Ben-Gvir Visits Sensitive Jerusalem Holy Site

Security personnel guard Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir as he passes by Damascus gate to Jerusalem's Old city marking Jerusalem Day, in Jerusalem May 18, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Security personnel guard Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir as he passes by Damascus gate to Jerusalem's Old city marking Jerusalem Day, in Jerusalem May 18, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
TT

Ben-Gvir Visits Sensitive Jerusalem Holy Site

Security personnel guard Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir as he passes by Damascus gate to Jerusalem's Old city marking Jerusalem Day, in Jerusalem May 18, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Security personnel guard Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir as he passes by Damascus gate to Jerusalem's Old city marking Jerusalem Day, in Jerusalem May 18, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, visited a sensitive Jerusalem holy site on Sunday at a time of heightened tensions with the Palestinians.

“I am happy to come up to the Temple Mount, the most important place for the Israeli people,” Ben-Gvir said in a statement following the visit. He praised the police presence at the site, saying it “proves who is in charge in Jerusalem.”

It’s his second known visit since becoming a member of Israel’s most right-leaning government ever.

The visit by the extremist minister comes days after Israelis marked Jerusalem Day, which celebrates Israel’s capturing of east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. Flag-waving nationalists marched through the main Palestinian thoroughfare in Jerusalem’s Old City, some singing racist anti-Arab chants, while hundreds of Jews visited the sensitive hilltop shrine.

The hilltop site is the holiest in Judaism, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and home to the ancient biblical Temples. Today, it houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. Since Israel captured the site in 1967, Jews have been allowed to visit but not pray there.

Ben-Gvir, along with a growing movement of activists, has long called for greater Jewish access to the holy site.

Palestinians consider the mosque a national symbol and view such visits as provocative and as a potential precursor to Israel seizing control over the compound. Most rabbis forbid Jews from praying at the site, but there has been a growing movement in recent years of Jews who support worship there.

Violence between Israel and Palestinians in the West Bank has spiked in the last year, as Israel launched near-nightly raids in response to a spate of Palestinian attacks.
More than 250 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the spring of 2022. About 50 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.



24 Killed as Israeli Airstrikes Hit Northeastern Lebanon

People check the destruction at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the eastern village of Bazzaliyeh in the Hermel district of Lebanon's Bekaa valley, near the border with Syria, on November 1, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah. (AFP)
People check the destruction at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the eastern village of Bazzaliyeh in the Hermel district of Lebanon's Bekaa valley, near the border with Syria, on November 1, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah. (AFP)
TT

24 Killed as Israeli Airstrikes Hit Northeastern Lebanon

People check the destruction at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the eastern village of Bazzaliyeh in the Hermel district of Lebanon's Bekaa valley, near the border with Syria, on November 1, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah. (AFP)
People check the destruction at the site of an Israeli airstrike that targeted the eastern village of Bazzaliyeh in the Hermel district of Lebanon's Bekaa valley, near the border with Syria, on November 1, 2024, amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hezbollah. (AFP)

Israeli airstrikes on Friday killed at least 24 people in northeastern Lebanon, the country’s news agency said, raising the death toll from eight there.

It was the latest deadly toll in the area since the conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed group Hezbollah escalated last month.

Israel’s military has said that its operation in Lebanon is targeting Hezbollah’s military infrastructure.

Lebanon’s state National news Agency reported four airstrikes in different villages across country’s northeast, saying rescuers were still searching for survivors in Younine, a town in the Bekaa Valley, from the rubble of a targeted house.

Hussein Haj Hassan, a Lebanese lawmaker representing the region in Baalbek-Hermel region, said that 60,000 people have already fled their homes in the area due to Israeli bombardment.

The death toll from Friday's strikes in the northeast was expected to increase further, reports said.

Earlier, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said an Israeli airstrike on a mountain town overlooking Beirut has killed three people and wounded five.

The ministry gave no further details about the early Friday airstrike on the edge of Qamatiyeh, southeast of Beirut.

An Associated Press journalist who visited the scene said the strike was closer to the nearby village of Ein al-Rummaneh, adding that it caused minor damage to an apartment on the first floor of a building.

On Oct. 6, an Israeli strike in Qamatiyeh killed six people, including three children, the Health Ministry said.

Israeli attacks have killed at least 2,897 people and injured 13,150 in Lebanon, with 30 fatalities reported in the past 24 hours, the ministry said on Friday.

‘New wave of displacement’

Meanwhile, the UN humanitarian aid coordination agency warned of a new “wave of displacement” in Beirut after the Israeli army issued new orders for people to leave.

Spokesman Jens Laerke of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Aid, citing local officials, said the new displacement orders for the capital’s southern suburbs were followed shortly afterward by heavy airstrikes.

He told reporters in Geneva that other recent displacement orders from the Israeli military spurred an estimated 50,000 people to leave the eastern city of Baalbek and head mostly toward the northern Bekaa Valley.

“We are working to access civilians who remain in hard to reach areas. To date, 15 convoys have successfully been organized to reach areas” in four Lebanese cities, including Baalbek, Laerke said. “But the insecurity has an impact on what we can do.”