Egypt plans to end the war between Israel and Hamas
Egypt is proposing a plan to end the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, with both sides not yet rejecting the idea.
Straight Arrow News
An Iranian general on Wednesday withdrew his demand that the deadly Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 was “revenge” for the killing of an Iranian general nearly four years ago, and told Al-Araby that his comments earlier in the day were “incompletely conveyed” and misunderstood.
Ramazan Sharif, spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, had linked the Hamas attack, dubbed “Operation Al-Aqsa Storm,” to a US drone strike in Iraq on January 2, 2020, that killed General Qasem Soleimani was killed. Sharif also said that Israel's killing of a senior Iranian military adviser in Syria this week would prompt a military response from Iran “directly or indirectly.”
The U.S. Justice Department said in a heavily redacted 2020 memorandum that Soleimani had commanded the Guard's elite Quds Force since the late 1990s and was a “key architect of Iran's campaign of terror, assassination and violence across the Middle East ” been.
The Iranian government, which funds Hamas, has repeatedly denied involvement in the October attack that killed 1,200 Israelis in communities along the Gaza border. Hamas issued a statement on Wednesday rejecting Sharif's claim that he linked the shooting spree to Iran, saying the attack was primarily a response to “threats posing the Al-Aqsa Mosque in “Threaten Jerusalem,” where there were clashes between Israeli settlers and Muslim believers.
However, Sharif did not abandon his promise of a military response to the killing of the Iranian brigade. General Razi Mousavi was targeted in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Damascus on Monday. Israel had accused Mousavi of being a key player in Tehran's efforts to supply weapons to Hamas and the militant Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“Iran will take harsh and strong revenge,” Sharif said, accusing Israel of killing Mousavi to “escape its defeat in Gaza and its failure there and divert the world's attention from a war crime.”
War in Gaza: Israeli adviser meets with US official
Developments:
∎ Israeli rockets rained down on the central and southern Gaza Strip early Wednesday, striking areas where Palestinians fleeing fighting in the northern Gaza Strip had gathered on orders from the Israeli military.
∎ Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen threatened the leader of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, saying Hassan Nasrallah “must understand that he is next.” A Hezbollah attack on Tuesday injured 11 people in northern Israel.
∎ The United Nations and its member countries have spent $622 million in aid to Gaza and the West Bank, 51% of the $1.2 billion the United Nations urgently requested at the start of the war.
∎ The Palestinian death toll rose to 21,110 dead and 55,243 injured after nearly 200 people were killed in the last 24 hours, Gaza's health ministry said. Israeli authorities, which have broadly confirmed the ministry's death toll, said the fatalities included 8,000 Hamas operatives – in addition to 1,000 militants killed during and immediately after the Oct. 7 attacks.
∎ Palestinian telecommunications officials said internet and telephone services were being restored across the Gaza Strip after a near-total blackout that severely hampered rescue and relief operations. It was at least the sixth major failure since the start of the war.
Roads leading to two of the country's busiest airports in New York and Los Angeles were temporarily blocked on Wednesday by pro-Palestinian protesters demanding an end to the war in Gaza, prompting some travelers to reach the terminals on foot .
In the middle of the busy holiday season, traffic on the expressway leading to New York's John F. Kennedy Airport came to a standstill for 20 minutes as protesters linked weapons and held up banners.
Video posted on social media showed passengers, some carrying suitcases, abandoning vehicles and climbing over barriers onto the highway median. Officials later arranged for buses to take stranded travelers to the airport.
Around the same time, activists disrupted driving conditions on the road leading to Los Angeles International Airport by dragging concrete blocks, tree branches, construction debris and other objects onto the roadway. according to LA police. Police tweeted that protesters threw an officer to the ground and attacked “innocent bystanders in their vehicles.”
According to authorities, 26 people were arrested at the JFK protest and 36 people were arrested at LAX, including one for assault on a police officer. Both airports were among the top six in the country last year, with more than 26 million passengers each.
Turkish and Israeli leaders engaged in a war of words on Wednesday over Israeli actions against Hamas militants in Gaza, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described as “no different” than those of Adolf Hitler. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hit back, accusing Erdogan of committing genocide against Kurds and keeping a “world record” number of opposition journalists in prison.
“Erdogan… is the last person who can preach morality to us” Netanyahu said this on social media, adding that Israel has “the most moral army in the world.” War Cabinet Secretary Benny Gantz, a political opponent of Netanyahu, dismissed Erdogan's comments as a “blatant distortion of reality and a desecration of the memory of the Holocaust.”
A 15-year-old Muslim girl was pepper-sprayed and insulted in a Brooklyn neighborhood, which police are investigating as a possible hate crime.
According to the New York Police Department, the girl was approached last week by an unknown woman who “made anti-ethnic comments toward the victim and then sprayed pepper in her face.” The woman fled the scene and the police are looking for her and release a photo with her image.
New York television station WPIX said the woman called the teenager a “terrorist,” one of the latest in a surge in hate incidents against Muslims and Palestinians since the start of the war.
− Christopher Cann
The US risks being drawn into an “all-out regional war” in the Middle East and the Biden administration must ensure a ceasefire rather than “blindly supporting Israel’s disastrous war in Gaza,” according to the National Iranian American Council. an advocacy group supporting democratic change in Iran said in a statement released Wednesday. A ceasefire could give diplomacy time to address the underlying issues fueling the war, the council said.
“The alternative is increasingly looking like a larger conflict that spans multiple borders and includes the United States,” it said. “President Biden must act before it is too late.”
The Israeli Air Force Chief of Staff on Wednesday repeated global claims firmly rejected that Israel's airstrikes in Gaza are indiscriminate. Brig. Gen. Omer Tischler said the Israeli military was conducting a “precise, targeted” military campaign that prioritized protecting civilians. Evacuations would be ordered in advance and munitions designed to minimize collateral damage would be used, he said. And attacks are monitored in real time and can be canceled if the danger to civilians becomes too great, he said.
But Israel has acknowledged that its campaign in Gaza has killed more civilians than the militants it targets. On numerous occasions, civilians have fled to safe zones at Israel's insistence, only to find those areas also under attack.
“Mistakes can happen in war,” Tischler said. “Although they are exceptional, they are still made. We study them, learn from them and make changes to our process as a result.”
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told the Israeli parliament that the war would be long and costly, but “the justification is the highest it can be.” Gallant, in a Times of Israel translation, promised that Israel would punish Hamas “whether it takes months or years.” He said Israel has faced attacks on seven fronts and has hit back on almost all of them.
Gallant's pledge came days after an Egyptian peace plan drew a cool response from Israel and Hamas. If approved, the plan would involve Hamas releasing the more than 100 remaining hostages in return for Israel releasing all Palestinians from its prisons. Nearly 8,000 Palestinians are being held by Israel on security-related charges or convictions, according to Palestinian figures. The plan also calls for Israel to withdraw from the battered Gaza Strip and for militants to stop rocket attacks on Israel.
Contribution: The Associated Press