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SvennoJ on 13 June 2024

Interview with Osama Hamdan by CNN

Hamas official says ‘no one has any idea’ how many Israeli hostages are still alive

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/13/middleeast/hamas-interview-israel-gaza-hostages-intl/index.html

Shortened version below (without all the IDF censor added bits and repeated background)

The fate of the 120 remaining hostages in Gaza is crucial to any deal to end the protracted and bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas. But a senior Hamas official has told CNN that “no one has an idea” how many of them are alive, and that any deal to release them must include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Speaking to CNN in the Lebanese capital Beirut, Hamdan said the latest proposal on the table – an Israeli plan that was first publicly announced by US President Joe Biden late last month – did not meet the group’s demands for an end to the war.

Hamdan told CNN that Hamas needed “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves, the reconstruction, the (lifting) of the siege … and we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange.”

Hamdan told CNN the duration of the ceasefire was a key issue for Hamas, which is concerned that Israel has no intention of following through with the second phase of the deal. The end of hostilities must be permanent, he said, and Israel must withdraw from Gaza completely.

“The Israelis want the ceasefire only for six weeks and then they want to go back to the fight, which I think the Americans, till now, they did not convince the Israelis to accept (a permanent ceasefire),” he said, adding that he believes the US needs to convince Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire as part of the deal.

Question of responsibility

Speaking to CNN inside a modest office decorated with a large map of Gaza and panoramic photo of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Hamdan repeatedly deflected any questions about Hamas’ role in the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. He called the October 7 terror attacks, which sparked the current war in Gaza, “a reaction against the occupation.”

“The one who is in charge or responsible for that is (the Israeli) occupation. If you resist the occupation, (they) will kill you, if you did not resist the occupation, (they) also will kill you and deport you out of your country. So what we are supposed to do, just to wait?,” he said.

Hamdan also dismissed as fake reports that Sinwar suggested the deaths of thousands of Palestinians were “necessary sacrifices.”

Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of using civilians in Gaza as human shields and earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal published what it said were leaked messages from Sinwar to other Hamas leaders in which he allegedly expressed an uncompromising determination to continue fighting, regardless of the human cost.

Hamdan told CNN the messages “were fake.”

“It was fake messages done by someone who is not Palestinian and (it) was sent (to the) Wall Street Journal as part of the pressure against Hamas and provoking the people against the leader,” he said without providing evidence. “No one can accept the killing of the Palestinians, of his own people.”

‘no one has any idea’ how many Israeli hostages are still alive

Israel believes that more than 70 hostages of the more than 100 who are still held in Gaza to be alive.

Speaking to CNN, Hamdan said he didn’t know how many were still alive. “I don’t have any idea about that. No one has an idea about this,” he said, alleging – without providing any evidence – that the Israeli operation to free four of the hostages on Saturday resulted in the deaths of three others, including an American citizen.

Asked about the testimony of a doctor who treated the released hostages and said they suffered mental and physical abuse and were beaten every hour, Hamdan again blamed Israel for their suffering.

“I believe if they have mental problem, this is because of what Israel have done in Gaza. Because (no one can) handle what Israel is doing, bombing each day, killing civilians, killing women and children … they saw that (with) their own eyes,” he said, adding that comparing images of the hostages taken before and after the eight-months long captivity shows “they were better than before”

Brutality of Israel’s war on Gaza becoming ‘dangerously normalised’: NRC

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has warned that images of brutality from Israel’s war on Gaza have become so common that there is a danger of the horror becoming “normalised”.

“We have all become so accustomed to images of brutality and destruction in Gaza that it has now become dangerously normalised,” said Suze van Meegen, NRC’s head of operations in Gaza.

“Even after more than eight months of violence, there was absolutely nothing normal about the scale and ferocity of attacks on civilians in Gaza’s Middle Area last week,” van Meegen said.

“It is not normal for a whole population to live in constant fear and with overwhelming grief. It is not normal to feel your safety is at greater risk in a school or hospital than elsewhere. It is not normal for a community to bury hundreds of people each week,” she said.

“The use of a unilaterally declared ‘humanitarian zone’ as a battleground last week betrays any suggestion of civilian protection or respect for humanitarian space,” she added.



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SvennoJ on 13 June 2024

This is huge

Saudi Arabia Just Shocked the Dollar! Future with BRICS and China



Saudi Arabia just changed the entire future of the US dollar when it decided to end it's 50 year agreement with the US and the Petrodollar. Saudi Arabia is now looking to BRICS and China for their future in this new multipolar world. What happens next for the US dollar and BRICS? Let's break it down!


That puts this video in a whole new perspective, US is sounding desperate

Biden Commits To FIGHT WARS For Saudi Arabia

 



SvennoJ on 14 June 2024

Hamas ceasefire stance shows confidence of ‘winning in the Gaza Strip’: Monitors

US-based defence think tanks, Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and the Critical Threats Project (CTP), say that Hamas’s recent ceasefire proposal amendments demonstrate that the Palestinian armed group is “confident that it is winning in the Gaza Strip”.

“Senior Hamas officials have repeatedly expressed confidence that Hamas will survive the war, despite Israeli military pressure,” the ISW/CTP say in their Gaza report. “Hamas forces throughout the Gaza Strip remain combat effective and are trying to reconstitute. Hamas has also begun trying to reassert its political authority in some parts of the strip,” the war monitors said.

The monitors also noted that Israeli forces concluded a weeklong operation in the Zeitoun and Sabra neighbourhoods of Gaza City on Thursday and that Israel has now “conducted at least five distinct clearing operations” in Zeitoun since the start of the war.

Hamas fighters carried out rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli forces deployed along the Netzarim Corridor on Thursday while fighters mortared Israeli forces pushing into the west of Rafah.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired rockets at Israel’s Ashdod and Ashkelon cities, as well as a number of smaller Israeli towns, and mortared Israel forces at the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) border crossing with Gaza.

Human Rights Watch calls for accountability as Israeli military added to UN ‘list of shame’

HRW’s director of child rights, Jo Becker, said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s inclusion of Israel on the UN’s list of countries that commit “grave violations against children” in armed conflict was “fully justified”.

Though the UN had already attributed 8,700 child casualties to Israel’s military between 2015 and 2022, “in 2023, the scale of the violations was apparently too large for the secretary-general to ignore”, Becker said in a statement.

Becker said the UN secretary-general had been criticised in the past for “omitting some parties from the ‘list of shame’ despite evidence of violations in UN reports”.

Now, the UN Security Council must “hold those responsible to account and make clear that children are off-limits in armed conflict”, she added.



SvennoJ on 14 June 2024

Two fishermen killed

We’re getting reports that Israeli forces have fired at fishing boats in the al-Qarara area, northwest of the city of Khan Younis, killing at least two Palestinians.


Israeli forces kill 3 Palestinians west of Rafah

Israeli bombing that targeted the Saudi neighbourhood, west of Rafah city, has killed three Palestinians, our colleagues on the ground report.


At least 3 killed in Israeli attack on Bureij refugee camp

Israeli attacks are concentrated now in central Gaza.

The Bureij refugee camp is densely populated and home to a large number of children, of displaced Palestinians who were made refugees in 1948.

As of late hours of last night, at least three people were killed – one child and two adults. Several other injuries were reported at al-Ahli Hospital.

In Gaza City, the Israeli military continues to target areas across the city with relentless air attacks, including in the eastern neighbourhoods of Gaza City, Daraj and Shujayea.

To the western part of the city, the Shati refugee camp, this place is a notorious site right now for many of the relentless attacks carried out by the Israeli military. More than 60 percent of this camp is destroyed and turned into a pile of rubble.

Three people were also reported killed and multiple wounded.


Children were playing in courtyard in Deir el-Balah when Israeli forces attacked

Medical sources have told Al Jazeera that 20 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli raids on different areas in the Gaza Strip since dawn today.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reports that Israeli forces targeted a house in Deir el-Balah, and killed at least two Palestinians. Four others were critically injured, among them children.

“Talking to the parents, they said they were playing in the courtyard when the air strike took place,” Khoudary said.

"There has been a couple of targets in Nuseirat and Bureij. The air strikes are ongoing from north to the south, despite the ceasefire negotiations.”


SvennoJ on 14 June 2024

Palestinians in northern Gaza fear ‘another wave of starvation’

We just saw the funeral of 10-year-old Mustafa Hijazi. He died due to health complications and the malnutrition made the situation worse. This is the second case where a Palestinian child has died due to malnutrition.

According to Kamal Adwan Hospital’s director, there are more than 200 Palestinian children currently at risk of death due to malnutrition. It’s difficult for Palestinians to find food. The only thing that is available is wheat flour and bread.

Palestinians in the north are saying they need more aid. Everyone is fearing another wave of starvation in the northern parts of the Gaza Strip.


In northern Gaza, starved families survive on bread alone

In northern Gaza, where Palestinians have been hit hardest by hunger, residents say acute shortages of vegetables, fruit and meat mean they are surviving on bread alone.

Food that can be found in the market is being sold at exorbitant prices, they said. One kilo of green peppers, which cost about a dollar before the war, was priced at nearly $90. Traders demanded $70 for a kilo of onions.

“We are being starved, the world has forgotten about us,” said Um Mohammed, a mother of six in Gaza City who has not left the area despite more than eight months of Israeli bombardments.

But she and her family have left their home for designated shelters in UN schools several times. “Except for flour and bread, we have nothing else. We don’t have anything to eat it with, so we eat bread only,” she said.



Displaced people in Jabalia scramble for drinking water

Footage shared online, and verified by Al Jazeera, shows a stampede and crowding among the displaced people at UNRWA schools trying to get drinking water on a daily basis.

In northern Gaza, the water crisis worsened after the massive destruction caused by the Israeli army in its recent military operation. “See how people suffer from lack of water and the spread of sewage, shelter and other challenges, including lack of food and aid,” one of the displaced people said.

“I came for several days trying to get water but wasn’t successful,” said an elderly woman. “We were displaced from Beit Hanoon after we lost our homes and now in Jabalia camp, we beg for water.”



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SvennoJ on 14 June 2024

War on the Northern border keeps on escalating

Antitank missile strike injures two Israeli soldiers in north: Military

The Israeli military said the two were evacuated after being injured in an antitank missile attack in the north of the country. One of the soldiers was moderately injured and another was lightly injured, the military said in a post on social media.

Hezbollah in Lebanon also shared a video clip earlier on Friday which it said showed an Israeli vehicle being hit with a missile in the Yiftah area of northern Israel. It was not known if Hezbollah’s missile attack was the same as that reported by Israel’s military.


Israeli military says it attacked Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon

The Israeli Air Force has said that it has attacked a “number of terrorists” operating in a military building in the Zeitoun area of southern Lebanon. It did not say how many casualties there were from the attack but added that an Israeli aircraft also “attacked and eliminated a terrorist” in a separate incident.

Also hit were “launch sites” from which Hezbollah has carried out missile and rocket attacks against Israel in recent days. On Thursday, Hezbollah said it fired 150 rockets into northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights in response to the Israeli military killing of one of its senior commanders.


It's kinda representative of the style of warfare Israel uses in Gaza...

Footage shows Israeli forces using medieval-style trebuchet catapult on Lebanon border

Footage shared by our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic and authenticated by the Sanad verification unit shows Israeli forces using a medieval-style trebuchet catapult on the border with southern Lebanon.

The trebuchet, a weapon made of wood with a long arm that catapults projectiles, can be seen hurling balls of fire over a fortified border wall into southern Lebanon, where intense fighting is ongoing with the armed group Hezbollah. An Israeli soldier with a bow is also seen firing a burning arrow across the border wall.

An anonymous Israeli official told NBC News that the medieval-style catapult is not part of the Israeli military’s standard arsenal, but was built by soldiers stationed on the border in order to burn away shrubbery on the frontier in which Hezbollah fighters are known to hide.

Use of the weapon was not sanctioned and it will not be used again, according to the anonymous official.



Translation: With a catapult … the occupation ignites fires on the border with Lebanon


Rockets, missiles fired at Israeli sites

Six rockets have been fired towards an Israeli site in the occupied Shebaa Farms in southern Lebanon, report our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic.

Israel Today also reported that five antitank missiles were fired from Lebanon towards Israeli soldiers and farmers in Metula, northern Israel. No casualties were reported.


Fire breaks out in northern Israel

Two houses have been damaged and a bus caught fire after antitank missiles were fired at Metula, northern Israel, from Lebanon, Israeli media has reported.


Israeli air strike kills one, wounds others in Lebanon

A Lebanese woman has been killed and at least seven people were wounded by an Israeli air strike last night in the Tyre district, southern Lebanon. The Lebanese National News Agency reported that the air strike targeted a house in the village of Jennata.



SvennoJ on 14 June 2024

What next for Lebanon if Hezbollah-Israel fighting intensifies?

Israel’s politicians and its military officials are increasing their rhetoric of war against Lebanon, as cross-border fighting with Hezbollah intensifies.

There is increasing concern the situation on the Israel-Lebanon border is reaching a critical point.

The shadow of war is also exposing Lebanon’s deep divisions. “Hezbollah has a strong presence and support in southern Lebanon where many back the armed group’s decision to open up a front to help Gaza,” said Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Lebanon’s capital Beirut.

“But the fractured political and sectarian landscape becomes apparent as you travel deeper inside Lebanon. In Beirut, it’s a different reality. Here there are little signs of war and life carries on as normal for many.

“On the surface, there appears to be indifference but there’s concern on what comes next. Israel has threatened to flatten Beirut while Hezbollah has warned it of devastating consequences if it does.”


Israel’s attacks on Lebanon ‘destructive and terrorist aggression’

As cross-border fighting between Hezbollah and Israeli forces continues, Lebanon’s PM Najib Mikati said the “continuation of Israeli attacks and the deliberate killing of people, destruction of towns, and burning of crops, is not only a matter of condemnation and denunciation by us, but it is a destructive and terrorist aggression”.

“It is a terrorist attack that the international community must put an end to.”

Israel confronting Hezbollah ‘a very different calculation’ than taking on Hamas

    It’s the third day of rocket barrages from Lebanon into Israel. Israel has characterised this as the most serious attack on its borders since the war started in October.

    Since the start of those increased hostilities along the border, some 28 towns and villages on the Israeli side have been evacuated. That’s some 60,000 people who live in them have been living away from there now since October.

    Netanyahu is under increasing pressure from far-right cabinet ministers who keep him in power to take a stronger line against Hezbollah to try to push them further away, deep into Lebanon, so they can’t target these northern areas.

    But for Israel to take on Hezbollah it’s a very different calculation than taking on Hamas.

    Hezbollah has thousands of – a vast array of – rockets that could easily hit many Israeli towns and cities and cause significant damage. In retaliation, Lebanon would also be catastrophically damaged by Israel, so that’s why both sides have managed to avoid all-out confrontation.

    Israeli defence minister rejects French plan towards defusing border tensions with Lebanon

    Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has ruled out joining an initiative promoted by French President Emmanuel Macron in which France, the United States and Israel would form a contact group to work on defusing tensions on Israel’s border with Lebanon.

    “As we fight a just war, defending our people, France has adopted hostile policies against Israel,” Gallant said in a statement. “Israel will not be a party to the trilateral framework proposed by France.”

     

    Israeli army proposes re-directing focus to Lebanon

    Israel’s Channel 12 is reporting that the army has recommended ending its military offensive in Rafah, southern Gaza, and redirecting its efforts towards a new offensive in southern Lebanon.



    SvennoJ on 14 June 2024

    G7 failed Gaza moral test, exposing hypocrisy and double standards

    Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara has highlighted the G7’s failure in what he regards as a moral test over Gaza, pointing out the group’s hypocrisy and double standards.

    Bishara emphasised that the G7’s expected final communique, which will likely express concern over the Israel-Lebanon border situation and urge Israel to avoid a full-scale invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, is “absolutely meaningless”.

    Israeli Labor Party leader says ‘huge protests’ must remove Netanyahu, blasts Gaza strategy

    Yair Golan, head of Israel’s Labor Party and a former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli military, has said his country’s war on Gaza “has no realistic goals” and it was not possible to “free the hostages and destroy Hamas at the same time”.

    In a long post on social media, Golan said it was possible – four months ago – to have reached a deal on the captives that would have seen them return home and the war to end.

    “The one who prevented this is Netanyahu, thus preferring his own political interest over the lives of Israeli men and women whom he is responsible for neglecting. It’s the truth,” Golan said.

    Just as “Israel has no idea or plan” in Gaza, Golan said Netanyahu’s government “has no plan to end the war in the north” where Israeli forces and Hezbollah are in an increasingly bloody border confrontation.

    “The government must be replaced, this will not happen without huge protests that will make it clear to Netanyahu and his partners that they have no choice but to call for new elections,” Golan said.

    Israeli polls find Netanyahu’s party reducing gap with Gantz

    Two new electoral polls show that Netanyahu’s Likud party has reduced the gap with former minister Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party. However, both polls indicated that the majority of voters would prefer Gantz as the country’s leader.

    The polls, for the left-wing Ma’ariv daily and the right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper, showed Likud winning 21 seats behind the National Unity Party on 24. Last week, the Ma’ariv poll showed Gantz’s party on 27 seats. At the beginning of the year, it regularly polled in the high 30s.

    The poll also found that the current ruling coalition would win 52 seats in the 120-seat Knesset against 58 for the main opposition parties.

    Netanyahu has refused to call early elections and would not face a vote until 2026 if his coalition holds.


    Gantz winning elections would not change much either, but got to start somewhere to get rid of Netanyahu.



    SvennoJ on 14 June 2024

    Gaza’s death toll rises

    At least 37,266 people have been killed and 85,102 wounded in Israeli military attacks on Gaza since October 7, the enclave’s Health Ministry says. Of them, 34 Palestinians were killed and 71 wounded in the past 24-hour reporting period, the ministry added.


    Israeli forces kill 2 east of Rafah

    Israeli shelling has targeted the town of ash-Shawka, east of Rafah, killing two people and wounding others, our colleagues on the ground report. Israeli helicopters are targeting the western areas of Rafah city with machineguns.



    Seven killed, nurse and daughter wounded in Israeli strike on residential building

    At least seven people have been killed and a nurse working for Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, and her nine-year-old daughter have been seriously wounded after Israeli forces hit their apartment building on Thursday night in northern Gaza, MSF UK says.

    At least three children were among those killed in the attack.

    Despite the severity of their injuries, the nurse and her daughter have been treated and are now in a stable condition.

    MSF added that five of its workers have been killed in Gaza since October 7.

    Two captives killed during Israeli strike on Rafah, Hamas says

    Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, says that two Israeli captives held by the group were killed in an Israeli air raid in Rafah several days ago, according to a post on their Telegram channel.

    “Your army deceives you and continues to deceive you,” the group said, addressing Israeli citizens. “Your government only wants to recover the hostages in coffins.”

    Hamas did not reveal the identities of the captives, provide any images of them, or give more information about them.

    Qassam Brigades says Israeli soldiers hit in several locations in Gaza

    The Hamas armed group says it blew up a house with a bomb where members of the Israeli forces were present, leaving them “killed and wounded”, east of the Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza City.

    Moreover, the Qassam Brigades said they targeted a gathering of Israeli troops penetrating east of Zeitoun with mortar shells.

    In Tal as-Sultan, west of Rafah, fighters hit an Israeli army Merkava tank with a Yassin-105 shell in the Saudi neighbourhood.

    Aftermath of Israeli attacks in Deir al-Balah





    SvennoJ on 14 June 2024

    12-year-old injured in occupied West Bank raid

    The youth was seriously injured in the Israeli raid of the Um-al-Sharayet neighbourhood in el-Bireh, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

    A second Palestinian was also wounded in the latest Israeli raid, the number of which has surged over eight months of war in Gaza.

    WHO sounds alarm about growing health crisis in occupied West Bank

    The World Health Organization (WHO) is concerned about the escalating health crisis in the occupied West Bank due to attacks on health infrastructure and increased restrictions on movement obstructing access to healthcare, said its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

    The WHO chief cited the deaths of more than 500 Palestinians, including 124 children, since October as well as the injuries of more than 5,150 people, including about 800 children, since that time.

    “WHO calls for the immediate and active protection of civilians and health care in the West Bank,” Tedros said on X. “International humanitarian law must be respected, which means the sanctity of health care must be observed at all times.”