‘Civil war’ breaks out in central Israeli city as mayor calls for military
The mayor of Israel’s Lod city pointed to a “civil war out of control,” Israeli media reported late Tuesday, calling upon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to send military forces to handle the situation.
The central Israeli city witnessed fierce clashes with police after a funeral procession of an Arab Israeli killed by an Israeli settler.
Israeli daily Yediot Ahronoth reported two Israeli police officers in the city of Lod were injured in the clashes, which also saw a police vehicle set ablaze.
Hundreds of Arab citizens of the city took part in the funeral procession of their Arab kinsman, who was killed on Monday.
Israeli police said on Tuesday that they arrested an Israeli suspected of killing the Arab Israeli and seriously wounding another.
On Monday, thousands of Arab Israelis demonstrated in the northern cities of Haifa, Nazareth, Shfaram, and Tira in protest of Israeli policies in Jerusalem, where 98 of them were arrested by Israeli police. [Continue reading…]
As a Palestinian watching the scenes unfold in my homeland on social media, I have been consumed by a range of conflicting emotions. I have felt pain and despair at these violent restrictions on basic Palestinian rights and freedoms; but I have also noticed a spirit of care and solidarity among Palestinians that has been inspiring.
How did we get here? Over the past week, thousands of Palestinians have been gathering to pray at al-Aqsa compound – one of the holy sites of Islam – in East Jerusalem, which has been occupied by Israel since 1967. But they have also been standing alongside the residents of Sheikh Jarrah, the neighbourhood from which numerous Palestinian families are facing eviction, in a move by Israel the United Nations has described as a possible war crime, given that it involves the transfer of “an occupying [power’s] civilian population into the territory that it occupies”. [Continue reading…]