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Two Arrested at Protest over Jerusalem Evictions

An Israeli policemen stands guard as Palestinians queue at the Bethlehem checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, to try crossing to Jerusalem to attend the third Friday prayers of the fasting month of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa mosque, on April 30, 2021. / AFP / HAZEM BADER
An Israeli policemen stands guard as Palestinians queue at the Bethlehem checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, to try crossing to Jerusalem to attend the third Friday prayers of the fasting month of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa mosque, on April 30, 2021. / AFP / HAZEM BADER
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Two Arrested at Protest over Jerusalem Evictions

An Israeli policemen stands guard as Palestinians queue at the Bethlehem checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, to try crossing to Jerusalem to attend the third Friday prayers of the fasting month of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa mosque, on April 30, 2021. / AFP / HAZEM BADER
An Israeli policemen stands guard as Palestinians queue at the Bethlehem checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, to try crossing to Jerusalem to attend the third Friday prayers of the fasting month of Ramadan at the Al-Aqsa mosque, on April 30, 2021. / AFP / HAZEM BADER

Two Palestinians were arrested and ten people injured in clashes in east Jerusalem, according to Israeli police and the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The confrontations on Monday evening came as Palestinian families face eviction, part of an ongoing effort by Jewish Israelis to take control of homes in the in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

Israeli police and border police arrived "after a protest including dozens of protesters who disturbed the order" according to the police, who said demonstrators threw stones and bottles at security forces and blocked traffic, AFP reported.

Police said they gave protesters "a reasonable time" to leave the "unlawful protest" before they dispersed the demonstration.

An AFP reporter saw Palestinians singing songs and defying the order to disperse. Officers ended the demonstration with mounted police and foul-smelling water.

The Red Crescent said three of the injured were hospitalized.

Sheikh Jarrah is in east Jerusalem, which Israel conquered in 1967 and annexed in a move not recognized by most of the international community.

Israeli Jews backed by courts have taken over houses in Sheikh Jarrah on the grounds that Jewish families lived there before fleeing in Israel's 1948 war for independence.

No such protection exists for Palestinians who lost their land.

Now Jewish claimants seek to evict a total of 58 more Palestinian families, according to the watchdog group Peace Now. Israel's Supreme Court is set to announce a decision for four of those families on Thursday.

Jordan has intervened, saying that when it administered the area from 1948 to 1967, it built the homes for Palestinian refugees who fled their homes in what became Israel.

Opponents of the evictions have gathered regularly in the neighborhood, including a Jewish Israeli lawmaker who last month was filmed being beaten by police.

Sheikh Jarrah is a short walk from the Old City's Damascus Gate, a plaza popular with Palestinians especially during the fasting month of Ramadan.

The latest protests follow days of clashes after Israeli police blocked the plaza.

Police quelled those protests with stun grenades, water cannons and skunk water before ultimately removing the barriers.

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Former Israeli Spies Describe Attack Using Exploding Electronic Devices against Lebanon’s Hezbollah

An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
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Former Israeli Spies Describe Attack Using Exploding Electronic Devices against Lebanon’s Hezbollah

An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)
An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon amid ongoing cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah fighters. (Photo by Anwar AMRO / AFP)

Two recently retired senior Israeli intelligence agents shared new details about a deadly clandestine operation years in the making that targeted Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Syria using exploding pagers and walkie talkies three months ago.
Hezbollah began striking Israel almost immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the Israel-Hamas war, The Associated Press said.
The agents spoke with CBS “60 Minutes” in a segment aired Sunday night. They wore masks and spoke with altered voices to hide their identities.
One agent said the operation started 10 years ago using walkie-talkies laden with hidden explosives, which Hezbollah didn't realize it was buying from Israel, its enemy. The walkie-talkies were not detonated until September, a day after booby-trapped pagers were set off.
“We created a pretend world,” said the officer, who went by the name “Michael.”
Phase two of the plan, using the booby-trapped pagers, kicked in in 2022 after Israel's Mossad intelligence agency learned Hezbollah had been buying pagers from a Taiwan-based company, the second officer said.
The pagers had to be made slightly larger to accommodate the explosives hidden inside. They were tested on dummies multiple times to find the right amount of explosive that would hurt only the Hezbollah fighter and not anyone else in close proximity.
Mossad also tested numerous ring tones to find one that sounded urgent enough to make someone pull the pager out of their pocket.
The second agent, who went by the name “Gabriel,” said it took two weeks to convince Hezbollah to switch to the heftier pager, in part by using false ads on YouTube promoting the devices as dustproof, waterproof, providing a long battery life and more.
He described the use of shell companies, including one based in Hungary, to dupe the Taiwanese firm, Gold Apollo, into unknowingly partnering with the Mossad.
Hezbollah also was unaware it was working with Israel.
Gabriel compared the ruse to a 1998 psychological film about a man who has no clue that he is living in a false world and his family and friends are actors paid to keep up the illusion.
“When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad,” Gabriel said. “We make like ‘Truman Show,’ everything is controlled by us behind the scene. In their experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100% kosher including businessman, marketing, engineers, showroom, everything.”
By September, Hezbollah militants had 5,000 pagers in their pockets.
Israel triggered the attack on Sept. 17, when pagers all over Lebanon started beeping. The devices would explode even if the person failed to push the buttons to read an incoming encrypted message.
The next day, Mossad activated the walkie-talkies, some of which exploded at funerals for some of the approximately 30 people who were killed in the pager attacks.
Gabriel said the goal was more about sending a message than actually killing Hezbollah fighters.
“If he just died, so he’s dead. But if he’s wounded, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You need to invest money and efforts,” he said. “And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of ‘don’t mess with us.’ They are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East.”
In the days after the attack, Israel's air force hit targets across Lebanon, killing thousands. Hezbollah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated when Israel dropped bombs on his bunker.
By November, the war between Israel and Hezbollah, a byproduct of the deadly attack by Hamas group in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, ended with a ceasefire. More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas militants, health officials have said.
The agent using the name “Michael” said that the day after the pager explosions, people in Lebanon were afraid to turn on their air conditioners out of fear that they would explode, too.
“There is real fear,” he said.
Asked if that was intentional, he said, “We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are. We can’t use the pagers again because we already did that. We’ve already moved on to the next thing. And they’ll have to keep on trying to guess what the next thing is.”