Israel speeds up settlement-building in East Jerusalem since Gaza war

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 17 April 2024

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LONDON - Israel’s government has accelerated the construction of settlements across East Jerusalem, with more than 20 projects totalling thousands of housing units having been approved or advanced since the start of the war in Gaza six months ago, planning documents show, according to the Guardian.

Ministries and offices within the Israeli government are behind all the largest and most contentious of the projects, sometimes in association with rightwing nationalist groups with a history of trying to evict Palestinians from their homes in parts of the city.

The rapid approval or construction of settlements that are illegal under international law is likely to further damage Israel’s relationship with the Biden administration.

The war was triggered by surprise Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

“The fast-tracking of these plans has been unparalleled in the last six months,” said Sari Kronish, from the Israeli human rights organisation Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights. “While many government bodies were shuttered or had limited operation following 7 October, the planning authorities continued to plough forward, advancing these plans at unprecedented speed.”

The new settlements will offer homes for Israel’s majority Jewish population in parts of Jerusalem that were unilaterally annexed by Israel in 1980, and are likely to be an obstacle to any attempt to create a viable Palestinian state with the east of the city as its capital.

The Gaza war has put a renewed focus on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as foreseen by the Oslo accords in the early 1990s.

The US, EU and UK have recently imposed sanctions on individual settlers in the West Bank amid surging violence.

Israeli planning authorities have approved two new settlements since the outbreak of the war, the first to be approved in East Jerusalem in more than a decade. The expansion of a gated high-security settlement called Kidmat Zion, in the heart of the Palestinian neighbourhood Ras al-Amud on the eastern periphery of the city, is also set to go ahead pending comments from the public.

A decision on Kidmat Zion was made just 48 hours after the Hamas attack on 7 October. The government was officially made part of the project in a planning hearing a month earlier, documents on the planning authorities’ website show.

Two major projects now flank the Palestinian community of Beit Safafa, most of which is in East Jerusalem. One, known as Givat Hamatos, was frozen for a decade due to international opposition. Work resumed in 2020 and last month the site was busy with workers, heavy machinery and trucks.

According to the most recent official planning documents, the “initiator” and “applicant” for the project is the Israel Land Authority, a governmental body. The document lists stakeholders as the state of Israel and the Jerusalem municipality among others.

A second large housing development is known as Givat Shaked and will be built on the north-western side of Beit Safafa, on a plot of grass and trees.

Official documents viewed by the Guardian show that the entity which has formally filed the plan is the Jerusalem Development Authority, a statutory body that aims to “promote Jerusalem as a leading international city in the economic sector and in quality of life in the public domain”.

The project’s “initiator” is the Ministry of Justice, through an office known as the General Custodian, which claims responsibility for the land on which Givat Shaked will be built because it includes substantial tracts that had Jewish owners before 1948.

The Givat Shaked project has been a source of division since building was first proposed there in the mid-1990s. Concerns that this posed a threat to the Oslo peace process led to international outrage and Washington pushed Israel to cancel the plan.

Two years ago the scheme regained momentum. The interior minister at the time, Ayelet Shaked, rejected any claims of Palestinian control over Jerusalem’s east and said it was “unthinkable to prevent development and construction in this area, or anywhere else in the city”.

Shaked also stressed the need “to increase the supply of housing” in Jerusalem. Other supporters of the scheme claimed Palestinians would be able to move into the new “neighbourhood”.

Full planning approval was given on 4 January this year.

The scheme involves high-rise blocks containing 700 housing units that occupy the only land in Beit Safafa where the 17,000-strong majority Muslim community could expand to accommodate young people. In the neighbourhood, as elsewhere, bureaucratic obstacles and other restrictions usually prevent Palestinians from building larger homes.

“Our family has been here for 250 years … Now I have a black hole in my heart because I can’t see how my children and grandchildren can spend their lives here,” said Ahmed Salman, 71, the chair of Beit Safafa’s community council.

“We had good relations with the municipality once, but not in recent years. Since the war, life goes on but they approved the plan and dismissed all our objections. We are appealing but I’m not optimistic.”

A third project, also near Beit Safafa, is known as Lower Aqueduct and involves the construction of a large settlement adjacent to a Palestinian neighbourhood. The Lower Aqueduct plan was fully approved on 29 December.

The site straddles the line between East Jerusalem and the western part of the city. The initiator and applicant of the project is the Israel Land Authority, documents show.

“Many of the settlement plans are strategically designated for areas along the southern perimeter of East Jerusalem,” said Amy Cohen, of Ir Amim, an Israeli human rights NGO based in Jerusalem. “If constructed, they would further fracture the Palestinian space … and create a ‘sealing-off’ effect of East Jerusalem from Bethlehem and the southern West Bank. Such moves directly undermine conditions necessary for a viable independent Palestinian state with a contiguous capital in East Jerusalem.

“All this while bringing planning and building for Palestinians in the city to a complete stop.”

The minutes of a planning meeting held in September show that the office of the General Custodian was accepted as a co-applicant on the Kidmat Zion plan, though it was initiated by a private company established by an organisation called Ateret Cohanim, a group that works to increase the Jewish population of East Jerusalem.

Ateret Cohanim has been accused of being behind attempts to evict Palestinians in East Jerusalem and to take over Christian hotels in Jerusalem’s Old City. It says the new settlement, which will be heavily fortified, is to be built on Jewish-owned land.

A recent United Nations report noted that the policies of Israel’s government, which is the most right wing in the country’s history and includes religious nationalists with close ties to settlers, appeared aligned with the goals of the Israeli settler movement to an “unprecedented extent”.

Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories had expanded by a record amount and risked eliminating any practical possibility of a Palestinian state, the UN report said.

About 40% of Jerusalem’s population of roughly 1 million are Palestinian. Maintaining a Jewish majority in the city has been an aim of successive Israeli governments.

Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the six-day war of 1967 and later annexed it in a move not recognised by most of the international community.Permanent settlement of territory occupied militarily is illegal under international law.

Why has Iran attacked Israel?

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 15 April 2024

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LONDON - On Saturday evening, Iran launched a series of drone, rocket and missile strikes against Israel.

The attack has been seen as an unprecedented escalation in a long-running Middle East conflict that has flared since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct 7, 2023.

Iran’s assault on Israel is the latest development in a long shadow war.

Why did Iran attack Israel?

Iranian officials had been threatening to retaliate to an unprecedented airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which killed Gen Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a top general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), along with several other officers.

Israel never officially claimed responsibility for the April 1 attack but is widely believed to be behind it.

Zahedi was in charge of Iran’s operations in Syria and Lebanon and was reported to have been involved in the “planning and execution” of Hamas’s Oct 7 attack on Israel, when the terror group killed around 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 200. Iran has denied any involvement.

That makes him the highest-profile assassination since the 2020 US airstrike that killed Qasem Soleimani, who was head of Iran’s elite Quds Force.

Why did Israel attack the Iranian consulate?

Ever since Hamas’s Oct 7 attack, Israel has been fighting off near daily rocket attacks from Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah in the north of Israel.

The exchange of fire along the border has largely been limited, with both sides apparently keen to avoid a major escalation.

But in recent weeks Israel has started to up the ante, launching strikes against Hezbollah operatives far deeper into Lebanon and even hitting several Iranian targets in Syria.

But none were as significant as the April 1 attack – both in terms of where the strike took place and who it killed.

As the commander in charge of Iran’s operations in Lebanon, Zahedi regularly met with the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and played a crucial role in providing Iranian-made missiles to the militant group, sources told The Telegraph.

Zahedi was killed in an airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus on April 1 - ZUMAPRESS.com / Avalon

Also present at the Iranian consulate on April 1 was his deputy, Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, who oversaw the entire Middle East, including coordinating Yemeni Houthi rebel attacks against Western shipping targets in the Red Sea.

The gathering of IRGC officials was a “very, very rare opportunity” for Israel to wipe out some of its archrival’s most senior commanders in one go, according to an Israeli source quoted by Reuters. “That’s not something a country at war would pass up.”

The attack served two purposes.

It was intended to disrupt Iran’s supplies and coordination with Hezbollah, and to serve as a warning: Israel could strike Iran wherever it was.

Some in Israeli media have questioned the rationale behind it, saying that the killing of a top Iranian commander does not fundamentally improve security for Israel in the region.

How will Israel retaliate?

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini has long been considered to be a calculating leader, anxious to avoid a head-on confrontation with Israel that would be highly damaging for a regime that is already facing widespread public discontent.

Despite the long war in Gaza, the IDF still have an enviable stockpile of high-precision weapons that can reach Iran.

Israel could also easily launch airstrikes against key infrastructure in Iran, crippling the economy and embarrassing the country’s rulers.

Potential targets would include Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities, which have long been suspected by Israel of being used to make nuclear weapons.

Who are Iran’s allies?

Iran’s allies are few in numbers and in global clout.

Yemen’s Houthis, Syria and Russia are probably its staunchest backers.

Moscow is already mired in a prolonged war in Ukraine and is unlikely to have any spare funds or weapons to help Tehran defend itself against Israel. Russia has already bought hundreds of combat drones from Tehran.

Trade partners like China would likely stand on the sidelines if a major regional conflict were to break out.

Who are Israel’s allies?

Israel is backed by countries with some of the strongest armies in the world including the United States and Britain.

Washington has offered Israel “ironclad” guarantees that it will help defend it against Iranian attacks.

Israel’s relations with its other allies in the West including Britain have soured as the war in Gaza increasingly became a humanitarian disaster, with an estimated 34,000 people killed and famine under way in the territory’s north.

But the same countries that criticised Israel for its war in Gaza have since pledged to stand behind Israel in case of an Iranian attack.

How many troops does each side have?

Iran is believed to have over 370,000 active military personnel, most of them ground forces.

Israel has 169,500 active military personnel, and 465,00 reservists – half of whom had already been called up to serve after the Hamas attack on Israel last year. Most of them have since been discharged.

Does either side have nuclear weapons?

Israel is widely accepted to have developed a nuclear bomb in the late 1960s and is now thought to have a stockpile of approximately 90 warheads – although it has never officially confirmed that.

Iran has been playing catch up ever since.

In the early 2000s, several Iranian dissident groups revealed the existence of an uranium enrichment plant and a heavy-water production facility.

While both can be used for nuclear power generation, they can also be repurposed to make weapons-grade uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, raising suspicions that Tehran was trying to make a nuclear bomb.

Iran has always maintained that it was only pursuing nuclear projects for civilian needs.

Iran signed an agreement with the West in 2015, committing to significant restrictions on its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. It also allowed international monitors to visit some – though not all – of its enrichment sites.

Donald Trump, while US president, withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018 and Iran began ignoring the restrictions shortly afterwards.

A recent report by the Washington Post suggested that Iran has a supply of highly enriched uranium that could be converted to make the fuel for at least three nuclear bombs within a few weeks.

It would take a few more months to make a crude nuclear device, while building a warhead that could be fitted onto a missile would take two years, according to unnamed US officials.

How much could it cost to rebuild Gaza after Israel's war with Hamas?

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Written by Super User

Category: MENA

Published: 09 April 2024

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By James Hockaday

KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA STRIP - Palestinians have been returning to their homes in Khan Younis, after Israeli forces withdrew from the city in southern Gaza.

Six months into Israel's war with Hamas, which has seen one of the world's most densely populated places hit with frequent air raids, residents say they've had nothing to come back to.

“I couldn’t find my home because of all the destruction,” he said as he stood in front of the rubble," Magdy Abu Sahrour told the Associated Press. "Where is my place, where is my home? … It’s a tragic situation.”

The Israel Defence Forces' (IDF) withdrawal from Khan Younis does not mean an end to the war, however, with fears looming of a long-anticipated invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah. About 1.5 million people are sheltering in the city, the last southern refuge in the besieged Palestinian enclave. Campaigners have expressed grave concern for their safety, but Israel has insisted it needs to press ahead with the assault to take out Hamas.

More than 33,000 people have been killed in Gaza in the past six months, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Those who do survive a potential invasion in Rafah are likely to remain destitute, with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNWRA, claiming in December that eight in 10 Gazans are now homeless.

We still don't know how long this war will go on, but some estimates have been made over its total cost, as Yahoo News explains here.

What is the cost of damage in Gaza?

As of the end of January 2024, $18.5bn (£14.6bn) worth of damage had been inflicted on infrastructure in Gaza, according to a recent report by the World Bank and the United Nations.

It says that, of this, more than four-fifths is concentrated on residential buildings (72% of the total) and businesses (9%), while the remaining 19% has been on other critical infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.

To put the sheer scale of destruction into perspective, the World Bank estimated rebuilding costs of $485m after an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in May 2021.

As well as rebuilding, getting rid of unexploded ordnances and clearing up debris is also likely to be a major obstacle, according to the report, published on 29 March. It said approximately 26 million tons of rubble had been left in Gaza.

Based on the World Bank and United Nation's estimate, the table below shows how researchers think it will have to be divided.

Housing is predicted to take up the vast majority of reconstruction costs. (World Bank/United Nations) (World Bank)

How will Gaza rebuilt?

The shock to Gaza's economy as a result of the current war is "one of the largest observed in recent economic history", the UN and World Bank report says. Gaza’s gross domestic product dropped by 86% in the last quarter of 2023, equivalent to a 24% year-on-year drop, and it could contract by over 50% year-on-year if reconstruction doesn't begin in 2024.

With the territory's economy in tatters, it will rely heavily on support from overseas. If a ceasefire is achieved, Turkey has said it "do whatever is necessary to compensate for the destruction caused by Israel".

"We will make efforts to rebuild the damaged infrastructure in Gaza and rebuild the destroyed schools, hospitals, water and energy facilities," Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in November.

Egypt, which has been acting as a mediator and has been facilitating much of the delivery of aid into Gaza, is also likely to play a role. In February, Erdogan met his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo and said the two countries are ready to cooperate in helping to rebuild the Palestinian enclave.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly told a Knesset panel that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would foot the bill for a restoration of Gaza, the Times of Israel reported in December. However, neither Gulf state had said anything about this at the time.

Arab states are unlikely to get involved with the rebuilding of Gaza without an agreement on a two-state solution, Bloomberg reports, something the Israeli government has not expressed an interest in.

Stressing the importance of securing Palestinian statehood as part of a longer-term solution, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned in January that Arab states are reluctant to get involved if Gaza is "levelled" again in a few years time.

How long will it take to rebuild Gaza?

While the political complexity of the region, and the sheer scale of destruction, make this difficult to predict, we do have some clues of how long rebuilding could take.

After the 2014 war in Gaza, a reconstruction framework was agreed between the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Israeli government and the United Nations.

This "privileged Israeli security concerns and maintained Israeli control over the entrance of goods to Gaza", according to Washington DC-based think-tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"Rebuilding did happen through this mechanism, but not enough to repair the damage of 2014 before the next round of violence in 2021," it added.

"The securitisation of aid delivery is likely to be even greater in a future reconstruction system. And the frustrations of organisations involved in supporting whatever rebuilding is permitted will probably be greater as well."

The United Nations Conference On Trade And Development (UNCTAD) said in late January that it will take "decades" to rebuild Gaza and restore it to pre-conflict socioeconomic conditions, and will require "substantial" foreign aid to do so. A report by the body says 79% of Gaza's labour force is unemployed.

Even under the UN's most optimising projection, it will still take over a decade for Gaza's GDP to fully recover, as shown in this chart below.