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I was the victim of settler violence in the West Bank. Looking away from it will endanger all of us.

(JTA) — Last Friday, I experienced firsthand — again — the dangers of life in the West Bank right now.

I had joined Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the director of the Israeli human rights NGO Torat Tzedek, to deliver food to a Palestinian community whose residents are fleeing due to Jewish settler violence. Afterward, we were accompanying residents of yet another village — a small community located near the Palestinian town of Turmus Aya — that is also fleeing settler violence.

While there, about a dozen settlers showed up, many of them armed. They attacked Rabbi Ascherman, who had blocked the road with his car and then exited the vehicle. I was filming from the passenger’s seat inside the car, and one settler entered the unlocked driver’s side door. He repeatedly demanded I give him the keys, which I did not have. I was filming him, but he grabbed my phone out of my hands. Rabbi Ascherman’s car was also stolen during the incident.

As I began exiting the car, the same settler who stole my phone told me, “Take one more step and you’re finished. I’ve already seen enough to do it.” Several soldiers, including an officer, quickly arrived on the scene, but they made no effort to detain our assailants or ensure our phones were returned.

After the incident, Rabbi Ascherman planned to file a police report. I told him that I wouldn’t be able to join.

I had a good reason. In May 2021, against the backdrop of rampant violence throughout Israel-Palestine and the war between Israel and Hamas, I was attacked by settlers. After that attack, I called the police. They arrived at the scene and told me that I was a suspect and needed to come to the police station. At the station, I was interrogated for two hours. This interrogation largely consisted of bad-faith questions such as “Are you a terrorist?” and “What were you wearing?” Two days later, I had a panic attack. Having been arrested for the crime of which I was the victim, I was too traumatized to put myself through that again.

On Oct. 7, Hamas invaded southern Israel, killing 1,400 Israelis and kidnapping over 200 civilians. Since then, Israel has been engaging in a nonstop bombardment of the Gaza Strip; one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. More than 8,000 Palestinians, including 3,000 children, have died, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza.

Related: In the West Bank, spiking violence and an idle economy spur fears of a broadening conflict

Meanwhile, since Oct. 7, more than 100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been killed, mostly by soldiers but also by settlers, sometimes seemingly working together. In one instance, four Palestinians were killed by armed settlers who entered the Palestinian village of Qusra. Israeli human rights group B’tselem said of the incident that “settlers are utilizing the fact that public attention is focused elsewhere to … add fuel to the fire of violence.” Two more Palestinians were killed at the subsequent funeral. The Palestinian communities in the villages of Zanuta, Wadi Al-Siq and more have fled due to settler violence. According to the left-wing Israeli NGO Eyes on the Occupation, 10 West Bank Palestinian communities have fled since Oct. 7.

In Wadi Al-Siq, soldiers and settlers were accused of binding, stripping, beating and urinating on three Palestinians, and zip-tying and stealing the phones of Israeli activists. Some of the attackers wearing military uniforms were identified as settlers from nearby illegal outposts.

In the village of Tuwani, located in the Masafer Yatta region, a settler is seen in a video shooting a Palestinian point-blank in the stomach. A soldier was seen escorting the shooter away from the scene.

With Israeli and international media attention almost entirely focused on Gaza, reporting has lagged on the violence currently taking place in the West Bank. Giving short shrift the West Bank has exacerbated the already existing trend in which the victims of right-wing violence in the West Bank are reluctant to report their crimes to the police.

According to Israeli human rights NGO Yesh Din,  between 2013 and 2015, out of “416 cases of ideologically-motivated violence, 43% of the victims of these incidents clearly stated an unwillingness to file a complaint with the Israeli police.” This percentage is sure to rise given the current political landscape. A source close to the shooting victim in Tuwani informed me that that family did not bother going to the police.

Sometimes, victims of settler violence do not go to the police because it seems like a waste of time. In cases like mine, traumatic experiences with the police and the fear of more trauma discourage victims from coming forward. In Wadi Al-Siq, state actors took part in the crime in the first place.

With all eyes on the Gaza Strip, what little accountability police and settlers faced in the West Bank may disappear. It is not in spite of the horrors occurring in Gaza, but because of them, that we must pay more attention to the similar horrors occurring throughout the West Bank.

Since the Holocaust, the story of Jewish peoplehood has been one of trauma. But inflicting trauma upon others will not heal us, and no amount of violence or killing — in Gaza or in the West Bank — will bring anyone back to life or make us safer. The violence in the West Bank is sure to invite retaliation and endanger all of us.


The post I was the victim of settler violence in the West Bank. Looking away from it will endanger all of us. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Trump Says Iran Must Give Up Dream of Nuclear Weapon or Face Harsh Response

Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

President Donald Trump said on Monday he believes Iran is intentionally delaying a nuclear deal with the United States and that it must abandon any drive for a nuclear weapon or face a possible military strike on Tehran’s atomic facilities.

“I think they’re tapping us along,” Trump told reporters after US special envoy Steve Witkoff met in Oman on Saturday with a senior Iranian official.

Both Iran and the United States said on Saturday that they held “positive” and “constructive” talks in Oman. A second round is scheduled for Saturday, and a source briefed on the planning said the meeting was likely to be held in Rome.

The source, speaking to Reuters on the condition of anonymity, said the discussions are aimed at exploring what is possible, including a broad framework of what a potential deal would look like.

“Iran has to get rid of the concept of a nuclear weapon. They cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.

Asked if US options for a response include a military strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, Trump said: “Of course it does.”

Trump said the Iranians need to move fast to avoid a harsh response because “they’re fairly close” to developing a nuclear weapon.

The US and Iran held indirect talks during former President Joe Biden’s term but they made little, if any progress. The last known direct negotiations between the two governments were under then-President Barack Obama, who spearheaded the 2015 international nuclear deal that Trump later abandoned.

The post Trump Says Iran Must Give Up Dream of Nuclear Weapon or Face Harsh Response first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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No Breakthrough in Gaza Talks, Egyptian and Palestinian Sources Say

Families and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas gather to demand a deal that will bring back all the hostages held in Gaza, outside a meeting between hostage representatives and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem, Jan. 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad

The latest round of talks in Cairo to restore the defunct Gaza ceasefire and free Israeli hostages ended with no apparent breakthrough, Palestinian and Egyptian sources said on Monday.

The sources said Hamas had stuck to its position that any agreement must lead to an end to the war in Gaza.

Israel, which restarted its military campaign in Gaza last month after a ceasefire agreed in January unraveled, has said it will not end the war until Hamas is stamped out. The terrorist group has ruled out any proposal that it lay down its arms.

But despite that fundamental disagreement, the sources said a Hamas delegation led by the group’s Gaza Chief Khalil Al-Hayya had shown some flexibility over how many hostages it could free in return for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel should a truce be extended.

An Egyptian source told Reuters the latest proposal to extend the truce would see Hamas free an increased number of hostages. Israeli minister Zeev Elkin, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, told Army Radio on Monday that Israel was seeking the release of around 10 hostages, raised from previous Hamas consent to free five.

Hamas has asked for more time to respond to the latest proposal, the Egyptian source said.

“Hamas has no problem, but it wants guarantees Israel agrees to begin the talks on the second phase of the ceasefire agreement” leading to an end to the war, the Egyptian source said.

AIRSTRIKES

Hamas terrorists freed 33 Israeli hostages in return for hundreds of Palestinian detainees during the six-week first phase of the ceasefire which began in January. But the second phase, which was meant to begin at the start of March and lead to the end of the war, was never launched.

Meanwhile, 59 Israeli hostages remain in the hands of the terrorists. Israel believes up to 24 of them are alive.

Palestinians say the wave of Israeli attacks since the collapse of the ceasefire has been among the deadliest and most intense of the war, hitting an exhausted population surviving in the enclave’s ruins.

In Jabalia, a community on Gaza’s northern edge, rescue workers in orange vests were trying to smash through concrete with a sledgehammer to recover bodies buried underneath a building that collapsed in an Israeli strike.

Feet and a hand of one person could be seen under a concrete slab. Men carried a body wrapped in a blanket. Workers at the scene said as many as 25 people had been killed.

The Israeli military said it had struck there against terrorists planning an ambush.

In Khan Younis in the south, a camp of makeshift tents had been shredded into piles of debris by an airstrike. Families had returned to poke through the rubbish in search of belongings.

“We used to live in houses. They were destroyed. Now, our tents have been destroyed too. We don’t know where to stay,” said Ismail al-Raqab, who returned to the area after his family fled the raid before dawn.

EGYPT’S SISI MEETS QATARI EMIR

The leaders of the two Arab countries that have led the ceasefire mediation efforts, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, met in Doha on Sunday. The Egyptian source said Sisi had called for additional international guarantees for a truce agreement, beyond those provided by Egypt and Qatar themselves.

US President Donald Trump, who has backed Israel’s decision to resume its campaign and called for the Palestinian population of Gaza to leave the territory, said last week that progress was being made in returning the hostages.

The post No Breakthrough in Gaza Talks, Egyptian and Palestinian Sources Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Iranian Foreign Minister to Visit Moscow Ahead of Second Iran-US Meeting

FILE PHOTO: Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi speaks as he meets with his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein, in Baghdad, Iraq October 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Saad/File Photo

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will visit Russia this week ahead of a planned second round of talks between Tehran and Washington aimed at resolving Iran’s decades-long nuclear stand-off with the West.

Araqchi and US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff held talks in Oman on Saturday, during which Omani envoy Badr al-Busaidi shuttled between the two delegations sitting in different rooms at his palace in Muscat.

Both sides described the talks in Oman as “positive,” although a senior Iranian official told Reuters the meeting “was only aimed at setting the terms of possible future negotiations.”

Italian news agency ANSA reported that Italy had agreed to host the talks’ second round, and Iraq’s state news agency said Araqchi told his Iraqi counterpart that talks would be held “soon” in the Italian capital under Omani mediation.

Tehran has approached the talks warily, doubting the likelihood of an agreement and suspicious of Trump, who has threatened to bomb Iran if there is no deal.

Washington aims to halt Tehran’s sensitive uranium enrichment work – regarded by the United States, Israel and European powers as a path to nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is solely for civilian energy production.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Araqchi will “discuss the latest developments related to the Muscat talks” with Russian officials.

Moscow, a party to Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact, has supported Tehran’s right to have a civilian nuclear program.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on vital state matters, distrusts the United States, and Trump in particular.

But Khamenei has been forced to engage with Washington in search of a nuclear deal due to fears that public anger at home over economic hardship could erupt into mass protests and endanger the existence of the clerical establishment, four Iranian officials told Reuters in March.

Tehran’s concerns were exacerbated by Trump’s speedy revival of his “maximum pressure” campaign when he returned to the White House in January.

During his first term, Trump ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six world powers in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on the Islamic regime.

Since 2019, Iran has far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on uranium enrichment, producing stocks at a high level of fissile purity, well above what Western powers say is justifiable for a civilian energy program and close to that required for nuclear warheads.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has raised the alarm regarding Iran’s growing stock of 60% enriched uranium, and reported no real progress on resolving long-running issues, including the unexplained presence of uranium traces at undeclared sites.

IAEA head Rafael Grossi will visit Tehran on Wednesday, Iranian media reported, in an attempt to narrow gaps between Tehran and the agency over unresolved issues.

“Continued engagement and cooperation with the agency is essential at a time when diplomatic solutions are urgently needed,” Grossi said on X on Monday.

The post Iranian Foreign Minister to Visit Moscow Ahead of Second Iran-US Meeting first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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