Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was in Tehran on Tuesday for talks with Iranian officials, state media reported, a day after the UN Security Council called for a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
There is no sign of a let-up in the war in the Gaza Strip, despite the UN Security Council demanding in a resolution an “immediate ceasefire” for the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan, leading to a “lasting” truce.
In southern Gaza’s Rafah, where over half of the enclave’s population has sought refuge, witnesses said Israeli jets bombed the city on Tuesday.
The UN resolution was adopted on Monday after Israel’s closest ally the United States abstained.
It also demands that Hamas and other militants free hostages they took during the unprecedented 7 October attacks on Israel, though it does not directly link the release to a truce.
Featured image: Momen Faiz/NurPhoto via Getty-archive
A United Nations expert told the global body’s Human Rights Council on Tuesday that she believed Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since 7 October amounted to genocide and called on countries to immediately impose sanctions and an arms embargo.
“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met,” Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, told the UN rights body in Geneva.
Israel, which did not attend the session, rejected her findings.
“Instead of seeking the truth, this special rapporteur tries to fit weak arguments to her distorted and obscene inversion of reality,” its diplomatic mission in Geneva said, claiming that its war was against Hamas and not Palestinian civilians.
UN humanitarian office OCHA calls for Israel to revoke an apparent ban on food deliveries to northern Gaza from UNRWA, saying people there were facing a “cruel death by famine”.
Israel said on Monday it would stop working with UNRWA in Gaza, accusing the aid agency of perpetuating conflict.
The agency said Israel told it that it would no longer approve its food convoys to north Gaza. Four such requests were denied since 21 March, it said.
“The decision must be revoked,” OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke tells a UN briefing in Geneva.
“You cannot claim to adhere to these international provisions of law when you block UNRWA food convoys.”
Amnesty International UK has unofficially “renamed” the London street leading up to the Israeli embassy to the UK.
Amnesty UK campaigns manager Kristyan Benedict posts to social media a picture of a sign reading “Genocide Avenue” and bearing the rights group’s logo.
“Israeli embassy, London. We’ve renamed your street (again),” Benedict says.
He adds that the move was the work of Amnesty UK and that “our friends” at Palestinian rights group Al-Haq “joined us for media interviews and photos”.
In March 2022, Benedict posted a similar message saying the Israeli embassy’s street had been renamed, attaching a photo of a sign reading “Apartheid Avenue” and “No Palestinians allowed”.
British journalist Owen Jones, who has railed against Israel’s war on Gaza, says “everything we warned about has happened”.
“They will never forgive us for being right about Gaza,” the columnist for the Guardian newspaper posts on X.
“Like Iraq – except this is a graver crime – the apologists were completely wrong, and we were vindicated in the worst possible way: with mass death.
“They’ll never forgive us for it.”
Twelve people have drowned trying to reach aid dropped by plane off a Gaza beach, Palestinian health authorities said on Tuesday, amid growing fears of famine nearly six months into Israel’s war on the enclave.
Video of the air drop obtained by Reuters showed crowds of people running towards the beach, in Beit Lahia in north Gaza, as crates with parachutes floated down, then people standing deep in water and bodies being pulled onto the sand.
The video showed the apparently lifeless body of a bearded young man being hauled onto the beach, the eyes open but unmoving, and another man trying to revive him with chest compressions as somebody said: “It’s over.”
“He swam to get food for his children and he was martyred,” said a man standing on the beach who did not give his name.
“They should deliver aid through the [overland] crossings. Why are they doing this to us?”
Aid agencies say only about a fifth of required supplies are entering Gaza as Israel ploughs on with an air and ground offensive.
They say deliveries by air or sea directly onto Gaza’s beaches are no substitute for increased supplies coming in by land via Israel or Egypt.
A piece of paper retrieved from Monday’s air drop said in Arabic written over an American flag that the aid was from the United States.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said its goodbyes on Monday to a 23-year-old colleague killed after being targeted by Israeli forces.
The humanitarian group posts on X that Ameer Abu Aysha was killed on Sunday as he performed his humanitarian duty at Khan Younis’s Al-Amal Hospital.
“He was laid to rest in his hometown in Deir Al-Balah city” in central Gaza, PRCS adds.
Mediator Qatar said on Tuesday that talks between Hamas and Israel on a Gaza truce and hostage exchange are continuing, despite the warring parties trading blame over the lack of headway.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said the talks were “ongoing”, adding there had not been “any development that would lead to thinking that one of the teams has pulled out of the negotiations”.
Qatar, with the United States and Egypt, has been engaged in weeks of behind-the-scenes talks in a bid to secure a truce in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinians held by Israel.
Since the UN Security Council adopted a resolution on Monday demanding an “immediate ceasefire” for Ramadan leading to a “lasting” truce, Hamas and Israel have traded blame for their failure to agree a deal.
Ansari told a Doha news conference that Qatar welcomed the UN resolution, which he said had not had “any immediate effect on the talks”.
The Qatari official said he could not comment specifically on the presence of Israeli technical teams in Doha but said “regardless of the comings and goings of these teams, the meetings are still ongoing here in Doha and I can confirm that part of the negotiating teams are still here in Doha conducting negotiations as we speak.”
Yemen’s Houthi rebels say on Tuesday that they have mounted six attacks on ships with drones and missiles in the last 72 hours in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.
The Houthis attacked the Maersk Saratoga, APL Detroit, Huang Pu and Pretty Lady after identifying them as either US or British, according to a statement from the group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree.
Saree adds that the group also attacked two US destroyers in the Red Sea as well as Israel’s city of Eilat.
It is not immediately clear which, if any, of the targets were struck by the drones or missiles.
(Reuters)
newarab.com