LONDON: Israel “firmly rejects” pressure not to build in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday following spreading international condemnation of planned evictions of Palestinians from homes in the city claimed by Jewish settlers.
“We firmly reject the pressure not to build in Jerusalem. To my regret, this pressure has been increasing of late,” Netanyahu said during a televised address ahead of national commemorations of the Israeli capture of east Jerusalem in a 1967 war.
“I say also to the best of our friends: Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and just as every nation builds in its capital and builds up its capital, we also have the right to build in Jerusalem and to build up Jerusalem. That is what we have done and that is what we will continue to do,” Netanyahu said.
His comments come as Israel’s justice ministry said it would delay the key Monday hearing in the case that could see Palestinian families evicted from their Jerusalem homes to make way for Jewish settlers.
“In all the circumstances and in light of the attorney general’s request, the regular hearing for tomorrow, May 10, 2021 (is) canceled,” it said in a statement, adding it would schedule a new hearing within 30 days.
The delay follows days of clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces, fueled in part by the dispute in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
Meanwhile, UNICEF urged the Israeli authorities to refrain from using violence against children and release all those detained, after 37 Palestinian children have been injured and arrested in east Jerusalem in the last two days.
“Over the past two days, 29 Palestinian children were injured in east Jerusalem, including in the Old City and the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood (and) eight Palestinian children were arrested.
“A one-year old toddler was among those injured. Some children were taken for treatment at hospitals with injuries in the head and the spine,” the UN children’s body said.
UNICEF said it received reports that ambulances were restricted from arriving on location to assist and evacuate the injured and that an on-site clinic was reportedly hit and searched.
“All children should be protected from violence and kept out of harm’s way at all times. Families’ rights to access all places of worship should be preserved and those injured be assisted without restrictions,” it said in a statement.
Pope Francis expressed his concern at the unrest in Jerusalem, saying: “Violence only generates violence. Let’s stop these clashes.”
“I pray so that this might be a place of encounter and not violent clashes, a place of prayer and of peace. I invite everyone to seek shared resolutions so that the multireligious identity and multiculture of the holy city might be respected and so that fraternity might prevail,” he said after reciting the Regina Caeli prayer.
Jordan also urged Israel on Sunday to stop what it described as “barbaric” attacks on worshippers in Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque and said it would step up international pressure.
Jordan, which has custodianship of Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem, said Israel should respect worshippers and international law safeguarding Arab rights.
King Abdullah II condemned the violations and said he rejected attempts by Israeli authorities to change the demographic situation in east Jerusalem, and all measures aimed at changing the city’s historical and legal status. The king also called on Israel to adhere to international law and international humanitarian law.
During a phone call with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, King Abdullah said Jordan would continue to protect Islamic and Christian holy sites and to preserve its Arab and Islamic identity, and called for coordination between Arab states to put an end to the Israeli violations in east Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa mosque.
“What the Israeli police and special forces are doing, from violations against the mosque to attacks on worshippers, is barbaric (behavior) that is rejected and condemned,” the government said in a statement.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said the kingdom would do its utmost to protect rights of Palestinians against ownership claims by Jewish settlers.
“Israel as the occupying force carries responsibility for protecting rights of Palestinians in their homes,” Safadi said in comments on state media.
Tunisia, the only Arab member of the UN Security Council, in coordination with Palestine, submitted a request to hold a session on Monday to discuss the dangerous escalation and aggressive practices of the Israeli authorities in Palestinian territories.
The request was supported by China — current president of the council — along with Norway, Ireland, Vietnam, Saint Vincent, the Grenadines and Niger.
The session will also discuss Israeli attacks against the Palestinians and their insistence on their expansionist policies, including settlement plans, demolition and dispossession of homes, displacement of Palestinian families, land grabbing, and obliterating the historical and civilizational identity of Jerusalem, the Tunisian foreign ministry said.
“These practices constitute a flagrant violation of international law, a threat to international peace and security and undermine efforts aimed at achieving a just and comprehensive peace in the region,” the ministry added.
Arab League foreign ministers announced they would hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday at Palestine’s request, which has been supported by a number of countries.
Hossam Zaki, assistant secretary-general of the Arab League, said in a statement “the meeting will discuss Israeli crimes and attacks in the occupied city of Jerusalem, Islamic and Christian holy sites, especially Al-Aqsa Mosque, and attacks on worshipers, in addition to the brutal Israeli attacks and plans to seize the homes of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood to empty the city of its residents and displace its people.”
Zaki said the decision was taken to raise the level of the meeting to the ministerial level, instead of ambassadorial, in proportion to the “seriousness of the Israeli attacks that are part of the Zionist regime’s systematic policy to Judaize Jerusalem and change the existing legal and historical status of the city and its sanctities.”
The Arab Parliament also said it will hold an emergency session on May 19 in Cairo to discuss the same issues.
Adel bin Abdulrahman Al-Asoumi, president of the Arab Parliament, stressed the need for Israel to stop the ongoing crimes committed against the Palestinian people, and support all their rights, foremost of which is the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation is also set to hold an emergency session on Tuesday.
Dozens of Palestinians and several Israeli police officers have been wounded in clashes in recent days in east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, the scene of a long-running land dispute and located a short walk from flashpoint holy sites.
The case dates back to before the creation of the state of Israel, when a small Jewish community lived in Sheikh Jarrah.
After Israel’s independence and the 1948 war with its Arab neighbors, east Jerusalem came under the control of Jordan.
Many refugees settled in the district after fleeing Zionist forces in other parts of what was now Israel.
Israel then seized east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it.
Early this year, the Jerusalem district court ruled in favor of Jewish settlers who laid claim to land in the Sheikh Jarrah district, now home to around 30 Palestinians from four families.
Palestinians argue that discriminatory laws mean they are unable to claim back their properties inside what is now Israel.
The Palestinian families’ lawyer, Hosni Abu Hussein, also accused the settlers of fraud.
“The registration of the lands in the name of the settlement association took place through fraud and deception, in collusion with the commissioner of public properties and the registrar of Israeli lands,” he told AFP.
The dispute, in a strategic location close to Jerusalem’s Old City, has added fuel to tensions around the nearby Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest mosque, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Hamas in Gaza have threatened attacks against Israel if the high-profile case goes against the Palestinian families.
(With Reuters and AFP)
Netanyahu says Israel firm on Jerusalem as global concern mounts
https://arab.news/rjyy3
Netanyahu says Israel firm on Jerusalem as global concern mounts
- Pope Francis has also called for an end to the violence in Jerusalem
- Tunisia calls for UN Security Council meeting, as Arab League and Arab Parliament to hold emergency sessions to discuss Israeli crimes and attacks
Syria authorities arrest official behind Saydnaya death penalties
- Confirmation by monitor of his detention came a day after deadly clashes erupted in province of Tartus, an Assad stronghold, when gunmen sought to protect him
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities have arrested a military justice official who under ousted president Bashar Assad issued death sentences for detainees in the notorious Saydnaya prison, a war monitor said Thursday.
The confirmation by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights of his detention came a day after deadly clashes erupted in the coastal province of Tartus, an Assad stronghold, when gunmen sought to protect him.
Mohammed Kanjo Hassan is the highest-ranking officer whose arrest has been announced since Assad’s ousting on December 8.
Assad fled for Russia after a militant offensive wrested from his control city after city until Damascus fell, ending his clan’s five-decade rule and sparking celebrations in Syria and beyond.
The offensive caught Assad and his inner circle by surprise and while fleeing the country he took with him only a handful of confidants.
Many others were left behind, including his brother Maher Assad, who according to a Syrian military source fled to Iraq before heading to Russia.
Other collaborators were believed to have taken refuge in their hometowns in Alawite regions that were once a stronghold of the Assad clan.
According to the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison, Kanjo Hassan headed Syria’s military field court from 2011 to 2014, the first three years of the war that began with Assad’s crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired democracy protests.
He was later promoted to chief of military justice nationwide, the group’s co-founder Diab Serriya said, adding that he sentenced “thousands of people” to death.
The Saydnaya complex, the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, epitomised the atrocities committed against Assad’s opponents.
The fate of tens of thousands of prisoners and missing people remains one of the most harrowing legacies of his rule.
After 13 years of civil war, Syria’s new leaders from Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) face the monumental task of safeguarding the multi-confessional, multi-ethnic country from further collapse.
With its roots in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda, a Sunni Muslim extremist group, HTS has moderated its rhetoric and vowed to ensure protection for minorities, including the Alawite community from which Assad hails.
With 500,000 killed in the war and more than 100,000 still missing, the new authorities have also pledged justice for the victims of abuses under the deposed ruler.
They also face the substantial task of restoring security to a country ravaged by war and where arms have become ubiquitous.
During the offensive that precipitated Assad’s ousting, rebels flung open the doors of prisons and detention centers around the country, letting out thousands of people.
In central Damascus, relatives of some of the missing have hung up posters of their loved ones in the hope that with Assad gone, they may one day learn what happened to them.
World powers and international organizations have called for the urgent establishment of mechanisms for accountability.
With the judiciary not yet reorganized since Assad’s toppling, it is unclear how detainees suspected of crimes linked to the former authorities will be tried.
Some members of the Alawite community fear that with Assad gone, they will be at risk of attacks from groups hungry for revenge or driven by sectarian hate.
On Wednesday, angry protests erupted in several areas around Syria, including Assad’s hometown of Qardaha, over a video showing an attack on an Alawite shrine that circulated online.
The Observatory said that one demonstrator was killed and five others wounded “after security forces... opened fire to disperse” a crowd in the central city of Homs.
The transitional authorities appointed by HTS said in a statement that the shrine attack took place early this month, with the interior ministry saying it was carried out by “unknown groups” and that republishing the video served to “stir up strife.”
On Thursday, the information ministry introduced a ban on publishing or distributing “any content or information with a sectarian nature aimed at spreading division and discrimination.”
In one of Wednesday’s protests over the video, large crowds chanted slogans including “Alawite, Sunni, we want peace.”
Assad long presented himself as a protector of minority groups in Sunni-majority Syria, though critics said he played on sectarian divisions to stay in power.
In Homs, where the authorities imposed a nighttime curfew, 42-year-old resident Hadi reported “a vast deployment of HTS men in areas where there were protests.”
“There is a lot of fear,” he said.
In coastal Latakia, protester Ghidak Mayya, 30, said that for now, Alawites were “listening to calls for calm,” but putting too much pressure on the community “risks an explosion.”
Noting the anxieties, Sam Heller of the Century Foundation think tank told AFP that Syria’s new rulers had to balance dealing with sectarian tensions while promising that those responsible for abuses under Assad would be held accountable.
“But they’re obviously also contending with what seems like a real desire on the part of some of their constituents for what they would say is accountability, maybe also revenge, it depends on how you want to characterise it,” he said.
WHO chief says he is safe after Sanaa airport bombardment
- Tedros was in Yemen as part of a mission to seek the release of detained UN staff and assess the health and humanitarian situations in the war-torn country
GENEVA: The head of the World Health Organization, who was at the Sanaa airport in Yemen amid an Israeli bombardment on Thursday, said there was damage to infrastructure but he remained safe.
“One of our plane’s crew members was injured. At least two people were reported killed at the airport,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X.
Other UN staff were also safe but their departure was delayed until repairs could be made, he added.
Tedros was in Yemen as part of a mission to seek the release of detained UN staff and assess the health and humanitarian situations in the war-torn country.
He said the mission “concluded today,” and “we continue to call for the detainees’ immediate release.”
While about to board their flight, he said “the airport came under aerial bombardment.”
“The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge — just a few meters from where we were — and the runway were damaged.”
The Israeli air strikes came a day after the latest attacks on Israel by Iran-backed Houthis.
The Houthi-held capital’s airport was struck by “more than six” attacks with raids also targeting the adjacent Al-Dailami air base, a witness told AFP.
Israeli strikes kill three in Yemen as Netanyahu fires warning
- Two people died and 11 were wounded at the Houthi-held capital’s airport, and one person was killed and three were missing at Ras Issa port, Houthis said
SANAA: Israeli air strikes pummelled Sanaa’s international airport and other targets in Yemen on Thursday, leaving three people dead, a day after the latest attacks on Israel by the Iran-backed Houthis.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was at the airport during the strike, he said, adding that “one of our plane’s crew members was injured.”
The strikes targeting the airport, military facilities and power stations in Houthi areas follow rising hostilities between Israel and the militia.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel’s strikes would “continue until the job is done.”
“We are determined to cut this branch of terrorism from the Iranian axis of evil,” he said in a video statement.
His defense minister Israel Katz said Israel would “hunt down all the Houthi leaders... No one will be able to escape us.”
Tedros, who was in Yemen to seek the release of detained UN staff and assess the humanitarian situation in war-torn Yemen, said he and his team were about to board their flight when “the airport came under aerial bombardment.”
He said the air traffic control tower, departure lounge and runway were damaged in the strike.
The Houthi-held capital’s airport was struck by “more than six” attacks with raids also targeting the adjacent Al-Dailami air base, a witness told AFP.
A series of strikes were also fired at a power station in Hodeida, a witness and the Iran-backed Houthis’ official Al-Masirah TV station said.
Two people died and 11 were wounded at the Houthi-held capital’s airport, and one person was killed and three were missing at Ras Issa port, Houthi statements said.
Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam called the strikes, a day after the Houthis fired a missile and two drones at Israel, “a Zionist crime against all the Yemeni people.”
The Israeli military said its “fighter jets conducted intelligence-based strikes on military targets belonging to the Houthi terrorist regime.”
The targets included “military infrastructure” at the airport and power stations in Sanaa and Hodeida, as well as other facilities at Hodeida, Salif and Ras Kanatib ports, an Israeli statement said.
“These military targets were used by the Houthi terrorist regime to smuggle Iranian weapons into the region and for the entry of senior Iranian officials,” the statement said.
Palestinian militant group Hamas, which is fighting Israel in the Gaza Strip, condemned the attack as an “aggression” against its “brothers from Yemen.”
On Saturday, days ahead of Wednesday’s missile and drone strike on Israel, 16 people were wounded by a Houthi attack in Tel Aviv.
The incident prompted a warning from Netanyahu, who said he ordered the destruction of the group’s infrastructure.
The Houthis have fired a series of missiles and drones at Israel since the eruption of war in Gaza in October last year, claiming solidarity with the Palestinians.
The Houthis have also waged a months-long campaign against shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Scores of drone and missile attacks on cargo ships have prompted a series of reprisal strikes by US and sometimes British forces.
Israel has also previously struck the Houthis in Yemen, including hitting ports and energy facilities, after Houthi attacks against its territory.
In July, a Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv killed an Israeli civilian, prompting retaliatory strikes on Hodeida.
Last week, before the latest volley of attacks, Netanyahu said the Houthis would “pay a very heavy price” for their strikes on Israel.
Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar Assad.
Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war, effectively turning it into a narco state under Assad.
“We found a large quantity of captagon, around one million pills,” said a balaclava-wearing member of the security forces, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Osama, and whose khaki uniform bore a “public security” patch.
An AFP journalist saw forces pour fuel over and set fire to a cache of cannabis, the painkiller tramadol, and around 50 bags of pink and yellow captagon pills in a security compound formerly belonging to Assad’s forces in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district.
Captagon has flooded the black market across the region in recent years, with oil-rich Saudi Arabia a major destination.
“The security forces of the new government discovered a drug warehouse as they were inspecting the security quarter,” said another member of the security forces, who identified himself as Hamza.
Authorities destroyed the stocks of alcohol, cannabis, captagon and hashish in order to “protect Syrian society” and “cut off smuggling routes used by Assad family businesses,” he added.
Syria’s new Islamist rulers have yet to spell out their policy on alcohol, which has long been widely available in the country.
Since an Islamist-led rebel alliance toppled Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, Syria’s new authorities have said massive quantities of captagon have been found in former government sites around the country, including security branches.
AFP journalists in Syria have seen fighters from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) set fire to what they said were stashes of captagon found at facilities once operated by Assad’s forces.
Security force member Hamza confirmed Wednesday that “this is not the first initiative of its kind — the security services, in a number of locations, have found other warehouses... and drug manufacturing sites and destroyed them in the appropriate manner.”
Maher Assad, a military commander and the brother of Bashar Assad, is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Experts believe Syria’s former leader used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
A Saudi delegation met Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, a source close to the government told AFP, to discuss the “Syria situation and captagon.”
Jordan in recent years has also cracked down on the smuggling of weapons and drugs including captagon along its 375-kilometer (230-mile) border with Syria.
Jordan says 18,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
AMMAN: About 18,000 Syrians have crossed into their country from Jordan since the government of Bashar Assad was toppled earlier this month, Jordanian authorities said on Thursday.
Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told state TV channel Al-Mamlaka that “around 18,000 Syrians have returned to their country between the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad on December 8, 2024 until Thursday.”
He said the returnees included 2,300 refugees registered with the United Nations.
Amman says it has hosted about 1.3 million Syrians who fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011, with 650,000 formally registered with the United Nations.
