More on Israeli destruction of Rafah’s main water tank
We have reported earlier that a preliminary investigation is under way in Israel into the video posted by an Israeli soldier, showing the troops blowing up Rafah’s main drinking water tank last week.
Since then, Rafah Mayor Ahmed al-Sufi has commented about the attack which constituted “a crime against humanity”, saying the Israeli troops destroyed not only the tank but also a water well in the Tal as-Sultan neighbourhood, west of Rafah. The destruction exacerbated the water crisis in the southern city, he added.
“The documented scenes of the occupation soldiers blowing up the Canada water tank, which was feeding the Rafah water network with 3,000 m3 per day, and the Canada Well, which operates at an operational capacity of 180 m3/hour, and the soldiers’ boasting while carrying out their mission reveal the truth of their goals of destroying everything that exists and destroying the necessities of life and their disregard for international laws,” he said in a statement.
He added that the total cost of constructing the tank and well amounted to $1.7m.
Al-Sufi appealed to international community “to quickly intervene to stop the occupation’s crimes against the Palestinian people” and open the border crossings to bring in spare parts and machinery to repair the water network and the sewage network.
‘Serious abuse’ of Palestinian detainee reported at Israel’s Sde Teiman prison
Israeli soldiers are suspected of abusing a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at the Sde Teiman detention facility in southern Israel, according to Israeli media and officials. The incident prompted Major General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, Israel’s military advocate general, to open a military police investigation, according to the Times of Israel.
When the investigators arrived at the facility to take suspected abusers for questioning, a heated argument erupted, the report said.
Reaction to Israeli soldiers’ arrest over suspected abuse of Palestinian detainee
Nine Israeli soldiers suspected of abusing a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman prison have been arrested, promptinh a strong reaction by the country’s far-fight politicians.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich published a video message on X, telling Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, who ordered the probe into the abuse, to take his hands off Israel’s “heroic warriors”.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and other members of his far-right Otzma Yehudit party announced that they were on their way to Sde Teiman to demand the release of the arrested soldiers.
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein announces that he will hold an urgent hearing tomorrow to discuss the arrests, saying: “Our soldiers are not criminals and this contemptible pursuit of our soldiers is unacceptable to me.”
Meanwhile, Yair Golan, chairman of the Israeli Labor Party and former deputy chief of staff, said “it is the duty of the army and the state to investigate the commission of criminal offenses by soldiers who acted in violation of orders”.
“The army must not allow the phenomena of criminal battalions to do whatever they want inside it,” he said.
