Leader of the Tulkarem Brigade killed by Israeli forces
As we’ve been reporting, Israeli forces have been conducting a raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp east of Tulkarem in the occupied West Bank. Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Tulkarem, says in the past hour, four Palestinian fighters have been killed by Israeli forces.
“One of them was the leader of the Tulkarem resistance brigade, the battalion of about 50 men strong that is based in Tulkarem, a man named Mohammed Jaber,” he said. He added that the four bodies of the Palestinian fighters were taken into Israeli custody.
Jaber has been targeted in the past, and his brother was killed in December. “This very dramatic escalation of events in the occupied West Bank in this ongoing raid seemed to have been successful in targeting Mohammed Jaber,” he added.
Two settlers at a time, that's not going to solve anything. In fact, this just proves the US is only stoking the fires by targeting a few individuals with sanctions. It's the government that arms and stands behind the settlers. That's where the sanctions need to go.
US issues sanctions on two Israeli entities
The US Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on two entities that it says helped raise tens of thousands of dollars for two sanctioned settlers in the occupied West Bank.
“Such acts by these organisations undermine the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank. We will continue to use our tools to hold those responsible accountable,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said in a statement.
The Treasury said the Mount Hebron Fund launched an online fundraising campaign that raised $140,000 for settler Yinon Levi after he was sanctioned on February 1 for leading a group of violent settlers who assaulted Palestinian and Bedouin civilians.
The second entity, Shlom Asiraich, raised $31,000 on a crowdfunding website for David Chai Chasdai, who the US said initiated and led a riot in Huwara that resulted in the death of a Palestinian civilian.
Separately, the US also sanctioned Ben-Zion Gopstein, founder and leader of the right-wing group Lehava, which it says has “engaged in violence, including assaults on Palestinian civilians”.
US veto was ‘irresponsible’, Iranian official says
Tehran says the US veto in the UN Security Council that blocked Palestine from achieving full UN membership was “irresponsible” and “unconstructive”.
“Washington’s action exposed the fraudulent nature of US foreign policy and its isolated position,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said.
During Thursday’s vote, 12 countries on the 15-member Security Council backed a resolution recommending full Palestinian membership. Britain and Switzerland abstained. The US has argued that while it “strongly” supports a two-state solution to the conflict, Palestine’s UN membership should come from “direct negotiations between the parties”, meaning Palestine and Israel.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israeli Katz commended the US for casting the veto, saying, “The shameful proposal was rejected. Terrorism will not be rewarded.”
Au contraire, state terrorism gets awarded with another 17 Billion dollars from the USA and has been rewarded by the US for decades.
