GAZA STRIP: Fighting raged Monday in and around the besieged Gaza Strip’s largest hospital complex where Israel said its forces killed and arrested Hamas militants, as Palestinians fled by foot under heavy bombardment.
While the army launched the overnight raid at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, the Israeli government sent the head of its Mossad spy agency to Qatar for renewed talks toward a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
The devastating war since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel has left roughly half of Gazans — around 1.1 million people — experiencing “catastrophic” hunger, a UN-backed food security assessment warned.
The expert report is “exhibit A for the need for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire,” said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, decrying an “entirely man-made disaster.”
“We must act now to prevent the unthinkable, the unacceptable and the unjustifiable,” he said.
Gaza’s soaring civilian death toll and large-scale destruction have hardened global opposition to Israel’s military operation and siege, including accusations of deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Israel’s military campaign had turned long-blockaded Gaza from the world’s “greatest open-air prison” into its biggest “open-air graveyard,” and that Israel was using famine as a “weapon of war.”
Foreign Minister Israel Katz replied that “Israel allows extensive humanitarian aid into Gaza” and accused Borrell of “attacking Israel.”
In the latest heavy battle, Israeli forces raided Al-Shifa in an operation the army said targeted senior Hamas militants.
Witnesses reported air strikes and tanks near the complex crowded with thousands of Palestinian patients and displaced people.
AFP images showed black smoke engulfing parts of the city after bombardment, with Palestinians fleeing by foot along rubble-strewn roads as others treated the wounded in the street.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said nearby residents had reported dozens of casualties who could not be helped “due to the intensity of gunfire and artillery shelling.”
An AFP journalist witnessed air strikes on buildings in the area around Al-Shifa and reported seeing “hundreds of people, mostly children, women, and the elderly, fleeing their homes.”
The Israeli military, which had asked Gazans to evacuate the area, said 20 militants were killed and dozens of others were detained at the hospital.
The army identified one of the fatalities as Hamas internal security official Fayq Al-Mabhouh, saying that “weapons were located in the room adjacent to where he was eliminated.”
A Gaza police source confirmed his death and said he was a brigadier general in the force. Relatives said he was also the brother of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, one of the founders of Hamas’s armed wing slain in Dubai in 2010.
Israeli forces previously raided Al-Shifa in November, when ground operations were focused on northern Gaza. In January Israel said it had “completed the dismantling” of Hamas’s command structure in the area.
Israel has repeatedly said the complex housed an underground Hamas control base, which the militants have denied.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “terribly worried” about the renewed fighting around Al-Shifa which was “endangering health workers, patients and civilians.”
The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on October 7 that resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also seized about 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.
Israel has carried out a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive that Gaza’s health ministry says has killed at least 31,726 people, most of them women and children.
As the fighting flared around Al-Shifa, elsewhere in Gaza City a massive crowd gathered at a UN food distribution center to collect bags of flour.
“There’s nothing to eat or drink. Children are dying,” said resident Umm Omar Al-Masharwai.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which operates the facility and coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, has faced funding cuts since Israel accused about a dozen of its employees of involvement in the October 7 attack.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said Monday he intended to visit Gaza but had been denied entry by “Israeli authorities,” a claim Israel did not immediately comment on.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi accused Israel of “starving children to death” in its siege of the Gaza Strip, and humanitarian charity Oxfam said Israel was “systematically and deliberately” blocking aid.
Global concern has focussed on Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians now live, many of them in crowded shelters and tent cities near the Egyptian border.
Repeated Israeli warnings of a looming ground invasion have raised fears of an even worse humanitarian catastrophe.
Responding to concerns voiced by top ally the United States and other governments, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday reiterated that civilians would be evacuated from Rafah before any ground attack, without detailing where to.
Mediation efforts toward a truce were expected to resume, following a week-long ceasefire in November.
A meeting in Qatar between Israel’s Mossad spy chief, David Barnea, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Egyptian officials “is expected to take place today,” a source close to the talks said.
It follows the latest proposal submitted by Hamas for a six-week truce, vastly more aid into Gaza and the initial release of about 42 hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
During the proposed truce, Israeli forces would withdraw from “all cities and populated areas” in Gaza, according to a Hamas official.
Netanyahu’s office said on Friday that Hamas’s new proposal was “unrealistic” but that Israel would send a delegation to Doha.
The White House said US President Joe Biden and Netanyahu spoke on Monday in their first call for over a month, with tensions rising over the war and its impact on civilians.
Battle rages at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital
https://arab.news/m74a6
Battle rages at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital
- Witnesses reported air strikes and tanks near the complex crowded with thousands of Palestinian patients and displaced people
- UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said Monday he intended to visit Gaza but had been denied entry by “Israeli authorities”
Gaza aid situation not much improved, US says as deadline for Israel looms
- Washington told Israel on Oct. 13 it had 30 days to take steps to address humanitarian crisis in Gaza
- Israel on Monday announced cancelling agreement with UN relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA)
WASHINGTON: Israel has taken some measures to increase aid access to Gaza but has so far failed to significantly turn around the humanitarian situation in the enclave, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday, as a deadline set by the US to improve the situation approaches.
The Biden administration told Israel in an Oct. 13 letter it had 30 days to take specific steps to address the dire humanitarian crisis in the strip, which has been pummeled for more than a year by Israeli ground and air operations that Israel says are aimed at rooting out Hamas militants.
Aid workers and UN officials say humanitarian conditions continue to be dire in Gaza.
“As of today, the situation has not significantly turned around. We have seen an increase in some measurements. We’ve seen an increase in the number of crossings that are open. But just if you look at the stipulated recommendations in the letter, those have not been met,” Miller said.
Miller said the results so far were “not good enough” but stressed that the 30-day period had not elapsed.
He declined to say what consequences Israel would face if it failed to implement the recommendations.
“What I can tell you that we will do is we will follow the law,” he said.
Washington, Israel’s main supplier of weapons, has frequently pressed Israel to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza since the war with Hamas began with the Palestinian militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel.
The Oct. 13 letter, sent by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, said a failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing the measures on aid access may have implications for US policy and law.
Section 620i of the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits military aid to countries that impede delivery of US humanitarian assistance.
Israel on Monday said it was canceling its agreement with the UN relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), citing accusations that some UNRWA staff had Hamas links.
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said Israel had scaled back the entry of aid trucks into the Gaza Strip to an average of 30 trucks a day, the lowest in a long time.
An Israeli government spokesman said no limit had been imposed on aid entering Gaza, with 47 aid trucks entering northern Gaza on Sunday alone.
Israeli statistics reviewed by Reuters last week showed that aid shipments allowed into Gaza in October remained at their lowest levels since October 2023.
Israel issues 7,000 new draft orders for ultra-Orthodox members
JERUSALEM: Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant issued 7,000 additional army draft orders Monday for individuals from the country’s ultra-Orthodox community, historically exempted from mandatory service until a June Supreme Court decision.
Gallant approved the Israeli army’s “recommendation to issue an additional 7,000 orders for screening and evaluation processes for ultra-Orthodox draft-eligible individuals in the upcoming phase, which is expected to begin in the coming days,” the defense ministry said in a statement.
The order comes after a first round of 3,000 draft orders were sent out in July, sparking protests from the ultra-Orthodox community.
Monday’s orders come at a time when Israel is struggling to bolster troop numbers as it fights a multi-front war, with ground forces deployed to fight Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“The defense minister concluded that the war and the challenges we face underscore the (Israeli army’s) need for additional soldiers. This is a tangible operational need that requires broad national mobilization from all parts of society,” the ministry said.
In Israel, military service is mandatory for Jewish men for 32 months, and for 24 months for Jewish women.
The ultra-Orthodox account for 14 percent of Israel’s Jewish population, according to the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), representing about 1.3 million people.
About 66,000 of those of conscription age are exempted, according to the army.
Under a rule adopted at Israel’s creation in 1948, when it applied to only 400 people, the ultra-Orthodox have historically been exempted from military service if they dedicate themselves to the study of sacred Jewish texts.
In June, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the draft of yeshiva (seminary) students after deciding the government could not keep up the exemption “without an adequate legal framework.”
Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 43,374 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to Gaza health ministry figures which the United Nations considers to be reliable.
Since late September, Israel has broadened the focus of its war to Lebanon, where it intensified air strikes and later sent in ground troops, following nearly a year of tit-for-tat cross-border fire with Hezbollah.
Palestinians build new lives in Cairo’s ‘Little Gaza’
CAIRO: Palestinian Bassem Abu Aoun serves Gaza-style turkey shawarma at his restaurant in an eastern Cairo neighborhood, where a growing number of businesses opened by those fleeing war have many dubbing the area “Little Gaza.”
“It was a big gamble,” said the 56-year-old about opening his restaurant, Hay Al-Rimal, named after his neighborhood in Gaza City, now devastated by Israeli bombardment.
“I could live for a year on the money I had, or open a business and leave the rest to fate,” he said.
So less than four months after fleeing with his family to neighboring Egypt from the besieged Palestinian territory, he opened his eatery in Cairo’s Nasr City neighborhood.
The establishment is one of the many cafes, falafel joints, shawarma spots and sweets shops being started by newly arriving Palestinian entrepreneurs in the area — despite only being granted temporary stays by Egypt.
These spaces have become a refuge for the traumatized Gazan community in Cairo, offering a livelihood to business owners, many of whom lost everything in the war.
“Even if the war stops now in Gaza, it would take me at least two or three years to get my life back on track,” Abu Aoun said.
“Everything has been wiped out there,” he continued.
His patrons are mainly fellow Palestinians, chatting in their distinct Gazan dialect as they devour sandwiches that remind them of home.
On a wall next to his shop was a mural of intertwining Egyptian and Palestinian flags.
“I have a responsibility to my family and children who are in university,” said the restaurateur, whose two eateries in Gaza have now been completely destroyed.
Abu Aoun and his family are among more than 120,000 Palestinians who arrived in Egypt between November last year and May, according to Palestinian officials in Egypt.
They crossed through the Rafah border crossing, Gaza’s only exit point to the outside world until Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side in early May and closed it ever since.
Although Egypt insists it won’t do Israel’s bidding by allowing permanent refugee camps on its territory, it had allowed in medical evacuees, dual passport holders and others who managed to escape.
Many drained their life savings to escape, paying thousands of dollars a head to the private Egyptian travel agency Hala, the only company coordinating Gaza evacuations.
War broke out in Gaza on October 7, 2023, after Hamas’s surprise attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed 43,374 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry which the UN considers reliable.
Gazan-style desserts
Opening the restaurant was not an easy decision for Abu Aoun, but he says he’s glad he did it.
“I’ll open a second branch and expand,” he said with a smile, while watching a family from Central Asia being served a traditional Gazan salad.
Nearby is Kazem, a branch of a decades-old, much-loved Gaza establishment serving iced dessert drinks.
Its Palestinian owner, Kanaan Kazem, opened the branch in September after settling in Cairo.
The shop offers ice cream on top of a drink sprinkled with pistachios, a Gazan-style treat known as “bouza w barad,” which has become a fast favorite among the Egyptian patrons filling the shop.
“There’s a certain fear and hesitation about opening a business in a place where people don’t know you,” said Kazem, 66.
But “if we’re destined never to return, we must adapt to this new reality and start a new life,” he said, standing alongside his sons.
Kazem hopes to return to Gaza, but his son Nader, who manages the shop, has decided to stay in Egypt.
“There are more opportunities, safety and stability here, and it’s a large market,” said Nader, a father of two.
Gazan patron Bashar Mohammed, 25, takes comfort in the flourishing Palestinian businesses.
“Little Gaza reminds me of Gaza’s spirit and beauty and makes me feel like I’m really in Gaza,” he said.
After more than a year of war, Gaza has become uninhabitable due to extensive destruction and damage to infrastructure, according to the United Nations.
“It’d be hard to go back to Gaza. There’s no life left there,” he said, taking a deep breath.
“I have to build a new life here.”
Israel accuses Turkiye of ‘malice’ over UN arms embargo call
- Turkiye’s letter, seen by AFP Monday, called the “staggering” civilian death toll “unconscionable and intolerable”
UNITED NATIONS, United States: Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations on Monday accused Turkiye of “malice,” after Ankara submitted a letter signed by 52 countries calling for a halt in arms deliveries to Israel over the war in Gaza.
“What else can be expected from a country whose actions are driven by malice in an attempt to create conflicts with the support of the ‘Axis of Evil’ countries,” said Ambassador Danny Danon, using a pejorative term to describe the Arab countries who signed the letter.
Turkiye’s foreign ministry said Sunday it had submitted the letter to the United Nations, with the signatories including the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Israel has faced international criticism for the conduct of its war in Gaza, where its offensive has killed at least 43,374 people, most of them civilians, according to health ministry figures which the United Nations considers to be reliable.
The war was sparked by Palestinian armed group Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
“This letter is further proof that the UN is led by some sinister countries and not by the liberal countries that support the values of justice and morality,” said Danon.
Turkiye’s letter, seen by AFP Monday, called the “staggering” civilian death toll “unconscionable and intolerable.”
“We therefore make this collective call for immediate steps to be taken to halt the provision or transfer of arms, munitions and related equipment to Israel, the occupying Power, in all cases where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that they may be used in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” the letter said.
It added that the UN Security Council (UNSC) must take steps to ensure compliance with its resolutions “which are being flagrantly violated.”
The UNSC called in March for a ceasefire in Gaza, but has struggled to speak with a unified voice on the issue due to the veto wielded by Israel’s key ally, the United States.
Asked about the joint letter on Monday, the spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he had not seen it.
Gaza aid situation not much improved, US says as deadline for Israel looms
- Aid workers and UN officials say humanitarian conditions continue to be dire in Gaza
WASHINGTON: Israel has taken some measures to increase aid access to Gaza but has so far failed to significantly turn around the humanitarian situation in the enclave, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday, as a deadline set by the US to improve the situation approaches.
The Biden administration told Israel in an Oct. 13 letter it had 30 days to take specific steps to address the dire humanitarian crisis in the strip, which has been pummeled for more than a year by Israeli ground and air operations that Israel says are aimed at rooting out Hamas militants.
Aid workers and UN officials say humanitarian conditions continue to be dire in Gaza.
“As of today, the situation has not significantly turned around. We have seen an increase in some measurements. We’ve seen an increase in the number of crossings that are open. But just if you look at the stipulated recommendations in the letter, those have not been met,” Miller said.
Miller said the results so far were “not good enough” but stressed that the 30-day period had not elapsed.
He declined to say what consequences Israel would face if it failed to implement the recommendations.
“What I can tell you that we will do is we will follow the law,” he said.
Washington, Israel’s main supplier of weapons, has frequently pressed Israel to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza since the war with Hamas began with the Palestinian militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel.
The Oct. 13 letter, sent by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, said a failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing the measures on aid access may have implications for US policy and law.
Section 620i of the US Foreign Assistance Act prohibits military aid to countries that impede delivery of US humanitarian assistance.
Israel on Monday said it was canceling its agreement with the UN relief agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), citing accusations that some UNRWA staff had Hamas links.
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said Israel had scaled back the entry of aid trucks into the Gaza Strip to an average of 30 trucks a day, the lowest in a long time.
An Israeli government spokesman said no limit had been imposed on aid entering Gaza, with 47 aid trucks entering northern Gaza on Sunday alone.
Israeli statistics reviewed by Reuters last week showed that aid shipments allowed into Gaza in October remained at their lowest levels since October 2023.
