JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called Wednesday for new efforts to promote coronavirus vaccination within Arab communities, which are now the leading hotspots of COVID-19 transmission.
Before leaving New York where he addressed the UN General Assembly, partly on Israel’s pandemic response, Bennett said “the 40 ‘reddest’ communities in Israel are from the Arab sector,” referring to transmission rates.
Bennett has faced criticism from some health experts over his refusal to reimpose lockdown restrictions despite persistently highly daily case counts.
But Bennett said his government’s policy was to keep Israel “as open as possible alongside focused work on the non-vaccinated and the centers of morbidity.”
“What will help is... going to the Arab sector, and persuading them,” he told reporters.
Israel’s Arab citizens, Palestinians who remained on their land after Israel’s founding in 1948, make up roughly 20 percent of the country’s 9.3 million population.
Zahi Said, a spokesman for the health ministry, said that 40 percent of all new infections in Israel — and a similar rate of hospitalizations and deaths — were within the Arab community.
Said attributed the high rates to a “lack of vaccination and non-compliance with health ministry instructions, such as distancing and wearing masks.”
He said the ministry was promoting vaccine awareness in Arab cities and towns, but that vaccine resistance has persisted.
Israel was in December among the first countries to launch a national vaccination campaign that brought infections down to a trickle and allowed the lifting in June of nearly all pandemic restrictions.
The emergence of the highly transmissible Delta variant caused infections to surge, but Bennett’s government has opted to rollout a third, or booster, jab of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine instead of a new lockdown.
Israeli data shows that those who have received a third shot are less likely to become seriously ill with COVID-19 than those who have received the required two shots.
Israel PM Naftali Bennett calls for COVID-19 vaccination push in Arab communities
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Israel PM Naftali Bennett calls for COVID-19 vaccination push in Arab communities
- Naftali Bennett says ‘the 40 ‘reddest’ communities in Israel are from the Arab sector’
Israeli army strikes 40 Hezbollah targets in south Lebanon
- Hezbollah has exchanged near-daily fire with the Israeli army
- Israel says 11 soldiers and eight civilians have been killed on its side of the border
Beirut: The Israeli army said Wednesday it struck 40 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon as near-daily exchanges of fire rage on the border between the two countries.
“A short while ago, IDF (army) fighter jets and artillery struck approximately 40 Hezbollah terror targets” around Aita Al-Shaab in southern Lebanon, including storage facilities and weaponry, the army said in a statement.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement said it fired a fresh barrage of rockets across the border earlier in the day after a strike blamed on Israel killed two civilians.
The group had already fired rockets at northern Israel late on Tuesday “in response” to the civilian deaths.
Hezbollah has exchanged near-daily fire with the Israeli army since its ally Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, triggering war in Gaza.
It has stepped up its rocket fire on Israeli military bases in recent days.
Hezbollah fighters fired “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at a border village in northern Israel “as part of the response to the Israeli enemy’s attacks on... civilian homes,” the group said in a statement.
On Tuesday, rescue teams said an Israeli strike on a house in the southern village of Hanin killed a woman in her fifties and a girl from the same family.
Since October 7, at least 380 people have been killed in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also 72 civilians, according to an AFP tally.
Israel says 11 soldiers and eight civilians have been killed on its side of the border.
Tunisia law professors call for release of detained opposition figures
Eight of the critics have been detained since, and have yet to see trial
TUNIS: More than 30 Tunisian law professors on Wednesday called for the release of several political opposition figures arrested last year, pointing out that the 14-month legal limit for pre-trial detention had passed.
Since a flurry of arrests in February 2023, around 40 critics of President Kais Saied have been facing charges of “conspiracy against the state.”
Eight of the critics have been detained since, and have yet to see trial.
They were expected to be released earlier this month after their detention was extended twice — four months each time — following an initial six-month stint, their lawyers said.
Yet all eight remain in detention after a court hearing on their case was put off until May 2.
This means they have been detained for more than 14 months without trial, which is the limit under Tunisian law.
“Keeping them in prison beyond the period of preventive detention is a violation (of Tunisian law),” read a statement signed by 33 law professors, including three deans.
The professors said the eight must be released, accusing the Tunisian authorities of putting them in what they called “forced detention.”
The country’s anti-terrorism court is investigating the political opponents for trying to “change the nature of the state” under Tunisia’s penal code.
In a letter addressed to President Saied last month, rights group Amnesty International called for the “immediate and unconditional” release of the detainees.
“I call on you to cease your targeted arrests of critics for the peaceful exercise of their rights to freedom of expression,” the letter read.
Saied, a former law professor, has ruled by decree since orchestrating a sweeping power grab in July 2021 in Tunisia, which saw the onset of what came to be known as the Arab Spring a decade earlier.
The eight detainees include former Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party figure Abdelhamid Jelassi, co-founder of the left-wing National Salvation Front coalition Jawhar Ben Mbarek and political activist Khayam Turki.
After the wave of arrests last year, the United Nations voiced alarm over “the deepening crackdown against perceived political opponents and civil society in Tunisia, including attacks on the independence of the judiciary.”
Critics have denounced Saied’s crackdown on opponents, accusing him of exploiting Tunisia’s judiciary as the country prepares for presidential elections set to take place later this year.
Turkish minister warns pro-Kurdish party it could face moves to ban it
- “In the past, closure cases were opened against parties for supporting terrorism,” Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc told reporters in Ankara
- “Therefore, we say that if the DEM Party follows the same path, then it will face the same treatment”
ISTANBUL: Turkiye’s justice minister warned the country’s main pro-Kurdish DEM party on Wednesday that it would face the risk of legal action, and even a closure case like its predecessor, if it did not distance itself from Kurdish militants.
DEM, parliament’s third largest party, was established last year as a successor to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which is facing the prospect of closure over alleged militant links in a court case following a years-long crackdown.
“In the past, closure cases were opened against parties for supporting terrorism,” Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc told reporters in Ankara, noting that some parties had been banned and that other cases were ongoing.
“Therefore, we say that if the DEM Party follows the same path, then it will face the same treatment,” he said. “We say keep your distance from terrorism if you do not want to face such a legal process.”
Another court had been expected to announce a verdict this month in a case trying jailed former HDP leaders and officials over 2014 protests triggered by a Daesh attack on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani. That verdict was postponed.
“They should not wag their fingers at us. I repeat, the policy of closure, blackmail and threats is over,” DEM Party co-chair Tuncer Bakirhan said on Wednesday in the wake of a call from a government ally to ban the DEM Party.
Critics say Turkish courts are under the influence of the government and President Tayyip Erdogan, which he and his AK Party (AKP) deny.
Both prosecutors and the government accuse the HDP of ties to the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is deemed a terrorist group by Turkiye, the United States and European Union. The HDP denies having any connections with terrorism.
The PKK launched an insurgency against the Turkish state in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. A peace process between Ankara and the PKK fell apart in 2015 and in a subsequent crackdown on the HDP thousands of its officials and members have been arrested and jailed.
UAE, Bahrain call for joint work to contain tensions threatening regional stability
- During a meeting in Abu Dhabi, the ministers discussed the fraternal relations between UAE and Bahrain
DUBAI: UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan received his Bahraini counterpart Dr. Abdul Latif bin Rashid Al Zayani in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.
Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed welcomed the Bahraini Foreign Minister, and during the meeting held at the ministry’s headquarters in Abu Dhabi, they discussed the fraternal relations between the two countries, and ways to enhance Emirati-Bahraini cooperation at various levels, WAM reported.
Sheikh Abdullah stressed during the meeting that the UAE and Bahrain are linked by historical relations that are becoming more established, developed and growing, and that they also constitute an important tributary to joint Gulf and Arab work.
He also stressed that the current challenges facing the region require intensifying cooperation, coordination and joint work to contain all tensions that threaten its stability, security and safety of its people.
A blast near a ship off Yemen may mark a new attack by Houthis after a recent lull
- Houthis have launched more than 50 attacks on shipping, seized one vessel and sank another since November
- The explosion happened some 130 kilometers southeast of Djibouti in the Gulf of Aden
JERUSALEM: A ship near the strategic Bab El-Mandeb Strait saw an explosion in the distance Wednesday, marking what may be a new attack by Yemen’s Houthis through the crucial waterway for international trade.
The explosion, reported by the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, comes after a relative lull from the Houthis after they launched dozens of attacks on shipping in the region over Israel’s ongoing war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The Houthis did not immediately claim responsibility for the blast, but suspicion fell on the group as they’ve repeatedly targeted ships in the same area. It typically takes the Houthis several hours before acknowledging their assaults.
The explosion happened some 130 kilometers southeast of Djibouti in the Gulf of Aden.
“The master of a merchant vessel reports an explosion in the water a distance form the vessel,” the UKMTO said. “Veseel and crew reported safe. Authorities are investigating.”
The private maritime security firm Ambrey separately reported the apparent attack.
The Houthis have launched more than 50 attacks on shipping, seized one vessel and sank another since November, according to the US Maritime Administration.
Houthi attacks have dropped in recent weeks as the militia has been targeted by a US-led airstrike campaign in Yemen and shipping through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden has declined because of the threat. American officials have speculated that they may be running out of weapons as a result of the US-led campaign against them and firing off drones and missiles steadily in the last months.
The Houthis have said they would continue their attacks until Israel ends its war in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians there. The war began after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 others hostage.
The ships targeted by the Houthis largely have had little or no direct connection to Israel, the US or other nations involved in the war. The Houthis have also fired missiles toward Israel, though they have largely fallen short or been intercepted.
