BRUSSELS: The EU condemned “provocations” by Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir after officials said he performed prayers at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in annexed east Jerusalem.
“The EU strongly condemns the provocations by Israeli Min. Ben Gvir who, during his visit to the Holy Sites, advocated for the violation of the status quo,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell wrote on X.
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.
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.
The latest incident comes as the EU and other international powers are trying to calm tensions in the region as Iran warns of retaliation against Israel after the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran.
The US also criticized the minister for leading prayers at the flashpoint mosque compound, saying he had hurt efforts for talks toward a Gaza ceasefire.
“The United States stands firmly for preservation of the historic status quo with respect to the holy sites of Jerusalem and any unilateral action, which this would be..., that jeopardizes such a status quo is unacceptable,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters.
“Not only is it unacceptable, it detracts from what we think is a vital time, as we are working to get this ceasefire deal across the finish line,” he said, referring to a US-led push for talks Thursday to stop the Israel-Hamas war.
US, EU condemn far-right Israeli minister’s prayer at Al-Aqsa mosque
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US, EU condemn far-right Israeli minister’s prayer at Al-Aqsa mosque
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- The US also criticized the minister for leading prayers at the flashpoint mosque compound, saying he had hurt efforts for talks toward a Gaza ceasefire
EU fears Israeli-occupied West Bank becoming a ‘new Gaza’
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- Borrell said Israel was opening “a new front... with a clear objective: to turn the West Bank into a new Gaza — in rising violence, delegitimising the Palestinian Authority and stimulating provocations to react forcefully”
CAIRO: The European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell warned on Tuesday that increased violence in the occupied West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war erupted meant it risked becoming “a new Gaza.”
Violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967 and is separated from the Gaza Strip by Israeli territory, has flared alongside the war that began after Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
Borrell said Israel was opening “a new front... with a clear objective: to turn the West Bank into a new Gaza — in rising violence, delegitimising the Palestinian Authority and stimulating provocations to react forcefully.”
Israel was also “not shying away from saying to the face of the world that the only way to reach a peaceful settlement is to annex the West Bank and Gaza,” Borrell added at a ministerial meeting of the Arab League in Cairo.
He accused “radical members of the Israeli government” of trying to make it “impossible to create a future Palestinian state,” which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several cabinet members have painted as a threat to Israel.
Some Israeli ministers have recently called to increase military operations in the West Bank.
“Without action, the West Bank will become a new Gaza,” Borrell said.
“And Gaza will become a new West Bank, as settlers’ movements are preparing new settlements,” he told the meeting.
“The international community deplores, feels, and condemns, but finds it hard to act.”
Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank hit a record in 2023, according to Israeli rights group Yesh Din, and the European Union has said last year saw the most settlement building permits issued in decades.
Some 490,000 Israelis live in the West Bank, in settlements which are illegal under international law, alongside three million Palestinians.
Since the Gaza war began on October 7, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 662 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
At least 23 Israelis, including members of the security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks in the West Bank during the same period, Israeli officials say.
On Tuesday, Israel’s military said it was “highly likely” that its forces “unintentionally” shot dead a US-Turkish activist last week, during a protest in the West Bank against settlement expansion.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was killed on Friday in the town of Beita, the site of weekly demonstrations against Israeli settlements.
Parched Iraqi Kurdistan town navigates regional water diplomacy
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- To ensure Qaladiza residents have potable water, a small makeshift dam has been constructed near the town to ensure it retains more of the river’s water
QALADIZA: A river flowing through Iraq’s northern Kurdistan has all but dried up, prompting warnings of an “environmental catastrophe” for the water-stressed border city as it tussles for the resource with neighboring Iran.
The Little Zab originates in neighboring Iran and flows through the outskirts of Qaladiza, a hillside town of 90,000 residents around 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the Iranian border, which uses its water for drinking as well as irrigating crops and farmland along its path.
But the effects of climate change and dam building across the border have left it greatly diminished.
A tributary of the mighty Tigris, the river used to carry seven billion cubic meters of water a year, yet the volume has shrunk dramatically in recent years, said Marf Karim, director of a water treatment facility serving Qaladiza.
He pinned much of the blame on the Kolsa dam, built on the Iranian stretch of the Little Zab in 2017.
“We monitor water levels every day,” Karim told AFP. “With the naked eye we can see a decrease of about 80 percent.”
The plummeting river levels have exposed the river’s grey, rocky bed to the scorching summer sun.
“It’s an environmental catastrophe” affecting the entire region, including its water wells and groundwater reserves, said Karim.
To ensure Qaladiza residents have potable water, a small makeshift dam has been constructed near the town to ensure it retains more of the river’s water. But it does little to solve “the problem of water quality” in the shrinking waterway, he said.
“We need more products to filter out impurities,” he said.
Beset by climate change, Iraq has endured years of drought, rising temperatures and declining rainfall.
But in Qaladiza’s case, resource diplomacy is also at play, exacerbating geopolitical fault lines and regional tensions as growing populations place increasing demands on a dwindling supply of water.
Iran itself is also enduring the effects of worsening conditions.
In June 2023, the meteorological department of Iran’s West Azerbaijan province, which borders Iraq, said “about 56 percent” of its territory was “affected by very severe drought.”
Several dams have been built since the 1990s, but “in 2017 Iran realized that it was still losing some two-thirds of its waters into Iraq, which could then lead into a problem of water shortage inside Iran by 2036,” said Banafsheh Keynoush, a visiting fellow at the Kroc Institute at US university Notre Dame.
Tehran then moved to construct more than 100 dams “to redirect this extra water flow into Iraq, into its own dam reservoirs,” she told AFP.
Iraq, too, has been building dams and trying to reduce demand, including by encouraging farmers to abandon traditional irrigation methods deemed wasteful, all while seeking a greater portion of the water resources it shares with its ally Iran.
Tehran has factored “its water disputes with Iraq into its larger geopolitical calculations,” said Keynoush.
“Progress on resolving these water issues has also been subjected to political and geopolitical negotiations” involving both Baghdad and Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, added the expert.
In November, for example, “Iran decided to release some water into the Zab... just to minimize some tensions with the Kurdistan regional government,” Keynoush noted.
It is “vital” for Iran to prevent any “major upheavals” on its borders, politically but also environmentally, she said.
Qaladiza governor Bakr Baez said water disputes are “essentially a political problem,” but failed attempts to resolve them have had dire real-life consequences.
Farmers now do not have enough water to irrigate their fields, and the vast majority of the area’s 257 fish farms have been affected by the shortages, according to Baez.
Kochar Jamal, the manager of an Iraqi dam downstream, downplayed the impact of the Iranian “cuts” on the water reservoirs he oversees.
This year, water levels at the Dukan dam rose compared to 2023, Jamal said, attributing the increase to greater “amounts of rain in winter and spring.”
To keep his fish alive, Qaladiza farmer Ali Hassan has begun digging in the hopes of reaching the water table.
“It’s been three days that we haven’t been able to change the water in the tanks,” said the man in his 50s, standing next to a large digger that was burrowing into the ground.
“Without it, the water will heat up, the fish will die. They need fresh water.”
Losing his fish would also mean a financial loss of at least $13,000, said Hassan.
Driving the digger is another farmer, 48-year-old Omar Mohamed, who said water shortages meant “we can no longer cultivate anything.”
“I’ve had orchards, they’re gone,” he said.
“A neighbor tried to plant okra, another, watermelon. They all failed.”
Palestinians in Gaza see themselves as ‘zombies’: UN official
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- He added that “a lot of people have nothing to eat,” noting that many had no access to electricity or even a bed
BRUSSELS, Belgium: Palestinians in Gaza feel they are “zombies” left to fend for themselves, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian Territories said on Tuesday.
“’We’re two million zombies living on our own. All the ties are broken.’ This is how the people of Gaza see themselves,” Muhannad Hadi said, citing a Palestinian he met during one of his many trips to the Gaza Strip.
Hadi was in Brussels for a series of meetings with European officials as the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, was on a visit to the region, including Egypt and Lebanon.
“So anything that you take for granted, or anything you took for granted, or you worked for yesterday in your life, it’s not there for the people of Gaza, for the majority of the people of Gaza,” Hadi said during a visit to Brussels.
He added that “a lot of people have nothing to eat,” noting that many had no access to electricity or even a bed.
“No one should suffer because of war. No one should suffer because of the wrong politics. No one should suffer because of the failed politics that we are seeing,” the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process said.
He accused politicians around the world of “not doing the job they should be doing.”
“That’s why we don’t have a ceasefire, and that’s why we don’t have a solution to their Gaza crisis,” he added.
Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, including some hostages killed in captivity, according to Israeli official figures.
Militants seized 251 hostages during the attack, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 41,020 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Polio vaccination starts in north Gaza despite obstacles
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GAZA: A campaign to vaccinate a final 200,000 children in north Gaza against polio began on Tuesday although health and aid officials said the operation was complicated by access restrictions, evacuation orders, and shortages of fuel.
The campaign in north Gaza, the part of the territory hardest hit by Israel’s 11-month military offensive against Hamas, follows the vaccination of more than 446,000 Palestinian children in central and south Gaza earlier this month.
Medical staff had started administering vaccines in the north despite a dire need for fuel, among other challenges, said Dr. Moussa Abed of the primary care unit in Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Vaccination centers are in areas that are militarily very active, challenging to reach, and isolated if things go wrong, said Sam Rose, a deputy director of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.
“There are some nerves, but we’ll have to make it work,” he texted Reuters.
On Monday, Israel stopped a convoy that included vehicles and fuel for the vaccination campaign as well as a World Health Organization team trying to get to Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, and the mission had to be aborted, the WHO’s Tarik Jasarevic said.
Israel also issued an evacuation order in north Gaza, the first in more than two weeks, that included areas that are part of humanitarian pause zones agreed upon for the polio vaccinations, according to a UN update on Monday.
“The centralization of services in the south makes it extremely difficult for us to get fuel, to get access to vaccinations, and to all other logistics,” Mahmoud Shalabi of Medical Aid for Palestinians, a UK-based charity, said via a spokesperson, adding there was no fuel available for mobile vaccination teams.
Hossam Medhat Saleh, a Palestinian father, said he had to walk with his three children to reach a vaccination clinic because no transportation was available.
“The dangers of the road are big — as you can see, the destruction, the streets, and infrastructure, in addition to the missiles and cannons (shelling) which continue,” he told Reuters, standing on a dusty street surrounded by smashed cars and buildings.
The campaign to vaccinate some 640,000 children in Gaza under 10 years of age began on Sept. 1, following confirmation by the WHO last month that the type 2 polio virus had partially paralyzed a baby, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
The campaign in north Gaza aims to conclude a first vaccination round, with a second set to commence after a month.
Israel began its military campaign in Gaza on Oct. 7 last year after Hamas led a shock incursion into southern Israel.
The resulting assault on Gaza has killed more than 40,900 Palestinians, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry, and reduced much of the territory to rubble.
Killing of US-Turkish citizen shows high price of expressing solidarity with Palestinians in occupied West Bank
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- 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
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.