Gaza

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U.S. fears Gaza "is turning into Mogadishu"

Palestinian civilians launch search and rescue operations during an Israeli army attack on a Palestinian police vehicle in Rafah, Gaza on Feb. 6. Photo: Ahmed Zaqout via Getty Images The Biden administration asked Israel to stop targeting members of the Hamas-run civilian police force who escort aid trucks in Gaza, warning of famine and a "total breakdown of law and order," Axios' Barak Ravid reports. Why it matters: U.S. officials say they're increasingly concerned that "Gaza is turning into Mogadishu." A security vacuum — and desperation — have opened the door for armed gangs to attack and loot aid trucks. It's a concern the Biden administration has been warning Israel about for several months — and why the U.S. urged the Israeli government to plan for post-war Gaza. Mogadishu — the capital of Somalia, in the Horn of Africa — was once considered the most lawless and dangerous city in the world. There's been a significant decrease in the number of aid trucks entering Gaza in recent weeks, according to the UN humanitarian aid office (OCHA). At least 11 members of the police force in Rafah have been killed in Israeli air strikes in recent weeks, according to U.S. officials. This opened the way for armed gangs to take control of the aid, the officials said. U.S. envoy for humanitarian affairs David Satterfield said at an event last week that the civilian police force in Gaza "certainly include Hamas elements" — but "also include individuals who don't have a direct affiliation with Hamas who are there as part of the Palestinian Authority's remnant presence and security." Many of the trucks that have recently entered Gaza have been overrun by criminal gangs, said James McGoldrick, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian Territory.

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Children in Gaza are beginning to succumb in rising deaths after famine warnings After months of warnings over the risk of famine in Gaza under Israel’s offensives and siege, children are starting to die. Read more.

Recent developments: Hunger is most acute in northern Gaza, which has been isolated by Israeli forces and has suffered long cutoffs of food supply deliveries. At least 20 people have died from malnutrition and dehydration, according to the Health Ministry.   Particularly vulnerable children are also beginning to succumb in the south, where access to aid is more regular. At the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, 16 premature babies have died of malnutrition-related causes over the past five weeks, one of the senior doctors told The Associated Press.   Israel has blamed the burgeoning hunger in Gaza on U.N. agencies, saying they fail to distribute supplies piling up at Gaza crossings. UNRWA, the largest U.N. agency in Gaza, says Israel restricts some goods deliveries and imposes cumbersome inspections that slow entry.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ A top EU official says a ship is leaving for Gaza as a test of new humanitarian corridor   Leading NGOs slam Israel’s halt in visa renewals for aid workers in Gaza and West Bank   Lawsuit filed against MIT accuses the university of allowing antisemitism on campus

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Biden in a hot mic moment shows his growing frustration with Netanyahu over Gaza humanitarian crisis

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden ‘s growing frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to mount, with the Democrat captured on a hot mic saying that he and the Israeli leader will need to have a “come to Jesus meeting.”

https://apnews.com/article/biden-netanyahu-hot-mic-gaza-885b97a75d15d15ae7f7a47d0125c918?

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An effort to get aid to Gaza by sea is moving ahead. But the first ship is still waiting in Cyprus

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — A U.S. Army vessel carrying equipment to build a temporary pier in Gaza was heading to the Mediterranean on Sunday, after U.S. President Joe Biden announced plans to increase aid deliveries by sea to the besieged enclave where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are going hungry.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-03-10-2024-cf0b639c9996715a1dc611c3d74b6a12?

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The first ship to use a new sea route delivers aid to Gaza, Israeli miliary says

WADI GAZA, Gaza Strip (AP) — A ship delivered 200 tons of humanitarian supplies, food and water to Gaza on Friday, the Israeli military said, inaugurating a sea route from Cyprus for aid to help ease the humanitarian crisis brought by Israel’s 5-month-old offensive in the enclave.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-03-15-2024-d4e2f9ed525914233e4cf16c217f5248?

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Netanyahu snaps back against growing US criticism after being accused of losing his way on Gaza

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu railed Sunday against growing criticism from top ally the United States against his leadership amid the devastating war with Hamas, describing calls for a new election as “wholly inappropriate.”

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-03-17-2024-ab0b75fdd8f0ab51c5e38b1870afecd8?

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Report says famine is ‘imminent’ in northern Gaza as Israel launches another raid on main hospital

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Famine is “imminent” in northern Gaza, where 70% of people are experiencing catastrophic hunger, according to a report issued Monday that warned escalation of the war could push half of Gaza’s total population to the brink of starvation.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-03-18-2024-eefc526aec97821fe5f1e845801a6640?

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Doctors visiting a Gaza hospital are stunned by the war’s toll on Palestinian children An international team of doctors visiting a hospital in central Gaza was prepared for the worst. But the gruesome impact Israel’s war against Hamas is having on Palestinian children still left them stunned. Read more.

Recent developments: After nearly six months of war, Gaza’s health sector has been decimated. Roughly a dozen of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are only partially functioning. The rest have shut down or are barely operational after running out of fuel and medicine or were damaged in fighting.   Health care workers face the same daily struggle as others in Gaza in finding food for their families and trying to ensure some safety for them. Hospitals have special protections under international law, though those can be removed if combatants use the hospitals for military purposes.   Israel has alleged that hospitals serve as command centers, weapons storage facilities and hideouts for Hamas, but has presented little visual evidence. Hamas has denied the allegations. Israel has been carrying out a large-scale operation in Gaza’s largest hospital, Shifa, for the past week.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ They fled kibbutzim after Hamas attacked. Now, many Israelis must decide whether to go back   An airstrip is being built on a Yemeni island during the ongoing war, with ‘I LOVE UAE’ next to it   US sanctions online media site Gaza Now and its founder for allegedly supporting Hamas

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Aid group says Israeli strike kills 7 of its workers in Gaza, including foreigners An apparent Israeli airstrike killed six international aid workers with the World Central Kitchen charity and their Palestinian driver, the aid group said Tuesday, hours after it brought a new shipload of food into northern Gaza, which has been isolated and pushed to the brink of famine by Israel’s offensive. The source of the fire could not be independently confirmed. Read more.

Recent developments: World Central Kitchen, the food charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, said it was immediately suspending operations in the region. The strike marked a potentially major setback to efforts to deliver aid by sea as Israel heavily restricts access to northern Gaza, where experts say famine is imminent.   Footage showed the bodies of the dead at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, several of them wore protective gear with the charity’s logo. The food charity said early Tuesday that the seven killed include citizens of Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom and a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada.   Three aid ships from Cyprus arrived earlier Monday carrying some 400 tons of food and supplies organized by the charity and the United Arab Emirates, the group’s second shipment after a pilot run last month. The Israeli military was involved in coordinating both deliveries and has said it was conducting a review “to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident.”

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ As Israel withdraws from raid on Shifa Hospital, accounts from military and witnesses differ wildly   Israel clears way to expel Al Jazeera   Iran vows response after strike it blames on Israel demolishes consulate in Syria

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🇮🇱 Bibi budges

Humanitarian aid falls toward the Gaza Strip after being dropped from an aircraft yesterday. Photo: Hannah McKay/Reuters Three hours after a tough call between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, Israel's cabinet approved new steps to increase the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, Axios' Barak Ravid writes. Why it matters: The U.S. asked Israel to implement those steps months ago. But Netanyahu — who is in a tenuous political position in Israel — has been under pressure from his political base and ultranationalist members of his coalition to limit aid into Gaza. Several hours before the cabinet meeting, Biden presented Netanyahu with an ultimatum: Change course regarding the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, or the U.S. will change its policy regarding the war. An Israeli official said Netanyahu came to the meeting with Biden with a list of steps and told the president he would approve them. A senior Netanyahu aide told reporters the security cabinet approved the opening of the Erez crossing in the northern Gaza Strip for the first time in almost six months.

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🪖 6 months of war

Data: Damage analysis of Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite data by Corey Scher of CUNY Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University. Map: Will Chase/Axios Israel's bombardment of Gaza in the past six months has flattened buildings, decimated farmland, and destroyed critical infrastructure, Axios' Will Chase and Alison Snyder write. Rebuilding could take decades. Data: Damage analysis of 3-m PlanetScope imagery © Planet Labs PBC by Dr. He Yin of Kent State University. Map: Will Chase/Axios More than 50% of buildings and roughly half of tree crops have been damaged or destroyed, according to analyses of satellite data.

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A mission of mercy, then a fatal strike: How an aid convoy in Gaza became Israel’s target

DEIR AL BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — It was hours after sundown when the eight aid trucks drove from the makeshift jetty, cobbled together from tons of wreckage left across Gaza by months of war.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-aid-workers-killed-2d08786a9839dfc402632c7ca745acca?

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More aid is supposed to be entering the Gaza Strip. Why isn’t it helping?

JERUSALEM (AP) — Under heavy U.S. pressure, Israel has promised to ramp up aid to Gaza dramatically, saying last week it would open another cargo crossing and surge more trucks than ever before into the besieged enclave.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-war-hamas-aid-trucks-unrwa-30173642b5c298c829f1457db357071e?

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Aid for Gaza will soon flow from pier project just finished by US military, Pentagon says

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon said Thursday that humanitarian aid will soon begin flowing onto the Gaza shore through the new pier that was anchored to the beach and will begin reaching those in need almost immediately.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-aid-us-pier-9414c4148285917f1c858b9590117a84?

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American Medical Missions Trapped in Gaza, Facing Death by Dehydration as Population Clings to Life

“We’re continuing to work around the clock with the government of Israel and with the government of Egypt to work on this issue,” the State Department said.

https://theintercept.com/2024/05/13/rafah-doctors-european-hospital-un-employee-killed/?

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The US-built pier in Gaza has broken apart Strong winds and heavy seas broke the pier apart just over a week after it became operational, as the project to deliver desperately needed humanitarian aid to Gaza through a U.S. military-built pier faces criticism that it hasn’t lived up to its initial billing or its $320 million price tag. Read more.

Recent developments: While early Pentagon estimates suggested the pier could deliver up to 150 truckloads of aid a day when in full operation, that has yet to happen. The United States Agency for International Development says it needs a steady flow of 600 trucks a day to ease the struggle for food and bring people back from the brink of famine.   Aid groups have had mixed reactions — both welcoming any amount of aid for starving Palestinians besieged by the nearly eight-month-old Israel-Hamas war and decrying the pier as a distraction that took pressure off Israel to open more border crossings, which are far more productive. It’s “a side-show,” said Bob Kitchen, a top official of the International Rescue Committee.   The Biden administration has said from the start that the pier wasn’t meant to be a total solution and that any amount of aid helps. U.S. officials also say that the steel causeway connected to the beach in Gaza and the floating pier are being repaired and reassembled at a port in southern Israel, then will be reinstalled and working again next week.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ 2 soldiers are killed in a West Bank car-ramming attack, Israeli military says   Xi pledges more Gaza aid at summit with Arab leaders   A nurse honored for compassion is fired after referring to Gaza ‘genocide’ in speech

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Gaza

 

The war in Gaza will likely continue through at least the end of the year, an Israeli official warned Wednesday, seemingly dismissing the idea that the fighting would end after Israel's planned military offensive in Rafah. "We expect another seven months of fighting to deepen our achievements and achieve our goal of destroying the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas and Islamic Jihad," Israel's national security adviser said. The death toll in Gaza has surpassed 35,000 since the war broke out on October 7 after Hamas killed at least 1,200 people in Israel, according to UN data. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that Israel must weigh "incremental gains" with "unintended horrific consequences" of military action in Gaza.

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Women and children of Gaza are killed less frequently as war’s toll rises, AP data analysis finds

JERUSALEM (AP) — The proportion of Palestinian women and children being killed in the Israel-Hamas war appears to have declined sharply, an Associated Press analysis of Gaza Health Ministry data has found, a trend that both coincides with Israel’s changing battlefield tactics and contradicts the ministry’s own public statements.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-casualties-toll-65e18f3362674245356c539e4bc0b67a?

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UN food agency pauses its aid work at US pier in Gaza over security concerns, in latest setback

WASHINGTON (AP) — The director of the U.N. World Food Program said Sunday the program has “paused” its distribution of humanitarian aid from an American-built pier off Gaza, saying she was “concerned about the safety of our people” after what had been one of the deadliest days of the war there.

https://apnews.com/article/pier-aid-us-gaza-israel-pause-70283c86da47591cd5bc8b9c196d6dff?

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Gaza

 

Israel's military denied striking a designated safe zone in southern Gaza today after the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said the Al-Mawasi region filled with refugees was hit by "land, sea and air strikes." It is currently unclear whether the strikes resulted in casualties at the camp. More than 500,000 people are in Al-Mawasi, according to reports, after Israeli forces ordered people in Rafah to head to the "expanded humanitarian area" as it stepped up its operations in the enclave. Meanwhile, a Gaza ceasefire proposal remains at a standstill, with neither Israel nor Hamas yet publicly committing to the plan.

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The Israeli military has announced a "tactical pause" of military activity along a route in southern Gaza to allow aid to be distributed but stressed it would not halt its offensive in Rafah. Aid has been delivered to the embattled enclave by land, sea and air since the war began, but few entry points remain operational. This has triggered a humanitarian crisis, with human rights groups repeatedly sounding the alarm over "unspeakable" living conditions for Palestinians. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has disbanded the country's war cabinet, an official told CNN. The decision comes after opposition leader Benny Gantz resigned last week, citing Netanyahu's failure to devise a strategy for the war and the future governance of Gaza.

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In the searing heat of the Gaza summer, Palestinians are surrounded by sewage and garbage

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza (AP) — Children in sandals trudge through water contaminated with sewage and scale growing mounds of garbage in Gaza’s crowded tent camps for displaced families. People relieve themselves in burlap-covered pits, with nowhere nearby to wash their hands.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-dirt-sanitation-sewage-garbage-d96fbbbc37e7a73acfd0aa47978394c7?

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US removes Gaza aid pier due to weather and may not put it back, officials say

WASHINGTON (AP) — The pier built by the U.S. military to bring aid to Gaza has been removed due to weather to protect it, and the U.S. is considering not re-installing it unless the aid begins flowing out into the population again, U.S. officials said Friday.

https://apnews.com/article/gaza-pier-humanitarian-aid-f3e21c072630c0d9cb9498d3a0e27a55?

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House keys carry symbolic weight for Gaza families repeatedly displaced by war

MUWASI, Gaza Strip (AP) — On his key chain, Hassan Nofal keeps the keys to two homes. One is to the house of his grandparents in what is now southern Israel, which his family was driven out of by Israeli forces in 1948 and to which they’ve never been able to return.

https://apnews.com/article/gaza-displacement-israel-war-900c4bacf70080249ea8e62f818c410f?

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Far-right groups that block aid to Gaza receive tax-deductible donations from US and Israel

JERUSALEM (AP) — Under American pressure, Israel has pledged to deliver large quantities of humanitarian aid into the war-ravaged Gaza Strip. But at the same time, the U.S. and Israel have allowed tax-deductible donations to far-right groups that have blocked that aid from being delivered.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-hamas-aid-humanitarian-nonprofit-69582d193ce270d63d5865ac0ead2df0?