Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 226

The stranglehold on aid reaching Gaza threatens an “apocalyptic” outcome, UN’s humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said as he warned of famine in the besieged territory, AFP reports.

“If fuel runs out, aid doesn’t get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming anymore. It will be present,” Griffiths said.

“And I think our worry, as citizens of the international community, is that the consequence is going to be really, really hard. Hard, difficult, and apocalyptic,” he told AFP on the sidelines of meetings with Qatari officials in Doha.

Griffith, the UN’s Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said some 50 trucks of aid per day could reach the hardest-hit north of Gaza through the reopened Erez crossing.

But battles near the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings in Gaza’s south meant the vital routes were “effectively blocked”, he explained. “So aid getting in through land routes to the south and for Rafah, and the people dislodged by Rafah is almost nil,” Griffiths added.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi has said that the kingdom demanded an international investigation into what it said were many war crimes committed during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, Reuters reports.

In remarks made during a press conference with the head of the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), Safadi said those responsible for documented crimes should be brought to justice.

The Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society has said the 18 detainees include children and former prisoners, who had previously been released, Al Jazeera reports.

The detentions were carried out in Nablus, Ramallah, Tulkarem, Bethlehem and occupied East Jerusalem from Saturday night until Sunday morning.

This brings the number of Palestinians detained by Israeli forces since October 7 to about 8,775, the organisations said.

Two Israeli soldiers were killed in a battle in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, Reuters quotes the Israeli military as saying.

Israel’s military has been focusing its offensive in the southern part of Gaza where it says the remaining Hamas brigades are holed up.

A Gaza hospital has said that an Israeli air strike targeting a house at a refugee camp in the centre of the Palestinian territory killed at least 20 people, AFP reports.

“We received 20 fatalities and several wounded after an Israeli air strike targeted a house belonging to the Hassan family in Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza,” the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital said in a statement.

Witnesses said the strike occurred around 3am local time. The Israeli army said it was checking the report.

Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that the wounded included several children, and rescuers were searching for missing people trapped under the rubble.

Witnesses said several other houses were targeted in air strikes during the night across Gaza, and that air strikes and artillery shelling also hit parts of Rafah during the night.

Israeli forces are continuing attacks across the Gaza Strip after a night of bombings that killed and wounded dozens of Palestinians, Al Jazeera reports.

In the past few hours alone, Al Jazeera Arabic’s reporters on the ground have reported more Israeli raids on the centre of Rafah city in the south, and in the Sheikh Zayed and Zeitoun neighbourhoods in the north, as well as in the vicinity of the Kamal Adwan hospital in the north.

Al Jazeera Arabic reporters also said there were fierce clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters in the Jabalia refugee camp in the north.

The violence comes hours after Israeli attacks on the Nuseirat refugee camp and Gaza City that killed at least 29 people.

A key issue is whether Washington might agree to build a uranium enrichment facility on Saudi territory, when it might do so, and whether Saudi personnel might have access to it or it would be run solely by US staff in a “black box” arrangement, Reuters reports.

Without rigorous safeguards built into an agreement, Saudi Arabia, which has uranium ore, could theoretically use an enrichment facility to produce highly enriched uranium, which, if purified enough, can yield fissile material for bombs.

Another issue is whether Riyadh would agree to make a Saudi investment in a US-based and US-owned uranium enrichment plant and to hire US companies to build Saudi nuclear reactors.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will visit Saudi Arabia this weekend for talks expected to touch on a civil nuclear cooperation agreement, one piece of a wider arrangement Washington hopes will lead to normalization of Israeli-Saudi relations, Reuters reports.

A civil nuclear deal is envisaged as part of a wider arrangement on Israeli-Saudi normalisation, something that is all but inconceivable while the Gaza conflict rages.

The Gaza death toll, health officials in the coastal enclave say, has risen to more than 35,000 and malnutrition is widespread, as Israel’s offensive continues in retaliation to the Oct 7 Hamas attacks. It is hard to imagine the Saudis being willing to normalise relations while Palestinians are dying in such numbers.

The United States hopes to find a way to give Saudi Arabia several things it wants — a civil nuclear pact, security guarantees and a pathway toward a Palestinian state — in return for Riyadh agreeing to normalise relations with Israel.

However, the wider Israel-Saudi normalisation envisaged as part of a Middle East “grand bargain” remains elusive.

Israel’s destructive military campaign in Gaza, which has so far killed over 35,000 Palestinians, including nearly 14,000 children over the past seven months in revenge for the Hamas assault on Oct 7 last year, has exposed the objectivity and impartiality claims of many leading Western newspapers and media outlets.

A couple of its stories have come in for considerable stick after readers and small independent digital media platforms investigated not just the claims contained in them but also who was responsible for the newsgathering, ie, whose byline appeared on these.

Most of the US and UK media are either blindly sympathetic to Israel or petrified of it to do the kind of journalism they should be doing. I am aware only of British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan being dropped by his channel in the US.

But all is not as bleak. Some of the journalists on CNN have done sterling work.

Matthew Chance’s story, based on whistle-blowers’ accounts of Palestinian detainees’ sub-human treatment and torture at a military-run camp, made headlines. CNN’s Jomana Karadsheh reported not just on the 14,000 children killed but also on the heart-breaking plight of the 20,000 WCNSF (wounded child, no surviving family), many of whom are amputees.

Israel may have banned Al Jazeera recently for its bold, powerful reporting, but the widespread use of social media bringing to our smartphones horrific images of the Gaza mass murder is slowly turning the tide against the total endorsement of the Israeli position. The student protests in the US and Europe are just one indication.

Read the full op-ed by Abbas Nasir here.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will visit Saudi Arabia this weekend for talks expected to touch on a civil nuclear cooperation agreement, one piece of a wider arrangement Washington hopes will lead to the normalization of Israeli-Saudi relations, Reuters reports.

Under Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the United States may negotiate agreements to engage in significant civil nuclear cooperation with other nations. It specifies nine nonproliferation criteria those states must meet to keep them from using the technology to develop nuclear arms or transfer sensitive materials to others. The law stipulates congressional review of such pacts.

As the world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia at first glance is not an obvious candidate for a nuclear pact typically aimed at building power plants to generate electricity.

There are two reasons Riyadh may wish to do so. The first is that under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious Vision 2030 reform plan, the kingdom aims to generate substantial renewable energy and reduce emissions. At least some of this is expected to come from nuclear energy.

Critics cite a second potential reason: that Riyadh might wish to develop nuclear expertise in case it someday wished to acquire nuclear weapons despite the safeguards enshrined in any deal with Washington to prevent this.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan have met to discuss Israel’s offensive in Gaza and seek to complete a broad bilateral agreement, the Saudi state news agency reports.

The meeting in the Saudi city of Dhahran included reviewing “the semi-final version of the draft strategic agreements between the two countries, which are almost being finalised,” a statement read.

The de facto Saudi leader and President Joe Biden’s top security aide also discussed the need to find a “credible track for bringing about the two-state solution” for Israel and the Palestinians, and to stop the conflict in Gaza and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid, the statement said.

The Biden administration and Saudi Arabia have been seeking to finalise an agreement for US security guarantees and civilian nuclear assistance, Reuters reported early this month, even as an Israel-Saudi normalisation deal envisioned as part of a Middle East grand bargain remains elusive.

The White House said on Friday that Sullivan would visit Saudi Arabia and Israel to discuss bilateral and regional matters, including Gaza and efforts to achieve lasting peace and security in the region.

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees has said that 800,000 people had been “forced to flee” Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah since Israel began military operations there this month, AFP reports.

“Nearly half of the population of Rafah or 800,000 people are on the road having been forced to flee since the Israeli forces started the military operation in the area on 6 May,” UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on social media site X.

Following the evacuation orders Gazans have fled to “the middle areas and Khan Younis including to destroyed buildings”, he said.

“Every time, they are forced to leave behind the few belongings they have … Every time, they have to start from scratch, all over again.”

Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz has demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commit to an agreed vision for the Gaza conflict that would include stipulating who might rule the territory after the fighting with Hamas, Reuters reports.

In a news conference, Gantz said he wanted the war cabinet to form a six-point plan by June 8.

If his expectations are not met, Gantz said, he would withdraw his centrist party from the conservative premier’s emergency government.

The Israeli military has said that its forces operating in the Gaza Strip recovered the body of Ron Binyamin, who was among 252 people seized by Hamas, Reuters reports.

Chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Binyamin was found along with three other slain hostages whose repatriation was announced on Friday.

German-Israeli Shani Louk’s father has said that finally laying his daughter to rest will be a gift after her body was recovered from Gaza, months after she was killed in Hamas’ October 7, Reuters reports.

Louk, a 23-year-old tattoo artist, was celebrating with friends at the Nova music festival just inside Israel before it was attacked by gunmen from the Palestinian fighter group.

Nissim Louk said that to be sure, he had viewed photos.

“We also saw the tattoos on her hands,” he said.

“Now she will have her own place next to us and we can go there whenever we want. And she can rest.”

He said the funeral will be held on Sunday, which is Ricarda Louk’s birthday.

“I think Shani said ‘Let’s give my mother a birthday present and let’s go back and be close to her’,” he added.

Having Shani’s grave nearby would be a comfort, said Ricarda Louk.

“Maybe we’ll find more peace,” she said.

Read full story here

Israeli troops and tanks have pushed into parts of a congested northern Gaza Strip district that they had previously skirted in the more than seven-month-old conflict, killing and wounding dozens of Palestinians, Reuters reports.

Israel’s forces also took over some ground in Rafah, a southern city next to the Egyptian border that is packed with displaced people and where the launch this month of a long-threatened incursion to crush Hamas hold-outs has alarmed Cairo and Washington.

Read more here.

The Commission for Detainees’ Affairs has said its lawyers were able to visit three detainees in Ramon prison, in southeast Israel, who accused prison authorities of neglecting their illnesses and dire health conditions, Al Jazeera reports.

Mohammed Tous and Murad Abu Alrub, who are serving life in prison, and Taher Saleh, who has been in administrative detention for the past four years, have said that Israeli authorities are carrying out “systematic negligence of detainees, including withholding medicine, leaving them to fall victim to illnesses”.

Tous, who has been in prison since 1985, told lawyers he has not witnessed this kind of mistreatment since his detention about 40 years ago. He confirmed to the commission’s legal team that his already poor vision deteriorated after prison authorities suspended his treatment since October 7.

Alrub spoke about the spread of skin diseases among detainees due to the lack of sanitisers and cleaning supplies, in addition to the lack of clothes and bed linens.

Saleh, who became paralysed on his left side while in prison and is unable to walk or use the toilet independently, said he is being denied transfer to a hospital, despite the prison doctor’s recommendation for him to receive treatment at one.

“The commission warns of an escalation in the medical crimes that threaten the lives of hundreds of sick detainees,” it said in a statement, adding that international intervention by rights and legal groups is needed.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society has said that Al Amal Hospital in Khan Younis conducted four specialised eye surgeries as part of ongoing efforts to reactivate the hospital’s services after repeated targeting by occupation forces rendered it out of service.

In a post on X, the agency said that the surgeries were performed by the hospital’s medical team with support from the UNRWA agency.

New divisions have emerged among Israel’s leaders over Gaza’s governance, with an unexpected Hamas fightback in parts of the Palestinian territory piling pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, AFP reports.

Netanyahu came under personal attack from Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for failing to rule out an Israeli government in Gaza after the conflict.

The Israeli premier’s outright rejection of post-conflict Palestinian leadership in Gaza has broken a rift among top politicians wide open and frustrated relations with its top ally the United States.

Experts say the lack of clarity only serves to benefit Hamas, whose leader has insisted no new authority can be established in the territory without its involvement.

“Without an alternative to fill the vacuum, Hamas will continue to grow,” International Crisis Group analyst Mairav Zonszein told AFP.

Emmanuel Navon, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, echoed this sentiment.

“If only Hamas is left in Gaza, of course they are going to appear here and there and the Israeli army will be forced to chase them around,” said Navon.

“Either you establish an Israeli military government or an Arab-led government.”

Austria will release funds to the UN’s Palestinian relief organisation UNRWA that were blocked after allegations agency staff were involved in the October 7 attacks on Israel, Reuters reports.

“After a thorough analysis of the action plan, we will release funds to UNRWA again,” the Austrian foreign ministry said.

Funds totalling $3.70 million have been budgeted for 2024, with the first payment due to be made in the summer, it added.

Arguments and tensions are inevitable in modern society and should not be brushed under the carpet, Pope Francis said, warning that trying to impose a uniform vision fostered frustration and violence, Reuters reports.

Addressing a peace gathering in a Roman amphitheatre in the northern Italian city of Verona, the pope said people needed to learn how to deal with conflict before it got out of hand, but also recognise that holding different opinions was healthy.

“A society without conflicts is a dead society. A society that hides conflicts is a suicidal society. A society that takes conflicts by the hand is a society of the future,” the pope told some 12,500 people gathered in the ancient arena.

“The flaw of dictatorships is not admitting plurality,” he added.

Francis said the world was assailed by wars, but added that ordinary people had to try to build bridges and avoid being dragged into armed conflict at the behest of their leaders.

“Ideologies have no feet to walk, no hands to heal wounds, no eyes to see the sufferings of others. Peace is made with the feet, hands, and eyes of the people involved,” he said.

Underscoring the pope’s hopes for personal reconciliation, an Israeli man, whose parents died in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, embraced on the Verona stage a Palestinian peace activist whose brother had died in an Israeli jail.

“I don’t think there are any words to add to this,” the pope said, leading the applause for their gesture.

“Don’t stop. Don’t get discouraged. Don’t become spectators of so-called ‘inevitable’ wars,” he told his audience.

At least eight people, including women and children, were killed and 10 were wounded after Israeli artillery targeted a group of Palestinians filling water containers west of the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza, Al Jazeera reports.

“We were displaced to the Faluja area, which is considered a safe area, and suddenly this place was shelled by the Israelis. We do not know where to go,” a witness said.

Video footage shared online and verified by Al Jazeera showed how the attack turned the area into a pool of blood, as well as the impact of shrapnel on shops and homes at the site of the bombing.

At least 35,386 Palestinians have been killed and 79,366 have been wounded in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza since October 7, Reuters reports quoting the Gaza health ministry.

Austria has said it will restore its funding to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees after suspending it over allegations that staff were involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks, AFP reports.

“After analysing the action plan in detail” submitted by UNRWA “to improve the functioning of the organisation”, Austria has decided to “release the funds,” its foreign ministry said in a statement.

A total of 3.4 million euros ($3.7 million) in funds have been budgeted for 2024, and the first payment is expected to be made in the summer, the statement said.

“Some of the Austrian funds will be used in the future to improve internal control mechanisms at UNRWA,” it added.

Austria said it will “closely monitor” the implementation of the action plan with other international partners, noting that “a lot of trust had been squandered”.

The Alpine country said it has substantially increased support for the suffering Palestinian population in Gaza and the region since 7 October, making 32 million euros ($34.8 million) in humanitarian aid available to other international aid organisations.