{"id":31164,"date":"2019-01-30T13:23:57","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T13:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31164"},"modified":"2019-01-30T13:23:57","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T13:23:57","slug":"houthi-militia-attacks-un-and-demining-teams-in-hodeidah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31164","title":{"rendered":"Houthi militia attacks UN and demining teams in Hodeidah"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nHEBRON, West Bank: Palestinians in Hebron accused Israel on Tuesday of trying to rid the flashpoint city of witnesses to its actions in the occupied West Bank by ejecting a foreign observer force that helps safeguard residents.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he will not renew the mandate of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), accusing the observers of unspecified anti-Israel activity.
Norway, which has headed the multi-country observer mission for the past 22 years, said \u201cthe one-sided Israeli decision can mean that the implementation of an important part of the Oslo accords is discontinued.\u201d
\u201cThe situation in Hebron is unstable and characterised by conflict,\u201d Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said in a statement to Reuters, adding that the end of the observer mission was therefore \u201cworrying.\u201d
Hebron, a Palestinian city of 200,000 people, is home to a community of around 1,000 Israeli settlers who are heavily guarded by a large Israeli military presence.
The TIPH was set up after a Jewish settler killed 29 Palestinians at a Hebron shrine holy to both Muslims and Jews in 1994. The city has also seen stabbing and shooting attacks against settlers and Israeli soldiers by Palestinians.
Since Israel partially withdrew from Hebron in 1998 under interim peace deals with the self-rule Palestinian Authority, the TIPH has monitored \u201cbreaches of the agreements (and) violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law,\u201d the force\u2019s website says.
\u201cThe settlers\u2019 attacks will increase,\u201d said Aref Jaber, a Palestinian resident of Hebron. TIPH\u2019s presence was particularly helpful to schoolchildren, he added, because they patrol the city \u201cin the morning and the afternoon, when they go to and return from school.\u201d
The United Nations said it regretted Israel\u2019s decision.
\u201cWhile the TIPH is not a United Nations body its role in contributing positively to defusing tensions in such a sensitive area has been widely recognized,\u201d UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
TIPH draws staff from Norway, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. The TIPH website says it has 64 international staff in the city. An Israeli official said its mandate ends on Jan. 31.
\u201d is our window to the world. They can show the Israeli occupation\u2019s ugly face \u2013 which is definitely annoying to the Israelis,\u201d said Bader Daour, a ceramics merchant in Hebron\u2019s old city.
Settler leaders welcomed news of the force\u2019s upcoming departure. They have accused the TIPH of harassing settlers and agitating against them.
Yishai Fleisher, a spokesman for the Hebron Jewish community, said the TIPH observers \u201ccreated an atmosphere of conflict, not a congenial atmosphere of peace.\u201d
Jews and Palestinians, he said, have inhabited the city for centuries: \u201cWe know each other and I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll find a way to get along without Norwegian help,\u201d Fleisher said.
Israel\u2019s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said in November that the TIPH were pro-Palestinian, \u201cignore Palestinian terrorism and harm IDF (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers by documenting their daily security activity.\u201d
Peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians collapsed in 2014. Most world powers consider Israel\u2019s settlements in the West Bank, territory captured by Israel in a 1967 war, to be illegal. Israel disputes this, citing biblical, historical and political ties to the land.
\u201c(The Israelis) don\u2019t want there to be witnesses to their crimes, or any other crime they commit against the Palestinians anywhere, and especially in Hebron,\u201d said the city\u2019s mayor of Tayseer Abu Sinaneh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HEBRON, West Bank: Palestinians in Hebron accused Israel on Tuesday of trying to rid the flashpoint city of witnesses to its actions in the occupied West Bank by ejecting a foreign observer force that helps safeguard residents.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he will not renew the mandate of the Temporary International…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}