Day: October 21, 2023

Arab leaders condemned Israel’s two-week-old bombardment of Gaza on Saturday at a gathering of Western and other leaders and demanded renewed efforts to end a decades-long cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

They were addressing a hastily arranged gathering dubbed the Cairo Peace Summit that included leaders and foreign ministers from Europe, Africa and beyond. But a senior European Union official said earlier it was unclear if any common declaration would be reached given “differences” between the participants.

The United States, Israel’s closest ally and a vital player in all past efforts towards peace in the region, only sent the charge d’affaires of its embassy in Cairo, as a conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza rages.

Jordan’s King Abdullah denounced what he termed global silence about Israel’s attacks, which have killed thousands in Hamas-ruled Gaza and made over a million homeless, and urged an even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The message the Arab world is hearing is that Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones,” he said, adding he was outraged and grieved by acts of violence waged against innocent civilians in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Israel.

“The Israeli leadership must realise once and for all that a state can never thrive if it is built on a foundation of injustice … Our message to the Israelis should be that we want a future of peace and security for you and the Palestinians.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Palestinians would not be displaced or driven off their land.

“We won’t leave, we won’t leave,” he told the summit.

Israel has vowed to wipe the Iranian-backed Hamas militant group “off the face of the earth” over a shock Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel that killed 1,400 people, the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in Israel’s 75-year history.

It has said it told Palestinians to move south within Gaza for their own safety, although the coastal strip is only 45 km (28 miles) long and Israeli air strikes have also hit the south.

The Cairo gathering was looking into ways to head off a wider regional war. But three diplomats said it was unlikely there would be a joint statement because of sensitivities around any calls for a ceasefire, and whether to include mention of Hamas’s attack and Israel’s right to defend itself.

The absence of some Western leaders has cooled expectations for what the event can achieve. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron were not attending.

The summit coincides with continuing Israeli preparations for a ground assault on Gaza. More than 4,100 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s counteroffensive, amid a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Arab countries have voiced anger at Israel’s unprecedented bombardment and siege of Gaza, home to 2.3 million people and one of the most densely populated places on earth.

In his speech Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said his country opposed what he called the displacement of Palestinians into Egypt’s largely desert Sinai region.

“Egypt says the solution to the Palestinian issue is not displacement, its only solution is justice and the Palestinians’ access to legitimate rights and living in an independent state.”

King Abdullah said forced displacement “is a war crime according to international law, and a red line for all of us.”

Egypt is wary of insecurity near the border with Gaza in northeastern Sinai, where it faced an Islamist insurgency that peaked after 2013 and has now largely been suppressed.

Egypt’s position reflects Arab fears that Palestinians could again flee or be forced from their homes en masse, as they were during the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.

Jordan, home to a large population of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, fears that a wider conflagration would give Israel the chance to implement a transfer policy to expel Palestinians en masse from the West Bank.

Shortly before the summit opening, trucks loaded with humanitarian aid began entering the Rafah crossing into Gaza. Egypt has been trying for days to channel humanitarian relief to Gaza through the crossing, the one access point not controlled by Israel.

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RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The border crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened on Saturday to let a trickle of desperately needed aid into the besieged Palestinian territory for the first time since Israel sealed it off in the wake of Hamas’ bloody rampage two weeks ago.

Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, half of whom have fled their homes, are rationing food and drinking dirty water. Hospitals say they are running low on medical supplies and fuel for emergency generators amid a territory-wide power blackout. Israel is still launching waves of airstrikes across Gaza that have destroyed entire neighborhoods, as Palestinian militants fire rocket barrages into Israel.

The opening came after more than a week of high-level diplomacy by various mediators, including visits to the region by U.S. President Joe Biden and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Israel had insisted that nothing would enter Gaza until Hamas released all of the captives from its attack, and the Palestinian side of the crossing had been shut down by Israeli airstrikes.

Egypt’s state-owned Al-Qahera news, which is close to security agencies, said just 20 trucks had crossed into Gaza on Saturday, out of more than 200 trucks carrying roughly 3,000 tons of aid that have been positioned near the crossing for days. Hundreds of foreign passport holders hoping to escape the conflict were not allowed to cross into Egypt.

The head of the U.N.’s World Food Program said the aid was insufficient. “The situation is catastrophic in Gaza,” Cindy McCain told The Associated Press. “We need many, many, many more trucks and a continual flow of aid,” she said, adding that some 400 trucks were entering Gaza daily before the war.

The Hamas-run government in Gaza also said the limited convoy “will not be able to change the humanitarian catastrophe,” calling for a secure corridor operating around the clock.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, said “the humanitarian situation in Gaza is under control.” He said the aid would be delivered only to southern Gaza, where the army has ordered people to relocate, adding that no fuel would enter the territory.

Guterres meanwhile gave voice to growing international concern over civilians in Gaza, telling a summit in Cairo that Hamas’ “reprehensible assault” on Israel two weeks ago “can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

The opening came hours after Hamas released an American woman and her teenage daughter, the first of captives to be freed after the militant group’s Oct. 7 incursion into Israel. It was not immediately clear if there was any connection between the two. Israel says Hamas is still holding at least 210 captives.

Hamas released Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter, Natalie, on Friday for what it said were humanitarian reasons in an agreement with Qatar, a Persian Gulf nation that has often served as a Mideast mediator.

The two had been on a trip from their home in suburban Chicago to Israel to celebrate Jewish holidays, the family said. They were in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, near Gaza, when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israeli towns, killing hundreds and abducting at least 210 others.

Hamas said it was working with Egypt, Qatar and other mediators “to close the case” of hostages if security circumstances permit.

Intense airstrikes were reported across Gaza overnight and into Saturday. The Hamas-run Health Ministry said 345 people were killed in Gaza in the last 24 hours, and that seven hospitals are out of service after being damaged in strikes or running out of fuel.

The Hamas-run Housing Ministry said at least 30% of all homes in Gaza have been destroyed or heavily damaged in the war. That figure does not include the destruction of entire neighborhoods, which the U.N. refugee agency now describes as “inaccessible mounds of rubble.”

There are growing expectations of a ground offensive that Israel says would be aimed at rooting out Hamas, an Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza for 16 years. Israel said Friday it does not plan to take long-term control over the small but densely populated Palestinian territory.

Israel has also traded fire along its northern border with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group, raising concerns about a second front opening up. The Israeli military said Saturday it struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response to recent rocket launches and attacks with anti-tank missiles.

“Hezbollah has decided to participate in the fighting, and we are exacting a heavy price for this,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said during a visit to the border.

Israel issued a travel warning on Saturday, ordering its citizens to leave Egypt and Jordan — which made peace with it decades ago — and to avoid travel to a number of Arab and Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain, which forged diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020. Protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza have erupted across the region.

An Israeli ground assault would likely to lead to a dramatic escalation in casualties on both sides in urban fighting. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed in the war — mostly civilians slain during the Hamas incursion. Palestinian militants have continued to launch rockets at Israel — more than 6,900 since Oct. 7, according to the military.

More than 4,300 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. That includes the disputed toll from a hospital explosion earlier this week. The ministry says another 1,400 are believed to have been buried under rubble, alive or dead.

Hosting a summit on Saturday, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi called for ensuring aid to Gaza, negotiating a cease-fire and resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which last broke down more than a decade ago. He also said the conflict would never be resolved “at the expense of Egypt,” referring to fears Israel may try to push Gaza’s population into the Sinai Peninsula.

King Abdullah II of Jordan told the summit that Israel’s air campaign and siege of Gaza was “a war crime” and slammed the international community’s response.

“Anywhere else, attacking civilian infrastructure and deliberately starving an entire population of food, water, electricity, and basic necessities would be condemned,” he said. Apparently, he added, “human rights have boundaries. They stop at borders, they stop at races, they stop at religions.”

Over a million people have been displaced in Gaza. Many heeded Israel’s orders to evacuate from north to south within the sealed-off coastal enclave. But Israel has continued to bomb areas in southern Gaza where Palestinians had been told to seek safety, and some appear to be going back to the north because of bombings and difficult living conditions in the south.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the opening of Rafah “an important first step that will alleviate the suffering of innocent people.” Britain, France and Germany also welcomed it.

The World Health Organization said four of the 20 trucks that crossed through Rafah on Saturday were carrying medical supplies, including essential supplies for 300,000 people for three months, trauma medicine and supplies for 1,200 people and 235 portable trauma bags for first responders.

The World Food Program said it has another 930 metric tons of emergency food waiting to be brought in through Rafah. It said it needs to replenish its “rapidly diminishing supplies” as it expands food assistance from 520,000 people to 1.1 million in the next two months.

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Magdy reported from Cairo and Krauss from Jerusalem. Associated Press journalists Isabel DeBre in Jerusalem and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

The first trucks bearing emergency humanitarian aid since Israel began a devastating siege of Gaza 12 days ago entered the enclave from Egypt on Saturday after further heavy Israeli bombardment overnight that killed dozens of Palestinians.

U.S. President Joe Biden had said earlier this week that agreement had been reached for 20 aid trucks to cross through Gaza’s Rafah border point with Egypt, and said on Friday he believed those first trucks would pass through within 48 hours.

Fifteen of the 20 trucks were on the Gaza side of the heavily fortified border after checks by the Palestinian Red Crescent and were preparing to proceed to recipients in populated areas, witnesses said, after days of diplomatic wrangling over conditions for delivering the relief.

But that would only be a small fraction of what is required in Gaza, where Israel’s “total siege” has left its 2.3 million people running out of food, water, medicines and fuel in what the United Nations says is a budding humanitarian catastrophe.

The United Nations said the convoy included life-saving supplies that would be received and distributed by the Palestinian Red Crescent. Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which rules Gaza, said the delivery included medicine and limited amounts of food but not fuel.

Palestinian health officials said the lack of fuel was jeopardising the lives of patients including people injured by air strikes. Fourteen medical centres have already suspended operations for want of fuel.

U.N. officials say at least 100 trucks daily are needed to cover urgent, life-saving needs and that any aid operation must be sustainable at scale – a tall order now with Israel carrying out devastating bombardments of the enclave day and night.

Israel kept up heavy bombardment of targets throughout Gaza in Saturday’s early hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “fight until victory” following the release of the first two hostages by Hamas.

Hamas on Friday freed Americans Judith Tai Raanan, 59, and her daughter Natalie, 17, who were among around 210 kidnapped in its Oct. 7 cross-border attack on southern Israel by militants of the Islamist movement. Hamas said it acted in part “for humanitarian reasons” in response to Qatari mediation.

Hamas gunmen seized the hostages when they burst out of the blockaded enclave into Israel and killed 1,400 people, mainly civilians, in a shock rampage, the deadliest single attack on Israelis since the country’s founding 75 years ago.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israel’s retaliatory air and missile strikes have killed at least 4,137 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, while over a million of the besieged territory’s 2.3 million people have been displaced.

Israel has amassed tanks and troops near the fenced border around the small coastal enclave for a planned ground invasion with the objective of annihilating Hamas, after several inconclusive wars dating to its seizure of power there in 2007.

Overnight Israeli fighter jets struck a “large number of Hamas terror targets throughout” Gaza including command centres and combat positions inside multi-storey buildings, the military said ion a statement.

Palestinian medical officials and Hamas media said Israeli aircraft had overnight targeted several family houses across Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated places, killing at least 50 people and injuring dozens.

Hamas said it fired rockets towards Israeli’s biggest city Tel Aviv on Saturday in response to Israel’s killing of civilians overnight. The Israeli military reported a fresh salvo of rockets from Gaza against southern Israeli border communities before dawn. There was no immediate word of any casualties.

Egyptian state TV showed footage of Egypt opening the Rafah border in the Sinai Peninsula for humanitarian deliveries after days of waiting by over 200 aid trucks, with more relief stockpiled in the region.

The Israeli military said on Saturday that the aid entering Gaza would go only to southern areas where it has urged Palestinian civilians to congregate “as we continue to intensify strikes” in the north of the enclave.

Terrified Palestinians who were forced to flee their houses after Israel’s deadly overnight bombings lashed out at the reports of aid trucks about to enter Gaza, saying it was a ceasefire and not food that they needed.

“They were asleep when the missile was dropped on them, innocent children, their father, their grandfather, what did they do? Did they fire rockets? Carried bullets? They are innocent children who did nothing!” cried one tearful woman.

“We have been fighting and the Arab nations are just watching. Canned food, is that the price of the Palestinian people who are offering sacrifices everywhere?”

Most of Gaza’s inhabitants depend on humanitarian aid. The heavily urbanised coastal strip has been under Israeli and Egyptian blockade since Hamas seized control of it in 2007, two years after Israeli ended a 38-year occupation.

Before the outbreak of conflict, an average of about 450 aid trucks were arriving daily in Gaza.

Diplomacy to secure a ceasefire has been fruitless so far.

Egypt opened a summit on the Gaza crisis on Saturday to try to head off a wider regional war but assembled Middle Eastern and European leaders are expected to struggle to agree a common position on the Israel-Hamas conflagration.

Arab leaders at the summit condemned Israel’s two-week-old bombardment of Gaza and demanded renewed efforts to reach a Middle East peace settlement to end a decades-long cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Palestinians would not be displaced or driven off their land. “We won’t leave, we won’t leave,” he told the summit.

The United States, Israel’s closest ally and a vital player in all past efforts towards peace in the region, only sent the charge d’affaires of its embassy in Cairo. Israel was absent from the meeting, as were several other major Western leaders, cooling expectations for what the hastily-convened event can achieve.

Israel has already told all civilians to evacuate the northern half of the Gaza Strip, which includes Gaza City. Many people have yet to leave saying they fear losing everything and have nowhere safe to go with southern areas also under attack.

The United Nations humanitarian affairs office said more than 140,000 homes – nearly a third of all homes in Gaza – had been damaged, with nearly 13,000 completely destroyed.

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