War between Israel and Gaza, live | Netanyahu assures that he has not received any new offer from Hamas about the release of the hostages

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured this Wednesday that he has not received any new proposal from Hamas to release the hostages in Gaza, before defining the Islamist militia's demands as "ridiculous."

The president has later conditioned progress in negotiations for a new truce to a “change of position” by Hamas on that issue.

Meanwhile, Spain and Ireland have demanded that the European Commission take stronger measures against Israel for its siege of Gaza.

The Spanish President, Pedro Sánchez, and the Irish Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, have sent a letter to President Ursula Von der Leyen, in which they ask that she review the association agreement of the European Union with Israel due to possible violations of the law. international.

The second vice president of the Government of Spain and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, has announced, for her part, a trip to Palestine at the invitation of her authorities, to "jointly study ways of collaboration."

Survivors and relatives of victims of the October 7 Hamas attacks, in which 1,200 people were killed and another 240 kidnapped, have traveled to The Hague to urge the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for the Hamas leaders.

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The country

UK wants “absolute guarantee” that employees of UN agency for Palestinian refugees do not support attack on Israel

The United Kingdom wants an “absolute guarantee” that the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) will not employ personnel who are willing to attack Israel, the minister of British Foreign Minister David Cameron, following accusations that some agency workers were involved in the attacks on Israel on October 7.

Last month, the United Kingdom joined the United States in “temporarily pausing” its financial contributions to UNRWA after receiving accusations that around 12 of its thousands of Palestinian employees were suspected of involvement in the Hamas attack that sparked the war. from Gaza.

Donors including Britain and the United States have indicated they will not resume support until the internal UN investigation into the allegations is completed.

A preliminary report is scheduled to be released in the coming weeks.

Asked what the UK needed to see in the report to resume funding, Cameron said: “What we are looking for is an absolute guarantee that this cannot happen again.

Let us be clear that it appears as if there were people working for UNRWA who participated in the October 7 attacks against Israel.

That is unacceptable.

That's why we've stopped our funding.

That is why these reviews are being carried out,” he told the media during a trip to Bulgaria.

“We need them done quickly because many UNRWA staff do absolutely vital work inside Gaza, where they are the only network to distribute aid, to ensure that we get help to the people who need it so much,” he continued. .

(Reuters)

ACT.14 FEB 2024 - 19:22

The country

The US insists that Israel let American flour into Gaza

The United States expects Israel to fulfill its commitment to allow a shipment of US-financed flour to enter Gaza, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday.

The answer is in reference to a report from the Axios portal that states that, despite the agreement between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the shipment had been blocked for weeks in the Israeli port of Ashdod.

Still according to the Axios report, the transportation of the flour is blocked by the Minister of Finance, the far-right Bezaliel Smotrich, who rejects the aid being distributed by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA, in its acronym in English). ).

Israel accuses UNRWA of being “totally” infiltrated by Hamas. 

Furthermore, militants from Smotrich's party have been gathering for weeks in front of the border crossings into Gaza to try to prevent the transport of humanitarian aid to Gazans.

(Reuters)

ACT.14 FEB 2024 - 18:53

Isabel FerrerThe Hague

Expansion |

Families of Hamas hostages trust International Criminal Court to investigate Hamas

The families of the Israeli Hamas hostages trust that the International Criminal Court (ICC) “has the capacity” to bring justice to the captives.

This is what the group that represents them has stated and has traveled to the Dutch city of The Hague, headquarters of the ICC to present a communication that supports the search and capture of those responsible for the attacks on October 7.

In the assault, 1,200 people died and another 240 were kidnapped.

Some of their relatives have presented to the CFI, among other documents, a series of written statements from those released recounting what happened during those days.

At the doors of the court, Raz Ben Ami, whose husband, Ohad, is still detained, has vowed that “you can hear me and know that I am still waiting for you,” he said.

The relatives carried Israeli flags and asked loudly “to bring them home now.”

The ICC has an open investigation into the situation in Palestine.

Israel is not a member of this court, but Palestine, as a United Nations observer state, joined in 2015. Therefore, the ICC Prosecutor's Office can prosecute crimes perpetrated both by Palestinians on Israeli territory and by them on Palestinian soil.

ACT.14 FEB 2024 - 18:30

Macron demands that Netanyahu end the operations in Gaza, which leave an "intolerable" balance

The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, this Wednesday called on the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, to put an end to military operations in the Gaza Strip in the face of the "intolerable" toll of victims it is causing, and has expressed clearly expresses its "firm opposition" to a large-scale offensive on the town of Rafah.

Macron fears that such an offensive would imply "a humanitarian disaster of a new magnitude" and "violations of International Humanitarian Law", among other reasons because it would mean the "forced displacement" of the Gazan civilians who are crowding right now in Rafah, mostly Palestinians. displaced from another area of ​​the Strip.

This has been personally raised with Netanyahu in a telephone conversation and, although he has insisted on France's "solidarity" with the Israeli people and authorities after the attacks of October 7, he has considered that there is an "extreme urgency" to reach to some type of agreement that interrupts the fighting and facilitates the "massive" entry of aid, the Elysée has reported.

(EP)

ACT.14 FEB 2024 - 18:00

The country

The Israeli embassy to the Holy See calls the Vatican Secretary of State's statements on Gaza “deplorable”

The Israeli embassy this Wednesday attacked the statements made yesterday by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, in which he had indicated his "indignation" at the "massacre" in the Gaza Strip.

“Other ways must be found to resolve the problem in Gaza and Palestine.

The Holy See has said it from the beginning: it clearly and without reservation condemns what happened on October 7 and all kinds of anti-Semitism, but, at the same time, it asks that the right to defend Israel, which has been invoked to justify this operation, be proportionate: with 30,000 dead, it certainly is not,” Parolin said. 

“It is a deplorable statement,” said the Israeli embassy to the Holy See in a statement.

“Judging the legitimacy of a war without taking into account all the relevant circumstances and data inevitably leads to wrong conclusions,” he attacked. (Efe) 

ACT.14 FEB 2024 - 17:58

coalition government

Discontent in Foreign Affairs due to Yolanda Díaz's announcement of a trip to Palestine without having agreed

Paula ChouzaMiguel González

The second vice president of the Government is preparing a trip to Palestine at the invitation of her Government.

"Spain can do something more"

ACT.14 FEB 2024 - 17:46

A Palestinian dies in the West Bank from Israeli gunfire, according to the official Palestinian agency

A Palestinian died this Wednesday from a gunshot wound to the head and twelve others were injured in the town of Beit Umar, in the occupied West Bank, in clashes with Israeli troops, official Palestinian sources said.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa has identified the deceased as Nihal Ziad Muhamad Ismael, 18.

The Ministry of Health of the Palestinian National Authority reported that a citizen died as a result of "a bullet from the occupation hitting his head, in Beit Umar."

Hours earlier, he had published that thirteen residents of that town had been admitted to the Hebron hospital for gunshot wounds, three of them in serious condition.

(Efe)

ACT.14 FEB 2024 - 17:32

Netanyahu assures that Israel has not received any "new offer" from Hamas regarding the hostages

Hamas has not presented any new offer regarding the hostages, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this Wednesday, before defining Hamas' "demands" as "ridiculous."

 “Israel has not received any new proposals from Hamas to release our hostages,” said a statement from Netanyahu's office. “Israel will not capitulate to Hamas's ridiculous demands.”

The note goes on to state that "a change in Hamas's positions will allow progress in the negotiations." (Reuters)

ACT.14 FEB 2024 - 17:27

Four dead in southern Lebanon due to Israeli reprisals, local sources say

A barrage of Israeli attacks on villages across southern Lebanon on Wednesday has killed four people and wounded nearly a dozen, according to two Lebanese security sources.

The attack is a retaliation for this morning's attack against northern Israel, which killed an Israeli woman and injured several people.

A woman and her two children were killed in an Israeli attack on the village of Al-Sawana, these sources have said.

The Lebanese Islamist armed group Hezbollah has claimed that an attack on another city killed one of its fighters.

11 people were injured across the south and the level of damage was “enormous”, sources said.

Hezbollah chief Sayed Hasan Nasrallah said in a televised speech on Tuesday that his group would only stop its exchanges of fire if a complete ceasefire was reached in Gaza.

“On that day, when the shooting stops in Gaza, we will stop the bombs in the south,” he said.

The cross-border bombing has already killed more than 200 people in Lebanon, including more than 170 Hezbollah fighters, as well as about a dozen Israeli soldiers and some civilians.

It has also displaced tens of thousands of people in the border areas of both countries.

(Reuters)

ACT.14 FEB 2024 - 16:24

Palestinians leave Naser hospital after Israel's evacuation order

Dozens of Palestinians who were taking refuge in the Naser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, began to leave the facilities this Wednesday after a siege by the Israeli Army, which has ordered the evacuation. of the facilities.

Images published by the Qatari television network Al Jazeera show the displaced people leaving the place, amid warnings from the international community about the deterioration of the situation and after the various raids carried out by the Israeli military against health centers in Gaza since the beginning. of the offensive.

The director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has been "alarmed" by the events at the hospital and has recalled that the center "has been under siege for about a week."

“Hostilities have destroyed storage facilities for medical equipment and supplies.

Access to the hospital remains blocked.

There is no safe corridor for those who need it," he lamented, before noting that two WHO missions have been prevented from accessing the facilities during the last four days. "We have lost contact with the hospital staff," has confirmed. (EP)

ACT.14 FEB 2024 - 14:44

Miguel GonzálezDiplomatic and Defense Correspondent of EL PAÍSMadrid

Foreign Affairs assures that at the moment “it is not organizing” the trip that Vice President Díaz has announced to Palestine 

The Spanish Foreign Ministry stated this Wednesday that “it is not organizing any trip” for the second vice president of the Government to Palestine after Yolanda Díaz herself announced that she will visit the West Bank at the invitation of her Palestinian Labor counterpart to sign a cooperation agreement in labor matter.

Other diplomatic sources explained that, so far, Foreign Affairs has only received one phone call from Yolanda Díaz's team generically informing of the vice president's intention to travel to Palestine.

In the event that this intention materializes, Foreign Affairs should analyze the trip and may or may not advise against it, depending on the political and security situation, as it usually does with the trips of senior officials abroad.

It also happens that the trip would not be possible without the approval of Israel, which controls the external borders of Palestine.

ACT.14 FEB 2024 - 13:34

Abbas urges Hamas to close deal with Israel to avoid 'catastrophe' in Rafah

The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has urged the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), which controls the Gaza Strip, to "quickly" reach an agreement with Israel that facilitates the exchange of hostages and prisoners to avoid a " catastrophe" in the town of Rafah, threatened by a large-scale Israeli military operation.

Abbas, who represents a rival political faction of Hamas and is the highest authority in the West Bank, has called to avoid "another catastrophe with sinister consequences, no less dangerous than the 'Nakba' of 1948", alluding to the 'catastrophe' with which Palestinians remember the massive wave of refugees resulting from the creation of the State of Israel, reports the WAFA news agency.

(EP)

ACT.14 FEB 2024 - 15:01