Israel continues to bombard Gaza

A Palestinian boy inspects the destruction at the site of an Israeli strike that targeted a house in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Monday. (AFP)
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Updated 02 December 2024
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Israel continues to bombard Gaza

  • Palestinian medics say 20 killed in latest attack
  • A new ceasefire push is underway, officials say

CAIRO: Israeli forces bombarded houses in several attacks in the northern Gaza Strip, including one airstrike that killed at least 15 people in a home sheltering displaced people in the town of Beit Lahiya, Palestinian medics said on Monday.

The three barely operational hospitals in the area were unable to cope with the wounded from the attack, and several other people were still missing, with rescue workers unable to reach them, the Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said.

Residents said clusters of houses were bombed and some set ablaze in Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun, three towns on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip where the Israeli army has been operating for weeks.

They said Israeli drones had also dropped bombs outside a school sheltering displaced families in Beit Lahiya, part of what residents have described as a campaign to scare people into leaving.

Palestinians say Israel’s army is trying to drive people out of the northern edge of Gaza with forced evacuations and bombardments to create a buffer zone. 

The Israeli army denies this and says it has returned to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping in an area where it had previously cleared them out.

Israel launched its campaign in Gaza after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 44,400 Palestinians and displaced most of the population, Gaza officials say. Vast swaths of the enclave lie in ruins.

A former Israeli defense minister accused Israel on Sunday of committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip, drawing a sharp rebuke from government ranks.

Moshe Yaalon, a hawkish former general, told Israeli media that hard-liners in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet were looking to chase Palestinians from northern Gaza and wanted to re-establish Jewish settlements there.

On Monday, the Israeli military rejected Yaalon’s serious claims.

“The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) operates under international law and evacuates civilians based on operational necessity for their protection,” it said.

Palestinian and UN officials said there were no safe areas in the Gaza Strip for the 2.3 million population, most of whom have been internally displaced.

In Gaza City, two Israeli air strikes killed five people, medics said.

Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Hezbollah last week that halted fighting in a conflict that has unfolded in Lebanon in parallel with the Gaza war.

But the Gaza war itself has ground on with only a single ceasefire that lasted for a week more than a year ago.

Officials in Cairo have hosted talks between Hamas and the rival Fatah group led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the possible establishment of a committee to run post-war Gaza.

Egypt has proposed that a committee made up of non-partisan technocrat figures and supervised by Abbas’s authority should be ready to run Gaza straight after the war ends. Israel has said Hamas should have no role in governance.

An official close to the talks said progress had been made, but no final deal had been reached. Israel’s approval would determine whether the committee could fulfill its role.

Egyptian security officials have also held talks with Hamas on ways to reach a ceasefire with Israel.

A Palestinian official close to the mediation effort said Hamas stood by its condition that any agreement must bring an end to the war and involve an Israeli troop withdrawal, but Hamas would show the flexibility needed to achieve that.

Israel has said the war will end only when Hamas no longer governs Gaza and poses no threat to Israelis.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Sunday there was some indication of progress toward a deal to free Israeli hostages but that Israel’s conditions for ending the war had not changed.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the chances of a ceasefire and hostage deal were now more likely.


Egypt’s FM heads to Washington for talks with US officials: ministry

Updated 09 February 2025
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Egypt’s FM heads to Washington for talks with US officials: ministry

CAIRO: Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty traveled to Washington on Sunday for talks with senior officials from the new Trump administration and members of Congress, his ministry said.
The ministry’s statement said the visit aimed “to boost bilateral relations and strategic partnership between Egypt and the US,” and would include “consultations on regional developments.”


Israeli official says force withdrawal from key Gaza corridor has begun, as part of ceasefire deal

Updated 09 February 2025
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Israeli official says force withdrawal from key Gaza corridor has begun, as part of ceasefire deal

TEL AVIV: An Israeli official said Sunday that Israeli forces have begun withdrawing from a key Gaza corridor, part of a ceasefire deal with Hamas that is moving ahead.

Israel agreed as part of the truce to remove its forces from the Netzarim corridor, a strip of land that bisects northern Gaza from the south. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss troop movement with the media.

At the start of the ceasefire, Israel began allowing Palestinians to cross Netzarim to head to their homes in the war-battered north and the withdrawal of forces from the area will fulfill another commitment to the deal.

It was not clear how many troops Israel had withdrawn on Sunday.

The 42-day ceasefire is just past its halfway point and the sides are supposed to negotiate an extension that would lead to more Israeli hostages being freed from Hamas captivity. But the agreement is fragile and the extension isn’t guaranteed.

The sides are meant to begin talks on the truce’s second stage but there appears to have been little progress.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was sending a delegation to Qatar, a key mediator in talks between the sides, but the mission included low-level officials, sparking speculation that it won’t lead to a breakthrough in extending the truce. Netanyahu is expected to convene a meeting of key Cabinet ministers this week on the second phase of the deal, but it was not clear when.

During the first phase of the ceasefire, Hamas is gradually releasing 33 Israeli hostages captured during its Oct.7, 2023, attack in exchange for a pause in fighting, freedom for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and a floor of humanitarian aid to war-battered Gaza. The deal stipulates that Israeli troops will pull back from populated areas of Gaza and that on day 22, which is Sunday, Palestinians will be allowed to head north from a central road that crosses through Netzarim, without being inspected by Israeli forces.

In the second phase, all remaining hostages would be released in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a “sustainable calm.”


2 mass graves with bodies of nearly 50 migrants found in southeastern Libya

Updated 09 February 2025
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2 mass graves with bodies of nearly 50 migrants found in southeastern Libya

CAIRO: Libya authorities uncovered nearly 50 bodies this week from two mass graves in the country’s southeastern desert, officials said Sunday, in the latest tragedy involving people seeking to reach Europe through the chaos-stricken North African country.
The first mass grave with 19 bodies was found Friday in a farm in the southeastern city of Kufra, the security directorate said in a statement, adding that authorities took them for autopsy.
Authorities posted images on its Facebook page showing police officers and medics digging in the sand and recovering dead bodies that were wrapped in blankets.
The Al-Abreen charity, which helps migrants in eastern and southern Libya, said that some were apparently shot and killed before being buried in the mass grave.
A separate mass grave with at least 30 bodies was also found in Kufra after raiding a human trafficking center, according to Mohamed Al-Fadeil, head of the security chamber in Kufra. Survivors said nearly 70 people were buried in the grave, he added. Authorities were still searching the area.
Migrants’ mass graves are not uncommon in Libya. Last year, authorities unearthed the bodies of at least 65 migrants in the Shuayrif region, 350 kilometers (220 miles) south of the capital, Tripoli.
Libya is the dominant transit point for migrants from Africa and the Middle East trying to make it to Europe. The country plunged into chaos following a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed longtime autocrat Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. Oil-rich Libya has been ruled for most of the past decade by rival governments in eastern and western Libya, each backed by an array of militias and foreign governments.
Human traffickers have benefited from more than a decade of instability, smuggling migrants across the country’s borders with six nations, including Chad, Niger, Sudan Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia.
Once at the coast, traffickers pack desperate migrants seeking a better life in Europe into ill-equipped rubber boats and other vessels for risky voyages on the perilous Central Mediterranean Sea route.
Rights groups and UN agencies have for years documented systematic abuse of migrants in Libya including forced labor, beatings, rapes and torture. The abuse often accompanies efforts to extort money from families before migrants are allowed to leave Libya on traffickers’ boats.
Those who have been intercepted and returned to Libya — including women and children — are held in government-run detention centers where they also suffer from abuse, including torture, rape and extortion, according to rights groups and UN experts.


Egypt to host emergency Arab summit on Feb. 27 to discuss ‘serious’ Palestinian developments

Updated 09 February 2025
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Egypt to host emergency Arab summit on Feb. 27 to discuss ‘serious’ Palestinian developments

  • Egypt has been rallying regional support against US President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate Palestinians

CAIRO: Egypt will host a summit of Arab nations on February 27 to discuss “the latest serious developments” concerning the Palestinian territories, its foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday.

The “emergency Arab summit” comes as Egypt has been rallying regional support against US President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Egypt and Jordan while establishing US control over the coastal territory.

Sunday’s statement said the gathering was called “after extensive consultations by Egypt at the highest levels with Arab countries in recent days, including Palestine, which requested the summit, to address the latest serious developments regarding the Palestinian cause.”

That included coordination with Bahrain, which currently chairs the Arab League, the statement said.

On Friday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty spoke with regional partners including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to shore up opposition to any forced displacement of Palestinians from their land.

Last week, Trump floated the idea of US administration over Gaza, envisioning rebuilding the devastated territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East” after resettling Palestinians elsewhere, namely Egypt and Jordan.

The remarks have prompted global backlash, and Arab countries have firmly rejected the proposal, insisting on a two-state solution with an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.


Israeli military says it is expanding West Bank operation

Updated 09 February 2025
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Israeli military says it is expanding West Bank operation

JERUSALEM: A Palestinian woman was killed in the West Bank as part of an expanded Israeli army operation in the occupied territory.

The Israeli army said they expanded the military operation to four refugee camps in the West Bank. In Nur Shams, a Palestinian refugee camp east of Tulkarm, Israeli forces had killed several “militants” and detained wanted individuals in the area, a military spokesperson said on Sunday.

The Palestinian Health ministry said Sunday that a woman was killed and her husband injured by Israeli gunfire in Tulkarm. 

Israeli military, police and intelligence services launched a counter-terrorism operation in Jenin in the West Bank on January 21.

It is described by Israeli officials as a “large-scale and significant military operation”. 

(with Reuters)