Iran’s leader Khamenei calls for Muslim unity, other Mideast news
Iran’s supreme leader called on Muslim countries to stand together against Israel and the United States, imploring them to “know your real enemy.” US broadcaster NBC said Israeli settlers attacked a team of its journalists in the occupied West Bank. A British activist faced deportation after Israeli settlers seized him and turned him over to police. And an Israeli airstrike in central Gaza killed at least two Palestinians, including a 3-year-old boy, hospital authorities said.
Here’s a look at the latest developments Sunday in the Iran war and the wider Middle East. Full coverage can be found here.
Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, urged Muslim cooperation and unity in a letter to religious leaders from Islamic countries attending a conference in Tehran, Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported.
Khamenei called the US and Israel enemies of all Islamic nations. “My enduring and repeating advice to rulers of Islamic nations is to know your real enemy, understand its plans and confront it,” he wrote. Six months after the US and Israel attacked Iran, killing Khamenei’s father and other senior leaders, Khamenei has not been seen publicly. The war has exposed deep divisions in the Muslim world after Iran struck targets in neighbouring Gulf Arab countries and restricted movement through the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has opposed the US military presence in neighbouring nations.
Settlers attacked an NBC crew in the central West Bank on Saturday as they were interviewing a Palestinian woman who said she’d been driven out of her house, the network said. Correspondent Matt Bradley, two other crew members and the woman were treated for injuries, NBC said, giving no details about them. NBC shared footage showing masked settlers approaching the crew with sticks and beating their vehicles. Israel’s military said it was “aware of reports of Palestinian injuries, including a Palestinian woman who sustained non-life-threatening injuries and was evacuated by the Red Crescent for medical treatment.”
It did not comment on the attack on the NBC crew. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a rare condemnation of the violence on Saturday, after a growing wave of violence by settlers in the West Bank. The Israeli leader has come under US criticism for the attacks. Israeli settlers seized a British activist from a Palestinian village in the West Bank on Saturday and locked him in a shed before turning him over to police, his lawyer said Sunday. Inbar Shaked Vardi said settlers held Finn Joughin for half an hour.
Video showed two settlers, one armed, restraining Joughin and marching him away. It was not clear what led to his capture. Settlers alleged he assaulted a child, which Vardi denied. Settlers pointed to a video where the activist uses his body in an apparent attempt to block a settler boy from passing through a fence. Vardi said the video shows he was trying to protect the village. “Without any hearing, the police have decided to move him to deportation, which just shows that this entire case has been political in the first place,” Vardi said later, adding that Joughin would likely be deported Sunday night.
A spokesperson with the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said embassy officials have raised the case with Israeli authorities and were seeking information. An Israeli strike hit a group of people in the western part of Deir al-Balah, killing a 3-year-old and a man whom Israel’s military called a Hamas operative. The military, in a statement, identified the man as Hassam Osama Hussein Nasir. It said he had “posed an immediate threat,” without providing evidence.
Another Palestinian was wounded, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, which received the casualties. The deaths were the latest in Gaza since a fragile October ceasefire deal attempted to halt more than two years of war between Israel and Hamas. Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israeli fire has killed at least 1,318 Palestinians since that truce.
