LONDON: Britain said on Thursday it had arranged for some orphans to be brought home from Syria, joining Germany, Belgium and Australia in repatriating children whose parents were suspected members of Daesh.
Britain has generally been reluctant to allow adults who traveled to Syria to return home but Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said it was right to bring children home.
“These innocent, orphaned, children should never have been subjected to the horrors of war,” Raab said.
“We have facilitated their return home, because it was the right thing to do. Now they must be allowed the privacy and given the support to return to a normal life.”
Raab did not say how many children were returning. The charity Save The Children said in October that more than 60 British children were trapped in north-eastern Syria.
Many Western countries have struggled with how to deal with citizens who went to the Middle East to join groups such as Daesh, which was driven out of its last territorial enclave in March by US-backed forces.
Earlier this month Turkey started to deport captives from Daesh.
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Britain repatriates some orphans left in Syria
Britain repatriates some orphans left in Syria
- Britain has generally been reluctant to allow adults who traveled to Syria to return home
- Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said it was right to bring children home
US sympathies shift to Palestinians from Israelis for first time: Gallup poll
- Poll: 41 percent of Americans sympathize more with the Palestinians and 36 percent sided with Israel
WASHINGTON: Americans for the first time sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis in their conflict, according to a Gallup poll released Friday, after the devastating Gaza war.
Views on the Middle East divide sharply along partisan lines, with the shift over the past year the result of more independents souring on Israel.
Overall, 41 percent of Americans sympathize more with the Palestinians and 36 percent sided with Israel, the poll said, with the rest undecided or saying they favored both or neither.
The gap is not statistically significant, but it marks the first time since Gallup asked the question more than two decades ago that Israel was not on top.
It also marks a sharp difference from just a year ago, when Israel led in sympathies 46 to 33 percent.
When asked about their sympathies, independents sided with the Palestinian people by 11 percentage points.
Members of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party continued to back Israel strongly, with 70 percent siding with Israel, although that figure has declined by 10 percentage points over the past decade.
Democrats’ views of Israel have grown increasingly negative since a decade ago, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly broke with then US president Barack Obama on his diplomacy with Iran.
Israel since then has moved sharply to the right. Some Democratic voters faulted former president Joe Biden for not doing more to rein in Israel in its devastating offensive in Gaza following the unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas.
In the latest poll, 65 percent of Democrats sympathized with the Palestinians and 17 percent with Israel.
Gallup surveyed 1,001 US adults by telephone from February 2 to 16.
Views on the Middle East divide sharply along partisan lines, with the shift over the past year the result of more independents souring on Israel.
Overall, 41 percent of Americans sympathize more with the Palestinians and 36 percent sided with Israel, the poll said, with the rest undecided or saying they favored both or neither.
The gap is not statistically significant, but it marks the first time since Gallup asked the question more than two decades ago that Israel was not on top.
It also marks a sharp difference from just a year ago, when Israel led in sympathies 46 to 33 percent.
When asked about their sympathies, independents sided with the Palestinian people by 11 percentage points.
Members of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party continued to back Israel strongly, with 70 percent siding with Israel, although that figure has declined by 10 percentage points over the past decade.
Democrats’ views of Israel have grown increasingly negative since a decade ago, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly broke with then US president Barack Obama on his diplomacy with Iran.
Israel since then has moved sharply to the right. Some Democratic voters faulted former president Joe Biden for not doing more to rein in Israel in its devastating offensive in Gaza following the unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas.
In the latest poll, 65 percent of Democrats sympathized with the Palestinians and 17 percent with Israel.
Gallup surveyed 1,001 US adults by telephone from February 2 to 16.
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