Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Israel-Hamas war: Kamala Harris to discuss aid to Gaza – as it happened

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This blog is now closed, please follow our live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war here.

AP is reporting that Benjamin Netanyahu has suspended heritage minister Amihai Eliyahu from cabinet meetings until further notice, after Eliyahu said dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza would be an option for Israel.

Netanyahu earlier said the remark was “divorced from reality”, and defence minister Yoav Gallant also criticized Eliyahu, saying: “It’s a good thing that people like this are not in charge of Israel’s security.”

Minister Amihai Eliyahu’s statements are not based in reality. Israel and the IDF are operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents. We will continue to do so until our victory.

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Israel launches major strikes on Gaza as violence flares up on Lebanon boundary

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Huge explosions reported in Gaza Strip, and communities in northern Israel come under mortar and rocket fire from Hezbollah

Gaza was rocked by a series of huge explosions on Sunday evening and communications with the coastal strip were cut, as violence also escalated on Israel’s northern boundary with Lebanon.

The strikes on Gaza came as the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) indicated that Israeli troops were planning to enter Gaza City in force perhaps within the next 48 hours, according to reports in Israeli media.

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Most agree Gaza needs help – but there’s fierce disagreement on how to deliver it

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While there is broad consensus on the need for a break in hostilities, people are divided on its extent, its duration, and how to label it

Most of the world agrees that the intensity of Israel’s attack on Gaza, while aimed at Hamas, is causing unbearable suffering to its civilians, pummelled from the air and running out of food, water and medical supplies.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, the top diplomat for Israel’s staunchest ally, delivered a personal message in Tel Aviv last week that more must be done to “protect Palestinian civilians” trapped after Israel laid siege to the territory.

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‘Loss and damage’ deal struck to help countries worst hit by climate crisis

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Governments draw up blueprint for fund to be administered at first by World Bank after tense Abu Dhabi talks

Countries have agreed key measures to supply funds to the world’s most vulnerable people to repair the damage from climate breakdown.

Governments from richer and poorer countries drew up the blueprint for a new “loss and damage” fund after a tense two-day meeting under UN guidance in Abu Dhabi that ended late on Saturday night.

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Parents-in-law of Humza Yousaf back in Scotland after fleeing Gaza

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The El-Naklas left Gaza on Friday but other British citizens are struggling to get out

The parents-in-law of Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, have arrived safely in Scotland after fleeing the conflict in Gaza, while dozens of other British citizens struggle to leave.

Yousaf shared a family photo of his wife, Nadia, and her parents, Elizabeth and Maged El-Nakla, surrounded by their relatives.

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Palestinian Authority would face many challenges in a post-Hamas Gaza

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Unpopular and incompetent, the West Bank’s leaders have little to offer in a ‘day after’ scenario, despite Antony Blinken’s hopes

After the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, won by the Hamas-backed Change and Reform party, the Palestinian Authority’s rule in Gaza was coming to an ignominious and chaotic end. Heavily armed families, some separated by their political affiliations with Hamas and Fatah, others by long-simmering rivalries, were involved in armed clashes.

In cities such as Khan Younis, barricades blocked districts that turned into impromptu strongholds. Corrupt, weak and incompetent, the PA in Gaza had allowed – even encouraged – the arming of the rival clans. Within months, the PA would be driven out by Hamas after a period of intra-Palestinian violence.

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What happens to Gaza the day after the war ends?

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A reformed Palestinian Authority or a multinational force have been mooted as solutions for security in the territory, but both proposals have met resistance

When Antony Blinken arrived in the Middle East on his most recent visit, one of the US secretary of state’s aims was to lift some of the fog over what happens to Gaza in the war’s aftermath, but he is meeting resistance both from Israel and Arab states.

Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said on Saturday at a press conference alongside Blinken: “What happens next? How can we even entertain what will happen in Gaza when we do not know what kind of Gaza will be left after this war is done? Are we going to be talking about a wasteland? Are we going to be talking about a whole population reduced to refugees? Simply, we do not know – we do not have all the variables to even start thinking about that.”

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Gaza ‘siege conditions’ unacceptable, says Lammy as Labour toughens line on Israel

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Shadow foreign secretary toughens line on Israel-Palestine in light of ‘shocking number’ of dead civilians

Labour has warned that the “siege conditions” in place in Gaza are unacceptable and called for an immediate humanitarian pause to the fighting, in the party’s strongest intervention over Israel’s intensifying war against Hamas.

David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary who visited the region last week, said that the “number of dead Palestinian civilians and children is shocking” as he called on Israel to take further steps to stop a “humanitarian catastrophe”. He said that Israel “must uphold international law” and also warned of violence in the West Bank.

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Rashida Tlaib claims in video that Biden supports Palestinian genocide

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Michigan Democrat is only Palestinian American in Congress and warns Biden voters ‘will remember in 2024’

Michigan Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, has released a video accusing Joe Biden of supporting the “genocide of the Palestinian people”.

Tlaib has been a withering critic of Biden’s staunch backing of the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza and the White House refusal to listen to demands from some progressive Democrats to back calls for a ceasefire.

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Protesters block London’s Oxford Street in pro-Palestine demonstration

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Free Palestine Coalition’s sit-in stops traffic in central shopping district as protests continue across UK over Israel-Hamas war

More than 350 protesters shut down part of Oxford Street on Saturday as they staged a sit-in protest during the shopping district’s busiest hours.

The demonstration, organised by the Free Palestine Coalition, a collective of grassroots groups standing in solidarity with Palestine, occupied a busy junction and stopped traffic for more than an hour by sitting down in the road.

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As their soldiers fight hand to hand in Gaza, Israelis wonder about the endgame

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Casualties in Gaza are growing, and so is Israel’s concern about the war’s direction

In the dark and the cloying heat of a Gaza night, the troops of the 13th Battalion of Israel’s Golani Brigade were attempting to advance in northern Gaza amid the flashes of air and artillery strikes across the Gaza Strip.

The ambush, when it happened, caught them by surprise – 30 fighters from an elite Hamas unit emerging from hidden tunnel entrances.

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Adelaide man thanks Australian officials for ‘relentless’ effort to get family of four home from Gaza

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Arriving in Adelaide the father of two has thanked everyone who ‘felt their pain’ and praised ‘compassionate’ Dfat staff

The father of a young family that has escaped war-torn Gaza and returned to Adelaide has thanked everyone who “felt their pain”, and praised the “relentless” efforts of Australian diplomats who secured their safety.

The Adelaide family of four travelled to Gaza so the two children, aged seven and 10, could visit their grandparents and family. It was their first visit to Gaza. They arrived two weeks before the conflict began and, according to their lawyer, have been through hell since then.

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Israel-Hamas war live: UN secretary general says ‘nowhere is safe’ in Gaza as Palestinian death toll tops 9,000

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António Guterres calls humanitarian situation in Gaza ‘horrific’ as thousands of people remain without food, water and medicine

Agence France-Presse has reported on the aftermath of what Hamas authorities said was Israeli tank shelling that killed 20 people at the Osama bin Zaid boys’ school north of Gaza City.

The report said:

Ambulance teams rushed into the debris-littered building to aid the injured and remove the dead.

Stunned onlookers wept and wandered the scene with hands clasped above the head in horror and disbelief.

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Antony Blinken meets Arab leaders in fresh effort to stop Gaza conflict escalating

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US secretary of state meets officials from Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar and UN as further civilian casualties reported in Gaza

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met senior Jordanian and other Arab officials in Amman on Saturday in the latest effort by Washington to avert a regional escalation of the war between Israel and Hamas, ease the acute humanitarian crisis in Gaza and build support for planning a post-conflict future for the territory.

The trip was Blinken’s second to the Middle East since the conflict began almost a month ago but came against the backdrop of further civilian casualties in Gaza and an apparent snub from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Lack of clean drinking water for 95% of people in Gaza threatens health crisis

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Polluted water supplies and salty groundwater are making people ill, with UN warning of threat of child deaths from dehydration

Palestinians who fled to southern Gaza, after warnings from Israel to leave their homes, are standing in line for hours to get contaminated water they believe is making them ill.

Long queues of people waiting to fill jerry cans are now ubiquitous across the territory as water becomes increasingly scarce, a result of restrictions on water and power imposed by Israel.

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Leftist Democrats invoke human rights law in scrutiny of Israel military aid

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Congressional progressives say proposed $14.3bn breaches 1997 Leahy act as assault on Gaza has overwhelmingly harmed civilians

Leftwing Democrats in Congress have invoked a landmark law barring assistance to security forces of governments deemed guilty of human rights abuses to challenge the Biden administration’s emergency military aid program for Israel.

Members of the Democratic party’s progressive wing say the $14.3bn package pledged by the White House after the 7 October attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,400 Israelis breaches the Leahy Act because Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has overwhelmingly harmed civilians. An estimated 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza so far, among them 3,700 children, according to the Gaza health ministry, run by Hamas.

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Israeli PM tells US: no pause in Gaza fighting without release of hostages

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Netanyahu says ‘full force’ offensive will continue, despite growing concerns over civilian casualties

Israel will continue its offensive in Gaza “with full force” and will refuse any temporary ceasefire that does not include the release of more than 240 hostages held by Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu has said, rejecting US calls for a pause in the fighting.

Earlier on Friday, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, flew into Israel to urge the Israeli prime minister to temporarily stop its military offensive to allow aid into the territory amid rising concerns over civilian casualties as the fighting intensifies.

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UN says agency in Gaza ‘practically out of business’ – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. Our live coverage of the Israel-Hamas war continues here

On Friday afternoon, the Hezbollah secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, is to make a highly anticipated speech. The head of the influential Iran-backed Shia militant group will break weeks of silence with a broadcast from Beirut, which comes in the wake of a rise in violence on Israel’s northern border.

Hezbollah said on Thursday it had simultaneously attacked 19 positions in Israel on Thursday evening. The clashes have so far been mostly contained to the frontier, and Hezbollah has used only a fraction of the firepower that Nasrallah has been threatening with Israel for years.

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Israeli forces attack Hamas targets in Gaza City as ground war intensifies

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IDF spokesperson says military ‘powerfully deployed’ north of Gaza and civilians still urged to move south

Israeli forces have surrounded Gaza City and are attacking Hamas infrastructure and destroying tunnels used by militants to launch attacks, the Israeli military said.

Airstrikes continued alongside the intensifying ground offensive in what Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described as the second stage of the war.

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First of 100-strong group of Britons cross Gaza border into Egypt

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Scotland first minister’s parents-in-law among those evacuated, amid concerns for those stuck in northern Gaza

The first people in a group of about 100 Britons due to leave Gaza on Friday have made the crossing into Egypt, amid concerns about whether individuals in the north of the Palestinian territory will be able to make it to the southern Rafah crossing.

By Friday, there were 127 people on the UK list to be evacuated into Egypt since the crossing opened on Wednesday, more than three weeks after the conflict began in which thousands of Palestinians and Israelis have been killed. Among those able to leave Gaza were the parents-in-law of Scotland’s first minister, Humza Yousaf, who described the last four weeks as a “living nightmare” for the family of his wife, Nadia El-Nakla.

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