Israel-Hamas war updates: US warns of imminent attack on Israel by Iran
Iran could launch strikes involving high-precision missiles and drones targeting Israel within days, the US has warned. Warning: Graphic
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The United States believes a major Iranian attack on Israel is imminent and could happen within days.
According to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with US and Israeli intelligence assessments, Iran could launch strikes involving high-precision missiles and drones targeting military and government sites in Israel.
It comes as America’s top military commander for the Middle East headed to Israel to coordinate a response.
Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla is expected to meet with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
US President Biden said on Wednesday that Iran is “threatening to launch a significant attack on Israel.”
“As I told [Israeli] Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu, our commitment to Israel’s security against these threats from Iran and its proxies is ironclad,” Mr Biden told reporters.
“Let me say it again: ironclad. We’re going to do all we can to protect Israel’s security.”
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Israel that it “will be punished” for a Damascus air strike that killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.
“The evil regime made a mistake in this regard. It must be punished and will be punished,” Khamenei said in a televised speech after Eid al-Adha prayers in Tehran.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz swiftly riposted with a Persian-language statement on social media site X (formerly Twitter).
“If Iran attacks from its territory, Israel will respond and attack Iran,” he said.
Khamenei said the April 1 strike, which levelled the five-storey Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital, had run roughshod over international agreements providing for the inviolability of diplomatic premises.
“The consulate and embassy offices in any country are the territory of that country,” he said. “When they attacked our consulate, it means they attacked our territory.” Khamenei has led Iranian officials in a succession of promises to avenge the strike, which was widely blamed on arch foe Israel.
One of his senior advisers, Yahya Rahim Safavi, warned over the weekend that Israeli embassies were “no longer safe”.
Israel said last week it was strengthening its defences and pausing leave for combat units following Iran’s retaliation threats.
Iran does not recognise Israel, and the two countries have fought a shadow war for years.
Iran charges that Israel was behind a wave of sabotage attacks and assassinations targeting its nuclear program.
FOLLOW UPDATES BELOW:
HAMAS LEADER’S FAMILY KILLED
An Israeli strike has killed three of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh’s sons in Gaza, the Palestinian leader and Israel’s military said, as war rages in the Palestinian territory despite ongoing truce negotiations.
Hamas said in a statement that three of Haniyeh’s sons and four of his grandchildren were killed in the air strike.
Israel confirmed the killings, saying the sons were “Hamas operatives” who were “on their way to carry out terrorist activities”.
The strike came as talks in Cairo aimed at a ceasefire and a hostage release deal dragged on without signs of a breakthrough.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Haniyeh, who is based in Qatar, suggested the strike was an attempt to shift Hamas’s negotiating stance, but insisted it would not work.
WONG’S PUSH FOR PALESTINE STATE
Meanwhile, Australia became the latest country to advocate formal recognition of a Palestinian state, further shattering a longstanding diplomatic taboo in the West.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said that recognising a state of Palestine could restart the moribund Middle East peace process and undermine extremist forces in the Middle East.
“Recognising a Palestinian state – one that can only exist side-by-side with a secure Israel – doesn’t just offer the Palestinian people an opportunity to realise their aspirations”, she told an audience in Canberra.
“It also strengthens the forces for peace, and undermines extremism. It undermines Hamas, Iran and Iran’s other destructive proxies in the region.”
For decades, the formal recognition of a Palestinian state has been seen as the endgame of a peace process between Palestinians and their Israeli neighbours.
The United States, Australia and most Western European nations have said they are willing to one day recognise Palestinian statehood, but not before agreement on thorny issues like the status of Jerusalem and final borders are agreed.
With war raging, Hamas in control of Gaza and Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government installed in Israel, the prospects of a peace process have rarely looked dimmer.
But after Hamas’ October 7 attacks and Israel’s searing response during six months of attacks on Gaza, diplomats are reconsidering once-contentious ideas.
“The failures of this approach by all parties over decades – as well as the Netanyahu Government’s refusal to even engage on the question of a Palestinian state – have caused widespread frustration,” Wong said.
“So the international community is now considering the question of Palestinian statehood as a way of building momentum towards a two-state solution,” she added.
Her comments come after the United Kingdom, Ireland, Malta, Slovenia and Spain have floated the idea of recognising a Palestinian state.
In 2014, Sweden, which has a large Palestinian community, became the first EU member in western Europe to recognise a Palestinian state.
A state of Palestine had earlier been recognised by six other European countries: Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania.
Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has so far killed 33,360 people, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
ISRAEL YET TO RESPOND TO LETTER OVER AUSSIE DEATH
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles has confirmed he and Senator Penny Wong were yet to receive a response to a letter they wrote to Israeli counterparts last Friday about the death of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom and six of her colleagues.
Mr Marles said the killing of aid workers was an “outrage” and “wholly unacceptable”.
“Obviously Australia has an interest here, a deep interest, to understand exactly what has occurred,” he told the ABC’s 7.30 Report on Tuesday.
“That’s why the foreign minister and I wrote the letter that we did last Friday to Israeli counterparts, and obviously we will continue to engage with Israel so that we can properly understand what has happened here and be assured that proper accountability is provided.”
Mr Marles said it was important to properly understand every detail.
“Israel needs to get to the bottom of this, but we need to have a full understanding of this as well, and then we need to be satisfied with the proper accountabilities that play out in respect of this event,” he said.
“That those who engaged in whatever has happened here are held properly to account.
“This is not something that can be satisfied in the course of a few days. This matter needs to play out over time.
“It is critically important for Australia that we see full responsibility taken, that we see the most thorough investigation, that we are given access to that.”
Mr Marles said it was “critically important” for Australia’s relationship with Israel.
Asked whether he expected criminal prosecutions, Mr Marles said he did not want to pre-empt any investigation.
But he added the appointment of Mr Binskin was an opportunity for the two countries to have a common understanding.
“We very much expect and hope that Israel will work closely with Mark Binskin in investigating this matter,” he said.
Despite writing the letter on Friday, Mr Marles confirmed he had not yet received a response from Israel.
“I can’t answer for Israel in relation to this, obviously,” he said.
“But I’m very clear about what Australia expects here and that this is a critical issue in the context of our relationship with Israel.”
ISRAEL TO BUY TENTS FOR DISPLACED PALESTINIANS
Israel is buying 40,000 tents to shelter almost half a million Gazans ahead of a ground attack on what it claims is Hamas’s last bastion in Rafah.
Israel has invited tenders for the tents, each housing about 12 people, according to the proposal published on the website of the defence ministry.
“I confirm that a call for tenders has been made, intended for the Gaza Strip,” the government source told AFP, requesting anonymity.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a ground assault on Rafah is planned, despite an international outcry against it.
The Israeli army estimates that Hamas has four battalions of fighters holding out in Rafah, a city on the border with Egypt where more than 1.5 million people have taken refuge.
Netanyahu has not confirmed the exact date of the offensive.
Other Israeli officials have confirmed that a ground offensive on Rafah is being planned, after the military withdrew troops from the main southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, leaving it in ruins.
‘AID BLOCKED’ AS FAMINE LOOMS
Israel has again been accused of blocking more convoys carrying food aid within Gaza, where famine is looming.
A spokesman for the United Nations’ humanitarian agency pointed to statistics from March showing that it was much more difficult to get clearance for delivering food than other aid in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
“Food convoys that should be going particularly to the north, where 70 per cent of people face famine conditions, are … three times more likely to be denied than any other humanitarian convoys with other kinds of material,” Jens Laerke told reporters in Geneva.
Israel meanwhile alleges that the main problem is with UN aid distribution within Gaza.
COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that manages the flow of aid, posted on X/Twitter, that “741 humanitarian aid trucks were inspected and transferred to the Gaza Strip over the last 2 days”.
“Only 267 aid trucks were distributed by UN aid agencies inside Gaza (out of which 146 carried food),” it said.
“The aid is available, distribution is what matters.”
Laerke said such comparisons were “meaningless” because the trucks screened by COGAT were “typically only half-full. That is a requirement that they have put in place for screening purposes”.
The trucks are then reloaded, filling them up fully, before moving on to the warehouses.
“Already there, the numbers will never match up,” Laerke said, and tallies don’t take into account the delays that happen at the crossing and other warehouses.
Israel has barred Egyptian drivers and trucks from being in the same area at the same time as Palestinian drivers and trucks, he said.
“That means there’s not a smooth handover,” Laerke said.
The main problem was getting authorisation that aid distribution can go ahead, he said.
While Israel complains about UN distribution, “half of the convoys that we were trying to send to the north with food (in March) were denied by the very same Israeli authorities”.
DOUBTS CAST OVER TRUCE DEAL
Israel’s Ynet news outlet cited an unidentified Israeli official as tempering the upbeat Egyptian report and stressing that “we still don’t see a deal on the horizon”.
“The distance is still great and there has been nothing dramatic in the meantime,” the Israeli official was quoted as saying by the Hebrew-language website.
A separate senior Israeli official was quoted by Ynet as saying that “patience is needed. There is potential, but we are not there yet”.
A senior Hamas official meanwhile told AFP that “we cannot speak of concrete progress so far”, with disagreement centred on the pace of displaced Palestinians returning to Gaza City in the north.
‘UNBEARABLE’: GAZA FAMILIES TRY TO IDENTIFY AL-SHIFA DEAD
Palestinian nurse Maha Sweylem came to the gutted shell of the Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza dreading news of her husband, whom she said was a doctor there.
World Health Organisation teams have arrived at what was Gaza’s biggest hospital to help identify the bodies that litter the ruins.
The Israeli military said it battled with Palestinian militants there during two weeks of fierce fighting last month, with the WHO saying that patients were trapped inside.
Sweylem told AFP that she had not seen her husband, Abdel Aziz Kali, since he was arrested by the Israel military during the assault. She does not know if he is dead or alive.
The nurse recalled how the Israeli army had quickly surrounded the hospital last month and then used loudspeakers to order that “ ‘everyone must surrender. Game over.’ Then, they started shooting at all the entrances, preventing anyone from moving.
“I spent four days there with my two little daughters, without any food or drink. They cried from hunger. When they arrested my husband, he had not eaten for three days,” she said.
AFP asked the Israeli army if they know of Kali’s whereabouts, but there was no immediate response.
‘THE STENCH IS DEATH’
The Israeli military have long accused Hamas and Palestinian militants of using hospitals and other medical facilities as hideouts and command posts, and their patients as shields.
Motasem Salah, director of the Gaza Emergency Operations Centre, said the scenes at the sprawling medical centre were “unbearable”.
“The stench of death is everywhere”, he said, as a digger went through the rubble and rescue workers pulled decomposed bodies from the sand and ruins.
Salah said Gaza lacked the forensic experts needed to help identify the dead or determine what had happened to them. So they are relying on “the expertise of the WHO and OCHA (UN humanitarian office) delegation.”
They are trying “to identify the decomposed bodies and the body parts that were crushed” from wallets and documents, he said.
Relatives were also there “to ascertain the fate of their sons, whether they have been killed, are missing, or have been displaced to the south,” said Amjad Aliwa, the head of Al-Shifa’s emergency department.
He said they wanted to identify “their sons and ensure they receive a proper burial. However, we lack the necessary equipment, and time is not on our side. We must complete the job before the bodies decompose,” Aliwa told AFP.
Salah said the psychological impact of this “unwatchable” process on the families is unbearable, in another WHO video from the scene shared with AFP.
“Seeing their children as decomposing corpses and their bodies completely torn apart is a scene that can’t be described. There are no words for it.”
Several worried relatives walked among what the WHO said were “numerous shallow graves” outside the devastated emergency department and the administrative and surgical buildings.
“Many dead bodies were partially buried with their limbs visible,” it said in a statement after its first visit to the site.
Athanasios Gargavanis, the WHO surgeon leading its mission said, “Hospitals should never be militarised.”
AFP video images from Al-Shifa on Monday showed the remains of several bodies being recovered from one of the courtyards of the hospital and put into body bags.
For the son of one of the missing, Ghassan Riyadh Kanita, whose 83-year-old father Riyadh had taken refuge in the hospital, the news was not good.
“My nephew called us and he told me that they found the body at the entrance of Al-Shifa. We came and they told us that they found the body.”
HAMAS ‘CONSIDERING’ TRUCE DEAL
Israel and Hamas have dampened hopes of a speedy breakthrough in Cairo talks towards a Gaza truce and hostage release deal after Egyptian state-linked media had previously reported “significant progress”.
As the Gaza war rages on into a seventh month, Israel is under growing international pressure to agree to a ceasefire, including from its top ally and arms supplier the United States.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted, half a year after the October 7 attack, that Israel is “one step away from victory” and has vowed to defeat remaining Hamas fighters in Gaza’s far-southern Rafah city.
On the same day however, the army also announced it had pulled its forces out of southern Gaza, although military commanders stressed the withdrawal was tactical and did not signal an end to the war.
Hamas said Tuesday it was considering a new truce framework proposed during the latest talks in Cairo.
The latest proposal to pause the fighting would see a six-week truce and Israeli women and child hostages freed in exchange for up to 900 Palestinian prisoners, a source in Hamas said Monday.
The deal would also allow the return of displaced Palestinian civilians to the north of the Gaza Strip and 400 to 500 trucks of food aid a day, according to the source.
Saying it “appreciates” the mediators’ efforts, Hamas accused Israel on Tuesday of not responding to any of its demands in the talks.
“Despite this, the movement’s leadership is studying the submitted proposal,” the militant group said in a statement.
The ceasefire talks in Cairo were described as “serious” by the White House.
“Now it’s going to be up to Hamas to come through,” the White House said.
“Today I received a detailed report on the talks in Cairo,” Netanyahu said.
“We are working all the time to achieve our goals, primarily the release of all our hostages and achieving a complete victory over Hamas.”
That “requires entry into Rafah and the elimination of the terrorist battalions there”, he added. “It will happen – there is a date,” he said in a video statement.
ISRAEL ACCUSES TURKEY OF VIOLATING TRADE DEALS
Israel vowed Tuesday to take steps against Turkey, accusing it of violating trade deals between the two countries after Ankara announced trade restrictions over the war in Gaza.
“Turkey is unilaterally violating the trade agreements with Israel, and Israel will adopt the necessary steps against it,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz sharply criticised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the decision.
“Erdogan has sacrificed the economic interest of Turkey’s people for the sake of his support of Hamas murders in Gaza,” Katz said on X.
“Israel will not submit to violence and extortion … and will adopt against Turkey similar steps that will harm the Turkish economy.”
Israel is now preparing an “expanded list of products” it intends to stop importing from Turkey, the ministry said, including construction materials like steel and cement.
AUSTRALIA COMMITS $2M TO UN GAZA AID COORDINATOR
The Australian government has committed $2 million dollars to the work of the UN Special Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag.
Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said the funds would help “facilitate safe, unimpeded and expanded humanitarian access” in the besieged enclave.
“Israel must do more to ensure aid gets into Gaza, including immediate action to protect and support humanitarian actors,” she wrote in a post on X.
Ms Wong also said she spoke with Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi about increased humanitarian aid entering Gaza, including parachute air drops, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry about the country’s efforts to broker a ceasefire.
I also spoke to UN Special Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza Sigrid Kaag.
— Senator Penny Wong (@SenatorWong) April 8, 2024
Australia has committed $2 million to support Ms Kaag's work to facilitate safe, unimpeded and expanded humanitarian access into Gaza.
ISRAEL DEPLOYS C-DOME DEFENCE SYSTEM FOR THE FIRST TIME
Israel for the first time deployed its ship-mounted defence system, called the C-Dome, against a “suspicious” target that entered the country’s airspace near the southern city of Eilat, the military said.
The C-Dome is a naval version of the Iron Dome air defence system used to shield against rocket and missile attacks.
On Monday evening, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported an alert in the area of Eilat, which was targeted in February by intercepted ballistic missile fire from Yemen’s Houthi rebels, allies of Palestinian militants Hamas.
“Following the sirens that sounded in the area of Eilat regarding the infiltration of a hostile aircraft, IDF Naval forces identified a suspicious aerial target crossing into Israeli territory,” the IDF said in a statement released early Tuesday.
“The target was successfully intercepted by the ‘C-Dome’ naval defence system,” it said.
No injuries or damage were reported. An IDF spokesman would not confirm whether the “suspicious” target had been a drone but told AFP this was “the first operational use of C-Dome”.
Mounted on Sa’ar 6-class corvettes, German-made warships, the C-Dome uses the same interceptor as the Iron Dome, according to state-owned operator Rafael Advanced Defence Systems. The land-based Iron Dome has been used countless times to intercept rockets fired from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
ISRAEL PREPARING FOR ‘FUTURE MISSIONS’
Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said IDF troops would “prepare for future missions, including … in Rafah” on the Egyptian border where almost 1.5 million Gazans live in crowded shelters and tents.
Israeli government spokesman Avi Hyman said “I wouldn’t read too much into the fact that we’ve moved soldiers in or out of anywhere. I’ll remind everyone that we’re living in a tiny country, we can move soldiers in or out very easily and very quickly.”
Witnesses told AFP that more Israeli air strikes and artillery fire hit central Gaza, including near Gaza City and in Deir al-Balah, as well as in Rafah in the south.
WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN DISPUTES IDF PROBE
World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres has raised questions over the Israeli probe into a strike that killed seven of his staff in Gaza – including an Australian – and warned that the conflict had become a “war against humanity itself.”
“I want to thank, obviously, the IDF, for doing such a quick investigation,” the head of the US-based charity told the ABC.
“At the same time, I would say with something so complicated, the investigation should be much more deeper,” he added.
“And I would say that the perpetrator cannot be investigating himself.”
The Israeli Defence Forces have insisted that their killing on Monday of the World Central Kitchen workers in Gaza was a “tragic mistake.”
An Australian, Lalzawmi ‘Zomi’ Frankcom, and six others were killed when their convoy, whose route was cleared with the IDF, was repeatedly struck.
In its investigation, the Israeli military said an armed man climbed on the roof of one of the trucks and “started firing his weapon,” leading to suspicions that the “convoy had been hijacked by Hamas.”
Andres questioned the narrative of the report, saying Israel was targeting anything that “seems” to move, and has been doing so “for too long.”
“This doesn’t seem like a war against terror. This doesn’t seem anymore like a war about defending Israel,” he said. “It really, at this point, seems like a war against humanity itself.”
The Gaza war broke out on October 7 with an attack by Hamas militants that resulted in the deaths of 1170 people, mostly civilians, Israeli figures show.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 33,175 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
‘IT SMELLS LIKE DEATH’: TROOPS PULL OUT OF KHAN YUNIS
“It smells like death,” said Maha Thaer, a mother of four, as she returned to the devastated southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis on Sunday, after Israeli troops withdrew.
“We don’t have a city anymore – only rubble. There is absolutely nothing left. I could not stop myself crying as I walked through the streets,” the 38-year-old told AFP.
“All the streets have been bulldozed. And the smell … I watched people digging and bringing out the bodies,” said Thaer, whose home was partially destroyed.
Soon after the Israeli army said its troops were pulling out, people began to emerge into the devastated landscape – the residents of Khan Yunis returning to find what remained of their homes.
Nearly 400,000 people lived in Khan Yunis and its environs before October 7.
Much of the area is now in ruins after months of bombardment and heavy fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants.
The Israeli army told AFP that it had pulled its 98th division of ground troops out of the southern city on Sunday to “recuperate”, with one official telling the Israeli media it had killed thousands of Hamas fighters there.
“There’s no need for us to remain … We did everything we could there,” an army official told Haaretz newspaper.
THOUSANDS RALLY FOR HOSTAGES
Thousands gathered in front of Israel’s parliament on Sunday to demand the return of the hostages abducted by Hamas militants in Gaza exactly six months ago.
“Stay strong you who are still there,” cried 17-year-old former hostage Agam Goldstein with tears in her eyes.
The teenager was freed in a deal with Hamas at the end of November. About 250 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage by militants on October 7. The army says 129 are still being held in Gaza, including 34 who are presumed dead.
In another moment of high emotion at the rally, Ofri Bibas appealed for the lives of her brother Yarden, his wife Shiri and their sons, Ariel, 4, and one-year-old Kfir – the youngest of the hostages.
After a massive anti-government demonstration in Tel Aviv on Saturday, which also heard emotional calls to free the hostages, organisers of the Jerusalem rally attempted to be apolitical.
But Lishay Meran, whose husband Omri is among those held captive in Gaza, took aim at the country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is frequently accused of not doing enough to free them.
“We were abandoned on October 7, and we have been abandoned since,” said the mother of two as protesters carried banners reading “Free them now!” and “Bring them home”.
Other hostage families have accused Netanyahu of trying to blacken their reputations and accusing them of being “traitors” for protesting in wartime.
Mr Sunak said the children of Gaza needed a “humanitarian pause immediately, leading to a long-term sustainable ceasefire”.
“That is the fastest way to get hostages out and aid in, and to stop the fighting and loss of life.
“For the good of both Israelis and Palestinians – who all deserve to live in peace, dignity and security – that is what we will keep working to achieve,” he said.
IRAN ON ‘HIGH ALERT’
Iran’s military forces are on “full high alert,” as it vows revenge for an alleged Israeli strike that killed a top Iranian commander in Syria and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members.
Meanwhile, the US is also preparing for a possible attack by Iran targeting Israeli or American assets.
American and Israeli negotiators were also expected in Cairo over the weekend for a renewed push to reach a ceasefire-hostage deal in a war that has raged for nearly half a year.
US President Joe Biden wrote to the leaders of Egypt and Qatar urging them to dial up pressure on Hamas to “agree to and abide by a deal,” a senior administration official told AFP on Friday night.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have engaged for months in behind-the-scenes talks to broker a ceasefire and an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners, but have made no headway since a week-long truce in November.
HOSTAGE NEGOTIATIONS CONTINUE
The White House confirmed that negotiations would occur this weekend in Cairo, but would not comment on US media reports that CIA Director Bill Burns would be attending, along with Israel spy chief David Barnea, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Egypt’s intelligence chief Abbas Kamel.
Israel and Hamas, which negotiate through intermediaries, have traded blame for the lack of progress.
“This basic fact remains true: There would be a ceasefire in Gaza today had Hamas simply agreed to release this vulnerable category of hostages — the sick, wounded, elderly, and young women,” the senior Biden administration official said.
Hamas officials and Qatari mediator Al-Thani have previously accused Israel of stymieing the truce with objections over the return of displaced Gazan civilians and the ratio of prisoners to hostages.
During a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, Biden pushed him to “fully empower” his negotiators to reach a deal.
WARNING AS AID WORKERS KILLED
A staunch backer of Israel, Biden’s patience with the immense toll inflicted by the war on Gaza appears to be waning, especially after the killing of seven aid workers.
With both international and domestic outrage mounting, Biden has warned of a reassessment of US support if more is not done to protect civilians.
Allies have been pressing Biden to leverage the billions of dollars in US military aid to Israel.
More than three dozen US politicians on Friday signed a letter to Biden urging him to reconsider the “recent decision to authorise the transfer of a new arms package to Israel, and to withhold this and any future offensive arms transfers until a full investigation into the air strike is completed”.
ISRAEL FIRES TWO OFFICERS AFTER AID WORKERS KILLED
The Israeli army, known as the IDF, announced it was firing two officers after finding a series of “grave mistakes” led to the drone strikes that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers on Monday.
It was a rare admission of wrongdoing by Israel in its campaign to root the militant group Hamas out of the Gaza Strip, where the health ministry says more than 33,091 people, mostly women and children, have been killed.
In response to the IDF’s preliminary findings on the strike, Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Saturday it was “not sufficient”.
World Central Kitchen said Israel “cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza”, noting that its staff was attacked despite having “followed all proper communications procedures”.
WCK said its operations in Gaza remain suspended after the attack, while top global aid groups said relief work has become almost impossible.
“In its speed, scale and inhumane ferocity, the war in Gaza is the deadliest of conflicts — for civilians, for aid workers, for journalists, for health workers and for our own (UN) colleagues,” UN chief Antonio Guterres told a UN Security Council briefing on Friday.
At the same briefing, Israeli ambassador Gilad Erdan insisted the “only reason” aid fails to reach Gazan civilians “is because Hamas loots it and the UN is incapable of handling the capacity of supplies”.
AID ALLOWED INTO GAZA
Following the Biden-Netanyahu call, Israel said it would allow “temporary” deliveries through additional aid routes, without specifying when that would begin.
For the 2.4 million Gazans, simply procuring food and water in the relentlessly bombarded strip has become a torturous struggle.
Since January, Palestinians in famine-threatened northern Gaza have eaten an average of just 245 calories per day — less than a can of beans — since January, according to Oxfam.
“Living in tents is difficult, everything is hard. Securing water and food is difficult,” said Gazan Siham Ashour, who like more than a million others has been displaced to the sprawling encampment in the strip’s southernmost city Rafah.
President Joe Biden has stood firmly by Israel amid months of mounting domestic and international outcry over the humanitarian toll in Gaza, but the killing of seven aid workers in an Israeli strike seems to have brought him the closest yet to a breaking point.
“Obviously the World Central Kitchen fiasco has turned the political pressure up,” James Ryan of the Middle East Research and Information Project told AFP, referring to the US-based aid group employing the seven workers.
“This turn of events has made it clear … that Israel is not really putting a lot of effort into discriminating between combatants and civilians, to say the least,” he said.
FEARS OF GROUND OFFENSIVE
Before the deaths of the workers, Washington already had growing concern over plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for a ground offensive in overcrowded Rafah, fearing that the civilian death toll in Gaza could soar.
At the end of February, after deadly chaos erupted at a food aid distribution in northern Gaza, the Biden administration upped pressure on Israel to increase the flow of aid and began its own series of humanitarian air drops.
But it wasn’t until Thursday that Biden finally opened the door to conditioning US aid for Israel.
In a tense 30-minute call with Netanyahu, Biden discussed “the need for Israel to announce and implement a series of specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” the White House said afterwards.
It added that Biden “made clear that US policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action.”
— with AFP & NewsWire
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