AMMAN: A cross-border attack in October by two young Jordanians against Israeli soldiers is a sign of deep anger at the war in Gaza in a country with strong ties to the Palestinians.
“Jordanians are boiling with anger, this is undeniable,” said Oraib Rantawi, head of the Amman-based Al Quds Center for Political Studies.
The attackers, who were killed in a firefight south of the Dead Sea last week that lightly wounded two Israeli soldiers, were members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, although the Islamist group said they acted independently.
It came just weeks after another attack by a Jordanian gunman at a border crossing with the occupied West Bank which killed three Israeli guards.
The two assailants in the most recent attack, Hussam Abu Ghazaleh and Amer Qawoos, had “always participated in events in solidarity with Gaza and in support of the resistance,” a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman recently said.
While there have been protests, Rantawi said, many Jordanians want concrete action against Israel, such as suspending trade or cutting diplomatic ties.
“Some young people, particularly those from Islamist, nationalist and leftist movements, feel that protests alone are not enough,” he said.
Jordan, where about half of the population is of Palestinian origin, has yet to officially condemn the attack.
But, Prime Minister Jafar Hassan said after the latest attack: “We will not be a place for strife or accept the risking of the future of this country, and we will not allow any party to replicate their models of chaos and destruction in our homeland.”
In 1994 Jordan became the second Arab country, after Egypt, to recognize Israel and establish diplomatic ties. Their shared border has remained largely calm since then.
Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has been fighting Israeli forces in Gaza since its October 7 attack last year sparked the war in the territory, called the latest attack “a significant development in the ongoing battle.”
It came just hours after Israel confirmed its forces in Gaza had killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, accused by Israel of masterminding the October 7 attack.
That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed 42,924 people, the majority civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures which the United Nations considers reliable.
The cross-border attacks “highlight mounting pressure on ordinary Jordanians as a result of Israel’s escalating aggression with the United States’ continuous support,” said political analyst Labib Kamhawi.
He said “the anger is evident both at the public and official levels, with the Jordanian government frustrated by Israel’s aggressive behavior.”
Amman has been “signalling that Jordan cannot ignore rising public outrage,” he added.
Many Jordanians saw the perpetrators of both attacks against Israel as martyred heroes, some even celebrating with sweets and fireworks in Amman.
Maher Diab Hussein Al-Jazi, who carried out the September attack before killing himself, was also hailed as a hero.
His father told local media that he was “honored to have raised a brave son who carried out an act of sacrifice.”
Faced with widespread anger from its people, Jordan has been striving to bring a diplomatic end to the war in Gaza.
But, Kamhawi said, “some Jordanians now see that attacks remain the only way of expressing solidarity with Palestinians.”
Jordanians ‘boiling with anger’ at Gaza spurring Israel border attacks
https://arab.news/z3w5f
Jordanians ‘boiling with anger’ at Gaza spurring Israel border attacks
- In 1994 Jordan became the second Arab country, after Egypt, to recognize Israel and establish diplomatic ties
- Many Jordanians saw the perpetrators of both attacks against Israel as martyred heroes
Between bomb craters: Taxis stuck on war-hit Lebanon-Syria border
MASNAA, Lebanon: Stuck in no man’s land on the war-hit Lebanon-Syria border, cab driver Fadi Slika now scrapes a living ferrying passengers between two deep craters left by Israeli air strikes.
The journey is just 2 km, but Slika has no other choice — his taxi is his only source of income.
“My car is stuck between craters: I can’t reach Lebanon or return to Syria. Meanwhile, we’re under threat of (Israeli) bombardment,” said the 56-year-old.
“I work and sleep here between the two holes,” he said.
A dual Lebanese-Syrian national, Slika has been living in his car, refusing to abandon it when it broke down until a mechanic brought a new engine.
His taxi is one of the few that has been operating between the two craters since Israeli strikes in October effectively blocked traffic on the Masnaa crossing.
The bombed area has become a boon for drivers of tuk-tuks, who can navigate the craters easily.
A makeshift stall, the Al-Joura (pit in Arabic) rest house, and a shop are set up nearby.
Slika went for 12 days without work while waiting for his taxi to be fixed. The car has become his home. A warm blanket covers its rear seats against eastern Lebanon’s cold winters, and a big bag of pita bread sits on the passenger side.
Before being stranded, Slika made about $100 for trips from Beirut to Damascus.
Now, an average fare between the craters is just $5.50 each way, though he said he charged more.
On Sept. 23, Israel intensified its aerial bombing of Lebanon and later sent in ground troops, nearly a year after Hezbollah initiated limited exchanges of fire in support of Hamas amid the Gaza war.
Since then, Israel has bombed several land crossings with Syria out of service.
It accuses Hezbollah of using what are key routes for people fleeing the war in Lebanon to transfer weapons from Syria.
Amid the hardship of the conflict, more than 610,000 people have fled from Lebanon to Syria, mostly Syrians, according to Lebanese authorities.
Undeterred by attacks, travelers still trickle through Masnaa, traversing the two craters that measure about 10 meters deep and 30 meters wide.
On the other side of the road, Khaled Khatib, 46, was fixing his taxi, its tires splattered with mud and hood coated in dust.
“After the first strike, I drove from Syria and parked my car before the crater. When the second strike hit, I got stuck between the two holes,” he said, sweat beading as he looked under the hood.
“We used to drive people from Damascus to Beirut. Now, we take them from one crater to another.”
Khatib doesn’t charge passengers facing tough times, he said, adding he had been displaced from southern Beirut, hammered by Israeli raids since September. He moved back to his hometown near the Masnaa crossing.
Despite harsh times, a sense of camaraderie reigns.
The drivers “became like brothers. We eat together at the small stall every day ... and we help each other fix our cars,” he said.
Mohamed Yassin moved his coffee stall from the Masnaa crossing closer to the pit after the strike, offering breakfast, lunch, and coffee. “We try to help people as much as possible,” he said.
Farther from the Lebanese border, travelers crossed the largest of the two crevasses, wearing plastic coverings on their shoes to avoid slipping in the mud.
A cab driver on a mound called out, “Taxi to Damascus!” while tuk-tuks and trucks ferried passengers, bags, and mattresses across.
Nearby, Aida Awda Mubarak, a Syrian mother of six, haggled with a tuk-tuk driver over the $1 fare.
The 52-year-old said she was out of work and needed to see her son after the east Lebanon town where he lives was hit by Israeli strikes.
“Sometimes we just can’t afford to pay for a tuk-tuk or a cab,” she said.
Netanyahu says ICC warrant won’t stop Israel defending itself
- “No outrageous anti-Israel decision will prevent us — and it will not prevent me — from continuing to defend our country in every way,” Netanyahu said
- The premier is accused alongside his former defense minister Yoav Gallant of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity“
JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court over his conduct of the Gaza war would not stop him defending Israel.
“No outrageous anti-Israel decision will prevent us — and it will not prevent me — from continuing to defend our country in every way,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. “We will not yield to pressure,” he vowed.
The premier is accused alongside his former defense minister Yoav Gallant of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” for Israel’s actions in Gaza.
He described Thursday’s decision as a “dark day in the history of nations.”
“The International Criminal Court in The Hague, which was established to protect humanity, has today become the enemy of humanity,” he said, adding that the accusations were “utterly baseless.”
Israel has been fighting in Gaza since October 2023, when a cross-border attack by Hamas militants resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Its retaliatory campaign has led to the deaths of 44,056 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.
UN agencies have warned of a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including possible famine, due to a lack of food and medicines.
The court said it had found “reasonable grounds” to believe Netanyahu and Gallant bore “criminal responsibility” for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, as well as the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.
Netanyahu said the court was accusing Israel of “fictitious crimes,” while ignoring “the real war crimes, horrific war crimes being committed against us and against many others around the world.”
In addition to Netanyahu and Gallant, the court also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military wing chief Mohammed Deif, who Israel said was killed in an air strike last July.
Hamas has never confirmed his death.
Netanyahu mocked the court’s decision to issue a warrant for “the body of Mohammed Deif.”
Italy says would have to arrest Netanyahu after ICC warrant
- Crosetto believed the ICC was “wrong” to put Netanyahu and Gallant on the same level as Hamas
- It was not a political choice but Italy was bound as a member of the ICC to act on the court’s warrants
ROME: Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said Thursday his country would be obliged to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visited, after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant.
The ICC earlier also issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu’s former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif.
Crosetto — whose country holds the G7 rotating presidency this year — told RAI television’s Porta a Porta program that he believed the ICC was “wrong” to put Netanyahu and Gallant on the same level as Hamas.
But he said that if Netanyahu or Gallant “were to come to Italy, we would have to arrest them.”
It was not a political choice but Italy was bound as a member of the ICC to act on the court’s warrants, Crosetto said.
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani had earlier been more cautious, saying: “We support the ICC, while always remembering that the court must play a legal role and not a political role.
“We will evaluate together with our allies what to do and how to interpret this decision.”
Israeli strikes kill 47 people in eastern Lebanon, official says
- Bachir Khodr, governor of Lebanon’s Baalbek-Hermel province, said at least 47 were killed and 22 wounded in Israeli strikes in the Baalbek region
- In Israel, a 30-year-old man was killed when shrapnel from a rocket struck a playground in the northern town of Nahariya
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: Israeli strikes killed at least 47 people in eastern Lebanon on Thursday, a Lebanese official said, pressing the campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group as a US mediator sought to advance ceasefire talks in Israel.
US mediator Amos Hochstein, who said a ceasefire was “within our grasp” during a visit to Lebanon on Tuesday, met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz. There were no immediate statements.
Indicating there were still gaps to close, a senior Lebanese official told Reuters that Beirut had sought changes to the US ceasefire proposal, to include ensuring a speedier withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon.
The diplomacy marks the most serious attempt yet to end the conflict between Israel and the heavily armed, Iran-backed Hezbollah, part of the regional spillover of the Gaza war that erupted more than a year ago.
Bachir Khodr, governor of Lebanon’s Baalbek-Hermel province, said at least 47 were killed and 22 wounded in Israeli strikes in the Baalbek region. Posting on X, he said rescue operations were underway. The region bordering Syria is an area of Lebanon where Shiite Islamist Hezbollah holds sway.
Beirut shook as Israeli airstrikes hit the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs about a dozen times, sending up clouds of debris, in some of the most intense airstrikes yet.
Residents have largely fled the area since Israel went on the offensive against Hezbollah in September.
The Israeli army said its strikes were against Hezbollah infrastructure and that it had mitigated civilian harm through advance warnings and other steps.
In Israel, a 30-year-old man was killed when shrapnel from a rocket struck a playground in the northern town of Nahariya, Israel’s MDA medical service said.
“The Israeli government is not safeguarding my security, my residents or the residents of the north (of Israel). It is not possible to live in such a situation like this,” Nahariya Mayor Ronen Marelly told public broadcaster Kansas
The Israeli military said about 10 rockets were launched from Lebanon toward Nahariya. “Most of the projectiles were intercepted and fallen projectiles were identified,” the military said in a statement.
Channel 12 said three rockets hit the coastal town.
Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station, citing its correspondent, confirmed rocket fire toward Nahariya and the surrounding area.
White House envoy Hochstein left for Israel after declaring progress in two days of talks in Lebanon with officials including Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, endorsed to negotiate by Hezbollah. Speaking before he left Beirut, Hochstein said he was going to Israel to try to close an agreement if possible.
BATTLE OF KHIYAM
The diplomacy aims to end a conflict that has inflicted massive devastation in Lebanon since Israel began its offensive, mounting airstrikes across wide parts of the country and sending troops into the south.
Footage broadcast by Al Jazeera showed thick smoke rising from the town of Khiyam in southern Lebanon, some 6 km (4 miles) from the border, a focal point of ground battles between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops.
Israel says its aim is to secure the return home of tens of thousands of people evacuated from its north due to rocket attacks by Hezbollah, which opened fire in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.
Hezbollah, which has suffered major blows since Israel began its offensive in September, has kept up rocket fire into Israel, attacking Tel Aviv this week. Its fighters are battling Israeli troops on the ground in the south.
The casualty toll since Oct. 2023 stands at 3,583 people killed in Lebanon, the Lebanese health ministry says, most of them killed during the Israeli offensive since September. The figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The ministry said 25 fatalities were reported on Wednesday.
Hezbollah strikes have killed more than 100 people in northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. They include more than 70 soldiers killed in strikes in northern Israel and the Golan Heights and in combat in southern Lebanon, according to Israel.
Amid Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon, airstrikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs
- Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported three raids “within the third round of strikes on the southern suburbs today“
- AFPTV footage showed columns of smoke rising from the area, usually a densely populated residential district but now largely emptied
BEIRUT: Fierce battles between the Israeli army and Hezbollah erupted in the town of Khiam and on the outskirts of the town of Biyyadah in Lebanon on Thursday.
Israeli resumed intense airstrikes in the morning on Beirut’s southern suburbs and villages in the Baalbek-Hermel governorate, following a pause that coincided with US envoy Amos Hochstein’s 48-hour visit to Beirut before heading to Tel Aviv.
Hezbollah continued its attacks on northern Israel, with rockets reaching Nahariya. According to medics and doctors with Magen David Adom, these attacks “killed a 30-year-old man due to rocket fire.”
Lebanon has been hit by large-scale Israeli attacks since Sept. 23.
Israel has been targeting Hezbollah headquarters, civilian homes in southern villages, pursuing displaced persons to their new locations, and destroying entire neighborhoods in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the southern border region, towns deep in the south, and villages in Baalbek-Hermel.
The attacks have also struck Beirut multiple times. The total death toll since the start of the confrontations has surpassed 3,520, with 14,940 injured.
The clashes in the south have been concentrated between the town of Chamaa and the coastal town of Biyyadah, following the capture of Chamaa.
Hezbollah said that its members “repelled a new Israeli force’s advance attempt at the southern outskirts of Chamaa toward Biyyadah.”
A fierce battle also raged in Khiam, amid reports on Wednesday night suggesting that the town had fallen to the Israeli army. However, Hezbollah reported “ongoing battles on four fronts, employing all types of weapons.”
Security reports indicated that the Israeli army “is conducting large-scale demolitions in Khiam, blowing up houses and residential buildings during its incursion into the town.”
Controlling Khiam is significant, as it is a strategic city located on top of the Al-Hamames Hill, 500 meters above sea level. Khiam is also one of the biggest cities in southern Lebanon in area, which allows the Israeli army to oversee northern Israel on one side and the Golan Heights on the other.
An Israeli raid on the Khardali road, which connects Nabatieh to Marjaayoun and is considered a Hezbollah supply road, blocked it completely.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes carried out destructive aerial strikes in stages against Beirut’s southern suburbs on Thursday morning.
The strikes were preceded by a series of evacuation warnings issued to the residents of Ghobeiri, Hadath, Haret Hreik, Bir Abed and Kafaat.
The raids destroyed a significant number of residential buildings and commercial shops. They also reached a building adjacent to a special needs school in Kafaat.
The Israeli army claimed that it “targeted Hezbollah command headquarters and infrastructure in Beirut’s southern suburbs.”
Raids on Younin, northern Bekaa, killed at least four people after they targeted an inhabited house without prior warning.
The Israeli raids included Brital, Makneh, Nahleh, Chaat in the Anti-Lebanon mountains, and Bouday in the western mountain range.
Dozens of citizens received mysterious calls on Wednesday night instructing them to evacuate their homes in Beirut’s neighborhoods and Mount Lebanon, including Mazraat Yachouh in Metn, where there is no Hezbollah presence.
The calls caused confusion, as residents of entire neighborhoods waited on the streets for officials confirmations. The calls were seen as “part of a psychological warfare.”
On the eve of Lebanon’s 81st Independence Day, army chief Joseph Aoun said that “Lebanon will always revolt against its enemies and those who mess with its safety and sovereignty, notably the Israeli enemy.”
Aoun said that the anniversary came amid a destructive and brutal war waged by the Israeli enemy for more than a year, resulting in thousands being wounded, and the displacement of people from their villages and towns in the south, the Bekaa and Beirut.
“As the enemy persists in its daily violations and aggressions, efforts are intensifying to reach a ceasefire that would bring calm to our country, paving the way for the return of our people in the south to their land and the rest of the displaced to their homes.”
Aoun said that the army was “still deployed in the south, where soldiers make sacrifices and give their lives for Lebanon. We will not abandon it because it is an integral part of national sovereignty, and it operates in coordination with UNIFIL under the framework of Resolution 1701. The army also stands by its people and citizens, fulfilling its national duty and continuing its missions despite challenges and dangers.”
He said that “there is no turning back, and there is no fear for the army, which will remain steadfast by the side of the Lebanese despite all circumstances, protecting Lebanon and defending its security, stability and sovereignty. The army will continue to embrace all Lebanese from different backgrounds, standing equally by each one of them.”
