Israel Defense Forces confirms that a Palestinian killed during a raid in the Jenin refugee camp in east Jerusalem has been killed in the past 12 months
An Israeli soldier has died following a shooting at a military checkpoint in East Jerusalem on Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Twitter.
A suspect opened fire at the Shuafat crossing and a shot was fired from a passing vehicle. Border Guard forces are searching for the suspects.”
Israeli emergency services said a male in serious condition was transferred to a hospital, and another female was treated at the scene and is in mild condition.
The shooting happened at a checkpoint of the normally quiet area near the Shuafat Refugee Camp in East Jerusalem, an area considered occupied by most of the international community.
“The IDF and its commanders regret any harm to uninvolved civilians, including those who are in a combat environment and in close proximity to armed terrorists during exchanges of fire,” the statement continued.
The 14-year-old was the youngest person shot in Palestine according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
In regards to Daoud, the Israel Defense Force stated that one of their soldiers spotted a suspect who threw Molotov Cocktails at them in the city of Qalqilya. The soldiers responded with live fire. A hit has been identified. The incident is under review.”
The latest attack happened during a period of heightened violence. There have been several Palestinian attacks in Jerusalem in recent weeks, including a deadly shooting two weeks ago outside a synagogue in Jerusalem that left nine Israelis and a Ukrainian citizen dead. The Israeli army has been raiding the West Bank for more than a decade, and they killed a Palestinian on Thursday.
On Saturday, two 17-year-old Palestinians were killed during an Israeli military operation in the Jenin refugee camp, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
The IDF said forces were in the Jenin refugee camp to arrest an “Islamic Jihad operative” who it claims was “involved in terrorist activities, planning and carrying out shooting attacks towards IDF soldiers in the area.”
After a series of Palestinian attacks last spring, Israel stepped up raids across the West Bank. The bloodshed has risen this year with more than 60 Palestinians killed in the West Bank and east Jerusalem according to an Associated Press tally. 13 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.
What is the big deal? It hasn’t lived up to the plan that Blinken had. This past week in Jerusalem has been particularly violent, after Israeli forces carried out their deadliest raid in the West Bank in years, killing nine Palestinians, including gunmen and a 61-year-old woman. More than 40 were injured.
There is a climate of fear, hatred and anger in the occupied West Bank. Wennesland said it is crucial that tensions are reduced immediately to open the space for initiatives that will establish a viable political horizon.
The explosion of a Palestinian teenager killed in a city: Israel needs to reestablish deterrence against terror, says the Israeli ambassador
The first explosion occurred near a typically crowded bus stop on the edge of the city. The second went off at Ramot, a settlement in the city’s north. Police said one person died from their wounds and at least three were seriously wounded in the blasts.
A notice announcing the death of Aryeh Shechopek said the teenager was going to a seminary when the blast went off. Shechopek was also a Canadian citizen, according to Canada’s Ambassador to Israel Lisa Stadelbauer. There were conflicting reports over Shechopek’s exact age.
The violence occurred hours after Palestinian militants stormed a West Bank hospital and carried out an Israeli citizen seeking treatment there after a car accident, according to the young man’s father. That incident could further ratchet up tensions.
While Netanyahu is open to negotiations with the Palestinians, and willing to work with them on security matters, he doesn’t think much else will change.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extremist lawmaker who has called for the death penalty for Palestinian attackers and who is set to become the minister in charge of police under Netanyahu, said the attack meant Israel needed to take a tougher stance on Palestinian violence.
He said at the scene of the first explosion that they needed to exact a price from terror. We need to reestablish deterrence against terror by taking back control of Israel.
Police found evidence that bombs were placed at the two sites as they searched for the suspected attackers. The twin blasts occurred amid the buzz of rush hour traffic and police briefly closed part of a main highway leading out of the city, where the first explosion went off. Video from shortly after the initial blast showed debris strewn along the sidewalk as the wail of ambulances blared. A bus in Ramot was pocked with what looked like shrapnel marks.
Yosef Haim Gabay was at the scene when the first blast occurred and told Israeli Army Radio that it was a crazy explosion. “I saw people with wounds bleeding all over the place.”
While Palestinians have carried out stabbings, car rammings and shootings in recent years, bombing attacks have become very rare since the end of a Palestinian uprising nearly two decades ago.
The Islamic militant Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and once carried out suicide bombings against Israelis, praised the perpetrators of the attacks, calling it a heroic operation, but stopped short of claiming responsibility.
The Israeli government said that it was closing both the West Bank crossings and the city of Jenin because of the blasts.
The terrorist attack on a Palestinian teen at Kedumim: the Israel Defense Ministry apologizes to the Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz
It was very bad. It was something that was inhumane,” Husam Ferro, the teen’s father, told Israeli news site YNet. I couldn’t do anything after they took him in front of my eyes.
The body’s return to the family was being discussed by a Druze leader. Palestinian militants have in the past carried out kidnappings to seek concessions from Israel. The body would be worth a lot of money if it was not returned.
The Israeli military said in a statement that security guards at Kedumim shot a Palestinian who was armed with a handgun and released a photo of the weapon. There was no information about the incident or the attacker’s condition.
The Palestinians want a future independent state in all three areas. Israel has annexed east Jerusalem in a step that is not internationally recognized and considers the entire city to be its undivided capital.
The Israeli military were “heavily shooting everywhere. When she heard people screaming, she went to the rooftop to see what happened.
She was found dead on the floor with a face full of blood, 25 minutes after the soldiers left the neighborhood.
Speaking before the IDF admitted responsibility, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said he wanted to express “sorrow for her death, as for any death of someone who was not involved in terrorism, if that was indeed the case.”
Palestinian deaths in the West Bank and Gaza: a UN special representative of children and the UN for children and armed conflict (WAFA)
A general strike was declared in Jenin on Monday following Jana’s killing, WAFA said, adding that “hundreds of people” took to the streets to protest “ongoing Israeli aggression”.
The Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN for Children and armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba, was asked by the Prime Minister to investigate the crimes of the occupation and put Israel on the blacklist. Gamba is in the West Bank and Gaza.
Sixty-one Palestinians have been killed by Israel this year, the Palestinian health ministry said. CNN records show that the number includes people shot as they attacked Israelis, people clashing with Israeli forces during raids, and bystanders.
On Thursday, a 16-year-old boy died after he was shot by Israeli forces in Ramallah, according to a separate statement by the Palestinian Ministry of Health last week.
There were two shots from the back of Al-Rimawi, who was 16-years-old. The first exited from his chest and the second exited from the abdomen,” that statement said.
What can I do to feel the impact of Israel’s lockdown on me? How I was born in Nablus and how I met my father in Israel
I was not able to measure the damage caused by Israel’s lockdown as a result of focus groups I did with medics, nurses, students and faculty. Many people refer to the sound of Israeli drones in Nablus as a form of psychological torture. What can I do to measure that? For one focus group, a public health faculty member explained that her journey to the city was stopped by a checkpoint and she had to go a different way, telling the group she had to wear two socks instead of one. What does it say about a population’s psyche when events like these are normalized?
I have long felt a responsibility to convey the reality of the situation for Palestinians not only as a researcher committed to justice and equity but also as someone whose family hails from the West Bank. Nablus was where I was born to a woman from a nearby village and a man from the Palestinian town that was encircled by Israel upon its establishment in 1948. My father taught political science and journalism in Nablus, before moving us to the US, where I was born. I’m now a professor myself, because I wanted to follow in his footsteps. My dad was a political scientist and I am a public health scholar. In any setting, health and politics are intertwined. I was reminded of how deep that connection is when I was in Nablus.
For the past fifty years, that context has remained for the most part, with periods of more freedom and restrictions for the Palestinians but also periods of heavy restriction and violence. I visited family in the West Bank every summer as a child and for most of my adult life. I remember the long, winding checkpoint lines, with hostile Israeli soldiers looking through our documents. I remember the electricity curfews imposed by Israel, leaving us to spend nights using only candles and lanterns. I remember traveling to the airport in Tel Aviv, but having to switch taxis halfway through the trip because Palestinian taxis were not allowed to pick us up. Now I and others of Palestinian descent, regardless of citizenship or country of residence, aren’t even allowed to use that airport without special Israeli permission. Instead, because Israel bombed the last Palestinian airport and won’t allow construction of a new one, we travel in and out of the West Bank through Jordan. Some people have recently been able to fly out of an airport in southern Israel.
Five Palestinians were killed and at least a dozen others were injured in the old city of Nablus, when Israeli military forces raided on the eve of my departure. For me, it was a sleepless night, knowing what was happening just minutes away.
The next day, after many panicked calls with a taxi company, which assured me it could get me out of the city, I left. Unlike Palestinians forced to live under these conditions every day, my time there had an end date. Now I am left to examine and analyze my data.
The announcement said that in response to public Palestinian celebrations over the attack, Israel would take new steps to “strengthen the settlements” this week. It gave no further details.
The situation in Israel and the West Bank were expected to be calm thanks to the visit of Tony Blinken. Blinken asked senior State Department officials to remain in the Middle East to help assist with steps that both Israel and the Palestinians have suggested to him “to lower the temperature.”
Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet, which is filled by hard-line politicians aligned with the West Bank settlement movement, approved the measures in the wake of a pair of shootings that included an attack outside an east Jerusalem synagogue on Friday night in which seven people were killed.
Washington didn’t respond immediately. The Biden administration does not support the construction of settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank because of their importance for a future state for the Palestinians. The topic is likely to be high on the agenda as Blinken arrives on Monday.
But with rising and concerning levels of violence from all sides, a far-right Israeli government in place under Netanyahu, and a Palestinian Authority led by an increasingly unpopular President Mahmoud Abbas, that may be an overly optimistic game plan.
Amos Harel wrote that if it was possible to put this violent genie back into the bottle, it would require the reinforcement and proper deployment of forces.
Israel is moving to strengthen settlements after shooting attacks on the Jewish Sabbath, according to an Israeli TV crew reportedly released on a Friday night
Seven Israelis were killed and three others were wounded in a shooting near a synagogue in east Jerusalem on the Jewish Sabbath. It was the deadliest attack on Israelis in 15 years.
Authorities published the names of four of the victims. They included an adult with a 14-year-old, and a couple with a 45 year-old. Funerals for some victims were scheduled Saturday night.
The mourners lighting candles near the synagogue on Saturday evening was a sign of the charged atmosphere and a crowd assault an Israeli TV crew that came to the area.
Ella Sakovich, an aunt of Natali Mizrahi, said that her niece had been celebrating the Jewish Sabbath with her husband and his father when they heard gunfire outside on Friday night.
“While eating, she and her husband wanted to help and went out of the house to treat the wounded; they shot both of them,” Sakovich said in a statement released by Hadassah Hospital, where Natali Mizrahi worked serving food to patients.
In response to the shooting, Israeli police beefed up activities throughout east Jerusalem and said they had arrested 42 people, including family members, who were connected to the shooter.
The 13-year-old attacker was shot by two passers-by as police rushed to the scene. The police took the wounded teen to the hospital.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/29/1152383010/israel-is-moving-to-strengthen-settlements-after-shooting-attacks
Ben-Gvir, the Israeli Attorney General, and the United States: Israel’s Promise to Israel in Light of the Jenin Shooting
Blinken is expected to arrive in Israel on Monday. The Biden administration condemned the shooting on Friday and called for calm, but they have no idea how they will promote these goals.
Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem are allowed to work and move throughout Israel, but they are not allowed to vote in national elections because of subpar public services.
Israel’s new national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has made waves with his promises to take even stronger action against the Palestinians after he presented himself as an enforcer of law and order.
Speaking to reporters at a hospital where victims were being treated, Ben-Gvir said he wanted the home of the gunman in Friday’s attack to be sealed off immediately as a punitive measure and lashed out at Israel’s attorney general for delaying his order.
The new government has a plan to reform Israel’s justice system and it says unelected judges and jurists have big powers.
The divisive issue helped fuel weekly protests by Israelis who say the sweeping proposed changes would weaken the Supreme Court and undermine democracy.
Tens of thousands of people protested in Tel Aviv Saturday evening for a new protest. Some raised banners that said “Ben-Gvir is a threat to world peace.”
The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, meanwhile, upheld its decision to halt security coordination with Israel to protest the deadly raid in Jenin.
The Palestinians want to stop Israeli actions, according to Abbas’ office. An Israeli official said the meeting was meant to ease tensions ahead of Ramadan and came after an American request.
It is important that people of Israel know that America’s commitment to their security remains ironclad. The commitment is supported by over 75 years of U.S. support. America’s commitment has never waivered, and never will.”
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in today’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, CNN’s three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Here, you can sign up.
A shocking 48 hours of violence – bloody even by the standards of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – followed immediately by a fortunately timed flying visit from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, focused the eyes of the world on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week.
He was speaking for an exclusive interview with Jake Tapper and he made it clear that it is very unlikely that the Palestinians and Israel will ever make progress towards a long-term peace.
Netanyahu has never been a full-throated supporter of a two-state solution, weaving in and out of different definitions of what that would mean. But in recent years he’s settled on the idea that he’d be open to a Palestinian state – as long as it has no military or security power, an arrangement that would have no parallel among modern sovereign states.
Netanyahu told Tapper in Jerusalem he was willing to give them all the power they needed to govern themselves, but they wouldn’t be able to threaten us.
He said he told Biden that the final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians would give Israel control over security in the area west of the Jordan.
I said you can’t divide who controls the airspace. Between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. You have to cross it. It takes 2 minutes to cross it. So what, one minute Israel controls it and the other minute the Palestinians? It is not workable.
You are right, I said. But – I don’t know what you’d call it, but it gives them the opportunity to control their lives, to elect their officials, to run their economy, to run their institutions, to have their flag and to have their parliament, but we have to have overriding security control.”
It isn’t targeting family members. Netanyahu thinks that terrorists are disincentivized by targeting family members who supported them.
HaMoked, an Israeli organization that protects the rights of human rights, has promised to challenge the legislation to deny residency to families of attackers.
Netanyahu’s economic success with Saudi Arabia: the case of Israel and the Arab-Palesean relationship in the wake of a global nuclear deal
Netanyahu told Tapper that his goal was to add countries in the circle of peace, with his top objective being Saudi Arabia.
For years, peace with the Palestinians was seen as a precondition for any normalization agreements between Arab countries and Israel. The game was changed by the Abraham Accords according to Netanyahu.
Blinken on Tuesday called for Israelis and Palestinians to de-escalate, stop violence and reduce tensions after a meeting with Abbas in the West Bank. He warned against Israeli moves including the legalization of settler outposts, the demolition of Palestinians from their homes, as well as the threat of violence and inciting them to do so.
Why it matters: The investment deal comes as IHC aims to increase its global acquisitions by 70% in 2023. Abu Dhabi’s largest listed company, IHC’s market value more than doubled last year. It is chaired by Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the influential UAE national security adviser and a brother of the UAE’s president.
Background: Since the 2018 reimposition of US sanctions on Iran after Washington ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the Islamic Republic has been disconnected from the Belgium-based SWIFT financial messaging service, which is a key international banking access point. Similar limitations have been slapped on some Russian banks since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last year.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/01/middleeast/netanyahu-palestinian-sovereignty-mime-intl/index.html
The City of Ramot is Inundated with Record Rain: The Palestinian-Jerusalem Airport Arrived for a Large-Scale Flight
The electoral commission in Tunisia said that there was a high turnout in the parliamentary elections on Sunday. President Kais Saied on Monday blamed the low turnout on hatred among voters of the parliament, calling it “an institution of absurdity and a state within the state.” The turnout was seen as evidence of public disdain for his agenda, and opposition parties called for his resignation.
The map shows that the A380 turned back after reaching west of Indonesia, more than a third of the way to New Zealand.
New Zealand’s biggest city has been inundated with record rain. An estimated 240 millimeters of rainfall (9.8 inches) – equal to an entire summer’s worth of rain – fell on Auckland Friday, making it the city’s wettest day on record.
There were travel disruptions over the weekend because of the rain. More than 2,000 people stayed overnight Friday in the airport’s terminals due to the flooding, the airport said. The international terminal was not operational until Sunday.
The longest route for the airline was resumed in December after being off for three years because of the Covid-19 outbreak. The flight takes between 16 and 17 hours and is among the world’s longest nonstop commercial routes.
Israeli officials and media say a 6-year-old boy and a man in his 20s were killed when a Palestinian driver rammed his car into a group of people at a bus stop in Ramot, a largely ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlement neighborhood in Jerusalem.
An off-duty policeman shot and killed a driver. Israeli media identified him as Hussein Karakeh, 31, from the Palestinian neighborhood of Issawiyeh in East Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities said three people had been targeted for attacks in the immediate future. The three were “neutralized,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israel Security Agency said in a joint statement.
The names of at least two suspects released by the IDF – Hussam Esleem and Waleed Dakheel – appeared to match names of the dead released by the Palestinian health ministry. The IDF said one was shot while fleeing and the other two were killed in an exchange of fire with the military.
The last time the military conducted daylight operations in the West Bank they said it was because of an immediate threat.
The Al QASSCAM brigade of Islamic Jihad warned that they are monitoring the crimes against their people in the occupied West Bank and that the enemy is tired of waiting.
The Jordan government said on Sunday that Israel and the Palestinians had agreed to de-escalate tensions after a Palestinian shooter killed two Israelis in the West Bank.
The statement signaled a small sign of progress, but many unanswered questions remained. As the negotiators were meeting, a Palestinian gunman killed two Israeli brothers in the northern West Bank.
A proposal that would impose the death penalty on Palestinian militant involved in deadly attacks has received initial approval from an Israeli ministerial committee. Lawmakers were able to discuss the measure further.
“On a difficult day in which two Israelis were murdered, there is nothing more symbolic that passing the death penalty law for terrorists”, stated Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s far right national security minister.
The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, called for the city of terror to be attacked without mercy, with tanks and helicopter, in a way to show that the master of the house has gone crazy.
In the wake of that shooting, Israel approved construction of over 7,000 new homes in West Bank settlements. It wasn’t clear if the order was affected by the freeze.
Israel said the prime minister’s national security adviser as well as the chief of the Shin Bet domestic security agency attended the talks in neighboring Jordan. The head of the Palestinian intelligence services as well as advisers to President Mahmoud Abbas also joined.
Palestinians who oppose any official engagement with Israel said they would protest the meeting, while Hamas criticized the meeting. It said that the shooting on Sunday was a natural response to Israeli incursions into the Palestinian areas of the West Bank.
Ramadan this year coincides with the weeklong Jewish holiday of Passover and worshippers from both faiths are expected to flock to the holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City, which are often a flashpoint for violence between the sides. Clashes erupted at a key Jerusalem holy site last year and tensions at the site helped spark an 11-day war with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip in 2021.