives with 34 members of his family and the adults are carefully rationing what they eat.

Thousands of other Palestinians had also gathered by the food trucks – eager to obtain essentials to take home.  Food supplies have grown increasingly scarce in the last month in Gaza, particularly in the north of the enclave.

“People were happy to see that I managed to get food, but at the same time they were jealous of me,” Mohammed told FRANCE 24, explaining that many families are being forced to let their children go hungry. In some cases, they are feeding them animal grain.

“Every time I go out to find food, my family worries about me, about my safety,” Mohammed said. “They also worry that I will come back empty handed. Sometimes I go without eating for three or four days in a row.”

“At night my children are crying from hunger, but we don’t have enough to give them more than one piece of bread a day,” he added.

‘Flour massacre’

It was only after Mohammed got home with the flour, pasta and cooking oil that he learned there had been a shooting by the food trucks.

Shortly after he left the convoy, he said, witnesses reported that Israeli troops opened fire on the civilians trying desperately to get hold of food.

However, Israeli officials denied that civilians had been fired on. Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said that people were trampled to death or injured during a fight to take supplies off the trucks.

Mohammed has been documenting Israel’s war on Gaza since it began on October 7 in response to Hamas’s deadly cross-border attack.

As soon as he heard about the shootings he rushed to Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, where many of the injured were taken.

He photographed an injured boy lying on a stretcher and corpses in white body bags, blood soaking through the wrappings. 

“They described it as the flour massacre,” he said.

Medics at Al-Shifa told him that children were amongst the hundreds of dead and injured. 

‘Famine almost inevitable,’ says UN

Gaza is seeing “the worst level of child malnutrition anywhere in the world”, Carl Skau, deputy head of the World Food Programme, told the UN Security Council on February 28.

“One child in every six under the age of two is acutely malnourished,” he said, adding that UNRWA – the Palestinian UN Relief and Works agency – is ‘indispensable’ to averting a famine.

The agency is the main provider of aid into Gaza, particularly during this war. But major country donors have frozen funding to the agency amid Israeli allegations that 12 UNRWA staffers participated in the October 7 attacks. 

“I woke up to children screaming because of the hunger that consumed their bodies. We may tolerate hunger, but children cannot. Their screams tore our heart,” said Gaza journalist Anes Al-Acharif, quoted by Algerian ambassador to the UN, Amar Bendjama, at the UN Security Council.

“Mothers struggle to find anything to satisfy their children’s hunger,” Bendjama told the Council, “resorting to animal fodder as a last resort”.

“If something doesn’t change, a famine is almost inevitable,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, on Friday.

“Once a famine is declared, it is too late for too many people,” Laerke added.

Attacks on aid convoys

The situation in northern Gaza is particularly dire. No aid has entered the area, now under Israeli control, since January 23.

The World Food Programme tried to resume food deliveries to the north on February 18 but much of the convoy’s cargo was taken by Palestinians in southern Gaza desperate for aid.

Shaza Moghraby, a New York-based spokesperson for the WFP, told FRANCE 24 that “gunfire and public disorder” had made it impossible for the agency to continue aid deliveries to northern Gaza. When asked who was behind the gunfire, she said she did not know. 

“We are still looking for solutions to make sure that the distribution happens in a safe manner,” Moghraby explained, “Unfortunately, we are seeing people, parents, risk their lives in order to get food to their starving children.”

 


 

Egyptian drivers putting themselves at risk 

One Egyptian driver of an aid truck, Sayed, told the media organisation PassBlue, that a fellow driver reported that the trucks were often looted by Gazans because of the scarcity of aid in the enclave.

“People would climb the aid trucks, smash the trucks, tear the sheets or plastic covering the supplies, and take whatever they can,” he said, describing what his colleague told him. “It becomes risky for drivers who decide to drive all the way inside Gaza because they are not secured at all.” 

Once fully inspected, aid trucks head from the Egyptian side of the border, the Rafah crossing, into Gaza. Some of the drivers head to a logistics point, before handing the truck over to a different driver, who then drives deeper into the enclave – as far as 70 kilometres.

Another truck driver told PassBlue that some of his colleagues would voluntarily drive further into Gaza if the drivers at the logistics point did not show up to finish the deliveries. 

However, some of the drivers return to Egypt with their trucks damaged and suffering from minor injuries themselves after their vehicles were seized in Gaza, Sayed said.

The IDF has also been accused of targeting multiple aid convoys near the Rafah Crossing in Gaza, Nebal Farsakh, the spokesperson for the Palestine Red Crescent Society, told PassBlue.

“The convoys trying to enter North Gaza have been targeted, and the IDF had fatally shot people who were just trying to get a bag of flour from the aid trucks,” she said.

Police officers in Gaza usually help to secure the aid convoys entering Rafah City as well as those en route to the north and prevent them from being looted, but that is no longer the case since the IDF started targeting them, Farsakh said. 

“The lack of civil order contributed to around a 50 percent decrease in the total number of aid trucks entering Gaza in February,” she said.

“When people talk about looting of convoys, it’s mostly not looting through criminality. Generally, when we see storming incidents it’s just people trying to get something to eat,” UNRWA spokesperson Jonathan Fowler told Passblue. “I mean, is that criminality?”

On Thursday evening, the UN Security Council met in an emergency session, called by Algeria, on what Gazans are calling the “flour massacre”,” but the 15 members failed to agree on a statement about the deaths and injuries of civilians seeking aid.  

Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told reporters that “dozens of those killed had bullets in their heads”. However, FRANCE 24 was unable to verify this information. 

In a tweet on X, French President Emmanuel Macron said he felt “deep indignation at the images coming from Gaza where civilians have been targeted by Israeli soldiers”. On Friday he joined worldwide calls for an independent inquiry into Thursday’s shootings as the US vowed to air drop supplies into the enclave.

 


 

This article was produced in collaboration with PassBlue, an independent media organisation. Dulcie Leimbach, Fatma Khaled for PassBlue, contributed reporting. 



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Israeli ground offensive in Rafah ‘aimed at making Gaza uninhabitable’

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Israel has announced plans to launch a full-scale offensive on the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza strip, claiming it is the only way to “completely destroy” Hamas. But according to former French military officer and author Guillaume Ancel, a large-scale military operation in the city that is now host to half of Gaza’s population is of no strategic interest. In his analysis, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s only goal is to make the Palestinian enclave “uninhabitable”.

The countdown has begun for Rafah. Israel repeated on Sunday its threats of carrying out a major ground attack against the southern Gaza city before the start of Ramadan: the holy month in Islam, during which Muslims fast, is expected to begin around March 10. The perspective of a ground operation in the city, which was once considered “safe” for civilians, is fuelling international concern about the fate of the 1.5 million Palestinians trapped in the city.

“The world must know, and Hamas leaders must know – if by Ramadan our hostages are not home, the fighting will continue everywhere, including the Rafah area,” Benny Gantz, a former Israeli defence minister currently serving on Netanyahu’s war cabinet, told a conference of American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem on Sunday. “Hamas has a choice. They can surrender, release the hostages and the civilians of Gaza can celebrate the feast of Ramadan,” he added.

Having so far ignored the warnings of his Western allies, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu seems more determined than ever to continue the war against Hamas, reaffirming on February 9 that he was aiming for “total victory”. On February 17 he said that foreign countries calling on Israel to spare the city were effectively telling the country to “lose the war” against Hamas.

“Benny Gantz’s statements reflect a rift within the war cabinet,” French military expert Guillaume Ancel said in an interview with FRANCE 24. “While the extremists led by Netanyahu want to go all the way, those who are more moderate, like Benny Gantz, want to leave the door open for negotiations, which are currently going very badly.”

Pressure ‘on partners involved in negotiations’

According to a Hamas official quoted by Israeli daily Haaretz, the arrival of the movement’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Cairo on Tuesday did not mean there had been any breakthrough in the negotiations.

Organised by Egypt and Qatar, several rounds of talks were held in Cairo earlier this month but failed to reach an agreement on a truce and the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. According to Israel, 130 hostages are still being held in Gaza, at least 30 of whom have reportedly died, out of the 257 kidnapped on October 7.

Read moreWho are the remaining Gaza hostages?

Talks have stalled over Hamas’s demands, described as “delusional” by Binyamin Netanyahu. These include a ceasefire, Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, an end to the Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territory and safe shelter for the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians.

“More than on Hamas, this is about putting pressure on the partners involved in the negotiations, specially Egypt, Qatar and the US”, says Tewfik Hamel, a researcher in military history at Université Paul Valéry in Montpellier, who sees Israel’s ultimatum as a call for the Islamist movement to capitulate.

Fears of ‘carnage’

Should new negotiations fail, the prospect of a military ground offensive in overcrowded Rafah raises the worst fears for the trapped Palestinian refugees. Nearly 30,000 people have so far been killed in the conflict, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

“In an area of 10 square kilometres, there are almost 1.5 million Palestinians, so this will necessarily lead to a massacre of the civilian population,” says Hamel. “Attacking the town of Rafah, where two-thirds of Gaza’s population is now squeezed, would mean committing carnage,” agrees Ancel.

The former soldier points out that the town has already been subjected to daily bombardment designed “to prepare the territory” for a ground attack. On Thursday, fresh Israeli bombardment of the city flattened a mosque and destroyed homes in what residents called one of their worst nights yet, killing at least 97 people and wounding 130 others in the last 24 hours, according to Gaza’s health authorities. Most victims were still under rubble or in areas rescuers could not reach.

“We can’t even begin to imagine what this would mean for all these displaced people. A military offensive is going to create even more chaos,” Jamie MacGoldrick, the UN’s Middle East coordinator, told FRANCE 24.

Reports from humanitarian organisations have been increasingly alarming on the situation in the Gaza Strip, where 2.2 million people could face starvation. According to UN agencies, food and drinking water have become “extremely scarce”, and 90 percent of the enclave’s young children now suffer from infectious diseases.

Watch moreThe desperate search for food and water in Gaza

Netanyahu has said Israel would provide “safe passage” to civilians trying to leave Rafah before the assault, but never mentioned to which destination. In the event of an offensive, Palestinian civilians would have to try to force their way across the closed border with Egypt.

“Egypt doesn’t want refugees in Sinai because the authorities don’t know whether Israel would later accept their return to the Gaza Strip, and Egypt doesn’t want to host the refugees out of fears some might end up being Hamas fighters, even if authorities don’t explicitly state it,” explains Bruno Daroux, FRANCE 24’s international affairs editor.

But recently Cairo seemed to be preparing for this scenario. According to reports by the Wall Street Journal and an Egyptian NGO, Cairo is constructing a walled camp in the Sinai Peninsula to receive displaced Palestinian civilians from the Gaza Strip. After satellite images appeared to show extensive construction work along the border, the reports claim the compound could accommodate more than 100,000 people on the Egyptian side, parallel to the border with Gaza.

Ancel sees this flight from Rafah as the real objective of Binyamin Netanyahu’s government. “Rafah is the only urban centre that has not been destroyed by the Israeli army. The government therefore wants to complete the destruction of the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure to make it uninhabitable. Netanyahu’s aim is to empty the Gaza Strip of Palestinians under the guise of fighting Hamas,” says the former officer, who believes that “a terrorist organisation cannot be destroyed by a military offensive”.

Destruction rendering ‘return of civilians impossible’

“The current Israeli government rejects the creation of a Palestinian state. From that point of view, the most reasonable option is to drive the Palestinians out of the territory,” says Hamel. “However, the attachment of the Gazans to the territory remains strong, because they know that as soon as there is a displacement of the population, the possibility of a return completely ceases to exist.”

As well as farmlands, almost 40 percent of the buildings in the Gaza Strip had been destroyed by January 17, an Israeli study revealed. According to satellite data analysis obtained by the BBC, the actual figure is higher. That analysis suggests between 144,000 and 175,000 buildings across the whole Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed – meaning between 50 and 61 percent of Gaza’s buildings.

UN human rights chief Volker Turk on February 8 accused the Israeli army of committing a “war crime” in its reported destruction of buildings within one kilometre of the barrier between the enclave and Israel in order to create a “buffer zone” along the border inside Gaza itself.

Read moreGaza: More than 40% of buildings destroyed in the ‘buffer zone’ Israel plans to create

Turk said the destruction “appears to be aimed at, or has the effect of, rendering the return of civilians to these areas impossible,” adding Israel’s “extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly, amounts to a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and a war crime”, he said in a statement.

This story has been adapted from the original in French.

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France under pressure to suspend military sales to Israel as war in Gaza grinds on

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NGOs and leftist members of the opposition have increased the pressure on France’s government to reconsider arms sales to Israel in the wake of the war in Gaza and follow in the footsteps of other European nations that made moves to suspend military exports over concerns about the humanitarian situation on the ground. 

It was Ramadan, and another war was raging in Gaza.

In July 2014, 8-year-old Afnan Shuheibar, her 16-year-old brother Oday, and her three cousins Basel, Jihad and Wassim – ages 8 to 11 – went up to the roof of the Shuheibar home in Gaza City to feed the pigeons when they were struck by a missile.

It was fired by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), but what helped guide it to the Shuheibars’ home was a small black position sensor around 2 centimetres long lodged deep inside the missile. On it were three words, with some letters partially erased: “EUROFARAD PARIS FRANCE”.  

Wassim and Jihad were killed instantly, and Afnan died in her father’s arms on the way to the hospital.

In 2016, the Shuheibar family filed a legal suit against Eurofarad. The company has since been bought by Exxelia Technologies, which is now facing charges of complicity in war crimes in France. (Exxelia itself was recently bought by the US group HEICO but is still headquartered in Paris.)

The first complaint was dismissed, but the family lodged another in 2018. A specialised department looking at crimes against humanity opened an investigation on suspicion of “complicity with war crimes” at a Paris court, and last summer several members of the Shuheibar family were heard.

The court will hear Exxelia’s side next, the family’s lawyer, Joseph Breham, said in a telephone interview on Monday.

His law firm is in touch with the Shuheibar family on a near-weekly basis. Several of them – in addition to investigators working on the case – have been wounded since the Israel-Hamas war started in early October, “to the extent that we wondered at one point whether or not the [Israeli] army was targeting them specifically”, Breham told FRANCE 24. 

The Shuheibar case is not unique. Other French defence companies – including Dassault, Thalès and MBDA – are facing charges of “complicity in war crimes” over weapons sales reportedly made to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which has spearheaded a regional coalition to fight the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

But in the context of the current war in Gaza, and following the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last month and the pending ruling – which could have profound repercussions for international jurisprudence – the Shuheibar case raises some lingering questions. 

Grilling in parliament

It remains unclear whether French companies continue to export weapons or any “dual-use” equipment to Israel that can be used in a military context, or whether French companies have reviewed any export licenses that were authorised before the latest war began.

The head of Amnesty International in France, Jean-Claude Samouiller, published an open letter this week addressed to French President Emmanuel Macron, urging the suspension of all weapons sales and military equipment to Israel.

MPs from the far-left France Unbowed (La France Insoumise or LFI) party have repeatedly grilled members of the government over continuing French military exports to Israel.

These calls have intensified over the past week. Mathilde Panot, the president of the LFI parliamentary group, asked Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné during a February 15 session in parliament whether France was arming Israel and called for a suspension of any such sales. “Has France continued providing weapons to [Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu? Mister minister, can you say with certainty that no French military component is being used in Gaza in any war crime that is being committed? When will you declare an arms embargo?” she asked, adding: “[Charles] de Gaulle did it [in 1967]. Emmanuel Macron must do it.”

She also urged him to provide a list of weapons and other equipment provided to Israel. “Concerning weapons, I will revert back to you to give you a number, because I don’t have it here,” Séjourné replied.

It was then French Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s turn to be questioned. In a written response to a question submitted by LFI MP Aurélien Saintoul, Lecornu said that France does not export “weapons, strictly speaking, but rather elementary components”.

Saintoul sits on the parliamentary defence commission. He repeatedly asked to question Lecornu, to no avail, prior to submitting his questions in writing.

When weapons are authorised for export, Lecornu said, they “are intended purely for defensive purposes”, citing the example of a type of missile used by Israel’s Iron Dome air defence system.

Lecornu went on to say that the respect for human rights and international humanitarian law exhibited by the destination country “are fully taken into account” when reviewing arms exports. Current assessments “have not led to a full suspension of the flow of military exports since 7 October 2023”, referring to the launch of the Israeli army response to the Hamas attack in southern Israel.

In an emailed response to FRANCE 24, the defence ministry stressed that all requests for military equipment exports were subjected to “robust checks”. The foreign affairs ministry did not respond to requests for specific comment on military exports to Israel.

Thomas Portes, another MP from LFI, last week launched a petition calling for transparency on the issue and urging the authorities to stop exporting military equipment to Israel. The government’s responses are “never precise, they never include any numbers … and so there is a kind of omerta surrounding this arms issue”, Portes said in a telephone interview on Monday.

“At the very least, I want there to be a public debate in France on whether today we accept, yes or no – as MPs, but beyond this, do citizens accept that France delivers weapons to the Israeli state in light of what the Israeli army is committing in the Gaza Strip?”

“I wouldn’t want us to be the last European country to commit itself to not supplying arms to Israel,” he said. France, Germany and the UK continue to supply Israel whereas Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium have moved to suspend arms sales.

Transparency

But obtaining transparency and establishing whether or not French companies are still exporting any weapons or dual-use equipment to the state of Israel is not an easy question to resolve.

Any export of military equipment by a French or France-based company must be vetted by the Inter-ministerial commission for war materials exports (CIEEMG).

Exxelia said in emailed responses sent on Wednesday that the “passive electronic components” it produces usually constitute a tiny part of far larger products, and can, for instance, be used to manufacture a “(Magnetic resonance imaging) machine, a 5G antenna or a radar”.

“Exxelia complies strictly with the laws in all the countries where it operates. Sales of dual-use equipment are subjected to strict regulations that the company applies scrupulously,” it added.

But as the Shuheibars’ lawyer Breham pointed out, decisions issued by the CIEEMG are protected by what is known as the “défense secret ” – meaning they are confidential – and, by law, the CIEEMG is not required to provide any explanation for its decisions.

Every year, the government must under French law release a report to the parliament detailing any such exports. The French authorities must also report annually to the secretary-general of the international Arms Trade Treaty.

But Breham dismissed these reports as “a load of hogwash … intended to play to the gallery”.

“The categories are extremely lax … for example, if you say you exported a specific kind of artillery shell, it is not the same thing if these shells end up in a CAESAR cannon, which is extremely precise, or if they end up in ordinary cannons,” he said. Moreover, since the parliamentary report does not specify the destination country for each piece of equipment, Brehem dismissed it as “absolutely useless”.

In the latest report submitted to the French parliament, one number does, however, stand out: €207.6 million in equipment sold to Israel over the past 10 years.

Breham dismissed the idea of declaring an arms embargo, advocated by LFI, arguing that it is the remit of the United Nations Security Council. But there is still room for the French authorities to take action, he argues.

“At the very least, I think it would be a good thing if France were to strongly declare that, number one, it is in favour of a total freeze on weapons exports to Israel and number two, that it is in favour of very tight restrictions on exports to Israel of double-use equipment, taking into consideration the fact that it is very easy to circumvent [these restrictions].”

As often, though, the devil is in the details. Military equipment export contracts take years to be put into place, he said. If in that time, concerns arise about international humanitarian law violations, then under article 7 of the Arms Trade Treaty, the exporting country must review its export authorisations.

“But that’s the theory,” he said.

Whether or not the Shuheibar family could ever win their case is uncertain. According to international law expert Pierre-Emmanuel Dupont, there is no such legal precedent in France.

In a phone interview on Wednesday, he evoked the case against Dassault, Thalès and MBDA – which is still pending.

He also cited the case against French cement company Lafarge, which is facing charges of complicity in crimes against humanity over alleged payoffs made to the Islamic State group and other jihadists to keep its factory running during the Syrian civil war.

Bringing the Lafarge case set a kind of precedent, Dupont said, although that case is also still awaiting a verdict.



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Netanyahu says Rafah offensive will go ahead as fears grow for patients in raided hospital

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Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that troops would go into the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah regardless of whether a hostage release was agreed. Fears continued to mount for the patients and staff trapped inside the Nasser hospital in Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Younis, which was raided by the Israeli army. 

The deadly bombardment of Gaza continued overnight with another 100 people killed in Israeli strikes, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

At least 120 patients and five medical teams are stuck without water, food and electricity in the Nasser hospital in Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Younis, according to the health ministry.

Israel has for weeks concentrated its military operations in Khan Younis, the hometown of Hamas‘s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, the alleged architect of the October 7 attack that triggered the war.


Nasser hospital under Israeli control. © Jean-Michel Cornu, Sylvie Husson, Valentina Breschi, AFP

Intense fighting has raged around the Nasser hospital – one of the Palestinian territory’s last major medical facilities that remains even partly operational.

The power was cut and the generators stopped after the raid, leading to the deaths of six patients due to a lack of oxygen, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

“New-born children are at a risk of dying in the next few hours,” the ministry warned Saturday.

Israel’s army said troops entered the hospital on Thursday, acting on what it said was “credible intelligence” that hostages seized in the October 7 attack had been held there and that the bodies of some may still be inside.

Hamas's armed wing has warned that the hostages held in Gaza are 'struggling to stay alive'.
Hamas’s armed wing has warned that the hostages held in Gaza are ‘struggling to stay alive’. © Tobias Schwarz, AFP

It said it has detained 100 people from the hospital suspected of “terrorist activity”, seized weapons and retrieved “medications with the names of Israeli hostages” in the hospital.

But the raid has been criticised by medics and the United Nations. The army has insisted it made every effort to keep the hospital supplied with power, including bringing in an alternative generator.

A witness, who declined to be named for safety reasons, told AFP the Israeli forces had shot “at anyone who moved inside the hospital”.

‘Pattern of attacks’

World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic slammed the operation Friday, saying “more degradation to the hospital means more lives being lost”.

“Patients, health workers, and civilians who are seeking refuge in hospitals deserve safety and not a burial in those places of healing,” he said.

Doctors Without Borders said its medics had been forced to flee and leave patients behind, with one employee unaccounted for and another detained by Israeli forces.

The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Around 1.4 million displaced civilians are trapped in the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
Around 1.4 million displaced civilians are trapped in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. © Mohammed Abed, AFP

Militants also took about 250 people hostage, 130 of whom are still in Gaza, including 30 who are presumed dead, according to Israeli figures.

Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed at least 28,858 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using hospitals for military purposes, which the Palestinian Islamist group has denied.

The UN Human Rights Office said the Nasser hospital raid appeared to be “part of a pattern of attacks by Israeli forces striking essential life-saving civilian infrastructure”.

‘Die from hunger’

High-level negotiations to pause the war were held this week in Cairo, but continue to remain “not really very promising”, said the prime minister of Qatar, a key mediator for the negotiations, on Saturday. 

“I believe that we can see a deal happening very soon. Yet the pattern in the last few days is not really very promising,” Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said at the Munich Security Conference.

“We will always remain optimistic, we will always remain pushing,” he added, speaking in English. 

A day after US President Joe Biden called for a “temporary truce” to secure the release of hostages, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh on Saturday reiterated the group’s demands, including a complete pause in fighting, the release of Hamas prisoners, and withdrawal of Israeli troops.

At the Abu Yussef Al-Najjar hospital in Gaza's southern city of Rafah, AFP saw corpses lined up in body bags while relatives grieved.
At the Abu Yussef Al-Najjar hospital in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, AFP saw corpses lined up in body bags while relatives grieved. © Mohammed Abed, AFP

Qatar-based Haniyeh said Hamas would “not agree to anything less”.

Al-Thani also said on Saturday that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas “should not be conditioned” by an agreement on hostage release. “This is the dilemma that we’ve been in and unfortunately that’s been misused by a lot of countries, that in order to get a ceasefire, it’s conditional to have the hostage deal. It shouldn’t be conditioned.”

Biden has also urged Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu not to launch an offensive in Rafah without a plan to keep civilians safe – but Netanyahu insisted he would push ahead with a “powerful” operation there to defeat Hamas.

During a televised news conference on Saturday, Netanyahu said critics calling for Israel not to mount military action in Rafah were effectively telling the country to “lose the war” against Hamas. The Israeli premier also indicated that troops would go into the southern Gaza Strip city regardless of whether a hostage release was agreed. “Even if we achieve it, we will enter Rafah.” 

Around 1.4 million displaced civilians are trapped in Rafah after taking refuge in a makeshift encampment by the Egyptian border, with dwindling supplies.

“We are dying slowly due to the scarcity of resources and the lack of medications and treatments,” said displaced Palestinian Mohammad Yaghi.

In northern Gaza, many are so desperate for food they are grinding up animal feed.

Israel has called for the head of UNRWA to step down after claims a Hamas tunnel had been discovered under its evacuated headquarters.
Israel has called for the head of UNRWA to step down after claims a Hamas tunnel had been discovered under its evacuated headquarters. © AFP

“We need food now,” said Mohammed Nassar, 50, from Jabalia in northern Gaza.

“We’re going to die from hunger, not by bombs or missiles.”

With the UN warning that Gazans are close to famine, the head of its agency for Palestinian refugees accused Israel of waging a campaign to “destroy” it entirely.

Israel has called for UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini to resign following claims a Hamas tunnel was discovered under its Gaza City headquarters.

Read moreAs donors suspend critical funding to UNRWA, allegations against staff remain murky

Lazzarini told Swiss media Tamedia that the tunnel was 20 metres underground, and UNRWA didn’t have the capabilities to search below ground in Gaza. More than 150 UNRWA installations have been hit during the war, he said.

Regional tensions

Hamas’s armed wing has warned hostages in Gaza are also “struggling to stay alive” as conditions deteriorate due to relentless Israeli bombardments.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Egypt was building a walled camp near the border to accommodate Palestinians displaced from Gaza, citing Egyptian officials and security analysts.

Satellite images obtained by AFP show machinery building a wall along the highly secure frontier.

With the conflict now in its fifth month, regional tensions remain high.

Hamas ally Hezbollah and arch-foe Israel have been exchanging near-daily border fire since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.

The leader of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, vowed that Israel would pay “with blood” for civilians it has killed in Lebanon.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

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Abandoned at sea, part 1: Syrian crew stranded for two years at Libyan port

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Our team has obtained rare footage from sailors abandoned by their employers years ago, leaving them far from their homes in ports or open water. During this three-month investigation, we looked at official documents and contracts provided by crewmembers as well as open-source data to trace the navigation history of these dilapidated vessels before their abandonment. The first part of this special edition, produced in partnership with independent Syrian investigators SIRAJ, reveals a complex set-up of shell companies used by a group of Syrian-Romanian ship owners to evade legal disputes and Western sanctions.

When the East Express, a 97-metre general cargo ship flying the flag of Togo, docked in the Libyan port of Misrata on January 18, 2022, its crew thought they would offload their cargo of sugar and move on. But the port authorities declared the sugar unfit for consumption and impounded the ship. The crew have been there ever since -– two years and counting.

This legal impediment prevented the delivery of the sugar to its Libyan purchaser, eventually leading the ship’s registered owner, Mina Shipping Ltd., to  abandon the vessel with its 12-member crew still on board: ten Syrians, one Egyptian and one Indian. 

‘We don’t have any food, or water, or wages’

The East Express is capable of carrying more than 5,000 tons of goods, fuel, and ballast. Ammar Sheikha, one of the Syrian sailors stranded on the East Express, explains:

For me, ‘abandonment’ means asking for food, drinks and daily necessities, and not being able to get them from the ship’s owners and manager.

He declared in a video that he sent us in September 2023 that the crew had been “completely abandoned” by the company. “We have no food, no water, and no salaries,” he told us. 

The crew contacted ITF Seafarers, a transport workers’ union that provides assistance to the crews of abandoned ships, but say they did not hear back for months.

Ian Ralby, an expert in international maritime law, explains what abandonment is:

Abandonment is when a vessel owner literally abandons the claims to a vessel. It can mean that the crew is left without anyone who actually has legal responsibility for ensuring that they get the fuel, the food, the water and all the services that they need.

With no fuel or electricity, life on board quickly became unbearable. Sheikha told us:

We began to suffer from a lack of supplies and money … We spend most of our time sleeping or on our mobile phones. This is our only distraction. We talk to our families and friends until the day is over.

The crew have not been paid in 12 months. They believe that staying on board is the only way they’ll get their money. At one point, Sheikha says, the company owed him $17,000. When it arrived in Misrata, the East Express flew the flag of Togo, West Africa. Publicly available maritime registries like Marine Traffic and EQUASIS indicate that it was owned by Romania-based Mina Shipping Ltd.

When we contacted Mina Shipping at the Romanian number that appeared on the sailors’ contracts, a woman who said she was a former employee told us: “Mina Shipping is an offshore company whose owner died years ago.” 

The ship’s captain told us that the owner of Mina Shipping is a man named Samir Fahel, from Tartus, Syria.

Posts shared by his family show that Mr. Fahel died in February 2023. 

A former life under a different name

Fahel regularly posted pictures of ships. One in particular caught our attention: the Nadalina.


In this photo posted by Mina Shipping owner Samir Fahel, the Nadalina is seen after a refit at a ship repair yard in the port of Navodari, Romania, in 2019. © Photo shared on Samir Fahel’s Facebook page in 2016.

We looked up the Nadalina using its IMO number (every ship has a unique identification number issued by the International Maritime Organization). It turns out that the Nadalina is the same ship as the East Express, abandoned in Misrata. 

Ship owners and operators regularly change not only their names, but also the countries in which they are registered as well as the companies that manage and own them. Industry analysts say the complex ownership structure makes it easier for ship owners and operators to walk away when a ship encounters legal or financial problems. “It’s sometimes better to abandon an asset than to retain it and have the liability for it,” says Ralby.

The East Express (IMO number 8215754) has had three different names in the last seven years.
The East Express (IMO number 8215754) has had three different names in the last seven years. © Ammar Sheikha (left), Marine Traffic / Babur Haluluport (center/right ).

Tracking the ‘Nadalina’: history of sanctions violations

Ships must broadcast regular signals intended to ensure the safety of navigational traffic, and sites such as MarineTraffic pick up these signals to plot their locations. FRANCE 24 used the data – nearly 3,000 daily locations over eight years – to track the Nadalina’s movements from 2016 to 2023.

The data shows that the ship made regular trips in the Mediterranean, including to Tunisia, Libya and the Russian-managed port of Tartus in Syria and through Turkey to the Black Sea, coming and going from the Romanian port of Constanta.

The Nadalina’s route in the Mediterranean between 2016 and 2023 shows that it made regular visits to the Russian-managed Syrian port of Tartus.
The Nadalina’s route in the Mediterranean between 2016 and 2023 shows that it made regular visits to the Russian-managed Syrian port of Tartus. © FRANCE 24 Observers

It also reveals that the Nadalina made trips to the so-called “closed ports” of the Crimean Peninsula.

The Nadalina’s route in the Black Sea between 2016 and 2019 shows that it made regular visits to the so-called
The Nadalina’s route in the Black Sea between 2016 and 2019 shows that it made regular visits to the so-called “closed” ports of the Crimean peninsula placed under international sanctions following Russia’s invasion of the Ukrainian territory in 2014. © FRANCE 24 Observers

Ukraine banned international cargo carriers from docking at Crimean ports after Russia’s illegal annexation of the peninsula in 2014. The United States and the European Union imposed sanctions on ships visiting Crimea.

Ukrainian and international media outlets documented at least 10 visits by the Nadalina to sanctioned Crimean ports between 2015 and 2019. 

“We found a group of ships that regularly visited the closed ports in Crimea,” says Kateryna Yaresko, an online investigator with the Myrotvets Center’s Seakrime project who has extensively worked on the Nadalina question. “They were connected to a group of Romanian-Syrian businessmen based in Constanta, Romania. This group was the worst offender.”

With her team, she obtained photographs showing the Nadalina docked illegally in Crimean ports such as Sevastopol and Feodosia between 2015 and 2019, and being loaded with cargoes of scrap metal or grain.

The Nadalina docked at the port of Sevastopol in Crimea on December 27, 2018 and was loaded with a cargo of scrap metal.
The Nadalina docked at the port of Sevastopol in Crimea on December 27, 2018 and was loaded with a cargo of scrap metal. © Seakrime, Myrotvorets Center

The Ukrainian investigators reported that the Nadalina was part of a group of ships operated by a company called Bia Shipping Co.

A shipping registry in 2015 gave Bia Shipping’s contact info as addresses at “joharshipping.ro”.

While “joharshipping.ro” is no longer online, we recovered versions of the site via an internet archive. The archived site belonged to a company called Johar Shipping and listed at least five of the ships operated by Bia Shipping Company. 


© France 24 Observers

Both this site and another Johar Shipping Co. archived site called “johar.ro” listed a man called “Adnan Hassan” as managing director, and “Johar Hassan” as in charge of general operations. 


© FRANCE 24 Observers

We found Adnan Hassan’s social media accounts. One clip he shared on Facebook shows him relaxing on board an 18-metre yacht with Johar Hassan, his brother. Photos also showed him with Samir Fahel.

This photo posted on the Facebook account of Samir Fahel in 2017 shows him in the company of Adnan Hassan.
This photo posted on the Facebook account of Samir Fahel in 2017 shows him in the company of Adnan Hassan. © Photo shareb on Samir Fahel’s Facebook page on 2017

The families respond

We repeatedly tried to contact the companies associated with the Hassan brothers and Fahel, using all the email addresses and phone numbers that we were able to find. 

A member of Fahel’s family told us that after his death, the family was still responsible for the East Express. She said a family member was assigned to manage the ship and assured us he would give an interview for our investigation. She gave us an email address that she said was for the family company Mina Shipping, but neither she nor the family responded to subsequent requests.

Adnan Hassan confirmed to us in a series of telephone interviews that he and his brother Johar had owned Johar Shipping Co. He said their company had acted as an agent for the ship on at least one occasion during the 2015 to 2019 period when it was known as the Nadalina and visited the closed ports of Crimea. He said they did not follow politics and were unaware that the Crimean ports were sanctioned, and that the visits to Crimea by the Nadalina and other ships they handled stopped after Romanian authorities investigated Johar Shipping. 

The Romanian Foreign Ministry confirmed having investigated the Nadalina’s visits to Crimea. “A check was performed on the financial transactions of companies connected to this ship,” they wrote. “The competent authorities concluded that there was not enough evidence that said payments constituted breaches of the prohibition.” They said they had notified “the economic operators involved of the risks of infringing the restrictive measures on the illegal annexation of Crimea”, and that Romania “strongly condemns” Russia’s “war of aggression against Ukraine”. 

Regarding the ship’s current status as the East Express and the plight of its crew in Libya, Adnan Hassan said the ship was owned by Samir Fahel and Mina Shipping. He said he was a friend of Fahel’s, but had no business relationship with him or Mina Shipping. He said the family contacted him seven months after Fahel’s death. “I wanted to be of help to his family to help them get the ship released,” he told us. “But I learned that the ship’s debts were greater than its value … I told the crew: ‘I will pay your wages only if the ship leaves the port, and I can examine it. That’s when you’ll get paid. Something to help you out.’”

Four crew members repatriated; seven remain on board 

The crew told us they had received small payments from Fahel before his death but had never received their full salaries. 

After FRANCE 24 contacted the ITF Seafarers union to inquire about the fate of the East Express crew, Sheikha told us the union agreed to send some money to cover his flight back to Syria. He sent us a message from the airport: “I can’t believe I’m on the way back home to my family after two years of suffering – without any savings. It’s tragic!” 

As of publication, Sheikha and three of his companions have returned to Syria, while seven of their companions remain on board the ship.


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UK ‘bases of death’ see controversy amid Middle East conflict

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Activists claim the UK and US use Cyprus as an “unsinkable warship” as recent conflicts in the Middle East spark renewed controversy over British military bases on the Mediterranean island.

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“We don’t want our island to be part of these wars,” Athina Kariati, a member of United for Palestine in Cyprus, told Euronews. “They are not for democracy, peace or justice.”

The Cypriot activist is part of a movement protesting against UK bases on the Mediterranean island, which are reportedly playing a significant role in recent conflicts in the Middle East.

“Western powers use Cyprus as an unsinkable warship,” she said. “This cannot continue.”

Numerous reports, including by DeclassifiedUK and Haaretz, claim UK and US forces are supporting Israel’s catastrophic offensive in Gaza with weapons and intelligence from Akrotiri and Dhekelia in southern Cyprus. 

The UK government has repeatedly denied this, saying that no Royal Air Force (RAF) flights to Israel have transported lethal cargo. 

RAF Akrotiri – a 40-minute flight from Tel Aviv – was also widely reported as the staging post for airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen in January, prompting angry crowds to gather outside the facility and chant “out with the bases of death.”

Kept by the UK after Cyprus won independence from its colonial rule several decades ago, the two sites – which cover 3% of the country – have remained in the background for decades. 

But recent events in the Middle East have galvanised local groups against them.

‘Leftover from colonialism’

Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on 7 October, they have become increasingly aware of a “daily increase” in flights from Akrotiri and an alleged ramped-up military presence there.

Activist Kariati says she opposes Cyprus being used to support Israeli attacks on Palestinians because of her country’s own experience of foreign interference and occupation.

“We do know what invasion means,” she told Euronews. “The memory is very fresh… The apartheid and settler genocide that is taking place in Gaza is very close to what we experienced [in Cyprus].”

“We don’t want that to happen to anybody,” Kariati added.

Following a prolonged period of ethnic tensions, Turkey invaded northern Cyprus in 1974, leading to its division into the Greek Cypriot Republic of Cyprus in the south and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The conflict resulted in widespread death, violence and displacement on both sides.

Cypriot activists also claim UK and US actions risk making Cyprus itself a target, with their strikes in Yemen having raised fears of regional escalation.

“People are afraid of retaliation,” says Kariati. “This is one reason some join the struggle against the bases.”

“Can we say Cyprus is safe? I am not sure.”

The EU’s most easterly state has not experienced violent overspill from the Middle East – bar a stray Syrian anti-aircraft missile that hit the north in 2019. Still, concerns are rising that the Israel Hamas war could engulf the wider region. 

In a statement sent to Euronews, a UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesperson said: “British Forces Cyprus plays a vital role in supporting humanitarian and disaster relief operations, such as pursuing humanitarian maritime routes to move aid into Gaza.

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“The only intelligence support provided to Israel has been specifically through the use of unarmed RAF aircraft to locate hostages_”  they said about the 240 people taken hostage by Palestinian militants, after their deadly 7 October assault on southern Israel.

“The Sovereign Base Areas make a major contribution to the security and stability of Europe and the wider region. The Republic of Cyprus is a trusted and valuable partner and the SBAs support joint UK-Cyprus efforts on many shared challenges, including participation in Cyprus’ civilian evacuation operations,” the statement continued. 

The UK MoD pointed to its humanitarian activity at the bases, detailing that British Forces Cyprus support efforts to ensure aid is provided to all those who are suffering as a result of the conflict in Gaza.

‘They don’t want to break relationships’

When Cyprus gained independence from the UK in 1960, London struck a deal with Turkey, Greece and Cypriot community leaders. The agreement outlined that Akrotiri and Dhekelia would both remain under British jurisdiction as sovereign territories. They operate beyond the reach of Cypriot authorities. 

Although the UK is not ‘controlling’ the country, Kariati claimed the bases are seen as “colonial” by many on the island.

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“Can we act as we want when parts of our land are occupied and controlled by an imperialist force? ” she asked. “There are places that Cypriot people don’t have any control over.”

Cypriot officials have repeatedly said they are not involved in any military operations, with the UK not obliged to inform them about activity in the facilities under their treaty of establishment.

Yet, The Guardian has reported that the US ambassador and British high commissioner briefed the Cypriot president of imminent military action in Yemen before the first round of airstrikes in January.

Campaigners like Kariati allege the government of the Republic of Cyprus is complicit in the bloodshed in Gaza by allowing the UK and US to help Israel.

“They [the leaders] use excuses that legal reasons mean they don’t have the right to do anything. But if they wanted to, they could make a political statement that they are against the war.”

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The Cypriot government did not reply to Euronews’ request for comment.

‘New militarisation of Cyprus’

However, the UK is not the only country operating on Cypriot soil.

French aircraft use a military air base in the southeastern corner of the island, DeclassifiedUK reports the US military has increased its presence on the Mediterranean Island, though this is unconfirmed. 

Alongside being a “very strategic point on the map”, Kariati claims Western powers are interested in Cyprus because of recently discovered gas reserves.

A US firm began exploratory drilling of natural gas in 2011, despite warnings from Turkey that the move could upset peace on the island. Cyprus announced in 2017 that licenses for well drilling had been granted to Exxon Mobil, Italy’s ENI and France’s Total.

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In parallel, Israel and Cyprus created an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in 2011 that clarified the two countries’ rights to oil and underwater gas reservoirs. Israel, Cyprus, the United States and Greece then agreed to enhance cooperation in energy, cyber and infrastructure security in 2019. 

Kariati claims these developments helped shift support in Cyprus towards Israel, with the country outwardly backing the Palestinians through the 1980s and 90s, alongside a “new militarisation” of the island.

“The military presence on and around Cyprus is rising in number and power. It doesn’t make us feel safe in any way,” she continued.



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The ‘Philadelphi Corridor’: A goal for Netanyahu, a red line for Egypt

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A narrow buffer zone between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, the “Philadelphia Corridor” has come under increasing scrutiny as Israel plans a full-scale military offensive on Rafah, Gaza’s crammed, southernmost city near the border. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has repeatedly declared his country’s intention to take control of the strategic sliver of land. That has Egypt worried amid fears of a breakdown of the decades-old Egypt-Israel peace accords.

Truce talks in Cairo this week have focused attention on the pressure Egypt is facing during the Israel-Hamas war and a little-known sliver of land rather inaccurately called “the Philadelphi Corridor”, sometimes translated as the Philadelphia Corridor.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has repeatedly declared his country’s intention to control this narrow buffer zone along the Egypt-Gaza border since the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) launched its war against Hamas following the October 7 attacks.

With Israel now threatening a full-scale ground offensive in Rafah – despite international warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe in a city crammed with around 1.5 million forcibly displaced Gazans – Egypt is warily eyeing its northeastern border with Israel.

A day before the CIA and Mossad chiefs held talks in Cairo this week with regional negotiators desperate for a ceasefire, Netanyahu was rattling Egyptian nerves again.  

In an interview with US TV channel ABC News, Netanyahu said Israel would provide “safe passage for the civilian population to leave” Rafah, which he described as Hamas’s “last stronghold”.

The Israeli prime minister did not say exactly where the desperate, already displaced Gazans could take refuge. Netanyahu did however mention areas north of Rafah that could be used as safe zones for civilians.

The UN though is not convinced of Israel’s plans for Gaza’s civilians. A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told reporters on Tuesday that the UN “will not be party to the forced displacement of people” since “there is no place currently safe” in Gaza.

That increased the spotlight on the Philadelphi Corridor, a route that runs along Gaza’s southern frontier with Egypt, from the Mediterranean coast to the Kerem Shalom crossing, where the borders of Egypt, Israel and the Gaza Strip meet.

The Philadephi Corridor © Studio Graphique France Médias Monde

Fearing a massive influx of refugees and its possible consequences, Egypt has deployed around 40 tanks and armored personnel carriers in northeastern Sinai over the past few weeks. This deployment is part of a series of measures aimed at reinforcing security on the border with Gaza, two Egyptian security sources told Reuters.

Through the corridors of power

Named “Philadelphi” after a randomly chosen Israeli military code name for what is also called the “Saladin Axis”, the strategic corridor is a 14 kilometre-long and 100 metre-wide buffer zone. It was set up in accordance with the terms of the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel.

The aim of the Philadelphi Corridor is to prevent armed incursions, control the movement of Palestinians in both directions, and prevent smuggling and arms trafficking between the Egyptian Sinai and the Gaza Strip.

Marked by barbed wire fences and concrete blocks, the Philadelphi Corridor was under Israeli control until the IDF’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

The 2005 Philadelphi Accord between Egypt and Israel authorised Cairo to deploy a contingent of 750 Egyptian border guards along the Egyptian side of the buffer zone. These border guards were the first Egyptian soldiers to patrol the zone since the 1967 war, when the Gaza Strip was conquered by Israel along with the Sinai Peninsula, which was later returned to Egypt under the Camp David Accords.

The 2005 Egypt-Israel agreement very precisely defined the Egyptian military equipment deployment in this buffer zone: eight helicopters, 30 light armored vehicles and four coastal patrol ships.

Their mission was to guard the corridor on the Egyptian side – the only Gaza border outside the direct control of the Israeli army – to combat terrorism and prevent smuggling and infiltrations.

On the other side of the corridor, Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces took over from the Israelis. But just two years later, the PA lost control of the corridor when it was pushed out of Gaza following the 2007 conflict between its Fatah and rival Hamas fighters.

In response, Israel imposed a land, air and sea blockade, as well as an embargo on the Palestinian enclave now under Hamas control. These restrictions encouraged the development of a system of smuggling tunnels, passing under the no-man’s-land between Gaza and Egypt, enabling goods and people to cross the border, which was documented by Israel as early as 1983.

Since then, the Egyptian-controlled Rafah terminal, through which people, goods and humanitarian aid transit, has only been opened intermittently. Israel sees this zone as a vital supply area for Hamas.

 

A buffer zone where the borders of Israel, Egypt and the Gaza Strip meet.
A buffer zone where the borders of Israel, Egypt and the Gaza Strip meet. © Studio Graphique France Médias Monde

In December 2007, Israel’s then foreign minister Tzipi Livni criticised Egypt for doing a “poor” job of stopping arms smuggling through the Philadelphi Corridor.

As far back as 2008-2009 Gaza war, also known as Operation Cast Lead, Israeli military plans called for the occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor in order to destroy the underground smuggling tunnels. This would have de facto encircled the Gaza Strip.

Following the 2013 military coup which ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Cairo became hostile to Hamas, which it saw as a Palestinian extension of the Brotherhood.

The Egyptian army set about destroying hundreds of smuggling tunnels dug under the border with the Gaza Strip. This was in retaliation against Hamas, which Cairo accused of destabilising the Sinai while the Egyptian military waged a counterterrorism operation against a branch of the Islamic State (IS) group. To destroy this underground system, Egypt deliberately flooded the border area in 2015.

The land that ‘must be in our hands’

After the October 7 attacks on Israeli soil, which was unprecedented in scale and human toll, attention in Israel once again turned to the Philadelphi Corridor, which was perceived more than ever as a strategic area for Hamas.

As the year ended – and the Gaza war headed to its third month – Netanyahu unambiguously stated Israel’s strategic intentions at a news conference on December 30.  

“The Philadelphi Corridor – or to put it more correctly, the southern stoppage point [of Gaza] – must be in our hands. It must be shut. It is clear that any other arrangement would not ensure the demilitarisation that we seek,” he said.

Netanyahu has frequently repeated this threat, compelling Cairo to take the Israeli leader’s rhetoric very seriously.

The risk of desperate Gazans fleeing into Egypt due to the Israeli assault is of great concern to Egyptian authorities, according to Salah Gomaa, deputy editor of Egyptian state-owned radio station Al-Sharq Al Awsat.

Since the start of the latest Gaza war, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who acts as mediator between Hamas and the Israeli government, has opposed the idea of allowing Gazans fleeing the war and crowded together at the Egyptian border to enter his territory. In a November address, Sisi reiterated his country’s rejection of the forced displacement of Gazans to Egypt, calling it a “red line”.

“Any bombardment or attack at Rafah now will certainly lead the refugees to flee to Sinai,” said Gomaa. “If Egypt allows this to happen, it will mean that it accepts the liquidation of the Palestinian issue while hardline Israeli ministers openly advocate the resettlement of Gaza and the ‘transfer‘ of Gazans to neighbouring Egypt.”

A diplomatic crisis looms

In addition to a likely humanitarian catastrophe, Netanyahu also runs the risk of triggering an open diplomatic crisis with Egypt if he orders an Israeli takeover of the Philadelphi Corridor.

In mid-January, Israel informed Egypt of its intention to carry out a military operation along the Gaza side of the border, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing Israeli and Egyptian sources.

Days later, Diaa Rashwan, head of the Egypt’s official public relations office, the State Information Service (SIS), issued a stern warning that any “occupation” of the Philadelphi Corridor by Israeli forces would be a violation of the 1978 peace treaty between the two neighbouring nations.

“Many Israeli politicians have stated that the very purpose of taking control of the corridor is to enable the Palestinians, under the pressure of bombardment, to migrate towards Sinai, and this is the crux of the problem with the announcement of an imminent assault on Rafah,” explained Gomaa, “This is why the SIS chief issued a firm warning and this is why Egypt considers the reoccupation of this axis to be a red line.”

Egypt, an ally of the US, has used Washington to underscore the importance of its message, according to Gomaa. “Egypt has informed Israel through diplomatic channels and has informed Israel through the United States that this option will never be allowed by Egypt.”

This article has been translated from the original in French.

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Patients at overwhelmed Gaza hospital are often ‘dying or doomed to die’

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Emergency medical personnel who volunteered to work at the European hospital near Khan Younis tell FRANCE 24 of the dire conditions at one of Gaza’s last functioning medical facilities, where overwhelmed staff grapple with an acute shortage of medicine and have to make agonising choices over which critically injured patients to treat. 

Doctor Raphaël Pitti and nurse Imane Maarifi returned to France on February 6 after a gruelling 16-day stint at the overcrowded European hospital in southern Gaza, where thousands of displaced people have joined the injured and sick, seeking shelter and safety.   

Their account offers rare insight into the plight of the Palestinian enclave – a mostly no-go zone for the international media – much of which has been reduced to rubble after four months of devastating bombings and ground fighting.

In the opening stages of the Israel-Hamas war, Khan Younis witnessed an influx of tens of thousands of people fleeing the fighting in the enclave’s north. But in recent weeks, the southern city has itself become the focus of fierce clashes, leaving displaced Gazans at the mercy of daily bombardment.  

“The local population are caught in a trap, living in extremely difficult conditions,” said Pitti, an emergency physician who was part of a seven-member team of health workers sent by the NGO PalMed Europe. “People sleep out on the pavement, under makeshift shelters,” he added. “The streets are filthy and the recent rainfall has left stagnant water everywhere.”

According to the medics, some 25,000 people are currently amassed around the hospital near Khan Younis and around 6,000 are crammed inside the facility. More arrive each day, hoping to find shelter or treatment. 

“People lack everything,” said Maarifi, 37, whose last patient, a newborn baby, died of hypothermia in her arms. She recalled trying to resuscitate a patient on the floor in a corridor and seeing children steal gloves from her pocket “to make balloons out of them”.

‘Heartbreaking choices’

Israel launched its offensive after more than 1,100 people were killed in an October 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas, the Islamist militant group that runs Gaza. Since then, more than 28,000 people have been killed in the Palestinian enclave, most of them women or children, according to health officials in the Hamas-run territory.

Israel and the United States accuse Hamas of using Gaza’s population as human shields and say Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members are operating out of hospitals in the territory.

The European hospital is one of the last functioning medical facilities in the enclave. In its overcrowded corridors, medical staff and volunteers try as best they can to provide care to the sick and wounded, in daunting conditions.

Read moreMalnourished, sick and scared: Pregnant women in Gaza face ‘unthinkable challenges’

“You have volunteers doing the work of orderlies, nurses doing the work of doctors, and doctors standing in for surgeons,” said Maarifi, lamenting a critical shortage of medicine and equipment.

“There are no sheets, sterile drapes or compresses,” the nurse added, and the dwindling supply of painkillers has to be used sparingly. Her voice choking up, she recalled having to make “heartbreaking choices” between “a child hit by shrapnel” and another “whose leg had been torn off”. 

In addition to the injured, the hospital is overwhelmed by patients suffering from chronic diseases, respiratory problems or illnesses linked to poor living conditions. 

“We can no longer do any dialysis or chemotherapy. Patients who need treatment are either dying or doomed to die,” said Maarifi. She cited the case of a pregnant 24-year-old patient with diabetes who developed complications due to the shortage of insulin, lost her baby and died the next day.

‘Collapse of public health’

“We are heading for a collapse of public health in Gaza,” said Lucile Marbeau, spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which works in partnership with the Egyptian Red Crescent (which is in charge of coordinating international aid to Gaza) and its Palestinian counterpart. 

“The war-wounded are amputated on a daily basis, the chronically ill can no longer receive treatment, and living conditions are stoking fears of a resurgence of diseases such as polio, cholera and chickenpox, which we won’t be able to treat,” Marbeau added.

She pointed to the worsening situation in nearby Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where desperate Gazans are gathering as Israel’s offensive pushes further south.

The city of around 270,000 inhabitants has seen its population increase sixfold since the start of the war, and is now home to more than 1.3 million people. Like Khan Younis, it has become a sprawling camp for displaced people crammed into tents and makeshift shelters.


Marbeau spoke of “deplorable hygiene conditions”, noting that water treatment plants have stopped working, depriving the population of toilets. “Access to drinking water is also very difficult and people are not getting enough to eat because the prices of the few foodstuffs available have soared,” she added.

Humanitarian aid ‘a drop in the ocean’

On December 22, the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling on all sides in the conflict to allow “safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale” into the enclave. But more than a month later, NGOs on the ground say only a trickle of the required aid has reached the people of Gaza.

“It’s a drop in the ocean,” said Marbeau, who also flagged the need for specific equipment to carry out repairs to basic infrastructure, such as plumbing work to improve access to drinking water.

The UN resolution also urged all parties to guarantee the “protection of humanitarian workers” and their “freedom of movement” throughout the enclave – conditions that are far from being met. 

“Access to the north of Gaza is still impossible because of the security conditions there,” said Marbeau, whose team has been unable to visit northern parts of the enclave since the beginning of November. “It is now the most deprived area and we are unable to help vulnerable people there,” she added. 

Expectations of an imminent Israeli ground offensive on Rafah have raised further alarm – particularly given that the border city is also the entry point for critically needed humanitarian aid from Egypt.

“A ground offensive in such a densely populated area would have dramatic consequences for the civilian population,” Marbeau warned. “We must, at all costs, show greater respect for humanitarian law in this conflict if civilians are to be spared.”

This article has been translated from the original in French.

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As donors suspend critical funding to UNRWA, allegations against staff remain murky

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From our UN correspondent in New York – The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) announced on January 26 that it had terminated the contracts of several employees pending an investigation into Israeli allegations that they had been involved in Hamas’s October 7 attacks in Israel. The move prompted several nations to suspend vital funding to UNRWA while the inquiry proceeds, deepening Gaza’s already acute humanitarian crisis. But Israel refuses to share either its evidence or the intelligence dossier – a summary of which was seen by FRANCE 24 – with UNRWA, posing a challenge for the UN agency to complete its inquiry.

A senior Israeli diplomat surprised UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini during a routine in-person meeting in Tel Aviv on January 18, informing him that Israel had evidence UNRWA staff members were involved in the October 7 massacre in southern Israel that left more than 1,100 dead.  

“We were shocked, we took this seriously because these were very serious allegations,” UNRWA director of communications Juliette Touma told FRANCE 24.    

Lazzarini travelled to New York four days later to brief UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and then to the US State Department in Washington to warn UNRWA’s top donor, the United States, Touma said.

Lazzarini also “had a series of phone call interactions with several of our largest donors before the UN went public in the morning of January 26” with the decision to let some staff members go.

“We took the decision to put out the information first and not to respond to leaks,” Touma said.  

She added that the Israeli information was given to Lazzarini verbally but that no evidence was shared. 

UNRWA acted quickly and “cross-checked the information and the names they were given,” UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told a press briefing last week.

The UN ended the contracts of the accused staff members and said it was launching an investigation into the Israeli claims. Touma said this unprecedented step was taken because the allegations “put the reputation of the agency and humanitarian operation in Gaza at serious risk”.

But despite the UN’s announcement of an immediate investigation, key UNRWA donors suspended funding to the agency pending its findings, as millions of Gazans go desperately hungry, are at risk of disease, and are forced to sleep in crude shelters or even on the streets amid continuing Israeli bombardment. 

The accusations against a handful of staff in an agency of 13,000 employees operating in Gaza alone have already had a devastating effect on civilians. UNRWA provides essential government services in Gaza, including running 278 schools for 280,000 children and 22 primary healthcare centres, while also providing food to the approximately 2 million people who have been under siege by Israel since early October. 

The ‘suspenders’ 

At least 16 donor countries, including the top two contributors – the US and Germany – have frozen funding to UNRWA over the allegations and have been dubbed the “suspenders” in the corridors of UN headquarters in New York.

About $440 million in funding is at risk, Touma said, adding that UNRWA will run out of money by the end of February if donors continue to withhold money. 

The United States and other donor nations as well as the European Union have made it clear they will not resume funding until they are satisfied with the UN’s investigation. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement that there must be “complete accountability for anyone who participated in the heinous attacks”.

Guterres has urged donor nations to resume funding to UNRWA immediately, reminding them of the “swift” action the UN is taking to address the accusations. He also asked Lazzarini to task an outside organisation with conducting a separate, independent assessment of the agency’s operations in addition to the internal UN review.

The UN announced on Monday that it had appointed Catherine Colonna, France’s former minister of foreign affairs, to lead the Independent Review Group to “assess whether the Agency is doing everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made”. The group will begin work on February 14 and will submit an interim report to the secretary general in late March with a final report – which will be made public – expected by late April 2024. 

France, UNRWA’s fourth-biggest donor, has not suspended its voluntary contributions to the agency. France increased its funding in 2023 to  €60 million, out of concern over the “disastrous humanitarian situation in Gaza” and its impact on civilians. France’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying it will be “waiting for the investigations launched in recent days” to decide how to proceed regarding its contributions for 2024.

‘The dodgy dossier’  

Israel has not yet shared its full intelligence dossier with either UNRWA or the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), the UN legal body tasked with carrying out the internal investigation.

“I don’t think we need to give intelligence information,” said Lior Haiat, a spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry. “This would reveal sources in the operation. We gave information to UNRWA about employees that worked for UNRWA that are members of Hamas.” 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated, “We haven’t had the ability to investigate [the allegations] ourselves. But they are highly, highly credible.”

Haiat noted that the very nature of the allegations makes it impossible for Israel to share all the evidence it has with UNRWA.

“They think that we can give them intelligence information, knowing that some of their employees work for Hamas? Are you serious? Why don’t we invite Hamas to our headquarters and have them sit at our desk and have a look at all the information we have?” he asked.

A six-page summary of the Israeli dossier leaked to a handful of media outlets and seen by FRANCE 24 provides the names of the 12 UNRWA staff members accused of participating in the Hamas attacks, ranging from kidnapping Israelis to helping to carry out the massacre at the Be’eri kibbutz. Two of the accused are dead and another is unaccounted for. 

The dossier alleges that the first man on the list of the accused, an UNRWA school counselor, entered Israeli territory to kidnap an Israeli woman with the help of his son.  

The accusations say they are drawn, in part, from “intelligence information, documents and identity cards seized during the course of the fighting”. The dossier estimates that there are around 190 Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad terrorist operatives working for UNRWA. 

The Israeli foreign ministry told FRANCE 24 that evidence of UNRWA staff involvement includes phone tracking that shows where the employees were on October 7 as well as video footage gathered by the Israeli Defence Forces.

Yet this documentation has not been provided to UN investigators. 

“They received some type of evidence to terminate the employees, obviously they would not have done that if they did not receive some type of evidence,” said Joshua Lavine, the spokesperson for the Israeli mission to the UN.  

Lavine said that he was “not surprised that there are members of UNRWA who are also members of terror organisations” and that there have been meetings in the past between the Israeli mission and UN officials discussing the issue.

Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan escorted a delegation of nine UN ambassadors to Israel on January 31 where they met with the president, the foreign and defence ministers, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. UNRWA was discussed at length. 

In a February 1 briefing, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told the ambassadors that UNRWA had “lost its legitimacy to exist”. Malta’s UN Ambassador Vanessa Frazier, who took part in the delegation, told FRANCE 24 that Gallant told them that UNRWA is “an internationally funded organisation paid to kill Israelis”.  

The ambassadors had a clear message for Israel, Frazier said: “Support the SG’s (UN secretary general’s) investigation; anyone involved must be accountable, but the collective punishment only hurts the Gazans more.”

Inquiry will take time

Donors are demanding a speedy inquiry before resuming funding, but UN sources say this could take up to a year.

Former senior OIOS investigator Vladimir Dzuro, who led a major probe into top management UNRWA, said the OIOS aims to complete investigations within six months but that a realistic timeframe is more like six to 12 months, depending on the complexity of the allegations.

“I do not believe that any professional investigation into allegations of this nature, in a quality that is required under the circumstances, could be conducted in four weeks,” Dzuro said, before UNRWA’s funding runs out.

It is also unlikely that UN investigators could conduct a thorough inquiry in an active war zone, he noted.  

The OIOS director of investigations, Suzette Schultz, was tight-lipped about the investigation, saying in an email only that her team is “pursuing various avenues of enquiry” and that it has “approached multiple member states that may have information relevant to the investigation”. 

Donor nation Norway has refused to cut aid to UNRWA. The country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide urged other donors not to turn their backs on UNRWA, saying: “We should not collectively punish millions of people. We must distinguish between what individuals may have done and what UNRWA stands for.” 

Chris Gunness, former chief spokesperson for UNRWA from 2007 to 2020, accused the donors who have frozen funding of “illegally weaponising” UNRWA, thus violating the International Court of Justice ruling calling on Israel to prevent genocide in Gaza and the Genocide Convention itself. 

“If these donors have made a decision without cast-iron evidence, they need to be investigated for a move which humanitarian experts say will cause mass starvation,” he said. “It’s time for serious pushback against the dodgy dossier, bad donorship and the betrayal of the UN, UNRWA, its staff and the people of Gaza.”

Gunness noted that the dossier illustrates “perfectly why the donors must ring-fence humanitarian decision-making from politics”. 

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, an organisation named after Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer of Jewish descent who coined the term “genocide” in 1944, also sounded the alarm on the withdrawal of funds. “This is a serious escalation of the crisis in Gaza and follows the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) first ruling in Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), which many hoped would slow the genocide.” 

“It is possible that at least some of the allegations are true. This is why UNRWA’s leadership has reacted swiftly, and an investigation has been launched,” said Matthias Schmale, UNRWA director in Gaza from 2017 to 2021.

“It can also be legitimately asked why these allegations surfaced around the time of the ICJ judgment that, amongst other things, articulated the need for immediate and massive delivery of humanitarian aid, which cannot be done without UNRWA,” he said.  

UNRWA in Israel’s crosshairs

Even before October 7, there was a long history of Israel questioning UNRWA’s credibility. And yet Israel relies solely on the UN agency to provide essential services to civilians in Gaza that it might otherwise have to provide itself. 

The agency is almost as old as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself. Created by the UN General Assembly in 1949, UNRWA was set up to provide critical social support for Palestinian refugees throughout the Mideast. Its mandate was renewed for another three years by the UN General Assembly in 2023.

Schmale, the former UNRWA director in Gaza, said that despite Hamas’s control of the Gaza Strip since 2007, the group has no involvement in the UN administration in the enclave.

“During my almost four years in Gaza I had to fire only one staff member for direct involvement, as we discovered that he was an active member of the Al-Qassam Brigade,” he said. “This was the exception, not the norm.”

“Hamas de facto authorities are NOT involved in UNRWA’s core services which include education and health,” Schmale said in an email. Hamas leaders “unsurprisingly from time to time make their views known on what UNRWA does and how, and express expectations of what should be conducted differently”.  

But Schmale said that, during his time in Gaza, “Hamas mostly respected that it cannot interfere in the running of the Agency, and we were able to conduct our work in conformity with UN standards and norms.”

UNRWA has 30,000 staff, mostly Palestinians, who provide essential services for millions of Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East. In Gaza alone, the agency has played a crucial role, especially since Israel imposed a blockade on the strip when Hamas took over governance in 2007. UNRWA is also the second-biggest employer in Gaza; 80 percent of the population of the 360-square-kilometre enclave relies on humanitarian aid.

Nevertheless, the UN agency has aroused Israeli suspicions.

A copy of a classified report written by Israel’s foreign ministry with a plan to dismantle UNRWA in Gaza in three stages was leaked to Israeli media last month. The first stage involved revealing cooperation between UNRWA and the Hamas movement. 

Haiat confirmed the existence of the foreign ministry report but said that it was a “non-paper” that had not been “approved by anyone”. 

An earlier Israeli government plan made public in 2017 outlined a process for dissolving UNRWA and transferring its responsibilities to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.  

When a Palestinian journalist and writer, Yasser Al Banna, who works in Gaza, read the allegations against UNRWA staff, he immediately recalled the leaked foreign ministry report and the 2017 Israeli government plan.

The accusations against UNRWA staff should be “taken in context,” Al Banna said, noting that the accused account for just 0.09 percent of UNRWA employees in Gaza. 

“Logically speaking, it is not strange that 12 people out of 13,000 employees [in Gaza] could get involved in illegal activities,”  Al Banna said. “Those involved should be punished legally and professionally. We should not punish an entire agency, an entire people.” 

Under pressure 

Lazzarini is now travelling to Gulf states to seek alternate funding for the agency. Despite facing intense pressure from Israel to resign, his spokesperson said he has no intention of doing so.

“This is a very serious crisis for the United Nations,” Touma acknowledged. “It’s probably one of the largest we’ve had to go through, involving the oldest and one of the most critical agencies of the UN. It’s important that the truth comes out.”

Touma was moved as she recalled her visits to UNRWA schools. “I have seen how they can be a sanctuary for children in a place like Gaza that is riddled with poverty, unemployment, despair, a blockade,” she said. 

She described meeting with young teenagers at a “children’s parliament”, an initiative run by UNRWA. It was a place “where refugee children can come together and learn about human rights, critical thinking and how to debunk” falsehoods.

“I ended up cancelling all my other engagements because I enjoyed speaking to these 12-, 13-, 14-year-olds so much,” Touma said. “They told me about their dreams, their hopes, what they want to be. They spoke about their love for Gaza, their dreams to travel, to be like any teenager … and that’s UNRWA.”

This article was produced in collaboration with PassBlue. Damilola Banjo, reporter for PassBlue, contributed reporting. 

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What is Kataeb Hezbollah, the militia accused of killing American soldiers in Jordan?

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The United States launched air strikes against Iranian forces and allied militias in Iraq and Syria on Friday, with President Joe Biden vowing more to come in retaliation for a deadly drone attack on a US base in Jordan. The Pentagon particularly has its sights on Kataeb Hezbollah, one of the main militias responsable for attacking US troops. 

The United States blamed a January 28 drone attack on forces backed by Iran, but did not strike inside the country’s territory when retaliating on Friday, with both Washington and Tehran seemingly keen to avoid an all-out war.

Attacks on US troops in the Middle East have reached an unprecedented level since the October 7 attack by Hamas in southern Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement.

There have been at least 165 drone strikes and rocket attacks since mid-October against the positions of US forces and those of the anti-Islamic State (IS) group coalition in Iraq and Syria. Yet no human losses had been reported until the latest attack on January 28, when a drone attack at the Tour 22 logistics base in Jordan near the Syrian border killed three American soldiers and injured 40 others.

This had been unheard of since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas, said David Rigoulet-Roze, a researcher at the French Institute for Strategic Analysis (IFAS) think-tank, for whom “a red line has been potentially crossed”. US President Joe Biden vowed the evening of the attack that the US “shall respond”. Biden later said in a written statement that the United States “will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing”.

Iran has denied it was behind the drone attack. But Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said the attack has “the footprints of Kataeb Hezbollah” – an Iran-backed militant group in Iraq which the Pentagon has blamed for previous violence.

The White House proffered a similar accusation, with spokesperson John Kirby during a press conference attributing the drone attack to the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias. This grouping “includes” the militant group Kataeb Hezbollah, he noted, while specifying that the deadly attack “certainly bore the mark” of this influential pro-Iran armed group in Iraq.

At the orders of Iran’s Supreme Leader

The Iraqi militia Kataeb Hezbollah – not to be confused with Lebanon’s Hezbollah – is one of the Iraqi militias “closest to Iran”, said Rigoulet-Roze. “They follow the principle of ‘velayat-e faqih’, which means they recognise the Iranian Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] as their supreme commander.”

The former leader of Kataeb Hezbollah, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, previously the right-hand man of the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, died alongside his boss in 2020 in a US strike on their convoy in Baghdad.

A member of the Hashed al-Shaabi, an Iraqi paramilitary network dominated by Iran-backed factions, carries a portrait of slain Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in Iraq’s central holy city of Karbala on December 29, 2020, during a symbolic funeral ceremony on the anniversary of the air strikes by US planes on several bases belonging to the Hezbollah brigades near Al-Qaim. © AFP, Mohammed Sawaf

Classified as a “terrorist” group by Washington and targeted by sanctions, the Kataeb Hezbollah faction has been hit in recent weeks by US strikes in Iraq, along with Harakat al-Nujaba, another fiercely anti-US faction.

Most of the attacks targeting Americans in recent months have been claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, which includes Kataeb Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba. This nebulous group of fighters from pro-Iran armed militias says they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians. Yet above all they seek the departure of some 2,500 American soldiers deployed in Iraq as part of the international coalition fighting against the IS group. Their demand has been heard: in the volatile context, the US and Iraq recently announced they would begin talks about formulating “a specific and clear timeline” for the future of US and other foreign troops in Iraq, with a timeline for reducing their presence.

Washington’s former allies 

Among the insurgent groups which compose the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Kataeb Hezbollah is undoubtedly the most influential. It is also affiliated with the Hashed al-Shaabi faction, which is made up of former Iraqi paramilitaries affiliated with Iran and “has a major role” within Kataeb Hezbollah, said Rigoulet-Roze. The current leader of Kataeb Hezbollah, Abu Fadak al-Muhammadawi, is also Hashed al-Shaabi’s chief of staff.

Hashed al-Shaabi was launched in June 2014 to support Iraqi forces against the IS group. Together, alongside the anti-IS group coalition led by Washington, they contributed to the defeat inflicted on the IS group in 2017 by Iraq.

“There was an objective alliance between the coalition, therefore the Americans, and the Hashed militias against Daesh [the IS group]. The two fought on the same side, with some on the ground and others in the air. After 2017, these groups found their Iranian- and therefore anti-American- DNA,” said Rigoulet-Roze.

Hashed al-Shaabi is currently composed of dozens of groups and has more than 160,000 members, according to estimates by the AFP. The US think tank The Washington Institute estimated that the militia has around 230,000 members. Yet neither the Iraqi authorities nor the organisation communicates on the numbers of its forces.

The exact number of militiamen in Kataeb Hezbollah remains unknown. According to Rigoulet-Roze, the figure ranges from 3,000 to 30,000, since some of its forces are mobilized only occasionally.

‘The executive branch has no control’

Faced with the increase in attacks against US troops in recent weeks, the Iraqi government feels caught in the crossfire. It was brought to power by a coalition of pro-Iran Shiite parties and a parliamentary majority including Hashed al-Shaabi, whose deputies have held seats in Iraq’s parliament since 2018.

Theoretically, Hashed al-Shaabi and its components, including Kataeb Hezbollah, are part of the country’s regular forces, according to a law passed in 2016. “This is largely a procedural question. In reality, the executive branch has no control over these militias. These groups benefit from a large margin of autonomy, and this is a problem for the executive power of [Iraqi Prime Minister] Mohamed Chia al-Soudani,” said Rigoulet-Roze.

Faced with the increase in attacks against US troops in recent weeks, the Iraqi government feels caught in the crossfire. It was brought to power by a coalition of pro-Iran Shiite parties and a parliamentary majority including Hashed al-Shaabi, whose deputies had sat in Iraq’s parliament since 2018.

After the threats of the US president, who said he held Iran “responsible” for having provided the weapons for the strike that killed the American soldiers, Kataeb Hezbollah announced on January 30, “the suspension of military and security operations against the occupation forces in order to prevent embarrassing the Iraqi government”.

The statement, signed by the group’s Secretary General Abou Hussein al-Hamidawi, mentioned the Iraqi government purely as a matter of form. Iran most likely intervened behind the scenes to calm the situation, knowing that there was now the risk of uncontrolled escalation with the White House. Yet the US reprisals on January 2 against Iran-linked factions could prompt them to reconsider their decision. 

(With AFP)

This article was translated from the original in French.

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