Israel to 'strengthen' settlements after shooting attacks
Israel to 'strengthen' settlements after shooting attacks
JERUSALEM -
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday announced a series of punitive steps against the Palestinians, including plans to beef up Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, in response to a pair of shooting attacks that killed seven Israelis and wounded five others.
The announcement cast a cloud over a visit next week by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and threatened to further raise tensions following one of the bloodiest months in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in several years.
Netanyahu's Security Cabinet approved the measures in the wake of a pair of shootings, including an attack outside an east Jerusalem synagogue on Friday night in which seven people were killed.
Netanyahu's office said the Security Cabinet agreed to seal off the attacker's home in preparation ahead of its demolition. It also plans to cancel social security and health benefits for the families of attackers, make it easier for Israelis to obtain weapons and step up efforts to collect illegal weapons.
The announcement said that in response to public Palestinian celebrations over the attack, Israel would take new steps to "strengthen the settlements" this week. It gave no further details.
There was no immediate response from Washington. The Biden administration, which condemned the shooting, opposes settlement construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank -- lands sought by the Palestinians for a future state. The topic is likely to be high on the agenda as Blinken arrives Monday for talks with Israeli and Palestinian officials.
The weekend shootings followed a deadly Israeli raid in the West Bank on Thursday that killed nine Palestinians, most of them militants. In response, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired a barrage of rockets into Israel, triggering a series of Israeli airstrikes in response. In all, 32 Palestinians have been killed in fighting this month.
It remains unclear whether the Israeli steps will be effective. The attackers in the weekend shootings, including a 13-year-old boy, both appear to have acted alone and were not part of organized militant groups.
In addition, Netanyahu could come under pressure from members of his government, a collection of religious and ultranationalist politicians, to take even tougher action. Such steps could risk triggering more violence and potentially drag in the Hamas militant group in Gaza.
"If it's even possible to put this violent genie back into the bottle, even for a little while, this would require the reinforcement and proper deployment of forces ... and carefully managing the crisis without being guided by the widespread calls for revenge," wrote Amos Harel, the defense affairs commentator for the Haaretz newspaper.
Friday's shooting, outside a synagogue in east Jerusalem left seven Israelis dead and three wounded before the gunman was killed by police. It was the deadliest attack on Israelis in 15 years.
Authorities published the names of four of the victims. They included 14-year-old Asher Natan; Eli Mizrahi, 48, and his wife Natali, 45; and Rafael Ben Eliyahu, 56. Funerals for some victims were scheduled Saturday night.
Ella Sakovich, an aunt of Natali Mizrahi, said that her niece had been celebrating the Jewish sabbath with her husband and his father when they heard gunfire outside on Friday night.
"While eating, she and her husband wanted to help and went out of the house to treat the wounded; they shot both of them," Sakovich said in a statement released by Hadassah Hospital, where Natali Mizrahi worked serving food to patients.
In response to the shooting, Israeli police beefed up activities throughout east Jerusalem and said they had arrested 42 people, including family members, who were connected to the shooter.
But later Saturday, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy opened fire elsewhere in east Jerusalem, wounding an Israeli man and his son, ages 47 and 23, paramedics said. Both were fully conscious and in moderate to serious condition in the hospital, the medics added.
As police rushed to the scene, two passers-by with licensed weapons shot and overpowered the 13-year-old attacker, police said. Police confiscated his handgun and took the wounded teen to a hospital.
Blinken is expected to arrive in Israel on Monday. The Biden administration condemned Friday night's shooting and has called for calm on all sides, but given few details on how it expects to promote these goals.
The attacks pose a pivotal test for Israel's new far-right government.
Both Palestinian attackers behind the shootings on Friday and Saturday came from east Jerusalem.
Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem hold permanent residency status, allowing them to work and move freely throughout Israel, but they suffer from subpar public services and are not allowed to vote in national elections.
Residency rights can be stripped if a Palestinian is found to live outside the city for an extended period or in certain security cases.
Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek all three areas for a future independent state. Israel has annexed east Jerusalem in a step that is not internationally recognized and considers the entire city to be its undivided capital.
Israel's new firebrand minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has presented himself as an enforcer of law and order and grabbed headlines for his promises to take even stronger action against the Palestinians.
Speaking to reporters at a hospital where victims were being treated, Ben-Gvir said he wanted the home of the gunman in Friday's attack to be sealed off immediately as a punitive measure and lashed out at Israel's attorney general for delaying his order.
"In my opinion this is awful. In my opinion, it can't be like that," he said.
Overhauling the justice system in the country, including the attorney general's office, has been at the top of the agenda of the new government, which says unelected judges and jurists have overwhelming powers.
The divisive issue helped fuel weekly protests by Israelis who say the sweeping proposed changes would weaken the Supreme Court and undermine democracy.
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the central city of Tel Aviv Saturday evening for a new protest. Some raised banners describing Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and other members of the government as "a threat to world peace."
The marchers also held a moment of silence in memory of Jerusalem shooting victims.
The Israeli army said it had deployed another battalion to the West Bank on Saturday, adding hundreds more troops to a presence already on heightened alert in the occupied territory.
The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, meanwhile, upheld its decision to halt security coordination with Israel to protest the deadly raid in Jenin. After a meeting headed by President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, the Palestinian Authority called on international community and the U.S. administration to oblige Israel into stopping its raids and operations in the West Bank.
Last year, as the Israeli military intensified its arrest raids following a string of deadly Palestinian attacks within Israel, at least 150 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. It was the highest annual death toll for more than a decade and a half. Over 30 people were killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis last year, according to Israeli figures.
Israel says most of the dead were militants. But youths protesting the incursions and others not involved in the confrontations also have been killed.
Police in Halifax say three people have been stabbed and a student is in custody following a weapons complaint at a high school in Bedford, N.S. The victims were taken to hospital for treatment, but the extent of their injuries is not yet known.
The parents of young Ontario hockey player Ben Teague have been searching for answers since he died while at a team retreat in 2019. The mystery about what happened and the code of silence in hockey culture is explored in CTV W5's 'What Happened to Ben,' on CTVNews.ca and W5's official YouTube channel.
In an effort to keep the foreign interference story at the forefront, and to do an apparent end run around the Liberal filibuster blocking one study from going ahead, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is forcing MPs to debate and then vote on a motion instructing an opposition-dominated House committee to strike its own review.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump's calls for protests ahead of his anticipated indictment in New York have generated mostly muted reactions from supporters, with even some of his most ardent loyalists dismissing the idea as a waste of time or a law enforcement trap.
Officials are still looking for victims after a fire ripped through a building in Old Montreal last week, killing at least one person. At a press conference Monday morning, spokespersons for the Montreal police and Montreal fire department said six people are still missing. They come from various locations in Quebec, Ontario and the U.S.
Bargain hunters are one step closer to seeing sales at Nordstrom's closing Canadian locations. At a hearing at Osgoode Hall in Toronto on Monday, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice gave the U.S. retailer's Canadian branch permission to start liquidating its merchandise.
Some of the world's largest central banks came together on Sunday to stop a banking crisis from spreading as Swiss authorities persuaded UBS Group AG to buy rival Credit Suisse Group AG in a historic deal.
Police in Halifax say three people have been stabbed and a student is in custody following a weapons complaint at a high school in Bedford, N.S. The victims were taken to hospital for treatment, but the extent of their injuries is not yet known.
Officials are still looking for victims after a fire ripped through a building in Old Montreal last week, killing at least one person. At a press conference Monday morning, spokespersons for the Montreal police and Montreal fire department said six people are still missing. They come from various locations in Quebec, Ontario and the U.S.
The parents of young Ontario hockey player Ben Teague have been searching for answers since he died while at a team retreat in 2019. The mystery about what happened and the code of silence in hockey culture is explored in CTV W5's 'What Happened to Ben,' on CTVNews.ca and W5's official YouTube channel.
Quebec provincial police (SQ) announced Monday morning that a third person has died in connection with the tragedy in Amqui, in the Lower St. Lawrence region, where a driver drove his pickup truck into pedestrians a week ago.
An Ontario woman has launched a lawsuit seeking $500,000 from Tim Hortons after she suffered major burns from an alleged ‘superheated’ tea. The company has denied all allegations and said she was ‘the author of her own misfortune.'
An American aid worker who was kidnapped in the West African nation of Niger more than six years ago has been released from custody, the Biden administration said Monday.
Pakistani police on Monday arrested scores more supporters of former prime minister Imran Khan for attacking officers over the weekend outside an Islamabad court where the ousted premier was to appear on graft charges, officials said.
President Vladimir Putin wasn't waiting at the end of the red carpet to greet Chinese leader Xi Jinping upon his arrival in Russia on Monday for a high-profile visit. But it wasn't a snub.
Former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou will visit China next week in what a spokesman called a bid to ease tensions between the self-ruled island and the mainland. Ma presided over a period of warm ties with Beijing, but left office under a cloud after a trade deal with the mainland failed to win approval.
Thailand's Parliament was dissolved Monday by a government decree, setting the stage for a May general election that poses an opportunity to lessen the military's influence in politics.
Police on Monday charged the first Australian veteran for an alleged murder in Afghanistan three years after a war crime investigation found that 19 Australian special forces soldiers could face charges for illegal conduct during the conflict.
In an effort to keep the foreign interference story at the forefront, and to do an apparent end run around the Liberal filibuster blocking one study from going ahead, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is forcing MPs to debate and then vote on a motion instructing an opposition-dominated House committee to strike its own review.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling for a national standardized testing process to be created in order to speed up the licensing process for doctors and nurses who are either immigrants or were trained abroad.
Canadians' satisfaction with our country continues to decline, especially when it comes to perceptions of our political institutions, according to a new national survey by Nanos Research. And younger Canadians have the bleakest view of the nation out of all age groups.
No elected Republican has done more to restrict abortion rights in the U.S. than Donald Trump, but in the early days of the 2024 presidential contest, no Republican has worked harder to avoid the issue than the former president.
The parents of young Ontario hockey player Ben Teague have been searching for answers since he died while at a team retreat in 2019. The mystery about what happened and the code of silence in hockey culture is explored in CTV W5's 'What Happened to Ben,' on CTVNews.ca and W5's official YouTube channel.
A Pentagon study has found high rates of cancer among U.S. military pilots and for the first time has shown that ground crews who fuel, maintain and launch those aircraft are also getting sick.
A slight increase in UFO sightings in 2020 compared to pre-pandemic years may not be because of the pandemic itself, but because of Elon Musk’s new internet satellites, researchers found.
Engineers at the University of Arizona have developed a system they say could allow autonomous vehicles to scout out habitats for astronauts in caves and other underground features by leaving a trail of 'breadcrumbs.'
A host of comedic and entertainment royalty gathered at Washington's Kennedy Center to present comedy icon Adam Sandler with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Some of the world's largest central banks came together on Sunday to stop a banking crisis from spreading as Swiss authorities persuaded UBS Group AG to buy rival Credit Suisse Group AG in a historic deal.
Many companies that emerged to manufacture and procure PPE in the early days of the pandemic have gone bust. But others with pre-existing product lines before pivoting to pandemic-related products have since managed to switch back, as supply lines and demand factors recovered and stabilized.
The 2023 World Happiness Report identifies the happiest nations, those at the very bottom of the happiness scale and everything in between, plus the factors that tend to lead to greater happiness.
Bear lovers rejoice: The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish is hiring for 'professional bear huggers' with an adorable job listing posted on Facebook.
The Rideau McDonald's Farewell March brought people from across the city, some dressed in costumes, who wanted to say goodbye to a part of what they say makes Ottawa Ottawa.
March Madness is heading to the Sweet 16 without a handful of top teams. Two No. 1 seeds, Kansas and Purdue, No. 2 seed Arizona and No. 4 seed Virginia are all gone -- and gone with them are millions of busted brackets.
The parents of young Ontario hockey player Ben Teague have been searching for answers since he died while at a team retreat in 2019. The mystery about what happened and the code of silence in hockey culture is explored in 'What Happened to Ben' on CTV W5.
The parents of young Ontario hockey player Ben Teague have been searching for answers since he died while at a team retreat in 2019. The mystery about what happened and the code of silence in hockey culture is explored in CTV W5's 'What Happened to Ben,' on CTVNews.ca and W5's official YouTube channel.
Volkswagen plans to invest in mines to bring down the cost of battery cells, meet half of its own demand and sell to third-party customers, the carmaker's board member in charge of technology said.
