The United Nations Security Council is preparing to hold an emergency meeting to discuss the recent visit by Israel’s new national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. His visit was condemned across the Middle East. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called his visit an “unprecedented provocation.” The militant group Hamas warned Ben-Gvir’s actions could lead to more conflict. Jordan has summoned Israel’s ambassador to protest the visit, with Jordan’s Foreign Ministry decrying it as “scandalous and [an] unacceptable violation of international law.”
Netanyahu’s selection of Itamar Ben-Gvir as his national security minister has sparked widespread condemnation. In 2007, Ben-Gvir was convicted of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization. Ben-Gvir lives in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. In 2021, he relocated his parliamentary office to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, where settlers have attempted to violently evict Palestinian residents from their homes. For years, Ben-Gvir hung a picture in his home of Baruch Goldstein, an Israeli American who killed 29 Palestinians at a mosque in Hebron in 1994. The Jerusalem Post’s editor-in-chief described Ben-Gvir as, quote, “the modern Israeli version of an American white supremacist and a European fascist,” unquote. Ben-Gvir will now be responsible for border police in the occupied West Bank at a time when violence and the killing of Palestinians has been surging.
— source democracynow.org | Jan 05, 2023