GAZA CITY: Hadil Al-Rafati gently adjusts her anaemia-stricken toddler’s frail legs onto her lap in the lobby of an NGO’s clinic in Gaza City.
The program providing treatment to her son is among those in the enclave facing cuts or closure due to a freeze on US aid to the Palestinians, organizers say.
“He weighs 7.2 kilogrammes (16 pounds), but at a year and a month, he should be at least 10,” the 21-year-old mother said of her son, Essam.
Since January, US financing for humanitarian programs serving the Palestinians has been suspended, with Washington saying it is being reviewed.
President Donald Trump has threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to force the Palestinians back to the negotiating table with Israel.
On a recent day, around 15 mothers waited in the lobby of the clinic run by Palestinian organization Ard Al-Insan to see a paediatrician or to receive food supplements for their children.
Certain services have been maintained with available funding, but the program is due to expire at the end of August if the money is not released.
“They help us, give us medicine,” said Rafati, who is unemployed and whose husband picks up odd jobs to make ends meet.
“If they close, where will we go?“
The Gaza Strip, controlled by Islamist movement Hamas, has been under an Israeli blockade for more than 10 years. The two sides have fought three wars since 2008.
Some 80 percent of the enclave’s two million residents rely on aid, according to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
Trump’s comments on aid in January came after Palestinian leaders suspended relations with the White House over its deeply controversial recognition of the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Since then, the passage of a US law in March withholding certain aid to the Palestinians over payments made to prisoners jailed for security offenses, or to the families of those killed while carrying out attacks against Israelis, has further complicated the situation.
Some $215 million (183.5 million euros) that the United States was to invest in humanitarian aid and development in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip has been held up, according to an analysis for the US Congress.
US financing for UNRWA has also been blocked.
“At President Trump’s direction, assistance to the Palestinians remains under review,” a US State Department official said.
Some programs are already facing cuts, such as the Palestine Avenir for Childhood Foundation, which has not renewed contracts for some 30 employees since the start of the year.
Suffering from cerebral palsy, nine-month-old Maher had been receiving four physiotherapy sessions per week from the organization.
He now only comes twice per week due to a lack of available therapists.
“The change has been huge in the last three months,” said his mother Nada Abu Assi, 27, as she watches her son move with the help of a support device.
The foundation’s director, Ahmad Alkashif, said “these are the last beneficiaries,” adding that hundreds of children are on its waiting list.
The project, financed by Washington’s development agency USAID, is part of a $50 million program started in 2016 and meant to last five years.
Some 20,000 patients were to benefit from the plan, with the possibility of extending it to 250,000 in case of disaster.
“Unless the funding hold is lifted in the next three months, the ‘Health Matters’ program will close, leaving the most vulnerable families in Gaza without even the most basic health care services,” said Ky Luu, chief operating officer of International Medical Corps, an American NGO contracted for the program.
The health system in the enclave is already badly struggling.
In recent months, it has faced an influx of more than 4,000 wounded Palestinians hit by Israeli gunfire during border protests and clashes.
At least 149 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the protests and clashes began on March 30. One Israeli soldier has been shot dead.
“It’s another burden that we must carry,” said Suhaila Tarazi, director general of the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City.
Without the US aid, training for surgeons will be canceled, she said.
“Many will wait and suffer,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.
Each month, more than 2,000 Gazans request permission from Israel to leave the enclave for health care.
Last year, only 54 percent of requests were approved and 54 patients died before being able to leave, according to the World Health Organization.
Many fear the loss of US funding will be impossible to replace.
“There is no follow-up for projects,” said Iyad Abu Hijayer, deputy director of the Palestinian Center for Democracy and Conflict Resolution.
“In general, for years financing has decreased.”
US aid suspension hits Gaza’s poor
US aid suspension hits Gaza’s poor
- Since January, US financing for humanitarian programs serving the Palestinians has been suspended
- Trump has threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to force the Palestinians back to the negotiating table with Israel
Syrian first lady Asma Assad has leukemia, presidency says
- Statement stated that Asma would undergo a special treatment protocol that would require her to isolate
DUBAI: Syria’s first lady, Asma Assad, has been diagnosed with leukemia, the Syrian presidency said on Tuesday, almost five years after she announced she had fully recovered from breast cancer.
The statement said Asma, 48, would undergo a special treatment protocol that would require her to isolate, and that she would step away from public engagements as a result.
In August 2019, Asma said she had fully recovered from breast cancer that she said had been discovered early.
Since Syria plunged into war in 2011, the British-born former investment banker has taken on the public role of leading charity efforts and meeting families of killed soldiers, but has also become hated by the opposition.
She runs the Syria Trust for Development, a large NGO that acts as an umbrella organization for many of the aid and development operations in Syria.
Last year, she accompanied her husband, President Bashar Assad ,on a visit to the United Arab Emirates, her first known official trip abroad with him since 2011. She met Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak, the Emirati president’s mother, during a trip seen as a public signal of her growing role in public affairs.
Yemen’s Houthis say they downed US drone over Al-Bayda province
- The Houthis said last Friday they downed another US MQ9 drone over the southeastern province of Maareb
DUBAI: Yemen’s Houthis downed a US MQ9 drone over Al-Bayda province in southern Yemen, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson said in a televised statement on Tuesday.
Yahya Saree said the drone was targeted with a locally made surface-to-air missile and that videos to support the claim would be released.
The Houthis said last Friday they downed another US MQ9 drone over the southeastern province of Maareb.
The group, which controls Yemen’s capital and most populous areas of the Arabian Peninsula state, has attacked international shipping in the Red Sea since November in solidarity with the Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas militants, drawing US and British retaliatory strikes since February.
Iranians pay last respects to President Ebrahim Raisi
- Mourners set off from a central square in the northwestern city of Tabriz
- Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declares five days of national mourning
TEHRAN: Tens of thousands of Iranians gathered Tuesday to mourn president Ebrahim Raisi and seven members of his entourage who were killed in a helicopter crash on a fog-shrouded mountainside in the northwest.
Waving Iranian flags and portraits of the late president, mourners set off from a central square in the northwestern city of Tabriz, where Raisi was headed when his helicopter crashed on Sunday.
They walked behind a lorry carrying the coffins of Raisi and his seven aides.
Their helicopter lost communications while it was on its way back to Tabriz after Raisi attended the inauguration of a joint dam project on the Aras river, which forms part of the border with Azerbaijan, in a ceremony with his counterpart Ilham Aliyev.
A massive search and rescue operation was launched on Sunday when two other helicopters flying alongside Raisi’s lost contact with his aircraft in bad weather.
State television announced his death in a report early on Monday, saying “the servant of the Iranian nation, Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi, has achieved the highest level of martyrdom,” showing pictures of him as a voice recited the Qur’an.
Killed alongside the Iranian president were Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, provincial officials and members of his security team.
Iran’s armed forces chief of staff Mohammad Bagheri ordered an investigation into the cause of the crash as Iranians in cities nationwide gathered to mourn Raisi and his entourage.
Tens of thousands gathered in the capital’s Valiasr Square on Monday.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ultimate authority in Iran, declared five days of national mourning and assigned vice president Mohammad Mokhber, 68, as caretaker president until a presidential election can be held.
State media later announced that the election would will be held on June 28.
Iran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri, who served as deputy to Amir-Abdollahian, was named acting foreign minister.
From Tabriz, Raisi’s body will be flown to the Shiite clerical center of Qom on Tuesday before being moved to Tehran that evening.
Processions will be held in in the capital on Wednesday morning before Khamenei leads prayers at a farewell ceremony.
Raisi’s body will then be flown to his home city of Mashhad, in the northeast, where he will be buried on Thursday evening after funeral rites.
Raisi, 63, had been in office since 2021. The ultra-conservative’s time in office saw mass protests, a deepening economic crisis and unprecedented armed exchanges with arch-enemy Israel.
Raisi succeeded the moderate Hassan Rouhani, at a time when the economy was battered by US sanctions imposed over Iran’s nuclear activities.
Condolence messages flooded in from Iran’s allies around the region, including the Syrian government, Palestinian militant group Hamas and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
It was an unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the devastating war in Gaza, now in its eighth month, and soaring tensions between Israel and the “resistance axis” led by Iran.
Israel’s killing of seven Revolutionary Guards in a drone strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1 triggered Iran’s first ever direct attack on Israel, involving hundreds of missiles and drones.
In a speech hours before his death, Raisi underlined Iran’s support for the Palestinians, a centerpiece of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Palestinian flags were raised alongside Iranian flags at ceremonies held for the late president.
Israeli army raids West Bank’s Jenin, Palestinians say seven killed
- Among the Palestinians killed was a surgical doctor, the head of the Jenin Governmental Hospital said
JENIN: Israeli forces raided Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday in an operation that the Palestinian health ministry said killed seven Palestinians, including a doctor, and left nine others wounded.
The army said it was an operation against militants and that a number of Palestinian gunmen were shot. There was no immediate word of any Israeli casualties.
The health ministry account of the casualties was quoted by the official Palestinian news agency WAFA.
Among the Palestinians killed was a surgical doctor, the head of the Jenin Governmental Hospital said. He was killed in the vicinity of the hospital, the director said.
The West Bank is among territories Israel seized in a 1967 Middle East war. The Palestinians want it to be the core of an independent Palestinian state. US-sponsored talks on a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict broke down in 2014.
Dubai DXB airport sees record 2024 traffic after 8.4% rise in Q1
- Dubai airport welcomed around 23 million passengers in January-March period, operator says
- India, Saudi Arabia and Britain were top three countries by passenger volumes in first quarter
DUBAI: Dubai’s main airport expects to handle a record passenger traffic this year after an 8.4% rise in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, operator Dubai Airports said on Tuesday.
Dubai International Airport (DXB), a major global travel hub, welcomed around 23 million passengers in the January-March period, the operator said in a statement, noting that the uptick was partly driven by increased destination offers by flagship carrier Emirates and its sister low-cost airline Flydubai.
“With a strong start to Q2 and an optimistic outlook for the rest of the year, we have revised our forecast for the year to 91 million guests, surpassing our previous annual traffic record of 89.1 million in 2018,” CEO Paul Griffiths said in the statement.
Dubai is the biggest tourism and trade hub in the Middle East, attracting a record 17.15 million international overnight visitors last year.
Its ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum last month approved a new passenger terminal in Al Maktoum International airport worth 128 billion dirhams ($34.85 billion).
The Al Maktoum International Airport will be the largest in the world with a capacity of up to 260 million passengers, and five times the size of DXB, he said, adding all operations at Dubai airport would be transferred to Al Maktoum in the coming years.
DXB is connected to 256 destinations across 102 countries. In the first quarter, India, Saudi Arabia and Britain were the top three countries by passenger numbers, Dubai Airports added. ($1 = 3.6729 UAE dirham)
