JERUSALEM: Israel embarked Thursday on an unprecedented snap election campaign — the second this year — after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a governing coalition and instead dissolved parliament.
In what seemed an improbable scenario just days ago, Israel’s newly elected Knesset dissolved itself in an early morning 74-45 vote and set a new election date for September 17.
The developments were a shocking setback for Netanyahu, who had appeared to secure a comfortable win in last month’s election. But he was unable to build a parliamentary majority needed to rule because a traditional ally, Avigdor Lieberman, refused to bring his Yisrael Beiteinu faction into the coalition.
Netanyahu, who has led Israel for the past decade, now faces another challenge to his lengthy rule. It comes as he prepares for a pre-indictment hearing before expected criminal charges against him in a series of corruption cases.
Assuming they would sweep into power again, Netanyahu’s allies in the ruling Likud Party had already begun drafting a contentious bill aimed at granting him immunity from the various corruption charges awaiting him. He was also looking to push legislation limiting the power of Israel’s Supreme Court and paving his path to many more years in office.
But it was a separate issue that sparked the unprecedented crisis, and for the first time in history thrust Israel into a repeat election before a new government was even formed.
Lieberman — a veteran nationalist and secular politician — demanded that current legislation mandating that young ultra-Orthodox men be drafted into the military run its course.
Years of exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men have generated widespread resentment among the rest of Jewish Israelis who serve. The ultra-Orthodox, backed by Netanyahu, refused to bend and the showdown quickly devolved into a full-blown crisis that imploded the perspective government.
“The public chose me, and Lieberman, unfortunately, deceived his voters. From the beginning he had no intention to do what he said,” Netanyahu said after the vote, accusing Lieberman of aligning with “the left.”
Lieberman, a former top aide to Netanyahu who has alternated between a close alliance and bitter rivalry with his former boss, retorted that the new election was a result of Netanyahu caving into the ultra-Orthodox.
“This is a complete surrender of Likud to the ultra-Orthodox,” he said.
A new election complicates Netanyahu’s efforts to pass the proposed bills to protect himself from prosecution.
Even if Netanyahu wins the election, it is unlikely he will be able to form a government and lock down the required political support for an immunity deal before an expected indictment. That would force him to stand trial, and in turn put heavy pressure on him to step aside. No one in Likud has yet challenged him publicly.
The US State Department said on Thursday that the US-led conference on economic aspects of a Middle East peace plan will go ahead next month in Bahrain despite Israel’s snap elections, .
“We are not anticipating any changes. It’s set for June 25 and 26,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus told reporters.
Another US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that a separate rollout of the political elements of the plan would take place “when the timing is right.”
Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, had been preparing for months to unveil the peace plan but had said he was waiting for Israel’s elections in April as well as the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
The Bahrain conference is expected to look at economic opportunities for the Palestinians, through funding from Washington’s allies that are united with Israel and the United States in opposing Iran.
Kushner has hinted that the United States in turn will not push for the creation of a Palestinian state, a key goal of decades of US-led diplomacy, and Netanyahu during his last campaign threatened to annex parts of the West Bank.
The Palestinian Authority has already said it will boycott the Bahrain conference, not seeing Trump as an honest broker after his landmark recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Israel faces new elections after parliament dissolves
Israel faces new elections after parliament dissolves
- Israel’s newly elected Knesset dissolved itself in an early morning 74-45 vote and set a new election date for September 17
- Benjamin Netanyahu, who has led Israel for the past decade, now faces another challenge to his lengthy rule
Netanyahu says Israel offering $5 mn reward for each Gaza hostage freed
- “Anybody who brings out a hostage will find with us a secure way for them and their family to leave” Gaza, Netanyahu says
JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel was offering a reward of $5 million to anybody who brings out a hostage held in Gaza.
“Anybody who brings out a hostage will find with us a secure way for them and their family to leave” Gaza, Netanyahu said in a video filmed inside the Palestinian territory, according to his office.
“We will also give them a reward of $5 million for each hostage.”
Wearing a helmet and a bullet-proof jacket, Netanyahu spoke with his back to the Mediterranean in the Netzarim Corridor, Israel’s main military supply route which carves the Gaza Strip in two just south of Gaza City.
“Anyone who dares to do harm to our hostages is considered dead — we will pursue you and we will catch up with you,” he said.
Accompanied by Defense Minister Israel Katz, Netanyahu underlined that one of Israel’s war aims remained that “Hamas does not rule in Gaza.”
“We are also making efforts to locate the hostages and bring them home. We won’t give up. We will continue until we’ve found them all, alive or dead.”
During Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack which triggered the war in Gaza, militants took 251 hostages. Of those, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 34 who have been confirmed dead.
Turkiye’s Erdogan says Israel’s Herzog was denied airspace en route to Azerbaijan
- “In light of the situation assessment and for security reasons, the President of the State has decided to cancel his trip to the Climate Conference in Azerbaijan,” the Israeli presidency said
ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that Turkiye refused to allow Israeli President Isaac Herzog to use its airspace to attend the COP climate summit in Azerbaijan, highlighting Ankara’s stance amid tensions with Israel.
“We did not allow the Israeli president to use our airspace to attend the COP summit. We suggested alternative routes and other options,” Erdogan told reporters at the G20 Summit in Brazil.
Herzog ended up canceling the visit.
“In light of the situation assessment and for security reasons, the President of the State has decided to cancel his trip to the Climate Conference in Azerbaijan,” the Israeli presidency said. Israel launched a devastating war against Hamas in Gaza a year ago after the Palestinian Islamist group’s deadly cross-border attack.
Turkiye withdrew its ambassador in Israel for consultations after the Gaza war broke out, but has not officially severed its ties with Israel and its embassy remains open and operational.
“But whether he was able to go or not, I honestly don’t know,” Erdogan said on Herzog’s visit to Baku.
“On certain matters, as Turkiye, we are compelled to take a stand, and we will continue to do so,” he said.
Hospital chief decries ‘extreme catastrophe’ in north Gaza
- Kamal Adwan Hospital director Hossam Abu Safiyeh told AFP by phone: “The situation in northern Gaza is that of an extreme catastrophe
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: The World Health Organization expressed grave concern on Tuesday for hospitals still partly operating in war-stricken northern Gaza, where one hospital director described the situation as an “extreme catastrophe.”
“We are very, very concerned, and it’s getting harder and harder to get the aid in. It’s getting harder and harder to get the specialist personnel in at a time when there is greater and greater need,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told journalists in Geneva.
She said the organization was “particularly concerned about Kamal Adwan Hospital” in Beit Lahia, where Israeli forces launched an offensive against Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups last month.
Kamal Adwan Hospital director Hossam Abu Safiyeh told AFP by phone: “The situation in northern Gaza is that of an extreme catastrophe.
“We’re beginning to lose patients because we lack medical supplies and personnel,” he said.
Abu Safiyeh added that his hospital had been “targeted many times by the occupation forces, most recently” on Monday.
“A large number of children and elderly people continue to arrive suffering from malnutrition,” the doctor said.
He accused Israel of “blocking the entry of food, water, medical staff and materials destined for the north” of the Gaza Strip.
The WHO’s Harris estimated that between November 8 and 16, “four WHO missions we were trying to get up to go were denied.”
“There’s a lack of food and drinking water, shortage of medical supplies. There’s really only enough for two weeks at the very best,” she said.
A statement from COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry body responsible for civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said Tuesday: “COGAT-led humanitarian efforts in the medical field continue.”
It said that on Monday, “1,000 blood units were transferred” to Al-Sahaba hospital in Gaza City, outside the area where Israel’s military operations are taking place.
In its latest update on the situation in northern Gaza, the UN humanitarian office OCHA said Tuesday that “access to the Kamal Adwan, Al Awda and Indonesian hospitals remains severely restricted amid severe shortages of medical supplies, fuel and blood units.”
Turkiye asks export group to help snuff out Israel trade
- Ankara has faced public criticism that trade may be continuing with Israel since a ban in May
ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s government has asked one of the country’s top export associations to help enforce a ban on trade with Israel, slowing the flow of goods in recent weeks, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Ankara has faced public criticism that trade may be continuing with Israel given a spike in exports to the Palestinian territories since the ban in May. So it turned to the Central Anatolian Exporters’ Association, the sources said.
The Trade Ministry has asked the association to require more checks and approvals of proposed shipments, including vetting with Palestinian authorities, they said.
One of the sources, from an export association, said the new system began in mid-October, causing an initial backlog. The “main concern was goods still going to Israel, so there is a procedural change in exports to Palestine,” he said.
In response to a query, the Trade Ministry said goods were only shipped if approved by Palestinian authorities under a bilateral trade mechanism. “The destination is Palestine and the importer is a Palestinian,” it said.
According to official Turkish Statistical Institute data, Turkiye, among the fiercest critics of Israel’s war in Gaza, has cut exports there to zero since May, from a monthly average of $380 million in the first four months of the year.
But at the same time exports to Palestinian territories — which must flow through Israel — jumped around 10-fold to a monthly average of $127 million in June-September, from only $12 million in the first four months of the year, the data show.
The top goods leaving Turkish ports and earmarked for Palestinian territories in recent months are steel, cement, machinery, and chemicals, according to the Turkish Exporters Assembly, also known as TIM.
The jump in such exports raised suspicions the trade ban was being circumvented, sparking street protests that questioned one of the main policies President Tayyip Erdogan’s government imposed to oppose Israel’s war with Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.
Opposition lawmakers have also sought answers in parliament.
Trade Minister Omer Bolat said this month that, before the ban, some $2 billion of Turkiye’s $6.5 billion annual trade with Israel was goods ultimately purchased by Palestinian buyers.
Last week, Bolat told parliament that the Palestinian Economy Ministry vetted all shipments. Turkiye’s Trade Ministry said that Palestinian confirmations then run through an electronic system, after which customs declarations require a separate approval.
The Central Anatolian Exporters’ Association is an umbrella body for sector-specific export groups. In the past, they all usually quickly approved shipments with little question, the sources said.
Under the new instructions from the government, the association is the main approval body, two sources said. It must first confirm receipt of information about the proposed export including the Palestinian authorities’ approval, and then approve a separate application for export, they said.
The first source said the system was working now, but slower than in the past due to relevant checks.
In the first 10 months of the year, exports to Palestinian territories were up 543 percent from a year earlier, TIM data show. In the first four months, before the Israel ban was imposed, they were up only 35 percent.
Lebanon’s first responders caught in the line of Israel-Hezbollah fire
- Israeli military claims Iran-backed Lebanese militia is using ambulances to transport arms and fighters
- Rights group says civil defense workers, even if affiliated with Hezbollah, are protected under laws of war
LONDON: Since tensions between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah flared up on Oct. 8 last year, paramedics and rescue workers in south Lebanon have found themselves in the line of fire, despite their protected status under international humanitarian law.
In the latest deadly incident, at least 13 people were killed on Thursday in an Israeli strike that hit the main civil defense center in the eastern Baalbek area, according to Lebanon’s General Directorate of Civil Defense.
Bachir Khodr, the regional governor, was quoted by BBC News as saying that the facility belonged to the Lebanese government and that among the victims was the city’s civil defense chief
In a post on X, EU High Representative Josep Borrell said the “EU strongly condemns” the loss of life and that the pattern of attack “mirrors appalling trends in other conflicts, from Syria to Ukraine or Sudan.”
As of Oct. 31, 2024, Israeli military strikes had killed at least 173 emergency workers, injured 277 others, and damaged 243 medical vehicles and 55 hospitals, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health.
Humanitarian organizations and rights groups have joined the ministry in condemning attacks on first responders, their facilities, and ambulances.
“The killing of first responders in south Lebanon is a heartbreaking violation, not just of international law, but of basic humanity,” Tania Baban, the Lebanon country director of the US-based charity MedGlobal, told Arab News.
The media office of the Lebanese Civil Defense earlier shared with Arab News a list documenting 13 personnel and volunteers killed in Israeli strikes while performing their duties. The document, received on Nov. 13, detailed the victims’ names, positions and place of death.
Six of the deaths occurred in the southern governorate of Nabatieh, which has come under regular bombardment since mid-September, while six others occurred in the town of Dardaghia, east of Tyre, and one in Beirut’s southern suburbs.
An Israeli strike directly hit the civil defense center in Dardaghia on Oct. 9, leaving it “completely destroyed” and killing five of its staff, according to the organization’s media office.
The document provided by the Lebanese Civil Defense also listed 70 personnel and volunteers injured in Israeli attacks while carrying out their duties. Injuries ranged in severity and included burns, head trauma, and inhalation of toxic fumes.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry condemned “the continued targeting of emergency medical teams by occupation forces,” calling on the international community “to put an end to this series of ongoing war crimes.”
The statement came after an airstrike on an ambulance in Zefta, a town in Nabatieh, reportedly killed a paramedic and injured two others on the morning of Oct. 31. According to the ministry, the vehicle belonged to the Al-Risala Emergency Medical Association.
“These are people who willingly risk their lives to help others, driven by a duty to save lives, often under extreme conditions. To see them become targets is devastating,” MedGlobal’s Baban said, referring to the first responders.
She said such attacks “undermine the very core of humanitarian work,” stressing that “medics are meant to be neutral, protected under international law.”
INNUMBERS
• 173+ First responders killed in Lebanon since October 2023.
• 243+ Emergency vehicles damaged across Lebanon.
• 55+ Healthcare facilities damaged.
(Source: Lebanese MOPH)
Indeed, Article 18 of the First Geneva Convention, Articles 16(1) and 17(1) of Protocol I, and Article 10(1) of Protocol II prohibit harming or punishing anyone performing medical activities, regardless of the person benefiting from them.
Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Oct. 30 that it had documented three direct Israeli attacks on “medical personnel, transports, and facilities” in Lebanon, which it said constituted “apparent war crimes.”
The three reported attacks involved a civil defense center in central Beirut on Oct. 3, as well as an ambulance and a hospital in southern Lebanon on Oct. 4, which killed 14 paramedics.
In a statement on Oct. 11, Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the UN human rights office, said the conflict had killed more than 100 medics and emergency workers across Lebanon within the past year.
Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN special coordinator for Lebanon, said at least “27 attacks targeted ambulances used by first responders” since early October last year.
Following the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in solidarity with its Palestinian ally. Israel retaliated, sparking a year-long exchange of fire along the shared Israel-Lebanon border.
However, this tit-for-tat suddenly escalated in September, with Israel mounting a wave of air and ground attacks against Hezbollah’s communications network, weapons caches, and leadership, eliminating the group’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 27.
Residential buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs have not been spared, nor have villages in south Lebanon, including Ayta Al-Shab, Ramyeh, Kfar Kila, and Mhaybib, according to an analysis of satellite data by The Washington Post.
Some 1.2 million people have been displaced from southern and eastern Lebanon, according to UN figures. As of Oct. 12, more than 283,000 of them — most of them Syrian nationals — had crossed the border into war-torn Syria.
Since the conflict began, at least 3,189 people — more than 770 of them women and children — have been killed, while some 14,078 others have been wounded, according to the Ministry of Public Health.
In Israel, 72 people have been killed by Hezbollah attacks, including 30 soldiers, according to the prime minister’s office. More than 60,000 people have been displaced from their homes.
The Israeli military has not denied targeting ambulances in south Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold that has become a battleground between Israeli forces and Lebanese and Palestinian armed groups. On Oct. 12, it even threatened to target medical vehicles.
Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army’s Arabic-speaking spokesperson, said: “Hezbollah operatives are using ambulances to transport fighters and arms.”
In a post on the social media platform X on Oct. 12, he warned that “action will be taken (by the Israeli military) against any vehicle carrying armed men, regardless of its type.”
Prior to Adraee’s statement, on Oct. 3, the UK’s Guardian newspaper reported that Israel had struck a civil defense center in central Beirut belonging to the Islamic Health Committee, which is affiliated with Hezbollah.
The following day, the BBC reported that an Islamic Health Committee ambulance was struck near the entrance of Marjayoun Hospital in southern Lebanon, killing seven paramedics and forcing the facility to close.
Human Rights Watch said in its Oct. 30 statement that “membership or affiliation with Hezbollah, or other political movements with armed wings, is not a sufficient basis for determining an individual to be a lawful military target.”
“Medical personnel affiliated with Hezbollah, including those assigned to civil defense organizations, are protected under the laws of war,” the rights monitor added.
It called on the Israeli military to “immediately halt unlawful attacks on medical workers and health care facilities,” urging Israel’s allies to “suspend the transfer of arms to Israel given the real risk that they will be used to commit grave abuses.”
MedGlobal’s Baban said the targeting of first responders in Lebanon “leaves communities even more vulnerable, depriving families and neighborhoods of essential care and support at a time when they need it most.”
“Every attack on medical staff not only steals lives but shakes the hope and resilience of those they serve,” she said. “We must continue to demand respect and safety for all who work to heal and protect in these conflict zones.”
