Israel mourns dead hostages as doubts grow over Gaza truce plan

Update Israel mourns dead hostages as doubts grow over Gaza truce plan
Left to right: Nadav Popplewell, Yoram Metzger, Amiram Cooper and Nadav Popplewell. (Hostages Families Forum Headquarters via AP)
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Updated 04 June 2024
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Israel mourns dead hostages as doubts grow over Gaza truce plan

Israel mourns dead hostages as doubts grow over Gaza truce plan

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Israel on Tuesday mourned four captives reported dead in Gaza by the army amid growing doubts and international pressure over a plan for a ceasefire and hostage release deal outlined by US President Joe Biden.

In the besieged Palestinian territory, Israeli strikes continued early Tuesday, particularly in Bureij in central Gaza where local hospital sources reported several deaths.

In northern Israel, firefighters and troops were battling forest blazes after rocket fire from neighboring Lebanon, with the border area the scene of near-daily exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and the Hezbollah militant group, an ally of Hamas, since the start of the war in Gaza nearly eight months ago.

Israel’s military on Monday announced the deaths in Gaza of four hostages seized during the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, naming them as Chaim Perry, Yoram Metzger, Amiram Cooper and Nadav Popplewell.

Their bodies were still in the hands of Hamas, it added.

Cooper, 84, Metzger, 80, and Perry, 80, were abducted from the Nir Oz kibbutz while Israeli-British citizen Popplewell, 51, was kidnapped from the Nirim kibbutz.

British foreign minister David Cameron said he was “greatly saddened to hear about the death” of Popplewell, adding: “we reiterate our demand for Hamas to send all hostages home.”

“They should have returned alive to their country and their families,” the Hostages Families Forum said.

Netanyahu, a hawkish veteran leading a fragile hard-right coalition government, is under intense domestic pressure from multiple sides.

Relatives and supporters of hostages have staged mass protests demanding a truce deal — but his far-right coalition allies are threatening to bring down the government if he agrees to that.

Biden on Friday presented what he labelled an Israeli three-phase plan that would end the bloody conflict, free all hostages and lead to the reconstruction of the devastated Palestinian territory without Hamas in power.

However, Netanyahu’s office stressed that the war would continue until all of Israel’s “goals are achieved,” including the destruction of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities.

The G7 group of countries said in a statement its leaders “fully endorse” the deal pushed by Biden, and called on Hamas to accept it.

Hamas on Friday said it viewed Biden’s outline “positively,” but has since made no official comment on stalled negotiations, while mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have not announced any new talks.

Foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt issued a statement on Monday backing the latest diplomatic effort.

UN Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland Tuesday urged all parties to reach an agreement after he visited Gaza and “witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of the hostilities. The scenes of destruction & suffering of people are heart-wrenching.”

“There is a serious proposal on the table — outlined by President Biden — and I urge all parties to reach an agreement immediately to achieve a ceasefire and return the hostages. There is no alternative — and any delay, every day simply costs more lives,” he posted on X.

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer earlier quoted Netanyahu as saying that the outline Biden presented was only “partial,” and that under the plan fighting would only stop temporarily “for the purpose of returning the hostages.”

The fighting showed no sign of easing, with the war that has devastated the coastal territory of 2.4 million people soon to enter its ninth month.

On Monday, Israel’s military said its forces had struck “over 50 targets” over the past day, and Gaza hospitals reported at least 19 fatalities in overnight strikes.

The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,194 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Militants also took 251 hostages, 120 of whom remain in Gaza, including 41 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive have killed at least 36,470 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Some 55 percent of all structures in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed, damaged or “possibly damaged” since the war erupted, according to the United Nations satellite analysis agency.

Heavy fighting has raged especially in Gaza’s far-southern Rafah area near the Egyptian border, where UN agencies say most civilians have now been displaced once more.

UN and other aid agencies have warned for months of the looming risk of famine in the besieged territory amid a spiralling humanitarian crisis.

Among bombed out buildings in the southern city of Khan Yunis, displaced Gazans were trying to remove sewage from their tents on Monday after a pipeline burst, flooding them in dirty water.

“This is no life,” said Abdullah Barbakh.

“The sewage has flooded over us. We can’t eat or drink, and we’re unable to sleep. We are sleeping in the streets,” said resident Abdul Samad Barbakh.

In northern Israel, firefighters were battling intense forest fires that broke out shortly after rocket and drone strikes from neighboring Lebanon, forcing the partial evacuation of Kiryat Shmona.

An AFP photographer in the northeastern town saw intense blazes engulfing parts of the area bordering Lebanon, the scene of near-daily exchanges of fire between the Israeli army and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group on the sidelines of the war in Gaza.


Gazans in Egypt reject displacement, grapple with decision when to go home

An Egyptian medic cares for a young Palestinian patient evacuated from Gaza through the Rafah crossing.
An Egyptian medic cares for a young Palestinian patient evacuated from Gaza through the Rafah crossing.
Updated 6 sec ago
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Gazans in Egypt reject displacement, grapple with decision when to go home

An Egyptian medic cares for a young Palestinian patient evacuated from Gaza through the Rafah crossing.
  • “We, the people of Gaza, can only live in Gaza,” a displaced Gazan said
  • “If they give us residencies, the cause will be lost,” she added

CAIRO: Weeks into the ceasefire in Gaza, thousands of Palestinians who left for neighboring Egypt are grappling with the question of when they might go home, though they reject the prospect of a mass displacement proposed by US President Donald Trump.
“A lot of people are torn, and I am one of them,” said Shorouk, who earns a living selling Palestinian food in Cairo, going by the name Gaza Girl. “Do you choose to go back and sit in the destruction and a place that still needs to be reconstructed or stay and go back when it is reconstructed?“
Whether or not she is able to go home soon, she does not want people like her to be accepted as residents outside Palestinian land.
“We, the people of Gaza, can only live in Gaza,” she said. “If they give us residencies, the cause will be lost.”
A proposal by Trump that much of the population of Gaza be cleared out and residents sent en masse to Egypt and Jordan has been universally denounced across the Arab world as a form of ethnic cleansing.
“You’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said. Asked if it would a temporary or long term solution, he said: “Could be either.”
Egypt says it will never participate in the mass displacement of Palestinians, which President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi described as an “act of injustice.”
But there are already about 100,000 Palestinians in Egypt, who say they do not know how or when they will be able to return.
During the war in Gaza, the border was mostly sealed and the vast majority of the 2.3 million residents were made homeless and forced into temporary shelters within the territory.
There were however months when some people were permitted to leave, including Palestinians with foreign passports, their close relatives or severely ill patients evacuated for humanitarian reasons.
Most have no long-term permission to stay in Egypt and view their stays as temporary, surviving on small trade or savings. The ceasefire agreement that paused the fighting in January has yet to resolve their fate.
Some say they will return as soon as they have a chance.
“There is nothing better than one’s country and land,” said Hussien Farahat, a father of two.
But others say the personal decision is more complicated, without a home to go back to.
“Even if the war were over, we still do not know our fate and nobody mentioned those stranded in Cairo. Are we going back or what will happen to us? And if we go back, what will happen to us? Our houses are gone,” said Abeer Kamal, who has lived in Cairo since Nov. 2023 and sells handmade bags with her sisters.
“There is nothing, not my house, or my family, or siblings, nothing,” she said.
Israel launched its assault on Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed Israeli towns, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel’s campaign has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities there, driven most Gazans from their homes and laid swathes of the territory to waste.
While Gazans in Egypt may vary in their personal plans, all said they reject any proposal by Trump to clear large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza.
“This is our land and it’s not his to control us,” said Fares Mahmoud, another Gazan in Cairo. “It’s our land, we leave it and go back to it when we want.”


Palestinians appeal for help with short-term shelter in Gaza

Palestinians appeal for help with short-term shelter in Gaza
Updated 03 February 2025
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Palestinians appeal for help with short-term shelter in Gaza

Palestinians appeal for help with short-term shelter in Gaza
  • Gaza needs $6.5 billion in temporary housing aid, PA official says
  • Hamas requests 200,000 tents, 60,000 caravans for displaced Gazans

CAIRO/RAMALLAH: With fighting in Gaza paused, Palestinians are appealing for billions of dollars in emergency aid — from heavy machinery to clear rubble to tents and caravans to house people made homeless by Israeli bombardment.
One official from the Palestinian Authority estimated immediate funding needs of $6.5 billion for temporary housing for Gaza’s population of more than two million, even before the huge task of long-term reconstruction begins.
US special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff estimated last week that rebuilding could take 10-15 years. But before that, Gazans will have to live somewhere.
Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that has moved quickly to reassert control of Gaza after a temporary ceasefire began last month, says Gaza has immediate needs for 200,000 tents and 60,000 caravans.
In addition, it says there is an urgent need for heavy digging equipment to begin clearing millions of tons of rubble left by the war, both to clear the ground for housing and to recover more than 10,000 bodies estimated to be buried there.
Two Egyptian sources said heavy machinery was waiting at the border crossing and would be sent into Gaza starting Tuesday.
World Food Programme official Antoine Renard said Gaza’s food imports had surged since the ceasefire and were already at two or three times monthly levels before the truce began.

'Dual use' goods face impediments
But he said there were still impediments to importing medical and shelter equipment, which would be vital to sustain the population but which Israel considers to have potential “dual use” – civilian or military.
“This is a reminder to you that many of the items that are dual use need also to enter into Gaza like medical and also tents,” he told reporters in Geneva.
More than half a million people who fled northern Gaza have returned home, many with nothing more than what they could carry with them on foot. They were confronted by an unrecognizable wasteland of rubble where their houses once stood.
“I came back to Gaza City to find my house in ruins, with no place else to stay, no tents, no caravans, and not even a place we can rent as most of the city was destroyed,” said Gaza businessman Imad Turk, whose house and wood factory in Gaza City were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes during the war.
“We don’t know when the reconstruction will begin, we don’t know if the truce will hold, we don’t want to be forgotten by the world,” Turk told Reuters via a chat app.
Countries from Egypt and Qatar to Jordan, Turkiye and China have expressed readiness to help, but Palestinian officials blame Israel for delays. Egypt and Qatar both helped broker the ceasefire that has, for now, stopped the fighting.
There was no immediate response from the Israeli military to a request for comment.


Palestinians accuse Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’ as 70 killed in West Bank

Smoke rises during an Israeli army operation in the Jenin camp for Palestinian refugees in the north of the occupied West Bank.
Smoke rises during an Israeli army operation in the Jenin camp for Palestinian refugees in the north of the occupied West Bank.
Updated 03 February 2025
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Palestinians accuse Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’ as 70 killed in West Bank

Smoke rises during an Israeli army operation in the Jenin camp for Palestinian refugees in the north of the occupied West Bank.
  • Palestinian presidency “condemned the occupation authorities’ expansion of their comprehensive war on our Palestinian people in the West Bank

RAMALLAH: The office of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas denounced an Israeli operation in the occupied West Bank as “ethnic cleansing” on Monday, with the health ministry saying Israeli forces killed 70 people in the territory this year.
In a statement, spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the Palestinian presidency “condemned the occupation authorities’ expansion of their comprehensive war on our Palestinian people in the West Bank to implement their plans aimed at displacing citizens and ethnic cleansing.”
Later the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said there had been “70 martyrs in the West Bank since the beginning of this year,” with 10 children, one woman and two elderly people among the dead.
The ministry confirmed to AFP they were “killed by the Israeli occupation.”
The figures showed 38 people killed in Jenin and 15 in Tubas in the north of the West Bank. One was killed in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, it added.
The Israeli military launched a major offensive in the West Bank on January 21 aimed at rooting out Palestinian armed groups from the Jenin area, which has long been a hotbed of militancy.
“We demand the intervention of the US administration before it is too late, to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression against our people and our land,” Rudeineh told the Palestinian official news agency WAFA in a statement coinciding with a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington.
On Sunday, the army said it had killed more than 50 “terrorists” during the operation that began on January 21 and in air strikes the preceding week.
Netanyahu is visiting Washington, where he is expected to begin talks on a second phase of Israel’s truce with Hamas in Gaza on Monday.
The next stage is expected to cover the release of the remaining captives and include discussions on a more permanent end to the war.


English attorney general involved in guide on combating Israeli apartheid

English attorney general involved in guide on combating Israeli apartheid
Updated 03 February 2025
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English attorney general involved in guide on combating Israeli apartheid

English attorney general involved in guide on combating Israeli apartheid
  • Lord Hermer detailed ways Palestinians could sue weapons firms in UK courts
  • Handbook, titled ‘Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation,’ was published in 2011

LONDON: The attorney general for England and Wales contributed to a handbook on combating Israeli apartheid during his time as a lawyer working in private practice, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

Lord Hermer wrote a chapter in the book on ways that Palestinian victims could use British courts to sue weapons firms that sold arms to Israel.

Lawyers in the UK were in a “much better position” to take action on the matter than those in the US, he wrote in the book “Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation,” published in 2011.

Lord Hermer, now legal chief to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, was working at Doughty Street Chambers as a lawyer at the time.

The book’s introduction says: “It is our hope that this book will prove useful in the fight against Israeli war crimes, occupation and apartheid.” It compiles commentary and contributions from pro-Palestinian lawyers and academics.

In the book, Lord Hermer criticizes British “export licences for weapons used by Israel in violation of international humanitarian and human rights law.”

He provides a list of “proactive steps that the UK could take” to punish firms that sell weapons to Israel that could be used to violate human rights law.

Last year, Lord Hermer played a key role in the UK government’s decision to suspend 30 arms export licenses to Israel.

He also called on the government to abide by the International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Lord Hermer’s chapter in the book explains how a Palestinian could use English courts to sue Israeli arms firm Elbit.

“If the company that was producing the drones or the missiles has a factory here, that’s sufficient (to bring legal action),” he said.

In a transcript attached to the chapter, detailing a question-and-answer session, Lord Hermer argued that the British legal system was more favorable to Palestinians than that of the US.

“There’s a much better position here than in the US. In the states, a whole host of important human rights cases have been closed down simply because they touch upon issues of foreign relations,” he said.


Syrian leader to visit Turkiye on Tuesday

Syrian leader to visit Turkiye on Tuesday
Updated 03 February 2025
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Syrian leader to visit Turkiye on Tuesday

Syrian leader to visit Turkiye on Tuesday

ISTANBUL: Syria’s interim president Ahmed Al-Sharaa will visit Turkiye on Tuesday on his second international visit since the toppling of Bashar Assad in December, the Turkish presidency said.
Sharaa “will pay a visit to Ankara on Tuesday at the invitation of our President Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” Fahrettin Altun, head of communications at the presidency, said on X.