Tag: Israel

  • White House approves ’emergency’ sale of tanks to Israel amidst war on Gaza

    White House approves ’emergency’ sale of tanks to Israel amidst war on Gaza

    The US State Department has approved the emergency sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition, it said Saturday.

    The department said it had notified Congress on Friday of a sale of 13,981 high-explosive 120mm tank cartridges and related equipment worth $106.5 million.

    That sale, while relatively small, comes amid heated political debate over the Gaza war, with Republicans slowing a far larger Biden administration request for new military spending for Israel and Ukraine, and Democrats divided over the use of US weaponry against Palestinian civilians.

    The State Department said the secretary of state had determined that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale to the Government of Israel” of the weaponry, thereby waiving the normal requirement of Congressional review.

    The statement said the sale, from US Army inventory, would be used by Israel “as a deterrent to regional threats and to strengthen its homeland defense” and would “not alter the basic military balance in the region.”

    On Wednesday, Republican senators blocked a White House request for $106 billion in emergency aid primarily for Ukraine and Israel as conservatives balked at the exclusion of immigration reforms they had demanded.

    The package would include roughly $60 billion to help Ukraine in its war with Russia and $10 billion for Israel in its conflict with Hamas, as well as aid for Taiwan.

    With the death toll in Gaza steadily mounting, meantime, some Democrats have strongly urged Israel to carry out a more targeted offensive against Hamas targets and limit civilian casualties.

  • Israel strikes Gaza after failed UN ceasefire bid

    Israel strikes Gaza after failed UN ceasefire bid

    Israel pressed its offensive against Hamas in Gaza on Saturday after the United States blocked an extraordinary UN bid to call for a ceasefire in the two-month war.

    Hamas and the Palestinian Authority swiftly condemned the US veto as the Hamas-run health ministry put the latest death toll in Gaza at 17,487 people, mostly women and children.

    An Israeli strike on the southern city of Khan Yunis killed six people, while five others died in a separate attack in Rafah, the ministry said Saturday.

    Israel has vowed to eradicate Hamas over its unprecedented attack on October 7 when militants broke through Gaza’s militarised border to kill around 1,200 people and seize hostages, 138 of whom remain captive, according to Israeli figures.

    Vast areas of Gaza have been reduced to rubble and the UN says about 80 percent of the population has been displaced, with dire shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine reported.

    “It’s so cold, and the tent is so small. All I have are the clothes I wear, I still don’t know what the next step will be,” said Mahmud Abu Rayan, displaced from Beit Lahia in the north.

    A UN Security Council resolution that would have called for an immediate cease-fire was vetoed by the United States on Friday.

    US envoy Robert Wood said the resolution was “divorced from reality” and “would have not moved the needle forward on the ground.”

    Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said the cease-fire “would prevent the collapse of the Hamas terrorist organization, which is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, and would enable it to continue ruling the Gaza Strip.”

    Hamas slammed on Saturday the US rejection of the cease-fire bid as “a direct participation of the occupation in killing our people and committing more massacres and ethnic cleansing.”

    Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said it was “a disgrace and another blank cheque given to the occupying state to massacre, destroy and displace.”

    The veto was swiftly condemned by humanitarian groups, with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) saying the Security Council was “complicit in the ongoing slaughter.”

    Israel’s military said Friday it had struck 450 targets in Gaza over 24 hours, showing footage of strikes from naval vessels in the Mediterranean.

    The health ministry reported 40 dead near Gaza City in the north, and dozens more in Jabalia and the main southern city of Khan Yunis.

    Humanitarian Catastrophe

    Following two months of conflict and bombardment, UN chief Antonio Guterres said Friday “the people of Gaza are looking into the abyss.”

    “People are desperate, fearful and angry,” he said.

    “All this takes place amid a spiralling humanitarian nightmare.”

    Many of the 1.9 million Gazans who have been displaced by the war have headed south, turning Rafah near the Egyptian border into a vast camp.

    With the death toll of medical workers in the conflict mounting, more than a dozen World Health Organization member states submitted a draft resolution on Friday that urged Israel to respect its obligations under international law to protect humanitarians in Gaza.

    They called for Israel to “respect and protect” medical and humanitarian workers exclusively involved in carrying out medical duties, as well as hospitals and other medical facilities.

    Only 14 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were functioning in any capacity, according to United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA.

    With the civilian toll mounting, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Friday that Washington believes Israel needs to do more to protect civilians in the conflict.

    “We certainly all recognize more can be done to… reduce civilian casualties. And we’re going to keep working with our Israeli counterparts to that end,” he said.

    The death toll also rose in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces shot dead six Palestinians on Friday, the territory’s health ministry said.

    Israel said Friday it has lost 91 soldiers in Gaza.

    It said two others were wounded in a failed bid to rescue hostages overnight, and that “numerous terrorists” were killed in the operation.
    Hamas claimed a hostage was killed in the operation, and released a video purporting to show the body, which could not be independently verified.

    Hamas rocket parts, launchers and other weapons as well as a one-kilometer tunnel were found at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City, the army said, as it warned residents to move west.

  • Palestinian poet Dr. Refaat Alareer killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

    Palestinian poet Dr. Refaat Alareer killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

    Palestinian poet, writer, literature professor, and activist Dr. Refaat Alareer was killed in an Israeli airstrike, announced on Thursday evening.

    “My heart is broken, my friend and colleague Refaat Alareer was killed with his family a few minutes ago,” wrote his friend, the Gazan poet, Mosab Abu Toha.

    The Israeli airstrike also killed his brother, his sister, and four of her children. He is now survived by his wife, Nusayba, and their children.

    Dr. Alareer was one of the leading contemporary authors in Gaza who settled on writing in English to tell stories of the besieged strip. He was one of the most prominent voices conveying details of the atrocities Israel is committing to global audiences.

    He had been working as a professor of literature and creative writing at the Islamic University of Gaza since 2007.

    His other contributions included co-editing Gaza Unsilenced (2015) and being editor of Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine (2014).

    Dan Sheehan quotes in LitHub that in his contribution to the 2022 collection Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, titled “Gaza Asks: When Shall this Pass?”, Refaat writes:

    “It shall pass, I keep hoping. It shall pass, I keep saying. Sometimes I mean it. Sometimes I don’t. And as Gaza keeps gasping for life, we struggle for it to pass, we have no choice but to fight back and to tell her stories. For Palestine.”

    He was also one of the founders of We Are Not Numbers, a nonprofit organisation founded in Gaza following the 2014 Israeli attack and devoted himself to establishing “a new generation of Palestinian writers and thinkers who can bring together a profound change to the Palestinian cause.”

    In November, Alareer published a poem on X entitled “If I must die” that was shared tens of thousands of times. It concludes with the words: “If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale.”

    Via his X (formerly Twitter) account, “Refaat in Gaza“, Dr. Alareer also openly condemned Israeli atrocities being committed in Gaza and was also vocal against the US who has been supporting Israel in its operations.

    Remembering Refaat

    The announcement of Dr. Refaat Alareer’s death evoked a cascade of sorrow and anguish across social media, shared by his friends, colleagues, former students, and followers:

  • Israel drops leaflets containing ayats from The Quran on Palestinians

    Israel drops leaflets containing ayats from The Quran on Palestinians

    Residents of Khan Yonis in the besieged Gaza Strip have received leaflets quoting a verse in the Quran which states “The flood overtook them as they were wrongdoers.”

    The witnesses say that the Israeli army has showered the leaflets through a plane in the area, the latest focus of Israeli military’s ground offensive.

    Journalist Aamer Tabsh in Khan Younis says he saw Israeli planes drop thousands of fliers.

    Tabsh says residents are convinced the reference to the epic flood of Noah in the Quran and the Bible “means that something much worse is coming.”
    Some are linking it to Hamas’ name for its October 7 onslaught against Israel, “Al Aqsa Deluge,” or flood.

    Al-Jazeera points to recent reports that the Israeli forces are considering flooding Hamas’s subterranean tunnel network with seawater to force out its fighters.

  • ‘Deliberate’ Israeli strike on journalists in Lebanon warrants ‘war crime’ investigation: watchdogs

    ‘Deliberate’ Israeli strike on journalists in Lebanon warrants ‘war crime’ investigation: watchdogs

    The Israeli strike that killed one journalist and wounded six others in Lebanon merits a “war crime” investigation, rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) told AFP on Thursday.

    Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah, 37, was killed instantly in the strike on October 13 in the south of the country near the Israeli border.

    The others present — two more Reuters journalists, two from Al Jazeera, and two from AFP — were all injured.

    AFP photographer Christina Assi, 28, was seriously wounded, later had a leg amputated and is still in hospital.

    Independent investigations by both rights groups concluded, like an AFP investigation published earlier on Thursday, that the first strike that killed Abdallah and severely wounded Assi was most likely a tank round fired from Israel.

    Amnesty said the strikes “were likely a direct attack on civilians that must be investigated as a war crime”.

    “Those responsible for Issam Abdallah’s unlawful killing and the injuring of six other journalists must be held accountable,” said Aya Majzoub, Amnesty’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

    “No journalist should ever be targeted or killed simply for carrying out their work. Israel must not be allowed to kill and attack journalists with impunity.”

    HRW said the two Israeli strikes “were apparently deliberate attacks on civilians, which is a war crime”.

    Under international humanitarian law, “it is forbidden in any circumstances to carry out direct attacks against civilians”, it said.

    The group’s investigation indicated that the journalists were “well removed from ongoing hostilities, clearly identifiable as members of the media, and had been stationary for at least 75 minutes before they were hit”.

    Amnesty said images it verified showed “the seven journalists were wearing body armour labelled ‘press’, and that the blue Reuters crew car was marked ‘TV’ with yellow tape on its hood”.

    “The evidence strongly suggests that Israeli forces knew or should have known that the group that they were attacking were journalists,” HRW’s Lebanon researcher Ramzi Kaiss said.

    “This is an unlawful and apparently deliberate attack on a very visible group of journalists,” he said.

    ‘Justice and accountability’

    Speaking at a press conference in Beirut, Dylan Collins, the other AFP journalist wounded in the attack, said: “I know they (the investigations) won’t bring Issam back to life. I know they won’t help Christina walk again.

    “But what I do hope is that they at least will mark the start of some sort of process of justice and accountability,” he said.

    He shared a message from Assi that said: “We chose journalism with a mission to deliver the truth, and despite the inevitable costs, our commitment remains unwavering. Nothing can silence us.”

    Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said in a statement his government would “take all measures to include” the conclusions of the investigation “in the complaint filed before the UN Security Council”.

    Since Israel’s bombardment of Gaza started after Palestinian fighter group Hamas struck Israel in a surprise attack on October 7, 63 journalists and media workers have been killed — 56 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese, the Committee to Protect Journalists says.

    The New York-based rights group on Thursday called for “an immediate, independent, and transparent investigation that holds the perpetrators to account” for the strike on journalists in Lebanon.

  • In a rare move, UN secretary-general invokes Article 99 on Gaza

    In a rare move, UN secretary-general invokes Article 99 on Gaza

    The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has invoked Article 99 of the UN Charter, calling on the Security Council to declare a ceasefire to put a stop to Israeli atrocities committed in Gaza.

    Invoking Article 99 is one of the few powers that the Charter gives the UN Secretary-General.

    In a letter written to the council’s president, Guterres cites the responsibility of the 15-member Security Council that has the obligation to maintain international peace and security, stating that the situation in Gaza and Israel “may aggravate existing threats to the maintenance of international peace and security.”

    He added that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza can have “potentially irreversible implications for Palestinians as a whole and for peace and security in the region.”

    UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric explained that the move has been taken “given the scale of the loss of human life in Gaza and Israel, in such a short amount of time.”

    He described the use of Article 99 as a “dramatic constitutional move” made by Guterres in the hope that it would put more pressure on the Council – and the international community at large – to demand a ceasefire between the warring parties.

    “I think it’s arguably the most important invocation”, Dujarric told reporters at UN Headquarters, “in my opinion, the most powerful tool that he [the Secretary-General] has.”

  • ‘Soul of my soul’; Bereaved grandfather comforts injured children in Gaza hospitals

    ‘Soul of my soul’; Bereaved grandfather comforts injured children in Gaza hospitals

    A few days back, a video of a Gazan grandfather bidding goodbye to his dead granddaughter went viral. In the video, the man, who’s two grandchildren were killed by Israeli airstrikes, kisses the little girl and hugs her as he calls her the “soul of my soul”.
    What touched hearts across the world was Khaled’s relationship with his granddaughter Reem.

    The grandfather, Khaled, is now volunteering in hospitals in Gaza. He can be found comforting other children who have been injured from Israeli air strikes. Many of the patients are severely wounded, having no access to adequate medical facilities because Israel has blocked aid into Gaza.

  • In rare Israel rebuke, US restricts visas on extremist settlers

    In rare Israel rebuke, US restricts visas on extremist settlers

    Washington (AFP) – The United States said Tuesday it would refuse visas for extremist Israeli settlers behind a wave of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, as it also asked Israel to do more to spare civilians in Gaza.

    The visa measures amount to a rare concrete repercussion by the United States against Israelis in the nearly two-month-old war, in which President Joe Biden has nudged the US ally privately but also promised strong support.

    “We have underscored to the Israeli government the need to do more to hold accountable extremist settlers who have committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

    “As President Biden has repeatedly said, those attacks are unacceptable,” he said.

    Blinken said the United States would refuse entry to anyone involved in “undermining peace, security or stability in the West Bank” or who takes actions that “unduly restrict civilians’ access to essential services and basic necessities.”

    “Instability in the West Bank both harms the Israeli and Palestinian people and threatens Israel’s national security interests. Those responsible for it must be held accountable,” Blinken said.

    State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that dozens of settlers, who were not publicly named, would be affected. The visa ban also applies to their immediate family members.

    Restrictions on entering the United States will not apply to extremist settlers who are US citizens.

    Wave of violence

    Hamas militants stormed out of Gaza into Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

    In response, Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and has carried out air strikes and a ground offensive that have killed around 15,900 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

    Even though Hamas does not control the West Bank, some 250 Palestinians have been killed there by Israeli soldiers and settlers since October 7, according to a Palestinian government tally.

    The Palestinian Authority holds limited autonomy in the West Bank where Palestinians have complained of impunity over attacks and harassment carried out by settlers, some of whom have been serving in the Israeli military as forces are shifted to Gaza.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in a coalition with far-right parties that strongly support Jewish settlement of lands seized in 1967, construction that is considered illegal under international law.

    Blinken visited both Israel and the West Bank last week just as a pause ended between Hamas and Israel.

    The State Department said that Israel has shown “improvement” in targeting its strikes in Gaza as it voiced concern about a repeat of the widespread bombing at the start of the war.

    “We will continue to monitor what’s happening and will continue to press them to do everything they can to minimize civilian harm,” said Miller, the State Department spokesman.

    The United States has also promised more than $100 million in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians but has faced strong criticism in much of the Arab world for its diplomatic and military support of Israel.

    J Street, the left-leaning pro-Israel US group that is frequently critical of Netanyahu, praised the visa restrictions as an “important first step.”

    It said that the Biden administration should specifically restrict two far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s cabinet, Minister for National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

    Before entering politics, Ben-Gvir hung a portrait in his living room of Baruch Goldstein, the US-born settler who killed 29 Palestinian worshippers at a mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron.

    The Biden administration has returned to the traditional US and international position of opposing settlements, although until now its stance has largely been rhetorical.

    Previous president Donald Trump switched course, with Blinken’s predecessor Mike Pompeo dropping objections to settlements and visiting one late in his term.

  • Israel has ‘killed Christmas spirit’; Bethlehem reveals symbolic Christmas decoration this year

    Israel has ‘killed Christmas spirit’; Bethlehem reveals symbolic Christmas decoration this year

    The Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, occupied West Bank, has new ideas for Christmas decorations as the season of festivity nears.

    Abandoning the conventional Christmas ornaments and Christmas tree decoration, the church has instead created debris symbolising the current destruction in Gaza. A pile of concrete pieces around an olive sapling can be seen in the setup, with a baby doll representing a trapped child under debris in the center.

    “While genocide is being committed against our people in Gaza, we cannot celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ this year in any way. We don’t feel like celebrating.,” the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem’s pastor Munzir Ishak told Anadolu Agency.

    “Our message to ourselves is this: God is with us in this pain. Christ was born in solidarity with those in pain and suffering. God is with the oppressed,” he said.

    “Secondly, we wanted to tell churches worldwide: ‘Unfortunately, Christmas in Palestine is like this.’ Whether Christian or Muslim, this is the situation we are going through in Palestine. We are exposed to a genocide war targeting all Palestinians. Unfortunately, when we think of the birth of Baby Christ, we think of the babies brutally killed in Gaza,” he added.

    Earlier last month in November, the Christian leadership in Bethlehem announced they will not have Christmas celebrations in the West Bank this year in light of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza which has resulted in killing more than 16,000 people.

    In a letter, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem have unanimously agreed to cancel the commemoration of Christmas to conform to the spiritual significance of the holiday while Palestinians are being brutally killed by Israeli forces.

    City officials in Bethlehem also took down Christmas decorations in solidarity with Palestinians.

  • 1.8 million Palestinians internally displaced, have no where to escape

    1.8 million Palestinians internally displaced, have no where to escape

    With about 1.8 million Palestinians already displaced across Gaza, the Israeli military has now called to evacuate areas in Khan Younis.

    On October 13th, Israel directed one million Gazans in the north to move south. But now, the internally displaced as well as the local residents have been asked to evacuate the south with no place to escape to for protection.

    Israeli air raids have been targeting refugee camps and residential buildings, having killed more than 15,500 people and injuring more than 41,300 since October 7.