[🇧🇩] Israel and Hamas war in Gaza-----Can Bangladesh be a peace broker?

[Saif]

Israeli strike in Gaza refugee camp kills 17

Gaza’s civil defence agency on Tuesday said an Israeli strike killed at least 17 people at a refugee camp in the centre of the territory, as Israel’s military targets Hamas positions.

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Israeli strike in Gaza refugee camp kills 17
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 08 October, 2024, 22:35

AFP file photo

Gaza’s civil defence agency on Tuesday said an Israeli strike killed at least 17 people at a refugee camp in the centre of the territory, as Israel’s military targets Hamas positions.

‘The civil defence teams recovered 17 martyrs, including children, and several others who were wounded from the three-story home of the Abdul Hadi family, which was bombed by a missile from an (Israeli) warplane in Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza,’ agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said in a statement.

Bassal said the bodies of those killed and the wounded were taken to Al-Awda hospital in Nuseirat camp and to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the city of Deir el-Balah.

Medics at Al-Awda confirmed the toll.

Bassal earlier said that several air strikes rocked central and northern Gaza since the early hours of Tuesday.

Witnesses and rescuers also said Israeli military operations continued in Jabaliya, where troops launched a ground assault in recent days.

Over the past day, Israeli forces killed ‘approximately 20 terrorists’ in air strikes in Jabaliya, the military said in a statement, adding troops also dismantled a weapons storage facility in the area.

On Sunday, the military said troops had encircled Jabaliya in response to indications Hamas was regrouping there despite a year of strikes and fierce fighting.

In recent months, troops have returned to several areas across the Palestinian territory where they had previously conducted operations against Hamas, only to find militants rebuilding.

Many residents of Jabaliya fled from their homes or tents as Israeli warplanes bombarded the area.

Iman Abu Najm, 33, left her home as the latest Israeli attack began in Jabaliya. ‘The shelling was relentless, children were screaming, people were panicking in the streets, and gunfire was targeting houses and people,’ she told AFP, describing the chaos that unfolded during the air strikes.

She said many people were ‘trapped in their homes, unable to leave as intense gunfire continued’.

In a separate statement, the military announced it had killed three Hamas militants who had participated in the October 7 attack.

They were killed in an air strike on September 30 that struck a school in Daraj Tuffah area.​

 

[Saif]

বাংলাদেশের মিলিটারি একাডেমিতে কমিশন হলো ৭ ফিলিস্তিনি তরুণের (Seven Palestinians got commission from Bangladesh Military Academy)

 

[Saif]

Nothing new on the Middle Eastern front

The tragedy is that Israel, which resulted from Europe’s guilt over the Holocaust, is becoming a symbol of European oppression and colonisation.

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One year of Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Nothing new on the Middle Eastern front

Israeli soldiers stand by a truck packed with shirtless Palestinian detainees in the Gaza Strip on December 8, 2023. PHOTO: REUTERS

A twist on the title of Erich Maria Remarque's famous 1929 novel about everyday life in the trenches of World War I seems fitting for the first anniversary of Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel. While the media covers each new and surprising development—the killing of Hamas's leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah; Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon; Iran's ballistic-missile attack on Israel—the fact is that things are becoming what they always were. Potentialities that were present from the beginning are being realised.

From a broader historical and philosophical perspective, Israel's critics miss the point when they claim that it is failing in its mission to destroy Hamas, and is merely killing Palestinians and razing Gaza. Recall Israel's strategy before October 7. For years, it ensured that foreign financing reached Hamas in order to keep the Palestinians divided, thus preventing any progress toward a two-state solution.

Of course, Israel is acting in self-defence in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon. But much depends on how one defines "self." If Russia occupies part of Ukraine and proclaims it part of Russia, can it then claim self-defence when it crushes those who resist? When Germany invaded Belgium at the start of World War I, a Belgian minister supposedly observed that, "Whatever historians will say later about this war, nobody will able to say that Belgium attacked Germany." Yet since Russia's invasion, respect for settled facts no longer holds. The Kremlin and its allies have become increasingly effective at claiming that Ukraine started the conflict.

Israel's rhetoric is not dissimilar. When the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) launched its "limited ground operation" in Lebanon on October 1, one was reminded of Russia's euphemistic description of its invasion as a "special military operation." In both cases, we can paraphrase Groucho Marx: it may look like war, and it may hurt like war; but don't let that fool you. This really is war.

Again, things are becoming what they always were. In late July, a coterie of Israeli ministers, MPs, journalists, and TV commentators decried an IDF military police raid on the Sde Teiman base in southern Israel, following reports of Israeli reservists abusing Palestinian detainees. The raid and arrests triggered large public protests, even though it was other Israeli reservists who had blown the whistle. Horrified by what they had witnessed, they heroically came forward with allegations that security personnel on the base were torturing Palestinian prisoners by sodomising them with metal rods. Some of the prisoners then bled to death.

Yet rather than being outraged by such atrocities, some Israeli officials were outraged at those prosecuting the case. Consider the following transcript from a debate in the Knesset (parliament), aired by the British journalist Peter Oborne:

Unidentified Israeli MP: "This is insanity, someone in the prosecutor's office thinks it's possible to arrest soldiers for things they do to Nukhba (Hamas Elite Unit) terrorists. We can't continue as usual…"

[Interjection]: "To insert a stick in a person's rectum, is this legitimate?"

MP: "Shut up! Yes, if he is Nukhba, everything is legitimate to do. Everything."

Or consider this clip from a panel discussion on Israeli TV (also shared by Oborne):

First panellist: "Soldiers are suspected of raping a shackled prisoner—this doesn't concern you?"

Second panellist: "I don't give a rat's ass what they do to that Hamas man. The only problem I see is that it's not state policy to abuse detainees. First, they deserve it and it's a great form of revenge. Second, maybe it will act as a deterrent."

Imagine our reaction if all this had happened in Russia. Crazy as it may sound, the best way to account for our moral predicament may be to entertain a conspiracy theory. Almost a year ago, I imagined a phone call between Israeli and Hamas hardliners:

Israeli hardliner: "Hi, do you remember how we discreetly supported you against the Palestine Liberation Organization? Now you owe us a favour: why don't you attack and slaughter some Jews close to Gaza? They're friends to Arabs, peaceniks, so we don't need them. What we need is something to end the civil protests against us, and to distract from the slow ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. The world will be shocked at your brutality, and we will be able to play the victim, achieve national unity, and accelerate ethnic cleansing in the West Bank!"

Hamas hardliner: "Okay, but we need a favour: to avenge our slaughter, you must bomb civilians in Gaza, killing thousands, especially children. That will foment anti-Semitism around the world, which is our true goal!"

Israeli hardliner: "No problem, we also need a resurgence of anti-Semitism, which allows us to keep playing the role of the victim and do whatever we want in self-defence!"

This imaginary scenario is obscene, of course. But recall Robert Harris's novel The Ghost (later a film by Roman Polanski). A ghostwriter for Adam Lang, a former UK prime minister modelled on Tony Blair, discovers that his client has been planted in the Labour Party and manipulated by the CIA all along. Commenting on the book's "shock-horror revelation," a critic for The Observer wrote that it was "so shocking it simply can't be true, though if it were it would certainly explain pretty much everything about the recent history of Great Britain."

Like Harris's invention, my own abhorrent scenario teases out the logic of today's perverse tango: It isn't true, but if it was, it would explain everything. My imaginary phone call is not part of reality, but it is real. Since victims are in principle permitted to strike back, the war gives Israel a chance to pursue ethnic cleansing in Greater Israel. According to Israel's far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, the "voluntary migration" of Palestinians in Gaza is the "right humanitarian solution" for the besieged enclave and for the region.

The parallel between Ukraine and Palestine has grown stronger as some key distinctions have become blurred. The pro-Israel West (especially the United States) now frames its support for Ukraine and its support for Israel as two initiatives in the same global war, as if Israel is no different from Ukraine. Meanwhile, on the pseudo-left, many claim that the initial attacks by Russia and Hamas were both justified defensive measures in response to historical provocations and oppression, as if Donetsk is the Russian West Bank.

In the new world order that is emerging, the Gaza war is a nodal point that condenses all the defining antagonisms of the modern era. It is where everything will be decided. "Palestine" today is a universal symbol—a stand-in for all European sins and a font of anti-Semitism.

The tragedy is that Israel, which resulted from Europe's guilt over the Holocaust, is becoming a symbol of European oppression and colonisation. Europeans gave the survivors of that genocide land that other people had inhabited for centuries. It is that original sin which, unexpiated, is once again preventing peace and quiet on the Middle Eastern front.

Slavoj Žižek, professor of philosophy at the European Graduate School, is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London and the author, most recently, of Christian Atheism: How to Be a Real Materialist.​

 

[Saif]

400,000 trapped in northern Gaza

An Israeli military operation in northern Gaza is leaving at least 400,000 Palestinians trapped in the area, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said yesterday.

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400,000 trapped in northern Gaza
Warns head of UNRWA as Israel carries out new strikes; 60 Palestinians killed in 24 hrs

An Israeli military operation in northern Gaza is leaving at least 400,000 Palestinians trapped in the area, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said yesterday.

"Recent evacuation orders from the Israeli Authorities are forcing people to flee again & again, especially from Jabalia Camp. Many are refusing because they know too well that no place anywhere in #Gaza is safe," Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, posted on X.

Lazzarini said some UNRWA shelters and services were being forced to shut down for the first time since the offensive began and that with almost no basic supplies available, hunger was spreading again in northern Gaza.

"This recent military operation also threatens the implementation of the second phase of the #polio vaccination campaign for children," he said.

At least 60 people were killed in Israeli military strikes in the past 24 hours, Palestinian medics said yesterday, as Israeli forces pressed on with a raid on the Jabalia refugee camp in the enclave's north.

The Israeli military says the raid, now in its fifth day, is intended to stop Hamas fighters staging further attacks from Jabalia and to prevent them regrouping.​

 

[Saif]

Israel ramps up Gaza shelling, blocks aid routes

The Israeli army intensified shelling of northern Gaza and closed roads, preventing the delivery of aid, the war-torn Palestinian territory’s civil defence agency said Wednesday.

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Israel ramps up Gaza shelling, blocks aid routes
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 10 October, 2024, 00:08

A man carries a child while evacuating in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday amid the on-going war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. | AFP photo

The Israeli army intensified shelling of northern Gaza and closed roads, preventing the delivery of aid, the war-torn Palestinian territory’s civil defence agency said Wednesday.

The army, which said it surrounded Jabalia in northern Gaza at the weekend, issued new evacuation demands on Tuesday, as analysts suggested Hamas was regrouping, despite a year of strikes and fierce fighting.

‘The shelling is intensifying, targeting civilians and their homes, causing significant fear and terror among the residents,’ said Ahmad al-Kahlut, the agency’s director in north Gaza.

The director said the Israeli army also was targeting the northern towns of Beit Lahia and Beit Hanun along with Jabalia.

‘Roads have been closed, and there has been a continuous siege for the fourth consecutive day, with no supplies entering the North Gaza Governorate,’ Kahlut said.

According to the director, ‘a large number’ of people died in northern Gaza during the fighting.

But he said counting the casualties had been complicated by the ‘difficulty of recovery and access to all areas’.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its teams had transported three dead and 15 injured from the al-Rafai school in Jabalia, where displaced Gazans had sought shelter.

The civil defence’s Kahlut said his agency had been receiving calls for help from various parts of northern Gaza, but staff had been unable to enter these areas for security reasons.

‘So far, Kamal Adwan Hospital is still operational and is dealing with the injuries that the teams can recover,’ he said, referring to a hospital in Beit Lahia.

Hisham Abu Aoun, head of the intensive care unit for the Friends of the Patient Hospital, said at least six children were evacuated to his hospital in Gaza City.

Amal Nasr, a resident of Jabalia, said her daughter Dana and husband Rami were both injured by gunfire while fleeing the area.

‘My daughter Dana was shot in the neck, and my husband was shot in his leg by the occupation forces’, she said, adding her daughter was taken to a Gaza City hospital and was now in stable condition.

‘I was injured while we were leaving our house. I was shot in the neck and started to bleed’, Dana Nasr said from the Al-Ahli Hospital.

‘There were many injured people in the streets of Jabalia,’ she added.

Gaza’s hospitals are struggling with limited supplies.

The health ministry appealed Tuesday for international help, warning fuel shortages could force hospitals to close.

The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said ‘intensified military operations’ in northern Gaza forced it to halt services.

This included the evacuation of seven UNRWA schools used as shelters by displaced Gazans.

The Israeli army on Wednesday said operations were on-going ‘throughout Gaza’.

It said Israeli troops had ‘eliminated’ 20 Palestinian combatants in the Jabalia area and had dismantled a weapons storage facility a day earlier.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures, which include hostages killed in captivity.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 42,010 people in Gaza, most them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations has described as reliable.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strike on Gaza school kills 28

Rescuers in Gaza said Israel conducted a deadly air strike Thursday on a school housing families displaced by the war, though the Israeli military said it was a Hamas command centre.

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Israeli strike on Gaza school kills 28
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 11 October, 2024, 00:25

Palestinians react outside the al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital after an Israeli strike hit a school housing displaced people in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, on Thursday, amid the on-going war between Israel and Hamas. | AFP photo

Rescuers in Gaza said Israel conducted a deadly air strike Thursday on a school housing families displaced by the war, though the Israeli military said it was a Hamas command centre.

While Israel has widened its military operations to Lebanon since last month, pounding Hezbollah strongholds around the country and battling militants near the border, it has also escalated in recent days its strikes on Gaza.

The strike on Rafida School in central Gaza, which according to the Palestinian Red Crescent killed 28 people and wounded 54 others, follows the widening of Israeli operations in the north of the territory.

The Israeli army said the strike targeted Palestinian militants operating from a command and control centre ‘embedded inside a compound that previously served as the (Rafida) School’.

Israel accuses Hamas of hiding in school buildings and other civilian infrastructure where thousands of Gazans have sought shelter — a charge the Palestinian militants deny.

The Gaza war began on October 7 last year, when Hamas militants stormed across the border and carried out the worst attack in Israeli history.

The militants took 251 people hostage in an attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

According to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, 42,065 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, a majority civilians, figures the UN has described as reliable.

While Israel received international support in its bid to crush Hamas and bring the hostages home, it has faced criticism over its conduct of the war.

Speaking to reporters about the humanitarian situation in northern Gaza, US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington was ‘incredibly concerned’ as Israel tightens its siege.

‘We have been making clear to the government of Israel that they have an obligation under international humanitarian law to allow food and water and other needed humanitarian assistance to make it into all parts of Gaza,’ he said.

Israel expanded a military operation around Jabalia in northern Gaza, where about 400,000 people are trapped, according to Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Lazzarini said on X there was ‘no end to hell’ in the area and that ‘recent evacuation orders from the Israeli authorities are forcing people to flee again & again’.

The army surrounded Jabalia and its refugee camp at the weekend and shelled it on Wednesday, preventing the delivery of aid, Gaza’s civil defence agency said.

The United States has also urged Israel to avoid Gaza-like military action in Lebanon, after prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it could face ‘destruction’ like the Palestinian territory.

The comments came after a phone call between Netanyahu and US president Joe Biden, their first in seven weeks.

The White House said Biden told Netanyahu to ‘minimise harm’ to civilians in Lebanon, particularly in ‘densely populated areas of Beirut’.

‘There should be no kind of military action in Lebanon that looks anything like Gaza and leaves a result anything like Gaza,’ Miller said.

Israel has since September 23 pounded Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon in a campaign that, according to an AFP tally of health ministry figures, has killed more than 1,200 people and displaced more than a million others.

On Thursday, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon accused Israel of firing on an observation tower at its headquarters and wounding two of its members.

The Israel-Hezbollah war was sparked by Hezbollah’s cross-border fire in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, following the October 7 attack.

The Hezbollah attacks forced tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes over the past year, and Netanyahu has promised to fight until they can return.

On Tuesday, he said in a video address to the people of Lebanon: ‘You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.’

‘Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.’

In Beirut, many people are sleeping out in the streets after Israeli air strikes.

Ahmad, a 77-year-old who did not want to give his family name for fear of reprisals, said he had a message for Hezbollah.

‘If you can’t continue to fight, announce you are withdrawing and that you have lost. There is no shame in losing,’ he said.

But Raed Ayyash, a displaced man from the south of the country, said he hoped Hezbollah would keep fighting.

‘We hope for victory, and we will never give up.’

Biden and Netanyahu’s call had been expected to focus on Israel’s response to last week’s missile barrage by Iran, which backs both Hezbollah and Hamas.

Iran fired about 200 missiles at Israel in what it said was retaliation for the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Most were intercepted by Israel or its allies.

Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said: ‘Our attack on Iran will be deadly, precise and surprising. They will not understand what happened and how it happened.’

Biden has cautioned Israel against attempting to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, which would risk major retaliation, and opposes striking oil installations.

With Hezbollah militants locked in clashes with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, the group said it destroyed an Israeli tank advancing on the border on Thursday.

A day earlier, two people were killed by suspected Hezbollah rocket fire in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona, while Israel intercepted two projectiles fired towards the coastal town of Caesarea, officials said.

Lebanon’s health ministry said at least four people were killed in an Israeli strike on a village southeast of Beirut, an area so far largely spared from Israeli bombing.​

 

[Saif]

Costs of enabling Israel’s Gaza war

THE US government often claims to stand for the rule of law, but this past year has made it painfully clear that this does not apply to Palestinians. The moral, financial, and security costs of US support for Israel’s rapidly expanding wars are adding up for Americans, too...

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Costs of enabling Israel’s Gaza war
Farrah Hassen 11 October, 2024, 00:00

THE US government often claims to stand for the rule of law, but this past year has made it painfully clear that this does not apply to Palestinians. The moral, financial, and security costs of US support for Israel’s rapidly expanding wars are adding up for Americans, too.

Since October 7, 2023, around 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, plus over 700 more in the West Bank. Over 1,100 Israelis have been killed, too. These tragedies are a direct consequence of Israel’s illegal, US-backed occupation of Palestinian territory and its war on Gaza, which must both end immediately.

From the mass killing and maiming of Palestinian civilians to the forced starvation and deliberate destruction of Gaza’s health infrastructure, Palestinians and international experts have warned from the start that Israel is committing a ‘textbook case of genocide’ in Gaza.

Despite the International Court of Justice finding genocide ‘plausible’ and calling on Israel to prevent it and ensure the delivery of lifesaving aid, Israel — like the US — has ignored all of the court’s orders.

The US has enabled this ongoing genocide and other crimes by providing unconditional support for Israel despite mounting atrocities. This has emboldened Israel to expand its assault to Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen as it threatens to drag the US into a wider war with Iran.

None of this is inevitable.

As Israel’s chief supplier of arms, the US has sent billions worth of high-powered explosives since October 7, which have turned up at massacre after massacre committed by Israel’s military. That’s a violation of our own laws barring assistance to forces that commit human rights abuses or block delivery of humanitarian aid, as Israel has done.

‘Our democracy is at stake’ has been an ongoing refrain this election season. But it’s also a threat to our democracy when elected officials ignore the vast majority of their constituents who have rightly demanded a permanent ceasefire and arms embargo on Israel. Instead of listening to voters, our leaders have backed violent crackdowns on protests, which threatens our First Amendment rights.

The costs of war always reverberate at home. Our policymakers have expressed support for the war using racist, dehumanizing rhetoric, which has directly contributed to rising anti-Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim hate crimes, harassment, and discrimination.

And even though most Americans oppose Israel’s war on Gaza, we’re still paying for it.

Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates that over the past year, the US has spent at least $22.76 billion and counting on Israel’s onslaught in Gaza and other US military operations in the surrounding region. In August, the Biden administration approved an additional $20 billion in arms sales to Israel.

All this comes on top of the $3.8 billion the US already sends Israel in military aid each year. That same $3.8 billion a year could fund 29,915 registered nurses, 394,738 public housing units, or 39,158 elementary school teachers, according to the National Priorities Project.

As our post-Covid safety net continues to crumble, more people are left unable to afford housing, health care, groceries, education, and other basic necessities. Compounding these challenges, more states are battling climate disasters. We desperately need those funds at home, not funding wars and lawlessness abroad.

Nevertheless, many of our elected officials would rather support the military-industrial complex than their own constituents. In a particularly flagrant example, Republican senator Lindsey Graham recently appeared on Fox News to plead for more US weapons for Israel in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which had ravaged his home state of South Carolina.

More than statistics, law, and politics, our nation’s role in the Palestinian genocide should shake our conscience and cause us to question its morality. Are human rights and justice good for some but not others? And can we recognize our complicity in this genocide and not take action to end it?

However one answers these questions, our shared humanity hangs in the balance.

CounterPunch.org, October 10. Farrah Hassen, JD, is a writer, policy analyst, and adjunct professor political science at Cal Poly Pomona.​

 

[Saif]

Gaza shame of humanity, calls for permanent ceasefire: Erdogan

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan renewed his attacks on Israel as he arrived in Tirana Thursday, the first stop of a Balkans tour that will also take him to Serbia.

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Gaza shame of humanity, calls for permanent ceasefire: Erdogan
Agence France-Presse . Tirana, Albania 11 October, 2024, 22:02

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan renewed his attacks on Israel as he arrived in Tirana Thursday, the first stop of a Balkans tour that will also take him to Serbia.

Repeating his claim that Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted ‘genocide’, he branded it the ‘shame of humanity’, at a joint press conference with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

‘The international community, we must do our best to urgently guarantee a permanent ceasefire and exert the necessary pressure on Israel,’ he added.

‘The genocide that has been going on in Gaza for the past year is the common shame of all humanity,’ he added.

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

According to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, 42,065 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, mostly civilians. The UN has said the figures are reliable.

Erdogan has branded Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu the ‘butcher of Gaza’ and compared him to Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler.

‘The aggression led by the Netanyahu government now threatens the world order beyond the region,’ Erdogan said.

Later Thursday Erdogan, accompanied by Prime Minister Edi Rama, inaugurated the Great Mosque of Tirana.

The largest Muslim place of worship in the Balkans, it has a capacity of up to 10,000 people. The project, funded by Turkey, cost 30 million euros.

Turkey is also a major employer in Albania. As Erdogan said in February, over 600 Turkish companies operate in the country, providing jobs to more than 15,000 workers.

It is also one of the five biggest foreign investors in Albania, he said, with $3.5 billion (3.2 billion euros) committed.

The two NATO member countries also have close military ties, with Turkey supplying Tirana with its Bayraktar TB2 drones.

For the second stage of his tour Erdogan travelled from Albania to Serbia, where he was greeted at Belgrade airport by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.

Turkey made a diplomatic comeback here in 2017 when Erdogan made a landmark visit to Belgrade.

The five century Ottoman presence in Serbia has traditionally weighed heavily on Belgrade-Ankara relations.

Another source of tension has been Turkey’s historic ties with Serbia’s former breakaway province of Kosovo. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a move Belgrade still refuses to recognise.

Erdogan’s 2017 visit repaired the relationship with Serbia, Belgrade analyst Vuk Vuksanovic said.

But Belgrade was furious last year when Turkey sold drones to Kosovo, something Serbia said was ‘unacceptable’.

The row could however still be patched up, Vuksanovic insisted.

‘I would not be surprised if we see a military deal at the end of this visit,’ he said.

He expected talks in Belgrade on Friday to focus on ‘military cooperation, the position of Turkish companies — and attempts by Belgrade to persuade Ankara to tone down support for Kosovo’.

While the rapprochement is relatively new, economic ties between the two countries are already significant.

Turkish investment in Serbia has rocketed from $1 million to $400 million over the past decade, the Turkey-Serbia business council told Turkey’s Anadolu news agency.

Turkish exports to Serbia hit $2.13 billion in 2022, up from $1.14 billion in 2020, according to official Serbian figures.

Turkish tourists are also important for Serbia, second only to visitor numbers from Bosnia.​