Middle-East
Palestinian mom fights to stave off punitive home demolition
Sanaa Shalaby says she had no idea what her estranged husband was up to until Israeli soldiers raided her home in the occupied West Bank last month.
Now she’s waging a legal battle to prevent Israel from demolishing the two-story villa where she lives with her three youngest children. It’s drawing attention to Israel’s policy of punitive home demolitions, which rights groups view as collective punishment.
Israeli security forces arrested her husband, Muntasser Shalaby, and accuse him of carrying out a May 2 drive-by shooting that killed an Israeli and wounded two others in the occupied West Bank. Israel says demolishing family homes is one of the only ways to deter attackers, who expect to be arrested or killed and who are often glorified by Palestinian factions.
The U.S. State Department has criticized such demolitions, and an internal Israeli military review in the 2000s raised questions about their effectiveness. The case of the Shalabys — who all have U.S. citizenship — could reignite the debate. Israel’s Supreme Court is expected to issue a final ruling on the demolition next week.
Read:Israel arrests Jerusalem activists in contested neighborhood
Sanaa and her husband had been estranged for nearly a decade. He lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he ran a profitable smoke shop and married three other women in private Muslim ceremonies not recognized by U.S. authorities.
“It’s allowed in our religion,” Sanaa said. “I didn’t agree to it.”
He came back to the West Bank in April for what she says was one of his yearly visits to see the children. He had also sought treatment for paranoia after having been institutionalized in the U.S. in recent years, according to a deposition he gave to her lawyer.
Sanaa said she knew nothing about the attack and had no indication he was planning anything.
“People commit crimes far worse than this in America and they don’t demolish their homes,” she said. “Whoever committed the crime should be punished, but it’s not the family’s fault.”
When the soldiers showed up after the attack they ransacked the home and briefly detained her 17-year-old son. She said they had a large dog that terrified her and her two younger children, a 12-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl. The soldiers came back weeks later to map out the house for demolition.
Now Sanaa says her children spend all day in bed and refuse to go to school. “I know my children and they were never like this,” she said. “My son, Ahmed, has to take his final exams and he can’t study. He opens his book, reads a couple pages and then he walks off.”
An Israeli official said the security agencies believe home demolitions are an effective deterrent. The official declined to comment on the Shalaby case, but said everyone is notified in advance and given the right to contest demolitions in court. Someone in Sanaa’s situation would have a “good legal case” if her account is independently verified, the official said.
“There are clear checks and balances,” the official said. “We are using it only when we feel that it is necessary, and only because we understand that this is an effective deterrent.”
Read:Jerusalem evictions that fueled Gaza war could still happen
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security procedures.
HaMoked, an Israeli rights group that has represented dozens of families seeking to halt punitive demolitions and is currently representing Sanaa, says such petitions rarely succeed. Of 83 cases brought since 2014, only 10 demolitions were prevented, it said. In the remaining cases, homes were partially or completely demolished, or apartments in multi-story buildings were permanently sealed off.
Jessica Montell, the group’s executive director, says that from a legal perspective the question of whether it serves as a deterrent is irrelevant.
“You don’t collectively punish innocent people just because they’re related to a criminal in the hope that that will deter future criminals. It’s an illegal and immoral policy regardless of the effectiveness,” she said.
The Israeli military prepared a report on punitive home demolitions in 2004 that led to a moratorium on the practice the following year, according to HaMoked, which received a Power Point presentation of the classified report in 2008 through a court petition.
The presentation raises concerns about the legality of such demolitions and international criticism of them. It also questions their effectiveness, saying the demolitions might even motivate more attacks. Such demolitions were mostly halted until 2014, when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed in the occupied West Bank.
A campaign by Jewish settlers to evict dozens of Palestinian families from their homes in east Jerusalem was one of the main causes of last month’s 11-day Gaza war, in which Israeli airstrikes demolished hundreds of homes in the militant-ruled territory.
Both forms of displacement summon bitter memories of what the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” when some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.
Shalaby said she has been in continual contact with the U.S. Embassy but was told it couldn’t do anything about the demolition.
Read:Gaza’s bereaved civilians fear justice will never come
The State Department declined to comment on the case, citing privacy concerns. But it said it was opposed to the punitive demolition of Palestinian homes. “The home of an entire family should not be demolished for the actions of one individual,” it said in a statement.
The Israeli Supreme Court will hear Sanaa’s case on June 17.
She hopes she will be able to remain in the house that she and her husband built in 2006. She said she had sold her bridal jewelry to help finance the construction. She raised her youngest children in the house, and an older daughter had her wedding there last year during a pandemic lockdown.
“My daughter got married here during the time of the coronavirus,” she said, pointing to the front courtyard and smiling at the memory. “It was better than any wedding hall.”
Israel arrests Jerusalem activists in contested neighborhood
Israeli police burst into the home of a prominent family in the contested Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem on Sunday, the family said, arresting a 23-year-old woman who has led protests against attempts by Jewish settlers to evict dozens of Palestinian families from their homes in the area. The young woman was later released, but her twin brother turned himself in and remained in custody.
The arrests came a day after Israeli police detained a well-known Al Jazeera reporter covering a demonstration in the neighborhood. The reporter, Givara Budeiri, was held for four hours before she was released and sent to a hospital to treat a broken hand. It was not clear how her hand was broken, but her boss blamed police mistreatment.
Earlier this year, heavy-handed police actions in Sheikh Jarrah and other parts of east Jerusalem fueled weeks of unrest that helped spark an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
Those tensions are simmering again this week — and could flare anew if Israeli ultranationalists follow through on plans to march Thursday through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Israeli police were expected to hold consultations on whether the parade, which was originally set to take place when the war erupted on May 10, would be allowed to proceed.
Read:Jerusalem evictions that fueled Gaza war could still happen
Renewed violence could complicate the task of embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents, who formed a fragile and disparate coalition last week, of passing a parliamentary vote of confidence needed for them to replace him and take office. A close ally of Netanyahu oversees the police.
In Sheikh Jarrah, Jewish settlers have been waging a decades-long campaign to evict the families from densely populated Palestinian neighborhoods just outside the walls of the Old City. The area is one of the most sensitive parts of east Jerusalem, which is home to sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims and which Israel captured in 1967 and annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Israel views the entire city as its capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
Settler groups and Israeli officials say the Sheikh Jarrah dispute is merely about real estate. But Palestinians say they are victims of a discriminatory system. The settlers are using a 1970 law that allows Jews to reclaim formerly Jewish properties lost during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, a right denied to Palestinians who lost property in the same conflict.
The al-Kurd family in Sheikh Jarrah has been at the forefront of months of protests against the planned evictions.
Early Sunday, police took Muna al-Kurd, 23, from her home.
Her father, Nabil al-Kurd, said police “stormed the house in large numbers and in a barbaric manner.”
“I was sleeping, and I found them in my bedroom,” he said. Police then searched the house and arrested his daughter. Video posted on social media showed her being taken away in handcuffs.
Read:Netanyahu opponents reach coalition deal to oust Israeli PM
“The reason for the arrest is that we say that we will not leave our homes, and they do not want anyone to express his opinion, they do not want anyone to tell the truth,” he said. “They want to silence us.”
Police also searched for her brother, Muhammad al-Kurd, but he was not there. Later, he turned himself in to Jerusalem police.
The siblings’ lawyer, Nasser Odeh, told journalists outside the police station that his clients were accused of “disturbing public security and participation in nationalistic riots.”
Late Sunday, Muna al-Kurd was released. But before she was freed, police briefly clashed with a crowd outside the station, throwing stun grenades. Her brother remained in custody.
The arrests came a day after Al Jazeera’s Budeiri, wearing a protective vest marked “press,” was dragged away by police at a protest in Sheikh Jarrah.
According to witnesses, police asked Budeiri for identification. Colleagues said police did not allow her to return to her car to retrieve her government-issued press card. Instead, they said she was surrounded by police, handcuffed and dragged into a vehicle with darkened windows.
In video footage posted online, Budeiri can be seen in handcuffs, while clutching her notebook and shouting, “Don’t touch, enough, enough.”
Read:Gaza’s bereaved civilians fear justice will never come
Israeli police said entrance to the neighborhood is limited due to the tense situation, and only accredited journalists are allowed in. They said that when Budeiri was unable to provide her press pass, police “removed her.” They added that Budeiri was arrested after becoming hostile and pushing an officer.
“The Israel Police will allow the freedom of press coverage, provided that these are done in accordance (with) the law while maintaining public order,” according to a statement. The statement did not reference her broken hand.
Budeiri was held for four hours before she was released and sent to the hospital, said Walid Omary, the Jerusalem bureau chief for Al Jazeera. In addition to the broken hand, Omary said Budeiri also suffered bruises on her body. He said her cameraman’s video camera was also heavily damaged by police.
As part of her release, Budeiri is banned from returning to the neighborhood for 15 days, Omary said.
“They are attacking the journalists in east Jerusalem because they don’t want them to continue covering what’s happening inside Sheikh Jarrah,” he said.
The Foreign Press Association, which represents hundreds of journalists working for international news organizations, said the treatment of Budeiri was “the latest in a long line of heavy-handed tactics by Israeli police” against the media in recent weeks. It said journalists have been hit by stun grenades, tear gas, sponge-tipped bullets and putrid-smelling water.
“We call on police to punish the officers who needlessly injured an experienced journalist and broke professional equipment. And once again, we urge police to uphold Israel’s pledges to respect freedom of the press and to allow journalists to do their jobs freely and without fear of injury and intimidation,” the FPA said.
Read:Netanyahu could lose PM job as rivals attempt to join forces
Last month’s war was triggered by weeks of clashes in Jerusalem between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a flashpoint holy site.
The war erupted on May 10 when Hamas, calling itself the defender of the holy city, launched a barrage of rockets at Jerusalem. Some 254 people were killed in Gaza and 13 in Israel before a cease-fire took effect on May 21.
Al Jazeera’s acting director general, Mostefa Souag, noted that Budeiri’s detention came after Israel’s May 15 war-time destruction of a Gaza high-rise that housed the local office of Al Jazeera. The tower also housed The Associated Press’ office.
Israel has alleged that Hamas military intelligence was operating from the building. The AP has said it has no indication of a purported Hamas presence and has called for an independent investigation.
Jerusalem evictions that fueled Gaza war could still happen
A long-running campaign by Jewish settlers to evict dozens of Palestinian families in east Jerusalem is still underway, even after it fueled weeks of unrest and helped ignite an 11-day Gaza war.
An intervention by Israel’s attorney general at the height of the unrest has put the most imminent evictions on hold. But rights groups say evictions could still proceed in the coming months as international attention wanes, potentially igniting another round of bloodshed.
The settlers have been waging a decades-long campaign to evict the families from densely populated Palestinian neighborhoods in the so-called Holy Basin just outside the walls of the Old City, in one of the most sensitive parts of east Jerusalem.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, home to holy sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, in the 1967 war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. Israel views the entire city as its capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
Read:Netanyahu opponents reach coalition deal to oust Israeli PM
The settlers are using a 1970 law that allows Jews to reclaim properties lost during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, a right denied to Palestinians who lost property in the same conflict, including Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The Israeli rights group Ir Amim, which closely follows the various court cases, estimates that at least 150 households in the neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan have been served with eviction notices and are at various stages in a long legal process.
The plight of four extended families comprising six households in Sheikh Jarrah, who were at risk of imminent eviction, triggered protests that eventually merged with demonstrations over the policing of a flashpoint holy site. After warning Israel to halt the evictions and withdraw from the site, Hamas fired long-range rockets at Jerusalem on May 10, triggering heavy fighting between Israel and the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza.
As tensions rose, Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit secured the postponement of the final hearing in the case of the four families. Another group of families requested that the attorney general also intervene in their cases, securing a delay. Israelis are currently trying to form a new government, adding more uncertainty to the process.
That has bought time for the families, but nothing has been resolved.
“Everything is very much hanging in the balance,” said Amy Cohen, a spokeswoman for Ir Amim. Rights advocates fear Israel will proceed with the evictions once the furor dies down and international attention turns elsewhere.
Read:Gaza’s bereaved civilians fear justice will never come
“We’re talking about over 1,000 Palestinians in both these two areas that are at risk of mass displacement,” Cohen said. “Because these measures are taking place in such an incremental manner, it’s so much easier to dismiss.”
The families in Sheikh Jarrah are stuck in limbo. A total of at least 65 families in two areas of the neighborhood are threatened with eviction, according to Ir Amim, including a group of families set to be evicted in August.
Banners hang in the street in Sheikh Jarrah, and small, occasional protests are still held there. Police man checkpoints at either end of the road and keep watch as Jewish settlers — who seized one of the homes in 2009 — come and go.
The settlers say they acquired the land from Jews who owned it before the 1948 war, when Jordan captured what is now east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. Jordan settled several Palestinian families on the land in the early 1950s after they fled from what is now Israel during the 1948 war. Settlers began trying to evict them shortly after Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 war.
For Palestinians, the evictions conjure bitter memories of what they refer to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of Israel’s creation, when some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the population — fled or were driven from their homes as the new state battled five Arab armies. Most ended up in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring countries.
“This isn’t just about Sheikh Jarrah, it’s about the entire Israeli occupation, that’s the problem. They aren’t going to stop here,” says Saleh al-Diab, who was born, grew up, married and raised his own children in one of the homes under threat in Sheikh Jarrah.
“You lose your home to them in 1948 and then they come back after 1967 and take your home again,” he said.
Read:Netanyahu could lose PM job as rivals attempt to join forces
Yaakov Fauci, a settler from Long Island, New York, who gained internet fame after a widely circulated video showed a Palestinian resident scolding him for stealing her home, says the Palestinians are squatting on private property.
“They’ve lived here since 1956. This is not exactly ancestral land going back to the times of Abraham,” he said. Fauci says he is a tenant and has no personal involvement in the legal dispute, but he insists the land belongs to the Jewish people.
“We don’t want to cause them any pain and suffering, but we need to have our land back,” he said. “If there are people there, they have to unfortunately get out.”
Ir Amim estimates that settler organizations have already evicted 10 families in Sheikh Jarrah and at least 74 families in Silwan, a few kilometers (miles) away, in the last few decades.
The Israeli government and a settler organization that markets properties in Sheikh Jarrah did not respond to requests for comment. Israel has previously said the evictions are a private real estate dispute and accused Hamas of seizing on the issue to incite violence.
The settler movement enjoys strong support from the Israeli government and the right-wing parties that dominate Israeli politics. The settlers have benefitted from Israeli policies going back to 1967 that have encouraged the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem while severely restricting the growth of Palestinian communities.
Read:Israel, Egypt talk truce with Hamas, rebuilding Gaza Strip
Today, more than 700,000 Jewish settlers live in both territories, mostly in built-up residential towns and neighborhoods. The Palestinians and much of the international community view the settlements as a violation of international law and a major obstacle to peace.
Ir Amim says Israeli authorities could intervene in any number of ways to prevent the Jerusalem evictions, including by modifying the law that allows settlers to take over such properties.
Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union, has demanded that Israel rein in the settlers as part of the informal truce brokered by Egypt that ended the Gaza war. Egyptian mediators are exploring ways to prevent the evictions, and previous cease-fires have included significant concessions to Hamas.
A war that destroyed hundreds of homes in Gaza may have ensured that residents of Sheikh Jarrah can remain in theirs, at least for now.
In Syria camp, forgotten children are molded by IS ideology
At the sprawling al-Hol camp in northeast Syria, children pass their days roaming the dirt roads, playing with mock swords and black banners in imitation of Islamic State group militants. Few can read or write. For some, the only education is from mothers giving them IS propaganda.
It has been more than two years since the Islamic State group’s self-declared “caliphate” was brought down. And it has been more than two years that some 27,000 children have been left to languish in al-Hol camp, which houses families of IS members.
Most of them not yet teenagers, they are spending their childhood in a limbo of miserable conditions with no schools, no place to play or develop, and seemingly no international interest in resolving their situation.
Only one institution is left to mold them: remnants of the Islamic State group. IS operatives and sympathizers have networks within the camp, and the group has sleeper cells around eastern Syria that continue to wage a low-level insurgency, awaiting an opportunity for a revival.
Kurdish authorities and aid groups fear the camp will create a new generation of militants. They are pleading with home countries to take the women and children back. The problem is that home governments often see the children as posing a danger rather than as needing rescue.
Read: Israel says it strikes targets in Syria after missile attack
“These children are ISIS’s first victims,” said Save the Children’s Syria Response Director Sonia Khush. “A 4-year-old boy does not really have an ideology. He has protection and learning needs.”
“The camps are no place for children to live or grow up,” she said. “It does not allow them to learn, socialize or be children ... It does not allow them to heal from all that they have lived through.”
In the fenced-off camp, row after row of tents stretch for nearly a square mile. Conditions are rough. Multiple families are often crammed together; medical facilities are minimal, access to clean water and sanitation limited; the tents flood in the winter, and fires have broken out from use of gas stoves for cooking or heat.
Some 50,000 Syrians and Iraqis are housed there. Nearly 20,000 of them are children. Most of the rest are women, the wives and widows of fighters.
In a separate, heavily guarded section of the camp known as the annex are housed another 2,000 women from 57 other countries, considered the most die-hard IS supporters, along with their children, numbering 8,000.
The IS influence was clear during a rare visit by The Associated Press to the camp last month. Around a dozen young boys in the annex hurled stones at the team, which was accompanied by Kurdish guards. A few waved sharp pieces of metal like swords.
Read: 'No Sweets': For Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a tough Ramadan
“We will kill you because you are an infidel,” screamed one child who looked around 10. “You are the enemy of God. We are the Islamic State. You are a devil, and I will kill you with a knife. I will blow you up with a grenade.”
Another child slid his hand across his neck and said, “With the knife, God willing.”
At a market inside the annex where women sold shampoo, bottled water and used clothes, one woman looked at a reporter and said, “The Islamic State endures” — a slogan of the group.
During its nearly 5-year rule over much of Syria and Iraq, IS made a priority out of indoctrinating children in its brutal interpretation of Islamic law, aiming to entrench its “caliphate.” It trained children as fighters, taught them how to carry out beheadings using dolls, and even had them carry out killings of captives in propaganda videos.
A Russian-speaking woman in the annex, who identified herself as Madina Bakaraw, said she feared for the future of the children, including her own son and daughter.
“We want our children to learn. Our children should be able to read, to write, to count,” said the 42-year-old, who was fully covered in black, including her face and hands. She said her husband was dead but refused to say how. “We want to go home and want our children to have a childhood.”
The women in the camp are a mix. Some remain devoted to IS, but others became disillusioned by its brutal rule or by its defeat. Others were never ideologically committed but were brought into the “caliphate” by husbands or family.
Read:Pleas for more aid to Syria: 'We don't have nearly enough'
The camp began to be used to house the families of IS fighters in late 2018 as U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces recaptured territory in eastern Syria from the militants. In March 2019, they seized the last IS-held villages, ending the “caliphate” that the group declared over large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
Since then, the Kurdish administrators running eastern Syria have struggled to repatriate camp residents in the face of local opposition to their return or because of the residents’ own fears of revenge attacks. Earlier this year, hundreds of Syrian families left the camp after a deal was reached with their tribes to accept them. Last month, 100 Iraqi families were repatriated to live in a camp in Iraq, but still face sharp opposition among their neighbors.
Some former Soviet Union states have let back some of their citizens, but other Arab, European and African countries have repatriated only minimal numbers or have refused.
“Those children are there through no fault of their own, and they should not pay the consequences of their parents’ choices,” Ted Chaiban, Mideast and North Africa director of the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, told the AP. Chaiban visited al-Hol in December.
The Kurdish-led administration says it doesn’t have the resources to maintain and guard the camp.
If home countries won’t repatriate, at least they should help set up facilities to improve children’s lives, said Shixmus Ehmed, head of the administration’s department for refugees and displaced.
Read:10 years on, Syria is a hungry nation
“We have suggested schools be opened, as well as rehabilitation programs and fields to do sports,” Ehmed said. “But so far, there is nothing.”
In the camp’s main section, UNICEF and Kurdish authorities had set up 25 learning centers, but they have been closed since March 2020 because of COVID-19. UNICEF and its partners have distributed books for kids to study on their own.
In the annex, authorities have been unable to set up learning centers. Instead, children there are largely taught by their mothers, mostly with IS ideology, according to U.N. and Kurdish officials.
Though the annex residents are considered the strongest IS supporters, the group has a presence in the main section housing Syrians and Iraqis as well.
In late March, the Kurdish-led forces assisted by U.S. forces swept through the camp, seizing 125 suspected IS operatives, including Iraqis and Syrians.
Those sleeper cells had been carrying out a campaign of killings against residents suspected of abandoning the group’s ideology, working as informants or defying its rules by, for example, working as prostitutes for survival. At least 47 people were killed this year, according to Kurdish-led forces, while U.S. officials put the number at 60.
Read: UN chief asks for continuing to reach all Syrians in need of humanitarian assistance
A Syrian woman who left the camp with her five grandchildren earlier this year told the AP she knew of several women killed for alleged prostitution. In each case, a masked man appeared at the woman’s tent, identified himself as an IS member and shot the woman in front of neighbors or even her children, she said.
“The next morning, news spread around the camp,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity for her security.
She said it was common even in the main part of the camp to see children chanting “the Islamic State endures” and carrying a stick with a black bag tied to it to symbolize an IS flag.
Amal Mohammed, a 40-year-old Iraqi in the camp, said her wish is to return to Iraq where her daughters can live a normal life.
“What is the future of these children?” she said. “They will have no future ... Here they are learning nothing.”
Netanyahu opponents reach coalition deal to oust Israeli PM
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents announced Wednesday that they have reached a deal to form a new governing coalition, paving the way for the ouster of the longtime Israeli leader.
The dramatic announcement by opposition leader Yair Lapid and his main coalition partner, Naftali Bennett, came shortly before a midnight deadline and prevented what could have been Israel’s fifth consecutive election in just over two years.
“This government will work for all the citizens of Israel, those that voted for it and those that didn’t. It will do everything to unite Israeli society,” Lapid said.
The agreement still needs to be approved by the Knesset, or parliament, in a vote that is expected to take place early next week. If it goes through, Lapid and a diverse array of partners that span the Israeli political spectrum will end Netanyahu’s record-setting but divisive 12-year rule.
Netanyahu, desperate to remain in office while he fights corruption charges, is expected to do everything possible in the coming days to prevent the new coalition from taking power. If he fails, he will be pushed into the opposition.
Read:Gaza’s bereaved civilians fear justice will never come
The deal comes at a tumultuous time for Israel, which fought an 11-day war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip last month while also experiencing mob violence between Jews and Arabs in cities across the country. The country also is emerging from a coronavirus crisis that caused deep economic damage and exposed tensions between the secular majority and the ultra-Orthodox minority.
Under the agreement, Lapid and Bennett will split the job of prime minister in a rotation. Bennett, a former ally of Netanyahu, is to serve the first two years, while Lapid is to serve the final two years — though it is far from certain their fragile coalition will last that long.
The historic deal also includes a small Islamist party, the United Arab List, which would make it the first Arab party ever to be part of a governing coalition.
In the coming days, Netanyahu is expected to continue to put pressure on hard-liners in the emerging coalition to defect and join his religious and nationalist allies. Knesset Speaker Yariv Levin, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, may also use his influence to delay the required parliamentary vote. There was no immediate comment from Netanyahu or Likud.
Lapid called on Levin to convene the Knesset for the vote as soon as possible.
Netanyahu has been the most dominant player in Israeli politics over the past three decades — serving as prime minister since 2009 in addition to an earlier term in the late 1990s.
Despite a long list of achievements, including last year’s groundbreaking diplomatic agreements with four Arab countries, he has become a polarizing figure since he was indicted on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in 2019.
Read:Netanyahu could lose PM job as rivals attempt to join forces
Each of the past four elections was seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s fitness to rule. And each ended in deadlock, with both Netanyahu’s supporters as well as his secular, Arab and dovish opponents falling short of a majority. A unity government formed with his main rival last year collapsed after just six months.
The new deal required a reshuffling of the Israeli political constellation. Three of the parties are led by hard-line former Netanyahu allies who had personal feuds with him, while the United Arab List made history as a kingmaker, using its leverage to seek benefits for the country’s Arab minority.
“This is the first time an Arab party is a partner in the formation of a government,” said the party’s leader, Mansour Abbas. “This agreement has a lot of things for the benefit of Arab society, and Israeli society in general.”
Among the concessions secured by Abbas were agreements for legal recognition of Bedouin villages in southern Israel, an economic plan for investing 30 billion shekels ($9.2 billion) in Arab towns and cities, and a five-year plan for combating violent crime in Arab communities, according to Army Radio.
Lapid, 57, entered parliament in 2013 after a successful career as a newspaper columnist, TV anchor and author. His new Yesh Atid party ran a successful rookie campaign, landing Lapid the powerful post of finance minister.
But he and Netanyahu did not get along, and the coalition quickly crumbled. Yesh Atid has been in the opposition since 2015 elections. The party is popular with secular, middle-class voters and has been critical of Netanyahu’s close ties with ultra-Orthodox parties and said the prime minister should step down while on trial for corruption charges.
The ultra-Orthodox parties have long used their outsize political power to secure generous budgets for their religious institutions and exemptions from compulsory military service. The refusal of many ultra-Orthodox Jews to obey coronavirus safety restrictions last year added to widespread resentment against them.
Read:Israel, Egypt talk truce with Hamas, rebuilding Gaza Strip
Bennett, 49, is a former top aide to Netanyahu whose small Yamina party caters to religious and nationalist hard-liners. Bennett was a successful high-tech entrepreneur and leader of the West Bank settler movement before entering politics.
In order to secure the required parliamentary majority, Lapid had to bring together eight parties that have little in common.
Their partners include a pair of dovish, left-wing parties that support Palestinian independence and three hard-line parties that oppose major concessions to the Palestinians and support West Bank settlements. Lapid’s Yesh Atid and Blue and White, a centrist party headed by Defense Minister Benny Gantz, and the United Arab List are the remaining members.
The coalition members hope their shared animosity toward Netanyahu will provide enough incentive to find some common ground.
“Today, we succeeded. We made history,” said Merav Michaeli, leader of the dovish Labor Party.
The negotiations went down to the wire, with Labor and Yamina feuding over the makeup of a parliamentary committee.
Earlier this week, when Bennett said he would join the coalition talks, he said that everyone would have to compromise and give up parts of their dreams.
Read:Blinken claims progress in effort to boost Gaza truce
In order to form a government, a party leader must secure the support of a 61-seat majority in the 120-seat parliament. Because no single party controls a majority on its own, coalitions are usually built with smaller partners. Thirteen parties of various sizes are in the current parliament.
As leader of the largest party, Netanyahu was given the first opportunity by the country’s figurehead president to form a coalition. But he was unable to secure a majority with his traditional religious and nationalist allies.
After Netanyahu’s failure to form a government, Lapid was then given four weeks to cobble together a coalition. That window was set to expire at midnight.
Lapid already faced a difficult challenge bringing together such a disparate group of partners. But then war broke out with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip on May 10. The fighting, along with the eruption of Arab-Jewish mob violence in Israeli cities during the war, put the coalition talks on hold.
But after a cease-fire was reached on May 21, the negotiations resumed, and Lapid raced to sew up a deal. He reached a breakthrough on Sunday when Bennett agreed to join the opposition coalition.
Gaza’s bereaved civilians fear justice will never come
The al-Kawlaks, a family of four generations living next door to each other in downtown Gaza City, were utterly unprepared for the inferno.
Like others, they were terrified by the heavy bombing in Israel’s fourth war with Gaza’s Hamas rulers that began May 10. The explosions felt more powerful than in previous fighting. At night, parents and children slept in one room so they would live or die together.
Yet the relatively well-to-do Rimal neighborhood where the family lived in a cluster of apartment buildings seemed somewhat safer than areas along Gaza’s border with Israel, which had been devastated in this and past fighting.
Then one night disaster struck. Azzam al-Kawlak’s four children had gone to bed, and he and his wife were preparing to join them.
At around 1 a.m. on May 16, a thunderous boom shook his top-floor apartment, followed quickly by a second and third. “The floor cracked below our feet and the furniture was thrown to the wall,” the 42-year-old engineer said.
The four-story building collapsed, with Azzam’s apartment dropping to the ground. The family escaped through the kitchen balcony, now almost ground level. Bizarrely, the laundry hanging on a clothesline seemed untouched.
Read:Israel, Egypt talk truce with Hamas, rebuilding Gaza Strip
It took a day for the full horror to emerge, as bodies and survivors were pulled from the rubble. The family and neighbors used ropes to clear chunks of concrete, working alongside ill-equipped rescue teams.
By nightfall, the family’s death toll stood at 22. Eight bodies were dug out of Azzam’s building and 14 from the one next door. The dead included 89-year-old family patriarch Amin, his son Fawaz, 62, his grandson Sameh, 28, and his great-grandson, 6-month-old Qusai.
Just a day earlier, Qusai’s parents had celebrated a small milestone, his first tooth. Azzam’s two younger brothers were killed. Three nieces — 5-year-old Rula, 10-year-old Yara and 12-year-old Hala — were found in a tight embrace, their bodies the last to be pulled out, said Azzam’s surviving older brother, Awni.
The bombing along several hundred meters (yards) of al-Wahda Street took just minutes. In all, it brought down three houses — two in the al-Kawlak compound and one nearby — and killed a total of 43 people, making it the single deadliest air raid of the 11-day war.
Israel said the target was a Hamas tunnel underneath the street, part of what it called a roughly 350-kilometer-long (220-mile) underground network. The tunnels served offensive and defensive purposes, military officials said, accusing Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman, said during a war-time briefing that the military target in Rimal collapsed, causing nearby houses and their supporting structures to collapse as well. “That caused a large amount of civilian casualties, which were not the aim,” he said.
Read:Blinken claims progress in effort to boost Gaza truce
He said the army was reviewing the incident and “adjusting the analysis and the ordnance used in the future” to prevent similar events from occurring again. “It’s not a totally mathematic exercise in choosing the ordnance,” he said.
He said Israel carried out dozens of airstrikes in areas just as densely populated, with far fewer casualties.
Iran’s largest navy ship catches fire, sinks in Gulf of Oman
The largest ship in the Iranian navy caught fire and later sank Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman under unclear circumstances, semiofficial news agencies reported.
The Fars and Tasnim news agencies said efforts failed to save the support ship Kharg, named after the island that serves as the main oil terminal for Iran.
Read: Iran successfully tests domestic coronavirus vaccine on humans
The blaze began around 2:25 a.m. and firefighters tried to contain it, Fars said. The vessel sank near the Iranian port of Jask, some 1,270 kilometers (790 miles) southeast of Tehran on the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf.
Photos circulated on Iranian social media of sailors wearing life jackets evacuating the vessel as a fire burned behind them. State TV and semiofficial news agencies referred to the Kharg as a “training ship.” Fars published video of thick, black smoke rising from the ship early Wednesday morning.
Satellite photos from Planet Labs Inc. analyzed by The Associated Press showed the Kharg off to the west of Jask on Tuesday. Satellites from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that track fires from space detected a blaze at the site of the Jask that started just before the time of the fire reported by Fars.
Read: Iran a key topic as US envoy Blinken meets UK counterpart
The Kharg serves as one of a few vessels in the Iranian navy capable of providing replenishment at sea for its other ships. It also can lift heavy cargo and serve as a launch point for helicopters. The ship, built in Britain and launched in 1977, entered the Iranian navy in 1984 after lengthy negotiations that followed Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Iranian officials offered no cause for the fire aboard the Kharg. However, it comes after a series of mysterious explosions that began in 2019 targeting ships in the Gulf of Oman. The U.S. Navy later accused Iran of targeting the ships with limpet mines, timed explosives typically attached by divers to a vessel’s hull.
Read: US Navy fires warning shots in new tense encounter with Iran
Iran denied targeting the vessels, though U.S. Navy footage showed members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard removing one unexploded limpet mine from a vessel. The incidents came amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
The sinking of the Kharg marks the latest naval disaster for Iran. In 2020 during an Iranian military training exercise, a missile mistakenly struck a naval vessel near the port of Jask, killing19 sailors and wounding 15. Also in 2018, an Iranian navy destroyer sank in the Caspian Sea.
Netanyahu could lose PM job as rivals attempt to join forces
A former ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said he would seek to form a coalition government with the Israeli leader’s opponents, taking a major step toward ending the rule of the longtime premier.
The dramatic announcement by Naftali Bennett, leader of the small hardline Yamina party, set the stage for a series of steps that could push Netanyahu and his dominant Likud party into the opposition in the coming week.
While Bennett and his new partners, headed by opposition leader Yair Lapid, still face some obstacles, the sides appeared to be serious about reaching a deal and ending the deadlock that has plunged the country into four elections in the past two years.
“It’s my intention to do my utmost in order to form a national unity government along with my friend Yair Lapid, so that, God willing, together we can save the country from a tailspin and return Israel to its course,” Bennett said.
READ: Israel, Egypt talk truce with Hamas, rebuilding Gaza Strip
The pair have until Wednesday to complete a deal in which each is expected to serve two years as prime minister in a rotation deal, with Bennett holding the job first. Lapid’s Yesh Atid party said negotiating teams were to meet later Sunday.
Bennett, a former top aide to Netanyahu who has held senior Cabinet posts, shares the prime minister’s hard-line ideology. He is a former leader of the West Bank settlement movement and heads a small party whose base includes religious and nationalist Jews. Yet he has had a strained and complicated relationship with his one-time mentor due to personal differences.
Bennett said there was no feasible way after the deadlocked March 23 election to form a right-wing government favored by Netanyahu. He said another election would yield the same results and said it was time to end the cycle.
“A government like this will succeed only if we work together as a group,” he said. He said everyone “will need to postpone fulfilling part of their dreams. We will focus on what can be done, instead of fighting all day on what’s impossible.”
If Bennett and Lapid and their other partners can wrap up a deal, it would end, at least for the time being, the record-setting tenure of Netanyahu, the most dominant figure in Israeli politics over the past three decades. Netanyahu has served as prime minister for the past 12 years and also held an earlier term in the late 1990s.
In his own televised statement, Netanyahu accused Bennett of betraying the Israeli right wing and urged nationalist politicians not to join what he called a “leftist government.”
“A government like this is a danger to the security of Israel, and is also a danger to the future of the state,” he said.
Despite his electoral dominance, Netanyahu has become a polarizing figure since he was indicted on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in late 2019. Each of the past four elections was seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s fitness to rule, and each ended in deadlock.
Netanyahu is desperate to stay in power while he is on trial. He has used his office as a stage to rally his base and lash out against police, prosecutors and the media.
In order to form a government, a party leader must secure the support of a 61-seat majority in parliament. Because no single party controls a majority on its own, coalitions are usually built with smaller partners. Thirteen parties of various sizes are in the current parliament.
As leader of the largest party, Netanyahu was given the first opportunity by the country’s figurehead president to form a coalition. But he was unable to secure a majority with his traditional religious and nationalist allies.
Netanyahu even attempted to court a small Islamist Arab party but was thwarted by a small ultranationalist party with a racist anti-Arab agenda. Although Arabs make up some 20% of Israel’s population, an Arab party has never before sat in an Israeli coalition government.
After Netanyahu’s failure to form a government, Lapid was then given four weeks to cobble together a coalition. He has until Wednesday to complete the task.
While Bennett’s Yamina party controls just seven seats in parliament, he has emerged as a kingmaker of sorts by providing the necessary support to secure a majority. If he is successful, he would represent the smallest party ever to lead an Israeli government.
Lapid already faced a difficult challenge, given the broad range of parties in the anti-Netanyahu bloc that have little in common. They include dovish left-wing parties, a pair of right-wing nationalist parties, including Bennett’s Yamina, and most likely the Islamist United Arab List.
Lapid’s task was made even more difficult after war broke out with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip on May 10. His coalition talks were put on hold during the 11 days of fighting.
But with Wednesday’s deadline looming, negotiations have kicked into high gear. Lapid has reached coalition deals with three other parties so far. If he finalizes a deal with Bennett, the remaining partners are expected to quickly fall into place.
They would then have roughly one week to present their coalition to parliament for a formal vote of confidence allowing it to take office.
Yohanan Plessner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, said Netanyahu will try to undermine those efforts until the end.
READ: Bangladesh urges UN to take decisive action against Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights
Netanyahu’s main strategy, he said, would be to try to appeal to hard-liners in both Bennett’s party and New Hope, another hard-line party led by a former Netanyahu confidant, to withdraw their support for the new coalition. A defection of just one or two lawmakers could prevent Lapid from mustering a majority and force another election.
“Anything might happen,” Plessner said. “I would wait for the final vote to go through.”
Even if Lapid and Bennett manage to put together a government, Netanyahu is unlikely to disappear, Plessner said.
Netanyahu could remain as opposition leader, working to exploit the deep ideological differences among his opponents to cause the coalition to fracture.
“History teaches us it would be unwise to write him off,” he said.
Israel, Egypt talk truce with Hamas, rebuilding Gaza Strip
Egypt and Israel held high-level talks in both countries Sunday to shore up a fragile truce between Israel and the Hamas militant group and rebuild the Gaza Strip after a punishing 11-day war that left parts of the seaside enclave in ruins.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukry received his Israeli counterpart, Gabi Ashkenazi, in Cairo on Sunday as part of Egypt’s efforts to revive the Mideast peace process and to “build on the cease-fire in Gaza,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said.
Spokesman Ahmed Hafez said Shukry called for establishing an atmosphere to relaunch “serious and constructive” negotiations between the two sides. He also urged both sides to refrain from “any measures” that could hamper efforts to revive the Mideast peace process.
The hourslong visit was the first public one by an Israeli foreign minister to Egypt since 2008, the Israeli Embassy in Cairo said. It wrote that the two ministers would discuss topics including the cease-fire and the release of Israeli soldiers and citizens being held by Hamas.
READ: Bangladesh urges UN to take decisive action against Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights
“We will discuss establishing a permanent ceasefire with #Hamas, a mechanism for providing humanitarian aid & the reconstruction of #Gaza with a pivotal role played by the intl. community,” Ashkenazi tweeted upon arrival in Cairo.
Hamas is holding the remains of two Israeli soldiers killed in a 2014 war. It also is holding two Israeli civilians who were captured after entering Gaza.
As part of the cease-fire efforts, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosted Abbas Kamel, Egypt’s intelligence chief, in Jerusalem. Netanyahu said he had raised the issue of returning the remains of soldiers and the two civilians as well as Israeli demands to prevent Hamas from gaining strength or diverting resources meant for the civilian population.
An Egyptian official said Kamel would also meet with Palestinian officials in the West Bank before heading to Gaza for talks with Hamas leaders. The intelligence agency, which is Egypt’s equivalent of the CIA, usually handles Egypt’s ties with Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza.
Egypt’s state-run MENA news agency said Kamel would convey a message from el-Sissi to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, affirming “Egypt’s full support to the Palestinian people.”
It said Cairo would host talks among Palestinian factions to achieve unity between those in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied areas of the West Bank. The report did not provide further details.
During a visit to the region last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was seeking to bolster Abbas and weaken Hamas as part of the cease-fire efforts.
Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas’ forces in 2007, leaving the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority in charge of administering autonomous zones in some 40% of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist, is branded a terrorist group by Israel, the U.S. and other Western countries.
READ: Form independent int’l commission to take legal action against Israel: FS
Discussions with Israeli officials have touched on a set of measures that would allow materials, electricity and fuel into the territory, as well as the possible expansion of maritime space allowed for Gaza fishermen, the Egyptian official said.
“The role of the Palestinian Authority is central in the talks,” he said. “Egypt is seeking to have it deeply involved in the reconstruction process.”
The Egyptian official, who had close knowledge of the proceedings that led to the cease-fire, spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t allowed to brief reporters.
The 11-day war killed more than 250 people, mostly Palestinians, and caused heavy destruction in the impoverished coastal territory. Preliminary estimates have put the damage in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Egypt was key in mediating a deal between the two sides.
The official said Egypt has offered guarantees that rebuilding funds will not find its way to Hamas, possibly going through an international committee led by Egypt or the United Nations that would oversee the spending.
Kamel has also discussed the situation in Jerusalem and ways to ease tensions in the holy city. That would include understandings at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where Israeli police repeatedly clashed with Palestinian demonstrators, and how to prevent the planned eviction of Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in east Jerusalem, the official said.
Egypt last week invited Israel, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority for separate talks in Cairo to consolidate the Cairo-mediated cease-fire and accelerate the reconstruction process in Gaza.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is expected to visit Cairo this week, according to the group’s spokesman Abdelatif al-Qanou, who also said Hamas is open to discussing a prisoner swap with Israel.
Ex-premier’s graft case a test of justice in oil-rich Kuwait
Where is Sheikh Jaber? Kuwait was abuzz with the question as citizens on social media demanded to know the whereabouts of their 79-year-old former prime minister. He’d been ordered detained pending trial in an unprecedented move last month over the alleged embezzlement of millions of dollars from a military aid fund.
When the scandal involving the sheikh and another royal family member erupted into public view nearly two years ago, it unleashed a rare wave of street protests. It prompted the Cabinet’s resignation and forced a reckoning in the Gulf Arab state about endemic corruption that has entrapped ministers and stained the country’s sprawling bureaucracy for generations.
Activists believe corruption runs rampant through the region of oil-rich Gulf Arab sheikhdoms, but public criminal cases against senior officials and royal family members remain rare, typically playing out behind palace doors.
That may be changing, however, with recent explosive feuds over money laundering in Kuwait, a major corruption sweep in Saudi Arabia and last week’s arrest of Qatar’s powerful finance minister in an embezzlement probe.
Now, Kuwait’s justice system is testing government pledges to hold ministers accountable for $790 million gone missing from the Defense Ministry fund years ago.
The ministerial court ordered two former ministers and royal family members, Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak Al Sabah and his ally, former Defense and Interior Minister Sheikh Khalid al-Jarrah Al Sabah, detained last month in Kuwait’s Central Prison over their suspected misuse of the ministry’s funds. The court also sent lower-ranking officials to jail pending trial and imposed a travel ban on Sheikh Jaber, according to a statement widely published in Kuwaiti media.
But Sheikh Jaber has not been spotted in public since the criminal prosecution began, and speculation has swirled about his fate. Many doubt the former prime minister is, in fact, languishing at the notorious prison on the dusty outskirts of Kuwait City riddled with reported coronavirus outbreaks.
That doubt reveals the deep-rooted distrust among Kuwaitis that authorities are pursuing the case in earnest. Social media has been ablaze in rumors in recent weeks even after the court accepted the defense team’s request to ban news and social media from publishing details about the trial sessions.
Kuwaiti newspapers — still reporting despite the court order — said the defense team maintained the former prime minister’s innocence during the most recent hearings. Sheikh Jaber’s legal team did not respond to repeated requests for comment amid the gag rule. Kuwait’s Information Ministry declined to comment on the case, citing the court’s secret investigation.
Soon, WhatsApp groups crackled with leaks that while other officials remained in detention, Sheikh Jaber’s version of state custody was a special hospital wing decorated like a palace with hotel service. A doctor at Kuwait’s state-run al-Amiri Hospital confirmed to The Associated Press that Sheikh Jaber, who skipped the last court session due to reported health problems, was receiving treatment there. The doctor declined to give details and spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, like most people interviewed.
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” a Kuwaiti anti-corruption activist said. “We are waiting and watching to see if this case ends up like the rest.”
The case of the missing military money is one of several scandals that have surfaced in Kuwait in recent years, damaging public confidence in its political establishment. Parliament has since shot down a public debt law that would raise billions of dollars for the government to solve its worst liquidity crisis since the 1991 Gulf War, in part over corruption fears.
In the fall of 2019, late defense minister Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al Sabah pressed for an investigation into the missing millions, triggering the downfall of the government when ministers refused to stand for questioning in parliament. Other schemes that later came to light have tainted Kuwait’s reputation, including a massive scandal at Malaysia’s state investment fund that ensnarled Sheikh Jaber’s son, now released on bail.
Under pressure, the government created a new Anti-Corruption Authority and a dozen similar committees. The late emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, vowed on state TV at the time that “no one, no matter his position, will escape punishment if convicted for public fund-related crimes.”
Yet modest hopes for accountability have dimmed, with various investigations stagnating over the years. In the nation flush with petrodollars, critics describe a culture of corruption extending from everyday “wasta,” or political connections, to bloated public works projects. Lawmakers have blamed that on Kuwait falling behind neighbors like Dubai in terms of development and foreign investment.
“Much more needs to be done to resolve Kuwait’s problems. For one, the judicial system is in need of a major overhaul,” said Bader al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University. “Without all of the embezzled money returned and prison sentences given if those implicated are at fault, the corruption will continue.”
Others more optimistic say the pre-trial detention of such powerful officials marks a pivotal moment in Kuwait’s drive to root out graft — and note it already has borne fruit.
Earlier this month, a leaked court document revealed that Sheikh Jaber had paid back 53.9 million Kuwaiti dinars ($180.7 million) to the state, which prosecutors had accused him personally of misappropriating. A lawyer at the court confirmed the authenticity of the receipt, calling it an important precedent.
“Former officials at court in jail clothes is not something you see often here,” he said.