JERUSALEM: Muslim leaders urged the faithful on Tuesday to keep up their prayer protests and avoid entering Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem, even after Israel dismantled metal detectors that initially triggered the tensions.
Israel said it would replace the metal detectors with new security arrangements based on “advanced technology,” reportedly including sophisticated cameras, but said it could take up to six months to install them.
Muslim religious leaders have demanded that Israel restore the situation at the site to what it was before it installed the metal detectors last week.
The religious leaders said Tuesday that they need time to study the proposed new Israeli measures.
“We need to know all the details before we decide to pray inside the compound,” said Mufti Mohammed Hussein.
Muslim worshippers heeded the call of the religious leaders, with dozens performing noon prayers in the streets outside the holy site on Tuesday.
The continued protests meant that the escalating crisis between Israel and the Muslim world, which began in mid-July, has not been defused, even after Israel backed down on the metal detectors.
Jordan has played a key role in trying to end the showdown over the holy site.
Over the weekend, Jordan’s efforts were complicated by a shooting at Israel’s Embassy in Amman in which an Israeli guard killed two Jordanians after being attacked by one with a screwdriver.
A 24-hour standoff was resolve after a phone call between Jordan’s King Abdallah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Jordan initially said the guard could not leave without an investigation, but then allowed him and the rest of the embassy staff to leave to Israel late Monday.
The timing of the events — the evacuation of the diplomats, followed by the removal of the metal detectors — suggested a larger deal had been struck between the two countries.
The 15-hectare holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City sits on the fault line of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has triggered major confrontations in the past.
Israel had erected metal detectors at the gates to the Muslim-administered site last week after gunmen killed two Israeli police guards there two days earlier.
The move incensed the Muslim world, amid allegations that Israel was trying to expand control over the site under the guise of security.
The installation of the metal detectors set off widespread protests and deadly Israeli-Palestinian violence over the past week. Large crowds of Muslim worshippers prayed outside the shrine in protest every day, refusing to pass through the metal detectors.
Israel has denied it has a hidden agenda, portraying the metal detectors as a needed security measure.
However, the Israeli government has come under growing diplomatic pressure in recent days to reconsider the decision. It also faced growing domestic criticism that it had acted hastily, without weighing the repercussions of installing new devices at the volatile site.
The diplomatic crisis with Jordan lent more urgency to finding a solution. The deal also coincided with a visit to Israel and Jordan by Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy.
His visit marked the first on-the-ground involvement by the US administration since the start of the crisis over the shrine.
Israel’s security Cabinet announced the decision to remove the metal detectors early Tuesday. It said police would increase the deployment of forces until the new measures are in place.
The statement said the government would budget 100 million shekels ($28 million) to implement the security plan over a period of “up to six months.”
As custodian, Jordan has the final say over Muslim policies at the shrine, but also needs to consider public opinion, including among Palestinians in the Holy Land.
In his phone call with Netanyahu, Jordan’s king stressed the need to “remove the measures taken by the Israeli side since the recent crisis broke out” and to agree on steps that would prevent another escalation in the future, Jordan’s state news agency Petra said.
The swift resolution of the latest diplomatic row reflected the overriding interest by Jordan and Israel to protect their relationship.
However, the peace treaty with Israel remains unpopular in Jordan and the tensions at the shrine and the embassy shooting inflamed anti-Israel sentiments.
MPs protest
An acrimonious session of Jordan’s Parliament was cut short Tuesday after lawmakers walked out in protest over the government’s handling of the shooting.
The session began with Interior Minister Ghaleb Al-Zobi presenting the initial findings of the investigation to lawmakers.
He confirmed previous accounts that the guard fired after being attacked with a screwdriver by one of two Jordanians delivering furniture to a residential building linked to the embassy.
The attack was preceded by a verbal dispute, the minister said.
The Jordanian was later identified as Mohammed Jawawdeh, the 16-year-old son of the owner of a furniture store. The owner of the building, who stood next to Jawawdeh during the confrontation, was also hit by gunfire and later died of his wounds.
Hundreds of mourners attended the teen’s funeral Tuesday. Mourners chanted slogans in support of the Jerusalem shrine and called Jawawdeh a “martyr” who died in defense of the holy site.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu praised the guard for acting “calmly” during the incident. Netanyahu met the guard and Israel’s ambassador to Amman on Tuesday in Jerusalem.
Muslims keep up Al-Aqsa boycott despite Israeli concessions
Muslims keep up Al-Aqsa boycott despite Israeli concessions
Sudan army chief visits HQ after recapture from paramilitaries
“Our forces are in their best condition,” Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan told army commanders at the reclaimed headquarters close to the city center and airport.
The army’s recapture of the General Command of the Armed Forces is its biggest victory in the capital since reclaiming Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city on the Nile’s west bank, nearly a year ago.
In a statement on Friday, the army said it had merged troops stationed in Khartoum North (Bahri) and Omdurman with forces at the headquarters, breaking the siege of both the Signal Corps in Khartoum North and the General Command, just south across the Nile River.
Since the early days of the war, when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) quickly spread through the streets of Khartoum, the military had to supply its troops inside the headquarters via airdrops.
Burhan was himself trapped inside for four months before emerging in August 2023 and fleeing to the coastal city of Port Sudan.
The recapture of the headquarters follows other gains for the army.
Earlier this month, troops regained control of Wad Madani, just south of Khartoum, securing a key crossroads between the capital and surrounding states.
The war in Sudan has unleashed a humanitarian disaster of epic proportions.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and, according to the United Nations, more than 12 million uprooted.
Famine has been declared in parts of Sudan but the risk is spreading for millions more people, a UN-backed assessment said last month.
Particularly in the country’s western Darfur region and in Kordofan in the south, families have been forced to eat grass, animal fodder and peanut shells to survive.
During Sunday prayers in Rome, Pope Francis lamented how the country has become the site of “the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world.”
He called on both sides to end the fighting and urged the international community to “help the belligerents find paths to peace soon.”
Both sides have been accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas, with the RSF specifically accused of ethnic cleansing, systematic sexual violence and laying siege to entire towns.
The United States announced sanctions this month against RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, accusing his group of committing genocide.
A week later, it also imposed sanctions against Burhan, accusing the army of attacking schools, markets and hospitals, as well as using food deprivation as a weapon of war.
Across the country, up to 80 percent of health care facilities have been forced out of service, according to official figures.
A deadly attack late Friday on the Saudi Hospital in the besieged North Darfur state capital El-Fasher killed 70 people and injured 19 others, the World Health Organization said on Sunday.
“At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.
In a rare statement addressing the targeting of health care in Sudan, Saudi Arabia also condemned the attack as a “violation of international law and international humanitarian law.”
AFP could not independently verify which of Sudan’s warring sides had launched the attack.
However, local activists reported that the hospital was hit by a drone after the RSF issued an ultimatum demanding army forces and their allies leave the city in advance of an expected offensive.
The WHO chief said that another facility in North Darfur’s Al-Malha, just north of El-Fasher, had also been attacked in recent days.
“We continue to call for a cessation of all attacks on health care in Sudan, and to allow full access for the swift restoration of the facilities that have been damaged,” Ghebreyesus said.
“Above all, Sudan’s people need peace. The best medicine is peace,” he added.
Pope Francis says Sudan's war 'most serious humanitarian crisis'
- A drone attack on a hospital in El-Fasher killed at least 70 people
- Pope Francis appeals to warring parties in Sudan to cease hostilities
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis said during Sunday prayers that the horror of the Holocaust can not be “forgotten or denied” as he also highlighted current suffering caused by Sudan’s civil war.
Speaking on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, he called on the entire world to “work together to eliminate the scourge of anti-Semitism as well as all forms of religious discrimination and persecution.”
Turning to Sudan, Francis said it was the “most serious humanitarian crisis in the world.”
“I renew my appeal to the warring parties in Sudan to cease hostilities and agree to sit at a negotiating table,” he said at the Sunday Angelus service.
The conflict in Sudan between the army and the Rapid Support Forces militia has triggered a huge humanitarian disaster, killing tens of thousands of people, uprooting more than 12 million and causing widespread starvation in parts of the country.
A drone attack on a Saudi-run hospital in El-Fasher in Sudan's Darfur region killed at least 70 people and wounded 19 others, according to the World Health Organization on Sunday.
Israeli fire kills 15 on deadline for Lebanon withdrawal
- Israeli forces opened fire on ‘citizens who were trying to return to their villages’
- The Lebanese army says ‘ready to continue its deployment” as soon as Israel left’
BURJ AL-MULUK, Lebanon: Israeli troops opened fire in south Lebanon on Sunday, killing at least 15 residents and a Lebanese soldier, health officials said as hundreds of people tried to return to their homes on the deadline for Israel to withdraw.
Israel was all but certain to miss Sunday’s deadline, which is part of a ceasefire agreement that ended its war with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group two months ago.
The deal that took effect on November 27 said the Lebanese army was to deploy alongside United Nations peacekeepers in the south as the Israeli army withdrew over a 60-day period.
That period ends on Sunday.
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli forces opened fire on “citizens who were trying to return to their villages,” killing at least 15 and wounding 83.
The ministry’s toll includes a soldier from the Lebanese army, which also announced his death and said Israeli fire had wounded another soldier.
AFP journalists said convoys of vehicles carrying hundreds of people, some flying yellow Hezbollah flags, were trying to get to several villages despite the Israeli military’s continued presence.
“We will return to our villages and the Israeli enemy will leave,” even if it costs lives, said Ali Harb, a 27-year-old trying to go to Kfar Kila.
Residents could also be seen heading on foot and by motorbike toward the devastated border town of Mays Al-Jabal, where Israeli troops are still stationed.
Some held up portraits of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, while women dressed in black carried photos of family members killed in the war.
Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee had issued a message earlier on Sunday to residents of more than 60 villages in southern Lebanon, telling them not to return.
Speaking from the border town of Aita Al-Shaab, Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah hailed in a television appearance “the return of residents in spite of the threats and warnings.”
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, the former army chief who took office earlier this month after a two-year vacancy in the post, called on residents to keep a cool head and “trust the Lebanese army,” which he said wanted “to ensure your safe return to your homes and villages.”
On Saturday, the army had said the delay in implementing the agreement was the “result of the procrastination in the withdrawal from the Israeli enemy’s side.”
A joint statement from the UN special coordinator for Lebanon and the head of the UN peacekeeping mission on Sunday acknowledged “that the timelines envisaged in the November Understanding have not been met.”
“As seen tragically this morning, conditions are not yet in place for the safe return of citizens to their villages along the Blue Line,” the statement said, referring to the border. It urged residents “to exercise caution.”
Israeli forces have left coastal areas of southern Lebanon, but are still present in areas further east.
The ceasefire deal stipulates that Hezbollah pull back its forces north of the Litani River — about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border — and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure in the south.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that the “agreement has not yet been fully enforced by the Lebanese state,” so the military’s withdrawal would continue beyond the Sunday deadline.
The Lebanese army said it was “ready to continue its deployment” as soon as Israel left.
Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati called Sunday for the backers of the ceasefire agreement — a group that includes the United States and France — “to force the Israeli enemy to withdraw.”
Lebanese state media have reported that Israeli forces have carried out demolitions in villages they control.
Aoun spoke on Saturday with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron about the “need to oblige Israel to respect the terms of the deal,” adding it must “end its successive violations, including the destruction of border villages.”
Macron’s office said the French president had called on all parties to the ceasefire to honor their commitments as soon as possible.
The fragile truce has generally held, even as the warring sides have repeatedly traded accusations of violations.
The deal ended two months of full-scale war that had followed nearly a year of low-intensity exchanges.
Hezbollah began trading cross-border fire with the Israeli army the day after the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by its Palestinian ally Hamas, which triggered the war in Gaza.
Israel’s campaign delivered a series of devastating blows against Hezbollah’s leadership including its longtime chief Nasrallah.
Israeli fire kills 1 as Palestinians are kept out of north Gaza over a ceasefire dispute
- Under the ceasefire, Israel on Saturday was to begin allowing Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza on foot
- Israel put the move on hold until Hamas freed a hostage who Israel said was supposed to have been released
DEIR AL-BALAH: A Palestinian man was killed and seven people were wounded by Israeli fire overnight, local health officials said Sunday, as crowds gathered in hopes of returning to the northern Gaza Strip under a fragile week-old ceasefire aimed at winding down the war.
In a separate development, President Donald Trump suggested Saturday that most of Gaza’s population should be at least temporarily resettled elsewhere, including in Egypt and Jordan, in order to “just clean out” the war-ravaged enclave. Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians themselves have previously rejected such a scenario.
Under the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Israel on Saturday was to begin allowing Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza on foot through the so-called Netzarim corridor bisecting the territory. Israel put the move on hold until Hamas freed a hostage who Israel said was supposed to have been released that day.
The man was shot and two others were wounded late Saturday, according to the Awda Hospital, which received the casualties. Another five Palestinians, including a child, were wounded early Sunday in a separate shooting, the hospital said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Israel has pulled back from several areas of Gaza as part of the ceasefire, which came into force last Sunday, but the military has warned people to stay away from its forces, which are still operating in a buffer zone inside Gaza along the border and in the Netzarim corridor.
Hamas freed four young female Israeli soldiers on Saturday, and Israel released some 200 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom were serving life sentences after being convicted of deadly attacks.
But Israel said another hostage, the female civilian Arbel Yehoud, was supposed to have been released as well, and that it would not open the Netzarim corridor until she was freed. It also accused Hamas of failing to provide details on the conditions of the hostages set to be freed in the coming weeks.
The United States, Egypt and Qatar, which mediated the ceasefire, were working to address the dispute.
The ceasefire reached earlier this month after more than a year of negotiations is aimed at ending the 15-month war triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and freeing scores of hostages still held in Gaza in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Around 90 hostages are still being held in Gaza, and Israeli authorities believe at least a third, and up to half of them, were killed in the initial attack or died in captivity.
The first phase of the ceasefire runs until early March and includes the release of a total of 33 hostages and nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The second — and far more difficult — phase, has yet to be negotiated. Hamas has said it will not release the remaining hostages without an end to the war, while Israel has threatened to resume its offensive until Hamas is destroyed.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 attack, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 people. More than 100 were freed during a weeklong ceasefire in November 2023. Israeli forces have rescued eight living hostages and recovered the remains of dozens more, at least three of whom were mistakenly killed by Israeli forces. Seven have been freed since the latest ceasefire began.
Israel’s military campaign has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not say how many of the dead were combatants. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
Israeli bombardment and ground operations have flattened wide swaths of Gaza and displaced around 90 percent of its population of 2.3 million people. Many who have returned to their homes since the ceasefire began have found only mounds of rubble where their neighborhoods once stood.
WHO chief urges end to attacks on Sudan health care after 70 killed in drone strike
- WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: ‘We continue to call for a cessation of all attacks on health care in Sudan’
The head of the World Health Organization called on Saturday for an end to attacks on health care workers and facilities in Sudan after a drone attack on a hospital in Sudan’s North Darfur region killed more than 70 people and wounded dozens.
“As the only functional hospital in El Fasher, the Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital provides services which include gyn-obstetrics, internal medicine, surgery and pediatrics, along with a nutrition stabilization center,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X after the Friday strike.
“We continue to call for a cessation of all attacks on health care in Sudan, and to allow full access for the swift restoration of the facilities that have been damaged,” Tedros said.
The war between Sudan’s army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which broke out in April 2023 due to disputes over the integration of the two forces, has killed tens of thousands, driven millions from their homes and plunged half of the population into hunger.
The conflict has produced waves of ethnically driven violence blamed largely on the RSF, creating a humanitarian crisis.
Darfur Governor Mini Minnawi said on X that an RSF drone had struck the emergency department of the hospital in the capital of North Darfur, killing patients, including women and children.
Fierce clashes have erupted in El Fasher between the RSF and the Sudanese joint forces, including the army, armed resistance groups, police, and local defense units.
