Jordan’s FM Calls for Investment into War-Torn Syria to Speed up Refugee Returns

Jordan Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi speaks during a press conference with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad, after their meeting in Damascus, Syria, Monday, July 3, 2023. (AP)
Jordan Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi speaks during a press conference with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad, after their meeting in Damascus, Syria, Monday, July 3, 2023. (AP)
TT
20

Jordan’s FM Calls for Investment into War-Torn Syria to Speed up Refugee Returns

Jordan Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi speaks during a press conference with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad, after their meeting in Damascus, Syria, Monday, July 3, 2023. (AP)
Jordan Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi speaks during a press conference with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad, after their meeting in Damascus, Syria, Monday, July 3, 2023. (AP)

Jordan's foreign minister Monday called for international investment into conflict-ravaged Syria's crippled infrastructure to speed up refugee returns.

Ayman Safadi made the remarks during a visit to the capital Damascus, where he met with Syrian President Bashar Assad and his counterpart, Faisal Mekdad.

Jordan, shares a border with the war-torn country and hosts some 1.3 million Syrian refugees, played a role in the once-pariah state's return to the Arab League. It hosted regional talks in May between Syrian, Saudi, Iraqi and Egyptian officials in an initiative to reach a political solution to the years-long crisis.

Syria’s uprising-turned civil war, now in its 13th year, has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half of its prewar population of 23 million. Syrians in both government-held territory and an opposition-held enclave in the country's northwest suffer from rampant poverty and crippled infrastructure.

“We have offered everything we can to ensure them a dignified life,” Safadi said at a news conference following his meetings. “But what we are sure of is that the refugees’ futures lie in their country.”

The Jordanian foreign minister said that securing critical infrastructure and basic necessities will speed up voluntary refugee returns, especially as international aid for refugees continues to decline.

Assad in a statement released by his office echoed similar sentiments, saying that investment in infrastructure and reconstruction would create the “best environment” for refugee returns.

“We reaffirm that the refugee file is a solely humanitarian and moral issue that should not be politicized in any way,” the statement read.

Anti-refugee sentiment has soared in Lebanon and Türkiye, two other neighboring countries hosting Syrian refugees.

But while government-held Syria receives humanitarian aid through United Nations agencies, Western-led sanctions have made it difficult for Damascus to fix electricity, water and other infrastructure decimated in the conflict and more recently by a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake in February.

Western countries, most vocally the United States and the United Kingdom, say that Syria is still not safe for return. UN agencies and human rights organizations say the same, with groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch saying they have documented cases of arbitrary detention and disappearances.

Safadi's meetings with Mekdad and Assad also discussed the humanitarian crisis in Syria, steps toward a political solution to the conflict, and drug smuggling, which has become a lucrative industry in the economically shattered country.



UN Agency Says Israel Shuts 4 Schools in East Jerusalem

A boy stands outside the gate of the Kalandia vocational training center (KTC), run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which was raided by Israeli forces earlier at the Qalandiya camp for Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)
A boy stands outside the gate of the Kalandia vocational training center (KTC), run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which was raided by Israeli forces earlier at the Qalandiya camp for Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)
TT
20

UN Agency Says Israel Shuts 4 Schools in East Jerusalem

A boy stands outside the gate of the Kalandia vocational training center (KTC), run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which was raided by Israeli forces earlier at the Qalandiya camp for Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)
A boy stands outside the gate of the Kalandia vocational training center (KTC), run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which was raided by Israeli forces earlier at the Qalandiya camp for Palestinian refugees in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says Israeli forces raided four of its schools in east Jerusalem, ordering their closure.

Israel has severed all ties with the agency, known as UNRWA, and bars it from operating in its territory. It says the agency allowed itself to be infiltrated by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, allegations denied by UN officials.

UNRWA said police entered a training center by force on Tuesday, firing tear gas and sound grenades and ordering its evacuation. It said 350 students and 30 staff were present during the raid on the Qalandiya Training Center.

It said police and city officials ordered the closure of three other schools in east Jerusalem, two of which proceeded with the school day.

Israeli police spokesman Dean Elsdunne said police did not enter the UN buildings and that Jerusalem municipal authorities carried out the closures. He said police were deployed to protect the city workers, using “riot dispersal” means in one case where a crowd threw stones at them outside a UN facility.

Roland Friedrich, UNRWA director for the occupied West Bank, including east Jerusalem, said the raids were an “unacceptable violation of United Nations privileges and immunities,” and a “denial of the right to education for children and trainees.”