Israel's security minister breaks agreement, prays at Temple Mount
Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem and prayed there over the weekend, breaking a longstanding agreement that allows Jews to visit the site, but not pray.
The site, located in occupied East Jerusalem, is known by Jews as the Temple Mount, and Ben-Gvir's prayer prompted a statement from the Israeli prime minister's office affirming that there has been no change in the decades-old agreement.
Jordan, the site's custodian, called Ben-Gvir's actions "an unacceptable provocation." Hamas called it a "deepening of the ongoing aggressions against our Palestinian people." A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the visit "crossed all red lines."
During his visit, Ben-Gvir called for Israel to "conquer" Gaza and encouraged Palestinians to leave the embattled region.
Temple Mount is the most holy place for Jews as it is the site of two Biblical temples. It is the third most holy site for Muslims, who claim it is where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.
The Waqf, the Islamic endowment that runs this site, said Ben-Gvir was one of 1,250 Jews who visited the compound Sunday morning.
Ben-Gvir has been convicted of supporting terrorism and inciting anti-Arab racism in Israel in the past.
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Los Angeles Times
11 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Netanyahu hints at expanded war in Gaza but former Israeli military and spy chiefs object
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at wider military action in devastated Gaza on Tuesday, even as former Israeli army and intelligence chiefs called for an end to the nearly 22-month war. The new pressure on Netanyahu came as Gaza's Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll had surpassed 61,000. Health officials reported new deaths of hungry Palestinians seeking food at distribution points. As desperation mounts, the Israeli defense body coordinating aid announced a deal with local merchants to improve aid deliveries. Former security officials speaking out included previous leaders of Israel's Shin Bet internal security service, Mossad spy agency and the military — and ex-Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In a video posted to social media this week, they said far-right members of the government are holding Israel 'hostage' in prolonging the conflict. Netanyahu's objectives in Gaza are 'a fantasy,' Yoram Cohen, former head of Shin Bet, said in the video. 'If anyone imagines that we can reach every terrorist and every pit and every weapon, and in parallel bring our hostages home — I think it is impossible,' he said. Netanyahu announced Monday that he would convene his Security Cabinet to direct the military on the war's next stage, hinting that even tougher action was possible. That meeting has begun, according to an Israeli official familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity because there was no formal announcement. Netanyahu said his objectives include defeating Hamas, releasing all 50 remaining hostages and ensuring Gaza never again threatens Israel after the Hamas-led 2023 attack sparked the war. Israeli media reported disagreements between Netanyahu and the army chief, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, on how to proceed. The reports, citing anonymous officials in Netanyahu's office, said the prime minister was pushing the army, which controls about three quarters of Gaza, to conquer the entire territory — a step that could endanger hostages, deepen the humanitarian crisis and further isolate Israel internationally. Various reports have said Zamir opposes this step and could step down or be pushed out if it is approved. Israeli officials did not respond to requests for comment on the reports. Egypt is a mediator in ceasefire talks, and its President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi said Israel's war in Gaza has become a 'war of starvation, genocide and liquidation of the Palestinian cause.' El-Sissi said the war no longer aims at achieving political aims or releasing the hostages. He reiterated his call for European governments and President Trump to help stop the war and deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza's over 2 million people. Long lines of trucks waiting to enter Gaza from Egypt have been a recurring image of the war. Egypt has strong security ties with Israel. Health officials in Gaza said Israeli forces opened fire Tuesday morning toward Palestinians seeking aid and in targeted attacks in central and southern Gaza, killing at least 25 people. Israel's military did not immediately comment. The dead included 19 in southern Gaza, 12 of them seeking aid near the Morag corridor and in the Teina area, some 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation hub east of Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital and the Health Ministry. The ministry doesn't distinguish between militants and civilians but says roughly half the dead have been women and children. It operates under the Hamas government. The U.N. and other international organizations see it as the most reliable source of casualty data. Elsewhere in central Gaza, Al-Awda hospital said it received the bodies of six Palestinians who were killed when Israeli troops targeted crowds near another GHF aid distribution site. The GHF said there were no incidents at its sites Tuesday. Several hundred Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since May while heading toward food distribution sites, airdropped parcels and aid convoys, according to witnesses, local health officials and the U.N. human rights office. Israel's military says it only has fired warning shots and disputes the toll. The Israeli defense body in charge of coordinating aid, COGAT, said on social media there will be a 'gradual and controlled renewal of the entry of goods through the private sector in Gaza.' It said a limited number of local merchants were approved for the plan. Mohammed Qassas from Khan Younis said his young children are so hungry that he is forced to storm aid trucks, which rarely reach warehouses these days because they are stopped by hungry crowds. 'How am I supposed to feed them? No one has mercy. This resembles the end of the world,' he said Monday. 'If we fight, we get the food. If we don't fight, we don't get anything.' It has become routine to see men returning from aid-seeking carrying bodies as well as sacks of flour. Yusif Abu Mor from Khan Younis called the current aid system akin to a death trap. 'This aid is stained with humiliation and blood,' he said, adding that aid seekers run the risk of being shot dead by Israel's military or run over by trucks in the chaotic crowds. Israel's blockade and military offensive have made it nearly impossible to safely deliver aid, contributing to the territory's slide toward famine. Aid groups say Israel's week-old measures to allow more aid in are far from sufficient. Families of hostages in Gaza fear starvation affects them too, but blame Hamas. As international alarm has mounted, several countries have airdropped aid over Gaza. The U.N. and aid groups call such drops costly and dangerous for residents, and say they deliver far less aid than trucks. Palestinians gather daily for funeral prayers. 'We are unarmed people who cannot endure this,' shouted Maryam Abu Hatab in the yard of Nasser hospital. Ekram Nasr said her son was shot dead while seeking aid near the Morag corridor. 'I had to go alone to carry my son,' she said, tears in her eyes. 'I collected the remains of my son like the meat of dogs from the streets.' She added: 'The entire world is watching. They are watching our patience, our strength and our faith in God. But we no longer have the power to endure.' Frankel and Shurafa write for the Associated Press. Shurafa reported from Deir Al Balah, Gaza Strip. Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Associated Press
12 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Gaza aid truck drivers face increasing danger from desperate crowds and armed gangs
Truck drivers trying to deliver aid inside Gaza say their work has become increasingly dangerous in recent months as people have grown desperately hungry and violent gangs have filled a power vacuum left by the territory's Hamas rulers. Crowds of hungry people routinely rip aid off the backs of moving trucks, the local drivers said. Some trucks are hijacked by armed men working for gangs who sell the aid in Gaza's markets for exorbitant prices. Israeli troops often shoot into the chaos, they said. Drivers have been killed in the mayhem. Since March, when Israel ended a ceasefire in its war with Hamas and halted all imports, the situation has grown increasingly dire in the territory of some 2 million Palestinians. International experts are now warning of a 'worst-case scenario of famine' in Gaza. Under heavy international pressure, Israel last week announced measures to let more aid into Gaza. Though aid groups say it's still not enough, getting even that amount from the border crossings to the people who need it is difficult and extremely dangerous, the drivers said. Driving aid trucks can be deadly Thousands of people packed around the road Monday as two trucks entered southern Gaza, AP video showed. Young men overwhelmed the trucks, standing on the cabs' roofs, dangling from the sides and clambering over each other onto the truck beds to grab boxes even as the trucks slowly kept driving. 'Some of my drivers are scared to go transfer aid because they're concerned about how they'll untangle themselves from large crowds of people,' said Abu Khaled Selim, vice president of the Special Transport Association, a nonprofit group that works with private transportation companies across the Gaza Strip and advocates for truck drivers' rights. Selim said his nephew, Ashraf Selim, a father of eight, was killed July 29 by a stray bullet when Israeli forces opened fire on crowds climbing onto the aid truck he was driving. Shifa Hospital officials said they received his body with an apparent gunshot to the head. The Israeli military said it was unaware of the incident and that 'as a rule' it does not carry out deliberate attacks on aid trucks. Earlier in the war, aid deliveries were safer because, with more food getting into Gaza, the population was less desperate. Hamas-run police had been seen securing convoys and went after suspected looters and merchants who resold aid at exorbitant prices, Now, 'with the situation unsecured, everything is permissible,' said Selim, who appealed for protection so the aid trucks could reach warehouses. The U.N. does not accept protection from Israeli forces, saying it would violate its rules of neutrality, and said that given the urgent need for aid it would accept that hungry people were going to grab food off the back of the trucks as long as they weren't violent. Flooding Gaza with renewed aid would ease the desperation and make things safer for the drivers, said Juliette Touma, communications director at UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. The danger for drivers is growing Ali al-Derbashi, 22, was an aid truck driver for more than a year and a half, but he quit after his last trip three weeks ago because of the increasing danger, he said. Some people taking aid off the trucks are now carrying cleavers, knives and axes, he said. He was once ambushed and forcibly redirected to an area designated by Israel as a conflict zone in its war against Hamas. There everything was stolen, including his truck's fuel and batteries, and his tires were shot out, he said. He was beaten and his phone was stolen. 'We put our lives in danger for this. We leave our families for two or three days every time. And we don't even have water or food ourselves,' he said. In addition to the danger, the drivers faced humiliation from Israeli forces, he said, who put them through 'prolonged searches, unclear instructions, and hours of waiting.' The war began Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 others. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to the latest figures by Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between militants and civilians and operates under the Hamas government. The threats come from everywhere Nahed Sheheibr, head of the Special Transport Association, said the danger for the drivers comes from everywhere. He accused Israel of detaining drivers and using them as human shields. The Israeli military did not comment on the accusation. In recent days, men linked to a violent Gaza clan fired at drivers, injuring one, and looted a convoy of 14 trucks, he said. They later looted a convoy of 10 trucks. Hossni al-Sharafi, who runs a trucking company and was an aid driver himself, said he is only allowed to use drivers who have no political affiliation and have been approved by Israel to transport aid from crossings. Al-Sharafi said he was detained by Israeli forces for more than 10 days last year while transporting aid from the southern Kerem Shalom crossing and interrogated about where the truck was headed and how the aid was being distributed. Israeli officials did not comment on the accusations. Some drivers spoke of being shot at repeatedly by armed gangs. Others said their trucks were routinely picked clean — even of the wooden pallets— by waves of desperate people, many of whom were fighting each other for the food, while Israeli troops were shooting. Hungry families who miss out on the aid throw stones at the trucks in anger. Anas Rabea said the moment he pulled out of the Zikkim crossing last week his aid truck was overwhelmed by a crowd. 'Our instructions are to stop, because we don't want to run anyone over,' he said. 'It's crazy. You have people climbing all over the cargo, over the windows. It's like you're blind, you can't see out.' After the crowd had stripped everything, he drove another few hundred meters and was stopped by an armed gang that threatened to shoot him. They searched the truck and took a bag of flour he had saved for himself, he said. 'Every time we go out, we get robbed,' he said. 'It's getting worse day by day.' ——- Associated Press writers Julia Frankel contributed to this report from Jerusalem and Sally Abou Aljoud from Beirut. Mariam Dagga contributed from Khan Younis, Gaza Strip.
USA Today
41 minutes ago
- USA Today
David Mamet storms out of interview over 'inquisition' on his conservative views
Playwright and author David Mamet stormed out of an interview after a conversation around his rightward political shift turned contentious. Mamet, the Tony and Pulitzer-winning mind behind plays like "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Speed-the-Plow," appeared on the "Talk Easy" podcast Sunday, Aug. 3, to discuss his expansive canon of work and his recent embrace of President Donald Trump. When host Sam Fragoso pressed Mamet on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, led by supporters of the president, the playwright offered an empathetic view, saying: "I think that Donald Trump said to those people, 'Go protest peacefully and patriotically,' and some of them were doing that. Some of them were rioting." When Fragoso countered that such a view was more "generous" than Mamet's approach to protestors demonstrating against the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 or the war in Gaza, Mamet grew agitated. "Why do you have me here today?" he said. "It seems to me that what we're talking about here is a little bit more toward an inquisition rather than a dialogue." Fragoso, seemingly trying to temper the conversation, said he was "genuinely curious" about Mamet's viewpoints. Still, the writer took specific offense to the reference to anti-war protests on college campuses. "Twenty months prior to my birth, they were throwing Jewish kids into the ovens. So American Jews of the midcentury, our main tactic of accommodation was to keep our heads down and work harder and try to be liked," he said, referencing the Holocaust. "You know what, I'm not going to debate the Columbia riots with you. Ask me something else," Mamet said. Despite his request to reorient the conversation, the two had seemingly hit a point of no return, with Mamet circling back to what he saw as the antisemitism running rampant throughout the protests. Protests against the war in Gaza, which spread across college campuses but found a locus at New York's Columbia University, were viewed by some in the Jewish community as promoting antisemitic tropes and encouraging violence against Jews. Proponents of the protests argued they were merely centered on a critique of the state of Israel and U.S. support of it, not the Jewish people writ large. Sam Fragoso, David Mamet spar over a punching joke The two then veered into a back-and-forth about a quip from Mamet that Fragoso looked like he had never been punched in the face. While both men maintained even tones of voice, the acrimony between them was clear with Mamet calling Fragoso "squishy" (a reference to the host's feelings-forward approach) and Fragoso seeming disappointed with the turn the conversation had taken. "I'm a Jew," Mamet said. "The River to the Sea means kill all the Jews. Support the antifada means kill all the Jews." Those phrases, used among student protestors to voice support for a liberated Palestinian people, were viewed by some in the Jewish community as manifestations of hate. "For you to say, on the other hand, there may be some people out there that were involved in peaceful protest is (a) loathesome piece of antisemitism," Mamet said. "You don't know what … you're talking about. Thank you for talking to me." He then got up, leaving Fragoso alone at the interview table looking a bit exasperated and confused, before he turned to the camera and said: "And that was David Mamet." Their exchange reflects a larger fault line in the American and Jewish populace, as the war in Gaza stretches into its second year, and warnings of widespread famine in the area grow louder. While some agree with early views of student protestors that Israel is carrying out a campaign of cruelty and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, others insist Hamas, the militant group in control of the region, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7, sparking the war, is solely responsible for the suffering.
