Israel vows to ‘eliminate’ new Hamas leader as war enters 11th month

Israel vows to ‘eliminate’ new Hamas leader as war enters 11th month
Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas in Gaza, greets his supporters during a meeting with leaders of Palestinian factions at his office in Gaza City, on Apr. 13, 2022. (AP)
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Updated 08 August 2024
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Israel vows to ‘eliminate’ new Hamas leader as war enters 11th month

Israel vows to ‘eliminate’ new Hamas leader as war enters 11th month
  • Speaking at a military base on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was “determined” to defend itself
  • “If a ceasefire deal seemed unlikely upon Haniyeh’s death, it is even less likely under Sinwar,” according to Rita Katz, executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group

JERUSALEM: Israel vowed to “eliminate” new Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, the alleged mastermind of the October 7 attack, whose appointment further inflamed regional tensions as the Gaza war entered its 11th month on Wednesday.
The naming of Sinwar to lead the Palestinian militant group came as Israel braced for potential Iranian retaliation over the killing of his predecessor Ismael Haniyeh last week in Tehran.
Speaking at a military base on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was “determined” to defend itself.
“We are prepared both defensively and offensively,” he told new recruits.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said late Tuesday that Sinwar’s promotion was “yet another compelling reason to swiftly eliminate him and wipe this vile organization off the face of the earth.”
Sinwar — Hamas’s leader in Gaza since 2017 — has not been seen since the October 7 attack, which was the deadliest in Israel’s history.
A senior Hamas official told AFP that the selection of Sinwar sent a message that the organization “continues its path of resistance.”
Hamas’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah congratulated Sinwar and said the appointment affirms “the enemy... has failed to achieve its objectives” by killing Hamas leaders and officials.
Analysts believe Sinwar has been both more reluctant to agree to a Gaza ceasefire and closer to Tehran than Haniyeh, who lived in Qatar.
“If a ceasefire deal seemed unlikely upon Haniyeh’s death, it is even less likely under Sinwar,” according to Rita Katz, executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group.
“The group will only lean further into its hard-line militant strategy of recent years,” she added.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that it was up to Sinwar to help achieve a ceasefire, saying he “has been and remains the primary decider.”
Civilians in both Israel and Gaza met Sinwar’s appointment with unease.
Mohammad Al-Sharif, a displaced Gazan, told AFP: “He is a fighter. How will negotiations take place?“
In Tel Aviv, logistics company manger Hanan, who did not want to give his second name, said Sinwar’s appointment meant Hamas “did not see fit to look for someone less militant, someone with a less murderous approach.”
Iran-backed Hezbollah has also pledged to avenge the deaths of Haniyeh and its own military commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli strike in Beirut hours earlier.
In a televised address to mark one week since Shukr’s death, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Tuesday his group would retaliate “alone or in the context of a unified response from all the axis” of Iran-backed groups in the region.
The United States, which has sent extra warships and jets to the region, urged both Iran and Israel to avoid an escalation.
President Joe Biden had calls with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, the Qatari emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Tuesday.
“No one should escalate this conflict. We’ve been engaged in intense diplomacy with allies and partners, communicating that message directly to Iran. We communicated that message directly to Israel,” Blinken told reporters.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in a telephone call that the West “should immediately stop selling arms and supporting” Israel if it wants to prevent war, his office said.
The Jeddah-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation met on Wednesday to discuss the situation in the Middle East.
Gambian Foreign Minister Mamadou Tangara, whose country currently chairs the bloc, said the “heinous” killing of Haniyeh risked “leading to a wider conflict that could involve the entire region.”
Israel has not commented on Haniyeh’s killing but confirmed it had carried out the strike on Shukr.
It held the Hezbollah commander responsible for a rocket attack in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights that killed 12 children.
Hezbollah has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli troops throughout the Gaza war.
The group said Tuesday that six of its fighters were killed in Israeli strikes on south Lebanon and that it had launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at a military base in the Golan Heights in retaliation.
Numerous airlines have suspended flights to Lebanon or limited them to daylight hours.
The Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by the Palestinian group’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, has already drawn in Iran-backed militants in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.
The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Palestinian militants seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 39 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,677 people, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.
The toll included two dozen deaths in the past 24 hours, according to ministry figures.
Israel said that its air force had “struck dozens of terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip” over the past day.

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Turkiye probing killing of activist in occupied West Bank

Turkiye probing killing of activist in occupied West Bank
Updated 3 sec ago
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Turkiye probing killing of activist in occupied West Bank

Turkiye probing killing of activist in occupied West Bank
  • Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was shot dead last week while demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the West Bank
  • The United Nations rights office has accused Israeli forces of shooting the US-Turkish activist in the head
ANKARA: Turkiye is investigating the killing of a US-Turkish activist during a protest in West Bank, the justice minister said Thursday, adding that Ankara would press the UN to take immediate action.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was shot dead last week while demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank town of Beita.
The settlements are illegal under international law but supported by right-wing members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
The United Nations rights office has accused Israeli forces of shooting Eygi in the head. The Israeli army has acknowledged opening fire in the area and said it was looking into the case.
“Turkiye has opened an investigation,” Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said.
He also said Turkiye would take the case to the United Nations and push for an independent inquiry into her death.
“We will work to ensure that the (UN) Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial and Arbitrary Executions takes immediate action, and that an independent commission of inquiry is established and prepare a report,” he said.
Tunc said Turkiye would forward that report to the UN Human Rights Council and to the ongoing case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
“We will continue to defend the right of our sister Aysenur and our Palestinian brothers,” he added.
Turkiye’s foreign ministry said the formal procedures for the transfer of the body had been concluded through its embassy in Tel Aviv and consulate in Jerusalem.
“The body of the deceased will arrive in Turkiye tomorrow,” it said, adding: “We once again condemn this murder committed by the genocidal Netanyahu government.”
Eygi’s family is still waiting for her body to arrive and is hoping to bury her in the southwestern town of Didim on Friday.
“It’s sad but it’s also a source of pride for Didim,” Eygi’s uncle Ali Tikkim, 67, said on Wednesday.
“It’s important that a young girl, martyred and sensitive to the world is buried here.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to ensure “that Aysenur Ezgi’s death does not go unpunished.”

Iran president arrives in Iraqi Kurdistan on day two of visit

Iran president arrives in Iraqi Kurdistan on day two of visit
Updated 5 min 8 sec ago
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Iran president arrives in Iraqi Kurdistan on day two of visit

Iran president arrives in Iraqi Kurdistan on day two of visit
  • It is Pezeshkian’s first foreign trip abroad since he took office in July
  • Tehran in 2022 repeatedly carried out strikes on armed groups in Kurdistan

Irbil: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived Thursday in Iraqi Kurdistan to meet the autonomous region’s leaders, on the second day of a visit aimed at deepening ties with the neighboring country.
It is Pezeshkian’s first foreign trip abroad since he took office in July.
Stepping off his plane in Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Pezeshkian was welcomed by regional president Nechirvan Barzani on a red carpet lined with Kurdish Peshmerga forces standing at attention with rifles at their sides.
Pezeshkian held talks with Barzani and Kurdistan’s prime minister, Masrour Barzani, before heading to Sulaimaniyah, a city where the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) political party wields influence including in the local security services.
On Wednesday, the first leg of his three-day visit, Pezeshkian announced in Baghdad the signing of more than a dozen agreements to strengthen ties between Iran and Iraq.
His trip comes at a time of heightened tensions in the Middle East due to the war in Gaza, which has drawn in Iran-backed armed groups and complicated Iraq’s relations with the United States.
Iran’s ties with Iraqi Kurdistan have improved in recent months, aided by efforts to neutralize Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, which have long operated in the region.
Tehran in 2022 repeatedly carried out strikes on armed groups in Kurdistan, before Iraq in March 2023 signed a security agreement with Iran. Baghdad committed to disarm these groups and relocate them from border areas to camps.
“We have succeeded... in regulating the security situation in the border areas,” Iraqi Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani said on Wednesday, reiterating Iraq’s refusal to allow any acts of aggression to be launched against Iran from its territory.
Iran had accused the Iranian Kurdish opposition of smuggling weapons from Iraq and launching attacks on its security forces.
It also accused these movements of fueling protests that shook Iran after the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurd arrested by the morality police.


War monitor says Israeli strike in Syria’s Golan kills two

War monitor says Israeli strike in Syria’s Golan kills two
Updated 27 min 11 sec ago
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War monitor says Israeli strike in Syria’s Golan kills two

War monitor says Israeli strike in Syria’s Golan kills two
  • The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the reported strike

Beirut: A Syria war monitor said an Israeli airstrike on Thursday in Quneitra province in the Syria-controlled Golan Heights killed two people, days after major raids elsewhere in the country.
“An Israeli air strike targeted a vehicle” on the Damascus-Quneitra road, “killing two people,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, without identifying them.
A local security source told AFP that “two charred bodies were removed” from the vehicle that was hit.
The Israeli army did not immediately comment on the reported strike.
Israel seized much of the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later annexed it in a move largely unrecognized by the international community.
Thursday’s strike came days after raids blamed on Israel killed 18 people in the central province of Hama, according to Syrian authorities.
The Observatory said those strikes killed 27 people, including six civilians, and targeted a “scientific research area” and other sites in the province’s Masyaf area.
Israel declined to comment on those reported strikes.
Hezbollah has repeatedly targeted military positions in the Israeli-held Golan in recent months as part of attacks from Lebanon in support of ally Hamas following the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.
Syria has sought to stay out of the Israel-Hamas conflict, whose fallout has raised fears of a broader regional war.
Limited rocket attacks from Syria by Hezbollah-allied fighters have targeted the Israeli-held Golan since October.
Since Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in the country, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters, including from Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there.
Israeli raids on Syria surged after Hamas’s October 7 attack then eased somewhat after an April 1 strike blamed on Israel hit the Iranian consular building in Damascus, prompting Iran’s first-ever direct attack against Israel.


Hundreds gather on Seattle beach to remember American activist killed by Israeli military

Hundreds gather on Seattle beach to remember American activist killed by Israeli military
Updated 12 September 2024
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Hundreds gather on Seattle beach to remember American activist killed by Israeli military

Hundreds gather on Seattle beach to remember American activist killed by Israeli military
  • Hundreds of people turned out at a beach in Washington for an evening vigil remembering Aysenur Ezgi Eygi

SEATTLE: For her 26th birthday in July, human rights activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi gathered friends for a bonfire at one of her favorite places, a sandy beach in Seattle where green-and-white ferries cruise across the dark, flat water and osprey fish overhead.
On Wednesday night, hundreds of people traveled to the same beach in grief, love and anger to mourn her. Eygi was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers last Friday in the occupied West Bank, where she had gone to protest and bear witness to Palestinian suffering.
“I can’t imagine what she felt like in her last moments, lying alone under the olive trees,” one of her friends, Kelsie Nabass, told the crowd at the vigil. “What did she think of? And did she know all of us would show up here tonight, for her?”
Eygi, who also held Turkish citizenship, was killed while demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank. A witness who was there, Israeli protester Jonathan Pollak, said she posed no threat to Israeli forces and that the shooting came during a moment of calm, following clashes between stone-throwing protesters and Israeli troops firing tear gas and bullets.
The Israeli military said Eygi was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, drawing criticism from American officials, including President Joe Biden, who said he was “outraged and deeply saddened” her killing.
“There must be full accountability,” Biden said in a statement released Wednesday. “And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”
The deaths of American citizens in the West Bank have drawn international attention, such as the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022 in the Jenin refugee camp. The deaths of Palestinians who do not have dual nationality rarely receive the same scrutiny.
Eygi’s family has demanded an independent investigation.
As the sun set, turning the sky on the horizon a pale orange, friends recalled Eygi as open, engaging, funny and devoted. The crowd spilled beyond a large rectangle of small black, red, green and white Palestinian flags staked in the sand to mark the venue for the vigil.
Many attendees wore traditional checked scarves — keffiyehs — in support of the Palestinian cause and carried photographs of Eygi in her graduation cap. They laid roses, sunflowers or carnations at a memorial where battery-operated candles spelled out her name in the sand.
Several described becoming fast friends with her last spring during the occupied “Liberated Zone” protest against the Israeli agression on Gaza at the University of Washington. Yoseph Ghazal said she introduced herself as “Baklava,” a name she sometimes used on messaging apps, reflective of her love of the sweet Mediterranean dessert.
Eygi, who attended Seattle schools and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in psychology this year, helped negotiate with the administration on behalf of the protesters at the encampment, which was part of a broader campus movement against the Gaza war.
“She felt so strongly and loved humanity, loved people, loved life so much that she just wanted to help as many as she could,” Juliette Majid, 26, now a doctoral student at North Carolina State University, said in an interview. “She had such a drive for justice.”
Eygi’s uncle told a Turkish television station that she had kept her trip a secret from at least some of her family, blocking relatives from her social media posts. Turkish officials have said they are working to repatriate her body for burial, per the family’s wishes.
Sue Han, a 26-year-old law student at the University of Washington, only knew Eygi for a few months after meeting her at the university encampment, but they quickly became close, laughing and blasting music in Eygi’s beat-up green Subaru. Eygi would pick Han up at the airport after her travels. Most recently, Eygi greeted her with a plastic baggie full of sliced apples and perfectly ripe strawberries.
Han saw Eygi before she left. Eygi was feeling scared and selfish for leaving her loved ones to go to the West Bank with the activist group International Solidarity Movement; Han said she couldn’t imagine anyone more selfless.
Eygi loved to connect people, bringing disparate friends together for coffee to see how they mixed, Han said. The same was true when she would bring people together on the beach, and it was true of the vigil, too.
“I was looking around at everybody sharing stories about Aysenur, sharing tears and hugs, and this is exactly what she would have wanted,” Han said. “These new relationships all sharing Aysenur as the starting seed — it’s the legacy she would have wanted.”


US sanctions Lebanese network over alleged oil, LPG smuggling for Hezbollah

US sanctions Lebanese network over alleged oil, LPG smuggling for Hezbollah
Updated 12 September 2024
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US sanctions Lebanese network over alleged oil, LPG smuggling for Hezbollah

US sanctions Lebanese network over alleged oil, LPG smuggling for Hezbollah
  • The sanctions target three people, five companies and two vessels

WASHINGTON: The Biden administration on Wednesday issued sanctions on a Lebanese network it accused of smuggling oil and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to help fund the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
The sanctions target three people, five companies and two vessels that the US Treasury Department said were overseen by a senior leader of Hezbollah’s finance team and used profits from illicit LPG shipments to Syria to aid generate revenue for the group.
Acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley Smith, in a statement, said Hezbollah “continues to launch rockets into Israel and fuel regional instability, choosing to prioritize funding violence over taking care of the people it claims to care about, including the tens of thousands displaced in southern Lebanon.”