JERUSALEM: Four Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli police in annexed east Jerusalem, the Palestinian Red Crescent said Monday, after officers cordoned off a popular gathering spot for Ramadan crowds.
Separately in the historically Arab Jaffa district of Tel Aviv, residents assaulted a rabbi seeking to acquire land for housing for Jewish seminary students in a predominantly Arab neighborhood, prompting clashes with police.
Police said they made three arrests after the Jerusalem clashes, during which they used tear gas and water cannon to disperse a large crowd gathered outside one of the gates to the walled Old City, video posted on Twitter showed.
Police said the crowd attacked officers with stones and firecrackers but caused no casualties.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said four people in the crowd were wounded.
During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when the faithful fast from dawn to dusk, the promenade around the walls of the Old City is a popular place for Palestinians to gather after dark.
Two far-right lawmakers — Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Religious Zionism alliance — visited police deployed outside the Old City on Sunday night.
“We need zero tolerance, an iron fist and to bring all the perpetrators to justice,” Smotrich tweeted.
In Jaffa, the unrest began when residents assaulted the head of a Jewish seminary, Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, police said, adding that they had arrested two suspects in their thirties.
After the assault, groups of Jaffa residents faced off with seminary students in the streets. Police in riot gear and on horseback rode through the neighborhood, where residents set off firecrackers and clouds of smoke hung in the air.
Police said officers were attacked with stones and firecrackers and two were injured. Three people were arrested.
The seminary’s director, Moshe Sendovich, told Israeli public radio that he and Mali had been touring a possible site for student housing when the alleged assault took place.
He said he and Mali were hit, slapped and kicked, and the rabbi’s glasses were thrown.
Sendovich said that the seminary, in the predominantly Arab Ajamni neighborhood of Jaffa, was part of an effort to boost the local Jewish community.
“The Jewish communities in Jaffa got weaker, and got thinner and we came to strengthen them,” he said.
Lawmaker Sami Abu Shehadeh, an Arab resident of Jaffa, said the seminary’s promoters were seeking to change the character of the neighborhood.
“These are people who have an ideology that is dangerous to a mixed city,” he said.
Palestinians injured during clashes in Jerusalem
Palestinians injured during clashes in Jerusalem
- Police said they made three arrests after the Jerusalem clashes
- The Palestinian Red Crescent said four people in the crowd were wounded
First responders enter devastated Aleppo neighborhood after days of deadly fighting
- The US-backed SDF, which have played a key role in combating the Daesh group in large swaths of eastern Syria, are the largest force yet to be absorbed into Syria’s national army
ALEPPO, Syria: First responders on Sunday entered a contested neighborhood in Syria’ s northern city of Aleppo after days of deadly clashes between government forces and Kurdish-led forces. Syrian state media said the military was deployed in large numbers.
The clashes broke out Tuesday in the predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud, Achrafieh and Bani Zaid after the government and the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main Kurdish-led force in the country, failed to make progress on how to merge the SDF into the national army. Security forces captured Achrafieh and Bani Zaid.
The fighting between the two sides was the most intense since the fall of then-President Bashar Assad to insurgents in December 2024. At least 23 people were killed in five days of clashes and more than 140,000 were displaced amid shelling and drone strikes.
The US-backed SDF, which have played a key role in combating the Daesh group in large swaths of eastern Syria, are the largest force yet to be absorbed into Syria’s national army. Some of the factions that make up the army, however, were previously Turkish-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.
The Kurdish fighters have now evacuated from the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood to northeastern Syria, which is under the control of the SDF. However, they said in a statement they will continue to fight now that the wounded and civilians have been evacuated, in what they called a “partial ceasefire.”
The neighborhood appeared calm Sunday. The United Nations said it was trying to dispatch more convoys to the neighborhoods with food, fuel, blankets and other urgent supplies.
Government security forces brought journalists to tour the devastated area, showing them the damaged Khalid Al-Fajer Hospital and a military position belonging to the SDF’s security forces that government forces had targeted.
The SDF statement accused the government of targeting the hospital “dozens of times” before patients were evacuated. Damascus accused the Kurdish-led group of using the hospital and other civilian facilities as military positions.
On one street, Syrian Red Crescent first responders spoke to a resident surrounded by charred cars and badly damaged residential buildings.
Some residents told The Associated Press that SDF forces did not allow their cars through checkpoints to leave.
“We lived a night of horror. I still cannot believe that I am right here standing on my own two feet,” said Ahmad Shaikho. “So far the situation has been calm. There hasn’t been any gunfire.”
Syrian Civil Defense first responders have been disarming improvised mines that they say were left by the Kurdish forces as booby traps.
Residents who fled are not being allowed back into the neighborhood until all the mines are cleared. Some were reminded of the displacement during Syria’s long civil war.
“I want to go back to my home, I beg you,” said Hoda Alnasiri.
