Category Archives: Palestinian Territories

Israeli delegation to visit Washington to discuss planned offensive on Rafah

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US says attack would be ‘mistake’ as Biden and Netanyahu talk by phone for first time in over a month

Israel will send a team of officials to Washington to discuss its planned offensive on Rafah, the White House has said, as the Biden administration insists that an attack would be a “mistake” and seeks to persuade Israel to allow in more aid in the face of an imminent famine in Gaza.

The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, announced the Israeli visit after a phone call on Monday between Joe Biden and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, focusing on the planned Rafah assault that Netanyahu has vowed to launch.

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Fierce clashes between IDF and Hamas after Israel takes control of key hospital

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Israel claims to have killed 20 militants at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City following early morning raid

Fierce fighting has continued around al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, as Israeli troops battled Hamas militants after seizing control of the strategically situated medical complex in an early morning raid.

Witnesses reported multiple airstrikes and ferocious firefights as fears rose for the safety of hundreds of civilians in the immediate vicinity of the hospital.

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‘Catastrophic levels of hunger’ in Gaza mean famine is imminent, says aid coalition

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More than a million people are at risk, according to report, as Oxfam says Israeli authorities are blocking relief deliveries

Famine is imminent in northern Gaza with people suffering “catastrophic levels of hunger”, a coalition of aid groups has warned.

The situation was called “man-made starvation”, as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), a group that includes the World Food Programme and the World Health Organization, said that 1.1 million people, half of Gaza’s population, faced famine.

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Israel’s Shifa raid shows its grip is slipping as a ‘forever war’ looms

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Retaking of Shifa complex shows Hamas militants, despite heavy losses, are still operational in northern Gaza

The latest raid on al-Shifa hospital reveals that the Israeli military’s hold on the areas of Gaza supposedly cleared of Hamas militants is considerably more tenuous than the country’s political leaders have claimed – and suggests the region’s military superpower is facing its own “forever war” in the territory with enormous costs for everyone involved, particularly civilians.

The fighting around the Shifa hospital and its eventual seizure was the climactic moment of the first phase of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, launched last year after Hamas killed 1,200 and captured 250 people, mostly civilians, in a surprise raid on 7 October. There was bitter argument over whether the hospital’s buildings and basements had been used by Hamas as a covert command centre, as Israel claimed, but none over the strength of Israel’s control of the site when its soldiers moved in on 15 November.

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Middle East crisis: famine ‘imminent’ in northern Gaza, UN report says, as EU foreign policy chief calls area ‘open air graveyard’ – as it happened

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Israel using starvation as weapon of war, says Josep Borrell, as UN report warns 1.1 million face ‘catastrophic’ food supply conditions. This live blog is closed

Oxfam has accused Israel of controlling “an unpredictable and chaotic regime of approval, scanning and inspection” of humanitarian aid destined for the Gaza Strip.

In a new report, the NGO says “people living in Gaza will suffer mass death from disease and starvation far beyond the current 31,000 Palestinian war casualties unless Israel takes immediate steps to end its violations.”

The ICJ order should have shocked Israeli leaders to change course, but since then conditions in Gaza have actually worsened. The fact that other governments have not challenged Israel hard enough, but instead turned to less effective methods like airdrops and maritime corridors is a huge red flag, signalling that Israel continues to deny the full potential of better ways to deliver more aid.

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Israel tells civilians to evacuate after taking control of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City

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Casualties reported after raids on complex, where hundreds are reportedly sheltering and IDF claims is being used by Hamas

Israeli forces are in control of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, after an overnight raid on the medical complex, and have told thousands living nearby to evacuate towards the south of the Palestinian territory.

Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesperson, said early on Monday that troops were “conducting a high-precision operation in limited areas of Shifa hospital based on … intelligence information indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists to command attacks”.

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Palestinian groups ‘relieved’ after Australia reverses visa cancellations for people fleeing Gaza

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Some visas reinstated after further security checks but Amnesty urges government to provide clarity on vetting processes

Palestinian groups and refugee advocates say they are “so relieved” that the federal government has reversed visa cancellations for people fleeing Gaza, after several were stranded on their way out last week.

Some of the visas have been reinstated after further security checks, but advocates have urged the government to provide further clarity on the vetting processes, to give assurance to other Palestinians with Australian visas who manage to get out of Gaza.

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Netanyahu vows to press ahead with assault on Rafah

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PM acknowledges international pressure is increasing but says it will not stop Israel achieving its goals

Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to press ahead with sending Israeli troops into Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, rejecting deep international concerns over the risks to more than a million Palestinians who have sought shelter there.

The prime minister said no amount of international pressure would stop Israel from realising all of its war aims.

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Middle East crisis: Palestinian foreign ministry accuses Israeli government of ‘blind revenge’ – as it happened

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Comments come after Benjamin Netanyahu insisted Israeli military would go ahead with plans for operations in Rafah

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said Israeli forces released Tamer Fouad Salim Al-Qarm, a PRCS volunteer, yesterday after a “36-day detention during the occupation’s raid on al-Amal hospital in Khan Younis”.

The PRCS added in its post on X that Israeli troops continue to detain 13 PRCS members and volunteers, “whose fate remains unknown to this moment”.

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How the uncommitted movement rocked Biden over Gaza

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The success of this agile grassroots group underlines the discontent over the war – and represents a warning for Democrats

People in Michigan, and across the country, had been protesting for months over the Gaza war and the US government’s role in it, marching in the streets, showing up at the president’s public events, and pressuring their elected officials to support a ceasefire.

But it didn’t seem as though Joe Biden was listening to a groundswell of Democrats who opposed the war and US media coverage of the protests, and of the war itself, seems to be waning, too.

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Severely injured patients trapped in Gaza’s hospitals as evacuations are halted

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Destruction of buildings, too few ambulances and having to work in ‘red zones’ all adding to trauma

There have been no medical evacuations from northern Gaza for more than a month so severely injured people are trapped in damaged hospitals where they cannot get adequate treatment, a leading medical charity has warned.

Ambulances need urgent access to take the most vulnerable patients for specialist care, said Patrick Münz, head of mission in Gaza for German medical charity Cadus.

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Gaza ceasefire hopes rise after Hamas abandons key demands

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Israeli negotiators are heading to Qatar after the group dropped calls for a permanent end to hostilities and agreed a 40-day pause

Israeli negotiators are expected to arrive in Qatar on Sunday amid intense new efforts to bring the war in Gaza to at least a temporary halt, after Hamas abandoned key ceasefire demands last week following a series of setbacks.

In recent days, the militant organisation has been disappointed by the failure of its calls for a wave of protest during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, angered by the appointment without consultation of a new prime minister by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and suffered the possible death of a key military commander in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

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Middle East crisis: ceasefire talks ‘expected to resume on Sunday’ – as it happened

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Source tells Reuters that discussions would cover issues including prisoner-hostage exchanges and humanitarian aid

Record numbers of Palestinian detainees are filling Israeli prisons where they face “systemic abuse” and torture, rights advocates warned, calling for international action, reports AFP.

Members of several Israeli NGOs travelled to Geneva this week to raise concerns before the UN about a major “crisis” inside the country’s prisons.

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Top senator calls on Biden to ‘use all levers’ to pressure Israel over Gaza

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Democrat Chris Van Hollen says Biden must cease giving arms to Israel until it lifts restrictions on aid and does more to protect lives

Joe Biden should use his leverage and the law to pressure Israel to change how it is prosecuting the war in Gaza, the Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen said.

Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, is among a group of senators urging Biden to stop providing Israel with offensive weapons until it lifts restrictions on the delivery of food and medicine into Gaza, where children are now dying of hunger and famine looms.

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‘Everyone has friends in jail’: how Palestinian prisoners became central to Gaza ceasefire talks

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Hamas seeks scaled-back release it can portray as victory as Israeli government weighs conflicting pressures over hostages

In a cafe on a dusty roundabout in the small West Bank town of Silwad, men sit and play cards, one eye on the large TV screen showing the latest news from Gaza. When there is any mention of a possible ceasefire deal – and so the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails – there is silence.

“Nobody tell us anything officially. We see on the news about a deal. So we just know that my brother might be released,” said Akhram Hammad, a 45-year-old blacksmith whose sibling Tayyer is serving multiple life sentences for shooting dead seven Israeli soldiers and three civilians at a checkpoint not far from Silwad in 2002. “It would be really good and everybody would be really happy; otherwise, he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.”

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Authors withdraw from PEN America festival in protest over Israel-Gaza war

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Group of more than a dozen writers decry organization’s inadequate response to ‘genocide’ being committed by Israel

More than a dozen prominent authors and literary figures have withdrawn from PEN America’s flagship World Voices Festival in protest of what they see as an inadequate response by the organization to the “genocide” being committed against Palestinians by Israel in Gaza.

The group of writers, which includes Naomi Klein, Michelle Alexander, Hisham Matar, Isabella Hammad and Zaina Arafat, sent a letter to PEN America asserting it had “betrayed the organization’s professed commitment to peace and equality for all, and to freedom and security for writers everywhere” by failing to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war.

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Biden says Schumer made ‘good speech’ in breaking with Benjamin Netanyahu

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President also condemns US surge in Islamophobia in comments that could portend broader shift in sentiment towards Gaza war

Joe Biden on Friday said Senator Chuck Schumer made “a good speech” that reflected many Americans’ concerns when he publicly broke with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over his handling of the war in Gaza.

While the US president announced no changes in his administration’s policy towards Israel, his views on the speech Schumer made Thursday from the floor of the US Senate, where the New York Democrat is the majority leader, could portend a broader shift in sentiment.

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Netanyahu approves Rafah attack plans as aid ship reaches Gaza

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Israeli PM’s decision may be intended to put negotiating pressure on Hamas, observers say, after his cabinet discussed truce proposal

Benjamin Netanyahu has approved plans for an attack on Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, where more than a million people displaced from elsewhere in the territory have sought shelter, officials in Israel have said.

The decision was made as a ship towing a barge loaded with food arrived off Gaza on Friday. It was a test run for a new aid route by sea from Cyprus into the devastated Palestinian territory, where famine looms after five months of Israel’s military campaign.

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Middle East crisis live: Netanyahu’s office ‘approves plan for Rafah operation’

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Reuters reports that Israeli military is preparing to evacuate the population of Gaza border town

Reuters has a breaking news line about the Gaza aid ship, the Open Arms, that set off from Cyprus on Tuesday. According to the news agency, witnesses have reported that the ship is close to Gaza’s coast now.

More details soon …

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Palestinians who had Australian visas cancelled mid-flight are ‘collateral damage’, charity group says

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At least 70 people have had to cancel or postpone travel while one man remains stuck in an Istanbul airport

Palestinians fleeing Gaza with valid Australian visas only for them to be cancelled mid-flight or at airports have been described as “collateral damage” for the federal government’s failures.

One charity group helping Palestinians to leave the war zone, the Palestine Australia Relief and Action (Para) group, said it has already had to cancel or postpone the upcoming flights of at least 70 people, including sick and elderly, and is frustrated by the lack of clarity.

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