Israel using Golan Heights attack ‘for PR’
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, says Israel’s public relations machine has been exploiting the current regional tensions and the weekend attack that took place in the occupied Golan Heights.
He highlighted how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew back to Israel three hours early after his US trip following the deadly attack.
“They [the Israeli government] called it Netanyahu’s urgent return to Israel, because Israeli citizens were killed in a Hezbollah strike’,” he said, stressing that it was not clear if Hezbollah was behind the incident.
“To call Syrians living in the occupied Golan Heights ‘Israeli citizens’, is a stretch by every possible way,” the analyst added.
Don't forget the immediate rally to get the world behind attacking Lebanon.
Hamas says Netanyahu keeps stalling truce deal
The Palestinian group says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has added new conditions and demands to a US ceasefire proposal, following the latest round of talks in Rome conducted through mediators.
The group said in a statement that the Israeli ceasefire response to the proposal showed that Netanyahu was stalling to avoid reaching an agreement.
“It is clear from what the mediators conveyed that Netanyahu has returned to his strategy of procrastination, evasion, and avoiding reaching an agreement by setting new conditions and demands,” Hamas added.
It accused Netanyahu of retreating from a proposal previously presented by the mediators, which it said had already been based on an “Israeli paper”.
Gaza is a ‘polio epidemic area’, Health Ministry says
Gaza’s Health Ministry has blamed Israel’s military offensive as it has declared a polio epidemic in the besieged and bombarded enclave.
In a statement on Telegram, it stressed the situation “poses a health threat to the residents of Gaza and neighbouring countries” and called it a “setback” to the global polio eradication programme.
The ministry called for an “immediate intervention to end the aggression and find radical solutions” to the issues of lack of potable water and personal hygiene, damaged sewage networks and removal of tonnes of rubbish and solid waste.
On Friday, the World Health Organization said it was sending more than one million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered over the coming weeks to prevent children from being infected after the virus was detected in sewage samples.
Poliomyelitis, which is spread mainly through the fecal-oral route, is a highly infectious virus that can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis. Cases of polio have declined by 99 percent worldwide since 1988 thanks to mass vaccination campaigns and efforts continue to eradicate it everywhere.
Israel’s military, meanwhile, said it would start offering the polio vaccine to soldiers in Gaza.
The UN reported last week that besides detecting the polio virus, there has been a widespread increase in cases of hepatitis A, dysentery and gastroenteritis as sanitary conditions deteriorate in Gaza. Israel’s war has damaged and destroyed sewage and water systems, and sewage has spilled into the streets near some camps for displaced people.
