ceasefire

RIMBO, SWEDEN — Following three years of one of the bloodiest battles of the 21st century, the Saudi assault on Yemen’s key port city of Hodeida may be nearing its end. The Saudi-led coalition and Ansar Allah, the political wing of the Houthi resistance movement, have agreed to a ceasefire in Hodeida and in the Taiz Province of northwestern Yemen, the scene of some of the most intense battles in the war, to facilitate the delivery of aid.

At first glance, it may seem like a positive move. The Trump administration and London are both putting pressure on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to implement a ceasefire in Yemen’s atrocious war. Washington and London are also calling for warring sides to enter into peace negotiations within a month.

GAZA CITY – The Gaza Strip seemed to maintain a tenuous calm Tuesday after a de facto ceasefire between Palestinian factions and Tel Aviv ended a week of heightened violence that saw the Israeli military pound civilian targets across the coastal enclave.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported that the Israeli assault has raised the death toll to 168 Palestinians killed and over 18,000 injured over the past four months in the besieged coastal region and home to 2 million people that is regularly referred to as the world’s largest open-air prison.

SANA’A, YEMEN — Yemen’s Houthis (Ansar Allah) have submitted an initiative they hope will bring an end to conflict in Yemen and have unilaterally suspended retaliatory attacks against Saudi-led coalition forces in the Red Sea in order to support this effort.
A source in the Supreme Political Council, the highest political authority in Sana’a, told MintPress that the halt in retaliatory attacks in the Red Sea is aimed at preserving the Yemeni people and comes in response to regional and international efforts to bring peace to Yemen.

HODEIDA, YEMEN — The United Arab Emirates Minister of Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, announced on Sunday a pause in the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led attacks against Yemen’s port city of Hodeida. He claimed the halt is intended to allow United Nations efforts to resolve the conflict to take place.

NEW YORK — A UN-brokered ceasefire has once again been established, now for the sixth time, in Syria and, like most of those that preceded it, has now been broken. The current ceasefire sought to end fighting in Eastern Ghouta, an area near the Syrian capital of Damascus that has long been controlled by militant U.S.-Saudi backed rebels seeking to overthrow the Syrian government.

GHOUTA, SYRIA — On February 20, from Amman, Jordan, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Geert Cappelaere, issued a statement of “outrage” titled: “The war on children in Syria: Reports of mass casualties among children in Eastern Ghouta and Damascus.”

Commenting today in the lead-up to ceasefire talks in Kazakhstan, UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura said it’s time for the rebel forces to recognize that they didn’t win the six and a half year long Syrian War.
Mistura is pushing a proposal in which, as soon as the rest of ISIS territory gets overtaken by various factions, a nationwide ceasefire would result, leading to negotiations on a permanent settlement of the conflict.

The United States appears to be on a course of permanently backing down from the following: conflict with Syrian forces in Syria, open disagreements which could lead to conflict with Russian forces in Syria, attempts to take the ‘lead’ in Syria, relations with Salafist terrorist groups in Syria.

Donald Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 Summit, in Hamburg. A US-Russia-brokered truce for southern Syria, brokered by the U.S. and Russia is being met with ire by Israel. (AP/Evan Vucci)
Russian foreign policy makers have slammed Israel’s latest statements condemning the recently agreed ceasefire in south-western Syria between Russia, the United States and Jordan.