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In the Gaza Strip Pet a Lion, Declawed

Palestinian children look through the bars of a cage at the declawed lioness at the Rafah Zoo in the southern Gaza Strip on February 12, 2019. (AFP)
Palestinian children look through the bars of a cage at the declawed lioness at the Rafah Zoo in the southern Gaza Strip on February 12, 2019. (AFP)
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In the Gaza Strip Pet a Lion, Declawed

Palestinian children look through the bars of a cage at the declawed lioness at the Rafah Zoo in the southern Gaza Strip on February 12, 2019. (AFP)
Palestinian children look through the bars of a cage at the declawed lioness at the Rafah Zoo in the southern Gaza Strip on February 12, 2019. (AFP)

A zoo in the war-battered Palestinian enclave of Gaza is promoting itself as offering the chance to play with a lion, who has been declawed but still has its teeth.

The 14-month lioness, called Falestine, is supposed to be placid enough to meet visitors to the park in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.

"I'm trying to reduce the aggression of the lioness so it can be friendly with visitors," said Mohammed Jumaa, 53, the park's owner.

It is the latest unconventional animal care practice in Gaza, where a few dilapidated zoos compete for business, said an AFP report on Wednesday.

Fayez al-Haddad, the veterinarian who operated on Falestine two weeks ago, watched her behavior closely Tuesday as she was briefly taken out of her cage to be near local residents, including children.

"The claws were cut so that they would not grow fast and visitors and children could play with her," Haddad said.

There is no specialized animal hospital in Gaza so the operation was carried out at the zoo, which lacks the proper facilities.

He denied that it was cruel to the animal.

"We want to bring smiles and happiness to children, while increasing the number of visitors to the park, which suffers from high expenses."

"(The lioness) does not lose its innate nature."

But the Paw Project, an NGO which rehabilitates big cats, charges that declawing is inhumane and can maim the felines.

The cramped zoo in Rafah has five lions, including three cubs, along with a few birds and other animals.

It was destroyed during an Israeli army bulldozing operation in Rafah in 2004, before Jumaa re-established it two years ago.

A group of laughing children were watching from the other side of a low fence as Falestine was briefly shown out of her cage Tuesday for the first time since her operation.

She interacted and played with zoo keepers, though for now guests were kept slightly apart as AFP watched.

At times the lioness looked stressed, trying to scratch its nonexistent claws on a tree.

12-year-old Anas Abdel Raheem insisted he wasn't scared as he leaned on the fence.

"I am happy because I played with the lion and it did not bite me or tear my clothes," he told AFP.

"My friends saw the pictures I posted on Facebook and WhatsApp."

Haddad warned, however, that the claws grow back within six months.

"Lions will not give up their offensive instincts."

Gaza is home to two million Palestinians but has been blockaded by Israel for more than a decade.

There are a number of small zoos, each with poor conditions.

Last month, a litter of lion cubs froze to death at one.

In 2016, the last animals were evacuated from what had been dubbed “the world's worst” zoo, also in southern Gaza.

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Varieties

Scientists Release Plans for an Even Bigger Atom Smasher to Address the Mysteries of Physics

Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
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Scientists Release Plans for an Even Bigger Atom Smasher to Address the Mysteries of Physics

Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Mike Lamont, director for accelerators and technology, center left, and Fabiola Gianotti, center right, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), speak with members of the U.S. House of Representatives in the Large Magnet Facility during a visit to CERN facilities in Meyrin, near Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, March 21, 2025. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)

Top minds at the world's largest atom smasher have released a blueprint for a much bigger successor that could vastly improve research into the remaining enigmas of physics.

The plans for the Future Circular Collider — a nearly 91-kilometer (56.5-mile) loop along the French-Swiss border and below Lake Geneva — published late Monday put the finishing details on a project roughly a decade in the making at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The FCC would carry out high-precision experiments in the mid-2040s to study “known physics” in greater detail, then enter a second phase — planned for 2070 — that would conduct high-energy collisions of protons and heavy ions that would “open the door to the unknown,” said Giorgio Chiarelli, a research director at Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics, The AP news reported.

“History of physics tells that when there is more data, the human ingenuity is able to extract more information than originally expected,” Chiarelli, who was not involved in the plans, said in an e-mail.

For roughly a decade, top minds at CERN have been making plans for a successor to the Large Hadron Collider, a network of magnets that accelerate particles through a 27-kilometer (17-mile) underground tunnel and slam them together at velocities approaching the speed of light.

“Ultimately what we would like to do is a collider which will come up with 10 times more energy than what we have today,” said Arnaud Marsollier, a CERN spokesman. “When you have more energy, then you can create particles that are heavier.”

The blueprint lays out the proposed path, environmental impact, scientific ambitions and project cost. Independent experts will take a look before CERN's two dozen member countries decide in 2028 whether to go forward, starting in the mid-2040s at a cost of some 14 billion Swiss francs (about $16 billion).

CERN officials tout the promise of scientific discoveries that could drive innovation in fields like cryogenics, superconducting magnets and vacuum technologies that could benefit humankind.

Outside experts point to the promise of learning more about the Higgs boson, the elusive particle that has been controversially dubbed “the God particle,” which helped explain how matter formed after the Big Bang.

Work at the particle collider confirmed in 2013 the existence of the Higgs boson — the central piece in a puzzle known as the standard model that helps explains some fundamental forces in the universe.

“This set of reports represents an important milestone in the process, but a full sense of the likelihood of it being brought to fruition will only be known through careful studies by scientists, engineers and others, including politicians who must make difficult decisions at time when uncertainty rules the day,” Dave Toback, a professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University, said in an e-mail.

The new collider “provides an exciting opportunity for the particle physics community, and indeed all of physics, on the world stage,” said Toback, who was not affiliated with the plans, and who worked for years at the Fermilab Tevatron collider in the United States that was shut down in 2011.

CERN scientists, engineers and partners behind the plans considered at least 100 scenarios for the new collider before coming up with the proposed 91-kilometer circumference at an average depth of 200 meters (656 feet). The tunnel would be about 5 meters (16 feet) in diameter, CERN said.