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Thousands of people demonstrated on Tuesday across Syria’s coastal Alawite heartland in protest against recent attacks targeting the minority community, AFP correspondents said.The protests are the biggest in the Alawite region since the fall last December of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, who hails from the community, following an Islamist-led offensive.Since then, the community has been the target of attacks, and hundreds of people were killed in sectarian massacres in the area in March.Protesters in the port city of Latakia shouted slogans including “The Syrian people are one” and “To the whole world, listen to us, the Alawites will not bend”.Security forces were deployed in the city but did not intervene.”We are one united people. We want armed factions in the region to leave, justice for our martyrs on the coast, and the release of our prisoners… We don’t know what they are accused of,” said Joumana, 58, a lawyer, who declined to provide her family name.Demonstrations also took place in other coastal areas such as Tartus and Jableh, where hundreds of people held banners demanding “federalism” and “the liberation of prisoners”, an AFP correspondent said.The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said that 9,000 mostly Alawite former military personnel who had surrendered to the new authorities were still being held.Clashes broke out in Jableh between participants in the rally and a counter-demonstration by supporters of the authorities, and gunshots were heard, the correspondent said. A few people sustained minor injuries.- ‘We demand federalism’ -The protests took place after a call on social media by the Supreme Islamic Alawite Council in Syria and Abroad.That appeal followed a wave of violence against the community in the central city of Homs after a Sunni Muslim Bedouin couple were killed on Sunday, with sectarian graffiti found at the site.After accusations emerged that Alawites were behind the killings, shops and houses were vandalised in districts home to the community, before authorities imposed a curfew and later said the killings were “a criminal act and not sectarian in nature”.Protester Mona, 25, said that “what happened in Homs is unacceptable”.”We demand freedom and security, an end to the killings and to kidnappings,” she said, also declining to provide her surname.”We want federalism for the Syrian coast,” she added.The Observatory for Human Rights recorded 42 demonstrations on Tuesday.The sectarian violence that tore through Syria’s Alawite heartland in March killed at least 1,426 members of the minority community, according to authorities, who said it began with attacks on government forces by Assad supporters.The Observatory said more than 1,700 people were killed.A UN commission found in August that the violence was “widespread and systematic”, with some cases amounting to war crimes.Syria’s new Islamist-led rule stoked fears among minority communities. In July, deadly sectarian clashes in the Druze-majority Sweida province killed more than 2,000 people, according to the Observatory.

In a town near Jerusalem, a growing number of houses and businesses are receiving demolition and evacuation notices, and Palestinian residents link the drive to Israel’s approval of a major new settlement project.”This is a project of total destruction for the economy and the people. It will affect everyone,” said Yahya Abu Ghaliyeh, whose home in Al-Eizariya town was demolished by Israeli authorities earlier this year.Now, the 37-year-old’s car wash business is also due for demolition.The notices say the buildings were constructed without permits, and no official Israeli statement links the demolition orders to the settlement project.But Palestinian residents say such permits are nearly impossible to obtain from Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967.They also link the impending demolitions to the E1 plan, one of the largest West Bank settlement projects ever approved by Israel.The project, which aims to build approximately 3,400 housing units, will connect Jerusalem with nearby Maale Adumim, one of the largest Israeli settlements in the West Bank.- E1 project -In August, Israel gave the green light to E1, a new construction project covering some 12 square kilometres (4.5 square miles) to the east of Jerusalem.The E1 plan has been condemned by several international leaders, with the UN chief’s spokesman saying it would pose an “existential threat” to a contiguous Palestinian state.The move would further separate east Jerusalem, occupied and annexed by Israel and predominantly inhabited by Palestinians, from the West Bank.Excluding east Jerusalem, 500,000 Israelis live in settlements throughout the West Bank. These settlements are illegal under international law.The E1 project includes a new road between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, which would not be accessible from Al-Eizariya, even though it runs through the town.Khalil Tufakji, director of cartography at Jerusalem’s Arab Studies Society, told AFP the project would ensure that Palestinians “cannot use the roads designated for Israelis”, describing it as “apartheid between Arabs and Jews”.People travelling between Al-Eizariya and Jerusalem would have to take a circuitous route three times longer than the present journey, he said.- Lazarus tourism -Al-Eizariya, which has around 22,000 residents, is also known as Bethany: the town is home to the tomb and church of Lazarus, which draw half a million tourists annually, according to Mayor Khalil Abu Rish.Many Palestinians, especially from east Jerusalem, shop along its four-kilometre-long shopping street, he said.On Saturdays, people often flock to buy wedding outfits, tableware or sweets.”The project will harm tourism,” the mayor told AFP.Al-Eizariya is bordered to the west by the separation barrier built by Israel in the early 2000s.Last month, Israel installed a security gate at the town’s eastern entrance, one of nearly a thousand gates it has placed at the entrances of Palestinian villages, towns and cities recently.The Israeli military told AFP that it “issued demolition orders for several illegal buildings constructed in an unlicensed area that pose a threat to the area’s security.”Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the Israeli anti-settlement organisation Ir Amim, said no official Israeli statement linked the demolition and evacuation notices in Al-Eizariya to the E1 project.But he believes Israel wants “to take over the land in Area C… which leads to increasing the number of settlers and displacing Palestinian communities.”Area C refers to the roughly 66 percent of the West Bank placed under Israeli civil and security control under the Oslo accords agreed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s.- ‘This is our land’ -Car wash owner Abu Ghaliyeh said: “They (the Israelis) only think of their own interests,” adding: “It’s as if the Palestinian community were livestock.””They don’t care if I end up sleeping in the open.”They are chasing away our livelihoods and that of our children,” added the father of five, who employs five people.”I’ve been here for 10 years, we built a customer base — how can they ask me to evacuate?”A few metres along the street, Naji Assakra said he received a demolition notice for his metal workshop as well, which he said supports six families.Mohammed Matar, a Palestinian Authority official tasked with combating settlement activity, predicted that E1 would trigger a major demographic shift in the area, with Israeli settlers becoming “twice as numerous as Palestinians”.Furthermore, “it will displace more than 24 Palestinian Bedouin communities, all of which rely on livestock”, he added, and therefore land for grazing.An Israeli court rejected an appeal filed by Israeli NGOs demanding the project’s annulment.For now, Abu Ghaliyeh insists on staying.”I do not intend to evacuate,” he said.”This is our land: Palestinian land.”

Charbel Matar says a Lebanese saint saved his life when he was a child. Now, he is among pilgrims of all faiths who visit Saint Charbel’s tomb, soon to be graced by Pope Leo XIV.”My family and I have great faith in Saint Charbel and always visit him,” said Matar, 69, at the Saint Maron Monastery in Annaya in the mountains of north Lebanon. “I almost died when I was five. He performed a miracle and saved me from death, and kept me alive for 64 more years,” said Matar, whose parents changed his name from Roger to Charbel to honour the saint.In Pope Leo’s first trip abroad since becoming head of the Catholic Church, the US-born pontiff will travel to Turkey and Lebanon, arriving in Beirut on November 30 and visiting the Annaya monastery the following day.Saint Charbel has broad popular appeal in Lebanon even beyond the Christian community, with many seeing him not only as a miracle worker but also as a national symbol.Depictions of the saint with a white beard, his eyes lowered in prayer and wearing black garb, can be found in homes, vehicles and workplaces.Randa Saliba, 60, called Saint Charbel “a message of love… and the face of Lebanon”. The pope’s trip to his tomb was a must, she said during a visit to the monastery with her family.The Catholic Church “can’t deny the miracles he performs and the people whose souls he transforms. He’s keeping the Christian message alive,” she added.- ‘Not just Christians’ -Charbel was born Youssef Makhlouf in north Lebanon in 1828 and entered the Lebanese Maronite Order aged 23, later joining Annaya’s Saint Maron Monastery, where he became a hermit, leading an ascetic life.He was declared a saint in 1977.Workers have been busy resurfacing the road to the quiet monastery in preparation for the arrival of the pope while visitors, including women wearing the Muslim hijab head covering, toured the site, lit candles or prayed faithfully to their saint.Vice rector Tannous Nehme, excitedly awaiting the pope’s visit, estimated that the monastery drew around three million visitors annually.”It’s not just Christians — a lot of Muslims come to visit, a lot of non-religious people come to visit. They come from everywhere — Africa, Europe, Russia,” Nehme said.As incense lingered in the air, the stone monastery’s tranquillity was interrupted only by the sound of restoration work on Saint Charbel’s tomb.When it was opened in 1950 in the presence of clergy, officials and doctors, they found his body well-preserved, more than half a century after his death in 1898.Black-and-white footage of the event is still occasionally shown on Lebanese television.The monastery has recorded tens of thousands of people who have been cured by Saint Charbel, with thousands of others believed to have been healed outside Lebanon.One of the saint’s most famous miracles is that of Nohad al-Shami from Lebanon’s Byblos region who was struck by an incurable illness in 1993.Shami said Saint Charbel came to her in a dream and healed her. She died this year, aged 75.- ‘Optimism’ for Lebanon -Pope Leo’s visit to Lebanon follows those of Benedict XVI in 2012 and John Paul II in 1997.His trip includes meetings with senior officials in the crisis-hit country including President Joseph Aoun, the Arab world’s only Christian head of state.Under multi-confessional Lebanon’s sectarian power-sharing system, the post of president is reserved for a Maronite Christian.Lebanon’s Maronite church is in full communion with Rome.”The pope’s visit is very important for Lebanon. It brings goodness and blessings… and optimism for the Lebanese people,” said Claude Issa, 56, a mother of three.Lebanon has been no stranger to calamity in recent years.A ceasefire in November 2024 was supposed to end more than a year of hostilities between Israel and militant group Hezbollah in which some 4,000 people were killed in Lebanon.But Israel has kept up deadly strikes despite the truce, and many fear a return to expanded Israeli raids.Before the war, Lebanon was reeling from an economic collapse that began in 2019, and a catastrophic explosion at Beirut’s port the following year that killed more than 220 people and injured some 6,500.The pope will hold a silent prayer at the site of the explosion, for which nobody has yet been held accountable.”The pope’s visit will revitalise people and make them feel there is still hope in Lebanon,” Issa said.