Tag: israel

‘Fed up with war’: Yemenis fear new conflict after Houthi Red Sea attacks | Israel-Palestine conflict

Sanaa, Yemen — When Israel’s war on Gaza broke out on October 7, Saleh Abdullah, a 48-year-old supermarket owner in Sanaa, joined pro-Palestine mass protests, expressing his solidarity with the besieged enclave. It never crossed his mind that the Houthi armed group that controls Yemen’s capital and large parts of the country would intervene militarily.

On October 19, a United States warship intercepted drones and missiles fired from Yemen as they were heading to Israel. Later, the Houthi group, which has been the de facto authority in north Yemen since 2015, claimed responsibility for firing ballistic missiles at Israel, announcing to launch more.

Abdullah celebrated. “When the Houthis declared sending missiles and drones towards Israel, the news lifted our morale and brought a sense of euphoria,” he said.

But that sentiment was short-lived, as Abdullah began to ponder over the repercussions of the escalation when his country is awash with multiple crises, including political instability, military rivalry and an unhealthy economy, and diplomatic talks to conclusively end years of fighting have remained inconclusive.

Now, a spate of attacks by the Houthis on ships transiting through the Red Sea — which the Yemeni group argues are aimed at pressuring Israel to end the war on Gaza that has killed almost 20,000 people — has triggered a backlash from the West.

On Monday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced a multinational maritime task force involving 10 navies aimed at securing the Red Sea from what he described as a “reckless” escalation by the Houthis.

It is precisely the kind of response that Abdullah has been fearing. “The Yemeni attacks on Israel or American forces will invite their response, and their response will put Yemen in a state of war. This is what lots of Yemenis and I do not want to see. We are fed up with conflicts and do not want atrocities to erupt anew,” he said.

Worry about war return

It has been nine years since Yemen slid into a civil war, sparking a catastrophic humanitarian situation with thousands killed and millions displaced. Since last year, efforts by the United Nations and regional players have helped silence weapons in Yemen, and civilians hope that that will continue, even as talks over a long-term ceasefire remain in limbo.

Yet in recent weeks, the war in Gaza has cast a shadow on those hopes. Multiple Houthi attacks on vessels traversing the Red Sea, a key maritime trade artery passing through a region that is the world’s biggest oil-supplier, have threatened to drag Yemen into a new war.

On Friday, some of the world’s biggest shipping companies announced that their vessels would stop transiting through the Red Sea amid the missile attacks, a move that threatens to send oil prices up, in turn hurting the global economy. The very next day, the navies of the United Kingdom and the US intercepted 15 attack drones fired from Houthi-controlled territories. Two other ships were attacked on Sunday.

‘Zero impact’

The Houthi missiles and drones have been a cause of concern for Israel over the past few weeks. However, the public in Yemen has conflicting views regarding the impact of such attacks.

Leila Salem, a 28-year-old university student in Sanaa, said the Houthi missiles and drones cannot be enough to stop the Israeli army from continuing its war on Gaza. She told Al Jazeera, “Firing drones and missiles from Yemen towards Israel is like hitting an angry elephant with a small stick. Such attacks can have a zero impact on the Israeli army.”

Instead, Salem worries, the consequences will be felt more by the Yemeni people, many of whom commend the Houthis for sending drones and firing missiles on Israeli and Western-linked vessels in the Red Sea.

“The previous US administration classified the Houthis as a foreign terrorist group. The ongoing Houthi attacks on shipping lanes and the American forces in the region may pave the way for blacklisting the group,” she said.

If the group is redesignated as a “foreign terrorist organisation”, the Houthis will survive, she said. “The group will not be weakened or eliminated overnight, and only civilians will bear the brunt.”

Ali al-Dhahab, a Yemeni political and military analyst, said the international maritime coalition coming together in the Red Sea will not stand idly by if it detects missiles or unmanned aircraft launched from Houthi-controlled areas. “The coalition will respond to the sources of fire,” he said. Any armed clash between the Houthis and international forces would impede the peace process in Yemen, he cautioned.

Persistent Houthi defiance

While civilians in Yemen display worry about the fallout of the Houthi involvement in Israel’s war on Gaza, the Iran-backed group’s leadership and fighters remain defiant.

Mohammed Nasser, a 28-year-old Houthi fighter on the front line in the city of Marib, told Al Jazeera that if their drones and missiles cannot reach Israel, they can still easily hit targets in the Red Sea, especially Israeli and US ships.

“We are prepared for all scenarios and capable of hitting targets in the Red Sea. No country can stop us from supporting Gaza,” Nasser told Al Jazeera.

On December 15, Houthi spokesperson Yahia Sarea said the group attacked two ships, MSC Alanya and MSC PALATIUM III in the Red Sea. He added, “The Yemeni armed forces confirm they will continue to prevent all ships heading to Israeli ports from navigating in [the Red Sea] until they bring in the food and medicine that our steadfast brothers in the Gaza Strip need.”

Houthi gains

To be sure, the Houthi intervention in the war on Gaza has some popular support too. A Sanaa-based political researcher, who requested anonymity, told Al Jazeera that the Houthi group had won the hearts of countless people in Yemen through its attacks in support of Gaza.

“By firing missiles at Israel or Israeli targets in the Red Sea, the Houthi group earns popular support in Yemen, and this is a considerable gain. The public support helps them consolidate their authority, which ensued from their 2015 coup against the Yemeni government,” he said.

However, he too acknowledged that these “gains” for the Houthis could mean losses for Yemen, which could face new “humanitarian and economic troubles”.

And prospects of peace could suffer. “The Houthi arrogance will rise, which may obstruct an agreement on ending the civil war with their local opponents,” he said.

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‘We have a duty’: US doctor says ceasefire an ‘ethical imperative’ in Gaza | News

Of all the doctors and medical personnel killed in Gaza this year, Dr Osaid Alser estimates he knew half personally.

Alser, a researcher and resident at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in the United States, grew up in Gaza City, Palestine’s largest city. He started his medical career there, starting as a student and eventually becoming a teacher himself.

But since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, Alser has watched as Israeli bombs have rained down on his hometown and military forces have stormed into medical centres.

The result has been the near collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system. Only 11 hospitals — a third of those in the enclave — remain operational, with dwindling amounts of fuel and medical supplies.

Faced with the death and destruction in Gaza, Alser felt compelled to speak up. “We have a duty to say: Stop the war and ceasefire now,” he told Al Jazeera.

To him, calling for a ceasefire was an ethical imperative, not a political statement.

But not all healthcare providers feel the same way. Many feel an obligation to avoid commenting on conflicts, as part of a tradition that views medical workers as above the fray.

However, the intensity of the war — and its particular toll on Gaza’s health system — have spurred some to ask: When do medical professionals have a responsibility to speak out?

Palestinians inspect the damage following an Israeli raid at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip [Fadi Alwhidifa/Reuters]

Debating ‘medical neutrality’

The debate erupted last month with a meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA), the largest professional organisation for physicians in the US.

Its House of Delegates, which sets the organisation’s policies, declined to debate a resolution that would have called for a ceasefire in Gaza.

According to the publication MedPage Today, some of the delegates felt the resolution would force them to decide whether the conflict in Gaza was a “’just war’ or ‘unjust war’”. That, they said, was not their role.

The concept of so-called “medical neutrality” stretches back to a history of civilian involvement in battlefield medical care, with some volunteer nurses tending to the sick and wounded on both sides of a conflict.

International law has since developed to protect the roles healthcare workers have in warfare, making it a war crime to intentionally attack medical personnel.

But “medical neutrality” does not necessarily mean impartiality. And some medical ethicists point out that the scale of the Gaza conflict has raised dire questions.

“The concern that a lot of people are having is that this is not business as usual,” Harold Braswell, an associate professor of healthcare ethics at Saint Louis University, told Al Jazeera.

“Israel has dropped an enormous amount of bombs on a highly condensed civilian area in a very, very short period of time. And that has created a very, very urgent situation.”

A unique circumstance

Gaza, a narrow strip only 11km (7 miles) wide and 40km (25 miles) long, is home to 2.3 million people. Palestinian health authorities estimate that at least 19,453 people have been killed, two-thirds of them women and children.

A further 1.9 million have been displaced, with tens of thousands living in the streets of Rafah after Israel ordered civilians to flee south.

Humanitarian organisations have warned of healthcare workers being killed, as bombs drop on hospitals and ambulance convoys.

Alser, the doctor in Texas, has taken it upon himself to sketch out the scale of the impact. He and his brother, also a doctor, launched an initiative last month to track the number of healthcare workers killed.

So far, they have documented 278 killed since the start of the war. That includes 104 physicians, 87 nurses and 87 others working in various medical roles.

“That includes a lot of my friends, my mentors, even my own medical students that I taught back in 2017, who went on to become doctors and have been killed,” Alser said.

“We’ve been documenting the names of course, because they’re not just numbers, and we’re posting their stories from people we know and trust on the ground.”

In addition, Israel has detained more than 40 health workers, including Dr Muhammad Abu Salmiya — the director of Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa — and Alser’s former student, Dr Saleh Eleiwa. The rising numbers left Alser feeling no choice but to speak out.

“I just felt like we absolutely have to talk about this,” he said. “So that’s really the motivation: Seeing our colleagues, friends, family being killed — doctors, professionals who just work in medicine [and] go home after they work for many, many hours and they get killed.”

Rising calls for a ceasefire

Alser is not alone. The American Public Health Association (APHA), the largest professional body for public health workers in the US, issued an appeal last month for an immediate ceasefire, amid pressure from its members.

Healthcare labour unions and advocacy groups have likewise called for a ceasefire. And more than 100 faculty members at public health and medical schools signed a letter this month urging the US government to support a ceasefire.

US President Joe Biden has thus far avoided pressing for a ceasefire, citing Israel’s right to “defend itself” after the Hamas attack on October 7.

But members of the medical community are divided over how much pressure to place on Israel and whether its acts of war have reached a threshold that demands a unified ethical stance.

Much of that division has centred on whether the attacks on healthcare centres in Gaza amount to war crimes.

In a widely circulated opinion piece published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr Matthew Wynia argued that health professionals do indeed have a responsibility to speak out on the war and denounce any crimes committed under international humanitarian law.

But he sees the issue as far from settled, citing Israel’s claims that Hamas fighters are using Gaza’s medical facilities “for offensive purposes, which can make striking them legal under limited circumstances”.

Even in those instances, however, Wynia said there were limits to the extent to which violence could be justified.

“If a facility is being used to hide military equipment and personnel, for example, any proposed strike on it must still ‘minimise’ potential harm to civilians, and the military value of the strike must be ‘proportionate’ to the civilian harms it might cause,” Wynia wrote.

In an email to Al Jazeera, Wynia said he fundamentally considers himself a pacifist and would personally support a ceasefire.

However, he added, “unless we posit that all doctors are ethically obliged to be pacifists, then I don’t think we can say that calling for a ceasefire in this war is an ethical obligation for all doctors”.

“And to be consistent, this would mean also calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine and in all other wars,” he said.

Article prompts backlash

Wynia’s opinion piece sparked a backlash in the medical community, with some readers saying it relied too heavily on narratives put forth by Israel.

Alser was among them. He and two colleagues — Canadian-Palestinian doctor Tarek Loubani, and Norwegian physician Mads Gilbert — wrote a response saying Wynia’s article lacked ethical clarity.

The article “muddied the moral intuitions held by many of us that attacking hospitals, infrastructure, and health care workers is wrong”, they wrote.

All three doctors had worked previously in Gaza. They said they had “never come across militants operating from within a hospital or restricting access to certain hospital areas”.

For its part, Israel’s military has released videos of weapons allegedly found in medical centres and given media tours of tunnels under the al-Shifa Hospital. No independent investigation has been conducted.

The Israeli doctor Zohar Lederman also said there should be no ethical ambiguity when it comes to the Israeli military’s siege of hospitals in Gaza.

“One of the most sophisticated militaries in the world should not murder hundreds of vulnerable patients, including patients receiving dialysis and newborns in incubators, who have nowhere else to go,” he wrote in his own response.

Wynia has since answered his critics with another, shorter article, saying medical professionals should condemn “both illegal use of and attacks on health care facilities” and war crimes committed by either side.

He also emphasised that there remains a diversity of opinions “on the ethics of Israel’s approach to this war”.

“In fact, I can attest that there are, and Israel’s defenders and critics are equally convinced they hold the moral high ground,” he said.

Time to ‘speak up more’

For Alser, the debate further underscores the need for Palestinian perspectives in discussions about the war, regardless of any professional repercussions he may face.

The 31-year-old doctor remained on call as the fighting began, watching the war in his homeland late at night or early in the morning.

In the weeks since the fighting started, his mother, five siblings, nieces and nephews have been displaced six times. They too briefly stayed at al-Shifa Hospital, before fleeing to Khan Younis and eventually Rafah.

Palestinian boys stand in a makeshift tent at a camp in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip [Mohammed Abed/AFP]

They are currently living in a tent. Alser explained that, as the Israeli siege continues and food runs scarce, they face malnourishment.

“For me, it was time to speak up and speak up more — to advocate for my family and call for protection for my friends, my people,” he said. “So, instead of just sitting at home crying and just doing nothing, I kind of shifted that energy to more like doing something good.”

“We’re being advocates,” he added, “and advocacy is a very important part of medicine”.



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Israel’s ‘Plan B’ for the Gaza Strip | Opinions

It has been more than two months now since the Israeli authorities launched a war on Gaza in response to Hamas’s attack on its southern territories, which resulted in the killing of about 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians. Relentless Israeli bombardment and ground attacks have flattened entire neighbourhoods and killed close to 20,000 Palestinians, more than a third of them children.

The declared goal of the Israeli onslaught has been the “eradication” of Hamas from the enclave, but the viability of that being achieved has been increasingly questioned by foreign officials and analysts. Instead, the large-scale destruction wrought on Gaza as well as internal communications point to another aim the Israeli authorities may be pursuing.

A document produced by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence leaked to the Israeli press in late October outlined the forcible and permanent transfer of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinian residents to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

The document was reportedly created for an organisation called The Unit for Settlement – Gaza Strip, which seeks to recolonise the Gaza Strip 18 years after Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from it.

Yet, we are not living in 1948. Today, it is much more difficult to wipe out cities and villages as was done 75 years ago during the expulsion of a large percentage of the Palestinian population from its homeland by Israeli militias, when, among other things, the reach of the media was far less extensive than it is now. The Israeli authorities have therefore turned to what we might term “the plan B”: that is, to make the Gaza Strip unliveable, by dropping tens of thousands of tonnes of bombs.

The new strategy is implemented by targeting civilian infrastructure that supports life in the strip, including schools, universities, hospitals, bakeries, shops, farmland and greenhouses, water stations, sewage systems, power stations, solar panels, and generators.

This is carried out in parallel with a full siege on Gaza, whereby food, water, electricity and medicine have been cut off. The Israeli army lets in a few trucks a day, if at all, which humanitarian organisations have said does not meet at all the needs of the Palestinian population, 1.8 million of whom have been internally displaced.

This has resulted in what has interchangeably been called humanitarian “disaster”, “catastrophe”, “graveyard” and “hell”. The Palestinians of Gaza have been pushed to the brink of survival, while widespread epidemics are perceived by some as a desired goal. As former head of the Israeli National Security Council Giora Eiland has claimed: “Severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer.”

Once the Gaza Strip is rendered unliveable and the population has no choice but to leave voluntarily, the next step is to ensure that neighbouring countries, Egypt first and foremost, are ready to “absorb them”. This has been made clear by several prominent figures in Israel, including former deputy director of its national intelligence agency Mossad, Ram Ben Barak.

In a tweet in Hebrew, Ben Barak expressed the need “to build a coalition of countries and international funding that will allow Gazans who want to leave to be absorbed [in those countries] through the acquisition of a citizenship”.

Back on November 12, 1914, US President Woodrow Wilson wrote to racial equality advocate William Monroe Trotter that “Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentleman”. More than 100 years later, Israel’s plan – which has less to do with segregation and more with ethnic cleansing – is presented in similar terms. The expulsion, in Ben Barak’s words, is an “opportunity [for Gaza residents] to escape the reign of fear of Hamas, which uses them as human shields”.

The irony, of course, is that Palestinian civilians are often used as “human shields” by the Israeli army itself. But beyond that, along with the emphasis on “voluntary” departure in this “benevolent approach”, the forced resettlement is also made more palatable for the international community with claims that the Palestinians are really just Arabs, and therefore can easily relocate to other Arab countries.

Israel has long called the 156,000 Palestinians (and their descendants) who managed to remain within its borders after 1948 “Arabs”, denying them their Palestinian identity. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once claimed, “The Arab citizens [of Israel] have 22 nation states. They don’t need another one.”

It is important here to stress that referring to the local populations, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Strait of Hormuz, as “the Arabs” would be like calling people from South Africa, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Britain, regardless of their origin, “the English”. They share the language but show very clear peculiar histories, traditions and identities.

More than 1,000 years ago, Jerusalemite geographer al-Muqaddasi (946–1000) explained in clear terms that he perceived himself as a Palestinian: “I mentioned to them [workers in Shiraz] about the construction in Palestine and I discussed with them these matters. The master stonecutter asked me: Are you Egyptian? I replied: No, I am Palestinian.”

Centuries later, on September 3, 1921, an editorial published in the Arabic-language newspaper Falastin pointed out: “We are Palestinians first, and Arabs second.”

These are just two examples, among many others, of written sources where “Palestinian” is clearly used as an identity marker.

That Palestinians are not simply “Arabs” appears further evident if we look at the years in which the West Bank was occupied (1948-1967) by Jordan: an occupation which was opposed by the local population at the time, most of all by Fatah fighters, to the point that King Hussein felt obliged to impose martial law.

In Gaza, which was under Egyptian control during the same period, Palestinians faced harsh repression, were denied citizenship, and had very little control over local administration. Most of them lived in very poor conditions, largely in refugee camps, having been expelled by Israeli militias from villages around the Gaza Strip, including Huj, Najd, Abu Sitta, Majdal, al-Jura, Yibna, and Bayt Daras. These last three villages, in particular, are the ones from where the three founders of Hamas – Ahmed Yassin, Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi and Ibrahim al-Yazuri – were expelled with their families when they were children.

Today, not only the Palestinians are struggling against their mass expulsion from Gaza and possibly the West Bank, but the neighbouring countries which Israel is pressuring to host them are also viciously resisting.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has repeatedly and clearly rejected the “displacement of Palestinians from their land”. He, like his predecessors, sees the Palestinians as a security risk. If they were to be expelled to the Sinai, he fears the peninsula would become a base of operations for Palestinian fighters, which could drag Egypt into another war.

Jordan is also worried about the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank to its territory and King Abdullah and his government have made their opposition clear. As Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi has argued: “Do whatever you [Israeli authorities] want. Go, destroy Gaza. No one is stopping you and once you are done, we [will not] clean up your mess.”

Israel’s ability to carry out its “Plan B” is indeed in question. Back in 1950, the United Nations suggested resettling thousands of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to the Sinai Peninsula. The proposal encountered harsh resistance from the refugees themselves and was eventually abandoned. Today, the resistance is fiercer than ever. Palestinians know what “temporary” means – that there is no “right of return” for them – and are keen to remain on their land.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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Israeli attack on residential area in south Gaza kills at least 29 | Israel-Palestine conflict News

At least 29 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli air strike in a residential area of Rafah in southern Gaza, while a hospital was raided in north Gaza and 10 people were killed in an attack on a refugee camp in that part of the enclave.

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have crammed into Rafah on Gaza’s border with Egypt to escape Israeli bombardments further north, despite fears that they will also not be safe there.

“Three residential buildings in one area were destroyed in the attack,” Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah, said on Tuesday.

The number of casualties was expected to rise as more bodies were pulled from the rubble, under which people were also trapped, he said.

Journalist Adel Zoroub was among the 29 killed in the air raid in Rafah, the Government Media Office in Gaza said on its Telegram channel.

Separately, at least 10 Palestinians were killed and many more injured in an Israeli air raid on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in the enclave said.

Fierce battles raged in northern Gaza, where Hamas continues to put up stiff resistance across what is now a battered wasteland seven weeks after Israeli tanks and troops stormed in.

Hospital raids

Ashraf al-Qudra, the Ministry of Health spokesperson in Gaza, said on Tuesday that Israeli forces turned al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza into barracks after detaining more than 240 people.

Those being held included “80 hospital staff, 40 patients, and 120 displaced people, inside the hospital”, he said.

They arrested six of the hospital’s staff, including the director of the facility, Ahmed Muhanna, according to al-Qudra.

Israeli forces also raided the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City overnight and into Tuesday, according to the church that operates it, destroying a wall at its front entrance and detaining most of its staff.

Don Binder, a pastor at St George’s Anglican Cathedral in occupied East Jerusalem, which runs the hospital, was quoted by The Associated Press news agency as saying that the raid left just two doctors, four nurses and two janitors to tend to more than 100 seriously wounded patients, with no running water or electricity.

“It has been a great mercy for the many wounded in Gaza City that we were able to keep our Ahli Anglican Hospital open for so long,” Binder wrote in a Facebook post late Monday. “That ended today.”

He said an Israeli tank was parked on the rubble at the hospital’s entrance, blocking anyone from entering or leaving.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has kept targeting and raiding healthcare facilities in the enclave.

A World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Monday that the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza that Israeli troops raided last week had stopped functioning and patients, including babies, have been evacuated.

“We cannot afford to lose any hospitals,” said Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for Gaza.

Peeperkorn also said about 4,000 displaced people taking refuge on the grounds of the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, were at risk as Israel pursues military operations there.

The Gaza Health Ministry said on Monday that 19,453 Palestinians had been killed and 52,286 wounded in the Israeli assault on the Hamas-ruled enclave in more than two months of warfare.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to achieve total victory over Hamas, whose fighters killed about 1,140 people and took 240 people captive in a surprise October 7 raid into Israel, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s intensifying retaliation against Hamas has created uproar among many governments and international organisations over the civilian death toll, hunger and homelessness.

‘Clear progress’ in talks

Meanwhile, talks for another truce between the sides continue with the mediation efforts led by Qatar amid repeated calls for the end of hostilities by the international community.

Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said there was “clear progress” towards a potential new hostage exchange deal between Israel and Hamas, after Bill Burns, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, flew to Warsaw for negotiations with David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service and Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani.

However, as Israel points to mid-January as the timetable for the “next stage of the war”, there is the possibility Hamas may decide “just to sit tight” until then “to see how things play out”, Fisher said.

Hamas may wait until then “to give up any of the captives and use them as a bargaining chip when things actually start to change on the ground”, he added.

Israeli Channel 12 television channel reported that Israeli negotiators now face the challenge of convincing the head of Hamas in Gaza to agree to a deal that does not include a truce.

Israel believes that the decision of Hamas to publish videos of Israeli captives is aimed at pushing for negotiations, Channel 12 also quoted a source as saying.

On Monday, Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, posted a one-minute video of three elderly Israeli captives pleading for their immediate release.

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Hamas posts video showing elderly Israeli captives pleading for release | Israel-Palestine conflict News

The Qassam Brigades releases the one-minute video, titled Don’t Let Us Grow Old Here, on its Telegram account.

Hamas has posted a video of three elderly Israeli captives pleading for their immediate release.

The Palestinian group’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, posted the one-minute video, titled Don’t Let Us Grow Old Here, on its Telegram account on Monday.

The men – identified by Israeli officials as 79-year-old Chaim Peri, 80-year-old Yoram Metzger and 84-year-old Amiram Cooper – were taken to Gaza on October 7 when Hamas launched attacks inside Israeli territory, killing 1,147 people and taking about 240 captives.

Peri, seated between the two others in the video, said in Hebrew that he was being held along with other elderly hostages with chronic illnesses and their conditions were harsh.

“We are the generation who built the foundation for the creation of Israel. We are the ones who started the IDF military. We don’t understand why we have been abandoned here,” he said, referring to the Israeli armed forces.

“You have to release us from here. It does not matter at what cost. We don’t want to be casualties as a direct result of the IDF military air strikes. Release us with no conditions,” he added.

The video concludes with the three men saying in unison: “Don’t let us grow old here.”

Israeli media reported the three hostages came from the Nir Oz kibbutz along the Israeli border, which was targeted in the October 7 attacks.

Peri was at his house in Nir Oz during the attack, Israeli media reports said. He tried to repel the gunmen while hiding his wife behind a sofa, his son told the Reuters news agency. He eventually gave himself up to save his wife, who remained hidden, the report said.

Outrage over captives in Israel

The Israeli military said Hamas had released a “criminal, terrorist video”.

“Chaim, Yoram and Amiram, I hope that you hear me this evening,” military spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a televised briefing. “Know this – we are doing everything, everything, in order to return you back safely.”

Israel has in the past labelled such videos as a form of psychological warfare by Hamas.

After the release of the latest video, families of Israelis held captive by Hamas in Gaza protested outside Israeli Ministry of Defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, demanding the immediate release of their loved ones.

The protest came amid growing outrage within Israel after the Israeli military last week admitted it mistakenly shot dead three Israeli captives in Gaza despite them waving a white flag.

Al Jazeera correspondent Sara Khairat, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said the video released by Hamas sends a “strong message”.

“[The video] is going to do two things: help the people know that they are alive even though it’s still not clear when it was filmed, and it will also put a lot more pressure on the Israeli government, which is already in hot waters for the death of three captives last week and at a time when the demonstrations are continuing,” she said.

Meanwhile, as diplomatic efforts continue to end the war in Gaza and release prisoners taken on both sides, the Israeli military has intensified its bombardment of the enclave, killing nearly 19,500 people since October 7 – most of them women and children.

The air and ground strikes on Gaza have flattened the besieged enclave, burying thousands of people under the rubble.

In absence of the required aid not being allowed to flow into the strip, international aid agencies have warned of a humanitarian disaster with widespread hunger and spread of diseases.

Human Rights Watched has accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.

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Is the US complicit in the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza? | Israel-Palestine conflict

As Israel continues its assault on Gaza, there is growing concern over humanitarian conditions in the besieged enclave.

Before the Israel-Hamas war, more than 500 aid trucks entered Gaza every day through the Karem Abu Salem crossing with Israel and the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

Those deliveries halted when Israel imposed a complete blockade on October 7 after Hamas carried out attacks on southern Israel.

Israel has temporarily reopened the route through Karem Abu Salem, called Kerem Shalom by Israel, to allow in more humanitarian aid.

At least 24 trucks have been allowed through – but the deliveries are far short of fulfilling the needs of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Should the United States, a staunch ally of Israel, be doing more to help the Palestinians? And how complicit is Washington in the humanitarian catastrophe that has unfolded?

Presenter: Cyril Vanier

Guests:

Robert Hunter – senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University

Khaled Elgindy – senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and its director of Palestine and Israel-Palestinian affairs

Zeina Ashrawi Hutchison – director of development and expansion at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

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Austin says US support for Israel unshakeable as Gaza ceasefire calls grow | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Lloyd Austin says US support ‘unshakeable’, urges Israel to do more to protect civilians and increase aid supplies.

United States Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says Washington will continue to support Israel in its war with Hamas but urged its ally to do more to protect civilians in Gaza amid growing calls for a ceasefire.

Speaking alongside Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv on Monday, Austin said US support for Israel was “unshakeable”, as the death toll from the Israeli assault on Gaza surpassed 19,000, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Austin said he had discussed with Gallant how to reduce harm to civilians trapped in the battlefield. They also talked about a transition from major combat to a lower-intensity conflict.

“In any campaign, there will be phases,” Austin said. “We will also continue to urge the protection of civilians during conflict and to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” Austin said.

While the US provides Israel with weapons and diplomatic support, it has recently sharpened its tone towards Netanyahu’s government. Last week President Joe Biden said Israel risked losing international support because of what he called its “indiscriminate” bombing.

Austin, however, offered reassurance on Monday, saying: “American support for Israel security is unshakable. Israel is not alone.”

Gallant meanwhile said Israel would gradually transition to the next phase of its operations in Gaza and displaced people would likely be able to return first to the north of the enclave.

Austin’s visit came amid growing concern from foreign governments and international organisations over civilian deaths in Gaza and a deepening humanitarian crisis.

Earlier, the international human rights organisation Human Rights Watch said that Israel was “deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food and fuel,” to people in Gaza and “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”.

The Israeli assault on Gaza began after Hamas killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel and took about 240 others captive, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel’s relentless bombardment and ground invasion has killed at least 19,453 people, most of them women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities, and levelled entire neighbourhoods and displaced more than 80 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has supported Israel’s campaign, said on Monday that “too many civilians” have been killed in the fighting, and expressed support for a “sustainable ceasefire”.

While Austin has said that more aid must be delivered to the people of Gaza, the US has found itself increasingly isolated over its stance on the war between Israel and Hamas.

Last week, the US cast one of the few dissenting votes against a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a ceasefire that passed with overwhelming support.

The UN Security Council is scheduled to hold a ceasefire vote on Monday, after the US also vetoed a previous resolution.

International leaders have also voiced concern over the possibility of a wider regional escalation as the war drags on.

Austin said on Monday that the US was leading efforts to address a series of attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebel group that have disrupted commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The Iran-backed group says the attacks are an effort to pressure Israel to halt its attacks on Gaza.

“In the Red Sea, we’re leading a multinational maritime task force to uphold the bedrock principle of freedom of navigation,” Austin said.

The Pentagon chief also warned against greater involvement by the powerful Iran-backed group Hezbollah, which has traded fire with Israel from southern Lebanon since the fighting began but has thus far avoided a larger confrontation.

US officials have said that William Burns, the director of the CIA, the US intelligence agency, is meeting with his Israeli counterpart and the prime minister of Qatar to discuss a potential deal to secure the release of additional captives held by Hamas.

A previous deal, which Qatar and Egypt helped to mediate, secured a seven-day truce and the release of dozens of captives in exchange for the release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

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Captives mistakenly killed by Israeli troops left SOS signs in Hebrew | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israel’s military says it has discovered distress signals in a Gaza building where three Israeli captives were sheltering before they were mistakenly shot dead by Israeli troops.

The signs, which read “SOS” and “Help, three hostages” in Hebrew, were found in a building in the Shujayea suburb of Gaza City, military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Sunday.

The military distributed photographs of the white cloth signs written in red, likely with leftover food. They were hung on a building about 200 metres (220 yards) from where the captives were shot last week, Hagari said.

The killing of the captives, who, Israel’s military said, were fired at despite waving a white flag, has sparked an outcry in Israel and amplified concerns about their military’s wartime conduct.

Ido Shamriz, brother of slain captive Alon Shamriz, accused the Israeli army of “abandoning” and then “murdering” him.

Ruby Chen, father of a 19-year-old captive and soldier still held in Gaza, said the incident made him even more fearful of his son’s fate.

“We feel like we’re in a Russian roulette game [finding out] who will be next in line to be told the death of their loved one,” Chen said.

Ruby Chen, father of Israeli captive Itay, lifts an hourglass as he presses for his son’s return [Alberto Pizzoli/AFP]

The captives’ deaths also added to Israeli concerns that their government and military are more focused on eliminating Hamas than rescuing at least 100 captives believed still to be in captivity in Gaza.

Hamas last month said about 60 captives had been killed or were missing due to the Israeli bombardment. Israel has confirmed at least 20 captives have died in Gaza, without saying how it knows this information.

On Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted that new negotiations may be under way to recover captives after his intelligence chief met the prime minister of Qatar, a mediator in the conflict.

However, Hamas has said it will not release any more captives until the war ends.

Where are the captives?

Israel believes some of the captives may be trapped in Hamas’s sprawling underground tunnel network, complicating the Israeli military’s efforts to root out the group.

On Sunday, Israel’s military announced it had uncovered the largest tunnel it had ever seen in Gaza and promised to search through more tunnels in its pursuit of Hamas.

“We will hunt them even if we need to go down to the tunnels,” Hagari said. “We also need to do it with attention to the rescue of our hostages and the understanding that maybe some of them are in the tunnels.”

The newly discovered Hamas tunnel has an entrance near a key Israeli border crossing, raising additional questions about security failures leading up to the group’s October 7 attacks on southern Israel.

Israeli soldiers enter a tunnel they say Hamas used for the October 7 attack [Jack Guez/AFP]

The expansive tunnel, equipped with ventilation and electricity, is twice the height and three times the width of other Gaza tunnels, Israeli officials said. It stretches for more than 4km (2.5 miles) and dives 50 meters (55 yards) below ground at some points.

“Millions of dollars were invested in this tunnel,” Hagari said on Sunday.

“It took years to build. … Vehicles could drive through,” he added. “At this point, this is the biggest tunnel in Gaza.”

Nir Dinar, another Israeli military spokesperson, said Israel had previously failed to spot the tunnel because its border defences detect only tunnels meant to enter Israel.

Israeli officials believed Hamas used the tunnel to move vehicles, fighters and supplies ahead of its October 7 attacks, which killed about 1,200 people, they say.

In retaliation for that attack, Israel has bombed the besieged Gaza Strip for two and a half months and launched a ground invasion, killing more than 19,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and reducing much of the enclave to ruins.

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Hamas is now recruiting in Lebanon. What will that mean for Hezbollah? | Israel-Palestine conflict

Beirut, Lebanon – When Hamas put out a call for recruitment in Lebanon on December 4, several mainstream Lebanese political parties and officials denounced the move, accusing the Palestinian group of violating their country’s national sovereignty, while recalling memories of the bloody civil war.

But the recruitment for a parallel armed force might end up serving the interests of Hezbollah, according to analysts, due to the Lebanese group’s military hegemony, particularly in southern Lebanon. Hamas is believed to be recruiting in Lebanon through announcements in the country’s Palestinian refugee camps and the mosques there.

“Hezbollah is trying to enlist the support of Sunni groups [like Hamas in Lebanon] in its fight against Israel from southern Lebanon,” Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut, told Al Jazeera. But any other actors won’t be able to act independently because “Hezbollah fully controls the border situation.”

After Hamas’s attacks in southern Israel on October 7, which killed 1,200 civilians and military personnel, according to Israeli officials, Israel has continuously bombarded Gaza, with only a brief pause in fighting at the end of November. More than 18,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry there.

In neighbouring Lebanon, more than 100 people have died since Hezbollah first targeted Israel with missiles on October 8. Most of the dead are Hezbollah fighters who have engaged Israel’s military in what they say are efforts to prevent their opponent’s full force from coming down on Hamas.

The ‘Axis of Resistance’ in Lebanon

Relations between Hamas and Hezbollah have resumed in recent years after a schism over the civil war in Syria. Members of Hamas’s leadership left their previous base in Damascus in 2012 after condemning Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on protests.

From 2017 onwards, some Hamas members returned to Lebanon, including Saleh al-Arouri, the deputy head of the Hamas Political Bureau; Khalil al-Hayya, the leader of Hamas’s Arab and Islamic relations; and Zaher Jabarin, in charge of issues concerning Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Last year, the Hamas leadership revealed the existence of “a joint security room” for the so-called “Axis of Resistance” – an Iranian-affiliated military coalition that includes Hamas and Hezbollah among other groups. Some analysts believe it could be based in Lebanon. And in April 2023, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh visited Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.

Analysts believe it is unlikely that Hamas would call for an expansion in Lebanon without having first consulted Hezbollah.

Hezbollah has maintained dominance in south Lebanon for decades. But Israeli officials have recently said they can no longer accept the presence of the group, or their elite al-Radwan unit, on Israel’s northern border. That’s why Hamas’s growing presence in Lebanon could be a tactical decision that also serves Hezbollah, according to some analysts.

“Hezbollah is searching for local allies in the post-war period because its military component will come into question as Israel wants it out of the south Litani,” Khashan said. After the 2006 July war between Hezbollah and Israel, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 1701, calling for a demilitarised zone from the Litani River, Lebanon’s longest river that runs from the southern seaside city of Tyre into the Bekaa Valley, to what is known as the “Blue Line”, which

But the expansion of Hamas in Lebanon would not only be beneficial to Hezbollah. As Hamas is under siege in Gaza, its popularity in the West Bank has grown, according to a recent opinion poll. In Lebanon, the group could be looking to play on their increased popularity and muscle out their political rivals Fatah.

By growing their cadre in Lebanon, “Hamas can say we strengthened our political position everywhere we exist”, Drew Mikhael, an expert on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, told Al Jazeera. “No political actor or party doesn’t want more power.”

A return to ‘Fatahland’

Still, the announcement caused a stir among some communities in Lebanon.

“We consider any armed action originating from Lebanese territory as an attack on national sovereignty,” Gebran Bassil, the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, a predominantly Christian party, said, rejecting the creation of what he called a “Hamas-land”.

It was a reference to “Fatahland”, a throwback to a time when the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) under Yasser Arafat operated as a state within a state in southern Lebanon from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. The PLO used southern Lebanon to launch attacks against Israel and became an active member in Lebanon’s civil war in 1975.

Other condemnations also arrived from figures like Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati; the chief of the right-wing nationalist Lebanese Forces party, Samir Geagea; a former police chief and current MP, Ashraf Rifi; and Samy Gemayel, who leads the Kataeb, a traditional Christian party that has attempted to rebrand itself as a centre-right nationalist party in recent years, among others.

While the warning was sounded by politicians across the sectarian spectrum, the reference to a return to “Fatahland” was evoked by multiple Christian leaders in particular. Resentment against Palestinians for the role of the PLO and other factions in the civil war is still common in Lebanon, particularly among parts of the Christian community, even if many empathise with the current suffering in Gaza.

‘Complete Christian marginalisation’

With the world’s eyes on Gaza, Lebanon’s Christian leaders may be using the announcement to play inter-sectarian politics and get a leg up on opponents in Lebanon, say analysts.

“Bassil’s entire career has been an effort to ramp up rhetoric on an ethnonational discourse,” Mikhael said. “Most of the time he doesn’t speak to a national audience. It’s an internal fight with Geagea.”

Bassil and Geagea lead the two biggest Christian parties in Lebanon. But despite their stature, both are divisive figures, deeply unpopular outside their immediate support base.

The internal jockeying is indicative of a Christian retreat from national politics in Lebanon, according to Michael Young of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

“There is a complete Christian marginalisation on most issues today,” Young told Al Jazeera. “When it comes to issues of national discussion, they are seemingly becoming more and more parochial. Christians don’t really pay attention to Palestinian politics and are almost mentally divorced from the Lebanese state.”

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At least 90 killed in latest Israeli attacks on Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp | Israel-Palestine conflict News

The first responders and locals are searching for the wounded as more bodies are believed to be under the rubble.

At least 90 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in the latest Israeli attacks on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

The enclave’s Health Ministry said Sunday’s strikes hit a residential block belonging to the al-Barsh and Alwan families in the town of Jabalia, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

Women and children were among the dead, with dozens still missing, Wafa said in its report.

The first responders and locals were searching for the wounded and more bodies were believed to be under the rubble.

Many of those injured, including children, were taken to nearby medical centres, which are already overwhelmed with patients.

 

The son of Dawoud Shehab, the spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, was among the dead, an official from the group told the Reuters news agency.

“We believe the number of dead people under the rubble is huge but there is no way to remove the rubble and recover them because of the intensity of Israeli fire,” he said by phone.

Medics in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah said at least 12 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded, while in Rafah in the south, an Israeli air attack on a house left at least four people dead.

About 19,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7. Israel says 1,147 people were killed on its territory that day.

Meanwhile, Israel has also ramped up its artillery shelling in southern Gaza, hitting the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, where the majority of displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

The stepping up of bombardments in the south has worsened the humanitarian situation, with starving people scrambling for food and water, grabbing them from aid trucks in desperation.

Israel on Sunday said it will reopen the Karem Abu Salem Crossing in the east but it is unclear whether supplies have crossed through there yet.

The United Nations estimates that 1.9 million people – about 80 percent of Gaza’s population – have been displaced by the war.

“I would not be surprised if people start dying of hunger, or a combination of hunger, disease, weak immunity,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

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