Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday (September 7, 2024) said Islamic countries should form an alliance against what he called “the growing threat of expansionism” from Israel.

He made the comment after describing what Palestinian and Turkish officials said was the killing by Israeli troops of a Turkish-American woman taking part in a protest on Friday against settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Also read | Turkey’s Erdogan says ‘spirit of United Nations dead in Gaza’

“The only step that will stop Israeli arrogance, Israeli banditry, and Israeli state terrorism is the alliance of Islamic countries,” Mr. Erdogan said at an Islamic schools’ association event near Istanbul.

He said recent steps that Turkey has taken to improve ties with Egypt and Syria are aimed at “forming a line of solidarity against the growing threat of expansionism,” which he said also threatened Lebanon and Syria.

Mr. Erdogan hosted Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Ankara this week and they discussed the Gaza war and ways to further repair their long-frozen ties during what was the first such presidential visit in 12 years.

Ties between them started thawing in 2020 when Turkey began diplomatic efforts to ease tensions with estranged regional rivals, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Erdogan said in July that Turkey would extend an invitation to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “any time” for possible talks to restore relations between the two neighbours, who severed ties in 2011 after the outbreak of the Syrian civil war.

Israel did not immediately comment on Mr. Erdogan’s remarks on Saturday.

Israel’s military said after Friday’s incident that it was looking into reports that a female foreign national “was killed as a result of shots fired in the area. The details of the incident and the circumstances in which she was hit are under review.

There was no immediate comment on Friday’s incident from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

Israeli troops tied a wounded Palestinian to a military vehicle during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, the army said Sunday, admitting that soldiers had violated operational procedures.

Footage of the incident, which occurred on Saturday, has gone viral and shows a man strapped horizontally to the bonnet of a military jeep as it passes through a narrow alley.

Medics identified the Palestinian as Mujahid Raed Abbadi, 24, who told AFP he lives in the Jenin refugee camp.

The military said a Palestinian man was wounded during a “counterterrorism operation” to arrest wanted suspects in the area of Wadi Burqin, between the town of Burqin and Jenin.

During an exchange of fire between troops and militants in Burqin’s Jabriyat neighbourhood, a Palestinian was wounded and apprehended, the military said in a statement.

The statement referred to him as a “suspect”, but did not specify any accusations against Abbadi, who medics told AFP was being treated at Jenin’s Ibn Sina hospital, and not in Israeli custody.

The military said: “In violation of orders and standard operating procedures, the suspect was taken by the forces while tied on top of a vehicle.”

He was later transferred to the Palestinian Red Crescent for treatment, it said.

“The conduct of the forces in the video of the incident does not conform to the values of the IDF (military),” the statement said.

“The incident will be investigated and dealt with accordingly.”

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, suggested the troops were using Abbadi to shield themselves from gunfire.

“#HumanShielding in action”, Albanese wrote on social media platform X, sharing footage of the incident.

At the hospital, Abbadi said he was hit and wounded as he stepped out of his uncle’s house in Jabriyat.

“I tried to withdraw and get inside the house, but they started shooting”, hitting him in the hand, Abbadi told AFP in his hospital bed.

‘Stomped my head’

He said he fell to the ground in an area behind the military jeep and was hit once more, with a bullet penetrating his leg.

According to Abbadi, rescuers or medics were unable to reach him for more than two hours as he lay on the ground.

“I started crawling” trying to escape as fighting continued around him, he said, before the Israeli troops noticed him.

“When they (the soldiers) arrived they stomped on my head and hit my face, my injured leg and hand,” Abbadi recalled.

“They were laughing and playing while they hit me.”

The soldiers lifted him and threw him on the ground before tying him to the bonnet of the jeep, he said.

Bahaa Abu Hammad, the doctor treating Abbadi at Ibn Sina hospital, told AFP that “he has burns on his back from neck to lower back” from being tied to the military jeep in the scorching summer heat.

Jenin has long been a stronghold for Palestinian militant groups, and the Israeli army routinely carries out raids in the city and an adjacent refugee camp.

Violence in the West Bank, which had already surged before the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, has only escalated since.

At least 553 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli troops or settlers since the Gaza war broke out, according to Palestinian officials.

Attacks by Palestinians have killed at least 14 Israelis in the West Bank over the same period, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The Gaza Strip has been gripped by more than eight months of war since Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Militants took 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 41 the army says are dead.

Israel’s military offensive on Gaza has since killed at least 37,598 people, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Palestinians prepare to evacuate, after Israeli forces launched a ground and air operation in the eastern part of Rafah, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 11, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israel ordered new evacuations in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah on May 11 as it prepared to expand its operation, saying it was also moving into an area in northern Gaza where Hamas has regrouped.

Fighting is escalating across the enclave with heavy clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants on the outskirts of Rafah, leaving the crucial nearby aid crossings inaccessible and forcing more than 110,000 people to flee north.

Israel’s move into Rafah has so far been short of the full-scale invasion that it has planned.

The United Nations and other agencies have warned for weeks that an Israeli assault on Rafah, which borders Egypt near the main aid entry points, would cripple humanitarian operations and cause a disastrous surge in civilian casualties. More than 1.4 million Palestinians — half of Gaza’s population — have been sheltering in Rafah, most after fleeing Israel’s offensives elsewhere.

Army spokesman, Avichay Adraee, told Palestinians in Jabaliya and Beit Lahiya cities and the surrounding areas to leave their homes and head to shelters in the west of Gaza City, warning that people were in “a dangerous combat zone” and that Israel was going to strike with “great force”.

Heavy fighting is underway in northern Gaza, where Hamas appeared to have once again regrouped in an area where Israel has already launched punishing assaults. Battles erupted this week in the Zeitoun area on the outskirts of Gaza City, in the northern part of the territory. Northern Gaza was the first target of the ground offensive. Israel said late last year that it had mostly dismantled Hamas in the area.

At least 19 people, including eight women and eight children, were killed overnight in Central Gaza in three different strikes that hit the towns of Zawaida, Maghazi and Deir al Balah, according to Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah and an Associated Press journalist who counted the bodies.

Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza have killed more than 34,800 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures.

Much of Gaza has been destroyed and some 80% of Gaza’s population has been driven from their homes.

Israeli police on Wednesday shot and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who stabbed a man in a Jerusalem light-rail station, officials said, while Palestinian militants detonated a bomb near a convoy of Israeli troops escorting Jewish worshippers to a holy site in the occupied West Bank, wounding four Israeli troops.

The attacks came hours after fighting erupted in a Palestinian refugee camp between local residents and their own security forces, leaving a 25-year-old Palestinian man dead.

The bloodshed was the latest in a deadly wave of violence that has gripped the area over the past year and a half and shows no signs of slowing.

The Israeli army said that the late-night explosion in Nablus — a stronghold of Palestinian militants in the northern West Bank — wounded an Israeli military officer and three soldiers.

The soldiers were evacuated to a nearby hospital for treatment. One was moderately wounded and the rest suffered only light wounds. Amateur video on social media showed a large plume of white smoke rising into the air after the blast.

The troops were escorting worshippers to Joseph’s Tomb – a flashpoint shrine where some Jews believe the biblical Joseph is buried. The Israeli army said the blast struck when its forces were trying to clear the way for worshippers and that no civilians were harmed.

Muslims say a sheikh is buried in the shrine. The army escorts Jewish worshippers to the site several times a year in coordination with Palestinian security forces.

But security coordination has weakened during the wave of fighting, and the unpopular Palestinian security forces have struggled to maintain control in militant strongholds like Nablus.

The explosion came shortly after Wednesday’s stabbing in Jerusalem – in which police said a Palestinian teen attacked a man, moderately wounding him, before he was shot and killed.

The incident occurred along the invisible line straddling east and west Jerusalem.

According to police, the boy stabbed the man on a platform at the station. An off-duty member of the paramilitary border police force in a train noticed the attack, got off the train and shot the attacker. Police later released a photo of what they said was the knife, its tip stained with blood.

However, it was unclear if the boy, identified as a resident of a Palestinian neighborhood in east Jerusalem, was still armed when he was killed in what was described as a fast-moving incident.

The police statement said a crowd of people “began to struggle with the terrorist” after the stabbing.

One witness, Eldad Bar-Kochva, told the Ynet news site that he was sitting at the station with his wife when the boy took out the knife.

“We pounced on him, I gave him a strong kick in the face and hand, and the knife fell out of his hand. A border policeman ran over and shot him,” he said, adding that the entire incident unfolded in about 30 seconds. Police praised the “professional and swift response” of the officer and said security camera footage wasn’t immediately available.

Earlier Wednesday, fighting erupted in a refugee camp in the northern West Bank between Palestinians and their own security forces, leaving a 25-year-old Palestinian dead, officials said. The unrest underscored the challenges facing Palestinian police trying to impose order in the restive territory.

Palestinian police entered the refugee camp in Tulkarem after residents appealed to the Palestinian Authority to remove metal street barriers set up by local militants that were blocking access to homes and schools, Palestinian security spokesperson Talal Dweikat said.

The angled metal barricades are a staple in the militarized refugee camps of the northern West Bank, meant to deter Israeli military vehicles during frequent army raids.

After police cleared the streets, Dweikat said Palestinian militants opened fire in front of the Tulkarem Muqata, the authority headquarters. Police responded “to control the security situation,” he added.

A Palestinian security officer in Tulkarem, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said that an uninvolved Palestinian resident who he identified as the 25-year-old was caught in the crossfire and killed.

He claimed the Palestinian security forces had fired tear gas and stun grenades at Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants but not live fire. Palestinians, he said, were seeking to conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death but the local militant group refused and was keeping his body.

The Hamas militant group condemned the death.

In flashpoint point cities in the northern West Bank under the administration of the Palestinian Authority, attempts by Palestinian security forces to reassert internal control have stirred anger among defiant militants, who deride the unpopular authority and its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, as collaborators with Israel. The PA administers semi-autonomous areas in the Israeli-occupied territory.

Unable to protect Palestinians against surging attacks by Jewish settlers and often deadly Israeli military raids into Palestinian towns and cities, Palestinian security forces have faced deep public criticism over their perceived impotence and reviled security alliance with Israel.

Nearly 180 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem since the start of this year, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Israel says most of the Palestinians killed were militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and those not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.

Some 30 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis during that time.

Israel says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. Palestinians say the raids undermine their security forces, inspire more militancy and entrench Israeli control over lands they seek for a hoped-for future state.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

Israeli police on Wednesday shot and killed a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who stabbed a man in a Jerusalem light-rail station, officials said, while Palestinian militants detonated a bomb near a convoy of Israeli troops escorting Jewish worshippers to a holy site in the occupied West Bank, wounding four Israeli troops.

The attacks came hours after fighting erupted in a Palestinian refugee camp between local residents and their own security forces, leaving a 25-year-old Palestinian man dead.

The bloodshed was the latest in a deadly wave of violence that has gripped the area over the past year and a half and shows no signs of slowing.

The Israeli army said that the late-night explosion in Nablus — a stronghold of Palestinian militants in the northern West Bank — wounded an Israeli military officer and three soldiers.

The soldiers were evacuated to a nearby hospital for treatment. One was moderately wounded and the rest suffered only light wounds. Amateur video on social media showed a large plume of white smoke rising into the air after the blast.

The troops were escorting worshippers to Joseph’s Tomb – a flashpoint shrine where some Jews believe the biblical Joseph is buried. The Israeli army said the blast struck when its forces were trying to clear the way for worshippers and that no civilians were harmed.

Muslims say a sheikh is buried in the shrine. The army escorts Jewish worshippers to the site several times a year in coordination with Palestinian security forces.

But security coordination has weakened during the wave of fighting, and the unpopular Palestinian security forces have struggled to maintain control in militant strongholds like Nablus.

The explosion came shortly after Wednesday’s stabbing in Jerusalem – in which police said a Palestinian teen attacked a man, moderately wounding him, before he was shot and killed.

The incident occurred along the invisible line straddling east and west Jerusalem.

According to police, the boy stabbed the man on a platform at the station. An off-duty member of the paramilitary border police force in a train noticed the attack, got off the train and shot the attacker. Police later released a photo of what they said was the knife, its tip stained with blood.

However, it was unclear if the boy, identified as a resident of a Palestinian neighborhood in east Jerusalem, was still armed when he was killed in what was described as a fast-moving incident.

The police statement said a crowd of people “began to struggle with the terrorist” after the stabbing.

One witness, Eldad Bar-Kochva, told the Ynet news site that he was sitting at the station with his wife when the boy took out the knife.

“We pounced on him, I gave him a strong kick in the face and hand, and the knife fell out of his hand. A border policeman ran over and shot him,” he said, adding that the entire incident unfolded in about 30 seconds. Police praised the “professional and swift response” of the officer and said security camera footage wasn’t immediately available.

Earlier Wednesday, fighting erupted in a refugee camp in the northern West Bank between Palestinians and their own security forces, leaving a 25-year-old Palestinian dead, officials said. The unrest underscored the challenges facing Palestinian police trying to impose order in the restive territory.

Palestinian police entered the refugee camp in Tulkarem after residents appealed to the Palestinian Authority to remove metal street barriers set up by local militants that were blocking access to homes and schools, Palestinian security spokesperson Talal Dweikat said.

The angled metal barricades are a staple in the militarized refugee camps of the northern West Bank, meant to deter Israeli military vehicles during frequent army raids.

After police cleared the streets, Dweikat said Palestinian militants opened fire in front of the Tulkarem Muqata, the authority headquarters. Police responded “to control the security situation,” he added.

A Palestinian security officer in Tulkarem, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said that an uninvolved Palestinian resident who he identified as the 25-year-old was caught in the crossfire and killed.

He claimed the Palestinian security forces had fired tear gas and stun grenades at Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants but not live fire. Palestinians, he said, were seeking to conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death but the local militant group refused and was keeping his body.

The Hamas militant group condemned the death.

In flashpoint point cities in the northern West Bank under the administration of the Palestinian Authority, attempts by Palestinian security forces to reassert internal control have stirred anger among defiant militants, who deride the unpopular authority and its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, as collaborators with Israel. The PA administers semi-autonomous areas in the Israeli-occupied territory.

Unable to protect Palestinians against surging attacks by Jewish settlers and often deadly Israeli military raids into Palestinian towns and cities, Palestinian security forces have faced deep public criticism over their perceived impotence and reviled security alliance with Israel.

Nearly 180 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem since the start of this year, according to a tally by The Associated Press. Israel says most of the Palestinians killed were militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and those not involved in the confrontations have also been killed.

Some 30 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis during that time.

Israel says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. Palestinians say the raids undermine their security forces, inspire more militancy and entrench Israeli control over lands they seek for a hoped-for future state.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.