Israel's Paranoia
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Gaza official says about 200 bodies exhumed at hospital
Gaza’s Civil Defence agency has said that health workers have uncovered around 200 bodies over the past three days of people killed and buried by Israeli forces at a hospital in Khan Younis.
The Israeli military did not offer an immediate comment.
“Our civil defence crews are still recovering bodies from inside Nasser Medical Complex, and since Saturday bodies of nearly 200 martyrs have been retrieved,” Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defence, told AFP.
British consulate in Jerusalem alarmed by violence, destruction in West Bank
The British consulate in Jerusalem has said that it is alarmed by the “escalating violence and destruction in the West Bank and the number of casualties, notably in Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem over the weekend”.
In a post on X, the consulate said that de-escalation is urgently needed.
“West Bank stability is essential to keep alive prospects of peace,” it said.
Review says UNRWA has ‘robust’ neutrality steps, issues persist
A review of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has found that it has robust frameworks to ensure compliance with humanitarian neutrality principles though issues persist, in a report which could prompt some donors to review funding freezes, Reuters reports.
The report also said Israel had yet to provide supporting evidence for its claim that a significant number of UNRWA staff were members of terrorist organisations.
The United Nations appointed former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna to lead the UNRWA neutrality review. Reuters reviewed a copy of the Colonna-led review’s final report, which is due to be released later today.
Spanish FM calls for permanent Gaza ceasefire
Spanish Foreign Minister Joss Manuel Albarez has called for a permanent ceasefire and warned of repercussions if Israel invades Rafah, Al Jazeera reports.
Ahead of an EU foreign ministers meeting, Albarez urged the international community not to remain indifferent and to act to achieve an urgent ceasefire.
He added that the recognition of a Palestinian state was necessary to achieve a two-state solution and to end the violence in the Middle East.
“The possibility of the conflict spreading to Lebanon worries us, because its dimensions will change, and because Lebanon is a fragile and tense state,” he warned.
Palestinians suffer Israeli bombardment at Gaza’s Al-Daraj neighbourhood
OIC seeks probe into ‘war crime’ over mass graves in Khan Younis
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has condemned “the horrific massacres” committed by Israel following the uncovering of mass graves in the courtyard of the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza’s Khan Younis, Al Jazeera reports.
“Hundreds of displaced, wounded, sick people and medical teams have been subjected to torture and abuse before being executed and buried collectively,” the organisation said in a statement.
It called for a probe into “a war crime, a crime against humanity, and organised state terrorism”, stressing the need for the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice “to assume their responsibilities in this regard”.
Why did the Israeli military-intelligence chief resign now?
Akiva Eldar, an Israeli author and former columnist with Haaretz newspaper, says Major-General Aharon Halavi likely quit now because Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t going to end the war on Gaza anytime soon.
Eldar added another reason is because the prime minister “is not interested in bringing the captives back to Israel”.
“Netanyahu is the highest authority and he never took responsibility [for the Hamas attack] so Haliva wanted to send a personal message to tell him, ‘if I can do it, you can do it,’” he said.
His move will energize anti-government protests while also putting more pressure on war cabinet members Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot. “It will create a dynamic that will make it harder for them to convince their constituencies that they have a good reason to stay,” said Eldar.
“If Haliva felt it was a time to say goodbye, many will call on them to step down since they were also part of this lack of strategy to end the conflict with the Palestinians.”
Israeli military intelligence got it ‘spectacularly wrong’
Major-General Aharon Haliva says in his resignation letter the military’s intelligence division did not live up to the task it was entrusted with. He said we know now there was a major failure of intelligence that allowed Hamas to get away with this large-scale attack on Israeli territory.
Up to a year before, Israeli intelligence got its hands on a Hamas document that accurately laid out the plans for the October 7 attack. We know Israeli military spotters watching from the towers around Gaza in the weeks and months leading up to the infiltration had said they’d seen Hamas battalions preparing for some sort of assault.
All of this was ignored at the very highest levels of the military and the government because there was this belief that Hamas was not interested in launching an assault on Israel. That Hamas was more interested in managing Gaza.
They got that spectacularly wrong. The head of military intelligence has accepted responsibility for that.
Gaza death toll hits 34,151 as Israel army announces war’s ‘next step’
The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza during the Israeli military onslaught has reached 34,151. Another 77,084 have been wounded, the health ministry says.
The death toll is likely far higher with thousands believed buried under the rubble of buildings demolished in Israeli strikes.
Among the dead are more than 14,500 children and 9,500 women, Gaza’s media office says.
Israeli military releases intelligence chief’s resignation letter
The resignation letter from Major-General Aharon Haliva has been provided to journalists.
“On Saturday, October 7th 2023, Hamas committed a deadly surprise attack against the state of Israel. The intelligence division under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with,” he said.
“I carry that black day with me ever since. Day after day, night after night. I will forever carry with me the terrible pain of the war.”
Haliva is the first high-ranking official to step down for failing to prevent the attack.
Relative of dead children asks: ‘What did they do?’
Reaction continues after an Israeli air strike on a family home killed 24 people, including 16 children and six women, in southern Rafah.
“These children were sleeping. What did they do? What was their fault?” asked one relative Umm Kareem.
Mohammed al-Beheiri said his daughter, Rasha, and her six children, the youngest 18 months old, were among the dead. A woman and three children were still under the rubble, he said.
Resident Umm Hassan Kloub, 35, said her children screamed when they “woke up to a nightmare of an explosion”.
“Every second we live in terror, even the sound of Israeli aircraft doesn’t stop,” she said.
Israel’s attack on Gaza has killed more than 14,500 children. The war has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians – at least two-thirds of them children and women – since last October.
Israeli army arrests Palestinian accused of killing settler
Israeli forces detained Ahmed Dawabsheh, 21, in the town of Duma in the occupied West Bank after he was accused of killing a young Israeli settler, Benjamin Achimer, earlier this month.
The 14-year-old was found dead a day after he went missing. As they searched for Achimer, dozens of Israeli settlers stormed the village of al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, killing one Palestinian and wounding at least 25 others. More villages were attacked in the following days as mobs set fire to homes and vehicles.
Since the start of the war on Gaza, settler attacks in the occupied Palestinian territory have surged to unprecedented levels. In the first 10 months of 2023, the UN recorded at least 1,038 incidents of setter violence – an average of three attacks per day – nearly triple the figure since October 7, 2023.
Israel’s military intelligence chief resigns over October 7 attack failures
Aharon Haliva, the head of Israel’s military intelligence, is the first senior official figure to step down over the failures surrounding Hamas’s attack.
Haliva said in October that he shouldered the blame for not preventing the attack, which broke through Israel’s vaunted defences.
Students at MIT, Emerson and Tufts universities set up protest camps
Students at three prestigious universities in and near the US city of Boston have set up protest camps, demanding that their institutions cut off ties with Israel, according to campaigners.
The universities are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Emerson and Tufts, the National Students for Justice in Palestine said.
The moves come after students at Columbia University in New York launched a Gaza Solidarity Encampment at their campus. That protest is now in its fifth day. Some 100 students were arrested there on Friday.
US congresswoman slams $14bn for ‘death and destruction’ in Gaza
Delia Ramirez said “history books will write about” how US leaders “lacked the courage and moral clarity to stand up to” Netanyahu.
Ramirez, who represents a district in the state of Illinois, pointed out that Netanyahu had bombed the “safe zone” of Rafah just one day after the US House voted to give $14bn to Israel “in unconditional military funding to Netanyahu’s campaign of death and destruction”.
The congresswoman made the comments in a post on X, in response to reports that 22 people were killed in Rafah on Sunday night, including 18 children.
Israeli army confirms Israeli drone shot down over Lebanon
The Israeli army has confirmed one of its drones was shot down by a surface-to-air missile while “operating in the skies of Lebanon”.
In a post on X, the army said Israeli fighter jets then attacked the site where the missile was launched from.
Earlier, Hezbollah said it had downed an Israeli drone that was “waging its attacks on our steadfast people”.
Blinken, Gallant discuss Israel’s security, captive negotiations
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has spoken to Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on the telephone about “efforts to protect Israel’s security”, according to a statement on X.
Blinken said the call also covered negotiations on releasing captives held by Hamas and allowing “more life-saving humanitarian aid to reach Palestinian civilians in Gaza” as well as “measures to de-escalate regional tensions”.
The call comes as Blinken is facing pressure from his Israeli counterparts over a reported plan to sanction an Israeli military unit for alleged human rights violations.
The US is also on track to approve $26.38bn in funding for Israel, including $5.2bn for Israel’s missile and rocket defence system, which successfully deterred a recent attack from Iran.
‘Constant fear’ in West Bank amid Israeli settler violence
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said Israeli settler violence is contributing to a “state of constant fear” in the occupied West Bank.
“The situation in the West Bank is worsening by the day including in Palestine refugee camps”, many of which are operated by UNRWA, he said in a post on X. “It is time to end the occupation and address the longest lasting unresolved conflict through political means and a genuine commitment to peace.”
Lazzarini’s comments came after the Palestinian Health Ministry said 14 people were killed in an Israeli raid on the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank’s Tulkarem on the weekend.
West Bank camp mourns Palestinians killed in Israeli raid
TULKAREM (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Families kissed the faces of the dead and neighbours cried in the streets after one of the worst Israeli raids anyone in the Nur Shams refugee camp can remember.
On Sunday a funeral procession for 13 Palestinians killed in the army's West Bank operation passed through roads piled with rubble from Israeli bulldozers and rocket fire.
Israel’s monthly military spending doubled by end of 2023: Report
Israel’s monthly military spending more than doubled to $4.7bn by the end of 2023, according to a new report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The increase from an average of $1.8bn per month before October 2023 was “mainly driven by Israel’s large-scale offensive in Gaza in response to the attack on southern Israel by Hamas in October 2023”, SIPRI said.
Israel’s increased military spending was part of a wider global trend, with SIPRI finding global military spending increased by 6.8 percent in 2023 to a total of $2443bn.
Israel’s closest ally, the United States, remained the single largest military spender in 2023, with $917bn in expenditure, a 37 percent share of all countries’ spending.
Bodies found at Gaza hospital as Israel vows to 'increase pressure' on Hamas
GAZA STRIP (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – Gaza's civil defence said Sunday dozens of bodies had been found buried at a hospital complex previously raided by Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to ramp up military pressure on Hamas.
Netanyahu, who threatened action "in the coming days" without elaborating, has repeatedly said the Israeli army will launch a ground assault on Rafah despite international concern for civilians who have taken refuge in the southern Gazan city.
Israel pounds Gaza as West Bank violence surges
GAZA STRIP (AFP) - Israel carried out deadly strikes in Gaza, first responders in the war-battered Palestinian territory said on Sunday (Apr 21), as violence flared in the occupied West Bank.
The latest bombardments came as lawmakers in Israel's top ally, the United States, approved US$13 billion in new Israeli military aid even as global criticism mounts over the death toll and dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
