Israel-Hamas war: Hostage families protest in Tel Aviv as anger grows
An Israeli minister has sparked fury and protests among the families of hostages after saying returning captives is “not the most important thing”. Warning: Graphic.
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The father of an 18-year-old who was taken captive by Hamas terrorists on October 7 has lashed out at the Israeli government for dismissing deals and increasing the risk of harm to the hostages.
Eli Albag, whose daughter Liri is among 134 hostages still being held in Gaza, slammed Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for suggesting that the efforts to return the hostages to Israel are less important than destroying Hamas.
#Israel: “I’m talking to all citizens of Israel — whoever thinks that the citizens, the hostages are unimportant, let them kidnap your children and then you can speak!â€-Eli Albag father of hostage held in #Gaza at protest this evening pic.twitter.com/JFB2HOJXI9
— sebastian usher (@sebusher) February 20, 2024
“Let them kidnap your children!” Mr Albag said at a protest outside the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv against the government’s decision not to send an Israeli delegation to the hostage talks in Cairo.
“Let them kidnap your children and I will shout in the street, ‘It’s not the most important thing!’”
“I’m talking to all citizens of Israel — whoever thinks that the citizens, the hostages are unimportant, let them kidnap your children and then you can speak.”
“We have suffered for 137 days, day after day, minute by minute, we don’t sleep at night.”
Calling for people to take to the streets in protest, Mr Albag said his daughter was attacked while protecting the State of Israel, but that the State did not protect her in return.
“It (Israel) will not protect you,” Mr Albag declares to the crowd of protesters.
“They are abandoning us above. They are laughing at us, dragging their feet, they are not going to negotiate. I say to you citizens, take to the streets because today it is us and tomorrow it will be you.”
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WHO TRANSFERS NASSER HOSPITAL PATIENTS
The World Health Organisation has transferred 32 patients out of the besieged Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza but said it feared for the patients and medics still inside.
WHO staff said the scenes around the hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis were “indescribable”, while calling the conditions inside ripe for the spread of disease.
Israeli troops entered the Nasser hospital on Thursday, following days of fighting around the complex. It is the main hospital in the southern Gaza Strip.
“The dismantling and degradation of the Nasser Medical Complex is a massive blow to Gaza’s health system,” the WHO said in a statement.
After being denied access to the hospital on Friday and Saturday, the WHO said it led two missions to transfer 32 patients in a critical state, including two children, from the complex on Sunday and Monday.
The missions also provided small supplies of essential medicines and food for remaining patients and staff.
The transferred patients were moved to other hospitals and to field hospitals in the Gaza Strip.
“Nasser Hospital has no electricity or running water, and medical waste and garbage are creating a breeding ground for disease,” the UN health agency said.
“WHO staff said the destruction around the hospital was ‘indescribable’. The area was surrounded by burnt and destroyed buildings, heavy layers of debris, with no stretch of intact road.” The patients were transferred by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in four ambulances.
“Weak and frail patients were transferred amidst active conflict near the aid convoy,” the WHO said, while road conditions slowed down the vehicles.
ISRAEL CONTINUES TO DETAIN 12 MEDICS
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has said that Israel continues to detain 12 members of its staff, including seven who were arrested during an Israeli raid on Al-Amal Hospital nearly two weeks ago.
Israel has faced allegations of disappearing medical workers and doctors throughout the current war.
“PRCS expresses deep concern for the safety of its detained teams, whose fate remains unknown, and calls on the international community to urgently intervene to pressure the Israeli occupation authorities to immediately release our detained teams,” the group said in a social media post.
The Israeli occupation continues to arrest 12 PRCS teams, including 7 who were arrested from inside Al-Amal Hospital 12 days ago.
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) February 20, 2024
🚨PRCS expresses deep concern for the safety of its detained teams, whose fate remains unknown, and calls on the international community to urgently… pic.twitter.com/iZw3CSFjjr
US VETOES CEASEFIRE
The United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, drawing stern criticism from allies as President Joe Biden faces mounting pressure to temper support for Israel.
Washington had circulated its own, alternative draft resolution ahead of the vote. Unlike past US efforts, that version does feature the word “ceasefire” — but with no call for it to be enacted immediately.
Tuesday’s resolution, which Algeria had been working on for three weeks, had demanded “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire that must be respected by all parties.”
The veto provoked a chorus of criticism of Washington — not just from China and Russia, which have rejected the resolute US backing for Israel, but also from US allies including France, Malta and Slovenia.
“We voted for the resolution because the killing of civilians in Gaza must stop. The suffering that Palestinians are enduring is beyond anything a human being should be subjected to,” Slovenia’s representative to the UN Security Council Samuel Zbogar said.
“The human toll and the humanitarian situation is intolerable and Israeli operations must stop,” French ambassador to the UN Nicolas de Riviere said.
Algeria’s envoy Amar Bendjama said: “Examine your conscience, how will history judge you,” Bendjama said.
ISRAEL POUNDS GAZA
Israel hit Gaza with new air strikes on Tuesday local time as world powers grappled with how to broker a ceasefire ahead of a UN Security Council vote.
The United Nations sounded the alarm over the humanitarian situation in the besieged territory, warning that food shortages could lead to an “explosion” of preventable child deaths.
Four months of relentless fighting have flattened much of the Palestinian territory, pushed 2.2 million people to the brink of famine and displaced three-quarters of the population, according to UN estimates.
“How many of us have to die... to stop these crimes?” Ahmad Moghrabi, said a Palestinian doctor in southern Gaza’s main city, Khan Younis.
“Where is the humanity?”
Even Prince William, Prince of Wales has made a plea for peace.
Despite repeated calls to spare Rafah, Israel has set a Ramadan deadline for a ground incursion, should Hamas militants not free scores of Israeli hostages held since the October 7 attacks by then.
“If by Ramadan the hostages are not home, the fighting will continue everywhere to include the Rafah area,” said war cabinet member Benny Gantz.
The Muslim holy month is expected to start around March 10.
International mediators have been scrambling to avert the assault and its feared mass civilian casualties.
At the United Nations Security Council, two rivalling ceasefire proposals have been put forward.
The first, drafted by Algeria, demands an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and “unconditional release of all hostages”.
It met swift opposition from key Israel backer the United States, which tabled an alternative draft.
That text, seen by AFP on Monday, emphasises “support for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza as soon as practicable”.
While Washington has pressed a truce-for-hostages deal, weeks of talks involving US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators have failed to reach an agreement.
Hamas has threatened to walk away from negotiations unless more aid gets into Gaza, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected Hamas’s demands as “delusional”.
He vehemently opposed calls for negotiations to include recognition of a Palestinian state.
“We flat out reject this,” he said in a video statement on Monday, saying it would “endanger the existence of the State of Israel.”
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 29,092 people, mostly women and children, according to the latest count by the territory’s health ministry.
Early Tuesday, witnesses said overnight air strikes and fighting had mostly hit Khan Younis and the east of Gaza City.
“Missiles are falling on us. How much more can a human can deal with that?” said Ayman Abu Shammali after his wife and daughter were killed in a strike Zawayda, in central Gaza.
“People in the north are dying from hunger while we here (are) dying from bombing.”
PALESTINIAN GIRLS, WOMEN, ‘RAPED, KILLED ASSAULTED’
UN experts, including the special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, say they are distressed by reports of “multiple forms of sexual assault” against Palestinian women and girls in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
In a statement, the UN rights office says there are “credible allegations” of arbitrary detention, executions and sexual assaults of Palestinian women and children in the Gaza Strip, calling for an urgent and independent investigation.
The report by UN Special Rapporteurs Reem Alsalem, Francesca Albanese and others said at least two female Palestinian detainees were raped while others were “threatened with rape and sexual violence” by Israeli soldiers.
Women and girls were also reportedly held in cages during rain, with no access to food, or executed at their places of shelter while waving white flags.
“Those responsible for these apparent crimes must be held accountable and victims and their families are entitled to full redress and justice,” said the report.
They expressed concern about the arbitrary detention of “hundreds of Palestinian women and girls, including human rights defenders, journalists and humanitarian workers, in Gaza and the West Bank since October 7.”
“We are particularly distressed by reports that Palestinian women and girls in detention have also been subjected to multiple forms of sexual assault, such as being stripped naked and searched by male Israeli army officers. At least two female Palestinian detainees were reportedly raped while others were reportedly threatened with rape and sexual violence,” the experts said, adding that that photos of female detainees in “degrading circumstances” were also reportedly taken by Israeli soldiers and uploaded online.
They also expressed concern that “an unknown number of Palestinian women and children, including girls,” have gone missing after contact with the Israeli army in Gaza.
“There are disturbing reports of at least one female infant forcibly transferred by the Israeli army into Israel, and of children being separated from their parents, whose whereabouts remain unknown,” they said.
“We remind the Government of Israel of its obligation to uphold the right to life, safety, health, and dignity of Palestinian women and girls and to ensure that no one is subjected to violence, torture, ill-treatment or degrading treatment, including sexual violence,” the experts said.
ISRAEL DECLARES BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT ‘PERSONA NON GRATA’
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s comparison of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust has unleashed a diplomatic firestorm, with Brazil recalling its ambassador Monday and Israel declaring Lula “persona non grata.”
The row erupted the day before when Lula said the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip “isn’t a war, it’s a genocide,” and compared it to “when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Lula had “crossed a red line,” and Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Lula is “persona non grata in the state of Israel so long as he doesn’t retract his remarks and apologize.”
Katz summoned Brazil’s ambassador Frederico Meyer for a meeting Monday at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem.
In a tit-for-tat move, the Brazilian foreign ministry then said it had also summoned the Israeli ambassador to Brazil, Daniel Zonshine, for a meeting later that same day, and recalled Meyer from Tel Aviv for consultations.
According to a diplomatic source, Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira and Zonshine had a “harsh, but appropriate” conversation, as Vieira “demonstrated dissatisfaction” with the treatment of Meyer and Lula in Jerusalem over the situation.
That included Meyer being forced to listen to a statement in Hebrew “without an interpreter, without knowing what was being said,” the source added.
FIRST PROOF OF LIFE OF MOTHER AND CHILDREN TAKEN BY HAMAS
The Israeli military has released footage which it says shows Shiri Bibas and her two small children being moved by Palestinian militants in Gaza shortly after the family was kidnapped in southern Israel on October 7.
The recently discovered images is the first proof of life of the three members of the family since they were taken into Gaza.
The security camera footage showed what appeared to be a young woman carrying a child on her shoulder as she was wrapped in a long, light-coloured covering in the yard of a building and transferred into a car.
The army claims the footage was recovered a few days ago and came from the area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
It says the images show the mother as well as her sons Ariel, who was aged four when he was kidnapped, and Kfir, the youngest hostage seized, who was nine months old at the time.
The boys’ father, Yarden, was kidnapped separately and is also still held in Gaza.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said in a press conference the IDF was “very concerned about the fate of Shiri and the children.”
He said the IDF does not currently have enough information to confirm whether they are dead or alive, but is “making every effort to obtain more information about their fate.”
The Bibas family released a statement calling for their immediate release.
“We desperately call on all decision makers in Israel and worldwide involved in negotiations: Bring them home immediately,” the family said.
SOUTHERN GAZA HOSPITALS UNDER ATTACK
An additional 107 Palestinians were killed and 145 injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza between Sunday and Monday, as the death toll in the war-ravaged territory surpassed 29,000, with more than 69,000 Palestinians injured, the UN reports.
Israeli forces arrested 70 medical staff at the Nasser Hospital complex in Khan Younis on Sunday where eight patients died due to a lack of oxygen, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported citing Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Fourteen patients were evacuated from the hospital on Sunday by the World Health Organization and negotiations are underway with Israeli forces calling for the evacuation of all remaining patients from the complex, OCHA reports.
The situation at Khan Younis’s Al Amal Hospital is also critical after being under Israeli siege for 28 days. Food is nearly exhausted and fuel is running out to produce electricity to keep high-risk patients alive, the UN notes in its latest flash report.
On Sunday, the hospital’s third floor was damaged by artillery shelling and its central maintenance room was destroyed, OCHA said citing the Palestine Red Crescent Society.
US PROPOSES RESOLUTION FOR ‘TEMPORARY CEASEFIRE’ IN GAZA
The United States has drafted a UN Security Council resolution that calls for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza “as soon as practical” and warns Israel not to launch a ground offensive on Rafah.
The draft, seen by Al Jazeera, also calls for “lifting all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale” in Gaza.
The US draft also warns Israel not to launch a ground offensive in Rafah, saying: “The Security Council should underscore that such a major ground offensive should not proceed, under the current circumstances.”
Israel has said it plans to storm Rafah, where more than 1.4 million of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza have sought shelter.
Those plans have prompted widespread international concern that such a move would kill large numbers of civilians and sharply worsen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is on the brink of famine, according to the UN.
14 PEOPLE WOUNDED IN LEBANON
Israeli forces have carried out at least two air strikes on the coastal town of Ghaziyeh in southern Lebanon, with local reports saying it targeted civilian factories.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) says 14 people in the country were wounded in Israeli air raids near Sidon earlier today.
The NNA says that the strikes on Ghaziyeh injured mostly “Syrian and Palestinian workers”.
Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said that a factory was targeted in the strikes.
“The owner of the factory said the targeted facility manufactured electrical generators,” she said. She added that strikes hitting deeper inside Lebanon are becoming more frequent.
HOUTHIS ATTACK US SHIPS
Yemen’s Houthi militants say they have attacked two US ships, Sea Champion and Navis Fortuna, in the Gulf of Aden.
“The targeting operation was carried out with a number of appropriate naval missiles, and the casualties were accurate and direct, thanks to God,” the group’s military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a statement reported by The Jerusalem Post.
US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees US military operations in the Middle East, says a UK-owned vessel in the Red Sea was damaged on Sunday when it was struck by an anti-ship ballistic missile fired from Houthi territory in Yemen.
“Two anti-ship ballistic missiles were launched from Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist-controlled areas of Yemen toward MV Rubymar, a Belize-flagged, UK-owned bulk carrier,” CENTCOM said in a social media post.
“One of the missiles struck the vessel, causing damage. The ship issued a distress call and a coalition warship along with another merchant vessel responded to the call to assist the crew of the MV Rubymar. The crew was transported to a nearby port by the merchant vessel.”
Feb. 18 Summary of Red Sea Activities
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) February 19, 2024
Between 9:30 and 10:45 p.m., Feb. 18, two anti-ship ballistic missiles were launched from Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist-controlled areas of Yemen toward MV Rubymar, a Belize-flagged, UK-owned bulk carrier. One of the missiles struck the… pic.twitter.com/d6Ty7YTwcG
ONLY THREE DAYS OF DRINKING WATER LEFT AT HOSPITAL
Israeli forces have targeted and damaged a water desalination station at al-Amal Hospital, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) has said.
“Available drinking water at al-Amal Hospital is only sufficient for three days,” the group said in a post on X.
Earlier, the PRCS said the situation inside the Khan Younis hospital was “highly dangerous due to a 28-day-long siege”.
- Water desalination station at PRCS Al-Amal Hospital in #KhanYunis disabled following targeting by Israeli occupation forces.
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) February 19, 2024
- Available drinking water at Al-Amal Hospital in is only sufficient for three days.#AlAmalHospital#Gaza#NotATarget ⌠#IHLpic.twitter.com/arZMpmrDrI
ISRAELIS BLOCK LIFESAVING AID
Even as the threat of famine stalks the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, Israeli protesters have gathered repeatedly to stop desperately needed aid from getting into the Palestinian territory.
“You might say it’s not acceptable to block food and water going in,” said one protester, David Rudman, at the Nitzana border post between Israel and Egypt.
“But, given the situation we’re in, it’s acceptable,” he argued as the Gaza war, siege and hostage crisis have continued into a fifth month.
The latest protest on Sunday came as Hamas threatened to suspend talks to free hostages unless more aid gets in.
Despite those threats, just over 100 people gathered at Nitzana, where the Egyptian Sinai meets Israel’s Negev desert, with some saying they were hoping to pile pressure on in a bid to free the captives.
Undeterred by concrete blocks across the road and armed soldiers on patrol, the protesters reached the terminal where aid from Egypt is checked before the trucks continue towards Gaza.
As a result, trucks waiting on the Egyptian side were unable to cross into Israel.
Some 300,000 people remain in northern Gaza, where increasingly desperate conditions have forced some to grind bird feed for flour.
A recent survey for Israel’s Channel 12 television suggested 72 per cent of Israelis believed Gaza should not receive any aid while hostages are still being held.
The UN says the protests at Nitzana and Kerem Shalom are blocking trucks from going into Gaza, hitting dwindling stocks.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society on Sunday evening said 123 trucks made it into Gaza via Kerem Shalom, but none had passed through Nitzana because of the protest.
Nili Naouri, head of the far-right group “Israel is Forever”, said that “it’s completely immoral to force Israel to send humanitarian convoys of trucks to people that support Hamas, who are holding our people hostage, and are collaborating with the enemy”.
Some 1.4 million Palestinians have been sheltering in Rafah in the far south of Gaza, many having been displaced several times in a bid to find safety since the start of the war.
With neighbouring Egypt repeatedly rejecting the mass displacement of Palestinians, they have nowhere to go as Israel’s planned ground offensive of Rafah looms.
ISRAEL GIVES HAMAS NEW HOSTAGE ULTIMATUM
Israel war cabinet member Benny Gantz has warned that if hostages held in Gaza aren’t free by the beginning of Ramadan, on March 10, their offence will continue everywhere, including in Rafah.
“The world must know, and Hamas leaders must know — if by Ramadan our hostages are not home, the fighting will continue everywhere, to include the Rafah area,” Gantz said at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations in Jerusalem, The Times of Israel reports.
“We will do so in a co-ordinated manner, facilitating the evacuation of civilians in dialogue with our American and Egyptian partners to minimise civilian casualties,” he continued.
“To those saying the price (of an offensive) is too high, I say this very clearly: Hamas has a choice — they can surrender, release the hostages, and the citizens of Gaza will be able to celebrate the holy holiday of Ramadan.”
Around 1.5 million Palestinians have reportedly taken refuge in Rafah as the conflict continues, with US President Joe Biden warning that military action shouldn’t go ahead without plans in place to ensure the safety of civilians in the area.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said that Israel will “drive Hezbollah away from our towns” on the Lebanese border.
He added that “if we have to wage a war in Lebanon, we will do it”.
Gantz added that “after October 7, the pathway to regional stability and peace is not through one-sided actions like recognition of a Palestinian state.”
“It is through facilitating long-term processes that will consolidate a regional architecture facing the Iranian axis of terror, and by advancing international arrangements that will improve the lives of people throughout the region and promote stability and peace.”
UN TO HOLD HEARINGS ON ISRAEL OCCUPATION
The UN’s top court will hold hearings on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967, with an unprecedented 52 countries expected to give evidence.
Nations including the United States, Russia, and China will address judges in a week-long session at the Peace Palace in The Hague, seat of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
In December 2022, the UN General Assembly asked the ICJ for a non-binding “advisory opinion” on the “legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”
While any ICJ opinion would be non-binding, it comes amid mounting international legal pressure on Israel over the war in Gaza sparked by the brutal October 7 Hamas attacks.
The hearings are separate from a high-profile case brought by South Africa alleging that Israel is committing genocidal acts during the current Gaza offensive.
The ICJ ruled in that case in January that Israel must do everything in its power to prevent genocide and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire.
On Friday, it rejected South Africa’s bid to impose additional measures on Israel, but reiterated the need to carry out the ruling in full.
TWO PALESTINIAN MEN KILLED IN REFUGEE CAMP
Israeli forces killed two Palestinian men during a raid in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.
The deaths were the latest in a surge of violence in the Palestinian territory that has prompted growing international concern since Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel sparked the Gaza war.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described the situation in the West Bank as being at boiling point and warned that “we could be on the eve of a greater explosion”.
The Palestinian health ministry said two men, aged 19 and 36, were pronounced dead from gunshot wounds following an army raid in the Tulkarm refugee camp on Sunday local time, in the north of the West Bank, which the UN says houses over 27,000 Palestinian refugees.
At least five other people were wounded in the Israeli military operation, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The Israeli military said its forces were there to apprehend “a senior wanted suspect” believed to have been involved in attacks on its forces.
The suspect was killed by Israeli troops in an exchange of fire, then “armed terrorists opened fire and hurled explosive devices at Israeli security forces, who responded with live fire”, the army said in a statement.
“During the exchange of fire, an Israel Border Police officer was severely injured” and hospitalised, it added.
WEST BANK RAIDS INTENSIFY
The Israeli military has stepped up its near daily raids across the West Bank, which it says are aimed at dismantling Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas.
At least 398 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank since October 7, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
The Israeli military said that since the start of the Gaza war, its troops had arrested more than 3100 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 1350 Hamas members.
The Palestinians seek the territory as the heartland of a future independent state.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said that at least 28,985 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory during the war between militants and Israel.
A total of 127 people died in the last 24 hours, and 68,883 people have been injured since war erupted on October 7, it added in a statement.
– with AFP
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Originally published as Israel-Hamas war: Hostage families protest in Tel Aviv as anger grows
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