RSS
Blinken Pushes for More Aid for Gaza in Talks With Israel’s Netanyahu
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken disembarks from an aircraft as he arrives in Israel, as the push for a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel continues, in Tel Aviv, March 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday for talks aimed at ensuring more aid flows into Gaza, amid increasingly tense relations between the two allies over the six-month-old war.
In Gaza, Israel claimed to have killed or captured hundreds of Hamas terrorists in a five-day operation at the Al Shifa hospital complex, the largest medical facility in the Palestinian enclave before the war.
Blinken, on his sixth trip to the Middle East since the war broke out on Oct. 7, has been engaged in an intense round of diplomacy since arriving in the region on Wednesday, meeting Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia and foreign ministers and officials from Arab nations in Cairo on Thursday.
Parallel meetings are also taking place in Doha on Friday aimed at securing a ceasefire in the conflict.
The top US diplomat’s latest visit to Israel comes at a time of strained ties between the two countries, with US President Joe Biden calling Israel‘s campaign in Gaza “over the top” and saying it has had too great a toll on civilian lives.
Prior to the meeting with Netanyahu, which lasted about 40 minutes, Blinken said he would address the growing gap between the two countries in his one-on-one conversation. He also met with the Israeli war cabinet.
Blinken said he would push Netanyahu to take urgent steps to allow more aid into the enclave.
The war was triggered by a raid into southern Israel by Hamas terrorists who killed 1,200 and took 253 hostages in a massacre that included mass rape and other atrocities.
US officials say the number of aid deliveries via land needs to increase fast and that aid needs to be sustained over a long period. Israel says it is not restricting aid.
“A hundred percent of the population of Gaza is experiencing severe levels of acute food insecurity. We cannot, we must not allow that to continue,” Blinken told a news conference late on Thursday.
Israeli Colonel Moshe Tetro, head of Israel‘s Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gaza, said the military does not believe there is a food shortage in the enclave.
“As much as we know, by our analysis, there is no starvation in Gaza. There is a sufficient amount of food entering Gaza every day,” he told reporters.
Blinken is also expected to discuss Israel’s intention to launch a ground offensive on Rafah, the Hamas terror group’s last stronghold in Gaza and where more than half of the enclave’s population is now sheltering.
Washington has repeatedly objected to such a plan. Netanyahu told Biden in a phone call on Monday that Israel sees no other way to defeat Hamas terrorists it says are holed up there.
Last week, the leader of Biden’s Democratic Party in the US Senate called Netanyahu an obstacle to peace and said Israelis should vote him out. Biden called it a “good speech”; Netanyahu called it “inappropriate” and later held a video conference with lawmakers from Biden’s Republican opposition.
RAFAH ALTERNATIVES
The discussion on Friday will likely lay the groundwork for meetings in Washington between senior Israeli and US officials next week, when the United States will present to the Israelis alternative ways to hunt down Hamas without resorting to a full-on assault that would endanger more civilian lives.
Talks in Qatar on a truce are focused on a proposal for a six-week halt to fighting during which some 40 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas would be released, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians in Israeli jails.
However, Israel is only prepared to commit to a temporary pause to the conflict and has repeatedly said it will push on with its campaign to achieve its aim of eradicating Hamas, which controls Gaza. Hamas wants a permanent end to the war and for Israeli troops to withdraw.
Blinken on Thursday said the gaps were narrowing.
In Gaza, fighting has been concentrated in recent days on the Al Shifa hospital complex.
Israeli troops entered the facility on Monday and have been combing through the sprawling complex, which they say is connected to a tunnel network used by Hamas.
Israel said it had killed hundreds of fighters and detained more than 500 suspects in its operation on Al Shifa, including 358 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian terrorist group. It said three senior Islamic Jihad military commanders and two Hamas officials responsible for operations in the West Bank were detained, as well as other Hamas internal security officials.
“Those who did not surrender to our forces fought against our forces and were eliminated,” Israel‘s Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told a briefing late on Thursday.
The post Blinken Pushes for More Aid for Gaza in Talks With Israel’s Netanyahu first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login