JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says the Israeli leader will undergo surgery on Sunday for a hernia.
Netanyahu’s office said the hernia was discovered during a routine checkup, and that the prime minister will be under full anesthesia and unconscious for the procedure.
Justice Minister Yariv Levin, a close confidant who also holds the title of deputy prime minister, will serve as acting prime minister during the operation, the office said.
Netanyahu, 74, has kept a full schedule throughout Israel’s nearly six-month-long war against Haqmas, and his doctors have said he is in good health.
Last year, however, doctors acknowledged he had concealed a long-known heart problem after they implanted a pacemaker.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli airstrike hit a tent camp in the courtyard of a crowded hospital in central Gaza on Sunday, killing two Palestinians and wounding another 15, including journalists working nearby.
An Associated Press reporter filmed the strike and aftermath at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where thousands of people have sheltered after fleeing their homes elsewhere in the war-ravaged territory. People including women and children scattered and cried out.
The Israeli military said it struck a command center of the Islamic Jihad militant group and claimed the hospital’s functioning was not affected.
Tens of thousands of people have sought shelter in Gaza’s hospitals since the start of the war nearly six months ago, viewing them as relatively safe from airstrikes. Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of operating in and around medical facilities, and troops have raided a number of hospitals.
Israeli troops have been raiding Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest, for nearly two weeks and say they have fought heavy battles with militants in and around the medical compound. The military says it has killed scores of fighters, including senior Hamas operatives. It said Sunday it had found numerous weapons hidden there.
Palestinian families who fled from the area, including many who had been displaced earlier in the war, say they were ordered to march south by Israeli soldiers after days of heavy fighting.
Only a third of Gaza’s hospitals are even partially functioning, while Israeli strikes kill and wound scores of people every day. Doctors say they are often forced to treat patients on hospital floors because all the beds are taken, and to operate without anesthetic and other crucial medical supplies.
Those wounded in Sunday’s strike lay on the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital floor and gasped while being treated, one clutching at the underside of a stretcher that held someone else.
An international team of doctors who recently visited the hospital said they were horrified by the war’s gruesome impact on Palestinian children. The World Health Organization director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, says around 9,000 patients urgently need to be evacuated abroad for lifesaving care.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed across the border on Oct. 7 and rampaged across southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages back to Gaza. Over 100 captives were freed last year in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Israel responded to the assault with one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, one that has driven around 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes. More than half of the population is now sheltering in the southern city of Rafah, where Israel plans a ground offensive despite warnings of catastrophe from allies and humanitarian groups.
The United Nations and partners have warned that famine could occur in devastated, largely isolated northern Gaza as early as this month. Humanitarian officials say deliveries by sea and air are not enough and that Israel must allow far more aid by road. Egypt has said thousands of trucks are waiting. The top U.N. court has ordered Israel to open more land crossings and take other measures to address the crisis.
The head of the World Food Program, Cindy McCain, told CBS on Sunday that WFP was able to get just nine trucks into Gaza on Saturday. “That’s nothing. We just cannot continue this way,” she said, calling for unrestricted access. “People are going to die otherwise, and they already are dying.”
Gaza’s Health Ministry said Sunday that at least 32,782 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, including 77 whose bodies were brought to hospitals over the last 24 hours. The ministry’s count does not differentiate between civilians and fighters, but it has said that women and children make up around two-thirds of those killed.
Israel says over one-third of the dead are militants, though it has not provided evidence to support that, and it blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the group operates in residential areas. Gaza health officials have repeatedly denied Israeli claims that militants operate in hospitals.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt have been trying to broker another cease-fire and hostage release since January. The cease-fire talks resumed in Cairo on Sunday, with little expectation of any breakthrough.
Hamas is demanding that any such agreement lead to an end to the war and the withdrawal of all Israeli forces.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected those demands and says Israel will keep fighting until it has destroyed Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. But he is under growing pressure to reach a deal from families of the hostages, some of whom have joined mass demonstrations calling for early elections to replace him.
On Saturday night, families of hostages said weekly protests would take to the streets of Israel from now on.
Israeli airstrikes kill 44 people in Syria, war monitor says – CBS News
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A U.K. war monitor says Israeli airstrikes killed 44 people near the Syrian city of Aleppo early Friday. Human rights groups have called it the deadliest attack in Syria in years. CBS News national security contributor Sam Vinograd joins with analysis.
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TEL AVIV — Israel’s Supreme Court on Thursday ordered an end to government subsidies for many ultra-Orthodox men who do not serve in the army — a blockbuster ruling that could have far-reaching consequences for the government and the tens of thousands of religious men who refuse to take part in mandatory military service.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces the most serious threat yet to his government as he struggles to bridge a major split over military service in the shaky national unity government cobbled together in the days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
Inside his coalition, the powerful bloc of ultra-Orthodox parties — longtime partners of Netanyahu — want draft exemptions to continue. The centrist members of his War Cabinet, both former military generals, have insisted that all sectors of Israeli society contribute equally during its war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
If the ultra-Orthodox parties leave the government, the country would be forced into new elections, with Netanyahu trailing significantly in the polls amid the war.
Most Jewish men are required to serve nearly three years in the military, followed by years of reserve duty. Jewish women serve two mandatory years.
But the politically powerful ultra-Orthodox, who make up roughly 13% of Israeli society, have traditionally received exemptions while studying full time in religious seminaries.
The exemptions — coupled with government stipends many seminary students receive through age 26 — have infuriated much of the general public. These longstanding tensions have grown during nearly six months of war — in which over 500 Israeli soldiers have been killed.
The Supreme Court has ruled the current system discriminatory and given the government until Monday to present a new plan and until June 30 to pass it. Netanyahu on Thursday asked the court for a 30-day extension to find a compromise.
The court did not immediately respond to his request. But it issued an interim order barring the government from funding the monthly subsidies for religious students who are between the ages of 18 and 26 and have not received a deferral from the military in the past year. Funds will be frozen starting April 1.
The ruling will affect about a third of the 180,000 seminary students who receive subsidies from the government for full-time learning, according to Israel’s Channel 12 TV. It said the subsidies could be temporarily covered by the governing coalition’s discretionary funds.
Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s top political rival and a member of the three-man War Cabinet, praised the court’s decision and said it recognized “the need for soldiers during a difficult war, and the need for everyone in our society to take part in the right to serve the country.”
Among Israel’s Jewish majority, mandatory military service is largely seen as a melting pot and rite of passage, and the army has said it is suffering from manpower shortages because of the war in Gaza.
The ultra-Orthodox say that integrating into the army will threaten their generations-old way of life and that their devout lifestyle and dedication to upholding the Jewish commandments protect Israel as much as a strong army. Religious leaders have vowed to fight attempts to force ultra-Orthodox men into the army and have staged mass protests against similar attempts in the past.
Aryeh Deri, head of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, called the court’s decision “unprecedented bullying of Torah students in the Jewish state.”
In his letter to the Supreme Court requesting the extension, Netanyahu said additional time is needed to come to an agreement, “because it has been proven in the past that enlistment without an agreed-upon arrangement actually has the opposite effect.”
Three people have been killed in Israeli army operations overnight in Jenin in the West Bank, the Israeli army reported.
Israel’s military said it conducted an anti-terrorist operation in the town on Tuesday night, during which Palestinians had thrown explosive devices. The soldiers responded with gunfire, killing one person. The 19-year-old who was killed was shot in the chest and thigh, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah said.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also said it had attacked and killed two other armed Palestinians in Jenin, with the health authority reporting that two people had died in an Israeli drone attack in the refugee camp there.
The IDF said its forces had destroyed a vehicle containing ready-to-use explosive devices. They also arrested two suspects who had previously been in the vehicle.
The health authority reported a total of four Palestinians injured in the course of the operations and confrontations with the IDF in Jenin. The town is considered a stronghold of Palestinian militants, and the Israeli army repeatedly carries out raids there.
Since the start of the Gaza war following the Hamas massacre on October 7 last year, the situation in the West Bank has become ever more tense.
More than 430 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli military operations, confrontations or their own attacks since then, the health authority said.
At the same time, there has also been an increase in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians.
People take part in the funeral of Palestinians who were killed during an Israeli army operation in the Jenin camp in the West Bank. Three people have been killed, the Israeli army reported. Ayman Nobani/dpa
People look at a damaged car after an Israeli army operation in the Jenin camp in the West Bank. Three people have been killed, the Israeli army reported. Ayman Nobani/dpa
People look at the site of the bombing after an Israeli drone attack in the Jenin camp in the West Bank. Three people have been killed in Israeli army operations overnight in Jenin in the West Bank, the Israeli army reported. Ayman Nobani/dpa
HEBBARIYE, Lebanon (AP) — An Israeli airstrike on a paramedics center linked to a Lebanese Sunni Muslim group in south Lebanon killed seven of its members early Wednesday and triggered a rocket attack from Lebanon that killed one person in northern Israel, officials said.
The strike on the village of Hebbariye came after a day of airstrikes and rocket attacks between Israel’s military and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group along the Lebanon-Israel border, raising concerns of further escalation along the frontier that has been active for the past five months of the Israel-Hamas war.
The airstrike after midnight Tuesday hit an office of the Islamic Emergency and Relief Corps, according to the Lebanese Ambulance Association. It was one of the deadliest single attacks since violence erupted along the border.
The paramedics association listed the names of seven volunteers who were killed in the strike. It said the strike was “a flagrant violation of humanitarian work.”
Hebbariye resident Ali Noureddine told The Associated Press that the seven dead were pulled out from the rubble before sunrise Wednesday.
The Israeli military said it struck a military building in Hebbariye and killed a member of Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim al-Jamaa al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Group, and several other militants. It said the man was involved in attacks against Israel.
Hours later, Hezbollah said it retaliated against the airstrike by firing dozens of rockets Wednesday morning on the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona and a military base there.
Rescue services in Israel said that a 25 year-old man was killed when a direct hit sparked a fire in an industrial park in Kiryat Shmona. Footage from the scene showed thick black smoke pouring out of a building.
Another person was lightly injured. Around 30 rockets were launched from Lebanon toward northern Israel, according to the Israeli military.
Nada Khleif was in her small bakery in Hebbariyeh when the strike heavily damaged her business and a nearby apartment, where two of her relatives were unharmed.
“The bakery was my only means of living. It is gone now,” she said.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group began launching rockets toward Israel one day after Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7. The near-daily violence has mostly been confined to the area along the Lebanon-Israel border, and international mediators are scrambling to prevent an all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel.
The fighting has killed nine civilians and 11 soldiers in Israel. Nearly 240 Hezbollah fighters and about 40 civilians have died in Lebanon.
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Lidman contributed from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writer Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
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Follow AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
TEL AVIV — As tensions rise between the two countries, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met withhis Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, on Tuesday, a day after the United States abstained in a United Nations Security Council vote calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
After the historic abstention by one of its closests allies, Israel abruptly canceled the visit of a high-level delegation to Washington this week, but Gallant who arrived Monday stayed on in the capital where he met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
Top of the agenda, Israel’s plans to launch an offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where more than 1 million displaced people have sought shelter, many of them displaced from other parts of Gaza.
In defiance of repeated U.S. warnings against an invasion, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated his determination to launch a military operation in the city, saying that Hamas cannot be defeated unless Israel takes out four battalions, made up of thousands of fighters, which he says are sheltering there and living in tent camps.
Ahead of the meeting, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Monday that U.S. officials had been discussing “ways to go about addressing the threat of Hamas, while also taking into account civilian safety.”
“A lot of those are from our own lessons [learned] conducting operations in urban environments,” he said. “I would expect the conversations to cover those kinds of things.”
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 32,000 people in the Gaza Strip, according to its Health Ministry, and driven a third of the enclave’s population to the brink of starvation. It was launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people and saw 240 taken hostage.
Ryder’s comments came after the U.S. abstention at the Security Council, which elicited a furious response from Netanyahu’s office in a series of posts on X.
Calling it a “clear departure from the consistent U.S. position in the Security Council since the beginning of the war,” Netanyahu’s office said that it would give Hamas “hope that international pressure will force Israel to accept a cease-fire without the release of our hostages, thus harming both the war effort and the effort to release the hostages.”
Having previously vetoed three cease-fire resolutions at the Security Council and seen a fourth fail to pass Friday when Russia and China refused to back a U.S.-led motion, U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield abstained from Monday’s vote, which passed 14-0.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield abstained from Monday’s Security Council vote, which passed 14-0. Angela Weiss / AFP – Getty Images
Thomas-Greenfield said Washington did not “agree with everything” in the resolution, which demanded an immediate cease-fire through Ramadan, which ends April 9, as well as the immediate release of hostages held in Gaza and an expansion of the flow of aid into the enclave. She added that “a cease-fire could have come about months ago if Hamas had been willing to release hostages.”
Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N., called it a “shameful resolution” and said it undermined efforts to secure the release of the remaining 134 hostages, although officials in the country say 33 have died in captivity.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian observer to the U.N., welcomed the adoption of the resolution as a “vote for humanity and life to prevail,” but he noted that it had taken almost six months of war for the Security Council to “finally demand an immediate cease-fire.”
However, Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and negotiator, told NBC News that he thought his government was unlikely to change course because of the vote.
“Israel will not end this war before the hostages are going back home, whatever the price is going to be,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday. “I think this is something the international community must internalize.”
A Palestinian child wounded by an Israeli bombardment is treated at a hospital in Gaza’s southernmost city Rafah. Hatem Ali / AP
Struggling to keep afloat his governing coalition, the most right-wing government in the country’s history, and with members of the Cabinet pushing for an even more aggressive approach in Gaza, Melamed said Netanyahu recognizes that “Israeli public opinion will not accept anything less than bringing back the hostages.”
Even as public support for his leadership has dwindled, Melamed added, the Israeli leader appeared determined to lead his country to an “ultimate victory at all costs, including the cost of a collision with the United States.”
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, is facing growing political pressure of his own at home and abroad to do more to help lessen Palestinian suffering and deaths, even as the U.S. continues to supply Israel with military hardware.
The U.S. was “very disappointed” by Netanyahu’s decision to cancel the visit of a high-level delegation to Washington, national security spokesman John Kirby said Monday, adding that the U.S. had hoped to have a “fulsome conversation with them about viable alternatives to going in on the ground in Rafah.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog sees Hamas leader Yehya al-Sinwar the lynchpin in the Gaza war and key to getting Israel’s hostages held in the Gaza Strip released.
“In the end, there is no choice,” Herzog said in Jerusalem on Tuesday. “We must continue the fight and we must get to Sinwar – either alive or dead – so that we can see the hostages back home.
Herzog said the reality is clear: “Everything begins and ends with Yehya Sinwar.
“He’s the one who decided on the October massacre. He’s been seeking to shed the blood of the innocent ever since. It is he who aims to escalate the regional situation, to desecrate Ramadan, to do everything to shatter coexistence in our country and in the whole region, to sow discord among us and around the world.”
TEL AVIV — The Israeli military’s’ raid at Gaza’s main hospital has entered its second week, with the IDF saying it has killed over 170 militants and detained hundreds of others in an operation that has raised questions over the fate of civilians sheltering at the site — and over Hamas’ ability to retake areas that Israel said it had cleared.
Israeli forces launched what the Israel Defense Forces described as a “high-precision” raid at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City one week ago, alleging once again that the facility was being used as a Hamas hub, while fighting was also reported in recent days at two other medical facilities in the southern city of Khan Younis.
The IDF said all of those killed and around 500 people detained in the operation were Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, though they did not provide evidence to support those claims. They also said they had located weapons and “terror infrastructure” within the hospital.
The raid has left much of Al-Shifa in ruins, with some of the walls that remain intact spattered with blood and civilians describing mass arrests.
A Palestinian woman who had been sheltering at Al-Shifa hospital, holds her triplets as she evacuates towards southern parts of Gaza on Thursday.Ashraf Amra / Anadolu via Getty Images
Hamas said last week that displaced civilians sheltering at the facility were among those killed, without providing evidence, while the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza said that at least five patients had died due to lack of food, water and health services. Others, it said, were in increasingly poor condition, “and worms began to emerge from their wounds.”
And one Western military analyst told NBC News that the renewed operation at Al-Shifa was likely an inevitable result of Israel’s shift in focus to the south, where it is preparing for an offensive the U.S. and international leaders have warned against.
Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, said it would be the “least surprising surprise” if Hamas militants had been using Al-Shifa Hospital as a base in recent weeks, with Israel’s attention turned largely toward a possible ground invasion of Rafah in Gaza’s south.
Inside Al-Shifa
Much of what exactly has been happening on the ground at Al-Shifa and in the area of Al-Amal Hospital in southern Gaza remains unclear. NBC News’ crew on the ground has had limited access to both sites due to fighting and NBC News wasn’t able to reach medical workers at the hospitals or the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza over the past week.
Video captured by NBC News’ crew, including on-camera witness accounts, have provided a glimpse into the chaos that has unfolded at the hospital compound over the past week, however.
In footage captured by the crew on Saturday, buildings could be seen destroyed around the Al-Shifa medical complex as blasts rang out and smoke rose in the distance. Days earlier, video showed some of the destruction inside Al-Shifa, with several rooms blown out, their walls reduced to rubble and others riddled with bullet holes. In one room, what appeared to be a body shrouded in blankets lay on the floor.
Multiple witnesses on Saturday provided NBC News’ crew with similar descriptions of being ordered by Israeli forces to exit areas of the hospital. Some said they were forced to remove their clothes outside on the medical facility’s grounds. The IDF has previously said the removal of clothes is “often necessary” to ensure detainees are not carrying weapons or explosives.
Smoke billows from buildings in the vicinity of the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Saturday.AFP via Getty Images
“It was raining on us and the cold was bitter,” said one man, who identified himself only as Mohamad and who NBC News has not identified further due to safety concerns. “They left us like that four to five hours.”
The man said soldiers then tied his hands and covered his eyes, before leading him and others into a room where they were left for hours before once again being taken outside. Some people were arrested, Mohamad, 36, said. “Some people were executed. Some people, of course, were released.” Asked to respond to his claim about people being “executed,” the IDF referred NBC News to a general statement about its operations at Al-Shifa Hospital.
Another witness, Abu Muhammad Alnajar, said patients and doctors were among those arrested. “I saw them with my own eyes. They arrested sick people as well as doctors,” he said.
The IDF said on Sunday that a large number of the people it apprehended were militants involved in the planning and execution of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, and accused Hamas militants of barricading themselves inside the wards of Al-Shifa and firing mortars at its forces, causing damage to the hospital’s buildings.
Hamas last week said it was targeting Israeli forces around the compound, sharing footage appearing to show its members blowing up an armored vehicle. NBC News was not able to independently verify the footage.
Separately, a witness described tanks and armored bulldozers plowing into the hospital courtyard, crushing ambulances and civilian vehicles — as well as the bodies of people killed in the raid, according to The Associated Press.
NBC News’ crew last week also encountered two boys running from the direction of Al-Shifa wearing only their underwear. They said they were ordered by what appeared to be a drone to remove their clothes before being allowed to flee the hospital area.
Despite emphasizing the “high-precision” nature of its raid, the IDF drew scrutiny when it shared a photo montage on Thursday of militants it said it had detained during the assault, before admitting a day later that the montage identified militants who had not yet been caught, but were believed to be operating in the area of the hospital. The IDF attributed the mistake to human error.
In a statement on Friday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said his team had received reports from a doctor at Al-Shifa of at least 50 health workers and 143 medical patients being forced to remain in one building during the raid “with extremely limited food, water and only one nonfunctional toilet.”
Ghebreyesus condemned the conditions patients were living under as “utterly inhumane” and called for an “immediate end to the siege.”
The IDF acknowledged that patients were moved to a “designated compound” in the hospital in what it said was a bid to “prevent harm to them.” On Saturday, it announced that it had facilitated the entry of “trucks full” of medical equipment and about two tons of food and three tons of water into the hospital. Asked to respond to a request for comment on the Palestinian Health Ministry’s allegations of five patient deaths, the IDF referred NBC News to the same statement. A spokesperson said they had no further comment.
On Sunday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said the IDF had also stormed the Al-Amal and Nasser hospitals in Khan Younis, with the PRCS reporting “intense shelling and heavy gunfire” around the two medical facilities. The following night, it said Al-Amal had gone “out of service” after medical workers and patients were forced to evacuate the facility.
The IDF has said it is operating in the area of Al-Amal, but not at the hospital directly. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment on PRCS’s allegations hospital workers and patients being forced to evacuate the hospital.
Palestinians took shelter in Al-Shifa Hospital in February. Omar Qattaa / Anadolu via Getty Images
The IDF’s assault on Al-Shifa comes after it first raided the medical facility in mid-November, in a dayslong operation that saw thousands of displaced civilians sheltering at the hospital flee, alongside some medical workers and patients, including some who were critically ill.
At least 31 babies who were receiving care at the hospital also had to be evacuated from the facility in November. And the decomposing bodies of several infants were found weeks later. The gruesome discovery was cited in South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
The IDF on Thursday acknowledged that its raid months ago had failed to lead to significant arrests of militant fighters, who it said had escaped, though it added its forces had found weapons and a tunnel system at the site.
An American intelligence assessment declassified in early January said the U.S. was confident militant groups used Al-Shifa Hospital to hold “at least a few” hostages seized during the Oct. 7 attack and to house command infrastructure, The Associated Press reported at the time.
“This time in a different way, we raided the complex by surprise,” IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Thursday. He added that Israeli forces “used trickery” in its latest operation at the hospital, but did not expand on how.
Byman had warned early on in October that the war was likely to become an ongoing “game of cat and mouse” if Israeli troops were to sweep through the enclave, leaving cleared areas in Gaza’s north largely unattended.
Byman said the IDF did not appear to be deploying a “clear, hold, build” approach, a counter-insurgency method that sees some troops remain in cleared areas to prevent the resurgence of an enemy force. But he also said that if Israel wants to prevent Hamas “or any other group from coming back, you need someone to govern. Someone to provide law and order.”
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan appeared to offer similar criticism last week, saying that instead of focusing on stabilizing parts of Gaza that Israel has cleared to prevent Hamas from retaking territory, “the Israeli government is now talking about launching a major military operation in Rafah.”
Hagari said the Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups were both “severely damaged” as a result of the latest operation at Al-Shifa. Senior Hamas officials understood “very well the significance of the operation,” he said, and “as the picture becomes clearer, the pressure on them will increase.”
There is growing international consensus to tell Israel cease-fire is needed, U.N. secretary general says
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said during a visit to Jordan on Monday that there is growing international consensus to tell Israel that a cease-fire is needed and that an assault on Rafah would cause a humanitarian disaster.
“We see a growing consensus emerging in the international community to tell the Israelis that the cease-fire is needed and I also see a growing consensus, I heard in the U.S., I heard from the European Union, not to mention of course the Muslim world, to tell clearly to Israelis that any ground invasion of Rafah could mean a humanitarian disaster,” Guterres told a news conference.
