Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled that a cease-fire deal that would free dozens of hostages in Gaza could be taking shape. Netanyahu is in Washington, where he is to address Congress.
The of part of a crowded area in the Gaza Strip it had designated a humanitarian zone. The Health Ministry in Gaza says over 39,000 Palestinians have been killed in the nine-month war.
Egypt, Qatar and the United States are pushing toward a phased deal that would stop the fighting and free remaining hostages. Netanyahu's office has said a negotiating team will be sent to continue talks Thursday.
In China, Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah on forming a unity government and ending a long rift. But previous declarations have failed, including a similar deal in 2011.
Here’s the latest:
UN convoy carrying children was hit by gunfire. No one was injured
UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. children’s agency convoy carrying humanitarian workers and children was hit by gunfire while waiting at a designated holding area in the central Gaza Strip, briefly halting their travel but resulting in no injuries, the U.N. says.
U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Tuesday the U.N. children’s agency, known as UNICEF, was unable to determine the origin of the bullets.
He said the two clearly marked UNICEF vehicles were hit earlier Tuesday near the Wadi Gaza checkpoint while en route to reunite five children, including a baby, with their father.
Dujarric said the shooting was the second involving UNICEF vehicles in the past 12 weeks and came just days after a convoy belonging to the U.N. agency helping Palestinians, known as UNRWA, was hit by gunfire from the Israeli side. The U.N. said both the UNRWA shooting and Tuesday’s UNICEF shooting took place near the Wadi Gaza checkpoint.
“We strongly reiterate that humanitarian workers are protected under international humanitarian law and must never be targeted,” Dujarric told U.N. correspondents.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
On Monday, the Israeli military ordered civilians to evacuate an area in southern Khan Younis it designated a humanitarian zone to facilitate operations against Hamas militants. It said Hamas fighters were launching rockets toward Israel from there. Dujarric said about 150,000 Palestinians were fleeing following the evacuation order and escalation of Israeli military operations.
Earlier this month, Israel estimated at least a million Palestinians were in the humanitarian zone that covered about 14 kilometers (8.6 miles) along the Mediterranean.
Dujarric said parts of the Salah a-Din highway, a main north-south road and a “key route for humanitarian goods,” were included in Israel’s evacuation order. Humanitarian workers were “forced to re-route many of their essential movements” to a different road that is not a “viable alternative” due to traffic congestion, he said.
Israel warns its Olympic athletes of possible attacks from extremist groups
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s ϳԹ Security Council warned Israelis traveling to the Olympic Games in Paris to avoid demonstrations and be vigilant against possible attacks.
Israel has designated France and other European countries with a Level 2 travel warning for potential threat, encouraging Israelis to take increased precautions. The Security Council also noted that there has been an increase in extremist groups targeting Israelis and Jews since the start of the latest war between Israel and Hamas, and the Olympics could prove a target because any attack will garner intense media coverage.
“It is our understanding that at least some of these organizations are planning to also attack Israeli/Jewish targets around the Olympic Games in France,” the security council said Tuesday.
Additionally, the government agency warned that there is a high likelihood of demonstrations against Israelis and the Israeli delegation, and that Israelis should avoid demonstrations, “which could escalate and become violent.”
Israel is sending a delegation of 88 athletes to the 2024 Olympics in Paris, according to the Israel Olympic Committee. Eight athletes are .
Newly displaced Palestinians sleep on the ground outside Nasser hospital
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Palestinians displaced by the Israeli military's latest order to leave parts of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis say they are sleeping in the streets. Some now shelter on the sidewalk outside the largest hospital in southern Gaza, Nasser hospital.
Monday's evacuation order as the Israeli military pursues Hamas militants has sent thousands of people on the move again. “We left without (taking) any water, food or mattress,” one displaced woman, Tamam al-Qarra, told The Associated Press.
Her relative, Hamda al-Qarra, said they are sleeping on the ground outside the hospital. “Take us back to our homes. We have had enough of war,” she said. Another displaced woman, Um Mohammad Abu Te’ma, said there are no water or bathroom facilities for displaced people to use at the hospital complex. Her several water bottles were nearly empty.
Hezbollah says it attacks 2 military posts in northern Israel
BEIRUT — Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group has carried out attacks with drones and rockets on two military posts in northern Israel after an Israeli drone strike killed a member of the group’s elite force.
Hezbollah said it launched several explosive drones at a military post in Mount Meron and a Burkan rocket with large warhead at a post near the village of Margliot.
Hezbollah said the attacks were in retaliation for an Israeli drone strike on the southern Lebanese village of Shaqra in which a member of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force was killed.
The Israeli military said “numerous suspicious aerial targets” were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israel. Several were intercepted and several hits were identified in the area of Mount Meron. There were no injuries, the military said.
Since early October, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have killed more than 450 people, mostly Hezbollah members, but also around 90 civilians and noncombatants. On the Israeli side, 21 soldiers and 13 civilians have been killed.
Israeli raid in a Palestinian city in the West Bank kills 5, including 3 militants
JERUSALEM — Israeli forces raided a Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank killing at least five people, including three militants, the Israeli military, Hamas and the Palestinian Health Ministry said Tuesday. The ministry said two women were among the dead.
The military said a drone struck militants in the area of the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem overnight, killing Ashraf Nafa, who the military called a local senior Hamas operative. It said another alleged militant, Mohammed Awad, was also killed, and said both had been behind attacks on Israeli soldiers. The Israeli statement did not mention the women.
Hamas identified Nafa as a member and said two other militants with the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, including Awad, were also killed. The Israeli army later announced that it ended the raid on Tulkarem.
For several years, the Israeli military has been carrying out near-nightly raids in the West Bank that intensified when the war in Gaza erupted. The Palestinian Health Ministry says more than 500 Palestinians have been killed in the ensuing violence, many of them in clashes with Israeli soldiers but others while throwing stones or protesting. People not involved in confrontations have also been killed.
A top WHO official is worried about possible polio and other disease outbreaks in Gaza
GENEVA — A top World Health Organization official in Palestinian areas said Tuesday he’s “extremely worried” about polio and other outbreaks of communicable diseases in Gaza after traces of the virus turned up in sewage samples in the territory.
Dr. Ayadil Saparbekov, team lead for health emergencies at WHO in the occupied Palestinian territory, said test results and a risk assessment were expected this week about how people and medical officials should respond to a possible outbreak.
There have been no confirmed human cases of polio in Gaza, but six of seven sewage samples tested positive for vaccine-derived polio virus, he said. That means that one or more people who got a polio vaccine jab have shed the virus in the environment.
“I am extremely worried about an outbreak happening in Gaza. And this is not only polio — the different outbreaks of the communicable diseases that may happen,” he told a United Nations briefing in Geneva by video, alluding to a hepatitis outbreak there in 2023.
Saparbekov said lack of water, sanitation, and access to health care could lead to more people dying of communicable diseases than from injury related conditions.
Rolando Gomez, a United Nations spokesperson in Geneva, said Israel “as the occupying power” has a responsibility “to ensure assistance reaches those in need in Gaza” and to “create an enabling environment for the U.N. and our partners to operate.”
Israel has announced plans to vaccinate its soldiers operating in Gaza against polio.
Palestinian factions sign a declaration in the latest attempt to clear the way for a unity government as the war in Gaza rages on
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah signed a declaration in Beijing on ending a yearslong rift, Chinese state state broadcaster CCTV said Tuesday, taking a step toward potentially resolving the deep divide between the sides as rages on.
The declaration by the two heavyweights of Palestinian politics — and other smaller Palestinian groups — to form a unity government for the Palestinian territories is the result of the latest in a series of .
But previous declarations have failed, including a similar deal in 2011, casting doubt over whether the China-sponsored negotiations might actually lead to a resolution. It also comes as Israel and Hamas are weighing that would wind down the nine-month war and free dozens of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Still, the future of Gaza is undecided, with Israel vehemently opposed to any role by Hamas in governing Gaza. It has also rejected calls from the United States for the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority to run Gaza after the war ends. The lack of a postwar vision for running the Gaza Strip has complicated negotiations over a cease-fire.
Since the current war broke out in Gaza almost 10 months ago, Hamas officials have said that the party does not want to return to ruling Gaza as it did before the conflict, and the group has called for formation of a government of technocrats to be agreed upon by the various Palestinian factions, which would prepare the way for elections for both Gaza and the West Bank, with the intention of forming a unified government.
Conditions for a cease-fire deal that would release hostages from captivity in Gaza are ‘ripening,’ Israel's Netanyahu says
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled that a cease-fire deal that would free dozens of could be taking shape.
In a meeting late Monday in Washington with families of hostages, Netanyahu said the conditions to bring the captives back were “ripening,” according to a statement from his office. He said that was happening because of the fierce military pressure Israel was putting on Hamas.
He gave no further details on the deal’s progress.
For weeks, Israel and Hamas have been weighing a United States-backed cease-fire deal that would bring a halt to the nine-month war and free the roughly 120 hostages taken by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack. About a third of the hostages are said to be dead, and Israel’s military announced Monday that two more died in captivity.
Netanyahu faces intense pressure from a broad swath of Israelis to agree to the deal. He has vowed to defeat Hamas before stopping the war, a term that has been a main sticking point throughout the negotiations.
The families of hostages had demanded that Netanyahu nail down a deal before flying to Washington, where he will address Congress and is expected to meet President Joe Biden.
Bill labeling UN Palestinian aid agency as a ‘terror group’ moves forward in Israel's parliament
JERUSALEM, Israel — An Israeli parliamentary bill that seeks to label the main provider of aid for Palestinians in Gaza a terrorist group is moving ahead.
Legislators voted 50-10 in favor of the bill in a preliminary vote in Israel’s parliament Monday. The bill requires two more votes before becoming law.
The bill is the product of increasingly tense relations between Israel and the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as . Israel has accused the agency of militant links, claiming that hundreds of its employees are members of militant groups, including in Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel. Those accusations led to a global cascade of funding cuts to the agency.
UNRWA employs thousands of workers and provides vital aid and services to millions of people across the Middle East. , it has been the main supplier of food, water and shelter to civilians during .
The bill moving through parliament would brand the agency as a “terror group,” saying that the employees’ alleged involvement in the Hamas assault shows that “it is a terror organization that is no different from the Hamas terror organization.” The bill also seeks to cut diplomatic ties between Israel and the agency.
Juliette Touma, director of communications for UNRWA, said she wasn’t entirely sure how the bill, if made law, would affect the agency, but said it would likely further complicate its work. She said UNRWA is in contact with Israeli authorities on a daily basis. The bill could make that more challenging if passed.
The European Union, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have all previously expressed concern about the bill, saying it would hobble the agency’s work.
