Gaza Christians ask for peace on Palm Sunday

RAMALLAH: Israeli military offensives in two West Bank refugee camps have displaced nearly 5,500 Palestinian families since December, local and UN officials said Tuesday, amid escalating violence in the occupied territory.
The Israeli military describes its ongoing operations as “counterterrorism” efforts aimed at rooting out Palestinian militancy.
Jonathan Fowler, spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said an estimated 2,450 to 3,000 families have been displaced from the Tulkarem refugee camp.
Faisal Salama, head of the camp’s popular committee, estimated that 80 percent of the camp’s 15,000 residents have been displaced.
Both Salama and Fowler said that obtaining precise figures is challenging because of the security situation within the camp and its fluctuating population.
“The displaced people from the camp are scattered in the suburbs and in the city of Tulkarem itself,” Salama told AFP.
He said that six people had been killed and dozens wounded since the offensive began on January 25.
“The bombing of residential homes in the camp continues, along with destruction and bulldozing of everything.”
Salama also reported that the violence has severely restricted the movement of goods into the camp.
“There is a shortage of water, no electricity, no communication and a lack of essential supplies such as milk for children, diapers, and medicine,” he added.
Displacement has also been severe in Jenin, also in the northern West Bank, where the military launched an intensive assault it dubbed “Iron Wall” on January 21.
Fowler reported that 3,000 families — around 15,000 people — have fled Jenin refugee camp since December, initially when Palestinian security forces staged their own operation against militants and then later because of the Israeli offensive.
Displacement has surged in recent days after the military assault inflicted further destruction on the camp.
On Sunday, Israeli media and the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli forces had demolished 20 buildings in a single coordinated detonation in the camp.
Both the Tulkarem and Jenin refugee camps are known strongholds of Palestinian militancy.
A gunman attacked an Israeli military checkpoint in the northern West Bank at Tayasir on Tuesday, fatally wounding two soldiers before troops shot him dead, the military said.
The Palestinian health ministry reported on Tuesday that 70 people had been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year, 38 of them in Jenin.
Israel’s military says its forces had killed “approximately 55 terrorists” across the West Bank in January, without specifying the locations.
Its West Bank operations intensified following a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip on January 19.
The Palestinian health ministry says Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 884 Palestinians, including many militants, in the West Bank since the Gaza war began on October 7, 2023.
Over the same period, at least 32 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military raids in the territory, official Israeli figures show.

TOKYO: The Japanese government is considering offering medical care in the world’s fourth-largest economy for sick and wounded residents of Gaza, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said.
Ishiba told a parliament session on Monday that his administration is working on a policy to provide support in Japan for “those who are ill or injured in Gaza.”
He said that educational opportunities could also be offered to people from Gaza, which is under a fragile ceasefire with Israel.
Ishiba was responding to a lawmaker who had asked whether a 2017 scheme to accept Syrian refugees as students could be used as a reference point to help Gaza residents.

“We are thinking about launching a similar program for Gaza, and the government will make efforts toward the realization of this plan,” Ishiba said.
The measures discussed in parliament are different to Japan’s main asylum policy, which has long been criticized for the low number of claims granted by the nation.
In 2023, Japan accepted 1,310 people seeking asylum — less than 10 percent of the 13,823 applicants.
Under a different framework, as of the end of last year, Japan had accepted a total of 82 people as students from Syria who were recognized as refugees by the UN refugee agency, a foreign ministry official in charge of aid programs said.