Hamas launches war on Israel

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Thousands call for release of hostages at pro-Israel rally in London

Thousands have attended a pro-Israel rally in London to mark 100 days since the 7 October attacks and call for the release of all hostages from Gaza.

People gathered in Trafalgar Square carrying Israeli flags and holding pictures of some of the 105 people still believed to be being held.

Appearing remotely, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said that "this battle belongs to the whole free world".

It comes as Israel faces mounting pressure over civilian deaths in Gaza.

The London event coincides with a 24-hour rally being held in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

President Herzog told the crowd: "In the face of those who wish to scare us into silence, you've stood up and spoken out with clarity, pride, and passion."

He also thanked the King, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer for their expressions of support following the 7 October attacks.

Other speakers included Israel's ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, and Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy. A minute's silence was also held.

People in the crowd told the BBC they were worried the hostages were being forgotten and that they felt compelled to attend and show support for Israel.

One organiser told the audience he had "never been prouder to be Jewish", prompting cheers.

The event also heard from Conservative peer Lord Pickles, the UK's special envoy for post-Holocaust issues, and Labour MP Christian Wakeford, a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel.

Lord Pickles said that Gaza could be rebuilt and peace brought to the Middle East, but that such a process could only begin if "we bring the hostages home".

Former home secretary Suella Braverman was in the audience and said she was "here to stand in solidarity with Israel".

"It has been 100 days since innocent people have been taken hostage by the Hamas terrorists and we need to bring them home now," she told the PA news agency.

Security for the event was tight, with attendees having to wait in long queues and undergo bag searches before being allowed to enter the square.

The weeks following the 7 October attacks brought what the Metropolitan Police described as a "massive increase" in antisemitic incidents in London.

They saw Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups cross into Israel and carry out attacks on civilian and military targets, killing around 1,200 people and taking an estimated 240 hostages.

A six-day ceasefire at the end of November saw 105 hostages released. Israel believes around 105 are still alive in Gaza, while a number of others are either unaccounted for or known to have died.

Following the attacks, Israel launched a ground invasion and bombing campaign in Gaza with the stated aim of destroying Hamas and removing the group from power in the territory.

On Saturday, thousands attended a march on Westminster calling for an end to the operation and a ceasefire in Gaza.

Israel is also facing a case at the International Court of Justice, brought by South Africa, which accuses it of committing genocide.

The Hamas-run Health Ministry says that more than 23,000 people have so far been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its campaign.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67976051

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The eyes that no one believed.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67958260

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It was claimed that the incident took place 110 miles South East of Aden, a port city in Yemen

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/253672...-yemen-houthi/

Markus

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Israel Gaza war: Deal reached on aid to Gaza, including the hostages

Israel and Hamas have reached a deal to allow more humanitarian aid into war-ravaged Gaza, Qatari mediators say.

They say that under a deal brokered by Qatar and France, medicines will be given to hostages held by Hamas.

In return Israel will allow more basic supplies into Gaza. Conditions in the territory are dire after more than three months of Israeli bombardment.

Meanwhile the US says it is hopeful that further talks could lead to the release of more hostages.

The US Middle East envoy has been in Qatar to discuss the possibility of such a deal, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Tuesday.

The discussions were "very serious and intensive", he added . "We are hopeful it will bear fruit and bear fruit soon."

Earlier, Qatar's foreign ministry spokesman Majed Al Ansari announced the agreement on aid.

Under the deal, the humanitarian supplies will leave the Qatari capital, Doha, for Egypt on Wednesday. The aid will then be taken to Gaza, to be delivered to civilians, while medicines are to reach Israeli captives.

More than 132 hostages are thought to be still held in Gaza.

About 240 people were captured by Hamas in a series of raids in southern Israel on 7 October. Some 1,300 people, mainly civilians, were killed.

In a letter sent to Israel's war cabinet after a ceasefire ended last year, the Hostages Families HQ group said many abductees needed regular medical attention and some were in immediate danger.

Last week Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said David Barnea, head of Israel's national intelligence agency Mossad, had approached Qatar to secure a deal for providing the medicines needed.

On Tuesday Mr Netanyahu issued a statement expressing "his appreciation to all those who have assisted in the endeavour".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68000227

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Israel accused of targeting civilians in deadly attack

Israel is accused of having targeted a group of Palestinian civilians with no links to armed groups and who posed no threat to Israeli forces, according to witnesses in the occupied West Bank.

Seven men - four of them brothers - were killed in an Israeli air strike early on 7 January, as they sat around a fire next to the road through al-Shuhada village, 10km (six miles) from the city of Jenin.

The BBC has spoken to relatives of the men killed, witnesses in the area at the time, and a paramedic at the scene. All provided strong evidence that the men were not members of armed militant groups, and that no clashes with Israeli forces were taking place in the location at the time.

Khalid al-Ahmad, the first paramedic to arrive that morning, is convinced the men were doing nothing wrong.

"One of them was wearing slippers and pyjamas," he told the BBC. "Don't you think that someone who wants to resist [the Israeli occupation] would at least wear proper shoes?"

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has linked the strike to a military operation hours earlier in Jenin refugee camp, in which a female soldier was killed.

The IDF directed us to a statement it released at the time, which said that "during the operation, an aircraft struck a terrorist squad that hurled explosives at the forces operating in the area".

Footage from both the IDF and a nearby CCTV camera does not show any clear evidence of confrontations with Palestinians in al-Shuhada at the time of the strike.

The four brothers - Alaa, Hazza, Ahmad, and Rami Darweesh - were aged between 22 and 29 years old. They were Palestinian emigrants who had returned from Jordan a few years earlier with their mother and five siblings.

They had Israeli permits, allowing them to cross into Israel for agricultural work each day. These permits are often difficult to obtain and are rapidly withdrawn from anyone Israel sees as a security threat - or as linked to someone who is.

The three men killed with them were members of their extended family.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68006126

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Intense Israeli strikes in south Gaza city as hostages sent medicine

Residents of Khan Younis in southern Gaza say they have faced one of the most intense nights of air strikes since the start of Israel's offensive.

Videos showed flames light up the sky as the sounds of Israeli bombings and gunfire reverberated across the city.

Displaced families have been fleeing a local hospital as fighting closes in.

Meanwhile, medicines are being sent for Israeli hostages held by Hamas in exchange for more aid for Palestinian civilians under a Qatar-mediated deal.

The White House says Qatar has also been overseeing "very serious, extensive discussions" about a possible new hostage release deal, which were joined by a US envoy.

"This is the loudest sound of armed clashes [between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters] that I've ever heard," Yasser Zaqzouq, who has been sheltering at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis with his family, told the BBC.

"This is the first time we saw such scenes [of air strikes]. We were in terror. All the kids were screaming and crying."

A local journalist, Tariq Dahlan, said: "There is a state of panic among the displaced people in the hospital."

"People are running away from this area towards the West, but nobody knows where they're going and what his fate will be."

Israeli tanks were said to be just metres from the hospital.

A woman in southern Gaza, who did not wish to be named, said children could not sleep "because of the sounds of missiles".

"We are living in fear and terror," she told the BBC, adding that many of the children had begun to wet themselves out of fear.

"The air strikes were very intense and very close around my house," another resident who lives opposite Nasser hospital, Abu Omar Al-Husseini, told the BBC.

"We fled under fire at dawn today. We carried a few blankets and walked for 5km (3.1 miles) to reach the entrance to the city of Rafah, and now we are in the street, not knowing where to go."

On Wednesday the Jordanian army said its military field hospital in Khan Younis had been badly damaged as a result of Israeli shelling in the area. The Jordanian army said it held Israel responsible for a "flagrant breach of international law".

The UN says that the war has displaced around 85% of Gaza's 2.3 million people, many of whom have been forced to cram into shelters and are struggling to get basic supplies.

In a joint statement, a number of UN special rapporteurs said: "Currently every single person in Gaza is hungry, a quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water, and famine is imminent."

Israel's Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, has said that the intense stage of Israel's military operations against Hamas would "soon" wind down in the south of Gaza, including Khan Younis, where it is thought local leaders of the armed group may be hiding.

He said that the military had already switched to more targeted action in the north, where it began its ground offensive.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68004449

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Netanyahu publicly rejects US push for Palestinian state

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has told the United States that he opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state once the conflict in Gaza comes to an end.

In a news conference, a defiant Mr Netanyahu vowed to press on with the offensive in Gaza "until complete victory": the destruction of Hamas and return of the remaining Israeli hostages, adding that it could take "many more months".

With almost 25,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and 85% of the Strip's population displaced, Israel is under intense pressure to rein in its offensive and engage in meaningful talks over a sustainable end to the war.

Israel's allies, including the US - and many of its foes - have urged a revival of the long-dormant "two-state solution", in which a future Palestinian state would sit side-by-side with an Israeli one.

The hope in many circles is that the current crisis could force the warring parties back to diplomacy, as the only viable alternative to endless cycles of violence. But from Mr Netanyahu's comments, his intention appears quite the opposite.

Speaking to reporters following Mr Netanyahu's latest comments, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby recognised that the US and Israel "obviously" see things differently.

Earlier on Thursday, Mr Netanyahu said Israel must have security control over all land west of the River Jordan, which would include the territory of any future Palestinian state.

"This is a necessary condition, and it conflicts with the idea of (Palestinian) sovereignty. What to do? I tell this truth to our American friends, and I also stopped the attempt to impose a reality on us that would harm Israel's security," he said.

Mr Netanyahu has spent much of his political career opposing Palestinian statehood, boasting just last month that he was proud to have prevented its establishment, so his latest remarks come as no surprise.

But the very public rebuttal of Washington's diplomatic push, and determination to stay the current military course, show the chasm widening with Israel's western allies.

Since the 7 October attacks - the worst in Israel's history, when Hamas gunmen killed about 1,300 Israelis and took some 240 hostage - the US has supported its right to defend itself.

But as the death toll in Gaza has grown, and the scenes of horror there have abounded, Western governments have called for Israeli restraint.

The White House has repeatedly tried to influence Israel's military policy: urging more precision-guided weapons rather than the blanket air strikes; discouraging a ground offensive; and calling for a two-state solution, with a role for the Palestinian Authority in post-conflict Gaza.

Mr Kirby said the US has been "exceedingly clear" about what it wants Gaza to look like after the war.

"We want governance in Gaza that's representative of the aspirations of the Palestinian people, that they have a vote and a voice in what that looks like and that there's no reoccupation of Gaza," he said.

Washington's advice has frequently fallen on deaf ears or been met by outright rejection - often publicly so, during visits by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

That, in turn, has hardened frustration in some American circles over the Biden administration's apparent blanket support for Israel, with strident calls to put conditions on US aid to its Middle East ally.

Israel's prime minister's comments will please his dwindling support base and the far-right ministers who prop up his government.

But they will dismay those at home and abroad who are increasingly horrified by the human cost of this war. Recent polls show most Israelis want him to prioritise bringing the remaining hostages home over the potentially impossible aim of destroying Hamas.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68025945

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