الكاتب: kafej

Many of us did not dare go out on the first day of the temporary truce in Gaza. We were too afraid it would not hold. On the second day, we gathered our courage and stepped out.

The daylight illuminated the destruction caused by Israel’s non-stop bombardment of Gaza over the past seven weeks. We did not recognise our neighbourhoods and streets.

There are whole stretches of land where there is not a single building standing. Nothing has been spared: houses, residential towers, shops, bakeries, cafes, schools, universities, libraries, children’s centres, mosques, churches.

The destruction was the first thing we saw. Then came the pain.

Amid the panic, alarm and scurrying to survive the bombs, many of us did not fully grasp the loss of loved ones, the wounds sustained, the lives, bodies and dreams shattered and destroyed. Many could not bury their dead. Many could not grieve.

As Sabri Farra, a medical student from Gaza, wrote in a post on social media: “The word catastrophe is insufficient to describe this. It is a collective inferno of extermination against the Palestinian people.”

I left my home in Gaza City during the first week of the war. I was lucky to have made it. On the same day, the Israeli army bombed a convoy of evacuees, killing at least 70 people.

The road that Israel designated as a “safe route” for people to evacuate from the north to the south has been anything but safe. Throughout the past seven weeks, people who made it south reported seeing harrowing scenes of bodies of civilians lying everywhere. The horror was documented on videos circulated on social media.

When the truce came into effect, more Palestinians decided to evacuate from the north, hoping it would be safe to do so.

But as they made their way south, they encountered Israeli army checkpoints, where they were stopped and searched and their belongings confiscated. Women in my family and friends told me that Israeli soldiers even took their gold. They were forced to walk with their hands in the air, carrying nothing but their IDs.

Those who made it through were lucky, as Israeli soldiers have also been systematically abducting evacuees. I have friends with siblings who were taken and are still missing after trying to evacuate through the designated “safe route”. The Israelis arrested even Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha. He was let go only after a massive international campaign for his release. We still don’t know the true number of those who have been abducted.

The walk from the north to the south is almost eight hours if you don’t stop. This is a trip many Palestinians are struggling to make as they are too old, too young, too tired, too starved and dehydrated, injured or disabled.

While going north to south can be risky and could lead to abduction, going in the opposite direction can cost you your life. The Israeli army dropped leaflets on us warning us not to attempt that trip. Israeli soldiers killed at least two people trying to go back to the north on the first day of the truce.

I, like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, am banned from returning to my home in Gaza City. I am heartbroken that I cannot go and check on my house to see if it is still standing. Many others who have family and friends shot in the streets or stuck under the rubble cannot go retrieve their bodies and give them a proper burial.

Israel controls everything: where we go, what we do, how much we eat or drink, whether we can save the wounded or those stuck under the rubble for days. It even decides how we tend to our dead. Its army is forcing more and more of us into an ever-shrinking space before it resumes the indiscriminate bombardment and the genocide.

The trucks of humanitarian aid Israel is allowing to enter Gaza cannot alleviate the humanitarian disaster. We are barely surviving. If the bombs don’t kill us, the hunger, the thirst, the lack of medicine, the cold will.

This pause has been more painful than the 50 days before it. It is the first time the people of Gaza were able to look at their open wounds, martyred children, slaughtered families, destroyed homes and shattered lives. Just imagine living for six days just to prepare and wait for your death on the seventh.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Ukrainian officials say wife of Kyrylo Budanov has been hospitalised due to heavy metals poisoning.

The wife of Ukraine’s military spy chief has been poisoned with heavy metals and is undergoing treatment, a Ukrainian official says.

A spokesperson for the Ukrainian military intelligence agency, or GUR, said Marianna Budanova, wife of Kyrylo Budanov, was receiving treatment in hospital.

“Yes, I can confirm the information. Unfortunately, it is true,” GUR spokesperson Andriy Yusov told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday without clarifying when the poisoning occurred or who was responsible.

Budanov has become a celebrated figure in Ukraine for his role in planning clandestine operations against Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Yusov said this year that Budanov had survived 10 assassination attempts by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB.

While it is not immediately clear who was behind the suspected poisoning of his wife, the BBC’s Ukrainian service cited Yusov as saying that other GUR officials have experienced milder poisoning symptoms.

The suspected poisoning was first reported by Ukrainian media. There was no immediate comment from Russian authorities.

Russian media figures have speculated that the poisoning could be a result of infighting within Ukraine.

Russia has previously been accused of poisoning dissidents, including politician Alexey Navalny and two Russian exiles who attended a summit in Berlin organised by a critic of Russia.

Moscow has also blamed Ukraine for suspected involvement in the killings of a pro-war Russian blogger and a pro-war journalist on Russian soil, something Ukraine denies.

NewsFeed

A critically endangered species welcomed the birth of a Sumatran rhino. With only a few dozen of these rhinos in the world, the newborn male calf is a sign of the success for the Indonesian government’s conservation efforts.

A legend of monks with cold heads, an angel holding a golden frying pan and a fictional Sint Pannekoek. Yes, today is Dutch pancake day!

While much of the world cooks their favourite sweet (and savoury, I guess) pancakes on Shrove Tuesday in the early months of the year, people in Rotterdam have a different tradition.

Every year, on 29 November, a number of Netherlands residents put pancakes on their heads in a quirky celebration that has gained traction.

Once the edible hat is in place, followers of the tradition say: “We wish you a happy and blessed Saint Pancake (Sint Pannekoek)!”

So, how did we get there?

The celebration was invented in 1986 in a cartoon by Dutch cartoonist Jan Kruis, in which a father comes home in the evening to find his family wearing pancakes on their heads.

Three decades later, Mr Kruis expanded the idea with The Gospel of Saint Pannekoek.

In this piece, he tells the tale of 12th-century monks in a monastery celebrating a young monk’s birthday and eating pancakes – but there is only enough for one each.

When the old abbott becomes cold, the young monk places his pancake upon the elder’s head.

At this, an angel descends from heaven holding a golden frying pan and flips a pancake onto the young monk’s head.

“The Lord has done us a miracle! We have a saint in our midst!” the others cry, and put their own pancakes on their heads.

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To learn more about Sint Pannekoek, Sky News spoke to Dr Henriette Louwerse, a senior lecturer in Dutch at the University of Sheffield.

“It is totally made up of course, but apparently it has gained some traction,” she told us.

“I like the implicit criticism of ‘the holiness of traditions’. The tendency to suggest that if traditions change, a profound identity is somehow infringed.”

Thai nationals were the single largest group of foreign nationals held by Hamas in Gaza and the highest number killed in Israel – the fact that 17 were quickly freed is considered a diplomatic achievement.

Behind the scenes, Thailand officials have been quietly working away at trying to get their citizens freed, attending meetings in Qatar and Iran.

At the centre of the Thai negotiating team is Lerpong Sayed, a Thai Muslim who, in an exclusive broadcast interview, told Sky News Hamas was justified in taking hostages.

Dr Sayed in recent weeks has split his time between his home country and Iran, where he spoke to Hamas five times.

“We went there to negotiate as normal people, not politicians. Hamas saw this. They saw us as Thai Muslims,” he told me in an interview that provides a window into his high-level talks.

“They promised that if there was a ceasefire Thai people would be released in the first group.

“Now we can obviously see Thais are among the first citizens freed compared to 20 other nationalities.”

Dr Sayed is part of a small team of three people working on behalf of the Thai House Speaker, Wan Muhammad Noor Matha, and the Shia Muslim leader in Thailand, Syed Sulaiman Husaini.

Thailand’s population of 70 million people is predominantly Buddhist and has largely peacefully co-existed with its sizeable Muslim minority.

On Tuesday, the Thai foreign minister went to Israel to meet with the hostages who were freed last week – the first group of captives released by Hamas as part of a truce deal with Israel.

The hostages are due to return to Thailand on Thursday.

Most went to Israel to work as farm labourers. On 7 October, when Hamas launched its attack, many were working in farms on the border. Before the war, 30,000 Thai labourers worked in Israel, predominantly in the agricultural sector.

Dr Sayed says the Thai government’s talks with the Qataris partly helped secure the release of Thais, but he firmly believes it was Thailand’s historic relationship with Iran that proved critical.

Read more:
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Tensions run high in West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp

“I’d like to thank Iran – both the government and the people who have been supportive in negotiating with Hamas.”

Other analysts have suggested an agreement mediated by Qatar and Egypt was the pivotal factor in securing the release of hostages.

Iran has said it facilitated the release, while Hamas said it was due to the efforts of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

For his part, Dr Sayed is confident that the Thai hostages have been treated well.

He says he knows they’ve told their families “they were well taken care of, well looked after, given shelter, clothes, food and water and given mental support”.

The negotiator insists there were no conditions from Hamas on what the hostages could or couldn’t say, and dismisses the idea that the group, seen waving at hostages in increasingly highly produced videos, are using the hostage releases as a spectacle.

Controversially, he also says Hamas was justified in taking hostages.

It was, he argues, “to help the Palestinians”, citing the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli prisons and decades of what he sees as Israeli occupation and mistreatment.

From what he has seen and heard from Hamas, he believes the rest of the Thais being held in Gaza will be released. According to the Thai government, there are 15 still being held in Gaza.

But he said Hamas had given him an ominous warning for the Thai people and the Thai authorities: “The border area is disputed land and it’s war time and Hamas will consider anyone who works there is working for the outlaws.”

They will be very alarming words for the many Thais who are now looking to return, and are financially dependent on the considerable extra money they make in Israel.