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

Britain sanctions Israeli groups, individuals for violence in West Bank

The UK has imposed sanctions on two “extremist” groups and four individuals in Israel who it blamed for violence in the West Bank, Reuters reports.

The UK Foreign Office named Hilltop Youth and Lehava as two groups which it said were known to have supported, incited and promoted violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank. The four individuals sanctioned were responsible for human rights abuses against these communities, the statement added.

Among them are Noam Federman, who has trained settler groups in committing violence and Elisha Yered, who has justified killing Palestinians on religious grounds.

British foreign minister David Cameron said extremist settlers were undermining security and stability and threatening the prospects for peace.

“The Israeli authorities must clamp down on those responsible. The UK will not hesitate to take further action if needed, including through further sanctions,” he said.

Those sanctioned will be subject to financial and travel restrictions.

Source: AFP
 
Palestinian doctor dies in Israeli prison

A Palestinian doctor has died in an Israeli prison after more than four months in detention, Palestinian prisoner associations have said.

Dr Adnan Al-Bursh, 50, was the head of orthopaedics at al-Shifa Hospital.

The Israeli prison service confirmed that a statement published on 19 April about a prisoner who was detained for national security reasons and had died in Ofer prison was Dr Al-Bursh.

No details were given on the cause of death, and the prison service said the incident was being investigated.

But the Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups said in a joint statement on Thursday that Dr Al-Bursh's death was an "assassination" and his body still remained in Israeli custody.

Dr Al-Bursh was the head of orthopaedics at Gaza's largest medical facility, al-Shifa hospital, which has been raided several times by Israeli armed forces.

He was temporarily working at Al-Awada hospital in north Gaza when he was detained by Israeli forces.


www.bbc.com

Israel-Gaza: Palestinian doctor dies in Israeli prison

Israeli authorities said they were investigating the death of orthopaedic surgeon Dr Adnan Al-Bursh.
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Palestinian employee of German development agency ‘abused’ in Israeli jail

A Palestinian employee of Germany’s state-funded development agency has been imprisoned in Israel for more than a month, where she has been beaten and subject to abusive and humiliating treatment, her family members and lawyer say.

Baraa Odeh, 34, works for the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), and was detained by Israeli border guards on March 5 while returning to her home in Ramallah from a work trip to Germany.

She has since been sentenced to three months of administrative detention without charge.

Neither her husband, who is a German national, nor her family have had direct contact with Odeh since her arrest.


www.aljazeera.com

Palestinian employee of German development agency ‘abused’ in Israeli jail

Baraa Odeh has told her lawyer from prison that she has been repeatedly strip-searched and physically assaulted.
www.aljazeera.com www.aljazeera.com
 
According to reports, Hamas are about to accept the ceasefire proposal.

The nightmare may be ending soon.
 
Finally the world is awakening against the atrocities of the apartheid regime
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An outburst of pro-Palestinian protests and clashes with law enforcement on US college campuses has dominated headlines, and started conversations among diplomats scrambling to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Middle East.

It puts US President Joe Biden in a new kind of domestic political bind.

He is caught between a left flank that is demanding peace, and Americans concerned that the unrest is disrupting university education and posing a threat to civil order.

A message scrawled on a tent at a refugee camp in Rafah, the beleaguered southern Gaza Strip city, captured exactly how far word of recent US campus protests has travelled.

“Thank you students for Columbia,” it read. “Thank you. Thank You. Thank you.”

Other tents had similar messages of gratitude and solidarity, captured in video and photographs by American journalists on the scene.

Over the past several weeks, police have arrested more than 2,000 protesters on dozens of college campuses across the US.

Late Tuesday night at the University of California Los Angeles, a masked pro-Israeli group assaulted a pro-Palestinian student protest camp, before officers were called to the campus. Classes were cancelled. On Thursday, California police cleared the pro-Palestinian encampment.

A similar scene played out at Columbia University, as New York City police in riot gear forcibly removed protesters who had barricaded themselves into an academic building and cleared that college's pro-Palestinian camp.

Source: BBC
 
Latest round of Gaza truce talks expected in Egypt

Negotiators seeking to halt the devastating seven-month war have proposed a 40-day pause in the fighting and an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, according to details released by Britain.

Qatari, Egyptian and US mediators met a Hamas delegation in Cairo on Saturday and a senior Hamas source close to the negotiations told AFP there would be "a new round" of talks on Sunday.

Each side blamed the other for stalled negotiations, with a senior Hamas official insisting late Saturday that the group would "not agree under any circumstances" to a truce that did not explicitly include a complete end to the war, including Israel's withdrawal from Gaza.

The official, who asked not to be named, condemned Israeli efforts to secure a hostage-release deal "without linking it to ending the aggression on Gaza". He accused Netanyahu of "personally hindering" efforts to reach a truce due to "personal interests".

A top Israeli official said earlier that Hamas was "thwarting the possibility of reaching an agreement" by refusing to give up its demand for an end to the war.

Israel has not agreed to any guarantees that the war will end, the official told AFP in Jerusalem.

Despite months of shuttle diplomacy, mediators have failed to broker a new truce like the week-long ceasefire that saw 105 hostages released last November in exchange for Palestinians held by Israel.

Previous negotiations stalled in part due to Hamas's demand for a lasting ceasefire and Netanyahu's repeated vows to crush the group's remaining fighters in the southern city of Rafah, which is flooded with displaced civilians.

Israel has yet to send a delegation to Cairo. The Israeli official said it would do so only if there was "positive movement" on the proposed framework.

"Tough and long negotiations are expected for an actual deal," the official added.

'Full-blown famine'

The war broke out following Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel's retaliatory offensive against Hamas has killed at least 34,654 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.

The United Nations has warned of a "full-blown famine" in northern Gaza.

"There is famine, full-blown famine in the north and it's moving its way south," Cindy McCain, executive director of the World Food Programme, said in an interview excerpt published Friday.

The World Health Organization said Friday that the availability of food in the Gaza Strip had very slightly improved in the besieged Palestinian territory, which is home to 2.4 million people.

The United Nations says more than 70 percent of Gaza's residential buildings have been completely or partly destroyed, and rebuilding will require an effort unseen since the aftermath of World War II.

Accepting a truce deal with Israel should be a "no-brainer" for Hamas, who are "the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire", US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said late Friday.

US President Joe Biden has come under mounting domestic pressure to leverage more concessions from Netanyahu's government over its conduct of the war.

A letter signed by 88 members of Congress from Biden's Democratic Party expressed serious concern over Israel's "deliberate withholding" of aid for Palestinian civilians and urged Biden to consider halting arms sales unless Israel's conduct changes.

At US urging, Israel has facilitated more aid deliveries into Gaza in recent days but UN agencies say that has not averted the advancing famine.

Rafah 'bloodbath'

The prospect of an assault on Rafah has sparked deepening international concern.

The senior Hamas official on Saturday said Israel would bear "full responsibility for insisting on entering Rafah instead of ceasing the aggression".

The WHO says 1.2 million people, half of the Gaza Strip's population, are sheltering in Rafah.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Friday warned that "a full-scale military operation in Rafah... could lead to a bloodbath".

The war in Gaza has also triggered a surge in violence in the already restive occupied West Bank, where Israel said on Saturday its troops killed five Palestinian "terrorists" during a 12-hour siege near Tulkarem.

Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, reported the death of three fighters, including its Tulkarem chief Alaa Adib.

At least 496 Palestinians have been killed in the territory by Israeli troops or settlers since October 7, according to an AFP tally.

Student protests against the war have erupted in Europe and North America, with demonstrators gathering on at least 40 US university campuses since mid-April.

In recent days, police have forcibly dismantled several student sit-ins, including one at New York University at the request of its administrators.

At the University of California, Los Angeles, hundreds of police emptied a camp, tearing down barriers and detaining more than 200 protesters.

SOURCE: AFP
 
Israel-Gaza war: Tens of thousands rally for hostage deal as Gaza ceasefire talks continue

Tens of thousands of Israelis rallied late into the night calling for a deal to bring hostages home, ahead of further ceasefire talks.

Protesters in Tel Aviv chanted "war is not holy, life is", with some accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of aiming to prolong the conflict in Gaza.

It came as a Hamas delegation met mediators in Egypt on Saturday.

The group said there were no new developments, but added "a new round will begin" on Sunday.

Negotiators have resumed long-running ceasefire talks in Cairo - brokered by Egypt and Qatar - on pausing Israel's offensive in Gaza in return for freeing hostages.

The main sticking point appears to be whether the deal would be temporary or permanent.

It is thought the wording being discussed involves a 40-day pause in fighting while hostages are released, and the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails.

An adviser to the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the group was looking at the latest proposal with "full seriousness".

But he repeated a demand that any deal would have to explicitly include an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and complete end to the war.

In an interview with the BBC, Israeli minister Amichai Chikli said the war will continue "until Hamas is eliminated". "We don't have the option to agree to a deal that includes ending the war or giving up a full-scale operation in Rafah," he added.

Separately, an anonymous Israeli government official told local media on Saturday that Israel would "under no circumstances agree to end the war as part of an agreement to free our abductees".

They added: "The IDF will enter Rafah and destroy the remaining Hamas battalions there - whether there is a temporary pause to free our captives or not."

Mr Netanyahu has faced pressure from within his far-right coalition to press ahead with the long-promised offensive in Gaza's southern-most city, where an estimated 1.4 million people have taken shelter after fleeing fighting in northern and central parts of the strip.

The US - Israel's biggest diplomatic and military ally - is reluctant to back a new offensive that could cause significant civilian casualties, and has insisted on seeing a plan to protect displaced Palestinians first.

Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted his forces will press ahead with a ground offensive in Rafah

Saturday's demonstrations in Israel were the latest display of the increased domestic pressure Mr Netanyahu is facing to secure the return of the hostages.

Of the 252 who were kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October, 128 are still unaccounted for - and among them, at least 34 are presumed dead.

Natalie Eldor, a protester in Tel Aviv, told Reuters news agency she was there to "support a deal now, yesterday".

"We need to bring all the hostages back, the live ones, the dead ones. We got to bring them back. We got to switch this government," she added.

Some who gathered at the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv accused the prime minister of undermining the proposed truce, while others called for an end to the war.

Addressing the prospects of a truce on Saturday, minister Benny Gantz, a member of Israel's war cabinet, said: "An official response to the outline has not yet been received. When accepted - the war management cabinet will meet and discuss it.

"Until then, I suggest to the 'political sources' and all decision-makers to wait for official updates, to act calmly and not to get into hysteria for political reasons."

Ceasefire talks have gone on for months without a breakthrough, and there has not been a pause in fighting or a release of hostages since the end of November.

There have been moments at which a new agreement has seemed imminent - only to fall through before being signed.

A source familiar with this latest round of discussions told the BBC that the negotiations were still complex, and any breakthrough could still take several days.

Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations' World Food Programme has warned that northern Gaza is now experiencing a "full-blown famine".

Cindy McCain warned the catastrophic situation in the territory was spreading south in an interview with US media.

"What we are asking for and what we've continually asked for is a ceasefire and the ability to have unfettered access to get in safe," Ms McCain said.

The war began after waves of Hamas gunmen stormed across Gaza's border into Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages. The group is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by many Western countries.

During the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza, more than 34,600 Palestinians have been killed and over 77,900 wounded, according to figures from the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

BBC
 
Several people have been wounded in a rocket attack from Gaza targeting the Kerem Shalom Jewish statement in southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities.

Al Jazeera
 
Israel shuts Kerem Shalom crossing after Hamas fires rockets

Israel has closed the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza after Hamas fired rockets from within the strip.

At least 10 people were injured, some seriously, Israeli media report.

The crossing is one of the few routes to get humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, into Gaza.

Mediators in the Egypt have held two days of talks aimed at securing a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages held by Hamas.

In a statement, Hamas said the latest round had ended on Sunday and that its delegation would now travel from Cairo to Qatar to consult with the group's leadership.


www.bbc.com

Israel-Gaza war: Israel shuts Kerem Shalom crossing after Hamas fires rockets

Israeli media report 10 people were injured as Hamas fired rockets at the Kerem Shalom crossing.
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Hamas armed wing claims responsibility for deadly attack on Israel-Gaza crossing

The armed wing of Palestinian Islamist group Hamas claimed responsibility on Sunday for an attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza that Israel said killed three of its soldiers.

Israel's military said 10 projectiles were launched from Rafah in southern Gaza towards the area of the crossing, which it said was now closed to aid trucks going into the coastal enclave. Other crossings remained open.

Hamas' armed wing said it fired rockets at an Israeli army base by the crossing, but did not confirm where it fired them from. Hamas media quoted a source close to the group as saying the commercial crossing was not the target.

More than a million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah, near the border with Egypt.

Shortly after the Hamas attack, an Israeli airstrike hit a house in Rafah killing three people and wounding several, Palestinian medics said.

The Israeli military confirmed the counter-strike, saying it struck the launcher from which the Hamas projectiles were fired, as well as a nearby "military structure".

"The launches carried out by Hamas adjacent to the Rafah Crossing ... are a clear example of the terrorist organisation's systematic exploitation of humanitarian facilities and spaces, and their continued use of the Gazan civilian population as human shields," it said.

Hamas denies it uses civilians as human shields.

Israel has vowed to enter the southern Gaza city and flush out Hamas forces there, but has faced mounting pressure to hold fire as the operation could derail fragile humanitarian efforts in Gaza and endanger many more lives.

Sunday's attack on the crossing came as hopes dimmed for ceasefire talks under way in Cairo.

The war began after Hamas stunned Israel with a cross-border raid on Oct. 7 in which 1,200 people were killed and 252 hostages taken, according to Israeli tallies.


Reuters
 
1.8 Million More Palestinians Doomed to Poverty if Gaza War Persists

Nearly seven months into the Gaza war, the UN warns that to rebuild and restore the buildings lost in this period, it would take several decades, and to revitalize Palestine’s economy, it would be a great undertaking. Meanwhile, the great losses in housing and public services and the economic stall only threaten to push even more Palestinians into poverty.

Last week, the UNDP and the Economic and Social Commission in Western Asia (ESCWA) released an update to their joint report, ‘The Gaza War: Expected Socio-Economic Impacts on the State of Palestine,’ first released in November 2023. The initial report projected that the war would see a projected loss of over 12 percent in Palestine’s GDP and an increase in the poverty rate of over 25 percent if it persisted for a three-month period as metrics for the losses that the state of Palestine would incur as a result of the war.

The latest report reveals the predicted losses that Palestine will suffer after nine months of the conflict. According to projections that estimate the war’s duration up to a nine-month period, the poverty rate could exceed 60 percent. As Director of the Regional Bureau for the Arab States for UNDP Abdallah Al Dadari explained to reporters, an additional 1.8 million people have fallen into poverty in Palestine since the beginning of the war.

Under the UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), it’s projected that at six months, Palestine will have seen a significant drop, reaching 0.677 compared to 0.716 in 2022, which sets back human development by 17 years. This will only decrease based on certain metrics, such as reduced life expectancy, a decline in the gross national income (GNI), and reduced years of schooling.

In Gaza alone, the setback in development exceeds more than 30 years under this scenario, as it suffered a drop of 0.598 percent in 2023, compared to 0.705 percent in 2022. Should the war persist for nine months, the HDI will likely see a decrease of 0.551 percent, which sets Gaza back to the 1980s.

Almost all economic activities in Gaza have taken a sharp decline since the start of the war, the report stated, with all major sectors reporting significant losses during the last quarter of 2023. This has had ripple effects across the entire occupied Palestinian territory. The unemployment rate in Palestine reached 57 percent in the first quarter of 2024, as over 507,000 jobs were lost across the territory, including 160,000 workers from the West Bank.

Palestine’s GDP has also declined by 22.5 percent for the year 2023 and could further decrease by 51 percent in 2024. The war has undoubtedly aggravated the socioeconomic costs that will impact post-war recovery and development across the state of Palestine.

Source: Global Issues.Org
 

Israel urges Palestinians to evacuate Rafah ahead of expected ground operation in Hamas stronghold​


Israel is preparing to launch what is expected to be a massive ground operation inside Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where some 1.5 million Palestinians have taken shelter. The Israeli army has begun ordering tens of thousands of Palestinians living in the city to evacuate.

On Monday, Israel’s Defense Forces ordered an evacuation of Rafah, signaling that a long-promised ground operation could be imminent. The Israeli army has described Rafah as the last significant Hamas stronghold after seven months of war, and its leaders have repeatedly said clearing Rafah is necessary to defeat the Islamic militant group.

Overnight, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that Israel was left with no choice but to act in Rafah after Hamas terrorists carried out a deadly rocket attack from Rafah earlier in the day that left four Israeli soldiers dead.

A potential ground operation comes as last-ditch efforts by international mediators, including the CIA, to broker a cease-fire have failed to produce a deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to carry out a military operation in Rafah. According to Israel’s army, forces are beginning with a "limited scope operation."

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an army spokesman, said some 100,000 people were being ordered to move to a nearby Israel-declared humanitarian zone called Muwasi. He said Israel published a map of the evacuation area.

These orders have been issued through air-dropped leaflets, text messages and radio broadcasts so that Palestinians could get the information.

"Anyone found near (militant) organizations endangers themselves and their family members. For your safety, the (army) urges you to evacuate immediately to the expanded humanitarian area," one flyer read.

He said Israel has expanded humanitarian aid into Muwasi, including field hospitals, tents, food and water.

Israel's army said on the social media platform X that it would act with "extreme force" against Hamas terrorists, and urged the population to evacuate immediately for their safety.

The move also comes as the Biden administration reportedly put a hold on a shipment of U.S.-manufactured ammunition to Israel for the first time since the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack.

Two Israeli officials told Axios that the weapons shipment was stopped last week, leaving officials within the Israeli government scrambling to understand why.

About 1.5 million Palestinians – more than half of Gaza's population – are sheltering in Rafah, as they have been forced to evacuate other areas in the Gaza Strip, amid Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas.

www.foxnews.com

Israel urges Palestinians to evacuate Rafah ahead of expected ground operation in Hamas stronghold

Israel is preparing to carry out a military operation in Rafah, Hamas's last stronghold in southern Gaza, amid its war with the terror group.
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Number of soldiers killed in Kerem Shalom crossing attack rises to four: Army​


The number of Israeli soldiers killed in a rocket attack launched from the besieged Gaza Strip towards the Kerem Shalom border crossing has risen to four, the military announced Monday, updating an earlier figure.

The military did not specify whether the soldier was among the 12 servicemen wounded in the attack on Sunday.

The military said on Sunday that three soldiers were killed in the attack, which was claimed later by the armed wing of Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The soldiers were hit while guarding heavy machinery, tanks and bulldozers that were stationed in the area.

The attack prompted the Israeli authorities to close the crossing, a key gateway for vital humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The military said 14 rockets were fired at the crossing from an area adjacent to the Rafah crossing.

 

Saudi Arabia warns Israel against targeting Rafah​


Saudi Arabia warns Israel against targeting Rafah as part of what it calls a “bloody and systematic” campaign to storm all areas of Gaza and displace its citizens, the foreign ministry says in a statement.

www.timesofisrael.com

Saudi Arabia warns Israel against targeting Rafah

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www.timesofisrael.com www.timesofisrael.com
 
The Israeli terrorists , the empire of blood Americans have gone total lunatic, if it’s possible .

Very desperate now to enter Rafah to commit murdering thousands in cold blood .

No people In history have show courage like these Palestinians, they won’t run off now .

It’s not nice to say as I live here but the world needs the uk & USA to collapse as any sort of powers or it will eventually lead to world war . Israel is their outpost of evil , it can only survive with their support .
 
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Hamas says it has approved a ceasefire deal for Gaza put forward by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

It is not yet known exactly what the group has agreed to - and whether Israel will give its backing to the plan.

The announcement comes as Israel has urged 100,000 Palestinians to leave eastern Rafah ahead of a "limited" military operation.


BBC
 

Israel says Hamas decision to accept ceasefire deal is a 'ruse'​

Hamas says it has accepted a ceasefire deal proposed by Egypt and Qatar - as Israel suggests it will not accept the proposal in its current form.

The Palestinian militant group has issued a statement saying its supreme leader, Ismail Haniyeh, had expressed his agreement in a phone call with Qatar's prime minister and Egypt's intelligence minister.

Mr Haniyeh said in a call with Qatar's head of state that Israel should "seize the moment" and accept the proposal.

It comes as Iran's foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian said Mr Haniyeh told him the "ball is now in Israel's court".

A Hamas official has said the group will send a delegation to visit the Egyptian capital Cairo to discuss the ceasefire proposal and the next steps.

However, an Israeli official has said Hamas has agreed to a "softened" proposal which is "not acceptable to Israel".

The official added that Hamas' announcement "appears to be a ruse to cast Israel as the side refusing a deal".

Egypt and Qatar have been mediating months of talks between Hamas and Israel.

news.sky.com

Israel says Hamas decision to accept ceasefire deal is a 'ruse'

Hamas has called on Israel to "seize the moment" after agreeing to a ceasefire deal that would pause the fighting in Gaza - but an Israeli official has said the "softened" proposal is "not acceptable".
news.sky.com news.sky.com
 
Israel begins ‘targeted’ strikes against Hamas in Rafah

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has begun conducting what it describes as "targeted strikes" against Hamas operatives in eastern Rafah, a city located in the southern Gaza Strip where more than 1 million civilians from other parts of Gaza are sheltering.

Per the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the War Cabinet has unanimously decided that Israel would continue exerting "military pressure" on Hamas in Rafah to promote the release of hostages and the other goals of the war."

Israel announced earlier Monday it was ordering around 100,000 Palestinians to begin evacuating from Rafah, following a statement from Hamas that it had accepted an Egyptian-Qatari proposal for a cease-fire to halt the seven-month-long war with Israel in Gaza.


www.foxnews.com

Israel begins ‘targeted’ strikes against Hamas in Rafah

The IDF has begun conducting “targeted strikes" against Hamas operatives in Rafah, a city located in the southern Gaza Strip where more than 1 million civilians are sheltering.
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Israel criticises terms of Gaza ceasefire with Hamas but talks go on

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has said a proposal for a new Gaza ceasefire is "far from Israel's basic requirements" but negotiations will continue.

His comments came after Hamas said it had accepted the truce terms offered by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

"The ball is now in Israel's court," an official in the Palestinian group said.

Overnight, Israeli forces and tanks were seen near the Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza, reports in Israeli media said.

Earlier, Israel's military carried out air strikes on Rafah, on the border with Egypt, after warning Palestinians to evacuate eastern parts of the city.

Tens of thousands of residents are believed to be affected by the operation and many were seen cramming into vehicles or on to donkey carts on Monday.

Israel has long threatened an offensive against Hamas hold-outs in the city of 1.4 million people, many of whom have sought refuge there from Israeli offensives in other parts of Gaza.

Late on Monday, Mr Netanyahu's office said in a statement: "Even though the Hamas proposal is far from Israel's basic requirements, Israel will send a delegation of mediators to exhaust the possibility of reaching an agreement under conditions acceptable to Israel."

At the same time, it added. Israel's war cabinet had decided to continue the Rafah operation to "exert military pressure on Hamas to advance our war aims: the release of our hostages, destroy Hamas's military and governing capabilities and ensure that Gaza does not pose a threat to Israel in the future".

Earlier in the day, Hamas put out a statement saying its political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, had informed Qatar's prime minister and Egypt's intelligence chief of its "approval of their proposal regarding a ceasefire agreement".

A senior Palestinian official familiar with the proposal told the BBC that Hamas had agreed to end "hostile activity forever" if the conditions were met.

That phrase hinted that Hamas might be contemplating the end of its armed struggle, although no further details were provided. It would come at the conclusion of a two-phase ceasefire deal, with each phase lasting 42 days.

The first phase would include the release of the female Israeli soldiers being held hostage, each in exchange for 50 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including some who are serving life sentences.

During this period, Israeli troops would remain within Gaza. But within 11 days of the ceasefire coming into force, Israel would begin dismantling its military facilities in the centre of the territory and would withdraw from Salah al-Din Road, which is the main north-south route, and the coastal road.

After 11 days, displaced Palestinians would be allowed to return to the north.

The second phase would conclude with a "sustainable long period of calm" and the complete lifting of the blockade of Gaza, according to the official.

US state department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters the US - which is attempting to broker a deal along with Qatar and Egypt - was reviewing Hamas's response and "discussing it with our partners".

The war began when Hamas gunmen stormed into southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages.

More than 34,700 people have been killed in Gaza during the ensuing Israeli military campaign, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

A deal agreed in November saw Hamas release 105 hostages in return for a week-long ceasefire and some 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Israel says 128 hostages remain unaccounted for in Gaza, at least 34 of whom are presumed dead.

BBC
 
Egypt warns incursion into Rafah threatens ceasefire efforts

Israel's operation in Gaza's Rafah city will threaten ceasefire efforts, Egypt has warned.

The country's foreign ministry condemned Israel's military operation after the IDF took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing this morning.

International leaders and humanitarian organisations have long been warning against an Israeli operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, arguing it would put civilians at risk.

Egypt's foreign ministry said it considered this morning's developments a "dangerous escalation" and a threat to more than one million Palestinians.

SKY NEWS
 
Al Jazeera will look to pursue all possible legal action “until the end” to challenge Israel’s ban on its operations there, the TV network’s news director told AFP in an interview.

The Qatar-based station was taken off air in Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government voted on Sunday to shut it down over its coverage of the Gaza conflict.

Speaking on Monday, Al Jazeera English news director Salah Nagm said the network would “follow every legal path”, adding: “If there is a possibility of challenging that decision we are going to pursue it until the end.”

Under a cabinet decision which Netanyahu said was “unanimous”, Al Jazeera‘s Jerusalem offices were shuttered, its equipment confiscated and its team’s accreditations pulled.

“The equipment which was confiscated, the loss that we suffered from stopping our broadcast, all of that is subject matter for legal action,” Nagm said.

The Israeli government on Sunday said the order was initially valid for 45 days, with the possibility of an extension.

Hours later, screens in Israel carrying Al Jazeera’s Arabic and English channels went blank, apart from a message in Hebrew saying they had “been suspended in Israel”.

‘An action from the 60s’​

The shutdown does not apply to the Israeli-occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip, from which Al Jazeera still broadcasts live on Israel’s fighting with Hamas.

Al Jazeera immediately condemned Israel’s decision as “criminal”, saying on social media site X that it “violates the human right to access information”.

But Najm downplayed the ban’s impact on Al Jazeera‘s coverage of the onslaught and on the public’s ability to access its content, even with its website now blocked in Israel.

“It’s an action from the 60s rather than the 21st century to take such a decision of shutting down,” he said, explaining the channel could rely on other sources for information without “people on the ground”.

“I know people that have VPN can see us online anytime,” the news director said referring to virtual private networks that establish protected internet connections and can allow users to access the internet as if they were in a different country.

The decision came after Israel’s parliament last month voted to pass a new national security law granting senior ministers powers to ban broadcasts by foreign channels over threats to security.

In his statement on Sunday, Netanyahu charged that “Al Jazeera correspondents have harmed the security of Israel and incited against IDF (Israeli military) soldiers”.

Source: AFP
 
UN agencies said on Tuesday that the two main crossings into Gaza Strip remain shut, virtually cutting off the enclave from outside aid with very few stores stationed inside the enclave.

The global agency’s humanitarian office spokesperson Jens Laerke said at a Geneva press briefing that Israel had shut both the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings as part of its Rafah military operation.

“The two main arteries for getting aid into Gaza are currently choked off,” he said, saying that UN agencies had very low stocks inside the Gaza Strip since humanitarian supplies are consumed straight away.

“If no fuel comes in for a prolonged period of time it would be a very effective way of putting the humanitarian operation in its grave,” he added.

A World Health Organization spokesperson said in response to a journalist’s question that no exceptions were being made for sick and injured patients.

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While some non-fuel supplies have entered via the northern Erez crossing in recent days, the UN agencies said this was insufficient and difficult to deliver to Rafah since it meant crossing active combat zones.

Source: Al Arabiya English
 
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, has denounced a General Assembly draft resolution that would recognise Palestine as qualified to become a full member and has called on the US to “completely stop funding” the UN if it’s passed.
 

‘Sustainable calm’ proposal splits Israel and Hamas​

After months of stalemate, the search for peace in Gaza has reached a critical stage. UN chief Antonio Guterres says it is a "decisive moment for the Palestinian and Israeli people and for the fate of the entire region".

There seems to be common ground between most sides about the principles: a ceasefire should take place alongside the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. Various draft agreements have been drawn up, setting out a complex process of how it would all work.

There is some disagreement over the detail of what should happen to whom and when and in what order. Israeli officials say, for example, that its female soldiers should be released earlier than envisaged.

They also say the texts should be clearer that the first 33 hostages to be released must be alive and are worried about not having a veto over which Palestinian prisoners would be released.

These are issues that could potentially be surmounted through negotiation.

But there is a more fundamental sticking point about a core principle that may be harder to get past and that is when the war should end.

The opening words of the draft agreement - supported by Hamas - declares that there should be a "temporary cessation of military operations between the two parties". This is largely unproblematic. Six weeks would pass while people are released, Israeli forces withdraw from some areas, displaced Gazans would be able to return to what if anything is left of their homes.

But then stage two would begin. The draft agreement then talks about a "return to sustainable calm", which it defines as "a permanent cessation of military and hostile operations".

It is this that seems to be unacceptable to Israel's government. In a statement, the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "Israel will not allow Hamas to restore its evil rule in the Gaza Strip, Israel will not allow it to restore its military capabilities to continue striving for our destruction. Israel cannot accept a proposal that endangers the security of our citizens and the future of our country."

In other words, Israel's government wants the right to continue taking the fight to Hamas in the long run. By contrast, Hamas wants a permanent ceasefire.

What is not clear is whether there is a way for Qatari, Egyptian and American negotiators to find a middle path through this.

It may be that all of this is part of the negotiation. Public statements are frequently used in negotiations to put pressure on the other side.

The announcement by Hamas that it supports a particular draft could be an attempt to push Israel into making concessions and divide it from its allies. Israel's warnings about an imminent military operation in Rafah could be an attempt to extract better terms from Hamas.

But the question of whether any ceasefire is permanent or not looks hard to square with clever diplomatic language.

Israel has agreed to send a delegation to Cairo but with modest ambitions - not to hammer out a deal but "to exhaust the possibility of reaching an agreement under conditions acceptable to Israel".

Much will depend on what the US government decides.

So far, US spokespeople have fallen over themselves to avoid making any comment on the deal Hamas has signed up to. They have limited themselves to asserting that an agreement is still "achievable" and to warning firmly against a military operation in Rafah.

That is because if the US were to throw its weight behind the current text, then Mr Netanyahu might be forced to choose between his main ally and the ultra-nationalist hardliners propping up his government who oppose any compromise.

Mr Netanyahu has survived many crises in his political career by postponing difficult decisions.

But President Biden has it in his gift to force Israel's leader to make a choice that he might rather avoid.

Source: BBC
 
The Biden administration is delaying the sale of at least two arms shipments to Israel amid mounting concern about the country’s plan to expand a military operation in southern Gaza that could dramatically increase the conflict’s death toll, said four people familiar with the matter.

The White House and State Department declined to explain the decision, but it is the first known instance of a delay in U.S. arms transfers since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack into Israel that killed more than 1,200 people.


The Washington Post
 
US believes Hamas, Israel can break Gaza ceasefire impasse; Israeli forces cut Rafah aid route

The U.S. said negotiations on a Gaza ceasefire should be able to close the gaps between Israel and Hamas while Israeli forces seized the main border crossing in Rafah on Tuesday, closing a vital route for aid.

Hamas official Osama Hamdan, speaking to reporters in Beirut, warned that if Israel's military aggression continued in Rafah, there would be no truce agreement.

The Palestinian militant group accused Israel of undermining ceasefire efforts in the seven-month-long war that has laid waste to Gaza and left hundreds of thousands of its people homeless and hungry.

The truce comments came as Israel invaded Rafah, a southern Gazan city where more than one million displaced Palestinian civilians have sought shelter from Israel's offensive throughout the tiny territory.

White House spokesperson John Kirby said Hamas offered amendments on Monday to an Israeli proposal aimed at ending the impasse. The deal text, as amended, suggests the remaining gaps can "absolutely be closed," he said. He declined to specify what those were.

Israel on Monday said a three-phase proposal that Hamas approved was unacceptable.

Kirby said mediators from Qatar and Egypt along with U.S. and Israeli officials were gathering in Cairo. Hamas separately said its delegation was in Cairo as well.

OFFENSIVE

Israel's seizure of the Rafah crossing came despite weeks of calls that the U.S., other nations and international bodies hoped would deter a big offensive in the Rafah area - which Israel says is Hamas fighters' last stronghold.

Israeli army footage showed tanks rolling through the Rafah crossing complex between Gaza and Egypt, and the Israeli flag raised on the Gaza side.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said seizing the crossing was a "very significant step" toward Israel's stated aim of destroying Hamas's military capabilities.

Residents reported heavy tank shelling on Tuesday evening in some areas of eastern Rafah. A Rafah municipal building caught fire after Israeli shelling, residents and Hamas media said. Medics said one Palestinian was killed and several wounded in the building while an Israeli strike also killed two Palestinians on a motorcycle.

Health officials said Abu Yousef Al-Najar, the main hospital in Rafah, closed on Tuesday after heavy bombardment nearby led medical staff and around 200 patients to flee.

"They have gone crazy. Tanks are firing shells and smoke bombs cover the skies," said Emad Joudat, 55, a Gaza City resident displaced in Rafah.

"I am now seriously thinking of heading north, maybe to the central Gaza area. If they move further into Rafah, it will be the mother of massacres," he told Reuters via a chat app.

Many of those in Rafah were previously displaced from other parts of Gaza following Israel's orders to evacuate from there.

Families have been crammed into tented camps and makeshift shelters, suffering from shortages of food, water, medicine and other essentials.

The U.N. and other international aid agencies said the closing of the two crossings into southern Gaza - Rafah and Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom - had virtually cut the enclave off from outside aid and very few stores were available inside.

Red Crescent sources in Egypt said shipments had completely halted. "These crossings are a lifeline... They need to be reopened without any delay," Philippe Lazzarini, head of U.N. aid agency UNRWA, said on X.

Separately, Jordan said Israeli settlers attacked a humanitarian convoy on its way to a crossing in northern Gaza.

The White House said it had been told the Kerem Shalom crossing would re-open on Wednesday and fuel deliveries through Rafah would resume then too.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to Israel and Hamas to spare no effort to get a truce deal. "Make no mistake – a full-scale assault on Rafah would be a human catastrophe," Guterres said.

'PANIC AND DESPAIR'

Israel's military said it was conducting a limited operation in Rafah to kill fighters and dismantle infrastructure used by Hamas, which runs Gaza. It told civilians to go to what it calls an "expanded humanitarian zone" some 20 km (12 miles) away.

In Geneva, U.N. humanitarian office spokesperson Jens Laerke said "panic and despair" were gripping the people in Rafah.

Civilians did not have enough time to prepare for evacuation and no safe route to travel, he said. The roads are "littered with unexploded ordnance, massive bombs lying in the street. It's not safe," he said.

Critics of the Gaza war have urged U.S. President Joe Biden to pressure Israel to change course. The U.S., Israeli's closest ally and main weapons supplier, has delayed some arms shipments to Israel for two weeks, according to four sources on Tuesday.

The White House and Pentagon declined comment, but this would be the first such delay since the Biden administration offered its full support to Israel after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack.

Israel's offensive has killed 34,789 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in the conflict, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting about 250 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Any truce would be the first pause in fighting since a week-long ceasefire in November during which Hamas freed around half of the hostages and Israel released 240 Palestinians it was holding in its jails.

Since then, all efforts to reach a new truce have foundered over Hamas' refusal to free more hostages without a promise of a permanent end to the conflict, and Israel's insistence that it would discuss only a temporary pause.

REUTERS
 

Israel Says It Reopened a Key Gaza Crossing But U.N. Says No Aid Has Entered​


The Israeli military said Wednesday that it has reopened its Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza after days of closure, but the U.N. said no humanitarian aid has yet entered and there is no one to receive it on the Palestinian side after workers fled during Israel's military incursion in the area.

The Kerem Shalom crossing between Gaza and Israel was closed over the weekend after a Hamas rocket attack killed four Israeli soldiers nearby, and on Tuesday, an Israeli tank brigade seized the nearby Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, forcing its closure. The two facilities are the main terminals for entry of food, medicine and other supplies essential for the survival of Gaza's population of 2.3 million Palestinians.

The Israeli foray did not appear to be the start of the full-scale invasion of the city of Rafah that Israel has repeatedly promised. But aid officials warn that the prolonged closure of the two crossings could cause the collapse of aid operations, worsening the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where the U.N. says a “full-blown famine” is already underway in the north.

The United States paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on Rafah, in a further widening of divisions between the two close allies.

The U.S. says it is concerned over the fate of around 1.3 million Palestinians crammed into Rafah, most of whom fled fighting elsewhere. Israel says Rafah is Hamas' last stronghold and that a wider offensive there is needed to dismantle the group's military and governing capabilities.

The U.S., Egypt and Qatar are meanwhile ramping up efforts to close the gaps in a possible agreement for at least a temporary cease-fire and the release of some of the scores of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas. Israel has linked the threatened Rafah operation to the fate of those negotiations. CIA chief William Burns, who has been shuttling around the region for talks on the cease-fire deal, met Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door negotiations.

With the seizure of Rafah, Israel now controls all of Gaza’s crossings for the first time since it withdrew troops and settlers from the territory nearly two decades ago, though it has maintained a blockade with Egypt's cooperation for most of that time. The Rafah crossing has been a vital conduit for humanitarian aid since the start of the war and is the only place where people can enter and exit. Kerem Shalom is Gaza’s main cargo terminal.

Associated Press journalists heard sporadic explosions and gunfire in the area of the Rafah crossing overnight, including two large blasts early Wednesday. The Israeli military reported six launches from Rafah toward the Kerem Shalom crossing on Tuesday.

COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of Palestinian civilian affairs, said the Kerem Shalom crossing reopened early Wednesday. But Juliette Touma, the director of communications for UNRWA, said no aid had entered as of midday Wednesday and that the U.N. agency had been forced to ration fuel, which is imported through Rafah.

Gaza’s Health Ministry meanwhile said at least 46 patients and wounded people who had been scheduled to leave Tuesday for medical treatment have been left stranded.

U.N. agencies and aid groups have ramped up humanitarian assistance in recent weeks as Israel has lifted some restrictions and opened an additional crossing in the north under pressure from the United States, its closest ally.

But aid workers say the closure of Rafah, which is the only gateway for the entry of fuel for trucks and generators, could have severe repercussions, and the U.N. says northern Gaza is already in a state of “full-blown famine.”

COGAT said 60 aid trucks entered through the northern crossing on Tuesday. Some 500 trucks entered Gaza every day before the war.

The war began when Hamas militants breached Israel's defenses on Oct. 7 and swept through nearby army bases and farming communities, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Hamas is still believed to be holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others after most of the rest were released during a November cease-fire.

The war has killed over 34,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, and has driven some 80% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million Palestinians from their homes. Israel's military campaign has been one of the deadliest and most destructive in recent history, reducing large parts of Gaza to rubble.

Biden has repeatedly warned Netanyahu against launching an invasion of Rafah. But Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners have threatened to bring down his government if he calls off an offensive or makes too many concessions in the cease-fire talks.

The U.S. has historically provided Israel enormous amounts of military aid, which has only accelerated since the start of the war.

The paused shipment was supposed to consist of 1,800 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) bombs and 1,700 smaller ones, with the U.S. concern focused on how the larger bombs could be used in a dense urban setting, a U.S. official said Tuesday on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. The official said no final decision had been made yet on proceeding with the shipment.

time.com

Israel Says It Reopened a Key Gaza Crossing

Israel's military said it has reopened its Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza, but the U.N. said no humanitarian aid has yet entered
time.com time.com
 

IDF says Hamas’s Gaza City naval chief killed in airstrike​


The commander of Hamas’s naval forces in Gaza City was killed in a recent airstrike in the Gaza Strip, the IDF and Shin Bet security agency announce.

Ahmed Ali, according to the military, was involved in advancing attacks against Israel and troops in the Gaza Strip amid the war.

In recent weeks, Ali was involved in attacks on IDF troops operating in central Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor, the military says.

The IDF also says that in recent years Ali had been managing various projects for Hamas’s naval forces.

www.timesofisrael.com

IDF says Hamas’s Gaza City naval chief killed in airstrike

* * *
www.timesofisrael.com www.timesofisrael.com
 
US reveals it paused shipment of bombs for Israel over Rafah concerns

The US last week paused a bomb shipment for Israel over concerns it was going ahead with a major ground operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a senior US administration official said.

The shipment consisted of 1,800 2,000lb (907kg) bombs and 1,700 500lb bombs, the official told the BBC.

Israel has not "fully addressed" US concerns over the humanitarian needs of civilians in Rafah, they added.

An Israeli military official appeared to play down the US move.

The delayed arms shipment comes as US President Joe Biden faces mounting domestic pressure - from Democratic lawmakers and some parts of the US public - to rein in Israeli operations in Gaza amid rising civilian deaths and a worsening humanitarian situation.

Despite firm and vocal US opposition, Israel appears poised to mount a large-scale invasion of Rafah, a congested part of southern Gaza that is Hamas' last major stronghold in the territory.

US officials have warned that an operation in the city - where the population has swelled with refugees from other parts of Gaza - could lead to extensive civilian casualties.

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari told a news conference that the US had provided "unprecedented" security assistance since the beginning of the war, adding that disputes between the allies were resolved "behind closed doors in a matter-of-fact way".

But a leading member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party in Israel told BBC's Newshour on Wednesday that he believes US domestic political considerations are behind the decision to halt the delivery of bombs.


www.bbc.com

US reveals it paused shipment of bombs for Israel over Rafah concerns

A bomb shipment was halted last week over concerns Israel was going ahead with a Rafah offensive.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces competing pressures at home and abroad when he weighs how far to push the operation to defeat Hamas in Rafah that complicates hopes of bringing Israeli hostages home.

Street demonstrations against the government by families and supporters of some of the more than 130 hostages still held in Gaza have become a constant fixture, with protestors demanding a ceasefire deal with Hamas to get them back.


Reuters
 

Israel says it reopened a key Gaza crossing after a rocket attack but the UN says no aid has entered​

The Israeli military said Wednesday that it has reopened its Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza after days of closure, but the U.N. said no humanitarian aid has yet entered and there is no one to receive it on the Palestinian side after workers fled during Israel’s military incursion in the area.

The Kerem Shalom crossing between Gaza and Israel was closed over the weekend after a Hamas rocket attack killed four Israeli soldiers nearby, and on Tuesday, an Israeli tank brigade seized the nearby Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, forcing its closure. The two facilities are the main terminals for entry of food, medicine and other supplies essential for the survival of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians.

The Israeli foray did not appear to be the start of the full-scale invasion of the city of Rafah that Israel has repeatedly promised. But aid officials warn that the prolonged closure of the two crossings could cause the collapse of aid operations, worsening the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where the U.N. says a “full-blown famine” is already underway in the north.

Source: AP News
 
The US says it is reviewing future weapons deliveries to Israel over concern it will begin a ground operation in the Gaza city of Rafah.

The US has already delayed a shipment "near-term assistance" of thousands of 2,000lb (907kg) and 500lb bombs to Israel.

"We are reviewing others," said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

The Israeli military has said that the two countries will resolve disagreements "behind closed doors".

On Wednesday, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed the delay of the bomb shipment - some of the most destructive munitions in Western military arsenals - while testifying in front of the US Senate.



BBC
 
Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Wednesday it was unwilling to make more concessions to Israel in negotiations over a ceasefire for Gaza, although talks were still under way in Cairo aimed at pausing Israel's seven-month-old offensive.

Israel continued tank and aerial strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah on Wednesday and has threatened a major assault on it. Its forces moved in via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Tuesday, cutting off a vital aid route and the only exit for the evacuation of wounded patients.


Reuters
 
Cricket Warrior said:
The US says it is reviewing future weapons deliveries to Israel over concern it will begin a ground operation in the Gaza city of Rafah.

The US has already delayed a shipment "near-term assistance" of thousands of 2,000lb (907kg) and 500lb bombs to Israel.

"We are reviewing others," said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

The Israeli military has said that the two countries will resolve disagreements "behind closed doors".

On Wednesday, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed the delay of the bomb shipment - some of the most destructive munitions in Western military arsenals - while testifying in front of the US Senate.



BBC
Click to expand...
Biden is tied up. He is under tremendous pressure from his own party to not support Israel unconditionally due to the impending elections.

Biden does not want to anger the far left too much as they are his primary vote bank.
 
Israel-Gaza war: Biden to halt some arms supplies if Israel invades Rafah

President Joe Biden has warned Israel that the US will stop supplying some weapons if it launches a major ground operation in the Gaza city of Rafah.

"If they go into Rafah, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah," he said during an interview with CNN.

He added that he would "continue to make sure Israel is secure".

Despite firm and vocal US opposition, Israel appears poised to mount a large-scale invasion of Rafah.

The congested part of southern Gaza is Hamas's last major stronghold in the territory. US officials have warned that an operation in the city - where the population has swelled with refugees from other parts of Gaza - could lead to extensive civilian casualties.

"We're not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells," Mr Biden said in the interview, which aired on Wednesday.

He said the US did not define the current situation in Rafah as a ground operation. "They haven't gone into the population centres. What they did is right on the border," he said.

"But I've made it clear to [Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu] and the war cabinet, they're not going to get our support, if in fact they go in these population centres."

Mr Biden acknowledged that US weapons had been used by Israel to kill civilians in Gaza.

When asked if Israel had crossed a "red line", the US president replied "not yet".

The comments amount to the president's strongest warning yet over a potential ground invasion of Rafah, and mark the first time he has said the US could stop shipments of American weapons to Israel.

Israel's ambassador to the UN said the country was "very disappointed" by Mr Biden's intervention.

"This is a difficult and very disappointing statement to hear from a president to whom we have been grateful since the beginning of the war," Gilad Erdan told Israeli public broadcaster Kan radio.

The US has already delayed a shipment of thousands of bombs to Israel, and has said it is reviewing future deliveries.

On Wednesday, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed the delay of the bomb shipment - some of the most destructive munitions in Western military arsenals - while testifying in front of the Senate.

The weapons being held back by the US are related to a future delivery, so the move is unlikely to have an immediate impact. But given the rate at which Israel is bombing it will probably affect future strikes fairly soon.

The Israeli military, meanwhile, has said that the two countries will resolve disagreements "behind closed doors".

President Biden faces mounting domestic pressure - from some Democrats and parts of the US public - to rein in Israeli operations in Gaza amid rising civilian deaths and a worsening humanitarian situation.

US officials confirmed that no new aid supplies had been delivered in Gaza via two gates in the south since Israeli tanks rolled into southern Rafah and took control of the Palestinian side of the crossing with Egypt this week.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said the US had provided "unprecedented" security assistance since the beginning of the war, adding that disputes between the allies were resolved "behind closed doors in a matter-of-fact way".

But a leading member of Mr Netanyahu's Likud party in Israel told the BBC's Newshour on Wednesday he believed US domestic political considerations were behind the decision to halt the delivery of bombs.

"I totally disagree that the American election has nothing to do with it," said Boaz Bismuth, a member of both the Israeli parliament and the foreign affairs and defence committee.

Rafah has been a key entry point for aid, and the only exit for people able to flee, since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas last October.

The crossing remained closed on Wednesday morning, but the Israeli military said it was reopening the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing, which had been closed for four days because of Hamas rocket fire.

On Monday, the Israeli military ordered tens of thousands of civilians to begin evacuating eastern parts of Rafah city, ahead of what it called a "limited" operation to eliminate Hamas fighters and dismantle infrastructure.

Meanwhile, efforts continue to reach a ceasefire, alongside the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. In Cairo, delegations from Israel and Hamas have resumed negotiations through mediators.

A US official said that talks with Israel were "ongoing and have not fully addressed our concerns" and the US had been reviewing its weapons transfers to Israel since April.

Israel launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group's attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 252 others were taken hostage, according to official Israeli tallies.

More than 34,780 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

A deal agreed in November saw Hamas release 105 hostages in return for a week-long ceasefire and some 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel says 128 hostages are unaccounted for, 36 of whom are presumed dead.

BBC
 

Donald Trump accuses Biden of siding with Hamas​


Donald Trump accused Joe Biden Thursday of siding with Hamas when he threatened to stop sending US weapons to Israel as it wages war against the Palestinian militant group in Gaza, calling the president’s stance “disgraceful.”

Biden warned Wednesday of halting weapons supplies if Israel pushes ahead with its long-threatened Rafah ground offensive, his most direct warning yet over the civilian impact of the war.

“Crooked Joe is taking the side of these terrorists, just like he has sided with the Radical Mobs taking over our college campuses,” Trump posted on his Truth Social network, referring to the protests against the war that have spread across US universities.

Speaking later to reporters outside the courtroom before entering his hush money trial in New York, Trump said that “what Biden is doing with respect to Israel is disgraceful.”

“He’s totally abandoned Israel and nobody can believe it,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who will challenge Biden in the November election, said.

Under increasing pressure from the left of his own party to limit arms shipments, Biden paused delivery last week of 1,800 2,000-pound (907 kilogram) bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs.

His administration has also previously taken smaller steps to show displeasure with Israel, including imposing sanctions on extremist settlers and letting through a UN Security Council resolution that supported a ceasefire.

The Gaza war began with Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel in response vowed to crush Hamas and free the captives. It began a military offensive that has killed more than 3,900 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

 
More than 80,000 people have fled the southern Gaza city of Rafah since Monday, the UN says, as Israeli tanks reportedly mass close to built-up areas amid constant bombardment.

Palestinian armed groups said they were targeting Israeli troops to the east.

Israel's military has said its ground forces are conducting "targeted activity" in eastern Rafah.

The UN also warned that food and fuel were running out because it was not receiving aid through nearby crossings.

Israeli troops took control and closed the Rafah crossing with Egypt at the start of their operation, while the UN said it was too dangerous for its staff and lorries to reach the reopened Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel.

It came as Israel's prime minister rejected a threat by the US president to stop supplying some weapons if it launched a major assault on "population centres" in Rafah. Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel could "stand alone" if necessary.

After seven months of war in Gaza, Israel has insisted victory is impossible without taking the city and eliminating the last remaining Hamas battalions.

But with more than a million displaced Palestinians sheltering there, the UN and Western powers have warned that an all-out assault could lead to mass civilian casualties and a humanitarian catastrophe.

Residents and aid workers in Rafah said the sound of artillery and air strikes was constant on Thursday.

Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), told the BBC in the afternoon that she was at a health facility in the west and could "hear and feel the bombardment coming closer".

"The building is shaking on a frequent basis. There is this constant buzzing of drones," she said. "The fear and nervousness that people [in Rafah] have had, has now become terror."

Palestinian media said two people were killed on Thursday afternoon in an Israeli air strike in the al-Jneineh neighbourhood - one of the eastern areas which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ordered residents to evacuate before beginning its ground operation began on Monday night.

Another three people were reportedly killed in an air strike in the nearby Brazil neighbourhood, which is not in the evacuation zone but is next to the Egyptian border.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) - which are proscribed as terrorist organisations by Israel, the US and other countries - said they were targeting Israeli forces on the eastern outskirts with mortars and anti-tank missiles.

Hamas also said it had blown up a booby-trapped tunnel east of Rafah underneath three Israeli military vehicles. The IDF said three of its soldiers were moderately wounded as a result of the explosion.

Overnight, at least five people were reportedly killed when a family's home in the western Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood was hit in an Israeli strike. They included three children, one of them a one-year-old infant, medics said.

Source: BBC
 
Israel due to get billions of dollars more in US weapons despite Biden pause

Billions of dollars worth of U.S. weaponry remains in the pipeline for Israel, despite the delay of one shipment of bombs and a review of others by President Joe Biden's administration, concerned their use in an assault could wreak more devastation on Palestinian civilians.

A senior U.S. official said this week that the administration had reviewed the delivery of weapons that Israel might use for a major invasion of Rafah, a southern Gaza city where over 1 million civilians have sought refuge, and as a result paused a shipment of bombs to Israel.

Washington has long urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government not to invade Rafah without safeguards for civilians, seven months into a war that has devastated Gaza.

Congressional aides estimated the delayed bomb shipment's value as "tens of millions" of U.S. dollars.
A wide range of other military equipment is due to go to Israel, including joint direct attack munitions (JDAMS), which convert dumb bombs into precision weapons; and tank rounds, mortars and armored tactical vehicles, Senator Jim Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters.


 
Israel strikes eastern Rafah as ceasefire talks end with no deal

Israeli forces bombarded areas of Rafah on Thursday, Palestinian residents said, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed U.S. President Joe Biden's threat to withhold weapons from Israel if it assaults the southern Gaza city.

A senior Israeli official said late on Thursday that the latest round of indirect negotiations in Cairo to halt hostilities in Gaza had ended and Israel would proceed with its operation in Rafah and other parts of the Gaza Strip as planned.

Israel has submitted to mediators its reservations about a Hamas proposal for a hostage release deal, the official said.

"If we must, we shall fight with our fingernails," Netanyahu said in a video statement. "But we have much more than our fingernails."

In Gaza, Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad said their fighters fired anti-tank rockets and mortars at Israeli tanks massed on the eastern outskirts of the city.

Residents and medics in Rafah, the biggest urban area in Gaza not yet overrun by Israeli ground forces, said an Israeli attack near a mosque killed at least three people and wounded others in the eastern Brazil neighbourhood.

Video footage from the scene showed the minaret lying in the rubble and two bodies wrapped in blankets.

An Israeli air strike on two houses in the Sabra neighbourhood of Rafah killed at least 12 people including women and children.

Among the dead was a senior commander of the militant Al-Mujahedeen Brigades, and his family, and the family of another group leader, medics, relatives and the group said.

Israel says Hamas militants are hiding in Rafah, where the population has been swelled by hundreds of thousands of Gazans seeking refuge from the bombardments that have reduced most of the coastal enclave to ruins.

In the United States, the White House repeated its hope that Israel would not launch a full operation in Rafah, saying it did not believe that would advance Israel's aim of defeating Hamas.

"Smashing into Rafah, in [President Biden's] view, will not advance that objective," spokesperson John Kirby said.

Kirby said Hamas had been pressured significantly by Israel and there were better options to hunt down what remains of the group's leadership than an operation with significant risk to civilians.

Israel's assault on Gaza has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 80,000, most of them civilians, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said.

It launched its offensive in response to a cross-border attack by Hamas militants on Israel on Oct. 7 in which they killed about 1,200 people and abducted 252. Some 128 hostages remain in Gaza and 36 have been declared dead, according to the latest Israeli figures.

Biden on Wednesday issued his starkest warning yet against a full ground invasion in Rafah, telling CNN that: "I made it clear that if they go into Rafah...I'm not supplying the weapons."

Israel's ambassador to the United States said the decision to withhold weapons from Israel over Rafah sends the "wrong message" to Hamas and the country's foes.

"It puts us in a corner because we have to deal with Rafah one way or the other," Ambassador Michael Herzog told a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace webinar.

The Israeli military has the munitions it requires for operations in Rafah and other planned operations, chief armed forces spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.

Israeli armed forces have already killed 50 Palestinian gunmen in east Rafah and uncovered several tunnels, Hagari said. Hamas had no immediate comment.

TALKS END

In Cairo, delegations from Hamas, Israel, the U.S., Egypt and Qatar had been meeting since Tuesday. The talks in Egypt's capital made some headway but no deal was reached, according to two Egyptian security sources.

Izzat El-Risheq, a member of Hamas' political office in Qatar, said the Hamas delegation had left Cairo, having reaffirmed its approval of the mediators' ceasefire proposal. The plan entails the release of Israeli hostages held captive in Gaza and a number of Palestinians jailed by Israel.

Hamas blames Israel for the lack of agreement, and its Al-Aqsa TV's Telegram account said the group would not make any concessions beyond those in the proposal it had accepted.

Israel has said it is open to a truce, but has rejected demands for an end to the war.

U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Washington continued to engage with Israel on amendments to a ceasefire proposal, adding work to finalize the text of an agreement was "incredibly difficult".

MEDICAL SECTOR COLLAPSING

Israeli residents set fire twice to the perimeter of the headquarters of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem, causing extensive damage to the outdoor areas but no casualties, UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X. There was no immediate comment from Israeli police.

"Once again, the lives of U.N. staff were at a serious risk," Lazzarini wrote, adding he had decided to close the compound until security is restored.

On Tuesday, Israeli tanks seized the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, cutting off a vital aid route and forcing 80,000 people to flee the city this week, according to the United Nations.

Israel kept up tank and aerial strikes across Gaza and tanks advanced in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City in the north, forcing hundreds of families to flee, residents said. The Israeli military said it was securing Zeitoun, starting with a series of intelligence-based aerial strikes on approximately 25 militant targets.

Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza was packed with people who had fled Rafah in recent days. Palestinian medics said two people, including a woman, were killed when a drone fired a missile at a group of people there.

The closure of the Rafah crossing with Egypt has prevented the evacuation of the wounded and sick and the entry of medical supplies, food trucks and fuel needed to operate hospitals, the Gaza health ministry said on Thursday.

The only kidney dialysis centre in the Rafah area had stopped operating due to the shelling.

"The entire medical sector has collapsed," said Ali Abu Khurma, a Jordanian surgeon volunteering at Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah.

United Nations aid chief Martin Griffiths said that for three consecutive days, "nothing and no one has been allowed in or out of Gaza."

"It means no aid. Our supplies are stuck. Our teams are stuck. Civilians in Gaza are being starved and killed, and we are prevented from helping them. This is Gaza today, even after 7 months of horrors," Griffiths posted on X.

REUTERS
 
Gaza war: Netanyahu says Israel can 'stand alone' if US halts arms shipments

Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed Israel can "stand alone", after the US warned arms shipments could be stopped if he orders a full-scale invasion of Rafah in Gaza.

Thousands of people have already fled the southern city after the Israeli military began what it called a "limited" operation on Monday.

US President Joe Biden has repeatedly warned against the operation, saying that it would cross a "red line".

But Mr Netanyahu dismissed the US warning, saying Israel would fight on.

"If we need to ... we will stand alone. I have said that if necessary we will fight with our fingernails," the prime minister said.

Mr Netanyahu also invoked the war of 1948 - where the newly formed State of Israel was attacked by a coalition of Arab states - to dismiss the US warnings.

"In the War of Independence 76 years ago, we were the few against the many," he said "We did not have weapons. There was an arms embargo on Israel, but with great strength of spirit, heroism and unity among us - we were victorious."

Despite Mr Netanyahu's comments, his government has come under pressure after the US suspended the delivery of 1,800 2,000lb (907kg) bombs and 1,700 500lb bombs over fears that they could cause civilian deaths in Rafah.

Mr Biden went further still in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, saying that if the attack went ahead he would further suspend supplies of artillery shells and other weapons.

Yoav Gallant, Mr Netanyahu's defence minister, dismissed the US warnings, saying Israel's "enemies as well as ... best of friends" should understand that his country "cannot be subdued".

"We will stand strong, we will achieve our goals," he added.

The comments came hours after the UN said more than 80,000 people had fled Rafah since Monday amid constant bombardment and as Israeli tanks massed close to built-up areas.

The UN also warned that food and fuel were running out for the more than one million still sheltering in the city, because it was not receiving aid through nearby crossings.

Israeli troops took control and closed the Rafah crossing with Egypt at the start of their operation, while the UN said it was too dangerous for its staff and lorries to reach the reopened Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel.

Israeli forces said they were conducting "targeted raids" against Hamas elements remaining in the city. However, the Israeli government has refused to rule out a full scale invasion, leading to Mr Biden's warning he would not supply it with the munitions to do so.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Mr Biden did not believe "smashing into Rafah" would advance Israel's objective of defeating Hamas.

"An enduring defeat of Hamas certainly remains the Israeli goal, and we share that goal with them," Mr Kirby said.

"The argument that somehow we're walking away from Israel, or we're not willing to help them defeat Hamas just doesn't comport with the facts," he said.

Palestinian media said two people were killed on Thursday afternoon in an Israeli air strike in the al-Jneineh neighbourhood of Rafah - one of the eastern areas which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ordered residents to evacuate before beginning its ground operation began on Monday night.

Another three people were reportedly killed in an air strike in the nearby Brazil area, which is not in the evacuation zone but is next to the Egyptian border.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) - which are proscribed as terrorist organisations by Israel, the US and other countries - said they were targeting Israeli forces on the eastern outskirts with mortar bombs and anti-tank missiles.

Hamas also said it had blown up a booby-trapped tunnel east of Rafah underneath three Israeli military vehicles. The IDF said three of its soldiers were moderately wounded as a result of the explosion.

Overnight, at least five people were reportedly killed when a family's home in the western Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood was hit in an Israeli strike. They included three children, one of them a one-year-old infant, medics said.

Hopes fade for a peace deal

Meanwhile hopes of a peace deal - which seemed close earlier in the week before Israel said it did not past muster - appeared to be fading. Both Israeli and Hamas delegations left indirect talks in Cairo on Thursday.

After seven months of war in Gaza, Israel insists victory is impossible without taking the city of Rafah and eliminating the last remaining Hamas battalions.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to the group's attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 252 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

More than 34,900 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel says 128 hostages are unaccounted for, 36 of whom are presumed dead.

BBC
 
US says Israel’s use of US arms likely violated international law, but evidence is incomplete

The Biden administration said Friday that Israel’s use of U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law but that wartime conditions prevented U.S. officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes.

The finding of “reasonable” evidence to conclude that the U.S. ally had breached international law protecting civilians in the way it conducted its war against Hamas was the strongest statement that the Biden administration has yet made on the matter. It was released in a summary of a report being delivered to Congress on Friday.

But the caveat that the administration wasn’t able to link specific U.S. weapons to individual attacks by Israeli forces in Gaza could give the administration leeway in any future decision on whether to restrict provisions of offensive weapons to Israel.



apnews.com

US says Israel’s use of US arms likely violated international law, but evidence is incomplete

The Biden administration says Israel’s use of U.S-provided weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law.
apnews.com apnews.com
 
US says Israel may have breached international law with American weapons in Gaza

The US says Israel may have used American-supplied weapons in breach of international humanitarian law in some instances during the war in Gaza.

It is "reasonable to assess" that those arms have been used in ways "inconsistent" with Israel's obligations, says the state department.

But it added that the US did not have complete information in its assessment and that shipments could continue.

The report was submitted to Congress on Friday after a delay.

The White House-ordered review looked into how the country, along with six others engaged in conflict, has used US-supplied arms since the start of last year.

While the report was a clear rebuke of some Israeli operations in Gaza, it stopped short of definitively saying that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) campaign had breached international law.

Israel had had to confront an "extraordinary military challenge" fighting Hamas in Gaza, it said.

And it added that assurances it had received from Israel about adhering to the legal use of US weapons were "credible and reliable".

The document also noted that because Hamas "uses civilian infrastructure for military purposes and civilians as human shields", it was often "difficult to determine facts on the ground in an active war zone" of what are legitimate targets.

But it said that given Israel's significant reliance on US-made weapons, they had probably been used "in instances inconsistent with its IHL [international humanitarian law] obligations or with established best practices for mitigating civilian harm".

It added that "Israel has the knowledge, experience, and tools to implement best practices for mitigating civilian harm in its military operations", but that "results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions as to whether the IDF is using them effectively in all cases".

The report said the UN and humanitarian organisations had described Israeli efforts to mitigate civilian harm as "inconsistent, ineffective and inadequate".

The state department found that Israel did not fully co-operate with US efforts to "maximise" humanitarian aid into Gaza in the initial months of the conflict. It said, however, that this situation had changed.

"We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance," the report said.

One of the contributors to the report, David Satterfield, a former US ambassador to Turkey, told the BBC that the report was the first of its kind and that the US would continue to keep Israeli actions "under review".

"This is a conflict quite unlike any that the world has seen," he added. "We tried to take account of all those factors in coming up with a very frank, but also credible judgement."

The report was finally released days after US President Joe Biden publicly threatened to withhold certain bombs and artillery shells from Israel if it went ahead with an assault on Rafah, the last stronghold of Hamas in Gaza that is packed with more than a million Palestinians.

Shortly before the report's publication, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed President Biden's warnings that the operation in Rafah would cross a "red line" and vowed that Israel would "stand alone" if necessary.

More than 80,000 people have fled Rafah since Monday, the UN says, with Israeli tanks reportedly massed close to built-up areas amid constant bombardment.

Israeli troops took control and closed the Rafah crossing with Egypt at the start of their operation, while the UN said it was too dangerous for its staff and lorries to reach the reopened Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to the group's attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 252 others were taken hostage. More than 34,900 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

BBC
 

Hamas to release video on fate of Israeli hostage Nadav Popplewell​


Palestinian militant group Hamas will release a video later on Saturday about the fate of Israeli hostage Nadav Popplewell, according to reports from Hamas media outlets.

The group earlier on Saturday released a brief video of the 51-year-old captive, showing him with a bruise on his right eye. Popplewell confirmed his name in that video. It was not clear when it was taken.

 

Israel orders more evacuations as Rafah fighting intensifies​


Israel has told tens of thousands more Palestinians to leave Rafah, as it intensifies military operations in southern Gaza.

Flyers dropped from the air and posts on social media told residents in the city's eastern districts to go to al-Mawasi - a narrow coastal area which Israel calls an "expanded humanitarian zone".

Parts of Rafah where the streets were packed with locals and displaced people just days ago, now look like a ghost town.

Israel has said it will proceed with planned operations in Rafah despite the US and other allies warning that a ground offensive could lead to mass civilian casualties and a humanitarian crisis.

Images showed smoke rising over the city on Saturday and witnesses quoted by AFP reported air strikes near the crossing with Egypt.

Posting on X, formerly Twitter, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that during the past day troops had been engaged in "face-to-face battles" with Hamas fighters in Rafah.

The IDF added that soldiers had found "a number of underground shafts" in the area.

In the past day, there have been dozens of Israeli air strikes across the length of the Gaza Strip, with the Israeli military saying it’s targeting what it calls terrorists and terrorist infrastructure.

It’s also instructed residents to leave some areas of northern Gaza; indicating its forces may return there months after they previously left.

The IDF said people in and around Jabaliya, in northern Gaza, need to "temporarily evacuate to shelters in western Gaza City" in order to "reduce harm" to residents "following attempts by Hamas to reassemble" in the area.

Israel's plans to extend its ground offensive to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip - where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere in the territory, has sparked international concern.

Last week, President Joe Biden said the US would not supply heavy weapons to Israel which could be used in a major assault on Rafah.

In an interview with CNN, Biden said America would continue to give Israel the weapons it needed to defend itself, including interceptors for its “Iron Dome” air defence system.

But he said US-supplied heavy weapons had already killed civilians in Gaza, and warned Israel would not keep Washington's support if it carried out military operations in those population centres.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron has said Britain is opposed to the military operation in Rafah, but is unlikely to follow America in delaying arms sales to Israel.

On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hopes to overcome his differences with Mr Biden - but vowed to press ahead with its military assault on Rafah.

"If we need to... we will stand alone. I have said that if necessary we will fight with our fingernails," Mr Netanyahu said.

Saturday's evacuation order cames hours after a US state department report said Israel may have used American-supplied weapons in breach of international humanitarian law in some instances during the war in Gaza.

It is "reasonable to assess" that those arms have been used in ways "inconsistent" with Israel's obligations, the report said, but added the US did not have complete information in its assessment and that shipments could continue.

Aid agencies have warned that the continuing Israeli military operation in southern Gaza means Palestinians will be left without any places of safety.

Khitam Al-Khatib, a Rafah resident who said she had lost at least 10 of her relatives in an airstrike on a family house earlier on Saturday, told Reuters there was "no safe place in Gaza".

"They threw fliers on Rafah and said, from Rafah to al-Zawayda is safe, people should evacuate there, and they did, and what has become of them? Dismembered bodies?" she was quoted as saying.

The charity Oxfam has said that the area has no functioning hospitals and aid supplies are extremely limited.

The largest of Rafah's three partially functioning hospitals, Abu Youssef al-Najjar, had to be hastily abandoned the following day after staff received an evacuation order and there was fighting nearby.

The UN's agency for Palestinian refugees has also expressed concerns about the conditions in the al-Mawasi encampment where people are being told to go.

Sam Rose from UNRWA told BBC News that the area had virtually no facilities for the numbers being sent there.

"It's people living in shacks, people living in tents by the side of a sandy beach road. Very difficult in terms of here providing services.

"There's no water networks there. There's no unfracture, sewage, sanitation," he said.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to the group's attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 252 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

More than 34,900 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Israel says 128 hostages are unaccounted for, 36 of whom are presumed dead.

www.bbc.com

Israel Gaza war: More Rafah evacuations as Israel steps up operations

The Israeli military tells thousands of Palestinians to leave the city as it expands its military operation.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Israeli atrocities continues in Gaza as the global protests fail to move the evil apartheid apparatus
  • Fierce fighting is under way in Gaza City’s Zeitoun district after Israel launched its latest ground assault in the north, months after announcing Hamas had been “dismantled” in the area.
  • The Israeli military orders tens of thousands of Palestinians to further evacuate eastern Rafah as it intensifies its assault on the area in southern Gaza.
  • Health authorities in Gaza say 80 bodies were recovered from three mass graves inside a section of the al-Shifa Hospital complex in Gaza City.
  • At least 34,971 people have been killed and 78,641 wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. The revised death toll in Israel from Hamas’s October 7 attacks stands at 1,139 with dozens of people still held captive.
Source: Al Jazeera
 
Israel orders more evacuations as Rafah fighting intensifies

Israel has told tens of thousands more Palestinians to leave Rafah, as it intensifies military operations in southern Gaza.

Flyers dropped from the air and posts on social media told residents in the city's eastern districts to go to al-Mawasi - a narrow coastal area which Israel calls an "expanded humanitarian zone".

Parts of Rafah where the streets were packed with locals and displaced people just days ago, now look like a ghost town.

Israel has said it will proceed with planned operations in Rafah despite the US and other allies warning that a ground offensive could lead to mass civilian casualties and a humanitarian crisis.

On Saturday, US President Joe Biden said a ceasefire in Gaza was possible as soon as the next day if Hamas released its hostages.

"Israel said it's up to Hamas, if they wanted to do it, we could end it tomorrow. And the ceasefire would begin tomorrow," he told a fund-raising event in Seattle.

Israel says 128 people taken hostage by Hamas on 7 October are unaccounted for, 36 of whom are presumed dead.

Images showed smoke rising over Rafah on Saturday and witnesses quoted by AFP reported air strikes near the crossing with Egypt.

Posting on X, formerly Twitter, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that during the past day troops had been engaged in "face-to-face battles" with Hamas fighters in Rafah.

The IDF added that soldiers had found "a number of underground shafts" in the area.

In the past day, there have been dozens of Israeli air strikes across the length of the Gaza Strip, with the Israeli military saying it’s targeting what it calls terrorists and terrorist infrastructure.

On Saturday evening the IDF said it was "currently striking Hamas terror targets in the Jabaliya area", in the far north of the Gaza Strip.

Earlier it instructed residents to leave some areas of northern Gaza. It said they should "temporarily evacuate to shelters in western Gaza City".

Israeli media report that several Hamas rockets were fired at Ashkelon overnight, a port city about 10km (six miles) north of the Gaza border. The Times of Israel says three people were lightly injured when one rocket hit their home.

Israel's plans to extend its ground offensive to the southern tip of the Gaza Strip - where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere in the territory, has sparked international concern.

Last week, President Biden said the US would not supply heavy weapons to Israel which could be used in a major assault on Rafah.

In an interview with CNN, Biden said America would continue to give Israel the weapons it needed to defend itself, including interceptors for its “Iron Dome” air defence system.

But he said US-supplied heavy weapons had already killed civilians in Gaza, and warned Israel would not keep Washington's support if it carried out military operations in those population centres.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron has said Britain is opposed to the military operation in Rafah, but is unlikely to follow America in delaying arms sales to Israel.

On Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hopes to overcome his differences with Mr Biden - but vowed to press ahead with its military assault on Rafah.

"If we need to... we will stand alone. I have said that if necessary we will fight with our fingernails," Mr Netanyahu said.

Saturday's evacuation order comes hours after a US state department report said Israel may have used American-supplied weapons in breach of international humanitarian law in some instances during the war in Gaza.

It is "reasonable to assess" that those arms have been used in ways "inconsistent" with Israel's obligations, the report said, but added the US did not have complete information in its assessment and that shipments could continue.

Aid agencies have warned that the continuing Israeli military operation in southern Gaza means Palestinians will be left without any places of safety.

Khitam Al-Khatib, a Rafah resident who said she had lost at least 10 of her relatives in an airstrike on a family house earlier on Saturday, told Reuters there was "no safe place in Gaza".

"They threw fliers on Rafah and said, from Rafah to al-Zawayda is safe, people should evacuate there, and they did, and what has become of them? Dismembered bodies?" she was quoted as saying.

The charity Oxfam has said that the area has no functioning hospitals and aid supplies are extremely limited.

The largest of Rafah's three partially functioning hospitals, Abu Youssef al-Najjar, had to be hastily abandoned the following day after staff received an evacuation order and there was fighting nearby.

The UN's agency for Palestinian refugees has also expressed concerns about the conditions in the al-Mawasi encampment where people are being told to go.

Sam Rose from UNRWA told BBC News that the area had virtually no facilities for the numbers being sent there.

"It's people living in shacks, people living in tents by the side of a sandy beach road. Very difficult in terms of here providing services.

"There's no water networks there. There's no infrastructure, sewage, sanitation," he said.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to the group's attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 252 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

More than 34,900 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

BBC
 

UK ban on selling arms to Israel would strengthen Hamas, says Cameron​


A UK ban on selling arms to Israel would only strengthen Hamas, the foreign secretary has told the BBC.

Lord Cameron said while he would not support a major ground offensive in the Gazan city of Rafah, the UK would not copy US plans to stop some arms sales.

He said the UK supplies just 1% of Israel's weapons and warned Israel must do more to protect civilians and allow humanitarian aid through.

Labour's Jonathan Ashworth said he not want British-made arms used in Rafah.

This week US President Joe Biden upended part of one of the world's most significant strategic relationships by saying the US are "not supplying the weapons " if Israel went ahead with a planned invasion of Rafah - the southern Gazan city where about 1.4 million people have been sheltering.

The UN says more than 80,000 people have fled Rafah since Monday, with Israeli tanks reportedly massed close to built-up areas.

Israel has said it will proceed with planned operations in Rafah despite the US and other allies warning that a ground offensive could lead to mass civilian casualties and a humanitarian crisis.

Its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has pledged to eliminate Hamas battalions he claims are based in Rafah.

He said he wanted instead to focus on "hammering away every day" on getting humanitarian aid into Gaza.

On Friday, the US State Department released an investigation which found Israel may have used American-supplied weapons in breach of international humanitarian law during the war in Gaza.

Pressed on whether he agreed with the findings, Lord Cameron said Israel's "performance is not good enough", arguing "Israel has not had a clean bill of health" on allowing humanitarian aid into the country.

But the UK "has a different approach" and Lord Cameron said he was "not really interested in message sending" through political moves like ending weapons sales.

Lord Cameron said: "I'm interested in what can we do to maximise the British pressure and the outcome that will help people in their lives - including getting the hostages, including British nationals, released."

He dismissed the idea of British boots on the ground in Gaza, saying it was "a risk that we should not take".

Labour MP Zarah Sultana accused the government of not following its own rules by supplying weapons to Israel.

The government's Strategic Export Licensing Criteria prevents weapons sales "if there is a clear risk that the items might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law".

Ms Sultana said the scale of arms sales to Israel "does not matter".

"We are aiding and abetting what are war crimes happening on a daily basis" she told the BBC.

Labour's position on Gaza has shifted since the 7 October Hamas attacks, in which 252 people were kidnapped and about 1,200 killed, sparked a full-blown Israeli military operation in the area.

Since then more than 35,000 people have been killed and 78,000 others wounded in Gaza, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Last year, 10 Labour frontbenchers quit over the party's failure to call for a ceasefire in Gaza as it instead backed a "humanitarian pause" to allow aid to flood into the country.

But in February, Labour began calling for an "immediate ceasefire" after the situation in Gaza "evolved".

Mr Ashworth, a senior member of the shadow cabinet, said he did not "want to see British-made weapons used" in an invasion in Rafah.

"A full-scale offensive into Rafah will be a catastrophe beyond description," he said.

He called on the government to publish the legal advice it has been given on arms sales to Israel.

www.bbc.com

UK ban on selling arms to Israel would strengthen Hamas, says Cameron

Foreign Secretary David Cameron tells the BBC the UK should focus on getting humanitarian aid into Gaza.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
At least 300,000 Palestinians have fled Gaza’s Rafah, according to the United Nations, as Israel expands its offensive in the southern city and confronts Hamas fighters there.

Israeli tanks are moving deeper into the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, witnesses said, after launching a series of intense air raids in the area.


Al Jazeera
 

Blinken delivers strongest public rebuke of Israel yet: 'Get out of Gaza'​


Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday delivered one of the Biden administration’s strongest public rebukes of Israel, amid its war with Hamas in Gaza.

During a pair of TV interviews, Blinken said the United States wants Israeli forces to "get out of Gaza" amid what he described as "a horrible loss of life of innocent civilians." He also said Israel’s tactics in the war have failed to neutralize Hamas and could create a power "vacuum" in the Palestinian territory.

When asked about the U.S. withholding high payload bombs to Israel, America’s ally, Blinken said: "We believe two things. One, you have to have a clear, credible plan to protect civilians, which we haven't seen. Second, we also need to see a plan for what happens after this conflict in Gaza is over. And we still haven't seen that because what are we seeing right now? We're seeing parts of Gaza that Israel has cleared of Hamas, where Hamas is coming back, including in the north, including in Khan Younis."

He added: "As we look at Rafah, they may go in and have some initial success, but potentially at an incredibly high cost to civilians, but one that is not durable, one that's not sustainable. And they will be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency because a lot of armed Hamas will be left, no matter what they do in Rafah, or if they leave and get out of Gaza, as we believe they need to do. Then you're going to have a vacuum and a vacuum that's likely to be filled by chaos, by anarchy, and ultimately by Hamas again."

The comments came during an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Blinken also had an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," where he echoed, for the first time publicly by a U.S. official, the findings of a new Biden administration report to Congress on Friday that said Israel’s use of U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law.

"When it comes to the use of weapons, concerns about incidents where given the totality of the damage that’s been done to children, women, men, it was reasonable to assess that, in certain instances, Israel acted in ways that are not consistent with international humanitarian law," Blinken said, condemning "the horrible loss of life of innocent civilians."

"We treat Israel, one of our closest allies and partners, just as we would treat any other country, including in assessing something like international humanitarian law and its compliance with that," he continued.

During the same interview, Blinken praised President Biden’s support for Israel — saying "no one has done more than Biden" — despite the apparent shift in tone.

"No one has done more to defend Israel when it mattered than President Biden," the Secretary of State said. "He was there in the days after October 7th, the first president to go to Israel in the midst of a conflict when Iran mounted an unprecedented attack on Israel. Some weeks ago, 300 projectiles, including ballistic missiles, launched in Israel. The United States, for the first time ever, participated in its act of defense, and President Biden brought together a coalition of countries that helped defend Israel."

Blinken spoke to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday, reiterating the U.S. opposition to the Israeli offensive in Rafah, given the toll on civilians there, according to the State Department's recounting of the call.

He said the U.S. continues to work with Arab countries and others for weeks on developing "credible plans for security, for governance, for rebuilding'' in Gaza, but "we haven’t seen that come from Israel. ... We need to see that, too."

More than a million Palestinians have been forced to live in Rafah amid Israel's offensive push across Gaza. Israel has described the city as one of the last strongholds of Hamas terrorists.

www.foxnews.com

Blinken delivers strongest public rebuke of Israel yet: 'Get out of Gaza'

Secretary of State Antony Blinken strongly criticized Israel's continued offensive in Gaza amid its war with the Hamas terror group, citing a growing civilian death toll.
www.foxnews.com www.foxnews.com
 

Eurovision: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu praises Eden Golan as Irish singer Bambie Thug criticises organisers and broadcaster​


Israel's prime minister has paid tribute to the country's Eurovision performer - as Ireland's contestant continues to criticise organisers and an Israeli broadcaster.

Switzerland won this year's Eurovision Song Contest in a competition fraught with last-minute changes, backstage incidents and boos for the boss.

Israel's Eden Golan was clapped, cheered, booed and jeered when she took to the stage to perform her song Hurricane at the Malmo Arena in Sweden.

Despite only scoring 52 points from jury votes, the 20-year-old finished in fifth place after receiving an audience score of 323 points - including 12 points from the UK's public vote.

Ms Golan told Sky News she was "over the moon" with the result and had ignored all of the controversy surrounding her performance.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Ms Golan and said she had brought "honour" to the country.

He said: "They booed you and we shouted 'douze points'.

"I saw that you received almost the highest number of votes from the public and this is the most important thing, not from the judges but from the public, and you held Israel's head up high in Europe.

"You have brought immense pride to the state of Israel and the people of Israel. Congratulations."

Ms Golan responded that she was "proud to have the privilege" of representing Israel.

She added: "We accomplished the impossible and it was a great privilege.

"I felt our country's love and everyone's support, and it was unforgettable."

Meanwhile, Bambie Thug has accused the contest's organisers of not supporting Ireland over a row with Israel.

The "ouji pop" star secured a sixth place finish with their song Doomsday Blue in Ireland's first grand final of the music event since 2018.

The performer, who is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, has been outspoken about their pro-Palestinian views and has accused Israeli broadcaster Kan of a rule break.

They said they have been waiting to hear back from the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) about what action would be taken against Israel - in hope that "next year they won't be able to compete".

Bambie Thug - who missed a dress rehearsal amid the row - accused the EBU of allowing Ireland to be "scapegoats".

They said: "They waited to the last minute, we still haven't gotten statement back to us, allowed us to be scapegoats, allowed us to be the spokesperson for standing up for ourselves.

"And yeah, the broadcaster has disobeyed the rules and I hope next year they won't be able to compete because of that."

Bambie Thug also spoke of pressure and stress behind the scenes, but said they were proud of Switzerland's non-binary performer Nemo for winning, adding: "I just want to say we are what Eurovision is. The EBU is not what the Eurovision is.

The UK's Olly Alexander has also broken his silence after placing 18th in the competition with his song Dizzy.

Although the Years & Years singer received 46 points from the jury, he was awarded zero points in the public vote.

On Instagram on Sunday, he shared a post from the official Eurovision account announcing Switzerland as the winner, adding: "Nemo! You did it! I'm so, so proud of you.

"It's been such an honour to be on this journey with you. You broke the code!"

news.sky.com

Eurovision: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu praises Eden Golan as Irish singer Bambie Thug criticises organisers and broadcaster

The UK's Olly Alexander has also broken his silence after placing 18th in the competition with his song Dizzy.
news.sky.com news.sky.com
 
Israeli forces push into Gaza from north and south

Israeli forces have pushed deep into the ruins of Gaza’s northern edge to recapture an area where they had claimed to have defeated Hamas months ago, while at the opposite end of the enclave tanks and troops pushed across a highway into Rafah, Reuters reports.

With some of the most intense fighting for weeks now taking place on both the northern and southern edges of Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have again taken flight, and aid groups warn that a humanitarian crisis could sharply worsen.

Israel described its latest return to the north, where it pulled out most of its troops five months ago, as part of a “mop-up” stage of the onslaught to prevent fighters from returning, and said such operations had always been part of its plan. Palestinians say the need to keep fighting amid the ruins of previous battles is proof Israel’s military objectives are unattainable.

In sprawling Jabalia, the biggest of Gaza’s eight camps built 75 years ago to house Palestinian refugees from what is now Israel, tanks pushed towards the heart of the district. Residents said tank shells were landing at the centre of the camp and air strikes had destroyed clusters of houses.

Source : Reuters
 
The parents of more than 900 Israeli soldiers deployed in Gaza have signed a letter urging the military to call off its ongoing offensive in Rafah, calling it a “deadly trap” for their children.

“It is evident to anyone with common sense that after months of warnings and announcements regarding an incursion into Rafah, there are forces on the other side actively preparing to strike our troops,” says the letter, sent on 2 May.

“Our sons are physically and mentally exhausted,” adds the letter, addressed to the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff, Lt Gen Herzi Halevi. “And now, you intend to send them into this perilous situation? … This appears to be nothing short of recklessness.”

The letter was initially signed by the parents of about 600 soldiers but in recent days the parents of another 300 have signed it.


The Guardian
 

Gaza war: Palestinians flee as Israeli forces go back into Jabalia​


Fierce fighting has been reported in Jabalia in northern Gaza, after the Israeli military went back into areas where it said Hamas had regrouped.

Residents who fled said they had seen tanks advancing towards Jabalia's refugee camp, which has come under heavy bombardment since Saturday.

Palestinian armed groups also said they were battling troops in the camp.

Meanwhile, the UN has said 360,000 people have fled Rafah, in the south, since an offensive began a week ago.

The Israeli military has ordered the evacuation of the eastern third of the city, which is swollen with more than a million Palestinians taking refuge.

On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Israel that a full-scale offensive in Rafah might provoke "anarchy" without eliminating Hamas.

His comments echoed briefings to Israeli media by unnamed senior Israeli military figures, who said Hamas's resurgence in northern Gaza was due to a lack of a specific plan from Israel's government for the "day after" the war.

The military scaled down operations in the north in January after declaring that it had "dismantled" Hamas's battalions there. But that left a power vacuum in which the group has been able to rebuild.

An estimated 300,000 people trapped in the devastated region are also experiencing a "full-blown famine" due to a lack of aid deliveries, according to the head of the World Food Programme.

Residents who were filmed fleeing Jabalia on foot on Monday morning said they had decided to leave after seeing tanks advance into the area.

"We don't know where to go. We have been displaced from one place to the next," one woman told Reuters news agency. "We are running in the streets. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw the tank and the bulldozer."

www.bbc.com

Gaza war: Palestinians flee as Israeli forces go back into Jabalia

Fierce fighting is reported as Israel says it is targeting areas of where Hamas has regrouped.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Israeli forces pushed deep into the ruins of Gaza's northern edge on Monday to recapture an area from Hamas fighters, while in the south tanks and troops pushed across a highway into Rafah, leaving Palestinian civilians scrambling to find safety.

Some of the most intense fighting for weeks is raging in both the north and south. Israeli operations in Rafah, which borders Egypt, have closed a main crossing point for aid. Humanitarian groups say this has worsened an already dire situation.

Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing again. Around half of Gaza's population took sanctuary there after Israel ordered evacuations from northern Gaza in October.

Gaza's health authority appealed for international pressure to reopen access via the southern border to allow in aid, medical supplies and fuel to power generators and ambulances.


Reuters
 
Israeli protesters block aid trucks destined for Gaza

Israeli protesters blocked aid trucks destined for Gaza on Monday, throwing food packages onto the road and ripping bags of grain open in the occupied West Bank.

The lorries, which were set upon at the Tarqumiya checkpoint west of Hebron, came from Jordan and were headed to the Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands of Palestinians face food and aid shortages.

The White House has condemned the attack, describing the "looting" of aid convoys as "a total outrage".

The group reportedly behind the protest said they were demonstrating against the continued detention of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Unverified footage shared on social media showed protesters toppling boxes from lorries onto the ground, and stomping on them once they'd fallen.

Some videos appeared to show vehicles being set on fire later in the evening. The BBC has not been able to independently verify these.

According to reports in Israeli media, the Tzav 9 activist group were responsible for organising the protest.

Israeli media reports describe it as a right-wing group which is seeking to halt humanitarian aid transfers into Gaza while Israeli hostages are held there.

One protester told AFP news agency she was at the checkpoint on Monday because she heard aid trucks were on "their way to the hands of the Hamas, who are trying to kill other soldiers and other Israeli citizens".

Hana Giat, 33, said "no food should go into Gaza" until Israeli hostages are returned "healthy and alive".

In a statement cited by the Jerusalem Post, Tzav 9 rejected some of the protesters' actions, saying that "acts were committed today that are not in line with the values of our movement."

It added, however, that "blocking the trucks is an effective and practical step in which we shout that 'no aid passes until the last of the hostages returns'".

Four protesters, including a minor, were arrested at the demonstration, according to a statement from their lawyers.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the protesters' behaviour was "completely and utterly unacceptable" and the White House was raising its concerns with "the highest level of the Israeli government."

The humanitarian situation in Gaza - the intended destination of the aid trucks - is a matter of grave concern among many in the international community.

The UN's World Food Programme has warned that Palestinians in northern Gaza are experiencing a "full-blown famine". While in the south, where most Palestinians have sought refuge, the humanitarian situation is worsening.

Israel has long maintained that it is committed to facilitating deliveries of humanitarian aid into and within Gaza and has accused Hamas of stealing the aid designated for civilians.

Monday's incident came on Israel's memorial day, as the country stopped to pay their respects to those who have lost their lives in war.

According to Israel's defence ministry, the names of 826 people from the security forces were added to the list of the country's fallen this year, alongside 834 victims of terrorist attacks.

Almost all of them were from the 7 October Hamas attacks, and the war that followed in Gaza.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to the group's attack on southern Israel last year, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 252 others were taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

More than 35,090 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

While the Israeli offensive has been focused on the Gaza Strip, tensions between Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank have heightened since the start of the war.

Around 700,000 Israelis live in 160 settlements alongside 2.7 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the settlement watchdog Peace Now.

Almost all of the international community regards the settlements as illegal, although Israel disputes this.

BBC
 

Israeli tanks push deeper into Rafah, battles rage in northern Gaza​

CAIRO, May 14 (Reuters) - Israeli tanks pushed deeper into eastern Rafah on Tuesday, reaching some residential districts of the southern Gazan border city where more than a million people had been sheltering and stoking fears of further civilian casualties.

Israel's international allies and aid groups have repeatedly warned against a ground incursion into refugee-packed Rafah, where Israel says four Hamas battalions are holed up. Israel says the operation is needed to root out the remaining fighters.

Fighting has intensified elsewhere across the Gaza Strip in recent days, including in the north, with the Israeli military heading back into areas where it had claimed to have dismantled Hamas months ago.

Fierce gun battles were continuing late on Tuesday in northern Gaza's Jabalia, a sprawling refugee camp built for displaced Palestinians 75 years ago.

"Many people are being trapped in their houses. We lost contact with some relatives after they were warned by the army in phone calls to leave and they refused," Nasser, 57, a father of six, told Reuters, using an international phone card.

In Rafah, which borders Egypt, Palestinian residents on Tuesday afternoon said they could see smoke billowing above eastern districts of the city and heard explosions after Israel bombarded a cluster of houses.

Hamas' armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said it had destroyed an Israeli troop carrier with an Al-Yassin 105 missile in the eastern Al-Salam district, killing some crew members and wounding others.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment on the report.

In a round-up of its activities, the IDF said its forces had eliminated "several armed terrorist" cells in close-quarter fighting on the Gazan side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. In the east of the city, it said it had also destroyed militant cells and a launch post from where missiles were being fired at IDF troops.

 
Israel and Egypt row over reopening Rafah border crossing

Israel and Egypt are locked in a row over the Rafah border crossing, blaming each other for its continued closure as Gaza's humanitarian crisis worsens.

Israeli forces have taken control of the Gaza side of the crossing.

On Tuesday Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz said he had told the UK and Germany about "the need to persuade Egypt to reopen" the crossing.

But Egypt says it is Israel's military operations in the area which are preventing aid from passing through.

Cairo said Israel was trying to shift the blame for blocked aid.


www.bbc.com

Israel and Egypt row over reopening Rafah border crossing

Israel says Egypt must reopen the crossing - but Egypt says Israel's military operation there is blocking aid.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Biden administration is giving $1 billion in new weapons and ammo to Israel, congressional aides say

The Biden administration has told key lawmakers it is sending a new package of more than $1 billion in arms and ammunition to Israel, three congressional aides said Tuesday.

It’s the first arms shipment to Israel to be announced by the administration since it put another arms transfer — consisting of 3,500 bombs — on hold earlier in the month. The administration has said it paused that earlier transfer to keep Israel from using the bombs in its growing offensive in the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah.

The congressional aides spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an arms transfer that has not yet been made public.

The package being sent includes about $700 million for tank ammunition, $500 million in tactical vehicles and $60 million in mortar rounds, the aides said.

There was no immediate indication when the arms would be sent. Israel is now seven months into its war against Hamas in Gaza.


 
The European Union urges Israel to end its military operation in Gaza's Rafah "immediately", warning that a failure to do so would undermine ties with the bloc.

"Should Israel continue its military operation in Rafah, it would inevitably put a heavy strain on the EU's relationship with Israel," said the statement issued in the EU's name by its foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

AFP
 
Hamas delegation meets Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, second right, meets Hamas deputy chief Khalil Al Hayya, second left, in Beirut on Wednesday.

Senior Hamas officials met Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah at an undisclosed location in Lebanon’s capital Beirut on Wednesday, to conduct “an in-depth assessment” of developments related to Israel’s war on Gaza, the groups said.

The meeting was held on the same day both Hezbollah and Hamas operatives in Lebanon fired salvos of rockets towards Israel, following the latter’s assassination of a senior Hezbollah commander the previous day.

The meeting also fell on Nakba Day, commemorating 76 years since Palestinians were forcibly evicted during the creation of what is now Israel.

The Hamas delegation, headed by senior official Khalil Al Hayya, also included political bureau members Mohammad Nasr and Osama Hamdan.

Source: The National News
 
Israeli defence chief challenges Netanyahu over post-war Gaza plans

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was publicly challenged about post-war plans for the Gaza Strip on Wednesday by his own defence chief, who vowed to oppose any long-term military rule by Israel over the ravaged Palestinian enclave.

The televised statement by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant marked the most vocal dissent from within Israel's top echelon against Netanyahu during a seven-month-old and multi-front conflict that has set off political fissures at home and abroad.

Netanyahu hinted, in a riposte which did not explicitly name Gallant, that the retired admiral was making "excuses" for not yet having destroyed Hamas in a conflict now in its eight month.

But the veteran conservative premier soon appeared to be outflanked within his own war cabinet: Centrist ex-general Benny Gantz, the only voting member of the forum other than Netanyahu and Gallant, said the defence minister had "spoke(n) the truth".


 
Gaza war: Battles rage as Israeli troops intensify Jabalia and Rafah operations

Israeli forces and Palestinian groups say there have been intense battles in the northern Gazan town of Jabalia.

Israel's military said troops had killed "a large number of terrorists" in Jabalia's refugee camp, while Hamas said it had killed several soldiers.

Tens of thousands of civilians have fled Jabalia since Saturday, when the military said it would re-enter the area because Hamas had regrouped there.

Fierce fighting is also continuing around the southern city of Rafah.

As of 15 May, according to the UN, nearly 600,000 people have been displaced from Rafah, including about 150,000 people in the past 48 hours.

With tanks now pushing into built-up areas and the nearby border crossings closed or inaccessible, supplies and medical services are dwindling.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed deep concern about the impact of the Israeli operation, saying there was an urgent need to restore the full operational capacity of the two Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings to make sure humanitarian assistance got into southern Gaza.

"What we don't want to see is a situation where we've basically reversed what's happened in recent months - where assistance was working its way through in the south but very little was getting to the north," he said.

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back against criticism of the military's operation, saying: "The humanitarian catastrophe that has been spoken of has not been realised, nor will it."

Israel launched a military campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group's cross-border attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 252 others were taken hostage.

More than 35,230 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement on Wednesday that troops had begun "an operation against terrorist operatives and infrastructure in the centre of Jabalia camp" overnight.

"Over the past day, IDF troops in the area have engaged in intense battles with dozens of terrorist cells and eliminated a large number of terrorists," it added.

Hamas's military wing also reported battles inside Jabalia camp on Wednesday and said fighters had targeted Israeli troops with anti-tank missiles and various other explosive devices.

It claimed that a dozen soldiers had been killed in attacks on a bulldozer, a tank and a house in the Block 4 area of the camp. The IDF did not report any casualties.

The Hamas-affiliated Safa news agency reported that air and artillery strikes had caused widespread destruction in areas where the troops had advanced.

Meanwhile, the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa, said four people were killed in an overnight Israeli air strike on a house in Jabalia town.

Wafa also said there had been violent shelling of the Zeitoun neighbourhood, in eastern Gaza City, from which Israeli troops withdrew on Wednesday following a separate six-day operation.

The IDF said the troops had "eliminated dozens of terrorists in encounters and airstrikes, destroyed terrorist infrastructure and located many weapons".

Residents of Zeitoun told BBC Arabic's Gaza Today programme that many had been forced to flee because of the intensity of the bombardment and fighting.

"The biggest problem we face in Zeitoun is that no ambulance or civil defence [rescue team] gets here. So, if your son is injured, he will continue bleeding before your eyes until he dies," said Atef al-Mashalti.

"Such a thing makes any father feel helpless. Fear has taken hold of my son to the point that he has to repeat the Shahadah [the Islamic declaration of faith] in anticipation of death at any moment."

On Tuesday night, Gaza's Hamas-run Civil Defence force said it had recovered the bodies of five people, including a woman and her child, in two Israeli air strikes in Sheikh Radwan and another part of Gaza City.

And on Wednesday afternoon, another strike in Gaza City reportedly killed three people who had been among a group waiting outside a shop that provided an internet signal.

The IDF said aircraft had struck about 80 "terror targets" across Gaza over the past day, including military compounds and weapons storage facilities.

Israel scaled down military operations in the north in January after declaring that it had "dismantled" Hamas's battalions there. But that left a power vacuum in which the group has been able to rebuild.

An estimated 300,000 people trapped in the devastated region are also experiencing a "full-blown famine" due to a lack of aid deliveries, according to the head of the World Food Programme.

Israel says it needs to send troops into Rafah, in the south, because Hamas's last remaining battalions are based there along with the group's leaders and surviving hostages.

The UN and Western powers have warned that an all-out ground assault could lead to mass civilian casualties and a humanitarian catastrophe.

The IDF has ordered the evacuation of a number of neighbourhoods since 6 May, when it began what it called "precise operations in specific areas of eastern Rafah and the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing".

On Wednesday, a statement said troops had been targeting a Hamas training compound, "eliminating terrorists in close-quarters combat" and locating weapons and "equipment intended to simulate that of the IDF".

Israeli troops reportedly advanced to within less than 1.6km (1 mile) from the centre of Rafah on Tuesday, when an Israeli soldier was killed in the south.

The IDF has told displaced residents to head towards an "expanded humanitarian area", which stretches north from the coastal strip of al-Mawasi to the town of Deir al-Balah, in Gaza's Middle Area.

Hind Khoudary, a Palestinian journalist in Deir al-Balah, told the BBC that many of those who had Rafah were now sheltering there.

"Unfortunately, the Middle Area is overcrowded with people. We're talking about a very small area that is supposed to be suitable for more than one million Palestinians," she said.

"They also asked people to go to Khan Younis, but it is completely destroyed and... people don't have access to basic needs, like water."

She also noted that some of those still in Rafah could not afford to pay for a vehicle to leave or were waiting for the IDF to tell them to evacuate.

"People are tired. They have been displaced more than seven or eight times... So the situation is deteriorating every single minute," she warned.

BBC
 

What a hypocrite nation is US, hopefully they do get some sense now​

======

Can US floating pier improve Gaza’s critical aid pipeline?​


With some of the key land crossing points still closed, an ambitious American maritime corridor is due to start operating in the coming days.

With 2.2 million Palestinians in need of food, shelter and other assistance, how much difference will it make?

Early on Thursday morning, a temporary pier, several hundred metres long, was attached to the beach just south of Gaza City.

Several miles offshore, a large floating platform has already been anchored, ready to receive the first shipments of aid from a staging post in Cyprus, 200 miles (320km) to the north.

US officials say the first 500 tonnes of assistance will arrive soon, with thousands more to follow.

The US military begun assembling the floating pier at sea last month
Because of the shallowness of the waters off the Gaza Strip, pallets of aid will be transported to the floating platform before being ferried to the pier aboard logistics support vessels (LSVs), capable of carrying up to 15 lorries each.

Fleets of lorries will ferry the aid ashore to a large marshalling yard prepared and guarded by the Israeli military.

From there, aid agencies - primarily the World Food Programme - will be responsible for distributing supplies across the Gaza Strip.

Vice-Adm Brad Cooper, deputy commander of US Central Command, said he initially expected to see about 90 lorries a day delivering aid via the maritime route, known as a Joint Logistics Over-The-Shore (JLOTS) capability.

He said this figure would rise to 150 lorries a day.

“We have high expectation,” he told reporters on Thursday, while making it clear that JLOTS are no substitute for properly functioning land corridors.

The Israeli military says it has made extensive preparations on Gaza's coast to receive the floating pier
With Israel’s military operation around Rafah now in its 11th day, almost no aid is getting in through the south.

Israel has recently opened crossing points into the north, but everyone agrees that the quantity of aid reaching 2.2 million desperate Gazans is still far from adequate.

“The humanitarian environment in Gaza has become a lot more complex in the last two weeks,” said Sonali Korde from USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.

“The maritime corridor is absolutely essential in helping meet this gap in need.”

“This is all hands on deck,” Ms Korde said. “We can’t spare any effort.”

Source: BBC
 
(Reuters) - The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday that would force President Joe Biden to send weapons to Israel, seeking to rebuke the Democrat for delaying bomb shipments as he urges Israel to do more to protect civilians during its war with Hamas.

The Israel Security Assistance Support Act was approved 224 to 187, largely along party lines. Sixteen Democrats joined most Republicans in voting yes, and three Republicans joined most Democrats in opposing the measure.
 
US confirms first aid trucks arrive via Gaza pier

The US military has confirmed that the first aid shipment via a temporary pier off Gaza has gone ashore.

US Central Command confirmed in a post on X that the aid trucks began moving ashore at about 0900 local time (0700 BST).

"This is an ongoing, multinational effort to deliver additional aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza via a maritime corridor that is entirely humanitarian in nature," the post read, adding that no US troops went ashore.

The US began building the floating base weeks ago to facilitate the delivery of aid to Gaza as Israel continues its military campaign against Hamas.

On Wednesday, it was reported that hundreds of tonnes of aid had arrived in Cyprus, where screening takes place before being loaded on to ships for delivery to the pier.

Vice Adm Brad Cooper, deputy commander of US Central Command, said commercial ships would collect pallets from Cyprus and deliver them to a floating platform anchored several kilometres off the coast of Gaza.

Smaller US military vessels, capable of carrying between five and 15 lorries of aid, will then transport it to a floating pier, several hundred metres long, fixed to the beach in Gaza.

Lorries will travel along the pier before dropping off the aid at a marshalling yard on the beach.

Authorities said that the UN, primarily the World Food Programme, will be responsible for the onward distribution of aid.

BBC
 
The West are the biggest hypocrites on the planet. On one hand supplying bombs and ammunition, and on the other , are concerned for the lack of Aid getting Through. Makes me feel sick to the stomach!
 
aboveandbeyond said:
The West are the biggest hypocrites on the planet. On one hand supplying bombs and ammunition, and on the other , are concerned for the lack of Aid getting Through. Makes me feel sick to the stomach!
Click to expand...

This is just the way we work. I live in and benefit from it so I feel somewhat guilty, but we live lives of luxury through dominating the rest of the world by military control and devastating destructive power. The noises and show of concern for aid are for home consumption to make us feel like we are the good guys.
 

IDF recovers bodies of three hostages taken from Nova music festival in Gaza tunnel​


The Israeli military announced Friday that it has recovered the bodies of three hostages from a tunnel in the Gaza Strip.

The hostages were identified as Shani Louk, Amit Bouskila, and Itshak Gelernter, IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a press conference in Tel Aviv. All three were killed while escaping the Nova music festival and their bodies taken into Gaza, he said.

“They were celebrating life in the Nova music festival and they were murdered by Hamas,” he said.

The bodies were identified by authorities and the families have been informed, Hagari said.

The bodies were transferred to medical professionals for forensic examination. The families were then notified, he added.

Around 240 people were taken hostage and moved to Gaza during Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel that also killed more than 1,200 people. A little more than 100 were freed during a release deal in November, but the IDF believes there are still 132 hostages being held in Gaza, 128 of whom were taken on October 7.

The IDF believed that of those 132 hostages, 40 are believed to be dead, including two who were taken in 2014.

 
US confirms first aid trucks arrive via Gaza pier

The first shipment of humanitarian aid has arrived in Gaza via a temporary floating pier, the US military has confirmed.

US Central Command said that aid trucks began moving ashore at about 09:00 local time (07:00 BST) on Friday.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the delivery of 8,400 plastic shelters was "the culmination of a herculean joint international effort".

About 500 tonnes of British aid including tents, hygiene kits and forklift trucks is expected to be delivered via the pier, built by US armed forces, in the coming weeks.

"This is an ongoing, multinational effort to deliver additional aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza via a maritime corridor that is entirely humanitarian in nature," the US Central Command said in a statement on X, adding that no US troops went ashore.

“More aid will follow, but we know the maritime route is not the only answer," Mr Sunak said.

"We need to see more land routes open, including via the Rafah crossing, to ensure much more aid gets safely to civilians in desperate need of help."

The UK has played a supporting role in the construction of the pier, which was anchored to the shore on Thursday, providing accommodation for US personnel on the Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel Cardigan Bay.


www.bbc.com

US confirms first aid trucks arrive via Gaza pier

It marks the opening of a new route for humanitarian aid to reach the stricken Gaza Strip.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets at Israeli military sites

The Lebanese Hezbollah group has said that it targeted an Israeli logistics base in the occupied Syrian Golan and artillery positions in northern Israel with dozens of Katyusha rockets.

The group said its members “targeted the logistics base of Tsnobar in the occupied Golan with 50 Katyusha rockets.”

Hezbollah fighters also bombed "enemy positions in the (settlement) of Za'oura with another round of Katyusha rockets," the group said in a separate statement. The Israeli ambulance service Magen David Adom reported that two Israelis were injured due to the firing of dozens of rockets from Lebanon at the Upper Galilee.

Source: TRT World
 

Body of hostage recovered from Gaza, says IDF​

Israeli forces have recovered the body of one of the hostages from Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said.

The army confirmed that Ron Benjamin, 53, was found alongside the bodies of three other hostages whose identities were confirmed on Friday.

The 53-year-old had been taking part in a group cycle ride near the Gaza border when the Hamas attack began on 7 October.

About 1,200 people were killed during the unprecedented attack when Hamas gunmen burst into Israel. They took 252 others back to Gaza as hostages.

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari said in a statement posted on X that military intelligence found he was killed on 7 October.

Identification was carried out on Mr Benjamin's body and his family have been informed.

Mr Benjamin's body was recovered in the same operation that recovered the bodies of three other hostages - Shani Louk, Amit Buskila, and Itzhak Gelerenter.

Source: BBC
 
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