UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed Tuesday an accord brokered by China seeking reconciliation between Hamas and other Palestinian factions to form a national unity government in Gaza.
“I think all steps toward unity are to be welcomed and encouraged,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, adding that Guterres “very much welcomes the signing of the Beijing Declaration by the Palestinian factions.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Hamas announced it had signed the agreement in Beijing with other Palestinian organizations — including rivals Fatah — to work together for “national unity.”
Hamas and Fatah are long-term rivals and fought a brief but bloody war in 2007 in which the former seized control of Gaza.
Fatah continues to dominate the Palestinian Authority, which has limited administrative control over urban areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Israel swiftly slammed the Beijing-brokered deal, with Foreign Minister Israel Katz insisting that “Hamas rule will be crushed” and accusing Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, a leader of Fatah, of embracing the group whose October 7 attacks triggered the war in Gaza.
The text of the deal outlines plans for “a temporary national unity government by agreement of the Palestinian factions” which would “exercise its authority and powers over all Palestinian territories” — the Gaza Strip as well the West Bank, including Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the factions had agreed to set up an “interim national reconciliation government” to govern post-war Gaza.
Speaking at the UN, spokesperson Dujarric said unity among the Palestinian factions was crucial.
“Palestinian unity... is crucial for peace and security and for advancing the aspirations of the Palestinian people for self determination and for fully independent, democratic, contiguous, viable and sovereign Palestinian state,” he said.
UN chief welcomes China-brokered accord seeking Palestinian unity
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UN chief welcomes China-brokered accord seeking Palestinian unity
- “I think all steps toward unity are to be welcomed and encouraged,” his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said
- Israel swiftly slammed the Beijing-brokered deal, with Foreign Minister Israel Katz insisting that “Hamas rule will be crushed“
The heads of the CIA and MI6 issue a joint call for a ceasefire in Gaza
CIA Director William Burns and MI6 Chief Richard Moore said their agencies had “exploited our intelligence channels to push hard for restraint and de-escalation.”
In an opinion piece for the Financial Times, the two spymasters said a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas “could end the suffering and appalling loss of life of Palestinian civilians and bring home the hostages after 11 months of hellish confinement.”
Burns has been heavily involved in efforts to broker an end to the fighting, traveling to Egypt in August for high-level talks aimed at bringing about a hostage deal and at least a temporary halt to the conflict.
So far there has been no agreement, though United States officials insist a deal is close. US President Joe Biden said recently that “just a couple more issues” remain unresolved. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, has said reports of a breakthrough are “exactly inaccurate.”
The US and the United Kingdom are both staunch allies of Israel, though London diverged from Washington on Monday by suspending some arms exports to Israel because of the risk they could be used to break international law.
Burns and Moore stressed the strength of the trans-Atlantic relationship in the face of “an unprecedented array of threats,” including an assertive Russia, an ever-more powerful China and the constant threat from international terrorism — all complicated by rapid technological change.
They highlighted Russia’s “reckless campaign of sabotage” across Europe and the “cynical use of technology to spread lies and disinformation designed to drive wedges between us.”
US officials have long accused Moscow of meddling in American elections, and this week the Biden administration seized Kremlin-run websites and charged employees of Russian broadcaster RT with covertly funding social media campaigns to pump out pro-Kremlin messages and sow discord around November’s presidential contest.
Thirteen Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, WAFA says
- Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has since killed over 40,800 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis
RAMALLAH: At least 13 Palestinians were killed and 15 wounded in Israeli strikes on a school sheltering refugees and a residential building in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency WAFA reported early on Saturday.
At least eight of the dead were in refugee tents at Halima Al-Sa’diyya School in Jabalia in northern Gaza, WAFA said.
The Israeli army said in a statement it had “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control center... embedded inside a compound that previously served as the ‘Halima Al-Sa’diyya’ School in the northern Gaza Strip.”
In a separate incident, five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike on a residential building in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered Oct. 7 last year when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has since killed over 40,800 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.
According to the United Nations, at least 1.9 million people across the Gaza Strip are internally displaced, including some uprooted more than 10 times.
UN investigator accuses Israel of a ‘starvation campaign’ in Gaza that Netanyahu denies
- UN investigator Michael Fakhri: “Never in post-war history had a population been made to go hungry so quickly and so completely as was the case for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza”
UNITED NATIONS: The UN independent investigator on the right to food accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians during the war in Gaza, an allegation that Israel vehemently denies.
In a report this week, investigator Michael Fakhri claimed it began two days after Hamas’ surprise attack in southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people, when Israel’s military offensive in response blocked all food, water, fuel and other supplies into Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said accusations of Israel limiting humanitarian aid were “outrageously false.”
“A deliberate starvation policy? You can say anything — it doesn’t make it true,” he said in a press conference Wednesday.
Following intense international pressure — especially from close ally the United States — Netanyahu’s government gradually has opened several border crossings for tightly controlled deliveries. Fakhri said limited aid initially went mostly to southern and central Gaza, not to the north where Israel had ordered Palestinians to go.
A professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, Fakhri was appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council as the investigator, or special rapporteur, on the right to food and assumed the role in 2020.
“By December, Palestinians in Gaza made up 80 percent of the people in the world experiencing famine or catastrophic hunger,” Fakhri said. “Never in post-war history had a population been made to go hungry so quickly and so completely as was the case for the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.”
Fakhri, who teaches law courses on human rights, food law and development, made the allegations in a report to the UN General Assembly circulated Thursday.
He claims it goes back 76 years to Israeli’s independence and its continuous dislocation of Palestinians. Since then, he accused Israel of deploying “the full range of techniques of hunger and starvation against the Palestinians, perfecting the degree of control, suffering and death that it can cause through food systems.”
Since the war in Gaza began, Fakhri said he has received direct reports of the destruction of the territory’s food system, including farmland and fishing, which also has been documented and recognized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and others.
“Israel then used humanitarian aid as a political and military weapon to harm and kill the Palestinian people in Gaza,” he claimed.
Israel insists it no longer places restrictions on the number of aid trucks entering Gaza, including food.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Netanyahu cited figures from COGAT, Israel’s military body overseeing aid entry into Gaza, that 700,000 tons of food items had been allowed into Gaza since the war began 11 months ago.
Nearly half of that food aid in recent months has been brought in by the private sector for sale in Gaza’s markets, according to COGAT figures. However, many Palestinians in Gaza say they struggle to afford enough food for their families.
Israel allows trucks of aid through two small crossings in the north and one main crossing in the south, Kerem Shalom. However, since Israel’s invasion of the southern city of Rafah in May, the UN and other aid agencies say they struggle to reach the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom to retrieve the aid for free distribution because Israel’s military operations make it too dangerous.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “beyond catastrophic,” with more than 1 million Palestinians not receiving any food rations in August and a 35 percent drop in people getting daily cooked meals.
The UN humanitarian office attributed the sharp reduction in cooked meals partly to multiple evacuation orders from Israeli security forces that forced at least 70 of 130 kitchens to either suspend or relocate their operations, he said Thursday. The UN’s humanitarian partners also lacked sufficient food supplies to meet requirements for the second straight month in central and southern Gaza, Dujarric added.
He said critical shortages of supplies in Gaza are stem from hostilities, insecurity, damaged roads, and Israeli obstacles and access limitations.
German minister says ‘purely military approach’ not the solution in Gaza
- Baerbock on Friday called for “a ceasefire now” and also spoke out against hawkish statements by Israeli officials about the West Bank, where the army on Aug. 28 launched a raid in multiple cities that has left at least 36 dead
TEL AVIV: German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Friday that a military approach alone was not the solution to Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“The past weekend has dramatically demonstrated that a purely military approach is no solution to the situation in Gaza,” she said after meeting with her Israeli counterpart, Israel Katz, in the coastal Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
Baerbock was referring to the recovery of six more dead hostages announced on Sunday.
Their deaths have ramped up domestic pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seal a deal with Hamas for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage exchange deal, though the two sides have traded blame over stalled talks this week.
FASTFACT
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called for ‘a ceasefire now’ and also spoke out against hawkish statements by Israeli officials about the West Bank.
Baerbock on Friday called for “a ceasefire now” and also spoke out against hawkish statements by Israeli officials about the West Bank, where the army on Aug. 28 launched a raid in multiple cities that has left at least 36 dead.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, said in a post on X on Friday that he had asked Netanyahu to make the defeat of Hamas “and other terrorist organizations” in the West Bank one of the aims of the war in Gaza.
“When members of the Israeli government themselves call for the same approach in the West Bank as in Gaza, that is precisely what acutely endangers Israel’s security,” Baerbock said.
Her comments came one day after German police shot dead a man who opened fire on them in what they treated as a foiled “terrorist attack” on Munich’s Israeli Consulate on the anniversary of the 1972 Olympic Games killings.
Baerbock said she had “expressed my deepest and full solidarity” with Katz.
“This is a terrible situation. This is a terrible moment for us, especially on the very anniversary of Munich 1972,” she said.
Authorities in Vienna said investigators seized electronic devices at the home of the young Austrian who fired shots near the Munich consulate, but found no weapons or Daesh propaganda material.
Jordanian Foreign Ministry condemns killing of US-Turkish citizen during West Bank protests
- 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi shot in the head on Friday in Nablus area while protesting against expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied West Bank
AMMAN: Jordan’s Foreign Ministry condemned the killing on Friday of a dual US-Turkish citizen while she was taking part in a protest against the expansion of settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The ministry described the incident as a “horrible crime for which those involved must face consequences,” the Jordan News Agency reported.
Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was shot in the head in the Nablus area of the northern West Bank while protesting. Her death was confirmed by the US State Department and the Turkish Foreign Ministry. The latter said she was killed by Israeli soldiers and described the incident as a “murder carried out by the Netanyahu government.”
Ambassador Sufian Qudah, a spokesperson for Jordan’s Foreign Ministry, said the killing was a “continuation of the crimes committed by the occupation and its ongoing violations against defenseless civilians in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.”
It “reflects the extreme policies of the Israeli government, which feed into extremism and hatred and encourage settlers to target the killing of Palestinians and anyone who supports the Palestinian people in their struggle for their rightful state,” he added.
Qudah urged the international community to live up to its moral and legal obligations by compelling Israel to halt its aggression in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and to hold accountable those who commit crimes against Palestinian civilians.
