Israel strikes Gaza’s Rafah as truce talks under way

Israel strikes Gaza’s Rafah as truce talks under way
Israel has warned it will expand its ground operations into Rafah, above, if Hamas does not free the remaining hostages held in Gaza by next month’s start of the Muslim holy month Ramadan. (AP)
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Updated 22 February 2024
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Israel strikes Gaza’s Rafah as truce talks under way

Israel strikes Gaza’s Rafah as truce talks under way
  • Global powers trying to navigate a way to end the Israel-Hamas war have so far come up short
  • International concern has in recent weeks centered on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Israel launched air strikes Thursday on southern Gaza’s Rafah after threatening to send troops into the city, where around 1.4 million Palestinians have sought shelter from around the territory.
Global powers trying to navigate a way to end the Israel-Hamas war have so far come up short, but a US envoy was expected in Israel on Thursday to try to secure a truce deal.
International concern has spiraled over the high civilian death toll and dire humanitarian crisis in the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel.
More than four months of relentless fighting and air strikes have flattened much of the Hamas-run coastal territory, pushing its population of around 2.4 million to the brink of famine, according to the UN.
International concern has in recent weeks centered on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million people forced to flee their homes elsewhere in the territory are now living in crowded shelters and makeshift tents.
The last city untouched by Israeli ground troops, Rafah also serves as the main entry point via neighboring Egypt for desperately needed relief supplies.
Israel has warned it will expand its ground operations into Rafah if Hamas does not free the remaining hostages held in Gaza by next month’s start of the Muslim holy month Ramadan.
The war started when Hamas launched its attack on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Hamas militants also took about 250 hostages — 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 30 presumed dead, according to Israel.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 29,313 people, mostly women and children, according to the latest count by the Hamas-run health ministry in the territory.
War cabinet member Benny Gantz said Israel’s operation in Rafah would begin “after the evacuation of the population,” although his government has not offered any details on where civilians would be evacuated to.
In the early hours of Thursday, AFP reporters heard multiple air strikes on Rafah, particularly in the Al-Shaboura neighborhood.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said early Thursday that 99 people had been killed around Gaza during the night, most of them women, children and elderly people.
Abdel Rahman Mohamed Jumaa said he lost his family in recent strikes on Rafah.
“I found my wife lying in the street,” he said. “Then I saw a man carrying a girl and I ran toward him and.... picked her up, realizing she was really my daughter.”
He was holding a small shrouded corpse in his arms.
Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, was expected to arrive in Israel Thursday — his second stop in the region after Egypt as part of US efforts to advance a hostage deal and broker a truce.
Hamas’s chief Ismail Haniyeh was in Cairo for talks as well, according to the group.
Israel’s Gantz said there were efforts to “promote a new plan for the return of the hostages.”
“We are seeing the first signs that indicate the possibility of progress in this direction.”
Matthew Miller, US State Department spokesman, said Washington was hoping for an “agreement that secures a temporary ceasefire where we can get the hostages out and get humanitarian assistance,” but declined to give details on ongoing negotiations.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted the army will keep fighting until it has destroyed Hamas and freed the remaining hostages.
Israel’s parliament on Wednesday overwhelmingly backed a proposal by Netanyahu to oppose any unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state.
The vote came days after the Washington Post reported that US President Joe Biden’s administration and a small group of Arab nations were working out a comprehensive plan for long-term peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
It included a firm timeline for the establishment of a Palestinian state, the report said.
Separately, a report by an Israeli group that fights sexual violence said Hamas’s October 7 attack also involved systematic sexual assaults on civilians, based on witness testimonies, public and classified information, and interviews.
The report came the same week UN rights experts called for an independent probe into alleged Israeli abuses against Palestinian women and girls — which Israel rejected as “despicable and unfounded claims.”
Israeli officials have repeatedly alleged the militants committed violent sexual assaults during the attack — something Hamas has denied.
Combat and chaos have stalled sporadic aid deliveries for civilians in Gaza, while in Khan Yunis — a city just north of Rafah — medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said an Israeli tank had fired on a house sheltering their employees and families.
Two relatives of MSF staff were killed and six others injured, it said, condemning the strike in the “strongest possible terms.”
When contacted by AFP about the incident, the Israeli army said its forces had “fired at a building that was identified as a building where terror activity is occurring,” adding that it “regrets” harm to civilians.
In the same town, the Palestinian Red Crescent said another hospital was also hit by “artillery shelling.”
Israel has repeatedly said Hamas militants use civilian infrastructure including hospitals as operational bases — claims that Hamas has denied.


Lebanon files complaint against Israel at UN labor body over deadly pager explosions, minister says

Lebanon files complaint against Israel at UN labor body over deadly pager explosions, minister says
Updated 54 min 9 sec ago
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Lebanon files complaint against Israel at UN labor body over deadly pager explosions, minister says

Lebanon files complaint against Israel at UN labor body over deadly pager explosions, minister says
  • Lebanese Labor Minister Moustafa Bayram said he traveled to Geneva to formally file the complaint against Israel at the International Labor Organization
  • Bayram said the casualty count was even higher than first reported

GENEVA: A Lebanese government minister said Wednesday his country was filing a complaint against Israel at the UN’s labor organization over the string of deadly attacks involving exploding pagers, saying workers were among those killed and injured.
The explosions in mid-September were widely blamed on Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied involvement. The blasts killed at least 37 people, including two children, wounded more than 3,000 and deeply unsettled even Lebanese who have no Hezbollah affiliation.
Lebanese Labor Minister Moustafa Bayram said he traveled to Geneva to formally file the complaint against Israel at the International Labor Organization, a sprawling UN agency that brings together governments, businesses and workers.
Bayram said the casualty count was even higher than first reported, saying “more than 4,000 civilians fell — between martyrs and injured and maimed — in a few minutes by this attack.”
“This method of warfare and conflicts may open the way for many who are evading international humanitarian law to adopt this method of warfare,” the minister told reporters at the UN compound in Geneva.
“It’s a very dangerous precedent, if not condemned,” he said. “We are in a situation where ordinary objects — objects used in daily life — become dangerous and lethal.”
Speaking in Arabic, Bayram insisted that ILO conventions guarantee the safety and security of workers, who “were in their workplace and had their pagers or walkies-talkies exploding all of a sudden,” according to an interpreter.
“I do not know where the outcome (of the complaint) will go, but at least we raised our voices to say and warn against this dangerous approach that strikes at human relations and leads to more conflicts,” he added.
An ILO spokeswoman said she was not immediately aware of the complaint or what redress might be possible through it.


Hezbollah chief says tens of thousands of ‘trained’ combatants ready to fight Israel

Hezbollah chief says tens of thousands of ‘trained’ combatants ready to fight Israel
Updated 06 November 2024
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Hezbollah chief says tens of thousands of ‘trained’ combatants ready to fight Israel

Hezbollah chief says tens of thousands of ‘trained’ combatants ready to fight Israel
  • “We have tens of thousands of trained resistance combatants” ready to fight, Naim Qassem said
  • He said the results of the US presidential election will have no impact on any possible ceasefire deal

BEIRUT: Hezbollah’s chief said Wednesday his group had tens of thousands of combatants ready to fight, adding that nowhere in Israel was off-limits to attacks.
“We have tens of thousands of trained resistance combatants” ready to fight, Naim Qassem said in a speech marking 40 days since his predecessor was killed.
He also said nowhere in Israel would be “off-limits” to the group’s attacks.
He said the results of the US presidential election will have no impact on any possible ceasefire deal.
“We don’t base our expectations for a halt of the aggression on political developments... Whether (Kamala) Harris wins or (Donald) Trump wins, it means nothing to us,” he said in a pre-recorded speech before Trump’s win was announced.
“What will stop this... war is the battlefield” he said, citing fighting in south Lebanon and Hezbollah attacks on Israel.
The speech was Qassem’s second since he was named Hezbollah secretary-general last week.
He replaced the group’s decades-long chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in a massive Israeli strike on the group’s south Beirut bastion.


Iran plays down importance of US election, voices readiness for confrontation

Iran plays down importance of US election, voices readiness for confrontation
Updated 06 November 2024
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Iran plays down importance of US election, voices readiness for confrontation

Iran plays down importance of US election, voices readiness for confrontation
  • Arab and Western officials tell Reuters Trump may reimpose “maximum pressure policy” through more sanctions on Iran
  • They fear Trump may also empower Israel to strike Iranian nuclear sites and conduct assassinations

DUBAI: Iranians’ livelihoods will not be affected by the US elections, government spokesperson Fatemeh MoHajjerani was reported as saying on Wednesday after Donald Trump claimed victory in the presidential vote.
Arab and Western officials have told Reuters Trump may reimpose his “maximum pressure policy” through heightened sanctions on Iran’s oil industry and empower Israel to strike its nuclear sites and conduct assassinations.
“The US elections are not really our business. Our policies are steady and don’t change based on individuals. We made the necessary predictions before and there will not be change in people’s livelihoods,” MoHajjerani said, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
The Revolutionary Guards did not directly react to Trump’s claimed electoral victory but said Tehran and its allied armed groups in the region are ready for confrontation with Israel.
“The Zionists do not have the power to confront us and they must wait for our response... our depots have enough weapons for that,” the Guards’ deputy chief Ali Fadavi said on Wednesday, as Tehran is expected to respond to Israel’s Oct. 25 strikes on its territory which killed four soldiers.
He added Tehran does not rule out a potential US-Israel pre-emptive strike to prevent it from retaliating against Israel.
In his first term, Trump re-applied sanctions on Iran after he withdrew from a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and world powers that had curtailed Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for economic benefits.
The reinstatement of US sanctions in 2018 hit Iran’s oil exports, slashing government revenues and forcing it to take unpopular steps, such as increasing taxes and running big budget deficits, policies that have kept annual inflation close to 40 percent.
Iran’s national currency has weakened at the prospect of a Trump presidency, reaching an all-time low of 700,000 rials to the US dollar on the free market, according to Iranian currency tracking website Bonbast.com.


Iranian Revolutionary Court sentences four individuals to death over charges of spying for Israel

Iranian Revolutionary Court sentences four individuals to death over charges of spying for Israel
Updated 06 November 2024
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Iranian Revolutionary Court sentences four individuals to death over charges of spying for Israel

Iranian Revolutionary Court sentences four individuals to death over charges of spying for Israel

DUBAI: Four people were sentenced to death by a revolutionary court in northwestern Iran over charges of spying for Israel, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Wednesday.
Fars said three of the defendants — whose nationalities it did not give — were accused of helping Israel’s spy agency Mossad move equipment used in the 2020 assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Fakhrizadeh was viewed by Western intelligence services as the mastermind of a covert Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons capability. The Islamic Republic has long denied any such ambition.
The Jewish Chronicle newspaper reported in February 2021, citing intelligence sources, that Fakhrizadeh was killed by a one-ton gun smuggled into Iran in pieces by Mossad agents, both Israeli and Iranian nationals.
Israel declined to comment at the time of his killing and on Wednesday an Israeli government spokesman said in response to the Fars report: “We never comment on such matters. There has been no change in our position.”
Fars said the fourth defendant sentenced to death was linked to another unspecified espionage case.


Rescue workers pull 30 bodies from apartments in Lebanon after Israeli strike

A resident of a building damaged in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday night, returns to collect his family’s belongings in Barja.
A resident of a building damaged in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday night, returns to collect his family’s belongings in Barja.
Updated 28 min 53 sec ago
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Rescue workers pull 30 bodies from apartments in Lebanon after Israeli strike

A resident of a building damaged in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday night, returns to collect his family’s belongings in Barja.
  • Search efforts were ongoing Wednesday, and it was unclear how many survivors or bodies were still trapped under the rubble
  • The airstrike Tuesday night came without warning

BARJA: Lebanon’s Civil Defense service says they have pulled 30 bodies from the rubble of an apartment building that Israel struck the night before. Search efforts were ongoing Wednesday, and it was unclear how many survivors or bodies were still trapped under the rubble.
The airstrike Tuesday night came without warning. There was no statement from the Israeli military on the strike, and it was not immediately clear what the intended target was.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in a surprise announcement that sparked protests across the country. Gallant’s replacement is Foreign Minister Israel Katz, a longtime Netanyahu loyalist and veteran Cabinet minister.
While Netanyahu has called for continued military pressure on Hamas, Gallant said military force created the necessary conditions for at least a temporary diplomatic deal that could bring home hostages held by the militant group.
The Israel-Hamas war began after Palestinian militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting 250 others. Israel’s military response in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people, Palestinian health officials say. They do not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but say more than half of those killed were women and children.
Since the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah erupted in 2023, at least 3,000 people have been killed and some 13,500 wounded in Lebanon, the Health Ministry reported. A report by Lebanon’s crisis response unit said 361,300 Syrians and over 177,800 Lebanese crossed into Syria between Sept. 23 and Nov. 1.