Tag: IsraelGaza

  • UN chief urges evacuation of 2,500 children from Gaza as doctors warn of ‘imminent risk’ of death | Israel-Gaza war


    UN secretary-general António Guterres has called for 2,500 children to be immediately evacuated from Gaza for medical treatment after meeting with US doctors who said the children were at imminent risk of death in the coming weeks.

    The four doctors had all volunteered in Gaza during the 15-month-long war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas that has devastated the territory of more than 2 million people and its healthcare system.

    Guterres said he was “deeply moved” by his meeting with the American doctors on Thursday. “2,500 children must be immediately evacuated with the guarantee that they will be able to return to their families and communities,” Guterres posted on social media after the meeting.

    Just days before a ceasefire began on 19 January, the World Health Organization said more than 12,000 patients were waiting for medical evacuations and it had hoped they could be ramped up during the truce.

    Among those patients urgently needing treatment are 2,500 children, said Feroze Sidhwa, a California trauma surgeon who worked in Gaza from 25 March to 8 April last year.

    “There’s about 2,500 children who are at imminent risk of death in the next few weeks. Some are dying right now. Some will die tomorrow. Some will die the next day,” Sidhwa told reporters after meeting with Guterres.

    “Of those 2,500 kids, the vast majority need very simple things done,” he said, citing the case of a 3-year-old boy who suffered burns to his arm. The burns had healed, but the scar tissue was slowly cutting off blood flow, leaving him at risk of amputation, said Sidhwa.

    Ayesha Khan, an emergency doctor at Stanford university hospital, worked in Gaza from the end of November until 1 January. She spoke about many children with amputations, who had no prosthetics or rehabilitation.

    She held up a photo of two young sisters with amputations, who were sharing a wheelchair. They were orphaned in the attack that injured them and Khan said: “Their only chance for survival is to be medically evacuated.”

    “Unfortunately, the current security restrictions don’t allow for children to travel with more than one caregiver,” she said. “Their caregiver is their aunt, who has a baby that she is breastfeeding.”

    “So even though we were able to, with great difficulty, get evacuation set up for them, they won’t let the aunt take her baby with her. So the aunt has to choose between the baby she’s breastfeeding and the lives of her two nieces.”

    Cogat, the Israeli defence agency that liaises with the Palestinians, did not respond to a request for comment on the demand for medical evacuation of 2,500 children by Guterres and the doctors he met. Israel’s mission to the UN also did not respond to a request for comment.

    The doctors said they are advocating for a centralised process for medical evacuations with clear guidelines.

    “Under this ceasefire agreement, there is supposed to be a mechanism in place for medical evacuations. We’ve still not seen that process spelled out,” said Thaer Ahmad, an emergency room doctor from Chicago, who worked in Gaza in January 2024.

    Khan said there was no process in place to get the children out, adding: “And will they be allowed to return? There is some discussion right now of the Rafah border opening only for exits, but it’s exit without right to return.”

    At the start of this month, before the ceasefire, the WHO said 5,383 patients had been evacuated with its support since the war began in October 2023, most of those in the first seven months before the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza was closed.



    United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for the urgent evacuation of 2,500 children from Gaza as doctors warn of the “imminent risk” of death in the war-torn region. The ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza has led to a dire humanitarian crisis, with children bearing the brunt of the violence.

    Guterres emphasized the need for the immediate evacuation of these children to ensure their safety and well-being. He condemned the escalating violence in Gaza and reiterated the importance of protecting civilians, especially children, during times of conflict.

    Doctors on the ground in Gaza have issued warnings of the dire situation faced by children in the region, with reports of severe injuries, trauma, and a lack of access to essential medical care. The UN chief’s call for evacuation comes as a critical response to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Gaza.

    As the Israel-Gaza war continues to escalate, it is imperative that immediate action is taken to protect the lives of innocent children caught in the crossfire. The international community must come together to ensure the safe evacuation of these vulnerable children and work towards a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

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    UN chief, Gaza children evacuation, doctors warn, imminent risk of death, Israel-Gaza war, humanitarian crisis, Gaza conflict, United Nations, child evacuation, Gaza Strip, urgent action, international response, civilian casualties, Middle East conflict

    #chief #urges #evacuation #children #Gaza #doctors #warn #imminent #risk #death #IsraelGaza #war

  • Three Israelis and five Thais freed from Gaza as Trump envoy meets hostages’ relatives | Israel-Gaza war


    Three Israelis and five Thai citizens held in Gaza have been freed, as Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy met hostages’ relatives, reportedly telling them he was optimistic the ceasefire would hold to allow the return of all the living and the dead.

    The handover on Thursday of seven hostages in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, was delayed by a chaotic crowd surging towards the group, despite an escort of heavily armed militants, jostling and blocking their passage to waiting Red Cross vehicles.

    Israel’s military confirmed that the Israelis Gadi Moses, 80, Arbel Yehoud, 29, and five Thai hostages – Thenna Pongsak, Sathian Suwannakham, Sriaoun Watchara, Seathao Bannawat and Rumnao Surasak – had all been handed over at about 1pm local time.

    Agam Berger, 20, the last female soldier held in Gaza, had been released earlier from northern Gaza.

    Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, attacked the “shocking scenes” in Khan Younis and suspended the planned release of Palestinian prisoners “until the mediators guarantee the safe exit of the hostages” in future.

    Gadi Moses, 80, is escorted by Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters as he is handed over to the Red Cross in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip. Photograph: Jehad Alshrafi/AP

    Buses carrying Palestinian prisoners due to be freed were sent back to Israeli jails in the early afternoon, before a new release time of 5pm was announced. Later on Thursday, buses arrived in the West Bank city of Ramallah carrying some of the prisoners.

    It was not the first crisis in a ceasefire deal that is not yet two weeks old. Yehoud had originally been listed for release on Saturday. When four female soldiers were handed over instead, Israel accused Hamas of violating the deal and suspended plans to allow Palestinian civilians to return to northern Gaza.

    After last-minute negotiations, Hamas confirmed Yehoud would be freed on Thursday with two other hostages and Israel opened checkpoints to northern Gaza on Monday.

    Shortly after the Thursday handover of the seven hostages in southern Gaza, Trump’s envoy for the region, Steven Witkoff, made a brief visit to Hostage Square in Tel Aviv.

    Crowds gather in Khan Younis for the release of Palestinian hostages as part of a ceasefire and prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel. Photograph: Haitham Imad/EPA

    Many people, when they realised Witkoff was there, raced to pay personal tribute to him for brokering the ceasefire agreement. “Thank you for freeing the hostages, thank you to Mr Trump,” one shouted.

    He met families of hostages briefly in a public library beside the square, assuring them he was optimistic the deal would hold, Israeli media reported, and said he was committed to bringing home the living held in Gaza and the dead.

    The first stage of the ceasefire is due to last 42 days and covers the release of 33 Israeli hostages, mostly women and older men. Of the 23 still to be released as part of the first phase, Hamas says eight are dead. Under the agreement, Israel will free about 1,900 Palestinian prisoners and increase aid into Gaza.

    Shortly after Thursday’s handover, Hamas confirmed the death of Mohammed Deif, the head of its military wing, six months after Israel announced he had been killed. It was the first statement that Hamas has released on Deif’s condition since the Israeli military said last August that he had been killed in an airstrike in southern Gaza the month before.

    Witkoff was visiting Israel before negotiations on the second phase of the deal, due to start on Monday, and went from Hostage Square to hold talks with Netanyahu. The Israeli leader faces heavy pressure from far-right members of his coalition to restart the war rather than extend the ceasefire.

    Trump’s envoy also visited Gaza with the Israeli military and met the four female soldiers freed on Saturday at the Israeli hospital where they were being treated.

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    The US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff (centre), in Tel Aviv, will hold talks with Benjamin Netanyahu. Photograph: Shir Torem/Reuters

    Among those in the crowd grateful to Trump was Dani Miran, whose son Omri Miran, 47, is a hostage in Gaza. “Only one person made this happen. I want to thank Trump,” he said. His hopes of seeing his son again rested entirely on the US leader, he added.

    He said that for one day he had put his own worries aside to celebrate, because after 15 months of intense campaigning, everyone held in Gaza feels like family. “I think all the time about [Omri’s return], but today I concentrate on the joy.”

    Miran was part of the crowd waiting in Hostages Square to watch the releases in real time, beside a clock broadcasting a countdown of the days, hours and minutes of the hostages’ captivity.

    Schoolchildren and parents pushing babies in prams mixed with adults who had taken the day off to be there for a “historic moment”, most veterans of the long campaign for a ceasefire deal.

    They cheered and wept when the first footage streamed from Gaza showed Berger walking unaided. Like the four other female soldiers freed last weekend, she was dressed in military-style fatigues and put on stage for a ceremony that served as a show of the militants’ power after 15 months of war.

    “She made it,” said Yahel Oren, 31, who served a decade ago at the Nahal Oz base, where Berger was captured by Hamas, and watched the video in tears. “It’s hard to think of her alone there, but at least we can count the minutes she has left.”

    People in Tel Aviv gather in Hostages Square to watch the release of hostages on a giant screen. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty

    Oren was part of a group campaigning for the freedom of the female “spotter” troops held in Gaza, and was wearing a T-shirt saying: “Once a spotter always a spotter.”

    Attention then shifted to the south, where seven hostages were due to be freed. Shlomo Zidkiahv, 83, waved a Thai flag in solidarity with a group of Thais taken hostage while working on one of the kibbutzim that was attacked.

    He carried photos of all 10 still in Gaza, as neither Hamas nor Israel had initially identified the five who would be freed. They were later named as Pongsak, Suwannakham, Watchara, Bannawat and Surasak.

    The release of Moses, the first man freed in this exchange, was taken by many in the crowd as a tacit acknowledgment that the last living women held in Gaza had been released.



    In a recent diplomatic breakthrough, three Israelis and five Thais have been freed from Gaza as Trump envoy meets hostages’ relatives. This development comes amidst the ongoing Israel-Gaza war, which has seen increased tensions and violence in the region.

    The release of these hostages is a positive step towards de-escalating the conflict and fostering peace in the region. The involvement of a Trump envoy in securing their freedom highlights the importance of international diplomacy in resolving such complex and volatile situations.

    The families of the hostages have expressed relief and gratitude for their loved ones’ safe return. This moment of joy serves as a glimmer of hope in the midst of a devastating war that has taken a toll on both Israelis and Palestinians.

    As the conflict continues to unfold, it is crucial for all parties involved to prioritize dialogue and diplomacy in order to achieve a lasting peace. The release of these hostages is a small but significant step towards that goal, and we can only hope that it paves the way for further progress in resolving the Israel-Gaza war.

    Tags:

    1. Israelis freed from Gaza
    2. Thais released from captivity
    3. Trump envoy meets hostages’ families
    4. Israel-Gaza conflict updates
    5. Hostages rescued in Gaza
    6. US intervention in Israel-Gaza crisis
    7. Families reunited with hostages
    8. Gaza hostage situation resolved
    9. International efforts in Israel-Gaza conflict
    10. Positive news from Israel-Gaza war zone

    #Israelis #Thais #freed #Gaza #Trump #envoy #meets #hostages #relatives #IsraelGaza #war

  • ‘A moral wreckage that we need to face’: Peter Beinart on being Jewish after Gaza’s destruction | Israel-Gaza war


    Author Peter Beinart speaks at an event in Atlanta in 2012. Photograph: David Goldman/AP

    Peter Beinart has spent a lifetime talking about Palestine and Israel. In the early 2000s he was regarded as among Israel’s most prominent American defenders. He has since broken with just about every tenet commonly associated with Zionism – from rejecting the argument that Israel can be simultaneously democratic and Jewish to arguing that Palestinian refugees must be allowed to return to historic Palestine. Few people have moved as far in so short a time.

    A professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York, Beinart once edited the New Republic and is now an editor-at-large at Jewish Currents and a contributing opinion columnist for the New York Times. He has built a reputation for being an incisive writer and public intellectual, with a knack for admitting when he’s wrong – on Israel, his early support for the Iraq war and what he has described as his previous complicity in tolerating workplace sexual harassment.

    In Beinart’s latest book, he appeals to his fellow Jews to grapple with the morality of their defense of Israel. The book, titled Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, begins with a “note to my former friend”, with whom he has broken over the issue. “By reading these words, you have agreed to walk with me,” he writes. “I hope to lure you beyond established boundaries.”

    Beinart relies on Jewish texts and draws lessons from South Africa, where his family is from, to confront Zionism and what he sees as complicity from the American Jewish establishment in Palestinian oppression. He argues for a Jewish tradition that has no use for Jewish supremacy and treats human equality as a core value.

    I spoke with Beinart before the declaration of a ceasefire earlier this month. I followed up to ask his view on the development.

    Ahmed Moor: Hi, Peter. We’ve all been casting about for resources and things to help us understand how the world has changed after Gaza. Your book aims to address some of that but, as the title states, it’s also about “being Jewish”. So who is the audience for the book?

    PB: First and foremost, I suppose it’s written for my community, my friends and even my family. I live inside a pretty traditional Jewish world. And I feel like there is a kind of pathology that exists in many Jewish spaces, among people who in other aspects of their lives are humane and thoughtful. Yet when it comes to the question of Gaza, and more generally the question of Palestinians and their right to be free, a certain set of blinders come down.

    My hope is that I can get them to see that something has gone very profoundly wrong in the way we think about what it means to be Jewish. I felt like I needed for my own sanity to write something which addressed this moral catastrophe in the hopes that maybe I will change some people’s minds. Maybe there is also a whole group of younger Jews who are themselves profoundly alienated and bewildered and deeply angry. There’s a kind of moral, cultural, even theological wreckage that Jews now have to face. I want to help them think about how they rebuild.

    AM: I’m on the outside, but from where I sit it appears that Jews are quite divided, both politically and religiously. Yet in the book you write as though you’re speaking to a single community. What are the values that anchor that community – and what happens when Israel enters the mix?

    PB: That’s a big question. What’s complicated about Judaism is that it is a religion with a universal kind of message like Christianity or Islam, but also embedded within Judaism is the metaphor of family. In the book of Genesis, you have the story of a family that in the book of Exodus becomes a people or a nation. In some ways, being Jewish can be analogous to being both Catholic and Italian, in the sense that proudly atheistic Jews still feel very intensely Jewish.

    People walk past the rubble of the Al-Hassan Benna mosque on Friday in Gaza City. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

    It’s one thing for Jews to feel these bonds of communal solidarity outside of the state framework, when they often had to depend on one another while living in states that were dangerous to them. But when you take a very powerful state and you inject that with this notion of uncritical solidarity, it leads to a series of rationalizations as that state commits what I think can be rightly called a genocide. Something terrible has gone wrong because Judaism also has a moral message. I feel like that gets lost in all of this.

    I think more relevant to the book is the question of how we tell a story about what it means to be Jewish that recognizes our obligations to one another, but also never loses sight of the fact that the first people created according to Torah are not Jews. All human beings are created in the image of God, and that precedes the Jewish story.

    What Israel has done in Gaza is the most profound desecration of the central idea of the absolute and infinite worth of every human being. And yet the organized American Jewish community acts as if Palestinians in Gaza have essentially no value. Their deaths are dismissed on the flimsiest of pretexts. These people are basically saying that the state has absolute value, but the human beings who live in this state, if they have the misfortune of being Palestinian, don’t have value.

    AM: One of the major themes of the book is complicity. How do you perceive complicity with what Israel is doing, and has been doing for decades, within American Jewish life?

    PB: I think the organized American Jewish community, especially since 1967, has been built around unconditional support for Israel as a central feature of what it means to live a Jewish life. You support the basic structure of the state even though the state is fundamentally unequal and fundamentally oppressive when it comes to Palestinians. It comes in many forms. It can come in participation in a group like Aipac, which is pressuring the government to maintain unconditional US support. It can come in more symbolic ways, like a prayer for the Israel Defense Forces which is common in many American synagogues. It also comes through the unwillingness to engage with Palestinians.

    Most American Jewish institutions – schools, synagogues, camps, whatever – don’t bring Palestinian speakers in to actually give people a genuine understanding of what Zionism looks like from the standpoint of its victims. These are all forms of complicity.

    AM: I’ve been reading your work since at least 2008. I wrote for you in 2012 at the Daily Beast when you were still recognized as a prominent liberal Zionist voice. Over the years, you’ve shown a willingness to change your mind and to do it publicly. Not a lot of people are willing to publicly admit they were wrong. Why do you think that is?

    PB: I always feel a little embarrassed when people ask me about these changes in a way that allows me to look good. The truth is that there were a lot of people who knew things much earlier that I took a long time to learn. Obviously many of them are Palestinians from whom I’ve learned, but there are also Jews and others.

    My learning process has been slow partly because of fear. I think perhaps that I was too comfortable living in an environment where I was not really exposed to many things, a relatively privileged and cloistered existence. But I’ve also always been afraid of what the consequences would be, career-wise and interpersonally, if I became too radically out of step with people around me. It’s still something I worry about all the time.

    For me, there was a process of unpeeling, like an onion, that began when I first went to the West Bank more than 20 years ago. It’s one thing to know in an abstract way that it’s not great for Israel to be occupying people. And I kind of knew that, and I supported two states, but there was always a notion of wanting to give Israel the benefit of the doubt. But the more one looked, the more that was just unsustainable.

    The Shuafat refugee camp is seen behind a section of Israel’s separation barrier in Jerusalem. Photograph: Oded Balilty/AP

    I was also forced to confront the degree to which I had dehumanized Palestinians. I didn’t think of myself as someone who did that. But I realized that I wasn’t engaging with Palestinians as human beings. I was engaging with Palestinians as a kind of an abstract group of people about whom I was making various judgments.

    There was a real shock that came with engagement with ordinary people and the realization that these were human beings who were enduring these things that I and the people around me would never be willing to tolerate. I was able to shed the preconceptions that I was raised with, that so many Jews are raised with, about Palestinians, that they have a tendency towards violence. I was able to unlearn those things. So that has been for me an experience of liberation.

    That’s part of what the book is about: I want other Jews to have that experience of liberation because first of all it means that we can stop being complicit in these horrors, but also we don’t have to carry the burden of this fear based on dehumanizing and often racist views.

    AM: This is a really thorny topic, but a lot of people see overt displays of traditionally Jewish symbols as signifiers of Zionism, which is militaristic and chauvinistic in my lived experience as a Palestinian who has spent time in both Gaza and the West Bank. For example, there was that infamous story of Israeli soldiers branding the Star of David on to a detainee’s face. So how do you unwind the association of Zionism with Judaism?

    PB: Zionism has this very strange relationship with Judaism. In one way it was a rebellion against Judaism. Normative notions of Jewish law said that Jews pray for the Messiah to come and once the Messiah comes, Jews will return to what we call the land of Israel. But then, in an era of nationalism and imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Zionist movement said: “We are going to have our own nationalist project.” In the beginning the vast majority of Jewish religious authorities were hostile to Zionism. But then Zionism also plays on these traditional notions in Jewish texts of a connection to this place called the land of Israel.

    But now, Zionism in the form of Jewish ethnonationalism risks swallowing Judaism or becoming so enmeshed with it that the two cannot be distinguished. The Israeli flag is designed to look like a tallit, the prayer shawl that Jews wear when they pray. It has the star of David, a traditional Jewish symbol. The menorah is also used in Israeli symbols.

    Jews want opponents of Zionism to make this distinction – I don’t want people to go up to a Jew on the street who is wearing a kippah or some Jewish symbol and make that person responsible for what the state of Israel does.

    Yet at the same time, Jewish leaders in America are constantly conflating these two things by saying Zionism is inherent in Judaism. On the one hand, they say, supporting the state of Israel is inherent in being Jewish. On the other, they’re asking the anti-Zionist or pro-Palestine activist to live up to a standard that they themself violate.

    Many American Jews will decide they want to be Zionists. They will decide they want to support the state of Israel. I may argue with them. They have the right to make that choice. But it is not an inherent part of being Jewish.

    AM: You write: “Hostility to Israel has become so pervasive in progressive circles that Zionist students sometimes feel like ideological pariahs.” How should the Palestinian rights movement interact with Zionist students, especially since the overwhelming weight of institutional opprobrium is directed at anti-Zionist students?

    PB: I wrestled with how to write that chapter a lot. I think some Jewish students arrive at college from an environment in which Zionism and support for the state of Israel is normative. It’s what they have experienced, what they have learned. They’ve probably had almost no interaction with Palestinians – no understanding of what Zionism looks like from the standpoint of its victims. So then the question is: how do you engage with those students?

    I think there is a great opportunity for education. Engaging with those students, talking to them, trying to create environments where they hear Palestinians and they hear scholarly work on Israel/Palestine is a better path than the path of exclusion. I don’t think the path of exclusion – basically saying you’re the equivalent of a white supremacist, we will not talk to you – is antisemitism. But I don’t think it is the most effective way of bringing about the change that we want.

    I think I can understand that it’s not easy for a Palestinian to sit down with a Jewish student and explain to the Jewish student why they are fully human and why they’re fully deserving of equality. In the same way that I think Black Americans often don’t really appreciate having to do that with white Americans. I understand that not everyone is going to want to play that role, but at the very least I don’t think people should shut down those spaces.

    A book by Beinart under the chair of an audience member as Beinart speaks in at Atlanta in 2012. Photograph: David Goldman/AP

    It’s a strategic argument. I don’t think that exclusion is the best way to bring about the change that we want.

    AM: Since we first spoke, a tenuous ceasefire has come into effect. How do you interpret its terms and how it came about?

    PB: To me the ceasefire shows that US pressure works. I’m glad that some hostages will be released and that Palestinians in Gaza will get some reprieve from the bombing and some additional aid. But even though Israel destroyed Gaza, Hamas will remain there, because the Palestinian problem is a political problem, not a military one. Israel never had a strategy, and will likely go back to destroying Gaza.

    AM: In your book, you end on a hopeful note, writing that Jews can contribute to humanity by “liberating ourselves from supremacy so, as partners with Palestinians, we can help liberate the world”. Do you really draw hope at this time?

    PB: I don’t think that hope is something one draws from material circumstances. Optimism is something you look for evidence for. I have none of that. I see Israel moving towards an American-style solution to the Palestinian question. In the 19th century, the American solution to the Native population was to destroy their societies so that they couldn’t function as a political entity.

    But hope comes from wherever it comes from. It’s just something that human beings need. Like we need oxygen. For me, maybe it comes from belief in God. I don’t know. I have glimpsed, myself, little episodes of this potential liberation as a child of South Africans. Imagine if this story of Palestine and Israel, which is now a story of unbelievable horror, of genocide, of apartheid – if it were instead a story of collective liberation. I do really believe in my soul that Israeli Jews and Palestinians could live together in full equality with a true process of reconciliation and full refugee return and historical justice that would unleash things that would be miraculous for people around the world.

    Will I see it? I have no idea. But that’s the dream.

    • Ahmed Moor is a writer and fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is a plaintiff in a lawsuit that charges the US state department with circumventing the law to fund Israeli military units accused of human rights abuses

    • Peter Beinart is editor-at-large of Jewish Currents and professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York. Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning is out on 28 January



    In his recent article, Peter Beinart delves into the moral complexities of being Jewish in the aftermath of the destruction in Gaza during the Israel-Gaza war. He grapples with the internal conflict of feeling a deep connection to his Jewish identity while also feeling immense sorrow and guilt over the devastation caused by the conflict.

    Beinart highlights the importance of facing the harsh realities of the situation, urging the Jewish community to confront the moral wreckage that has been left in the wake of the war. He emphasizes the need for introspection and self-reflection, acknowledging the pain and suffering that has been inflicted on both sides of the conflict.

    As a prominent voice in the Jewish community, Beinart’s words carry weight and significance. His call for accountability and empathy serves as a powerful reminder of the ethical responsibilities that come with being Jewish, especially in times of conflict and crisis.

    Ultimately, Beinart’s thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis challenges us to confront the moral complexities of our identities and to strive for a more just and compassionate world, even in the face of destruction and devastation.

    Tags:

    1. Peter Beinart
    2. Jewish identity
    3. Israel-Gaza war
    4. Moral wreckage
    5. Gaza destruction
    6. Jewish perspective
    7. Conflict in the Middle East
    8. Jewish community
    9. Gaza crisis
    10. Israel-Palestine conflict

    #moral #wreckage #face #Peter #Beinart #Jewish #Gazas #destruction #IsraelGaza #war

  • Middle East crisis live: displaced Palestinians blocked from returning home as Trump suggests ‘we just clean out’ Gaza | Israel-Gaza war


    Trump wants Jordan and Egypt to accept more Palestinian refugees and suggests plan to ‘clean out’ Gaza

    US President Donald Trump has indicated that he would like to see Jordan, Egypt and other Arab nations increase the number of Palestinian refugees they are accepting from the Gaza Strip.

    Speaking to reporters on Air Force One yesterday, Trump, an ally of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’”

    Trump also told reporters that he had call earlier in the day with King Abdullah II of Jordan and would speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi on Sunday.

    Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One as he travels from Las Vegas to Miami on January 25 2025.
    Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One as he travels from Las Vegas to Miami on January 25 2025. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

    The newly inaugurated Republican president said he complimented Jordan for having successfully accepted Palestinian refugees and that he told the king: “I’d love for you to take on more, cause I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.” For context,Jordan is already home to more than 2.39 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the UN.

    Trump added:

    I don’t know, something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.

    Trump said that the potential housing “could be temporary” or “could be long-term”. During Israel’s 15 month war on Gaza, more than two-thirds of buildings have been destroyed or damaged by one of the most intensive bombardments in modern times. It has sparked a refugee crisis as large parts of the territory are now uninhabitable.

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    Key events

    Here are some of the latest images being sent to us over the newswires from Gaza, where thousands of Palestinian people are waiting to be allowed to return to their homes in the north:

    Displaced Palestinians in central Gaza wait to be allowed to return to their homes in northern Gaza. Photograph: Hatem Khaled/Reuters
    Palestinian people gather with their belongings near a roadblock on al Rashid Street in central Gaza. Photograph: Jehad Alshrafi/AP
    A drone view shows displaced Palestinians waiting to be allowed to return to their homes in northern Gaza. Photograph: Reuters
    People gather with their belongings gather near a roadblock on Salah al-Din Street as Israeli forces delay reopening access to the north of the Gaza Strip. Photograph: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP
    Many Palestinians are waiting anxiously for any breakthrough between Israel and Hamas that could allow them to return home. Photograph: Mohammed Salem/Reuters
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    Trump resumes sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, undoing Biden pause

    As a reminder, Donald Trump said yesterday that he had instructed the US military to release a hold on the supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel imposed by former president Joe Biden.

    “We released them. We released them today. And they’ll have them. They paid for them and they’ve been waiting for them for a long time. They’ve been in storage,” Trump told reporters.

    Biden put the hold on the delivery of those bombs due to concern over the devastating impact they could have on the civilian population, particularly in Gaza’s Rafah, during Israel’s war on the Palestinian territory, which has now killed over 47,200 people, according to the health ministry. One 2,000-pound bomb can rip through thick concrete and metal, creating a wide blast radius.

    Israel’s foreign minister Gideon Saar has today thanked Trump for authorising the release of the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs.

    In a post on X, he wrote:

    Thank you, President Trump, for yet another display of leadership by releasing the crucial defence shipment to Israel.

    Washington says it is helping Israel defend itself against Iran-backed militant groups like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. But Israel has been accused of genocide and war crimes in Gaza, charges Israel denies. The US has undoubtedly fuelled Israel’s military assault through providing it with arms and giving Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration diplomatic cover on the international stage.

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    Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad says Trump’s idea of relocating Palestinians encourages ‘war crimes’

    Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which fought alongside Hamas in the war against Israel, has reacted to Donald Trump’s idea of possibly relocating Palestinian people to Egypt and Jordan, both of which border Gaza (see post at 08.54 to read the US president’s comments). It said: “This proposal falls within the framework of encouraging war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land.”

    A senior Hamas official, meanwhile, told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency: “As they have foiled every plan for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades, our people will also foil such projects,” Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas political bureau, said.

    Israel’s war on Gaza displaced almost the entire 2.3 million people in Gaza, many of them multiple times (through a combination of forced evacuation orders and relentless airstrikes across the territory). Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has previously rejected the idea of a forced displacement of Palestinians into the Sinai peninsula, amid concern that those displaced may never be able to return.

    Shortly after the Hamas-led 7 October attack on southern Israel, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned against trying to push Palestinian refugees into Egypt or Jordan, saying that the humanitarian situation must to be dealt with inside Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

    As we mentioned in a previous post, Jordan is already home to millions of registered Palestinian refugees.

    Israeli forces kill three people in south Lebanon as residents try to return home after deadline for Israeli withdrawal expires

    Israeli forces killed three people and injured at least 31 others trying to return to homes in south Lebanon where Israeli troops remained on the ground after a deadline for their withdrawal passed on Sunday, Lebanon’s health ministry has said.

    A 60-day truce that went into effect at the end of November between Hezbollah and Israel halted a two-month-old Israeli ground assault and more than a year of cross-border aerial attacks that drove tens of thousands of people in both countries from their homes.

    As my colleagues Bethan McKernan and Quique Kierszenbaum note in this story, the US/France-brokered ceasefire was supposed to become permanent when it expired on Sunday – but just a day before the deadline, neither side had fulfilled their obligations.

    The deal stipulated that Israeli forces should withdraw from the south as the Iran-backed Hezbollah’s weapons and fighters were removed from the area and the Lebanese army deployed.

    Israel has, however, said the terms have not been fully enforced by the Lebanese state, while Lebanon’s US-backed military on Saturday accused Israel of procrastinating in its withdrawal.

    Locals gather with flags in Burj al-Muluk, near the southern Lebanese village of Kfar Kila, where Israeli forces remained on the ground despite the deadline for their withdrawal having passed. Photograph: Karamallah Daher/Reuters

    The Lebanese health ministry has said one person was killed in the Lebanese village of Houla, another in Aitaroun, and a third person in Blida as a result of Israeli attacks on citizens while they were trying to enter their still-occupied towns.

    Dozens of Lebanese people have also reportedly been injured by Israeli forces who remain on the ground despite the terms of the agreement.

    Israel has not said how long its forces would remain in the south, where the Israeli military says it has been seizing Hezbollah weapons and dismantling its infrastructure.

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    Trump wants Jordan and Egypt to accept more Palestinian refugees and suggests plan to ‘clean out’ Gaza

    US President Donald Trump has indicated that he would like to see Jordan, Egypt and other Arab nations increase the number of Palestinian refugees they are accepting from the Gaza Strip.

    Speaking to reporters on Air Force One yesterday, Trump, an ally of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’”

    Trump also told reporters that he had call earlier in the day with King Abdullah II of Jordan and would speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi on Sunday.

    Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One as he travels from Las Vegas to Miami on January 25 2025. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP

    The newly inaugurated Republican president said he complimented Jordan for having successfully accepted Palestinian refugees and that he told the king: “I’d love for you to take on more, cause I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.” For context,Jordan is already home to more than 2.39 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the UN.

    Trump added:

    I don’t know, something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.

    Trump said that the potential housing “could be temporary” or “could be long-term”. During Israel’s 15 month war on Gaza, more than two-thirds of buildings have been destroyed or damaged by one of the most intensive bombardments in modern times. It has sparked a refugee crisis as large parts of the territory are now uninhabitable.

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    Palestinians blocked from returning to northern Gaza by Israeli military

    Hello, and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the developments in the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel and the crisis in the Middle East more widely.

    Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement, people displaced from their homes in Gaza should now be allowed to move freely around the Palestinian territory.

    But thousands of displaced Palestinian people are reportedly being blocked from returning to their homes in northern Gaza as Israel accuses Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, from not honouring the terms of the ceasefire deal.

    On Saturday, armed members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad handed over four Israeli soldiers to the Red Cross as part of the agreement. The freed soldiers are Karina Ariev, 20, Daniella Gilboa, 20, Naama Levy, 20, and Liri Albag, 19, who served with the Israel Defense Forces.

    Palestinians wait in the central Gaza strip to be allowed to return to their homes in the north after being displaced by Israeli bombardments during the war. Photograph: Mohammed Salem/Reuters

    However, a dispute broke out when the German-Israeli citizen Arbel Yehoud, aged 28 at the time of her capture, was not included in the swap, even though Hamas was expected to free more non-military hostages.

    Yehoud is one of the last female civilians held in Gaza. She is reportedly held by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second largest armed faction, rather than Hamas, which led the 7 October 2023 on southern Israel, complicating her potential handover and release.

    Hamas insisted Yehoud is alive and will be freed next week. But Israel has responded by delaying the planned withdrawal of some of its troops from Gaza, which would have allowed Palestinians to return to the devastated northern areas of the strip, which include Beit Hanoon, Beit Lahiya and Jabalia.

    Al Jazeera is reporting this morning that thousands of Palestinian people are waiting for a permit by the Israeli military to access northern Gaza, much of which lies in rubble after the renewed Israeli assault on it last autumn.

    The Israeli military has warned people that they cannot move north past the Netzarim Corridor – which divides the territory – as planned. We will bring you the latest on this throughout the day.

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    The ongoing crisis in the Middle East has reached a critical point as displaced Palestinians are being blocked from returning to their homes amid escalating tensions between Israel and Gaza. To make matters worse, former President Donald Trump has suggested a drastic solution to the conflict by saying “we just clean out” Gaza.

    The Israel-Gaza war has resulted in widespread destruction and loss of life, with reports of civilians being caught in the crossfire. The blockade of Palestinians from returning to their homes only adds to the humanitarian crisis in the region, leaving many without access to basic necessities and shelter.

    Trump’s inflammatory remarks have been met with condemnation from world leaders, who have called for a peaceful resolution to the conflict through dialogue and negotiation. The international community must come together to address the root causes of the crisis and work towards a lasting peace in the region.

    As the situation continues to deteriorate, it is more important than ever for global leaders to step up and take action to protect the lives and rights of all those affected by the conflict. The world is watching, and the time to act is now. #MiddleEastCrisis #IsraelGazaWar #PalestinianRights

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    1. Middle East crisis
    2. Displaced Palestinians
    3. Trump
    4. Gaza
    5. Israel-Gaza war
    6. Middle East conflict
    7. Humanitarian crisis
    8. Displacement
    9. Middle East news
    10. Political tensions

    #Middle #East #crisis #live #displaced #Palestinians #blocked #returning #home #Trump #suggests #clean #Gaza #IsraelGaza #war