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

[Saif]

Israel accused of genocide in Gaza

Amnesty International accused Israel Thursday of ‘committing genocide’ against Palestinians in Gaza since the start of the war last year, saying its new report was a ‘wake-up call’ for the world.

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Israel accused of genocide in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem 07 December, 2024, 01:18

Amnesty International accused Israel Thursday of ‘committing genocide’ against Palestinians in Gaza since the start of the war last year, saying its new report was a ‘wake-up call’ for the world.

The London-based human rights group said its findings were based on satellite images documenting devastation, fieldwork and ground reports from Gazans as well as ‘dehumanising and genocidal statements by Israeli government and military officials’.

Israel dismissed the findings as ‘entirely false’, denouncing the report as ‘fabricated’ and ‘based on lies’.

Amnesty chief Agnes Callamard accused Israel of treating the Palestinians in Gaza ‘as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them’.

‘Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,’ she said in a statement.

Hamas, which has been fighting Israel in Gaza, welcomed the report as a ‘message to the international community... on the need to act to bring an end to this genocide’.

Israel’s offensive has killed at least 44,580 people in Gaza.

Independent UN human rights experts have accused Israel of genocide several times, and South Africa brought a case against Israel to the UN’s top court in December 2023 accusing it of ‘violating the genocide convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza’. The case is still ongoing.

Callamard insisted at a press conference in The Hague that ‘the existence of military objectives does not negate the possibility of a genocidal intent’.

She said Amnesty had based its findings on the criteria set out in the UN Convention on the Prevention of Genocide.

But an Israeli army spokesperson said the report’s findings ‘fail to account for the operational realities’ it has faced.

Amnesty International said it ‘deeply regrets that some members’ of its Israel branch ‘have chosen to distance themselves’ from the report.

‘Amnesty International stands by its rigorous research and conclusions,’ a spokesperson said.

Amnesty’s 300-page report points to ‘direct deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructures where there was no Hamas presence or any other military objectives’ as well as the blocking of aid deliveries, and the displacement of 90 percent of Gaza’s 2.4 million people.

Palestinians have been subjected to ‘malnutrition, hunger and diseases’ and exposed to a ‘slow, calculated death’, Amnesty said.

The rights group, which is also due to publish a report on the crimes committed by Hamas, cited 15 air strikes in Gaza between October 7, 2023 and April 20, which killed 334 civilians, including 141 children, for which the group found ‘no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective’.

The Amnesty report also referenced dozens of calls by Israeli officials and soldiers for the annihilation, destruction, burning or ‘erasure’ of Gaza.

Such statements highlighted ‘systemic impunity’ as well as ‘an environment that emboldens... such behaviour’.

‘Governments must stop pretending that they are powerless to terminate Israel’s occupation, to end apartheid and to stop the genocide in Gaza,’ Callamard said.

‘States that transfer arms to Israel violate their obligations to prevent genocide under the convention and are at risk of becoming complicit.’​

 

[Saif]

Saudi slams genocidal Israel

A senior Saudi royal termed Israel ‘genocidal’ and an ‘apartheid’ state on Saturday, as he called on incoming US President-elect Donald Trump to bring peace to the Middle East.

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Saudi slams genocidal Israel
Agence France-Presse . Manama 07 December, 2024, 22:16

A senior Saudi royal termed Israel ‘genocidal’ and an ‘apartheid’ state on Saturday, as he called on incoming US President-elect Donald Trump to bring peace to the Middle East.

Prince Turki Al Faisal, who was Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief for more than two decades, also said he hoped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be brought before the International Criminal Court.

‘Israel today, according to international human rights groups, is not only an apartheid colonial state, but it is also a genocidal one,’ Prince Turki said.

‘It is committing genocide on the people of Gaza.’

He added: ‘It’s about time for the world to... take the necessary steps to bring those who are charged by the International Criminal Court to justice.’

The ICC issued warrants for Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant last month on suspicion of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Saudi’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also accused Israel of genocide at a joint Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation summit in Riyadh last month.

Amnesty International levelled the same charge this week in a new report that was dismissed by Israel as ‘fabricated’ and ‘based on lies’.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 44,612 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to figures from the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

Prince Turki, also a former Saudi ambassador to the US, said Trump’s ‘strong mandate’ from American voters ‘can enable him to provide the statesmanship that is highly needed in the world.

‘Friendly countries in the region are hoping that Mr. Trump pursues what he started before, to bring peace with capital letters to the Middle East,’ he said.

‘It is time for America, under your presidency, to change the course of this troubled region,’ he added.

During Trump’s first administration, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco signed the Abraham Accords recognising Israel, a break with the long-held Arab consensus that there should be no ties without the creation of a Palestinian state.​

 

[Saif]

Observing the international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people

On November 29, the world observed the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People-- a day established by the UN in 1977 to emphasise global support for Palestinian rights, including self-determination, independence and a just resolution to the issue of Palestinian refugees. The int

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Observing the international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people
Muhammad Zamir
Published :
Dec 09, 2024 00:38
Updated :
Dec 09, 2024 00:38

On November 29, the world observed the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People-- a day established by the UN in 1977 to emphasise global support for Palestinian rights, including self-determination, independence and a just resolution to the issue of Palestinian refugees. The interesting thing is that the date was chosen as it marked the anniversary of the UN General Assembly's adoption of Resolution 181 in 1947, which proposed the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

This year, amidst Israel's continuing war on Gaza, fifteen countries - Armenia, Slovenia, Ireland, Norway, Spain, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Colombia, Saint Lucia, Holy See, Sweden and Haiti - have formally recognised the State of Palestine, reflecting growing international support for this entity.

This means that now, at least 146 UN member states recognise the State of Palestine, as does the Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church and Vatican City, which holds UN observer status.

Recognising Palestine strengthens its global standing, improves its capacity to hold Israeli authorities accountable for the occupation, and pressures Western powers to act on the two-state solution. This represents the fact that the State of Palestine is recognised as a sovereign nation by 146 countries, representing 75 per cent of United Nations Member States.

At this point one needs to recall the brief history of Palestinian recognition.

On November 15, 1988, in the early years of the first Intifada, Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, proclaimed Palestine as an independent State with Jerusalem as its capital. Following the announcement, more than 80 countries recognised Palestine as an independent State, with strong support from the Global South, including nations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Arab world. Most of the European countries that recognised Palestine during this time, also did so as part of the former Soviet bloc.

A few years later, on September 13, 1993, the first direct talks between Palestinians and Israelis led to the signing of the Oslo Accords, which were supposed to bring about Palestinian self-determination in the form of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. This was never achieved.

It would be useful at this point to recall the Oslo Accords. This was the first direct Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement. This measure was meant to initiate future peace talks with the desired goal of a two-State solution, which has unfortunately never been achieved.

The agreement was negotiated in Oslo, Norway, and signed at the White House in Washington, USA on September 13, 1993 between Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel and Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the PLO in the presence of US President Bill Clinton.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, nearly 20 countries recognised Palestine, followed by 12 more between 2000 and 2010 - mostly from across Africa and South America. By 2011, all African countries, except for Eritrea and Cameroon, recognised Palestine.

In 2012, the General Assembly voted by an overwhelming majority (138 in favour, 9 against, 41 abstentions) agreed to change Palestine's status to "Nonmember Observer State", and in 2014, Sweden became the first country in Western Europe to recognise Palestine.

On May 22, 2024, in a positive gesture - against what was taking place in Gaza- Norway, Ireland and Spain, in succession, announced that they were recognising Palestine according to the pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital. In response, Israel recalled its Ambassadors from the three European countries and promised to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank as punishment.

On June 4, Slovenia became the latest European country to recognise a Palestinian State. Other European nations, Malta and Belgium, are also discussing whether and when to recognise Palestinian statehood.

Unfortunately, however, none of the G7 countries - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom or the United States - have recognised Palestine.

Analyst Sumaya Mashrufa has correctly observed that the war that is currently being carried out by Israel with the support of some of its Western allies has spiraled, and appears to have seemingly merged into genocide. In this context, lands, as Edward Said once described, "lived on and owned by others," are stripped away under the guise of right, erasing histories etched into the soil. The denial from the West has also not unfortunately been accidental. It has been deliberate, woven into the fabric of imperial complicity. What is unfolding over more than two years is not chaos, but a design-a slow, systematic unmaking of a people.

Geo-strategists have noted that since October 7, 2023, nearly17,000 children have been killed, including 700 infants under the age of one, as reported by the UN. Such a scenario can only be described as an example of extermination. When 700 babies, still learning to crawl are killed before they can -how do you process that? Human rights activists have also referred to the pain being suffered by 17,000 childless mothers. One can imagine the suffering and grief they are going through being given the connotation by Israeli activists that all those killed (apparently including crawling babies), were deemed dangerous to an Israeli existence. Nothing demonstrates gross human rights violations more unambiguously than the reality of Palestinian women, stripped of their dignity and subjected to unimaginable horrors.

At this juncture question arises about what happened with the expected Western indignation over such decimation of human rights. Analyst Sumaya Mashrufa has correctly observed that these same Western voices, are however, swift to condemn and paint Muslim men as oppressors who apparently all cover their women in burqas. One can only note that when the perpetrators of violence do not fit the convenient Western narrative of barbarism, it is difficult for them to express their anger.

At this point, however, one also needs to condemn the manner in which Hamas carried out the initial attack on Israeli citizens that started this unfortunate war. Those guilty of these crimes need also to be taken to task through a legal process.

Sumaya Mashrufa has also observed that "I shouldn't have to seek the West's condemnation, nor wait for permission to call the deaths what they are-genocide! I shouldn't need anyone's approval to count my own loss. I can see with my own eyes that my mothers and brothers are gone. Yet this is the world we live in, where the veto-wielding powers must grant me the right to mourn my unbloomed sisters, my brothers who will never fulfill their potential".

Such an evolving scenario in Gaza leads one to also refer to the fourth report presented in March 2024 by Francesca Albanese, an international lawyer and expert in Middle Eastern human rights serving as the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights since 2022, to the United Nations, titled, "Anatomy of a Genocide." Supported by three prominent Israeli scholars of genocide and the Holocaust-Professors Raz Segal, Amos Goldberg, and Omar Bartov-the report concluded that Israel is committing genocide. The existing challenge today lies not merely in acknowledging that genocide is taking place in Gaza and Lebanon but in proving it to a world that demands evidence while turning a blind eye to the unfolding atrocities.

Geo-strategists have correctly observed that simply cataloguing these acts as "crimes against humanity" is insufficient. Most of us have seen how such a description has now become more or less ineffective since 1949, long before the recent surge in violence. The current paradigm also includes what has been happening since 2017 in Myanmar with regard to more than 700,000 Rohingyas who had to flee across the border from the Rakhine Province and seek shelter in Bangladesh because they were Muslims. Their number has now grown to over 1.2 million.

Analyst Sumaya Mashrufa has also correctly described genocide as being "systemic, calculated, a machine of annihilation". It is also unfortunate that the names of leadership might change in some G7 countries but policies remain the same. Such a scenario urges one to point out that in the contemporary world national interest overrides any responsibility associated with human rights.

In this context, it has been touching how students from Jahangirnagar University and in different parts of Bangladesh have expressed their concern about what is happening not only in Gaza but in other parts forcibly occupied by Israel. The Palestinian flag has become a symbol of what needs to be respected.

One also has to understand that the United Nations with the principle of Veto power also continues to cast a long shadow over offences created through discrimination and contravention of international law. It is difficult to accept that in the contemporary world genocide and atrocities have become only statistics and nothing more.

Muhammad Zamir, a former Ambassador, is an analyst specialised in foreign affairs, right to information and good governance.​

 

[Saif]

1m displaced Palestinians face extreme cold: UN

Nearly one million displaced Palestinians in Gaza are at risk from extreme cold and rain this winter, the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) has warned.

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1m displaced Palestinians face extreme cold: UN

Nearly one million displaced Palestinians in Gaza are at risk from extreme cold and rain this winter, the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) has warned.

"Displaced people in Gaza need protection from the rain and cold. Only around 23 percent of this need has been met, leaving 945,000 people at risk of exposure this winter," the UN agency said in a statement on Sunday. "Aid is urgently required to address the overwhelming needs as the crisis deepens."

The United Nations also renewed its call for a ceasefire in Gaza as Israeli airstrikes demolished homes and casualties increased.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said yesterday that at least 44,758 people have been killed in more than 14 months of Israeli offensive in the enclave.

"In Deir Al Balah and across Gaza, people search through the rubble of their destroyed homes, trying to salvage what little remains after an Israeli airstrike," the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees said in a post on X.

"As strikes continue, civilian casualties rise, and homes and vital infrastructure are reduced to ruins. The human cost of this war is unbearable. We need a ceasefire now."

In a separate development, more than 4,000 amputations and 2,000 cases of spinal and brain injuries have been recorded in Gaza since the start of the Israeli offensive last year, a news agency reports.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 38 in Gaza

Israeli air attacks across the Gaza Strip killed at least 38 Palestinians yesterday, most of them in an airstrike on a house in Beit Lahiya town in the north of the enclave, medics said.

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Israeli strikes kill 38 in Gaza
Women, children among dead; several trapped under rubble

Israeli air attacks across the Gaza Strip killed at least 38 Palestinians yesterday, most of them in an airstrike on a house in Beit Lahiya town in the north of the enclave, medics said.

The Beit Lahiya strike killed at least 22 people, including women and children, health officials said. Relatives listed the names of the dead on social media.

More than 30 people were living in the multi-storey building before it was struck, and several family members remained missing as rescue operations continued through the morning, the Palestinian WAFA news agency said.

At least 44,805 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's military offensive on Gaza since October 7, 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement yesterday.

In nearby Beit Hanoun, where the Israeli forces have operated since October, medics said an Israeli airstrike killed and wounded several people, without giving an exact toll. Rescue workers said several people were trapped under rubble.

Earlier yesterday, at least seven Palestinians were killed and several others wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, medics told Reuters.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service and medics said four other people were killed in separate Israeli airstrikes on two houses in Gaza City.

The Israeli military said in a statement that two rockets were fired from the central Gaza Strip into Israel, but fell in open areas and caused no injuries. It signalled the ability of Hamas rebels in Gaza to continue to stage rocket attacks despite 14 months of devastating Israeli aerial and ground offensives.

Later yesterday, the Israeli military ordered residents in the Al-Maghazi camp in central Gaza to evacuate, citing rocket launches from the area. It urged them to head towards a humanitarian-designated zone near the Mediterranean coast.

Palestinian and United Nations officials say there are no safe areas in the devastated enclave. Israel accuses Hamas of hiding among the civilian population, a charge Hamas denies as a pretext by Israel to "justify its indiscriminate attacks".

Israeli forces have been operating in Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and the nearby Jabalia refugee camp since October 5.

The UN General Assembly was set to vote yesterday on a draft resolution that seeks an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a symbolic gesture after the US previously vetoed a similar action in the UN Security Council.​

 

[Saif]

UNGA calls for unconditional Gaza ceasefire

he UN General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, a symbolic gesture rejected by the United States and Israel...

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UNGA calls for unconditional Gaza ceasefire
Agence France-Presse . United Nations, United States 12 December, 2024, 06:15

The UN General Assembly on Wednesday overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, a symbolic gesture rejected by the United States and Israel.

The resolution –– adopted by a vote of 158-9, with 13 abstentions –– urges ‘an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire,’ and ‘the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages’ –– wording similar to a text vetoed by Washington in the Security Council in November.

At that time, Washington used its veto power on the council –– as it has before –– to protect its ally Israel, which has been at war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7, 2023 attack.

It has insisted on the idea of making a ceasefire conditional on the release of all hostages in Gaza, saying otherwise that Hamas has no incentive to free those in captivity.

Deputy US ambassador Robert Wood repeated that position Wednesday, saying it would be ‘shameful and wrong’ to adopt the text.

Ahead of the vote, Israel’s UN envoy Danny Danon said, ‘The resolutions before the assembly today are beyond logic. (...) The vote today is not a vote for compassion. It is a vote for complicity.’

The General Assembly often finds itself taking up measures that cannot get through the Security Council, which has been largely paralysed on hot-button issues such as Gaza and Ukraine due to internal politics, and this time is no different.

The resolution, which is non-binding, demands ‘immediate access’ to widespread humanitarian aid for the citizens of Gaza, especially in the besieged north of the territory.

Dozens of representatives of UN member states addressed the Assembly before the vote to offer their support to the Palestinians.

‘Gaza doesn’t exist anymore. It is destroyed,’ said Slovenia’s UN envoy Samuel Zbogar. ‘History is the harshest critic of inaction.’

That criticism was echoed by Algeria’s deputy UN ambassador Nacim Gaouaoui, who said, ‘The price of silence and failure in the face of the Palestinian tragedy is a very heavy price, and it will be heavier tomorrow.’

The war between Israel and the Hamas that began in October 2023 killed 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. That count includes hostages who died or were killed while being held in Gaza.

Militants abducted 251 hostages, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed at least 44,805 people, a majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry that is considered reliable by the United Nations.

‘Gaza today is the bleeding heart of Palestine,’ Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour said last week during the first day of debate in the Assembly’s special session on the issue.

‘The images of our children burning in tents, with no food in their bellies and no hopes and no horizon for the future, and after having endured pain and loss for more than a year, should haunt the conscience of the world and prompt action to end this nightmare,’ he said, calling for an end to the ‘impunity.’

After Wednesday’s vote, he said, ‘we will keep knocking on the doors of the Security Council and the General Assembly until we see an immediate and unconditional ceasefire put in place.’

The Gaza resolution calls on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to present ‘proposals on how the United Nations could help to advance accountability’ by using existing mechanisms or creating new ones based on past experience.

The Assembly, for example, created an international mechanism to gather evidence of crimes committed in Syria starting from the outbreak of civil war in 2011.

A second resolution calling on Israel to respect the mandate of the UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees –– UNRWA –– and allow it to continue its operations was passed Wednesday by a vote of 159-9 with 11 abstentions.

Israel has voted to ban the organisation starting January 28, after accusing some UNRWA employees of taking part in Hamas’s devastating attack.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strike kills 22 in Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Wednesday that an overnight Israeli air strike in the northern part of the Palestinian territory killed at least 22 people, including women and children...

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Israeli strike kills 22 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 11 December, 2024, 22:36

Two boys sit on plastic chairs amidst debris near the rubble and remains of a collapsed building in Gaza City on Wednesday amid the on-going war in the Palestinian territory between Israel and Hamas. | AFP photo

Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Wednesday that an overnight Israeli air strike in the northern part of the Palestinian territory killed at least 22 people, including women and children.

‘At least 22 people were martyred in the massacre committed by the occupation military after it bombed a house belonging to the Abu al-Tarabish family near Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza,’ agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.

Bassal said that an Israeli jet had fired three missiles at the house around midnight, adding the strike completely destroyed the three-storey structure.

More than 50 people were living in the house, he said, with many still under the rubble.

‘Rescuers were unable to evacuate the martyrs or the wounded until this morning,’ said Jaber Alian, 30, who witnessed the strike from a house near the hospital.

He said there were several other bombings across the northern parts of the territory during the night.

The Israeli military confirmed it carried out a strike in the Jabalia area near the Kamal Adwan hospital on Tuesday night.

‘According to an initial examination, the number of casualties resulting from the strike published in the media is inaccurate and does not align with the information held by the Israeli military,’ it said in a statement.

‘The military is continuing to examine the incident.’

It did not give a toll of its own from the strike.

For several weeks, the Israeli military has been engaged in a sweeping operation in northern Gaza, particularly in Jabalia, where it says Hamas militants had been regrouping.

In another strike in central Gaza on Wednesday morning, at least seven people were killed when an Israeli warplane struck the house of the Al-Bayoumi family in Nuseirat refugee camp, Bassal said.

The military, meanwhile, said two projectiles crossed from central Gaza into Israel on Wednesday, but were intercepted by the air force.

The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7 last year, resulting in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

The count includes hostages who died or were killed while being held in Gaza after they were seized by Palestinian militants during the attack.

Militants abducted 251 hostages, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 44,805 people, a majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry that is considered reliable by the UN.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes on Gaza kill 36

At least 36 Palestinians were killed early yesterday in Israeli bombings of various areas in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

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Israeli strikes on Gaza kill 36

Children, women among casualties; Israel, Palestinians explore truce with US envoy

At least 36 Palestinians were killed early yesterday in Israeli bombings of various areas in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Children and women were among seven killed when a residential building in Gaza City's al-Jalaa Street was bombed, WAFA said. Another 15 were killed in the bombing of a house where displaced people were taking shelter, west of Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, the agency added.

In the western area of Rafah city, south of the Gaza Strip, 13 Palestinians were killed and others were injured, according to WAFA, in a strike that hit people providing aid.

Earlier, medics said at least 30 people were also wounded in the Rafah attack, with several in critical condition.

In the city of Khan Younis, another group of men tasked with security for aid shipments was hit by a separate Israeli airstrike that wounded several of them, medics said. At least 44,835 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's offensive on Gaza since October 7, 2023.

Meanwhile, Israelis and Palestinians are signalling new efforts to forge a ceasefire deal, their first in a year, to pause the fighting in Gaza and return to Israel at least some of the 100 hostages still held in the Palestinian enclave.

The guarded optimism emerges as US President Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan held talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel yesterday before heading to Egypt and Qatar, co-mediators with the US on a deal.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 20 in Gaza

Israeli troops killed at least 20 Palestinians, most of them in the northern Gaza Strip, on airstrikes and other attacks on targets that included a school sheltering displaced Gazans, medics and residents said yesterday.

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Israeli strikes kill 20 in Gaza
Troops raid school sheltering displaced Palestinians in Beit Hanoun

Israeli troops killed at least 20 Palestinians, most of them in the northern Gaza Strip, on airstrikes and other attacks on targets that included a school sheltering displaced Gazans, medics and residents said yesterday.

They said at least 11 of the dead were killed in three separate Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City houses. The others were killed in the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Jabalia camp.

Residents said clusters of houses were bombed and some set ablaze in the three towns. The Israeli army has been operating in the towns for over two months.

In Beit Hanoun, Israeli forces besieged families sheltering in Khalil Aweida school before storming it and ordering them to head towards Gaza City, the medics and residents said.

Medics said several people were killed and wounded during the raid on the school while the army detained many men. The number killed was not immediately clear.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army. Since October last year, Israel's offensive in Gaza has killed almost 45,000 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.

Palestinians accuse Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing to depopulate the areas at the northern edge to create a buffer zone. Israel denies it and says the campaign targets Hamas members and aims to prevent them from regrouping.

A bid by Egypt, Qatar and the United States to reach a truce has gained momentum in recent weeks, yet there has been no news of a breakthrough.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 40 Palestinians

Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera said its cameraman Ahmed al-Louh was killed ‘in an Israeli bombardment’ that targeted Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza...

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Israeli strikes kill 40 Palestinians
Agence France-Presse . Palestine 16 December, 2024, 04:22

Gaza civil defence agency said that Israeli strikes across Palestine on Sunday killed at least 40 people, including several children, an Al Jazeera TV cameraman and three rescuers.

Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera said its cameraman Ahmed al-Louh was killed ‘in an Israeli bombardment’ that targeted Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal confirmed Louh was killed in the strike that ‘targeted the Civil Defence site’ in Nuseirat camp, also killing three members of the rescue agency.

The Israeli military confirmed in a statement that it killed Louh, claiming that he was an Islamic Jihad member and ‘previously served as a platoon commander’ for the militant group which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza.

The military said the civil defence site was being used as a ‘command and control centre’ by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Israel’s military has repeatedly accused Al Jazeera journalists of links to Hamas or its ally Islamic Jihad.

Al Jazeera has fiercely denied the accusations and said Israel -- which has passed a law to ban the network -- has systematically targeted its employees in Gaza.

Louh is the fifth Al Jazeera journalist to be killed since the war in Gaza began, and the network's office in the territory has been bombed.

Later on Sunday, Bassal told AFP that an Israeli strike on a school used as shelter by displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza’s main city killed at least 12 people, including a number of children.

‘One missile hit the third floor of the school’ in Khan Yunis, also injuring 35 people, Bassal said.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it was looking into the report.

Another strike on a house in Shujaiya, east of Gaza City, killed six people, according to the civil defence spokesman.

Bassal earlier told AFP that rescuers working through the night recovered the bodies of 18 people, including three children.

He also reported more dead in a strike on a house in central Gaza City and another that his a tent sheltering dozens of displaced people in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

AFP images showed distraught relatives mourning the bodies of loved ones at a hospital in Gaza City. Some corpses lay on the floor covered in blankets.

On Sunday, the military confirmed it had carried out strikes in the northern Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia areas.

‘The troops struck dozens of terrorists from both the air and ground and additional terrorists were apprehended’ in Beit Hanoun, it said.

‘In Beit Lahia, troops eliminated terrorists and located and dismantled large quantities of weapons, including explosives and dozens of grenades,’ Israel’s military said.

The statement did not specify when these operations took place.

The military also said it targeted a clinic in northern Gaza, accusing Hamas of using it as a ‘command and control centre’ and storage site for weapons.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Since then, Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 44,976 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

The violence has displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million population, with many people forced to flee multiple times.

The Israeli military has been conducting a large-scale operation in northern Gaza for several weeks, stating that its objective is to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping.

In early December, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres highlighted the devastating toll of the conflict and the urgent need for international action.

‘Malnutrition is rampant... Famine is imminent. Meanwhile, the health system has collapsed,’ Guterres said.

Medics in Gaza report severe shortages of medicines in hospitals amid the ongoing military assault.

‘We are suffering from a shortage of medical staff as a result of the targeting and the martyrdom of a large number of doctors and nurses,’ said Hossam Abu Safiyeh, director of Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, in a statement o journalists.

He said Israeli air strikes and shelling continued to target the hospital and surrounding areas, exacerbating the crisis and endangering both patients and staff.

Israel’s military has denied targeting the hospital directly.​