Israelis rattled by Iranian attack, fear escalation
Israel has killed more than 33,686 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
Updated 15 April 2024
Reuters
JERUSALEM: The first direct attack on Israel by Iran has shaken Israelis and left them fearful that a bigger war is looming.
While the population has long been used to sirens warning of attacks from Hamas, the hundreds of drones and missiles sent from Iran over Saturday night marked a new element in the over-lapping Middle East conflicts.
Israel reported modest damage on Sunday after the military said it shot down almost all of the more than 300 drones and missiles launched by Iran.
But the attack still rattled Israelis, whose army has fought Hamas for years in Gaza but never engaged in direct warfare with regional superpower Iran. Iranian weapons and interceptors could be seen flashing over the sky at night.
I hope there won’t be a big war; none of us in Israel wants a big war, so I hope that’s it, and I hope Iran would stop no.
Jeremy Smith, Resident of Tzur Hadassah
“I think it was quite scary when we started hearing booming in the middle of the night, and we did not know what it was. I mean, we knew what it was, but we didn’t know to what extent it would be,” said Jerusalem resident Cecile Smulowitz.
“But thank God the Israeli army came through, and so far it’s quiet, and we hope it will continue that way.”
Iran mounted its attack in retaliation for a suspected Israeli air strike on Tehran’s embassy compound in Damascus on April 1, which killed 13 people. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied carrying out the attack but is widely believed to have done so.
Following Iranian senior leader Ali Khamenei’s promise to hit back, Israelis were put on high alert.
Iran warned Israel and the US on Sunday of a “much larger response” if there was any retaliation for its mass drone and missile attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly told the world that Iran is an existential threat to the Jewish state, vowed Israel would achieve victory.
The threat of open warfare erupting between Iran and Israel and dragging the US into the conflict has put the region on edge.
Some Israelis said they did not want an escalation, but with the stakes so high, they are nervous despite having the most powerful and technologically advanced military in the region.
“I hope there won’t be a big war; none of us in Israel wants a big war, so I hope that’s it, and I hope Iran would stop now,” said Jeremy Smith, 60, a resident of Tzur Hadassah.
“I imagine Israel will respond because, I mean, our whole country was covered in missiles and drones. So what can you do? But we have to stop it somehow.”
Before the Iranian attack, Israeli authorities had instructed the public not to hold large gatherings, to close all schools and venues for children’s camps during the Jewish holiday of Passover, and to close some beaches and travel sites.
“We didn’t want the war with Hamas. They attacked us. We don’t want a war with Iran, they attack us,” said Jerusalem resident Amy Friedlang Morgans, 71.
“We don’t want a war with Iran. They, somehow, cannot accept Jewish people living here. This is our homeland. It’s written in the Bible.”
The Iranian attack took place against the background of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, in which Israeli forces have killed more than 33,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry figures.
Syrian air defenses confront ‘aggression’ in central region
Updated 6 sec ago
Reuters
CAIRO: Syrian air defenses confronted an “aggression” targeting multiple locations in Syria’s central region, state media said late on Sunday, following reports of an explosion heard in the same area.
14 killed in a car crash in war-torn Yemen, state media report
The crashes claim thousands of lives every year and are mostly caused by speeding, bad roads, or poor enforcement of traffic laws
Updated 47 sec ago
AP
SANAA, Yemen: A passenger bus overturned while driving Sunday in a mountainous area in southwestern Yemen, killing at least 14 people, state-run media reported.
The vehicle was traveling on a highway overlooking a rocky area in the Maqatra district when it suffered a mechanical failure and tumbled to the ground, according to the state-run SABA news agency.
The bus was transporting 14 passengers from the southern province of Aden, the seat of the internationally recognized government, to the southwestern province of Taiz, the agency reported.
It said only one person survived the crash and was taken to hospital for treatment.
Deadly traffic crashes are not uncommon in Yemen, where a decade of civil war wrecked the country’s infrastructure. The crashes claim thousands of lives every year and are mostly caused by speeding, bad roads, or poor enforcement of traffic laws.
Yemen plunged into civil war in 2014, when Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels took control of the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north, forcing the government to flee to the south, then to Saudi Arabia.
A Saudi-led coalition entered the war in March 2015, backed at the time by the US, in an effort to restore the internationally recognized government to power.
The war has killed more than 150,000 people including civilians and combatants. In recent years the situation has deteriorated and the conflict has largely turned into a stalemate and caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Usually arid areas in southern Morocco and Algeria have been drenched in floods caused by massive rainfall since Friday, officials told AFP Sunday
Updated 25 min 47 sec ago
AFP
OUARZAZATE, Morocco: Moroccan authorities on Sunday told AFP that 11 people died and nine were missing in flooding caused by an “exceptional” climate phenomenon in southern areas.
Interior ministry spokesman Rachid Khalfi said authorities recorded an initial “toll of 11 deaths” after “heavy thunderstorms” that hit “17 prefectures and provinces in the kingdom.”
Among the victims, seven died in the province of Tata, some 740 kilometers south of Rabat, and two in Errachidia, almost 500 kilometers east of Marrakech, according to Khalfi.
He said one of the victims had foreign citizenship, without providing further details.
Khalfi also said “the volume of precipitation recorded in two days is equivalent to that which these regions normally experience during an entire year.”
The floods also caused the collapse of 40 homes and damaged 93 roads, and “affected electricity, drinking water and telephone networks,” he added.
Usually arid areas in southern Morocco and Algeria have been drenched in floods caused by massive rainfall since Friday, officials told AFP Sunday.
Areas in southern Morocco have been affected “by an extremely unstable tropical air mass,” the spokesman for the Moroccan General Directorate of Meteorology, Lhoussaine Youabd, told AFP.
This “led to the formation of unstable and violent clouds” that caused massive rainfall, he said, describing the phenomenon as “exceptional.”
As a result, the Ouarzazate region received 47 millimeters of water in three hours, and Tagounite, near the Algerian border, some 170 millimeters, according to the Moroccan weather service.
“We haven’t seen such rain for about 10 years,” Omar Gana, an Ouarzazate local, told AFP.
The heavy rains hit regions of Morocco that have been suffering from drought for at least six years.
In a previous toll, Algerian civil defense said one person died in Illizi, some 1,900 kilometers south of Algiers, and one was missing in flooding in the south.
Later in the day, it gave a total of two people missing, in El Bayadh and Tamanrasset.
It also said it had rescued several families trapped by flooded rivers in the south.
Videos posted on social media showed that some areas in the Sahara desert were drenched. In Morocco’s Ouarzazate, entire streets were flooded.
Morocco has been experiencing severe water stress after six consecutive years of drought, shrinking dam levels to less than 28 percent of capacity by the end of August.
West Bank escalation signals potential for a multifront regional conflict
Deadly Israeli military operations and Jewish settler attacks drive unrest in an already volatile occupied territory
Violence shows no sign of ebbing despite elimination of several militant commanders by Israeli security forces
Updated 9 min 48 sec ago
Nadia Al-Faour
DUBAI: Israeli military raids, settler attacks and a vicious cycle of violence have claimed the lives of more than 662 Palestinians and 24 Israelis in the West Bank since Oct. 7, raising the specter of a new active front in a regional conflict.
The West Bank has long been a center of unrest, but recent events have led to unprecedented volatility, with the Israeli government stepping up military operations in the area, including large-scale raids by soldiers backed by armored vehicles and bulldozers in Jenin, Tulkarm and other areas.
One recent raid at a refugee camp in the city of Jenin, which houses more than 4,000 Palestinians, involved hundreds of Israeli troops and armored vehicles. Simultaneous raids were launched in Tulkarm, Tubas, Nablus and Ramallah.
The Israeli army withdrew from Jenin and the refugee camp on Friday after the 10-day operation, which left 36 dead across the occupied West Bank, witnesses said. Residents who had fled began returning to their homes in the camp.
Israeli officials said 14 militants were killed and at least 25 arrested over the course of the Jenin assault, which camp residents say has led to the blockage of essential aid. One Israeli soldier was killed in the operation.
Bulldozers tear up a street during an Israeli raid in the center of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on September 2, 2024. (AFP)
Hamas, whose Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel triggered the ongoing war in Gaza, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have acknowledged the loss of at least 14 fighters. Since Oct. 7, Israeli troops have arrested some 5,000 Palestinians across the West Bank.
“Operation Summer Camps” was the largest incursion since the early 2000s, when the Second Intifada, or uprising, took place. Authorities said the raids are part of a strategy to prevent Iranian-backed militant groups from launching attacks on Israeli citizens.
Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, described the roundup of terrorist suspects as “mowing the lawn” but said the threat to Israel would only be fully neutralized once its forces “pull out the roots.”
Israeli military vehicles deploy during a house demolition operation in the Palestinian village of Kafr Dan, west of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, on Sept. 3, 2024. (AFP)
“The rise of terror in Judea and Samaria is an issue that we need to be focused on every minute,” Gallant said during a meeting with military officials, describing the West Bank by its biblical name.
Videos of the raids shared on social media show deserted streets and colossal damage to buildings. The UN Human Rights Office has accused Israeli forces of using “unlawful force” and called for an “immediate end” to the operation.
Kamal Abu Al-Rub, the governor of Jenin, said the situation was the “most severe, the most painful and oppressive” in years. He said Israeli troops had mounted 12 major raids in the city since Oct. 7.
“Israeli army is preventing food, water and ambulances from reaching besieged areas.”
Governor of West Bank’s Jenin, Kamal Abu Al-Rub, says the situation at the Israeli closed military areas is bad.
Medecins Sans Frontieres, one of the aid agencies operating in the West Bank, said that “repeated attacks by the Israeli military on health workers, ambulances and medical facilities, are severely hindering people’s ability to get access to medical care. There has been very limited medical access in the city of Tulkarm and its refugee camps.”
The organization said its teams had ceased operations in Jenin and Tulkarm, citing restrictions to their movements.
Ori Goldberg, a lecturer at Israel’s Reichman University, regards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions in the West Bank as an act of desperation designed to rally public support amid mass protests over his handling of the Gaza hostage crisis.
INNUMBERS
• 650 Palestinians killed in West Bank and East Jerusalem since Oct. 7 (Palestinian Ministry of Health).
• 1,300 Attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in Oct. 7, 2023-Sept. 2, 2024 period
Source: UN OCHA
The strategy could be backfiring, however, as the Israeli occupation of the West Bank appears to be “teetering” on the brink of all-out chaos.
“Israeli citizens support the war on terror,” Goldberg told Arab News, referring to the West Bank raids, but “they don’t see the connection between the dead hostages and the Israeli rampage. They think we have to do this. But I don’t think Israel can contain the violence.”
The military operation inside the Jenin refugee camp has left many Palestinian homes damaged or destroyed by army bulldozers and pavement stripped from roads.
A Palestinian boy sits on the rubble of a damaged shop, next to a street that was torn up by bulldozers during an Israeli raid in the center of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Sept. 2, 2024. (AFP)
On Friday, agencies said residents used bulldozers of their own to begin clearing the rubble after Israeli armored vehicles left.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and its forces regularly make incursions into Palestinian communities, but the latest raids as well as the hawkish comments by Gallant signaled an escalation, residents told AFP news agency.
The Israeli military has maintained a strong footing in the occupied territory for decades to protect the roughly 500,000 Israeli citizens living in settlements there.
Despite international condemnation, the Netanyahu government has allowed illegal settlements to continue to expand across the West Bank.
In March this year, the Israeli government announced it was confiscating an area of roughly 1,980 acres in the northern Jordan Valley with a view to expanding Jewish settlements there.
On Friday, a 26-year-old Turkish American woman was killed in the West Bank during a protest where Israeli forces opened fire. Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was taking part in a protest against settlement expansion in Beita, a town near Nablus.
Settler violence in the area also is nothing new. However, there has been a sharp increase in the number of attacks on Palestinians since the war in Gaza began.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there were at least 1,300 attacks between Oct. 7 and Sept. 2 this year.
The raids and settler violence have been taking place against the backdrop of the war in Gaza, which has left more than 40,000 Palestinians dead, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and created a major humanitarian crisis.
Despite international pressure, Netanyahu has resisted calls to strike a ceasefire deal with Hamas, which would see the return of the remaining hostages, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and an end to the fighting.
Opinion
This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)
Last week, Netanyahu presented a plan that included the destruction of the Netzarim Corridor — an 8-km stretch of land that connects the Mediterranean Sea with the former Karni crossing in northeastern Gaza.
He said reconstruction would not be permitted and that Palestinians would not be allowed to return to their homes in northern Gaza to prevent Hamas from establishing “nests” in the area.
Meanwhile, the Philadelphi Corridor, which separates Gaza from Egypt, would remain under Israeli control, and a third corridor would be built between Khan Younis and Rafah, which would also be under Israeli military control.
What was perhaps more striking about the map used by Netanyahu during his news conference, however, was that the West Bank appeared to be completely annexed by Israel.
Asked by a reporter to elaborate on this, Netanyahu said: “I didn’t get into that. I was talking about Gaza. There is a whole issue of how to achieve peace between us. That’s another press conference.”
Whether Netanyahu’s government intends to open a new front in its war with the Palestinians and seize complete control of the West Bank remains unclear.
Reichman University’s Goldberg is skeptical about Netanyahu’s appetite for risk given the magnitude of unfinished business both in Gaza and the Lebanon border. “I doubt that Israel will bring larger forces into the West Bank,” he said. “It cannot afford to lose on yet another front.”
Egyptian archaeologist calls on Berlin to return Nefertiti bust
Akhenaten, called the heretic king, was notorious for promoting the worship of the god Aten to the exclusion of Egypt’s other gods
Updated 43 min 26 sec ago
Reuters
CAIRO: Prominent Egyptian archaeologist and former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass has launched a petition for the return to Egypt of the pharaonic bust of Queen Nefertiti from the Neues Museum in Berlin.
Nefertiti’s famous painted limestone bust was uncovered at Tell el-Amarna, around 300 km (185 miles) south of Cairo, in 1912 by a German archaeological mission, which shipped it to Berlin the following year.
Amarna was the short-lived capital of Nefertiti’s husband, the 18th dynasty Pharaoh Akhenaten, who reigned until about 1335 B.C.
Akhenaten, called the heretic king, was notorious for promoting the worship of the god Aten to the exclusion of Egypt’s other gods. His reign also introduced a radical change in Egyptian art.
In his petition launched on Saturday, Hawass asked for the return of the bust, saying it was removed from Egypt illegally after its discovery.
“We announce today that Egypt — this is the national committee, it is not a government committee — asks for the return of the bust of Nefertiti,” Hawass said.
“What I need from everyone here is to go to my website... hawasszahi.com, and you will sign, one signature, to show that you would love for this bust to come back.”
Hawass said he is not calling for the repatriation of artefacts taken out of Egypt legally. His campaign is focused on repatriating “three main beautiful objects” including the bust of Nefertiti, the Rosetta Stone and the Dendera Zodiac.
Officials at Berlin’s Neues Museum were not immediately available for comment.