NAHARIYA, Israel: The war with Hezbollah that residents of northern Israel feared since the start of the Gaza conflict appeared more likely after a deadly rocket strike rocked the annexed Golan Heights.
There, in the Golan Heights bordering Nahariya’s Galilee region and occupied by Israel since 1967, 12 youths were killed and dozens wounded Saturday by the rocket that hit a soccer field in the Druze Arab town of Majdal Shams.
“Before, we felt safe, we didn’t feel danger,” said Amal Al-Shaar, 46, who accompanied her 12-year-old son Adam to the Galilee Medical Center in the coastal town of Nahariya while he received treatment for his injuries from the strike.
“We paid a high price with our children’s lives, we paid with the blood of our hearts for this war,” she said.
Below the ground where Adam and Amal were and in what used to be the hospital’s underground parking lot, certain departments were relocated to protect them from future rocket attacks.
“We’re the only hospital to be functional below ground or in a protected area since October 7,” said director Massad Barhum, who made the decision for the transfer the day of Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
As early as October 8, Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite movement supported by Iran, began to fire rockets at Israel in support of Palestinians and of its ally Hamas, which rules Gaza.
Since then, cross-border exchanges of fire between Israel’s army and the group have become almost daily, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a “severe response” to the Majdal Shams strike blamed on Hezbollah.
Tuesday, another Israeli civilian was killed by a rocket in the area, according to the army and paramedics, leading the military to strike back inside Lebanon where it says it has been aiming at Hezbollah’s infrastructure for weeks.
Tens of thousands of Israelis who lived close to the border were evacuated shortly after the start of the war in Gaza, but in Nahariya, people remained.
This created a “new border” where Nahariya is on the frontline, said Barhum, “along this entire new border, it’s us.”
“When there is a war, it will be here. Missiles could hit here,” said the 64-year-old Arab-Israeli, adding that his hospital is “ready to hold for seven days” without any contact with the outside world.
Strings of small Israeli flags have been hanged between the various departments as a sign of support.
In the hospital’s neonatal unit, the first department to have been relocated underground, newborns are under high protection.
Down there, only the incubators’s humming break the silence, as the sound of air-raid sirens cannot travel through the ground.
“We’re safe down here, far from the world,” said Vered Fleisher-Shefer, the unit’s director, who said she refuses to “live in fear.”
Like Nahariya, the nearby town of Maalot is so close to Lebanon — about 10 kilometers (six miles) — that residents will have just a few seconds to seek shelter when sirens warn of incoming rockets.
“We’re not even inside the (bomb) shelter when we hear explosions... that’s the scary thing,” said teacher Florence Touati-Wachsstock, who move there more than a decade ago.
“That’s what happened in Majdal Shams, and they’re even closer (to Lebanon),” added the 47-year-old mother of five.
“For almost 10 months, we’ve been expecting a real war with Lebanon, even more so these past few days with the attack in Majdal Shams,” she said.
Now she is reassessing her plans for the future.
“Should we stay, should we go, when will we know that we need to go, we have no idea of what can happen this evening, or tomorrow,” she said.
On Tuesday night, Israel carried out a strike on Hezbollah’s stronghold in the suburbs south of Beirut, targeting what the army said was the commander responsible for the Majdal Shams attack.
A source close to the Iran-backed militant group said that senior commander Fuad Shukr was the target but that he “survived the Israeli strike.”
No time to seek shelter, residents in north Israel after Golan strike
https://arab.news/z3kww
No time to seek shelter, residents in north Israel after Golan strike
- “Before, we felt safe, we didn’t feel danger,” said Amal Al-Shaar, 46, who accompanied her 12-year-old son Adam to the Galilee Medical Center
- “We’re the only hospital to be functional below ground or in a protected area since October 7,” said director Massad Barhum
Eleven dead, nine missing in Morocco flooding
- Usually arid areas in southern Morocco and Algeria have been drenched in floods caused by massive rainfall since Friday, officials told AFP Sunday
OUARZAZATE, Morocco: Moroccan authorities on Sunday told AFP that 11 people died and nine were missing in flooding caused by an “exceptional” climate phenomenon in southern areas.
Interior ministry spokesman Rachid Khalfi said authorities recorded an initial “toll of 11 deaths” after “heavy thunderstorms” that hit “17 prefectures and provinces in the kingdom.”
Among the victims, seven died in the province of Tata, some 740 kilometers south of Rabat, and two in Errachidia, almost 500 kilometers east of Marrakech, according to Khalfi.
He said one of the victims had foreign citizenship, without providing further details.
Khalfi also said “the volume of precipitation recorded in two days is equivalent to that which these regions normally experience during an entire year.”
The floods also caused the collapse of 40 homes and damaged 93 roads, and “affected electricity, drinking water and telephone networks,” he added.
Usually arid areas in southern Morocco and Algeria have been drenched in floods caused by massive rainfall since Friday, officials told AFP Sunday.
Areas in southern Morocco have been affected “by an extremely unstable tropical air mass,” the spokesman for the Moroccan General Directorate of Meteorology, Lhoussaine Youabd, told AFP.
This “led to the formation of unstable and violent clouds” that caused massive rainfall, he said, describing the phenomenon as “exceptional.”
As a result, the Ouarzazate region received 47 millimeters of water in three hours, and Tagounite, near the Algerian border, some 170 millimeters, according to the Moroccan weather service.
“We haven’t seen such rain for about 10 years,” Omar Gana, an Ouarzazate local, told AFP.
The heavy rains hit regions of Morocco that have been suffering from drought for at least six years.
In a previous toll, Algerian civil defense said one person died in Illizi, some 1,900 kilometers south of Algiers, and one was missing in flooding in the south.
Later in the day, it gave a total of two people missing, in El Bayadh and Tamanrasset.
It also said it had rescued several families trapped by flooded rivers in the south.
Videos posted on social media showed that some areas in the Sahara desert were drenched. In Morocco’s Ouarzazate, entire streets were flooded.
Morocco has been experiencing severe water stress after six consecutive years of drought, shrinking dam levels to less than 28 percent of capacity by the end of August.
West Bank escalation signals potential for a multifront regional conflict
- Deadly Israeli military operations and Jewish settler attacks drive unrest in an already volatile occupied territory
- Violence shows no sign of ebbing despite elimination of several militant commanders by Israeli security forces
DUBAI: Israeli military raids, settler attacks and a vicious cycle of violence have claimed the lives of more than 662 Palestinians and 24 Israelis in the West Bank since Oct. 7, raising the specter of a new active front in a regional conflict.
The West Bank has long been a center of unrest, but recent events have led to unprecedented volatility, with the Israeli government stepping up military operations in the area, including large-scale raids by soldiers backed by armored vehicles and bulldozers in Jenin, Tulkarm and other areas.
One recent raid at a refugee camp in the city of Jenin, which houses more than 4,000 Palestinians, involved hundreds of Israeli troops and armored vehicles. Simultaneous raids were launched in Tulkarm, Tubas, Nablus and Ramallah.
The Israeli army withdrew from Jenin and the refugee camp on Friday after the 10-day operation, which left 36 dead across the occupied West Bank, witnesses said. Residents who had fled began returning to their homes in the camp.
Israeli officials said 14 militants were killed and at least 25 arrested over the course of the Jenin assault, which camp residents say has led to the blockage of essential aid. One Israeli soldier was killed in the operation.
Hamas, whose Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel triggered the ongoing war in Gaza, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have acknowledged the loss of at least 14 fighters. Since Oct. 7, Israeli troops have arrested some 5,000 Palestinians across the West Bank.
“Operation Summer Camps” was the largest incursion since the early 2000s, when the Second Intifada, or uprising, took place. Authorities said the raids are part of a strategy to prevent Iranian-backed militant groups from launching attacks on Israeli citizens.
Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, described the roundup of terrorist suspects as “mowing the lawn” but said the threat to Israel would only be fully neutralized once its forces “pull out the roots.”
“The rise of terror in Judea and Samaria is an issue that we need to be focused on every minute,” Gallant said during a meeting with military officials, describing the West Bank by its biblical name.
Videos of the raids shared on social media show deserted streets and colossal damage to buildings. The UN Human Rights Office has accused Israeli forces of using “unlawful force” and called for an “immediate end” to the operation.
Kamal Abu Al-Rub, the governor of Jenin, said the situation was the “most severe, the most painful and oppressive” in years. He said Israeli troops had mounted 12 major raids in the city since Oct. 7.
Medecins Sans Frontieres, one of the aid agencies operating in the West Bank, said that “repeated attacks by the Israeli military on health workers, ambulances and medical facilities, are severely hindering people’s ability to get access to medical care. There has been very limited medical access in the city of Tulkarm and its refugee camps.”
INNUMBERS
• 650 Palestinians killed in West Bank and East Jerusalem since Oct. 7 (Palestinian Ministry of Health).
• 1,300 Attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in Oct. 7, 2023-Sept. 2, 2024 period
Source: UN OCHA
The organization said its teams had ceased operations in Jenin and Tulkarm, citing restrictions to their movements.
Ori Goldberg, a lecturer at Israel’s Reichman University, regards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions in the West Bank as an act of desperation designed to rally public support amid mass protests over his handling of the Gaza hostage crisis.
The strategy could be backfiring, however, as the Israeli occupation of the West Bank appears to be “teetering” on the brink of all-out chaos.
“Israeli citizens support the war on terror,” Goldberg told Arab News, referring to the West Bank raids, but “they don’t see the connection between the dead hostages and the Israeli rampage. They think we have to do this. But I don’t think Israel can contain the violence.”
The military operation inside the Jenin refugee camp has left many Palestinian homes damaged or destroyed by army bulldozers and pavement stripped from roads.
On Friday, agencies said residents used bulldozers of their own to begin clearing the rubble after Israeli armored vehicles left.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and its forces regularly make incursions into Palestinian communities, but the latest raids as well as the hawkish comments by Gallant signaled an escalation, residents told AFP news agency.
The Israeli military has maintained a strong footing in the occupied territory for decades to protect the roughly 500,000 Israeli citizens living in settlements there.
Despite international condemnation, the Netanyahu government has allowed illegal settlements to continue to expand across the West Bank.
In March this year, the Israeli government announced it was confiscating an area of roughly 1,980 acres in the northern Jordan Valley with a view to expanding Jewish settlements there.
On Friday, a 26-year-old Turkish American woman was killed in the West Bank during a protest where Israeli forces opened fire. Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was taking part in a protest against settlement expansion in Beita, a town near Nablus.
Settler violence in the area also is nothing new. However, there has been a sharp increase in the number of attacks on Palestinians since the war in Gaza began.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there were at least 1,300 attacks between Oct. 7 and Sept. 2 this year.
The raids and settler violence have been taking place against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, which has left more than 40,000 Palestinians dead, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and created a major humanitarian crisis.
Despite international pressure, Netanyahu has resisted calls to strike a ceasefire deal with Hamas, which would see the return of the remaining hostages, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and an end to the fighting.
Opinion
This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)
Last week, Netanyahu presented a plan that included the destruction of the Netzarim Corridor — an 8-km stretch of land that connects the Mediterranean Sea with the former Karni crossing in northeastern Gaza.
He said reconstruction would not be permitted and that Palestinians would not be allowed to return to their homes in northern Gaza to prevent Hamas from establishing “nests” in the area.
Meanwhile, the Philadelphi Corridor, which separates Gaza from Egypt, would remain under Israeli control, and a third corridor would be built between Khan Younis and Rafah, which would also be under Israeli military control.
What was perhaps more striking about the map used by Netanyahu during his news conference, however, was that the West Bank appeared to be completely annexed by Israel.
Asked by a reporter to elaborate on this, Netanyahu said: “I didn’t get into that. I was talking about Gaza. There is a whole issue of how to achieve peace between us. That’s another press conference.”
Whether Netanyahu’s government intends to open a new front in its war with the Palestinians and seize complete control of the West Bank remains unclear.
Reichman University’s Goldberg is skeptical about Netanyahu’s appetite for risk given the magnitude of unfinished business both in Gaza and the Lebanon border. “I doubt that Israel will bring larger forces into the West Bank,” he said. “It cannot afford to lose on yet another front.”
Egyptian archaeologist calls on Berlin to return Nefertiti bust
- Akhenaten, called the heretic king, was notorious for promoting the worship of the god Aten to the exclusion of Egypt’s other gods
CAIRO: Prominent Egyptian archaeologist and former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass has launched a petition for the return to Egypt of the pharaonic bust of Queen Nefertiti from the Neues Museum in Berlin.
Nefertiti’s famous painted limestone bust was uncovered at Tell el-Amarna, around 300 km (185 miles) south of Cairo, in 1912 by a German archaeological mission, which shipped it to Berlin the following year.
Amarna was the short-lived capital of Nefertiti’s husband, the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Akhenaten, who reigned until about 1335 B.C.
Akhenaten, called the heretic king, was notorious for promoting the worship of the god Aten to the exclusion of Egypt’s other gods. His reign also introduced a radical change in Egyptian art.
In his petition launched on Saturday, Hawass asked for the return of the bust, saying it was removed from Egypt illegally after its discovery.
“We announce today that Egypt — this is the national committee, it is not a government committee — asks for the return of the bust of Nefertiti,” Hawass said.
“What I need from everyone here is to go to my website... hawasszahi.com, and you will sign, one signature, to show that you would love for this bust to come back.”
Hawass said he is not calling for the repatriation of artefacts taken out of Egypt legally. His campaign is focused on repatriating “three main beautiful objects” including the bust of Nefertiti, the Rosetta Stone and the Dendera Zodiac.
Officials at Berlin’s Neues Museum were not immediately available for comment.
Turkish president vows to ‘purge’ military graduates who took a pro-secular oath
- Erdogan added that an investigation was underway and vowed that ”the few impertinent individuals responsible will be purged”
ISTANBUL: The Turkish president has hit out at military graduates who took a pro-secular oath during their graduation ceremony, promising that those behind it would be “purged” from the military.
Speaking at a conference for Islamic schools in the northwestern city of Kocaeli on Saturday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described those involved as “opportunists.” He added that an investigation was underway and vowed that ”the few impertinent individuals responsible will be purged.”
“Whoever they are, it is not possible for them to be part of our military,” Erdogan said.
Erdogan was present at the graduation ceremony at the Turkish Military Academy in Ankara on Aug. 30.
Valedictorian Ebru Eroglu led the 960-strong graduating class in reciting the official military oath about defending Turkiye. But video footage from about an hour later shows about 400 of the graduates gathered in a field, raising their swords and chanting “We are the soldiers of Mustafa Kemal” — a reference to the secular founder of modern Turkiye, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Eroglu then led the group in the Officer’s Oath, in which they vowed to defend “a secular, democratic Turkiye.” That oath was discontinued from the academy in 2022.
Turkiye has become more overtly religious under Erdogan, shedding some of the secularist traditions of the original Kemalist republic.
Turkiye’s military has traditionally viewed itself as the guarantor of secularism, which has resulted in a series of coups. It led three takeovers between 1960 and 1980 and toppled a conservative government in 1997. However in 2016, an attempt to overthrow Erdogan and his religious-conservative administration was foiled and thousands of people were purged from the armed forces, the judiciary, and other public institutions.
Some pro-government commentators were highly critical of the actions of the military graduates, suggesting it might be a challenge to Erdogan’s government. Others online praised it as a sign that the Turkish military will remain secular regardless of the ruling party. Erdogan ally Devlet Bahceli, head of the Nationalist Movement Party, later called for an investigation. On Thursday, the Ministry of National Defense confirmed that a probe had been launched.
In addition to the controversy, this year’s graduation also stood out for being the first time in Turkiye’s history that all three branches of the military — army, navy and air force — saw women graduating at the top of their respective classes.
Kuwait emir accepts resignation of oil minister
RIYADH: Kuwait’s Emir Sheikh Meshal Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah has accepted the resignation of Deputy Prime Minster and Oil Minister Emad Al-Atiqi, Kuwait News Agency reported on Sunday.
Minister of Finance and Minister of State for Economic and Investment Affairs Nora Suleiman Al-Fassam was appointed as acting minister of oil.
