Latest news with #Zionist-Palestinian
Kuwait Times
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Kuwait Times
Zionists bulldozing West Bank camps to thwart right of return
TULKAREM: In the West Bank city of Tulkarem, the landscape has been transformed after Zionist army bulldozers ploughed through its two refugee camps in what the military called a hunt for Palestinian fighters. The army gave thousands of displaced residents just a few hours to retrieve belongings from their homes before demolishing buildings and clearing wide avenues through the rubble. Now residents fear the clearances will erase not just buildings, but their own status as refugees from lands inhabited by generations of their ancestors in what is now the Zionist entity. The 'right of return' to those lands, claimed by Palestinian refugees ever since the creation of the Zionist entity in 1948, remains one of the thorniest issues of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict. The army said it would demolish 104 more buildings in the Tulkarem camp this week in the latest stage of an operation that it launched in January during a truce in the Gaza war, billing it as an intensive crackdown on several camps that are strongholds of Palestinian armed groups fighting against the Zionist entity. 'We came back to the camp and found our house demolished. No one informed us, no one told us anything,' said Abd al-Rahman Ajaj, 62, who had been hoping to collect his belongings on Wednesday. Born in Tulkarem camp after his parents fled what is now the Zionist city of Netanya, about 12 km to the west, Ajaj said he had not foreseen the scale of the Zionist operation. It began with a raid on the northern West Bank city of Jenin, a longtime stronghold of Palestinian militants, and quickly spread to other cities, including Tulkarem, displacing at least 40,000 people, according to UN figures. Vacating the camp after a warning of a raid, 'we would usually come back two or three days later', Ajaj told AFP. Now left without a house, he echoed the sentiments of Palestinians of his parents' generation, who thought their own displacement in 1948 would also be temporary. 'The last time, we left and never returned,' he said. In Tulkarem, the Zionist army's bulldozers ploughed through the dense patchwork of narrow alleyways that had grown as Palestinian refugees settled in the area over the years. Three wide arteries of concrete now streak the side of Tulkarem camp, allowing easy access for the army. Piles of cinder blocks and concrete line the roadside like snowbanks after a plough's passage. Ajaj said the destruction had been gradual, drawn out over the course of the operation, which the army has dubbed 'Iron Wall'. Beyond the military value of wide access roads, many residents believe the Zionist entity is seeking to destroy the idea of the camps themselves, turning them into regular neighborhoods of the cities they flank. Residents fear this would threaten their refugee status and their 'right of return' to the land they or their forebears fled or were expelled from in 1948. The current Israeli government — and particularly some of its far-right ministers, who demand the outright annexation of the West Bank — are firmly opposed to this demand, which they see as a demographic threat to the Zionist entity's survival as a Jewish state. 'The aim is clearly to erase the national symbolism of the refugee camp, to eliminate the refugee issue and the right of return,' said Suleiman Al-Zuheiri, an advocate for residents of nearby Nur Shams, Tulkarem's other refugee camp, where he also lives. Zuheiri's brother's house was destroyed last week by the bulldozers. 'The scene was painful and tragic because a house is not just walls and a roof. It holds memories, dreams, hopes and very important belongings that we couldn't retrieve,' he said. Each demolished building housed at least six families on three floors, he added. The land allocated to the camps was limited, so residents have had little choice but to build upwards to gain space, adding an extra storey with each new generation. Back at Tulkarem camp, 66-year-old Omar Owfi said he had managed to make two trips into the camp now occupied by Israeli soldiers to retrieve belongings on Wednesday. He feared becoming homeless if his home was demolished. 'They don't care what the house is worth. All they care about is demolishing. We're the ones losing. We've lost everything,' he told AFP. 'They want to erase the camp — to remove as many buildings as possible and leave just streets.' He said he feared for his children and grandchildren, as they dispersed to live with various relatives. The Zionist supreme court froze the military order for mass demolitions in Tulkarem camp on Thursday, giving the state two months to answer a petition against them, said the Palestinian human rights group Adalah, which filed it. But the physical damage has already been done as the army's manhunt for militants continues. As residents retrieved mattresses, wardrobes and air conditioning units from the camp on Wednesday under the surveillance of Israeli troops, gunshots rang out through the streets. A loud explosion echoed across the city, followed by a column of dust rising as another building was apparently blown up, sending the smell of gunpowder wafting in the wind. – AFP
Kuwait Times
25-06-2025
- Business
- Kuwait Times
China helpless as Mideast war craters regional leverage
BEIJING: China has been able to do little more than stand back and watch as war between its key partner Iran and Zionist entity harms its hard-fought leverage in the Middle East, analysts say. Beijing has sought to frame itself as a mediator in the region, facilitating a 2023 rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran and portraying itself as a more neutral actor in the Zionist-Palestinian conflict than its rival the United States. And its position as the largest purchaser of Iranian oil has served as a crucial lifeline for Tehran as its economy is battered by crippling international sanctions. But as Zionist entity and Iran engaged in an unprecedented exchange of attacks and the United States struck key targets on Iranian soil in the past week, Beijing has offered little beyond calls for de-escalation. 'Beijing has offered Tehran no real help — just rhetoric that paints China as the principled alternative while it stays safely on the sidelines,' Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, told AFP. China, he said, 'sticks to rhetoric — condemnations, UN statements, talk of 'dialogue' — because over-promising and under-delivering would spotlight its power-projection limits'. 'The result is a conspicuously thin response that underscores how little real heft China brings to Iran when the shooting starts.' 'Strategic' friendship China — alongside its 'no limits' partner Russia — has long been a key backer of Iran, deepening ties in the wake of the United States' withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal in 2018. President Xi Jinping described relations as 'strategic' in a 2023 meeting with Iran's then-president Ebrahim Raisi, and backed Tehran in its fight against 'bullying'. Liu Qiang, a retired Chinese Senior Colonel, was even more explicit in an article on the academic website Aisixiang this month. 'Iran's survival is a matter of China's national security,' said the director of the Academic Committee of the Shanghai International Center for Strategic Studies. Beijing, he insisted, must take 'proactive measures' in light of the recent war to ensure that Tehran 'will not be broken by the military conflict' or 'jointly strangled by the US and Zionist entity'. Analysts say Beijing's ties with Tehran are central to its efforts to ensure a regional counterbalance against both the United States and Zionist entity as well as the Gulf States. 'Iran fits into Beijing's broader campaign to counterbalance US-led hegemony and to a lesser extent NATO encroachment,' Tuvia Gering, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub, told AFP. Those efforts have gone into overdrive following blows to other 'Axis of resistance' players since the start of the Gaza war — the collapse of Bashar Al-Assad's rule in Syria and the degradation of Hamas and Hezbollah in fighting with Zionist entity. 'Beijing has sought to prevent a total unravelling of Iran's regional role,' Gering said, pointing to Chinese efforts to resurrect the nuclear deal. China has condemned recent US strikes on Iran and called for parties in the region, 'especially (Zionist entity)', to de-escalate. And it has called for a political solution to help a declared ceasefire hold. Fighting last month between India and Pakistan saw Beijing furnish its long-time allies in Islamabad with state-of-the-art military gear. Analysts don't expect China to extend the same courtesy to its comrades in Tehran, given the risk of direct confrontation with the United States. 'Iran needs more than statements at the UN or missile components,' Andrea Ghiselli, a lecturer at the University of Exeter, told AFP. 'It needs air defenses and fighter jets, which are things that China could provide but would require much time to be put into use—not to mention the likely extremely negative reaction by Zionist entity and, especially now that is directly involved, the US,' he added. The United States has urged China to use its influence on Iran to help deter its leaders from shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, a vital route for oil and gas. But Ahmed Aboudouh, an associate fellow with the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa Program, was skeptical that Beijing has the leverage. 'China's position in the Middle East after this conflict' has been badly affected, he told AFP. 'Everybody in the Middle East understands that China has little leverage, if any, to play any role in de-escalation.'— AFP
Saba Yemen
19-02-2025
- Politics
- Saba Yemen
China Renews Strong Support for Two-State Solution
Beijing - (Saba): The People's Republic of China renewed its strong support for the two-state solution as the only realistic path to end the Zionist-Palestinian conflict. The New China News Agency (Xinhua) quoted today, Wednesday, the Chinese Ambassador to Egypt and the Arab League Liao Liqiang, calling in a speech he delivered at the fourth meeting of the Global Alliance for the Two-State Solution, held in Cairo, for the international community to work vigorously to fully implement the ceasefire agreement. He also expressed his deep concern over the situation in the Gaza Strip.
