JERUSALEM: Vandals slashed the tires on nearly a dozen Palestinian-owned vehicles overnight in a tense Jerusalem neighborhood where Jewish settlers have been waging a decades-long legal battle to evict Palestinians, residents said Friday.
CCTV footage shows three hooded men entering a fenced-off area of Sheikh Jarrah before stabbing the tires of parked cars. It was unclear who was responsible, but recent weeks have seen an escalation in settler violence toward Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli police say they are investigating the incident.
Protests and clashes over the threatened evictions helped spark the 11-day Gaza war in May. Two weeks ago, four Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah rejected a settlement floated by the Israeli Supreme Court that would delay their eviction for the next 15 years.
None of the 11 cars whose tires were deflated were owned by those Palestinian families, according to residents.
Sheikh Jarrah is in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most of the international community, and it considers the entire city its capital. It has portrayed the legal battle in Sheikh Jarrah as a local real-estate dispute.
The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state that includes the West Bank and Gaza, where Israel withdrew forces in 2005. They say the settlers, with backing from the state, are trying to drive them out of the city and change its identity.
In a separate development, Israel returned the bodies of two Palestinians killed while allegedly carrying out attacks. In recent years, Israel has had a policy of holding the remains of Palestinians it says were carrying out attacks.
The bodies of Isra Khazimia and Amjad Abu Sultan were returned on “humanitarian grounds,” according to a defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Israeli police shot and killed Khazimia in September, when she allegedly tried to stab an officer in Jerusalem’s Old City. Abu Sultan, a teenager, was killed in October while attempting to throw firebombs at cars near an Israel settlement, the army said.
Israel says its policy of holding the remains of Palestinian attackers, established in 2015, is needed for deterrence of future attacks and for possible exchanges for the remains of two Israeli soldiers held by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Human rights groups view the practice as a form of collective punishment that inflicts further pain on bereaved families.
The Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center, a Palestinian rights group, says Israel is holding the remains of around 80 Palestinians, many in secret cemeteries where their graves are marked by numbered plaques.
Palestinians’ tires slashed in tense Jerusalem neighborhood
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Palestinians’ tires slashed in tense Jerusalem neighborhood
- CCTV footage shows three hooded men entering a fenced-off area of Sheikh Jarrah before stabbing the tires of parked cars
- Israeli police say they are investigating the incident
Lebanese finance minister denies any plans for a Kushner-run economic zone in the south
- Proposal was made by US Envoy Morgan Ortagus but was ‘killed on the spot’
- Priority is to regain control of state in all aspects, Yassine Jaber tells Arab News
DAVOS: Lebanon’s finance minister dismissed any plans of turning Lebanon’s battered southern region into an economic zone, telling Arab News on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos that the proposal had died “on the spot.”
Yassine Jaber explained that US Envoy to Lebanon Morgan Ortagus had proposed the idea last december for the region, which has faced daily airstrikes by Israel, and it was immediately dismissed.
Jaber’s comments, made to Arab News on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, were in response to reports which appeared in Lebanese media in December which suggested that parts of southern Lebanon would be turned into an economic zone, managed by a plan proposed by Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son in law.
Meanwhile, Jaber also dismissed information which had surfaced in Davos over the past two days of a bilateral meeting between Lebanese ministers, US Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff and Kushner.
Jaber said that the meeting on Tuesday was a gathering of “all Arab ministers of finance and foreign affairs, where they (Witkoff and Kushner) came in for a small while, and explained to the audience the idea about deciding the board of peace for Gaza.”
He stressed that it did not develop beyond that.
When asked about attracting investment and boosting the economy, Jaber said: “The reality now is that we need to reach the situation where there is stability that will allow the Lebanese army, so the (Israeli) aggression has to stop.”
Over the past few years, Lebanon has witnessed one catastrophe after another: one of the world’s worst economic meltdowns, the largest non-nuclear explosion in its capital’s port, a paralyzed parliament and a war with Israel.
A formal mechanism was put in place between Lebanon and Israel to maintain a ceasefire and the plan to disarm Hezbollah in areas below the Litani river.
But, the minister said, Israel’s next step is not always so predictable.
“They’re actually putting pressure on the whole region. So, a lot of effort is being put on that issue,” he added.
“There are still attacks in the south of the country also, so stability is a top necessity that will really succeed in pushing the economy forward and making the reforms beneficial,” he said.
Lawmakers had also enacted reforms to overhaul the banking sector, curb the cash economy and abolish bank secrecy, alongside a bank resolution framework.
Jaber also stressed that the government had recently passed a “gap law” intended to help depositors recover funds and restore the banking system’s functionality.
“One of the priorities we have is really to deal with all the losses of the war, basically reconstruction … and we have started to get loans for reconstructing the destroyed infrastructure in the attacked areas.”
As Hezbollah was battered during the war, Lebanon had a political breakthrough as the army’s general, Joseph Aoun, was inaugurated as president. His chosen prime minister was the former president of the International Court of Justice, Nawaf Salam.
This year marks the first time a solid delegation from the country makes its way to Davos, with Salam being joined by Jaber, Economy and Trade Minister Amr Bisat, and Telecoms Minister Charles Al-Hage.
“Our priority is to really regain the role of the state in all aspects, and specifically in rebuilding the institutions,” Jaber said.
