GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip: Afaf Al-Najar had found a way out of Gaza.
The 19-year-old won a scholarship to study communications in Turkey, secured all the necessary travel documents and even paid $500 to skip the long lines at the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
But when she arrived at the border on Sept. 21 she was turned back — not by Israel or Egypt, which have imposed a 14-year blockade on the Gaza Strip — but because of a male guardianship law enacted by the Hamas group, which rules the territory.
“I honestly broke down,” she said, describing the moment border officials removed her luggage from the bus. “My eyes started pouring, I could not even stand up. They had to bring a chair for me... I felt my dream is being robbed.”
Travel in and out of Gaza, a coastal territory that is home to more than 2 million Palestinians, has been severely restricted since 2007, when Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces. Israel, which has fought four wars with Hamas, most recently in May, says the blockade is needed to keep the militants from rearming. Critics view it as a form of collective punishment.
Hamas has repeatedly demanded the lifting of the blockade. But in February, an Islamic court run by Hamas issued a notice saying that unaccompanied women must get permission from a male “guardian” — a husband, relative, or even a son — to travel outside the territory.
After a backlash led by human rights groups, Hamas authorities amended the ruling to drop the requirement. Instead, it said that a male relative can petition a court to prevent a woman from traveling if it would result in “absolute harm.” Women cannot prevent men from traveling.
Hamas has only taken sporadic steps over the years to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on already conservative Gaza, and even then has usually backed down in the face of criticism. It does not share the extreme ideology of more radical factions such as the Daesh group.
But the amended law has remained in effect.
Al-Najar’s father filed a petition, and the court prevented her from traveling so that it could consider it. She lives with her mother, who is separated from her father, and says he cut off all contact with her in May. He could not be reached for comment.
Hamas officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group that is deeply critical of the blockade, called on Hamas to lift its restrictions.
“Hamas’s authorities should lift the travel ban on Afaf Al-Najar and the Supreme Judicial Council should withdraw its notice, so that women in Gaza can travel without discriminatory restrictions,” it said.
After being turned back at the border, Al-Najar appealed to a number of local human rights groups, but said they appeared reluctant to assist her, fearing reprisal from Hamas. Eventually, she filed a petition against the ban.
Her father failed to show up at the first hearing, causing it to be postponed. Before it adjourned, the judge asked her why she was going abroad and suggested she could just as easily study in one of Gaza’s universities.
Al-Najar, who speaks fluent English and teaches the language, aspires to be a journalist. She says a multi-cultural country like Turkey provides opportunities that don’t exist in Gaza, which is largely cut off from the outside world.
The hearing was postponed a second time because her father’s attorney was sick. It was postponed a third time on Wednesday because his new lawyer said he needed time to study the case.
The scholarship’s validity was extended until the end of the year, but if Al-Najar does not make it to Turkey by then, she will lose it.
But she’s not giving up.
“I realized no one is going to help me but myself, and I realized that I have to be strong now to fight for my rights,” she said. “Instead of crying in my room and letting myself down, I decided to fight. I chose to fight for the first time in my life.”
Hamas ‘guardian’ law keeps Gaza woman from studying abroad
https://arab.news/9829c
Hamas ‘guardian’ law keeps Gaza woman from studying abroad
- When Afaf al-Najar arrived at the border on Sept. 21 she was turned back — not by Israel or Egypt, but because of a male guardianship law enacted by Hamas
- "My eyes started pouring, I could not even stand up. I felt my dream is being robbed,” she said
Pact for $4.5m signed to aid 4,400 stranded Gazans in West Bank
- “Thousands of Palestine refugees from Gaza remain trapped in the West Bank, trapped in this crisis situation,” UNRWA Commissioner-General said
CAIRO: The Qatar Red Crescent and the UN agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) signed an agreement on Sunday, with $4.5 million from a Qatari state development fund, to aid more than 4,400 stranded Palestinian workers and patients from Gaza in the West Bank.
“Cash assistance will represent vital support for those displaced who have not been able to return to the Gaza Strip since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Strip last October,” a statement from the Qatar’s state news agency said.
“Thousands of Palestine refugees from Gaza remain trapped in the West Bank, trapped in this crisis situation, stranded from their loved ones and livelihoods,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said.
Since Israel’s blockade of Gaza began in 2007, movement in and out of the Strip has been heavily restricted, forcing individuals to seek medical care, education, or jobs in the West Bank, while escalating violence often closes borders, trapping those in need of essential services.
Egypt condemns killing of activist by Israeli forces in the West Bank
- Ministry extends condolences to government of Turkiye and its people
CAIRO: Egypt condemned the killing of US-Turkish activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi by Israeli forces in the West Bank.
Ahmed Abu Zeid, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, condemned the killing of Eygi, which occurred south of Nablus.
In a statement issued by the ministry, Abu Zeid extended his condolences to the Turkish government and people and offered his sympathies to the family of the deceased.
He said the death is a further example of the daily Israeli violations against Palestinian civilians and their supporters, adding to the various forms of violence and disregard for human rights they face in the occupied Palestinian territories.
He also condemned the moral crisis faced by the international community due to the atrocities committed against civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories over decades.
Eygi, 26, was shot and killed on Friday in the village of Beita, near Nablus, during a nonviolent protest against settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and escalating settler violence against Palestinian homes and landowners.
Eight-year-old found dead in Turkiye after national search effort
- “Narin Guran was found dead wearing the same clothes as the last time she was seen,” said Zorluoglu
ANKARA: The body of an eight-year-old girl who had been missing in Turkiye for 19 days has been found after an enormous manhunt, the interior minister said on Sunday.
The body of Narin Guran was found in a bag in a river in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir, around one kilometer from the village where she lived with her family, Diyarbakir governor Murat Zorluoglu told reporters.
“Unfortunately, the lifeless body of Narin, who went missing in the village of Tavsantepe... has been found,” Turkish interior minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
She disappeared on August 21, sparking a huge search effort in Turkiye, with a number of well-known figures joining a social media campaign called “Find Narin.”
“Narin Guran was found dead wearing the same clothes as the last time she was seen,” said Zorluoglu.
“Based on the first observations, she was put into a bag after she was killed. The bag was then placed in the river, hidden under branches and rocks so as not to raise suspicion,” he added.
Diyarbakir prosecutors have detained 21 people, said Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc.
The girl’s uncle was arrested last week on suspicion of murder and “deprivation of liberty.”
“Our president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is following the case closely to guarantee that the ongoing investigation continues thoroughly and that those who took Narin’s life answer before the law,” the president’s communications director Fahrettin Altun said on X.
Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish party DEM has called for a march to take place in Diyarbakir on Sunday evening.
“Narin was killed in an organized manner. Those responsible for this murder, which has saddened us all, must be revealed and held accountable before an impartial and independent justice system,” DEM wrote on X.
Tunc said on X that “those responsible for Narin’s death will be brought to justice.”
Sudan rejects UN call for ‘impartial’ force to protect civilians
PORT SUDAN: Sudan has rejected a call by UN experts for the deployment of an “independent and impartial force” to protect millions of civilians driven from their homes by more than a year of war.
The conflict since April last year, pitting the army against paramilitary forces, has killed tens of thousands of people and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The independent UN experts said Friday their fact-finding mission had uncovered “harrowing” violations by both sides, “which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
They called for “an independent and impartial force with a mandate to safeguard civilians” to be deployed “without delay.”
The Sudanese foreign ministry, which is loyal to the army under General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, said in a statement late Saturday that “the Sudanese government rejects in their entirety the recommendations of the UN mission.”
It called the UN Human Rights Council, which created the fact-finding mission last year, “a political and illegal body,” and the panel’s recommendations “a flagrant violation of their mandate.”
The UN experts said eight million civilians have been displaced and another two million people have fled to neighboring countries.
More than 25 million people — upwards of half the country’s population — face acute food shortages.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on a visit to Sudan on Sunday, said: “The scale of the emergency is shocking, as is the insufficient action being taken to curtail the conflict and respond to the suffering it is causing.”
In Port Sudan, where government offices and the United Nations have relocated to due to the intense fighting in the capital Khartoum, Tedros called on the “world to wake up and help Sudan out of the nightmare it is living through.”
The Sudanese foreign ministry statement accused the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Burhan’s former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, of “systematically targeting civilians and civilian institutions.”
“The protection of civilians remains an absolute priority for the Sudanese government,” it said.
The statement added that the UN Human Rights Council’s role should be “to support the national process, rather than seek to impose a different exterior mechanism.”
It also rejected the experts’ call for an arms embargo.
Iran’s president to visit Iraq on first foreign trip
- Pezeshkian will head a high-ranking Iranians delegation to Baghdad to meet senior Iraqi officials
TEHRAN: Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian will visit neighboring Iraq on Wednesday, state media reported Sunday, in what will be his first trip abroad since he took office in July.
Pezeshkian will head a high-ranking Iranians delegation to Baghdad to meet senior Iraqi officials.
The visit comes at the invitation of Iraq’s premier, Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, the official IRNA news agency quoted Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad Mohammad Kazem Al-Sadegh as saying.
The two countries will sign memoranda of understanding on cooperation and security, Sadegh said, without elaborating.
He said the agreements were to have been signed during a planned visit to Iraq by Iran’s late president, Ebrahim Raisi.
But Raisi was killed in May along with the then foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, when their helicopter crashed on a fog-shrouded mountainside in northern Iran.
Since taking office, Pezeshkian has vowed to “prioritize” strengthening ties with the Islamic republic’s neighbors.
Relations between Iran and Iraq, both Shiite-majority countries, have grown closer over the past two decades.
Tehran is one of Iraq’s leading trade partners, and wields considerable political influence in Baghdad where its Iraqi allies dominate parliament and the current government.
In March 2023 the two countries signed a security agreement covering their common border, months after Tehran struck Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq’s north.
They have since agreed to disarm Iranian Kurdish rebel groups and remove them from border areas.
Tehran accuses the groups of importing arms from Iraq and of fomenting 2022 protests that erupted after the death in custody of Iranian-Kurd woman Mahsa Amini.
In January, Iran launched a deadly strike in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, saying it had targeted a site used by “spies of the Zionist regime (Mossad).”
On Saturday, an exiled Iranian Kurdish group said one of its activists, Behzad Khosrawi, had been arrested in Iraq’s northern city of Sulaimaniyah and handed over to “Iranian intelligence.”
Local Asayesh security forces said Khosrawi was arrested “because he did not have residency” in the Kurdish region, and denied he had any connection to “political activism.”
