We look at Palestinian children’s right to play in war-ravaged Gaza and in the occupied West Bank.
All children – wherever they are in the world – deserve to be children: to explore, laugh and play, especially since play is a vital path to their learning and growth. But what about Palestinian children’s play time – or lack thereof? This is a human right taken from them by Israel.
Presenter: Stefanie Dekker
Guests: Omar El-Buhaisi – Psychiatrist & field supervisor, Palestine Trauma Centre
Syria’s foreign minister has held talks with senior Lebanese government figures in Beirut as the countries seek to reset ties after decades of belligerent relations, borne of involvement in each other’s ruinous civil wars and occupation, accrued during the reign of the al-Assad family.
Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said on Friday that his visit, the first to its neighbour by a senior leader of the fledgling government, demonstrated “a new Syrian approach towards Lebanon” that would “overcome the obstacles of the past”, alluding to the al-Assad clan’s decades-long control over Lebanese affairs.
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Attending a joint news conference, Lebanese Foreign Minister Youssef Rajji concurred, saying that the neighbours, which regularly clash over their shared 330-kilometre (205-mile) border, were forging a “new path”.
Key issues include the border, the status of 2,000 Syrian prisoners in Lebanese jails, locating Lebanese nationals missing in Syria for years, and facilitating the return of Syrian refugees.
More than a million Syrians fled their country’s 14-year civil war for Lebanon – though the United Nations refugee agency says more than 294,000 have returned home this year.
After meeting President Joseph Aoun, al-Shaibani said the refugee issue would be resolved gradually. “There are plans that we are discussing now, with international support, for the dignified and stable return” of refugees, he said.
On the border issue, Lebanon and Syria’s defence ministers signed an agreement last March to address security threats after clashes left 10 dead.
‘Respect for sovereignty’
The two countries have to overcome decades of mutual mistrust.
The new Syrian government led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, which overthrew Bashar al-Assad in a lightning rebel offensive last December, harbours deep resentment over the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah’s role in fighting alongside al-Assad forces in Syria’s civil war, propping up his authoritarian rule for years.
And many Lebanese still hold a grudge over Syria’s 29-year domination of its smaller neighbour, where it had a military presence for three decades and assassinated numerous officials in Lebanon opposed to its rule.
Syria had become the dominant power in Lebanon after former president Hafez al-Assad intervened in its 1975-1990 civil war. His son Bashar withdrew troops in 2005 following mass protests triggered by the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, blamed on al-Assad and Hezbollah.
Bridge-building between the two countries has gathered momentum following al-Assad’s ouster and Hezbollah’s significant losses during its recent war with Israel. The group had lost a major ally and supply route with al-Assad’s removal.
Al-Shaibani, who was accompanied by a delegation that included Justice Minister Mazhar al-Wais, reiterated Syria’s “respect for Lebanon’s sovereignty,” saying Damascus seeks to “move past previous obstacles and strengthen bilateral ties”.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet has voted to accept the Gaza ceasefire deal, despite threats from right-wing coalition partners to bring down his government. Donald Trump, who brokered the deal, said it made Netanyahu more popular but accepted it could lead to him losing power.
A small tent held up by flimsy tarpaulin stands alone, surrounded by bloodied and tattered blue helmets and vests with the word “PRESS” marked across them. Smashed cellphones, laptops and camcorders, and debris lie scattered around it in what could be a scene from a warzone.
But this is not a warzone. It is an installation setting the scene for a two-day conference organised by Al Jazeera, which began on Wednesday to highlight the terrible dangers faced by journalists working in armed conflicts.
The installation has been positioned in front of the angular conference hall of the Sheraton Grand hotel, a brutalist building that stands in Doha’s upscale West Bay neighbourhood.
Inside, an LCD screen is playing footage of Al Jazeera’s journalists wearing those blue vests and jackets, reporting in Gaza. It then cuts to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu patting an Israeli military soldier on the back before footage of protesters carrying Palestine flags and posters calling Netanyahu a war criminal.
To the side of the hall, a panel listing the names and pictures of Al Jazeera’s journalists who have been injured or killed while reporting on Israel’s war in Gaza, over which Hamas and Israel have now agreed to the first stage of a peace process, appears. The panel is horrifyingly long, spanning the entire length of the hall.
Most recently, Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif was deliberately killed by an Israeli attack on a tent housing journalists in Gaza City on August 10. That assault also killed an Al Jazeera correspondent, two Al Jazeera camera operators, a freelance cameraman and a freelance journalist.
The installation outside the Doha conference on Wednesday [Sarah Shamim/Al Jazeera]
Opposite, on the other side of the hall, another panel displays the names and pictures of Al Jazeera’s journalists who have been killed while reporting on conflict all over the world, including Rasheed Wali, who was killed in Iraq in 2004 while covering clashes in the city of Karbala; and Mohammad al-Masalmeh, killed in Deraa, Syria in 2013 while covering the civil war.
It is a painful reminder that the war on Gaza, in which nearly 300 journalists and media workers have been killed, according to the Shireen Abu Akleh Observatory – including 10 from Al Jazeera – is no isolated case of journalists losing their lives while reporting in conflict zones.
A panel showing Al Jazeera journalists killed in conflict zones before Gaza [Maha Elbardani/Al Jazeera]
Gaza has marked a turning point for journalists, however, Louise Alluin Bichet, director of projects and emergency response at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told the conference on Wednesday.
While reporters once relied on the sorts of bulletproof vests seen strewn at the entrance to the conference to shield them from accidental injury, as they performed their jobs amidst and on the sidelines of conflict, she said, they are now being deliberately targeted.
“It does not matter what kind of body armour you’re wearing.”
As Maryam bint Abdullah Al-Attiyah, chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), highlighted, international law has been flouted in the Gaza war and “journalists have been targeted and killed.”
The installation depicted the reality for many journalists in Gaza [Maha Elbardani/Al Jazeera]
Journalists under fire
Al Jazeera Arabic anchor M’hamed Krichen opened the conference on Wednesday with a video of smoke billowing in Gaza as journalists come under attack.
“The journalists became news themselves,” Krichen said as an image of Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, writhing in pain after an attack played out on the screen. Dahdouh has lost many family members in Gaza, including his wife and several of his children.
The video then cut to footage of Samer Abudaqa, an Al Jazeera cameraman killed in an Israeli attack in December 2023 in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis. Krichen told the audience that Abu Daqqa had bled for six hours while Israeli forces prevented an ambulance from reaching him.
“Al Jazeera has said goodbye to many of its sons,” Krichen said.
As journalists come increasingly under fire, the newly appointed director general of Al Jazeera Media Network, Sheikh Nasser bin Faisal Al Thani, told the conference their safety must be the overriding priority for all news organisations.
“Otherwise, war crimes will remain unwritten,” he said. “Protecting journalists is protection of the truth itself.”
A witness and a victim
Wael Dahdouh was one of Al Jazeera’s most prominent correspondents during the earlier stages of the war. He has been seriously injured and has lost close relatives during the course of the war, and was evacuated to Qatar in December 2023 to receive treatment for an injury.
He describes what has been taking place in Gaza as a “total genocide”.
On October 25, 2023, an Israeli air strike targeted a house in the central Gaza Strip where Dahdouh’s family had taken shelter while he was reporting on the war. Several close family members, including his wife, son, daughter and grandson, were killed.
“Journalists are being killed and genocide is being committed against them,” Dahdouh told the conference, gesticulating heavily with his left hand, as his right hand is still recovering from a serious injury.
Dahdouh told the audience that reporting on a war which has had such devastating personal consequences has been a major challenge for all journalists in Gaza.
“When your family is dead, cut into pieces before you … there is a volcano inside of you. You want to fight, but you remain professional and you continue your work,” he said.
After he buried his wife and children, he told his son and daughter, who had been injured: “I am going back to Gaza (City) to continue my work. What do you want to do?”
“We will come with you. Either we die together or live together,” they said.
Then tragedy struck again. Dahdouh’s eldest son, Hamza Dahdouh, 27, also a journalist, was killed by an Israeli missile strike in western Khan Younis in January 2024.
Journalists in Lebanon, where Israel launched major attacks during the second half of 2024 – to target members of Hezbollah, it said – and killed at least 1,000 people, have also faced this dilemma.
Nakhle Odaime, news correspondent and presenter at MTV Lebanon, also chose to continue reporting despite coming under fire.
“I recorded a video because I thought it might be the last video I’ll record. The voice of the truth should reach the audiences,” he told the conference.
‘If we don’t move now, tomorrow will be worse’
While journalists are treated the same as civilians under international law – they are never legitimate targets in a war – there is one main difference between the two.
“The civilian can go away from the combat field, but the journalist has to stay,” said Omar Mekky, the regional legal coordinator for the Near and Middle East region for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). “To assimilate the war journalist with the civilian is not right.”
The protection of journalists in war zones must be specifically enshrined in international law, therefore, he and others – including Fadi El Abdallah, head of public affairs at the International Criminal Court (ICC) – told the conference.
It is also necessary to expand the definition of “journalist” in the era of social media, Mekky said. “Anyone who has access to these resources is a journalist,” he added, referring to those using phones and social media to broadcast news of the war.
Omar Mekky addresses the crowd [Maha Elbardani/Al Jazeera]
Female journalists, who endure different forms of violence while reporting in conflict zones, must also be afforded special protections, said Renaud Gaudin de Villaine, a human rights officer at the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Ultimately, however, none of this will be possible without the political will of states, said Bichet from RSF. “The backup needs to come from all the states that have the power to put pressure.”
Time is of the essence, said Doja Daoud, regional programme coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un vowed to turn the country into a ‘socialist paradise’ during a huge ceremony for the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea.
India has announced that it is upgrading its technical mission in Kabul to a full-fledged embassy, cementing its first high-level diplomatic engagement with Afghanistan’s Taliban administration since the group seized power in 2021 after the United States withdrawal and fall of the previous government.
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Friday revealed the decision following talks with his Afghan counterpart in New Delhi.
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“Closer cooperation between us contributes to your national development, as well as regional stability and resilience,” Jaishanker noted, addressing Afghanistan’s Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi at a joint news briefing.
Jaishankar said India was “fully committed to the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Afghanistan”. He thanked Muttaqi for his “invitation to Indian companies to explore mining opportunities in Afghanistan”.
The move reopens the embassy that was closed in 2021 following the withdrawal of US-led NATO forces. India had since maintained a limited mission to oversee trade, medical, and humanitarian efforts.
In his remarks, Muttaqi said Kabul “has always sought good relations with India”. He also referred to ongoing counterterrorism efforts and said the Taliban administration would not allow anyone to use Afghanistan’s territory for targeting other nations.
There was controversy, however, as female journalists were not allowed in for the news briefing, a move likely requested by the Taliban delegation, who have again cracked down on women’s and girls’ rights and their access to education and jobs in Afghanistan since they recaptured power, drawing international condemnation.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants in July for two top Taliban leaders in Afghanistan on charges of abuses against women and girls.
ICC judges said there were “reasonable grounds” to suspect Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and Chief Justice Abdul Hakim Haqqani of committing gender-based persecution.
The Afghan foreign minister arrived in New Delhi on Thursday after the United Nations Security Council Committee granted him a temporary travel exemption.
A journalist watches the live streaming of talks between Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and India’s Foreign Minister S Jaishankar [Anushree Fadnavis/Reuters]
Muttaqi is among multiple Afghan Taliban leaders under UN sanctions that include travel bans and asset freezes.
While some dozen countries, including China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkiye, have embassies operating in Kabul, only Moscow has formally recognised the Taliban government.
During the Taliban’s initial rule between 1996 and 2001, the Indian government refused to engage with the Afghan group and did not recognise their rule, which at the time was only recognised by Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
India, which had supported the earlier Soviet-backed government of Mohammad Najibullah, shut down its embassy in Kabul once the Taliban came to power: It claimed the Taliban was a proxy of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, which had supported the mujahideen against Moscow.
Instead, New Delhi supported the anti-Taliban opposition group, the Northern Alliance.
Following the United States-led removal of the Taliban in 2001, India reopened its Kabul embassy and became a significant development partner for Afghanistan, investing more than $3bn in infrastructure, health, education and water projects, according to its Ministry of External Affairs.
Afghanistan’s regional neighbours, including India, voiced a rare unified front by opposing foreign attempts to deploy “military infrastructure” in the country, as US President Donald Trump presses to regain control of the Bagram airbase.
