JERUSALEM: Israel has approved a new settlement on a UNESCO World Heritage Site near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, its far-right finance minister said on Wednesday.
Bezalel Smotrich, who also heads civil affairs at the defense ministry, said his office had “completed its work and published a plan for the new Nahal Heletz settlement in Gush Etzion,” a bloc of settlements south of Jerusalem.
All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.
“No anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist decision will stop the development of settlements,” Smotrich, who lives in a settlement, posted on X.
“We will continue to fight against the dangerous project of creating a Palestinian state by creating facts on the ground.”
The Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now denounced the plan, calling it a “wholesale attack” on an area “renowned for its ancient terraces and sophisticated irrigation systems, evidence of thousands of years of human activity.”
The approval also comes at a time of heightened tensions in the West Bank and east Jerusalem over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, which has been raging since October 7.
Over the years, dozens of unauthorized settlements have sprung up in the West Bank.
Excluding east Jerusalem, some 490,000 Israeli settlers now live in the territory, alongside some three million Palestinians.
Far-right parties in Israel’s governing coalition have pressed for an acceleration of settlement expansion.
The new settlement was approved a day after National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, another hard-liner, drew global condemnation when he joined thousands of Jews to pray at the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in annexed east Jerusalem, where Jewish prayer is banned.
The Nahal Heletz settlement, which received preliminary approval along with four others in June, lies between Gush Etzion and the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem.
Peace Now said it will flank houses in the Palestinian village of Battir, a world heritage site known for its stepped agricultural terraces, vineyards and olive groves.
“These actions are not only fragmenting Palestinian space and depriving large communities of their natural and cultural heritage, they also pose an imminent threat to an area considered to be of the highest cultural value to humanity,” the organization said in a statement.
According to a European Union report, last year Israel advanced plans for 12,349 homes to be built in the West Bank, the most in 30 years.
Palestinians say the settlements represent the biggest threat to the two-state solution envisaging Israeli and Palestinian states existing side by side.
Violence in the West Bank has surged since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
At least 625 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops and settlers in the West Bank since October 7, according to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry figures.
At least 18 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed by Palestinian attacks in the West Bank over the same period, according to official Israeli figures.
Israel approves new settlement on UNESCO site near Bethlehem
https://arab.news/mugd7
Israel approves new settlement on UNESCO site near Bethlehem

- All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission
Libyan coast guards train in Greece under plan to stem migrant flows
Relations between Greece and Libya have been strained by a maritime boundary agreement signed in 2019 between the Tripoli-based Libyan government and Turkiye, Greece’s long-standing foe.
A tender that Greece launched this year to develop hydrocarbon resources off Crete revived those tensions, while a spike in migrant flows from North Africa to Europe has prompted Athens to deploy frigates off Libya and pass legislation banning migrants arriving from Libya by sea from requesting asylum.
The division of Libya by factional conflict into eastern and western sections for over a decade has further complicated relations. Greece says it is determined to continue talking to both the Tripoli-based government and a parallel administration based in Benghazi to the east.
So far, coast guard officers from eastern Libya have been training in Greece, including areas such as patrolling and search and rescue operations. Coast guard officers from western Libya are expected to also participate in the training, the sources said.
As part of efforts to improve relations, Athens last week invited Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli to start talks on demarcating exclusive economic zones in the Mediterranean Sea.
Missions from both countries are expected to hold talks on maritime zones in the coming months, the Greek sources said.
Israeli rights groups break taboo with accusations of genocide

- Israeli human rights groups brace for backlash
- Deeply sensitive accusation in Israel, founded after Holocaust
JERUSALEM: When two human rights groups became the first major voices in Israel to accuse the state of committing genocide in Gaza, breaking a taboo in a country founded after the Holocaust, they were prepared for a backlash.
B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel released reports at a press conference in Jerusalem on Monday, saying Israel was carrying out “coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.”
That marked the strongest possible accusation against the state, which vehemently denies it. The charge of genocide is deeply sensitive in Israel because of its origins in the work of Jewish legal scholars in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. Israeli officials have rejected genocide allegations as antisemitic.
So Sarit Michaeli, B’Tselem’s international director, said the group expected to face attacks for making the claim in a country still traumatized by October 7, 2023.
“We’ve looked into all of the risks that we could be facing. These are legal, reputation, media risks, other types of risk, societal risks and we’ve done work to try and mitigate these risks,” said Michaeli, whose organization is seen as being on the political fringe in Israel but is respected internationally.
“We are also quite experienced in attacks by the government or social media, so this is not the first time.” It’s not unrealistic “to expect this issue, which is so fraught and so deeply contentious within Israeli society and internationally to lead to an even greater reaction,” she said.
Israel’s foreign ministry and prime minister’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Shortly after the reports were released on Monday, government spokesperson David Mencer said: “Yes, of course we have free speech in Israel.” He strongly rejected the reports’ findings and said that such accusations fostered anti-semitism abroad.
Some Israelis have expressed concern over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, destroyed much of the enclave and led to widespread hunger.
An international global hunger monitor said on Tuesday a famine scenario was unfolding in the Gaza Strip, with malnutrition soaring, children under five dying of hunger-related causes and humanitarian access severely restricted.
“For me, life is life, and it’s sad. No one should die there,” said nurse Shmuel Sherenzon, 31.
But the Israeli public generally rejects allegations of genocide.
Most of the 1,200 people killed and the 251 taken hostage to Gaza in the October 7 attacks in southern Israel were civilians, including men, women, children and the elderly.
In an editorial titled “Why are we blind to Gaza?” published on the mainstream news site Ynet last week, Israeli journalist Sever Plocker said images of ordinary Palestinians rejoicing over the attacks in and even following the militants to take part in violence made it almost impossible for Israelis to feel compassion for Gazans in the months that followed.
“The crimes of Hamas on October 7 have deeply burned – for generations – the consciousness of the entire Jewish public in Israel, which now interprets the destruction and killing in Gaza as a deterrent retaliation and therefore also morally legitimate.”
Israel has fended off accusations of genocide since the early days of the Gaza war, including a case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in the Hague that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned as “outrageous.”
While Israeli human rights groups say it can be difficult working under Israel’s far-right government, they don’t experience the kind of tough crackdowns their counterparts face in other parts of the Middle East.
Israel has consistently said its actions in Gaza are justified as self-defense and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, a charge the militant group denies.
Israeli media has focused more on the plight of hostages taken by Hamas, in the worst single attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
In this atmosphere, for B’Tselem’s Israeli staff members to come to the stark conclusion that their own country was guilty of genocide was emotionally challenging, said Yuli Novak, the organization’s executive director.
“It’s really incomprehensible, it’s a phenomena that the mind cannot bear,” Novak said, choking up.
“I think many of our colleagues are struggling at the moment, not only fear of sanctions but also to fully grasp this thing.”
Guy Shalev, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, said the organization faced a “wall of denial.”
It has been under pressure for months and is expecting a stronger backlash after releasing its report.
“Bureaucratic, legal, financial institutions such as banks freezing accounts including ours, and some of the challenges we expect to see in the next days...these efforts will intensify,” he told Reuters.
Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says

- Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says
ANKARA: Turkiye will start exporting natural gas from Azerbaijan to Syria from Saturday, the energy minister said on Wednesday.
Syria’s Islamist authorities, who toppled Bashar Assad in December, are seeking to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and economy after almost 14 years of civil war.
The conflict badly damaged Syria’s power infrastructure, leading to cuts that can last for more than 20 hours a day.
“We will start exporting natural gas from Azerbaijan to Aleppo via Kilis,” a province in southernmost Turkiye near the Syrian border, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said.
In May, Syrian Energy Minister Mohammad Al-Bashir said Damascus and Ankara had reached a deal for Turkiye to supply natural gas to the war-torn country via a pipeline in the north.
Gas-rich Azerbaijan is a historic ally of Turkiye which maintains close ties with the Syrian transitional government.
At least 5 dead in clashes between Uganda, South Sudan forces: official

- It was not clear what triggered the clashes on Monday between the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and government troops in Central Equatoria State that were confirmed by South Sudanese People’s Defense Force
JUBA: At least five South Sudan security forces were killed in clashes with the Ugandan army near the countries’ shared border earlier this week, local officials said Wednesday.
Uganda has a history of involvement in impoverished South Sudan, and has long provided military support to President Salva Kiir, including a deployment of special forces since March.
It was not clear what triggered the clashes on Monday between the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and government troops in Central Equatoria State that were confirmed by South Sudanese People’s Defense Force (SSPDF).
Police in Kajo Keji county, where the clashes took place, said “two SSPDF officers, two prison officers and a police officer” were killed, according to a statement from local authorities on Wednesday.
The statement quoted local army commander Henry Buri as saying the Ugandan forces “were heavily armed with tanks and artilleries,” and had targeted 19 “joint operation” forces.
There was no comment from the Ugandan government.
An earlier statement by local county officials said there had been “loss of lives and injuries from both sides.”
Uganda sent troops to support Kiir when civil war broke out in the country in 2013, just two years after it gained independence from Sudan.
The civil war between Kiir and his long-time rival, Riek Machar, lasted five years and left some 400,000 dead before a power-sharing agreement was reached in 2018.
Uganda again deployed special forces in March this year as Kiir moved once again against Machar, eventually placing him under house arrest.
That has all but buried the power-sharing deal and triggered conflict between the army and members of a militia from Machar’s ethnic Nuer community.
The Ugandan army has been accused of using chemical weapons, namely barrel bombs containing a flammable liquid that killed civilians, against Nuer militias in South Sudan’s northeast.
Uganda has denied the accusations.
African Union says does ‘not recognize’ Sudan parallel govt

- A bitter two-year civil war in Sudan has pitted the government against the Rapid Support Forces
- The AU called on all member states and the international community to reject the fragmentation of Sudan
ADDIS ABABA: The African Union said on Wednesday it would not recognize a “so-called parallel government” in Sudan, urging its members to follow suit.
A bitter two-year civil war in Sudan has pitted the government against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which announced it was forming a government and appointed a prime minister on Saturday.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council “called on all AU Member States and the international community to reject the fragmentation of Sudan and not recognize the so-called “parallel government” which has serious consequences on the peace efforts and the existential future of the country,” it said in a statement.