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Israeli Government Skips Vote on Allowing Return of Palestinian Workers From West Bank
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a press conference with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel’s security cabinet on Sunday discussed but ultimately shelved a vote on whether to allow Palestinian workers from the West Bank to enter the country for the first time since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, leaving the decision in limbo until differences over the matter are resolved.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — as well as representatives from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Shin Bet security service, and Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), a unit within Israel’s Defense Ministry that implements civilian policy in the West Bank — reportedly supported letting in a certain number of workers. However, the measure was opposed by the Israel Police and several members of the governing coalition.
Amid such disagreement, Netanyahu did not bring the matter to a vote, fearing it would be voted down without a clear majority of support.
Earlier on Sunday, the socioeconomic cabinet, a 15-member body led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and consisting of ministers from the governing coalition, voted against the move to allow the entry of Palestinian workers. Smotrich said the socioeconomic cabinet recommended that the security cabinet not allow the West Bank Palestinians to reenter Israel.
“Money and building permits do not buy peace,” said Smotrich. “Anyone who killed us when there was no money will kill us also when there is money. The security of the citizens of Israel comes first.”
Palestinian laborers have not been allowed in Israel since Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas invaded the Jewish state on Oct. 7 and massacred 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The terrorists also abducted 240 people as hostages back to Hamas-ruled Gaza.
Israeli Economy Minister Nir Barkat, who has announced his intention to run in party elections to unseat Netanyahu, also spoke out against the prime minister to Hebrew media.
“You live in Oct. 6; you refuse to accept that the world order has changed,” he said. “The days when Israel depended on the working hands of Palestinian laborers are over. We must create alternatives. You want to bring the enemy into Israel? Are you crazy? You didn’t learn anything from Oct. 7.”
Prior to the Hamas atrocities and ensuing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, industries such as construction and agriculture were heavily dependent on Palestinian labor. According to government statistics, more than 100,000 Palestinians were in possession of work permits that allowed them to enter sovereign Israel daily to do their work. About 150,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and an additional 17,000 from Gaza had permits to enter Israel legally for work.
However, after Hamas’ murderous onslaught across southern Israel, the government shut down entry of workers from Gaza and the West Bank. The move, initially unchallenged in the public sphere, took away the laborers’ main income source. This reality prompted the security establishment to recommend allowing some workers in, both for economic reasons and out of fear of that if they stayed out of work for too long, they would resort to violence, according to Hebrew-language media.
As a result, the government decided to allow in 8,000 Palestinians to positions they deemed essential, such as in hotels where Israelis displaced by the war were staying that were short staffed.
According to the proposal being debated on Sunday evening, the government was discussing reissuing visas to Palestinians over the age of 35, with the justification that those above 35 are less likely to perpetrate terror attacks. This idea was opposed by Gideon Saar, a member of War Cabinet Benny Gantz’s party, who according to leaks from the meeting said the security establishment “forgot to mention how many attacks [on Oct. 7] were committed by married men over the age of 35.”
One of the proposals reportedly said the Israeli officials would look into an increase of foreign workers to help address the shortage of laborers. Since the outbreak of the war, many foreign workers have returned to their countries of origin, while domestically Israelis have been largely focused on the war effort.
The post Israeli Government Skips Vote on Allowing Return of Palestinian Workers From West Bank first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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