Israel close to completing Gaza missions, focus on north, defense minister says

Smoke rises near the Israel Lebanon border, after Hezbollah fired projectiles toward Israel from Lebanon, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Northern Israel, Sept. 10, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 10 September 2024
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Israel close to completing Gaza missions, focus on north, defense minister says

  • “The center of gravity is moving northward, we are near to completing our tasks in the south, but our mission here is not yet done,” Gallant told troops
  • “These instructions that you are waiting for here today, I gave in the south and saw the forces operate“

JERUSALEM: Israeli forces are near to fulfilling their mission in Gaza and their focus will turn to the country’s northern border with Lebanon as daily exchanges of fire with Hezbollah take place, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Tuesday
“The center of gravity is moving northward, we are near to completing our tasks in the south, but our mission here is not yet done,” Gallant told troops on Israel’s northern border in a video sent by his office.
Gallant was attending a ground combat drill, his office said.
“These instructions that you are waiting for here today, I gave in the south and saw the forces operate,” Gallant said referring to Israel’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip three weeks after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that triggered the war.
The Lebanese group Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8 and the two sides have been trading fire since, with tens of thousands of civilians displaced on both sides of the border.
Israeli leaders have said they would prefer to resolve the conflict through an agreement that would push Iran-backed Hezbollah away from the border. Hezbollah has said that it will continue fighting Israel as long as the war in Gaza is ongoing.
In separate remarks to journalists on Tuesday, Gallant said:
“While we pursue an agreement, I have directed the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) to prepare for every scenario, including directing our attention to the northern arena. We are committed to changing the security situation on the northern front and to bringing our citizens home safely.”
The Israeli military on Tuesday said it killed a commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force. The group confirmed his death but not his role and said it fired rockets at Israeli army targets across the border in retaliation.


Russia asks Israel to avoid air strikes near Syrian base

Updated 5 sec ago
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Russia asks Israel to avoid air strikes near Syrian base

MOSCOW: Russia has asked Israel to avoid launching aerial strikes as part of its war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah near one of Moscow’s bases in Syria, a top official said Wednesday.
Syrian state media in mid-October claimed that Israel had struck the port city of Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar Assad, who is supported by Russia and in turn backs Hezbollah.
Latakia, and in particular its airport, is close to the town of Hmeimim that hosts a Russian air base.
“Israel actually carried out an air strike in the immediate vicinity of Hmeimim,” Alexander Lavrentiev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy in the Near East, told the RIA Novosti press agency.
“Our military has of course notified Israeli authorities that such acts that put Russian military lives in danger over there are unacceptable,” he added.
“That is why we hope that this incident in October will not be repeated.”
Israel has carried out intensive bombing of Syria but rarely targets Latakia, to the northwest of Damascus.
Israel accuses Hezbollah of transporting weapons through Syria.
The two warring parties have been in open conflict since September after Israel’s year-long Gaza war with Hamas — a Hezbollah ally — escalated to a new front.
Lavrentiev said that Russia’s air base was not being used to supply Hezbollah with weapons.
Israel stepped up strikes on Syria at the same time as targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian government forces and groups supported by its arch-foe Iran, notably Hezbollah troops that have been deployed to assist Assad’s regime.
Israel rarely comments on its strikes but has said it will not allow Iran to extend its presence to Syria.

Lebanon says at least six killed in Israeli strike south of Beirut

Updated 5 min 51 sec ago
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Lebanon says at least six killed in Israeli strike south of Beirut

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli strike killed at least six people on Wednesday in a densely-packed area south of the capital Beirut, outside Hezbollah’s traditional strongholds.
“The Israeli enemy strike on Aramoun killed six people” and wounded 15 others, the ministry said giving a preliminary toll, adding that “body parts were recovered from the site and their identities are being verified.”


Allies providing Sudan’s warring parties with weapons are ‘enabling the slaughter,’ UN official says

Updated 13 November 2024
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Allies providing Sudan’s warring parties with weapons are ‘enabling the slaughter,’ UN official says

  • Last month, the RSF rampaged through the province of Gezira, attacking towns and villages, killing dozens of people and raping women and girls, according to the UN and local groups

GENEVA: The UN political chief accused allies of Sudan’s warring military and paramilitary forces on Tuesday of “enabling the slaughter” that has killed more than 24,000 people and created the world’s worst displacement crisis.
“This is unconscionable,” Rosemary DiCarlo told the UN Security Council. “It is illegal, and it must end.”
She didn’t name the countries funding and providing weapons to Sudan’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, but she said they have a responsibility to press both sides to work for a negotiated settlement of the war.
Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including western Darfur, which was wracked by bloodshed and atrocities in 2003. The UN recently warned that the country has been pushed to the brink of famine.
Last month, the RSF rampaged through the province of Gezira, attacking towns and villages, killing dozens of people and raping women and girls, according to the UN and local groups.
DiCarlo told the council that nongovernmental organizations say those attacks have been marked by “some of the most extreme violence in the last 18 months.”
She strongly condemned the RSF’s continuing attacks against civilians and said the UN is also “appalled by the attacks against civilians perpetrated by forces affiliated with the Sudanese Armed Forces in the Khartoum area.”
DiCarlo said it is long past time for the rival forces to come to the negotiating table, but she said both sides seem convinced they can win on the battlefield, and this is being fueled by outside support and weapons.
“As the end of the rainy season approaches, the parties continue to escalate their military operations, recruit new fighters and intensify their attacks,” she said. “This is possible thanks to considerable external support, including a steady flow of weapons into the country.”
Sudan has accused the United Arab Emirates of arming the RSF, which the UAE vehemently denies. The RSF has also reportedly received support from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group. And UN experts said in a report earlier this year that the RSF received support from Arab-allied communities and new military supply lines running through Chad, Libya and South Sudan.
As for the government, Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, who led a military takeover of Sudan in 2021, is a close ally of neighboring Egypt and its president, former army chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi. In February, Sudan’s foreign minister held talks in Tehran with his Iranian counterpart amid unconfirmed reports of drone purchases for government forces.
DiCarlo called for stepped up international action to protect civilians and promote talks.
She said UN special envoy for Sudan Ramtane Lamamra “is considering the next phase of his engagement with the warring parties, including another round of ‘proximity talks’ focused on commitments related to the protection of civilians.”
Sudan’s military boycotted proximity talks in Geneva, Switzerland, in July aimed at spurring humanitarian aid and starting peace talks despite international pleas that it take part. The RSF sent a delegation to Geneva.
DiCarlo said Lamamra will travel to Sudan and other places in the region in the coming weeks to meet key stakeholders to discuss a new attempt at talks.
Ramesh Rajasingham, coordination director in the UN humanitarian office, told the council the “shocking atrocities” in Gezira and fighting in West Darfur and North Darfur are causing more people to flee.
Since April 2023, more than 11 million people have fled their homes, with 3 million crossing into neighboring countries, he said. Last month, 58,000 people from the two Darfur states crossed into neighboring Chad, which is now hosting more than 710,000 refugees, he said.
Rajasingham said fighting continues to intensify around North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher — the only capital in Darfur that the RSF doesn’t hold. In July, hunger experts confirmed famine conditions in the Zamzam displacement camp nearby.
Rajasingham said a recent nutrition screening in the camp found about 34 percent of children malnourished including 10 percent who are severely malnourished.
“And we are now seeing troubling indications that deepening food insecurity is spreading to other areas, with reports in recent weeks of particularly alarming levels of hunger in South Kordofan,” he said.
“I just cannot put strongly enough how serious this situation is,” Rajasingham said, urging the international community to take immediate action.


Northern Gaza at grave risk of Israeli atrocities of ‘the most serious nature,’ UN warns

Updated 13 November 2024
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Northern Gaza at grave risk of Israeli atrocities of ‘the most serious nature,’ UN warns

  • ‘Horrific possibility’ of famine cannot be separated from unrelenting Israeli attacks on the human rights of Palestinians, Security Council hears
  • Systematic destruction of Palestinian infrastructure is directly contributing to threat of starvation, human rights official tells council members

NEW YORK CITY: Not only are Israeli authorities seeking to clear northern Gaza of Palestinians by displacing them to the south of the territory, but their actions pose a grave risk of atrocities of “the most serious nature,” the UN warned on Tuesday. 

Ilze Brands Kehris, the organization’s assistant secretary-general for human rights, urged all states to assess their arms sales or transfers “with a view to ending such support if this risks serious violations of international law.”

Speaking during a meeting of the Security Council to discuss the growing risk of famine in Gaza, she described the humanitarian and human rights situation for Palestinians across the battered enclave as “catastrophic.”

The meeting followed an alert issued at the weekend by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Famine Review Committee, which said there was “a strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip.” It called for the international community to act “in days, not weeks” to address this threat.

Figures verified by the UN Human Rights Office reveal that almost 70 percent of those killed in Gaza since the war began in October last year were children, mostly between the ages of 5 and 9 years old, or women. According to the Palestinian health ministry, the total death toll from the conflict stands at least 43,000 Palestinians, and more than 100,000 have been injured.

However, these figures are likely to be “a serious understatement,” Brands Kehris told the Security Council, because the bodies of many other victims are thought to be buried under rubble.

Nearly 1.9 million people in Gaza have been displaced, many of them repeatedly, including pregnant women, people with disabilities, the elderly and children, she said. Meanwhile, Israeli strikes on shelters and residential buildings continue to kill unconscionable numbers of civilians, she added: women, men, young and old.

“Attacks on so-called ‘safe zones’ prove that nowhere in Gaza is safe,” Brands Kehris said.

The destruction of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure by the Israeli military — including facilities that enjoy protected status under international law, such as hospitals, schools and vital services such as including power supplies, water and sewage — is directly contributing to the risk of famine, she added.

In addition, Israeli forces have killed hundreds of medical personnel, civilian police officers, journalists and humanitarian aid workers, including more than 220 UN staff, she said, and thousands of Palestinians have been taken from Gaza to Israel, usually shackled and blindfolded, where they are held incommunicado.

“Meanwhile, there is constant and continued interference with the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance, which has fallen to some of the lowest levels in a year,” Brands Kehris added.

“The cumulative impact of more than a year of destruction in Gaza has taken an enormous toll. Basic services for Palestinians in Gaza, the fabric of society, have been decimated. Conditions of life, particularly in northern Gaza, are increasingly not fit for survival.

“This horrific possibility cannot be separated from the unrelenting attacks on the human rights of civilians there.”

Over the past five weeks, she said, Israeli strikes have resulted in massive civilian fatalities in northern Gaza, particularly among women, children, the elderly, the sick and people with disabilities, many of whom are reportedly “trapped by Israeli military restrictions and attacks on escape routes.”

She added: “The pattern and the frequency of these reported attacks suggest the systematic targeting of locations known, or which should have been known, as sheltering significant numbers of civilians, coupled with the continued use of weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas.

“The Israeli military has also conducted repeated attacks on the three major hospitals in the area and on other vital infrastructure, while unlawfully restricting the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza.”

Brands Kehris echoed a call by the high commissioner for human rights for an end to the war, the release of Israeli hostages, and the urgent delivery and distribution of humanitarian aid to Gaza “by all routes.”

There must also be “due reckoning” over allegations of serious violations of international law, she said, overseen by “credible and impartial judicial authorities.”

She added: “In line with the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion and the General Assembly resolution, Israel must end its continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible, allowing the Palestinian people to exercise their right to self-determination.”


Trump nominates hard-liner Mike Huckabee as US ambassador to Israel

Updated 13 November 2024
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Trump nominates hard-liner Mike Huckabee as US ambassador to Israel

  • Huckabee, 69, who ran twice for Republican Party presidential nomination, has traveled to Israel regularly since 1973
  • Israel’s FM Gideon Saar quickly offered congratulations to Huckabee

WASHINGTON: President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday he had nominated Mike Huckabee as US ambassador to Israel under his incoming administration, putting a stalwart supporter of that country’s government in a key role.
“Mike has been a great public servant, Governor, and Leader in Faith for many years,” Trump said in a statement, referring to the Christian pastor-turned-politician.
“He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him.”
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar quickly offered his congratulations to Huckabee, who has in the past said there was “no such thing as an occupation” when it came to Palestinian territories.
“I look forward to working with you to strengthen the bond between our peoples,” Minister Saar posted to Huckabee on X. “As a longstanding friend of Israel and our eternal capital Jerusalem — I hope you will feel very much at home.”
Huckabee, 69, ran twice for the Republican Party presidential nomination, including in 2016 against eventual winner Trump, who Huckabee was quick to back after falling out of the race.
Huckabee, whose nomination requires confirmation by the US Senate, has traveled to Israel regularly since 1973, and has led numerous tours there.
In 2017, he was present in Maale Adumim for the expansion of one of Israel’s largest illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. In 2018, he also laid a brick at a new housing complex in Efrat settlement, strongly suggesting he was in support of Trump’s positions on Israel.
“There is no such thing as the West Bank — it’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee told CNN there at the time, using the Biblical terms for the area.
“There’s no such thing as a settlement; they’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation,” he added.
In December 2023 he visited Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where dozens of Israelis were killed in the October 7 cross-border attack by Hamas militants.
Huckabee was born in Hope, Arkansas, the same town that gave rise to Democrat Bill Clinton, who served as the state’s governor before he became president.
His daughter Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the current governor of Arkansas. She also served as Trump’s White House press secretary from 2017 to 2019.