JERUSALEM: Aid workers in the Palestinian territories told AFP they are concerned that rules recently floated by Israel could make already difficult humanitarian work “almost impossible.”
Since the war in Gaza broke out with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, aid organizations have been contending with a “slippery slope” when it comes to Israeli authorities’ tolerance for their work, said one senior NGO staffer.
But after COGAT, the Israeli body responsible for overseeing Palestinian affairs, presented a plan last month for reorganizing aid distribution, that slope has gotten “much steeper,” with some NGOs deeming the proposed changes unacceptable, she added.
COGAT did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.
The staffer and others interviewed requested anonymity for fear of repercussions for their operations in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip, where responding to the acute humanitarian crisis brought on by the war had already been a Herculean undertaking.
“The ability to deliver aid and adhere to humanitarian principles in Gaza, the access restrictions we’re facing in the West Bank... All of these things, when you put them together, you just feel like you’re watching the apocalypse,” she said.
“We basically have a fire extinguisher trying to put out a nuclear bomb.”
According to NGOs, COGAT presented a plan at the end of February that aims to reinforce Israeli oversight of aid by establishing logistics centers linked to the army and by enforcing tighter control over the entire humanitarian supply chain.
“Logistically, it will be almost impossible,” said one member of a medical NGO, wondering whether such organizations would be forced to declare individual recipients of various medications.
COGAT’s stated objective, according to the NGOs, is to combat looting and the misappropriation of aid by militants.
But the NGOs say they believe looting is currently marginal, and that the best way of avoiding it is to step up deliveries.
Israel, meanwhile, cut off aid deliveries to Gaza entirely early this month over an impasse with Hamas on how to proceed with a fragile ceasefire.
“The thinking (of COGAT) was that Hamas would rebuild itself thanks to humanitarian aid,” said a representative of a European NGO, “but that’s false, and humanitarian aid won’t bring them rockets or missiles.”
Israel “just wants more control over this territory,” he added.
The NGOs said COGAT did not specify when the new rules would take effect.
A separate government directive that came into force in March established a new, stricter framework for registering NGOs working with Palestinians.
It requires organizations to share extensive information on their staff, and gives the government the right to reject employees it deems to be linked to the “delegitimization” of Israel.
NGOs operating in the Palestinian territories already face numerous difficulties, and even outright danger, particularly in Gaza.
At least 387 employees have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to a recent UN estimate.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, which was recently banned from operating in Israel, said the humanitarian community is wondering “how far can we go while remaining principled,” and at what point that would no longer be the case under the new rules.
Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO network PNGO, said organizations “need to all work against” the new restrictions, adding that he believed the rules’ actual goal was to “prevent accountability and any kind of criticism on Israel toward what they committed” in Gaza and the West Bank.
“Lives are at stake,” he added.
The head of an international NGO agreed that a “red line has been crossed and I think we should oppose it.”
But one humanitarian in the medical sector said a principled stand would only draw flak from the Israelis, and “given the needs (of the Palestinians), principled positions don’t hold water.”
NGOs fear new rules will make helping Palestinians ‘almost impossible’
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NGOs fear new rules will make helping Palestinians ‘almost impossible’
- Since the war in Gaza broke out, aid organizations have been contending with a ‘slippery slope’ when it comes to Israeli authorities’ tolerance for their work
- COGAT, the Israeli body responsible for overseeing Palestinian affairs, presented a plan last month for reorganizing aid distribution
Israel says retrieved official Syrian archive on executed spy Eli Cohen
- Eli Cohen was discovered by Syrian intelligence and publically hanged in Damascus on May 18, 1965
- Among the items recovered are a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours before his execution, audio recordings and files from his interrogations
JERUSALEM: Israel announced on Sunday that it had retrieved the official Syrian archive on famed spy Eli Cohen — a cache of 2,500 documents, photographs and personal effects linked to the Mossad agent executed in Damascus in 1965.
“In a complex covert operation by the Mossad, in cooperation with a strategic partner service, the official Syrian archive on Eli Cohen was brought to Israel,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement, referring to the country’s external intelligence agency.
“The trove contains thousands of items that had been kept under tight security by Syrian intelligence for decades,” the statement added.
Cohen, who developed close ties with high-level political and military figures in Syria as part of a four-year espionage operation, was eventually discovered by Syrian intelligence.
He was publically hanged in Damascus on May 18, 1965.
Cohen’s story was dramatized in the Netflix minizeries “The Spy,” starring the British actor Sacha Baron Cohen.
The prime minister added that retrieving the archive reflected Israel’s “unwavering commitment to bringing back all our missing, prisoners, and hostages.”
The statement was an apparent reference both to the 58 captives, dead and alive, being held by Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, as well as the announcement last week that Israel had retrieved from Syria the body of a soldier missing for 43 years, also in a covert Mossad operation.
Sunday’s statement said that the recovery of the items came after “decades of Mossad intelligence, operational, and technological effort to find every scrap of information about Eli Cohen in the quest to shed light on his fate and discover the location of his burial.”
Over the years, multiple operations have been carried out to that end, the statement said, including “inside enemy states.”
Mossad director David Barnea said in the statement that recovering the archive was a “significant achievement,” and “another step toward locating our man in Damascus’ burial place.”
Among the items recovered are a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours before his execution, audio recordings and files from his interrogations and those of his sources, letters he wrote to family members in Israel and photographs from his clandestine mission in Syria.
Additionally, the cache included belongings taken from his home after his arrest, including forged passports and photographs of him with senior Syrian military and government officials, as well as notebooks and diaries listing Mossad tasks.
Also discovered was a file labelled “Nadia Cohen,” detailing Syrian intelligence monitoring of Cohen’s wife’s campaign to free her husband.
In a special meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu and Barnea shared the trove of items with Nadia Cohen, the statement said.
Israel army says 2 projectiles launched from Gaza after air raid sirens sound
- One projectile was intercepted and the other fell in an open area
JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said two projectiles were launched from the Gaza Strip on Sunday, shortly after it announced it had commenced “extensive ground operations” across the besieged Palestinian territory.
“Following the sirens that sounded in Kissufim, two projectiles were identified crossing into Israel from the central Gaza Strip,” the army said, adding one was intercepted and the other fell in an open area.
Israeli forces have demolished 600 Palestinian houses in Jenin since January offensive
- Shops, houses and infrastructure in Al-Sharqi and Al-Hadaf neighbourhoods sustain heaviest damage
- Forces arrest a prisoner who was released during Israel-Hamas truce in November 2023
LONDON: Israeli forces have demolished nearly 600 Palestinian houses in the Jenin refugee camp, according to the town municipality, where Israel has been carrying out military operations for the past 118 days.
On Sunday, forces intensified dredging and destruction operations in the Jenin refugee camp, causing significant damage to its water and electricity infrastructure and main roads, while continuing to block access to the area.
The Jenin Municipality has documented the total destruction of 600 houses in the camp, while others were either partially damaged or have been abandoned by residents since Israel launched a major offensive in January.
The neighborhoods of Al-Sharqi and Al-Hadaf sustained the heaviest damage — to shops, houses and infrastructure — the Wafa news agency reported.
Also on Sunday, Israeli forces arrested Yasmeen Shaaban at her home in Al-Jalameh village, north of Jenin. Shaaban, who spent 21 months in prison, was released in November 2023 during the first temporary truce and captive-exchange arrangement between Israel and Hamas.
The municipality reported that 22,000 people are displaced in Jenin as Israeli forces increase enforcement in the town and its refugee camp. The military operation has caused heavy losses to businesses in Jenin, leading to many shop closures and a decrease in shopper footfall from nearby villages, with an estimated loss of $300 million.
Since Israel launched its offensive on January 21 in Jenin, at least 40 people have been killed, while hundreds have been arrested and injured.
Italian MPs protest at Egypt’s Gaza border against war
- The group — including 11 members of the Italian parliament, three MEPs and representatives of NGOs — held signs reading “Stop genocide now”
RAFAH: Italian parliamentarians protested on Sunday in front of Egypt’s Rafah border crossing with Gaza, calling for aid access and an end to the war in the devastated Palestinian territory.
“Europe is not doing enough, nothing to stop the massacre,” Cecilia Strada, an Italian member of the European parliament, told AFP.
The group — including 11 members of the Italian parliament, three MEPs and representatives of NGOs — held signs reading “Stop genocide now,” “End illegal occupation” and “Stop arming Israel.”
“There should be a complete embargo on weapons to and from Israel and a stop to trade with illegal settlements,” Strada said.
The protesters laid toys on the ground in solidarity with Gaza’s children, who the UN warns face “a growing risk of starvation, illness and death” more than two months into a total Israeli aid blockade.
At least 15,000 children have been killed in Gaza since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, according to the United Nations.
Israel has faced mounting pressure to lift its aid blockade, as UN agencies warn of critical shortages of food, clean water, fuel and medicines.
It resumed its offensive on March 18, ending a two-month truce in its war against Hamas triggered by the Palestinian militant group’s October 2023 attack on Israel.
On Saturday Israel announced an expanded military campaign, killing dozens of people in new strikes.
“We hear the bombs right now,” Walter Massa, president of Italian non-profit organization Associazione Ricreativa Culturale Italiana, told AFP near the crossing.
“The Israeli army continues to do what it believes is right in the face of an international community that does not intervene, and in Gaza, beyond the Rafah crossing border, people continue to die,” he said.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said Saturday said he was “alarmed” at the escalation and called for “a permanent ceasefire, now.”
Italy’s government on Saturday reiterated its calls to Israel to stop attacking Gaza, with Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani saying: “Enough with the attacks.”
“We no longer want to see the Palestinian people suffer,” Tajani said.
Gaza’s health ministry said Sunday 3,193 people have been killed since Israel resumed its strikes on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 53,339.
Lebanon says soldier among two wounded in Israeli strike
BEIRUT: Lebanon said two people including a soldier were wounded in an Israeli strike Sunday in the country’s south, where the army has been deploying after a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“A soldier was moderately wounded due to the Israeli enemy targeting of a vehicle... at the Beit Yahun checkpoint” in Bint Jbeil district, an army statement said.
Beit Yahun is around eight kilometers (around five miles) from the border.
The health ministry said two people including a soldier were wounded in the strike, which it said was launched by an “Israeli enemy drone” and targeted a vehicle.
The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the reported strike.
Israel has continued to launch raids on its neighbor despite a November truce which sought to halt more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah militants including two months of all-out war.
Lebanon has reported four deadly strikes this week in the south, with Israel saying it targeted Hezbollah operatives.
Under the ceasefire, the Iran-backed Hezbollah was to pull back its fighters north of Lebanon’s Litani River and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure to its south.
Israel was to withdraw all its forces from Lebanon, but it has kept troops in five areas that it deems “strategic.”
The Lebanese army has been deploying in the south as Israeli forces have withdrawn and has been dismantling Hezbollah infrastructure.
The truce was based on a United Nations Security Council resolution that says Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers should be the only forces in south Lebanon, and calls for the disarmament of all non-state groups.
Last month, President Joseph Aoun said the army was deployed in more than 85 percent of the south, and that the sole obstacle to full control across the frontier area was “Israel’s occupation of five border positions.”
Also in April, Lebanon’s military said a munitions blast in the south killed three personnel, days after an explosion killed another soldier as the force was dismantling mines in a tunnel.
