At Least Five Killed in Tel Aviv Shooting, Third Attack in a Week

The shooting raised to 11 the number of people killed by Arab gunmen in Israel over the past week, the sharpest spike in attacks on city streets in years.

Bnei Brak (Israel): An Arab gunman killed at least five people in a Tel Aviv suburb on Tuesday before he was fatally shot, the national ambulance service said, in the third deadly attack in Israel in a week.

“Israel is facing a wave of murderous Arab terror,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted after the shootings in Bnei Brak, a Jewish ultra-Orthodox city on the outskirts of Israel’s commercial capital.

The shooting raised to 11 the number of people killed by Arab gunmen in Israel over the past week, the sharpest spike in attacks on city streets in years.

Palestinians have been reporting a rise in settler violence across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in a 1967 war.

Amateur video broadcast on Israeli television stations showed a man dressed in black and pointing an assault rifle walking down a road in Bnei Brak.

Also read: Israel’s Support to Ukraine Involves No Policies, Only Disgrace and Shticks

Israeli media reports, quoting unidentified security officials, said the assailant was a Palestinian from a village near the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

Police said he killed four civilians and an officer who had arrived on the scene before officers fatally shot the gunman.

Last year saw nightly Ramadan clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police and settlers. Police raids at Al-Aqsa mosque compound and a ban on evening gatherings at Damascus Gate helped ignite violence between Israel and Gaza militants that led to 11 days of Palestinian rocket attacks and Israeli air strikes.

In Bnei Brak, witnesses said the gunman began shooting at apartment balconies and then at people on the street and in a car.

“I live on Hashneim Street in Bnei Brak and I was at home when I heard gunshots,” paramedic Menachem Englander said, according to a tweet posted by Magen David Adom. “I immediately went out to the street and saw a terrorist pointing a weapon at me. By a miracle, his weapon jammed and he couldn’t shoot.”

Last week, an Arab citizen of Israel killed four people in a stabbing and car ramming attack in the southern city of Beersheba, before he was shot dead by a passerby. Israeli authorities said he was an Islamic State sympathiser.

On Sunday, as an Israeli-Arab summit convened in southern Israel, an Arab assailant shot and killed two police officers in Hadera, a city some 50 km (30 miles) north of Tel Aviv. Other officers shot and killed him.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Hadera attack.

(Reuters)

Scores Injured as Israeli Police Target Palestinians at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa

At least 205 Palestinians and 17 officers were injured in the night-time clashes at Islam’s third-holiest site. Tensions have been running in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood with the imminent eviction of Palestinian residents.

Jerusalem: Israeli police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades towards rock-hurling Palestinian youth at Jerusalem’s AlAqsa Mosque on Friday amid growing anger over the potential eviction of Palestinians from homes on land claimed by Jewish settlers.

At least 205 Palestinians and 17 officers were injured in the night-time clashes at Islam’s third-holiest site and around East Jerusalem, Palestinian medics and Israeli police said, as thousands of Palestinians faced off with several hundred Israeli police in riot gear.

Tension has mounted in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, with nightly clashes in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah – a neighbourhood where numerous Palestinian families face eviction in a long-running legal case.

Calls for calm and restraint poured in on Friday from the United States and the United Nations, with others including the European Union and Jordan voicing alarm at the possible evictions.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians packed into the hilltop compound surrounding the mosque earlier on Friday for prayers. Many stayed on to protest against the evictions in the city at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But following the evening meal that breaks the Ramadan fast, clashes broke out at AlAqsa with smaller scuffles near Sheikh Jarrah, which sits near the walled Old City’s famous Damascus Gate.

Police used water cannon mounted on armoured vehicles to disperse several hundred protesters gathered near the homes of families facing potential eviction.

“If we don’t stand with this group of people here, (evictions) will (come) to my house, her house, his house and to every Palestinian who lives here,” said protester Bashar Mahmoud, 23, from the nearby Palestinian neighbourhood of Issawiya.

‘Calm down and be quiet’

An Aqsa official appealed for calm on the compound through the mosque’s loudspeakers. “Police must immediately stop firing stun grenades at worshippers, and the youth must calm down and be quiet!”

Israel’s Supreme Court will hold a hearing on the Sheikh Jarrah evictions on Monday, the same day that Israel marks Jerusalem Day – its annual celebration of its capture of East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East war.

The Palestine Red Crescent ambulance service said 108 of the Palestinians injured were taken to hospital, with many hit with rubber-coated metal bullets.

One of the injured lost an eye, two suffered serious head wounds and two had their jaws fractured, the Red Crescent said. Most of the rest of the injuries were minor, it added.

A police spokeswoman said Palestinians had thrown rocks, fireworks and other objects towards officers, with about half of the 17 injured requiring medical treatment in hospital.

“We will respond with a heavy hand to any violent disturbance, rioting or harm to our officers, and will work to find those responsible and bring them to justice,” the spokeswoman said.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he “held (Israel) responsible for the dangerous developments and sinful attacks taking place in the holy city” and called on the U.N. Security Council to hold an urgent session on the issue.

Violence has also increased in the occupied West Bank, where two Palestinian gunmen were killed and a third critically injured on Friday after they opened fire at an Israeli base, police said. After that incident, Israel’s military said it would send additional combat troops to the West Bank.

A Palestinian hurls stones at Israeli police during clashes at the compound that houses Al-Aqsa Mosque. Photo: Reuters/ Ammar Awad

‘Playing with fire’

Sheikh Jarrah’s residents are overwhelmingly Palestinian, but the neighbourhood also contains a site revered by religious Jews as the tomb of an ancient high priest, Simon the Just.

The spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the evictions, “if ordered and implemented, would violate Israel’s obligations under international law” on East Jerusalem territory it captured and occupied, along with the West Bank, from neighbouring Jordan in 1967.

“We call on Israel to immediately halt all forced evictions, including those in Sheikh Jarrah, and to cease any activity that would further contribute to a coercive environment and lead to a risk of forcible transfer,” spokesman Rupert Colville said on Friday.

Washington was “deeply concerned about the heightened tensions in Jerusalem,” said US State Department spokeswoman Jalina Porter.

“As we head into a sensitive period in the days ahead, it will be critical for all sides to ensure calm and act responsibly to deescalate tensions and avoid violent confrontation,” Porter said.

The European Union, Jordan and the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council have expressed alarm at the potential evictions.

Jordanian foreign minister Ayman Safadi said Jordan had given the Palestinian Authority documents that he said showed the Sheikh Jarrah Palestinians were the “legitimate owners” of their homes.

Israel’s “provocative steps in occupied Jerusalem and violation of Palestinian rights, including the rights of the people of Sheikh Jarrah in their homes, is playing with fire,” Safadi said in a foreign ministry statement on Twitter.

Israel’s foreign ministry said on Friday that Palestinians were “presenting a real-estate dispute between private parties as a nationalist cause, in order to incite violence in Jerusalem.” Palestinians rejected the allegation.

(Reuters)

Yehya Al-Sinwar Re-elected to Head Hamas in Gaza

The re-election reflects his control over both political and military wings of the Islamist group that rules the Palestinian enclave.

Gaza: Yehya Al-Sinwar has been re-elected to head Hamas in the Gaza Strip for a second term, officials said on Wednesday, reflecting his control over both political and military wings of the Islamist group that rules the Palestinian enclave.

Sinwar, Hamas leader in Gaza since 2017, was freed in a 2011 prisoner swap with Israel after spending more than 20 years behind bars on charges that included killing suspected informants against Palestinian militants.

While he supports Hamas’s opposition to co-existence with Israel, Sinwar has maintained a relatively stable standoff across the Gaza border. He has also sought improved ties with Egypt, which maintains restrictions along its frontier with Gaza, a small Mediterranean coastal territory.

“Sinwar’s victory shows the man maintains a strong grip on things inside the movement, especially within its vital components such as the military wing,” said Gaza political analyst Adnan Abu Amer. “The win will enable Sinwar to pursue his policies, whether inside Gaza or with regional countries and the handling of the conflict with Israel.”

Also read: After Backlash, Gaza to Revise Ruling on Travel For Unmarried Women

Sinwar’s main challenger in the election, which is only open to Hamas members including those in Israeli prisons, was Nizar Awadallah, a long-time official and co-negotiator of the 2011 swap deal. In a statement issued by Awadallah, he stressed his support for Sinwar, saying: “We stand by his side in every position to achieve the goals of our project and our movement.”

Hamas has yet to elect a leader for the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Sources said his identity would be kept secret as protection against Israel or the administration of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a Hamas rival.

Filling the position of Hamas’s political chief, who also speaks for its military wing, will require more time.

The overall leader of Hamas is Ismail Haniyeh, who is also based in Gaza. Haniyeh is facing a challenge this time by the former head of the group, Khaled Meshaal, who lives in Qatar.

(Reuters)

Trump’s Middle East ‘Peace Plan’ Is a Step Towards Institutionalising Apartheid

The ‘deal of the century’ demands that Palestinians officially accept that Israel has no responsibility for its inaugural act of ethnic cleansing and all brutalities on Palestinians since.

The Trump Peace Plan unveiled on January 28, represents the formal institutionalisation of an Israeli apartheid state. Most other governments – regardless of whether they enthusiastically or more cautiously welcomed the Plan or even criticised or rejected it – have invariably stated that, given the absence of the Palestinian side in the process of forming this Plan, a negotiated ‘final settlement’ is still needed.

This completely misses the point. What has happened is the logical culmination of a process of US unilateralism that began with the Trump presidency which declared undivided Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; endorsed the permanent annexation of the Golan Heights; cut off funding to the Palestinians; and now put forward this new plan.

This is the ‘final settlement’. It is not a proposal put forward for discussion and substantive changes through further negotiation but an ultimatum.

To grasp what the real purpose of this plan is and also who are its intended audiences – certainly not the leadership of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) which is why they were deliberately excluded in the first place – the plan itself must be dissected. It is followed by a brief survey of certain official government responses including that of India. This is because this plan, through the creation of irreversible new ‘facts on the ground’, also aims to dramatically deepen Palestine’s international isolation.

The plan

The Trump plan declared that the main illegal Israeli settlements that are in the West Bank (minus a few outliers) must now become permanent and, sure enough, within hours of Washington saying this, Netanyahu announced the formal annexation of 131 Jewish settlements. What will soon follow is the annexation of the Jordan River valley of some 80,000 hectares of agricultural land where some 65,000 Palestinians and 11,000 illegal Israelis settlers currently live.

Also read: In 10 Points, What the ‘Israel Model’ Is and Why It’s Bad for India

During the course of its longstanding occupation of the West Bank, over 70% of its water resources were routinely diverted to the settlements and to Israel behind the Wall. This process will be further exacerbated in the valley so as to force out the Palestinian farming families earning their livelihood there.

According to the new plan the Palestinians will get, area-wise. a substantially reduced set of separate Bantustans connected by roads, bridges and tunnels (also to Gaza) but with no security control over the new boundaries of this truncated and internally fragmented ‘Swiss cheese’ of a so-called state. This entity will be fully de-militarised with its air space also fully under Israeli military control.

Maps from Trump’s vision for Israel and Palestine.

The Palestinian ‘Right of Return’ – incidentally a fundamental human right – to previous homes/lands for Palestinians expelled and displaced since 1948 must be renounced. It is crucial to understand why this is so pernicious a condition. This ROR has a practical dimension and a political-symbolic one.

The former is negotiable, namely how many actually do or want to return or are given compensation and rights of residency elsewhere.

But the latter dimension is far more important and must be upheld. There can be no future establishment of an enduring peace or the transformation of the existing hostile relationship between Israel and Palestinians unless Israel admits that it’s ethnic cleansing of 1948 was a great injustice and wrong.

There could have been no new beginning between Germany and Israel and Jewry if the former did not apologise and accept its moral guilt for the Holocaust. Similarly, South African apartheid had to be recognised as fundamentally unjust and immoral and needed to be ended before relations between whites and non-whites could start on a new footing.

The same holds true for future relations between Palestinians and Israeli Jews. Moreover, this plan also calls for the Palestinian side to drop all war crimes investigations against Israel including withdrawing those lodged in the International Criminal Court. So this ‘Deal of the Century’, which actually is a collusion between the US and the mainstream political parties of Israel, demands acceptance of not only its apartheid rule but that Palestinians officially acknowledge not only that Israel has no responsibility for its inaugural act of ethnic cleansing that created Israel in the first place, but for all the brutalities that have been imposed on the Palestinians since.

Watch | ‘Wide Angle’ Episode 13: Trump’s Jerusalem Announcement – The End Of The Mideast Peace Process?

The ‘twist’ in this plan is that there will be a four year waiting and a probation period for the Palestinian leadership to accept and come to terms with this new reality. Israel will freeze further annexations during this period provided the Palestinians ‘behave themselves’ i.e., pose no ‘security threat’ to Israel which will be the sole arbiter of whether or not Palestinians have behaved properly.

File Photo: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas heads a Palestinian cabinet meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah July 28, 2013. Photo: Reuters/Issam Rimawi/Pool/File Photo

In return for this complete surrender and after the end of this period, Trump has promised to organise $50 billion for Palestinian development no doubt with the support of other allies in the Middle East and Europe who can be expected to fall in line with the new arrangement once the Palestinian leadership itself falls into line. Otherwise, there will be no Palestinian state, period.

During these four years, more pressure will be put on both the Palestinians and its ostensible allies among Arab states while diplomatic criticism from other governments can be expected to fade further from its existing levels of already feeble inconsequences. Of course, the divide between Hamas and Fatah must be retained.

For the former in Gaza, more punishment for this most densely populated and impoverished region but also the sustenance of its status as the world’s largest open-air prison subject to regularised aerial bombing and shelling. For Fatah or other aspiring leaders in the West Bank, accepting the transition from being since Oslo, subcontractors of the occupation in an economy substantially fuelled by international aid, and having some limited degree of autonomy to carry out municipal rule and line your own pockets through corruption, to now becoming mere puppets in a new dispensation. Even apartheid rule requires local collaborators.

Audiences and responses

Trump’s plan which has long been in the making, apart from what it has done for the more extreme forms of Israeli Zionism, has really had three other targets in mind. One, of course, is the anticipated political fallout in the US itself. The second pertains to the Middle East, North Africa (MENA) region and especially its key actual or potential allies. The third is its European, NATO and other strategic and tactical allies among which India can certainly be counted.

Within the US this plan will have decisively shifted the goalposts. It puts an end to the waffling by previous US administrations, whether Republicans or Democrats, willing to mouth pieties about respecting international law and recognising that Palestine had a case while deliberately being blind to Israeli transgressions and continuing to give it material, military and diplomatic-political support whenever it really mattered.

Also read: Ein Rashash: A Typical West Bank Morning Under Illegal Israeli Occupation

Sanders and Warren the two candidates in the Democratic primaries have voiced their rejection but the mainstream in the Democratic Party may voice reservations about whether this will work but will not buck the new political wisdom in Israel itself and will eventually accommodate itself to this plan as it already has to all the other unilateral steps taken by Trump regarding Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The safer option currently is to concentrate on the upcoming elections, talk about Trump diverting attention from the impeachment proceedings and keep talking about Israeli security needs. Biden, the Democrat frontrunner, in his response to Trump, failed to make any reference to the Palestinians.

Benny Gantz (left), leader of Blue and White party, at an election campaign event in Ashkelon, Israel, April 3, 2019, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu smiling at a polling station in Jerusalem, April 9, 2019. Photo: Reuters/Amir Cohen/File photo, Ariel Schalit/Pool via Reuters

In Israel, the claim that this plan was mainly meant to be a diversion needed by Netanyahu given his bribery charges, does not really hold water. Washington can count on his rivals like Gantz and the other parties in whatever ruling coalition finally emerges after the March elections, to fully endorse what has been done. It is noticeable that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain and the UAE have been careful not to condemn the plan and have even suggested that the Palestinians might take it into consideration in their negotiations.

For formality’s sake, these countries have also gone along with the Arab League’s latest joint resolution rejecting the deal. Egypt values its close relationship with the US (a huge donor) and after its separate Peace treaty with Israel has had no quarrel with it. The US knows that it is Iran, not Israel that most worries these Arab states and that the gulf between these princely and dictatorial regimes and the Arab street on the Israel-Palestine issue has always been very wide. There is even the possibility that over the next four years, as mentioned earlier, these governments, that also bankroll the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and Fatah, could also play their part in pushing the latter to accept what now seems unacceptable.

Britain’s Boris Johnson, as expected, has welcomed the plan while France has also done so saying it will study it carefully. Russia, needing to balance between two friendships with Iran and Israel respectively, has also taken the easy way out saying it needs to study the plan leaving it to Germany, the other main heavyweight in Europe, to somewhat surprisingly, strike a more sceptical note doubting that it can be the basis for a sustained peace.

A number of politicians belonging to the centre and rightwing parties have been aggressively critical of it. Nonetheless, the German government is buying time saying its official position will come after consultations with European partners.

So where does India fit in? Ever since the Congress government of Rao established full diplomatic relations with Israel, the Indian stance has been one of having ever closer cooperation at various levels with Israel while paying lip service and money to the Palestinian cause. With the advent of the first and subsequent NDA governments, the Sangh’s ideological admiration for Zionism has led it to go further. Where once a positive Indian vote for UN resolutions in favour of Palestine was de rigeur, now there has been the occasional abstention.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shakes hands with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi during a meeting with Indian community in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv. Credit: PTI

It was during Vajpayee’s time that there was the first-ever visit of a sitting Israeli Premier, Ariel Sharon. Modi was the first Indian premier to officially visit Israel. New Delhi’s response this time was more timid than that of Germany abandoning even the formality of not annoying the PNA leadership by stating that the two sides “engage with each other including on the recent proposal put forward by the United States.” Given that this was preceded by a three-year silence by India on Trump’s declaration that undivided Jerusalem must be Israel’s capital, no one should be surprised at this implicit endorsement of apartheid. After all, why condemn that which happens abroad if something similar is what is desired on the home front!

Also read: Indian Diplomat Wants ‘Israel Model’ in Kashmir, Sets Off Controversy

As for Palestine?

As for the Palestinians, Mahmud Abbas has announced that the PNA has withdrawn from the Oslo Accords – which in any meaningful sense was already long dead – and will cut its security ties with Israel and the US. It remains to be seen what will follow from this.

Does Fatah now say Israel must do all internal policing and local political decision-making regarding everyday concerns thereby voluntarily giving up whatever powers and authority it currently has? Will it give up its call for a two-state solution and now talk of full and equal democratic rights for all in a one state Israel? Will it seriously seek unity and share authority with Hamas when in the past it has colluded with the US and Israel to deny Hamas the fruits of election victory in the West Bank, and when this will alienate many European governments which it might still want for material and political-diplomatic reasons? Past experience does not suggest any such dramatic stiffening of the spine of the current PNA leadership.

The great tragedy of a remarkable people – the Palestinians – is that they have never had the kind of leadership they have deserved. But it is their indomitable will and their relentless pursuit of justice across generation after generation that continues to prevent forces far more powerful from finishing off for good this amazing Palestinian struggle. What then might be the way forward in these dark times? Some comments here may not be entirely amiss.

First, the only realistic longer-term goal is for a fully democratised one state solution with equal rights for all its citizens regardless of religious or ethnic affiliation.

Second, a new and younger and more united leadership, which recognises how much of a dead-end both Fatah and Hamas have been, must emerge. This may not be that far off.

A boy plays in the Israeli settlement of Vered Yericho in the occupied West Bank, on September 11, 2019 Photo: Reuters/ Ronen Zvulun

Third, further democratise the internal structure of the Palestine Legislative Council by giving due and substantial representation to those chosen by Palestinian refugees outside of the occupied territories (OTs) and in this way forge a much wider and deeper unity that will be far more effective both within and without the OTs.

Fourth, Palestinian success cannot be separated from the question of what happens in Iran and the Arab world as a whole. This region remains dominated by one or the other form of anti-democratic and dictatorial rule. The overthrow of one significant power in the region and its replacement by an enduring democratic order will dramatically reignite the prospects of achieving greater justice for the Palestinians themselves and for further democratic upheaval in the region. Neither Israel nor the US can stop this once it reaches a critical level of intensity. These two struggles must be connected. For too long the Palestinian leadership has taken the failed route of ignoring this wider democratic struggle so as to secure largesse and feeble political-diplomatic support from repressive regimes.

Also read: In Palestine for Three Hours, Modi Drops Indian Support for ‘United’, ‘Viable’ Palestinian State

Fifth, pursue a completely non-violent resistance to the brutalities of Israel. This may reduce but it will not stop Israeli brutalities. However, it will also generate much wider support among the world’s ordinary public to carry out the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign and put much more pressure on their respective governments to penalise and censure Israel in various ways. In the longer run, Israel fears this more than any armed resistance.

Nelson Mandela was once asked when he knew that apartheid’s end was forthcoming. His answer needs to be treasured. He said that he knew this would happen once he and others in the anti-apartheid struggle had realised that they had caught the ‘moral imagination of enough people’. He did not say all the people or most of the people but only of ‘enough’. As long as the Palestinian people continue to remain unbowed and intransigent in their struggle for justice, despite all betrayals by leaders and governments, that time will come!

Achin Vanaik is a writer and social activist, a former professor at the University of Delhi and Delhi-based Fellow of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam. He is the author of The Painful Transition: Bourgeois Democracy in India and The Rise of Hindu Authoritarianism.

EU Denounces Trump’s Middle East Peace Plan, Israel Responds With Anger

An official statement says the proposal ‘departs from’ international agreements on the Israel-Palestine conflict.



The European Union slammed US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan on Tuesday, arguing that it “departs from” international agreements on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Last week, US President Donald Trump presented a proposal to address the conflict. The plan, which Trump dubbed the “deal of the century,” would give Israel control over Jewish settlements on the West Bank and Jordan Valley, while also calling for a Palestinian state. It was rejected by Palestinian leadership both prior to and after its unveiling.

In a statement, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that the plan does not adhere to “internationally agreed parameters.”

“To build a just and lasting peace, the unresolved final status issues must be decided through direct negotiations between both parties,” he said, urging both sides to “re-engage and to refrain from any unilateral actions contrary to international law.”

Also read: Trump’s Middle East ‘Peace Plan’ Delivers Neither

On settlements, “steps towards annexation, if implemented, could not pass unchallenged,” read the statement. “We are especially concerned by statements on the prospect of annexation of the Jordan Valley and other parts of the West Bank.”

Trading barbs with Israel

The response, however, triggered an angry response from Israel, which backs the plan.

“The fact that the High Rep of the EU, Josep Borrell, chose to use threatening language towards Israel, so shortly after he assumed office and only hours after his meetings in Iran, is regrettable and, to say the least, odd,” tweeted Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat.

 

“Pursuing such policies and conduct is the best way to ensure that the EU’s role in any process will be minimised,” Haiat wrote.

Trump’s plan, which was welcomed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was dismissed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as “nonsense.” No Palestinian representatives were present for the announcement of the plan.

Palestinian demands include regaining control over all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which were captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. They are also calling for an independent state and the removal of more than 700,000 Israeli settlers from those areas.

The EU, which often issues slow responses due to the requirement for unanimity among its 27 member states, stated last week that it would study Trump’s plan before issuing an official verdict.

The article was originally published on DW. You can read it here.

Seven Palestinians Killed in Border Protests: Gaza Health Officials

The Palestinian deaths bring to around 200 the number of Gazans killed since the border protests began on March 30, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.

Gaza: Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians on Friday in protests along Gaza’s border, Gaza health officials said. Israel said its troops had shot a group who broke through the fence with a bomb and attacked an army post.

The Palestinian deaths bring to around 200 the number of Gazans killed since the border protests began on March 30, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures.

Gaza medics said that, in addition to the seven dead, around 140 others were wounded.

The Israeli military said that the demonstrators, numbering around 15,000, had been “hurling rocks, explosive devices, firebombs and grenades” at Israeli troops and at the fence.

Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col Jonathan Conricus tweeted that one group had “detonated a bomb on the Israel-Gaza border fence”, allowing around 20 people to climb through the hole.

Also Read: Years of Military Occupation Have Shaped the Lives of Palestinian Children

He said around five of the group had then launched an organised attack against a military post inside Israel and all had been killed by the troops.

The Palestinian protesters are demanding an end to an Israeli and Egyptian blockade on the narrow coastal strip, which is home to around 2 million Gazans. They also seek the right to return to lands that Palestinians fled or were driven from upon Israel’s founding in 1948.

Israel accuses the Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza, of orchestrating the protests along the border fence to provide cover for attacks and to distract from Gaza’s economic plight. Hamas denies the allegations.

The Israeli military has been criticised by Palestinians and international human rights groups for its lethal response to the protests. It says its troops have used “riot dispersal means” and have fired “in accordance with standard operating procedures”.

One Israeli soldier has been killed by a Palestinian sniper during the weekly protests, and tracts of Israeli land have been scorched by incendiary kites and balloons.

Hamas seized control of Gaza from Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007 and has since fought three wars with Israel, most recently in 2014.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh, addressing a conference in Istanbul from Gaza, said on Friday that Hamas was seeking to reach understandings with several parties, including Qatar, Egypt and the UN. He expressed hope that the efforts “could lead to calm in return for breaking the siege”.

(Reuters)

Gaza Border Protests: Four Palestinians, One Israeli Soldier Dead

The soldier was the first to be killed on the Gaza front in active duty since a 2014 war between Israel and Hamas. Officials say Israeli troops have killed at least 135 people since the weekly protests began on March 30.

Gaza/Jerusalem: Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli soldier along the Gaza border on Friday, said the Israeli military, which launched dozens of strikes into Gaza that killed four Palestinians, including three Hamas fighters.

The soldier was the first to be killed on the Gaza front in active duty since a 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, an Israeli army spokesman said. He was on “operational activity” when he and colleagues came under fire, the military said.

At least four Palestinians were killed in later Israeli strikes, according to Palestinian medical officials. Hamas, the armed Islamist movement which controls Gaza, said three of the dead were its fighters. The fourth was a protester, local residents and medics said. At least 120 Gazans were wounded.

Egyptian security officials and a diplomat from another unnamed state were holding contacts with Hamas and Israel in an effort to restore calm and prevent further deterioration, a Palestinian official told Reuters. Gaza was relatively quiet after midnight, residents said.

 A Palestinian official said: “Egypt has managed to restore calm through talks with the two sides in Israel and in Gaza … We hope it lasts.”

Israel said its aircraft and tanks had struck dozens of targets belonging to Hamas and across the Gaza Strip, including a drone warehouse, aerial defense systems and observation posts.

“The event that happened today is something that we cannot tolerate and cannot allow to become a routine norm, that’s why we retaliated and that’s why we continue to target military targets belonging to Hamas,” said lieutenant-colonel Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held emergency discussions with cabinet colleagues and military chiefs about the escalation, which follows four months of Palestinian border protests.

After dark on Friday, the Israeli military said that Gaza militants had launched three rockets into Israel, of which two were intercepted by its Iron Dome defence system.

Israeli defence minister Avigdor Lieberman issued a statement after holding a phone conversation with Nickolay Mladenov, UN’s envoy to the region.

“If Hamas continues with rocket launches, the results will be far more severe than they can imagine. Responsibility for the destruction and for human life will be on Hamas,” a statement quoted Lieberman as saying.

Mladenov said on Twitter that “Everyone in Gaza needs to step back from the brink. Not next week. Not tomorrow. Right NOW! Those who want to provoke Palestinians and Israelis into another war must not succeed.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who holds little sway over Hamas, called for international intervention to prevent an escalation of the violence, his office said.

Kite attacks

Earlier, Hamas defied Lieberman’s calls to stop launching incendiary balloons from the coastal enclave and he threatened to order a military offensive to prevent them.

Fires caused by kites and helium-filled balloons have ravaged farmland in Israel in recent months.

The tactic has become popular during the months-long Gaza border protests known as ‘The Great March of Return’, in which Israeli security forces have killed more than 140 Palestinians.

Palestinians are protesting to demand the right to return to homes and villages they fled or were driven from during the conflict surrounding the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948. But more recently some Gaza officials said the protests would end if Israel lifted an economic blockade of the Strip.

Israel says Hamas has been orchestrating the demonstrations to provide cover for militants’ cross-border attacks. Hamas denies this.

Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’s deputy chief in Gaza, said the kites would continue to fly. “In the face of Zionist threats, we say the resistance will continue, the marches will continue and its tools will continue to vary and take different forms, including the kites,” he said.

Hayya also said on Friday that Hamas was holding two Israeli soldiers that Israel had declared killed in action during a 2014 war in Gaza.

He said they would be returned only as part of a deal similar to that in 2011 under which captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was released in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinians jailed in Israel.

“Your soldiers are still in our hands … The occupation (Israel) will not see them until they pay the price, just like they did for Shalit,” Hayya said.

(Reuters)

Palestine President Vows to Continue Paying Stipends to Prisoners in Israel

Israel has repeatedly demanded that the Palestinians, who view prisoners as national heroes, stop paying stipends to them and their families.

Ramallah (West Bank, Palestine): Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday his government would keep paying stipends to Palestinians jailed by Israel, their families and the families of those killed by Israeli forces despite a new Israeli law to penalise the policy.

Israel has repeatedly demanded that Palestinians, who view prisoners as national heroes, stop paying stipends to them and their families, saying they are a reward and encouragement for the prisoners’ actions against it. The Palestinians say they are welfare payments to support them and their families.

A week ago, Israel enacted a law that orders holding back part of the roughly $130 million in tax revenues it collects on behalf of Palestinians each month under interim peace agreements as a penalty.

“The money we pay to families of prisoners and martyrs, which Israel opposes, we will not allow anyone to intervene with it,” said Abbas, whose Western-backed Palestinian authority has limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank. “We will continue to pay for them.”

“We are watching and are waiting and we will take the appropriate measures that suit our interest,” Abbas said in comments published by the official Palestinian Wafa News Agency.

According to Palestinian officials, the payments to inmates serving longer sentences for more serious offences are larger than to others serving shorter sentences for lighter offences. Israel says this is an incentive to commit more severe attacks.

Palestinian officials say that some 6,500 Palestinians are currently being held in Israeli jails. Many of them were convicted of attacks or planning attacks against Israelis.

(Reuters)

Gazans Bury Dead After Bloodiest Day of Border Protests

The death toll rose to 60 overnight after an eight-month-old baby died from tear gas that she inhaled at a protest camp on Monday.

Gaza: Palestinians rallied in Gaza on Tuesday for the funerals of scores of people killed by Israeli troops a day earlier, while on the Gaza-Israel border, Israeli forces took up positions to deal with the expected final day of a Palestinian protest campaign.

Monday’s violence on the border, which took place as the US opened its new embassy in Jerusalem, was the bloodiest for Palestinians since the 2014 Gaza conflict.

The death toll rose to 60 overnight after an eight-month-old baby died from tear gas that her family said she inhaled at a protest camp on Monday. More than 2,200 Palestinians were also injured by gunfire or tear gas.

Palestinian leaders have called Monday’s events a massacre and the Israeli tactic of using live fire against the protesters has drawn worldwide concern and condemnation.

Israel has said it is acting in self-defence to defend its borders and communities. Its main ally the US has backed that stance, with both saying that Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the coastal enclave, instigated the violence.

There were fears of further bloodshed on Tuesday as Palestinians planned a further protest to mark the “Nakba”, or “Catastrophe”.

That is the day Palestinians lament the creation of Israel in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in violence culminating in war between the newly created Jewish state and its Arab neighbors in 1948.

A six-week campaign of border protests dubbed “The Great March of Return” has revived calls for refugees to have the right of return to their former lands, which now lie inside Israel. It was unclear whether large crowds would turn up at the border on Tuesday for the climax to the campaign after the heavy fatalities suffered on Monday.

Palestinian medical officials say that 104 Gazans have now died since the start of the protests on March 30. No Israeli casualties have been reported.

Israeli troops deployed along the border again on Tuesday. The area was relatively quiet early in the day, with many Gazans at the funerals. Protesters are expected to go to the border later.

In Geneva, the UN human rights office condemned what it called the “appalling deadly violence” by Israeli forces and said it was extremely worried about what might happen later.

UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said Israel had a right to defend its borders according to international law, but lethal force must only be used a last resort, and was not justified by Palestinians approaching the Gaza fence.

More than two million people are crammed into the narrow Gaza Strip, which is blockaded by Egypt and Israel and suffering a humanitarian crisis.

Young Victim

At the Gaza hospital where the body of eight-month-old Laila al-Ghandour was being prepared for burial, her grandmother said the child was at one of the tented protest encampments that have been set up a few hundred yards inside the border.

“We were at the tent camp east of Gaza when the Israelis fired lots of tear gas,” Heyam Omar said.

“Suddenly my son cried at me that Lolo was weeping and screaming. I took her further away. When we got back home, the baby stopped crying and I thought she was asleep. I took her to the children’s hospital and the doctor told me she was martyred (dead).”

Palestinian demonstrators run for cover from Israeli fire and tear gas during a protest against US embassy move to Jerusalem and ahead of the 70th anniversary of Nakba, at the Israel-Gaza border in the southern Gaza Strip, May 14, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/File photo

Palestinian demonstrators run for cover from Israeli fire and tear gas during a protest against US embassy move to Jerusalem and ahead of the 70th anniversary of Nakba, at the Israel-Gaza border in the southern Gaza Strip, May 14, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/File photo

Most of the protesters stay around the tent camps, but groups of youths have ventured closer to the no-go zone along the fence, risking live fire from Israeli troops to roll burning tyres and throw stones.

Some have flown kites carrying containers of petrol that have spread fires on the Israeli side.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered a general strike across the Palestinian Territories on Tuesday and three days of national mourning.

Monday’s protests were fired by the opening ceremony for the new US embassy in Jerusalem following its relocation from Tel Aviv. The move fulfilled a pledge by US President Donald Trump, who in December recognised the contested city as the Israeli capital.

Palestinians envision East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they hope to establish in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel regards all of Jerusalem, including the eastern sector it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move that is not recognised internationally, as its “eternal and indivisible capital”.

Most countries say the status of Jerusalem  a sacred city to Jews, Muslims and Christians  should be determined in a final peace settlement and that moving their embassies now would prejudge any such deal.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump’s decisions but Palestinians have said the US can no longer serve as an honest broker in any peace process. Talks aimed a finding a two-state solution to the conflict have been frozen since 2014.

Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the Gaza violence. Hamas denied instigating it but the White House backed Netanyahu.

“The responsibility for these tragic deaths rests squarely with Hamas. Hamas is intentionally and cynically provoking this response,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters.

Trump, in a recorded message on Monday, said he remained committed to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. He was represented at the embassy ceremony by his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, US envoy to the Middle East.

The Trump administration says it has nearly completed a new Israeli-Palestinian peace plan but is undecided on how and when to roll it out.

The US on Monday blocked a Kuwait-drafted UN Security Council statement that would have expressed “outrage and sorrow at the killing of Palestinian civilians” and called for an independent investigation, UN diplomats said.

(Reuters)

Israeli Troops Wound Dozens of Palestinians Amid Gaza Border Unrest

On Friday, at least 15 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces confronting protesters.

Gaza: Israeli troops shot and wounded about 70 Palestinians among crowds demonstrating at the Gaza-Israel border on Saturday, health officials said, after one of the deadliest days of unrest in the area in years.

Thousands of people marched through the streets of Gaza in funerals for the 15 people killed by Israeli gunfire on Friday, and a national day of mourning was observed in the enclave and in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel was responsible for the violence. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu said Israel was protecting its sovereignty and citizens.

An Israeli military spokesman said he was checking the details of Saturday’s unrest. It broke out when Palestinians gathered on the border between the Hamas-run enclave and Israel then began throwing stones. Palestinian health officials said about 70 were wounded.

On Friday, at least 15 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces confronting protesters. The military said some had shot at them, rolled burning tyres and hurled rocks and fire bombs toward troops across the border.

Hamas said five of them were members of its armed wing. Israel said eight of the 15 dead belonged to Hamas, designated a terrorist group by Israel and the West, and two others belonged to other militant groups.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians had gathered on Friday along the fenced 65-km (40-mile) frontier, where tents had been erected for a planned six-week protest pressing for a right of return for refugees and their descendents to what is now Israel.

But hundreds of Palestinian youths ignored calls from the organisers and the Israeli military to stay away from the frontier and violence broke out.

The protest, organised by Hamas and other Palestinian factions, is scheduled to culminate on May 15, the day Palestinians commemorate what they call the “Nakba” or “Catastrophe” when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven out of their homes in 1948, when the state of Israel was created.

Relatives of Palestinian Hamdan Abu Amshah, who was killed along Israel border with Gaza, mourn during his funeral in Beit Hanoun town, in the northern Gaza Strip March 31, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Suhaib Salem

Israel has long ruled out any right of return, fearing an influx of Arabs that would wipe out its Jewish majority. It says refugees should resettle in a future state the Palestinians seek in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Peace talks to that end have been frozen since 2014.

Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but still maintains tight control of its land and sea borders.

Egypt also keeps its border with Gaza largely closed.

Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdainah, said: “The message of the Palestinian people is clear. The Palestinian land will always belong to its legitimate owners and the occupation will be removed.”

Israeli military spokesman Brigadier-General Ronen Manelis said Hamas was using the protests as a guise to launch attacks against Israel and ignite the area. He said violence was likely to continue along the border until May 15.

“We won’t let this turn into a ping-pong zone where they perpetrate a terrorist act and we respond with pinpoint action. If this continues we will not have no choice but to respond inside the Gaza Strip,” Manelis told reporters.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an independent investigation into Friday’s bloodshed, and appealed for all sides to refrain from any actions that could lead to further casualties or put civilians in harm’s way.