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SYRIA

UN experts call on Israeli settlers to withdraw

Israel must immediately begin withdrawing its settlers from the Palestinian territories, UN experts told diplomats in Geneva on Monday, even as the Israeli government appeared set to strengthen the hand of the Jewish settler lobby.

Israel must act to "immediately and without preconditions cease the settlement activity and to initiate a process of withdrawal from the settlements", Christine Chanet told the UN Human Rights Council, lamenting a "rampant annexation" of Palestinian territories.

Chanet, of France, was presenting a report of a fact-finding mission commissioned by the council that deemed that the settlements were leading to Palestinians' human rights "being violated consistently and on a daily basis".

The report, published at the end of January, sparked angry reactions from Israel, which at the time slammed it and the Human Rights Council that commissioned it as "one-sided and biased".

The council's decision to dispatch the fact-finding mission last March to determine what impact the settlements are having on the rights of Palestinians so enraged the Jewish state that it immediately cut all ties with the body, and on Monday, Israel was not represented at the Geneva forum.

Meanwhile, Israel's new hawk-dominated ruling coalition, being sworn in Monday, is expected to strengthen rather than weaken the power of the settlers.

Palestinian representative Ibrahim Khrashi harshly criticised recent comments from Israeli politicians in support of the settlements and condemned the country for not taking part in Monday's Human Rights Council meeting.

The settlements, he insisted, "kills any possibility to achieve the two-state solution," decrying Israel's "flagrant violation of international law" and accusing it of maintaining a system of "apartheid".

The Palestinians are set to table a resolution Monday calling for the implementation of the fact-finding mission's recommendations which should be voted on by the end of the council session on Friday.

Almost all country representatives who took the floor on Monday harshly criticised Israel for its settlement policies and its absence from the council.

Brazil, also speaking on behalf of India and South Africa, insisted that nothing short of a full withdrawal from all settlements would be acceptable.

US Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe however came to Israel's defence, accusing the UN body of discriminating against the Jewish state.

"The United States remains extremely troubled by the council's continued bias and disproportionate focus on Israel," she said.

Israel has come under widespread international criticism for ramping up its construction of settlements in the Palestinian territories, notably in occupied east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want to establish as the capital of their future state but which Israel considers part of its "indivisible" capital.

All Israeli settlements on Palestinian land beyond the so-called 1949 Green Line are considered illegal under international law.

Chanet, who in January suggested that Israel settling its population into occupied territory might constitute "war crimes," stressed Monday that International Criminal Court in the Hague should consider prosecuting the violations.

Chanet and her fellow report authors Asma Jahangir, from Pakistan, and Unity Dow, from Botswana, were not permitted to travel to Israel or the Palestinian territories for their mission but instead relied on a wide range of interviews.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay meanwhile presented a separate report to the council Monday also decrying widespread rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories, including settler violence against Palestinians "perpetrated with impunity".

She expressed concern "about the situation of thousands of Palestinians detained and imprisoned by Israel" and criticised both sides for rights violations committed during the eight-day conflict in Gaza in November.

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SYRIA

‘I can’t go back’: Syrian refugees in Denmark face limbo after status revoked

Bilal Alkale's family is among the hundred or so Syrian refugees in Denmark whose lives are on hold amid an insufferable legal limbo -- their temporary residency permits have been revoked but they can't be deported. Now, they have no rights.

Syrian refugee Bilal Alkale and his daughter Rawan at their home in Lundby, Denmark on November 17th 2021. 
Syrian refugee Bilal Alkale and his daughter Rawan at their home in Lundby, Denmark on November 17th 2021. Photo: Thibault Savary / AFP

Alkale, who until recently ran his own small transportation company in Denmark, found out in March he wasn’t allowed to stay in the Scandinavian country where he has lived as a refugee since 2014, as Copenhagen now considers it safe for Syrians to return to Damascus.

His wife and three of his four children were also affected by the decision taken by Danish authorities.

Once the ruling was confirmed on appeal in late September — like 40 percent of some 200 other cases examined so far — Alkale and his family were ordered to leave.

READ ALSO: Danish refugee board overturns decisions to send home Syrians

They were told that if they didn’t go voluntarily, they would be placed in a detention centre.

The family has refused to leave.

Normally they would have been deported by now, but since Copenhagen has no diplomatic relations with Damascus, they can’t be. And so they wait.

Days and weeks go by without any news from the authorities.

In the meantime, the family has been stripped of their rights in Denmark.

Alkale can’t sleep, his eyes riveted on his phone as he keeps checking his messages.

“What will become of me now?” the 51-year-old asks.

“Everything is off. The kids aren’t going to school, and I don’t have work,” he says, the despair visible on his weary face as he sits in the living room of the home he refurbished himself in the small village of Lundby, an hour-and-a-half’s drive south of Copenhagen.

“All this so people will get annoyed enough to leave Denmark.”

For him, returning to Syria means certain death.  

“I can’t go back, I’m wanted,” he tells AFP.

And yet, he has no way to earn a living here.

“As a foreigner staying illegally in Denmark, your rights are very limited,” notes his lawyer Niels-Erik Hansen, who has applied for new residency permits for the family.

In mid-2020, Denmark became the first European Union country to re-examine the cases of about 500 Syrians from Damascus, which is under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, saying “the current situation in Damascus is no longer such as to justify a residence permit or the extension of a residence permit”. 

The decision was later widened to include the neighbouring region of Rif Dimashq.

Despite a wave of Danish and international criticism, the Social Democratic government — which has pursued one of Europe’s toughest immigration policies — has refused to budge.

READ ALSO:

The Alkale family is considering leaving for another European country, even though they risk being sent back to Denmark. 

Alkale’s oldest child was already over the age of 18 when they arrived in Denmark and therefore has her own residency permit, currently under review.

Of the three other children, only the youngest, 10-year-old Rawan, still has the carefree ways of a child.

Majed, 14, says he’s “bummed”, while Said, 17, who was studying to prepare for professional chef school, says he now has no idea what his future holds.

Only a handful of Syrians have so far been placed in detention centres, regularly criticised for poor sanitary conditions.

Asmaa al-Natour and her husband Omar are among the few.

They live in the Sjælsmark camp, a former army barracks surrounded by barbed wire and run by the prisons system since late October.

“This centre should disappear, it’s not good for humans, or even for animals. There are even rats,” says al-Natour.

READ ALSO:

 The couple, who have two sons aged 21 and 25, arrived in Denmark in 2014.

“My husband and I opened a shop selling Arabic products, it was going well. Then I decided to resume my studies, but now everything has just stopped,” says al-Natour, who “just wants to get (her) life back.” 

“Going back to Syria means going to prison, or even death, since we’re opposed to Bashar al-Assad. He’s a criminal.”

Niels-Erik Hansen, who also represents this couple, says his clients are being “held hostage by the Danish authorities.”

The government is trying “to spread the message that ‘in Denmark, we almost deport to Syria’,” he says.

Amnesty International recently criticised Syrian security forces’ use of violence against dozens of refugees who returned home.

Danish authorities meanwhile insist it’s safe for Syrians to go back.

“If you aren’t personally persecuted … there haven’t been acts of war in Damascus for several years now. And that is why it is possible for some to go back,” the government’s spokesman for migration, Rasmus Stoklund, tells AFP.

Some 35,500 Syrians currently live in Denmark, more than half of whom arrived in 2015, according to official statistics.

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