JENIN, Palestinian Territories: The Israeli military on Monday said it had “eliminated over 15 terrorists” and arrested 40 wanted people during a major raid that began last week in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
The raid began two days after a truce took hold in the Gaza Strip, seeking to put an end to more than 15 months of the Israel-Hamas war that ravaged the Palestinian coastal territory.
The military said in a statement that during the Jenin operation troops seized dozens of weapons and “located an explosive device hidden inside a washing machine in one of the buildings in Jenin.”
Soldiers “also dismantled dozens of explosives planted beneath roads intended to attack troops,” it said.
During another operation, “an observation command center was located, containing gas canisters intended for manufacturing explosive devices,” it said.
Backed by bulldozers and warplanes, the military launched last Tuesday its “Iron Wall” operation in Jenin and its adjacent refugee camp, militant strongholds frequently targeted in Israeli raids.
AFP images on Monday showed Israeli troops still in the area, and black smoke rising over the camp.
Salim Al-Saadi, a member of the Jenin camp’s management committee, told AFP that 80 percent of its residents had fled since the raid began.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on its website that more than 24,000 refugees were registered in the camp in 2023, though the actual population is not known.
AFP pictures on Thursday showed rows of women, men and children filing out of the camp, some of them carrying their belongings in bags, accompanied by Palestine Red Crescent ambulances.
A number of Palestinian officials reported that Israel had ordered residents to leave the camp, but the military denied this.
The Palestinian health ministry had earlier reported that the Israeli operation killed at least 12 Palestinians and injured 40 more around Jenin.
Violence has soared throughout the West Bank since the war between Hamas and Israel broke out in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 860 Palestinians in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the health ministry.
At least 29 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military raids in the territory over the same period, according to Israeli official figures.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
Israel says ‘eliminated’ 15 Palestinians in Jenin raid
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Israel says ‘eliminated’ 15 Palestinians in Jenin raid
- A number of Palestinian officials reported that Israel had ordered residents to leave the camp, but the military denied this
UN aid chief says Israel’s blocking of food to Gaza is a ‘war crime’
- Tom Fletcher says Israel is attempting to forcibly displace the Palestinian population by withholding aid
- ‘History will be tough in the way it judges us’ over failing to prevent genocide, he tells BBC
LONDON: Israel’s blocking of food aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza in an attempt to forcibly remove the population amounts to a war crime, the UN’s humanitarian chief said in an interview broadcast on Friday.
Israel allowed a trickle of supplies into Gaza last week after a complete blockade for nearly three months. But there have been chaotic and deadly scenes amid a new distribution system that sidelined the UN.
“We’re seeing food sat on the borders and not being allowed in when there is a population on the other side of the border that is starving, and we’re hearing Israeli ministers say that is to put pressure on the population of Gaza,” Tom Fletcher told the BBC.
Using food as a weapon “is classified as a war crime,” he said, adding that would be for the courts and history to judge.
He also warned Israel against the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza to another country, a policy that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his hard-line cabinet have advocated.
Earlier this month, Israel’s extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Gaza would be “totally destroyed” within six months and Palestinians there would be so despairing that they would be “looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places.”
Fletcher called on Netanyahu to ensure that “this language, and ultimately, this policy ... of forced displacement, isn’t enacted.”
Since Israel broke a two-month ceasefire in March it has ramped up its operations in Gaza, killing thousands more Palestinian civilians in an attempt to take full military control of the territory.
The increased violence has led European countries to shift their stance and threaten sanctions against Israel if it does not stop the slaughter and allow the full flow of aid.
On May 14, Fletcher told the UN Security Council that it must act to prevent genocide in Gaza. He said the comments were in response to what his colleagues on the ground were telling him.
“What they’re reporting is forced displacement. They’re reporting starvation, they’re reporting torture, and they’re reporting deaths on a massive scale,” he said.
“In previous cases, Rwanda, Srebrenica and Sri Lanka, the world had told us afterwards that we didn’t act in time, that we didn’t sound the warning and ask that the world respond to prevent genocide.
“And that’s my call to the Security Council and the world right now, ‘will you act to prevent genocide?’”
He added: “History will be tough in the way it judges us. And it must be.”
The conflict has killed almost 54,000 Palestinians since it started in October 2023 when a Hamas-led assault killed 1,200 Israelis and seized dozens of hostages.
Israel’s Gaza war producing ‘staggering’ carbon footprint
- Emissions from military activity, reconstruction more than annual footprint of 100 countries: Study
- Analyst: ‘Sobering reminder of the ecological and environmental cost of Israel’s genocidal campaign’
LONDON: The emissions caused by Israel’s war on Gaza as well as estimated reconstruction costs are greater than the annual footprint of 100 individual countries, new research has found.
The war caused more carbon emissions than the annual combined total of Costa Rica and Estonia in its first 15 months.
The research, published by the Social Science Research Network, was shared exclusively with The Guardian.
Destroying, clearing and rebuilding the Gaza Strip could produce 31 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), researchers from the UK and US found.
There is no obligation for states to record military emissions to the UN’s climate body, with researchers warning that the lack of accountability could lead to an underreporting of the global carbon footprint.
The study’s data, which also includes estimates of emissions relating to Hamas and Hezbollah activity, highlights the asymmetry between each side.
Hamas’s use of bunker fuel and rockets accounted for about 3,000 tCO2e, just 0.2 percent of the conflict’s total carbon footprint.
Israel’s use of weapons, equipment, tanks and ordnance produced 50 percent of emissions, the study found.
Researchers also included estimated emissions from Yemen’s Houthi militia, which has traded strikes with Israel over the course of the war. Iran and Israel’s tit-for-tat attacks, and the war in southern Lebanon, were also recorded.
All military activity arising from the Gaza war produced the equivalent, in emissions, of charging 2.6 billion smartphones or running 84 gas power plants for a year.
The figure includes the tC02e estimate — 557,359 — of the pre-war construction of Hamas’s tunnel network and Israel’s “iron wall” barrier surrounding Gaza. The findings could eventually help calculate claims for reparations, The Guardian reported.
More than 99 percent of the tCO2e generated between Oct. 7, 2023, and the temporary ceasefire in January this year was attributed to Israeli bombardment and the invasion of Gaza.
US involvement in the emissions was also highlighted by researchers. They found that almost 30 percent of greenhouse gases generated in the same period came from regular resupply flights carrying military equipment to Israel from American stockpiles in Europe.
Israel’s destruction of Gaza has produced an estimated 60 million tonnes of toxic rubble that requires clearing, producing what researchers warned would be the biggest emissions toll of the conflict.
Removing debris, rebuilding 436,000 destroyed apartments, roads, 700 schools, mosques and administrative sites will produce an estimated 29.4 million tCO2e.
Zena Agha, analyst for Palestinian policy network Al-Shabaka, said: “This report is a staggering and sobering reminder of the ecological and environmental cost of Israel’s genocidal campaign … But this is also the US, UK and EU’s war, all of which have provided seemingly limitless military resources to enable Israel to devastate the most densely populated place on the planet.
“This brings home the destabilizing (regional) impact of the Israeli settler state and its inseparability from the western military-industrial complex.”
In producing the report, researchers used open-source information, media articles and data from independent groups, including UN agencies.
Hadeel Ikhmais, head of the climate change office at the Palestinian Environmental Quality Authority, said: “Wars not only kill people but also release toxic chemicals, destroy infrastructure, pollute soil, air and water resources and accelerate climate and environmental disasters.
“War also destroys climate adaptation and hinders environmental management. Not counting carbon emissions is a black hole in accountability that allows governments to get away from their environmental crimes.”
Three suspects detained for storming Libya’s state oil firm, attorney general says
- “The public prosecution reviewed the evidence of the storming of the Corporation’s headquarters,” the attorney general said
- The three suspects were handed over by the defense ministry
TRIPOLI: Three suspects have been detained for allegedly storming the Libyan state oil firm’s headquarters in Tripoli, the country’s attorney general said on Friday, a day after its rival government in the east threatened to declare force majeure on oil fields and ports citing assaults on the firm.
The National Oil Corporation is based in Tripoli under the control of the internationally-recognized Government of National Unity. The parallel government in Benghazi in the east is not internationally recognized, but most oilfields in the major oil producing country are under the control of eastern Libyan military leader Khalifa Haftar.
The NOC has previously denied its corporation’s headquarters were stormed, calling it “completely false” and quoted its acting chief as calling it “nothing more than a limited personal dispute that occurred in the reception area.”
But the eastern-based government has threatened to also temporarily relocate the NOC’s headquarters to “safe cities” such as Ras Lanuf and Brega, both of which it controls.
“The public prosecution reviewed the evidence of the storming of the Corporation’s headquarters, inspected the scene, reviewed the video footage recorded at the time of the incident and heard the testimonies of those present,” the attorney general said in a statement.
The three suspects were handed over by the defense ministry, which was asked “to arrest the remaining contributors to the incident,” the attorney general said.
The national output of crude oil in the past 24 hours reached 1,389,055 barrels per day, the NOC said on Wednesday, reflecting normal levels.
Libya’s oil output has been disrupted repeatedly in the chaotic decade since 2014 when the country divided between two rival authorities in the east and west following the NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
RSF drone strike kills six in Sudan hospital: army source
- “The militia launched a drone strike on the Social Insurance Hospital, killing six and wounding 12,” an army source said
- A medical source at El-Obeid Hospital, the city’s main facility, confirmed the toll
KHARTOUM: Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces bombarded El-Obeid on Friday, killing six people in a hospital in the key southern city, medical and army sources said.
“The militia launched a drone strike on the Social Insurance Hospital, killing six and wounding 12, simultaneously attacking residential areas of the city with heavy artillery,” an army source told AFP, adding that the bombardment had also hit a second hospital in the city center.
A medical source at El-Obeid Hospital, the city’s main facility, confirmed the toll, adding that the Social Insurance Hospital had been forced shut “due to damage” sustained in the drone strike.
El-Obeid, a strategic city 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of Khartoum which is the capital of North Kordofan state, was besieged by the RSF for nearly two years before the regular army broke the siege in February.
It was one of a series of counteroffensives that also saw the army recapture Khartoum, but El-Obeid has continued to come under RSF bombardment.
The city is a key staging post on the army’s supply route to the west, where the besieged city of El-Fasher is the only state capital in the vast Darfur region still under its control.
The RSF and the army have clashed repeatedly along the road between El-Obeid and El-Fasher in recent weeks.
On Thursday, the paramilitaries said they retaken the town of Al-Khoei, around 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of El-Obeid, after the army recaptured it earlier this month.
The war between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 13 million since it erupted in April 2023.
The United Nation says the conflict has created the world’s biggest hunger and displacement crises.
It has also effectively split Sudan in two, with the army holding the center, east and north, while the paramilitaries and their allies control nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.
Since losing Khartoum in March, the RSF has adopted a two-prong strategy: long-range drone strikes on army-held cities accompanied by a counteroffensive in the south.
On Thursday, the paramilitaries also announced they had recaptured Dibeibat, in South Kordofan state some 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of El-Obeid, another town that the army had retaken earlier this month.
Swathes of South Kordofan are controlled by a rebel group allied with the RSF, Abdelaziz Al-Hilu’s faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North.
Israel minister says ‘we will build Jewish Israeli state’ in West Bank
- “This is a decisive response to the terrorist organizations that are trying to harm and weaken our hold on this land,” Katz said
- Katz was speaking during a visit to the Sa-Nur settlement outpost in the northern West Bank
JERUSALEM: Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed on Friday to build a “Jewish Israeli state” in the occupied West Bank, a day after the government announced the creation of 22 new settlements in the Palestinian territory.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank, seen as a major obstacle to lasting peace, are regularly condemned by the United Nations as illegal under international law, and Thursday’s announcement drew sharp foreign criticism.
“This is a decisive response to the terrorist organizations that are trying to harm and weaken our hold on this land — and it is also a clear message to (French President Emmanuel) Macron and his associates: they will recognize a Palestinian state on paper — but we will build the Jewish Israeli state here on the ground,” Katz was quoted as saying Friday in a statement from his office.
“The paper will be thrown into the trash bin of history, and the State of Israel will flourish and prosper.”
Katz was speaking during a visit to the Sa-Nur settlement outpost in the northern West Bank.
Sa-Nur was evacuated in 2005 as part of Israel’s disengagement from Gaza, promoted by then prime minister Ariel Sharon.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
During a visit to Singapore on Friday, French President Macron asserted that recognition of a Palestinian state, with some conditions, was “not only a moral duty, but a political necessity.”
An international conference meant to resurrect the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is set to take place in June at the UN headquarters in New York.
A diplomat in Paris close to preparations for the conference said it should pave the way for more countries to recognize a Palestinian state.
Macron said in April that France could recognize a Palestinian state in June.
Following Israel’s announcement of the new settlements on Thursday, Britain called the move a “deliberate obstacle” to Palestinian statehood, while UN chief Antonio Guterres’s spokesman said it pushed efforts toward a two-state solution “in the wrong direction.”
