The Outlaw Ocean Ep. 10 | Freedom or Death | Time

source https://time.com/6292361/outlaw-ocean-freedom-or-death-time/

Tom Cruise Is Doing the Most to Try to Save the Movies in the New Mission Impossible

At the end of the apocalypse, after the sun has fried every flower and tree, as the last skyscraper turns to dust, when each extant cockroach has gone belly-up with x’es for eyes, there will be one man standing tall, or somewhat tall: Tom Cruise is forever, and if that idea may have seemed mortifying 40-odd years ago, when he was mugging his way through thinly disguised navy recruitment ads or grinning and grinding in his skivvies to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock & Roll,” it’s more palatable now. Cruise has never been a great or subtle actor, but he has grown into a perfectly watchable one, and that has come to mean more at a time when the movies are shrinking, literally and metaphorically. He’s the star attraction of the seventh Mission: Impossible film, Dead Reckoning Part One, and he carries the film ably on his back, along with his always-at-the-ready parachute. Cruise, still in love with what big mainstream movies used to be, has become a chivalric dreamer, striving to ensure their survival by sheer will. Maybe he can pull it off and maybe he can’t. But at least there’s some pleasure to be had in watching him try.

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If you’re fond of MacGuffins, you’ll love Dead Reckoning Part One, whose central thingie is a two-piece key that can be used to control an instance of artificial intelligence gone rogue, a manmade smarty-pants that has beehived into an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful entity known, cleverly, as the Entity. Basically, it’s all just an excuse for Cruise—returning as Impossible Mission Force veteran Ethan Hunt—to do stuff like ride motorcycles off cliffs and drive teeny-tiny cars down Rome’s Spanish Steps. Cruise’s devotion to practical action and his insistence on doing most of his own stunts, many of them quite dangerous, are already the stuff of legend, or at least a bunch of press releases, and it’s not giving too much away to say that the plot of Dead Reckoning Part One—directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who has been pulling the franchise’s various strings and levers since 2015’s Rogue Nation—is virtually unfollowable after about the first third. The story exists only as flimsy interstitial tissue between the Tom-centric stunts, but maybe that’s enough. Ostensibly greater movies have given us less.

Courtesy of Paramount PicturesCruise, doing the stunts himself

All you need to know going in, really, is that every woman for whom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt expresses even the tiniest bit of affection is doomed. But not right away, which means that Dead Reckoning brings back Rebecca Ferguson’s silky-steely Ilsa Faust, of the most engaging characters from the franchise’s last two entries, Fallout (2018) and Rogue Nation (2015). She, apparently, has one-half of the much-desired-by-many-parties key, which makes her a target of, well, everybody: We first see in her in the corner of the world where she’s been hiding out, the Arabian Desert near Yemen. Ethan shows up on horseback, a dazzling sight wrapped in scarves and goggles designed to shield him from the swirly, sandy wind. There’s an encounter, and an event. Shortly thereafter, the action shifts to IMF headquarters (“the other IMF,” as one character quips wryly), where zillions of workers in suits are rushing to make hard copies of digital information—on typewriters. You could make a whole movie about that and plenty of people would be happy, but admittedly, it would be rather low on action.

Courtesy of Paramount PicturesCruise as Ethan Hunt, flying through the air on a motorcycle

As it is, the action in Dead Reckoning zips from the desert to the office to Rome to Venice to the Austrian Alps—the locations alone are transportive, even if the plot is a mess. Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames return as Ethan’s sidekicks Benji and Luther, and the three of them make almost as many solemn pronouncements about loyalty and family and friendship as Vin Diesel does in the Fast and Furious movies. Ethan stands by his team; he’s willing, he reminds us more than once, to die for them, and that includes any newbie who might enter the fold. In this case, that would be Hayley Atwell’s Grace, a pickpocket extraordinaire and sleight-of-hand expert who, at any given point in the movie, may or may not have the all-important half-key. The point is to keep it out of the hands of Ethan’s adversaries, which include Vanessa Kirby’s Alanna, AKA the White Widow, and an acrobatic assassin, Paris, played by Pom Klementieff. Ethan’s biggest enemy, though, is evil silver fox Gabriel (Esai Morales), who seeks the key to unleash chaos upon the world. Or something.

And the stunts! Isn’t that really what it’s all about? They include, but are not limited to, a gorgeously staged duel between Faust and Gabriel, set on a slender Venetian bridge: Faust wears a silky topcoat whose tails whirl about her as her sword slashes through the air, intensifying the already intense aura of Venetian mystery and drama. There is that business with the almost-miniature vintage Fiat 500 and the Spanish Steps, though rest assured, no Spanish Steps were harmed in the making of this film. The movie’s last third or so takes place in and around—but also, of course, atop—the Orient Express as it steams through the Alps. That section, already detailed in promotional videos for the film, also features Cruise speedflying—not to be confused with skydiving—over jagged mountain terrain. It’s beautiful, and it does look pretty dangerous.

Courtesy of Paramount PicturesEsai Morales and Tom Cruise fighting atop a moving train in ‘Dead Reckoning Part One’

Cruise has invested a great deal of emotional energy in making sure we know it’s really him doing these stunts, and you can’t blame him. In a green-screen movie world, where the idea of excitement, if not the thing itself, can be filled in long after filming is done, it’s rare to be able to watch a human being move like this. Cruise is muscular, feisty, nimble—but he does have bones, like everyone else, and those bones are now 61 years old. He’s the last survivor of his generation of action stars. Nicolas Cage and Bruce Willis have moved on, by necessity or choice, but Cruise still wants to do some version of what he has always done, whether it’s flying, running, or wrestling down random baddies on top of a moving train. Ethan Hunt is a grave presence—a recurring flashback in Dead Reckoning features snippets of a murder that looms large in his psyche, apparently influencing his every move. But Cruise doesn’t have a naturally grave persona; he has to work at it, and so he does.

At a certain point in Dead Reckoning, Ethan is required to smile at one of the women in his orbit. She has just said something nice to him, or about him, and he must respond appropriately. So he stiffens his jaw ever so slightly, and his eyes crinkle like those of a painted Santa. This expression of veiled gratitude, of being a sturdy guy who knows it’s better not to show much emotion, takes some effort, and you can see Cruise working to deliver. But even this not-quite-a-smile takes muscle and nerve. Think of it as a microstunt, less dangerous, certainly, than riding a motorcycle off a cliff, but a bit of risky business in its own right.

source https://time.com/6291965/mission-impossible-dead-reckoning-part-one-review-tom-cruise/

What to Know as Texas Shooter in Racist Walmart Attack Is Sentenced

EL PASO, Texas — A white Texas gunman who killed 23 people at a Walmart in 2019 returns to court Wednesday for sentencing in a mass shooting that targeted Hispanic shoppers in the border city of El Paso.

Patrick Crusius, 24, is set to receive multiple life sentences after pleading guilty to federal hate crime and weapons charges in one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. Although the federal government did not seek the death penalty, Texas prosecutors have not taken lethal injection off the table under a separate case in state court.

Investigators say the shooting was preceded by Crusius posting a racist screed online.
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The sentencing phase could last several days. It is the first time that relatives of the victims, who included citizens of Mexico, will have an opportunity to address Crusius face-to-face in court.

Read More: One Year After Mass Shooting, El Paso Residents Grapple With White Supremacy: ‘It Was There the Whole Time’

Some things to know about the shooting and the case:

Who is Patrick Crusius?

Crusius was 21 years old when authorities say he drove more than 10 hours from his home in an upper-class Dallas suburb to El Paso and opened fire.

The son of a licensed therapist and nurse, Crusius had been enrolled as a student at Collin College, near Dallas, and had no criminal convictions before the shooting. On social media, Crusius appeared consumed by the nation’s immigration debate, tweeting #BuildtheWall and posts that praised then-President Donald Trump’s hardline border policies.

His views went further in a document posted to an online message board about 20 minutes before the massacre in which he said the shooting was “in response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

In American politics, Republicans have continued using the word “invasion” to describe migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, waving off critics who say the rhetoric fuels anti-immigrant views and violence.

The shooting

Prosecutors say the Aug. 3, 2019, attack began in the parking lot on a busy weekend at a Walmart that is popular with shoppers from both Mexico and the U.S. Approaching the store, Crusius shot participants in a fundraiser for a girls’ soccer team.

Inside, Crusius continued firing with an AK-47-style rifle, corning shoppers at a bank near the entrance where nine were killed, before shooting at the checkout area and people in aisles.

Crusius was apprehended shortly after the attack and confessed to officers who stopped him at an intersection, according to police.

More than two dozen people were injured and numerous others were severely traumatized as they hid or fled.

The victims

The people who were killed range in age from a 15-year-old high school athlete to several elderly grandparents.

They included immigrants, a retired city bus driver, teachers, tradesmen including a former iron worker, and several Mexican nationals who had crossed the U.S. border on routine shopping trips. Witnesses recounted moments of terror, anguish and heroism.

An infant boy named Paul Anchondo narrowly survived with a broken hand as his parents were gunned down. Mother Jordan Anchondo is credited by relatives with shielding her baby.

David Johnson, 63, was killed after pushing his wife and 9-year-old granddaughter under a counter. The woman and child survived.

The funeral for one victim, 63-year-old Margie Reckard, drew thousands of sympathizers after her husband announced he had few relatives left and invited the world to attend.

Test case

The sentencing arrives amid efforts by the Justice Department under President Joe Biden to more aggressively identify hate crimes and deliver meaningful results in the highest-profile cases.

The 2019 Walmart attack is the deadliest of a dozen mass shootings in the U.S. linked hate crimes since 2006, according to a database of mass killings in the U.S. compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.

Crusius agreed in February to accept up to 90 consecutive life sentences, avoiding the possible death penalty on charges of using a firearm in a crime of violence that causes death. Companion hate crime convictions against Crusius don’t carry the death penalty.

Federal prosecutors haven’t formally explained their decision, but have acknowledged that Crusius suffered from schizoaffective disorder that can be marked by hallucinations, delusions and mood swings.

Adria Gonzalez, a 41-year-old El Paso native who survived the Walmart attack even as she helped panicked shoppers toward exits, says she fears that a life sentence won’t be enough to rein in racist attacks on Latinos.

“It’s not only him. There are other people, other groups that could hurt us,” she said.

What’s next

Crusius still faces capital murder charges in state court and could receive the death penalty if convicted.

It is unclear when that case will proceed. In November, El Paso County’s former district attorney resigned over mounting criticism about her performance on the job, which included accusations that problems in her office were slowing down Crusius’ case.

Also, victims’ relatives have sued Walmart. Such lawsuits are common following mass shootings in the U.S. but typically face high hurdles to succeed.

—Weber reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press reporter Michael Tarm in Chicago also contributed.

source https://time.com/6292144/texas-walmart-shooter-sentence-crusius/

9 People Shot and Wounded in Washington D.C. As Violence Continues to Mar July 4 Celebrations

WASHINGTON — Nine people were shot and wounded, including two juveniles, early Wednesday in Washington, D.C., police said.

Shortly before 1 a.m. police responded to a report of a shooting on Meade Street in the northeastern quadrant of the U.S. capital, Assistant Chief Leslie Parsons of the Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement on Twitter.

Upon their arrival officers discovered multiple shooting victims, including a 9-year-old and a 17-year-old, Parsons said.

A dark colored SUV seen driving through the neighborhood, stopped and then shot at the victims outside enjoying the July Fourth holiday, Parsons said, calling the shooting targeted.
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Several victims were transported to local hospitals by D.C. Fire and EMS while others transported themselves. All the victims suffered non-life threatening injuries, Parsons said. None have been identified.

It was not immediately clear if there was more than one shooter in the vehicle and no arrests have been made.

The D.C. shooting is the latest in a string of mass shootings over a violent holiday weekend.

Twenty-eight people were shot, two fatally at a block party in Baltimore early Sunday. Authorities say many of the shooting victims were under 18.

On Monday night, a gunman in a bulletproof vest has opened fire on the streets of Philadelphia, killing five people and wounding two boys, 2 and 13, before he surrendered to responding officers, police.

Three people were killed and eight others injured when several men fired indiscriminately into a crowd of hundreds that had gathered in a Texas neighborhood following a festival in the area, authorities said. The shooting in the Fort Worth neighborhood of Como happened late Monday night, about two hours after the annual ComoFest ended.

source https://time.com/6292148/washington-mass-shooting-july-4/

Cambodias Prime Minister Ditched Facebook But His Followers Arent Following Him

“I have decided to stop using Facebook, on which I have more than 14 million followers,” Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen told his followers on Telegram last week.

The announcement came just hours after the Oversight Board of Meta, Facebook’s parent company, recommended his account be suspended. But before Facebook could break up with him, the 70-year-old strongman ruler swiftly ditched the platform first.

Now, however, it seems like Hun Sen is finding it hard to recreate his popularity elsewhere.

While his Telegram channel, launched in May last year, has amassed close to a million followers, his one-week-old TikTok account sits at just about 100,000 followers—both a far cry from what he had with Facebook.
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Read More: 40 Years After the Fall of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia Still Grapples With Pol Pot’s Brutal Legacy

Once a prolific Facebook user, the Prime Minister regularly broadcasted his daily life and political activities to 14 million followers on the platform—a whopping audience, though he faced allegations of buying likes to boost his profile.

Now, in perhaps a sign of desperation, the strongman appears to be resorting to unconventional measures to boost his following.

On Thursday, Hun Sen requested to meet the owner of a TikTok account dedicated to posting content about him—one of several such accounts that have significantly more followers than he has himself—saying that he “may take control of the unofficial account as the followers of it are his fans anyway,” the pro-establishment newspaper Khmer Times reported.

Here’s what to know about the situation.

Why exactly did Hun Sen Leave Facebook?

Last week, Meta’s independent internal review committee advised Facebook to suspend Hun Sen over a video he posted in January. In the now-deleted video, which had amassed 600,000 views, the Prime Minister told his political opponents to choose between the “legal system” and “a bat,” and threatened to beat them up.

“Given the severity of the violation, Hun Sen’s history of committing human rights violations and intimidating political opponents, as well as his strategic use of social media to amplify such threats, the Board calls on Meta to immediately suspend Hun Sen’s Facebook Page and Instagram account for six months,” the Oversight Board said in a statement.

Read More: Facebook’s “Oversight Board” Is a Sham. The Answer Is Regulating Social Media

Cambodia’s foreign affairs ministry decried the recommendation as “political in nature.” But international observers hailed the Oversight Board’s decision as a precedent for other autocrats.

“This kind of face-off between Big Tech and a dictator over human rights issues is long overdue,” Phil Robertson, Deputy Asia Director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement issued on Thursday.

“The stakes are high because plenty of real world harm is caused when an authoritarian uses social media to incite violence—as we have already seen far too many times in Cambodia.”

Following the Oversight Board ruling, Hun Sen threatened to ban Facebook in the country last week—but walked back on the threat just hours later, citing the large number of people in the country who rely on the platform to sell products. Cambodian authorities did, however, announce on Tuesday that the 22 members of Meta’s Oversight Board were no longer welcome in the country.

“A clear trend has emerged: Cambodia is slowly untangling its politics from Facebook,” Will Brehm, an associate professor at University College London who researches political economy in Southeast Asia, tells TIME. “Given Facebook’s role in eroding democracy in many countries around the world, this is good news.”

The social media giant has previously received criticism for its record of—inadvertently or otherwise—aiding authoritarian regimes around the world, from stifling free speech in Vietnam to amplifying anti-Rohingya content in Myanmar.

But in recent years, the company has demonstrated a greater proactiveness to sanction even the most prominent public figures: former U.S. President Donald Trump was banned from Facebook in 2021 after he praised those engaged in the violence at the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, though his account was reinstated earlier this year.

Does Hun Sen even need social media popularity?

Facebook has long been an important way for Hun Sen to connect with the Cambodian public. Over the past decade, he has “artfully mobilized the platform to support his increasing hold on power,” Astrid Norén-Nilsson, a senior lecturer at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University, tells TIME.

“He encouraged people to express their concerns to government officials on Facebook for greater accountability, and used his own Facebook page to cultivate a novel emotive, intimate relationship with the populace through carefully curated selfies and select photos inviting followers into his private family circle.”

But even if Hun Sen fails to find the same popularity on TikTok and Telegram, experts say that his social media presence may have little effect on his dominance at the polls this month, as his election campaign kicked off over the weekend.

The upcoming election has been widely criticized as neither free nor fair and has been labeled by opponents as a “joke” after the only opposition party was disqualified, leaving Hun Sen’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party to maintain its grip on power.

Read More: Outcry at Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Bid to Shut Down Independent Media

“The spat with Facebook will likely have no impact on the July elections,” says University College London’s Brehm. “He has effectively silenced any opposition long before the Meta Oversight Board announced its decision.”

Still, despite Hun Sen’s high-profile departure from Facebook, it seems that other politicians in the country are unlikely to follow suit. As the country’s top social media site—boasting 11.6 million users among a population of 16.6 million—Facebook has proven to be an important tool for political mobilization and publicity. And Hun Sen’s struggles to gain a following on TikTok aren’t likely to inspire a wider shift.

“Facebook is the social media platform of choice in Cambodia, across generations and demographic groups,” says Norén-Nilsson, adding that the “enmeshment of private and political life on Facebook” has become an “ingrained habit” across the country.

Tellingly, Hun Manet, Hun Sen’s son and expected successor, remains active on Facebook—where he just shared a video montage of his recent visit to a local garment factory.

source https://time.com/6292120/cambodia-prime-minister-hun-sen-facebook-telegram-tiktok-followers/

The World May Have Just Experienced the Hottest Day Ever Recorded

The entire planet sweltered to the unofficial hottest day in human recordkeeping July 3, according to University of Maine scientists at the Climate Reanalyzer project.

High temperature records were surpassed July 3 and 4 in Quebec and northwestern Canada and Peru. Cities across the U.S. from Medford, Oregon to Tampa, Florida have been hovering at all-time highs, said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Beijing reported 9 straight days last week when the temperature exceeded 35°C (95°F).

This global record is preliminary, pending approval from gold-standard climate measurement entities like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. But it is an indication that climate change is reaching into uncharted territory. It legitimately captures global-scale heating and NOAA will take these figures into consideration when it does its official record calculations, said Deke Arndt, director of the National Center for Environmental Information, a division of NOAA.
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“In the climate assessment community, I don’t think we’d assign the kind of gravitas to a single day observation as we would a month or a year,’’ Arndt said. Scientists generally use much longer measurements — months, years, decades — to track the Earth’s warming. In addition, this preliminary record for the hottest day is based on data that only goes back to 1979, the start of satellite record-keeping, whereas NOAA’s data goes back to 1880.

But Arndt added that we wouldn’t be seeing anywhere near record-warm days unless we were in “a warm piece of what will likely be a very warm era” driven by greenhouse gas emissions and the onset of a “robust” El Nino. An El Nino is a temporary natural warming of parts of the central Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide and generally makes the planet hotter.

Read More: El Niño Has Begun. What to Know About the Weather Phenomenon

Human-caused climate change is like an upward escalator for global temperatures, and El Nino is like jumping up while standing on that escalator, Arndt said.

The global daily average temperature for July 3 came in at 17.01 degrees Celsius or 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a common tool often used by climate scientists for a good glimpse of the world’s condition. The reanalyzer is based on a NOAA computer simulation intended for forecasts that uses satellite data. It is not based on reported observations from the ground. So this unofficial record is effectively using a weather tool that is designed for forecasts, not record-keeping.

This average temperature may not seem that hot, but it’s the first time in the 44 years of this dataset that the temperature surpassed the 17-degree Celsius mark.

Hotter global average temperatures translate into brutal conditions for people all over the world. In the U.S., heat advisories are in effect this week for more than 30 million people in places including portions of western Oregon, inland far northern California, central New Mexico, Texas, Florida and the coastal Carolinas, according to the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center. Excessive heat warnings are continuing across southern Arizona and California, they said.

When the heat spikes, humans suffer health effects.

Read More: How Extreme Heat Impacts Your Brain and Mental Health

“Those hotter temperatures that happen when we get hotter than normal conditions? People aren’t used to that. Their bodies aren’t used to that,” said Erinanne Saffell, the Arizona state climatologist and an expert in extreme weather and climate events.

Saffell added that the risk is already high for the young and old, who are vulnerable to heat even under normal conditions.

“That’s important to understand who might be at risk, making sure people are hydrated, they’re staying cool, and they’re not exerting themselves outside and taking care of those folks around you who might be at risk as well,” she said.

—Borenstein reported from Washington and Walling from Chicago.

source https://time.com/6292103/worlds-hottest-day-preliminary-record/

Israel Targets Jenin With Drones and Troops Killing at Least 8 Palestinians

JENIN, West Bank — Israel struck targets in a militant stronghold in the occupied West Bank and deployed hundreds of troops Monday in an incursion that resembled the broad attacks carried out during the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago. Palestinian health officials said at least eight Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded.

The assault began with drone strikes and continued with troops, which remained inside the Jenin refugee camp at midday, pushing ahead with the largest operation in the area during more than a year of fighting. It came amid growing domestic pressure for a tough response to a series of attacks on Israeli settlers, including a shooting attack last month that killed four Israelis.
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Black smoke rose from the crowded streets of the camp while exchanges of fire rang out and the buzzing of drones was heard overhead. Military bulldozers plowed through narrow streets, damaging buildings as they cleared the way for Israeli forces.

The Palestinians and neighboring Jordan and Egypt and the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation condemned the violence, along with the United Arab Emirates, which established diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the operation was “proceeding as planned,” but gave no indication when it would end. Fighting continued some 14 hours after Israel entered the camp.

Read More: What It’s Like in the Palestinian Town Attacked by Israeli Settlers

Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an army spokesman, said a brigade-size force — roughly 2,000 soldiers — was taking part and that military drones had carried out a series of strikes.

Although Israel has carried out isolated airstrikes in the West Bank in recent weeks, Hecht said Monday’s strikes were an escalation unseen since 2006 — the end of the last Palestinian uprising.

Smoke billowed from within the crowded camp, with mosque minarets in the backdrop. Ambulances raced toward a hospital where the wounded were brought in on stretchers.

Lynn Hastings, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian areas, said on Twitter that she was “alarmed by scale of Israeli forces operation,” noting the airstrikes in a densely populated refugee camp. She said the U.N. was mobilizing humanitarian aid.

According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the military blocked roads within the camp, took over houses and buildings and put snipers on rooftops. The tactics signaled the operation could drag on for some time.

“There are bulldozers destroying the streets, snipers are inside and on roofs of houses, drones are hitting houses and Palestinians are killed in the streets,” said Jamal Huweil, a political activist in the camp, predicting the operation would fail.

“They can destroy the refugee camp but will fail again because the only solution is the political solution in which a Palestinian state is established and the occupation ends,” he said.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said at least eight Palestinians were killed and 50 people were wounded — 10 critically. The dead were identified as young men and Palestinian youths, including a 16-year-old boy and two 17-year-olds.

In a separate incident, a 21-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire near the West Bank city of Ramallah, the ministry said.

“Our Palestinian people will not kneel, will not surrender, will not raise the white flag, and will remain steadfast on their land in the face of this brutal aggression,” said Palestinian presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh.

On Monday afternoon, the Israeli army said it had uncovered three weapons-making facilities, confiscated hundreds of explosives and shot two Palestinian gunmen during shootouts.

The army also reported exchanges of fire between Israeli security forces and Palestinian gunmen at a mosque where soldiers found explosive devices, weapons and military equipment.

The Jenin camp and an adjacent town of the same name have been a flashpoint since Israeli-Palestinian violence began escalating in spring 2022.

Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, accused archenemy Iran of being behind the violence by funding Palestinian militant groups.

“Due to the funds they receive from Iran, the Jenin camp has become a center for terrorist activity,” he told foreign journalists, adding that the operation would be conducted in a “targeted manner” to avoid civilian casualties.

Palestinians reject such claims, saying the violence is a natural response to 56 years of occupation since Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war.

Jenin has long been a bastion for armed struggle against Israel and was a major friction point in the last Palestinian uprising.

In 2002, days after a Palestinian suicide bombing during a large Passover gathering killed 30 people, Israeli troops launched a massive operation in the camp. For eight days and nights they fought militants street by street, using armored bulldozers to destroy rows of homes, many of which had been booby-trapped.

Monday’s raid came two weeks after another violent confrontation in Jenin and after the military said a pair of rockets were fired from the area last week. The rockets exploded shortly after launch, causing no damage in Israel, but marked an escalation that has raised concerns in Israel.

But there also may have been political considerations at play. Leading members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government, which is dominated by West Bank settlers and their supporters, have been calling for a broader military response to the ongoing violence in the area.

“Proud of our heroes on all fronts and this morning especially of our soldiers operating in Jenin,” tweeted National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist who recently called for Israel to kill thousands of militants if necessary. “Praying for their success.”

Israeli military experts said they expected the operation to wrap up within hours or a day or two. Prolonged violence and heavy casualties would risk attracting increased international criticism and drawing militants from the Gaza Strip or even Lebanon into the fighting.

“From the Israeli point of view, the intent and interest are to end this very limited operation ASAP and to make sure it does not become a regional event,” said Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli general and former national security adviser.

Read More: Column: I Witnessed a Shocking Attack on Palestinian Civilians. What I Saw May Be a Sign of What’s to Come

Islamic Jihad, a militant group with a large presence in Jenin, threatened to launch attacks from its Gaza Strip stronghold if the fighting dragged on.

“If the Israeli aggression against Jenin does not stop, the Palestinian resistance will do what it has to do in a short time,” said Dawood Shehab, a spokesman for the group.

Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group also condemned the attacks, saying in a statement that the Palestinians have “many alternatives and means that will make the enemy regret its acts.” Hezbollah fought a monthlong war against Israel in 2006.

More than 130 Palestinians have been killed this year in the West Bank, part of more than a yearlong spike in violence that has seen some of the worst bloodshed in the area in nearly two decades.

Israel says the raids are meant to beat back militants. The Palestinians say such violence is inevitable in the absence of any political process with Israel and increased West Bank settlement construction and violence by extremist settlers.

Israel says most of those killed have been militants, but stone-throwing youths protesting the incursions and people uninvolved in confrontations have also been killed.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians seek those territories for their hoped-for independent state.

Federman reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Julia Frankel in Jerusalem and Omar Akour in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/6292006/israel-targets-jenin-west-bank/