Tag: Middle East

Israel is using the same tactics in Gaza that al-Assad employed in Syria | Opinions

As the humanitarian pause took effect in Gaza, footage of the massive destruction in the northern part of the enclave has started to trickle in.

Seeing these images of devastation, one cannot but think of Thomas Friedman’s reference to what he calls the “Hama rules”  in an article he published with The New York Times on October 14.

A neologism he coined many years ago, it refers to then-Syrian President Hafez al-Assad’s violent razing of the city of Hama in 1982 that killed more than 20,000 Syrians. Friedman argues that brute force commands legitimacy in the Middle East. This idea is deeply problematic, but the scale of destruction in Gaza suggests that the Israeli government and the military have embraced it.

Indeed, Israel’s war on Gaza bears striking similarities to events in Syria. But we need not go as far back as the 1980s to find those parallels.

In 2011, when Hafez’s son, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, faced a nationwide uprising against his rule, he unleashed a violent campaign against the protesters that soon turned into a civil war.

The tactics of collective punishment he used, aided and abetted by the systematic dehumanisation of the opposition by some parts of Syrian society, are similar to what we are seeing in Gaza today.

In the earliest stages of the conflict, Israel justified a complete siege on Gaza, cutting off the supply of food, water, electricity and fuel, through systematic dehumanisation of its residents. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called the Palestinians “human animals”, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness”. Such language used by Israeli officials appeared to make the use of starvation as a weapon of war acceptable.

This sentiment seeped into social media where videos appeared of Israelis rapaciously mocking the residents of Gaza under siege by indulging in clean water or lavish meals. Some stooped even lower, producing racist vignettes making fun of Palestinian victims of Israeli bombardment.

And as Israeli military targets came to include Gaza’s hospitals and other civilian structures, the dehumanisation campaign of the Palestinian population also expanded. The official government narrative, maintained by Netanyahu and others, states that “terrorists had used hospitals as military bases”. Accordingly, medical staff became “terrorist collaborators” while patients and families who had sought refuge in medical facilities were – willing “human shields”. Their deaths – even in the eyes of Israeli doctors – were therefore justified.

But what seems lost in the present moment is that this campaign of dehumanisation is not unique. Since 2011, al-Assad has relied on eerily similar strategies to justify nearly identical military sieges and attacks on civilian infrastructure in rebel-held territories.

The 2015 siege on the town of Madaya near Damascus bears a striking resemblance to the current Israeli weaponisation of starvation in Gaza. As the al-Assad regime dismissed the local residents as “agents of terror”, Syrians in government-controlled areas bought into the narrative.

As the people of Madaya were reduced to subsisting on leaves, Syrian social media was filled with images and videos of detractors enjoying lavish meals and mocking their starvation. The Twitter hashtag “solidarity with the siege of Madaya” was flooded with culinary content to further brutalise an already brutalised population under siege. More than 420 people died in Madaya, including dozens of children, as a result of the blockade.

The al-Assad regime continued this policy of “starve or surrender” in multiple rebel-held territories, including Aleppo, Ghouta, and Daraya, without any meaningful response from the international community.

In parallel, the al-Assad regime also targeted civilian infrastructure as a war tactic, especially hospitals. According to the International Rescue Committee, only 64 percent of hospitals and 52 percent of primary healthcare centres remain operational in Syria as a result of attacks on healthcare facilities. The al-Assad regime has justified these offensives under the nebulous banner of “countering terrorism”, claiming that 119 healthcare facilities were “taken over by terrorist groups”.

But many of these facilities were put on a deconflicting list, shared with Damascus, and as the UN has pointed out, it was running at least one of them. An investigation by Human Rights Watch has also challenged the Syrian regime’s claims, pointing out they could not find any evidence of military equipment or personnel near the hospitals when they were targeted.

Israel is currently playing by al-Assad’s rules of war, in large part because to date the Syrian leader has not been held to account for those war crimes, or the dehumanisation of his people that enabled them.

On the contrary, al-Assad has emerged from isolation by the international community, particularly after the February 2023 earthquakes in Syria. He has ridden the wave of normalisation by attending Arab League summits and has even been invited to the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai.

Indeed, the victims of the Syrian regime’s brutality have recognised the parallels with Gaza. Zina Najjar, a Syrian activist, posted on X that what is transpiring currently in the besieged enclave is analogous to the events of Madaya eight years ago. Recollecting the brutal siege, Najjar warns that “international failure and silence” in Syria is encouraging the same crimes in Gaza.

That international silence must end immediately, both in Syria and in Gaza. More pressingly, the Israeli government must face swift pushback from the international community for its dehumanisation of the people of Gaza and for the collective punishment it is inflicting on them.

Otherwise, as in Syria, starvation and the deliberate bombardment of hospitals as war tactics will become chillingly normalised as par for the course.

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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Near Sfax, refugees scramble after violent clashes with Tunisia police | Features

Sfax, Tunisia – On the outskirts of Tunisia’s second-largest city and the destination point for thousands of sub-Saharan African refugees hoping to get to Europe, 15-year-old Osman Bah from Guinea points to his sleeping quarters.

The spot is hard to make out among the grey sand and plastic bags scattered across the wasteland, but it is there, he says, in the lee of some piled-up dirt and stones.

Other than the squat, yurt-shaped shelter, put together with pallets and plastic, there is nothing here but the distant outline of phosphate heaps, the occasional passing train and a white horse, tethered to a tree and standing defiant against the bleakness of its surroundings.

All the same, it is here and to the olive groves of Al Amra, about 25km (15.5 miles) away, that thousands of Black refugees and migrants were either bused or fled to after the Tunisian security services launched an operation to evict them from Sfax’s city centre in September.

Osman Bah, 15, came to Sfax from Guinea hoping to reach Europe [Simon Speakman Cordall/Al Jazeera]

Since then, the situation has deteriorated further. Right now, the fields around Al Amra have been locked down by the police and national guard as security units comb the area for a gun and ammunition reportedly lost during confrontations with the refugees and migrants sleeping rough there. A situation those living on the scrubland refer to as “the problem”.

The choice of Al Amra as the site where the authorities moved them is significant.

Long before the evictions, Al Amra and the small, hardscrabble hamlets around it, such as El-Hamaziah, were already established departure points for those seeking to escape their lives in sub-Saharan Africa for new ones in Europe. There, crude metal boats would be assembled by local fishermen and their families, the refugees say, before being bought and chartered for Europe by the refugees themselves.

The decision to flood the region with yet more arrivals from sub-Saharan Africa has not been explained. However, some say it is not insignificant that the move came amid rising tensions between Tunisia and the European Commission surrounding a “pact on migration” that the two sides signed in July.

An influx of refugees fleeing the war in Sudan, which has raged since April, has already sorely tested Tunisia’s resources and put its relations with Europe under increasing strain.

Violence against Black people had exploded across Tunisia in February when President Kais Saied accused the refugees of bringing “violence, crime and unacceptable practices” to the country as part of a wider plot to change the predominantly Arab country’s demographic makeup.

A horse tethered to a tree on the outskirts of Sfax, Tunisia, where refugees from sub-Saharan Africa wait, hoping to get on a boat to Europe [Simon Speakman Cordall/Al Jazeera]

‘The police released tear gas, lots of tear gas’

On November 24, the situation in Al Amra escalated again. “Lots of police arrived,” Omar Jjie, an 18-year-old Gambian tells Osman, who translates roughly. “They dug up the boats [to be used for transporting people to Europe] buried under the sand.

“The boys, they grew very angry and threw stones, so the police released tear gas, lots of tear gas.”

In the ensuing melee, four national guardsmen were reportedly injured. Video shared widely on social media ostensibly shows a stricken guardsman lying on the ground, immobile and bleeding.

The people camped there claim that three of their number lost their lives during the violence as well. One, Mohammed Ceesay, was well known to those sleeping rough.

Twenty people were arrested in the confrontation’s immediate aftermath. Reports of more being rounded up and expelled to Libya and Algeria are also growing, which would be an act in contravention of international law and is one Tunisia has denied undertaking.

Omar insists he played no role in the violence, saying he only witnessed it. But as someone who had already paid the 500 euros ($545) for a place on one of the boats, raised through casual work picking olives and money sent by wire from his family in Gambia, he had no choice but to watch as his boat was unearthed and destroyed by the police.

Now, he sits slumped outside a cafe on the far side of the wasteland, back on the outskirts of Sfax, a small crowd gathered around him, asking if what friends in Al Amra have told them about the events over social media is true.

“I walked [here] on the back road,” he says, switching to English. “I walked from 19km,” he says, using the shorthand common among many here, supplanting road distance markers for place names. “I don’t want the police to see me. There are so many police there. They are looking for the gun.”

Locked down

Since November 24, security units have essentially locked the region down. French newspaper Le Monde reported increasing numbers of special units from the national guard being deployed as well as police officers with the National Rapid Intervention Brigade.

The local member of parliament, Fatma Mseddi, spoke on local radio, accusing the refugees of “terrorising” local inhabitants and being members of Boko Haram despite the majority coming from Sudan, not a location typically associated with the armed group.

Ibrahim Njie from Guinea, who says some of his friends have been detained by police, avoids the authorities [Simon Speakman Cordall/Al Jazeera]

“The police, they are angry and they lose one gun and six rounds,” Ibrahim Njie from Guinea says as he stands outside a nearby mosque, its foundation skirted with rubble and isolated scrub. “My friend says the police came and took them prisoner. They say, ‘If you return the gun, we will let you go.’”

One young man who gives his name simply as Mohammed adds: “If [the police] catch you here, they take away your phone and your money. Sometimes they take you away to Libya or Tebessa [a town in Algeria close to the border with Tunisia]. Many of my friends have been taken.”

“Six buses, they come here,” he says gesturing around the desolate scrubland.

According to Mohammed and others, two days after the confrontation in Al Amra, two Black refugees died after falling from a rooftop while trying to escape the police.

Osman believes he will get to Europe eventually, whatever the circumstances, he says.

He texts from a friend’s phone later in the day. He had just talked to his sister in Gambia.

It had been months since he last talked with them. For Osman, at least, there is still hope.

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Over 700 killed as Israel pounds Gaza, widens evacuation orders | News

The Israeli army has ordered more people to evacuate from southern Gaza, which was earlier declared ‘safe zone’.

Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli air raids in the past 24 hours in Gaza as the Israeli army ordered more areas in and around the enclave’s second-largest city of Khan Younis to evacuate.

The Director General of the Government Media Office in Gaza told Al Jazeera on Sunday that more than 700 Palestinians have been killed since Israel resumed bombardment after a seven-day truce ended on Friday.

More than 1.5 million people have been displaced, most of them from northern Gaza, since Israel launched a military offensive on October 7 in the wake of a deadly Hamas attack.

Overnight and into Sunday, intense bombing was reported in Khan Younis, Rafah, and some northern parts targeted by Israel’s air and ground attacks.

“Everywhere you turn to, there are children with third-degree burns, shrapnel wounds, brain injuries and broken bones,” James Elder, UNICEF’s global spokesperson, told Al Jazeera from Gaza.

“Mothers crying over children who look like they are hours away from death. It seems like a death zone right now.”

People check a house hit by Israeli bombing in Khan Younis [Mahmud Hams/AFP]

The main hospital in Khan Younis received at least three dead and dozens wounded on Sunday morning from an Israeli air raid that hit a residential building in the eastern part of the city, according to an Associated Press journalist at the hospital.

Separately, the bodies of 31 people killed in Israeli bombardment across the central areas of the strip were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Gaza’s central city of Deir el-Balah, said Omar al-Darawi, an administrative employee at the hospital.

In northern Gaza, rescue teams with little equipment scrambled on Sunday to dig through the rubble of buildings in the Jabaliya refugee camp and other neighbourhoods in Gaza City in search of potential survivors and dead bodies.

An injured man being rescued after a house was hit by Israeli bombing in Khan Younis [Mahmud Hams/AFP]

Hopes of any future cessation in the fighting were dashed on Saturday when Israel announced it was pulling out negotiators from the Qatari capital, Doha, saying talks had reached an “impasse”.

Israel has said it is working to eliminate the armed Palestinian group Hamas, which launched deadly attacks on southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking more than 240 captives, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel has killed more than 15,200 Palestinians in Gaza attacks since October 7, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

Evacuation orders

The Israeli military on Sunday expanded evacuation directives in Khan Younis and the vicinity, urging residents from at least five additional areas to relocate for safety purposes.

Leaflets distributed by the military instructed residents to move south to Rafah, or a coastal area in the southwest, emphasising that Khan Younis was a “dangerous” combat zone.

Rights groups have raised concerns against Israel’s stepped-up attacks in the southern part of the besieged enclave, which was earlier declared a “safe zone”.

Following an Israeli air raid on an eastern residential building, the main hospital in Khan Younis reported at least three deaths and dozens of injuries on Sunday morning, according to an AP journalist.

A significant portion of the 2.3 million inhabitants in the territory now resides in the southern areas due to the war.

Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, a 21-year-old Palestinian was shot dead on Sunday by Israeli forces in a raid in Qalqilya.

According to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society, Israel arrested at least 60 Palestinians in overnight raids in the occupied territory.

The latest arrests add to more than 3,000 Palestinians arrested in the West Bank since October 7, according to the UN Human Rights Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

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Analysis: Israel resumed bombing Gaza, what has happened since? | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Fighting in Gaza resumed almost on cue on Friday when the last extension of the truce expired and hopes in attempts to renew it again faded.

Back in action first were Israeli F-16 bombers, pounding more than 400 targets in Gaza, including some in the very south near the Rafah border crossing with Egypt. However, the focus appeared to be in the north and there is little doubt that the Israeli army will try to advance deeper towards the centre of Gaza City just as Defence Minister Yoav Gallant announced: tanks, artillery, armoured bulldozers, then infantry.

Meanwhile, contradictory news from Qatar, where intermediaries from the host country, Egypt and the United States were still trying to convince the warring sides to reach another pause. The first announcement on Saturday said the talks were continuing.

Then at mid-afternoon, the Israeli prime minister’s office issued a statement: “Following the impasse … David Barnea, head of the Mossad, ordered his team in Doha to return to Israel.”

Writing official statements is an art: One should never lie but there is no need to tell the whole truth. While the “official” Israeli secret service delegation may indeed be on its way home, I have no doubt that at least a small team remains in Doha. They may not be Mossad, but it would be foolish not to leave qualified liaison officers who can keep talking.

Another reason for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to maintain at least a core team of officials in Qatar would be to avoid straining relations with traditional ally the United States, which has supported Israel greatly in the post-October 7 crisis.

US President Joe Biden visited Israel offering Bibi a photo op the cunning veteran of Israeli politics jumped on, splattering the media with their embraces and carefully selected soundbites. Washington followed with massive supplies of military goods, some commercial sales, and others loans. The biggest may be the $14.3bn aid package “for Israel’s defence”.

Weapons and armaments have been pouring into Israel by US C-17 aircraft and commercial airlifters practically from October 8. The Washington Post reported that 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells (155mm) came by air, a figure consistent with the estimated amount of ordnance expended in the eight-week campaign and the carrying capacity of the aircraft.

Less urgent supplies will be arriving on less glamourous, higher-capacity ships.

As the bombing campaign resumed, the media revealed the types of bombs shipped to Israel, focusing mostly on the specialised heavy “bunker busters”. The report claims that 100 BLU-109 bombs were shipped. Some media speculated that this delivery may signify a change in tactics against the Hamas, but there is nothing to be excited about.

Palestinian children wait for food aid amid food shortages, as Israel resumes bombing Gaza, in Rafah southern Gaza Strip, December 2, 2023 [Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]

The 900kg (2,000lb) BLU-109 is nothing more than a “dumb bomb” with thicker outer walls than general-purpose bombs, that help it penetrate deeper into the earth or through thicker layers of reinforcing concrete before exploding. The corresponding weight class general-purpose MK84 bomb carries 430kg (950lb) of explosives to the “bunker-busters” 240kg (530lb).

But the BLU-109, which costs US taxpayers $65,000 apiece versus $16,000 for the MK84, is of little use to Israel as a dumb bomb. To be effective and able to hit targets with precision, it needs to be upgraded with a far costlier laser guidance head unit and a control tail unit. According to the same reports, the US delivered 3,000 such JDAM kits that convert dumb bombs into smart weapons.

Apart from 100 bunker busters, US deliveries reportedly included two sizes of general-purpose dumb bombs: 5,400 MK84s – 900kg (2,000lb) – and 5,000 MK82s – 450kg (1,000lb) – and 1,000 precision-guided GBU-39 “small diameter bombs” – 150kg (300lb).

Worried about the indiscriminate aerial bombardment of Palestinian targets that could be compared to carpet bombing, the US warned Israel on several occasions to reduce the number of civilian casualties.

After the resumption of bombing on Friday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Israel that “the massive levels of loss of civilian life and displacement scale we saw in the north must not be repeated in the south”.

Explosions in Gaza after Israeli air raids shown in a long-exposure photo taken from southern Israel, on December 2, 2023 [John MacDougall/AFP]

He allegedly received Israeli assurances that they would try to kill fewer civilians, but the casualty toll in the first 24 hours of renewed fighting, with nearly 200 reportedly killed in the bombardment, leaves little room for optimism.

Can anything about the intentions of the next stage of aerial bombardment be determined from the numbers and types of bombs delivered to the Israeli army?

First, there is no reason to put too much importance on the delivery of 100 bunker busters. Israel already had those in its arsenal and used some, so this may be a simple replenishment or a modest build-up. While long and sometimes deep, Hamas tunnels are mostly not covered in thick layers of concrete, so Israel would need just a handful of bunker busters.

Second, one could compare the number of conventional bombs delivered, 10,400 of two different weight classes, with the number of JDAM kits, 3,000. Along with the transfer of 1,000 small but precise “small-diameter bombs”, these figures may suggest that one in every three or four bombs dropped in future might be “smart” and that Israel would be making an effort to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza, as it allegedly promised the US.

Such a conclusion would be premature. Without knowing the number of dumb bombs and smart kits that were in Israeli warehouses and bases before October 7, a top military secret, the ratio of precision-guided bombs versus dumb ones that indiscriminately destroy civilian infrastructure and kill non-combatants, cannot be made and it will take several more days to establish whether there is any change in the way targets on the ground are attacked.

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Israel-Hamas war: List of key events, day 58 | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israel continues to ignore international calls for putting a stop to the war and civilian deaths – here are the major updates.

Here’s what is to know about the situation on Sunday, December 3, 2023:

The Israeli bombardment

  • The Israeli army continued to relentlessly bomb different areas across the Gaza Strip, killing hundreds of Palestinians since the truce ended on Friday. At least 15,207 Palestinians have been killed so far, including 6,150 children.
  • On Sunday morning alone, more than 30 Palestinians were killed in the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah. Israel has conducted more than 600 air raids since Friday. The Israeli army has called on residents from certain neighbourhoods in Khan Younis to evacuate to other areas. The warning came through a new evacuation system that divides Gaza into many small blocks with the stated purpose of avoiding civilian casualties.
  • Israel appears to be planning to expand its ground offensive to include southern Gaza as well. This and the brutal aerial raids have left Palestinians wondering where to take shelter.
  • Hamas launched the largest barrage of rockets from the Gaza Strip since the ceasefire ended, hitting multiple places within Israeli territory in the south, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Most of them were intercepted.
  • The Times of Israel reported that an Israeli official had confirmed Israeli intentions to create a buffer zone on the Palestinian side of the Gaza border to prevent future attacks after the war.

Diplomacy

  • Israel recalled the Mossad delegation it had sent to Qatar to negotiate late on Saturday, saying an “impasse” had been hit in the talks.
  • A Hamas official told Al Jazeera negotiations on prisoner exchanges were over and would not resume until Israel halted its attacks and handed over all Palestinian prisoners.
  • United States Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said he learned from his time leading forces against ISIL (ISIS) that “you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians”. He added that Washington “will remain Israel’s closest friend in the world”.
  • French President Emmanuel Macron, who is in Doha to help negotiate a truce, said, “There is no lasting security for Israel in the region if its security is achieved at the cost of Palestinian lives.”
  • Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), visited Israel and the occupied West Bank on Saturday. Palestinian rights groups boycotted Khan’s visit and asked why he did not visit refugee camps in Gaza under Israeli bombardment.

Humanitarian aid and West Bank

  • Humanitarian aid in Gaza has “largely halted” after Israeli attacks resumed on Friday, according to the United Nations. It also said there were only limited distributions of flour in areas south of Wadi Gaza in the past few days.
  • Sharing data from the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company, the UN has also said the besieged enclave has had no electricity since October 11. Palestinians also continue to struggle to get water.
  • Israeli raids have not stopped across the West Bank either. A 21-year-old Palestinian man was shot dead on Sunday morning in Qalqilya in the occupied territories, where more than 250 people have been killed since October 7.

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Photos: More deaths and destruction as Israel targets southern Gaza | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israel has carried out deadly bombardments in Gaza for a second day after a weeklong truce with Hamas collapsed despite international calls for an extension.

Clouds of grey smoke from the strikes hung on Saturday over Gaza, where the Hamas-run Ministry of Health said nearly 200 people had been killed since the pause in hostilities expired early on Friday.

Residents feared the latest bombings presage an Israeli ground operation in the south of the Palestinian territory that would pin them into a shrinking area and possibly try to push them into Egypt.

The southern part of Gaza, including Khan Younis and Rafah, was pounded by Israeli war planes and artillery on Saturday. Thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering there because of fighting in the north.

Residents said houses had been hit and three mosques destroyed in Khan Younis.

Palestinian witnesses said Israeli tanks had taken up positions near the road between Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah.

“A night of horror,” said Samira, a mother of four. “It was one of the worst nights we spent in Khan Younis in the past six weeks since we arrived here. … We are so afraid they will enter Khan Younis.”

Officials said the overall death toll in Gaza since the October 7 start of the Israel-Hamas war has surpassed 15,200 while more than 40,000 people have been wounded in the Israeli attacks.

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Can Israel learn from the intelligence failure that led to Hamas attack? | Israel-Palestine conflict

Renewed Israeli bombardment of Gaza after the truce is worsening the humanitarian crisis.

Israel has one of the most advanced and well-equipped militaries in the world.

And yet, on October 7, Hamas fighters breached the Gaza border fence, infiltrated southern Israel and killed about 1,200 people.

Israel responded by declaring war on Hamas. Its bombing campaign has razed much of Gaza to the ground and killed more than 15,000 Palestinians.

Many in the international community have condemned the offensive as disproportionate.

After a brief truce, the bombardment has resumed – and appears to be expanding into the densely populated southern part of the Gaza Strip.

A year ago, senior government officials reportedly dismissed intelligence pointing to an impending attack by Hamas.

Who will be held accountable for the unheeded warnings? And what will it take for Israel to call its operation in Gaza a success?

Presenter: Jonah Hull

Guests:

Oren Ziv – journalist and photographer at +972 Magazine, an independent Israeli online news platform

Antony Loewenstein – author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book on Israel’s arms and surveillance industry

Omar Ashour – professor of security and military studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

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Israel pulls Mossad negotiators from Qatar after ‘impasse’ over captives | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israel has pulled its Mossad negotiators from Qatar, which along with Egypt and the United States is mediating talks to secure a renewed pause in the Israel-Hamas war.

“Following the impasse in the negotiations and at the direction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, David Barnea, head of the Mossad, ordered his team in Doha to return to Israel,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Saturday.

The statement accused Hamas of not fulfilling its side of an agreement to extend the truce in Gaza. The deal had included the release of all women and children held in Gaza in accordance with a list conveyed to Hamas and agreed upon, the statement said.

Hours later, Hamas said there will be no further prisoner exchange with Israel until the war on Gaza is over.

“Our official stance is there will be no further prisoner swap until the war ends,” deputy head of the group, Saleh al-Arouri, told Al Jazeera.

“Israeli prisoners will not be released until our [Palestinian] prisoners are liberated and after a ceasefire comes into effect.”

“What we have left of Israeli prisoners are soldiers and civilians serving in the army,” he added.

The Hamas official said the group was ready to exchanges the “bodies of dead Israelis in exchange for our own martyrs, but we need time to exhume these bodies”.

“The Israeli occupation insists that we are still holding women and children but we have already released them all,” he said.

Reporting from Doha, Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem said: “Given the fact that the demands now are changing, the Israelis are demanding that Hamas should release women soldiers.”

“To Hamas, that has a different price,” he said, referring to the previous agreement of three Palestinians prisoners released for every captive held in Gaza under the weeklong truce that ended early on Friday. “The main issue is also that Hamas was from the beginning offering all for all – the Israeli captives for all the Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

“Now, we are facing this deadlock with the Israelis withdrawing. This doesn’t mean that negotiations are coming to an end. There may be another mediation and new ideas from different parties,” he said.

The temporary truce between Israel and Hamas collapsed after mediators were unable to extend it. The humanitarian pause saw the release of 80 Israeli captives in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel and Hamas have traded blame over the truce’s collapse.

Macron in Qatar

Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron said France is “very concerned” by the resumption of violence in Gaza as he landed in Qatar on Saturday to help kick-start a new truce.​​​

Macron said at a press conference at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai that the situation required the doubling-down of efforts to obtain a lasting ceasefire and the freeing of all captives.

He also urged Israel to clarify its goals towards Hamas.

“We are at a moment when Israeli authorities must more precisely define their objectives and their final goal: the total destruction of Hamas – does anyone think it is possible? If this is the case, the war will last 10 years,” he said.

“There is no lasting security for Israel in the region if its security is achieved at the cost of Palestinian lives and thus of the resentment of public opinion in the region. Let’s be collectively lucid,” Macron added.

People chant slogans at a pro-Palestinian rally in Paris on Saturday [Thomas Padilla/AP]

Asked for a response to those remarks, Mark Regev, senior adviser to Netanyahu, told reporters Israel does not want to see Gaza civilians caught in the crossfire as battles resume.

“Israel is targeting Hamas, a brutal terrorist organisation that has committed the most horrific violence against innocent civilians. Israel is making a maximum effort to safeguard Gaza’s civilians,” Regev said.

Jabalia camp hit again

But the civilian death toll continues to mount in the enclave.

At least 100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli air strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the strip on Saturday. Rescuers used their bare hands to dig through rubble in search of survivors.

Palestinian authorities said at least 240 people have been killed since the bombings resumed early on Friday.

Fadel Naim, chief doctor at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, said his morgue has received 30 bodies since Saturday morning, including seven children.

“The planes bombed our houses. Three bombs, three houses destroyed,” Nemr al-Bel, 43, told the Agence France-Presse news agency, adding that he had counted 10 dead in his family and “13 more still under the rubble”.

The United Nations estimated at least 1.7 million people in Gaza – 80 percent of its population – have been displaced since the war began on October 7.

Since then, the Israeli campaign in Gaza has killed more than 15,000 people, most of them civilians. In Israel, the official death toll stands at about 1,200.

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‘Hell on Earth’ in Gaza: Israel strikes hit Deir el-Balah | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Israel’s attacks on Gaza have stretched into a second day after a seven-day truce with Hamas ended as Qatar and Egypt mediate talks to renew a pause in hostilities.

The United Nations said on Saturday that the fighting would worsen the extreme humanitarian emergency in Gaza.

“Hell on Earth has returned to Gaza,” said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN humanitarian office in Geneva.

“Today, in a matter of hours, scores were reportedly killed and injured. Families were told to evacuate, again. Hopes were dashed,” UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said, adding that children, women and men of Gaza had “nowhere safe to go and very little to survive on”.

Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza said Israeli tanks have not stopped shelling the enclave and gunboats are attacking its coastline.

“Houses have been targeted. At least three mosques were hit. Areas across the Gaza Strip – the north, south and centre – have all been targeted.”

The Israeli army said on Saturday that it hit more than 400 targets overnight, including in the Khan Younis area in the south, to which tens of thousands of civilians evacuated over the past month.

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Israel, Palestine and Canada’s ‘schizophrenic foreign policy’ | Israel-Palestine conflict News

Montreal, Canada – More than a month into its bombardment of Gaza, the Israeli military issued a warning: Ground troops had surrounded the largest hospital in the Palestinian enclave, al-Shifa. A raid would be launched “in minutes”.

The impending siege of the Gaza City health complex sparked panic among the thousands of injured patients, medical staff and displaced Palestinians sheltering there.

But amid urgent international pleas to protect Gaza’s hospitals, much of the focus in Canada was on the tougher tone of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“I have been clear: The price of justice cannot be the continued suffering of all Palestinian civilians. Even wars have rules,” Trudeau said in a news conference on November 14, around the time the al-Shifa raid began.

“I urge the government of Israel to exercise maximum restraint,” he continued, offering his toughest comments since the war began. For weeks, Trudeau had been ignoring calls – and some of Canada’s largest protests in recent memory – demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

“The world is watching. On TV, on social media, we’re hearing the testimonies of doctors, family members, survivors, kids who’ve lost their parents. The world is witnessing this. The killing of women and children – of babies; this has to stop.”

Palestinians wounded in Israeli strikes sit on beds at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on November 25 [Abed Sabah/Reuters]

The response from Tel Aviv was swift. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted publicly to Trudeau’s speech, arguing on social media that the Palestinian group Hamas, not Israel, was responsible for any civilian casualties. Netanyahu pointed to Hamas’s attacks in southern Israel on October 7, one of the events that precipitated the war.

Pro-Israel lobby groups in Canada echoed that argument, saying “the blood of dead babies – Israeli and Palestinian – is on Hamas” and accusing Trudeau of fuelling anti-Semitism.

In the days that followed, Canadian ministers sought to temper Trudeau’s comments.

“The prime minister, quite understandably, is concerned about innocent lives on both sides of that border,” Defence Minister Bill Blair told the Canadian network CTV. “We’ve also been crystal clear: Israel has the right to defend itself.”

The episode is one of many examples in recent weeks of what observers have described as Canada’s “schizophrenic” foreign policy when it comes to Israel and Palestine.

“Whenever [Trudeau] does show any mettle with respect to this, he invariably then steps back from what he said after any sort of criticism coming from either the Israel lobby in Canada or Israeli leaders,” Michael Lynk, a former United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, told Al Jazeera.

Unlike its powerful neighbour and Israel’s foremost backer, the United States, Canada says it aims to tread the middle ground in its policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It supports a two-state solution, opposes illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and says international law must be respected by all parties.

But experts say Canada has two policies when it comes to the conflict: one on paper and one in practice.

They note that Canada has cast UN votes against its own stated positions and opposed Palestinian efforts to seek redress at the International Criminal Court, and argue that it has backed hardline, Israeli policies and failed to hold the country accountable for rights abuses.

“This government, as well as previous Canadian governments, have unfortunately had a blind spot with respect to Israel,” said Farida Deif, Canada director at Human Rights Watch.

She added that Canada’s stance has not changed despite the nearly two-month-long military campaign in Gaza, where bombs have struck hospitals, refugee camps and schools serving as shelters. More than 15,200 Palestinians have been killed.

“What we’ve seen with respect to Canada’s policy on Israel-Palestine is really a lack of coherence, confusion, and essentially not really engaging with the reality on the ground,” she told Al Jazeera. “And the reality on the ground that we’ve seen – that Palestinian organisations, Israeli organisations, international organisations have documented – is the reality of apartheid and persecution.”

So what drives Canada’s position?

Al Jazeera spoke to nearly a dozen human rights advocates, politicians, former officials and other experts about how foreign and domestic calculations influence Ottawa’s stance – and whether public outrage could shift its strategy.



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