Israeli airstrikes target Damascus countryside, Syria says
Syria's defense ministry claims an Israeli airstrike hit Damascus's countryside on Tuesday morning.
Israel early on Tuesday launched missiles at several military targets outside the Syrian capital Damascus resulting in some "material damage," Syria's defense ministry said.
Syrian air defenses intercepted Israeli "missiles and shot down some of them," the ministry added in a statement.
According to Maariv, citing reports, the strikes targeted military structures in the al-Kalmon area. In addition, citing Al-Hadath, the Israeli news outlet stated Hezbollah arsenals were the object of the attack.
Iran has been a major backer of President Bashar al-Assad during Syria's nearly 12-year-old conflict. Its support for Damascus and the Lebanese group Hezbollah has drawn regular Israeli air strikes meant to curb Tehran's extraterritorial military power.
View of the tripoint border between Israel, Syria, and Jordan, northern Israel, on February 15, 2024 (credit: MICHAEL GILADI/FLASH90)Those strikes have ramped up in line with flaring regional tensions since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, with more than half a dozen Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers killed in suspected Israeli strikes on Syria since December.
As a result, the Guards have scaled back deployment of their senior officers in Syria and have planned to rely more on allied Shi'ite militia to preserve their sway there, Reuters reported in February.
9 hours ago
West Bank city names street after self-immolating US soldier Aaron Bushnell
"[Bushnell] wanted to light a strong spark, to reignite our cause,” Mayor Abdul Karim Sidr told a small crowd gathered at the opening.
The West Bank city of Jericho announced on Facebook on Monday that they had named a street after Aaron Bushnell, the US Air Force serviceman who set himself on fire as a reported act of protest for "Palestine."
"The American pilot Aaron Boshnail, who set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington in solidarity with Palestine and in rejection of his country's support for Israel, had a street in Jericho named after him," the municipality wrote on Facebook in Arabic.
“We didn’t know him, and he didn’t know us. There were no social, economic or political ties between us. What we share is a love for freedom and a desire to stand against these attacks [on Gaza]...[Bushnell] wanted to light a strong spark, to reignite our cause,” Mayor Abdul Karim Sidr told a small crowd gathered at the opening, according to the Guardian.
City Council Member Amani Rayan, who is originally from Gaza, told the source “He [Bushnell] sacrificed the most precious thing, whatever your beliefs. This man gave all his privileges for the children of Gaza."
Bullet holes are pictured on a door at the scene where Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian gunmen during a raid near the city of Jericho on February 6, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/MOHAMAD TOROKMAN)Aaron Bushnell's self-immolation
Bushnell, 25, set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC in February.
“I am an active duty member of the US Air Force,” he was recorded saying before setting himself alight, “and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people in Palestine have been experiencing at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all."
“This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,” he added, before shouting "Free Palestine" and ignighting himself.
Bushnell, who livestreamed his immolation online, had made several extreme posts about Israel, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL.)
“Israel is a white supremacist, ethnonationalist, settler-colonial apartheid state… it has no right to exist,” Bushnell Published on Reddit on February 3, 2024.
The ADL, while citing unofficial channels, reported that the terrorist groups Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine had expressed condolences and "full solidarity" to Bushnell's family.
“The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden bears full responsibility for the death of the American military pilot Aaron Bushnell due to its policy that supported the Nazi zionist [sic] entity in the genocide war against our Palestinian people… The heroic pilot Aaron Bushnell will remain immortal in the memory of our Palestinian people and the free people of the world, and a symbol of the spirit of global humanitarian solidarity with our people and their just cause,” Hamas reportedly said.
Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei shared support for the deceased serviceman, writing on his X account, "The West’s disgraceful antihuman policies with regard to the genocide in Gaza have reached such a point that a US military officer sets himself on fire. #AaronBushnell"
"The genocide in Gaza is even too much for that young person who was brought up in the Western culture. His conscience was hurting, and he set himself on fire. #AaronBushnell"
7 days ago
Palestinian state is the only path leading to peace with Israel - Saudi official
The official said Palestinian statehood must be "irreversible" and "irrevocable."
An anonymous Saudi Arabian official told Al-Arabiya on Tuesday that the only possible route for Saudi to establish ties with Israel is through the establishment of Palestinian statehood.
“We don’t have a partner on the other side that is helping us to make this step,” the official said while claiming that normalization with Israel was still possible but more difficult since October 7. “But there must be an irreversible, irrevocable” establishment of a Palestinian state, the official asserted.
Pushing for Palestinian statehood
The United States is engaged in ongoing “planning processes” on how best to advance the establishment of a Palestinian state, US State Department spokesperson Mathew Miller said in January.
“Yes, we are actively pursuing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with real security guarantees for Israel,” Miller told reporters in Washington on Wednesday. "We support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and we do a lot of work in the government to think about how to bring it about.”
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken also pushed Israel for recognition of a Palestinian state in January, claiming that it would be the best way to marginalize Iran.
US SECRETARY of State Antony Blinken holds a news conference in Tel Aviv, last week. (credit: Mark Schiefelbein/Reuters)“If you build that integration, if you bring Israel in, if you make the necessary commitments to security, and you move down the path to a Palestinian state, that’s the single best way to isolate, to marginalize Iran and the proxies,” Blinken said.
Do Palestinians want a two-state solution?
A poll conducted by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that only 28% of Palestinians support a two-state solution, and 70% oppose it, the Jerusalem Post reported in June 2023.
A November poll conducted by the Arab World for Research and Development found that 74.7% of Palestinians supported the existence of only a singular Palestinian state.
The support for a single Palestinian state was more commonly held by Palestinians living in the West Bank (77.7%) than Palestinians living in Gaza (70.4%.)
A total of 17.2% of respondents said they supported a two-state solution, with Palestinians in Gaza (22.7%) supporting this solution to a greater extent than Palestinians living in the West Bank (13.3%.)
Only 5.4% of respondents supported a “one-state for two peoples” solution.
Tovah Lazaroff and Barak Ravid contributed to this report.
7 days ago