© AFP / BASHAR TALEBGaza City Rimal residential district on May 20, 2021
Russia is preparing for a potential mission to rescue its own citizens, and those of former Soviet states, from war-torn Gaza as Israeli forces press ahead with a campaign of airstrikes aimed at Palestinian militants.
In an executive order issued on Thursday, President Vladimir Putin instructed the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, along with its top intelligence agency, the SVR, and emergency response officials to lay the groundwork for an evacuation of any citizens or personnel trapped by the fighting. The move, which the president described as a response to a "sharp deterioration in the situation in Gaza," would also offer a potential lifeline to passport holders from the Commonwealth of Independent States, comprised of nine of the USSR's ex-republics.
The decision comes just one day after Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov warned Israel's ambassador in Moscow that the situation was worsening. During "a frank exchange of views," the Russian side "expressed extreme concern about the escalation of tensions and emphasized that a further increase in the number of civilian casualties would be unacceptable."Earlier this week, Moscow's veteran Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters that "we condemn the strikes that are being launched from [Gaza] to residential areas [in Israel]." At the same time, he added, "We also, of course, condemn the completely unacceptable strikes on civilian targets in the Palestinian territories."
He pledged Russia's support in negotiating an end to the violence. "We will do everything to help them find agreements to calm down the present, extremely dangerous, hot phase of the conflict and to start direct negotiations as soon as possible," Lavrov said.
US President Joe Biden is also pushing for a pause in the fighting, using a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to insist that he "expected significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire." However, since then, there have been reports of renewed violence in the region, with Israel's Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen saying the country will halt its offensive only "when we decide we have attained our goals."
Israeli officials say that 12 people have died and another 336 have been injured in rocket attacks launched from Gaza that have forced people in nearby cities to seek shelter. Hamas, the territory's de facto government, say that 230 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,700 wounded in aerial bombardments.
"Jews and Arabs are all really children of the House of Abraham," says Harry Ostrer, MD, Director of the Human Genetics Program at New York University School of Medicine, an author of the new study by an international team of researchers in the United States and Israel. "And all have preserved their Middle Eastern genetic roots over 4000 years."
The researchers analyzed the Y chromosome, which is usually passed unchanged from father to son, of more than 1,000 men worldwide. Throughout human history, alterations have occurred in the sequence of chemical bases that make up the DNA in this so-called male chromosome, leaving variations that can be pinpointed with modern genetic techniques. Related populations carry the same specific variations. In this way, scientists can track descendants of large populations and determine their common ancestors.
Specific regions of the Y chromosome were analyzed in 1,371 men from 29 worldwide populations, including Jews and non-Jews from the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe.
The study, published in the May 9 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that Jewish men shared a set of common genetic signatures with non-Jews from the Middle East, including Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese, and these signatures diverged significantly from those of non-Jewish men outside of this region.
Consequently, Jews and Arabs share a common ancestor and are more closely related to one another than to non-Jews from other areas of the world.
The study also revealed that, despite the complex history of Jewish migration in the Diaspora (the time since 556 B.C. when Jews migrated out of Palestine), Jewish communities have generally not intermixed with non-Jewish populations. If they had, then Jewish men from different regions of the world would not share the same genetic signature in their Y chromosome.
"Because ancient Jewish law states that Jewish religious affiliation is assigned maternally, our study afforded the opportunity to assess the contribution of non-Jewish men to present-day Jewish genetic diversity, said Hammer. "It was surprising to see how significant the Middle Eastern genetic signal was in Jewish men from different communities in the Diaspora.."
The authors of this study are: Dr. Ostrer from NYU School of Medicine; Michael F. Hammer, University of Arizona, Tucson; Alan. J. Redd, (University of Arizona); ElizabethT. Wood (University of Arizona); Roxane Bonner (University of Arizona); Hamdi Jarjanazi (University of Arizona); Tanya. Karafet (University of Arizona), Silvana Santachiara-Benerecetti (Universityof Pavia, Italy); Ariella Oppenheim (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel); Mark Jobling (University of Leicester, England); Trefor Jenkins (University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa) and Batsheva Bonne-Tamir (Tel Aviv University, Israel).