Dick Cheney, celebrated as a master Republican strategist but defined by the darkest chapters of America’s “War on Terror,” was honored Thursday in a funeral attended by Washington’s elite that pointedly left out President Donald Trump.Cheney’s career reads like a catalogue of American statecraft, even as his long shadow over foreign policy — as defense secretary during the Gulf War and the 46th vice president under George W. Bush — still divides the country.Bush and fellow former president Joe Biden were among more than 1,000 guests at Washington National Cathedral. But Trump, who hasn’t commented on Cheney’s death, and Vice President JD Vance were not invited.The Neo-Gothic Episcopal church, veiled in muted autumn gloom and fortified by tight security, set a tone of quiet gravity as a Who’s Who of luminaries gathered beneath its vaulted stone arches.”Colleagues from every chapter of his career will tell you that he lifted the standards of those around him, just by being who he was: so focused and so capable,” Bush told the congregation.”In our years in office together — on the quiet days and on the hardest ones — he was everything a president should expect in his second-in-command.”Every living former vice president — Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Al Gore and Dan Quayle — were in attendance, along with generals, foreign dignitaries and Supreme Court justices.Praised for his intellect and described by historians as the most powerful vice president in modern US history, Cheney was admired as a strategist of unusual clarity, and a steady hand through America’s darkest hours.His career spanned the Cold War, the Gulf conflict and the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.As vice president, he helped drive national security policy and drove an unprecedented expansion of presidential authority.He was said to embody the paradoxes of power: a meticulous operator often thrust into the spotlight, a staunch conservative who backed civil rights for his lesbian daughter and a statesman regarded as both indispensable and dangerous.Cheney’s daughter Liz — famously ousted from the congressional Republican Party over her opposition to Trump — spoke movingly about connecting with her father in his final years, watching sports and old movies, and hitting the road together.”We drove for hours. We talked about life and family history and America,” she said.- Darker legacy -Flags across states were lowered to half-staff after his death on November 3.But looming over every tribute was the darker side of his legacy: the expansion of executive power, the “War on Terror,” the invasion of Iraq and the debate over America’s use of torture.For critics, he was the architect of some of the nation’s most calamitous decisions, a politician whose belief in executive power left deep scars at home and abroad.Cheney was a key advocate for the 2003 invasion of Iraq — famously stating that “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction” — a conviction that haunted him after the intelligence behind the claim unraveled.He championed sweeping surveillance powers under the Patriot Act and defended controversial “enhanced interrogation” techniques.Later in life he emerged as a critic of his own party’s populist drift. A vocal detractor of Trump, whom he called a “threat to our republic,” he even endorsed Harris, the president’s Democratic election rival in 2024.Trump’s absence reflected the ideological rifts that divided Washington during Cheney’s final years, and the demise of the bipartisanship valued by the oldest generation of power-brokers.The president has been silent on Cheney’s death, though his press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was “aware” of his passing.Responding to past criticism, Trump once described Cheney as an “irrelevant RINO” and a “king of endless, nonsensical wars, wasting lives and trillions of dollars.”

Ten months after he was forced out of the occupied West Bank’s Tulkarem refugee camp, Hakam Irhil doesn’t know if he will ever be able to return.Irhil was displaced and his home demolished after Israel launched a major military operation in mid-January in multiple northern Palestinian refugee camps, where the army says it is seeking to root out armed groups.Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, calls the ongoing operation “Iron Wall”.”Before the operation, in our house — even though it was in the camp — each child had a room. Our life was better,” the 41-year-old father of four told AFP.Irhil now lives in a nearby school, and fears the temporary refuge could well become permanent.The NGO Human Rights Watch warned in a report published Thursday that 32,000 Palestinians remain forcibly displaced due to Iron Wall.- ‘War crimes’ -Over the decades in Tulkarem camp — as with other Palestinian camps — tents gave way to concrete buildings, onto which new generations added floors to accommodate the growing population.But in the last 10 months, the military has demolished more than 850 homes and other buildings across three camps, HRW said, blasting large arteries through the patchwork of alleyways to ease access for military vehicles.The displacement of the camps’ residents, HRW concluded, was carried out through “violations of international law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity”.It added that preventing displaced populations from returning and demolishing homes amounted to ethnic cleansing.In a statement to AFP, the military said the camps in Tulkarem and Jenin had become “terror hubs, where terrorists operated from within civilian neighbourhoods”.It added that there had been “a significant decrease in terrorist activity” as a result of Iron Wall — but declined to say when the operation would end.Irhil’s family is one of 19 now living in the school.”There is no privacy at all. I’m living in a room that’s actually a classroom — me and the five with me,” Irhil said, adding he had put curtains up to give his daughter some space.In the covered outdoor corridors, Irhil and the other families have appropriated the space, setting up planters on ledges, a dish-washing station in a classroom sink, and clotheslines between the columns.- No access -Near Tulkarem city’s other refugee camp, Nur Shams, displaced residents organised a demonstration Monday to demand the right to return home.”We are trying to convey to the army that enough is enough. We are innocent, so why did they expel us from the camp?” said Nur Shams resident Umm Mohammad al-Jammal, who was displaced in February.”This is collective punishment… Why did they do this to us?”Hesitantly, the crowd of about 150 passed the newly-installed gate on the road to the camp, before stopping and chanting at its entrance, an ascending street now littered with rubble from damaged homes.The air was thick with the stench of a decomposing dog, left out to rot with no residents around to remove it.Gunfire rang out from inside the camp, where Israeli troops are stationed, and an Al Jazeera journalist was shot in the leg, sending the crowd running.The army told AFP that demonstrators “violated a closed military zone”, and acknowledged firing at “a key disturber”, accusing him of refusing to comply with soldiers’ commands.Refugee camps were created in the West Bank, Gaza and neighbouring Arab countries after the first Arab-Israeli war for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from what is now Israel at the time of its creation in 1948.The event, known as the Nakba, vividly lives on in Palestinian collective memory, and camp residents like Irhil fear the history of displacement — which many also thought would be temporary in 1948 — will repeat itself.Rumours about possible return dates now circulate among the camp’s residents.”They say ‘in January, you will return’. So in January we prepare ourselves, thinking we’ll return to the camp, return to normal life,” Irhil said.”Then another decision comes — February, March, April…”