Palestinian Presidency to Asharq Al-Awsat: We Laud the ‘Historic’ Saudi Position

A street in Rafa crowded with displaced Palestinians (AFP)
A street in Rafa crowded with displaced Palestinians (AFP)
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Palestinian Presidency to Asharq Al-Awsat: We Laud the ‘Historic’ Saudi Position

A street in Rafa crowded with displaced Palestinians (AFP)
A street in Rafa crowded with displaced Palestinians (AFP)

The Palestinian presidency hailed Saudi Arabia’s supporting position and welcomed the statement issued by the Foreign Ministry calling for the recognition of a Palestinian State.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said the Palestinian leadership is confident in Saudi Arabia and its “historic decisions,” announcing that the two sides continue to communicate and coordinate efforts regarding the current developments, namely to stop the aggression in Gaza.
Abu Rudeineh told Asharq Al-Awsat that the efforts aim to deal with the repercussions and find political solutions based on the Arab Peace Initiative and Security Council resolutions that affirm the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
He stressed that the Palestinian Authority welcomed the Saudi public position issued on Wednesday.
The spokesman noted that the Saudi leadership has always emphasized the Palestinian rights, and Riyadh has never hesitated in supporting the Palestinian cause, “we have confidence in Riyadh and its positions”, he stated.
Abu Rudeineh praised Saudi Arabia’s “precise” and clear position, emphasizing the priority of establishing a Palestinian state before establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.
Riyadh has always emphasized its position regarding the Palestinian cause since it issued the Arab Peace Initiative, which is considered the most valuable thing, and it is the only way to establish a Palestinian state, said Abu Rudeineh.
He explained that the Palestinian Authority consistently reiterated this position with world leaders, most recently during the meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ramallah.
Abbas stressed the need to stop the aggression against Gaza and establish a Palestinian state and praised Saudi Arabia’s positions.
Abu Rudeineh expressed the Palestinians’ reassurance of the Saudi position regarding Riyadh’s efforts at the Arab and international levels.
- Riyadh meeting
Meanwhile, Riyadh hosted a consultative ministerial meeting Thursday and discussed the regional developments, most notably in Gaza Strip and its surroundings, and the efforts made to deal with the security and humanitarian repercussions.
The Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry participated in the Arab ministerial meeting.
The meeting was attended by Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, Jordan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi, and Palestine’s Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Minister of Civil Affairs of Palestine Hussein al-Sheikh.
- Bin Farhan, Blinken
Furthermore, on Thursday, Prince Faisal received a phone call from Blinken. They discussed the latest developments in the region, particularly in the Gaza Strip.



Sudan: Global Food Monitor Says Famine Has Taken Gold in Darfur

Women and children wait to fill their jerrycans with water at the Huri camp for people displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan, south of Gedaref in eastern Sudan, on March 29, 2024 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid / AFP)
Women and children wait to fill their jerrycans with water at the Huri camp for people displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan, south of Gedaref in eastern Sudan, on March 29, 2024 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid / AFP)
TT

Sudan: Global Food Monitor Says Famine Has Taken Gold in Darfur

Women and children wait to fill their jerrycans with water at the Huri camp for people displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan, south of Gedaref in eastern Sudan, on March 29, 2024 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid / AFP)
Women and children wait to fill their jerrycans with water at the Huri camp for people displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan, south of Gedaref in eastern Sudan, on March 29, 2024 during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid / AFP)

The war in Sudan and restrictions on aid deliveries have caused famine in at least one site in North Darfur, and have likely led to famine conditions in other parts of the conflict region, a committee of food security experts said in a report on Thursday.

The finding, linked to an internationally recognised standard known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), is just the third time a famine determination has been made since the system was set up 20 years ago.

It shows how starvation and disease are taking a deadly toll in Sudan, where more than 15 months of war between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have created the world's biggest internal displacement crisis and left 25 million people - or half the population - in urgent need of humanitarian aid.

Experts and UN officials say a famine classification could trigger a UN Security Council resolution empowering agencies to deliver relief across borders to the most needy.

In its report, the Famine Review Committee (FRC) found that famine, confirmed when acute malnutrition and mortality criteria are met, was ongoing in North Darfur's Zamzam camp for Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and likely to persist there at least until October.

Zamzam has a population of 500,000. It is near the city of al-Fashir, home to 1.8 million people and the last significant holdout from the RSF across Darfur. The RSF has been besieging the area and no aid has reached the sprawling camp for months.

The primary causes of famine in Zamzam camp are conflict and severely restricted humanitarian access, the FRC said, Reuters reported.

It said it was plausible that similar conditions were affecting other areas in Darfur including the displaced persons camps of Abu Shouk and Al Salam.

In late June, an IPC process led by the Sudanese government found that 14 areas in the country, including parts of El Gezira, Kordofan and Khartoum states, were at risk of famine.

Reuters has reported that some Sudanese have been forced to eat leaves and soil, and that satellite imagery showed cemeteries expanding fast as starvation and disease spread.

A Reuters analysis of satellite images identified 14 burial grounds in Darfur that had expanded rapidly in recent months. One cemetery in Zamzam grew 50% faster in the period between March 28 and May 3 than in the preceding three-and-a-half months. The analysis was used by the famine review committee as indirect evidence of increasing mortality.

The FRC finding comes during Sudan's lean season, when food availability is lowest. Experts fear that even when harvest season comes in October, crops will be scarce because war prevented farmers from planting.

Sudan's war erupted in mid-April last year from a power struggle between Sudan's army and the RSF ahead of an internationally backed political transition towards civilian rule.

The factions had shared power uneasily after staging a coup in 2021 that derailed a previous transition following the overthrow of autocrat Omar al-Bashir two years earlier.

Since the war began, aid workers say international relief has been blocked by the army and looted by the RSF. Both sides deny impeding aid.

Even where markets have supplies, many Sudanese cannot buy food because of soaring prices and a lack of cash.

In February, the military-backed government prohibited aid deliveries from Chad to Darfur through the Adre border crossing, one of the shortest routes to the hunger-stricken region. Government officials have claimed that the crossing is used by the RSF to move weapons.

The alternative Tine border crossing is currently inaccessible because of heavy rain, according to the U.N. humanitarian agency, OCHA.

The FRC called for a ceasefire and "unhindered access" into Darfur.

Sudan's government, which is aligned with the army, has signalled its opposition to any famine declaration.

Al-Harith Idriss, Sudan's envoy at the UN, said in late June that a famine "dictated from above" could lead "ill-wishers to intervene in Sudan".

Nicholas Haan, a member of the FRC and cofounder of the IPC, said he hoped the finding would "shake people, the power brokers, to respond as they need to".

"And that means humanitarian access, that means funding at the level that needs to be funded ... and it means all due political pressure to end the conflict."

The IPC is an initiative of more than a dozen UN agencies, regional bodies and aid groups and is the main global system for measuring food crises. Its most extreme warning is Phase 5, which has two levels, catastrophe and famine. The conditions for classifying an area to be in famine are that at least 20% of the population must be suffering extreme food shortages, with 30% of children acutely malnourished and two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or from malnutrition and disease.

In Zamzam, the FRC said data from Médecins Sans Frontières on acute malnutrition from January 2024 revealed rates exceeding the IPC famine threshold, while the mortality rate reached 1.9 deaths in every 10,000 people per day.

Since the IPC process began, famine has been declared in parts of Somalia in 2011 and in parts of South Sudan in 2017.