Netanyahu rival’s visit to US highlights cracks within Israel’s wartime leadership

Netanyahu rival’s visit to US highlights cracks within Israel’s wartime leadership
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz attend a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv on October 28, 2023 amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (POOL/AFP)
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Updated 04 March 2024
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Netanyahu rival’s visit to US highlights cracks within Israel’s wartime leadership

Netanyahu rival’s visit to US highlights cracks within Israel’s wartime leadership
  • Netanyahu reportedly had a “tough talk” with Benny Gantz and told him the country has “just one prime minister”
  • Gantz is a centrist political rival who joined Netanyahu’s wartime Cabinet following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack
  • A visit to the US, if met with progress on the hostage front, could further boost support for Gantz's political future

TEL AVIV, Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuked a top Cabinet minister arriving in Washington on Sunday for talks with US officials, according to an Israeli official, signaling widening cracks within the country’s leadership nearly five months into its war with Hamas.

The trip by Benny Gantz, a centrist political rival who joined Netanyahu’s wartime Cabinet following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, comes as friction between the US and Netanyahu is rising over how to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and what the postwar plan for the enclave should look like.
An official from Netanyahu’s far-right Likud party said Gantz’s trip was planned without authorization from the Israeli leader. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Netanyahu had a “tough talk” with Gantz and told him the country has “just one prime minister.”
Gantz is scheduled to meet on Monday with US Vice President Kamala Harris and national security adviser Jake Sullivan and on Tuesday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to his National Unity Party. A second Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity said Gantz’s visit is intended to strengthen ties with the US, bolster support for Israel’s war and push for the release of Israeli hostages.
In Egypt, talks were underway to broker a ceasefire before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins next week.
Israel did not send a delegation because it is waiting for answers from Hamas on two questions, according to a third Israeli government official who spoke on condition of anonymity. Israeli media reported that the government is waiting to learn which hostages are alive and how many Palestinian prisoners Hamas seeks in exchange for each.
All three Israeli officials spoke anonymously because they weren’t authorized to discuss the disputes with the media.
On Saturday, the US airdropped aid into Gaza. The airdrops came after dozens of Palestinians rushing to grab food from an Israel-organized convoy were killed last week, and they circumvented an aid delivery system that has been hobbled by Israeli restrictions, logistical issues and fighting in Gaza. Aid officials say airdrops are far less effective than deliveries made by trucks.
US priorities in the region have increasingly been hampered by Netanyahu’s Cabinet, which is dominated by ultranationalists. Gantz’s more moderate party at times acts as a counterweight.
Netanyahu’s popularity has dropped since the war broke out, according to most opinion polls. Many Israelis hold him responsible for failing to stop the Oct. 7 cross-border raid by Hamas, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 people as hostages into Gaza, including women, children and older adults, according to Israeli authorities.
More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters. Around 80 percent of the population of 2.3 million have fled their homes, and UN agencies say hundreds of thousands are on the brink of famine.
Israelis critical of Netanyahu say his decision-making has been tainted by political considerations, a charge he denies. The criticism is particularly focused on plans for postwar Gaza. Netanyahu wants Israel to maintain open-ended security control over Gaza, with Palestinians running civilian affairs.
The US wants to see progress on the creation of a Palestinian state, envisioning a revamped Palestinian leadership running Gaza with an eye toward eventual statehood.
That vision is opposed by Netanyahu and the hard-liners in his government. Another top Cabinet official from Gantz’s party has questioned the handling of the war and the strategy for freeing the hostages.
Netanyahu’s government, Israel’s most conservative and religious ever, has also been rattled by a court-ordered deadline for a new bill to broaden military enlistment of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Many of them are exempted from military service so they can pursue religious studies. Hundreds of Israeli soldiers have been killed since Oct. 7, and the military is looking to fill its ranks.
Gantz has remained vague about his view of Palestinian statehood. Polls show he would earn enough support to become prime minister if a vote were held today.
A visit to the US, if met with progress on the hostage front, could further boost Gantz’s support.
Israel has essentially endorsed a framework of a proposed Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, and it is now up to Hamas to agree to it, a senior US official said Saturday. He spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House to brief reporters.
Israelis, deeply traumatized by Hamas’ attack, have broadly backed the war effort as an act of self-defense, even as global opposition to the fighting has increased.
But a growing number are expressing their dismay with Netanyahu. Some 10,000 people protested late Saturday to call for early elections, according to Israeli media. Such protests have grown in recent weeks, but remain much smaller than last year’s demonstrations against the government’s judicial overhaul plan.
If the political rifts grow and Gantz quits the government, the floodgates will open to broader protests by a public that was already unhappy with the government when Hamas struck, said Reuven Hazan, a professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Israeli strikes late Saturday in Rafah and in the Jabaliya refugee camp killed more than 30 people, including women and children, according to local health officials. And on Sunday two Israeli strikes southwest of Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza killed at least five people and destroyed an aid truck, according to witnesses and staff at Al Aqsa hospital.
Amid concerns about the wider regional conflict, White House senior adviser Amos Hochstein was going to Lebanon on Monday to meet officials, according to an administration official who was not authorized to comment. White House officials want Lebanese and Israeli officials to prevent tensions along their border from worsening.
 


Israeli airstrike kills 20 in northern Lebanon, local officials say

Israeli airstrike kills 20 in northern Lebanon, local officials say
Updated 9 sec ago
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Israeli airstrike kills 20 in northern Lebanon, local officials say

Israeli airstrike kills 20 in northern Lebanon, local officials say
  • Strike on Sunday occurred in the village of Aalmat, north of Beirut, and far from the areas in the south and east of the country where the Hezbollah militant group has a major presence
DEIR AL-BALAH: Lebanon’s Health Ministry says an Israeli airstrike has killed at least 20 people.
It says the strike on Sunday occurred in the village of Aalmat, north of Beirut and far from the areas in the south and east of the country where the Hezbollah militant group has a major presence.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
An Israeli strike early Sunday on a home sheltering displaced people in the northern Gaza Strip killed at least 17 people, according to the director of a nearby hospital that received the bodies.
Dr. Fadel Naim, director of the Al-Ahly Hospital in Gaza City, said the dead include nine women, and that the toll was likely to rise as rescue efforts continue.
He said they were killed in a strike on a home in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya, where Israel has been carrying out an offensive for over a month.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Israeli forces have encircled and largely isolated Jabaliya and the nearby towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun for the past month, allowing in only a trickle of humanitarian aid. Hundreds of people have been killed since the offensive began on Oct. 6, and tens of thousands of people have fled to nearby Gaza City.
On Friday, experts from a panel that monitors food security said famine is imminent in the north or may already be happening. The growing desperation comes as the deadline approaches for an ultimatum the Biden administration gave Israel to raise the level of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza or risk possible restrictions on US military funding.
The northern third of Gaza, including Gaza City, was the first target of Israel’s ground invasion and has suffered the heaviest destruction of the 13-month-old war, which was triggered by Hamas’ attack into southern Israel. As in other areas of Gaza, Israel has sent forces back in after repeated operations, saying Hamas has regrouped.
The military says it only targets militants, whom it accuses of hiding among civilians in homes and shelters. Israeli strikes often kill women and children.
The war began when Hamas-led militants blew holes in the border fence and stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities who do not distinguish between civilians and militants in their count but say over half the fatalities were women and children.
Israeli bombardment and ground invasions have left vast areas of Gaza in ruins and displaced around 90 percent of the population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands of people are living in crowded tent camps with few if any public services and no idea of when they might return to their homes or rebuild.
Ceasefire talks mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt have repeatedly stalled since the start of the year.
Qatar, which has served as a key mediator with Hamas, said over the weekend that it had suspended its efforts and would only resume them when “the parties show their willingness and seriousness to end the brutal war and the ongoing suffering of civilians.”

IAEA Chief to visit Iran on Wednesday — Tasnim

IAEA Chief to visit Iran on Wednesday — Tasnim
Updated 10 November 2024
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IAEA Chief to visit Iran on Wednesday — Tasnim

IAEA Chief to visit Iran on Wednesday — Tasnim

DUBAI: UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi will visit Iran next Wednesday and start consultations with Iranian officials the following day, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday. 


Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum

Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum
Updated 10 November 2024
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Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum

Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum
  • They managed to capture 3D footage of around 50 former Daesh jails and 30 mass graves before they were transformed
  • In total they have documented 100 prison sites, interviewed more than 500 survivors and digitised over 70,000 Daesh documents.

Paris: After jihadists jailed him in 2014, Iraqi religious scholar Muhammad Al-Attar said he would sometimes pull his prison blanket over his head to cry without other detainees noticing.
Daesh group extremists arrested Attar, then 37, at his perfume shop in Mosul in June 2014 after overrunning the Iraqi city, hoping to convince the respected community leader to join them.
But the former preacher refused to pledge allegiance, and they threw him into prison where he was tortured.
In his group cell of at least 148 detainees at Mosul’s Ahdath prison, at times “there was nothing left but to weep,” Attar said.
But “I couldn’t bear the thought of the younger men seeing me cry. They would have broken down.”
So he hid under his blanket.
Daesh, also called Daesh, seized control of large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq and declared a so-called caliphate there in 2014, implementing its brutal interpretation of religion on inhabitants.
The militants banned smoking, mandated beards for men and head-to-toe coverings for women, publicly executed homosexuals and cut off the hands of thieves.
They threw perceived informants or “apostates” into prison or makeshift jails, many of whom never returned.
Attar’s story is one of more than 500 testimonies that dozens of journalists, filmmakers and human rights activists in Syria and Iraq have collected since 2017 as part of an online archive called the Daesh Prisons Museum.
The website, which includes virtual visits of former jihadist detention centers and numerous tales about life inside them, became public this month.
The project is holding its first physical exhibition, including virtual reality tours, at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, the UN’s culture and education agency, until November 14.
Syrian journalist Amer Matar, 38, is director of the web-based museum.
“IS abducted my brother in 2013, and we started to look for him,” he told AFP.
After US-backed forces started to expel jihadists from parts of Syria and Iraq in 2017, “I and my team got the chance to go inside certain former IS prisons,” he said.
They found thousands of prison documents from the group whose caliphate was eventually defeated in 2019, but also detainee scratchings on the walls.
Etched inside the football stadium in the Syrian city of Raqqa, for example, the team found prisoner names and Qur’anic verses, as well as lyrics from a 1996 television drama about peace eventually prevailing.
Inside one solitary cell, they discovered exercise instructions to keep fit in English.
Matar says he was detained twice at the start of the Syrian civil war, in a government jail for covering protests against President Bashar Assad.
“I too would write my name on the wall because I didn’t know if I’d get out or if they’d kill me,” he said.
“People usually write their names, cries for help or stories about someone who was killed,” he added.
“They’re messages into the future so that people can find someone.”
Matar and his team decided to film the former prison sites and archive all the material within them before they disappeared.
“Many were homes, clinics, government buildings, schools or shops” that people were returning to and starting to repair, said Matar, who is now based in Germany.
They managed to capture 3D footage of around 50 former Daesh jails and 30 mass graves before they were transformed, he said.
In total they have documented 100 prison sites, interviewed more than 500 survivors and digitised over 70,000 Daesh documents.
Younes Qays, a 30-year-old journalist from Mosul, was in charge of data collection in Iraq.
“To hear and see the crimes inflicted on my people was really tough,” he said, recounting being particularly shocked by the tale of a woman from the Yazidi minority who was raped 11 times in IS captivity.
Robin Yassin-Kassab, the website’s English editor, said the project aimed to “gather information and cross-reference it” so it could be used in court.
“We want legal teams around the world to know that we exist so that they can come and ask us for evidence,” he said.
Matar has not found his brother.
But within the coming year, he hopes to launch a sister website called Jawab, “Answer” in Arabic, to help others find out what happened to their loved ones.


Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say

Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say
Updated 10 November 2024
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Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say

Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say
  • The first strike on a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza killed ‘at least 25’ people

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Dozens of people were killed and wounded in an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip at dawn on Sunday, Palestinian medics said.
Footage circulating on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed about a dozen bodies wrapped in blankets and laid to the ground at a hospital. Residents said the building that was hit had housed at least 30 people.
The Palestinian official news agency WAFA and Hamas media put the number of people killed at 32. There was no immediate confirmation of the tally by the territory’s health ministry.
The Civil Emergency Service says its operations have been halted by an ongoing Israeli raid into two towns and a refugee camp in northern Gaza that began on Oct 5. It also could not provide a figure for those killed in the attack.
Israel says it sent forces into Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun in the north of the enclave to fight Hamas militants waging attacks from there and to prevent them from regrouping. It says its troops have killed hundreds of militants in those areas since the new offensive began.
In Gaza City, an Israeli airstrike on a house in Sabra neighborhood killed Wael Al-Khour, an official at the Welfare Ministry, and seven other members of his family including his wife and children on Sunday, medics and relatives said.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports on the strike in Jabalia and in the Sabra neighborhood.


US, Britain launch raids on Yemeni capital Sanaa, elsewhere, Al-Masirah TV says

US, Britain launch raids on Yemeni capital Sanaa, elsewhere, Al-Masirah TV says
Updated 10 November 2024
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US, Britain launch raids on Yemeni capital Sanaa, elsewhere, Al-Masirah TV says

US, Britain launch raids on Yemeni capital Sanaa, elsewhere, Al-Masirah TV says
  • Houthi media and residents said about nine raids had targeted the Sanaa, its suburbs and Amran governorate
  • Iran-aligned Houthi militants have launched attacks on international shipping near Yemen since November last year

Washington: US warplanes staged multiple strikes Saturday night on Iran-backed Houthi advanced weapons storage facilities in Yemen, the Pentagon said.
The facilities contained various weapons used to target military and civilian vessels navigating international waters throughout the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, according to information provided to AFP by the Pentagon.
The Houthi-run Al Masirah television network reported three American and British raids that targeted the capital Sanaa’s southern Al Sabeen district.
“Eyewitnesses said they heard intense flying, along with explosions in different parts of the capital Sanaa,” Al Masirah said.
The United States and Britain have repeatedly struck Houthi targets in Yemen since January in response to attacks by the rebels on shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
The rebels say the strikes, which have disrupted maritime traffic in a globally important waterway, target vessels linked to Israel and are intended to signal solidarity with Palestinians during the Gaza war.
The attacks have seriously disrupted the Red Sea route which carries 12 percent of global trade.
In more than 100 Houthi attacks over nearly a year, four sailors have been killed and two ships have sunk, while one vessel and its crew remain detained since being hijacked last November.
Saturday’s strikes come three days after the Houthi’s leader Abdul Malik Al-Houthi criticized US president-elect Donald Trump for supporting Israel.
Houthi said that normalization deals between Arab countries and Israel brokered by Trump had failed to bring an end the Middle East conflict and that he would fail again in his second term.