RSS
Palestinian gunman kills Israeli soldier outside of Kedumim, Bezalel Smotrich’s home settlement
(JTA) — A Palestinian gunman killed an Israeli soldier when security forces stopped the gunman while he was driving near the Kedumim settlement in the northern West Bank. The gunman was killed after the attack.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on Thursday, noting that Kedumim is where Bezalel Smotrich, the minister responsible for the West Bank, lives.
“Tell the criminal Zionist Minister Smotrich that al-Qassam almost knocked on your door,” the Jerusalem Post quoted Qassam Brigades, a militia affiliated with Hamas, as saying.
Hamas said the attack was retaliation for a massive Israeli raid this week in Jenin, where 12 Palestinians whom Israel says were armed militants were killed. An Israeli soldier was also killed in that raid.
The Israel Defense Forces said the gunman near Kedumim was killed after being scrutinized. “Security forces identified and stopped a suspicious vehicle for inspection,” the IDF spokesman said in a statement. “During the inspection, an assailant inside the vehicle opened fire toward them. The forces responded with live fire and the assailant fled. IDF soldiers and civilian security personnel pursued the assailant, and engaged and neutralized him.”
Reports said that the settlements civilian security team alerted the army after spotting a suspicious white van circling the settlement around 4 p.m. A joint army and civilian security team stopped the van and the gunman shot and killed one member of the team. Later Thursday, the IDF identified the slain soldier as Shilo Yosef Amir, 22.
Palestinian media identified the gunman as a 19-year-old from Qibya, a village near Ramallah.
“The enemy will know that its massacre in Jenin only increased our people’s insistence on resistance and adherence to its approach until liberation,” Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based news service, quoted Hamas as saying.
Palestinian-Israeli tensions have been mounting ting for over a year and intensified after the election last November of the most-right wing government in Israeli history. Smotrich, who is also the finance minister, is one of its most extremist members and has said he will use his powers as the minister running the West Bank to limit Palestinian growth and expand Israeli settlements.
Israeli authorities say most of the terrorist attacks on Israelis originate in Jenin. They say the raid this week, the biggest in years, was necessary because the Palestinian Authority is virtually powerless in the city, which is controlled by militias.
—
The post Palestinian gunman kills Israeli soldier outside of Kedumim, Bezalel Smotrich’s home settlement appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login