Palestinian Authority security forces have battled Islamist fighters in Jenin for days as they wrestle to exert control over one of the historic centres of militancy in the West Bank ahead of a likely shakeout in Palestinian politics after the Gaza war.
Switzerland’s Parliament on Tuesday voted to outlaw Hezbollah, in a rare move by the neutral country that has traditionally followed a policy of promoting international dialogue and mediation.
An international war crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday that evidence emerging from mass grave sites in Syria had exposed a state-run “machinery of death” under toppled leader Bashar al-Assad in which he estimated more than 100,000 people were tortured and murdered since 2013.
Palestinian security forces try to exert control in West Bank
Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces have battled Islamist fighters in Jenin for days, as they wrestle to exert control of one of the historic centres of militancy in the West Bank ahead of a likely shakeout in Palestinian politics after the Gaza war.
Forces of the PA, which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, moved into Jenin in early December and have since clashed with fighters from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
At least three people have been killed, including a senior Islamic Jihad commander and two civilians. The UN humanitarian agency Ocha has called for an investigation into what it called violations of human rights law by the Palestinian forces.
Heavily armed Palestinian security forces in armoured personnel carriers have set up checkpoints around the city and outside the adjacent refugee camp, where there have been repeated protests by residents against the operation.
Residents say the behaviour of the PA security forces resembles the way the Israeli army has traditionally acted in Jenin. The city and refugee camp have long been a centre of Palestinian militancy, where fighters have clashed with Israeli forces mounting large-scale raids that left trails of smashed roads and infrastructure.
“The PA does not have bulldozers like the [Israeli] army does. That is the only difference. The raid is the same, the blockade is the same,” said Jenin resident Malek Jaber.
Brigadier General Anwar Rajab, spokesperson of the Palestinian security forces, said “outlaws” who had taken over Jenin camp had been arrested and would be brought to justice. The operation was aimed at imposing order and security and would continue until the objectives were achieved, he said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa, who visited Jenin with Palestinian security leaders at the weekend, said the operation should restore security “on the way towards the creation of an independent state”.
However, the operation has provoked strong opposition in Jenin and there have been violent clashes in other West Bank cities including Tubas in the Jordan Valley and Tulkarm in the north.
The timing of the operation is a sign that the PA has to “prove its worth” as it seeks to uphold its role in the West Bank while preparing for a possible future role in Gaza, said Hani al-Masri, a Palestinian political analyst in Ramallah.
The Palestinian Authority was set up three decades ago under the Oslo interim peace accords and given limited authority in the West Bank and Gaza, where Palestinians hope for an independent state. It was driven out of Gaza by Hamas in a 2007 civil war.
Since the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas-led fighters, Israel has vowed to drive Hamas out of Gaza. Israel says it also believes the PA should have no role in Gaza after the war, but most Western and Arab countries say Gaza must be run by Palestinians and they expect a role for the PA.
Michael Mihlshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and one of Israel’s leading experts on Palestinian affairs, agreed that PA President Mahmoud Abbas was trying to show force now, ahead of an anticipated post-war settlement.
“There is very broad pressure on him to do something if he wants to be considered as a relevant player for the day after in Gaza,” said Milshtein.
He noted that the operation in Jenin also follows a ceasefire in Lebanon, the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the election of Donald Trump in the US, events that leave the region’s future unsettled.
Israel accuses the PA of failing to control militant groups in the occupied West Bank. The PA says Israel, which has military control over the territory, deliberately undermines its authority.
PA officials say one of the aims of the operation is to prevent Hamas and Islamic Jihad from creating the kind of rule in the West Bank that opened the way for Israel to destroy Gaza.
Despite efforts at reconciliation, Fatah, the main faction behind the PA, has so far failed to agree with Hamas on how Gaza should be ruled after the fighting.
Swiss Parliament votes to ban Hezbollah
Switzerland’s Parliament on Tuesday voted to outlaw Hezbollah, in a rare move by the neutral country that has traditionally followed a policy of promoting international dialogue and mediation.
Proponents of the ban, which was passed by the Lower House after receiving Upper House approval last week, said Hezbollah was a threat to international security and that Switzerland needed to prohibit it to take a stand against terrorism
The Swiss government opposed the ban.
“If Switzerland now moves to ban such organisations with special laws, we must ask ourselves where and how the boundaries are drawn,” said Justice Minister Beat Jans during the parliamentary debate.
The ban against the Lebanese armed group was passed in the Lower House with 126 votes in favour, 20 against and 41 abstentions.
The security policy committee that proposed the ban argued that Switzerland’s mediating role would remain intact thanks to a specific provision on peace talks and humanitarian aid.
Last week, the Swiss Parliament outlawed Hamas for the Palestinian militant group’s 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel.
Switzerland had previously only banned al Qaeda and Islamic State, which are on the United Nations’ list of terrorist organisations.
Syrian mass graves expose ‘machinery of death’ under Assad - prosecutor
An international war crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday that evidence emerging from mass grave sites in Syria had exposed a state-run “machinery of death” under toppled leader Bashar al-Assad in which he estimated more than 100,000 people were tortured and murdered since 2013.
Speaking after visiting two mass grave sites in the towns of Qutayfah and Najha near Damascus, former US war crimes ambassador-at-large Stephen Rapp told Reuters: “We certainly have more than 100,000 people that were disappeared into and tortured to death in this machine.
“I don’t have much doubt about those kinds of numbers, given what we’ve seen in these mass graves."
“When you talk about this kind of organised killing by the state and its organs, we really haven’t seen anything quite like this since the Nazis,” said Rapp, who led prosecutions at the Rwanda and Sierra Leone war crimes tribunals.
“From the secret police who disappeared people from their streets and homes, to the jailers and interrogators who starved and tortured them to death, to the truck drivers and bulldozer drivers who hid their bodies, thousands of people were working in this system of killing,” said Rapp.
Syrian residents living near a former military base where one of the sites was located and a cemetery used to hide bodies from detention sites described seeing a steady stream of refrigeration trucks delivering bodies which were dumped into long trenches dug with bulldozers.
Israeli airstrikes kill families in two Gaza homes
Huge Israeli airstrikes killed extended families in homes in two parts of the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, while tanks in the south pushed towards a humanitarian zone on the Mediterranean coast, forcing displaced families to take flight again.
Medics said at least 10 people were confirmed killed in an airstrike on a house in the Daraj suburb of Gaza City that destroyed the building and damaged nearby houses.
Further north, in the town of Beit Lahiya which has been under Israeli siege since early October, at least 15 people were believed to be dead or missing under the rubble of a house hit by an airstrike around dawn, said medics. Rescuers were unable to reach the site to confirm the toll.
At least 10 other Palestinians were killed in separate strikes elsewhere in Gaza City and Beit Lahiya, said medics.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the reports of airstrikes. Israel says it targets militants and blames any harm to civilians on fighters for operating among them, which the fighters deny.
In Beit Lahiya, Israel has been operating since October in what it calls an offensive to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping; Palestinians say the army aims to depopulate a buffer zone on the enclave’s northern edge, which Israel denies.
In the southern part of the enclave, in Rafah near the border with Egypt, Israeli tanks pushed deeper towards the western area of Mawasi, forcing dozens of families to flee northwards towards Khan Younis, said residents.
Hours later, residents said the army blew up several houses in the area and set several tents ablaze.
Israel has previously designated Mawasi, along the Mediterranean coast, as a humanitarian area. Thousands of Palestinians have lived there in tents for months, having obeyed Israeli orders to move there from other areas for safety.
The war began when the Palestinian militant group Hamas stormed into Israel on 7 October 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel then launched an air and land offensive that has killed more than 45,000 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
The campaign has displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.
Gaza ceasefire talks gain momentum as officials push for deal
An agreement to halt the 14-month-old war in Gaza and free hostages held in the Palestinian enclave could be signed in the coming days, with talks in Cairo making progress, sources briefed on the meeting said on Tuesday.
The US administration, joined by mediators from Egypt and Qatar, has made intensive efforts in recent days to advance the talks before President Joe Biden leaves office next month.
“We believe — and the Israelis have said this — that we’re getting closer, and no doubt about it, we believe that, but we also are cautious in our optimism,” said White House spokesperson John Kirby in an interview with Fox News.
“We’ve been in this position before where we weren’t able to get it over the finish line.”
The sources said a ceasefire deal could be days away that would stop the fighting and return hostages held by the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Hamas said in a statement a deal was possible if Israel stopped setting new conditions. A Palestinian official close to the mediation efforts said negotiations were serious, with discussions under way about every word.
Russian law paves way to recognise Taliban and potentially Syria’s HTS
Russia’s Parliament passed a law on Tuesday that would allow courts to suspend bans on groups designated by Moscow as terrorist organisations — paving the way for it to normalise ties with the Afghan Taliban and potentially with the new leadership of Syria.
No country currently recognises the Taliban government in Afghanistan, which seized power in August 2021 as US-led forces staged a chaotic withdrawal after 20 years of war.
But Russia has been gradually building ties with the movement, which President Vladimir Putin said in July was now an ally in fighting terrorism.
The leader of Russia’s Muslim region of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, called on Monday for the removal of Syrian group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) from Moscow’s list of banned terror groups. HTS spearheaded the toppling of Assad this month.
Kadyrov, a close Putin ally, said Russia needed ties to the new Syrian authorities to ensure stability and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. The Kremlin said this week that Russia was in contact with the new leadership in Syria, where it hopes to retain the use of an airfield and a naval base that give it an important military foothold in the Mediterranean.
The new law, passed by Parliament’s lower house, the State Duma, allows for a group to be removed from Russia’s banned list by order of a court if it ceases terrorist-related activity.
The Taliban was in the first batch of groups to be listed, in February 2003, and Syria’s HTS was added in 2020.
Moscow sees a major security threat from Islamist militant groups based in a string of countries from Afghanistan to the Middle East, where Russia lost a major ally with the fall of Assad.
In March, gunmen killed 145 people at a concert hall outside Moscow in an attack claimed by Islamic State. US officials said they had intelligence indicating it was the Afghan branch of the group, Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), that was responsible.
The Taliban says it is working to wipe out the presence of Islamic State in Afghanistan.
Western diplomats say the movement’s path towards wider international recognition is stalled until it changes course on women’s rights. The Taliban has closed high schools and universities to girls and women and placed restrictions on their movement without a male guardian. It says it respects women’s rights in line with its strict interpretation of Islamic law.
Russia has a complex and bloodstained history in Afghanistan. Soviet troops invaded the country in December 1979 to prop up a Communist government, but became bogged down in a long war against mujahideen fighters armed by the US.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pulled his army out in 1989, by which time some 15,000 Soviet soldiers had been killed.
US airstrike hits Houthi command and control facility in Yemen
The US military said it conducted an airstrike on Monday against a command and control facility operated by the Houthis in Yemen.
“The targeted facility was a hub for coordinating Houthi operations, such as attacks against US Navy warships and merchant vessels in the Southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden,” said the US military’s Central Command in a post on X.
Al-Masirah TV, the main television news outlet run by Yemen’s Houthi movement, said early on Tuesday that a strike carried out by the US targeted al-Ardi complex in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.
The Iran-backed group in Yemen has been attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea for more than a year to try to enforce a naval blockade on Israel, saying they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel’s year-long war in Gaza. DM
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