Israeli Mayors Say Netanyahu ‘Failed Us’

Sunday’s massive attack in which 350 Hezbollah missiles and rockets pounded Israeli cities, towns, settlements and military bases created much anger among the Israeli public who are now blaming the extrmist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being responsible for what is happening.

Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav said, Sunday, the city is suffering from a very difficult economic situation after shops were closed due to Hezbollah missiles.

Yahav added to the Hebrew channel, i24 News, he has gone to the Knesset  to explain to its members of the exceedingly difficult situation in the city.

He explained “the Finance Committee in the Knesset and the Israeli state do not understand or know the terrible and dangerous events taking place in Haifa, as the city has been continually targeted on a daily basis, the economy is collapsing and the city is economically stagnant after the shops shutdown.”

Hezbollah is intensifying its targeting of the Israeli city, which includes important military and economic facilities, in addition to targeting the Krayot settlements near Haifa Bay, which resulted in much material losses, fires and human injuries.

Also, In central Israel, Petah Tikva Mayor Rami Greenberg said psychologists were deployed in the city after a rocket was fired from Lebanon. Hebrew radio station FM 103 quoting Greenberg as saying: “Social workers are deployed at the site of the Lebanese missile’s fall.”

Greenberg explained that whilst “the injuries are moderate and light, these specialists are providing the necessary answers to ease the burden on the settlers, as a result of the successive Lebanese missiles falling on their heads.”

On Sunday, the escalation was at its highest with over 500 sirens going off all over the north and center Israel where Tel Aviv itself was hit 17 times with missiles.

Greenberg’s statements come as Channel 12 reported two Israelis were injured, one of them moderately, as a result of a missile fired from Lebanon falling on a building in the settlement of Petah Tikva, whilst air traffic at the Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, central Israel, was halted.

The official Israeli Broadcaster, Kan,  published a video clip showing the extensive destruction of a building in Petah Tikva, after it was directly hit by a missile, which led to a fire.

Security Failure

In the same context, Ronen Marley, the mayor of Nahariya in northern Israel, said, Sunday, Tel Aviv had failed to provide security for its citizens, and had wasted huge sums of money from its budget to no avail.

The same radio station quoted Marley as saying “the state of Israel has failed to provide security for its residents, as it previously wasted huge budgets to evacuate residents of the south (adjacent to the Gaza Strip).” He described Israel’s decision to evacuate the population as “stupid,” explaining that government had recorded a “disastrous failure” in this regard.

Over four million people spend their time down the underground shelters, double the number that took to hiding on a regular basis in the last months.

CrossFireArabia

CrossFireArabia

Dr. Marwan Asmar holds a PhD from Leeds University and is a freelance writer specializing on the Middle East. He has worked as a journalist since the early 1990s in Jordan and the Gulf countries, and been widely published, including at Albawaba, Gulf News, Al Ghad, World Press Review and others.

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Amnesty Condemns Netanyahu’s Visit to Hungry

Responding to reports that Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has invited and plans to host Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Hungary on Wednesday, Erika Guevara-Rosas the head of Global Research, Advocacy and Policy of Amnesty International said:

“Prime Minister Netanyahu is an alleged war criminal, who is accused of using starvation as a method of warfare, intentionally attacking civilians and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.  As a member state of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Hungary must arrest him if he travels to the country and hand him over to the Court. Any trip he takes to an ICC member state that does not end in his arrest would embolden Israel to commit further crimes against Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“Netanyahu’s reported visit should be seen as a cynical effort to undermine the ICC and its work, and is an insult to the victims of these crimes who are looking to the Court for justice. Hungary’s invitation shows contempt for international law and confirms that alleged war criminals wanted by the ICC are welcome on the streets of a European Union member state.

“Netanyahu’s visit to Hungary must not become a bellwether for the future of human rights in Europe. European and global leaders must end their shameful silence and inaction, and call on Hungary to arrest Netanyahu during a visit which would make a mockery of the suffering of Palestinian victims of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its war crimes in other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and its entrenched system of apartheid against all Palestinians whose rights it controls.

“Amnesty International calls on the ICC Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute all Israel’s crimes. Hungary should equally do so by applying universal jurisdiction principles. Powerful leaders, like Netanyahu, accused by the ICC of war crimes and crimes against humanity, must no longer enjoy the prospect of perpetual impunity.”

“The ICC was established to ensure accountability for victims of genocide and other crimes under international law, and so that crimes which shock the human conscience would “never again” be accompanied by impunity. In ‘bringing power to justice’, the ICC is now facing a global backlash from powerful leaders seeking to undermine the international rule of law and stamp out the prospect of accountability for the most powerful.”

Background

In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as al-Qassam brigades commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Since then, leaders from ICC member states France, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Poland have stated or implied that they would not arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he travelled to their respective countries. The United States has also enacted sanctions against the ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan.

A cornerstone principle of the ICC’s founding Rome Statute is that all individuals subject to ICC arrest warrants must be arrested and surrendered to the Court without recourse to immunity when they are within the jurisdiction of ICC member states, including on their territory.

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Israel Violates Syria With 11 Air Raids

Israel will not leave Syria alone! Israeli raids, Wednesday evening, struck the Scientific Research Institute in the Barzeh neighborhood in Damascus according to Sana, the Syrian news agency.

https://twitter.com/warintel4u/status/1907509948881502435

Israeli warplanes went on to strike the Hama military base with more than 11 air raids, Sana pointed out. later reports show that the military airport was targeted 17 times.

The Israeli Channel 12 added that an additional target was the T4 military airport in rural Homs.

The Israeli raids, almost daily, started months ago on Syria and its capital, Damascus, and increased after 9 December 2024 when there was a change of regime in the country.

Residents in Damascus said they heard loud explosions after the intense air raids that targeted the scientific building in Barzeh.

But before that Israel has been conducting deadly air raids, literally mounting to thousands on Syria for years under the now ousted Baath regime of President Bashar Al Assad.

Israel then claimed it was targeting Hezbollah and Iranian bases but there were many deaths and injuries.

Israel occupied most of the Syrian Golan Heights after the 1967 Arab-Israel war, and took advantage of the fall of the regime and occupying the country’s buffer zone and declaring the collapse of the 1974 disengagement agreement between the two sides.

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