Israel-Hamas relations: a predictable but fatal dance

The longtime enemies have developed a fiery pattern of trading rockets for airstrikes

It has become a near-monthly event with a predictable pattern – rockets from Gaza are traded for Israeli airstrikes. Palestinians cower in basements while Israelis hide in bomb shelters. Each flare-up signals the threat of full-blown war, but the next day it is usually over.

Israel and Hamas – the Palestinian faction that rules Gaza Strip on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean between Israel and Egypt – have fallen into a bloody and fiery dance over the past year.

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Israeli military bombs Gaza after rocket strike

  • Five wounded as Israel strikes ‘Hamas terror targets’
  • Hamas says Egypt has helped arrange a ceasefire

Israeli forces and Hamas exchanged rocket fire on Monday night amid fears of a new conflict in Gaza.

Israeli forces carried out strikes against what they called “Hamas terror targets” across the Gaza Strip, after an earlier rocket attack that destroyed a family home and wounded seven people in a neighbourhood north of Tel Aviv. The army also said it was reinforcing troops along the Gaza border and calling up reserves.

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Spymaster behind the capture of Adolf Eichmann dies aged 92

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu hails Rafi Eitan as a hero of the intelligence services

Rafi Eitan, a renowned and controversial Israeli spymaster who masterminded the capture of Adolf Eichmann, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, has died aged 92.

The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him a “hero of the Israeli intelligence services”.

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Trump provokes global anger by recognising Israel’s claim to Golan Heights

Russia, Iran and Turkey condemn US president while Syria vows to recapture territory lost in 1967 war

Syria has vowed to retake the Golan Heights as Donald Trump’s call for the US to recognise the occupied territory as part of Israel elicited strong responses from Russia, Turkey and Iran.

The president ended half a century of US foreign policy and broke from post-second world war international consensus that forbids territorial conquest during war with a tweet on Thursday that said it was time “to fully recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights”.

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Trump: time for US to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Golan Heights – live

South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg is the latest Democratic presidential hopeful to go on a hiring spree.

The 2020 Democratic candidate has nearly twenty jobs available on his website in five states for aspiring operatives.

In a sign that he may be leaning towards a presidential bid, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan has Iowa in the NCAA championship game, even though the team is a #10 seed. The state has the first in the nation caucuses.

Hogan has his home state Maryland Terps winning it all.

Never say never. pic.twitter.com/MjcIL7d8mE

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UK will change tack on UN motions criticising Israel, says Jeremy Hunt

Policy will be to vote against claims of rights abuses by Israel brought under special protocol

The UK will oppose motions criticising rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza that are brought to the UN’s human rights council under a special procedure dedicated to Israel’s behaviour in the occupied territories, Jeremy Hunt has said.

The move is likely to delight the Trump administration, which quit the human rights council in June last year, citing its approach to Israel. It also appears aimed at cementing the Conservative party’s relations with pro-Israel sections of the British Jewish community at a time when the Labour party is mired in criticism of its handling of antisemitism complaints.

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Trump says US will recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Golan Heights

Donald Trump has announced that the US will recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, in a dramatic move likely to bolster Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes to win re-election, but which will also provoke international opposition.

Previous US administrations have treated Golan Heights as occupied Syrian territory, in line with UN security council resolutions. Trump declared his break with that policy in a tweet.

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Rockets fired from Gaza target Tel Aviv for first time since 2014

No group immediately claims attack as Israeli army says no damage or injuries reported

Militants in Gaza have fired two rockets towards Tel Aviv, the first such attack since the war between Israel and Hamas in 2014.

Rocket sirens wailed in the densely populated Mediterranean city on Thursday evening, alerting residents to rush to bomb shelters. Videos posted online by locals showed empty streets and captured the blare of “code red” sirens, used to warn of imminent attacks.

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One-state solution gains ground as Palestinians battle for equal rights

Belief in two-state solution crumbles as up to 600,000 Israeli settlers remain on occupied land

Maybe it wasn’t the wisest choice for a Palestinian activist living under the close watch of Israeli security. But Fadi Quran was obsessed and determined: he would study nuclear physics at Stanford University.

“I got stopped at the border a lot,” he joked years later of the times he passed through Israeli passport control after graduating. “To be honest, when I first started I just wanted to win a Nobel prize in physics. I was 18 years old. I loved the stuff.”

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Gaza’s generation blockade: young lives in the ‘world’s largest prison’

Anger and frustration for generation of Palestinians who have spent their entire lives in the fenced-off territory

Cruising south along Israel’s coastal highway, there are almost no signs that you are approaching Gaza. Two million people live trapped on a thin slice of land along the Mediterranean, but someone could easily drive right past and miss it altogether.

For visitors to the strip, restricted mainly to diplomats, aid workers and journalists, the last stop in Israel is a service station, where Red Sea-bound tourists and commuters sip lattes and eat chocolate croissants at an American-style coffeehouse. Walking back to their cars, they may glimpse the only hint of Gaza’s existence – a white orb high in the southern sky, a tethered surveillance balloon that provides the Israeli army with a 24-hour overhead view of the enclave.

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The Guardian view on the Israeli elections: Netanyahu debases his office – again | Editorial

Next month’s poll is a referendum on a prime minister who has triumphed by fuelling divisions

Israel is not a state of all its citizens, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu declared on Sunday. His words should be shocking, but in truth they made explicit the message of last year’s nation state law, rendering Palestinians in Israel second-class citizens. They would be shameful if he were capable of shame. Mr Netanyahu’s campaign for re-election in the face of a bribery and fraud indictment shows he is not. He has prospered by fostering division.

This latest act of cynical bigotry is simply par for the course. The same is true of Mr Netanyahu’s awful turn to far-right parties for support. Mr Netanyahu orchestrated the merger of the racist anti-Arab Jewish Power and the pro-settler Jewish Home parties to help them pass the electoral threshold and him put together a coalition. Jewish Power includes followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party was outlawed in Israel and is designated by the US and EU as a terror organisation.

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Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel is ‘not a state of all its citizens’

PM has been accused of demonising Israeli Arabs in lead-up to April election

Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is “not a state of all its citizens”, in a reference to the country’s Arab population.

In comments on Instagram, the prime minister went on to say all citizens, including Arabs, had equal rights, but he referred to a deeply controversial law passed last year declaring Israel the nation state of the Jewish people.

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Antisemitism debate exposes new fault lines in US politics

The fallout from comments by Ilhan Omar spans identity politics, party politics, geopolitics and a generational divide

An Israeli prime minister who has embraced Donald Trump and taken rightwing populism from his playbook. And a group of fiery young Democrats unafraid to question their elders or challenge the status quo. Put together, the elements were bound to be explosive.

Democrats were expected to offer a resolution condemning antisemitism on the floor of the US House of Representatives on Thursday following the latest provocative comments by Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who in January became one of the first two Muslim women in Congress.

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UN says Israel’s killings at Gaza protests may amount to war crimes

Inquiry accuses army of killing demonstrators ‘who were not posing an imminent threat’

UN investigators have accused Israeli soldiers of intentionally firing on civilians and said they may have committed war crimes in their lethal response to Palestinian demonstrations in Gaza.

The independent Commission of Inquiry, set up last year by the UN’s human rights council, said Israeli forces killed 189 people and shot more than 6,100 others with live ammunition near the fence that divides the two territories.

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Pro-Israel US group condemns Netanyahu pact with extremists

Aipac attacks Israeli PM’s pact with ‘racist and reprehensible’ Jewish Power party

Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to enter an electoral pact with a party of ultranationalist extremists has drawn rare criticism from an influential pro-Israel group in the US.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), which has generally given unflinching support to the Israeli leader during his 13 years in power, called the Jewish Power party “racist and reprehensible”.

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Where Jesus once preached, the holy waters are draining away

Climate change and conflict have left the river Jordan a stagnant stream and the Sea of Galilee critically low

If Jesus were alive today, he might reconsider a baptism in the river Jordan; there’s a good chance he’d pick up an eye infection. Faecal bacteria in the pungent, murky waters have risen in recent years to up to six times the recommended levels.

Once a raging torrent, the lower Jordan has been starved of water to become a stagnant stream, filled with sewage and dirty run-off from farms. Around 95% of its historical flow has been diverted by agriculture during the past half-century. And the river’s primary source, the Sea of Galilee – where Christians believe the son of God walked on water – has for years been dammed to prevent its demise.

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Summit cancelled as Israel and Poland row over Holocaust

Israeli foreign minister accuses Poles of hatred towards Jews in remarks described as ‘racist’ by Polish PM

Poland has pulled out of a planned trip to Jerusalem and scuppered an international summit the same day officials were due to arrive, after Israel’s foreign minister accused Poles of hatred against Jews and complicity in the Holocaust.

Israel Katz, who was appointed acting foreign minister on Sunday, said Poles “suckle antisemitism with their mother’s milk”. Speaking on another radio show on Monday morning, he accused all Polish people of harbouring “innate” antisemitism.

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Warsaw-Jerusalem tensions rise over ‘Nazi link’ claims

Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments cause anger in Poland ahead of summit

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to build friendly relations with central European nations are being tested, on the eve of a Jerusalem summit aimed at showcasing the alliance, by disputes over Holocaust history.

Netanyahu has long been criticised by domestic opponents for seeking political alliances in central Europe while turning a blind eye to historical revisionism and antisemitism in the region. However, the Israeli leader was caught up in the dispute last week, when he said during a visit to Warsaw that Poles had collaborated with the Nazis in the Holocaust.

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Do Netanyahu’s smiles with Arab leaders signal a new era?

Israeli leader bets on antipathy toward Iran to overshadow Palestine issue in Warsaw

They are images that will infuriate the Palestinian leadership: the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, smiling and joking with Arab leaders at an international conference on the Middle East.

Israel has formal diplomatic relations with only two Arab states, Egypt and Jordan. For decades, one price the country has paid for its occupation of the Palestinian territories has been snubs by the majority of its neighbours.

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Ilhan Omar apologizes after being accused of using ‘antisemitic tropes’

Congresswoman ‘unequivocally apologized’ after suggesting Republican support for Israel was fueled by financial incentives

The Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar “unequivocally” apologized on Monday for comments that suggested American support for Israel was fueled by political donations from a pro-Israel lobby group – a remark condemned by House Democratic leaders for raising “antisemitic tropes and prejudicial accusations”.

“Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes,” she said in a statement posted on Twitter. “My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole.”

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