PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday said he would hold a trilateral summit on the situation in Gaza with Egypt President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
Israel has pushed to seize territory in Gaza since the collapse of a short-lived truce in its war with Hamas, in what it has called a strategy to force the militants to free hostages still in captivity.
Simultaneously, Israel has escalated attacks on Lebanon and Syria.
“In response to the Gaza emergency and during my visit to Egypt at President El-Sisi’s invitation, we will hold a trilateral summit with the Egyptian president and the King of Jordan,” Macron wrote on X ahead of his trip.
The French president is expected in Cairo on Sunday evening, where he will hold talks with his Egyptian counterpart on Monday morning.
The trilateral summit will be held the same day in the Egyptian capital, according to Macron’s office.
On Tuesday, Macron will also visit the Egyptian port of El-Arish, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of the Gaza Strip, to meet humanitarian and security workers and demonstrate his “constant mobilization in favor of a ceasefire.”
El-Arish is a transit point for international aid intended for Gaza.
Macron to hold Gaza summit with Egyptian, Jordanian leaders
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Macron to hold Gaza summit with Egyptian, Jordanian leaders
- The French president is expected in Cairo on Sunday evening
- The trilateral summit will be held the same day
Israel says no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza
“Israel’s policy is clear: no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza“
JERUSALEM: Israel said Wednesday it would keep blocking humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, where a relentless military offensive has turned the Palestinian territory into a “mass grave,” a medical charity reported.
Air and ground attacks resumed across the Gaza Strip on March 18, ending a two-month ceasefire with Hamas that had largely halted hostilities in the territory.
However, Israel has halted the entry of aid into Gaza since March 2, as the humanitarian crisis continues to grow amid ongoing military assaults which rescuers said killed at least 11 people Wednesday.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel would continue preventing aid from entering the besieged territory of 2.4 million people.
“Israel’s policy is clear: no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population,” Katz said in a statement Wednesday.
“No one is currently planning to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza, and there are no preparations to enable such aid.”
Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have cited military pressure as the only way to secure the release of the 58 hostages held in Gaza.
“Hamas will continue to suffer blow after blow. We insist that they release our hostages, and we insist on achieving all of our war objectives,” Netanyahu told troops in northern Gaza Tuesday.
The Ramallah-based Palestinian foreign ministry denounced his Gaza visit, calling it a “provocative intrusion intended to prolong and intensify the crimes of genocide and forced displacement” of Gazans.
Medical aid agency Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Israeli military operations and the blockage of aid had transformed Gaza into a graveyard for Palestinians and those who help them.
“Gaza has been turned into a mass grave of Palestinians and those coming to their assistance,” said MSF coordinator Amande Bazerolle.
“With nowhere safe for Palestinians or those trying to help them, the humanitarian response is severely struggling under the weight of insecurity and critical supply shortages, leaving people with few, if any, options for accessing care,” she said.
The UN had warned on Monday that Gaza is facing its most severe humanitarian crisis since the war began in October 2023.
“The humanitarian situation is now likely the worst it has been in the 18 months since the outbreak of hostilities,” said the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In a statement, OCHA said no supplies had reached the territory for a month and a half, and medical supplies, fuel, water and other essentials are in short supply.
Israel firmly controls the entry of vital international aid to Gaza.
On April 28, the International Court of Justice is set to open hearings on Israel’s humanitarian obligations toward Palestinians.
The UN General Assembly approved a resolution in December requesting that The Hague-based top court give an advisory opinion on the matter.
It calls on the ICJ to clarify what Israel is required to do to “ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population.”
Although ICJ decisions are legally binding, the court has no concrete way of enforcing them. They increase the diplomatic pressure, however.
Israel continued to pound Gaza on Wednesday.
A pre-dawn air strike in Gaza City killed 11 people, including women and children, the civil defense agency said.
The renewed assault has so far killed at least 1,652 people in Gaza, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory reported.
The Gaza war erupted after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Since then at least 51,025 people, the majority of them civilians, have been killed in Gaza in the Israeli offensive, the territory’s health ministry said.
The military also announced it had killed a Hezbollah militant in south Lebanon, despite a ceasefire between the two sides.
Lebanon says two dead in strikes as Israel says killed Hezbollah militant
- The Israeli military said its air force “struck and eliminated” a member of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force
- Israel has continued to strike Lebanon since the November 27 ceasefire
BEIRUT: Lebanon reported two dead in separate Israeli strikes on the country’s south Wednesday, as Israel’s military said it had killed a Hezbollah operative, despite a ceasefire between the two sides.
A “drone strike launched by the Israeli enemy on a vehicle in Wadi Al-Hujair killed one person,” Lebanon’s health ministry said in a statement, referring to an area around 12 kilometers (seven miles) from the border.
It later said a separate Israeli strike in Hanin, elsewhere in the south near the border, “killed one person and wounded another.”
The Israeli military said its air force “struck and eliminated” a member of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force in the Qantara area, near Wadi Al-Hujair.
Israel has continued to strike Lebanon since the November 27 ceasefire that largely halted more than a year of hostilities with Hezbollah, including two months of all-out war.
The health ministry also said a 17-year-old wounded in an Israeli strike on south Lebanon’s Aitaroun on Tuesday had died, bringing the toll in that raid to two dead.
The Israeli military said that strike also killed a Hezbollah operative.
The United Nations Human Rights Office said on Tuesday that “at least 71 civilians” had been killed by Israeli forces in Lebanon since the ceasefire.
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah said last week that 186 people had been killed since the truce, without saying how many were members of the group.
The health ministry has not responded to AFP requests for updated figures.
The truce accord was based on a UN Security Council resolution that says Lebanese troops and United Nations peacekeepers should be the only forces in south Lebanon, and calls for the disarmament of all non-state groups.
Under the truce, Hezbollah was to withdraw fighters from south of Lebanon’s Litani River and dismantle any remaining military infrastructure there.
Israel was to pull out all its forces from south Lebanon, although it continues to hold five positions that it deems “strategic.”
Lebanon’s army has been deploying in the south near the border as Israeli forces have withdrawn.
A source close to Hezbollah told AFP on Saturday that the group had ceded to the Lebanese army around 190 of its 265 military positions identified south of the Litani.
Sudanese paramilitary group says its forming a rival government
- The move came as the RSF suffered multiple battlefield setbacks, losing the capital, Khartoum and other urban cities in recent months
- It raises concerns that Sudan is heading toward partition, or a prolonged conflict like that one in neighboring Libya where two rival administrations have been fighting for power for over a decade
CAIRO: A notorious paramilitary group fighting against the Sudanese military announced that it was forming a rival government, which will rule parts of the country controlled by the group including the western Darfur region where the United Nations says recent attacks by the group have killed over 400 people.
Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the Rapid Support Forces, announced the move in a speech on Tuesday as the northeastern African nation marked two years of civil war.
“On this anniversary, we proudly declare the establishment of the Government of Peace and Unity,” Dagalo said in a recorded speech, adding that other groups have joined the RSF-led administration, including a faction of the Sudan’s Liberation Movement, which controls parts of Kordofan region.
Dagalo, who is sanctioned by the US over accusations that his forces committed genocide in Darfur, said that he and his allies were also establishing “a 15-member Presidential Council” representing all of Sudan’s regions.
The move came as the RSF suffered multiple battlefield setbacks, losing the capital, Khartoum and other urban cities in recent months. The paramilitary group has since regrouped in its stronghold in the sprawling region of Darfur.
It raises concerns that Sudan is heading toward partition, or a prolonged conflict like that one in neighboring Libya where two rival administrations have been fighting for power for over a decade. The nation of South Sudan won independence from Sudan in a 2011 referendum that followed a war in which Janjaweed militias, a predecessor to the RSF, fought on behalf of the government.
The Janjaweed were accused of mass killings, rapes and other atrocities.
Many countries, including the US, have rejected the RSF efforts to establish an administration in areas they control.
“Attempts to establish a parallel government are unhelpful for peace & security for the country, and risk further instability & de facto partition of the country,” the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs posted on X in March when the RSF and its allies signed what they called “transitional constitution” in a Kenya-hosted conference.
Sudan was plunged into chaos on April 15, 2023 when simmering tensions between the military and the RSF exploded into open warfare across the country.
Since then, at least 24,000 people have been killed, though the number is likely far higher. The war has driven about 13 million people from their homes, including 4 million who have crossed into neighboring countries, and pushed parts of the country into famine.
The fighting has been marked by atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially in Darfur, according to the UN and international rights groups.
Dagalo’s announcement has come a few days after his forces and allied militias rampaged through two famine-hit camps, which shelter some 700,000 Sudanese who fled their homes, in North Darfur province.
The multi-day attack on the Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps killed more than 400 people, including 12 aid workers and dozens of children, the UN humanitarian office said, citing local sources.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Tuesday the attack forced up to 400,000 people to flee the Zamzam camp in recent days.
He said the camp has become inaccessible after the RSF and its allied militias took control of it, “restricting the movement of those remaining, especially young people.”
Israel will keep Gaza buffer zone, minister says, as ceasefire efforts stall
- Since resuming their operation last month, Israeli forces have carved out a broad “security zone” extending deep into Gaza
- Comments from Katz underscore how far away the two sides remain from any ceasefire agreement
JERUSALEM/CAIRO: Israeli troops will remain in the buffer zones they have created in Gaza even after any settlement to end the war, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday, as efforts to revive a ceasefire agreement faltered.
Since resuming their operation last month, Israeli forces have carved out a broad “security zone” extending deep into Gaza and squeezing more than 2 million Palestinians into ever smaller areas in the south and along the coastline.
“Unlike in the past, the IDF is not evacuating areas that have been cleared and seized,” Katz said in a statement following a meeting with military commanders, adding that “tens of percent” of Gaza had been added to the zone.
“The IDF will remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and the communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza — as in Lebanon and Syria.”
In southern Gaza alone, Israeli forces have seized about 20 percent of the enclave’s territory, taking control of the border city of Rafah and pushing inland up to the so-called “Morag corridor” that runs from the eastern edge of Gaza to the Mediterranean Sea between Rafah and the city of Khan Younis.
It already held a wide corridor across the central Netzarim area and has extended a buffer zone all around the border hundreds of meters inland, including the Shejaia area just to the east of Gaza City in the north.
Israel says its forces have killed hundreds of Hamas fighters, including many senior commanders of the Palestinian militant group, but the operation has alarmed the United Nations and European countries.
More than 400,000 Palestinians have been displaced since hostilities resumed on March 18 after two months of relative calm, according to the UN humanitarian agency OCHA and Israeli air strikes and bombardments have killed at least 1,630 people.
Medical charity MSF said Gaza had become a “mass grave” with humanitarian groups struggling to provide aid. “We are witnessing in real time the destruction and forced displacement of the entire population in Gaza,” Amande Bazerolle, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza said in a statement.
Katz said Israel, which has blocked the delivery of aid supplies into the territory, was creating infrastructure to allow distribution through civilian companies at a later date. But he said the blockade on aid would remain in place.
He said Israel would push forward with a plan to allow Gazans who wished to leave the enclave to do so, although it remains unclear which countries would be willing to accept large numbers of Palestinians.
Red lines
The comments from Katz, repeating Israel’s demand on Hamas to disarm, underscore how far away the two sides remain from any ceasefire agreement, despite efforts by Egyptian mediators to revive efforts to reach a deal.
Hamas has repeatedly described calls to disarm as a red line it will not cross and has said Israeli troops must withdraw from Gaza under any permanent ceasefire.
“Any truce lacking real guarantees for halting the war, achieving full withdrawal, lifting the blockade, and beginning reconstruction will be a political trap,” Hamas said in a statement on Wednesday.
Two Israeli officials said this week that there had been no progress in the talks despite media reports of a possible truce to allow the exchange of some of the 59 hostages still held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli officials have said the increased military pressure will force Hamas to release the hostages but the government has faced large demonstrations by Israeli protesters demanding a deal to stop the fighting and get them back.
Israel launched its campaign in Gaza in response to the October 2023 attack by Hamas on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
The offensive has killed at least 51,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and devastated the coastal enclave, forcing most of the population to move multiple times and reducing broad areas to rubble.
On Wednesday, Palestinian medical authorities said an airstrike killed 10 people, including Fatema Hassouna, a well-known writer and photographer who had documented the war. A strike on another house further north killed three, they said.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said Israel’s suspension of the entry of fuel, medical, and food supplies since early March had begun to obstruct the work of the few remaining working hospitals, with medical supplies drying up.
“Hundreds of patients and wounded individuals are deprived of essential medications, and their suffering is worsening due to the closure of border crossings,” the ministry said.
Gaza hospital chief held in ‘inhumane’ conditions by Israel: lawyer
- Abu Safiya was subjected to interrogations involving beatings, mistreatment and torture.
- In January, rights group Amnesty International demanded Abu Safiya’s release, citing witness testimonies describing “the horrifying reality” in Israeli prisons.
NAZARETH: The director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital who was detained by Israeli forces in December is being held in “inhumane” conditions by Israel and subjected to “physical and psychological intimidation,” his lawyer told AFP.
Hussam Abu Safiya, a 52-year-old paediatrician, rose to prominence last year by posting about the dire conditions in his besieged hospital in Beit Lahia during a major Israeli offensive.
On December 27, Israeli forces began an assault on the facility which they labelled a Hamas “terrorist center,” and arrested dozens of medical staff including Abu Safiya.
The military accused him of being a “Hamas operative.”
Abu Safiya’s lawyer, Gheed Qassem, was able to visit the doctor on March 19 in Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank.
“He is suffering greatly, he is exhausted from the torture, the pressure and the humiliation he has endured to force him to confess to acts he did not commit,” said Qassem who met an AFP correspondent in Nazareth.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment from AFP about the conditions in which Abu Safiya is being held.
After initially spending two weeks in the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel’s Negev desert, Abu Safiya was transferred to Ofer, where Israel keeps hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
In Sde Teiman, Abu Safiya was subjected to interrogations “involving beatings, mistreatment and torture,” Qassem said, before he was transferred to a cramped cell in Ofer for 25 days, where he was also subjected to questioning.
The Israeli authorities have designated the medic an “illegal combatant” for an “unlimited period of time,” Qassem said, and his case has been designated confidential by the military, meaning Abu Safiya’s defense cannot access the files.
She denounced what she said were restrictions imposed on legal visits, which have prevented lawyers from informing detainees about “the war, the date, the time or their geographic location.”
Her meeting with Abu Safiya, which took place under tight surveillance, lasted for only 17 minutes, she said.
Adopted in 2002, Israel’s law concerning “illegal combatants” permits the detention of suspected members of “hostile forces” outside of normal legal frameworks.
In January, rights group Amnesty International demanded Abu Safiya’s release, citing witness testimonies describing “the horrifying reality” in Israeli prisons, where Palestinian detainees are subjected to “systematic acts of torture and other mistreatment.”
A social media campaign using the hashtag #FreeDrHussamAbuSafiya has brought together health care organizations, celebrities and UN leaders.
That includes the director of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who demanded Abu Safiya’s release in a post on X.
Qassem warned that her client’s health was “very worrying.”
“He is suffering from arterial tension, cardiac arrhythmia and vision problems,” she said, adding “he has lost 20 kilos in two months and fractured four ribs during interrogations, without receiving proper medical care.”
The doctor remains calm, she said, but “wonders what crime he has committed” to be subjected to “such inhumane conditions.”
According to the lawyer, Abu Safiya’s jailers are demanding that he confess to having operated on members of Hamas or Israeli hostages held in Gaza, but he has refused to do so and denies the accusations.
The doctor insists that he is just a paediatrician, “and everything he did was out of a moral, professional and human duty toward the patients and the wounded,” Qassem said.
Since October 7, 2023, around 5,000 Gazans have been arrested by Israel, and some were subsequently released in exchange for hostages held in Gaza.
In general, they are accused of “belonging to a terrorist organization” or of posing “a threat to Israel’s security,” the lawyer said.
Qassem said that a number of detainees are being held without charge or trial and that their lawyers often did not know where their clients were during the first months of the war.
