Jerusalem clashes wound 22 Palestinians as land rights tensions mount

A Palestinian demonstrator is arrested by Israeli security forces in the in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied east Jerusalem on May 5, 2021. (AFP)
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Updated 06 May 2021
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Jerusalem clashes wound 22 Palestinians as land rights tensions mount

  • Police confirmed 11 arrests in the latest unrest to rock the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood near Jerusalem’s walled Old City

JERUSALEM: Twenty-two Palestinians were wounded in overnight clashes with Israeli police in annexed east Jerusalem, the Red Crescent said Thursday, as tensions flare over a controversial land rights case.
Police confirmed 11 arrests in the latest unrest to rock the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood near Jerusalem’s walled Old City, where land disputes between Palestinians and Jewish settlers have fueled hostility for years.
Palestinian protests, which began late Wednesday, continued into the early hours.
The legal case centers on the homes of four Palestinian families on land claimed by Jews.
Earlier this year, a Jerusalem district court ruled the homes legally belonged to the Jewish families, citing purchases decades ago.
The Jewish plaintiffs claimed their families lost the land during the war that accompanied Israel’s creation in 1948, a conflict that also saw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced from their homes.
The Palestinian families implicated in the case have provided evidence that their homes were acquired from Jordanian authorities who controlled east Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967.
Amman has intervened in the case, providing documents to support the Palestinian claims.
Israel seized east Jerusalem in 1967 and later annexed it, in a move not recognized by most of the international community.
The district court ruling infuriated Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah who viewed it as a further step in what they see as a Jewish settler effort to drive Arabs out of east Jerusalem.
Weeks of clashes that have seen police use skunk water cannons and deploy anti-riot police on horseback have resulted in several arrests.
Israel’s Supreme Court has ordered the sides to seek a compromise.
Sami Irshid, a lawyer for the Palestinians, said the Nahalat Shimon settler movement proposed that one member of each concerned Palestinian family be recognized as a “protected tenant.”
That would temporarily delay eviction until the protected tenant died, at which point the home would return to Nahalat Shimon, Irshid said.
“We reject this completely,” Mona Al-Kurd, one of the Palestinian residents said.
“The settlers want us to recognize their property rights, it is impossible.”
Yehonatan Yosef, an activist with Nahalat Shimon, accused the Palestinian families of rejecting “any compromise.”
“It’s their problem,” he said, noting that if the Supreme Court ruled in the settlers’ favor, the Jewish families would do what they wished with each plot.
The Supreme Court has indicated that if the sides cannot reach a compromise, it will rule on whether the Palestinians can appeal the district court decision.
An appeal process could take years.
Mohammed Deif, the reclusive leader of the military wing of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, issued a rare public warning on Tuesday, saying Israel would pay a “high price” over the Sheikh Jarrah dispute.
The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as their future capital, while Israel regards the entire city as its “undivided capital.”
Palestinian foreign minister Riyad Al-Maliki sent a letter to the International Criminal Court urging it to “to take a clear and public stand against crimes perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.”


Syria arrests alleged Daesh commander behind shrine attack plot: state media

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Syria arrests alleged Daesh commander behind shrine attack plot: state media

Authorities arrested “Abu Al-Hareth Al-Iraqi, commander in the Daesh organization,” said SANA
The interior ministry at that time had posted pictures of four men it identified as members of an arrested Daesh cell

DAMASCUS: Syrian Arab Republic authorities have arrested an alleged Daesh commander accused of planning a foiled attack targeting a Shiite Muslim shrine near Damascus, state media reported Saturday.
Authorities arrested “Abu Al-Hareth Al-Iraqi, commander in the Daesh organization,” said state news agency SANA, citing an unidentified intelligence official and using an Arabic acronym for Daesh.
He was “behind the planning of a number of operations,” SANA reported, adding that “the cell that was thwarted in its plan to attack the Sayyida Zeinab shrine” was working under his direction.
Last month, Syrian authorities said they foiled an Daesh attempt to blow up the shrine, Syria’s most visited Shiite pilgrimage site, located south of Damascus.
The interior ministry at that time had posted pictures of four men it identified as members of an arrested Daesh cell.
It was the first time the new Damascus authorities said they had foiled an Daesh attack.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Saturday that the man arrested is “an Iraqi national who was one of the second-tier commanders in Daesh and spent his recent years” in the Badia desert region.
Iran-backed guards used to be deployed at the gates of the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, but fled in December shortly before Sunni Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus, toppling president Bashar Assad.
Over the years, Shiite shrines have been a frequent target of attacks by Sunni extremists of the Daesh group, both in Syria and neighboring Iraq.
Daesh seized large swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in the early years of Syria’s civil war, declaring a cross-border “caliphate” in 2014.
US-backed Kurdish-led forces in Syria territorially defeated its proto-state in 2019, but the militants have maintained a presence in the country’s vast desert.

‘Welcome back’: Israelis cheer, cry as hostages freed from Gaza

Updated 15 February 2025
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‘Welcome back’: Israelis cheer, cry as hostages freed from Gaza

  • All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border
  • They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel

TEL AVIV: Holding up signs reading “sorry and welcome back” and “complete the ceasefire,” hundreds of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv’s “Hostages Square” on Saturday to watch Hamas release three Israeli hostages from Gaza.
In smaller groups, friends and relatives of the released men — Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov, 29, and Israeli-Argentine Yair Horn, 46 — shed tears of joy at the sight of their loved ones, who were made to address a crowd in Gaza from a stage alongside rifle-wielding militants.
All three men were taken from Nir Oz, a kibbutz community near the Gaza border, during Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 which sparked the war.
Dekel-Chen’s wife, Avital, who gave birth to the couple’s third daughter two months after her husband was seized, was waiting for him at an army base in southern Israel.
“My breath has returned. He looks so handsome,” she said following his release in a call to her sister aired by Israel’s Kan public broadcaster.
Other relatives of Dekel-Chen said they were relieved to see him alive.
“I am excited, and I see that he looks OK, and I want to hug him,” his mother-in-law told Kan, wiping away tears.
Dekel-Chen’s sister-in-law said: “Thank God that everything is OK and they were on their feet.”
They watched the release from the town of Carmei Gat in southern Israel, where some residents of Nir Oz have moved to since the attack.
In Kfar Saba, in central Israel, a friend of the Horn family, Ronnie Milo, told AFP that she was experiencing “unimaginable joy” on seeing him return alive.
Ronli Nissim, of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group, said: “It’s an emotional roller coaster, and also very bittersweet.”
“Every time someone comes back... we are just a jumble of emotions,” she said.
“But then we’re thinking about everyone who’s left behind, and we know that they are mistreated, we know that they’re in hell, and they’re just waiting to be released.”
So far under the Gaza truce, 19 Israeli hostages have been released in exchange of hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli custody.
The 42-day first phase of the truce stipulates the release of a total of 33 hostages, including eight Israel says are dead, in exchange for some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.
Out of the 251 people abducted during the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants, 70 remain in Gaza, with half of them dead according to the Israeli military.
In Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, Trupanov’s friends and family clapped, cheered and cried as they watched the 29-year-old, who had been held by Hamas’s ally Islamic Jihad, step out of a car in Gaza.
In a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Trupanov’s family said they were grateful to see him return.
“Finally, Sasha can be surrounded by his loved ones and begin a new path,” said the statement, adding that they did not know if Trupanov was “aware that his father, Vitaly, was murdered on October 7.”
“This knowledge — or lack thereof — will completely transform his homecoming from a day of great joy to one of deep mourning for his beloved father,” they said.


Kremlin thanks Hamas for freeing Russian-Israeli hostage: state media

Updated 15 February 2025
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Kremlin thanks Hamas for freeing Russian-Israeli hostage: state media

  • Moscow welcomed the freeing of Alexander Trufanov and expresses its gratitude to Hamas

MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Saturday said it was grateful to Palestinian militant group Hamas for freeing a Russian-Israeli hostage from Gaza in another prisoner exchange with Israel.
“Moscow welcomes the freeing of Alexander Trufanov (identified by Israel as Sasha Trupanov) and expresses its gratitude to the Hamas leadership for taking this decision,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.


Lebanon official media report Israeli drone strike in south

Updated 15 February 2025
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Lebanon official media report Israeli drone strike in south

  • An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike targeting the outskirts of Ainata, said NNA

BEIRUT: Lebanese official media said an Israeli drone struck the country’s south on Saturday, without reporting casualties, days before a deadline in a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike” targeting the outskirts of the town of Ainata, the state-run National News Agency (NNA) said, adding that “nobody was hurt” and that “drones and surveillance aircraft are still flying over the area at low altitude.”


Three Israeli hostages freed in Gaza, Israel releases 369 Palestinians in exchange

Updated 15 February 2025
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Three Israeli hostages freed in Gaza, Israel releases 369 Palestinians in exchange

  • Exchange of hostages and prisoners maintains ceasefire, with buses carrying freed Palestinians arriving to cheering crowds in Ramallah, Gaza
  • The swap takes place after negotiations, with both sides focusing on the next phase to return the remaining hostages and end the war

KHAN YOUNIS:  Hamas released Israeli hostages Iair Horn, Sagui Dekel Chen and Sasha (Alexander) Troufanov in Gaza on Saturday and Israel freed some 369 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in exchange, after mediators helped avert a collapse of the fragile ceasefire.
The three Israelis were led onto a stage with Palestinian Hamas militants armed with automatic rifles standing on each side of them at the site in Khan Younis, live footage showed, before they were taken back into Israel by Israeli forces.
Shortly afterwards, buses carrying freed Palestinian prisoners and detainees departed Israel’s Ofer jail in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The first bus arrived in Ramallah to a cheering crowd, some waving Palestinian flags.

Freed Palestinian prisoners gesture from a bus after being released by Israel as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 15, 2025. (Reuters)

“We didn’t expect to be freed, but God is great, God set us free,” said Musa Nawarwa, 70, from the West Bank town of Bethlehem, who was serving two life terms for killings of Israeli soldiers in the West Bank.
Buses carrying some of the hundreds of Palestinian freed prisoners and detainees, some flashing victory signs as they hung from the windows, arrived later at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

A few were returning to an enclave they have not seen for years, before it was blasted into rubble by Israeli airstrikes and shelling in 15 months of war. But most were rounded up after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
The ceasefire’s second phase would usher in negotiations to return the remaining living hostages among the 251 seized that day, and complete an Israeli military withdrawal before a final end to the war and the reconstruction of Gaza.

Israeli hostages Iair Horn, 46, left, Sagui Dekel Chen, 36, center left, and Alexander Troufanov, 29, right, are escorted by Hamas on a stage before being handed over to the Red Cross in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip on Feb. 15, 2025. (AP)

Argentina-born Iair Horn, 46, was taken captive together with his younger brother Eitan. Horn appeared to have lost considerable weight in captivity.
“Now, we can breathe a little. Our Iair is home after surviving hell in Gaza. Now, we need to bring Eitan back so our family can truly breathe,” Horn’s family said in a statement.
The swap of the three Israelis for the 369 Palestinians allayed growing alarm that the ceasefire agreement could unravel before the end of the 42-day first stage of the truce pact in effect since January 19.
In what has become known as Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, people broke into cheers and tears after hearing the Red Cross was on its way to deliver the three to Israeli military forces.
Dekel Chen, a US-Israeli, Troufanov, a Russian Israeli, and Horn along with his brother Eitan were seized in Kibbutz Nir Oz, one of the communities near Gaza’s border that were overrun by Hamas gunmen on October 7, 2023.
Some of the dozens of masked Islamist Hamas fighters deployed at the handover site carried rifles seized from the Israeli military during the October attack, Hamas sources said.

On the handover stage in Khan Younis, the hostages were made to give short statements in Hebrew and militants presented Horn with an hourglass and photo of another Israeli hostage still in Gaza and his mother, reading “time is running out (for the hostages still in Gaza).”
Troufanov was abducted with his mother, grandmother and girlfriend — all of whom were released during a brief November 2023 pause in hostilities. His father was killed in the attack on Nir Oz, one of the worst-hit communities, where one in four people either died or were taken hostage.

A freed Palestinian prisoner is hugged by a boy after being released by Israel as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 15, 2025. (Reuters)

On October 7, Dekel Chen, 36, left his pregnant wife and two little daughters in the family safe room to go out and fight gunmen rampaging through the kibbutz.
He embraced his tearful wife Avital tightly and said “perfect” with a big smile when she told him the name of their baby daughter, who he has not yet seen, was Shahar Mazal, Hebrew for “dawn” and “luck,” in a video released by the military.
Nineteen Israeli and five Thai hostages have been released so far, with 73 still in captivity, around half of whom have been declared dead in absentia by Israeli authorities.
Prospects for the ceasefire surviving have been shaken by US President Donald Trump’s call for Palestinians to be resettled permanently out of Gaza, and for the tiny enclave to be turned over to the US to be redeveloped as a seaside resort. That idea has been rejected out of hand by Palestinian groups, Arab states and Western allies of Washington.