Iran dismisses European calls for restraint amid Middle East tensions/node/2567208/middle-east
Iran dismisses European calls for restraint amid Middle East tensions
Above, a huge billboard depicts Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, right, and slain Palestinian Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh at Tehran’s Valiasr Square on Aug. 12, 2024. (AFP)
Iran dismisses European calls for restraint amid Middle East tensions
Three European countries issued a statement on Monday calling on Iran and its allies to refrain from attacks against Israel
Updated 13 August 2024
Reuters
DUBAI: Calls from France, Germany and Britain that Iran should exercise restraint with regards to Israel “lack political logic and contradict principles of international law,” Iran’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
The three European countries issued a statement on Monday calling on Iran and its allies to refrain from attacks against Israel following the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Tehran last month.
Tehran and its allies, Hamas and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, have accused Israel of carrying out the assassination. The Israeli government has made no claim of responsibility.
“Without any objection to the crimes of the Zionist regime (Israel), the E3 statement impudently requires Iran not to respond to a violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said.
Kanaani said Tehran was determined to deter Israel and called on Paris, Berlin and London to “once and for all stand up against the war in Gaza and the warmongering of Israel.”
“The inaction of the United Nations Security Council and the extensive political and military support of Western governments to the Zionist regime (Israel) are the main factors behind the regional expansion of the Gaza crisis,” he said.
Killing of US-Turkish citizen shows high price of expressing solidarity with Palestinians in occupied West Bank
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi believed shot by Israeli troops while taking part in peaceful protest against settlement expansion
International community has condemned the wave of attacks on Palestinians and their allies since Oct. 7 last year
Updated 13 sec ago
Jonathan Gornall
LONDON: On Saturday afternoon, two young women lay side by side in a hospital morgue in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Unknown to each other but united in death, one was the victim of the increasingly unbridled Israeli settler violence in the West Bank.
The other had died at the hands of the Israeli military while protesting against that very same violence.
The first to die was Bana Amjad Bakr, a 13-year-old girl killed on Friday night in her bedroom at home in Qaryut, a village 15 km south of Nablus. She was reportedly hit by a stray bullet fired by Israeli forces.
According to Yesh Din, an Israeli non-profit organization that advocates for the human rights of Palestinians living under occupation, Bakr was fatally wounded after dozens of settlers, “protected” by Israeli soldiers, stormed her village.
The teenager was taken to Rafidia Hospital in Nablus, where she was pronounced dead.
Nablus Governor Ghassan Daghlas (3-R) stands in front of the bodies of Turkish-American Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26 (L) and 13-year-old Palestinian Bana Baker at a hospital morgue in Nablus in the occupied West Bank on September 7, 2024. (AFP)
But the tragedy of her passing and her family’s grief would have gone unnoticed by the wider world — were it not for events that unfolded the following day.
On Saturday morning, a Turkish-born American citizen was shot in the head by Israeli troops in the village of Beita, just 8 km north of where Bana had been mortally wounded in Qaryut.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old from Washington state, had been taking part for the first time in the regular weekly protest organized by the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement against the town’s expanding Jewish settlement.
Just three months ago, Eygi had graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle, where she had studied psychology and Middle Eastern languages and cultures.
Palestinian activists lift a banner and portraits of slain Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi during a funeral procession in Nablus in the occupied West Bank on September 9, 2024. (AFP)
In a statement, her family said she had been active in pro-Palestinian protests on campus and had felt morally compelled to travel to the West Bank and “stand in solidarity with Palestinian civilians.”
According to eyewitness accounts, Eygi and other protesters had taken refuge in an olive grove after Israeli soldiers fired tear gas as the peaceful protest began to disperse.
“The demonstration, which primarily involved men and children praying, was met with force from the Israeli army stationed on a hill,” said a spokesperson for ISM.
“Initially, the army fired a large amount of tear gas and then began using live ammunition.”
It was then that Eygi, who appeared to be deliberately targeted by an Israeli sniper, was shot in the back of the head.
Israeli forces take position following a demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel in the village of Qaryut on September 15, 2023. (AFP)
ISM denied “repeated false claims” that demonstrators had been throwing rocks. “All eye-witness accounts refute this claim,” said the spokesperson.
“Aysenur was more than 200 meters away from where the Israeli soldiers were, and there were no confrontations there at all in the minutes before she was shot.
“Regardless, from such a distance neither she nor anyone else could possibly have been perceived as posing any threat. She was killed in cold blood.”
It was Eygi’s death, and not Bakr’s, that prompted international outrage and global headlines. A spokesperson for the UN secretary-general demanded a “full investigation of the circumstances” and accountability for the death of the dual American-Turkish citizen.
The US government also called for an investigation, with a National Security Council spokesperson saying the White House was “deeply disturbed by the tragic death of an American citizen.”
Members of the Palestinian security forces carry the body of 13-year-old Bana Amjad Bakr during her funeral in Nablus. (AFP)
Meanwhile, the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it held the Israeli government responsible for Eygi’s death and pledged to bring those who killed her to justice.
Although such killings add impetus to the growing international alarm over Israel’s behavior, in Gaza and the West Bank, the death of a single foreign activist at the hands of Israeli soldiers frequently garners more global coverage than multiple killings of Palestinians.
As ISM pointed out, “the human rights activist, who we consider a martyr in the struggle, was the 18th demonstrator to be killed in Beita since 2020” — the youngest of whom was just 13 years old.
Ghassan Daghlas, the governor of Nablus, paid his respects to Eygi and Bakr in an emotional visit to the morgue in Rafidia hospital on Saturday. “Both were killed by the same bullets,” he said.
“We call on the international community to stop the insane war on Palestine. Bullets do not differentiate between activists and a Palestinian child.”
People check a burnt car a day after an attack by Jewish settlers on the village of Jit near Nablus that left a 23-year-old man dead and others with critical gunshot wounds, on August 16, 2024. (AFP)
Over the years, several American nationals have lost their lives while protesting in solidarity with Palestinians. One of the most infamous cases occurred more than 20 years ago, in March 2003, when another member of ISM was killed.
Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old activist from Washington state, was crushed by an armored military bulldozer during a protest against the demolition of Palestinian homes in Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians do not forget their friends. Many children born after Corrie’s death carry her first name and a street in Ramallah is named for her. But until now it has been difficult to conclude that sacrifices such as hers have not been in vain.
The marked difference in the response of the US government then and now shows how less tolerant global opinion has become toward Israel’s behavior.
US CITIZENS KILLED BY ISRAELIS
May 2003: Rachel Corrie, 23, crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer during Gaza protest.
May 31, 2010: Furkan Dogan, 19, shot by Israeli troops during Gaza Flotilla raid.
Jan. 13, 2022: Omar Assad, 78, died in Israeli custody in the West Bank.
May 11, 2022: Shireen Abu Akleh, 51, shot by Israeli troops while reporting in the West Bank.
Jan. 20, 2024: Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, 17, shot by Israeli gunmen in the West Bank.
Feb. 10, 2024: Mohammad Ahmad Khdour, 17, shot by Israeli gunmen in the West Bank.
Sept. 6, 2024: Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, shot by Israeli troops during West Bank protest.
Back in 2003, 77 members of the US Congress signed a resolution “expressing sympathy for the loss of Rachel Corrie in the Palestinian village of Rafah in the Gaza Strip on March 16, 2003,” calling on the US government “to undertake a full, fair, and expeditious investigation” into her death.
No such investigation followed. But following the killing of Eygi this week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that “when we have more info, we will share it, make it available and, as necessary, we’ll act on it.”
Eygi is at least the third US citizen known to have been killed in the West Bank since October. In February, Palestinian-American Mohammad Ahmad Alkhdour, 17, was reportedly shot twice by Israeli forces northwest of Jerusalem.
In January, another 17-year-old Palestinian-American national, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, was killed in similar circumstances.
A Palestinian girl holds posters of US peace activist Rachel Corrie during a protest marking the anniversary of her death at a refugee camp in Rafah on March 16, 2013. (AFP)
The settler movement, ultimately responsible for the deaths at the weekend of both Bakr and Eygi, may yet prove to be the undoing of an Israeli government that has not only given it free rein to expand settlements, but has also armed it to the teeth.
Toward the end of last month, it emerged that the head of Israel’s security agency had written to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accusing the extremist settler movement of terrorism.
Ronen Bar, head of the Shin Bet, warned that the increasingly violent actions of the “hilltop youth” were out of control and “a large stain on Judaism and on all of us.”
He added: “The damage to Israel, especially at this time, and to the majority of the settlers is indescribable: A loss of global legitimacy even among our best friends.”
Bar blamed nationalist politicians, in particular Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. By encouraging and arming the extremists, they were “willing to jeopardize the state’s security and its very existence” in the pursuit of their ideological ambitions, he said.
Palestinian medics transport a man who was injured in a reported attack by Israeli settlers in the village of Qusra, into Rafidia Hospital in Nablus on August 31, 2024. (AFP)
International Crisis Group recently reported there had been a record 1,246 attacks on Palestinians by settlers in the West Bank since Oct. 7, causing 21 deaths, hundreds of injuries, and, as part of a deliberate policy to sabotage livelihoods, the systematic destruction of 23,000 trees.
“Settler violence is at an all-time high, with Israeli settlers harassing, terrorizing and killing Palestinians across the West Bank in greater numbers and with greater frequency and fervor,” Mairav Zonszein, the ICG’s senior Israel analyst, said in a statement on Friday.
“They are emboldened by a government committed to deepening control over the West Bank and foiling a Palestinian state.”
She added: “To stem settler violence, the US and other Western countries should target not only individual settlers but state entities and policies that bolster the settlement enterprise.”
But in weakening support for Israel in the West, ultimately it may be the reckless behavior of the settlers and their political supporters — and the death of foreign activists like Eygi — that will backfire on Netanyahu and his government.
A 13-year hiatus ends: Turkish foreign minister attends Arab League summit
Ankara sees Fidan’s visit as a strategic move to strengthen ties with bloc members while exploring new avenues for cooperation
Country’s previous military operations in Libya, Somalia and Syria have strained relations with the Arab League, which has frequently criticized such actions
Updated 41 min 32 sec ago
MENEKSE TOKYAY
ANKARA: As Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan attends the 162nd Ordinary Council of Foreign Ministers of the Arab League in Cairo on Tuesday, attention is focused on how this will impact Turkiye’s ongoing efforts to further normalize relations with its Arab neighbors after years of strained ties.
It has been 13 years since a Turkish foreign minister attended a summit of the 22-member Arab League. Ankara sees the visit as a strategic move to strengthen Turkiye’s regional ties with the members on a more institutionalized basis, while exploring new avenues for cooperation and mutual benefit.
The country’s previous military operations in Libya, Somalia and Syria have strained relations with the Arab League, which has frequently criticized such actions.
Fidan’s presence at the summit is particularly noteworthy because, as the former head of intelligence, he was instrumental in initiating the normalization process with Gulf countries in 2020.
Since becoming foreign minister last year, he has continued his efforts to improve relations with the region, holding several meetings with Arab diplomats and Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit.
Political consultations were also held in Ankara in February between Deputy Foreign Minister Ambassador Ahmet Yildiz and Arab League Deputy Secretary-General Ambassador Hossam Zaki.
More recently, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi made a long-awaited visit to Turkiye after years of bitter rivalry.
In response to the Gaza conflict, Turkiye has joined a joint contact group formed at a summit of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to seek an end to the violence.
On Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan proposed an alliance among Islamic countries to counter Israeli “expansionism.”
Soner Cagaptay, senior fellow at The Washington Institute, told Arab News: “There seems to be a wide consensus among Arab League members that the Syrian regime should be rehabilitated and integrated into the international system. One piece of this is Turkish-Syrian normalization.
“Key members of the Arab world, including those that have financial ties with Turkiye such as Saudi Arabia and UAE, have long insisted that Ankara also normalize ties with Egypt, which has happened, but I think that those two countries are also driving the normalization process between Ankara and Damascus.”
In the meantime, Turkiye and the Gulf Cooperation Council are currently negotiating a free trade agreement.
Syria’s return as a full member of the Arab League last year and Damascus’s approval of Turkiye’s participation in the summit are also significant for the latter’s ongoing normalization talks with Syria since the countries broke off relations in 2011.
While Turkiye has improved relations with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, its efforts to normalize ties with Damascus are progressing gradually.
Galip Dalay, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, thinks Fidan’s presence at the summit reflects the level of normalization achieved between Turkiye and the Arab world so far.
“Recent developments had tested this to some extent, not least the Gaza war. Rather than undermining it, the war has underpinned this normalization process as Turkiye has pursued a policy prioritizing Arab agencies on the subject,” he told Arab News.
Dalay thinks this also signifies revisiting Turkiye’s pre-Arab Spring regional policies, favoring good relations with Arab governments and elites.
“It indicates a gradual, economy-focused regional policy centered on positive interactions with Arab elites. Syria, in any case, had no luxury to reject Turkiye’s participation in the Summit,” he added.
According to widespread rumors over the summer, Turkiye is expected to extend an invitation to Syrian President Bashar Assad “any time” for possible talks to restore bilateral relations. Alternatively, both parties could meet in a third country. Speaking at the NATO summit in July in Washington, Erdogan said he had assigned Turkiye’s foreign minister to follow up on this issue.
In the meantime, the country’s spy chief, Ibrahim Kalin, recently visited Libya to help overcome the ongoing political impasse over oil exports.
“By the final months of 2020, not only Ankara but also all the capitals of the Middle East, including Tel Aviv, began initiating normalization processes with one another. This shift was a natural consequence of a pragmatic reassessment of the region’s political climate, which has been tense since 2011,” Betul Dogan-Akkas, assistant professor of international relations at Ankara University’s international relations department, told Arab News.
“Minister Fidan, as the chief of intelligence, has played a key role in shaping strategic normalization efforts with the Gulf, Egypt and Syria. His actions as foreign minister reflect this new era in regional diplomacy,” she added.
“During a critical visit to Ankara last week, President El-Sisi emphasized Egypt’s eagerness to collaborate with Turkiye to strengthen regional peace, including addressing conflicts in Libya and Syria. Initially, his comments were interpreted as an attempt to leverage Cairo’s role in Turkiye-Syria cooperation.”
According to Dogan-Akkas, combining these dynamics suggests that Turkiye has proposed a new diplomatic approach to the Arab world, one that seeks to move beyond political controversies and establish strategically significant diplomatic channels since the end of 2020.
“If Turkiye successfully navigates this process and underscores its constructive role in the region, it could lead to a long-term strengthening of relations with both Syria and Egypt,” she said.
Israel releases video of a Gaza tunnel where it says Hamas militants killed 6 hostages
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Tuesday the footage of the Gaza tunnel had been shown to the hostages’ families
It “was very hard for them to see how their loved ones survived in those conditions”
Updated 40 min 31 sec ago
AP
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military on Tuesday released video footage of a Gaza tunnel where it says six hostages were recently killed by Hamas. The video shows a low, narrow passageway deep underground that had no bathroom and poor ventilation.
The discovery of the hostages’ bodies last month has sparked a mass outpouring of anger in Israel and the release of the new video could add to the pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas to bring the remaining hostages held by Hamas home.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Tuesday the footage of the Gaza tunnel had been shown to the hostages’ families, and that it “was very hard for them to see how their loved ones survived in those conditions.”
Hagari revealed the video in a nationally televised press conference after visiting the tunnel himself. He said the tunnel was reached by a shaft buried under a child’s bedroom in a home in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. The tunnel was about 20 meters (70 feet) underground and stretched about 120 meters (yards).
In the video, a hunched-over Hagari, unable to stand upright in the narrow arched passageway, describes the conditions as extremely humid and difficult to breathe. He showed bottles of urine, a bucket that appeared to have served as a makeshift toilet, a chess board and ammunition for an automatic rifle believed to have been used by the captors.
“They were here in this tunnel in horrific conditions, where there’s no air to breathe, where you cannot stand,” he said.
The six included Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, a native of Berkeley, California, whose parents led a high-profile global campaign seeking his release. Goldberg-Polin lost part of his left arm to a grenade in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the war in Gaza. In April, Hamas issued a video that showed him alive, sparking protests in Israel. The army identified the others as Ori Danino, 25; Eden Yerushalmi, 24; Almog Sarusi, 27; Alexander Lobanov, 33; and Carmel Gat, 40.
Three of the six – including Goldberg-Polin – had reportedly been scheduled to be released in the first phase of a ceasefire proposal discussed in July, further fueling anger when they were found dead.
The Hostages Families Forum, a group representing relatives of hostages, said in a statement that “time is running out” and called for an immediate deal to return those kidnapped.
“Every day that passes is a danger to their lives, hanging by a thread, at the mercy of terrorists capable of the worst crimes against humanity,” the group said.
Pathology tests on the bodies of the six, who were found by the military in the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Saturday, Aug. 31, showed they had been killed sometime on the night of Aug. 29, Hagari told reporters.
Hagari said Israeli soldiers found evidence indicating the hostages and at least two captors had been there for more than a few days. Mattresses, clothes, assault rifle magazines and shells were also found, as was some food, mainly energy bars and tuna. There were blood stains on the floor, he said.
The day before the bodies were found, Hagari said, the army had killed two militants trying to run away from a complex of tunnels near where the hostages were found. There was “a probability” that the two had been those who killed the hostages, he said. DNA tests were being carried out to verify this, he added.
Hamas kidnapped about 250 people during the Oct. 7 attack. More than 100 were released during a brief ceasefire in November in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Eight have been rescued by Israeli forces, while Israeli troops mistakenly killed three Israeli hostages who had escaped captivity in December. Israeli authorities say 101 hostages remain in captivity, including 35 who are believed to be dead.
Shai Dickman, the cousin of Gat, one of the hostages who was found dead in the tunnel, told Israel’s Channel 13 TV that the government should move immediately to reach a deal to bring home the remaining hostages.
“There are still people living like this,” she said, holding back tears. “If there had been a deal on time, Carmel would be sitting here.”
Hamas has offered to release the hostages in return for an end to the war, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants. But negotiations on a ceasefire have failed to produce any deal.
Houthis say Taiz school stampede after US, UK strikes killed 2, injured 10
US Central Command says forces destroyed Houthi missile systems, support vehicle and drone over Red Sea
Updated 40 min 48 sec ago
Saeed Al-Batati
AL-MUKALLA: Two students were killed and at least 10 were injured in a stampede at a Yemeni school caused by US and UK airstrikes in the southern province of Taiz, Houthi media said on Tuesday.
The Houthi-run Al-Masirah channel reported that American and British jets carried out strikes on a location, believed to be a military base, near Aiysha school in Taiz’s Al-Janad, causing frightened students to stampede through the school’s doors, killing two and injuring at least 10.
Houthi media broadcast footage from a local medical facility in Taiz, showing what appeared to be the bodies of two dead female students wrapped in white garments while other wounded students received treatment.
The reported strikes by US and UK aircraft are the latest in a series of military operations against Houthi targets in response to the militia’s attacks on ships.
On Tuesday, Monday and Sunday, the Houthis reported that US and UK aircraft struck Ibb, Hodeidah and Taiz, respectively.
Abdul Basit Al-Baher, a Yemeni military officer in Taiz, told Arab News that Al-Janad in Taiz has at least five military bases, and he believes the warplanes may have targeted the Al-Janad army base, which is the closest military site to the school.
Al-Baher said that the Tariq Air Base is Al-Janad’s largest military base, where “Iranian and Lebanese military experts assemble missiles and drones.”
It came as Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea claimed on Tuesday that militia forces shot down a new US MQ-9 Reaper drone over the northern province of Saada, the second such claim in less than a week and the ninth since the militia’s anti-ship campaign began in November.
On Saturday, the Houthis claimed to have shot down a US MQ-9 drone that was carrying out “hostile operations” over the central provinces of Marib.
Unlike previous videos released following their announcements, the Houthis have not broadcast footage of the latest two drones being shot down to support their claims.
At the same time, US Central Command said on Tuesday morning that its forces destroyed two Houthi missile systems and one support vehicle in Houthi-held Yemeni territory, as well as one Houthi drone over the Red Sea, over the previous 24 hours.
During the past 10 months, the Houthis have fired hundreds of ballistic missiles, drones and drone boats at international commercial and naval ships in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and other seas, claiming to be acting in support of Palestinians against Israel’s war in Gaza.
Israel close to completing Gaza missions, focus on north, defense minister says
“The center of gravity is moving northward, we are near to completing our tasks in the south, but our mission here is not yet done,” Gallant told troops
“These instructions that you are waiting for here today, I gave in the south and saw the forces operate“
Updated 10 September 2024
Reuters
JERUSALEM: Israeli forces are near to fulfilling their mission in Gaza and their focus will turn to the country’s northern border with Lebanon as daily exchanges of fire with Hezbollah take place, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Tuesday
“The center of gravity is moving northward, we are near to completing our tasks in the south, but our mission here is not yet done,” Gallant told troops on Israel’s northern border in a video sent by his office.
Gallant was attending a ground combat drill, his office said.
“These instructions that you are waiting for here today, I gave in the south and saw the forces operate,” Gallant said referring to Israel’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip three weeks after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that triggered the war.
The Lebanese group Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8 and the two sides have been trading fire since, with tens of thousands of civilians displaced on both sides of the border.
Israeli leaders have said they would prefer to resolve the conflict through an agreement that would push Iran-backed Hezbollah away from the border. Hezbollah has said that it will continue fighting Israel as long as the war in Gaza is ongoing.
In separate remarks to journalists on Tuesday, Gallant said:
“While we pursue an agreement, I have directed the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) to prepare for every scenario, including directing our attention to the northern arena. We are committed to changing the security situation on the northern front and to bringing our citizens home safely.”
The Israeli military on Tuesday said it killed a commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force. The group confirmed his death but not his role and said it fired rockets at Israeli army targets across the border in retaliation.