Promoted post: The Best Muslim, Jewish and Christian Voices for Bringing Peace in Israel and Palestine and The Muslim Times is nominating Senator Bernie Sanders for Nobel Peace Prize for 2024
By Niha Masih and Bryan Pietsch for the Washington Post
Updated December 6, 2023 at 7:41 a.m. EST|Published December 6, 2023 at 4:27 a.m. EST
The United States will impose visa restrictions on people believed to have engaged in violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Tuesday, following repeated calls for Israel to do more to prevent extremist attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians.
The move comes amid a surge of attacks in the West Bank, where rights groups say settler violence against Palestinians has reached record levels since the Oct. 7 assault on Israel by Hamas.
In a statement, Blinken said the policy was designed to target “individuals believed to have been involved in undermining peace, security, or stability in the West Bank, including through committing acts of violence or taking other actions that unduly restrict civilians’ access to essential services and basic necessities.”
Categories: Anti-Semitism, USA
Hamas Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar ‘hiding underground’, says Israeli army
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, whose house they say they have surrounded, is hiding underground.
Earlier today, Benjamin Netanyahu announced that troops “are encircling Sinwar’s house,” adding that “he can escape, but it’s only a matter of time before we get him.”
Sinwar, a founding member of Hamas, grew up in a refugee camp of Khan Younis.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2023/dec/06/israel-hamas-war-live-updates-palestinians-killed-gaza-strike-as-israeli-military-idf-fighting-khan-younis-news
Israeli authorities have approved the construction of more than 1,700 new homes in a settlement partly in occupied East Jerusalem, according to reports.
Half the “new neighbourhood”, known as the Lower Aqueduct project, will be in the city’s annexed east, the Israeli non-governmental organisation Peace Now told AFP.
A representative told the news agency:
If it weren’t for the war (between Israel and Hamas), there would be a lot of noise. It’s a highly problematic project for the continuity of a Palestinian state between the southern West Bank and east Jerusalem.
The Ir Amim organisation, which tracks the construction of Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, said an access road would be built over private Palestinian land, adding that this land would likely be expropriated, the Times of Israel reported.
The Palestinian foreign ministry said on Tuesday that Israel was “taking advantage of international concern over the war in Gaza to approve the construction of a settlement in occupied Jerusalem”.
It was part of a plan to “flood Jerusalem with settlements and settlers” and “separate it from its Palestinian surroundings”, the ministry said.
Would be nice if the US would restrict the delivery of bombs used to destroy Gaza…
what about those (quite a few) who have US passports? withdraw the US nationality?