GAZA: The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that an Israeli operation in Khan Yunis killed 70 people and wounded more than 200, after the military warned it would “forcefully operate” in the area.
The military warning affected the eastern Khan Yunis sector of the Al-Mawasi humanitarian zone in southern Gaza and sent thousands of Palestinians fleeing.
The military said it would act to curb rocket fire in the area. Khan Yunis had already seen heavy fighting earlier this year.
The latest incident comes nine days after the health ministry said 92 people were killed in a strike on Al-Mawasi, when Israel said it was targeting Hamas’s commander.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and has launched intense military operations in areas of Gaza that it previously had declared free of the militants.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure to reach a truce and hostage-release deal, was on his way to Washington to address the US Congress.
Netanyahu will meet US President Joe Biden, who has pushed him to agree to a ceasefire, more than nine months into the Gaza war ignited by the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attacks on Israel.
In late June Netanyahu had said the war “in its intense phase” was about to end.
The evacuation order for the Al-Mawasi area came just two months after the military directed Palestinians there for their own safety.
“Due to the Israeli occupation’s attacks and massacres in Khan Yunis governorate from the early hours of this morning until now, 70 people have been martyred and more than 200 wounded,” the Gaza health ministry said.
The Israeli military did not offer comment on the toll, when asked by AFP.
But in a statement, the military said its fighter jets and tanks “struck and eliminated terrorists in the area.”
It said forces targeted more than “30 terror infrastructure” sites in Khan Yunis. Israeli warplanes also hit a weapons storage facility, observation posts, tunnel shafts and structures used by Hamas militants, it added.
Facing yet another displacement, Palestinians filled the dusty streets of Khan Yunis with cars, motorbikes, donkey-drawn carts, and on foot, carrying what belongings they could.
Hassan Qudayh said his family fled in “panic.”
“We were happily making breakfast for our children, as we had been safe for a month, only to be stunned by shells, warning leaflets and martyrs in the streets,” he told AFPTV.
“This is the 14th or 15th time we’ve been displaced.
“Enough! We’ve been suffering for 10 months.”
Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 44 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 39,000 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
The relentless fighting has plunged Gaza into a severe humanitarian crisis.
Yussef Abu Taimah from Al-Qarara in Khan Yunis said his family went to the humanitarian zone but found no space.
“Even the sidewalks are full of people and tents. We are tired and fed up. Enough of this displacement and migration.”
Months of intermittent talks for the first ceasefire and hostage-prisoner swap since November have yielded little progress.
Netanyahu will meet Biden on Tuesday and deliver a landmark speech to Congress on Wednesday, amid unprecedented strains between Israel and its ally the United States.
The Israeli leader has repeatedly resisted pressure from the Biden administration to accept a truce, which far-right members of his coalition opposes.
Washington fears a voter backlash over the mounting civilian war toll in Gaza, while protests by anti-government demonstrators and families of hostages in Israel are pressuring Netanyahu at home.
“Never before has the atmosphere been so fraught,” said Steven Cook, a Middle East specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“There is clearly tension in the relationship, especially between the White House and the Israeli prime minister,” Cook said in a commentary.
The visit comes with the Gaza war again fueling regional violence.
Israel on Saturday attacked Yemen for the first time, in retaliation for a deadly drone strike on Tel Aviv by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
There were also further exchanges of fire between Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and the Israeli military at the weekend, as tensions remained high along the border.
An Israeli delegation will travel to Doha on Thursday to discuss new demands for a Gaza truce and hostage-prisoner exchange, a source with knowledge of the talks said.
Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been working to secure a deal between Israel and Hamas.
Gaza health ministry says dozens killed, after Israel evacuation order
https://arab.news/j88pt
Gaza health ministry says dozens killed, after Israel evacuation order

- The Palestinians were killed by tank salvoes in the town of Bani Suhaila and other towns fringing the eastern side of Khan Younis, with the area also bombarded by air
- “It is like doomsday,” one resident, who only identified himself as Abu Khaled, said
First group of Gazan children arrives in Jordan for treatment

CAIRO: Jordan has received the first group of sick Gaza children for medical treatment, according to state-run Petra news agency.
Jordan's King Abdullah II announced last month that his country would take in some 2,000 sick children from war-torn Gaza to receive treatment.
The batch will include cancer children who are in a very ill state.
Syria president in Cairo for Arab summit on Gaza: state media

DAMASCUS: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in Cairo on Tuesday to attend an Arab League summit on countering US President Donald Trump's widely condemned plan for Gaza, Syrian state media reported.
Sharaa arrived “to attend the extraordinary Arab Summit in Cairo on developments on the Palestinian issue,” state news agency SANA reported.
Egypt to host emergency Arab League summit to counter Trump’s Gaza plans

- The Arab League summit in Cairo will address Trump’s Gaza plans and efforts to protect Palestinian rights
- Egypt’s reconstruction plan includes recovery, infrastructure restoration, and a two-state solution, but financing concerns remain
DUBAI: An emergency Arab League summit will be held in Cairo on Tuesday to counter US President Donald Trump’s Gaza plans.
Organized by Egypt, the summit aims to respond to Trump’s proposals to take control of Gaza and resettle Palestinians, as well as to address the Israeli Prime Minister’s stance on ending the ceasefire and resuming hostilities in Gaza.
The summit will focus on creating a unified Arab response that protects Palestinian rights and makes Gaza habitable again.
Egypt’s Plan
Egypt has yet to release full details of its proposal, but former Egyptian diplomat Mohamed Hegazy outlined a plan in three technical phases over three to five years.
The first phase, lasting six months, would focus on early recovery and debris removal. The second phase would involve an international conference to set out detailed reconstruction plans and restore infrastructure.
The final phase would include the provision of housing and services, as well as the establishment of a political track for implementing a two-state solution, with an independent Palestine alongside Israel.
Under the Egyptian plan, a Governance Assistance Mission would replace the Hamas-run government in Gaza for an unspecified interim period and would be responsible for humanitarian aid and for kick-starting reconstruction of the enclave, which has been devastated by the war.
Egypt and Jordan will train Palestinian police personnel in preparation for deployment in the strip.
The plan will also demand that Israel stops all settlement activities, annexation of lands and demolition of Palestinian homes.
Experts have raised concerns over the plan’s financing, with the UN estimating the cost of rebuilding Gaza at over $50 billion.
The summit will propose a plan that aims to counter US President Trump’s statement last month, in which he proposed taking control of Gaza and resettling Palestinians in Egypt and Jordan.
Tensions have heightened as Israel blocked all humanitarian aid to Gaza on March 1, citing Hamas’s refusal to extend the ceasefire, which was meant to begin its second phase.
Far-right Israel minister Smotrich heading to the US

- His trip comes with US President Donald Trump expected to announce whether to back the annexation of all or part of the West Bank
JERUSALEM: Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who supports the annexation of the occupied West Bank, said on Tuesday that he was traveling to the United States for a brief visit.
“The goal of this visit is to strengthen economic cooperation between Israel and the United States... and deepen the strategic alliance between our two countries,” Smotrich wrote on social media platform X.
His trip comes with US President Donald Trump expected to announce whether to back the annexation of all or part of the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Smotrich, an ultranationalist settler whose support is key to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s parliamentary majority, said he would meet US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, as well as other US government officials.
The visit coincides with an Arab League summit on Tuesday in Cairo, where leaders are discussing a counterproposal to Trump’s February 4 plan for US control of Gaza.
Under that plan, Palestinians living in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip would be transferred to third countries, and the coastal territory would be turned into what Trump called “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Asked when unveiling the plan whether he backed Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Trump said he would probably “make an announcement” on the issue within four weeks.
In 2024, the International Court of Justice, the UN’s top legal body, issued an advisory opinion saying that Israel’s prolonged presence in the West Bank was unlawful.
The United Nations regularly condemns Israel’s settlement expansion in the territory as illegal under international law.
Syrian refugee family that Pope Francis brought to Rome prays for him as they build new life

- Nearly a decade after Pope Francis plucked them from a refugee camp in Greece, a Syrian couple and their child have carved out a quiet life in suburban Rome
- While they observe Ramadan, they’re praying for the hospitalized pope, whom they refer to as a gift from heaven – and a leader who showed the world migrants aren’t to be feared
ROME: Just before breaking the Ramadan fast on Sunday evening, Hasan Zaheda played basketball with his son in the tiny courtyard of the basement-level apartment on Rome’s outskirts where the refugee family is rebuilding their lives.
They have no pictures from their native Syria – they fled Damascus at the height of the civil war with only one change of clothes, diapers and milk for their toddler. But there is a framed photo of little Riad meeting Pope Francis, who brought them and two other Muslim families back with him to Italy from refugee camps in the Greek island of Lesbos almost a decade ago.
“He’s a gift from paradise,” Zaheda said Sunday, chuckling. “Pope Francis, a gift from our God, that God sent us to save us.”
As the Zahedas began to observe the holy month of Ramadan, Francis, 88, entered his third week of battling pneumonia in a hospital not far away. The least they can do, the family said, is to be close to him in prayer night and day.
“We look for his health bulletin every day,” said the mother, Nour Essa, 39, after recalling meeting the pontiff suddenly in Lesbos. “What shocked me the most is that the father of the church was a modest man, who didn’t have prejudices, open toward other ethnicities and religion.”
The family journeyed on the pope’s plane – one of the most visible moments of advocacy for migrants that marked Francis’ papacy. The Zahedas remember how kindly Francis patted Riad’s head as he passed down the aisle to speak with journalists.
But “miraculous” as it appeared to them, it was only the beginning of a new life in Italy to which they’re still adjusting.
Essa, a biologist, and Zaheda, an architect who worked as a civil servant in Damascus, decided to leave Syria in 2015 after he was drafted into the military. They sold their house to pay for a smuggler, walking through the night trying not to make a sound in the desert and at one point riding for ten hours in different trucks.
After scrambling to get through Daesh-controlled territory, they made it into Turkiye and then had three failed attempts to reach the Greek islands by boat before arriving in Lesbos in early 2016.
“I always thank God that my son was so small, and that he has no memory of all these things,” Essa said as Riad watched a Syrian soap opera in the cramped living room with his grandfather, who fled about a year after them. On the walls, Hasan’s haunting paintings of white faces against swirling black and red tell of the parents’ all-too-vivid memories.
After more than one month in a Lesbos camp, the family was approached for an interview by a stranger – Daniela Pompei, the head of migration and integration for the Catholic charity Sant’Egidio.
She had been tasked with finding families with appropriate paperwork that Francis could bring back to Rome with him, and asked them to make a decision on the spot. They accepted, and the charity, with Vatican funds, eventually brought more than 300 refugees from Greece and 150 from another papal trip to Cyprus in 2021.
Sant’Egidio’s goal was to spare migrants longer journeys by sea across different routes in the Mediterranean, which have killed tens of thousands of asylum-seekers willing to “die for hope” over the years, Pompei said.
But the real test has been integration, from processing their asylum cases to learning Italian to school and job placement. Initiatives like the pope’s make all the difference because they signal to the refugees that their new communities are willing to welcome them, despite faith differences.
“The pope has long appealed to open parishes, to welcome at least one family in each parish, to push us Catholics too to counter what he called, with a very strong term in Lampedusa, ‘the globalization of indifference,’” Pompei said.
In the characteristic Roman accent they’ve acquired, the Zaheda parents told of their challenges – having to reenroll in university so their degrees can be recognized, helping their families come to Europe, taking care of their son.
Working or studying 12 hours a day, they rarely have time to socialize with other Syrian families and the migrants who comprise most of their neighbors in the modest brick-faced apartment buildings as well as most of Riad’s classmates.
His best friend is from Ecuador, and Riad plans to study Spanish in middle school. He’s joined a local basketball team, and pictures from the court line his bedroom, where a large Syrian flag hangs by his bunkbed. He likes to read The Little Prince in English, but his Arabic is tentative, even though he spends most afternoons with his grandfather, who loves to sketch local churches.
For Sunday’s iftar – the meal breaking the day’s fast – the family topped a little table with yogurt-and-chickpea tisiyeh salad and take-out pizza in typical Roman flavors like zucchini flowers and anchovies.
As Riad packed his backpack for the school week, his parents said their future hinges on the little boy – for whom they will likely stay in Italy, instead of joining relatives in France or returning to a Syria they probably couldn’t recognize.
“I always wish that he can build his future, that he can build a position as the son of an undocumented migrant who arrived in Italy and who wanted to leave his mark in a new country,” Zaheda said.