Hamas is demanding complete Israeli withdrawal from the area and said Netanyahu’s position “aims to thwart reaching an agreement”…reports Asian Lite News
Hamas called on the United States Thursday to “exert real pressure” on Israel to reach a Gaza ceasefire agreement as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there is no deal in the making.
The two sides have traded blame over stalling talks for a ceasefire and hostage exchange as Netanyahu faces pressure to seal a deal that would free remaining captives, after Israeli authorities announced on Sunday the deaths of six whose bodies were recovered from a Gaza tunnel.
“If the US administration and its President (Joe) Biden really want to reach a ceasefire and complete a prisoner exchange deal, they must abandon their blind bias toward the Zionist occupation,” Hamas’s Qatar-based lead negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya said, calling on the US to “exert real pressure on Netanyahu and his government.”
But Netanyahu told US talk show Fox & Friends: “There is not a deal in the making… Unfortunately, it’s not close but we will do everything we can to get them to the point where they do make a deal and at the same time we prevent Iran from resupplying Gaza as this great terror enclave.”
Netanyahu insists that Israel must retain control over the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border to prevent weapons smuggling to Hamas, whose October 7 attack on Israel started the war.
Hamas is demanding complete Israeli withdrawal from the area and on Thursday said Netanyahu’s position “aims to thwart reaching an agreement.”
The Palestinian militant group says a new deal is unnecessary because they agreed months ago to a truce outlined by Biden.
“We do not need new proposals,” Hamas said in a statement.
“We warn against falling into the trap of Netanyahu… who uses negotiations to prolong the aggression against our people,” the group said.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby nonetheless said that Washington believes a ceasefire deal is 90 percent agreed.
But he added that “nothing is negotiated until everything is negotiated, and the things that are still in play right now are very, very detailed… issues, and that’s when things get difficult.”
At Israeli protests in several cities this week, Netanyahu’s critics have blamed him for hostages’ deaths, saying he has refused to make necessary concessions for striking a ceasefire deal.
“We’ll do everything so that all hostages will be with us. And if the leaders don’t want to sign a deal, we’ll make them,” said Gil Dickmann, cousin of Carmel Gat, one of the six hostages whose bodies were found in a Gaza tunnel last week.
Dickmann took part in an anti-government rally at Tel Aviv on Thursday evening, where crowds of demonstrators carried symbolic coffins in a procession. Key mediator Qatar has said that Israel’s approach was “based on an attempt to falsify facts and mislead world public opinion by repeating lies.” Such moves “will ultimately lead to the demise of peace efforts,” Qatar’s foreign ministry warned.
The October 7 attack by Hamas resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians including some hostages killed in captivity, according to official Israeli figures.
Of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the attack, 97 remain in Gaza including 33 the Israeli military says are dead. Scores were released during a one-week truce in November.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has so far killed at least 40,878 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory. Most of the dead are women and children, according to the UN rights office.
Strikes continued across Gaza on Thursday, with medics and rescuers reporting a total of 12 dead in separate attacks in the north and south of the territory.
While Israel presses its Gaza offensive, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the military should use its “full strength” against Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.
“These terrorist organizations that have various names, whether in Nur Al-Shams, Tulkarem, Faraa or Jenin, must be wiped out,” he said, referring to cities and refugee camps where an Israeli military operation is underway.
The Israeli military said Thursday its aircraft “conducted three targeted strikes on armed terrorists” in the Tubas area, which includes Faraa refugee camp. A strike on a car killed five men aged 21 to 30 and wounded two others, the territory’s health ministry said.
Eyewitnesses said they saw a large number of Israeli troops storming Faraa camp, where explosions were heard.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said the Israeli military handed over the dead body of a 17-year-old, after medics were prevented from reaching him when he was wounded.
Israel has killed at least 36 Palestinians across the northern West Bank since its assault there started on August 28, according to figures released by the health ministry, including children and militants. One Israeli soldier was killed in Jenin, where the majority of the Palestinian fatalities have been.
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has left the territory in ruins, with the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure blamed for the spread of disease. The humanitarian crisis has led to Gaza’s first polio case in 25 years, prompting a massive vaccination effort launched Sunday with localized “humanitarian pauses” in fighting.
Nearly 200,000 children in central Gaza have received a first dose, the World Health Organization said, and a second stage got underway Thursday in the south, before medics move north. The campaign aims to fully vaccinate more than 640,000 children, with second doses due in about four weeks.
Louise Wateridge, spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), warned however that the vaccination drive in the south may not reach all children, as some do not reside in the designated humanitarian zones where Israel has agreed not to strike.
With no firm public response yet from Hamas or Israel to the proposal they received 10 days ago, Blinken started his eighth visit to the region since the conflict began in October …reports Asian Lite News
Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his latest trip to the Middle East, where America’s top diplomat urged approval of a ceasefire proposal that faced new uncertainty following Israel’s hostage rescue operation that killed many Palestinians and turmoil in Netanyahu’s government.
With no firm public response yet from Hamas or Israel to the proposal they received 10 days ago, Blinken started his eighth visit to the region since the conflict began in October by meeting with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt, a key mediator with the militant Hamas group. He then flew to Israel for talks with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.
Blinken once again called on Hamas to accept the plan, which he said has wide international support.
“If you want a ceasefire, press Hamas to say ‘yes,’” he told reporters before leaving Cairo on the trip that also will take him to Jordan and Qatar. Blinken said Israel has accepted the proposal, though Netanyahu has expressed skepticism.
“I know that there are those who are pessimistic about the prospects,” Blinken said, putting the onus on Hamas. “That’s understandable. Hamas continues to show extraordinary cynicism in its actions, a disinterest not only in the well-being and security of Israelis but also Palestinians.”
While President Joe Biden, Blinken and other US officials have praised the rescue of four Israeli hostages on Saturday, the operation resulted in the deaths of 274 Palestinian civilians and may complicate the ceasefire push by emboldening Israel and hardening Hamas’ resolve to carry on fighting in the war that started with its Oct. 7 attack in Israel.
Blinken said the plan is the “single best way” to get to a ceasefire, release the remaining hostages and improve regional security.
In his talks with El-Sisi, Blinken also discussed plans for post-conflict governance and reconstruction in Gaza.
“It’s imperative that there be a plan, and that has to involve security, it has to involve governance, it has to involve reconstruction,” Blinken said.
Netanyahu and his government have resisted calls for any “day after” plan that would bar Israel from having some form of security presence in the territory. Blinken said he would urge Israel to come up with alternatives that would be acceptable.
“It would be very good if Israel put forward its own ideas on this, and I’ll be talking to the government about that,” he said. “But one way or another, we’ve got to have these plans, we’ve got to have them in place, we’ve got to be ready to go if we want to take advantage of a ceasefire.”
The three-phase plan calls for the release of more hostages and a temporary pause in hostilities that will last as long as it takes to negotiate the second phase, which aims to bring the release of all hostages, a “full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza” and “a permanent end to hostilities,” according to an American-drafted resolution put before the UN Security Council. The third phase calls for reconstruction in Gaza.
The Security Council voted Monday to approve the resolution, which welcomes the proposal and urges Hamas to accept it. The vote on the US-sponsored resolution was 14-0, with Russia abstaining.
But Hamas may not be the only obstacle.
Although the deal has been described as an Israeli initiative and thousands of Israelis have demonstrated to support it, Netanyahu has expressed skepticism, saying what has been presented publicly is not accurate and that Israel is still committed to destroying Hamas.
Netanyahu’s far-right allies have threatened to collapse his government if he implements the plan. Benny Gantz, a popular centrist, resigned on Sunday from the three-member War Cabinet after saying he would do so if the prime minister did not formulate a new plan for postwar Gaza.
In the aftermath of the hostage rescue, Netanyahu had urged him not to step down.
Blinken has met with Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Gantz and Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid on nearly all his previous trips to Israel. Officials said Blinken is expected to meet with Gantz on Tuesday.
Despite Blinken’s roughly once-a-month visits to the region since the war began, the conflict has ground on with more than 37,120 Palestinians killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its counts. Hamas and other militants killed some 1,200 people in the Oct. 7 attack, mostly civilians, and took around 250 people hostage.
The war has severely hindered the flow of food, medicine and other supplies to the Palestinians in Gaza, who are facing widespread hunger. UN agencies say more than 1 million people in the territory could experience the highest level of starvation by mid-July.
In Jordan, Blinken will take part in an emergency international conference on improving the flow of aid to Gaza.
A six-week ceasefire is on the cards in the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel after both sides communicated to the mediators on stepping down from their earlier demands.
While Hamas has agreed to climb down from the demand for a permanent end of the war to a pause for six weeks, Israel has almost agreed to release 1000 Palestinian prisoners including 100 charged with grievous crimes including murder.
There were a series of meetings in Doha, Cairo, and Paris in the last two days with different negotiators brokering a truce between Israel and Hamas
Sources in Israeli intelligence agencies told IANS that Qatar has communicated to the Hamas leadership that it would “not hesitate to deport them from Qatar if they do not come down from unreasonable demands”.
According to sources, the strong position taken by Qatar and Egypt to prevent any Gazan refugees on its soil if Israel invades Rafah has acted as a trigger for Hamas to rework its earlier demands of a permanent ceasefire.
As per the available information, Hamas would release all Israeli prisoners including soldiers in exchange for 1000 Palestinian prisoners.
Israeli intelligence agencies have communicated to the government that of the 134 remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza, 32 have died.
Hamas, according to sources in the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, would release the remaining 102 hostages and send the bodies of 32 hostages in exchange for 1000 Palestinian prisoners. However, it is unclear whether all the hostages would be released in a single go or multiple slots.
The UN team has brought with them medicines, vaccines and fuel to help ensure that the medical facility remains functioning.
A UN team visited Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and brought aid, the first time the world body has been able to deliver aid into besieged northern Gaza in over a week, said UN humanitarians.
A team from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the World Health Organisation and the UN Children’s Fund visited Al-Shifa and brought with them medicines, vaccines and fuel to help ensure that the medical facility remains functioning, said OCHA.
The team also met with people who were among those injured on Thursday while seeking life-saving aid west of Gaza City, Xinhua news agency reported.
The hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, has reportedly admitted more than 700 people injured in that incident, about 200 of whom were still hospitalised on Friday, OCHA added.
By the time of the team’s visit on Friday morning, the hospital had also received the bodies of more than 70 people who had been killed in the incident. According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, the overall death toll from Thursday’s incident has reached 112, said OCH.
Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor Emerita English and Comparative Literature; Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender Columbia University.
Hirsch writes about the transmission of memories of violence across generations, combining feminist theory with memory studies in global perspective, a process she has termed “postmemory.” Her books include Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (1997), The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust (2012). She co-authored Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory (2010) and School Photos in Liquid Time: Reframing Difference (2020) with Leo Spitzer. Her (co)-edited volumes include The Familial Gaze (1998), Women Mobilizing Memory (2019) and Imagining Everyday Life (2021). Hirsch is professor emerita in Comparative Literature and Gender Studies at Columbia University in New York. She is a former President of the Modern Language Association of America and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a co-founder of Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference, where with a group of artists, scholars and activists, she co-created the Zip Code Memory Project, dedicated to finding community-based ways to memorialize the devastating losses resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic while also acknowledging its radically differential effects on Upper New York City neighborhoods. Hirsch is currently working on a book about reparative memory.
In an interview with Abhish K. Bose she discusses how the disastrous impacts of tragic incidents affects the posterity.
1, You have studied the psychological and physiological impact of the Holocaust on survivors and their descendants and proposed the term postmemory for inherited trauma. According to you, memories of tragedies will not end in one generation, rather they get transmitted to posterity. What is the scientific basis of this contention? Please explain?
Yes, I have argued that we can remember other people’s memories. Descendants of individuals and communities that have survived powerful collective experiences – catastrophes such as war, genocide and extreme violence, but also transformative political movements such as coups, revolutions and uprisings – often feel as though they were shaped by events that preceded their birth. But they experience these events not as memories, but as postmemories; they were not there, so their recollections are belated, temporally and qualitatively removed.
This argument is based on literary, artistic and autobiographical second-and third generation accounts and on research about trauma and its intergenerational transmission. In recent years, neuroscientists have substantiated these accounts by showing how trauma can be transmitted across generations epigenetically. Thus, parental trauma can be encoded in children’s epigenetic structures – not their DNA sequence but in the gene expression which encodes environmental factors that are heritable. This can make them more vulnerable to traumatic and post-traumatic stress symptoms. Although this research is in its very beginnings and not yet conclusive, it does corroborate the more subjective accounts of members of what the writer Eva Hoffman has called the “postgenerations.”
2, What do you think the impact of calamities such as the current wars will be for posterity? The Israel – Hamas war is ongoing with indescribable destruction and butchering of humanity. Could you evaluate the repercussions of the loss of human life for the descendants of the victims and the survivors?
It is harrowing to think about the generations of trauma that are being produced by the brutal wars in Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Gaza. And by other less publicized wars and ethnic cleansings. The fear of deadly aerial bombardment; the intimate brutality and devastation children are suffering and witnessing; the wounding, maiming, hunger, lack of medical care they are experiencing – all this will haunt traumatized survivors and their descendants for generations to come. And this violence is sure to breed further enmity and hatred against the perpetrators. In all these wars and on all sides, the current devastation is also reactivating older histories of violence that have not been worked through but that fuel current conflicts. It is both fascinating and extremely troubling that the Holocaust, for example, is being used as an alibi for war, both by Russia and by Israel. It feels impossible to “solve” these wars and to envision peace—but, as intellectuals, we must try to shift the frames of war and to think beyond and against its inevitability.
3, The impact of communal riots resulting from partition also bears similar long standing consequences. India had a fair share of communal riots and the partition triggered mass displacement. Are there connections between them and the descendants of Holocaust survivors as far as the repercussions of these historical events are concerned?
This is not my field, but I do believe that the violence of the partition and the mass displacement that resulted left lasting scars that were and are transmitted to subsequent generations. It took longer for this research to emerge but studies of the long-term effects of the partition are now central to the field of memory studies. Literary, artistic and historical works about the partition are offering a new focus in the field and the opportunity to study both the particularity of each of these catastrophic histories and points of connection between them.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at an official ceremony marking the Holocaust Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. (Xinhua/Du Zhen/IANS)
4, What mitigation measures do you offer the post generations suffering from the disastrous effects of these traumatic histories ? Can the individual and communal mental, psychological and emotional torment be repaired or healed ?
Can individuals and communities repair long-standing legacies of structural inequality and violence and their traumatic after-effects? For the last three decades, I have worked on the memory of the Holocaust and other catastrophic histories, yet the reparative potentials of memory—the possibility of healing and repair – were not my primary concerns. My goal was to trace and to understand the workings of trauma and its transmission across generations. I worked under the assumption that some traumatic events would remain irreparable. In recent years, however, for me and many of my colleagues, doing work on memory within the unforgiving frame and teleology of trauma – the powerful idea that it will repeat, and can never truly be healed – has come to feel constraining. I’ve had the occasion to study the workings of social and cultural memory in the context of several transnational interdisciplinary working groups and to participate in memory networks and conferences in numerous locations across the globe. Inspired by feminist, queer, de-colonial and indigenous ideas about time and memory and by commitments to social justice, some of these groups have displaced the focus on trauma and its inexorable after-effects. I have joined them in examining alternative, multiple, non-linear ideas about time and memory that help to reveal aspects of the past and its continuing presence that resist the inevitability of trauma and its unforgiving return. Without denying the magnitude of traumatic loss, the focus on vulnerability, care, mutual aid and repair can help us reveal instances of resistance and refusal in the past, and also of hope and belief in a future.
These questions of repair, reparation and justice became urgent for me as I lived through the Covid-19 pandemic in New York City and observed how legacies of racism and inequality created enormous differentials in how individuals and communities experienced the pandemic. I worked with a group of academics, artists and activists to seekreparative ways to acknowledge these devastating losses and to memorialize the people, institutions, moments, and places that our communities lost. In what we called the Zip Code Memory Project, we acted on the belief that when memory activates the past in a communal setting, it can also reframe it and help us imagine a different potential ending – one that can serve as a provocation for collective political engagement. Thus, perhaps, memory could be reparative and oriented toward the future. Through a series of art-based workshops and communal gatherings, we built a community that could envision trust, care, and the possibility of repair. It was a small, local experiment, but as you can see on the Zip Code Memory Project website, many of the practices are replicable in other settings.
5, Children of survivors and their contemporaries inherit catastrophic histories not through direct recollection but through haunting postmemories, multiply mediated images, objects, stories, behaviors, and affects passed down within the family and the culture at large. Do you have any evidence to prove that postmemory changes across geographical and historical differences?
I think that the structure of postmemory exhibits a lot of parallels across different histories, but also that its particular manifestations take different shapes in different national, geographic and historical settings. So much depends on the infrastructures of memory and in the structure of power that shapes and controls it. If groups and nations are shaped by their memories, then memory is always contested. Whose memory, whose voice, counts? Whose is silenced? Who decides? How do silenced voices nevertheless get heard? These questions are constant across various histories, but the instances are different.
And yet, memory is also a global phenomenon and we see remarkable similarities in its manifestations. Across the globe, contemporary writers, filmmakers, visual artists, memorial artists and museologists have forged an aesthetic of postmemory. They have sought forms through which to express the gaps in knowledge, the fears and terrors, that ensue in the aftermath of trauma, the excitements and disappointments that follow revolutions. Some of these tropes and artistic strategies have been remarkably consistent, constructing a global memory and postmemory aesthetic that both bridges and occludes political and cultural divides. The wall of photos at the Museo de la Memoria in Santiago, Chile, recalls similar walls in memorial museums in Phnom Penh, Paris, Amsterdam, and New York. Lists of names recall victims of the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, the September 11, 2001 bombings, and more. Memorial artists like Horst Hoheisel have worked in Germany, Argentina and Cambodia; Daniel Libeskind in Berlin, Stockholm and New York. Their memorial sites are dominated by idioms of trauma, loss and mourning, invoking tropes of absence and silence, unknowability and emptiness. They tend to rely on archival images and documents, highlighting ghosts and shadows, gaps in knowledge and transmission. They use projection, reframings, recontextualization. They juxtapose or superimpose past and present, without allowing them to merge. But some of these practices also do more in an activist frame: they demand accountability and justice. Thus, groups of mothers walk or sit in squares from Buenos Aires to Mexico City to Istanbul, memorializing their disappeared children by holding photographs of them from a time before their violent disappearances or deaths. Memory can serve progressive ends, but it can also be mobilized in opposite ways—to provoke enmity and conflict.
6, Your book Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory, co-authored with your husband, the historian Leo Spitzer, is a family/communal memoir about the city in which your parents grew up and survived the Holocaust. What message do you have to convey to humanity based on your exploration of the period of Holocaust? Has our species matured enough to deter the occurrence of similar incidents in the future?
Our species has decidedly not matured in any way. Racialized hatred and persecution are everywhere visible and are being practiced with impunity by many nations. It’s only a few months ago that Armenians were brutally displaced from Azerbaijan with the world watching and not intervening.
As I mentioned, I have been alarmed at how the Holocaust has entered present political conversations and actions. Alarmed not only as a scholar of the Holocaust, but also as a daughter of parents who were persecuted, chased from their homes, and targeted for extermination as Jews. It is unbearable to me that my ancestors’ suffering is being misused by politicians and the media to justify the necessity of continuing cycles of violence and war by Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and by Israel in the aftermath of the horrific racialized violence of October 7 perpetrated by Hamas. Holocaust memory has become an alibi for repression, violence, and racialized hatred and for the contagious perpetuation and exploitation of transgenerational fear and trauma.
If you are asking about a message, I’d say: Don’t invoke the Holocaust in these ways. Don’t exploit its memory. Don’t take it out of history. Don’t divide the world into Nazis and Jews and then apply these terms to groups and nations for your own political purposes.Learn from this history that genocides can happen and do your utmost to prevent them by building a world of care and repair.
UAE envoy Lana Nusseibeh inaugurated the water desalination plants in the Egypt’s Rafah, in the presence of numerous representatives of UNSC member states.
Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh, Assistant Minister for Political Affairs and Permanent Representative to the UN, has inaugurated three water desalination plants in the Egypt’s Rafah, in the presence of numerous representatives of UN Security Council member states.
The plants aim to supply the Gaza Strip with its needs for drinking water, as part of the UAE’s humanitarian response to alleviate the suffering of the Palestinian people in the Strip.
This came during the visit by a UN delegation to the Rafah Crossing, at the initiative of the United Arab Emirates and in cooperation with the Arab Republic of Egypt.
The establishment of water desalination plants in the Egyptian Rafah is part of the UAE’s ‘Noble Knight 3’ humanitarian operation to address the dire water infrastructure situation in Gaza and ensure the Palestinian people’s access to safe drinking water.
The three new desalination plants will provide clean drinking water for 300,000 people, by processing approximately 600,000 gallons of seawater each day, sending them through a network of pipes throughout the Gaza Strip. This will significantly improve access to safe and clean drinking water for the residents.
The United Arab Emirates launched the ‘Noble Knight 3’ humanitarian operation on November 5, 2023, to provide humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people in Gaza. The UAE sent 105 aircraft carrying a field hospital, water desalination plants, and more than 7,126 tonnes of food, medical, and relief supplies.
‘Committed to Support Palestinians’
Ambassador Nusseibeh has emphasised the UAE’s commitment to its continued support of the Palestinian people.
“The UAE is committed to its continued support of the Palestinian people. Looking ahead, we confirm that our contribution to any reconstruction effort in Gaza will be conditional on the existence of an unambiguous commitment, backed by tangible steps, to launch a concrete plan to achieve the two-state solution with a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian state, in line with relevant UN Security Council resolutions, and negotiated between the two parties with full international backing.
Having just returned from a UAE-organised visit to Rafah border with Gaza, where alongside 15 current and incoming UN Security Council ambassadors and UN officials we learned first hand about the scale of the devastation in Gaza. Our immediate priority is to end the violence and protect the civilian Palestinian population there. We will continue to demand an urgent humanitarian ceasefire to end the bloodshed, and to facilitate the immediate, safe, sustainable, and unhindered delivery of relief and humanitarian aid, particularly to the most vulnerable, including the sick, children, the elderly, and women. We further stress the importance of the full and urgent implementation of Security Council resolution 2712 (2023).
We must also prevent, through robust measures, a wider escalation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in the West Bank where extremist settler violence must cease immediately, and perpetrators must be held accountable.
The only way forward from this desperate crisis is the two-State solution and the UAE will use all diplomatic and political levers to push for that outcome.”
The resolution received 13 votes in the 15-member Council with Britain abstaining on Friday but was cut down by Washington’s veto, reports Arul Louis
Brushing aside an impassioned plea by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a diplomatically isolated United States has again vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Hamas-Israel conflict.
The resolution received 13 votes in the 15-member Council with Britain abstaining on Friday but was cut down by Washington’s veto.
The veto came exactly two months after Israel launched retaliatory attacks on Gaza for the terrorist onslaught a day earlier by Hamas, which rules the territory.
This was the second resolution on Gaza that the US vetoed; another was vetoed by Russia and China, and two failed to get the minimum of nine votes required to pass as the Council grappled with the crisis.
But last month, the Council adopted a resolution calling for a humanitarian pause in the fighting – a more limited cessation of hostilities with a specific aim – when the US, Russia and Britain abstained saving it from a veto after the failure of the four earlier attempts at an action on Gaza.
That led to a four-day pause — extended by two days — in fighting starting last month to allow relief supplies into Gaza and for the release of some of the about 240 hostages taken from Israel by Hamas and other terrorist groups.
(UN Photo/Loey Felipe) A wide view of the UN Security Council chambers as members meet on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.
Friday’s resolution backed by about 90 countries was proposed by the United Arab Emirates, whose Deputy Permanent Representative Mohamed Issa Abushahab asked, “What is the message we are sending civilians across the world who may find themselves in similar situations” by being unable to pass the resolution.
Explaining the veto, US Deputy Permanent Representative Robert Wood said that it was calling for an “unsustainable ceasefire that will only plant the seeds for the next war”.
Moreover, he said, it did not condemn the 7/10 Hamas attack on Israel or affirm Israel’s right to self-defence.
The attempt to pass a resolution for a Gaza ceasefire came after Guterres on Wednesday invoked a rarely used provision of the UN Charter to call the Council’s attention to the crisis in that territory from Israel’s retaliatory attacks.
He asked the Council to act to “avert a human catastrophe” warning, “There is a high risk of the total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza, which would have devastating consequences”.
He used Article 99 of the Charter that had been invoked only three times before to make the call to action by the Council, about the only power given to the Secretary-General to act in a crisis.
He warned the Council on Friday “I fear the consequences (of the conflict) could be devastating for the security of the entire region” and spread elsewhere constituting a threat to international peace,
Making his plea for a ceasefire, Guterres told the Council, “The people of Gaza are looking into the abyss”.
They “are being told to move like human pinballs – ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival”, he said. “But nowhere in Gaza is safe:.
He said that he “unreservedly” condemned the Hamas attacks that killed about 1,200 people including 33 children and resulted in hundreds taken hostage, and that he was “appalled by the reports of sexual violence”.
Despite a lack of appropriate consultation by the resolution’s authors, the United States engaged in good faith on the Security Council resolution put forward today.
Unfortunately, nearly all of our recommendations were ignored. And the result of this rushed process was an…
He also had strong words for Israel noting: “At the same time, the brutality perpetrated by Hamas can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people”.
He noted that 17,000 Palestinians, including more than 4,000 women and 7,000 children, have been “reportedly” killed in Israeli operations.
“While indiscriminate rocket fire by Hamas into Israel, and the use of civilians as human shields, are in contravention of the laws of war, such conduct does not absolve Israel of its own violations”, he said.
In a remark apparently aimed at the US, which he did not name, he said, “International humanitarian law cannot be applied selectively. It is binding on all parties equally at all times, and the obligation to observe it does not depend on reciprocity”.
Israel’s Permanent Representative Gilad Erdan criticised Guterres for invoking Article 99 saying that he did not use it while the world was reeling from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or for other crises.
He said that regional stability can “only be achieved once Hamas is eliminated”.
Palestine’s Permanent Observer Riyad Mansour accused Israel of “conducting the war, through atrocities” and added that denying a ceasefire will not end them.
The General Assembly in October passed by an overwhelming majority a resolution calling for a ceasefire.
It received the votes of 121 members, while 14 voted against it and 45 including India abstained, showing broad support for a ceasefire.
India said it was abstaining because the resolution did not condemn Hamas terrorism.
The veto came as President Joe Biden is facing growing calls for a ceasefire from many, even those in his party, and large demonstrations while his unwavering support for Israel is backed by a broad political spectrum from his party and the Republican side.
To meet the criticism of his backing for Israel while its actions in Gaza his civilians, the Biden administration has been counselling Israel to take more precautions to protect civilians.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who has spoken to Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, said, “As Israel pursues its military objectives in Gaza, we believe Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians.”
The top Arab diplomats will hold a coordination meeting before meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The foreign ministers of Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt will meet with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Amman on Saturday to look into a ceasefire in Gaza, according to a statement from the Jordanian Foreign Ministry.
The Secretary-General of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization will also attend the meeting, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the statement.
The top Arab diplomats will hold a coordination meeting before meeting with Blinken.
During their meeting with Blinken, the top Arab diplomats will reaffirm the Arab stance, calling for an immediate ceasefire and the urgent and immediate delivery of humanitarian assistance to the besieged strip.
The Arab foreign ministers will also discuss with Blinken how to contain the Israel-Hamas conflict and prevent it from spreading to the region.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen.(Photo :twitter.com/elicoh1)
Israeli ambassadors stationed in Turkey have been told to return to Israel, reports Asian Lite News
Israel Foreign Minister Eli Cohen has said that he has ordered the return of the diplomatic representatives from Turkey in order to conduct a reassessment of Israel-Turkey relations.
“Against the background of the harsh statements from Turkey, I ordered the return of the diplomatic representatives from Turkey in order to conduct a reassessment of Israel-Turkey relations,” Cohen posted on X.
According to The Times of Israel, a review of diplomatic relations with Turkey is demanded by Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, following the “harsh” condemnation of Israel’s military operation against Hamas by Turkish leaders.
Israeli ambassadors stationed in Turkey have been told to return to Israel, according to Cohen.
Last week, Israel recalled its diplomats from the country as it also called on Israeli citizens to leave due to terror threats, according to The Times of Israel.
Amid Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan termed Hamas as ‘mujahideen’ defending their lands, as he announced the cancellation of his visit to Israel.
While addressing a conference of his AK party faction in parliament a few days back, the Turkish President said that Israel “can view Hamas as a terrorist organisation along with the West. The West owes you a lot. But Turkey does not owe you anything,” The Times of Israel reported.
Speaking out against Israel, Erdogan also stated that he is cancelling plans to visit Israel because of its “inhumane” war.
“Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it is a group of mujahideen defending their lands,” he said, according to The Times of Israel.
“We had a project to go to Israel, but it was cancelled, we will not go,” Erdogan added.
Meanwhile, the foreign minister of Turkey, Hakan Fidan has said that Israel committed “a crime against humanity” in its war in Gaza while speaking in Qatar, The Times of Israel reported.
“Targeting our Palestinian brothers, including children, patients and the elderly, even in schools, hospitals and mosques, is a crime against humanity,” he said.
Earlier on Tuesday, during a Security Council meeting, the UN chief said, “It is important to also recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” claiming that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”
He added, “They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced; and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”
Lambasting the UN chief after his remarks, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen stated, “Mr. Secretary-General, in what world do you live?” He rebutted as he addressed the Security Council. “Definitely, this is not our world.”
"These kids witnessed horror that cannot be described… Mr. Secretary General: In what world do you live? Definitely this is not our world,"
Following this, Cohen also cancelled a private meeting with Guterres, saying that there is “no place” for a “balanced approach”.
The October 7 attacks by Hamas killed at least 1,400 Israelis and wounded more than 4,500. The major offensive included the firing of thousands of rockets at Israel and the infiltration of the Jewish state by terrorist forces. (ANI)
However, some issues remain to be sorted out, even as 27 leaders of European Union called for “humanitarian pauses for aid supplies to flow”, which was short of calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East
Qatar has made “significant progress” on hostage negotiations with Hamas but still some issues remain to be sorted out, even as 27 leaders of European Union called for “humanitarian pauses for aid supplies to flow”, which was short of calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Middle East, reports said.
“There has been ‘significant progress’ on negotiations to release hostages held by Hamas but there are issues still remaining,” diplomatic sources familiar with the negotiations were quoted by CNN as saying.
“Negotiations are going very well. We have a breakthrough,” the source said. “There are issues still remaining, but talks are ongoing, and we remain hopeful.”
Qatar has helped US in the release of four hostages so far from Hamas captivity almost fortnight after they were kidnapped by the Hamas militants since their lightning strike from Gaza on October 7.
US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Barbara Leaf is now in Doha for meetings with Qatar’s leadership, CNN quoted informed sources. On the status of the hostage negotiations, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said: “Every channel is a possible channel.
“One thing should be clear — we have a goal and I trust the State of Israel and the IDF … and we’ll keep doing every effort to bring the hostages and the missing back.”
A Western official briefed on the hostage negotiations said there is still “optimism around a possible release, but there is also recognition that the clock is ticking”. The official indicated talks had made progress but an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza will not be delayed much longer.
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani
Meanwhile, the leaders of the 27 European Union member states had met in Brussels on Thursday and called for “humanitarian corridors and pauses for humanitarian needs.” The call for humanitarian “pauses” stops short of calling for a ceasefire, ruled out earlier by several European leaders.
Meanwhile, France called for hundreds of aid trucks daily for Gaza as soon as possible following the recent visit of its President Emmanuelle Macron to Israel. French Foreign and European Affairs Minister Catherine Colonna followed up on Macron’s visit saying: “Aid must be allowed into Gaza as soon as possible with hundreds of trucks needed every day.”
“It is absolutely necessary to get aid into Gaza in a durable manner as soon as possible, in significantly greater volumes. Inspections on aid trucks were a real obstacle to the flow of needed supplies,” she told French radio station RTL.
The French government announced a flight of 50 tons of aid for Gaza, which includes medicines, food aid and tents, a French Foreign Ministry source said on Friday, adding that the population of Gaza has “enormous and growing needs”.
The lack of a guarantee of French aid being allowed into Gaza is the largest obstacle facing aid operations, the source said, adding there is “no special treatment for French aid”.
This material aid is in addition to 20 million euros ($21.1 million) of French financial aid, split between multilateral international organizations and international NGOs already working in Gaza, reports said.
