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US Set to Judge Israel Progress on Gaza Aid This Week
Palestinians gather to receive aid, including food supplies provided by World Food Program (WFP), outside a United Nations distribution center, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, Aug. 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
The United States this week will decide whether Israel has made progress toward improving the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and how Washington will respond, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday as Israel began to make its case.
President Joe Biden’s administration told Israel in an Oct. 13 letter signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that the longtime US ally must take steps within 30 days on a series of measures or risk restrictions on American military aid.
“This week we will make our judgments about what kind of progress they have made,” Sullivan told the CBS program “Face the Nation.” “And then Secretary Austin, Secretary Blinken, the president will make judgments about what we do in response, and I’m not going to get ahead of that.”
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, on Sunday published a list of Israel‘s humanitarian efforts over the past six months, “highlighting recent initiatives and detailing plans to sustain support for Gaza as winter approaches.”
“Through expanded routes, medical assistance, infrastructure improvements and coordination with international partners, COGAT continues to facilitate the implementation of humanitarian efforts that are meant to help the civilian population in the Gaza Strip,” the agency said.
The US deadline is set to expire just days after global food security experts said there is a “strong likelihood that famine is imminent in areas” of northern Gaza as Israel pursues a military offensive against Hamas Palestinian terrorists there.
Israel began its wide military push in northern Gaza last month. The United States has said it is watching to ensure that Israel‘s actions on the ground show that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government does not have a “policy of starvation” in the north.
COGAT on Saturday pushed back against the rare alert by the independent Famine Review Committee, which reviews findings by the internationally recognized standard known as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.
The Israeli agency said that “all projections by the IPC have proven incorrect and inconsistent with the situation on the ground” and that Israel‘s military “operates and will continue to operate in accordance with international law to facilitate and ease the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza.”
COGAT also said Friday that it is preparing to open another crossing — at Kissufim — into Gaza.
The UN has accused Israel of hindering and blocking attempts to deliver aid, particularly to Gaza‘s north.
Israel‘s UN Ambassador Danny Danon last month told the Security Council that the issue in Gaza was not a lack of aid, saying more than a million tons had been delivered during the past year. He accused Hamas of hijacking the assistance.
The post US Set to Judge Israel Progress on Gaza Aid This Week first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.