Netanyahu’s ‘vendetta’ against UNRWA long predates ban: Analyst

Kenneth Roth, the former Human Rights Watch executive director and now visiting professor at Princeton, said Israel’s outlawing of UNRWA is designed to deny Palestinians their status as refugees and comes amid much antipathy towards the UN agency.

“Netanyahu has had a vendetta against UNRWA forever because he naively thinks that if you destroy UNRWA, then somehow Palestinian refugees will forget that they are Palestinian refugees,” Roth told Al Jazeera.

The flawed logic in Israel is, Roth said, that “refugees in the West Bank and Gaza won’t want to return to their ancestral homes in Israel. That refugees in Lebanon, or Syria or Jordan won’t even want to return to Palestine, which currently the Israeli government blocks them from doing.”

“Clearly, killing UNRWA is not going to stop refugees from thinking they are refugees. But this is a big part of the Israeli government’s motivation,” he said.

A second motivation for the ban is Gaza, Roth said, where Israel has starved the Palestinian population of aid.

“The Israeli government has been pursuing a starvation strategy. And the bits and pieces of food and other humanitarian aid that’s let into Gaza, the only real agency with the capacity to deliver that to the Palestinian civilians in need is UNRWA,” he said.

“So, if you kill UNRWA, aid doesn’t get to the people in Gaza who need it.”

“I think what’s going on here, ultimately, is that Netanyahu is pursuing the strategy articulated by some of the far-right members of his government, to make conditions so horrible in Gaza that ultimately Israel ‘solves this Palestinian problem’, Roth said.

“It solves the problem of apartheid. It solves the problem of Hamas by just getting rid of the Palestinians, forcing them to flee to Egypt. And I’m afraid that is a big part of what is going on right now,” he said.

UNRWA ban is latest in Israel’s attacks on ‘the UN as a whole’: Legal expert

UNRWA’s former General Counsel Lex Takkenberg told Al Jazeera that the move to ban the key UN agency assisting Palestinian refugees was the latest attack by Israel on the entire UN system and a strong response was now necessary.

“We should also consider that these legislative attacks come on top of numerous other attacks on the UN as a whole,” Takkenberg said, noting that Israel had attacked the UN secretary-general and had also urged the closure of the UN General Assembly.

“It’s really reaching a point that the principal organs of the United Nations – the Security Council and the General Assembly – have really no choice but to take strong action,” Takkenberg said.

“Under international humanitarian law, if Israel prevents UNRWA from operating its schools, its health centres and its other critical services – Israel is under a legal obligation to provide those services itself,” he said.

“This was one of the key reasons why, in 1967, Israel requested UNRWA to continue its operations in Gaza and West Bank, because Israel knew that otherwise, it would have to make provisions for this,” Takkenberg added.

“So I think Israel has moved itself into a very difficult political and legal corner and it will be very critical to see how the leadership in the UN, including the General Assembly and the Security Council, will deal with this.”

International community must stop Israel’s impunity, ban on UNRWA: Analyst

Mohamad Bazzi, of New York University, said that if Israel is permitted to “dismantle” UNRWA’s operations in Gaza and the occupied West bank, it will set a precedent for other countries to also target UN organisations and flout international law.

“This is an unprecedented ban because we have a member of the United Nations, a member state, Israel, that has decided to ban an organisation that is part of the United Nations,” Bazzi told Al Jazeera.

“If Israel is allowed to get away with this, if it is allowed to implement this ban and if the UN does not take steps to counter that, if the United States and the Biden administration continue to defend Israel at the Security Council, continue to prevent Israel from paying any costs for flouting international law, we will see other member states of the UN take up this kind of impunity,” Bazzi said.

“UNRWA has been in Israel’s sights for many years, and Israel has used the post-October 7 environment – the war on Gaza… and the widening regional war – to put even more pressure on UNRWA, and now we see this Israeli attempt to essentially dismantle UNRWA in the Palestinian territories.”

New Israeli laws will shut down UNRWA entirely

Tamara Alrifai, director of external relations and communications at UNRWA, says if the Knesset laws are implemented, they are likely to prevent the UNRWA from working in any part of the occupied Palestinian territory.

“What effectively this means is that most likely the international staff will no longer have visas to go to Israel or the occupied Palestinian territory,” she said. “No work permits will be given to our Palestinian colleagues and there will be no possibility to pass through Israeli checkpoints,” Alrifai added.

She also said the laws will prevent UNRWA trucks, convoys and humanitarian supplies from crossing into the occupied Palestinian territory, including Gaza, during the continuing humanitarian catastrophe.

She stressed no coordination on the safety of the UNRWA operations will be possible with the Israeli government, adding that the agency’s premises will be taken over.

UN agencies slam Israeli decision to ban UNRWA

UNICEF spokesperson James Elder says Israel’s decision to ban UNRWA could see the “collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza”. “So a decision such as this suddenly means that a new way has been found to kill children,” Elder said.

UN humanitarian office spokesperson Jens Laerke also said, “[UNRWA] is indispensable and there is no alternative to it at this point.”

In response to a question about whether the ban represented a form of collective punishment against Palestinians in Gaza, he said: “I think it is a fair description of what they have decided here, if implemented, that this would add to the acts of collective punishment that we have seen imposed on Gaza.”

Palestine official calls for Israel’s ouster from UN over UNRWA ban

The president of the Palestinian National Council, Rawhi Fattouh, has called for Israel’s expulsion from the United Nations if it fails to reverse its ban on UNRWA functioning in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory.

Fattouh said Israel’s decision is in clear violation of the UN Charter and part of Israel’s policy is “ethnic cleansing”, Wafa news agency reported.

He urged UN member states to hold a General Assembly session to compel Israel to reverse its legislation or face legal consequences that could result in expulsion from the world body.

The ban on the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) not only jeopardises the rights of refugees but also undermines international legitimacy and goes against UN resolutions concer

Irish PM calls on EU to review trade relations with Israel

The Republic of Ireland’s Prime Minister Simon Harris has called on the EU to review its ties with Israel following its ban on the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

“The most important action that the European Union could take right now is reviewing trade relations,” Harris told reporters in Dublin. “What Israel and the Israeli Knesset did last night was despicable, disgraceful and shameful. More people will die, more children will starve,” he said.

Harris said there’s “no alternative” to UNRWA and will discuss “how Europe now needs to find the moral courage … to act in relation to this”.

Ireland, Spain, Belgium, and Slovenia, which all recognised Palestinian statehood earlier this year, have been calling for the bloc to take more action on the war, he added.

CIA chief proposed 28-day Gaza ceasefire and captive deal: Report

CIA Director Bill Burns proposed the ceasefire in return for the freeing of about eight captives held in Gaza and the release of dozens of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, the Axios news site reports.

Burns made the proposal during a meeting on Sunday with Israeli and Qatari counterparts, Axios reports, citing three Israeli officials. The proposal, however, does not address Hamas’s central ceasefire demand that Israel end its war on Gaza and withdraw in exchange for the release of captives.

“Israel agrees to a temporary pause, but Hamas wants a pause that would open a process that would lead to irreversible Israeli steps. If neither side softens its position,  there isn’t going to be a deal,” a senior Israeli official tells Axios.

A pause is not a ceasefire... Netanyahu has no intentions of stopping the destruction and displacement in Gaza. Israel just banned UNWRA, making aid deliveries even a lot harder than they are now. Hamas has no intentions on accepting ongoing occupation. Civilians continue to suffer.

Israel says it is open to a limited truce

Prime Minister Netanyahu has stated that he is not against a temporary ceasefire, a very limited one.

What we have seen throughout the Israeli media landscape is the following. Israeli officials are talking about the fact that William Burns, the CIA director, suggested a more limited framework of a ceasefire in his meeting with the Mossad director and the Qatari foreign minister in Qatar on Sunday.

This ceasefire would potentially last 20 days and would see perhaps eight Israeli captives held in Gaza being released by Hamas in exchange for several Palestinians in Israeli prisons.

This is a far more limited framework than we have seen compared with other versions of a deal presented in the past. It presents a problem because Hamas, in the past, said that they would only agree to a permanent ceasefire.

Qatar will work with US until ‘last minute’ for Gaza ceasefire

Qatar will work with US President Joe Biden’s administration “until the last minute” before the US election to reach a Gaza ceasefire deal, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry says.

“We don’t foresee any negative result of the elections on the mediation process itself,” ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari told a press conference. “We believe that we are dealing with institutions and in a country like the United States, the institutions are invested in finding a resolution to this crisis.”

Qatar, along with the US and Egypt, has mediated months of negotiations for a deal to end the Israeli war on Gaza and exchange Israeli captives held there for Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel.

Hezbollah claims drone attacks on Israeli troops

The Lebanese armed group said it launched three drone attacks on Israeli troops in the settlements of Manara, Kafr Jaladi and Za’rit in northern Israel.

The Israeli military said in a statement early on Tuesday that five missiles crossed from Lebanon at 11:27pm local time on Monday night and that some of them were intercepted, while the rest fell in open areas.

Israeli army targeting civilian infrastructure to ‘inflict pain’

At least 60 people have been killed and 58 people wounded in the latest strikes on several locations in Baalbek in Lebanon.

It is clear that Israel is stepping up its military operations. Israel is no longer going after the military infrastructure of Hezbollah but going after civilian infrastructure. The strategy appears to be one of inflicting pain, not just on the group but its supporters.

Hezbollah’s supporters live in the east of Lebanon – in Baalbek in the Bekaa region – and in southern Lebanon. We have seen the Israeli army levelling villages in these regions.

There is no doubt that there is a military objective of doing that, but they also aim at erasing the history and livelihoods of people. This is a way of punishing those who are supporting Hezbollah.

Hezbollah appoints Naim Qassem as secretary-general

Hezbollah has announced Naim Qassem will succeed slain leader Hassan Nasrallah as secretary-general of the group. In a statement, Hezbollah said Qassem was elected due to his “adherence to the principles and goals of Hezbollah”.

“The Shura Council of Hezbollah agreed to elect His Eminence Sheikh Naim Qassem as Secretary-General of Hezbollah, carrying the blessed banner in this journey, asking God Almighty to guide him in this noble mission in leading Hezbollah and its Islamic resistance,” the statement said.

Born in 1953 in Beirut to a family from southern Lebanon, Qassem’s political activism began with the Amal Movement. In 1979, he left the group during Iran’s Islamic revolution.

Qassem took part in the meetings that led to the formation of Hezbollah, which was established with the backing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

In 1991, Qassem was appointed deputy chief by the then secretary-general Abbas al-Musawi, who was killed the following year in an Israeli helicopter attack. Qassem stayed in his role when Nasrallah became leader and has been Hezbollah’s leading spokesman during interviews with foreign media.

Seven Palestinians killed as Israeli bombardment of Beit Lahiya continues

The Wafa news agency is reporting that Israeli forces bombed two houses in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, killing at least seven people, including children. Many more are missing under the rubble of the homes belonging to al-Omari and Obeid families, the agency added.

The bombings come a day after Israel’s attacks on six buildings in Beit Lahiya killed at least 45 people and left dozens trapped under the rubble. Rescue workers at the Palestinian Civil Defence said they are unable to reach victims because of the ongoing Israeli attacks and its siege of northern Gaza, which is now in its fourth week.

Death toll rises in central Gaza as Palestinians in the north describe ‘horrific’ conditions

The Israeli military has been intensifying its attacks across Gaza but the main focus has been on the central area and the northern parts of the enclave.

In central Gaza, two residential buildings that were packed with civilians were hit earlier in the evening. At least seven Palestinians have been confirmed killed and the number is expected to rise as rescue operations are ongoing.

Israeli military operations are ongoing in Jabalia in the north with air strikes continuing at high momentum. Civilians remain trapped in Jabalia and Beit Lahiya, and they are describing horrific conditions. They are running extremely low on basic supplies, while Israeli military operations in the vicinity of the Kamal Adwan Hospital have destroyed multiple buildings there.

The hospital is a lifeline for Palestinians in northern Gaza and these attacks are hampering the ability of medical teams to operate in the region.

Israeli forces set fire to UNRWA school in north Gaza

Israeli forces have burned down the UNRWA-run Al Fakhoura school in the Jabalia refugee camp and are blowing up houses in the area, according to Al Jazeera Arabic and the Wafa news agency.

The attacks come as Israel’s military continues its bombardment across the Gaza Strip, killing at least seven Palestinians in northern Beit Lahiya and 10 others in central az-Zawayda.

Several Palestinians were wounded in an Israeli attack on the Abu Laban family home in Gaza City, Wafa reported, while assaults continued on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the centre and on Rafah in the south, according to AJA.

Israeli soldier dies of wounds from north Gaza combat

Israel’s military said the 25-year-old was a commander in the 52nd battalion and had died of injuries suffered during fighting in the north of the Gaza Strip on October 19. According to the Israeli military, at least 772 Israeli soldiers have been killed since October 7, 2023, in fighting in Gaza, Lebanon and Israel.

MSF ‘revolted’ by Israel’s ‘repeated killings’ of its staff in Gaza

Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym, MSF, issued a statement following an Israeli attack that killed its staff member, Hasan Suboh, in Gaza on October 24.

He was the eighth MSF staff member to be killed in Gaza since the beginning of Israel’s war, the group said.

“We denounce these killings in the strongest possible terms and are revolted by the fact that in over one year of war, Israel has acted with total impunity. Israel’s repeated direct attacks, which do not distinguish between military objectives and civilians, must be investigated independently,” it added.

Residential building in Beit Lahiya flattened by Israeli attack

Quite horrific scenes of people we are seeing inside this residential building, which was completely flattened by multiple air strikes earlier this morning carried out by the Israeli military.

A hundred people, including children, are estimated to be inside this building. These are local residents of the area – the owner of this residential building, relatives and in-laws who were forced into internal displacement.

They were from the Jabalia refugee camp and the vicinity and displaced after the Israeli military stormed the area. A witness told us some of the people who were killed this morning just arrived there yesterday evening.

According to what we hear from local residents and volunteers, it is hard to imagine that about 60 people remaining inside the building are going to make it. They are talking about the sheer level of destruction that is caused by the bombs that were dropped on the building.

No proper equipment and machinery are there to help remove the large pieces of concrete at the scene. These people are buried under the five-storey building that came down.


At least 62 people killed in Israeli strike in Beit Lahiya

Within the past half hour, the number of people killed in the Israeli attack on a residential building in Beit Lahiya has dramatically increased. Sixty-two people have been confirmed killed by al-Awda Hospital, a small facility struggling to operate in the north of Gaza.

The death toll is expected to increase as witnesses estimate about 100 people were in the building.

Director at North Gaza hospital issues distress call after deadly Israeli attack

Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, says dozens of wounded people have arrived at the facility and urged all surgeons to return there to treat them.

Many of the wounded may die because of the lack of resources at the hospital, he told Al Jazeera.

“The world must take action and not just watch the genocide in the Gaza Strip,” he added. “We call on the world to send specialised medical delegations to treat dozens of wounded people in the hospital.”

As we’ve been reporting, the Kamal Adwan Hospital is the main medical facility treating Palestinians in North Gaza and Israeli forces detained dozens of medical staff there days ago, leaving only three doctors to care for the wounded.

Israel has attacked shelters in Gaza 39 times this month

The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said Israel’s military has attacked shelter centres in the Gaza Strip 39 times so far this month in a bid to “displace Palestinians and empty Gaza”.

The assaults have killed 188 people and wounded hundreds more, it said.

The Geneva-based group said Israel has targeted schools, hospitals, clinics and shelter centres in Gaza 65 times since the beginning of August. Most of the sites were located in Gaza City or northern Gaza, it said.

“The Israeli targeting has included shelling, direct shootings, killing forcibly displaced people and their families, or making them leave schools-turned-shelters under fire and/or with orders to relocate. These schools are then burned or otherwise destroyed by Israeli forces in order to render them uninhabitable and stop displaced people from returning to them,” the group added.

_{Residents and civil defence teams conduct search and rescue operations after the Israeli army targeted Asma School, run by the UNRWA, in the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on October 27}

Death toll in Beit Lahiya attack rises to 65

In Beit Lahiya, 65 people have been killed, 17 of them children below the age of 12. Al-Awda Hospital, a facility in the northern part of the Strip, still somehow operational and offering medical care, is unable to accommodate the large number of injuries.

More people are being pulled out of the rubble. They are in critical condition. They are severely bleeding or simply were crushed by the heavy weight of the large pieces of concrete that collapsed on their heads while they were sleeping.

There are other people who actually have gone missing, as some people are talking about other members of their families who do not exist any more. They are simply pulverised by the intensity of the explosion because we’re talking about a building that at some point was standing five storeys now turned into a pile of rubble.

_{Palestinians transport bodies ahead of their funeral in Beit Lahiya, Gaza, on October 29}


Death toll rises to 77 from Israeli attack in Beit Lahiya

The death toll has increased with 77 people confirmed dead in the attack on a residential building in Beit Lahiya in the north of the Strip. The images we are seeing show that more bodies are being pulled from under the rubble, including women and children.

According to local journalists, some bodies are being buried immediately in makeshift graves because official burial places are too dangerous to access. One video showed the preparation of a mass burial site in a local market place.


Health Ministry says more medical staff needed after ‘ruthless massacre’ in north

Marwan al-Hams, director of field hospitals in Gaza, has given a media conference on the situation across the enclave.

Beit Lahiya attack death toll rises to 93

The Ministry of Health in Gaza has said that the number of people killed in an airstrike early Tuesday in Beit Lahiya has risen to 93, adding that 25 children are among the dead. 40 are still missing after an Israeli attack on a residential building housing displaced people in Beit Lahiya.

Al-Thawabta told our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic that dozens of wounded were arriving at Kamal Adwan Hospital, which stopped working, and no one could treat them.

He added that the building Israel attacked housed 200 people. So far, 83 people have been buried.

Four Israeli soldiers killed in northern Gaza fighting

The Israeli military says in a statement the families of the soldiers have been notified. The army has been carrying out a large-scale ground incursion and mass arrests in northern Gaza, frequently attacking residential buildings.

Israeli raids continue in occupied West Bank

The Wafa news agency has reported a series of Israeli raids across the occupied West Bank overnight, including in: