Egypt warns of ‘catastrophic repercussions’ if Israeli attacks Rafah
Israel has said a truce with Hamas would delay, not prevent, a ground invasion of Rafah
“The world is witnessing the most heinous crimes and violations against the Palestinian people,” Shoukry said
Updated 27 February 2024
AFP
GENEVA: Egypt warned on Tuesday that Israel’s planned ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza would have “catastrophic repercussions” for peace in the Middle East.
Foreign ministers from Arab League countries told the United Nations Human Rights Council that some nations were turning a blind eye to the suffering in Gaza.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the extreme polarization exposed by the Gaza war had laid bare the double standards of some members of the UN’s top rights body.
Israel has said a truce with Hamas would delay, not prevent, a ground invasion of Rafah on the Egyptian border, where an estimated 1.4 million Palestinian civilians have sought refuge from the war.
“The world is witnessing the most heinous crimes and violations against the Palestinian people,” Shoukry said.
He called for an immediate ceasefire and urged Israel not to attack Rafah.
“Any military action in the present circumstances would have catastrophic repercussions that undermine peace in the region,” he warned.
The war in Gaza began after the Hamas militant group that controls the Palestinian territory launched an attack on October 7 that killed about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli figures.
Hamas militants also took hostages, 130 of whom remain in Gaza.
Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza have killed at least 29,878 people, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Shoukry said some countries on the 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva were shying away from the firm action they had taken over other conflicts.
“It seems that life in Gaza is not worthy enough of their attention, that the massacre of tens of thousands of children fails to shake their otherwise all-too-sensitive conscience,” he said.
“The lives of Gaza’s children are seemingly less valuable than others.
“This preludes the... collapse of the international system, including this council.”
Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Abdullah Al-Yahya said the “brutal crimes of the Israeli occupation forces against defenseless civilians” had led to “catastrophic crisis and destruction.”
Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said the world “cannot keep turning a blind eye” to the “unprecedented human disaster” in Gaza.
Qatari International Cooperation Minister Lolwah Al-Khater said Gaza was witnessing a “genocidal war,” while the situation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was also deteriorating.
“Sponsoring this Israeli exceptionalism above international law by some global powers should stop,” she told the council.
Meanwhile Tunisian Foreign Minister Nabil Ammar, speaking via video-link, said human rights were being violated in Gaza “with the utmost barbarism” and said the international community had been “paralyzed because of a handful of countries.”
Israeli defense minister warns an attack on Iran would be ‘lethal’ and ‘surprising’
Updated 10 October 2024
AP
JERUSALEM: Israel’s defense minister warned on Wednesday that his country’s retaliation for a recent Iranian missile attack will be “lethal” and “surprising,” while the Israeli military pushed ahead with a large-scale operation in northern Gaza and a ground offensive in Lebanon against Hezbollah militants.
On the diplomatic front, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Joe Biden held their first call in seven weeks, with a White House press secretary saying the call included discussions on Israel’s deliberations over how it will respond to Iran’s attack.
“It was direct, it was productive,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of the 30-minute call.
The Israeli operation in northern Gaza left dozens of people dead and threatened to shut down three hospitals over a year into the war with Hamas, Palestinian officials and residents said.
The continuing cycle of destruction and death in Gaza, unleashed by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, comes as Israel expands a weeklong ground offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon and considers a major retaliatory strike on Iran following Iran’s Oct. 1 missile barrage.
“Our strike will be lethal, precise and above all, surprising. They won’t understand what happened and how. They will see the results,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said during a speech to troops. “Whoever strikes us will be harmed and pay a price.”
Iran fired dozens of missiles at Israel on Oct. 1 which the United States helped fend off. Biden has said he would not support a retaliatory strike on sites related to Tehran’s nuclear program.
On Wednesday, Hezbollah claimed a rocket attack that killed two people in the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona. The town’s acting mayor, Ofir Yehezkeli, said the two killed were a couple walking their dogs.
Dozens killed in Gaza and survivors fear displacement
In northern Gaza, there was heavy fighting in Jabaliya, an urban refugee camp dating back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, where Israeli forces have carried out several major operations over the course of the war and then returned as militants regroup. The entire north, including Gaza City, has suffered heavy destruction and has been largely isolated by Israeli forces since late last year.
In Gaza, Jabaliya residents said thousands of people have been trapped in their homes since the operation began Sunday, as Israeli jets and drones buzz overhead and troops battle militants in the streets.
“It’s like hell. We can’t get out,” said Mohamed Awda, who lives with his parents and six siblings. He said there were three bodies in the street outside his home that could not be retrieved because of the fighting.
“The quadcopters are everywhere, and they fire at anyone. You can’t even open the window,” he told The Associated Press by phone, speaking over the sound of explosions.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said it recovered 40 bodies from Jabaliya from Sunday until Tuesday, and another 14 from communities farther north. There are likely more bodies under rubble and in areas that can’t be accessed, it said.
Jabaliya residents fear Israel aims to depopulate the north and turn it into a closed military zone or a Jewish settlement. Israel has blocked all roads except for the main highway leading south from Jabaliya, according to residents.
“We are concerned about the displacement to the south,” Ahmed Qamar, who lives in Jabaliya with his wife, children and parents, said in a text message. “People here say clearly that they will die here in northern Gaza and won’t go to southern Gaza.” Hospitals are under threat
Fadel Naeem, the director of Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City, said it had received dozens of wounded people and bodies from the north. “We declared a state of emergency, suspended scheduled surgeries, and discharged patients whose conditions are stable,” he told AP in a text message.
Israel’s offensive has gutted Gaza’s health sector, forcing most hospitals to shut down and leaving the rest only partially functioning.
Naeem said three hospitals farther north — Kamal Adwan, Awda and the Indonesian Hospital — have become almost inaccessible because of the fighting. The Gaza Health Ministry says the Israeli army has ordered all three to evacuate staff and patients. Meanwhile, no humanitarian aid has entered the north since Oct. 1, according to UN data.
Israel’s authority coordinating humanitarian affairs in Palestinian territories said Israel “has not halted the entry or coordination of humanitarian aid entering from its territory into the northern Gaza Strip.”
Israel says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it fights in residential areas.
Israel ordered the wholesale evacuation of northern Gaza, including Gaza City, in the opening weeks of the war, but hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have remained there. Israel reiterated those instructions over the weekend, telling people to flee south to a humanitarian zone where hundreds of thousands are already crammed into squalid tent camps.
The war began just over a year ago, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. They still hold around 100 hostages, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many were fighters. It has said women and children make up over half of the dead. The offensive has also caused staggering destruction across the territory and displaced around 90 percent of the population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to keep fighting until “total victory” over Hamas and the return of all hostages. Israel warns Lebanon it could end up like Gaza
On Tuesday, Netanyahu said Lebanon would meet the same fate as Gaza if its people did not rise up against Hezbollah.
Video verified by The Associated Press shows what appears to be a group of Israeli soldiers raising an Israeli flag in a village in southern Lebanon.
In the video, which appears to have been filmed in Maroun A-Ras, three soldiers are seen hoisting up a flag atop a pile of debris. A soldier off camera speaks in Hebrew and refers to the nearby Israeli village of Avivim. The date it was filmed wasn’t immediately known.
The video follows other similar acts that took place throughout Israel’s ground offensive in Gaza. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
An Israeli strike killed four people and wounded another 10 at a hotel sheltering displaced people in the southern Lebanese town of Wardaniyeh on Wednesday, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said.
An Associated Press reporter in a nearby town heard two sonic booms from Israeli jets before the strike. Plumes of smoke rose from the building after the explosion.
In recent weeks Israel has waged a heavy air campaign across large parts of Lebanon, targeting what it says are Hezbollah rocket launchers and other militant sites. A series of strikes had killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and most of his top commanders.
The Israeli military said Wednesday that Hezbollah has fired more than 12,000 rockets, missiles and drones at Israel in the past year.
Israel carries out airstrikes on sites in Syria, state TV says
Updated 10 October 2024
Reuters
CAIRO: Israel carried out airstrikes targeting an industrial site in the Syrian city of Homs and a military site in the countryside near the city of Hama leaving only “some material damage,” Syrian state TV said early on Thursday.
Israel targeted a car manufacturing plant at the industrial site in Homs, which led to a fire breaking out there and firefighting teams are currently working to extinguish it, Syrian TV said, citing the director of the industrial site, Amer Khalil.
Explosions were heard in the Syrian city of Daraa and they are being investigated, state media also reported.
Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years, but has ramped up its raids since last year’s Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israeli territory.
Israeli military says it intercepted drone that approached Israel over Red Sea
Updated 09 October 2024
Reuters
CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Wednesday it intercepted a drone that approached Israel over the Red Sea but did not cross into Israeli territory, minutes after the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it targeted Israel’s Eilat with drones.
Lebanon arrests two Syrians on suspicion of spying for Israel
Updated 09 October 2024
AFP
BEIRUT: The Lebanese army said Wednesday it had arrested two Syrians on suspicion of having been recruited to work for Israel, as its military bombs Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
Lebanese army intelligence arrested two Syrians “for photographing different places... and documenting the results of enemy air strikes,” an army statement on social network X said.
The arrests were “a result of surveillance and follow-up of Israeli spy networks and enemy agents,” it said in the statement.
The pair had also documented “search and rescue operations and the recovery of bodies” at Israeli strike sites and were “recruited through social media,” the statement said, adding that judicial authorities were investigating.
Israel has been pounding Lebanon for more than two weeks, saying it is targeting Hezbollah commanders and munitions, in raids that have killed more than 1,200 people since September 23, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Lebanon remains technically at war with Israel and forbids citizens from having any contact with Israel or traveling there.
Suspicions are running particularly high after Israel killed senior Hezbollah commanders in recent weeks, including the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Lebanese security services have arrested dozens over the years on suspicions of collaborating with Israel, with some receiving jail terms of up to 25 years.
Lebanon facing ‘catastrophic’ situation as 600,000 displaced: UN
Updated 09 October 2024
AFP
UNITED NATIONS: United Nations officials warned Wednesday that Lebanon was staring down a “catastrophic” humanitarian crisis as the number of internally displaced people hit 600,000 and Israel presses its offensive against Hezbollah militants.
Hezbollah said its fighters were locked in clashes with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, using rocket-propelled weapons to repel Israeli attempts to breach the border.
“Lebanon finds itself facing a conflict and a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions,” Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, told a briefing.
She expressed “hope that Israel too will now be ready to add its support to the many calls and appeals that are out there” for de-escalation.
But as fighting raged, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down, warning Lebanon could face “a long war... like we see in Gaza.”
Israel has intensified air strikes on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon since September 23, leaving more than 1,190 people dead and forcing more than a million to flee, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
The UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon Imran Riza said that Lebanon was facing “one of the deadliest periods” in its recent history, reporting that 600,000 people are internally displaced — over 350,000 of whom are children.
“Even wars have rules,” he said.
Israel has refused to rule out strikes on Beirut’s civilian airport and its access roads, even as thousands of people continue to flee the country by air and road every day.
“We are not targeting civilians. But at the same time, if we will find Hezbollah activities or intention to launch rockets into Israel, we will do what any other country would do about it,” said Israel’s ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
Israel’s ground forces crossed into Lebanon on September 30 in response to Hezbollah rocket and artillery attacks over the past year that have forced tens of thousands of Israelis out of their homes in border areas.
