Category: World News

Israeli forces battled Hamas militants through shell-blasted buildings in Gaza City on Thursday as some 80 countries and organisations met in Paris to coordinate humanitarian aid and find ways to help wounded civilians escape the siege.

Residents in Gaza City said Israeli were fighting Hamas and other militants and that tanks were stationed around the city. They said Israeli forces were moving closer to two hospitals where thousands of displaced Palestinians were seeking shelter.

The Israeli military said its troops had advanced into the heart of Gaza City, Hamas’ main bastion and the biggest city in the Palestinian coastal enclave, while the Islamist group said its fighters had inflicted heavy losses.

Hamas’ armed wing on Wednesday released a video that appeared to show intense street battles alongside bombed out buildings in Gaza City.

Israeli tanks have met heavy resistance from Hamas fighters using underground tunnels to stage ambushes, according to sources with Iran-backed Hamas and the separate Islamic Jihad militant group.

As the Israel-Hamas war enters its second month, the United States said when the war does end Palestinians must govern Gaza.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday outlined Washington’s red lines and expectations for the besieged coastal territory, pushing back at Israeli comments that it would be responsible for security in Gaza indefinitely.

There should be “no reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza,” Blinken said at a press conference in Tokyo.

While Blinken said there may be a need for “some transition period” at the end of the conflict, but that post-crisis governance in Gaza must include Palestinian voices.

“It must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”

The Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, says the Gaza Strip, where Hamas has ruled since 2007, is an integral part of what it envisions for a future Palestinian state.

Israeli officials have clarified they do not intend to occupy Gaza after the war, but they have yet to articulate how they might ensure security without maintaining a military presence. Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005.

Israel launched its military assault on Gaza in response to a cross-border Hamas raid on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which gunmen killed 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Palestinian officials said 10,569 people had been killed as of Wednesday, 40% of them children. Israel says 33 of its soldiers have been killed.

SEA LANES FOR AID AND WOUNDED

A conference in Paris on Thursday, attended by Arab nations, Western powers, G20 members and NGO groups such as Doctors Without Borders will discuss measures to alleviate the suffering in Gaza, but without a pause in fighting expectations are low.

“The object is really to work with all the participants and also with Israel … to allow improved access,” a French presidential official told reporters ahead of the conference.

Among the options discussed will be setting up a maritime corridor to use sea lanes to ship humanitarian aid into Gaza and see how ships could be used to help evacuate the wounded.

Thousands of Palestinian civilians trudged in a forlorn procession out of the north of Gaza on Wednesday seeking refuge from Israeli air strikes and fierce ground fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants.

The exodus took place during a four-hour window announced by Israel, which has told residents to evacuate encircled northern parts of Gaza or risk being trapped in the violence. But the central and southern parts of the enclave also came under fire again.

Huge numbers of displaced people from among Gaza’s 2.3 million population are already crammed into schools, hospitals and other sites in the south.

Thousands of others remain in the north, including at Gaza City’s main Al Shifa hospital.

Israel has blamed Hamas for civilian deaths in Gaza, saying that it is using them as human shields and hiding arms and operations centres in residential areas.

“As deaths and injuries in Gaza continue to rise due to intensified hostilities, intense overcrowding and disrupted health, water, and sanitation systems pose an added danger: the rapid spread of infectious diseases,” the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday.

WHO said that more than 33,551 cases of diarrhoea had been reported since mid-October, the bulk of which was among children aged under five.

Reuters

Having encircled the densely populated Gaza City in the north of the enclave, where the Hamas Islamist group is based, Israel’s military said it had taken a militant compound and was set to attack fighters hiding in a warren of underground tunnels.

Israel has bombarded the enclave since the Hamas raid on southern Israel one month ago, when its fighters killed 1,400 people and seized 240 hostages.

Gaza health officials say the Israeli assault has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians, including some 4,100 children.

Both Israel and Hamas have rebuffed mounting calls for a halt in fighting. Israel says hostages should be released first. Hamas says it will not free them nor stop fighting while Gaza is under attack.

Netanyahu said a general ceasefire would hamper his country’s war effort, but pausing fighting for humanitarian reasons, an idea supported by Israel’s top ally the United States, would continue to be considered based on circumstances.

“As far as tactical little pauses – an hour here, an hour there – we’ve had them before. I suppose we’ll check the circumstances in order to enable goods, humanitarian goods to come in, or our hostages, individual hostages, to leave,” Netanyahu told ABC News on Monday.

“But I don’t think there’s going to be a general ceasefire.”

U.S. President Joe Biden discussed such pauses and possible hostage releases in a phone call with Netanyahu on Monday, reiterating his support for Israel while emphasising that it must protect civilians, the White House said.

Like Israel, the U.S. fears Hamas would take advantage of a full ceasefire to regroup.

Netanyahu said when the conflict is over he thinks “Israel will for an indefinite period … have the overall security responsibility (in Gaza) because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have that security responsibility.”

Calling for an urgent ceasefire, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday that Gaza is becoming a “graveyard for children“.

“Ground operations by the Israel Defense Forces and continued bombardment are hitting civilians, hospitals, refugee camps, mosques, churches and U.N. facilities – including shelters. No one is safe,” Guterres told reporters.

“At the same time, Hamas and other militants use civilians as human shields and continue to launch rockets indiscriminately towards Israel,” he said.

International organizations have said hospitals cannot cope with the wounded and food and clean water are running out with aid deliveries nowhere near enough.

“We need an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. It’s been 30 days. Enough is enough. This must stop now,” said a statement from the heads of several United Nations’ bodies on Monday.

Hundreds of protesters, many from the group Jewish Voice for Peace, staged a sit-in on Monday outside New York’s Statue of Liberty, calling for a cease-fire and a free Palestine.

Video on social media showed throngs of activists sitting at the base of the statue chanting “Never again for anyone, never again is now,” echoing a Jewish rallying cry in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

A Jewish man who fell to the ground in an altercation during dueling pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian street protests in California died on Monday, and his death was determined to be a homicide, law enforcement and a Jewish organization said.

GAZA CITY CUT OFF

The Israeli military on Monday released video of tanks moving through bombed-out streets and groups of troops moving on foot. It says it has surrounded Gaza City, cutting off northern parts of the narrow coastal strip from the south.

In a press briefing, chief military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said troops were hunting Hamas field level commanders to weaken the militants’ ability “to carry out counter attacks.”

The U.N. Security Council met behind closed doors on Monday. The 15-member body is still trying to agree a resolution after failing four times in two weeks to take action. Diplomats said a key obstacle is whether to call for a ceasefire, cessation of hostilities or humanitarian pauses to allow aid access in Gaza.

At a meeting of foreign ministers from the G7 leading democracies in Tokyo, Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said the group plans to call for a pause in fighting and allowing humanitarian access to Gaza.

Biden’s administration has informed the U.S. Congress that it is planning a $320 million transfer of precision bombs for Israel, a source familiar with the plan said on Monday.

Israel said on Monday it was striking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response to a barrage of rockets fired at northern Israeli cities. The Israeli military said it detected around 30 launches from Lebanon in an hour.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah has been exchanging fire with Israeli forces across the Lebanese-Israeli frontier since Oct. 7, in the worst fighting there since Hezbollah and Israel fought a war in 2006.

Hamas said it had launched 16 missiles towards Nahariyya and southern Haifa in Israel.

Reuters

Israel’s military said it had struck over 600 militant targets over the past few days as it continued to expand ground operations in the Gaza Strip, where Palestinian civilians are in dire need of fuel, food and clean water as the conflict enters its fourth week.

“IDF troops killed dozens of terrorists who barricaded themselves in buildings and tunnels, and attempted to attack the troops,” the military said in a statement.

Israeli air strikes hit areas near Gaza’s Shifa and Al-Quds hospitals, and Palestinian militants clashed with Israeli forces in a border area east of the city of Khan Younis in the south, Palestinian media said.

There was no comment from Hamas. Reuters was not able to independently confirm the reports.

The bombardments came hours after Israel released images of battle tanks on the west coast of the Palestinian enclave, signalling a potential effort to surround Gaza’s main city two days after the Israeli government ordered expanded ground incursions. Some pictures posted online also appeared to show Israeli soldiers waving an Israeli flag deep inside Gaza. Reuters could not verify the images.

Israel’s self-declared “second phase” of a three-week war against Iranian-backed Hamas militants has been largely kept from public view, with forces moving under darkness and a telecommunications blackout cutting off Palestinians.

The phone and internet cuts appeared to ease on Sunday, but telecoms provider Paltel said Israeli air strikes had again knocked out internet and phone service in parts of Gaza’s northern sections, where Hamas has command centres.

The outages have severely hampered rescue operations for casualties of the Israeli barrages.

The reported strikes near hospitals came after the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Sunday it had received warnings from Israeli authorities to immediately evacuate al-Quds hospital, where some 14,000 people have sought shelter.

Israel has accused Hamas of locating command centres and other military infrastructure in Gaza hospitals, which the group denies.

Palestinian officials said about 50,000 people had also taken shelter in Al-Shifa Hospital, adding that they were concerned about Israeli threats to the facility.

Israel has tightened its blockade and bombardment of Gaza since Hamas gunmen stormed into Israel on Oct. 7. Israeli authorities say the militants killed some 1,400 people and took at least 239 hostages.

The military has also stepped up operations against Islamist groups in the West Bank, killing scores of Palestinians and arresting hundreds.

Israeli security forces killed four people during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin early on Monday, the Palestinian health ministry said.

CALLS FOR A PAUSE

The stepped-up attacks coincided with a mounting international outcry for a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid in.

Qatar-mediated negotiations between Israel and Hamas continued on Sunday, a source briefed on the talks told Reuters, and included discussions about the possible release of hostages.

Hamas wants a five-day humanitarian pause in Israel’s operations to allow aid and fuel into the besieged Gaza Strip in return for the release of all civilian hostages held by the militants, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

More than half the hostages held by Hamas have foreign passports from 25 countries, including 54 Thai nationals, according to the Israeli government.

On Monday, the United Nations Security Council is due to be briefed on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The 15-member body has unsuccessfully voted four times in the past two weeks on draft resolutions that aimed to take action on the war, but the 193-member U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Friday to call for an immediate humanitarian truce.

U.S. President Joe Biden pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a call on Sunday to protect civilians in Gaza and “immediately and significantly increase the flow of humanitarian aid”, the White House said.

Colonel Elad Goren of COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry agency that co-ordinates with the Palestinians, said Israel will allow a dramatic increase in aid to Gaza in the next few days and Palestinian civilians should head to a “humanitarian zone” in the south of the tiny territory.

Medical authorities in Gaza, which has a population of 2.3 million people, said on Sunday 8,005 people – including 3,324 minors – had been killed.

The Hamas-run Gaza government’s media office said 116 medics and 35 journalists have been killed since the conflict erupted.

Reuters was unable to independently verify these figures.

Israel has vowed to annihilate Hamas, a task it described as necessitating protracted ground assaults in, around and under Gaza City, where the militants have an extensive subterranean bunker network.

There are fears too that the war will spill over into the region, including in Lebanon, where the Israeli army and Iranian-backed Hezbollah group have been exchanging fire.

On Monday, Syrian state TV said Israeli air strikes targeted two army posts in Daraa, leading to “some material losses”.

The conflict has spurred large demonstrations worldwide in support of the Palestinians. On Sunday several thousand people rallied in Beirut to show solidarity with Gaza.

Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters stormed Russia’s Dagestan airport in Makhachkala on Sunday after a plane from Israel arrived, forcing security forces to close the airport and divert flights while removing the demonstrators.

The incident prompted Israel to urge Moscow to protect Israelis and Jews in Russia.

Reuters

“Trump Too Small” – a phrase mocking former President Donald Trump that a California lawyer intended to slap on T-shirts – instead has become the center of another U.S. Supreme Court battle exploring the intersection of trademark law and free speech rights.

The justices are set to hear arguments on Wednesday in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s appeal of a lower court’s decision that reversed the agency’s denial of attorney Steve Elster’s 2018 trademark application for “Trump Too Small.” At issue is whether the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment free speech protections for criticism of public figures outweigh the agency’s concerns over Trump’s rights, as the lower court found.

The agency will try to convince the justices to uphold a 1946 federal law that bars trademarks featuring a person’s name without consent. President Joe Biden’s administration is seeking to protect Trump – the man he defeated in the 2020 U.S. election – from, in its view, having his name misappropriated in commerce. Trump is not personally involved in the case.

Elster has argued that a ruling favoring the government would give politicians improper control over speech about them. The agency, on the other hand, has said that trademarks like Elster’s could restrict the free speech of others on political matters by giving legal ownership of certain words to specific people.

Trademarks protect identifiers of sources of goods, like brand names, logos and advertising slogans.

The Supreme Court in recent years has struck down two trademark laws based on free speech concerns. It ruled in favor of Asian-American rock band The Slants in 2017 against a ban on trademarks that “disparage,” and in favor of artist Erik Brunetti against a prohibition on “immoral” or “scandalous” marks in a dispute over his “FUCT” brand in 2019.

Elster applied for the “Trump Too Small” trademark to use on T-shirts, inspired by an exchange between Trump and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio during a March 2016 Republican presidential candidate debate.

Trump earlier sought to denigrate Rubio by calling him “Little Marco.” Rubio responded at a campaign rally in Virginia that his rival had disproportionately small hands. Trump defended the size of his hands at the debate.

“Look at those hands. Are they small hands?” Trump asked. “If they’re small, something else must be small. I guarantee you, there’s no problem. I guarantee it.”

Elster told the Supreme Court that his trademark uses a double meaning to criticize Trump while expressing his views about “the smallness of Donald Trump’s overall approach to governing.” Trump was president at the time of Elster’s application.

The agency denied the application based on the 1946 law. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit later reversed that decision.

‘I STUMP FOR TRUMP’

U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, representing Biden’s administration, told the Supreme Court in a brief that the 1946 law differed from the two that the justices recently invalidated because it did not restrict speech based on an applicant’s viewpoint.

The trademark office said that the law is meant to prevent a person’s name from “being exploited for another’s commercial gain,” and has been used to reject trademarks with positive connotations (“Better With Biden,” “I Stump For Trump”) and neutral ones (“Obama Pajama,” “Royal Kate”) in addition to critical messages.

“To give Elster a (trademark) registration, I don’t think it really enhances in any way his right to speak,” said Jonathan Moskin, a partner at law firm Foley & Lardner who wrote a brief supporting the agency on behalf of the International Trademark Association, which represents various trademark owners. “He can put his slogan anywhere he wants – whether or not he gets a registration.”

Moskin also said that a Supreme Court trademark decision from June – in which the justices ruled in favor of Jack Daniel’s in a dispute over dog toys that parodied its famous whiskey bottles – may have “pulled back a little bit” from the Slants and Brunetti precedents.

Elster in a brief to the court wrote that the 1946 law “effectively precludes the registration of any mark that criticizes public figures – even as it allows them to register their own positive messages about themselves.” Elster noted that “Joe 2020” and “Hillary For America” were registered, but “No Joe in 2024” and “Hillary for Prison 2016” were rejected under the law.

Golden Gate University School of Law professor Samuel Ernst, who wrote a court brief supporting Elster, said a win for the government would create a “heckler’s veto” for politicians who want to prevent trademarks criticizing them. Ernst also said the law at issue does not further the overarching trademark law goal of preventing marketplace confusion.

“Nobody would be confused into believing that Donald Trump is selling T-shirts accusing him of being too small,” Ernst said.

Reuters

The operation took place after Israel’s Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu said its troops were still preparing for a full ground invasion, while the United States and other countries urged Israel to delay such action, fearing it could ignite hostilities on other fronts in the Middle East.

The U.N. agency providing aid to Palestinian civilians in Gaza said it may have to shut down operations very soon if no fuel reaches the Hamas-ruled territory amid a desperate need for shelter, water, food and medical services.

Israel has carried out nearly three weeks of intense bombardments of the densely populated Gaza Strip following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli communities which it says killed some 1,400 people.

Gaza’s health ministry said on Thursday that 7,028 Palestinians had now been killed in the retaliatory air strikes, including 2,913 children.

On Wednesday, U.S. President Joe Biden cast doubt on the Palestinian casualty figures, which an Israeli military spokesman said could not be trusted.

However the military has not provided any assessment of its own and Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra rejected the statements questioning the figures.

The Health Ministry on Thursday published a 212 page document which it said contains the names of all the victims identified, with their ID numbers.

Israeli army radio said the military had overnight staged its biggest incursion into northern Gaza of the current war.

Military video showed armoured vehicles crossing the fortified barrier from Israel and blowing up buildings in preparation for the next stages of combat.

“Tanks and infantry struck numerous terrorist cells, infrastructure and anti-tank missile launch posts,” it said.

Palestinians said Israeli air strikes had pounded the territory again overnight and people living in central Gaza, including near the Bureij refugee camp, reported intensive tank shelling all night.

ARAB CRITICISM

As the bloodshed continued with no sign of a let-up, the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt and Morocco on Thursday condemned the targeting of civilians and violations of international law in Gaza.

Their joint statement said the right to self-defence did not justify breaking the law and neglecting Palestinians’ rights. The Arab ministers also condemned forced displacement and collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza.

They criticised Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian areas and called for more efforts to implement a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict – an idea that has been the foundation of a long-moribund peace process.

“The absence of a political solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has led to repeated acts of violence and suffering for the Palestinian and Israeli peoples and the peoples of the region,” it said.

Support for Israel came from European governments.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Friday will send a clear signal of backing for Israel in what he called its self-defence efforts.

HOSTAGES

Concern also grew over the fate of more than 200 hostages seized by Hamas in the Oct. 7 assault and taken to Gaza.

A spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, said on Thursday about 50 captives had been killed in Gaza due to Israeli strikes. He gave no further details and Reuters was not able to verify the numbers.

Biden discussed efforts to locate and secure Americans believed held hostage in Gaza in a phone call with Netanyahu.

Israel said there were 224 hostages, whose presence complicates any Israeli ground invasion. Some of those held include a number of foreign passport holders. Hamas has freed four captives since Friday and Gaza began receiving a small amount of aid the following day.

A Qatari negotiator told Sky News that a pause in fighting could help get more hostages released in the coming days.

Qatari Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Mohmmad Al Khulaifi said: “It’s a very, very difficult negotiation … With the bombing continuing every day, our task becomes more difficult. But despite that we remain hopeful, we remain committed.”

MORE DEATHS

In Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, an Israeli air strike hit a house, killing a mother, her three daughters and a baby boy, whose father held his body in hospital.

“Did he kill? Did he wound someone? Did he capture someone? They were innocent children inside their house,” he said.

The director of the Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, Nahed Abu Taaema, said the bodies of 77 people killed in air strikes had been brought in overnight, most of them women and children, Hamas’s Al-Aqsa radio station reported.

Many Palestinians are sheltering in Khan Younis’s hospitals, schools, homes and existing refugee camps and on the street after Israel warned them to leave their homes in the north.

Israel did not respond directly to the report but said its forces had struck a Hamas missile launch post in the Khan Younis area that was next to a mosque and kindergarten.

It was not clear if both sides were referring to the same incident.

The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said it urgently needed fuel to maintain life-saving humanitarian operations in Gaza. Israel has refused to let in fuel with aid shipments, saying it could be seized by Hamas.

More than 613,000 people made homeless by the war are sheltering in 150 UNRWA facilities across the shattered territory.

“In the last 24 hours another three UNRWA staff members have been killed, bringing the total to 38 staff killed,” said UNRWA.

Around midday on Thursday, according to officials at Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis, Israel bombed an area not far from an UNRWA shelter for displaced people, killing at least 18 people and causing panic among the displaced.

Mahmoud Shameya, sheltering there with his wife and three children, said they lived in constant terror because of ongoing Israeli bombing.

“I urge the whole world to protect us,” he said. “We sleep amid the sounds of explosions and we wake up to the sounds of explosions, the children are always blocking their ears with their hands.”

Humanitarian supplies are critically low but world powers failed at the United Nations to agree on how to call for a lull to the fighting to deliver significant amounts of aid.

Reuters

…Israeli forces raid Jalazone refugee camp in West Bank, two dead, says Palestinian health ministry

…Biden, European leaders issue joint statement supporting Israel, calling to protect civilians

…Second aid convoy reaches Gaza

…Fears grow that Israel-Hamas conflict could expand as ground offensive looms

Israel bombarded Gaza with air strikes early on Monday and its aircraft struck southern Lebanon overnight, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a meeting of his top generals and his war cabinet to assess the escalating conflict.

Israel’s attacks concentrated on the Gaza Strip’s centre and north, Palestinian media reported. A strike on a house near the Jabalia refugee camp, in northern Gaza, killed several Palestinians and wounded others, according to media reports.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, two Palestinians were killed at the Jalazone refugee camp near Ramallah, the Palestinian health ministry said on Monday.

Residents told Reuters that Israeli forces raided the camp and carried out widespread arrests, as they clashed with gunmen and some youths who threw stones. The Israeli army has not issued a statement about the incident.

Health authorities in Gaza said at least 4,600 people were killed in Israel’s two-week bombardment that began after a Hamas Oct. 7 rampage on southern Israeli communities in which 1,400 people were killed and 212 were taken into Gaza as hostages.

Palestinian Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian discussed in a call late on Sunday the means of stopping Israel’s “brutal crimes” in Gaza, Hamas said in a statement.

Israel has amassed tanks and troops near the fenced border around Gaza for a planned ground invasion aiming to annihilate Hamas.

Fears that the Israel-Hamas war could mushroom into a wider Middle East conflict rose over the weekend with Washington warning of a significant risk to U.S. interests in the region and announcing a new deployment of advanced air defenses.

The Pentagon has already dispatched a significant amount of naval power to the Middle East, including two aircraft carriers, support ships and about 2,000 Marines, to help deter attacks by Iran-affiliated forces.

“What we’re seeing … is the prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told ABC’s “This Week” program on Sunday.

China’s Middle East special envoy Zhai Jun, who is visiting the region, warned that the risk of a large-scale ground conflict was rising and that spillover conflicts in the region were “worrisome”, Chinese state media said on Monday.

Iranian security officials told Reuters Iran’s strategy was for Middle East proxies like Hezbollah to pursue limited strikes on Israeli and U.S. targets but to avoid a major escalation that would draw in Tehran, a high-wire act for the Islamic Republic.

In neighbouring Syria, where Hamas’ main regional backer Iran has a military presence, Israeli missiles hit Damascus and Aleppo international airports early on Sunday, putting both out of service and killing two workers, Syrian state media said.

Along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, the Iran-backed Hezbollah group has clashed with Israeli forces in support of Hamas in the deadliest escalation of frontier violence since an Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006.

Early on Monday, Israeli aircraft struck two Hezbollah cells in Lebanon that were planning to launch anti-tank missiles and rockets toward Israel, its military said. Israel’s military also said it struck other Hezbollah targets, including a compound and an observation post.

Hezbollah said on Monday that one of its fighters was killed, without providing details. Israel’s military said 7 troops have been killed on the Lebanese border since the latest conflict began.

With violence around its heavily guarded borders increasing, Israel on Sunday added 14 communities close to Lebanon and Syria to its evacuation contingency plan in the north of the country.

MORE AID ARRIVES IN GAZA

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh called on the international community to create “a united front” to stop Israel’s attacks in Gaza and allow desperately needed aid which has only begun to trickle in.

A second convoy of 14 aid trucks entered the Rafah crossing to the besieged Gaza Strip on Sunday night, and U.S. President Joe Biden and Netanyahu affirmed in a call “there will now be continued flow of this critical assistance into Gaza”, the White House said.

The U.N. humanitarian office said the volume of aid entering so far was just 4% of the daily average before the hostilities and a fraction of what was needed with food, water, medicines and fuel stocks running out.

Biden also ramped up his diplomacy, convening calls on Sunday with Netanyahu and Pope Francis and speaking with the leaders of Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Britain about getting aid into Gaza and preventing the conflict from spreading.

In a joint statement, the leaders voiced support for Israel’s right to defend itself. They also called for adherence to international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians.

Netanyahu also held a phone call with the leaders of France, Spain and the Netherlands late on Sunday, the Israeli leader’s office said.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will visit Israel on Monday and French President Emmanuel Macron will visit Tuesday.

Reuters

…Biden says ‘based on information we have today, it appears the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza’

…White House says current US assessment of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source info is that Israel not responsible for explosion at Gaza hospital

…Biden hugs survivors of Hamas rampage

U.S. President Joe Biden pledged solidarity with Israel on Wednesday and said a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital appeared to have been caused by Hamas militants as he wrapped up an urgent Middle East peace mission that was curtailed by the explosion.

Raising fears of wider instability, protesters around the Middle East vented fury with Israel over the fireball that engulfed the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital late on Tuesday, which Palestinian officials said killed 471 people.

They blamed an Israeli air strike for the blast, while Israel it was caused by a failed rocket launch by Gaza’s Islamic Jihad militant group, which denied blame.

Biden promised more aid to Israel at the end of his impromptu one-day visit to the country, which is bombarding Gaza to try to root out militants from its ruling Hamas group after they killed 1,400 Israelis in a rampage earlier this month.

He said of the hospital blast: “Based on the information we have seen today, it (explosion) appears the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.”

In Washington, the White House National Security Council echoed Biden, saying the U.S. assessment was based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information.

Arab leaders responded to the loss of life at the hospital, which they blamed on Israel, by cancelling a summit with Biden in Jordan. This had been intended as the second half of his carefully choreographed itinerary for emergency meetings with allies to avert a wider Middle East war.

DON’T BE CONSUMED BY RAGE, BIDEN SAYS

Biden said the United States would do everything it could to ensure Israel was safe while also urging Israelis not to be consumed by rage, reiterating that the vast majority of Palestinians were not affiliated with Hamas.

The Gaza health ministry said 3,478 Palestinians have been killed and 12,065 injured in Israeli air strikes since Oct 7.

Biden said the U.S. would provide $100 million in new funding for humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

“What sets us apart from the terrorists is we believe in the fundamental dignity of every human life,” Biden said. If that was not respected, “then the terrorists win.”

He also said he would ask Congress for an “unprecedented” aid package this week, before flying out of Israel after what ended up being a less than eight-hour visit.

Biden faced intense pressure to secure a clear Israeli commitment to let aid into Gaza from Egypt, to ease the plight of civilians in the small, densely populated coastal enclave.

At the end of his visit, Netanyahu’s office put out a statement saying Israel would let food, water and medicines reach southern Gaza via Egypt. It reiterated that it would not let aid in from Israel until Hamas released Israeli hostages.

BIDEN SUMMIT WITH ARABS CANCELLED

Biden’s Middle East trip was designed to calm the region, but Jordan called off his planned summit in Aman with Egypt and the Palestinian Authority after the hospital blast. Instead, he was expected to speak to the Jordanian and Egyptian leaders by phone from Air Force One on his way home.

After talks with Netanyahu’s war cabinet, Biden held an emotional meeting with Israeli survivors of the Oct. 7 slaughter. He hugged retired grandmother Rachel Edri, who was held hostage at gunpoint in her home for 20 hours by Hamas and used food and conversation to stall them until their capture.

“Please keep supporting us in eliminating Hamas once and for all,” a soldier told Biden.

Hamas and witnesses later said Israel was bombarding Gaza City’s Zeitoun district, and the group’s armed wing said it fired more rockets towards Israel’s biggest city Tel Aviv on Wednesday over what it called Israeli attacks on Gaza civilians.

Sirens sounded in central Israel but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

‘HELP US, HELP US!’

The accounts of destruction at the hospital were horrific even by the standards of the past 12 days, which have confronted the world with relentless images, first of Israelis murdered by Hamas gunmen in their homes and then of Palestinian families buried under rubble from Israel’s retaliatory strikes.

Rescue workers scoured blood-stained debris for survivors. The Gaza health ministry put the death toll at 471, though Israel disputed those figures. Palestinian ministry spokesperson Ashraf Al-Qudra said rescuers were still recovering bodies.

“People came running into the surgery department screaming, ‘Help us, help us, there are people killed and wounded inside the hospital!’” said Dr Fadel Naim, head of the hospital’s Orthopedic Surgery Department.

Israel later released drone footage of the scene of the explosion, which it said showed it was not responsible because there was no impact crater from any missile or bomb and no structural damage to surrounding buildings.

The Israeli military published what it said was an audio recording of “communication between terrorists talking about rockets misfiring”.

Palestinians were convinced the explosion was an Israeli attack, with no warning for civilians to leave a hospital being used as a shelter by Gazans already made homeless by bombing.

FURY ACROSS MIDDLE EAST

World leaders from U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres to Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the blast in statements that nonetheless avoided addressing who was to blame.

The blast unleashed anger across the Middle East.

Palestinian security forces fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse anti-government protesters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, seat of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, one of the Arab leaders who cancelled a meeting with Biden.

Tensions also ran very high on Israel’s border with Lebanon, where clashes between the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement and Israel over the past week have been the deadliest since the last all-out war in 2006.

On Wednesday, the Israeli army said troops exchanged fire with militants across the border and a tank destroyed two militant positions on Lebanese soil after spotting fighters trying to fire an anti-tank rocket.

Reuters