JERUSALEM: Security forces locked down parts of Jerusalem’s Old City on Saturday and an ultra-sensitive holy site remained closed after an attack that killed two police officers and heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions.
Three Arab Israeli assailants opened fire on Israeli police Friday in the Old City before fleeing to the nearby Haram Al-Sharif, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, where they were shot dead by police.
Israeli authorities said they had come from the flashpoint holy site, which includes the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, to commit the attack.
The authorities took the highly unusual decision to close the Al-Aqsa mosque compound for Friday prayers, leading to anger from Muslims and Jordan, the holy site’s custodian.
Wael Arabiyat, Jordan’s Islamic Affairs Minister, warned that keeping Al-Aqsa mosque closed is “dangerous” and “unprecedented.”
On Friday, Amman called for the immediate reopening of the mosque.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has indicated it will stay closed until at least Sunday while security was assessed, and rejected Jordan’s criticism.
“Instead of denouncing the terrorist attack, Jordan chose to attack Israel,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying by officials, and called for restraint.
Netanyahu also spoke of increasing security at entrances to the site when it reopens — likely to be a controversial move.
On Saturday, access was restricted through Damascus Gate, the main entrance used by Palestinians into Jerusalem’s Old City, and only residents with identification were allowed to pass.
“This is not security. This is punishment,” said Bader Jweihan, 53, an accountant who was denied entry.
“They want to punish the Arab Jerusalem citizens.”
Musa Abdelmenam Qussam, 73 and with poor eyesight, was helped by a grandson as he walked with a cane and sought to enter.
But the owner of a book wholesale shop in the Old City was also turned away.
“This mosque is not only for Muslims. Tourists come,” he said, adding that he usually prays at Al-Aqsa every day.
“This city is for all the world. It must be open.”
Jaffa Gate, heavily used by tourists and near the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, was open but with a heavy police presence.
A group of tourists from Poland said they were concerned when they heard about Friday’s shooting but wanted to continue their visit.
They were on their way to do some shopping in the Old City and visit the nearby Garden of Gethsemane, where Christians believe Jesus prayed the night before his crucifixion.
“It stressed me a little,” said Ewa, who did not want to give her last name or age.
At Lions Gate near the site of the attack, police guarded the entrance and restricted access, checking IDs.
The attack and aftermath was one of the most serious incidents in Jerusalem in recent years.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Netanyahu spoke by phone on Friday as tensions rose in the wake of the incident.
Israeli authorities also detained Jerusalem’s top Muslim cleric, grand mufti Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, as crowds gathered at the gates of the Old City after the attack, his son said.
Hussein, who had criticized the closure of Al-Aqsa, was released later Friday after being questioned, according to another of his sons.
With Al-Aqsa closed, crowds gathered at Old City gates and held Friday prayers there instead.
The Palestinian director of the Waqf (religious property) council, Abdel Azim Salhab, said the closure of the mosque compound was the “worst aggression since 1967” — a reference to the start of Israel’s occupation of east Jerusalem which it later annexed.
The Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount is central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinians fearing Israel may one day seek to assert further control over it.
It is considered the third holiest site in Islam and the most sacred for Jews.
Jews are allowed to visit but not pray there to avoid provoking tensions.
Israel’s annexation of east Jerusalem after the 1967 Six-Day War was never recognized by the international community.
A wave of unrest that broke out in October 2015 has claimed the lives of at least 281 Palestinians or Arab Israelis, 44 Israelis, two Americans, two Jordanians, an Eritrean, a Sudanese and a Briton, according to an AFP toll.
Israeli authorities say most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks.
Others were shot dead in protests and clashes, while some were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.
The violence had greatly subsided in recent months.
Security tight, holy site shut after Jerusalem attack
Security tight, holy site shut after Jerusalem attack
’Strong likelihood’ famine imminent in north Gaza, say food security experts
LONDON: There is a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas” of the northern Gaza Strip, a committee of global food security experts warned on Friday, as Israel pursues a military offensive against Palestinian militants Hamas in the area.
“Immediate action, within days not weeks, is required from all actors who are directly taking part in the conflict, or have influence on its conduct, to avert and alleviate this catastrophic situation,” the independent Famine Review Committee (FRC) said in a rare alert.
The warning comes just days ahead of a US deadline for Israel to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza or face potential restrictions on US military aid.
Israeli army discovers ‘Hezbollah training center’ near UNIFIL outpost as raids continue in Lebanon
- Several videos showed residential houses and tourist, social and religious facilities being set with explosives and blown up remotely
- Adraee also accused Hezbollah of “using ambulances to transport saboteurs and arms” and called on “medical personnel to avoid dealing and cooperating with Hezbollah members”
BEIRUT: The Israeli army on Friday continued to destroy houses in Lebanon’s southern border villages to establish a buffer zone. The latest bombing targeted the areas of Yaroun, Aitaroun and Maroun Al-Ras in Bint Jbeil.
Several videos showed residential houses and tourist, social and religious facilities being set with explosives and blown up remotely.
In parallel with the deliberate destruction, Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued “a new urgent warning to the residents of southern Lebanon,” instructing them “to refrain from returning to the south, or to their houses or olive fields,” describing the region as “a dangerous combat zone.”
Adraee also accused Hezbollah of “using ambulances to transport saboteurs and arms” and called on “medical personnel to avoid dealing and cooperating with Hezbollah members.”
The army will take the “necessary measures against any vehicle transporting armed members regardless of its type,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army claimed that “surveillance cameras of the Oded Brigade reservists captured a Hezbollah training center just 200 meters from a UNIFIL outpost.”
The army claimed that “the forces discovered the training facility, which was used by Hezbollah for training, studying, and storing large quantities of weapons.”
It said that “the facility contained missile launchers used for firing at Israeli settlements, as well as documents and instructional books detailing Hezbollah’s operational methods, maps of Israel, explanations of the Israeli army’s equipment, and additional weapons.” The army said “the weapons were confiscated and the compound was dismantled.”
The Israeli army resumed raids on the Baalbek-Hermel area, killing and injuring people and causing further destruction.
The Ministerial Emergency Committee estimated that, as of Thursday evening, Israel had conducted 121 raids, including 56 on Nabatieh, 24 on Baalbek and 23 in the south.
The committee said the number of people killed so far in Israeli attacks on Lebanon exceed 3,100, while 14,000 people have been injured.
More than 1.2 million people have been displaced, with close to 200,000 staying in shelters, it added.
Lebanese observers believe this transitional phase, from now until US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, is the most dangerous period for Lebanon.
Raids on Kfar Tebnit killed two people after a building comprising residential apartments and commercial shops was destroyed.
A raid on Zebdine in Nabatieh killed Mohammed Fayez Mokaddam and his sons, Fayez and Hadi Mokaddem, after their building was destroyed.
Zaher Ibrahim Ataya, a medic with Hezbollah’s Islamic Health Committee from the southern town of Tair Harfa, was killed when Israeli forces struck a newly established medical center.
The strike was part of a broader Israeli aerial campaign that targeted more than 50 towns across the Tyre and Bint Jbeil districts in the past 48 hours.
The Lebanese Red Cross chief Georges Kettaneh announced that rescue teams have returned to Wata Al-Khiyam to complete the recovery of victims from an incident on Oct. 27.
Working alongside UNIFIL forces and the Lebanese Army, teams recovered four bodies and remains, with efforts continuing to ensure the mission’s completion.
Earlier the Red Cross retrieved 17 bodies from the site where civilians, who had been tending to livestock, sought shelter in a building during an Israeli incursion.
The Israeli military initially stalled permission for the Lebanese Red Cross to recover the victims, eventually granting only a four-hour window for the operation.
The Israeli air campaign extended to Lebanon’s Bekaa region, with strikes hitting Hrabta town west of Baalbek and Hosh Al-Sayyed Ali near the Syrian border north of Hermel.
Sirens sounded across northern Israel, including Haifa, Nazareth, Kiryat Shmona and surrounding areas, as well as the Ramat Trump settlement in the Golan Heights and Israeli media reported approximately 30 rockets launched from Lebanon toward northern Israel and Haifa’s suburbs.
The Israeli military confirmed detecting about 20 rockets, with some being intercepted, and reported drone incursions in northern airspace, including one near Caesarea.
The Israeli military announced the death of a soldier from Battalion 8207, Alon Brigade (228), who succumbed to wounds sustained in southern Lebanon on Oct. 26, while Israeli army radio detailed a fierce battle in the border village of Aitaroun that claimed the lives of six Israeli soldiers.
Hezbollah said on Friday it had launched “dozens of rockets reaching as far as Haifa and south of Nazareth.”
The group claimed strikes on several targets, including the Stella Maris naval base and Ramat David air base, northwest and southeast of Haifa, respectively, Kiryat Shmona settlement, and military gatherings in Misgav Am and Margaliot settlements.
In response to Israeli infiltration attempts, Hezbollah reported targeting Israeli forces south of Adaisseh with artillery fire. The group also claimed to have destroyed a military bulldozer and inflicting casualties on accompanying infantry forces trying to advance northwest of Kfarkila.
Buried for 14 hours after Israeli strike, Lebanese toddler makes recovery
- Two-year-old Ali Khalifeh is the only survivor of his family after Israel blew up the apartment block where they lived
- The toddler’s parents, sister and two grandmothers all perished in the strike that killed 15
SIDON, Lebanon: Rescuers did not expect to find two-year-old Ali Khalifeh alive after an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon killed his entire family and left him trapped under the rubble for 14 hours.
Amputated, bandaged and hooked to a respirator in a hospital bed that was way too big for him, “Ali is the sole survivor of his family,” said Hussein Khalifeh, his father’s uncle.
The toddler’s parents, sister and two grandmothers all perished in the strike on September 29, days after Israel intensified its attacks on Hezbollah militants.
The strike on Sarafand, some 15 kilometers (nine miles) south of the coastal city of Sidon, flattened an apartment complex and killed 15 people, many of them relatives, according to residents.
“Rescue workers had almost lost hope of finding anyone alive under the rubble,” 45-year-old Khalifeh told AFP from the hospital in Sidon where his two-year-old relative was being treated.
But then “Ali appeared among debris in the shovel of the bulldozer, after we all thought he had died,” he said.
“He emerged from the rubble, barely breathing, after 14 hours.”
Israel has been at war with Hezbollah since late September, when it broadened its war focus from fighting Hamas militants in Gaza to securing its northern border with Lebanon.
An escalating Israeli air campaign, after nearly a year of low intensity cross-border fire, has killed more than 2,600 people across Lebanon since September 23, according to health ministry figures.
Signs of the violence were apparent even at the hospital in Sidon where Ali was rushed to following the strike on Sarafand.
The toddler, under a medically induced coma after doctors amputated his right hand, has since been transferred to a medical facility in the capital Beirut where he is due to undergo pre-prosthetic surgery.
“Ali was sleeping on the couch at home when the strike hit. He is still asleep today... were are waiting to complete his surgeries before waking him up,” said the relative Hussein Khalifeh.
Other family members were also fighting to stay alive after the Sarafand strike.
One of Khalifeh’s nieces, 32-year-old Zainab, was trapped under the rubble for two hours before being rescued and transferred to the nearest hospital, said the man.
It was there that she was later informed that her parents, her husband and three children, aged between three and seven, had all been killed.
The strike left her with only one, severely injured eye.
Zainab said she “did not hear the sounds of the missiles that rained down on her family’s home,” according to Khalifeh.
“She only saw darkness and heard deafening screams,” he said.
Ali Alaa El-Din, a doctor treating her, said that “the psychological scars that Zainab suffered are much greater than her physical injury.”
He has also tended Zainab’s sister Fatima, 30, who was wounded in the same strike.
Both had injuries “throughout their bodies, with fractures in the feet and damage to the lungs,” said the doctor.
Medically, he added, “Zainab and Fatima’s cases are not among the most difficult cases we have faced during the war, but they are the most severe from a psychological and human perspective.”
UN accuses Israel of ‘deliberate’ attack on peacekeeping position in Lebanon
- UN Interim Force in Lebanon cites ‘seven other similar incidents’
- Accuses Israel of ‘flagrant violation of international law and resolution 1701’
NEW YORK: The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon on Friday said two Israeli excavators and a bulldozer destroyed part of a fence and a concrete structure in one of its positions in Ras Naqoura in southern Lebanon.
The UN Interim Force in Lebanon added that in response to its “urgent protest,” the Israel Defense Forces denied any activity was taking place inside its position.
UNIFIL is stationed in southern Lebanon to monitor hostilities along the demarcation line with Israel, an area that has seen more than a year of fighting that turned into fierce clashes since last month between Israeli soldiers and Hezbollah fighters.
Israel claims that UN forces provide cover for Hezbollah, and has told UNIFIL to evacuate peacekeepers from southern Lebanon for their own safety.
But UNIFIL said the incident, which took place on Thursday, “like seven other similar incidents, is not a matter of peacekeepers getting caught in the crossfire, but of deliberate and direct actions by the IDF.”
UNIFIL issued a statement warning that “the IDF’s deliberate and direct destruction of clearly identifiable UNIFIL property is a flagrant violation of international law and resolution 1701.”
It called on the IDF and all other actors to honor “their obligation to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property and respect the inviolability of UN premises at all times.”
UNIFIL also expressed concern over the destruction and removal this week of two of the blue barrels that mark the UN-delineated line of withdrawal between Lebanon and Israel (the Blue Line). Peacekeepers said they directly observed the IDF removing one of them.
“Despite the unacceptable pressures being exerted on the mission through various channels, peacekeepers will continue to undertake our mandated monitoring and reporting tasks under resolution 1701,” UNIFIL said.
Netanyahu appoints Yechiel Leiter as new ambassador to US
- His son was killed last year in Gaza war against Hamas
- Leiter’s appointment came three days after Trump’s election to second term as US president
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed US-born Yechiel Leiter, an official who previously served as chief of staff in the finance ministry, as the next Israeli ambassador to the United States.
“Yechiel Leiter is a highly capable diplomat, an eloquent speaker, and possesses a deep understanding of American culture and politics,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
His appointment was also welcomed by Yisrael Ganz, the head of the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization representing councils of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a territory Palestinians want as part of a future state.
Ganz said Leiter, who lives in the Gush Etzion settlement area, as “a key partner in English-language advocacy for Judea and Samaria,” a name used by many Israelis for the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Leiter’s appointment came three days after Donald Trump’s election to a second term as US president, celebrated by many Israelis because of his strong support for Israel.
As well as serving in the finance ministry, Leiter also held positions as deputy director general in the Education Ministry and acting chairman of the Israel Ports Company.
His son was killed last year in the Gaza war against Palestinian militant group Hamas while serving with the Israeli military.
