TEL AVIV, Israel: Egypt said Friday it has agreed to send United Nations humanitarian aid trucks through Israel’s main crossing into Gaza, but it was unclear if they will be able to enter the territory as fighting raged in the southern city of Rafah amid Israel’s escalating offensive there.
Gaza’s humanitarian crisis has spiraled as the UN and other aid agencies say the entry of food and other supplies to them has plunged dramatically since Israel’s Rafah offensive began more than two weeks ago. On Friday, the top UN court — the International Court of Justice — ordered Israel to halt the Rafah offensive, though Israel is unlikely to comply.
At the heart of the problem lie the two main crossings through which around 300 trucks of aid a day had been flowing into Gaza before the offensive began.
Israeli troops seized the Rafah crossing into Egypt, which has been inoperative since. The nearby Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza has remained open, and Israel says it has been sending hundreds of trucks a day into it. But while commercial trucks have successfully crossed, the UN says it cannot reach Kerem Shalom to pick up aid as it enters because fighting in the area makes it too dangerous.
As a result, the UN says it has received only 143 trucks from the crossing in the past 19 days. Hundreds of truckloads have been sitting on the Gaza side of the crossing unretrieved, according to Israeli officials, who say UN manpower limitations are to blame. UN and other aid agencies had to rely on the far smaller number of trucks entering daily from a single crossing in northern Gaza and via a US-built pier bringing supplies by sea.
Humanitarian groups are scrambling to get food to Palestinians as some 900,000 people flee Rafah, scattering across central and southern Gaza. Aid workers warn Gaza is near famine. UNRWA, the main UN agency in the humanitarian effort, had to halt food distribution in Rafah city because it had run out of supplies.
The Egyptian announcement appeared to resolve a political obstacle on one side of the border.
Israel says it has kept the Rafah crossing open and asked Egypt to coordinate with it on sending aid convoys through it. Egypt refused, fearing the Israeli hold will remain permanent, and demanded Palestinians be put back in charge of the facility. The White House has been pressing Egypt to resume the flow of trucks.
In a phone call with US President Joe Biden on Friday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi agreed to allow trucks carrying humanitarian aid and fuel to go to the Kerem Shalom crossing until a solution is found for the Rafah crossing, El-Sisi’s office said in a statement.
But it remained unclear whether the UN will be able to access additional trucks coming from Egypt.
UNRWA did not immediately reply to requests for comment. In a post on social media outlet X on Thursday, it said, “We could resume (food distribution in Rafah) tomorrow if the crossing reopened & we were provided with safe routes.”
Mercy Corps, an aid group operating in Gaza, said in a statement Friday that the offensive had caused the “functional closure … of the two main lifelines” of aid and “has brought the humanitarian system to its knees.”
“If dramatic changes do not occur, including opening all border crossings to safely surge aid into these areas, we fear that a wave of secondary mortality will result, with people succumbing to the combination of hunger, lack of clean water and sanitation, and the spread of disease in areas where there is little medical care,” it said.
Fighting appeared to escalate in Rafah. Bombardment intensified Friday in eastern parts of the city, near Kerem Shalom, but shelling was also taking place in central, southern and western districts closer to the Rafah crossing, witnesses said.
Israeli leaders have said they must uproot Hamas fighters from Rafah to complete the destruction of the group after its Oct. 7 attack.
Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and abducted around 250 others in the Oct. 7 attack. Around half of those hostages have since been freed, most in swaps for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel during a weeklong ceasefire in November.
Israel’s campaign of bombardment and offensives in Gaza has killed more than 35,800 Palestinians and wounded more than 80,200, the Gaza Health Ministry said Friday. Its count does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
The Israeli military said its troops overnight found the bodies of three people killed in the Oct. 7 attack and subsequently taken into Gaza and counted among the hostages.
The bodies of Hanan Yablonka, Michel Nisenbaum, and Orion Hernandez Radoux were found in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, where Israeli troops have been fighting for the past week with Hamas militants, the military said.
The announcement comes less than a week after the army said it found in the same area the bodies of three other Israeli hostages also killed on Oct. 7.
Nisenbaum, 59, was a Brazilian-Israeli from the southern city of Sderot. He was killed in his car as he went to get his 4-year-old granddaughter from a site near Gaza that came under attack by the militants.
Oryon Hernandez Radoux, 30, and Yablonka, 42, a father of two, were both killed as they tried to escape the Nova music festival, where the attackers killed hundreds of people. Hernandez Radoux had been attending the festival with his partner, German-Israeli Shani Louk, whose body was among those found by the army earlier.
Israel says around 100 hostages are still captive in Gaza, along with the bodies of at least 39 more, while 17 bodies of hostages have been recovered.
The group representing the families of the hostages said the bodies had been returned to their families for burial. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country had a duty to do everything to return those abducted, both those killed and those who are alive.
French President Emmanuel Macron gave condolences to the family of Hernández-Radoux, a French-Mexican citizen, saying France remains committed to releasing the hostages.
CIA Director Bill Burns was meeting in Paris on Friday with Israeli and Qatari officials in informal talks aimed at getting hostage and ceasefire negotiations back on track, a US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive discussions. Burns is in close contact with Egyptian officials, who like the Qataris have acted as mediators with Hamas, the US official said.
Ceasefire talks ground to a halt at the beginning of the month after a major push by the US and other mediators to secure a deal, in hopes of averting a planned Israeli invasion of the southern city of Rafah. The talks were stymied by a central sticking point: Hamas demands guarantees that the war will end and Israeli troops will withdraw from Gaza completely in return for a release of all the hostages, a demand Israel rejects.
Egypt agrees to send aid trucks through Israeli crossing to Gaza but impact is unclear
https://arab.news/y5svv
Egypt agrees to send aid trucks through Israeli crossing to Gaza but impact is unclear
- Israeli troops seized the Rafah crossing into Egypt, which has been inoperative since
- The UN says it cannot reach Kerem Shalom to pick up aid as it enters because fighting in the area makes it too dangerous
The crisis is Gaza is only growing. Here’s what to know
JERUSALEM: The crisis in Gaza has reached one of its darkest periods, as Israel blocks all food and supplies from entering the territory and continues an intensifying bombardment campaign.
Humanitarian officials caution that famine threatens to engulf the strip. Doctors say they are out of medicine to treat routine conditions.
Israeli leaders are threatening an even more intense ground offensive. The military is preparing for a new organization with US backing to take over aid delivery, despite alarms raised from humanitarian groups that the plans won’t meet the massive need and could place restrictions on those eligible. It’s unclear when operations would begin or who would fund them.
“This is the deadliest and most destructive phase of Israel’s war on Gaza, yet the world has turned away,” said Bushra Khalidi, policy lead for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory at the humanitarian nonprofit Oxfam. “After 19 months of horror, Gaza has become a place where international law is suspended, and humanity is abandoned.”
HERE’S WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE STATE OF AFFAIRS IN GAZA
Casualties soar from increased Israeli bombardment
Israel ended a six-week ceasefire in mid-March and resumed its attacks in Gaza, saying military pressure against Hamas was the best way to push the militant group into freeing more hostages. But ceasefire talks remain deadlocked, and scores of civilians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.
On Friday, Israeli airstrikes killed 108 — raising the death toll over the past three days to more than 200 Palestinians. Those numbers come from the Palestinian Health Ministry, a body directed by the Hamas government that does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The strikes — often at night, as people sleep in their tents — have directly targeted hospitals, schools, medical clinics, mosques, a Thai restaurant-turned shelter. The European Hospital, the only remaining facility providing cancer treatments in Gaza, was put out of service.
Israel says it targets only militants and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
But the death toll has reached the same level of intensity as the earliest days of the war, when Israel pounded Gaza with airstrikes in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, said Emily Tripp, executive director of Airwars, an independent group in London that tracks recent conflicts.
She says preliminary data indicate the number of incidents where at least one person was killed or injured by Israeli fire hovered around 700 in April. It’s a figure comparable only to October or December 2023 — one of the heaviest periods of bombardment.
In the last 10 days of March, UNICEF estimates that an average of 100 children were killed or maimed by Israeli airstrikes every day.
Almost 3,000 of the estimated 53,000 dead since Oct. 7, 2023, have been killed since Israel broke the ceasefire on March 18, the ministry said.
Among those killed in recent days:
A volunteer pharmacist with the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, killed with her family in a strike on Gaza City on May 4.
A midwife from Al Awda Health and Community Association, killed with her family in another strike on May 7.
A journalist working for Qatari television network Al Araby TV, along with 11 members of his family.
Motaz Al-Bayyok, age 1. His older brother, Yusuf, 11, screamed as a shroud was parted to expose young Motaz’s face.
Israeli officials threaten new ground operation
Israel shows no sign of slowing its operation in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised this week to use even more force against Hamas, against the objections of families of hostages begging him to agree to a deal instead.
An Israeli official said the strikes Friday were preparatory actions for a larger operation, intended to send a message to Hamas that it will begin soon if there isn’t an agreement to release hostages. The official was not authorized to brief media and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The war began when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in an Oct. 7, 2023, intrusion into southern Israel. Hamas still holds 58 of the roughly 250 hostages it took during its attack, with 23 believed to still be alive, although Israeli authorities have expressed concern for the status of three.
No food has entered Gaza for 75 days, and Palestinians go hungry
Israel has blocked food, water and supplies from reaching Gaza — where the UN says the entire population is reliant on aid — for more than two months. Most community kitchens have shut down. The main food providers inside Gaza — the UN’s World Food Program and World Central Kitchen — say they are out of food. Vegetables and meat are inaccessible or unaffordable. Palestinians queue for hours for a small scoop of rice.
Food security experts said in a stark warning Monday that Gaza would likely fall into famine if Israel doesn’t lift its blockade and stop its military campaign.
Nearly half a million Palestinians face possible starvation — living in “catastrophic” levels of hunger — and 1 million others can barely get enough food, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a leading international authority on the severity of hunger crises.
Israel is preparing south Gaza for a new aid program
Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press show what appear to be Israeli preparations for a new aid distribution program in Gaza, one that has come under heavy criticism from aid workers.
Satellite photos from May 10 show four bases in southern Gaza — two that are newly built in the last month and two that have been enhanced.
One, at the southwestern corner of Gaza, has been fortified with new walls. A new road connects the base to a sandy expanse of newly bulldozed land.
Another base, in the center of Gaza, appears to have been fortified with new defensive sand berms. Adjacent is a newly bulldozed lot.
The photos appear to correspond to a new aid distribution program being developed by a new group supported by the US.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — made up of American security contractors, former government officials, ex-military officers and humanitarian officials — says it would initially set up four distribution sites, guarded by private security firms. Each would serve 300,000 people, covering only about half of Gaza’s population.
The GHF proposal said subcontractors will use armored vehicles to transport supplies from the Gaza border to distribution sites, where they will also provide security. It said the aim is to deter criminal gangs or militants from redirecting aid.
‘Let’s not waste time’ with US-backed Gaza aid plan UN aid chief’: UN aid chief
- No aid has entered Gaza since March 2
- US-backed aid group aims to start work by end of May
UNITED NATIONS: United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher said on Friday that time should not be wasted on an alternative US-backed proposal to deliver aid to Gaza, saying the UN has a proven plan and 160,000 pallets of relief ready to enter the Palestinian enclave now.
“To those proposing an alternative modality for aid distribution, let’s not waste time. We already have a plan,” he said in a statement as Israel blocked the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza for the 75th day in a row.
US President Donald Trump said earlier on Friday that “a lot of people are starving in Gaza.” A global hunger monitor has warned that half a million people face starvation — about a quarter of the population in the enclave.
Israel has accused Palestinian militant group Hamas of stealing aid, which the group denies. Under the alternative heavily-criticized aid plan, a US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aims to start work in Gaza by the end of May.
The foundation intends to work with private US security and logistics firms to transport aid into Gaza to so-called secure hubs where it will be then distributed by aid groups, a source familiar with the plan has told Reuters. It is unclear how the foundation will be funded.
The UN has said it won’t work with the foundation because the distribution plan is not impartial, neutral or independent. Fletcher on Friday issued a briefing note on the UN plan to resume aid deliveries to Gaza, adding that nearly 9,000 trucks are ready to enter the enclave.
“We have the people. We have the distribution networks. We have the trust of the communities on the ground. And we have the aid itself – 160,000 pallets of it – ready to move. Now,” he said. “We demand rapid, safe, and unimpeded aid delivery for civilians in need. Let us work.”
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has asked Israel to allow humanitarian deliveries by the UN and aid groups to resume now until its own infrastructure is fully operational, saying this is essential to “alleviate the ongoing humanitarian pressure.”
Israel has committed to the foundation to let aid deliveries resume imminently, said a source familiar with the plan. Israel’s UN mission in New York declined to comment on Friday.
The war in Gaza was triggered on October 7, 2023, when Palestinian militants Hamas killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took some 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.
Microsoft says it provided AI to Israeli military for war but denies use to harm people in Gaza
- The company added that it could not know how its products might be used through other commercial cloud providers
WASHINGTON: Microsoft acknowledged Thursday that it sold advanced artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to the Israeli military during the war in Gaza and aided in efforts to locate and rescue Israeli hostages. But the company also said it has found no evidence to date that its Azure platform and AI technologies were used to target or harm people in Gaza.
The unsigned blog post on Microsoft’s corporate website appears to be the company’s first public acknowledgement of its deep involvement in the war, which started after Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel and has led to the deaths of tens of thousands in Gaza.
It comes nearly three months after an investigation by The Associated Press revealed previously unreported details about the American tech giant’s close partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, with military use of commercial AI products skyrocketing by nearly 200 times after the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. The AP reported that the Israeli military uses Azure to transcribe, translate and process intelligence gathered through mass surveillance, which can then be cross-checked with Israel’s in-house AI-enabled targeting systems and vice versa.
The partnership reflects a growing drive by tech companies to sell their artificial intelligence products to militaries for a wide range of uses, including in Israel, Ukraine and the United States. However, human rights groups have raised concerns that AI systems, which can be flawed and prone to errors, are being used to help make decisions about who or what to target, resulting in the deaths of innocent people.
Microsoft said Thursday that employee concerns and media reports had prompted the company to launch an internal review and hire an external firm to undertake “additional fact-finding.” The statement did not identify the outside firm or provide a copy of its report.
The statement also did not directly address several questions about precisely how the Israeli military is using its technologies, and the company declined Friday to comment further. Microsoft declined to answer written questions from The AP about how its AI models helped translate, sort and analyze intelligence used by the military to select targets for airstrikes.
The company’s statement said it had provided the Israeli military with software, professional services, Azure cloud storage and Azure AI services, including language translation, and had worked with the Israeli government to protect its national cyberspace against external threats. Microsoft said it had also provided “special access to our technologies beyond the terms of our commercial agreements” and “limited emergency support” to Israel as part of the effort to help rescue the more than 250 hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.
“We provided this help with significant oversight and on a limited basis, including approval of some requests and denial of others,” Microsoft said. “We believe the company followed its principles on a considered and careful basis, to help save the lives of hostages while also honoring the privacy and other rights of civilians in Gaza.”
The company did not answer whether it or the outside firm it hired communicated or consulted with the Israeli military as part of its internal probe. It also did not respond to requests for additional details about the special assistance it provided to the Israeli military to recover hostages or the specific steps to safeguard the rights and privacy of Palestinians.
In its statement, the company also conceded that it “does not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices.” The company added that it could not know how its products might be used through other commercial cloud providers.
In addition to Microsoft, the Israeli military has extensive contracts for cloud or AI services with Google, Amazon, Palantir and several other major American tech firms.
Microsoft said the Israeli military, like any other customer, was bound to follow the company’s Acceptable Use Policy and AI Code of Conduct, which prohibit the use of products to inflict harm in any way prohibited by law. In its statement, the company said it had found “no evidence” the Israeli military had violated those terms.
Emelia Probasco, a senior fellow for the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University, said the statement is noteworthy because few commercial technology companies have so clearly laid out standards for working globally with international governments.
“We are in a remarkable moment where a company, not a government, is dictating terms of use to a government that is actively engaged in a conflict,” she said. “It’s like a tank manufacturer telling a country you can only use our tanks for these specific reasons. That is a new world.”
Israel has used its vast trove of intelligence to both target Islamic militants and conduct raids into Gaza seeking to rescue hostages, with civilians often caught in the crossfire. For example, a February 2024 operation that freed two Israeli hostages in Rafah resulted in the deaths of 60 Palestinians. A June 2024 raid in the Nuseirat refugee camp freed four Israeli hostages from Hamas captivity but resulted in the deaths of at least 274 Palestinians.
Overall, Israel’s invasions and extensive bombing campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon have resulted in the deaths of more than 50,000 people, many of them women and children.
No Azure for Apartheid, a group of current and former Microsoft employees, called on Friday for the company to publicly release a full copy of the investigative report.
“It’s very clear that their intention with this statement is not to actually address their worker concerns, but rather to make a PR stunt to whitewash their image that has been tarnished by their relationship with the Israeli military,” said Hossam Nasr, a former Microsoft worker fired in October after he helped organize an unauthorized vigil at the company’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza.
Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, applauded Microsoft Friday for taking a step toward transparency. But she said the statement raised many unanswered questions, including details about how Microsoft’s services and AI models were being used by the Israeli military on its own government servers.
“I’m glad there’s a little bit of transparency here,” said Cohn, who has long called on US tech giants to be more open about their military contracts. “But it is hard to square that with what’s actually happening on the ground.”
Libyan protesters demand prime minister quit as three ministers resign
- Some protesters tried to storm Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah's office, leaving one security force dead
- At least three ministers resigned in sympathy with the protesters, who want Dbeibah to resign
TRIPOLI: Hundreds of Libyan protesters called on Friday for the ouster of the internationally-recognized prime minister and his government said one security force member was killed when some protesters tried to storm his office.
At least three ministers resigned in sympathy with the protesters, who want Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah to quit. The demonstrators gathered in Martyrs’ Square in Tripoli, chanting slogans such as “The nation wants to topple the government” and “We want elections.”
They then marched to the main government building in the city center. “We won’t leave until he leaves,” one protester said.
The marchers carried pictures of Dbeibah, national security adviser Ibrahim Dbeibah and Interior Minister Emad Tarbulsi with their faces crossed out in red.
Dbeibah, who leads the divided country’s Government of National Unity, came to power through a UN-backed process in 2021. Planned elections failed to proceed that year because of disagreements among rival factions, and he has remained in power.
The government media platform said in a statement that one security member of its building protection force was killed, posting a video footage showing the building’s fence destroyed with rocks on the ground.
“Security forces thwarted an attempted storming of the Prime Minister’s Office by a group embedded among the demonstrators,” it said in the statement.
On Friday, businessman Wael Abdulhafed said: “We are (here) today to express our anger against Dbeibah and all those in the power for years now and (who) prevent elections. They must leave power.”
Calls for Dbeibah to resign increased after two rival armed groups clashed in the capital this week in the heaviest fighting in years. Eight civilians were killed, according to the United Nations.
Violence flared after the prime minister on Tuesday ordered the armed groups to be dismantled. Demonstrators have accused Dbeibah of failing to restore stability and of being complicit in the growing power of armed groups.
Economy and Trade Minister Mohamed Al-Hawij, Local Government Minister Badr Eddin Al-Tumi and Minister of Housing Abu Bakr Al-Ghawi resigned on Friday.
Militia leader Abdulghani Kikli, widely known as Ghaniwa, died in the clashes, which calmed on Wednesday after the government announced a ceasefire.
Libya has had little stability since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising ousted longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi. The country split in 2014 between rival eastern and western factions, though an outbreak of major warfare paused with a truce in 2020.
While eastern Libya has been dominated for a decade by commander Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army, control in Tripoli and western Libya has been splintered among numerous armed factions.
The main oil facilities in the major energy exporter are located in southern and eastern Libya, far from fighting in Tripoli. Engineers at several oil fields and export terminals told Reuters output remained unaffected by the clashes.
US developing plan to move 1 million Palestinians to Libya, NBC News reports
- The US has discussed it with Libya’s leadership
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate as much as one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya, NBC News reported on Friday, citing five people with knowledge of the matter.
Citing two people with direct knowledge and a former US official, NBC also reported that the plan is under serious enough consideration that the US has discussed it with Libya’s leadership.
In exchange for resettling the Palestinians, the administration would release to Libya billions of dollars of funds the US froze more than a decade ago, according to NBC and citing the same three people.
