Latest news with #internationalcommunity
LBCI
5 days ago
- Business
- LBCI
IMF delegation meets donor ambassadors at the residence of Egyptian ambassador in Beirut
Sources told LBCI that an International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation met with ambassadors of donor and supporting countries to Lebanon at the residence of the Egyptian ambassador in Beirut. The discussions focused on the critical challenges facing Lebanon's stalled economic reform agenda, emphasizing the urgency of implementing immediate measures. According to sources familiar with the meeting, the IMF emphasized that time is running out for the Lebanese government to implement the necessary reforms required to regain the confidence of the international community and financial institutions. The gathering underscores growing international concern over Lebanon's political paralysis and its implications for global support and recovery prospects.
LBCI
6 days ago
- General
- LBCI
Health Minister receives UNHCR delegation informing him of decision to stop healthcare coverage for Syrian refugees
Health Minister Rakan Nassereddine received a delegation from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), headed by the office representative in Lebanon, Ivo Freijsin. The delegation informed him of the UNHCR's decision to cease healthcare coverage for Syrian refugees residing in Lebanon and to halt support for various primary healthcare centers starting next November due to limited funding from donor countries. Nassereddine emphasized the necessity for the international community not to neglect its humanitarian responsibilities. He said: "Less than three months ago, Lebanon witnessed a new wave of displacement, which keeps the number of refugees very high relative to Lebanon's size and the capacity of its health system to bear additional major burdens." The Health Minister emphasized the importance of the UNHCR, in collaboration with key international partners, in finding ways to secure healthcare coverage for refugees and support the health services provided to them in primary care centers. He affirmed that there is no solution except securing international funding for healthcare and the treatment of refugees until their safe return to their country, calling in this regard for serious efforts to begin implementing a plan for their return to their home country after the situation there improves.
Al Jazeera
7 days ago
- General
- Al Jazeera
Faced with hunger, Palestinians crowd a controversial aid centre in Gaza
Thousands of Palestinians have overwhelmed a food distribution centre in southern Gaza, driven by hunger after nearly three months without access to fresh supplies. It was a chaotic scene on Tuesday in the southern city of Rafah, as men, women and children thronged the aid centre, seeking food to stave off malnutrition and starvation. Israeli soldiers used gunfire to disperse the desperate crowds, as they tugged at the fences separating them from food boxes. Starting on March 2, Israel had imposed a total blockade on aid into war-torn Gaza, as part of the military offensive it began in the Palestinian enclave in October 2023. As fears of famine grew, so too did international pressure on Israel. Allies including the United Kingdom, France and Canada warned Israel earlier this month that it could face sanctions if aid restrictions were not lifted. Days later, Israel announced it would allow 'minimal' deliveries of essential supplies to resume. But that announcement was controversial, not least for Israel's decision to bypass traditional aid distribution networks, like those run by the United Nations. Instead, it tapped the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a United States-backed nonprofit, to lead the effort. 'There were a lot of questions raised, even within the Israeli government, about how exactly this was going to operate,' said Al Jazeera correspondent Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, Jordan. 'Now, as you can see here, the private company that was put in place to distribute this aid has completely lost control.' Israel has blamed the armed Palestinian group Hamas for the chaos at the aid centre, something the group has denied. In a statement released on Tuesday, Hamas instead blamed Israel for failing to 'manage the humanitarian crisis it deliberately created'. Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamed Vall also reported there was no evidence that Hamas has disrupted the aid distribution. He instead pointed to the sheer need: More than two million Palestinians live in Gaza. 'These are the people of Gaza, the civilians of Gaza, trying to get just a piece of food — just any piece of food for their children, for themselves,' he said. Vall added that there was also scepticism on the ground about the motives behind concentrating aid distribution in the south of Gaza. 'They say the reason why [Israeli officials] did this, the reason why they established these distribution points only in the south is that they want to encourage people — or even force them — to flee from the north,' Vall explained. The fear remains, he said, that moving Palestinians southwards could be a 'preliminary phase for the complete ousting' of Gaza's population. According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, at least 54,056 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, which humanitarian aid groups and United Nations experts have compared to a genocide. Here are some scenes from Tuesday's aid distribution efforts.
The National
26-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Israeli air strike on Gaza school kills at least 13
Live updates: Follow the latest on Israel-Gaza An Israeli air strike at dawn on Monday killed 13 people at a Gaza city school, according to medics, as Israel presses ahead with its war. "Civil defence crews in Gaza city retrieved 13 martyrs and 21 injured from inside Fahmi Al-Jarjawi School in the Al Daraj neighbourhood, after the Israeli occupation forces targeted it at dawn today," Gaza's civil defence agency said. Israel's war in Gaza against Hamas drew condemnation from the international community as an aid blockade lasting almost three months has worsened shortages of food, water, fuel and medicine in the Palestinian territory. The strike came after leaked documents showed Israel intends to control three-quarters of Gaza's territory within two months, which suggests Palestinians could be relocated to three small zones in the strip. About 40 per cent of Gaza is occupied, according to Israeli estimates, but the military expects that to rise to 75 per cent within two months, under the plans reported by outlets including the Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post. Those reports say civilians would be divided between three areas in northern, central and southern Gaza. One would be in Gaza city, a second in Deir Al Balah, and the third in Al Mawasi in the south, where many evicted Gazans have already been forced to relocate to a "safe zone" that has come under repeated attacks. On Sunday, Spain's foreign minister called for sanctions on Israel as European and Arab nations gathered in Madrid. The talks aimed to stop Israel's "inhumane" and "senseless" war in Gaza, Jose Manuel Albares told reporters before the meeting opened. Humanitarian aid must enter Gaza "massively, without conditions and without limits, and not controlled by Israel", he added, describing the territory as humanity's "open wound". Spain also urged partners to impose an arms embargo on Israel and "not rule out any" individual sanctions against those "who want to ruin the two-state solution forever", he added. The new condemnation came after Gaza rescuers said 22 people were killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli air strikes across the Palestinian territory on Sunday. Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said seven people were killed in a strike on a home in Jabalia, in the north. Some people were still under the debris, he added, as "the civil defence does not have search equipment or heavy equipment to lift the rubble to rescue the wounded and recover the martyrs". Two more people, including a woman who was seven months pregnant, were killed in an attack targeting tents sheltering displaced people around Nuseirat in central Gaza, he said, adding that doctors were unable to save the unborn child.
Irish Times
25-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
I am seldom lost for words, but the atrocities in Gaza leave me speechless
I love words. Professionally, they are my primary tool . Yet sometimes – more often than I would like – I question what they are good for. Sometimes, they feel like empty noises or squiggles on a screen. Take Gaza . Words seem to be failing us. The phrases we used to hear a lot – international order, international community, civilisation – seem to have been rendered meaningless. Most European countries, ourselves being one of the few exceptions , have opted for throwaway pieties. They favour realpolitik over morality, (let's not poke the Trumpbeast), while the constant coverage has started to have a gradual numbing effect. If there is a triumph in the razing of Gaza, in the targeted starvation, the mass killing, in the fervent cruelty of it all, it is a triumph over language: as the atrocities pile on top of one another, it becomes increasing difficult to find words to reflect their horror. It's not that people, in Ireland and elsewhere, have ceased to care: it's more a slightly despairing sense that words – to move, to prompt thought or compassion, to call others to action – seem to have lost their efficacy. Despite the vast majority of countries on this planet calling for a ceasefire, despite international arrest warrants, plausible claims of genocide and war crimes, the situation has grown worse, not better. Israeli politicians and generals seem to be caught in the addictive grip of thinking up ever new ways, not just to kill and maim Gazans, but to mentally torture them too. Evacuate. Bomb. Evacuate. Bomb: every time with the almost sniggering justification that it is for civilian safety. READ MORE The pen isn't beating the sword. And when language is defeated, so too is diplomacy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and co may be aware of the millions of words being said on this subject. Or they may not hear them. They certainly don't seem to care. They don't have to. The majority of Israelis may not wish to see Netanyahu in power, but they still support Operation Gideon's Chariots: a name calibrated to continue the depiction of Israel as the outgunned underdog. (In the biblical account, Gideon led a battle against the Midianites using trumpets and jars containing torches. The Israelites won, despite a vast numerical disadvantage.) [ Air strikes kill dozens in Gaza as international criticism of Israel grows Opens in new window ] Words don't work that well either when speaking to the traumatised; and for the last 19 months, Israel has been a traumatised country. Apart from the naked horror and death of the October 7th attack, it was a pogrom on Israeli territory: an incident cynically designed to reignite the darkest fears of Jewish racial memory. The sense of shock will continue not just until all the hostages are returned, but for years afterwards. Right now, it's all Israeli society seems able to think about. It's all the Israeli media can report on. It's understandable, and correct, that the fate of the hostages is always in the foreground of the Israeli media's coverage. But the disparity between the domestic and international reporting on Gaza is vast. Due to an ethos of supporting the 'war effort', Israelis aren't shown pictures of the doomscape that is now the Gaza Strip. They seem unaware, or not willing to believe, that within a two-hour drive from any point in Israel, 50,000 corpses have piled up. [ 'No sane country kills babies as a hobby': Israeli politician causes uproar with Gaza war condemnation Opens in new window ] Sooner or later, this will all come to an end. Yet the psychological toll will be incalculable. It's impossible to predict what effect this will have had upon Palestinians: whether we're witnessing the end of a nation or just another bloody turn in the ongoing churn of violence. In the future, perhaps years from now, Israel may reach a point where it can look back at what happened and start to consider if, while caught up in its own anguish and distress, it allowed fanatics to transform their genocidal fantasies into reality. But it will be far too late then. It already is. And words will never explain it.
