Category Archives: Israel

Thousands of Israelis line streets for funeral of Bibas family killed in Gaza

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National outpouring of grief comes amid reports that deal reached to resume ceasefire with Hamas

Thousands of Israelis have lined the route of a funeral procession for two small children and their mother who were held hostage and died in captivity in Gaza.

The national outpouring of grief for Ariel, Kfir and Shiri Bibas came amid reports that a deal had been reached to resume the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, with the handover of more bodies of hostages in return for the release of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

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Israel strikes targets in southern Syria after demanding demilitarisation

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Military sites hit as Tel Aviv says it ‘will not allow southern Syria to become southern Lebanon’

Israeli warplanes have carried out several airstrikes on military targets outside Damascus and in southern Syria, as Israeli officials warned the country’s army not to move south of the capital city.

Israeli jets struck military sites late on Tuesday in the town of Kiswah, south of Damascus, as well as in the southern province of Deraa, local Syrian media reported.

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Israel ‘wants to extend first phase of Gaza ceasefire deal’ as talks stall

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Israel ready to resume fighting if there is no progress in crucial talks this week, reports say

Israel is seeking to extend the first stage of the ceasefire agreement in the war with Hamas in Gaza and is prepared to resume fighting if there is no progress in crucial talks this week, according to reports.

Israel’s Kan Radio, along with Ma’ariv, a daily newspaper, reported on Tuesday that informal talks were under way aimed at extending the first 42-day stage of the ceasefire, which expires on Saturday. Official internationally mediated negotiations on how to implement the second stage – which would involve a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territory – were supposed to begin weeks ago, but have been repeatedly postponed as the fragile truce has lurched from crisis to crisis.

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UN ‘gravely concerned by rising violence’ in West Bank; Gaza ceasefire in doubt as first phase nears end – Middle East crisis live

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Israeli tanks in West Bank for first time in more than two decades amid tensions over ceasefire agreement with Hamas

Hamas official Basem Naim has been talking to Al Jazeera about the precocious Gaza ceasefire deal which looks increasingly like it will collapse. As a reminder, Benjamin Netanyahu has delayed the handover of 620 Palestinians indefinitely as he is demanding Hamas stop what he called its “cynical use of hostages for propaganda”.

Naim – a member of Hamas’s political bureau - said the Israeli prime minister is “intentionally sabotaging” the truce agreement. He told Al Jazeera:

Before going to the next step, we have to be sure that the past step, which was releasing 620 prisoners, are already released.

Because Netanyahu is clearly sending strong messages that he is intentionally sabotaging the deal; he is preparing the atmosphere for returning back to the war.

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Israel says West Bank operation will last for a year as it sends tanks to Jenin

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Continued operation in Palestinian territory will leave 40,000 displaced people unable to return home

Israel has sent tanks to the West Bank city of Jenin, in the first deployment of its kind in the area in more than two decades, as troops intensify operations in the territory that officials said will last at least a year.

The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, said on Sunday that the latest operation across the West Bank was expanding, and that troops would remain in the area’s urban hotspots “for the coming year”, meaning approximately 40,000 people displaced by the fighting will not be able to return to their homes.

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Massive crowds attend funeral of late Hezbollah leader Nasrallah

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Hasan Nasrallah, one of the founding members of Hezbollah, was killed during Israeli bombing in September

Tens of thousands of people have attended a funeral in Beirut for Hassan Nasrallah, who led the Iran-backed, Lebanese militia and political party Hezbollah for three decades before being killed in an Israeli bombing last September.

The ceremony was held in a sports stadium in the southern suburbs of Beirut, which had extra seats installed prior to the ceremony in anticipation of the massive crowds.

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Israeli hostage only discovered fiancee had survived 7 October after his release

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Eliya Cohen spent more than 500 days in captivity fearing Ziv Abud had died in Hamas attacks in 2023

An Israeli hostage only discovered his fiancee had survived the 7 October attacks after his release on Saturday, Israeli media has reported.

Eliya Cohen had spent more than 500 days in captivity fearing his bride-to-be, Ziv Abud, was dead. The last time they had seen each other, they were hiding in a shelter with relatives and friends after attending the Nova festival.

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Hamas hands over six hostages but Israel delays release of 600 Palestinians

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Ceasefire in jeopardy as Israel says it will wait ‘until release of next hostages is guaranteed’

Hamas released six Israeli hostages on Saturday, but Israel delayed the handover of more than 600 Palestinians it was due to free from its prisons in exchange, putting the five-week-old ceasefire agreement once more in jeopardy.

The government said the release would be delayed “until the release of the next hostages is guaranteed, and without the degrading ceremonies” at handovers of Israeli captives in Gaza.

The statement by Benjamin Netanyahu’s office came as vehicles apparently carrying prisoners left the open gates of Ofer prison, only to turn around and go back in.

The release of 620 Palestinian prisoners had been delayed for several hours and was meant to occur just after six Israeli hostages were released on Saturday.

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Shiri Bibas remains identified as Israel and Hamas prepare for another hostage-prisoner swap

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Gaza ceasefire deal still on track amid uproar over fate of two Israeli boys and initial false return of their mother’s body

The body of the Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas has been identified, Israel’s army radio reported early on Saturday, adding that Bibas was likely killed in captivity with her children.

The confirmation came as Israelis and Palestinians braced for another tense exchange of hostages, prisoners and detainees on Saturday after uproar in Israel over allegations that two child hostages were “brutally murdered” by Hamas, and the group’s initial failure to deliver the body of their mother, instead returning the corpse of an unidentified woman.

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Long-term effects of Gaza war could quadruple Palestinian death toll, warn UK doctors

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Surgeons who worked in Gaza fear disease, malnutrition and eradication of healthcare will reverberate for decades

British doctors who worked in Gaza during the war have issued dire predictions over the long-term health of Palestinian civillians, warning that large numbers will continue to die.

The prevalence of infectious disease and multiple health problems linked to malnutrition, alongside the destruction of hospitals and killing of medical experts, meant mortality rates among Palestinians in Gaza would remain high after the cessation of Israeli shelling.

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Middle East crisis live: Israeli military says body of Shiri Bibas is not among returned hostages

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Israel has demanded the return of Shiri Bibas after it said testing showed that one of the four bodies released by Hamas did not belong to any other hostage

The Israeli military has said the two Bibas boys were “murdered by terrorists” in Gaza.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said earlier that Ariel and Kfir Bibas had been identified after their bodies were released by Hamas on Thursday under the current ceasefire agreement.

According to the assessment of professional officials, based on the intelligence available to us and forensic findings from the identification process, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were brutally murdered by terrorists in captivity in November 2023.

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Bus blasts in Israel are ‘suspected terror attack’, say police

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No injuries reported after three explosions in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, with two more bombs being defused

Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he has ordered the military to conduct an “intense operation” against “terror hubs” in the West Bank after a series of explosions on three parked buses that authorities said was a suspected terrorist attack. No injuries were reported.

The explosions on Thursday happened on a day when Israel was grieving after Hamas returned the bodies of four hostages from Gaza as part of a ceasefire deal. The bus explosions were reminiscent of bombings during the Palestinian uprising of the 2000s, but such attacks are now rare.

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‘One of the hardest days’ in Israel as Hamas hands over hostages’ bodies

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Remains of two young children, an elderly man and an unidentified fourth person arrive in Tel Aviv after ‘cruel’ handover in Gaza

The remains of two young children and an elderly man who were taken hostage by Hamas, as well as a fourth person who remains unidentified, have been handed over to Israel in what onlookers described as one of the “hardest days” for Israelis since the Palestinian militant group attack that ignited the war in Gaza.

A convoy carrying what was thought to be the bodies of Shiri Bibas, 32, her sons Ariel and Kfir, four years and nine months old respectively, and 85-year-old Oded Lifshitz, all from the Nir Oz kibbutz, arrived at a forensics centre in Tel Aviv yesterday for DNA checks and autopsy procedures.

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Israeli hostage vowed to return to his family – only to find they had been killed

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Eli Sharabi learned his wife and daughters had been killed after his release from captivity in Gaza but is ‘mentally strong’, says British brother-in-law

“Don’t worry, I will be back. Whatever they do to me, I will be back,” was one of the last things Eli Sharabi told his wife and daughters before he was abducted by Hamas. And when the 52-year-old was freed after 16 months in captivity in Gaza, he was desperate to know if his family were waiting for him.

It was only then that he was told that his British wife, Lianne Sharabi, 48, and daughters Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13, had been murdered at their home in the Be’eri kibbutz in Israel on 7 October 2023.

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Hamas offers handover of all hostages to Israel if next phase of ceasefire agreed

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Benjamin Netanyahu signals readiness for talks on second phase by appointing adviser Ron Dermer to lead delegation

Hamas has said it is ready to release all its remaining hostages in a single exchange if the ceasefire agreement with Israel moves forward to a second phase next month.

The offer came as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, signalled his readiness to talk about a second phase of the Gaza ceasefire after an extended delay, by appointing one of his closest advisers, Ron Dermer, a US-born cabinet minister and former ambassador to Washington, to lead the Israeli delegation to the talks.

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Hamas says it will hand over bodies of Bibas family and free six hostages

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Remains of Shiri Bibas and young sons Kfir and Ariel, whose deaths had not been confirmed, to be returned on Thursday

Hamas has said it will release six hostages from Gaza this week and hand over the bodies of four others, including the remains of two young children from the same family whose deaths had not previously been confirmed.

Khalil al-Hayya, a Hamas negotiator, said the four bodies to be handed over on Thursday would include those of 32-year-old Shiri Bibas and her sons, Kfir and Ariel, who were nine months old and four years old when Hamas abducted them from the Nir Oz kibbutz during the 7 October 2023 attack that ignited the Gaza war.

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Campaigners urge F-35 fighter jet producing nations to stop supplying Israel

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Exclusive: More than 200 civil society groups say governments have failed to prevent planes from being used to violate international law

More than 200 organisations worldwide have called on nations involved in producing F-35 fighter jets to “immediately halt all arms transfers to Israel” amid fears they have failed to prevent the planes from being used to violate international law.

The letter, signed by 232 civil society organisations, was sent on Monday to government ministers in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, the US and the UK as the war in Gaza reached 500 days.

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Netanyahu seeks to draw Trump into future attack on Iranian nuclear sites

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Israeli PM urges US to help ‘finish the job’ as Washington makes early maximalist demand over Tehran’s programme

Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that, with Donald Trump’s support, his government will “finish the job” of neutralising the threat from Iran, amid US reports that Israel is considering airstrikes against Iranian nuclear sites in the coming few months.

Trump has said he would prefer to make a deal with Tehran, but also made clear that he was considering US military action if talks failed, and his administration has laid down an early maximalist demand: Iranian abandonment of its entire nuclear programme.

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Netanyahu ‘committed’ to Trump’s plan to take over Gaza

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Comments suggest Israeli PM will reject Hamas pledge to hand over control of territory to the PA

Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated that he is “committed” to Donald Trump’s plan to take over and develop the Gaza Strip, amid uncertainty over whether Israel will send a delegation to Qatar to discuss the second stage of the fragile ceasefire in the war with Hamas.

In a statement on Monday, the Israeli prime minister said: “Just as I have committed to, on the day after the war in Gaza, there will be neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority. I am committed to US president Trump’s plan for the creation of a different Gaza.”

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Egypt draws up Gaza reconstruction plan that would exclude Hamas

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Alternative to Trump plan would involve committee of technocrats but future military status of Hamas unresolved

An alternative to Donald Trump’s plan to turn the Gaza Strip into a US-owned “Riviera of the Middle East” is being prepared by Egypt in conjunction with the World Bank, under which Hamas would be formally excluded from governance and control of the territory’s reconstruction.

The process would be handed over on an interim basis to the control of a social or community support committee. No member of Hamas would sit on the committee. But the future military status of Hamas within Gaza is unresolved, which is likely to be a barrier to Israeli endorsement of the plan.

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