GAZA: At least 50 Gaza families living next to the front line with Israel had fled their homes by the seventh day of Israel’s air war but far more people will be uprooted if there is any ground invasion, the UN relief agency in the enclave said yesterday.
The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which serves over one million Palestinians in Gaza, has directed the displaced to one of its schools for “protected shelter,” offering them mattresses, blankets and some kitchen tools.
There has been no massive displacement so far, Filippo Grandi, UNRWA’s Commissioner General, told Reuters during a visit to a distribution center in the Gaza Strip.
“What usually triggers displacement is a ground operation, a ground offensive. That’s why we really hope that a ground offensive will not happen because among many other things it will also cause a lot of humanitarian problems,” Grandi said. More than a half of the 115 Palestinians killed so far were civilians, including 27 children. Street-to-street urban fighting could raise the toll significantly.
Many Gazans believe Israel is deliberately targeting houses to mount pressure on Hamas to cease fire. Nael Al-Attar, 28, said he had fled his house with his wife and two children “under fire from the Israeli Army.” “The Jews killed children, the elderly and women. We hope this does not last long and we urge all countries to intervene and resolve the conflict,” Attar said. He added: “We thank Hamas and all other organizations for their resistance. Do all you can to terrorize the occupier.”
Meanwhile, efforts to end a week-old convulsion of Israeli-Palestinian violence drew in the world’s top diplomats yesterday, with President Barack Obama dispatching his secretary of state to the region on an emergency mission and the UN chief appealing from Cairo for an immediate cease-fire.
Hillary Rodham Clinton departed for the Mideast yesterday from Cambodia, where she had accompanied Obama on a visit. Clinton is to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank and Egyptian leaders in Cairo, according to US and Palestinian officials.
Netanyahu said yesterday that Israel wouldn’t balk at a broader military operation.
“I prefer a diplomatic solution,” Netanyahu said in a statement after meeting with Germany’s foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle. “But if the fire continues, we will be forced to take broader measures and will not hesitate to do so.”
Early yesterday, Israeli aircraft targeted another Hamas symbol of power, the headquarters of a bank senior Hamas officials set up to sidestep international sanctions on the militant group’s rule. After Hamas overran Gaza, foreign lenders stopped doing business with its militant-led government, afraid of running afoul of international terror financing laws.
The inside of the bank was destroyed and a building supply business in the basement was damaged. “I’m not involved in politics,” said the business owner, Suleiman Tawil. “I’m a businessman. But the more the Israelis pressure us, the more we will support Hamas.”
A man identified as the most elusive top military commander of Hamas is urging the group’s fighters to keep up attacks on Israel.
Mohammed Deif, seriously wounded in an Israeli airstrike in 2003, says Hamas “must invest all resources to uproot this aggressor from our land,” a reference to Israel.
Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby, accompanied by 10 Arab ministers, crossed into Gaza yesterday on a solidarity visit, the Hamas government announced.
“The Arab foreign ministers delegation has arrived through the Rafah border crossing,” Hamas information office said in a statement, adding Turkey’s foreign minister was with the delegation.
Meanwhile, A Bahrain lawmaker says he set fire to an Israeli flag during a Parliament session in a show of support for the Palestinians in Gaza.
Osama Al-Tamimi says he smuggled a canister of gasoline into the chamber and set the flag ablaze yesterday. The incident prompted a five-minute suspension of the session. Al-Tamimi says he sought to “send a clear message to the international community” about Bahrain’s support for the people of Gaza.
Gaza invasion could displace thousands, warns UNRWA
Gaza invasion could displace thousands, warns UNRWA
Hamas negotiators ‘not in Doha’ but political office not closed: Qatar
- Qatar hosted the Palestinian militant group since 2012 announced earlier this month it was pausing its mediation efforts
“The leaders of Hamas that are within the negotiating team are now not in Doha,” foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al-Ansari said, adding: “The decision to... close down the office permanently, is a decision that you will hear about from us directly.”
Qatar, along with the United States and Egypt, had been engaged in months of fruitless negotiations for a truce in the Gaza war, which would include a hostage and prisoner release deal.
But the Gulf state, which has hosted the Palestinian militant group since 2012, with Washington’s blessing, announced earlier this month it was pausing its mediation efforts.
“The mediation process right now... is suspended unless we take a decision to reverse that which is based on the positions of both sides,” Ansari said on Tuesday.
“The office of Hamas in Doha was created for the sake of the mediation process. Obviously, when there is no mediation process, the office itself doesn’t have any function,” he added, declining to confirm whether Qatar had asked Hamas officials to leave.
Syrian top diplomat arrives in Tehran for talks
- Sabbagh is in Tehran for his first visit since taking up his post in September to meet Iranian officials, local media reported
Tehran: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi welcomed his new Syrian counterpart Bassam Al-Sabbagh in Tehran on Tuesday, the latest in a series of meetings between top officials from the close allies.
Sabbagh is in Tehran for his first visit since taking up his post in September to meet Iranian officials, local media reported.
Details of his meetings have not yet been disclosed.
Al-Sabbagh’s visit comes less than a week after Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, visited Syria and met with Syrian President Bashar Assad, a close ally of Iran.
Over the weekend, Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasrizadeh was in Damascus to hold talks with Syrian officials.
Earlier in October, Araghchi himself traveled to Damascus as part of a regional tour just days before Israel’s first confirmed attack on Iranian military sites.
This attack was a response to a large Iranian missile strike on Israel at the start of the month that was prompted by the killing of commanders of militant groups affiliated with Iran, including Hezbollah, and a commander of the Revolutionary Guards.
It followed an Iranian missile and drone attack against Israel in April that was triggered by a strike on an Iranian diplomatic building in Damascus blamed on Israel.
Iran does not recognize Israel and has made support for the Palestinian cause a cornerstone of its foreign policy since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
As a staunch ally of Damascus, Tehran has supported Bashar Assad during more than a decade of civil war in Syria.
Norway to ask ICJ to step in after Israel bans UNRWA
- Bills passed by Israel’s parliament will stop UN agency from sending vital aid to Gaza
- Norwegian FM: Bills will ‘undermine the stability of the entire Middle East’
London: Norway will ask the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion condemning Israel for ceasing cooperation with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, The Guardian reported on Tuesday.
Last month, Israel’s parliament passed two bills banning the agency from the country and forbidding state cooperation with it.
There are fears that the bills, due to come into effect within three months, will prevent UNRWA from delivering vital aid into Gaza.
The agency says two-thirds of its buildings have been destroyed in Israel’s invasion of the Palestinian enclave, and 243 staff have been killed.
Norway’s Deputy Foreign Minister Andreas Motzfeldt Kravik has held talks at the UN on a draft resolution to urge an advisory opinion from the ICJ to protect the existence of UNRWA.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said: “The international community cannot accept that the UN, international humanitarian organizations, and states continue to face systematic obstacles when working in Palestine and delivering humanitarian assistance to Palestinians under occupation.
“We are therefore requesting the International Court of Justice for an advisory opinion on Israel’s obligations to facilitate humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population, delivered by international organizations, including the UN, and states.”
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said the Israeli bills would “undermine the stability of the entire Middle East” and have “severe consequences for millions of civilians already living in the most dire of circumstances.”
Norway’s move is being backed by an increasing number of UN figures and member states. UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said at the UN on Monday: “The situation (in Gaza) is devastating and beyond comprehension, and frankly it is getting worse. It is totally unacceptable that it is harder than ever to get aid into Gaza.
“In October only 37 aid trucks reached Gaza, the lowest ever. There is no excuse for Israeli restrictions on aid.”
UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said: “I have drawn the attention of the member states that now the clock is ticking … We have to stop or prevent the implementation of this bill.”
According to the UN Charter, UN buildings are meant to be inviolable during conflicts. After the 2008 war in Gaza, Israel paid the UN compensation amounting to $10.4 million for damage caused to its premises after an investigation determined “an egregious breach of the inviolability of the United Nations premises and a failure to accord the property and assets of the organisation immunity from any form of interference.”
UN says over 200 children killed in Lebanon in under 2 months
Geneva: The UN said Tuesday that over 200 children have been killed in Lebanon in the less than two months since Israel escalated its attacks targeting Hezbollah.
“Despite more than 200 children killed in Lebanon in less than two months, a disconcerting pattern has emerged: their deaths are met with inertia from those able to stop this violence,” James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, told reporters in Geneva.
“Over the last two months in Lebanon, an average of three children have been killed every single day,” he said.
Israeli army says 40 projectiles fired from Lebanon into central, northern Israel
- On Monday, one person was killed and several people injured in two separate incidents
Jerusalem: The Israeli military said on Tuesday that some 40 projectiles were fired from Lebanon into central and northern Israel, with first responders reporting that four people were lightly injured by shrapnel.
“Following sirens that sounded between 09:50 and 09:51 in the Upper Galilee, Western Galilee, and Central Galilee areas, approximately 25 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israel. Some of the projectiles were intercepted and fallen projectiles were identified in the area,” the military said in a statement.
That announcement followed earlier reports that some 15 projectiles fired that set of air raid sirens.
A spokesperson for Israeli first responders said that in central Israel it found “four individuals with light injuries from glass shards.... They were injured while in a concrete building where the windows shattered.”
The Israeli police said they were searching the impact sites from projectiles intercepted by Israel’s air defense systems but did not report any serious damage.
On Monday, one person was killed and several people were injured in two separate incidents, one in the northern Israeli town of Shfaram and the other in the suburbs of Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv.
The military said Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, which is backed by Iran, fired around 100 projectiles from Lebanon toward Israel on Monday, while Israel’s air force carried out strikes on Beirut.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel in October last year in support of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza. Since September, Israel has conducted extensive bombing campaigns in Lebanon primarily targeting Hezbollah strongholds, though some strikes have hit areas outside the Iran-backed group’s control.
