WarSclerotic

Hamas has sent a warning to Israel that it will respond forcefully and immediately to any attack on the Gaza Strip, a Lebanese newspaper reported Friday.

Quoting an unnamed source in the Gaza-ruling terror group, the Al-Akhbar daily also said Hamas refused to accept aid money from Qatar as Israel put new conditions on its transfer, according to Hebrew media reports.

The source said these conditions included Israel’s objection to using the $15 million in Qatari funds to pay the salaries of a number of top Hamas members. Daily Edition by email and never miss our top storiesFREE SIGN UP

Hamas’s rejection of the money from Qatar has stoked fears in Israel of renewed violence on the Gaza border, which has seen large-scale weekly clashes since last year and periodic flareups between the Israeli military and Palestinian terror organizations.

Israel had temporarily held up the transfer of the Qatari aid following a pair of shooting attacks on the border Tuesday but on Thursday gave its approval. Hamas announced shortly after it would not take the funds, accusing Israel of violating a ceasefire agreement.

Hamas government employees wait to receive 60 percent of their long-overdue salaries, at the main Gaza Post Office, in Gaza City, November 9, 2018. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

According to Al-Akhbar, Qatar’s envoy to Gaza Mohammed Al-Emadi told Hamas that Israel was on standby in case of a military conflict with armed groups in Gaza. The daily said Hamas, for its part, warned its response would be larger than a massive exchange of fire between the sides in November that saw the largest number of rockets shot toward Israel since the 2014 Gaza war.

That round of violence came after a botched special forces operation in the Strip which saw an Israeli commando and at least seven Hamas fighters die in the ensuing firefights.

In light of the renewed tensions on the border, the Israeli military on Thursday began beefing up its troop presence near Gaza.  It also deployed Iron Dome missile defense batteries in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and in the south as a precautionary measure against potential attack from either the Gaza Strip or from the north, where the security situation has also been increasingly precarious.

Israeli soldiers stand near a battery of the Iron Dome missile defense system deployed in Tel Aviv on January 24, 2019. (Menahem Kahana/AFP)

Defense officials reportedly fear that the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad terror group could fire a longer-range missile from Gaza into Israel’s densely populated heartland.

Israeli officials are also worried that fighters in the Strip could carry out cross-border shooting attacks, either with light arms or anti-tank missiles, the Ynet news website reported. Some roads near the Gaza fence are expected to be closed off Friday.

“If no agreement is reached, the chances for violence along the border tomorrow afternoon are high,” a Gazan source told Ynet.

Under the unofficial ceasefire arrangement between Israel and Hamas, Doha has agreed to transfer a total of $90 million to Gaza in monthly installments of $15 million. The group received the funds, in $100 bills, in November and December.

The money, $10 million of which goes to Hamas civil servants and the rest to needy residents in the Strip, was seen by defense analysts as key to calming tensions between Israel and the Palestinian enclave, which has seen regular violence along the border over the past 10 months.

According to reports, Hamas had been trying to calm the situation after the Tuesday flareup to allow the money through, but the use of the cash as a carrot had increased pressure on the group to reject it and take a harder line toward Israel.

Palestinians take cover behind a dirt mound as they raise their national flag during clashes along the Israeli fence east of Gaza City, on January 18, 2019. (Said Khatib/AFP)

Since March, Palestinians have been holding regular protests on the border. Israel has accused Gaza’s Hamas rulers of using the demonstrations as a cover for attacks on troops and attempts to breach the security fence.

Over 200 Palestinians have been killed and thousands more injured along the Gaza border by Israeli troops since March, according to statistics from the United Nations and the Strip’s Hamas-run health ministry. Hamas has claimed many of the dead as its members.

An IDF soldier was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper in July during a riot along the security fence. A Palestinian man living in Israel was also killed by a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip in November.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Fissures appear along roads while massive holes open up in the countryside, their gaping maws a visible sign from the air of something Iranian authorities now openly acknowledge: the area around Tehran is literally sinking.

Stressed by a 30-year drought and hollowed by excessive water pumping, the parched landscape around Iran’s capital has begun to sink dramatically. Seen by satellite and on foot around the city, officials warn that what they call land subsidence poses a grave danger to a country where protests over water scarcity already have seen violence.

“Land subsidence is a destructive phenomenon,” said Siavash Arabi, a measurement expert at Iran’s cartography department. “Its impact may not be immediately felt like an earthquake, but as you can see, it can gradually cause destructive changes over time.”

He said he can identify “destruction of farmland, the cracks of the earth’s surface, damage to civilian areas in cities, wastewater lines, cracks in roads and damages to water and natural gas pipes.”

This frame grab from video taken on Aug. 8, 2018, provided by Iranian Students’ News Agency, ISNA, shows the edge of a massive hole caused by drought and excessive water pumping in Kabudarahang, in Hamadan province, western Iran. Some sinkholes in western Iran are as deep as 60 meters (196 feet). (ISNA via AP)

Tehran, which sits 1,200 meters (3,900 feet) above sea level against the Alborz Mountains on a plateau, has rapidly grown over the last 100 years to a sprawling city of 13 million people in its metropolitan area.

All those people have put incredible pressure on water resources on a semi-arid plateau in a country that saw only 171 millimeters (6.7 inches) of rain last year. Over-reliance on ground aquifers has seen increasingly salty water pumped from below ground.

“Surface soil contains water and air. When you pump water from under the ground surface, you cause some empty space to be formed in the soil,” Arabi told The Associated Press. “Gradually, the pressure from above causes the soil particles to stick together and this leads to sinking of the ground and formation of cracks.”

Rain and snow to recharge the underground aquifers have been in short supply. Over the past decade, Iran has seen the most prolonged and severe drought in more than 30 years, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. An estimated 97 percent of the country has faced some level of drought, Iran’s Meteorological Organization says.

That has caused the sinkholes and fissures now seen around Tehran.

Iranian authorities say they have measured up to 22 centimeters (8.6 inches) of annual subsidence near the capital, while the normal range would be only as high as 3 centimeters (1.1 inches) per year.

Screen capture from video of protests about the water situation in Iran, June 30, 2018. (Twitter)

Even higher numbers have been measured in other parts of the country. Some sinkholes formed in western Iran are as deep as 60 meters (196 feet).

Those figures are close to those found in a study by scientists at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam previously discussed by the journal Nature and accepted by the journal Remote Sensing of Environment. Using satellite images between 2003 and 2017, the scientists estimate the western Tehran plain is sinking by 25 centimeters (9.8 inches) a year.

Either way, the numbers are alarming to experts.

“In European countries, even 4 millimeters (0.15 inches) of yearly subsidence is considered a crisis,” Iranian environmental activist Mohammad Darvish said.

The sinking can be seen in Tehran’s southern Yaftabad neighborhood, which sits close to farmland and water wells on the edge of the city. Cracks run down walls and below windows, and waterpipes have ruptured. Residents fear poorly built buildings may collapse.

The sinking also threatens vital infrastructure, like Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport. German scientists estimate that land under the airport is sinking by 5 centimeters (1.9 inches) a year.

Tehran’s oil refinery, a key highway, automobile manufacturing plants and railroads also all sit on sinking ground, said Ali Beitollahi, a Ministry of Roads and Transportation official. Some 2 million people live in the area, he said.

Masoud Shafiee, head of Iran’s cartography department, also acknowledged the danger.

“Rates (for subsidence) are very high and in many instances it’s happening in densely populated areas,” Shafiee told the AP. “It’s happening near sensitive infrastructures like airports, which we consider a top priority.”

Geopolitics play a role in Iran’s water crisis. Since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has sought to become self-sufficient across industries to thwart international sanctions. That has included agriculture and food production.

The problem, however, comes in inefficient water use on farms, which represents over 90 percent of the country’s water usage, experts say.

Already, the drought and water crisis has fed into the sporadic unrest Iran has faced over the last year. In July, protests around Khorramshahr, some 650 kilometers (400 miles) southwest of Tehran, saw violence as residents of the predominantly Arab city near the border with Iraq complained of salty, muddy water coming out of their taps amid the yearslong drought.

The unrest there only compounds the wider unease felt across Iran as it faces an economic crisis sparked by US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who long has opposed Iran’s theocratic government, even released an online video in June offering his country’s water technology in a jab at Iran’s leaders.

“The Iranian regime shouts: ‘Death to Israel,’” Netanyahu said. “In response, Israel shouts: ‘Life to the Iranian people.’”

Iranian officials shrugged off the offer. But solutions to the water crisis will be difficult to find.

The crisis “stems from decades of sanctions and compounding political mismanagement that is likely to make it very difficult to alleviate the emerging crisis before it wreaks lasting damage upon the country,” wrote Gabriel Collins, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

Iranian authorities have begun to crack down on illegal water wells. They also are exploring using desalinization plants along the Persian Gulf as well, though they require tremendous energy. Farming practices also need to change as well, experts say.

“We need to shift our development model so that it relies less on water and soil,” Darvish, the activist, said. “If we don’t act quickly to stop the subsidence, it can spread to other areas.”

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Amnesty International has accused Iran of arresting more than 7,000 people last year, including journalists, lawyers, minority rights activists and women, in a “shameless campaign of repression.”

The new report published on Thursday came as the US released an American-born anchorwoman for Iranian state television after she was detained on a material witness warrant in Washington. Iranian officials and state media have widely condemned the arrest of Marzieh Hashemi.

Amnesty and the Committee to Protect Journalists noted Iran’s widespread arrest and harassment of journalists.

Amnesty said Iran arrested at least 50 media workers in 2018. It said at least 20 “were sentenced to harsh prison or flogging sentences after unfair trials.”

Overall, hundreds of dissidents were jailed or flogged, Amnesty said, at least 26 protesters against the regime were killed, and nine people died in custody in suspicious circumstances.

“Iranian authorities beat unarmed protesters and used live ammunition, teargas and water cannon throughout the year – particularly in January, July and August – with thousands arbitrarily arrested and detained,” according to a Guardian report on the Amnesty allegations.

“2018 will go down in history as a year of shame for Iran,” Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Middle East research and advocacy director, was quoted saying. “The staggering scale of arrests, imprisonments and flogging sentences reveal the extreme lengths the authorities have gone to in order to suppress peaceful dissent.

“From underpaid teachers to factory workers struggling to feed their families, those who have dared to demand their rights in Iran today have paid a heavy price,” he noted. “Throughout 2018, the Iranian authorities waged a particularly sinister crackdown against women’s rights defenders. Governments which are engaged in dialogue with Iran must not stay silent while the net of repression rapidly widens.”

Hashemi, meanwhile, sent a message to supporters on Thursday.

Marzieh Hashemi (Hossein Hashemi via AP)

She said in Farsi: “I have a lot of things to say about what I have suffered.”

Hashemi, 59, who works for the Press TV network’s English-language service, was detained by federal agents January 13 in St. Louis, Missouri, where she had filmed a Black Lives Matter documentary after visiting relatives in the New Orleans area, her son said. She was then transported to Washington and had remained behind bars until Thursday.

Hashemi appeared at least twice before a US District judge in Washington, and court papers said she would be released immediately after her testimony before a grand jury. Court documents did not include details on the criminal case in which she was named a witness.

US federal law allows judges to order witnesses to be detained if the government can prove that their testimony has extraordinary value for a criminal case and that they would be a flight risk and unlikely to respond to a subpoena. The statute generally requires those witnesses to be promptly released once they are deposed.

Hashemi is a US citizen and was born Melanie Franklin. She lives in Tehran and comes back to the United States about once a year to see her family, usually scheduling documentary work in the US, her son said.

Press TV issued a statement Wednesday, saying, “Marzieh Hashemi and her family will not allow this to be swept under the carpet. They still have serious grievances and want answers as to how this was allowed to happen. They want assurances that this won’t happen to any Muslim — or any other person — ever again.”

The network said Hashemi would remain in Washington for a protest Friday.

Hashemi’s detention comes amid heightened tensions between Iran and the US after President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran also faces increasing criticism of its own arrests of dual citizens and other people with Western ties.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.