DUBAI: Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said the death in custody of a young Iranian Kurdish woman last year has sparked an irreversible “revolutionary process” that would eventually lead to the collapse of the Islamic Republic.
Iran’s clerical rulers have faced widespread unrest since Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the morality police on Sept. 16 after she was arrested for wearing “inappropriate attire.”
Iran has blamed Amini’s death on preexisting medical problems and has accused the United States and other foes fomenting the unrest to destabilize the clerical establishment.
As they have done in the past in the face of protests in the past four decades, Iran’s hardline rulers have cracked down hard. Authorities have handed down dozens of death sentences to people involved in protests and have carried out at least four hangings, in what rights activists say is aimed at intimidating people and keep them off the streets.
A staunch critic of the clerical establishment that has ruled in Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Ebadi has been one of the most outspoken supporters of the anti-government demonstrations.
Like many critics of Iran’s clerical rulers, Ebadi believes the current wave of protests has been the boldest challenge to the establishment’s legitimacy yet.
“This revolutionary process is like a train that will not stop until it reaches its final destination,” said Ebadi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her work defending human rights and who has been in exile in London since 2009.
The 1979 revolution toppled Iran’s Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a secular monarch allied with the West, and led to the formation of an Islamic Republic.
With the latest protests ushering Iran into an era of deepening crisis between the rulers and society at large, Amini’s death has unbottled years of anger among many Iranians over issues ranging from economic misery and discrimination against ethnic minorities to tightening social and political restrictions.
For months, Iranians from all walks of life have called for the fall of the clerical establishment, chanting slogans against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
However, protests have slowed considerably since the hangings began. They have been at their most intense in the Sunni-populated areas of Iran and are currently mostly limited to those regions.
Videos shared on social media, unverifiable by Reuters, showed people chanting “Death to Khamenei” from rooftops in some cities, but nothing on the scale of past months.
The rights group HRANA said that as of Wednesday, 527 protesters had been killed during unrest, including 71 minors. It said 70 members of the security forces had also been killed. As many as 19,262 protesters are believed to have been arrested, it said.
GROWING ANGER
Ebadi, speaking in a phone interview from London, said the state’s use of deadly violence will deepen anger felt by ordinary Iranians about the clerical establishment because their grievances remain unaddressed.
“The protests have taken a different shape, but they have not ended,” Ebadi told Reuters in a phone interview from London.
With deepening economic misery, chiefly because of US sanctions over Tehran’s disputed nuclear work, many Iranians are feeling the pain of galloping inflation and rising joblessness.
Inflation has soared to over 50%, the highest level in decades. Youth unemployment remains high with over 50% of Iranians being pushed below the poverty line, according to reports by Iran’s Statistics Center.
The crackdown has stoked diplomatic tensions at a time when talks to revive Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers are at a standstill. The United States and its Western allies have slapped sanctions on Iranian authorities and entities for their involvement in the crackdown and other human rights abuses.
To force Iran’s clerical establishment from power, Ebadi said the West should take “practical steps” such as downgrading its political ties with Iran by recalling its ambassadors from Tehran, and should avoid reaching any agreement with the Islamic Republic, including the nuclear deal.
Nobel laureate Ebadi says Iran’s ‘revolutionary process’ is irreversible
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Nobel laureate Ebadi says Iran’s ‘revolutionary process’ is irreversible
- Iran’s clerical rulers have faced widespread unrest since a 22-year-old woman died in custody last September
- Shirin Ebadi says the protest movement is ‘like a train that will not stop until it reaches its final destination’
Palestinian fighters battle Israeli forces around Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital
- Israeli army continues to operate around the hospital complex in Gaza City after storming it more than a week ago
The Israeli army said it continued to operate around the hospital complex in Gaza City after storming it more than a week ago. Its forces had killed around 200 gunmen since the start of the operation “while preventing harm to civilians, patients, medical teams, and medical equipment,” it said.
Gaza’s health ministry said wounded people and patients were being held inside an administration building in Al-Shifa that was not equipped to provide them with health care. Five patients had died since the Israeli raid began due to shortages of food, water and medical care, the Hamas-run ministry said.
Al-Shifa, the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital before the war, had been one of the few health care facilities even partially operational in north Gaza before the latest fighting. It had also been housing displaced civilians.
Unverified footage on social media showed its surgery unit blackened by flames and nearby apartments on fire or destroyed.
The armed wings of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups said in a statement they “bombed, with a barrage of mortar shells, gatherings of Israeli soldiers in the vicinity of the Al-Shifa Complex” in a joint operation.
Islamic Jihad targeted an Israeli tank with an anti-tank rocket outside the hospital, it said in another statement. The Israeli military said militants fired at its troops from inside and outside the ER building.
Israel says it is targeting Hamas militants who use civilian buildings, including apartment blocks and hospitals, for cover. Hamas denies doing so.
At least 32,552 Palestinians have been killed and 74,980 wounded in Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, the territory’s health ministry said on Thursday.
Thousands more dead are believed to be buried under rubble and over 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is displaced, many at risk of famine.
The war erupted after Hamas militants broke through the border and rampaged through communities in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253 hostages according to Israeli tallies.
TWO MORE HOSPITALS BESIEGED
Israeli forces continued to blockade Al-Amal and Nasser hospitals in Khan Younis, while several other areas in the southern Gaza city came under Israeli fire, residents said.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said seven people working for the organization arrested in a raid on Al-Amal hospital on Feb. 9 had been released after 47 days in Israeli prisons.
Among them was the director of ambulance and emergency services in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Abu Musabeh. Eight members of the association were still being detained, it said in a statement.
Israel said soldiers from its Commando Brigade had arrested dozens of Palestinian militants in the Al-Amal area and discovered explosives and dozens of Kalashnikov-type weapons.
The World Health Organization said Al-Amal Hospital had ceased to function due to fighting, leaving just 10 of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip partially operational.
“Once more, WHO demands an immediate end to attacks on hospitals in Gaza, and calls for protection of health staff, patients, and civilians,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X on Thursday.
In Rafah, where over a million people have been sheltering, health officials said an Israeli airstrike on a house killed eight people and wounded others.
Israel says it plans a ground offensive into Rafah, where it believes most Hamas fighters are now sheltering. Its closest ally and main arms supplier the United States opposes such an assault, arguing it would cause too much harm to civilians who have sought refuge there.
Israel government shaken by ultra-Orthodox conscription row
- Military service is obligatory for all young Israelis – 32 months for men, and two years for women
- But almost all the ultra-Orthodox have been able to escape it
JERUSALEM: A legal row over controversial exemptions from compulsory military service for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews had the country’s right-wing coalition government scurrying to find a compromise Thursday.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara sent shock waves through the government — which is reliant on ultra-Orthodox parties — declaring Wednesday there was no legal framework to the continuing exemptions.
This means that ultra-Orthodox will be liable to be called up from April 1, as Israel’s war against Hamas militants rages in the Gaza Strip.
The government has set itself a Thursday deadline to strike a deal.
With the war in Gaza, pressure has increased on the country’s large and growing ultra-orthodox community who have long been spared military service which is compulsory for everyone else.
After several legal challenges to the exemptions, the Supreme Court gave the government until Wednesday to draw up a new conscription bill.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been unable to get agreement on the deeply divisive issue, with his ultra-Orthodox allies fiercely opposed to conscription for their community.
The government has asked for a short extension to the Supreme Court deadline in the hope of formulating a deal.
The coalition depends on two large ultra-Orthodox parties.
Last year the government voted through unprecedented funding equivalent to just over $1 billion for orthodox religious schools, or yeshivas.
Netanyahu is working, at any cost, on “avoiding an early election” that would benefit Benny Gantz, a centrist member of his war cabinet, Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute think tank, has said.
Recent polls suggest that if there were an election, Gantz’s party would win the largest number of seats.
Before the war in Gaza, the religious parties had also supported Netanyahu’s controversial judicial reforms, in the hopes of further extending military exemptions.
The judicial revamp sparked months of protests, often by tens of thousands of Israelis.
But Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in February announced a reform of military service that would include the ultra-Orthodox. Some Israeli media perceived Gallant’s move as a challenge to Netanyahu. Both men belong to the same Likud party.
Military service is obligatory for all young Israelis — 32 months for men, and two years for women.
But almost all the ultra-Orthodox have been able to escape it, with 66,000 members of the community excused from military service last year alone.
Jewish men who study the Torah full-time in religious schools have long been granted an annual deferment from military service until the age of 26, at which point they become exempt.
Young ultra-Orthodox women are automatically exempt.
The exemptions date from Israel’s founding in 1948, and were meant to allow a group of 400 young people to study sacred texts and preserve Jewish traditions, much of which had been lost during the Holocaust.
But today’s ultra-Orthodox number 1.3 million people, according to the Israel Democracy Institute — bolstered by a fertility rate of more than six children per woman, compared with the national average of 2.5.
Most ultra-Orthodox want the exemptions to be extended to all religious students, saying serving in the military is incompatible with their values.
US says it downed four Yemen rebel drones in Red Sea
- US military says the unmanned aerial systems presented threat to merchant vessels
- It says the action was taken to protect freedom of navigation in international waters
WASHINGTON: The United States military said Wednesday it had downed four drones launched by Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen aimed at a US warship in the Red Sea.
US Central Command said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, that its forces had “engaged and destroyed four long-range unmanned aerial systems” at around 2 am Sanaa time (2300 GMT), adding there were no injuries or damage reported to US or coalition ships.
“It was determined these weapons presented an imminent threat to merchant vessels and US Navy ships in the region,” the statement said.
“These actions are taken to protect freedom of navigation and make international waters safer and more secure for US Navy and merchant vessels,” it added.
In November, the Houthis launched a campaign of drone and missile strikes against vessels in the Red Sea, an area vital for world trade, in professed solidarity with Palestinians during Israel’s war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
US and British forces have responded with strikes against the Houthis, who have since declared American and British interests to be legitimate targets as well.
Outpouring of anger as thousands of Jordanians protest at Israeli embassy
- Surge in protests sparked by claims of Israeli soldiers raping, executing Palestinian women
- Many of Jordan’s 12m citizens are descendants of displaced Palestinians
AMMAN: Thousands of Jordanians marched to the Israeli embassy in Amman on Wednesday for the fourth consecutive day in an outpouring of anger at Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.
“The people demand the end of Wadi Araba,” some chanted, referring to Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel.
Protestors, who began gathering at the Kaloti mosque around 10 p.m., were met by hundreds of security personal and military tanks in anticipation of the planned march to the heavily fortified Israeli embassy nearby.
Ambulances and medical teams were stationed as a precaution in the wake of days marked by violent confrontations between protestors and riot police.
Jordan has had some of the largest peaceful protests in the region since October, with regular marches in downtown Amman drawing hundreds of thousands of people on consecutive Fridays.
However, several demonstrators on Wednesday told Arab News the recent surge of daily gatherings near the Israel embassy were triggered by claims by Jamila Al-Hissi, a Palestinian woman, who told Al Jazeera Arabic of Israeli soldiers torturing, raping and executing women inside Al-Shifa hospital.
There have been reports that Al-Hissa’s claimed were denied on March 25 by a former Al Jazeera executive, who referenced a purported Hamas investigation.
Jordanians have felt the impact of the war in Gaza deeply, where Israel’s relentless bombing has killed over 32,000 Palestinians.
Many of Jordan’s 12 million citizens are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.
“I’m devastated that we haven’t been able to help Gaza. The least that we can do is to be here so that our brothers and sisters in Palestine know that we’re standing with them,” 29-year-old Haneen Ashour told Arab News.
Popular chants like “No Zionist embassy on Jordanian soil” reflect the widespread public opposition to diplomatic normalization with Israel, seen as a betrayal of the Palestinians suffering under occupation.
Despite the large turnout and passionate demonstrations, some protesters have expressed doubt about the impact of their actions.
“This is our duty and it’s the least that we can do, but to be honest with you I don’t (know if) these protests are making any difference. If they were, we wouldn’t be 171 days into the war in Gaza,” 24-year-old Ammar Najar said.
Several protesters were beaten in previous days, and dozens were arrested as they attempted to break a heavy police cordon around the embassy, witnesses said.
Jordan’s authorities allow protests but say they cannot tolerate any attempt to storm the embassy, instigate civic unrest or try to reach borders with the occupied West Bank or Israel.
Gun attack on school bus in West Bank wounds 3 Israelis: army
- Soldiers were pursuing the suspect
JERUSALEM: Medics and the army said three people including a boy were wounded in a gun attack Thursday that targeted a school bus near the city of Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
After reports that a militant fired toward “a number of vehicles,” soldiers were sent to the scene near the town of Al-Auja, the military said, adding that soldiers were pursuing the suspect.
The military confirmed a school bus had been targeted.
A 30-year-old man was in serious condition with gunshot wounds, while a 21-year-old man was less seriously wounded and a 13-year-old boy suffered shrapnel injuries, emergency services said.
Israeli public radio said the masked gunman started shooting at Israeli cars at around 7:00 a.m. local time, hitting a car and a school bus.
Violence has surged in the West Bank since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip in October. The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7 that left about 1,160 people dead.
More than 440 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank since the war broke out, according to the Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the West Bank.
At least 17 Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed in attacks there over the same period, say the Israeli authorities.