Promised Hamas command center at Al-Shifa still elusive
Promised Hamas command center at Al-Shifa still elusive/node/2412966/middle-east
Promised Hamas command center at Al-Shifa still elusive
This grab from handout footage released by the Israeli army on November 17, 2023, shows what the army says is the entrance of a tunnel under Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital that stretches beneath the complex where troops have been conducting a major operation. (AFP)
Promised Hamas command center at Al-Shifa still elusive
Updated 22 November 2023
AP
JERUSALEM: Three weeks ago, the Israeli military unveiled a detailed 3D model of Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital — showing a series of underground installations that it said was part of an elaborate Hamas command and control center under the territory’s largest healthcare center.
Days after taking control of the hospital, the military has yet to unveil this purported center. But it has released videos of weapons allegedly seized inside the hospital, a tunnel running through the complex and videos appearing to show Hamas militants dragging hostages through the hospital’s hallways. Israel says there will be much more to come.
What Israel finds — or fails to find — could play a large part in its efforts to rally international support for its war against Hamas.
Gaza’s hospitals have played a central role in the dueling narratives surrounding the war.
Hospitals enjoy special protected status under the international laws of war. But they can lose that status if they are used for military purposes.
Osama Hamdan, a top Hamas leader based in Beirut, acknowledged that Israel could find a tunnel “here or there.”
“We don’t deny there are hundreds of kilometers of tunnels in and around Gaza,” he told a news conference. But he said Hamas does not use hospitals for militant activities.
Hamdan, the Hamas leader, mocked the Israeli discoveries so far. “The Israelis said there was a command and control center, which means that the matter is greater than just a tunnel,” he said.
Israel has long claimed that Hamas uses hospitals, schools, mosques and residential neighborhoods as human shields.
In particular, it says Hamas has hidden command centers and bunkers underneath the sprawling grounds of Al-Shifa. The United States says its own intelligence corroborates those claims. Hamas denies the allegations.
The UN and other international organizations say these evacuations have endangered patients and overwhelmed the remaining hospitals in the besieged territory.
With Israel already facing mounting international criticism of its offensive, a failure to uncover a significant Hamas presence could step up the pressure to halt the operation. Israel has vowed to press ahead until it destroys Hamas.
The Israeli military has released videos showing AK47s, ammunition and other military equipment it said was found in the hospital’s MRI unit.
Israeli military says 50 projectiles fired from Lebanon
Updated 16 October 2024
AFP
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said around 50 projectiles were fired from Lebanon at the country’s north early Wednesday, without any reports of casualties.
“Some of the projectiles were intercepted and fallen projectiles were identified in the area,” a military statement said, while Hezbollah said it launched “a large salvo of missiles” at the town of Safed.
Netanyahu vows ‘no ceasefire’ in Lebanon after Hezbollah threats
Netanyahu and the Israeli military have repeatedly insisted there must be a buffer zone along Israel’s border with Lebanon where there is no presence of Hezbollah fighters
Updated 16 October 2024
AFP
JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the idea of a ceasefire in Lebanon on Tuesday that would leave Hezbollah close to his country’s northern border as the militant group threatened to widen its attacks.
Netanyahu’s comments came as the United States ramped up pressure on him over the conduct of Israel’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza, criticizing the recent bombing of Beirut and demanding that more aid reach the Palestinian territory.
In a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, Netanyahu said he was “opposed to a unilateral ceasefire, which does not change the security situation in Lebanon, and which will only return it to the way it was,” according to a statement from his office.
Netanyahu and the Israeli military have repeatedly insisted there must be a buffer zone along Israel’s border with Lebanon where there is no presence of Hezbollah fighters.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu clarified that Israel would not agree to any arrangement that does not provide this (a buffer zone) and which does not stop Hezbollah from rearming and regrouping,” the statement said.
In a defiant televised speech, the group’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said the only solution was a ceasefire while threatening to expand the scope of its missile strikes across Israel.
“Since the Israeli enemy targeted all of Lebanon, we have the right from a defensive position to target any place” in Israel, he said.
In another day of fighting, the Iran-backed group said it launched a barrage of rockets toward the northern Israeli city of Haifa and targeted Israeli bulldozers and a tank near the border.
Israel’s military bombed several areas in southern and eastern Lebanon on Tuesday, including in the Bekaa Valley where a hospital in Baalbek city was put out of service, Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported.
It also said it had captured three Hezbollah fighters in south Lebanon.
Asked about Israeli air strikes in Lebanon, in which residential buildings in the center of Beirut were hit on October 10, the US State Department voiced open criticism.
“We have made clear that we are opposed to the campaign the way we’ve seen it conducted over the past weeks” in Beirut, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.
In a letter sent to the Israeli government on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also warned that the United States could withhold weapons deliveries unless more humanitarian aid was delivered to Palestinians in Gaza.
The letter made “clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today,” Miller added on Tuesday.
Despite the need for food, medical supplies and shelter in hunger-ravaged Gaza, a spokesman for the UN’s children’s agency UNICEF said Tuesday that aid was facing the tightest restrictions since the start of Israel’s offensive in October last year.
“We see now what is probably the worst restrictions we’ve seen on humanitarian aid, ever,” spokesman James Elder told a press conference in Geneva, adding that there were “several days in the last week (where) no commercial trucks whatsoever were allowed to come in.”
For over a week, Israeli forces have engaged in a sweeping air and ground assault targeting northern Gaza and the area around Jabalia amid claims that Hamas militants were regrouping there.
“The whole area has been reduced to ashes,” said Rana Abdel Majid, 38, from the Al-Faluja area of northern Gaza.
Majid said entire blocks had been levelled by “the indiscriminate, merciless bombing.”
At a school-turned-shelter hit by an Israeli strike in the central Nuseirat camp, Fatima Al-Azab said “there is no safety anywhere” in Gaza.
“They are all children, sleeping in the covers, all burned and cut up,” she said.
Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza after an October 7 attack by Hamas that resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures, including hostages killed in captivity.
The Israeli campaign has killed 42,344 people, the majority civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory which the UN considers reliable.
Israel dramatically escalated its air campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon from September 23 and then launched a ground offensive a week later intended to push the group back from its northern border.
Hezbollah has been firing thousands of projectiles into Israel over the last year in support of Hamas, displacing tens of thousands of Israelis.
At least 1,356 people have been killed in Lebanon since Israel escalated its bombing last month, according to an AFP tally of Lebanese health ministry figures, though the real toll is likely higher.
The war in Lebanon, which has suffered years of economic crisis, has displaced at least 690,000 people, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration.
Israel is also weighing how to respond to Iran’s decision to launch around 200 missiles at the country on October 1.
Netanyahu’s office said that Israel — and not its top ally the United States — would decide how to strike back.
“We listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interest,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Iranian barrage was in retaliation for an Israeli strike in Lebanon’s Beirut that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian general Abbas Nilforoushan on September 27.
US President Joe Biden — whose government is Israel’s top arms supplier — has warned Israel against striking Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities.
According to a Washington Post report on Monday citing unnamed US officials, Netanyahu reassured the White House that Israel was only contemplating targeting military sites.
US warns Israel to boost humanitarian aid into Gaza or risk losing weapons funding
Israel has killed over 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry
The three hospitals operating minimally in northern Gaza are facing “dire shortages” of fuel, trauma supplies, medications and blood, and while meals are being delivered each day, food is dwindling, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said
Updated 16 October 2024
AP
WASHINGTON: The Biden administration has warned Israel that it must increase the amount of humanitarian aid it is allowing into Gaza within the next 30 days or it could risk losing access to US weapons funding.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned their Israeli counterparts in a letter dated Sunday that the changes must occur. The letter, which restates US policy toward humanitarian aid and arms transfers, was sent amid deteriorating conditions in northern Gaza and an Israeli airstrike on a hospital tent site in central Gaza that killed at least four people and burned others.
A similar letter that Blinken sent to Israeli officials in April led to more humanitarian assistance getting to the Palestinian territory, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Tuesday. But that has not lasted.
A Palestinian woman looks on at the site of an Israeli strike on tents sheltering displaced people, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, at Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, October 14, 2024. (REUTERS)
“In fact, it’s fallen by over 50 percent from where it was at its peak,” Miller said at a briefing. Blinken and Austin “thought it was appropriate to make clear to the government of Israel that there are changes that they need to make again, to see that the level of assistance making it into Gaza comes back up from the very, very low levels that it is at today.”
For Israel to continue qualifying for foreign military financing, the level of aid getting into Gaza must increase to at least 350 trucks a day, Israel must institute additional humanitarian pauses and provide increased security for humanitarian sites, Austin and Blinken said in their letter. They said Israel had 30 days to respond to the requirements.
“The letter was not meant as a threat,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “The letter was simply meant to reiterate the sense of urgency we feel and the seriousness with which we feel it, about the need for an increase, a dramatic increase in humanitarian assistance.”
An Israeli official confirmed a letter had been delivered but did not discuss the contents. That official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a diplomatic matter, confirmed the US had raised “humanitarian concerns” and was putting pressure on Israel to speed up the flow of aid into Gaza.
The letter, which an Axios reporter posted a copy of online, was sent during a period of growing frustration in the administration that despite repeated and increasingly vocal requests to scale back offensive operations against Hamas, Israel’s bombardment has led to unnecessary civilian deaths and risks plunging the region into a much wider war.
“We are particularly concerned that recent actions by the Israeli government, including halting commercial imports, denying or impeding 90 percent of humanitarian movements” and other restrictions have kept aid from flowing, Blinken and Austin said.
The Biden administration is increasing its calls for its ally and biggest recipient of US military aid to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza while assuring that America’s support for Israel is unwavering just before the US presidential election in three weeks.
Funding for Israel has long carried weight in US politics, and Biden said this month that “no administration has helped Israel more than I have.”
Humanitarian aid groups fear that Israeli leaders may approve a plan to seal off humanitarian aid to northern Gaza in an attempt to starve out Hamas, which could trap hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are unwilling or unable to leave their homes without food, water, medicine and fuel.
UN humanitarian officials said last week that aid entering Gaza is at its lowest level in months. The three hospitals operating minimally in northern Gaza are facing “dire shortages” of fuel, trauma supplies, medications and blood, and while meals are being delivered each day, food is dwindling, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
“There is barely any food left to distribute, and most bakeries will be forced to shut down again in just days without any additional fuel,” he said.
The UN humanitarian office reported that Israeli authorities facilitated just one of its 54 efforts to get to the north this month, Dujarric said. He said 85 percent of the requests were denied, with the rest impeded or canceled for logistical or security reasons.
COGAT, the Israeli body facilitating aid crossings into Gaza, denied that crossings to the north have been closed.
US officials said the letter was sent to remind Israel of both its obligations under international humanitarian law and of the Biden administration’s legal obligation to ensure that the delivery of American humanitarian assistance should not be hindered, diverted or held up by a recipient of US military aid.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas has killed over 42,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It does not differentiate between fighters and civilians but has said a little more than half the dead are women and children. The Hamas attacks killed some 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and militants abducted another 250.
The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began and led to escalating conflict around the Middle East, according to a report for Brown University’s Costs of War project.
That aid has enabled Israel to purchase billions of dollars worth of munitions it has used in its operations against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. However, many of those strikes also have killed civilians in both areas.
Turkish govt delays tax plan to fund defense industry
The bill stipulated that people with a credit card limit of at least 100,000 liras (nearly $3,000) would have to pay an annual 750 lira ($22) in tax from January to bolster the defense industry
Updated 16 October 2024
AFP
ISTANBUL: The Turkish government on Tuesday postponed until 2025 a parliamentary debate on a proposed tax on credit cards, which it sought to fund the arms industry as conflict rages in its neighborhood.
Indignant Turks, who already face double-digit inflation, called their banks to lower their credit limits after the governing AKP party submitted the tax bill to parliament on Friday.
After the public outcry, the AKP announced Tuesday that it was delaying debating the bill until next year.
“There were certain objections from our citizens, we will examine all of this in detail,” said the AKP’s parliamentary group chairman, Abdullah Guler.
“We have postponed our discussions and we will reconsider, after the budget, if there are some points to change or remove,” he said.
The proposed legislation came as Israel’s conflicts with Tehran-backed Islamist militants in Gaza and Lebanon, and missile strikes by Iran, have raised global concerns that a broader war could erupt in the Middle East.
“Our country has no choice but to increase its deterrent power. There’s war in our region right now. We are in a troubled neighborhood,” Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek told private broadcaster NTV earlier on Tuesday.
The bill stipulated that people with a credit card limit of at least 100,000 liras (nearly $3,000) would have to pay an annual 750 lira ($22) in tax from January to bolster the defense industry.
“If we increase our deterrent power, then our ability to protect against fire in the region will increase,” Simsek had said, though he added that the bill was in the hands of parliament and that the AKP, could “re-evaluate” it.
When he proposed the tax on Friday, Guler said that Israel’s next target would be Turkiye, an argument often cited by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
A vocal critic of Israel’s offensive in Gaza and Lebanon, Erdogan doubled down on the threat posed by Israel when addressing a conference hosted by his AKP party on Tuesday.
“Even if there are those who cannot see the danger approaching our country... we see the risk and take all kind of measures,” he said.
Turkiye’s defense industry has enjoyed a boom in recent years but Simsek said the sector still needed a boost.
The defense industry is planning to invest in 1,000 projects, including an air defense system that would protect Turkiye from missile assaults, Simsek said.
Turkiye allocated 90 billion lira from the budget to fund the defense industry last year, he added.
“This year, we increased it to 165 billion lira. Maybe we will need to double this even more.”
Turkiye’s defense companies signed contracts in 2023 worth a total of $10.2 billion, according to Haluk Gorgun, the head of Turkiye’s state Defense Industry Agency (SSB).
The top 10 Turkish defense exporters contributed nearly 80 percent of total export revenue, he said.
Sales of Turkish Baykar drones, used in Nagorno-Karabakh or Ukraine, amounted to $1.8 billion.
Last week, parliament held a closed-door session for the government to explain why it saw Israel as a potential threat, but the opposition said it was not convinced.
The spokesman for Turkiye’s main opposition CHP party, Deniz Yucel, said Monday that the government was exploiting nationalist feelings to sweep an “economic crisis” under the carpet.
Inflation has spiralled over the past two years, peaking at an annual rate of 85.5 percent in October 2022.
Official data showed it had slowed to 49.4 percent in September.
“The AKP is trying to create a fake ‘foreign threat and war agenda’ with the rhetoric of ‘Israel may attack us’,” Yucel said.
“We know and see that they are trying to disguise the economic crisis they caused.”
War-torn Gaza a ‘constant peak emergency’: UN official
They practically have no access to fresh food — just staples provided by UNRWA and WFP,” Renard said, referring to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees
Updated 15 October 2024
AFP
JERUSALEM: The Gaza Strip remains in a state of “constant peak emergency,” a UN official said, as aid groups continue to face severe challenges in delivering assistance after more than a year of war.
“Every day is a struggle to make sure that we can provide our assistance,” Antoine Renard, head of the World Food Programme (WFP) in the occupied Palestinian territories, told AFP shortly after a visit to war-torn Gaza.
Vast areas of Gaza have been devastated by Israel’s retaliatory assault on the territory after the October 7 Hamas attack last year sparked the war.
Israel has been intensifying operations in the north of the besieged Palestinian territory, where the UN has warned hundreds of thousands of people are trapped.
“People in the north of Gaza are relying solely on assistance. They practically have no access to fresh food — just staples provided by UNRWA and WFP,” Renard said, referring to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
He said that most residents have survived so far on tinned food, a situation he describes as “unsustainable.”
“It’s unique to actually have one year into a war where people are just depending on processed food that is coming from cans,” he said.
“We face issues with crossings. We face issues in having our assistance not being under bombs,” he added, noting that looting of the goods once in the territory was also a problem.
Despite a desperate need to increase the amount of aid going in, he said no WFP food aid has managed to reach northern Gaza since October 1, requesting that “crossings be reopened.”
The Israeli military said it was facilitating the transfer of humanitarian aid into northern Gaza, including fuel for hospitals and allowing the transfer of patients from one hospital to another.
According to the military, some 30 trucks carrying flour and food from the WFP entered northern Gaza through the Erez West crossing on Monday.
James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, on Tuesday said Gaza appeared to be facing the worst restrictions on aid yet.
“August was the lowest amount of humanitarian aid that came into the Gaza Strip of any full month since the war broke out,” he said.
Renard said access to fresh food in southern Gaza is slightly better, with some vegetables and fruits available, but most people in the area still lack access to dairy, meat or fish.
Most goods, however, remained out of reach for many residents with shortages causing prices to skyrocket.
“The price of a can has just doubled now again on the market in the south of Gaza,” he said.
Bread remains one of the few fresh staples available to Gazans, he said, with WFP-assisted bakeries providing a loaf of bread to 2.1 million people daily.
“For many in Gaza, this is the only fresh food they have,” Renard added, calling them a “lifeline for the entire population.”
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s attack on October 7 last year, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures which includes hostages killed in captivity.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 42,344 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations has described as reliable.
