US ‘deplores’ Israeli attack on UN training centre in Gaza By Nidal al-Mughrabi Updated January 25, 2024 Gaza: The United Nations said Israeli tanks struck a huge UN compound in Gaza sheltering displaced Palestinians, causing “mass casualties”, but Israel denied its forces were responsible and suggested Hamas may have launched the shelling. The attack, which the UN said hit a vocational training centre housing 30,000 displaced people in Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s main city, prompted rare outright condemnation from the United States. Thomas White, director of Gaza affairs for the UN agency UNRWA, said two tank rounds hit one of the centre’s buildings where some 800 displaced people were sheltering. At least nine people were killed and 75 wounded. The agency’s head Philippe Lazzarini said the death toll was probably higher. Palestinians try to extinguish a fire at a building of an UNRWA vocational training centre which displaced people use as a shelter, after being targeted by Israeli tank shill in Khan Younis.Credit: AP “The compound is a clearly marked UN facility and its coordinates were shared with Israeli authorities as we do for all our facilities. Once again a blatant disregard of basic rules of war,” Lazzarini said. In Washington, US. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel said: “We deplore today’s attack on the UN’s Khan Younis training centre”. “Civilians must be protected, and the protected nature of UN facilities must be respected, and humanitarian workers must be protected so that they can continue providing civilians with the life-saving humanitarian assistance that they need,” Patel said. Israel’s military initially released a statement describing the wider Khan Younis area as a base of Hamas fighters and acknowledged that fighting was taking place near large numbers of civilians. In a second statement sent following Washington’s criticism, the military said an examination of its operational systems ruled out that its forces had struck the centre. It added that a thorough review was still under way to examine the possibility that the strike was a result of Hamas fire. Patel repeated Washington’s calls for protection of civilians, humanitarian workers and aid facilities. Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi accused Israel of holding up aid deliveries for the Gaza Strip as a pressure tactic, the latest sign of friction between the two countries that have maintained a blockade on the enclave. Palestinians carry a a body of a person killed in the Israeli bombardment at a building of an UNRWA vocational training center which displaced people use as a shelter in Khan Younis.Credit: AP “This is a form of pressure on the Gaza Strip and its people over the conflict and the release of hostages. They are using this as a pressure tool on the people of the Strip,” Sissi said in comments to mark Egypt’s national police day. Israel, which denies holding up aid, launched an air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas militants stormed across its border on October 7, killing some 1200 people and taking hostages, about 130 of whom remain in captivity. Israel’s response has left more than 25,400 dead and caused a severe humanitarian crisis, with most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people left homeless and acutely short of food, water, medicine and fuel. Israel has ordered residents to leave a swath of downtown Khan Younis that includes Nasser Hospital and two smaller medical facilities as the country pushes ahead with its three-month-old offensive against Hamas. The UN humanitarian office said the area was home to 88,000 Palestinians and was hosting another 425,000 displaced by fighting elsewhere. But the aid group Doctors Without Borders said fleeing was not an option for many. It said its staff was trapped inside Nasser with some 850 patients and thousands of displaced people because the surrounding roads were inaccessible or too dangerous. The hospital is one of only two in southern Gaza that can still treat critically ill patients, the group said. Gaza’s Health Ministry also said the facility had been isolated. Reuters, AP
Some residents of Gaza are getting sick and tired of Hamas -- and are now openly protesting. Let's hope this spreads and becomes open revolt against the terrorist organization. Deep down the residents of Gaza know who the real oppressor is. Keep in mind that Hamas just rejected a two month ceasefire proposal with a hostage exchange. it's clear that Hamas does not want peace and will do anything to cling to power in Gaza -- no matter how many deaths the terrorist organization causes. Some Gaza Residents Appear To Be Turning Against Hamas, Protest Video Shared By IDF Shows https://dailycaller.com/2024/01/24/gaza-resident-call-hostage-release-hamas/ The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Arabic spokesperson shared a video Wednesday purporting to show Gazans urging Hamas release its hostages. IDF Spokesman Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee tweeted in Arabic this was a “spontaneous demonstration” in the Gaza Strip of people “demanding that you [Hamas] return the kidnapped Israelis to their homes so that the war stops.” “Will these cries and demands reach the hideouts of Hamas leaders?” Adraee asked. The location of the protest was alleged to have been near the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city of Dir al-Balah, i24 reported. The video shows several men, women and children loudly chanting slogans in Arabic. “A message written on a poster says ‘yes to handing over the hostages.’ Protestors are also saying they want to go back to the north (Gaza),” Joe Truzman, a Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior research analyst on Palestinian armed groups, tweeted. Anti-Hamas protests in the Gaza Strip are rare, but they do occasionally happen. One such incident occurred in July 2023 when thousands took to the streets expressing discontent with Hamas rule and the difficult living standards conditions in Gaza, The Associated Press (AP) reported. Palestinian Protesters Demand Release of Israeli Hostages as Fury Mounts at Gaza Against Hamas https://www.nysun.com/article/pales...hostages-as-fury-mounts-at-gaza-against-hamas
"Is there any limit to Hamas atrocities? Friday morning in Gaza’s Khan Yunis Sector. An incident that took place with one of the battalions operating under the 4th Brigade: Before carrying out a raid, the force sent up a drone after spotting a suspicious figure. Through the drone they saw an elderly woman bound to a bed. The investigator called out to her in Hebrew and Arabic. The suspicion of a luring event [i.e., an attempt to lure the soldiers into an ambush or a trap] was ruled out. The force went up to the apartment together with the investigator. They found a 75-year-old woman bound by her arms and in very poor health. Her arms were extremely swollen, and she was severely dehydrated. The investigator questioned her (the incident has been documented by the IDF) while a doctor treated her on site. According to the woman, her family fled south. Two Hamas operatives in IDF uniforms arrived, bound her to the bed, and told her to say that the IDF did it. She lay like that for two days. There are more and more monstrous and insane cases of bound elderly women, boobytrapped elderly men, and other outlandish things. The time has really come for the IDF Spokesperson to start releasing these materials"
Opinion Will Biden ever stand up to Benjamin Netanyahu? Don’t bet on it Chris McGreal Thu, 25 January 2024 Photograph: Miriam Alster/Pool via Reuters The Israeli prime minister has spent his political life opposing a Palestinian state and acting accordingly. And although Biden has trotted out a rote commitment to the two-state solution when confronted with a crisis in the Middle East, there was barely a murmur from the White House as Netanyahu’s far-right government ramped up creeping colonisation of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and hardened its domination of the Palestinians who live there. So last week’s pronouncement by Netanyahu that there will be no Palestinian state, and that he intends to perpetuate Israel’s brand of apartheid through permanent military control of the West Bank, was no great revelation to Washington. The timing, however, means that this time it cannot be so easily shunted aside. One effect of the Hamas attack on 7 October has been to push the Palestinian question back into the diplomatic spotlight after the US and its allies all but abandoned any real attempt to resolve the conflict in recent years and consigned it to the shadows. During Netanyahu’s long tenure as prime minister of Israel, politicians in Washington, Brussels and London have continued to pay occasional lip service to two states but in talking to them privately it often seemed that they had concluded that the Palestinians were a defeated people – and so colluded in the Palestinians’ oppression by leaving Netanyahu to get on with his land grab. Occasional objections to particularly egregious statements or actions by Netanyahu’s racist cabinet ministers might be raised, but no one was going to back up words with consequential action, least of all the Biden administration. This White House went a long way to avoid confrontation with Israel even before its largely unconditional support for the present war in Gaza, which has claimed more than 25,000 lives, most of them children and women, according to the health ministry there. As Stephanie Kirchgaessner revealed in the Guardian last week, the US state department has a unit working to undermine American human rights laws by, in effect, covering up suspected crimes against humanity in the occupied territories in order to protect weapons shipments to Israel. The White House wouldn’t even stand up for a US citizen, the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, when she was shot in 2022 in what looked very much like a cold-blooded killing by the Israeli army. And the US, as ever, has continued to wield its veto at the UN security council in support of Israel. Netanyahu has repaid all of this by humiliating Biden. Two weeks after the Hamas attack, Biden said that the Israel-Gaza crisis should result in a “concentrated effort” to create a Palestinian state. Last week, as attention shifts to what comes next, Netanyahu bluntly rejected any such plan. In his desperation to sidestep reality, Biden even tried to deny that Netanyahu meant what he said. The White House claimed that the Israeli prime minister told the president in a phone call that he remains open to two states under certain conditions. Netanyahu responded with an abrupt tweet killing that idea: “I will not compromise on full Israeli security control over the entire area west of Jordan – and this is contrary to a Palestinian state.” Why would Netanyahu make such a statement at this time, publicly embarrassing the president of Israel’s most important and powerful ally? Because he’s learned that he can so without any real cost. Netanyahu would have had one eye on domestic politics: he wants to shore up support in his far-right coalition by putting a damper on the sudden revival of talk in foreign capitals about getting a Palestinian state back on track, including reports that the White House is looking to a deal with a future Israeli government and Arab countries. But the statement also reflects Netanyahu’s sense of impunity. Israeli leaders used to take pains to at least stay on the right side of the White House. But Netanyahu found that there were no real consequences for open contempt when he ran up against Barack Obama. The military aid and diplomatic protection continued to flow uninterrupted. Obama came to power in 2009 saying he regarded the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a “constant sore” that “infect all of our foreign policy”. His national security adviser, General James Jones, told a European leader that the administration would be “forceful” with Israel, and that the US, EU and moderate Arab states must define “a satisfactory endgame solution”. When Netanyahu rejected Obama’s demand for a halt to settlement construction, the president suggested that Israeli intransigence endangered America’s security, a dramatic departure from the standard Washington line about the Jewish state as the US’s closest ally. Netanyahu responded to the pressure by publicly lecturing Obama on a 2011 visit to the White House, and even used a clip of his humiliating treatment of the president in a later election campaign ad. In the end, Obama wasn’t ready to risk the political capital required to press the Palestinian cause and retreated. He then signed the biggest-ever military aid bill to Israel – $3.8bn a year. Biden learned the lesson. Even Donald Trump, who firmly sided with Netanyahu, had few illusions about the man who goes by the nickname Bibi. “Bibi never wanted peace. He just tapped us along. Tap, tap, tap, tap …,” the Israeli journalist Barak Ravid says Trump told him in 2021. It’s tempting to think that things might be different when Netanyahu is gone. Opinion polls show that most Israelis blame him for the political and military failures which allowed Hamas and other militant groups to slaughter 1,200 people and abduct more than 200 others on 7 October. But there’s not much sign of a serious commitment to negotiating a viable deal with the Palestinians among Netanyahu’s prospective successors, and it’s unlikely to come without serious US pressure. Biden has shown that he is prepared to pay a political price for his support for Israel, which has angered many progressive Democrats at home and large parts of the rest of the world, which see the assault on Gaza as a vengeful bloodletting and further evidence of the systematic oppression of the Palestinians. It is probably too much to hope that, in the face of Netanyahu’s intransigence, Biden will take the political risks to fight for a Palestinian state just as forcefully as he defends Israel. But if the president is not prepared to do so, it will be clearer than ever to the rest of the world that the US has chosen to stand with oppression.
'We Are Appalled': Qatar Fumes Over Leaked 'Netanyahu Audio' That Reveals Possible Israel-US Tiff Curated By: Rohit News18.com Last Updated : January 26, 2024 https://www.news18.com/world/we-are...-reveals-possible-israel-us-tiff-8755006.html Qatar accuses Israeli PM Netanyahu of obstructing Gaza war mediation, calling Gulf state 'problematic.' Leaked recording sparks tensions. Qatar's Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Majed Al-Ansari, speaks to journalists during a press conference in Doha, Qatar, November 23, 2023. (Reuters) Qatar has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of obstructing and undermining mediation efforts in the Gaza war after a leaked recording allegedly caught him calling the Gulf state “problematic”. “We are appalled by the alleged remarks attributed to the Israeli Prime Minister in various media reports about Qatar’s mediation role,” Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Majed Al Ansari, wrote on X. “If the reported remarks are found to be true, the Israeli PM would only be obstructing and undermining the mediation process, for reasons that appear to serve his political career instead of prioritising saving innocent lives, including Israeli hostages,” he wrote. ‘I haven’t thanked Qatar’ In a leaked recording from a meeting with hostage families that aired on Israel’s Channel 12 news on Tuesday, he was purportedly heard saying, “You haven’t seen me thank Qatar, have you noticed? I haven’t thanked Qatar. Why? Because Qatar, to me, is no different in essence from the UN, from the Red Cross and in a way it’s even more problematic. However, I’m willing to use any mediator now who can help me bring them (the hostages) home.” Asked to comment on Qatar’s statement and whether the leaked recording was authentic, an Israeli government spokesperson said Israel “cannot go into details regarding the efforts and steps taken to release the hostages.” In response Qatari spokesperson, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, accused Doha of “supporting and funding terrorism.” Smotrich said that Qatar was “largely responsible” for the October 7 attack on southern Israeli communities and called on Western countries to apply more pressure on it to bring an immediate release of the hostages. “One thing is clear: Qatar will not be involved in what happens in Gaza the day after the war,” Smotrich wrote. Qatar, where several Hamas political leaders are based, has served as the main mediator between the movement that governs Gaza and Israeli officials in the conflict. Back in November, Qatar helped secure a week-long pause in fighting, during which 110 Israeli and foreign hostages were released from Gaza in return for 240 Palestinians released from Israeli captivity.
Netanyahu spoke the truth and he spoke diplomatically when he described the actions of Qatar as problematic.