JERUSALEM: Israel launched more deadly strikes on besieged Gaza on Thursday as world powers watched nervously whether the country would retaliate against a weekend attack by its arch enemy Iran.
The Israeli army said it had bombed dozens of targets in the Palestinian coastal territory of 2.4 million people, more than six months into the bloodiest ever Gaza war.
Weeks of talks toward an Israel-Hamas truce and hostage release deal have stalled, according to Qatar’s prime minister who said the Gulf emirate was now “reassessing our role as mediator.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has vowed to destroy Hamas over its October 7 attack on Israel, also stressed on Wednesday that Israel “reserves the right to protect itself” against Iran.
The Islamic republic last weekend carried out its first ever attack to directly target its regional foe but Israel, backed by its allies, intercepted most of the 300 missiles and drones and suffered no deaths.
Iran’s attack was retaliation for an April 1 air strike, which it blamed on Israel, on the consular annex of its embassy in Damascus.
The international community has urged de-escalation since Iran’s attack on Israel which came after months of high tensions and violence involving Israel and Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
“We are on the edge of a war in the Middle East which will be sending shock-waves to the rest of the world,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said ahead of a G7 meeting in Capri, Italy.
Iran has warned of “a fierce and severe response” if Israel launches any further attacks after seven of its Revolutionary Guards died in the consular strike.
However, Tehran had also sought to calm tensions through indirect diplomatic channels with its other major adversary, the United States, which is Israel’s top ally and military supplier.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, in New York for a UN meeting, said Iran had “tried to tell the United States clearly” that it is “not looking for the expansion of tension in the region.”
Washington has made clear it won’t join any Israeli attack on Iran, but has pledged to instead impose new punitive sanctions against Iran.
The European Union on Wednesday said it would impose new sanctions on Iran’s drone and missile producers.
Israeli public broadcaster Kan said Netanyahu, after discussions with US President Joe Biden, decided not to proceed with pre-arranged plans for retaliatory strikes on Iran.
“Diplomatic sensitivities came into play,” a senior Israeli official told Kan, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official added that there would be a response, but that it would be different to the one initially planned.
US broadcaster ABC News, citing three unnamed Israeli sources, reported that Israel had “prepared for and then aborted retaliatory strikes against Iran on at least two nights this past week.”
Among the range of possible responses considered by Israel were an attack on Iranian proxies in the region or a cyberattack, the sources told ABC.
German airline Lufthansa extended its suspension of flights to and from Tehran and Beirut to the end of April and said its planes would continue avoiding Iranian airspace.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz welcomed a European Union announcement of sanctions on Iran as “an important step” and wrote on X that “Iran must be stopped now before it is too late.”
Iran’s attack on Israel “is succeeding in taking the focus, particularly the media spotlight, off of the Gaza famine and the Gaza war and the loss of life that is taking place there,” Roxane Farmanfarmaian, a Middle East/North Africa specialist at the University of Cambridge’s POLIS department, told AFP.
“And that was very much I think what Israel planned to do,” she said.
An AFP correspondent in Gaza said Israeli artillery shelling and aircraft strikes again hit Gaza City overnight.
The Israeli military said it struck dozens of militant targets over the past day.
The war started after Hamas launched their unprecedented attack on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
The militants also took about 250 hostages. Israel estimates 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 who are presumed dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 33,970 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the latest toll on Thursday from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Gaza’s civil defense said Thursday it had recovered 11 more bodies in the southern city of Khan Yunis during the night.
Israel had also bombed the far-southern city of Rafah.
Gaza rescue crews recovered the corpses of eight family members, including five children and two women, from a house in Rafah’s Al-Salam neighborhood, the civil defense service said.
One woman in Rafah, Jamalat Ramidan, told AFP she and crying children fled the carnage of a strike, stumbling over “body parts and corpses scattered all over the place.”
Talks toward a ceasefire have stalled, said Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, despite months of effort also involving United States and Egyptian officials.
He said his country was undertaking “a complete re-evaluation of its role because there has been damage to Qatar,” which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
Israel has faced growing global opposition to the Gaza war, which the United Nations and aid agencies say has left the north of the territory on the brink of famine.
Netanyahu on Wednesday rejected this, saying Israeli efforts were “above and beyond” what is needed “on the humanitarian issue,” his office said.
The UN Security Council was preparing to vote soon on an Algeria-drafted resolution for full United Nations membership for a Palestinian state, diplomatic sources said.
However, the veto-wielding United States has repeatedly expressed opposition to such a move.
Israel bombs Gaza as Middle East tense after Iranian attack
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Israel bombs Gaza as Middle East tense after Iranian attack
- “We are on the edge of a war in the Middle East which will be sending shock-waves to the rest of the world,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said
- Iran has warned of “a fierce and severe response” if Israel launches any further attacks after seven of its Revolutionary Guards died in the consular strike
In post-Assad Damascus, hundreds protest for democracy, women’s rights
- Despite HTS’s reassurances, many Syrians fear the new administration will move toward religious rule that marginalizes minority communities and excludes women from public life
DAMASCUS: In Damascus’s Ummayad Square, hundreds gathered Thursday, demanding a democratic state that includes women in public life, marking the first such demonstration since Islamist-led rebels toppled longtime ruler Bashar Assad.
Women and men, young and old, chanted slogans including “No to religious rule,” “God is for religion and the homeland is for all,” and “We want a democracy, not a religious state.”
“We are here in peaceful action to safeguard the gains of the revolution that has let us stand here today in complete freedom,” said Ayham Hamsho, 48, a prosthetic limb maker in the country torn by more than 13 years of war.
“For more than 50 years, we have been under tyrannical rule that has blocked party and political activity in the country,” he told AFP.
“Today we are trying to organize our affairs” in order to achieve “a secular, civil, democratic state” that is decided at the ballot box, he added.
For days, Syrians celebrated in Ummayad Square after rebels led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham took the capital on December 8 and toppled Assad after a lightning offensive.
Rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and proscribed as a “terrorist” organization by several Western governments, HTS has sought to moderate its rhetoric by assuring protection for the country’s many religious and ethnic minorities.
It has appointed a transitional leadership to run the country until March 1.
Despite the reassurances, many Syrians fear the new administration will move toward religious rule that marginalizes minority communities and excludes women from public life.
On Thursday, some protesters held signs reading simply the word “secular,” while one man held a sign with the scales of justice hanging equally and the words “men” and “women” written below.
People also chanted “the Syrian people are one,” rejecting divisions among the multi-confessional and multi-ethnic country.
A few armed HTS fighters, some of them masked, roamed around at the demonstration.
One told the crowd, “the great Syrian revolution was victorious through armed force,” before protesters cut him off, chanting, “Down with military rule.”
One young man wearing keffiyeh scarf and dark glasses held a hand-written sign saying, “No free nation without free women,” while another demonstrator’s placard read “Equality between women and men is a legitimate Islamic and international right.”
Actress Raghda Khateb, standing with friends among the crowd, said “Syrian women have been a constant partner on the streets, in protecting protesters, in tending to the wounded, and in prisons and detention centers.”
She said the demonstration was part of “preventive” action to block any attempts to establish strict conservative rule in the country.
“The people who took to the streets against the murderous regime are ready to come out again and to rule,” she added.
The demand for women’s right to participate in political life came days after Obaida Arnaout, spokesman for the new political administration, said “female representation in ministries or parliament... is premature,” citing “biological” and other considerations.
The remarks sparked criticism and anger among some Syrians, including protester Majida Mudarres, 50, a retired civil servant.
“Women have a big role in political life... We will be observing any position against women and will not accept it. The time in which we were silent is over,” she told AFP.
Assad’s family crushed dissent, ruling Syria with an iron fist for decades.
Fatima Hashem, 29, who writes television series, said Syrian women “must not be just partners but must lead the work of building a new Syria.”
Women must be “a major voice in the new society,” added Hashem, who was wearing a white hijab.
Under Assad’s anti-Islamist rule, women were involved in Syria’s political, social and economic life, with parliamentary and ministerial representation sometimes ranging between 20 percent and 30 percent.
Researcher Widad Kreidi said she was worried by some statements from HTS, which until just weeks ago ruled a conservative rebel bastion in Syria’s northwest.
“While men were fighting, women were keeping up the economy, feeding their children and taking care of their families,” Kreidi said.
“Nobody has the right to come to Damascus and attack women in any way,” she added.
UN votes overwhelmingly for ICJ probe of Israeli role in Gaza’s ‘dystopian humanitarian nightmare’
- 137 countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Spain, vote in favor of the resolution, which was drafted by Norway
- Norwegian deputy foreign minister says Israel is not collaborating with humanitarian organizations and is in breach of its obligations under international law
The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to adopt a resolution calling on the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion on Israel’s humanitarian obligations to ensure and facilitate the unrestricted delivery of humanitarian aid necessary for the survival of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
The resolution, drafted by Norway, was adopted with 137 member states voting in favor. Israel, the US and 10 other countries voted against it, and 22 abstained.
Israel’s parliament passed laws in October banning the UN’s aid agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, from operating inside Israel and East Jerusalem. Israel alleges that the agency, which has provided critical support for Palestinian refugees for seven decades, has been infiltrated by Hamas but has consistently failed to provide evidence to support the accusation.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, Israel has maintained strict control over the aid that enters the besieged territory. On Thursday, Human Rights Watch became the latest international organization to accuse Israeli authorities of carrying out acts of extermination and genocide against Palestinians by deliberately restricting access to water.
Georgios Petropoulos, the head of the UN’s humanitarian office in Gaza, said on Thursday that Israel was weaponizing the aid system, which is severely limiting the ability to provide assistance to civilians.
“Every day as an aid worker in Gaza, you’re forced to make horrible decisions,” he said. “Should I let people die of starvation or of the cold? Do we bring in more food to ease hunger, or more plastic sheets or some shelter from the rain at night? Do I cut back on hygiene supplies or do I bring in more painkillers for the sick and injured?”
Israeli support for humanitarian operations is “almost zero,” Petropoulos added.
“As the occupying power, it imposes blanket prohibitions on nearly everything. Commercial imports are being banned. Humanitarian equipment and supplies for Gaza are consistently blocked, and our own movements inside the Gaza Strip are most often denied in most areas.”
The resolution adopted by the UN on Thursday, which was co-sponsored by several countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Spain, expresses “grave concern about the dire humanitarian situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” and “calls upon Israel to uphold and comply with its obligations not to impede the Palestinian people from exercising its right to self-determination.”
The International Court of Justice is the UN’s highest judicial body. But while its advisory opinions hold legal and political significance, they are not legally binding. The court, based in The Hague, lacks the power to enforce its opinions if they are disregarded.
Norway’s deputy foreign minister, Andreas Kravik, said after the vote that the resolution follows several months during which the world has watched a catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza turn into “a dystopian nightmare.”
He added: “45,000 Palestinians have been killed — many more, probably, if you include those under the rubble — and we have an obligation, as representatives of the international community, to respond and to react, and that is what we did today with this resolution.”
While he said there was no lack of willingness among many countries and the UN to step up their humanitarian efforts in Gaza, Kravik lamented the lack of access to the territory as “the fundamental problem” they face.
“Israel is not collaborating,” he said. “Israel is not facilitating humanitarian access. (So) today, the international community has said, ‘Enough is enough.’
“Israel is claiming that they have a right to do what they’re doing. We are now seeking guidance from the highest court of the world, the ICJ, to punctuate this argument. We want clarity on the legal issues.
“We are determined. We are clear-eyed about Israel’s obligations. Israel, under international law, has an obligation to provide assistance, to collaborate with UN humanitarian organizations and third states and let them help those who are suffering.”
Libyan rivals agree to work with UN to end political deadlock
RABAT/TRIPOLI: Delegations from rival Libyan legislative bodies agreed at talks in Morocco on Thursday to work together with a United Nations mission to pave the way for elections to end years of political deadlock.
Libya has undergone a chaotic decade since it split in 2014 between two administrations in its east and west following the NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
The talks in Bouznika, near the Moroccan capital Rabat, were between rival legislatures known as the High Council of State based in Tripoli in the west and the House of Representatives based in Benghazi in the east.
Restoring stability in Libya requires “free and fair elections,” the two bodies said in a final statement.
To that end, they agreed to cooperate with the UN mission in Libya to elaborate a roadmap to end the crisis in a way that ensures “Libyan ownership” of the political process.
The two bodies also agreed to cooperate to form a national unity government as well as launch institutional, financial and security reform.
Stephanie Koury, acting head of the UN mission in Libya, said last week the United Nations would convene a technical committee of Libyan experts to resolve contentious issues and put the country on a path to national elections.
A political process to end years of institutional division, outright warfare and unstable peace has been stalled since an election scheduled for December 2021 collapsed, amid disputes over the eligibility of the main candidates.
Operations at Beirut airport running efficiently, says Lebanon interior minister
- Israeli army continues demolishing homes amid reports of elderly woman missing in a border village
BEIRUT: Lebanese Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi has said security operations at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut are running efficiently.
The minister toured the airport on Thursday to assess security ahead of the holiday season and said every effort was being made to address any potential threat.
Earlier, he revealed that several Syrian figures linked to Bashar Assad’s regime had entered Lebanon from Syria and used the airport for international travel.
“Maher Al-Assad’s wife and son entered Lebanon and departed through the airport,” he said. “Anyone who enters Lebanon legally, regardless of their background, is allowed to exit through the airport.”
Mawlawi added that Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk, former presidential special security and military advisor, had not entered Lebanon and would be arrested if he tried to do so.
“His photos have been circulated at Rafic Hariri International Airport to intercept any attempt to pass through using forged documents,” said the minister.
In 2013, the Lebanese military judiciary issued an arrest warrant in absentia for Mamlouk for allegedly orchestrating the transportation of explosives, intended for detonation in Lebanon, in the car of former minister Michel Samaha. In his indictment against Mamlouk, Lebanese investigative judge Riad Abou Ghaida later called for the death penalty.
On the southern side of the border, Israeli army bulldozers continued demolishing homes in the towns of Naqoura, Maroun al-Ras, Bani Hayyan, and the area between Qlyaa and Marjeyoun.
The findings of the committee overseeing the implementation of the ceasefire agreement, which convened on Wednesday to address ongoing Israeli land and air violations, were not disclosed.
A joint statement issued by the US and French embassies in Lebanon, along with the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, said: “The committee will meet regularly and closely coordinate its work to achieve progress in the implementation of the ceasefire agreement and Resolution 1701.”
The municipality of Bani Haiyyan appealed to the authorities and the committee to take immediate action to bring about the withdrawal of Israeli forces.
A statement said: “The enemy has been destroying homes and places of worship and bulldozing the infrastructure without deterrence.”
It also urged the army, the Lebanese Red Cross and UNIFIL to “act swiftly to save the life of a sick elderly woman who remains in the town, facing physical and psychological pressure, and (who) has been out of contact since Wednesday.”
Blinken announces $200m in humanitarian aid for Sudan at UN Security Council
- World Food Program warned that Sudan risked becoming the world’s largest hunger crisis
NEW YORK: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday announced $200 million in additional aid for Sudan at a United Nations Security Council meeting.
The package will include food, shelter, and healthcare, in response to the ongoing conflict that has caused tens of thousands of deaths and the world’s largest displacement crisis.
During the session, Blinken emphasized the need for aid to be delivered safely and quickly to those in need.
He also pledged to use all available tools, including sanctions, to prevent abuses in Sudan and hold perpetrators accountable, urging others to adopt similar measures.
The UN says that nearly 25 million people in Sudan require aid, with famine affecting displacement camps.
Since the war began in April 2023, amid a power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), 11 million people have been displaced, including 3 million who fled to other countries.
Also on Thursday, the World Food Program warned that Sudan risked becoming the world’s largest hunger crisis in recent history, and the only place globally currently where famine has been confirmed.
A spokesperson said some 4.7 million children under age of five were suffering from severe malnutrition in the country.
