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imagine the carnage if they didnt try to minimize civilian deaths. good thing they were restrained.
Israeli forces rescue 2 hostages in dramatic Gaza raid that killed at least 67 Palestinians
By NAJIB JOBAIN, JOSEF FEDERMAN and SAMY MAGDY
15 mins ago
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces rescued two hostages early Monday, storming a heavily guarded apartment in a densely packed town in the Gaza Strip and extracting them under fire and covering airstrikes that local officials said killed at least 67 Palestinians.
The plight of the dozens of hostages held by Hamas has profoundly shaken Israelis, and the rescue in Rafah briefly lifted the spirits of a nation still reeling from the militant group's cross-border raid last year that started the war. Israel has described Rafah — a city on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where 1.4 million Palestinians have fled fighting elsewhere — as the last remaining Hamas stronghold in the territory and signaled that its ground offensive may soon target the city.
In Gaza, the operation unleashed another tragedy in a war that has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians in the territory, displaced over 80% of the population and set off a massive humanitarian crisis.
More than 12,300 Palestinian minors — children and young teens — have been killed in the conflict, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday. About 8,400 women were also among those killed. That means minors make up about 43% of the dead and women and minors together make up three quarters.
The ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, provided the breakdown at the request of The Associated Press. Israel claims to have killed about 10,000 Hamas fighters.
In Hamas’ cross-border raid on Oct. 7, an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, and militants took 250 people captive, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel says about 100 hostages remain in Hamas captivity after dozens were freed during a cease-fire in November. Hamas also holds the remains of roughly 30 others who were either killed on Oct. 7 or died in captivity.
The government has made freeing the hostages a top aim of its war, along with destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. But as the fighting drags on, rifts have emerged in Israel over how to retrieve them.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says persistent military pressure will bring about the captives' freedom even as families of the hostages and many of their supporters have called on the government to make another deal with Hamas.
A DRAMATIC RAID
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said special forces broke into a second-floor apartment in Rafah under fire at 1:49 a.m. Monday, accompanied a minute later by airstrikes on surrounding areas. He said Hamas militants were guarding the captives and that members of the rescue team shielded the hostages with their bodies as the battle erupted.
The army identified those rescued as Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70, who were abducted by Hamas militants from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak on Oct. 7. They also hold Argentinian citizenship. They are among just three hostages to be rescued; a female soldier was rescued in November.
The rescue, which Hagari said was based on precise intelligence and planned for some time, is a morale booster for Israelis but a small step toward winning the release of the remaining hostages, who are believed to be spread out and hidden in tunnels.
Har's son-in-law, Idan Begerano, who saw the released captives at the hospital where they were airlifted, said the two men were thin and pale, but communicating well and aware of their surroundings.
Begerano said Har told him immediately upon seeing him: “You have a birthday today, mazal tov." The men held long, tearful embraces with their relatives at hospital, according to video released by Netanyahu's office.
DOZENS KILLED IN STRIKES
The airstrikes hit jam-packed Rafah in the middle of the night and dozens of explosions could be heard around 2 a.m. Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Health Ministry, said at least 67 people, including women and children, were killed in the strikes.
Al-Qidra said rescuers were still searching the rubble. An Associated Press journalist counted at least 50 bodies at the Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah.
Mohamed Zoghroub, a Palestinian living in Rafah, said he saw a black jeep speeding through the town followed by clashes and heavy airstrikes.
“We found ourselves running with our children, from the airstrikes, in every direction,” he said, speaking from an area flattened by the strikes.
Footage circulating on social media from Rafah's Kuwaiti hospital showed dead or wounded children. The footage could not immediately be verified but was consistent with AP reporting.
A young man could be seen carrying the body of an infant who he said was killed in the attacks. He said the girl, the daughter of his neighbor, was born and killed during the war.
“Let Netanyahu come and see: Is this one of your designated targets?" he said.
CONCERNS ABOUT RAFAH
Netanyahu has said sending ground troops into Rafah is essential to meeting Israel's war goals. On Sunday, the White House said President Joe Biden had warned Netanyahu that Israel should not conduct a military operation there without a “credible and executable” plan to protect civilians.
More than half of Gaza's 2.3 million population is now crammed into Rafah, where hundreds of thousands live in sprawling tent camps and overcrowded U.N. shelters.
Discussion of the potential for a cease-fire agreement took up much of the call, a senior U.S. administration official said. The official said that after weeks of diplomacy, a “framework” is now “pretty much” in place for a deal that could see the release of remaining hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and a halt to fighting.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss negotiations, acknowledged that “gaps remain,” but declined to give details. The official said military pressure on Hamas in the southern city of Khan Younis in recent weeks helped bring the group closer to accepting a deal.
Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on the call. Hamas’ Al-Aqsa television station earlier quoted an unnamed Hamas official as saying any invasion of Rafah would “blow up” the talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
Biden and Netanyahu spoke after two Egyptian officials and a Western diplomat said Egypt threatened to suspend its peace treaty with Israel if troops are sent into Rafah.
___
This story has been updated to correct that the number of minors killed is about 43% of the overall death toll in Gaza, not 47%.
___
Federman reported from Jerusalem and Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.
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Egypt is threatening to void its decades-old peace treaty with Israel. What does that mean?
By JULIA FRANKEL
Today
JERUSALEM (AP) — It was a warm handshake between the unlikeliest of statesmen, conducted under the beaming gaze of U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Sunlight streamed through the trees at Camp David, Maryland, as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin solidified a landmark agreement that has allowed over 40 years of peace between Israel and Egypt. It has served as an important source of stability in a volatile region.
That peace has held through two Palestinian uprisings and a series of wars between Israel and Hamas. But now, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to send Israeli troops into Rafah, a city in Gaza on the border with Egypt, the Egyptian government is threatening to void the agreement.
Here's a look at the history of the treaty and what could happen if it is nullified.
HOW DID THE TREATY ORIGINATE?
It was 1977, and Begin, Israel's new prime minister, opposed ceding any of the land Israel had conquered a decade earlier in the 1967 Mideast war. Those lands included Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
Egypt and Israel had fought four major wars, most recently in 1973. So it shocked the world when Egypt's Sadat broke with other Arab leaders and decided to engage with the Israelis.
The talks culminated in the Camp David Accords in September 1978 and a peace treaty the following year.
Under the peace treaty, Israel agreed to withdraw from the Sinai, which Egypt would leave demilitarized. Israeli ships were granted passage through the Suez Canal, a key trade route. The countries established full diplomatic relations in Israel's first peace agreement with an Arab country.
“The Camp David Accords were led by three brave men who took a bold stance because they knew the lasting effects for peace and security, both then and for the future. We need the same kind of leadership today, and it is currently lacking in the Israeli government,” said Paige Alexander, chief executive of the Carter Center.
WHAT IS EGYPT'S CURRENT POSITION?
Two Egyptian officials and a Western diplomat told The Associated Press on Sunday that Egypt may suspend the peace treaty if Israeli troops invade Rafah.
Netanyahu says Rafah is Hamas' last remaining stronghold after more than four months of war and that sending in ground troops is essential to defeat the group.
But Egypt opposes any move that could send desperate Palestinians fleeing across the border onto its territory. Rafah also serves as the besieged territory's main entry point for humanitarian aid, and an Israeli attack could stifle the deliveries of key supplies.
Rafah's population has swelled from 280,000 people to an estimated 1.4 million as Palestinians flee fighting elsewhere in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of those evacuees are living in sprawling tent camps.
Netanyahu has ordered the military to prepare a plan to evacuate all Palestinian civilians before the offensive starts. But it is unclear where they will go.
Netanyahu said Sunday that they would be able to return to open spaces farther north. But those areas have been badly damaged by the Israeli offensive.
WHAT HAPPENS IF THE TREATY IS VOIDED?
The treaty greatly limits the number of troops on both sides of the border. This has allowed Israel to focus its military on other threats.
Along with the war in Gaza, Israel has engaged in near-daily skirmishes with the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon while its security forces deploy heavily in the occupied West Bank.
If Egypt were to nullify the agreement, it could mean that Israel can no longer rely on its southern border as an oasis of calm. Bolstering forces along its border with Egypt would no doubt challenge an Israeli military already thinly stretched.
But it would bear serious ramifications for Egypt as well. Egypt has received billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance from the U.S. since the peace agreement.
If the agreement is voided, it could jeopardize that funding. A massive military buildup would also strain Egypt's already struggling economy.
Alexander said that if Israel attacks Rafah, it would "threaten to draw Egypt into the hostilities, which would be catastrophic for the entire region.”
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Airstrike from Israeli hostage rescue wipes out entire Palestinian family in Gaza border town
1 hour ago
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Ibrahim Hasouna trudged over the rubble of the destroyed house, pointing out where family moments had taken place — where his mother and sister-in-law used to sleep, where he played with his 5-year-old nieces, where he helped his 1-year-old nephew take his first steps.
His entire family was now dead — his parents, his two brothers, and the wife and three children of one of those brothers. The house was reduced to rubble on top of them in the barrage of airstrikes that Israeli warplanes inflicted across Rafah before dawn Monday as cover for troops rescuing two hostages elsewhere in the city on the southern Gaza border.
At least 74 Palestinians were killed in the bombardment, which flattened large swaths of buildings and tents sheltering families who had fled to Rafah from across Gaza.
Among the dead were 27 children and 22 women, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose researchers compiled the list from Rafah hospitals. The Israeli offensive has taken a heavy toll on women and children, with more than 12,300 Palestinian children and young teens killed in the conflict, the Gaza Health Ministry said Monday.
The 30-year-old Ibrahim, his parents and his brothers arrived in Rafah a month earlier, the latest of their multiple moves to escape fighting after fleeing their homes in northern Gaza. They rented a small, one-story house on the east side of Rafah.
“I was close to them,” Ibrahim said of his older brother Karam’s children. In the house, he would play cards or hide-and-seek with them to distract them from the war, he said. The twin girls, Suzan and Sedra, often asked if they would go to kindergarten and if their teacher from kindergarten back home was alive or dead, he said.
The strikes came at a moment of joy. The families had just obtained three chickens — the first they would have to eat since the war started more than four months ago.
“The children were thrilled,” Ibrahim said. The family was sick of canned food, which was the main thing they were able to get under an Israeli siege that has allowed only a trickle of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
They planned to eat the chicken Sunday night. But during the day, Ibrahim went to visit a friend on the other side of Rafah, who convinced him to stay the night. Ibrahim called home, and they decided to put off the treasured meal so he wouldn’t miss it. Ibrahim’s mother, Suzan, put the chickens in the neighbor’s fridge.
Just after 2 a.m. Monday, Ibrahim began getting calls from friends telling him strikes had hit in the neighborhood where his family was staying. Unable to reach them by phone, he walked and hitched a motorcycle ride back home. He found massive destruction, he said.
The first thing he saw was a woman’s arm that had been hurled across the street to the door of a neighboring mosque. It was his mother’s. He dug through the rubble, pulling out body parts.
Later he went to the Youssef Najjar Hospital and identified the bodies of his mother and his father, Fawzi, an engineer. The body of his younger brother Mohammed had no head, but he recognized the clothes.
In a bag that staff brought him were parts of his brother Karam and his family. He recognized pieces of his niece Suzan from her earrings and a bracelet, one she used to fight over all the time with her sister, Ibrahim said.
He spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday as he walked around the rubble of the home. He recalled how the children’s noise in the morning would wake him up, but “their noises were comforting for me.”
He pointed to part of the wreckage. There, he said he would sit with his nephew Malek “to bask in the sun and to walk him for a little bit. To walk a little bit and have a sense of life.”
Israel said the bombardment was to cover its troops as they extracted two Israeli hostages from an apartment and made their way back out of Gaza. The military has not commented on why specific sites across Rafah were targeted in the barrage, but Israeli officials have blamed Hamas for causing civilian casualties by operating in the heart of residential areas.
The extent of the bloodshed from the raid has increased fears of what could happen if Israel follows through with vows to attack Rafah in its campaign to destroy Hamas. The city and its surroundings now shelter more than half of the Gaza Strip’s entire population of 2.3 million after hundreds of thousands took refuge there.
Already, Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians, more than 70% of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Israel has vowed to uproot Hamas from Gaza and win the return of more than 100 hostages still in the group's hands after the Oct. 7 attacks in which militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
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Israeli forces storm the main hospital in southern Gaza, saying hostages were likely held there
By WAFAA SHURAFA, BASSEM MROUE and MELANIE LIDMAN
45 mins ago
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces stormed the main hospital in southern Gaza on Thursday, hours after Israeli fire killed a patient and wounded six others inside the complex. The Israeli army said it was seeking the remains of hostages taken by Hamas.
The raid on Nasser Hospital came after troops had besieged the facility for nearly a week, with hundreds of staff, patients and others inside struggling under heavy fire and dwindling supplies, including food and water. A day earlier, the army ordered thousands of displaced people who had taken shelter there to leave the hospital in the city of Khan Younis, the focus of Israel’s offensive against Hamas in recent weeks.
The war shows no sign of ending, and the risk of a broader conflict grew as Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group stepped up attacks after a particularly deadly exchange on Wednesday.
The military said it had “credible intelligence” that Hamas had held hostages at Nasser Hospital and that the hostages' remains might still be inside. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesperson, said forces were conducting a “precise and limited” operation there and would not forcibly evacuate medics or patients. Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals and other civilian structures to shield its fighters.
A released hostage told The Associated Press last month that she and over two dozen other captives had been held in Nasser Hospital. International law prohibits the targeting of medical facilities; they can lose those protections if they are used for military purposes, though operations against them still must be proportional to any threat.
As troops searched hospital buildings, they ordered the more than 460 staff, patients and their relatives to move into an older building in the compound that isn't equipped to treat patients, the Gaza Health Ministry said. They were “in harsh conditions with no food or baby formula” and severe water shortages, it said.
Six patients were left in intensive care, along with three infants in incubators with no staff to attend to them. The ministry said fuel for generators would soon run out, endangering their lives.
Separately, Israel launched airstrikes into southern Lebanon for a second day after killing 10 civilians and three Hezbollah fighters on Wednesday in response to a rocket attack that killed an Israeli soldier and wounded several others.
It was the deadliest exchange of fire along the border since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Israel and Hezbollah — an ally of Hamas — have traded fire daily, raising the risks of a broader conflict.
Hezbollah has not claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s rocket attack. Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, a senior member of the group, said it is “prepared for the possibility of expanding the war” and would meet “escalation with escalation, displacement with displacement, and destruction with destruction.”
Negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza, meanwhile, appear to have stalled, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive and expand it to the Gaza city of Rafah, near Egypt, until Hamas is destroyed and scores of hostages taken during the militants' Oct. 7 attack are freed.
In a phone call Thursday, President Joe Biden again cautioned Netanyahu against moving forward with a military operation in Rafah before coming up with a “credible and executable plan” to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians, the White House said Thursday,
SCENES OF PANIC IN HOSPITAL
Nasser Hospital has been the latest focus of Israeli military operations that have gutted Gaza’s health sector as it struggles to treat a constant stream of people wounded in daily bombardments.
Israeli troops, tanks and snipers have surrounded the hospital for at least a week, and fire from outside has recently killed several people inside, according to health officials.
“There’s no water, no food. Garbage is everywhere. Sewage has flooded the emergency ward,” said Raed Abed, a wounded patient who was among those who left Nasser Hospital on Israeli orders Wednesday.
Still suffering from a severe stomach wound, Abed said he initially collapsed as he got out of his hospital bed and tried to leave. He then waited outside for hours as troops made those leaving pass by five at a time, arresting some and making them strip to their underwear, he said. Finally, he walked for miles until he reached the border town of Rafah, where he was put in a hospital. Lying in a bed there, he wheezed in pain from his wound as he spoke.
Overnight, a strike slammed into one of Nasser Hospital’s wards, killing one patient and wounding six others, Dr. Khaled Alserr, one of the remaining surgeons there, told the AP.
Video showed medics scrambling to move patients down a corridor filled with smoke or dust, while in a dark room a wounded man screamed in pain as gunfire echoed outside.
“The situation is escalating every hour and every minute,” Alserr said.
The international aid group Doctors Without Borders said its staff had to flee the hospital Thursday, leaving patients behind, and that one staffer was detained at an Israeli checkpoint.
Troops were still searching the hospital hours after the entered, military spokesman Hagari said. He said dozens of militants were arrested from the hospital grounds, including three who participated in the Oct. 7 attack. He also said troops found grenades and mortar shells, and that Israeli radar determined that militants fired mortars from the hospital grounds a month ago.
NO END IN SIGHT TO THE WAR
The war began when Hamas militants on Oct. 7 burst out of Gaza and attacked several Israeli communities, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. More than 100 captives were freed during a cease-fire in November in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
Around 130 hostages remain in Gaza, a fourth of whom are believed to be dead. Netanyahu has come under intense pressure from hostages' families and the wider public to make a deal to secure their freedom, but his far-right coalition partners could bring down his government if he is seen as being too soft on Hamas. Dozens of hostages' relatives protested and blocked traffic Thursday outside the military's headquarters, where the War Cabinet also meets.
At least 28,663 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and more than 68,000 wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Some 80% of the population has been driven from their homes, and a quarter are starving amid a worsening humanitarian catastrophe. Large areas in northern Gaza, the first target of the offensive, have been completely destroyed.
Israeli media reported that CIA Director William Burns flew to Israel to meet with Netanyahu to discuss efforts for a cease-fire.
Hamas says it will not release all the remaining captives until Israel ends its offensive, withdraws and frees Palestinian prisoners, including top militants.
Netanyahu has rejected those demands and says Israel will soon expand its offensive into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. Over half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge in Rafah after fleeing fighting elsewhere.
Airstrikes late Wednesday in central Gaza killed at least 11 people, including four children and five women, according to hospital records. Relatives gathered around bodies wrapped in white shrouds outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah before the remains were placed in a truck to be taken for burial.
One man struggled to let go, lying down and holding one of the bodies on the truck as he wept.
___
Mroue reported from Beirut and Lidman from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
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Israel's defense chief says military 'thoroughly planning' offensive in crowded Gaza border town
By JOSEF FEDERMAN, WAFAA SHURAFA and BASSEM MROUE
Today
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s defense minister on Friday said Israel is “thoroughly planning” a military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, signaling determination to move ahead despite growing international concerns about the safety of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians seeking refuge there.
U.S. President Joe Biden has urged Israel not to carry out the operation without a “credible” plan to protect civilians and to instead focus on a cease-fire, while Egypt has said an operation could threaten diplomatic relations between the countries. Many other world leaders have issued similar messages of concern.
An estimated 1.4 million Palestinians, more than half of Gaza’s population, have crammed into Rafah, most of them displaced by fighting elsewhere in the territory. Hundreds of thousands are living in sprawling tent camps.
Speaking to reporters Friday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel has inflicted heavy losses on Hamas during a war that is now in its fifth month and that Rafah is “the next Hamas center of gravity” Israel plans to target.
“We are thoroughly planning future operations in Rafah, which is a significant Hamas stronghold,” he said. He declined to say say when the operation might begin, though Israel has previously said it will first develop a plan to evacuate civilians.
Palestinians and international aid agencies say there is no safe place to go, with Israel also carrying out strikes in areas where it had told civilians to seek shelter, including Rafah.
The Israeli military launched its war in response to a cross-border Hamas attack on Oct. 7 that killed some 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 others hostage. The air and ground offensive has killed over 28,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave, caused widespread destruction, displaced some 80% of the population and sparked a humanitarian crisis.
Egypt has repeatedly warned Israel not to push Palestinian civilians in Rafah across the border, saying a mass influx could lead to the end of the 1 979 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.
While some Israeli hard-liners have called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, Gallant said there were no plans to do so.
“The state of Israel has no intention of evacuating Palestinian civilians to Egypt,” he said. “We respect and value our peace agreement with Egypt, which is a cornerstone of stability in the region as well as an important partner.”
New satellite photos, however, indicate that Egypt is preparing for that very scenario. The images show Egypt building a wall and leveling land near its border with Gaza. Egyptian officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The Israeli offensive has included months of airstrikes as well as a ground invasion that has steadily moved southward through most of Gaza.
In recent weeks, it has focused on Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city and a Hamas stronghold.
On Friday, Palestinian health officials in Khan Younis said that five patients in intensive care died after their oxygen ran out following a raid by Israeli troops in southern Gaza’s largest hospital.
The Israeli army has been searching the Nasser Hospital complex, arresting suspected Hamas militants and searching for evidence that the remains of Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas might be there. Israel says it does not target patients or doctors, but staff say the facility is struggling under heavy fire and dwindling supplies, including food and water.
Gallant said 70 suspected militants have been arrested at the hospital, including 20 who allegedly participated in the Oct. 7 attack.
Two Israeli airstrikes on Rafah overnight killed at least 13 people, including nine members of the same family, according to hospital officials.
Also on Friday, a Palestinian assailant opened fire at a bus stop on a busy intersection in southern Israel, killing two people and wounding four before being shot dead by a bystander. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
CEASE-FIRE STALLING
Negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza, meanwhile, appear to have stalled, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday pushed back hard against the U.S. vision for after the war — particularly its calls for the creation of a Palestinian state.
After speaking overnight with Biden and reportedly meeting with visiting CIA chief William Burns, Netanyahu wrote on X that Israel will not accept “international dictates regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians.”
He said that if other countries unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, it would give a “reward to terrorism.”
Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected creation of a Palestinian state and even boasted about having been instrumental in preventing it during his time in office.
His governing coalition is dominated by hard-liners who oppose Palestinian independence and any diplomatic process would likely lead to the collapse of the government.
Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until Hamas is destroyed and the more than 100 hostages who remain in captivity are freed.
Biden on Friday urged Netanyahu to put off a Rafah operation and instead pursue a cease-fire that could include the release of Israeli hostages.
“I’m still hopeful that that can be done and, in the meantime, I don’t anticipate, I’m hoping that, that the Israelis will not make any massive land invasion," Biden said. “My hope and expectation is that we'll get this hostage deal.”
UNRWA UNDER PRESSURE AGAIN
Gallant released new Israeli allegations against the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, including a photo of what he said was a U.N. social worker participating in the kidnapping of an Israeli on Oct. 7.
Israel has long accused UNRWA of collaborating with Hamas or turning a blind eye to the militant group’s activities.
Throughout the war, it has released images of tunnels built next to UNRWA facilities and last month it claimed that 12 UNRWA employees had actively participated in the Oct. 7 massacre.
That prompted the United States and other donor countries to suspend funding to UNRWA, the main provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza. The agency says it will have to halt operations by the end of the month if funding isn’t restored.
UNRWA denies collaborating with Hamas. It already has dismissed the employees accused in the Oct. 7 attacks and launched a pair of investigations into its operations.
In his presentation to reporters, Gallant said Israeli intelligence has “significant indications” that more than 30 additional UNRWA workers joined the Oct. 7 attack.
He said nearly 1,500 workers, 12% of its work force, are members of Hamas or the Islamic Jihad militant group, and over 230 are in their armed wings.
“UNRWA has lost legitimacy and can no longer function as a U.N. body,” he said. He said he has ordered Israeli authorities to begin working with alternative organizations that could replace UNRWA.
UNRWA’s commissioner, Philippe Lazzarini, says he takes the allegations seriously but has also pointed out that the 12 workers identified by Israel are a tiny fraction of UNRWA’s overall work force. He has warned that a halt in operations could endanger the well-being of Gazans who depend on the agency.
The agency did not comment on Gallant’s latest accusations, but has said it regularly provides the names of its workers to Israel and takes action against anyone found to be violating U.N. rules of neutrality.
“These shocking allegations come as more than 2 million people in Gaza depend on lifesaving assistance that the agency has been providing since the war began,” Lazzarini said last month.
“Anyone who betrays the fundamental values of the United Nations also betrays those whom we serve in Gaza, across the region and elsewhere around the world,” he added.
___
Shurafa reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip. Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed reporting from Washington.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Reading some of these posts it seems the associated press is quite popular as is the amount of copying and pasting news articles. In America where so many posters are from the news outlets you are exposed to is pure rubbish and is not giving you the true picture of whai’s happening. Firstly that dramatic hostage rescue of two Israelis. Well one of those guys has been held captive on three different times and rescued successfully on all occasions. Ironically his last rescue happened at that start of February. What you hear from the Israeli media is pure lies and anyone who believes it well they probably believe in ET. There’s no getting around it, what the Israeli government are doing and the butchers of the IDF is pure genocide and ethic cleansing. If you bother to look at the universal declaration of human rights Israel are guilty of numerous violations.
Do I need to post videos of children with their heads blown off, riddled with bullets, handicapped Palestinian shot dead in cold blood, journalists deliberately targeted and killed along with their families, starving babies, this is the reality. This is not war!
So, li hear the screams “this is war” well it’s not, blanket bombing, using banned munitions is just a way to kill a POPULATION not target and kill an enemy combatant.
Israeli defence minister, the prime minister and various members of the government said repeatedly the Palestinians were not people they were animals, they cut of the supply of fuel, medicines, food, electricity and water. That is targeting a population not an enemy combatant. Now for a really controversial statement but factually correct, this very tactic and the actual statements made has been used before - it was used in the siege of Leningrad during WW2 (google it) and anyone guess who used that very language - ADOLF HITLER. I have no problem whatsoever with peace loving Jewish people, but zionists, the IDF and anyone who supports Israeli actions, well you need to examine your soul.
Oh and as I end this post, anyone guess who founded, financed and help Hamas grow and become the force they are?
To quote a IRA Volunteer who gave his life for the cause ‘Our revenge will be the laughter of our children”. Bobby Sands the Palestinian children will have their laughter and Israel’s expense, not today, not tomorrow but someday and I hope to see that evil sadistic regime and Zionism defeated peacefully but definitively
how much ethnic cleansing was occurring on October six? Zero posters to this topic have been able to answer that question.
Just as you've refused to answer the question of when and how many dead Palestinians will quench the blood lust of Israel. Up to 28,858 with 70% women and children. But you know, Hamas.
how much ethnic cleansing was occurring on October six? Zero posters to this topic have been able to answer that question.
But since you asked, at least one. But its "just one," right?
‘My son was killed on October 6. There was no Hamas’
Family of teen killed in West Bank before Hamas attack says Israel’s actions against Palestinians not about Hamas.
Nablus, occupied West Bank – It has been almost two months since Najlaa Dmaidi’s eldest son, 19-year-old Labib, was shot dead by Israeli settlers.
But for the 42-year-old mother, time has stopped. She keeps her head down and her eyes glued to the ground in sorrow over her killed son.
“He turned 19 on July 21. His birthday was on the same day his sister’s high school matriculation exam results came out,” she said in a muffled voice.
Sitting in the living room of her home in the Palestinian town of Huwara, south of Nablus city, Najlaa said: “That was the last time we all celebrated together.”
Huwara is surrounded by four illegal Israeli settlements and countless settler outposts, military checkpoints and bases. It has come under severe settler attacks and movement restrictions imposed by the Israeli army for more than a year and a half.
“Labib would always liven up the house. He loved to joke, to play, he loved life, he also loved his homeland,” Najlaa said, fidgeting with her fingers.
On the night of October 5 – and into the early hours of October 6 – dozens of Israeli settlers attacked the Dmaidi home which is situated on the Huwara road – the main artery running from the north to the south used by both Palestinians and settlers.
The attack came hours after a Palestinian carried out a drive-by shooting in the town, causing no injuries.
“The settlers were gathered in front of our building and snipers standing on rooftops were shooting at people,” Najlaa explained, adding that the “army was with” the settlers and that they were firing tear gas into their home.
Some 25 family members, including 13 children, were inside when the attack took place. Labib was shot dead while standing on the roof of his uncle’s house just opposite his family’s building.
“His 12-year-old brother was standing next to him when he was shot,” said Najlaa.
‘Dreams shattered in the blink of an eye’
Labib was in his second year of a graphic design degree at Palestine Technical University – Kadoorie in the nearby city of Tulkarm.
His father, 50-year-old Mohammad, an engineer, is a soft-spoken man with a neatly shaved beard.
“I would sit with Labib and we would draw plans for his future,” he recalled. “In a blink of an eye, all of these dreams were shattered.”
The father-of-three said he was very proud of his son before he was killed. “Labib would go to university every day, and after that he would work at his uncle’s store in Huwara,” Mohammad told Al Jazeera, adding that his son was also taking a course in home decor.
The worsening conditions for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, particularly in Huwara, make it difficult to imagine a better future for Palestinian children, he said.
“No one is not afraid for their children, their nephews and nieces,” said Mohammad. “They have no future.”
Owing to its location on a main highway in the occupied West Bank, Huwara’s 9,000 residents once enjoyed a steady stream of business due to the constant flow of Palestinians driving through from other cities and villages.
But since May 2022, the Israeli army and settlers have slowly turned Huwara into a ghost town, much like Shuhada Street in the Old City of Hebron.
On February 27, hundreds of settlers rampaged through Huwara, carrying out what was described as a “pogrom” and which left a 37-year-old Palestinian man dead, hundreds of others injured, and dozens of cars and homes burned down. Several other attacks have happened since.
Israel reimposed movement closures on October 5 after the drive-by shooting in the town, with the vast majority of Huwara’s 800 stores forced to shut their doors. They have never reopened.
“We were not even allowed to walk or stand on the road at all for the first 45 days after October 5,” said Najlaa.
Mohammad believes that Israel used the Gaza-based Hamas armed group attack on Israel two days later, on October 7, to severely intensify restrictions in Huwara.
That day, Hamas fighters killed some 1,200 people in a surprise operation. Shortly afterwards, Israel launched an ongoing shelling campaign on the besieged Gaza Strip, killing at least 15,000 Palestinians, including more than 6,000 children.
But Labib’s father said the focus on Hamas since October 7 shifts the focus from Israel’s policies against the Palestinian people as a whole.
“They claim that what is happening is about Hamas. My son was killed on October 6. There was no Hamas,” Mohammad told Al Jazeera.
“When they burned down Huwara in February, there was no Hamas. When they attacked our house yet again two weeks after they killed my son, there was no Hamas,” he said.
“Imagine that a minister of a state comes out and says to the media ‘erase Huwara’ – what world are we living in?”
‘Living under the illusion of a state’
Due to the frequency of settler attacks and heavy militarisation of Huwara and the southern area of Nablus, which is also heavily populated with illegal settlements, the Dmaidi family said their children are suffering severely psychologically.
“My niece has a literal nervous breakdown when she sees the settlers. Particularly after the night Labib was killed, she falls to the ground and starts shaking,” said Mohammad.
“All the children of the family saw Labib lying on the ground on the street bleeding out after we carried him from the roof. It was horrific for them,” he explained.
The killed teen’s father said he believes the Palestinian Authority (PA) shares part of the blame for the situation of residents in the occupied West Bank today.
The PA was created as a temporary governing body in 1993 and has administrative control over small pockets of the occupied West Bank.
It was meant to serve for five years in the lead-up to the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the 1967-occupied territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The continuing Israeli occupation, land theft and settlement building have meant that the Palestinian state was never created.
Many Palestinians now view the PA as little more than a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation due to the requirement that it share intelligence with the Israeli authorities, among other policies.
“We have been living under the illusion of a state for 30 years,” said Mohammad.
“I used to go up to the mountain, there was no Yitzhar [an Israeli settlement south of Nablus]. Thanks to Oslo, Yitzhar is now here. The settler comes down with all ease to the centre of our town – this is all based on Oslo. Now in two or three years, they won’t just come to the front door, we are going to find them in our living rooms,” he said.
“We have a president, we have a prime minister, and yet, we have nothing at the same time.”
Seeing how some seem to struggle with the definition of "ethnic cleansing," I'll help them out.
eth·nic cleans·ing
/ˌeTHnik ˈklenziNG/
noun
the mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society.
Who are Israeli settlers, and why do they live on Palestinian lands?
As many as 700,000 Israeli settlers are living illegally in the occupied West Bank as settler violence surges.
6 Nov 2023
Since Israel unleashed its brutal bombing campaign in Gaza on October 7 in the wake of a deadly Hamas attack, settler attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem have more than doubled from an average of three to eight incidents a day, according to the United Nations.
The spike in settler attacks have forced hundreds of Palestinians to flee their homes in the past three weeks amid the Israeli bombardment of Gaza that has killed more than 9,500 people.
So, who are the settlers and where do they live?
Who are the settlers?
Settlers are Israeli citizens who live on private Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The vast majority of the settlements have been built either entirely or partially on private Palestinian land.
More than 700,000 settlers – 10 percent of Israel’s nearly 7 million population – now live in 150 settlements and 128 outposts dotting the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
A settlement is authorised by the Israeli government while an outpost is built without government authorisation. Outposts can range from a small shanty of a few people to a community of up to 400 people.
Some of the settlers move to the occupied territories for religious reasons while others are drawn by a relatively lower cost of living and financial incentives offered by the government. Ultraorthodox Jews form one-third of all settlers.
A plurality of Israeli Jews who live in the West Bank say that the construction of settlements improves the security of the country, according to the Pew Research Center. The argument is that settlements act as a buffer for Israel’s national security as they restrict the movement of Palestinians and undermine the viability of a Palestinian state. However, some on the Israeli left argue that the settlement expansion hurts the two-state solution and thereby Israel’s own prospects for peace.
When were the first settlements built?
Israel started building settlements just after capturing the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the June 1967 Six-Day War.
In September 1967, the Etzion Bloc in Hebron was the first settlement built in the occupied West Bank. The settlement now hosts 40,000 people.
Kfar Etzion, one of the oldest settlements, houses around 1,000 people while the largest – Modi’in Illit – has around 82,000 settlers, most of them ultraorthodox Jews.
Successive Israeli governments have pursued this policy leading to a rise in settler population in the occupied territories.
About 40 percent of the occupied West Bank land is now controlled by settlements. These settlements — along with a vast network of checkpoints for Palestinians — effectively separate the Palestinian parts of the West Bank from each other, making the prospect of a future contiguous state almost impossible, according to critics.
The first Jewish settlement in Palestine goes back to the early 20th century when Jews facing widespread discrimination, religious persecution and pogroms in Europe started to arrive. Back then Palestine – which was still under British colonial control – was overwhelmingly Arab with a tiny Jewish minority.
Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, was built as a settlement in the suburb of the Arab city of Jaffa in 1909.
The mass migration of Jews to Palestine triggered an Arab uprising. But in the ensuing violence, the well-armed Zionist militias ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians in 1948. Palestinians call their expulsion the Nakba, which is Arabic for catastrophe.
Are settlers backed by the government?
The Israeli government has openly funded and built settlements for Jews to live there.
The Israeli authorities give its settlers in the West Bank some 20 million shekels ($5m) a year to monitor, report and restrict Palestinian construction in Area C, which is over 60 percent of the West Bank. The money is used to hire inspectors and buy drones, aerial imagery, tablets and vehicles among other things.
On April 4, Israeli authorities asked to double that amount in the state budget, to 40 million shekels ($10m).
Over the past few years, the Israeli army has been operating a hotline it calls War Room C, for settlers to call and report Palestinian construction in Area C.
Several Israeli laws enable settlers to seize Palestinian land:
Israel has used legal means to expropriate Palestinian property for public needs such as roads, settlements and parks.
After the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the Israeli government officially stopped building new settlements but the existing settlements continued to grow.
The settlement population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem grew from approximately 250,000 in 1993 to nearly 700,000 in September this year.
But in 2017, Israel formally announced the start of new settlements.
Prime Minister Netanyahu – Israel’s longest-serving prime minister – has bolstered settlement expansions since he first came to power in 1996.
There are also Israeli “nongovernmental” organisations that work to evict Palestinians from their land using loopholes in the land laws.
Israeli authorities also regularly seize and demolish Palestinian properties citing the lack of Israeli-issued building permits and land documents.
But international rights groups say acquiring an Israeli building permit is nearly impossible.
Are Israeli settlements legal under international law?
No. All settlements and outposts are considered illegal under international laws as they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which bans an occupying power from transferring its population to the area it occupies.
Settlements, activists say, are enclaves of Israeli sovereignty that have fragmented the occupied West Bank, and any future Palestinian state would look like a series of tiny, unconnected South Africa’s former Bantustans, or black-only townships.
The United Nations has condemned them through multiple resolutions and votes. In 2016, a United Nations Security Council resolution said settlements had “no legal validity”.
But the US, Israel’s closest ally, has provided diplomatic cover over the years. Washington has consistently used its veto power at the UN to protect Israel from diplomatic censure.
Israel authorises and encourages settlements. Though it deems outposts as illegal under its laws, Israel has in recent years retrospectively legalised several outposts.
More than 9,000 settlers withdrew from Gaza in 2005 when Israel dismantled settlements as a part of a “disengagement” plan by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
How does Israel keep control of the West Bank?
Israel has built a wall or Separation Barrier that stretches for more than 700km (435 miles) through the West Bank restricting movement of more than 3 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. But Israel says the wall is for security purposes.
Palestinian farmers need to apply for permits to access their own land. These permits need to be renewed repeatedly and can also be denied or revoked without explanation.
For instance, about 270 of the entire 291 hectares that belong to the Palestinian village of Wadi Fukin near Bethlehem are designated as Area C, which is under Israeli control. About 60 percent of the occupied West Bank falls under Area C.
Besides the separation wall, over 700 road obstacles are placed across the West Bank including 140 checkpoints. About 70,000 Palestinians with Israeli work permits cross these checkpoints in their daily commute.
Palestinians cannot move freely between the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, and require permits to do so.
Rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem have concluded that Israeli policies and laws used to dominate Palestinian people can be described as “apartheid“.
Has settler violence spiked in recent weeks?
Yes. Settlers have carried 241 attacks in the West Bank forcing around 1,000 Palestinians to flee their homes as Israel has continued its relentless bombardment of Gaza, since October 7.
“Settlers have been committing crimes in the occupied West Bank well before October 7. It is as though, however, they got a green light after October 7 to carry out more crimes,” Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official monitoring settler activity told Al Jazeera.
On October 28, a Palestinian farmer harvesting olives was shot dead by settlers in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus. “We are now during the olive harvest season – people have not been able to reach 60 percent of olive trees in the Nablus area because of settler attacks,” said Daghlas.
Bedouin village of Wadi as-Seeq village in the occupied West Bank was emptied out of its 200 residents on October 12 following threats from settlers.
The current violence comes as last year saw record settler violence, rising from an average of three to seven incidents a day, according to the United Nations.
In recent years settlers have increasingly been trying to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound raising Palestinian concerns that they want to encroach upon Islam’s third holiest site. Jewish prayers are not allowed as per “status quo” governing the Al-Aqsa.
Three days before Hamas carried out a deadly attack inside Israel, settlers stormed the mosque compound. In 2021, Israeli police stormed the mosque compound to facilitate the entry of settlers, triggering a deadly conflict.
In February, far-right settlers went on a rampage in the West Bank town of Huwara torching dozens of houses and cars. Following the violence, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for Huwara to be “wiped out”.
Israeli settler violence has displaced more than 1,100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2022, according to a UN report released in September 2023.
August 2022 30 Palestinians, mostly women and children killed.
Not to mention the thousands wounded and who die of the lack of access to basic medical treatment. Most of the population in Gaza today are young men, women and children. they have never known anything but to be imprisoned in Gaza. make no mistake Gaza is the worlds largest concentration camp!
Palestinians cannot leave Gaza without explicit permission or permits. Palestinians cannot drive on the same roads as Israelis, Palestinians cannot grow or tap into wells for water for themselves because they require permission from the commanding IDF officer in the area which never is granted. Children are arrested and detained without trial and without visitation from their parents or in most cases by human rights NGO’s.
Anyone who thinks Israels evil is a recent development are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Seeing how some seem to struggle with the definition of "ethnic cleansing," I'll help them out.
eth·nic cleans·ing
/ˌeTHnik ˈklenziNG/
noun
the mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society.
Well here is just a couple of statements made by the angelic Zionists in the Israeli government.
1. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly. 2. Calling for Gaza to be wiped of the face of the earth 3. Gaza must be burned 4. Claiming EVERY member of the population (men women children) are not innocent or uninvolved.
I could go on but I think that little definition you kindly provided has just strengthened anyones statement of ETHNIC CLEANSING.
Btw those people here who support Israel's actions should learn that the persons responsible for Hamas popularity and the winning of the election in 2008 was none other than good old Benjamin netanyahu and backing by president Georgie Bush in elections in 2008. Those two experts decided that in order to suppress the PLO they needed an alternative they thought they could control. So Hamas wins the election despite initially not having any intention of standing in elections. Immediately the US and Israel impose sanctions but money is funnelled to Hamas via a third party nation so that Hamas can control Gaza to the likening of Israel. But what happens, same thing as Al Qaeda they support the enemy of my enemy only for that same group to turn on them! That's a brief history of Hamas' foundation and rise to power, and a skimming of Al Qaeda's development and growth.
how much ethnic cleansing was occurring on October six? Zero posters to this topic have been able to answer that question.
that was an attack. in response to the situation on the ground. it was not ethnic cleansing. it was a terrorist attack that targeted jewish people. it was not a systematic sustained effort to remove them from their land. comparing 10/6 to what has been going on decades, and comparing israel response to 10/6 are wholly separate things. these are all symptoms of the same overarching issue.
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.- Hemingway
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,920
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,920
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Comments
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
but let's just keep blank checking them billions just to make sure.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces rescued two hostages early Monday, storming a heavily guarded apartment in a densely packed town in the Gaza Strip and extracting them under fire and covering airstrikes that local officials said killed at least 67 Palestinians.
The plight of the dozens of hostages held by Hamas has profoundly shaken Israelis, and the rescue in Rafah briefly lifted the spirits of a nation still reeling from the militant group's cross-border raid last year that started the war. Israel has described Rafah — a city on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where 1.4 million Palestinians have fled fighting elsewhere — as the last remaining Hamas stronghold in the territory and signaled that its ground offensive may soon target the city.
In Gaza, the operation unleashed another tragedy in a war that has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians in the territory, displaced over 80% of the population and set off a massive humanitarian crisis.
ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR
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UN Palestinian aid agency says it's 'critical' to receive EU aid soon, but EU wants an audit first
A top Jewish group in Switzerland slams antisemitic poster purportedly by a local ski rental stand
More than 12,300 Palestinian minors — children and young teens — have been killed in the conflict, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday. About 8,400 women were also among those killed. That means minors make up about 43% of the dead and women and minors together make up three quarters.
The ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, provided the breakdown at the request of The Associated Press. Israel claims to have killed about 10,000 Hamas fighters.
In Hamas’ cross-border raid on Oct. 7, an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, and militants took 250 people captive, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel says about 100 hostages remain in Hamas captivity after dozens were freed during a cease-fire in November. Hamas also holds the remains of roughly 30 others who were either killed on Oct. 7 or died in captivity.
The government has made freeing the hostages a top aim of its war, along with destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. But as the fighting drags on, rifts have emerged in Israel over how to retrieve them.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says persistent military pressure will bring about the captives' freedom even as families of the hostages and many of their supporters have called on the government to make another deal with Hamas.
A DRAMATIC RAID
Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said special forces broke into a second-floor apartment in Rafah under fire at 1:49 a.m. Monday, accompanied a minute later by airstrikes on surrounding areas. He said Hamas militants were guarding the captives and that members of the rescue team shielded the hostages with their bodies as the battle erupted.
The army identified those rescued as Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70, who were abducted by Hamas militants from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak on Oct. 7. They also hold Argentinian citizenship. They are among just three hostages to be rescued; a female soldier was rescued in November.
The rescue, which Hagari said was based on precise intelligence and planned for some time, is a morale booster for Israelis but a small step toward winning the release of the remaining hostages, who are believed to be spread out and hidden in tunnels.
Har's son-in-law, Idan Begerano, who saw the released captives at the hospital where they were airlifted, said the two men were thin and pale, but communicating well and aware of their surroundings.
Begerano said Har told him immediately upon seeing him: “You have a birthday today, mazal tov." The men held long, tearful embraces with their relatives at hospital, according to video released by Netanyahu's office.
DOZENS KILLED IN STRIKES
The airstrikes hit jam-packed Rafah in the middle of the night and dozens of explosions could be heard around 2 a.m. Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman for the Health Ministry, said at least 67 people, including women and children, were killed in the strikes.
Al-Qidra said rescuers were still searching the rubble. An Associated Press journalist counted at least 50 bodies at the Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah.
Mohamed Zoghroub, a Palestinian living in Rafah, said he saw a black jeep speeding through the town followed by clashes and heavy airstrikes.
“We found ourselves running with our children, from the airstrikes, in every direction,” he said, speaking from an area flattened by the strikes.
Footage circulating on social media from Rafah's Kuwaiti hospital showed dead or wounded children. The footage could not immediately be verified but was consistent with AP reporting.
A young man could be seen carrying the body of an infant who he said was killed in the attacks. He said the girl, the daughter of his neighbor, was born and killed during the war.
“Let Netanyahu come and see: Is this one of your designated targets?" he said.
CONCERNS ABOUT RAFAH
Netanyahu has said sending ground troops into Rafah is essential to meeting Israel's war goals. On Sunday, the White House said President Joe Biden had warned Netanyahu that Israel should not conduct a military operation there without a “credible and executable” plan to protect civilians.
More than half of Gaza's 2.3 million population is now crammed into Rafah, where hundreds of thousands live in sprawling tent camps and overcrowded U.N. shelters.
Biden's remarks, made in a phone call with Netanyahu, were his most forceful language yet on the possible operation.
Discussion of the potential for a cease-fire agreement took up much of the call, a senior U.S. administration official said. The official said that after weeks of diplomacy, a “framework” is now “pretty much” in place for a deal that could see the release of remaining hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and a halt to fighting.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss negotiations, acknowledged that “gaps remain,” but declined to give details. The official said military pressure on Hamas in the southern city of Khan Younis in recent weeks helped bring the group closer to accepting a deal.
Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on the call. Hamas’ Al-Aqsa television station earlier quoted an unnamed Hamas official as saying any invasion of Rafah would “blow up” the talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
Biden and Netanyahu spoke after two Egyptian officials and a Western diplomat said Egypt threatened to suspend its peace treaty with Israel if troops are sent into Rafah.
___
This story has been updated to correct that the number of minors killed is about 43% of the overall death toll in Gaza, not 47%.
___
Federman reported from Jerusalem and Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.
___
Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
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JERUSALEM (AP) — It was a warm handshake between the unlikeliest of statesmen, conducted under the beaming gaze of U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Sunlight streamed through the trees at Camp David, Maryland, as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin solidified a landmark agreement that has allowed over 40 years of peace between Israel and Egypt. It has served as an important source of stability in a volatile region.
That peace has held through two Palestinian uprisings and a series of wars between Israel and Hamas. But now, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to send Israeli troops into Rafah, a city in Gaza on the border with Egypt, the Egyptian government is threatening to void the agreement.
Here's a look at the history of the treaty and what could happen if it is nullified.
HOW DID THE TREATY ORIGINATE?
It was 1977, and Begin, Israel's new prime minister, opposed ceding any of the land Israel had conquered a decade earlier in the 1967 Mideast war. Those lands included Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
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Egypt and Israel had fought four major wars, most recently in 1973. So it shocked the world when Egypt's Sadat broke with other Arab leaders and decided to engage with the Israelis.
The talks culminated in the Camp David Accords in September 1978 and a peace treaty the following year.
Under the peace treaty, Israel agreed to withdraw from the Sinai, which Egypt would leave demilitarized. Israeli ships were granted passage through the Suez Canal, a key trade route. The countries established full diplomatic relations in Israel's first peace agreement with an Arab country.
“The Camp David Accords were led by three brave men who took a bold stance because they knew the lasting effects for peace and security, both then and for the future. We need the same kind of leadership today, and it is currently lacking in the Israeli government,” said Paige Alexander, chief executive of the Carter Center.
WHAT IS EGYPT'S CURRENT POSITION?
Two Egyptian officials and a Western diplomat told The Associated Press on Sunday that Egypt may suspend the peace treaty if Israeli troops invade Rafah.
Netanyahu says Rafah is Hamas' last remaining stronghold after more than four months of war and that sending in ground troops is essential to defeat the group.
But Egypt opposes any move that could send desperate Palestinians fleeing across the border onto its territory. Rafah also serves as the besieged territory's main entry point for humanitarian aid, and an Israeli attack could stifle the deliveries of key supplies.
Rafah's population has swelled from 280,000 people to an estimated 1.4 million as Palestinians flee fighting elsewhere in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of those evacuees are living in sprawling tent camps.
Netanyahu has ordered the military to prepare a plan to evacuate all Palestinian civilians before the offensive starts. But it is unclear where they will go.
Netanyahu said Sunday that they would be able to return to open spaces farther north. But those areas have been badly damaged by the Israeli offensive.
WHAT HAPPENS IF THE TREATY IS VOIDED?
The treaty greatly limits the number of troops on both sides of the border. This has allowed Israel to focus its military on other threats.
Along with the war in Gaza, Israel has engaged in near-daily skirmishes with the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon while its security forces deploy heavily in the occupied West Bank.
If Egypt were to nullify the agreement, it could mean that Israel can no longer rely on its southern border as an oasis of calm. Bolstering forces along its border with Egypt would no doubt challenge an Israeli military already thinly stretched.
But it would bear serious ramifications for Egypt as well. Egypt has received billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance from the U.S. since the peace agreement.
If the agreement is voided, it could jeopardize that funding. A massive military buildup would also strain Egypt's already struggling economy.
Alexander said that if Israel attacks Rafah, it would "threaten to draw Egypt into the hostilities, which would be catastrophic for the entire region.”
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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
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RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Ibrahim Hasouna trudged over the rubble of the destroyed house, pointing out where family moments had taken place — where his mother and sister-in-law used to sleep, where he played with his 5-year-old nieces, where he helped his 1-year-old nephew take his first steps.
His entire family was now dead — his parents, his two brothers, and the wife and three children of one of those brothers. The house was reduced to rubble on top of them in the barrage of airstrikes that Israeli warplanes inflicted across Rafah before dawn Monday as cover for troops rescuing two hostages elsewhere in the city on the southern Gaza border.
At least 74 Palestinians were killed in the bombardment, which flattened large swaths of buildings and tents sheltering families who had fled to Rafah from across Gaza.
Among the dead were 27 children and 22 women, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose researchers compiled the list from Rafah hospitals. The Israeli offensive has taken a heavy toll on women and children, with more than 12,300 Palestinian children and young teens killed in the conflict, the Gaza Health Ministry said Monday.
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The 30-year-old Ibrahim, his parents and his brothers arrived in Rafah a month earlier, the latest of their multiple moves to escape fighting after fleeing their homes in northern Gaza. They rented a small, one-story house on the east side of Rafah.
“I was close to them,” Ibrahim said of his older brother Karam’s children. In the house, he would play cards or hide-and-seek with them to distract them from the war, he said. The twin girls, Suzan and Sedra, often asked if they would go to kindergarten and if their teacher from kindergarten back home was alive or dead, he said.
The strikes came at a moment of joy. The families had just obtained three chickens — the first they would have to eat since the war started more than four months ago.
“The children were thrilled,” Ibrahim said. The family was sick of canned food, which was the main thing they were able to get under an Israeli siege that has allowed only a trickle of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
They planned to eat the chicken Sunday night. But during the day, Ibrahim went to visit a friend on the other side of Rafah, who convinced him to stay the night. Ibrahim called home, and they decided to put off the treasured meal so he wouldn’t miss it. Ibrahim’s mother, Suzan, put the chickens in the neighbor’s fridge.
Just after 2 a.m. Monday, Ibrahim began getting calls from friends telling him strikes had hit in the neighborhood where his family was staying. Unable to reach them by phone, he walked and hitched a motorcycle ride back home. He found massive destruction, he said.
The first thing he saw was a woman’s arm that had been hurled across the street to the door of a neighboring mosque. It was his mother’s. He dug through the rubble, pulling out body parts.
Later he went to the Youssef Najjar Hospital and identified the bodies of his mother and his father, Fawzi, an engineer. The body of his younger brother Mohammed had no head, but he recognized the clothes.
In a bag that staff brought him were parts of his brother Karam and his family. He recognized pieces of his niece Suzan from her earrings and a bracelet, one she used to fight over all the time with her sister, Ibrahim said.
He spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday as he walked around the rubble of the home. He recalled how the children’s noise in the morning would wake him up, but “their noises were comforting for me.”
He pointed to part of the wreckage. There, he said he would sit with his nephew Malek “to bask in the sun and to walk him for a little bit. To walk a little bit and have a sense of life.”
Israel said the bombardment was to cover its troops as they extracted two Israeli hostages from an apartment and made their way back out of Gaza. The military has not commented on why specific sites across Rafah were targeted in the barrage, but Israeli officials have blamed Hamas for causing civilian casualties by operating in the heart of residential areas.
The extent of the bloodshed from the raid has increased fears of what could happen if Israel follows through with vows to attack Rafah in its campaign to destroy Hamas. The city and its surroundings now shelter more than half of the Gaza Strip’s entire population of 2.3 million after hundreds of thousands took refuge there.
Already, Israel's campaign in Gaza has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians, more than 70% of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Israel has vowed to uproot Hamas from Gaza and win the return of more than 100 hostages still in the group's hands after the Oct. 7 attacks in which militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
___
Follow AP's coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
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RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli forces stormed the main hospital in southern Gaza on Thursday, hours after Israeli fire killed a patient and wounded six others inside the complex. The Israeli army said it was seeking the remains of hostages taken by Hamas.
The raid on Nasser Hospital came after troops had besieged the facility for nearly a week, with hundreds of staff, patients and others inside struggling under heavy fire and dwindling supplies, including food and water. A day earlier, the army ordered thousands of displaced people who had taken shelter there to leave the hospital in the city of Khan Younis, the focus of Israel’s offensive against Hamas in recent weeks.
The war shows no sign of ending, and the risk of a broader conflict grew as Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group stepped up attacks after a particularly deadly exchange on Wednesday.
The military said it had “credible intelligence” that Hamas had held hostages at Nasser Hospital and that the hostages' remains might still be inside. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief military spokesperson, said forces were conducting a “precise and limited” operation there and would not forcibly evacuate medics or patients. Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals and other civilian structures to shield its fighters.
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A released hostage told The Associated Press last month that she and over two dozen other captives had been held in Nasser Hospital. International law prohibits the targeting of medical facilities; they can lose those protections if they are used for military purposes, though operations against them still must be proportional to any threat.
As troops searched hospital buildings, they ordered the more than 460 staff, patients and their relatives to move into an older building in the compound that isn't equipped to treat patients, the Gaza Health Ministry said. They were “in harsh conditions with no food or baby formula” and severe water shortages, it said.
Six patients were left in intensive care, along with three infants in incubators with no staff to attend to them. The ministry said fuel for generators would soon run out, endangering their lives.
Separately, Israel launched airstrikes into southern Lebanon for a second day after killing 10 civilians and three Hezbollah fighters on Wednesday in response to a rocket attack that killed an Israeli soldier and wounded several others.
It was the deadliest exchange of fire along the border since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Israel and Hezbollah — an ally of Hamas — have traded fire daily, raising the risks of a broader conflict.
Hezbollah has not claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s rocket attack. Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, a senior member of the group, said it is “prepared for the possibility of expanding the war” and would meet “escalation with escalation, displacement with displacement, and destruction with destruction.”
Negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza, meanwhile, appear to have stalled, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive and expand it to the Gaza city of Rafah, near Egypt, until Hamas is destroyed and scores of hostages taken during the militants' Oct. 7 attack are freed.
In a phone call Thursday, President Joe Biden again cautioned Netanyahu against moving forward with a military operation in Rafah before coming up with a “credible and executable plan” to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians, the White House said Thursday,
SCENES OF PANIC IN HOSPITAL
Nasser Hospital has been the latest focus of Israeli military operations that have gutted Gaza’s health sector as it struggles to treat a constant stream of people wounded in daily bombardments.
Israeli troops, tanks and snipers have surrounded the hospital for at least a week, and fire from outside has recently killed several people inside, according to health officials.
“There’s no water, no food. Garbage is everywhere. Sewage has flooded the emergency ward,” said Raed Abed, a wounded patient who was among those who left Nasser Hospital on Israeli orders Wednesday.
Still suffering from a severe stomach wound, Abed said he initially collapsed as he got out of his hospital bed and tried to leave. He then waited outside for hours as troops made those leaving pass by five at a time, arresting some and making them strip to their underwear, he said. Finally, he walked for miles until he reached the border town of Rafah, where he was put in a hospital. Lying in a bed there, he wheezed in pain from his wound as he spoke.
Overnight, a strike slammed into one of Nasser Hospital’s wards, killing one patient and wounding six others, Dr. Khaled Alserr, one of the remaining surgeons there, told the AP.
Video showed medics scrambling to move patients down a corridor filled with smoke or dust, while in a dark room a wounded man screamed in pain as gunfire echoed outside.
“The situation is escalating every hour and every minute,” Alserr said.
The international aid group Doctors Without Borders said its staff had to flee the hospital Thursday, leaving patients behind, and that one staffer was detained at an Israeli checkpoint.
Troops were still searching the hospital hours after the entered, military spokesman Hagari said. He said dozens of militants were arrested from the hospital grounds, including three who participated in the Oct. 7 attack. He also said troops found grenades and mortar shells, and that Israeli radar determined that militants fired mortars from the hospital grounds a month ago.
NO END IN SIGHT TO THE WAR
The war began when Hamas militants on Oct. 7 burst out of Gaza and attacked several Israeli communities, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. More than 100 captives were freed during a cease-fire in November in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
Around 130 hostages remain in Gaza, a fourth of whom are believed to be dead. Netanyahu has come under intense pressure from hostages' families and the wider public to make a deal to secure their freedom, but his far-right coalition partners could bring down his government if he is seen as being too soft on Hamas. Dozens of hostages' relatives protested and blocked traffic Thursday outside the military's headquarters, where the War Cabinet also meets.
Israel responded to the Hamas attack with one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history.
At least 28,663 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and more than 68,000 wounded, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Some 80% of the population has been driven from their homes, and a quarter are starving amid a worsening humanitarian catastrophe. Large areas in northern Gaza, the first target of the offensive, have been completely destroyed.
Israeli media reported that CIA Director William Burns flew to Israel to meet with Netanyahu to discuss efforts for a cease-fire.
Hamas says it will not release all the remaining captives until Israel ends its offensive, withdraws and frees Palestinian prisoners, including top militants.
Netanyahu has rejected those demands and says Israel will soon expand its offensive into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. Over half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge in Rafah after fleeing fighting elsewhere.
Airstrikes late Wednesday in central Gaza killed at least 11 people, including four children and five women, according to hospital records. Relatives gathered around bodies wrapped in white shrouds outside Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah before the remains were placed in a truck to be taken for burial.
One man struggled to let go, lying down and holding one of the bodies on the truck as he wept.
___
Mroue reported from Beirut and Lidman from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
___
Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
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TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s defense minister on Friday said Israel is “thoroughly planning” a military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, signaling determination to move ahead despite growing international concerns about the safety of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians seeking refuge there.
U.S. President Joe Biden has urged Israel not to carry out the operation without a “credible” plan to protect civilians and to instead focus on a cease-fire, while Egypt has said an operation could threaten diplomatic relations between the countries. Many other world leaders have issued similar messages of concern.
An estimated 1.4 million Palestinians, more than half of Gaza’s population, have crammed into Rafah, most of them displaced by fighting elsewhere in the territory. Hundreds of thousands are living in sprawling tent camps.
Speaking to reporters Friday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel has inflicted heavy losses on Hamas during a war that is now in its fifth month and that Rafah is “the next Hamas center of gravity” Israel plans to target.
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“We are thoroughly planning future operations in Rafah, which is a significant Hamas stronghold,” he said. He declined to say say when the operation might begin, though Israel has previously said it will first develop a plan to evacuate civilians.
Palestinians and international aid agencies say there is no safe place to go, with Israel also carrying out strikes in areas where it had told civilians to seek shelter, including Rafah.
The Israeli military launched its war in response to a cross-border Hamas attack on Oct. 7 that killed some 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 others hostage. The air and ground offensive has killed over 28,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave, caused widespread destruction, displaced some 80% of the population and sparked a humanitarian crisis.
Egypt has repeatedly warned Israel not to push Palestinian civilians in Rafah across the border, saying a mass influx could lead to the end of the 1 979 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt.
While some Israeli hard-liners have called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, Gallant said there were no plans to do so.
“The state of Israel has no intention of evacuating Palestinian civilians to Egypt,” he said. “We respect and value our peace agreement with Egypt, which is a cornerstone of stability in the region as well as an important partner.”
New satellite photos, however, indicate that Egypt is preparing for that very scenario. The images show Egypt building a wall and leveling land near its border with Gaza. Egyptian officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The Israeli offensive has included months of airstrikes as well as a ground invasion that has steadily moved southward through most of Gaza.
In recent weeks, it has focused on Khan Younis, Gaza’s second-largest city and a Hamas stronghold.
On Friday, Palestinian health officials in Khan Younis said that five patients in intensive care died after their oxygen ran out following a raid by Israeli troops in southern Gaza’s largest hospital.
The Israeli army has been searching the Nasser Hospital complex, arresting suspected Hamas militants and searching for evidence that the remains of Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas might be there. Israel says it does not target patients or doctors, but staff say the facility is struggling under heavy fire and dwindling supplies, including food and water.
Gallant said 70 suspected militants have been arrested at the hospital, including 20 who allegedly participated in the Oct. 7 attack.
Two Israeli airstrikes on Rafah overnight killed at least 13 people, including nine members of the same family, according to hospital officials.
Also on Friday, a Palestinian assailant opened fire at a bus stop on a busy intersection in southern Israel, killing two people and wounding four before being shot dead by a bystander. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
CEASE-FIRE STALLING
Negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza, meanwhile, appear to have stalled, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday pushed back hard against the U.S. vision for after the war — particularly its calls for the creation of a Palestinian state.
After speaking overnight with Biden and reportedly meeting with visiting CIA chief William Burns, Netanyahu wrote on X that Israel will not accept “international dictates regarding a permanent settlement with the Palestinians.”
He said that if other countries unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, it would give a “reward to terrorism.”
Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected creation of a Palestinian state and even boasted about having been instrumental in preventing it during his time in office.
His governing coalition is dominated by hard-liners who oppose Palestinian independence and any diplomatic process would likely lead to the collapse of the government.
Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until Hamas is destroyed and the more than 100 hostages who remain in captivity are freed.
Biden on Friday urged Netanyahu to put off a Rafah operation and instead pursue a cease-fire that could include the release of Israeli hostages.
“I’m still hopeful that that can be done and, in the meantime, I don’t anticipate, I’m hoping that, that the Israelis will not make any massive land invasion," Biden said. “My hope and expectation is that we'll get this hostage deal.”
UNRWA UNDER PRESSURE AGAIN
Gallant released new Israeli allegations against the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, including a photo of what he said was a U.N. social worker participating in the kidnapping of an Israeli on Oct. 7.
Israel has long accused UNRWA of collaborating with Hamas or turning a blind eye to the militant group’s activities.
Throughout the war, it has released images of tunnels built next to UNRWA facilities and last month it claimed that 12 UNRWA employees had actively participated in the Oct. 7 massacre.
That prompted the United States and other donor countries to suspend funding to UNRWA, the main provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza. The agency says it will have to halt operations by the end of the month if funding isn’t restored.
UNRWA denies collaborating with Hamas. It already has dismissed the employees accused in the Oct. 7 attacks and launched a pair of investigations into its operations.
In his presentation to reporters, Gallant said Israeli intelligence has “significant indications” that more than 30 additional UNRWA workers joined the Oct. 7 attack.
He said nearly 1,500 workers, 12% of its work force, are members of Hamas or the Islamic Jihad militant group, and over 230 are in their armed wings.
“UNRWA has lost legitimacy and can no longer function as a U.N. body,” he said. He said he has ordered Israeli authorities to begin working with alternative organizations that could replace UNRWA.
UNRWA’s commissioner, Philippe Lazzarini, says he takes the allegations seriously but has also pointed out that the 12 workers identified by Israel are a tiny fraction of UNRWA’s overall work force. He has warned that a halt in operations could endanger the well-being of Gazans who depend on the agency.
The agency did not comment on Gallant’s latest accusations, but has said it regularly provides the names of its workers to Israel and takes action against anyone found to be violating U.N. rules of neutrality.
“These shocking allegations come as more than 2 million people in Gaza depend on lifesaving assistance that the agency has been providing since the war began,” Lazzarini said last month.
“Anyone who betrays the fundamental values of the United Nations also betrays those whom we serve in Gaza, across the region and elsewhere around the world,” he added.
___
Shurafa reported from Rafah, Gaza Strip. Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed reporting from Washington.
___
Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
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There’s no getting around it, what the Israeli government are doing and the butchers of the IDF is pure genocide and ethic cleansing. If you bother to look at the universal declaration of human rights Israel are guilty of numerous violations.
I have no problem whatsoever with peace loving Jewish people, but zionists, the IDF and anyone who supports Israeli actions, well you need to examine your soul.
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‘My son was killed on October 6. There was no Hamas’
Family of teen killed in West Bank before Hamas attack says Israel’s actions against Palestinians not about Hamas.
Nablus, occupied West Bank – It has been almost two months since Najlaa Dmaidi’s eldest son, 19-year-old Labib, was shot dead by Israeli settlers.
But for the 42-year-old mother, time has stopped. She keeps her head down and her eyes glued to the ground in sorrow over her killed son.
“He turned 19 on July 21. His birthday was on the same day his sister’s high school matriculation exam results came out,” she said in a muffled voice.
Sitting in the living room of her home in the Palestinian town of Huwara, south of Nablus city, Najlaa said: “That was the last time we all celebrated together.”
Huwara is surrounded by four illegal Israeli settlements and countless settler outposts, military checkpoints and bases. It has come under severe settler attacks and movement restrictions imposed by the Israeli army for more than a year and a half.
“Labib would always liven up the house. He loved to joke, to play, he loved life, he also loved his homeland,” Najlaa said, fidgeting with her fingers.
On the night of October 5 – and into the early hours of October 6 – dozens of Israeli settlers attacked the Dmaidi home which is situated on the Huwara road – the main artery running from the north to the south used by both Palestinians and settlers.
The attack came hours after a Palestinian carried out a drive-by shooting in the town, causing no injuries.
“The settlers were gathered in front of our building and snipers standing on rooftops were shooting at people,” Najlaa explained, adding that the “army was with” the settlers and that they were firing tear gas into their home.
Some 25 family members, including 13 children, were inside when the attack took place. Labib was shot dead while standing on the roof of his uncle’s house just opposite his family’s building.
“His 12-year-old brother was standing next to him when he was shot,” said Najlaa.
‘Dreams shattered in the blink of an eye’
Labib was in his second year of a graphic design degree at Palestine Technical University – Kadoorie in the nearby city of Tulkarm.
His father, 50-year-old Mohammad, an engineer, is a soft-spoken man with a neatly shaved beard.
“I would sit with Labib and we would draw plans for his future,” he recalled. “In a blink of an eye, all of these dreams were shattered.”
The father-of-three said he was very proud of his son before he was killed. “Labib would go to university every day, and after that he would work at his uncle’s store in Huwara,” Mohammad told Al Jazeera, adding that his son was also taking a course in home decor.
The worsening conditions for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, particularly in Huwara, make it difficult to imagine a better future for Palestinian children, he said.
“No one is not afraid for their children, their nephews and nieces,” said Mohammad. “They have no future.”
Owing to its location on a main highway in the occupied West Bank, Huwara’s 9,000 residents once enjoyed a steady stream of business due to the constant flow of Palestinians driving through from other cities and villages.
But since May 2022, the Israeli army and settlers have slowly turned Huwara into a ghost town, much like Shuhada Street in the Old City of Hebron.
On February 27, hundreds of settlers rampaged through Huwara, carrying out what was described as a “pogrom” and which left a 37-year-old Palestinian man dead, hundreds of others injured, and dozens of cars and homes burned down. Several other attacks have happened since.
Israel reimposed movement closures on October 5 after the drive-by shooting in the town, with the vast majority of Huwara’s 800 stores forced to shut their doors. They have never reopened.
“We were not even allowed to walk or stand on the road at all for the first 45 days after October 5,” said Najlaa.
Mohammad believes that Israel used the Gaza-based Hamas armed group attack on Israel two days later, on October 7, to severely intensify restrictions in Huwara.
That day, Hamas fighters killed some 1,200 people in a surprise operation. Shortly afterwards, Israel launched an ongoing shelling campaign on the besieged Gaza Strip, killing at least 15,000 Palestinians, including more than 6,000 children.
But Labib’s father said the focus on Hamas since October 7 shifts the focus from Israel’s policies against the Palestinian people as a whole.
“They claim that what is happening is about Hamas. My son was killed on October 6. There was no Hamas,” Mohammad told Al Jazeera.
“When they burned down Huwara in February, there was no Hamas. When they attacked our house yet again two weeks after they killed my son, there was no Hamas,” he said.
“Imagine that a minister of a state comes out and says to the media ‘erase Huwara’ – what world are we living in?”
‘Living under the illusion of a state’
Due to the frequency of settler attacks and heavy militarisation of Huwara and the southern area of Nablus, which is also heavily populated with illegal settlements, the Dmaidi family said their children are suffering severely psychologically.
“My niece has a literal nervous breakdown when she sees the settlers. Particularly after the night Labib was killed, she falls to the ground and starts shaking,” said Mohammad.
“All the children of the family saw Labib lying on the ground on the street bleeding out after we carried him from the roof. It was horrific for them,” he explained.
The killed teen’s father said he believes the Palestinian Authority (PA) shares part of the blame for the situation of residents in the occupied West Bank today.
The PA was created as a temporary governing body in 1993 and has administrative control over small pockets of the occupied West Bank.
It was meant to serve for five years in the lead-up to the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the 1967-occupied territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The continuing Israeli occupation, land theft and settlement building have meant that the Palestinian state was never created.
Many Palestinians now view the PA as little more than a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation due to the requirement that it share intelligence with the Israeli authorities, among other policies.
“We have been living under the illusion of a state for 30 years,” said Mohammad.
“I used to go up to the mountain, there was no Yitzhar [an Israeli settlement south of Nablus]. Thanks to Oslo, Yitzhar is now here. The settler comes down with all ease to the centre of our town – this is all based on Oslo. Now in two or three years, they won’t just come to the front door, we are going to find them in our living rooms,” he said.
“We have a president, we have a prime minister, and yet, we have nothing at the same time.”
‘My son was killed on October 6. There was no Hamas’ | Israel War on Gaza | Al Jazeera
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Who are Israeli settlers, and why do they live on Palestinian lands?
As many as 700,000 Israeli settlers are living illegally in the occupied West Bank as settler violence surges.
6 Nov 2023
Since Israel unleashed its brutal bombing campaign in Gaza on October 7 in the wake of a deadly Hamas attack, settler attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem have more than doubled from an average of three to eight incidents a day, according to the United Nations.
The spike in settler attacks have forced hundreds of Palestinians to flee their homes in the past three weeks amid the Israeli bombardment of Gaza that has killed more than 9,500 people.
So, who are the settlers and where do they live?
Who are the settlers?
Settlers are Israeli citizens who live on private Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The vast majority of the settlements have been built either entirely or partially on private Palestinian land.
More than 700,000 settlers – 10 percent of Israel’s nearly 7 million population – now live in 150 settlements and 128 outposts dotting the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
A settlement is authorised by the Israeli government while an outpost is built without government authorisation. Outposts can range from a small shanty of a few people to a community of up to 400 people.
Some of the settlers move to the occupied territories for religious reasons while others are drawn by a relatively lower cost of living and financial incentives offered by the government. Ultraorthodox Jews form one-third of all settlers.
A plurality of Israeli Jews who live in the West Bank say that the construction of settlements improves the security of the country, according to the Pew Research Center. The argument is that settlements act as a buffer for Israel’s national security as they restrict the movement of Palestinians and undermine the viability of a Palestinian state. However, some on the Israeli left argue that the settlement expansion hurts the two-state solution and thereby Israel’s own prospects for peace.
When were the first settlements built?
Israel started building settlements just after capturing the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the June 1967 Six-Day War.
In September 1967, the Etzion Bloc in Hebron was the first settlement built in the occupied West Bank. The settlement now hosts 40,000 people.
Kfar Etzion, one of the oldest settlements, houses around 1,000 people while the largest – Modi’in Illit – has around 82,000 settlers, most of them ultraorthodox Jews.
Successive Israeli governments have pursued this policy leading to a rise in settler population in the occupied territories.
About 40 percent of the occupied West Bank land is now controlled by settlements. These settlements — along with a vast network of checkpoints for Palestinians — effectively separate the Palestinian parts of the West Bank from each other, making the prospect of a future contiguous state almost impossible, according to critics.
The first Jewish settlement in Palestine goes back to the early 20th century when Jews facing widespread discrimination, religious persecution and pogroms in Europe started to arrive. Back then Palestine – which was still under British colonial control – was overwhelmingly Arab with a tiny Jewish minority.
Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, was built as a settlement in the suburb of the Arab city of Jaffa in 1909.
The mass migration of Jews to Palestine triggered an Arab uprising. But in the ensuing violence, the well-armed Zionist militias ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians in 1948. Palestinians call their expulsion the Nakba, which is Arabic for catastrophe.
Are settlers backed by the government?
The Israeli government has openly funded and built settlements for Jews to live there.
The Israeli authorities give its settlers in the West Bank some 20 million shekels ($5m) a year to monitor, report and restrict Palestinian construction in Area C, which is over 60 percent of the West Bank. The money is used to hire inspectors and buy drones, aerial imagery, tablets and vehicles among other things.
On April 4, Israeli authorities asked to double that amount in the state budget, to 40 million shekels ($10m).
Over the past few years, the Israeli army has been operating a hotline it calls War Room C, for settlers to call and report Palestinian construction in Area C.
Several Israeli laws enable settlers to seize Palestinian land:
After the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the Israeli government officially stopped building new settlements but the existing settlements continued to grow.
The settlement population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem grew from approximately 250,000 in 1993 to nearly 700,000 in September this year.
But in 2017, Israel formally announced the start of new settlements.
Prime Minister Netanyahu – Israel’s longest-serving prime minister – has bolstered settlement expansions since he first came to power in 1996.
There are also Israeli “nongovernmental” organisations that work to evict Palestinians from their land using loopholes in the land laws.
Israeli authorities also regularly seize and demolish Palestinian properties citing the lack of Israeli-issued building permits and land documents.
But international rights groups say acquiring an Israeli building permit is nearly impossible.
Are Israeli settlements legal under international law?
No. All settlements and outposts are considered illegal under international laws as they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which bans an occupying power from transferring its population to the area it occupies.
Settlements, activists say, are enclaves of Israeli sovereignty that have fragmented the occupied West Bank, and any future Palestinian state would look like a series of tiny, unconnected South Africa’s former Bantustans, or black-only townships.
The United Nations has condemned them through multiple resolutions and votes. In 2016, a United Nations Security Council resolution said settlements had “no legal validity”.
But the US, Israel’s closest ally, has provided diplomatic cover over the years. Washington has consistently used its veto power at the UN to protect Israel from diplomatic censure.
Israel authorises and encourages settlements. Though it deems outposts as illegal under its laws, Israel has in recent years retrospectively legalised several outposts.
More than 9,000 settlers withdrew from Gaza in 2005 when Israel dismantled settlements as a part of a “disengagement” plan by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
How does Israel keep control of the West Bank?
Israel has built a wall or Separation Barrier that stretches for more than 700km (435 miles) through the West Bank restricting movement of more than 3 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. But Israel says the wall is for security purposes.
Palestinian farmers need to apply for permits to access their own land. These permits need to be renewed repeatedly and can also be denied or revoked without explanation.
For instance, about 270 of the entire 291 hectares that belong to the Palestinian village of Wadi Fukin near Bethlehem are designated as Area C, which is under Israeli control. About 60 percent of the occupied West Bank falls under Area C.
Besides the separation wall, over 700 road obstacles are placed across the West Bank including 140 checkpoints. About 70,000 Palestinians with Israeli work permits cross these checkpoints in their daily commute.
Palestinians cannot move freely between the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, and require permits to do so.
Rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem have concluded that Israeli policies and laws used to dominate Palestinian people can be described as “apartheid“.
Has settler violence spiked in recent weeks?
Yes. Settlers have carried 241 attacks in the West Bank forcing around 1,000 Palestinians to flee their homes as Israel has continued its relentless bombardment of Gaza, since October 7.
“Settlers have been committing crimes in the occupied West Bank well before October 7. It is as though, however, they got a green light after October 7 to carry out more crimes,” Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official monitoring settler activity told Al Jazeera.
On October 28, a Palestinian farmer harvesting olives was shot dead by settlers in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus. “We are now during the olive harvest season – people have not been able to reach 60 percent of olive trees in the Nablus area because of settler attacks,” said Daghlas.
Bedouin village of Wadi as-Seeq village in the occupied West Bank was emptied out of its 200 residents on October 12 following threats from settlers.
The current violence comes as last year saw record settler violence, rising from an average of three to seven incidents a day, according to the United Nations.
In recent years settlers have increasingly been trying to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound raising Palestinian concerns that they want to encroach upon Islam’s third holiest site. Jewish prayers are not allowed as per “status quo” governing the Al-Aqsa.
Three days before Hamas carried out a deadly attack inside Israel, settlers stormed the mosque compound. In 2021, Israeli police stormed the mosque compound to facilitate the entry of settlers, triggering a deadly conflict.
In February, far-right settlers went on a rampage in the West Bank town of Huwara torching dozens of houses and cars. Following the violence, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for Huwara to be “wiped out”.
Israeli settler violence has displaced more than 1,100 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2022, according to a UN report released in September 2023.
Who are Israeli settlers, and why do they live on Palestinian lands? | Israel War on Gaza News | Al Jazeera
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Cast Lead (2008-2009) 1400 Palestinians killed
Operation Pillar of Defense (2012) 176 Palestinians killed, 700 families left homeless
Operation Protective Edge (2014) 2100 Palestinians killed
March 2018 170+ Palestinians killed
May 2021 260 killed
August 2022 30 Palestinians, mostly women and children killed.
Not to mention the thousands wounded and who die of the lack of access to basic medical treatment. Most of the population in Gaza today are young men, women and children. they have never known anything but to be imprisoned in Gaza. make no mistake Gaza is the worlds largest concentration camp!
Palestinians cannot leave Gaza without explicit permission or permits. Palestinians cannot drive on the same roads as Israelis, Palestinians cannot grow or tap into wells for water for themselves because they require permission from the commanding IDF officer in the area which never is granted. Children are arrested and detained without trial and without visitation from their parents or in most cases by human rights NGO’s.
Anyone who thinks Israels evil is a recent development are living in cloud cuckoo land.
Well here is just a couple of statements made by the angelic Zionists in the Israeli government.
1. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.
2. Calling for Gaza to be wiped of the face of the earth
3. Gaza must be burned
4. Claiming EVERY member of the population (men women children) are not innocent or uninvolved.
I could go on but I think that little definition you kindly provided has just strengthened anyones statement of ETHNIC CLEANSING.
That's a brief history of Hamas' foundation and rise to power, and a skimming of Al Qaeda's development and growth.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©