Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 294

Palestine Olympic Committee President Jibril Rajoub has made said hundreds of athletes have been killed, injured, are missing or have been arrested across Palestine and sports facilities destroyed, Al Jazeera reports.

“We could not bring out any one of the athletes from Gaza. Inside the West Bank, the movement is not easy, but in spite of that, we could find a small team who were qualified or with a wildcard,” Rajoub added.

He also said it would be up to individual athletes if they want to face Israelis in the Paris Olympic Games, adding that his organisation faces rebuilding after the competition.

The Palestinian team for the games consists of six athletes competing in boxing, judo, taekwondo, shooting and swimming. They have slim hopes of a medal.

Palestinian sports officials have said that since the start of the war in Gaza in October, more than 300 athletes, referees and sports officials have been killed and all sports facilities in Gaza demolished.

French President Emmanuel Macron has demanded an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza, according to a press release from Elysee Palace.

It was released as Macron hosted Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the palace, just a few hours before the start of the Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony.

Macron spoke with his Israeli counterpart as part of talks on the sidelines of the Olympics and was expected to reiterate his commitment to “ensuring the safety of Israeli athletes”.

“Faced with the unbearable human toll among the civilian population of Gaza and the unsustainable humanitarian situation, the president will call for the conclusion without further delay of an immediate and lasting ceasefire to allow the release of all the ‘hostages’ of Hamas, including that of our two compatriots, as well as the huge delivery of medical and humanitarian aid,” the press release said according toAl Jazeera.

The UN chief Antonio Guterres has urged countries around the world to stop armed conflict as part of “the Olympic truce”, saying during a meeting with International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach that the event was a chance for peace, Al Jazeera reports.

“I want to express the total support of the United Nations to the IOC,” Guterres said. “We live in a divided world where conflicts are proliferating in a dramatic way.

“The horrendous suffering in Gaza, the seemingly endless war in Ukraine, terrible suffering from Sudan to the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo], from the Sahel to Myanmar.

“In a moment like this it is important to say that the first recorded, in history, real peace initiative was the Olympic truce.”

Downing Street has confirmed the government will drop its challenge to arrest warrants sought by an international court’s prosecutor for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, AFP reports.

The UK had until today to submit its questions to the court in The Hague, but the recently elected Labour government has confirmed it will not follow through with Rishi Sunak’s plan.

“This was a proposal by the previous government which was not submitted before the election, and which I can confirm the government will not be pursuing in line with our long standing position that this is a matter for the court to decide on,” a Downing Street spokeswoman said.

“I think you would note that the courts have already received a number of submissions on either side, so they are well seized of the arguments to make their independent determinations,” she added.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has been forced to reduce rations for families in Gaza to ensure broader coverage for newly displaced people, Reuters reports.

“Food stocks and humanitarian supplies in central and southern Gaza are very limited and barely any commercial supplies are going in,” WFP added in a post on social media platform X.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned about the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip while reiterating a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, Anadolu Agency reports.

“The humanitarian situation in Gaza is a total disaster,” Guterres said as he listed two reasons.

“First, a military campaign that has the highest level of killing and destruction that I remember in any other military campaign since I am Secretary General, anywhere in the world,” he said. “The second reason is because the level of humanitarian aid is totally out of proportion with the needs.”

His remarks came one day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the US Congress, where he claimed that the conflict in Gaza has “one of the lowest ratios of combatants to non-combatant casualties in the history of urban warfare.”

Turning to Netanyahu’s claims about Gaza, Guterres said: “There was nothing said yesterday that is new. So, there is nothing that was said that deserves comments, and obviously, we absolutely must keep the two-state solution as the only possible long-term solution for peace in the region, independently of whatever is said by whoever, wherever.”

Iran’s government says the recent meeting of Hamas and Fatah in the Chinese capital is a valuable step in the direction of national reconciliation for Palestine, Al Jazeera reports.

Nasser Kanaani, the foreign ministry spokesperson, said on X that the Iranian government backs the Palestinian groups “in confronting the occupation of the apartheid regime of Israel and their collective movement in the direction of exercising the fundamental right to self-determination”.

The Palestinian groups agreed earlier in the week to form a unity government at the talks hosted by China, a deal meant to deliver a post-conflict Gaza administration.

The agreement was shortly rejected by Israel.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has dismissed remarks made by US Vice President and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris about the situation in Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

“There will be no truce, Madam Candidate,” Ben-Gvir wrote on X.

He was responding to Harris, who said after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that she would “not be silent” about the “suffering” in Gaza.

Ben-Gvir’s message came after Israeli Economy Minister Bezalel Smotrich said this morning that Harris’s push for a ceasefire proves that the deal is about “surrendering to [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar”.

Hamas leader Mustafa Muhammad Abu Ara was killed in an Israeli prison, raising the number of detainees who have been killed since Oct 7 to 19, Palestinian organizations involved with prisoner affairs said, Anadolu Agency reports.

“The administrative detainee Sheikh Mustafa Muhammad Abu Ara, 63, from the town of Aqaba in the Tubas province in the northern West Bank, was martyred,” the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a joint statement.

The statement added that Ara “died after being transferred from the Israeli Ramon Prison to Soroka Hospital due to a serious deterioration in his health.”

Ara, a Hamas leader and former prisoner, had been arrested multiple times since 1990. The latest was from his home on Oct 30, 2023, it added, noting that before his arrest, Ara suffered from severe health issues and required intensive medical follow-up.

Oil prices were little changed but on track for a third consecutive weekly decline, pressured by muted demand in China and expectations of a Gaza ceasefire deal that could ease Middle East tensions and accompanying supply concerns, Reuters reports.

Brent LCOc1 crude futures for September dipped 1 cent to $82.36 a barrel by 0744 GMT. US West Texas Intermediate crude for September CLc1 fell 6 cents to $78.22.

The leaders of Australia, New Zealand and Canada called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza in a joint statement, Reuters reports.

“An immediate ceasefire is needed desperately,” the statement said.

“Civilians must be protected, and a sustained increase in the flow of assistance throughout Gaza is needed to address the humanitarian situation.”

US Vice President Kamala Harris pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday to help reach a Gaza ceasefire deal that would ease the suffering of Palestinian civilians, striking a tougher tone than President Joe Biden.

The Saint Hilarion complex, one of the oldest monasteries in the Middle East, has been put on the Unesco list of World Heritage sites in danger due to Israeli bombardment in Gaza, the body said, AFP reports.

Unesco said the site, which dates back to the fourth century, had been put on the endangered list at the demand of Palestinian authorities and cited the “imminent threats” it faced.

“It’s the only recourse to protect the site from destruction in the current context,” Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the Unesco World Heritage Centre, told AFP, referring to the fighting sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

In December, the Unesco Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict decided to grant “provisional enhanced protection” — the highest level of immunity established by the 1954 Hague Convention — to the site.

Unesco had then said it was “already concerned about the state of conservation of sites, before October 7, due to the lack of adequate policies to protect heritage and culture” in Gaza.

A Hamas leader in the West Bank died in Israeli custody, Palestinian authorities and the group has said, AFP reports.

Mustafa Muhammad Abu Ara, 63, died after being moved from a prison in southern Israel to a hospital, according to a joint statement by the Palestinian Authority’s prisoners affairs body and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club watchdog.

“We mourn the passing of the leader and prisoner Sheikh Mustafa Muhammad Abu Ara and hold the occupation responsible for his assassination through deliberate medical neglect,” Hamas said in a statement.

Abu Ara was arrested in October while suffering severe health problems, the Palestinian body and the watchdog said. During his detainment he was subjected to torture and starvation, they added.

Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The leaders of Australia, New Zealand and Canada have again called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Reuters reports.

“An immediate ceasefire is needed desperately,” the statement issued jointly by the three countries’ prime ministers says.

“Civilians must be protected, and a sustained increase in the flow of assistance throughout Gaza is needed to address the humanitarian situation.”

“We call on Israel to respond substantively to the ICJ’s advisory opinion, and ensure accountability for ongoing acts of violence against Palestinians by extremist settlers,” the statement said.

It further called on Israel to “reverse the record expansion of settlements in the West Bank which are illegal under international law, and work towards a two-state solution”.

Read more here.

A group of 45 American doctors and nurses who have been working in Gaza since October have written a letter to US President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris recounting “the massive human toll from Israel’s attack” on the territory, Al Jazeera reports.

The multi-faith, multiethnic group said their experience in the warzone made them “uniquely positioned” to comment as the US considered its continued support for Israel’s war on Gaza.

“It is likely that the death toll from this conflict is already greater than 92,000, an astonishing 4.2% of Gaza’s population,” they write, adding that every signatory to the joint letter had treated Palestinian children who “must have been deliberately” targeted for attack.

“Every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest,” they wrote.

With a few exceptions, “everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both”, they added.

Chanting “yes, to peace, yes, to a deal”, hundreds of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis marched noisily through Tel Aviv on Thursday night, demanding an end to the offensive in Gaza and the cycle of violence, AFP reports.

Their agenda starts with a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict, but ultimately, they want to reboot Palestinian-Israeli relations, and breathe new life into the moribund peace movement.

“It basically went silent after October 7,” and the start of the military campaign, Amira Mohammed, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, said of the peace camp. “The radicals became louder than the peace movement. So right now, we’ve got to be radical about the peace that we want.”

Mohammed said that included an “acknowledgement of the power dynamic between occupier and occupied” as well as “accountability on both sides”. “We can’t stop violence with more violence,” said teacher Carmit Bar Levy, 49.

“Peace is the only way forward,” said Marcelo Oliki, 64, a survivor of the Hamas-attacks on Kibbutz Nirim.

“There are children, women and babies dying just across the border from me. There are people there who are grieving too, just like me, and that want peace, too, like me.”

Read more here.

Kamala Harris has signalled a major shift in US’s Gaza policy, with the presidential hopeful telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seal a peace deal, AFP reports.

Ripping up outgoing President Joe Biden’s playbook of mostly behind-the-scenes pressure on Israel, the vice president said after meeting Netanyahu that it was time to end the “devastating” conflict.

“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time,” Harris told reporters.

“We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent.”

The 59-year-old Democratic presidential nominee said she pressed Netanyahu on the dire situation in the “frank” meeting.

She said she “expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians”.

US media reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu distorted the actions of his army in the Gaza Strip and attempted to cover up facts in his address to Congress, Anadolu Agency reports.

Perhaps the biggest “distortion” Netanyahu made during his nearly hour-long speech was when he claimed that no civilians were killed in the southern city of Rafah, which the Israeli military invaded in early May. There have been numerous reports of airstrikes and bombings with mass casualties in the Gazan city.

“Netanyahu, whose popularity has plummeted from its pre-war levels, aimed to portray himself as a statesman respected by Israel’s most important ally and welcomed in the corridors of Washington,” wrote The Associated Press.

“That task is complicated by Americans’ increasingly divided views on Israel and the war, which has emerged as a key issue in the US presidential election”

Read more here.

US President Joe Biden met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday and called on the Israeli leader to swiftly finalise a deal on a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages, AFP reports.

“President Biden expressed the need to close the remaining gaps, finalize the deal as soon as possible, bring the hostages home, and reach a durable end to the war in Gaza,” according to a White House readout, which added they discussed the “humanitarian crisis” in the embattled Palestinian territory and the need to remove obstacles to the flow of aid.

US Vice President Kamala Harris signalled a major shift in Gaza policy, telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu she had “serious concern” over casualties and telling him to get a peace deal done, AFP.

“We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silent,” said Harris, now the presumptive Democratic nominee after President Joe Biden bowed out of the 2024 US election.

The Israeli military has carried out a series of attacks in and around the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza in recent hours, the Wafa news agency reports.

In total, medical sources have said that the bodies of 32 people have arrived at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis since Thursday morning, Wafa reports.

The attacks include:

• One woman was killed and others were injured by Israeli air strikes in Khan Younis
• One person was killed and others were injured by Israeli shelling targeting the town of Bani Suheila, east of Khan Younis
• Rescue crews retrieved the lifeless bodies of an unspecified number of people from under the rubble of houses bombed by the Israeli military in Bani Suheila
• An Israeli drone bombed the Sheikh Nasser neighbourhood of Khan Younis, killing two people and injuring a third
• The Israeli military has shot and killed two men in the east of Khan Younis Israeli forces shot and killed one person in the al-Shakoush area, northwest of Rafah

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Israeli forces were responsible for firing on three of the UN’s aid convoys over three days in the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera reports.

The attacks took place between Sunday and Tuesday, and bullets pierced UN vehicles on two occasions, Guterres said at a news conference at the UN headquarters in New York on Thursday.

“They were shot by the Israeli military,” the UN chief said.

The UN said earlier this week that one attack was on a UN convoy carrying humanitarian workers and children near the Wadi Gaza checkpoint.

No one was injured by the Israeli gunfire.

Qatar welcomed the signing of the “Beijing Declaration” by Palestinian factions earlier this week to achieve reconciliation and strengthen unity against Israeli “violations” in all the occupied territory, Al Jazeera reports.

The foreign ministry said in a statement it considers the agreement “an important step towards national unity and the consolidation of the national project to establish an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital”.

A Houthi response to deadly Israeli air raids near Yemen’s Hodeidah is coming, the militia’s leader warned in a televised speech according to Al Jazeera.

“The response is inevitable,” Abdel-Malik al-Houthi said. “Everything that happens from the side of the Israeli enemy will be more incentive for revenge.”