As of: February 10, 2024, 5:15 a.m
By: Tadhg Nagel, Felix Durach, Nail Akkoyun
Comments
Press
Split
The fighting in the Gaza Strip is heating up.
IDF may have committed war crimes in West Bank hospital killing.
The news ticker about the war in Israel.
Hamas
demands
1,000 trucks
per day: calls for humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip
Hezbollah
attacks
: Terrorist militia announces further attacks on Israel
Biden
criticizes
Israel
: “Action in the Gaza Strip is excessive”
The information processed here about the war in Israel and the fight against Hamas in the Gaza Strip
comes from local and international media as well as news agencies.
Much of the information cannot be independently verified.
Update from February 9, 7:57 p.m.:
The killing of three Palestinian men in a West Bank hospital in January by Israeli commandos disguised as medical staff and Muslim women could constitute war crimes, a group of UN experts said on Friday.
The three militants were killed in a joint covert operation by the army, Shin Bet security service and border police at Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin on January 29, the Israeli military said.
“Under international humanitarian law, the killing of a defenseless, injured patient being treated in a hospital constitutes a war crime,” the U.N. experts said in a statement, referring to Basel Al-Ghazzawi, who was being treated for injuries alleged to have been caused by an Israeli airstrike.
Soldiers “disguised as seemingly harmless, protected medical personnel and civilians.”
“By masquerading as seemingly harmless, protected medical personnel and civilians, the Israel Defense Forces also prima facie committed the war crime of perfidy, which is prohibited under all circumstances,” they added, calling on Israel to investigate.
According to the Israeli military, one of the men killed in the hospital was a member of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, while the others worked for the Jenin Brigade and the armed wing of Islamic Jihad.
The Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank.
© IMAGO/Nasser Ishtayeh
Update from February 9th, 7:55 p.m.:
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has strongly condemned Israel's plans for a military offensive in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
Abbas said on Friday evening at his official residence in Ramallah in the West Bank that these would represent a "dangerous prelude" to a policy of displacement that Palestinians fear.
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Abbas accused Israel and its ally USA of “destructive policies”.
He called on the UN Security Council to take action.
“These steps [considered by Israel] endanger security and peace in the region, they cross all red lines,” he added.
Israel prepares offensive on Rafah
Update from February 9th, 7 p.m.:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the country's army to prepare an offensive on the southern city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip.
"It is impossible to achieve the war goal of eliminating Hamas if four Hamas battalions remain in Rafah," he said through the prime minister's office on Friday.
The plans that the military leadership should submit to the government must also include the evacuation of civilians in Rafah, the statement said.
A military offensive in Rafah, which lies in the very south of the Gaza Strip and borders Egypt, is considered highly problematic.
The town, which had around 300,000 inhabitants before the war, is now said to be home to 1.3 million people.
Most of them fled there from other parts of the Gaza Strip before the war, partly on orders from the Israeli military.
“Combined Plan” for Evacuation and Destruction - Warnings of Humanitarian Disaster
“It is clear that intense (military) activity in Rafah requires civilians to clear the combat zone,” Netanyahu said on Friday.
He therefore instructed the military leadership to present the government with a “combined plan” for the evacuation of the population and the destruction of the Hamas battalions.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres had previously warned of a humanitarian catastrophe and consequences for the entire region.
Half of the Gaza Strip's population is crammed into Rafah and has nowhere else to go, he wrote on the news platform X, formerly Twitter.
The US government and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock have also spoken out clearly against military action in Rafah in recent days.
A camp of refugee Palestinians in Rafah.
© IMAGO/Bashar Taleb\apaimages
Israeli soldiers storm hospital in Khan Yunis
Update from February 9th, 5:45 p.m.:
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, Israeli soldiers stormed a hospital in the city of Khan Yunis in the south of the Gaza Strip.
This is reported by the
AFP news agency.
The Israeli armed forces stormed the Al-Amal hospital and began a search, the organization said on Friday.
The Israeli military did not initially respond to a request from the news agency.
At the beginning of the week, the Red Crescent announced that around 8,000 people who had sought protection in the hospital had been evacuated.
Around 40 displaced people, 80 patients and 100 employees remained in the hospital after the evacuation.
Israel has recently focused its military action on Khan Yunis in the south of the Gaza Strip.
The army suspects that high-ranking officials of the Islamist Palestinian organization Hamas are hiding in the city, as well as hostages kidnapped by them.
Netanyahu has Rafah evacuated
Update from February 9th, 4:32 p.m.:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his armed forces to draw up plans for the evacuation of the civilian population in the city of Rafah.
The military should present the government with a “combined plan to evacuate the population and destroy the battalions” of the radical Islamic group Hamas in Rafah, the prime minister's office said on Friday.
Rafah is located in the south of the Gaza Strip near the border with Egypt.
Since the war between Israel and Hamas began, more than a million Palestinian internally displaced people have sought refuge in the city.
Smoke rises over the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
© Ismael Mohamad/imago-images
Update from February 9th, 3:40 p.m.:
The Syrian state news agency SANA has reported the shooting down of two Israeli drones near the capital Damascus.
The drones entered Syrian airspace from the Golan Heights.
The report cannot currently be independently verified.
Israel's armed forces have not yet commented on the allegations.
War in Israel: Humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip – one in ten children is malnourished
Update from February 9th, 3:22 p.m.:
The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip remains catastrophic.
According to the United Nations, almost one in ten children under the age of five in the Gaza Strip is malnourished.
This resulted in measurements of the arm circumference of thousands of small children and infants, according to a statement from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) distributed on Friday.
Overall, 9.6 percent are undernourished, and in the northern Gaza Strip alone the figure is 16.2 percent.
According to the charity ActionAid, some Gazans eat grass.
“Every single person in Gaza is hungry now,” it said.
The supply of clean drinking water is also a problem.
The aid organization Islamic Relief quoted one of its workers in Gaza as saying: “My children and I have not eaten fruit or vegetables in months.
People are being killed trying to get to the United Nations aid trucks.”
Hamas demands 1,000 trucks of humanitarian aid per day for the Gaza Strip
Update from February 9th, 1:23 p.m.:
Hamas is apparently demanding that 1,000 trucks with humanitarian aid be driven to the northern Gaza Strip every day in order to mitigate the effects of the war.
This is reported by several Arab media.
The Times of Israel also reported the demand, citing the Hamas-run media office in Gaza.
The famine in the Gaza Strip has “worsened as a result of American and Israeli actions,” a Hamas spokesman is quoted as saying.
“We call for the immediate entry of 1,000 trucks daily into the northern Gaza Strip until it recovers from the famine and its effects,” it said.
It is estimated that 300,000 to 400,000 Palestinian people currently live in the northern Gaza Strip, which the Israeli army had evacuated at the beginning of the war.
Concern in Israel: Will the USA soon recognize a Palestinian state?
Update from February 9th, 10:30 a.m.:
According to a newspaper report, Israel is concerned that the USA could recognize a Palestinian state without Israel's consent as part of its efforts to find a two-state solution.
The Israeli newspaper
Maariv
wrote on Friday that Israel sees “intense activities” by the US government with the aim of unifying the West Bank and Gaza Strip under a Palestinian government.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects a two-state solution.
This means an independent Palestinian state that exists peacefully side by side with Israel.
However, efforts to achieve this have not made any progress for years.
The Islamist Palestinian organization Hamas, which violently seized sole power in the Gaza Strip a year after its election victory in 2007, also rejects this.
War in Israel: Hezbollah announces attacks – “Sirens will sound”
Update from February 9th, 7:48 a.m.:
In response to an Israeli drone attack on the vehicle of a high-ranking Hezbollah member, the Lebanese terrorist militia has launched a new series of attacks against northern Israel.
The Israeli army had not previously claimed responsibility for the attack in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatea.
However, both Arab and Israeli media reported the incident and identified the Hezbollah member as Abbas al-Debs.
A Hezbollah spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the target's identity, telling
Newsweek
that "Debs' name was mentioned by Israel, not us."
He further claimed that no one was killed and there were “only injured people.”
He then threatened that sirens would sound in “a number of settlements” in Israel.
Biden criticizes Israel: “Action in the Gaza Strip is excessive”
First report:
Tel Aviv/Gaza - While things remained relatively quiet in Israel and the Gaza Strip on Friday night (February 9th), US President Joe Biden tightened his tone towards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the action against the terrorist militia Hamas described as disproportionate.
“I believe the response in Gaza has been excessive,” Biden said.
There are many innocent people who are starving, in need or even dying.
“This has to stop.” During his appearance in front of the press, the Democrat actually spoke about a domestic political issue, but at the end he answered a question about the crisis in the Middle East.
The USA has long been urging Israel to increase protection of the civilian population and provide more aid to the population in Gaza.
However, the US government's recent statements indicate increasing discontent with the resonance of its appeals with the Israeli leadership.
Air strikes on Rafah: Apparently several people killed
According to media reports, Israeli air strikes took place overnight on Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip.
According to the Qatari-operated broadcaster
Al Jazeera,
several people were killed in the attack on residential areas.
Israel has stepped up airstrikes on Rafah in recent days after Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to expand the military offensive on the city to advance the war against Hamas.
In this case, too, the United States warned urgently of catastrophic consequences for the civilian population if the operation were extended to the city.
It was only on Wednesday (February 7th) that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken struck a strikingly clear note during a visit to Israel and warned the military leadership to do more to protect civilians in the Gaza war.
The dehumanization that Israel experienced in the Hamas massacre in October “cannot be a license” to dehumanize others, Blinken said in Tel Aviv.
(talk to agencies)