JNS.org — Israel Police officers on Monday arrested 13 suspects and were checking a suspicious vehicle they stopped on the busy Route 6 highway near the Horeshim interchange.

The Horeshim interchange is in the southern Sharon Plain, close to Samaria.

“All the occupants of the vehicle were detained for questioning,” said the statement, adding that sappers were searching for explosives.

שוהה בלתי חוקי פלסטיני נעצר בכביש 6 בחשד שתכנן לבצע פיגוע, השב”כ מעורב בחקירה. כביש 6 נחסם ממחלף חורשים צפונה@Doron_Kadosh pic.twitter.com/RHKjCv1frD

— גלצ (@GLZRadio) September 9, 2024

On Sept. 2, Israeli security forces neutralized a car bomb outside the entrance to the Jewish community of Ateret in the Binyamin region of Samaria.

Police and military sappers used a robot to inspect the vehicle, which was carrying two large gas tanks connected to an operating mechanism.

There were no casualties in the incident, which Israel Ganz, the head of the Binyamin Regional Council, called a “great miracle.”

Days earlier, the Hamas terrorist group hailed a “double heroic operation” after car bombers wounded three Israelis in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank.

Last month, Hamas leader abroad Khaled Mashaal called for a return to suicide terrorist attacks against Israelis in the West Bank.

During a video address to a conference in Istanbul, Mashaal said, “Resistance operations in the West Bank are escalating despite the harsh conditions,” CNN Arabic reported.

“We want to return to martyrdom operations. This is a situation that can only be addressed by open conflict. They are fighting us with open conflict, and we are confronting them with open conflict,” he continued.

On Aug. 19, the “military””wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad both claimed responsibility for a failed suicide bombing in south Tel Aviv.

In a statement, Hamas vowed to continue to carry out suicide attacks “as long as Israel continues its massacre and policy of assassinations in Gaza.”

The post Israel Police Search for Bombs After Stopping Vehicle on Highway first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

JNS.org — The Palestinian Authority (PA) is circulating a draft resolution asking the United Nations General Assembly to urge Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and remove some 500,000 Israeli citizens living in the territory within six months.

According to a report by Israel’s Channel 12 on Sunday, the resolution, which cites a July 19 advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, is expected to be brought to a vote next week.

The 79th Session of the UN General Assembly is scheduled to open on Sept. 10.

In addition to demanding an end to Israel’s civilian and military presence, the draft text urges UN member states to impose sanctions on officials in Jerusalem, banning trade with Jewish businesses in the West Bank and blocking weapons sales to Israel if they might be used in the area.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon attacked the PA’s move and called on the 193 members of the General Assembly to “outright reject this shameful resolution and instead adopt a resolution condemning Hamas, calling on it to release all the hostages immediately.”

“Let it be clear: Nothing will stop nor deter Israel in its mission to bring back all the hostages and defeat Hamas,” the Israeli diplomat stated.

“If this resolution passes in the General Assembly, exactly one year after the Oct. 7 massacre, the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, it would be a reward for terrorism and a message to the world that the barbaric massacre of children, the rape of women, and the kidnapping of innocent civilians is a profitable move,” added Danon.

While the Palestinians have a near-automatic majority in the General Assembly — including the overwhelming portion of nearly 60 Arab and Muslim governments — resolutions passed by the body are not binding.

On July 19, the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial arm of the UN, issued a non-binding, 83-page opinion declaring Israel’s 57-year “occupation” of the West Bank to be “unlawful.”

The non-binding ruling claimed that “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.”

Jerusalem is “obliged to bring an end to its presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible,” the UN court added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the ruling, saying that no “absurd” ICJ opinion can “deny this historical truth or the legal right of Israelis to live in their own communities in our ancestral home.”

Despite the PA’s continued efforts to undermine Israel through lawfare, the US administration insists that Ramallah be given control of the Gaza Strip following the cessation of hostilities there.

The post PA Wants UN to Order Removal of 500,000 Jews From West Bank first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi hopes to hold talks with new Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian by November on improving Iran‘s stalled cooperation with his agency, he said on Monday.

Several long-standing issues are dogging relations between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including Tehran’s barring of uranium-enrichment experts on the inspection team and its failure for years to explain uranium traces found at undeclared sites.

“It has been more than three and a half years since Iran stopped implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, more commonly known as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal], including provisionally applying its Additional Protocol, and therefore, it is also over three and a half years since the Agency was able to conduct complementary access in Iran,” Grossi said in a statement to a quarterly meeting of his agency’s 35-nation Board of Governors.

“Consequently, the agency has lost continuity of knowledge in relation to the production and inventory of centrifuges, rotors and bellows, heavy water and uranium ore concentrate,” Grossi added. “Iran says it has declared all nuclear material, activities and locations required under its NPT Safeguards Agreement. However, this statement is inconsistent with the agency’s findings of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at undeclared locations in Iran. The agency needs to know the current location(s) of the nuclear material and/or of contaminated equipment involved.”

Despite saying there “has been no progress” in resolving several issues concerning Iran’s nuclear violations and lack of cooperation with the IAEA, Grossi said he and Iran’s president would meet in the near future.

“He [Pezeshkian] agreed to meet with me at an appropriate juncture,” Grossi said in his statement, referring to an exchange after Pezeshkian’s election in July.

“I encourage Iran to facilitate such a meeting in the not-too-distant future so that we can establish a constructive dialogue that leads swiftly to real results,” he said.

With nuclear diplomacy largely stalled between the Iranian presidential election and the US one on Nov. 5, Grossi said he wanted to make real progress soon.

Asked at a news conference if his reference to the “not-too-distant future” meant before or after the US election, Grossi said: “No, hopefully before that.”

IAEA board resolutions ordering Iran to cooperate urgently with the investigation into the uranium traces and calling on it to reverse its barring of inspectors have brought little change, and quarterly IAEA reports seen by Reuters on Aug. 29 showed no progress.

Iran responded to the latest resolution in June by announcing an expansion of its enrichment capacity, installing more centrifuges, machines that enrich uranium, at its Natanz and Fordow sites.

At its Fordow site dug into a mountain where it is enriching to up to 60 percent purity, close to the 90 percent of weapons grade, it installed two of the eight new cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-6 centrifuges within days of informing the IAEA of its plan. Two weeks later, it had installed another two.

By the end of the quarter, the latest IAEA reports showed Iran had completed installation of all eight new cascades but still not brought them online. At its larger underground site at Natanz, which is enriching to up to 5 percent purity, it had brought 15 new cascades of other advanced models online.

“What we see is that there is some work, but nothing that indicates a rush to a fast implementation of a big increase in terms of enrichment production,” Grossi said.

Iran has stepped up nuclear work since 2019, after then-US President Donald Trump withdrew from an agreement reached under his predecessor Barack Obama under which Iran agreed to temporary restrictions on its nuclear activities in return for the lifting of international sanctions.

Western diplomats say there are plans for talks on fresh restrictions should Democrat Kamala Harris win the election.

The post IAEA Chief Grossi Says Iran Stopped Cooperating With Nuclear Watchdog, Hopes to Hold Talks With Tehran by November first appeared on Algemeiner.com.