Blinken urges Israel to avoid ‘further civilian harm’ in Gaza
Jason Burke
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has met top Israeli officials in Tel Aviv on a regional tour aimed at reaching a consensus on the territory’s future and stopping an escalation of the war across the Middle East.
US officials said Blinken told Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, on Tuesday that his forces must avoid inflicting further harm on civilians in Gaza.
Matthew Miller, a state department spokesperson, said Blinken had reaffirmed US support for Israel’s attempts to stop any repeat of the Hamas attack of 7 October but “stressed the importance of avoiding further civilian harm and protecting civilian infrastructure in Gaza”.
However, there was no sign of any let up in the violence in Gaza as the two men met, as intense fighting, shelling and aerial bombardment continued across the south and centre of the territory.
On the disputed border between Israel and Lebanon, there have been intensifying clashes for weeks between Israel and Hezbollah, the militant Islamist organisation.
Hezbollah targeted a key Israeli base on Tuesday, declaring the attack part of its response to recent high-level Israeli assassinations in Lebanon. Shortly afterwards, Israel killed four more Hezbollah members, including one at the funeral of a senior commander in the group’s elite Radwan force who had been killed the day before.
Key events
Antony Blinken says the “immense human toll” is one of the reasons why the US continues to stand with Israel in ensuring that the 7 October Hamas attacks can never happen again.
He says the US is “intensely focused” on bringing the remaining hostages in Gaza home, addressing the humanitarian crisis, strengthening protection for civilians in Gaza, and preventing the conflict from spreading across the region.
Blinken holds news conference in Tel Aviv
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is speaking at a press conference in Tel Aviv following meetings with Israeli leaders.
Blinken says he has met with hostages who have been released as well as families of those hostages still being held in Gaza, for whom “time moves differently”.
He says time also “feels different” for families in Gaza, where hundreds of thousands are experiencing “acute” food insecurity. “The passage of another day without food is excruciating,” he says.
You can watch Blinken’s news conference below:
UN international law experts have criticised the killing of Hamas deputy leader, Saleh al-Arouri, and other fighters in drone strikes in Lebanon, stating that this amounted to crimes of extrajudicial killings and murder.
“Killings in foreign territory are arbitrary when they are not authorised under international law,” UN special rapporteurs Ben Saul and Morris Tidball-Binz said in a statement.
Israel was not exercising self-defence because it presented no evidence that the victims were committing an armed attack on Israel from Lebanese territory.
The UN experts also said there was “no legal basis for geographically unlimited attacks against members of an armed group wherever they are”.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it assassinated Arouri, who was killed in a drone strike on Hamas’s office in Musharafieh, a southern suburb of Beirut, last week.
Israel needs to “act carefully” and avoid risking further escalation in its war with Hamas, Downing Street has said.
PA news agency reported that when whether the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, shared his foreign secretary David Cameron’s concerns about whether Israel was acting within international law, a No 10 spokesperson replied:
It’s an issue we continue to keep under review and obviously we have made our views clear to the Israeli government at a number of levels on this.
The Downing Street spokesperson added:
We continue to want Israel to act carefully and avoid doing anything that could endanger civilians or risk potential further escalation. Fundamentally, though, we recognise that it is Israel that is responding to a terror attack, first and foremost.
Palestinian Authority accuses Israeli forces of running over body of militant in West Bank
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has accused Israel of a “brutal crime” after footage circulating on social media appeared to show a military vehicle running over a dead militant in the occupied West Bank.
As we reported earlier, the videos appear to show soldiers firing at an injured Palestinian lying on the ground and an Israeli armoured vehicle running over one of the bodies of the dead men before halting and then continuing over the body, dragging it for several metres.
The foreign affairs ministry of the PA said the footage was from a military operation in the city of Tulkarem. A statement said:
This complex and brutal crime is not the first and will not be the last in the series of crimes of the occupation and terrorist settler militia members.
Israel’s military confirmed they had killed three “terrorists” on Monday night and engaged in gun battles around Tulkarm.
Blinken urges Israel to avoid ‘further civilian harm’ in Gaza
Jason Burke
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has met top Israeli officials in Tel Aviv on a regional tour aimed at reaching a consensus on the territory’s future and stopping an escalation of the war across the Middle East.
US officials said Blinken told Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, on Tuesday that his forces must avoid inflicting further harm on civilians in Gaza.
Matthew Miller, a state department spokesperson, said Blinken had reaffirmed US support for Israel’s attempts to stop any repeat of the Hamas attack of 7 October but “stressed the importance of avoiding further civilian harm and protecting civilian infrastructure in Gaza”.
However, there was no sign of any let up in the violence in Gaza as the two men met, as intense fighting, shelling and aerial bombardment continued across the south and centre of the territory.
On the disputed border between Israel and Lebanon, there have been intensifying clashes for weeks between Israel and Hezbollah, the militant Islamist organisation.
Hezbollah targeted a key Israeli base on Tuesday, declaring the attack part of its response to recent high-level Israeli assassinations in Lebanon. Shortly afterwards, Israel killed four more Hezbollah members, including one at the funeral of a senior commander in the group’s elite Radwan force who had been killed the day before.
Hamas chief urges Muslim states to provide weapons
The Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh has called on Muslim states to provide Palestinian militants with weapons, adding that the group’s war with Israel is “not the battle of the Palestinian people alone”.
Haniyeh, at a conference in Doha, said Israel had “failed to achieve any of its goals” after nearly 100 days of its war in Gaza, and it had only succeeded in revealing its “bloody, murderous face to the whole world after committing all these massacres”.
He argued that the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October “came after an attempt to marginalise the Palestinian cause”. In comments released by Hamas, Haniyeh said:
We see countries of the world pouring weapons into the occupation (Israel) … The time has come (for Muslim states) to support the resistance with weapons, because this is … not the battle of the Palestinian people alone.
We reported earlier that the UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, has confirmed that two British nationals are still being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.
Sky News is reporting that Nadav Popplewell is one of the British hostages in Gaza.
Popplewell, 51, was taken captive along with his mother, Channah Peri, 79, during the Hamas attack on their home in the Nirim kibbutz, the Times of Israel reported. Peri was released on 24 November as part of a temporary ceasefire deal.
Nadav Popplewell (51) from Kibbutz Nirim is a family person who loves spending time with his beloved nephews. His sister, Ayelet, describes him as a literature fan with a collection of hundreds of science fiction books, his favorite genre. In his free time, Nadav prefers to play… pic.twitter.com/9fnqymYRec
— Bring Them Home Now (@bringhomenow) November 13, 2023
The Israel Defense Forces said they shot dead a Palestinian man following an alleged stabbing attack in the occupied West Bank.
An IDF statement said the Palestinian man was shot after attempting to stab a soldier near the city of Ramallah. The Palestinian health ministry said a 31-year-old man was killed in the nearby village of Ein Sinya.
Israeli forces have killed more than 330 Palestinians in the West Bank since the war between Israel and Hamas began three months ago, the Palestinian health ministry said.
International criminal court says it is investigating potential crimes against journalists in Gaza
The international criminal court (ICC) has confirmed it is investigating potential crimes against journalists since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
The media advocacy group has filed two complaints with the ICC alleging war crimes over the deaths of journalists trying to cover the conflict. In a statement, RSF said:
The office of prosecutor Karim Khan has assured the organisation that crimes against journalists are included in its investigation into Palestine.
RSF cited a statement from the ICC prosecutor’s office as saying:
Crimes against journalists are being examined by the prosecutor’s office, among other potential crimes, as part of the ongoing investigation into the situation in Palestine, and RSF’s objectives and actions must be supported and are of crucial importance in Gaza and elsewhere.
At least 79 journalists and media workers, the vast majority of them Palestinian, have been killed since the war began three months ago, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
On Sunday, Al Jazeera accused Israel of the targeted killing of two of its journalists, Hamza Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuria, while on assignment in Gaza. A third freelancer, Hazem Rajab, was wounded. The health ministry in Gaza confirmed the deaths and blamed an Israeli strike.
Leyland Cecco
Confusion over Canada’s plan to temporarily resettle 1,000 Palestinians trapped in Gaza has created a situation like the “Hunger Games”, with residents fighting for what immigration lawyers say are too few spots to address the humanitarian crisis.
In December, amid mounting pressure from advocacy groups, Canadian officials said they would offer 1,000 visas to people fleeing Gaza.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced during Israel’s sustained aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Canada’s programme allows successful applicants to take refuge in Canada for three years if their families are willing to financially support them during that time.
But one immigration lawyer said the few details released about the application process, which opens on Tuesday, means residents in Canada are fearful they won’t be able to help family members.
“When the government says 1,000 spots – what does that mean? We have a client with more than 20 family members in Gaza. Do they represent one application? Or 20? We don’t know,” the lawyer said. “We have one client hoping to save her family but the reality is, she’s competing against everyone else in this situation.”
Matthew Krupovich, a spokesperson for Canada’s Immigration Department, said on Tuesday the cap of 1,000 visas “takes into consideration the volatility on the ground and the difficulty that Canada and like-minded countries are having in moving people from Gaza to Egypt”.
The National Council of Canadian Muslims has called on the government to remove the cap, arguing the need is far greater than the 1,000 visas allocated.
Last year, Canada announced a similar effort to help Ukrainians flee the Russian invasion of their country. But the programme had no cap on visa applications and the government waived all application fees.
“Canada has previously shown that when it wants to help, it can,” the lawyer said. “Why they’re not doing it in this situation, when people’s homes are being bombed, is immensely frustrating.”
A group of rabbis and rabbinical students staged a protest at the UN security council in New York calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
More than 30 rabbis gained access to the UN building as part of a guided tour, where they recited prayers and chanted their support for a ceasefire, HuffPost reported.
A representative from Jews for Racial and Economic Justice told the paper:
Since the Biden administration is consistently, single-handedly blocking the UN from taking any meaningful action for a ceasefire, we are organising 36 rabbis and rabbinical students from seven different states to come to the U.N. themselves, and say, ‘We’re speaking for the people, this is a moral call.’
