When Taha Amin-Ismail Khalifeh dialled into a conference call with his Israeli employer last month, the Palestinian hotel worker expected a briefing on how the Israel-Hamas conflict was affecting business. Instead, he and 40 others were laid off, Reuters reports.
Khalifeh, who lives in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, had worked as a housekeeper in a hotel in East Jerusalem for more than 20 years. Israel has also sent back thousands of Palestinians to the besieged Gaza Strip.
Like many of them, Khalifeh had mixed feelings about working for an Israeli business, but it was his best option for a reliable paycheque. Unemployment is running at about 46 per cent in Gaza and 13pc in the West Bank, and wages are much lower.
“There is nothing that would provide us with a living except working in Israel,” Khalifeh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. “We have no other choice.”
Now jobless for more than a month, he fears he may never be able to return as Israeli businesses urge the government to plug the labour gap left by the Palestinian workers from nations including India and Sri Lanka.
Israel must not only instruct Gazans to move to safety but also make this possible, a spokesperson for the German foreign ministry said amid concerns that the war against Hamas could expand into Gaza’s refugee-crowded south, Reuters reports.
It is important that Israel avoids civilian casualties and adheres to humanitarian law, the spokesperson told reporters in Berlin, adding that the German government was conveying this message in its talks with Israeli partners.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial has resumed, despite the country’s continuing bombardment of the Gaza Strip, AFP reports.
The trial was suspended two months ago due to the October 7 attacks.
Netanyahu, leader of Israel’s right-wing Likud party, is accused of fraud and breach of trust over his relationship with Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan and other wealthy personalities.
According to prosecutors, between 2007 and 2016 Netanyahu allegedly received gifts valued at 700,000 shekels ($195,000), including boxes of cigars, bottles of champagne and jewellery, in exchange for financial or personal favours.
Netanyahu, who is Israel’s first sitting prime minister to stand trial, denies any wrongdoing, saying gifts were only accepted from friends and without him having asked for them.
More than half of Gaza’s homes have been destroyed or damaged in Israel’s attack of the besieged territory since October 7, Al Jazeera reports.
Since early morning, Israeli tanks and armoured vehicles have been moving towards Khan Younis from the east, Al Jazeera reports.
The Israeli military has ordered residents of those areas to start evacuating westwards and asked them to move further towards Rafah.
According to Al Jazeera, the tanks have started to advance. Currently, they’re on the edge of the eastern part and are moving slowly under heavy mass bombardment of the area.
People who came here to Nasser Hospital from those areas have told Al Jazeera of the sheer level of destruction caused by the massive air strikes and heavy artillery shelling around the clock for the past two days.
The commander of Israel’s armoured corps has said that his and other ground forces were close to achieving their war mission in the northern Gaza Strip and were operating elsewhere in the Palestinian enclave against Hamas, Reuters reports.
“The goals in the northern section have almost been met,” Brigadier-General Hisham Ibrahim told Israel’s Army Radio.
“We are beginning to expand the ground maneouvre to other parts of the Strip, with one goal: to topple the Hamas terrorist group.”
The White House budget chief warned the US Congress that failure to agree on fresh funds for Ukraine by the end of the year would “kneecap” Kyiv on the battlefield, AFP reports.
In a letter to the House Speaker, the director of the Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young said time was rapidly running out to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion.
Casting Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hamas as twin forces trying to “annihilate” neighbouring democracies, Biden has sought to tie $61 billion for Ukraine with $14 billion for Israel in the aid package he demanded in October.
