Israel issues evacuation order in central Gaza
Thousands of leaflets were dropped over Deir el-Balah on Sunday, telling displaced families living in tents in several densely populated parts of the city to leave immediately.
The Israeli military warned of imminent action against Hamas fighters in the area as it continued its deadly attacks on unarmed and starving civilians desperately looking for food, killing dozens of Palestinians on Sunday, at least 73 of them aid seekers in northern Gaza. In a post on X, the military's Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said residents and displaced Palestinians sheltering in the Deir el-Balah area should leave immediately. (Agencies) page 5
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Al Jazeera
4 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Pro-Palestinian Lebanese fighter released from French prison after 40 years
France has released Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a pro-Palestinian Lebanese fighter jailed since 1984, and put him on a flight to Beirut after he spent nearly four decades behind bars. Shortly before 3:40am (01:30 GMT) on Friday, a convoy of six vehicles with flashing lights was seen leaving the Lannemezan prison in southern France, according to journalists with the AFP news agency on the ground. A source confirmed the 74-year-old had been freed and later boarded a flight to Lebanon. Abdallah, who was convicted in 1987 for his role in the killings of United States military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris, had long been eligible for release. However, repeated applications were rejected, often due to pressure from the US, which was a civil party in Abdallah's case. Last month, the Paris Court of Appeal ruled in favour of his release, effective on Friday, on the condition that Abdallah leave French territory and never return. His lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, told AFP that the former fighter appeared 'very happy' during their final visit 'even though he knows he is returning to the Middle East in an extremely tough context for Lebanese and Palestinian populations'. Abdallah, the founder of the now-defunct Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions, had declared during a recent visit by a lawmaker that he remained a 'militant with a struggle'. French police uncovered submachine guns and communication equipment in one of his flats at the time of his arrest. Abdallah has never expressed regret for his actions and has always insisted he is a 'fighter' who has battled for the rights of Palestinians and is not a 'criminal'. The Paris court described his behaviour in prison as irreproachable and said in November that he posed 'no serious risk in terms of committing new terrorism acts'. The appeals court cited the length of Abdallah's detention and his advanced age, calling his continued imprisonment 'disproportionate'. In France, inmates serving life sentences are typically released after less than 30 years. Abdallah's family said they would greet him at Beirut's airport before travelling to his hometown of Kobayat in northern Lebanon, where a reception has been planned.
Al Jazeera
4 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Israel is trying to hijack the Baloch struggle
As Israel loudly beat the drums of war one day before its unprovoked surprise attack on Iran, a small but significant piece of news slipped by almost unnoticed: The announcement of a new research project on the website of a Washington, DC think tank. On June 12, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) announced the launch of the Balochistan Studies Project (BSP). Significantly, in addition to mentioning Balochistan's abundance of natural resources 'such as oil, gas, uranium, copper, coal, rare earth elements and the two deep seaports of Gwadar and Chabahar', MEMRI's statement justifies the project's necessity by identifying the region as 'the perfect outpost to counter and keep under control Iran, its nuclear ambitions, and its dangerous relations with Pakistan, which may provide Tehran with tactical nukes'. MEMRI is well known for its selective translation of snippets of Arabic, Persian and Turkish-language media, screenshots from which often end up being shared as memes on social media platforms. Originally founded in 1998, the think tank has consistently peddled a pro-Israel agenda, with its founder, Colonel Yigal Carmon, having served in the Israeli Military Intelligence Corps for more than 20 years. Additionally, MEMRI has been involved 'unofficially' in intelligence gathering for the Israeli state since at least 2012. Given this context, MEMRI's creation of the BSP can be seen as an indication of an Israeli attempt to co-opt the Baloch national struggle against both Iran and Pakistan for Israel's geopolitical objectives. Given the strategic advantages that a successful co-optation of the Baloch cause would grant Israel, and the potential ramifications it would bear upon the resistance of stateless peoples within the region, including Palestinians as well as the Baloch, themselves, there is a need to examine the limitations of geopolitical thinking within national liberation movements. MEMRI's announcement of the BSP is riddled with logical inconsistencies and misinformation regarding the reality of exploitation and resistance in Balochistan. For example, centring the fact that the states of both Iran and Pakistan are currently fighting counterinsurgency campaigns in Balochistan, MEMRI's website calls for 'the international community' to 'understand that Balochistan is a natural ally of the West' – ignoring the fact that Western companies such as Barrick Gold and BHP Billiton have played key roles in enabling colonial resource extraction and ecological destruction in the region. Another example relates to the personnel involved in the project. One article on the BSP on MEMRI's website welcomes a 'renowned Baloch writer, scholar, and political scientist' called Mir Yar Baloch, whose X account 'has been defined as one of the most influential in the Subcontinent', as a 'special adviser'. In May of this year, Baloch made headlines for unilaterally declaring the independence of Balochistan in a series of posts on X, where he also announced to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India had 'the backing of 60 million Baloch patriots' after it launched Operation Sindoor against Pakistan. More than for his grand proclamations, Mir Yar Baloch is interesting for the amount of mystery that surrounds him, given his supposed status as an important and influential Baloch intellectual. Despite being profiled by a variety of news outlets – notably all Indian – none have deviated from regurgitating a biography for him as limited as that published in the MEMRI article. Significantly, however, more well-known Baloch activists have been quick to distance themselves from him. Niaz Baloch of the Baloch National Movement, for example, posted on X that there exists no consensus for a declaration of independence among Baloch leaders. Crucially, he also listed four 'fake accounts', including that of Mir Yar Baloch, that he stated 'should be reported and unfollowed immediately'. Baloch activists therefore speculate that Mir Yar Baloch is a fake persona created by a state with interests in the region to support its objectives. Balochistan is a region that spans the border between Iran and Pakistan, where both states are engaged in counterinsurgency campaigns that often spur tensions between them. Each has accused the other of fostering instability by sheltering militant groups across the frontier. Crucially, many Baloch people on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border view themselves as marginalised and systematically oppressed by the states that govern them. In this context, an Israeli overture towards supporting the Baloch cause opens the door to new avenues of entrenching Israeli influence in the wider West Asia region. Beyond Israel's infiltration of the Iranian state and security apparatus, demonstrated to devastating effect by the events of June 13, declaring overt support for the Baloch cause allows Israel to build relationships with secessionist groups in regions where Iranian and Pakistani political legitimacy is limited. Taking into account Israel's objective of containing and crushing Palestinian resistance, support for such groups also creates conditions that enable Israel to actively undermine efforts at transnational solidarity-building between Palestinians and other stateless populations, such as the Baloch. Any Israeli gesture towards Balochistan would also be scaffolded by Israel's strategic partnership with India, which has long positioned itself as a key supporter of the Baloch cause – a position that has notably undermined attempts at solidarity-building between the Baloch and stateless peoples forced to live under Indian rule, such as Kashmiris. In a substantive sense, it is notable that Mir Yar Baloch, who has tweeted in support of Israel and India, owes his public profile almost entirely to the Indian media. Furthermore, his messaging is overwhelmingly directed at Indian audiences. The BSP thus represents a case of India and Israel's strategic partnership manifesting in a projection of both Israeli and Indian cross-regional influence. I do not deny the relevance of geopolitics in strategising and building capacity for resistance, but elevating it to top priority can be harmful. A 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' approach risks undermining principled long-term alliances. History offers a warning: The Palestine Liberation Organisation's (PLO) alliance with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a relationship described by Sadiq al-Azm as 'unprincipled', alienated Kurds and indirectly facilitated the development of relatively warm relations between Israel and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq. More recently, Iran's crackdown on Kurdish – and to a lesser extent Baloch – groups following its war with Israel cited fears of their possible collaboration with Israel as a pretext. A post-geopolitical approach to foreign policy formulation among stateless groups, therefore, would necessarily take into account the factory defect of nation-states: their necessary prioritisation of survival and the maintenance of a constellation of privileges and interests over a substantive struggle towards justice. In this context, a principled anticolonial inter- and transnationalism that looks beyond geopolitics does not represent a utopian ideal detached from the practicalities of struggle. Instead, it represents a form of long-term pragmatism in and of itself that pushes against the short-termist gains of privileging geopolitics above principles. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
Al Jazeera
6 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Iran is meeting European powers amid threats of renewed nuclear sanctions
Iranian diplomats are meeting their counterparts from Germany, the United Kingdom and France for renewed nuclear talks, amid warnings that the three European powers could trigger 'snapback' United Nations sanctions outlined under a previous 2015 deal. The meeting, which is underway in Turkiye's Istanbul on Friday morning, will be the first since Israel's mid-June attack on Iran, which led to an intensive 12-day conflict with the United States militarily intervening on Israel's behalf also attacking key Iranian nuclear sites. Israel's offensive – which killed top commanders, nuclear scientists and hundreds of civilians as residential areas were struck as well – also derailed US-Iran nuclear talks that began in April. Iran said on Friday that the meeting is an opportunity for with the so-called E3 group of Germany, UK and France, to correct their positions on Iran's nuclear issue. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said in an interview with state news agency IRNA that Iran considers the talk of extending UN Security Council Resolution 2231 to be doubly 'meaningless and baseless'. The resolution, which cemented the 2015 deal Iran reached with world powers under which it curbed enrichment in return for much-needed sanctions relief, is due to expire in October. It enshrines the big powers' prerogative to to restore UN sanctions. Since then, the E3, have threatened to trigger the 'snapback mechanism', which would reinstate the sanctions on Iran by the end of August, under the effectively moribund 2015 nuclear deal which United States President Donald Trump unilaterally torpedoed in 2018 during his first term. The option to trigger the snapback expires in October, and Tehran has warned of consequences should the E3 opt to activate it. Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, who is attending the talks Friday, alongside senior Iranian diplomat Majid Takht-Ravanchi, warned this week that triggering sanctions 'is completely illegal'. He also accused European powers of 'halting their commitments' to the deal after the US withdrew from it. 'We have warned them of the risks, but we are still seeking common ground to manage the situation,' said Gharibabadi. Warning from Tehran Iranian diplomats have previously warned that Tehran could withdraw from the global nuclear non-proliferation treaty if UN sanctions are reimposed. Restoring sanctions would deepen Iran's international isolation and place further pressure on its already strained economy. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has urged European powers to trigger the mechanism. Israel's June 13 attack on Iran came two days before Tehran and Washington were scheduled to meet for a sixth round of nuclear negotiations. On June 22, the US istruck Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordo, Isfahan, and Natanz. Before the conflict, Washington and Tehran were divided over uranium enrichment, which Iran has described as a 'non-negotiable' right for civilian purposes, while the US called it a 'red line'. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says Iran is enriching uranium to 60 percent purity – far above the 3.67 percent cap under the 2015 deal, which is well below the 90 percent needed for weapons-grade levels. Tehran has said it is open to discussing the rate and level of enrichment, but not the right to enrich uranium. A year after the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, Iran reportedly began rolling back its commitments, which had placed restrictions on its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. Israel and Western powers accuse Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons – a charge Tehran has consistently denied. Both US intelligence and the IAEA said they had seen no evidence of Iran pursuin a nuclear weapon in the build up to the June conflict. Enrichment is 'stopped' Iran insists it will not abandon its nuclear programme, which Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called a source of 'national pride'. The full extent of the damage sustained in the US bombing remains unclear. Trump has claimed the sites were 'completely destroyed', but US media reports have cast doubt over the scale of destruction. Araghchi has noted that enrichment is currently 'stopped' due to 'serious and severe' damage to nuclear sites caused by US and Israeli strikes. In an interview with Al Jazeera that aired on Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran is prepared for another war and reiterated that its nuclear programme will continue within the framework of international law while adding the country had no intention of pursuing nuclear weapons. Since the 12-day conflict, Iran has suspended cooperation with the IAEA, accusing it of bias and failing to condemn the attacks. Inspectors have since left the country, but a technical team is expected to return in the coming weeks after Iran said future cooperation would take a 'new form'. Israel has warned it may resume strikes if Iran rebuilds facilities or moves towards weapons capability. Iran has pledged a 'harsh response' to any future attacks.
