The Times of Israel liveblogged Monday’s events as they happened.
The Israel Defense Forces says the incident near the northern West Bank village of Nazlet Zeid earlier was a car-ramming attack.
According to the IDF, troops returned fire at the Palestinian suspects who accelerated toward them.
Two soldiers are hurt, including one as a result of shrapnel from the gunfire toward the suspects.
An Iranian intelligence officer claims that Israel, the United States and France are among some 20 countries involved in nationwide protests last year sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini.
The demonstrations erupted following the September 16 death in custody of Kurdish-Iranian Amini, 22, after her arrest for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women. Hundreds of people were killed, including dozens of security personnel, and thousands were arrested in connection with what officials labeled “riots” which they said were fomented by foreign countries after Amini’s death.
“Investigations carried out by the intelligence services of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) indicate that around 20 countries were involved in the riots,” says the head of the services, General Mohammad Kazemi.
Kazemi alleges that the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Belgium, Italy and Iran’s arch-foe Israel were among the countries involved in inciting the protests, according to excerpts of an interview published by state media.
Saudi Arabia, with which Iran has recently resumed diplomatic ties after a seven-year rupture, and the United Arab Emirates were also involved, he says in the interview with the website of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Many of the countries he listed had publicly expressed their support for the protests and imposed sanctions against Iran and its security forces for cracking down on the demonstrators.
Kazemi also alleges that Emirati and Israeli intelligence agencies held “periodic meetings in an Arab country to back the troubles” in Iran, without elaborating.
Likewise, he says, French diplomats based in Tehran “gathered information on the ground regarding the riots and the (Iranian) security forces.”
Two Israeli soldiers have been wounded under unclear circumstances during a suspected car-ramming incident in the northern West Bank, medics say.
According to the Rescuers Without Borders emergency service, troops carrying out a patrol in the Palestinian village of Nazlet Zeid opened fire at a suspicious car that allegedly accelerated toward them.
One of the soldiers was treated for a sprained leg, and the second, aged 38, was taken by the Magen David Adom ambulance service to the Hillel Yaffe hospital in Hadera.
MDA says the second soldier had been brought to the nearby Shaked checkpoint with an unspecified minor injury.
The Palestinian Authority health ministry says two men in the car that was shot at by Israeli troops have been taken to a hospital in Jenin, and that one of them is listed in critical condition.
There is no immediate comment from the Israel Defense Forces on the incident.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid attacks the coalition’s plan to limit judicial review of government decisions for their “reasonableness” as “full-on regime change,” hours after the government reactivated its shakeup to the judiciary.
Earlier in the day, Lapid and fellow opposition party chair Benny Gantz denied coming to final agreements with the coalition on curtailing the reasonableness test, amid weeks of coalition claims that their parties were aligned in principle to cut the practice.
The coalition will bring a bill to limit the judicial test to a Knesset committee on Wednesday, which Lapid calls “total capitulation by [Prime Minister] Netanyahu to [Justice Minister] Yariv Levin and his cadre.”
He says their plan is “smashing democracy, smashing the Supreme Court, and this time they’re also going after the attorney general,” the latter part in reference to the coalition mulling a separate bill to limit the authority of government legal advisers.
A search is underway for a missing submersible that carries people to view the wreckage of the Titanic, according to media reports.
The US Coast Guard tells BBC News that a search is underway off the coast of Newfoundland. OceanGate Expeditions confirmed it owned the missing vessel.
“We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely,” the company says in a statement to BBC News. “Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families.”
In 2021, OceanGate Expeditions began what it expected to become an annual voyage to chronicle the deterioration of the iconic ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank in 1912.
A search is reportedly underway for a submarine that vanished while possibly transporting tourists to the Titanic wreckage at the bottom of the Atlantic Oceanhttps://t.co/uQFo7ZLRQw
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) June 19, 2023
Palestinian Islamic Jihad claims three of the five Palestinians killed during clashes with Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Jenin earlier today as members.
According to Islamic Jihad, Qassam Abu Sariya, 29, Qais Jabareen, 21, and Ahmed Daraghmeh, 19, were members of local wings of the terror group, known as the Jenin Battalion and Tubas Battalion.
Palestinian health officials said two others were killed, Khaled Asasa, 21, and 15-year-old Ahmed Saqr. Additionally, 91 Palestinians were wounded, including 23 listed in serious and critical condition.
#شهداء جنين اليوم
1- الشهيد الطفل أحمد يوسف صقر (15 عاماً).
2- الشهيد قيس مجدي عادل جبارين (21 عاماً).
3- الشهيد خالد عزام عصاعصة (21 عاماً ).
4- الشهيد قسام فيصل أبو سرية (29 عاماً).
5- أحمد صلاح دراغمة pic.twitter.com/vcGYaxAAnV— Newpress | نيو برس (@NewpressPs) June 19, 2023
The Israel Defense Forces says it will hold a preplanned drill near the border with the Gaza Strip tomorrow.
The exercise will begin Tuesday morning and last until Wednesday, according to the IDF.
The army notifies residents that they may see increased security forces in the area amid the drill.
According to the IDF, the drill is preplanned, meaning it did not stem from a fresh security assessment.
The White House reiterates its stance against Israel advancing judicial reforms that don’t have the broad support of the public in a statement issued shortly after coalition leaders agreed to unilaterally pass parts of the judicial overhaul amid a breakdown in talks with the opposition that sought to reach a compromise on the matter.
“The president has said consistently, both privately and publicly, that fundamental reforms like these require a broad basis of support to be durable and sustained, and we hope there will be genuine compromise,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson says in a statement.
“Ultimately, it is up to Israelis to find the best path forward. But as close friends of Israel, we urge them to reach a compromise with the broadest possible base of popular support. We look forward to working with Israel to advance the interests and democratic values that have been at the heart of our relationship for decades,” the statement adds.
Four far-right suspects accused of planning attacks on mosques and Jewish targets go on trial in Paris, with a judge surprising the court by ordering the hearings be made public.
One of the accused was a teenager when police arrested the suspects in 2018 and 2019, making a closed-door trial for all four men likely under French law.
But presiding judge Christophe Petiteau says given the seriousness of the allegations, “the court considers it important to lift the restricted publicity.”
France has uncovered several violent plots by far-right extremists in recent years, including one in 2018 suspected of preparing an attempt on French President Emmanuel Macron’s life.
“We’re talking about a new and growing threat — mass killings inspired by English-speaking countries that are being imported into our territory,” says prosecution lawyer Olivier Dabin.
Prosecutors say the four men, now aged between 22 and 28, joined a private internet chat group called “Operation WaffenKraft,” where talks “very quickly turned to the preparation of terrorist projects.”
The Waffen-SS was the military branch of the Nazi’s elite SS corps.
The chat group discussed targets, including mosques as well as the headquarters of the Jewish council (CRIF) and the office of the anti-Jewish discrimination league (LICRA).
The group’s alleged leader was Alexandre Gilet, at the time a volunteer deputy police officer in the southeastern department of Isere.
President Isaac Herzog releases a statement to “emphasize” that “no binding drafts were sent by the President’s Residence to either side,” in overhaul negotiations, “and of course, no full agreement was reached on any issue,” echoing opposition leaders.
“Naturally, ideas have been raised both in internal discussions and among the general public regarding the issues on the agenda, but they have not yet been formulated into any understandings and conclusions,” he adds.
Herzog also calls on parties to return to the negotiating table amid the crisis in talks.
“I have always believed, and today more than ever, that dialogue is the best solution for the State of Israel. I reiterate my call to show national responsibility and to continue the fruitful and substantive dialogue that took place in recent months under the auspices of the President’s Residence,” he says.
The Israeli military publishes footage showing an Apache helicopter carrying out strikes in the northern West Bank city of Jenin earlier today.
According to the Israel Defense Forces, the strikes targeted an area where Palestinian gunmen were identified, and were to aid the evacuation of seven troops wounded by a roadside bomb.
IDF publishes footage of an Apache helicopter carrying out strikes in Jenin earlier today, in order to aid the evacuation of seven troops wounded by a roadside bomb. pic.twitter.com/CGUTDEaOAD
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) June 19, 2023
Palestinian gunmen opened fire at the helicopter, causing minor damage, the IDF adds.
UN Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland warns against changes decided upon by the Israeli government relaxing the procedures to authorize new construction in settlements in the West Bank.
“I am deeply concerned by the Israeli Government’s decision yesterday to alter settlement planning procedures that have been in place since 1996, which is expected to expedite settlement expansion,” a statement from Wennesland’s office says.
A senior Israeli official said Sunday the move would reduce the administrative procedures needed to authorize West Bank settlements.
The changes “will cut unnecessary administrative red tape in the construction authorization process,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
Visiting soldiers wounded in this morning’s Jenin firefight, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has in recent months “eliminated and arrested a record number of terrorists, and this was the case in the Jenin operation as well.”
The premier visits a number of patients at Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center.
Netanyahu tells the media the wounded soldiers are “incredibly impressive” and “come from all walks of Israeli society.”
“We are hitting out at terrorism with strength and determination,” he says.
The leaders of Palestinian terror groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas hold talks with top Iranian officials in Tehran.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi receives Islamic Jihad chief Ziyad al-Nakhalah while Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh holds talks with Ali Akbar Ahmadian, the newly appointed secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), ahead of meeting with other top officials.
“The most efficient way to end the more than 75 years of occupation of Palestine is resistance,” Ahmadian tells Haniyeh, according to the Nournews website close to the SNSC.
Nakhalah has been in Iran since last week and has met top Iranian officials, including the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Raisi.
Coalition heads have agreed upon next steps for their stalled judicial shakeup, officially kicking legislative changes back into gear for the first time since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put the plan on pause at the end of March.
According to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and government sources, the coalition will advance a bill to curtail the judicial test of reasonableness for government decisions, beginning with a Wednesday presentation at the Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee.
Coalition sources add that the core of the reform, asserting political control over judicial appointments, will be planned for the Knesset’s winter session, opening in October.
Coalition leaders have decided to “continue the reform,” according to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, shortly after coalition leadership’s meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wraps up.
“We reached a decision to continue the reform,” Smotrich says, at the opening of his Religious Zionism party’s Knesset faction meeting.
He adds that he has “instructed” Constitutional, Law and Justice Committee head Simcha Rothman to begin advancing a bill as early as Wednesday to end the High Court of Justice’s ability to review government decisions for their reasonableness. Smotrich calls the bill the “Sohlberg bill,” after the Supreme Court judge who proposed a method for doing so.
“We are ready for a conversation, we’re ready to listen, we’re ready for peace,” Smotrich says of stalled conversations, while adding that “we’re ready to convince, because we’re right.”
He says returning to talks is up to the “princesses” in the opposition, after they quit negotiations last Wednesday, saying they would not meet until the coalition staffs and convenes the Judicial Selection Committee.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir says he’s told fellow coalition heads they need to continue with their plan to shake up the judiciary, in a meeting that just concluded at the Prime Minister’s Office.
“I said we need to continue with the reform. We can’t content ourselves with something cosmetic,” the far-right leader says at the opening of Otzma Yehudit’s Knesset faction meeting.
Yesterday, the High Court of Justice issued a conditional order to block the implementation of a Ben Gvir-backed law to give himself unprecedented power over the police, giving the state 90 days to respond.
Ben Gvir says the court’s ruling is “a message” that “you, the politicians, can continue talking; we, the Supreme Court, will continue running the country.”
“I want an independent judiciary, but I don’t want the court to become the legislature,” he adds. “At the end of the day, we were elected to lead.”
Europe should brace for more deadly heatwaves driven by climate change, says a new sweeping report, noting the world’s fastest-warming continent was some 2.3 degrees Celsius hotter last year than in pre-industrial times.
Crop-withering drought, record sea-surface temperatures and unprecedented glacier melt are among the consequences laid out in a report by the World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The continent, which has been warming twice the global average since the 1980s, saw its warmest summer on record last year, with countries including France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom experiencing their warmest year on record.
The world has warmed an average of nearly 1.2 degrees since the mid-1800s, unleashing a devastating cascade of extreme weather, including more intense heatwaves, more severe droughts in some areas and storms made more ferocious by rising seas.
The Defense Ministry has inaugurated Israel’s national pavilion at the 2023 Paris Air Show, where it will present a wide array of defense companies and their technologies.
The exhibition, held every other year, is considered one of the largest and most important in the world, with over 2,500 companies and 150,000 officials exhibiting their latest products.
Seventeen Israeli companies will be displaying their technologies at the show, in the fields of air defense systems, drones, radar and laser technologies, missile warning systems, and command and control solutions, according to a statement by SIBAT, the International Defense Cooperation Directorate at the Defense Ministry.
Speaking at the inauguration ceremony, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says Israel is constantly developing new military technologies to counter Iran.
“Israel’s ability to face threats is determined by the dedicated individuals who tirelessly work to develop state-of-the-art technology. This ongoing and highly challenging battle of intellect mostly takes place behind the scenes. In recent years, this intellectual contest has been gaining momentum, and I can confidently affirm that Israel surpasses its adversaries in both defensive and offensive capabilities,” Gallant says.
“Iran is closer than ever to gaining military-nuclear capabilities, and it is conducting a war of attrition against us by engaging in proxy terrorism. This clear strategy aims to destabilize not only the region but also the world. In response to Iran’s efforts, the Israeli defense establishment is working to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, utilizing all the resources at our disposal,” he adds.
The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry raises the death toll of the Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin earlier today to five.
The fifth fatality is not immediately identified, the ministry says.
Another 66 Palestinians are wounded in the clashes with Israeli forces in Jenin, including 18 listed in serious and critical condition, the ministry says.
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid joins MK Benny Gantz in denying that their parties came to agreements on certain judicial reforms that the coalition is currently considering advancing unilaterally.
“There are no agreements and there weren’t any,” Lapid says at the outset of his Yesh Atid party’s Knesset faction meeting. “The only reason that [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu returned to legislating is that he’s lost control over his coalition.”
Lapid reiterates his “call to Netanyahu to stop” and insists that the coalition call another vote to finish staffing the Judicial Selection Committee — a condition he previously set for returning to stalled negotiations on the larger judicial overhaul.
“They have to convene the Judicial Selection Committee. That’s what was agreed upon with the president, and once they convene the committee, we can talk. As long as they don’t legislate [beforehand],” Lapid elaborates in response to reporter questions.
“If they don’t convene the committee, I’ll petition the Supreme Court,” he adds.
“We won’t sit at the President’s Residence [for negotiations] just so Netanyahu can be interviewed on CNN and claim there is a dialogue while [Justice Minister] Yariv Levin is passing legislation that would destroy our democracy,” Lapid adds.
The opposition leader also sloughs off criticism from fellow opposition party head Avigdor Liberman that Yesh Atid would agree to changes tailored to enabling the cabinet to reinstate Shas leader Aryeh Deri after he was dismissed by the High Court.
“How is that logical? Why would I make a deal with someone to bring Aryeh Deri into the government?” Lapid says.
National Unity party chief Benny Gantz calls on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “be responsible” and meet his conditions for returning to judicial overhaul negotiations, rather than unilaterally legislating changes to the judiciary.
“One-sided legislation will become Netanyahu’s one-sided disconnect from the nation,” Gantz says as he opens his opposition Knesset faction’s weekly meeting.
“We’ve already been there, on the verge of the abyss, on the verge of civil war. I urge Netanyahu not to be the one who casts the lit match into the forest.”
Gantz, who pulled out of talks last Wednesday and said he’d stay away until the Judicial Selection Committee is convened, denies that National Unity came to agreements in principle over two key issues that Netanyahu is weighing unilaterally pushing — the so-called “reasonability” test by which the court can strike down government actions and the appointment of private legal advisers to ministries.
“No plan was ever agreed upon,” says Gantz, who has insisted upon a single, complete package deal or no deal at all.
“I am looking for a solution,” he adds, “and the only way to do it, because of the lack of trust, is to do it under the auspices of the President’s Residence.”
At his Yisrael Beytenu party’s faction meeting at the Knesset, Avigdor Liberman says the government “must launch an extensive, large-scale military operation [in the northern West Bank] in order to clean out the gangs [of armed gunmen and terrorists] and get the weapons.”
Blaming Hamas for the violence, Liberman calls for a resumption of assassinations of Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip.
“We cannot accept the ‘rules of the game’ in which they can inflame Judea and Samaria while being immune in Gaza,” he says, using the biblical name for the West Bank.
The United States and China pledge to stabilize their badly deteriorated ties during a critical visit to Beijing by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met today with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
It remains to be seen whether the two countries can resolve their most important disagreements, many of which have international financial, security and stability implications.
Apart from a willingness to talk, there was little sign that either is prepared to bend from hardened positions on issues ranging from trade to Taiwan to human rights conditions in China and Hong Kong to Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The Palestinian Authority health ministry updates the toll of those wounded during the Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin earlier.
According to the ministry, in addition to four Palestinians killed, another 62 were wounded during the clashes, including 14 listed in serious and critical condition.
The Israel Defense Forces said troops opened fire at gunmen and suspects hurling explosives during the raid. Additionally, the military said an Apache helicopter carried out strikes against an open area where armed Palestinians were, after a roadside bomb was detonated against an IDF convoy.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh calls the Israeli operation and heavy clashes in Jenin a “massacre” and an attempt “to detonate the area and drag it into the violence box.”
He says Washington and the world must take action to “stop this Israeli madness.”
“International silence is what encourages the occupation government to continue its crimes and wage an all-out war against our Palestinian people, their land and their holy places,” he says.
Israel says gunmen attacked soldiers during an arrest operation in the early morning, leading to massive exchanges of fire.
Seven soldiers were wounded after an army vehicle was hit by an explosive device. Four Palestinians were killed in the clashes and over 60 were hurt. An Israeli helicopter gunship carried out rare strikes at the scene, the first in the West Bank in some two decades.
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