Harris says she will ‘always give Israel the ability to defend itself’

Israel’s war on Gaza was among the many issues discussed in the US presidential debate between Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and her Republican rival, Donald Trump.

Harris, the US’s vice president, repeated the same line she has espoused in previous public appearances. She focused on the stalled US-led effort to reach a ceasefire but avoided committing to using any leverage to prevent Israel from carrying out more abuses in Gaza.

“Israel has a right to defend itself… and how it does so matters, because it is also true far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed – children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end,” she said.

“I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular, as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”

Trump claims Israel ‘won’t exist within two years from now’ if Harris becomes president

In comments made during the first presidential debate between the pair, the Republican nominee said, “I hope I’m wrong on that one”, but claimed he has been “pretty good at predictions”.

Trump also said Harris “hates Israel” – to which the Democratic nominee responded, “That’s absolutely not true”, adding that she is a lifelong supporter of the Jewish state.

Trump also accused Harris of refusing to attend a speech given by Netanyahu to a joint session of Congress on July 24 to attend a “sorority party of hers”. He also repeated his assertion that the war in Gaza “would’ve never happened” if he was president.

“Iran was broke under Donald Trump,” Trump said. “Iran had no money for Hamas, or Hezbollah or any of the 28 different spheres of terror.”

Harris-Trump debate a ‘big disappointment’ for Palestinians

The high-stakes presidential debate between US Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump has been a “big disappointment’ for Palestinians hoping for a change of gear in foreign policy matters, Tamer Qarmout, analyst at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, has told Al Jazeera.

“Both Kamala [Harris] and Trump do not talk about the big vision,” Qarmout, who is a Palestinian from Gaza, said. “The best Kamala could come up with was a ceasefire. What about ending the conflict? What about making peace?”

The analyst said the common thread between the two candidates was their “lack of vision” on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

“She [Harris] could have given new energy to this peace process and revived it from the dead, but she did not,” Qarmout said.

Unlikely either Harris or Trump will use leverage to pressure Israel

Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst with the International Crisis Group, says it is not clear whether either US presidential candidate is willing to use “political capital” to change the situation on the ground in Gaza if elected.

“At this point, [Kamala] Harris and [Donald] Trump are both pro-Israel candidates who have not said that they would use leverage or pressure to change Israeli actions,” Zonszein told Al Jazeera from Tel Aviv.

As for whom Netanyahu would like to see as the next US president, Zonszein said many people believe the prime minister favours Trump.

“What everybody understands is that Netanyahu is a Republican, … that he likes Trump. [When he was president,] he gave him [Netanyahu] a lot of what he wanted in terms of settlements, annexation and recognising basically Israel’s acquisition of land through force,” she added.

However, she said the “reliance” Netanyahu places on Trump giving him everything he wants may be a “little off base”.

Israeli army issues statement on Nuseirat attack

The Israeli army has issued a statement about the air attack on the school-turned-shelter for displaced people in Nuseirat, claiming that the air force targeted a Hamas command and control centre.

Without providing evidence, it said the compound was used to plan and carry out attacks against Israeli forces in Gaza and against Israel.

As we’ve reported, children are among the at least nine people killed, with the death toll expected to rise.



Everything is a Hamas command and control center now. Hamas has more command and control centers than members!

Israel ‘contradicts’ itself by claiming Nuseirat attack targeted Hamas

It was a massive strike that hit a very densely populated area of the Nuseirat refugee camp that the Israeli army has designated as “a safe zone”.

The grim reality is that the Israeli army is bombing the UN-run shelters under the pretext of them being used as control and command centres by the Palestinian armed groups.

Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant just two days ago said that Hamas as a military formation does not exist any more as the Israeli forces managed to eradicate the vast majority of its military capabilities.

Now, the question is, if these capabilities have been diminished in a considerable manner, who is Israel attacking at the moment?




Death toll in Israeli attack on school rises to 14

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence says that at least 14 people, including two UNRWA staff, women and children, have been killed in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Israeli jets struck an UNRWA-run school-turned-shelter for the internally displaced known as al-Jaouni.

Palestinian Civil Defence said at least 18 people were wounded, some critically, as its teams are still working to recover bodies and look for survivors.

‘Tremendous size of destruction’ witnessed in Nuseirat

Witnesses told me people were waiting for food when the Israeli attack was carried out targeting a UN-run evacuation centre in the Nuseirat refugee camp without any warning.

I have just returned from the site. I saw a tremendous size of destruction. Piles of rubble are scattered around the area. I saw a missile that was stuck in the ground. I saw a large number of emergency workers in Nuseirat, trying to find survivors after the Israeli attack on an evacuation centre. They have been digging the rubble with their bare hands due to the lack of basic equipment.

The emergency workers retrieved 14 bodies and transferred an unidentified number of injured people to nearby hospitals. The attack caused a great deal of destruction and the hope for finding survivors is dwindling.

One unidentified Palestinian man who survived the Nuseirat school blast expressed his anger about the latest Israeli assault on a shelter in Gaza. “All of a sudden there was a huge explosion. Women and children were blown to pieces. This is the fifth time the school building was pounded by Israeli warplanes. It is supposed to be a safe sheltering area. What targets are the Israelis hitting in this school?” he asked.

This is not the only attack that was carried out by the Israeli forces on evacuation shelters. In the Nuseirat refugee camp alone, 13 of them were targeted since July.

Earlier on Wednesday, an attack hit a home near the southern city of Khan Younis, killing 11 people, including six brothers and sisters from the same family who ranged in age from 21 months to 21 years old, according to the European Hospital, which received the casualties.

Civil Defence worker’s daughter among the dead in Nuseirat strike

We’ve been reporting on yet another Israeli attack on a school sheltering war-displaced Palestinians, which killed at least 14 people, including children, with the death toll expected to rise.

One of the children killed was the daughter of Momin Selmi, a member of Gaza’s Civil Defence agency, which works to rescue the wounded and retrieve bodies after Israeli strikes.

Selmi hadn’t seen his daughter for 10 months as he remained in northern Gaza to keep working while his family fled south seeking safety, the agency said in a statement.

Officials from al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat said they received 10 dead from the strike and another four bodies were brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby town of Deir el-Balah. At least 18 people were wounded in the attack.



Death toll of Israeli attack on UNRWA school rises to 18

The attack on the UNRWA school in Nuseirat refugee camp killed at least two staff working for the UN agency that provides relief to Palestinians, the civil defence agency added.

At least 20 people were wounded. It is the fifth time the shelter has been bombed by Israeli forces since the war on Gaza began last October.

6 UN staff among the dead in Israel’s Nuseirat school attack

The United Nation’s Palestinian refugee agency says six of its staffers were killed in two Israeli air raids on central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp – the “highest death toll among our staff in single incident” during the war.

Among those killed was the manager of the UNRWA shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people, it said.

“This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children. No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared,” the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said.

Just Tragic.#Gaza
Six @UNRWA colleagues killed today when two airstrikes hit a school and its surroundings in Nuseirat in the middle areas.
This is the highest death toll among our staff in a single incident.
Among those killed was the manager of the UNRWA shelter and other…

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) September 11, 2024

Three killed in Israeli attack west of Gaza City

A spokesperson for the civil defence agency says at least three people have been killed and seven wounded in an Israeli air raid on Nassr neighbourhood. Israeli jets struck a group of people waiting to buy bread outside a bakery west of Gaza City.

UN chief says lack of accountability on staff killings in Gaza ‘unacceptable’

A lack of accountability for the killing of United Nations staff and humanitarian aid workers in the Gaza Strip is “totally unacceptable,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says.

Describing Israel’s war in Gaza, Guterres said there have been “very dramatic violations of the international humanitarian law and the total absence of an effective protection of civilians”.

“What’s happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable,” he said.

Nearly 300 humanitarian aid workers, more than two-thirds of them UN staff, have also been killed during the conflict, according to the UN. Guterres said there should be an effective investigation and accountability for their deaths.

“We have courts but we see that the decisions of courts are not respected, and it is this kind of limbo of accountability that is totally unacceptable and that requires also a serious a serious reflection.”

UN official promises staff in Gaza ‘not going to back down’ after 6 killed in Israeli strike

William Deere, an UNRWA official based in Washington, DC, says Israel’s war on Gaza “has absolutely no bottom to it” after six UN workers were among 18 killed at a shelter for war-displaced Palestinians.

“Six colleagues lost today, that brings the death toll among UNRWA staff in this conflict to 220, which is the highest ever in United Nations history,” Deere told Al Jazeera. “Our staff are on the front lines, and they’re not going to back down, they’re not going to stop doing their job.”

He said a total of 190 UN-run facilities have been targeted by Israeli forces “many of them more than once”, despite the sharing of their GPS coordinates with the Israeli military. Deere also noted a UN convoy going to vaccinate Palestinian children against polio on Monday was stopped for eight hours by Israeli troops with vehicles damaged by bulldozers.

“The longer the impunity prevails over these incidents at displaced shelters, the more international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions become irrelevant,” he added.

Killing of activist Aysenur Eygi ‘raises legitimate questions’: Harris

Kamala Harris, the US vice president and presidential hopeful, has said in a statement that the Israeli killing of Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi in the occupied West Bank last week was “a horrific tragedy that never should have happened”.

“Aysenur was peacefully protesting in the West Bank – standing up against the expansion of settlements – when her young life was senselessly cut short. No one should be killed for participating in a peaceful protest,” she said.

“The shooting that led to her death is unacceptable and raises legitimate questions about the conduct of [Israel’s military] personnel in the West Bank. Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again,” Harris said.

She also said Israel’s preliminary investigation indicated it was the result of “a tragic error for which the [Israeli army] is responsible”, adding that the US would continue to press the Israeli government for answers.

The statement comes just two days after US State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to acknowledge that Eygi was killed by an Israeli soldier, but called for the process to “play out and for the facts to be gathered”.

US grants Egypt $1.3bn in military aid citing Gaza peace efforts

The US government is overriding human rights concerns by providing $1.3bn in military aid to Egypt, a State Department spokesperson says.

The announcement comes as Washington has relied heavily on Cairo – a longstanding US ally – to mediate so far unsuccessful talks between Israel and Hamas on a ceasefire deal to end the bloody war on Gaza.

“This decision is important to advancing regional peace and Egypt’s specific and ongoing contributions to US national security priorities, particularly to finalize a ceasefire agreement for Gaza, bring the hostages home, surge humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in need, and help bring an enduring end to the Israel-Hamas conflict,” the spokesperson said.

Buying Egypt off to stop their demands for Israeli withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor...

More details on CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/11/politics/us-will-not-will-not-restrict-military-funding-egypt/index.html

Egypt has been accused of sweeping human rights violations under President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, but Cairo has been a key negotiator in the discussions about Gaza – a fact the spokesperson referenced in explaining the administration’s decision to fully provide the funding.

“This decision is important to advancing regional peace and Egypt’s specific and ongoing contributions to U.S. national security priorities, particularly to finalize a ceasefire agreement for Gaza, bring the hostages home, surge humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in need, and help bring an enduring end to the Israel-Hamas conflict. This decision also reflects Egypt’s crucial role in promoting a ceasefire in Sudan, and its instrumental efforts to get humanitarian assistance to the Sudanese people,” they said.

....

Still, the determination comes despite the State Department’s most recent human rights report – covering the year 2023 – which found that “there were no significant changes in the human rights situation in Egypt during the year.”

The report noted “reports of significant numbers of political prisoners and detainees,” adding that “humanitarian groups were not permitted access to political prisoners or detention centers.”

Israel won’t abandon ‘security’ corridor dividing Gaza

Hamas says its negotiation team, led by senior official Khalil al-Hayya, met Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel to discuss the latest developments in Gaza.

A current ceasefire proposal remains on the table with Hamas saying it’s ready to hand over Israeli captives, but Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu rejecting the terms.

Sultan Barakat, a professor at Qatar’s Hamid Bin Khalifa University, says “the Israelis have created further facts on the ground” when it comes to the truce deal that Hamas accepted in July after it was endorsed by the UN Security Council.

Israel has created a “corridor that splits Gaza in two and it will never leave that”, Barakat told Al Jazeera, a fact Hamas cannot agree to in any agreement. “They [the Israelis] use the excuse of security, but they really use it to make the lives of Palestinians even more difficult,” he added.

Hamas says its ready to implement ceasefire without new conditions

The group says negotiators reiterated readiness to implement an “immediate” ceasefire with Israel in Gaza based on a previous US proposal without new conditions from any party.

Hamas said in a statement its negotiation team – led by senior official Khalil al-Hayya – met mediators including Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel in Doha to discuss the latest in Israel’s bloody war on Gaza.

CIA Director William Burns, the chief US negotiator on Gaza, said on Saturday a more detailed ceasefire proposal would be made in the next several days.

Iran’s president slams West over war on Gaza and support for Israel

Masoud Pezeshkian, who is in Iraq on his first foreign trip as Iranian president, has criticised Israel’s “massacres” in Gaza against “women, children, young men and elderly”.

“They bomb hospitals and schools,” he said in Baghdad. “All these crimes are being committed by using European and American ammunition and bombs,” he added, without elaborating.

Earlier, we reported that Pezeshkian met Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who said both governments are opposed to any widening of Israel’s war on Gaza.



Trump voices concern about Israel’s existence as Gaza war rages

No real shift in US policy over the war on Gaza can expected should either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris be elected as the next president, according to an analyst.

The closest Harris got to hinting at any change was “asserting the need for a two-state solution” and for Israel to observe principles of humanitarian rights law, said Sultan Barakat, a professor of public policy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University.

He highlighted Tuesday’s attack on a school shelter that killed at least 14 Palestinians. “But you can see from today’s incident, [the Israelis] don’t really care, and they’re not listening to the United States,” Barakat told Al Jazeera.

“What really worries us is this debate and the discussion that took place really gives Netanyahu until the day of election to do whatever he likes. It is very clear that neither of the candidates is going to put any serious pressure on Israel to stop the massacre.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s preferred candidate is Trump, who voiced concerns about Israel being eradicated from the Middle East, the analyst said.

“What Trump said about the possibility of Israel ending within two years is really reflecting the level of fear the Israelis have. And in fact, Netanyahu has contributed greatly to this. He has stripped Israel of all the moral objectives for its existence.”

Israel continues to withhold $1.9bn of Palestinian funds

The Palestinian Authority says the Israeli government illegally deducted about $1.9bn from Palestinian tax revenues.

According to the latest figures by the Ministry of Finance, Israel deducted $749m between October 2023 and August 2024. The Palestinian Authority allocated this amount for its Gaza-based civil servants and other services, such as health and education.

The PA says Israel is deducting these funds “as a punitive measure” to stop payments allocated for Gaza.

Israel is also is refusing to transfer revenue from exit taxes – departure fees paid by Palestinian travellers – at border crossings to Jordan. This amount has now surpassed $238m, it said.

Israel collects taxes on Palestinians’ behalf as stipulated by the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 and 1995 between the two parties.

Israel says soldier killed in West Bank truck-ramming attack

Israel’s military has confirmed that a soldier was killed when the driver of “a Palestinian truck” rammed into “forces conducting operational activity” in the occupied West Bank.

The suspected assailant was “neutralised” by Israeli forces “and an armed civilian” at the scene of the attack near the Jewish settlement of Givat Assaf, north of Ramallah, an army statement said.

It later identified the dead soldier as 24-year-old Staff Sergeant Geri Gideon Hanghal.

Two Palestinians killed in Israeli air strike in Tulkarem

The Palestine Red Crescent Society says two Palestinians were killed in an air raid in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli military said its aircraft conducted an air attack in Tulkarem. The refugee camp has been a frequent target in recent weeks.

Experts say Israel’s tactics during its raids appear to be part of a broader doctrine to collectively punish the population, ostensibly because pockets of armed resistance are fighting back against Israel’s ever-entrenching occupation.

Israeli army blows up vehicle, raids houses in West Bank’s Tubas

The Israeli army bombed a car and raided homes in Tubas in the occupied West Bank as troops faced confrontations with Palestinian fighters.

Earlier on Wednesday, five Palestinians were killed by Israeli shelling in Tubas, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS).

Tubas Governor Ahmad al-Asaad said Israel imposed a curfew in the city, sending troops into several neighbourhoods.

Israel bombards Gaza City, kills at least 12

Israel’s military carried out a series of bombings across Gaza City on Wednesday evening, killing at least 12 and wounding many more, according to the Wafa news agency.

Here’s the breakdown:

Palestinian man killed in Far’a refugee camp

The Wafa news agency is reporting that the 46-year-old died after being shot in the heart by an Israeli sniper in the camp, which is located south of the city of Tubas in the occupied West Bank.

The raid on Far’a comes amid an ongoing Israeli operation in Tubas, which has been under siege for more than 24 hours.

Earlier on Wednesday, at least five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air attack on Tubas. Israeli forces have also raided homes in the city, declared a curfew and laid siege to the Turkish Government Hospital.


_{People assess the site of Israeli strikes in which Palestinians were killed in Tubas on September 11}

Israeli forces shot Aysenur Ezgi Eygi after protests subsided: Report

The Washington Post is reporting that its investigation into the death of the US-Turkish activist challenges the Israeli military’s claim that she had been shot “unintentionally” during a “violent riot” in the occupied West Bank.

The Post said it analysed 50 videos and photographs and interviewed 13 witnesses to reconstruct events leading up to Ezgi Eygi’s death, on what was her first day protesting against Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the town of Beita.

The Post’s investigation found “Eygi was shot more than a half-hour after the height of confrontations in Beita, and some 20 minutes after protesters had moved down the main road – more than 200 yards away from Israeli forces”.

It said the Israeli military declined to answer questions about why its forces fired toward the demonstrators so long after they had retreated, and from a distance where they posed no apparent threat.

UN says Israeli raids destroyed water supply for 35,000 Palestinians in Jenin

Israeli forces destroyed roads, water and sewage systems during recent extensive raids on Kafr Dan, in the Jenin Refugee Camp, and eastern Jenin, the UN humanitarian agency, OCHA, has said.

In its latest update, OCHA reported:

_{A child walks through rubble after an Israeli-raid on Jenin, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Friday}