Latest news with #Hebron
The National
2 days ago
- General
- The National
Eid al Adha preparations around the world
Sellers wait for customers at a livestock market on the outskirts of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. AFP
CTV News
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Israeli soldiers bar media from visiting West Bank villages on tour organized by Oscar winners
Basel Adra, Palestinian co-director of the Oscar winner documentary "No Other Land", looks at a damaged car after a settler's attack in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, file) JERUSALEM — Israeli soldiers on Monday barred journalists from entering villages in the West Bank on a planned tour organized by the directors of the Oscar-winning movie 'No Other Land.' The directors of the film, which focuses on Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territory, said they had invited the journalists on the tour Monday to interview residents about increasing settler violence in the area. In video posted on X by the film's co-director, Yuval Abraham, an Israeli soldier tells a group of international journalists there is 'no passage' in the area because of a military order. Basel Adra, a Palestinian co-director of the film who lives in the area, said the military then blocked the journalists from entering two Palestinian villages they had hoped to visit. Israel's military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 'They don't want the world to see what is happening here' 'They don't want journalists to visit the villages to meet the residents,' said Adra, who had invited the journalists to his home. 'It's clear they don't want the world to see what is happening here.' Some of the surrounding area, including a collection of small Bedouin villages known as Masafer Yatta, was declared by the military to be a live-fire training zone in the 1980s. Some 1,000 Palestinians have remained there despite being ordered out, and journalists, human rights activists and diplomats have visited the villages in the past. Palestinian residents in the area have reported increasing settler violence since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel and kickstarted the war in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards — and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time. Adra said the journalists were eventually able to enter one of the villages in Masafer Yatta, but were barred from entering Tuwani, the village where he lives, and Khallet A-Daba, where he had hoped to take them. Adra said settlers arrived in Khallet A-Daba Monday and took over some of the caves where village residents live, destroying residents' belongings and grazing hundreds of sheep on village lands. The military demolished much of the village last month. Film won several awards 'No Other Land,' which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages. The joint Palestinian-Israeli production was directed by Adra, Hamdan Ballal, another Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, along with Israeli directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. The film has won a string of international awards. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for their future state and view settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution. Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to over 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centers. Article by Julia Frankel.
CTV News
28-05-2025
- General
- CTV News
Police seek video footage after shots fired at home outside Yarmouth, N.S.
The Mounties are looking for the public's help as they investigate shots being fired in a rural community near Yarmouth, N.S. Police in Yarmouth, N.S., say they are looking for information from the public after shots were fired at a home in the rural community of Hebron early Tuesday morning. The Yarmouth Rural RCMP Detachment received a report of shots fired at a residence on Greenville Road around 2:40 a.m. The home was damaged, but no one was injured. Police say they would like to hear from anyone with video footage showing Highway 1 south from Greenville Road and Main Street in Yarmouth between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m. Tuesday. Anyone with footage, or with information about the shooting, is asked to call police at 902-742-9106 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477). For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page
Asharq Al-Awsat
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Looking Back On Oslo (2)
It has become common knowledge that Benjamin Netanyahu did not hesitate to mobilize the far right, in both its nationalist and religious wings, in a campaign against the Oslo Accords and Yitzhak Rabin. The latter was portrayed wearing the uniform of a Nazi officer in an infamous poster by this campaign that eventually led to Rabin's assassination in 1995. A year earlier, a religious extremist by the name of Baruch Goldstein, an American-Israeli who had been a follower of Meir Kahane and a member of his movement, murdered 29 Palestinians in Hebron while they were praying. Rabin's assassination is considered the major turning point of the Oslo process, and it was a prologue for the slow collapse of the 'peace camp.' On the other side, the growing wave of Hamas 'martyrdom operations,' which peaked in the mid-1990s, saw a security agenda occupy the space that had been vacated by the desire for peace. This eruption of violence coincided with rising tensions on the Israeli-Lebanese front, in 1993 and even more so in 1996. In turn, this polarized climate and broad sense of insecurity paved the way for Netanyahu's narrow electoral victory over Shimon Peres, the Oslo Accords' chief architect and its second key figure. As the terrorist violence by radicals on both sides aggravated, the slur 'Osloist' grew out of 'Arafatist,' a slur that had been coined earlier by Assad's Damascus, whose sponsorship (alongside Iran) of Hamas and its affiliates' activities was no secret. Although peace achieved a second victory through the Wadi Araba Treaty that Jordan and Israel signed in late 1994, Palestinian leaders, first and foremost Arafat, failed to exhibit the degree of responsibility needed to engage in a difficult and complex peace process and meet international commitments. Indeed, such behavior did not come naturally to the Palestinian leader, who had spent most of his political life jockeying with Levantine local communities and security regimes. Moderation also receded among Palestinians, as illustrated by Arafat's flip-flopping during this period. He was torn over whether to comply with the Oslo Accords or not because of the performative bravado of Palestinian, Arab, and Iranian radicals seeking to delegitimize him, which only intensified with the onset of the Second Intifada. In 1994, Arafat made a gaffe at a mosque in South Africa, comparing Oslo to the 'Treaty of Hudaybiyyah' between the Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh at a time when the Israelis were criticizing him for failing to do anything to curb the aggravating terrorist attacks beyond condemning them. Similarly, the elected government in the West Bank and Gaza that was supposed to replace the Palestinian Authority never emerged; corruption, nepotism, and arbitrary rule became entrenched. While opinion polls had, at one point, shown that over two-thirds of the Palestinian public supported Oslo, the number steadily dropped as the conviction that peace would achieve nothing grew. This authority born of peace was not compelling: the occupation persisted, and the checkpoints around Ramallah multiplied in parallel with the aggravation of both the frequency and scale of terrorist attacks, suffocating the Palestinians and restricting their mobility. Meanwhile, the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which had stood at 110,000 when Oslo was signed, began to rise, first by tens of thousands and then by hundreds of thousands- international law's prohibition of such settlement activity was irrelevant. Not only did the number of settlements increase, the nature of these settlements also changed: what had begun as a pursuit of functional considerations (cheaper housing and living conditions than those in the cities) was increasingly driven by an ideological, religious, and nationalist desire to acquire land. The Palestinian Authority's tenuous standing among its people went hand in hand with its weak position in the face of the Israelis, with each of these two problems feeding on the other. Because it was too weak to deter terrorist attacks, the Palestinian Authority was also too weak to force the Israelis from expanding settlements or to assert greater control over 'security coordination' with them, and this went both ways. As a result, the Palestinian Authority, focused on proving that it had not been breaching the agreement, was increasingly seen as an Israeli tool concerned only with maintaining the crumbs of a corrupt power structure on the one hand, and on the other, as complicit in the terrorist attacks against Israelis. Even so, this wounded peace had not lost all of its power, and Oslo's potential had not been squandered yet. Following Rabin's assassination, Shimon Peres continued to pursue its implementation as prime minister. Even Netanyahu, after winning the 1996 election, seemed compelled to pretend he had been adhering to it. In early 1997, he allowed the Palestinian Authority to take back control of Hebron, drawing the ire of his right-wing base. In late 1998, Netanyahu, Arafat, and Clinton met at the Wye River Summit in the United States. They agreed to resume the Oslo process: Israel would withdraw from parts of the West Bank, counter-terrorism measures would be implemented, and the Palestinian Authority and Israel agreed to develop their economic ties and continue final status negotiations. The Knesset, for its part, approved the Wye River Memorandum that came out of the summit by a large majority, and the Israeli public largely supported it. When Netanyahu tried to stall and play tricks to obstruct its implementation, his government collapsed in 1999, triggering elections that were won by the Labor candidate and 'Osloist,' Ehud Barak. With Barak's victory, the peace camp had some hope again, though it was faint in comparison to the optimism that followed Rabin's 1992 victory. Barak, amid a drop-in popular support for peace, seemed more hesitant and less decisive than Rabin or Peres. On the other side, Palestinians' confidence in the peace process declined as Israel imposed greater restrictions and set up larger numbers of checkpoints. As for the notion that all of this proves Israel had never sought peace and never will, it is extremely a reductionist assessment.
Jordan Times
14-05-2025
- General
- Jordan Times
IFPO showcases decade of research on Palestinian urban architecture
AMMAN — The French Institute of the Near East (IFPO) in Amman on Monday unveiled a newly released publication documenting ten years of research on urban architecture in Palestine. The project, led by French architects and urban planners Luc Vilan and Yves Roujon in collaboration with IFPO, focuses on the architectural fabric of Hebron, Bethlehem, and Nablus—three historic highland cities along the ancient route linking Damascus to Cairo via Jerusalem. Speaking at the event, IFPO Amman head and researcher Najla Nakhlé-Cerutti highlighted the importance of preserving Palestinian urban heritage, particularly amid ongoing regional challenges. 'This work reflects the transnational vocation of our research at IFPO in Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan,' Nakhlé-Cerutti said. 'After earlier work on Damascus, Vilan and Roujon undertook this program in Palestine, focusing on the architecture of its cities.' The research, which began in 2011 without a predetermined timeline or scope, evolved through close collaboration with local communities. 'When we arrived in Palestine, we didn't know we would spend ten years working on its cities,' the researchers said during the lecture. 'The project developed progressively, shaped by our engagement with local actors.' Based on extensive fieldwork and direct observation, the study examines the material and structural elements that define Palestinian cities. The resulting publication presents a layered, cumulative understanding of urban form and heritage across the three cities. Notably, the research sheds light on the 'hosh'—a large traditional Palestinian house that remains a defining feature of both urban and rural settlements. The publication includes architectural surveys, detailed drawings, maps, and interpretative texts, making it a valuable resource for architects, researchers, and students alike. While Hebron, Bethlehem, and Nablus are often framed in religious or political terms, the study re-centers attention on the cities as architectural achievements—built environments that embody collective memory and cultural continuity.
