Four killed in Syria border strike: Report

A presumed Israeli strike has hit a car near the Syria-Lebanon border, killing at least four people, reports the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The strike targeted the Lebanon-bound vehicle on Syria’s Zabadani bridge on the road connecting Damascus to Beirut, the observatory said, without providing information on the victims.

Lebanon’s An-Nahar news site shared photos and footage of the attack’s aftermath, with thick black smoke rising over a pile of wreckage on the road.

The attack would mark the 60th time Israel has hit Syrian territory this year, according to the observatory.

US is Israel’s accomplice, not a ceasefire mediator

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/8/28/the-us-is-israels-accomplice-not-a-ceasefire-mediator

On July 21, 2006, nine days into the 34-day Israeli war on Lebanon that killed 1,200 people, United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice opined that “an immediate ceasefire without political conditions does not make sense”.

In response to a journalist’s question at a press briefing, she declared that she had “no interest in diplomacy for the sake of returning Lebanon and Israel to the status quo ante”.

In addition to manoeuvring to delay a ceasefire, the US also expedited shipments of precision-guided bombs to Israel to assist in the mass slaughter.

Just two and a half years later, Rice was back agitating against a too-quick ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, where over the course of 22 days in December 2008 and January 2009 Israel massacred some 1,400 Palestinians.

Fast forward 15 years, how is Washington positioning itself when it comes to ceasefire talks? Is it purposefully dragging out negotiations?

Israeli forces kill Palestinian in Jenin village

Israeli forces have killed another Palestinian with live fire, this time in the village of Kafr Dan west of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, Wafa news agency reports. Resident Mohammed Ibrahim ‘Abed, who was released in 2022 from Israeli prison, was killed after being shot directly, Wafa said.

At least 10 Palestinians have been reported killed in the occupied West Bank as the Israeli military continues its biggest raid in close to 20 years.

Power outage and confrontations ongoing in Jenin refugee camp

An Al Jazeera correspondent has confirmed that the power has been cut off in a number of neighbourhoods in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank during the Israeli military operation.

He added that confrontations are ongoing between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters inside the camp.

Local Palestinian channels on Telegram have shared videos of a large number of Israeli soldiers patrolling the streets. The videos have been verified by Sanad, Al Jazeera’s fact-checking agency.

Jordan calls for ‘more effective American position’ to stop catastrophe: Report

Jordan’s King Abdullah II has “warned of the seriousness of developments in the West Bank” and called for a “more effective American position to stop the humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip, the Wafa news agency has reported.

He made the comments during a meeting with a delegation of the US Congress at Al-Husseiniya Palace in Amman, according to a statement by the Jordanian Royal Court.

He noted “the attacks by colonists and extremists against the Palestinians, and to the violations against Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem that will lead to the escalation of violence”, Wafa reported.

The king called for “the United States to play a more effective role in pushing to stop the humanitarian catastrophe in the Strip, and to find a political horizon to achieve a just and comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution”.

UN human rights office says Israeli assaults risk ‘seriously deepening’ conflict

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says Israel’s assaults on the occupied West Bank risk “seriously deepening” an already “catastrophic situation” there.

OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said in a statement that the 637 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank since October 7 represents the highest death toll over a comparable period in two decades and Israeli forces have ramped up abuses already endemic to the occupation.

“Thousands of Palestinians have been arbitrarily arrested and tortured, subjected to unrelenting settler violence, severe restrictions on movement and expression, their homes and property destroyed or seized, and forcibly displaced,” the statement reads. “Israel, as the occupying power, must abide by its obligations under international law.”

Nearly 650 patients forced from Al-Aqsa Hospital: MSF

Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, says it has set up a field hospital in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah after Israeli evacuation orders forced nearly 650 patients from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.

Before the evacuation order, an MSF doctor said the hospital, now nearly empty, was so full that some patients had to receive treatment on the floor.

“MSF’s field hospital, which wasn’t scheduled to open until September, started receiving its first patients amid a severe lack of supplies and resources and is facing huge pressure as the other remaining hospitals in the area are under threat,” MSF said in a news release.

“It was designed to be complementary and to provide support for other larger hospitals like Al-Aqsa. Field hospitals are not a solution, but a last resort in response to Israel’s dismantling of the health care system.”

Israeli forces opened fire on ‘clearly marked’ humanitarian vehicle: UN

The UN has said that Israeli forces in Gaza attacked a marked UN aid vehicle on Tuesday evening during a humanitarian operation that had been coordinated with the Israeli military beforehand.

“A clearly marked UN humanitarian vehicle, part of a convoy that had been fully coordinated with the [Israeli military], was struck 10 times by [Israeli military] gunfire, including with bullets targeting front windows,” UN secretary-general spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said.

Al Jazeera correspondent Gabriel Elizondo reported that the attack took place near Wadi Gaza, and that two UN workers inside the vehicle were unharmed.

Freed Israeli captive calls on Israel gov’t to reach a deal

Qaid Farhan al-Kadi, an Israeli man who was abducted by Hamas on October 7 and held in Gaza until he was recovered earlier this week, has returned to his home and called on the Israeli government to reach a deal for the release of the remaining captives.

“It does not matter if they are Arab or Jewish, all have a family waiting for them. They also want to feel the joy,” he told reporters in his home village of Khirbet Karkur. “I told Netanyahu yesterday, ‘work to have an end to this’.”

The 52-year-old is one of Israel’s about 300,000 Arab Bedouins, a group that has long faced discrimination from the Israeli state.

The Associated Press reported that Khirbet Karkur, an unincorporated Bedouin village, is currently under demolition orders by the government.

Since November, 70 percent of residents have received notifications that their homes will be demolished on the grounds that they were constructed without permits, which Israeli authorities rarely grant to the group. About one-third of Bedouin Arabs live in communities and villages that the Israeli government considers illegal.

Israeli captives’ families march for deal

Many families of Israeli captives have set out on a march from Tel Aviv towards an area near the security fence with Gaza to demand a prisoner exchange deal.

Shira Albag, the mother of one of the female soldiers held in the Strip, said history would care more about how the country manages the safe return of captives than whether Israel occupied the Philadelphi Corridor.

Her comments come after another round of ceasefire talks in Cairo on Sunday failed to yield any results as Hamas rejected new conditions put forward by Israel.

Key sticking points in the talks include an Israeli presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow 14.5km (9-mile) stretch of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.

In Cairo, the Hamas delegation demanded that Israel be bound by what was agreed upon on July 2, following a plan laid out by Biden and a UNSC resolution.

UN chief ‘deeply concerned’ by Israel’s assault on the West Bank

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for “an immediate cessation” of Israel’s operations in the occupied West Bank, including its assault on Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas governorates, according to a statement.

The UN chief strongly condemned the loss of lives, including of children, and urged Israel to protect civilians and ensure their safety.

“All those injured must have access to medical care, and humanitarian workers must be able to reach everyone in need,” he said.

“These dangerous developments are fuelling an already explosive situation in the occupied West Bank and further undermining the Palestinian Authority,” he added.

Guterres also expressed concern over “dangerous and provocative acts and statements” by Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has led Israelis in the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound several times since the war on Gaza began and called for a synagogue to be built there.

Israel elevates use of lethal force in occupied West Bank to ‘war standards’: Analyst

Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch and visiting professor at Princeton University, said the increasing levels of Israeli violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank was a “very grave development”.

Under Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territory, the standard of policing should be that which applies to normal law enforcement, “to the police on the street”, Roth told Al Jazeera.

“That means you cannot use lethal force except as a last resort to meet an imminent lethal threat,” Roth said.

“Now, it looks like that is not what Israel is doing. It is bombing away. And, indeed, the Israeli foreign minister – Israel Katz – said that this is a war. Now, in war, you can just shoot the other side’s combatants. No need to try and capture them. Nothing about last resort,” he said.

“So, Israel is now escalating its standards for the use of lethal force to war standards. That is a very grave development,” he added.

Israel’s West Bank operation must not go ‘down the path’ of Gaza: Analyst

“The last thing that we want is this kind of massive displacement taking place in the West Bank too,” Roth told Al Jazeera.

“Frankly, ‘the dream’ of the far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s government is to ‘solve the problem’ of the West Bank. ‘Solve the problem’ of the apartheid regime that Israel is maintaining there, by just getting rid of the Palestinians,” Roth said.

“That would be a massive war crime. But this is what certain members of the Netanyahu government – whose votes in the Knesset Netanyahu needs to stay in power – this is what they talk about,” he said.

“This is an urgent reason to nip this in the bud and not to let this continue down the path that we have seen in Gaza,” he added.