Israeli authorities have put an extremist Jewish settler into detention for five months without charges or trial to head off violence aimed at stopping Israel's Gaza Strip pullout, and a newspaper reported yesterday that dozens more suspected militants could be arrested.
Israeli frequently uses the practice, known as administrative detention, against Palestinians it considers as a security threat, but it rarely employs it against Jews. But with Jewish extremists planning to resist the summer pullout, the army and politicians have discussed using the detentions to contain expected violence.
On Sunday, police arrested Neria Ofan, a 34-year-old West Bank settler, at an army roadblock, and said they plan to hold him until the end of September. Officials, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said Ofan was suspected of "involvement in terror."
Ofan's wife, Naomi, told Israel Army Radio the detention was part of a campaign to muzzle opponents.
The Haaretz newspaper reported that Israeli army officers want to place dozens of Jewish extremists under administrative detention. Sharon aide Ilan Cohen told Army Radio there would not be "wholesale administrative detentions, on the contrary," but did not explain further.
Ofan, who has been questioned by police in the past though never charged, advocates Jewish control of a disputed Jerusalem holy site, known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif. Extremist Jews have threatened to storm the shrine in the summer to divert police and soldiers from Gaza to Jerusalem, and thereby stop the pullout.
Israeli police prepared for possible clashes between Jews and Muslims yesterday at the holy site, a flashpoint for Israeli-Palestinian tensions. A small group of Jewish extremists, Revava, had initially said its supporters would attempt to enter the shrine at the start of each month on the Jewish calendar.
A handful of demonstrators showed up the shrine a month ago, and were kept out by police. Access to Israelis has been restricted since Israel captured east Jerusalem and its holy sites in the 1967 Mideast war.
Yesterday, which marks the start of the month of Iyar on the Jewish calendar, no demonstrators showed up. However, police severely restricted access to Muslims, in order to prevent possible friction.
Police clashed briefly yesterday morning with 200 Palestinians who had gathered nearby to protest the restrictions. The Palestinians threw stones and bottles at police, who responded with stun grenades. Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, meanwhile, warned that destroying Jewish settlers' homes in Gaza could jeopardize the planned Israeli pullout from the area this summer.
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
Chinese authorities are snuffing out any remembrance of the deadly 1989 military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which happened 37 years ago yesterday, in a further tightening of a years-long campaign to erase what happened from public memory. Police told relatives of the victims they would not be allowed to visit a cemetery in Beijing on the anniversary of the crackdown, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Relatives of the victims visited the cemetery on the anniversary for more than 30 years to read memorial statements with police keeping watch, Amnesty International said. Hundreds of people,
RSS