التصنيف: estaql

Israel’s military has brought the war to the front gates of al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s biggest hospital complex, where thousands of injured and displaced people are trapped amid ferocious bombardment.

“We are minutes away from imminent death,” Muhammad Abu Salmiya, al-Shifa Hospital’s directorm told Al Jazeera from inside the besieged facility on Saturday, where operations had to be suspended after it ran out of power and fuel.

Abu Salmiya said al-Shifa’s buildings are being targeted and any person moving within the hospital compound is being attacked by Israeli snipers.

“One member of a medical crew who tried to reach the incubator to lend a helping hand to the babies born inside was shot and killed,” he said. “We lost a baby in the incubator, we also lost a young man in the intensive care unit.”

Gaza Deputy Health Minister Dr Youssef Abu al-Reesh, who is currently inside al-Shifa Hospital, told Al Jazeera that all generators are off and all power sources are now out in the hospital.

“We have 39 newborns in the incubators, those babies are fighting against death.”

He also said snipers were stationed around the compound and people inside were unable to move around freely.

“Ferocious gunfire can be heard within the vicinity of the hospital, the intensive care unit received a mortar shell a few minutes ago … Blood is everywhere, on the floor, we cannot even clean it,” he added.

‘War crime’

Located in the northern Rimal neighbourhood, close to the port, al-Shifa became a hospital in 1946, undergoing successive expansions. The facility has become a lifeline for people seeking urgent medical intervention.

Thousands of people who have lost their homes in Israel’s continuing bombardment are also living in the hospital corridors and courtyard.

Israel claims al-Shifa provides cover for a Hamas command centre, an accusation the hospital’s director has rejected as “utter lies”. Hamas also rejects the claims.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, who is visiting the region, has said that any armed group who uses civilian infrastructure to shield itself is contravening the laws of war. However, he added: “But such conduct by Palestinian armed groups does not absolve Israel of its obligation to ensure that civilians are spared … Failure to do so is also in contravention of the laws of war – with devastating impact on civilians.”

Al Jazeera’s diplomatic correspondent James Bays remarked: “So that’s the top human rights official saying that targeting a hospital is a war crime.”

Bays also noted that none of the doctors or staff at al-Shifa have reported seeing Hamas members in the hospital for years.

‘We cannot bury our dead’

Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF, supplied al-Shifa with the medicines and equipment that it still has in its stock. Early on Saturday, the NGO posted on X that it was unable to contact its staff inside the hospital and was “extremely concerned” about the patients and medics.

Fabrizio Carboni, the Red Cross’s Regional Director for Near and Middle East, said the information coming out of al-Shifa was “distressing”, adding that the thousands of people in the compound “need to be protected in line with the laws of war”.

Speaking from inside the hospital on Saturday, deputy health minister in Gaza, Monir al-Bashr, said that people were being forced to dig with their hands in order to bury bodies within the hospital compound.

“We are surrounded, we cannot bury our dead. We are going to create a mass grave within the hospital compound,” he told Al Jazeera,

“We do not have any equipment or machinery to dig the grave. We have to bury these bodies otherwise epidemics will break out. These bodies have been lying on the street for days.”

As the fighting intensifies just by the front gate of the hospital, for Abu Salmiya, the hospital’s director, the outlook is bleak.

“We are totally cut off from the whole world … We are stranded, we sent many SOS to the whole world – there has been no response, no response,” he said.

“The residents of Gaza, who saw fit to turn the hospitals into terrorist nests in an attempt to take advantage of Western morality, are the ones who brought their destruction upon themselves – terrorism must be eliminated everywhere and in any way. Attacking terrorist headquarters located inside a hospital is the right, and even the duty of the IDF.”

Upon initial examination, one might think these are sentences written by extremists or fanatics, giving an army permission and encouragement to bomb hospitals. What is shocking is not only the statement itself, but that it is signed publicly by dozens of Israeli doctors and shared widely on various social media platforms.

Instead of immediate outrage and condemnation, the statement resulted in what some called a “legitimate” public debate within the Israeli medical community, to bomb or not to bomb Palestinian hospitals.

We, six Palestinian physicians working within the Israeli healthcare system, are sickened to our core by the statements made by some of our colleagues, Israeli doctors we work with, calling on the Israeli army to bomb hospitals in the Gaza Strip.

Regrettably, we cannot say we were surprised. As doctors trained and practising in this system, we are all too aware of its embedded racism, militarism and hypocrisy covered up by a false image of a medical sector where Arabs and Jews work together in harmony and respect.

The recent letter by our Israeli colleagues issued at a time of an unfolding massacres is a telling example of what the Israeli health system is really like. It is a system where some doctors, shamelessly and publicly, adopt the role of consultants to the army.

They use their position and profession, not to save lives, not to preach about the devastating effects of war on civilians on both sides and the necessity of finding a peaceful political solution, but actually to validate attacks on medical facilities, knowing full well that this means the killing of fellow doctors and patients.

At the same time, this health system has adopted a distinctly McCarthyist witch hunt approach towards us, Palestinian physicians. As a result, we cannot engage in any intellectual or moral conversation about the war. We are expected to condemn Hamas and join the patriotic Israeli military frenzy, while watching silently our Jewish colleagues cheering for the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians and endorsing the tightening of the blockade.

We drive to work every day, listening to the devastating news about the death toll and destruction in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. When we arrive, we put on that mask of “everything is fine” and endure the daily loyalty test and scrutinising eyes of our colleagues. During coffee breaks, we are forced to listen with a straight face to our Israeli colleagues casually dropping phrases like “flattening Gaza” and discussing the merits of displacing its people.

We are also seeing our Palestinian colleagues being interrogated, fired and shamed without a valid reason. We are very aware of how the hospitals and clinics we work in have become disciplining arenas. In a “normal” place, we would be in the streets, demanding an end to the war and massacres and advocating for a peaceful solution. We would use our profession and position to denounce the inhumane attacks on healthcare workers, facilities and civilian infrastructure.

We are deeply aware that the situation is much more complex than choosing sides and we know that every life lost is a tragedy, whether it is Israeli or Palestinian. But precisely because of this, we also know that history did not begin on October 7 and that our people have been displaced, killed, injured and humiliated for decades, with the full endorsement and involvement of our fellow Israeli doctors.

We come to work every day, knowing that our people are killed, tortured and maimed by illegal Israeli settlers and the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank land. However, we also know that we cannot ask our fellow Israeli doctors “Do you condemn?”

We have been forced to live in a coercive environment where Palestinian death is normalised and often celebrated, but Israeli Jewish death is seen as a tragedy that cannot be accepted and necessitates revenge.

This is the reality, where Israeli national security is of high value but Palestinian national security is a dark joke. It is Jewish supremacy in life and death that is so normalised, particularly at such tragic times when it explodes to uncover the true face of our Israeli colleagues and sadly also of the Western world and its medical institutions.

The normalisation of Palestinian dehumanisation reflects the complicity of the entire world in the massacres which are taking place in the Gaza Strip.

The medical profession has a long and rich history of opposing war and its devastating effects on health. It has stood up against racism, colonialism and imperial expansion, which have driven deadly wars.

We can vividly remember the massive organising of doctors against the US wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. We saw how doctors in the US, in the aftermath of 9/11, organised to oppose and lobby against the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, knowing it would lead to more deaths and not security.

But we are also aware that the majority of our fellow Israeli Jewish colleagues are on the opposite side of this urge to protect civilians, as the entire Israeli health system has been mobilised to join the war effort and support it.

The Israeli health system not only does not oppose Israel’s war, occupation and apartheid but also prevents Palestinian doctors living in Israel from speaking up and organising against them.

In this tragic and regrettable environment we live and work in, we need to hide our names and write anonymously to state the obvious, following our professional duty and oath. We have reached such a level of demoralisation and dehumanisation that we are forced to watch massacres, with Palestinian children burned by Israeli phosphorus bombs and entire populations starved of food and water, without batting an eye, as if everything is just “normal”.

Not only are we barred from volunteering to provide medical aid to the innocent Palestinian civilians, but we are also not allowed to speak up against those state crimes without risking our jobs and safety.

We want this letter to serve as an apology to our Palestinian people and colleagues in the Gaza Strip, exposing our profound powerlessness and complete impotence.

We and the world have failed you.

We can only hope that in future calmer days, we can bear witness and speak and write about the conditions that have allowed for massacres to unfold and to take part in healing those who survived.

Editor’s note: Suad, Layla and Samir are pseudonyms. This op-ed has been written by them along with three other Palestinian doctors working in Israel. They are writing anonymously for fear of physical and professional retribution.

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

Mojahed was one of the few men carrying the dead body of his father’s friend, Muhammad Ahmar. Around 40 mourners had gathered in late May in the Ombada district of Omdurman, a city in Sudan occupied by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), to witness the burial of this respected figure, the head of a family in his 70s who used to be an architect.

A bullet had pierced his back during one of the RSF lootings in late May. Muhammad was deemed “uncooperative” by the members of the RSF while they were trying to requisition his car; he was shot and left for dead in front of his son.

Sorrow loomed as the burial line reached a local schoolyard, a temporary grave for many victims of the war since April. The presence of violent RSF members close by made it impossible for any proper funeral rites to take place.

“Muhammad was a peaceful and respected man,” Mojahed, who did not wish to give his full name for fear of reprisals, recalls. “On the day before his death, we ran into each other after the evening prayer, and he told me that I looked like my father.”

Blood was still seeping from the gunshot wound, Mojahed says, as he and the other pallbearers laid Muhammad in his grave. The fear of RSF assaults meant a rushed burial, and the schoolyard had become the resting place for many community members killed during the war.

No one thought Omdurman would become a hellscape. Now, Mojahed is living it.

Once a home

Following years of instability and coups, Sudan has been devastated by fighting between the Sudanese army, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, led by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

The Rapid Support Forces evolved from the Janjaweed militias from the Darfur region, fighting alongside the Sudanese army against a rebellion in the 2000s. Grasping more power throughout the years, the RSF became an undeniable and brutal force in Sudan, described by Human Rights Watch as “Men With No Mercy”.

The power struggle between these two top generals evolved into a full-scale war on April 15 this year. Since then, more than 5,000 people have been killed, 12,000 injured and millions displaced.

Gunfire and explosions have filled the capital of Khartoum and the western region of Darfur as civilians have fled for their lives. By the end of September, the United Nations said a total of 5.4 million people had been internally displaced or were seeking refuge in other African countries including Egypt, Eritrea and Kenya.

Mojahed’s family are among those millions displaced. Their house, located in a middle-class neighbourhood in Omdurman and once home to dozens of extended family members before the war, now holds just one – Mojahed – as it is in an area which has been taken over by the RSF.

A former police officer now aged 46, he volunteered to stay behind while his wife and two children fled to al-Thawra after the war started – a town 10km (6.2 miles) north of Omdurman and still under army control. The family believed they would be safer there.

The once-bustling neighbourhood filled with street vendors, teachers and restaurant owners is now crowded with RSF patrols, looking to pick up anyone who looks suspicious. Any adult male civilians may be suspected of being undercover army members. “They [RSF] will constantly question any adults walking on the street or just going to the market,” Mojahed says. “You are asked about where you live and if you are part of the military, undercover.”

According to Mojahed, a whip from a leather stick is the most common weapon the patrol members use during interrogations. Any resistance will be met with bullets or arrest and even torture in one of the nearby RSF camps.

“People that go into [those] camps either never make it back or are released after days of torture,” Mojahed says, describing the encounters he has heard about between the RSF and others living in his neighbourhood. “It’s RSF’s second nature to kill. To them, it’s as easy to take a human life as it is to step on an ant.”

Now, adult men refrain from going to RSF-concentrated areas like the market, sending women and children instead since they have proved less likely to attract the patrol’s attention. Mojahed says he himself has taken to leaving the house carrying only a small amount of cash and a half-broken phone, wearing a jalabiya, a traditional white dress often worn by elders in Sudan, so he appears “old and weak”.

The worst feeling, Mojahed says, is the crushing weight of uncertainty: “You know someone and the next day, you hear people came to their house and killed them. It’s like a horror movie.”

The ones who stayed behind

Millions have fled to other cities and countries since the war started, but some have no choice but to stay behind. Many simply cannot afford to travel and pay rent in a new place. Some have volunteered to stay to protect family properties which have been passed down for generations.

In Omdurman, Mojahed and others who have remained in his neighbourhood have agreed to form an alliance – a community “workforce” – in a collective bid to protect themselves and their properties from lootings and assaults.

Around 20 to 30 men, including Mojahed, have volunteered to stand guard at either end of their street during the day: “If people are not grouped up, the RSF is more likely to harass them,” Mojahed explains. RSF patrols usually do their rounds in groups of fewer than six; 30 workforce members divided into two groups at both ends of the street usually keep the trouble away.

Family members of the workforce often ask why they are lingering instead of fleeing as well. Their common response is: “Leave to where?” Having spent all their lives in this neighbourhood, many like Mojahed cannot bear the idea of abandoning their roots.

Stationed on the street during daylight when RSF members are most active, the workforce’s only mission is to safeguard the area so their community, or at least their street, won’t suffer attacks by RSF raiders. Community members constantly update each other on the status of RSF activity by WhatsApp as they get news or warnings of upcoming patrols or motorcades.

However, internet services are usually cut off by the authorities whenever there are gunshots in the area, something which happens daily. This is an attempt by the government to prevent the RSF from communicating with each other during fighting.

Mojahed believes that cities like Omdurman have in some way been more “fortunate” because of the unstable yet available supply of water and electricity. “Alhamdulillah we still have water and electricity from the government, but it randomly cuts off.”

Mojahed’s family house has become a temporary headquarters of sorts for the neighbourhood workforce. “When the RSF sees a house empty, they are more likely to occupy it or loot it. Everyone looks out for one another. I got closer with some people because of this [workforce],” Mojahed says.

Yet, the day shifts cannot entirely prevent RSF members from patrolling and disrupting the neighbourhood. The “hooligan behaviours” Mojahed talks about refer to the RSF firing shots at children and dogs. Burials, he says, must be performed in backyards as constant lootings and raids torment the rest of the neighbourhood.

At night, Mojahed and the rest of the community sleep in their yards: A single bed, a phone for communication and a pistol for the worst-case scenario are all part of their nightly routine. Mojahed still uses his phone at night to check in on his family. However, the conversations are often cut short by communication blackouts.

Beaten for leaving the area

Tragedy and conflict have become a constant for the people of Sudan. Even intrastate travel can prove extremely dangerous – at least four RSF roadblocks were set up between Omdurman and the neighbouring town, al-Thawra.

When Mojahed’s neighbour, Mukhtar, attempted a 20-minute road trip in early September to have his broken phone fixed, he made it as far as the first checkpoint. Mukhtar’s fit figure and young age flagged him as suspicious to the RSF, who are always on the lookout for the undercover military.

Despite trying his best to prove his civilian status and explain why he needed to travel, Mukhtar was severely beaten, receiving bruises and cuts all over his body. Mojahed says he doesn’t know if his neighbour would have made it back home had it not been for the people living next to the roadblock. They took Mukhtar in and tended to his injuries as best they could.

Apart from the community workforces like the one Mojahed is part of, others in Sudan have stayed behind to volunteer for medical aid as hundreds of civilians are injured and transported to hospitals daily.

According to MSF’s (Doctors Without Borders) head of mission in Sudan, Pietro Curtaz, the organisation’s hospitals in Khartoum have received assistance from the Sudanese Ministry of Health, along with local volunteers who organised themselves to work with MSF.

However, volunteers are worn out – the conflict in Sudan has gone on for so long and become so intense. “Although medical needs in Sudan have increased, MSF is now working with half the number of international medical staff as compared to before April, which affects our ability to even maintain these services,” Curtaz tells Al Jazeera.

“The high level of violence and insecurity in Khartoum and Darfur also pose a challenge to patients and health staff to access health services. In some places, patients are delaying seeking medical attention because it is too dangerous to come to us once they have more serious complications.

“International organisations, MSF included, should be doing more – but cannot.

“We are currently working in 10 states in Sudan, and we are seeing massive emerging and pre-existing needs…with the constantly changing security situation, lack of consistency in the visa process and unreliable supply of medical supplies in the country, we are not able to provide assistance to the scale that we would like.”

Dr Waleed Madibo, a senior governance and international development expert, paints a similar picture. The founder of an NGO which focuses on governance in Khartoum, Dr Madibo, who is from East Darfur, believes Sudan requires a “fundamental reboot”.

“I think the war is going to expand before it diminishes,” he tells Al Jazeera. “The war will begin to spread to each part of the country but ultimately it will reach a point where some sort of a consensus [in the country] will be reached [to stop the war].”

“I think al-Burhan [Sudan’s army chief] is a liability for the country, just as Hemedti [leader of the RSF] is. Both are liabilities to the country and even organisations like Forces of Freedom [The Forces of Freedom and Change, FFC].

“All those who were part of the political quagmire before the war can no longer be a part of the government’s equation in the future.”

The road away

In the end, and despite his previous determination to stay put, Mojahed has decided not to stay to see Omdurman’s future.

A few days after he spoke to Al Jazeera, Mojahed called back to report a full-scale occupation of his neighbourhood by the RSF.

Doors were kicked down in late September as looters hot-wired cars outside Mojahed’s house. Shattered glass and items of furniture from his house lay strewn on the ground, and RSF officials swore to return the next day to “take all the furniture”.

They were true to their word. The next thing Mojahed remembers, he says, is walking through empty rooms he used to call home. “The community collapsed,” Mojahed says. “It’s only RSF now.”

So Mojahed finally left, along with the rest of the community members. He has gone to al-Thawra to be with his wife and children, forced to give up the land he cared so deeply for.

As for the whereabouts of the rest of the workforce, and the places they have fled to, Mojahed simply doesn’t know. He says he is distraught about leaving. He says he truly believes that if all the men who left had stayed alongside him, with their much bigger numbers collectively, the extent of the damage unleashed by the RSF would have been less, at least in his neighbourhood.

Mojahed is still planning to return to Omdurman, hopefully in the next few days, he says. Not because he still has any hope of defending what’s left of his home – the danger would be too grave – but because he has to gather any valuables left there.

Mojahed wants to sell them so that he can send his two children overseas, or at least as far away as possible from the strife in Sudan.

Tense and difficult negotiations continue at the United Nations Security Council in an effort to break the deadlock crippling the world’s most powerful decision-making authority – as death and despair rain down on Gaza.

Al Jazeera has learned that Malta’s ambassador to the UN, Vanessa Frazier, has circulated a new resolution among the Council members for consideration and a potential vote, hoping to finally pass a resolution on the war on Gaza, after serial failed efforts over the past month.

Malta is one of 10 elected members of the Council and has been the penholder on children in armed conflict since 2022. This position gives Malta the opportunity to play a leading role in the UNSC’s efforts to protect children in conflict zones. Diplomatic sources have told Al Jazeera that this new resolution is being drafted with a focus on children in the hopes that all 15 members of the UNSC can agree on protections for children in the ongoing conflict.

On Friday, Adele Khodr, UNICEF Middle East and North Africa regional director, said, “Children’s right to life and health is being denied.” The UN agency went on to warn that the lives of one million children in the besieged enclave are “hanging by a thread” as child health services almost collapse across the Gaza Strip.

There is renewed hope that the UNSC will finally respond to the war on Gaza, not only because there have been new attempts to find compromise language that will appeal to all its members, including the United States, but also because there has been a shift in the stance of the US itself. President Joe Biden called for a humanitarian pause to Israel’s war for the first time on November 2.

The US says it is actively engaging with the elected members – Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland and the UAE. This is significant because its veto power has been one of the reasons why several of the previous Council resolutions have failed since violence broke out on October 7.

But, as ever, in the Council, there is much wrangling over the exact language of the resolution. Russia and China have vetoed a US resolution calling for a “humanitarian pause”, a phrase suggesting it would be conditional and time-limited. Most of the rest of the Council wants the resolution to include the word “ceasefire”. The choice of a single word in the resolution – pause or ceasefire – has meant an impasse in the UN’s top body, empowered with the maintenance of international peace and security.

With the Maltese resolution, sources told Al Jazeera, a key question that might come up for debate is the duration of the pauses in fighting. Humanitarian groups, and even US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have said the four-hour pauses that Israel has agreed to are currently not enough to ease humanitarian suffering meaningfully. However, it is unclear whether the US will agree to pauses that last several days at a stretch.

Still, one thing has changed since the previous resolutions. The UN General Assembly – which represents all of the UN member states – has expressed its clear opinion, calling for a humanitarian truce that passed on October 27 with 120 votes out of the 193 members. Such a resolution is not binding but has moral weight as a temperature check of the world’s mood.

Why has the UN failed to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza?

Previous UNSC draft resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza have failed. Two resolutions drafted by Russia did not get enough votes, with the US among the countries that voted against them. Even though a resolution proposed by Brazil received 12 votes out of the 15 member states, the US vetoed the draft. And, Russia and China vetoed a resolution drafted by the US.

While the five permanent members of the UNSC – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US – have the power to veto any resolution that they do not like, it remains reasonably rare. The US and Russia are the two countries that have exercised their veto power the most in the past. In recent years, the US has mostly used its veto to protect its ally Israel.

This was not always the case. Prior to the 1970s, the US often allowed resolutions to pass that Israel did not like.

In 1956, it voted with other UNSC members to criticise Israel for a military operation in Gaza the previous year. Egypt controlled Gaza at the time.

Will Israel abide if a resolution passes?

More recently, on December 23, 2016, during the last days of the Barack Obama administration, the UNSC passed Resolution 2334.

This resolution reaffirmed that Israel’s settlements in occupied Palestine, including East Jerusalem, “had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law”. It added that the settlements were a major obstacle to the vision of a two-state solution. There was considerable pressure from Israel and within the US for the Obama administration to veto it, but in the end they abstained. The resolution passed with 14 votes.

While the Council’s resolution, which also called for immediate steps to prevent violence against civilians, is “binding international law”, it was ignored by Israel.

What happens if a country defies a UNSC resolution?

If the resolution is broken, the next step is for the Council to take punitive action. This would be done in a follow-up resolution, which addresses the breach and calls for action.

The UN has taken action in the past by sanctioning breaching countries. However, in recent years, there has been pushback from permanent members Russia and China, who are not keen on the UNSC adopting new sanctions.

Under the UN Charter, the Council can go even further and order the authorisation of an international force. A notable example of this was in 1991 when a US-led military alliance was created to reverse the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The problem lies in any potential follow-up resolution. There are virtually no circumstances under which the Biden administration would support a punitive resolution that would take forceful action against Israel.

Currently, there are backchannel efforts from the US administration to try and get Israel to restrain its military operations and stop killing civilians. But they are not working.

Israel does not currently seem at all concerned about accountability under international law. Israel and the US are not signatories to the Rome Statute that set up the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The court has made it clear that it does have jurisdiction regarding crimes committed in the Gaza conflict. Violations of UNSC resolutions and breaches of international humanitarian law, such as targeting hospitals and indiscriminate bombardment of civilians, could form part of a compelling case.

But even if the ICC takes action, there is no way that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would voluntarily surrender himself into custody in The Hague. The same way, we have not seen Russian President Vladimir Putin offer himself up to the ICC judges when an arrest warrant for war crimes was issued against him by the ICC in March.

All this does not mean that circumstances will not change at some point. And if you breach international law, there is no statute of limitation on war crimes. The ICC and a separate International Independent Commission of Inquiry, set up by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021, are gathering evidence on the current conflict. This will remain on the record for the world to see.

What has the UN done so far?

If we go back into history, the UN has established peacekeeping forces to tackle issues involving Israel. This includes the UN Emergency Force (UNEF), which deployed international peacekeepers on the border between Egypt and Israel in 1956.

Two other missions are still operating, to this day. The UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) was established in 1974 after the agreed disengagement of the Israeli and Syrian forces in the Golan Heights. In 1978, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was formed to confirm Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and to restore international peace and security.

These forces have a mandate to report any breaches, monitor the situation and provide a calming presence.

Yet, there are limits to what these forces can accomplish by way of establishing peace. There is currently no calm on the front line between Lebanon and Israel, known as the Blue Line, with the heaviest clashes for years between Hezbollah and Israeli forces. The Golan Heights situation has also been very tense for a long time, including during the Syrian war.

But all that only matters if the UNSC can first agree on a resolution. It is about to be tested again.

Iceland has declared a state of emergency after thousands of tremors raised fears of a volcanic eruption.

Authorities have ordered thousands living in the southwestern town of Grindavik to evacuate as a precaution and have closed the nearby Blue Lagoon tourist attraction.

The area around Mount Thorbjorn on the Reykjanes Peninsula has been shaken by hundreds of small earthquakes every day for more than two weeks due to a build-up of volcanic magma – molten rock – around three miles (5km) underground.

Land in the region has risen by 9cm (3.5in) since the end of October, according to the Icelandic Met Office (IMO).

Scientists are closely monitoring the situation for any indication the seismic activity is getting closer to the surface.

Iceland, which sits above a volcanic hotspot in the North Atlantic, averages an eruption every four to five years.

The most disruptive in recent times was the 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which spewed huge clouds of ash into the atmosphere and led to widespread airspace closures over Europe.

The Reykjanes Peninsula on Iceland’s southwestern coast includes a volcanic system that has erupted three times since 2021, after being dormant for 800 years.

The evacuation of Grindavik came after the IMO warned “significant changes have occurred in the seismic activity” and that magma could have extended under the town, which is located about 33 miles (53km) from the capital Reykjavik.

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The IMO said: “At this stage, it is not possible to determine exactly whether and where magma might reach the surface.”

Iceland’s civil protection agency ordered residents to leave the area but stressed it was not an emergency evacuation. It said there was “plenty of time to prepare… and drive out of town calmly”.

“There is no immediate danger imminent, the evacuation is primarily preventive,” the agency added.