The Latest News from Gaza Middle East Crisis
The Latest News from Gaza Middle East Crisis
Raids Ease in West Bank but Paletinians Fear Israelis’ Return
It has been weeks since Israeli military forces broke into Rifat al-Tebe’s cellphone shop in Tulkarm, breaking the door, smashing display cases and taking merchandise, he said. But Mr. al-Tebe says he has yet to fix anything other than installing a new door, fearful that his repairs would be swiftly undone if the Israeli military raids the area again.
Civilians in the Palestinian city in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have for months endured destructive and deadly Israeli military raids targeting members of Palestinian armed groups. In the past few weeks alone, Israeli forces have come and gone multiple times — appearing to withdraw only to return hours or days later. That is leaving residents like Mr. al-Tebe unsure of whether to try anymore to rebuild.
“We no longer have the will to continue working — we don’t know what to do, to work or to just sit,” he said. “We’re afraid they will return and destroy what we repair.”
On Aug. 28, Israel launched one of its most extensive and deadly raids in the West Bank in years — a marked escalation after the near-nightly operations that had become the norm. Israel has said the raids are aimed at rooting out armed fighters who it says have attempted more than 150 attacks on Israelis over the past year. The military says that it has found weapons and explosives during its raids and killed multiple fighters.
Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. al-Tebe’s account or raids on shops in general. In the past, it has said it raids private property when searching for suspects or for lookout spots.
The raids — in Tulkarm, Tubas and Jenin — have killed at least 39 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Palestinian armed groups have claimed some of the dead as members. Others have been civilians, including children, according to the United Nations. Residents have described the raids as punishing them indiscriminately.
The United Nations agency that aids Palestinians said that one of its employees was killed by a sniper in Tubas early Thursday while he was on the roof of his home. The killing was the first of an UNRWA staff member in the West Bank in more than a decade, the agency said. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During the raids, the Israeli military churned up roads with bulldozers in what it has said is a search for explosive devices. And it has carried out numerous airstrikes, a type of attack that was rare in the West Bank before the Hamas-led assault on Israel last Oct. 7, leaving thousands of Palestinians trapped in their homes for days.
In the city of Jenin, from which Israeli forces withdrew late last week, workers were fixing torn-up roads and trying to repair damaged sewage and water lines. Electricity had been restored but water had yet to come back and residents were having to fill up water tanks from trucks.
But there were few signs of recovery in Tulkarm, where Israeli forces returned on Tuesday before withdrawing on Thursday. Residents and officials there were assessing the damage on Friday but unsure what to do.
“For nearly a month we have been repairing, but we can’t even finish repairing roads or homes or anything before they raid again and destroy everything,” said Faisal Salameh, the head of the services committee in the Tulkarm camp neighborhood of the city. He added: “At any moment they raid again and bulldoze the streets and burn homes or destroy homes and shops.”
Residents have been patching things up temporarily to return to some semblance of a normal life, he said. But that is undermined by the fear and uncertainty of when the next Israeli raid may come.
One of President Biden’s most trusted advisers, Amos Hochstein, will travel back to the Middle East on Monday in another effort to defuse tensions between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, U.S. officials said on Friday. “Amos’s trips are a continuation of the diplomacy he has conducted for many months to prevent a second front,” a White House spokesman, John F. Kirby, said. “It’s part of ongoing efforts by the administration and the team to prevent escalation and the spread of this conflict.” But the visit comes as Israeli forces have been “operating intensively in the northern arena” to target Hezbollah, as Israel’s military put it in a statement on Friday, noting that troops there have also been “simulating operations in enemy territory.”
The Israeli military has attacked more than 140 targets in Lebanon in the past week, according to a statement from the military on Friday that said it had killed multiple Hezbollah fighters in strikes on a weapons manufacturing site, arms warehouses, observation posts, launchers and other sites. U.S. and other Western officials have said that Israel also carried out a commando raid in Syria near the Lebanese border on Sunday that obliterated a Hezbollah missile production facility, killing a number of people at the site. Israel’s Friday statement made a rare acknowledgment that it had attacked inside Syria, but said only that its forces had targeted “several terrorists” there.
Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s political chief and an architect of the Oct. 7 attack, thanked Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, for its support “and engagement” in the war with Israel, in a letter published on Friday on Hezbollah channels. Hamas and Hezbollah are both backed by Iran and part of its “axis of resistance,” and Hezbollah has been targeting Israel’s northern border since Hamas’s war with Israel in Gaza began last year. The letter also thanked Mr. Nasrallah for sending condolences over the July assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s previous political leader.
A Palestinian representative took a seat at the U.N. General Assembly for the first time on Thursday, after the body adopted a resolution in May declaring that Palestinians qualify for full-members status. The resolution was seen as a rebuke to Israel and to the United States, which had vetoed full U.N. membership for a Palestinian state a month earlier. Though largely symbolic, the resolution conferred new diplomatic privileges, among them allowing the Palestinian ambassador, Riyad Mansour, to sit among envoys from member states and to directly propose and amend resolutions. The Palestinians are recognized by the United Nations as a nonmember observer state, a status granted to them in 2012 by the General Assembly.
Chile has asked to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip, according to a statement on Friday from the I.C.J., the United Nations’ highest court. The I.C.J. said that it had set the process in motion by inviting both Israel and South Africa for “written observations” of Chile’s request. The U.N. allows countries to join or “intervene” in proceedings if they are parties to the U.N.’s 1948 Genocide Convention. Israel has categorically denied the accusation of genocide.
Spain hosted a meeting on Friday with Arab and European leaders on a two-state solution, calling it a step toward resolving the enduring conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Pedro Sanchez, Spain’s prime minister, said on social media on Friday that the group wanted to identify concrete actions to advance peace. Josep Borell Fontelles, the E.U.’s highest diplomat, said on social media that he was attending the meeting, adding: “We need a new collective effort to stop the war in Gaza” and to pursue a future of “2 States, Palestine & Israel, living side by side in peace & security.”
The body of an American woman who was shot and killed by Israeli forces while protesting in the West Bank arrived in Turkey on Friday, where she was mourned in a ceremony at the Istanbul Airport. The 26-year-old, Aysenur Eygi, a Turkish American dual citizen, was expected to be buried in Didim, a town on Turkey’s Aegean coast where her father is from.
Comments
Post a Comment