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Forums - Politics Discussion - Israel-Hamas war, Gaza genocide

SvennoJ 1 day ago
Fatah, Hamas discuss post-war Gaza governance in Cairo: Report

Rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas showed “increased flexibility and optimism” during talks in Cairo over the formation of a committee to manage Gaza’s post-war governance, according to Egypt’s Al Qahera news.

The broadcaster, citing a high-level security source, said the committee “is envisioned to include independent figures”. The source said the discussions in Cairo were part of addressing the goal of strengthening Palestinian unity and ensuring that Gaza is not separated from the West Bank.

The talks come after the two groups met in China in July and agreed on steps to form a Palestinian unity government for Gaza and the occupied West Bank. They are also part of long-running and previously unsuccessful efforts to heal a schism that hardened when Hamas seized control of Gaza in a brief conflict with Fatah in 2007.


Israeli intelligence estimates that 51 captives are still alive: Report

Of the 101 captives being held by Hamas in Gaza, 51 are still alive, Israel Hayom has reported, citing Israeli intelligence assessments. Pressure has been mounting on Netanyahu’s administration to secure a deal for the release of the remaining captives.

According to Israeli officials, 251 people were taken captive by Hamas on October 7, 2023 and nearly half of the captives have been released. Others are still in captivity with some confirmed or feared dead. Hamas has announced multiple times that some of the captives were killed in Israeli attacks.


Focus on children, education instead of replacing UNRWA, says Lazzarini

Commissioner-general of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, called for children in Gaza and their education to be prioritised when speaking about replacing the agency in the enclave.

In a statement on X, Lazzarini said children are losing their second year of education in Gaza due to Israel’s war.

“Our schools are the only education system in the region that includes a Human Rights programme and that follows United Nations standards and values. Dismantling UNRWA in the absence of a viable alternative will deprive Palestinian children of learning in the foreseeable future,” he wrote.

“Without learning, children slip into hopelessness, poverty & radicalisation. Without learning, children fall prey to exploitation including joining armed groups. Without learning, this region will remain unstable & volatile,” he said.

Lazzarini added that instead of banning UNRWA, which the Israeli government approved last month, the focus should be on ending the war to “prioritise children and their future”.



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SvennoJ 1 day ago

International law ‘laid to rest’

Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, says Israel’s war on Gaza and Lebanon will have an “impact for generations”.

“The level of destruction, suffering, even polio vaccination campaigns that cannot be continued but it is also about how international law is being laid to rest (in) an even more definitive way,” Levy told Al Jazeera from London.

“What Israel has done is maintained an occupation, an apartheid regime which has been largely paid for across decades by international funding,” he added.

Levy explained it is only possible for Israeli ministers to call for settlements in Gaza because Israel’s “trade ties” internationally “continue to be normal” despite the level of destruction.

“Even when its (Israel’s UN) ambassador says the UN building should be destroyed and shreds the UN charter on the podium at the General Assembly…where are those arrest warrants, where are the sanctions, where is that questioning of whether Israel can be a member in good standing?” he asked.


Children in Gaza ‘have seen things that no child should ever see’: NGO official

Rachael Cummings, a health specialist with Save the Children, says the fact that 50 children have been killed in Gaza over the past 48 hours shows the “intensity of this conflict and this war on children”.

The Israeli attack on a polio vaccine centre yesterday, additionally, will have a “knock-on effect” on mothers who have little trust in ensuring their children are safe when being vaccinated, Cummings told Al Jazeera from Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.

“They’d have to weigh up that with the risk of another hospital, another healthcare facility being attacked,” she said, adding that 20,000 children are missing or have become unaccompanied in this conflict in the last year while another 14,000 children have been killed.

With no formal education, being constantly displaced and living under the threat of bombs, children’s “sense of normality, their sense of stability has been ripped away from them”, Cummings said.

“[Children are] having to take on roles within family settings that are not for children. They take on caregiver roles. They have to take on fetching water, trying to find food,” she added.

“They have seen things that no child should ever see.”


In Palestine, ‘children, in particular, are targeted’

United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has said that Palestinian children are, “in particular, targeted in so many depraved ways – through killing, maiming, starving, torture, terror, depriving them of schools, dreams, future, hope”.

In a post on X, she said: “Look at the totality of Israel’s conduct, in the totality of the land it unlawfully occupies, against the totality of the Palestinian people living there. And when you see how children, in particular, are targeted … you see the destructive mind and intent at work, in the realisation of a plan that comes from afar.”

Albanese was referring to an incident in which Israel’s military blocked children from reaching the Haj Ziad Jaber School in the Jaber neighbourhood of Hebron, south of the occupied West Bank, by closing the road with barbed wire.



SvennoJ 1 day ago

UNICEF chief says more than 50 children killed in 48 hours in Jabalia, staffer attacked

UNICEF’s executive director, Catherine Russell, has released a statement condemning a “deadly weekend of attacks in North Gaza”, saying more than 50 children have been killed in the Jabalia area over “the past 48 hours alone”.

Russell added that she had also received reports that a UNICEF staffer working on the polio vaccination campaign was attacked on Saturday by a suspected Israeli quadcopter in Jabalia.

“This morning, the personal vehicle of a UNICEF staff member working on the polio vaccination campaign came under fire by what we believe to be a quadcopter while driving through Jabalia – Elnazla. The car was damaged. Fortunately, the staff member was not injured. But she has been left deeply shaken,” she said.

“The attacks on Jabalia, the vaccination clinic and the UNICEF staff member are yet further examples of the grave consequences of the indiscriminate strikes on civilians in the Gaza strip,” Russell added.


Palestinian children are vaccinated against polio during the second round of a vaccination campaign in Gaza City on November 2

Russell said the Israeli attacks that killed more than 50 children in Jabalia, along with the assault on the polio vaccination clinic and the agency’s staffer “combine to write yet another dark chapter in one of the darkest periods of this terrible war”.

“Attacks on civilians, including humanitarian workers, and what remains of Gaza’s civilian facilities and infrastructure must stop. The entire Palestinian population in North Gaza, especially children, is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and the ongoing bombardments,” she said.

Russell demanded that Israel conduct an investigation into the attack on her staffer and also urged UN’s member staff to use their influence to ensure respect for international law in Gaza.

“It is beyond time to end this war,” she said.


Israel’s siege is compromising Gaza’s polio campaign, official says

As we’ve been reporting, UN agencies have resumed the final phase of a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza City in the enclave’s north. But more than 15,000 children in the towns of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoon will not receive their doses because of Israel’s ongoing siege there.

“This of course impacts the quality of the vaccination and its effectiveness,” said Jamil Ali, the head of the Daraj first aid clinic in Gaza City. “If initially 90 percent to 95 percent were targeted, we are currently talking about less than 70 percent of a target,” he said.

UN officials say at least 90 percent of all children must be vaccinated to interrupt the transmission of poliovirus, which can cause paralysis and even death.

Polio had been eradicated in Gaza 25 years ago, but Israel’s war – which disrupted routine vaccination campaigns and destroyed the enclave’s healthcare and sanitation systems – caused the disease to re-emerge. A 10-month-old Palestinian baby was partly paralysed as a result of the virus earlier this year.


Health Ministry appeals to international community to send medical teams to northern Gaza

The Health Ministry in Gaza has appealed to international organisations to send medical and surgical delegations to hospitals in northern Gaza.

The ministry said in a statement that Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north is especially in need of help due to the “continued fierce attack by [Israeli] forces”. It also appealed to international organisations to provide ambulances to transport the wounded and sick to hospitals.

Last week, Israeli forces withdrew from Kamal Adwan Hospital after detaining dozens of medics and some patients and causing widespread damage to one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza.

The UN special rapporteur on health has used a new term, “medicide”, to describe the widespread and systematic attacks by Israel on healthcare workers and facilities.



SvennoJ 1 day ago

Israeli forces attack Gaza’s Beit Lahiya, Jabalia, killing at least 3

Israeli forces are shelling areas of northern Gaza and have also carried out two raids on the city of Beit Lahiya, according to our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic.

At least three people have been killed and several more wounded after Israeli jets bombed a house in the Jabalia area of northern Gaza, our Al Jazeera Arabic colleagues report.


Israeli soldier killed in grenade explosion in north Gaza

The Israeli military said the soldier was killed overnight on Saturday in the north of the Gaza Strip. It said it is looking into the circumstances of the incident.


Israeli forces attack north Gaza as vaccine campaign continues

Israeli attacks are continuing on the Gaza Strip. Since 6am, two densely populated houses in the northern Gaza Strip have been hit by Israeli forces. We know there are a lot of Palestinians trapped under the rubble, and there are appeals for civil defence teams to go and rescue those trapped and pull bodies out.

This comes as the polio vaccination campaign continues in northern Gaza. Yesterday, on the first day of the campaign, a quadcopter fired sound grenades that wounded at least three Palestinian children and their parents.

Palestinian children are frightened and families tell us that despite the fact there is a vaccination rollout, there are many challenges in reaching that area and ensuring their safety amid risks to their lives.

They don’t know whether this polio vaccination is going to really protect their children, especially as the northern Gaza Strip has been under a strict siege without food, water, medicine, or aid for a month now.


One Palestinian killed in Israeli attack on Rafah

Al Jazeera Arabic is reporting that a Palestinian has been killed and two wounded after an Israel drone attack on the city of Rafah in southern Gaza.


Four bodies recovered north of Nuseirat refugee camp

Four bodies have been recovered following Israeli raids a few days ago on homes north of Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic have reported.

A series of deadly Israeli attacks since Friday have struck homes and shelters in the Nuseirat refugee camp area, killing dozens of people. Rescue teams and family members have been sifting through the smouldering rubble over recent days, searching for anyone who may be trapped.


Woman, her children killed in Israeli air raid in Rafah: Report

A woman and her two children were killed in an Israeli drone attack in the Khirbet al-Adas area, northeast of Rafah, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported quoting medical sources. They told Wafa that another person was killed in an Israeli attack in as-Sudaniya, northwest of Gaza City.

Earlier, another woman was killed along with her son and daughter in an Israeli air raid on the al-Jarn neighbourhood in Jabalia, Wafa reported.



SvennoJ 1 day ago

Hundreds of Palestinians remain trapped under the rubble

Hundreds of Palestinians are trapped under the rubble after Israeli forces hit two densely populated houses in the northern Gaza Strip today. According to health officials, 13 Palestinians were killed in northern Gaza since the early hours of this morning.

For 12 days now, there have been no ambulances, civil defence teams, or paramedics in the northern Gaza Strip.

There have been endless appeals and calls from families saying they have live people trapped under the rubble, that their family members are trapped and no one could rescue them.

People were digging with their bare hands. The families said they do not have any equipment to help those trapped under the rubble.


‘Apocalypse unfolding’ in north Gaza: Save the Children

“We are seeing the apocalypse now unfolding in the north of Gaza,” says Rachael Cummings from Save the Children International. While Israel continues to issue forced displacement orders, it is not safe to move, she added.

“People are being constantly bombarded with aerial attacks and of course, we know that the food and the water is not sufficient. The convoys of food and water are being denied into the north … It is absolutely catastrophic.”


Death toll rises in Gaza

At least 43,341 people have been killed and 102,105 wounded in Israeli military attacks on Gaza since October 7, 2023, the enclave’s Health Ministry says.

Of those, 27 Palestinians were killed and 86 wounded in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the ministry added.


Israeli air strike kills seven in Khan Younis: Report

The southern part of the city of Khan Younis has just been attacked. An air strike carried out by the Israeli military targeted a residential home, killing seven members of one family, including four children.

Three of the young boys who were inside the house were all transferred to Nasser Medical Complex.

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SvennoJ 1 day ago

Israeli forces carry out raids across occupied West Bank

The Israeli military has carried out raids across the occupied West Bank in recent hours, according to local media reports. Locations include:

  • The town of Faroun, south of Tulkarem, and the suburbs of Ezbet al-Jarad, Thinnabeh and Artah, south and east of the city
  • The town of Turmus Aya and the village of Abu Falah, east of Ramallah
  • The village of Kafr Nima, west of Ramallah
  • The village of Jouret al-Sham’a, south of Bethlehem
  • The Qalandiya camp, north of occupied East Jerusalem
  • The Fawar camp, south of Hebron, where a man has been arrested.


Israeli army closes road in Hebron, blocking students from going to school: Report

Israeli forces closed an access road with barbed wire in the old city of Hebron this morning, blocking students from reaching the Ziad Jaber Elementary School, Wafa reported.

Aref Jaber, a local rights activist, reported that the blocked road left more than 40 students stranded near the street, less than 30 metres (0.2 miles) from their school, unable to reach it.

Jaber added that these types of closures often occur during Jewish holidays to facilitate the passage of Israeli settlers to the Ibrahimi Mosque in the heart of the city.


Sixteen Palestinians arrested in the occupied West Bank

At least 16 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since Saturday night, including a child and former prisoners, Palestinian prisoner advocacy organisations reported.

The Palestinian Authority’s Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees and the Prisoner’s Society said in a joint statement that the arrests occurred in the Ramallah, Nablus, Tubas, Salfit, and Hebron provinces.

Israeli forces on Saturday carried out a large-scale incursion into the Fawwar camp south of Hebron, conducting field interrogations of dozens of citizens who were later released.

Since the war on Gaza began last year, 11,500 Palestinians have been detained by Israeli forces from the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.


Israeli settlers steal Palestinian olive harvest near Ramallah: Report

A group of Israeli settlers accompanied by Israeli forces targeted the olive harvests of local Palestinian farmers in the village of Mughayer, northeast of Ramallah, the Wafa news agency reported.

Dozens of settlers stormed the village and picked olives from trees belonging to local Palestinians, stealing their harvest, local sources said.

According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, the occupied West Bank experienced a significant increase in violence against Palestinian olive farmers during the previous month, with 360 attacks, mostly in Nablus. This included 245 acts of vandalism, theft, and the uprooting of 1,401 trees, Wafa reported.



SvennoJ 1 day ago

UN expert exposes international fraternity’s nexus with media to protect Israel | Janta Ka Reporter


Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has lashed out at the international fraternity for their silence on Israeli excesses in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. After presenting her latest report in the UN, she told media that Israel should be suspended from the global body. She also exposed the nexus between a section of countries with powerful media in using fake narrative to create propaganda in favour of Israel.

Dispatch from Dearborn, Michigan Ahead of Election 2024 w/ Rania Khalek


BT’s Rania Khalek reports from Dearborn, Michigan, home to one of the largest Arab-American communities in the country. Voter anger over the horrors in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and beyond has the potential to swing the state against Kamala Harris.



SvennoJ 1 day ago

Satellite images reveal Israeli destruction of villages in south Lebanon

Satellite imagery reveals how Israeli attacks have caused extensive damage to more than a dozen villages in southern Lebanon.

Al Jazeera’s Virginia Pietromarchi explains the impact it has on civilians.



Hezbollah targets site north of Haifa

The Lebanese armed group says it attacked the Zevulon military industries base with a salvo of missiles. Earlier, Hezbollah also claimed an attack on a Merkava tank “at the gate of Metula with a guided missile”, saying it led to deaths and injuries among the crew.


Death toll from Israeli attacks on Lebanon reaches 2,986

The death toll from Israeli attacks on Lebanon has now climbed to 2,986 and the number of injured to 13,402 since October 2023, including 18 dead and 83 injured in the past 24 hours, the Lebanese Health Ministry says.

At least 772 of those killed were women and children, it said in a statement.


Hezbollah must be pushed back to Litani River: PM Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking from Israel’s border with Lebanon, says Hezbollah must be pushed back beyond the Litani River, with or without a ceasefire deal in place.

He also said the group must be prevented from rearming.

“With or without an agreement, the key to returning our [evacuated] residents in the north safely to their homes is to keep back Hezbollah beyond the Litani, to strike its every attempt [to] rearm, and to respond forcefully against all action against us,” Netanyahu said.


Israeli incursion into Lebanon health centre kills two medics

According to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, two paramedics were killed in an Israeli raid on a health centre in al-Bazouriyeh, near Tyre, in the south of the country.

The Public Health Emergency Operations Centre – affiliated with the Ministry of Public Health – said in a statement the Israeli attack on the health centre led to the killing of two paramedics and the injury of several others.


Israel says Syrian citizen connected to Iran seized

The Israeli military says it has carried out a ground raid into Syria and seized a Syrian citizen allegedly involved in spying for Iran.

It was the first time in the current war that Israel announced its troops operated in Syrian territory. Israel has carried out air strikes in Syria multiple times over the past year, targeting members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah and officials from Iran, the close ally of both Hezbollah and Syria. But it has not previously made any ground forays into Syria public.

The Israeli military said the seizure was part of a special operation “that took place in recent months,” though it did not say exactly when it occurred.

The disclosure of the raid comes as Israel has waged an escalated campaign of bombardment in Lebanon for the past six weeks, as well as a ground invasion along the countries’ shared border, vowing to cripple Hezbollah.

On Saturday, an Israeli military official said naval forces carried out a raid in a northern Lebanese town, seizing a man they called a senior Hezbollah operative.



SvennoJ 1 day ago

UNRWA building in southern Lebanon hit by Israeli strike

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says its premises were attacked in an Israeli strike near the Burj al-Shemali camp in Lebanon’s Tyre area. “UNRWA is currently conducting an assessment to determine the extent of the damage,” it said in a situation report.


Hezbollah fires missiles at Israeli base in Haifa

Lebanon’s Hezbollah says it launched a barrage of missiles at an Israeli military base in the northern coastal city of Haifa.

The group said in a statement that it targeted “for the first time the technical base of Haifa, affiliated with the Israeli air force” with a barrage of missiles, after it earlier claimed a drone attack on another military base south of the city.


Israeli fighter jets attack eastern Lebanon

Israeli air strikes have hit the town of Mashghara in the western Bekaa Valley, Lebanon’s National News Agency reports.


Israeli forces continue attacks on southern Lebanon

Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reports that Israeli fighter jets attacked the al-Jabal neighbourhood in the town of Jebchit. Israel’s army fired four artillery shells on the outskirts of Burj al-Muluk, another town in southern Lebanon, said the NNA.


Israeli killed in Hezbollah rocket attack in Nahariya

An Israeli settler has died from wounds sustained from a Hezbollah rocket attack in the northern city of Nahariya last week.

Israel’s Army Radio said the unnamed man, 57, was injured by shrapnel from a rocket fired by Hezbollah into the city on October 23. On that day, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for firing a barrage of rockets on Nahariya and the Western Galilee region.

Last week, seven civilians were killed in one day by rocket fire in Metula and near Haifa, in one the deadliest days of the war for Israel.



SvennoJ 1 day ago

Activists lead symbolic funeral in Oslo to commemorate killed Gaza journalists

Pro-Palestinian supporters led a large march in the streets of the Norwegian capital, Oslo, to commemorate journalists killed in Israel’s wars, footage verified by Al Jazeera shows.

The protesters organised a march carrying a coffin wrapped in the Palestinian flag – a symbolic funeral for the tens of thousands of people killed by Israel in more than a year. Activists denounced the ongoing Israeli wars on Gaza and Lebanon, and called for the liberation of Palestine.

Leading the march were people holding pictures of dozens of killed journalists while other protesters raised Palestinian flags.

This event coincided with the 107th anniversary of the “Balfour Declaration”, which turned the Zionist aim of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine into a reality when UK Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour pledged to establish “a national home for the Jewish people” there.



Turkey delivers UN letter demanding halt to Israeli arms sales

Turkey’s foreign ministry says it submitted a letter to the United Nations, signed by 52 countries and two organisations, calling for a halt in arms deliveries to Israel.

“We have written a joint letter calling on all countries to stop the sale of arms and ammunition to Israel. We delivered this letter, which has 54 signatories, to the UN on November 1,” said Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan at a press conference in Djibouti, where he attended a Turkey-Africa partnership summit.

“We must repeat at every opportunity that selling arms to Israel means participating in its genocide,” said Fidan. The letter is “an initiative launched by Turkey”.

Among the signatories were Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Algeria, China, Iran and Russia, with the two organisations being the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.