The United Nations has added 68 more companies to a blacklist of companies from 11 countries that it says are complicit in violating Palestinian human rights through their business ties to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The new list spotlights companies that do business that's deemed supportive of the settlements, which are considered by many to be illegal under international law. The list, formally known as a "database of companies," now contains 158 companies, the vast majority Israeli. The others are from Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United States.
By WAFAA SHURAFA and FATMA KHALED Associated Press
Updated
Israeli airstrikes across Gaza have killed at least 25 people including children as the new U.S. ambassador to Israel made his first public appearance in Jerusalem. Gaza hospitals say among the dead early Friday were 10 people in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, including eight from the same house. The strikes come a day after more than two dozen people died in Gaza as Israel ramps up attacks to pressure Hamas to return the hostages and disarm. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee appeared at the Western Wall, the holiest Jewish prayer site in Jerusalem's Old City, where he inserted a prayer handwritten by President Donald Trump.
Thousands of ultranationalist Israelis have marched through a sensitive Palestinian area of Jerusalem in an annual procession, chanting racist slogans. Also on Wednesday, the country's far-right national security minister boasted that Jews had prayed at a key holy site in the city in violation of longstanding agreements. Both stoke regional tensions that are already high because of the war in Gaza. The march has in previous years ignited widespread tensions, as it did three years ago, when it helped set off an 11-day war in Gaza. The annual march commemorates "Jerusalem Day," which marks Israel's capture of east Jerusalem, including the Old City and its holy sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, in the 1967 Mideast war.
