Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An unassuming bookshop sits at its centre of the bustle and chatter of Salah ed-Din Street in East Jerusalem, with its contents exclusively dedicated to titles about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and its mission to bear witness to the very history it survives to explain. 

Established as a humble stationery shop, The Educational Bookshop has now expanded to include two more branches, including a book shop and café across the street, and a shop at the American Colony Hotel three blocks down the road.

Purchased by Ahmad Muna in 1984, the successful enterprise now spans three generations. 

When the First Intifada broke out in 1987 after 20 years of occupation, the streets of East Jerusalem were swept in revolution, and the political uprising attracted the interest of the outside world. Major news agencies established bureaus and United Nations agencies increased their presence. 

At this moment, Imad, Ahmad Muna’s son, saw an opportunity for the business. He looked to sell English books about the history of Palestine to the humanitarian workers, journalists and diplomats who were now flooding the city and eager to learn more. However, at that time, resources about the conflict were scarce. 

“They started to ask for materials, like books, and at that time I only had Arabic books, but, quickly, I thought I need to bring good material for these people, because first of all, business-wise there is demand for these types of books, and, secondly, we want to show our story. It is important,” Imad told The Jordan Times. “We are in a revolution, and that means the world has to know the history of the occupation.” 

Slowly, Arabic books on the shelves were replaced with English ones. 

Imad began by venturing to the Israeli side where he would look for the addresses of publishers to order copies for the bookshop. Then, through book fairs, publishers, authors and clients, he started to learn more about the prominent authors writing about this issue. 

Throughout the 39 years of the shop’s history, Imad can only recount a handful of times the Israeli government gave him issues on importing books as “they only have censorship on Arabic books”. 

While business was going steady, Imad was inspired by the European-style cafés he saw abroad. 

“It was my dream, at that time, to do it here in Jerusalem,” Imad said. 

However, just as the family thought of opening a new branch with a bookshop and café, the Second Intifada broke out in 2000. Due to the risk, the family waited until 2005 to open the doors of their second branch. 

As Imad’s business grew, so did his family. Today, his youngest brother Mahmud and son, Ahmed, serve as managers in both locations. 

However, the next generation will have to succeed in a digital world where book, magazine and newspaper sales have dramatically decreased over the past decades. 

“Bookstores should not limit themselves in 2023 to just books,” Mahmoud said. “They should be masters of inner places and that way they reestablish their place in society as an important intellectual and cultural hub.” 

Finally, in 2014, through an agreement with the American Colony Hotel, it became home to the bookshop’s third location. Today, The Educational Bookshop’s stock list includes more than 1,400 titles and ships to customers worldwide. The majority of the books focus on history, politics, literature and historical fiction written by Palestinian, Israeli and international authors. 

“We have stuck to this collection and we have a challenge everyday that we continue to say that any book about Palestine you will find in this bookshop,” Ahmad, the bookshop manager, said. 

As the door swings open and closed with local and foreign customers stopping in for a coffee, browsing the book selection, or selecting souvenirs, business continues every day of the week. 

“We started as a business, but always in our minds, it is not only a business,” Imad said. “It is a business because it is feeding us, we live from it, but we are very happy to distribute information. We are an important source about Palestine and passing a message.” 

NABLUS, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces on Thursday shot dead a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials and a relative of the deceased said, as the army reported “counterterrorism activity” in the area.

Amir Ahmed Mohammed Khalifa, 27, was killed during a raid on Zawata, a town west of the city of Nablus, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement.

“He was shot in the head and back with two bullets fired by the Israeli occupation soldiers during their aggression on the town of Zawata,” it said.

The Israeli forces said a suspect had opened fire on troops early Thursday during “counterterrorism activity” in Nablus, in the northern West Bank.

“Soldiers responded with live fire and hits were identified,” the army said but did not specify whether it was same incident in which Khalifa was killed.

Khalifa, who lived in Ain Beit Ilma refugee camp near Nablus, was “wanted by Israeli forces for two years and had refused to surrender”, a family member, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told AFP.

Khalifa was a member of Al Aqsa Matryrs Brigades, said the militant group, which is linked to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fateh movement, in a statement on social media.

Posters calling him “a martyr, a hero” were distributed in Nablus by members of Fateh hours after his killing, witnesses told AFP.

Since early last year, deadly violence has rocked the northern West Bank, a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups where Israel has stepped up military raids often in crowded neighbourhoods.

The area has seen a spate of attacks on Israelis as well as attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinian communities.

They include, on the Palestinian side, combatants as well as civilians and, on the Israeli side, three members of the Arab minority.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.

Excluding occupied East Jerusalem, the territory is home to nearly 3 million Palestinians and around 490,000 Israelis who live in settlements considered illegal under international law.

RAQQA, Syria — Thousands of people displaced by 12 years of war are stuck in squalid, unofficial camps in Syria’s Kurdish-held northeast, languishing in extreme poverty and largely cut off from international assistance.

“We’ve been completely forgotten,” said Rahma Al Hammud, 33, standing at her tent — a shoddy patchwork of worn-out fabric, tarp and old fertiliser bags crudely sewn together.

“Our children get sick over and over again. They get fever, diarrhoea and vomiting,” said the widowed mother of four.

She lives in the Al Yunani camp in the northern province of Raqqa, where the Daesh group had set up its de facto capital before its defeat in 2017 by US-backed Kurdish-led fighters.

Located near the Euphrates River, it is one of many informal camps inside Syria for people displaced by the conflict.

Women can be seen carrying heavy buckets of water from communal tanks in heat that can exceed 40ºC, while children in filthy clothes and bare feet play in the dirt.

Sheikhmous Ahmed, an official in the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration, said tens of thousands of people live in dozens of informal camps in north and northeast Syria.

Only 16 camps, housing around 150,000 people, are formally recognised and have access to international aid, including Al Hol and Roj, which host suspected relatives of Daesh fighters, he said.

While living and hygiene conditions can be dire even in official displacement camps, the situation in informal settlements is sometimes worse, with no semblance of organisation and little or no humanitarian assistance.

Tanya Evans of the International Rescue Committee said such informal camps “can be considered the ‘forgotten camps’ of Syria”.

“Increased attention, funding, and sustained efforts by the international community are crucial” to ensuring such camps “receive the assistance they desperately need”, she told AFP in a statement.

Hammud, who is displaced from elsewhere in Raqqa province, said aid was “scarce” and that international organisations “do not recognise” the Al Yunani camp.

“Even if they helped us every two or three months, people would have” better lives, said Hammud, a day labourer in the agriculture sector.

Three of her children also work in an industrial area nearby to help make ends meet.

Syria’s war has killed more than half-a-million people and displaced millions since it broke out in 2011 with the regime’s repression of peaceful protests.

It spiralled into a deadly conflict that pulled in foreign powers and global terrorists.

‘Hell forever’ 

According to Sheikhmous Ahmed, Kurdish authorities are working “on a plan to transfer residents from informal to formal camps” in a bid to improve their living conditions.

If this were to come true it could improve the life of residents of Sahlat Al Banat, a makeshift camp which sits next to a landfill on the outskirts of Raqqa city.

Residents spend their days scavenging the rubbish tip for anything of value, such as scrap metal and bits of plastic, which they hope to sell. It is their main source of income.

“The situation in the camp is tragic,” said 30-year-old mother Shakura Mohammed, who was displaced from nearby Deir Ezzor province.

“People search through the rubbish for things they can sell in order to buy bread and earn a living,” she said.

“No aid comes to the camp,” she added.

According to a report by the United Nations humanitarian agency OCHA, 79 per cent of settlements in Raqqa province are informal.

A UN cross-border mechanism allowing aid to enter northeast Syria from neighbouring Iraq was halted in early 2020 after pressure from regime ally Russia at the UN Security Council, worsening conditions for those in need.

Umm Rakan, who lives at Sahlat Al Banat, said she had given up on the idea that things would improve.

“We no longer count on anyone’s help. We lost hope years ago,” said the woman in her 40s, who was also displaced from Deir Ezzor.

“We are destined to live trapped in this hell forever.”

CAIRO — The Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity on Wednesday warned it may suspend support to one of the last fully-functioning hospitals in war-torn Sudan if its workers are not given visas.

With only a quarter of the country’s healthcare facilities still open after nearly four months of war, the charity said it has been waiting “for more than eight weeks” for visas for its staff to be processed.

Other aid groups have also reported visa and other bureaucratic hurdles, and have sought urgent safe passage and access for their staff since the start of the conflict between army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

“Without visas being urgently granted by the Sudanese authorities, Medecins Sans Frontieres may soon be forced to withdraw our support to the Turkish Hospital in Khartoum,” it said.

“The visas of many of the staff currently running the hospital are close to expiring,” MSF said.

“As a result, MSF’s support to the ministry of health in the facility — which is one of the few hospitals in the whole of Khartoum that is providing round-the-clock care — will soon have to end.”

The war has decimated the country’s health infrastructure and killed more than 3,900 people, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

“The MSF team who are currently present inside the hospital have worked tirelessly with our partners in the Ministry of Health for more than two months to keep the facility open,” said Claire Nicolet, MSF’s emergency manager for Sudan.

Rising hunger 

The charity said it treated more than 3,800 patients, including over 200 children, in the Turkish Hospital between mid-June and the end of July.

Sudan was one of the world’s poorest countries even before the war erupted in mid-April and plunged it into further chaos and destitution.

The charity Save the Children on Tuesday warned the country is at risk of major disease outbreaks, with thousands of unburied corpses remaining out in the open and the country’s health and sanitation infrastructure destroyed.

MSF noted that visas can only be collected in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, which has been spared the fighting but is difficult to reach from battle-scarred areas like the capital and the western Darfur region.

The country’s rainy season began in June, adding to health challenges, and World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “more than 40 per cent of the population of Sudan is now in hunger — double the number since May last year”.

More than 4 million people have been internally displaced by the war or fled to neighbouring countries.

As they try to flee, “They are vulnerable to abuse, theft and harassment during their journeys to safer areas,” the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, said in a statement.

“The parties to the conflict in Sudan must ensure the safe passage of civilians fleeing violence,” she said.

CAIRO — War-torn Sudan is at risk of major disease outbreaks, with thousands of unburied corpses remaining out in the open and the country’s health and sanitation infrastructure destroyed, Save the Children warned on Tuesday.

Residents say Khartoum is littered with dead bodies from fighting between the forces of army chief Abdel Fattah Al Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

With thousands of corpses decomposing on the streets of the capital and morgues overflowing four months into the conflict, the London-based charity raised the alarm about “the risk of major disease outbreaks in the city”.

Sudan has seen repeated cholera outbreaks in recent years, and doctors have warned of a renewed threat as a result of the war.

“A horrifying combination of rising numbers of corpses, severe water shortages, non-functioning hygiene and sanitation services, and lack of water treatment options are also prompting fears of a cholera outbreak in the city,” Save the Children said.

Without a functioning public health laboratory for testing, the non-governmental organisation said it was difficult to assess whether Sudan was experiencing a cholera outbreak.

The conflict which erupted on April 15 has prevented victims and families from reaching hospitals, 80 per cent of which the World Health Organisation says are out of service.

In addition, “prolonged power shortages have left the city’s morgues without refrigeration, leaving bodies to decompose in the heat,” said Save the Children.

“The inability to give those who have died a dignified burial is yet another element of the suffering of families in Khartoum,” said Bashir Kamal Eldin Hamid, a doctor with the organisation.

Fighting has killed at least 3,900 people nationwide, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

More than 4 million people have been uprooted from their homes, the UN’s refugee agency said on Tuesday.

The United Nations says more than six million people are “just one step away from famine”, as aid groups struggle to deliver life-saving assistance through bureaucratic hurdles, security challenges and targeted attacks.

Since the conflict began, Khartoum has not gone a day without the sound of heavy artillery, air strikes or gunfire rattling terrified civilians, trapped at home and rationing water and electricity.

On Tuesday, witnesses reported clashes in central Khartoum, while a medical source in the capital’s northwest told AFP the fighting had killed 13 civilians.

The source requested anonymity for their protection, as medical personnel have been targeted.

“These clashes are the heaviest since the war began,” a bus driver told AFP, adding he had been prevented from navigating the capital’s northwest.

DUBAI — Two years ago, Dubai’s skyscraper-studded skyline welcomed a Ferris wheel touted as the world’s largest, but it mysteriously stopped turning just months after opening.

The much-touted Ain Dubai (Dubai Eye) was designed as a tourist-luring landmark in the United Arab Emirates’ glam-hub, which is home to the world’s tallest building.

But now it stands idle for undisclosed reasons, its extravagant light fixtures the only parts seemingly still working.

“Ain Dubai remains closed until further notice,” says an official website for the attraction.

“We continue to rigorously work on completing the enhancement works that have been taking place over the past months.”

The wheel was supposed to close for just a month but its reopening has since been postponed indefinitely.

Those behind the project inaugurated in 2021 have failed to reply to enquiries.

At restaurants, shops and cafes built around the attraction, employees remain sceptical that the structure, which took around six years to build, will ever turn again.

“Last year they promised us that in winter it will be open, even now, they are saying that in [the coming] winter it will be open again,” said one employee at a nearby shop.

“But we’re not sure... it will,” said the man who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of reprisal.

‘Too slow’ 

The Dubai Eye, built by a consortium of international companies, is located in Bluewaters — a man-made island designed as a retail, residential and entertainment hub.

For more than a year, the main entrance to the attraction has remained closed and ticket booths abandoned. Only a slow trickle of tourists visit the site, snapping pictures of LED lights mounted on its exterior.

“I asked a security guard here about it and he told me that it doesn’t work,” said Marwan Mohammad, an Egyptian tourist.

“I asked him for the reason but he did not give me an answer,” said the 33-year-old business consultant.

In a city filled with record-breaking landmarks, the Dubai Eye stands at a height of 250 metres, each of its legs the length of 15 London buses, according to Dubai’s tourism department.

Nearly twice as tall as the London Eye, it is the largest of its kind in the world.

Its 48 passenger cabins, all of them air-conditioned, can carry around 1,750 passengers on a single ride.

Ticket prices range between 100 dirhams (about $27) and 4,700 dirhams (about $1,280), with luxury passes and private cabins on offer.

“The view was very beautiful from above,” said Mohammad who experienced the 38-minute ride before it closed, adding however, that it moved “too slowly”.

‘Heavier than island’ 

With no official explanation, rumours are rife on the Ferris wheel’s apparent technical issues, especially among employees at Bluewaters.

They all spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing repercussions from authorities or their employers.

“This is a man-made island. I heard that [the wheel] is heavier than the island itself, that’s why it is very dangerous,” said a waiter at a nearby restaurant, adding that it had been noisy during its few months of operation.

“Now... it’s only for show, just for the lighting and that’s it”.

The giant wheel, made of more steel than the Eiffel Tower, features prominently on the list of Dubai’s top tourist attractions.

They include the Dubai Frame monument and Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.

Patrick Clawson, research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said official silence on the Ferris wheel suggested a complicated problem.

UAE authorities are generally “quick to provide information if they” have a solution, he said.

But with the Dubai Eye, “whatever the problem, the authorities are not confident they have a solution”, he told AFP.