Region

Amid Israel's military offensive in Gaza, the Palestinians in early April revived a membership application first made to the world body in 2011, though the veto-wielding United States has repeatedly expressed opposition to the proposal.

The General Assembly can admit a new member state with a two-thirds majority vote, but only after the Security Council gives its recommendation.

Regional bloc the Arab Group issued a statement Tuesday affirming its "unwavering support" for the Palestinians' application.

"Membership in the United Nations is a crucial step in the right direction towards a just and lasting resolution of the Palestinian question in line with international law and relevant UN resolutions," the statement said.

Algeria, a non-permanent Security Council member, has drafted the resolution that "recommends" to the General Assembly "the State of Palestine be admitted to membership of the United Nations".

The vote on Thursday will coincide with a Security Council meeting scheduled several weeks ago to discuss the situation in Gaza, which ministers from several Arab countries are expected to attend.

The Palestinians -- who have had observer status at the United Nations since 2012 -- have lobbied for years to gain full membership.

"We are seeking admission. That is our natural and legal right," Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, said in April.

According to the Palestinian side, 137 of the 193 UN member states already recognise a Palestinian state, raising hope that their request would be supported in the General Assembly.

But the Palestinian push for UN membership faces a major hurdle, as the United States — Israel’s closest ally — could use its veto power to block the Security Council recommendation.

“We call on all members of the Security Council to vote in favor of the draft resolution... At the very least, we implore Council members not to obstruct this critical initiative,” the Arab Group said on Tuesday.

The United States has voiced its opposition to full Palestinian membership, saying it backed statehood but only after negotiations with Israel, while pointing to US laws that would require cuts to UN funding if such a move took place without a bilateral agreement.

“That is something that should be done through direct negotiations through the parties, something we are pursuing at this time, and not at the United Nations,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters in April.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan has strongly opposed the Palestinian membership bid, saying in mid-April the considerations were “already a victory for genocidal terror.”

“The Security Council is deliberating granting the perpetrators and supporters of October 7 full membership status in the UN,” Erdan said.

Hamas launched an unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, resulting in the deaths of 1,170 people in Israel, according to Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 33,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The 37-year-old, then detained for his activism, celebrated behind bars when Bashir was toppled in a palace coup.

In the heady days that followed, as the army promised a transition to elective civilian rule, Ushari was released, and set to work on his dream project: a literary cafe near the banks of the Nile.

Named Rateena, his cafe swiftly became known as a safe haven for young activists eager to take part in building a "better Sudan".

But on April 15 last year, the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces went to war, and Ushari watched both his project and his dreams for the country "fade, bit by bit".

For months, he braved raging street battles to visit Rateena, "sit in the dark, take stock of what had been looted since my last visit, and reminisce".

He didn’t understand how “the music that filled the space, the lectures and debates people shared, had been replaced with stray bullets strewn around me and the sound of tank fire outside”.

Now as the war has entered its second year, with thousands dead and millions more driven from their homes, Ushari tells AFP his is “only one of thousands of dreams shattered” — a microcosm of “a stolen revolution”.

‘Hopes were high’

Bashir’s ouster in April 2019 ushered in a civilian-led transition that saw an outpouring of “hope, inspiration and vibrancy” among young Sudanese, said Samah Salman, who worked in corporate venture capital at the time.

Startups were “springing up all across Sudan”, she told AFP from the United States, “all building extraordinary solutions to real needs ordinary Sudanese people were facing”.

Salman alone reviewed over 50 startups working in telehealth, agritech, renewable energy, logistics and fintech solutions, crediting the boom to “the energy of the revolution”.

According to Ushari, “hopes were high that Sudan was finally on the right path, out of the shadows and heading towards democracy, towards freedom”.

Like countless others, communications expert Raghdan Orsud, 36, wanted to play her part.

She co-founded Beam Reports to investigate disinformation in Sudan — “out of the belief in the role media can play in democratic transition”, she told AFP from London.

But in October 2021, two months after Beam Reports launched, that transition came to an end. The same generals who would later go to war — army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his then-deputy RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo — ousted civilians from the transitional administration.

“Nothing was the same after the coup,” Ushari said.

“It was a painful time, they were killing protesters every week, but still we had hope.”

Then, one fateful Saturday at the end of Ramadan, the people of Khartoum awoke to the sounds of air strikes and shelling as their worst fears came true: the erstwhile allies had turned their guns on each other.

Up in flames

Overnight, bodies began piling up on the streets as vicious urban warfare drove millions to flee.

Orsud had just bought studio-grade recording equipment, “still in their boxes” when RSF paramilitaries seized and looted her offices.

Ushari was piecing together a life in Cairo when he received a video message showing a massive fire.

“That’s how I found out Rateena had burned down,” he said.

Countless Sudanese in the diaspora — who had spent decades saving up to build their Khartoum homes — have been forced to watch from afar as they were looted by the RSF.

“At some point, he was praying for an air strike to hit the house,” pastry chef Shaimaa Adlan, 29, told AFP in Cairo, referring to her father in Saudi Arabia.

“He would have rather seen it destroyed than know his life’s work was being used as a paramilitary base.”

Adlan herself had started a catering business in Khartoum, before finding herself in Egypt — uprooted and jobless.

But barely a year later, she sprints through a bustling kitchen in Cairo, shouting orders to her staff and fussing over dishes.

Back home, Salman says the war has not crushed Sudanese entrepreneurialism, just redirected it.

Tech entrepreneurs now crowdsource real-time safety updates instead of protest plans, optimising evacuation paths instead of delivery routes, she said.

The same young people who were organising demonstrations now coordinate aid, becoming what the United Nations calls “the front line” of humanitarian response.

And in displacement centres and the diaspora, the dream of a new Sudan has not been forgotten.

“No matter where we’ve been exiled, or what remote Sudanese state we’ve ended up in, there’s still a spark of the revolution left in every heart,” Ushari said.

“Sudan is ours, it’s all of ours,” said Orsud, whose fact-checking team has resumed operations from Nairobi.

“What else would we do besides rebuild it, over and over?”

The Gulf sultanate's official news agency initially reported on Sunday that nine schoolchildren and three other adults had "lost their lives after their vehicles got swept away in gushing wadi waters".

Five individuals were also reported missing in the floods that struck the northeast of the country.

The Oman News Agency reported on Monday the bodies of a child and three further individuals and had also been recovered.

Violent thunderstorms, heavy rain and strong winds beginning on Sunday have battered the country, causing flash floods in several regions in the north and east of Oman.

The sultanate's Council of Ministers said in a statement it was "filled with grief" and "extends its sincere condolences and sympathies to the families and relatives of school students who recently died in the Governorate of A'Sharqiyah".

On Monday, the ministry of education shuttered schools in most regions as a precaution against the flooding which also resulted in the closure of a number of roads.

Dozens left stranded were rescued in operations aided by helicopters from Oman’s air force.

Storms were expected to affect other Gulf states, including Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, later in the day.

Flooding had already claimed the lives of three children during downpours in Oman in February.

World powers have called for restraint after Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel late Saturday, though the Israeli military has said nearly all were intercepted.

Tehran's first direct assault on Israel, in retaliation for a deadly April 1 strike on its Damascus embassy consular annex, followed months of violence across the region involving Iranian proxies and allies who say they act in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

No decision has been made on how, when — or if — Israel could respond to the Iran attack, local media said, reporting that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu would meet with his war cabinet later Monday.

Tensions in Iran "weaken the regime and rather serve Israel," the newspaper Israel Hayom said, adding that this suggested Israeli leaders would not rush to retaliate.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has warned that a "reckless" Israeli move would spark a "much stronger response".

Tehran has insisted the attack on Israel was an act of "self-defence" after the Damascus strike that killed seven Revolutionary Guards including two generals.

 Attention has also turned to Israel’s top ally, the United States, which played a key role in shooting down the Iranian drones.

Gaza war toll rises 

The Israeli military said it would not be distracted from its war against Hamas in Gaza, triggered by the Palestinian armed group’s October 7 attack on Israel.

“Even while under attack from Iran, we have not lost sight... of our critical mission in Gaza to rescue our hostages from the hands of Iran’s proxy Hamas,” military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said late Sunday.

Israel estimates that 129 hostages, including 34 presumed dead, remain in the hands of Palestinian militants since the attack six months ago.

The Hamas government media office said Israeli aircraft and tanks launched “dozens” of strikes overnight on central Gaza, reporting several casualties.

Witnesses told AFP that strikes hit the Nuseirat refugee camp, with clashes also reported in other areas of central and northern Gaza.

Hamas’s attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, according to Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 33,797 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. The toll rose by at least 68 deaths over 24 hours.

Israel released around 150 detainees on Monday who had been rounded up in Gaza, the territory’s crossings authority told AFP.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hizbollah group, which has had near-daily cross-border clashes with Israel since the war broke out, claimed an overnight attack on Israeli soldiers who had crossed into Lebanese territory.

The Israeli army confirmed that four of its troops were wounded in an explosion while inside Lebanon. 

‘On the brink’ of war 

The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting Sunday following the Iranian attack, where Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the region was “on the brink” of war.

“Now is the time to defuse and de-escalate,” Guterres said.

Britain and Germany were among those also calling for de-escalation on Monday, while French President Emmanuel Macron said his government would help do everything it could to avoid a “conflagration” in the Middle East.

A United States official said the hope was that “in the light of day” Israel would see it had won a “spectacular success” against Iran’s attack, which resulted in no reported deaths.

However, Middle East analyst James Ryan said he feared the “status quo will be short-lived”.

“I expect Biden to attempt to restrain Israeli responses, but Netanyahu has already shown a willingness to test any kind of limit Biden wishes to impose,” he said.

Netanyahu, who leads a coalition including religious and ultra-nationalist parties, has faced regular protests by anti-government demonstrators as well as supporters of the Gaza hostages demanding the government get them home.

Experts, and the protesters, have said they expect Netanyahu to continue the war as a tactic to remain in power.

Ahead of Iran’s attack, Israel closed schools and announced restrictions on public gatherings. But the army said on Monday that those measures were being lifted for most of the country.

In Iran, airports in the capital and elsewhere reopened on Monday, state media said.

World oil prices sank as traders bet on a de-escalation of tensions.

Mediation 

More than six months of war have led to dire humanitarian conditions in the besieged Gaza Strip, which the UN has warned faces imminent famine.

Rumours of a reopened Israeli checkpoint on the coastal road from the territory’s south to Gaza City sent thousands of Palestinians heading north on Sunday, despite Israel denying it was open.

Attempting the journey back to northern Gaza, displaced resident Basma Salman said, “even if it (my house) was destroyed, I want to go there. I couldn’t stay in the south”.

“It’s overcrowded. We couldn’t even take a fresh breath of air there. It was completely terrible.”

In Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s main city, civil defence teams said they had retrieved at least 18 bodies from under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

Responding late Saturday to the latest truce plan presented by US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators, Hamas said it insists on “a permanent ceasefire” and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Israel called this a “rejection” of the proposal, but the US said mediation efforts continue.