DEIR AL-BALAH: 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 warned that the latest raids and displacement in Gaza City could lead to the collapse of long-running negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release, after the two sides had appeared to have narrowed the gaps in recent days.
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 on Monday said it is “offering flexibility and positivity” to facilitate a deal, while accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “putting more obstacles in the way of negotiations.”
Meanwhile, Hamas’ top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, warned mediators of “catastrophic consequences” if Israel continued its operations in Gaza City, saying Netanyahu and the army would bear “full responsibility” for the collapse of the talks, the group said in a subsequent statement.
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.
Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza City as Hamas warns that escalation threatens ceasefire talks
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Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza City as Hamas warns that escalation threatens ceasefire talks
- Hamas warned that the latest raids and displacement in Gaza City could lead to the collapse of long-running negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release
- Israeli troops were again battling militants in areas that the army said had been largely cleared months ago in northern Gaza
Israel insists on keeping troops in Gaza. That complicates truce talks with Hamas
- Keeping a foothold in the Morag corridor is a key element in Israel’s plan to drive hundreds of thousands of Palestinians south toward a narrow swath of land along the border with Egypt
JERUSALEM: As Israel and Hamas move closer to a ceasefire agreement, Israel says it wants to maintain troops in a southern corridor of the Gaza Strip — a condition that could derail the talks.
An Israeli official said an outstanding issue in the negotiations was Israel’s desire to keep forces in the territory during a 60-day truce, including in the east-west axis that Israel calls the Morag corridor. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk with the media about the negotiations.
Keeping a foothold in the Morag corridor is a key element in Israel’s plan to drive hundreds of thousands of Palestinians south toward a narrow swath of land along the border with Egypt, into what it has termed a “humanitarian city.”
Critics fear the move is a precursor to the coerced relocation of much of Gaza’s population of some 2 million people, and part of the Israeli government’s plans to maintain lasting control over the territory.
Hamas, which still holds dozens of hostages and refuses calls by Israel to surrender, wants Israel to withdraw all of its troops as part of any permanent truce. It is adamantly opposed to any lasting Israeli presence inside Gaza.
As part of the proposed truce, Israel and Hamas would hold fire for 60 days, during which time some hostages would be freed and more aid would enter Gaza.
Previous demands by Israel to maintain troops in a separate corridor stalled progress on a ceasefire deal for months.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to comment on how the Morag corridor was playing into ceasefire talks. Netanyahu was in Washington this week to discuss the ceasefire and other matters with US President Donald Trump, who has pushed both sides to bring an end to the war in Gaza.
Israel’s desire to keep troops in Gaza was among the ceasefire sticking points discussed Tuesday by senior officials from the US, Israel and Qatar, according to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
“We want to have peace. We want to get the hostages back. And I think we’re close to doing it,” Trump said Wednesday in response to a question about the officials’ meeting.
Hamas said in a statement late Wednesday that Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza was one of several remaining sticking points in the talks, without mentioning Morag specifically.
Morag corridor is one of three that carve up Gaza
During their 21-month campaign in Gaza, Israeli forces have seized wide swaths of land, including three east-west corridors that have carved up the Palestinian enclave.
In April, Israel seized the Morag corridor — named after a Jewish settlement that existed in Gaza before Israel withdrew from the territory in 2005.
The corridor, located between Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah and its second-largest city Khan Younis, stretches about 12 kilometers (7 miles) from Israel to the Mediterranean coast and is about 1 kilometer (half a mile) wide.
At the time, Netanyahu said it was part of a strategy of “increasing the pressure step by step” on Hamas.
Netanyahu called Morag a “second Philadelphi,” referring to another corridor that runs along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Israel has repeatedly insisted it must maintain control of Philadelphi to prevent cross-border arms smuggling. Egypt denies arms are moved through its territory.
Since the collapse of the last ceasefire in March, Israel has also reasserted control of the Netzarim corridor, which cuts off Gaza’s northern third from the rest of the territory and which it used to prevent Palestinians from returning to northern Gaza before the last truce.
It was not immediately clear how Israeli troops in the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors factor into the ceasefire negotiations.
Morag allows Israel to set its population movement plan into motion
The foothold in Morag has effectively cut the Rafah area off from the rest of Gaza.
Rafah, once a city of tens of thousands of people, is currently all but flattened and emptied of its population following Israeli evacuation orders.
With those conditions in place, Israel says it seeks to turn the Rafah area into a “sterile zone” free of Hamas militants where it wants to move hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into a “humanitarian city.”
Most of Gaza’s population has already been displaced multiple times throughout the war and squeezed into ever smaller pieces of land. Rights groups see the planned new push to get them to head south as forcible displacement.
Israel’s idea is to use Morag as a screening zone for Palestinians being moved south, to prevent Hamas from infiltrating the area, according to Kobi Michael, a senior researcher at two think tanks, the Institute for National Security Studies and Misgav. That would allow Israeli troops to operate further north without Palestinian civilians getting caught in the crossfire, he said.
A no-go for Hamas
Michael said the move might allow Israel to ramp up the pressure on — and possibly defeat — Hamas in northern Gaza, where guerilla-style fighting continues to dog Israeli troops. And that, he added, could lay the groundwork for an end to the war, which Israel has vowed to continue until Hamas is destroyed.
But critics say the plan to move Palestinians south paves the way for the expulsion of Palestinians from the territory and for Israel to assert control over it, a priority for Netanyahu’s powerful far-right governing partners.
Netanyahu has said that any departures would be “voluntary.” But Palestinians and human rights groups fear that concentrating the population in an area hard-hit by the war with little infrastructure would create catastrophic conditions that leave Palestinians no choice but to leave.
Michael Milshtein, an Israeli expert on Palestinian affairs and former military intelligence officer, called the plan to move Palestinians south through the Morag corridor a “crazy fantasy.” He said the current negotiations could crumble over the Israeli demand because it signaled to Hamas that Israel does not intend to withdraw forces after the ceasefire expires, something Hamas will not accept.
“For Hamas, it’s a no-go,” he said. “If those are the terms, I can’t see Hamas agreeing.”
UN mission in Libya urges immediate de-escalation in Tripoli
- Call follows reports of continued military buildup in and around the capital city
- Libya has had little stability since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising ousted longtime ruler Muammar Qaddafi
TRIPOLI: The UN Mission in Libya urged on Wednesday all Libyan parties to avoid actions or political rhetoric that could trigger escalation or renewed clashes in Tripoli, following reports of continued military buildup in and around the city.
Libyan Prime Minister Abdulhamid Al-Dbeibah ordered in May the dismantling of what he called irregular armed groups, which was followed by Tripoli’s fiercest clashes in years between two armed groups that killed at least eight civilians.
“The Mission continues its efforts to help de-escalate the situation and calls on all parties to engage in good faith toward this end ... Forces recently deployed in Tripoli must withdraw without delay,” the UN Mission said on social media.
A Tripoli-based Government of National Unity under Al-Dbeibah was installed through a UN-backed process in 2021 but the Benghazi-based House of Representatives no longer recognizes its legitimacy.
Libya has had little stability since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising ousted longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi. The country split in 2014 between rival eastern and western factions, though an outbreak of major warfare paused with a truce in 2020.
While eastern Libya has been dominated for a decade by commander Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army, control in Tripoli and western Libya has been splintered among numerous armed factions.
Yemen crisis ‘deeply volatile and unpredictable,’ UN special envoy tells Security Council
- Condemnation of renewed Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, the first for 7 months
- Humanitarian chief warns of 17m people going hungry in the country
NEW YORK CITY: The UN Security Council convened on Wednesday for a briefing on the escalating conflict and humanitarian crisis in Yemen, amid growing concerns about regional instability and the resumption of Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
The UN’s special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, described the present period as “deeply volatile and unpredictable,” while noting that there were some fragile hopes for a deescalation following the recent ceasefire agreement between Iran and Israel.
However, he cautioned that the Houthis continue to launch missile attacks against Israel, and recently targeted two commercial vessels in the Red Sea, resulting in civilian casualties and potential environmental damage. They were the first such assaults on international shipping in more than seven months.
“These attacks threaten freedom of navigation and risk dragging Yemen further into regional crises,” Grundberg warned, as he underscored the imperative need to safeguard civilian infrastructure and maintain stability in the country.
He emphasized that while the front lines in the Yemen conflict have largely held, military activity persists across several governorates, with troop movements suggesting an appetite for escalation among some factions.
Grundberg urged all parties involved in the conflict to demonstrate a genuine commitment to peace, including the release of all conflict-related detainees, a process that has been stalled for more than a year.
He also highlighted the dire economic situation in the country, describing it as the “most active front line” of the conflict, with currency devaluation and worsening food insecurity pushing millions toward famine.
In a call for practical cooperation, Grundberg praised recent developments such as the reopening of Al-Dhalea Road, which he said has eased movement and improved economic activity. He urged both sides to build on such progress to restore salaries, services and oil production.
The UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Tom Fletcher, briefed council members on the accelerating food-security crisis in the country.
“More than 17 million people are going hungry in Yemen, with numbers expected to rise to over 18 million by September,” he said, highlighting the threat to more than a million malnourished children under the age of 5.
Despite funding shortfalls, Fletcher said progress had been made in controlling cholera outbreaks and scaling up nutritional treatments, with more than 650,000 children receiving life-saving aid.
He also cited local-level agreements in Taiz governorate for the joint management of water supplies, and the reopening of a key road between Aden and Sanaa that is facilitating civilian and commercial transport for the first time in seven years.
However, he stressed the urgent need for increased funding of relief efforts, and called for the immediate release of detained UN workers and employees of nongovernmental organizations, echoing Grundberg’s demands.
The US Ambassador to the UN, Dorothy Shea, condemned the recent Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, including the sinking of the cargo vessel Magic Seas, describing them as “destabilizing” and a violation of freedom of navigation.
She urged the Security Council to renew calls for transparency regarding Houthi attacks on commercial vessels, and reaffirmed the US position in support of Israel’s right to self-defense against Houthi missile and drone attacks. She also condemned the continuing detention by the Houthis of UN and NGO workers and called for their immediate, unconditional release.
“The United States remains committed to depriving the Houthis of resources that sustain their terrorist actions,” she said, stressing that any assistance provided to the Houthis constituted a violation of US law as a result of the group’s designation by Washington as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
In addition, Shea called for the termination of the UN Mission to Support the Hudaydah Agreement, which she described as outdated and ineffective. Established following the 2018 Stockholm Agreement between the Yemeni government and the Houthis, the role of the mission has been to monitor the ceasefire agreement in the port city of Hodeidah (the UN uses an alternative spelling of the city’s name), oversee the redeployment of forces, monitor ports to ensure they are used for civilian purposes, and facilitate coordination between stakeholders in Yemen, including UN agencies.
US sanctions UN rights expert for Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese
- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attacked Albanese for her criticism of Washington policy on Gaza and for ‘biased and malicious activities’
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday announced Washington was sanctioning the United Nations special expert on the Palestinian territories, following her criticism of Washington policy on Gaza.
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt (International Criminal Court) action against US and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio said on social media.
In a subsequent statement, he slammed the UN expert’s strident criticism of the United States and said she recommended to the ICC that arrest warrants be issued targeting Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Rubio also attacked her for “biased and malicious activities,” and accused her of having “spewed unabashed antisemitism (and) support for terrorism.”
He said she escalated her contempt for the United States by writing “threatening letters” to several US companies, making what Rubio called unfounded accusations and recommending the ICC pursue prosecutions of the companies and their executives.
“We will not tolerate these campaigns of political and economic warfare, which threaten our national interests and sovereignty,” Rubio said.
Albanese has leveled broadsides against the policies of US President Donald Trump, particularly the plan he announced in early February to take over the Gaza Strip and resettle its residents elsewhere.
That proposal, short on details, faced a resounding rejection from Palestinians, Middle East leaders and the United Nations.
Albanese dismissed the Trump proposal as “utter nonsense” and an “international crime” that will sow panic around the world.
“It’s unlawful, immoral and... completely irresponsible because it will make the regional crisis even worse,” she said on February 5 during a visit to Copenhagen.
US envoy calls for change in Lebanese political culture in interview with LBCI Lebanon
- Thomas Barrack says Hezbollah is a Lebanese problem, up to Lebanese people to solve it
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s politicians have spent 60 years “denying, detouring and deflecting,” the US special envoy Tom Barrack said in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.
Barrack has been in Lebanon to talk with political leaders over Washington’s proposals to disarm the powerful militant group Hezbollah.
Asked whether the Lebanese politicians he has been dealing with were actually engaging with him or just buying time, the diplomat responded “both.”
“The Lebanese political culture is deny, detour and deflect,” Barrack said. “This is the way that it's been for 60 years, and this is the task we have in front of us. It has to change.”
After meeting President Joseph Aoun on Monday, he reacted positively to the Lebanese government’s response to a US plan to remove Hezbollah’s weapons.
In an interview with Lebanese broadcaster LBCI, Barrack said he believed the president, prime minister and the speaker of the house were being “candid, honest, and forthright” with him.
But he warned Lebanon’s politicians that the region is changing and if the politicians didn’t want to change as well “just tell us, and we'll not interfere.”
While he did not disclose the details of the US proposals, or the Lebanese response, Barrack said Lebanon’s leadership had to be willing to take a risk.
“We need results from these leaders,” he said.
Lebanon’s politicians have long been accused of corruption and putting self-interest first ahead of the good of the nation and the Lebanese people.
Public anger came to a head in 2019 with mass public protests against corruption and financial hardship.
The Lebanese economy spiraled into a financial crisis with the country defaulting on its debt and the currency collapsing.
Barrack, who is also Washington’s ambassador to Turkiye and special envoy for Syria, said the US was offering Lebanon a helping hand rather than trying to interfere in its politics.
“We’ve only said one thing, if you want us to help you, we're here to usher, we’re here to help. We’re here to protect to the extent that we can,” he said.
“But we’re not going to intervene in regime change. We’re not going to intervene in politics. And if you don’t want us, no problem, we’ll go home. That’s it.”
Barrack said Hezbollah, which is viewed as a terrorist organization by the US and is also a political party with 13 MPs in Lebanon “is a Lebanese problem, not a world problem.”
“We’ve already, from a political point of view, said it’s a terrorist organization. They mess with us anywhere, just as the president (Trump) has established on a military basis, they’re going to have a problem with us. How that gets solved within Lebanon is another issue … It’s up to the Lebanese people.”
Barrack said the disarmament of Hezbollah had always been based on a simple fact for President Donald Trump: “One nation, one people, one army.”
“If that's the case, if that’s what this political body chooses, then we will usher, will help, will influence, and will be that intermediary with all of the potential combatants or adversaries who are on your borders,” Barrack said.
The diplomat dismissed media speculation that the US had set timelines for its proposals, but said while Trump had been extremely proactive on Lebanon, he would not wait long for progress.
“Nobody is going to stick around doing this until next May,” he said. “I don’t think there’s ever been a president since Dwight Eisenhower who came out with such ferocity for Lebanon. On his own, he (Trump) has the courage, he has the dedication, he has the ability. What he doesn’t have is patience.
“If Lebanon wants to just keep kicking this can down the road, they can keep kicking the can down the road, but we’re not going to be here in May having this discussion.”
During the near hour-long, wide-ranging interview, Barrack, whose grandparents emigrated from Lebanon to the US, everybody across Lebanon’s many religions and sects was tired of war and discontent.
“If we have 19 different religions and 19 different communities and 19 different confessionals, there's one thing that’s above that, and that’s being Lebanese,” he said.
The Trump administration is keen to support Lebanon and Aoun, who became president in January, as the country struggles to emerge from years of economic hardship, political turmoil and regional unrest.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, had become the most powerful military force in the country and a major political power, but was significantly weakened by an Israeli campaign against the group last year.
Its weapons arsenal has remained an ongoing thorn in the side of US-Lebanon relations.
Along with disarming Hezbollah, the US proposals presented to Lebanese officials by Barrack last month are thought to include economic reforms to help the country move forward.
