Dozens arrested in Israeli West Bank raid, UN meets Thursday
The Palestinian Ministry of Health claims that Israeli forces arrested hundreds and killed two people in the Jalazone refugee camp, near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.
Jalazone residents told Reuters news agency on Monday that Israeli forces raided the camp and carried out widespread arrests, where they clashed with gunmen and youths who threw stones.
About 20 people were arrested, according to the Health Ministry.
Israeli forces have currently retreated to the outskirts of the camp, the residents said.
The Israeli army has not issued a statement about the incidents.
At least 120 militants said to be Palestinians were arrested across the West Bank overnight, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reports, including 59 in the city of Hebron, among which were 40 workers from the Gaza Strip.
The European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Monday urged faster aid deliveries to Gaza, saying the bloc’s 27 foreign ministers would debate calling for a “humanitarian pause” in the war.
“I think a humanitarian pause is needed to allow the humanitarian support to come in and be distributed, seeing that half of the population of Gaza has been moving from their houses,” Borrell said.
TheCornet reports that Isreal has continued to launch brutal offenses in Gaza after militant Hamas attacked an Isreali settlement, killing several people and taking over 100 citizens as captives.
The United Nations General Assembly will meet Thursday to discuss the conflict. The body’s president announced the meeting in a letter to member states.
The Security Council has so far failed to agree on a resolution concerning the war, but a number of states including Jordan, on behalf of an Arab group of nations, Russia, Syria, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Cambodia, formally requested General Assembly President Dennis Francis to schedule the meeting.
Last week, the UN Security Council, regularly divided on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, rejected a Russian draft resolution calling for a “humanitarian pause.”
Only five of the 15 member states had supported the text, which condemned all violence against civilians and all terrorist acts but did not name Hamas, an unacceptable omission to the United States, the United Kingdom, and France.
Washington then vetoed a second resolution put forward by Brazil, as the text did not mention Israel’s right to defend itself.
Twelve out of 15 Council members voted in favor of that resolution, which also condemned the “heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas,” while Russia and the United Kingdom abstained.
The United States was the only one to vote against it, but as one of the body’s five permanent members, its vote counts as a veto.
