Netanyahu calls Australian PM ‘weak politician who betrayed Israel'
'History will remember Albanese for what he is: a weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia's Jews,' read a post on the official X account of Netanyahu's office.
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Arab News
38 minutes 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.'
Arab News
38 minutes ago
- Arab News
UN warns Daesh remains a major threat in Middle East despite leadership losses
NEW YORK CITY: Daesh remains an active and dangerous presence in the Middle East, the UN warned on Wednesday, as the group works to rebuild its operations in Syria and Iraq, even after the loss of senior leaders. Vladimir Voronkov, the UN's counterterrorism chief, told the Security Council that Daesh has maintained its operational capacity in the region and continues to exploit instability, especially in the Badia region of Syria and parts of the country under the control of Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham. 'Daesh continues to exploit security gaps, engage in covert operations and incite sectarian tensions in Syria,' Voronkov said as he presented Secretary-General Antonio Guterres's 21st report on the threat posed by the terrorist organization. The group also remains active in Iraq, he added, where it seeks to destabilize local authorities and reclaim influence. The humanitarian and security situations in northeastern Syria remain 'deeply concerning,' Voronkov warned, particularly in the camps and detention facilities that hold suspected terrorists and their families. 'The secretary-general's concern about stockpiles of weapons falling into the hands of terrorists has, unfortunately, materialized,' he said. In Afghanistan, Daesh-Khorasan continues to pose one of the most serious terrorist threats to Central Asia and beyond, through ongoing attacks against civilians, minority groups and foreign nationals, while leveraging dissatisfaction with the de facto authorities. Despite the ongoing threats in the Middle East, Africa remains the region experiencing the highest intensity of Daesh-related activity, Voronkov said, with violence escalating in West Africa and the Sahel. There has been a resurgence of Daesh in the Greater Sahara, while Daesh-West Africa Province has emerged as a key source of propaganda that is attracting foreign fighters, primarily from within the region. In Libya, arrests have revealed the logistical and financial networks linked to the group and connected to the Sahel. In Somalia, a large-scale Daesh attack in Puntland early this year involving foreign fighters prompted a military counteroffensive that killed 200 militants and resulted in more than 150 arrests. 'Though weakened, Daesh still benefits from regional support networks,' Voronkov said. Assistant Secretary-General Natalia Gherman, executive director of the Counter-Terrorism Committee's Executive Directorate, or CTED, echoed the concerns. She noted that Daesh-Somalia's role as a global logistical hub has been growing recently, though counteroffensives had degraded some of its operational capabilities. Daesh continues to exploit instability in Africa, she added, where more than half of the world's terrorism-related fatalities now occur. In the Lake Chad Basin region, for example, the group has received foreign money, drones, and expertise on improvised explosive devices. Gherman also highlighted the growing use by Daesh of emerging technologies and financial innovations, as terrorist groups increasingly leverage encrypted platforms, artificial intelligence, and cross-border financial systems to raise funds, spread propaganda and recruit new members. In response to these evolving threats, CTED has visited countries across Europe and Africa, including Somalia, Chad, Cameroon, Hungary and Malta, to assess local capacities and provide tailored support. The EU-UN Global Terrorism Threats Facility has helped implement legislative reforms and capacity building in countries such as Iraq, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria and Tajikistan. Voronkov urged member states to invest more in long-term strategies for prevention, rather than focusing only on killing or capturing the leaders of terrorist groups. He said effective counterterrorism efforts must address the root causes of radicalization, while complying with the requirements of international law. He raised concerns in particular about detention camps in northeastern Syria, where tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children, continue to be held in unsafe and undignified conditions, risking further radicalization. Gherman said that CTED is helping states address such challenges through the adoption of principles for tackling the use of drones, financial tech and artificial intelligence for terrorism purposes. Despite the geopolitical and resource-related constraints, both of the officials emphasized the need for sustained international collaboration on the issue. 'The persistence of the threat posed by Daesh, despite national and international efforts, underscores the urgency of sustained global counterterrorism cooperation,' said Voronkov.
Asharq Al-Awsat
an hour ago
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Israel Says It Has Taken First Steps of Military Operation in Gaza City
Israel's military has taken the first steps of a planned operation to take over Gaza City, Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said on Wednesday. Following a clash with Hamas south of Khan Younis in the strip on Wednesday, he said: "We will deepen the attack on Hamas in Gaza City, a stronghold of governmental and military terror for the terrorist organization." Defrin said troops had already begun circling the outskirts of Gaza City and Hamas was now a "battered and bruised" guerrilla force. "We have begun the preliminary operations and the first stages of the attack on Gaza City, and already now forces are holding the outskirts of Gaza City," he said. Israel's military called up tens of thousands of reservists on Wednesday in preparation for the expected assault on Gaza City, as the Israeli government considered a new proposal for a ceasefire after nearly two years of war. The call-up signals Israel is pressing ahead with its plan to seize Gaza's biggest urban center despite international criticism of an operation likely to force the displacement of many more Palestinians. But a military official briefing reporters said reserve soldiers would not report for duty until September, an interval that gives mediators some time to bridge gaps between Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel over truce terms. Israeli troops clashed on Wednesday with more than 15 Hamas fighters who emerged from tunnel shafts and attacked with gunfire and anti-tank missiles near Khan Younis, south of Gaza City, severely wounding one soldier and lightly wounding two others, an Israeli military official said. In a statement, Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades confirmed carrying out a raid on Israeli troops southeast of Khan Younis and engaging Israeli troops at point-blank range. It said one fighter blew himself up among the soldiers, causing casualties, during an attack that lasted several hours.
