As war rages in Gaza, Israel’s crackdown on West Bank insurgency is killing Palestinian youths

1 / 2
The body of Odei, a 22-year-old Palestinian militant, is carried into a morgue at the hospital in Jenin, West Bank, on June 6, 2024. (AP)
Short Url
Updated 13 September 2024
Follow

As war rages in Gaza, Israel’s crackdown on West Bank insurgency is killing Palestinian youths

  • More than 150 teens and children 17 or younger have been killed in the embattled territory since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel
  • Most died in nearly daily raids by the Israeli army that Amnesty International says have used disproportionate and unlawful force

JENIN, West Bank: As the world’s attention focuses on the deadly war in Gaza, less than 80 miles away scores of Palestinian teens have been killed, shot and arrested in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has waged a monthslong crackdown.
More than 150 teens and children 17 or younger have been killed in the embattled territory since Hamas’ brutal attack on communities in southern Israel set off the war last October. Most died in nearly daily raids by the Israeli army that Amnesty International says have used disproportionate and unlawful force.
Amjad Hamadneh lost son Mahmoud when the 15-year-old’s school dismissed students at the start of a May raid.




Amjad Hamadneh tapes a photograph to the grave of his son, Mahmoud, who was killed by an Israeli sniper on his way home from school in Jenin, West Bank, on June 5, 2024. (AP)

“He didn’t do anything. He didn’t make a single mistake,” says Amjad Hamadneh, whose son, a buzz-cut devotee of computer games, was one of two teens killed that morning by a sniper.
“If he’d been a freedom fighter or was carrying a weapon, I would not be so emotional,” says his father, an unemployed construction worker. “But he was taken just as easily as water going down your throat. He only had his books and a pencil case.”
It is clear from statements by the Israeli military, insurgents and families in the West Bank that a number of the Palestinian teens killed in recent months were members of militant groups.
Many others were killed during protests or when they or someone nearby threw rocks or homemade explosives at military vehicles. Still others appear to have been random targets. Taken together, the killings raise troubling questions about the devaluation of young lives in pursuit of security and autonomy.

The Israeli army said in a statement to The Associated Press that it has stepped up raids since Oct. 7 to apprehend militants suspected of carrying out attacks in the West Bank and that “the absolute majority of those killed during this period were armed or involved in terrorist activities at the time of the incident.”
On the June afternoon that 17-year-old Issa Jallad was killed, video from a neighbor’s security camera shows, he was on a friend’s motorbike with an Israeli armored vehicle in close pursuit. Days later, a poster outside his family’s home in Jenin showed him cradling an assault rifle and declared him a holy warrior.
But the grainy tape, reviewed by AP days after the raid, and others from nearby cameras do not explain where he fit in the conflict. The Israeli army said that its soldiers had spotted two militants handling a powerful explosive device. When the pair tried to flee, troops opened fire and “neutralized them.”
But an Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, says its review of multiple security camera videos showed Jallad and his friend posed no threat.
“We all expected to be in this situation,” said the teen’s brother, Mousa Jallad. “It could happen to any of us.”
Jenin’s refugee camp has long been notorious as a hotbed of Palestinian militancy, raided repeatedly by Israeli forces who have occupied the West Bank since seizing control in their 1967 war with neighboring Arab states.
The embattled territory was already seeing deadly clashes before the war began. But Israeli forces, which police about 3 million Palestinians while assigned to protect 500,000 Jewish settlers, has significantly stepped up raids in the months since.
Youths represent almost a quarter of the nearly 700 Palestinians slain in the West Bank since the war began, the most since the violent uprising known as the Second Intifada in the early 2000s. More than 20 Israeli civilians and soldiers have been killed in the territory since October.
A military spokesman said the Israeli army makes great efforts to avoid harming civilians during raids and “does not target civilians, period.” He said human rights groups focus on a few outlier cases.
Military operations in the West Bank are fraught because forces are pursuing militants, many in their teens, who often hide among the civilian population, said the spokesman, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani.
“In many cases many of them are 15, 16 years old who are not wearing uniforms and might surprise you with a gun, with a knife,” he said.
Critics say the crackdown is shaped by retribution, not only military strategy.
When sirens erupted at the start of the May raid, Amjad Hamadneh says, he called Mahmoud on his cellphone and was relieved to hear that the brothers had reached their school. But then Mahmoud’s twin brother, Ahmed, called back to say that the principal had dismissed classes. As students poured into the street, the brothers were separated in the chaos.




Young Palestinian refugees walk past a damaged vehicle in the West Bank refugee camp of Tulkarem on Sept. 12, 2024. (AP)

Four bullets hit Mahmoud as he fled, and another pierced his skull. He was the third student from his school killed in a raid since the war began.
A former classmate, Osama Hajjir, who had dropped out of school to work, was also killed, along with a teacher from a nearby school and a doctor from the hospital down the street.
“Now when I hear the sound of sirens I go to my room and stay there,” says Karam Miazneh, another classmate, who was shot during the raid but survived. “I’m still in fear that they will come to shoot me and kill me.”
Immediately after the May raid, a spokesman for the army said it had carried out the operation with Israeli border police and the country’s internal security agency, destroying an explosive device laboratory and other structures used by militants. But police recently declined to comment, and three weeks after the AP asked the military to answer questions about the May raid, an army spokesman said he was unable to comment until he could confer with police.
When Amjad Hamadneh heard his son had been wounded, he sped through Jenin’s twisting streets, drawing gunfire as he neared the hospital. But Mahmoud was already gone.
Nearby, Osama’s father, Muhamad, broke down as he leaned over his son’s body. Months earlier he’d snapped a photo of the smiling teen beside graffiti touting Jenin as “the factory of men,” tirelessly cranking out fighters in the resistance against Israel. Now, he pressed that same, still-smooth face between his hands.
“Oh, my son. Oh, my son,” he sobbed. “My beautiful son.”
Since Mahmoud Hamadneh was killed, his siblings ask frequently to visit his grave. His younger sister now sleeps in his bed so her surviving brother, Ahmed, will not be in the room alone.
“I feel like I cannot breathe. We used to do everything together,” Ahmed says. His father listens closely, despairing later that such grief could drive the teen into militancy. If the risk is so clear to a Palestinian father, he says, why don’t Israeli soldiers see it?
“They think that if they kill us that people will be afraid and not do anything,” he says. “But when the Israelis kill someone, 10 fighters will be created in his place.”
 


Istanbul mayor’s staff targeted by dozens of arrest warrants

Updated 4 sec ago
Follow

Istanbul mayor’s staff targeted by dozens of arrest warrants

The warrants were based on “four separate corruption investigations centered on Istanbul,” Anadolu said
Police had already detained nearly 70 people in subsequent raids

ISTANBUL: Turkish authorities have issued 47 arrest warrants for municipal officials and staff across Istanbul, whose mayor — the main political rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — has been jailed since March, the state news agency Anadolu reported on Saturday.

The warrants were based on “four separate corruption investigations centered on Istanbul,” Anadolu said, without revealing how many people were actually taken into custody.

The March 19 arrest and jailing of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu sparked the biggest street protests Turkiye had seen in decades.

Police had already detained nearly 70 people in subsequent raids linked to alleged corruption at Istanbul City Hall, including Imamoglu’s private secretary and his private protection officer.

The latest warrants targeted a former opposition lawmaker and five mayors of Istanbul districts, according to Anadolu.

The private television station Halk, seen as close to the opposition CHP party that Imamoglu belongs to, said that nine district mayors — out of a total of 39 — had now been arrested and were being kept in custody.

The CHP, which has nominated Imamoglu as its candidate in presidential elections due in 2028, did not immediately comment on the latest warrants.

Divided UN extends arms embargo on South Sudan as fears of renewed civil war grow

Updated 34 min 59 sec ago
Follow

Divided UN extends arms embargo on South Sudan as fears of renewed civil war grow

  • The arms embargo, and travel bans and asset freezes on South Sudanese on the UN sanctions blacklist, were extended for a year until May 31, 2026
  • There were high hopes for peace and stability after oil-rich South Sudan gained independence

UNITED NATIONS: A divided UN Security Council voted Friday to extend an arms embargo on South Sudan, where escalating political tensions have led the UN to warn that the country could again plunge into civil war.

A US-sponsored resolution to extend the embargo and other sanctions was approved by the narrowest margin — the minimum nine “yes” votes required. Six countries abstained – Russia, China, Algeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Pakistan.

The arms embargo, and travel bans and asset freezes on South Sudanese on the UN sanctions blacklist, were extended for a year until May 31, 2026.

There were high hopes for peace and stability after oil-rich South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011, becoming the world’s newest nation.

But the country slid into civil war in December 2013 when forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, who is from the largest ethnic group in the country, the Dinka, started battling those loyal to Riek Machar, who is from the second-largest ethnic group, the Nuer.

A 2018 peace deal that brought Machar into the government as first vice president has been fragile, and implementation has been slow. A presidential election has been postponed until 2026.

Last month, the UN envoy to South Sudan, Nicholas Haysom, warned that the escalating rivalry between Kiir and Machar had degenerated into direct military confrontation between their parties and led to Machar’s arrest.

A campaign of misinformation, disinformation and hate speech is “fueling political and ethnic tensions — particularly on social media,” he warned. And “these conditions are darkly reminiscent of the 2013 and 2016 conflicts, which took over 400,000 lives.”

US Minister Counselor John Kelley thanked the council after the vote, saying the arms embargo “remains necessary to stem the unfettered flow of weapons into a region that remains awash with guns.”

“Escalating violence in recent months has brought South Sudan to the brink of civil war,” he said, urging the country’s leaders to restore peace.

Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Anna Evstigneeva countered by saying the easing of Security Council sanctions on South Sudan is long overdue. She said the arms embargo and other sanctions are restricting implementation of the 2018 peace agreement.

She accused the resolution’s supporters of “putting a brake on a successful political process unfolding in Sudan, as well as complicating the deployment and proper equipping of the national armed forces.”

South Sudan’s UN ambassador, Cecilia Adeng, expressed “deep disappointment” at the extension of the arms embargo and other sanctions.

“The lifting of the sanctions and the arms embargo is not only a matter of national security or sovereignty, but also a matter of economic opportunity and dignity,” she said. “These measures create barriers to growth, delay development, discourage foreign investment, and leave the state vulnerable to non-state actors and outlaws.”


Sudden hailstorm lashes Egypt’s Alexandria

Updated 31 May 2025
Follow

Sudden hailstorm lashes Egypt’s Alexandria

  • Storms are common along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast in winter, however this spring event was described as “unprecedented"

ALEXANDRIA: An unseasonal rainstorm battered the Egyptian city of Alexandria on Saturday, flooding roads and damaging seafront businesses in the latest bout of erratic weather to hit the region.
Hailstones pelted the city overnight, forcing people to flee cafes as gusts of wind blew the ice pellets through windows, according to footage posted on social media.
Lightning lit up the skies and underpasses were submerged.
Alexandria governor Ahmed Khaled Hassan raised the alert level and emergency crews worked through the morning to tow cars and clear debris.
No casualties were reported, Egypt’s health ministry said.
Storms are common along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast in winter, but media outlets described this spring event as “unprecedented.”
Scientists warn extreme weather is becoming more frequent due to climate change, which drives both droughts and intense, unpredictable rainstorms.
Alexandria is highly vulnerable to climate impacts, suffering from coastal erosion, rising sea levels and flooding from annual storms.
The Mediterranean could rise by up to a meter (three feet) within three decades, according to the UN-mandated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Even under more optimistic forecasts, a 50-centimeter rise by 2050 would flood 30 percent of Alexandria, displace a quarter of its six million residents and cost 195,000 jobs.
Authorities have begun mitigation efforts, including constructing a massive breakwater along the coast.


Arab ministers condemn Israel ‘ban’ on planned Ramallah visit

Updated 31 May 2025
Follow

Arab ministers condemn Israel ‘ban’ on planned Ramallah visit

  • Palestinian Authority official says that the issue of whether the meeting in Ramallah would be able to go ahead is under discussion
  • The move comes ahead of an international conference due to be held in New York on June 17-20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood

DUBAI: Israel’s decision to prevent an Arab delegation from visiting Ramallah and meeting with Palestinian officials “represents a blatant violation of Israel’s obligations as the occupying power,” Jordan’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement.

Members of the ministerial committee, assigned by the extraordinary joint Arab-Islamic summit on Gaza, decided to postpone the visit to Ramallah after Israel refused the delegation’s entry through the airspace of the occupied West Bank, which it controls.

“It reflects the extent of the Israeli government’s arrogance, its disregard for international law, and its continued illegitimate measures and policies that besiege the brotherly Palestinian people and their legitimate leadership, perpetuate the occupation, and undermine the chances of achieving a just and comprehensive peace,” the foreign ministry said.

 

 

The delegation included ministers from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Palestinian Authority officials said. The ministers would require Israeli consent to travel to the West Bank from Jordan.

An Israeli official said the ministers intended to take part in “a provocative meeting” to discuss promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“Such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel,” the official said. “Israel will not cooperate with such moves aimed at harming it and its security.”

A Palestinian Authority official said that the issue of whether the meeting in Ramallah would be able to go ahead was under discussion.

The move comes ahead of an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, due to be held in New York on June 17-20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood.

Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries which favor a two-state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that recognizing a Palestinian state was not only a “moral duty but a political necessity.”

Israel this week announced the creation of 22 new West Bank settlements, which are regularly condemned by the United Nations as illegal under international law, and are seen as one of the main obstacles to a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

On Friday, visiting one of the areas slated for recognition, Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed to build a “Jewish Israeli state” in the West Bank.

Taking aim at foreign countries that would “recognize a Palestinian state on paper”, he added: “The paper will be thrown into the trash bin of history, and the State of Israel will flourish and prosper.”

with agencies


Syrian president to make first official visit to Kuwait 

Updated 31 May 2025
Follow

Syrian president to make first official visit to Kuwait 

  • On his trip to Kuwait, the Syrian president will meet the Kuwaiti leadership to discuss ways to boost bilateral relations
  • Al-Sharaa had previously visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on his Gulf tour

CAIRO: Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa  will make his first official visit to Kuwait on Sunday accompanied by an official delegation.

“Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, accompanied by an official delegation, is due to arrive in Kuwait on Sunday,” read a statement on KUNA.

The Syrian president will meet the Kuwaiti leadership to discuss ways to boost bilateral relations, KUNA added. 

Earlier this month, sources close to Al-Sharaa have reported that the Syrian president was planning a trip to the Gulf state towards the end of May.

Al-Sharaa had previously visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates on his Gulf tour.