‘Operation al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 314:
New ceasefire talks begin in Doha as official death toll surpasses 40,000
By Qassam Muaddi, August 15, 2024
Casualties
· 40,005 + killed* and at least 92,401 wounded in the Gaza Strip. The identities of 32,280 of the slain have been identified, including 10,627 children and 5,956 women, representing 60% of the casualties, and 2,770 elderly, as of August 6, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble*
· 632+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes 140 children.**
· Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,140.
· 690 Israeli soldiers and officers have been recognized as killed, and 4096 as wounded by the Israeli army, since October 7.***
* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on August 15, 2024. Rights groups and public health experts estimate the death toll to be much higher.
** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of August 15.
*** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.
Source: mondoweiss.net
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Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
U.S. Parole Commission Denies Leonard Peltier’s Request for Freedom; President Biden Should Grant Clemency
In response to the U.S. Parole Commission denying Leonard Peltier’s request for parole after a hearing on June 10, Paul O’Brien, Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, made the following statement:
“Continuing to keep Leonard Peltier locked behind bars is a human rights travesty. President Biden should grant him clemency and release him immediately. Not only are there ongoing, unresolved concerns about the fairness of his trial, he has spent nearly 50 years in prison, is approaching 80 years old, and suffers from several chronic health problems.
“Leonard Peltier has been incarcerated for far too long. The parole commission should have granted him the freedom to spend his remaining years in his community and surrounded by loved ones.
“No one should be imprisoned after a trial riddled with uncertainty about its fairness. We are now calling on President Biden, once again, to grant Leonard Peltier clemency on humanitarian grounds and as a matter of mercy and justice.”
Background
· Leonard Peltier, Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), was convicted of the murders of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. He has always maintained his innocence. Amnesty International joins Tribal Nations, Tribal Leaders, Members of Congress, former FBI agents, Nobel Peace Prize winners and former U.S. Attorney James Reynolds, whose office handled Peltier’s prosecution and appeal, in urging his release.
· Parole was also rejected at Peltier’s last hearing in 2009. Due to his age, this was likely the last opportunity for parole.
· A clemency request is pending before President Joe Biden. President Biden has committed opens in a new tab to grant clemency/commutation of sentences on a rolling basis rather than at the end of his term, following a review of requests by the White House Counsel’s Office and the Department of Justice.
Amnesty International has examined Peltier’s case extensively for many years, sent observers to his trial in 1977, and long campaigned on his behalf. Most recently, Amnesty International USA sent a letter to the U.S. Parole Commission urging the commission to grant him parole.
https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/u-s-parole-commission-denies-leonard-peltiers-request-for-freedom-president-biden-should-grant-clemency/
Write to:
Leonard Peltier 89637-132
USP Coleman 1
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.
Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:
https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition
Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603
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Beneath The Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader (City Lights, 2024) is a collection of revolutionary essays, written by those who have been detained inside prison walls. Composed by the most structurally dispossessed people on earth, the prisoner class, these words illuminate the steps towards freedom.
Beneath the Mountain documents the struggle — beginning with slavery, genocide, and colonization up to our present day — and imagines a collective, anti-carceral future. These essays were handwritten first on scraps of paper, magazine covers, envelopes, toilet paper, or pages of bibles, scratched down with contraband pencils or the stubby cartridge of a ball-point pen; kites, careworn, copied and shared across tiers and now preserved in this collection for this and future generations. If they were dropped in the prison-controlled mail they were cloaked in prayers, navigating censorship and dustbins. They were very often smuggled out. These words mark resistance, fierce clarity, and speak to the hope of building the world we all deserve to live in.
"Beneath the Mountain reminds us that ancestors and rebels have resisted conquest and enslavement, building marronage against colonialism and genocide."
—Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency
Who stands beneath the mountain but prisoners of war? Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jennifer Black have assembled a book of fire, each voice a flame in captivity...Whether writing from a place of fugivity, the prison camp, the city jail, the modern gulag or death row, these are our revolutionary thinkers, our critics and dreamers, our people. The people who move mountains. —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Filled with insight and energy, this extraordinary book gifts us the opportunity to encounter people’s understanding of the fight for freedom from the inside out. —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag and Abolition Geography
These are the words each writer dreamed as they sought freedom and they need to be studied by people inside and read in every control unit/hole in every prison in America. We can send this book for you to anyone who you know who is currently living, struggling, and fighting
Who better to tell these stories than those who have lived them? Don’t be surprised with what you find within these pages: hope, solidarity, full faith towards the future, and most importantly, love.
Excerpt from the book:
"Revolutionary love speaks to the ways we protect, respect, and empower each other while standing up to state terror. Its presence is affirmed through these texts as a necessary component to help chase away fear and to encourage the solidarity and unity essential for organizing in dangerous times and places. Its absence portends tragedy. Revolutionary love does not stop the state from wanting to kill us, nor is it effective without strategy and tactics, but it is the might that fuels us to stand shoulder to shoulder with others regardless. Perhaps it can move mountains." —Jennifer Black & Mumia Abu-Jamal from the introduction to Beneath The Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader
Get the book at:
https://www.prisonradiostore.com/shop-2/beneath-the-mountain-an-anti-prison-reader-edited-by-mumia-abu-jamal-jennifer-black-city-lights-2024
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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
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*Major Announcement*
Claudia De la Cruz wins
Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!
We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.
We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.
We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!
We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.
We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.
The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step:
Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer
Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate
See you in the streets,
Claudia & Karina
Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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The writers' organization PEN America is circulating this petition on behalf of Jason Renard Walker, a Texas prisoner whose life is being threatened because of his exposés of the Texas prison system.
See his book, Reports from within the Belly of the Beast; available on Amazon at:
https://www.amazon.com/Reports-Within-Belly-Beast-Department-ebook/dp/B084656JDZ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/protect-whistleblowers-in-carceral-settings
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Daniel Hale UPDATE:
In February Drone Whistleblower Daniel Hale was transferred from the oppressive maximum-security prison in Marion, Illinois to house confinement. We celebrate his release from Marion. He is laying low right now, recovering from nearly 3 years in prison. Thank goodness he is now being held under much more humane conditions and expected to complete his sentence in July of this year. www.StandWithDaniel Hale.org
More Info about Daniel:
“Drone Whistleblower Subjected To Harsh Confinement Finally Released From Prison”
https://thedissenter.org/drone-whistleblower-cmu-finally-released-from-prison/
“I was punished under the Espionage Act. Why wasn’t Joe Biden?” by Daniel Hale
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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1) Israel Strikes School Complex Turned Shelter in Gaza, Killing Dozens, Local Health Officials Say
By Raja Abdulrahim, Aaron Boxerman and Victoria Kim, August 10, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/10/world/israel-iran-hamas-gaza-war
People grieved following an Israeli strike on a school turned shelter on Saturday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An Israeli airstrike early Saturday hit a school compound in northern Gaza where displaced Palestinians were sheltering, killing dozens of people, according to Gazan officials.
The Israeli military said Hamas and another armed Palestinian group were using the facility for military operations and attacks on Israel.
The strike in Gaza City, the latest in a string of attacks on schools turned into shelters, drew strong condemnation from the European Union and the United Nations, with Josep Borrell Fontelles, the top E.U. diplomat, saying that “there’s no justification for these massacres.”
The series of strikes has taken place alongside mounting international pressure on Israel to conclude a deal for a cease-fire and an exchange of hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian detainees, with President Biden and the leaders of Egypt and Qatar saying this week that “the time has come.”
The Gaza Civil Defense emergency service said more than 90 were killed, but that number could not be confirmed, and two doctors at one hospital in the area gave slightly lower totals.
It was not clear whether any of those killed were combatants. The Israeli military did not provide a death toll, and questioned the Gaza authorities’ statements.
The Civil Defense emergency service said the strike hit as more than 200 people who had gathered before sunrise in a prayer hall to worship. More than 2,000 displaced people had been staying at the shelter, the Al-Tabaeen school in the Al-Daraj neighborhood, Civil Defense said.
The Israeli military says that Hamas embeds itself among civilians to use them as human shields, and uses school buildings as centers of operations — while international law experts have said Israel still has a responsibility to protect civilians. At least 17 school buildings in Gaza have been targeted in the past month, with at least 163 Palestinians killed in the attacks, the U.N. human rights office said in a report this week.
The Civil Defense spokesman, Mahmoud Basal, said 11 children and six women were among the dead, adding that many people were seriously wounded.
The airstrike hit two floors, one of which was used for communal prayers and the other for sheltering women and children, Mr. Basal said. He said the prayer hall inside the school complex has been used for worship since the beginning of the 10-month war.
Many of those wounded in the Israeli strike, including children, were arriving with severe burns covering much of their bodies, said Tayseer al-Tanna, a surgeon at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, who called the scene “very difficult to watch.”
Fadel Naim, a medical official at Al-Ahli Hospital who served for years as dean of the medical college at the Islamic University of Gaza, widely seen as a Hamas stronghold, said the hospital had received at least 70 bodies since Saturday morning. The strike was followed by a flood of people searching for loved ones missing in the wake of the explosion, he said.
Khamis Elessi, a doctor at the same hospital, in Gaza City, said more than 73 identified bodies were brought to the hospital morgue, as were another 10 who have yet to be identified because they were disfigured in the explosion.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli military spokesman, said that based on intelligence assessments, approximately 20 militants from the Hamas and Islamic Jihad armed groups, including senior commanders, were operating from the school and using it to carry out attacks.
“The compound, and the mosque that was struck within it, served as an active Hamas and Islamic Jihad military facility,” he said, without providing details. He added that the information released by Gaza authorities in the past has “proven to be sorely unreliable.”
The Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers are believed to be broadly reliable, though there is often uncertainty in the immediate aftermath of specific strikes, and the destruction of the territory’s health system has made tolls harder to track.
Israeli forces have recently been scaling up military attacks throughout Gaza in areas where they had previously fought Hamas, saying the fighters had regrouped.
Troops had previously moved in on the Al-Daraj neighborhood in early July as part of a renewed ground offensive in Gaza City. But the Israeli military appears to have wound down its ground operation there, even as it continued to conduct airstrikes in the area.
Many of its offensives in recent days have targeted school grounds — a large number of which have been converted into makeshift shelters. The U.N. has said that strikes were escalating and that it was “horrified by the unfolding pattern.”
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, called the deadly attack “another day of horror” in Gaza. He called on all sides not to harm civilians or use schools for military purposes.
“It’s time for these horrors unfolding under our watch to end,” he said on social media. “We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm.”
The U.N. and other rights organizations have repeatedly said that there is no safe place in Gaza as areas people are ordered to evacuate to are subsequently targeted by Israeli airstrikes. Almost the entire population of Gaza — more than two million Palestinians — has been displaced, many people multiple times.
Ameera Harouda, Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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2) The U.S. says it won’t halt aid to an Israeli military unit accused of abuses, after Israel took remedial steps.
By Michael Crowley reporting from Washington, August 10, 2024
"The State Department notified Congress this week of its intent to disburse $3.5 billion in new military aid to Israel from a supplemental budget bill approved earlier, the department said in a statement. The disbursement was expected to go forward in 15 days. Israel is expected use the money to purchase arms from the U.S. government or from American companies."
Israeli soldiers from the Netzah Yehuda battalion during a swearing-in ceremony at the end of their military training in Jerusalem last month. Credit...Abir Sultan/EPA, via Shutterstock
The Biden administration will not block U.S. security assistance to an Israeli military unit found to have committed human rights violations, after Israel’s government took steps to prevent further offenses, the State Department said on Friday.
The department determined in April that the unit, the Netzah Yehuda battalion, had committed abuses in the Israeli-occupied West Bank that were serious enough to prompt the invocation of the Leahy Law, which bans U.S. training or the provision of U.S. equipment for foreign troops who commit “gross human rights violations” like rape, murder or torture.
In April, when it became public that the United States was considering imposing sanctions on Israeli battalions accused of human rights violations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders called the possibility “the peak of absurdity and a moral low” at a time when Israeli forces were fighting a war in Gaza against Hamas.
But Israel took sufficient action to meet the Leahy Law’s criteria for “remediation,” in the form of justice and accountability, to make the unit eligible for continued American assistance, the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said in a statement on Friday. The statement did not specifically name Netzah Yehuda, but officials have said it was the only Israeli unit under such scrutiny.
After spending months evaluating information provided by Israel’s government, Mr. Miller said, the department found that the unit’s violations — which occurred in the Israeli-occupied West Bank before the current war with Hamas in Gaza — had “been effectively remediated.” It added: “Consistent with the Leahy process, this unit can continue receiving security assistance from the United States of America.”
A U.S. official said that Israel had provided the Biden administration with information showing that two soldiers who Israeli military prosecutors said should be disciplined had left the Israeli military and were ineligible to serve in the reserves.
The official also said that the Israel Defense Forces had taken other steps to prevent further offenses, including enhanced screening for new recruits and the implementation of a two-week educational seminar for such recruits.
Netzah Yehuda, created to accommodate the religious practices of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, has been repeatedly accused of mistreating Palestinians. The charges against the unit include binding and gagging a 78-year-old Palestinian American who died of a heart attack while in military custody in January 2022.
The unit was transferred in 2022 from the West Bank to the Golan Heights in northern Israel, according to an April letter on the matter that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken sent to the House Speaker, Mike Johnson.
That letter revealed that the State Department had found that two other units with the Israel Defense Forces and two civilian authority units had committed gross human rights violations, but that Israel had also taken adequate remedial steps in response to those cases.
The State Department notified Congress this week of its intent to disburse $3.5 billion in new military aid to Israel from a supplemental budget bill approved earlier, the department said in a statement. The disbursement was expected to go forward in 15 days. Israel is expected use the money to purchase arms from the U.S. government or from American companies.
Edward Wong contributed reporting.
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3) Stay or go? Israeli strikes on schools pose a life-or-death choice for civilians seeking shelter in Gaza.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, August 10, 2024
A deadly Israeli strike on a school turned shelter in northern Gaza on Saturday exposed an agonizing dilemma for civilians in Gaza seeking safety after 10 months of war.
They could stay at the schools turned shelters, hoping for a modicum of security in the desperate conditions of Gaza. Or they can flee, knowing that the shelters themselves can become targets.
The school year has been abandoned in Gaza, and tens of thousands of civilians have flocked to the compounds since the earliest days of the war, trying to build temporary lives in classrooms and corridors, or pitching makeshift tents in schoolyards.
Conditions are atrocious, residents have said, but the schools, which offer walls and access to limited plumbing, are attractive for the simple reason that the alternatives are worse. Israel’s airstrikes and ground assaults continue around the territory. Extreme hunger is widespread. And diseases are spreading fast in squalid, crowded camps and the ruins of former homes.
As a result, schools have been preferable options for many because they have offered the promise of better security in a conflict that has killed nearly 40,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Ahmed Tahseen Abd Shabat, a 25-year-old who had been living at the Hafsa government school in Gaza City with his two brothers and parents, told The New York Times by phone that they arrived there as a last resort after fleeing 10 times since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a deadly attack on Israel that began the conflict.
“I don’t consider moving out of the school despite the constant targeting of schools because there is no safe zone in Gaza,” said Mr. Shabat, who said he had been completing a master's degree in law at Palestine University before the war. “Areas previously officially declared as safe zones are now the complete opposite.”
In recent weeks, he said, people had moved to sleeping inside classrooms rather than in the open air, believing that would offer a degree of protection against shrapnel in the event of a strike. As a result, he said, classrooms were becoming more crowded.
At present, his family was sharing a classroom with three other families, totaling around 20 people, and some of the men were sleeping in hallways to give the women and children more space.
“There is a complete lack of privacy,” he said.
Israel’s strikes on school grounds, which are just one element of its current campaign, appear to reflect a shift in its efforts to root Hamas out from Gaza. Military analysts say that the Israeli military has largely destroyed Hamas’ main battalions as fighting units and that it has also destroyed the group’s network of tunnels, forcing more fighters above ground.
The Israeli military says that Hamas had “cynically exploited” schools, hospitals and shelters, using them as bases and civilians as human shields. It has said its strikes “against this infrastructure are conducted in accordance with international law.”
With each of the strikes it has launched on school areas in recent weeks, the Israeli military has said that it has taken steps “to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.” On Saturday, the military said in a statement that those steps included the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and intelligence information.
In previous high-profile attacks, such as one in July that Israel says killed an important Hamas commander, the military appears not to have issued warnings to civilians in advance to avoid alerting its target. At least 90 people in the vicinity of the strike were killed that day, according to the Gazan health ministry.
Around 200 U.N. buildings have been hit since the start of the conflict, a number not previously seen in the organization’s history, said Juliette Touma, the director of communications for the main agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA. During a more limited conflict in Gaza in 2014, she said, only one U.N. building was hit.
U.N. experts in April expressed concern about what they said was the “systemic destruction” of the enclave’s education system — a process they called “scholasticide.” Ms. Touma argued that the more recent attacks would have a longer-term impact once the war is over.
“Many of those schools cannot be used because they were bombed or they might have unexploded ordnance in them,” she said, adding “What will that mean for the education journey of children in Gaza?”
The United Nations has submitted the coordinates of all of its buildings in Gaza to the warring parties, Ms. Touma said, adding that it has also called for an independent investigation to determine whether the schools have been used as military bases.
“U.N. facilities must never be used for military and fighting purposes, and they should be protected in times of conflict,” she said.
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4) Israel Expands Evacuation Orders for Khan Younis in Southern Gaza
By Vivek Shankar and Matthew Mpoke Bigg, August 11, 2024
Displaced Palestinians flee an area of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday. Credit...Hatem Khaled/Reuters
The Israeli military on Sunday ordered civilians to evacuate from part of the humanitarian zone it had set up in southwestern Gaza, saying it was planning to fight in the area because Hamas had “embedded terrorist infrastructure” there.
It was the latest in a string of evacuations ordered by the Israeli military in 10 months of war, and it came a day after Israel gave a similar explanation — that Hamas fighters were hiding among civilians — for a strike on a school-turned-shelter that the local authorities said killed dozens of people.
In recent days, tens of thousands of people have fled the city of Khan Younis after evacuation orders issued by Israel’s military last week.
The new order on Sunday covered the neighborhood of al-Jalaa in Khan Younis. Israel’s military said it was redrawing the border of the humanitarian zone and urged civilians to move to what it said were safe zones. It said it was sending phone messages, dropping fliers and broadcasting these instructions to people in the area.
But many people in Gaza say there is nowhere in the enclave that is truly safe. Israel has previously mounted attacks inside the designated humanitarian zone, including a strike on the outskirts of Khan Younis last month targeting the commander of Hamas’s military wing, Muhammad Deif, that Gazan health authorities said killed at least 90 people in the vicinity.
Residents also say that the repeated orders to move are exhausting, humiliating and expensive. Almost all of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million has been displaced by the war, which the health authorities in the enclave say has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians. Israel has faced international condemnation for not doing enough to prevent civilian casualties.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, said on Sunday that people in Gaza have “nowhere to go" amid the evacuation orders, and that more than 75,000 people had been displaced in the southwestern part of the enclave in recent days.
“Some are only able to carry their children with them, some carry their whole lives in one small bag,” he said in a post on social media. “They are going to overcrowded places where shelters are already overflowing with families.”
Israel has adjusted the borders of the humanitarian zone several times; the area shrank by more than a fifth last month. The latest downsizing appeared to be more limited. Maps and analysis of satellite imagery show that the zone is overcrowded and often hit by strikes.
Hours before announcing the evacuation order on Sunday, Israel’s military said that it had carried out a “targeted raid" in Khan Younis, recovering weapons including rifles and explosives in a tunnel. It also said that its jets had struck dozens of targets and killed fighters, including one who took part in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The military’s claims could not be independently verified.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Harris condemns civilian deaths in an Israeli strike on a school compound, and other news.
· Asked about a strike on a school compound in Gaza that local officials say killed dozens of people, Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters on Saturday that “far too many civilians” had been killed in the enclave. “Israel has a right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas,” she said. “But, as I have said many, many times, they also have, I believe, an important responsibility to avoid civilian casualties.” Ms. Harris also called for a hostage deal and a cease-fire.
· Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wong, on Sunday condemned the deaths of civilians in the attack and said Israel must comply with international law. “Innocent Palestinians cannot continue to pay the price of defeating Hamas,” she said in a post on social media that also called for a cease-fire. The strike on the school building was also strongly criticized by the European Union and the United Nations.
· Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany said that he spoke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Sunday and that he condemned threats against Israel by Iran and its proxies, which have vowed to retaliate for the assassination in Tehran last month of a top Hamas leader. “The destructive spiral of retaliation must be broken,” Mr. Scholz wrote on social media. “It’s time for an agreement to release the hostages and a ceasefire.”
· Gunmen opened fire from a passing car at Israelis traveling along a main artery in the Jordan Valley area of the occupied West Bank on Sunday, killing a male civilian and moderately wounding another, according to the Israeli military and emergency services. Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency services organization, said the victims were found in two separate vehicles. Searches were underway for the perpetrators, who fled the scene.
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5) Gazans describe carnage after strike on school turned shelter: ‘The dead were all in pieces.’
By Raja Abdulrahim and Ameera Harouda, August 11, 2024
People checking the damage in a school used as a temporary shelter for displaced Palestinians in Gaza City, following an Israeli strike on Saturday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
When Hasan Almoghani arrived at the scene shortly after an Israeli airstrike on a Gaza school turned shelter, he said he found a scene of carnage unlike any he had seen in the past 10 months of war: A prayer hall strewed with bodies and body parts over two floors.
A resident of Gaza City, where the attack on Saturday took place, Mr. Almoghani has been documenting daily life in Gaza during the war. But this was the worst thing he had witnessed, he said.
The strike hit the prayer hall when it was filled with more than 200 people, before the call to worship had sounded at about 4:30 a.m., according to the Gaza Civil Defense service.
The Civil Defense said the Israeli attack killed more than 90 people, including women and children. Two doctors at a hospital that received many of the casualties gave slightly lower tolls.
The Israeli military said Hamas and another armed Palestinian group were using the school compound for military operations and to attack Israel.
In the aftermath, survivors, some of them children, were sifting through the rubble and collecting body parts, witnesses said.
“The dead are all in pieces,” said Mr. Almoghani. “We don’t know if they will be able to save the wounded. It’s just a matter of time.”
He arrived on the scene about 10 minutes after the strike, which he said had collapsed the second floor of the prayer hall, where the women and children had gathered.
He posted a video on his social media page showing a bloodied man being carried out on a makeshift stretcher that appeared to be a door as other people tried to wrap bodies — some of them missing limbs — in blankets.
In another video, an elderly man, his head bandaged, lies on a dirty mattress on the ground with debris from the explosion around him.
Other videos posted online by journalists in Gaza and verified by The New York Times showed dozens of bodies at the scene as well as clothes and rubble scattered over different floors of the damaged building. Mourners crouched over bodies wrapped in white shrouds just outside the school complex.
Many of the casualties were taken to the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City.
“We received more than 70 victims who have severe wounds and severe burns,” said Khamis Elessi, a doctor at Al-Ahli. “Their skin had melted.” Many others have lost limbs, he said, adding that many of the wounded are women, children and elderly people.
He said 83 of the dead were brought to Al-Ahli and of those, 73 had been identified. Ten others had yet to be identified because they were disfigured in the explosion, he said.
Like all other Gaza hospitals still functioning, Al-Ahli suffers from a lack of medicine, blood and medical staff, Dr. Elessi said.
The strike was the latest in a string of attacks on schools turned into shelters. There have been 17 in the past month, killing at least 163 Palestinians, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
More than 2,000 displaced Palestinians were sheltering at the school hit on Saturday, the Civil Defense said.
Hossam Shabat, a Palestinian journalist from Gaza City, said he arrived at the school less than 30 minutes after the attack.
“The bodies were on fire,” he said. “It was so hard to see.”
The school complex has been used as a shelter since the early days of the war, said Mr. Shabat, who appears to have expressed sympathy for Hamas in social media posts before the group led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that started the war.
He said he knew some of the families who had been sheltering at the school complex.
“This center was full of people who were displaced after their homes had been destroyed,” Mr. Shabat said.
He and Mr. Almoghani both said they saw no sign of any fighters from armed groups at the school.
Those who had been sheltering there for months now have nowhere else to go, Mr. Shabat said.
“Since the massacre, residents have set out to find another center to shelter in,” he said, knowing that any new location could very well be targeted in upcoming strikes.
Sanjana Varghese contributed reporting.
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6) Britain’s Anti-Immigrant Riots Pose Critical Test for Starmer
Even after restoring order, the new prime minister faces a bigger challenge: defusing the issues of fraying public services and a cost of living crisis that underlie the unrest.
By Stephen Castle, Reporting from London, Aug. 12, 2024
The police engaging with a man during an anti-immigration riot this month in Rotherham, England, where a hotel housing some asylum seekers was attacked. Credit...Danny Lawson/Press Association, via Associated Press
With cars being torched and mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers under attack, the riots that swept Britain over the past two weeks have posed the first direct challenge to the new prime minister, Keir Starmer.
But even if the violence has subsided, for now, at least, the shocking scenes of disorder have underscored the scale of the task facing his government.
That, analysts say, includes defusing tensions stoked successfully by far-right groups — over immigration and fraying public services — particularly in areas of Britain that have long been in economic decline.
While opinion polls show the public clearly supports Mr. Starmer’s crackdown on violent protesters, “a lot of those people who see the rioters as thugs want immigration brought down,” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham.
With cars being torched and mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers under attack, the riots that swept Britain over the past two weeks have posed the first direct challenge to the new prime minister, Keir Starmer.
But even if the violence has subsided, for now, at least, the shocking scenes of disorder have underscored the scale of the task facing his government.
That, analysts say, includes defusing tensions stoked successfully by far-right groups — over immigration and fraying public services — particularly in areas of Britain that have long been in economic decline.
While opinion polls show the public clearly supports Mr. Starmer’s crackdown on violent protesters, “a lot of those people who see the rioters as thugs want immigration brought down,” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham.
Mr. Starmer, who has promised to cut migration numbers, “needs to follow up and do the things he says he’s going to do,” Professor Fielding added, while noting that it was “no accident” that violence erupted in several economically deprived regions.
Concern over immigration, which declined in Britain after Brexit, is on the rise again and, when jobs are scarce and health care and other services are overstretched, immigrants make an easy target for the far right. The campaign leading up to last month’s general election prompted a bitter political dispute over the last government’s plans to send to Rwanda people arriving in Britain on small boats.
But while around 30,000 people entered the country that way last year, that was only a fraction of those admitted legally minus those who left — a number that hit almost 750,000 in 2022.
Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, a research institute, said Mr. Starmer must show he can revive neglected areas where the rightists have found support by bolstering employment and public services.
“He needs to deliver,” Mr. Katwala said, “for those town and cities — whether it’s Southport or Hartlepool — where people’s primary concerns are National Health Service waiting lists and ‘Can I get a job?’”
Those close to Mr. Starmer say he is getting a grip on the disorder, drawing on his experience as a chief prosecutor in 2011, when riots took place in London and he pushed to get those responsible tried, sentenced and jailed swiftly to deter others.
“He has a detailed knowledge of how to do this, and he understands how you prosecute and convict quickly, and you do so visibly in a way that sends a message to anybody who is thinking about participating in one of these riots,” said Claire Ainsley, a former policy director for Mr. Starmer.
But ensuring that such violence does not recur is harder, she said.
“We have had the far right with us in good economic times and in bad economic times,” said Ms. Ainsley, who now works in Britain for the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington-based research institute.
“But it is much harder for them to have any kind of influence when you are in better economic times,” she added. “That means people’s living standards rising and people starting to feel they are better off and that they are part of a system that is working — and that isn’t a description of Britain today.”
Ms. Ainsley pointed to the role of social media in spreading misinformation and stoking tensions, and cautioned against making a direct link between the riots and immigration. She noted that, alongside extremists, some of the rioters may be looters and other opportunists.
It is, she added, “wrong to assume that all of the people participating in these riots are politically motivated by immigration.”
Still, other analysts note the context of the riots, after years of broken promises to reduce immigration and the contentious dispute over the last government’s doomed effort to send some asylum seekers to Rwanda.
They were a particular target of the recent anti-immigrant riots, including in Rotherham, England, where a hotel housing some asylum seekers was attacked on Aug. 4, driving home the severity of the disorder.
Launched by a former prime minister, Boris Johnson, in 2022, the Rwanda plan was adopted as a flagship policy by Rishi Sunak, who entered Downing Street later that year. The courts ruled against the proposal, and despite months of political maneuvering, no asylum seekers were sent to Africa under the plan. After taking office, Mr. Starmer quickly scrapped the effort.
But Mr. Katwala said that by pledging to “stop the boats,” Mr. Sunak had drawn attention to the issue, sending “very loud messages” about how much control he would exert over national borders while delivering none. The result, Mr. Katwala said, was to “stoke up the level of concern over the issue, and completely fail on all fronts.”
By global standards the scale of small-boat arrivals is relatively modest and “the visible lack of control is much more the issue than the number of people coming via that route,” Mr. Katwala said.
While Mr. Starmer can try to lower the political temperature, his practical options for curbing English Channel crossings are limited. He plans to crack down on people-smuggling gangs, but, unless Britain strikes a new migration deal with France, recent experience suggests that step alone is unlikely to resolve the problem.
One thing the government intends to do is to speed up the system for processing asylum requests to cut the number of would-be refugees accommodated in hotels at public expense — a source of grievance to anti-immigrant protesters. (Asylum seekers tend to be accommodated in less wealthy areas where hotel costs are lower, making them a particular target in the recent riots.)
The fact that many more people have been allowed to enter the country legally has created another issue that has been weaponized by the far right, presenting Mr. Starmer with another big challenge.
Successive Conservative governments promised but failed to reduce annual legal net immigration to below 100,000, and control of the country’s frontiers was a key issue in a 2016 referendum in which Britons voted for Brexit.
Still, since Brexit, legal immigration has tripled, falling back only slightly from its 2022 peak — the highest on record.
Those figures were inflated by programs to accommodate people from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan, for which there was wide public support. But Britain also relies heavily on foreign workers to fill jobs in health care and other sectors, and immigration is a driver of economic growth, so cutting it is hard.
“There is broad support for all the immigration that generates the very high numbers,” said Mr. Katwala, noting that most people welcomed Ukrainians and are happy for foreign workers to fill vacancies in British hospitals, “but then concern about the scale of the number.”
Before losing last month’s general election, Mr. Sunak tightened the migration rules, restricting the right of some legal immigrants to bring relatives to Britain. Those changes are expected to push down the numbers over the next year.
Reducing them further will be difficult without damaging health care and other key sectors, or impeding Mr. Starmer’s central objective of reviving the economy to ease Britain’s cost of living crisis. The recent unrest suggests that lifting economic growth, reviving neglected cities and investing in crumbling public services have never been more important.
The riots are “not telling this government anything it didn’t know,” Professor Fielding said. “They are just making its task more urgent.”
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7) U.S. and Israeli Defense Officials Speak Amid Fears of Escalation in Mideast
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, the Pentagon said. In an unusual disclosure, it said Mr. Austin had ordered a submarine to the Middle East.
By Eric Schmitt, reporting from Washington, Aug. 12, 2024
The U.S.S. Georgia, a guided-missile submarine, in a 2020 photograph released by the U.S. Navy. The submarine is moving to the Middle East amid fears of an escalation in regional conflicts. Credit...Spc. William Gore/U.S. Navy, via Reuters
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, on Sunday, the third call the two are known to have held in a week, amid rising fears of an escalation in the conflict between Israel and Iran.
In the call, Mr. Austin “reiterated the United States’ commitment to take every possible step to defend Israel,” according to a summary provided by the Pentagon press secretary, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder.
In an unusual disclosure, General Ryder said that Mr. Austin had ordered the guided-missile submarine Georgia to the Middle East. The Pentagon rarely announces the movements of its submarine fleet, underscoring the seriousness of the regional crisis.
General Ryder noted that Mr. Austin had already ordered additional combat aircraft and missile-shooting warships to the region. The orders came in response to threats from Iran and its proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen to attack Israel to avenge the assassination of a top Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran on July 31.
Mr. Austin has also directed the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, equipped with F-35 fighter jets, to speed to the region, joining the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and its accompanying warships already in the Gulf of Oman.
A statement from the Israeli government said that Mr. Gallant had spoken to Mr. Austin about the Israeli military’s “readiness and capabilities in the face of threats posed by Iran and its regional proxies.”
The Israeli defense minister also discussed “the urgency of achieving an agreement for the release of hostages and thanked the U.S. administration for its leadership and commitment to this issue,” the statement said. The United States and Arab mediators are preparing to present what they have called a “final” proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza at a meeting on Thursday in the Middle East that Israel has said its negotiators will attend. Hamas has not indicated whether its representatives will be at the meeting.
The call between Mr. Austin and Mr. Gallant came a day after an Israeli airstrike hit a school compound in northern Gaza where displaced Palestinians were sheltering, an attack that Gazan authorities said killed dozens of people. Mr. Austin used the call to once again underscore the importance of “mitigating civilian harm” during Israeli operations in the enclave, General Ryder said.
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8) Israel Was Less Flexible in Recent Gaza Cease-Fire Talks, Documents Show
The country made five new demands, according to documents detailing its newest negotiating positions.
By Ronen BergmanPatrick Kingsley and Adam Rasgon. Aug. 13, 2024
Ronen Bergman reported from Tel Aviv, Patrick Kingsley from Jerusalem and Adam Rasgon from Doha, Qatar.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-cease-fire-talks.html
Destroyed buildings last month in Beit Lahia, one of the northernmost cities in the Gaza Strip. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
For weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has denied that he is trying to block a cease-fire deal in Gaza by hardening Israel’s negotiating position. Mr. Netanyahu has consistently placed all blame for the deadlocked negotiations on Hamas, even as senior members of the Israeli security establishment accused him of slowing the process himself.
But in private, Mr. Netanyahu has, in fact, added new conditions to Israel’s demands, additions that his own negotiators fear have created extra obstacles to a deal. According to unpublished documents reviewed by The New York Times that detail Israel’s negotiating positions, Israel relayed a list of new stipulations in late July to American, Egyptian and Qatari mediators that added less flexible conditions to a set of principles it had made in late May.
Doubts have also been raised about Hamas’s willingness to compromise on key issues, and the group also requested its own extensive revisions throughout the process, while ceding some smaller points in July. But the documents reviewed by The Times make clear that the behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Netanyahu government has been extensive — and suggest that agreement may be elusive at a new round of negotiations set to begin on Thursday.
Among other conditions, the latest document, presented to mediators shortly before a summit in Rome on July 28, suggested that Israeli forces should remain in control of Gaza’s southern border, a detail that was not included in Israel’s proposal in May. It also showed less flexibility about allowing displaced Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza once fighting is halted.
Some members of the Israeli negotiating team fear that the new additions risked scuppering the deal, according to two senior officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
The Times reviewed the documents and confirmed their authenticity with officials from Israel and other parties involved in the negotiations.
For months, Israel and Hamas have held indirect negotiations, mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, to halt the fighting in Gaza; free the remaining hostages captured by Hamas at the start of the war; and release hundreds of Palestinians held by Israel.
While Hamas has also proved intransigent, Mr. Netanyahu’s Israeli critics partly blame the prime minister for the deadlock because his new conditions risk derailing the talks at a time when a deal appears within reach. Some have argued that he is prioritizing the stability of his coalition government above the freedom of the hostages: His small majority in Parliament depends on several far-right lawmakers who have conditioned their support for his government on the prevention of a cease-fire.
In a statement for this article, Mr. Netanyahu’s office, which did not dispute the authenticity of the documents, denied that he had added new conditions and said that the prime minister had instead sought to clarify ambiguities in Israel’s May proposal, making it easier to put into effect.
“The July 27 letter does not introduce new terms,” the statement said. “To the contrary, it includes essential clarifications to help implement the May 27 proposal.”
“Hamas is the one that demanded 29 changes to the May 27 proposal, something the prime minister refused to do,” the statement added.
The statement echoed similar comments from Mr. Netanyahu and his office in recent weeks; on Monday, it released a statement saying that Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader, “has been — and remains — the only obstacle to a hostage deal.”
At a meeting on Aug. 4 with cabinet ministers, Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel had “not added even a single demand to the outline” and that “it is Hamas which has demanded to add dozens of changes.”
Yet, in a letter to mediators on July 27, the Israeli negotiation team added five new qualifications to the outline of a deal that it had proposed exactly two months earlier, on May 27.
One of the most contentious additions was the inclusion of a map indicating that Israel would remain in control of the border between Gaza and Egypt, an area known as the Philadelphi Corridor.
By contrast, Israel’s proposal in May had suggested that troops would leave the border zone. It pledged the “withdrawal of Israeli forces eastwards away from densely populated areas along the borders in all areas of the Gaza Strip.”
A second key point of contention adds new complexity to the way in which displaced Palestinians would return to their homes in northern Gaza during a cease-fire.
For months, Israel said it would agree to a cease-fire only if its soldiers could screen the returning Palestinians for weapons as they moved from southern to northern Gaza.
Then, in its May proposal, Israel softened that demand. While its position paper still stated that the returnees should not be “carrying arms while returning,” it removed the explicit requirement that Israeli forces screen them for weapons. That made the policy seem more symbolic than enforceable, prompting Hamas to agree to it.
Israel’s July letter revived the question of enforcement, stating that the screening of people returning to the north would need to be “implemented in an agreed upon manner.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s office said there was no contradiction between the two positions, saying that the second one made the first one easier to carry out. “The letter not only does not contradict the May 27 proposal, it facilitates it,” the statement said.
In recent weeks Mr. Netanyahu has suggested that it is reasonable for Israel to seek to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its military strongholds in northern Gaza.
Hamas is “unprepared to allow any mechanism to check for and prevent the passage of munitions and terrorists to the northern Gaza Strip,” Mr. Netanyahu said on Aug. 4. “It is doing all this because it wants to recover and rebuild, and return again and again to the massacre of Oct. 7.”
Senior Israeli officials familiar with the latest negotiations, as well as leaders in Israel’s security forces, agree in principle with Mr. Netanyahu that it would be better to maintain checkpoints to screen people for weapons. But they also believe that it is not worth holding up a deal over this point, and want Mr. Netanyahu to back down ahead of the planned meeting on Thursday, so hostages can be freed as quickly as possible, the senior officials said.
Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.
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9) Palestinians Describe Dire Conditions in Gaza’s Shrinking ‘Humanitarian Zone’
By Hiba Yazbek and Ameera Harouda reporting from Jerusalem and Doha, Qatar, August 13, 2024
An Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Saturday hit a school turned shelter. Credit...Mahmoud Zaki/EPA, via Shutterstock
An area that Israel has designated as a humanitarian zone and has ordered hundreds of thousands of civilians to go to has become an overcrowded “hell,” where food and water are scarce and safety is not guaranteed, according to some of the displaced Palestinians there.
“The truth is that this area is anything but humanitarian,” said Kamel Mohammed, a 36-year-old sheltering in a tent with nine family members. He added, “Our life in these camps is like hell.”
Mr. Mohammed described the humanitarian zone, a once-vacant strip of coastal land known as Al-Mawasi, as a “barren sand desert” crammed with displaced families that offers “no sense of safety.” The high cost of materials and the lack of assistance have forced many families to share tents, he said.
“A tent that used to accommodate four to seven people now houses 15 to 17 people from two or more families,” he said.
Mr. Mohammed listed the privations people in Al-Mawasi face: “no drinkable water, no healthy food,” and only “primitive bathrooms.” The heat is scorching under the sun, with no trees to provide shade, and, because the area is on the shore, it becomes windy and chilly at night. “We do not have the means for a decent life,” Mr. Mohammed said.
The Israeli military has issued a string of evacuation orders in recent weeks, uprooting tens of thousands of people in various parts of the Gaza Strip, and at Israel’s urging, many of them have moved into the Mawasi humanitarian zone. The Israeli military has characterized it as safer than other parts of the Gaza Strip, but has made clear that it will go after Hamas anywhere it believes it has a presence.
Israel has adjusted the borders of the humanitarian zone several times, shrinking the area by more than a fifth last month. Maps and analysis of satellite imagery show that the zone is crammed with people and often hit by airstrikes.
On Sunday, the Israeli military ordered another section of the zone to be evacuated because it was planning to fight in the area, where it said Hamas had “embedded terrorist infrastructure.”
Israel has previously mounted attacks inside the zone, including one strike on the outskirts of the southern city of Khan Younis last month that was meant to kill the commander of Hamas’s military wing, Muhammad Deif. Gazan health authorities say that strike killed at least 90 people.
“It is no longer a safe area,” said Nisreen Joudeh, a 37-year-old mother of four who has been sheltering in the humanitarian zone for the last few months. “We really feel that we could die any minute,” she added.
Palestinians from other parts of Khan Younis, where the Israeli military said that it was operating over the weekend, have also been fleeing to the humanitarian zone in recent days, Ms. Joudeh said.
She added that a few families who had been sheltering in Al-Mawasi for a long time have been leaving the area.
Israel first designated the Mawasi area a “humanitarian zone” in October, after it began asking residents of Gaza City to move southward ahead of its ground invasion into northern Gaza.
The zone started out as an area roughly a half-mile wide and around three miles long, according to a military map, but it was expanded several times as Israeli forces invaded southern Gaza. By May, the area was roughly four miles wide and about nine miles long, a military map shows.
On Friday, the United Nations humanitarian affairs office said the humanitarian zone covered about 18 square miles, or nearly 13 percent of the Gaza Strip.
Many of the roughly 1.4 million people who left Rafah as Israel pressed farther into the town squeezed into the humanitarian zone.
Mona al-Farra, who is sheltering in Al-Mawasi with nine other family members, said the severe overcrowding — along with shortages of water, medicine and food — is causing disease to spread, especially skin rashes among children, who are also hungry.
Ms. al-Farra said the sound of airstrikes coupled with Israeli evacuation orders were making her and her family “feel constantly threatened and in danger.” She said the people in the zone have nowhere else to flee.
“We live in an area that is considered humanitarian and is supposed to be safe, but it is not,” she said. “There is no safe place for us or our children.”
Abu Bakr Bashir contributed reporting from London, and Patrick Kingsley from Jerusalem.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Iran criticizes European leaders who urged restraint, and other news.
· Iran sharply criticized three European leaders who had called for restraint in the crisis with Israel, saying Tehran reserved the right to defend its sovereignty. Nasser Kanani, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said in a statement on Tuesday that the they had ignored Israeli “crimes and terrorism” against Palestinians and in the Middle East. On Monday, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany had urged Iran and its allies not to retaliate for the assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran because it could disrupt efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza.
· Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel assailed Itamar Ben-Gvir, his national security minister, on Tuesday after Mr. Ben-Gvir visited a sensitive holy site in Jerusalem, along with dozens of other Jews who prayed there in violation of longstanding arrangements. Mr. Ben-Gvir was seen in videos singing songs and saying he supported Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, the location of two ancient Jewish temples. The site is known to Muslims as the Aqsa Mosque compound and the place from which the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. “It is the government and the prime minister who determine policy on the Temple Mount,” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. For years, the government has quietly allowed Jews to pray at the site, but in the videos from Tuesday, dozens of Jewish visitors are seen fully prostrating themselves in prayer.
· Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, met with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday, and Mr. Putin said Russia was doing “everything to support the Palestinian people.” Mr. Putin long projected friendly relations with Israel, but the war in Ukraine has strained ties, with Russia increasingly beholden to Israel’s enemy, Iran, a key weapons supplier. Mr. Abbas is in Moscow until Wednesday, and then is due to travel to Turkey. There, he is expected to give a rare address to the country’s Parliament, and to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a harsh critic of Israel.
· Houthi authorities have been occupying the United Nations human rights office in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, since a raid earlier this month that flouted the organization’s diplomatic immunity, U.N. officials in Geneva said on Tuesday. The Iranian-backed rebels, who have attacked Israel and ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with the Palestinians, have also stepped up hostile actions against the United Nations and other international organizations. Houthi authorities seized control of equipment, files and vehicles in the Aug. 3 raid on the U.N. office. Days before, the U.N. rights chief, Volker Türk, suspended the office’s work over security fears after Houthi authorities accused some staff members of spying for Israeli and American intelligence agencies. The Houthis arrested 13 U.N. staff members in June and now hold 17, who are being held incommunicado.
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10) On the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, the war in Gaza resonates.
By Ephrat Livni, August 13, 2024
A hospital staff member on Monday looking at the bodies of Palestinians inside the morgue at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock
Rules that were adopted to guide conduct in conflicts after World War II are as relevant as ever 75 years after the ratification of these directives, known as the Geneva Conventions. But debate rages about the global community’s commitment to them.
“Seventy-five years ago today, the Geneva Conventions were put in place to protect civilians in times of wars,” Philippe Lazzarini, chief of the United Nations agency for Palestinians, known as UNRWA, wrote in a post on social media on Monday to note the anniversary of their adoption.
The rules are meant to limit the devastating impact of wars and everyone ostensibly agrees on them, he added. But he said that the rules “have been blatantly broken” on a daily basis in Gaza by both the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas. And he accused United Nations member states of failing “in their responsibilities to respect the conventions and ensure that parties to the conflict respect them under all circumstances.”
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, in a statement on the anniversary, recalled the “tragedies” of World War II that led to their ratification and called on all nations to reaffirm their commitment to respecting those rules. “Faced with the horrible reality of war, parties to armed conflict must comply with international humanitarian law to mitigate many of war’s worst humanitarian consequences, support pathways to peace, and advance the protection of civilians and other victims,” he said.
The comments came after an Israeli strike on a former school compound in northern Gaza on Saturday killed dozens of Palestinians, drawing international censure. Gazan health authorities, who do not distinguish between militants and civilians in reporting casualties in the war, said more than 100 people had been killed.
The Israeli military defended the attack, as it has numerous other strikes throughout the war, arguing that Hamas and other militants were using schools, hospitals and homes in Gaza City as military command centers in violation of international humanitarian law, and that Israel had conducted precise strikes based on intelligence. On Monday, in a statement, the military said that it had identified 31 militants “so far” from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad who had been killed in the operation.
António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, condemned the attack in a statement on Monday that mourned “the continued loss of life in Gaza, including women and children” and noted that the school complex had been sheltering displaced Palestinian families.
“The secretary general underlines that international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack, must be upheld at all times,” Mr. Guterres said, referring to concepts articulated in the Geneva Conventions.
Those principles require militaries to distinguish between civilians and combatants and to take precautions to protect noncombatants, including by ensuring that the attacks are proportional. But there is no precise formula that dictates what might constitute a proportional strike, international humanitarian law experts say.
Instead, military commanders are expected to use a balancing test, using a “reasonable commander” standard to assess whether there could be “incidental harm” from an attack that is excessive to the military advantage anticipated. The test is subjective. It gives military operators some discretion to exercise judgment while recognizing that war is violent.
The rules of war have “a humanitarian goal,” said Allen S. Weiner, director of Stanford University Law School’s Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. They try to “ameliorate suffering,” he said, but they are “not a tool for pacifism.”
The war in Gaza has been “a huge challenge for the application of international humanitarian law,” Mr. Weiner said.
Much of the concern surrounding Gaza has been about whether the Israeli military’s operations have caused excessive “incidental harm.” But it is very difficult for observers to make a judgment on proportionality without access to the Israeli military’s intelligence and other information underlying decision-making, he said.
People are “demoralized” about international humanitarian law, Mr. Weiner said, because of the death tolls in Gaza and the “Whac-a-Mole” nature of Israel’s military operations, as civilians have been repeatedly called on to evacuate areas that the Israeli military has previously claimed to have been cleared of militants. After more than 10 months of war, the Gazan Health Ministry says nearly 40,000 people have been killed.
But Mr. Weiner said it was worth remembering World War II and the bombing campaigns that led to the ratification of the Geneva Conventions.
“Imagine what the conflict would be like if we didn’t have these rules,” he said.
Anushka Patil contributed reporting.
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11) Here’s why Iran may be waiting to retaliate against Israel.
By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, August 13, 2024
“The United States has stepped up its military readiness. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has ordered additional combat aircraft, warships and a guided-missile submarine to the Middle East in response to threats, both to bolster Israel’s capacity to thwart any potential attack and to reinforce the message that it would support the country militarily.”
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/13/world/israel-iran-hamas-gaza-war
A truck bearing Ismail Haniyeh’s coffin driving through Tehran this month. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Iran vowed revenge at the end of last month after a top Hamas leader was killed in Tehran, leading many in Israel to fear an imminent attack. Nearly two weeks have passed and no large-scale response has materialized, leaving Israel and the wider Middle East on edge.
The crisis comes at an especially delicate moment in Iran, which analysts say is trying to formulate a response that doesn’t let an assassination on its soil go unpunished, while avoiding an all-out war against a powerful adversary. It also comes as a new government in Tehran has taken office, which could be slowing a decision on how to respond.
Here’s a look at the crisis and the factors that could determine what happens next:
Why has Iran vowed revenge?
Iran and Hamas officials have promised to avenge the death of Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader, who was killed in Tehran on July 31 after he attended the inauguration of Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian. Iran, which backs Hamas, blamed Israel for the assassination. Israeli leaders have not said their forces were responsible.
A day earlier, Fuad Shukr, a senior commander in Hezbollah, which is also supported by Iran, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in a suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The Israeli government said that strike was in retaliation for a rocket fired from Lebanon that struck a soccer field in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, killing at least 12 people, mostly teenagers and children. Hezbollah has denied carrying out that attack.
But Mr. Haniyeh’s killing was seen as the greater blow to Tehran because it took place on Iranian soil. In response, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued an order for Iran to strike Israel directly, according to three Iranian officials briefed on the matter. Failing to follow through on that threat would suggest that Iran’s system of deterrence, built up over years and at great cost, was in fact hollow, analysts said.
Why hasn’t Iran responded yet?
A spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, Nasser Kanaan, said that “it is necessary to punish Israel,” echoing comments from other senior Iranian officials. But he also said that “Tehran is not interested in escalating the regional conflicts.”
Furthermore, the new president’s cabinet, including the foreign minister, is yet to be approved, which is likely to have slowed internal deliberations, said Sanam Vakil, a Middle East analyst at Chatham House, a research group in London.
At the same time, Mr. Pezeshkian, who is seen as a reformist, may try to balance a perceived need to project strength with his government’s broader interest in alleviating the effects of Western economic sanctions and in preventing Iran from becoming further isolated internationally, Ms. Vakil said.
“The response has to be carefully calibrated so as not to slam shut the door of negotiations with the West that could lead to potential sanctions relief,” Ms. Vakil said.
A military response that is viewed as largely symbolic is also risky from Tehran’s perspective, but it would be unlikely to deter Israel from conducting further attacks, said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director of Crisis Group, a think tank.
That leaves the option of a substantive response, but that would, in turn, likely provoke a bigger Israeli response — and Tehran would not be able to control the cycle of escalation that could follow, Mr. Vaez said.
“Israel has checkmated Iran in this situation because Iran is left with no good options,” said Mr. Vaez. He and Ms. Vakil both said that it is difficult to discern Iran’s intentions.
What could an Iranian response look like?
Iran could strike Israel from multiple directions and in different forms. Tehran maintains a network of proxy forces including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi militia in Yemen, giving it the ability to attack targets from northern Israel to the Red Sea.
Two Israeli officials and a senior Western intelligence official said last week that, based on the latest information, Hezbollah will likely strike first in a separate attack before Iran conducts its own retaliation.
In April, Tehran attacked Israel with around 300 missiles and drones, a response to an apparent Israeli strike on an Iranian embassy complex. Almost all were shot down by Israel’s air defenses assisted by the United States and other allies. It was the first direct attack by Iran after a clandestine war with Israel that had been conducted for years by land, sea, air and cyberspace and, as such, represented a significant escalation.
The attack in April caused light damage to an Israeli air base in the Negev desert and seriously wounded a 7-year-old girl. Now Israel is bracing for what could be a bigger attack.
How is Israel preparing?
The Israeli authorities have told people to stock food and water in fortified safe rooms, and hospitals have made plans to move patients to underground wards. At the same time, rescue teams have been positioned in cities.
U.S. and Israeli diplomats and security officials had some advanced knowledge of its scope and intensity of Iran’s attack in April, which facilitated defensive preparations. By the same token, the nearly two weeks that have passed since Mr. Haniyeh’s killing have allowed time for heightened readiness in Israel.
Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel was “prepared for defense, as well as offense.”
That said, military analysts say that Iran and Hezbollah could potentially overwhelm Israel’s defenses by firing enough missiles simultaneously. They could also launch swarms of drones that fly at low altitude, making them difficult to detect and destroy.
How are the United States and others responding?
Diplomats have feared for months that back-and-forth strikes between Israel and Iran could escalate into a regional conflict that would compound both the war in Gaza and the conflict on Israel’s border with Lebanon. As a result, they have worked to forestall or minimize Iran’s reaction. In the latest example, the leaders of United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy called on Iran on Monday to “stand down” its threat of military action and said they supported Israel’s defense against Iranian aggression. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain also telephoned the Iranian president with a similar message.
A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Nasser Kanani, on Tuesday criticized a separate call for restraint by Britain, France and Germany, saying Tehran reserved the right to defend its sovereignty. The three European leaders had ignored Israeli “crimes and terrorism” against Palestinians and in the Middle East, he said.
The foreign minister of Jordan, an ally of the United States, has traveled to Tehran in recent days for meetings. Saudi Arabia last week convened an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a forum of Muslim countries, at which it called the assassination of Mr. Haniyeh a violation of Iran’s sovereignty while urging de-escalation by all sides.
The United States has stepped up its military readiness. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has ordered additional combat aircraft, warships and a guided-missile submarine to the Middle East in response to threats, both to bolster Israel’s capacity to thwart any potential attack and to reinforce the message that it would support the country militarily.
At the same time, the Biden administration has sought to jump-start cease-fire talks for Gaza. The Biden administration and Arab mediators are planning a meeting in the region on Thursday to try to advance a deal. Israel has said it will send its negotiators, but Hamas has not said if it will participate.
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12) Israel draws global condemnation after a cabinet minister’s proclamations at a holy site.
By Ephrat Livni, August 14, 2024
Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, center, visiting the Temple Mount, the location of two ancient Jewish temples, on Tuesday. Credit...Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, led a group of his supporters in prayer on Tuesday at a holy site in Jerusalem that is revered by both Jews and Muslims, violating a historical political arrangement and drawing condemnation in Israel and from around the globe.
Mr. Ben-Gvir was seen in videos online singing songs at the holy site, the Temple Mount, where two ancient Jewish temples were located. The site is known to Muslims as the Aqsa Mosque compound and the place from which the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. The longstanding agreement governing the site is that Jews may visit but not pray there, and much of the international community does not recognize Israel’s claim to East Jerusalem, where the site stands. “Our policy is to allow prayer,” Mr. Ben-Gvir said in a video he posted.
The purpose of the visit was also political. In the video, Mr. Ben-Gvir added that Israel must win the war in Gaza rather than attend meetings in Egypt and Qatar — a reference to the upcoming cease-fire negotiations set to take place on Thursday. “This is the message: We can defeat Hamas and bring it to its knees,” he said.
Mr. Ben-Gvir and a crowd estimated at about 2,000 inflamed tensions with leaders across the world and in Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel assailed Mr. Ben-Gvir on Tuesday, in the latest sign of friction between members of the country’s fragile governing coalition.
“It is the government and the prime minister who determine policy on the Temple Mount,” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement, noting that there was no “individual policy” for any minister and that Mr. Ben-Gvir’s decision represented “a deviation from the status quo.”
The actions were taken around the world as a provocation, particularly given that diplomats have been scrambling to calm tensions in the Middle East and hoping that a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas would prevent a further escalation of the conflict following the assassinations last month of a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon and a Hamas leader in Iran. Israel has claimed responsibility for the death in Lebanon and is widely believed to have been behind the one in Iran. Both Iran and Hezbollah have vowed to retaliate.
In a briefing with reporters on Tuesday, Vedant Patel, a deputy spokesman for the State Department, called Mr. Ben-Gvir’s actions “unacceptable” and noted that the move “detracts” from efforts to reach a cease-fire agreement “at a vital time.”
Qatar, which has been among the nations mediating the negotiations between Israel and Hamas, condemned the prayers at the holy site as an attack “on millions of Muslims around the world.” It warned in a statement from its Foreign Ministry on Tuesday that the move could negatively affect the cease-fire talks.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry also issued a statement condemning Mr. Ben-Gvir’s decision. It called the move “a provocation to the feelings of Muslims around the world, especially in light of the continuing war and acts of violence against defenseless Palestinians.”
Josep Borrell Fontelles, the European Union’s high commissioner for foreign affairs, also issued a statement “strongly” criticizing “the provocations” by Mr. Ben-Gvir. And France’s Foreign Ministry decried Mr. Ben-Gvir’s defiance of a “longstanding ban on Jewish prayer at the Al-Aqsa mosque,” urging Israel to respect the status quo. “This new provocation is unacceptable,” the French ministry said.
For years, the Israeli government has quietly allowed Jews to pray at the site, but in the videos from the scene on Tuesday, dozens of Jewish visitors are seen fully prostrating themselves in prayer. Some religious officials inside Israel expressed alarm at the flagrant violation.
Moshe Gafni, chair of the religious party United Torah Judaism, said Mr. Ben-Gvir was damaging the Jewish people and defying the dictates of generations of Israel’s chief rabbis. Michael Malchieli, Israel’s religious affairs minister and a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, said Mr. Ben-Gvir’s actions were an “unnecessary and irresponsible provocation against the nations of the world.”
Mr. Ben-Gvir, a settler whose government responsibilities include oversight of the police, has not been circumspect about his expansionist aims or his opposition to a Palestinian state. He strongly opposes a cease-fire with Hamas, and his decision to lead a group to the sensitive site for prayers just as negotiations were set to resume underscored disagreements within Israel over the wisdom of striking a deal and halting the war in Gaza.
There are about 115 hostages — dead and living — believed to still be held in Gaza. Relatives of the hostages on Tuesday accused Mr. Ben-Gvir of repeatedly trying to thwart a cease-fire deal, saying the minister was endangering the chances of bringing their captive family members home.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Israel approves a new settlement site in the West Bank, and other news.
· Israeli planning authorities on Wednesday formally signed off on Nahal Heletz, a new Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, one of several set to be authorized in the coming months. In June, Bezalel Smotrich, a powerful far-right government minister and settler leader, pushed for measures that would expand settlements, which much of the international community views as illegal, in exchange for agreeing to release hundreds of millions in frozen Palestinian revenues. Mr. Smotrich, a core member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, has said Israel ought to rule the West Bank indefinitely without granting its Palestinian residents equal rights.Mr. Smotrich also opposes a cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza, and last week the White House sharply rebuked him for making what it called “ridiculous charges” against a U.S.-brokered proposal.
· Israeli forces have conducted 40 attacks in Gaza over the last 24 hours, hitting infrastructure and militants “who posed a threat” to Israeli troops, the military said on Wednesday. Gaza’s Ministry of Health said that 36 people had been killed and 54 others were wounded over the same time period, bringing the total death toll since Oct. 7 close to 40,000 people. The Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel’s military said last month that it had killed or apprehended 14,000 combatants in the enclave since the war’s start, but it did not say how it had arrived at that number, or how it had distinguished combatants from civilians. Critics of the war contend that Israel is too quick to identify any man killed as a fighter.
· Diplomats called for a cease-fire at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday focused on an Israeli airstrike on Saturday that hit a school compound in northern Gaza where more than 2,000 displaced Palestinians had sought shelter. The Gaza Civil Defense emergency service said more than 90 people were killed in the strike at Al-Tabaeen school in Gaza City. Diplomats, who also called for a hostage release, said the war must stop to end human suffering and to prevent a wider war. “Ten months since the start of the war, the threat of further regional escalation is more palpable, and chilling, than ever,” said the U.N.’s top political chief, Rosemary DiCarlo.
· Iran sharply criticized three European leaders who had called for restraint in the crisis with Israel, saying Tehran reserved the right to defend its sovereignty. Nasser Kanaani, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said in a statement on Tuesday that the they had ignored Israeli “crimes and terrorism” against Palestinians and in the Middle East. On Monday, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany had urged Iran and its allies not to retaliate for the assassination of a Hamas leader in Tehran because it could disrupt efforts to reach a cease-fire in Gaza.
A correction was made on Aug. 14, 2024:
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of the headline with this article misstated the location of a new Israeli settlement. It is in the West Bank, not in Gaza.
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13) As Famine Deepens in Sudan, U.S. Leads New Push for Ceasefire
The American-backed talks in Switzerland, starting on Wednesday, aim to halt a catastrophic civil war. But only one side says it will turn up.
By Declan Walsh, Reporting from Nairobi, Kenya. Aug. 14, 2024
Recently arrived Sudanese refugees from the Darfur region wait in line to receive food on the outskirts of the Adré refugee camp, in Chad, last month. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
The United States is initiating new peace talks on Wednesday that are aimed at stopping Sudan’s catastrophic civil war, with this push for dialogue driven by growing alarm that the conflict is sending the country deeper into a famine that experts warn could become the world’s worst in decades.
But Sudan’s military, one of the war’s two main belligerents, has said it will not attend the negotiations in Switzerland, stymying hopes of a quick cease-fire in a fight between the forces of rival generals that has now lasted 16 months.
Famine was officially declared earlier this month in Sudan’s western Darfur region, and other areas are expected to follow. By one estimate as many as 2.5 million Sudanese could die from hunger by the end of September.
Appalled at the scale of the war-induced catastrophe in Sudan, a sprawling country in northeastern Africa, American officials said it was urgent to begin the new peace drive, even if chances of a breakthrough seem slim.
Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, the paramilitary leader whose Rapid Support Forces are fighting the military, reiterated on Monday that his side would attend the talks. But after a drone strike appeared to target the army leadership at a parade in eastern Sudan on July 31, the military chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, spurned the meeting.
“We will not retreat, we will not surrender and we will not negotiate,” General al-Burhan told troops.
In a call on Aug. 5, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken urged General al-Burhan to send a delegation to the talks.
Regional powers that have been drawn into the conflict will be there, too. Egypt, which has long been a political backer of Sudan’s military, has been invited as an observer. So has the United Arab Emirates, which has been widely criticized for supplying weapons to the R.S.F., actions which its leaders have denied.
The Switzerland meeting picks up from talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that failed to stop the fighting. Even before the talks in Geneva could start, however, American officials sought to temper expectations.
Tom Perriello, the U.S. envoy to Sudan, said in an interview that his goal is to broker a cease-fire and to strike a deal for full humanitarian access across Sudan, where more than 10 million people have been forced from their homes and tens of thousands are estimated to have died.
But if, as seems likely, one of the two forces fighting each other does not turn up, American officials hope to at least revive the moribund peace process and pressure both sides to come to the table. American diplomats also aim to generate a sense of global urgency about a ballooning humanitarian crisis whose relief efforts remain chronically underfunded, despite the severity of the problem.
“We need to start pivoting to a different set of solutions if we are to prevent a couple of million people from starving,” Mr. Perriello said.
As of Tuesday, the United Nations had received just one-third of the $2.7 billion it had requested for Sudan. People are dying because aid agencies lack funding, said Mohamed Refaat, country director with the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration.
“We see people who are dying, and who we have access to, who we can’t do anything for,” Mr. Refaat said in a video call with reporters from the de facto capital, Port Sudan, where all government functions have been moved with Khartoum divided between the two sides.
The previous talks in Saudi Arabia ran aground after the Sudanese military refused to attend unless the R.S.F. abandoned most of its military gains since the war started in April 2023 — effectively a refusal to attend.
American officials began to also see the Saudis as part of the problem, saying they seemed to be doing little to encourage the talks to resume, according to two officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
Some Saudi officials seemed to relish growing tension between the United States and Saudi Arabia’s own rival, the United Arab Emirates, over the military support that the Emiratis have continued to supply to the R.S.F., the two officials said.
At the talks in Geneva, Saudi officials will no longer be leading mediation efforts, and will instead be listed as “co-hosts” with Switzerland.
Despite American assurances that the talks will focus narrowly on a cease-fire, many Sudanese civilian leaders worry they could ultimately pave the way for a power-sharing deal between the warring generals whose feud is destroying the country, instead of leading to the democratic transition many once hoped for.
The talks carry risk for the United States, too. The Biden administration has already faced criticism from Sudanese and even former American officials that flawed diplomacy in 2022 set the stage for the outbreak of war in 2023.
“Well-intentioned but counterproductive diplomatic efforts” by the United States and others “at best, failed to prevent the war and at worst contributed to its outbreak,” Payton Knopf, a former American diplomat who participated in some of those efforts, wrote this week.
Some Sudanese commentators have called the Geneva talks a “now or never” opportunity, noting that the chief organizer, Mr. Perriello, could be replaced, depending on the outcome of the presidential election in the United States.
Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva.
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14) U.C.L.A. Can’t Let Protesters Block Jewish Students From Campus, Judge Says
The judge’s temporary ruling came after protests over the war in Gaza in the spring led to over 200 arrests on campus.
By Anemona Hartocollis, Aug. 14, 2024
The pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, in April. Credit...Mark Abramson for The New York Times
A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily barred the University of California, Los Angeles, from allowing protesters to set up encampments that barred Jewish students from having access to central parts of the campus.
Issuing a preliminary injunction in favor of three Jewish students who had sued U.C.L.A., Judge Mark C. Scarsi said university administrators were prohibited from offering any programs, activities or access to campus if they were not “fully and equally accessible to Jewish students.”
“Jewish students were excluded from portions of the U.C.L.A. campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” Judge Scarsi, who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump, wrote in the order. “This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating.”
He added that U.C.L.A. had argued that it “has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters.” But Judge Scarsi said it did not matter who blocked the students.
Lawyers for the students said the injunction was the first in the nation against what they called “an antisemitic encampment.” Last spring, scores of pro-Palestinian encampments protesting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza sprang up at campuses across the nation. Many, including the one at U.C.L.A., were broken up by the police, leading to more than 3,100 arrests nationwide, and in some cases, physical confrontations.
Amid the clashes, Jewish students said they felt threatened and intimidated by the encampments. Protesters, on the other hand, said they were exercising their rights to free speech.
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15) Gaza Cease-Fire Negotiators Meet Amid Threat of Wider Conflict
By Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon reporting from Jerusalem, August 15, 2024
Mourning over the body of a Palestinian killed in an airstrike, in Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Monday. Credit...Bashar Taleb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mediators and Israeli negotiators were meeting in Qatar on Thursday for a high-stakes push to end the war in Gaza, where tens of thousands have died, as the Middle East braced for an anticipated retaliation against Israel by Iran and its allies that could ignite a broader armed conflict.
The Biden administration and its allies called for the meeting last week, in the hope that making progress toward a Gaza cease-fire might avert or curb the expected Iranian-led reprisals for the recent assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, and Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah military commander.
But Hamas was not participating in the meeting on Thursday, and it remained at odds with Israel over the details of a proposed framework for a truce being advanced by the mediators, Egypt and Qatar. Under the three-stage proposal, Hamas would gradually free the remaining hostages in Gaza in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners jailed by Israel.
International pressure had already been rising for months for some kind of deal that would end the suffering in Gaza and allow for the release of hostages held in the enclave. The Gazan Health Ministry reported on Thursday that the Palestinian death toll in the war had surpassed 40,000. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
But prospects for a breakthrough still appear remote, leaving the Middle East facing a precarious moment. The United States has sent stealth fighter jets, a carrier group and a guided-missile submarine to the region in anticipation of an Iranian-led attack.
Israel and Hamas have been holding indirect negotiations on and off for months and are still deadlocked over numerous issues, including who would control the Gazan side of the enclave’s border with Egypt and how Israel could prevent armed Hamas fighters from returning to northern Gaza, which has been largely depopulated during the war.
In recent weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has toughened his country’s stance on several points. Hamas announced earlier this week that it would not participate in Thursday’s talks, though Hamas has told mediators it was open to consulting afterward should Israel present a serious response to its latest offer from early July, according to two officials familiar with the talks.
Hamas officials have said Mr. Netanyahu’s government is not genuinely interested in reaching a cease-fire, pointing to the assassination of Mr. Haniyeh in Tehran and the prime minister’s decision to introduce new conditions in recent weeks. “Hamas believes the Israeli occupation is trying to buy time with more negotiations,” said Ibrahim al-Madhoun, an Istanbul-based analyst close to Hamas.
In Israel, Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right coalition allies continue to insist that Israel rule Gaza indefinitely, and they have already denounced the latest Israeli proposal as tantamount to surrender, vowing to oppose it. If Mr. Netanyahu moves ahead with the deal, his governing coalition could splinter, potentially ending his political career.
Mr. Netanyahu himself has equivocated on the cease-fire deal, saying he supports the three-stage proposal even as he repeatedly promises the Israeli public an “absolute victory” over Hamas. Relatives of hostages held in Gaza have argued that the prime minister has prioritized his hold on power over signing a deal to free their loved ones.
Yaron Blum, a former Israeli security official who previously led the country’s effort to bring home hostages, said the meeting on Thursday — even if successful — would be just the start of a protracted process of hashing out the details of a deal. But if the talks go poorly, the region could descend into a wider confrontation, he said.
“If everyone doesn’t work in the coming days until white smoke comes out, I don’t see it coming together going forward,” said Mr. Blum. “But there’s still a chance now, because every side realizes that they need to advance.”
A White House spokesman, John Kirby, said on Thursday morning the talks had resumed and that officials from Egypt and Qatar were in contact with Hamas officials. He said the United States expects talks to continue on Friday.
Mr. Kirby said the American delegation was led by the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, and President Biden’s Middle East envoy, Brett McGurk.
Israel’s delegation is being led by the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, David Barnea. The other principals in the talks are the head of Egyptian intelligence, Abbas Kamel, and Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, one of officials familiar with the talks said.
The stakes at the talks are particularly high for the families of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. Over 40 of the 115 hostages are now presumed dead, according to the Israeli authorities.
“Every second there are hostages held in captivity is a severe risk to their lives,” said Jon Polin, the father of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, one of eight Israeli-American hostages. Three of them have been declared dead by the Israeli authorities.
In Gaza, most of the enclave’s more than two million people have been displaced, many repeatedly, and are living in tents or temporary lodgings. Finding enough food and safe drinking water is often a daily struggle, and swaths of the coastal enclave have been reduced to rubble.
Anas al-Tayeb, who lives in Jabaliya, just outside of Gaza City, said many there rejoiced in July, the last time mediators said cease-fire talks were progressing. But just a few days later, the Israeli military again stormed neighborhoods in Gaza City.
Mr. al-Tayeb said Israel and Hamas were both responsible for the failure to reach a deal. He wondered why Hamas had declined to accept any of the previous Israeli cease-fire proposals, which have broadly adhered to the three-stage framework.
“Those same conditions were offered before in previous rounds of negotiations,” said Mr. al-Tayeb. “So why didn’t they take it then?”
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, Hersh’s mother, said she believed it was time for everyone to agree to a “true compromise.”
“Not everyone is going to agree,” she said. “But everyone has interests and everyone gets a little bit of the interests they’re looking for. Let’s make that happen and move forward.”
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Abbas tells Turkey’s Parliament that he intends to visit Gaza, and other news.
· The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas pledged to visit the Gaza Strip “even if it costs my life,” using a speech to Turkey’s Parliament on Thursday to renew criticism of Israel. It was not immediately clear whether such a visit was feasible, and Mr. Abbas, who leads the Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has not been to the enclave since Hamas seized power there in 2007. Israeli officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Mr. Abbas, who was wrapping up a two-day visit to Turkey, received a standing ovation from lawmakers. Both he and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a harsh critic of Israel’s approach to the war in Gaza, entered the chamber wearing scarves bearing the Palestinian and Turkish flags.
· More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, including women and children, the Gazan Health Ministry said on Thursday. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel’s military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said hours later that the Israeli military had killed more than 17,000 combatants in the enclave since the war’s start, but he did not say how the military had arrived at that number, or how it had distinguished combatants from civilians. Critics of the war contend that Israel is too quick to identify any man killed as a fighter. Israel has previously said that it has killed some 14,000 of Hamas’s estimated 25,000 fighters.
· Marking 100 days since the Israeli closure of the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, the Gaza government press office said at a news conference on Thursday that the closure had severely hurt Gaza’s health care system. The closure is preventing the entry of medical supplies and aid, and blocking critically ill patients from receiving necessary treatment abroad, a spokesman for the office said. The office estimated that more than 1,000 people had died because they could not leave through the crossing in southern Gaza. The Israeli military seized the crossing when it moved into the city of Rafah in May, calling it an important step in reducing Hamas’s control over the territory.
· Dozens of Israeli civilians illegally entered the military-run Erez border crossing with northern Gaza early Thursday morning, leading to several arrests, the Israeli military said. At least some of those detained belonged to Onward to Gaza, a group of far-right activists who hope to rebuild Jewish settlements in Gaza, according to their attorneys. Some right-wing Israelis, including senior government ministers and coalition lawmakers, have called for Israel to rule Gaza indefinitely and populate it with its own citizens.
· The United States imposed new sanctions on Thursday intended to cut off financing to Iranian-backed militias. The measures targeted several companies, individuals and vessels involved in shipping Iranian commodities to finance its proxy groups, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, the U.S. Treasury said. The Houthis have been targeting commercial ships in the Red Sea since last year in allegiance with Hamas, also an Iranian proxy, disrupting global shipping. Hezbollah has launched strikes into northern Israel for the same reason.
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16) A new Israeli settlement in the West Bank will encroach on a World Heritage Site, activists say.
By Ephrat Livni, August 15, 2024
Battir, a Palestinian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Credit...Zain Jaafar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A new Israeli settlement planned for construction in the occupied West Bank will encroach on Palestinian land recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage site, Israeli peace activists say.
Much of the international community views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal, and many were established illegally under Israeli law, but tolerated by the government.
Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister and a settler himself, gave preliminary approval to the new settlement, Nahal Heletz, in June, and the country’s planning authorities signed off on it on Wednesday.
But the area designated for the settlement was much bigger than what was shown in a plan the government published in July, according to an Israeli advocacy group, Peace Now, which closely tracks settlements. The new plan claims over 150 acres rather than the 30 acres announced previously, and all of it is on UNESCO-designated territory, the group said.
Mr. Smotrich, who is part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, has pushed for measures that would expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank in exchange for the release of funds withheld from the Palestinian Authority, which partly administers the territory.
Peace Now accused Mr. Smotrich of disregarding the UNESCO Convention in a statement on Wednesday. Israel is a party to the World Heritage Convention, though it left UNESCO in 2019, accusing the multilateral organization of trying to minimize Jewish ties to the land of Israel. It also objected to the organization’s acceptance of Palestine as a member state in 2011.
Peace Now said that the Israeli authorities were accelerating new claims over West Bank land in an effort to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Tor Wennesland, the United Nations’ special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in June that signs of expedited settlement expansion — and the retroactive legalization of West Bank outposts initially established in violation of Israeli law — undermine prospects for a two-state solution.
That is one of Mr. Smotrich’s stated goals. In a post on social media on Wednesday about the newly approved settlement, he said he wold continue to fight what he called “the dangerous idea” of establishing a Palestinian state.
The territory being claimed for the Nahal Heletz settlement is adjacent to the West Bank village of Battir and encroaches on its surrounding area, which UNESCO has designated a World Heritage site because of its terraced farming, irrigation system and architecture, according to the agency’s website.
The World Heritage Convention is the most widely accepted international conservation treaty. There are nine World Heritage sites in Israel.
“UNESCO is closely following the state of conservation of the World Heritage property,” the UNESCO World Heritage Center said in a statement in response to a query about the planned new settlement.
Last month, the governing body of the organization took note “with concern of the reports of ongoing illegal constructions, settlements and other developments within the property and its buffer zone” and asked “all parties to avoid any action that would cause damage to the property.”
In July, the International Court of Justice issued a nonbinding advisory opinion declaring that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and its settlements there, violated international law. The court called for Israel’s presence in the territories to end “as rapidly as possible” and said that Israel was obligated to provide full reparations for the damage it had caused. Mr. Netanyahu dismissed the opinion as “absurd” in posts on social media, saying: “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land.”
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17) Gaza Cease-Fire Talks Will Resume Next Week, Officials Say
By Aaron Boxerman and James C. McKinley Jr., August 16, 2024
Palestinian women and children receiving food aid in Beit Lahia, in northern Gaza, on Wednesday. Credit...Omar Al-Qattaa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The United States, Egypt and Qatar said on Friday that cease-fire talks aimed at ending the war in Gaza would continue next week in Cairo, as mediators raced to make progress toward a truce they hoped would help avert a wider regional conflagration.
The announcement came after top American, Israeli, Egyptian, and Qatari officials ended two days of talks in Doha, Qatar, as mediators try to bridge remaining disagreements between Israel and Hamas. U.S. and regional officials hope that movement in the negotiations would blunt or stop a widely anticipated Iranian-led retaliation for the assassination of senior leaders in Hamas and Hezbollah, both backed by Iran.
During the talks, the United States said it had presented a proposal — backed by Egypt and Qatar, the main mediators — that narrows the gaps between Israel and Hamas on reaching a cease-fire. Details of the proposal were not immediately known. In a joint statement, all three governments characterized the meetings as “serious, constructive and conducted in a positive atmosphere.”
“This proposal builds on areas of agreement over the past week, and bridges remaining gaps in the manner that allows for a swift implementation of the deal,” the three countries said. “Working teams will continue technical work over the coming days on the details of implementation.”
Senior officials will again convene before the end of next week in Cairo in the hopes of reaching an agreement based on the terms laid out in Qatar, the statement said. In the meantime, lower-ranking officials would continue to hammer out technical details on how the cease-fire proposal would be implemented, they added.
There was no immediate comment from Israeli or Hamas officials on whether they will participate in the talks in Cairo.
Hamas officials, who have accused the Israeli government of bargaining in bad faith, did not participate directly in the talks in Doha have signaled a willingness to consider new proposals from the Israelis.
The talks have taken on heightened significance as the region braces for an expected retaliation against Israel from Iran and Hezbollah after the recent assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, in Tehran, and Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah military commander, in a Beirut suburb. The United States has deployed additional combat aircraft and warships to the region, and dispatched a guided-missile submarine, underscoring the gravity of the likely repercussions of any attack on Israel.
A cease-fire deal for Gaza, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern diplomats, could help persuade Iran to rein in its response and reduce the likelihood of a broader conflict.
International pressure has been rising for months for some kind of deal to end the suffering in Gaza and allow for the release of hostages. The Gazan Health Ministry reported on Thursday that the Palestinian death toll in the war had surpassed 40,000. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. On the same day, the Israeli military said that it had killed more than 17,000 combatants over the course of the war.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Israel further shrinks Gaza’s ‘humanitarian zone,’ and other news.
· The Israeli military called for more evacuations from the “humanitarian zone” it has designated for civilians in southern Gaza, distributing fliers calling for people to leave parts of Khan Younis and Deir al Balah. The military’s announcement on Friday in effect further shrinks a zone that by last month had already been reduced in size by more than a fifth. Israel said the evacuation orders followed rocket fire from those areas and what it described as resumed terrorist activity. The Israeli military has characterized the already overcrowded humanitarian zone as safer than other parts of Gaza, but has made clear that it will go after Hamas anywhere it believes it has a presence.
· Israel’s foreign minister called on allies to join in attacking Iran if Tehran conducts a retaliatory strike. “The right way to deter Iran and prevent war is by announcing that if Iran attacks, they will stand with Israel not only in defense but also in striking targets in Iran,” the foreign minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement on Friday after meeting with his counterparts, David Lammy of Britain and Stéphane Séjourné of France. The French and British diplomats did not immediately comment on the statement. Iran and its ally Hezbollah have vowed to attack Israel in response to the assassination of a senior Hamas leader in Tehran and a Hezbollah commander in Beirut. On Friday, Hezbollah released an unusual video showing its fighters operating in underground tunnels, part of an ongoing exchange of threats.
· The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas pledged to visit the Gaza Strip “even if it costs my life,” using a speech to Turkey’s Parliament on Thursday to renew criticism of Israel. It was not immediately clear whether such a visit was feasible, and Mr. Abbas, who leads the Palestinian Authority, which controls parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, has not been to the enclave since Hamas seized power there in 2007. Israeli officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Mr. Abbas, who was wrapping up a two-day visit to Turkey, received a standing ovation from lawmakers. Both he and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a harsh critic of Israel’s approach to the war in Gaza, entered the chamber wearing scarves bearing the Palestinian and Turkish flags.
· The United States imposed new sanctions on Thursday intended to cut off financing to Iranian-backed militias. The measures targeted several companies, individuals and vessels involved in shipping Iranian commodities to finance its proxy groups, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, the U.S. Treasury said.
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18) Israeli settlers storm a West Bank village, drawing rare rebukes from Israeli officials.
By Ephrat Livni, August 16, 2024
Jit, in the West Bank, on Friday, the day after an attack by Jewish settlers on the village. Credit...Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians have surged in the West Bank, but a riot on Thursday in the village of Jit stood out for drawing rapid and unusual rebukes from Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose coalition government includes West Bank settlers in top positions.
The Israeli military condemned the attack, and said that dozens of Israeli civilians, including some wearing masks, had set fire to vehicles and hurled rocks and firebombs. It said that its forces, along with Israeli Border Police, were dispatched to the scene and dispersed the rioters by firing shots into the air and “removing the Israeli civilians from the town.”
The Palestinian Authority said that one Palestinian had been shot dead during the attack and that another was critically injured. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports of a fatality and that it had opened an investigation with other security agencies. One rioter was arrested and transferred to the police for questioning.
The prime minister’s office said in a statement that Mr. Netanyahu took the riots seriously and pledged to find and prosecute those responsible for “any criminal act.”
The attack also drew condemnation from the United States and the European Union on Friday. Jack Lew, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he was “appalled” by the violence. “These attacks must stop and the criminals be held to account,” he said in a post on social media.
As the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has stretched into its 11th month, Israel has increased its military activity against what it terms suspected terrorism in the occupied West Bank, and violent settler attacks have surged at the same time.
Far-right ministers in Mr. Netanyahu’s government — particularly Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, who are both West Bank settlers — have espoused divisive rhetoric and advanced policies to expand Israel’s hold on the territory.
The West Bank is home to about 2.7 million Palestinians and more than 500,000 settlers. Israel seized control of the territory from Jordan in 1967 during a war with three Arab states, and Israelis have since settled there with both tacit and explicit government approval. The international community largely considers settlements illegal, and many outposts also violate Israeli laws.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which tracks violent incidents in the West Bank, said in its latest update on Wednesday that Israeli settlers had carried out 25 attacks against Palestinians in the previous week. Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that set off the war in Gaza, the agency has recorded around 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their property.
“There has been an uptick in vigilante attacks by a minority of settlers,” David Makovsky, director of the Koret Project on Arab-Israel relations at the Washington Institute, said in an interview. “The West Bank is a tinderbox.”
Few attacks, however, have generated the kind of immediate approbation from Israeli officials that followed the storming of Jit.
In July, a departing Israeli general issued a harsh rebuke of the government’s policies in the West Bank and condemned rising “nationalist crime” by Jewish settlers. Retired Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuks, the former chief of Israel’s Central Command, said in a speech that the actions of a violent minority threatened Israel’s security, undermined Israel’s reputation internationally and sowed fear among Palestinians.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, expressed a similar sentiment on Thursday in response to the riot in Jit. “This is not our way and certainly not the way of Torah and Judaism,” Mr. Herzog said in a post on social media. He accused an “extremist minority” of settlers of harming Israel’s standing in the international community during an “especially sensitive and difficult time.”
Aaron Boxerman and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
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