GAZA: Israeli forces advanced deeper into the Gaza Strip’s largest city in pursuit of militants who had regrouped there, sending thousands of Palestinians fleeing on Monday from an area ravaged in the early weeks of the nine-month-long war.
Hamas said it had shown flexibility in indirect talks over a ceasefire and hostage release and accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of setting “obstacles,” including the latest escalation. The incursion into Gaza City came after Israel and Hamas appeared to draw closer to bridging gaps in negotiations.
Israeli troops were again battling militants in areas that the army said had been largely cleared months ago in northern Gaza. The military ordered evacuations ahead of the raids, but Palestinians said nowhere feels safe. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are packed into sweltering tent camps.
Israel ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza in the first weeks of the war and has prevented most people from returning. But hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain, living in shelters or the shells of homes.
“We fled in the darkness amid heavy strikes,” said Sayeda Abdel-Baki, a mother of three who had sheltered with relatives in the Daraj neighborhood. “This is my fifth displacement.”
Residents reported artillery and tank fire, as well as airstrikes. Gaza’s Health Ministry, with limited access to the north, did not immediately report casualties.
Israel issued additional evacuation orders for areas in other neighborhoods of central Gaza City. The military said it had intelligence showing that militants from Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group were in the area, and called on residents to head south to the city of Deir Al-Balah.
Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of hiding among civilians. In Shijaiyah, a Gaza City neighborhood that has seen weeks of fighting, the military said troops raided and destroyed schools and a clinic that had been converted into militant compounds.
The war has decimated large swaths of urban landscape and sparked a humanitarian catastrophe.
Obstacles to a deal
Israel and Hamas seem to be the closest they have been in months to agreeing to a ceasefire deal that would pause the fighting in exchange for the release of dozens of hostages captured by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war.
CIA Director William Burns returned to the region Monday for talks in Cairo, according to Egypt’s state-run Qahera TV, which is close to the security services. An Israeli delegation was also heading to the Egyptian capital, Israeli media reported.
But obstacles remain, even after Hamas agreed to relent on its key demand that Israel commit to ending the war as part of any agreement. A key part of that shift, officials told The Associated Press, is the level of destruction caused by Israel’s rolling offensive.
Hamas still wants mediators to guarantee that negotiations conclude with a permanent ceasefire, according to two officials with knowledge of the talks. The current draft says the mediators — the United States, Qatar and Egypt — “will do their best” to ensure that negotiations lead to an agreement to wind down the war.
Israel has rejected any deal that would force it to end the war with Hamas intact — a condition Netanyahu reiterated Sunday.
Hamas said in a statement Monday it is “offering flexibility and positivity” to facilitate a deal, while “Netanyahu is putting more obstacles in the way of negotiations, escalating his aggression and crimes against our people and persisting in attempts to forcibly displace them in order to thwart all efforts to reach an agreement.”
The two officials said there’s also an impasse around whether Hamas can choose the high-profile prisoners held by Israel that it wants released in exchange for hostages. Some prisoners were convicted of killing Israelis, and Israel does not want Hamas to determine who is released. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive talks with the media.
Bombing keeps responders from bodies
Inside Gaza, residents saw no end to their suffering.
Maha Mahfouz fled her home with her two children and many neighbors in Gaza City’s Zaytoun neighborhood. She said their area was not included in the latest evacuation orders but “we are panicked because the bombing and gunfire are very close to us.”
Fadel Naeem, the director of the Al-Ahli hospital, said patients fled the facility even though there was no evacuation order for the surrounding area. He said those in critical condition had been evacuated to other hospitals in northern Gaza.
Marwan Al-Sultan, director of the Indonesian Hospital, said it received 80 patients and wounded people from Al-Ahli who were packed into “every corner.”
“Many cases require urgent surgeries. Many cases suffer from direct shots in the head and require intensive care. Fuel and medical supplies are dwindling,” he said in a text message. He said the hospital also received 16 bodies of people killed in the Israeli incursion, half of them women and children.
Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the Civil Defense first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, said the neighborhoods of Tufah, Daraj and Shijaiyah had become inaccessible because of Israeli bombing. In a voice message, he said the military shelled houses in Gaza City’s Jaffa area and first responders “saw people lying on the ground and were not able to retrieve them.”
The war has killed more than 38,000 people in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Hamas’ cross-border raid on Oct. 7 killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities. The militants took roughly 250 people hostage. About 120 are still in captivity, with about a third said to be dead.
Israel pushes deeper into Gaza as Hamas accuses Netanyahu of new ‘obstacles’ to deal
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Israel pushes deeper into Gaza as Hamas accuses Netanyahu of new ‘obstacles’ to deal
- Israel conducts offensives in Daraj, Tuffah in east and Tel Al-Hawa, Sabra, and Rimal further west
- Heavy armor push comes as Egypt, Qatar and US step up efforts to mediate ceasefire pact
A look at the terms — and tensions — in the Israel-Hamas draft ceasefire deal
- In the first week, troops would withdraw from the main north-south coastal road — Rasheed Street — which would open one route for Palestinians returning. By the 22nd day of the ceasefire, Israeli troops are to leave the entire corridor
- During the first phase, Hamas is to release 33 hostages in exchange for the freeing of hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel
CAIRO: If the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal goes according to the current draft, then fighting will stop in Gaza for 42 days, and dozens of Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be freed. In this first phase Israeli troops will pull back to the edges of Gaza, and many Palestinians will be able to return to what remains of their homes as stepped-up aid flows in.
The question is if the ceasefire will survive beyond that first phase.
That will depend on even more negotiations meant to begin within weeks. In those talks, Israel, Hamas, and the U.S, Egyptian and Qatari mediators will have to tackle the tough issue of how Gaza will be governed, with Israel demanding the elimination of Hamas.
Without a deal within those 42 days to begin the second phase, Israel could resume its campaign in Gaza to destroy Hamas – even as dozens of hostages remain in the militants’ hands.
Hamas has agreed to a draft of the ceasefire deal, two officials confirmed, but Israeli officials say details are still being worked out, meaning some terms could change, or the whole deal could even fall through. Here is a look at the plan and potential pitfalls in the draft seen by the Associated Press.
Swapping hostages for imprisoned Palestinians
During the first phase, Hamas is to release 33 hostages in exchange for the freeing of hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. By the end of the phase, all living women, children and older people held by the militants should be freed.
Some 100 hostages remain captive inside Gaza, a mix of civilians and soldiers, and the military believes at least a third them are dead.
On the first official day of the ceasefire, Hamas is to free three hostages, then another four on the seventh day. After that, it will make weekly releases.
Which hostages and how many Palestinians will be released is complicated. The 33 will include women, children and those over 50 — almost all civilians, but the deal also commits Hamas to free all living female soldiers. Hamas will release living hostages first, but if the living don’t complete the 33 number, bodies will be handed over. Not all hostages are held by Hamas, so getting other militant groups to hand them over could be an issue.
In exchange, Israel will free 30 Palestinian women, children or elderly for each living civilian hostage freed. For each female soldier freed, Israel will release 50 Palestinian prisoners, including 30 serving life sentences. In exchange for bodies handed over by Hamas, Israel will free all women and children it has detained from Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023.
Dozens of men, including soldiers, will remain captive in Gaza, pending the second phase.
Israeli pullbacks and the return of Palestinians
During the proposed deal’s first phase, Israeli troops are to pull back into a buffer zone about a kilometer (0.6 miles) wide inside Gaza along its borders with Israel.
That will allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes, including in Gaza City and northern Gaza. With most of Gaza’s population driven into massive, squalid tent camps, Palestinians are desperate to get back to their homes, even though many were destroyed or heavily damaged by Israel’s campaign.
But there are complications. During the past year of negotiations, Israel has insisted it must control the movement of Palestinians to the north to ensure Hamas does not take weapons back into those areas.
Throughout the war, the Israeli military has severed the north from the rest of Gaza by holding the so-called Netzarim Corridor, a belt across the strip where troops cleared out the Palestinian population and set up bases. That allowed them to search people fleeing from the north into central Gaza and bar anyone trying to return.
The draft seen by the AP specifies that Israel is to leave the corridor. In the first week, troops would withdraw from the main north-south coastal road — Rasheed Street — which would open one route for Palestinians returning. By the 22nd day of the ceasefire, Israeli troops are to leave the entire corridor.
Still, as talks continued Tuesday, an Israeli official insisted the military will keep control of Netzarim and that Palestinians returning north would have to pass inspections there, though he declined to provide details. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss closed negotiations.
Working out those contradictions could bring frictions.
Throughout the first phase, Israel will retain control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the strip of territory along Gaza’s border with Egypt, including the Rafah Crossing. Hamas dropped demands that Israel pull out of this area.
Humanitarian aid
In the first phase, aid entry to Gaza is to be ramped up to hundreds of trucks a day of food, medicine, supplies and fuel to alleviate the humanitarian crisis. That is far more than Israel has allowed in throughout the war.
For months, aid groups have struggled to distribute to Palestinians even the trickle of aid entering Gaza because of Israeli military restrictions and rampant robberies of aid trucks by gangs. An end to fighting should alleviate that.
The need is great. Malnutrition and diseases are rampant among Palestinians, crammed into tents and short on food and clean water. Hospitals have been damaged and short of supplies. The draft deal specifies that equipment will be allowed in to build shelters for tens of thousands whose homes were destroyed and to rebuild infrastructure like electricity, sewage, communications and road systems.
But here, too, implementation could bring problems.
Even before the war, Israel has restricted entry of some equipment, arguing it could be used for military purposes by Hamas. Another Israeli official said arrangements are still being worked out over aid distribution and cleanup, but the plan is to prevent Hamas from having any role.
Further complicating matters, Israel’s government is still committed to its plan to ban UNRWA from operating and to cut all ties between the agency and the Israeli government. The UN agency is the major distributor of aid in Gaza and provides education, health and other basic services to millions of Palestinian refugees across the region, including in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The second phase
If all of that works out, the sides must still tackle the second phase. Negotiations over it are to begin on Day 16 of the ceasefire.
Phase two’s broad outlines are laid out in the draft: All remaining hostages are to be released in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a “sustainable calm.”
But that seemingly basic exchange opens up much bigger issues.
Israel has said it will not agree to a complete withdrawal until Hamas’ military and political capabilities are eliminated and it cannot rearm — ensuring Hamas no longer runs Gaza. Hamas says it will not hand over the last hostages until Israel removes all troops from everywhere in Gaza.
So the negotiations will have to get both sides to agree to an alternative for governing Gaza. Effectively, Hamas has to agree to its own removal from power — something it has said it is willing to do, but it may seek to keep a hand in any future government, which Israel has vehemently rejected.
The draft agreement says a deal on the second phase must be worked out by the end of the first.
Pressure will be on both sides to reach a deal, but what happens if they don’t? It could go in many directions.
Hamas had wanted written guarantees that a ceasefire would continue as long as needed to agree on phase two. It has settled for verbal guarantees from the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
Israel, however, has given no assurances. So Israel could threaten new military action to pressure Hamas in the negotiations or could outright resume its military campaign, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened.
Hamas and the mediators are betting the momentum from the first phase will make it difficult for him to do that. Relaunching the assault would risk losing the remaining hostages — infuriating many against Netanyahu — though stopping short of destroying Hamas will also anger key political partners.
The third phase is likely to be less contentious: The bodies of remaining hostages would be returned in exchange for a 3- to 5-year reconstruction plan to be carried out in Gaza under international supervision.
UN Libya mission alarmed by reported torture footage in detention facility
- The UN mission said the footage was consistent with what it described as “documented patterns of human rights violations in detention facilities across Libya”
CAIRO: The UN Libya mission expressed on Tuesday its alarm over what it said was footage circulating on social media featuring “brutal torture and ill-treatment” of detainees at the Gernada detention facility in eastern Libya.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the location nor date of the footage, however architectural details seen on the videos, including the type of tiles on the floor, the wall painting and cell bars are consistent with file imagery of the prison from corroborating reports.
“As UNSMIL continues to verify the circumstances of the circulated footage, it strongly condemns these acts that constitute serious violations of international human rights law,” it said.
The UN mission said the footage was consistent with what it described as “documented patterns of human rights violations in detention facilities across Libya.”
It also called for an immediate investigation into the accusations, adding that it is coordinating with the General Command of Libyan National Army for “unrestricted access to UNSMIL’s human rights officers and other independent monitors to the Gernada facility as well as other detention centers under their control.”
There was no immediate comment from Libyan authorities regarding the videos or the UN report.
The North African country has plunged into chaos and lawlessness after the toppling of the regime of former dictator Muammar Qaddafi in NATO-backed uprising in 2011.
UN lays groundwork for Gaza aid surge under ceasefire but still sees challenges
- More than 46,000 people have been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials
UNITED NATIONS, United States: The United Nations said on Tuesday it was busy preparing to expand humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip under a potential ceasefire but uncertainty around border access and security in the enclave remain obstacles.
Negotiators in Qatar are hammering out final details of a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas in Gaza, with mediators and the warring sides all describing a deal as closer than ever. A truce would include a significant increase of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
The UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, met with Israeli and Palestinian ministers in recent days and spoke with the Egyptian foreign minister on Tuesday about UN engagement in a ceasefire, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.
“The UN system as a whole is in intense planning and preparation for when a ceasefire comes into play, and how we can increase the aid,” Dujarric said.
Among the unknowns are what border crossings would be open into Gaza under a truce and how secure the enclave would be for aid distribution since many shipments have been targeted by armed gangs and looters during the conflict.
“Obviously, things that will continue to be challenging because we don’t have answers to all those questions,” Dujarric said.
The UN has complained of aid obstacles in Gaza throughout the 15-month-old war. The UN says Israel and lawlessness in the enclave have impeded the entry and distribution of aid in the war zone.
’DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE’
Global food security experts warned in November there is a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent” in northern Gaza. More than 46,000 people have been killed in Israel’s assault on Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials.
Israel has said the quantity of aid delivered to Gaza — which it puts at more than a million tons over the past year — has been adequate. But it accuses Hamas of hijacking the assistance before it reaches Palestinians in need. Hamas has denied the allegations and blamed Israel for shortages.
The fate of the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA — which the UN says is the backbone of aid operations in Gaza — is also unclear as a law banning its operation on Israeli land and contact with Israeli authorities is due to take effect later this month.
Dujarric said the UN and partner organizations are “doing everything possible” to reach Palestinians in need with extremely limited resources.
“However, ongoing hostilities and violent armed looting as well as systematic access restrictions continue to severely constrain our efforts,” he said. “Road damage, unexploded ordinances, fuel shortages and a lack of adequate telecommunications equipment are also hampering our work.”
“It is imperative that vital aid and commercial goods can enter Gaza through all available border crossings without delay, at a scale needed,” he said.
Hamas killed 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and took some 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel has laid much of Gaza to waste, and the territory’s prewar population of 2.3 million people has been displaced multiple times, humanitarian agencies say.
Emirati observation satellite MBZ-SAT launches successfully from California
- MBZ-SAT was entirely developed by Emirati engineers at Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai
- Developers say it will enhance disaster-management by capturing high-res images of areas as small as 1 sq. meter
LONDON: The Emirati-developed observation satellite MBZ-SAT successfully launched on Tuesday evening from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in the US state of California.
Described by developers as the most advanced observation satellite in the Middle East, it was carried into space by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Emirates News Agency reported.
The satellite was entirely developed by Emirati engineers at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre in Dubai. Final testing by the team ahead of launch took place at SpaceX’s facilities in the US.
Developers said the satellite will enhance disaster-management efforts by continuously capturing high-resolution images that can reveal details in areas as small as 1 sq. meter.
120 civilians killed in artillery shelling in Sudan
PORT SUDAN: At least 120 civilians were killed in artillery shelling of western Omdurman on Tuesday as fighting between the Sudanese army and paramilitary forces escalated again.
Rescuers said medical supplies were in critically short supply as health workers struggled to treat “a large number of wounded people suffering from varying degrees of injuries” in the capital Khartoum’s twin city just across the Nile River.
Sudan has been at war since April 2023 between the forces of rival generals. Most of Omdurman is under army control, while the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces hold Khartoum North and some other areas of the capital.
Greater Khartoum residents on both sides of the Nile regularly report shelling across the river, with bombs and shrapnel often hitting homes and civilians. Both the army and the paramilitaries have been accused of targeting civilians, including health workers, and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
Fighting has intensified in recent weeks. Port Sudan, the seat of Sudan's army-aligned government, was without power after a drone attack by the paramilitaries hit a hydroelectric dam in the north.
The war has killed up to 150,000 people, uprooted more than 12 million and pushed many Sudanese to the brink of famine.
