��������

NABLUS, Palestinian Territories: The Israeli military detained several Palestinians in an overnight raid in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, an AFP journalist at the scene said on Friday.
When contacted by AFP, an Israeli military spokesman confirmed the raid and said that “forces operated in the Nablus area to apprehend several suspects involved in terrorist activities.”
“The suspects were subsequently transferred to the Shin Bet for questioning,” the spokesman added, referring to the Israeli domestic intelligence agency.
An official from Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas said that “former prisoners, journalists, academics and members of the Legislative Council,” were among those targeted.
The detentions “will only fuel public anger,” said Abdul Rahman Shadid, a Hamas official in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
Violence in the West Bank has soared since the Hamas attack on Israel triggered the Gaza war in October 2023.
Since then, Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 983 Palestinians in the West Bank, including many militants, according to health ministry figures.
Over the same period, at least 36 Israelis, including members of security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military operations, according to official figures.
Meanwhile, the Allenby border crossing — which is the only international gateway for Palestinians to leave the West Bank that does not require entering Israel — reopened on Friday, but later than scheduled.
The crossing had been largely closed since a Jordanian truck driver transporting humanitarian aid to Gaza shot dead an Israeli soldier and a reserve officer at the border last week.
On Tuesday, Palestinian and Jordanian authorities said Israel was indefinitely closing the crossing, which Palestinians feared was retaliation by Israel for France and other Western countries formally recognizing a Palestinian state.
Israel announced on Thursday it would reopen the crossing only for passenger traffic from the next morning.
At around 11:00 am (0800 GMT) on Friday, Palestinian travelers confirmed the reopening, roughly three hours later than scheduled.
Thousands of people gathered in front of the terminal, an AFP journalist on the scene reported.
In an angry UN address on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to block a Palestinian state, accusing European leaders of pushing his country into “national suicide” and rewarding Hamas.

NEW YORK: Encircled by critics and protesters at the United Nations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told fellow world leaders on Friday that his nation “must finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza, giving a defiant speech despite growing international isolation over his refusal to end the devastating war. “Western leaders may have buckled under the pressure,” he said. “And I guarantee you one thing: Israel won’t.”

Netanyahu’s speech, aimed as much at his increasingly divided domestic audience as the global one, began after dozens of delegates from multiple nations walked out of the UN General Assembly hall en masse Friday as he began.

Responding to countries’ recent decisions to recognize Palestinian statehood, Netanyahu said: “Your disgraceful decision will encourage terrorism against Jews and against innocent people everywhere.”

As the Israeli leader spoke, unintelligible shouts echoed around the hall, while applause came from supporters in the gallery.

The US delegation, which has backed Netanyahu in his campaign against Hamas, stayed put. The few world powers in attendance, the United States and the United Kingdom, did not send their most senior officials or even their UN ambassador to their section. Instead, it was filled out with more junior, low-level diplomats.

“Anti-semitism dies hard. In fact, it doesn’t die at all,” Netanyahu said. Netanyahu routinely accuses his critics of antisemitism.

Netanyahu faces international isolation, accusations of war crimes and growing pressure to end a conflict he has continued to escalate. Friday’s speech was his chance to push back on the international community’s biggest platform.

As he has often in the past at the United Nations, Netanyahu held up a visual aid — a map of the region titled “THE CURSE,” which chronicles Israel’s challenges in its neighborhood. He marked it up with a large marker. He wore — and pointed out — a pin with a QR code that leads to a site about the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that led to the war and about the Israeli hostages taken by the militants. Members of the Israeli delegation wore similar pins.

Netanyahu also frequently praised President Donald Trump, his chief ally in his political and military approach in the region. Netanyahu said the changes across the Mideast have created new opportunities. He said Israel has begun negotiations with Syria aimed at reaching security arrangements with the country’s new government.

The Israeli government took steps Friday to ensure that those in Gaza heard Netanyahu, setting up loudspeakers at the border to blast his words into the territory. The prime minister’s office also claimed that the Israeli army had taken over mobile phones in Gaza to broadcast his message. AP journalists inside Gaza saw no immediate evidence of Netanyahu’s speech being broadcast on phones there.

Netanyahu said the special measures were taken in an attempt to reach the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza. He spoke in Hebrew at one point, and he read the names of the 20 who are believed to still be alive. But much of his speech was also aimed at an international audience that is increasingly critical of Israel.

A closely watched speech

Netanyahu’s annual speech to the UN General Assembly is always closely watched, often protested, reliably emphatic and sometimes a venue for dramatic allegations. But this time, the stakes were higher than ever for the Israeli leader.

In recent days, Australia, Canada, France, the United Kingdom and others announced their recognition of an independent Palestinian state. The European Union is considering tariffs and sanctions on Israel. The assembly this month passed a nonbinding resolution urging Israel to commit to an independent Palestinian nation, which Netanyahu has said is a non-starter.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant accusing Netanyahu of crimes against humanity, which he denies. And the UN’s highest court is weighing South Africa’s allegation that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, which it vehemently refutes.

As Netanyahu spoke Friday, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered a few blocks from the heavily secured United Nations.

“Israel has chosen a war against every conscientious human being in this world,” said Nidaa Lafi, an organizer with Palestinian Youth Movement, prompting chants of “shame” from the growing crowd. “The masses have come to the irreversible realization that this war was always about the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestine, about the exploitation and the stealing of Palestinian land.”

Opposition to Netanyahu’s approach is growing

At a special session of the UN Security Council this week, nation after nation expressed horror at the 2023 attack by Hamas militants that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, saw 251 taken hostage and triggered the war. Many of the representatives went on to criticize the response by Israel and call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and influx of aid.

Israel’s sweeping offensive has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza and displaced 90 percent of its population, with an increasing number now starving.

While more than 150 countries now recognize a Palestinian state, the United States has not, providing Israel with vociferous support. But Trump pointedly signaled Thursday there are limits, telling reporters in Washington that he wouldn’t let Israel annex the occupied West Bank.

Israel hasn’t announced such a move, but several leading members in Netanyahu’s government have advocated doing so. And officials recently approved a controversial settlement project that would effectively cut the West Bank in two, a move that critics say could doom chances for a Palestinian state. Trump and Netanyahu are scheduled to meet during his visit.

Netanyahu’s office also “instructed civilian groups in cooperation with the army to place loudspeakers on trucks on the Israeli side of the border,” it said in a statement, noting that the broadcasts would be arranged so they would not endanger soldiers.

Palestinians had their UN say the day before

Netanyahu was preceded at the leaders’ meeting a day earlier by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who addressed the General Assembly via video on Thurdsay after the US denied him a visa. He welcomed the recent announcements of recognition but said the world needs to do more to make statehood happen.

“The time has come for the international community to do right by the Palestinian people” and help them realize “their legitimate rights to be rid of the occupation and to not remain a hostage to the temperament of Israeli politics,” he said.

Abbas leads the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, which administers portions of the West Bank. Hamas won legislative elections in Gaza in 2006 before seizing control from Abbas’ forces the following year.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war, then withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The Palestinians want all three territories to form their envisioned state, part of a “two-state solution” that the international community has embraced for decades.

Netanyahu opposes it robustly, maintaining that creating a Palestinian state would reward Hamas. In his speech, Netanyahu insisted that Israel is battling radical Islam on behalf of all nations.

“You know deep down,” he said, “that Israel is fighting your fight.”