Israel expands Gaza ground offensive as Hamas fires rockets at Tel Aviv
The escalation in hostilities came after a two-month cease-fire in Gaza collapsed this week with a deadly Israeli aerial bombardment in the territory, which the military said had targeted Hamas. Israel argued that the truce could not continue unless Hamas released more hostages still held in Gaza, while Hamas accused Israel of violating the cease-fire agreement.
The potential endgame for this round of fighting, however, remained far from clear. Israel and Hamas have set seemingly incompatible conditions for the next steps in the cease-fire, and the renewed Israeli assault had yet to force Hamas to accept its demands.
Husam Badran, a senior Hamas official, said in an interview Thursday that the group was unwilling to disarm its military wing -- a key Israeli precondition for ending the war.
'If you do that, you're giving the occupation an opportunity to kill without any Palestinian response,' Badran said from Doha, Qatar.
He added that Hamas had delayed firing rockets until Thursday in an attempt to give mediators more time to pressure Israel to halt its attacks. But as Israel continued its assault and the death toll rose in Gaza, he said, 'Hamas had to give indications that it can respond.'
The renewed Israeli assault has killed more than 500 people in Gaza over the past three days, including scores of children, the Gaza health ministry said Thursday. The figures do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
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The United States, which had been seeking to broker an extension of the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, has thrown its weight behind the Israeli offensive. Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesperson, told reporters Thursday that President Trump 'fully supports Israel' and 'the actions that they've taken in recent days.'
After the Hamas rocket attack, the Israeli military warned Palestinians in Bani Suheila, in southern Gaza, to flee, saying militants were firing from the area. Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesperson, called it 'a final advance warning' before an Israeli attack.
Hamas said at least five senior members of its Gaza leadership were among hundreds of people killed in Israeli strikes Tuesday. The Israeli military said Thursday that it had killed at least two other Hamas security officials.
In Gaza, the escalating conflict prompted panic and fear among Palestinians, who had hoped for a longer respite from violence. Many said they saw little hope for a resolution to the crisis soon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to step up pressure on Hamas until the group capitulates and releases more hostages. About 24 living Israeli and foreign captives -- as well as the remains of more than 30 others -- are believed to be in Gaza, according to Israel.
Hamas officials say their demands for the release of the rest of the captives remain unchanged, including an agreement to end the war, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and the release of more Palestinian prisoners.
The 15-month war in Gaza has killed more than 48,000 in the territory, including thousands of children, according to the Gaza health ministry. Hamas set off the conflict by leading a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed about 1,200 people and saw about 250 taken as hostages back to Gaza.
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The cease-fire reached in January secured an initial six-week truce while mediators sought to bridge gaps between Israel and Hamas on a comprehensive truce. But it lapsed in early March without a broader agreement.
Almost immediately, Israel blocked humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, including food and medicine, in an apparent effort to pressure Hamas in the negotiations to free more hostages. Later, the Israeli government cut off electricity it provided to a desalination plant.
Mediators were trying to reach a deal to extend the truce, including a permanent end to the war and the release of the remaining living hostages. Steve Witkoff, Trump's Middle East envoy, pitched a proposal that would extend the initial cease-fire in exchange for the release of more captives.
Badran, the Hamas official, suggested the group was willing to show some flexibility over such a deal to jump-start talks aimed at ending the war. Previously, Hamas had spoken only of releasing one living and four slain American Israeli hostages in such an agreement, keeping more than 50 others still in Gaza.
'The problem isn't the numbers,' Badran said. 'We're acting positively with any proposal that leads to the start of negotiations' over a permanent truce.
But Israel has been unwilling to end the war as long as Hamas still controls Gaza. Hamas is refusing to disband its armed battalions or send its leaders into exile.
Members of the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee -- who receive classified intelligence briefings -- said in a recent letter that Hamas still had more than 25,000 fighters.
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Hamas's allies in Yemen, the Iran-backed Houthi militia, have also resumed shooting missiles at Israeli territory, setting off air-raid sirens across the central and southern parts of the country at least three times over the past two days.
The Houthis shot missiles and drones at Israel for more than a year in solidarity with the militants in Gaza, pausing only when the cease-fire went into effect in January.
Over the past week, US warplanes have carried out large-scale attacks in Yemen against the Houthis, in what US officials proclaimed was an attempt to stop the group from targeting commercial ships in the Red Sea.
On Wednesday, Trump said the Houthis would be 'completely annihilated,' and warned Iran to stop supporting the militants. Israel and the Biden administration had repeatedly bombarded the Houthis without successfully deterring them.
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NBC News
4 minutes ago
- NBC News
Starvation in Gaza divides many Jewish Americans
Heartbreaking images of children starving in Gaza have caused what some Jewish Americans call a 'rupture' between supporters of Israel's offensive in its current form and those who oppose how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's government is managing the war. Frustrated by the bloodshed, pressure is mounting on the United States and the international community to take better control of chaotic food distribution sites. 'We're seeing not only divisiveness, but hatred between us, and that's not a good thing for the future,' said Rabbi Erez Sherman of Sinai Temple, a Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles. 'So how do we not solve it? How do we work on that?' But support for Israel remains ironclad among many American Jewish groups and rabbis, who argue that Hamas is preventing humanitarian aid from reaching innocent civilians. 'Israel has facilitated an extraordinary amount of aid to Palestinians in Gaza, in wartime, and that's really an unprecedented situation,' said Belle Etra Yoeli, spokesperson for the American Jewish Committee, which recently ran a full-page ad in The New York Times with the image of an Israeli hostage who remains in Hamas custody. 'The Palestinian civilians who have been caught in the crossfire throughout this entire war because of Hamas' actions should not be suffering,' she added. 'Israel doesn't want that.' Nearly 1,400 people have been killed and more than 4,000 have been injured seeking food in Gaza, the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week. At least 859 people have been killed near sites operated by Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF, a controversial American- and Israeli-backed organization, the United Nations said. The foundation's executive director, Johnnie Moore, said Hamas is largely responsible for the killings and dismissed news reports about people dying by Israeli gunfire. 'We have not seen the Israeli military do anything that remotely aligns with some of these accusations,' he said. 'It is a quite evident fact that Hamas has killed intentionally probably hundreds of people in proximity not to just our sites, to U.N. distribution sites, as a means of sort of misattributing those attacks either to the IDF or to being in proximity to GHF,' he added, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. To address escalating concerns over the humanitarian crisis, synagogues across Jewish movements in the United States have organized roundtables with the executive director of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. At an event with GHF hosted last month by Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, reactions were mixed, according to Sherman, the rabbi, who led the discussion. Some people were shocked that an organization that has come under so much criticism was allowed to present its case. Others appreciated hearing directly from people on the ground. 'How do you block evil from your midst while also feeding the hungry and supporting the orphan and widow?' Sherman said after the roundtable, referring to Psalm 146. 'To me, it's an impossible task, and I give credit to somebody who is at least trying to do that.' Polling suggests Jewish Americans are divided over Netanyahu's handling of the war. According to a Pew Research Center report, 53% of Jewish Americans say they lack confidence in his leadership, while 45% say they have confidence. About 6 million Jews live in the United States, or 2% of the population, according to the Pew Research Center. The poll was conducted in April, before GHF began its operations in Gaza. Supporters of Netanyahu's government, including several Jewish American organizations, have said Hamas is spreading misleading information about who is to blame for ongoing violence at aid sites, a claim Hamas has repeatedly denied. They have also criticized detractors for losing focus on the remaining Israeli hostages held captive by Hamas. 'All of this can just be stopped anytime if Hamas puts down its weapons,' said Orthodox Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization that supports Netanyahu's government. An emerging concern echoed by several organizations and rabbis is that Netanyahu's position is not creating a safer Israel or global environment for Jewish people. Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of nonprofit advocacy organization J Street, said the ongoing violence is exposing Israelis and Palestinians to unnecessary bloodshed. J Street, which supports a two-state solution, opposed Netanyahu years before the war. 'If you say to people you must be pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel, then we're condemning ourselves and our kids to a never-ending conflict,' Ben-Ami said Monday. But according to Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari of Kol Tzedek, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Philadelphia, the war is creating an 'existential rupture' that is pitting friends and family members against one another. 'It's catastrophic,' he said. 'We're wrestling with the very question 'Do we belong to each other?'' Fornari was among more than 40 people arrested outside Trump Tower in New York City earlier this month as they shouted for the United States to stop arming Israel and feed Gaza. He was arrested for investigation of blocking traffic and obstruction, his third arrest since the war started on Oct. 7, 2023, he said. Some posters and signs displayed outside Trump Tower referred to an ancient maxim about the moral obligation to speak out against injustice, Fornari said. 'It says anyone who has the power to speak out and chooses not to do so is responsible for it,' he said. Handcuffed near Fornari was Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the CEO of T'ruah, a rabbinic human rights organization. Jacobs said she supported Israel's military response to Hamas' terrorist attack in 2023, which killed 1,200 people and led to the taking of 250 hostages. The strike, the worst one-day attack on Jews since the Holocaust, shocked the world. Since then, more than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including thousands of children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, and much of the territory has been destroyed. Jacobs began questioning Netanyahu's strategy as more and more civilians in Gaza were killed, she said. In July, she denounced American Jewish leaders who had not spoken out against the humanitarian crisis unfolding thousands of miles away. 'Privately, Jewish lay leaders are anguished over Gaza. Publicly, they fear being labeled antisemitic,' she wrote in an opinion column in The Forward, a Jewish American newspaper. Jacobs has been called antisemitic by other Jewish people who support Netanyahu and shunned by legacy Jewish organizations, she said. Some of it, she said, comes from a legitimate fear of prejudice. In May, two Israeli Embassy staffers were killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., and a Colorado pro-Israeli hostages group was attacked with two Molotov cocktails in June. There have also been reports of anti-Jewish slurs and signs at college campuses and pro-Palestinian protests across the country. The cultural fallout has been playing out in living rooms and across kitchen tables. Sonya Meyerson-Knox, a spokesperson for the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, which has opposed the war since 2023, said a member was uninvited to Shabbat family dinners because of differing opinions about the war. The group was suspended from several campuses, including Columbia University's, over allegations it intimidated Jewish students and made them feel unsafe during pro-Palestinian protests last year. Jewish Voice for Peace maintains that its views are not antisemitic. 'It is not unique in Jewish history for Jews to be in fierce disagreement with each other,' she said. 'What is unique is that there seems to be an effort to weaponize one-half of our community against the other.'
The Intercept
an hour ago
- The Intercept
Anas al-Sharif Was My Friend. Here's Why Israel Feared Him So Much.
Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif reports near the Arab Ahli Hospital in Gaza City in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 10, 2024. Photo: AFP via Getty Images Ali Ghanim is the pseudonym of a Palestinian journalist living in the U.S. I first met Anas Al-Sharif in in November 2023 at the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, which was the biggest complex in the war-torn Gaza City. Israel had just ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza, a first step toward depopulating the area during an earlier stage of the genocide. Anas was lying on the floor in front of the emergency room with tears in his eyes. 'Why are you so sad?' I asked him sardonically. 'We're still at the beginning of this movie!' He laughed. Anas felt the weight of the war heavily, but he was still from Gaza, and we have our trademarked Ghazawi way of lighthearted humor in the face the most unfathomable loss and unbearably dark days. Above all, Israel fears the people who tell the world about what is happening in Gaza. 'You're right,' he responded. 'The climax, the real tragedy, the end of the story, are still on the way.' For Anas, the end would come too soon. On Monday, Anas, 28, was targeted, along with three other Al Jazeera journalists, in an Israeli strike on a tent complex around Al-Shifa Hospital. The Israeli government mocked him in death — even accusing him of being a Hamas operative. It's their way of belittling Anas because he did something so small as tell our story. Israel fears so many simple facets of Palestinian life, a child wearing a keffiyeh or a mother telling her son to fight for Palestine. Above all, though, Israel fears the people who tell the world about what is happening in Gaza — the war, the genocide, the famine. Anas made it a mission to tell these stories, our stories, all over the world. And people listened. For me, though, Anas wasn't just a star journalist. He shepherded me through tough times, encouraged me to do reporting, and shared his knowledge freely. Along with my father, Anas's strength was the biggest inspiration to my life. It helped keep me going. He was a mentor and, moreover, a friend. In the hospital that day we met, we chatted for a couple hours. We both grew up in Jabaliya refugee camp. He knew some of my relatives. It was Israel's occupation that inspired him to become a journalist. Anas told me once about how, when he was still young, one of his relatives had been arrested. When the relative returned from Israeli prisons, Anas listened intently as the man narrated tales from behind bars for his family. Those were the kinds of stories — of injustice, of torture, of indignity — that needed to be told to the wider world, Anas realized. Palestinian communities are famously tight-knit, but it was especially true in our camp, where people felt each other's needs and wants intensely. In the camp, people supported each other at any cost. Anas was known for being close to the children in his community, connecting with them and instilling pride in them by teaching them about Palestine. The spirit of telling people's stories while also supporting them as human beings was ever present in his work. Anas could be seen walking through a hospital at work, microphone in hand, but pausing to express sympathy for mothers who had lost their sons. We would both come to know tremendous loss in this war. Anas's father was killed by Israel in an airstrike a month after our meeting. And my family home was hit by an airstrike on our densely populated neighborhood shortly before we encountered each other; my mother had been killed, and my sister landed in the intensive care unit of Al-Shifa Hospital, part of the reason I was there that day. We were also, for the meantime, stuck. Israel was besieging the hospital. It was an affront to international norms, and Israel justified its attack with bogus propaganda about militants hiding out in tunnels beneath the complex. We spent a lot of time together during the offensive and formed a bond that would continue until the day Anas died. Anas pushed me further into journalism — and once I was getting my feet under me, he pushed me to keep going. When we had met at the hospital, I'd already been taking photos. Every morning, I'd put on my nearly five-pound press vest and sprint from massacre to massacre. Darting around Gaza City, I took pictures with one hand because my other arm was severely injured in the attack that killed my family members. 'I see you're working with one hand,' Anas said at the hospital, and I told him my story. At the time, I had mostly been posting to social media. Anas, though, was an official journalist with Al Jazeera. He began to show me the ropes, patiently answering any questions I might have had and telling me how to interact with editors abroad. This was a crucial part of the job for Anas: His journalism came first, but he knew that our stories needed to reach the world outside Gaza if there was any hope of international intervention to stop the genocide. We had to give a voice to our fellow Palestinians. His journalism came first, but he knew that our stories needed to reach the world outside Gaza. He knew it was dangerous work, but it was worth it. When I worried about a dangerous outing, Anas told me about the value of risking your life for silenced people — how if we didn't do it, those voices may never get heard. He also, however, understood that sometimes people needed to move on. I hadn't been able to leave the hospital because I was with my ailing sister, but during the siege, the lack of power brought her life support down and she succumbed to her injuries. It was time to go south and reconnect with my father. Anas understood and urged me to go — but to keep working. He told me, 'Don't forget you survived the bombardment of your house for a reason, and you need to continue.' I wondered about him. Why was he staying in such a dangerous place? He answered that his people were still there in the north and he would stay with them. Eventually, I had to leave the Gaza Strip to get medical care for my injured arm and was lucky enough to get out. I ended up in the U.S. I began pursuing a degree but continued to do journalism work. And, through WhatsApp, Anas continued to be there for me — just as he was for his colleagues who were in Gaza. I was very close with one of Anas's colleagues at Al Jazeera, Fadi al-Wahidi. Last October, al-Wahidi was behind the camera in Jabaliya, within an area Israel had labeled a 'yellow' zone — not in a forbidden 'red' zone — when gunfire broke out. He was hit in the neck and paralyzed. A few months ago, Anas began leading the charge to get his colleague evacuated to Qatar. He activated a network of contacts to prod international organizations. It would turn out to be a long fight and Anas wouldn't see it to its conclusion. His own work, too, was becoming more difficult. Israel's targeting of journalists has made the genocide the deadliest war for the press in history. Anas himself had received explicit threats. 'I feel tired,' he told me a few days before he was killed. Even as he had encouraged me to leave, however, and worked to get colleagues evacuated, he had resolved to stay, to never give up. He said, 'This is my land and this is my reality.' We had been speaking for a story I am working on. Anas had, in his usual generous way, agreed to help me find sources. We set up a meeting for 5 p.m. Eastern time in the U.S. — late at night for Anas, when little would be going on. I messaged him at the appointed time, but no response came. I sat and waited, a pit in my stomach. I opened Instagram, something I had been seeking to do less of. Immediately, I saw the news about Anas. Without thinking, reacting on instinct, I threw my phone across the room. Anas spent so much of his life making sure other people's stories were heard. When I got the news, however, my voice didn't produce any words. All I could do was scream.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
US accuses UK of 'significant human rights issues' and restricting free speech
The US State Department has accused the UK of having "significant human rights issues", including restrictions on free speech. The unflattering assessment comes via a new version of an annual Human Rights Practices report, with its publication coinciding with Vice President JD Vance's holiday in the Cotswolds. Politics Hub: Follow latest updates and analysis It says human rights in the UK "worsened" in 2024, with "credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression", as well as "crimes, violence, or threats of violence motivated by antisemitism" since the 7 October Hamas attack against Israel. On free speech, while "generally provided" for, the report cites "specific areas of concern" around limits on "political speech deemed 'hateful' or 'offensive'". Sir Keir Starmer has previously defended the UK's record on free speech after concerns were raised by Mr Vance. In response to the report, a UK government spokesperson said: "Free speech is vital for democracy around the world including here in the UK, and we are proud to uphold freedoms whilst keeping our citizens safe." The US report highlights Britain's public space protection orders, which allow councils to restrict certain activities in some public places to prevent antisocial behaviour. It also references "safe access zones" around abortion clinics, which the Home Office says are designed to protect women from harassment or distress. They have been criticised by Mr Vance before, notably back in February during a headline-grabbing speech at the Munich Security Conference. The report also criticises the Online Safety Act and accuses ministers of intervening to "chill speech" about last summer's murders in Southport, highlighting arrests made in the wake of the subsequent riots. Ministers have said the Online Safety Act is about protecting children, and repeatedly gone so far as to suggest people who are opposed to it are on the side of predators. Read more politics news: The report comes months after during a summit at the White House, cutting in when Donald Trump's VP claimed there are "infringements on free speech" in the UK. "We've had free speech for a very long time, it will last a long time, and we are very proud of that," the PM said. But Mr Vance again raised concerns during a meeting with Foreign Secretary David Lammy at his country estate in Kent last week, saying he didn't want the UK to go down a "very dark path" of losing free speech. The US State Department's report echoes similar accusations made by the likes of Nigel Farage and Elon Musk. The Trump administration itself has been accused of trying to curtail free speech and stifle criticism, most notably by targeting universities - Harvard chief among them.
