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Thousands of Palestinians March against Nablus Massacre

Clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers near Nablus on Friday. (AFP)
Clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers near Nablus on Friday. (AFP)
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Thousands of Palestinians March against Nablus Massacre

Clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers near Nablus on Friday. (AFP)
Clashes between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers near Nablus on Friday. (AFP)

Thousands of Palestinians furious over deadly Israeli raids in Nablus this week held midnight marches on Friday throughout the West Bank.

Protesters took to the streets in response to a call for demonstrations by the Lion’s Den group.

Clashes ensued between the protesters and Israeli forces that tried to disperse them. Dozens of Palestinians were wounded.

A group of armed settlers from a nearby outpost descended on the village of Qusra and Palestinians went into the street to see what was happening late Thursday, said Ghassan Douglas, the Palestinian official who monitors Israeli settlements in the Nablus region.

After midnight, one of the settlers opened fire at the residents, hitting one man in the stomach and another in the thigh. Douglas said the shooting was unprovoked.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the two injuries were serious.

The Lion’s Den called on Thursday Palestinians to take to the streets to show loyalty to the 11 martyrs of the Nablus massacre committed by Israeli forces.

Meanwhile, retired Israeli commander Lt. Col. Yaron Buskila commented that the third intifada has begun.

“The path of this intifada could lead to the collapse of the Palestinian Authority if Israel fails to take adequate deterrence measures,” he warned.

Nablus was the scene of an Israeli military raid that set off a fierce gunbattle on Wednesday, killing several Palestinians, including two men aged 72 and 61, and a 16-year-old boy, and wounded scores of others. Palestinian militant groups claimed six of the dead as members.

The bloodshed extended one of the deadliest periods in years in the West Bank, where dozens of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the start of the year. Palestinian attacks on Israelis in 2023 have killed 11 people.

Following Friday prayers at the Dome of the Rock Mosque in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem, Palestinians chanted and protested against the deadly raid in Nablus, as well as a crackdown on Palestinian prisoners by Israel’s right-wing government.

The northern West Bank in particular has seen a surge of settler attacks. Many villages in the area have gradually become sandwiched between settlements and unauthorized outposts that house particularly ideological settlers.

Last month, leading Israeli human rights group B'Tselem recorded a string of incidents near Nablus — from settlers attacking Palestinians with stones in Qusra to torching Palestinian cars in Aqraba. Earlier this month, a settler shot and killed a Palestinian in the farming town of Salfit.

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Arab World

Trump Administration Ends Some USAID Contracts Providing Lifesaving Aid across the Middle East

A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)
A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)
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Trump Administration Ends Some USAID Contracts Providing Lifesaving Aid across the Middle East

A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)
A USAID flag flutters outside, as the USAID building sits closed to employees after a memo was issued advising agency personnel to work remotely, in Washington, DC, US, February 3, 2025. (Reuters)

The Trump administration has notified the World Food Program and other partners that it has terminated some of the last remaining lifesaving humanitarian programs across the Middle East, a US official and a UN official told The Associated Press on Monday.

The projects were being canceled “for the convenience of the US Government” at the direction of Jeremy Lewin, a top lieutenant at Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency whom the Trump administration appointed to oversee and finish dismantling the US Agency for International Development, according to letters sent to USAID partners and viewed by the AP.

About 60 letters canceling contracts were sent over the past week, including for major projects with the World Food Program, the world’s largest provider of food aid, a USAID official said. An official with the United Nations in the Middle East said the World Food Program received termination letters for US-funded programs in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

Some of the last remaining US funding for key programs in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and the southern African nation of Zimbabwe also was affected, including for those providing food, water, medical care and shelter for people displaced by war, the USAID official said.

The UN official said the groups that would be hit hardest include Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. Also affected are programs supporting vulnerable Lebanese people and providing irrigation systems inside Syria, a country emerging from a brutal civil war and struggling with poverty and hunger.

In Yemen, another war-divided country that is facing one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, the terminated aid apparently includes food that has already arrived in distribution centers, the UN official said.

Aid officials were just learning of many of the cuts Monday and said they were struggling to understand their scope.

Another of the notices, sent Friday, abruptly pulled US funding for a program with strong support in Congress that had sent young Afghan women overseas for schooling amid Taliban prohibitions on women’s education, said an administrator for that project, which is run by Texas A&M University.

The young women would now face return to Afghanistan, where their lives would be in danger, according to that administrator, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration had pledged to spare those most urgent, lifesaving programs in its cutting of aid and development programs through the State Department and USAID.

The Republican administration already has canceled thousands of USAID contracts as it dismantles USAID, which it accuses of wastefulness and of advancing liberal causes.

The newly terminated contracts were among about 900 surviving programs that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had notified Congress he intended to preserve, the USAID official said.

There was no immediate comment from the State Department.