RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories, Feb 8, 2024 Agence France Presse: Palestinian culture minister Atef Abu Seif was in Gaza on October 7 for a planned ceremony when the Hamas attack on Israel set off the war and left him trapped for 90 days.
During those painful months, Abu Seif said he witnessed unimaginable death and destruction and lost countless relatives and friends in the coastal territory where he was born.
Now back in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank after he managed to escape the war zone, Abu Seif, 50, talked to AFP about the traumatic experience.
“Gaza is no longer Gaza,” he said. After the war ends, he added, “we will need a new Gaza.”
The minister was in the territory on October 7, which marked Palestinian Heritage Day, for a planned ceremony at Al-Qarara Museum in the southern city of Khan Yunis.
“I wanted to celebrate the launch of Palestinian Heritage Day from Gaza for the first time in history,” he said. But it was not to be.
That Saturday saw Hamas launch their unprecedented attack that resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
The militants also seized around 250 hostages. Israel says 132 remain in Gaza, of whom 29 are believed to have died.
Israel, vowing to eliminate Hamas, launched relentless air strikes and a ground offensive that have killed at least 27,840 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza.
Abu Seif said the toll includes many of his friends and “more than 100 relatives, including my sister-in-law and her children.”
Abu Seif said he spent the first 48 days of the war with his 17-year-old son and family members in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.
But then their home was hit by an Israeli strike, forcing them to flee, like half of Gaza’s population of 2.4 million.
They headed south to Rafah, on the border with Egypt, which Israel now says is the next target of its military campaign.
From his days in Jabalia, Abu Seif has painful memories, including helping pull bodies from under the rubble after a strike hit a relative’s home.
“We were shocked to find that a body which a friend retrieved belonged to his 16-year-old son,” said Abu Seif. “The war in Gaza is ugly.”
Abu Seif said he eventually managed to leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt to return to Ramallah via Jordan.
“I cannot imagine what my neighborhood in the (Jabalia) camp looks like now,” he said.
And what will happen, he said, when he returns one day to Gaza and does “not find half of my friends alive“?
“All the grief of the people of Gaza is postponed... because the sadness has no longer a meaning and is no longer useful in survival.”
Before the war, Abu Seif used to travel to Gaza from Ramallah on Thursdays to link up with his friends for the weekend.
He said now “almost half of them” have been killed.
His ministry says the damage has been immense to Gaza’s cultural heritage.
Around 195 historical buildings, including mosques and churches, and 24 cultural institutes have been damaged or destroyed, it says.
The Al-Qarara Museum, which was surrounded by 5,000-year-old Roman columns, and an ancient Phoenician harbor have also been destroyed, said Abu Seif.
Abu Seif criticized the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO “for keeping silent” on the destruction.
After his return home, Abu Seif urged Palestinian authors and academics living in Gaza to write about their lives there.
The result is a collection of stories from 24 authors called “Writing Behind the Lines.”
One account entitled “The Donkey of Return” tells the story of Gazans forced to use donkey-drawn carts amid dire fuel shortages.
Others relate to the challenges of the internally displaced with titles such as “Seven times displaced” and “We hope to survive.”
“It is important for Gaza’s writers... to write about their lives,” said Abu Seif. “We want the world to read them.”
‘The war is ugly’: Palestinian minister recounts 90 days in Gaza
https://arab.news/y26eg
‘The war is ugly’: Palestinian minister recounts 90 days in Gaza
US presses missile issue as new Iran talks to open in Geneva
- New round of negotiations in Geneva comes after the US carried out a massive military build-up in the region
- The dispute between the countries mostly revolves around Iran’s nuclear program
GENEVA: The United States and Iran are set to hold indirect talks in Switzerland on Thursday aiming to strike a deal to avert fresh conflict and bring an end to weeks of threats.
The new round of negotiations in Geneva comes after the US carried out a massive military build-up in the region and President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to strike Iran if a deal is not reached.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump accused Iran of “pursuing sinister nuclear ambitions.”
He also claimed Tehran had “already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”
The Iranian foreign ministry called these claims “big lies.”
The maximum range of Iran’s missiles is 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) according to what Tehran has publicly disclosed. However the US Congressional Research Service estimates they top out at about 3,000 kilometers — less than a third of the distance to the continental United States.
The dispute between the countries mostly revolves around Iran’s nuclear program, which the West believes is aimed at building an atomic bomb but Tehran insists is peaceful.
However the US has also been pushing to discuss Iran’s ballistic missile program, as well as Tehran’s support for armed groups hostile toward Israel.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that Iran must also negotiate on its missile program, calling Tehran’s refusal to discuss ballistic weapons “a big, big problem” on the eve of the talks.
He followed up by saying “the president wants diplomatic solutions.”
Iran has taken anything beyond the nuclear issue off the negotiating table and has demanded that the US sanctions crippling its economy be part of any agreement.
‘Neither war nor peace’
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Wednesday he had a “favorable outlook for the negotiations” that could finally “move beyond this ‘neither war nor peace’ situation.”
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who is leading the Iranian delegation at the talks, has called them “a historic opportunity,” adding that a deal was “within reach.”
In a foreign ministry statement that followed a meeting with his Oman counterpart, Araghchi said the success of the US negotiations depend “on the seriousness of the other side and its avoidance of contradictory behavior and positions.”
The US will be represented by envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
The two countries held talks earlier this month in Oman, which is mediating the negotiations, then gathered for a second round in Geneva last week.
A previous attempt at negotiations collapsed when Israel launched surprise strikes on Iran last June, beginning a 12-day war that Washington briefly joined to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.
In January, fresh tensions between the US and Iran emerged after Tehran engaged in a bloody crackdown on widespread protests that have posed one of the greatest challenges to the Islamic republic since its inception.
Trump has threatened several times to intervene to “help” the Iranian people.
Emile Hokayem, senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that “the region seems to expect a war at this point.”
In January, there was “a big push by a number of Middle Eastern states to convince the US not to” strike Iran.
“But there’s a lot of apprehension at this point, because the expectation is that this time” a war would be “bigger” than the one in June.
Tehran residents who spoke to AFP were divided as to whether there would be renewed conflict.
Homemaker Tayebeh noted that Trump had “said that war would be very bad for Iran.”
“There would be famine and people would suffer a lot. People are suffering now, but at least with war, our fate might be clear,” the 60-year-old said.
