Palestinians in Hebron accused Israel on Tuesday of trying to rid the flashpoint city of witnesses to its actions in the occupied West Bank by ejecting a foreign observer force that helps safeguard residents.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he will not renew the mandate of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), accusing the observers of unspecified anti-Israel activity.

Norway, which has headed the multi-country observer mission for the past 22 years, said “the one-sided Israeli decision can mean that the implementation of an important part of the Oslo accords is discontinued.”

“The situation in Hebron is unstable and characterized by conflict,” Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said in a statement to Reuters, adding that the end of the observer mission was therefore “worrying.”

​Hebron, a Palestinian city of 200,000 people, is home to a community of around 1,000 Israeli settlers who are heavily guarded by a large Israeli military presence.

The TIPH was set up after a Jewish settler killed 29 Palestinians at a Hebron shrine holy to both Muslims and Jews in 1994. The city has also seen stabbing and shooting attacks against settlers and Israeli soldiers by Palestinians.

Since Israel partially withdrew from Hebron in 1998 under interim peace deals with the self-rule Palestinian Authority, the TIPH has monitored “breaches of the agreements (and) violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law,” the force’s website says.

“The settlers’ attacks will increase,” said Aref Jaber, a Palestinian resident of Hebron. TIPH’s presence was particularly helpful to schoolchildren, he added, because they patrol the city “in the morning and the afternoon, when they go to and return from school.”

U.N. reaction

The United Nations said it regretted Israel’s decision.

“While the TIPH is not a United Nations body its role in contributing positively to defusing tensions in such a sensitive area has been widely recognized,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

TIPH draws staff from Norway, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey. The TIPH website says it has 64 international staff in the city. An Israeli official said its mandate ends on Jan. 31.

“[It] is our window to the world. They can show the Israeli occupation’s ugly face — which is definitely annoying to the Israelis,” said Bader Daour, a ceramics merchant in Hebron’s old city.

‘Atmosphere of conflict’

Settler leaders welcomed news of the force’s upcoming departure. They have accused the TIPH of harassing settlers and agitating against them.

Yishai Fleisher, a spokesman for the Hebron Jewish community, said the TIPH observers “created an atmosphere of conflict, not a congenial atmosphere of peace.”

Jews and Palestinians, he said, have inhabited the city for centuries: “We know each other and I’m sure we’ll find a way to get along without Norwegian help,” Fleisher said.

Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said in November that the TIPH were pro-Palestinian, “ignore Palestinian terrorism and harm IDF [Israel Defense Forces] soldiers by documenting their daily security activity.”

Peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians collapsed in 2014. Most world powers consider Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, territory captured by Israel in a 1967 war, to be illegal. Israel disputes this, citing biblical, historical and political ties to the land.

“[The Israelis] don’t want there to be witnesses to their crimes, or any other crime they commit against the Palestinians anywhere, and especially in Hebron,” said the city’s mayor of Tayseer Abu Sinaneh.
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Iran appears to be broadening its presence in cyberspace, stealing information that would allow its cyber spies to monitor and track key political and business officials.

As part of this growing focus, Iranian-linked cyber actors are using phishing emails and stolen credentials to infiltrate telecommunication companies and the travel industry in order to steal personally identifiable information they can use in future operations.

The main culprit, according to a report released Tuesday by cybersecurity firm FireEye, is a group known as Advanced Persistent Threat 39, or APT 39. Active since 2014, FireEye maintains the group has been working “in support of Iranian national interests,” showing an ability to hits targets across the Middle East and beyond.

“APT 39’s focus on the widespread theft of personal information sets it apart from other Iranian groups,” the report said, warning the activity “showcases Iran’s potential global operational reach.”

“They are targeting a number of telecommunication and information technology entities and really going after just large amounts of PII [personally identifiable information],” said FireEye Senior Analyst Cristiana Kittner.

“Once in the network, they’re looking at phone logs and employee records and airline records,” she added. “Our assessment is that the PII is being stolen both for general surveillance as well as for specific targets, including high profile people and potentially political individuals and those that have significant roles in strategic affairs related to the country.”

Kittner said APT 39 has even gone after visa and passport information, searching through keystroke logs to try to get what it wants.

And while most of the companies that have been targeted by APT 39 are in the Middle East — Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates – the group’s pursuit of telecommunications and travel industry data have led it further afield. Companies in Norway, South Korea, Australia and the United States may also have been affected.

The report from FireEye follows similar warnings from other cybersecurity firms, which have increasingly voiced concern about Iranian-linked cyber actors targeting the telecommunications and travel sectors. And there is likely to be debate over just how new APT39 may be.

Much of APT 39’s activity aligns with that of the Iranian-based cyber group known as Chafer, which was identified by the cybersecurity firm Symantec in 2015, and which has also focused on the telecommunications, travel and IT industries.

“Chafer has become notably more ambitious,” Symantec told VOA in a statement. “Over the past two years, the group moved their attacks up the supply chain in the industries they typically target, and these supply chain attacks may allow Chafer to reach a broader set of victims in each industry they target.”

Other experts and analysts worry advances by APT 39 and Chafer show that Tehran, already a formidable actor in cyberspace, has further refined its cyber espionage doctrine and will soon find more ways to use cyber spying to gain an advantage, economically and politically.

“Iran’s leveraging these capabilities in order to identify suppliers…where they’re shipping certain things to,” said David Kennedy, the chief executive officer at the IT security consulting firm TrustedSec. “They may have the ability to snag individuals or pick them up.”

“The methods that they use are very effective for going against a lot of different companies,” added Kennedy, who previously served with the U.S. National Security Agency and with the Marine Corps electronic warfare unit.

European officials, meanwhile, worry that this is just the start, and that Iranian cyber actors are only going to get more ambitious as the U.S. and Western powers increase pressure on Tehran in response to its missile tests and nuclear activity.

“Newly imposed sanctions on Iran are likely to push the country to intensify state-sponsored cyberthreat activities in pursuit of its geopolitical and strategic objectives at a regional level,” the European digital security agency warned in a report Monday.

U.S. officials have also warned of Iran’s growing prowess in cyberspace.

This past November, the U.S. indicted two Iranian hackers for using the SamSam ransomware to extort millions of dollars from U.S. municipalities, hospitals and other public institutions.

And in march of last year, U.S. prosecutors charged nine Iranian hackers with penetrating the computer networks of hundreds of universities and institutions to steal research material.
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Before Islamic State militants were dislodged from Iraq in 2017, they stole thousands of ancient artifacts. Most are still missing, and an international team of archaeologists is turning detective to recover as many as possible.

In 2014 and 2015, during its occupation of most of the country, the jihadist group raided and wrecked historical sites on what UNESCO called an “industrial” scale, using the loot to fund its operations through a smuggling network extending through the Middle East and beyond.

“We’re trying to recover a lot of artifacts and need all local and international resources to work. Iraq cannot do this on its own,” said Bruno Deslandes, a conservation architect at the U.N. cultural agency.

He spoke at a workshop at Baghdad’s National Museum convened to coordinate international retrieval efforts.

Video that went viral after it was released by Islamic State in 2014 showed militants using bulldozers and drills to tear down murals and statues the 3,000-year-old Assyrian site of Nimrud near Mosul. What they did not destroy they smuggled and traded.

Deslandes was the first international expert to access the site in early 2017 while Islamic State was still being driven out.

With the battle raging just kilometers away, he and his team had to work quickly to assess damage to the site, using 3D scanning and satellite imagery. Within minutes, they gathered a trove of data he says will be critical in tracking lost items down.

“When an artifact has been taken, we can document the footprint left,” Deslandes said.

“We document this very precisely… so we can recover it… When we have an artifact in Europe or somewhere matching this specification we can… yes!” he added, clapping his hands together for emphasis.

‘Tip of the Iceberg’

The workshop, which brought together Iraqi and foreign police, customs officials and archeological experts, was the second in two years organized by the European Union Advisory Mission in Iraq.

Law enforcement officials said they can help Iraqi police track down the objects using databases of seizures and other information, including smuggling routes.

Mariya Polner of the World Customs Organization (WCO) said reports of cultural heritage seizures by customs officials worldwide were “only the tip of the iceberg,” and that better coordination between the WCO’s 183 members states had helped increase recoveries.

In 2017, the WCO said customs officers recovered more than 14,000 items looted worldwide including antiquities, paintings and statues, 48 percent up from the previous year.

Eckhard Laufer, a participating police officer from Germany, said many private collectors and some museums often did not question the provenance of artifacts. “It is one of the biggest problems in crime.”

Deslandes said sites inside Iraq were still at risk. “When a site is liberated, it doesn’t mean the looting has finished.”
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A major international labor union has called on Iran to immediately release several labor activists whom it says appear to have been tortured in custody late last year.

The London-based International Transport Workers’ Federation made the appeal in a letter addressed to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, shared with VOA Persian on Monday.

In the letter dated Jan. 25, ITF General Secretary Stephen Cotton said there was “credible evidence” that confessions by several labor activists in a recently-broadcasted state television program were obtained through threats, beatings and torture.

“Such violations of basic human rights must cease immediately,” Cotton wrote to Rouhani. “I call on you both to stop such torture, and to immediately release these detainees.”

There was no public response from Rouhani to the letter by late Monday. ITF represents 20 million workers in 140 countries.

The state TV documentary Tarahi Soukhteh (A Burnt Plot), broadcast Jan. 19, accused labor activists involved in recent protests at the Haft Tapeh sugar cane plantation in southwestern Iran of having ties to the United States, Israel and an exiled Iranian Marxist group. The program included confessions by activists Esmail Bakhshi and Sepideh Gholian, who were arrested Nov. 18 for joining Haft Tapeh workers in daily peaceful protests that began Nov. 5 in the town of Shush.

The striking workers had been demanding months of unpaid wages and the removal of private owners, whom they accuse of mismanaging and abandoning the sugar cane complex, founded in the 1950s.

After being released on bail in mid-December, Bakhshi and Gholian declared they had been beaten during their several weeks in detention, a period in which their televised confessions were recorded. Bakhshi made the accusation in a Jan. 4 Instagram post and Gholian backed him up in a Jan. 9 Twitter message saying she had seen him being beaten. In a video broadcast Jan. 21 by BBC Persian, Gholian said she also had been beaten. Authorities re-arrested both activists Jan. 20.

Iranian officials have denied the torture allegations. Speaking to reporters Jan. 14, Iranian prosecutor general Hojatoleslam Montazeri accused Bakhshi of “pursuing political goals.”

In a Jan. 24 statement, New York-based group Human Rights Watch said Iran’s broadcast of what it termed “forced confessions” by Bakhshi and Gholian “only raises more concerns about torture and mistreatment” of activists in Iranian detention.

The Iranian state TV program also accused the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (SWTSBC) of being part of a plot behind the recent Haft Tapeh strike. In his letter to Rouhani, ITF leader Cotton said the accusation is incorrect and expressed “extreme concern” for all members of SWTSBC, also known as the Vahed Syndicate.

“We urge you to make immediate assurances as to their ongoing liberty and safety and look forward to receiving said assurances from you,” Cotton wrote.

SWTSBC has expressed solidarity with Iranians protesting poor labor conditions in various industries around the country in the past, including the workers at the Haft Tapeh plantation.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
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