JERUSALEM: Israel has released a Turkish woman who had been arrested while visiting on a tourist visa and accused of helping the Palestinian group Hamas, in a case that angered Ankara and Israel, her lawyer said on Monday.
Turkey threatened retaliation after Ebru Ozkan’s detention last month. The ex-allies have long been at loggerheads over Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and Jerusalem’s status.
Ozkan’s lawyer, Omar Khamaisi, said she flew to Istanbul on Sunday, a week after an Israeli military court indicted her. An appeals court had ordered her freed and returned her passport, he told Reuters, adding: “The indictment still stands, but I think that will be canceled too.”
The Turkish news agency Anadlou quoted Ozkan, upon landing, as thanking President Tayyip Erdogan for having been “kind enough to be very interested in my case.”
Commenting on the decision to release Ozkan, an Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “There are a number of factors behind this decision, including the amount of time she had already spent in detention and the fact that the charges weren’t especially grave in the first place.”
The official declined to be drawn on whether Turkish diplomatic pressure might also have been a factor.
Ozkan was held at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport last month while trying to board her original flight home after a visit that took her to Jerusalem, whose Al-Aqsa Mosque draws pilgrims from the few Muslim countries that have relations with Israel.
She was charged with helping smuggling money and packages to Hamas, which is classed as a terrorist group in Israel and the West, but not by NATO-power Turkey. Ozkan’s lawyer dismissed the charges as baseless and, potentially, politically motivated.
Hamas did not comment on the case.
Turkey’s government had cited Israel’s treatment of Ozkan and several other detained Turkish visitors as among “inhumane policies” that were souring bilateral ties.
Turkey vocally opposed a US decision in December to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Palestinians want a state with a capital in eastern parts of the city where Al-Aqsa, as well as major Jewish and Christian shrines, are housed.
Israel frees Turk after charging her with aiding Hamas
Israel frees Turk after charging her with aiding Hamas
- Israel releases Ebru Ozkan, accused of helping Hamas
- Turkey threatened retaliation after Ebru Ozkan’s detention last month
Donors pledge over $2 billion for Gaza at Kuwait conference
- The conference said the funds would be dispersed over two years, with the possibility of an extension
- The initiative is designed “to mobilize efforts to support life-saving humanitarian interventions in the Gaza Strip”
KUWAIT CITY: A conference of international donors in Kuwait pledged over $2 billion in aid to Gaza Sunday as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an “immediate” ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
The conference, organized by the International Islamic Charitable Organization (IICO) and UN humanitarian coordination agency OCHA, said the funds would be dispersed over two years, with the possibility of an extension.
The initiative is designed “to mobilize efforts to support life-saving humanitarian interventions in the Gaza Strip, and to support the prospects for early recovery for the population,” IICO general manager Bader Saud Al-Sumait said.
It would be applied on five different tracks — “life-saving interventions, shelter, health, education, and economic empowerment,” Sumait said as he read the conference’s final statement.
Guterres urged an immediate halt to the war, the return of hostages held in Gaza and a “surge” in humanitarian aid to the besieged Palestinian territory.
“I repeat my call, the world’s call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, the unconditional release of all hostages and an immediate surge in humanitarian aid,” Guterres said in a video address.
“But a ceasefire will only be the start. It will be a long road back from the devastation and trauma of this war,” he added.
Israeli strikes on Gaza continued on Sunday after it expanded an evacuation order for Rafah despite an international outcry over its military incursion into eastern areas of the city, effectively shutting a key aid crossing.
“The war in Gaza is causing horrific human suffering, devastating lives, tearing families apart and rendering huge numbers of people homeless, hungry and traumatized,” Guterres said.
Meeting Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Meshal Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, the UN chief accepted an honorary shield “on behalf of the United Nations, and especially on behalf of the almost 200 members of the UN that were killed in Gaza.”
On Friday in Nairobi, Guterres warned that Gaza faced an “epic humanitarian disaster” if Israel launched a full-scale ground operation in Rafah.
Gaza’s bloodiest-ever war began following Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched a retaliatory offensive that has killed more than 35,034 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Egypt says to support South Africa ICJ case against Israel
- In its most recent appeal to the ICJ on Friday, South Africa again accused Israel of “continuing violations of the Genocide Convention”
- Egypt on Sunday said its move to back the case comes “in light of the worsening severity and scope of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip”
CAIRO: Egypt on Sunday announced its intention to formally support South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice against Israel, alleging genocide in its war against Hamas in Gaza.
Pretoria brought its case to the ICJ in December, calling on the UN court to order Israel to suspend its military operations in Gaza.
In its most recent appeal to the ICJ on Friday, South Africa again accused Israel of “continuing violations of the Genocide Convention” and of being “contemptuous” of international law.
Egypt on Sunday said its move to back the case comes “in light of the worsening severity and scope of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip,” according to a foreign ministry statement.
It further pointed to Israel’s systematic “targeting of civilians and destruction of infrastructure” and “pushing Palestinians into displacement and expulsion.”
South Africa has called on the world’s top court to order Israel to “immediately withdraw and cease its military offensive” in Rafah, the southernmost Gaza city where about 1.5 million Palestinians had been pushed against the Egyptian border.
Israel on Monday sent ground troops and tanks into eastern Rafah, later seizing and shutting the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that Gaza risked an “epic humanitarian disaster” if Israel launched a full-scale ground operation in Rafah.
Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, and has acted as a key mediator between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, including in the current war.
It also shares the only border with the Gaza Strip not controlled by Israel, but has refused to coordinate aid access through the Rafah crossing since Israeli forces seized it.
State-linked television channel Al-Qahera News on Sunday reported a high-level source denying Israeli media reports of “coordination between Israel and Egypt at the Rafah crossing.”
Egypt has also issued repeated warnings against escalation since negotiators from both Israel and Hamas departed Cairo on Thursday after talks again failed to achieve a truce.
In January the ICJ called on Israel to prevent acts of genocide following the original South African request for international action.
The court rejected a second South African application for emergency measures over Israel’s threat to attack Rafah. South Africa made a new request in early March.
Qatari emir meets US congress members
- Two sides discussed ways to strengthen relations between Qatar and the US
DOHA: Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani met a delegation of US Congress members on Sunday during their visit to Doha.
The visitors were Democrats Salud Carbajal, Ami Bera and Juan Vargas (California) and Derek Kilmer (Washington) and Republicans Dave Joyce (Ohio) and Lance Gooden (Texas), the Qatar News Agency reported.
The two sides discussed ways to strengthen relations between Qatar and the US, strategic cooperation in various sectors, and regional and global developments.
The talks came a day after Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani spoke to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about the situation in Gaza.
During a phone call, they discussed joint mediation efforts to end the war, the release of prisoners and detainees, and getting humanitarian aid to all areas of the enclave.
Qatar has played an intermediary role throughout the war in Gaza. Along with the US and Egypt, it was instrumental in helping negotiate the brief halt to the fighting in November that led to the release of dozens of hostages.
Israel lacks ‘credible plan’ to safeguard Rafah civilians, says Blinken
- Blinken said Biden determined to help Israel defend itself and shipment of 3,500 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs was only US weapons package being withheld
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday defended a decision to pause a delivery to Israel of 3,500 bombs over concerns they could be used in the Gazan city of Rafah, saying Israel lacked a “credible plan” to protect some 1.4 million civilians sheltering there.
Speaking to ABC News’ This Week, Blinken said that President Joe Biden remains determined to help Israel defend itself and that the shipment of 3,500 2,000-pound and 500-pound bombs was the only US weapons package being withheld.
That could change, he said, if Israel launches a full-scale attack on Rafah, which Israel says it plans to invade to root out fighters of the ruling Hamas militant group.
Biden has made clear to Israel that if it “launches this major military operation to Rafah, then there are certain systems that we’re not going to be supporting and supplying for that operation,” said Blinken.
“We have real concerns about the way they’re used,” he continued. Israel needs to “have a clear, credible plan to protect civilians, which we haven’t seen.”
Rafah is hosting some 1.4 million Palestinians, most of them displaced from elsewhere in Gaza by fighting and Israeli bombardments, amid dire shortages of food and water.
The death toll in Israel’s military operation in Gaza has now passed at least 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
The war was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which some 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 people taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel says 620 soldiers have been killed in the fighting.
