US envoy meets top Israeli Druze leader to discuss situation in Syria's Sweida
'Today I had a warm and informative meeting with Israeli Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif and his team,' Barrack said in a post on X. 'We discussed the situation in Sweida and how to bring together the interests of all parties, de-escalate tensions, and build understanding.'
Sweida, a majority-Druze region in southern Syria, has seen rare but deadly outbreaks of violence in recent months amid deepening frustration over economic collapse, corruption, and local clashes with armed groups.
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Arab News
3 minutes ago
- Arab News
Palestinian Authority condemns Israel's approval of key West Bank settlement
TEL AVIV: The Palestinian Authority has slammed Israel's approval of a key settlement project in the occupied West Bank, saying it undermined the chances of a two-state solution. The approval of the project in the area known as E1 'fragments ... geographic and demographic unity, entrenching the division of the occupied West Bank into isolated areas and cantons that are disconnected from one another, turning them into something akin to real prisons,' the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Israel gave final approval Wednesday for the controversial settlement project that would effectively cut the territory in two, and that Palestinians and rights groups say could destroy hopes for a future Palestinian state. Settlement development in E1, an open tract of land east of Jerusalem, has been under consideration for more than two decades, but was frozen due to US pressure during previous administrations. The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank to be illegal and an obstacle to peace. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a former settler leader, cast the approval as a rebuke to Western countries that announced their plans to recognize a Palestinian state in recent weeks. 'The Palestinian state is being erased from the table not with slogans but with actions,' he said on Wednesday. 'Every settlement, every neighborhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.' A German government spokesperson commenting on the announcement said that settlement construction violates international law and 'hinders a negotiated two-state solution and an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.' Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and has vowed to maintain open-ended control over the occupied West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem, and the war-ravaged Gaza Strip — territories Israel seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for their state. Israel's expansion of settlements is part of an increasingly dire reality for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as the world's attention focuses on the war in Gaza. There have been marked increases in attacks by settlers on Palestinians, evictions from Palestinian towns, Israeli military operations, and checkpoints that choke freedom of movement, as well as several Palestinian attacks on Israelis. More than 700,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The location of E1 is significant because it is one of the last geographical links between the major West Bank cities of Ramallah, in the north, and Bethlehem, in the south. The two cities are 22 km apart, but Palestinians traveling between them must take a wide detour and pass through multiple Israeli checkpoints, spending hours on the journey. The hope was that, in an eventual Palestinian state, the region would serve as a direct link between the cities. 'The settlement in E1 has no purpose other than to sabotage a political solution,' said Peace Now, an organization that tracks settlement expansion in the West Bank. 'While the consensus among our friends in the world is to strive for peace and a two-state solution, a government that long ago lost the people's trust is undermining the national interest, and we are all paying the price.' If the process proceeds quickly, infrastructure work in E1 could begin within the next few months, and construction of homes could commence around a year later. The plan includes around 3,500 apartments that would surround the existing settlement of Maale Adumim. Smotrich also hailed the approval, during the same meeting, of 350 homes for the settlement of Ashael near Hebron. Israel's government is dominated by religious and ultranationalist politicians, like Smotrich, with close ties to the settlement movement. The finance minister has been granted Cabinet-level authority over settlement policies and vowed to double the settler population in the West Bank.
Al Arabiya
5 minutes ago
- Al Arabiya
Netanyahu says Israel has ‘work' to do to win over Gen Z
Israel has 'work' to do in winning over young people in the West as polls show collapsing support, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted to a UK-based podcast in an interview aired Wednesday. Protests against Israel's war in Gaza have become increasingly common in capitals across the West, attracting large numbers of young people. A recent Gallup poll also showed only six percent of 18 to 34-year-olds in the United States had a favorable opinion of Netanyahu and just nine percent approved of Israel's military action in Gaza. On the 'Triggernometry' podcast, Netanyahu was asked whether Israel could lose the backing of Western governments once 'Gen Z' – those born between around 1997 and 2012 – assumes power. 'If you're telling me that there's work to be done on Gen Z and across the West, yes,' he responded. But he said opposition to Israel among Gen Z stemmed from a wider campaign against the West and repeated his unproven claim of an orchestrated plot against Israel and the West, without saying who was behind it. Since returning to the White House in January, US President Donald Trump has offered Israel ironclad support. Netanyahu told the podcast, which bills itself as promoting free speech with 'open, fact-based discussion of important and controversial issues,' that Trump 'has proven an exceptional, exceptional friend of Israel, an exceptional leader.' 'I think we've been very fortunate to have a leader in the United States who doesn't act like the European leaders, who doesn't succumb to this stuff,' he added, referring to countries including France and the UK that have vowed to recognize a Palestinian state.
Arab News
an hour ago
- Arab News
How religious extremism and settler attacks are eroding the Christian presence in Israel and the West Bank
LONDON: Harassment, violence and displacement have become a daily reality for Palestinians across the occupied West Bank, where attacks by Israeli settlers — allegedly with the protection or tacit approval of the army and government — have spread unchecked. Religious minorities, including the West Bank's various Christian denominations, have not been spared amid the violence. On Aug. 7, settlers illegally seized land belonging to the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Abba Gerasimos of the Jordan in Jericho. Just days earlier, another group stormed Taybeh, the only entirely Christian village in the West Bank, home to Greek Orthodox, Melkite and Catholic residents. Masked and armed, the assailants reportedly set vehicles ablaze, sprayed graffiti and released livestock. It was the second such raid in as many weeks. A fortnight earlier, settlers had torched the ancient Church of Saint George and desecrated its adjoining graveyard. 'They have always done this around the village, but nowadays they dare to go inside,' Buthina Khoury, a Greek Orthodox filmmaker who grew up in Taybeh, told Arab News. 'My cousin the other day opened her window and she saw the settler just outside her house, just in the backyard of her house.' Although nobody was killed in these raids, attacks such as these reflect a pattern of escalating settler abuse that is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities. The same week, Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved a highly controversial plan to advance 3,401 new housing units in the E1 settlement, a move that would split the West Bank in two and sever it from East Jerusalem. These settlements are deemed illegal under international law and would make any future contiguous Palestinian state even harder to realize. The move, widely condemned by the international community, risks deepening an already volatile situation, further entrenching a dynamic in which nationalist and colonialist ideologies are intertwined with Jewish religious extremism. 'The whole situation has been very, very critical and very sensitive, and what's happening in the rest of Palestine, it affects Taybeh as well,' said Khoury. 'They are trying to turn our life into misery.' For decades, Taybeh — a village mentioned in the Gospel of John where Jesus is said to have stayed before his entry into Jerusalem and eventual death on the cross — had been largely spared from settler violence. That is now changing. Recent attacks have drawn international figures to the village, including Roman Catholic Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. But Khoury says such visits do little to change the reality on the ground. 'What happened in Taybeh is the least compared to what happened to the villages and towns nearby,' she said, adding that such visits 'do nothing' but 'show a fake solidarity.' Christian minorities such as Khoury's, arguably more at risk than any other Palestinian community, have steadily dwindled in the West Bank. In 1922, in what was then Mandatory Palestine, Christians made up about 11 percent of the population. Today they account for less than 1 percent. Bethlehem, once 85 percent Christian, is now home to just 10 percent. A 2020 study by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Philos Project found that political instability, residency permit restrictions for married couples and clergy, frustration with the stalled peace process and economic hardship were drivers of this decline. About 40 percent of Christian respondents also reported feeling discriminated against by fellow Palestinians. Khoury said the situation has shifted dramatically since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel triggered the war in Gaza. Violence has simultaneously escalated in the West Bank, and Christians are being used to fuel a narrative of division. Indeed, Khoury said Israeli policies had been designed to drive a wedge between religious groups. 'It's the policy of every occupier,' she said. 'We Palestinian Christians or Palestinian Muslims — we don't feel separate from each other.' Regardless of any deliberate effort to divide Palestinians along these lines, Khoury said settlers are not targeting Christians solely for their religious identity, but rather aiming to purge the West Bank of any and all non-Jewish peoples. The UN has recorded a sharp rise in settler violence this year. In the first half of 2025 alone, it documented in excess of 700 attacks — more than triple the number for all of 2023. Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 11, Israeli authorities also 'punitively demolished or sealed 23 homes and four other structures,' displacing about 140 people, including 57 children — the highest level of displacement in such a short period since 2009. The monthly average of Palestinians injured by settlers also doubled in June and July to about 100, compared with 49 per month in the first five months of the year. But the pressures faced by Christians are not confined to the occupied territories. Within Israel itself, Christian communities — long perceived as relatively secure — are reporting a surge in harassment and hostility. 'In recent years, the Christian community in the Holy Land has faced a rise in violence and intimidation, targeting both clergy and faithful,' Bishop William Shomali, patriarchal vicar for Jerusalem and Palestine, told Arab News. 'These incidents reflect a growing climate of hostility that threatens peaceful coexistence and religious freedom.' Shomali, a Catholic who grew up in the Christian-majority town of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, said members of the clergy had been spat on by Jewish extremists while walking in religious attire or during processions in Jerusalem's Old City. Church walls and properties have been vandalized with hateful graffiti in Hebrew. Often filmed and shared online, these acts, he said, 'express clear contempt for the Christian presence in the Holy City.' Attacks against Christians in Israel have risen sharply in recent months, shaped in part by the post-Oct. 7 political climate. A recent report by the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue — a Jerusalem-based interreligious organization promoting ties between Jews, Christians and Muslims — documented 111 cases of harassment in 2024, with physical assaults being the most common. The figure, almost certainly an undercount given the community's reluctance to report such incidents, marks a 30 percent increase compared with 2023. 'The problem is much bigger and wider than that,' Hannah Bendcowsky, the center's program director, told Arab News. 'We're talking about the legitimizing of violence toward minorities, the normalization of violence and anti-Christian attacks, the lack of condemnation from authorities, and the lack of proper reaction from police forces.' These actions, she said, not only endanger the Christian community but have long-term consequences for Israeli society as a whole. While Israel's Christian population grew slightly in 2023 — by about 0.6 percent — Bendcowsky warned that persistent harassment is fueling what she called a 'slow emigration.' The community numbers about 180,000 people — around 80 percent of them Arab Christians. Yet they experience what she described as a 'double minority' status — marginalized as both Christians and Palestinians within Israeli society. 'The main question is, when an Israeli meets a Palestinian Christian, what do they see? A Palestinian or a Christian? Or I should be more accurate. When they meet a Palestinian Christian, when do they see him as a Christian and when do they see him as a Palestinian?' Bendcowsky said longstanding religious tensions have been deliberately instrumentalized by Israeli leaders since Oct. 7, deepening polarization and mistrust that extend beyond minorities to affect Israeli Jewish communities as well. She emphasized the need for a broader contextual understanding of these incidents to fully grasp the wider dynamics affecting the Christian community, whereby some attacks can be deemed anti-Palestinian while others distinctly anti-Christian. 'We do relate to the attacks of settlers, but I would say that it's a different kind of attack,' she said. 'The harassment we see in Jerusalem and in Israel against Christians is anti-Christian. So it's not because they are Palestinian, but it's because they're Christian. And most of the people being attacked are not Palestinians. They're foreign Christians. 'While the incident in Taybeh is not anti-Christian per se, it's anti-Palestinian. And this is part of a wider phenomena that, to my understanding, is ignored by the international community.' Bishop Shomali described an 'emotional shift' since Oct. 7 that has provoked a 'noticeable increase in hatred and mistrust' across the region. 'What used to be a tense coexistence has now turned into a more hostile and polarized atmosphere,' he said. 'People express fear, sadness and a sense of loss — not only of physical safety but also of hope for peaceful relations.' While much remains to be done to address the situation in the West Bank, some local efforts have emerged to curb harassment in Israel. Jewish volunteers have begun accompanying Christian clergy and pilgrims during major processions in Jerusalem, documenting incidents of spitting or other abuse and reporting them to the police. 'There is a growing sense that the Israeli police are now more seriously committed to addressing specific issues, particularly the spitting incidents and anti-Christian graffiti in Jerusalem,' said Shomali. However, he cautioned that while these measures are 'meaningful and appreciated,' they remain limited in scope, addressing the problem within Israel without tackling the broader context that has fostered instability and mistrust for decades. For Shomali, the heart of the issue lies deeper than religious tensions. 'Interreligious dialogue, though valuable, cannot by itself resolve the deeper and more complex issue of the land's ownership,' he said. 'The core of the conflict lies in two national narratives — Palestinian and Jewish — that are often contradictory and deeply rooted in historical, political and religious claims. 'Religion is not just a spiritual identity in this context; it is interwoven into each narrative, which makes compromise particularly difficult to achieve.'
