Day: September 27, 2023

Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, has said he is confident the inquiry will “end up in absolutely nothing.”

The opposition railed against National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Wednesday after six people were killed in Arab-sector crime incidents, five in the northern Bedouin town Basmat Tabun, and a sixth man, Ataf Abu Kalib, 50, was shot dead in broad daylight in Haifa.

In Basmat Tabun, the victims were all members of the same Delaika family: the parents and their three children. Police suspect a connection between the two murders and are investigating.

Magen David Adom paramedics who arrived at Basmat Tabun pronounced their deaths, while evacuating another man at the scene with moderate injuries to the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa. “A redline was crossed here,” said police chief Kobi Shabtai at the scene. “The people who carried out this attack, from our perspective, are terrorists; this is a terrorist act,” he added, vowing to bring the killers to justice.

Medics who arrived in Haifa found Abu Kalib lifeless. Three masked men, armed with automatic weapons, rained fire on him, killing him instantly, and immediately exited the scene. Abu Kalib is the cousin of Omar Abu Kalib, a member of the Hariri criminal group.

These latest victims bring the death tally in Arab sector violence this year to 188, compared to 80 at this point last year, according to the Abraham Initiatives, a nonprofit that deals with Arab-Israeli dialogue and tracks the murder rate in the sector. The organization pointed the responsibility to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he must “fire the national security minister immediately and implement a welfare plan to deal with sector crime. This is an emergency.”

The Abraham Initiatives added that of the 188, 171 were shot, 87 were under the age of 30, and 12 were women. 

Benny Gantz calls for Ben-Gvir to be fired

After the Haifa murder, various opposition members spoke out against Ben-Gvir with some calling for him to be fired.

Earlier in the day, after the Haifa murder, National Unity leader Benny Gantz said, “The murder today shows just how severe the neglect is and how widespread and deep the treatment must be. The current government, which appointed Ben-Gvir, who is busy with provocations instead of saving human life, is not qualified to handle this problem. The prime minister must fire Ben-Gvir not only because of his actions, but mainly because of his neglect.”Yesh Atid MK Ron Katz voiced a similar sentiment alongside a screenshot of footage from the murder.

Head of the Otzma Yehudit party MK Itamar Ben Gvir at a special committee in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, on December 18, 2022. (credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)

“This morning, a man was assassinated in the North,” he wrote. “And the idle minister is busy with interviews, TikTok videos, and planning prayer services to divide the people. In what other country would this minister be kept in his position? How can it be that there is no price for failure in the State of Israel?”

He ended by telling Netanyahu that he is responsible for the issue, an accusation echoed by National Unity MK Yifat Shasha-Biton.

“We cannot deal with Ben-Gvir with tweets, it’s time for action,” she said. “There’s no governance, there’s no security, there are more and more victims, more and more crime, and there’s no light at the end of the darkness that has befallen us. Israel’s citizens are living in fear on [Netanyahu’s] watch. You cannot blame the appointed minister, who suffers from delusions of grandeur and who is busy being the neighborhood bully. You were chosen to lead. The responsibility is on you. It’s time to do it.”

After the Basmat Tabun murders, Ben-Gvir made his way to the scene.

“I’m expressing deep shock from the violence and the bloodbath in the Arab sector that claimed another six lives today,” he said. “In the last few months, we gave the police a lot of resources and passed legislation that will help police to eradicate the murders, and we are continuing to work to pass laws, like the option of using biometric cameras, that could save lives.”

The last time a murder of this scale in the sector took place was three months ago in Yafia. Five people were shot in a shooting at a car wash. An investigation found that the shots were fired from automatic weapons.

A woman who resides in the regional council told Maariv that she was at home “when we heard police sirens on the street. We went out not understanding what was happening, and then we heard about the horrific murder of the Delaika family in their home. People cried and screamed. This situation cannot continue; we are being neglected every day. There is no knowing who will be the next victim.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir cancelled the prayer service he had planned for Thursday after being pressured to do so by his fellow coalition members.

In a statement released by the minister’s office, the claim was that Ben-Gvir had changed his mind as a result of “an announcement by the far-left protest leaders saying they wouldn’t repeat the antisemitic activity they led on Yom Kippur.”

“I’m happy the extreme Left understood that there is no place for antisemitism against Jews in the heart of Tel Aviv,” said Ben-Gvir. “We have one Jewish nation where Jews can pray in public spaces whenever and wherever they want.”

Ben-Gvir had announced the service following the events of Yom Kippur in which protesters disrupted a Kol Nidrei prayer service in Dizengoff Square as the holiday began because the congregants set up a partition to divide men and women despite the Tel Aviv Municipality and the High Court of Justice banning it.

A counter-prayer on Thursday was announced by the Kaplan Force protest organization soon after Ben-Gvir’s invitation for people to join his. The Kaplan Force’s service was set for an hour-and-a-half after Ben-Gvir’s and was supposed to take place in Dizengoff Square as well but was moved to Habima Square instead on Wednesday.

Jews pray while activists protest against gender segregation in the public space during a public prayer on Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and the holiest of Jewish holidays, September 25, 2023. (credit: ITAI RON/FLASH90)

“Ben-Gvir’s provocation is staying in Dizengoff,” the announcement said.

Protests groups celebrate the win

After Ben-Gvir announced that he was cancelling the service, protest groups took credit for the decision.

“What led the national danger minister to cancel his ‘prayer’ provocation in Dizengoff was the decision of the protest organizations to ignore it,” they said. “Let this be a lesson to anyone who gives a stage to the public relations tricks of an incapable pyromaniac who only wants to divide people and make them hate each other.”

The view that Ben-Gvir was creating a provocation by holding his prayer service was held throughout the coalition as well, with many urging Ben-Gvir to cancel his event or move the service to a synagogue in the area.

“I want it to be clear to everyone that Jews are allowed to pray anywhere in the world without disruptions,” said Economy Minister Nir Barkat on Wednesday morning. “The truth is that [the Yom Kippur incident] broke my heart. I see the extremists in the State of Israel pulling us to the edges and ripping the extremely important social fabric that connects us.

“We need to work toward unity and love and work on our common denominators while not allowing extremists to lead us to the crumbling of our social fabric. Therefore, I call on Ben-Gvir as well not to provoke and not to go to Dizengoff. I call on everyone to focus on what connects us and not on the edges.”

When asked if he would attend the prayer service, Innovation, Science, and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis said that Ben-Gvir would do better to move it to a synagogue so as to avoid a provocation in a public space.

Pressure to cancel the service had also come from the Religious Zionist Party with whom Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party had run in the last elections. RZP leader Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Tuesday that the event would be playing into the hands of the protest and that this wasn’t the time for “unnecessary provocation.”

Some reports indicated that Ben-Gvir had been met with pushback even within his own party.

The cancellation of the event, however, was praised by Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai.

“I’m happy that sanity won out,” he said. “In these days, there is no place for stoking the flames and hate among brothers. Tel Aviv will continue to respect the traditions and the religion alongside democratic values. The two together are an important basis for the State of Israel.” 

LONDON — At least 68 people were killed and 105 are still missing from an explosion that tore through a makeshift gas station being used by ethnic Armenians on Monday night as thousands sought to flee the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, according to local authorities.

The newly revised death toll followed a statement earlier from Armenia’s health minister, Anahit Avanesyan, saying 125 bodies from people killed in the blast had been brought to Armenia.

But Avanesyan later said those bodies were casualties from fighting. The Stepanakert Forensic Medical Examination Bureau in the enclave’s regional capital said Tuesday the number of confirmed dead from the gas station blast remained at 68, with nearly 300 injured.

Many of the injured have been evacuated to Armenia, carried by Armenian and Russian military helicopters, local officials said. Avanesyan said most of the patients had extremely severe to severe injuries.

The explosion and fire ripped through the fuel store on Monday night as hundreds of refugees were lining up for gas for their vehicles to leave Nagorno-Karabakh, according to local officials.

Thousands of ethnic Armenians have been leaving the enclave following a successful military offensive last week by Azerbaijan that defeated the local Armenian authorities and restored Azerbaijan’s rule over the region.

Ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh sit in a truck on their way to Goris in Syunik region, Armenia, on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2023.

More than 28,000 people have crossed from Nagorno-Karabakh into Armenia since Sunday, according to a statement from Armenia’s government. It’s feared the enclave’s entire population — estimated at 120,000 — may seek to flee in the coming days.

Armenia’s prime minister on Monday said what was happening was the “ethnic cleansing” of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population.

Long traffic jams of people seeking to leave were visible snaking miles along the only road out of Nagorno-Karabakh to a checkpoint in the “Lachin Corridor” that links the enclave to Armenia.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been at the center of a decadeslong conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Internationally recognized as Azerbaijan’s territory, the two countries fought a bloody war over the enclave amid the collapse of the Soviet Union, in which Armenia backed local ethnic Armenian separatists, who succeeded in establishing control over most of the region. Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijani civilians were driven from the region during that war.

Azerbaijan reopened the conflict in 2020, launching a full-scale war that decisively defeated Armenia and forced it to largely abandon its claims to Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia helped broker a truce and dispatched a peacekeeping force there that remains deployed. Last week, Azerbaijan launched a new offensive that swiftly forced the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian’s leadership to surrender.

Medics of the Russian peacekeeping troops treat people injured in an explosion at a fuel depot outside Stepanakert, in an unknown location in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inhabited by ethnic Armenians, in this still image from video published Sept. 26, 2023.

Russian Defence Ministry via Reuters

Since then thousands of ethnic Armenians have been preparing to leave the enclave, which has been under Azerbaijani blockade for nine months, unwilling to live under Azerbaijan’s rule and fearing they will face persecution.

Western countries, including the United States, France and Germany, have expressed concern for Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population and warned Azerbaijan it bears responsibility for their rights and security.

The Biden administration has dispatched Samantha Power, currently administrator of USAID and senior another State Department official to Armenia to express U.S. support for the country amid the crisis.

Power on Tuesday visited the checkpoint at Armenia’s border with Nagorno-Karabakh where refugees have been arriving, and called for international monitors and aid groups to be given access to the enclave and for Azerbaijan to facilitate the evacuation of injured civilians from there.

“It is absolutely critical that independent monitors as well as humanitarian organizations get access to the people in Nagorno-Karabakh who still have dire needs,” Power told journalists at the checkpoint. “There are still tens of thousands of Ethnic Armenians there living in very vulnerable conditions,” announcing the U.S. would provide $11.5 million in humanitarian assistance that would include everything from food to psychiatric support.

A medic of the Russian peacekeeping troops treats a man injured in an explosion at a fuel depot outside Stepanakert, in an unknown location in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inhabited by ethnic Armenians, in this still image from video published Sept. 26, 2023.

Russian Defence Ministry via Reuters

Power, who has been a high-profile campaigner for human rights, said she was in Armenia to also hear testimonies from people fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh and that she would be reporting back to the Biden Administration as it considers how to respond to the crisis.

Power and the Acting Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, Yuri Kim met with Armenia’s prime minister Nikol Pashinyan on Monday. Power delivered a letter from President Joe Biden in which he expressed condolences for the loss of life in Nagorno-Karabakh and promised help on addressing humanitarian needs.

“I have asked Samantha Power, a key member of my cabinet, to personally convey to you the strong support of the United States and my Administration for Armenia’s pursuit of a dignified and durable regional peace that maintains your sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and democracy,” the letter read.

U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power, center, speaks to the Red Cross members while visiting ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh at a temporary camp in Armenia’s Goris in Syunik region, Armenia, on Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2023.

Pashinyan told Power the international community and Armenia had failed to prevent the “ethnic cleansing” of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenians.

“Unfortunately, at the moment the process of the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh is continuing, it is happening right now. It’s a very tragic fact. We tried to inform the international community that this ethnic cleansing would happen, but, unfortunately, we did not manage to prevent it,” Pashinyan told Power and Yuri Kim, the State Department’s acting assistant secretary for Europe and Eurasian Affairs, according to the prime minister’s press service.

Armenia and Azerbaijan were due to hold talks mediated by the European Union in Brussels on Tuesday, the first talks between the sides since Azerbaijan’s retook Nagorno-Karabakh.

Refugees queue in vehicles near the border town of Kornidzor, arriving from Nagorno-Karabakh, on Sept. 26, 2023.

Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty Images

Monday’s blast at the fuel station added a horrific complication to the exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh, with local authorities pleading for people to hold off leaving as the traffic-choking the roads out was preventing the evacuation of the severely injured.

Helicopters from Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, were reported to have flown to Nagorno-Karabakh to help evacuate some of the worst injured. A long line of ambulances was also filmed by Russian media crossing into the enclave.

The enclave’s Armenian health authorities said the hospitals in the enclave, already short of medicine and other equipment, were not equipped for the disaster.

Russia’s peacekeeping contingent said it was also providing medical assistance and showed videos of its soldiers evacuating some of the injured.

The former head of Nagorno-Karabakh’s separatist government was arrested as he tried to cross into Armenia on Wednesday, Azerbaijani authorities said.

Ruben Vardanyan was one of more than 50,000 people to cross into Armenia from the separatist region, almost half of its 120,000 population, since Azerbaijan lifted its nine-month blockade on the enclave on Sunday.

It marks a fundamental shift in ethnic control of lands that had been disputed by mostly Christian Armenians and predominantly Muslim Azerbaijanis for the past century.

Despite Azerbaijan’s promises to respect the rights of the region’s ethnic Armenians, they have rushed to flee the region en masse, fearing reprisals.

It follows Azerbaijan’s 24-hour blitz last week to reclaim control of the region, involving heavy artillery, rocket launchers and drones, which forced the separatist authorities to agree to lay down weapons and sit down for talks on Nagorno-Karabakh’s “reintegration” into Azerbaijan.

Mr Vardanyan, a billionaire businessman who made his fortune in Russia where he owned a major investment bank, moved to Nagorno-Karabakh last year and served as the head of the regional government for several months before stepping down this year.

Azerbaijan’s border security service said Mr Vardanyan was escorted to the country’s capital of Baku and handed over to “the relevant state bodies”. It posted a picture of him being held by two border guards next to a helicopter.

His wife Veronika Zonabend said on his Telegram channel that he had been arrested while trying to flee. She asked for people’s “prayers and support for my husband’s safe release”.

It was not known on what grounds Mr Vardanyan had been held but Azerbaijan has signalled it will seek to prosecute prominent figures in the Karabakh leadership.

“We have accused elements of the criminal regime and we will bring them to justice,” Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said last week, without naming anyone or specifying any crime.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the arrest of Mr Vardanyan, who renounced his Russian citizenship after moving to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia’s attempts to absorb the rush of ethnic Armenians come with officials still trying to identify the whereabouts of more than 100 people reported missing in a fuel depot blast on Monday that claimed 68 lives.

The fireball erupted as refugees were stocking up on fuel for the long drive along the mountain road leading to Armenia.

Azerbaijan’s Health Ministry said a total of 192 Azerbaijani troops have been killed and 511 wounded in the offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh. One Azeri civilian also died in the hostilities, the ministry said.

Nagorno-Karabakh officials earlier said at least 200 people on their side, including 10 civilians, were killed and more than 400 were wounded in the fighting.

Azerbaijan’s swift onslaught followed a nine-month blockade of the road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. The Armenian government in Yerevan claimed the closure denied basic food and fuel supplies to the enclave’s residents, while Azerbaijan countered by alleging the Armenian government was using the road for mineral extraction and transporting illicit weapons to the region’s separatist forces.

The Armenian government on Wednesday said it had received 50,243 Nagorno-Karabakh refugees since Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive.

It has prepared living arrangements for 40,000 families since last week’s fighting broke out.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s spokeswoman said late on Tuesday the government had so far been able to find housing for only 2,850 people.

Western governments fear a humanitarian disaster and are pressing for Azerbaijan to allow international observers into Karabakh to monitor its treatment of the resident population.

“What is needed now is transparency and the eyes and ears of the international community on the spot,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock posted on X, formerly Twitter.

“It would be a sign of confidence that Azerbaijan is serious about its commitments to the security and well-being of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh if it allows international observers.”

independent political analyst Boris Navasardyan said: “The influx of refugees will have a serious impact on the domestic political situation in Armenia.”

The Red Cross and the UN’s refugees agency are trying to organise immediate help.

Moscow is now firing daily barbs at Mr Pashinyan for his vow on Sunday to pivot away from Armenia’s long-standing alliance with the Kremlin.

Mr Pashinyan has blamed Russia for failing to avert the Azerbaijani offensive and called Armenia’s current foreign security alliances “ineffective” and “insufficient”.

The comments underscored the extent to which the Kremlin’s influence has shrunk across former Soviet republics since it became bogged down in its war on Ukraine.

But Moscow still has an important military base in Armenia and has indicated that it will try to keep Yerevan in its sphere of influence.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday said Moscow expected “all agreements on developing bilateral co-operation … to continue to be implemented” in full.