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Cairo Plans to Rebuild Gaza Without Displacing Palestinians

CrossFireArabia
February 2, 2025

Egypt said Sunday that it has a “clear vision” regarding the reconstruction of the war-torn Gaza Strip without displacing Palestinians from the territory.

“The Egyptian efforts regarding Gaza are ongoing and will not stop with regard to implementing the specific requirements of the ceasefire agreement in its three stages,” Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty told a news conference in Cairo with his Djiboutian counterpart Mahamoud Ali Youssouf.

“We have a clear vision for rebuilding the Gaza Strip without any citizen leaving his land,” he added.

Trump suggested last weekend that Palestinians in Gaza should be relocated to Egypt and Jordan, calling the enclave a “demolition site” after Israel’s war. His proposal, however, was vehemently rejected by Cairo and Amman.

A six-nation Arab ministerial meeting in Cairo on Saturday firmly rejected Palestinian displacement from Gaza and renewed calls for implementing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump’s proposal came after a ceasefire agreement took effect in Gaza on Jan. 19, suspending Israel’s genocidal war that has killed nearly 47,500 people, most of them women and children, and injured over 111,000 since Oct. 7, 2023.

Red Sea

The top Egyptian diplomat said there is no justification for military escalation in the Red Sea after the Gaza ceasefire.

“We stress the need to enhance the security of the Red Sea and freedom of maritime navigation, and we reject any military presence of any country that does not border the Red Sea,” he added.

Tension has begun to ease in the Red Sea after the Gaza ceasefire deal. During the Gaza war, Yemen’s Houthi group carried out drone and missile attacks on Israeli cargo ships or ones linked with Tel Aviv in the Red Sea in a show of support for the Palestinian enclave.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met early Sunday with the Djiboutian foreign minister to discuss bilateral cooperation and the latest developments in Somalia and the Red Sea region, the presidency said in a statement.

Tension escalated between Ethiopia and Somalia originated in January 2024, when Addis Ababa signed an agreement with Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland to use the Red Sea port of Berbera. Since then, Türkiye has actively mediated to ease tensions between the two nations.

Egypt and Ethiopia are already locked in a decade-long dispute over the construction of a dam project on the Nile River, which Cairo fears will drastically reduce its share from the Nile water. Ethiopia says that the dam is vital for its development process according to Anadolu.

Features

Survivors Speak of a Massacre Long Forgotten in Syria

CrossFireArabia
February 2, 2025

Forty-three years ago, Syria’s former Baath regime carried out one of the country’s deadliest atrocities — the 1982 Hama Massacre — killing tens of thousands and leaving thousands more missing.

The Baath regime, which seized power in a 1963 coup and was overthrown in December 2024, launched its bloodiest crackdown in Hama, a city known for its conservative society and opposition to the government.

In late January 1982, forces loyal to then-President Hafez al-Assad laid siege on the city under the pretext of suppressing an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood group.

The attack was led by the Defense Brigades, commanded by Rifaat al-Assad, alongside Special Forces, Conflict Brigades, the 21st Airborne Regiment, and various security and paramilitary units — amounting to at least 20,000 troops.

Tanks and artillery surrounded Hama as the assault began on Feb. 2 with airstrikes, followed by heavy shelling. Water, electricity, and communications were cut off. Regime forces engaged in mass executions, looting, and sexual violence. Young men above 15 were abducted and separated from their families.

At least 40,000 killed, 17,000 missing

According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), at least 40,000 civilians were killed, either in the bombardment or executed by regime forces.

At least 17,000 people were abducted from their homes and never seen again. Families suspect they were sent to Tadmor Prison in Homs, where they were later executed.

SNHR data shows entire neighborhoods — including al-Sahhane, al-Kaylaniyya, al-Asida, al-Shimaliyya, al-Zenbakiya, and Bayn Hayrin — were completely destroyed. Others, such as al-Barudiyya, al-Bashuriyya, al-Amiriyya, and Manah, suffered up to 80% destruction.

One-third of Hama’s city center was leveled. Historical sites, especially in Kaylaniyya, were severely damaged. Eighty-eight mosques and three churches were either destroyed or heavily damaged.

After the massacre, the Baath regime built a party headquarters and a five-star hotel on the ruins of Kaylaniyya.

Detention, torture, and mass graves

Eyewitnesses reported that mosques, schools, and factories were turned into detention and torture centers. Identified sites include the Omar ibn Khattab Mosque, an industrial high school, a porcelain factory on the Homs road, and a cotton processing plant. Thousands were executed or tortured at these locations.

Families were denied access to the bodies of their loved ones. To this day, the burial sites of thousands remain unknown.

For decades, the Baath regime forbade any mention of the massacre. But after 61 years of Baath rule ended in December 2024, Hama residents spoke openly for the first time about the events that shaped decades of fear under the Assad family’s rule.

Survivors recall horror

Muhammad Shaqeeq, an activist documenting the massacre, described how regime forces seized Hama Castle, a fortress towering 125 meters (410 feet) high, and used it to bombard residential areas.

He recalled seeking shelter in a basement with women and children.

“During the second week of the massacre, soldiers came and took all the men,” he said. “I remember one of them, Abdullatif Susa. He was injured after a wall collapsed on him. Soldiers hit his wounded leg.”

He also described walking through streets filled with corpses.

“The water was nearly up to my knees,” he said. “I was a child, and my boots filled with a mixture of water and blood.”

He said the streets were covered with bodies, adding: “We walked nearly 300 meters over corpses.”

Shaqeeq recalled how a rocket attack trapped them under rubble before they managed to escape.

His family fled to Soran, a town roughly 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) to the north, and when they returned to Hama, they found the city destroyed.

Hind Shaqaki, 22 at the time, witnessed regime brutality in al-Bashuriyya.

“The soldiers called us out and lined us up against the wall,” she said. “They told us, ‘We are going to shoot you.’ We pleaded, saying, ‘We are women’.”

The soldiers separated the men from the women.

“We were kept in the basement for a month,” she said. “The men were taken away. None of them ever came back.”

Her home was later hit by a tank shell.

She and 35 others spent 25 days in a basement under dire conditions.

“We heard the bombardments but didn’t know what was happening,” she said. “It was a basement with no windows or doors. We were afraid to move.”

End of Baath regime

With the fall of the Assad regime, survivors now openly demand justice for those killed and missing in the massacre.

After anti-regime groups took full control of Damascus on Dec. 8, 2024, following victories in multiple cities, they established reconciliation centers for former regime members to surrender. However, some refused, leading to clashes across various provinces.

The Baath Party’s 61-year rule — and the Assad family’s 53-year grip on power — officially ended with the opposition’s takeover of Syria’s capital according to Anadolu.

Features

Profile: Meet ‘Prince of Shadows’ Abdullah Barghouti

CrossFireArabia
January 26, 2025

Nicknamed “the Prince of Shadows” Abdullah Barghouti is the Palestinian political prisoner with the most number of life sentences ever given to a single detainee.

A former leader of the Hamas’ al-Qassam brigade’s armed wing, in the West Bank, he now appears to be on the verge of release in the Hamas-Israel prisoner exchange.

Born in Kuwait in 1972, Abdullah Barghouti grew up outside of occupied Palestine, despite his family having originated from the village of Beit Rima, located near Ramallah. Barghouti attended school, up until high school in Kuwait.

Upon the eruption of the first Intifada in the occupied Palestinian territories, in 1987, Barghouti recounted in his memoir that the uprising had inspired him to seek revenge against the occupiers, especially after Israeli forces murdered one of his cousins and youngest uncle. “Simply put, they threw stones at the Zionist occupation forces that were wreaking havoc, so they were shot and martyred” he stated.

During the first Gulf War (1990-1991), Abdullah Barghouti was reportedly arrested for around a month after being accused of participating in the fight against US forces, later being released after the war. Prior to this, Barghouti had decided to pursue the combat sport of Judo and was trained by a man named Munir Samik who was also Palestinian.

Samik once asked Barghouti: “Aren’t you Palestinian? Don’t you want to liberate your country? If you use it against all those who occupied your homeland, there in Palestine, use what you learned here.” Inspired to make himself physically strong and capable of fighting Israel, he then began training in the use of firearms and explosives in the Kuwaiti desert. During the war, Barghouti’s family was forced to flee to Jordan.

When he traveled to live in Amman, Jordan, he would finish high school there but due to his family being too poor to afford University, so he would borrow money from a relative in order to open up a mechanic shop, continuing to practice Judo as a hobby. However, he wasn’t able to earn enough money to keep his business afloat and pay back his relatives and decided to move abroad in order to pursue higher education instead.

A friend of Barghouti had recommended he apply for a visa program to travel to South Korea, which ended up leading him there in pursuit of an education. When he arrived, he had no money and little but the clothes on his back.

Barghouti walked from the airport to a location that was supposed to help him secure an education; his journey would take three days during which he went without eating. He recalled that he drank water from public parks until reaching the address he had been given, finding out that it was a wood-cutting factory.

So, without any money or prospects, he ended up working at the factory for 45 days without having money to buy food, eating only from what the factory would supply him.

In 1991, after a few months in the wood-cutting factory, he moved to work in a mechanical factory and studied in parallel with his work at an engineering institute, specializing in electromechanics. This was also the time during which he would meet his wife, who was of Korean origin.

However, his passion for seeking the liberation of Palestine through armed struggle would not perish while he lived in South Korea, as he would routinely go deep into the forest and practice making improvised explosive devices and refining his craft. In 1998 he would then return to Amman with his wife, before deciding to divorce her due to his desire to have children.

Around this time he started becoming more religious, moved to Jerusalem and then the West Bank, married a Palestinian wife, and settled down in his family’s village of Beit Rima. He later had two daughters, Safaa and Tala, and a son called Osama.

It just so happened that in 2001, Beit Rima would be the first area in the West Bank that would experience a full-scale military invasion during the Second Intifada. Israeli forces deployed tanks, attack helicopters, and a huge military force to the village.

Abdullah Barghouti joined the Qassam Brigades in 2001, seeking out his cousin Bilal Barghouti in order to share his expertise in bomb-making.

After his cousin, who is currently serving 16 life sentences in Israeli military prison, witnessed how skilled he was at engineering explosives, he told his superiors in the Hamas military wing and Abdullah Barghouti would begin military training in the Nablus area, going on to become a commander of the Qassam Brigades in the West Bank.

This entire time, almost nobody close to him knew of his secret ambition to seek revenge against Israel and his bomb-making skills. He would later go on to participate in the manufacturing of explosives that killed 66 Israelis and injured over 500.

When he was eventually tracked down in 2003 and arrested by the Israeli occupation forces, he was interrogated and tortured for over five months, before being handed 67 life sentences, amounting to 5,200 years in prison. In later interviews recorded with Barghouti from inside an Israeli prison, he would confidently state that one day interviewers would come to meet him while he sits inside a hot tub in Ramallah.

If he is to be released during the upcoming Hamas-Israel prisoner exchange, it is likely that Israel will request his deportation outside of occupied Palestine. It is speculated that Barghouti could be useful to Hamas in developing its influence in the armed struggle inside the West Bank, which is currently dominated by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Fatah-aligned fighters.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

Features

After 39 Years Israel Frees ‘Dean of Palestinian Prisoners’

CrossFireArabia
January 25, 2025

After 39 years of mistreatment and retaliation in Israeli jails, Mohammed Al-Tous, the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner, was released on Saturday as part of the second batch under phase one of the Jan. 19 ceasefire agreement and prisoner exchange deal.

Al-Tous, nicknamed the “dean of Palestinian Prisoners,” hails from the village of Jab’a in Bethlehem, in the southern occupied West Bank. He has spent 39 years in Israeli prisons since his arrest in 1985.

Who is the dean of Palestinian Prisoners?

Mohammed Ahmed Abdul-Hamid Al-Tous, 69, is the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israeli detention. He was arrested in October 1985 and sentenced to life in prison for leading a group in carrying out military operations against Israeli military targets. He sustained severe injuries during his arrest.

Over the years, Al-Tous endured various forms of mistreatment and retaliation. In addition to the serious injuries he suffered during his arrest from Israeli gunfire and enduring lengthy and harsh interrogations, the Israeli forces demolished his family home three times.

Israel repeatedly refused to release Al-Tous in all prisoner exchange deals and release initiatives during his incarceration, including a group of veteran prisoners in 2014, in which he was listed, but Israel refused to release.

JUST IN: Muhammad Al-Tous had been released!

He was arrested when he was a child and had been detained for 40 years continuously.

He is the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner and spent 39 years in Israeli prisons.

He will be extradited to Egypt pic.twitter.com/Hs11sj7ljA
— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) January 25, 2025

A year later, his wife’s health deteriorated, and she fell into a coma for a full year before passing away in 2015, without Al-Tous being able to bid her farewell.

Al-Tous is among the veteran prisoners detained before the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords, a group that now numbers 21 prisoners following last year’s death of Walid Daqqa.

This group is joined by 11 re-arrested prisoners from the Gilad Shalit exchange deal of 2011, who had been imprisoned before the Oslo Accords, released in 2011, and then re-arrested in 2014, most notably Nael Barghouthi.

Prisoner exchange

Palestinian resistance group Hamas earlier Saturday handed over four female Israeli soldiers under a Gaza ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement with Israel.

Some 200 Palestinian prisoners were also released on Saturday in exchange for the four freed Israeli soldiers.

Television footage showed the arrival of 114 prisoners to the West Bank city of Ramallah from the Ofer Military Prison aboard three International Red Cross buses.

Sixteen prisoners, accompanied by Red Cross representatives, also arrived at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, to the warm welcome of thousands.

Egypt’s state-affiliated Al-Qahera News channel also reported that two buses carrying 70 freed Palestinian prisoners arrived in Egypt under the Gaza ceasefire agreement.

The Prisoners’ Media Office said early Saturday that the freed prisoners include 121 who had been serving life sentences and 79 with lengthy sentences.

It added that 70 of those serving life sentences will be sent outside the Palestinian territories.

Under phase one of the Gaza ceasefire, Israel is now set to withdraw from the Netzarim Corridor area that separates northern Gaza from its south, allowing displaced Palestinians to return to northern Gaza.

Ceasefire seeking permanent truce

The first six-week phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement took effect on Jan. 19, suspending Israel’s genocidal war that has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured more than 111,000 since Oct. 7, 2023.

On day one of the ceasefire, Israel released 90 Palestinian detainees in return for three Israeli captives set free by Hamas.

The three-phase ceasefire agreement includes a prisoner exchange and sustained calm, aiming for a permanent truce and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza according to Anadolu.

The Israeli onslaught has left more than 11,000 people missing, with widespread destruction and a humanitarian crisis that has claimed the lives of untold numbers of elderly people, women, and children.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.

Features

EuroMed Urges ‘Outside’ Forensic Experts to Identify Mass Body Victims

CrossFireArabia
January 22, 2025

The international community must put genuine pressure on Israel to promptly guarantee the unconditional entry of technical teams, forensic specialists, and criminal investigators into the Gaza Strip, along with the required tools. This will help Palestinians in the Strip recover the bodies of victims from beneath debris and in areas where Israeli forces invaded, identify the victims, and provide information about the whereabouts of those who have not been found.

These actions are essential, not only to safeguard families’ rights to know the fate of their loved ones and to bury those who have been killed with dignity and respect, but to ensure accountability for the perpetrators of the genocide that Israel has committed in the Gaza Strip for the past 15 months.

Decomposed

Through urgent field visits during the first few days of the ceasefire, Euro-Med Monitor field teams have documented vast numbers of Palestinian bodies killed by Israeli shelling over the past few months, many of which have almost completely decomposed.

The bodies of 79 people, including 21 unidentified individuals, were recovered in the Rafah neighborhoods by ambulance and civil defense crews following the withdrawal of Israeli army forces.

The Euro-Med Monitor field team was able to inspect areas of incursion in both Rafah and the northern Gaza Strip, and found the severely decomposed remains of multiple additional victims, of whose skulls and a few bones were all that was left.

The international community must put genuine pressure on Israel to promptly guarantee the unconditional entry of technical teams, forensic specialists, and criminal investigators into the #Gaza Strip, along with the required toolshttps://t.co/vZAEObPreW
— Euro-Med Monitor (@EuroMedHR) January 20, 2025

In order to help local rescue teams recover victims from beneath the massive and intricate debris, it is imperative that specialised equipment and technical crews be brought in. It should be noted that the current rescue teams are using antiquated and inadequate tools, which makes it more difficult for them to carry out their mission effectively, and adds to the suffering of families who are waiting to find out what happened to their loved ones.

The situation could worsen, and the number of victims could rise, if this equipment is not provided right away.

Forensic specialists

Expert teams of criminal investigators and forensic medicine specialists are urgently needed to identify victims, particularly hard-to-identify decomposed bodies. According to preliminary estimates, over 11,000 people are missing, including many individuals who are presumed by their families to have been killed in areas of Israeli military incursion and/or who remain trapped under the rubble following bombings, as well as others who were forcibly disappeared in Israeli occupation prisons. This doubles the suffering of families and highlights the urgent need for international assistance to save remaining survivors and find out what happened to the missing.

Given the potential for heightened suffering if swift action is not taken, this crisis necessitates immediate international intervention. Many of the decomposing bodies found likely belong to individuals who were forcibly disappeared by the Israeli military months ago, underscoring the urgent need for legal proceedings pertaining to the investigation of the missing people’s fate, particularly those who vanished due to the extensive military operations or were detained by the Israeli occupation forces.

Israeli crimes

In addition to strengthening international accountability efforts against the Israeli crimes committed in the Gaza Strip, the presence of specialized forensic teams will help to ensure the preservation of crucial evidence needed to hold those responsible for these violations accountable. To prevent the loss of such evidence or deception in investigations, it is necessary to provide a way to document the condition of victims’ bodies in accordance with human rights standards.

The large number of victims and the fact that Israeli army forces remain heavily deployed in the eastern and northern outskirts of the Gaza Strip, as well as in the Netzarim axis area, south of Gaza City, make it difficult for rescue teams to do their jobs well. To thoroughly investigate the grave crimes Israel has committed against Palestinians in the Strip, it is crucial to make it easier for rescue teams to reach the aforementioned areas, recover victims, and determine the causes of death and potential means of killing.

Given that video footage has shown Israeli bulldozers burying Palestinians after they have been killed—as was the case in the Wadi Gaza Bridge area, south of Gaza City—pressure must be placed on Israel to disclose the locations or potential locations of any mass graves or burial sites of the Palestinian dead, so that the bodies can be exhumed and identified.

Mass graves

Any suspected mass grave sites must be thoroughly investigated, and the appropriate precautions must be taken to safeguard them and prevent tampering. International experts should oversee the exhumation of bodies and victim identification process in compliance with internationally recognised protocols, making sure that victim dignity and family rights are upheld throughout these operations. Additionally, these offences need to be recorded as proof in order to aid in the prosecution of the perpetrators.

It is crucial to speed up the recovery of the deceased people’s bodies in order to begin separating the victims who are confirmed dead or alive from those still missing and to enable families to bury their loved ones’ remains in a dignified manner and in accordance with their religious beliefs, as well as to determine the number of people who may have been forcibly disappeared in Israeli prisons or camps and pressure Israel to disclose their fate.

In the case of detainment, it is also important to ensure that families’ contact with their living loved ones is restored and that they are reunited as soon as possible, to relieve the significant psychological and social strain that people and their families endure due to these extended separations. Euro-Med Monitor emphasizes that family reunification is not just a humanitarian issue, but a fundamental legal right that must be upheld without delay.

To achieve justice and accountability, accurately recording each step of this process is crucial. This will guarantee that the required evidence will be available for use in future court cases or legal investigations.

The international community must also act quickly and decisively to guarantee justice and accountability for the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor stresses that this includes establishing and sending specialised teams and investigation committees to the Strip to address these crimes.

Teams from the International Criminal Court, specifically, should be sent to the Gaza Strip immediately in order to ensure independent and thorough investigations; gather and preserve evidence; hear directly from victims and witnesses; establish a permanent office in the Strip to carry out their duties as effectively as possible, expedite their processes, and broaden the scope of their investigations to include the crime of genocide; plus issue arrest warrants for all those involved in these crimes, in order to ensure accountability and bring them to justice.

EuroMed Human Rights Monitor