Israel's Bigotry
Live Reporting
Cyprus not involved in military conflict: Gov’t spokesperson
Cyprus’s government spokesman has said that statements and threats made by the Hezbollah chief do not correspond to reality and that Cyprus has never been involved in military conflicts nor will it be.
On Wednesday, Nasrallah issued a warning to Cyprus, an EU member that sits in the eastern Mediterranean west of the Lebanese and Israeli coasts, saying that the group has information that Israel is conducting military exercises in Cyprus.
Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides said his island nation “is in no way involved” in any military operations in the region.
On Thursday, Constantinos Letympiotis, the spokesman, said: “Our relations are still excellent with Lebanon.”
Netanyahu creating ‘mythical’ rift with Biden ahead of US elections
Netanyahu has artificially created a rift with the Biden administration to play into US domestic politics ahead of the country’s presidential elections, says HA Hellyer, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The rift is “created … mythical”, Hellyer told Al Jazeera, adding that Biden has applied no serious pressure on Netanyahu beyond “rhetoric”.
“It’s certainly not how Netanyahu is presenting it, as though they’re in battle.”
Netanyahu is likely playing up the divide with Biden because he feels a Trump presidency would work even more to his advantage, leaving him more “free”, said Hellyer.
Palestinian journalist describes torture, abuse at Israeli detention camp
Mohammed Saber Arab, a detained Palestinian journalist from Gaza, described multiple instances of torture, abuse and rape that he and other detainees endured at the Israeli Sde Teiman detention camp.
The 42-year-old detailed his harrowing experiences to his lawyer during a recent visit to the detention centre.
Arab, who worked as a correspondent for Al Araby TV, was arrested at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza amid a large-scale Israeli assault in March.
Arab said that detainees are kept blindfolded and handcuffed. He noted that for 50 days, he had not changed his clothes and was only allowed to change his trousers before the visit. Detainees are subjected to continuous torture, physical and sexual abuse and humiliation, leading to deaths.
He noted that conversations between detainees are prohibited, with severe beatings as punishment for violations, forcing detainees to talk to themselves and silently pray as they are deprived of religious practices.
The journalist pointed out that some detainees had their limbs amputated and bullets removed without anaesthesia.
The detainees are constantly surrounded by police dogs, and only four detainees are allowed one minute in the toilet at a time. They sleep on the ground, using their shoes as pillows, he added.
Severe lack of food, drinking water, milk and formula for babies in Gaza: UN
The humanitarian crisis in southern Gaza is “quickly deteriorating” for tens of thousands of displaced people crammed into an area along Gaza’s coast amid “burning summer heat” and where “active conflict and lawlessness” are making it almost impossible for relief workers to meet the “soaring needs”.
That was just one of several warnings on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza contained in the latest situation report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
OCHA also reports that at camps for displaced people in central and southern Gaza, access to water is critically low and there is a severe lack of food, as well as milk and formula for babies.
“Many households report having only one meal every day, with some having one meal every two or three days,” the OCHA report states.
Israeli-imposed constraints continue to “severely undermine the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance and services across Gaza, including the delivery of food and nutrition assistance, medical care, protection and shelter support, and water, sanitation and hygiene [WASH] services to hundreds of thousands of people”, the OCHA report adds.
Israeli military arrests 7 during raid on town near Ramallah
The Israeli military has detained seven Palestinians during an arrest operation in the town of Beit Sira, west of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency reports.
Four members of the Hamdan family were arrested in the raids, including two men previously held in Israeli custody.
Israeli forces have also stormed the city of Dura, south of Hebron and arrested a Palestinian man.
A damaged Israeli military bulldozer has also been removed from the Far’a refugee camp, south of Tubas, after Palestinian fighters struck it with an explosive device.
UN Israel-Gaza inquiry sends ‘7000 pieces of evidence’ to ICC
Navi Pillay of the UN Commission of Inquiry told Al Jazeera that her team has submitted 7,000 pieces of evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) related to crimes committed by Israel and Hamas. “We have never seen anything like this,” Pillay told Al Jazeera’s James Bays.
Colombia to treat, rehabilitate Palestinian children who lost limbs in Israel’s war on Gaza
Colombia’s Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo said his government is planning to help up to 50 Palestinian children from Gaza who have lost limbs by bringing them to Colombia and providing them with prostheses.
Under the programme, the children, aged between 12 and 15 years, would be flown from Egypt to Colombia alongside a family member or guardian, where they would spend six months in treatment and rehabilitation.
Murillo described the plans as “quite advanced” on Wednesday, the AP news agency reports, and said he had already discussed the programme with Egyptian and Jordanian officials.
“The plan up to now is that Colombia would be sending an aeroplane, bringing some support to Gaza or refugee camps in Egypt. We think that the plan can move forward, according to the agreements with our colleagues in Jordanian and Egypt,” he said.
Fisherman could be a lifeline for Palestinians, but Israel is killing them
The sea is both a source of livelihood for Palestinian fishermen and part of their identity.
Mostafa Abu Amera risks his life every day, rowing out on the waves off the coast of Gaza, under Israeli surveillance, to net the occasional fish on which his hungry family have come to rely.
“We are forced to go to sea and fish to feed our children,” he says. “Last week, I lost my brother-in-law who was also a fisherman.”
With Israel blocking humanitarian aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip, these fishermen could be a lifeline for Palestinians. But Israel’s war has effectively shut down the fishing industry, adding to the widespread hunger and starvation.
Jake Sullivan to meet with top Israel officials amid US-Israel tensions: Reports
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is set to meet with his Israeli counterpart Tzachi Hanegbi and Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer in Washington, DC, on Thursday, White House officials have confirmed to news outlets.
The nature of the meeting has not been disclosed, but it comes amid growing tensions between the Netanyahu government and the Biden administration after the Israeli prime minister released a video on Wednesday complaining that the US is blocking arms shipments to the country.
The complaint reportedly surprised US officials, who insist they have only withheld a single shipment of 900kg (2,000-pound) bombs back in May, while all other weapons transfers to Israel have continued uninterrupted.
Israeli army ‘one of the most criminal in the world’
“The Israeli army is one of the most criminal armies in the world,” Chris Sidoti, a member of the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry (COI) on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, has told reporters. The commission was presenting findings of its report into abuses committed by both Israel and Hamas since October last year.
West Bank: Explosion, fire as Israeli attack drone strikes petrol station in Tulkarem
An Israeli drone strike has caused a large explosion and fire near a petrol station east of Tulkarem, in the occupied West Bank, the Wafa news agency is reporting.
A video shared on social media shows a man running away from a fire as debris falls from the sky. No injuries were reported, Wafa added.
Israeli aircraft were heard flying over the city of Tulkarem and its refugee camps for hours, before the drone strike, in the as-Salam neighbourhood of Tulkarem, near the Nur Shams refugee camp, Wafa reports.
Earlier this week, UN human rights chief Volker Turk expressed alarm at the “dramatically deteriorating” situation in the occupied West Bank, where 528 Palestinians, including 133 children, have been killed by Israeli military forces or Israeli settlers since October.
Israeli army spokesman’s comments undermine ‘Netanyahu’s doctrine’ on Hamas’s destruction: Analyst
Israeli political analyst Akiva Eldar said the statement by Israel’s army spokesman Daniel Hagari that “Hamas is an ideology” and “we cannot eliminate an ideology” has undermined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “doctrine” that Hamas could be defeated “once and for all”.
“Right now, it seems that for the first time after many years, there is an ongoing escalation between the government headed by Netanyahu and his entourage of reporters, analysts who are actually on his – unofficially – on his team, that are smearing the chief of staff,” Eldar told Al Jazeera.
“It’s a kind of apocalyptic scenario that the army spokesman – who is reporting to the chief of staff – is just undermining Netanyahu’s doctrine, which is: We do have to put an end to the Hamas government once and for all in Gaza,” Eldar said.
“What Hagari is saying is challenging Netanyahu and saying, actually … you are hallucinating.”
Fighting in Gaza's Rafah as tensions soar on Israel-Lebanon border
GAZA STRIP (AFP) - Israeli air strikes and clashes between troops and Palestinian groups rocked Gaza on Wednesday (Jun 19), after Israel's army warned it had readied an "offensive" against the Lebanese Hezbollah movement on the country's northern front.
Witnesses and the civil defence agency in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip reported Israeli bombardment in western Rafah, where medics said drone strikes and shelling killed at least seven people.
