RAMALLAH: Israeli police have been criticized for heavy-handed tactics after hundreds of Orthodox Christians were blocked from celebrating Holy Saturday in a church in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Several Coptic Orthodox priests were targeted in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, according to videos circulating on news websites.
Israeli forces blocked the celebrations with roadblocks and barriers at the gates of the Old City, allowing only small numbers of Christians and those with entry permits to enter.
They also obstructed traffic in Khan Al-Zeit market and assaulted dozens of worshippers trying to cross the checkpoints, local sources said.
The millennium-old celebration usually draws thousands of worshippers to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Christians believe Jesus was buried.
In contrast to previous years, when as many as 10,000 worshippers packed into the church, only 1,800 will be allowed inside this year, with another 1,200 outside. Additional checkpoints around the Old City will also restrict access to the area around the church.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described it as a “blatant attack on the freedom of worship.”
The ministry condemned what is said was a “flagrant attack on the existing political, historical and legal status quo in occupied Jerusalem and on Israel’s obligations as an occupying regime in Jerusalem.”
These measures “violate international law, international humanitarian law and signed agreements,” it said.
The churches said they would refuse to cooperate with the police restrictions, which they see as part of long-standing efforts to push out the local Christian community.
Some church leaders have voiced concern over what they describe as an environment of impunity in the face of rising acts of violence and vandalism targeting Christians and their properties in Jerusalem.
The supreme presidential committee for Palestinian church affairs called for mass participation of Christians in the Saturday of Light activities, despite Israeli restrictions.
The Holy Sepulchre lies at the heart of the Old City’s Christian Quarter in East Jerusalem.
After hours of anticipation, the ceremony culminates when Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox patriarch emerges from the sealed empty tomb with a lighted candle, a mysterious act considered an annual Holy Saturday miracle before Orthodox Easter Sunday.
The light is then quickly dispersed among the faithful gathered in the darkened church and outside it.
Israeli police said they were working to ensure safety for participants in the Holy Fire ceremony.
“The safety of all those participating is crucial to the Israel police. Officers are working to assist the flow of participants arriving in large crowds,” a statement said.
Nevertheless, the National Christian Coalition in the Holy Land expressed profound anger and sorrow as the Israeli occupation forces turned Jerusalem into a military barracks and blocked access to the church in an apparent escalation of state-sponsored religious persecution.
Dimitri Diliani, president of the coalition, condemned the oppressive measures, “which flagrantly violate the most basic human rights.”
He said that the world at large “should express deep concern about the racist nature of the Israeli occupation authorities, which manifests these days in religious persecution against anyone who is not Jewish. The National Christian Coalition calls for protecting the rights of all, including Muslims and Christians, in Palestine.”
He added that despite the brutal suppression of the Israeli occupation forces, the coalition “has worked tirelessly over the past week to mobilize as many worshippers and celebrants as possible, challenging the tyrannical restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation.”
Diliani praised the unified stance taken by the patriarchs and heads of the churches of Jerusalem in rejecting the occupation forces’ decisions and refusing to recognize their authority over the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
“We will continue to exercise our natural right to worship freely in Jerusalem, regardless of the risks and challenges we face,” he said.
Elsewhere, on Saturday, Israeli police again raided the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque in large numbers and removed banners and flags placed on the Dome of the Rock on Friday.
Israeli police storm Christians heading to Jerusalem church
https://arab.news/28qhu
Israeli police storm Christians heading to Jerusalem church
- Several Coptic Orthodox priests were assaulted in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
- Israeli forces blocked the celebrations with roadblocks and barriers at the gates of the Old City
Israel orders Spain to stop consular services for Palestinians from June 1
- Israel statement: Spain’s consulate in Jerusalem is ‘authorized to provide consular services to residents of the consular district of Jerusalem only’
The ministry said in a statement that Spain’s consulate in Jerusalem is “authorized to provide consular services to residents of the consular district of Jerusalem only, and is not authorized to provide services or perform consular activity vis-a-vis residents of the Palestinian Authority.”
Israel army kills Palestinian teen after West Bank ‘attempted attack’
- The deadly incident took place near Hebron in the southern West Bank, the army and the Palestinian ministry said
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said its troops killed a Palestinian assailant in the occupied West Bank, with the Palestinian health ministry identifying him as a teenager.
Israeli forces “identified a terrorist who came in their direction and attempted to carry out a stabbing attack,” a military statement said.
“The soldiers fired at him and killed him,” it said.
The Palestinian health ministry identified the fatality as Majd Shahir Aramin, 14, and said he had been killed by Israeli forces.
The deadly incident took place near Hebron in the southern West Bank, the army and the Palestinian ministry said.
The West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967, has seen a surge in violence for more than a year, but especially since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on October 7.
According to Palestinian officials, at least 519 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli troops or settlers since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip.
Attacks by Palestinians have killed at least 12 Israelis in the West Bank over the same period, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israeli police and Jewish pilgrims clash at beleaguered festival site
- The all-night sessions of prayer, mystical songs and dance had in previous years drawn crowds in the tens of thousands
- Police limited the number of attendees since the 2021 tragedy in which 45 people died in a crowd rush
JERUSALEM: Clashes erupted on Sunday between police and Jewish pilgrims at a religious festival site in northern Israel where three years ago 45 people died in a crowd crush, and which authorities closed this year due to rocket fire from Lebanon.
Since the 2021 tragedy at the tomb of a 2nd-century sage during the annual Lag B’Omer celebration, police have limited the number of attendees.
The all-night sessions of prayer, mystical songs and dance had in previous years drawn crowds in the tens of thousands.
This year’s festival was canceled since the site at Meron in the Galilee region has been targeted by rocket fire from Lebanon.
Many northern Israeli towns have been evacuated since Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon began firing at them following Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza.
Both sides have traded blows since. Despite the closure, police said they turned away thousands of pilgrims over the weekend, though hundreds managed to reach the site, where things got out of hand.
The visitors damaged property and hurled objects at officers, police said. Nineteen officers were injured.
Israeli media reported that several people among the unauthorized crowd were hurt. At least one officer was suspended for pushing an older man to the ground, and police said it was examining other incidents from the site.
Ten dead, 39 injured in southern Turkiye highway collision
ISTANBUL: Ten people died and 39 others were injured in southern Turkiye on Sunday when an intercity bus collided with three other vehicles on a main highway, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said.
The bus, traveling to Istanbul from Diyarbakir, crashed into a transport truck and two other vehicles in the Tarsus district near the Mediterranean city of Mersin, he said on social media platform X.
The government said an investigation had been launched.
Israel war cabinet to discuss new push for Gaza hostage deal
- Hamas eader Izzat Al-Rishq jas accused Netanyahu earlier Sunday of “trying to buy more time to continue the aggression"
RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he “strongly opposes” ending the war in Gaza, ahead of his war cabinet convening amid intense diplomacy to forge a truce and hostage release deal.
Meanwhile deadly fighting rocked the Gaza Strip and Hamas militants fired a salvo of rockets at Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv for the first time in months, sending people scrambling for shelter.
Netanyahu has long rejected Hamas’s demand in negotiations for a permanent end to the fighting, which was triggered by the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack and has left vast areas of besieged Gaza in ruins.
A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, had earlier told AFP that “the war cabinet is expected to meet... tonight at 9 p.m. (1800 GMT) to discuss a hostage release deal.”
A statement issued by Netanyahu’s office before the meeting said Hamas chief in Gaza Yahya “Sinwar continues to demand the end of the war, the withdrawal of the IDF (army) from the Gaza Strip and leaving Hamas in place, so that it will be able to carry out the atrocities of October 7 again and again,” referring to the attack that triggered the war.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu strongly opposes this,” the statement said.
A member of Hamas’s political leadership, Izzat Al-Rishq, accused Netanyahu earlier Sunday of “trying to buy more time to continue the aggression.”
In Brussels, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists before meeting Palestinian premier Mohammed Mustafa that a strong Palestinian Authority (PA) was in Israel’s interest.
EU members Ireland and Spain, and also Norway, have said they will recognize the State of Palestine from Tuesday, drawing furious Israeli condemnation.
“A functional Palestinian Authority is in Israel’s interest too, because in order to make peace, we need a strong Palestinian Authority, not a weaker one,” Borrell said.
Mustafa, whose government is based in the occupied West Bank, said the “first priority” was to support people in Gaza, especially through a ceasefire, and then “rebuilding the institutions of the Palestinian Authority” there after Hamas seized it from the PA in 2007.
US President Joe Biden has pushed for renewed international efforts to halt the war, now in its eighth month.
The Israeli official had said Saturday that “there is an intention to renew these talks this week” after negotiations involving US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators stalled in early May.
However, Rishq said Sunday that so far, “we have not received anything from the mediators.”
He insisted on Hamas’s long-standing demand for a permanent cessation of hostilities as “the foundation and the starting point for anything.”
Netanyahu has repeatedly vowed to destroy Hamas following the October 7 attack, but has also faced growing domestic and international criticism.
The attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,984 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
The military on Sunday announced the death of a soldier in north Gaza, taking to 289 the number of troops killed since Israel began its ground offensive in late October.
As the war ground on, the families of hostages still held by Palestinians militants have piled pressure on Netanyahu to secure a deal to free them.
Washington has also taken a tougher line with its close ally as outrage over the war and US support for Israel has become a major issue for Biden, seeking re-election in a battle against Donald Trump.
With more strikes reported Sunday across Gaza, Israel’s military said that over the past 24 hours it had destroyed “over 50 terror targets.”
Fighting has centered on the far-southern city of Rafah, where Israel launched a ground operation in early May despite widespread opposition over concerns for civilians sheltering there.
Rafah resident Moaz Abu Taha, 29, told AFP of “constant bombardment from land and air, which has destroyed many houses.”
Gaza’s civil defense agency said it had retrieved six bodies after a house was targeted in eastern Rafah.
Hamas’s armed wing said it had targeted Tel Aviv “with a large rocket barrage in response to the Zionist (Israeli) massacres against civilians.”
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a televised briefing that “Hamas terrorists in Gaza fired eight rockets at central Israel from Rafah.”
“Hamas launched these rockets from near two mosques in Rafah,” Hagari said. “Hamas is holding our hostages in Rafah, which is why we have been conducting a precise operation” there.
Analyst Neomi Neumann said the militants were not trying to “cause damage to Israel, but to maintain continuity of fire.”
They “shoot relatively few rockets per barrage from their diminishing arsenal, and choose when to concentrate their efforts,” said Neumann, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank.
The UN has warned of looming famine in the besieged territory, where most hospitals are no longer functioning.
Amid the bloodiest ever Gaza war, Israel has faced growing global outcry over the surging civilian death toll, and landmark moves last week at two international courts.
Last Monday, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defense minister as well as for three top Hamas figures.
And on Friday, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its Rafah offensive or any other operation there that could bring about “the physical destruction” of the Palestinians.
