Bedouin women recount harrowing attack by West Bank settlers

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A Palestinian man walks past burnt out vehicles stationed in car park following a reported Israeli settlers attack in the town of Burqah, east of the West Bank city of Ramallah on June 7, 2024. (AFP)
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Activists confront settlers on land in al-Makhrour in the occupied West Bank near Beit Jala village on 22 August, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 27 August 2024
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Bedouin women recount harrowing attack by West Bank settlers

  • Israeli settlements in the territory are illegal under international law, and the United Nations considers them an obstacle to peace with Palestinians
  • Netanyahu appointed several far-right ministers who support the annexation of the entire West Bank, an agenda they have pursued even more aggressively since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7

RAHAT, Israel: Lamis Al-Jaar says she can hardly sleep at night after hard-line Jewish settlers violently assaulted her and four other members of her Israeli Bedouin family, sparking outcry across the country.
On August 9, the 22-year-old got lost while driving with her young daughter, two sisters and a niece from the Bedouin city of Rahat in southern Israel toward Nablus, a large Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank.
The women say that when they asked a man for directions, they unwittingly set in motion what Israeli police would later describe as a “serious attack” — one that heightened concerns about rising settler violence and spurred an outpouring of support for the family.
The man they approached sent them down the wrong road, then blocked their car when they tried to turn around, allowing a dozen assailants to descend on the vehicle, throwing stones and brandishing weapons.
Lamis, a teacher’s aide in a kindergarten, was certain she was going to die. She told AFP how one of the men threatened her daughter Elaf, just two and a half years old, “with the barrel” of his firearm.
Her sister Raghda Al-Jaar, a 29-year-old assistant in a dentist’s office, said the men shattered the car windows and sprayed its occupants with tear gas.
“I said... that we were Israeli citizens,” Raghda recounted, but when one of the men realized she was calling the police he threw a rock at her and shouted: “You will not leave here alive!“
Despite being outnumbered, the group managed to flee and were eventually rescued by Israeli police and soldiers.
Police said they had “accidentally entered” Givat Ronen, an outpost of the Jewish settlement of Har Bracha, south of Nablus.

The area is run by members of the so-called hilltop youth, religious nationalists who dream of settling all the biblical land of Israel, and who sometimes also clash with Israeli security forces.
Israel’s Bedouins are descendants of Muslim shepherds who once roamed freely across desert expanses far beyond the country’s current borders.
Like other Arab minorities in Israel, they often complain of discrimination.
Rahat, where the Al-Jaar family lives, is home to one of the biggest concentrations of Bedouins.
During the interview with AFP, which took place at the home of their father Adnan Al-Jaar, Lamis and Raghda described their injuries: fractured fingers and back pain for Lamis and a head injury for Raghda, whose left leg is also in a cast.
Two days after the attack, Israeli President Isaac Herzog called Adnan Al-Jaar to tell him he was “shocked” by the violence and that “all citizens of Israel deserve equal and decent treatment,” his office said.
Adnan Al-Jaar, a 59-year-old truck driver who like his daughters switches easily between Hebrew and Arabic, told AFP such outreach “makes us feel good,” even though he fears the crime, like other instances of violence, could go unpunished.
The police have so far announced the arrest of five suspects, four of whom remain in custody while the fifth is under house arrest.

The attack against the Al-Jaars occurred against the backdrop of worsening violence in the West Bank.
Israeli settlements in the territory are illegal under international law, and the United Nations considers them an obstacle to peace with Palestinians.
But settlements have grown under all governments, both left and right, after Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, and they have increased significantly since the formation in December 2022 of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government.
Netanyahu appointed several far-right ministers who support the annexation of the entire West Bank, an agenda they have pursued even more aggressively since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7.
The violence meted out to the Al-Jaars nevertheless appears to have shaken Israel, and myriad voices have denounced it.
Center-right opposition lawmaker Matan Kahana visited the Al-Jaar home to show solidarity, saying he was “reassured that the majority of the Israeli people condemn this act.”
Rabbi Benny Lau, known as a moderate Orthodox figure, posted a photo on Facebook of his meeting with Adnan Al-Jaar, accompanied by a message emphasising the aspirations of “the millions... who want to live together.”
Amit Segal, a television personality known for his right-wing views, condemned the remarks of a far-right parliamentarian whom he accused of colluding with “supporters of terrorism” by trying to shift blame for the August 9 attack onto the victims.
Ordinary Israelis have also spoken out.
Noa Epstein Tennenhaus, 41, recently drove an hour and a half with her husband and their four children to present a toy to young Elaf.
“I cried” upon learning of the attack, she told AFP.
“I imagined being in the position of Lamis in the car and being attacked by these monsters.”
“Blind hatred is going to get us all killed in the end if we don’t stand up to it,” she added.
 

 


UK signs deals with Iraq aimed at curbing irregular immigration

Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Iraq’s Minister of Interior Abdul Amir Al-Shimmari, front right, shake hands.
Updated 4 sec ago
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UK signs deals with Iraq aimed at curbing irregular immigration

  • “Organized criminals operate across borders, so law enforcement needs to operate across borders too,” Cooper
  • The pacts include a joint UK-Iraq “statement on border security” committing both countries to work more closely in tackling people smuggling and border security

LONDON: The UK government said Thursday it had struck a “world-first security agreement” and other cooperation deals with Iraq to target people-smuggling gangs and strengthen its border security.
Interior minister Yvette Cooper said the pacts sent “a clear signal to the criminal smuggling gangs that we are determined to work across the globe to go after them.”
They follow a visit this week by Cooper to Iraq and its autonomous Kurdistan region, when she met federal and regional government officials.
“Organized criminals operate across borders, so law enforcement needs to operate across borders too,” she said in a statement.
Cooper noted people-smuggling gangs’ operations “stretch back through Northern France, Germany, across Europe, to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and beyond.”
“The increasingly global nature of organized immigration crime means that even countries that are thousands of miles apart must work more closely together,” she added.
The pacts include a joint UK-Iraq “statement on border security” committing both countries to work more closely in tackling people smuggling and border security.
The two countries signed another statement on migration to speed up the returns of people who have no right to be in the UK and help reintegration programs to support returnees.
As part of the agreements, London will also provide up to £300,000 ($380,000) for Iraqi law enforcement training in border security.
It will be focused on countering organized immigration crime and narcotics, and increasing the capacity and capability of Iraq’s border enforcement.
The UK has pledged another £200,000 to support projects in the Kurdistan region, “which will enhance capabilities concerning irregular migration and border security, including a new taskforce.”
Other measures within the agreements include a communications campaign “to counter the misinformation and myths that people-smugglers post online.”
Cooper’s interior ministry said collectively they were “the biggest operational package to tackle serious organized crime and people smuggling between the two countries ever.”


Some Lebanon hospitals look set to restart quickly after ceasefire, WHO says

Updated 1 min 38 sec ago
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Some Lebanon hospitals look set to restart quickly after ceasefire, WHO says

  • “Probably some of our hospitals will take some time,” Abdinasir Abubakar, WHO representative in Lebanon said

GENEVA: A World Health Organization official voiced optimism on Thursday that some of the health facilities in Lebanon shuttered during more than a year of conflict would soon be operational again, if the ceasefire holds.
“Probably some of our hospitals will take some time, but some hospitals probably will be able to restart very quickly,” Abdinasir Abubakar, WHO representative in Lebanon, told an online press conference after a damage assessment this week.
“So we are very hopeful,” he added, saying four hospitals in and around Beirut were among those that could restart quickly.


Lebanon says 2 hurt as Israeli troops fire on people returning south after truce with Hezbollah

Updated 28 November 2024
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Lebanon says 2 hurt as Israeli troops fire on people returning south after truce with Hezbollah

  • Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said two people were wounded by Israeli fire in Markaba, close to the border, without providing further details
  • It said Israel fired artillery in three other locations near the border

BEIRUT: At least two people were wounded by Israeli fire in southern Lebanon on Thursday, according to state media. The Israeli military said it had fired at people trying to return to certain areas on the second day of a ceasefire with the Hezbollah militant group.
The agreement, brokered by the United States and France, includes an initial two-month ceasefire in which Hezbollah militants are to withdraw north of the Litani River and Israeli forces are to return to their side of the border. The buffer zone would be patrolled by Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said two people were wounded by Israeli fire in Markaba, close to the border, without providing further details. It said Israel fired artillery in three other locations near the border. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
An Associated Press reporter in northern Israel near the border heard Israeli drones buzzing overhead and the sound of artillery strikes from the Lebanese side.
The Israeli military said in a statement that “several suspects were identified arriving with vehicles to a number of areas in southern Lebanon, breaching the conditions of the ceasefire.” It said troops “opened fire toward them” and would “actively enforce violations of the ceasefire agreement.”
Israeli officials have said forces will be withdrawn gradually as it ensures that the agreement is being enforced. Israel has warned people not to return to areas where troops are deployed, and says it reserves the right to strike Hezbollah if it violates the terms of the truce.
A Lebanese military official said Lebanese troops would gradually deploy in the south as Israeli troops withdraw. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.
The ceasefire agreement announced late Tuesday ended 14 months of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that began a day after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza, when the Lebanese militant group began firing rockets, drones and missiles in solidarity.
Israel retaliated with airstrikes, and the conflict steadily intensified for nearly a year before boiling over into all-out war in mid-September. The war in Gaza is still raging with no end in sight.
More than 3,760 people were killed by Israeli fire in Lebanon during the conflict, many of them civilians, according to Lebanese health officials. The fighting killed more than 70 people in Israel — over half of them civilians — as well as dozens of Israeli soldiers fighting in southern Lebanon.
Some 1.2 million people were displaced in Lebanon, and thousands began streaming back to their homes on Wednesday despite warnings from the Lebanese military and the Israeli army to stay out of certain areas. Some 50,000 people were displaced on the Israeli side, but few have returned and the communities near the northern border are still largely deserted.
In Menara, an Israeli community on the border with views into Lebanon, around three quarters of homes are damaged, some with collapsed roofs and burnt-out interiors. A few residents could be seen gathering their belongings on Thursday before leaving again.


Algeria facing growing calls to release French-Algerian author Boualem Sansal

Updated 28 November 2024
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Algeria facing growing calls to release French-Algerian author Boualem Sansal

  • “The detention without serious grounds of a writer of French nationality is unacceptable,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said
  • The European Parliament discussed Algeria’s repression of freedom of speech on Wednesday and called for “his immediate and unconditional release”

PARIS: Politicians, writers and activists have called for the release of French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, whose arrest in Algeria is seen as the latest instance of the stifling of creative expression in the military-dominated North African country.
The 75-year-old author, who is an outspoken critic of Islamism and the Algerian regime, has not been heard from by friends, family or his French publisher since leaving Paris for Algiers earlier this month. He has not been seen near his home in his small town, Boumerdes, his neighbors told The Associated Press.
“The detention without serious grounds of a writer of French nationality is unacceptable,” France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Wednesday.
He added Sansal’s work “does honor to both his countries and to the values we cherish.”
The European Parliament discussed Algeria’s repression of freedom of speech on Wednesday and called for “his immediate and unconditional release.”
Algerian authorities have not publicly announced charges against Sansal, but the APS state news service said he was arrested at the airport.
Though no longer censored, Sansal’s novels have in the past faced bans in Algeria. A professed admirer of French culture, his writings on Islam’s role in society, authoritarianism, freedom of expression and the civil war that ravaged Algeria throughout the 1990s have won him fans across the ideological spectrum in France, from far-right leader Marine Le Pen to President Emmanuel Macron, who attended his French naturalization ceremony in 2023.
But his work has provoked ire in Algeria, from both authorities and Islamists, who have issued death threats against him in the 1990s and afterward.
Though few garner such international attention, Sansal is among a long list of political prisoners incarcerated in Algeria, where the hopes of a protest movement that led to the ouster of the country’s then-82 year old president have been crushed under President Abdelmadjid Tebboune.
Human rights groups have decried the ongoing repression facing journalists, activists and writers. Amnesty International in September called it a “brutal crackdown on human rights including the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.”
Algerian authorities have in recent months disrupted a book fair in Bejaia and excluded prominent authors from the country’s largest book fair in Algeria has in recent months, including this year’s Goncourt Prize winner Kamel Daoud,
“This tragic news reflects an alarming reality in Algeria, where freedom of expression is no more than a memory in the face of repression, imprisonment and the surveillance of the entire society,” French-Algerian author Kamel Daoud wrote in an editorial signed by more than a dozen authors in Le Point this week.
Sansal has been a polarizing figure in Algeria for holding some pro-Israel views and for likening political Islam to Nazism and totalitarianism in his novels, including “The Oath of the Barbarians” and “2084: The End of the World.”
Despite the controversial subject matter, Sansal had never faced detention. His arrest comes as relations between France and Algeria face newfound strains. France in July backed Morocco’s sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, angering Algeria, which has long backed the independence Polisario Front and pushed for a referendum to determine the future of the coastal northwest African territory.
“A regime that thinks it has to stop its writers, whatever they think, is certainly a weak regime,” French-Algerian academic Ali Bensaad wrote in a statement posted on Facebook.


Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer killed in Syria, SNN reports

Updated 28 November 2024
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Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer killed in Syria, SNN reports

DUBAI: Iranian Revolutionary Guards Brig. Gen. Kioumars Pourhashemi was killed in the Syrian province of Aleppo by “terrorists” linked to Israel, Iran’s SNN news agency reported on Thursday without giving further details.
Rebels led by Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham on Wednesday launched an incursion into a dozen towns and villages in northwest Aleppo province controlled by Syrian President Bashar Assad.