Rocket sirens blare in Jerusalem area after Hamas’ Temple Mount ultimatum, as tensions boil over ■ Israel beefs up forces along Gaza border

Rocket sirens sounded Monday in the Jerusalem area, moments after a 6 P.M. ultimatum issued by Hamas for Israel to remove its forces from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

A spokesman for the Hamas military wing said the organization “fired rockets at occupied Jerusalem, in response to the enemy’s crimes and aggression against the holy city, and its abuse of out people in Sheikh Jarrah and Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Armenia’s Human Rights Defender (Ombudsman) Arman Tatoyan reaffirmed his position on Public TV Company that the TV station hardly covers the defender’s statements regarding the situation in Syunik Province and the rights of border residents.

“These statements are important because they contain specific messages; they are needed in the context of more effective protection of human rights in the future,” the ombudsman’s office said in a Facebook post on Sunday.

“The human rights defender referred to the coverage of the Public Television, as H1 is a publicly funded organization,” it added.

 Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor,

Libya’s first female foreign minister has come under pressure to resign and been subjected to personal abuse seven weeks into the job, after she called for Turkish troops and mercenaries to leave her country.

Najla El-Mangoush, a lawyer and human rights activist’ was appointed foreign minister by the country’s interim prime minister, Abdelhamid Dbeibah, after he faced a backlash for backtracking on promises that 30% of ministerial posts would go to women.

A lawyer from Benghazi in the east, Mangoush is trying to navigate her way around an array of external actors in Libya.

On Saturday, a militia in Tripoli stormed a hotel used previously by the unity government, which finally came into being in March, replacing rival administrations in east and west. In footage broadcast over the weekend, the militia can be heard asking about Mangoush’s whereabouts and searching cars.

Separately, the radical Islamist cleric Sadiq al-Gharyani, who lives in Turkey, criticised Mangoush on his TV channel Al-Tanasuh, describing her as “mean, despicable, and serving the Zionist project”. Observers said the vitriol directed at Mangoush endangered her life and showed the inability of some Libyan men to accommodate women in Libyan politics.

Some of Mangoush’s opponents allege she is a supporter of the commander Khalifa Haftar and his eastern-based Libyan National Army (LNA), which still holds sway nearly a year after its 14-month offensive to seize the capital, Tripoli, collapsed. In Tripoli, the armed groups that pushed Haftar back from the capital with Turkish support still control the streets.

Mangoush’s opponents say her calls for Turkey to leave have not been matched by criticism of the presence of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group, which has links to Haftar.

Video: East Jerusalem Palestinians face evictions following settlers’ lawsuits (France 24)

The foreign minister’s supporters say she has been even-handed in her call for all troops to leave, and clips of remarks she had made in 2019 now circulating on social media had been edited to excise her criticisms of Haftar.

The US ambassador to Libya, Richard Norland, defended Mangoush, saying the criticism must stop.

“We fully support foreign minister Mangoush’s unambiguous call for the departure of foreign forces in the interest of Libyan sovereignty and stability,” he said.

Turkey claims its presence in Libya cannot be compared to those of Russian mercenaries since its troops are in Libya at the invitation of the previous Libyan government.

The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who visited Tripoli last week, criticised those who suggest the Turkish presence in Libya is equivalent to that of illegitimate groups. But recent UN security council resolutions have called for all foreign mercenaries and troops to leave the country, as did a peace agreement signed by both sides last year.

The storming of the Tripoli hotel led to calls for the seat of the government to be moved to the coastal town of Sirte.

Dbeibah’s unity government is tasked with overseeing reunified state institutions until nationwide elections are held on 24 December. The elections are supposed to see a president elected for the first time and a new parliament, but there is resistance among MPs, who do not want to their access to power disrupted, nor a powerful president.

The ambassadors in Libya from France, the US, the UK, Germany and Italy issued a statement last week calling on all sides, including the government, to stick to the 24 December election timetable. 

The statement was condemned by the parliament as unwarranted interference in Libya’s internal affairs. 

The five embassies stressed the importance of making the necessary political and security arrangements for elections, along with “the technical and logistical preparations”, which they regard as critical.

The holy city, which contains sacred sites for Jews, Muslims and Christians, has been rocked by violence over the past three days. An Israeli march laying claim to the whole of Jerusalem is set to go ahead on Monday.

• Israeli authorities limit Jerusalem Day march route
• Palestinian medics report around 300 wounded
• Israel says Gaza militants fired rockets
• UN urges Israel to show ‘restraint’

This article was last updated at 14:36 UTC

Hamas issues ultimatum to Israel

Hamas, the paramilitary group in control of the Gaza Strip, has issued an ultimatum to the Israeli authorities. The group is demanding Israeli troops withdraw from the Temple Mount and the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood by 6 p.m. local time (1500 UTC), or else it will launch attacks against Israel.

Israeli forces have been given about an hour to respond. The Israeli military has suspended a major military drill in order to focus on the ongoing security crisis.

Israeli police limit Jerusalem march 

Israeli police have decided to limit the “Jerusalem Day” march this afternoon, with participants not allowed to pass through the Old City’s Jerusalem Gate and Muslim Quarter. The move is intended to prevent confrontations between the Israeli marchers and Palestinians.

The decision was reportedly ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Alleged collusion by judicial authorities

DW has been speaking to Mohammed el Kurd, a young writer whose family is one of those being threatened with eviction.

“There is clear collusion between the settler organizations and the Israeli judicial system to throw us out of our homes,” he said. Read the full report here.

Germany calls for de-escalation  

“We call on both sides, now, to make an urgent contribution to deescalate the situation,” said German government spokesman Steffen Seibert as he called on Israelis and Palestinians to show restraint.

Netanyahu backs police’s ‘strong stand’

“We insist on ensuring the rights of everyone, this occasionally requires taking a strong stand as the officers of the Israel Police, and our security forces, are doing at the moment. We back them in this just struggle,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted as saying by his spokesman Ofir Gendelman. 

Calm restored, Israel says

Gendelman tweeted that calm has been restored on Temple Mount. 

The latest from DW on the ground

Israeli security services recommend that police change the planned route of the scheduled march through the Old City area of Jerusalem to prevent clashes with Muslim residents, said DW correspondent Tania Krämer.

Israeli participants were initially meant to march through the flashpoint Damascus Gate and Muslim Quarter. 

Violence broke out early Monday morning as several young Palestinians stayed overnight to prevent the planned Israeli marches from entering the Al-Aqsa compound, she added. 

Israeli police said they entered the compound to disperse the crowds, which sparked the confrontations as Palestinians threw stones and barricades while police fired stun grenades, Krämer said. 

Over 150 protesters were in need of medical attention.

Turkey is currently under a full nationwide lockdown to curb a dangerous surge in coronavirus infections and deaths. Residents have been ordered to stay at home until May 17. But foreign tourists are exempt from the curfew, as DW’s Julia Hahn reports.

Several well-known figures were attending the first rally of the Armenia bloc led by second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan yesterday, and among the spotted figures were representatives of the recently established Union of Reserve Officers of the National Security Service NGO Mikayel Hambardzumyan (former Director of the National Security Service), Hrant Yepiskoposyan (former first Deputy Director of the National Security Sevice), Vrezh Arzumanyan (former Deputy Director of the National Security Service).

A few ex-officers of the National Security Service, who are members of the NGO, were also attending the meeting. The fact that these longstanding officers of the National Security Service attended the Armenia bloc’s rally at Freedom Square already shows that they see a serious problem in terms of national security and believe Robert Kocharyan can solve the situation.

By Azad Essa,

If there are no consequences for expelling Palestinians from their homes, there are surely none for the media’s erasure of these illegal acts

Over the past week, Jewish settlers with thick Brooklyn accents were caught on camera bullying their way into Palestinian homes in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah. 

“If I don’t steal your home, someone else will steal it,” one settler said to Mona al-Kurd, a Palestinian woman whose house was being invaded, in a video that has since gone viral.

Israeli police, too, were seen stormingthe neighbourhood, violently breaking up vigils, and beating and choking activists conducting sit-ins in protest at the displacement of Palestinian refugees living in the area, many of whom are facing eviction in the coming days. On social media, online campaigners have been sharing #SaveSheikhJarrah in a bid to garner international attention and to make sure the world bears witness to yet another Israeli crime. 

Make no mistake: an ethnic cleansing is currently underway in the predominantly Palestinian neighbourhood in full view of the world. 

But in the American mainstream media, it is as if nothing is happening at all.

In this parallel universe, the illegal and vicious attempt to remove Palestinians from their homes, and the violent actions of Israeli forces to halt demonstrations against a recent court order upholding the evictions, have been met with a resounding silence.

Multiple displacements

A cursory glance at the New York Times, NPR, CNN and Time Magazine returned no results on the events of the past few days. Instead, they continue to focus primarily on Israel’s inability to form a government. When the evictions and the violence inflicted on Sheikh Jarrah residents have been covered – for example, by the Associated Press – the issue is framed as a quasi commercial dispute between two parties and described as a “long-running legal battle” between Palestinians and settlers, conveniently neglecting to note that under international law, Israeli courts do not have the authority to settle civilians in occupied Palestinian territory, while the displacement of Palestinian families contravenes the fundamentals of international humanitarian law. 

As the longtime attacks on families in the neighbourhood would attest, the story in Sheikh Jarrah goes to the heart of the never-ending Israeli project of settler-colonialism of the land and expulsion of Palestinians, or as Palestinians have described it: a continuation of the Nakba of 1948.

The neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah comprises some 3,000 refugees who were forcibly displaced from their original homes in other parts of what was historic Palestine in 1948. Since the early 1970s, Palestinians in the neighbourhood have been battling a series of Jewish settler organisations who filed lawsuits claiming the land belonged to them. Dozens of Palestinians have been kicked out of the neighbourhood and replaced by Israeli settlers. 

The current impasse and protests came about after Israeli courts last year orderedthe eviction of more than a dozen Palestinian families from the residential neighbourhood. 

Considering the ways in which the mainstream US media has historically covered the Israeli occupation of Palestine – be it the use of the term “clashes,” even when Israeli mobs have marched to the chant of “Death to Arabs,” as they did last month, or the drawing of false equivalences in the levels of violence between occupier and occupied, or the constant justification of Israeli violence as “self-defence,” even in the thick of an invasion – the lack of coverage of the events in Sheikh Jarrah is not altogether surprising.

This is the same media after all that still chooses to laud Israel’s Covid-19 vaccine success while it completely negates its legal responsibilites towards the lives of Palestinians living under its control.

The erasure of the events in Sheikh Jarrah, though, is still jarring.

One would have thought that given the tumultuous events of the past year – from the Black Lives Matter movement to the Covid-19 pandemic which exposed a decrepit, unequal America – that US mainstream media would have shifted gears, rethinking their own complicity, or at least exploring American duplicity.

But they apparently remain unmoved. 

Official silence

Part of the problem is that there is no one to hold Israel to account. Palestinian civil society activists have called upon the International Criminal Court to include the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah as part of its ongoing investigations, but both Israel and the US have rejected the ICC’s right to hold Israel to account. 

On Sheikh Jarrah, the US government has refused to condemn the state-sponsored actions of the settlers. On Wednesday, numerous American lawmakers called on the State Department to break their silence. Representative Marie Newman, for instance, demandedthat the State Department “immediately condemn these violations of international law as Palestinians are forcibly being removed from their homes in East Jerusalem”. 

On Thursday, a spokesperson for State Department told Middle East Eye it was “deeply concerned”.

“As we have consistently said, it is critical to avoid unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions or take us further away from peace, this includes evictions, settlement activity and home demolitions,” the spokesperson added.

The United Nations has been equally pallid on the matter. Its leadership, too, has shown itself barely capable of reiterating its oft-repeated position that “all settlement activities, including the evictions and demolitions, are illegal under international law”.

Meanwhile, the facts on the ground continue to change. Today, tomorrow, the evictions will continue; more lives destroyed, more homes taken over. And it seems the US mainstream media is well aware that if there are no consequences for displacing and expelling Palestinians from their homes, there are surely no consequences for the media to erase these crimes.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Source: https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/sheikh-jarrah-israel-palestine-us-media-erasing-crimes