الكاتب: kafej

As the war enters, its 628th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Monday, November 13, 2023.

Fighting

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned Ukrainians to prepare for Russia to attack the country’s energy infrastructure as winter approaches in a repeat of last year’s relentless attacks on the power grid that left hundreds of thousands without heating or electricity in the coldest months of the year. “We must be prepared for the possibility that the enemy may increase the number of drone or missile strikes on our infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said in his daily address. “All our attention should be focused on defence… The Ukrainian air shield is already stronger than last year.”
• On Saturday, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the capital came under air attack for the first time in nearly two months. No major damage or casualties were reported in Kyiv itself, but some buildings were damaged in the Kyiv region.
• Ukraine and Russia reported intensified fighting around the eastern city of Bakhmut, which was captured by Russia in May after months of heavy battles. The head of Ukraine’s ground forces, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Moscow’s forces were “more active” and “trying to recover lost positions”. Russian accounts of the fighting said its forces had repelled five Ukrainian attacks near the ruined city.
• Ukrainian military intelligence said an explosion killed at least three Russian servicemen in the Russian-occupied southern town of Melitopol, which it described as an “act of revenge” by resistance groups.
• Russian law enforcement said it had begun a “terrorism” investigation after a goods train was derailed by an improvised explosive device in the Ryazan region southwest of Moscow. Some 19 carriages travelling from the town of Rybnoye were thrown from the tracks and 15 were damaged, investigators wrote in a statement on social media.
• Moscow accused Ukraine of carrying out a series of attacks in Russia’s border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod, damaging five railway carriages and injuring one person in the town of Valuyki some 30km (19 miles) from the border.

• A Ukrainian special forces commander played a key role in sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September last year, according to a joint investigation by Der Spiegel and the Washington Post. Ukraine has denied being behind the attack.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukraine presidential aide Andriy Yermak said he had arrived in the United States with a delegation headed by Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko for talks on cooperation and support. “I will have meetings in the White House, Congress, think tanks and with representatives of civil society organisations,” Yermak said, with discussions being focused on issues including “the President’s formula for peace” and strengthening Ukraine’s defence.

Weapons

• The German government has agreed in principle to double the country’s military aid for Ukraine next year to 8 billion euros ($8.5 billion), a political source told the Reuters news agency. Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, interviewed by broadcaster ARD, referred to the planned doubling of military aid to Ukraine as sending “a strong signal to Ukraine that we will not leave them in the lurch”. The plan needs parliamentary approval.

Rescue efforts are under way to reach workers trapped in tunnel collapse in India’s Uttarakhand state.

Dozens of construction workers are feared trapped after the road tunnel they were building collapsed in northern India’s Uttarakhand state, with rescuers scrambling to reach them beneath piles of debris.

“About 40 to 41 workers are trapped inside. Oxygen is being supplied through the debris, but more rubble is coming down as rescuers try to remove the obstruction,” State disaster response official, Durgesh Rathodi, told the AFP news agency.

Local media, however, reported that up to 36 people were believed to be trapped in the tunnel, which partially collapsed at 4am on Sunday (22:30 GMT on Saturday) as a result of a landslide. Nearly 200 metres (14.8 feet) of the 4.5km (2.8-mile) long tunnel appear to have caved in, according to media reports.

The incident occurred during a shift change at the Yamunotri national aighway in the Himalayan state when a group of workers were moving out and replacement workers were going in.

The tunnel is being constructed between Silkyara and Dandalgaon to connect two of the holiest Hindu shrines of Uttarkashi and Yamnotri.

Photographs released by the government rescue teams showed huge piles of concrete blocking the wide tunnel, with twisted metal bars on its broken roof poking down in front of the rubble.

“Pray to god that those workers trapped inside the tunnel are brought out safely,” Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami wrote on social media platform X.

A local police officer told the Press Trust of India news agency they were “very optimistic” the men would be rescued safely, but added it was “difficult to say how long it will take”.

Accidents on large infrastructure construction sites are common in India.

Earlier this year, Indian authorities evacuated hundreds of people from their homes in Joshimath town, also located in Uttarakhand state, after buildings in the area popular with pilgrims and tourists developed cracks.

In 2021, more than 200 people, most of them construction workers, were killed after part of a glacier broke away sweeping away two hydroelectric projects in Raini village of Uttarakhand state.

Construction of major roads to improve access to religious sites and the Chinese border area, as well as the building of tunnels, are believed to be some of the reasons behind the landslides and glacier bursts.

David McBride, a former army lawyer who revealed information about alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, could be facing a “life sentence” if found guilty in a trial that starts on Monday.

While Australia has established an independent special investigator into alleged war crimes committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan, supporters of McBride point out he is facing a criminal trial before any of the perpetrators of the alleged wrongdoing he helped reveal.

“It seems strange that when clearly so many things went wrong in the wars of Afghanistan and Iraq, that I am the first person to [face trial]”, McBride told Al Jazeera in an interview before his trial began. “It’s extremely likely that I will be facing prison and not just short term but for quite a long time,” the defence whistleblower added.

McBride is open about the fact he leaked documents to the ABC, Australia’s public broadcaster, leading to a series of articles called the Afghan Files.

“I’ve been charged with leaking documents,” McBride said. “I’ve never made a secret of that.”

Instead, he wants the conversation to be about whether it was right to speak out.

“What I want to be discussed is whether or not I was justified in doing so,” the whistleblower says.

Although McBride, a former lawyer for the Australian and British armies, sees the information he revealed as being in the public interest, his ability to claim a whistleblowing defence has been limited by claims of national security.

He is going on trial “without the benefit of being able to rely” on a whistleblower defence, Kieran Pender a lawyer with the Human Rights Law Centre, an Australian organisation based in Melbourne, told Al Jazeera.

McBride’s trial will be heard by both a judge and jury and will begin in the Australian Capital Territory’s Supreme Court at 10am Canberra time on Monday (23:00 GMT on Sunday).

‘Wrongs of the past’

McBride has not been the first or only person to reveal information about alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan.

Dramatically, an Australian judge found earlier this year that journalists had not defamed one of Australia’s most highly decorated soldiers Ben Roberts-Smith by saying he was “complicit in and responsible for the murder” of three Afghan men.

That case was a notable moment that came more than seven years after the Australian government established an inquiry, led by Supreme Court Justice Paul Brereton, into allegations that Australian troops had committed war crimes in Afghanistan.

In 2020, Brereton handed down findings that there was credible evidence to support allegations war crimes had been committed. As a result, the Australian government established a new Office of the Special Investigator, as an independent executive agency within the attorney general’s portfolio.

“We should be proud that Australia set up this process as a meaningful way to address these allegations,” Rawan Arraf, the executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, told Al Jazeera.

But while Arraf notes that McBride’s trial is separate from other processes related to justice for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, she questions what it says about the Australian government’s priorities that his trial is proceeding first.

“Where is their priority in this?” Arraf asked. “Prosecuting a whistleblower or prosecuting those alleged crimes?”

Although one former soldier was charged earlier this year, McBride is still the first to stand trial.

Arraf adds that the Australian government has been “slow” to implement a recommendation to provide “compensation, or as we would say, reparations to Afghan victims and their families impacted” by alleged Australian crimes.

“Australia still has a long way to go to adequately address the legacy of its military involvement in Afghanistan,” Kobra Moradi, from the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organisation, told Al Jazeera, adding that “while some progress has been made” the trial of McBride was a setback.

“People should not be punished for telling the truth,” Moradi said.

For McBride, despite the trial going ahead, he still thinks revealing the information he did was important.

“It’s important for me to show that there are people in the West, especially people in the Western war machine who do get [that] we are not above the law,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We cannot have this kind of colonial mindset where we’re always right without ever having some sort of insight into our own actions and accountability for those activities we carry out overseas, especially involving violence and imprisonment,” McBride said. He wants people to know “there are people who are working to right the wrongs of the past,” he added.

Despite acknowledging he is concerned about his trial going ahead, McBride says he has people contacting him from Afghanistan and around the world “and that always lifts my spirits”.

Journalists and whistleblowers

McBride’s case is just one of several examples of whistleblowers and journalists in Australia facing consequences for speaking out.

In June 2019 the Australian Federal Police raided the offices of the ABC, with a warrant to search reporters’ notes, emails and story drafts in relation to the so-called Afghan Files. Police later dropped the investigation in 2020.

McBride is also not the only whistleblower currently, or recently, facing prosecution in Australia.

But he is going on trial “without the benefit of being able to rely” on a whistleblower defence, Pender, his lawyer, says.

“David McBride tried to argue that he was protected under whistleblowing law,” says Pender, “The government made a last-minute national security claim in relation to that argument that ultimately meant it was never decided by the court.”

Instead, supporters of McBride have been calling for the Australian attorney general to intervene in his case.

In 2022, Attorney General Mark Dreyfus did intervene in the prosecution of another Australian lawyer, Bernard Collaery, leading to the case against him being dropped.

Collaery had been charged with conspiring to release classified information about alleged Australian spying on the then newly formed nation of East Timor during negotiations over oil and gas boundaries in the Timor Sea.

Asked about whether the attorney general would consider a similar intervention in the case of McBride, a spokesperson told Al Jazeera: “The attorney general’s power to discontinue proceedings is reserved for very unusual and exceptional circumstances.”

The spokesperson also said that the Australian government is currently planning to pursue further whistleblower reforms, though it seems unlikely these will be applicable to McBride’s trial this week.

Israeli troops are closing in on al-Shifa Hospital, where hundreds of medics, patients and displaced people are trapped.

Israeli air strikes in Gaza have killed more than a dozen people and destroyed the main hospital’s cardiac ward, Gaza officials say, as fighting continues in the besieged strip for the 37th consecutive day.

At least 13 people were killed in an Israeli air strike on a home in Khan Younis, Gaza officials reported on Sunday.

The day before, at least “several people” were killed and wounded in a strike at a UN compound in Gaza City where hundreds had sheltered, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said.

“The ongoing tragedy of death and injury to civilians ensnared in this conflict is unacceptable and must stop,” the UNDP said in a statement.

Al-Shifa Hospital surrounded

The strikes continue as Israel steps up its offensive near Gaza’s main hospital, al-Shifa, where health officials say thousands of medics, patients and displaced people are trapped with no electricity and dwindling supplies.

Director of al-Shifa Hospital Muhammad Abu Salmiya, said two intensive care unit patients had died due to lack of electricity and oxygen. He said the others were at risk of dying if the lack of fuel at the hospital continued. “If this catastrophic situation continues, all ICU patients will die,” he told Arab news channels.

The hospital has repeatedly come under fire as Israeli forces close in on the facility, which it accuses Hamas fighters of using as cover for a command centre – charges Hamas denies. Israel has not provided proof for its claims.

Witnesses inside al-Shifa Hospital told the AFP news agency that “violent fighting” had raged around the hospital all Saturday night.

One air strike destroyed the hospital’s cardiac ward, Gaza officials said, while electricity cuts shut off incubators in the neonatal unit hosting around 40 babies and ventilators for others receiving urgent care.

Doctors Without Borders surgeon Mohammed Obeid said in an audio message posted on social media that two babies died in the al-Shifa neonatal unit after power to their incubators depleted and a man also died when his ventilator cut off.

The Israeli military pledged on Saturday to aid the evacuation of babies from the hospital, noting that “staff of the al-Shifa Hospital has requested that tomorrow”.

Al-Shifa, one of the 16 operating hospitals left in Gaza, was also out of reach for the newly wounded, said Mohammad Qandil, a doctor at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, who is in touch with colleagues there.

“Al-Shifa Hospital now isn’t working, no one is allowed in, nobody is allowed out, and if you are wounded or injured around Gaza area you can’t be evacuated by our ambulance to al-Shifa Hospital, so al-Shifa Hospital now is out of service”, he told the Reuters news agency.

Israel has waged a devastating bombing campaign and ground incursion in the besieged Gaza Strip since October 7, killing at least 11,000 Palestinians, more than a third of them children, Gaza officials say. The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says at least 100 of its employees have been killed in the war.

The Israeli campaign has also displaced some 1.6 million Palestinians, over 70 percent of the enclave’s total population, and wrecked much of its infrastructure.

Palestinians forced from their homes now live in dire conditions, often sheltering in overcrowded outdoor camps and in desperate need of food, water and medicine. Humanitarian workers say what little aid has been allowed into the enclave is a “drop in the bucket” compared to what is needed.

Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took some 240 hostages during its surprise attack on October 7, Israeli officials say.

Gaza Strip – The start of the school year is a particularly special time for me.

Normally me and my students are starting to get to know each other and build that bond of love and trust which will grow through the year.

For me, it is an almost maternal relationship, that between me and my students, and it extends beyond schoolwork.

Now, it is more than two months since the start of the school year, but I have not had the chance to get to know my new fifth-graders. I miss that aspect, the most important part of my work that I have always cared most about – finding that space in which my students can trust me without any barriers between us.

On November 6, the Ministry of Education suspended the 2023-2024 school year for the 625,000 schoolchildren in the Gaza Strip, as Israel’s offensive that began on October 7 continued, unrelenting.

Of the more than 11,000 people who have been killed by the onslaught, more than 4,400 are children, with another 1,400 young souls missing under the rubble. At least 1.5 million Palestinians have been displaced, and tens of thousands are taking shelter in schools.

‘Was I able to reach their hearts?’

Over time, I usually get to know the students and their personalities little by little, so six weeks was not enough time for me to familiarise myself with all 90 students in our four fifth-grade classrooms.

I remind myself that the important thing is that I love them all even though I have not yet learned all their names.

Sometimes I’d mix up their names, and they would correct me. Or I’d call them by their family names, and they would say: “No, call me by my name,” which always made me laugh.

Was I able to reach their hearts? Do they love me as I love them?

They have this knack for making me laugh even when I am annoyed at their naughtiness – I cannot keep a straight face.

They know this, which is why they don’t worry too much about their punishment.

I am a science teacher and the curriculum in Palestine is demanding. It requires real effort from the students to grasp the subject fully and learn what they are taught. I try to deliver my lessons with extra activities to keep things simpler, easier, lighter.

I found this batch of fifth-graders precocious and smarter than previous ones, each one has their own style and personality. I already developed the strong impression that these are young men and women, not merely 10-year-old children.

Notes

Two years ago, I began asking my students to write notes to express their thoughts and opinions about what they were learning, and about their teacher – me.

On October 5, two days before the war began, after writing a lesson summary on the blackboard, I asked the children to write their notes anonymously.

They loved the idea. I have to confess that a small part of me was worried about what the students might write about me. I gathered their papers and told them that I would read them later.

Some of the students wrote their names on their notes and some did not, but I felt I knew who some of them were from their handwriting and their funny drawings.

Salma, the sweet girl who hugs me when I enter the classroom, said: “The curriculum is good… you explain things so clearly and your voice is lovely.”

That certainly brought a smile to my face.

Rafiq, a supersmart student, wrote: “The best teacher and the best subject,” which I suppose is also high praise since he knows his teachers.

Another student, Hassan, wrote: “The subject is very easy and the lessons are nice.”

Qusay and Qais, the twins, said: “The subject is nice and the lessons are good.”

I left their little notes in the science lab where I sit during my free time. I was planning to ask the other fifth-grade classes to write some as well, but the war came and threw all our plans out the window.

I miss their morning sleepiness.

I miss their naughtiness.

I miss hearing them shout “Miss!” when I greet them.

I want this war to stop so I can go back to getting to know them.

I miss my students.