DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Israeli airstrikes early Wednesday killed 20 Palestinians in central Gaza, including six children and three women, some of them inside a purported “safe zone” declared by the Israeli military, hospital authorities said.
This second straight night of deadly strikes in the central town of Deir Al-Balah and nearby refugee camps came as US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators as well as Israeli officials came together in the Qatari capital, Doha, for talks trying to push through a long-elusive deal for a ceasefire and hostage release.
Israel and Hamas had appeared to narrow the gaps in recent days, but obstacles remain.
Strikes early Wednesday hit three houses in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing 12 people including five children, said authorities at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the casualties were taken. An Associated Press reporter counted the bodies.
The camp, like others around Gaza, was originally erected to house Palestinians driven from their homes during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. It has grown into an urban neighborhood in the decades since.
A fourth strike early Wednesday killed four men, three women and a child when it hit a home in Deir Al-Balah, an area that is located within the “humanitarian safe zone” where Israel has told Palestinians to seek refuge as it conducts offensives in multiple parts of the Gaza Strip.
The overnight bombardment came hours after Israeli warplanes struck the entrance of a school sheltering displaced families outside the southern city of Khan Younis. The toll from the strike rose to 31 people killed, including eight children, and more than 50 wounded, officials at the nearby Nasser Hospital said Wednesday.
Footage aired by Al-Jazeera television showed kids playing soccer in the school’s yard when a sudden boom shook the area, prompting shouts of “a strike, a strike!”
The Israeli army said the airstrike near the school and reports of civilian casualties were under review, and claimed it was targeting a Hamas militant who took part in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, though it provided no immediate evidence. The military blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants fight in dense, urban areas. But the army rarely comments on what it is targeting in individual strikes, which often kill women and children.
In nine months of bombardment and offensives in Gaza, Israel has killed more than 38,200 people and wounded more than 88,000, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. Nearly the entire population has been driven from their homes. Many have been displaced multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are packed into sweltering tent camps.
Israel’s onslaught was triggered by Hamas’ cross-border raid on Oct. 7, during which militants killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities. The militants took roughly 250 people hostage. About 120 are still in captivity, with about a third said to be dead.
This week, Israeli troops have also been waging a new ground assault in Gaza City in the north of the territory — its latest effort to battle Hamas militants regrouping in areas the army previously said had been largely cleared.
Large parts of Gaza City and urban areas around it have been flattened or left a shattered landscape by previous Israeli assaults, and much of the population fled earlier in the war. But the latest incursions and bombardment prompted a new flight of people.
After Israel on Monday called for an evacuation from eastern and central parts of Gaza City, staff at two hospitals — Al-Ahli and the Patients Friends Association Hospital — rushed to move patients and shut down, the United Nations said.
The Israeli military said Tuesday that it told hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza City they did not need to evacuate. But hospitals in Gaza have often shut down and moved patients at any sign of possible Israeli military action, fearing raids.
In the past nine months, Israeli troops have attacked at least eight hospitals, causing the deaths of patients and medical workers along with massive destruction to facilities and equipment. Israel has claimed Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes, though it has provided only limited evidence.
Only 13 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning, and those only partially, according to the United Nations’ humanitarian office.
International mediators were making a new concerted effort to push through a proposed ceasefire deal.
An Egyptian official said the head of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, Abbas Kamel, went to Doha to join discussions over the deal. The official said US and Israeli officials were also attending. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press on the meetings.
A day earlier, CIA Director William Burns, who has led the American mediation, met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Cairo
Obstacles remain in the talks, even after Hamas agreed to relent on its key demand that Israel commit to ending the war as part of any agreement. Hamas still wants mediators to guarantee that negotiations conclude with a permanent ceasefire.
Israel has rejected any deal that would force it to end the war with Hamas intact. Hamas on Monday accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “putting more obstacles in the way of negotiations,” including the operations in Gaza City.
Israeli strikes in central Gaza kill 20 Palestinians amid push for ceasefire deal
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Israeli strikes in central Gaza kill 20 Palestinians amid push for ceasefire deal
- Some casualties took place in area declared “safe zone” by Israel, say hospital authorities
- US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators hold talks for long-elusive ceasefire with Israeli officials in Doha
Israeli rights groups break taboo with accusations of genocide
- Israeli human rights groups brace for backlash
- Deeply sensitive accusation in Israel, founded after Holocaust
B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel released reports at a press conference in Jerusalem on Monday, saying Israel was carrying out “coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.”
That marked the strongest possible accusation against the state, which vehemently denies it. The charge of genocide is deeply sensitive in Israel because of its origins in the work of Jewish legal scholars in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. Israeli officials have rejected genocide allegations as antisemitic.
So Sarit Michaeli, B’Tselem’s international director, said the group expected to face attacks for making the claim in a country still traumatized by October 7, 2023.
“We’ve looked into all of the risks that we could be facing. These are legal, reputation, media risks, other types of risk, societal risks and we’ve done work to try and mitigate these risks,” said Michaeli, whose organization is seen as being on the political fringe in Israel but is respected internationally.
“We are also quite experienced in attacks by the government or social media, so this is not the first time.” It’s not unrealistic “to expect this issue, which is so fraught and so deeply contentious within Israeli society and internationally to lead to an even greater reaction,” she said.
Israel’s foreign ministry and prime minister’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Shortly after the reports were released on Monday, government spokesperson David Mencer said: “Yes, of course we have free speech in Israel.” He strongly rejected the reports’ findings and said that such accusations fostered anti-semitism abroad.
Some Israelis have expressed concern over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, destroyed much of the enclave and led to widespread hunger.
An international global hunger monitor said on Tuesday a famine scenario was unfolding in the Gaza Strip, with malnutrition soaring, children under five dying of hunger-related causes and humanitarian access severely restricted.
“For me, life is life, and it’s sad. No one should die there,” said nurse Shmuel Sherenzon, 31.
But the Israeli public generally rejects allegations of genocide.
Most of the 1,200 people killed and the 251 taken hostage to Gaza in the October 7 attacks in southern Israel were civilians, including men, women, children and the elderly.
In an editorial titled “Why are we blind to Gaza?” published on the mainstream news site Ynet last week, Israeli journalist Sever Plocker said images of ordinary Palestinians rejoicing over the attacks in and even following the militants to take part in violence made it almost impossible for Israelis to feel compassion for Gazans in the months that followed.
“The crimes of Hamas on October 7 have deeply burned – for generations – the consciousness of the entire Jewish public in Israel, which now interprets the destruction and killing in Gaza as a deterrent retaliation and therefore also morally legitimate.”
Israel has fended off accusations of genocide since the early days of the Gaza war, including a case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in the Hague that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned as “outrageous.”
While Israeli human rights groups say it can be difficult working under Israel’s far-right government, they don’t experience the kind of tough crackdowns their counterparts face in other parts of the Middle East.
Israel has consistently said its actions in Gaza are justified as self-defense and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, a charge the militant group denies.
Israeli media has focused more on the plight of hostages taken by Hamas, in the worst single attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
In this atmosphere, for B’Tselem’s Israeli staff members to come to the stark conclusion that their own country was guilty of genocide was emotionally challenging, said Yuli Novak, the organization’s executive director.
“It’s really incomprehensible, it’s a phenomena that the mind cannot bear,” Novak said, choking up.
“I think many of our colleagues are struggling at the moment, not only fear of sanctions but also to fully grasp this thing.”
Guy Shalev, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, said the organization faced a “wall of denial.”
It has been under pressure for months and is expecting a stronger backlash after releasing its report.
“Bureaucratic, legal, financial institutions such as banks freezing accounts including ours, and some of the challenges we expect to see in the next days...these efforts will intensify,” he told Reuters.
Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says
- Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says
ANKARA: Turkiye will start exporting natural gas from Azerbaijan to Syria from Saturday, the energy minister said on Wednesday.
Syria’s Islamist authorities, who toppled Bashar Assad in December, are seeking to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and economy after almost 14 years of civil war.
The conflict badly damaged Syria’s power infrastructure, leading to cuts that can last for more than 20 hours a day.
“We will start exporting natural gas from Azerbaijan to Aleppo via Kilis,” a province in southernmost Turkiye near the Syrian border, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said.
In May, Syrian Energy Minister Mohammad Al-Bashir said Damascus and Ankara had reached a deal for Turkiye to supply natural gas to the war-torn country via a pipeline in the north.
Gas-rich Azerbaijan is a historic ally of Turkiye which maintains close ties with the Syrian transitional government.
At least 5 dead in clashes between Uganda, South Sudan forces: official
- It was not clear what triggered the clashes on Monday between the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and government troops in Central Equatoria State that were confirmed by South Sudanese People’s Defense Force
JUBA: At least five South Sudan security forces were killed in clashes with the Ugandan army near the countries’ shared border earlier this week, local officials said Wednesday.
Uganda has a history of involvement in impoverished South Sudan, and has long provided military support to President Salva Kiir, including a deployment of special forces since March.
It was not clear what triggered the clashes on Monday between the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and government troops in Central Equatoria State that were confirmed by South Sudanese People’s Defense Force (SSPDF).
Police in Kajo Keji county, where the clashes took place, said “two SSPDF officers, two prison officers and a police officer” were killed, according to a statement from local authorities on Wednesday.
The statement quoted local army commander Henry Buri as saying the Ugandan forces “were heavily armed with tanks and artilleries,” and had targeted 19 “joint operation” forces.
There was no comment from the Ugandan government.
An earlier statement by local county officials said there had been “loss of lives and injuries from both sides.”
Uganda sent troops to support Kiir when civil war broke out in the country in 2013, just two years after it gained independence from Sudan.
The civil war between Kiir and his long-time rival, Riek Machar, lasted five years and left some 400,000 dead before a power-sharing agreement was reached in 2018.
Uganda again deployed special forces in March this year as Kiir moved once again against Machar, eventually placing him under house arrest.
That has all but buried the power-sharing deal and triggered conflict between the army and members of a militia from Machar’s ethnic Nuer community.
The Ugandan army has been accused of using chemical weapons, namely barrel bombs containing a flammable liquid that killed civilians, against Nuer militias in South Sudan’s northeast.
Uganda has denied the accusations.
African Union says does ‘not recognize’ Sudan parallel govt
- A bitter two-year civil war in Sudan has pitted the government against the Rapid Support Forces
- The AU called on all member states and the international community to reject the fragmentation of Sudan
ADDIS ABABA: The African Union said on Wednesday it would not recognize a “so-called parallel government” in Sudan, urging its members to follow suit.
A bitter two-year civil war in Sudan has pitted the government against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which announced it was forming a government and appointed a prime minister on Saturday.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council “called on all AU Member States and the international community to reject the fragmentation of Sudan and not recognize the so-called “parallel government” which has serious consequences on the peace efforts and the existential future of the country,” it said in a statement.
Saudi Arabia, France issue joint UN declaration calling for 2-state solution, end to Gaza war
- It pushes for reunification of Gaza and West Bank under control of the Palestinian Authority, and for Hamas to relinquish power in Gaza and surrender its weapons
- Floats the idea of a future ‘Peace Day’ to mark formal end of the conflict and the launch of regional cooperation in trade, energy and infrastructure
NEW YORK CITY: France and Saudi Arabia issued a joint declaration at the UN on Tuesday calling for an immediate end to the war in Gaza, and setting out a detailed international road map for the implementation of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Released at the close of a high-level international conference in New York, which the two countries co-chaired, and seen by Arab News, the “New York Declaration on the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine” outlined a time-bound process for establishing an independent, sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel, with security guarantees for both sides.
The declaration was endorsed by a broad group of international partners that had chaired working groups during the conference, including Brazil, Egypt, Japan, Ireland and the EU, in what organizers described as an “unprecedented global consensus” on the urgent need to resolve the long-standing conflict.
“The war in Gaza must end now,” the declaration stated. It condemned the attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent Israeli military operations in Gaza that have resulted in large-scale civilian casualties and the destruction of infrastructure.
It warned that a continuing conflict, absent a credible path to peace, “poses grave threats to regional and international stability,” and called for the immediate implementation of a phased ceasefire agreement, brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the US, to end hostilities, secure the release of hostages, and ensure the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
The declaration additionally called for the reunification of Gaza and the West Bank under the control of the Palestinian Authority, and for Hamas to relinquish power in Gaza and surrender its weapons. A transitional administrative committee, backed by international partners, would be established under the authority of the PA, supported by a temporary, UN-led stabilization mission to protect civilians and assist with the security and governance transitions.
“Only a political solution can deliver peace or security,” the declaration stated, as it reaffirmed international backing for a two-state solution based on 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.
The declaration also pledged broad international support for the reconstruction of Gaza, endorsing an Arab-Organization of Islamic Cooperation recovery plan, and announced a forthcoming Gaza Reconstruction Conference to take place in Cairo. It committed to the creation of a dedicated international trust fund, reaffirmed the role of UN Relief and Works Agency, and backed the Palestinian Authority’s agenda for reforms.
Recent commitments made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to hold elections and pursue peaceful statehood, alongside plans for democratic reforms and enhanced governance, were welcomed.
The signatories also called on Israeli authorities to halt settlement activity, end settler violence, and give a clear public commitment to a two-state solution. “Unilateral measures threaten to destroy the last remaining path to peace,” the declaration warned.
It linked Palestinian statehood to broader normalization and integration efforts in the Middle East. It proposed exploration of a regional security framework, modeled on the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and floated the idea of a future “Peace Day” to mark the formal conclusion of the conflict and the launch of regional cooperation in trade, energy and infrastructure.
The co-chairs of the conference pledged to present a progress report on efforts to implement the declaration during the 80th session of the UN General Assembly in September, and tasked the chairs of the working groups with establishing a follow-up mechanism under the umbrella of the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution.
“This is a historic opportunity,” the declaration stated. “The time for decisive, collective action is now — to end the war, realize Palestinian statehood, and secure peace and dignity for both peoples.”
