- Highlighted updates
- Iran confiscates Mahsa Amini's prize at the airport
- Iran: We will close the Mediterranean if crimes in Gaza continue
12/23/2023 5:50:12 p.m
Biden convinced Israel not to attack Hezbollah
Joe Biden convinced Israel not to launch a preemptive strike against Hezbollah forces in Lebanon on October 11. This was revealed by the Wall Street Journal citing some sources that said the Israeli planes were in flight waiting for the green light to fly when the American president spoke to Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and told him to stand down and about the Think about the consequences that the action would have. Israel had decided on the preemptive strike based on intelligence considered reliable by the United States that suggested Hezbollah fighters were ready to cross the border.
12/23/2023 5:47:54 p.m
Israel: Hassan Atrash, Hamas weapons manager, killed
The army and the Shin Bet said they killed Hassan Atrash, who was responsible for trafficking, manufacturing and smuggling weapons for Hamas. Atrash was killed in a targeted airstrike yesterday while he was in a vehicle in Rafah, southern Gaza. Two other people also died with him. According to the same sources, the man was also involved in smuggling from various countries into the Palestinian enclave and also played a role in supplying weapons to the West Bank.
12/23/2023 5:18:42 p.m
Iran confiscates Mahsa Amini's prize at the airport
Iranian security forces have confiscated the 2023 EU Sakharov Prize plaque recently awarded to Mahsa Amini. Kurdish human rights activists denounced this. Amini's family's lawyer, Mohammad Saleh-Nikbakht, was reportedly intercepted and interrogated at Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport last night after arriving from France, where he accepted the award on behalf of the family. The award, as well as the lawyer's cell phone and passport, were confiscated by security forces at the airport.
12/23/2023 4:30:09 p.m
Hamas: Lost contact with group with five hostages
Hamas said it had lost contact with a militia group holding five hostages and that it believed they were all killed in an Israeli airstrike. This was announced by the spokesman for the al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida.
12/23/2023 2:00:03 p.m
Gaza authorities: 76 family members killed in raid
An Israeli airstrike killed 76 members of an extended family in Gaza City, the Associated Press reported on its website, citing aid workers in the enclave who today reported the death toll from yesterday's raid on a building in the city.
The attack “was among the bloodiest in the war between Israel and Hamas,” said Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for the Gaza Civil Protection Department, providing an incomplete list of names and stressing that among the dead were women and children as well as Issam al-Mughrabi, a U.N. employee development program, his wife and their five children. 12/23/2023 1:59:32 p.m
Attack on a ship in the Indian Ocean for Israel leaving Iran
Israel believes that the drone that attacked a Liberian-flagged chemical tanker off the coast of India in recent hours and, according to various sources, linked to the Jewish state, came from Iran. This is reported by the Israeli broadcaster Channel 12.
12/23/2023 1:41:00 p.m
Iran: We will close the Mediterranean if crimes in Gaza continue
This was said by a commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards The Mediterranean could be “closed” if the United States and its allies continue to commit “crimes” in Gaza. Portal reports this on its website. “You should soon expect the closure of the Mediterranean, the Strait of Gibraltar and other waterways,” said Pasdaran commander Mohammad Reza Naqdi, quoted by Tasnim. Iran has no direct access to the Mediterranean and it is unclear how it can try to close it, although Naqdi spoke of “the rise of new resistance powers and the closure of other waterways.”
12/23/2023 10:59:07
Guterres: 136 UN staff killed in Gaza in 75 days
In the 75 days of war in Gaza, 136 UN staff were killed, which was “unprecedented” in the history of the UN, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told his colleagues. “Many of our employees had to leave their homes. “I pay tribute to them and the thousands of humanitarian workers who are risking their lives to help civilians in Gaza,” Guterres wrote again in his tweet.
An incomplete solution. After days of delays, the UN Security Council managed to adopt a text on the war – with the USA and Russia abstaining Gaza. However, he ignores calls for an immediate ceasefire. The resolution – the second to be adopted in more than two months of war – therefore calls for “urgent” measures to allow “immediate, safe and unhindered humanitarian access” to the Gaza Strip and “to create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities “. an indefinite future. The draft's previous wording – which spent days refining and changing to persuade the US not to use a new veto – instead called for “the urgent cessation of hostilities,” although it was not a true ceasefire for Israel and Washington was unwelcome. It is not clear what happened between one draft and the other. The vote scheduled for Thursday evening was canceled at the last minute with a statement of regret from American Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield. After “working hard and diligently over the past week” with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to find a solution GazaWashington was ready to “support the draft as it was written,” the diplomat said, without explaining why the vote had been postponed again.
INSIGHTS
A few hours later, press rumors announced that in the latest draft – seen by AFP – the passage about “immediate ceasefire” had disappeared. The adopted text also deplores “any act of terrorism” and “attacks against civilians and calls for the unconditional release” of all hostages. But – a sore point in the resolution that disappoints the US – it makes no explicit and unequivocal condemnation of the October 7 Hamas attack. “Israel continues to ignore calls for a humanitarian ceasefire. “Their siege is inhumane,” Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour said in response to the vote. “The resolution is a step in the right direction,” he added, referring to humanitarian aid, “but there is no way to stop the genocide without a ceasefire,” he stressed, as the death toll in Gaza increased 20,000 dead and half a million people exceeded, according to United Nationsthey risk dying of hunger.
“The real problem is that the way Israel is conducting this offensive is creating obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza.
“A humanitarian ceasefire is the only way to meet the desperate needs of the people of Gaza,” commented Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. However, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan immediately clarified that the council's decision “maintains Israel's security authority to monitor and inspect aid entering the Gaza Strip.” “The Security Council's decision that the UN guarantee rationalization of aid deliveries and that they reach their destination and not Hamas is correct,” Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said, but warned: “Israel will continue the war until all abductees are released.” and the elimination of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.”
They also do not appear to be moving forward with the negotiations that Israel and Hamas are conducting with the mediation of Egypt and Qatar. After the Palestinian group said no to a proposal for a week-long ceasefire in exchange for the release of 40 hostages, Israeli officials reportedly offered a two-week cessation of hostilities in exchange for dozens of abductees. Hamas continues to reiterate that it does not want to carry out a release without “an end to the aggression” against Gaza, but sources reported by Kan TV reported that the Islamic faction is “considering” this second proposal. Meanwhile, Israel continues its attacks on the Gaza Strip. According to the Yussef al-Najar Hospital in Rafah, three people – including two minors – died and six others were injured in a car explosion in the city on the border with Egypt. Witnesses at the scene reported that the car had been hit in an airstrike in what appeared to be a “targeted execution.” In addition, the IDF has also attacked at least three locations in recent weeks where it had ordered Palestinian civilians to evacuate for their “safety,” according to an analysis by CNN and the New York Times. CNN also revealed that Israel has dropped hundreds of 2,000-pound (over 907 kg) bombs in the more than two months of conflict, many of which could kill or injure people at a distance of more than 300 meters. Marc Garlasco, a former U.S. defense intelligence analyst and former United Nations war crimes investigator, said on U.S. television that the intensity of Israel's bombing of Gaza in the first month was “not seen since Vietnam.” On the northern front, the Israeli army announced the death of a 19-year-old soldier, Amit Hod Ziv, who was killed by rockets fired from Lebanon. However, to prevent the conflict from spreading further, the Biden administration is reportedly negotiating with mediators from Israel, Lebanon and Hezbollah to ease tensions at the border, according to the NYT.
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