Category Archives: Israel

Tensions run high across Israel after car ramming attack leaves tourist dead

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Further violence feared after Arab-Israeli man drives his vehicle into busy city promenade following a West Bank shooting

On 8 April 2022, a Palestinian gunman entered a crowded bar in Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial capital, and opened fire, killing three people and wounding 10. This weekend, on the anniversary of that attack, an Arab-Israeli man rammed his car into pedestrians on the city’s seaside promenade, killing an Italian tourist and injuring seven more people.

That attack followed a shooting earlier in the day in the north of the occupied West Bank that killed two British-Israeli sisters, aged 15 and 20, and left their 48-year-old mother in critical condition after their car veered off the road.

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Hezbollah and Israel pull back from the brink – but spectre of conflict looms

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The rocket attack that followed air strikes and mosque raids failed to provoke all-out war, but it must surely be inevitable

The groves of southern Lebanon had been quiet for nearly 17 years. But as farmers tended to orange trees and banana crops on Thursday, rocket men lurked among them, readying the biggest barrage fired into Israel since the war of 2006 and taking a startled region to the precipice of another conflict that leaders on both sides of the border fear will be worse than all before them.

Familiar sights of streaks through a clear blue sky, sirens and billowing smoke from impact sites were soon replaced by fear and trepidation. In Beirut and Tel Aviv, an escalation seemed imminent. But as a troubling afternoon wore on, the apocalyptic showdown between Hezbollah and Israel that had been widely predicted started to fizzle. Rhetoric was of measured responses. Israel was content to blame Palestinian groups and put a distance between them and Hezbollah. War could wait, for now.

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Israeli government calls up reservists after car attack in Tel Aviv

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Police to deploy extra battalions in city centres as Benjamin Netanyahu also directs army to mobilise additional forces

Israel began calling up police and army reservists on Saturday after separate attacks killed three people, including an Italian tourist and two British-Israeli sisters, in Tel Aviv and the West Bank.

Despite appeals for restraint, violence has surged since Israeli police clashed with Palestinians inside Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque on Wednesday, with Israel bombarding Gaza and Lebanon in response to rocket fire by Palestinian militants.

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Violence in Tel Aviv leaves one dead and five injured

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Italian tourist dies and Britons among injured after driver rams people near beach, Israeli officials report

An Italian man has died and five other British and Italian tourists have been injured in an attack in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv, the latest episode of violence after several days of rising tensions sparked fears of a broader conflagration in the region.

The 30-year-old Italian died from a gunshot wound, Israel’s rescue service said on Friday night, the Jewish holy day. At the same time, Israeli police said a car had been driven into people near the beach, and that the driver had been shot and killed.

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Two British sisters killed and mother injured in West Bank shooting

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Sisters, believed to have migrated from the UK, died after car was shot at and crashed on Friday

Two sisters with British nationality have been killed and their mother seriously injured in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank, keeping the region on edge even as the situation on Israel’s borders appeared to ease after Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip overnight.

The sisters were killed when their car crashed after it was shot at in the north of the territory on Friday, Israeli media reported. Local authorities said they were 16 and 20 years old, and their mother 48. The family have not yet been officially named due to a pause in some Israeli police procedures for the Jewish holy day, Shabbat.

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Israel launches airstrikes in Lebanon and Gaza Strip after ‘biggest rocket salvo since 2006’

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Rocket fire from Gaza and Lebanon and second Israeli raid on al-Aqsa mosque stoke fears of further escalation

Israeli jets hit sites in Lebanon and Gaza early on Friday, in retaliation for rocket attacks it blamed on the Islamist group Hamas, as tensions following police raids on the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem this week threatened to spiral out of control.

Two explosions were heard in Gaza late on Thursday. It was not immediately clear what had been targeted but Israel said its jets hit targets including tunnels and weapons manufacturing sites of Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the blockaded southern coastal strip.

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Rocket fire from​ Lebanon and​ Gaza​​ ​hits Israel​ after​ second al-Aqsa mosque raid

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Israeli army says salvo fired from Lebanese territory, after officers entered religious compound to remove worshippers

Rocket fire from Gaza and Lebanon and a second Israeli police raid on Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque in as many nights have stoked fears of further escalation in the region during a sensitive period of overlapping religious holidays.

On Thursday afternoon, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said the biggest salvo of rockets since the 2006 war had been fired from Lebanese territory into northern Israel. Most of the 34 projectiles were intercepted, but there were two minor injuries and a fire.

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Israeli hospitals scramble to comply with ‘chametz law’ for Passover

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New law bans people from taking leavened food made from grain into medical centres during Jewish holiday

Passover celebrations in Israel this year are once again being overshadowed by a row over the consumption of leavened food such as bread in public buildings, in a symbolic fight about the role of religion in the state.

Last week, the Knesset passed the “chametz law”, which bans people from taking leavened food made from grain into hospitals during Passover. The law, sponsored by an ultra-Orthodox party, is in accordance with traditional Jewish teachings stipulating that observant Jews cannot eat chametz or have it in their homes during the week-long holiday.

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Palestinians arrested and injured in Israeli raid on al-Aqsa mosque

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Police raid triggers West Bank clashes, cross-border strikes in Gaza Strip and fears of escalation

At least 14 Palestinians have been injured and hundreds arrested in an Israeli police raid on Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, triggering clashes in the West Bank, cross-border strikes in the Gaza Strip and fears of wider escalation over the holiday period.

The violence in the early hours of Wednesday – during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and on the eve of the Jewish Passover holiday – comes after a year of spiralling bloodshed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also carries echoes of 2021, when clashes at Jerusalem’s holiest site helped start an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement in control of Gaza.

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Mount of Olives becomes latest target in fight for control of Jerusalem

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Israeli settler movement is making life harder for Jerusalem’s Palestinians and erasing Christian character of holy city

Even in a city as storied as Jerusalem, some places are holier than others. The Mount of Olives, studded with churches marking events in the lives of Jesus and Mary, home to the most sacred Jewish cemetery in the world and tombs celebrated as those of the Sufi mystic Rabia al-Basri and the medieval scholar Mujir al-Din, is one such place.

Christians believe Jesus spent the last days of his life here, while according to the Hebrew Bible, the mount is where the resurrection will begin; in both Christianity and Islam, it is revered as the site Jesus ascended to heaven. The Mount of Olives’ summit, which gives the clearest view of the Temple Mount, or al-Haram al-Sherif, has served as a pilgrimage destination for all three faiths for millennia.

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‘I am proud of my work’: the women pushing boundaries in Gaza

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Palestinian women are fighting back, despite personal losses and scarcity of opportunities in the conservative territory

Rouzan al-Najjar, a paramedic from the Gaza Strip, knew that her work saving lives during the 2018 protests on the frontier with Israel challenged assumptions in the highly conservative Palestinian territory about the role of women.

“Being a medic is not only a job for a man,” the 21-year-old said in an interview shortly before she was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper.

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Israeli government approves far-right minister’s proposal of national guard

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Itamar Ben-Gvir says force will focus on Arab unrest as police chief voices concerns and opposition figures denounce it as ‘militia’

Israel’s government has authorised the establishment of a national guard proposed by the far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said it would focus on Arab unrest, as political rivals accused him of setting up a sectarian “militia”.

The previous government had begun moves to set up an auxiliary police force to tackle internal political violence after pro-Palestinian protests in mixed Jewish-Arab areas during the Israel-Gaza conflict in May 2021. However, that government ended before the force was finalised.

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Israeli airstrikes wound five Syrian soldiers, state media say

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Attack near western city of Homs early on Sunday was Israel’s third in recent days

Five Syrian soldiers were wounded in the latest Israeli airstrike on Syria, the state news agency Sana reported on Sunday, while Iran said two Revolutionary Guards officers had died in earlier attacks.

Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian territory during more than a decade of civil war, primarily targeting Iranian-backed forces and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions.

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Second killing in a day by Israeli forces in Jerusalem and West Bank

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Authorities say both deaths were in response to threats: a man grabbing a police officer’s gun at al-Aqsa mosque, and a car ramming near Beit Ummar

A man was killed by Israeli soldiers after a West Bank car ramming on Saturday, the army said, in an escalation threatening to end a relative lull during the holy month of Ramadan so far.

The Palestinian’s death came less than 24 hours after an Arab Israeli allegedly snatched a gun from a police officer at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque compound and fired it before being shot dead.

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Israeli police say man shot dead in Jerusalem had grabbed officer’s gun

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Man was killed near al-Aqsa mosque after allegedly firing officer’s gun, in what police describe as terrorist attack

A man detained by Israeli police near a flashpoint mosque compound in Jerusalem grabbed an officer’s gun and fired it, prompting the unit to shoot him dead, the force said on Saturday, describing the incident as a terrorist attack.

The incident overnight at the edge of al-Aqsa mosque complex, an icon of Palestinian nationalism, came at a high point of Muslim attendance for the holy month of Ramadan.

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Man shot dead by police near Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque

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26-year-old man from an Arab village in southern Israel had grabbed and fired officer’s gun after being stopped for questioning, say police

A man detained near al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem was shot dead after he grabbed an officer’s gun and fired it, police said.

They identified the man as a 26-year-old resident of Hura, an Arab village in southern Israel.

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Israel’s Netanyahu rejects Biden’s call to ‘walk away’ from judicial overhaul

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Prime minister praises US president’s commitment to Israel but will not be swayed by ‘pressures from abroad’

Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed Joe Biden’s call to “walk away” from a proposed judicial overhaul that has led to massive protests across Israel, with the Israeli prime minister responding that he does not make decisions based on pressure from abroad.

Netanyahu on Monday delayed the proposal after large numbers of people spilled into the streets. The White House initially suggested Netanyahu should seek a compromise but the US president went further in taking questions from reporters on Tuesday. “I hope he walks away from it,” Biden said.

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Israeli crisis continues as fired minister apparently refuses to quit

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Questions raised over Benjamin Netanyahu’s control over coalition as he makes concessions to far right

Israeli politics has descended into disarray with questions over whether a fired defence minister is refusing to step down and concerns Benjamin Netanyahu may have promised too much to far-right politicians in exchange for a deal aimed at quelling nationwide demonstrations.

Facing a climax in the 12-week protest movement against his plans to weaken the power of the courts, the prime minister on Monday evening announced a delay to the proposals, saying he wanted time to seek a compromise with political opponents.

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Netanyahu’s failure to grasp anger over Israel judicial overhaul exposes weaknesses

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Israeli prime minister looks out of touch in his handling of response to the country’s latest political crisis

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, kept the country waiting all day, but in the end, when he finally announced a suspension to the government’s proposed judicial overhaul, it was a theatrical speech. The 73-year-old compared the unprecedented rift dividing Israel to the tale of Solomon, who commanded an infant be cut in half to decide which of two women was its real mother. Try as he might, however, in this story Netanyahu is not playing the role of the wise king.

Rather, Israel’s latest political crisis is once again completely his own doing. Bibi, as he is widely known, has for now bought some time by delaying implementing the controversial legislation weakening the power of the supreme court to the Knesset’s summer session, but the issue is far from resolved.

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Netanyahu halts judicial overhaul but fight is far from over

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The biggest protest movement in Israeli history has achieved its goal but the country may soon face new elections

One word is heard more often than any other on the streets of Jerusalem these days: democratia, or democracy.

About 100,000 people sang, shouted and banged pots and pans outside the Knesset building on Monday afternoon, many carrying Israel’s blue and white flag. The demonstrators were tired; some had been up all night.

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