Tag: InternationalNews

{The seasonal weather system brings much needed rain across east Asia, but often leads to severe flooding.}

Every year the people of east Asia await the arrival of the seasonal rains with a mix of anticipation and trepidation.

These spring rains generally arrive in eastern China, Taiwan and Okinawa during the month of May as the moist air over the Pacific meets the cooler continental air mass coming down from the interior. The formation of frontal depressions along the front bring rain across the region, moving back and forth depending on the strength of the cool and warm air masses.

Over the next few months, the rains along this almost stationary front migrate to parts of Russia, Japan, the Korean Peninsula, and – in the later summer months – to eastern China. The front is known as the Meiyu-Baiu, or the “Plum Rains” as it is known locally.

As the front moves back and forth, there is often very heavy and prolonged rainfall which often leads to flooding, particularly in eastern China, and the heavy rains can frequently lead to mudslides in more rural areas. This year has proved no exception, with the recent heavy rains already causing widespread flooding across parts of Zengcheng District in Guangzhou Province in the south.

However, in the years when the Meiyu-Baiu does not produce the heavy downpours, this can often lead to drought, which has a far more long-term, negative impact on the region and infrastructure.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Chancellor Angela Merkel’s comments come as NATO considers increased presence in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban.}

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that she does not believe Germany is “first in line” to send more troops to Afghanistan, as NATO considers a proposal to boost forces there.

“I don’t think we’re first in line to expand our capacities there,” Merkel said after meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday.

She said Germany will continue to lead NATO’s military training mission in northern Afghanistan, adding that she will wait and see the outcome of the alliance’s assessment of a request from military chiefs to send more troops to the country.

Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane, reporting from Berlin, said there were few specifics revealed at Thursday’s meeting.

“The news conference between Stoltenberg and Merkel was very heavy on warm words, on the appreciation of the role of NATO and the role of Germany, but it was light on specifics regarding whether the Germans would perhaps increase their contingent of troops in Afghanistan,” Kane said.

On Wednesday, Stoltenberg met British Prime Minister Theresa May, a day after reports suggested NATO had asked Britain for more troops a few weeks ago.

He confirmed he had received a request for more troops, but insisted it would not mean a return to combat operations.

“We have received a request from our military authorities to increase our military presence in Afghanistan with a few thousand troops,” Stoltenberg said.

“It will continue to be a train, assist and advise operation,” he added.

Stoltenberg said a decision on the request will be made within weeks and the issue is expected to be high on the agenda at the NATO annual summit in Brussels on May 25.

{{‘Desperate’ for assistance}}

Since NATO’s combat mission in Afghanistan formally ended in 2014, Taliban attacks have intensified and Afghan military and civilian casualties have risen.

NATO already has some 13,450 troops in Afghanistan, including around 6,900 US and 500 British military personnel, who are training the Afghan armed forces to eventually take over the country’s defence and security.

The US has an additional 1,500 soldiers conducting assist missions directly under Pentagon command.

They have sustained high casualties, up 35 percent in 2016 with 6,800 soldiers and police killed, according to a US watchdog.

In April, the Taliban announced the beginning of its annual “spring offensive” and last week the armed group stormed and seized a district in the vicinity of Kunduz, in northern Afghanistan.

Al Jazeera’s John Hendren, reporting from Kabul, said the Afghan government is in “desperate” need of assistance.

“If you talk to Afghan troops, they say they desperately need the help,” Hendren said. “In the north and south of the country, they are embattled.”

He added that the goal of the idea of a troop increase is to get the Taliban to the negotiating table.

Security analyst Mushtaq Rahim told Al Jazeera that NATO and the international community should focus on the root causes of the conflict in Afghanistan.

“The overall strategy should concentrate on beating the Taliban at the root levels instead of addressing the symptoms of the whole conflict,” Rahim said from Kabul.

Separately, the US administration is reportedly considering deploying more troops to Afghanistan as well. Official sources quoted anonymously by US media said the increase would range from between 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers, including Special Operations forces.

President Donald Trump is expected to receive a proposed new approach to the war this week, according to Theresa Whelan, a Pentagon policy official.

According to the United Nations, 583,000 people have fled their homes as a result of the conflict in 2016, the highest number of displacements since records began in 2008.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Student election at university in the occupied West Bank seen as indicator of Palestinian political mood.}

A student group ideologically aligned with Hamas has won the most seats for the third year in a row in an election held at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank.

Al-Wafaa Islamic Bloc won 25 of the 51 seats in Wednesday’s student council election, with the Fatah-aligned Martyr Yasser Arafat party winning 22.

The last general election held among Palestinians was the parliamentary vote in 2006, in which Hamas won a majority.

Fatah’s refusal to recognise the result ended in divided rule among Palestinians in the occupied territories, with Hamas administering the Gaza Strip and Fatah ruling the West Bank in conjunction with Israeli forces.

The West Bank university’s yearly election is therefore “perceived as a bellwether of Palestinian politics and an indicator of the overall political mood among Palestinians” in the West Bank, according to Alaa Tartir, Programme Director of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network.

“The student body affiliated with Hamas won the elections for the third year running which debunks the myth that Hamas is losing its popularity and support of the Palestinians in the West Bank,” Tartir told Al Jazeera.

“In fact, it is Fatah that remains shackled by its crisis and negatively affected by the failures and lack of legitimacy of their political leadership in the West Bank.”

While campaigning largely revolves around university and student affairs, the election does take on a political tone, indicative of the fact that up to 50 percent of students vote according to political issues, according to the estimate given by Marwan Taha, 19, a Birzeit law student and a volunteer who helped organise the election this year.

“Many do vote for student affairs, and the campaigning is specific to university and administrative issues,” Taha said.

But the politics of the occupation tend to go hand-in-hand with student affairs.

Previous years have involved students being detained by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has long been known to pay university students to serve as informants.

Birzeit students have also frequently been targeted by Israeli forces, and several academics and human rights organisations have called attention to the manner in which Palestinian education is threatened by the occupation.

Political system ‘in crisis’

But according to Tartir, “the election is not only an indicator of the Palestinian political mood but also a reflection of the crisis of the Palestinian political system”.

Palestinians vote in municipal elections on Saturday, but only in the occupied West Bank and not the Gaza Strip, illustrating the persistent inability of Fatah and Hamas to overcome deep divisions.

Efforts last year to hold joint local elections failed as the two parties failed to bridge their differences.

Saturday’s vote for some 300 municipal councils in the West Bank, occupied by Israel for 50 years, has been seen as yet another sign that reconciliation may be a long way off.

“The student election has re-produced the same political problems instead of tackling them. For example, the university’s political scene is still dominated by Fatah and Hamas despite all the damages over the last 10 years due to the intra-Palestinian divide,” Tartir added.

The election on Saturday will involve 1.1 million voters. There will be 536 candidate lists with 4,400 candidates, the head of the electoral commission, Hisham Keheil, said.

“Everything indicates that the vote should go well,” Keheil said while expressing hope that voters will show up at the polls.

Turnout is a major question, however. A poll published by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research suggested only 42 percent of Palestinians wanted to vote.

Some 22 percent said they do not believe the election will help reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.

“The student community, and the whole Palestinian community, remains unable to challenge and reverse that Fatah-Hamas dichotomy. This means that they are failing to hold both parties accountable and failing to create a much-needed progressive front to challenge that dichotomy,” Tartir told Al Jazeera.

Source:Al Jazeera

On 4 May 2017, a joint forum on “The Freedom and Responsibility of the Press for a Just and Peaceful Society” was held with journalists from Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine by an international NGO under the UN Department of Public Information (DPI) called Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL).

This forum celebrating the ‘World Press Freedom Day’, May 3rd, designated by the UN aimed to discuss the role of the press in both protecting freedom of expression and promoting the public awareness of peace.

The participants shared the level of the freedom of expression and the responsibility of the press in each country. The head of Kazakhstan editors club in the forum said, ”Freedom is like air. It always has to be. But if there are too much freedom, we, the journalists, might be lose our responsibility.”

Mr. Fedorov Petr, the director of international affairs at the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (vgtrk) in Russia, commented, “It’s important not only how the media works but also how free the information space within the country is. Russia has 2,300 broadcasting channels, 80% of which are private broadcasting ones, and about 600 are foreign broadcasting ones. The freedom of access to information is as important as the freedom of the founding reporter of information.”

The mutual relationship between the role of the press and building a just and peaceful society was also discussed. Igor Shevyryov, a journalist from Ivestia, Ukraine, who has been carrying our journalists’ cooperation for peacebuilding, highlighted that journalists should communicate with each other for understanding, rather than engaging themselves in international conflicts. ”Evil causes more evil,” said other Ukraine participants to explain the role of media that ”should have communication with each other.” Kazakhstani particiants also added, ”Journalism should not be dividing, but should be uniting.”

The cooperation between media and NGOs for peace as an example of the positive role of media was introduced. Peace campaigns including seminars, forums, and peace walks by the local citizens in areas of conflict were operated by HWPL, when its association network with international media covered the 40 years of conflict and the need for global attention for peace in Mindanao, the Philippines. Vasily Nikulenkov, an editor of “The Newman in Foreign Policy”, a magazine in Russia, who participated in the forum, mentioned, “HWPL makes an effort to cease war and carious conflicts and work for peace with youth, women’s groups and media organizations for agreement on cessation of the war at the UN. This part is respectful. We educate for many students as examples of voluntary civil society activities.”

HWPL is working with about 130 public ambassadors of the press to form public opinion for creating a culture of peace designated in the UN resolutions. As a part of HWPL’s media forums, ‘Voice of Press’, an online conference, has been held five times in Ukraine, three times in Kazakhstan, once in Sweden, once in Crimea of Russia, once in Algeria. The participants of these forums agreed that the significant role of the press is to motivate people to acknowledge the importance of peace and to introduce the peace activities in solving the matters of the society.

On 4 May 2017, a joint forum on “The Freedom and Responsibility of the Press for a Just and Peaceful Society” was held with journalists from Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine by an international NGO under the UN Department of Public Information (DPI) called Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWPL).

This forum celebrating the ‘World Press Freedom Day’, May 3rd, designated by the UN aimed to discuss the role of the press in both protecting freedom of expression and promoting the public awareness of peace.

The participants shared the level of the freedom of expression and the responsibility of the press in each country. The head of Kazakhstan editors club in the forum said, ”Freedom is like air. It always has to be. But if there are too much freedom, we, the journalists, might be lose our responsibility.”

Mr. Fedorov Petr, the director of international affairs at the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (vgtrk) in Russia, commented, “It’s important not only how the media works but also how free the information space within the country is. Russia has 2,300 broadcasting channels, 80% of which are private broadcasting ones, and about 600 are foreign broadcasting ones. The freedom of access to information is as important as the freedom of the founding reporter of information.”

The mutual relationship between the role of the press and building a just and peaceful society was also discussed. Igor Shevyryov, a journalist from Ivestia, Ukraine, who has been carrying our journalists’ cooperation for peacebuilding, highlighted that journalists should communicate with each other for understanding, rather than engaging themselves in international conflicts. ”Evil causes more evil,” said other Ukraine participants to explain the role of media that ”should have communication with each other.” Kazakhstani particiants also added, ”Journalism should not be dividing, but should be uniting.”

The cooperation between media and NGOs for peace as an example of the positive role of media was introduced. Peace campaigns including seminars, forums, and peace walks by the local citizens in areas of conflict were operated by HWPL, when its association network with international media covered the 40 years of conflict and the need for global attention for peace in Mindanao, the Philippines. Vasily Nikulenkov, an editor of “The Newman in Foreign Policy”, a magazine in Russia, who participated in the forum, mentioned, “HWPL makes an effort to cease war and carious conflicts and work for peace with youth, women’s groups and media organizations for agreement on cessation of the war at the UN. This part is respectful. We educate for many students as examples of voluntary civil society activities.”

HWPL is working with about 130 public ambassadors of the press to form public opinion for creating a culture of peace designated in the UN resolutions. As a part of HWPL’s media forums, ‘Voice of Press’, an online conference, has been held five times in Ukraine, three times in Kazakhstan, once in Sweden, once in Crimea of Russia, once in Algeria. The participants of these forums agreed that the significant role of the press is to motivate people to acknowledge the importance of peace and to introduce the peace activities in solving the matters of the society.

{Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted in 2013, has been locked up since May 2010.}

Former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of stealing classified documents on the war in Iraq and turning them over to WikiLeaks, will be released next week, her lawyers have said.

Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison after being convicted in 2013, will be released following President Barack Obama’s order commuting her sentence in January just before he left office after more than 115,000 people signed a petition for her release.

Manning’s representatives could not provide the exact day she will be released, but a White House statement in January said she would be freed on May 17.

The 29-year-old Army private, formerly known as Bradley Manning, made international headlines after releasing thousands of classified US military documents to WikiLeaks.

The documents were stolen while Manning worked in Iraq. Their publication by WikiLeaks was one of the largest and most embarrassing leaks of classified information in US history. Manning has been in custody since being arrested in May 2010.

“Chelsea has already served the longest sentence of any whistle-blower in the history of this country. It has been far too long, too severe, too draconian,” said Manning’s lawyers in a joint statement.

Manning, who began the process of gender reassignment while in custody, said in a statement she can now see a future for herself as Chelsea.

“Freedom was only a dream, and hard to imagine. Now it’s here! You kept me alive,” she said on Twitter.

Manning had reportedly tried to commit suicide and gone on hunger strikes while in custody in a military prison.

A former intelligence analyst in Iraq, Manning was convicted in 2013 of leaking more than 700,000 secret military and State Department documents and battlefield videos. Manning’s leaks of classified information were among the largest in US history.

Manning admitted to leaking the materials, arguing that she wanted to expose the US military’s disregard for human rights and the impact of war on civilians. She said she chose information that wouldn’t harm US personnel or security.

The US government and critics said the leaks put sources in harm’s way.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Responding to Trump’s move to send arms supplies to YPG in battle for Raqqa, Turkish official hopes US will ‘turn back’.}

The US announcement to supply weapons to Kurdish units in Syria is “unacceptable”, Turkey’s deputy prime minister has said in a TV interview.

Speaking to broadcaster A Haber, Nurettin Canikli said on Wednesday that Turkey “cannot accept the presence of terrorist organisations that would threaten the future of the Turkish state”.

“We hope the US administration will put a stop to this wrong and turn back from it,” he said.

Canikli said the US claim that cooperation with the People’s Protection Units (YPG) was the only way to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ( ISIL ) group in a ground offensive was not based on facts.

Earlier Dana White, the Pentagon’s chief spokeswoman, said in a written statement that President Donald Trump had authorised the arms shipments on Monday.

She said Trump’s approval gave the Pentagon the go-ahead to ” equip Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as necessary to ensure a clear victory” over ISIL in Raqqa, the group’s self-declared capital in Syria.

Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkey-Syria border, said this announcement gets right to the heart of Turkey’s security concerns not only in Syria but also in Turkey.

“Turkey has long considered the YPG, the strongest Kurdish fighting force in Syria along that northern border, to be affiliated with a terrorist organisation,” he said.

“Last year, Turkey’s operation Euphrates Shield was not only targeting ISIL positions in that area, but was aimed at weakening Kurdish forces along that border”.

INFOGRAPHIC: Syrian civil war – Who controls what

The US has said it will closely monitor weapons transfers, and has promised that if arms are smuggled into other areas that could threaten Turkey, the supply will be cut off.

The SDF was founded in Syria’s mainly Kurdish northeastern region in October 2015 and is made up of at least 15 armed factions, mostly fighters from the YPG and the Free Syrian Army.

One faction, Ghadab al-Furat launched a campaign in October 2016 to retake Raqqa.

Last week it said it had taken 90 percent of Tabqa city in Raqqa province.

The YPG is the main faction battling ISIL, also known as ISIS, on the ground in Syria.

Turkey says YPG fighters are linked to Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) inside Turkey who have waged an armed campaign since 1984 that has killed more than 40,000 people.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that the US wants to reassure the people and government of Turkey that it is committed to preventing additional security risks and protecting our NATO ally.

For its part, the YPG praised on Wednesday the “historic” US decision to arm its fighters battling ISIL and said it expected to play a stronger and more influential role in what it called the fight against terrorism.

“We believe that from now on and after this historic decision, [the YPG] will play a stronger, more influential and more decisive role in combating terrorism at a fast pace,” Redur Xelil, YPG spokesperson, said in a written statement to the Reuters news agency on Wednesday.

The US says as of March 31, 2017, the total cost of operations related to ISIL since August 8, 2014, is $12.5bn. The average daily cost is $13m for 967 days of operations.

As of May 3, 2017, the US coalition has conducted a total of 21,065 strikes, including 12,561 in Iraq and 8,504 Syria.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Officials were ‘investigating wrongdoing’ at world football’s governing body – the focus of numerous corruption cases.}

A FIFA ethics investigator removed from office has said that his committee was investigating “several hundred” cases of possible wrongdoing, some involving senior officials.

World football’s governing body recommended on Tuesday that Cornel Borbely, along with the chief ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, not be re-elected at the FIFA Congress, which takes place on May 11 in Bahrain.

Eckert led the clean-up attempt at the organisation, which has been the focus of numerous corruption allegations, and helped bring down Sepp Blatter as FIFA president.

The removal of the ethics investigators is a “setback in the fight against corruption” and “means nothing else but the end of the reform process”, Borbely said in Bahrain on Wednesday.

Borbely earlier said that the “removal was unnecessary and, because of that, political”, adding it is a “setback for the fight against corruption”, with experience in the cases being lost.

Eckert and Borbely predicted long delays in current investigations, saying on Wednesday that there is “no period of transition” to the new ethics leadership for the ongoing cases.

“We investigated several hundred cases and several hundred are still pending and ongoing at the moment,” Borbely said.

FIFA issued a statement on Tuesday saying that the Colombian investigator Maria Claudia Rojas had been nominated as the new head of the investigatory chamber, with Vassilios Skouris, of Greece, a former president of the European Court of Justice, put forward as head of the adjudicatory chamber.

The decision is set to be ratified by FIFA at its annual Congress, which convenes in Bahrain on Thursday.

The decision is controversial as critics have accused Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, of having a personal motive to replace Eckert and Borbely, as an ethics investigation was launched against him last year.

Eckert was the judge who opened proceedings against Blatter and Michel Platini in November 2015.

Following Tuesday’s decision, one FIFA council official was quoted by AFP news agency as saying: “Congress members felt that FIFA and the Ethics Commission needed freshening up.”

{{Reform agenda in question}}

FIFA’s decision threatens to overshadow its congress and critics will argus that it calls into question the reform agenda set by the president, who was elected last year after football’s governing body was engulfed by corruption scandals and high-ranking executives were arrested in Zurich hotel raids.

Infantino had claimed to be ushering in a “new era” in after succeeding the discredited and banned Blatter.

Against this backdrop, FIFA has been trying to persuade commercial backers to sign up after many were scared off by the corruption allegations.

FIFA’s leadership was able to start its congress week in Bahrain by boasting the arrival of Qatar Airways to fill the airline sponsorship category that has been vacant for more than two years.

But the deal was anticipated given that Qatar Airways is the state-owned carrier of the 2022 World Cup hosts.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Qatari foreign minister says ‘de-escalation zones’ are a step towards reaching a solution and not the solution itself.}

Qatar’s foreign minister has said that “de-escalation zones” are not a substitute for political transition in Syria, adding that President Bashar al-Assad ought to leave office in any final peace agreement.

Speaking to Al Jazeera in Washington, DC on Monday, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the de-escalation zones “are a step towards reaching a solution and not the solution itself”.

“There should be a clear message that political transition is based on the Geneva I declaration, which ends with Bashar al-Assad and his regime leaving power and the establishment of a transitional authority,” Al Thani said.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy to Syria, has said talks between the Syrian government and opposition on ending the war are to reconvene in Geneva on May 16.

De Mistura says he hopes that an agreement reached in Astana last week between Russia, Iran and Turkey to set up the Russian-sponsored de-escalation zones will be fully implemented.

On Monday, Walid al-Moualem, Syria’s foreign minister, said there would be no role for the UN or other “international forces” in the so-called de-escalation zones but that Russia saw an observer role for its military police.

He gave no further details.

“We do not accept a role for the United Nations or international forces to monitor the agreement,” he said.

Russia said on Monday that it had tabled a draft UN Security Council resolution backing the de-escalation zone deal.

A source at the UN told Russia’s Interfax news agency that “a vote on the draft will take place possibly this week”.

Russia and regional power Iran have helped President Bashar al-Assad gain the military advantage against rebels fighting for six years to unseat him.

Russia has led most of the recent diplomatic efforts to end the conflict.

{{‘Dragged on too long’}}

Moualem also addressed what he described as an apparent change of attitude toward Syria by the US administration.

“It seems the United States, where (President Donald) Trump has said the Syrian crisis has dragged on too long, might have come to the conclusion that there must be an understanding with Russia on a solution,” he said.

He warned that if forces from Jordan, a supporter of rebel groups in southern Syria, entered the country without coordinating with Damascus, it would be considered an act of aggression, but added Syria was not about to confront Jordan.

Speaking about the military situation inside Syria, Moualem said Deir Az Zour, a city and province occupied by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in the east, was the “fundamental objective” for government forces and more important to the average Syrian than Idlib.

Asked about US backing for Kurdish groups fighting ISIL in northeast Syria, he said that what Syrian Kurds were doing against the jihadist group was “legitimate” at this stage and fell within the framework of preserving Syrian unity.

The Syrian civil war was born from unrest that started in March 2011. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Fatima Hjeiji was the seventh Palestinian child to be killed by Israeli security forces in 2017.}

Occupied West Bank, Palestine – At the Hjeiji family home in the occupied West Bank village of Qarawat Bani Zeid, classmates, friends and relatives of Fatima Hjeiji lined up to pay their respects.

One by one, the women and girls hugged Fatima’s mother Dareen and offered sympathetic words.

“She was such a lovely girl. Everybody at school loved her,” said Nadin Imad, 17, who attended the girls’ school in the village with Fatima.

“I was in class with her since the first grade. She had a very strong character and was not afraid to say whatever she wanted.”

The previous afternoon had begun like any other afternoon in the Hjeiji household. Fatima, 16, had returned home from school around 1.30pm and updated her mother on the morning’s events.

“It was a normal day, nothing unusual,” said Dareen Hjeiji.

“She told me about her school day, friends, teachers and her work. I had to visit the doctor so I left the house to go to the appointment. Fatima didn’t tell me she was going to Jerusalem to visit her relatives.”

Fatima’s uncle Salameh Hjeiji told Al Jazeera that he believed the teenager had gone to visit another uncle and aunt who lived in the Old City of Jerusalem.

However, the teenager had not told her immediate family of any plans to do so and did not have an entry permit that would have enabled her to pass through the Israeli checkpoints that separate Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank.

{{Alleged attack}}

Later that evening a family member received a phone call from the DCO, the joint Palestinian-Israeli military coordination office in the West Bank, informing them that Fatima had been shot dead by Israeli paramilitary police close to Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.

Soon afterwards, Fatima’s father Afeef received a call from an Israeli intelligence official, asking him to come to Jerusalem and identify Fatima’s body.

He was also questioned by intelligence officers for three hours that evening, he told Al Jazeera.

The Israeli police said in a statement that Fatima had been holding a knife and tried to attack Israeli paramilitary officers close to an entrance to the Old City, who then shot and killed the teenager.

The statement added that a letter had been found on the dead girl, which cited Quranic verses, addressed her family and was signed “martyr”.

But Fatima’s mother could not fathom what had happened the previous evening and believed that the police officers had no justification for shooting and killing her daughter.

“I could never imagine that my daughter would do this,” she said. “I don’t believe what the Israeli police said.”

According to eyewitness reports cited by local media, Hjeiji had been standing around 10 metres away from the police officers when they shot her.

Some accounts noted that the police officers continued to fire at the teenager after she had fallen to the ground and no longer posed a threat.

Since a wave of sporadic violence began in October 2015, mostly involving Palestinian street attacks on Israelis, a number of local and international human rights groups have raised concerns that Israeli security forces have used excessive force when confronting Palestinians who had carried out attacks or been suspected of doing so.

The Israeli police relaxed its open-fire regulations in December 2015, permitting officers to open fire with live ammunition on those throwing stones or firebombs as an initial option, without having to use non-lethal weapons first.

In a recently published investigation, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem found that 101 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli security forces in 2016, including 31 minors.

The NGO reported that “these incidents were made possible by an open-fire policy that permits both shooting to kill in instances defined as ‘incidents of assault’ and a trigger-happy approach to demonstrations or stone-throwing”.

DCI-Palestine (DCIP), a children’s rights NGO, noted that Fatima was the seventh Palestinian child to be killed by Israeli security forces in 2017.

“Israeli security forces routinely use intentional force against Palestinian youth,” Ayed Abu Eqtaish, accountability programme director at DCIP, said in a statement.

“Such excessive force, without a modicum of accountability, signals tacit approval for killing children with impunity.”

The eldest of four siblings, Fatima had been a strong student and enjoyed writing poetry and speeches in her spare time, but she really excelled in mathematics, her family said.

“She was part of a club for gifted mathematics students in Ramallah,” said her mother Dareen.

Dareen described her as quiet, calm and kind, noting that she was popular among her classmates.

The teenager was politically aware and had ambitions to work in the media after completing her education.

“She was a good speaker and a good writer,” said Dareen. “She always watched the news because she wanted to be a journalist when she was older.”

Source:Al Jazeera