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SvennoJ on 23 February 2024
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Follow the money....

IMF says Egypt needs ‘support package’ amid Gaza pressures, fears of refugee flight

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that talks with Egyptian officials over a loan programme to support the country through its current economic challenges, not least pressures from the war in Gaza, are making good progress. The IMF and Egyptian authorities are currently carrying out a review of Cairo’s existing $3bn loan.

IMF spokesperson Julie Kozack said there is a need for a “very comprehensive support package” for Egypt due to the challenges posed by the expected entry of refugees into Egypt from Gaza.

“We’re working very closely with both the Egyptian authorities and their partners to ensure that Egypt does not have any residual financing needs and also to ensure that the programme is able to ensure macroeconomic and financial stability in Egypt,” she said.

Is the permanent transfer of Palestinians Israel’s ultimate goal?

Israel’s war on Gaza had displaced close to two million Palestinians. The majority of the displaced are sheltering from Israel’s bombardments in the southern city of Rafah. Now, with a threatened Israeli ground attack on Rafah and calls by Israeli politicians to expel Gaza’s population, fears are growing that another forced transfer of the Palestinian people will unfold.





UNRWA chief reveals efforts by Israeli officials to ‘dismantle’ refugee agency

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini has told the president of the UN General Assembly that his organisation has come under a “concerted effort” by Israeli officials who want to see “the dismantling” of the refugee agency for Palestinians.

In a letter in which he describes UNRWA reaching a “breaking point”, Lazzarini reveals that Israel’s land authority has ordered UNRWA to vacate a vocational training centre in occupied East Jerusalem and pay a fee of more than $4.5m for its use. The UNRWA chief points out that the centre was “assigned to UNRWA by Jordan in 1952”.

There has also been an attempt by an Israeli deputy mayor of Jerusalem to “evict UNRWA from its HQ of 75 years in East Jerusalem”, Lazzarini said.

Among other forms of harassment: Entry visas for international staff have been limited to spans of just one or two months; Israel’s finance minister has threatened to revoke UNRWA’s tax exemption privileges, an Israeli bank has blocked an UNRWA account, and Israeli customs officials have suspended shipments of the agency’s goods, among other actions.

Witnesses reject Israeli forces’ claim they pulled out of Nasser Hospital

More deadly air strikes have taken place in central Gaza and so far, it’s a pattern we’ve been seeing in the past weeks: If it’s less intense in one area, it’s very aggressive in the other.

In Rafah, it was another deadly night for people sheltering inside residential homes. Eight people have been reported killed, all displaced Palestinians from the northern part.

In Khan Younis, where the Israeli military last night announced that its forces completed what it described as its precise and limited operation inside Nasser Hospital. But what’s visible is the sheer level of destruction caused to the vicinity of the hospital and the different buildings inside the hospital. But right now what we’re getting it from witnesses in Khan Younis is that the Israeli military has not pulled out of the hospital. It is still surrounding it, and is repeatedly targeting its facilities with tanks, shells and attack. The hospital is 100 percent out of service right now.

MSF slams US for repeated veto of ceasefire resolutions

The Secretary General of medical charity MSF has warned the UN Security Council that children as young as five in Gaza say they would prefer to die than to witness the horrors of Israel’s war. Christopher Lockyear also criticised repeated vetoes by the US of resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza where more than 29,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli attacks since October 7.

“For 138 days, we have watched the systematic obliteration of a health system we have supported for decades. We have watched our patients and our colleagues be killed and maimed. This situation is the culmination of a war Israel is waging on the entire population of the Gaza Strip, a war of collective punishments, a war without rules, a war at all costs,” said Lockyear.

“We are appalled by the willingness of the United States to use its powers as a permanent council member to obstruct efforts to adopt the most evident of resolutions, one demanding an immediate and sustained ceasefire.”

‘Humanitarian response in Gaza today is an illusion’: Doctors Without Borders

“Children who do survive this war will not only bear the visible wounds of traumatic injuries, but the invisible ones too: Those of repeated displacements, constant fear and witnessing family members literally dismembered before their eyes. These psychological injuries have led children as young as five to tell us that they would prefer to die.

“The humanitarian response in Gaza today is an illusion. A convenient illusion that perpetuates a narrative that this war is being waged in line with international laws.”

‘Beaten, stripped, used as human shield’: Gaza victim recalls terror

https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/2/23/beaten-stripped-used-as-a-human-shield-gaza-man-recounts-israel-terror

Blood all over his face, eyes swollen, Ramadan Shamlakh arrived at a hospital after passersby found him struggling to walk southwards from northern Gaza. The 21-year-old man said he had endured beatings, a stripping and a war crime – he was used as a human shield – by Israeli soldiers when they raided his family home in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood.

“We were telling them that we are civilians and it is not our fault, but to no avail,” the young man said, while receiving treatment at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. After a period of torture and interrogation, the soldiers who had raided his home ordered Shamlakh to take off his clothes, remain in his underwear, and head south.

“I was walking with great difficulty, my body bleeding and my face coated in blood. The cold chilled me to the bone, and I shivered uncontrollably.”

Israeli strike kills two paramedics in southern Lebanon

Lebanon’s civil defence says two of its paramedics have been killed in an Israeli air strike on a healthcare centre in Lebanon’s southern town of Bint Jbeil. Lebanon’s Health Ministry strongly condemned Thursday’s deadly attack, which also resulted in the complete destruction of the civil defence facility, along with damage to a number of ambulances belonging to the centre.

Israeli army conducts drills ‘preparing for war in Lebanon’

Army Radio has reported on military exercises conducted by the Israeli military, saying it “is preparing for war in Lebanon”. “The fleet of missile ships conducted a training exercise that practices wide-scale combat in the naval arena in coordination with the air force,” it added.

“Among the scenarios that were practiced: thwarting unmanned aircraft, the ability to conduct air rescues from vessels and refuelling a missile ship in the middle of the sea.”

Arms exports to Israel must stop immediately: UN experts

Any transfer of weapons or ammunition to Israel that would be used in Gaza is likely to violate international humanitarian law and must cease immediately, a team of UN experts has warned. “All States must ensure respect for international humanitarian law by parties to an armed conflict, as required by 1949 Geneva Conventions and customary international law,” the experts said.

“States must accordingly refrain from transferring any weapon or ammunition – or parts for them – if it is expected, given the facts or past patterns of behaviour, that they would be used to violate international law.” The team of experts welcomed the decision of a Dutch appeals court ordering the Netherlands to halt the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel.

The court found that there was a “clear risk” that the parts would be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law, as “there are many indications that Israel has violated the humanitarian law of war in a not insignificant number of cases”.