WASHINGTON DC: The Pentagon on Monday sought to dispel what it said were false perceptions on social media that Israel staged part of its hostage rescue operations on the US military’s floating pier off Gaza, saying that was not true and no US personnel were involved.
Still, Pentagon spokesperson Major General Patrick Ryder acknowledged there were Israeli helicopter operations “near” the pier, which was announced by US President Joe Biden as a way to bring desperately needed humanitarian aid to Palestinians.
“It was near but I think it’s incidental. Again, the pier, the equipment, the personnel all supporting that humanitarian effort had nothing to do with the IDF rescue operation,” Ryder said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
In a raid in Gaza on Saturday, Israeli forces rescued four hostages held by Hamas since October. In Saturday’s operation 274 Palestinians were killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Ryder said the US military was trying to “push back on some of the inaccurate social media allegations” circulating about the pier.
“The humanitarian pier facility, including its equipment, personnel and assets, were not used in the IDF’s operation to rescue hostages in Gaza. And any such claim to the contrary is false.”
The US military’s pier operations resumed briefly on Saturday after nearly two weeks offline but have been halted against since Sunday due to bad weather. On Saturday, 492 metric tons of aid were delivered from the pier, the US military’s Central Command said.
The Israel-Hamas war has now entered its ninth month, since Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people and took some 250 others hostage in a rampage through southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and reduced most of the enclave to wasteland, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Any perception that the pier could be used by Israel militarily could undermine US efforts to increase the flow of aid to Palestinians and potentially increase the threat to US troops.
Ryder acknowledged misinformation and disinformation about what US troops were doing in the Middle East. But he dismissed the idea that the current misperceptions that the pier was used by Israel increased the threat to US forces, who have air defenses installed to shield them from possible rocket attack.
“No, I don’t think it puts our forces at greater risk,” he said, without explaining how he came to that conclusion.
Pentagon says Israel’s hostage operation did not involve Gaza pier
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Pentagon says Israel’s hostage operation did not involve Gaza pier
- The US military’s pier operations resumed briefly on Saturday after nearly two weeks offline
Deadly strikes hit Gaza as war enters tenth month
GAZA: Israel carried out deadly air strikes in the Gaza Strip as the war entered its tenth month on Sunday, with fighting raging across the Palestinian territory and fresh diplomatic efforts under way to halt the violence.
Israel has said it will send a delegation in the coming days to continue truce talks with Qatari mediators that began recently in Doha.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spokesman said "gaps" remained with Hamas on how to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
"It was agreed that next week Israeli negotiators will travel to Doha to continue the talks. There are still gaps between the parties," the spokesman said in a statement on Friday.
Meanwhile, the fighting in Gaza continued unabated, with the Palestinian Red Crescent saying Sunday that the bodies of six people, including two children, who were killed in Israeli strikes had arrived at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah.
Paramedics also said Sunday that six people had been killed in an Israeli strike on a house in a northern area of Gaza City.
The day before, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 16 people had been killed in a strike on a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) that was sheltering displaced people in Nuseirat, in central Gaza.
The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted "terrorists" operating around the Al-Jawni school.
The military earlier said it had conducted operations across much of the Gaza Strip, including Shujaiya in the north, Deir al-Balah and Rafah in the south.
Shujaiya is among the areas the military had previously declared to be cleared of Hamas, but where fighting has since resumed.
The Hamas press office and paramedics said four journalists working for local media outlets were killed in strikes overnight into Saturday, and UNRWA said two of its employees had been killed.
UNRWA, which coordinates much of the aid delivered to Gaza, says 194 of its employees have been killed in the war.
Talks resume
The United States, which has mediated ceasefire negotiations alongside Qatar and Egypt, has talked up the prospects of a deal, saying there is a "pretty significant opening" for both sides.
US President Joe Biden announced a pathway to a truce deal in May that he said had been proposed by Israel.
It included an initial six-week truce, an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza's population centres and the freeing of hostages held by Palestinian militants.
Talks subsequently stalled, but a US official said Thursday that a new proposal from Hamas "moves the process forward and may provide the basis for closing the deal".
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told AFP that new ideas from the group had been "conveyed by the mediators to the American side, which welcomed them and passed them on to the Israeli side".
"Now the ball is in the Israeli court."
There has been no truce since a one-week pause in November when 80 Israeli hostages were freed in return for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
Pressure has mounted domestically for another hostage release deal, with regular protests and rallies in Israel.
"It's important that we reach a deal so that all the mothers can embrace their children and husbands, just as I hug my mother every morning now," rescued hostage Almog Mair Jan said in a recorded message to a rally in Tel Aviv Saturday.
The war began with Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead.
In response, Israel has carried out a military offensive that has killed at least 38,098 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.
The war has uprooted 90 percent of Gaza's population, destroyed much of its housing and other infrastructure, and left almost 500,000 people enduring "catastrophic" hunger, UN agencies say.
The main stumbling block to a truce deal has been Hamas's demand for a permanent end to the fighting, which Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners strongly reject.
The veteran hawk demands the release of the hostages and insists the war will not end until Israel has destroyed Hamas's ability to fight or govern.
Hezbollah and Israel
Israel and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement have exchanged cross-border fire almost daily since the Gaza war began, but attacks have escalated over the past month.
This has raised fears of a major conflagration between the bitter enemies that could draw in others including Iran.
Israel's army said late Saturday that its jets had struck Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and troops had fired artillery across the border "throughout the day".
Earlier Saturday, sirens blared over northern Israel and the military said it had downed a "suspicious aerial target" and that two "hostile aircraft" launched from Lebanon had hit open ground.
A source close to Hezbollah said an Israeli drone strike targeted a vehicle in eastern Lebanon Saturday, killing a Hezbollah official.
Israel said he was part of the group's air defence unit.
UAE-led operation uncovers environmental crime, with $32 million worth of items seized, 25 suspects arrested
- Operation ‘Green Justice’ was to target the regional network of environmental criminal activities in the Amazon Basin
DUBAI: The UAE led an operation that has uncovered vast environmental crimes in the Amazon Basin, with $32 million worth of items seized and 25 suspects arrested.
Operation ‘Green Justice’ was to target the regional network of environmental criminal activities in the Amazon Basin.
It has dealt a serious blow to organised crime groups in the Amazon Basin, state-run WAM reported.
Regional law enforcement agencies from UAE, Brazil, Peru, and Colombia, along with UNODC and the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) supported and participated in the operation.
The mission, also coordinated by the International Initiative of Law Enforcement for Climate (I2LEC), seized 2.4 tonnes of items related to illegal wildlife and marine catches, 37 illegal fishing equipment, 229 illegal mining equipment, and more than 10,498 cubic metres of illicitly cut wood. The illicit goods were estimated to be worth more than $32 million.
The 25 suspects were charged with various environmental crimes, WAM added.
’Bulldozed and shelled’: Gaza’s farming sector ravaged by war
- Israel has killed at least 38,098 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Tank tracks still fresh on his field in southern Gaza’s coastal area of Al-Mawasi, Nedal Abu Jazar lamented the damage war has wrought on his trees and crops.
“Look at the destruction,” the 39-year-old farmer told AFP, holding an uprooted tomato plant.
He pointed to his greenhouse’s metal frame and its white plastic sheeting strewn across the plot, inside an area designated a humanitarian zone by the Israeli army.
“People were sitting peacefully on their farmland ... and suddenly tanks arrived and fired at us, and then there were (air) strikes.”
Abu Jazar said the Israeli operation in late June destroyed about 40 dunams (10 acres) of land and killed five laborers.
His is not an isolated case. Across Gaza, 57 percent of agricultural land has been damaged since the war began, according to a joint assessment published in June by the UN’s agriculture and satellite imagery agencies, FAO and UNOSAT.
The damage threatens Gaza’s food sovereignty, Matieu Henry of the Food and Agriculture Organization told AFP, because 30 percent of the Palestinian territory’s food consumption comes from agricultural land.
“If almost 60 percent of the agricultural land has been damaged, this may have a significant impact in terms of food security and food supply.”
The Gaza Strip exported $44.6 million worth of produce in 2022, mainly to the West Bank and Israel, with strawberries and tomatoes representing 60 percent of the total, according to FAO data.
That number fell to zero after the October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 38,098 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
The damage assessment on the agricultural land comes as the UN’s hunger monitoring system estimated in June that 96 percent of Gaza faces high levels of acute food insecurity.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army said it “does not intentionally harm agricultural land.”
In a statement, it said Hamas “often operates from within orchards, fields and agricultural land.”
The impact is worse in the Palestinian territory’s north, where 68 percent of agricultural land is damaged, although the southern area encompassing parts of Al-Mawasi has seen the most significant increase in recent months due to military operations.
UNOSAT’s Lars Bromley told AFP the damage is generally “due to the impact of activities such as heavy vehicle activity, bombing, shelling, and other conflict-related dynamics, which would be things like areas burning.”
Near the southern city of Rafah, 34-year-old farmer Ibrahim Dheir feels helpless after the destruction of 20 dunams (five acres) of land he used to lease, and all his farming equipment with it.
“As soon as the Israeli bulldozers and tanks entered the area, they began bulldozing cultivated lands with various trees, including fruits, citrus, guava, as well as crops like spinach, molokhia (jute mallow), eggplant, squash, pumpkin and sunflower seedlings,” he said, before listing more damage in a testimony of the area’s past agricultural abundance.
Dheir, whose family exported its produce to the West Bank and Israel, now feels destitute.
“We used to depend on agriculture for our livelihood day by day, but now there’s no work or income.”
Farmer Abu Mahmoud Za’arab also finds himself with “no source of income.”
The 60-year-old owns 15 dunams (3.7 acres) of land on which crops and fruit trees used to grow.
“The Israeli army passed through the land, completely wiping out all trees and crops,” he told AFP.
“They bulldozed and shelled the land, turning it into barren pits.”
The harm done to farmland in Gaza will last far beyond tank tracks and explosions, said Bromley of UNOSAT.
“With modern weaponry, a certain percentage is always going to fail. Tank shells won’t explode, artillery shells won’t explode ... so clearing that unexploded ordnance is a massive task,” he said.
It will require “probing every centimeter of the soil before you can allow the farmers back onto it.”
Despite the risks, Dheir wants to return to farming.
“We want the war to stop and things to return to how they were so we can farm and cultivate our lands again.”
What does reformist Masoud Pezeshkian’s election win mean for Iran’s future?
- Heart surgeon and former MP will be Islamic Republic’s first reformist Iranian president since 2005
- The election witnessed record low voter turnout with less than half of eligible voters casting their ballots
ATHENS, Greece: Iran reformist Masoud Pezeshkian’s victory over his hardline rival Saeed Jalili in the country’s presidential runoff on Saturday offers Iranians desperate for change a sliver of hope, according to political observers.
While many Iranians are too disillusioned with their government to feel optimistic, some believe Pezeshkian’s win points to the possibility of reform in the midst of economic turmoil, corruption, and crackdowns on dissent.
The first round of elections began on June 28, just over a month after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash.
Newly-elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian gestures during a visit to the shrine of the Islamic Republic's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran on July 6, 2024.(AFP)
However, the election failed to generate more than 50 percent of votes for any candidate, with the lowest turnout since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Videos circulating on social media platforms, including X, showed almost empty polling stations across the country.
“How can you, while holding a sword, gallows, weapons, and prisons against the people with one hand, place a ballot box in front of the same people with the other hand, and deceitfully and falsely call them to the polls?” Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian human rights activist and Nobel laureate, said in a statement from Evin Prison.
BIO
- Name: Masoud Pezeshkian
- Year of birth: 1954
- City of birth: Mahabad, Iran
- Occupation: Heart surgeon
The underwhelming turnout is part of a trend that began four years ago with the country’s 2020 parliamentary election, according to Ali Vaez, Iran Project director at the International Crisis Group (ICG).
“This clearly shows that the majority of the Iranian people have given up on the ballot box as a viable vehicle for change,” he told Arab News.
“The head-to-head between Jalili and Pezeshkian in the second round was a contest between two opposite ends of the spectrum acceptable to the system: Jalili’s hard-line, ideological approach and Pezeshkian’s moderate, liberal stance created intense polarization, seemingly driving a higher voter turnout. Jalili embodies confrontational foreign policy and restrictive social policies, while Pezeshkian advocates for moderate reforms and diplomatic engagement.”
Political analysts voiced cautious optimism in the wake of Pezeshkian’s victory.
“Pezeshkian prevailed in an election where just 50 percent of voters went to the polls. He lacks the mandate enjoyed by Iran’s previous reform-minded presidents. But boycotting is what made his candidacy possible,” Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder and CEO of the UK-based Bourse & Bazaar Foundation think tank, said on X on Saturday.
“Both voters and non-voters had an influence on this remarkable outcome. The turnout was high enough to push Pezeshkian into office, but low enough to deny the (Iranian regime) legitimacy and to maintain political pressure for more significant change.”
Some Iranians have said that while they do not have any great expectations for Pezeshkian’s governance, their decision to vote for him was motivated by the desire for change, however small.
“The reason for my vote is not that I have any special hopes for his government, no. I voted because I believe that society’s explosive desire for change is now so strong and ready to erupt that even if a small opportunity is provided, society itself … will change many things for the better,” Iranian journalist and Sadra Mohaqeq, who voted for Pezeshkian, said on Friday.
Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon whose political career includes a tenure as the Iranian health minister, will be the first reformist to assume the office of president in Iran since 2005. His promises include efforts to improve relations with the West and a relaxation of Iran’s mandatory headscarf law.
With both Azeri and Kurdish roots, he also supports the rights of minorities in Iran. Minority groups often bore the brunt of state-sanctioned violence in the wake of the 2022-2023 protests sparked by the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini in police custody.
After Amini’s death, Pezeshkian said that it was “unacceptable in the Islamic Republic to arrest a girl for her hijab and then hand over her dead body to her family.”
However, just days later, amid nationwide protests and brutal crackdowns by the government, he warned protesters against “insulting the supreme leader.” For even the most optimistic of Iran observers, it is clear that Pezeshkian still answers to the country’s head of state.
“Despite being a reformist, Pezeshkian is loyal to the supreme leader of Iran, and reformists in Iran generally cannot pursue reforms that challenge the vision, goals, and values of the Islamic Revolution. The ultimate authority doesn’t rest with President-elect Pezeshkian but with (Supreme Leader Ali) Khamenei,” Mohammed Albasha, senior Middle East analyst for the US-based Navanti Group, told Arab News.
Furthermore, even if Pezeshkian proves willing to strongly push for reforms, the Iranian political environment is still dominated by hardliners.
Vaez said: “Given Pezeshkian’s relatively low votes, the continued conservative dominance of other state institutions, and the limits of presidential authority, Pezeshkian will face an uphill battle in securing the greater social and cultural rights at home and diplomatic engagement abroad he’s emphasized in debates and on the campaign trail.”
While Pezeshkian has expressed support for domestic reforms and improved international relations, he has also voiced his unequivocal support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
He has condemned the former Trump administration’s decision to label the IRGC as a terrorist organization and has worn the IRGC uniform in public meetings.
Opinion
This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)
It is unclear how Pezeshkian will reconcile a desire for ties with the West with his views, particularly given that the IRGC has been designated as a terrorist group by the US, Sweden, and Canada.
An increased push for improved ties with the West may also draw the ire of the Islamic Republic’s strongest military and economic allies, such as China and Russia.
However, Pezeshkian may not have much choice in the matter, regardless of his own aspirations.
“The president in Tehran is primarily responsible for implementing the daily agenda, not setting it. Nuclear policy, regional alliances, and relations with the West are dictated by the supreme leader and the Revolutionary Guard,” the Navanti Group’s Albasha said.
Though not the head of state, Pezeshkian will undoubtedly have some influence over Iran’s domestic and foreign policies, as well as economic policy.
The government of Iran’s last reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, was characterized by some liberalization, including freedom of expression, a free market economy, and improved diplomatic relations with other countries.
Only time will tell how much change Pezeshkian is willing, or able, to bring about.
Pezeshkian’s election win is not a turning point, ICG’s Vaez said, but “another twist in the complex political dynamics of a system that remains split between those who want the 1979 revolution to mellow and those who want it to remain permanent.”
Egypt to host Israeli, US delegations for Gaza ceasefire talks, says Al Qahera TV
CAIRO: Egypt’s state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said on Saturday that the country will host Israeli and US delegations to discuss “outstanding issues” in a possible Gaza ceasefire agreement.
Citing a senior official, Al Qahera News said Egypt is conducting talks with the Palestinian faction Hamas to conclude ceasefire and hostages-for-prisoners swap deals.
