After more than nine months of detention, Israeli authorities released Palestinian American teenager Mohammed Ibrahim, who according to some experts embodies Israeli abuses of Palestinians in occupied West Bank.
Following months of pressure from American lawmakers and civil rights organizations, Mohammed’s release on Thursday came as a result.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
In the town of al-Mazraa ash-Sharqiya, near Ramallah, the Florida teenager was detained and taken from his family home in February when he was 15 years old.
He lost weight dramatically as a 16-year-old while being held in an Israeli prison and developed a skin infection.
Mohammed’s uncle Zeyad Kadur stated in a statement that “words can’t describe the incredible relief we have as a family right now” in the presence of his parents.
Before his parents wrapped their arms around him and felt secure, “we couldn’t believe Mohammed was free.”
Mohammed was detained after he denied allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli settlers. Mohammed was blindfolded and beaten during the raid on his family home in February, according to his father Zaher Ibrahim and other family members.
He was denied access to his family while he was imprisoned by Israeli authorities, and he had no visitation rights. Only US officials, who had access to Mohammed, provided updates that his family members were receiving.
His family members pleaded with US President Donald Trump’s administration to press for his release or at least ensure that he had access to safe food and medical care throughout his detention.
In a statement released on Thursday, Kadur claimed that “Israeli soldiers had no right to take Mohammed from us in the first place.”
Our family has been living a horrifying and unending nightmare for more than nine months, especially Mohammed’s mother and father, who are aware that Israeli soldiers are starving and beating their youngest child.
In response to rumors that Mohammed’s health was deteriorating, the pressure to release him grew more recent.
27 US lawmakers wrote in a letter to the Trump administration last month to demand that they press Israel to free him.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a prominent member of the Democratic Party, has also been campaigning to get Mohammed’s release.
The family plans to celebrate Mohammed’s release by celebrating his 16th birthday with his mother Muna serving his favorite meal, according to the statement from Thursday. It thanked those who pushed for his release.
According to a UN report, at least 83, 000 women and girls were intentionally killed last year, or one every six minutes. Soraya Lennie of Al Jazeera compiles the figures.
The United States Department of State has backed plans to establish what it calls “alternative safe communities” (ASC) in Gaza, part of a US-Israeli plan that would appear to divide the Palestinian enclave into two.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed to Al Jazeera that it supported the ASC “approach”, saying it was “seen as the most effective way to achieve” the goal of “moving people into safe accommodations as quickly as possible”.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
The ASC plan has emerged in recent weeks as part of wider discussions that would see Gaza split into a “green zone” controlled by Israel and a “red zone” controlled by the Palestinian group Hamas.
There has been little clarity over how the plan would work, and details appear to still be in flux, but the broad outline, according to reporting in The New York Times and other outlets, is that reconstruction in Gaza would take place only in areas controlled by Israel and not in those where Hamas still operates.
This means the areas where the majority of Gaza’s estimated 2.2 million residents still live, including Gaza City and central regions such as Deir el-Balah, would not see any reconstruction despite the desperate situation Palestinians there continue to live in.
“Addressing the immediate need for secure housing in Gaza [is our] central concern,” the State Department spokesperson said.
“US efforts are directed toward rebuilding in those parts of Gaza where the majority of the population currently resides,” the spokesperson added, although it was unclear if that meant that rebuilding would also occur in non-Israeli-controlled areas under the ASC plan or whether the US hoped that the majority of Gaza’s population would move to Israeli-controlled areas.
Some reports suggested that the ASCs would consist of compounds housing 20,000 or 25,000 people in container-sized units, such as those currently used in disaster relief. It is not currently clear how these compounds could be expanded to accommodate all Palestinians in Gaza.
“If they [the US and Israel] could establish a proper situation, people might move there, but it’s not feasible,” Hussein, a Palestinian from Gaza City, said of the US plans. “What are they going to establish, with what infrastructure? It would need water, electricity. It would take years.”
Who will pay?
Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza has killed more than 69,700 Palestinians. Now, more than a month after a ceasefire officially began in Gaza, there are still questions over what the next phase of the agreement will bring and when full-scale reconstruction will begin.
In the meantime, Israel continues to attack periodically, killing at least 347 people since the ceasefire began on October 10.
For those still alive, life is incredibly difficult. At least 1.9 million people in Gaza are displaced. Many of them have had to flee multiple times. Ninety-two percent of Gaza’s housing stock has been damaged or reduced to rubble, leaving hundreds of thousands of people living in tents, a particularly precarious situation as winter approaches.
The destruction of Gaza’s buildings has come as a result of Israeli air strikes and shelling as well as a systematic campaign to deliberately demolish vast swaths of the territory.
Officials quoted in The New York Times said the first ASC compound was still months away from completion. Israeli soldiers were expected to begin clearing an area around what remains of Rafah in the south this week. But that work could be delayed if tunnels, unexploded ordnance or human remains are encountered.
Two people involved in the project estimated that the cost for just the initial compound could reach tens of millions of dollars. Overall, the cost of reconstructing Gaza is expected to come to at least $70bn and take several decades. Where the funding for the reconstruction will come from is unclear.
Who will pay for the proposed ASCs is equally ambiguous. The administration of US President Donald Trump is reported to have ruled out funding their construction while Israeli politicians have yet to confirm their final position.
The US State Department spokesperson did not comment on the funding, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
The remains of the southern city of Rafah, where the first compound is slated to be established [Hatem KhaledReuters]
Engineering a new Gaza
While few Palestinians currently live in Gaza’s Israeli-controlled zone, US hopes are understood to rest on the idea that development, security and presumably access to medical care and welfare would be enough to draw people from other areas of Gaza.
But complicating US ambitions is that access to the “green zone” is heavily restricted for Palestinians, a situation that is likely to continue going forward.
According to The New York Times, Israeli security services are likely to conduct background checks on Palestinians seeking shelter in the new compounds, giving Israel a veto over who will be allowed in.
The outlet added that European diplomats have expressed concern that the eventual criteria could exclude large numbers of Palestinians, including civil servants, such as police and medical staff, who have worked under Hamas’s 18-year administration of the enclave as well as their family members.
And aid agencies said the idea of providing aid only to people in certain areas to the exclusion of others goes against humanitarian principles.
“We deliver aid where people are,” said Tamara Alrifai, the director of external relations for the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA. “We don’t provide services where we’d like people to be. That goes against the entire philosophy of aid and development.”
“This is about delivering the services people need to where the people are, not creating an artificial village and imposing what services you think people need onto them,” she said.
US planners are said to hope that access to food, security and aid will draw people into the Israeli-controlled ‘green zone’ [Basher Taleb/AFP]
Division, partition and shrunken space
Arab and European officials as well as agencies such as Refugees International have expressed concern that the division of Gaza into red and green zones may pave the way to permanent partition. The idea has also drawn comparisons to the occupations of Baghdad and Kabul, where green zones became effective Western enclaves.
However, the suggestion of dividing Gaza is not entirely new. Speaking in April, Netanyahu spoke of plans to “divide up” Gaza by building a new Israel-controlled security corridor between Rafah and Khan Younis, suggesting Israel was preparing to separate the two cities.
As recently as September, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich characterised Gaza as a “real estate bonanza”, telling an audience that he was already in negotiations with the Americans on how to divide up the enclave after the war.
Smotrich and other Israeli settler leaders have consistently called for Israel to create illegal settlements for Jewish Israelis in Gaza and essentially force the Palestinian population out in what would amount to ethnic cleansing.
Hardline Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has described Gaza, where Israel has killed almost 70,000 people, as a ‘real estate bonanza’ [File: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters]
“How can you divide it?” Yossi Mekelberg of Chatham House asked rhetorically. “You can’t squeeze 2 million people into a space even smaller than that which they’re already in.”
“Imposing an Israeli or American solution onto Gaza just isn’t going to work. If you’re going to even try to achieve something lasting, you need to begin with an understanding of Gaza’s history, culture and trauma,” Mekelberg added. “Palestinians need to be part of any settlement, or it’s never going to be stable.”
In Gaza, news of US and Israeli plans for the future of Palestinians is doing little to reassure a population battered and displaced after two years of Israeli assaults.
Washington, DC – Authorities in the United States have identified the two National Guard members shot in Washington, DC, in what the FBI is investigating as an act of “terrorism”.
US Attorney Jeanine Pirro on Thursday named 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom and 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe as the West Virginia National Guard members who were shot a day earlier, just blocks from the White House.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
She said both service members had gone through surgery and were in critical condition. They had been deployed to the US capital as part of what President Donald Trump has described as an anticrime initiative.
“A lone gunman opened fire without provocation, ambush style, armed with a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver,” Pirro told reporters at a news conference.
The attacker has been identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who came to the US in 2021 shortly after the withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan.
Pirro said Lakanwal was a resident of Washington state and had driven across the country before the attack.
He has been charged with three counts of assault with intent to kill and possession of a firearm. He remains hospitalised after sustaining wounds that officials said did not appear to be life-threatening.
Pirro, a former Fox News host, added the charges could be upgraded if either of the National Guard members do not survive.
Kash Patel, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said the attack was being investigated as “terrorism” and a search warrant has been executed at Lakanwal’s home.
Speaking earlier on Fox News, US Attorney General Pam Bondi said the wounded personnel were “fighting for their lives”.
“Everyone, pray today for these two soldiers, these two Guardsmen, the man and woman,” she said. “But if something happens – I will tell you right now, I will tell you early – we will do everything in our power to seek the death penalty against that man.”
The attack came at a time of heightened scrutiny over Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard to Washington, DC, and other US cities.
Trump has said the deployment is needed to respond to high rates of crime in the US capital. Critics have decried the move as an incendiary show of force out of step with the needs of the federal district.
A judge last week ruled that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard was illegal but delayed enforcement of the decision until December 11.
After Thursday’s attack, the Trump administration quickly ordered 500 more National Guard soldiers to Washington, DC, adding to the nearly 2,200 military members already stationed there.
Revetting Afghans
In the wake of the attack, the Trump administration pledged to “re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under [Former President Joe] Biden”.
The administration also announced it was pausing all processing of “immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals”.
On Thursday, Trump administration officials continued to focus on the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was conducted after a deal struck by Trump and the Taliban during the Republican leader’s first term.
During the withdrawal, the Biden administration launched Operation Allies Welcome to quickly relocate Afghans to the US, including those who had worked alongside US forces and Western entities in Afghanistan for more than two decades.
About 77,000 Afghans came to the US under the programme.
On Thursday, John Ratcliffe, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said in a statement that the attacker had worked with the agency “as a member of a partner force” in the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar before coming to the US.
The attack has sparked fear for Afghan evacuees in the US and those still seeking relocation from Afghanistan after many were already reeling from the Trump administration’s hardline restrictions on refugees and asylum seekers.
Many Afghans who worked with US and Western forces face threats of reprisals from the Taliban government.
In a statement, Shawn VanDiver, the president of the AfghanEvac humanitarian advocacy group, urged “the media, elected leaders and decision-makers and other people of influence not to demonize the Afghan community for the deranged choice this person made”.
Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, echoed that sentiment, saying the “entire Afghan community must not be punished due to the actions of one individual”.
Since the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of the city of El-Fasher last month, hundreds of Sudanese children have been arriving in the western Darfur region of Sudan without their parents, according to a humanitarian organization.
At least 400 unaccompanied children had arrived in Tawila, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), but that number is likely much higher than that.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
The group reported that “children are frequently walking through the desert for days and getting to Tawila exhausted and deeply distressed.”
“Many travelers are terrified of the armed groups they encountered on the way.” During the chaos of flight, many people separated from their parents, while others are thought to have vanished, been detained, or died.
After an 18-month siege that prevented residents of Sudan’s north-central region from getting food, medicine, and other essential supplies, the RSF took control of El-Fasher, Sudan’s capital, on October 26.
Since April 2023, the paramilitary group has been accused of carrying out numerous sexual assaults, kidnappings, and mass killings in its annexation of Sudan.
The RSF claims that rogue actors are to blame for the actions of civilians and has stopped aid.
However, Volker Turk, the UN’s director of human rights, claimed in mid-November that the “atrocities” that have occurred in El-Fasher “constitute the gravest of crimes.”
According to the most recent UN figures, more than 100 000 people have fled El-Fasher, with many seeking refuge in nearby Chad.
Meanwhile, the NRC reported on Thursday that it had received at least 15, 000 new visitors to Tawila, which is located about 60 kilometers (37 miles) away from El-Fasher, since October 26. According to the report, more than 200 children are registered each day on average.
Children arrive with “signs of acute trauma,” according to Nidaa, a teacher with the humanitarian organization’s Tawila education program.
Some of the students could not speak at all when we first began our classes. She claimed that some people were having nightmares when they woke up. They describe being separated from family in the chaos, traveling at night, and hiding for hours.
fears of trafficking in people
According to humanitarian organizations, the newly populated displacement camps in Tawila are becoming overpopulated as a result of the arrival of newcomers from El-Fasher and its nearby villages.
In the midst of months of fighting in the area, the Sudanese American Physicians Association estimated in early November that more than 650, 000 internally displaced people had sought refuge in Tawila.
In a report released on November 5, the organization reported that nearly a quarter of displaced residents (74%) were living in informal communities without adequate infrastructure, and that only 10% of displaced households had reliable access to latrines or water.
According to the report, “These circumstances make Tawila effectively a stand-alone crisis epicentre, not just an overflow from el-Fasher.”
A group of UN experts also made the warning that Sudanese women and girls are now at greater risk of sexual exploitation and trafficking as a result of the region’s deteriorating situation.
According to the experts, displacement children are also becoming more prone to being recruited to fight in the escalating conflict.
The alarming reports of human trafficking since the [RSF] took control of el-Fasher and surrounding areas have raised “our deep concern,” they said in a statement.
Women, unaccompanied and separated children are at increased risk of sexual violence and exploitation because “women and girls have been abducted in RSF-controlled areas.”
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, expressed optimism about a draft United States-backed peace plan for Ukraine, saying it could form the basis for a “serious” discussion of a future agreement.
Putin acknowledged that the US had taken Russia’s position into account in the negotiations, but he said some issues still needed to be resolved while speaking to reporters on Thursday while on a state visit to Kyrgyzstan.
Recommended Stories
list of 3 itemsend of list
We generally concur that this could serve as the foundation for future agreements, he said of the draft plan.
The Russian leader also confirmed that Steve Witkoff, a special envoy to Russia, would soon travel to Moscow for further discussions, which he claimed should concentrate on the Donbas and Crimea, which are currently under Russian control.
A 28-point peace plan for Ukraine that was widely criticized as being too favorable for Russia was revealed last week by the US. It included demands for Kyiv to make significant territorial concessions and give up its membership in NATO. According to Ukraine’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya, the plan has since been modified with Ukrainian input, with the removal of a 600, 000-member cap on the country’s army and a general war crimes amnesty.
However, the most recent proposal’s full details have not been made public.
In his most recent remarks, Putin claimed that there isn’t a final version of the plan.
Andriy Yermak, the chief of staff for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stated on Thursday that US and Ukrainian officials would continue to work on the plan.
Ukrainian troops must leave, according to the law.
Putin reaffirmed that despite his ostensible willingness to reach a deal, Russia would continue to fight the nearly four-year conflict, which has resulted in the deaths or injuries of hundreds of thousands on both sides.
The Ukrainian troops must leave their holding areas before fighting will end. We will use armed means to accomplish this if they don’t leave. Putin claimed that that is it, claiming that the Russian forces are moving more quickly through Ukraine.
The Russian leader added that the international community must accept any upcoming agreements that acknowledge Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine. He also argued that the country’s current leadership is unlawful.
alleged Crimea bridge assailants are sentenced in Russia
Putin’s remarks come as a Russian court pronounces a verdict in a deadly 2022 truck bombing attack claimed by Ukraine’s secret services.
Eight men were given life sentences by the military court in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, for aiding in the bombing, which ripped through a bridge connecting southern Russia to the Russian-annexed Crimea and damaged a crucial supply route for Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
Putin personally inaugurated the bridge in 2018, which is seen by both Ukraine and Russia as a representation of Moscow’s 2014 occupation and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.
