UN demands Israel end ‘unlawful’ presence in Palestinian territories within 12 months

Palestinian representative Riyad Mansour applauds the result of the vote at UN Headquarters on September 18, 2024 in New York. (AFP)
Palestinian representative Riyad Mansour applauds the result of the vote at UN Headquarters on September 18, 2024 in New York. (AFP)
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Updated 19 September 2024
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UN demands Israel end ‘unlawful’ presence in Palestinian territories within 12 months

Palestinian representative Riyad Mansour applauds the result of the vote at UN Headquarters on September 18, 2024 in New York.
  • The resolution received 124 votes in favor, while 43 countries abstained and Israel, the United States and 12 others voted no

UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday adopted a Palestinian-drafted resolution that demands Israel end “its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” within 12 months.
The resolution received 124 votes in favor, while 43 countries abstained and Israel, the United States and 12 others voted no.
The action isolates Israel days before world leaders travel to New York for their annual UN gathering. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to address the 193-member General Assembly on Sept. 26, the same day as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The resolution welcomes a July advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice that said Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and settlements is illegal and should be withdrawn.
The advisory opinion — by the highest United Nations court, also known as the World Court — said this should be done “as rapidly as possible,” although the General Assembly resolution imposes a 12-month deadline.
The General Assembly resolution also calls on states to “take steps toward ceasing the importation of any products originating in the Israeli settlements, as well as the provision or transfer of arms, munitions and related equipment to Israel ... where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that they may be used in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
The resolution is the first to be formally put forward by the Palestinian Authority since it gained additional rights and privileges this month including a seat among UN members in the assembly hall and the right to propose draft resolutions.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield urged countries to vote no on Wednesday. Washington — an arms supplier to and ally of Israel — has long opposed unilateral measures that undermine the prospect of a two-state solution.
The ICJ advisory opinion is not binding but carries weight under international law and may weaken support for Israel. A General Assembly resolution also is not binding, but carries political weight. There is no veto power in the assembly.
“Each country has a vote, and the world is watching us,” Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the General Assembly on Tuesday. “Please stand on the right side of history. With international law. With freedom. With peace.”
Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon criticized the General Assembly on Tuesday for failing to condemn the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian Hamas militants that sparked Israel’s assault on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
He rejected the Palestinian text, saying: “Let’s call this for what it is: this resolution is diplomatic terrorism, using the tools of diplomacy not to build bridges but to destroy them.”
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem — areas of historic Palestine which the Palestinians want for a state — in the 1967 Middle East war and has since built settlements in the West Bank and steadily expanded them.
The war in the Gaza Strip began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas gunmen stormed into Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and abducting about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel’s military has leveled swaths of the Palestinian enclave, driving nearly all of its 2.3 million people from their homes, giving rise to deadly hunger and disease and killing more than 41,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.
The General Assembly on Oct. 27 last year called for an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza with 120 votes in favor. Then in December, 153 countries voted to demand — instead of calling for — an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in December.
The Palestinian Authority represents the Palestinian people at the UN, where it is a non-member observer state and the delegation is known as the State of Palestine. 


Russia says Hezbollah is still organized despite Israeli attacks

Russia says Hezbollah is still organized despite Israeli attacks
Updated 3 sec ago
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Russia says Hezbollah is still organized despite Israeli attacks

Russia says Hezbollah is still organized despite Israeli attacks
“According to our assessments, Hezbollah, including the military wing, has not lost its chain of command,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said
The West, in particular the United States and Britain, was stoking the conflict in the Middle East

MOSCOW: Russia’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday that Hezbollah was still organized and had not lost its chain of command despite strikes by Israel which Moscow said was trying to stoke an armed conflict across the Middle East.
“According to our assessments, Hezbollah, including the military wing, has not lost its chain of command and is demonstrating organization,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters.
Zakharova said that the West, in particular the United States and Britain, was stoking the conflict in the Middle East and showing hypocrisy by its support for Israel which was inflicting significant civilian casualties in Lebanon.
Hezbollah was formed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the early 1980s to battle Israel. It is also a major social, religious and political movement for Lebanese Shiite Muslims.
Russia also scolded Israel for a strike on Syria.
“Once again, Israel has grossly violated the sovereignty of Syria by launching a missile attack on a multi-story apartment building in a densely populated area of Damascus,” Zakharova said.
“It is outrageous that such actions have literally turned into a routine practice applied to Syria, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip,” Zakharova said, adding that it showed Israel’s “desire to further expand the geography of armed escalation in the region.”

Two people killed in northern Israel by Hezbollah rocket fire, medics say

Two people killed in northern Israel by Hezbollah rocket fire, medics say
Updated 15 min 33 sec ago
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Two people killed in northern Israel by Hezbollah rocket fire, medics say

Two people killed in northern Israel by Hezbollah rocket fire, medics say
  • Hezbollah fighters repel Israeli troops in skirmishes along length of the border

JERUSALEM/BEIRUT: Two people were killed in a town in northern Israel that was hit by rocket fire from Hezbollah in Lebanon on Wednesday, Israeli authorities said.
Israel’s ambulance service said that a man and a woman had been killed in the town of Kirya Shmona.
The military said about 20 projectiles had been launched from Lebanon in the barrage.

Hezbollah claimed on Wednesday its fighters had pushed back advancing Israeli troops in clashes along the length of the border, a day after Israel said it had killed two successors to the Iran-backed Lebanese militant movement’s slain leader.

Hezbollah has been launching rockets against Israel for a year in parallel with the Gaza war and is now fighting it in ground clashes that are spreading along Lebanon’s mountainous frontier with Israel.

The group said it had fired several rocket salvos at Israeli troops near the village of Labbouneh in the western part of the border area, close to the Mediterranean coast, and had managed to push them back.

Further east, it said it had attacked Israeli soldiers in the village of Maroun el-Ras and fired missile barrages at Israeli forces advancing toward the twin border villages of Mays Al-Jabal and Mouhaybib.

The Israeli military said Hezbollah fighters had fired around 40 projectiles across the frontier into Israeli territory on Wednesday, some of which had been shot down. Sirens sent Israelis rushing toward shelter.

Israel meanwhile launched airstrikes including at targets far from the border combat zone. The Lebanese health ministry said four people were killed and 10 wounded by a strike that hit the town of Wardaniyeh, north of Sidon along the coast.

The escalation in Lebanon, after a year of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, has raised fears of a wider Middle East conflict that could suck in Iran and Israel’s superpower ally the United States.

In recent weeks Israel has carried out a string of assassinations of top Hezbollah leaders and launched ground operations into southern Lebanon that expanded further this week.

Israel has said that troops from as many as four divisions have operated inside Lebanon since the first announcement of the ground operation on Oct. 1. It has not confirmed that they have established a permanent presence there.

Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon has killed more than 2,100 people, most of them in the last two weeks, and forced 1.2 million people from their homes. Israel says it has no choice but to strike Hezbollah so that tens of thousands of Israelis can return to homes they fled under Hezbollah rocket fire.

Burn victims from Israeli strikes are being treated at a specialized unit in Beirut’s Geitaoui hospital, the only one of its kind in the country. Reuters journalists saw nurses gently change the gauze on patients, some of whom were wrapped neck down because of the severity of burns.

Mahmoud Dhaiwi, a Lebanese soldier, told Reuters he was off duty and heading to the beach when his car was hit by an Israeli strike. His whole body was burned.

Overnight, Israel again bombed Beirut’s southern suburbs and said it had killed a figure responsible for budgeting and logistics for Hezbollah, Suhail Hussein Husseini.

The densely-populated and thriving suburban district has been abandoned by many residents following Israeli evacuation warnings. Some Lebanese draw parallels between the warnings and those seen in Gaza over the last year, prompting fears that Beirut could face the same scale of destruction.

BIDEN-NETANYAHU CALL

US President Joe Biden is expected to speak on Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Middle East has been on edge awaiting Israel’s response to a missile attack from Iran last week that Tehran carried out in retaliation for Israel’s military escalation in Lebanon. The only fatality from the Iranian attack was a Palestinian hit by debris that fell in the West Bank.

Biden has said Israel should consider alternative targets to striking Iranian oil fields or nuclear sites. An attack on oil facilities could drive up global prices.

Iran’s foreign minister was visiting Gulf Arab states. Tehran has told them would be unacceptable if they allowed use of their airspace or military bases for attacks against Iran, a senior Iranian official said.

Netanyahu said on Tuesday Israeli airstrikes had killed two successors to Hezbollah’s slain leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, himself killed in an Israeli air attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sept. 27.

Netanyahu did not identify them, but Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Hashem Safieddine, the man expected to succeed Nasrallah, had probably been “eliminated.”

Safieddine has not been heard from since a huge Israeli airstrike late last week.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said the group endorsed efforts by Lebanon’s speaker of parliament to secure a ceasefire. He conspicuously left out an oft-repeated condition of the group — that a separate ceasefire would have to be reached in Gaza before Hezbollah would agree to a truce. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on Qassem’s remarks.


Israeli strike kills policeman in Syria: state media

Israeli strike kills policeman in Syria: state media
Updated 09 October 2024
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Israeli strike kills policeman in Syria: state media

Israeli strike kills policeman in Syria: state media
  • It comes after a strike in the Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh late Tuesday

BEIRUT: Israeli bombardment on Wednesday killed a policeman in the south of Syria near the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, state media said, the day after a deadly air strike on the capital.
Israel has repeatedly struck Syria throughout the civil war that started in 2011, but it has ramped these up in recent weeks as it also pounds Lebanon.
Citing a police official, the official SANA news agency reported “the death of a security force member and wounding of another in an Israeli strike” on the outskirts of Quneitra city.
It comes after a strike in the Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh late Tuesday, that a war monitor said targeted a building used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The Syrian government said it killed seven civilians.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor on Wednesday reported a higher toll of nine civilians, including four children.
The Britain-based organization said four others were also killed, including two members of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Last week, the Observatory said an Israeli strike on Mazzeh killed four people, including the son-in-law of the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike on south Beirut last month.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence.
Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have been among the Syrian government’s most important allies in the country’s more than decade-old civil war.


Six wounded in stabbing attack in Israel, police say

Six wounded in stabbing attack in Israel, police say
Updated 09 October 2024
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Six wounded in stabbing attack in Israel, police say

Six wounded in stabbing attack in Israel, police say
  • At least two were in serious condition

JERUSALEM: At least six people were wounded, two of them seriously, in a stabbing attack in the Israeli city of Hadera on Wednesday, Israeli authorities said.
“The terrorist has been neutralized,” police said in a statement. “Four separate locations have been identified, resulting in six victims with stab wounds.”
The police did not immediately provide other details, but issued a brief video of the suspected attacker being apprehended.
Of the six people rushed to the hospital, at least two were in serious condition, according to medical officials.
Israel has been on high security alert since the Hamas assault a year ago sparked the war in Gaza, while a the conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon continues to escalate.


Turkiye moves to evacuate nationals from Lebanon

Turkiye moves to evacuate nationals from Lebanon
Updated 09 October 2024
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Turkiye moves to evacuate nationals from Lebanon

Turkiye moves to evacuate nationals from Lebanon
  • Turkiye is estimated to have 14,000 citizens registered with its consulate in Lebanon

ANKARA: Turkiye on Wednesday sent ships to evacuate around 2,000 of its citizens from Lebanon, with its Beirut envoy saying it would be “the biggest” evacuation of its type from the war-torn country.

A Turkish diplomatic source told AFP two naval ships carrying the evacuated nationals and their families would arrive at the southern Turkish port of Mersin “in the early hours” of Thursday morning.

The two ships set sail overnight for the Lebanese capital whose southern suburbs were hit overnight by fresh Israeli bombardments.

“These ships, with a capacity of around 2,000 people, will be ready to take those of our citizens who requested it from Lebanon to Mersin port,” Turkish ambassador Ali Baris Ulusoy told TRT Haber public television.

Turkiye, which is estimated to have 14,000 citizens registered with its consulate in Lebanon, announced the move on Tuesday because of the deteriorating security situation on the ground in Lebanon.

Images on TRT Haber showed a crowd of people at Beirut port waiting to board the boats.

The ambassador said the two ships were also bringing “approximately 300 tons of humanitarian aid” to show Turkiye’s support for the Lebanese people, including tents, bedding, hygiene kits and kitchenware.

Since September 23, Israel has intensified strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, killing more than 1,100 people and forcing more than a million to flee, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Monday.