[🇧🇩] Israel and Hamas war in Gaza-----Can Bangladesh be a peace broker?

[Saif]

Israeli tanks push into Rafah

Israel’s military operation in Rafah has set truce negotiations with Hamas ‘backward’, mediator Qatar said on Tuesday, adding that talks have reached...

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Israeli tanks push into Rafah
New Age Desk 15 May, 2024, 00:43

People move past destroyed buildings along a street in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday amid the on-going conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. | AFP photo

Israel's military operation in Rafah has set truce negotiations with Hamas 'backward', mediator Qatar said on Tuesday, adding that talks have reached 'almost a stalemate', reports AFP.

'Especially in the past few weeks, we have seen some momentum building but unfortunately things didn't move in the right direction and right now we are on a status of almost a stalemate,' prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani told the Qatar Economic Forum.

'Of course, what happened with Rafah has set us backward.'

Qatar, which has hosted Hamas's political office in Doha since 2012, has been engaged — along with Egypt and the United States — in months of behind-the-scenes mediation between Israel and the Palestinian militant group.

'There is no clarity how to stop the war from the Israeli side. I don't think that they are considering this as an option even when we are talking about the deal and leading to a potential ceasefire,' Sheikh Mohammed said.

Israeli politicians were indicating 'by their statements that they will remain there, they will continue the war. And there is no clarity on what Gaza will look like after this', he added.

Meanwhile, Israeli tanks forged deeper into eastern Rafah on Tuesday, reaching some residential districts of the southern border city where more than a million people had been sheltering, raising fears of yet further civilian casualties, reports Arab News.

Israel's international allies and aid groups have repeatedly warned against a ground incursion into refugee-packed Rafah, where Israel says four Hamas battalions are holed up.

The World Court, also known as the International Court of Justice, said it would hold hearings on Thursday and Friday to discuss a request by South Africa seeking new emergency measures over the Rafah incursion, which Qatar says has stalled efforts to reach a ceasefire.

South Africa's demand is part of a case it brought against Israel accusing it of violating the genocide convention in Gaza, and which Israel has called baseless. Israel will provide its views on the latest petition on Friday, the ICJ said.

Israel has vowed to press on into Rafah even without its allies' support, saying the operation is necessary to root out remaining Hamas fighters.

'The tanks advanced this morning west of Salahuddin Road into the Brzail and Jneina neighbourhoods. They are in the streets inside the built-up area and there are clashes,' one resident told Reuters via a chat app.

Palestinian residents of western Rafah later said they could see smoke billowing above the eastern neighbourhoods and hear the sound of explosions following an Israeli bombardment of a cluster of houses.

Hamas's armed wing said it had destroyed an Israeli troop carrier with an Al-Yassin 105 missile in the eastern Al-Salam district, killing some crew members and wounding others.

In a round-up of its activities, the IDF said its forces had eliminated 'several armed terrorist' cells in close-quarter fighting on the Gazan side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. In the east of the city, it said it had also destroyed militant cells and a launch post from where missiles were being fired at IDF troops.

Israel issued evacuation orders for people to move from parts of eastern Rafah a week ago, with a second round of orders extending to further zones on Saturday.

They are moving to tracts of land such as Al-Mawasi, a sandy strip bordering the coast that aid agencies say lacks sanitary and other facilities to host an influx of displaced people.


UNRWA, the main United Nations aid agency in Gaza, estimates some 4,50,000 people have fled Rafah since May 6, warning 'nowhere is safe,' in the enclave of 2.3 million.

The war has pushed much of Gaza's population to the brink of famine, the UN says, and has devastated its medical facilities, where hospitals, if working at all, are running short of fuel to power generators and other essential supplies.

James Smith, a British emergency room doctor volunteering in hospitals in southern Gaza, said he had been told by a World Health Organisation official that some emergency fuel had made it into the Gaza Strip, potentially enough for six days.

Fighting across the Strip has intensified in recent days, including in the north, with the Israeli military heading back into areas where it had claimed to have dismantled Hamas months ago. Israel says the operations are to prevent Hamas, which runs Gaza, from rebuilding it military capacities.

The Palestinian death toll in the war has now surpassed 35,000, according to Gaza health officials, whose figures do not differentiate between civilians and fighters. It said that 82 Palestinians were killed in the past 24 hours, the highest death toll in a single day in many weeks.

Israel launched its Gaza operation following a devastating attack on October 7 by Hamas-led gunmen who rampaged through Israeli communities near the enclave, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

In the Zeitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City in the north, bulldozers demolished clusters of houses to make a new road for tanks to roll through into the eastern suburb.

In northern Gaza's Jabalia, a sprawling refugee camp built for displaced Palestinians 75 years ago, residents said Israeli forces were trying to reach as deep as the camp's local market under heavy tank shelling.​

 

[Saif]

Bangladesh condemns Israeli attacks on humanitarian convoy to Gaza

Breaking News, International News & Multimedia

thedailynewnation.com

Bangladesh condemns Israeli attacks on humanitarian convoy to Gaza
14 May 2024, 5:25 pm

BSS: Bangladesh has condemned the recent attacks perpetrated by Israeli extremist settlers in Palestine on a Jordanian humanitarian convoy to Gaza via the Beit Hanoun Crossing meant for civilian aid in Gaza.

"It is the responsibility of the Israeli Occupation authorities to put an end to these settlers' violence and to protect humanitarian convoys," according to a statement issued by the Bangladesh foreign ministry today.

It said Bangladesh underscored the need for the signatory parties to uphold the International humanitarian law (IHL) which clearly lays out the responsibilities of states and non-state armed groups for rapid and unimpeded passage for all humanitarian aid.

"As we express our support and solidarity with the Jordanian government in their endeavors to serve humanity through its humanitarian aid, we call upon Israeli Occupation Authorities to allow unhindered access of humanitarian aid to Gaza as enshrined in the International Humanitarian Law," read the statement.​

 

[Saif]

The butcher of Gaza opens his mouth to tell a lie. He is trying to justify the mass murder of Palestinians by the Israeli forces by claiming that half of the murdered Palestinians are Hamas fighters.

Hamas fighters comprise almost half Gaza's death toll, claims Netanyahu

Netanyahu insisted to podcaster Dan Senor that Israel had "been able to keep the ratio of civilians to combatants killed... (to) a ratio of about one to one".

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Hamas fighters comprise almost half Gaza's death toll, claims Netanyahu
AFP
Published: 14 May 2024, 08: 40

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives a speech during a ceremony on the eve of the Memorial Day for fallen soldiers (Yom HaZikaron), at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem on May 12, 2024.

Israel's prime minister said on a podcast that almost half of those killed in the Gaza war are Hamas fighters, playing down a civilian toll that has sparked global outrage.

Benjamin Netanyahu maintained the overall toll is lower than that given by authorities in the Palestinian territory.

According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, at least 35,091 people have been killed in the territory during more than seven months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants.

But Netanyahu suggested in an interview on the "Call Me Back" podcast conducted on Sunday that the death toll in Gaza was actually around 30,000 and that Hamas fighters accounted for nearly half of that toll.

Gazan authorities do not provide an overview of the number of Palestinian militants killed, but have repeatedly said that a large majority of those killed in the war have been women and children.

The United Nations and a long line of countries have voiced alarm at the number of civilian deaths.

United Nations rights chief Volker Turk warned in a statement last month that children especially are "disproportionately paying the ultimate price in this war".

But Netanyahu insisted to podcaster Dan Senor that Israel had "been able to keep the ratio of civilians to combatants killed... (to) a ratio of about one to one".

"Fourteen thousand have been killed, combatants, and probably around 16,000 civilians have been killed," he said.

He gave similar figures in March during an interview with Politico, at a time when Gaza's health ministry was reporting a toll of at least 31,045.

Netanyahu said at the time that the figure included 13,000 militants and the number of civilians was "far less than" 20,000.

His latest comment comes at a time of intensified pressure from Israel's chief military supplier, the United States, over the Palestinian toll from the war.

Washington paused delivery of 3,500 bombs, and US president Joe Biden warned he would stop supplying artillery shells and other weapons if Israel carries out a full-scale invasion of Rafah, where around one million people are sheltering.

A US State Department report on Friday said it was "reasonable to assess" that Israel has used American arms in ways inconsistent with standards on humanitarian rights but that the United States could not reach "conclusive findings."

The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas's 7 October attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Militants also seized around 250 hostages, scores of whom were freed during a week-long truce in November. Israel estimates 128 captives remain in Gaza, including 36 the military says are dead.​

 

[Saif]

'What's happening in Gaza is not a religious crisis'

Rabbi Alissa Wise, founder of Rabbis for Ceasefire, talks about Jewish solidarity with Gaza in an exclusive interview with The Daily Star.

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Interview with Rabbi Alissa Wise
'What's happening in Gaza is not a religious crisis'

Rabbi Alissa Wise arrested with a group of seven other Rabbis while trying to deliver aid into Gaza during Passover, on April 26, 2024. PHOTO COURTESY: RABBI ALISSA WISE

Rabbi Alissa Wise, founder of Rabbis for Ceasefire, speaks to Ramisa Rob of The Daily Star in this exclusive interview about Jewish solidarity with Gaza, Zionism in Israel and the US, and the dehumanisation of Palestinians.

Can you describe the work you have been doing and what exactly led you to go to the Erez Crossing—between Israel and north Gaza—to deliver aid to Palestinians?

So I was raised in a Zionist community in the US, which is very pro-Israel. Throughout my childhood, I went to Israel many times with my family and in summer camps. When I was in college, I spent a year in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where I had the opportunity to learn about Nakba, the catastrophe and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the foundation of the state of Israel. I was shocked to learn, for the first time, that Palestinians were living under a system of occupation. I couldn't believe that the Jewish values that I was brought up with were being disregarded. When I applied the teachings of Judaism that I was taught growing up to real life, they led me to a life of seeking solidarity with the Palestinian people.

I became a rabbi in 2009, in Philadelphia, and for most of my career, I was a staff leader for Jewish Voice for Peace. When October 7 happened, there was a clear need in the Jewish community, of a reminder about what Judaism teaches: life, peace, and for our purposes, ceasefire. Before the ground invasion had even begun, I began organising a group of rabbis to call for a ceasefire. We did a series of events—outside the capitol building in Washington D.C., met with members of Congress for a ceasefire bill; we did an action inside the United Nations to draw attention to the Biden administration's continued veto of the ceasefire. We also organised interfaith work: a pilgrimage for peace walk from Philadelphia to Washington D.C.

As we were thinking about Passover this year—which is the season of our freedom, our liberation, and in the Passover story we talk about the obligation to feed people—we realised that the dire man-made famine of the 2.3 million people in Gaza was what needed our attention the most. So we at Rabbis for Ceasefire, in concert with Israeli leftists, organised a march to take food to Gaza, through the northern crossing, knowing the famine is most acute in the north.

Can you describe exactly what happened when you went to give aid to people in Gaza?

We had a tonne of rice and flour that we had brought with us in a truck. We had tried different ways to coordinate with a humanitarian organisation on the ground in Gaza to receive it on the other side, but the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) wasn't allowing them free movement. When we got to the crossing, on the morning of April 26, we pulled over on a side caravan to begin our walk to the crossing on foot. The police were already there, so it seemed that they were anticipating our arrival. So we were pushing forward by foot, with the bags of rice and flour, and we were chanting and singing verses of scripture and the Hagara. Then, at a certain point, the police started shoving us off the road and proceeded to start arresting us. They first arrested our Israeli leftist counterparts, then they took me and a couple of other women.

I was detained for about 10 hours. They told me, "You are being detained because you tried to bring food to Gaza." Then they said again, "You are being detained because you tried to bring rice and flour to Gaza." It was pretty shocking that this is a crime. They formally interrogated me and I reserved my right to remain silent throughout it. The female police officer pretended to turn off the recording device and said she just wanted to talk to me one on one. She told me, "I just really can't understand why you would do this, it doesn't make any sense," and then proceeded to say really horrific, genocidal comments. She said, "There are no innocents in Gaza, not even the babies, not even the foetuses in the womb." As she was talking, I saw on her desk, a picture of her with her toddler. The soldier herself is a mother and the fact that she's able to dehumanise Palestinian foetuses, babies to this extent, was truly stomach-turning.

What do you think is the reasoning behind this ingrained dehumanisation of Palestinians today?

For both Israeli Jews and American Jews—the context that I'm in—we are often taught that Israel is a social justice project of sorts, that the Jews of Eastern Europ (those who survived the Holocaust; and many of my family members died in the Holocaust) needed Israel because we cannot count on the world who turned its back on us. In fact, Netanyahu has said these exact words in a press conference recently. In our minds, Jews are always the victims of a genocide, not the perpetrators of it. People just don't wish to see or accept that Israel has in fact been acting like a vicious oppressor of Palestinians for decades. But Israel is a nation-state, it's not a person, and it is not "Jewish" because its behaviours such as denying Palestinians the right to life, freedom and dignity is not a Jewish value.

PHOTO COURTESY: RABBI ALISSA WISE/RABBIS FOR CEASEFIRE

We are literally live-streaming the mass murder and mass destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, but people are still reluctant to call it what it is. Our work at Rabbis for Ceasefire is to hold fast to the moral traditions deeply embedded in Judaism and to allow it to pull ourselves back from this thirst for revenge, and this fantasy of eliminating Hamas. You can kill human beings but you just cannot destroy an ideology. We know that Hamas has long recruited from those who have had family members killed by the state of Israel, so think about the hundreds of thousands of people that it's true for now. There is now a whole new generation that is traumatised and they will be prone to hate. But American Jews and Israeli Jews are engaging in a fantasy that they wouldn't possibly be resisting in the way oppressed Palestinians are resisting now, and they want to believe that Palestinian are just inherently violent, that they don't deserve protection and that they in fact are no longer human. This is such a dangerous road to go down because when you dehumanise any people, you start with the Palestinians but then where's it going to end? We know all too well from Jewish history where dehumanisation ends.

How do you, as a rabbi and an activist, feel about the religious rhetoric in this crisis?

The crisis between Israelis and Palestinians is a political crisis. It is not a religious one. There are a lot of efforts to turn this into a centuries-old religious conflict, stoked primarily by Christian Zionists. Most of the Zionists in the US are not Jewish; they are Christians. There's a group called "Christians United for Israel," which hosts more than 11 million members—more than the entire population of Jews in the US. They are the dominant political force behind the US support for Israel. Understanding this is actually really important, because when the founding idea first came about to establish a Jewish state, in the late 1800s, the first idea was not that it would be in historic Palestine. There was a Uganda plan, and people were also looking at the far reaches of Eastern Europe. There was an urging and influence from the Christian Zionist movement, essentially those within the British Parliament, that tried to leverage the traditions of the Torah and Bible and utilise those for the Christian Zionist context, to hasten the "Second Coming," at which point Jews would either have to convert in mass to Christianity or burn. There is literally nothing more antisemitic than that.

What do you make of "antisemitism" since October 7? Is the meaning being warped?

I have been called a self-hating Jew, an anti-Semite. There's a person in my neighbourhood who puts a sticker on my house almost every week, that says "You don't speak for Jews." The thing to really understand is that critiquing the actions of the Israeli state is not inherently antisemitic. Anti-Jewish hatred is a totally different thing. If you are motivated to critique Israel, because Israel is being led by a group of Jews and you mistrust Jews, then that's antisemitism. But if you are critiquing Israel because you see the mass demolition of life in Gaza and understand the state's systemic oppression of the Palestinian people, that's a valid critique of a nation-state. That is not antisemitism.

There's an industry in order to confuse people. And the reasons why powerful people are feeding into that idea is because there is no other way to shield themselves from accountability and critique, and there is just no rationale for decades of siege. As the pro-Israel community is muddying the waters of what is antisemitism, they are actually leaving Jews more vulnerable to it. As a Jew, I feel less safe in the US given the activities of the pro-Israel community, who are willing to make common cause with White nationalists and Christian nationalists—the very people who have committed murderous attacks against Jews in the US.

Politically, one of the ways you can actually be a true friend is by telling people when they are going down the wrong path and having some form of accountability. As we now wait to see what kind of horrors unfold in Rafah—the US has to stop sending blank checks to send munitions that have killed over 15,000 children in Gaza. You don't aid and abet people who are committing such heinous war crimes. The blood is now on our hands, here in the US, and what we are seeing everyday—such as the mass graves being uncovered in Al-Shifa hospital—is why students on college campuses are willing to sacrifice their degrees, reputations, internships because they understand that if they right now allow these horrors to happen to Palestinians, what kind of future are they even going to be living in? If in the present, we allow these horrors to go unchallenged and the US government continues to fund them, the universities continue to profit off of them, then what will happen in the future?

How do you plan to further your activism within the Jewish community since your visit to Israel?

I'm still trying to absorb my brief experience in Israel. There is a tendency to start the clock on October 7, but we need to understand that the state of Israel has been using Jewish traditions as a fig leaf to compromise Palestinian life and devastate families and communities for the sake of militarised ethno-nationalism. At this point, we need to really reckon with that history and refuse these easy narratives such as, "Hamas hates Jews." No. Hamas resents being under the apartheid system that the Israeli government has set up. And I am not trying to defend Hamas at all; in fact, I myself am a non-violent activist and I don't support armed resistance. But I think we need to understand the context. When I was there in the region in April, I also saw American Jews in the West Bank from Florida setting up outposts and terrorising Palestinian communities from just ploughing their fields. We really have a responsibility to understand history, address reality and refuse these easy narratives.

What we faced in Israel has also reinforced for me how important the organisation Rabbis for Ceasefire is. We are now over 330 rabbis and Jewish clergy, who are calling together for a ceasefire at a time when many in the Jewish community are not just opposing ceasefire, but recently there was a rally where a Jewish member of Congress called for more humanitarian aid into Gaza, and he was booed by the crowd; thousands of New Yorkers booed the idea of allowing aid into Gaza. The moral crisis inside the Jewish community cannot be overstated. We need to sever this idea right now that Israel and Zionism is akin to Judaism—which is a centuries-old multifaceted religion fostering peace and life. Zionism is over a 125-year-old political movement. These are completely different tracks that have been pushed together for political expediency. Part of the work now is to pull them apart.

Primarily, we want to bring more attention to a ceasefire but it doesn't just end there. The day the bombs stop falling and the people of Gaza, God willing, are able to start putting their lives back together—some experts say it'll take two decades before the strip can be adequately restored—we still have to figure out how to ensure that the apartheid system ends. Immediate ceasefire is what's needed to save lives now, but we also need to look at long-term peace and justice. It's hard to imagine how to rebuild that society where there's such a deep level of hate and dehumanisation. I was talking to my Israeli comrade, and she said she's been been reading up on how Germany "de-Nazified" after World War II, to see how this could end and how Palestinians and Israelis can really live together. A lot of work—moral, spiritual and humanitarian—has to be done.​

 

[Saif]

Women, children make up 56pc of Gaza dead: UN

Women and children make up at least 56 percent of the thousands killed in the Gaza offensive, the UN said Tuesday, amid controversy over the toll based on numbers from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

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Women, children make up 56pc of Gaza dead: UN

Women and children make up at least 56 percent of the thousands killed in the Gaza offensive, the UN said Tuesday, amid controversy over the toll based on numbers from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

The United Nations was clarifying a fresh breakdown of the death toll in Gaza, after Israel slammed the world body for "parroting... Hamas's propaganda messages".

"Anyone who relies on fake data from a terrorist organisation in order to promote blood libels against Israel is antisemitic and supports terrorism," Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on X, formerly Twitter, late Monday.

Due to a lack of access, UN agencies have since the beginning of the Gaza offensive on October 7 relied on death tolls provided by the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. This has drawn criticism from Israel, but the United Nations says the ministry's tolls before the offensive were deemed reliable, and that it will strive to verify the figures "when conditions permit".

The ministry said Tuesday that at least 35,173 people have been killed in the territory due to Israeli military operations. Gaza authorities have consistently said women and children make up a large majority of those killed in the territory.

But a fresh breakdown provided by the health ministry and published by the UN last week appeared to cast doubt on that assertion.The ministry said that as of April 30 it had fully identified nearly 25,000 of those killed, with identification elements missing for the remainder of the nearly 10,000 others who had died.

Of those fully identified, it said 40 percent were men, 20 percent women and 32 percent children, while another eight percent were elderly -- a category not broken down by gender.

WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva that by applying the same ratio to the unidentified and assuming women represent half of the elderly, it could be expected that at least "56 percent women and children" were among the more than 35,000 dead.​

 

[Saif]

Biden admin plans $1b in new arms for Israel despite Rafah threat

US President Joe Biden's administration informed Congress on Tuesday of a $1 billion weapons package for Israel, official sources told AFP, a week after threatening to withhold some arms over concerns of a Rafah assault

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Biden admin plans $1b in new arms for Israel despite Rafah threat

US President Joe Biden's administration informed Congress on Tuesday of a $1 billion weapons package for Israel, official sources told AFP, a week after threatening to withhold some arms over concerns of a Rafah assault.

The administration informally notified the weapons package to Congress, which will need to approve it, a US official said, while a congressional aide who also requested anonymity said the weapons bought from US weapons makers amounted to around $1 billion.

The weapons would come out of a major $95 billion package recently approved by Congress in defense support for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and the Biden administration has repeatedly said it planned to go ahead and appropriate the funds through purchases from US manufacturers.

But the deal comes a week after Biden warned he may withhold bombs and artillery shells to Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went ahead in defiance of US warnings with an assault on Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than one million Palestinians have taken shelter after half a year of war.

The Biden administration also confirmed last week that for the first time it had halted a shipment including 2,000-pound bombs, fearing they would be used with devastating risks for civilians in Rafah.

Congress could still block the weapons sale to Israel, with left-leaning members of Biden's Democratic Party outraged by the toll on civilians in the Gaza war.

But the overall package passed despite opposition from the left, with the rival Republican Party almost unanimously in support of arms for Israel.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the new arms package. It said it could potentially include $700 million in tank ammunition and $500 million in tactical vehicles.

The Biden administration, while increasingly critical of Israel, has made clear it will continue to support its ally's security and pointed to US assistance last month in shooting down Iranian drones launched in retaliation for a strike on a diplomatic facility.

"We are continuing to send military assistance, and we will ensure that Israel receives the full amount provided in the supplemental," Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor, told reporters on Monday.

"We have paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs because we do not believe they should be dropped in densely populated cities. We are talking to the Israeli government about this," he said.

Since the October 7 Hamas attack that triggered the massive Israeli retaliation, the Biden administration has twice cited emergency needs to avoid the regular 30-day review by Congress of military transfers.

Critics also point out that the Biden administration has sent a regular flow of weapons unknown to the public as they fall below the threshold for congressional notification.​

 

[Saif]

Ireland to recognise Palestinian statehood ‘this month’

Ireland is certain to recognise Palestinian statehood by the end of May, the country’s foreign minister Micheal Martin said on Wednesday, without specifying a date...

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Ireland to recognise Palestinian statehood 'this month'
Agence France-Presse . Dublin 15 May, 2024, 22:57

Ireland is certain to recognise Palestinian statehood by the end of May, the country's foreign minister Micheal Martin said on Wednesday, without specifying a date.

'We will be recognising the state of Palestine before the end of the month,' Martin, who is also Ireland's deputy prime minister, told the Newstalk radio station.

In March the leaders of Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and Malta said in a joint statement that they stand ready to recognise Palestinian statehood.

Ireland has long said it has no objection in principle to officially recognising the Palestinian state if it could help the peace process in the Middle East.

But Israel's war against Hamas militants in Gaza has given the issue new impetus.

Last week, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Spain, Ireland and Slovenia planned to symbolically recognise a Palestinian state on May 21, with others potentially following suit.

But Martin on Wednesday shied away from pinpointing a date.

'The specific date is still fluid because we're still in discussions with some countries in respect of a joint recognition of a Palestinian state,' he said.

'It will become clear in the next few days as to the specific date but it certainly will be before the end of this month.

'I will look forward to consultations today with some foreign ministers in respect of the final specific detail of this.'

Last month during a visit to Dublin by Spanish premier Pedro Sanchez, Irish prime minister Simon Harris said the countries would coordinate the move together.

'When we move forward, we would like to do so with as many others as possible to lend weight to the decision and to send the strongest message,' said Harris.

Harris's office said Wednesday that he updated King Abdullah II of Jordan by telephone on Ireland's plan for statehood recognition.

Harris 'outlined Ireland and Spain's on-going efforts on Palestinian recognition and on-going discussions with other like-minded countries', a statement read.

'The King and the Taoiseach (prime minister) agreed that both Ireland and Jordan should stay in touch in the coming days,' it added.

The conflict in Gaza followed Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack against Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Militants also seized about 250 hostages, 128 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 36 the military says are dead.

Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 35,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory's health ministry.​

 

[Saif]

Hezbollah fires rocket barrage at Israeli positions

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it yesterday launched “more than 60” rockets at Israeli military positions in retaliation for overnight air strikes on the country’s east.

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Hezbollah fires rocket barrage at Israeli positions

Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group said it yesterday launched "more than 60" rockets at Israeli military positions in retaliation for overnight air strikes on the country's east.

Israel and Hamas ally Hezbollah have exchanged near-daily fire following the Palestinian group's October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza, now in its eighth month.

Hezbollah fighters "launched a missile attack with more than 60 Katyusha rockets" on several Israeli military positions in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, the group said in a statement.

The strikes were "in response to the Israeli enemy's attacks last night on the Bekaa region" in eastern Lebanon's Baalbek area, the group added.

The Israeli army later said it had identified "approximately 40 launches" from Lebanon "towards the Golan Heights", causing "no injuries".

It added that Israeli forces struck the sources of the fire. The army reported several more attacks from Lebanon on northern Israel, to which it had also responded with strikes.​