UNRWA chief says Israel ‘must stop its campaign’ against agency
Philippe Lazzarini highlights ‘outrageous attacks on employees, facilities and operations’
Updated 31 May 2024
AFP
JERUSALEM: UN Palestinian refugee agency chief Philippe Lazzarini said on Friday that Israel “must stop its campaign against UNRWA” in an opinion article published by the New York Times.
“The war in Gaza has produced a blatant disregard for the mission of the UN, including outrageous attacks on (UNRWA) employees, facilities and operations,” agency chief Lazzarini said.
“These attacks must stop and the world must act to hold the perpetrators accountable.”
UNRWA, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, has been in crisis since January, when Israel accused about a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza employees of being involved in the Oct. 7 attack.
That prompted many governments, including top donor the US, to abruptly suspend funding to the agency, threatening its efforts to deliver aid in Gaza, although several have since resumed payments.
An independent review of UNRWA, led by French former Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality-related issues” but said Israel had yet to provide evidence for its leading allegations.
“Israeli officials are not only threatening the work of our staff and mission, they are also delegitimizing UNRWA by effectively characterizing it as a terrorist organization that fosters extremism and labelling UN leaders as terrorists who collude with Hamas,” Lazzarini said.
He said the “assault on UNRWA has spread to (Israeli-annexed) East Jerusalem”, where demonstrations outside the agency’s compound have become common in recent months, and “increasingly dangerous, with at least two arson attacks.”
UNRWA last week suspended food distribution in southern Gaza, including Rafah, after Israel launched an offensive in the city and seized the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s attack on southern Israel.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 36,284 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry.
Israel pounds Lebanon’s Hezbollah after device blasts
Israeli fighter jets roared over Beirut, their sonic booms shaking buildings and sending residents scrambling for cover
Hezbollah maintains its fight is in support of Hamas, and Nasrallah vowed the attacks on Israel will continue as long as the war in Gaza lasts
Updated 4 sec ago
AFP
Beirut: Israel said it pounded Lebanon’s Hezbollah, just hours after the group’s leader vowed retribution for deadly explosions that targeted its communication devices, killing 37 people and wounding thousands. The Iran-backed Hezbollah blamed Israel for the explosion of thousands of its operatives’ pagers and radios in attacks that spanned two days this week. Israel has yet to comment on the attacks. Speaking for the first time since the deadly device sabotage, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed on Thursday that Israel would face retribution. Describing the attacks as a “massacre” and a possible “act of war,” Nasrallah said Israel would face “just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not.” As he delivered his address, Israeli fighter jets roared over Beirut, their sonic booms shaking buildings and sending residents scrambling for cover. Hours later, Israel’s military said its jets hit “approximately 100 launchers and additional terrorist infrastructure sites, consisting of approximately 1,000 barrels” set to be fired immediately. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Israel struck the south at least 52 times. It was one of the heaviest Israeli bombardments of south Lebanon since the border exchanges erupted last October. Hezbollah meanwhile said it launched at least 17 attacks on military sites in northern Israel. The device blasts and Thursday’s barrage of air strikes came after Israel announced it was shifting its war objectives to its northern border with Lebanon where it has been trading fire with Hezbollah. For nearly a year, Israel’s firepower has been focused on Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, but its troops have also been engaged in near-daily exchanges with Hezbollah militants. International mediators have repeatedly tried to avert a full-blown war between Israel and Hezbollah and staunch the regional fallout of the war in Gaza, started by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. Hezbollah maintains its fight is in support of Hamas, and Nasrallah vowed the attacks on Israel will continue as long as the war in Gaza lasts. The cross-border exchanges of fire have killed hundreds in Lebanon, most of them fighters, and dozens in Israel, including soldiers. Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border have been forced to flee their homes. Speaking to Israeli troops on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: “Hezbollah will pay an increasing price” as Israel tries to “ensure the safe return” of its citizens to areas near the border. “We are at the start of a new phase in the war,” he said. Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war.” Speaking ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on the attacks set for Friday, he said Lebanon had filed a complaint against “Israel’s cyber-terrorist aggression that amounts to a war crime.” Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Israel faces “a crushing response from the resistance front” after the blasts, which wounded Tehran’s ambassador in Beirut. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has been scrambling to salvage efforts for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, called for restraint by all sides. “We don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party” that would endanger the goal of a ceasefire in Gaza, he said as he joined European foreign ministers in Paris to discuss the widening crisis. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden still believes a diplomatic solution between Israel and Hezbollah is “achievable.” Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, in Madrid, called for a new peace conference aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas’s October 7 attacks that sparked the Gaza war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity. Out of 251 hostages seized by militants, 97 are still held in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military says are dead. Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,272 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations has acknowledged the figures as reliable. In the latest Gaza violence, the territory’s civil defense agency said an air strike on a house in Nuseirat refugee camp killed eight people. Another six people, including children, were killed in a separate strike on an apartment in Gaza city, it added. In Lebanon, the influx of so many casualties following the blasts overwhelmed medics and triggered panic. “What happened in the last two days is so frightening. It’s terrifying,” Lina Ismail told AFP by phone from the eastern city of Baalbek. “I took away my daughter’s power bank and we even sleep with our mobile phones in a separate room,” she added in a trembling voice. The preliminary findings of a Lebanese investigation found the pagers had been booby-trapped, a security official said. The country’s mission to the United Nations concurred, saying in a letter that the probe showed “the targeted devices were professionally booby-trapped... before arriving in Lebanon, and were detonated by sending emails to the devices.” A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, said the pagers were recently imported and appeared to have been “sabotaged at source.” The New York Times reported Wednesday that the pagers that exploded were produced by the Hungary-based BAC Consulting on behalf of Taiwanese manufacturer Gold Apollo. It cited intelligence officers as saying BAC was part of an Israeli front. A government spokesman in Budapest said the company was “a trading intermediary, with no manufacturing or operational site in Hungary.”
Gaza ceasefire deal unlikely in Biden’s term — report
The United States and mediators Qatar and Egypt have for months attempted to secure a ceasefire in Gaza
The US has said a ceasefire deal could lower tensions across the Middle East amid fears of a wider conflict
Updated 32 min 8 sec ago
Reuters
WASHINGTON: US officials now believe that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza is unlikely before President Joe Biden leaves office in January, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The newspaper cited top-level officials in the White House, State Department and Pentagon without naming them. Those bodies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“I can tell you that we do not believe that deal is falling apart,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters on Thursday before the report was published.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said two weeks ago that 90 percent of a ceasefire deal had been agreed upon.
The United States and mediators Qatar and Egypt have for months attempted to secure a ceasefire but have failed to bring Israel and Hamas to a final agreement.
Two obstacles have been especially difficult: Israel’s demand to keep forces in the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt and the specifics of an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The United States has said a Gaza ceasefire deal could lower tensions across the Middle East amid fears the conflict could widen.
Biden laid out a three-phase ceasefire proposal on May 31 that he said at the time Israel agreed to. As the talks hit obstacles, officials have for weeks said a new proposal would soon be presented.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.
WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Thursday the US Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates by half of a percentage point was “a political move.”
“It really is a political move. Most people thought it was going to be half of that number, which probably would have been the right thing to do,” Trump said in an interview with Newsmax.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday kicked off what is expected to be a series of interest rate cuts with an unusually large half-percentage-point reduction.
Trump said last month that US presidents should have a say over decisions made by the Federal Reserve.
The Fed chair and the other six members of its board of governors are nominated by the president, subject to confirmation by the Senate. The Fed enjoys substantial operational independence to make policy decisions that wield tremendous influence over the direction of the world’s largest economy and global asset markets.
Gaza ceasefire deal unlikely in Biden’s term, WSJ reports
Updated 20 September 2024
Reuters
WASHINGTON: US officials now believe that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza is unlikely before President Joe Biden leaves office in January, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
The newspaper cited top-level officials in the White House, State Department and Pentagon without naming them. Those bodies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
“I can tell you that we do not believe that deal is falling apart,” Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters on Thursday before the report was published.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said two weeks ago that 90 percent of a ceasefire deal had been agreed upon.
The United States and mediators Qatar and Egypt have for months attempted to secure a ceasefire but have failed to bring Israel and Hamas to a final agreement.
Two obstacles have been especially difficult: Israel’s demand to keep forces in the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt and the specifics of an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The United States has said a Gaza ceasefire deal could lower tensions across the Middle East amid fears the conflict could widen.
Biden laid out a three-phase ceasefire proposal on May 31 that he said at the time Israel agreed to. As the talks hit obstacles, officials have for weeks said a new proposal would soon be presented.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations at the World Court that Israel denies.
PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that a “diplomatic path exists” in Lebanon, where fears of an all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel spiked after deadly explosions of hand-held devices.
War is “not inevitable” and “nothing, no regional adventure, no private interest, no loyalty to any cause merits triggering a conflict in Lebanon,” Macron said in a video to the Lebanese people posted on social media.
