标签： Asia

A Brussels-based non-governmental organization has launched a formal legal push to force Indian authorities to detain an Israeli army reservist accused of committing war crimes in Gaza during his holiday in the country’s northern Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh.

The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) submitted an urgent legal complaint on Tuesday to three key Indian bodies: national police, the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the country’s immigration bureau. The filing names the suspect as Eitan Gilboa, a member of the Israel Defense Forces’ 271st Combat Engineering Battalion who is currently traveling in India.

In the complaint and a public statement accompanying it, HRF detailed its months-long investigation into Gilboa’s actions during the ongoing military campaign in Gaza. The organization alleges that Gilboa directly took part in and publicly celebrated the systematic leveling of entire residential neighborhoods in Gaza as an act of collective retaliation against Palestinian civilians. These actions, HRF argues, qualify as explicit war crimes under India’s 1960 Geneva Conventions Act.

To back its claims, HRF points to social media content originally shared by Gilboa’s mother, which captures multiple instances of the reservist participating in and commemorating the destruction of civilian infrastructure across southern Gaza, including in the heavily bombed areas of Khan Younis and Rafah.

The legal filing emphasizes that as a signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention, India carries a binding international legal obligation to hunt for and prosecute any individual accused of grave breaches of the treaty, regardless of their nationality. This requirement is laid out explicitly in Article 146 of the convention.

HRF has laid out three clear demands for Indian officials: immediately take Gilboa into custody, file a formal First Information Report (FIR) to open a criminal investigation into the allegations, and if arrest is not pursued, order the reservist’s immediate deportation from Indian territory.

“Eitan Gilboa is not a tourist. He is a war criminal currently enjoying the hospitality of India while fleeing the consequences of his crimes,” HRF director Dyab Abou Jahjah, a prominent Lebanese political activist, said in a statement. “India must not allow Indian soil to become a safe haven for those who celebrate the destruction of civilian lives,” he added.

Local Indian activist Shrishti Khanna, speaking to independent outlet Middle East Eye, noted that mass tourism from Israeli veterans to Himachal Pradesh is a decades-long trend, with thousands of former and active Israeli military personnel vacationing in the state since the 1980s. Khanna argued that the current complaint exposes a long-standing pattern of complicity by the Indian government, one that has deepened dramatically under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration. Modi has overseen increasingly close political, military and ideological alignment with Israel, Khanna said, resulting in Israeli occupying forces being treated as harmless holidaymakers rather than potential suspects requiring scrutiny and legal accountability.

Khanna added that she does not expect Indian authorities to actually move forward with an arrest and prosecution, but said that “even if no action is taken, the complaint itself will create a permanent public record of India’s position on this issue.”

This legal action is the latest in a series of efforts by HRF to hold alleged Israeli war criminals accountable across the globe. To date, the organization has filed more than 90 similar criminal complaints in 30 different national jurisdictions, pursuing investigations and litigation against individuals suspected of participating in war crimes against Palestinians.

The complaint comes amid sustained international and domestic pressure on the Indian government over its long-standing military relationship with Israel. New Delhi has continued to approve and ship arms to Israel throughout the current military campaign in Gaza, a policy that has drawn widespread criticism from human rights groups and civil society activists who argue the weapons are being used to commit widespread human rights abuses against Palestinian civilians.

Decades of ongoing conflict have reduced Yemen, already one of the Arab world’s poorest nations, to a state of systemic economic collapse, leaving millions of citizens fighting for daily survival. For the country’s low-skilled working-age population, the challenge of securing stable employment to support families has grown even more dire amid a growing wave of transient East African migrants, who have reshaped local low-wage labor markets.

Zahed al-Zabidi, a 30-something Yemeni native originally from conflict-battered Hodeidah governorate, knows this struggle intimately. Seven years ago, he relocated to the southern port city of Aden in search of more reliable work, leaving behind a life of inconsistent day labor that barely put food on the table for his five family members. For more than 15 years, Zabidi has made his living washing dishes and cleaning dining spaces at local restaurants – work that requires no formal education or specialized training, the only kind of employment he can access. Where he once had no trouble securing shifts, opportunity has all but dried up in recent years.

Zabidi blames the growing competition from Ethiopian migrants passing through Yemen on their way to Gulf Cooperation Council nations. “I worked at several restaurants in Aden, but the situation gets worse every day because Ethiopian migrants are taking our jobs, and many restaurants have started hiring them,” he explained. “Ethiopian migrants are ready to work for any amount, so restaurant owners prefer them and fire us.” Zabidi once earned 130,000 Yemeni Riyals, roughly $83, per month – a sum already barely enough to cover his family’s basic needs – before he was replaced by an Ethiopian worker who accepted just 80,000 Yemeni Riyals ($51) for the same role. For Zabidi, that lower wage is impossible to accept: unlike many transient migrants, he has a family of five to support, and the reduced rate cannot cover even the most basic household expenses.

Today, Zabidi remains out of work, traveling from restaurant to restaurant across Aden seeking any open position, with no luck. His family now survives on just bread and tea for most meals, with meat only appearing on their table when a charitable neighbor shared it during the Eid al-Fitr holiday. “It is difficult for a jobless person like me to buy good food for his family. We are only eating to survive,” Zabidi said. Now, he is planning to leave Aden to seek work on farms in Lahj governorate, where relatives already work, even though he has no prior experience in agricultural labor. “I don’t have experience in farming, but I will learn it from my relatives and try my best to work there,” he said.

Official data underscores the scale of Zabidi’s crisis: Yemen’s national youth unemployment rate hit 32.39 percent in 2024, with the hardest impacts falling on low-skilled workers like him who rely on informal, unskilled roles. The United Nations estimates that 22.3 million Yemenis – nearly three-quarters of the country’s total population – require some form of humanitarian assistance or protection support in 2025.

The influx of migrants that has reshaped Yemen’s labor market is part of a long-running regional migration pattern. Yemen’s strategic position on the southwestern edge of the Arabian Peninsula has made it a key transit hub for decades for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty in East Africa and the Horn of Africa, most notably Ethiopia and Somalia, who seek better economic opportunity and safety in Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 110,144 migrants have entered Yemen since the start of 2025, 97 percent of them Ethiopian and 3 percent Somali. More than 90 percent of these new arrivals list Saudi Arabia as their final destination, with only 10 percent planning to settle in Yemen permanently. For most, the country is nothing more than a temporary stopover as they coordinate the next leg of their dangerous journey.

Because migrants only need enough income to cover immediate daily survival costs while they wait to continue north, most are willing to accept extremely low wages that Yemeni heads of household cannot afford to work for. One Ethiopian migrant, who gave his name as Ramadan, explained this dynamic in a brief interview with Middle East Eye. “We plan to reach Saudi Arabia, and while we are here, we need to eat, so we work just like anyone else,” he said. Ramadan, who has picked up basic Arabic during seven months working at an Aden restaurant, added: “I love Yemen and Yemenis, and I don’t want to make anyone unhappy. Yemenis are our brothers, and we share the same suffering.”

Restaurant owners in Aden openly admit that they prefer to hire Ethiopian migrants for low-wage cleaning and dishwashing roles for this reason. Ali, an Aden restaurant owner who spoke to MEE on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the lower labor costs and higher willingness to work long hours make migrants the more attractive option for business owners. “The Ethiopian migrants work hard and they clean the restaurant better than some Yemenis. Moreover, they accept lower wages and don’t complain,” Ali said. “While some Yemeni workers frequently demand higher wages and require a lot of time off, that is not the case with Ethiopians, who work silently and dutifully perform any task requested of them. As a businessman, I prefer to employ Ethiopians for these roles because they work longer hours for less pay.”

Economic analysts note that while the migrant influx exacerbates strain on low-wage Yemeni workers, it is not the root cause of the country’s unemployment crisis – that stems from the 10-year ongoing civil conflict that collapsed Yemen’s national economy. “These migrants work in cleaning, strenuous domestic labour and farming, especially Qat farming, where they accept low wages,” explained economic expert Wafeeq Saleh. “These low wages are not enough for a Yemeni to eke out a decent living for a family, creating unfair competition in the labour market between Yemeni workers and Ethiopians.”

Saleh added that shifting cultural norms have already pushed more Yemenis into these once-shunned low-skilled roles. “There used to be a relative reluctance among Yemenis to take up cleaning jobs because it was culturally viewed as ‘shameful’, but the severe economic crisis has contributed to the fading away of this culture, and Yemenis are now in dire need of any opportunity,” he said.

Even many Yemeni workers who have lost jobs to migrants do not oppose migrants working, but rather call for uniform wage standards that eliminate the unfair advantage low-wage transient migrants give employers. “I am not against Ethiopian migrants working, but I am against the low salaries that encourage restaurant owners to hire them,” Zabidi said. “If we received the same salary for the same working hours, restaurant owners would prefer us.”

When the Global Sumud Flotilla set sail on May 18 to break Israel’s aerial, land and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, its cargo held far more than life-sustaining basics. Alongside stockpiles of food, clean drinking water, infant formula and critical medical equipment targeted to Gaza’s collapsing healthcare system, the aid mission carried a surprising, gentle addition: portable homemade bubble play kits. These simple kits, crafted from just soap, water, rope and wooden sticks, are the core initiative of Bubbles Not Bombs (BNB), a grassroots humanitarian project dedicated to giving children trapped in war zones and displaced by conflict small, precious moments of respite through mindful bubble play.

For 15 years, BNB operated under the umbrella of Dr Zigs, a Welsh eco-friendly toy company founded by 56-year-old Italy-born Paola Dyboski that frames play as a foundational tool to support children’s emotional wellbeing in crisis settings. Just recently, the initiative spun off to become an independent non-profit organization, expanding its reach to conflict-hit regions across the globe.

Dyboski does not minimize the urgent need to deliver basic necessities to Gaza, where the Palestinian health ministry confirms more than 22,000 Palestinian children have been killed since the start of Israel’s military campaign launched after the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack. But she has long argued that play itself is a universal human right that no child, even in the midst of active conflict, should be denied.

Currently, BNB is working to deliver physical bubble kits to children across Gaza and southern Lebanon, where ongoing Israeli military operations have killed more than 3,500 people and displaced nearly one million since March 2024. To bridge gaps in delivery amid restricted access, the organization has already shared simple, open-source digital instructions for making homemade bubbles using locally available materials, so children and caregivers can build their own kits without waiting for external shipments.

Dyboski explains that the soft, fleeting nature of bubbles, with their inherent joy and lightness, offers children living with chronic trauma a tangible tool to process fear and grief, articulate unspoken difficult feelings, regulate their breathing, and stabilize their emotions amid constant chaos.

That impact is visible on the ground in Gaza, where Mohamed Abushbeka has cared for his two young nieces since their father was killed in the first weeks of Israel’s military campaign. Last week, BNB reposted a video Abushbeka shared of his older niece, Batool, blowing bubbles inside an overcrowded displacement camp.

“Bubbles give children these rare stretches of joy, safety, and escape from all the anxiety and brutal reality around them,” Abushbeka told Middle East Eye in an interview. He emphasized that bubble play helps children release overwhelming emotions they often lack the words to name, giving them a brief, tangible sense of freedom. “You see them running, laughing, chasing the bubbles as they float up, then suddenly fall and burst,” he said.

He added that bubble play is uniquely accessible in a context where most resources are scarce: it is low-cost, simple to make, and children will repurpose any available materials, from plastic cups to discarded small tubes, to make their own wands. For caregivers working to preserve any shred of normal childhood for the next generation, protecting these small moments of play is non-negotiable, Abushbeka said. “One day, Palestinian children will laugh without fear, sleep without bombs, and grow up surrounded by peace instead of loss,” he wrote on his Instagram page.

Leigh Evans, a Welsh emergency nurse, paramedic and activist with four medical aid missions to Gaza under his belt, has witnessed first-hand the constant trauma that shapes daily life for Gaza’s children, and the heartbreak of seeing them robbed of the chance to just be kids. “I think children’s need to play and develop as whole human beings should be a major part of what we count as essential aid,” Evans said.

He reflected on how Gazan families work tirelessly to preserve small bits of normalcy even amid widespread destruction, recalling invitations to share meals in partially bombed-out homes, where families leaned on cooking and play to comfort their children when death could come at any moment. Evans has long integrated BNB’s bubble kits into his solidarity work: he joined the Global Sumud Flotilla mission, used bubble play during the 2025 Global March to Gaza, blew bubbles during a peaceful Red Line solidarity rally in West Wales last week, and joined activists in a direct action outside Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems in March, where bubble play was used to disrupt production of munitions deployed in Gaza.

“Bubbles are wonderfully therapeutic,” Evans said. “They offer a small but incredibly powerful form of psychological relief for children in conflict zones, letting them be children in a place where they would otherwise have no space for that.”

Sabine Choucair, a Lebanese performer and co-founder of Clown Me In, an organization that brings arts programming to children in crisis zones, frames bubbles as uniquely magical for young people. “Bubbles are magical, like small globes that reflect everything around children,” she explained. “They bring kids together and give them a low-stakes way to experiment and play.”

Choucair, who has 20 years of experience performing for children in refugee camps and disaster zones across the world, recently partnered with BNB by sharing a video of her original activity “Pop the Fear”, where children are invited to name their fears, visualize placing them inside a bubble, pop the bubble to release the fear, then blow new bubbles to make space for joy and hope.

Speaking of the ongoing crisis in Lebanon, where children are once again displaced, forced out of school, and forced to re-live the trauma of bombardment and home loss, Choucair pushed back against the narrative that mental health and play support are secondary to basic aid. “Imagine re-living the loss of your home, hearing drones and bombs again, and being out of school once more,” she said. “How are we supposed to survive if our mental state is destroyed?”

Mental health experts echo this framing, noting that even when basic survival needs are unmet, psychosocial support for children facing repeated bombardment, displacement and grief is not a secondary priority—it should be a core component of any emergency response. A powerful video from the Gaza-based Sameer Project illustrates this impact, showing a young girl channeling her fear of shelling and famine into popping bubbles, before sharing her wish to be reunited with her mother, who was killed in the conflict.

“It’s a simple but deeply effective way to help children process trauma,” Dyboski said. “Creating moments of play is healing. They can feel a sense of control and make the experience their own.”

Beyond Gaza and Lebanon, BNB has already begun distributing bubble kits to children in Myanmar and at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, home to the world’s largest refugee camp. The organization is working to expand access to Sudan in partnership with local group Let’s Have Hope, though shipment challenges have delayed entry to date. It also plans to send kits to children in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia’s Tigray region, both sites of ongoing protracted conflict.

“We need to make sure children not only survive but are also able to grow into human beings who can live, love and function fully,” Evans said. Citing UNICEF data that an estimated 473 million children worldwide currently live in active conflict zones, Dyboski says the work is far from over. “We’ve got a lot of children to reach.”

In the shadow of the world’s highest peak, a remarkable story of survival has emerged from Nepal’s Mount Everest, where a veteran Sherpa guide is now recovering in a Kathmandu hospital after spending an entire week stranded on the mountain’s notoriously dangerous upper slopes. The ordeal, however, has sparked fierce anger from the guide’s family, who are blaming systemic negligence and inequity for the costly delay in launching his rescue, and have already initiated formal legal and regulatory action against the responsible parties.

Fifty-seven-year-old Dawa Sherpa was located by chance on Thursday, crawling across frozen snowfields near the Khumbu Icefall, just above Everest’s base camp, seven full days after he was first reported missing. He was immediately evacuated by air to the capital Kathmandu, where he was reunited with relatives who had already begun funeral rites for him, having abandoned all hope of finding him alive. HAMS Hospital, the facility treating Dawa, confirmed in an official statement Friday that he remains in stable condition despite suffering from frostbite, severe dehydration, and soft tissue damage to his thighs as he recieves ongoing care.

Dawa was last spotted on May 29 descending from the high slopes, alongside two foreign climbers who both made it safely back to base camp — leaving Dawa unaccounted for. The pair was among the final groups on the mountain as the 2024 spring climbing season drew to a close, when fixed routes and safety infrastructure on the mountain are normally disassembled. His last confirmed position was at the Yellow Band, a rocky outcrop located above Camp 3, roughly 7,200 meters above sea level, far above the 5,300-meter base camp.

The two foreign climbers with Dawa that day have confirmed the circumstances of his disappearance. British climber Chris Thrall, who was part of the group, posted an explanation to his Instagram account noting that he was forced to prioritze evacuating Polish climber Mariusz Chmielewski, who was already suffering from severe frostbite and declining health. Thrall explained that after Dawa spent 19 hours in Everest’s deadly “death zone” above 8,000 meters, the group made the decision to descend through the Khumbu Icefall, leaving Dawa behind with no option to mount an immediate search. Initial helicopter search efforts launched after Dawa was reported missing failed to locate the stranded guide.

It remains unclear why Dawa and his climbing party were still on the high slopes after Nepali authorities had already begun removing fixed ladders from the route on May 29. The guide was ultimately spotted by a crew from the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, an organization that handles installing and maintaining fixed ladders and ropes on Everest’s climbing routes at the start of each season, then removes gear and cleans up waste from the mountain after the climbing window closes.

Dawa’s family has made clear their frustration over the week-long delay in launching an aggressive search for the guide. They have filed a formal police complaint against Dawa’s employer, Kathmandu-based expedition operator Himalayan Traverse, and submitted an official grievance to Nepal’s Department of Tourism, the government body that regulates all mountaineering activity in the country.

Speaking on behalf of the family, Dawa’s nephew Karma Gelje Sherpa called the delay a direct result of clear negligence on the part of the expedition company. He also raised allegations of unequal treatment for local guides versus foreign climbers, saying: “If he had been a foreign climber, rescue would definitely have been organized much faster and prompt, but he happened to be an old Nepali.”

Himalayan Traverse, the company that employed Dawa, did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations when contacted by reporters on Friday. The family’s legal action comes amid growing scrutiny of safety standards and treatment of Sherpa guides on Mount Everest, where overcrowding, poor regulation, and unequal access to rescue resources have been the subject of ongoing debate in mountaineering circles in recent years.