JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded Thursday that Israel retain control of key Gaza territory along the border with Egypt as part of any accord to suspend the war with Hamas.
The condition conflicts with Hamas's position that Israel must withdraw from all Gaza territory after a ceasefire.
Speaking after the return of Israeli negotiators from talks with mediators in Qatar, Netanyahu said Israel needed control to stop weapons reaching Hamas from Egypt -- one of four conditions for a deal with the Palestinian militants.
He did not say if the measure would be permanent. But it is the first time Israel has insisted on retaining control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt and the so-called Philadelphi corridor along the border.
Netanyahu said Israel's negotiators, led by Mossad intelligence chief David Barnea, went to Doha to defend what he called four "ironclad principles", with the key condition that Israel be allowed to keep fighting until its war aims of destroying Hamas and bringing home all hostages are achieved.
Netanyahu reaffirmed the others: stopping weapons reaching Hamas from Egypt -- "first and foremost by Israeli control of the Philadelphi axis and the Rafah crossing" -- not allowing militants to regroup in northern Gaza and ensuring a "maximum" number of hostages are freed.
While the United States has expressed "cautious optimism" over the Qatar talks, Netanyahu vowed to keeping fighting Hamas with "full force", calling it a "sacred mission" to bring back hostages seized in the October 7 attacks.
The attacks on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead. Some 105 hostages were freed during a one-week truce in November.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 38,345 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.
"Ambiguity and hesitance did not bring about our achievements to date, and they will not bring about achievements in the future," Netanyahu said.
"I am committed to an outline for the release of our hostages, but Hamas terrorists continue to insist on demands that contradict the outline and threaten Israel's security," he added.
Netanyahu demands Israeli control of Gaza territory on Egypt border
https://arab.news/n4t79
Netanyahu demands Israeli control of Gaza territory on Egypt border
- The condition conflicts with Hamas's position that Israel must withdraw from all Gaza territory after a ceasefire
- Netanyahu said Israel needed control to stop weapons reaching Hamas from Egypt
Violent clash over torture of Palestinian detainees reveals extent of Israeli political polarization
Violent clash over torture of Palestinian detainees reveals extent of Israeli political polarization
- Investigation into maltreatment of a Palestinian in a military detention facility sparks rightwing protests
- New accusations include use of waterboarding, electrocution, and sleep deprivation on Palestinians in Israeli custody
ATHENS: Southern Israel’s Sde Teiman detention facility was rocked by protests on Monday when dozens of protestors — including several far-right members of the Knesset — clashed with military police.
The protestors, waving Israeli flags and chanting “shame,” were condemning the arrest and detention of nine Israel Defense Forces reservists accused of subjecting a detained Palestinian man to abuse so severe it resulted in his hospitalization.
As domestic political tensions continue to rise and the war in Gaza shows no sign of stopping, many are wondering whether the widely reported torture of Palestinians in Israeli custody will only deepen the political rift in Israel.
The protest at Sde Teiman was expected, especially given the rhetoric of Israeli lawmakers regarding the treatment of detained Palestinians. Israel’s far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir took to X on Monday to post: “Take your hands off our reservists!”
Some Israeli politicians’ brazen endorsement of torture is even more shocking. When asked by a fellow member of the Knesset whether there was any justification for sodomizing a detainee, Likud Party MK Hanoch Mildwidsky shouted: “Yes! If he is a Nukhba (Hamas militant), everything is legitimate to do!”
Bezalel Smotrich, the minister of finance, also condemned the arrests on X, demanding the release of the reservists — whom he called “IDF heroes” — and calling for those who ordered their arrest to be sacked.
Videos posted on social media also showed far-right parliamentarian Zvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionist Party and Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu of Otzma Yehudit entering the detention facility at Sde Teiman.
The Sde Teiman protest escalated after protestors realized the detained reservists were being held at the Beit Lid military base north of Tel Aviv, where they attempted to break into the detention center to release the soldiers.
Several members of the reservists’ unit also joined in the protest in full military uniform, though their faces were covered.
Allegations of the torture of Palestinian detainees by Israeli forces have been mounting for years — even more so since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report on Wednesday alleging the death of at least 53 Palestinian detainees in Israeli custody since the war began, as well as the use of waterboarding, electrocution, and sleep deprivation.
The Israel Prison Service has denied all of the allegations, claiming that Israeli prisons do not violate the rights of prisoners.
The OHCHR report added that more than 9,400 Palestinians had been detained in Israel from October to the end of June, many of whom had not been granted access to a lawyer.
Since Oct. 7, thousands of Palestinians — including medics, patients, residents and captured fighters — have been taken from Gaza to Israel, “usually shackled and blindfolded,” the OHCHR report said.
INNUMBERS
• 53 Palestinian detainees believed to have died in Israeli custody since Oct.7.
• 9,400 Palestinians detained in Israel from October to the end of June.
Source: OHCHR
Thousands more have been detained in the West Bank and Israel. “They have generally been held in secret, without being given a reason for their detention, access to a lawyer or effective judicial review,” OHCHR added.
Testimonies for the report suggested that Israel had subjected prisoners to “a range of appalling acts, such as waterboarding and the release of dogs on detainees,” UN human rights chief Volker Turk said in a statement accompanying the report.
Many released Palestinians reported treatment “including severe beatings, electrocution, being forced to remain in stress positions for prolonged periods, or waterboarding.” The report said detainees had been subjected to blackmail, “being burnt with cigarettes, and given hallucinogenic pills.”
It said there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that since Oct. 7, Israel and Palestinian armed groups had “committed gross violations and abuses … of the rights to life, liberty and freedom from torture and other ill-treatment.”
These included the use of “rape and other forms of sexual violence,” warning the abuses may amount to war crimes. Besides calling for the abuses to cease, the OHCHR urged all parties to “immediately end all forms of arbitrary detention, including the holding of hostages.”
A summary of the report referred to a “staggering” number of detainees — including men, women, children, journalists and human rights defenders.
“Detainees said they were held in cage-like facilities, stripped naked for prolonged periods, wearing only diapers. Their testimonies told of prolonged blindfolding, deprivation of food, sleep and water,” the summary said.
Some detainees said that “their hands were tied and they were suspended from the ceiling,” while “some women and men also spoke of sexual and gender-based violence.”
According to the Prisoners Club, a Palestinian rights watchdog, around 9,600 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli jails, including hundreds under administrative detention where they can be kept for long periods without charge.
Not all Israelis have defended the alleged actions of the arrested reservists, nor do they support the use of torture and the violation of the human rights of Palestinian detainees.
“Are you in favor of rape? Is this part of Judaism?” Israeli human rights activist Yariv Oppenheimer replied to Belal Smotrich’s post on X.
Israeli writer Hen Mazzig condemned the protests, during which he said members of the media were verbally and physically assaulted.
“Israel’s investigation (of the reservists) must be allowed to proceed. This protest and the politicians encouraging it do NOTHING to help Israel. It only gives more material for those who hate us,” he posted on X on Monday.
Only a handful of Israeli government officials have condemned the protests and the storming of the detention facility, chief among them Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Interior Minister Moshe Arbel.
“Even when angry, the laws apply to everyone — do not break into IDF bases and do not violate the laws of the State of Israel,” Gallant posted on X.
“I call on the Israeli Police to act immediately against the violators of the law and on all elected officials to refrain from irresponsible statements that drag the IDF into the political arena,” he said in a separate post.
In a statement on Monday, Herzi Halevi, chief of the general staff of the IDF, stated that the break-ins at IDF bases were “extremely serious and against the law.”
However, despite these condemnations, Israeli security forces at the IDF military bases were reportedly apathetic towards the protestors, and there have been no reported detentions or arrests of those involved.
The day after the protests saw a boisterous meeting in the Knesset after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the mob that broke into IDF bases.
Despite attempts by right-wing activists and lawmakers alike to have the arrested reservists released, eight of the original 10 reservists had their detentions extended this morning and will remain in custody until Sunday, according to the IDF.
The suspects may face charges of aggravated sodomy, assault, and conduct unbecoming of a soldier, among other charges.
Hezbollah leader’s body found in rubble following airstrike
- Lebanon urges international community to act to halt further escalation
BEIRUT: Hezbollah civil defense teams on Wednesday found the body of senior commander Fouad Shukr, who was killed in an Israeli drone strike the previous night in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
The militant group had confirmed Shukr’s presence in the targeted building earlier in the day after a blackout that lasted throughout Tuesday night.
Conflicting reports emerged regarding the fate of the prominent Hezbollah leader. Security information shared at the site of the attack suggested that Shukr was the main target of the airstrike.
Diplomatic communications with Lebanon intensified in the wake of Shukr’s death. Political observers linked the scale of the response to the attack with the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political bureau chief, in Tehran early on Wednesday.
Relief and civil defense teams continued to remove debris from the upper floors of the Beirut residential building, which partially collapsed after it was struck by three missiles fired by the Israeli combat drone.
Journalists and photographers were not allowed near the site, which was cordoned off by Hezbollah members. Debris was cleared from the surrounding streets, and roads were reopened.
At least four other people are though to have died in the attack: Wasila Baydoun from the southern town of Chehabiyeh; and Hanan Hakim and her two children, Sarah, 6, and Hassan Fadlallah,10, from the southern town of Aainata.
Most of those injured in the blast were discharged from hospital after receiving treatment, with a few remaining under medical care.
In its morning statement, Hezbollah said that “civil defense teams have been diligently working to remove the debris since the incident occurred, but progress is slow due to the condition of the destroyed floors. We are still awaiting the outcome of this operation concerning the fate of the esteemed leader and other citizens at this location, so that the necessary action can be taken.”
The Israeli attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs was widely condemned by Lebanese politicians and parties, with demands for “urgent international, regional, and UN action to stop the Israeli killing machine.”
A ministerial delegation visited the site after an extraordinary Cabinet session chaired by Najib Mikati, the caretaker prime minister, who strongly condemned the attack, warning that “matters will escalate for the worse if the enemy continues with its recklessness and murderous, criminal insanity, and if the concerned countries and the international community do not quickly intervene to curb this dangerous escalation.”
Mikati also condemned the killing of Haniyeh, describing it as a “serious threat that could expand the circle of global concern in the region.”
Ziad Makary, the caretaker information minister, said that the Lebanese Cabinet “remains in open session to monitor any developments.”
He added that the prime minister’s office is making “vigorous diplomatic efforts aimed at promoting peace transparently and unequivocally.”
Makary added: “It is natural for everyone to fear the possibility of war.”
Separately, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix; UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert; and the UNIFIL Commander, Gen. Aroldo Lazaro, discussed with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Foreign Minister Abdullah Bou Habib “ways to contain the escalation to prevent the expansion of the war.”
Meanwhile, the attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs sparked concern and confusion among travelers at Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport.
Travel and tourism companies said that many scheduled trips to Lebanon next week had been canceled.
The head of the Association of Travel and Tourism Agents, Jan Aboud, said that a week ago Lebanon was receiving around 14,000 passenger arrivals daily, with at least 85 flights per day. However, yesterday the number of passenger arrivals dropped to 9,500.
Children suffer as skin disease runs rampant in Gaza tent camps
- Doctors wrestling with over 103,000 cases of lice, scabies and 65,000 cases of rashes
GAZA STRIP: A steady stream of miserable children and worried parents flowed into the dermatology office at Nasser Hospital in central Gaza.
A toddler with a blue hair bow sobbed as her mother showed how the red and white spots covering her face have spread to her neck and chest.
Another woman lifted her little boy’s clothes to reveal the rashes on his back, butt, thighs and stomach. On his wrists, he had open sores from scratching. A father stood his daughter on the desk so the doctor could examine the lesions on her calves.
Skin diseases are running rampant in Gaza, health officials say. The cause, they say, is the appalling conditions in overcrowded tent camps housing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from their homes, along with the summer heat and the collapse of sanitation that has left pools of open sewage amid 10 months of Israel’s bombardment and offensives in the territory.
Doctors are wrestling with more than 103,000 cases of lice and scabies and 65,000 cases of skin rashes, according to the World Health Organization.
In Gaza’s population of some 2.3 million, more than 1 million cases of acute respiratory infections have been recorded since the war began, along with more than half a million of acute diarrhea and more than 100,000 cases of jaundice, according to the United Nations Development Programme.
Cleanliness is impossible in the ramshackle tents, basically wood frames hung with blankets or plastic sheets, crammed side by side over wide stretches, Palestinians say.
“There’s no shampoo, no soap,” said Munira Al-Nahhal, living in a tent in the dunes outside the southern city of Khan Younis. “The water is dirty. Everything is sand and insects and garbage.”
Her family’s tent was crammed with her grandchildren, many of whom had rashes. One little boy stood scratching the red patches on his belly. “One child gets it, and it spreads to all of them,” Al-Nahhal said.
Palestinians in the camp said clean water was almost impossible to get. Some wash their children in salt water from the nearby Mediterranean. People have to wear the same clothes day after day until they’re able to wash them, then they wear them again immediately. Flies are everywhere. Children play in garbage-strewn sand.
“First it was spots on her face. Then it spread to her stomach and arms, all over her forehead. And it hurts. It itches. And there’s no treatment. Or if there is we can’t afford it,” said Shaima Marshoud, sitting next to her little daughter in a cinder block structure they’d settled in among the tents.
More than 1.8 million of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes. The vast majority are now crowded into a 50-square-kilometer area of dunes and fields on the coast with almost no sewage system and little water.
The distribution of humanitarian supplies, including soap, shampoo and medicines, has slowed to a trickle, UN officials say, because Israeli military operations and general lawlessness in Gaza make it too dangerous for relief trucks to move.
“The solid waste management system has collapsed,” said Chitose Noguchi, the deputy special representative of the UN Development Program.
The UNDP said Gaza’s two pre-war landfills were unreachable amid the fighting and it had set up 10 temporary sites. But Noguchi said there were more than 140 informal dumping sites that have cropped up. Some of them are giant pools of human waste and garbage.
Killing of Hamas political leader points to diverging paths for Israel, US, on ceasefire
- The US remains focused on a ceasefire in the 9-month-old Israeli war in Gaza “as the best way to bring the temperature down everywhere,” Blinken said
- “I just don’t see how a ceasefire is feasible right now with the assassination of the person you would have been negotiating with,” said Vali Nasr, a former US diplomat
WASHINGTON: Israel’s suspected killing of Hamas’ political leader in the heart of Tehran, coming after a week in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahupromised US lawmakers he would continue his war against Hamas until “total victory,” points to an Israeli leader ever more openly at odds with Biden administration efforts to calm the region through diplomacy.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking on an Asia trip, was left to tell reporters there that Americans had not been aware of or involved in the attack on Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, whose roles included overseeing Hamas’ side in US-led mediation to bring a ceasefire and release of hostages in the Gaza war.
The US remains focused on a ceasefire in the 9-month-old Israeli war in Gaza “as the best way to bring the temperature down everywhere,” Blinken said after Haniyeh’s killing.
The targeting, and timing, of the overnight strike may have all but destroyed US hopes for now.
“I just don’t see how a ceasefire is feasible right now with the assassination of the person you would have been negotiating with,” said Vali Nasr, a former US diplomat now at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
If the expected cycles of retaliation and counter-retaliation ahead start unspooling as feared, Haniyeh’s killing could mark the end of Biden administration’s hopes of restraining escalatory actions as Israel targets what Netanyahu calls Iran’s “axis of terror,” in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.
And with the US political campaign entering its final months, it will be more difficult for the Biden administration to break away — if it wants to — from an ally it is bound to through historical, security, economic and political ties.
The killing of Haniyeh, and another suspected Israeli strike on a senior Hezbollah leader in the Lebanese capital of Beirut hours earlier, came on the heels of Netanyahu’s return home from a nearly weeklong trip to the US, his first foreign trip of the war.
The Biden administration had said it hoped to use the visit to overcome some of the remaining obstacles in negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza and to free Israeli, American and other foreign hostages held by Hamas and other militants.
President Joe Biden has been Israel’s most vital backer in the war, keeping up shipments of arms and other military aid while defending Israel against any international action over the deaths of more than 39,000 Palestinians in the Israeli offensive.
But Biden has also put his political weight behind efforts to secure the ceasefire and hostage release, including publicly declaring that the two sides had both agreed to a framework and urging them to seal the deal.
Netanyahu told a joint meeting of Congress during his visit that Israel was determined to win nothing less than “total victory” against Hamas. Asked directly by journalists on the point later, he said that Israel hoped for a ceasefire soon and was working for one.
Following the visit, Biden administration officials dodged questions about reports that Israel’s far-right government had newly raised additional conditions for any ceasefire deals.
Haniyeh had been openly living in Doha, Qatar, for the months since the Oct. 7 attack. But he wasn’t attacked until he was in Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s president. Nasr said Iran will see it as a direct Israeli attack on its sovereignty, and respond.
“If you wanted to have a ceasefire, if Haniyeh was in your sights, you might have said, ‘I’ll kill him in a few months. Not now,” said Nasr, who said it suggested overt undermining of ceasefire negotiations by Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s far-right government says Israel is fighting in Gaza to destroy Iran-allied Hamas as a military and governing power there. Israel warns that it is also prepared to expand its fight further to include an offensive in Lebanon, if necessary to stop what have been near-daily exchanges of rocket fire between Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Israel.
Hezbollah is by far the most powerful of the Iran-allied groups in the Middle East. Analysts and diplomats warn of any such expansion of hostilities touching off uncontrollable conflicts throughout the region that would draw in the United States as Israel’s ally. The US, France and others have urged Israel and Iran and its allies to resolve tensions through negotiations.
In a letter to foreign diplomats made public Tuesday, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that Israel “is not interested in all-out war,” but that the only way to avoid it would be to implement a 2006 UN resolution calling for a demilitarized zone along Israel’s border with Lebanon and an end of hostilities with Hezbollah.
US national security adviser John Kirby, who earlier this week called fears of major escalation from the killing of the Hezbollah official in Beirut “exaggerated,” told reporters that the news of the more momentous strike on the Hamas leader in Tehran “doesn’t help ... with the temperature going down in the region. We’re obviously concerned.”
At the same time, Kirby said, “We also haven’t seen any indication...that this process has been completely torpedoed. We still believe that this is a worthy endeavor...and a deal can be had.” The US had a team in the region Wednesday for negotiations, he said.
“We don’t want to see an escalation. And everything we’ve been doing since the 7th of October has been trying to manage that risk,” he said.
Queen Rania of Jordan opens new radiation oncology facility in Amman
- Expansion will allow the department to increase its capacity from 260 to about 400 patients a month
AMMAN: Queen Rania of Jordan officially opened a new radiation oncology building at the King Hussein Cancer Center in Amman on Wednesday.
The new facility, which has 2,700 square meters of space and is equipped with cutting-edge medical technology, will allow the radiation oncology department to increase the number of patients it treats each month from 260 to about 400, the Jordan News Agency reported.
During her visit to the center, the queen toured key departments, including Jordan’s first neurosurgery suite, which has successfully carried out more than 300 operations since it opened in 2019. She also saw the pediatrics department, which provides care for about 90 percent of the all pediatric cancer patients in the country.
“Over the past 25 years, the King Hussein Cancer Center has become a cornerstone of cancer care in the region, serving more than 70,000 patients,” said Princess Ghida Talal, chairperson of the King Hussein Cancer Foundation and Center.
Each year, the center, which covers an area of 108,700 square meters, handles 7,000 new patients, 14,000 admissions and 250,000 outpatient visits, officials said, and provides essential radiotherapy services required by about 60 percent of the patients it treats.
Its key facilities include the country’s first public umbilical cord blood bank, specialized intensive-care units, diagnostic and therapeutic radiology departments, a cellular therapy and applied genomics department, and a bone marrow-transplant program.
Other dignitaries who joined the queen at the inauguration ceremony on Wednesday included several other members of the royal family and Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh.
