JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he has decided to postpone the planned demolition of a West Bank hamlet to allow time for a negotiated solution with its residents, in a move that appeared aimed at staving off the fierce international condemnation such a demolition would likely entail.
Israel has come under heavy criticism, with major European countries urging it to avoid the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar. The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor recently said such a move could constitute a war crime.
Israeli officials said alternative solutions have arrived in recent days from various sources and Netanyahu wanted to give them a chance. That sparked criticism from Netanyahu's hard-line coalition partners who are demanding decisive action. In response, Netanyahu clarified that the hamlet would be razed, and his delay was not open-ended.
"Khan al-Ahmar will be evacuated, it's a court ruling, that's our policy and it will be done," he said. "I have no intention of postponing this until further notice, contrary to reports, but rather for a short, defined period of time."
Netanyahu's Cabinet decided on Sunday to postpone the demolition by "a few weeks" to allow a negotiated settlement.
Israel says the Palestinian Bedouin encampment of corrugated shacks outside an Israeli settlement was illegally built in an unsafe location near a major highway. It has offered to resettle residents a few miles (kilometers) away in what it says are improved conditions — with connections to water, electricity and sewage treatment they currently lack. But critics say it's impossible for Palestinians to get building permits and that the demolition plan is meant to make room for the expansion of an Israeli settlement.
Israel's Supreme Court recently rejected a final appeal, paving the way for Khan al-Ahmar's demolition.
The encampment of 180 residents has become a rallying cry for Palestinians, who have staged large-scale protests at the site for the past few months. Much of the high-level European engagement derives from concerns that such demolitions could threaten the prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state, at a time of already fading hopes for a two-state solution.
For the Palestinians, it is seen as part of a creeping annexation of territory they seek for a future state.
The village is in the 60 percent of the West Bank known as Area C, which remains under exclusive Israeli control and is home to dozens of Israeli settlements. Israel places restrictions on Palestinian development there and home demolitions are not unusual. As part of interim peace deals in the 1990s, the West Bank was carved up into autonomous and semi-autonomous Palestinian areas, known as Areas A and B, and Area C, which is home to some 400,000 Israeli settlers.
The Palestinians claim all the West Bank and say that Area C, home also to an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Palestinians, is crucial to their economic development.
Waleed Assaf, who heads the Palestinian department of settlement affairs, welcomed the Israeli announcement but said opposition would continue "until the Israelis completely revoke the demolition order."
"I think the international pressure, particularly from the EU, and the clear warning from the ICC that the removal of this West Bank hamlet amounts to a war crime prompted the new Israeli decision," he said.
Israel says the case of Khan al-Ahmar is a simple matter of law and order. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman made it clear he favors demolishing the hamlet without delay.
Naftali Bennett, head of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, adopted an even stronger tone.
"This is illegal building whose destruction was approved by the Supreme Court," he tweeted. "In a nation of laws, you enforce the law even if the international community objects and threatens.
Israel indefinitely postpones demolition of Bedouin West Bank village
Israel indefinitely postpones demolition of Bedouin West Bank village
- Israel had been making the preparations to expel the residents and demolish the village
- The fate of Khan Al-Ahmar has drawn international concern, with European countries calling on Israel not to move ahead with plans to demolish it
Egypt reopens historic mosque after long restoration
- The mosque of Al-Zhahir Baybars, built under Mamluk rule in 1268, spans an area of three acres just north of central Cairo
CAIRO: A 13th century mosque that fell into disrepair after being used over the years as a soap factory, a slaughterhouse and a fort reopened in Cairo on Monday after undergoing a long restoration.
The mosque of Al-Zhahir Baybars, built under Mamluk rule in 1268, spans an area of three acres just north of central Cairo, making it Egypt’s third-largest mosque.
The mosque underwent mechanical and chemical restoration to bring it back to its original condition, said Tarek Mohamed El-Behairy, who supervised the restoration.
“Some parts were destroyed, some parts have been dismantled because they were structurally unsuitable to remain in the mosque,” he said.
“But we were very keen, even in the reconstruction process, to work according to the correct archaeological style.”
The restoration, which cost $7.68 million, was co-funded with Kazakhstan and began in 2007.
For 225 years, the mosque was either closed, abandoned or had operated for non-religious purposes that contributed to its disrepair.
During Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt it was used as a military fort, then under Ottoman rule in the 19th century as a soap factory. Later, when the British invaded Egypt in 1882, it was used as a slaughterhouse.
Al-Zahir Baybars was a prominent figure in Egypt’s history credited with cementing Mamluk rule in Egypt which spanned three centuries up to 1517.
Killing of West Bank toddler condemned as ‘state terrorism’
- Mohammed Al-Tamimi was shot in the head near his village of Nebi Saleh
- The Israeli military has opened an investigation into the incident
RAMALLAH: Two-year-old Palestinian boy Mohammed Al-Tamimi, who was shot by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank last Thursday, died of his wounds, health officials said on Monday.
The toddler was shot in the head in the village of Nabi Saleh, northwest of Ramallah.
Basem Naim, the head of the political department of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, described the killing of Al-Tamimi as state terrorism.
Mustafa Al-Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative Party, said that the killing of Al-Tamimi is an example of hundreds of crimes committed by the Israel Defense Forces against hundreds of Palestinian children.
He said Israeli violence must be deterred by sanctions and boycotts and and called for the soldiers and officers who committed the crimes to stand trial.
The shooting was the latest bloodshed in a surge of violence in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Also on Monday, the Palestinians commemorated the 56th anniversary of the June 1967 Naksa when Israel seized the remaining Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula in a six-day war.
Nineteen years earlier, in 1948, the state of Israel came into being in a violent process.
On the 56th anniversary of the Naksa, Palestinian experts reiterated their beliefs that the two-state solution is not possible anymore and that only a one-state solution is the future.
Nasser Al-Kidwa, the former representative of Palestine to the UN, told Arab News that the Palestinians had failed to achieve their national goals.
“We are far from achieving our national goals and have failed at all levels,” he said.
Ahmed Majdalani, minister of social development in the Palestinian Authority, disagreed with Al-Kidwa.
Majdalani told Arab News that the “resistance, sacrifices, and steadfastness of the Palestinian people had thwarted the Israeli occupation project to impose the Israeli vision on the Palestinian people, achieve the dream of Greater Israel, and achieve demographic change in the West Bank,” pointing out that Israel was forced to withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005.
He claimed that the Palestinian struggle had made a series of achievements since the setback in 1967.
He pointed to recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians, establishment of the Palestinian Authority on Palestinian lands, and 147 countries in the world recognizing Palestine as an observer state at the UN.
Ghassan al-Khatib, a Palestinian political analyst, told Arab News that Israel had not managed to swallow the West Bank 56 years after the setback, “and we have not succeeded in ending the occupation.”
Al-Khatib said that the Israeli goals were not achieved because the Palestinians had clung to their land and many did not migrate.
But Al-Khatib believes that the Palestinians are far from achieving their goal of establishing an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“Our goal is to prevent the success of the Zionist project in the rest of the Palestinian territories, to fight against the apartheid project, and to call for one state instead of the two-state solution, which is no longer possible to achieve,” he said.
“Despite the absence of allies and supporters for the Palestinians, they succeeded in preventing the Israelis from achieving their strategic goals in the West Bank.”
Ahmed Ghuneim, a prominent leader in the Fatah movement, told Arab News that Israel has not achieved any decisive military victory since 1967.
“As Palestinians, 56 years after the setback, we did not win, but we were not defeated because there are still about 7 million Palestinians living on the Palestinian lands, which thwarted the Zionist project’s claim that Palestine is a land without a people for a people without a land,” Ghuneim told Arab News.
He pointed out that the Palestinians did not leave despite 56 years of racist laws and ethnic cleansing by Israel, but that did not mean that the Palestinians had not suffered the consequences of the setback or continue to pay the price for it.
“Israel wants to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians by enacting racist laws to achieve what it did not seek to resolve militarily,” he told Arab News.
France seeks removal of Lebanese ambassador’s immunity after rape accusation
- The first former employee, aged 31, filed her complaint in June 2022 for a rape she says was committed in May 2020 in the ambassador’s private apartment
- The second woman made a complaint last February after what she said was a series of physical attacks after she turned down sexual relations
PARIS: French authorities will on Monday ask Lebanon to lift the immunity of Beirut’s ambassador to Paris after an investigation was opened into alleged rape and intentional violence by the envoy, a source said.
“Steps in this direction will be taken during the day,” a French diplomatic source, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
The ambassador, Rami Adwan, is being investigated in France following complaints by two former embassy employees. He has diplomatic immunity but could face trial if Lebanon agrees to France’s request.
Lebanon’s foreign ministry said Saturday that it would send an investigation team to the embassy in Paris to question the ambassador and hear statements from embassy staff.
The first former employee, aged 31, filed her complaint in June 2022 for a rape she says was committed in May 2020 in the ambassador’s private apartment, according to sources close to the investigation, confirming a report by the Mediapart news site.
According to the complaint, she had a relationship with the ambassador, who carried out “psychological and physical violence with daily humiliations.”
The second woman, aged 28, made a complaint last February after what she said was a series of physical attacks after she turned down sexual relations.
She says Adwan tried to hit her with his car after an argument on the sidelines of last year’s Normandy World Peace Forum.
“In view of the seriousness of the facts mentioned, we consider it necessary for the Lebanese authorities to lift the immunity of the Lebanese ambassador in Paris in order to facilitate the work of the French judicial authorities,” the French foreign ministry told AFP late Friday.
Adwan’s lawyer Karim Beylouni has said his client “contests all accusations of aggression in any shape or form: verbal, moral, sexual.”
He said Adwan had had “romantic relationships” with the two women between 2018 and 2022 that were “punctuated by arguments and breakups.”
Israel jails Palestinian for life over West Bank killing
- The Israeli military court sentenced Moath Hamed, 39, to two life sentences for the attack
Jerusalem: An Israeli court on Sunday sentenced a Palestinian to life in prison for the 2015 killing of an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank, the military said Monday.
The Israeli military court sentenced Moath Hamed, 39, to two life sentences for the attack, which he admitted to carrying out on behalf of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, the army said.
On June 29, 2015 Hamed fired at a vehicle, killing Malachi Rosenfeld, 25, who was returning from a basketball game near Shilo, an illegal settlement in the West Bank.
Three other Israelis were also injured in the attack.
In July 2015, Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency said it had arrested seven Palestinians in connection with the attack.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said Hamed had been arrested by Israeli forces in April 2022 after being “pursued by the occupation (Israel) for seven years.”
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967.
Cases involving events in the West Bank are tried by Israeli military tribunals.
Nearly three million Palestinians live in the West Bank, as do around 490,000 Israelis in settlements that are considered illegal under international law.
Netanyahu convenes Iran war drill, scorns UN nuclear watchdog
- The Israeli prime minister’s office issued footage of the drill
- It appeared to depart from Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraqi reactor
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ramped up threats to attack Iranian nuclear facilities on Sunday, convening a rare cabinet war drill after he accused UN inspectors of failing to confront Tehran.
With Iran having enriched enough uranium to 60 percent fissile purity for two nuclear bombs, if refined further — something it denies wanting or planning — Israel has redoubled threats to launch preemptive military strikes if international diplomacy fails. Israel has long maintained that for diplomacy to succeed, Iran must be faced with a credible military threat.
“We are committed to acting against Iran’s nuclear (drive), against missile attacks on Israel and the possibility of these fronts joining up,” Netanyahu said in a video statement from Israel’s underground command bunker at its military headquarters in Tel Aviv.
The possibility of multiple fronts, Netanyahu said while surrounded by security cabinet ministers and defense chiefs, requires Israel’s leadership “consider, if possible consider ahead of time,” its major decisions.
Netanyahu’s office issued footage of the drill. The publicity around the preparations appeared to depart from Israel’s 1981 strike on an Iraqi nuclear reactor and a similar sortie in Syria in 2007, carried out without forewarning.
UN WATCHDOG SAID IRAN PROVIDED SATISFACTORY ANSWER
Earlier, Netanyahu levelled sharp criticism of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), following a report last week by the UN watchdog that Iran had provided a satisfactory answer on one case of suspect uranium particles and re-installed some monitoring equipment originally put in place under a now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal.
“Iran is continuing to lie to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The agency’s capitulation to Iranian pressure is a black stain on its record,” Netanyahu told his cabinet in televised remarks. The watchdog risked politicization that would lose it its significance on Iran, he said.
The IAEA declined to comment.
On Wednesday, the agency reported that after years of investigation and lack of progress, Iran had given a satisfactory answer to explain one of three sites at which uranium particles had been detected.
Those particles could be explained by the presence of a onetime Soviet-operated mine and lab there and the IAEA had no further questions, a senior diplomat in Vienna said.
In an apparent reference to this, Netanyahu said Iran’s explanations were “technically impossible.”
However, the Vienna diplomat also said the IAEA’s assessment remained that Iran carried out explosives testing there decades ago that was relevant to nuclear weapons.
After then US President Donald Trump quit the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Tehran ramped up uranium enrichment. Israeli and Western officials say it could switch from enrichment at 60 percent fissile purity to 90 percent — weapons-grade — within a few weeks.
In a 2012 UN speech, Netanyahu deemed 90 percent enrichment by Iran a “red line” that could trigger preemptive strikes.
Military experts are divided, however, on whether Israel — whose advanced military is believed to be nuclear-armed — has the conventional clout to deliver lasting damage to Iranian targets that are distant, dispersed and well-defended.
Focussing domestic attention on Iran might provide Netanyahu with respite from a months-long crisis over his proposals to overhaul Israel’s judiciary. But opinion polls showed that both those concerns are trumped, for Israelis, by high living costs.
