CrossFireArabia
Hardcore Israeli Minister Smotrich declares 2025 the ‘year of sovereignty’ with full annexation plans for the West Bank underway. Meanwhile, the U.S. stands by Israel’s side, ignoring both the land grab and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Cartoon by Carlos Latuff
CrossFireArabia
CROSSFIREARABIA – It’s a second attack on the private residence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in less than a month.
The Saturday night attack through two flash bombs landed in the courtyard of Netanyahu house in Caesarea is being described as a serious incident by Shabak and the Israeli police who quickly opened up an investigation.
The attack is widely trending on the social media with the official line being that Netanyahu and his wife were not in the house at the time and there was little damage.
Moment of launching flash bombs in Caesarea, and targeting Netanyahu's house yesterday. #معركة_أولي_البأس#الإعلام_الحربي#اعلام_المقاومة_الفلسطينية#GazaGenocide #Gaza #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/Us9rFEbC2Z
— GHOUL 𓂆(@Ibnalbarr) November 17, 2024
The incident is being treated as “domestic” with three people arrested and under investigation with reactions from the leader of the opposition Yair Lapid and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. They all described the attack on Netanyahu’s residence as “redline” but it is difficult to see what they would do about it.
Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth said one of the arrested suspects is a senior reserve officer, a brigadier general, who has been active in protests against Netanyahu’s government over the past two years according to Anadolu.
The first attack on Netanyahu’s house in Caesarea was made on 19 October through a drone attack launched from Lebanon targeted Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea claimed by Hezbollah. The attack was described as so precise that it landed in Netanyahu’s bedroom.
This time news reports suggest that the flash bombs either landed in the garden and/or the courtyard of the house.
CrossFireArabia
— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws) November 12, 2024
BREAKING:
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has cancelled his trip to Paris after dozens of human rights organisations and lawyers submitted a request to the French Attorney General to issue an arrest warrant for him.https://t.co/PS8sSi0mZb pic.twitter.com/D9cYmtMVbL
CrossFireArabia
A call by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to annex the occupied West Bank has drawn a wave of condemnations across the Arab world.
On Monday, Smotrich said he instructed Israel’s Settlement Division and Civil Administration to initiate the groundwork for infrastructure to “apply sovereignty” in the West Bank.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry called the Israeli minister’s call a “blatant violation of international law.”
A ministry statement denounced the call as a “dangerous escalation that would hinder the chances of peace in the region, especially with the ongoing brutal war on the Gaza Strip and its horrific repercussions.”
It called on the international community “to stand firmly against the occupation’s settlement, colonial and racist policies, and its repeated attacks on the Palestinian rights, especially its ongoing crimes in the West Bank.”
“The repeated Israeli statements that violate international laws and resolutions clearly reveal that the occupation is the obstacle to any efforts for peace and stability” in the region, the ministry said.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry decried Smotrich’s call as a “flagrant violation of international law and international humanitarian law.”
“The irresponsible and extremist remarks by a member of the Israeli government clearly reflect Israel’s rejection of adopting the peace option in the region,” the ministry said in a statement.
Jordan termed the Israeli minister’s call “racist” and “extremist”
It called Smotrich’s statements a “blatant violation of international law and the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to establish their independent state with sovereignty along the June 4, 1967 borders and its capital in occupied Jerusalem.”
This June, Smotrich confirmed reports from The New York Times that he had a “secret plan” to annex the West Bank and thwart any efforts to incorporate it into a future Palestinian state.
In July this year, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a landmark opinion that declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land “illegal” and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
According to the Israeli public broadcaster KAN on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to reintroduce the annexation of the West Bank to the agenda of his government when US President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
In 2020, Netanyahu planned to “annex” the illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley, based on the so-called Middle East peace plan announced by Trump in January of the same year.
Territories Netanyahu planned to annex at that time constitute about 30% of the West Bank. His plan, however, wasn’t launched under international pressure and lack of US approval.
International law views both the West Bank and East Jerusalem as “occupied territories” and considers all Jewish settlement-building activity there as illegal according to Anadolu.
CrossFireArabia
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he is “looking at” sanctioning Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, as well as the national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir.
The sanctions come in response to Smotrich’s remarks that “starving two million people in Gaza might be justified and moral,” while Ben Gvir described settlers who killed a 19-year-old in the West Bank as “heroes.”
