Category: 2. World

ISLAMABAD: Floodwaters gushing through mountain villages, cities rendered swamps, mourners gathered at fresh graves — as Pakistan’s monsoon season once again delivers scenes of calamity, it also lays bare woeful preparedness.

Without better regulation of construction and sewer maintenance, the annual downpours that have left hundreds dead in recent months will continue to kill, experts say.

Even Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif appeared to agree as he toured flood-stricken northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province last week, where landslides killed more than 450 people.

“Natural disasters are acts of God, but we cannot ignore the human blunders,” he said.

“If we keep letting influence-peddling and corruption control building permits, neither the people nor the governments will be forgiven.”

Pakistan is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, with limited resources for adaptation.

In the devastated mountain villages the prime minister visited, and beyond, residential areas are erected near riverbeds, blocking “natural storm drains,” former climate change minister Sherry Rehman told AFP.

Entrepreneur Fazal Khan now recognizes the “mistake” of building too close to the river.

His home in the Swat Valley was destroyed first by 2010 floods and then again in the 2022 inundation that affected nearly four million Pakistanis.

“On August 15, once again, the floodwater surged through the channel and entered our home,” the 43-year-old father said.

Since it began in June, this year’s monsoon has killed around 800 people and damaged more than 7,000 homes, with further downpours expected through September.

While South Asia’s seasonal monsoon brings rainfall that farmers depend on, climate change is making the phenomenon more erratic, unpredictable and deadly across the region.

By the middle of this month, Pakistan had already received 50% more rainfall than this time last year, according to disaster authorities, while in neighboring India, flash floods and sudden storms have killed hundreds.

Extractive practices have also compounded the climate-related disasters, with cash-strapped but mineral-rich Pakistan eager to meet growing American and Chinese demand.

Rehman, the former minister, said mining and logging have altered the natural watershed.

“When a flood comes down, especially in mountainous terrain, a dense forest is very often able to check the speed, scale and ferocity of the water, but Pakistan now only has five percent forest coverage, the lowest in South Asia,” she said.

Urban infrastructure, too, has faltered.

Days after villages were swept away in the north, a spell of rain in the south brought Pakistan’s financial capital, Karachi, to a standstill.

The coastal megacity — home to more than 20 million people — recorded 10 deaths last week, with victims electrocuted or crushed by collapsing roofs.

A Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) report said brown water inundating streets is not only the result of rain but “clogged drains, inadequate solid waste disposal, poor infrastructure, encroachments, elitist housing societies… and so on.”

Published in the wake of 2020’s deadly floods, the report still rings true today.

According to the commission, the problems are “inherently political” as various parties use building permits to fuel their patronage networks — often disregarding the risks of constructing on top of drainage canals.

In some areas, “the drain has become so narrow that when high tide occurs and it rains simultaneously, instead of the water flowing into the sea, it flows back into the river,” urban planning expert Arif Hasan said in an interview after the 2022 floods.

In the sprawling, rapidly swelling city, the various authorities, both civil and military, have failed to coordinate urban planning, according to the rights commission.

As a result, what infrastructure does get built can solve one problem while creating others.

“Karachi isn’t being destroyed by rain, but by years of negligence,” said Taha Ahmed Khan, an opposition lawmaker in the Sindh provincial assembly.

“Illegal construction and encroachments on stormwater drains, along with substandard roads… have only worsened the crisis,” he added.

Karachi Mayor Murtaza Wahab says he has been asking Islamabad every year for help financing the revamping of drainage canals, to no avail.

“It’s easy to suggest that drainage capacity should be enhanced, but the cost is so high that it might require spending almost the entire national budget,” he told AFP.

Yet during June’s budget vote, the opposition accused the city of having spent only 10% of funds earmarked for a massive development project.

The five-year plan, designed with international donors, was supposed to end the city’s monsoon suffering by the end of 2024.

But nearly a year later, there is no respite.

Girl walking to get food in Gaza. Jaber Jehad Badwan/Wikimedia Commons.

International legal experts are increasingly asserting that the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza is not merely a by-product of war but a deliberate Israeli strategy, a policy many allege is a war crime.

‘If [Israeli] Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu decided that every child in Gaza should have breakfast tomorrow, it could be done,’ says Alex de Waal, an expert on famine and Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University. ‘The fact that this has not happened speaks volumes about Israel’s intentions in what may be one of the most ruthlessly engineered famines in modern history.’

The IBA’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) has condemned the ‘deliberate starvation’ of Gaza’s population as an inhuman method of warfare and as a ‘grave breach of international law.’ Gaza, it says, is enduring a ‘summer of long horrors’, highlighting in a statement that ‘famine remains an imminent threat across the territory. Critical infrastructure and services are nearing total collapse. Life in Gaza is being extinguished day by day and the minimal flow of aid reaching the Strip falls far short of meeting the overwhelming humanitarian need.’

Catriona Murdoch, an international criminal barrister and starvation crimes expert, says that Israel, by wielding aid as a bargaining chip, is flouting core humanitarian duties to provide aid unconditionally. The strategy has exacerbated the pre-existing humanitarian crisis and has contributed to the staggeringly quick impact of food insecurity, she says. ‘The conduct of Israel in routinely blocking [aid] for extended periods or making the conditions of delivery so dangerous or logistically impossible, would fall within the set of rules which prohibits this type of conduct,’ she says, referring to international humanitarian law (IHL). ‘Starvation is the process of deprivation that occurs when actors impede the capacity of civilians to access the means of sustaining life.’

Israeli officials reject these accusations and deny any deliberate famine policy. They defend aid limits by pointing to major security risks to Israeli citizens and blame Hamas for siphoning off supplies, claiming that the group funnels food, fuel and medicine to its fighters rather than civilians. Israel says it only bars ‘dual-use’ items – which it insists could serve military ends – from aid. 

Commentators say that some of the statements and actions by Israeli officials indicate criminal intent. In January, for example, Israeli media outlet Haaretz reported that eight members of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee had advocated cutting off northern Gaza’s food, water and power supplies as a military tactic against Hamas. Despite Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza to the Strip’s outside borders, experts say Israel remains the occupying power, controlling the territory’s borders and resources. Under international law, this obliges it to provide civilians with basic necessities – a duty, critics say, it has failed to uphold.

‘In the case of Israel, given the repeated and public statements made indicating a specific intent to seal off areas [and] restrict food and water, coupled with the dehumanising language and strong rhetoric of starvation tactics [being presented], it would be difficult to run a defence based on denial that civilians were not the intended target of this siege and starve campaign,’ says Murdoch.

Legal analysts argue that Israel’s ten-week complete blockade on food deliveries to Gaza, which lasted from March to May, could form the backbone of a powerful war crimes prosecution, with starvation as a central charge. Stephen Rapp, IBAHRI Council Member and former US Ambassador-at-large for War Crimes Issues, says that intent – a critical element in such cases – may be legally inferred from the predictable consequences of sealing off the enclave while destroying its lifelines. Israel controlled all access points after its military operations rendered the Rafah crossing inoperable and crippled local food production, including farming and fishing.  

‘Even if it was reasonable to presume that the civilian population could control Hamas’ decisions, it is well settled that a party cannot commit IHL violations in order to force another party to comply with its obligations,’ Rapp says. ‘One must comply with the law even if the other side does not.’

‘Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the [Rome] Statute’ was one of the charges laid against Netanyahu alongside Yoav Gallant, the former Minister of Defence of Israel, by the International Criminal Court when it issued arrest warrants for both men in May 2024. Israel has denied this charge and others contained in the warrants.

Rapp adds that beyond food, other necessities of life such as medical care are being denied. He refers to a recent report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) – for which he is a board member – based on testimony from over 50 medical workers in Gaza, which details how Israeli authorities systematically blocked vital medical supplies – items with no conceivable military use – leading to preventable deaths and lasting harm. 

‘I think that a prosecution case alleging starvation as a war crime is a strong one,’ Rapp says. ‘The full blockade and tighter restrictions of 2025 will make cases stronger, and harder to defend against, at the ICC and in national systems exercising universal jurisdiction.’

The IBAHRI, while condemning the attacks by Hamas against Israel that took place on 7 October 2023, dismisses Israel’s aid-diversion claims as unsubstantiated, citing an internal study carried out by the US Agency for International Development that debunked them. As such, the claims ‘in no way justify bypassing international humanitarian norms,’ the IBAHRI says. Officials from bodies such as the UN World Food Programme have denied Israeli claims of large-scale, organised theft by Hamas but have said that, in fact, some aid was stolen ‘by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces.’

De Waal highlights the duration during which aid has been prevented as grounds for accusations of criminal conduct. ‘A military commander cannot starve a population by accident,’ he says. ‘It takes weeks to starve. During this time, information is available about the outcome. In Gaza, authoritative warnings have been repeatedly issued by the UN and the US FEWS NET [Famine Early Warning Systems Network]. Failing to act on these warnings should be taken as evidence for criminal intent.’

In spring 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an additional measure to an earlier ruling demanding Israel allow full, unhindered humanitarian access to Gaza, including by opening border crossings and ensuring aid delivery. The ruling even received near-unanimous support including from Israel’s appointed judge, Aharon Barak, on humanitarian grounds. 

Despite this, Israel has failed to comply. ‘Within an hour’s drive of the stricken communities, the UN and other aid organisations have the resources, skills and networks to [create] a comprehensive humanitarian operation today,’ says De Waal.

Commentators say that as a party to the Genocide Convention, Israel is legally bound to prevent atrocities. The international community, particularly signatory states, has a duty to enforce these obligations. Yet, with crossings still restricted and aid blocked, Gaza’s famine continues to worsen by the day.

While Israel frames its policies as security-driven, the global view – backed by rights groups and legal bodies – holds that its restrictions are disproportionate, legally questionable and a leading cause of Gaza’s famine. 

Emad Mekay is a freelance journalist and can be contacted at emad.mekay@int-bar.org 

LONDON: At precisely 6:29 a.m. on Tuesday, Israel’s Hostages and Missing Families Forum launched a “day of struggle” in towns and cities across the country.

It was the biggest mass protest to date against what many in Israel now see as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s willful determination to escalate the war in Gaza at all costs — including the potential sacrifice of the remaining hostages who have been held by Hamas since the attack on Israel, which began at 6:29 a.m. on Oct. 7, 2023.

It was also the most dramatic demonstration yet of an increasingly obvious reality: that the war in Gaza is exposing deep fractures within Israeli society.

Global outrage over the war in Gaza reached new heights on Monday following an Israeli strike on a hospital that killed 20 people, including five journalists working for international news outlets.

But opposition to the war is also rising inexorably within Israel itself, even as the Israel Defense Forces press ahead with Netanyahu’s plan to broaden the war and attack Gaza City in the face of international condemnation.

“Almost every day and every night there are massive protests that block roads,” Rabbi Noa Sattath, head of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, told Arab News. 

“The protestors include hostage families, people demanding an end to the war and atrocities in Gaza, ultra-Orthodox men who have staged huge protests against plans to draft them into the army, and other people who feel it’s unfair that the ultra-Orthodox are not serving yet. It is all pretty chaotic for everyday life.”

Sattath is speaking from her car, and her conversation with Arab News is briefly interrupted. “I was just stopped by a nice woman who gave me an anti-war sticker,” she said.

Last week, the Israeli Cabinet approved plans for an assault on Gaza City despite Hamas agreeing to mediators’ proposals for a 60-day ceasefire, which would have seen half of the surviving hostages released.

Israeli peace campaigners say this broadening of the war, in tandem with increasing attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank by radical Israeli settlers, benefits only Netanyahu and the far-right members of his coalition government.

In May, thousands gathered in Jerusalem for a two-day People’s Peace Summit, organized by It’s Time, a coalition of more than 60 Jewish and Arab peacebuilding and shared-society organizations founded last year “to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a political agreement that will ensure both peoples’ right to self-determination and secure lives.”

The coalition accuses Netanyahu’s government of conducting “a criminal war for political reasons that are certainly not in the interest of the Israeli people.”

Leading establishment figures, from high-ranking former members of the military to politicians, have expressed concern about the direction in which Netanyahu and his Cabinet are taking Israel.

On Tuesday, in an interview with public radio, Gadi Eisenkot, the former IDF chief of staff, whose soldier son Gal was killed in Gaza, said Netanyahu’s government “is not worthy of Gal (and) many combat soldiers and, unfortunately, also the hostages, who lost their lives because of cowardice and … political and ideological considerations of those who want to return to the settlement of the Gaza Strip.”

Appearing on the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking” on Sunday, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke of the “deep division between a major part of public opinion which is in favor of changing course, and a part which is now governed by the Netanyahus and the group of thugs which are known to be the Cabinet ministers.”

Netanyahu’s war, he added, “is an unneeded and unnecessary war … There is not any national interest of Israel which can be served by continuing the war. And therefore, the inevitable conclusion is that it serves the personal interests of the prime minister.”

Civil groups in Israel are not shying away from using the word “genocide” to describe what is happening.

On July 28, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem published a powerful report, titled “Our Genocide,” condemning the “genocidal regime in Israel.”

The report concluded that “an examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads us to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.”

The report came with a stark statement from B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak. “Nothing prepares you for the realization that you are part of a society committing genocide. This is a deeply painful moment for us,” she said.

The genocide, she added, is rooted in part in the existential fear among Israelis created by the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023 — a fear now being exploited by “the extremist, far-right messianic government … to promote an agenda of destruction and expulsion.”

“Messianic” is a word that has increasing resonance in, and consequences for, Israeli society.

Messianism, said Sattath, “is really dangerous. What they are trying constantly to achieve is to ignite another front in the war, either in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem or inside Israel.”

For the messianic element in Israeli society, major disasters in Jewish history — from the Holocaust to the Oct. 7 attack and the subsequent war — are interpreted as painful but divinely guided stages on the path toward ultimate redemption.

In this view, such events are part of a larger historical process leading to the full resettling of what they believe to be the biblical Land of Israel, extending beyond today’s borders to include all of Palestine and parts of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Many in Israel, said Sattath, are looking toward the country’s next election, half in hope, half in fear. “We don’t know when the elections will be,” she said. “The full term for the government would be November 2026, but we have not had a government that completed a full term since 1981.”

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel and other organizations, she said, have multiple concerns about the upcoming election.

“One is changes to election laws in order to disqualify Arab candidates and parties from running. There’s legislation that hasn’t been advanced yet, but it could get advanced very quickly, and that would have dramatic effects on the elections.

“We are also worried about police harassment of voters, because the police have been so taken over by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, or voter harassment by thugs in which the police would not intervene.

“Everybody’s looking towards the next elections. But we are very worried about whether free and fair elections are even possible under the current system.”

Another issue fragmenting Israeli society is whether or not ultra-Orthodox Jews should be drafted into the military. This is something they bitterly oppose, while other Israelis resent having to send their sons and daughters to die while the ultra-Orthodox are exempt.

A recent survey found “a sharp drop in support for the current situation of exempting ultra-Orthodox” — only 9 percent compared with 22 percent 10 months earlier. Meanwhile, support for conscripting the ultra-Orthodox rose from 67 percent last year to more than 84.5 percent, with a third of respondents backing economic penalties for those who refuse to serve.

In a special research paper for Arab News, Yossi Mekelberg, a professor of international relations and a senior consulting fellow of the MENA Program at the UK-based Chatham House think-tank, highlighted the “mutual opportunism” that had seen Netanyahu join forces with two ultra-Orthodox parties in order to maintain his grip on power.

It was, wrote Mekelberg, “a measure of how far to the right the political discourse in Israel has shifted” that in 2022 the parties Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) had gained nearly 11 percent of the vote and 14 seats in the Knesset.

The parties are led by settlers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose rewards for supporting Netanyahu were jobs in his Cabinet, as finance minister and national security minister, respectively.

The ultra-Orthodox, once a small, isolated element in society, now pose a long-term demographic threat to the very future of Israel.

With a fertility rate among the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim, of 6.1 children per woman, compared with 2.3 among non-Haredi Jews, the growth rate of Haredi society is about 4 percent a year — double the rest of Israel’s population.

In 2024, the 1.26 million Haredi Jews accounted for 16 percent of the total Jewish population of Israel. At the current rate of growth, a quarter of Israel’s population will be Haredim by 2065.

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, one-third of the 480,000 Jews living in West Bank settlements or outposts are Haredim.

As Israel’s war in Gaza drags on, there is increasing pressure on the government to call up Haredim youth to serve in the military — a red line for a religious group that until now has been exempt from military service on the historical basis that they can best protect Israel by studying the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew bible.

The exemption was granted in 1948 by Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. Since then, however, the number of ultra-Orthodox Jews has grown dramatically and in June last year, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the IDF should begin drafting Haredim. 

Israel needs more troops for its latest Gaza campaign. As part of its controversial plan, the IDF is currently calling up 60,000 reservists , but very few Haredim are answering the call — each year, fewer than 10 percent of the 13,000 eligible ultra-Orthodox youths enlist.

Protests against conscription have seen thousands of Haredim take to the streets, driving a wedge between mainstream Israeli society and a once small and marginal faction that has now become disproportionately influential.

“What we are seeing now is the Israeli tribes fighting each other,” Dr. Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and a former officer in the IDF, told Arab News.

The Israeli “tribes,” he said, “are pulling in different directions, and it is hard for me to see how they could come together again.

“The small but influential settler tribe wants to expand into the West Bank and expel the West Bankers. The Tel Aviv liberal camp is wary of the consequences of the occupation.

“The Haredi tribe doesn’t really care much about what Israel does or doesn’t do as long as they don’t have to serve in the military and as they keep getting their money from the state.”

Israelis should, he added, be careful what they wish for. 

“There is a growing effort to put pressure on the Haredim to join the military. I believe that they will be enlisted in the end, because there is a real need for more manpower as the IDF is too small and the missions too big.

“But personally, I would not like them to be enlisted, as they will make the military even more religious than it already is.”

Bregman believes Israeli society has become so fractured — by the war, the ideological settlement of Palestinian lands, and demographic changes under way — that he fears the worst.

“Tensions within Israeli society are so high that the situation could easily deteriorate into an open civil war,” he said.

“What could spark such a war? For example, the refusal of Netanyahu to accept the results of the forthcoming general elections. Or maybe even a political assassination.”

 

Heavy rain set off a landslide on a famed Hindu pilgrimage route in India-occupied Jammu region, killing at least 30 people, the ANI news agency said on Wednesday, while floods prompted official warnings for people to stay indoors at night.

Weather officials forecast more rain and thunderstorms with gusty winds for the mountainous region of Ladakh, while heavy rain is set to lash the occupied Jammu and Kashmir territory.

Authorities were battling to restore telecom services as communication was “almost nonexistent”, said Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.

Tuesday’s landslide near the shrine of Vaishno Devi on the pilgrims’ route killed at least 30 people, said ANI, in which Reuters holds a minor stake.

It was the latest havoc from downpours in the Himalayan region that killed 60 people, with 200 missing in Kishtwar in occupied Kashmir last week.

Authorities also ordered the closure of educational institutions in held Jammu, which weather officials said was deluged with 368 millimetres of rain on Tuesday.

The rivers Tawi, Chenab, and Basantar overflowed beyond their alert levels, causing floods in low-lying areas, held Jammu district official Rakesh Kumar told reporters.

Television images showed vehicles falling into a big hole after a bridge collapsed on the Tawi river, while some highways linking occupied Jammu to the rest of India were also damaged.

Pakistan has also grappled with monsoon rains in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, Islamabad said Punjab faced a “very high to exceptionally high” danger of flooding from a combination of heavy rains and India’s decision to release water from two dams.

The number of displaced in the province now exceeds 150,000, including nearly 35,000 who left voluntarily after flood warnings triggered by heavy rain since August 14, officials said.

A person shows the blood-stained camera that freelance journalist Mariam Dagga, 33, was carrying when she was killed in a double Israeli strike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on August 25, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AP

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