‘We must strike with great force’, says Israel’s notorious police minister as tension mounts in Al-Aqsa

News Network
April 12, 2023

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Ramallah, Apr 12: Amidst escalating tensions in Palestine, Israel has banned visits by non-Muslims to the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem until the end of Ramadan.

The move followed outrage after Israeli security forces permitted about 800 settlers to pray in the compound on Tuesday morning, the sixth day of the Passover holiday, in breach of a longstanding agreement that prohibits such activity during the last 10 days of the Muslim holy month.

It remains unclear whether Israel’s increasingly empowered radical settler movement will comply with the Al-Aqsa policy. 

One of their leaders, far-right police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — a notorious religious bigot with a criminal record for supporting terrorism and incitement to racism — denounced the ban. “…we must strike… with great force, not surrender to its whims,” he said.

Sheikh Ekrima Said Sabri, former grand mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine and the current preacher at Al-Aqsa, said: “Israel wants to prove that they are the ones who decide what can and cannot happen at Al-Aqsa, and we see this as an extreme violation and provocation.”

Meanwhile, there was no letup on Tuesday in Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank. The army killed two Palestinians and injured a third in the village of Deir Al-Hatab, east of Nablus, during an ambush near the Elon Moreh settlement.

Palestinian sources said that the two who died, Saud Al-Titi and Mohammed Abu Dira, were former prisoners and members of Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the military wing of President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party. 

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News Network
November 10,2024

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The media office in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a genocidal war since last October, says as many as 188 Palestinian journalists have been killed since the onset of the brutal military onslaught.

The office provided the figure on Saturday, naming four journalists as the most recent victims of the onslaught.

It identified the foursome as Zahraa Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Ahmad Mohammad Abu Sukheil, Mustafa Khadr Bahar, and Abdel Rahman Khadr Bahar.

The office said it “strongly condemns the targeting, killing, and assassination of Palestinian journalists by the Israeli occupation and holds it fully responsible for committing this heinous crime.”

“We call on the international community, international organizations, and those involved in journalistic work worldwide to take action against the occupation, pursue it in international courts for its ongoing crimes, and pressure it to halt the genocide and the targeted killings of Palestinian journalists,” it said.

Earlier in the day, the office said the Israeli regime had bombed the tents sheltering journalists and displaced persons at the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza for the ninth consecutive time.

The atrocity that claimed the lives of two people and injured 26 others came as part of “the genocidal crimes committed by the Israeli occupation army against hospitals, civilians, and displaced persons,” it said.

The media office held the regime and the United States, its biggest ally, as well as other countries aiding the genocide fully responsible for such systematic crimes.

At least 43,552 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed and 102,765 others wounded since the launch of the war that followed a retaliatory operation by Gaza’s resistance groups.

The fatalities include 44 people, who were killed across the coastal sliver, in the most recent phase of the military onslaught.

As many as 24 of the victims were killed in the northern part of the territory, where the regime has markedly intensified its deadly attacks for weeks.

They included an eight-year-old child and a five-year-old one, who lost their lives after Israeli warplanes targeted a group of minors filling up jerry cans with water alongside their mother at the Jabalia Refugee camp.

Gaza’s heath ministry, meanwhile, said a number of victims remained under the rubble and in the streets following Israeli airstrikes, saying ambulances and civil defense teams could not reach them due to the sheer extent of the destruction caused by the raids and obstruction caused by the regime.

Also on Saturday, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report, a United Nations-backed assessment, warned that famine was looming in northern Gaza amid escalated Israeli aggression and the regime’s near-total siege of the targeted areas.

The alert from the Famine Review Committee warned of "an imminent and substantial likelihood of famine occurring, due to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip."

On October 17, the body projected that the number of people in Gaza facing "catastrophic" food insecurity between November and April 2025 would reach 345,000, or 16 percent of the population.

The IPC report classified that figure as Phase 5 -- a situation when "starvation, death, destitution, and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels are evident."

The Israeli military, however, questioned the report's credibility.

"To date, all assessments by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground," the army said in a statement, denouncing "partial, biased data and superficial sources with vested interests."

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