Newly installed Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa announced a package of reforms on Tuesday aimed at strengthening the Palestinian Authority (PA) amid increased global pressure for a revival of political dialogue with Israel.

Mustafa, appointed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas earlier this year, said his government would introduce measures to improve transparency and fight corruption, overhaul the justice system and security sectors and improve public sector efficiency.

In addition, he said the health and education system would be improved, public finances strengthened and economic reforms implemented.

The reform pledges largely match promises previously made by his predecessor Mohammed Shtayyeh, who announced his resignation in February as the PA looked to build support for an expanded role amid Israel’s war against the Islamist terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

The United States and other international partners have pressed the PA to implement sweeping reforms to restore confidence among Palestinians who have become deeply disillusioned with the body set up under the interim Oslo Peace Accords more than 30 years ago.

The urgency to make reforms has increased as attention has turned towards the governance of Gaza, once Israel winds up its military campaign against Hamas following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel led by fighters from the Islamist movement.

Despite resistance from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Washington and its allies say the PA must be involved in administering the enclave once Israeli troops pull out.

The United States and most Western countries say only a two-state solution, entailing an independent Palestinian state next to Israel, can offer the chance of a peaceful resolution to decades of conflict.

However, Abbas reacted angrily last week when Washington vetoed a Palestinian request for full United Nations membership, saying the PA would reconsider bilateral ties with the United States following the decision.

The PA has been grappling with a severe financial crisis which has left most public sector employees receiving only part of their normal salary for the past two years.

The crisis has worsened since the start of the war in Gaza as Israel has cut off some of the tax revenues it collects on the PA’s behalf, accusing the Authority of supporting Hamas.

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i24 News – Claims that IDF troops left mass graves on the territory of two Gaza hospitals, where they buried executed Palestinians, are merely the latest lurid fabrication to issue from Hamas, the Israeli military said on Saturday.

“The claim that the IDF buried Palestinian bodies is completely baseless,” the IDF says in response to a query on the matter.

Hamas falsely claimed they found bodies in mass graves at the Nasser and Al Shifa hospitals after the facilities was abandoned by Israeli troops, following counterterrorism operations.

The IDF said it exhumed a number of corpses buried by Palestinians on the grounds of the Nasser hospital in an effort to track hostages.

Earlier in the day Ravina Shamdasani, the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that the U.N. human rights office was working on corroborating Palestinian reports that 283 bodies were found at Nasser and 30 at Al Shifa.

The post ‘Completely Baseless’: Reports of Mass Graves at Gaza Hospitals are False, IDF Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Israeli strikes intensified across Gaza on Tuesday in some of the heaviest shelling in weeks, residents said, as the army ordered fresh evacuations in the north of the strip, warning civilians they were in a “dangerous combat zone.”

Strikes by air and shelling from tanks on the ground were also reported in central and southern areas in what residents said were almost non-stop bombardments.

In a post on social media platform X, Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee urged residents of four zones in northern Beit Lahiya to move to shelter in two designated areas.

He said the military “will work with extreme force against terrorist infrastructure and subversive elements” in the region.

The renewed shelling and bombing of northern Gaza comes almost four months after the Israeli army announced it was drawing down its troops there, saying Hamas no longer controlled those areas.

This month, Israel also drew down most of its forces in southern Gaza. But efforts to reach a ceasefire have failed, and Israeli bombardment and raids on territory where its troops have withdrawn are making it difficult for displaced Gazans to return to abandoned homes.

Overnight tanks made a new incursion east of Beit Hanoun on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip, though they did not penetrate far into the city, residents and Hamas media said. Gunfire reached some schools causing panic amongst displaced residents sheltering there.

Tuesday’s bombardment came after incoming rocket alerts sounded in two southern Israeli border towns, although no casualties were reported.

The armed wing of Islamic Jihad, a group allied to Hamas, claimed responsibility for the attacks on Sderot and Nir Am, indicating fighters were still able to launch rockets almost 200 days into the war, which has flattened large swathes of the enclave and displaced almost all of its 2.3 million people.

Thick black smoke could be seen rising in northern Gaza from across the southern Israeli border. Shelling was intense east of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia and continued on Tuesday in areas such as Zeitoun, one of Gaza City’s oldest suburbs, with residents reporting at least 10 strikes in a matter of seconds along the main road.

‘NIGHT OF HORROR’

“It was one of those nights of horror that we have lived in at the start of the war. The bombing from tanks and planes didn’t stop,” said Um Mohammad, 53, a mother-of-six living 700 meters from Zeitoun.

“I had to gather with my children and my sisters who came to shelter with me in one place and pray for our lives as the house kept shaking,” she told Reuters via a chat app.

Elsewhere in the enclave, shelling hit the east of the main southern city Khan Younis a day after tanks raided the area, and in the central district four bodies were recovered from a house hit overnight in the Al-Nusseirat refugee camp.

The Israeli army said rockets launched overnight into Israel had come from northern Gaza. It had struck rocket launchers and killed several terrorists, in what it called “targeted and precise” strikes.

“Over the past day, IAF fighter jets and additional aircraft struck approximately 25 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including military infrastructure, observation posts, terrorists, launch posts,” it said in a statement.

Israel says Rafah, where more than a million displaced civilians are sheltering on the Egyptian border, is the last bastion of several Hamas battalions.

The post Israel Intensifies Strikes Across Gaza, Orders New Evacuations in North first appeared on Algemeiner.com.