According to one U.S. official, the U.S. Air Force has been told by the White House National Security Council to pause the delivery of ammunition already approved and under contract, waiting to be shipped from Dover Air Force Base.
A second U.S. official confirmed to ABC News that the NSC was behind the decision to pause the munitions. U.S. officials said the delay is being done intentionally.
The NSC has not confirmed the decision or said why the shipment was put on hold. Instead, administration officials have noted that the overall U.S. policy toward Israel hasn’t changed.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Hamas announced its acceptance Monday of an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal, but Israel said the deal did not meet its “core demands” and that it was pushing ahead with an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Still, Israel said it would continue negotiations.
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Hamas’s abrupt acceptance of the cease-fire deal came hours after Israel ordered an evacuation of some 100,000 Palestinians from eastern neighborhoods of Rafah, signaling an invasion was imminent.
[…]
On Sunday, Hamas fighters near the Rafah crossing fired mortars into southern Israel, killing four Israeli soldiers.
This is nuts. Every negotiation should begin with, “release all of the hostages, and then…”
Riyadh and JerusalemCNN —
Hamas is considering a new framework proposed by Egypt that calls for the group to release as many as 33 hostages kidnapped from Israel in exchange for a pause in hostilities in Gaza, an Israeli source familiar with the negotiations and a foreign diplomatic source told CNN.
The latest proposal, which Israel helped craft but has not fully agreed to, is laid out in two phases, the first of which calls for 20 to 33 hostages to be released over several weeks in exchange for the pause and the release of Palestinian prisoners. The second phase is what sources described as the “restoration of sustainable calm,” during which the remaining hostages, captive Israeli soldiers and the bodies of hostages would be exchanged for more Palestinian prisoners.
The diplomatic source familiar with the talks said the reference to sustainable calm was “a way to agree to a permanent ceasefire without calling it that.”
We are spinning into a real war. Expect terrorism all over the Western world being perpetrated by Iranian-backed terror groups.
Israel, early Friday morning local time, launched missiles in a retaliatory strike against Iran, a senior U.S. official told ABC News.
The missile launches follow Iran’s attack last Saturday, where the country sent a volley of more than 300 uncrewed drones and missiles toward targets throughout the country, Israeli military officials previously said. All but a few were intercepted by Israel and its allies, including the United States, officials said.
Iran’s attack came more than six months after Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on Oct. 7, after which the Israeli military began its bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
For the first time ever, Iran has carried out strikes against Israeli territory.
In the middle of Saturday night, air raid alerts went off in Israel, residents were urged to seek shelter while explosions were heard as air defences were activated.
Interceptions lit up the night sky in several places across the country, while many drones and missiles were shot down by Israel’s allies before they reached Israeli territory.
At least nine countries were involved in the military escalation – with projectiles fired from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen and downed by Israel, the US, the UK and France as well as Jordan.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. in recent days authorized the transfer of billions of dollars worth of bombs and fighter jets to Israel, two sources familiar with the effort said on Friday, even as Washington publicly expresses concerns about an anticipated Israeli military offensive in Rafah.
The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK84 2,000-pound bombs and 500 MK82 500-pound bombs, said the sources, who confirmed a report in the Washington Post.
Washington gives $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, its longtime ally.
The package comes as Israel faces strong international criticism over its continued bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza and as some members of President Joe Biden’s party call for him to cut U.S. military aid.
On Thursday, the United States ended decades of stalwart support for Israel in the United Nations Security Council, submitting a draft resolution that calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
The U.S., which negotiated the language of the proposed resolution with the governments of Egypt and Qatar, seeks to have the Security Council vote on it on Friday.
An earlier version of the resolution that was circulated earlier in the day Thursday linked the cessation of fighting with the release of hostages held in Gaza by Hamas, the Associated Press reported. The latest revision, however, makes no such precondition for “the imperative of an immediate and sustained cease-fire.”
In February, the U.S. was the only nation on the Security Council to veto a similar resolution, saying that calling for an immediate end to military hostilities would imperil hostage negotiations.
The doctors warned about a potential “bloodbath” with “apocalyptic” consequences if Israel carries out its planned invasion of Rafah, a southern city by the border with Egypt where over 1.5 million displaced civilians are currently taking refuge.
“This is probably the worst crisis that can happen within this war,” Sahloul said.
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Although international leaders, including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have publicly shared their concerns, a senior Israeli official told ABC News on Wednesday that “there is no world” in which Israel does not go ahead with its Rafah offensive, a military operation they claim will destroy the last battalions of Hamas left in the south.
The doctors affirmed that the situation is already dire and called for a cease-fire.
Frankly, Israel’s care to provide paths to safety, warnings, and humanitarian care for civilians as they prosecute the war is admirable. They do it at great risk to themselves and knowing that their enemy would not – has not – do the same for them. Hamas has a long history of using civilians as shields. There is one reason that civilian Gazans continue to be in the middle of a war. That reason is Hamas.
WASHINGTON — The White House is considering options for how to respond if Israel defies President Joe Biden’s repeated warnings against launching a military invasion of Rafah without a credible plan to protect Palestinian civilians, according to one former and three current U.S. officials.
The discussions are taking place amid growing concern in the administration and frustration among congressional Democrats that the president’s pleas will simply be ignored. Israel this week inched closer to initiating an incursion into the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip.
“Time and again, President Biden calls upon the Netanyahu government to take certain actions, and for the most part, time and again, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu ignores the president of the United States. And so I think that makes the United States look ineffective,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., in an interview.
US Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has called for new elections in Israel, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of prioritising his “political survival” above the country.
Mr Schumer, a Democrat and the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US, said Mr Netanyahu had “lost his way”.
He warned that huge civilian casualties in Gaza risked alienating allies and turning Israel into a global “pariah”.
It is a sharp escalation in US criticism of Mr Netanyahu’s government.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinians began fasting for Ramadan on Monday as the Muslim holy month arrived with cease-fire talks at a standstill, hunger worsening across the Gaza Strip and no end in sight to the five-month-old war between Israel and Hamas.
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Hamas is demanding guarantees that any such agreement will lead to an end to the war, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until “total victory” against the militant group and the release of all the remaining hostages.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage. Hamas is still believed to be holding around 100 captives and the remains of 30 others following an exchange last year.
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The United States and other countries have begun airdropping aid in recent days, but humanitarian groups say such efforts are costly and insufficient. The U.S. military has also begun transporting equipment to build a sea bridge to deliver aid, but it will likely be several weeks before it is operational.
A ship belonging to Spanish aid group Open Arms carrying 200 tons of food aid was expected to make a pilot voyage to Gaza from nearby Cyprus, though it was not clear when it would depart. Israel says it welcomes the sea deliveries and will inspect Gaza-bound cargo before it leaves Cyprus.
The ship in Cyprus is expected to take two to three days to arrive at an undisclosed location in Gaza. The food is being supplied by the World Central Kitchen, a U.S. charity founded by celebrity chef José Andrés, which said contruction work on a jetty in Gaza began Sunday. Once the ship reaches Gaza, aid will be offloaded by a crane, placed on trucks and driven north.
And do you notice that, once again, it is the Americans and the Europeans extending their money and their hearts with humanitarian aid? Where are the lorries and air drops full of aid from Egypt? Saudi? UAE? Iraq? JORDAN!? Syria? Lebanon? Libya? Algeria? Pakistan? Qatar? Kuwait? Turkey? Indonesia?
Are all of those countries willing to watch their Palestinian brothers die for the cause? Yes. Yes, they are.
Vice President Kamala Harris has broken with President Joe Biden to call for ‘an immediate ceasefire’ in Gaza.
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‘Before I begin I must address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,’ Harris said. ‘What we are seeing every day in Gaza is devastating.’
Citing the ‘immense scale of suffering’ in the war-torn nation, she stressed ‘there must be an immediate ceasefire for at least the next six weeks’.
‘This will get the hostages out and get a significant amount of aid in. This will allow us to build something more enduring to ensure Israel is secure and to respect the right of Palestinian people to dignity, freedom and self-determination,’ Harris said.
Her comments mark a departure from the more cautious approach so far favored by Biden, as he struggles to strike a balance between the US’ role as an ally to Israel, with growing international outrage over its bombing of Gaza.
I highly doubt that this is a break with Biden. This is a strategy for the Biden Administration to try to appease two conflicting Democratic constituencies.
Of course the timing is intentional. Biden had three years to change this policy and chose this moment because his is bleeding Islamist support in the battleground states of Michigan and Minnesota. Biden doesn’t mind dead Jews in the Holy Land if it means him retaining power.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Friday restored a U.S. legal finding dating back nearly 50 years that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are “illegitimate” under international law.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. believes settlements are inconsistent with Israel’s obligations, reversing a determination made by his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, in the Biden administration’s latest shift away from the pro-Israel policies pursued by former President Donald Trump.
Blinken’s comments came in response to a reporter’s question about an announcement that Israel would build more than 3,300 new homes in West Bank settlements as a riposte to a fatal Palestinian shooting attack.
It wasn’t clear why Blinken chose this moment, more than three years into his tenure, to reverse Pompeo’s decision. But it came at a time of growing U.S.-Israeli tensions over the war in Gaza, with the latest settlement announcement only adding to the strain. It also came as the United Nations’ highest court, the International Court of Justice, is holding hearings into the legality of the Israeli occupation.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The United Nations’ top court ordered Israel on Friday to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in its military offensive in Gaza, but stopped short of ordering a cease-fire.
South Africa alleged that Israel’s campaign in the tiny coastal enclave amounted to genocide in the case, which goes to the core of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts, and had asked the court to order Israel to halt the operation.
While the ruling stopped short of that, it nonetheless constituted an overwhelming rebuke of Israel’s wartime conduct and adds to mounting international pressure to halt the offensive that has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, decimated vast swaths Gaza, and driven nearly 85% of its 2.3 million people from their homes.
The UN is a defunct organization rife with antisemites and tyrants. It lacks the moral authority to levy judgment. As an example, the nation that brought this case, South Africa, is currently in the process of committing a slow genocide on their white population. Nobody cares.
I truly pray that this is, or becomes, the prevailing view of Gazans. I fear, however, that it is a tiny minority.
“We are displaced here in Rafah and before that [we were] in Khan Younis. We have no money and no home, the unstoppable wars between Hamas and Israel have destroyed our lives.”
A businessman called Mohammed agreed.
“We have lived under unjust rule for more than 16 years. Hamas imposed heavy taxes on us and now they have dragged us into a devastating war in which we lost our property, money and homes,” he told the BBC.
“I used to live in a good house and work in trade. Now what will we do? The crossings are closed, the company has been destroyed, and the house is not fit for habitation due to the destruction.
“The worst thing that could happen to us is that we return under Hamas rule when the war ends.”
He’s right. For all practical purposes, the Palestinians had their own state in Gaza. They were self-governing and left alone by Israel except on their borders. And look what happened… The Palestinians have demonstrated that they will never be satisfied until all of the Jews are dead and Israel doesn’t exist. That will not change if they are given a patch of land from which to launch attacks.
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.
During Thursday’s news conference, he 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.
Note that support for Israel has wide support in Congress. If Biden asked Congress to approve this aid through normal procedure, it would easily pass. Biden is choosing to usurp Congress’ authority for two reasons. First, Biden has tied support for Ukraine to support for Israel because Americans have grown weary of supporting Ukraine. Biden refuses to decouple the asks. Second, if there was a standalone vote to support Israel, the antisemites in the Democratic Party in Congress would vote against it and spend hours spewing their anti-Jewish hate. Biden doesn’t want that cancer in his party exposed any more than it already is during an election year.
The fact that Biden thought that ignoring the Constitutional separation of powers was the least problematic path speaks volumes for how far we have fallen as a Constitutional Republic.
WASHINGTON (AP) — For the second time this month the Biden administration is bypassing Congress to approve an emergency weapons sale to Israel as Israel continues to prosecute its war against Hamas in Gaza under increasing international criticism.
The State Department said Friday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had told Congress that he had made a second emergency determination covering a $147.5 million sale for equipment, including fuses, charges and primers, that is needed to make the 155 mm shells that Israel has already purchased function.
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The emergency determination means the purchase will bypass the congressional review requirement for foreign military sales. Such determinations are rare, but not unprecedented, when administrations see an urgent need for weapons to be delivered without waiting for lawmakers’ approval.
Blinken made a similar decision on Dec. 9, to approve the sale to Israel of nearly 14,000 rounds of tank ammunition worth more than $106 million.
Lawmakers warned President Joe Biden’s national security team that planned U.S. aid to Israel must be met with assurances of concrete steps from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government.
“The truth is that if asking nicely worked, we wouldn’t be in the position we are today,” Sanders said in a floor speech. It was time for the United States to use its “substantial leverage” with its ally, the Vermont senator said.
“And we all know what that leverage is,” he said, adding, “the blank-check approach must end.”
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel pounded targets in the crowded southern half of the Gaza Strip on Saturday and ordered more neighborhoods designated for attack to evacuate, driving up the death toll even as the United States and others urged it to do more to protect Gaza civilians a day after a truce collapsed.
The truce didn’t “collapse.” It’s not something that just happened. Hamas broke the truce.
Also, notice how Israel continues to try to protect civilians by announcing where they are going next despite the increased risk to their soldiers. Hamas does not do that.
At least 200 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting resumed Friday morning following the weeklong truce with the territory’s ruling militant group Hamas, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Several homes were hit across Gaza on Saturday, with multiple casualties reported in a strike that flattened a multi-story building on the outskirts of Gaza City.
The Health Ministry in Gaza is Hamas and they have been proven habitual liars. Yet, this reporter takes their statements at face value.
The appeal from the United States, Israel’s closest ally, to do more to protect civilians came after an air and ground offensive in the first weeks of the war devastated large areas of northern Gaza.
The Biden Administration has abandoned Israel and is lobbying on behalf of Hamas.
Meanwhile, Palestinian militant groups in Gaza said they fired a barrage of rockets on southern Israel. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesperson, said Hamas had launched more than 250 rockets at Israel since the cease-fire ended.
Put another way, “Hamas terrorists continue to target Israeli civilians with indiscriminate rocket attacks.” Notice how Israel is intentionally warning civilians to protect them while Hamas is targeting civilians. There is not a moral equivalence here.
The maps and leaflets generated panic and confusion, especially in the crowded south. Unable to go to northern Gaza or neighboring Egypt, their only escape is to move around within the 220-square-kilometer (85-square-mile) area.
Remember that Egypt could – at any time – open their border with Gaza and offer their fellow Muslims sanctuary. Egypt is not willing to welcome the terrorists into their country for good reason.
Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, in Dubai on Saturday for the COP28 climate conference, said in a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi that “under no circumstances” would the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, the besiegement of Gaza or redrawing of its borders, according to a U.S. summary.
Harris was expected to outline proposals with regional leaders to “put Palestinian voices at the center” of planning the next steps for Gaza after the conflict, according to the White House. President Joe Biden’s administration has emphasized the need for an eventual two-state solution, with Israel and a Palestinian state coexisting.
Again, the Biden Administration is firmly on the side of the terrorists now.
Aid deliveries to Gaza were halted on Friday due to fuel shortages and a communications outage in the Palestinian enclave, United Nations officials said, while issuing dire warnings of people possibly facing starvation.
