Qatar to strengthen tourism partnership with Jordan, delegation visits Amman Citadel
Qatar to strengthen tourism partnership with Jordan, delegation visits Amman Citadel/node/2608443/middle-east
Qatar to strengthen tourism partnership with Jordan, delegation visits Amman Citadel
Saad Al-Kharji, the chairperson of Qatar Tourism, visited the historical site of Amman Citadel, accompanied by the Jordanian minister of tourism and antiquities, Lina Annab. (Petra)
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Arab News
Qatar to strengthen tourism partnership with Jordan, delegation visits Amman Citadel
Talks underway for launch of joint promotional campaigns and sharing of expertise in sustainable tourism marketing
Central Bank of Jordan reports 11.9% increase in tourism revenues during first half of 2025 to $3.67bn, despite drop in visitors to Petra in June due to regional conflicts
Updated 25 sec ago
Arab News
LONDON: Saad Al-Kharji, the chairperson of Qatar Tourism, visited the historical site of Amman Citadel, accompanied by the Jordanian minister of tourism and antiquities, Lina Annab, as officials from the two countries met to discuss enhanced cooperation in the tourism sector.
The Qatari delegation toured several key landmarks on Wednesday and learned about Jordan’s rich cultural history as part of a visit described as an essential step as officials work to develop joint promotional campaigns and share expertise in the marketing of sustainable tourism, the Jordan News Agency reported.
The Jordanian ministry said the diverse tourism options in Jordan and Qatar provide the foundations for fostering a partnership that can enrich visitor experiences and attract foreign travelers.
Meanwhile, the Central Bank of Jordan reported an 11.9 percent increase in tourism revenues to $3.67 billion during the first half of 2025 compared with the same period last year.
This was despite a previously reported decline of more than 75 percent in the number of foreign visitors to Petra, the country’s main tourist attraction, in June compared with the same month in recent years due to the ongoing war in Gaza and the conflict between Iran and Israel.
British surgeon in Gaza describes wounded Palestinians dying due to malnutrition
Professor Nick Maynard moved to tears by malnourished state of Palestinian babies at Nasser Hospital
Even Palestinian hospital colleagues look shadow of former selves due to Israel’s aid blockade
Updated 4 sec ago
Arab News
LONDON: Palestinians being treated in one of Gaza’s few remaining hospitals are dying from their wounds because they they are so malnourished, a British doctor working in the territory said.
Professor Nick Maynard, a consultant gastrointestinal surgeon, who is on his third stint volunteering in the territory since the war started, said he is seeing unprecedented levels of severe malnutrition.
“The malnutrition I’m seeing here is indescribably bad. It’s much, much worse now than a year ago,” Maynard, who is based at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, said.
UNICEF chief Catherine Russell told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that acute malnutrition among children in Gaza had almost tripled after Israel imposed an 11-week blockade on food aid to the territory in March.
Maynard said malnutrition levels were directly contributing to preventable deaths among patients receiving surgery. He said those injured in Israel’s military attacks were dying because being malnourished prevents proper healing.
“The repairs that we carry out fall to pieces; patients get terrible infections and they die,” Maynard, who is volunteering with Medical Aid for Palestinians, said. “I have had so many patients die because they can’t get enough food to recover, it’s distressing to see that and know that it is preventable and treatable.”
Maynard said babies in Nasser’s neonatal unit have been particularly affected, with four recent infant deaths blamed on malnutrition.
The surgeon said he had been reduced to tears by the state of the children he has seen.
“I saw a seven-month-old who looked like a newborn,” Maynard said. “The expression ‘skin and bones’ doesn’t do it justice. We have almost no liquid or intravenous feeds — children are being given essentially 10 percent sugar water, which is not proper nutritional support.”
Maynard said he had even seen the effects of malnutrition in his Palestinian colleagues, who were barely recognizable from when he had worked with them a year ago. He said many had lost 20-30kg due to the food shortages.
Israel’s blockade of Gaza lead to widespread warnings that the territory could descend into a state of famine.
Surgeon Nick Maynard is on his third visit to Gaza since the war started. He said the levels of severe malnutrition are unprecedented. (MAP)
In her briefing to the security council, UNICEF’s Russell said that of the more than 113,000 children screened for malnutrition in June, almost 6,000 were found to be acutely malnourished — an 180 percent increase in acute malnutrition cases compared to February.
“Children in Gaza are enduring catastrophic living conditions, including severe food insecurity and malnutrition,” she said.
Maynard, who is usually based at Oxford University Hospital, has been traveling to volunteer in Gaza with MAP for more than 10 years.
While on his current posting, he has witnessed the daily arrival of Palestinians who have been shot while trying to access food aid through distribution hubs set up by the new Israeli- and US-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
“We have hundreds of trauma casualties coming in every day, it’s relentless,” he said. “This is not only from Israeli military airstrikes and attacks, but we are also treating multiple gunshot wounds every day.
“These are mainly from the militarized distribution points, where starving civilians are going to try and get food but then report getting targeted by Israeli soldiers or quadcopters.”
The surgeon said he had mostly been operating on boys aged 12 or 13 who had been sent to the aid hubs to get food for their families.
“A 12-year-old boy I was operating on died from his injuries on the operating table — he had been shot through the chest.”
Maynard called on the international community to force Israel to allow the full flow of food and aid into Gaza, and to end the “collective punishment” of the territory’s population.
“The enforced malnutrition and attacks on civilians we are witnessing will kill many more thousands of people if not stopped,” he said.
Palestinian man dies in Israeli jail a week after his arrest
Samir Mohammad Yousef Al-Rifai, 53, is the 74th Palestinian prisoner to die in Israeli custody since October 2023
Palestinian prisoners’ advocacy groups say his death constitutes a new crime of Israeli brutality against prisoners and ongoing genocide
Updated 17 July 2025
Arab News
LONDON: A 53-year-old Palestinian prisoner died in an Israeli jail after nearly a week following his arrest in Rummana, near Jenin, in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian Detainees’ Affairs Commission and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society announced on Thursday the death of Samir Mohammad Yousef Al-Rifai. He is the 74th Palestinian prisoner to die in Israeli custody since October 2023 and the 311th since Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian Territories began in 1967.
Al-Rifai, a father of five, was arrested by Israeli occupation forces at his home in Rummana on July 10. According to the Wafa news agency, he had pre-existing heart problems and required intensive medical follow-up. He was scheduled to have his first hearing in the Salem Military Court on Thursday.
The commission and the PPS reported that Palestinian prisoners face systematic crimes, including torture, starvation, medical abuses, sexual assaults, and harsh conditions in Israeli prisons, which lead to the outbreak of diseases like scabies.
The death of Al-Rifai “constitutes a new crime added to the record of Israeli brutality, which commits all forms of crimes aimed at killing prisoners. This is another aspect of the ongoing genocide, and an extension of it,” they added.
More than 10,000 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisons, the highest prisoner count since the Second Intifada in 2000, Palestinian prisoners’ advocacy groups reported last week.
As of early July, some 10,800 prisoners are said to be held in Israeli detention centers and prisons, including 50 women — two of whom are from the Gaza Strip — and over 450 children.
Since the 1967 occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, over 800,000 Palestinians have spent time in Israeli jails, according to a UN report in 2023.
Turkiye’s Erdogan risks alienating voters as PKK peace advances
Erdogan’s own future is also at stake: his term runs out in 2028 unless parliament backs the idea of early elections
Erdogan’s comments about “walking together” with DEM drew a cool response from the pro-Kurdish party itself
Updated 17 July 2025
Reuters
ANKARA: President Tayyip Erdogan risks losing support among nationalist Turkish voters in making peace with Kurdistan Workers Party militants, whose burning of weapons last week was dismissed by some as a stunt.
A backlash to Erdogan’s call on Saturday for wide parliamentary support for the process underlines the challenge he faces in balancing nationalist and Kurdish demands, with a failure to do so potentially jeopardizing the plan’s success.
Erdogan’s own future is also at stake: his term runs out in 2028 unless parliament backs the idea of early elections or a change in the constitution to extend a 22-year rule in which he has raised NATO member Turkiye’s profile on the world stage. He insists that personal political considerations play no role.
“The doors of a new powerful Turkiye have been flung wide open,” he said on Saturday of the symbolic initial handover of arms.
While his AKP party’s far-right nationalist coalition partner MHP drove the peace process, smaller nationalist parties have condemned it. They recalled his years condemning the pro-Kurdish DEM party as being tied to the 40-year PKK insurgency that the PKK now says is over.
Erdogan’s comments about “walking together” with DEM drew a cool response from the pro-Kurdish party itself, with DEM lawmaker Pervin Buldan saying there was no broad political alliance between it and the AKP.
AKP spokesperson Omer Celik reaffirmed the president’s nationalist credentials in response to a request for comment on his statement, saying the process “is not give-and-take, negotiation, or bargaining.”
Parliament is convening a commission tasked with deciding how to address Kurdish demands for more autonomy and the reintegration of fighters complying with the February disarmament call of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
The nationalist opposition IYI Party is refusing to take part, with its leader Musavat Dervisoglu describing the peace process at the weekend as a betrayal after a conflict which has killed more than 40,000 people.
“We will not allow the Republic to be destroyed, we will not allow the Turkish homeland to be divided, we will not surrender to betrayal,” he said.
Umit Ozdag, head of the opposition Victory Party, also sought to stir nationalist passions, slamming the commission as a bid to legitimize the PKK and dismissing the event where 30 PKK members burned their guns as a “barbecue party.”
“You don’t just burn 30 rifles and call it a day. Weapons are surrendered, and PKK members interrogated one-by-one.”
A senior Turkish official said the gun burning was an “irreversible turning point.” It is part of a five-stage process culminating in legal reforms and social reconciliation by early 2026, according to another Turkish source.
NUMBER CRUNCHING
While those parties could not derail the peace process alone, Erdogan, a shrewed political operator, is likely to closely monitor public reaction as the commission starts its work.
A private June survey by the Konda pollster seen by Reuters showed that only 12 percent of respondents believe the PKK, designated as a terrorist group by Turkiye and its Western allies, has abandoned the insurgency that it launched in 1984.
It also showed potential candidates for the opposition CHP, now subject to a wide-ranging legal crackdown, beating Erdogan in head-to-head votes in an election.
Erdogan critics say the peace process is aimed at drawing Kurdish support for a new constitution that would both boost their rights and allow him to be a candidate in 2028. He says reform is needed because the constitution is outdated rather than for any personal reasons and he has not committed to running again.
It is unclear whether the commission will propose constitutional change, but such changes require the support of 400 MPs in the 600-seat assembly with the potential for a referendum if more than 360 MPs vote in favor. The AKP-MHP alliance has 319 seats, while DEM have 56.
Any move to hold early elections would also require 360 votes, but that — and the peace process itself — would depend on keeping DEM on board.
After meeting the justice minister on Wednesday, DEM’s Buldan said she had insisted that PKK disarmament proceed in lock-step with legal changes.
“The minister expressed commitment to ensuring the process proceeds legally and constitutionally,” she said, adding that there was no specific timeline for disarmament.
Paramilitary shelling on camp kills 8 in Sudan’s Darfur: rescuers
The bombardment hit Abu Shouk camp, which hosts tens of thousands of displaced people
Thursday’s offensive comes just days after a series of attacks by the RSF targeted another battleground region of Sudan
Updated 17 July 2025
AFP
PORT SUDAN: Paramilitary forces shelled a displacement camp in Sudan’s Darfur region on Thursday, killing eight civilians and injuring others, a local rescue group said.
The bombardment hit Abu Shouk camp, which hosts tens of thousands of displaced people on the outskirts of El Fasher, the besieged capital of North Darfur.
El-Fasher remains the last major stronghold in Sudan’s western Darfur region not under the control of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), who have been at war with the regular army since April 2023.
“The Abu Shouk camp witnessed heavy artillery bombardment by the RSF... killing eight people,” the camp’s Emergency Response Room said in a statement.
In recent weeks, El-Fasher, which has been under paramilitary siege since last year, has been locked in intense fighting between warring sides in a region also gripped by famine.
Thursday’s offensive comes just days after a series of attacks by the RSF targeted another battleground region of Sudan.
More than 450 people, including 35 children, were killed in several villages of North Kordofan, southwest of the capital Khartoum, according to a statement released this week by the UN’s children agency.
“No child should ever experience such horrors,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell. “Violence against children is unconscionable and must end now.”
On Sunday, the RSF claimed to have killed more than 470 army personnel near the town of El-Obeid, also in North Kordofan, in a statement posted to its Telegram channel.
Independent verification of casualties in Sudan remains difficult due to restricted access to its conflict zones.
Now in its third year, the conflict has killed tens of thousands and forced millions to flee, creating what the United Nations describes as the world’s largest displacement crisis.
In December last year, famine was officially declared in three displacement camps near El-Fasher, namely Zamzam, Abu Shouk and Al-Salam, according to the UN.
Since the Sudanese army regained control of the capital Khartoum in March, the RSF has shifted its operations westward, focusing on Darfur and Kordofan in a bid to consolidate territorial gains.
In April, RSF fighters seized the Zamzam displacement camp, located near Abu Shouk.
The assault forced nearly 400,000 people to flee, according to UN figures, effectively emptying one of the country’s largest camps for the displaced.
Sudanese analyst Mohaned el-Nour told AFP the RSF aims to redefine its role in the conflict.
“Their goal is no longer to be seen as a militia, but as an alternative government in western Sudan, undermining the legitimacy of the authorities in Port Sudan.”
He added that the recent surge in violence in North Kordofan was likely intended to divert the army’s attention from El Fasher, where the military is trying “at all costs” to maintain.
Europe’s largest missile maker supplying parts to Israel for bombs used in Gaza
GBU-39 bombs identified as having killed civilians, including children
UN special rapporteur: ‘Genocide continues because it is lucrative for many’
Updated 17 July 2025
Arab News
LONDON: Parts made by Europe’s largest missile maker are being used in bombs launched by Israel in airstrikes on Gaza, an investigation has found.
A joint report by The Guardian, Disclose and Follow the Money discovered that components produced by MBDA are used to construct the GBU-39 bomb.
Wing-like parts, called Diamond-Blacks and manufactured at MBDA’s plant in Alabama, are fitted to the 250 lb GBU-39, which is made by Boeing, allowing the bomb to manoeuver mid-air toward targets.
The GBU-39 is sent to Israel as part of the US military aid program, bought directly from Boeing and transferred from American military stocks.
Deployed aerially from fighter jets over combat zones, an estimated 4,800 have been sent to Israel since the Gaza war began in October 2023.
Open-source analysis found that the weapon has been deployed at least 24 times in Gaza in incidents where civilians, including children, were killed.
The attacks often came at night, targeting shelters including school buildings, camps and a mosque. At least 500 people have been killed in the identified cases, including more than 100 children.
The UN and Amnesty International have both raised concerns that a number of incidents involving GBU-39s amount to war crimes.
Donatella Rovera, a senior investigator at Amnesty, told The Guardian: “Those launching attacks have a legal duty to take precautions so as to avoid harming civilians — even in cases where there may be a military target at the location — including by not striking locations full of civilians.”
Last year, Foreign Secretary David Lammy suspended a number of arms export licenses to Israel over fears that UK-made equipment could be used to commit “serious violations” of international law in Gaza.
But campaigners told The Guardian that the use of Diamond-Black wings, manufactured in the US, shows the limits of the UK government’s measures, which cannot ban the export of items made overseas by sister companies of British firms.
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in a report last month that numerous private sector firms continue to arm Israel despite warnings of human rights violations, war crimes and genocide in Gaza.
“The present report shows why the genocide carried out by Israel continues: because it is lucrative for many,” she added.
Sam Perlo-Freeman, research coordinator at Campaign Against the Arms Trade, told The Guardian: “We would support the UK government taking all actions that are within their powers to stop the genocide.
“Beyond an arms embargo, this includes sanctions on companies arming Israel, banning UK investments in such companies.”
MBDA’s code of ethics states that it is “committed to taking the utmost care in identifying and preventing negative direct and indirect impacts our activities may have on human rights, fundamental freedoms and people health and safety.”
