KSrelief: Houthis Hamper Access of 632 Ships, Trucks

KSrelief spokesman Dr. Samer Aljetaily during a news conference in Riyadh on Monday. Asharq Al-Awsat
KSrelief spokesman Dr. Samer Aljetaily during a news conference in Riyadh on Monday. Asharq Al-Awsat
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KSrelief: Houthis Hamper Access of 632 Ships, Trucks

KSrelief spokesman Dr. Samer Aljetaily during a news conference in Riyadh on Monday. Asharq Al-Awsat
KSrelief spokesman Dr. Samer Aljetaily during a news conference in Riyadh on Monday. Asharq Al-Awsat

An official from King Salman Center for Humanitarian Aid and Relief (KSrelief) revealed on Monday that Houthis blocked 65 relief ships at Hodeidah and Saleef ports in addition to 567 relief-loaded trucks in various Yemeni regions between April 2015 and December 2017. 

KSRelief spokesman Dr. Samer Aljetaily said during a news conference in Riyadh that Houthi militias confiscated during the past four months around 363 relief trucks, looted 6,315 relief baskets and traded them in the black market in areas controlled by the insurgents.

He added that KSrelief’s total number of aid projects worldwide stands at 308 with 119 partners at the value of $967m while the total number of projects in Yemen stands at 175, implemented in association with 77 partners at the cost of $821m.

During the past two years, he said, the center provided 7,590 people with relief assistance by air and that 364,000 people from 85 nationalities were evacuated from Yemen.

In the first half of 2017, Houthi militias recruited 568 Yemeni children under the age of 18, and more than 8,000 children since 2015, he said.

The center launched the third phase of its Yemeni children rehabilitation program for those recruited by the Houthis, he stated, adding that the program, which targets 2,000 children, aims to help them integrate into the Yemeni community.

Commenting on cholera updates, Aljetaily declared that no cholera-related deaths were recorded in the past weeks, affirming that several organizations shut down their private clinics in multiple Yemeni provinces in an indicator on the successful efforts to halt the spread of the disease.



Israeli Likud Party Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex West Bank

Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
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Israeli Likud Party Ministers Urge Netanyahu to Annex West Bank

Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)
Israeli soldiers in Tubas in the north of the occupied West Bank on September 11, 2024. (AFP)

Cabinet ministers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party called on Wednesday for Israel to annex the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the Knesset recesses at the end of the month.

They issued a petition ahead of Netanyahu's meeting next week with US President Donald Trump, where discussions are expected to center on a potential 60-day Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.

The petition was signed by 15 cabinet ministers and Amir Ohana, speaker of the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

There was no immediate response from the prime minister's office. Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, long a confidant of Netanyahu, did not sign the petition. He has been in Washington since Monday for talks on Iran and Gaza.

"We ministers and members of Knesset call for applying Israeli sovereignty and law immediately on Judea and Samaria," they wrote, using the biblical names for the West Bank captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

Their petition cited Israel's recent achievements against both Iran and Iran's allies and the opportunity afforded by the strategic partnership with the US and support of Trump.

It said the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel demonstrated that the concept of Jewish settlement blocs alongside the establishment of a Palestinian state poses an existential threat to Israel.

"The task must be completed, the existential threat removed from within, and another massacre in the heart of the country must be prevented," the petition stated.

Most countries regard Jewish settlements in the West Bank, many of which cut off Palestinian communities from one another, as a violation of international law.

With each advance of Israeli settlements and roads, the West Bank becomes more fractured, further undermining prospects for a contiguous land on which Palestinians could build a sovereign state long envisaged in Middle East peacemaking.

Israel's pro-settler politicians have been emboldened by the return to the White House of Trump, who has proposed Palestinians leave Gaza, a suggestion widely condemned across the Middle East and beyond.