African migrants suffer under crackdown in Tunisia
Updated 01 March 2023
Reuters
TUNIS: Since Tunisia’s president announced a crackdown on illegal immigration last week using language the African Union denounced as racialized, Malian construction worker Mohamed Kony has been evicted from his apartment and sacked from his job.
Unemployed, homeless and without legal residency, he now fears he will face the fate of several of his friends who have been attacked on the street.
“I am confused and worried,” said Kony, 32, who has lived in Tunis for five years and appeared well liked in his neighborhood, where Tunisian residents said they enjoyed his cheerful demeanour and often employed him for small repair jobs.
“I can’t believe we are a problem here,” he said, his eyes skipping to each end of the road in case of a police car.
Kony’s problems began last week, when President Kais Saied said there had been a conspiracy to change Tunisia’s racial makeup, ordering security forces to stop all illegal immigration and to expel any migrants living in Tunisia illegally.
“The undeclared goal of the successive waves of illegal immigration is to consider Tunisia a purely African country that has no affiliation to the Arab and Islamic nations,” he said.
Saied’s speech — repeating the “great replacement” theory that political elites are replacing native inhabitants with immigrant supporters — was called “shocking” by the African Union and praised by French far-right politician Eric Zemmour.
When Saied issued a second statement last week, he denied being racist and said he only wanted police to implement Tunisian law, but he repeated the idea that there had been a conspiracy to change Tunisia’s demographics.
Social media has, meanwhile, filled with accounts by darker-skinned people in Tunisia, including migrants with and without valid visas, African students and Black Tunisians, of ill treatment and fear.
They have described detentions for not carrying identity papers, insults, stone throwing, evictions and job losses.
The Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES), a group that works with migrants, said it had documented hundreds of arbitrary arrests and hundreds of evictions without notice.
More disturbingly, it said it had documented some violent assaults, including with knives, that police had been slow to respond to. The Interior Ministry has said it will comply with all national laws and international treaties with full respect for human rights.
Outside the Ivory Coast’s Tunis embassy, dozens of the country’s citizens stood this week, seeking repatriation.
“After the president’s speech, we were attacked. We are afraid. We were kicked out of the house,” said one, Berry Dialy Stephan.
Another, Foufana Abou, said people in his district had insulted and attacked him.
“They threw stones and pieces of wood at us,” he said. “Why? We are all Africans!” he added.
CRACKDOWN
Saied’s critics say the crackdown is consistent with his increasingly fiery, conspiracy-laden rhetoric as he pursues a parallel crackdown on political opponents, accusing them of plotting against the state with foreign backing.
Both were preceded by social media campaigns among online groups of Saied supporters that his critics say were increasingly intertwined with his approach to rule.
It also comes at a difficult time for the president as ultra-low turnout in parliamentary elections casts doubt over popular support for his political program after seizing most powers in 2021, and amid an economic crisis.
“The presidential campaign aims to create an imaginary enemy for Tunisians to distract them from their basic problems,” said Ramadan Ben Amor, a spokesperson for FTDES.
After racially charged language by some media commentators, the journalists syndicate and the independent media regulator both responded by urging press to be more careful in their language to avoid racist incitement.
Official figures say there are 21,000 migrants from sub-Saharan African countries in Tunisia. FTDES said the true figure was likely higher, but not more than 50,000.
Tunisia introduced visa-free travel for many African countries over the past decade. Getting a residency permit can be very difficult.
Many migrants in Tunisia aim to cross illegally to Europe but cannot afford the hundreds of dollars to get to Italy — a journey also taken by growing numbers of Tunisians.
Mamuella, an Ivorian woman who has stayed inside her apartment in Tunis for over a week for fear of arrest, said Tunisians had no reason to fear her or her compatriots.
“We just want to arrive on the other side of the Mediterranean where we can find opportunity,” she said.
Orders to evacuate Rafah ‘inhumane,’ may amount to war crimes: UN human rights chief
Volker Turk: New offensive would exacerbate civilian deaths, suffering beyond ‘already unbearable levels’ — According to UNICEF, children account for half of the more than 1.2m people sheltering in Rafah
NEW YORK: UN human rights chief Volker Turk on Monday warned that Israel’s orders for Palestinians to vacate parts of Rafah ahead of a new offensive there would only exacerbate civilian deaths and suffering beyond “already unbearable levels.”
He added that such actions could constitute war crimes, and lamented that months of “relentless strikes” by Israel across the enclave have left no other location except Rafah with the infrastructure and resources to host the mass displacement of more than 1.2 million Palestinians.
Sheltering in tents and overcrowded schools in Rafah, they are now being instructed to move to Al-Mawasi, an area that is already overcrowded and lacking essential services.
Turk said the Israeli orders to relocate Palestinians are “inhumane” and risk exposing them to further danger and misery. Such actions “can sometimes amount to a war crime,” he added.
“Gazans continue to be hit with bombs, disease, and even famine. And today, they have been told that they must relocate yet again as Israeli military operations into Rafah scale up,” Turk said. “This is inhumane.”
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs on Monday said a mass evacuation on this scale “is impossible to carry out safely.”
OCHA added that the area of Rafah under evacuation orders covers more than 30 sq. km. There are nine sites sheltering displaced people in the area. It is also home to three clinics and six warehouses.
As of today, more than three-quarters of the Gaza Strip are under evacuation orders.
OCHA said any full-scale incursion into Rafah would push displaced Palestinians “past their breaking point,” and would cripple the already very fragile humanitarian operation there.
It added: “The UN is not taking part in involuntary evacuations or in the setting up of any displacement zones in southern Gaza.”
According to UNICEF, children account for half of the more than 1.2 million people sheltering in Rafah.
In a statement on Monday, the agency called for children not to be forcibly relocated, saying there is nowhere safe for them to go.
UNICEF said potential evacuation corridors are likely mined or littered with unexploded ordnance, and shelter and services in areas for relocation are likely to be limited.
Turk stressed that international humanitarian law prohibits ordering the displacement of civilians for reasons related to the conflict unless the security of civilians involved or “imperative military reasons so demand,” and even then subject to strict legal requirements.
“Failure to meet these obligations may amount to forced displacement, which is a war crime,” the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement.
“Forcibly relocating hundreds of thousands from Rafah to areas which have already been flattened and where there is little shelter and virtually no access to humanitarian assistance necessary for their survival is inconceivable. It will only expose them to more danger and misery.”
On Monday, Israel carried out airstrikes on Rafah, killing at least 26 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Also on Monday, two crossings into Rafah were closed, completely disrupting the already meager flow of humanitarian assistance.
“More attacks on what is now the primary humanitarian hub in the Gaza Strip are not the answer,” said Turk.
“The lessons of the past seven months of conflict in Gaza are clear — with women and children making up over 70 percent of the more than 120,000 killed, wounded and missing. Enough of the killing.”
Turk reiterated the urgent need for a ceasefire and unhindered, at-scale flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
He also called for the immediate release of hostages held by Hamas, and of Palestinians arbitrarily detained by Israel.
Palestinians in the West Bank pushed to the brink as Israeli assault on Gaza keeps tensions high
Jewish settlers in the West Bank together with Israeli troops ramp up hostilities against Palestinians, especially rural communities in Area C
Attitude of Israeli authorities blamed for emboldening violent Jewish settlers to attack and expel Palestinians from the West Bank with impunity
Updated 12 min 37 sec ago
ANAN TELLO
LONDON: Shockwaves from Israel’s military operation in Gaza have reverberated into the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where security forces and emboldened Jewish settlers have reportedly ramped up attacks on Palestinian communities.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack sparked the conflict in Gaza, Israeli settlers have carried out 603 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, expelling 1,222 people from 19 herding communities, according to UN figures.
Armed settlers have also killed at least nine Palestinians, while Israeli security forces have killed 396 others in the past few months.
Likewise, the Israeli army has intensified raids. On May 4, Israeli forces raided Tulkarem and killed five Palestinians, including four Hamas members. On April 20, Israeli forces carried out a raid in the same governorate, home to more than 6,400 refugees, killing 14 Palestinians.
Abeer, who runs a small business in Jenin, has observed a “surge in settler attacks, the proliferation of checkpoints, daily raids on Palestinian homes, infrastructure destruction, killing of Palestinian youths, and increased Israeli military airstrikes.”
The Israeli army has intensified raids in parts of the West Bank. (AFP)
While similar attacks regularly took place before Oct. 7, she told Arab News that “they have doubled and become more horrific” since the onset of the Gaza war.
Jenin “has for about two years been specifically a target for the Israeli military, as it’s home to a few resistance groups,” she added.
According to a report by the UN Human Rights Office published in March, the “drastic acceleration” of long-standing patterns of discrimination, oppression, and violence against Palestinians has pushed the West Bank to the “brink of catastrophe.”
Israel, at “one of the fastest rates on record,” has demolished 917 Palestinian-owned structures in the West Bank since Oct. 7, displacing 1,015 Palestinians. Of these structures, 210 are in East Jerusalem and 285 are residential buildings, the report added.
Yasmeen El-Hasan, international advocacy officer at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, a nongovernmental organisation supporting rural Palestinian communities, described the situation in the West Bank as “absolutely horrendous.”
“The Israeli expansion of its settler colonial enterprise in the West Bank is happening parallel to the genocidal war on Gaza,” she told Arab News.
“The occupation has established numerous new settler outposts, settler roads within the West Bank,” she said, adding that the Israeli government “has approved thousands of new settler units within the West Bank.”
Since Oct. 7, Israeli settlers have carried out 603 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank (AFP)
While casualties from Israeli violence in the West Bank have not reached the scale of those in Gaza, she said the “intensity of Israeli settler colonial violence in every part of historic Palestine has amplified, increased, been exacerbated in the past six months.”
The “impunity” granted by Israeli authorities has further emboldened Jewish settlers in the West Bank, El-Hasan said.
Settlers attacking Palestinian communities are “increasingly armed by the government of the Israeli occupation and there are no consequences for what they’re doing,” she said.
Addressing the 55th session of the Human Rights Council in March, Nada Al-Nashif, the UN deputy high commissioner for human rights, said that after Oct. 7, the OHCHR documented “cases of settlers wearing full or partial Israeli army uniforms and carrying army rifles, harassing and attacking Palestinians, including shooting at them at point-blank range.”
She also said that by Oct. 31, Israeli security forces had reportedly distributed about 8,000 weapons to “settlement defense squads” and “regional defense battalions” in the West Bank.
INNUMBERS
• 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
• 300 Illegal settlements or outposts on Palestinian territory.
Source: OHCHR
An incident in which the Israeli military purportedly enabled settler violence took place in mid-April, when about 50 settlers attacked the northern West Bank village of Aqraba “protected by the Israeli occupation army,” according to WAFA, the Palestinian news agency.
Two Palestinians were killed in the settler attack, according to the mayor of the village, Salah Bani Jaber, who witnessed the incident. He said the Israeli soldiers at the scene “stood idly, watching the settlers.”
“The absence of accountability for settler violence is a key factor in the ongoing coercive environment,” Al-Nashif told the president of the UN Human Rights Council.
The “drastic acceleration” of long-standing patterns of discrimination, oppression, and violence against Palestinians has pushed the West Bank to the “brink of catastrophe,” said a UN report. (AFP)
She described this lack of accountability as a “manifestation of a dual system of criminal justice that has had discriminatory effects on Palestinians.”
Yesh Din, an Israeli NGO that documents abuses by Israeli civilians against Palestinians in the occupied territories, concluded in its December data sheet that “the Israeli-law enforcement system fails in fulfilling its duty to protect Palestinians from Israeli violence.”
The report emphasized that the continuation of “this systemic failure” for at least two decades “evinces that the State of Israel normalizes and supports ideologically motivated violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank.”
The data sheet showed that in the past 20 years, 93.7 percent of all police investigations into settler offenses against Palestinians were closed without an indictment, while only 3 percent led to a full or partial conviction.
Yesh Din also noted that Palestinians tend to mistrust Israeli authorities, making victims of settler violence reluctant to report offenses.
In July last year, at least 3,000 Palestinians fled their homes in the Jenin refugee camp after a large Israeli military operation. (AFP)
Between January and September 2023, more than 57 percent of the victims chose not to file a complaint. Of these, 54 percent said they feared retaliation or did not trust the Israeli authorities to apprehend offenders.
Palestinians in the West Bank’s rural areas are particularly vulnerable to expulsion from their lands by Jewish settlers.
El-Hasan of UAWC said: “Israeli settlers, often accompanied by or protected by the Israeli occupation forces, very frequently target Palestinian agricultural lands and critical infrastructure, as well as the communities.
“This includes vital resources like water wells, roads, greenhouses, sanitary facilities, land where crops are grown, herds, herding enclosures, cars, and houses.”
Opinion
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The OHCHR report found that from January 2022 to early September 2023, 1,105 Palestinians from 28 herding communities (about 12 percent) were forcibly displaced due to settler violence and prevention of access to grazing land.
Palestinian farmers and rural communities in Area C, which constitutes 61 percent of the West Bank territory, have been specifically targeted by Israeli settlers, El-Hasan said.
“Area C is the majority of the West Bank, the most resource rich, and it’s also, according to the Oslo Accords, under Israeli military and civil administration,” she added.
Israeli security forces have killed 396 Palestinians in the West Bank in the past few months. (AFP)
The Oslo Accords, signed on the White House lawn in September 1993, were the first direct peace agreement between Israeli authorities and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They sought to pave the way for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
Stressing the importance of talking about Area C in the context of Israeli settlement expansion, El-Hasan pointed out that this “very fertile” area is “directly tied to Palestinian livelihood.”
It is “where most of the settlements are,” she explained, adding that “the Israeli occupation is trying its hardest to take” this area.
“Land and livelihood are directly tied to Palestinian food systems. This targeted disruption and destruction of Palestinian food systems is a tactical strategy of Israeli settler colonialism that is attempting to sever the indigenous relationship with interdependence on the land, no matter the consequences.
“And that includes humanitarian targeting, like the tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians, or environmental, like the hundreds of thousands of metric tons of planet-warming emissions produced by Israel in the past few months.”
On April 29, Washington said five Israeli security force units committed “gross violations of human rights” against Palestinians in the West Bank before Oct. 7, yet it has not barred any of the units from receiving US military support, Reuters reported.
The Oslo Accords sought to pave the way for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. (AFP)
On May 3, two “extremist” groups and four individuals in Israel who it blamed for violence in the West Bank, as part of a fresh package of measures against settlers.
Referring to Jewish settlers living in occupied West Bank, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintains that “the vast majority of residents of Judea and Samaria are law-abiding citizens ... Israel acts against all violators of the law in all places and therefore there is no place for drastic steps on this matter.”
In July last year, at least 3,000 Palestinians fled their homes in the Jenin refugee camp, home to about 18,000 people, after the Israeli military launched what Palestinian officials described as the largest operation in the area in two decades.
Israel has proved over the past 76 years that it “will do whatever it takes to forcibly take that land,” said Yasmeen El-Hasan. (AFP)
Israel said it was targeting a Palestinian militant command center.
Saying that “the basis of settler colonialism is land theft,” El-Hasan accused Israel of proving over the past 76 years that it “will do whatever it takes to forcibly take that land, and that includes destroying it, exploiting it, and committing genocide.”
“Palestinian communities are physically rooted in our land,” she told Arab News. “Our relationship with this land is not just symbolic, it’s symbiotic. It’s not transactional, it’s reciprocal. And as the indigenous people to this land, we are its caretakers.”
Hamas says it agrees to ceasefire proposal in Gaza war
The agreement, should it take effect, will be first truce since a week-long pause in the fighting in November
It follows months of failed attempts at pausing the fighting to free hostages and allow more aid into Gaza
Updated 50 min 2 sec ago
Reuters
CAIRO: Hamas on Monday agreed to a ceasefire proposal in the seven-month-old war with Israel in Gaza, hours after the Israeli military told residents to evacuate some parts of Rafah, which has been sheltering more than a million displaced people.
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh informed Qatari and Egyptian mediators that the group accepted their ceasefire proposal, according to a brief statement from Hamas, which gave no details of the accord.
There was no immediate comment from Israel.
The agreement, should it take effect, would be the first truce since a week-long pause in the fighting in November, and follows months of failed attempts at pausing the fighting to free hostages and allow more aid into Gaza.
There had been concerns that the ceasefire talks being held in Cairo had stalled after Hamas official Izzat Al-Rashiq warned that any Israeli operation in Rafah would put the truce talks in jeopardy.
The city, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, has been the last sanctuary for around half of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents, pushed south by Israel’s seven-month-old assault.
Lebanese civilians injured as Israel ramps up attacks on southern front
2 Israeli soldiers killed in Hezbollah drone attack on Metula area
Strike was ‘most serious event since the beginning of the war,’ Israeli media report
Updated 3 sec ago
NAJIA HOUSSARI
BEIRUT: Hostilities between Hezbollah and the Israeli army on Lebanon’s southern front escalated on Monday, with two Israeli soldiers killed and several Lebanese civilians injured.
The Israeli army on Monday morning raided what it described as a Hezbollah military compound in Sefri, Baalbek. Three civilians were wounded in the attack, which destroyed a factory, rubble from which covered the neighboring Riyaq–Baalbek road.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, said it targeted the “headquarters of the Golan Division (210th) at the Nafah base with dozens of Katyusha rockets in response to the Israeli attacks in Bekaa.”
It said it also carried out a drone attack that “targeted a gathering of Israeli soldiers south of Metula … (which) hit the Israeli soldiers’ settlement points in addition to destroying and damaging their vehicles and killing and injuring them.”
Israeli media outlets later confirmed that two soldiers had been killed in Metula.
“Targeting Metula is the most serious event since the beginning of the war in northern Israel as two soldiers were killed and two others were injured, with one sustaining serious injury, after a kamikaze drone hit Metula. The victims were soldiers in the 98th Paratroopers Division,” one report said.
Israeli fighter jets conducted eight airstrikes at a low altitude, focusing on the mountains and valleys of Iqlim Al-Tuffah and Jabal Al-Rayhan.
The attacks were concentrated near Al-Tasa Spring, Aqamata farm, the towns of Louaize and Aramti, and areas near Sarda.
Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee said warplanes targeted “15 military buildings and infrastructure that were placed inside a camp belonging to Hezbollah’s Radwan Force in the Louaizeh area in southern Lebanon.”
The army also bombed what Adraee described as “military buildings in the towns of Ramia, Aita Al-Shaab and Marwahin and military infrastructure in Jabal Balat.”
The Israeli military said it used artillery to target “the origin of the gunfire in the Shebaa area to eliminate a possible danger.”
The action was taken after observing two rockets being fired from Syrian land toward the town of Ramot Magshimim in the Golan Heights, it said.
“The rockets landed in uninhabited areas and did not cause any injuries,” it said.
Israeli F15 fighter jets also flew at a low altitude over the Marjayoun Plain and Al-Khiam and conducted an attack on Sajjad Heights and Malikh Heights.
Israeli forces also shelled the towns of Kafr Kila and Al-Adisa from Metulla as warplanes flew overhead.
Kuwait, EU discuss cooperation on renewable energy, climate change
Two underscored the pivotal role of the private sector in realizing clean energy objectives under international treaties
Updated 06 May 2024
Arab News
LONDON: The Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research on Monday held discussions with an EU delegation about enhancing cooperation in renewable energy, climate change and addressing international environmental challenges.
Mashaan Al-Otaibi, acting director-general of KISR, met with Spyros Kouvelis, representing the European Commission’s Gulf Cooperation Council-EU project on green transition.
The two underscored the pivotal role of the private sector in realizing clean energy objectives outlined in international treaties, Kuwait News Agency reported.
Al-Otaibi highlighted Kuwait’s vision of improving the business environment through its green transition project as a means to achieve these objectives.
He said that this was crucial for enabling renewable energy solutions, fostering regional cooperation, and taking strides toward a sustainable future while mitigating the effects of climate change.
In response, the EU official reiterated the significance of bolstering collaboration between international organizations, such as the EU, the UN, and GCC countries through green transition projects.
