Israel and Hamas resume fighting after a week-long break
After the ceasefire ended, Israel resumed fighting in Gaza, claiming that Hamas violated the agreement by firing rockets during the ceasefire.
The United States blamed Hamas after Israeli forces resumed air strikes on the Gaza Strip, ending a weeks-long lull in fighting.
The White House said Friday that Hamas had failed to provide a list of hostages the militant group would release. Meanwhile, Israel and Hamas presented conflicting accounts of why the ceasefire ended.
“This pause ended because of Hamas,” said John Kirby, the National Security Council’s strategic communications coordinator. “They were simply unable and failed to produce a list of hostages that could help extend this pause.”
President Joe Biden and the entire Security Council would continue negotiations, Kirby said, as the US pushed for another pause and the release of more hostages. Qatar, another international mediator alongside Egypt, said it was working to renew the ceasefire and expressed “deep regret” over the renewed fighting.
The Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip said at least 178 Palestinians died and dozens more were injured in the hours after airstrikes resumed on Friday, and Israel said it hit more than 200 Hamas targets.
“The responsibility is on Hamas to come up with a list of hostages that they can free so that we can try to get this pause back on track,” Kirby said.
According to Israeli officials, Israel initially stopped the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza since airstrikes resumed on Friday, but later allowed several dozen trucks carrying aid to enter at the request of the Biden administration.
“If Hamas really cares about the Palestinians, as it claims, it will do its utmost to create a list of hostages that can be exchanged so that aid can continue to flow,” Kirby said.
Israel said it had resumed fighting after Hamas “violated” the ceasefire. and fired at Israel. Hamas officials blamed the Israelis, saying they had rejected offers to release elderly hostages as well as the bodies of hostages.
During Israel’s seven-day pause in fighting in Gaza, more than 100 hostages, all women and children, including two Americans, were freed from Hamas captivity. Seven Americans, including a woman, remain missing. In return, around 240 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel were released.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, more than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed since the war broke out nearly two months ago. About 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed in Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on October 7.
Developments:
∎ As of Friday, Hamas is holding 137 hostages, including 115 men, 20 women and two children, according to an Israeli government briefing. Of this group, 126 are Israelis and 11 are foreigners.
∎ German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called on the international community to work for another ceasefire “for the remaining hostages who have been waiting for their release in dark tunnels for weeks, and for the suffering people of Gaza who urgently need more.” humanitarian aid.”
∎ Hezbollah, the militant group in Lebanon, said on Friday it had attacked Israeli troops along the border with Israel for the first time since the temporary ceasefire between Israel and allied Hamas began a week ago. Lebanese officials told the Associated Press that two civilians were killed by Israeli fire in a village.
∎ The Iranian delegation walked out of the UN climate conference in protest at the presence of Israeli officials, state news agency IRNA reported on Friday.
∎ Médecins Sans Frontières or Doctors Without Borders said Al-Awda Hospital was damaged in an explosion hours after the ceasefire ended. According to the organization, it is one of the few remaining functioning hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip.
Within 30 minutes of the end of the ceasefire, Israel announced that its warplanes would strike Hamas targets across the Gaza Strip, including a community in southern Gaza east of Khan Younis. Another attack hit a house northwest of Gaza City, according to the Associated Press.
Israeli forces also dropped leaflets over areas of the southern Gaza Strip urging people to flee and calling Khan Younis a “dangerous combat zone.”
Meanwhile, sirens blared in several Israeli communities near the Gaza border, warning of incoming rockets; No hits were reported. Photos showed rockets fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip.
The World Health Organization said on Friday it was concerned about the collapse of the health system in Gaza as Israel’s bombardment resumes.
“The health system has been crippled by the ongoing hostilities. Gaza cannot afford to lose any more hospitals or hospital beds,” Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “We need a ceasefire. A ceasefire that lasts.”
At a UN briefing on Friday, Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said 18 of Gaza’s 37 hospitals were “partially functional” and that the number of beds had fallen to 1,500 from 3,500 before the war started.
Peeperkorn also said the WHO is concerned about disease outbreaks as Palestinians spread respiratory and other diseases while crammed into crowded shelters.
Israeli airstrikes hit the outskirts of Damascus
Syrian state media reported that Israeli airstrikes hit several points on the outskirts of Damascus early Saturday.
State news agency SANA, citing an unnamed military official, said the attacks came from the direction of the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights and that Syrian air defenses shot down most of the rockets. The strikes resulted only in “material losses,” the statement said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition war monitor, said the attacks hit the area of the southern Damascus suburb of Sayyida Zeinab, where it said “forces were working with Lebanese Hezbollah.” It was said that ambulances were rushed to the scene.
Israel has attacked targets in Syria several times since the Hamas-Israel war began on October 7th. On Sunday, an Israeli airstrike reportedly hit the international airport in Damascus and put it out of service, just hours after the airport resumed flight operations following a month-long pause following an earlier Israeli attack.
Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks in government-held parts of war-torn Syria in recent years, often targeting Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militant groups. However, the operations are rarely acknowledged or discussed.
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, told the Associated Press that the militant group was willing to exchange more Israeli civilian hostages for Palestinians detained in Israel.
Hamdan said Israel rejected recommendations from mediators, including Qatar, to release hostages before the ceasefire expired, AP reported. Hamas has accepted three of the proposals, Hamdan said.
Hamas rejected a list of 10 names of women Israel wanted to release, saying they were soldiers captured at military posts, Hamdan told the AP.
Who are the released Palestinians? Released prisoners highlight the controversial tactics of the Israeli detention system
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called for a ceasefire on Friday, saying the resumption of fighting would be “catastrophic.”
He added that indications that Israel plans to expand and intensify its military offensive after the ceasefire expires were “very worrying,” citing the civilian death toll in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis in the war-torn area Enclave.
“Thousands of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7,” he said. “The same fate now threatens even more. Others risk being forcibly displaced into already overcrowded and unsanitary parts of the Gaza Strip. The situation has passed the crisis point.”
The Israeli military released a map on Friday dividing the Gaza Strip into zones and said the resource would contain “information on the evacuation of civilians in the Gaza Strip for their safety in the next phase of the war.”
“This will allow Gazans to orient themselves and, if necessary, evacuate certain locations for their safety.” said the Israeli military on X.
The map appeared hours after Israeli forces resumed airstrikes on the Gaza Strip and began dropping leaflets across the southern area of the enclave.
Vice President Kamala Harris left Washington on Friday for Dubai, where she will represent the Biden administration at the UN climate conference COP28 and also plans to discuss the Israel-Hamas conflict with other world leaders.
“The President has asked Vice President Harris to attend the COP28 Leaders’ Summit on his behalf to demonstrate U.S. global climate leadership at home and abroad and to help raise global ambition at this important event,” said the White House.
John Kerry, the White House special presidential envoy for climate, is among dozens of other senior Biden administration officials also attending the two-week summit.
The conference comes amid alarmingly rising temperatures worldwide due to climate change. The World Meteorological Organization announced Thursday that 2023 is “almost certain” to be the warmest year on record. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited Antarctica last week to shed light on the continent’s rapidly melting glaciers.
-Joey Garrison
When deadly attacks and bombings occurred in Israel and Gaza, Jewish day schools in U.S. cities like Philadelphia and Dallas heard from concerned families: Can you take our children?
According to a survey by the Prizmah Center for Jewish Day Schools, about 92% of Jewish day schools in the U.S. and Canada said they had received requests to enroll Israeli students since October 7, and 80% of schools surveyed said they had already received new enrollments to have made students.
In the two weeks immediately following the outbreak of war, Prizmah said 278 new students enrolled in Jewish day schools, including community, conservative, Orthodox, pluralistic and reform schools.
The center heard from families who wanted to enroll their children for a variety of reasons: some were moving from Israel; Some were visiting the United States when war broke out and were unwilling or unable to return home. and others wanted their children to feel a deeper connection to their Jewish faith and heritage.
“The schools wanted to open their arms as wide as possible and embrace a very traumatized population,” said Paul Bernstein, founder and CEO of Prizmah. Read more.
-Phaedra Trethan
Contributors: The Associated Press; John Bacon, USA TODAY