Haj gets more expensive this year

Israel has prevented tens of thousands of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank from entering the holy land of Jerusalem to celebrate a Christian festivity at the city’s churches.

The Palestinian WAFA news agency reported that only a limited number of Palestinian Christians were able to attend celebrations in al-Quds for the Palm Sunday feast day. 

Israeli forces issued only 6,000 permits for West Bank Christians, although the population exceeds 50,000, the report added.

The occupation’s soldiers imposed strict measures at checkpoints surrounding al-Quds and its Old City, home to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

“This is the second consecutive year that only a small number of pilgrims are able to participate in Holy Week and Easter celebrations in al-Quds, due to the ongoing conflict,” said Father Ibrahim Faltas, deputy head of the Custody of the Holy Land.

Christians in the Gaza Strip commemorated Palm Sunday at Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church, just hours after an Israeli aerial assault on the nearby al-Ahli Arab hospital.

In a statement, the Gaza-based Hamas resistance group censured Israel for restricting West Bank Palestinians’ access to al-Quds.

The Israeli move is a part of a broader racist and fascist policy aimed at isolating Palestinians from their homeland and holy sites, it added.

Hamas also called on all churches across the world to condemn the occupation and its ongoing attacks on freedom of worship and access to holy sites.

It further urged the international community to take serious steps towards ending Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip, which is aimed at annihilating Palestinians and liquidating their cause.

Israel launched its brutal Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after Hamas carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

After one and a half years of war, the Tel Aviv regime has failed to achieve its declared objectives in the besieged territory, despite killing at least 50,944 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 116,156 others.

The US military has struck the western Yemeni oil port of Ras Isa, leaving dozens of workers and paramedics dead, and dozens more injured.

The facility in Hudaydah governorate was hit at least two times on Thursday night, with the second strike coming as civil defense and rescue teams were extinguishing fires and recovering victims. The second attack killed at least five paramedics.

The Palestinian Information Center and al-Manar TV now report that at least 38 people have been killed in that attack, while 102 others injured.

The Yemeni government slammed the attack as a clear war crime aimed at supporting the Zionist regime and enabling it to continue the Gaza genocide.

It said the strikes prove that the US deliberately attacks civilian infrastructure in Yemen with false justifications.

The government vowed that this crime would not pass without painful punishment, and the US would reap nothing but humiliating defeat and failure.

The US military claimed the port was a source of fuel for the Ansarullah resistance movement.

The governorates of Sana'a, al-Bayda and Hudaydah were also hit with multiple strikes.

The United States intensified its deadly attacks on the country last month at President Donald Trump’s direct orders.

Washington claims the raids are strictly aimed at protecting shipping activity around Yemen, alleging that the regional waterways’ maritime security had been endangered by Sana’a.

Yemeni officials have, however, roundly rejected such claims, underlining that the country only targeted vessels belonging to the Israeli regime and ships taking supplies to it.

The operations implemented by Yemen’s Armed Forces began in October 2023, when the Israeli regime, the US’s most cherished regional ally, began taking the Gaza Strip under a genocidal war.

More than 51,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed as a result of the warfare, which receives hugely enhanced and unstinting arms support on the part of Washington.

New Israeli strikes have killed over a dozen people, including seven children, in the besieged territory as the regime is pressing ahead with its bloody military onslaught against Palestinians.

Gaza's civil defense agency said the bodies of 10 people, including seven children, were brought to the hospital following an Israeli airstrike that targeted the al-Farra family home in central Khan Younis.

Witnesses reported continuous and intensive Israeli tank fire in the city. 

Moreover, one Palestinian was killed and four others were wounded following an aerial attack on a group of civilians in Rafah.

In central Gaza, Israeli drones struck a group of civilians in Deir el-Balah, following which a number of casualties were transferred to the al-Aqsa Hospital.

Two more people killed in an Israeli strike that targeted a group of civilians in the al-Atatra area in the northern city of Beit Lahia.

On Friday morning, the Israeli military released an “urgent and serious” evacuation notice for residents living in various neighborhoods east of Gaza City.

The United Nations on Friday said its analysis of 36 recent Israeli strikes in Gaza showed only women and children were killed and decried the human cost of the war.

Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani cited an April 6 strike on a residential building of the Abu Issa family in Deir al-Balah, which reportedly killed one girl, four women, and one four-year-old boy.

Even the areas where Palestinians were being instructed to go in the expanding number of Israeli "evacuation orders" were also being subjected to attacks, she said.

Israel has said its troops are seizing "large areas" in Gaza and incorporating them into buffer zones cleared of their inhabitants.

The UN rights office warned that expanding Israeli evacuation orders are resulting in the "forcible transfer" of people into ever-shrinking spaces in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.

"Let us be clear, these so-called evacuation orders are actually displacement orders, leading to displacement of the population of Gaza into ever shrinking spaces," Shamdasani said.

"The permanently displacing the civilian population within occupied territories amounts to forcible transfer, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and it is a crime against humanity."

Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Shamsadani said between March 18 and April 9, there were some 224 incidents of Israeli strikes on residential buildings and tents for internally displaced people.

"In some 36 strikes about which the UN Human Rights Office corroborated information, the fatalities recorded so far were only women and children," she said.

"Overall, a large percentage of fatalities are children and women, according to information recorded by our Office," she added.