Israel has accepted an offer of help from the Palestinian authorities to tackle the wildfires that have engulfed large areas of central and northern parts of the country.
The crisis has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes as flames have swept into the country’s third largest city of Haifa.
Four Palestinian firefighting teams will join the effort to combat the fires.
A senior Israeli official told daily newspaper Haaretz that Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories will oversee the cooperation between the Palestinian and the Israeli fire crews.
Russia, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Croatia and Cyprus are all also helping fight the blaze, while America has agreed to send a Boeing 747 “Supertanker” firefighting plane.
Israel’s chief of police has blamed the fires on arson attacks, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said such an attack would be treated as terrorism.
Israeli police said on Friday they had arrested 12 people on suspicion of arson.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a dozen people had been detained either while attempting to set fires or fleeing the area, but he provided no further details.
Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan said they were “minorities”, an allusion to either Arab Israeli citizens or Palestinians.
“The highest likelihood is that the motive is nationalistic,” Mr Erdan told Army Radio.
The flames, which have raged since Tuesday, have been fanned by strong winds during an exceptionally dry period.
Former Senior Parliamentary Secretary Hawazi Daipi will be Singapore’s new non-resident representative to the Palestinian Territories, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said on Monday (Nov 7).
In a press release, MFA said Senior Minister of State for Defence and Foreign Affairs Maliki Osman, who is currently on a working visit to the Middle East, announced Mr Hawazi’s appointment during meetings in Ramallah with Palestinian National Authority (PNA) leaders President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad Al-Maliki, Minister of Education and Higher Education Sabri Saidam and Minister of National Economy Abeer Odeh.
“The PNA leaders welcomed the appointment,” MFA said.
As non-resident representative to PNA, Mr Hawazi will coordinate Singapore’s Enhanced Technical Assistance Package for the Palestinians. In April this year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had announced that Singapore would double the package to help the Palestinians with capacity-building from S$5 million to S$10 million.
KUALA LUMPUR: Until sometime in 1982, a Malaysian woman living in exile in London with her Singaporean husband was all but oblivious to the Palestinian plight.
Penang-born Dr Ang Swee Chai, like many non-Muslims, could not relate to the suffering of the Palestinians owing to the highly charged religious sentiments of their supporters. She grew up supporting Israel.
“My church celebrated when Israel won the Six Day War,” Ang told FMT, referring to the 1967 war that Israel won against Arab forces.
The petite orthopaedic surgeon was in Kuala Lumpur to attend the launching of a new edition of her memoir of the events of September 1982 in Lebanon.
From Beirut to Jerusalem is her eyewitness account as a young volunteer during the Sabra and Shatilla massacre in Lebanon. The killings, blamed on a pro-Israeli Lebanese Christian army, was condemned as an act of genocide by the United Nations General Assembly in December that year.
Ang began to question her beliefs after watching news reports on British television of Israelis flushing out the Palestine Liberation Organisation from Lebanon, sparing neither civilians nor hospitals.
“The Christian in me knew this was wrong,” she said. “God’s commandment to us is to love, not to kill.”
Ang is now 67. Five years ago, she lost her husband, Francis Khoo, a devout Catholic whom she married in 1977 and whose political activism in Singapore made him a target of the Internal Security Act.
Following their marriage, Ang was also sought by Singapore authorities, who hoped to use her to lure back her husband who by then had sought refuge in the United Kingdom.
But Ang managed to reunite with him. For the next three decades, both lived in exile in London.
To Lebanon
In 1982, moved by the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, Ang responded to appeals for international aid. She left for Beirut, thinking she would volunteer for only a few weeks.
But the extent of the death and destruction she saw shocked her. She ended up in a refugee camp and soon learnt first-hand the plight of the Palestinians and how they had been driven from their homes by the Israeli army.
“They have a country, and homes they cannot go back to. They are not terrorists. They are kind, loving and generous people,” she said of the Palestinians, with whom she maintains close ties until today.
Her life changed when, three weeks into her volunteer work, the Sabra and Shatillah massacre took place.
“Every dead body was found with a Palestinian refugee card,” she said. “That’s when it hit me that they were the victims of terror.
“I realised that my church got it wrong, the press got it wrong and that justice had not been done and that the truth was not being told.
“Some 3,000 people were killed in three days. I remember standing over dead bodies. I asked for God’s forgiveness for being prejudiced and blind, and for taking sides without understanding the side of the victims.”
It was at this point, she said, that she sought repentance and vowed to offer herself to helping Palestinians for the rest of her life.
When the British government wanted to repatriate British aid workers, she refused to go back.
Ang founded Medical Aid for Palestinians with a committed group of friends. In 1987 she was awarded Palestine’s highest civilian award, the Star of Palestine, for her service to the people of Palestine.
For all the inhumanity she witnessed, Ang said the indomitable spirit of the Palestinians was what gave her hope.
“Bombs cannot destroy their spirit,” she said. “When they lose their homes, they build and rebuild time and again.
“Their children see so much – death, mass graves, destruction. Yet, they are unafraid. This gives me hope to continue serving the people of Palestine.”
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Article was first published in Free Malaysia Today. Republished with permission.
I read with great consternation that Singapore will be hosting the Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu as a state guest.
The Israeli PM is directly responsible for the current continued oppression of the Palestinian people through its illegal occupation of Gaza and the West Bank as stated by numerous UN resolutions which Israel continuously ignores with the shameful backing of the US government. Its occupying forces conducts numerous crimes against Palestinian civilians and its forces have conducted many agressions in occupied Palestinian territories that are culpable to war crimes, as recent as the last Gaza incursion in 2014 that claims thousands of Palestinian lives through excessive use of powerful bombs on densely populated Palestinian residential areas.
The Singapore government may seem to think that it is acceptable to host the Israeli PM afterall the Israelis are the pioneering country that provided military assistance in terms of training and guidance to the Singapore Armed Forces when Singapore first setup its nascent military defence unit after independence.
It serves as no great solace to know that we had relied on Israeli military advice and guidance in the formation of our Armed Forces. This is especially so as a Malay/Muslim Singaporean who has felt direct discrimination towards his race in the Singapore Armed Forces.
This discrimination has most probably arisen from the advice and guidance of the Israeli military consultants who may have sowed distrust towards the Malay/Muslim citizens serving the Singapore Armed Forces likely rationalized and justified by their own experience and paranoia towards the Palestinan people (and the Arabs too) that they have kept under siege for 60 years encounting with no end to hostility nor nearing any peaceful settlement to the last remaining illegal occupation to exist on God’s earth.
Such inhumane treatment that the Israelis imposed upon the Palestian people in the occupied territories has resulted in extreme distrust between them and the Palestinians and overtime have led to a toxic unsustainable relationship based on fears and suspicion with no end in sight.
Likewise, a toxic relationship too may have emerged in our own land caused by our own policies for the last 50 years that blankets the entire Malay/Muslim population as suspicious and not to be fully trusted to be given full access to all military positions, especially so-called ‘sensitive areas’ in the Singapore Armed Forces. This unjustified and unproven fears that have shaped and colored policies preventing Malay/Muslim citizens full meritocratic access to all possible ranks and files in the military must end immediately.
Only when this happens will the process of correction and rapprochement begin to eradicate the poisoned perceptions that have developed overtime by the majority towards Malay/Muslim trustworthiness in and beyond the Military into other aspects of society. This disriminatory policy must stop for the sake of fairness, justice and a true harmonious multi-racial/multi-religious Singapore that we intend to build for this nation.
For all the above reasons, as a Malay/Muslim Singaporean I protest the coming of Mr Benjamin Netanyahu to my country. He is also an alleged war criminal.
I forward below an email from our very own Dr Ang Swee Chai from Medical Aid for Palestinian, a London based NGO, in support of my involvement in previous protest effort against the brutal acts of the Israeli government towards the Palestinian people that the invited Isreali PM is currently heading.
Thank you for emailing me so that I can support what you and the Fellowship of Muslim Students Association are doing. As you know a ceasefire is in place after 150 Gazans were killed and nearly a thousand injured. As you know Gaza is half the size of Singapore and home to 1.7 million people, 80% of them refugees from the rest of Palestine. They were forced out from the rest of Palestine in 1948 and took refuge in Gaza. Since 2007 Gaza’s people are under constant military blockade. All her borders with Israel are sealed by the military and none can move in or out, except through Rafah which until recently was also closed by President Mubarak. The sea of Gaza is manned by Israeli warships and no one from Gaza can wander beyond 3 nautical miles. The targetting of fishing boats and killing and injury of fishermen by warships firing at them even with the 3 nautical miles are all too often.
Even before this recent assault, military helicopters regularly fly into Gaza and kill and injure civilians. When you hear the word targets mentioned by the BBC and the Western Press, you do not hear the cries of the mothers who lost their babies, who are sometimes just called collateral damage. The skies of Gaza are patrolled by drones and the whole of Gaza is under surveillance and drone attacks are frequent.
Electricity is scarce, many of the 21,000 homes and buildings destroyed from Cast Lead four years ago not rebuilt since there is also a blockade on building materials. The schools destroyed during Cast Lead are also not rebuilt and children are now crammed into whatever school buildings which are still functional. Many people are still living in tents or in temporary buildings. Unemployment is high since factories and workshops cannot function and even if they function the military siege makes it impossible to export their goods and import raw materials. It is the same with agriculture produce – all forms of trade is made impossible by the blockade. Hospitals are starved of medical supplies.
Water is also a problem in Gaza since Israel has dug deep wells and siphoned off the natural water from Gaza. The water from Gaza now is heavily polluted and contains high nitrates and unfit for washing and drinking.
You can find more facts from various sources including from the website of Medical Aid for Palestinians and Palestine Solidarity Campaign – I have only given you a very sketchy description.
So when F16s bomb Gaza the last 9 days, hitting hundreds of “targets” daily, those of us who know Gaza well can only cry out in shock and anger against this atrocity and injustice. Yet many of us are astonished by the courage of people in Gaza in resisting the assault. The ceasefire is agreed on mainly because Israel knows it cannot beat down Gaza despite pounding it incessantly with bombs. They had planned a land invasion but did not go through with it not because they are humane, but because they know they cannot win and do not have the stomach to go through with it. Hilary Clinton got to turn round from her visit to Burma to fly Cairo to support a truce called by the new Egyptian Government.
Your supporters need to know the following:
Israel is the sixth largest military power in the world. In 2009 it has –
200-300 nuclear warheads
300 F16s
60 military helicopters
60 warships
3650 tanks
Plus daily military aid of eight million dollars from the USA ( as opposed to non-military aid) and the huge support of the Western Press and governments.
Palestine has none of the above. Gaza has home made rockets.
But Palestine has truth on her side. Despite the killing and the suppression of truth, people from all over the world are beginning to find out. And I hope your meeting will help others understand what is going on. Up to 1982, I was the victim of lies against the Palestinians until I went out to work in Sabra and Shatilla. By God’s grace I have seen the truth and may this never depart from me.
I hope one day your Association will have the chance to visit Gaza and West Bank, and meet the people there. But until then take it from me that it is a great honour to be able to support them. For me it is a personal privilege that Medical Aid for Palestinians have been able to be partners to the humanitarian Palestinian institutions in Gaza, West Bank and in Lebanon. I hope your institution will be the same.
