US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced that the parties involved in the Israel assault on Gaza are close to reaching an agreement on a ceasefire in the besieged strip.
In remarks given to Arab media outlets, Blinken emphasised the importance of putting a stop to the dire situation to pave the way for a better future for Gaza.
Addressing Israel’s current offensive, Blinken stated that the US opposes Tel Aviv’s intention to carry out a large-scale ground assault on Rafah.
OTTAWA: Canada will halt all arms shipments to Israel, Foreign Minister Melanie Joly’s office confirmed Wednesday, a decision that has drawn the ire of Israeli leaders facing growing international scrutiny over the war in the Gaza Strip.
The besieged Palestinian territory is facing a mounting humanitarian crisis, and months of war have pushed hundreds of thousands of Gazans to the brink of famine.
Canada, a key ally of the United States, which provides Israel with billions of dollars a year in military aid, had already reduced its shipments to Israel to only include non-lethal equipment, such as radios, following the October 7 Hamas attack.
“Since January 8th, the government has not approved new arms export permits to Israel and this will continue until we can ensure full compliance with our export regime,” said a statement from Joly’s office.
“There are no open permits for exports of lethal goods to Israel,” it added.
Export permits approved prior to January 8, however, would “remain in effect,” Joly’s office said, explaining that canceling them risked “important implications for both Canada and its allies,” including NATO and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance.
A senior Canadian official had on Tuesday told AFP that “the situation on the ground makes it so that we can’t” export any equipment that could have a potential military use.
Israel slammed the decision, with foreign minister Israel Katz saying it “undermines Israel’s right to self-defense against Hamas terrorists.”
“History will judge Canada’s current action harshly,” he said in a post on social media platform X.
US Senator Bernie Sanders welcomed the move, saying in his own post on social media: “Given the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, including widespread and growing starvation, the US should not provide another nickel for (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s war machine.”
The issue of arms deliveries to Israel has triggered legal proceedings in several countries around the world.
In Canada, a coalition of lawyers and citizens of Palestinian origin filed a complaint against the government in early March to suspend arms exports to Israel, accusing Ottawa of violating both international and domestic law.
Israel has historically been a top receiver of Canadian arms exports, with Can$21 million worth of military materiel exported to Israel in 2022, according to government data, following Can$26 million in shipments in 2021.
That places Israel among the top 10 recipients of Canadian arms exports.
Israel offensive in Gaza has killed at least 31,923 people, most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
While affirming Israel’s right to defend itself, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken an increasingly critical stance toward Israel as civilian deaths have mounted in Gaza.
On Monday, the Canadian Parliament passed a nonbinding resolution calling for the international community to work toward a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians.
Palestinian Territories: Displaced by Israeli bombardment, the Tabatibi family gathered in central Gaza to eat together during the first Friday night of Ramzan, a scene that soon turned into a bloodbath.
An air strike hit the building where they were staying as women prepared the pre-fasting meal, killing 36 members of the family, survivors told AFP on Saturday.
The health ministry in Gaza, which provided the same death toll, blamed Israel for the strike in Nuseirat, while the Israeli military said it was looking into the incident.
“This is my mother, this is my father, this is my aunt, and these are my brothers,” 19-year-old Mohammed Al-Tabatibi, whose left hand was injured in the strike, said through tears at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in nearby Deir Al-Balah.
“They bombed the house while we were in it. My mother and my aunt were preparing the suhoor food. They were all martyred.”
He spoke as bodies were spread out in the hospital courtyard, then stacked on a truck to be driven to a cemetery.
Because there were not enough body bags, some of the dead — including at least two children — were wrapped in white cloth stained with blood, AFPTV footage showed.
The first Friday of Ramzan, the Muslim fasting month which began on Monday, passed peacefully in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, despite concerns about tensions at the sacred Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
But it was a different story in Gaza.
The strike in Nuseirat was one of 60 “deadly air strikes” reported overnight by the press office of the government, from Gaza City in the north to Rafah in the south.
“This is a bloody night, a very bloody night,” said Salama Maarouf of the media office.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 31,553 people in Gaza since October 7, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.
In Rafah, where the majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have sought refuge, more bloodshed is feared after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Friday he had approved plans for a military operation there.
Yet even before any such operation begins, air strikes continue, including one early Saturday that witnesses said killed Issa Duhair, the muezzin of a mosque, along with his two sons.
Mahmoud Duhair, a 41-year-old relative who lives nearby, described the muezzin as “a good man” who, as usual, dutifully performed the call to prayer before dawn on Saturday, then went to eat with his family “when his house was struck.”
Back in Nuseirat, in central Gaza, Yussef Tabatibi said the true toll of the strike that killed 36 members of his family could rise.
“Some of the martyrs we are unable to retrieve. We lack equipment, bulldozers, machinery, or anything else, ” he told AFP, his hands and sweatshirt covered with dust from trying to clear rubble.
“We retrieve them only with our hands. We brought shovels and hammers, but to no avail. Look at the extent of the destruction.”
The humanitarian situation in Gaza is a “nightmare” for mothers and babies, with doctors reporting small and sickly newborns, stillbirths and women forced to undergo C-sections without adequate anesthesia, a UN official said Friday.
“I’m personally leaving Gaza this week terrified for the one million women and girls of Gaza… and most especially for the 180 women who are giving birth every single day,” Dominic Allen, UN Population Fund (UNFPA) representative for the state of Palestine, said in a video news conference from Jerusalem.
“Doctors are reporting that they no longer see normal-sized babies,” Allen said after visiting hospitals still providing maternity services in the north of Gaza, where need is especially great.
“What they do see though, tragically, is more stillborn births… and more neonatal deaths, caused in part by malnutrition, dehydration and complications.”
The numbers of complicated deliveries are roughly twice what they were before the war with Israel began — with mothers stressed, fearful, underfed and exhausted — and caregivers often lacking necessary supplies.
“We have had reports of insufficient anesthetic being available” for Caesarean sections, “which again is unthinkable.”
“Those mothers should be wrapping their arms around their children,” he said. “Those children should not be wrapped in a body bag.”
Israel has defended its policies as it pursues its stated goal of destroying Hamas, saying the UN should send more aid to the war-ravaged territory, pushing back on reports by the UN and NGOs that cumbersome Israeli inspections are blocking food and other essentials.
Allen said Israeli authorities had refused to allow in some UNFPA supply shipments, such as kits for midwives, or had removed supplies like flashlights and solar panels.
“It’s a nightmare which is much more than a humanitarian crisis,” he said. “It is a crisis of humanity… beyond catastrophic.”
What he saw while driving through Gaza, he said, “really broke my heart.”
Everyone he passed or spoke to, Allen said, “was gaunt, emaciated, hungry” and exhausted from the daily struggle to survive.
At one military checkpoint, he said, he saw a boy who appeared to be about five years old walking with his hands held high, clearly frightened, as his slightly older sister followed behind, holding a white flag.
Israel’s military operations has killed at least 31,490 people in Gaza since October 7, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry.
A US charity said Saturday its team in Gaza Strip had finished unloading the first maritime aid shipment to reach the besieged territory.
“All cargo was offloaded and is being readied for distribution in Gaza,” World Central Kitchen said in a statement, noting that the aid was “almost 200 tonnes of food”.
The group is preparing a second boat of 240 tonnes of food to set sail from Cyprus, the starting point of a new maritime aid route across the eastern Mediterranean.
The humanitarian effort is intended to mitigate food shortages that have prompted UN famine warnings in Gaza from the United Nations and aid workers.
“That shipment includes pallets of canned goods and bulk product including beans, carrots, canned tuna, chickpeas, canned corn, parboiled rice, flour, oil and salt,” World Central Kitchen said.
The second shipment would also include a forklift and a crane to assist with deliveries, it added.
The humanitarian group said it had “no information to release on when our second boat and the crew ship will be able to embark.”
The Israeli military on Friday confirmed the first vessel, operated by the Spanish charity Open Arms, had arrived and said soldiers had been deployed to secure the area and conduct a security inspection.
The military also said the delivery of humanitarian aid by sea did not constitute a breach of its years-long maritime blockade of Gaza, which has been ruled since 2007 by Hamas.
World Central Kitchen had to build a jetty southwest of Gaza City to deliver the aid.
Israel has killed at least 31,490 people in Gaza since October 7, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
As cumbersome Israeli security checks and logistical hurdles slow overland aid delivery to Gaza, countries have pursued alternatives including airdrops and the new maritime corridor.
Jose Andres, founder of World Central Kitchen, said on social media platform X on Friday that the first shipment was “a test” and that “we could bring thousands of tonnes each week.”
Hamas has proposed a new six-week truce in Gaza and an exchange of several dozen Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, an official from the militant group told AFP on Friday.
“The agreement is for a six-week ceasefire and a prisoner exchange,” the official said after weeks of so far fruitless mediation efforts, adding that the group would want this to lead to “a complete (Israeli) withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a permanent ceasefire”.
During the proposed truce, Gaza militants would release about 42 hostages seized during the October 7 attack that triggered the war in Gaza, the official said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.
The official said that between 20 and 50 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails would be released per hostage — down from a previous proposal of a roughly 100-to-one ratio, according to a Hamas source in late February.
Under the new proposal, the initial exchange could include women, children, elderly and ill hostages, the official said.
During the October 7 attack, militants seized about 250 Israeli and foreign hostages, dozens of whom were released during a week-long truce in November. Israel believes about 130 captives remain in Gaza including 32 presumed dead.
The latest proposal appears to be a shift for Hamas, whose armed wing said earlier this month there would be “no compromise” on its demand that Israel withdraw from Gaza before any more hostages are freed.
Now the militants are saying that, during a six-week truce, Israeli forces would need to withdraw from “all cities and populated areas in the Gaza Strip” and allow for the return of displaced Gazans “without restrictions”, the official said.
The Hamas proposal also calls to ramp up the flow of humanitarian aid, the official added.
The terms of an eventual ceasefire would see Israel’s “complete military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip” and a comprehensive hostage-for-prisoner exchange involving the release of all hostages for “an agreed-upon number of Palestinian prisoners”, according to the official.
“Egypt and Qatar, along with the United States, are responsible for following up and ensuring the implementation of the agreement,” the official said.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign after October 7 has disproportionately killed at least 31,490 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said late Thursday that Hamas “is continuing to hold unrealistic demands” but that an update on truce talks would be submitted to Israel’s war cabinet on Friday.
An Israeli soldier was killed in a stabbing attack in central Israel on Thursday, the military said, and a police official said the assailant was shot dead.
The Israeli military identified the victim as 51-year-old Uri Moyal, a command sergeant major, and said on its website he “was killed during an attack at the intersection of Beit Kama”, a kibbutz roughly 55 kilometres (35 miles) southwest of Jerusalem.
Israeli police commissioner Yaakov Shabtai told reporters at the scene of the attack that the perpetrator was a 23-year-old man who grew up in Gaza until he was 18 but had moved to Israel four years ago and “got married here”.
Police “immediately arrived at the scene and the initial investigation revealed that a terrorist entered the restaurant on the spot, stabbed a soldier who returned fire at the terrorist and neutralised him,” a police statement said.
A police official later told AFP that the assailant was killed.
The Magen David Adom emergency service treated the soldier and transported him to a hospital in Beersheba, in southern Israel, the statement said.
“We arrived at the scene in large numbers, we saw a great commotion, and next to one of the stores a man in his 50s was lying unconscious and suffering from stab wounds to his body,” Kalman Ginzburg, a senior paramedic with MDA, said in a statement.
“We immediately put him on mobile ICU and took him to hospital in critical condition while performing resuscitation.”
The attack came one day after police said two Israeli security personnel were wounded in a stabbing carried out by a 15-year-old Palestinian boy on a bicycle.
That attack occurred at the Tunnels checkpoint south of Jerusalem, and police later pronounced the assailant dead.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed 31,341 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.
Ramallah (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has appointed Mohammed Mustafa, a long-trusted adviser on economic affairs, as prime minister, the official Wafa news agency said on Thursday.
Mustafa’s appointment comes less than three weeks after his predecessor, Mohammed Shtayyeh, resigned, citing the need for change after the October 7 attacks leading to Israeli genocide in Gaza.
The 69-year-old now faces the task of forming a new government for the Palestinian Authority, which has limited powers in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Since 2007, control of the Palestinian territories has been divided between Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Mustafa, who studied at George Washington University in the United States, is an independent executive committee member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation — dominated by the ruling Fatah movement.
He has served as deputy prime minister for economic affairs, held a board seat at the Palestine Investment Fund and worked in a number of senior positions at the World Bank.
He has also advised the Kuwaiti government and the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, the Public Investment Fund.
Mustafa was also involved in reconstruction efforts in Gaza after Israel’s 2014 invasion.
Mustafa’s appointment represents an attempt to bolster Palestinian institutions and “close some loopholes in the Palestinian Authority” at a time when Abbas is “under siege and under pressure” from Israel and the United States, Palestinian analyst Abdul Majeed Sweilem told AFP.
Mustafa would likely be seen as “acceptable to the Americans as he follows a liberal approach,” Sweilem added.
The White House on Thursday welcomed Mustafa’s appointment, calling on him to deliver “credible and far-reaching reforms” as he prepares his cabinet.
“A reformed Palestinian Authority is essential to delivering results for the Palestinian people and establishing the conditions for stability in both the West Bank and Gaza,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.
Yet Khalil Shaheen, political analyst and writer, said Mustafa’s closeness to Abbas limits prospects for major change.
“In the end, the man (Mustafa) remains the right-hand man of President Abbas… Abbas wants to say that he supports reforms, but they remain under his control,” Shaheen said.
The Israeli military offensive after October 7 in Gaza has killed at least 31,341 people, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
During the war, violence in the West Bank has flared to levels unseen in nearly two decades.
Israeli troops and settlers have killed at least 430 Palestinians in the West Bank since the Gaza war began, according to the health ministry in Ramallah.
The United States and other powers have called for a reformed Palestinian Authority to take charge of all Palestinian territories after the end of the war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has rejected postwar plans for Palestinian sovereignty.
Shortly after Shtayyeh’s resignation in late February, Palestinian factions including Hamas and Fatah participated in talks hosted by Russia that addressed the war in Gaza and post-war plans.
Afterwards the factions said in a statement they would pursue “unity of action” in confronting Israel.
An Israeli general leading troops in Gaza has delivered rare public criticism of the country’s political leadership, demanding it “be worthy” of the soldiers fighting against Hamas in the Palestinian territory.
Brigadier General Dan Goldfus, head of the 98th division deployed in Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Yunis, also appeared to enter into a row over exempting ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service.
He was subsequently summoned by the military leadership for his comments, which breached a long-standing taboo on uniformed officers publicly wading into politics.
“You must be worthy of us,” Goldfus said of his country’s leaders, in comments broadcast on Israeli television on Wednesday.
He called for Israeli politicians “to push aside the extreme, and adopt togetherness” in the Gaza following October 7 attacks.
The general vowed that military commanders and soldiers would take responsibility for their actions.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far stopped short of assuming personal responsibility for Israel’s intelligence failures on October 7 and said any official investigations must take place after the war.
“We will not run from responsibility. We bow our heads in light of our reverberating failure on October 7, but at the same time are leading forward,” the general said.
Since Israel launched a ground offensive in Gaza on October 27, 249 soldiers have been killed in the Palestinian territory, according to the military.
Addressing Israel’s political leaders, Goldfus called on them to ensure that “everyone takes part” in enlisting in the armed forces, in an apparent reference to ultra-Orthodox Israeli men being exempt from national service — a contentious political issue.
Most Jewish men are required by law to serve in the Israeli military, but members of the ultra-Orthodox minority — known in Hebrew as Haredim — have long been given sweeping exemptions.
Since the October 7 attack, public frustration over the exemption has resurfaced, adding pressure on Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which relies on ultra-Orthodox allies staunchly opposed to drafting Haredi men.
Neither Netanyahu nor Defence Minister Yoav Gallant publicly responded to Goldfus’s remarks.
Some lawmakers voiced their approval while others expressed dissatisfaction with the general making political statements of any kind.
Yoav Segalovitz, a centrist opposition lawmaker, told Kan public radio on Thursday that “a uniformed officer needs to talk only about what’s related to his decisions or take off the uniform”.
Writing in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, columnist Nahum Barnea said that “with all respect to the heartfelt sentiments of the esteemed officer, fighting in Gaza doesn’t give him the right or the authority to express a position on political matters”.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed at least 31,341 Palestinians since October 7, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry.
Palestinian Territories – A boat laden with food for Palestinians in Gaza was “ready” to set sail from Cyprus, an NGO said Saturday, as Israeli military operations in Gaza raged.
The sea route aims to counter aid access restrictions, which humanitarians and foreign governments have blamed on Israel, more than five months into the genocide which has left Gaza’s 2.4 million people struggling to survive.
Hopes were fading fast for a pause in the fighting before Ramadan, which could begin as early as Sunday depending on the lunar calendar, as Israel accused Hamas of seeking to “inflame” the region during the Muslim fasting month.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned of looming famine, particularly in north Gaza where no overland border crossings are open.
In Rafah, in Gaza’s far south, “we can barely get water,” said displaced Palestinian woman Nasreen Abu Yussef.
Roughly 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge in the city, where Atallah al-Satel said he wanted an end to the genocide.
“We are just exhausted citizens,” said Satel, who had fled to Rafah from Khan Yunis.
Spanish charity Open Arms said its boat, which docked three weeks ago in Cyprus’s Larnaca port, was “ready” to embark but awaits final authorisation.
It would be the first shipment along a maritime corridor from Cyprus — the closest European Union country to Gaza — that the EU Commission hopes will open on Sunday.
Open Arms spokeswoman Laura Lanuza told AFP that Israeli authorities were inspecting the cargo of “200 tonnes of basic foodstuffs, rice and flour, cans of tuna”.
US charity World Central Kitchen, which has partnered with Open Arms, has teams in the besieged Gaza Strip who were “constructing a dock” to unload the shipment, Lanuza said.
With ground access limited, countries have also turned to airdropping aid, although a parachute malfunction turned one delivery deadly on Friday.
The health ministry in Gaza said three more children had died from malnutrition and dehydration, with the total number of such deaths now 23.
Another 82 people were killed in strikes over the previous day, the ministry said, bringing the number of deaths in Israel’s bombardment and ground offensive of Gaza to 30,960, mostly women and children.
Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas began after the movement’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in about 1,160 deaths, mostly civilians, according to Israeli official figures.
The UN’s World Food Programme has warned that the volume of aid that can be delivered by sea will do little if anything to stave off famine in Gaza.
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, in Larnaca on Friday, said a “pilot operation” would be launched in partnership with World Central Kitchen, supported by aid from the United Arab Emirates.
A US effort for a “temporary pier” to receive aid off Gaza, which the Pentagon said would take up to 60 days to establish, builds upon the maritime corridor proposed by Cyprus, senior US officials said.
Humanitarian workers and UN officials say easing the entry of trucks to Gaza would be more effective than aid airdrops or maritime shipments.
The US military said it airdropped more than 41,000 meals into Gaza on Saturday, and Canada has said it too will join aerial aid delivery missions.
But a steady flow of relief into Gaza was “only part of the solution”, said International Committee of the Red Cross chief Mirjana Spoljaric.
The warring sides must do more to “safeguard civilian life and human dignity”, she said, decrying the “unacceptable” civilian death toll.
After a week of talks with mediators in Cairo failed to produce a breakthrough, Hamas’s armed wing said it would not agree to a hostage-prisoner exchange unless Israeli forces withdraw.
Israel has rejected such a demand.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Mossad spy agency chief David Barnea had met CIA director William Burns on Friday “as part of the ceaseless efforts to advance another hostage release deal”.
US President Joe Biden acknowledged it would now be “tough” to secure a new truce deal in time for Ramadan.
Saturday’s Israeli statement accused Hamas of “entrenching its positions like someone who is not interested in a deal and is striving to inflame the region during Ramadan”.
Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israel was preparing for “all possible operational scenarios” during the Muslim holy month.
On the ground in southern Gaza, the Israeli army said fighting persisted in the area of Khan Yunis and Hamas authorities reported more than 30 air strikes overnight.
Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh called for the speedy distribution of aid to Gazans and for the full opening of border crossings “to end the siege of our people”.
The war’s effects have been felt across the region, including off Yemen where Iran-backed Huthi rebels, who say they are acting in solidarity with Gazans, have repeatedly targeted ships plying the vital Red Sea trade route.
US and allied forces shot down 28 one-way attack drones fired towards the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden on Saturday, the US military said, after one of the largest such rebel strikes.
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