• Haley: U.S. to oppose UNGA call for Israel to return Golan Heights to Syria
• For first time U.S. opposes UNGA call to return Golan to Syria

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley speaks to the General Assembly before a vote in the General Assembly June 13, 2018 in New York. . (photo credit: DON EMMERT / AFP)

The United Nations General Assembly is set to disavow Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem and ignore Jewish ties to its most holy site, the Temple Mount in a highly publicized debate set to take place in New York late Thursday.

According to the text of the Jerusalem resolution, likely to be voted Friday, the UN will call for “respect for the historic status quo at the holy places of Jerusalem, including the Haram al-Sharif, in word and in practice.”

The resolution also states that “any actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration on the Holy City of Jerusalem are illegal and therefore null and void and have no validity whatsoever.

Finally the text calls “upon Israel to immediately cease all such illegal and unilateral measures.”

The text on settlement boycott, calls on member states, “Not to render aid or assistance to illegal settlement activities, including not to provide Israel with any assistance to be used specifically in connection with settlements in the occupied territories, in line with Security Council resolution 465

(1980).
It’s expected that during the meeting that starts Thursday and is likely to run into Friday that some six pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel resolutions will be passed.

The debate is part of the UN’s annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. It marks the 71st anniversary of the US passage of Resolution 181, which called for independent Jewish and Arab states on territory that had been under British control since the end of World War I.

At the time it was accepted by Jews and rejected by the Arabs.

The resolutions are cyclical and voted upon annually at the UNGA and in other UN forums. Israel has focused its energy in recent years on similar text in other smaller bodies, such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Executive Board.

Less attention has been given to the UN General Assembly where the Palestinians have automatic support among its 193 member states.

The Trump Administration strong support of Israel, particularly thought is Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has also helped highlight the anti-Israeli resolutions at the General Assembly.

Debates have increasingly become less about hostiles between Israel and the Palestinians and more about acrimony between the United States and the Palestinian Authority.

In an unusual move Hamas called on the United Nations to support its right to bear arms against Israel in a letter the terror group’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh wrote to UN General Assembly President Maria Fernada Spinosa.

He spoke out in advance of UN debate later possibly Friday or Monday on a US back resolution condemning Hamas rocket fire against Israel.

“We reiterate the right of our people to defend themselves and to resist the occupation, by all available means, including armed resistance, guaranteed by the international law,” Haniyeh wrote.

“The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted dozens of resolutions that affirm the right of peoples to independence, self-determination and struggle by all available means, peaceful and non-peaceful, for that right. The UN singled out the Palestinian people for dozens of relevant resolutions, including 2621, 2649, 2787 and 3236,” he said.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said in response, “Hamas speaks about international law while it fires rockets into civilian populations, holds the bodies of IDF soldiers and Israeli citizens, and uses its own people as human shields.”

“A terrorist organization going to the UN for assistance is like a serial killer asking the police for assistance. Israel and the United States will continue to mobilize the countries of the world into a united front against the terrorism that Hamas engages in on behalf of Iran,” Danon said.

Hamas has forcibly ruled the Gaza Strip since it ousted Fatah in a bloody coup in 2007. The international community has solely recognized the Palestinian Authority as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people.

The UN, through its Middle East Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov, is working together with Egypt to reconcile Hamas and Fatah. The US resolution also speak of support for those efforts.

In its letter to the UN, Hamas put itself forward as a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and also spoke to of rejection of any Israeli claims to any portion of that territory.

It condemned the US for adopting the Israeli narrative of the conflict and for its support of Israeli “aggression” against the Palestinian people.

“The last of these efforts is the attempt by the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, in the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People which is held on November 29 each year, to submit a draft resolution condemning the Palestinian resistance and the right of our people to defend themselves against this racist and continuous occupation for more than seven decades.

“There had been not only that, but it has taken a turn when the US President Donald Trump administration sought to reduce the number of UN resolutions on the Palestinian issue claiming that “many biased resolutions against Israel are not helpful,” Haniyeh said.

“We greatly count on the members of the UN General Assembly and their stand by international legitimacy in support for the right of peoples to defend themselves and thwart these aggressive American endeavors,” he added.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/UNGA-to-disavow-Jewish-ties-to-Jerusalem-call-for-Golan-withdrawal-573196

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An Egyptian delegation left Gaza on Wednesday and asked Israel to allow one more chance for calm to be restored to the situation, Liberman said.

>  Egypt releases 1978 Camp David Accords calling for Palestinian autonomy.

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   After 130 rockets fired from Gaza, Israelis wake to tentative calm

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   Iran is the culprit behind Tuesday’s Gaza rocket barrage, Israel says

Despite relative calm returning to southern Israel after more than 100 mortars and rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip, Israel is at its closest point to war since Operation Protective Edge four years ago, a senior IDF officer in the Southern Command said on Thursday.

According to the senior officer, the Iranian-funded Islamic Jihad did not show all its strength and, under the guidance of Tehran, might still be able to act against Israel from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
“This week, Islamic Jihad operated with Iranian consent and Iran has an interest in escalating the situation in Gaza in light of what is happening in Syria and other areas,” he told reporters.

The Southern Command, he said, operated with a “very clear” directive on Tuesday to make sure the latest round of violence didn’t escalate into a full-blown war so that Israel “could focus” on confronting larger threats like Iran and Syria.

The officer said that the army had anticipated an attack by Islamic Jihad, and while the military was not certain when the attack by the Gazan terrorist group would happen, the IDF had spoken to regional council heads and had deployed Iron Dome batteries. The warning system has also been improved for residents living within seven kilometers of the Gaza Strip, giving them 23 seconds to run for shelter instead of the previous 15, he said.

According to the senior officer, Israel struck dozens of high-value Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets but admitted that the IDF did not succeed in targeting the cells that had fired the projectiles.

“We were instructed to locate and attack the cells that carried out the launches, but the enemy has improved and learned lessons since the last round of fighting, and much of the shooting was carried out with timers and from underground,” he said.

The officer nevertheless stressed that “the terrorist organizations limited themselves regarding the range of [their] rocket fire this week.” But “if it continued, we were ready for something a lot broader and more meaningful – and Hamas knew it. It could have ended very differently.”

The senior officer said that the 65 targets struck by the IDF “were targets that have been on our ‘waiting list,’” adding that Hamas planned to use them in the next war with Israel.

Among the high-value targets was an offensive tunnel built in the last year that infiltrated both into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula as well as into Israeli territory. The officer explained that the intelligence on the tunnel has been shared with Egypt, which has neutralized it on its territory as well.

While rocket fire from Gaza remains a major concern for Israel, the threat posed by offensive tunnels infiltrating Israel led the IDF to invest millions of shekels into building an underground barrier with the Strip, dubbed by Israel “the guillotine.”

According to the officer, 12 Hamas tunnels have been destroyed in the past two years, including six that infiltrated into Israeli territory.

While the underground barrier – which is to also extend into the Mediterranean Sea in the form of a breakwater – is set to be completed by the end of 2019, “whoever gives the number of tunnels which remain is irresponsible,” the officer said. “We don’t know everything yet and the threat [posed by the tunnels] remains until the barrier is completed.”

On Wednesday, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov told the UN Security Council that the escalation was a “warning to all of us of how close we are to the brink of war every day.”

According to the senior officer, Israel should allow for additional measures in order to stabilize the humanitarian situation. “Otherwise, we will be on a slippery slope.” He pointed out that even the Palestinian Authority has disengaged itself from the Strip.
Hamas, the senior officer said, is trying to save itself from collapse but has no solution.

“No one wants the problem of Gaza, even us,” he said. “Small steps can be taken that will give a year and a half of quiet, and allow for a long arrangement to be reached. We do not need to help Hamas or lift it up… as large as Hamas’s concessions will be, so will be the size of the arrangement,” he said.

Beyond the ongoing operations of the Erez and Kerem Shalom crossings, as well as the limited opening of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, additional “arrangements” are being examined, the senior officer said.

Source:  https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Senior-IDF-official-Israel-at-closest-point-to-war-since-2014-558863

The post Senior IDF Official: Israel at closest point to war since 2014 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Israel has launched airstrikes against targets throughout the Gaza Strip after the armed wing of the ruling group in the Palestinian territory launched dozens of rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel.

The confrontation, which continued into Wednesday morning, is the worst episode of violence between Israel and Hamas since they fought a seven-week-long war in 2014.

Read more: Gaza residents ‘caged in a toxic slum’: UN human rights chief Zeid

What we know so far

• The Israeli military said around 70 rockets and bombs had been fired into Israel by 8 p.m. local time on Tuesday (1700 GMT). One mortar shell landed near a kindergarten.
• Israeli forces intercepted most of the rockets and mortar shells, the military said, and tanks and bombers responded by targeting 55 militant locations within Gaza. There were no immediate reports of Palestinian casualties.
• Three Israeli soldiers were wounded, according to the military.
• The armed faction of Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attacks in a joint statement. They said they were retaliating against “Zionist aggression and crimes against our people” since clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian protesters on March 30.
• Islamic Jihad said Egypt had brokered a ceasefire agreement with Israel, but Israel later dismissed the report.

Read more: ‘No soldier fires at will’ on Gaza border

‘Threshold of war’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “The Israeli army will respond with great force to these attacks, and Israel will exact a heavy price from anyone who tries to harm it, and we see Hamas as responsible for preventing these attacks against us.”

Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said Hamas and Israel were “at the closest point to the threshold of war” since 2014. “If the firing [from Gaza] does not stop, we will have to escalate our responses and it could lead to a deterioration of the situation,” Katz told Army Radio.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah group rules the Palestinian West Bank and is a rival of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, said Israel had used “vigorous aggression” against Gaza and was not interested in peace.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council for Wednesday and said: “The Security Council should be outraged and respond to this latest bout of violence directed at innocent Israeli civilians.”

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, called on Hamas to end its rocket and mortar strikes and said “indiscriminate attacks against civilians are completely unacceptable under any circumstances.”

Nickolay Mladenov, the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, denounced “the indiscriminate firing of rockets by Palestinian militants from Gaza toward communities in southern Israel.”

Weeks of violence: The exchanges follow weeks of clashes along the Gaza-Israeli border. Israeli forces have shot and killed more than 110 Palestinians protesting against Israel’s occupation of lands claimed by Palestinians. Israel has said the use of force against protesters was necessary to defend Israel’s border, and has accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields.

Read more: Israel Supreme Court upholds use of lethal force against Palestinians during protests

amp/cmk (dpa, AP, Reuters)

Source: http://www.dw.com/en/israel-launches-retaliatory-airstrikes-in-gaza-after-hamas-rocket-attacks/a-43988147

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Palestinians appeal for UN help to save them from ‘massacre’

Israeli soldiers and snipers at the border east of Gaza City on May 15. Photographer: Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images

Skunk water, sticky foam, sponge grenades and tear gas-spraying drones are among the non-lethal methods Israel has pioneered to quell Palestinian protests.

Given this extensive toolkit, Israel is struggling to explain why its snipers fired enough bullets into Gaza Monday to kill 60 Palestinians and wound about 1,200. As with previous conflicts there, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government may face investigations and censure from international legal bodies.

“It’s simply unacceptable and outrageous to use live fire, not as the last resort but as the basic modus operandi for dealing with these demonstrations,” said Amir Gilutz, spokesman for Israeli human rights group B’tselem.

Some 40,000 of Gaza’s 2 million residents converged on Israel’s border on May 14 to protest against the transfer of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move they say sets back peace efforts and undermines their bid for statehood. Juxtaposed with the festive mood at the opening of the U.S. embassy, footage from Gaza, showing scores of Palestinians shot by Israeli soldiers, alarmed viewers around the world.

Some youths hurled rocks and petrol bombs at Israeli troops. Others used wire-cutters to try to breach the border fence. Though witnesses say most protesters were unarmed, army footage aired on Israel’s Hadashot News showed a group with with guns, bombs, grenades and wire-cutters trying to cross the fence; all eight were shot dead.

Ambulances and hospitals were overwhelmed, said Ayman Sahabani, chief of surgery at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. “We’re at 25 times our capacity and our drug inventory is exhausted,” he said.

Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus said troops tried using non-lethal weapons like tear gas and rubber bullets when possible and had tried dousing burning tires with water cannons, but those methods had not proved sufficiently effective.

“We are defending ourselves against terrorists and rioters,” he said. “We shoot in order to stop them so that they cannot harm the security infrastructure and infiltrate into Israel.”

Investigate Incidents

Ranked as the world’s seventh-largest arms exporter, Israel has developed expertise in making non-lethal weapons to subdue protests in Gaza and the West Bank. Among them are putrid-smelling fluids and immobilizing foam. In preparation for this week’s demonstrations, it equipped drones to drop tear gas.

Given the availability of those methods, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process Nickolay Mladenov told the Security Council Tuesday there was no justification for the killings.

“Israel has a responsibility to calibrate its use of force, to not use lethal force, except as a last resort, under imminent threat of death or serious injury,” he said. “It must protect its borders, but it must do so proportionally and investigate every incident that has led to a loss of human life.”

Israel faced criticism from countries including Saudi Arabia, France, Belgium and the U.K. Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador and recalled its own from Israel and the U.S. The Palestinian Authority appealed to the Arab League and UN for international protection and urged the International Criminal Court to investigate Israeli officials.

Israel is “conducting a massacre against our people,” said Mahmoud al-Aloul, deputy chairman of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah party.

In the 2008 Gaza conflict that left about 1,400 Palestinians and five Israelis dead, a UN fact-finding commission found both Israel and Hamas, the group which rules Gaza, committed war crimes. The panel’s chief, Richard Goldstone, later said the report erroneously accused Israel of intentionally killing civilians.

Hamas said 50 of the dead were members of the armed Islamist group, which is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union.

Trump’s ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, blamed Hamas and said Israel acted with restraint.

Following investigations in the aftermath of three Gaza wars, the army has assigned lawyers, senior officers and video photographers to its regional commands to document military actions and try to ensure no war crimes are committed. The army says soldiers adhere to open-fire regulations and officers were prepared to defend their actions.

“Every bullet that’s fired is ordered by a commander and every bullet has a target,” said Conricus. Still, he said, smoke, sand, wind and tear gas created a chaotic environment in Gaza, and “unfortunately we do not always hit where we are trying to hit.”

The death toll appeared to deter a second day of protests that had been expected Tuesday to mark 70 years since Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes with Israel’s establishment. Instead, Gazans were burying their dead.

Israeli gunfire “will never make us lose hope to get back our land,” said Mohamed Abu el-Majd, 23, whose left leg was fractured. “They can shoot me in the right leg now and I swear to God I’ll come crawling back.”

— With assistance by Fadwa Hodali

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Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-17/in-gaza-israel-counts-on-army-snipers-over-non-lethal-arsenal

[Disclaimer]

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