JERUSALEM: Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir led hundreds of Israelis into the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in annexed east Jerusalem Tuesday and performed prayers marking a Jewish holiday, sources said.
Ben Gvir, who has often defied the Israeli government’s longstanding ban on Jewish prayer at the mosque compound, vowed to “defeat Hamas” in Gaza in a video he filmed during his visit.
The compound is Islam’s third holiest site and a symbol of Palestinian national identity but it is also Judaism’s holiest place, revered as the site of the ancient temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
While Jews and other non-Muslims are allowed to visit the mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem during specified hours, they are not permitted to pray or display religious symbols.
In recent years, the restrictions have been increasingly flouted by hard-line religious nationalists like Ben Gvir, prompting sometimes violent reactions from Palestinians.
On Tuesday morning, Ben Gvir and some 2,250 other Israelis walked through the compound in groups, singing Jewish hymns under the protection of Israeli police, an official from the Waqf, the Jordanian body that is custodian of the site, told AFP.
“Minister Ben Gvir, instead of maintaining the status quo at the mosque is supervising the Judaization operation and trying to change the situation inside Al-Aqsa mosque,” the official said on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak on the issue.
Israeli police also “imposed restrictions” on Muslim worshippers trying to enter the mosque, he said.
Images posted on social media networks showed Ben Gvir inside the compound while several Israelis lay on the ground performing Talmudic rituals.
Ben Gvir released a video statement on social media platform X, which he filmed inside the compound himself, vowing to win the war in Gaza.
“We must win this war. We must win and not go to the talks in Doha or Cairo,” he said, referring to the US-backed negotiations for a truce and hostage release deal for Gaza to resume on August 15.
“We can defeat Hamas.. we must bring them down to their knees,” Ben Gvir said.
Tuesday’s entry into the Al-Aqsa compound comes on the Jewish mourning day of Tisha Be’Av that commemorates the destruction of the ancient temple.
Last month too, Ben Gvir, who is known for provocative gestures, said he had prayed inside the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, defying the longstanding rules that permit Jewish visits but forbid prayer.
Far-right minister leads Israelis in prayer at flashpoint mosque compound
https://arab.news/pw4e2
Far-right minister leads Israelis in prayer at flashpoint mosque compound
- While Jews are allowed to visit the mosque compound in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem during specified hours, they are not permitted to pray / display religious symbols
Fear in central Beirut district hit by Israeli strikes
There had been no evacuation warning issued by the Israeli military for the Basta area
BEIRUT: When Lebanese carpenter Samir awoke in a panic Saturday to the sound of explosions and screams, he thought his own building in central Beirut had been hit by an air raid.
As it turned out, the early morning air strike — which killed at least 11 people and injured 63, according to authorities — had actually brought down an eight-story building nearby, in the second such attack on the working-class neighborhood of Basta in as many months.
A Lebanese security source told AFP the target had been a senior Hezbollah figure, without naming him.
“The strike was so strong it felt like the building was about to fall on our heads,” said Samir, 60, who lives with his family in a building facing the one that was hit.
“It felt like they had targeted my house,” he said, asking to be identified by only his first name because of security concerns.
There had been no evacuation warning issued by the Israeli military for the Basta area.
After the strike, Samir fled his home in the middle of the night with his wife and two children, aged 14 and just three.
On Saturday morning, dumbstruck residents watched as an excavator cleared the wreckage of the razed building and rescue efforts continued, with nearby buildings also damaged in the attack, AFP journalists reported.
The densely packed district has welcomed people displaced from traditional Hezbollah bastions in Lebanon’s east, south and southern Beirut, after Israel intensified its air campaign on September 23, later sending in ground troops.
“We saw two dead people on the ground... The children started crying and their mother cried even more,” Samir told AFP, reporting minor damage to his home.
Since last Sunday, four deadly Israeli strikes have hit central Beirut, including one that killed Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif.
Residents across the city and its outskirts awoke at 0400 (0200 GMT) on Saturday to loud explosions and the smell of gunpowder in the air.
“It was the first time I’ve woken up screaming in terror,” said Salah, a 35-year-old father of two who lives in the same street as the building that was targeted.
“Words can’t express the fear that gripped me,” he said.
Saturday’s strikes were the second time the Basta district had been targeted since war broke out, after deadly twin strikes early in October hit the area and the Nweiri neighborhood.
Last month’s attacks killed 22 people and had targeted Hezbollah security chief Wafiq Safa, who made it out alive, a source close to the group told AFP.
Salah said his wife and children had been in the northern city of Tripoli, about 70 kilometers away (45 miles), but that he had to stay in the capital because of work.
His family had been due to return this weekend because their school reopens on Monday, but now he has decided against it following the attack.
“I miss them. Every day they ask me: ‘Dad, when are we coming home?’” he said.
Lebanon’s health ministry says that more than 3,650 people have been killed since October 2023, after Hezbollah initiated exchanges of fire with Israel in solidarity with its Iran-backed ally Hamas over the Gaza war.
However, most of the deaths in Lebanon have been since September this year.
Despite the trauma caused by Saturday’s strike, Samir said he and his family had no choice but to return home.
“Where else would I go?” he asked.
“All my relatives and siblings have been displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs and from the south.”
US says committed to ‘diplomatic resolution’ in Lebanon
- Austin “reiterated US commitment to a diplomatic resolution in Lebanon that allows Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return safely to their homes “
- He also “urged the Government of Israel to continue to take steps to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza”
WASHSINGTON: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stressed that the United States was dedicated to a diplomatic resolution in Lebanon and urged Israel to improve “dire” conditions in Gaza, in a call Saturday with his Israeli counterpart.
Austin “reiterated US commitment to a diplomatic resolution in Lebanon that allows Israeli and Lebanese civilians to return safely to their homes on both sides of the border” in his call with Israel Katz, according to a Pentagon spokesperson.
Austin also “urged the Government of Israel to continue to take steps to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza and emphasized the US commitment to securing the release of all hostages, including US citizens.”
Lebanon said Saturday that an Israeli air strike in the heart of Beirut that brought down a residential building and jolted residents across the city killed at least 11 people.
Israel stepped up its campaign against the Hezbollah militant group in late September, targeting its strongholds in Lebanon.
Lebanon’s health ministry says at least 3,645 people have been killed since October 2023, when Hezbollah began trading fire with Israel in solidarity with its Palestinian ally Hamas.
The United Nations and others have repeatedly decried humanitarian conditions, particularly in northern Gaza, where Israel said Friday it had killed two commanders involved in Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
In the call with Katz, Austin also discussed ongoing Israeli operations and reaffirmed Washington’s “ironclad commitment to Israel’s security,” the Pentagon said.
Turkiye’s Erdogan hails ‘courageous’ ICC warrants for Israeli leaders
ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday praised the “courageous decision” of the International Criminal Court to seek the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
“We support the arrest warrant. We consider it important that this courageous decision be carried out by all country members of the accord to renew the trust of humanity in the international system,” Erdogan said in a speech in Istanbul. The ICC issued the warrants against the Israeli leaders and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif on Thursday on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza conflict.
Israeli settlers set sights on Trump support for full control of West Bank
- Settlements expand rapidly under Netanyahu’s pro-settler coalition
- Trump’s potential support for annexation raises hopes among settlers
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Move would risk US goals, end hope of two-state solution, says former US envoy
SHILO, West Bank: After a record expansion of Israeli settlement activity, some settler advocates in the occupied West Bank are looking to Donald Trump to fulfil a dream of imposing sovereignty over the area seen by Palestinians as the heart of a future state. The West Bank has been transformed by the rapid growth of Jewish settlements since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned at the head of a far-right nationalist coalition two years ago. During that time, an explosion in settler violence that has led to US sanctions.
In recent weeks, Israeli flags have sprouted on hilltops claimed by some settlers in the West Bank’s Jordan Valley, adding to worries among many local Palestinians of greater control of those areas. Some settlers prayed for Trump’s victory before the election.
“We have high hopes. We’re even buoyant to a certain extent,” said Yisrael Medad, an activist and writer who supports Israel absorbing the West Bank, speaking to Reuters about Trump’s victory in the house he has lived in for more than four decades in the West Bank settlement of Shilo. Settlers have celebrated Trump’s nomination of a clutch of officials known for pro-Israel views, among them ambassador Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian who has said the West Bank is not under occupation and prefers the term “communities” to “settlements.” And over the past month, Israeli government ministers and settler advocates who have cultivated ties with the US Christian right have increasingly pushed the once fringe idea of “restoring sovereignty” over the West Bank in public comments. The Netanyahu government has not announced any official decision on the matter. A spokesperson at Netanyahu’s office declined to comment for this story. It is by no means certain Trump will give backing to a move that puts at risk Washington’s strategic ambition of a wider deal under the Abraham Accords to normalize Israel’s ties with Saudi Arabia, which, like most countries in the world, rejects Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank.
“Trump’s desire for expansion of the Abraham Accords will be a top priority,” Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator for Democratic and Republican administrations said, based on his own assessment of Trump’s foreign policy considerations.
“There’s no way the Saudis will think seriously about joining if Israel formally absorbs the West Bank,” he said. Annexation would bury any hope of a two-state solution that creates an independent Palestine and also complicate efforts to resolve more than a year of war in Gaza that has spilled over into neighboring Lebanon. In his first term, Trump moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and ended Washington’s long-held position that the settlements are illegal. But, in 2020, his plan to create a rump of a Palestinian state along existing boundaries derailed efforts by Netanyahu for Israeli sovereignty over the area.
The president-elect has not revealed his plans for the region. Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt did not answer questions about policy, saying only that he would “restore peace through strength around the world.” Nonetheless, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, one of the most prominent pro-settler ministers in the government, said last week he hoped Israel could absorb the West Bank as early as next year with the support of the Trump administration.
Israel Ganz, the head of the Yesha Council, an umbrella group of West Bank Jewish municipalities, said in an interview that he hoped the Trump administration would “let” Israel’s government move ahead.
Ganz led a prayer session for a Trump victory in the ruins of an old Byzantine basilica in Shilo before the Nov. 5 election.
“We prayed that God will lead to better days for the people of the United States of America and for Israel,” he said. Shilo has been a popular stop for visiting US politicians, including both Huckabee and Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense.
Last week, Huckabee told Arutz Sheva, an Israeli news outlet aligned with Smotrich’s Religious Zionism movement, that any decision on annexation would be a matter for the Israeli government. Huckabee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Senior Palestine Liberation Organization official Wasel Abu Yousef said any such action by the Israeli government “will not change the truth that this is Palestinian land.”
SURROUNDED
Together with the neighboring settlement of Eli, Shilo sits near the center of the West Bank, an hour from Jerusalem along Route 60, a smooth motorway that contrasts sharply with the potholed roads that connect the area’s Palestinian cities.
Bashar Al-Qaryouti, a Palestinian activist from the nearby village of Qaryut, said the expansion of Shilo and Eli had left Palestinian villages in the central West Bank surrounded.
Al-Qaryouti described an increase in settlers constructing without waiting for formal paperwork from the Israeli government, a trend also noted by Peace Now, an Israeli activist group that tracks settlement issues.
“This is happening on the ground,” Al-Qaryouti told Reuters by phone. “Areas across the center of the West Bank are under the control of settlers now.”
The West Bank, which many in Israel call Judea and Samaria after the old Biblical terms for the area, is a kidney shaped region about 100 km (60 miles) long and 50 km (30 miles) wide that has been at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since it was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. Most countries consider the area as occupied territory and deem the settlements illegal under international law, a position upheld by the UN’s top court in July.
Around 750,000 Palestinians were displaced with the creation of Israel in 1948, according to UN estimates. The West Bank is claimed by Palestinians as the nucleus of a future independent state, along with the Mediterranean enclave of Gaza to the south.
But the spread of Jewish settlements, which have mushroomed across the West Bank since the Oslo interim peace accords 30 years ago, has transformed the area.
Revered as the site of the tabernacle set up by the ancient Israelites after they returned from exile in Egypt and kept there for 300 years, modern Shilo was established in the 1970s and has the air of a gated community of quiet streets and neat suburban homes. Its population in 2022 was around 5,000 people.
For supporters of Jewish settlements, the Biblical connection is what gives them the right to be there, whatever international law may say.
“Even if the Byzantines, the Romans, the Mameluks and Ottomans ruled it, it was our land,” said Medad.
As such, settler advocates reject the term “annexation,” which they say suggests taking a foreign territory. Settlement construction in the West Bank reached record levels in 2023. Since the war started in Gaza last October, a spate of new roads and ground works have changed the appearance of hillsides across the area visibly.
Criticism from the Biden administration has done nothing to stop it. At the same time, violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has spiralled, including around Shilo, drawing international condemnation and US and European sanctions, as recently as this week, against individuals deemed to have taken a prominent part.
Settler leaders including Ganz say violence has no place in their movement. The settler movement has argued that they provide security for the rest of Israel with their presence in areas near Palestinian towns and cities.
“IRREVERSIBLE FACT”
A series of steps have been taken to consolidate Israel’s position in the West Bank since Netanyahu’s government came to power with a coalition agreement stating “The Jewish people have a natural right to the Land of Israel.”
“We’re changing a lot of things on the ground to make it a fact that Israel is in Judea and Samaria as well,” said Ohad Tal, chairman of Smotrich’s parliamentary faction, speaking beside a red Trump MAGA hat on a shelf in his Knesset office.
A whole mechanism has been built “to effectively apply sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, to make it an irreversible fact that Jewish presence is there and to stay.”
Many functions relating to settlements previously handled by the military have been handed to the Settlement Administration, a civilian body answerable directly to finance minister Smotrich, who has an additional defense ministry portfolio that puts him in charge of running the West Bank.
In 2024, nearly 6,000 acres (2,400 hectares) have been declared Israeli state land, a classification that makes it easier to build settlements, the biggest annual growth on record and accounting for half of all areas declared state land in the past three decades, Peace Now said in a report in October.
At least 43 new settler outposts have been established over the past year, compared with an average of under 7 a year since 1996, according to a separate analysis from Peace Now.
The outposts, often satellites of existing settlements on nearby hilltops that allow the original location to expand, have been served with kilometers of new roads and other infrastructure. Often built illegally according to Israeli law, the Yesha Council has said almost 70 were extended government support this year.
“It’s clever because it’s boring looking,” said Ziv Stahl, a director of Yesh Din, another Israeli group that tracks settlements. “They are not legislating now, saying ‘We are annexing the West Bank’, they are just doing it.”
Turkiye replaces pro-Kurdish mayors with state officials in two eastern cities
ANKARA: Turkiye stripped two elected pro-Kurdish mayors of their posts in eastern cities on Friday, for convictions on terrorism-related offenses, the interior ministry said, temporarily appointing state officials in their places instead.
The local governor replaced mayor Cevdet Konak in Tunceli, while a local administrator was appointed in the place of Ovacik mayor Mustafa Sarigul, the ministry said in a statement, adding these were “temporary measures.”
Konak is a member of the pro-Kurdish DEM Party, which has 57 seats in the national parliament, and Sarigul is a member of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). Dozens of pro-Kurdish mayors from its predecessor parties have been removed from their posts on similar charges in the past.
CHP leader Ozgur Ozel said authorities had deemed that Sarigul’s attendance at a funeral was a crime and called the move to appoint a trustee “a theft of the national will,” adding his party would stand against the “injustice.”
“Removing a mayor who has been elected by the votes of the people for two terms over a funeral he attended 12 years ago has no more jurisdiction than the last struggles of a government on its way out,” Ozel said on X.
Earlier this month, Turkiye replaced three pro-Kurdish mayors in southeastern cities over similar terrorism-related reasons, drawing backlash from the DEM Party and others.
Last month, a mayor from the CHP was arrested after prosecutors accused him of belonging to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), banned as a terrorist group in Turkiye and deemed a terrorist group by the European Union and United States.
The appointment of government trustees followed a surprise proposal by President Tayyip Erdogan’s main ally last month to end the state’s 40-year conflict with the PKK.
