How the Israeli resettlement of Gaza went from being a fringe view to a real possibility

Special How the Israeli resettlement of Gaza went from being a fringe view to a real possibility
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Israel announced its Gaza disengagement plan in 2003, and implemented it two years later. The withdrawal happened 38 years after the Israeli army captured Gaza from the Egyptian army. (Reuters /File)
Special How the Israeli resettlement of Gaza went from being a fringe view to a real possibility
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A baby holds an Israeli flag as members of the Israeli settler community gather at a convention in Jerusalem on January 28, 2024, calling for Israel to rebuild settlements in the Gaza Strip and the northern part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. (REUTERS)
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Updated 01 February 2024
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How the Israeli resettlement of Gaza went from being a fringe view to a real possibility

How the Israeli resettlement of Gaza went from being a fringe view to a real possibility
  • Rightwing Israeli politicians, including cabinet ministers, are joining forces with settler groups hoping to reoccupy enclave
  • The resettlement of Gaza and ‘voluntary’ removal of Palestinians would likely deal a killer blow to the two-state solution

LONDON: It is easy to miss the gated entrance to the Gush Katif Museum, squeezed between two low-rise apartment blocks on an unremarkable side street in Jerusalem.

Since it opened in 2008, the museum has been a quiet, reflective backwater, a place of pilgrimage for a group of people who call themselves “the uprooted” — the survivors of a curious and, for them, traumatic chapter in the story of Israel and the Palestinians.

But since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants, and the subsequent devastating retribution visited upon Gaza by the Israeli army, the museum suddenly finds itself rather more than a mere footnote to history.




Israeli armor advances against Egyptian troops at the start of the Six-Day War June 5, 1967 near Rafah, Gaza Strip. Thirty-eight years later, the Israeli army pulled out of Gaza under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan. (AFP/Getty Images/File)

Instead, it has become the spiritual home of an increasingly vocal rightwing movement in Israel calling not only for the reoccupation of Gaza by Israel, but also for the ethnic cleansing of all Arabs from the territory.

Situated barely 1.5 km west of Jerusalem’s Old City, the museum was established in August 2008 to commemorate the 17 Israeli settlements that sprang up in Gaza in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War.

From 1970 onward the agricultural settlements, inhabited mainly by orthodox Jews and known collectively as Gush Katif, occupied a narrow coastal strip running north from the Egyptian border for about 12 km.




In this combination of images taken from 2001 to 2004, Israeli children (top photos) are seen at play in the  Netzarim settlement in Gush Katif near the Gaza Strip. At the bottom are Palestinians living as refugees in their own homeland. As Palestinians escalated their resistance, the Israeli government decided to pull out from Gaza, forcibly uprooting Jewish settlers that it had previously encouraged to build homes on Palestinian lands. (AFP/File)

For 35 years the communities of Gush Katif, insulated from their Palestinian neighbors by a system of roads closed to Arab drivers and patrolled by a dedicated unit of the Israeli army, put down deep roots and thrived. They built homes, schools, synagogues and greenhouses on land they believed would belong to Israel forever.

But then it all came crashing down.

In what some in Israel still describe as a betrayal, and even a crime, in 2003 Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, announced his “disengagement” plan — a unilateral decision, taken in the face of stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, to withdraw all Israeli settlements from Gaza.




In this picture taken on May 4, 2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon views the wreckage of a car that exploded at Rafah Yam in the Gush Katif group of Jewish settlements, amid Palestinian resistance. Sharon subsequently ordered an Israeli disengagement from Gaza, to the dismay of settlers who came to the captured Palestinian territory on government invitation. (AFP)

In a televised speech on Aug. 15, 2005, Sharon described the withdrawal as “the most difficult and painful step of all … very difficult for me personally.”

The decision had not been taken lightly, he said, “but the changing reality in the country, in the region, and the world, required of me a reassessment and change of positions.”

Israel, he added, “cannot hold on to Gaza forever.”

Without doubt, the “disengagement” was traumatic for the Jews of Gush Katif, more than 8,000 of whom lost their homes. For some, it was a second displacement, having been resettled there at the invitation of the Israeli government after Israel handed over the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1982.




Tens of thousands of Israeli settlers and right-wing supporters march at a Gaza beach on April 27, 2005, in protest against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon disengagement plan. (AFP/File)

Contemporary newsreels playing at the Gush Katif Museum capture the traumatic forced evacuations that took place between Aug. 15 and 22 in 2005. Film of the final day of the evacuation shows women and children, crying and screaming, being dragged away from their homes by Israeli soldiers and police officers.

At one of the settlement’s synagogues, men, singing prayers and weeping, gather for the last time. Even as the settlements are being abandoned, diggers and bulldozers move in to destroy all the homes.

“I don’t think it’s fully appreciated that the religious right in Israel have their own calendar, and that there are traumatic events marked in that calendar,” said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli attorney specializing in Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem and the founder of the NGO Terrestrial Jerusalem.

“Trauma number one came in 1967, when Moshe Dayan (then Israel’s defense minister) did not forcefully impose Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, which they consider to be Israel’s biggest blunder.




In this file photo, Israeli troops observe the old city of Jerusalem, home to the Dome of the Rock (C) in the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, Islam's third holiest site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount, the holiest site of Judaism, prior to their attack June 1967. (AFP)

“But the second-largest trauma for the religious right is the eviction from Gush Katif, a seminal, traumatic event for them.

“There is a yearning for returning now that that has been spoken about for years, but always by people who were perceived as on the fringe. Now, there are people in government who are also talking about it.”

GAZA STRIPTIMELINE

• Belongs to Ottoman Empire from 16th to 20th century.

• Taken by British troops in 1917 during the Second World War.

• British rule ends in 1918.

• Under Egypt’s military rule in 1950s and 1960s.

* Captured by Israel in 1967 Middle East war.

• Palestinians gain limited control under 1993 peace accord.

• Israel evacuates troops and settlers in August 2005.

• In 2006, Hamas scores victory in Palestinian parliamentary vote.

• In 2007 Hamas ejects political rivals and becomes sole ruler.

And not just talking about it. Rightwing politicians, including some in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet, are joining forces with settler groups and calling for the lost homes of Gush Katif, and many more besides, to be rebuilt.

On Sunday Jan. 28, no fewer than a dozen government ministers and 15 members of the Israeli parliament joined 3,000 people at the Jerusalem International Convention Center for a “Resettle Gaza Conference,” a boisterous, noisy affair with a distinctly celebratory atmosphere.




Jewish settlers gather at a convention in Jerusalem on January 28, 2024, calling for Israel to rebuild settlements in the Gaza Strip and the northern part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. (REUTERS)0

Among the high-profile conference-goers was Netanyahu’s security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the darling of Israel’s religious right.

Last year Ben-Gvir led ultranationalist settlers on a series of provocative marches to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which many Jewish religious extremists would like to see destroyed to make way for the construction of a third Jewish temple, replacing the two that the Jewish bible says were destroyed in antiquity.

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It was these marches, and an escalation in Israeli settler activities, that were cited by Hamas as the final provocation that triggered the Oct. 7 assault on Israel — an operation it named Al-Aqsa Flood.

Ben-Gvir has shown no remorse for his provocations. Indeed, on New Year’s Day he declared “we must promote a solution to encourage the migration of Gaza residents … a correct, just, moral, and humane solution.”

He added: “Make no mistake about it, we have partners around the world that can help, there are statesmen around the world to whom we can promote this idea.

“Encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza will allow us to bring the residents of Gush Katif back home.”




Israeli ministers, including national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, participated in a Resettle Gaza Conference in Jerusalem. (AFP)

His boss, Netanyahu, appears to share his sentiments.

In the face of growing international disquiet at Israel’s disproportionate military response in Gaza since Oct. 7, the man at the helm of the most rightwing government in Israel’s history, politically beholden to settler groups, has repeatedly rejected calls from allies, including the US, to pave the way for the long-awaited two-state solution.

Netanyahu’s position was made clear in a statement issued by his office on Jan. 21, the day after US President Joe Biden once again publicly urged him to seek peace by agreeing to the principle of Palestinian statehood.

“In his conversation with President Biden,” it read, “Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated his policy that after Hamas is destroyed Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty.”




US President Joe Biden, left, meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Oct. 18, 2023, to discuss the the war between Israel and Hamas. (Pool Photo via AP, File)

A return to Gush Katif, now being openly proposed by some in Netanyahu’s cabinet, would be compatible with this bleak vision of the future — but some want to go much further.

In a poll carried out in Israel in December, 68 percent of Israelis said they supported the idea of “voluntary migration” for the Arab citizens of Palestine. And on Dec. 25, the day after the poll results were published, Netanyahu told a meeting of his Likud Knesset faction that his government was already working on how to achieve this.

“Our problem is finding countries that are ready to absorb them, and we are working on it,” the Jewish Press reported Netanyahu as saying.

The idea is also gaining traction among the Jewish lobby overseas.

On Jan. 2, a columnist for the Jewish Press, the largest independent weekly Jewish newspaper in the US, a self-proclaimed “tireless advocate on behalf of the State of Israel,” offered a sinister take on the calls for “voluntary migration.”

“It stands to reason that rather than engage in futile efforts to persuade the countries of the world to open their gates to the most militant Islamist population on the planet, Israel should invest efforts in making life in Gaza unbearable,” wrote David Israel in a deeply disturbing column.




Palestinian man uses a wheelchair to transport bags of flour distributed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on January 29, 2024. If rightwing Israelis have their way, Palestinians should be sent to a country where they are welcomed. (REUTERS/File Photo)

He added: “The idea of tempting the Gaza Arabs onto large cruise ships that would take them to nicer places may be a romantic delusion, but the flight of thousands of starved individuals from a disease-ridden and ever-shrinking livable space would eventually bring down the Egyptian government’s barred gates.”

In Israel, not everyone is comfortable with the talk of resettling Gaza, a prospect that has alarmed even politically center-right newspaper The Jerusalem Post. In an editorial on Jan. 30, it labelled the Resettle Gaza Conference “disturbing” and condemned the calls to resettle Gaza as “divisive.”

But, given the support of a growing number of ministers and others, the paper concluded, “we can no longer say the resettlement of Gaza is a fringe idea that has no teeth or staying power.”




Palestinians shop in an open-air market near the ruins of houses and buildings destroyed in Israeli strikes during the conflict in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November 30, 2023. Rightwing Israelis are toying with the idea of letting Palestinians leave Gaza "voluntarily" and migrate to other countries. (REUTERS/File Photo)

Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs in Providence, Rhode Island, cautions against the use of euphemisms in the current situation.

“When speaking of a reoccupation of Gaza and the ‘voluntary’ removal of Palestinians, Ben-Gvir and followers are in fact speaking about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and then its settlement by Jews,” he said.

“They are quite open about that. There is nothing voluntary about this.”

If this came about, he said, “this would first of all mean that the entire IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) operation in Gaza will be seen as one of forcible removal of population, which is a war crime and a crime against humanity under international humanitarian law.”

It might also “be a breach of the Genocide Convention, as it could be presented as the intentional destruction of the part of the Palestinian people living in Gaza. This would put Israel directly in the sights of the International Court of Justice.”




Displaced Palestinians flee from Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on January 30, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (AFP)

Bartov is, however, doubtful that “the radicals in the Israeli cabinet will manage to push this through. I don’t think there will be ethnic cleansing, but I do anticipate a major political crisis in Israel.

“This can be channeled in a positive direction only through massive pressure by the US and its allies, especially the UK, France and Germany, and then a regional agreement with Arab states, not least Saudi Arabia, to normalize relations with Israel on condition of the creation of an independent, possibly demilitarized, Palestinian state,” he said.

In the Gush Katif museum, among the artefacts on display, pride of place goes to a menorah, the traditional candelabra traditionally lit on the Jewish holiday of Hannukah. It was saved from the synagogue of Netzarim, the last of the Gaza settlements to be evacuated, and growing numbers in Israel would like to see it returned to what they believe is its rightful place.




More than 20,000 Peace Now demonstrators gathered in Tel Aviv on October 1, 1996, calling for a continuation of the peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Twenty-seven years after, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still in office, leading right-wing extremists in posing an obstacle to peace. (AFP/File)

In a film shown at the museum, Rivka Goldschmidt, one of the “Uprooted” from Gush Katif, speaks of her hopes for the future.

“It could be that our children will be able to return to Gush Katif and that will be a great comfort,” she says.

“I don’t know if it will happen, or when it will happen, but in the back of my mind that is an aspiration because there was something there that was great and tremendous, built by honest people.”

Gush Katif, she adds, “was vacated for no reason and it could be that our children, maybe our grandchildren, will return there one day.”

If Netanyahu and the rightwing ministers in his cabinet get their way, that day could be sooner than anyone could have predicted.

And if that happens, the prospects for a two-state solution and the peace for which so many Palestinians and Israelis have prayed for so long will likely have been dashed for generations to come.

 


UN sanctions two generals from Sudan’s paramilitary force

UN sanctions two generals from Sudan’s paramilitary force
Updated 09 November 2024
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UN sanctions two generals from Sudan’s paramilitary force

UN sanctions two generals from Sudan’s paramilitary force
  • Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital
  • The UN sanctions order all countries to freeze the asses and impose a travel ban on the generals

UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions Friday on two generals in Sudan’s paramilitary force for their key roles in the war against the country’s military that has seen ethnically motivated attacks and atrocities.
Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including Darfur. The UN says over 14,000 people have been killed and 33,000 injured, and recently warned that the country has been pushed to the brink of famine.
The council’s sanctions committee added Maj. Gen. Osman Mohamed Hamid Mohamed, head of the Rapid Support Forces’ operations department, and Maj. Gen. Abdel Rahman Juma Barkalla, the RSF commander in West Darfur, to the sanctions blacklist.
Britain’s UN Mission tweeted on X that the two generals were added for threatening the peace, security and stability of Sudan, “including acts of violence and human rights abuses.”
The UN sanctions order all countries to freeze the asses and impose a travel ban on the generals. The United States Treasury imposed sanctions on both generals earlier in the year, freezing any assets in the US and banning all financial transactions with them.
Two decades ago, Darfur became synonymous with genocide and war crimes, particularly by the notorious Janjaweed Arab militias, against populations that identify as Central or East African. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes. That legacy appears to have returned, with the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, saying in January there were grounds to believe both sides may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide in Darfur. The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed.
Human Rights Watch said in a report in May that attacks by the paramilitary force and its allied militias, which killed thousands in Darfur in 2023, constituted a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the area’s non-Arab population.
The rights group said the RSF and its militias targeted the ethnic Masalit and other non-Arab groups in El Geneina, the capital city of West Darfur state. Masalit who were captured were tortured, women and girls were raped and entire neighborhoods were looted and destroyed, Human Rights Watch said.
Its report is entitled “The Massalit Will Not Come Home: Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan.”
The RSF controls the capitals of four of the five states in Darfur and has intensified its military campaign for control of the lone holdout, North Darfur capital El Fasher.


Syrian state news agency reports Israeli strike in Aleppo region

Syrian state news agency reports Israeli strike in Aleppo region
Updated 09 November 2024
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Syrian state news agency reports Israeli strike in Aleppo region

Syrian state news agency reports Israeli strike in Aleppo region
  • The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported that the strikes had targeted military installations

 

DAMASCUS: Syrian state media reported an Israeli strike Saturday on the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib that injured soldiers and caused damage.
“At around 00:45 after midnight, the Israeli army launched an air aggression from the direction of southeast Aleppo, targeting a number of sites in the countryside of Aleppo and Idlib,” the official SANA news agency said.
The report added that the attack had “resulted in the injury of a number of soldiers and some material losses,” without providing further details.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported the strikes had targeted military installations.
The war monitor also said members of the Iranian revolutionary guards and pro-Tehran factions were based in the area.
Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Hezbollah.
The Israeli military has intensified its strikes on Syria since it launched its war on Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on the strikes but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence in Syria.
 

 


 


UN probe says women, children comprise the majority of Gaza war dead

UN probe says women, children comprise the majority of Gaza war dead
Updated 09 November 2024
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UN probe says women, children comprise the majority of Gaza war dead

UN probe says women, children comprise the majority of Gaza war dead
  • The report detailed a raft of violations of international law since Oct. 7

GENEVA: The UN on Friday condemned the staggering number of civilians killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, with women and children comprising nearly 70 percent of the thousands of fatalities it had managed to verify.
In a fresh report, slammed by Israel, the United Nations human rights office (OHCHR) detailed a raft of violations of international law since Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack in Israel sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.
Many could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly even “genocide,” it warned, demanding international efforts to prevent “atrocity crimes” and ensure accountability.
“Civilians in Gaza have borne the brunt of the attacks, including through the initial ‘complete siege’ of Gaza by Israeli forces,” the UN said.
“Conduct by Israeli forces has caused unprecedented levels of killings, death, injury, starvation, illness and disease.”
It pointed to “the Israeli government’s continuing unlawful failures to allow, facilitate and ensure the entry of humanitarian aid, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, and repeated mass displacement.”
Israel’s mission to the UN in Geneva “categorically” rejected the report, decrying “the inherent obsession of OHCHR with the demonization of Israel.”
“Gaza is now a rubble-strewn landscape,” Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN rights office’s activities in the Palestinian territories, said via video-link from Amman.
“Within this dystopia of destruction and devastation, those alive are left injured, displaced and starving.”
Friday’s report also found that Hamas and other armed groups had committed widespread violations that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including seizing hostages, killings, torture and sexual violence.
Those violations, it said, were especially committed in connection with the October 7, 2023 attack, which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly of civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
The report also tackled the contentious issue of the proportion of civilians among the nearly 43,500 people killed in Gaza so far, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian territory.
UN agencies have been relying on death tolls provided by the authorities in Hamas-run Gaza due to lack of access. This has sparked harsh criticism from Israel but the UN has repeatedly said the figures are reliable.
The rights office said it had now managed to verify around 10,000 of the more than 34,500 people reportedly killed during the first six months of the war.
“We have so far found close to 70 percent to be children and women,” Sunghay said, highlighting the stringent verification methodology that requires at least three separate sources.
He said the findings indicated “a systematic violation of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.”
He said 4,700 of the verified fatalities were children and 2,461 were women.
The rights office found that about 80 percent of all the verified deaths in Gaza had occurred in Israeli attacks on residential buildings or similar housing.
Children between the ages of five and nine made up the largest group of victims, with the youngest victim a one-day-old boy and the oldest a 97-year-old woman, it said.
Israel says its operations in Gaza target militants and are in line with international law.
But Friday’s report stressed that the verified deaths largely Gaza’s demographic makeup rather than that of combatants.
This, it said, clearly “raises concerns regarding compliance with the principle of distinction and reflect an apparent failure to take all feasible precautions to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life.”
UN rights chief Volker Turk called on all countries to work to halt the violations and to ensure accountability, including through universal jurisdiction.
“It is essential that there is due reckoning with respect to the allegations of serious violations of international law through credible and impartial judicial bodies,” he said.
“The violence must stop immediately, the hostages and those arbitrarily detained must be released, and we must focus on flooding Gaza with humanitarian aid.”


After Hamas rejection of hostage deal, US asked Qatar to expel the group

After Hamas rejection of hostage deal, US asked Qatar to expel the group
Updated 09 November 2024
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After Hamas rejection of hostage deal, US asked Qatar to expel the group

After Hamas rejection of hostage deal, US asked Qatar to expel the group
  • Negotiators from Israel’s Mossad spy agency have repeatedly met mediators in Doha over the last year and Qatari government officials have shuttled back-and-forth to Hamas leaders in the political office

WASHINGTON/DOHA: The US has told Qatar that the presence of Hamas in Doha is no longer acceptable in the weeks since the Palestinian militant group rejected the latest proposal to achieve a ceasefire and a hostage deal, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.
“After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, its leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner. We made that clear to Qatar following Hamas’s rejection weeks ago of another hostage release proposal,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Qatar then made the demand to Hamas leaders about 10 days ago, the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said. Washington has been in touch with Qatar over when to close the political office of Hamas, and it told Doha that now was the time following the group’s rejection of the recent proposal.
Three Hamas officials denied Qatar had told Hamas leaders they were no longer welcome in the country.
Qatar, alongside the US and Egypt, has played a major role in rounds of so-far fruitless talks to broker a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages the militant group is holding in the enclave.
The latest round of Doha talks in mid-October failed to reach a ceasefire, with Hamas rejecting a short-term ceasefire proposal.
The spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for confirmation or comment.
Last year, a senior US official said Qatar had told Washington it was open to
reconsidering the presence of Hamas
in the country once the Gaza war was over.
This came after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken
told leaders
in Qatar and elsewhere in the region that there could be “no more business as usual” with Hamas after the group led the Oct. 7 attacks on Southern Israel.
Qatar, an influential Gulf state designated as major non-NATO ally by Washington, has hosted Hamas’ political leaders since 2012 as part of an agreement with the US Doha has come under criticism from within the US and Israel over its ties to Hamas since Oct. 7.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has said repeatedly over the last year that the Hamas office exists in Doha to allow negotiations with the group and that as long as the channel remained useful Qatar would allow the Hamas office to remain open.
Negotiators from Israel’s Mossad spy agency have repeatedly met mediators in Doha over the last year and Qatari government officials have shuttled back-and-forth to Hamas leaders in the political office.

 

 


US defense chief holds first call with new Israeli counterpart

US defense chief holds first call with new Israeli counterpart
Updated 09 November 2024
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US defense chief holds first call with new Israeli counterpart

US defense chief holds first call with new Israeli counterpart
  • Katz was sworn in before parliament the previous day
  • The US defense chief also discussed “the need to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza“

WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed Lebanon and Gaza on Friday in his first call with his new Israeli counterpart Israel Katz, the Pentagon said.
Katz was sworn in before parliament the previous day, after his predecessor’s shock dismissal by the prime minister over a breakdown in trust during the war in Gaza — a conflict that began with a devastating Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.
Austin “held an introductory call today with the new Israeli minister of defense, Israel Katz, and congratulated him on his recent appointment,” Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said in a statement.
He told Katz that Washington is committed to a deal that allows Lebanese and Israeli citizens displaced by more than a year of cross-border violence to return to their homes, as well as to the return of hostages seized by Palestinian militant group Hamas, Ryder said.
The US defense chief also discussed “the need to improve the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza,” after he and Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Israel in a letter earlier this month that it needed to allow more aid into the small war-wracked coastal territory.