GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli forces killed more than 20 people across the Palestinian territory on Friday, ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations in New York.
It comes as the Israeli military presses its offensive against Hamas in Gaza City, from which hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee.
The civil defense agency — a rescue force operating under Hamas authority — reported at least 22 people killed since dawn across the territory, including 11 in Gaza City.
Israel’s military said in a statement Friday that the air force had over the past day “struck over 140 targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including terrorists, tunnel shafts (and) military infrastructure.”
AFP footage from the Al-Shati refugee camp near Gaza City showed heavy damage to buildings after an air strike.
Buildings stood with facades blown off by blasts, while people including a barefoot young girl searched through rubble for belongings. Toppled poles created a web of powerless electric wires on the ground.
Israel launched its ground offensive on the territory’s largest city on September 16. The military on Thursday said that 700,000 Palestinians had fled the urban hub since late August.
The UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, said that the displacement of 388,400 people had been recorded since mid-August, most of them from Gaza City.
On the ground, Palestinians struggle to meet their basic needs after nearly two years of war that has left the territory devastated and bereft of basic goods.
“We just want the bare minimum to survive, and here in Al-Mawasi, we don’t even have that,” said Khaled Abu Alba, a Palestinian from Gaza City who has been displaced to a designated humanitarian area in south Gaza.
“Even for water, we wait for hours just to get a single bucket,” the 35-year-old added.
Um Youssef Al-Shaer, 50, who is also displaced in Al-Mawasi after fleeing northern Gaza, told AFP that the area had become overcrowded as more and more Palestinians sought refuge there.
“We are piled on top of each other in a single tent — me, my husband, our six children, and my husband’s elderly parents — 10 people in a small tent,” she said.
“There’s no room to sleep in that cramped space... There’s no privacy.”
On Friday, Netanyahu ordered troops to broadcast his speech at the UN headquarters to Gazans from loudspeakers mounted on trucks on the Israeli side of the border, his office said.
Over nearly two years, Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed at least 65,549 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, figures the UN considers reliable.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
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Civil defense says over 20 killed in Gaza ahead of Netanyahu’s UN speech
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Civil defense says over 20 killed in Gaza ahead of Netanyahu’s UN speech
- The civil defense agency reported at least 22 people killed since dawn across the territory
- Israel’s military said in a statement Friday that the air force had over the past day “struck over 140 targets throughout the Gaza Strip “
Israeli minister calls West Bank measures ‘de facto sovereignty,’ says no future Palestinian state
- Eli Cohen’s comments on Tuesday suggest these steps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state
- alestinians, Arab countries, and human rights groups view the actions as annexation
RAMALLAH: A top Israeli official said Tuesday that measures adopted by the government that deepen Israeli control in the occupied West Bank amounted to implementing “de facto sovereignty,” using language that mirrors critics’ warnings about the intent behind the moves.
The steps “actually establish a fact on the ground that there will not be a Palestinian state,” Energy Minister Eli Cohen told Israel’s Army Radio.
Palestinians, Arab countries and human rights groups have called the moves announced Sunday an annexation of the territory, home to roughly 3.4 million Palestinians who seek it for a future state.
Cohen’s comments followed similar remarks by other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz.
The moves — and Israeli officials’ own descriptions of them — put the country at odds with both regional allies and previous statements from US President Donald Trump. Netanyahu has traveled to Washington to meet with him later this week.
Last year, Trump said he won’t allow Israel to annex the West Bank. The US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that aimed to stop the war in Gaza also acknowledged Palestinian aspirations for statehood.
Widespread condemnation
The measures further erode the Palestinian Authority’s limited powers, and it’s unclear the extent to which it can oppose them. Still, Hussein Al Sheikh, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy president, said on Tuesday “the Palestinian leadership called on all civil and security institutions in the State of Palestine” to reject them
In a post on X on Tuesday, he said the Israeli steps “contradict international law and the agreements signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization.”
A group of eight Arab and Muslim-majority countries expressed their “absolute rejection” of the measures, calling them in a joint statement Monday illegal and warning they would “fuel violence and conflict in the region.”
Israel’s pledge not to annex the West Bank is embedded in its diplomatic agreements with some of those countries and renewed warnings that it was a “red line” for the Emirates led Israel to shelve some high-level discussions on the matter last year.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “gravely concerned” by the measures.
“They are driving us further and further away from a two-State solution and from the ability of the Palestinian authority and the Palestinian people to control their own destiny,” his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said on Monday.
What the measures mean
The measures, approved by Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet on Sunday, expand Israel’s enforcement authority over land use and planning in areas run by the Palestinian Authority, making it easier for Jewish settlers to force Palestinians to give up land.
Smotrich and Katz on Sunday said they would lift long-standing restrictions on land sales to Israeli Jews in the West Bank, shift some control over sensitive holy sites — including Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs — and declassify land registry records to ease property acquisitions.
They also revive a government committee empowered to make what officials described as “proactive” land purchases in the territory, a step intended to reserve land for future settlement expansion.
Taken together, the moves add an official stamp to Israel’s accelerating expansion and would override parts of decades-old agreements that split the West Bank between areas under Israeli control and areas where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited autonomy.
Israel has increasingly legalized settler outposts built on land Palestinians say documents show they have long owned, evicted Palestinian communities from areas declared “military zones” and villages near archaeological sites it has reclassified as “national parks.”
More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians are not permitted to sell land privately to Israelis. Settlers can buy homes on land controlled by Israel’s government.
The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.
“These decisions constitute a direct violation of the international agreements to which Israel is committed and are steps toward the annexation of Areas A and B,” anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now said on Sunday, referring to parts of the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority exercised some autonomy.
The steps “actually establish a fact on the ground that there will not be a Palestinian state,” Energy Minister Eli Cohen told Israel’s Army Radio.
Palestinians, Arab countries and human rights groups have called the moves announced Sunday an annexation of the territory, home to roughly 3.4 million Palestinians who seek it for a future state.
Cohen’s comments followed similar remarks by other members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Defense Minister Israel Katz.
The moves — and Israeli officials’ own descriptions of them — put the country at odds with both regional allies and previous statements from US President Donald Trump. Netanyahu has traveled to Washington to meet with him later this week.
Last year, Trump said he won’t allow Israel to annex the West Bank. The US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that aimed to stop the war in Gaza also acknowledged Palestinian aspirations for statehood.
Widespread condemnation
The measures further erode the Palestinian Authority’s limited powers, and it’s unclear the extent to which it can oppose them. Still, Hussein Al Sheikh, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy president, said on Tuesday “the Palestinian leadership called on all civil and security institutions in the State of Palestine” to reject them
In a post on X on Tuesday, he said the Israeli steps “contradict international law and the agreements signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization.”
A group of eight Arab and Muslim-majority countries expressed their “absolute rejection” of the measures, calling them in a joint statement Monday illegal and warning they would “fuel violence and conflict in the region.”
Israel’s pledge not to annex the West Bank is embedded in its diplomatic agreements with some of those countries and renewed warnings that it was a “red line” for the Emirates led Israel to shelve some high-level discussions on the matter last year.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “gravely concerned” by the measures.
“They are driving us further and further away from a two-State solution and from the ability of the Palestinian authority and the Palestinian people to control their own destiny,” his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said on Monday.
What the measures mean
The measures, approved by Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet on Sunday, expand Israel’s enforcement authority over land use and planning in areas run by the Palestinian Authority, making it easier for Jewish settlers to force Palestinians to give up land.
Smotrich and Katz on Sunday said they would lift long-standing restrictions on land sales to Israeli Jews in the West Bank, shift some control over sensitive holy sites — including Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Tomb of the Patriarchs — and declassify land registry records to ease property acquisitions.
They also revive a government committee empowered to make what officials described as “proactive” land purchases in the territory, a step intended to reserve land for future settlement expansion.
Taken together, the moves add an official stamp to Israel’s accelerating expansion and would override parts of decades-old agreements that split the West Bank between areas under Israeli control and areas where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited autonomy.
Israel has increasingly legalized settler outposts built on land Palestinians say documents show they have long owned, evicted Palestinian communities from areas declared “military zones” and villages near archaeological sites it has reclassified as “national parks.”
More than 700,000 Israelis live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians are not permitted to sell land privately to Israelis. Settlers can buy homes on land controlled by Israel’s government.
The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.
“These decisions constitute a direct violation of the international agreements to which Israel is committed and are steps toward the annexation of Areas A and B,” anti-settlement watchdog group Peace Now said on Sunday, referring to parts of the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority exercised some autonomy.
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