Israel
Israel troops kill 2 Palestinians during raid in occupied West Bank
Israeli troops shot and killed two Palestinians during a military raid in the occupied West Bank early Thursday, Palestinian media reported, as Israeli-Palestinian violence continued to surge.
The official news agency Wafa identified the dead as Jawad Bawatqa, 58, and Adham Jabarin. They were shot in the Jenin refugee camp in northern West Bank.
Read more: UN to hold emergency meeting on Israeli visit to holy site
The Palestinian media said Bawatqa was a teacher, while the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade — an armed militia affiliated with Fatah, the secular political party that controls the Palestinian Authority — claimed Jabarin as a fighter.
The Israeli military said it had no immediate comment.
Palestinian media also reported that the Israeli forces arrested a local official of the militant group Islamic Jihad in Jenin.
Tensions have soared in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has been conducting near-nightly arrest raids since last spring, after a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israelis that killed 19 people. Another 10 Israelis were killed in a second string of attacks later last year.
Israel says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see them as further entrenchment of Israel’s open-ended, 55-year occupation of lands they seek for their future state.
Read more: Over 90 nations express ‘deep concern’ at Israeli punitive measure against Palestinians
Thursday’s deaths put at 17 the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military in the West Bank since the beginning of 2023.
Nearly 150 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 2022, according to figures by the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, making it the deadliest year since 2004.
Israel says most of the dead were militants. But Palestinian stone-throwers, youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in confrontations also have been killed.
Israel's outgoing army chief rebukes far-right government
Israel's outgoing army chief on Friday warned against plans by Benjamin Netanyahu’s new coalition to grant more control to pro-settler lawmakers and make other changes to the Israeli security establishment, joining a loud chorus of criticism against the most right-wing government in the country's history.
In several interviews with Israeli news outlets just days before he steps down, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi took unusually sharp aim at Netanyahu's coalition agreements with hard-line Jewish settler activists who seek to entrench Israeli rule in the occupied West Bank, restructure the Defense Ministry and control a special paramilitary police unit.
"This is likely to cause damage and adversely affect our preparedness for war,” Kochavi told the Israeli news site Ynet.
While the coalition deals have sparked furor from many segments of Israeli society, Kochavi's worries have deep significance. Among Jewish Israelis, the military is considered an emblem of stability and one of the country’s most trusted institutions.
Read more: Thousands of Israelis protest new government's policies
Kochavi expressed particular concern about the coalition's plans to create three separate sources of authority in the West Bank. Netanyahu gave his right-wing finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, control over an Israeli military body that regulates planning for Israeli settlements and Palestinian construction in parts of the West Bank where Israel maintains civilian control.
Smotrich is an advocate of the outright annexation of parts of the West Bank that the Palestinians want for their hoped-for independent state.
“There cannot be two commanding authorities (in the West Bank),” Kochavi said. “The separation between us is not good and may cause damage and lead to a worse situation for all populations.”
Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem — territory the Palestinians seek for a future state. Israel has constructed dozens of Jewish settlements home to around 500,000 Israelis who live alongside around 2.5 million Palestinians. Most of the international community considers Israel’s West Bank settlements illegal and an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.
Another move that Kochavi fears could undermine the army’s chain of command in the West Bank stems from Netanyahu's agreement with Itamar Ben-Gvir, a right-wing lawmaker whose his views were so extreme that the army banned him from compulsory military service.
Read more: New Israeli government vows to develop West Bank tourism
As national security minister, Ben-Gvir now oversees the paramilitary border police, which, until now, has worked under the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank.
"The work that the border police is doing in Judea and Samaria is excellent and I hope that the situation remains just as it is today. The chain of authority must be maintained,” Kochavi said, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name.
In other interviews, Kochavi said he called Netanyahu twice to warn him about the far-reaching consequences of the coalition's moves for the cohesion of the defense establishment.
Netanyahu has sought to assure the public — as well as the U.S. and Israel's European and Arab allies — that he has veto power over any changes that the far-right ministers make. But critics say he has so far failed to restrain his coalition partners.
After serving nearly four years as chief of staff, Kochavi is set to hand over the reins to Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi next week.
Thousands of Israelis protest new government's policies
Thousands of Israelis took to the streets Saturday evening to protest plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government that opponents say threaten democracy and freedoms.
The protesters gathered in the central city of Tel Aviv days after the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in the country’s 74-year history was sworn in.
Read more: New Israeli government vows to develop West Bank tourism
“The settler government is against me,” read one placard. Another banner read, “Housing, Livelihood, Hope.” Some protesters carried rainbow flags.
The protest was led by left-wing and Arab members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. They contend that proposed plans by the new Cabinet will hinder judicial system and widen societal gaps.
The left-wing protesters slammed Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who on Wednesday unveiled the government’s long-promised overhaul of the judicial system that aims to weaken the country’s Supreme Court.
Critics accused the government of declaring war on the legal system, saying the plan will upend Israel’s system of checks and balances and undermine its democratic institutions by giving absolute power to the new governing coalition.
Read more: Israeli missile strikes put Damascus airport out of service
“We are really afraid that our country is going to lose the democracy and we are going to a dictatorship just for reasons of one person which wants to get rid of his law trial," said Danny Simon, 77, a protester from Yavne, south of Tel Aviv. He was referring to Netanyahu, who was indicted on corruption charges in 2021, allegations that he has denied.
Protesters also called for peace and co-existence between Jews and Arab residents of the country.
“We can see right now many laws being advocated for against LGBTQ, against Palestinians, against larger minorities in Israel,” said Rula Daood of “Standing Together,” a grassroots movement of Arabs and Jews. “We are here to say loud and clear that all of us, Arabs and Jews and different various communities inside of Israel, demand peace, equality and justice.”
UN to hold emergency meeting on Israeli visit to holy site
The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting Thursday at the request of the Palestinians and other Islamic and non-Islamic nations to protest the visit of an ultranationalist Israeli Cabinet minister to a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site and demand an end to Israeli extremist provocations and respect for the historic status quo at the site revered by Muslims and Jews.
Tuesday’s visit by Israel’s new National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a West Bank settler leader who draws inspiration from a racist rabbi, to the site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif, Arabic for the Noble Sanctuary, drew fierce condemnation from across the Muslim world, a strong rebuke from the United States, and fueled fears of unrest as Palestinian militant groups threatened to act in response.
The Palestinian U.N. ambassador, Riyad Mansour, told reporters Wednesday after meetings with Arab ambassadors, representatives of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the 120-member Nonaligned Movement and others that there is not only widespread condemnation of Ben-Gvir’s visit but also of the broader “environment of extremism” surrounding the most extremist government in Israel’s history.
He accused Israel of committing “aggression” not only against Muslim holy sites including the Al Aqsa Mosque but against Christian sites including graveyards.
The site is the holiest site in Judaism, home to the ancient biblical temples. Today, it houses the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. Since Israel captured the site in 1967, Jews have been allowed to visit but not pray there.
Describing the Temple Mount as “the most important place for the Jewish people,” Ben-Gvir decried what he called “racist discrimination” against Jewish visits to the site.
With the Dome of the Rock, the Islamic shrine, in the background and waving his fingers at the camera, he said the visits would continue. As for threats from Gaza’s Hamas militant group, Ben-Gvir, known for his anti-Arab rhetoric and provocative stunts, said in a video clip taken during the visit: “The Israeli government won’t surrender to a murderous organization, to a vile terrorist organization.”
Mansour, flanked by ambassadors from about 20 countries, said that at Thursday’s emergency Security Council meeting, also supported by the United Arab Emirates, China, France and Malta, “we will not be satisfied with beautiful statements which will be uttered.”
“We want them to be implemented in a concrete way,” he said. “We want this behavior not to be repeated in Al Aqsa Mosque and Al-Haram Al-Sharif, and we want a guarantee of honoring and respecting the historic status quo in deeds, not only in words.”
Assistant Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Khaled Khiare will brief the Security Council at Thursday’s meeting, U.N. spokesman Stepane Dujarric said.
Jordan’s U.N. Ambassador Mahmoud Hmoud said his country, whose ruler King Abdullah II is custodian of the Islamic and Christian holy sites, is “extremely concerned at the incursion” by minister Ben-Gvir and the Israeli government.
“This is an action of extremism that purports to create a new cycle of violence,” he said. “The Security Council has to take its responsibility seriously and stop such attempts.”
Hmoud said Israel has made a commitment to respect “the historic legal status quo” and its obligations under international law, but unfortunately Ben-Gvir made an incursion into the Al-Aqsa Mosque in violation of Israel’s legal obligations.
“There has to be a firm stand by the international community against this because it will happen again, and once it will happen again, a new cycle of violence will ensue,” he warned.
Hmoud recalled that in September 2000 Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s opposition leader, visited the holy site, which helped spark clashes that led to a full-fledged Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada. The Security Council deplored Sharon’s visit, which it called a “provocation.”
Clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinian demonstrators in and around the site also fueled an 11-day war with Hamas in 2021.
Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office last week for his sixth term as prime minister, leading the most religious, right-wing government in the country’s history. Its goals include expanding West Bank settlements and annexing the occupied territory.
Responding to the outcry over Ben-Gvir’s visit, Netanyahu late Tuesday said Israel remains committed to “strictly maintaining the status quo” at the site.
“The claim that a change has been made in the status quo is without foundation,” he said.
New Israeli government vows to develop West Bank tourism
The tourism minister of Israel's new hardline government on Sunday promised to invest in developing the West Bank, calling the occupied area “our local Tuscany.”
Haim Katz made the comments days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government took office, promising in its coalition guidelines to make West Bank settlement construction a top priority. His coalition includes far-right settler leaders in top posts.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and has built dozens of settlements that are now home to roughly 500,000 Israelis.
Read more: Israeli missile strikes put Damascus airport out of service
The Palestinians claim the entire area as part of a future independent state and consider the settlements illegal — a position that is widely shared by the international community. Israel's commitment to deepening its control of the West Bank has threatened to put it on a collision course with some of its closest allies.
At a ceremony Sunday, Katz said he would channel resources to promote tourism in the West Bank. “We will invest in areas that may not have received sufficient support to date,” he said. “For example, our local Tuscany in Judea and Samaria," he added, using the biblical term for the West Bank favored by religious and right-wing Israelis.
The West Bank settler community has developed a small tourism sector that includes hotels, bed and breakfasts and wineries. Israel considers these industries to be part of the country's broader tourism sector, while international human rights groups have said they deepen control of occupied territory.
Airbnb in 2018 said it would bar listings in the Israeli settlements, but it quickly backed down under heavy Israeli pressure. Last year, Booking.com said it was adding warnings to its listings there.
Read more: Israel indicts soldiers for trying to bomb Palestinian home
On Friday, the U.N. General Assembly asked the U.N.'s highest judicial body to give its opinion on the legality of Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu called the resolution “disgraceful” and said Israel is not obligated to cooperate with the International Court of Justice.
Israeli missile strikes put Damascus airport out of service
Israel’s military fired missiles toward the international airport of Syria's capital early Monday, putting it out of service and killing two soldiers and wounding two others, the Syrian army said.
The attack, the second in seven months to put the Damascus International Airport out of service, caused material damage in a nearby area, the army said, without giving further details.
Israel has targeted airports and ports in government-held parts of Syria in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups backed by Tehran, including Lebanon's Hezbollah.
Read more: Israel indicts soldiers for trying to bomb Palestinian home
An opposition war monitor reported the Israeli strikes hit the airport as well as an arms depot close to the facility south of Damascus. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four people were killed in the strike.
There was no comment from Israel.
On June 10, Israeli airstrikes that struck Damascus International Airport caused significant damage to infrastructure and runways. It reopened two weeks later after repairs.
In September, Israeli airstrikes hit the international airport of the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest and once commercial center, also putting it out of service for days.
In late 2021, Israeli warplanes fired missiles that struck the port of Latakia hitting containers and igniting a huge fire.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.
Read more: 4 Palestinians killed in flare-up as Israel counts votes
Israel has acknowledged, however, that it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.
Thousands of Iran-backed fighters have joined Syria's 11-year civil war and helped tip the balance of power in Assad’s favor.
Israel says an Iranian presence on its northern frontier is a red line that justifies its strikes on facilities and weapons inside Syria.
Netanyahu government: West Bank settlements top priority
Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming hard-line government put West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its list of priorities on Wednesday, a day before it’s set to be sworn into office.
Netanyahu’s Likud party released the new government’s policy guidelines, the first of which is that it will “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel — in the Galilee, Negev, Golan Heights, and Judea and Samaria” — the Biblical names for the West Bank.
The commitment could put the new government on a collision course with its closest allies, including the United States, which opposes settlement construction on occupied territories.
Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians seek the West Bank as the heartland of a future independent state. In the decades since, Israel has constructed dozens of Jewish settlements there that are now home to around 500,000 Israelis living alongside around 2.5 million Palestinians.
Most of the international community considers Israel’s West Bank settlements illegal and an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s new government — the most religious and hard-line in Israel’s history — is made up of ultra-Orthodox parties, an ultranationalist religious faction and his Likud party. It is to be sworn in on Thursday.
Several of Netanyahu’s key allies, including most of the Religious Zionism party, are ultranationalist West Bank settlers.
Also Read: Israel says it deported Palestinian activist to France
On Wednesday, incoming finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said in an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal that there would be no “changing the political or legal status” of the West Bank, running contrary to years of advocating annexation of the entire territory.
He leveled criticism at the “feckless military government” that manages civilian affairs for Israeli settlers, including himself. Smotrich is set to assume control over the military government in the occupied West Bank under his second role — a newly created position as a minister in the Defense Ministry.
Netanyahu is returning to power after he was ousted from office last year after serving as prime minister from 2009 to 2021. He will take office while on trial for allegedly accepting bribes, breach of trust and fraud, charges he denies.
Netanyahu’s partners are seeking widespread policy reforms that could alienate large swaths of the Israeli public, raise tensions with the Palestinians, and put the country on a collision course with the United States and American Jewry.
The Biden administration has said it strongly opposes settlement expansion and has rebuked the Israeli government for it in the past.
Earlier on Wednesday, Israel’s figurehead president expressed “deep concern” about the incoming government and its positions on LGBTQ rights, racism and the country’s Arab minority in a rare meeting called with Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the coalition’s most radical members.
President Isaac Herzog met with Ben-Gvir, head of the Jewish Power faction and heir to the outlawed politician Meir Kahane, after members of his party called for the legalization of discrimination against LGBTQ people based on religious belief.
Herzog’s office said the president urged Ben-Gvir to “calm the stormy winds and to be attentive to and internalize the criticism” about the incoming government’s stance on LGBTQ issues, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and a bill to remove a ban on politicians supporting racism and terrorism from serving in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.
The government platform also mentioned that the loosely defined rules governing holy sites, including Jerusalem’s flashpoint shrine known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, would remain the same.
Ben-Gvir and other Religious Zionism politicians had called for the “status quo” to be changed to allow Jewish prayer at the site, a move that risked inflaming tensions with the Palestinians. The status of the site is the emotional epicenter of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israeli archaeologists excavating ‘Jesus midwife’ tomb
An ancient tomb traditionally associated with Jesus’s midwife is being excavated anew by archaeologists in the hills southwest of Jerusalem, the antiquities authority said Tuesday.
The intricately decorated Jewish burial cave complex dates to around the first century A.D., but it was later associated by local Christians with Salome, the midwife of Jesus in the Gospels. A Byzantine chapel was built at the site, which was a place of pilgrimage and veneration for centuries thereafter.
The cave was first found and excavated decades ago by an Israeli archaeologist. The cave’s large forecourt is now under excavation by archaeologists as part of a heritage trail development project in the region.
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Crosses and inscriptions in Greek and Arabic carved in the cave walls during the Byzantine and Islamic periods indicate that the chapel was dedicated to Salome.
Pilgrims would “rent oil lamps, enter into the cave, used to pray, come out in give back the oil lamp,” said Ziv Firer, director of the excavation. “We found tens of them, with beautiful decorations of plants and flowers.”
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Israel says it deported Palestinian activist to France
) Israel said it deported a Palestinian lawyer and activist to France, claiming he has ties to a banned militant group, despite objections from the French government.
The explusion of Salah Hammouri underscored the fragile status of the status of Palestinians in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and set up a possible diplomatic spat with France. The French government had repeatedly appealed to Israel not to carry out the expulsion.
Israel’s interior minister, Ayelet Shaked, announced the deportation in a brief statement.
Read more: Beefed-up Israel police clash with Palestinians in Jerusalem
“I’m happy to announce that justice was served today and the terrorist Salah Hammouri was deported from Israel," she said in a videotaped statement.
Israel says Hammouri is an activist in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Hammouri had been held in administrative detention without being charged. Shaked ordered the expulsion when his detention ended.
Hammouri was born in Jerusalem but holds French citizenship
Read more: Palestinians clash with Israeli police at major holy site
Conservation plan highlights Arabs’ fraught ties to Israel
Ayoub Rumeihat opened his palms to the sky in prayer as he stood among tombstones for Bedouins killed in action while serving the state of Israel.
Finishing the holy words, he gazed at the distant Mediterranean Sea across a valley full of olives and oak where his community has grazed goats for generations.
Rumeihat says the Bedouins, celebrated by the Israeli military for their knowledge of the land, fear the government now seeks to sever their ties to that same piece of earth.
Rumeihat and his fellow Bedouins see a plan to turn their land into a wildlife corridor as an affront to their service to the country. They say it’s in line with steps taken by nationalist Israeli governments against the Arab minority in recent years that have deepened a sense of estrangement and tested the community’s already brittle ties to the state.
The plan has sparked rare protests from Bedouins in Israel’s northern Galilee region — some of the few native Palestinians to embrace early Jewish settlers before Israel’s creation in 1948. Many have since served in the Israeli police and military, often fighting against fellow Palestinians.
“We were with you from the beginning,” said Rumeihat, standing next to a tombstone engraved with a Star of David in honor of a Bedouin tracker likely killed by a Palestinian. “We are like the lemon and the olive trees. How can you uproot us?”
Palestinian citizens of Israel make up 20% of the country’s 9 million people. They have citizenship and can vote, and some reach the highest echelons of government and business. But they have long faced discrimination in housing, jobs and public services and face neglect at the hands of the state. Many Jewish Israelis see them as a fifth column for their solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
Within that same minority are subgroups, like the Bedouins, who have become more embedded in Israeli society through their service in the security forces.
But in recent years, the Bedouins have accused Israel of belittling their service with its policies, particularly a 2018 law that defines the country as the nation state of the Jewish people. Bedouin and Druze Israelis, who both serve in the military, felt the law demoted them to second-class citizens.
The community sees the wildlife corridor as another slight. It will set controls on their grazing and could limit the residents’ housing options in the future.
The Bedouins have started small weekly protests with Jewish supporters in the Galilee and also in Jerusalem, outside the offices of the prime minister and the Nature and Parks Authority.
The 2,600-acre (1,050-hectare) wildlife corridor is meant to allow foxes, quail and other animals to move safely around the urban landscape of Haifa, the country’s third-largest city. The Bedouins call the lush ravines of the area al-Ghaba, or “forest” in Arabic.
Environmentalists say wildlife corridors, which serve as safe migration zones for animals, are an important part of conservation efforts.
Uri Shanas, an ecology professor at the University of Haifa-Oranim, said the corridor was essential because the surrounding area is built up and the animals, especially the endangered mountain gazelle, require the land bridge.
“The only place that it’s still thriving in the world is in Israel and we are obliged to protect it,” he said.
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Palestinian citizens of Israel have in the past accused Israeli authorities of justifying land seizures under the guise of environmental stewardship. In January, Bedouins in southern Israel staged protests against tree planting by nationalists on disputed land. And advocacy groups say many forests in Israel were planted atop the ruins of Palestinian villages emptied during the events that led to Israel’s creation.
A spokeswoman for the parks authority, Daniela Turgeman, said the corridor plan was crafted with local leaders in the 1980s and surveyed plants and animals. She said that it allows for controlled grazing and said there are only “a few individuals who still have objections.”
The Bedouins object to the plan’s omission of traditional land-use rights and reject any limits on grazing. They claim private ownership of certain parcels and total grazing rights after settling in the area about 100 years ago, buying land, planting olive groves and farms, and building homes.
They also deny there was any prior consultation with the parks authority, which Turgeman said formed the plan after six recent meetings and “a joint tour” with local leaders.
Guy Alon, an official with the parks authority, told Israel’s Channel 13 TV in July that the wildlife corridor would benefit Jews and Arabs while respecting property rights and striking an ecological balance.
For “Bedouins who come and say ‘we want open spaces,’ the nature reserve offers just that,” he said. “Those who ask that we let them graze on the land, we respect that.” he said.
After learning of the plan, three Bedouin villages filed an objection, charging the corridor didn’t take into consideration private Bedouin property. The Haifa district planning committee rejected that objection, and an appeal is now being heard.
“Nature has been used as a political tool before many, many times, so for people there is no trust,” said Myssana Morany, a lawyer with the Arab legal rights group Adalah, which filed the objection on the residents’ behalf.
She said the parks authority has dealt with the Bedouins differently than it has with other citizens, pointing to nearby examples of its plans to integrate nature reserves with existing farms and other types of land use.
Environmental claims ring hollow to villagers who see ongoing construction at nearby Jewish villages as far more ecologically disruptive than grazing goats and olive groves.
Fatima Khaldi, 73, sitting in her large family home in the village of Khawaldeh, said local knowledge will protect the land more than any outside expertise. “Their whole goal is to remove us and destroy our heritage.”
Mustafa Rumeihat, 70, a distant relative of Rumeihat, said he’s worried his grandchildren won’t inherit the family ties to the land.
“I see myself dying of desperation,” he said, shuffling downhill from his pen of two dozen goats. “When my son asks me about the land, I won’t be able to answer him.”