PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Scuffles broke out on Wednesday between Israeli authorities and protesters who feared preparations were underway to raze a Bedouin village in a strategic part of the occupied West Bank, despite international calls for a reprieve.
Protesters, including some waving Palestinian flags, tried to block a bulldozer and scuffled with police at Khan al-Ahmar, east of Jerusalem. Some climbed onto the bulldozer in protest.
Israeli police said 11 people were arrested. Israeli rights group B'Tselem said they included the organisation's own head of field research.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported 35 people injured, with four taken to hospital. Police said the wounded included three officers, including one taken to hospital.
Police said stones were thrown at officers.
The incident came after activists said the Israeli military had issued a warrant to the 173 residents of Khan al-Ahmar on Tuesday, authorising soldiers to seize access roads to the village.
Heavy equipment was seen around the village on Wednesday, prompting speculation a road was being prepared to facilitate its evacuation and demolition.
"Today they are proceeding with infrastructure work to facilitate the demolition and forcible transfer of residents," Amit Gilutz, spokesman for B'Tselem, told AFP.
Israeli authorities say the village and its school were built illegally, and in May the supreme court rejected a final appeal against its demolition.
But activists say the villagers had little alternative but to build without Israeli construction permits, as the documents are almost never issued to Palestinians for building in parts of the West Bank where Israel has full control over civilian affairs.
Israel authorities say they have offered villagers an alternative site.
The village is made up mainly of makeshift structures of tin and wood, as is traditionally the case with Bedouin villages.
It is unclear when the demolition will take place.
Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat condemned the demolition plans and appealed to the international community.
"Are we coming to see one day that Israel can be held accountable?" he asked journalists in Ramallah.
"If not, it means you're pushing this region towards a deeper hole of violence and counter-violence and extremes."
Britain's minister of state for the Middle East, Alistair Burt, visited the village in May and called on the Israeli government to show restraint.
He warned that any forced relocation "could constitute forcible transfer of people as far as the United Nations is concerned."
Forcible transfer is considered a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Khan al-Ahmar is located east of Jerusalem near several major Israeli settlement blocs and close to a highway leading to the Dead Sea.
Activists are concerned continued Israeli settlement construction in the area could effectively divide the West Bank in two.
In another Bedouin village in the same region, Abu Nuwar, Israel carried out a series of demolitions Wednesday on what it described as illegally built structures.
B'Tselem said nine residential structures and three agricultural ones were demolished, leaving 62 people homeless.
The Israeli defence ministry's COGAT unit for civilian affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories said the demolitions had taken place after the "owners of the buildings failed to utilise the planning procedures to their fullest extent".
"This despite the fact that they were given the opportunity to enquire in the matter and were told that if they did not, the illegal construction would be demolished," it said in a statement.
Clashes as Israel gets set to raze West Bank Bedouin village
Clashes as Israel gets set to raze West Bank Bedouin village
- Heavy equipment, including at least one bulldozer, were seen around the village
- Israeli authorities say the village and its school were built illegally and in May
Syria moves military reinforcements east of Aleppo after telling Kurds to withdraw
- The United States, which for years has supported Kurdish fighters but also backs Syria’s new authorities, urged all parties to “avoid actions that could further escalate tensions” in a statement by the US military’s Central Command chief
ALEPPO: Syria’s army was moving reinforcements east of Aleppo city on Wednesday, a day after it told Kurdish forces to withdraw from the area following deadly clashes last week.
The deployment comes as Syria’s Islamist-led government seeks to extend its authority across the country, but progress has stalled on integrating the Kurds’ de facto autonomous administration and forces into the central government under a deal reached in March.
The United States, which for years has supported Kurdish fighters but also backs Syria’s new authorities, urged all parties to “avoid actions that could further escalate tensions” in a statement by the US military’s Central Command chief Admiral Brad Cooper.
On Tuesday, Syrian state television published an army statement with a map declaring a large area east of Aleppo city a “closed military zone” and said “all armed groups in this area must withdraw to east of the Euphrates” River.
The area, controlled by Kurdish forces, extends from near Deir Hafer, around 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Aleppo, to the Euphrates about 30 kilometers further east, as well as toward the south.
State news agency SANA published images on Wednesday showing military reinforcements en route from the coastal province of Latakia, while a military source on the ground, requesting anonymity, said reinforcements were arriving from both Latakia and the Damascus region.
Both sides reported limited skirmishes overnight.
An AFP correspondent on the outskirts of Deir Hafer reported hearing intermittent artillery shelling on Wednesday, which the military source said was due to government targeting of positions belonging to the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
‘Declaration of war’
The SDF controls swathes of the country’s oil-rich north and northeast, much of which it captured during Syria’s civil war and the fight against the Daesh group.
On Monday, Syria accused the SDF of sending reinforcements to Deir Hafer and said it would send its own personnel there in response.
Kurdish forces on Tuesday denied any build-up of their personnel and accused the government of attacking the town, while state television said SDF sniper fire there killed one person.
Cooper urged “a durable diplomatic resolution through dialogue.”
Elham Ahmad, a senior official in the Kurdish administration, said that government forces were “preparing themselves for another attack.”
“The real intention is a full-scale attack” against Kurdish-held areas, she told an online press conference, accusing the government of having made a “declaration of war” and breaking the March agreement on integrating Kurdish forces.
Syria’s government took full control of Aleppo city over the weekend after capturing its Kurdish-majority Sheikh Maqsud and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods and evacuating fighters there to Kurdish-controlled areas in the northeast.
Both sides traded blame over who started the violence last week that killed dozens of people and displaced tens of thousands.
PKK, Turkiye
On Tuesday in Qamishli, the main Kurdish city in the country’s northeast, thousands of people demonstrated against the Aleppo violence, with some burning pictures of Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, an AFP correspondent said, while shops were shut in a general strike.
Some protesters carried Kurdish flags and banners in support of the SDF.
“Leave, Jolani!” they shouted, referring to President Sharaa by his former nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani.
“This government has not honored its commitments toward any Syrians,” said cafe owner Joudi Ali.
Other protesters burned portraits of Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, whose country has lauded the Syrian government’s Aleppo operation “against terrorist organizations.”
Turkiye has long been hostile to the SDF, seeing it as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and a major threat along its southern border.
Last year, the PKK announced an end to its long-running armed struggle against the Turkish state and began destroying its weapons, but Ankara has insisted that the move include armed Kurdish groups in Syria.
On Tuesday, the PKK called the “attack on the Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo” an attempt to sabotage peace efforts between it and Ankara.
A day earlier, Ankara’s ruling party levelled the same accusation against Kurdish fighters.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 45 civilians and 60 soldiers and fighters from both sides killed in the Aleppo violence.
Aleppo civil defense official Faysal Mohammad said Tuesday that 50 bodies had been recovered from the Kurdish-majority neighborhoods after the fighting.
