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[VIDEOS/PICTURES] Bloodshed in the land of Palestine - 2023 Edition

Just pray for these innocent people, may they have their peace and freedom
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Displaced Palestinians hold on to keys of their homes
Palestinians displaced by Israel’s incursion in Gaza hold on to keys from their damaged or destroyed homes as a symbol of returning to their land one day, Al Jazeera reports.

For many, it’s a tradition that their grandparents started during the Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, in 1948.

In Syria, 13 years after the start of the country’s civil war, many of the thousands who have been displaced also keep the keys to the homes they were forced out of – just as Palestinian refugees do.

Source : Dawn News
 
BouncerGuy said:
US is trying to play on both sides atm. they want to make themselves look good by throwing penny aid for Gaza while supporting Israel at every forum and supplying them with weapons. Even the Hypocrisy is shocked to see what the US is doing atm.
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BouncerGuy said:
Trying to fool the whole world actually but not the whole world is gonna buy this US trick because we are not blind.
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You're 100% right, but I think it's predominantly aimed at the left in the US. Biden is facing a tight election and is now playing all sides trying to appease one and all. Post elections they'll be fully backing Israel once again.
 
Gaza war: UNRWA says Rafah aid centre hit by Israeli forces

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees says a member of staff was killed and 22 others were injured when Israeli forces hit a food distribution centre in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said attacks on its facilities had "become commonplace in blatant disregard to international humanitarian law".

The Hamas-run health ministry said an Israeli air strike killed five people.

The Israeli military said it killed a Hamas commander in a "precise strike".

It identified him as Mohammed Abu Hasna and alleged that he had been a "combat support operative" in Hamas's military wing in the Rafah area.

A man with that name was on a list of five fatalities given by health officials.

Rafah is crammed with an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians who are seeking shelter from Israel's ground offensive elsewhere in Gaza.

The UN's secretary general has warned that a threatened Israeli assault on the city could "plummet the people of Gaza into an even deeper circle of hell".

The war in Gaza began when Hamas gunmen attacked southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking 253 others as hostages.

More than 31,200 people have been killed in Gaza in the military campaign that Israel launched in response, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Wednesday's strike reportedly hit the eastern side of the UNRWA food distribution centre, which is in the eastern part of Rafah.

UNRWA spokeswoman Juliette Touma told the BBC that up to 60 people were believed to have been working at the facility, which also served as a warehouse for food and other critical supplies.

"We know that it is the Israeli forces who were responsible. Our teams were on site and they reported back the casualties," she said.

Pictures of the aftermath showed a pool of blood in a courtyard outside a blue-and-white painted warehouse, and another pool just inside the doorway of the building, next to boxes of aid.

A 15-year-old boy and four men aged between 27 and 50, one of them called Mohamed Abu Hasna, were reported killed.

People were also filmed at a local hospital next to the bodies of five people, one of whom was a man wearing a blue UN tabard.

"It's a UNRWA centre, expected to be secure," UNRWA staff member Sami Abu Salim told the AFP news agency as he surveyed the damage.

"Some came to work to distribute aid to the people in need of food during the [Islamic] holy month of Ramadan. Suddenly, they were struck by two missiles."

On Wednesday evening, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) put out a statement saying its aircraft had "precisely targeted and eliminated a terrorist in Hamas's Operations Unit in the area of Rafah, Mohammed Abu Hasna", without mentioning the UNRWA facility.

"He was also involved in taking control of humanitarian aid and distributing it to Hamas terrorists," it added.

"Furthermore, [Abu] Hasna co-ordinated the activities of various Hamas units, as well as communicated with and activated Hamas field operatives. [Abu] Hasna was also responsible for an intelligence operations room which provides information on IDF positions for use in Hamas attacks."

Mr Lazzarini said: "Today's attack on one of the very few remaining UNRWA distribution centres in the Gaza Strip comes as food supplies are running out, hunger is widespread and, in some areas, turning into famine."

"Every day, we share the co-ordinates of all our facilities across the Gaza Strip with parties to the conflict. The Israeli army received the co-ordinates including of this facility yesterday."

UNRWA says at least 165 of its 13,000 employees in Gaza have been killed and more than 150 of its facilities have been hit since the start of the war.

More than 400 people have also been killed while seeking shelter under the UN flag, according to the agency.

Israel has accused UNRWA of supporting Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the UK, US and other countries.

The agency has denied this, but in January it sacked nine of the 12 employees accused in an Israeli document of playing a part in the 7 October attacks.

The UN has yet to publish the results of an internal investigation launched as the US and other donors paused funding in response to the allegations.

BBC
 

Disturbing and heart wrenching, curse on Israeli forces​

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Israeli forces shoot dead 12-year-old Palestinian who set off firework​

In the last few seconds of his life, Rami Hamdan Al-Halhouli lit a firework and held it above his head. Then there were three sharp cracks - the first was a police officer's bullet, the second was the firework leaving Rami's hand, the third was the sound of the firework bursting over Rami's body in a bright shower of red and gold.

Rami al-Halhouli was a 12-year-old Palestinian boy born and raised in Shuafat, a refugee camp in occupied East Jerusalem that is home to about 16,000 people. On Tuesday night, Rami was playing with his brother and friends in front of the family home when they urged him on to light a firework. He pointed it away from him, roughly in the direction of some Israeli border police, but aimed up into the sky.

According to video of the incident, before even the firework could go off Rami was hit by a bullet fired by a border police officer positioned some distance away. In a statement, the police said a single shot was fired at a suspect who had "endangered the forces while firing aerial fireworks in their direction".

The police have not yet released Rami's body to the family. The police did not respond to specific questions about the shooting, but the family told the BBC on Wednesday that the bullet hit Rami in his heart.

Source: BBC News
 
At least 20 people killed, dozens wounded in shelling while waiting for food aid, Gaza health ministry says

At least 20 people were killed and 155 wounded in shelling Thursday while waiting for food aid in Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian enclave.

The death toll is expected to rise as casualties are still being transferred to the hospital, according to Mohammad Ghrab, a doctor at the emergency unit at Al Shifa Hospital.

Earlier, a witness on the scene said dozens of people had died, and videos showed tens of bodies at the scene.

The health ministry said the incident was “a result of the Israeli occupation forces targeting a gathering of citizens waiting for humanitarian aid to satisfy their thirst at the Kuwaiti roundabout in Gaza.”

“Medical teams are unable to deal with the volume and type of injuries reaching hospitals in northern Gaza due to weak medical and human capabilities,” the ministry said.

CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment.

Eyewitnesses said the area was struck by what they said sounded like tank or artillery fire.

Gaza Civil Defense Spokesman Mahmoud Basal accused Israel of being behind the attack in a statement late Thursday.

“The Israeli occupation forces are still practicing the policy of killing innocent citizens waiting for relief aid as a result of the famine occurring in the northern Gaza Strip,” Basal said in a statement.



CNN
 
It seems like they are intentionally creating public gatherings by providing food aid so thats how they can target a larger number of people at a single place.
 
sweep_shot said:
That's what it seems like.

It seems like their focus is to kill as many Palestinians as possible. This is a genocide.
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They are trying to end the next generation. That is why most of the people who died were children. A pathetic and genocidal thing is happening in Palestine atm and the world is sleeping.
 
At least 29 Palestinians have been killed while waiting for aid in two separate Israeli attacks, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

The first incident on Thursday saw eight people killed in an airstrike on an aid distribution centre in the Nuseirat camp, in the central Gaza Strip, they said.

SKY
 
Gaza aid reaches shore in first sea delivery

The first ship towing a barge of humanitarian aid to Gaza has unloaded supplies onto the shore.

The Spanish ship Open Arms left Cyprus on Tuesday with 200 tonnes of food desperately needed for Gaza, which the UN says is on the brink of famine.

Videos posted online show a crane moving crates from the barge to lorries waiting on a purpose-built jetty.

It marks the start of a trial to see if sea deliveries are effective, after air and land deliveries proved difficult.

World Central Kitchen (WCK), which supplied the food, carried out the mission in co-operation with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to deliver the barge's cargo of rice, flour, legumes, canned vegetables and canned proteins.

Gaza has no functioning port, so a jetty stemming from the shoreline was built by WCK's team. How the food will be distributed in Gaza remains unclear.

WCK's founder, celebrity chef José Andrés, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that all the food aid from the barge had been loaded into 12 lorries.



www.bbc.com

Israel-Gaza: Aid reaches Gaza shore in first sea delivery

The first shipment of food aid is unloaded, but how it will be distributed in Gaza remains unclear.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Thankfully somehow starving people in Gaza will have some food to eat. But we don't know for how long they will have to be served like animals.
 
Cricket Warrior said:
Gaza aid reaches shore in first sea delivery

The first ship towing a barge of humanitarian aid to Gaza has unloaded supplies onto the shore.

The Spanish ship Open Arms left Cyprus on Tuesday with 200 tonnes of food desperately needed for Gaza, which the UN says is on the brink of famine.

Videos posted online show a crane moving crates from the barge to lorries waiting on a purpose-built jetty.

It marks the start of a trial to see if sea deliveries are effective, after air and land deliveries proved difficult.

World Central Kitchen (WCK), which supplied the food, carried out the mission in co-operation with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to deliver the barge's cargo of rice, flour, legumes, canned vegetables and canned proteins.

Gaza has no functioning port, so a jetty stemming from the shoreline was built by WCK's team. How the food will be distributed in Gaza remains unclear.

WCK's founder, celebrity chef José Andrés, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that all the food aid from the barge had been loaded into 12 lorries.



www.bbc.com

Israel-Gaza: Aid reaches Gaza shore in first sea delivery

The first shipment of food aid is unloaded, but how it will be distributed in Gaza remains unclear.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
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The people of Gaza not just need food but medical aid as well. These kinds of efforts mean too much for those desperate ones in Gaza.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1768754010691878912
 
Thousands of Israeli soldiers are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or other combat trauma, according to the head of the army’s mental health department.

At least 1,000 of these soldiers have been diagnosed with “acute distress disorder”, department head Colonel Lucian Tatsa-Laur told Israeli newspaper TheMarker.

With the mental health decline, more and more soldiers are refusing to return to the battlefield after being granted temporary leave, a trend that is challenging army operations, said Tatsa-Laur.

“As a psychiatrist, I wish I had a magic wand that could make this whole period disappear,” he said.
Click to expand...

Reference: https://aje.io/zju41v?update=2775957.

I guess this is what can happen when you kill innocents.
 

Israel-Gaza war: Netanyahu vows to defy allies on Rafah invasion​


Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reaffirmed his determination to launch an offensive in Rafah, defying international criticism.

The city is crammed with some 1.5 million Palestinians from other parts of Gaza seeking refuge.

His comments come as the German chancellor, on a Middle East trip, restated his opposition to the plan.

But Mr Netanyahu said "no international pressure will stop Israel" from achieving all of its war aims.

"If we stop the war now before achieving all of its goals, the meaning is that Israel had lost the war and we will not allow this," Mr Netanyahu told a meeting of his cabinet.

He said Israel must be able to continue its war, with the aims of "eliminating Hamas, releasing all our hostages and ensuring that Gaza will no longer pose a threat against Israel".

"To do this, we will also operate in Rafah."

Mr Netanyahu said the offensive in city at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip "will happen" and will take "several weeks".

He also lashed out at at his critics for, as he put it, forgetting the Hamas attack of 7 October.

Those attacks, in which about 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 were taken hostage from Israel, sparked the current war. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 31,400 have been killed.

www.bbc.com

Israel-Gaza war: Netanyahu vows to defy allies on Rafah invasion

The Israeli prime minister says no international pressure will stop Israel from achieving all its war aims.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reaffirmed his determination to launch an offensive in Rafah, defying international criticism.

The city is crammed with some 1.5 million Palestinians from other parts of Gaza seeking refuge.

His comments come as the German chancellor, on a Middle East trip, restated his opposition to the plan.

But Mr Netanyahu said "no international pressure will stop Israel" from achieving all of its war aims.

"If we stop the war now before achieving all of its goals, the meaning is that Israel had lost the war and we will not allow this," Mr Netanyahu told a meeting of his cabinet.


BBC
 
Cricket Warrior said:
"If we stop the war now before achieving all of its goals, the meaning is that Israel had lost the war and we will not allow this," Mr Netanyahu told a meeting of his cabinet.


BBC
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Israel has already lost the war. Actually, they lost two wars (one is the PR war and another is failure to bring hostages home and dismantle Hamas).

All Israel managed to achieve was killing 31,000+ innocent civilians. That's not an achievement; that's cowardice.
 
sweep_shot said:
Israel has already lost the war. Actually, they lost two wars (one is the PR war and another is failure to bring hostages home and dismantle Hamas).

All Israel managed to achieve was killing 31,000+ innocent civilians. That's not an achievement; that's cowardice.
Click to expand...

Just to add, Israel also lost around 250 soldiers officially. Real number is probably higher than that. Many of their soldiers now also have PTSDs and disabilities.

Looks like things aren't going according to plan for Netanyahu.
 

They know no humanity, somebody must put a rein on them or a big fallout will follow them soon​

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Israel launches operation on Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital compound​

“The operation is based on intelligence information indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists.”

Witnesses in Gaza City told AFP they saw tanks surround the hospital site.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians displaced by the war have sought shelter in the complex, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

The Israeli army had also carried out a November operation in Al-Shifa, sparking an international outcry.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of running military operations from hospitals and other medical centers, claims the militant group denies.

The Hamas government media office in Gaza condemned the operation, saying that “the storming of the Al-Shifa medical complex with tanks, drones, and weapons, and shooting inside it, is a war crime.”

The Israeli army has carried out multiple operations in and around medical facilities across the Gaza Strip since the start of the war.

The war began when Hamas launched an unprecedented attack from Gaza on October 7 that resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.

Palestinian militants seized about 250 Israeli and foreign hostages during the October 7 attack, but dozens were released during a week-long truce in November.

Israel believes about 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 -- eight soldiers and 25 civilians -- who are presumed dead.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has carried out a relentless bombardment and ground offensive that the health ministry in the Palestinian territory says

Source: Al Arabiya
 
sweep_shot said:
Israel has already lost the war. Actually, they lost two wars (one is the PR war and another is failure to bring hostages home and dismantle Hamas).

All Israel managed to achieve was killing 31,000+ innocent civilians. That's not an achievement; that's cowardice.
Click to expand...

You are condemning killing of 31,000 people here but Islamic invaders had killed many more in India whom you were praising in other thread. That was the hypocrisy I was talking about.

And when non-Muslim's see's this kind of open hypocrisy, they tend to believe the support for Palestine is more religious than humanitarian and finds it very tough to lend their support.

I mean just look at the contrasting threads below lined together - Bloodshed for one and best thing to have happened on another. Not sure whether to laugh or cry.



1710753089741.png
 
Rajdeep said:
You are condemning killing of 31,000 people here but Islamic invaders had killed many more in India whom you were praising in other thread. That was the hypocrisy I was talking about.

And when non-Muslim's see's this kind of open hypocrisy, they tend to believe the support for Palestine is more religious than humanitarian and finds it very tough to lend their support.

I mean just look at the contrasting threads below lined together - Bloodshed for one and best thing to have happened on another. Not sure whether to laugh or cry.



View attachment 142810
Click to expand...

There is no hypocrisy. You are comparing apple to orange. Now stop derailing the thread.

Israel didn't just kill 31,000. This stuff is going on since 1940's or even earlier.

Also, I don't care what you think about this conflict. You have nothing at stake here.
 
sweep_shot said:
There is no hypocrisy. You are comparing apple to orange. Now stop derailing the thread.
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How is this apple to orange's when both were invasions and both the invaders killed innocent civilians? Apples & Oranges because one is a Muslim blood and other is for kaafir's?

sweep_shot said:
Israel didn't just kill 31,000. This stuff is going on since 1940's or even earlier.
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Just to give you a context - 60 to 80 million (6 to 8 crore) Hindus died at the hands of Muslim invaders and rulers over a period of 500 years between 1000 AD and 1525 AD. However you will shed crocodile tear for 31000 but will praise Islamic rulers. If this ain't hypocrisy, not sure what is.

sweep_shot said:
Also, I don't care what you think about this conflict. You have nothing at stake here.
Click to expand...

I am not saying I have anything at stake on this conflict but mere highlighting your blatant hypocrisy. Perhaps this is the reason most world leaders openly supports Israel.
 
Rajdeep said:
How is this apple to orange's when both were invasions and both the invaders killed innocent civilians? Apples & Oranges because one is a Muslim blood and other is for kaafir's?


Just to give you a context - 60 to 80 million (6 to 8 crore) Hindus died at the hands of Muslim invaders and rulers over a period of 500 years between 1000 AD and 1525 AD. However you will shed crocodile tear for 31000 but will praise Islamic rulers. If this ain't hypocrisy, not sure what is.



I am not saying I have anything at stake on this conflict but mere highlighting your blatant hypocrisy. Perhaps this is the reason most world leaders openly supports Israel.
Click to expand...

A conflict from middle ages is not same as a modern day conflict. Also, these two conflicts aren't same.

Now let's stick to topic.
 
sweep_shot said:
A conflict from middle ages is not same as modern day conflict. Also, these two conflicts aren't same.

Now let's stick to topic.
Click to expand...

But why you are praising that conflict of middle age today? You should be criticizing the islamic invaders for killing 60 to 80 million hindus just like you are condemning Israel. Forget about criticism, you are infact praising Islamic invasion in India at the same time condemning Israel. It is so easy to catch the hypocrisy among you guys. Perhaps that is why the outrage levels are different as wider world is aware of this hypocrisy

Outrage levels : Israeli aggression towards Palestinians vs Russia's attack on Ukraine

It's possible that I am living in an alternate universe where I see zero condemnation directed at Israel for its atrocities vs Palestinians whilst Russia is being marked as a bully/murderer on a daily basis. Am I losing my mind or is this also the case in the real world we live in? Palestinian...
ppforum.pakpassion.net ppforum.pakpassion.net
 
Indians want
Rajdeep said:
But why you are praising that conflict of middle age today? You should be criticizing the islamic invaders for killing 60 to 80 million hindus just like you are condemning Israel. Forget about criticism, you are infact praising Islamic invasion in India at the same time condemning Israel. It is so easy to catch the hypocrisy among you guys. Perhaps that is why the outrage levels are different as wider world is aware of this hypocrisy

Outrage levels : Israeli aggression towards Palestinians vs Russia's attack on Ukraine

It's possible that I am living in an alternate universe where I see zero condemnation directed at Israel for its atrocities vs Palestinians whilst Russia is being marked as a bully/murderer on a daily basis. Am I losing my mind or is this also the case in the real world we live in? Palestinian...
ppforum.pakpassion.net ppforum.pakpassion.net
Click to expand...

Where did I praise killing 60 to 80 million Hindus? Show one post please that I praised that kind of thing. Also, is that figure even accurate? LOL.

When you mean wider world, speak for yourself. Most countries are siding with Palestine (check UN votes). Even many Jews and other non-Muslims are condemning Israel.

I think this should be my last post toward you on this thread. You are not a Jew or a Muslim.
 
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sweep_shot said:
Where did I praise killing 60 to 80 million Hindus? Show one post please that I praised that kind of thing. Also, is that figure even accurate? LOL.
Click to expand...
You did say Muslims rule in India was the best thing to have happened in Indian sub continent. The rule that was build on the blood of slaughtered hindus which is considered as the biggest genocide in India. So even though you didnt directly say you support killing of millions of hindus but by showing your support to a barbaric regime you are endorsing their horrific crimes.

sweep_shot said:
When you mean wider world, speak for yourself. Most countries are siding with Palestine (check UN votes). Even many Jews and other non-Muslims are condemning Israel.
Click to expand...
Well, there is literally a thread here about different outrage level for Ukraine compared to Palenstine. Now reading some of the posts here and understanding the mindset, I now know why.

sweep_shot said:
I think this should be my last post toward you on this thread. You are not a Jew or a Muslim. You have no stake in this conflict. I don't have time for your ignorant rants.
Click to expand...
You always run away bro. Anyway let me know when you want to debate on this topic next, time & place as per your choice.

Good day.
 
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Rajdeep said:
You did say Muslims rule in India was the best thing to have happened in Indian sub continent. The rule that was build on the blood of slaughtered hindus which is considered as the biggest genocide in India. So even though you didnt directly say you support killing of millions of hindus but by showing your support to a barbaric regime you are endorsing their horrific crimes. Kisko bewkoof bana rahe ho yaar?
Click to expand...

You are talking about a middle age empire. Many such empires existed during that time. They did some good things and probably some bad things. Check how many Crusaders killed (one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(1099)). Crusade was sanctioned by Pope.

When I mean Muslim rule was good, I meant as a whole. If they killed innocents, I of course wouldn't support it. But, looks like many of the stuffs you post come from biased Indian sources (probably inaccurate).

This is a modern day conflict. Not sure why you are bringing in stuffs which happened in middle ages.

Let's stick to topic. You want to bash Mughals, do that in Mughal threads.
 
Israeli forces launched an operation early Monday in and around Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, with witnesses reporting air strikes and tanks near the complex crowded with patients and displaced people

The pre-dawn raid came at a time of growing concern over a looming Israeli ground invasion of Gaza’s crowded far-southern city of Rafah, and as international mediators and envoys readied to meet in Qatar Monday to revive stalled truce talks.

A meeting between Israel’s Mossad chief David Barnea, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Egyptian officials “is expected to take place today,” a source said on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the talks.

The Israeli military told Gazans to immediately evacuate from Al-Shifa in Gaza City after it launched the raid based on what the army termed intelligence “indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists.”

Witnesses told AFP that the Israeli forces had dropped Arabic-language leaflets with the same evacuation instructions and a warning that “You are in a dangerous combat zone!”

The health ministry in the Gaza Strip said residents near the hospital in the largely devastated city had reported dozens of casualties who could not be helped “due to the intensity of gunfire and artillery shelling.”

The Hamas government media office condemned as a “war crime” the “storming of the Al-Shifa medical complex with tanks, drones and weapons, and shooting inside,” where thousands of displaced Palestinians were sheltering.

The army and the Shin Bet security service said Israeli troops had “identified terrorist fire towards them from a number of hospital buildings. The forces engaged the terrorists and identified several hits.”

Israel’s military also said troops had been told to “avoid harm to the patients, civilians, medical staff and medical equipment,” with Arabic speakers deployed to “facilitate dialogue with the patients remaining in the hospital.”

The army had previously raided Al-Shifa in mid-November, sparking an international outcry, in an operation in which it said its troops had found weapons and other military equipment in rooms in and below the hospital.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on October 7 that resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

The militants also seized about 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.

Israel, vowing to destroy Hamas and free the captives, has carried out a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive that Gaza’s health ministry says has killed at least 31,726 people, most of them women and children.

An Israeli siege that cut off water, electricity, fuel and basic supplies has brought large-scale shortages in the territory of 2.4 million people that the UN warns is on the brink of famine.

Overland access for aid convoys from Egypt has been limited amid the bombing, ground combat and growing insecurity in Gaza where some vehicles have been looted by desperate crowds.

The United States, Jordan and other western and Arab countries have airdropped food into Gaza, while a first aid vessel sailing from the Mediterranean island-nation of Cyprus has opened a new maritime corridor for humanitarian relief goods.

Halting efforts toward a truce and hostage release deal, which have involved US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators, were expected to resume in Qatar, following a week-long ceasefire in November.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has again vowed, in the face of growing global concern, that the army will finish its operation to destroy Hamas, before or after any truce.

Global alarm has focused on Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah near the Egyptian border, where about 1.5 million Palestinians now live in crowded shelters and tent cities.

Netanyahu’s warnings of a looming ground invasion have raised fears the civilians would be in the line of fire, sparking warnings of a potential “slaughter.”

Israel’s top ally the United States, which has provided it with billions of dollars in military assistance, has stressed it wants to see a “clear and implementable plan” to ensure civilians are “out of harm’s way.”

The Israeli premier on Sunday reiterated that civilians would be evacuated from Rafah before any ground attack, without detailing where they would go in the largely devastated coastal strip.

“Our goal in eliminating the remaining terrorist battalions in Rafah goes hand-in-hand with enabling the civilian population to leave Rafah,” he said during a visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

“It’s not something that we will do while keeping the population locked in place.”

Scholz, like others before him, raised the question: “Where should they go?”

Speaking to reporters later, Scholz said that if a Rafah offensive resulted in “a large number of casualties,”ffi this “would make any peaceful development in the region very difficult.”

In efforts toward a new truce deal, Hamas had so far demanded a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces, which Netanyahu has rejected as “delusional.”

A new Hamas proposal calls for an Israeli withdrawal from “all cities and populated areas” in Gaza during a six-week truce and for more aid to come in, according to an official from the group.

Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported Monday that “the cabinet approved the departure of the delegation with a mandate to hold the negotiations. The delegation will leave today.”

 
Israel has reached the height of cruelty in Gaza. It's unfortunate that the world has not taken a stand for humanity, and a ceasefire has not been achieved.
 
The US has confirmed Israel killed Hamas number three Marwan Issa in an operation last week. Meanwhile, the Israeli military says 20 Hamas fighters were killed and dozens of suspects arrested in a raid on Gaza's al Shifa hospital. The Hamas-run health ministry described it as a war crime.

SKY
 
Gaza's catastrophic food shortage means mass death is imminent, monitor says

Extreme food shortages in parts of the Gaza Strip have already exceeded famine levels, and mass death is now imminent without an immediate ceasefire and surge of food to areas cut off by fighting, the global hunger monitor said on Monday.

The Integrated Food-Security Phase Classification (IPC), whose assessments are relied on by U.N. agencies, said 70% of people in parts of northern Gaza were suffering the most severe level of food shortage, more than triple the 20% threshold to be considered famine.

The IPC said it did not have enough data on death rates, but estimated residents would be dying at famine scale imminently, defined as two people out of every 10,000 dying daily from starvation or from malnutrition and disease.

Gaza's health ministry has said 27 children and three adults have died so far from malnutrition.

"The actions needed to prevent famine require an immediate political decision for a ceasefire together with a significant and immediate increase in humanitarian and commercial access to the entire population of Gaza," it said.


 
A resolution from the federal New Democrats initially calling on Canada to recognize the "State of Palestine” passed amid widespread acrimony on Monday, after the Liberals drastically altered its wording to see the government simply work towards that aim as part of a two-state solution.

As per the Canadian media, after appearing destined to fail when the governing Liberals vowed Monday to not let the opposition sway its foreign policy, Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon shocked MPs on both sides of the aisle when he rose in the final minutes of debate to advance a nearly 500-word motion that rephrased considerable portions of the NDP motion.

The federal New Democrats proposed a resolution in Canada to recognize the "State of Palestine," but the Liberals modified it to focus on pursuing peace in the Middle East through a two-state solution.

Despite last-minute changes, the motion passed amidst controversy, with NDP claiming a victory.

The altered motion received support from Liberal, NDP, Bloc Quebecois, and Green MPs, while Conservatives opposed it.
 
Trudeau is the most Pro Israeli politician Canada has seen. The guy wants to be liked by everyone.
 

Gaza's entire population facing acute food insecurity, Blinken warns​

Gaza's two million people are experiencing "severe levels of acute food insecurity", US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said.

This was first time an entire population had been so classified, he said when questioned by the BBC about conditions in the territory.

Mr Blinken called on Israel to prioritise providing for those in need.

UN agencies have said north Gaza could face famine by May without a pause in the fighting and a surge in aid.

Mr Blinken's warning came during a trip to the Philippines as US officials announced that he would travel to the Middle East, his sixth trip to the region since October, as efforts to secure a ceasefire continue.

Israeli negotiators are due to begin talks in Qatar on Tuesday in a fresh attempt to agree a deal with Hamas to halt the fighting, get humanitarian aid in, and Israeli hostages out.

Mr Blinken's comments were among his strongest yet in setting out the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Asked by the BBC whether the current conditions were a harbinger of the territory's future without an agreed governance or security plan, he said: "According to the most respected measure of these things, 100% of the population in Gaza is at severe levels of acute food insecurity. That's the first time an entire population has been so classified."

Acute food insecurity is when a person's inability to consume adequate food puts their life or livelihood in immediate danger. If unaddressed, it leads to starvation.

Mr Blinken added: "We also see again, according to in this case the United Nations, 100% - the totality of the population - is in need of humanitarian assistance," he added.

"Compare that to Sudan, about 80% of the population there is in need of humanitarian assistance; Afghanistan, about 70%. So, again, this only underscores both the urgency, the imperative, of making this the priority."

He once again called on Hamas to lay down arms but said it was incumbent on Israel to make it a priority to provide for those who desperately needed humanitarian assistance.

Asked about the numbers of journalists killed in Gaza and lack of access to the territory for international reporters, Mr Blinken said that "as a matter of principle" journalists should have access wherever there is conflict so "the world can have knowledge".

He said the issue was something "we bring up in every instance".

Later, the UN human rights chief stressed that the catastrophic hunger in Gaza was "human-made and... entirely preventable".

Volker Türk put the blame firmly on what he called Israel's "extensive restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid and commercial goods, displacement of most of the population, as well as the destruction of crucial civilian infrastructure".

The restrictions, he warned, "may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war, which is a war crime".

Israel's diplomatic mission to the UN in Geneva said Mr Türk was seeking to blame it for the situation in Gaza and "completely absolve the responsibility of the UN and Hamas".

"Israel is doing everything it can to flood Gaza with aid, including by land air and sea," it insisted.

Aid workers reject this, saying that much of the problem in the northern Gaza is due to a collapse in security around aid convoys, after Israel targeted police who were escorting them.

Israel has said police have been hit because its military is dismantling Hamas. But the US has questioned this, saying such targeting makes aid distribution impossible and is counterproductive.

Meanwhile, the US State Department has called on Israel to permit Philippe Lazzarini, chief of the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees, entry into Gaza after he was denied on Monday.

Israel previously accused UNRWA of supporting Hamas, which the agency denied. But in January it sacked nine of 12 employees accused in an Israeli document of playing a part in the 7 October attacks.

US officials also announced on Tuesday that Mr Blinken would make his latest trip to the region since Hamas's attacks on Israel on 7 October and the start of the war in Gaza.

It comes without a breakthrough so far on a ceasefire for hostage-release deal between Israel and Hamas.

He will speak with Saudi leaders in Jeddah and then continue onto Cairo to meet the Egyptian leadership.

A significant part of the talks will focus on Arab support for a post-war plan to secure and govern Gaza.

The Americans want rule by the Palestinian Authority, the post-Oslo peace accords entity that lost control in Gaza to Hamas after elections and fighting 17 years ago.

But the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected the idea of PA rule there, one of many critical points of dispute over any so-called "day after plan" for Gaza.

Mr Blinken did not address a question about whether an agreed post-war plan for Gaza could only move forward with a different Israeli leader.

On Monday night, US President Joe Biden told Mr Netanyahu this his plan to push on with an offensive in Rafah would be a "mistake", with more than a million Gazan civilians sheltering in the southern border town.

In their first conversation in over a month, they also discussed a plan to send an Israeli delegation to Washington next week to discuss both the Rafah plan and a new alternative approach to targeting Hamas there without a major ground invasion.

Source: BBC
 
US government must do more in order to materialize a long-lasting ceasefire deal. There are too many innocent people suffering in the region for several months now and things are getting worse for them with every passing day.
 

The most resilient people on the face of Earth​

=====

When the story of Palestine’s liberation is written, its people’s sacrifices will be its biggest strength​

Nowadays, it’s considered unfashionable to have such romantically religious notions of how your state came to be, but something about her deflection hit a chord. A nation knows itself and its future through the story its people tell. Whether it’s the story of rising from the ashes of a once dominant empire or that a nation was carved onto the map by the hands of God Himself — each tale carries weight.

Civilised, barbarian, or savage —19th century’s distorted worldview
In much of the dark world, our nations were born with congenital bloodstains on their cheeks.

In the 19th century, nations were either civilised, barbarian, or savages. All white states were naturally civilised unless they seriously transgressed (that is, became communist) at which point they regressed to being barbarians. Barbarians were semi-civilised and could be interacted with the aim that they would at some point be dragged into civilisation kicking and screaming.

Savages were non-white and beyond the pale, they were no more than human, infantilised, and unrepresented in the community of states. These groups were challenged after the First World War when the devastation wrought by European infighting led the rest of the world to question the so-called superiority of the white world. But instead of changing the rules, everyone just wanted in.

Japan tried to join the League of Nations, asserting its distinction from other perceived ‘barbarians’, claiming to be far better than its neighbour, China, at the very least. Its plea was rejected. Arthur Balfour, who represented Britain at the conference, said that “it was true in a certain sense that all men of a particular nation were created equal; but not that a man in Central Africa was created equal to a European.”

The West was given powers of ‘tutelage’ after World War I over territories that were considered to not be ‘able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world’ and so required help from ‘advanced nations who because of their resources, their experience, or their geographical position can best undertake this responsibility’.

How they achieved this advancement and how they acquired these resources and experience was left unsaid but one thing was clear: the architects had decided the world’s blueprints and we were in the outhouse with the promise of being allowed inside if we behaved.

The paradox of independence
Of course, we didn’t behave. From the early 20th century onwards, empires fell like dominos as new states emerged onto the international plane. But none of them were as polarising as the Algerian war against its ‘parent’ state, France.

Similar to the conversations taking place about Palestine and Hamas today, philosophers debated the necessity of armed violence in overthrowing a coloniser using brute force to maintain its hold. While the French state tortured and executed people, rebels planted bombs and killed innocents.

Frantz Fanon argued that the anti-colonial revolution must be violent, not only because it was effective, but also because it helped the colonised “shake off the paralysis of oppression and forge a new shared identity”.

The Algerian novelist and philosopher Albert Camus disagreed. When accepting his Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, he emphasised that the struggle for independence is a plea for peace: “People are now planting bombs in the tramways of Algiers. My mother might be on one of those tramways. If that is justice, then I prefer my mother.”

While Camus was choosing his mother, these new states were figuring out how to be many people but one nation within borders they hadn’t chosen. Our territorial integrity, so hard won, was to be jealously guarded for anyone wanting to break it up. And in many instances, like Bangladesh, we tried to preserve it by recreating the oppression we had just fought.

Meanwhile, the mills of international politics kept churning and the West was working to ensure that it maintained its domination through an economic empire. Our former colonisers became ‘sugar daddies’ getting us hooked on aid, trapping us in debt cycles, and pillorying us with talk of human rights. We were left working to create justice in a sieve.

Source: Dawn News
 
Just a few peanuts from Saudis
======
A Saudi Arabia-funded humanitarian agency pledged on Wednesday to boost the kingdom’s donation to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) by $40 million, Reuters has reported.

The donation by the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre (KSrelief), which is dedicated to Gaza, comes as UNRWA faces a severe funding crisis after the United States, the UK and other donor states “paused” their funding following Israel’s accusations that a dozen of its 13,000 staff in Gaza took part with Hamas in its cross-border incursion on 7 October. No evidence has been produced by Israel for its allegation.

UNRWA manages shelters, and provides food and healthcare for nearly two million people in Gaza, according to its website.

A UN-backed report warned on Monday that northern Gaza faces imminent famine, even as global pressure mounts on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave with a population of 2.3 million people.

Canada, Australia and Sweden have recently restored funding to UNRWA, while several Gulf countries, in addition to Saudi Arabia, have increased their donations. That may still not be enough, however.

“The US is our largest donor so no amount of compensation by other donors, as generous as they are, can actually fill the gap that is left by the US,” said UNRWA spokesperson Tamara Al-Rifai.

Saudi Arabia announced a $2 million contribution to UNRWA in October, while KSrelief provided $15 million to the agency in November.

Source: The Middle East Monitor
 
US unveils draft UN resolution seeking immediate Gaza ceasefire

The United States has circulated a draft UN Security Council resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire linked to the release of hostages” in the Gaza Strip, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

The diplomat made his announcement while on a tour of the Middle East that will include a stop in Israel.

Key Israel backer the United States has vetoed previous UN Security Council votes on the nearly six-month war, objecting as recently as in February to the use of the term “immediate” in a draft submitted by Algeria.

In recent weeks, however, Washington has upped the pressure on its ally, while insisting that Hamas militants must immediately release the hostages seized by militants during its October 7 attacks on Israel.

“Well, in fact, we actually have a resolution that we put forward right now that’s before the United Nations Security Council that does call for an immediate ceasefire tied to the release of hostages, and we hope very much that countries will support that,” Blinken said in Saudi Arabia.

“I think that would send a strong message, a strong signal,” he told Saudi media outlet Al Hadath on Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas in retaliation for the October 7 attacks.

“Of course, we stand with Israel and its right to defend itself... but at the same time, it’s imperative that the civilians who are in harm’s way and who are suffering so terribly — that we focus on them, that we make them a priority, protecting the civilians, getting them humanitarian assistance,” Blinken said.

US officials had been negotiating an alternative text since blocking an Algerian draft resolution calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza at the end of February.

That alternative, focusing on support for a six-week truce in exchange for the release of hostages, had little chance winning approval, according to diplomatic sources.

A new version, seen by AFP, stresses “the need for an immediate and durable ceasefire to protect civilians on all sides, enable the delivery of essential humanitarian aid, and alleviate suffering... in conjunction with the release of hostages still held.”

No vote has yet been scheduled on this text.

Blinken met Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and then held talks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman soon after landing in the kingdom on Wednesday on the first leg of a regional tour that will include Egypt on Thursday and then Israel on Friday.

Blinken’s tour, his sixth to the region since the war began, runs parallel with talks in Qatar, where mediators met for a third day on Wednesday in a renewed effort to secure a ceasefire but with little indication of an imminent agreement.

The plan being discussed in Qatar would temporarily halt the fighting as hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners and the delivery of relief supplies to Gaza is stepped up.

The latest fighting has included an Israeli assault on Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, a vast complex crowded with patients and people seeking refuge, where Israel says Palestinian militants are holed up.

The Israeli army said “over 300 suspects” had been apprehended in the hospital raid that began Monday, including “dozens of senior terrorists and those with key positions.”

Israel said its forces have “killed approximately 90 terrorists” since the start of the raid, and army chief Herzi Halevi said the objective was “not to allow such a place to be controlled” by Hamas.

Hamas condemned Israeli “crimes” at Al-Shifa “for the third day in a row, the executions of dozens of displaced persons, patients and staff.”

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said at least 70 people had been killed in Gaza overnight.

UN agencies have warned that Gaza’s 2.4 million people are on the brink of famine, and UN rights chief Volker Turk said Israel may be using “starvation as a method of war.”

Blinken had earlier warned that Gaza’s “entire population” is suffering “severe levels of acute food insecurity.”

Riyadh announced as Blinken arrived it would donate $40 million to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which has been central to aid operations in Gaza but has faced massive funding cuts and calls for its abolition spearheaded by Israel.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini warned that “siege, hunger and diseases will soon become the main killer in Gaza.”

Rafah, the last area in Gaza to remain free from a large-scale invasion, is now home to some 1.5 million Palestinians, many of them sheltering in tents along the Egyptian border after fleeing from other parts of the coastal territory.

Washington wants Israel to hold back from a full-scale ground assault, citing concern for civilians, but Netanyahu has repeatedly said it was the only way to eradicate Hamas.

Israel has continued to bombard Rafah and said on Wednesday it had “eliminated senior Hamas operatives” in the city.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant will visit Washington in the coming week for talks with Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, although neither side gave a date.

Netanyahu’s office said a separate delegation would visit Washington at “the request of US President Joe Biden” to discuss the planned Rafah assault.

The bloodiest-ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s attacks resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Militants also seized about 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.

Israel’s military has waged a retaliatory offensive against Hamas that has killed almost 32,000 people, most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

The talks in Qatar this week have given little indication of an imminent agreement.

SOURCE: ARAB NEWS
 

Arab ministers meet Palestinian official in Cairo to discuss Gaza​


Arab ministers held talks with a Palestinian official in Cairo on Thursday to discuss efforts to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and were due to meet US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is seeking to secure a ceasefire of at least six weeks.

The ministers met with Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee general secretary Hussein Al Sheikh to discuss "efforts to stop the Israeli war against Gaza, the inevitability of achieving a ceasefire, and full access to aid," the Egyptian foreign ministry's spokesperson said.

Blinken was also due to meet with Sheikh — a confidant of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and an intermediary in contacts with Israel — along with the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, and the UAE's state minister for international cooperation, according to an Egyptian foreign ministry note.

Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited control of the occupied West Bank, could play a role in administering Gaza once fighting ends, though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed strong opposition.

Blinken had already met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to discuss the negotiations to secure an immediate ceasefire in the war, now in its sixth month, and the release of all hostages kidnapped by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that runs Gaza, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said.

They also discussed the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel.

Blinken had also met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

www.khaleejtimes.com

Arab ministers meet Palestinian official in Cairo to discuss Gaza

Arab ministers held talks with a Palestinian official in Cairo on Thursday to discuss efforts to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, and were due to meet US ..
www.khaleejtimes.com
 
Will America make Palestine an independent state? I don't think so because we've been hearing about this for decades, but it has never happened.
 

Dermer: Israel will enter Rafah ‘even if entire world turns on us, including the US’​


Israel will take control of Rafah even if it causes a rift with the United States, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday, describing the Gazan city packed with evacuees as a final Hamas bastion harboring a quarter of the group’s fighters.

The prospect of tanks and troops storming Rafah worries Washington, which says Israeli must have a plan to move more than a million Palestinians who have sheltered there since being displaced from elsewhere in the Gaza Strip during the five-month-old war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to ensure civilian evacuation and humanitarian aid — measures that top Israeli aides are due to discuss in the White House in the coming days at the behest of US President Joe Biden.

“We’re quite confident that we can do this in a way that would be effective — not only militarily, but also on the humanitarian side. And they have less confidence that we can do it,” one of those Israeli envoys, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, told the podcast “Call Me Back with Dan Senor.”

Dermer, a former ambassador to the United States, said Israel would hear out American ideas for Rafah, but that the city on Gaza’s border with Egypt would be taken whether or not the allies reach agreement.

“It will happen even if Israel is forced to fight alone. Even if the entire world turns on Israel, including the United States, we’re going to fight until the battle’s won.”

As fighting raged in northern Gaza, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Cairo for talks with Arab officials about a proposed ceasefire. Israel is open to a truce that will allow the release of hostages, but has ruled out ending the war with Hamas still in power.

Dermer said leaving the Iran-backed Islamists standing would invite open-ended attacks against Israel from across the region: “And that’s why the determination to take them out is so strong, even if it leads to a potential breach with the United States.”

He and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi are expected to fly to Washington in the coming days to discuss the continuation of the war on Hamas with Biden administration officials.

While backing Israel's war goals, the US administration has been shaken by the toll on Palestinian civilians and particularly the growing humanitarian crisis in the enclave.

The offensive has killed almost 32,000 Palestinians, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said, without providing a breakdown of civilians and combatants. Israel says at least 13,000 are fighters. Hamas killed around 1,200 people in Israel on October 7 and abducted 253.

Hamas does not detail its losses or deployments and has dismissed Israel’s assessments as exaggerations. Yet Palestinian rocket salvoes have tapered off dramatically as most of Gaza has been overrun by Israeli forces. So have Israeli military losses, which number 252 since the start of the ground operation in late October.

Dermer said there were four intact Hamas battalions in Rafah, bolstered by gunmen who had retreated from other parts of Gaza, amounting to 25% of the group’s prewar strength.

“We’re not going to leave a quarter of them in place,” he said. “We’re going into Rafah because we have to... And I think what people don’t understand is that October 7 is an existential moment for Israel.”

www.timesofisrael.com

Dermer: Israel will enter Rafah ‘even if entire world turns on us, including the US’

As Netanyahu aides head to Washington to discuss potential tactics in southern Gaza city, minister stresses 'we're going to fight until the battle's won'
www.timesofisrael.com www.timesofisrael.com
 

Israeli govt would just engender a disaster for themselves by delaying this truce​

====

Israel’s war on Gaza updates: Israel ‘negative’ on Hamas truce proposal​

  • Hamas official Osama Hamdan says Israel responded “negatively” to the group’s truce proposal, and Doha-based ceasefire talks could lead to a “dead end”.
  • More than 100 aid workers have been killed and dozens wounded over the past week in eight attacks carried out by Israeli forces, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza.
  • Displaced people sheltering at al-Shifa Hospital recount details of the Israeli army’s storming and siege of the medical complex in Gaza City.
  • The death toll from Israeli attacks on Nuseirat refugee camp rises to 27. Another Israeli attack on an aid distribution team in Gaza City killed at least 23.
  • At least 31,923 Palestinians have been killed and 74,096 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The revised death toll in Israel from Hamas’s October 7 attack stands at 1,139, with dozens taken captive.
Source: Al Jazeera
 
The United States will ask the U.N. Security Council on Friday to back a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and an Israel-Hamas hostage deal, increasing pressure on its ally Israel to allow more humanitarian aid and better protect civilians.


Reuters
 
sweep_shot said:
He shouldn't be out in the open like this. Too dangerous.

IDF losers often snipe indiscriminately.
Click to expand...
Yeah, you are right. IDF is killing everybody and this is not a war anymore, this is mass murder-type stuff going on. Not wise for the parents to let this kid be out in the open like this.
 
Israeli forces kill 10 Palestinians in West Bank in 24 hours, WAFA news agency says

Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in separate incidents in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, increasing to 10 the number of Palestinians killed in the territory over 24 hours, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Since the Gaza war began, Israel has stepped up military raids in the West Bank, where violence had already been surging for over a year. U.N. records show that Israeli forces or settlers have killed hundreds of Palestinians in West Bank clashes since Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

A 19-year-old Palestinian died after being shot by Israeli forces in El Bireh near Ramallah on Thursday morning, the Palestinian health ministry said, and another man died after being shot in the area of Jericho. WAFA said they were wounded during confrontations with Israeli forces.

Israel police said it was carrying out an operation in the Jericho area against a man planning to carry out a suicide attack. During the raid, officers exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen there, police said.

South of Bethlehem, Israeli forces shot dead a 63-year-old Palestinian near the settlement of El'azar, WAFA reported.

The Israeli military said soldiers had fired shots towards "a Palestinian who aroused their suspicion at the El'azar Junction."

"A hit was identified and he was later pronounced dead," it said, adding that military police had opened an investigation into the incident.

Citing Hebrew-language media, the Times of Israel reported that the 63 year-old man had his hands in the air when he was shot but there was no immediate confirmation from the military.

Israel captured both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 war. Palestinians have long aimed to establish an independent state in the territories occupied in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Israeli forces also killed four Palestinians in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the West Bank city of Tulkarm overnight, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, adding that two of them were shot and the other two killed in an Israeli strike.

Residents said Israeli forces bulldozed roads in the area. Israel said it had struck militants firing rifles and throwing explosives at its troops during a counter-terrorism operation there.

Israeli forces also killed three Palestinians in the city of Jenin on Wednesday night, WAFA and the Palestine health ministry said, in what Israel's military said was an operation targeting Palestinian militants.

The militant group Islamic Jihad said three of its fighters had been killed, calling it an assassination operation.

Following the incident, local sources said Palestinian militants shot dead a Palestinian man in Jenin accused of spying for Israel.

Militants also clashed in Jenin with security forces from the Palestinian Authority (PA), the body led by President Mahmoud Abbas that exercises limited self-rule over patches of the West Bank, angered at the arrest of one of their members, local sources said.

Tensions have long simmered in the West Bank between militants and the PA, established under interim peace agreements with Israel three decades ago.

The PA lost control of Gaza in 2007 to Hamas, the militant group behind the Oct. 7 attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel and resulted in another 253 being abducted, according to Israeli tallies.

Some 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip by Israel's devastating retaliatory offensive, according to health authorities in the territory.

A poll, opens new tab conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in March found that support for Hamas had dropped in recent months, with 34% of people saying they supported the group when asked which faction they backed, compared with 43% in December. Six months ago - before the Gaza war - support for Hamas was at 22%.

Support for Abbas' Fatah party was unchanged from December's level at 17%. The poll found that 84% want Abbas to resign, down from 88% three months ago.

A vast majority across the West Bank and Gaza - 71% - said Hamas' decision to launch the Oct. 7 attack was correct, virtually unchanged from 72% in December.

The Palestinians last held a presidential election in 2005, won by Abbas, while Hamas won the last parliamentary polls, held in 2006.

SOURCE: REUTERS
 
US devilish resolution rejected
====

UN Security Council fails to pass US resolution calling for immediate ceasefire in Gaza​

The United Nations Security Council has failed to pass a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza as part of a hostage deal after Russia and China, who are permanent members, voted against the measure proposed by the United States, Reuters reports.

The resolution called for an “immediate and sustained ceasefire” lasting roughly six weeks that would protect civilians and allow for the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said it was exceedingly politicised and contained an effective green light for Israel to mount a military operation in Rafah.

Source: Dawn News
 

Palestinian ministry slams Israel over new settlement plan​

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs says Israel’s claim to 800 hectares of land in the Jordan Valley is a “crime” that is part of an “official policy racing against time to annex the West Bank and eliminate the possibility of creating a Palestinian state”.

“There are no morals, values, principles or international resolutions that can stop the extremist right,” the ministry said in a statement according to Al Jazeera.

It added that the plan by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to develop hundreds of housing units near the Israeli settlement of Yafit was once again an indication that Israel “denies the existence of our people and incites their extermination and displacement”.

“Israel’s continued impunity provides the fascists with the necessary time to complete the slaughter and extermination of our people, the theft of their homeland and their displacement from it,” it said, adding that international complicity with Israel’s crimes was “the crime of the century”.

Source: Dawn News
 
US call at UN for Gaza truce linked to hostages blocked

Russia and China have blocked a US draft resolution put to the UN which for the first time called for a ceasefire and hostage releases in Gaza.

While there have been previous attempts by other countries to call for a ceasefire, the US text marked a hardening of its stance towards Israel.

But Russia and China used their veto. Moscow called the text "hypocritical".

The move by the US, Israel's key ally, comes at a time of growing tensions between them.

Washington has made clear that it expects Israel to lessen the intensity of its offensive in Gaza, where the Hamas-run health ministry says at least 31,988 people - mainly women and children - have been killed since the war began on 7 October.

It has also said it would not support an Israeli attack on the city of Rafah without a plan to protect civilians there, and has urged Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that Israel will go ahead with a planned ground assault on Rafah, even without the support of its key ally.

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, in Tel Aviv for talks, said such an operation was not the answer.

"It risks killing more civilians, it risks wreaking greater havoc with the provision of humanitarian assistance, it risks further isolating Israel around the world and jeopardising this long-term security and standing," he said.

The US - one of five permanent members of the Security Council with the power of veto - has previously blocked resolutions calling for a ceasefire, saying such a move would be wrong while delicate negotiations for a truce and hostage releases were continuing between Israel and Hamas.

But on Friday it publicly changed its position, in a carefully-worded draft.

"The Security Council," the text read, "determines the imperative of an immediate and sustained ceasefire", adding "and towards that end unequivocally supports ongoing international diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages".

In doing so, the US linked its support for a ceasefire to the release of the Israeli hostages - 253 - held by Hamas.

Although Russia and China vetoed the draft, 11 countries on the 15-member council voted in favour of it. Algeria voted against it and Guyana abstained.

Ahead of the vote, Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, criticised the text as "exceedingly politicised", accusing it of doing nothing to avert Israel's planned assault on Rafah.

More than half of Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians are sheltering in the southern city, where Israel says Hamas leaders are hiding and Hamas battalions still operate.

The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, called Russia and China's action "deeply, deeply cynical".

"Russia and China simply did not want to vote for a resolution that was penned by the United States, because it would rather see us fail than see this Council succeed," she said.

Speaking after talks with Mr Netanyahu, Mr Blinken said the US was trying to show the international community "a sense of urgency".

A ceasefire tied to the release of hostages, he said, was "something that everyone, including the countries that veto the resolution should have been able to get behind".



BBC
 
Five of the wounded Palestinians at the Gaza Strip’s Al-Shifa Hospital, which is being besieged by Israeli forces, have died, the enclave's health ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The medical facility is under siege for the sixth day in a row with no water, food nor health services, the ministry added.

Fighting raged on Saturday around Al-Shifa Hospital where Israel says it has so far killed more than 170 gunmen in an extensive raid.

The armed wing of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said their fighters were engaged in battles with the Israeli forces outside and around the vicinity of the hospital, though Hamas denies any presence inside the facility.

Israeli troops stormed Al-Shifa in the early hours of Monday morning and have been combing through the sprawling complex, which the military says is connected to a tunnel network used as a base for Hamas and other Palestinian fighters.

Source: Al Arabiya
 
The Bald Eagle said:
Five of the wounded Palestinians at the Gaza Strip’s Al-Shifa Hospital, which is being besieged by Israeli forces, have died, the enclave's health ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The medical facility is under siege for the sixth day in a row with no water, food nor health services, the ministry added.

Fighting raged on Saturday around Al-Shifa Hospital where Israel says it has so far killed more than 170 gunmen in an extensive raid.

The armed wing of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said their fighters were engaged in battles with the Israeli forces outside and around the vicinity of the hospital, though Hamas denies any presence inside the facility.

Israeli troops stormed Al-Shifa in the early hours of Monday morning and have been combing through the sprawling complex, which the military says is connected to a tunnel network used as a base for Hamas and other Palestinian fighters.

Source: Al Arabiya
Click to expand...
When will the curse of Israel be wiped out from the world?
 
'The choice is clear - surge or starvation': UN chief condemns blocked aid to Gaza on Ramadan visit

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has denounced aid being blocked from entering Gaza, describing the imminent risk of starvation as a "moral outrage".

"It's time to truly flood Gaza with life-saving aid. The choice is clear: either surge or starvation," Mr Guterres said on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border.

Almost half of Gaza's 2.3 million people are facing catastrophic food insecurity, with a risk of famine by the end of May if a ceasefire does not happen or if there is no sustained access to aid, according to a UN-backed report.

The UN secretary-general stood beside a long queue of trucks that international aid agencies and Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron have blamed on Israel. They claim some supplies have been stuck at the border for nearly three weeks.

Mr Guterres also renewed calls for an "immediate humanitarian ceasefire" - after more than 32,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel's military offensive, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.

In a statement, the UN head said it was time to "silence the guns" as Gazans "remain stuck in a non-stop nightmare".

He added: "Communities obliterated. Homes demolished. Entire families and generations wiped out. With hunger and starvation stalking the population. Any further onslaught will make everything worse."

Asked about Mr Guterres's concerns, Mr Netanyahu's office referred to a social media post by foreign minister Israel Katz, who accused the UN chief of allowing the organisation to become "antisemitic and anti-Israeli".

Mr Guterres's visit to the territory comes during Ramadan, with him demanding the immediate release of all Israeli hostages in the holy month's "spirit of compassion".

Netanyahu presses on with Rafah offensive

Hamas is still thought to be holding around 100 Israeli hostages, having already killed several since the 7 October attacks - during which 1,200 Israelis were killed.

It recently proposed a deal for a ceasefire, offering Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ignored Western concerns that an assault on Rafah, currently home to an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians, would "further isolate" his nation.

He said he made it "supremely clear" to US President Joe Biden he intended to go ahead with the offensive, believing Hamas's remaining battalions are hiding there.

Eight people were killed on Friday in an airstrike on a house in Al Naser, east of Rafah. And fighting raged on Saturday around Gaza's largest hospital, Shifa.

The Israel Defence Forces said it had killed more than 170 militants in the hospital since they began their raid five days ago, but Palestinian authorities described it as a "war crime" that led to multiple casualties.

Gaza's health ministry said hospital departments had been set alight with patients still inside, adding that the Israeli military had detained health workers, patients and relatives inside the complex.

SKY NEWS
 
Red Crescent says Israel army besieges two more Gaza hospitals

The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Sunday that Israeli forces were besieging two hospitals in southern Gaza, days after the army began targeting Hamas in and around the territory’s biggest medical center.

Israel has mounted several raids at and near hospitals in Gaza since the war began last October, claiming that fighters are operating in medical complexes — a charge denied by Hamas.

Military vehicles approached Nasser and Al-Amal hospitals in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis as heavy bombardment and gunfire echoed in the area, the Red Crescent said.

The medical organization said a volunteer worker at the hospital was killed by Israeli gunfire on Sunday.

In response to a request for comment on the Red Crescent’s accusation, the military said it was operating in the Al-Amal area and “is not currently operating in the hospitals.”

The Red Crescent said messages broadcast from drones demanded that everyone in Al-Amal leave naked, while forces blocked the gates of the hospital with dirt barriers.

“All of our crews are currently under extreme danger and cannot move at all,” the group added.

Israel’s military said it began an operation in the Al-Amal neighborhood “to continue dismantling terrorist infrastructure and eliminating terrorist operatives in the area.”

The military said the operation began with air force strikes on approximately 40 targets, including military compounds, tunnels and other “terror infrastructure.”

Israeli forces started a major operation early on Monday that is still going on, saying they were targeting Hamas fighters in and around Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa.

The raid, which Israel vowed will continue until the last fighter is in its hands, has killed some 170 militants, according to the Israeli military.

The military previously raided the facility last November, sparking international criticism.

Israel has also previously carried out operations around Al-Amal, with the Red Crescent in February saying the military had engaged in a multi-day siege of the facility.



Arab News
 
French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that any forced transfer of people from the southern Gaza city of Rafah would constitute "a war crime".

And he repeated his opposition to any Israeli military operation to fight Hamas in Rafah, where most of Gaza's population has taken shelter after months of fierce fighting in the besieged territory.

In a telephone call between the two leaders on Sunday, Macron also "strongly condemned" Israel's announcement Friday of the seizure of 800 hectares of land in the occupied West Bank for new settlements.


Brecorder
 
Yep its a two-headed devil
=====
Hamas says main battle with US as Israelis 'sidekick'

Campaigners stage action with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu riding a US missile ahead of a Gaza ceasefire vote at the Security Council, outside the UN headquarters in New York City on February 20, 2024.

A senior Hamas official says the Palestinian resistance group is fighting with the United States that is providing all-out support to Israel in its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

Mahmoud al-Mardawi made the remarks on Monday in an interview with Qatar-based Al-Araby TV, after Washington offered a compromise proposal during a new round of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas in Doha aimed at securing a Gaza truce deal.

“The American proposal is actually meant to divert public opinion. In fact, we are fighting with the US, which is providing the enemy with all-round military, financial, and political support,” he said.

“The Zionist enemy is actually obeying the will of the US government and we are not willing to negotiate directly with it.”

Mardawi also stressed that the Palestinian resistance will use every opportunity to end the genocide against the Palestinian people, adding, however, it will not stop defending the rights of the Palestinian nation.

The enemy only wants the freedom of its captives held in Gaza, but it is not possible without a ceasefire, he emphasized.

The Hamas official further said that Israel’s opposition to a permanent Gaza truce means that the regime is insisting on its crimes in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Source: Press TV
 

UN Security Council for first time demands immediate Gaza ceasefire as US abstains​


After more than five months of war, the UN Security Council for the first time Monday demanded an immediate ceasefire after the United States, Israel’s ally which vetoed previous drafts, abstained.

Drawing unusual applause in the often staid Security Council, all 14 other members voted in favor of the resolution which “demands an immediate ceasefire” for the ongoing Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

The resolution calls for the truce to lead to a “lasting, sustainable ceasefire” and demands that Hamas and other militants free hostages seized on October 7.

Russia at the last minute objected to the removal of the word “permanent” ceasefire and called a vote, which failed to gain passage.

The successful resolution was drafted in part by Algeria, the Arab bloc’s current member on the Security Council, with a diverse array of countries including Slovenia and Switzerland.

The United States has vetoed previous bids for a ceasefire but has shown growing frustration with Israel, including its stated plans to expand its military operation to the packed southern city of Rafah.

A change in tone toward its Middle Eastern ally was seen Friday, when the United States put forward a resolution to recognize “the imperative” of an “immediate and sustained ceasefire.”

But that text was blocked by Russia and China, which along with Arab states criticized it for stopping short of explicitly demanding Israel halt its campaign in Gaza.

The United States had repeatedly blocked ceasefire resolutions as it attempts to walk a line between supporting Israel with military aid and voicing frustration with leader Benjamin Netanyahu as the civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip mounts.

Unlike Friday’s text, the call for a ceasefire in the new resolution is not directly linked to ongoing talks, led by Qatar with support from the United States and Egypt, to halt fighting in return for Hamas releasing hostages.

Israel has criticized the Security Council for previous resolutions that have not specifically condemned Hamas.

The October 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group on Israel resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli figures.

The militants also seized 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes around 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 presumed dead.

Israel’s military campaign in response to eliminate Hamas has killed more than 32,000 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the territory.

The Security Council has been divided over the Israel-Hamas war since the October 7 attacks, only approving two of eight resolutions, which both mainly dealt with humanitarian aid.

And those resolutions seem to have had little effect on the ground, where UN personnel say Israel continues to block aid convoys as experts warn of looming famine.

 
FearlessRoar said:
After more than five months of war, the UN Security Council for the first time Monday demanded an immediate ceasefire after the United States, Israel’s ally which vetoed previous drafts, abstained.
Click to expand...
seems like they have achieved their target so no need to vito further resolutions.
 
Israel cancels Washington visit after US allows UN Gaza ceasefire resolution to pass

Tensions between the US and Israel were exposed on Monday when Washington stood aside and allowed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

The US decision to abstain on the vote prompted Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel a scheduled trip to the US by two of his top advisers, two Israeli officials said.

The US had previously vetoed similar resolutions calling for a ceasefire. Its position evolved last week when on Friday, it put forward a ceasefire resolution tied tied to the release of hostages. That resolution fell when it was vetoed by Russia and China. The US abstention on Monday’s vote allowed the latest resolution to pass, when the other 14 members of the 15-strong council voted yes.

The US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that while the latest resolution included edits requested by the US, Washington could not vote yes because it “did not agree with everything.”

“A ceasefire could have come about months ago if Hamas had been willing to release hostages,” the ambassador said, calling on members states and the UNSC to demand that Hamas “accepts the deal on the table.”

“Any ceasefire must come with the release of all hostages,” she added.

The resolution, put forward by the 10 non-permanent members of the Security Council, demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan, the immediate and unconditional release of hostages and “the urgent need to expand the flow” of aid into Gaza.



 
Soon after the UN Security Council resolution was passed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the US of a "clear retreat" from its previous position.

Here's the full statement from Netanyahu's office, just published on X:

"The United States has abandoned its policy in the UN today. Just a few days ago, it supported a Security Council resolution that linked a call for a ceasefire to the release of hostages.

"China and Russia vetoed that resolution partly because they opposed a ceasefire that was linked to the release of hostages. Yet today, Russia and China joined Algeria and others in supporting the new resolution precisely because it had no such linkage.

"Regrettably, the United States did not veto the new resolution, which calls for a ceasefire that is not contingent on the release of hostages. This constitutes a clear departure from the consistent US position in the Security Council since the beginning of the war.

"Today’s resolution gives Hamas hope that international pressure will force Israel to accept a ceasefire without the release of our hostages, thus harming both the war effort and the effort to release the hostages.

Quote Message: Prime Minister Netanyahu made it clear last night that should the US depart from its principled policy and not veto this harmful resolution, he will cancel the Israeli delegation's visit to the United States. In light of the change in the US position, Prime Minister Netanyahu decided that the delegation will remain in Israel."

BBC
 
Palestinian Islamist group Hamas said on Monday it has informed mediators that it will stick to its original proposal on reaching a comprehensive ceasefire, which includes the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and a return of displaced Palestinians.

It also demanded what it called "a real exchange of prisoners", referring to the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for Israeli hostages being held in Gaza.


Reuters
 
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would have reacted the same way Israel did after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, but that Israel was losing international support and should wrap up its war against the Islamist group in Gaza.

Hamas' killing spree through southern Israel, Trump said, was "one of the saddest things I've ever seen."

"That being said, you have to finish up your war. You have to finish it up, you got to get it done," he said.


Reuters
 
Israel cancels Washington meeting after UN Gaza ceasefire vote

Israel has cancelled a meeting in Washington after the US declined to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The resolution, which also called for the release of all hostages, followed several failed attempts at similar measures since the 7 October attacks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the US of having "abandoned" its previous policy.

The spat comes amid calls for urgent action to avert a famine in Gaza.

Since the start of the conflict, the US has used its veto power to block three Security Council resolutions calling for pauses in the fighting or a ceasefire. Another two have been vetoed by both Russia and China.

On Monday, the US abstained on a resolution that called for an "immediate" ceasefire for the rest of the month of Ramadan - two weeks - and the "immediate and unconditional release of all hostages".

The 14 other members of the council, including the UK, voted in favour, meaning the resolution passed.

Following the vote, Mr Netanyahu objected that the resolution did not make the call for a ceasefire conditional on the release of the hostages, as the US and Israel had both argued it should.

Israel believes Hamas and its allies are still holding about 130 hostages in Gaza, including 33 presumed dead.

"Today's resolution gives Hamas hope that international pressure will force Israel to accept a ceasefire without the release of our hostages, thus harming both the war effort and the effort to release the hostages," Mr Netanyahu's office said in a statement.

It added that, "in light of the change in the US position", a planned visit by an Israeli delegation to the US this week would not go ahead.

Israeli and US officials had been due to meet to discuss Israel's planned offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where some 1.5 million Palestinians have sought shelter, having fled the fighting elsewhere in Gaza.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said publicly that a ground operation in Rafah risks killing more civilians and is "not the way" to defeat Hamas.

Responding to the Israeli decision, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said it was "disappointing" but reiterated the US view that "a major ground offensive in Rafah would be a major mistake".

He added that scheduled meetings between Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan would go ahead as planned.

Yair Lapid, Israel's opposition leader and former prime minister, criticised Mr Netanyahu's decision, described the episode as "unnecessary" and said Mr Netanyahu had been "irresponsible".

"Bad for Israel. Bad for security, bad for the economy," he said on X, formerly Twitter.

"Sometimes you have to say 'no' to the Americans. Israel is indeed an independent country, and we do not need anyone's permission to defend ourselves. [But] it is better to keep the quarrels in closed rooms."

UN Security Council resolutions are widely considered to be legally binding on UN member states, although the US has said it does not consider Monday's vote to be binding on Israel.

Mr Gallant has said Israel will not stop the war in Gaza while hostages are still being held there. The hostages were seized when Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians.

The Palestinian representative to the UN, Riyad Mansour, welcomed the resolution but said it was overdue.

"It has taken six months, over 100,000 Palestinians killed and maimed, two million displaced, and famine, for this council to finally demand an immediate ceasefire," he said.

Hamas also welcomed the vote, saying it was ready "to engage in an immediate prisoner exchange process that leads to the release of prisoners on both sides".

Talks between Israeli and Hamas representatives continue via mediators in Qatar. Reports suggest that a deal currently being proposed would see 40 Israeli hostages released in exchange for 800 Palestinian prisoners.

Monday's resolution came amid huge concern over the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Last week, Mr Blinken warned that the entire population of Gaza was experiencing "severe levels of acute food insecurity".

The UN World Food Programme has also warned that, in Gaza's two northern governorates, famine is expected to set in by May unless the flow of aid into the territory is increased.

Following Monday's vote, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the resolution "must be implemented" and that "failure would be unforgivable".

Early on Tuesday, the British government announced that it had carried out its first airdrop of food into Gaza.

It said the Royal Air Force drop included 10 tonnes of supplies: water, rice, cooking oil, flour, tinned goods and baby formula.

It also repeated calls on Israel to allow more aid in via Gaza's ports and to open more land crossings into the territory.

BBC
 
The UN Security Council finally passed a resolution on Monday, demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during Ramazan, an unconditional release of prisoners, and urgent expansion of aid into the besieged Palestinian enclave.

The move garnered mixed reactions from supporters of Palestine on social media, with most people criticising it for being too little too late.

Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda took to Instagram to voice her “disappointment” regarding the resolution because “it is demanding an immediate ceasefire for two weeks”. Owda was referring to how the ceasefire is only going to last for the month of Ramazan, of which there are two weeks left.

She highlighted that the resolution did not discuss the release of the “7,000 Gazans taken by Israel since the beginning of the genocide”, a permanent ceasefire, or the return of Palestinians’ homes in Northern Gaza.

Owda continued that the UN only passed the resolution to bring back Israeli hostages. “This is a very disappointing resolution and that is why it was passed,” the journalist said.

Source: Dawn News
 
Pentagon chief says civilian death toll in Gaza ‘far too high’

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has told his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant that the civilian death toll is “far too high” in the Gaza Strip, a day after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution demanding a ceasefire in the war-torn Palestinian enclave.

Speaking at the start of a meeting with Gallant on Tuesday in Washington, DC, Austin said the amount of humanitarian aid reaching Gaza also remains “far too low”.

“Gaza is suffering a humanitarian catastrophe, and the situation is getting even worse,” the Pentagon chief said.

“And we need immediate increases in assistance to avert famine, and our work to open a temporary humanitarian corridor by sea will help, but the key is still expanding aid deliveries by land.”

Israel has blocked the entry of critical humanitarian assistance to Gaza, prompting warnings that the Palestinian territory is facing “famine-like conditions”.

Gallant’s trip to the US capital also came as the UN Security Council voted on Monday in favour of a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, where more than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its military offensive in early October.


www.aljazeera.com

Pentagon chief says civilian death toll in Gaza ‘far too high’

Lloyd Austin tells Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant that humanitarian aid reaching Palestinian enclave ‘far too low’.
www.aljazeera.com www.aljazeera.com
 

Israel truce team leaves Doha, official blames Hamas for 'dead end'​

JERUSALEM, March 26 (Reuters) - Israel has recalled its negotiators from Doha after deeming mediated talks on a Gaza truce "at a dead end" due to demands by Hamas, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday.

The official, who is close to the Mossad spymaster heading up the talks, accused Hamas' Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar of sabotaging the diplomacy "as part of a wider effort to inflame this war over Ramadan".

The warring sides had stepped up negotiations, mediated by Qatar and Egypt, on a six-week suspension of Israel's offensive in return for the proposed release of 40 of the 130 hostages still held by the Palestinian militant group in Gaza.

Hamas has sought to parlay any deal into an end to the fighting and withdrawal of Israeli forces. Israel has ruled this out, saying it would eventually resume efforts to dismantle the governance and military capabilities of Hamas.

Hamas also wants hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled Gaza City and surrounding areas southward during the first stage of the almost six-month-old war to be allowed back north.

The Israeli official said that Israel had agreed to double the number of Palestinians it would release in exchange for the hostages to 700-800 prisoners and allow some displaced Palestinians to return to northern Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Tuesday that Hamas had made "delusional" demands, which it said showed the Palestinians were not interested in a deal.

In Tel Aviv, a crowd of around 300 family members of hostages and their supporters gathered outside the Israeli defence headquarters demanding a deal be done to release the captives. Some locked themselves inside cages in protest, holding placards with photos of their loved ones. "No price is too high," one of the signs said.

Source: Reuters
 
Gazans reportedly drown after rush for aid drop in sea

Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office says 18 Palestinians have been killed while trying to collect desperately-needed aid that was airdropped over northern Gaza.

Twelve people drowned when they went into the sea to retrieve food packages, the other six were trampled to death in “stampedes” when other aid packages landed on the ground, a statement said.

It calls for “an immediate end" to airdrops, calling them "offensive, wrong, inappropriate and useless".

Video, obtained by Reuters, has emerged of Palestinians rushing to the coast after aid was dropped at a beach near the northern town of Beit Lahia on Monday.

It shows people running as dozens of aid packages attached to parachutes float down near the coast.

Israel - which is under pressure to allow more aid into Gaza via land - says it facilitated airdrops of 159 one-tonne packages of aid over northern Gaza on Monday.

The US says two C-17 aircraft dropped 46,000 "meals ready to eat" (MREs) over the north on Monday, while the UK says one of its A400M aircraft dropped 10 tonnes of water, rice, cooking oil, flour, tinned goods and baby formula.

Humanitarian organisations have warned that airdrops cannot meet the soaring need for food and the strategy has sparked considerable discussion.

BBC
 
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says Iran has a fixed policy of providing support to Palestine and the people in Gaza who have been suffering from brutal Israeli aggression for nearly six months.

Ayatollah Khamenei made the remarks in a meeting in Tehran on Tuesday with a Palestinian resistance movement Hamas delegation led by the group’s politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran would never hesitate to support the Palestinian cause and the oppressed and resilient people of Gaza,” he said.

Ayatollah Khamenei: The historic patience of the people of Gaza in the face of the crimes and savagery of the Zionist regime, fully supported by the West, is a great phenomenon that has turned the issue of Palestine into a global priority.

The Leader praised the people of Gaza for the “historic patience” they have shown in the face of Israeli aggression, saying the patience has become a source of dignity and pride for Islam and the Muslims.

“The huge phenomenon of the patience of people in Gaza has turned the issue of Palestine into the world’s dominant issue despite the will of the enemy,” he said.

Ayatollah Khamenei: The Islamic Republic of Iran will not hesitate in supporting the cause of Palestine and the oppressed and resilient people of Gaza.

Ayatollah Khamenei also paid tribute to Saleh al-Arouri, a member of the Hamas political bureau, who was assassinated in the Lebanese capital Beirut in January in a drone attack attributed to the Israeli regime.

In the meeting, Haniyeh thanked the Iranian government and the nation for the support they have provided to the Palestinian cause and the people in Gaza during the ongoing war.

He also briefed Ayatollah Khamenei about the latest political developments surrounding the war in Gaza and the situation on the ground.

Source: Press TV
 

and athiest/other religion's people are dumb to take it as some disputed territory issue .
 
Israeli strikes on Rafah raise fear ground assault could begin

Israel bombed at least four homes in Rafah on Wednesday, raising new fear among the more than a million Palestinians sheltering in the last refuge on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip that a long-threatened ground assault could be coming.

One of the airstrikes killed 11 people from a single family, health officials said.

Mussa Dhaheer, looking on from below as neighbours helped an emergency worker lower a victim in a black body bag from an upper storey, said he had awakened to the blast, kissed his terrified daughter, and rushed outside to find the destruction. His father, 75, and mother, 62, were among the dead.

"I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. I can't make sense of what happened. My parents. My father with his displaced friends who came from Gaza City," he told Reuters.

"They were all together, when suddenly they were all gone like dust."

At another bomb site, Jamil Abu Houri said the intensification of air strikes was Israel's way of showing its disdain for a U.N. Security Council resolution last week demanding an immediate Israel-Hamas ceasefire.

Next up, he fears a ground assault on Rafah, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to carry out despite warnings from closest ally Washington that this would wreak a humanitarian disaster.

"The bombing has increased, and they have threatened us with an incursion, and they say that have been given the green light for the Rafah incursion. Where is the Security Council?" Abu Houri said.

A U.S. official said on Wednesday Israel had asked to reschedule a meeting in Washington to discuss its plans for Rafah, days after Netanyahu abruptly cancelled the talks over the passage of a Gaza ceasefire resolution by the U.N. Security Council that the U.S. decided not to veto.

The U.S. abstention from the vote pointed to frustration with Netanyahu, who rebuked Washington over the move.

MORE DEADLY AIRSTRIKES

Another Israeli airstrike in Rafah on Wednesday afternoon killed four Palestinians including a woman and a child and injured other residents, Gaza health authorities said.

Just west of Gaza City in the enclave's north, seven people were killed in an airstrike on a house, health officials said.

The Israeli military says it is targeting armed Hamas militants who use civilian buildings, including apartment blocks and hospitals, for cover. Hamas denies doing so.

Separately, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where bloodshed has worsened in parallel with the Gaza war, three Palestinians were killed and four wounded by Israeli fire during a raid in Jenin overnight, the Palestinian health ministry said.

At least 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's air and ground offensive into Hamas-run Gaza, according to the health ministry there, with thousands of other dead believed buried under rubble and over 80% of the 2.3 million population displaced, many at risk of famine.

The war erupted after Islamist Hamas militants broke through the border on Oct. 7 and rampaged through nearby communities, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253 hostages according to Israeli tallies.

Israeli forces just north of Rafah kept the two main hospitals in Khan Younis, Al-Amal and Nasser Hospital, under a blockade imposed late last week. In the north, they were still operating inside Al Shifa, the enclave's largest hospital, which they stormed more than a week ago.

Israel says the hospitals have been lairs for Hamas gunmen, which Hamas and medical staff deny. The Israeli military has said it killed and captured hundreds of fighters in a battle in Al Shifa. Hamas says civilians and medics were rounded up.

Gaza's health ministry said wounded people and patients were being held inside Al Shifa's human resources department that was not equipped to provide them with healthcare.

Residents living nearby have reported hearing constant explosions in and around Al Shifa and columns of smoke coming from buildings inside the premises.

International mediation has failed to secure a ceasefire and exchange of prisoners so far as the two sides stick to irreconcilable demands. Hamas wants an end to the war and total Israeli withdrawal from Gaza while Israel has vowed to keep fighting until its Islamist foe is eradicated.

SOURCE: REUTERS
 

Palestinian Authority announces a new Cabinet amid Israeli assault on Gaza​

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has announced the formation of a new Cabinet as it faces international pressure to reform.

President Mahmoud Abbas, who has led the PA for nearly two decades, announced the new government in a presidential decree on Thursday.

Abbas tapped Mohammad Mustafa, a longtime adviser, to be prime minister earlier this month. He replaced Mohammed Shtayyeh, who, along with his government, resigned in February citing the need for change amid Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and escalating violence in the occupied West Bank.

Mustafa is a politically independent US-educated economist and has pledged to form a technocratic government and create an independent trust fund to help rebuild Gaza. Mustafa will also serve as foreign minister.

Interior Minister Ziad Hab al-Rih is a member of Abbas’s secular Fatah movement and held the same portfolio in the previous government. The Interior Ministry oversees the security forces. The incoming minister for Jerusalem affairs, Ashraf al-Awar, registered to run as a Fatah candidate in elections in 2021 that were indefinitely delayed.

At least five of the incoming 23 ministers are from Gaza, but it was not immediately clear if they are still in the besieged territory.

The PA administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and is dominated by Abbas’s Fatah party. Fatah has long had a strained relationship with Hamas, the group that runs Gaza, and the two factions fought a brief war before Fatah was expelled from the territory in 2007.

The PA has little popular support or legitimacy among Palestinians, in part because it has not held elections in 18 years. Its policy of cooperating with Israel on security matters is extremely unpopular and has led many Palestinians to view it as a subcontractor of the occupation.

The provisional self-governing authority has also been unable to prevent Israeli occupation from expanding, including stopping Israel’s illegal settlement expansion project, home demolition orders and widescale arrests.

It has struggled to address major concerns about the status of Jerusalem – the eastern half of which remains occupied by Israel – as well as Palestinian refugees and the right of return.

Opinion polls in recent years have consistently found that a vast majority of Palestinians want the 88-year-old Abbas to resign.

The United States has called for a revitalised PA to administer Gaza after the Israeli war on the territory ends.
More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli assault on Gaza since October 7, according to Palestinian authorities. More than 80 percent of its 2.3 million population has been displaced and are in desperate need of aid, and swaths of the enclave now lie in rubble.

Israel has rejected the US plan, saying it will maintain open-ended security control over Gaza and partner with Palestinians who are not affiliated with the PA or Hamas.

Mustafa said in a cabinet statement addressed to Abbas that the first national priority is an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and a complete Israeli withdrawal from the enclave, in addition to allowing humanitarian aid to enter in large quantities and reaching all areas, WAFA reported.

“In order to enable the launch of the recovery process and preparation for reconstruction, stop the aggression and settlement activities, and curb settlers’ terrorism in the West Bank,” Mustafa added.

Hamas has rejected the formation of the new government as illegitimate, calling instead for all Palestinian factions, including Fatah, to form a power-sharing government ahead of national elections.

Fatah and Hamas have attempted several times in the past to form a unity government, but the attempts have so far been fruitless.

www.aljazeera.com

Palestinian Authority announces a new Cabinet amid Israeli assault on Gaza

Mahmoud Abbas has announced a new interim government as calls grow for a revitalised and reformed PA.
www.aljazeera.com www.aljazeera.com
 
This is not the time for all these things. The people are suffering. This is the time to achieve freedom once and for all.
 
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has announced the formation of a new Cabinet as it faces international pressure to reform.

President Mahmoud Abbas, who has led the PA for nearly two decades, announced the new government in a presidential decree on Thursday.

Abbas tapped Mohammad Mustafa, a longtime adviser, to be prime minister earlier this month. He replaced Mohammed Shtayyeh, who, along with his government, resigned in February citing the need for change amid Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and escalating violence in the occupied West Bank.

Mustafa is a politically independent US-educated economist and has pledged to form a technocratic government and create an independent trust fund to help rebuild Gaza. Mustafa will also serve as foreign minister.

Interior Minister Ziad Hab al-Rih is a member of Abbas’s secular Fatah movement and held the same portfolio in the previous government. The Interior Ministry oversees the security forces. The incoming minister for Jerusalem affairs, Ashraf al-Awar, registered to run as a Fatah candidate in elections in 2021 that were indefinitely delayed.

At least five of the incoming 23 ministers are from Gaza, but it was not immediately clear if they are still in the besieged territory.

The PA administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and is dominated by Abbas’s Fatah party. Fatah has long had a strained relationship with Hamas, the group that runs Gaza, and the two factions fought a brief war before Fatah was expelled from the territory in 2007.

The PA has little popular support or legitimacy among Palestinians, in part because it has not held elections in 18 years. Its policy of cooperating with Israel on security matters is extremely unpopular and has led many Palestinians to view it as a subcontractor of the occupation.

Source: Al Jazeera
 
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