International
No news on truce deal, says Hamas as thousands of Israelis protest
No news on truce deal, says Hamas as thousands of Israelis protest
Hamas says there’s been no progress in ceasefire talks with Israel over the war on Gaza as tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv demanding the government save the captives and get a deal done.
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official based in Lebanon, said on Saturday the Palestinian group is still ready to discuss any truce proposal that ends the nearly nine-month conflict.
“Once again, Hamas is ready to deal positively with any proposal that secures a permanent ceasefire, a comprehensive withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and a serious swap deal,” Hamdan told a news conference in Beirut.
Arab mediators’ efforts, backed by the United States, have so far failed to conclude a ceasefire with both sides blaming each other for the impasse. Hamas says any deal must end the war for good and bring full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Israel says it will accept only temporary pauses in fighting until Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, is “eradicated”.
Hamdan also blamed the United States for applying pressure on Hamas to accept Israel’s conditions.
Antigovernment protest organisers in Tel Aviv estimated 130,000 Israelis converged downtown on Saturday night demanding an immediate truce deal to bring the captives home.
At a news conference held outside the defence ministry, family members of those held in Gaza made statements to the crowd.
“Do not let Netanyahu sabotage the deal again. Netanyahu’s insistence on prolonging the war stands between us and our loved ones,” one unidentified relative said.
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“Continuing the war means killing the hostages at the hands of the Israeli government. The people understand that Netanyahu prolongs the war for personal reasons – reaching a deal would lead to early elections and end his rule.”
New American text
On Saturday, The Associated Press news agency quoted an unnamed “senior Biden administration official” as saying the US has presented new language to intermediaries Egypt and Qatar aimed at trying to jump-start stalled Israel-Hamas negotiations.
The official said the revised text focuses on negotiations that are to start between Israel and Hamas during the first phase of a three-phase deal that US President Joe Biden laid out nearly a month ago.
The first phase calls for a “full and complete ceasefire”, a withdrawal of Israeli forces from all densely populated areas of Gaza, and the release of a number of captives – including women, older people and the wounded – in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
The proposal called for the parties to negotiate the terms of the second phase during the 42 days of phase one. Under the current proposal, Hamas could release all of the remaining men, both civilians and soldiers. In return, Israel could free an agreed-upon number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. The releases will not occur until “sustainable calm” takes effect and all Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza.
The new proposed language, which the official did not detail, aims to find a workaround for differences between Israel and Hamas regarding the parameters of the negotiations between phase one and phase two.
Hamas wants negotiations centred on the number and identity of Palestinian prisoners to be released from Israeli jails, in exchange for remaining living Israeli soldiers and male captives held in Gaza, the official said. Israel wants negotiations to be broader and include the demilitarisation of the territory controlled by Hamas.
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Hamdan said the group had yet to receive a new ceasefire proposal from mediators. Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh spoke by phone with the head of Egypt’s intelligence service to discuss the negotiations, Hamas said in a statement.
Growing fears of wider war
Talks of a truce come as pressure mounts on regional and world leaders to bring a halt to the Gaza war as fears of its expansion into Lebanon rise. Both Hamas ally Hezbollah and Israel officials have threatened major escalation over the past week.
Analysts have said a full-out war in northern Israel and southern Lebanon would be catastrophic for the Middle East. Seven countries have called on their nationals to urgently leave Lebanon, the latest being Saudi Arabia, which urged its citizens to “depart the Lebanese territory immediately”.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant threatened this week to bomb Lebanon “back to the Stone Age” if major conflict erupted. Hezbollah’s main ally Iran warned Israel of an “obliterating war” if it attacked Lebanon.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Saturday highlighted the prospect of an “unprecedented” war in the region, calling for urgent international intervention to prevent the “expansion of the gravely escalating conflict”.
No news on truce deal, says Hamas as thousands of Israelis protest
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES
International
Israeli strike kills senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon
Israeli strike kills senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon
Hezbollah has said one of its senior commanders was killed in an Israeli air strike in southern Lebanon, with the Iran-backed armed group retaliating with a barrage of rockets against Israel.
Mohammed Nimah Nasser is the latest senior member of Hezbollah to be targeted by Israel during almost nine months of cross-border violence which have raised fears of an all-out war.
Hezbollah said it had launched 100 rockets and missiles at Israeli military positions “as part of the response to the assassination”. The Israeli military said a number of projectiles which fell in open areas sparked fires, but no injuries were reported.
The military said Nasser commanded Hezbollah’s Aziz Unit, which is responsible for launching rockets from south-western Lebanon, and accused him of directing a “large number of terror attacks”.
It also described him as “the counterpart” of Taleb Sami Abdullah, the commander of another unit whose killing last month prompted Hezbollah to launch more than 200 rockets and missiles into northern Israel in a single day.
Since then, there has been a flurry of diplomatic efforts to de-escalate tensions, with the UN and US warning of the potentially catastrophic consequences of a war that could also draw in Iran and other allied groups.
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There have been almost daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the day after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on 7 October.
Hezbollah has said it is acting in support of the Palestinian group that is also backed by Iran. Both groups are proscribed as terrorist organisations by Israel, the UK and other countries.
In recent weeks, Israeli officials have repeatedly warned that they will use military force to restore security along the northern border if diplomacy fails.
“We are striking Hezbollah very hard every day and we will also reach a state of full readiness to take any action required in Lebanon, or to reach an arrangement from a position of strength,” Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Wednesday. “We prefer an arrangement, but if reality forces us we will know how to fight.”
Hezbollah, heavily armed and long seen as a significantly superior foe to Hamas, has said it does not want a full-out war with Israel and that it will observe in Lebanon any ceasefire in Gaza.
“Israel can decide what it wants: limited war, total war, partial war,” the group’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, said in an interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday. “But it should expect that our response and our resistance will not be within a ceiling and rules of engagement set by Israel.”
So far, more than 400 people have been reported killed in Lebanon, the vast majority of them Hezbollah fighters, and 25 people in Israel, mostly soldiers.
Tens of thousands from communities on both sides of the border have also been displaced.
Israeli strike kills senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon
International
Biden vows to stay in US presidential race, governors offer support
Biden vows to stay in US presidential race, governors offer support
United States President Joe Biden has pledged to continue his re-election campaign “to the end”, as the embattled Democrat fights to keep his candidacy alive amid growing alarm over his physical and mental fitness.
Biden, 81, on Wednesday insisted that he would keep running despite growing pressure from within his party to step aside following last week’s disastrous debate performance against his Republican challenger Donald Trump.
“Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can, as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running … no one’s pushing me out,” Biden said on a call with campaign staffers.
“I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end, and we’re going to win.”
Biden’s defiant remarks came after US media reports indicated that the president and his team have acknowledged that his candidacy is at risk of collapsing within days if he cannot convince the public of his fitness for office.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre denied those reports, insisting Biden was “clear-eyed, and he is staying in the race”.
Concerns about Biden’s age and condition have boiled over since last Thursday’s debate, when the president gave several answers that meandered into incoherence.
International
Heavy fighting rocks Gaza, thousands flee war zone
Heavy fighting rocks Gaza, thousands flee war zone
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Israeli forces bombed and battled Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday as tens of thousands of Palestinians scrambled for a safe haven after the army issued an evacuation order for a vast swathe in the territory’s south.
Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City’s Shujaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets, said AFP reporters.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a US media report saying his generals were urging a Gaza truce even with Hamas undefeated, stressing on Tuesday that “this will not happen.”
Military chief Herzi Halevi meanwhile said Israel is engaged in “a long campaign” to destroy Hamas over the October 7 attack and to bring home the hostages held by Palestinian militants.
The United Nations warned that the almost nine-months-old war had “unleashed a maelstrom of human misery” and that the latest evacuation order had plunged yet more Palestinians into “an abyss of suffering.”
Ten days after Netanyahu said the war’s “intense phase” was winding down, the Israeli military again rained down air strikes and artillery fire on militants in the Shujaiya district.
The air force struck “over 50 terror infrastructure sites” across Gaza in 24 hours while ground troops “eliminated terrorists,” located tunnels and found weapons including AK-47 assault rifles, the military said.
The Israeli army — which issued an evacuation order for Shujaiya a week ago — on Sunday did the same for a larger area near Khan Yunis and Rafah in the south, raising fears of renewed heavy battles there.
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Tens of thousands of Palestinians have again taken to the road there, many bundling their scant belongings on top of cars or donkey carts as they sought safety elsewhere in the bombed-out wasteland.
The UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said 250,000 people had been impacted by the latest evacuation order that covers southern areas bordering Israel and Egypt.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the order covers 117 square kilometers (45 square miles), or “about a third of the Gaza Strip, making it the largest such order since October.”
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, told the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday that the war had now displaced 80 percent of Gaza’s population.
She also said not enough aid was reaching the besieged territory and that crossings must be reopened, particularly to southern Gaza, to avert a humanitarian disaster.
“Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering, their home lives shattered, their lives upended,” she said. “The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery.”
Amid the war, siege and mass displacement, more than 150,000 people have contracted skin diseases in the squalid conditions, said the World Health Organization.
Wafaa Elwan, a Palestinian mother of seven who now lives in a tent city by the sea, said: “We sleep on the ground, on sand where worms come out underneath us.”
She said her five-year-old son, much of whose body was covered in rashes and welts, “can’t sleep through the night because he can’t stop scratching his body.”
The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive since then has killed at least 37,925 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that “operational activities continue throughout the Gaza Strip.”
The Gaza civil defense agency said seven people were killed when a strike hit a family house north of Gaza City.
Another strike killed three people in a car at Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Deir Al-Balah area, said an AFP reporter.
Air strikes also hit homes in Rafah, according to Gaza’s government media office.
The New York Times has quoted Israeli security officials as saying top generals see a truce as the best way to secure the release of the remaining hostages, even if that meant not achieving all of the war goals.
Netanyahu, who heads a government including hard-line right-wing parties, strongly rejected this on Tuesday and vowed Israel would not give in to the “winds of defeatism.”
“The war will end once Israel achieves all of its objectives, including the destruction of Hamas and the release of all of our hostages,” he said.
Heavy fighting rocks Gaza, thousands flee war zone
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