Egypt Contains Crisis with Kuwait after Holding Judicial Probe

The Nile River in Cairo. (Getty Images)
The Nile River in Cairo. (Getty Images)
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Egypt Contains Crisis with Kuwait after Holding Judicial Probe

The Nile River in Cairo. (Getty Images)
The Nile River in Cairo. (Getty Images)

Egypt succeeded in containing a crisis with Kuwait after the emergence of a video deemed offensive to the Gulf state.

In the video, an individual was shown offering pedestrians 500 dollars in exchange for burning the Kuwaiti national flag. All pedestrians turned down the offer, refusing to insult Kuwait.

The Egyptian judiciary probed the individual in the video. He explained that he did not seek to insult Kuwait, but rather wanted to show the strength of the relations between it and Egypt as demonstrated by how everyone rejected his offer.

He added that he sought to use the video to show how the Egyptian people cannot be lured by money to offend others. He said that the Egyptians chose the moral high ground despite an assault last month against an Egyptian worker in Kuwait.

The Egyptian judiciary verified that the person behind the video does not belong to any terrorist group and only sought to prove the strength of ties between the Egyptian and Kuwaiti people.

He has since been released.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri telephoned on Sunday his Kuwaiti counterpart Dr. Ahmed Nasser al-Mohammed al-Sabah to discussed bilateral relations.

Relations between Cairo and Kuwait have been strained in recent months. In July, Kuwaiti authorities arrested a citizen for slapping an Egyptian worker, which had sparked uproar on social media in Egypt.

In March, campaigns against Egyptian workers in Kuwait flooded social media over the excuse that they may have been infected by the novel coronavirus.



Israeli Soldiers Open Fire inside a West Bank Hospital While Searching for Fighters’ Bodies

 Israeli troops enter the complex of the Turkish hospital, where they searched for the bodies of those killed in an airstrike, Israel said was targeting fighters, in the West Bank city of Tubas, Tuesday Dec. 3, 2024. (AP)
Israeli troops enter the complex of the Turkish hospital, where they searched for the bodies of those killed in an airstrike, Israel said was targeting fighters, in the West Bank city of Tubas, Tuesday Dec. 3, 2024. (AP)
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Israeli Soldiers Open Fire inside a West Bank Hospital While Searching for Fighters’ Bodies

 Israeli troops enter the complex of the Turkish hospital, where they searched for the bodies of those killed in an airstrike, Israel said was targeting fighters, in the West Bank city of Tubas, Tuesday Dec. 3, 2024. (AP)
Israeli troops enter the complex of the Turkish hospital, where they searched for the bodies of those killed in an airstrike, Israel said was targeting fighters, in the West Bank city of Tubas, Tuesday Dec. 3, 2024. (AP)

Israeli soldiers opened fire inside a hospital in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday during a raid to seize the bodies of alleged fighters targeted in earlier airstrikes, a Palestinian doctor working at the hospital told The Associated Press.

Soldiers entered the Turkish Hospital complex in Tubas after the bodies of two Palestinians killed and one wounded in airstrikes in the northern West Bank on Tuesday were brought there, said Dr. Mahmoud Ghanam, who works in the hospital’s emergency department. The troops briefly handcuffed and arrested Ghanam and another doctor.

“The army entered in a brutal way, and they were shooting inside the emergency department,” said Ghanam. “They handcuffed us and took me and my colleague.”

The military confirmed that its troops were operating around the hospital searching for those targeted in the airstrikes, which they said had hit a militant cell near the Palestinian town of Al-Aqaba in the Jordan Valley. It denied that troops had entered the hospital building or fired gunshots inside.

The soldiers left after learning that the wounded man had been transferred to another hospital, Ghanam said. The soldiers wanted to take the bodies of the two men killed in the strike, but the hospital’s manager refused to hand over the bodies, Ghanam said.

Israeli raids on hospitals in the West Bank are rare but have grown more common since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. In Gaza, Israeli troops have systematically besieged, raided and damaged many hospitals.

About 800 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza ignited the war there. Israel has carried out near-daily military raids in the West Bank that it says are aimed at preventing attacks on Israelis — attacks which have also been on the rise.

Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek all three territories for an independent state.