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West Bank: New Front Challenges Israel, Palestinian Authority

The West Bank witnessed widespread unrest on Tuesday night as Palestinian anger flared in the aftermath of the massacre at the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza. (AFP)
The West Bank witnessed widespread unrest on Tuesday night as Palestinian anger flared in the aftermath of the massacre at the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza. (AFP)
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West Bank: New Front Challenges Israel, Palestinian Authority

The West Bank witnessed widespread unrest on Tuesday night as Palestinian anger flared in the aftermath of the massacre at the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza. (AFP)
The West Bank witnessed widespread unrest on Tuesday night as Palestinian anger flared in the aftermath of the massacre at the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza. (AFP)

The West Bank has witnessed escalating tensions that could potentially open a third front against Israel, along with Gaza and the Lebanese border, since Israel launched its war on the coastal enclave two weeks ago,

Hamas has been actively pushing the West Bank toward a larger confrontation with Israel, even before it launched Al-Aqsa Storm operation on Oct.7.

The Islamic Jihad has also explicitly urged Palestinians in the West Bank to bear arms and engage in the confrontation with Israel.

While much of the attention has been focused on the borders with Gaza and Lebanon, tensions have significantly escalated in the West Bank.

Palestinians there have carried out armed attacks on Israeli military positions, engaged in angry protests, and clashed violently with the army.

It appears that the army has decided to change its approach and crack down on the Palestinians in the area, much like what it is doing in Gaza.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the official spokesperson for Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas, accused Israel of waging a comprehensive war against Palestinians wherever they are located.

He stated that Israel is a lawless state committing crimes in both the West Bank and Gaza.

The West Bank witnessed widespread unrest on Tuesday night as Palestinian anger flared in the aftermath of the massacre at the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza.

Thousands of people took to the streets across the West Bank, with some clashing with Palestinian security forces, protesting what they saw as “Abbas’s insufficient support for Hamas.”

While Abbas has not directly attacked Hamas, he has been keen on not supporting it, emphasizing multiple times that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is the sole representative of the people and focusing more on efforts to halt the war against civilians.

The relationship between Abbas and Hamas has been strained since the movement’s takeover of Gaza in 2007, with the wars in Gaza only exacerbating these tensions.

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Arab World

Syria’s New Information Minister Promises Free Press

Syrian Minister of Information Mohamed al-Omar speaks to members of the media during a meeting in Damascus on December 31, 2024. (AFP)
Syrian Minister of Information Mohamed al-Omar speaks to members of the media during a meeting in Damascus on December 31, 2024. (AFP)
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Syria’s New Information Minister Promises Free Press

Syrian Minister of Information Mohamed al-Omar speaks to members of the media during a meeting in Damascus on December 31, 2024. (AFP)
Syrian Minister of Information Mohamed al-Omar speaks to members of the media during a meeting in Damascus on December 31, 2024. (AFP)

Syria's minister of information in the country's transitional government told AFP he is working towards a free press and committed to "freedom of expression", after decades of tight control under the country's former rulers.

"We are working to consolidate freedoms of the press and expression that were severely restricted" in areas controlled by the former government of Bashar al-Assad, said the minister, Mohamed al-Omar, after opposition fighters on December 8 ended more than five decades of rule by the Assad clan.

Syria's ruling Baath party and the Assad family dynasty heavily curtailed all aspects of daily life, including freedom of the press and expression with the media a tool of those in power.

Reporters Without Borders, a freedom of information watchdog, ranked Syria second-last on its 2024 World Press Freedom Index, ahead only of Eritrea and behind Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

"There was a heavy restriction on freedom of the press and expression under the regime which practiced censorship. In the period to come we are working on the reconstruction of a media landscape that is free, objective and professional," Omar said during an interview with AFP on Tuesday.

He is part of the interim administration installed in Damascus by the victorious opposition coalition led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

The group has its origins in the Syrian branch of the Al-Qaeda group and is designated a terrorist organization by numerous governments, but has sought to soften its image in recent years.

Diplomats from around the region and from the West have made contact with Syria's new rulers, who have also vowed to protect the country's religious and ethnic minorities.

Omar was previously minister of information in the self-proclaimed Salvation Government, the civil administration set up in 2017 by HTS in the opposition holdout of Idlib province, in Syria's northwest. It was from Idlib that the opposition began their lightning advance towards Damascus, 13 years into the country's civil war.

After the conflict erupted in 2011 with the government's brutal repression of pro-democracy protests, Assad tightened restrictions on independent journalism.

- A different way -

"We don't want to continue in the same way, that is, have an official media whose aim is to polish the image of the ruling power," Omar said.

Following Assad's overthrow and flight to Moscow, Syrian media outlets which had trumpeted his regime's glories quickly adopted a revolutionary fervor.

Omar said the new administration wants to "reduce bureaucracy and facilitate the work of foreign press teams" who were intensely scrutinized by Assad's government and had difficulty obtaining visas to work freely.

On December 13, the Information Ministry released a statement saying "media workers who were part of the war and propaganda machine of the fallen Assad regime and contributed directly or indirectly to promoting its crimes," would be "held to account".

But Bassam Safar, head of the Damascus branch of the anti-Assad Syrian journalists' union, previously based abroad, said earlier that no media worker should be held responsible "unless it is proven that they took part in the bloodshed."

That, he said, "is the business of the courts."

Saffar said the Syrian people should reconcile with their journalists, to establish "a new media environment built on freedom" and human rights.

On Tuesday Omar held an exchange with dozens of Syrian journalists to discuss the transition.

"We want media reflecting Syrian cultures in their diversity, reflecting their ambitions, and that transmit their preoccupations and serve as a link between the people and the administration", Omar told AFP.