‘Safety’ Israeli crutch to limit religious rights
JERUSALEM, April 23, (Agencies): Israeli police in full riot gear stormed a sensitive Jerusalem holy site sacred to Jews and Muslims on Friday after Palestinian youths hurled stones at a gate where they were stationed.
The renewed violence at the site, which is sacred to Jews and Muslims, came despite Israel temporarily halting Jewish visits, which are seen by the Palestinians as a provocation. Medics said more than two dozen Palestinians were wounded before the clashes subsided hours later.
Friday evening, Israel said Palestinian militants in Gaza fired two rockets from the territory. One rocket landed in an open area in southern Israel and the other fell in Gaza. Palestinian media reported that two Gaza residents were injured from the rocket that landed short. There was no immediate comment from local health officials.
In Jerusalem, Tens of thousands of Muslims took part in the main Friday prayers at midday, which were held as planned.
Palestinians and Israeli police have regularly clashed at the site over the last week at a time of heightened tensions following a string of deadly
attacks inside Israel and arrest raids in the occupied West Bank. Three rockets have been fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas.
The string of events has raised fears of a repeat of last year, when protests and violence in Jerusalem eventually boiled over, helping to ignite an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, and communal violence in Israel’s mixed cities.
Palestinian youths hurled stones toward police at a gate leading into the compound, according to two Palestinian witnesses who spoke on condition of anonymity out of security concerns. The police, in full riot gear, then entered the compound, firing rubber bullets and stun grenades.
Israeli police said the Palestinians, some carrying Hamas flags, had begun stockpiling stones and erecting crude fortifications before dawn. The police said that after the rock-throwing began, they waited until after early morning prayers had finished before entering the compound.
Video footage showed the police firing at a group of journalists holding cameras and loudly identifying themselves as members of the press. At least three Palestinian reporters were wounded by rubber bullets fired by police.
Some older Palestinians urged the youths to stop throwing rocks but were ignored, as dozens of young masked men hurled stones and fireworks at the police. A tree caught fire near the gate where the clashes began. Police said it was ignited by fireworks thrown by the Palestinians.
The Palestinian Red Crescent medical service said at least 31 Palestinians were wounded, including 14 who were taken to hospitals. A policewoman was hit in the face by a rock and taken for medical treatment, the police said.
The violence subsided later in the morning after another group of dozens of Palestinians said they wanted to clean the area ahead of the main weekly prayers midday. Those went ahead, with some 150,000 worshippers attending, according to the Islamic endowment that administers the site.
After prayers, a small group of Palestinians waving Hamas flags marched in protest and tried to break into an empty police post inside the compound. The police used a drone to drop tear gas on them, sending crowds of people scattering across the esplanade.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City is the third holiest site in Islam. The sprawling esplanade on which it is built is the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because it was the location of two Jewish temples in antiquity. It lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and clashes there have often ignited violence elsewhere.
parallel trenches measuring about 40 meters (131 feet) long, Maxar said in a statement.
West studying oil and gas
The United States unleashed some of its toughest actions against Russian President Vladimir Putin right after he rolled his troops into Ukraine. Polls in the U.S. find that people want Washington to do more. So what’s left, financially, diplomatically and militarily, to step up the pressure?
The U.S. could get strong results from any number of next steps, economists and current and former U.S. officials say. It could simply persist in pouring cash and potent weaponry into Ukraine - a likely course. It could even commit to shutting down some of the inroads the Kremlin has made into U.S. political and financial systems, also conceivable.
But the mightiest trigger the West can pull now on Russia, many experts agree, is the one on a gas pump nozzle. Cutting off Russian profits from oil and natural gas sales has become a main topic among world leaders looking at what else they can do to force Putin to end his invasion.
“It would be very useful to try to devise a way to reduce proceeds from those sales and that really is the proper objective, I think, of a ban,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told a meeting of world finance leaders Thursday.
“But if we can think of a way to do that without harming the entire world from higher energy prices, that would be ideal,” Yellen said.
Mass graves
Satellite photos of what appeared to be rows upon rows of freshly dug mass graves on the outskirts of Mariupol brought the horrors of the war increasingly into focus, as Russia pounded away Friday at Ukrainian holdouts in the city’s steel mill and other targets in a drive to seize the country’s industrial east.
“Every day they drop several bombs on Azovstal,” Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to Mariupol’s mayor, said of the besieged steelworks. “Fighting, shelling, bombing do not stop.”
Cities elsewhere in the Donbas region also came under Russian fire overnight, and the attacks interfered with efforts to evacuate civilians.
The region, home to coal mines, metal plants and heavy-equipment factories, is bracing for what could be an epic clash as Russian President Vladimir Putin attempts to salvage a victory from the 8-week-old war widely seen as a blunder and a humanitarian disaster.
Field hospitals
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is calling on the Biden administration to establish field hospitals near Ukraine’s border and ramp up medical support for what’s expected to be a monthslong war of attrition waged by Russia.
Forces aligned with Ukraine have suffered thousands of casualties since Russia invaded on Feb. 24. And Russian strikes on hospitals and other non-military targets have killed large numbers of civilians and strained Ukraine’s ability to care for sick and wounded people. The Associated Press has documented three dozen Russian attacks on medical facilities, hitting medics, patients and even newborns.
More than a dozen House members wrote Friday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asking for the U.S. to fill gaps in Ukraine’s medical infrastructure. The steps recommended by the group include opening field hospitals in eastern Poland, providing Ukraine with armored ambulances and taking some of the sick and wounded to the U.S. military’s Landstuhl regional hospital in western Germany.
British embassy
The British government said Friday its embassy in Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv will reopen next week after temporary closure.
The embassy was forced to temporarily close due to Russia’s full-scale and illegal invasion.
“A contingent of British staff remained in western Ukraine to provide humanitarian and other support,” British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Elizabeth Truss said in a statement.