Tamar Pileggi is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
The Times of Israel liveblogged Tuesday’s events as they unfolded.
The US ambassador to the United Nations says the UN Human Rights Council must “address its chronic anti-Israel bias” if it wants to maintain its credibility.
Nikki Haley delivers her highly-anticipated remarks to the council as it opens its three-week summer session in Geneva.
“It is essential that this council address its chronic anti-Israel bias if it is to have any credibility,” she says.
Haley decries the “rapidly deteriorating human rights situation” in Venezuela, and says Washington may withdraw from the UNHRC if it can’t address the problem.
Reiterating concerns voiced by officials of President Donald Trump’s administration about the effectiveness of the 47-member body, she says the US is “looking carefully at this council and our participation in it.”
Haley also urges that the council adopt “the strongest possible resolutions on the critical human rights situations in Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Belarus and Ukraine, and that it follow up to prevent further human rights violations and abuses in those countries.”
British police name the third man who carried out a terror attack in London as 22-year-old Youssef Zaghba, an Italian national of Moroccan origin, confirming a report in Italian media.
Police say Zaghba was “not a police or MI5 subject of interest” after Italian reports said Italian intelligence had notified British and Moroccan secret services about his status as a potential extremist.
— AFP
A US-backed Syrian force says it has begun an offensive to capture the northern city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State group, after months of clearing operations.
Talal Sillo, a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, tells reporters that operations have begun in coordination with the US-led coalition.
“We declare today the beginning of the great battle to liberate the city of Raqqa, the alleged capital of terrorism and terrorists,” Sillo tells a news conference held in northern Syria. “Morale is high and military readiness to implement the military plan is complete, in coordination with the US-led coalition.”
Raqqa was among the first cities captured by IS, in January 2014, and has been the home of some of the group’s most prominent leaders, including those who planned the November 2015 Paris attacks and other international assaults. The battle for the city is expected to be long and bloody, and could mark a major turning point in the war against the extremists.
— AP
British police announce they had made an arrest in the investigation into the London terror attack, a day after saying they had released without charge all 12 people arrested so far.
“A 27-year-old man was arrested under the Terrorism Act at approximately 8:05am (0705 GMT),” police say, adding that the arrest took place in Barking, the east London suburb that has been the focus of police raids since Saturday’s attack.
— AFP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israel will “forever” retain control of the Golan Heights, warning that any withdrawal from the strategic plateau it captured from Syria in 1967 would bring Islamist extremists to the country’s doorstep.
“The Golan Heights will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty,” he says at a conference of Israeli youth held in the northern city of Katzrin. “We will never leave the Golan Heights. It’s ours.”
“If we are not here, radical Islam will be, and we all understand the consequences,” Netanyahu adds.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon criticizes UN Secretary-General António Guterres for his earlier statement marking the Six Day War in which he decried the ongoing “occupation” of Palestinian territories.
Danon says that attacks on Israel by its neighbors did not begin in 1967, and that “any attempt at a moral equivalency between killing innocent people and the building of homes is absurd.”
Instead of spreading “Palestinian misinformation,” the UN should stick with the facts, Danon added. “It is preposterous to blame terror and violence in the Middle East on the one true democracy in the region,” he said. “The moment the Palestinian leadership abandons terror, ceases to incite against our people and finally returns to direct negotiations, then real progress can be made towards peace.”
The Kremlin strongly denies a leaked US report that Russian military intelligence hackers tried to infiltrate into US voting systems before last year’s presidential election.
“Apart from this claim which absolutely does not conform to reality, we have not seen any other information nor heard any arguments for the reliability of this information,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells journalists.
“We resolutely deny the possibility that such a thing could have happened,” he says, adding that he had not read the report.
The report by the National Security Agency was allegedly leaked by a private contractor just over a month after it was written and published Monday on The Intercept, an online news website which focuses on national security issues.
— AFP
The Philippines will temporarily suspend the deployment of Filipino workers to Qatar, fearing food riots and other potential problems amid the diplomatic crisis gripping the energy-rich Gulf nation.
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello says the ban took effect yesterday but there is no plan yet to repatriate the more than 200,000 Filipino workers in Qatar.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab powers severed diplomatic ties Monday with Qatar and moved to isolate the nation, accusing it of supporting terrorist groups and backing Iran.
Saudi Arabia closed its land border with Qatar, through which the tiny Gulf nation and international travel hub imports most of its food, sparking a run on supermarkets.
— AP
Israel Police reveals that security forces raided an explosives-manufacturing laboratory in a Palestinian town east of Jerusalem overnight Monday.
A statement from police spokeswoman Luba Samri says the facility in Abu Dis manufactured at least 30 explosive devices that were hurled at Israeli security forces during protests since the beginning of the year.
Two people were arrested during the raid on suspicion of manufacturing the bombs and taking part in violent protests.
Saudi Arabia is revoking Qatar Airways’ operating licenses as part of a package of punitive measures against the Gulf country.
In a statement carried on the state-run Saudi Press Agency, the aviation authority says it will close the airline’s offices in the kingdom within 48 hours.
Meanwhile, the Saudi ports authority says Qatari-flagged shipping vessels are barred from docking. It’s ordering shipping agents not to receive any vessels owned by Qatari companies or Qatari nationals and not to unload any goods from Qatar.
— AP
A third man arrested for carrying out Saturday’s deadly attack in central London is an Italian-Moroccan who was arrested last year on suspicion of trying to reach Syria, according to Italian media reports.
Italy’s main media outlets report Youssef Zaghba, 22, was intercepted at the Bologna airport last year as he was about to board a plane for Turkey, apparently with the intention of joining Islamic State militants in Syria.
He was detained with only a small backpack, his passport and a one-way ticket to Istanbul.
Police reportedly found IS propaganda videos on his cellphone, but after an investigation, they failed to find sufficient evidence of links to terrorism to prosecute him, and released him.
According to the reports, the British and Moroccan secret services were notified of Zaghba’s status as a potential militant.
But British police said Zaghba was “not a police or MI5 subject of interest.”
— AFP
US President Donald Trump says that Middle Eastern leaders complained about the Gulf state of Qatar when he demanded an end to support for radical ideology that encourages terrorism.
In a tweet, Trump does not take a position on the decision by Saudi Arabia and three other Arab nations to sever diplomatic relations with Qatar but appears to suggest it was understandable.
“During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar – look!” Trump tweets.
Yesterday, Saudi Arabia along with Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates cut ties with Qatar over its alleged support for extremists. All of the countries are friendly with the US, putting Trump in a potentially awkward position.
Trump met with Qatar’s emir during the president’s visit to Saudi Arabia last month.
“We are friends, we’ve been friends now for a long time, haven’t we?” Trump asked at the meeting. “Our relationship is extremely good.”
— AP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implores settler leaders to unify behind his peace efforts, promising he would not bring a “catastrophe” upon the settlements and that none would be uprooted as part of a future peace deal with the Palestinians.
In his remarks in the Knesset, in an event marking 50 years since the capture of the West Bank and Jordan Valley during the Six Day War, Netanyahu promises that no harm will come to the settlements.
“Alongside our desire to reach an agreement with our Palestinian neighbors, we will continue to protect the settlement enterprise and strengthen it,” says Netanyahu. “We are doing this responsibly and with discretion.”
“No one will be uprooted from his home,” the prime minister vows, to applause.
Referring to the settler leaders as “my friends,” the prime minister made a plea for unity.
“I am doing what is necessary to protect the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria… we will continue to develop it, and we will not bring a tragedy upon the settlements, if we agree to work together. This is the most important thing. To work together.”
— Marissa Newman
Netanyahu tells lawmakers that he rejected proposals by the Trump administration that “harm our basic rights,” hinting the new US administration is sticking to decades-old peace-making formulas.
At a Knesset event marking 50 years since the capture of the West Bank and Jordan Valley during the Six Day War, Netanyahu stresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is “not a territorial dispute” but is rather an attempt by the Palestinians to “destroy a country.”
The prime minister says that “50 years of propaganda” to the international community on the root of the conflict will not quickly be unraveled.
“We’ve made some strides, but there is a long way to go,” he says of efforts by Israel to change the narrative.
“And therefore, even when we went through difficult changes — and we got through them together — here we are still facing this problem; even when governments change, even when a new administration enters. I will not detail here what ideas were raised, those who need to know, know. And we did not accept things that would have harmed our basic rights and essential matters.”
— Marissa Newman
Gulf sanctions against Qatar could damage reconstruction in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, where it has provided large financial backing, the head of a major humanitarian charity warns.
The Gulf state has strong ties to Hamas, and is one of the largest donors to the Palestinian enclave. The gas-rich state has funded the rebuilding of much of its infrastructure since a 2014 war with Israel.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a former head of the UN’s humanitarian wing, warns Qatar might have to cut back some of its aid to Gaza.
“Qatar has been very important as an investor in Gaza and as a contributor to infrastructure progress there. It is my impression this may not easily continue,” he says.
After the 2014 war with Israel, Qatar pledged $1 billion for reconstruction — the most of any country.
As of December 2016, $216 million of that had been disbursed, according to the World Bank, with the Gulf state suffering from falling energy prices.
— with AFP
Police say the security guard who killed an Arab protester overnight in the town of Kafr Qassem acted in accordance with regulations when he opened fire during a riot outside a local police station.
The unnamed guard was questioned by police for several hours this afternoon where he relayed his version of events that led to the death of 27-year-old Mohammed Taha.
He told police he and the other guards opened fire on protesters because he feared for his life and had not other choice.
Police determined that he acted in accordance with open-fire regulations, and released him.
US President Donald Trump wades into a rapidly escalating Gulf crisis, suggesting ally Qatar — home to the largest US military base in the Middle East — is funding extremism as he tacitly backed a diplomatic blockade of the emirate.
“So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off,” Trump says in a morning tweet.
…extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017
“They said they would take a hard line on funding… extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!”
— AFP
Thousands of people attend the funeral for Mohammed Taha, an Arab-Israeli protester who was shot dead by a security guard during a riot in the town of Kfar Qassem early this morning.
Among the mourners is Knesset member Jamal Zahalka of the Joint (Arab) List, who says Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Israel Police Commissioner Roni Alsheich have failed to address the increasing crime rates in a Arab communities and
“The police are abandoning Arab citizens to gangs of criminal organizations, and there is no rule of law,” Zahalka says in a statement.
The lawmaker says Israel has successfully tackled organized crime in Jewish-majority cites, which left Arab towns and cities more vulnerable to criminal activities.
“Arab cities suffer from severe discrimination, violent crime in Arab society is 50 percent, while police only allocate 5% of their overall budget to fight crime in Arab communities,” he says. No wonder the disparity is so stark, he says.
A French police officer shot and injured a man who attacked him with a hammer outside Paris’s Notre-Dame cathedral on Tuesday, authorities say.
Police seal off the area in front of the cathedral after the incident.
French TV reports that panicked tourists are fleeing for cover.
#BREAKING: video from the scene near Notre Dame in #Paris pic.twitter.com/K6JUbIO0PR
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) June 6, 2017
Residents of Kafr Qassem say the killing of an arab protester at a riot last night, saying the shooting of 27-year-old Mohammed Taha amounts to a “cruel murder.”
“This is a cruel murder, the killing of a person for no reason,” one unnamed resident tells the Ynet news website.
كفرقاسم في وداع ابنها الشهيد محمد …لحظة وصول جثمان الشهيد محمد طه الى كفرقاسم وانطلاق الجنازة بمشاركة عشرات الالاف .
Posted by Khatab Nassar خطاب نصار on Tuesday, 6 June 2017
“We are all angry at the murder of the heroic martyr who was shot without endangering the life of police, and their claims that he endangered lives is false,” another says. “They are just trying to evade responsibility because they know they made a serious mistake.”
“We do not want the police in our city because instead of ending violence and crime, they are contributing to the murder of people,” Mustafa Sarsour says. “The police humiliate us instead of serving us.”
“We’re fed up, we don’t feel safe, our lives are in danger,” Sarsour adds.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s office slams Netanyahu’s pledge to keep permanent security control over the Jordan Valley, saying Israel is “not ready” for peace.
It says Netanyahu’s remarks last night were meant as a stumbling block to US President Donald Trump’s attempts to breathe life into long-stalled peace efforts.
“They are a message to the US administration and to the international community that Israel is not ready to reach peace based on international law and resolutions,” Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh says in a statement.
“We reject these remarks, which seek to create a climate that makes the situation more complicated and are absolutely not aimed at supporting efforts for a solution,” he adds.
— AFP
Paris police say an operation around Notre Dame Cathedral is over, after an attacker who targeted police with a hammer was shot and injured.
Police spokeswoman Johanna Primevert tells The Associated Press that the intervention is over. She does not provide further details.
Another police official says the attacker surged at police patrolling the scene with a hammer.
Paris police tweet that one officer was wounded in the attack.
Hundreds of people on the esplanade in front of Notre Dame were evacuated while the operation was underway.
— AP
At the funeral for an Arab protester who was shot dead by a guard during a riot in Kafr Qassem overnight, Joint List MK Ahmad Tibi says the incident is proof of state-sanctioned discrimination against Arabs.
“There is only one collective in Israel that risks being shot and killed if they choose to demonstrate — Arab citizens,” Tibi says in a statement.
He notes that other groups that regularly hold demonstrations in Israel are not met with police violence.
Tibi says the police “continues to prove that it regards the Arabs as the enemy, and not civilians.”
He says anger toward police in Kafr Qassem is especially fierce, as residents say law enforcement has failed to deal with the growing crime in the town.
Paris prosecutors open a counterterrorism investigation after an unidentified assailant attacked police with a hammer outside Notre Dame Cathedral.
The attacker was shot and wounded in the incident. He was taken to hospital with chest injuries, according to a police source.
French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb says the attacker cried “this for Syria” as he went after officers patrolling an esplanade in front of the famous landmark.
The Paris prosecutor’s office says the investigation was opened immediately after the attack.
Collomb says police found kitchen knives, a hammer and other unsophisticated weapons on the wounded assailant.
It was the latest of several attacks in France targeting security officers. In April, an attacker opened fire on a police van on Paris’ Champs Elysees, killing one and gravely wounding two others. The attacker was shot dead by police.
— Agencies
The chairman of the Joint (Arab) List says the fatal shooting of an Arab protester in Kafr Qassem overnight is the result of systemic discrimination against Israel’s Arab communities.
“This isn’t about the Arab population being against the Jewish population,” Ayman Odeh says in an interview with Channel 10. “However, police continue to treat the Arab population as enemies to be defended against, and not citizens to be defended.”
Odeh points out the Or Commission Report — written after 13 Israeli Arabs were killed during riots in northern Israel in 2000 — prohibits the use of sniper fire as a crowd control method.
He adds that the commission determined that Israeli Arabs face systemic discrimination at the hands of police.
“But let’s forget about that and take a look at reality: Recently there have been many protests by the ultra-Orthodox community that devolved into violence, and the police never used live fire in those situations.”
He goes on to make another comparison between the way in which police handled settlers protesting the court-ordered evacuation of the Amona outpost and officers’ fatal shooting of a Bedouin resident of Umm-al Hiran who they claimed was trying to run him over.
He says police have shot dead at least 52 Arab protesters since 2000, as opposed to four Jewish protesters in that same period.
An Italian prosecutor says that Youssef Zaghba, one of the three men who carried out last weekend’s deadly attack in London, was notified to Britain as a “possible suspect” back in March 2016.
Bologna prosecutor Giuseppe Amato says the warning had been transmitted after Zaghba was intercepted at the city’s airport trying to board a plane for Turkey, en route for Syria.
British police had earlier said the 22-year-old had not been on their radar prior to Saturday’s attack.
— AFP
Belgian police arrest 12 people in a series of raids across Brussels over suspected links to the March 2016 attacks on the capital, prosecutors say.
Police search 14 properties across the city and took the suspects for “thorough questioning,” according to the federal prosecutor’s office.
The arrests are “within the framework of the inquiry” into the attacks on Zavantem Airport and the Maalbeek metro station in which 32 people were killed and more than 200 injured, the prosecutor’s office says in statement.
“The investigative judge shall decide in the next few hours on their possible further detention,” it says.
— AFP
Qatar-based broadcaster Al-Jazeera says Saudi Arabia’s decision to shut its office in the kingdom as part of the diplomatic crisis in the Gulf is “unjustified.”
In a statement, the global news channel condemns Riyadh’s move and calls on Saudi Arabia to allow its journalists to continue to work “free of intimidation and threats.”
“We firmly believe these are unjustified measure(s) by the authorities in the kingdom against the network and its operations,” the statement says.
“In spite of restriction(s) imposed on the network, Al-Jazeera will continue to cover the news and current affairs from the region and beyond (in a) balanced objective manner.”
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister says that Qatar must stop supporting terrorist groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Qatar must “change their policies” and stop supporting “extremist groups”, Adel Al-Jubeir says in Paris, a day after his nation and its allies cut off ties with the Gulf state.
“They have to change their policies” and “stop supporting extremist groups,” he tells reporters, adding that Qatar needed “to act like a normal country.”
A Palestinian is killed by Israeli fire in the southern Gaza Strip, the Hamas-run health ministry says, naming him as Fadi al-Najjar, 25.
An Israeli army spokeswoman confirms that troops on Israel’s side of the border fired warning shots into the air as Palestinians hurled rocks and rolled blazing tires at the border fence but she had no knowledge of casualties.
— with AFP
China’s government rejected a US State Department call to release three activists detained while investigating a Chinese company that produced shoes for Ivanka Trump and other brands. It sought instead to enforce a cone of silence around the men, according to a lawyer and a family member who was interrogated and told not to speak to the foreign press.
Deng Guilian, the wife of one of the detainees, tells The Associated Press that she had been interrogated twice by police in her hometown in central China’s Hubei province. The police pulled her in for four hours of questioning that lasted past midnight on Friday, and then called her for a further interrogation on Saturday. She said police questioned her sharply about her contacts with foreign media.
— AP
The Arab League’s Secretary-General, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, says he regrets the split between Arab countries, after some Gulf states and Egypt severed ties with Qatar over accusations of supporting terrorism.
Aboul Gheit says in a statement that he is following closely the developments of the crisis and hopes for Arab nations to overcome their differences in the near future “to safeguard Arab national security from the threats it faces.”
The move against the tiny Gulf state was taken by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Yemen, who say that Qatar harbors extremists and backs Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, Iran. Qatar has denied the allegations.
— AP
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