A boy in Gaza with brain damage fights for his life amid blockade
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Yahoo
37 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Israeli airstrikes kill 33 Palestinians in Gaza
DEIR al-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli airstrikes killed at least 33 Palestinians in Gaza, hospital officials said on Sunday, as Israel's military said it has struck over 100 targets in the embattled enclave in the past day. The strikes came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was preparing to fly to Washington for talks at the White House aimed at pushing forward ceasefire efforts. Separately, an Israeli official said the Israeli security Cabinet on Saturday night approved sending aid into the northern part of Gaza, where civilians are suffering from acute food shortages. The official declined to offer more details. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the decision with the media. In Yemen, a spokesperson for the Houthi rebel group announced in a prerecorded message that the group had launched ballistic missiles targeting Ben Gurion airport overnight. The Israeli military said these had been intercepted. President Donald Trump has floated a plan for an initial 60-day ceasefire that would include a partial release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for an increase in humanitarian supplies allowed into Gaza. The proposed truce calls for talks on ending the 21-month war altogether. Israel strikes dozens of targets Twenty people were killed and 25 wounded after Israeli strikes hit two houses in Gaza City, according to Mohammed Abu Selmia, the director of Shifa Hospital that services the area. In southern Gaza, 13 Palestinians were killed by strikes in Muwasi, an area on Gaza's Mediterranean where many displaced people live in tents, officials at Nasser Hospital in neaby Khan Younis told The Associated Press. Five of the dead belonged to the same family according to the hospital. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the individual strikes, but said it struck 130 targets across the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours. It said the strikes targeted Hamas command and control structures, storage facilities, weapons and launchers, and that they killed a number of militants in northern Gaza. The war began when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage. Israel responded with an offensive that has killed over 57,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The ministry, which is under Gaza's Hamas government, does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. The U.N. and other international organizations see its figures as the most reliable statistics on war casualties. Ceasefire deal being discussed The strikes occur as efforts to reach a ceasefire deal appeared to gain momentum. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's office said his government will send a negotiating team to talks in Qatar on Sunday to conduct indirect talks, adding that Hamas was seeking 'unacceptable' changes to the proposal. The planned talks in Qatar comes ahead of Netanyahu's planned visit on Monday to Washington to meet U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss the deal. It is unclear if a deal will be reached ahead of Netanyahu's White House meeting. Hamas has sought guarantees that the initial truce would lead to a total end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Previous negotiations have stalled over Hamas demands of guarantees that further negotiations would lead to the war's end, while Netanyahu has insisted Israel would resume fighting to ensure the militant group's destruction. ___ Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press reporter Tia Goldenberg contributed from Tel Aviv.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Reporter's Notebook: 'Post' just met with top Hebron sheikh who wants to pull out of PA
Joining the Abraham Accords could be a game changer, but it has opposition from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides and may be torpedoed globally. The South Hebron Hills seem ancient and as unchanging as ever, but massive change may be in the air. In the aftermath of the Wall Street Journal's blockbuster disclosure early Sunday morning that half a dozen major Palestinian sheikhs from the Hebron area, all led by Sheikh Wadee' al-Jaabari (also known as Abu Sanad), are ready to break off from the Palestinian Authority and sign a new Abraham Accords-style deal with Israel as the "Emirates of Hebron," The Jerusalem Post can now disclose having recently met with Jabari at his ceremonial tent. It was also disclosed that another 13 sheikhs from the Hebron area also plan to leave the PA. At the meeting, Jaabari, 48, wore a large and flowing white robe with gold stripes and a black-striped headdress. He also wore multiple large ceremonial rings, one on one hand and two on the other hand. His beard was still mostly black, though with shades of gray. The "tent" itself was mostly red and was no normal tent. It ranged around 50 feet by 30 feet and had a very high ceiling. Though it seemed somewhat unchanged from when earlier sheikhs in his family line - who, according to the sheikh, have ruled Hebron since the time of Saladin - may have also conducted the region's affairs, there was powerful air conditioning to withstand the intense heat of the surrounding desert. Surprisingly, the tent was not, at that moment, surrounded by many security guards, though the Post was later told that this might have been done temporarily to make it less intimidating for this visiting reporter. Some less powerful sheikhs are known to have their homes surrounded by as many as 10 armed gunmen. At this meeting, there was only one male attendee providing drinks, fruits, and other food, as well as three young children, seemingly between the ages of four and seven, running around nearby. One of them sported a Spider-Man-style shirt. Despite the low-key attendees, the meeting itself was marked by officialdom and honorifics, with the early discussion centering around the illustrious history of the Jaabari family from Saladin to the sheikh's grandfather and father. The sheikh said that he had control of around 78% of Hebron's greater metro population, which could translate into 700,000 or more Palestinians. The simple but radical premise he proposed was that he was ready, along with the other sheikhs (four of whom the Post interacted with separately), to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and end all claims in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He would do so with the goal of eventually assembling six other Palestinian "emirates" (designed like the UAE) comprising the Bethlehem, Jericho, Nablus, Tulkarm, Jenin, Qalqilya, and finally Ramallah areas. These are the main areas the Palestinian West Bank was divided into under the mid-1990s Oslo Accords, which, while barely functioning, have governed Israeli-Palestinian relations for three decades. Sheikh Jaabari told the Post he was willing to make this massive shift in exchange for Israel's support in removing the PA from the area, restoring work permits that were suspended after October 7, 2023, building new joint Israeli-Palestinian industrial work zones, and for some pieces of the Oslo Accords Area C. The Jaabari family has hated the PA for decades, and, since it torched a PA police station and took 34 PA officers hostage in 2007 in reprisal for their killing a member of the Jaabari clan, it has already reduced PA intervention in Hebron affairs. Jaabari's father has had numerous meetings with Israeli officials, including one attended years ago by another Post reporter, to try to move forward with coexistence initiatives that do not involve the PA. But what is unique about this latest initiative is that it happened in the post-Abraham Accords and post-October 7 world. The Post's Zvika Klein wrote an op-ed in May after meeting with Minister Nir Barkat, who is the lead Israeli figure behind the initiative, in which he discussed it at a more general conceptual level. Barkat has kept Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the loop, but even the risk-averse prime minister has stayed out of it directly until now to see which way the wind would blow. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) intensely opposes the initiative. While the security agency is not satisfied with the PA's fight against Palestinian terror, it still regards it as the only body that can really assist Israel in curbing terror across the entire West Bank. Some Israeli officials estimate the PA has as many as 70,000 soldier-officers, including a smaller group of commandos - not an easy body to replace. Currently, the officials estimate there are around 4,000 PA officers in Hebron, along with 200 commandos. Throughout the years, despite contrary threats to cut off relations, the PA has shared intelligence with the Shin Bet, helping them to capture at least some Palestinian terrorists, especially Hamas. Sometimes the PA's motivation for sharing such intelligence is to weaken Hamas opposition, but Israel does not really care about its motivation if the result is capturing terrorists. The IDF has similar opposition to the idea, also counting on the PA for security cooperation. What has happened in Jenin since December 2024 is a good metaphor for the dilemma. For six weeks, the PA, partially at Israel's urging, hounded its own people in the Jenin area who were engaging in terror and violent protests. It substantially succeeded at reducing terror in the area but failed to gain control of the internal Jenin refugee camp. Eventually, on January 21, the IDF entered the camp itself and started a multi-month operation to truly root out the remaining terror elements. So the PA helped but also failed. This is the history of the PA in the West Bank - helping the Shin Bet and IDF at times, but not when the other Palestinian fighters are "too strong." The Shin Bet and IDF prefer the enemy that they know about. They worry that a loose confederation of emirates in the West Bank would be unmanageable, not to mention that this initiative could lead to an unpredictable Palestinian civil war. Jaabari told the Post that if Israel supports him, he can rout the PA in Hebron in hours or days without too much bloodshed since many of its officers are actually part of his clan. He said that in his Hebron region, his word is law, and promised that he could bring total and utter quiet to an area that a decade ago was among the worst and most chaotic. This is because Hebron is still run primarily by the tribal clans, and he can take swift and, if needed, deadly action against anyone who violates his decrees. The deal that Jaabari has negotiated with Barkat discusses 1,000 new Palestinian workers in Israel from Hebron, followed by 5,000 after a trial period. But these numbers are tiny compared to the pre-October 7 numbers of 210,000 Palestinian workers in Israel. Jaabari insisted that Barkat and Israel will give him 50,000 from Hebron alone within a short period of time. The arrangements for Area C are more questionable. Jaabari would probably get some new parts of Area C, but Israeli officials would also likely try to use the new accords to take larger areas for Israel. In this way, Palestinians may complain that this new deal is worse for them as a group and nation than getting a more independent and larger Palestinian state along the lines of the 1967 Six Day War. Also, the accords would permanently yield Jerusalem to Israel and dispose of the "return of refugees" issue, though it would enshrine Palestinian autonomy over the Temple Mount Muslim prayer areas. Why would Jaabari make such concessions, which the PA would never make, and much of the world would oppose? From his perspective, the PA was a foreign force from Tunisia (where PLO and then PA leader Yasser Arafat was expelled to before Oslo) that returned to the West Bank after over 20 years of exile and pushed down the traditional sheikhdoms that had always run all Palestinian affairs in the area. He told the Post that all critical local services are still handled by his council of sheikhs and that all the PA does is collect taxes, a way of appropriating local money for its corrupt "foreign" needs. Put differently, Jaabari sees the PA as only a parasite and wants back full control of the area, which he and his council say existed for hundreds of years before the Oslo Accords. Also, after October 7, he simply believes that the pre-war idea of a Palestinian state is dead and that Israelis will never accept it. So what is the point of waiting around for a pipe dream while the PA takes portions of his clan's money in the meantime? Jaabari is up against the Shin Bet, the IDF, possibly Netanyahu (his final position is undecided), the PA, and probably much of the world, which is still set on the traditional Oslo-era two-state solution. It is unclear whether US President Donald Trump would weigh in on the issue and try to sway the world toward accepting it, especially if Israel itself has not decided its position. And if Netanyahu ever started talking about the plan seriously in public, would it be because he actually intended to implement it - or to use it as a bluff to pressure the Saudis into normalization at a lower price for what he would need to give the PA? (by telling the Saudis he will move along with the plan if they don't.) But Trump loves normalization deals, and the Abraham Accords were carried out despite PA opposition. From one perspective, this could be a new pragmatic way for Israelis and Palestinians to coexist and live in peace after 33 years of Oslo have not yielded this. Some of the Israeli Right are enthusiastic about the initiative because it would allow them to keep Jerusalem and to take more portions of Area C, while the local sheikhs would also support it in order to get the PA off their backs. From another perspective, it may be an unrealistic pipe dream of a group of local sheikhs and right-wing Israelis up against much larger forces within their own people and globally. Even if it did go ahead, it is also unclear how many Palestinians would still be satisfied in 10 years, when October 7 is more of a distant memory, after giving up full statehood and east Jerusalem. But Sheikh Jaabari made it clear that he is not waiting idly anymore and is stating the question publicly to Israel and the world: do you want to take his hand and forge a new kind of coexistence or not?
The Hill
2 hours ago
- The Hill
Here's where Trump's approval ratings stand on key issues
President Trump's approval ratings remain underwater as he gets mixed reviews on his immigration crackdown, economic handling and foreign policy five months into his second administration. Trump's approval on the economy, one of his biggest strengths throughout 2024, has appeared to improve slightly after taking a hit from chaotic tariff moves and stock market losses earlier this year, though it largely remains negative. And support for his handling of immigration, while still his strongest issue, has shown signs of weakening as he pursues his campaign promise of mass deportations. At the same time, his favorability and job approval numbers have ticked up slightly since the Israel-Iran ceasefire took hold, noted Scott Tranter, the director of data science for Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) — signaling some recovery even as the figures remain significantly lower than they were when Trump took office. Here's what voters think of Trump's job performance and moves on major issues heading into the July 4 holiday weekend: Trump started his second term with some of his highest approval numbers but crossed into net-negative territory this spring amid blowback over his whiplash moves on tariffs. After hitting a disapproval high in April, his numbers started to recover slightly in May and early June, according to averages from DDHQ. Last month, though, his numbers sank again, with a roughly 45 percent approval and 51 percent disapproval rating. At the same time, DDHQ's tracker has seen some improvement for Trump, as last week his net approval reached minus-8 points. 'Both favorability and job approval numbers for President Trump had an uptrend since last week's ending of the Iranian conflict,' Tranter said. 'We are seeing a range for both of these metrics that is for now, higher than the range was in his first term.' 'So, over the course of last week, it's gone up. But it is certainly lower than it was post-inauguration.' Gallup's tracker puts Trump at a 40 percent approval rating as of early June, before developments including the U.S. strikes against Iran. That figure is not far from the 38 percent approval he logged in June of 2017, during his first term, but is well behind former President Biden's 56 percent at this point during the Democrat's first year. New polling from The Economist/YouGov conducted June 27-30 found Trump with a net approval of minus 11 points, down from a minus 4 point net approval at the end of May. An Emerson College Polling survey taken last week found a similar slide, with Trump once again underwater. In a positive sign for the president, his economic numbers appear to be in recovery mode after his aggressive trade moves earlier this year dealt a blow to his approval. A tracker from pollster Nate Silver shows Trump's approval rating on the economy has appeared to even out after a significant downturn in March and April, now sitting at a minus-12 net rating. Trump had a 43 percent approval rating on jobs and the economy in the latest Economist/YouGov numbers, on par with the 42 percent logged at the end of last month — though he fell on inflation and prices from a negative 15 points to a minus-24 net score. Americans' assessments of the economy improved slightly in Gallup's June Economic Confidence Index, climbing from minus 22 points in April to minus 18 points in May and then minus 14 points this month. Trump scored a major legislative win this week when Congress passed his 'big, beautiful bill,' sending the sweeping package that could add trillions to the federal deficit to Trump's desk. Approval for the bill has been underwater in some polling, and it remains to be seen how its passage could impact the president's broader numbers. Immigration, another issue that bolstered Trump through both of his presidential campaigns, continues to be one of his strong suits in his second term, but some new polls suggest support for his hard-line stances are slacking. 'He's lost ground,' Tranter said. 'Some polls show he is underwater, and some are back and forth. So I think the consensus is: We can argue whether or not he still has a net positive support on immigration or not, but we can say that it's gone down.' The Economist/YouGov poll had Trump's approval on immigration at a positive net 7 points at the end of May, before it flipped to a net negative 3 points at the end of June. In the first few months of his second term, Trump has spearheaded a deportation blitz and worked to end birthright citizenship as part of a major crackdown on immigration. After Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workplace raids sparked protests in Los Angeles last month, Trump sent thousands of National Guard members and Marines to California as he clashed with Democrats over the issue. A new poll from PBS News, NPR and Marist released this week found a minus-9 point net approval rating for Trump's immigration handling. A majority of Americans, or 54 percent, described ICE's actions to uphold immigration laws as having 'gone too far,' a figure bolstered largely by Democrats and independents. Meanwhile, 49 percent of surveyed Republicans described the actions as appropriate. Trump sent shock waves through the political world in late June when he announced that the U.S. had bombed three Iranian nuclear sites, inserting the U.S. into a tense conflict between Israel and Iran in the Middle East. The president then brokered a fragile ceasefire that ended the 12-day conflict, and he has touted that the U.S. strikes 'obliterated' Iran's nuclear threat, even as some have called that claim into question. 'He's riding high after Iran,' Tranter said of Trump, calling it 'a clear win' for the commander in chief as he pointed to Trump's approval uptick over the past week. But Americans in the PBS News polling were divided about the U.S. strikes, with a 50-50 split on agreement with the military action. More than 8 in 10 surveyed Republicans supported the strikes, compared with 45 percent of independents and 23 percent of Democrats. Three in 4 Americans also worried that Iran could retaliate after the U.S. strikes. Americans in CNN polling were even more disapproving, with 56 percent of those surveyed against and 44 percent for the strikes, and 6 in 10 worried that the strikes could increase the Iranian threat to the U.S. Meanwhile, Trump announced this week that Israel agreed to conditions that could finalize a 60-day ceasefire with the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza amid a conflict that has ravaged the Gaza Strip for nearly two years. If that deal goes through, it could mark the 'next theoretical big win' for Trump, Tranter said. Quinnipiac polling from mid-June found low approval for Trump's Israel-Hamas handling, at just 35 percent. He got similar marks, 34 percent approval, for his approach to Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine, a three-year conflict Trump has repeatedly claimed would not have happened on his watch. Trump struggled to make progress toward an end in fighting, lashing out at various points at both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
