Tag: palestine

Israeli war chief demands extended mandatory service to overcome troop shortages

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to schedule an urgent meeting to discuss extending compulsory military service to three years, Hebrew news outlet Makan reported on 21 June. 

The request comes in light of a serious enlistment crisis and shortage of soldiers in the Israeli army. 

“The new security reality requires finding means to continue the war effort,” Gallant was quoted as saying. Gallant has requested that Netanyahu approve this in government within the coming days.

The war minister’s request also comes less than two weeks after Israel’s Knesset voted in favor of a controversial draft conscription bill to delay the enlistment of Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) to the army. 63 voted for the bill, and 57 opposed it. 

The conscription of the Haredim has been a source of much tension in Israel lately. Far-right parties, on which Netanyahu’s coalition relies, favor continued exemption for the Haredim, while others, including Gallant, believe the burden of military service is a responsibility for all Israelis. 

Ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews of military age have been able to avoid compulsory enlistment into the army for decades by enrolling in yeshivas (religious schools) and obtaining repeated one-year service deferrals until they reach the age of military exemption.

The government has been unable to reach a consensus on the matter. 

“For many months, the security and military establishment has been working to advance the draft law and reach agreements with the Ministries of Finance and the Judiciary, without success or progress in meeting the immediate and urgent needs of the army,” Gallant said. 

The issue of the Haredim has contributed to severe shortages of soldiers in the army during wartime. 

An Israeli army radio correspondent, Doron Kadosh, reported on Monday that the military is setting up a new division for reservists over the retirement age of 40 in order to meet the “urgent need for more troops.”

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New legal powers for Jewish settlers open door to ‘actual annexation’ of West Bank

The Israeli military has quietly handed over significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants working for Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the Guardian reported on 21 June, in a move that will help accelerate Israel’s illegal annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Israeli military announced the transfer of responsibility for dozens of bylaws at the Civil Administration on its website on 29 May. The Civil Administration governs the West Bank under the military’s direction.

Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer, said: “The bottom line is that [for] anyone who thought the question of annexation was foggy, this order should end any doubts. What this order does is transfers vast areas of administrative power from the military commander to Israeli civilians working for the government.”

The transfer will allow Smotrich and his civilian appointees from his religious settler movement to further remove domestic legal obstacles to the theft of Palestinian land for Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

It will also allow Smotrich to further limit Palestinians from building new homes on their own land, which are needed as their population grows.

Israel captured the West Bank and militarily occupied it in 1967. It is home to millions of indigenous Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

Acquiring territory through war and establishing foreign settlements therein is illegal under international law.

The Guardian notes that Israeli politicians have long sought to​ find ways to annex the occupied Palestinian West Bank and make it formally part of Israel.

The transfer of laws, which received little attention in the Israeli press, follows a years-long campaign by pro-settlement politicians to acquire legal powers in the West Bank previously held by the Israeli military as the occupying power.

The laws cover everything from building regulations to the administration of agriculture, forestry, parks, and bathing locations.

Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst for Israel–Palestine at Crisis Group, said, “The big story is that this is no longer ‘creeping annexation’ or ‘de facto annexation,’ it is actual annexation.”

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US-Built Gaza Pier To Be Dismantled Early Amid Ongoing Failures

Following the latest weather and choppy seas setback, the US-built aid pier off Gaza has resumed operations as of the end of this week (Thursday), the Pentagon said, after it broke apart last month. It’s been an on-again off-again situation and the controversial and costly pier project has by and large proven ineffective.

But despite aid reportedly now rolling off the pier once again, Israeli media on Saturday has documented more embarrassing issues, including apparently broken off parts from the pier still washing up to shore far away from its location…

Following significant repairs it underwent at an Israeli port, the pier was transferred back in place amid a series of problems largely due to turbulent seas in the eastern Mediterranean..

The Associated Press has written in a fresh report that “Aid groups have sharply criticized the plan to bring aid by sea into Gaza, saying it’s a distraction to take pressure off Israel to open more land border crossings that are far more productive.”

This week The New York Times essentially declared that the expensive Biden project is an utter failure and that it will be dismantled earlier than expected.

“The $230 million temporary pier that the U.S. military built on short notice to rush humanitarian aid to Gaza has largely failed in its mission, aid organizations say, and will probably end operations weeks earlier than originally expected,” the Times wrote.

“In the month since it was attached to the shoreline, the pier has been in service only about 10 days. The rest of the time, it was being repaired after rough seas broke it apart, detached to avoid further damage or paused because of security concerns,” the report continued.

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Largest European Companies Arming Israel and Their Financiers – Report 

From 2019 to 2023, six of the world’s largest arms producers – Boeing, General Dynamics, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Rolls-Royce – have sold weapons or weapon systems to Israel.

A new report published by a group of 19 civil society organizations and trade unions has exposed the largest European financial institutions investing billions of euros in international arms producers that sell weapons to Israel.

Titled The Companies Arming Israel and Their Financiers, the report “reveals European financial institutions have provided 36.1 billion EUR in loans and underwritings, and hold 26 billion EUR in shares and bonds in companies selling weapons to Israel,” the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said in a statement on Thursday. The FIDH is one of the organizations involved in the exposé.

From 2019 to 2023, six of the world’s largest arms producers – Boeing, General Dynamics, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Rolls-Royce – have sold weapons or weapon systems to Israel, the statement said.

It mentioned that French bank BNP Paribas is by far the largest finance provider to companies that have sold weapons to Israel, having provided 5.7 billion EUR in loans and underwritings since 2021.

Other large investors identified by the report include the banks Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Barclays and UBS, as well as the Norwegian government pension fund GFPG and the insurance company Allianz. It also mentioned banks such as the UK’s HSBC and Standard Chartered.

“According to international standards on business and human rights, financial institutions have a clear responsibility to ensure that they do not invest in companies that contribute to human rights violations”, said Gaëlle Dusepulchre, Deputy Director of FIDH’s Business, Human Rights & Environment Desk.

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British-Israeli Soldiers in the War-Crimes Zone

British nationals are serving in some of Israel’s “craziest” combat units in Gaza where they view Palestinian fighters as “rats” and “animals”.

The soldiers have pledged to “kill these sons of whores” and “start pummelling them again.”

Declassified has gathered names and photographs of 15 Britons who have recently fought for Israel, and has partially identified another 10.

They are among at least 80 U.K. nationals who the Foreign Office knows to have enlisted in the IDF but is doing nothing to stop.

One of the soldiers, master sergeant Sam Sank, filmed himself fighting in Gaza between December 2023 and January 2024.

Declassified showed the footage to open source intelligence analyst Alysia Alexandra who located the neighbourhood where it was taken.

The tape puts Sank in the Gazan border settlement of Khuza’a while it was being flattened by the IDF during his two-month tour.

Israel’s top human rights group, B’Tselem, has described the IDF’s operation to create a buffer zone in Khuza’a throughout that period as a “war crime”.

“The military demolished the entire town, including residential buildings and mosques,” B’Tselem said, warning that the level of destruction was disproportionate and “violates a basic principle of international humanitarian law.”

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Palestinians released from Israeli torture camps detail ‘nightmare’ conditions

The Israeli army released 33 Palestinian abductees taken captive from Gaza in previous months, Anadolu Agency reported on 21 June, amid continued reports that Israel is subjecting the detainees to severe torture.

“The freed Palestinians were admitted to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital with thin bodies and signs of torture,” said Palestinian medical sources speaking with Anadolu.

The sources added that the detainees were set free in eastern Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

Since the beginning of the Israeli ground invasion in Gaza, Israel has abducted thousands of Palestinian civilians, including women, children, and medical and rescue workers.

Israel has released some, while others remain in Israeli captivity.

One of those released on Thursday was Badr Dahlan, 30, who displayed signs of psychological distress, including bugged eyes and difficulty forming sentences while speaking.

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Israel’s pledge to guard an aid route into Gaza falls flat as lawlessness blocks distribution

The Israeli military said Sunday that it was establishing a new safe corridor to deliver aid into southern Gaza. But days later, this self-declared “tactical pause” has brought little relief to desperate Palestinians.
The United Nations and international aid organizations say a breakdown in law and order has made the aid route unusable.
With thousands of truckloads of aid piled up, groups of armed men are regularly blocking convoys, holding drivers at gunpoint and rifling through their cargo, according to a UN official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media on the issue.
He said lawlessness has emerged as the main obstacle to aid distribution in southern Gaza — where an estimated 1.3 million Palestinians displaced from Rafah, or more than half of Gaza’s entire population, are now sheltering in tent camps and cramped apartments without adequate food, water, or medical supplies.
Here is a closer look at the security challenges facing the UN and aid organizations.
Israel’s ‘tactical pause’ stymied
Israel said Sunday it would observe daily pauses in combat along a route stretching from Kerem Shalom — the strip’s only operational aid crossing in the south — to the nearby city of Khan Younis. Before the pause, aid organizations had reported that the need to coordinate trucks’ movement with the Israelis in an active combat zone was slowing aid distribution.
The UN official familiar with the aid effort said that there has been no sign of Israeli activity along the route. The UN tried to send a convoy of 60 trucks down the road Tuesday to pick up aid at Kerem Shalom. But 35 of the trucks were intercepted by armed men, the official said.

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War on Gaza: ‘Brutal day’ as Israel bombs tents, refugee camps and service workers

Israeli forces bombed displacement tents, municipal workers operating water wells and homes across Gaza on Friday, killing over 75 people according to Al Jazeera Arabic, on one of the deadliest days for Palestinians in weeks. 

Artillery shelling and gunfire from Israeli tanks targeted displaced people sheltering in Rafah’s coastal al-Mawasi area, previously declared a “humanitarian zone” by the Israeli military.

At least 25 Palestinians were killed in the attack and 50 wounded, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. 

Hours earlier, an Israeli strike hit a municipality facility in Gaza, killing at least seven people, including five workers operating water wells.

Another strike on a home in the densely populated and war-ravaged al-Shati refugee camp killed 10 people and wounded 17, according to Al Jazeera.

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UN: Israeli Authorities Responsible for Crimes Against Humanity

Speaking to the UN Security Council, the head of an investigatory body probing the Gaza war found Israeli officials committed war crimes during military operations in the Strip.

Navi Pillay, chairperson of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, announced her findings to the UNSC on Wednesday, stating the commission had concluded that “Israeli authorities are responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.”

She explained that those crimes include “extermination, intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects, murder or willful killing using starvation as a method of War, forcible transfer, gender persecution, sexual and gender-based violence amounting to torture and cruel or inhuman treatment.”

The commission noted that Hamas has committed similar crimes throughout the latest conflict.

During the eight-month assault on Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed over 37,000 Palestinians and injured an estimated 85,000. Israeli bombings have also destroyed most of Gaza’s homes, schools, mosques, hospitals, and farmland. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been plunged into near-famine conditions.

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IDF: Netanyahu’s Goal of Eliminating Hamas Is Unachievable

The spokesman for the Israeli military explained that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of eradicating Hamas is not achievable. The statement comes amid a growing rift between the Israeli leader and the military.

In remarks to Israel’s Channel 13 News on Wednesday, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the military spokesperson, explained that the PM’s stated objective in Gaza is an insult to the Israeli people. “This business of destroying Hamas, making Hamas disappear – it’s simply throwing sand in the eyes of the public,” he said. “Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party. It’s rooted in the hearts of the people – whoever thinks we can eliminate Hamas is wrong.”

The statement from Hagari reflects assessments from US intelligence and military officials that destroying Hamas is not something that can be accomplished. The US intelligence community’s threat assessment released in March said that Israel would likely be fighting Hamas for years to come.

Netanyahu’s office responded to Hagari’s remarks by saying the prime minister’s ends in Gaza remain unchanged. Netanyahu “has defined the destruction of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities as one of the goals of the war. The Israeli military, of course, is committed to this,” the statement said.

It is not the only time Netanyahu has clashed with members of his military in recent days. On Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced a limited pause to operations in a select area of Rafah during daylight hours to allow more aid to reach the Palestinians. Netanyahu quickly denounced the move as “unacceptable.”

Other divides have emerged within the Israeli government. Last week, former IDF general Benny Gantz withdrew from the war cabinet over Netanyahu’s refusal to work out a hostage release agreement. Gantz’s exit led Netanyahu to dissolve the war cabinet entirely.

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