GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Efforts mounted on Thursday to get more aid into the war-devastated Gaza Strip, where the UN warns of famine and desperate residents have stormed relief convoys.
After mediators failed to reach a truce between Israel and Hamas for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which started Monday, fighting continued with at least 69 deaths over the previous 24 hours, the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said.
Hamas authorities reported more than 40 air strikes across Gaza, from Beit Hanoun in the north to Rafah in the south, where most of Gaza’s population has sought refuge and Israel is threatening a ground assault.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday doubled down on pledges to invade Rafah, saying: “There is international pressure to prevent us from entering Rafah and completing the job.
“I will continue to repel the pressures and we will enter Rafah... and bring complete victory to the people of Israel,” he said during a visit to a field intelligence base.
Around 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt in Rafah.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said late Wednesday that a “significant” number of them would need to be moved “to a humanitarian island that we will create with the international community.”
The Israeli military said on Thursday it was “raiding Hamas’s hideouts and military strongholds” in southern Gaza’s main city of Khan Yunis.
“During a search in the area, the forces located several weapons in a bedroom under a bed, including missiles and explosives. Following the searches in the area, the forces located a rocket launcher and missiles near a school and destroyed it.”
Gaza’s health ministry said seven people were killed when Israeli troops opened fire at an aid distribution point near Gaza City. The army had no immediate comment.
In central Israel, police said a Gaza-raised Palestinian had stabbed a soldier in a shopping center, who had shot his attacker dead before later dying from his injuries.
The war began on October 7 when Hamas militants attacked Israel, resulting in about 1,160 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Israel has carried out a relentless campaign of bombardment and ground operations in Gaza, killing at least 31,341 people, most of them civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Hamas militants also seized about 250 Israeli and foreign hostages, dozens of whom were released during a week-long truce in November. Israel believes about 130 of the captives remain in Gaza and that 32 are dead.
Activists and families of Israeli hostages kept up pressure for their negotiated release, again blocking a Tel Aviv highway in protest on Thursday.
And in a sign of mounting US exasperation with the Netanyahu, US Senate leader Chuck Schumer called for a snap election in Israel, describing the veteran hawk as one of a number of “major obstacles” to a two-state solution and peace.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas appointed Mohammed Mustafa, a long-trusted adviser on economic affairs, as prime minister, three weeks after his predecessor resigned.
Washington and other powers have called for a reformed Palestinian Authority to take charge of all Palestinian territories after the end of the war.
US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators failed to broker a new truce in time for Ramadan, but Netanyahu said Thursday there was now “Qatari pressure on Hamas.”
“As of this moment, there has been no real response from Hamas. They are still clinging to unacceptable demands,” he told representatives of hostages’ families.
“As a result of our pressure... and also with your help, we are seeing — for the first time — Qatari pressure on Hamas.”
The war has resulted in severe shortages of medical supplies across Gaza, with only a fraction of hospitals partially functioning.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said aid had been delivered to Al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza, but said it was “struggling with water, sanitation, hygiene and waste management.”
“Two of the hospital’s warehouses are no longer functional and are being used to shelter 7,000 displaced people,” he added.
The Spanish aid vessel Open Arms, pulling about 200 tons of food, was nearing Israel’s coast after departing Cyprus on Tuesday, the Marinetraffic website showed on Thursday.
Cypriot Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said a second, bigger vessel was being readied for the aid corridor which, senior US officials have said, will be complemented by a temporary pier off Gaza to be built by American troops.
Daily aid airdrops by multiple countries have been taking place this month, and Germany said it would join the effort.
But the air and sea missions are “no alternative” to land deliveries, 25 organizations including Amnesty International and Oxfam said in a statement.
Dire shortages have left many scrambling for scraps of aid, among them Mokhles Al-Masry, 27, who was displaced from Beit Hanoun to Beit Lahia in northern Gaza.
“There is no food, nothing to feed our children. We can’t even find a bottle of baby milk. We’ve been wandering around since early morning, hoping that a plane would drop parachutes,” he said.
“As you can see, these parachutes don’t cover one percent of people’s needs.”
Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, said the international community seemed to have accepted that the war will drag on.
“Why are you making an investment that is going to take two months?” she asked, referring to the Pentagon’s timeline for setting up the temporary pier which, it said, could enable the provision of more than two million meals a day.
Aid efforts intensify for famine-stalked Gaza
https://arab.news/v3nwn
Aid efforts intensify for famine-stalked Gaza

- The war has resulted in severe shortages of medical supplies across Gaza, with only a fraction of hospitals partially functioning
- WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said aid had been delivered to Al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza
Iraq’s water reserves lowest in 80 years: official
Water is a major issue in the country of 46 million people undergoing a serious environmental crisis because of climate change, drought, rising temperatures and declining rainfall.
Authorities also blame upstream dams built in neighboring Iran and Turkiye for dramatically lowering the flow of the once-mighty Tigris and Euphrates, which have irrigated Iraq for millennia.
“The summer season should begin with at least 18 billion cubic meters... yet we only have about 10 billion cubic meters,” water resources ministry spokesperson Khaled Shamal told AFP.
“Last year our strategic reserves were better. It was double what we have now,” Shamal said.
“We haven’t seen such a low reserve in 80 years,” he added, saying this was mostly due to the reduced flow from the two rivers.
Iraq currently receives less than 40 percent of its share from the Tigris and Euphrates, according to Shamal.
He said sparse rainfall this winter and low water levels from melting snow has worsened the situation in Iraq, considered by the United Nations to be one of the five countries most vulnerable to some impacts of climate change.
Water shortages have forced many farmers in Iraq to abandon the land, and authorities have drastically reduced farming activity to ensure sufficient supplies of drinking water.
Agricultural planning in Iraq always depends on water, and this year it aims to preserve “green spaces and productive areas” amounting to more than 1.5 million Iraqi dunams (375,000 hectares), said Shamal.
Last year, authorities allowed farmers to cultivate 2.5 million dunams of corn, rice, and orchards, according to the water ministry.
Water has been a source of tension between Iraq and Turkiye, which has urged Baghdad to adopt efficient water management plans.
In 2024, Iraq and Turkiye signed a 10-year “framework agreement,” mostly to invest in projects to ensure better water resources management.
Israeli strikes kill 23 in Gaza, including a journalist and rescue service official

- Israeli fire kills at least 23 people in Gaza
- Israel controls 77 percent of Gaza Strip, Hamas media office says
CAIRO: Israeli military strikes killed at least 23 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, including a local journalist and a senior rescue service official, local health authorities said.
The latest deaths in the Israeli campaign resulted from separate Israeli strikes in Khan Younis in the south, Jabalia in the north and Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip, medics said.
In Jabalia, they said local journalist Hassan Majdi Abu Warda and several family members were killed by an airstrike that hit his house earlier on Sunday.
Another airstrike in Nuseirat killed Ashraf Abu Nar, a senior official in the territory’s civil emergency service, and his wife in their house, medics added.
There was no immediate comment by the Israeli military.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said that Abu Warda’s death raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, to 220.
In a separate statement, the media office said Israeli forces were in control of 77 percent of the Gaza Strip, either through ground forces or evacuation orders and bombardment that keeps residents away from their homes.
The armed wing of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said in separate statements on Sunday that fighters carried out several ambushes and attacks using bombs and anti-tank rockets against Israeli forces operating in several areas across Gaza.
On Friday the Israeli military said it had conducted more strikes in Gaza overnight, hitting 75 targets including weapons storage facilities and rocket launchers.
Israel launched an air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas militants’ cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people by Israeli tallies with 251 hostages abducted into Gaza.
The conflict has killed more than 53,900 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and devastated the coastal strip. Aid groups say signs of severe malnutrition are widespread.
Israeli military says it intercepted missile from Yemen

- Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have continued to fire missiles at Israel in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza
CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Sunday that it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen toward Israel.
Sirens sounded in several areas in the country, the Israeli military said earlier.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis have continued to fire missiles at Israel in what they say is solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Most of the group’s missile have been intercepted or have fallen short.
The Houthis did not immediately comment on the latest missile launch.
Syria to help locate missing Americans

DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities have agreed to help the United States locate and return Americans who went missing in the war-torn country, a US envoy said on Sunday.
“The new Syrian government has agreed to assist the USA in locating and returning USA citizens or their remains. The families of Austin Tice, Majd Kamalmaz, and Kayla Mueller must have closure,” US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack wrote on X.
Turkiye, PKK must both change for peace: former militant

- For years, Yuksel Genc was a fighter with the Kurdish rebel group
- Genc herself joined the militants in 1995 when she was a 20-year-old university student in Istanbul
DIYARBAKIR, Turkiye: “When you try and explain peace to people, there is a very serious lack of trust,” said Yuksel Genc, a former fighter with the PKK, which recently ended its decades-long armed struggle against the Turkish state.
Talking over a glass of tea in a square in Diyarbakir, the biggest city in Turkiye’s Kurdish-dominated southeast, this 50-year-old former fighter with long auburn curls is worried about how the nascent rapprochement between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) will play out.
“The guerillas are sincere, but they don’t think the state is,” said Genc, her words briefly interrupted by the roar of a fighter jet flying overhead.
“They think the government does not trust them.”
For years, she was a fighter with the Kurdish rebel group, which on May 12 said it would disarm and disband, ending a four-decade armed struggle against the Turkish state that cost more than 40,000 lives.
The historic move came in response to an appeal by its jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan, arrested in 1999 and serving life in solitary ever since on a prison island near Istanbul.
Genc herself joined the militants in 1995 when she was a 20-year-old university student in Istanbul.
“At that time, many Kurdish villages were being burnt down, and we were constantly hearing about villages being evacuated, people being displaced and unsolved murders,” she said.
She described it as “a time of terrible repression.”
“You felt trapped, as if there was no other way than to join the guerrillas,” she said.
Four years later, after years in exile, Ocalan was snatched by Turkish commandos in a Hollywood-style operation in Nairobi.
“Ocalan’s capture provoked a deep sense of rage among the guerrillas, who feared it would mean the Kurdish cause would be destroyed,” she said.
But it was Ocalan himself who called for calm and insisted it was time for the Kurdish question to be resolved democratically. He urged his followers to go to Turkiye, hand over their weapons and seek dialogue.
“He thought our arrival would symbolize (the PKK’s) goodwill, and persuade the state to negotiate.”
Genc was part of the first so-called “groups for peace and a democratic solution” — a group of three women and five men who arrived in Turkiye on October 1, 1999 on what they knew would be a “sacrificial” mission.
After a long march through the mountains, they arrived in the southeastern village of Semdinli under the watchful eye of “thousands” of Turkish soldiers huddled behind rocks.
Handing over their weapons, they were transferred to the city of Van 200 kilometers (140 miles) to the north where they were arrested.
Genc spent the next nearly six years behind bars.
“For us, these peace groups were a mission,” she said. “The solution had to come through dialogue.”
After getting out, she continued to struggle for Kurdish rights, swapping her gun for a pen to become a journalist and researcher for the Sosyo Politik think tank.
Even so, her writing earned her another three-and-a-half years behind bars.
“Working for peace in Turkiye has a cost,” she said with a shrug.
When Recep Tayyip Erdogan became prime minister in 2003, there was hope for a new breakthrough. But several attempts to reach an agreement went nowhere — until now.
“Like in 1999, the PKK is moving toward a non-violent struggle,” she said.
“But laying down arms is not the end of the story. It is preparing to become a political organization.”
Resolving the decades-long conflict requires a change on both sides however, said Genc.
“It essentially involves a mutual transformation,” she argued.
“It is impossible for the state to stick with its old ways without transforming, while trying to resolve a problem as old and divisive as the Kurdish question.”
Despite the recent opening, Genc does not speak of hope.
“Life has taught us to be realistic: years of experience have generated an ocean of insecurity,” she said.
“(PKK fighters) have shown their courage by saying they will lay down their weapons without being defeated. But they haven’t seen any concrete results.”
So far, the government, which initiated the process last autumn, has not taken any steps nor made any promises, she pointed out.
“Why haven’t the sick prisoners been released? And those who have served their sentences — why aren’t they benefiting from the climate of peace?“
And Ocalan, she said, was still being held in solitary despite promises of a change in his situation.
The number of people jailed for being PKK members or close to the group has never been revealed by the Turkish authorities.
“The fact that Ocalan is still not in a position to be able to lead this process toward a democratic solution is a major drawback from the militants’ point of view,” she said.
“Even our daily life remains totally shaped by security constraints across the region with the presence of the army, the roadblocks — all that has to change.”