What's new

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

Why is Israel demanding to keep control of the Netzarim Corridor?

The Netzarim Corridor, a 7km (4.4-mile) stretch established by the Israeli military that divides northern and southern Gaza, has become a major point of contention in ceasefire negotiations.

Israel is now insisting that its forces maintain control over this corridor, directly opposing one of Hamas’s central demands — Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza.

Hassan Barari, a professor of international affairs at Qatar University, told Al Jazeera that control of the corridor is crucial for Israel because it allows it to screen any Palestinians moving from south to north.

Israel’s military fears that if Palestinians are able to move freely to the north, “it would be an opportunity for Hamas to regroup and attack Israel”, said Barari. “The memory of October 7 is still there.”

However, Barari stated that by including this stipulation in ceasefire demands, Israel is negotiating in bad faith, knowing it is a non-starter for Hamas.

“Hamas wants Israel’s full withdrawal from the entire Strip … and to make sure those who are displaced can return to their homes once and for all,” he said. “Anything short of that Hamas would interpret as a kind of capitulation.”

Source: Al Jazeera
 
Israeli strikes kill dozens in Gaza after Blinken ends visit without breakthrough

Israeli airstrikes across Gaza killed at least 50 Palestinians in the past 24 hours, Palestinian health officials said on Wednesday, after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended his latest visit to the region with a truce deal still proving elusive.

As last-ditch diplomatic efforts aimed at halting the 10-month-old war between Israel and Hamas continued, the Israeli military said jets hit around 30 targets throughout the Gaza Strip including tunnels, launch sites and an observation post.

It said troops killed dozens of armed fighters and seized weapons including explosives, grenades and automatic rifles.

Later in the day, the Israeli military struck a school and a nearby house in Gaza City, killing at least four people and wounding 15, including several children, the territory's Civil Emergency Service said.

The military said in a statement that it had hit Hamas militants operating at a command centre located inside a compound that had previously served as a school.


 
Biden tells Netanyahu Gaza ceasefire deal is urgent

US President Joe Biden has “stressed the urgency” of reaching a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House has said.

In a call on Wednesday, which was also joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr Biden is said to have stated the importance of removing “any remaining obstacles” blocking an agreement with Hamas.

He also reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to help defend Israel against what the White House called "all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis".

It came after the US secretary of state wrapped up a diplomatic tour of the Middle East, pushing for a deal that could end the war.

The office of Mr Netanyahu reiterated on Wednesday that Israel planned to keep troops in a strip of land along the border between Gaza and Egypt - known as the Philadelphi Corridor - in the event of any such deal.

“Israel will insist on the achievement of all of its objectives for the war, as they have been defined by the security cabinet, including that Gaza never again constitutes a security threat to Israel. This requires securing the southern border,” a statement said.

The issue has become a key sticking point - with Hamas so far insisting on a total withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Egypt also opposes the presence of Israeli troops along its border with Gaza.

On Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Israel had agreed to a “US bridging proposal”, after a three-hour meeting with Mr Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

Mr Blinken would not confirm to the BBC whether the US proposal stipulated the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Philadelphi corridor, but Mr Netanyahu’s repeated public insistence on the plan appears to have irritated Washington.

A US official accused the prime minister of making “maximalist statements” that were “not constructive to getting a ceasefire deal across the finish line”.

A new round of ceasefire talks is set to take place in Cairo this weekend, with US, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari representatives in attendance.

Hamas has so far not said they will attend, but it is believed they are continuing to receive updates on the negotiations from Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

A member of the Hamas political bureau told the BBC on Monday that the group had “agreed a deal [through mediators] on 2 July” and therefore “don't need a new round of negotiations or to discuss the new demands of Benjamin Netanyahu”.

“We have shown maximum flexibility and positivity,” Basem Naim said. He claimed that Mr Netanyahu was “not interested in reaching a ceasefire, only in flaring up the region... and serving his own personal political interests".

In Gaza on Wednesday, at least 50 Palestinians were killed by Israeli air strikes, Hamas-run health authorities said.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it hit around 30 targets across the territory, including tunnels, launch sites and an observation post.

The targets included the UN-run Salah al-Din school in Gaza City, which the IDF said was used by “Hamas operatives” as a “hideout”. The strike killed at least four people and wounded 15, the Hamas-run Civil Defence service said.

Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN's Palestinian refugee agency, said that children were killed in the strike and some were “burnt to death".

"Gaza is no place for children anymore. They are the first casualty of this merciless war," he said, adding that “a ceasefire is beyond overdue".

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October by Hamas gunmen, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

More than 40,223 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and combatant deaths. The UN human rights office says most of those killed were women and children.

Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement also exchanged fire on Wednesday, with Israel saying it hit a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in the Bekaa Valley overnight. The Lebanese health ministry said one person was killed and 30 others injured.

In response, Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, said it targeted Israeli military positions in the Golan Heights with a rocket barrage. Israeli authorities said two homes were hit and one person was injured.

BBC
 

Israel’s war on Gaza: Israeli attacks kill at least 40 today in Gaza​


Medical sources say at least 41 people were killed since dawn in Gaza as the Israeli military stepped up operations in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza and Khan Younis in the south.

Israeli negotiators reportedly arrive in Cairo as the next round of ceasefire talks are set to start.

Source: Al Jazeera
 
Israeli demands for troops in Gaza blocking truce deal, sources say

Disagreements over Israel's future military presence in Gaza and over Palestinian prisoner releases are obstructing a ceasefire and hostage deal, according to ten sources familiar with the round of U.S.-mediated talks that concluded last week.

The sources, who include two Hamas officials and three Western diplomats, told Reuters the disagreements stemmed from demands Israel has introduced since Hamas accepted a version of a ceasefire proposal unveiled by U.S. President Joe Biden in May.

All the sources said Hamas was especially concerned about the latest demand to keep troops deployed along the Netzarim Corridor, an east-west strip Israel cleared during the current war that prevents Palestinians' free movement between north and south Gaza, as well as in a narrow border strip between Gaza and Egypt known as the Philadelphi Corridor.

The sources asked not to be named to speak freely about sensitive matters.

 
Democrats reject Gaza protesters demand to give speaking slot to Palestinian

Democrats have rejected demands from demonstrators to allow a Palestinian to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Uncommitted delegates - who oppose US support of Israel's war in Gaza - began a sit-in protest just outside of the arena doors on Wednesday night.

But by 18:00 local time on Thursday - the deadline protesters had set to hear from Kamala Harris's campaign - activists said they had not received a response to their requests for a Palestinian to be allowed to take the stage.

The sit-in protest on the final night of the convention came as thousands of demonstrators outside the perimeter continued to rally against the war in Gaza and White House policy.

The demonstrations this week have been largely peaceful, except for a smaller, unsanctioned protest outside the Israeli consulate that led to 56 arrests.

"This has been a disastrous decision by the Democratic leadership to deny a bare-minimum ask that we requested weeks ago, prior to the convention," said Layla Elabed, a co-leader of the uncommitted national movement.

The Harris campaign told the BBC that campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez had met leaders from the uncommitted movement in recent days.

"There have been a number of speakers who have spoken about the war in Gaza and the need to secure a ceasefire and hostage deal. You will continue to hear that message," a spokesperson said.

Uncommitted delegates were selected in state Democratic primaries earlier this year. President Joe Biden won an overwhelming share of primary voters, but pro-Palestinian activists urged people to vote "uncommitted" and similar options in a number of states.

Enough Democratic voters did so to send 30 delegates to the convention in Chicago, out of a total of more than 2,400 delegates.

Israel's war in Gaza has divided the Democratic Party, but has largely been avoided as a topic of discussion during the DNC this week.

The uncommitted protesters said they had given the Harris campaign a list of several potential Palestinians who could speak at the conference.

The activists said the Harris campaign sent aides and lawmakers to the sit-in protest outside the arena on Wednesday night to try to resolve the conflict, but they refused to offer a speaking slot.

Uncommitted activists said they were told that the focus of the convention was on the vice-president, as she prepared to give a speech that would be the "biggest of her life".

The delegates said they had been asking to have a Palestinian speaker address the crowd at the convention for two months.

"We're going to have to have a lot of difficult conversations with the vice-president and her team after this," said Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan. "We're going to have to take stock of what happened."

Despite the large protests outside the arena doors, the war in Gaza has been mentioned by only a handful of speakers throughout the four-day programme.

Mr Alawieh said the goal of having a Palestinian speaker at the convention was about "forcing" the Democratic Party to "create space for talking about Palestinian human rights".

Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, an outspoken critic of US support of Israel, told the BBC she was not surprised the topic has not been featured much during the convention.

“Interestingly, foreign policy never really is a huge topic that’s talked about,” she said. “But I’ve always thought of foreign policy as domestic policy."

BBC
 
Stumbling block persists in Gaza ceasefire talks

John Kirby, the US National Security Council spokesperson, has stated that reports suggesting the talks were on the verge of collapse are inaccurate.

However, the Americans have been discussing the possibility of a deal since this proposal by US President Joe Biden was revealed in May.

We know where the stumbling block is—we saw it when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the Middle East over the past few days. Blinken mentioned that a timeline has been agreed upon for the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers from Gaza.

However, it was reported that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu told the families of the captives that Israeli soldiers would remain in the Netzarim Corridor—which stretches across the Gaza Strip from east to west—as well as in the Philadelphi Corridor, the buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt.

Hamas has stated that not only can this not happen, but that there cannot be any Israeli soldiers left in Gaza. The Egyptians are also not in favour of this idea. As a result, the suggestion that Benjamin Netanyahu is saying one thing to Antony Blinken and another to the families of the captives has upset the Americans.

Source: Al Jazeera
 
Israel-Gaza ceasefire: Is a deal still possible?

Earlier this week, on live television, the mother of one of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza made an offer to the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar: Release all 109 hostages – dead and alive - in exchange for the children of Israel’s security chiefs.

But Ditza Or, whose son Avinatan was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during the 7 October attacks, wasn’t pushing for Israel’s leaders to sign a ceasefire deal - she was pushing them to fight Hamas harder.

Ms Or, and a handful of other pro-war hostage families, are unlikely allies of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now under immense pressure from his US ally, his security chiefs and even his own defence minister to be more flexible and reach a deal.

Leaked reports of a recent phone call with his most important ally suggested that US President Joe Biden told the Israeli leader at one point to “stop bullshitting” him. The implication: that Mr Netanyahu didn’t want a deal at all.

As negotiations limped on in Cairo this week, aimed at bridging the gaps between Israel and Hamas, leaks to Israeli media suggest that the gaps between Mr Netanyahu and his own negotiators and defence chiefs are getting wider.

According to Dana Weiss, chief political analyst for Israel’s TV Channel 12, the prime minister privately accused key negotiators and security chiefs of “weakness”, presenting himself as standing alone in defence of Israel’s security interests.

They have different approaches to the urgency of a deal, she says, and one reason for that is the differing level of responsibility each feels.

“The military establishment feel guilty about 7 October, and feel a moral duty to bring back the hostages,” she explained. “Our government, our ministers and especially Prime Minister Netanyahu don’t feel personally responsible for 7 October, they put the blame totally on the military establishment, and therefore do not feel that same sense of urgency to go ahead with a deal.”

Mr Netanyahu has said that getting the hostages home is his second priority in the war - behind victory over Hamas, and has emphasised his commitment to preserve Israel’s security “in the face of major domestic and foreign pressure”.

The man who once cherished his image as Israel’s ‘Mr Security’ appears to be playing to it again, 10 months after that image was shattered by the 7 October attacks.

A key sticking point in negotiations is whether Israeli forces withdraw from a strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor.

Mr Netanyahu appears to be sticking hard to a "red line" of keeping an Israeli military presence there, citing Israel’s security needs, despite leaks suggesting that his negotiators believe it is a “deal-breaker”.

Senior Hamas figure Hussam Badran told the BBC on Friday that the group would accept nothing less than the withdrawal of Israeli forces, and that Mr Netanyahu’s position showed that he did not want an agreement, but was “manipulat[ing] through empty rounds of negotiations to gain time”.

Hamas is widely seen as facing tough questions over what Gaza or the Palestinians have gained from the October attacks, after more than 10 months of bombing and displacement.

Compromises on prisoner exchanges are seen as easier for the group to swallow than accepting the continued presence of Israel’s army in Gaza, and checkpoints for residents moving north.

Egypt is also understood to be refusing any deal that does not have Palestinians in charge on the other side of their shared border.

Hamas has not formally joined the current round of talks, and many believe Mr Sinwar’s own priority is keeping the Gaza War going in order to spark a regional conflict, which would put enormous pressure on Israel, and - the reasoning goes -force its prime minister into greater concessions to end it.

The risks of a wider escalation – amid threats from Iran and Hezbollah – are one reason Washington is pressing hard for a deal. The US is three months away from a presidential election, and President Biden’s administration believes a ceasefire in Gaza would help calm the region.

The political analyst, Dana Weiss, says that Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant agrees that if Israel does not take the path of a ceasefire deal - even temporarily - then it will be on a sure path to escalation.

“For the prime minister, it’s totally the opposite,” she says. “He answers: No, if we go ahead and cave to Sinwar now, Hezbollah and Iran see that we’re weak. We have to finish the task with Hamas, to prevent the war.”

But, she says, Mr Netanyahu also has domestic political incentives to stall the negotiations. Among those incentives is the fact that, after months of abysmal approval ratings, he is now rising again in opinion polls.

Several surveys have recently placed him at the top of respondents’ voting intentions, both in terms of his right-wing party, Likud, and his own personal profile as leader - results that were unthinkable a few months ago.

All eyes are now on the next scheduled talks, due to take place on Sunday. In the meantime, Egypt has reportedly agreed to share Israel’s latest proposal for the border area with Hamas.

Mediators insist a deal is still possible, but hopes on all sides appear to be shrinking.

After meeting the Israeli prime minister today, Ella Ben Ami, the daughter of another Israeli hostage, said she looked Benjamin Netanyahu in the eye and asked him to promise to do everything and not give up until they return.

She was left, she said, with “a heavy and difficult feeling that this isn’t going to happen soon”.

The clock is ticking on these negotiations: for Gaza’s people, for the Israeli hostages still held there in tunnels, for the region as a whole.

But for Mr Sinwar and Mr Netanyahu, perhaps the most powerful weapon they have in this war is time.

BBC
 
Latest Updates on Gaza War:
  • Relentless Israeli attacks across Gaza have killed at least 59 Palestinians since dawn on Saturday.
  • More than 100,000 people have been forced to evacuate Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, as Israel’s army attacks homes and tents in Khan Younis and Nuseirat refugee camp.
  • A Hamas delegation, led by senior official Khalil al-Hayya, has arrived in Cairo amid continuing Gaza ceasefire talks. Reports say the group will be briefed on the current status of negotiations but is not expected to take part directly.
  • UN official says Palestinian children are “paying the heaviest price” as Gaza faces critical humanitarian aid shortages and spike in malnutrition.
  • At least 40,334 people have been killed and 93,356 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas-led attacks on October 7.
Source: Al Jazeera
 
BouncerGuy said:
Democrats reject Gaza protesters demand to give speaking slot to Palestinian

Democrats have rejected demands from demonstrators to allow a Palestinian to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Uncommitted delegates - who oppose US support of Israel's war in Gaza - began a sit-in protest just outside of the arena doors on Wednesday night.

But by 18:00 local time on Thursday - the deadline protesters had set to hear from Kamala Harris's campaign - activists said they had not received a response to their requests for a Palestinian to be allowed to take the stage.

The sit-in protest on the final night of the convention came as thousands of demonstrators outside the perimeter continued to rally against the war in Gaza and White House policy.

The demonstrations this week have been largely peaceful, except for a smaller, unsanctioned protest outside the Israeli consulate that led to 56 arrests.

"This has been a disastrous decision by the Democratic leadership to deny a bare-minimum ask that we requested weeks ago, prior to the convention," said Layla Elabed, a co-leader of the uncommitted national movement.

The Harris campaign told the BBC that campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez had met leaders from the uncommitted movement in recent days.

"There have been a number of speakers who have spoken about the war in Gaza and the need to secure a ceasefire and hostage deal. You will continue to hear that message," a spokesperson said.

Uncommitted delegates were selected in state Democratic primaries earlier this year. President Joe Biden won an overwhelming share of primary voters, but pro-Palestinian activists urged people to vote "uncommitted" and similar options in a number of states.

Enough Democratic voters did so to send 30 delegates to the convention in Chicago, out of a total of more than 2,400 delegates.

Israel's war in Gaza has divided the Democratic Party, but has largely been avoided as a topic of discussion during the DNC this week.

The uncommitted protesters said they had given the Harris campaign a list of several potential Palestinians who could speak at the conference.

The activists said the Harris campaign sent aides and lawmakers to the sit-in protest outside the arena on Wednesday night to try to resolve the conflict, but they refused to offer a speaking slot.

Uncommitted activists said they were told that the focus of the convention was on the vice-president, as she prepared to give a speech that would be the "biggest of her life".

The delegates said they had been asking to have a Palestinian speaker address the crowd at the convention for two months.

"We're going to have to have a lot of difficult conversations with the vice-president and her team after this," said Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan. "We're going to have to take stock of what happened."

Despite the large protests outside the arena doors, the war in Gaza has been mentioned by only a handful of speakers throughout the four-day programme.

Mr Alawieh said the goal of having a Palestinian speaker at the convention was about "forcing" the Democratic Party to "create space for talking about Palestinian human rights".

Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, an outspoken critic of US support of Israel, told the BBC she was not surprised the topic has not been featured much during the convention.

“Interestingly, foreign policy never really is a huge topic that’s talked about,” she said. “But I’ve always thought of foreign policy as domestic policy."

BBC
Click to expand...
You should be knowing by now that no matter what party comes to power in the US - both will support Israel unequivocally. Infact they will try to outdo each other on this. Biden actually gave more to Israel than trump. And Harris if she wins will do the same. Yeah some lip service at the democratic convention and status quo..
 
deltexas said:
You should be knowing by now that no matter what party comes to power in the US - both will support Israel unequivocally. Infact they will try to outdo each other on this. Biden actually gave more to Israel than trump. And Harris if she wins will do the same. Yeah some lip service at the democratic convention and status quo..
Click to expand...
vocal.media

Gaza War: Israel is doomed to fail and US must remain cautious

Netanyahu prolonging the war in Israel just to evade corruption charges at expense of Israel's demise
vocal.media vocal.media

A good short article, US need to realize its madness
 
GAZA, Saturday, August 24, 2024 (WAFA) – Israeli occupation forces committed five massacres against families in the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, resulting in the killing of at least 69 Palestinians and the injury of 212 others, according to medical sources.

Local health authorities confirmed that the Palestinian death toll from the Israeli onslaught since October 7 has risen to 40,334 reported fatalities, with an additional 93,356 individuals sustaining injuries. The majority of the victims are women and children.

According to the same sources, emergency services are still unable to reach many casualties and dead bodies trapped under the rubble or scattered on roads across the war-torn enclave, as Israeli occupation forces continue to obstruct the movement of ambulance and civil defense crews.
Click to expand...

Reference: https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/148343.
 

Diseases spread in Gaza as sewage contaminates camps and coast​


The waters on parts Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline have started turning brown as health experts warn of the spread of open sewage and diseases across the territory.

Satellite images, analysed by BBC Arabic, show what appears to be a large discharge of sewage spill off the coast of Deir al-Balah.

A local official told BBC Arabic displaced people in nearby camps are sending their sewage straight to sea.

“It is because of the increase in the number of displaced people and many are connecting their own pipes to the rainwater drainage system,” said Abu Yazan Ismael Sarsour, head of the Deir al-Balah emergency committee.

Wim Zwijnenburg, an environmental expert from the Pax for Peace organisation, confirmed that wastewater appeared to be heading into the sea from nearby crowded camps, after examining the satellite pictures.

The sewage discharge in the images, captured on 2 August, covered an area of over 2 sq km (0.8 sq miles). Satellite images show the discharge first started appearing in June and that it grew steadily over the next two months.

It is not clear if the coastal pollution is still growing as more recent satellite image are not available.

Intensive Israeli bombardment has led to the collapse of Gaza’s waste water management infrastructure, a UN environmental report concluded in June.

The Israeli defence ministry body overseeing policy for the Palestinian territories, Cogat, told BBC Arabic a dedicated humanitarian taskforce had taken action to improve the sewage system in Gaza.

In recent months, Cogat co-ordinated the restoration of water wells and desalination facilities, as well as the extension of water pipes in Gaza, according to its statement.

The BBC is not able to independently verify specific improvements to Gaza’s sewage infrastructure. Israel, alongside Egypt, does not allow independent journalists into Gaza except on controlled and brief visits with the Israeli military.

Health experts, though, are sounding the alarm about the spread of waterborne diseases, after a 10-month-old baby was partially paralysed after contracting polio - the first registered case in Gaza for 25 years.

UN and World Health Organization (WHO) officials also called for a two one-week ceasefires so they can vaccinate 600,000 children in Gaza.

But observers say the delivery of vaccines would probably hit the same barriers affecting the flow of other humanitarian aid, making distribution slow and extremely difficult. The destruction of Gaza's health care system will also make any vaccination programme an enormous challenge.

In a response to BBC Arabic, Cogat insisted there were no restrictions on medical aid.

In a later social media statement, Cogat said “an additional 60,000 polio vaccines will be delivered to vaccinate over one million children” in the coming weeks.

The charity Oxfam told BBC Arabic a quarter of Gaza's population had already become ill because of waterborne diseases.

“We are seeing a catastrophic health crisis unfolding in front of our eyes," said Lama Abdul Samad, a water and sanitation expert at Oxfam.

“Polio is a waterborne disease and it is directly linked to the sanitation situation.”

“The sanitation infrastructure has been damaged severely to the point that it is flooding the streets and the neighbourhoods, and people are basically living adjacent to puddles of sewage," she added.

New photos and satellite images analysed by BBC Arabic illustrate how the problem of untreated sewage in Gaza has been getting steadily worse.

The Sheikh Radwan Lagoon in northern Gaza, which was once a source of clean rainwater, appears to be overflowing with dirty water.

The lagoon has clearly been contaminated by raw sewage, Ms Abdul Samad said after assessing the pictures.

Several Palestinians living nearby have complained to BBC Arabic’s Gaza Lifeline emergency radio service of the overflowing waste water, stench and rodents coming out of the lagoon.

“Raw sewage is running into our property because of the overflowing Sheikh Radwan Lagoon,” Ibrahim Ramzi said.

Meanwhile, Ghada al-Haddad, an aid worker in central Gaza, sent BBC Arabic a video from a makeshift camp where sewage had built up into a pond next to displaced people. She described the smell as "overpowering" and "unendurable”.

Polio is just one part the heath crisis facing Gaza.

Earlier this month, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Unrwa, reported 40,000 cases of Hepatitis A – which can also be transmitted through ingestion of contaminated water - in Gaza since the start of the war compared to only 85 in the same period beforehand.

Public health experts are also warning of a potential cholera epidemic.

Aid agencies say doctors in Gaza are also struggling to treat a huge caseload of dysentery, pneumonia, and severe skin diseases because of the collapse of the health sector.

“The reason behind the spread of these bacterial diseases is the complete lack of a sanitation system,” paediatric consultant Dr Ahmed al-Farra explained.

He said the problems included the “mixing of clean ground water and sewage, the severe overpopulation, the extreme heat, the lack of ventilation, the overpopulated tents, [and] the oversharing of toilets”.

The UN estimates the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been internally displaced since last autumn.

Many people are living in shelters with just one toilet for 600 people, a World Health Organization official told reporters in July.

On 7 October, Hamas launched unprecedented assault on Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken back to Gaza as hostages.

Since the attack, the Israeli military operation in Gaza has killed more than 40,200 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

www.bbc.com

Diseases spread in Gaza as sewage contaminates camps and coast

Satellite images show the impact of the damage to Gaza's critical water and sanitation systems.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Palestinian health ministry says six killed in West Bank attacks

At least five people have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian officials say.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) confirmed the strike, on the Nur Shams camp near the city of Tulkarm, saying it had targeted what it called the command room of a "terror cell".

Separately, the Palestinian Authority said one person had been killed and three injured in an attack by Israeli settlers near Bethlehem. The IDF said it was investigating the reports.

There has been a surge in violence in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, triggered by Hamas's deadly attack on southern Israel on 7 October.

The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last Wednesday that 128 Palestinians, including 26 children, had been killed in air strikes in the West Bank since 7 October.

It added that as of 19 August, 607 Palestinians had been killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem - including seven by Israeli settlers.

Ten Israelis have also been killed in attacks by Palestinians from the West Bank, the agency adds.

The Nur Shams camp has been targeted by the IDF several times in recent months.

In April, the Palestinian Red Crescent said 14 people died in a two-day Israeli operation.

And in July the IDF bulldozed the camp's main street.

In Monday's second reported attack near Bethlehem, Palestinian media said dozens of Israeli settlers had entered the village of Wadi Rahhal, attacking residents.

The settlers shot dead a 40-year-old Palestinian man and wounded at least three others, Palestinian officials said.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem - land the Palestinians want as part of a future state - in the 1967 Middle East war.

The vast majority of the international community considers the settlements illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

BBC
 

Palestinians in occupied West Bank face increasing settler attacks​

People are telling us that they had a night of terror after settlers attacked the village of Wadi Rahal. They believe that they came from this area, which is where the illegal Israeli settlement of Efrat is located.

It’s one of the largest settlements here in the Bethlehem area, and it’s been inching closer and closer towards the homes of Palestinians. People tell us that settlers have used this road to get to this area.

They started throwing rocks at homes, leading many Palestinians to come here and try to fend them off their loved ones.

And especially since the war started, we’ve been seeing how the Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been giving settlers more and more access to weapons. Now the ambulances could not get to this area to help Khalil, leading him to die of his wounds.

We are talking about these settler attacks that have been increasing and increasing.

Palestinians say that they’ve been getting more and more vulnerable towards settler attacks, and especially that they’re facing more armed, more audacious settlers by the day.

Source: Al Jazeera
 
The Bald Eagle said:

Palestinians in occupied West Bank face increasing settler attacks​

People are telling us that they had a night of terror after settlers attacked the village of Wadi Rahal. They believe that they came from this area, which is where the illegal Israeli settlement of Efrat is located.

It’s one of the largest settlements here in the Bethlehem area, and it’s been inching closer and closer towards the homes of Palestinians. People tell us that settlers have used this road to get to this area.

They started throwing rocks at homes, leading many Palestinians to come here and try to fend them off their loved ones.

And especially since the war started, we’ve been seeing how the Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been giving settlers more and more access to weapons. Now the ambulances could not get to this area to help Khalil, leading him to die of his wounds.

We are talking about these settler attacks that have been increasing and increasing.

Palestinians say that they’ve been getting more and more vulnerable towards settler attacks, and especially that they’re facing more armed, more audacious settlers by the day.

Source: Al Jazeera
Click to expand...

Simply horrendous.

Imagine the terror these innocent Palestinians are experiencing due to these criminal settlers.
 
Israeli military launches major West Bank operation

At least 11 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the north of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials say.

Five were reportedly killed in an air strike in al-Far’a refugee camp, and six in a drone strike and armed clashes in Jenin.

Israeli security forces said they were carrying out "a counterterrorism operation to thwart terror" in Jenin and Tulkarm.

This appears to be a major Israeli operation, with at least four Palestinian cities being targeted at the same time - Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus and Tubas.

It is believed to be the first time since the second intifada - a major Palestinian uprising from 2000 to 2005 - that several Palestinian cities have been targeted simultaneously in this way.

Palestinian reports say that the main roads into Jenin have been closed off with armed clashes in the city’s refugee camp.

An Israeli air strike is said to have targeted a vehicle in a nearby village at dawn.

Israeli forces are said to have entered a hospital in Jenin and blocked off two in Tulkarm.

Israeli military raids of Nablus are reportedly focused on two refugee camps there.

In Far’a camp near Tubas, medics say ambulances are struggling to reach the wounded after an Israeli drone strike.

The Israeli military has given few details but said in a statement that the Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet and Israel Border Police forces were "currently conducting a counterterrorism operation to thwart terror in Jenin and Tulkarm."

BBC
 

Fate of Gaza ceasefire deal in Hamas leader’s hands: US intel official​


The fate of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is “largely a question that is going to be answered” by the leader of the Palestinian militant group, Deputy CIA Director David Cohen said on Wednesday.

Cohen did not refer to Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, by name. The Israelis were showing seriousness in the negotiations, Cohen told an intelligence and national security summit in Washington.

Mediators from the US, Egypt and Qatar have been working to strike a deal between the sides and prevent a broader regional war.

On those efforts, Cohen said: “There may be episodes where people would step back from the brink, but I don’t think anybody can be confident that that effort to control escalation is something that ... any party in that region” can control.

 
EU foreign policy chief slams Israeli foreign minister’s comments on West Bank operations

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has expressed alarm over comments from Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz about Israeli operations in the occupied West Bank.

Katz likened the Israeli raids to the war in Gaza and said the “temporary evacuation” of Palestinians – a term with unsettling connotations in the West Bank, where Israel has been forcing Palestinians from their lands for decades – was on the table.

“The Israeli major military operation in the occupied West Bank must not constitute the premises of a war extension from Gaza, including full-scale destruction,” Borrell said in a social media post.

The parallel drawn by Katz, “especially on evacuating Palestinian residents, threatens to fuel further instability”, Borrell wrote.

Source: Al Jazeera
 
Rescued Israeli pleads for hostage deal with Hamas

A Bedouin Arab man rescued in Gaza has urged Israel to reach a deal with Hamas to free all the remaining hostages, as details of his suffering in captivity have emerged.

Kaid Farhan Elkadi, 52, was rescued on Tuesday in a "complex operation in the southern Gaza Strip", the Israeli military said.

After returning to his village in southern Israel on Wednesday, Mr Elkadi said his "happiness is not complete as long as there are detainees" on both sides.

Meanwhile, a former Israeli mayor said Mr Elkadi had been hardly exposed to sunlight for eight months.

In a separate development on Wednesday, Israel announced that it had recovered the body of an Israeli soldier killed in last October's attack by Hamas on Israel.

The soldier's name was not publicly released at the request of his family.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said "a bold operation" by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the country's security service reflected "our commitment to bringing all the hostages home".

US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are trying to broker a ceasefire deal that would see Hamas release the 103 hostages still being held, including at least 33 who are presumed dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.


www.bbc.com

Rescued Israeli man pleas for hostage deal with Hamas

Kaid Farhan Elkadi was freed in a "complex operation" in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military says.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
This is just silly. Why don't they release the hostages? They are basically giving an invitation to Israel to continue destroying their people.
 

The apartheid regime sowing in the seed for future conflicts​

=====

Israel paving asphalt road along Philadelphi Corridor: war monitors​


The Israeli military is paving an asphalt road along a section of the Gaza Strip’s southern border with Egypt, according to satellite imagery analysed by two US-based war monitors.

“Paving the Philadelphi Corridor will make it harder for Palestinian militias to plant improvised explosive devices (IED) along it,” the Critical Threats Project and Institute for Study of War report.

Source: Al Jazeera
 

Israel says it killed five Palestinian fighters inside West Bank mosque​


The Israeli military said on Thursday its troops killed five Palestinian militants who were hiding inside a mosque in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, in one of its largest assaults in the Israeli-occupied territory for months.

The operation, which a Reuters witness said has yet to conclude, began in the early hours of Wednesday with hundreds of Israeli troops backed by helicopters, drones and armored personnel carriers raiding the flashpoint cities of Tulkarm, Jenin and areas in the Jordan Valley.

There was also a complete network outage at Jawwal, one of the two main telecommunications companies in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, according to the Reuters witness.

Palestinian health authorities said at least 12 Palestinians were killed in Wednesday’s operations.

In Jenin earlier, Israeli bulldozers edged along empty, rubbish-strewn streets as the sound of drones pierced the sky. The troops searched ambulances on the streets and in front of Jenin’s main hospital, having blocked off access to it on Wednesday to prevent fighters from seeking refuge there.

Israel said one of the five militants killed in the Tulkarm mosque was Muhamad Jabber, known as “Abu Shujaa,” the head of a network of fighters in the adjacent Nur Shams refugee camp.

The Tulkarm division of Islamic Jihad’s armed wing said: “As part of the response to the assassination of our leader, our fighters were able to ambush an infantry force in the Manshiyya axis behind Abu Ubaida Mosque.”

The militant group claimed “direct hits” on Israeli troops after it detonated an explosive device near them.

In a statement, human rights group Amnesty International called the stepped-up scale of West Bank fighting alarming and said Israel has an obligation, as the occupying power, to safeguard health facilities and protect Palestinians, their homes and their infrastructure.

Clashes with Israeli forces in the West Bank have escalated since Israel’s war with Hamas militants began in Gaza nearly 11 months ago.

More than 660 – combatants and civilians – have been killed, by Palestinian tallies, some by Jewish settlers who have carried out frequent vigilante-style attacks on West Bank Palestinian communities.

 

Families of Israeli hostages try to cross into Gaza Strip​


Families of Israeli hostages being held in the Gaza Strip protested near the border on Thursday, demanding a deal to secure their release and at one point made a dash to try to cross into the coastal enclave.

Relatives of some of the 107 hostages still held by Palestinian militants in Gaza, carrying photographs and wearing shirts marked with red paint, gathered at kibbutz Nirim in southern Israel, roughly 2 km (1.2 miles) from the border.

They began by shouting messages of love and support through a stack of speakers pointed towards the Gaza frontier.

“Hersh, it’s dada,” yelled Jon Polin, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was taken hostage from a music festival.

“What you need to know, and all 107 of you need to know, is not only are the families here today and 9 million people of this country, but people all over the world are fighting for you,” he said.

His mother, Rachel Goldberg, raised her hand to the sky as she spoke into the microphone: “We love you. Stay strong. Survive.”

Nirim was one of a string of Israeli communities around the Gaza Strip targeted in a cross-border rampage by Hamas on Oct. 7 that sparked the war in Gaza.

Hamas-led gunmen killed some 1,200 Israelis and foreigners and abducted around 250 hostages on Oct. 7, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel’s military has levelled Gaza, driving nearly all of its inhabitants from their homes and killing at least 40,000, according to Palestinian health authorities. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 militants.

International efforts to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal have failed to end the fighting.

At one point a few dozen protesters broke off and rushed towards the Gaza border in the distance.

“We are coming to get them back to Israel where they belong, where they are supposed to be,” said Eyal Kalderon, short of breath during the dash, whose cousin Ofer is a hostage.

They were stopped before reaching the border by Israeli police, who warned that standing in the open field made them easy targets for Palestinian militants.

“We were trying to get into Gaza to get the hostages back. Our family members. Our military stopped us, they are trying to defend and protect us. But the hostages aren’t protected there,” said Gil Dickmann. His cousin Carmel Gat is also in captivity.

“We have to sign a deal now and get all the hostages back. And we’re calling our prime minister - if you can’t do this, we’ll get inside and we’ll bring them back ourselves. Bring them home now.”

 
Israel kills a top militant in its deadliest West Bank raids since the Gaza war began

The Israeli military said it killed five more West Bank militants, including a local commander, as it pressed ahead Thursday with its deadliest operation in the occupied territory since the start of the war in Gaza.

Israel says the raids across the northern West Bank — which have killed a total of 16 people, nearly all militants, since late Tuesday — are aimed at preventing attacks. The Palestinians see them as a widening of the war in Gaza and an effort to perpetuate Israel’s decades-long military rule over the territory.

The raids drew alarm from the United Nations and neighboring Jordan, as well as from British and French leaders, who stressed the urgency of cease-fire in Gaza after nearly 11 months of fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Medics at al-Awda Hospital in central Gaza said Thursday eight Palestinians were killed and 20 wounded from Israeli strikes on the crowded Nuseirat refugee camp.

In the West Bank, the Islamic Jihad militant group confirmed that Mohammed Jaber, known as Abu Shujaa, was killed during a raid in the city of Tulkarem. He became a hero for many Palestinians earlier in the year when he was reported killed in an Israeli operation, only to make a surprise appearance at the funeral of other militants, where he was hoisted onto the shoulders of a cheering crowd.

Israel said he was killed Thursday along with four other militants in a shootout after the five had hidden inside a mosque. It said Abu Shujaa was linked to numerous attacks on Israelis, including a deadly shooting in June, and was planning more.


apnews.com

Israel kills a top militant in its deadliest West Bank raids since the Gaza war began

The Israeli military says it has killed five more militants, including a local commander, in the occupied West Bank.
apnews.com apnews.com
 
Israel agrees to pauses in fighting for polio vaccine drive

Israel has agreed to a series of “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to allow for the vaccination of children against polio, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

The campaign will aim to vaccinate around 640,000 children across the Gaza strip and will begin on Sunday, senior WHO official Rik Peeperkorn said.

It will be rolled out in three separate stages, across the central, southern and northern parts of the strip. During each stage, fighting will pause for three consecutive days between 06:00 and 15:00 local time.

The agreement comes days after UN officials said a 10-month-old baby had been partially paralysed after contracting Gaza’s first case of polio for 25 years.

Around 1.26m doses of the novel oral polio vaccine type 2 (nOPV2) are already in Gaza, with 400,000 additional doses set to arrive soon.

The vaccinations will be carried out by UN staff and other local health workers. Over 2,000 health and community outreach personnel have been trained to administer the vaccine.

The WHO is aiming to achieve 90% vaccine coverage across the strip, which is needed to stop transmission of the virus within Gaza.

An agreement is in place for an additional fourth day of vaccination and humanitarian pause if needed to achieve that level of vaccination.

Poliovirus is highly infectious and is most often spread through sewage and contaminated water.

It can cause disfigurement and paralysis, and is potentially fatal. It mainly affects children under the age of five.

The WHO says immunisation rates in Gaza and the occupied West Bank were optimal before the conflict. Polio vaccine coverage was estimated at 99% in 2022, although it had declined to 89% last year, according to the latest data.

The Israeli military said in July it had begun vaccinating its soldiers against the disease.

Hamas official Basem Naim told the Reuters news agency: "We are ready to cooperate with international organisations to secure this campaign, serving and protecting more than 650,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the series of three-day pauses were "not a ceasefire".

James Kariuki, UK deputy permanent representative to the UN, said he "strongly" welcomed the vaccination plan.

"We now need to see this in action and these pauses need to be long enough to deliver the 90% coverage required. When the campaign starts and thousands of vulnerable and unaccompanied children gather at vaccination sites, they must all be protected," he added.

Prof Hagai Levine, a spokesman for the Hostages Families Forum - a group which is calling for more action to secure the release of Israeli hostages - urged health workers to ensure those still being held are included in the vaccination campaign.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to an unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October by Hamas, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

More than 40,530 people have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

BBC
 
Israel says Hamas leader killed on third day of West Bank operation

The Israeli military says it has killed the head of the Palestinian armed group Hamas in Jenin and two other fighters, as a major operation continues for a third day in the north of the occupied West Bank.

Israeli security forces "encountered and eliminated" Wissam Hazem in a vehicle and then carried out air strikes on “two additional terrorists while they attempted to flee”, a statement said.

The Palestinian health ministry said the three men had been killed overnight near the town of Zababdeh, south-east of Jenin.

Palestinian media also reported that Israeli forces had withdrawn from Tulkarm after causing severe damage to buildings and infrastructure in the city's refugee camps.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which said on Thursday that it had killed five members of armed groups in Tulkarm, including their local leader.

The military did, however, announce that forces had pulled out of the al-Faraa refugee camp near Tubas after completing what it called “the objective of foiling terror, exposing terrorist infrastructure and eliminating armed terrorists”.

At least 19 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israeli operation, which is one of the biggest in the West Bank in two decades, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

With the war in Gaza still raging, it is causing international alarm.

The UK said on Friday that it was "deeply worried by the methods Israel has employed and by reports of civilian casualties and the destruction of civilian infrastructure".

"The risk of instability is serious and the need for de-escalation urgent," a Foreign Office spokesperson said.

The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres warned on Thursday that the raids were “fuelling an already explosive situation”.

There has been a spike in violence in the West Bank since Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war in Gaza.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed as Israeli forces have intensified their raids, saying they are trying to stem deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Israel.

BBC
 
Israeli forces increase aerial attacks as troops withdraw

Reporting from Deir el-Balah, central Gaza

The [latest] Israeli evacuation orders are perceived as misleading and contradictory.

They are very similar to orders in which people were told to evacuate to area that were supposed to be safe but they ended up being killed in those areas.

This is what we’re seeing right now with the withdrawal [of Israeli troops] from some of the areas in the eastern part of Deir el-Balah City and from the eastern part of Khan Younis.

At the same time, we see that the military scaled up the aerial attacks, so this withdrawal doesn’t mean the air attacks have ceased or are going to anytime soon.

Source: Al Jazeera
 
This shows the insanity of Netanyahu government, they are just beyond pathetic
====
Israel military to put dozens of soldiers on trial over refusal to return to Gaza

Israel’s military is threatening to make dozens of soldiers face trial over their refusal to return to the Gaza Strip, amid growing cases of such refusals in recent months.

According to the Israeli public broadcaster, KAN, this week, at least 20 Israeli soldiers have refused to return to Gaza, where occupation forces have been committing war crimes and human rights violations while attempting to eliminate Palestinian Resistance group, Hamas, and its government in the besieged Territory.

At least 10 of those dissenting soldiers have reportedly received official warnings from the army, with threats of facing trial over their refusal to return.

The families of some of the soldiers, who were quoted by the broadcaster, have stated that their relatives “are forced to conduct ground manoeuvres in Gaza or face prison”, resulting in some of them offering to return to duty in areas other than Gaza.

“There are only a few soldiers left in their company who are capable of fighting,” the soldiers’ relatives said. “This is our time as parents to help them confront a system that does not care about them.”

The threat of looming trials and legal action against Israeli soldiers comes amid increasing cases of dissenting soldiers refusing to continue to fight in the besieged Palestinian Territory, either due to the occupation forces’ ongoing war crimes or due to growing perception that Hamas cannot be as easily militarily defeated as the Israeli government initially believed.

Source: Middle East Monitor
 
BouncerGuy said:
Israel says Hamas leader killed on third day of West Bank operation

The Israeli military says it has killed the head of the Palestinian armed group Hamas in Jenin and two other fighters, as a major operation continues for a third day in the north of the occupied West Bank.

Israeli security forces "encountered and eliminated" Wissam Hazem in a vehicle and then carried out air strikes on “two additional terrorists while they attempted to flee”, a statement said.

At least 19 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israeli operation, which is one of the biggest in the West Bank in two decades, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Click to expand...
IDF needs to outsource it's communication to ISPR, they've got a better knack of announcing things....

'19 terrorists killed, many injured in intelligence-based operations across B̶a̶l̶o̶c̶h̶i̶s̶t̶a̶n̶ West Bank': I̶S̶P̶R̶ IDF
 

Massive destruction in Jenin city: Palestinian spokesperson​


Bashir Matahen, director of public relations and media in the municipality, says Israeli forces have bulldozed more than 70 percent of the city’s streets, the Wafa news agency reports.

About 80 percent of Jenin and the entire refugee camp is cut off from water supplies because of the destruction of distribution networks, and technical teams are unable to access the affected areas, Matahen was quoted as saying.

Since Friday, soldiers have concentrated raids on the city of Jenin and its camp, long a bastion of Palestinian armed groups fighting against Israel’s decades-old occupation.

Source: Al Jazeera
 
Israel says bodies of six Gaza hostages recovered

Israel says its forces have recovered the bodies of six hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the bodies were located on Saturday in an underground tunnel in the Rafah area.

The IDF named the hostages as Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Master Sgt Ori Danino.

Spokesman Rear Adm Daniel Hagari said an initial assessment was they were "brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them".

After the death of Mr Goldberg-Polin - an American citizen - was confirmed, US President Joe Biden said he was "devastated and outraged" by the news.

A group representing the families of those held hostage in Gaza has demanded that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "address the nation and take responsibility for abandoning the hostages".

The Hostages Families Forum said that all six held captive were "murdered in the last few days, after surviving almost 11 months of abuse, torture, and starvation in Hamas captivity".

"The delay in signing the deal has led to their deaths and those of many other hostages," they added in a statement.

The group has also announced plans to "bring the nation to a halt" on Sunday, asking the Israeli public to join protests in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel to call for a hostage exchange deal.

In its statement on Sunday morning announcing the deaths, the IDF said the bodies had been "returned to Israeli territory".

"They were all taken hostage on 7 October [2023] and were murdered by the Hamas terrorist organisation in the Gaza Strip."

The statement added that their families had already been notified.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the "heart of an entire nation is shattered to pieces with the news" of their killing.

"On behalf of the State of Israel, I embrace their families with all my heart, and apologize for failing to bring them home safely," he added.

Meanwhile, Mr Biden said in a statement that "Hersh was among the innocents brutally attacked while attending a music festival for peace in Israel on 7 October".

"He lost his arm helping friends and strangers during Hamas’ savage massacre. He had just turned 23. He planned to travel the world.

"I have gotten to know his parents, Jon and Rachel. They have been courageous, wise, and steadfast, even as they have endured the unimaginable," Mr Biden said.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas in response to the unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, during which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 40,530 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators are trying to broker a ceasefire deal that would see Hamas release the 97 hostages still being held, including at least 27 who are presumed dead, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

It comes as a UN-led multi-day polio vaccination campaign gets under way in Gaza, following the discovery of the potentially deadly virus in wastewater samples earlier this summer.

Three "humanitarian pauses" in the fighting - beginning on Sunday - have been agreed between Israel and Hamas so that officials can vaccinate around 640,000 children under the age of 10

The move comes after the first infection in more than 25 years was detected in a 10-month-old Palestinian child last month.

BBC
 

Netanyahu vows ‘to settle the score’ with Hamas after hostage deaths​


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to “settle the score” with Hamas after the military had recovered the bodies of six hostages from a Gaza tunnel.

“Those who kill hostages do not want an agreement” for a Gaza truce, Netanyahu said in a statement, telling Hamas leaders that “we will hunt you down, we will catch you and we will settle the score.”

Netanyahu said that Israel was “fighting on all fronts against a cruel enemy who wants to murder us all,” mentioning a shooting attack near the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank earlier on Sunday that killed three police officers.

Hamas has not claimed the attack but in a statement called it a “heroic operation by the resistance.”

According to Netanyahu, “the fact that Hamas continues to commit atrocities such as those it committed on October 7 obliges us to do everything we can to ensure that it can no longer do so,” referring to the Palestinian group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel that triggered the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

A senior Hamas official said that several of the six hostages found dead had been “approved” for release in the event of a truce deal, which has yet to be finalized despite months of mediation efforts.

“Some of the names of the captives announced as found by the [Israeli] occupier... were part of the list of hostages to be released that Hamas had approved” in a proposed exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

Israeli media reported that US-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin and two others whose bodies had been recovered from Gaza -- Carmel Gat and Eden Yerushalmi -- had been approved by Hamas to be released in the event of a truce deal.

The Hamas official said the six captives were “killed by the occupation’s fire and bombing,” an accusation denied by the Israeli military.

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani in an online briefing with journalists that “according to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists.”

“We do know they were murdered by Hamas terrorists. We do know -– I can tell you -– there was no real-time fire engagement in the tunnel,” Shoshani said.

Claims by Hamas that the hostages were killed by Israeli forces were “psychological warfare,” he said.

The bodies were found in a tunnel in the southern city of Rafah, around one kilometer (0.6 miles) away from where troops had rescued alive another hostage, Kaid Farhan Alkadi, on Tuesday, according to Shoshani.

 
Israelis set to strike - as around 500,000 protest after hostages found dead

Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to demand a ceasefire after six hostages were found dead in Gaza.

An estimated 500,000 people attended planned demonstrations in multiple cities across Israel, according to Hostage Families Forum, which organised protests.

It is believed to be the largest demonstration since the start of the war 11 months ago.

More than 300,000 people were in Tel Aviv, where protesters marched with coffins to symbolise the hostages who had been killed and others set fires in the middle of one of the city's main motorways, bringing it to a standstill.

Protests were sparked after the Israel Defence Forces said the bodies of Carmel Gat, 40, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Alexander Lobanov, 33, Almog Sarusi, 27, and Ori Danino, 25, were found and recovered from a tunnel in southern Gaza on Saturday.


news.sky.com

Israelis set to strike - as around 500,000 protest after hostages found dead

Protests were sparked after the Israel Defence Forces said the bodies of six Israeli hostages were found and recovered from a tunnel in southern Gaza on Saturday. More demonstrations are set for Monday.
news.sky.com news.sky.com
 

Israel faces general strike after night of protests​


Israel is braced for a general strike as protests continue over what is seen as the government's failure to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas.

Tensions have been running high since the bodies of six hostages were recovered by soldiers on Saturday, causing national outrage.

On Sunday, tens of thousands of people rallied across Israel accusing PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his government of not doing enough to reach a deal over the remaining hostages taken by Hamas during the 7 October attack.

The call for a one-day strike on Monday was issued by Israel's biggest labour union, Histadrut, whose leader, Arnon Bar-David, said the country was getting "body bags instead of a deal".

The government has reacted angrily to the union's action, with far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich accusing it of playing into the hands of Hamas.

It is unclear how widely the stoppage will be observed, after several cities and municipalities announced they would not take part.

However, the call for a nationwide strike is the latest sign that public anger at the latest hostage killings is not about to subside.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said earlier that the six bodies were found on Saturday in an underground tunnel in the Rafah area of southern Gaza.

The hostages were identified as Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Master Sgt Ori Danino.

The IDF said they had been killed shortly before its troops reached them on Saturday.

This triggered the demonstrations on Sunday, with crowds accusing the government and Mr Netanyahu personally of failing to save the remaining hostages.

Sunday's protests were largely peaceful - but crowds broke through police lines, blocking a major highway in Tel Aviv.

Some people scaled buses and bins to gain a vantage point over the march, while others surrounded someone wearing a mask of Mr Netanyahu, chanting: “Alive, alive, we want them alive.”

One demonstrator held a sign which read: "You are the head. You are to blame".

Protesters - many clad in Israeli flags - also descended on Jerusalem and other Israeli cities.

The demonstrations have overshadowed humanitarian efforts in Gaza, where the UN said on Sunday that the first full day of a campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children against polio had been successful.

The rollout relies on a series of localised pauses in fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas fighters, and the first three-day window began on Sunday.

It is not clear how many hostages remain in Gaza. Hamas kidnapped 251 people and killed 1,200 others during its attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

The Israeli military responded by launching a ground and air offensive in Gaza to destroy Hamas.

More than 40,738 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

www.bbc.com

General strike looms in Israel after night of protests

Tensions are running high over the government's failure to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
FearlessRoar said:

Netanyahu vows ‘to settle the score’ with Hamas after hostage deaths​


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to “settle the score” with Hamas after the military had recovered the bodies of six hostages from a Gaza tunnel.

“Those who kill hostages do not want an agreement” for a Gaza truce, Netanyahu said in a statement, telling Hamas leaders that “we will hunt you down, we will catch you and we will settle the score.”

Netanyahu said that Israel was “fighting on all fronts against a cruel enemy who wants to murder us all,” mentioning a shooting attack near the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank earlier on Sunday that killed three police officers.

Hamas has not claimed the attack but in a statement called it a “heroic operation by the resistance.”

According to Netanyahu, “the fact that Hamas continues to commit atrocities such as those it committed on October 7 obliges us to do everything we can to ensure that it can no longer do so,” referring to the Palestinian group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel that triggered the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

A senior Hamas official said that several of the six hostages found dead had been “approved” for release in the event of a truce deal, which has yet to be finalized despite months of mediation efforts.

“Some of the names of the captives announced as found by the [Israeli] occupier... were part of the list of hostages to be released that Hamas had approved” in a proposed exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue.

Israeli media reported that US-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin and two others whose bodies had been recovered from Gaza -- Carmel Gat and Eden Yerushalmi -- had been approved by Hamas to be released in the event of a truce deal.

The Hamas official said the six captives were “killed by the occupation’s fire and bombing,” an accusation denied by the Israeli military.

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani in an online briefing with journalists that “according to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists.”

“We do know they were murdered by Hamas terrorists. We do know -– I can tell you -– there was no real-time fire engagement in the tunnel,” Shoshani said.

Claims by Hamas that the hostages were killed by Israeli forces were “psychological warfare,” he said.

The bodies were found in a tunnel in the southern city of Rafah, around one kilometer (0.6 miles) away from where troops had rescued alive another hostage, Kaid Farhan Alkadi, on Tuesday, according to Shoshani.

Click to expand...

Netanyahu has killed 40,000+ Palestinians. That's around 4% of entire Gaza population. Real figure is probably much higher.

Most evil man in 21st century.
 
Netanyahu not doing enough to free Gaza hostages, says Biden

US President Joe Biden has said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to secure a hostage deal and ceasefire with Hamas, amid reports that a new "final" proposal would be sent to the Israeli leader.

Mr Biden and Kamala Harris, his vice-president, met US negotiators to hammer out a proposal, as protests engulfed Israel on Monday after the discovery of six more hostage bodies in Gaza.

Asked whether Mr Netanyahu was doing enough, Mr Biden replied "no". He added that the US would not give up, and would "push as hard as we can" for a deal.

US officials have characterised this latest proposal as a "take it or leave it deal", the Washington Post has reported.

Among the bodies recovered from Gaza on Saturday was that of 23-year-old Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

He became one of the most recognisable hostages in the crisis after being seized by Hamas gunmen at a music festival in southern Israel on 7 October last year.

The discovery of the bodies has caused widespread protests in Israel from those critical of Mr Netanyahu's handling of the war and hostage crisis.

On Monday, thousands of people joined a strike called by the country's biggest trade union, in an effort to put pressure on Mr Netanyahu to close out a deal.

Goldberg-Polin's funeral was held in Jerusalem on the same day, attended by thousands.

His mother Rachel - who also spoke at last month's Democratic convention in the US - described her torment. President Isaac Herzog offered an apology that his country had "failed" to protect Goldberg-Polin or bring him home.

In comments of his own on the same day, Mr Netanyahu appealed to Israelis for "forgiveness" over the group's deaths.

Mr Biden said the US was "devastated and outraged" by the death of Mr Goldberg-Polin and the five others. "Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes," he said.

Mr Biden spoke after Monday's meeting with negotiators in the White House Situation Room. US officials said he and Ms Harris discussed next steps in the effort to release of the hostages, including continuing talks with co-mediators Qatar and Egypt.

Mr Biden is expected to present a "final" hostage release and ceasefire proposal later this week, according to the Axios website, which cited US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in conversation with the US families of remaining hostages.

The US family of Edan Alexander, a member of the Israeli military who is still a hostage in Gaza, have pushed for Israel to accept the deal, saying it is "now or never".

His father Adi Alexander praised the US for its "dedication and commitment" to secure a deal, saying that his meeting on Sunday was his 15th with Mr Sullivan since 7 October last year.

But in an interview with BBC’s US partner CBS News on Monday, Mr Alexander appealed to US officials to "do something different, because the outcome is the same after 11 months".

Mr Alexander accused Mr Netanyahu of "prolonging the war for short-term political gain". He added: "Time is passing by and we're getting more bodies out of Gaza. This is unacceptable."

In its report, the Washington Post reported that the killing of the six hostages had increased the urgency among Mr Biden's aides to push for a deal.

"You can't keep negotiating this. This process has to be called at some point," one senior official told the newspaper.

"Does it derail the deal? No. If anything, it should add additional urgency in this closing phase, which we were already in," they added.

The US, Qatar and Egypt have for months tried to secure a deal that includes a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas.

The Biden administration has criticised Hamas for failing to agree to a deal, though US foreign officials have also accused Mr Netanyahu of making demands that have also derailed efforts.

The war in the Gaza Strip began after the Hamas breached the Gaza boundary, killed 1,200 Israelis and abducted 251 in their attack last year.

Israel has since killed over 40,000 Palestinians in retaliatory attacks, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.

The US response to the war has had implications for the Biden administration and Ms Harris, the Democratic nominee in November's US presidential election. Pro-Palestinian factions in the party have urged for a ceasefire.

Ms Harris's opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump, has blamed Ms Harris and Mr Biden's failure to secure a deal for the hostage deaths last weekend.

BBC
 
US charges Hamas leaders over 7 October attack on Israel

The US has charged Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and several other prominent figures in the Palestinian group in connection with its deadly attack in Israel on 7 October last year.

The justice department said it was indicting six Hamas members with seven charges, including the murder of US citizens, conspiracy to finance terrorism and use of weapons of mass destruction.

The criminal complaint covers decades of alleged attacks by Hamas, as well as the unprecedented assault on southern Israel nearly a year ago.

It is the first step by US law enforcement to hold accountable the ringleaders of the 7 October attack, though up to three of those named in the indictment are dead and Sinwar is believed to be hiding in tunnels somewhere under Gaza.

In a video statement on Tuesday, Mr Garland said the defendants were responsible for "financing and directing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the security of the United States".

The group also "led Hamas's efforts to destroy the state of Israel and murder civilians in support of that aim".

He noted the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas, in which the group "murdered entire families" in "the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust".

"They murdered the elderly and they murdered young children. They weaponised sexual violence against women, including rape and genital mutilation."

He added that during the attack the group "murdered over 1,200 people" and "perpetrated the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust".

Other Hamas leaders charged include former leader Ismail Haniyeh; Marwan Issa, the deputy leader of the organisation's armed wing; Khaled Mashaal, who leads the group outside Gaza and the West Bank; along with Mohammed Deif and Ali Baraka.

The charges include conspiracy to bomb a place of public use resulting in death, conspiracy to finance terrorism and material support for acts of terrorism resulting in death.

The justice department’s complaint notes that all the “defendants are either deceased or remain at large”.

Haniyeh, Issa and Deif have all been reported killed in the past few months in attacks that were either claimed by or attributed to Israel.

The attorney general referred in Tuesday's remarks to the killing last week of US-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, in addition to 42 other American citizens killed in the 7 October attack and 10 taken hostage.

“We are investigating Hersh’s murder, and each and every one of Hamas’ brutal murders of Americans, as an act of terrorism,” Mr Garland said.

If convicted, the group faces a maximum penalty of life in prison or a death sentence.

The charges were filed in February, but were kept under wraps until Tuesday in case the US had the opportunity to arrest any of the accused, an unnamed justice department official told CBS News, the BBC's US partner.

Over the weekend, President Joe Biden condemned the Hamas killing of Goldberg-Polin, calling it "as tragic as it is reprehensible".

“Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes,” Mr Biden said.

Meanwhile, the UK has defended its decision to ban some weapons sales to Israel over concerns about how they might be used in Gaza.

Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostage.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza since then in Israel's ongoing military campaign, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

BBC
 
Latest updates in Gaza War as apartheid regime's madness continues
====
  • Gaza’s Health Ministry says 42 Palestinians were killed and 107 wounded in the latest 24-hour reporting period.
  • Palestinian children are being vaccinated in Deir el-Balah amid loud explosions in Bureij and Maghazi refugee camps, which were excluded from a humanitarian pause in fighting and the vaccination campaign.
  • Israeli military’s latest assault across the occupied West Bank is now in its eighth day. At least 33 Palestinians have been killed and 130 wounded since August 28, the vast majority in Jenin.
  • At least six Palestinians killed in the attack on Namaa College, where people had been sheltering. Dozens more are buried in the rubble.
  • At least 40,861 people have been killed and 94,398 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza. At least 1,139 people were killed in Israel in the Hamas-led attacks on October 7.
Source: Al Jazeera
 

Turkiye, Egypt call for greater international recognition of Palestine statehood​

Turkiye and Egypt, on Wednesday, called for greater international recognition of Palestinian statehood, Anadolu Agency reports.

In a joint declaration following the first Turkiye-Egypt High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council, Ankara and Cairo reaffirmed their steadfast support for ending the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian Territories and for the Palestinian people’s right to establish an independent and sovereign state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, based on the 1967 borders.

They also emphasized their commitment to protecting the Right of Return for all Palestinian refugees.

The declaration stressed the importance of supporting Iraq’s sovereignty and stability, highlighting Turkish and Egyptian support for Iraq’s development and reconstruction efforts.

It said that the two countries also reaffirmed their commitment to supporting a political process led and owned by Libyans under the facilitation of the UN, aimed at preserving Libya’s security, stability, territorial integrity and political unity.

Turkiye and Egypt reaffirmed the importance of achieving peace, security and stability in the Horn of Africa.The two nations also advocated fostering neighbourly and friendly relations, and respect for each country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty in the Horn of Africa.

Voicing concern over the ongoing conflict in Sudan which has been causing a devastating humanitarian crisis across the country and region, Turkiye and Egypt welcome efforts to resolve the crisis peacefully and support joint diplomatic initiatives in this regard, the declaration said.
Reiterating their joint commitment to finding a lasting and comprehensive solution to the conflict in Syria, the two countries underlined the importance of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2254.

The joint declaration underlined the significance of fighting against all forms and manifestations of terrorism.

Stressing the importance of humanitarian aid and early development projects for the Syrian people, the statement called on the global community to continue these efforts at a “satisfactory level”.

Source: Middle East Monitor
 
Netanyahu doubles down on control of Gaza's border with Egypt

Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has again insisted that Israeli forces will not leave the Philadelphi Corridor - a strategically important strip of land in southern Gaza along the border with Egypt.

He told foreign media in Jerusalem that he is “open” to considering alternatives to the presence of Israeli troops along the Gaza-Egypt border, as part of any future permanent ceasefire deal – but that he did not see it happening.

Mr Netanyahu argued that Israeli troops must remain in this buffer zone to prevent weapons and possibly Israeli hostages being smuggled across the border.

Hamas said in a statement cited by Reuters news agency that Mr Netanyahu's decision not to withdraw from the Philadelphi corridor is an attempt to thwart the ceasefire agreement, adding that it was time to put pressure on Israel.

Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Netanyahu said conditions for any permanent ceasefire must include "a situation where the Philadelphi corridor cannot be perforated."

He said if someone could show, “not on paper, not in words, not in a slide, but on the ground, day after day, week after week, month after month that they can actually prevent the recurrence of what happened there before we're open to consider it.”

But, he continued, “I don’t see that happening […] And until that happens, we are there.”

His comments open a miniscule crack in his repeated insistence that Israeli forces would not leave Gaza’s southern border.

But he also doubled-down on his insistence that Israel needed to keep troops there for its security, describing it as a “red line”.

“People said: this will kill the deal,” he continued. “And I say: such a deal will kill us.”

Making more concessions after Hamas killed six hostages last week would be “illogical”, “immoral” and “insane,” he insisted.

“We have red lines. They haven’t changed. We’ll hold to them.”

His security chiefs, including his defence minister, are widely reported to have backed alternatives to a military presence along the border, such as technological solutions to monitor activity there, or the presence of allied forces.

Leaks to Israeli media have described shouting matches between the prime minister and his defence chiefs in meetings, with Mr Netanyahu reportedly accused of not wanting a deal at all.

A growing number of people here appear to believe that the prime minister is playing for time, and that his real goal is to find and kill the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, before ending the war.

Mr Netanyahu says he is safeguarding Israel’s security in the face of extraordinary international pressure. And that it is Hamas who is blocking a deal.

Talks on a permanent ceasefire would only take place once Israel and Hamas agree to begin the first phase of a three-step plan, which is being pushed heavily by US President Joe Biden.

Israel’s national public radio quoted an unnamed senior official who said that the chief negotiator, Mossad head David Barnea, had conveyed to mediators Israel’s agreement to withdraw troops from the border at a later stage in the ceasefire process.

But even getting agreement on the first stage is proving tricky, with many issues still unresolved.

BBC
 

Hamas negotiator urges US to ‘exert real pressure’ on Israel for Gaza truce​


Hamas’s lead negotiator on Thursday urged the United States to press Israel for a truce in Gaza, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of blocking a ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.

“If the US administration and its President (Joe) Biden really want to reach a ceasefire and complete a prisoner exchange deal, they must abandon their blind bias towards the Zionist occupation and exert real pressure on Netanyahu and his government,” Qatar-based Khalil al-Hayya said in a video statement.

Months of back-and-forth talks mediated by Washington, Doha and Cairo have thus far failed to bring an end to the conflict in Gaza and secure a hostage and prisoner exchange.

Hamas and Israel have traded blame for the stalled talks, as pressure for a deal intensified after Israeli authorities announced on Sunday the deaths of six hostages whose bodies were recovered from a Gaza tunnel.

Netanyahu said the militant group had “rejected everything” in the indirect talks, saying on Wednesday Israel was “trying to find some area to begin the negotiations.”

“They (Hamas) refuse to do that... (They said) there’s nothing to talk about,” he added.

Netanyahu’s insistence on keeping control of the so-called Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt has emerged as a recent sticking point.

Hayya on Thursday accused the Israeli premier of seeking to “evade the obligation to reach a ceasefire agreement.”

 

The perpetrators of these crimes will suffer one day​

====

Teenager killed by Israel in West Bank raid​

  • Israeli forces shot and killed 16-year-old Palestinian boy in Far’a refugee camp. Wafa news agency reported that soldiers “fired several bullets at the child, abused him and prevented ambulance crews from reaching him”.
  • Hamas says Netanyahu is thwarting a ceasefire deal by refusing to withdraw forces from Gaza’s Philadelphi Corridor.
Source: Al Jazeera
 
Amnesty urges war crimes probe over Israel levelling east Gaza

"Using bulldozers and manually laid explosives, the Israeli military has unlawfully destroyed agricultural land and civilian buildings, razing entire neighbourhoods, including homes, schools and mosques," it said.

The London-based rights group said the levelling since the start of the war on October 7 "should be investigated as war crimes of wanton destruction and of collective punishment".

Israel has in several cases said it was destroying "terror" infrastructure to protect Israeli communities living on the other side of the border fence. It did not reply to a request from Amnesty for comment.

An Amnesty investigation, which examined satellite imagery and videos posted by Israeli soldiers between October and May, showed "newly cleared land along Gaza's eastern boundary, ranging from approximately 1 to 1.8 km (0.6 to 1.1 miles) wide", the group said.

The expanded buffer zone covers around 58 square kilometres (22 square miles), or about 16 percent of the Gaza Strip, it said.

More than 90 percent of buildings within that zone appeared to have been destroyed or severely damaged, it said.

More than half of the agricultural land in the area showed "a decline in health and intensity of crops due to the ongoing conflict", it added.

"Our analysis reveals a pattern along the eastern perimeter of Gaza that is consistent with the systematic destruction of the entire area," said Amnesty's Erika Guevara-Rosas.

"The homes were not destroyed as the result of intense fighting. Rather, the Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area," she added.

"Israeli measures to protect Israelis from attacks from Gaza must be carried out in conformity with its obligations under international law."

Amnesty investigator Barbara Marcolini said the level of destruction was unprecedented.

"It wasn't like specific buildings had been destroyed, but entire neighbourhoods and farms completely razed to the ground," she told AFP.

'Not under any threat'

She said footage showing Israeli soldiers posing for pictures or toasting in celebration as buildings were demolished showed there was no imminent threat to them.

"These videos show the demeanour of the soldiers at the time of destruction. They were relaxed, even cheerful, which shows that they were not under any threat," she said.

"Once you analyse the context, you understand why these destructions should be investigated as war crimes."

The rights group in particular focused on destruction in the town of Khuzaa in the south of the strip, and the eastern district of Shujaiya in Gaza City.

They also recorded destruction around, and east of, the Al-Bureij and Al-Maghazi refugee camps in the centre of that buffer zone, and the villages of Al-Sureij and Abasan al-Kabira in its south.

The United Nations said last month that nearly two-thirds of the buildings in the Gaza Strip had been damaged or destroyed since the war began.

Palestinian armed group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, resulting in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians and including hostages killed in captivity, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the attack, 97 remain in Gaza including 33 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 40,878 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

AFP
 

US Muslim group asks FBI to investigate killing of American activist​

A Muslim advocacy group in the US has asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the killing of a Turkish-American activist in the occupied West Bank.

“I write to request that the Justice Department investigate and prosecute the Israeli officials, soldiers, and settlers responsible for committing violent crimes against Palestinian-Americans, including slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and peace activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers today in the occupied West Bank,” Robert S McCaw, a director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said in a letter.

“CAIR calls on the DOJ, working in coordination with FBI and Department of State, to immediately investigate and prosecute the horrific murder of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who was allegedly shot in the head by Israeli soldiers while volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement to protect Palestinian farmers,” McCaw said.

“In light of this heinous act of violence, we demand the US government act on its own accord and not passively defer to Israeli investigations, which time and again have resulted in predictable exoneration.”

Source: Al Jazeera
 
American killed in West Bank protest as Israeli forces opened fire

A 26-year-old American woman has been shot dead in the occupied West Bank during a protest on Friday, where Israeli forces opened fire.

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, who was also a Turkish citizen, is reported to have been taking part in a protest against Jewish settlement expansion in the town of Beita near Nablus.

Ms Eygi was allegedly shot by Israeli troops, according to local media reports. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was "looking into reports that a foreign national was killed as a result of shots fired in the area".

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken deplored the "tragic loss", adding: "When we have more info, we will share it, make it available and, as necessary, we'll act on it."


www.bbc.com

American killed in West Bank protest as Israeli forces opened fire

Washington confirmed Aysenur Ezgi Eygi's death on Friday, saying it is "urgently gathering more information".
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Netanyahu says Israeli forces won't leave Philadelphi corridor until guarantee it's not used as Hamas 'supply line'

Israel will not remove its troops from a narrow strip of land on the Gaza side of the border with Egypt until there is a guarantee it can never be used as a supply line for Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu has said.

The area of scrubland and sand dunes, known as the Philadelphi corridor, was seized by his forces in May and has become a key obstacle in talks to try to secure a ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza.

The Israeli prime minister has insisted on retaining control of the corridor, where his troops have uncovered dozens of tunnels which officials say have been used to supply Hamas with weapons and ammunition.

He told foreign media that his country's three "war goals": destroying Hamas, releasing all hostages and ensuring Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel, could not be achieved without control of the corridor.

Mr Netanyahu repeated his outright rejection of a withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor in the first phase of a truce deal, expected to last 42 days, saying international pressure would make it effectively impossible to return.

For a permanent ceasefire to be agreed upon after that, Israel would need guarantees that whoever ran Gaza after the war would be able to prevent the corridor from being used as a route for smuggling weapons and supplies for Hamas.

The message was similar to one Mr Netanyahu presented to Israeli media on Tuesday and also one which Ron Dermer, a close aide to the prime minister and Israeli minister of strategic affairs, gave in an interview with Sky News' Yalda Hakim on Wednesday.

Mr Dermer said Hamas's massacre in southern Israel on 7 October last year "couldn't have happened" if the corridor had been closed and if Israel gave up control it would put the country at risk of repeated attacks.

Is Israel building a new Gaza corridor?

"If you want to release the hostages, you have got to control the corridor," Mr Netanyahu said, explaining his position in detail.

"Gaza must be demilitarised and this can only happen if the Philadelphi corridor remains under firm control and is not a supply line."

He also hit out at international pressure to "end the war" and accept a hostage deal with Hamas - which US, Qatari, and Egyptian negotiators have been working to secure for months.

What is the Philadelphi corridor?

The Philadelphi corridor is a strip of land along Gaza's border with Egypt, including the Rafah crossing.

Spanning nine miles (14km) in length and 100 metres wide it was introduced as a demilitarised border zone after the withdrawal of Israeli settlements and troops from Gaza in 2005.

Before 2005, a 1979 treaty with Egypt allowed it to have a limited number of troops in the corridor but no heavy armour.

After 2005 it became the responsibility of Egypt and the Palestinian Authority.

Hundreds of Egyptian police were stationed there to prevent weapons smuggling, until Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007.

In May 2024, it was seized by Israel as its Gaza ground offensive pushed into Rafah.

However, Egypt continues to be against a major Israeli military presence on the border.

"People said 'If you stay, this will kill the deal', but such a deal will kill us," Mr Netanyahu stated.

"If we leave there will not be any pressure points and we won't get the hostages, the real obstacle to getting a deal is Hamas."

If agreed, a deal would see the release of the remaining 101 hostages who have been held since the 7 October attack, in which more than 1,200 people were killed and over 250 taken hostage.

'Israel is being led by a bunch of losers'

Following Mr Netanyahu's press conference, Hamas said in a statement there is no need for new ceasefire proposals, and it is "time to put pressure on Israel".

Both sides previously agreed, in principle, to a plan announced by US President Joe Biden on 31 May, but Hamas has since proposed amendments and Israel has suggested clarifications - leading to each side accusing the other of trying to scupper the deal.

Following the latest negotiations last month, mediators said they had presented a proposal to both parties, which they hope will build on areas of agreement and bridge any remaining gaps.

'I am sorry'

Mr Netanyahu also faces a great deal of internal pressure to agree a deal.

Mass protests in Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem have taken place over the past four days, sparked by the recovery of the bodies of six hostages from a tunnel in southern Gaza on Saturday. Israel says the hostages were shot dead by Hamas.

'Hostages came back as corpses'

Addressing the loved ones of the six, Mr Netanyahu said he had visited one of the families and had spoken to others.

He explained: "I said to them that I am sorry."

"I apologised that we didn't get them out. We worked so hard to get them, we were close, but we didn't," he said.

Gil Dickmann, the cousin of Carmel Gat, one of the hostages found on the weekend, told The World with Yalda Hakim he thought the Israeli government were "all losers".

"They lost Carmel's life. They knew that her life was in danger. They knew, and we warned them... that they could be murdered at any moment and they decided... that they are going to say no to a deal that would save her life," he said.

"They decided to sacrifice the lives of Israeli citizens - Israeli people who were taken from their beds on 7 October under the open eye of Ron Dermer [minister of strategic affairs] and Benjamin Netanyahu.

"They decided to sacrifice Carmel and all the other hostages and now they have been executed."

Despite the backlash and mass gatherings of demonstrators, Mr Netanyahu said the people of Israel were "overwhelmingly united" and committed to achieving its goals in Gaza.

According to the territory's health ministry, more than 40,800 Palestinians have been killed in a retaliatory offensive by the Israeli military for the 7 October attack.

More than 30 Palestinians have also been killed since Israel launched a major operation in different areas of the occupied West Bank, involving hundreds of soldiers and armoured vehicles.

It claimed the offensive was to thwart Iranian-backed militant groups preparing attacks on Israeli civilians.

SOURCE: https://news.sky.com/story/netanyah...ee-its-not-used-as-hamas-supply-line-13209645
 

Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 61 in 48 hours as UN pursues vaccinations​


Israeli military strikes across the Palestinian Gaza Strip killed at least 61 people in the space of 48 hours, local medics said on Saturday, as Israeli forces battled Hamas-led militants in the territory.

Eleven months into the war, numerous rounds of diplomacy have so far failed to clinch a ceasefire deal to end the conflict and bring the release of Israeli and foreign hostages held in Gaza as well as many Palestinians jailed in Israel.

An Israeli airstrike in on the Halima al-Sa'diyya school compound serving as a shelter for displaced people in the Jabalia urban refugee camp killed at least eight people and wounded 15 others, medics said.

The Israeli military said the strike had targeted a Hamas command centre inside the compound. It accused the Islamist militant group of repeatedly exploiting civilians and civilian infrastructure for military purposes, an allegation Hamas denies.

Five more people were killed in a strike on a house in Gaza City.

Later on Saturday, an Israeli strike killed four people and wounded 25 others at Amr Ibn Ala'as school, which also houses displaced families in the Sheikh Radwan suburb of Gaza City, Palestinian medics said.

The Israeli military said the air strike targeted a command center operated by Hamas gunmen in the compound that had previously served as a school.

Palestinian health officials said Israeli military strikes had killed so far 28 people across the Gaza Strip on Saturday.

The armed wings of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah groups said they had fought Israeli troops in Gaza City, in central areas and in the south with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs, and in some incidents detonated bombs to target tanks and other army vehicles.

The two warring sides continued to blame one another for the failure of mediators, including Qatar, Egypt and the United States, to broker a ceasefire. The U.S. is preparing to present a new proposal, but the prospects of a breakthrough appear dim as gaps between the sides remain large.

CIA Director William Burns, the chief U.S. negotiator, told an event in London that a more detailed proposal would be made in the coming days.

PAUSES IN FIGHTING LET POLIO VACCINATIONS CONTINUE

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it was incumbent on both Israel and Hamas, which ran Gaza before the war and was responsible for the Oct. 7 killing spree against Jews in Israel that triggered it, to make concessions to reach a deal.

On Saturday, senior Hamas official Hossam Badran said the group had made no new demands and remained committed to a July 2 proposal put forward by the United States, accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of attaching new conditions that would not end the war.

Netanyahu says it was Hamas that introduced unacceptable conditions.

Despite the deadlock, the United Nations, in collaboration with local health authorities, has pursued a campaign to vaccinate 640,000 children in Gaza after its first polio case in around 25 years. Limited pauses in the fighting have allowed the campaign to proceed.

U.N. officials said they were making progress, having reached over half of the children needing the drops in the first two stages in the southern and central Gaza Strip.

On Sunday, the campaign will move to the northern Gaza Strip. A second round of vaccination will be required four weeks after the first.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel's subsequent assault on the enclave has killed over 40,900 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court, which Israel denies.

 
West Bank residents tell of teargas then shots before US woman’s death

US officials have insisted that a ceasefire in Gaza is close even as fighting rages unabated in the blockaded Palestinian territory and violence spirals in the occupied West Bank, where witnesses told the Observer an American-Turkish dual national was killed by Israeli forces on Friday.

William Burns, who is also the US’s chief negotiator in the indirect talks between Israel and Hamas, echoed secretary of state Antony Blinken during a speech in London on Saturday in which he said that “90% of the text had been agreed but the last 10% is always the hardest”.

But pressure from the US, Israel’s most important ally, and the two mediators speaking to Hamas, Qatar and Egypt, has done little to assuage the fighting in Gaza or rising tensions in the West Bank.

The US has also said it is urgently seeking more information about the killing of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, who witnesses said was shot in the head by Israel Defence Forces (IDF) troops during an anti-settlement protest in the West Bank on Friday. Several of Israel’s western allies, including the US, have recently imposed sanctions on individuals and organisations associated with Israel’s settler movement, despite blowback from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which includes far-right supporters of Israeli extremism in the West Bank.

Eygi’s family have called for an independent investigation into her killing, adding to the pressure on the Biden administration to end what critics say is US complicity in the Israeli occupation.

On Saturday, IDF troops, some of whom appeared to be forensic investigators, visited the town of Beita, near Nablus, to examine the scene where Eygi was killed. For the residents, it was yet another case of the IDF investigating itself: about 1% of army inquiries result in prosecutions, according to rights groups.

All of the Beita residents the Observer spoke to gave very similar accounts of the shooting. A group of demonstrators had gathered on the hillside, as they have every Friday for midday prayers in recent years, to protest against Eyvatar, an Israeli settlement on the next hill built on land belonging to Palestinian farmers.

On this occasion, there were some 20 Palestinians from Beita, 10 foreign volunteers from the anti-occupation International Solidarity Movement, including Eygi, and about a dozen children from the district.

“The kids were throwing stones here at the junction, and the soldiers fired tear gas at them,” Mahmud Abdullah, a 43-year-old resident said. “Everyone scattered and ran into the olive grove and then there were two shots.” One of the bullets hit something along the way and a fragment hit a protester in the stomach, wounding him slightly, the witnesses said. The other bullet hit Eygi in the head, passing through her skull. Neighbours pointed out both the spot where Eygi was shot and where the bullet came from: a house on a ridge.

The owner, Ali Mohali, said a group of soldiers, perhaps half a dozen, had gone on to his roof, 200m from where Eygi was shot. He said he heard one shot, but was not sure if there had been a second from that position.

The IDF statement on the incident said it was looking into the report that troops had killed a foreign national while firing at an “instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them”.

Moneer Khdeir, Mohali’s 65-year-old neighbour, was derisive of the IDF account. “They said that the stones posed a threat to the soldiers. They were stones thrown by kids from all the way down there, yet they talk about it like it was a Yassin [rocket propelled grenade],” Khdeir scoffed.

Across the West Bank, army units on the ground are increasingly seen by Palestinians as a protective military wing of the settlers, taking their cues from the far right elements of Netanyahu’s government. Palestinian officials and rights groups have long accused the IDF of standing by during or even joining in settler attacks.

Hisham Dweikat, 57, a science professor from Beita, said Eygi was the 15th person to be killed protesting against Eyvatar over the three years since the settlement was reoccupied, but hers was the first killing the IDF has investigated. He did not put much faith in the result. “It is clear that the army is with the settlers,” he said.

Fifteen kilometres south of Beita in the village of Qaryut, Amjad Bakr and his family buried his 12 year-old daughter Bana on Saturday afternoon. She was shot dead while opening the window in her bedroom at about the same time on Friday that Eygi was killed in Beita.

“As usual on Friday, settlers came to raid the town and the people of the town went to defend themselves. There was a confrontation and the army came,” said Bakr, 47.

“We went back home, because we thought that if the army was here, maybe they could stop the settlers. But unfortunately the army did not stop the settlers. They stand with the settlers,” he said.

“The bullet that hit my daughter came through the window and hit her in the heart,” he said. “She was innocent, and shy, and clever. She had memorised three sections of the Holy Quran.”

As to what Bana had planned to do with her life, Bakr shrugged: “An Israeli bullet doesn’t care about the future of any Palestinian.”

In a statement, the IDF said that soldiers were dispatched to disperse violent confrontation between dozens of Palestinians and Israelis, and had fired shots in the air. “A report was received regarding a Palestinian girl who was killed by shots in the area. The incident is under review,” it said.

Since Hamas’s 7 October assault that triggered the war in Gaza, Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 662 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry, which does not differentiate between militant and civilian deaths. The toll is almost five times higher than the 146 killed in 2022, which was already an almost 20-year record high.

At least 23 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, according to Israeli officials. Meanwhile, in the Gaza Strip, another 61 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes across the territory in the past 48 hours, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said, putting the death toll at 40,939 people. Around 1,200 Israelis and other nationals were killed in Hamas’s 7 October assault that triggered the war, according to Israeli tallies.

The latest round of ceasefire talks have stalled over Netanyahu’s insistence that Israeli troops will not withdraw from the Gaza-Egypt border – a dealbreaker for Hamas – despite agreeing to the measure in talks held in July.

Tensions between Israel and its regional foes - Iran and the powerful Lebanese militia Hezbollah - have brought the Middle East to the brink of regional war on several occasions in the past 11 months.

THE GUARDIAN
 

Israel’s war on Gaza: 2.2 million Palestinians in ‘urgent’ need of aid​

The World Food Programme (WFP) says 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza are still in “urgent” need of food and livelihood assistance as Israeli attacks on the enclave enter their 12th month.

More than 630,000 students in Gaza will not be returning to school on Monday, officials say, as Israel’s war on the Palestinian enclave disrupts schooling for a second year.

Hamas official rejects US media reports it presented new conditions as part of ceasefire talks.

At least 40,988 people have been killed and 94,825 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza. In Israel, the number of those killed in the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 is at least 1,139, while more than 200 people were taken captive.

Source: Al Jazeera
 
Israel strikes humanitarian area in Gaza

Many are feared killed and wounded after Israeli forces struck a humanitarian zone created to shelter displaced people in southern Gaza, in what Israel said was an attack on Hamas terrorists in the area.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Monday evening that it “struck significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control center embedded inside the humanitarian area” in Khan Younis, Gaza.

The strike was carried out with the direction of the Israel Security Agency and the Israeli Air Force, and steps were taken to mitigate civilian harm, it also said in a statement.

“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional means,” it also said.

According to Gaza’s Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal, civil defense and medical teams are working “to control the situation” following the strike.

Video circulating on social media, and shared by Hamas media outlet Al Aqsa TV, showed Gaza Civil Defense members digging in the sand as they search for missing people. Clothes and shoes can be seen scattered across the area. CNN has been unable to independently verify the footage.


 
Hamas says Israeli strikes kill 40 in Gaza safe zone

At least 40 people have been killed in southern Gaza and dozens more injured in Israeli strikes on a designated humanitarian zone, the Hamas-run Civil Defence authority has said.

The Israeli military said its aircraft attacked an operations centre in Khan Younis belonging to Hamas fighters, and it had taken steps to mitigate risk of harming civilians.

Local residents said three strikes targeted tents housing displaced people in the humanitarian zone of al-Mawasi, west of the city of Khan Younis, causing seven metre-deep craters.

"Forty people were killed and more than 60 injured, while many are still under the rubble," the operations director of Hamas's Civil Defence authority told the BBC.

Eyewitnesses told the BBC large explosions rocked the al-Mawasi area shortly after midnight and flames could be seen rising into the sky.

Khaled Mahmoud, a volunteer for a charity who lives near the site of the strikes, said he and other volunteers rushed to help but were stunned by the scale of the disaster.

"The strikes created three craters seven metres deep and buried more than 20 tents," Mr Mahmoud said.

Unverified videos showed civilians digging through the sand with their hands in an attempt to rescue Palestinians from a deep hole caused by the airstrikes.

In a statement, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said the military had attacked "significant Hamas terrorists who were operating within a command and control center embedded inside the Humanitarian Area in Khan Yunis."

"Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional means," the spokesperson added.

"The terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip continue to systematically abuse civilian and humanitarian infrastructure, including the designated Humanitarian Area, to carry out terrorist activity against the State of Israel and IDF troops."

Hamas rejected the Israeli military's claims that its fighters were present in the area, calling it a "blatant" lie.

"The resistance has denied several times that any of its members exist within civilian gatherings or are using these places for military purposes."

Thousands of displaced Palestinians have fled to Khan Younis since Israel launched its military campaign in the territory last October.

The ground operation began in response to Hamas's unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

More than 40,900 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

BBC
 
Al-Mawasi survivors say safe zone turned into ‘inferno’ in Israel’s attack

Survivors of Israel’s attack on the al-Mawasi say their tents were “engulfed in fire” as the Israeli army struck the designated safe zone.

Samah Abu Rahmeh told Al Jazeera there was an explosion “beyond imagination.”

“We woke up to the Israeli warplanes firing missiles at us. The tents were engulfed in flames, like inferno,” she said.

“This is claimed to be a safe humanitarian zone, Al Mawasi, Khan Younis. But in reality, these are all lies,” Abu Rahmeh added.

Fayez Hassan recounted the aftermath of the strike. “We rushed to find many dead bodies blown into pieces and others injured,” he said, adding those were “shocking scenes, beyond any words.”

“It is part of Israel’s unjustifiable barbaric airstrikes,” Hassan said.

Source: Al Jazeera
 

Israeli strike kills five Palestinians in West Bank, health ministry says​


Five Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli air strike in the north of the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry says.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said a drone targeted a group of five young men near a mosque in the city of Tubas at dawn on Wednesday, and an ambulance crew transferred the bodies to the local government hospital.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said an aircraft struck an “armed terrorist cell” during counter-terrorism activity by security forces in Tubas and the nearby town of Tamun.

An Israeli military official said later that a curfew had been declared in Tubas as part of the operation.

The government hospital has been surrounded and people can exit and enter only subject to being checked by forces, according to the official.

Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli forces were carrying out large-scale raids on the city’s outskirts and several neighbourhoods.

Wafa also said an Israeli military operation was continuing in the city of Tulkarm and its refugee camps for a second day.

On Tuesday, the Palestinian health ministry said a Palestinian man and woman were killed by gunfire from Israeli forces in Tulkarm. The IDF did not comment on the incident.

It comes days after the largest Israeli operation in the West Bank since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war in Gaza.

The health ministry said at least 36 Palestinians were killed during the nine-day operation in the Tubas, Tulkarm and Jenin areas. Most of the dead were claimed by armed groups as members, but the ministry said children were also among those killed.

An Israeli soldier was also killed during the fighting in Jenin.

Also on Wednesday, Israeli paramedics said an Israeli man was in a critical condition following a ramming attack by a lorry near the Jewish settlement of Givat Assaf.

The IDF said the attacker was "neutralised" at the scene.

Israeli media identified the lorry driver as a Palestinian man from Rafat, near Ramallah.

On Sunday, three Israeli security guards were shot dead by a Jordanian lorry driver at the Allenby Bridge border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank.

There has been a spike in violence in the West Bank since last October.

More than 690 Palestinians have been killed, the Palestinian health ministry says, as Israeli forces have intensified their nearly daily search and arrest raids.

Israel says it is trying to stem Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Israel, in which 28 Israelis had been killed as of 2 September, according to the UN.

www.bbc.com

Israeli strike kills five Palestinians in West Bank - ministry

The Israeli military says an aircraft struck an “armed terrorist cell” during an operation in Tubas.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
The rabid assault of apartheid government continues
=====
Gaza War Updates
  • At least 14 people – including women and children – have been killed in an Israeli air attack on a school-turned-shelter in Nuseirat camp in central Gaza Strip.
  • Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank arrested 30 Palestinians in Hebron, Jenin, Ramallah and Bethlehem, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society.
  • A campaign to vaccinate Gaza’s children against the poliovirus continues in the north “against all odds”, including Israeli attacks on UN health workers and their vehicles, according to UNRWA.
  • At least 41,084 people have been killed and 95,029 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza. In Israel, the number of those killed in the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 is at least 1,139 while more than 200 people were taken captive.
Source: Al Jazeera
 
Israeli strikes in West Bank kill eight Palestinians, paramedics say

Eight Palestinians have been killed in two Israeli air strikes in the north of the occupied West Bank, paramedics and health officials say.

The first strike took place around dawn on Wednesday and killed five young men in Tubas, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it targeted an armed "terrorist cell” during a counter-terrorism operation in the city.

The IDF adds that it conducted a second strike in the evening during a separate operation in Tulkarm. The Red Crescent says three people were killed when a car was hit.

Meanwhile, an Israeli soldier was killed in what the IDF said was a ramming attack involving a fuel tanker elsewhere in the West Bank.

The IDF said a "terrorist driving a Palestinian truck” near the Jewish settlement of Givat Assaf “accelerated towards forces conducting operational activity”.

Soldiers and an armed civilian then “neutralised” the driver at the scene, it added.

Israeli media posted video footage showing a tanker veering off a busy road at high speed before hitting a bus stop. They also identified the driver as a Palestinian man from Rafat.

Rafat’s council leader told Israel's Haaretz newspaper that he knew the driver and did not believe it was an attack, but rather a case of him losing control of the tanker.

There has been a spike in violence in the West Bank since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war in Gaza.

More than 690 Palestinians have been killed, the Palestinian health ministry says, as Israeli forces have intensified their nearly daily search and arrest raids.

Israel says it is trying to stem Palestinian attacks in the West Bank and Israel, in which at least 33 Israelis have been killed, according to Israeli authorities.

The IDF said in a statement that its troops, along with forces from the Shin Bet internal security agency and Israel Prison Service, had been operating since Tuesday night to "thwart terror" in Tubas and Tamun.

An air strike killed "five terrorists armed with explosives who posed a threat to the forces, while the forces on the ground confiscated weapons, dismantled a vehicle rigged with explosives, and hit several armed fighters during exchanges of fire, it added".

A curfew in Tubas was also imposed on Tubas and that the city's government hospital was surrounded, with people allowed to exit and enter subject to being checked by Israeli forces, according to an Israeli military official.

Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Wednesday morning that Israeli forces were carrying out large-scale raids on the city’s outskirts and several neighbourhoods.

It also said another Israeli military operation was continuing in the city of Tulkarm and its refugee camps for a second day.

On Tuesday, the Palestinian health ministry said a Palestinian man and woman had been killed by gunfire from Israeli forces in Tulkarm.

The IDF has not commented on that report, but the statement it put out on Wednesday afternoon said Israeli forces had "eliminated an armed terrorist and struck several others" during a counter-terrorism operation in the Tulkarm area.

Later, the IDF put out a brief statement saying that an aircraft had conducted an air strike in Tulkarm, without providing any further details.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had taken the bodies of three Palestinians to a local hospital following a drone strike on a vehicle in a suburb of Tulkarm.

Armed groups identified the dead men as fighters, according to Palestinian media reports.

The raids come days after the largest Israeli operation in the West Bank since last October.

The Palestinian health ministry said at least 36 Palestinians had been killed during the nine-day operation in the Tubas, Tulkarm and Jenin areas. Most of the dead were claimed by armed groups as members, but the ministry said children were also among those killed.

An Israeli soldier was also killed during the fighting in Jenin.

In a separate development on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden said Israel had to do more to make sure that incidents like the killing of an American-Turkish activist during a protest in the West Bank last week “never happen again”.

The IDF said on Tuesday that it was "highly likely" Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was "hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her".

Mr Biden said the US had confidence in the result of the Israeli investigation but described the killing as “totally unacceptable” and demanded full accountability.

An Israeli government spokesman insisted the IDF’s rules of engagement were “extremely clear in preventing any damage to any harm to civilians”.

BBC
 
UN says Israeli strike on Gaza school killed six of its staff

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) says six of its employees have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a school it runs in central Gaza.

Gaza's Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said a total of 18 people were killed in Wednesday’s strike on al-Jaouni school in Nuseirat refugee camp, which is being used as a shelter by thousands of displaced Palestinians.

Israel's military said it carried out a “precise strike on terrorists” planning attacks from the school, and that it had taken measures to avoid harm to civilians.

UN Secretary General António Guterres condemned the strike, saying: “What’s happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable.”

“These dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Unrwa said the attack marked "the highest death toll among our staff in a single incident" since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in October.

It also noted that it was the fifth time the school had been hit over the past 11 months.

In July, 16 people were reportedly killed in a strike which the Israeli military said had targeted several structures at the school used by Hamas fighters.

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, hit out at Guterres' criticism.

“It is unconscionable that the UN continues to condemn Israel in its just war against terrorists, while Hamas continues to use women and children as human shields,” he said.

Hamas - which is proscribed as a terrorist group by Israel, the UK and other countries - has denied using schools and other civilian sites for military purposes.

Israeli forces launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group's unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 41,080 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

Video of the aftermath of Wednesday’s strike showed hundreds of people inspecting the heavily damaged ground floor of one wing of al-Jaouni school, as well as the remains of an adjoining structure that appeared to have been destroyed.

Other footage showed ambulances bringing wounded men, women and children said to have been wounded in the strike to al-Aqsa hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah.

Survivors said they had to step over “shredded limbs” as they scrambled over the rubble.

“I can hardly stand up," one man holding a bag of human remains told AFP news agency.

"We've been going through hell for 340 days now. What we've seen over these days, we haven't even seen it in Hollywood movies, now we're seeing it in Gaza."

Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said on Wednesday night that 18 people were killed, including Unrwa staff members, children and women, and that 18 others were injured.

A Telegram post from the agency identified one of those killed as the daughter of one of its rescue workers, Momin Salmi. It said he had not seen Shadia for 10 months because he had stayed in northern Gaza while his wife and their eight children had fled southwards.

The BBC was not able to independently verify the death toll, but a medical source at al-Awda hospital in Nuseirat camp told AFP that a total of 15 people killed in the strike had been brought there and to al-Aqsa hospital.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said aircraft had “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control centre” embedded inside al-Jaouni school.

“Numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence,” it added.

“This is a further example of the Hamas terrorist organisation’s systematic abuse of civilian infrastructure in violation of international law.”

Gaza’s Hamas-run government media office accused Israel of a “brutal massacre”.

Later, Unrwa said in a statement that two air strikes had hit the school and its surroundings, which were home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children.

"Among those killed was the manager of the Unrwa shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people," it said.

The agency insisted that "schools and other civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times", adding: "They are not a target."

"We call on all parties to the conflict to never use schools or the areas around them for military or fighting purposes."

Hours before the incident, Unrwa said in a situation report that almost 70% of its schools in Gaza had been hit during the war.

It also reported that 214 of its staff members had been killed, along with at least 563 displaced people who had been sheltering inside its schools and other installations.

Israel has previously accused Unrwa of supporting Hamas.

The agency has denied this, but the UN said in August that it had fired nine of Unrwa's 13,000 staff in Gaza after investigators found evidence that they might have been involved in the 7 October attack. Another 10 staff were cleared because of insufficient evidence.

Israel also alleged that hundreds of Unrwa staff were members of terrorist groups, but a UN review published in April found Israel had not provided evidence for its claims.

In a separate development on Wednesday, the IDF announced that two Israeli soldiers had been killed and eight others injured in a helicopter crash overnight in southern Gaza.

The helicopter was on a mission to evacuate a critically injured soldier to a hospital for medical treatment and crashed while landing in the Rafah area, a statement said.

“An initial inquiry conducted indicates that the crash was not caused by enemy fire. The cause of the crash is still under investigation,” it added.

BBC
 

Turkey probing killing of activist in occupied West Bank​


Turkey is investigating the killing of a US-Turkish activist during a protest in West Bank, the justice minister said on Thursday (Sep 12), adding that Ankara would press the UN to take immediate action.

The settlements are illegal under international law but supported by right-wing members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

The United Nations rights office has accused Israeli forces of shooting Eygi in the head. The Israeli army has acknowledged opening fire in the area and said it was looking into the case.

"Turkey has opened an investigation," Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said.

He also said Turkey would take the case to the United Nations and push for an independent inquiry into her death.

"We will work to ensure that the (UN) Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial and Arbitrary Executions takes immediate action and that an independent commission of inquiry is established and prepares a report," he said.

Tunc said Turkey would forward that report to the UN Human Rights Council and to the ongoing case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

"We will continue to defend the rights of our sister Aysenur and our Palestinian brothers," he added.

Turkey's foreign ministry said the formal procedures for the transfer of the body had been concluded through its embassy in Tel Aviv and consulate in Jerusalem.

"The body of the deceased will arrive in Turkey tomorrow," it said, adding: "We once again condemn this murder committed by the genocidal Netanyahu government."

Eygi's family is still waiting for her body to arrive and is hoping to bury her in the southwestern town of Didim on Friday.

"It's sad but it's also a source of pride for Didim," Eygi's uncle Ali Tikkim, 67, said on Wednesday.

"It's important that a young girl, martyred and sensitive to the world is buried here."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to ensure "that Aysenur Ezgi's death does not go unpunished".

www.channelnewsasia.com

Turkey probing killing of activist in occupied West Bank

ANKARA: Turkey is investigating the killing of a US-Turkish activist during a protest in West Bank, the justice minister said on Thursday (Sep 12), adding that Ankara would press the UN to take immediate action. Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was
www.channelnewsasia.com www.channelnewsasia.com
 

Israel’s war on Gaza: ‘Endless and senseless killing, day after day’​

  • UNRWA’s chief decries the “endless and senseless killing, day after day” in Gaza after Israeli air strikes killed at least 18 people – including six of his staff – at a shelter for war-displaced civilians.
  • The USS Theodore Roosevelt is heading home, ending the Pentagon’s rare move to keep two US Navy aircraft carriers in the Middle East for weeks as fears of a wider war reverberated.
Source: Al Jazeera
 
Unrwa says one of its employees was killed during Israeli operation in occupied West Bank

It has gone 10am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. This is our latest live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) said on Friday that one of its employees was killed during an Israeli operation in the occupied West Bank, where raids have escalated since last month.

The Israeli military called the UN worker a “terrorist” who posed a threat to troops.

Unrwa said the employee was its first to be killed in the Palestinian territory in more than a decade, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports. But, he is among dozens of Palestinians killed during the large-scale Israeli operation that began days ago and is ongoing, with several more Palestinians dead since Wednesday.

Unrwa identified the employee as Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, who worked as a sanitation labourer. It said he was “shot and killed on the roof of his home by a sniper” in Faraa refugee camp.

An Israeli military spokesperson, Lieut Col Nadav Shoshani, said on X that during an operation in Faraa “a terrorist was identified hurling explosive devices that posed a threat” to forces, leading troops to open fire to remove the threat. It was later “discovered he is also an Unrwa employee”, Shoshani said.

Jawwad’s death is in addition to those of six other Unrwa staffers the UN said were killed in Gaza on Wednesday during a strike on a school turned shelter.

Mourners carried Jawwad’s body through the streets of Faraa on Friday, while in nearby Tubas, funerals also took place for other Palestinians, who were killed by an airstrike.

THE GUARDIAN
 
Gaza rescuers report 11 of a family killed in Israeli strike

Gaza's civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike hit a house in Gaza City this morning and killed 11 members of a single family, including women and children.

"We have recovered the bodies of 11 martyrs, including four children and three women, after an Israeli air strike hit the house of the Bustan family in eastern Gaza City," agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.

The strike took place near the Shujaiya school in the Al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City, he said.

"Rescuers are continuing to search for the missing," Bassal said.

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strike.

Israeli forces carried out similar strikes in some other parts of the Hamas-run territory overnight, killing at least 10 people, he added.

Five people were killed in northwestern Gaza City when an air strike hit a group of people near Dar Al-Arqam school.

Three others were killed in a strike in the Al-Mawasi area of the southern Khan Yunis governorate, where tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge, Bassal added.

The war in Gaza broke out after the October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Militants also seized 251 captives during the attack, 97 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead. The count includes hostages killed in captivity.

Israel's retaliatory military campaign has so far killed at least 41,118 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-run territory, which does not provide details of civilian and militant deaths. The UN human rights office says most of the dead have been women or children.

SOURCE: https://www.thedailystar.net/news/w...eport-11-family-killed-israeli-strike-3702776
 
UN employee shot dead by Israeli sniper in occupied West Bank

A sniper killed a UN worker on the roof of his home in the northern West Bank, the UN has said, as friends and family gathered in Turkey to bury a US-Turkish activist who had been killed by the Israeli military at a protest six days earlier and around 30km away.

Sufyan Jaber Abed Jawwad, a sanitation worker with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, was the first Unrwa employee killed in the West Bank in more than a decade. Shot in the early hours of Thursday morning in el Far’a camp, he left behind a wife and five children.

The war in Gaza has overshadowed spiralling conflict in the West Bank, which has seen weeks of Israeli military operations and violence has reached “unprecedented levels, placing communities at risk,” Unrwa said.

“Civilian infrastructure, including water and electricity networks, have been destroyed, with precarious access for communities to basic supplies,” the agency said in a statement about Jawwad’s death. “Unrwa has been forced to suspend services to refugees because of the unacceptable risk to staff and beneficiaries.”

The violence was thrown into the international spotlight last week when an Israeli soldier killed 26 year-old US-Turkish activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi at a protest in Beita. She was in the town with International Solidarity Movement, a group dedicated to bringing observers trained in non-violent methods to protests.

On Saturday hundreds of people gathered for her burial in the Turkish coastal town of Didim, where her coffin was carried by an honour guard from the Turkish military. Many in the crowd carried Palestinian flags, and photos of Eygi.

Eyewitness Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli protester, said she posed no threat to troops when she was killed and that the shooting came during a moment of calm, following clashes between stone-throwing protesters and Israelis firing tear gas and bullets. The Israeli military said she was shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by one of its soldiers who were targeting violent protestors.

Her family have called for an investigation and the shooting drew criticism from US officials including president Joe Biden, who said he was “outraged and deeply saddened”.

The refugee camps of the northern West Bank, including Tulkaram, Jenin, Nur Shams and el Far’a, where Unrwa employee Jawwad was killed, have been a particular focus over weeks of Israeli military operations.

The Israeli military said Jawwad was killed by a sniper during an operation in the camp. It said he was throwing “explosive devices” at its troops from his home, without providing evidence. “It was found that the terrorist was known to Israeli security forces and he had been complicit in additional terrorist activities,” spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said in a statement.

UNWRA regularly provides lists of all staff members in Gaza and the West Bank to the Israeli government, and was not informed of any concerns about Jawwad before he was killed. Staff learned about the Israeli allegation from a statement on the social media site X.

The killing came days after Israeli airstrikes on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza killed six UNWRA staff members, bringing the total number of agency employees killed in this war to at least 220. Israel’s military said three of the dead Unrwa workers were Hamas employees, without providing evidence.

An independent review of previous Israeli claims that Unrwa staff were members of terrorist organisations found that the country was yet to provide any supporting evidence. It was led by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna.

THE GUARDIAN
 

Israel recruiting African refugees in Gaza war in exchange for residency status: Report​


The Israeli regime is recruiting African asylum seekers to kill Palestinians in the Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip in exchange for permanent residency status, according to a report.

The report, ran by the Israeli paper Haaretz on Sunday, revealed that the project is conducted in an organized manner, with the guidance of military establishment legal advisers.

In Gaza, the death toll passes 41,200 with close to 100,000 more injured in almost a year since the Israeli regime forces launched their genocidal war. However, the continued violence is prompting some Jewish Israelis to leave the occupied Palestinian land.

To make up for the loss, Tel Aviv is offering the incentive of permanent residency status to asylum seekers who agree to join the Israeli regime forces ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Haaretz has learned that some people have expressed objections to the practice, arguing that it exploits people who have fled their countries due to war. However, according to those sources, these voices have been silenced.

“This is a very problematic matter,” one source was quoted as saying by Haaretz.

According to the report, there are currently some 30,000 African asylum seekers living in the occupied territories, most of them young men. Around 3,500 are Sudanese citizens with temporary status granted by the court because the regime has not processed and ruled on their applications.

Unnamed sources who spoke with Haaretz also revealed that while there were some inquiries about granting status to asylum seekers who assisted in the genocidal war in Gaza, none were actually given status.

Haaretz also learned that the Interior Ministry explored the possibility of drafting the children of asylum seekers, who were educated in schools in the occupied territories, into the Israeli military.

In the past, the regime allowed the children of foreign workers to serve in the military in exchange for granting status to their immediate family members.

African refugees, who came to the occupied territories seeking asylum, were previously kept in internment camps and deported without their own consent.

www.presstv.ir

Israel recruiting African refugees in Gaza war in exchange for residency status: Report

The Israeli regime is recruiting African asylum seekers to kill Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in exchange for permanent residency status, according to a report.
www.presstv.ir www.presstv.ir
 
Israel sets new war goal of returning residents to the north

Israel has made the safe return of residents to the north of the country an official war goal, the prime minister's office has said.

The decision was taken by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet late on Monday.

About 60,000 people have been evacuated from northern Israel because of near-daily attacks by Iran-backed Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.

Cross-border fighting escalated on 8 October 2023 - a day after the deadly attack on Israel by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip - when Hezbollah fired at Israeli positions, in solidarity with the Palestinians.

"The Security Cabinet has updated the objectives of the war to include the following: Returning the residents of the north securely to their homes," a statement from the prime minister's office said.

"Israel will continue to act to implement this objective," it added.

Earlier on Monday, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the only way to return Israel's northern residents to their homes was through "military action", during a meeting with US envoy Amos Hochstein.

“The possibility for an agreement is running out as Hezbollah continues to ‘tie itself’ to Hamas, and refuses to end the conflict,” a statement from his office said.

"Therefore, the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes, will be via military action.”

Gallant's comments came as speculation grew that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to replace him amid differences between the two men over the war in Gaza.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin warned of the devastating consequences of further escalation.

In a statement from the US defence department, his office said he "reaffirmed the necessity of a ceasefire and hostage deal, and that Israel should give diplomatic negotiations time to succeed, noting the devastating consequences that escalation would have on the people of Israel, Lebanon, and the broader region."

Israel has repeatedly warned it could launch a military operation to drive Hezbollah away from the border.

Hezbollah is a Shia Muslim organisation which is politically influential and in control of the most powerful armed force in Lebanon.

The group has so far made no public comments on the issue.

The latest Israeli move marks an expansion of the country's previously stated war goals:

  • The elimination of Hamas and its military capabilities
  • The return of all the hostages taken during the 7 October attack
  • Ensuring that the Gaza Strip no longer poses a threat to Israel
Israeli forces launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group's unprecedented attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 41,220 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

BBC
 

Rabidness continues​

====

'500 casualties in 25 minutes’: Gazan doctor recounts horrors of Israel war​


In the corridors of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, the largest hospital in Gaza, a grim scene unfolds.

Children with amputated limbs sit silently, while displaced families line the hallways, some with IV drips hanging from doorways, Anadolu Agency reports.

Dr. Mohammad Ashraf, a Palestinian emergency doctor at Gaza’s largest hospital and Project Officer for Turkish medical relief group, Yeryuzu Doktorlari, recently returned from a 45-day stint at Al-Shifa.

Prior to Israel’s ongoing offensive in the enclave, now in its 11th month, Ashraf had attended a mass casualty management course with the World Health Organisation (WHO).

“We have been trained to handle a maximum of 90 casualties per hour,” he recalled.

However, the reality of the war far exceeded their preparations.

“During the bombing of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, we received 500 casualties in 25 minutes at Al-Shifa Hospital,” Ashraf said.

This influx of patients overwhelmed the facility, already lacking in equipment, electricity, fuel for its generators and other basic necessities.

For medical personnel, the strain of Israel’s war on Gaza has been severe, with at least 500 killed and 1,500 others injured since 7 October, and over 300 detained by Israeli forces, according to the latest official figures.

Despite these challenges, Gaza’s medical professionals remain determined, with many helping people at the only four hospitals that are partially functioning – Kamal Adwan Hospital, Indonesian Hospital, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and the Nasser Hospital.

‘Did you bring us to hell?’​

As the Israeli bombardment intensified, hospitals became more than just medical facilities, also serving as shelters for the displaced.

Ashraf recounted that, while treating a heavily bleeding patient, he learned that the man had received his injuries in the hospital’s maternity building, where the doctor’s own family had sought refuge.

When he opened the door to the wing, he found his mother, sister, and her children covered in dust, but alive, he recounted.

They cried out to him, “Did you bring us to hell?”

Months later, the scene at Al-Shifa Hospital is still one of overcrowding and scarcity. The injured and displaced fill every available space — hallways, rooms and courtyards. With resources scarce, patients, displaced families and medical staff share what little food and water they have.

Source: Middle East Monitor
 
UN General Assembly demands Israel ends occupation of Palestinian territories

The UN General Assembly has adopted a Palestinian-drafted, non-binding resolution demanding Israel end "its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory" within 12 months.

There were 124 votes in favour and 14 against, including Israel, along with 43 abstentions. As a non-member observer state, Palestine could not vote.

The resolution is based on a July advisory opinion from the UN's highest court that said Israel was occupying the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip against international law.

The Palestinian ambassador called the vote a turning point “in our struggle for freedom and justice”. But his Israeli counterpart denounced it as “diplomatic terrorism”.

Although the General Assembly’s resolutions are not binding, they carry symbolic and political weight given they reflect the positions of all 193 member states of the UN.

It comes after almost a year of war in Gaza, which began when Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others as hostages.

More than 41,110 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

There has also been a spike in violence in the West Bank over the same period, in which the UN says more than 680 Palestinians and 22 Israelis have been killed.

The advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) - which was also not legally binding - said a 15-judge panel had found that "Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful” and that the country was “under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence... as rapidly as possible”.

The court also said Israel should “evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory” and “make reparation for the damage caused to all the natural or legal persons concerned”.

Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967. The court said the settlements “have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law”, which Israel has consistently disputed.

Israel's prime minister said at the time that the court had made a "decision of lies" and insisted that “the Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land”.

Wednesday’s General Assembly resolution welcomed the ICJ’s declaration.

It demands that Israel “brings to an end without delay its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory... and do so no later than 12 months”, and “comply without delay with all its legal obligations under international law”.

The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry described its passing as a “pivotal and historic moment for the Palestinian cause and international law”.

It emphasised that the support of almost two thirds of UN member states reflected “a global consensus that the occupation must end and its crimes must cease”, and that it “reaffirmed the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination”.

Israel’s foreign ministry called the resolution “a distorted decision that is disconnected from reality, encourages terrorism and harms the chances for peace”, adding: “This is what cynical international politics looks like.”

It said the resolution “bolsters and strengthens the Hamas terrorist organisation” and “sends a message that terrorism pays off and yields international resolutions”. It also accused the Palestinian Authority of “conducting a campaign whose goal is not to resolve the conflict but to harm Israel” and vowed to respond.

The US, which voted against the resolution, warned beforehand that the text was “one-sided” and “selectively interprets the substance of the ICJ’s opinion”.

“There is no path forward or hope offered through this resolution today. Its adoption will not save Palestinian lives, bring the hostages home, end Israeli settlements, or reinvigorate the peace process,” Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.

The UK’s ambassador, Barbara Woodward, explained that it had abstained “not because we do not support the central findings of the ICJ's advisory opinion, but rather because the resolution does not provide sufficient clarity to effectively advance our shared aim of a peace premised on a negotiated two-state solution”.

BBC
 

UN accuses Israel of ‘massive’ violation of child rights treaty in Gaza​


A United Nations committee has accused Israel of severe breaches of a global treaty protecting children’s rights, saying its military actions in Gaza have had a catastrophic impact on children and are among the worst violations in recent history.

More than 11,355 minors have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war triggered by Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on October 7. More than 1,100 people, mostly Israeli civilians, were killed in the Hamas-led attacks and about 250 were taken captive. In response, Israel has waged a war in the besieged enclave, killing more than 41,000 people and reducing large swaths of the Palestinian territory to rubble.

“The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history,” Bragi Gudbrandsson, vice chairperson of the committee, told reporters on Thursday.

“I don’t think we have seen before a violation that is so massive as we’ve seen in Gaza. These are extremely grave violations that we do not often see,” he said.

On top of the registered casualties by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, thousands of children are believed to be missing under the rubble, buried in unmarked graves or severely wounded by explosives, the British aid group Save the Children said in a report published in June.

According to an Al Jazeera tally in January – when the number of children killed by Israel’s war in Gaza was about 10,000 – one Palestinian child was being killed there every 15 minutes.

Source: Al Jazeera
 
Delta pauses flights to Tel Aviv until the end of the year

Delta Air Lines is the latest to pause flights to Tel Aviv, announcing today it will not travel between New York and the Israeli city until the end of the year.

The airline said a travel waiver had been issued to allow impacted customers to rebook their travel.

It also urged customers to be prepared for possible adjustments to its Tel Aviv flight schedule.

This includes additional cancellations on a rolling basis.

Concerns over a wider conflict in the Middle East have prompted international airlines to suspend flights to the region and avoid impacted air spaces.

Lufthansa has also confirmed it is suspending flights to and from Tel Aviv and Tehran up to and including 24 September.

Air France said this week it was suspending services to Beirut and Tel Aviv up to and including today.

Budget airline easyJet stopped flying to and from Tel Aviv in April and will only resume flights from 30 March next year, while Ryanair has cancelled trips to and from the same city until 26 October.


SKY News
 

Israel investigates after its soldiers filmed throwing bodies off roof​


Israel's military has launched an investigation after its soldiers were filmed throwing the bodies of three dead Palestinians off a rooftop during a raid in the occupied West Bank.

Footage of the incident, filmed in the northern town of Qabatiya, near Jenin, then appears to show an Israeli military bulldozer picking up and removing the bodies.

The images have sparked widespread outrage. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Friday that it was “a serious incident” that did not “conform” to its values and what was expected of its forces.

Local Palestinian officials say at least seven people were killed by Israeli forces in Qabatiya on Thursday.

Under international law, soldiers are obliged to ensure that bodies, including those of enemy fighters, are treated with respect.

The IDF said it carried out a counterterrorism operation in Qabatiya, during which four militants were killed in an "exchange of fire" and three others were killed after a drone strike on a car.

A journalist in Qabatiya told the BBC that on Thursday morning Israeli troops had surrounded a building in town.

He described how four men who were in the house then escaped to the roof and were shot by snipers.

Fighting continued in the town and when it had subsided, he then said he saw Israeli troops go up to the roof and drop the bodies down over the side, where they were then loaded onto a bulldozer.

Asked about the incident shown in the footage, the IDF said: "This is a serious incident that does not conform with [our] values and the expectations from IDF soldiers. The incident is under review."

The military said that one of those killed in Qabatiya was Shadi Zakarneh, who it identified as being "responsible for directing and carrying out attacks in the northern West Bank area".

It said he was "the head of the terrorist organisation" in Qabatiya but did not specify which group he belonged to.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in the West Bank, described the incident on X, formerly known as Twitter, as a "crime" which exposed the "brutality" of the Israeli army.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby described the footage as "deeply disturbing".

"If it's proven to be authentic, it clearly would depict abhorrent and egregious behaviour by professional soldiers," he told reporters.

There has been a spike in violence in the West Bank since Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war in Gaza.

More than 690 Palestinians have been killed there since then, the Palestinian health ministry says, as Israeli forces have intensified their nearly daily search and arrest raids.

Israel says it is trying to stem Palestinian attacks in the West Bank and Israel, in which at least 33 Israelis have been killed.

In Gaza, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israeli military action, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

www.bbc.com

Israel investigates after its soldiers filmed throwing bodies off roof

The IDF says the incident does not "conform" to its values, while Palestinian officials say it is a "crime".
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Gaza’s Health Ministry says 24 Palestinians were killed and 60 wounded in the latest 24-hour reporting period.

Israeli forces pound Gaza, killing a mother and four of her children in an attack on Deir el-Balah, and 10 more Palestinians in two separate attacks on schools-turned-shelters.

World leaders and press freedom groups condemn Israel’s decision to send in heavily armed soldiers to shut down Al Jazeera’s bureau in the occupied West Bank.

At least 41,431 people have been killed and 95,818 injured in Israel’s war on Gaza. In Israel, the number of those killed in the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 was at least 1,139 while more than 200 people were taken captive.

Source: Al Jazeera
 

At least 41,467 killed in Israel’s war on Gaza: Ministry​


Israeli attacks over the past 24-hour period killed at least 12 people and wounded 43 across the Gaza Strip, according to the latest daily update by the Health Ministry in the besieged and bombarded territory.

The latest figures bring the total number of people killed since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza to at least 41,467, with 95,921 wounded and thousands still missing under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

Source: Al Jazeera
 

Israel slammed for sending 88 unidentifiable bodies of Palestinians to Gaza​


Gaza’s Ministry of Health has refused to receive a container carrying the bodies of 88 Palestinians sent from Israel without prior coordination or information about their identities.

The procedures for receiving the container were suspended until Israel provides full data with the victims’ names, time of death and the location they were taken from, the ministry said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday.

This is “the minimum rights of these people and their families”, it said.

Gaza’s Government Media Office called the shipment of unidentifiable bodies an “inhumane and criminal move”, in a separate statement.

Reporting from central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said “the bodies are unidentifiable because they are mostly decomposed”.

“There are signs that those bodies have been in Israel for a long time,” he said.

“The Palestinian Health Ministry said that the Israeli military has deliberately concealed the identity of those Palestinian people. There is no information about their names, genders and the location they have been kidnapped from. The circumstances of their abduction from the Gaza Strip are also unclear,” he added.

Source: Al Jazeera
 
Israeli strike on Gaza school kills at least 11, health ministry says

At least 11 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a school in northern Gaza being used as a shelter by displaced families, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

Women and children were among the dead brought to hospitals following the attack on al-Faluja school in the urban Jabalia refugee camp, according to the ministry.

The Israeli military said a “precise" strike targeted a “command-and-control centre” used by Hamas fighters - something the armed group has previously denied.

The Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said thousands of displaced Palestinians were living there and put the death toll at 15.

Local medics meanwhile told Reuters news agency that at least 14 people were killed.

One resident, Rami Abdul Nabi, said the school was hit by two missiles and that it felt “like an earthquake” as they exploded.

"This should be... a place for the displaced to find a sanctuary, people who have no options left,” he told Reuters. “It was a shocking massacre."

Many schools have been turned into shelters for the 1.9 million Palestinians who have fled their homes since the war between Israel and Hamas started almost a year ago.

However, at least 61% of schools have been directly hit during the conflict and another 24% have been damaged, according to satellite analysis by the UN and its partners.

Three other schools in northern and central Gaza were struck by Israeli aircraft between last Saturday and Monday, reportedly killing at least 32 people.

As with Thursday’s strike in Jabalia camp, the Israeli military said it had targeted Hamas command centres and that it had taken steps to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.

It also accused Hamas of systematically violating international law by operating from inside civilian infrastructure.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group's unprecedented attack on southern Israel on 7 October, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

More than 41,150 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory's health ministry.

In a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas - a rival of Hamas who is based in the occupied West Bank - appealed to world leaders to end the war.

"Stop this crime. Stop it now. Stop killing children and women. Stop the genocide. Stop sending weapons to Israel. This madness cannot continue,” he said.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, condemned the speech, saying that Abbas “did not say the word ‘Hamas’ once”.

“Since the massacre of 7 October, Abbas has failed to condemn Hamas for their crimes against humanity,” he added.

The US, Egypt and Qatar are trying to broker a ceasefire and hostage release deal, which they also see as key to de-escalating between Israel and the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah. However, US officials have admitted the negotiations have stalled in recent weeks.

BBC
 

Israeli airstrikes kill 12 in Gaza, but ground fighting less intense​

CAIRO: Israeli airstrikes pounded areas across the Gaza Strip on Monday killing 12, including a journalist and her family, medics said, although the intensity of the ground offensive has subsided as Israel steps up its fight with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Palestinian health officials said Wafa Al-Udaini, who wrote articles about the war in English advocating the Palestinian viewpoint, was killed when a missile struck her house in the central city of Deir Al-Balah, also killing her husband and their two children.
There has been no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Udaini’s death raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed in the Israeli offensive since Oct. 7 to 174, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said.

In another strike, a Palestinian was killed and several were wounded in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, while in the northern town of Beit Hanoun an airstrike killed one man and injured others, medics said.

While later on Monday, an Israeli air strike on a house in Nuseirat, one of Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, killed six people, health officials said.

Some residents said fighting and Israeli military activities in Gaza have declined slightly in the past week as Israel has escalated its military offensive against Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on Friday. The group announced Nasrallah’s death on Saturday.

While the intensity of the ground offensive has been lower, Israel has kept up its airstrikes in the enclave, they added.
Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel for almost a year, in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza.

In the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli authorities released 12 Palestinians, including Khaled Al-Ser, head of the surgery unit at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, medics and Hamas media said. Palestinians freed by Israel have complained of torture and ill-treatment in Israeli jails, charges Israel denies.

Israel and Hamas have been fighting since gunmen from the Palestinian militant group stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing about 250 hostages, going by Israeli tallies.

Most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced by the war, in which more than 41,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health authorities.

Source: Arab news
 

Israeli strikes on southern Gaza kill 51, says Hamas-run health ministry​


Israeli air strikes and a ground operation targeting the Khan Younis area in southern Gaza have killed at least 51 people, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry.

Tanks reportedly advanced into some parts of the southern city and the surrounding area on Tuesday night, with residents reporting gunfire and heavy shelling.

One wounded villager who made it to hospital told the BBC “tanks stormed in” to his village without warning.

Separately, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had hit Hamas targets located in two schools in central and northern Gaza overnight.

The IDF said the strikes were aimed at Hamas members operating “inside compounds that previously served as schools”. Palestinian media reported at least nine civilians were killed at one school.

Israel’s continued strikes into Gaza came just hours after it repelled a barrage of missiles from Iran and launched a ground invasion into Lebanon on the same day. It has described Tuesday's advance into Lebanon as a “limited” operation, targeting Hezbollah sites.

The IDF is yet to comment on the strikes in southern Gaza, which reportedly occurred at dawn on Wednesday.

But one man from Qizan an-Najjar village, south-east of Khan Younis, told BBC Arabic some of his relatives had been killed in the attack.

"Tanks stormed into the area, accompanied by quadcopters that directly targeted us," he said, speaking from Nasser Hospital where medical officials also gave updates on the death toll.

Another man at the hospital said: "We were in Qizan An-Najjar when suddenly, shells began to rain down on us from planes and tanks."

A third man told BBC Arabic: "There was no prior warning. Following the rocket fire from Lebanon, we witnessed complete destruction. I barely survived; my daughter is injured, and my wife has a head injury that may lead to vision loss."

He said Israeli forces had also "completely destroyed" a house where displaced families had been sheltering.

The health ministry on Wednesday warned the death toll could rise, with another 82 people injured in the strikes.

Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on 7 October last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others as hostages.

Israel responded with a military campaign in Gaza that has now killed a total of 41,689 people, according to the health ministry.

Khan Younis - Gaza’s second-largest urban area - has been directly targeted by the IDF several times before, including two major ground operations in August and July 2024.

It was also bombed heavily in the first months of the war in December 2023.

www.bbc.com

Israeli strikes on southern Gaza kill 51, says Hamas-run health ministry

The reported strikes into Khan Younis come after Israel entered Lebanon and faced missiles from Iran.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Food aid to Gaza falls as Israel sets new rule – sources

Food supplies to Gaza have fallen sharply in recent weeks because Israeli authorities have introduced a new customs rule on some humanitarian aid and are separately scaling down deliveries organized by businesses, people involved in getting goods to the war-torn territory told Reuters.

The new customs rule applies to truck convoys chartered by the United Nations to take aid from Jordan to Gaza via Israel, seven people familiar with the matter said. Under the rule, individuals from relief organizations sending aid must complete a form providing passport details, and accept liability for any false information on a shipment, the people said.

They said relief agencies are disputing that requirement, which was announced mid-August, because they fear signing the form could expose staff to legal problems if aid fell into the hands of Hamas or other enemies of Israel.

As a result, shipments have not been getting through the Jordan route -- a key channel in Gaza supplies -- for two weeks. The dispute has not affected shipments via Cyprus and Egypt, the sources said.

In a parallel move, Israeli authorities have restricted commercial food shipments to Gaza amid concerns that Hamas was benefiting from that trade, the people familiar with the matter and industry sources said.

U.N. and Israeli government data show that in September, deliveries of food and aid sank to their lowest in seven months.

Israeli's military humanitarian unit, Cogat, which oversees aid and commercial shipments to Gaza, confirmed that no U.N.-chartered convoy has moved from Jordan to Gaza since Sept. 19, but a spokesperson said Israel was not blocking goods.

The spokesperson referred questions about the form dispute to Israel's Ministry of Economy. A ministry spokesperson did not answer Reuters' questions. A spokesperson for the U.N.'s emergency-response arm, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), declined to comment. Cogat did not address specific questions about commercial shipments.

The twin restrictions, which have not been previously reported, have reignited concerns among aid workers that pervasive food insecurity will worsen for the 2.3 million Gazans trapped in the occupied Palestinian territory.

"Lack of food is some of the worst it's been during the war, these past weeks especially," Nour al-Amassi, a doctor who works in southern Gaza, told Reuters by phone.

"We thought we'd been able to get a hold on it but it's got worse. My clinic treats 50 children a day for various issues, injuries and illness. On average 15 of those are malnourished."

The number of trucks carrying food and other goods to Gaza fell to around 130 per day on average in September, according to Cogat statistics. That is below about 150 recorded since the beginning of the war, and far off the 600 trucks a day that the U.S. Agency for International Development says are required to address the threat of famine in wartime.

Food insecurity has been one of most fraught issues of the war that began after Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year. In May, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors asked the court to issue an arrest warrant against Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, saying they suspected Israeli authorities had used "the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare."

Israeli authorities have denied this, saying they facilitate food deliveries to Gaza despite challenging conditions. In September, they filed two official challenges to the ICC, contesting the legality of the prosecutor's request and contesting the court's jurisdiction.

CHAOTIC ROUTES

During the war, aid to Gaza has been delivered through several different routes that have come in and out of operation, according to U.N. and Israeli officials.

The main route before the war was to southern Gaza via Egypt, after a detour for Israeli scans. Since Israel launched a military assault on the town of Rafah in May, U.N. aid coming that way has slumped because insecurity made it increasingly difficult to organize, U.N. relief agencies have said.

In May, a U.S.-led effort launched a pier to deliver humanitarian aid by boat, but the jetty was damaged by storms and abandoned in July. Some shipments that were earmarked for the pier at the time have yet to reach Gaza even after they were re-routed through the Israeli port of Ashdod, aid workers said.

Israel opened the Jordan route in December, allowing trucks to move directly from the Hashemite Kingdom to Gaza. U.N. and NGO aid workers say the Jordan corridor became the most reliable until the recent suspension.

Transportation via the route was helped after Israeli authorities agreed with Jordan to simplify customs procedures for humanitarian aid transported by U.N. agencies.

But in mid-August, Cogat informed U.N. relief agencies that this fast track had been revoked, the people familiar with the matter said. That generates additional costs and delays.

The new customs form is an extra headache, the sources said, adding the U.N. side had proposed an alternative and was hopeful Israel would accept it.

FALL IN COMMERCIAL IMPORTS

Compounding concerns about hunger in Gaza, the sources pointed to a recent drop in commercial supplies.

Commercial imports by Gaza-based traders made up the majority of the 500 trucks that entered the territory daily before the war.

Israel halted most of these supplies when war broke out, but allowed food imports to resume from Israeli-controlled territory in May, helping to augment the supply of fresh, nutritious products not contained in aid shipments, four Gazan traders and four U.N. officials said.

But commercial shipments have fallen from a daily average of 140 trucks in July to 80 in September, according to Cogat statistics. In the last two weeks of September, Gaza-based traders said the daily average fell even further, to a low of 45 trucks.

Israeli authorities actively promoted commercial supply since May, saying in June it was a more efficient alternative to U.N. aid.

But they changed tack after realizing that Hamas managed to levy taxes on some commercial shipments and seize some of the food, people familiar with the matter said.

SOURCE: https://www.reuters.com/world/middl...-israel-sets-new-aid-rule-sources-2024-10-02/
 

Yazidi woman freed from Gaza in U.S.-led operation after decade in captivity​


BEIRUT (Reuters) -A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq more than a decade ago was freed from Gaza this week in an operation led by the United States, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

The operation also involved Israel, Jordan and Iraq, according to officials.

The woman is a member of the ancient Yazidi religious minority mostly found in Iraq and Syria which saw more than 5,000 members killed and thousands more kidnapped in a 2014 campaign that the U.N. has said constituted genocide.

She was freed after more than four months of efforts that involved several attempts that failed due to the difficult security situation resulting from Israel's military offensive in Gaza, Silwan Sinjaree, chief of staff of Iraq's foreign minister, told Reuters.

She has been identified as Fawzia Sido. Reuters could not reach the woman directly for comment.

Iraqi officials had been in contact with the woman for months and passed on her information to U.S. officials, who arranged for her exit from Gaza with the help of Israel, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Officials did not provide details of how exactly she was eventually freed, and Jordanian and U.S. embassy officials in Baghdad did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The director of the digital diplomacy bureau at Israel's foreign ministry, David Saranga, posted on X that "Fawzia, a Yazidi girl kidnapped by ISIS from Iraq and brought to Gaza at just 11 years old, has finally been rescued by the Israeli security forces."

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

A State Department spokesperson said the United States on Oct. 1 "helped to safely evacuate from Gaza a young Yezidi woman to be reunited with her family in Iraq."

The spokesperson said she was kidnapped from her home in Iraq aged 11 and sold and trafficked to Gaza. Her captor was recently killed, allowing her to escape and seek repatriation, the spokesperson said.

Sinjaree said she was in good physical condition but was traumatized by her time in captivity and by the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza. She had since been reunited with family in northern Iraq, he added.

More than 6,000 Yazidis were captured by Islamic State militants from Sinjar region in Iraq in 2014, with many sold into sexual slavery or trained as child soldiers and taken across borders, including to Turkey and Syria.

Over the years, more than 3,500 have been rescued or freed, according to Iraqi authorities, with some 2,600 still missing.
Many are feared dead but Yazidi activists say they believe hundreds are still alive.

www.yahoo.com

Yazidi woman freed from Gaza after decade in captivity

A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq a decade ago was freed from Gaza this week in a secret operation months in the making that involved Israel, the United States and Iraq, officials said. The woman is a member of the ancient Yazidi religious minority mostly found in...
www.yahoo.com www.yahoo.com

Gaza holding Captured Yazidi woman. Amazing.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Three Hamas leaders killed months ago, IDF says​


The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has announced that, three months ago, it killed three senior Hamas leaders in Gaza.

Among them is Rawhi Mushtaha, identified by the IDF as the head of the Hamas government in Gaza, along with Sameh al-Siraj and Sami Oudeh, who were responsible for security in Hamas.

The IDF said they were hiding in an underground compound in northern Gaza and were killed by air strikes.

Israel said Hamas did not announce the deaths "in order to prevent loss of morale and functioning of its terror operatives".

In a statement, the IDF said Rawhi Mushtaha was "one of Hamas's most senior operatives and had a direct impact on decisions relating to Hamas's force deployment".

The deaths announced on Thursday add to the list of prominent Hamas leaders killed in the last year, since Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war in Gaza.

In August, the Israeli military said it shot dead Hamas's leader Wissam Khazem, during a major operation in the West Bank.

Separately, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an explosion in the Iranian capital, Tehran, in July. Iran blamed the incident on Israel, but Israeli officials did not claim it.

The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) later said that Iran's missile attack on Israel on Tuesday was retaliation for what it called the "violation of Iran’s sovereignty and the martyrdom” of Haniyeh.

www.bbc.com

Three Hamas leaders killed months ago, IDF says

The IDF says the men, including the head of the Hamas government, were killed in a strike on northern Gaza.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
 
Israel carries out strike on refugee camp in West Bank

The Israeli military says it has carried out a strike in the city of Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank.

Several people are reported to have been killed, with the Palestinian Authority health ministry putting the number at 16.

The Palestinian Red Crescent, separately, said that at least five people were killed.

The IDF did not provide further details of the strike on the refugee camp in its statement.


BBC
 
Israeli air strike kills 18 people in occupied West Bank

At least 18 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm, the Palestinian health ministry said late on Thursday.

The Palestinian Authority-run news agency Wafa said the air strike had hit a cafe in the Tulkarm refugee camp where many civilians had been present.

The Israeli military said the air force had conducted a strike in Tulkarm in a joint operation with its Shin Bet security service and had killed the head of Hamas in Tulkarm and "other significant terrorists".

There has been a spike in violence in the West Bank since Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war in Gaza.

Since then more than 700 Palestinians have been killed as Israeli forces have intensified their raids, saying they are trying to stem deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank and Israel.

The Israeli military has carried out dozens of air strikes in the occupied West Bank in the past year, but normally using drones or helicopters.

One resident from the area told AFP news agency the Israeli had "hit a cafeteria in a three-story building."

"There are many victims in the hospital," the resident added, saying the death toll would likely rise.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the strike had killed Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, who it said had attempted a car bombing last month and supplied weapons.

Wafa quoted a local official as saying children and elderly people from several families had been killed in the strike.

Tulkarm was one of the towns and Palestinian refugee camps targeted during a major Israeli military operation in August.

Last month UN rights chief Volker Turk said major Israeli operations in the occupied West Bank were taking place "at a scale not witnessed in the last two decades".

Over the past year more than 700 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry says.

Meanwhile at least 24 Israelis including members of the security forces have been killed by Palestinian attackers in the same period, according to Israeli officials.

BBC
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

nextover666666
Pakistan defeat Palestine 11-3 in the final of the West Asia Baseball Cup 2023
Replies
22
Views
2K
CherylFogle
C
L
Dawah, Islamic Law, Punishments & Limits in Islam
6 7 8
Replies
601
Views
47K
Justcrazy
Justcrazy
BouncerGuy
  • Poll Poll
What will it take to start a revolution of the kind we have seen in Bangladesh?
Replies
38
Views
866
anikrc1
A
MenInG
[VIDEOS/ PICTURES] Shahnawaz Dahani could be in trouble for his social media outburst after being ignored for Asia Cup and Afghanistan series
2
Replies
125
Views
40K
FearlessRoar
FearlessRoar
C
ICC World Cup 2023: Netherland (245/8) beat in-form South Africa (207 all out) by 38 runs to win their first match of the tournament
5 6 7
Replies
551
Views
12K
Swing
S
Back
Top