US rejects Hamas plea to halt Gaza airdrops as fighting rages on

This picture taken from Israel's southern border with the Gaza Strip shows parachutes of humanitarian aid dropping over the besieged Palestinian territory on March 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)
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Updated 27 March 2024
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US rejects Hamas plea to halt Gaza airdrops as fighting rages on

  • Israel has killed at least 32,414 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: The United States said Tuesday it would continue airdrops of aid to besieged Gaza, despite pleas from Hamas to stop the practice after it said 18 people had died trying to reach food packages.
Hamas demanded that its enemy Israel instead allow more aid trucks to enter the war-torn territory, which the United Nations has warned is on the brink of a “man-made famine” after nearly six months of war.
Fighting raged unabated on Tuesday, a day after the UN Security Council passed its first resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire” and urging the release of the roughly 130 hostages Israel says remain in Gaza, including 34 captives who are presumed dead.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 12 people including some children were killed when an air strike hit a displacement camp late on Tuesday near the southern city of Khan Yunis.
And Israeli forces were continuing an assault on Gaza City’s largest hospital, and their forces have surrounded two other medical facilities in Khan Yunis.
The Palestinian Red Crescent warned that thousands were trapped in the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis and “their lives are in danger.”
The war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel has shattered Gaza’s infrastructure and aid agencies say all of its 2.4 million people are now in need of humanitarian help.
Six people were killed in stampedes and 12 others drowned off the territory’s Mediterranean coast trying to salvage aid packages, the Hamas government and the Swiss-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said.
“People are dying just to get a can of tuna,” Gaza resident Mohamad Al-Sabaawi told AFP, holding a can in his hand after a scramble over an aid package.

Hamas in a statement called for “an immediate end to airdrop operations” and “the immediate and rapid opening of land crossings.”
The UN children’s fund, UNICEF, said vastly more aid must be rushed into Gaza by road rather than air or sea to avert an “imminent famine.”
UNICEF spokesman James Elder pointed out that the necessary help was “a matter of kilometers away” in aid-filled trucks waiting across Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
The US National Security Council said in a statement later they would continue trying to get aid in on the road.
But the statement added that airdrops were “one of the many ways that we are helping to provide desperately needed aid to Palestinians in Gaza, and we will continue to do so.”
AFPTV footage showed crowds rushing toward aid packages on Tuesday parachuting from planes sent by Jordan, Egypt, the UAE and Germany.

Israeli troops meanwhile battled Hamas with no sign of a let-up, with the military saying its jets had struck more than 60 targets, including tunnels and buildings “in which armed terrorists were identified.”
The Security Council resolution passed Monday demanded a ceasefire for the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan that should lead to a “lasting” truce.
Israel’s top ally the United States, which had blocked previous resolutions, abstained from the vote, prompting Israel to cancel a planned visit by senior officials.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Israel was experiencing “unprecedented political isolation” and losing US “protection” at the Security Council.
Washington has baulked at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s determination to launch an assault on Rafah, a southern city where most of Gaza’s population is now sheltering.
The US has also expressed increasing concern over the humanitarian toll.
Ahead of a meeting with his Israeli counterpart, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that in Gaza “the number of civilian casualties is far too high, and the amount of humanitarian aid is far too low.”

The October 7 attack resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Hamas has killed at least 32,414 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Officials from the two sides are in indirect mediated talks in Qatar aimed at sealing a ceasefire and a hostage release.
But both Hamas and Netanyahu said the talks were failing and blamed each other.
Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said on Tuesday the talks were “ongoing,” adding there had been no “development that would lead to thinking that one of the teams has pulled out of the negotiations.”

On the ground in Gaza, dozens of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles surrounded the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, where thousands of displaced people have sought refuge, witnesses said.
The health ministry said shots were fired around the sprawling complex, but no raid had yet taken place.
At Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest, Israeli troops have been engaged in heavy fighting for nine days. Israel claims to have killed 170 Palestinian militants and arrested hundreds.
On Monday, the Israeli military reported killing about 20 fighters in a day around Al-Amal Hospital in Khan Yunis, in combat and air strikes.
Israel has labelled its action “precise operational activities” and said it had taken care to avoid harm to civilians, but aid agencies have voiced concern for non-combatants caught up in the fighting.
Palestinians living near Al-Shifa have reported corpses in the streets, constant bombardment and the rounding up of men who are stripped to their underwear and questioned.
 

 


Israeli strikes batter Lebanon, killing five medics

Updated 22 November 2024
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Israeli strikes batter Lebanon, killing five medics

  • Israel has pushed on with its intense military campaign against Hezbollah, tempering hopes that efforts by a US envoy could lead to an imminent ceasefire
  • Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at Israeli troops east of Khiyam at least four times on Friday

BEIRUT: Israeli strikes battered southern Lebanon and the outskirts of the capital Beirut on Friday, killing at least five medics, as ground troops clashed with Hezbollah fighters in the south.
Israel has pushed on with its intense military campaign against the Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, tempering hopes that efforts by a US envoy could lead to an imminent ceasefire.
US mediator Amos Hochstein said earlier this week in Beirut that a truce was “within our grasp.” He traveled on to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz before returning to Washington, according to the news outlet Axios.
His trip aimed to end more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah along Lebanon’s southern border, which escalated dramatically when Israel ramped up its strikes in late September and sent ground troops into Lebanon on Oct. 1.
Israeli troops have fought Hezbollah in a strip of towns all along the border and this week pushed deeper to the edges of Khiyam, a town some six km (four miles) from the border. Hezbollah said it had fired rockets at Israeli troops east of Khiyam at least four times on Friday.
Lebanese security sources told Reuters that Israeli troops had also advanced in a string of villages to the west as well. They said Israel was most likely trying to isolate Khiyam ahead of a major attack on the town.
Israeli strikes on two other villages in southern Lebanon killed a total of five medics from a rescue force affiliated with Hezbollah, the Lebanese health ministry said.
The more than 3,500 people killed by Israeli strikes over the last year include more than 200 medics, the health ministry said.
Israel says its aim is to secure the return home of tens of thousands of people evacuated from Israel’s north due to rocket attacks by Hezbollah, which began firing across the border in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.
Israel also mounted more strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, a once densely populated stronghold of Hezbollah.
It issued evacuation orders on the social media platform X for several buildings in the area on Friday. Reuters footage showed one of the strikes appearing to pierce the center of a multi-story building, sending the whole structure toppling in a massive cloud of smoke.


UN reports heavy clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah in south Lebanon

Updated 22 November 2024
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UN reports heavy clashes between Israeli troops and Hezbollah in south Lebanon

  • “We are aware of heavy shelling in the vicinity of our bases,” UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti said
  • Asked if the peacekeepers and staff at the headquarters are safe, Tenenti said: “Yes for the moment”

BEIRUT: Israeli troops fought fierce battles with Hezbollah fighters on Friday in different areas in south Lebanon, including a coastal town that is home to the headquarters of UN peacekeepers.
A spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL told The Associated Press that they are monitoring “heavy clashes” in the coastal town of Naqoura and the village of Chamaa to the northeast.
UNIFIL’s headquarters are located in Naqoura in Lebanon’s southern edge close to the border with Israel.
“We are aware of heavy shelling in the vicinity of our bases,” UNIFIL spokesman Andrea Tenenti said. Asked if the peacekeepers and staff at the headquarters are safe, Tenenti said: “Yes for the moment.”
Several UNIFIL posts have been hit since Israel began its ground invasion of Lebanon on Oct. 1, leaving a number of peacekeepers wounded.
The fighting came a day after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister and a Hamas military leader, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity over their 13-month war in Gaza and the October 2023 attack on Israel respectively.
The warrant marked the first time that a sitting leader of a major Western ally has been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by a global court of justice.
Israel’s war has caused heavy destruction across Gaza, decimated parts of the territory and driven almost the entire population of 2.3 million people from their homes, leaving most dependent on aid to survive.
Israel launched its war in Gaza after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel has also launched airstrikes against Lebanon after the Hezbollah militant group began firing rockets, drones and missiles into Israel the day after Hamas’ attack last October. A full-blown war erupted in September after nearly a year of lower-level conflict.


Gaza ministry: hospitals to cut or stop services ‘within 48 hours’ over fuel shortages

Updated 22 November 2024
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Gaza ministry: hospitals to cut or stop services ‘within 48 hours’ over fuel shortages

  • All hospitals in Gaza would have to stop or reduce services “within 48 hours“

GAZA: The Hamas government’s health ministry warned Friday all hospitals in Gaza would have to stop or reduce services “within 48 hours” for lack of fuel, blaming Israel for blocking its entry.
“We raise an urgent warning as all hospitals in Gaza Strip will stop working or reduce their services within 48 hours due to the occupation’s (Israel’s) obstruction of fuel entry,” Marwan Al-Hams, director of Gaza’s field hospitals, said during a press conference.


Israel says to end ‘administrative detention’ for West Bank settlers

Updated 22 November 2024
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Israel says to end ‘administrative detention’ for West Bank settlers

  • Practice allows for detainees to be held for long periods without being charged or appear in court
  • The Palestinian Prisoners Club advocacy group said in August that 3,432 Palestinians were held in administrative detention

JERUSALEM: Israeli authorities will stop holding Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank under administrative detention, or incarceration without trial, the defense ministry announced Friday.
The practice allows for detainees to be held for long periods without being charged or appear in court, and is often used against Palestinians who Israel deems security threats.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said it was “inappropriate” for Israel to employ administrative detention against settlers who “face severe Palestinian terror threats and unjustified international sanctions.”
But, according to settlement watchdog Peace Now, it is one of only few effective tools that Israeli authorities to prevent settler attacks against Palestinians, which have surged in the West Bank over the past year.
Katz said in a statement issued by his office that prosecution or “other preventive measures” would be used to deal with criminal acts in the West Bank.
B’Tselem, an Israeli rights group, said authorities use administrative detention “extensively and routinely” to hold thousands of Palestinians for lengthy periods of time.
The Palestinian Prisoners Club advocacy group said in August that 3,432 Palestinians were held in administrative detention.
Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Friday that eight settlers were held under the same practice in November.
Yonatan Mizrahi, director of settlement watch for Peace Now, said that although administrative detention was mostly used in the West Bank to detain Palestinians, it was one of the few effective tools for temporarily removing the threat of settler violence through detention.
“The cancelation of administrative detention orders for settlers alone is a cynical... move that whitewashes and normalizes escalating Jewish terrorism under the cover of war,” the group said in a statement, referring to a spike in settler attacks throughout the Israel-Hamas conflict over the past 13 months.
Western governments, including Israel’s ally and military backer the United States, have recently imposed sanctions on Israeli settlers and settler organizations over ties to violence against Palestinians.
On Monday, US authorities announced sanctions against Amana, a movement that backs settlement development, and others who have “ties to violent actors in the West Bank.”
“Amana is a key part of the Israeli extremist settlement movement and maintains ties to various persons previously sanctioned by the US government and its partners for perpetrating violence in the West Bank,” the US Treasury said.
Excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, the West Bank — which Israel has occupied since 1967 — is home to three million Palestinians as well as about 490,000 Israelis living in settlements that are illegal under international law.


UK would arrest Netanyahu over ICC warrant: Senior politician 

Updated 22 November 2024
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UK would arrest Netanyahu over ICC warrant: Senior politician 

  • Emily Thornberry: Britain has ‘obligation under Rome Convention’ to arrest Israeli PM if he enters country 
  • Court: ‘Reasonable grounds to believe’ Netanyahu responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity in Gaza

LONDON: The UK will arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he enters the country, a senior British politician has said.

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu on Thursday for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, alongside his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, pertaining to the Gaza war.

Emily Thornberry — Labour chair of the foreign affairs committee, and former shadow foreign secretary and shadow attorney general — told Sky News: “If Netanyahu comes to Britain, our obligation under the Rome Convention would be to arrest him under the warrant from the ICC.

“(It is) not really a question of should — we are required to, because we are members of the ICC.”

UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has refused to be drawn on whether Netanyahu would be arrested if he set foot on British soil, saying it “wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment.”

She told Sky: “We’ve always respected the importance of international law, but in the majority of the cases that they pursue, they don’t become part of the British legal process.

“What I can say is that obviously, the UK government’s position remains that we believe the focus should be on getting a ceasefire in Gaza.”

Netanyahu’s arrest warrant is the first to be issued against the premier of a major Western ally by an international court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

His office denounced the warrant as “anti-Semitic,” adding that Israel “rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions.” Israel is not an ICC member and rejects the court’s jurisdiction.

US President Joe Biden called the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant “outrageous,” adding: “Whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he plans to invite Netanyahu to visit Budapest, adding that the arrest warrant will “not be observed” by his government.

The Italian and French governments, however, have indicated that Netanyahu will be arrested if he visits either country.

The ICC said on Thursday it has “reasonable grounds to believe” that Netanyahu and Gallant “bear criminal responsibility” for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”

The court also issued a warrant for Hamas commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Israel says Al-Masri, believed to have been the mastermind behind the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, was killed in Gaza earlier this year.

The ICC said it issued the warrant for his arrest because of insufficient evidence to prove his death.