Latest news with #PalestinianConflict
CTV News
30-05-2025
- Business
- CTV News
Canada calls on Israel to abandon plans for new West Bank settlements
A young Israeli settler walks to a bus stop outside of the West Bank settlement of Bruchin on Thursday, May 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) OTTAWA — Canada is calling on Israel to abandon plans unveiled Thursday to authorize 22 Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank which it says would be illegal. Israel captured the West Bank, along with Gaza and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Arab–Israeli war and the Palestinians want all three territories for a future state. Global Affairs Canada says the proposed new settlements 'violate international law and undermine prospects for lasting peace and security via the two-state solution.' The Thursday decision would cover new settlements and legalize outposts already built without government authorization. Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that the decision 'constitutes a crushing response to Palestinian terrorism,' while a spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the decision a 'dangerous escalation' that could trigger more violence. Canada joined the U.K. and France this month in threatening to impose targeted sanctions against Israeli officials if they continue to expand settlements in the West Bank. Ottawa has repeatedly condemned mounting violence in the West Bank since a deadly October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel prompted months of bombardment of the Gaza Strip. — With files from The Associated Press This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 30, 2025. Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press
BreakingNews.ie
29-05-2025
- Business
- BreakingNews.ie
Israel says it will establish 22 new Jewish settlements in occupied West Bank
Israel has said it would establish 22 new Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. They would include new settlements and the legalisation of outposts already built without government authorisation. Advertisement Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, killed 12 people overnight, health officials said. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and the Palestinians want it to be the main part of their future state. Most of the international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to resolving the decades-old conflict. Israel's defence minister Israel Katz said the settlement decision 'strengthens our hold on Judea and Samaria', using the biblical term for the West Bank, 'anchors our historical right in the Land of Israel, and constitutes a crushing response to Palestinian terrorism'. Advertisement Israel's defence minister Israel Katz described the settlements decision as a strategic move (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File) He added it was also 'a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel'. Israel has already built well over 100 settlements across the territory that are home to some 500,000 settlers. The settlements range from small hilltop outposts to fully developed communities with blocks of flats, shopping centres, factories and public parks. The West Bank is home to three million Palestinians, who live under Israeli military rule with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centres. The settlers have Israeli citizenship. Israel has accelerated settlement construction in recent years – long before Hamas's October 7 2023 attack ignited the war in Gaza – confining Palestinians to smaller and smaller areas of the West Bank and making the prospect of establishing a viable, independent state even more remote. Advertisement During his first term, US President Donald Trump's administration broke with decades of US foreign policy by supporting Israel's claims to territory seized by force and taking steps to legitimise the settlements. Former president Joe Biden, like most of his predecessors, opposed the settlements but applied little pressure to Israel to curb their growth. During his first term US President Donald Trump supported Israel's claims to territory seized by force (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) The top United Nations court ruled last year that Israel's presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful and called on it to end, and for settlement construction to stop immediately. Israel denounced the non-binding opinion by a 15-judge panel of the International Court of Justice, saying the territories are part of the historic homeland of the Jewish people. Israel withdrew its settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but leading figures in the current government have called for them to be re-established and for much of the Palestinian population of the territory to be resettled elsewhere through what they describe as voluntary emigration. Palestinians view such plans as a blueprint for their forcible expulsion from their homeland, and experts say the plans would likely violate international law. Advertisement Israel now controls more than 70% of Gaza, according to Yaakov Garb, a professor of environmental studies at Ben Gurion University, who has examined Israeli-Palestinian land use patterns for decades. The area includes buffer zones along the border with Israel as well as the southern city of Rafah, which is now mostly uninhabited, and other large areas that Israel has ordered to be evacuated. The war began with Hamas's October 7 attack, in which militants stormed into Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Hamas still holds 58 hostages, around a third of them alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements. Israeli forces have rescued eight and recovered dozens of bodies. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants. Advertisement Israeli strikes killed at least 13 Palestinians overnight in Gaza, according to local hospitals. Four were killed in a strike on a car in Gaza City late on Wednesday and another eight, including two women and three children, were killed in a strike on a home in Jabaliya. A strike on a built-up refugee camp in central Gaza killed one person and wounded 18. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants are embedded in populated areas.
New York Times
22-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Killings Echo Earlier Assassination of Israeli Diplomat
More than 50 years ago, an Israeli diplomat was gunned down in his driveway in suburban Maryland after returning from a dinner party. On Wednesday night, two staff members at the Israeli Embassy were fatally shot as they left an event organized by the American Jewish Committee at the Capital Jewish Museum. The suspect, the police say, shouted, 'Free, free Palestine,' after he was in custody. The earlier case remained unsolved, but the parallels between the shootings are stark, echoing a combustible chapter in Israeli-Palestinian relations in which violence flared around the globe. 'It was a time of heightened tensions between Palestinians and Israelis just as they are today,' said Eugene Casey, a retired F.B.I. agent who investigated the killing of Col. Yosef Alon, the military attaché who was shot five times. Since Hamas's devastating attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel's large-scale response, pro-Palestinian protests spread across the United States, including at Israeli consulates and college campuses, during the grinding conflict in Gaza. The Trump administration and Israel are among those who have accused the protesters of promoting antisemitism and inciting violence against Jews with inflammatory rhetoric. Demonstrators and their supporters have denied the accusations and most of the protests have been nonviolent. 'Some believe the Oct. 7 terror attack was a just solution to a political problem,' said Lara Burns, a retired F.B.I. agent who investigated Hamas for years. 'And the normalization of that narrative provides a foundation for the advocacy of violence against the Jewish people and it manifested itself yesterday. ' 'The conflict is not just limited to the Middle East,' added Ms. Burns, who leads terrorism research at George Washington University's Program on Extremism. 'And it is on our doorstep today.' Before Colonel Alon's murder, tensions were also high across the world and in the United States. Months earlier, members of a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September attacked Israeli citizens on German soil at the 1972 Olympic Games. The events played out on live television, shocking viewers. To promote their cause, a terrorist with suspected ties to Black September tried to detonate three car bombs in New York City in March 1973. The bombs were timed to coincide with a visit by Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel. Eventually, the violence arrived at the doorstep of Mr. Alon, a decorated fighter pilot who had settled in Chevy Chase, Md., with his wife and three daughters. He had been sent to the United States to make sure that Israel had access to advanced fighters in the event of war with surrounding Arab countries. After he arrived home that night, parking in his driveway, his wife exited the car first, gunshots ringing out the second she reached the porch. The attackers fled and she was spared. The assassination triggered a major F.B.I. investigation. Mr. Alon's killing was never solved, though the C.I.A. suspected Palestinian terrorists carried out the plot. As part of his investigation, Mr. Casey interviewed Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal who is imprisoned in France. He told Mr. Casey that Americans who sympathized with the plight of the Palestinians were behind the operation. Mr. Casey retired before he could interview a list of people who might have been involved, leaving the case unsolved. By contrast, a suspect was quickly identified in the shooting late Wednesday. The police, naming the gunman as Elias Rodriguez, 30, said he was spotted pacing in front of the museum beforehand. He approached four people who were leaving the event, shooting two embassy aides and then entered the museum, where he was detained by security officers. Investigators descended on his home in Chicago the next day. The F.B.I. was investigating whether he left behind clues pointing to the reasons behind the attack, a law enforcement official said, and whether the shooting was indeed a hate crime. A post on social media on Wednesday night from an account that The New York Times verified as belonging to the suspect condemned the Israeli and American governments. His writings also cite Israeli military actions against Palestinians, but they do not mention the approximately 1,200 men, women and children slain on Oct. 7 in Israel, the single deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Despite the similarities in the two cases, there is one important difference, Mr. Casey said. 'It's tragic, but the families will have some closure,' he said. 'I was glad the guy was captured at the scene unlike our case. I wish we had DNA back in 1973. There will be no open questions about who killed them.' Mr. Casey said he still felt 'terrible' that Mr. Alon's case remained unsolved. In the wake of the latest killings, he added, he hoped the F.B.I. picks up where he left off in 2017 and finally puts the case to rest.
