GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Israeli air strikes and clashes between troops and Palestinian militants rocked Gaza on Wednesday, as Israel’s army warned it had readied an “offensive” against the Lebanese Hezbollah movement on the country’s northern front.
Witnesses and the civil defense agency in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip reported Israeli bombardment in western Rafah, where medics said drone strikes and shelling killed at least seven people.
The Israeli military has announced a daily humanitarian “pause” in fighting on a key road in eastern Rafah, but a UN spokesman said days later that “this has yet to translate into more aid reaching people in need.”
More than eight months of war, sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, have led to dire humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territory and repeated UN warnings of famine.
The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt has been shut since Israeli troops seized its Palestinian side in early May, while nearby Kerem Shalom on the Israeli border “is operating with limited functionality, including because of fighting in the area,” said UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq.
He told reporters that in recent weeks, there had been “an improvement” in aid reaching northern Gaza “but a drastic deterioration in the south.”
“Basic commodities are available in markets in southern and central Gaza. But... it’s unaffordable for many people.”
The war has sent tensions soaring across the region, with violence involving Iran-backed Hamas allies.
The Israeli military, which has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah since October, said late Tuesday that “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon were approved and validated.”
On Wednesday the military said its warplanes had struck Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon overnight, while reporting a drone had infiltrated near the border town of Metula in an attack claimed by Hezbollah and targeting troops.
The Iran-backed group also announced the death of two of its fighters.
Lebanon’s official National News agency reported Israeli strikes on several areas in south Lebanon on Wednesday morning, including on the border village of Khiam, where an AFP photographer saw a large cloud of smoke.
The army’s announcement that its plans for an offensive in Lebanon had been approved, along with a warning from Foreign Minister Israel Katz of Hezbollah’s destruction in a “total war,” came as US envoy Amos Hochstein visited the region to push for de-escalation.
Syrian state media said an Israeli strike on military sites in the country’s south killed an army officer on Wednesday. Israel has not commented on the report.
In Gaza, Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian armed group that has fought alongside Hamas, said its militants were battling troops amid Israeli shelling of western Rafah.
Witnesses reported seeing Israeli military vehicles enter the city’s Saudi neighborhood, followed by nighttime gunbattles.
Parts of central Gaza also saw fighting overnight, with witnesses reporting artillery shelling and heavy gunfire in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighborhood.
The October 7 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages. Of these, 116 remain in Gaza, although the army says 41 are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,396 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.
At least 24 people died over the past day, the ministry said.
A UN report issued Wednesday detailed six “indiscriminate and disproportionate” Israeli strikes that killed at least 218 people in the first two months of the war.
It said the strikes involved “the suspected use” of heavy bombs — a shipment of which the United States had paused in May over concerns Israel might use them in its Rafah assault.
The strikes targeted “densely populated” areas including refugee camps, a school and market, the UN rights office said, making the use of heavy bombs “highly likely to amount to a prohibited indiscriminate attack.”
UN human rights chief Volker Turk said: “The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid, or at the very least minimize to every extent, civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign.”
More than six months since the attacks featured in the report, “there is no clarity as to what happened or steps toward accountability,” Turk said.
Fighting in Gaza’s Rafah as tensions soar on Israel-Lebanon border
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Fighting in Gaza’s Rafah as tensions soar on Israel-Lebanon border
- More than eight months of war have led to dire humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territory
- Israeli army earlier announced that its plans for an offensive in Lebanon had been approved
Turkiye arrests leader of far-right party on charges of inciting violence through social media
- Ozdag, a 63-year-old former academic, is an outspoken critic of Turkiye’s refugee policies and has called for the repatriation of millions of Syrian refugees
ANKARA, Turkiye: Turkish authorities on Tuesday arrested the leader of a far-right opposition party on charges of inciting violence through a series of anti-refugee posts on social media, his party said.
Umit Ozdag, the leader of Turkiye’s anti-immigrant Victory Party, was detained by police on Monday as part of an investigation into allegations that he insulted President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a speech he delivered a day earlier.
The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s office, however, released Ozdag from custody on charges of insulting the president but subsequently ordered his arrest on charges of “inciting hatred and hostility among the public,” the party said.
Prosecutors presented 11 of the politician’s posts on the social platform X as evidence against him, the party said. The prosecutor’s office also held Ozdag responsible for anti-Syrian refugee rioting that erupted in the central Turkish province of Kayseri last year, during which hundreds of homes and businesses were attacked.
Ekrem Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul who is seen as a possible candidate to challenge Erdogan in the next elections, criticized Ozdag’s arrest, saying on X that “Everyone knows that this is political meddling in the judiciary.”
Imamoglu, who is a member of Turkiye’s main opposition party, was convicted of insulting members of Turkiye’s electoral board in 2022 and faces a two-year ban from politics if his conviction is upheld by a court of appeals.
Ozdag, a 63-year-old former academic, is an outspoken critic of Turkiye’s refugee policies and has called for the repatriation of millions of Syrian refugees.
The politician was being taken to Silivri prison on the outskirts of Istanbul, according to his party.
Mehmet Ali Sehirlioglu, the party’s spokesman, would temporarily assume leadership of the Victory Party.
Yemen Red Sea port capacity down sharply after hostilities, UN says
- Houthis have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since November 2023 in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip
GENEVA: Operations at a Red Sea port in Yemen used for aid imports have fallen to about a quarter of its capacity, a UN official said on Tuesday, adding it was not certain that a Gaza ceasefire would end attacks between the Iran-backed Houthis and Israel.
Houthis have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since November 2023 in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. This has prompted Israel to strike port and energy facilities, including the Red Sea port of Hodeidah.
“(The) impact of airstrikes on Hodeidah Harbor, particularly in the last weeks, is very important,” Julien Harneis, UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Yemen told a UN meeting in Geneva on Tuesday via videolink.
Four of the port’s five tugboats needed to escort the large ships bringing imports had sunk, while the fifth was damaged, he said, without attributing blame.
“The civilian crews who man them are obviously very hesitant. The capacity of the harbor is down to about a quarter,” he added, saying the port was used to transit a significant portion of imported aid.
Since a Gaza ceasefire agreement last week, Yemen’s Houthis have said they will limit their attacks on commercial vessels to Israel-linked ships, provided the Gaza ceasefire is fully implemented.
“We are hopeful that sanity will prevail and people will be focused on solutions and peace, but we are nonetheless prepared as a humanitarian community for various degradations,” said Harneis, adding that the agency had contingency plans.
The Iran-aligned Houthis have controlled most of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, since seizing power during 2014 and early 2015.
Suspected settlers attacked Palestinian villages hours before Trump rescinded Biden sanctions
- Even before taking office, Trump appears to have pressed Netanyahu to accept a Gaza ceasefire agreement with Hamas that strongly resembled one the Biden administration had been pushing for months
- On Tuesday, the charred shells of cars lay on the side of the road in Jinsafut and residents surveyed the damage to a burned storage space
JINSAFUT, West Bank: Shortly after suspected Jewish settlers stormed Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank late Monday, setting cars and property ablaze, US President Donald Trump canceled sanctions against Israelis accused of violence in the territory.
The reversal of the Biden administration’s sanctions, which were meant to punish radical settlers, could set the tone for a presidency that is expected to be more tolerant of Israel’s expansion of settlements and of violence toward Palestinians. In Trump’s previous term he lavished support on Israel, and he has once again surrounded himself with aides who back the settlers.
Settler leaders rushed to praise Trump’s decision on the sanctions, which were first imposed nearly a year ago as violence surged during the war in Gaza. The sanctions were later expanded to include other Israelis seen as violent or radical.
Finance Minister and settler firebrand Bezalel Smotrich called it a just decision, saying the sanctions were a “severe and blatant foreign intervention.” In a post on social media platform X, he went on to praise Trump’s “unwavering and uncompromising support for the state of Israel.”
The West Bank’s 3 million Palestinians already live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Palestinian Authority administering cities and towns. Smotrich and other hard-line settler leaders want Israel to annex the West Bank and rebuild settlements in Gaza, territories that Israel seized during the 1967 Mideast war.
Palestinians want both territories for a future state and have long viewed the settlements as a major obstacle to peace, while the international community overwhelmingly considers them illegal. There are more than 500,000 settlers in the West Bank who have Israeli citizenship.
Late Monday, dozens of masked men who are widely believed to be settlers marauded through at least two Palestinian villages and attacked homes and businesses, according to officials in Jinsafut and Al-Funduq, which are roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it treated 12 people who were beaten by the men. It gave no details on their condition. Israel’s military said the men hurled rocks at soldiers who had arrived to disperse them, and that it had launched an investigation.
Violence has surged in the West Bank during the Gaza war, so it was not clear if the attack had any link to the inauguration. On Tuesday, meanwhile, Israel launched a deadly raid on the Jenin refugee camp.
Jalal Bashir, the head of Jinsafut’s village council, said that the men attacked three houses, a nursery and a carpentry shop located on the village’s main road. Louay Tayem, head of the local council in Al-Funduq, said dozens of men had fired shots, thrown stones, burned cars, and attacked homes and shops.
“The settlers were masked and had incendiary materials,” said Bashir. “Their numbers were large and unprecedented.”
On Tuesday, the charred shells of cars lay on the side of the road in Jinsafut and residents surveyed the damage to a burned storage space.
Growing impunity, even after Biden’s sanctions
Biden’s executive order against the settlers marked a rare break with America’s closest Middle East ally, and signaled his frustration with what critics say is Israel’s leniency in dealing with violent settlers.
Rights groups say that impunity has deepened since Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz exempted settlers from what is known as administrative detention — Israel’s practice of detaining individuals on security grounds without charge or trial — which is routinely used against Palestinians.
Katz, who freed all Israelis held in administrative detention just last week, said those behind Monday’s attack should be held accountable in Israel’s more transparent criminal justice system.
Palestinian residents, meanwhile, are tried in Israeli military courts.
Biden’s sanctions were aimed at settlers who were involved in acts of violence, as well as threats against and attempts to destroy or seize Palestinian property. They later were broadened to include other groups, including Tzav 9, an activist organization that was accused of disrupting the flow of aid into Gaza by trying to block trucks heading into the territory.
Reut Ben-Chaim, a mother of eight who founded the group and was then slapped with sanctions that crippled her wellness company and prohibited her access to credit cards or banking apps, welcomed Trump’s step.
“We have heard in the last few days that the Trump administration is going to be the most pro-Israel there has been,” she told The Associated Press. “These actions, such as the removal of the sanctions … these are actions that already mark the way forward.”
Support for Israel could clash with wider ambitions
Trump has long boasted of his support for Israel, but he has also pledged to end wars in the Middle East that could require exerting some pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Even before taking office, Trump appears to have pressed Netanyahu to accept a Gaza ceasefire agreement with Hamas that strongly resembled one the Biden administration had been pushing for months.
During his first term, Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights — which it captured from Syria in the 1967 war — and presented a Mideast peace plan that was seen as overwhelmingly favorable to Israel.
He also let settlement construction in the West Bank surge unchecked.
But he seemed at the time to have tapped the brakes on Netanyahu’s plans to annex large parts of the West Bank, something Israel’s far-right settlers have demanded for years. Netanyahu said he temporarily shelved the idea as part of the agreement with the UAE.
Four wounded in Tel Aviv stabbing attack, attacker killed
- This was the second stabbing attack in Tel Aviv in four days, after another assailant seriously wounded a person on Saturday before being shot by an armed civilian
TEL AVIV: Four people were wounded in a stabbing attack on Tuesday in Tel Aviv while the attacker was killed, Israeli emergency service Magen David Adom said.
The police said an initial investigation “revealed that a terrorist armed with a knife stabbed three civilians on Nahalat Binyamin Street and one civilian on Gruzenberg Street.”
Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv said it had received three stabbing victims, including one in “a serious condition with a knife wound to the neck” who was taken into surgery.
The Nahalat Binyamin street and surrounding neighborhood of Tel Aviv are popular for their restaurants and nightlife.
The area was cordoned off by the police, while an AFP journalist saw the dead body of a man on the street.
This was the second stabbing attack in Tel Aviv in four days, after another assailant seriously wounded a person on Saturday before being shot by an armed civilian.
UK PM tells Netanyahu peace process ‘should lead’ to Palestinian state
- Downing Street: The PM said ‘that the UK stands ready to do everything it can to support a political process, which should also lead to a viable and sovereign Palestinian state’
- Downing Street: The PM also ‘reiterated that it was vital to ensure humanitarian aid can now flow uninterrupted into Gaza, to support the Palestinians who desperately need it’
LONDON: UK premier Keir Starmer told Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday that any peace process in the Middle East should pave the way for a Palestinian state, Downing Street said.
The two leaders held a call that focused on the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a UK government spokesperson said.
During the conversation, “both agreed that we must work toward a permanent and peaceful solution that guarantees Israel’s security and stability,” the British readout of the call added.
“The prime minister added that the UK stands ready to do everything it can to support a political process, which should also lead to a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.”
Starmer also “reiterated that it was vital to ensure humanitarian aid can now flow uninterrupted into Gaza, to support the Palestinians who desperately need it,” the statement added.
Starmer “offered his personal thanks for the work done by the Israeli government to secure the release of the hostages, including British hostage Emily Damari,” the statement added.
“To see the pictures of Emily finally back in her family’s arms was a wonderful moment but a reminder of the human cost of the conflict,” Starmer added, according to the statement.
A truce agreement between Israel and Hamas to end 15 months of war in Gaza came into effect on Sunday.
The first part of the three-phase deal should last six weeks and see 33 hostages returned from Gaza in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.
