ANKARA: The foreign ministers of Ireland, Norway and Turkey say aid deliveries from Turkey to rebel-held northwest Syria must continue, warning Wednesday of a humanitarian crisis if the only remaining border gate is closed.
Russia’s deputy UN ambassador has told the UN Security Council that Moscow sees no reason to continue humanitarian aid deliveries through the Bab Al-Hawa border gate. He accused the West and the United Nations of insufficient efforts to deliver such aid from Damascus, the Syrian capital. The UN Security Council is scheduled to vote July 10 on whether to continue authorizing cross-border aid from Turkey.
Ireland and Norway, two non-permanent members of the UN Security Council, have been working together to keep the Bab Al-Hawa crossing open. Their foreign ministers visited the border area on Wednesday before holding talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Ankara.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt told reporters during a joint news conference that 4 million Syrians were in need of the humanitarian aid that passes through the border, warning that the situation in Syria was going from “bad to worse.”
Cavusoglu said he discussed the aid deliveries with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during their talks in Ankara last week.
“We will continue our efforts to persuade the Russian side in the coming period,” he said.
In early July 2020, China and Russia vetoed a UN resolution that would have maintained two border crossing points from Turkey to deliver humanitarian aid to Syria’s Idlib province. Days later, the council authorized the delivery of aid through just one of those crossings, Bab Al-Hawa. That one-year mandate was extended for a year on July 9, 2021.
Ireland, Norway, Turkey want UN to extend aid to Syria
https://arab.news/c56uj
Ireland, Norway, Turkey want UN to extend aid to Syria
- Ireland and Norway have been working together to keep the Bab al-Hawa crossing open
- Their foreign ministers visited the border area on Wednesday before holding talks with Turkey’s foreign minister
Top Hamas leader rejects disarmament or ‘foreign rule’
- “As long as there is occupation, there is resistance. Resistance is a right of peoples under occupation” said Meshal
DOHA: A senior Hamas leader said Sunday that the Palestinian Islamist movement would not surrender its weapons nor accept foreign intervention in Gaza, pushing back against US and Israeli demands.
“Criminalizing the resistance, its weapons, and those who carried it out is something we should not accept,” Khaled Meshal said at a conference in Doha.
“As long as there is occupation, there is resistance. Resistance is a right of peoples under occupation ... something nations take pride in,” said Meshal, who previously headed the group.
Hamas, an Islamist movement, has waged an armed struggle against what it sees as Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. It launched a deadly cross-border raid into Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023, which triggered the latest war.
A US-brokered ceasefire in Gaza is in its second phase, which foresees that demilitarization of the territory — including the disarmament of Hamas — along with a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Hamas has repeatedly said that disarmament is a red line, although it has indicated it could consider handing over its weapons to a future Palestinian governing authority.
Israeli officials say that Hamas still has around 20,000 fighters and about 60,000 Kalashnikovs in Gaza.
A Palestinian technocratic committee has been set up with a goal of taking over the day-to-day governance in the battered Gaza Strip, but it remains unclear whether, or how, it will address the issue of demilitarization.
The committee operates under the so-called “Board of Peace,” an initiative launched by US President Donald Trump.
Originally conceived to oversee the Gaza truce and post-war reconstruction, the board’s mandate has since expanded, prompting concerns among critics that it could evolve into a rival to the United Nations.
Trump unveiled the board at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos last month, where leaders and officials from nearly two dozen countries joined him in signing its founding charter.
Alongside the Board of Peace, Trump also created a Gaza Executive Board — an advisory panel to the Palestinian technocratic committee — comprising international figures including US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, as well as former British prime minister Tony Blair.
On Sunday, Meshal urged the Board of Peace to adopt what he called a “balanced approach” that would allow for Gaza’s reconstruction and the flow of aid to its roughly 2.2 million residents, while warning that Hamas would “not accept foreign rule” over Palestinian territory.
“We adhere to our national principles and reject the logic of guardianship, external intervention, or the return of a mandate in any form,” Meshal said.
“Palestinians are to govern Palestinians. Gaza belongs to the people of Gaza and to Palestine. We will not accept foreign rule,” he added.
