With a huge majority, the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday passed a resolution condemning Israel for using ‘excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate’ force during the recent clashes at the Gaza border and calling for an “international protection mechanism” for Palestinian civilians.
The Trump administration is responding to a scheduled Wednesday vote in the UN General Assembly condemning Israel’s recent actions in Gaza with a counter-vote, in which the 193-nation body would separately vote to condemn Hamas.
The United States has decided to change tactics at the United Nations and instead of merely settling for defending Israel, it is now going on the offensive against countries that refuse to condemn the Hamas terror organization.
Israel has complained to the UN Security Council, saying that Hamas is working with Hezbollah to establish missile factories and training camps in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese newspaper Al Joumhouria reported Saturday.
The Israeli military is preparing for massive riots along the Gaza security fence on Friday afternoon, potentially on par with violent clashes that took place on May 14, in which tens of thousands of people participated and some 60 Palestinians were killed, a senior army officer said Thursday.
Incendiary kites launched from Gaza continued to ravage land in southern Israel on Tuesday, sparking fires in as many as 10 different locations.
Despite relative calm returning to southern Israel after more than 100 mortars and rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip, Israel is at its closest point to war since Operation Protective Edge four years ago, a senior IDF officer in the Southern Command said on Thursday.
Israel is pointing a finger at Iran for being behind the most serious escalation on it’s southern front in four years.
Nikki Haley, US President Donald Trump’s envoy to the UN, tore into the organization on Wednesday for what she characterized as a lackadaisical response to the firing of over 70 rockets on Israel from Gaza the day before.
The Israeli military on Thursday released satellite images and details of the more than 65 targets it struck in Gaza in response to massive mortar and rocket attacks by terror groups from the coastal enclave on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Israeli warplanes hit some 25 Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip late Tuesday and early Wednesday in a second wave of retaliatory strikes, the army said, as Palestinian terror groups continued to fire mortars and rockets into Israel.
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile shield shot down a barrage of mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday after sirens sounded in southern Israel, warning residents to find shelter.
Israeli Air Force jets targeted underground terror infrastructure in the northern Gaza Strip early Wednesday morning, the IDF said. Two further targets belonging to Hamas naval forces in Gaza were also targeted.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday hosts for the second time in half a year a summit of the world’s main pan-Islamic group seeking to show solidarity with the Palestinians and condemn Israel after deadly clashes at the Gaza border Monday in which some 60 Palestinians were killed by IDF fire.
Palestinian protests on the Gaza-Israel border have dropped off over the past two days, amid reports that Egyptian officials intervened to restore calm.
Fifty of the Palestinians killed in a protest in the border region between the Gaza Strip and Israel earlier this week were Hamas members, Hamas Politburo member Salah Bardaweil said on Wednesday.
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahhar said the riots on the Israel-Gaza border are ‘not peaceful resistance’ but rather, are supported by its ‘military force.’
Israeli forces were gearing up Tuesday for a second straight day of Palestinian protests and the prospect that they may spread, after hours of bloody clashes on the Gaza border Monday left at least 58 Palestinians dead and thousands more injured.
The Gaza Strip’s Hamas-run health ministry said Tuesday morning that a baby was among those killed during violent border clashes along the territory’s border with Israel the previous day, bringing the overall death toll in the day’s bloody events to 58.
The Israeli army is deploying three additional brigades to Gaza and the West Bank at the start of what Israeli security officials believe could be an extremely violent week of Palestinian protests coinciding with the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem on Monday, the military said Saturday.