JERUSALEM: The UN envoy for the Middle East warned Israel on Thursday that carrying out its plans to annex parts of the West Bank could set of a spasm of violence that would upend Israeli-Palestinian relations and reverberate across the region.
Speaking to a group of foreign correspondents in Jerusalem, Nickolay Mladenov, the UN special coordinator for the region, said any Israeli unilateral action will “will have economic and security repercussions on the ground that will affect the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians.”
“Surely any such moves will be met by counter moves by the Palestinian Authority and they have already started,” he told members of the Foreign Press Association, noting how the Palestinians have absolved themselves from abiding by past agreements with Israel.
“For now we have the clear commitment by the Palestinian leadership that they will do everything in their power to contain law and order in the areas they control,” he said. “But as the money runs out and as the political prospects become more grim, I feel that will become more difficult or impossible in the future.”
His stern warning comes amid a flurry of international pressure on Israel to recant on its plans.
On Wednesday, the head of the Arab League warned a high-level UN meeting that any annexation would inflame tensions and endanger peace in the Middle East, and could ignite “a religious war in and beyond our region.” More than a thousand European lawmakers also signed a joint letter protesting Israel’s plan, saying such a move would “be fatal” to hopes for a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Emboldened by the Trump administration’s favorable Mideast plan, and eager to establish its permanent eastern border, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to begin annexing parts of the West Bank that have Israeli settlements, perhaps as early as next week.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and in the decades since has built dozens of settlements that are now home to roughly 400,000 Israelis. Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal. The Palestinians seek the territory as part of a future independent state and have preemptively rejected the Trump plan.
Netanyahu’s government has yet to publish details of the proposed annexation but the prime minister has called for roughly 30% of the territory — including the strategically important Jordan Valley — to be annexed by Israel.
Even British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a close Netanyahu ally, said last week that he strongly opposed annexation of parts of the West Bank, which would “amount to a breach of international law.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged Israel on Tuesday to hear the global calls and not to carry on with its plans. He told The Associated Press that annexation would not only violate international law, but “would be a major factor to destabilize the region.”
Mladenov took a more philosophical approach, saying annexation would do more than just extinguish the prospect of a two-state solution to solve the conflict.
“If we remove entirely the notion that through negotiations, through compromises, through discussions, through dialogue, this goal can be achieved, I fear that we really take the spirit out of the peace process and put everyone is a very difficult position,” he said. “Unilateral action will become the theme of the day.”
Israeli annexation of West Bank could unleash Middle East violence -- UN envoy
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Israeli annexation of West Bank could unleash Middle East violence -- UN envoy
- UN said any Israeli unilateral action will “will have economic and security repercussions on the ground"
- Netanyahu has promised to begin annexing parts of the West Bank that have Israeli settlements
UN genocide advisers urge immediate action to deescalate violence in Gaza amid deadly airstrikes
- Senior officials warn of ‘irreversible consequences,’ with hundreds believed killed in strikes
- Call comes amid worsening humanitarian crisis after Israel suspends aid entry to the enclave
NEW YORK: Two senior UN advisers have sounded the alarm over renewed violence in Gaza following a series of deadly Israeli airstrikes, warning the escalation could have “irreversible consequences.”
UN Acting Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Virginia Gamba, and Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, Mo Bleeker, called on all parties involved to prioritize the protection of civilians and immediately deescalate tensions to prevent further loss of life.
The airstrikes, which began on March 18, are the first major military action since a ceasefire was brokered two months ago.
Hundreds of people are believed to have died in the strikes, with many more injured.
In a joint statement, Gamba and Bleeker said: “These developments signal a troubling and dramatic escalation of violence with irreversible consequences. It is essential that the mutual imperatives of peace process, integrating aspects of prevention and protection, are prioritized urgently.”
In addition to the violence, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues to worsen. The two advisers expressed concern over Israel’s decision on March 2 to suspend the entry of aid into Gaza, exacerbating the already dire conditions.
Humanitarian organizations, the UN, and several member states have condemned the move, stressing that any further delays in the delivery of essential aid could lead to starvation and further suffering for Gaza’s civilian population.
Gamba and Bleeker also reiterated the need for a comprehensive political solution to the conflict.
“In line with the prevention of genocide and the responsibility to protect frameworks, we urge all parties to prioritize the protection of civilians and take immediate steps to deescalate tensions, prevent further loss of life, and engage in a solid political solution,” said the advisers.
They also echoed the UN secretary-general’s statement of “profound shock at these developments” and his urgent calls “for the ceasefire to be respected, for unimpeded humanitarian access to be restored, and for the unconditional release of all remaining hostages.”
Israel launches a ground operation to retake part of a key corridor in northern Gaza
- Israel used the Netzarim corridor as a military zone which bisected northern Gaza from the south.
DEIR AL-BALAH: Israel said Wednesday it launched a “limited ground operation” in northern Gaza to retake part of a corridor that bisects the territory, and the country's defense minister warned that the army plans to step up the attacks that shattered a two-month ceasefire "with an intensity that you have not seen.”
The military said it had retaken part of the Netzarim corridor, which bisects northern Gaza from the south and from where it had withdrawn as part of the ceasefire with Hamas that began in January.
Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Palestinians in Gaza that the army would again order evacuations from combat zones soon, and that its attacks against Hamas would become more fierce if dozens of hostages held for more than 17 months weren’t freed.
The move appeared to deepen a renewed Israeli offensive in Gaza, which shattered a ceasefire with Hamas.
The Gaza Health Ministry said at least 436 people, including 183 children and 94 women, have been killed since Israel launched the strikes early Tuesday. It said another 678 people have been wounded.
The military says it only strikes militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it operates in densely populated areas. Gaza’s Health Ministry records do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The military said in a statement that as part of the new offensive, it struck dozens of militants and militant sites on Wednesday, including the command center of a Hamas battalion.
The war in Gaza, which was paused in January by an internationally-mediated ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, has been among the deadliest conflicts ever for humanitarian workers, according to the UN.
The resumption of fighting launched by Israel early Tuesday risks plunging the region back into all-out war. It came weeks after the end of the first phase of the ceasefire, during which Israel and Hamas exchanged hostages for prisoners and were set to negotiate an extension to the truce that was meant to bring about an eventual end to the war.
But those negotiations never got off the ground. Hamas has demanded that Israel stick to the terms of the initial ceasefire deal, including a full withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the war. Israel, which has vowed to defeat Hamas, has put forward a new proposal that would extend the truce and free more hostages held by Hamas, without a commitment to end the war.
Italian coast guard recovers bodies of 6 migrants who died in shipwreck in the Mediterranean
- The Red Cross said they were in good physical condition, and were receiving psychological care
- Survivors said that some 56 people were in the dinghy when it departed from the Tunisian port of Sfax
MILAN: The Italian Coast Guard has recovered six bodies and was searching for up to 40 migrants missing after a rubber dinghy that departed from Tunisia sank in the central Mediterranean, the UN refugee agency in Italy said Wednesday.
Another 10 people, including four women, were rescued Tuesday and brought to Italy’s southernmost island of Lampedusa.
The Red Cross said they were in good physical condition, and were receiving psychological care.
Survivors said that some 56 people were in the dinghy when it departed from the Tunisian port of Sfax on Monday evening, the UNHCR reported.
The boat started to deflate a few hours after departure. The people on board were from Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Mali, the UNHCR said.
The UN Missing Migrant Project puts the number of the dead and missing in the perilous central Mediterranean at over 24,506 from 2014 to 2024, many of whom were lost at sea. The project says that number may be greater, as many deaths go unrecorded, with the sightings of so-called ghost ships with no one aboard and remains of people washing ashore in Libya not associated with any known shipwreck.
So far this year, 8,963 migrants have arrived in Italy, according to Interior Ministry figures updated Wednesday, a 4 percent increase over the same period last year.
Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni’s center-right government has pushed for economic agreements with northern African countries aimed at prevent departures. Speaking to lawmakers this week, Meloni credited the deals with a nearly 60 percent drop of migrant arrivals in Italy last year to 66,317 from 157,651 in 2023, adding that in 2024 1,695 people were dead or missing at sea, compared with 2,526 a year earlier.
“What do these numbers mean? They tell us that reducing the departures, and curbing the traffickers’ business is the only way to reduce the number of migrants who lose their lives trying to reach Italy and Europe,” she said on Tuesday.
Medics struggle to revive Sudan’s hungry with trickle of aid supplies
- The patients at Alban Jadeed Hospital are in urgent need of help
- The real situation could be worse, since fighting has prevented proper data collection in many areas, medics and aid staff say
SHARG ELNIL, Sudan: In a nutrition ward at a hospital in Sudan’s war-stricken capital, gaunt mothers lie next to even thinner toddlers with wide, sunken eyes.
The patients at Alban Jadeed Hospital are in urgent need of help after nearly two years of battles that have trapped residents and cut off supplies, but doctors have to ration the therapeutic milk and other products used to treat them.
The war that erupted in April 2023 from a power struggle between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has created what the United Nations calls the world’s largest and most devastating humanitarian crisis.
About half of Sudan’s population of 50 million now suffer some degree of acute hunger, and famine has taken hold in at least five areas, including several parts of North Darfur State in western Sudan.
The real situation could be worse, since fighting has prevented proper data collection in many areas, medics and aid staff say.
In Sudan’s greater capital, where the cities of Khartoum, Omdurman and Bahri are divided by the Nile, the warring factions have prevented deliveries of aid and commercial supplies, pushing the prices of goods beyond most people’s reach.
Alban Jadeed Hospital, in Bahri’s Sharg Elnil district, received more than 14,000 children under five years old suffering from severe acute malnutrition last year, and another 12,000 with a more mild form, said Azza Babiker, head of the therapeutic nutrition department.
Only 600 of the children tested were a normal weight, she said.
The supply of therapeutic formula milk via UN children’s agency UNICEF and medical aid agency MSF is insufficient, Babiker said, as RSF soldiers twice stole the supplies.
Both sides deny impeding aid deliveries.
The sharp reduction of USAID funding is expected to make things worse, hitting the budgets of aid agencies that provide crucial nutritional supplies as well as community kitchens relied upon by many, aid workers say.
The army recently captured Sharg Elnil from the RSF, as part of recent gains it has made across the capital.
Fruit and vegetables have become extremely scarce. “Aside from the difficulty of getting these products in, not all families can afford to buy them,” Babiker said.
Many mothers are unable to produce milk, often due to trauma resulting from RSF attacks, or their own malnutrition, said Raneen Adel, a doctor at Alban Jadeed.
“There are cases who come in dehydrated ... because for example the RSF entered the house and the mother was frightened so she stopped producing breast milk, or she was beaten,” she said.
The RSF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A lack of nutrition and sanitation has led to cases of blood poisoning and other illnesses, but the hospital has also run out of antibiotics.
“We had to tell the patients’ companions to get (the drugs) from outside, but they can’t afford to buy them,” Adel said.
Jordan’s king says Israel’s resumption of Gaza attacks a ‘dangerous step’
- French President Macron also said that the new Israeli strikes on Gaza were a 'dramatic step backwards'
PARIS: Jordan’s King Abdullah called on Tuesday for the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza to be restored and for aid flows to resume.
“Israel’s resumption of attacks on Gaza is an extremely dangerous step that adds further devastation to an already dire humanitarian situation,” he said, standing next to French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.
Israel’s resumption of strikes on the Gaza Strip represents a major step in the wrong direction after its ceasefire with Hamas earlier this year, President Emmanuel Macron said alongside King Abdullah II.
“The resumption of Israeli strikes yesterday, despite the efforts of mediators, represents a dramatic step backwards,” Macron said ahead of talks in Paris with Abdullah, who in turn called the strikes “an extremely dangerous step that adds further devastation to an already dire humanitarian situation.”
