JERUSALEM: The UN agency for Palestinian refugees said Friday one of its employees was killed during an Israeli operation in the occupied West Bank, where raids have escalated since last month.
The United Nations agency, UNRWA, said the employee was its first to be killed in the Palestinian territory in more than a decade.
But he is among dozens of Palestinians killed during the large-scale Israeli operation which began days ago and is ongoing, with several more Palestinians dead since Wednesday.
UNRWA identified the employee as Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, who worked as a sanitation laborer. It said he was “shot and killed on the roof of his home by a sniper” in Faraa refugee camp.
His death is in addition to those of six other UNRWA staffers the UN said were killed in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday during a strike on a shool-turned-shelter. It was the highest single incident toll for the agency, UNRWA said.
Mourners on Friday carried Jawwad’s body through the streets of Faraa, with his blue UN vest resting atop the Palestinian flag that covered him.
In nearby Tubas, funerals also took place for other Palestinians, who were killed by an air strike.
A military statement on Friday said Israeli forces had “conducted a 48-hour counter-terrorism operation” in the areas of Tubas, Tamun and Faraa — northeast of Nablus — killing “five armed terrorists” in an air strike.
It added that a sixth militant was also killed.
Violence in the West Bank had already soared alongside the nearly 12-month-old war in Gaza but in late August Israel began its large-scale raids.
Major Israeli operations in the West Bank are sometimes occurring “at a scale not witnessed in the last two decades,” the United Nations human rights chief said this week.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa said the military withdrew from Tubas on Thursday evening, allowing the funerals there to go ahead, after the air strike which the Palestinian Red Crescent said killed them on Wednesday.
“I woke up in the morning to the sound of an explosion,” Ahmed Sawafta, father of one of the dead men, told AFP.
The fifth person killed was buried on Friday in Tamun, also in the northern West Bank.
Osaid Kharaz, who identified himself as a Hamas activist, told AFP at the funeral in Tubas that Israel “is attempting to impose a new reality and undermine the popular support for the resistance (to Israeli occupation) in the West Bank.”
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced on September 4 that the military would use its “full strength” to strike Palestinian militants in the West Bank.
He said he had ordered the military to carry out air strikes “wherever necessary” in order to “avoid endangering soldiers.”
Days later, the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said Israel aimed “to turn the West Bank into a new Gaza.”
Israeli forces this week also carried out operations around the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem.
A military statement on Friday reported four deaths “in the areas of Tulkarem and Nur Shams.”
It said “three of the terrorists were eliminated in an aerial strike on Wednesday, and the fourth terrorist was eliminated during close-quarters combat with the security forces.”
The armed wing of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad said that the strike killed three of its fighters.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and has ramped up deadly raids in the territory since Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel sparked the war in Gaza.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, at least 679 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli military or settlers since October 7.
At least 24 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations in the territory during the same period, according to Israeli officials.
Rare death of UN worker as Israel pursues West Bank operation
https://arab.news/4y2dr
Rare death of UN worker as Israel pursues West Bank operation
- The United Nations agency, UNRWA, said the employee was its first to be killed in the Palestinian territory in more than a decade
- UNRWA identified the employee as Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, who worked as a sanitation laborer
The UN will vote on a Palestinian resolution demanding Israel end its occupation
The resolution is being put to a vote in the 193-member assembly as Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza approaches its first anniversary and as violence in the West Bank reaches new highs. The war was triggered by Hamas attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, opened the assembly meeting Tuesday by saying Palestinians face an “existential threat” and claiming Israel has held them “in shackles.” He demanded an end to Israel’s decades-long occupation and for Palestinians to be able to return home to live in peace and freedom.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, urged member nations to reject the resolution, describing it as “an attempt to destroy Israel through diplomatic terrorism” that never mentions Hamas’ atrocities and “ignores the truth, twists the facts and replaces reality with fiction.”
“Instead of a resolution condemning the rape and massacre committed by Hamas on Oct. 7, we gather here to watch the Palestinians’ UN circus — a circus where evil is righteous, war is peace, murder is justified and terror is applauded,” he said.
If adopted, the resolution would not be legally binding, but the extent of its support would reflect world opinion. There are no vetoes in the General Assembly, unlike in the 15-member Security Council.
The resolution is a response to a ruling by the top United Nations court in July that said Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territories is unlawful and must end.
In the sweeping condemnation of Israel’s rule over the lands it captured during the 1967 war, the International Court of Justice said Israel had no right to sovereignty over the Palestinian territories and was violating international laws against acquiring the lands by force.
The court’s opinion also is not legally binding. Nonetheless, the Palestinians drafted the resolution to try to implement the ruling, saying Israel’s “abuse of its status as the occupying power” renders its “presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful.”
Mansour stressed that any country that thinks the Palestinian people “will accept a life of servitude” or that claims peace is possible without a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “not being realistic.”
The solution remains an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living side by side in peace and security with Israel, he said.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield told reporters that the resolution has “a significant number of flaws,” saying it goes beyond the ICJ ruling. It also doesn’t recognize that “Hamas is a terrorist organization” in control of Gaza and that Israel has a right to defend itself, she said.
“In our view, the resolution does not bring about tangible benefits across the board for the Palestinian people,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “I think it could complicate the situation on the ground, complicate what we’re trying to do to end the conflict, and I think it impedes reinvigorating steps toward a two-state solution.”
The resolution calls for Israel to pay reparations to Palestinians for the damage caused by its occupation and urges countries to take steps to prevent trade or investments that maintain Israel’s presence in the territories.
It also demands that Israel be held accountable for any violations of international law, that sanctions be imposed on those responsible for maintaining Israel’s presence in the territories, and for countries to halt arms exports to Israel if they’re suspected of being used there.
Mansour said an initial Palestinian draft demanded Israel end its occupation within six months but that it was revised in response to concerns of some countries to increase the time frame to within a year.
Most likely, he said, Israel won’t pay attention to the resolution.
Blinken arrives in Egypt to push Gaza ceasefire
- On his 10th trip to the Middle East since the start of the war in Gaza nearly a year ago, Blinken will address negotiation efforts with Egyptian officials
- Blinken is expected to meet with Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and hold a press conference with Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty
CAIRO: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Cairo early Wednesday, an AFP reporter said, as efforts to secure an elusive ceasefire in Gaza were further complicated by a wave of blasts in Lebanon.
On his 10th trip to the Middle East since the start of the war in Gaza nearly a year ago, Blinken will address negotiation efforts with Egyptian officials, according to the US State Department.
Blinken is expected to meet with Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and hold a press conference with Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, but will not be visiting Israel in this round of diplomacy.
US officials say privately that they do not expect any breakthroughs at Wednesday’s talks in Cairo, but Blinken’s visit will aim to keep up the pressure campaign for a deal between Israel and Hamas.
“He’ll be meeting with Egyptian officials about a number of things, but squarely on the agenda is how we get a proposal that we think would secure agreement from both parties,” said US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
His visit comes after a series of pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least nine people and wounding about 2,800 in blasts the Iran-backed militant group blamed on Israel.
The United States was “not involved” and “not aware of this incident in advance,” according to Miller.
Israel recently announced it was broadening the aims of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attacks to include its fight against Hezbollah along the country’s border with Lebanon.
Gold Apollo says it did not make pagers used in Lebanon explosion
- The company’s founder said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had the right to use the Taiwanese firm’s brand
TAIPEI: Taiwan’s Gold Apollo did not make the pagers that were used in the detonations in Lebanon on Tuesday, the company’s founder Hsu Ching-Kuang told reporters on Wednesday.
At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon on Tuesday.
Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo.
Hsu said the pagers used in the explosion were made by a company in Europe that had the right to use the Taiwanese firm’s brand.
Biden calls on Sudan’s warring parties to re-engage in negotiations
- “We call for all parties to this conflict to end this violence and refrain from fueling it, for the future of Sudan and for all of the Sudanese people,” Biden said in a statement
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Tuesday called on Sudan’s warring parties to re-engage in negotiations to end a war that has been ongoing for more than 17 months.
“We call for all parties to this conflict to end this violence and refrain from fueling it, for the future of Sudan and for all of the Sudanese people,” Biden said in a statement.
“I call on the belligerents responsible for Sudanese suffering— the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)— to pull back their forces, facilitate unhindered humanitarian access, and re-engage in negotiations to end this war.”
More than 12,00 people have been killed across Sudan since the war started on April 15, 2023.
The conflict began when competition between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which had previously shared power after staging a coup, flared into open warfare.
Biden said the RSF’s assault is disproportionately harming Sudanese civilians and called on the armed forces to stop “indiscriminate” bombings that are destroying civilian lives and infrastructure.
The US previously determined that the two sides committed war crimes and sanctioned 16 individuals and entities tied to the war.
Biden said the United States will continue to evaluate further atrocity allegations and potential additional sanctions.
