A Palestinian activist who has run afoul of both the Palestinian and Israeli authorities was released from a Palestinian jail Sunday, a week after he was arrested for writing a Facebook post critical of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

 

Issa Amro, who says he pursues a path of non-violence against discriminatory Israeli policies and Jewish settlements in the West Bank city of Hebron, now faces the rare predicament of criminal proceedings in both an Israeli military court and a Palestinian court.

 

Amro was arrested on September 4 for writing a Facebook post criticizing the detention of a Palestinian journalist who was arrested for calling for President Mahmoud Abbas’s resignation.

 

His attorney said Sunday that Amro was released on $1,400 bail after being held under a recent edict that allows the government to crack down on social media critics. Farid Atrash said it was “shameful” that his client was arrested for exercising his right of free expression.

 

“They want to silence me and silence every voice defending human rights, but they are wrong. I will continue defending human rights and struggling against occupation,” he said following his release from jail on Sunday. He denied any wrongdoing.

 

In jail last week, Amro began a hunger strike to protest what he said was an unlawful detention, made without a warrant or due process.

 

Following his release, Amro said he was verbally and physically abused during his investigation by Palestinian security.

 

Though he has been freed from jail for now, Amro’s legal battles are only just starting.

 

Amro, a 35-year-old activist whose organization Youth Against Settlements protests against Israeli settlements in his hometown of Hebron, also faces charges at an Israeli military court for allegedly inciting violence and hindering soldiers during official duties. His trial is to resume in October.

 

Despite facing double-barrel legal battles for his political activities, Amro vows to press forward with what he says is a non-violent struggle.

 

“I know the law and never, ever violated it,” he said. “I never incited for violence, I never incited against any official. I call for human rights.”

 

Amro’s arrest by Palestinian security last week prompted rights groups to urge the Palestinian Authority to release him. Amnesty International condemned his arrest as “a shameless attack on freedom of expression.”

 

Last week nine members of U.S. Congress penned a letter to Abbas asking him to “immediately drop the baseless charges and release” Amro, calling his detention “extremely concerning.”

 

In June, 32 members of Congress signed a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson urging him to persuade Israeli authorities to drop charges against Amro. The lawmakers expressed concern that some of the allegations against him are “not internationally recognizable criminal offenses” and that the military court “will not render a fair and impartial verdict.”

 

In July, two United Nations human rights rapporteurs said the Israeli charges against him were “directed squarely at his lawful right to peacefully protest.”

 

Amro, like several other Palestinian journalists, was arrested and charged with disturbing public order under a recently passed Electronic Crimes Law, and “causing strife” under a 1960 Jordanian law. Human rights organizations have noted a spike in journalists arrested by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, particularly after the implementation of the vaguely worded decree in July.

 

The law enables the Palestinian Authority government to jail those who harm “national unity” or the “social fabric” online. Critics say the edict, issued without prior public debate, is perhaps the most significant step yet by Abbas’ government to restrict freedom of expression in the autonomous Palestinian enclaves of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

 

Amnesty International reported that Palestinian Authority security services arrested at least six journalists in August and shut down dozens of websites in a major crackdown on free speech.
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Saudi Arabia and Iran are rethinking their rivalry and a highly tentative, as well as a deniable, courtship is underway, say analysts. But it is fraught pitfalls and last week in London Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister dismissed talk of a possible thaw as “laughable,” saying Iran would have to change its policies dramatically for that to happen.

Even so, Riyadh has softened its opposition to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s ally, and has dialed down its own sectarian rhetoric against the mullahs in Tehran.

And Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said last week his country, a majority-Shi’ite country, is ready for dialogue with Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia to see how they can overcome their enmity and end a decades-long battle for influence across the Middle East.

“We are prepared to cooperate with Islamic countries on all issues that are important to the Islamic world,” Zarif told a local news outlet. “If the Saudi government is ready to turn the page, Iran is ready for that as well,” he added.

At first glance, any rapprochement, however mild, between the rivals would appear unlikely. Each accuses the other of subverting regional security and they are supporting opposite sides in conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

But efforts to ease tensions between the Gulf rivals has been on display the past few months. In Mecca, the annual haj (pilgrimage) was attended by an estimated 90,000 Shi’ite Iranians after Tehran lifted a boycott imposed last year amid sharp tensions between Iran and the Saudis. Mecca authorities went out of their way to welcome Iranian worshippers and were praised for doing so by Tehran.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani suggested a trouble-free hajj would help build confidence in other areas of dispute between the arch-rivals. “If our pilgrims come back satisfied, and if Saudi Arabia’s behavior is within religious and international frameworks, I think the situation would be more convenient to resolve the issues,” he was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA earlier this year.

A difficult path

Hajj has ended, but engineering a rapprochement won’t be easy, as was stressed by Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister at an event last week in London.

“We have an Iran which is on the rampage, that has to decide whether it is a revolution or a nation state, that part of it seeks to restore the Persian empire from thousands of years ago, and another part of it seeks a better future for its people and that supports terrorism and interferes in the affairs of others,” warned Adel Al-Jubeir speaking Thursday at Chatham House, a London-based policy research group.

He added, “Iran believes in exporting its revolution… supports terrorism, smuggles weapons into neighboring countries and tries to destabilize.” He sadi Iran needs to live by international rules, be neighborly and stop interfering in the affairs of others, otherwise “it will be difficult to accept them.”

He stressed, though, the Saudi kingdom would approach regional issues with a “pragmatic, practical and non-ideological” mind.

Complicated regional politics

A changing and volatile Middle East at least makes the timing right for attempts to ease hostilities, say analysts. “The two states, who have clashed in multiple countries, now find themselves in a new political situation which may force them to work together,” according to analyst Baraa Sabri.

He argues that “at the very least they may have to modify their respective policies by reinforcing those that could help lead to a rapprochement and by turning a blind eye to the most contentious matters between them, Syria and Yemen, even if only temporarily.”

Factors pushing Riyadh and Tehran to re-think include a developing Turkish-Russian alliance and doubts about Moscow, allied to Iran, and Washington, an ally of the Saudis, are to be trusted.

In August, for all his public dismissal now of the possibility of improved relations, the Saudi foreign minister shook hands with his Iranian counterpart at a meeting in Istanbul of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, of which Iran and Saudi Arabia are members. At the meeting, Iran’s Zarif called for re-establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries and said the two may soon exchange diplomatic visits.

But it will take more than a handshake or two and a few diplomatic exchanges to bridge the huge sectarian gap between the two countries. Analyst Bruce Riedel of the Washington-based Brookings Institution scorns the idea of an Iranian-Saudi thaw, arguing Saudi monarch Salman bin Abdul-Aziz al-Saud is “the most hostile king toward Iran since the Iranian Revolution.”
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Fawaz Saleh Ahmed has been secretly sneaking into his own village in northern Iraq to visit his home.

 

The last time he went, he wept as he spent several hours going from room to room in the partially destroyed house, he said. When his tears dried, he made his way back to the nearby Khazir camp housing those displaced by war, where he and his family have lived for almost a year.

 

Frustratingly, tantalizingly, he can see his house from there, but the Kurdish forces controlling his village, called Hassan Shami, won’t allow him to return to live.

 

“That is my house there on the hill, do you see it?” said Ahmed, a member of Iraq’s once-dominant Sunni Arab minority. He stretched his arm to point.

 

The 39-year-old Ahmed’s predicament is part of the wider disaster facing Iraq’s Sunni Arabs. Three years of war have freed their lands from the rule of the Islamic State group but have also left the community at its lowest state ever. Sunnis are feeling lost, unsure what their place will be in the country’s future and worried that the Shiite majority and the Kurds aim to change the demographics of some Sunni areas to impose their own control.

 

Sunnis have been barred from returning to their homes in numerous villages and towns that the Kurds seized during fighting with Islamic State militants in a belt of territory across the north stretching down to Iraq’s eastern border.

 

Kurdish officials cite security reasons for not allowing residents back, even though IS was driven out of the area late last year. At the same time, the Kurds have repeatedly said they intend to incorporate the captured territory into their own self-rule zone — even as they plan a referendum for outright independence later this month. That raises questions over the future of Sunni Arab villages like Hassan Shami.

 

Further south, Iranian-backed Shiite militias that captured mainly Sunni territory have also kept Sunnis from returning to strategic areas between Baghdad and the Iranian border or other areas Shiites consider vital.

 

Sunni Arabs, meanwhile, are faced with the depth and magnitude of their plight. The fear among Iraqi authorities and the Sunnis themselves is that new militant groups could take root unless the community’s situation is improved.

 

Their cities and towns lie in partial ruins from the fight that drove IS out of most of the territories it seized in 2013 and 2014, from northern Iraq through the country’s center and across the Sunni heartland of the western Anbar province. Thousands of Sunnis languish in detention for alleged links to the group.

 

The community has suffered massive displacement. Currently, 3.2 million people are displaced, the overwhelming majority Sunni Arabs. Another more than 2 million were displaced previously but have since returned home, according to the International Organization of Migration. Together that would be a staggeringly high proportion of the country’s entire Sunni Arab population, which is generally estimated to make up 15 to 20 percent of Iraq’s 37 million people.

 

Those who have returned — mainly to Anbar — must rebuild homes and communities, so far with little help from the government. Those still displaced either scramble to find housing or jobs or languish in camps. More than 400,000 of those displaced in nearly a year of fighting to liberate Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, are housed in 19 camps around the north.

 

Sunni Arabs have struggled since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, which brought down Saddam Hussein and opened the door for the Shiite majority to gain power through elections. Sunnis were relegated to second-tier status, igniting an insurgency that brought years of violence and gave rise to al-Qaida and its successor, the Islamic State group. Over those years, divided Sunni politicians were ineffectual, and many Sunni professionals and businessmen left the country.

 

Some Sunnis talk of trying to form their own self-rule region like Kurdistan. But many are wary, knowing the Sunni-majority areas have far fewer resources.

 

“We Sunni Arabs are the weakest link in Iraq today. But trust me, this country will not be stable and strong again unless we assume a leading role in how the country is run,” said Adnan Abu-Zeid, a school teacher from Mosul.

 

But this kind of bravado masks a widespread despair.

 

“Back in 2003, we wanted democracy and freedoms. Look where that got us,” said an embittered Ghazi Hamad, displaced from Mosul. “We have now lowered our expectations. Any government is good for us, as long as it makes us feel safe. We will happily live on the sidelines.”

 

Hossam Ahmed, a 24-year-old student displaced from Mosul, spoke nostalgically of Saddam, though he would have only been 11 when the autocrat was ousted. “I love Saddam Hussein. When he was in power, we, the people of Mosul, enjoyed full security,” he said. “Iraq was finished when he left.”

 

In a sign of resignation and distrust of Shiites, some Sunni Arab tribal chiefs in the north are even publicly campaigning for their areas to join the Kurdish region. The Kurds are overwhelmingly Sunni, but suspicions and divisions run along ethnic lines with Sunni Arabs.

 

The Baghdad government routinely says it wants the displaced to return, and official media celebrate when Sunni Arabs go back to their areas. Officials cite security concerns and lack of basic services as reasons why some do not return.

 

But Sunnis worry over signs of forced demographic change in particular strategic areas.

 

For example, Sunnis have had difficulty returning to parts of Diyala province, which borders both Iran and the Iraqi Kurdish autonomy zone.

 

A recent IOM survey found that nearly 80 percent of Sunnis displaced from two sampled towns in Diyala had tried to return home but were prevented, whether by Kurdish forces or Shiite militiamen.

 

Sheikh Iyad al-Laheibi, a local Sunni tribal chief, said he believes Shiite militias are engineering demographic changes in Diyala to secure a direct route from the Iranian border to Baghdad through the province.

 

“Who gets to return home has become a random practice,” al-Laheibi said. He also pointed to frequent kidnappings of the Sunnis who remain, believed to be aimed at intimidating them into leaving.

 

In neighboring Salaheddin province, nearly half of those displaced from towns around the provincial capital Tikrit — Saddam’s hometown — said they had been blocked from returning by Shiite militias, according to the IOM survey.

 

Southwest of Baghdad, thousands of Sunni Arabs have been unable to return to Jurf al-Sakhar, a Sunni pocket in mainly Shiite Babel province that controls the gateway to the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala further south. Shiite militias drove IS militants from the area in 2014.

 

Sunni politicians’ repeated calls for Sunni residents to be allowed back have been ignored. Last month, the Babel provincial government threatened legal proceedings against anyone demanding their return.

 

Infuriated Sunni lawmakers accused Babel of seeking to change the area’s demographics. The U.N. said the Babel government was trying to intimidate politicians into silence.

 

In Khazir camp, Fawaz Ahmed, once a Health Ministry employee, spoke of his secret trips back to his home in Hassan Shami village. Kurdish fighters guarding the village don’t allow visits, so Ahmed and others obtain permits to leave the camp, ostensibly to visit relatives elsewhere, and then sneak into their homes.

 

“My heart keeps telling me to go back and look,” he said, squatting on a large rock at the edge of the camp facing his village. Below, in a ravine running parallel to the Khazir river, youths played soccer on dirt fields as the sky grew darker.

 

“There is only one question on my mind: Why can’t I go home?” he said.

 

In Irbil, Naseradeen Saeed Sindi, the Kurdish official in charge of “Kurdistani areas outside the region,” had no direct answer. He said security concerns prevent return for the moment. He also suggested that such captured areas would be made part of the Kurdish self-rule region.

 

“Turkmen, Christians and Arabs will have rights equal to those enjoyed by the Kurds under the region’s law,” he said.

 

In Khazir and other camps, residents languish, dealing with sizzling heat and long hours of boredom in tents lined up in monotonous rows. They talk longingly of “awda” — Arabic for “return.”

 

“One’s village is like his mother. You can never abandon her,” said Ahmed Hassan Khalaf, another native of Hassan Shami and a father of 13 who is in his mid-70s and in poor health. “We used to grow tomatoes on the land on which this camp is built,” he said, grapping a fist-load of pebbles from the ground outside his tent.

 

Then he murmured, barely audible in despair, “Oh God, oh God the compassionate.”

 

 

 
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Iraqi authorities said Sunday they are holding more than 1,300 foreign women and children, the families of suspected Islamic State jihadists, at a camp for displaced people and expect to repatriate them to their home countries.

The women and children, most from Russia, Turkey and Central Asia with some from European countries, surrendered to Kurdish forces at the end of August after Iraqi fighters drove Islamic State from the northern town of Tal Afar, near Mosul.

Iraqi officials said they are verifying the nationalities of the women, many of whom no longer had their original passports or other international documents.

As Kurdish forces assumed control of Tal Afar, they handed over the women and children to Iraqi forces, while keeping the men, all assumed to be fighters, in their custody.

The Norwegian Refugee Council, which is supporting 541 of the women and their children, said in a statement that Iraq “must swiftly move to clarify its future plans for these individuals.  Like all those fleeing conflict, it is imperative that these individuals are able to access protection, assistance, and information.  They are in de-facto detention.”

One 27-year-old French woman of Algerian descent told Reuters, “My mother doesn’t even know where I am.”  She said she had been tricked by her husband to come with him via Turkey into Syria and then Iraq when he joined Islamic State last year.

“I had just given birth to this little girl three months before,” she said, holding the infant. “He said, ‘Let’s go for a week’s holiday in Turkey.’  He had already bought the plane tickets and the hotel.”

After four months in Mosul, she said she ran away from her husband to Tal Afar in February.  She was hoping to make it back to France, but he found her and would not let her leave.  She cried as she recounted how her five-year-old son was killed by a rocket in June while playing in the streets.

“I don’t understand why he did this to us,” she said of her husband, who she said was killed fighting in Mosul.  “Dead or alive, I couldn’t care less about him.”

 

 

 

 

 
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