Raseef22 English

Following repeated human rights calls for the immediate release of Palestinian doctor Hussam Abu Safiya — who was abducted by the Israeli army in December 2024 while carrying out his duties as a physician — and reports of his exposure to severe torture, the United Nations, in a statement published on March 24, called for his release. UN experts warned of the deterioration of his health condition and urged the immediate release of the highly respected medical administrator and pediatrician, as well as granting him access to necessary medical care. The humanitarian experts also stressed the need to end violence against healthcare workers and the Israeli targeting of medical facilities that “have continue unabated despite a so-called ceasefire in Gaza.”

A report by UN expert Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, published on Monday, sheds light on how Israel imposes an environment of “systematic torture” on Palestinians, while criticizing the international community’s silence. Addressing the UN Human Rights Council, Albanese stated that the world has given Israel “a licence to torture Palestinians, because most of your governments, your ministers, have allowed it,” as she presented her latest report. “What once operated in the shadows is now practiced openly: a regime of organized humiliation, pain, and degradation, sanctioned at the highest political levels,” Albanese said in the report, titled “Torture and genocide”. While Albanese described life in the occupied Palestinian territories before the UN Human Rights Council as “a continuum of physical and mental suffering,” the Israeli mission in Geneva attacked her, claiming she “is an agent of chaos… and any document she produces is nothing but a politically charged, activist rant, aimed at undermining the very existence of the State of Israel.”

As the Israeli war on Lebanon enters its fourth week, the Disaster Risk Management Unit announced in its latest report on Tuesday, March 24, that the number of displaced individuals has reached 134,921, distributed across 657 shelters, while the total number of displaced families stands at 34,102. The number of people killed by Israel has reached 1,072, including 121 children, while the number of injured has risen to 2,966, with 3,646 Israeli hostile acts recorded targeting Lebanese territory since March 2. The UN Deputy Special Coordinator, Resident, and Humanitarian Coordinator for Lebanon, Imran Riza, stated on Sunday that the number of forcibly displaced people has exceeded 1.2 million, pointing to increasing needs amid this ongoing crisis.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) revealed that the US–Israeli bombardment of Iran has forcibly displaced more than 3.2 million people from their homes. The largest waves of displacement have been concentrated from the capital Tehran and major cities such as Isfahan, Bushehr, and Shiraz, toward rural areas and northern provinces in search of safer refuge away from direct targeting. The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights reported that more than 5,900 people have been killed since the start of the war, including 595 civilians, while more than 18,550 others have been injured with varying degrees of severity. These heavy losses come as a result of the widening scope of attacks and field targeting, with airstrikes and missile strikes targeting vital facilities and military bases, alongside residential areas in more than 184 cities across 26 Iranian provinces.

Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stated on Monday that all Lebanese land south of the Litani River must be occupied by Israel, and that they should own and control more than half of Lebanon “just as” they had done in Gaza. In an interview with Israeli media, Smotrich said that Israel’s “new border” with Lebanon should extend up to the Litani River deep inside South Lebanon: “I say here definitively … in every room and in every discussion, too: the new Israeli border must be the Litani.” “Just as we now own and control 55% of Gaza, we should do the same in Lebanon,” Smotrich added. The Israeli minister further proclaimed that the military campaign in Lebanon “needs to end with a different reality entirely, both with the Hezbollah decision but also with the change of Israel’s borders.” The past few days have seen Israel continuing its deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure and bridges connecting the northern and southern banks of the Litani River, in clear violation of international humanitarian law and in an attempt to isolate southern Lebanon and cut off access to the tens of thousands of people still in the city of Tyre and the surrounding districts. On March 4 and 5, the Israeli military issued forced displacement orders for the entire population of Lebanon south of the Litani River and all residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs, which include hundreds of thousands of people. Since March 12, the Israeli military has expanded the areas subject to displacement orders, ordering residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate north of the Zahrani River near Sidon, 40 kilometers north of Lebanon’s southern border. The number of forcibly displaced people has exceeded 1.2 million thus far. On Sunday, Israel’s Army Minister, Israel Katz, issued a statement announcing that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), have “ordered the acceleration of the demolition of Lebanese houses in the border villages, in accordance with the Beit Hanoun and Rafah models in Gaza.” One week ago, Katz said that “hundreds of thousands of Shiite residents of southern Lebanon […] will not return to their homes south of the Litani area until the safety of Israel’s northern residents is guaranteed,” which has been condemned by Human Rights Watch (HRW) as a human rights violation and possible war crime signaling that Israel will prevent residents from returning to their homes for an indefinite period. These remarks also come months after Netanyahu echoed long-standing Israeli expansionist visions associated with the concept of “Greater Israel,” which includes territories across historic Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, parts of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Turkey.

Vital civilian infrastructure across #Sudan continues to be targeted by both sides in the war that has been ongoing since 2023. The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that an airstrike on Al-Daein Teaching Hospital in Sudan on Friday, March 20, killed and injured more than 150 people. The attack also forced the hospital out of service due to severe damage, in addition to causing a critical disruption of essential medical services and the destruction of supply storage facilities. As is often the case in such incidents, both sides to the conflict exchanged accusations over responsibility for the attack.

The Qasmiyeh Bridge was not merely a road for the people of southern Lebanon to cross; it was a daily passage toward villages, homes, and memories in the South. On Sunday, the Israeli army targeted the bridge linking southern Lebanon to the rest of the country, causing severe damage, after ordering the destruction of crossings over the Litani River and escalating the demolition of homes near the southern border, which many Lebanese see as an attempt to restrict movement and isolate the South in preparation for a planned ground invasion and attempted occupation. As Israel continues to destroy civilian infrastructure and bridges connecting the northern and southern banks of the Litani River, in a clear violation of international humanitarian law, it has effectively cut off access to the tens of thousands of people still in the city of Tyre and the surrounding districts. The destruction of this main bridge is not limited to material loss and the disruption of traffic; it also carries a deep emotional and psychological impact on the people of the South, some of whom expressed their feelings with these words…

Israel continues to destroy civilian infrastructure and bridges connecting the northern and southern banks of the Litani River, in a clear violation of international humanitarian law, in an attempt to isolate southern Lebanon and cut off access to the tens of thousands of people still in the city of Tyre and the surrounding districts. At dawn today, Israeli warplanes destroyed the Qaqqaiyat al-Jisr Bridge over the Litani River in southern Lebanon, and later in the day destroyed Dallafa Bridge that links southern Lebanon with the eastern Bekaa region. This comes after Israeli warplanes targeted the Qasmiyeh Bridge twice on Sunday and completely destroyed it, and earlier this month, on March 13, destroyed the Tayr Felsay (Zrariyeh) Bridge. With this, Israel has destroyed three of the five main bridges connecting the south of the Litani River to its north, in addition to a number of key bridges and roads that serve as lifelines for tens of thousands of residents in the city of Tyre and dozens of villages and towns in southern Lebanon.

Lebanon is at war again. More than one million people have fled their homes since the start of Israel’s war on Lebanon. Entire villages in the South, Beirut’s southern suburbs, and the Bekaa are nearly empty. Families are sleeping on the streets, in cars, or in public schools. The Lebanese economy, which hardly recovered from the 2019 economic crisis, is taking another devastating blow. Our team is part of this reality. Some colleagues have been displaced. Others are working under grueling conditions, welcoming the displaced into their homes or trying to assist their families and relatives. Everyone continues to write, edit, and publish under non-stop pressure. We know that many of you are facing your own challenges today. We are not asking for the impossible. We ask for whatever you can give; whether by donating or sharing this link with those who want to support. Everything we receive goes directly toward keeping Raseef22 operational, independent, and present. We need your support today more than ever Support link below raseef22.net/take-action/do…

"Wherever my mother sits, we all sit, wherever she is in the house, becomes its main room. And when she sleeps, we all sleep." #MothersDay #March21 #ArabMothersDay

This #Eid arrives heavy on our hearts. May the coming days be kinder on our hearts, our countries, and our people ❤️

Lebanon is at war again. More than one million people have fled their homes since the start of Israel’s war on Lebanon. Entire villages in the South, Beirut’s southern suburbs, and the Bekaa are nearly empty. Families are sleeping on the streets, in cars, or in public schools. The Lebanese economy, which hardly recovered from the 2019 economic crisis, is taking another devastating blow. Our team is part of this reality. Some colleagues have been displaced. Others are working under grueling conditions, welcoming the displaced into their homes or trying to assist their families and relatives. Everyone continues to write, edit, and publish under non-stop pressure. We know that many of you are facing your own challenges today. We are not asking for the impossible. We ask for whatever you can give; whether by donating or sharing this link with those who want to support. Everything we receive goes directly toward keeping Raseef22 operational, independent, and present. We need your support today more than ever ❤️ Support link below raseef22.net/english/take-a…

“Israeli terrorists are back to their disgusting behavior, this time in the village of Marjayoun, during today's invasion and occupation of southern Lebanon.” This is what the “Israel Genocide Tracker” account wrote on X, while sharing a video documenting the moral depravity of a unit of the Israeli army that invaded the village of Marjayoun in southern Lebanon and raided a Lebanese home. The soldiers did not stop at breaking into the house; they turned the memories and belongings of its owners into material for disturbing mockery, ridiculing the identity of an elderly Lebanese woman and toying with women’s undergarments. They then proceeded to gleefully smash furniture and property, acting as if they were on a tour inside a “new property” they were looking to purchase. Similar scenes were documented in Gaza and Lebanon last year during the genocide, and are now being repeated once again, as Israeli soldiers invade villages in Lebanon, raid people’s homes, and film themselves mocking, ridiculing, and meddling with people’s belongings, in an attempt to assert their control over the innermost sanctity of private, domestic life in the homes they break into. This video comes as the Israeli military continues renewed and intensified ground incursions in southern Lebanon, in an attempt to invade, occupy, and empty villages south of the Litani River of their residents, and to destroy their infrastructure — as is currently happening in the districts of Marjayoun, Khiyam, and most border villages in the South.

In the latest escalation against activists of the #SumudFlotilla seeking to break the blockade on Gaza, the Tunisian judiciary issued prison detention orders against seven prominent activists on financial charges — a move widely seen as a crackdown on political solidarity with Palestine.