Israel-Hamas war: Fighting in Gaza’s Rafah as tensions soar on Israel-Lebanon border
Israeli air strikes have rocked Gaza’s Rafah once more as the IDF moved ahead with its offensive against Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
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Israeli air strikes and clashes between troops and Palestinian militants have rocked Gaza, as Israel’s army warned it had readied an “offensive” against the Lebanese Hezbollah movement on the country’s northern front.
Witnesses and the civil defence agency in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip reported Israeli bombardment in western Rafah, where medics said drone strikes and shelling killed at least seven people.
The Israeli military, which has traded near-daily cross-border fire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah since October, said that “operational plans for an offensive in Lebanon were approved and validated”.
The military said its warplanes had struck Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon overnight, while reporting a drone had infiltrated near the border town of Metula in an attack claimed by Hezbollah and targeting troops.
The Iran-backed group also announced the death of two of its fighters. Lebanon’s official National News agency reported Israeli strikes on several areas in south Lebanon on Wednesday morning, including on the border village of Khiam, where an AFP photographer saw a large cloud of smoke.
The army’s announcement that its plans for an offensive in Lebanon had been approved, along with a warning from Foreign Minister Israel Katz of Hezbollah’s destruction in a “total war”, came as US envoy Amos Hochstein visited the region to push for de-escalation.
Syrian state media said an Israeli strike on military sites in the country’s south killed an army officer on Wednesday. Israel has not commented on the report.
In Gaza, Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian armed group that has fought alongside Hamas, said its militants were battling troops amid Israeli shelling of western Rafah.
Witnesses reported seeing Israeli military vehicles enter the city’s Saudi neighbourhood, followed by nighttime gun battles.
Parts of central Gaza also saw fighting overnight, with witnesses reporting artillery shelling and heavy gunfire in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood.
Hochstein said the plan would ultimately lead to “the end of the conflict in Gaza”, which would in turn quell fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
A UN report issued Wednesday detailed six “indiscriminate and disproportionate” Israeli strikes that killed at least 218 people in the first two months of the war.
It said the strikes involved “the suspected use” of heavy bombs -- a shipment of which the United States had paused in May over concerns Israel might use them in its Rafah assault.
The strikes targeted “densely populated” areas including refugee camps, a school and market, the UN rights office said, making the use of heavy bombs “highly likely to amount to a prohibited indiscriminate attack”.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk said: “The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid, or at the very least minimise to every extent, civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign.” More than six months since the attacks featured in the report, “there is no clarity as to what happened or steps toward accountability”, Turk said.
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PROTESTERS TARGET SEINFELD IN SYDNEY
Jerry Seinfeld’s Sydney show has again been interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters.
Footage from the comedian’s show on Tuesday evening shows two men disrupting the show, standing up and yelling at Seinfeld.
In the footage, one of the men can be heard yelling “shame on you”, before calling Seinfeld a “hack” and a “fraud”.
Both men then held up the Palestinian flag before one started yelling “free Palestine”.
The audience at the ICC Sydney Theatre can be heard booing and Seinfeld can be heard addressing the hecklers with sarcasm.
“You’re doing great, you’re getting them on your side,” the comedian says.
“Can you hear it? It’s working. You have strong political feelings but you don’t know where to say them.
“You think that ruining the night … it doesn’t affect me … all these people, you’re ruining their night.”
The crowd then starts cheering.
Tuesday’s incident comes after a pro-Palestine protester interrupted the comedian, who is Jewish and has been a vocal supporter of Israel, during his first Sydney show on Sunday at the Qudos Bank Arena.
‘MAKE THE GOVERNMENT FALL’: ISRAELIS TURN ON NETANYAHU
Israeli demonstrators have rallied outside the parliament and near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence demanding early elections and chanting “All of them! Now!” calling for hostage release, as US, Qatari and Egyptian mediation efforts towards a truce deal have stalled for months.
“We need to shut down the country in order to make the government fall,” said Yaacov Godo, whose son Tom was killed during the Hamas attack, at the start of what activists describe as a week of anti-government action across the country.
The war should have stopped “a long time ago”, and the return of the captives would “end this story”, Mr Godo said.
Israeli media said another rally is planned in front of the parliament building late Tuesday.
It comes as witnesses reported gunfire and artillery shelling near Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, where the civil defence agency said at least 13 people died in two separate strikes on a family home and on a commercial building.
Witnesses and the Hamas government media office said there were some strikes and fighting elsewhere in northern and central Gaza.
In a statement, the Israeli army said its operations continued on Tuesday in central and southern Gaza including Rafah city on the border with Egypt.
In Rafah, where the Israeli military has said it would pause fighting along a key route in the city’s east, witnesses saw Israeli military vehicles and reported shelling in other areas.
United Nations rights chief Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva he was “appalled by the disregard for international human rights” and “unconscionable death and suffering”.
At least three people were wounded and eight arrested as Israeli police clashed with protesters outside the Jerusalem home of Mr Netanyahu.
Tens of thousands of Israeli protesters have been converging in Jerusalem for eight months after the start of the war and a year-and-a-half since the unveiling of the Netanyahu-led government’s judicial coup.
The demonstrations are calling for new elections, a permanent ceasefire and hostage release deal, and more.
Some protesters were violently arrested as water cannons were used to put out a fire that protesters had lit on the road, according to local Israeli media.
Following the dissolving of Mr Netanyahu’s war cabinet, reflecting the country’s political fractures, representatives from several anti-government protest groups announced they will be intensifying their activism with “A Week of Resistance” that will include countrywide demonstrations taking place over the next several days.
The upheaval comes after centrist military leader Benny Gantz, who formed and headed the Israeli war cabinet, resigned over Mr Netanyahu’s lack of a post-war plan for Gaza.
Protester Oren Shvill said: “The healing process for the country of Israel, it starts here. After last week when Benny Gantz and Eisenkot left the coalition, we are continuing this process and hopefully this government will resign soon.”
ISRAELI STRIKES CONTINUE DURING ‘HUMANITARIAN PAUSE’
Israeli strikes on Tuesday killed at least 13 people in central Gaza, the civil defence agency in the Hamas-run territory said, although fighting has largely subsided as Muslims mark Eid al-Adha.
Despite Israel’s “humanitarian pause” for the purposes of allowing more aid into Gaza, Palestinian officials in the far-southern city of Rafah reported tank shelling early on Monday local time, before the start of the daily “local, tactical pause of military activity” announced by the army.
It said the pause “for humanitarian purposes will take place from 8:00am (0500 GMT) until 7:00pm (1600 GMT) every day until further notice along the road that leads from the Kerem Shalom crossing to the Salah al-Din road and then northwards”.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP “there was no change” in the military’s policy and stressed fighting “continues as planned”.
The military in a statement said troops were still operating in Rafah and central Gaza, reporting “close-quarters combat” that killed several militants.
In Gaza City, medics at Al-Ahli hospital said at least five people were killed in two separate air strikes, and witnesses reported tank shelling in the southern neighbourhood of Zeitun.
Mahmud Basal, spokesman for the civil defence agency in the Hamas-ruled territory, said that apart from the deadly Gaza City strikes overnight, “the other areas of the Gaza Strip are somewhat calm”.
He reported military movements and gunfire in parts of Rafah as well as Bureij camp in central Gaza.
Israel struck Gaza on Monday local time and witnesses reported blasts in the besieged territory’s south, but fighting has largely subsided after a day of relative calm and as Muslims marked Eid al-Adha.
BOTH SIDES COMMITTED WAR CRIMES: UN
A UN investigation has concluded that Israel committed crimes against humanity during the war in Gaza, including that of “extermination”.
The independent Commission of Inquiry’s report is the United Nations’ first in-depth investigation into the events of the war that erupted on October 7.
The report noted “a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population in Gaza.”
It also found that Hamas, other Palestinian armed groups and civilians participating in the October 7 attack “deliberately killed, injured, mistreated, took hostages and committed sexual and gender-based violence”.
These acts were committed against civilians and members of the Israeli security forces.
The commission further said it found “significant evidence on the desecration of corpses, including sexualised desecration, decapitations, lacerations, burning, severing of body parts and undressing”.
“Women were subjected to gender-based violence during the course of their execution or abduction. Women and women’s bodies were used as victory trophies by male perpetrators.”
Many children who witnessed their relatives being killed were “also filmed for propaganda purposes”, with the commission finding it “particularly egregious that children were targeted for abduction”.
The commission was similarly scathing of Israel.
“The commission found that the crimes against humanity of extermination; murder; gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys; forcible transfer; and torture and inhuman and cruel treatment were committed,” it added.
Israel rejected the conclusions by accusing the UN commission of “systematic anti-Israeli discrimination”
The report is based on interviews with victims and witnesses conducted remotely, and in Turkey and Egypt, and through studying thousands of verified open-source items, satellite imagery and forensic medical reports, the commission said.
– with AFP
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