Gaza
Israel to reopen main crossing point with Gaza to boost economy
Israel on Tuesday decided to reopen the Erez crossing point on the northern tip of the Gaza Strip after economic losses in the impoverished coastal enclave had piled up.
"After an assessment of the security situation, it was decided to resume the entry of workers and merchants from Gaza into Israel through the Erez crossing as of tomorrow, Tuesday," Major General Ghassan Alyan, coordinator of Government Activities in the Palestinian territories, said in a statement to the press on Monday.
"The opening of the crossing to the movement of merchants and workers, and other civilian steps from the Gaza Strip into Israel is conditional on maintaining security and stability in the region," the statement said.
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Israel closed the crossing point on Sunday after unknown militants fired several rockets from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel, according to the Palestinian coordination office with Israel.
This happened against the backdrop of growing tension in East Jerusalem and the Israeli arrest campaigns in the West Bank during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Gaza economists said that keeping the crossing open would have constituted a qualitative leap in breaking the current state of economic deterioration and stagnation that has continued for more than 15 years due to Israeli blockade.
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They said that some 12,000 Palestinian workers and merchants are crossing from the Gaza Strip to Israel every day, bringing financial liquidity of 5 million Israeli Shekels (1.52 million U.S. dollars) to the coastal enclave.
These revenues, which were supposed to enter Gaza through the workers, would greatly alleviate the economic, social, and living crisis suffered by the Gaza Strip residents.
Israel closes crossing to Gaza workers after rockets
Israel said Saturday that it would close its border crossing to thousands of Gaza workers after a series of rockets were fired from the territory ruled by the militant Hamas group in recent days.
The Palestinians denounced the move as “collective punishment" of the impoverished territory's 2 million residents, who have lived under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces nearly 15 years ago.
The rocket fire came amid near-daily clashes at a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site over the past week, with Palestinians hurling stones and fireworks and Israeli police entering the compound and firing rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades.
Also read: Israeli police storm Jerusalem holy site after rock-throwing
The violence in Jerusalem, and a string of deadly attacks inside Israel and raids across the occupied West Bank, have raised fears of another war between Israel and Hamas like the one that broke out under similar circumstances last year.
Israel said Palestinian militants fired two rockets late Friday, with one landing in an open area inside Israel and the other falling inside Gaza. Palestinian media reported that two Gaza residents were wounded by the rocket that fell short. There was no immediate comment from health officials.
Another rocket was fired from Gaza early Saturday, but the military did not say where it landed. There were no reports of casualties or damage.
The Israeli military body that coordinates civilian affairs in Gaza said the crossing used by workers would not be re-opened on Sunday, the start of the work week. “The re-opening of the crossing will be decided accordingly with a security assessment,” it said in a statement.
In recent months, Israel had issued thousands of work permits to Palestinians from Gaza, which has been under a crippling Israeli and Egyptian blockade since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces nearly 15 years ago.
Israel portrayed the move as a goodwill gesture in order to maintain calm, but the permits — which can be revoked at any time — also give it a strong form of leverage over Palestinians. Israel grants permits to some 12,000 Palestinians in Gaza and over 100,000 to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, mostly for work in construction and other menial jobs.
Also read: Palestinians vandalise West Bank shrine as tensions soar
The Gaza workers union said the closure was “collective punishment” and would hurt the already suffering economy, where unemployment hovers around 50%. It said the timing of the closure, just before the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan, would compound the pain for families struggling to make ends meet.
Sami Amassi, the head of the union, said the permits themselves were meant to “exploit” the workers for political purposes, rather than improve their lives.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Wassem said the move “aims at tightening the siege and is a form of aggression that we cannot accept.”
“This will not succeed. The police of collective punishment against the Palestinians has always proven to fail," he told The Associated Press.
Israel captured east Jerusalem — which includes major holy sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims — along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 war. The Palestinians want all three territories to form their future state.
Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally, and has built Jewish settlements across the occupied West Bank that now house nearly 500,000 settlers alongside nearly 3 million Palestinians. There have been no substantive peace talks in more than a decade.
The violence in Jerusalem has been centered on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. Jews consider the hilltop on which it is built to be their holiest site, and refer to it as the Temple Mount because it was the location of two Jewish temples in antiquity.
The site lies at the emotional heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and clashes there have often ignited violence elsewhere.
Israel, Gaza militants trade fire as Mideast tensions mount
Palestinians fired several rockets into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip early Thursday as Israeli aircraft hit Gaza militant sites soon after an earlier rocket strike that was the second such attack this week.
The cross-border Gaza violence was an extension of Israeli-Palestinian tensions that have been boiling in Jerusalem.
The Israeli military said four rockets were fired from Gaza early Thursday and were intercepted by air defenses. Late Wednesday, a rocket was fired from Gaza, triggering Israeli airstrikes.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage, and no one claimed the rocket strikes. Israel holds the Hamas militant group that rules Gaza responsible for all rocket fire and typically responds with airstrikes within hours.
Early Thursday, Israeli warplanes conducted a series of airstrikes at a Hamas military site in the central Gaza Strip, local media reported. Social media posts by activists showed smoke billowing in the air. The Israeli military said the airstrikes were aimed at a militant site and an entrance of a tunnel leading to an underground complex holding “raw chemicals” to make rockets.
The Israeli military said later that its planes attacked another Hamas compound after an anti-aircraft missile was fired from Gaza during the initial airstrikes. It said the missile failed to hit its target and no injuries or damage were reported from the anti-aircraft missile.
Hamas had earlier issued vague threats over a planned march through Jerusalem by Israeli ultra-nationalists. But Israeli police blocked roads and prevented the marchers from reaching dense Palestinian neighborhoods in and around the Old City, after a similar event nearly a year ago helped trigger an Israel-Gaza war.
Also Read: Palestinian killed, 31 injured by Israeli soldiers in WB
Police used parked trucks and barricades just outside the walls of the Old City to close the main road leading down to Damascus Gate, the epicenter of last year’s unrest. After some pushing and shoving with police, the marchers rallied near the barricades, waving flags, singing and chanting.
Israeli police deployed in large numbers around the historic Old City, home to major religious sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims, out of concern that confrontations could further inflame an already tense situation during the Jewish holiday of Passover and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Tensions have surged in recent weeks after a series of deadly attacks inside Israel, followed by military operations in the occupied West Bank. On Monday, Palestinian militants fired a rocket from the Gaza Strip into Israel for the first time in months, and Israel responded with airstrikes. That rocket was intercepted and there were no casualties from the exchange.
Also Read: Hamas, Fatah reject Israeli threats to storm Palestinian cities in northern West Bank
It came after repeated clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
The hilltop shrine in Jerusalem’s Old City is the third holiest in Islam, while for Jews it is their holiest site, where two temples stood in antiquity. It is the emotional ground zero for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a flashpoint for previous rounds of violence.
Earlier on Wednesday, a small group of Palestinian protesters threw rocks at police while hundreds of Jewish visitors entered the flashpoint holy site.
Amateur video from the scene appeared to show police using sponge-tipped plastic projectiles intended to be non-lethal as the protesters barricaded themselves inside the mosque. Police said a firebomb thrown by one of the protesters set a carpet outside the mosque on fire, but it was quickly extinguished. No injuries were reported.
Hamas said Wednesday ahead of the march that Israel would bear “full responsibility for the repercussions” if it allowed the marchers “to approach our holy sites,” without elaborating.
Itamar Ben Gvir, an ultra-nationalist lawmaker who frequently stages provocative visits to Palestinian areas, attended the rally and was greeted with cheers. He is a disciple of a radical rabbi whose violently anti-Arab ideology was once shunned in Israel but is now having a revival.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a statement that he would bar Ben Gvir from going to Damascus Gate. “I don’t intend to allow petty politics to endanger human lives,” he said.
Last May, Palestinian militants in Gaza fired rockets toward Jerusalem as a much larger group of thousands of Israelis held a flag march to the Old City following weeks of protests and clashes in and around Al-Aqsa. Those events led to an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas.
Israeli nationalists stage such marches to try to assert sovereignty over east Jerusalem, which Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the West Bank and Gaza, and annexed in a move not recognized internationally. The Palestinians seek an independent state in all three territories and consider east Jerusalem their capital.
Organizer Noam Nisan defended the march in an interview with Kan public radio before it was held, saying: “A Jew with a flag in Jerusalem is not a provocation.”
He said the demonstration was a response to Palestinians pelting buses with stones just outside the Old City earlier this week. The attack happened near an entrance leading to the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, which is next to Al-Aqsa.
Israeli jets hit militant targets in Gaza after rocket fire
Israel’s military said early Sunday it launched strikes against militant targets in the Gaza Strip, a day after rockets were fired from the Hamas-ruled territory.
Video filmed in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, showed three huge explosions and fighter jets could be heard flying overhead. There was no immediate confirmation on possible casualties.
The Israeli military said the attacks targeted a rocket manufacturing facility and a military post for Hamas. It also blamed the militant Islamic group for any violence emanating from the territory it controls.
The airstrikes come as retaliation for two rockets fired from Gaza on Saturday which landed in the Mediterranean Sea off central Israel.
Read: Israel set to OK 3,000 West Bank settler homes this week
It was not clear whether the rockets were meant to hit Israel, but Gaza-based militant groups often test-fire missiles toward the sea. There were no reports of casualties from Saturday’s rocket launches.
Apart from a single incident in September, there has been no cross-border rocket fire since a cease-fire ended an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in May.
The cease-fire, brokered by Egypt and other mediators, has been fragile. The militant Hamas group says Israel did not take serious steps to ease the blockade it imposed on Gaza with Egypt’s help when the Islamic movement seized control of the coastal enclave in 2007.
Tension are also high as other groups like the smaller but more hardline Islamic Jihad threaten military escalation if Israel doesn’t end the administrative detention of a Palestinian prisoner who has been on a hunger strike for over 130 days.
Read: Israel, Palestinian militants use bodies as bargaining chips
On Wednesday, Palestinian militants in Gaza shot and lightly wounded an Israeli civilian near the security fence and Israel responded with tank fire targeting multiple Hamas sites in the first exchange of fire in months.
Defiant in war and isolation, Hamas plays long game in Gaza
Each month, hundreds of trucks heavy with fuel, cement and other goods cross a plowed no man’s land between Egypt and the Gaza Strip — and Hamas becomes stronger.
Hamas collects tens of millions of dollars a month in taxes and customs at the crossing in the border town of Rafah, according to estimates. The funds help it operate a government and powerful armed wing while international aid covers most of the basic needs of Gaza’s 2 million residents.
That this is happening with the quiet acquiescence of Israel, which considers Hamas a terrorist group, might come as a surprise.
Israel says it works with Egypt to supervise Rafah in return for quiet. The opening of the crossing “was a common interest for all parties to ensure a lifeline for Hamas that would enable it to maintain calm in Gaza and prevent an explosion,” said Mohammed Abu Jayyab, an economist and editor-in-chief of a business daily in Gaza.
But there’s more to it. After surviving four wars and a nearly 15-year blockade, Hamas has only become more resilient, and Israel has been forced to accept that its sworn enemy is here to stay.
It has largely accepted Hamas’ rule in Gaza because a prolonged invasion is seen as too costly. At the same time, Hamas furnishes Israeli leaders with a convenient boogeyman -- how can the Palestinians be allowed statehood if they are divided between two governments, one of which steadfastly opposes Israel’s very existence?
Meanwhile, Hamas’ willingness to use violence — in the form of rockets, protests along the border or incendiary balloons — has helped it to wrest concessions from Israel.
“Hamas stuck to its position and the Israeli government made a lot of compromises” after the war in May, said Omar Shaban, a Gaza-based political analyst. “Hamas was stubborn.”
MILLIONS EACH MONTH
After Hamas seized power from the Palestinian Authority in 2007, Israel and Egypt imposed a punishing blockade aimed at preventing the group from arming. A massive economy based on smuggling tunnels sprang up in and around Rafah. Hamas levied taxes on goods that were brought in.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi ordered the tunnels destroyed after leading the 2013 overthrow of an Islamist government that had been sympathetic to Hamas. But four years and another Gaza war later, Egypt agreed to Hamas’ demands to open an above-ground commercial crossing.
Imports through Gaza’s only other functioning commercial crossing — with Israel — are already taxed by Israeli authorities, who transfer some of the revenues to the Palestinian Authority, so Hamas can only exact small tariffs without noticeably inflating prices. Rafah belongs to Hamas.
Hamas does not release figures on public revenues or expenses. An Egyptian government media officer did not respond to a request for comment.
Some 2,000 truckloads of cement, fuel and other goods entered through Rafah in September, nearly twice the monthly average in 2019 and 2020, according to Gisha, an Israeli rights group that closely monitors the Gaza closures.
Rami Abu Rish, the managing director of the crossings at the Hamas-run Economy Ministry — who used to supervise tax collection from the tunnels — says authorities derive no more than $1 million a month from the Israeli crossing and up to $6 million from Rafah.
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But the Palestinian Authority’s Finance Ministry estimates Hamas derives as much as $30 million a month, mainly from taxes on fuel and tobacco coming in through Rafah, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal figures.
A cigarette importer in Gaza — who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing the trade — said a small group of merchants imports 9,000 to 15,000 crates of cigarettes through Rafah each month, with Hamas charging $1,000 to $2,000 per crate. That alone would bring in $18 million on average.
Abu Jayyab, the Gaza economist, estimates Hamas makes up to $27 million a month. That’s in addition to taxes and customs paid on cement and fuel.
Mohammed Agha, whose family owns a chain of gas stations in Gaza, was one of the few businessmen who agreed to speak publicly about Hamas’ management of the crossings. He said gas station owners are forced to buy most of their fuel from the supplies coming through Rafah because Hamas benefits from the trade.
He said Hamas jailed him for two months in 2019 when he protested the arrangement.
“We as businessmen are sustaining the government” as the wider economy suffers, he said. “Before Hamas, 1,000 shekels (about $320) a month was enough for a family to get by. Now, 5,000 isn’t enough because they tax the citizens.”
The money Hamas collects could go to its estimated 50,000 civil servants or supporters of the political movement. Or it could be spent on Hamas’ armed wing, which has improved its military capabilities with every war and fired over 4,000 rockets at Israel in 11 days last spring.
HAMAS AND ISRAEL
Hamas burst onto the scene during the first intifada, or uprising, in 1987. As the then-dominant Palestine Liberation Organization joined the nascent peace process with Israel, Hamas embraced armed struggle.
The militant group launched scores of attacks, including suicide bombings, in the 1990s and 2000s. Hundreds of Israelis were killed. The group called for Israel’s demise and rejected peace negotiations. It adopted a more moderate political platform in 2017, but its goals hardly changed.
In 2006, Hamas won a landslide victory in Palestinian elections, igniting a bloody power struggle with President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party. Hamas seized power in Gaza the following year, confining his authority to parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Abbas’ peaceful approach has spared the West Bank from war and isolation, but he has been powerless to end the 54-year military occupation or stop the expansion of Jewish settlements. There have been no substantive peace talks in over a decade, and Israel’s current prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is opposed to Palestinian statehood.
By contrast, Israel withdrew all its settlers and troops from Gaza in 2005 — after a second and more violent Palestinian uprising — and its soldiers cannot enter without risking war.
Israel refuses to talk to Hamas, but over the last decade it has negotiated a series of informal cease-fires through Egyptian, Qatari and U.N. mediators in which it has eased the blockade in return for calm.
Read: Hamas says oxygen bottles exploded in Lebanon camp, not arms
Bassem Naim, a senior Hamas official, attributes much of his group’s popularity to “the failure of the other project,” referring to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.
“The majority of Palestinian factions believe that resistance, and particularly armed resistance, has to be one of the tools in our struggle for freedom.” He said the easing of the blockade “doesn’t address the root of the problem, which is the siege and the occupation.”
Bennett was an outspoken critic of the previous government’s policy of allowing Qatar to send suitcases of cash into Gaza through an Israeli crossing.
But within months of becoming prime minister, the payments to needy families resumed through a U.N.-run voucher system, and Qatar resumed its contribution to the Hamas-run government’s payroll in the form of fuel.
Israel denies it has given in to Hamas’ demands. The new government says it has modified policies to try to ensure that humanitarian aid bypasses Hamas while responding militarily to even minor attacks.
All construction materials — including those brought in through Rafah — are imported through a monitoring system established with the U.N. and the PA after the 2014 war. Israel says it is barring all new, large construction projects until a deal is reached to return two captives and the remains of two Israeli soldiers held by Hamas since 2014.
Restrictions on so-called dual-use items that could be used for military purposes are in place at both the Israeli and Egyptian crossings, said Abu Rish, the Hamas crossing official.
A senior Israeli Defense Ministry official said the goal is to maximize humanitarian aid while minimizing the risk that it benefits Hamas. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, would only say that Israel is aware of the Rafah imports, and is relying on Egypt to ensure that the same restrictions are in place there as there are at the Israeli crossing.
‘THE OTHER CHOICE IS NOT BETTER’
Even as Hamas generates revenue for its government and from the crossings and taxing businesses, the international community sustains the people of Gaza.
U.N. agencies have spent more than $4.5 billion in Gaza since 2014, including $600 million in 2020 alone. Most of that funding goes through the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, which provides food aid, health services and operates schools for some 280,000 children.
The wealthy Gulf state of Qatar has sent $1.3 billion to Gaza since 2012 to fund reconstruction and health services, including $500 million pledged after the May war.
The largesse can be seen in Gaza City, where Qatari funds were used to build a scenic seaside promenade and expand a main road that runs past a Qatari-funded housing complex and the Qatari diplomatic mission, which resembles an embassy.
On the surface it all looks very prosperous, with families strolling past beach cafes, amusement parks and even a handful of luxury hotels. But the new construction is merely a backdrop to the grinding living conditions endured by most Gazans.
Unemployment hovers around 45% and nearly three out of five Gazans live in poverty, the World Bank reported in November. The average Gazan only has 13 hours of electricity a day and tap water is undrinkable.
Still, there has been almost no public opposition to Hamas within Gaza because Palestinians see no viable alternative. The Palestinian Authority has come to be seen by many as a corrupt, authoritarian extension of Israeli rule.
Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, said the absence of protests “doesn’t mean the Palestinians in Gaza are happy with Hamas.”
He attributed the lack of visible opposition to Hamas’ violent crackdown on protests over taxes and the rising cost of living in 2019, as well as the PA’s failures.
“The other choice is not better than Hamas,” he said. “Fatah and the PA are still seen by the Palestinian people as a very corrupted organization.”
A poll this month found that despite the deprivations wrought by the confrontations between Hamas and Israel, 47% of Gazans would vote for Hamas if parliamentary elections were held, compared to just 29% who would vote for Abbas’ Fatah.
Hamas isn’t going anywhere. And Israel knows it.
“They are facing a number of problems here,” Abusada said. “But resilience is part of their strategy. They’re not going to give up.”
Israel hits Hamas targets in Gaza in response to rocket fire
Israeli aircraft struck a series of targets in the Gaza Strip early Monday in response to a series of rocket launches out of the Hamas-ruled territory. It was the third consecutive night of fighting between the enemies.
Tensions have been heightened following last week’s escape from an Israeli prison by six Palestinian inmates, as well as struggling efforts by Egypt to broker a long-term cease-fire in the wake of an 11-day war last May.
Read: Gaza border clashes wound 24 Palestinians, Israeli policeman
The Israeli military reported three separate rocket launches late Sunday and early Monday, saying at least two of them were intercepted by its rocket defenses.
In response, it said it attacked a number of Hamas targets. There were no reports of casualties on either side.
Over the weekend, Israel caught four of the six Palestinian inmates, who tunneled out of a maximum security prison on Sept. 6. Palestinian militants responded with rocket fire. Israel’s search for the last two prisoners is continuing.
Meanwhile, Egyptian-mediated efforts to deliver a long-term truce have struggled with the sides unable to agree on a system to renew Qatari payments to needy Gaza families. Israel has demanded guarantees that Hamas does not divert the money for military use.
Gaza is an impoverished territory whose population is overwhelmingly comprised of families who fled or were forced from properties in what is now Israel during the war surrounding Israel’s establishment in 1948.
Read:Human Rights Watch: Israeli war crimes apparent in Gaza war
Hamas is pushing for Israel to end a crippling blockade that has devastated Gaza’s economy, while Israel is demanding that Hamas free two captive Israeli civilians and return the remains of two dead Israeli soldiers.
Hamas has controlled Gaza since ousting the forces of the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority in 2007, a year after the Islamic militant group won Palestinian parliamentary elections.
Since then, Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and numerous smaller rounds of fighting.
Israel strikes Gaza after Hamas fires incendiary balloons
Israel launched airstrikes on the Gaza Strip late Thursday for a second time since a shaky cease-fire ended last month’s 11-day war. The strikes came after activists mobilized by Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers launched incendiary balloons into Israel for a third straight day.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the strikes, which could be heard from Gaza City. Israel also carried out airstrikes early Wednesday, targeting what it is said were Hamas facilities, without killing or wounding anyone.
The military said fighter jets struck Hamas “military compounds and a rocket launch site” late Thursday in response to the balloons. It said its forces were preparing for a “variety of scenarios including a resumption of hostilities.”
Also read: Israeli airstrikes target Gaza sites, first since cease-fire
Rocket sirens went off in Israeli communities near Gaza shortly after the airstrikes. The military later said they were triggered by “incoming fire, not rockets.”
Surveillance camera footage obtained by The Associated Press showed what appeared to be heavy machine-gun fire into the air from Gaza, a possible attempt by Palestinian militants to shoot down aircraft. Other footage showed projectiles being fired from Gaza, but it was unclear what kind or where they landed.
Tensions have remained high since a cease-fire halted the war on May 21, even as Egyptian mediators have met with Israeli and Hamas officials to try and shore up the informal truce.
Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and countless smaller skirmishes since the Islamic militant group seized power from rival Palestinians forces in 2007. Israel and Egypt have imposed a crippling blockade on Gaza, which is home to more than 2 million Palestinians, since Hamas took over.
Earlier, Israeli police used stun grenades and a water cannon spraying skunk water to disperse Palestinian protesters from Damascus Gate in east Jerusalem, the epicenter of weeks of protests and clashes in the run-up to the Gaza war.
After the crowds were dispersed, Palestinians could be seen throwing rocks and water bottles at ultra-Orthodox Jews walking in the area.
Calls had circulated for protesters to gather at Damascus Gate in response to a rally held there by Jewish ultranationalists on Tuesday in which dozens of Israelis had chanted “Death to Arabs” and “May your village burn.” The police had forcibly cleared the square and provided security for that rally, part of a parade to celebrate Israel’s conquest of east Jerusalem.
In a separate incident, a Palestinian teenager died Thursday after being shot by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank during a protest against a settlement outpost, the fourth demonstrator to be killed since the outpost was established last month.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that a soldier stationed near the wildcat outpost in the West Bank saw a group of Palestinians approaching, and that one “hurled a suspicious object at him, which exploded adjacent to the soldier.” The army said that the soldier fired in the air, then shot the Palestinian who threw the object.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said Thursday that Ahmad Shamsa, 15, died of a gunshot wound sustained a day earlier.
Settlers established the outpost, which they refer to as Eviatar, near the northern West Bank town of Nablus last month and say it is now home to dozens of families. Palestinians say it is built on private land and fear it will grow and merge with other large settlements nearby.
Also read: Israeli airstrikes kill 6, level large family home in Gaza
Nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers live in some 130 settlements across the occupied West Bank. The Palestinians and much of the international community view the settlements as a violation of international law and a major obstacle to peace.
Israeli authorities have evacuated the outpost on several occasions. They appear reluctant to do so this time because it would embarrass Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and other right-wing members of the fragile government sworn in over the weekend.
Palestinians from the nearby village of Beita have held several protests in which demonstrators have hurled stones and Israeli troops have fired tear gas and live ammunition. Four Palestinians have been killed since mid-May, including Shamsa and another teenager.
The Israeli military also shot and killed a Palestinian woman on Wednesday, saying she had tried to ram her car into a group of soldiers guarding a West Bank construction site.
In a statement, the army said soldiers fired at the woman in Hizmeh, just north of Jerusalem, after she exited the car and pulled out a knife. The statement did not say how close the woman was to the soldiers, and the army did not release any photos or video of the incident.
The family of Mai Afaneh insisted she had no reason or ability to carry out an attack.
Also read: Israel, Egypt talk truce with Hamas, rebuilding Gaza Strip
In recent years, Israel has seen a series of shootings, stabbings and car ramming attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians in the occupied West Bank. Most have been carried out by Palestinians with no apparent links to organized militant groups.
Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups say the soldiers often use excessive force and could have stopped some assailants without killing them. In some cases, they say that innocent people have been identified as attackers and shot.
The Palestinians seek the West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority exerts limited self-rule in population centers, as part of a future state along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Israel captured all three territories in the 1967 war and says Jerusalem is indivisible. There have been no substantive peace talks in more than a decade.
Israel suspends ultranationalists' march in east Jerusalem
Israeli police on Monday said they blocked a planned procession by Jewish ultranationalists through parts of Jerusalem’s Old City, following warnings that it could reignite tensions that led to a punishing 11-day war against Gaza’s militants last month.
The parade, which celebrates Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, was underway on May 10 when Hamas militants in Gaza fired rockets toward the holy city, setting off heavy fighting. Some 254 people were killed in Gaza and 13 in Israel before a cease-fire took effect on May 21.
The war was preceded by weeks of clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators in the Old City and in the nearby neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where Jewish settlers have waged a decades-long campaign to evict Palestinian families from their homes.
READ: Israel arrests Jerusalem activists in contested neighborhood
The procession, which had intended to go through the through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, is considered by Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem to be a provocation.
In a statement, police said the proposal to hold the parade later this week was not approved, but new plans would be considered. The decision was attacked by organizers, who accused police of caving in to pressure from Hamas.
Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the hard-line Religious Zionism party, tweeted a warning to embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “not to give in to Hamas threats.”
Renewed tensions in east Jerusalem or fighting with Hamas could complicate Israel’s shaky politics. Netanyahu’s opponents last week said they have formed a coalition that could remove the prime minister from office after a 12-year term. The new coalition is expected to be sworn into office in the coming days.
Over the weekend, Israeli police arrested and released a veteran reporter for the Al Jazeera satellite channel who had regularly been covering the Sheikh Jarrah. And on Sunday, authorities stormed the home of a leading activist in the neighborhood, arresting her and her brother. The siblings were later released.
Before Muna al-Kurd was freed, police briefly clashed with a crowd outside the station, throwing stun grenades.
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Sheikh Jarrah is one of the most sensitive parts of east Jerusalem, home to sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims and which Israel captured in 1967 and annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Israel views the entire city as its capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
The settlers are using a 1970 law that allows Jews to reclaim formerly Jewish properties lost during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, a right denied to Palestinians who lost property in the same conflict.
The War on Gaza
You and I are human beings, with family, perhaps children and grandchildren, certainly with friends and neighbors. We are of different nationalities, ethnicities, beliefs. We have all seen extreme poverty, and witnessed wars and the killing and the dying, whether firsthand or through the news.
We have similar sentiments. Empathy is a part of us, in our DNA. Unless one can completely block out this aspect of all human beings, it is impossible to view what has happened in the last weeks the people of Gaza without being heartbroken, angry, and feeling helpless.
The country inflicting such disproportionate war on the inhabitants of Gaza is the one that was carved out of ancient Palestine following one of the worst, and one of the most heartbreaking man-made human calamities, the Jewish Holocaust.
As the smoke clears, and as both parties finish their “victory celebrations,” it is on all of us to ask ourselves what we can do.
A mostly barren region of the world, the Israeli and Palestinian land is the holy birthplace of the prophets of the three primary monotheist religions of the world. One would think that with the wisdom of these powerful religions, it would be a heaven of harmony. Instead, we find a hell on Earth, a ground soaked in the blood and tears of far too many innocent victims.
No conflict has consumed so much thought, wisdom and mediation by so many sages. It has produced more “peace plans” and “road maps” than any other conflict of the last century, the writers and planners at times rewarded prematurely with the Nobel Peace Prize, creating false optimism followed by disillusion, more frustration and anger. The hopes of Palestinians have been betrayed by their own leaders, by the rulers of their fellow Arab nations, and by the US.
We have just witnessed a new round of horrors, unleashed by an Israeli state that is apparently without moral constraints, one that believes it somehow has God’s exclusive mandate to be the unchallenged regional power, and one that believes itself entitled to nuclear arsenal that is denied to others in the region. Hamas rockets are easily overwhelmed by the unmatched air force and infantry army of Israel, the world’s 4th world military power.
Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II.
AS of 2020, the United States had provided Israel $146 billion (current, or noninflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. In 2021, the Trump Administration requested and additional $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing for Israel and $500 million in missile defense aid. Israel receives the second largest foreign aid allocation in the US budget, second only to Afghanistan, including ultra-modern lethal weapons, advanced missile shield technology and the most advanced jet fighters.
Rhetoric and fist-waving aside, Israel has no discernible external threats to its survival. Iran is as close as it comes to a plausible enemy – but with no nuclear weapons against Israel’s 200 nuclear warheads it is difficult to call this credible. The rockets fired by Hamas, most of them destroyed by Israel’s “Iron Dome,” are comparable to a child throwing rocks at an army of tanks in proportion to Israeli might. Yet the Israeli army has continued to wage wars against the Palestinian people, as it has done since the Arab-Israel war of half a century ago.
The recent conflict, ignited by the invasion by Israeli security forces of the most sacred of Muslim sites, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, resulting in hundreds wounded, is only the latest move in a long campaign. It is made even more absurd today by the fact that 44% of the population of Gaza is under 14 years old, a demographic often seen in populations that have been subjected to campaigns of annihilation.
The US is an irreplaceable partner in the region and is critical to is resolution. The Biden Administration is inheriting a legacy of extraordinary blunders by the Trump administration that were received by Netanyahu as a green light and license for a scorched earth war against the Palestinians. It will demand courage and wisdom, and strong international support, to undo.
A path to the resolution must begin with all parties being held to the recognized international standards for crimes against humanity. No alliance with the powerful should shield any state or party from accountability for the violation of these standards. International Standards of crimes against one’s fellow human beings, when applied to Slobodan Milošević or Omar Al-Bashir but not to Benjamin Netanyahu become pointless.
Every conflict in this ongoing theater of insanity, including the “eviction” by armed forces from one’s home, to missiles landing in one’s bedroom in Gaza to a 10-year-old Israeli girl cowering in fear in a shelter, should reaffirm the validity and urgent need for the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. The only other option is a unified state composed of Israelis and Palestinians, with the recognition that Palestinians would be the majority. There are no other options.
The next steps on this vital road must now include unimpeded access to Gaza for international humanitarian agencies, and international support for the reconstruction and compensation for the destruction of infrastructures and human lives needlessly lost and wounded. Our common empathy and humanity demand it.
(This article was published in Wall Street International on June 4, 2021 from New York, USA)
Jerusalem evictions that fueled Gaza war could still happen
A long-running campaign by Jewish settlers to evict dozens of Palestinian families in east Jerusalem is still underway, even after it fueled weeks of unrest and helped ignite an 11-day Gaza war.
An intervention by Israel’s attorney general at the height of the unrest has put the most imminent evictions on hold. But rights groups say evictions could still proceed in the coming months as international attention wanes, potentially igniting another round of bloodshed.
The settlers have been waging a decades-long campaign to evict the families from densely populated Palestinian neighborhoods in the so-called Holy Basin just outside the walls of the Old City, in one of the most sensitive parts of east Jerusalem.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, home to holy sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, in the 1967 war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. Israel views the entire city as its capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
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The settlers are using a 1970 law that allows Jews to reclaim properties lost during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, a right denied to Palestinians who lost property in the same conflict, including Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The Israeli rights group Ir Amim, which closely follows the various court cases, estimates that at least 150 households in the neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan have been served with eviction notices and are at various stages in a long legal process.
The plight of four extended families comprising six households in Sheikh Jarrah, who were at risk of imminent eviction, triggered protests that eventually merged with demonstrations over the policing of a flashpoint holy site. After warning Israel to halt the evictions and withdraw from the site, Hamas fired long-range rockets at Jerusalem on May 10, triggering heavy fighting between Israel and the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza.
As tensions rose, Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit secured the postponement of the final hearing in the case of the four families. Another group of families requested that the attorney general also intervene in their cases, securing a delay. Israelis are currently trying to form a new government, adding more uncertainty to the process.
That has bought time for the families, but nothing has been resolved.
“Everything is very much hanging in the balance,” said Amy Cohen, a spokeswoman for Ir Amim. Rights advocates fear Israel will proceed with the evictions once the furor dies down and international attention turns elsewhere.
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“We’re talking about over 1,000 Palestinians in both these two areas that are at risk of mass displacement,” Cohen said. “Because these measures are taking place in such an incremental manner, it’s so much easier to dismiss.”
The families in Sheikh Jarrah are stuck in limbo. A total of at least 65 families in two areas of the neighborhood are threatened with eviction, according to Ir Amim, including a group of families set to be evicted in August.
Banners hang in the street in Sheikh Jarrah, and small, occasional protests are still held there. Police man checkpoints at either end of the road and keep watch as Jewish settlers — who seized one of the homes in 2009 — come and go.
The settlers say they acquired the land from Jews who owned it before the 1948 war, when Jordan captured what is now east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. Jordan settled several Palestinian families on the land in the early 1950s after they fled from what is now Israel during the 1948 war. Settlers began trying to evict them shortly after Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 war.
For Palestinians, the evictions conjure bitter memories of what they refer to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of Israel’s creation, when some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the population — fled or were driven from their homes as the new state battled five Arab armies. Most ended up in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring countries.
“This isn’t just about Sheikh Jarrah, it’s about the entire Israeli occupation, that’s the problem. They aren’t going to stop here,” says Saleh al-Diab, who was born, grew up, married and raised his own children in one of the homes under threat in Sheikh Jarrah.
“You lose your home to them in 1948 and then they come back after 1967 and take your home again,” he said.
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Yaakov Fauci, a settler from Long Island, New York, who gained internet fame after a widely circulated video showed a Palestinian resident scolding him for stealing her home, says the Palestinians are squatting on private property.
“They’ve lived here since 1956. This is not exactly ancestral land going back to the times of Abraham,” he said. Fauci says he is a tenant and has no personal involvement in the legal dispute, but he insists the land belongs to the Jewish people.
“We don’t want to cause them any pain and suffering, but we need to have our land back,” he said. “If there are people there, they have to unfortunately get out.”
Ir Amim estimates that settler organizations have already evicted 10 families in Sheikh Jarrah and at least 74 families in Silwan, a few kilometers (miles) away, in the last few decades.
The Israeli government and a settler organization that markets properties in Sheikh Jarrah did not respond to requests for comment. Israel has previously said the evictions are a private real estate dispute and accused Hamas of seizing on the issue to incite violence.
The settler movement enjoys strong support from the Israeli government and the right-wing parties that dominate Israeli politics. The settlers have benefitted from Israeli policies going back to 1967 that have encouraged the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem while severely restricting the growth of Palestinian communities.
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Today, more than 700,000 Jewish settlers live in both territories, mostly in built-up residential towns and neighborhoods. The Palestinians and much of the international community view the settlements as a violation of international law and a major obstacle to peace.
Ir Amim says Israeli authorities could intervene in any number of ways to prevent the Jerusalem evictions, including by modifying the law that allows settlers to take over such properties.
Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union, has demanded that Israel rein in the settlers as part of the informal truce brokered by Egypt that ended the Gaza war. Egyptian mediators are exploring ways to prevent the evictions, and previous cease-fires have included significant concessions to Hamas.
A war that destroyed hundreds of homes in Gaza may have ensured that residents of Sheikh Jarrah can remain in theirs, at least for now.