Hundreds of thousands displaced in Khan Younis as Netanyahu meets Trump

Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators are to meet with Israeli negotiators in the Italian capital Sunday in the latest push for a Gaza truce, Egyptian state-linked media said.

"A four-way meeting between Egyptian officials and their American and Qatari counterparts, in the presence of Israel's intelligence chief, will be held in Rome on Sunday to reach an agreement on a truce in Gaza," Al-Qahera news, which has links to Egyptian intelligence, reported on Friday, citing a "senior official" who was not identified.

Egypt, along with Qatar and the United States, has been involved in months of mediation efforts aimed at ending the Israel's war on Gaza, which has been raging for more than nine months.

The proposed truce deal would be linked to the release of hostages held by Palestinian groups in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

US news outlet Axios separately reported that CIA Director Bill Burns is expected to hold talks on the issue in Rome on Sunday with Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials.

The official quoted by Al-Qahera News said Egypt insists on "an immediate ceasefire" as part of the agreement, which should also "ensure the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza" and "safeguard the freedom of movement" of civilians in the Palestinian territory.

Cairo would also like to see a "complete (Israeli) withdrawal from the Rafah crossing" connecting Gaza to Egypt, the official added.

Recent mediation efforts have focused on a framework which US President Joe Biden presented in late May, billing it an Israeli proposal.

On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress, pleading for continued US support, before meeting with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee in the US presidential election later this year, said after the meeting she would not be "silent" on the suffering in Gaza and that it was time to end the "devastating" conflict.

More than 180,000 Palestinians have fled Israeli attacks around the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis in four days, the United Nations said Friday, after an operation by the Israeli army to extract captives' bodies from the area.

Recent "intensified hostilities" in the Khan Yunis area, more than nine months into the Israel-Hamas war, have fuelled "new waves of internal displacement across Gaza", said the UN humanitarian agency, OCHA.

It said that "about 182,000 people" have been displaced from central and eastern Khan Yunis between Monday and Thursday, while "hundreds of other people remain stranded in eastern Khan Yunis".

The Israeli military on Monday forced Palestinians to evacuate parts of the southern city, announcing its forces would "forcefully operate" there, including in a area previously declared a safe humanitarian zone.

On Wednesday, Israel said five bodies of captives seized during Hamas's October 7 attack had been recovered from the area.

Since the latest fighting began in Khan Yunis this week, Israel's military claimed on Friday that its forces had "eliminated approximately 100 terrorists" in the city.

Witnesses and rescuers said Israeli attacks continued on Friday around eastern Khan Yunis, where the civil defence agency said shelling killed at least two people in a house.

Israel's indiscriminate war on Gaza has killed at least 39,175 Palestinians and injured over 90,000 more.

According to UN figures, the vast majority of Gaza's 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once by the fighting.

Pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida while US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met inside, chanting slogans including "Free Free Palestine" and "Trump in Jail" while displaying Palestinian flags and a satirical placard showing Trump boxing Netanyahu, video from the AFP news agency showed. 

Jordan's King Abdullah and U.S. President Joe Biden discussed on Friday in a phone call the dangerous developments in Gaza and efforts aimed at reaching an immediate and lasting ceasefire and ending the humanitarian crisis there, the royal palace said in a statement. 

(Reuters)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave a warm greeting to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife on Friday as the two leaders met for talks in Florida.

Trump kissed Sara Netanyahu on both cheeks, then clasped hands with the long-serving prime minister before posing for a photo with the two while giving a thumbs up sign, a video clip posted on social media by the former president showed.

Netanyahu posted a photo online showing him holding a hat that said "TOTAL VICTORY" -which he has vowed to achieve against Hamas in Gaza - as he stood next to Trump at the Republican's Mar-a-Lago resort.

The tone was in notable contrast to Netanyahu's meeting with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris the previous day, in which the vice president told him to seal a Gaza peace deal and insisted that she would not be "silent" on the suffering in the Palestinian enclave.

Over 39,000 people, most of them women and children, have been killed over 9 months of indiscriminate Israeli assault on the enclave.

"What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time," Harris told reporters.

CIA Director William Burns is expected to meet with senior Israel, Qatari and Egyptian officials in Rome on Sunday in an effort to bring the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal to a close, Axios reported on Friday, citing unidentified U.S. and Israeli officials.

The United States is deferring the removal of certain Lebanese citizens from the country, President Joe Biden said on Friday, citing humanitarian conditions in southern Lebanon amid tensions between Israel and Hezbollah.

The deferred designation, which lasts 18 months, allows Lebanese citizens to remain in the country with the right to work, according to a memorandum Biden sent to the Department of Homeland Security.

An Israeli military commander said Friday that troops in the country's north were preparing for "a decisive offensive" against Lebanon's Hezbollah after months of deadly cross-border exchanges

Speaking to troops, Major General Ori Gordin, Israel's commanding officer in the north, claimed that "we have already eliminated more than 500 terrorists in Lebanon, the great majority of them from Hezbollah", an army statement said.

Hezbollah confirms that around 340 of its militants have died. Gordin did not mention civilian casualties.

The Israeli military has "destroyed thousands" of targets across the border, Gordin claimed. The statement said troops were now preparing "for the transition to offence".

"When the moment comes and we go on the offensive, it will be a decisive offensive," Gordin added.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged countries around the world to stop armed conflict as part of the Olympic truce, with the Paris 2024 Olympics set to open later on Friday.

"I want to express the total support of the United Nations to the IOC," Guterres said. "We live in a divided world where conflicts are proliferating in a dramatic way.

"The horrendous suffering in Gaza, the seemingly endless war in Ukraine, terrible suffering from Sudan to the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), from the Sahel to Myanmar. In a moment like this it is important to say that the first recorded, in history, real peace initiative was the Olympic truce."

The Games kicked off later on Friday and end on August 11 with the participation of more than 10,500 athletes representing 206 nations and territories.

These include a Palestinian team, which while not a full member of the United Nations, has an official national Olympic Committee.

Israel on Friday slammed a UN rights expert for "anti-Semitism" after she endorsed a social media post comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.

On Thursday, Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, responded to a post on X displaying a picture of Hitler being celebrated by a crowd with Nazi salutes and cheers above a shot of Netanyahu appearing to be greeted by US congressmen this week.

This is precisely what I was thinking today.

— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) July 24, 2024

Israel's foreign ministry slammed her on X as being "beyond redemption".

"It is inconceivable that (Albanese) is still allowed to use the UN as a shield to spread anti-Semitism," it said.

Israel's mission to the UN in Geneva also chimed in. "When a current UN 'expert' endorses Holocaust distortion spread by the former (UN rights office) director in New York... the system is rotten to its core," it said. "It's high time to #UNseatAlbanese!"

Albanese on Friday hit back at the criticism, insisting that "the memory of the Holocaust remains intact".

"Institutional rants and outburst of selective moral outrage will not stop the course of justice, which is finally in motion."

EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Thursday urged Israel to revoke its decision to outlaw the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, calling it nonsense.

"Outlawing UNRWA – and labelling it as terrorist, which it is not – amounts to targeting regional stability and human dignity of all those benefiting from the UN agency work. We join many partners in urging the Israeli Governement to halt this nonsense," he wrote on X on Thursday.

Britain said on Friday it would not proceed with efforts to question whether the International Criminal Court (ICC) has jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

"On the ICC submission... I can confirm the government will not be pursuing (the proposal) in line with our long-standing position that this is a matter for the court to decide on," the spokesperson told reporters.

In May, the ICC's prosecutor said he had requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and three Hamas leaders over alleged war crimes.

Court documents made public in June showed Britain, an ICC member state, had filed a request with the court to provide written observations on whether "the court can exercise jurisdiction over Israeli nationals, in circumstances where Palestine cannot exercise criminal jurisdiction over Israeli nationals (under) the Oslo Accords".

Since then, Britain has elected a new government run by the Labour Party, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer's spokesperson said the previous government had not submitted its proposal before the July 4 election.

he World Health Organization is sending more than one million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered over the coming weeks to prevent children being infected after the virus was detected in sewage samples, its chief said on Friday.

"While no cases of polio have been recorded yet, without immediate action, it is just a matter of time before it reaches the thousands of children who have been left unprotected," Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in an opinion piece in Britain's The Guardian newspaper.

He wrote that children under five were most at risk from the viral disease, and especially infants under two since normal vaccination campaigns have been disrupted by more than nine months of conflict.

Besides polio, the U.N. reported last week a widespread increase in cases of Hepatitis A, dysentery and gastroenteritis as sanitary conditions deteriorate in Gaza, with sewage spilling into the streets near some camps for displaced people.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has been forced to reduce rations for families in Gaza to ensure broader coverage for newly displaced people, it said on Friday.

"Food stocks and humanitarian supplies in central and southern Gaza are very limited and barely any commercial supplies are going in," WFP added in a post on social media platform X.

Israeli officials criticised U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris after she said it was time for the war in Gaza to end given the suffering of Palestinians being caused by the fighting.

"There has been hopeful movement in the talks to secure an agreement on this [ceasefire] deal, and as I just told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done," she said. "We cannot allow ourselves to be numb to the suffering and I will not be silent."

Both Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, leaders of two hardline religious nationalist parties whose support is vital for Netanyahu's right-wing coalition, condemned Harris' remarks.

"Madam candidate, there will be no cessation of hostilities," Ben-Gvir wrote on the social media platform X.

Several rockets were launched Thursday and Friday against bases hosting troops from the US-led anti-Islamic State group coalition in Iraq and Syria, security officials and a war monitor said.

"Four rockets fell in the vicinity" of Ain al-Assad base in Anbar province, an Iraqi security source said. Another security official said an attack occurred with "a drone and three rockets" that fell close to the base perimeter.

A United States official said initial reports indicated that projectiles landed outside the base without causing injuries or damage to the base.

At least one rocket also fell near a base of the coalition in the Conoco gas field in Deir Ezzor province of eastern Syria, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

The Observatory said a blast was heard in the area but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

The rocket was fired from "zones under the control of pro-Iranian militia" groups, said the monitor which relies on sources inside Syria.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either attack.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday for the first time in nearly four years at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

A Hamas leader in the occupied West Bank died in Israeli custody, Palestinian authorities and the militant group said Friday.

Mustafa Muhammad Abu Ara, 63, died after being moved from a prison in southern Israel to a hospital, according to a joint statement by the Palestinian Authority's prisoners affairs body and the Palestinian Prisoners' Club watchdog.

"We mourn the passing of the leader and prisoner Sheikh Mustafa Muhammad Abu Ara and hold the occupation responsible for his assassination through deliberate medical neglect," Hamas said in a statement.

Abu Ara was arrested in October while suffering severe health problems, the Palestinian body and the watchdog said.

During his detainment he was subjected to torture and starvation, they added.

من أقمار فلسطين هذا اليوم.
الشيخ مصطفى محمد أبو عرة (63 عاما) من قادة "حماس" في الضفة الغربية، يلقى ربه شهيدا، بإذن الله، في سجون الغزاة بعد وجبات اعتقال متواصلة بلغت 12 عاما.
وكانت آخرها بعد "طوفان الأقصى" مباشرة.
شعب يقدّم خيرة أبنائه على درب الشهادة والأسر، لن يُهزم بإذن الله. pic.twitter.com/m5LDOyYpYt

— ياسر الزعاترة (@YZaatreh) July 26, 2024

The Saint Hilarion complex, one of the oldest monasteries in the Middle East, has been put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites in danger due to the war in Gaza, the body said Friday.

UNESCO said the site, which dates back to the fourth century, had been put on the endangered list at the demand of Palestinian authorities and cited the "imminent threats" it faced.

"It's the only recourse to protect the site from destruction in the current context," Lazare Eloundou Assomo, director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, told AFP, referring to the war on Gaza.

8/ attacks that have devastated so many other sites in the Gaza Strip. Photo: Mosaic at Saint Hilarion Monastery/Tel umm el-Amr site in Gaza (UNESCO office in Ramallah) pic.twitter.com/fCs3UXhOll

— Emek Shaveh (@EmekShaveh) July 24, 2024

Hamas political bureau member Ezzat al-Reshq criticised US Vice-President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris for meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that she is starting her electoral campaign with "fabricated lies that are careless about the human rights she is pretending to defend."

"Pretending keenness on the humanitarian situation and sadness over the suffering of our people in Gaza is a renewed American lie," Reshq said in a Telegram post on Friday, adding that the US could stop the war "if it wanted" and could "withhold its military, security, political and intelligence support for the Nazi army."

Reshq urged the US administration "to act to stop the genocidal war" and pressure Netanyahu to "commit to end" it.

He added that the Palestinian casualties "are innocent civilians" who were killed by the Israeli army with "US weapons and political cover".

The leaders of Australia, New Zealand and Canada called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza in a joint statement on Friday.

"An immediate ceasefire is needed desperately," the statement said.

"Civilians must be protected, and a sustained increase in the flow of assistance throughout Gaza is needed to address the humanitarian situation."