Category World News

As the first talks between the parties since the most recent outbreak of violence come to an end, Thailand and Cambodia have reported new fighting in their ongoing border conflict.

According to Thai media reports, Thai forces responded to Cambodian BM-21 rocket attacks with artillery, tank fire, and drones in clashes in the border provinces Sisaket and Surin.

Prior to Thai forces firing on more than 19 Cambodian military targets, one Thai soldier was hurt in Sisaket province’s Pha Mo I Daeng–Huai Ta Maria region, according to the Thai army.

A civilian residential area was hit with four bombs as a result of Thai forces’ air attacks on Banan district in the northwestern border province of Battambang, according to Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defense.

A video of the Cambodian government’s ministry of education claiming to show scenes of panic at a provincial school, where students fled as the air raid was carried out, was also released.

Further, according to the Khmer Times, the ministry claimed that Thai shelling in Banteay Meanchey province had injured two civilians.

Conversations begin.

The most recent fighting occurred just before a defense officials’ meeting at the border crossing between the nations, Ban Pakkad and Pailin, on Wednesday.

According to official counts, the talks are the first between the parties since more than 40 new clashes broke out on December 7 that left about a million people dead and displaced.

Following a regional push to put an end to the fighting, the two parties agreed on Monday to hold the talks within the framework of a current bilateral border committee, the Cambodia-Thailand General Border Committee.

Assed Baig, a reporter from Phnom Penh, in the capital of Cambodia, reported that the meeting was taking place, with ASEAN nations acting as observers, but no significant developments were anticipated.

It’s crucial to be clear about what this meeting is and isn’t. He claimed that the conflict is between military and political figures, not politicians.

A ceasefire can not be agreed upon or signed in this forum.

He claimed that the discussions would primarily be about “stabilizing the situation, clarifying incidents between the parties, and maintaining those lines of communication open.”

According to him, any agreement on a ceasefire would need to be reached with Bangkok and Phnom Penh’s political leaders, and that is where outside pressure comes in.

Both China and the US had been speaking to each other to demand a resolution of the conflict.

He continued, “both sides are still locked in the blame game,” adding that this was true.

Following the collapse of a truce brokered by the United States and Malaysia that put an end to five days of fighting in July, Thailand and Cambodia have been fighting each other daily along their 817 km (508-mile) land border.

The conflict is brought on by a territorial dispute over the border’s 800 km (500 km) boundary’s colonial-era demarcation and a remnant of the border’s ancient temple ruins.

Both sides have disputed the legitimacy of the renewed fighting by blaming one another for self-defense, making similar claims about attacks on civilians.

Thailand accused of destroying a Hindu statue

A Cambodian official has also criticized Thailand for destroying a Hindu statue in a disputed border region, condemning the destruction of religiously significant things.

The statue of Vishnu, which was constructed in 2014, was destroyed on Monday by Thai forces, according to Kim Chanpanha, a government spokesman in the border province of Preah Vihear.

We condemn the destruction of ancient statues and temples that Buddhist and Hindu devotees revere.

On social media, videos of the statue’s demolition were popular.

The Thai military has not commented on the incident, but it did retract Cambodia’s claim that it was using cluster bombs to harm civilians in a statement.

According to the statement, cluster munitions were dual-purpose artillery shells fired at military targets, in accordance with the definitions of “military necessity” and “proportionality.”

Because neither Thailand nor Cambodia were parties to the agreement, the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM), which forbids signatories from using such weapons, was not applicable.

The UN Security Council earlier this week received a positive report from Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris, according to Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the secretary-general of the Arab League.

The 22-member league praised its “highly significant political, humanitarian, and security messages” and demanded “positive engagement” with the plan, according to Gheit on Wednesday.

Idris, the transitional civilian government in Sudan, had earlier told the UNSC on Monday that the government’s proposal was “homemade,” rather than “imposed on us,” in an indirect reference to the so-called Quad, which includes the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.

He told the UNSC’s 15 members that a truce would have “no chance of success” unless the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were confined to camps and disarmed, and that the group had been in conflict with the military since April 2023.

Al-Basha Tibiq, an adviser to the RSF commander, rejected Idris’ plan, saying that the idea of the group withdrawing was “closer to fantasy than politics.” The RSF agreed to the request for a humanitarian truce back in November.

Tibiq was quoted as saying in an RSF statement that the plan was “nothing more than a recycling of outdated exclusionary rhetoric” that was unintelligible from General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan’s position in an RSF statement posted on Facebook.

Al-Burhan had previously rejected the Quad’s request for a humanitarian truce, claiming that UAE involvement meant the plan was biased and favored the paramilitaries over the army.

The UAE has long refuted claims that it funds and arms the RSF. It called the Sudanese decision to bring a case against it to the International Court of Justice a “cynical publicity stunt” in March.

In the Kordofan region, fighting reaches a high volume.

The conflict, which involved the army chief al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, erupted after a power struggle between the army chief al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, has claimed tens of thousands of lives and caused about 14 million people to flee.

After an 18-month siege that had been held there for an entire year, the RSF&nbsp finally took control of the city of el-Fasher in the western Darfur region in October.

In its takeover of the city, the paramilitary group is accused of carrying out numerous sexual assaults, kidnappings, and mass murders.

As fighting continued, Idris proposed a solution, with the RSF claiming that Alouba, a strategic town in the Kordofan region, had regained control of the town.

1,700 people had fled Sudan’s White Nile state, east of the Kordofan region, according to Sudanese officials, many of whom were heading to Kosti.

According to Mohamed Vall, a journalist from Kosti, the city was already home to about 2 million refugees and internally displaced people and was currently “under incredible, huge stress” trying to accommodate the new arrivals.

The authorities are urging the international community and any other local or international organizations to help with this situation, particularly [given] the severe cuts in funding for the UN organizations specialized in providing] aid in Sudan, Vall said.

The Sudanese army and its allies seized the areas of Abu Qamra and Ambro, which the RSF claimed had advanced in North Darfur, in addition to other developments.

The Sudanese army, for its part, claimed to have shelled two Kadugli, South Kordofan areas and that it had destroyed an RSF convoy in North Darfur state.

General Muawiya Hamad, the commander of the army’s 22nd Brigade, was killed in Babnusa earlier this month, according to a source from the army.

US deputy ambassador to the UN, Jeffrey Bartos, pleaded with “both belligerents” to accept the Quad’s request for a humanitarian truce as the fighting escalated on Monday in preparation for an UNSC meeting with Idris.

A well-known cycle of celebrations occurs in the Christian world every December: carols, lights, decorated trees, consumer fervor, and the warm imagery of a snowy night. Public discourse frequently mentions “Western Christian values” or even the flimsy idea of “Judeo-Christian civilisation” in the United States and Europe. Many people now believe, almost automatically, that Christianity is a Western religion, an expression of European culture, history, and identity because of these expressions.

It doesn’t.

West Asian and Middle Eastern religions have always been associated with Christianity. This land is where its geography, culture, worldview, and founding stories originate: among peoples, cultures, and social structures that resemble those found in today’s Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan more than anything else imagined in Europe. The term “Judeo-Christian values,” which even includes Judaism, is a distinctly Middle Eastern phenomenon. Christianity was not given birth to it by the West, which is undoubtedly true.

Nothing more clearly demonstrates the disconnect between Christianity’s roots and its contemporary Western expression than Christmas, a Palestinian Jew’s birth story from a landlie who was born long before modern boundaries and identities first emerged.

What Christmas was made in the West

Christmas is a cultural marketplace in the West. It is romanticized, layered, and commercialized. Giving presents to the poor is more important than giving them. A holiday stripped of its theological and moral foundation has evolved into a performance of abundance, nostalgia, and consumerism.

The Christmas song Silent Night’s famous lines reveal the story’s true origin: Jesus was not a child of upheaval but rather of serenity.

He was born in a region plagued by military occupation, to a family that had been forced by an imperial decree. According to the Gospel account, a fearful tyrant who wanted to preserve his rule forced the holy family to flee as refugees. Sound quaint to you?

In fact, Christmas is a story of empire, injustice, and vulnerability for people who are just like them.

Bethlehem: Reality versus Imagination

Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is viewed as an imaginable postcard from antiquity that has been lost in time for many in the West. Instead of being a living, breathing city with real people and a distinct history and culture, the “little town” is portrayed as a quaint village in scripture.

Today, Bethlehem is surrounded by checkpoints and walls constructed by occupiers. Its residents are subserved by an apartheid and fragmented society. Many people experience isolation from both Jerusalem and the occupier’s refusal to allow them to travel there.

This sentiment also explains why so many people in the West are so uninterested in Bethlehem’s Christians during Christmas. Even worse, many people adopt ideologies and political beliefs that completely erase or deny our presence in order to support Israel, the world’s largest empire, today.

In these contexts, modern Bethlehem, with its Palestinian Christians suffering and surviving, is an unpalatable reality that needs to be ignored.

This disconnect is significant. Western Christians lose sight of their spiritual roots when they forget Bethlehem is real. And when they forget the Christmas story, they also forget that Bethlehem is real.

They forget that it took place among people who were under an empire, in trouble, who longed for justice, and who believed in God’s presence rather than a distant one.

What Bethlehem’s Christmas significance is

What does Christmas look like when it is told from the perspective of the Palestinian Christians who still reside there today? What significance does it have for a tiny town that has practiced religion for two millennia?

Christmas is a story of God’s solidarity at its core.

It is the story of a God who is present among the people and takes the side of those who are marginalized. The idea that God incarnated on human flesh is not a metaphysical abstraction. It makes a radical statement about where God chooses to reside: among those who are vulnerable, in poverty, among those who are occupied, among those who have no other source of power but hope.

In the Bethlehem story, God doesn’t identify with the oppressed, but with the victims of the empire. God is an infant, not a warrior, when He comes. God is incarnated in a manger rather than a palace. The most striking example of divine solidarity is when God joins humanity’s most vulnerable parts.

Thus, Christmas is the declaration of a God who challenges empire-based logic.

This is lived experience for Palestinians today, not just theology. We are aware of our own world when we read the Christmas story: the census, which imposed restrictions on Mary and Joseph’s travels resembles the permits, checkpoints, and bureaucratic controls that today entail. The displaced people who have fled wars across our region resonate with the flight of the holy family. The violence we encounter around us echoes Rode’s.

The Palestinian story of Christmas is unparalleled.

A global perspective

After two years of holding private holidays, Bethlehem now observes Christmas. We had no other choice but to cancel our celebrations, which was painful but necessary.

We couldn’t possibly assume otherwise as people who still reside in the holiday country were witnessing a genocide in Gaza. When children his age were being slain from the rubble, we couldn’t celebrate Jesus’ birth.

Celebrating this season does not imply that apartheid’s structures, genocide, or war have ended. As of right now, there are still fatalities. We are still under siege.

Instead, our celebration is a sign of resilience, a declaration that Bethlehem is still home to Christmas and that the story told here must continue.

It is crucial to return to the story’s foundation at a time when Western political discourse increasingly uses Christianity as a marker of cultural identity, frequently excluding the very people who were the birth of Christianity.

Our message to the world church this Christmas is to remember where the story began, especially Western Christians. to keep in mind that Bethlehem is still a place of worship rather than a myth. The Christian world must turn its attention to Bethlehem, a town whose citizens still clamor for justice, dignity, and peace, if it is to honor the meaning of Christmas.

Remembering Bethlehem means remembering that God supports the oppressed and that Jesus’ followers are also called to do the same.