GAZA: Israel is preparing a ground invasion of Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday while Israeli shelling killed more Palestinian civilians and international pressure grew to deliver aid and to safeguard hostages held by Hamas.
US President Joe Biden, in remarks looking beyond the war that broke out with an Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian Hamas militants, said the future should include a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.
Israel should be integrated among its Arab neighbors, he said.
“Israelis and Palestinians equally deserve to live side by side in safety, dignity and in peace,” Biden said at a joint press conference in Washington with visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Israeli retaliatory strikes have killed over 6,500 people, the health ministry in the Hamas-run strip said on Wednesday. Reuters has been unable to independently verify the casualty figures of either side.
Biden said he had no notion that the Palestinians were telling the truth about how many had been killed. “I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.”
In Jerusalem, Netanyahu said the decision on when forces would go into Gaza would be taken by the government’s special war cabinet, but he declined to provide any details on the timing or other information about the operation.
“We have already killed thousands of terrorists and this is only the beginning,” Netanyahu said in a televised statement.
“Simultaneously, we are preparing for a ground invasion. I will not elaborate on when, how or how many. I will also not elaborate on the various calculations we are making, which the public is mostly unaware of and that is how things should be.”
Israeli tanks and troops are massed on the border with Gaza awaiting orders. Israel has called up some 360,000 reservists.
International pressure is growing to delay any invasion of Gaza, not least because of hostages. More than half the estimated 220 hostages held by Hamas have foreign passports from 25 different countries, the Israeli government said.
The Wall Street Journal, citing US and Israeli officials, reported that Israel had agreed to delay invading Gaza for now so that the United States could rush missile defenses to the region to protect US forces there, reflecting its concern about the Gaza war spreading around the Middle East.
US officials have so far persuaded Israel to hold off until US air defense systems can be placed in the region, as early as this week, the Journal said.
Asked about the report, US officials told Reuters that Washington has raised its concerns with Israel that Iran and Iranian-backed Islamist groups could escalate the conflict by attacking US troops in the Middle East. An Israeli incursion into Gaza could be a trigger for Iranian proxies, they said.
As Israel stepped up bombings of south Gaza, violence flared elsewhere in the Middle East and a showdown loomed at the United Nations over aid to Palestinian civilians, hundreds of thousands of whom fled from north to south in the tiny coastal strip.
Israel had warned them it would bombard mainly the north to wipe out Hamas militants.
Among Wednesday’s casualties, an internally displaced person was killed and 44 were injured in an air strike near an United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school in the southern town of Rafah, said the agency, which is responsible for Palestinian refugees in the strip.
The school was sheltering 4,600 people and sustained severe collateral damage, an UNRWA statement said.
The Israeli-Hamas war has already kindled increased conflict well beyond Gaza.
Israeli warplanes struck Syrian army infrastructure in response to rockets fired from Syria, an ally of Iran.
Syrian state media said Israel had killed eight soldiers and wounded seven near the southwestern city of Daraa, and hit Aleppo airport in the northwest, already out of action.
Israel did not accuse the Syrian army of launching rockets but is suspicious of Iran, its arch-enemy which has a significant military and security presence in Syria.
Iran has sought regional ascendancy for decades and backs armed groups in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere as well as Hamas. It has demanded Israel stop its onslaught on Gaza.
Israel said its forces also hit five squads in south Lebanon preparing attacks. Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah group said 42 of its fighters had been killed since border clashes with Israel resumed after the Gaza war erupted.
The United States and Russia were leading rival calls at the United Nations for a pause in fighting to allow aid into Gaza, where living conditions are harrowing with medical care crippled due to a lack of electricity, and food and clean water scarce.
Limited deliveries of food, medicine and water from Egypt restarted on Saturday through Rafah, the only crossing not controlled by Israel.
In proposals the UN Security Council was expected to consider on Wednesday, the United States was seeking short pauses to allow aid in while Russia advocated a wider cease-fire. Israel has resisted both, arguing that Hamas would only take advantage and create new threats to its civilians.
Israel bombs Gaza, prepares invasion as Biden urges ‘path to peace’
https://arab.news/cq3xa
Israel bombs Gaza, prepares invasion as Biden urges ‘path to peace’
- Israeli retaliatory strikes have killed over 6,500 people in Gaza
- “I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war," Biden says
Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills
Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war, effectively turning it into a narco state under Assad.
“We found a large quantity of captagon, around one million pills,” said a balaclava-wearing member of the security forces, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Osama, and whose khaki uniform bore a “public security” patch.
An AFP journalist saw forces pour fuel over and set fire to a cache of cannabis, the painkiller tramadol, and around 50 bags of pink and yellow captagon pills in a security compound formerly belonging to Assad’s forces in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district.
Captagon has flooded the black market across the region in recent years, with oil-rich Saudi Arabia a major destination.
“The security forces of the new government discovered a drug warehouse as they were inspecting the security quarter,” said another member of the security forces, who identified himself as Hamza.
Authorities destroyed the stocks of alcohol, cannabis, captagon and hashish in order to “protect Syrian society” and “cut off smuggling routes used by Assad family businesses,” he added.
Syria’s new Islamist rulers have yet to spell out their policy on alcohol, which has long been widely available in the country.
Since an Islamist-led rebel alliance toppled Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, Syria’s new authorities have said massive quantities of captagon have been found in former government sites around the country, including security branches.
AFP journalists in Syria have seen fighters from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) set fire to what they said were stashes of captagon found at facilities once operated by Assad’s forces.
Security force member Hamza confirmed Wednesday that “this is not the first initiative of its kind — the security services, in a number of locations, have found other warehouses... and drug manufacturing sites and destroyed them in the appropriate manner.”
Maher Assad, a military commander and the brother of Bashar Assad, is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Experts believe Syria’s former leader used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
A Saudi delegation met Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, a source close to the government told AFP, to discuss the “Syria situation and captagon.”
Jordan in recent years has also cracked down on the smuggling of weapons and drugs including captagon along its 375-kilometer (230-mile) border with Syria.
Jordan says 18,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
AMMAN: About 18,000 Syrians have crossed into their country from Jordan since the government of Bashar Assad was toppled earlier this month, Jordanian authorities said on Thursday.
Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told state TV channel Al-Mamlaka that “around 18,000 Syrians have returned to their country between the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad on December 8, 2024 until Thursday.”
He said the returnees included 2,300 refugees registered with the United Nations.
Amman says it has hosted about 1.3 million Syrians who fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011, with 650,000 formally registered with the United Nations.
Lebanon hopes for neighborly relations in first message to new Syria government
- Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war
- Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders
DUBAI: Lebanon said on Thursday it was looking forward to having the best neighborly relations with Syria, in its first official message to the new administration in Damascus.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib passed the message to his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, in a phone call, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said on X.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war, before bringing its fighters back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel – a redeployment which weakened Syrian government lines.
Under Assad, Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist militants captured the capital Damascus.
Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders after toppling Assad.
Iraqi intelligence chief discusses border security with new Syrian administration
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi delegation met with Syria’s new rulers in Damascus on Thursday, an Iraqi government spokesman said, the latest diplomatic outreach more than two weeks after the fall of Bashar Assad’s rule.
The delegation, led by Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid Al-Shatri, “met with the new Syrian administration,” government spokesman Bassem Al-Awadi told state media, adding that the parties discussed “the developments in the Syrian arena, and security and stability needs on the two countries’ shared border.”
Israeli minister’s Al-Aqsa mosque visit sparks condemnation
- Ben Gvir has repeatedly defied the Israeli government’s longstanding ban on Jewish prayer at the site in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem
JERUSALEM: Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visited Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound on Thursday, triggering angry reactions from the Palestinian Authority and Jordan accusing the far-right politician of a deliberate provocation.
Ben Gvir has repeatedly defied the Israeli government’s longstanding ban on Jewish prayer at the site in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, which is revered by both Muslims and Jews and has been a focal point of tensions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“I went up to the site of our temple this morning to pray for the peace of our soldiers, the swift return of all hostages and a total victory, God willing,” Ben Gvir said in a message on social media platform X, referring to the Gaza war and the dozens of Israeli captives held in the Palestinian territory.
He also posted a photo of himself on the holy site, with members of the Israeli security forces and the famed golden Dome of the Rock in the background.
The Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem’s Old City is Islam’s third-holiest site and a symbol of Palestinian national identity.
Known to Jews as the Temple Mount, it is also Judaism’s holiest place, revered as the site of the second temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.
Under the status quo maintained by Israel, which has occupied east Jerusalem and its Old City since 1967, Jews and other non-Muslims are allowed to visit the compound during specified hours, but they are not permitted to pray there or display religious symbols.
Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as their future capital, while Israeli leaders have insisted that the entire city is their “undivided” capital.
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry said in a statement that it “condemns” Ben Gvir’s latest visit, calling his prayer at the site a “provocation to millions of Palestinians and Muslims.”
Jordan, which administers the mosque compound, similarly condemned what its foreign ministry called Ben Gvir’s “provocative and unacceptable” actions.
The ministry’s statement decried a “violation of the historical and legal status quo.”
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a brief statement that “the status quo on the Temple Mount has not changed.”
