Latest news with #Israeli-issued
Mint
28-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Major NYC Landlord Blames Bankruptcy On High Interest Rates
(Bloomberg) -- A portfolio of rent-stabilized New York City apartments owned by Joel Wiener was pushed into bankruptcy by 'sky-rocketed' interest rates and changes to state housing law that restricted the property owners' ability to increase rent on tenants, according to court papers. Dozens of properties managed by Wiener's Pinnacle Group were put into Chapter 11 last week, saddled with roughly $564 million in mortgage debt and facing foreclosure actions from its primary lender, Flagstar Bank. The apartments also have outstanding amounts on Israeli-issued bonds, pushing the total debt on the properties to roughly $1 billion, according to bankruptcy papers filed Tuesday. Interest rate hikes in 2022 significantly increased the cost of the mortgage debt, to the point that rental income was no longer enough to cover debt service and operating expenses, Ephraim Diamond, the properties' chief restructuring officer said in a court filing. Rates on a large portion of the Pinnacle properties' mortgage debt has 'sky rocketed' since 2022, from between 3% to 4% to as high as 7.5% and 10.25%, in certain circumstances, Diamond said. The cost to service the debt was about $26 million in 2023, including $20 million interest. Last year, that amount jumped to $36 million, including $25 million in interest, and is projected to increase again in 2025, he said. US Bankruptcy Judge David Jones, during the first hearing in the case since the filing, delayed ruling on a request by the apartment business to spend cash being held as collateral for the Flagstar debt. Jones asked both sides to try to come to a compromise about how the money would be used during the next few weeks. If they can't agree, Jones said he was prepared to rule on the request as soon as tomorrow, when both sides are scheduled to return to court. Flagstar claims that rent money that should have gone to pay the mortgage instead may have been funneled to a related holding company where it went to bondholders. 'No one knows where the rental income went, but it did not go to pay the lenders and appears to have been consolidated to pay bondholders,' Flagstar said in court papers filed Wednesday. A lawyer for the apartment company did not immediately return a request for comment. Most of its tenets get some form of rent stabilization and changes to state law in recent years intended to protect renters created further financial stress on the buildings, Diamond said. In 2019, state lawmakers placed restrictions on building owners' ability to raise rents when a tenement leaves a rent-regulated apartment and limited landlords' ability to turn apartments into condos, according to court documents. 'These legislative changes put further strain on the Company's and the Debtors' cash flow, and significantly slowed their condominium conversion initiatives,' Diamond said. Diamond said bankruptcy will give advisers time to devise a restructuring strategy and discuss options with creditors. The case is Broadway Realty I Co. LLC, number 25-11050, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. More stories like this are available on
Al Etihad
15-04-2025
- Health
- Al Etihad
UN expresses deep concern over Israeli strike on Gaza hospital
15 Apr 2025 12:12 NEW YORK (ALETIHAD)UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed deep concern over Sunday's strike by Israeli forces on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, incapacitating the hospital in Gaza City and dealing a severe blow to an already devastated healthcare system in the a statement issued late last night by his Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, Guterres stressed that under international humanitarian law, wounded and sick, medical personnel and medical facilities, including hospitals, must be respected and supplies are running low while mass casualties continue to fill Secretary-General noted that nearly 70% of Gaza is now under Israeli-issued displacement orders or within a 'no-go' zone, leaving Palestinians in Gaza with no safe place to go and little to survive voiced his strong concern as aid continues to be blocked, with Israel not having allowed any humanitarian aid or other essential supplies in for more than seven weeks. The humanitarian consequences are devastating, with food stocks running out, water production drastically dropping and shelter materials almost totally Secretary-General recalled that, under international humanitarian law, if the whole or part of the population of an occupied territory is inadequately supplied, the occupying Power shall agree to relief schemes on behalf of the said population and shall facilitate them by all the means at its disposal. This is reflected in a number of Security Council resolutions, including resolutions 2730 (2024) and 2417 (2018), which strongly condemn the unlawful denial of humanitarian access and depriving civilians of objects indispensable to their survival.
Arab News
14-04-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
How Israeli settlers are able to seize Palestinian land with impunity in the West Bank
LONDON: Attacks on Palestinian villagers in the West Bank by Israeli settlers, and the seizure or demolition of their properties under lopsided laws, are nothing new. But, ever since the start of the war in Gaza, the number and nature of such incidents has intensified. Several attacks over the past few weeks have added to the impression that not only have settlers been given carte blanche to do as they please, but also that discipline within the ranks of the Israeli army operating in the West Bank is breaking down. Since the Gaza war began in October 2023, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 917 Palestinians, including militants, in the West Bank. On March 27, the UN humanitarian affairs office, OCHA, revealed that in the first three months of this year alone, 99 Palestinians had been killed during operations by Israeli forces in the West Bank. Tens of thousands had been displaced from their homes, 10 UN-run schools had been forced to close, and 431 homes lacking impossible-to-acquire Israeli-issued building permits had been demolished — twice as many as over the same period last year. Occasionally, such attacks are caught on camera. That was the case at the beginning of this month, when footage circulated purportedly showing masked settlers attacking the village of Duma in the northern West Bank, setting fire to homes. On Feb. 29, dozens of settlers, accompanied by Israel Defense Forces personnel, descended on Jinba, a shepherding community, where, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, 'uniformed and civilian-dressed Israelis raided the village, broke into all the homes, dumped food, vandalized appliances and terrorized the locals.' The supposed trigger for the attack on the village, after which dozens of Palestinian men were rounded up and arrested, was an alleged assault on a settler shepherd. In fact, phone footage later emerged appearing to show the man in question approaching Palestinians and their flock on an all-terrain vehicle and physically assaulting one of them. 'Land seizures and violence by settlers is not new, but there has been a huge increase,' Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, an architect and adviser to the Israeli nongovernmental organization Planners for Planning Rights, or Bimkom, told Arab News. 'What has changed is that there is now widespread collaboration between the settlers, the army, the authorities, and the police. Now, the army is the settler.' Often those involved in violence and intimidation are from IDF reserve units, whose members are settlers and are deployed near their own settlements, and 'sometimes they are wearing uniforms, sometimes not.' Rarely is anyone arrested. 'The police put obstacles in the way of Palestinians who come to submit complaints,' said Cohen-Lifshitz. 'The army, the police, and the settlers have become a single unit, working together against the poorest, most fragile and marginalized communities that don't do any harm. These people are not involved in anything, but they live in fear of the settlers.' Their 'crime' is that 'they are living on land which Israel and the settlers want to control and ethnically cleanse,' he added. Planning law is also being deployed against Palestinians in the West Bank. 'Israel is using it like a weapon to conquer land,' said Cohen-Lifshitz. It was planning law, he said, that led to the creation of settlements and the fragmentation of the West Bank, and 'there are plans for the Palestinians, too, but the aim of these is to limit the development, to create very small areas in which building is allowed, but at a very high density, which is not how it used to be in Palestinian villages. 'There, it was about 10 units per hectare. Now the plans for Palestinian areas propose urban densities of 100 units, allowing the authorities to justify demolitions outside these areas.' Over the past two years, however, 'there has been a huge expansion in settlement outposts and farms. But, as far as we know, not a single permit for Palestinian building has been approved.' Apparent indiscipline in the IDF ranks has not escaped the notice of the military top brass, who appear keen to ascribe poor conduct to reserve soldiers rather than core personnel. Although he did not comment on the violence in Duma, Israel's top commander in the occupied West Bank, Major General Avi Bluth, condemned the actions of reservists during a raid on the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem on April 2. Images shared on social media showed vandalized apartments, where furniture was broken and Israeli nationalist slogans spray painted on walls. In a video shared by the army last week, Bluth said that 'the conduct in Dheisheh by our reserve soldiers is not what we stand for.' 'Vandalism and graffiti during an operational mission are, from our perspective, unacceptable incidents. It is inconceivable that IDF soldiers do not act according to their commanders' orders,' he added. It would be a mistake, however, to interpret the escalation in violence in the West Bank as the result of a collapse of discipline, said Ahron Bregman, a senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, who served in the Israeli army for six years and took part in the 1982 Lebanon war. 'This is not about discipline. This is something else — the execution of a plan,' he said. 'The war in Gaza is all but over. The main front now is the West Bank, where I think the Israelis are trying to implement a big plan to empty it of its people and annex it.' The IDF, in Bregman's view, has changed. 'Many IDF units, especially infantry, are now dominated by right-wing settlers. They have managed to penetrate these units to such an extent that I think it is not an exaggeration to say that many units, especially infantry, which is relevant because they are on the ground, are led by settlers.' The driving force, he believes, is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a defense minister and is responsible for the administration of the West Bank. Leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party, Smotrich is himself a settler, who, in the words of a profile in The Times of Israel, 'has long been a vociferous supporter of West Bank settlements and just as strongly opposes Palestinian statehood, subscribing to the view that Jews have a right to the whole land of Israel.' The support of Israeli ministers for the settlers goes beyond mere words. Last year, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir gave more than 120,000 firearms to settlers. More recently, Smotrich and Orit Strock, the settlements and national missions minister, gifted 21 ATVs to illegal farms and outposts in the South Hebron hills, to be used 'for security purposes.' Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, a US-registered non-profit that collects data on conflict and protest around the world, says its findings support the anecdotal evidence that violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is escalating. 'It is not always clear who is responsible,' Ameneh Mehvar, ACLED's senior Middle East analyst, told Arab News. 'Is it always settlers, or soldiers, security squads, regional defense battalions? There is a blurring of lines. But we have definitely seen problematic behavior by soldiers in the past few weeks.' Traditionally, she said, 'the IDF's rules of engagement in the West Bank were different. The policy of the Central Command was to limit violence and maintain the status quo — for practical reasons, as much as anything else, because settlers and Palestinians live side by side. 'But since Oct. 7, things have become much worse. There is a spirit of revenge and the soldiers feel they have the support of the rhetoric of far-right, pro-settler politicians. It isn't necessarily that senior commanders are ordering more violence, but that junior commanders on the ground are allowing it. 'So what we're seeing is a mix of this permissible environment, and the redeployment to the West Bank of soldiers from Gaza, coming back from the war there with the mindset that Palestinians are not humans. They use the same rules of engagement — that everyone is dangerous, anything is allowed, shoot first, and ask questions later.' The pro-settlement parties in Israel, she said, 'are no longer fringe actors, but are part of the mainstream in Israeli politics, and their aim is obviously annexation of parts of the West Bank. 'Prime Minister Netanyahu's biggest interest is staying in power, and in order to keep his coalition together he has been giving a lot of incentives to the pro-settlement parties and politicians.' The IDF's ongoing so-called 'Iron Ball' operation in the northern West Bank is taking place against this background. According to the UN Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, the assault on Jenin Camp, which began two months ago, is 'by far the longest and most destructive operation in the occupied West Bank since the Second Intifada in the 2000s.' The UN says that tens of thousands of residents from Jenin, Tulkarm, Nur Shams, and Far'a refugee camps have been displaced, as the IDF has embarked on 'systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure and homes, aiming to permanently change the character of Palestinian cities and refugee camps at a scale unjustifiable by any purported military or law enforcement aims.' Although the world's attention has been focused on Israeli actions in Gaza and Lebanon, 'what is happening in the West Bank is not a sideshow,' said Mehvar. 'Before Oct. 7, settler attacks were already on the rise. But now the West Bank is a powder keg that could explode at any time.'
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Israel orders its military to prepare plan for Palestinians to voluntarily leave Gaza
Israel's defense minister said Thursday that he had instructed his military to prepare a plan to allow Palestinians to voluntarily leave the Gaza Strip, after his country's leadership embraced President Donald Trump's widely condemned remarks in which he said the United States may seek ownership of the territory. Welcoming what he called Trump's "bold initiative," Israel Katz said in a statement Thursday that Palestinians in Gaza "should be granted the freedom to leave and emigrate, as is customary everywhere in the world." He said the plan would include "exit options" for Palestinians to leave Gaza via land crossings, with the possibility of "special arrangements" for departures by sea and air. Katz's comments came after Trump on Tuesday suggested to the press and visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. should take a "long-term ownership position" of Gaza and "develop" the enclave, which he had earlier in the day referred to as a "demolition site." Trump made contradictory comments on whether he foresaw Palestinians being able to live in the enclave, with White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday seeking to clarify his statements. The president is "committed to rebuilding Gaza and to temporarily relocating" Palestinians during those reconstruction efforts, she said, adding that Trump has not committed to sending U.S. troops to Gaza as part of the effort. Trump's remarks were widely rejected for their apparent dismissal of Palestinians' long pursuit of internationally recognized statehood. The Human rights organization Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the plan amounted to an "intent to escalate ethnic cleansing in Gaza." Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday, Netanyahu praised Trump's remarks, adding that 'the actual idea of allowing first Gazans who want to leave, to leave, what's wrong with that?' Katz's plan would represent a major policy shift for Israel, which — along with Egypt — has maintained a land, air and sea blockade on the enclave since 2007, when Hamas took power two years after Israel withdrew from the territory following 38 years of occupation. Barred from leaving the territory without Israeli-issued exit permits, Palestinians have effectively been trapped in a war zone. More than 47,500 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, according to local health officials, since Israel launched its military offensive following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks that killed 1,200 people and saw around 250 others taken hostage, according to Israeli officials. Those who have been able to leave Gaza during the war have feared not being allowed by Israel to return, a concern underpinning fears over Trump's plan. When discussing his instructions to the Israel Defense Forces, Katz said countries such as Spain, Ireland and Norway, which moved to formally recognize Palestinian statehood last year as they condemned Israel's offensive in Gaza, should be "legally obligated to allow Gaza residents to enter their territory." The Israeli defense minister's plan was welcomed by figures on Israel's far right, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, who resigned from his role as national security minister last month over Israel's ceasefire truce with Hamas. "The real solution for Gaza is no longer dreams of 'reconstruction' and a return to the previous situation, but a fundamental change in reality," Ben-Gvir, who has expressed support for the Israeli resettlement of Gaza, said in a post on X on Thursday. In Gaza, Palestinians have expressed outrage over the threat Trump's plan poses to the future recognition of Palestinian statehood. "We spent a year and four months in the war and did not leave our country, so is it expected that we will leave it now?" Abu Saad Al-Daada told NBC News' crew on the ground Wednesday in Khan Younis. "He is crazy," Daada, 56, said of Trump. "He has to find another solution." This article was originally published on
