Hamas launches war on Israel

[Jimbuna]

Hamas is expected to respond soon to a proposal that includes hostage releases

A senior Hamas official says the group will respond “very soon” to a proposal that includes extended pauses in Gaza fighting and phased exchanges of Hamas-held hostages for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.

The official told The Associated Press on Friday a lasting cease-fire is the most important component for Hamas, and that everything else can be negotiated.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/h...-b2489362.html

[Jimbuna]

Western officials in protest over Israel Gaza policy

More than 800 serving officials in the US and Europe have signed a statement warning that their own governments' policies on the Israel-Gaza war could amount to "grave violations of international law".

The "transatlantic statement", a copy of which was passed to the BBC, says their administrations risk being complicit in "one of the worst human catastrophes of this century" but that their expert advice has been sidelined.

It is the latest sign of significant levels of dissent within the governments of some of Israel's key Western allies.

One signatory to the statement, a US government official with more than 25 years' national security experience, told the BBC of the "continued dismissal" of their concerns.

"The voices of those who understand the region and the dynamics were not listened to," said the official.

"What's really different here is we're not failing to prevent something, we're actively complicit. That is fundamentally different from any other situation I can recall," added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The statement is signed by civil servants from the US, the EU and 11 European countries including the UK, France and Germany.

It says Israel has shown "no boundaries" in its military operations in Gaza, "which has resulted in tens of thousands of preventable civilian deaths; and… the deliberate blocking of aid… putting thousands of civilians at risk of starvation and slow death."

"There is a plausible risk that our governments' policies are contributing to grave violations of international law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide," it said.

The identities of those who signed or endorsed the statement have not been made public and the BBC has not seen a list of names, but understands that nearly half are officials who each have at least a decade of experience in government.

One retired US ambassador told the BBC that the coordination by dissenting civil servants in multiple governments was unprecedented.

"It's unique in my experience watching foreign policy in the last 40 years," said Robert Ford, a former American ambassador to Algeria and Syria.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68177357

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

Hamas has replied to a proposal aimed at the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza and a sustained cessation in fighting, Qatar and the United States announced Tuesday.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US is reviewing Hamas' response, adding that he will discuss the proposal with Israel Wednesday as part of his current Middle East tour.

In Gaza, aid workers have raised concerns over any expanded Israeli military operation south toward Rafah, where satellite images show a makeshift tent city estimated to house more than 1 million civilians displaced by the war.

Israel's defense minister said Hamas' leadership is "on the run." A Hamas spokesperson said the group's fighters were "still operating in all areas" of the enclave.

[Jimbuna]

Gaza ceasefire: Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu rejects Hamas's proposed terms

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected Hamas's proposed ceasefire terms - saying "total victory" in Gaza is possible within months.

He was speaking after Hamas laid out a series of demands in response to an Israel-backed ceasefire proposal.

He said negotiations with the group were "not going anywhere" and described their terms as "bizarre".

Talks between negotiators are continuing.

"There is no other solution but a complete and final victory," Mr Netanyahu told a press conference on Wednesday.

"If Hamas will survive in Gaza, it's only a question of time until the next massacre."

He added that Israeli forces have been ordered to prepare to operate in the southern Gaza city of Rafah - where thousands of Palestinians have fled in order to escape the fighting.

The United Nations has warned of many more civilian casualties if fighting escalates in Rafah.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told the Reuters news agency that Mr Netanyahu's remarks show he intends to pursue the conflict in the region and "are a form of political bravado".

"The movement [Hamas] is prepared to deal with all options," Mr Abu Zuhri said.

An Egyptian official source told the BBC that a new round of negotiations is expected to start tomorrow in Cairo, sponsored by Egypt and Qatar.

Egypt calls on all parties to show the necessary flexibility to reach a calm agreement, the source said.

On Tuesday, Hamas had put forward a counter-offer to a ceasefire proposal backed by Israel and the US, and mediated by Qatar and Egypt.

A draft of the Hamas document seen by Reuters news agency listed these terms:

Phase one: A 45-day pause in fighting during which all Israeli women hostages, males under 19, the elderly and sick would be exchanged for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. Israeli forces would withdraw from populated areas of Gaza, and the reconstruction of hospitals and refugee camps would begin.

Phase two: Remaining male Israeli hostages would be exchanged for Palestinian prisoners and Israeli forces leave Gaza completely.

Phase three: Both sides would exchange remains and bodies.

The proposed deal would also see deliveries of food and other aid to Gaza increase. By the end of the 135-day pause in fighting, Hamas said negotiations to end the war would have concluded.

Around 1,300 people were killed during the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October last year.

More than 27,700 Palestinians have been killed and at least 65,000 injured by the war launched by Israel in response, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68232883

[Jimbuna]

The Guardian view on an Israeli assault on Rafah: Gaza’s people have no place to run

The last refuge is no longer a refuge. Around half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have found some kind of shelter in Rafah, often under canvas, raising the border city’s population fivefold. Now, though desperate, traumatised and exhausted, many are readying to flee again.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israeli troops will soon enter, despite warnings from António Guterres, the UN secretary general, that it would “increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences”. Strikes on the city appeared to be intensifying on Thursday.

The UN has warned that a ground offensive could lead to war crimes. It is hard to see how devastating civilian casualties would not result, given what has happened in less crowded areas. Israel said in late January that it had killed only about 30% of Hamas fighters – around 10,000, including 1,000 killed in the group’s murderous attack on 7 October, which claimed 1,200 mostly Israeli lives. The total death toll stands at 27,000 people, more than 11,000 of them children. Another 66,000 have been injured. A quarter of the population is starving.

Israel has reportedly told Egypt that it will allow people to leave Rafah before it moves in. But not everyone is capable of fleeing again, and there is nowhere safe to go. Some of those who have tried to leave the city in recent days have not been heard of since making the attempt. Fierce fighting continues in the Gazan city of Khan Younis. Overall, more than half of Gaza is still under evacuation orders, and Israel has said that fighting will continue in the north, where it had previously said operations were completed, due to the reappearance of Hamas combatants and officials.

Where fighting has ceased, a wasteland is left. Homes, schools, bakeries, hospitals, mosques, churches, sewage infrastructure, aid centres – all erased from the earth. In the words of one witness: “It’s like after an atomic bomb.” The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has also complained that it has not been able to deliver aid to the north for more than a fortnight. A major ground offensive in Rafah threatens to cut off Gaza’s lifeline completely, since aid comes via the city’s crossing with Egypt.

Meanwhile, each day of war increases the need for those deliveries. The US has, belatedly, invested heavily in attempts to pursue a ceasefire and the release of hostages. Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, said the Hamas counteroffer to proposals from the US and Israel contained clear non-starters, but offered “space to pursue negotiations”. However, Mr Netanyahu’s response made it clear that American shuttle diplomacy is of limited use while Washington’s pressure essentially amounts to urging and imploring. He insisted that “absolute victory” is needed, and that there will be months more fighting. Nor is the prime minister willing to listen to freed hostages, and relatives of those still held, as they plead for a deal. The extreme right, upon whom he depends for political survival, would not tolerate such an agreement.

Mr Netanyahu is far from being the only obstacle on the Israeli side to a ceasefire and the release of hostages. But there can be little if any progress while he remains at the helm. He is too busy pursuing his personal interests to serve his country’s. That means, frighteningly, that the least grim scenario for Rafah now looks like further mass displacement and a deepening humanitarian disaster.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...o-place-to-run

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

Israel-Gaza war: US says it will not back unplanned Rafah offensive

The US has warned Israel that staging a military offensive into Gaza's southern city of Rafah without proper planning would be a "disaster".

Some 1.5 million Palestinians are surviving in the city bordering Egypt in dire humanitarian conditions.

The White House said it would not support major operations without due consideration for the refugees there.

The comments come days after Israel's leader said the military had been told to prepare to operate in Rafah.

Speaking on Thursday evening, and without referring to Rafah, US President Joe Biden said Israel's actions in Gaza had been "over the top".

Reported Israeli air strikes on Gaza on Friday killed at least 15 people including eight in Rafah, officials from the Hamas-run health ministry said. Israel did not immediately comment.

Salem El-Rayyes, a freelance journalist living at a camp for displaced people in Rafah, said children were among those killed when an air strike hit a house nearby. Bodies of the victims "flew from the third floor", he told Reuters.

Most of the people in Rafah have been displaced by fighting from other parts of Gaza and are living in tents.

Garda al-Kourd, a mother-of-two who said she had been displaced six times during the war, said she was expecting an Israeli assault but hoped there would be a ceasefire agreement before it happened.

"If they come to Rafah, it will be the end for us, like we are waiting for death. We have no other place to go," she told the BBC from a relative's house in Rafah where she was living with 20 other people.

The head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, told the BBC that such an operation in Rafah - which he called "the world's biggest displacement camp" - would be a catastrophe.

"There are people on their flimsy plastic sheeting. They are fighting for food. There is no drinking water. There is epidemic disease and then they [the IDF] want to bring a war to this place. You can't make it up really," he said.

Much of northern and central Gaza has been reduced to ruins by sustained Israeli bombardment since the war began on 7 October.

Earlier, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Israeli military had a "special obligation as they conduct operations there or anywhere else to make sure that they're factoring in protection for innocent civilian life".

"Military operations right now would be a disaster for those people and it's not something that we would support," he said, adding that the US had not seen anything to suggest Israel was going to launch a major operation in Rafah imminently.

Deputy State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel echoed Mr Kirby's comments, saying: ''We [the US] would not support the undertaking of something like this without serious and credible planning."

Asked by the BBC where refugees in Rafah should go in the event of an operation, Mr Patel said these were "legitimate questions that we believe the Israelis should answer".

Speaking in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said any "military operation that Israel undertakes needs to put civilians first and foremost... and that's especially true in the case of Rafah".

It is rare for the US, a key ally and military backer of Israel, to talk about any forthcoming stages of the country's military offensive in Gaza - but this was a clear warning.

Washington sends around $3.8bn (£3bn) in military aid to Israel each year, making the country the world's biggest recipient of such funding.

Around 1,300 people were killed during the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on 7 October, according to Israeli officials.

More than 27,800 Palestinians have been killed and at least 67,000 injured by the war launched by Israel in response, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

"They are living in overcrowded makeshift shelters, in unsanitary conditions, without running water, electricity and adequate food supplies," was the stark assessment of the situation by UN chief António Guterres on Thursday.

"We were clear in condemning the horrific acts of Hamas. We are also clear in condemning the violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza."

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered troops to "prepare to operate" in Rafah and that "total victory" by Israel over Hamas was just months away.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68247050

[Jimbuna]

Gaza residents surviving off animal feed and rice as food dwindles

People living in the isolated north of Gaza have told the BBC that children are going without food for days, as aid convoys are increasingly denied permits to enter. Some residents have resorted to grinding animal feed into flour to survive, but even stocks of those grains are now dwindling, they say.

People have also described digging down into the soil to access water pipes, for drinking and washing.

The UN has warned that acute malnutrition among young children in the north has risen sharply, and is now above the critical threshold of 15%.

The UN's humanitarian coordination agency, Ocha, says more than half the aid missions to the north of Gaza were denied access last month, and that there is increasing interference from Israeli forces in how and where aid is delivered.

It says 300,000 people estimated to be living in northern areas are largely cut off from assistance, and face a growing risk of famine.

A spokesman for the Israeli military agency tasked with coordinating aid access in Gaza said in a briefing last month that there was "no starvation in Gaza. Period." The agency, Cogat, has repeatedly said it does not limit the amount of humanitarian aid sent to Gaza.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68239320

[Skybird]

This story has the potential to seriously backfire against Israel.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68180642

No happy end.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68261286

It could turn the public opinion in the West completely.


Meanwhile, Israel reports that it has found HAMAS tunnels under the UNRWA headquarters. UNRWA employs 10-12 thousand people, virtually all of whom are Palestinian Arabs. 1200-1500 of them are now listed as appointed Hamas members. The UNRWA scandal started with only 12 or 15 Hamas members being exposed.

UNRWA must get dismantled, like Hamas. The whole UN blue helmet mission should be gone. In past Lebanon wars UN soldiers radioed reprts on Israeli acitvites over unprotected radio networks, allowing Hezbollah to listen to them, too, and learn intel from them. That makes the UN not neutral observers, but a war party. But that is nothing new. The UN always was predominantly anti-Israel and is pro-Islam.

[mapuc]

Why is it that a picture or story of a little girls fate in a dangerous situation makes us sad and more eager to help, than if it was a picture or story of a middle age man ?

It sadden me seeing all this dead and destruction whether it is in Gaza or in Ukraine.

Another thing - Can somebody confirm this story. I do know BBC is a reliable source

I know from life experience that people has a tendency to become more sad/mad/angry when a little girl is harmed

Hamas are in big problems so they need some help and this story came as a gift.

I'm not saying it's untrue, however I need a second and a third source of information.

This is how I see it.

Markus

[Skybird]

Me too thought about manipulation, and even AI editing. Such things must be expected these days. Also, bias making the media house rpeorting prone to propaganda manipualtion. German media for example all the time uncritically copy info given by Hamas speakers and officials, without labelling the source as such, and they treat this info a "fact" from then on. It has already several times exploded them into their faces.

[Skybird]

Not that it means too much, but I nevertheless wondered what took them so long. Families of Israeli hostages move to sue Hamas leadership at The Hague.

[Jimbuna]

Warnings over Rafah offensive mount as Israel plans push in Gaza

Israel is facing growing international warnings over its planned offensive in Rafah - the city in southern Gaza crammed with Palestinian refugees.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said "over half of Gaza's population are sheltering in the area", while Dutch FM Hanke Bruins Slot said there could be "many civilian casualties".

Saudi Arabia warned of "very serious repercussions" if Rafah was stormed.

Gaza's Hamas rulers said there could be "tens of thousands" of casualties.

On Sunday Hamas warned any operation would also undermine ongoing talks about a possible release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

Israel launched its operations in the Palestinian enclave after more than 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel on 7 October by Hamas gunmen, who also took about 240 people hostage.

On Sunday the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 112 more Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli military over the previous day, bringing the overall death toll to more than 28,100 and more than 67,500 injured.

Many Gazans have ended up in Rafah having been forced to flee their homes elsewhere at least once.

Saturday's warnings came a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his military to prepare to evacuate civilians from the city ahead of an expanded offensive against Hamas.

"It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war without eliminating Hamas, and by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah. It is clear that intense activity in Rafah requires that civilians evacuate the areas of combat," Mr Netanyahu's office said.

The prime minister also rejected Hamas's latest proposed ceasefire terms.

The US has already warned Israel that an invasion of Rafah as part of its assault on Gaza would be a "disaster", while the EU and the UN both expressed their own concerns.

Aid groups say it is not possible to evacuate everyone from the city on the border with Egypt.

UN humanitarian co-ordinator Jamie McGoldrick, who has just been to Gaza to assess the situation, told the BBC's Barbara Plett Usher that people in Rafah would have "nowhere to go" if Israeli troops launched their offensive.

"The safe areas that were declared are no longer safe. And if these people have to move - where can they move? We are really fearful of the horrific nature of where we are could only ever get worse," he said.

Some 1.5 million Palestinians are believed to be in Rafah, seeking refuge from Israeli combat operations in the rest of the Gaza Strip. Most of them are living in tents.

In a social media post, Mr Cameron said he was "deeply concerned about the prospect of a military offensive in Rafah.

"The priority must be an immediate pause in the fighting to get aid in and hostages out, then progress towards a sustainable, permanent ceasefire."

Meanwhile, Ms Bruins Slot described the situation in Rafah as "very worrying".

"Many civilians in Gaza have fled south. Hard to see how large-scale military operations in such a densely populated area would not lead to many civilian casualties and a bigger humanitarian catastrophe. This is unjustifiable," she added.

Also on Saturday, the Saudi foreign ministry issued a statement that warned against "targeting the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, which is the last resort for hundreds of thousands of civilians forced by the brutal Israeli aggression to flee".

The ministry also repeated its "demand for an immediate ceasefire".

In other developments on Saturday:

At least five Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Rafah, according to the Palestinian news agency, Wafa
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its air force killed two Hamas operatives in the southern city
The IDF also said it discovered a tunnel shaft near a school run by the relief agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) that was leading to an "underground terrorist tunnel beneath UNRWA's main headquarters"
UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini denied any knowledge of a Hamas tunnel near the agency's office - a building which he said his staff vacated months ago
A six-year-old girl who went missing in Gaza City last month was found dead with several of her relatives and two paramedics - after appearing to come under fire from Israeli tanks
The BBC is unable to independently verify many battlefield claims made during the course of the war.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68266335

[Jimbuna]

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says Israeli strikes kill 67 people in the overcrowded city of Rafah.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled to Rafah, at the southern edge of the Strip, after months of fighting in Gaza.

Overall, the health ministry in Gaza says 164 people have been killed in the past day.

In Rafah, a doctor tells the BBC the "most popular question on people’s minds is, where can we go?"

Israel says it carried out a "wave of strikes" while rescuing two hostages from the second floor of a building in Rafah.

The Israeli military says Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70, are in "good medical condition"

Israel launched its operations in Gaza after Hamas killed more than 1,200 people on 7 October, and took 253 people hostage.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 28,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 67,500 injured since then.