19 dead and thousands trapped as Israel strikes Jabalia refugee camps: latest

Donald Trump’s family business tried to open a luxury hotel in Jerusalem, Israel, according to a report.

The former president’s company also looked into transforming a developing skyscraper — near the Israel Defense Forces headquarters — in Tel Aviv into another hotel. Once completed, that building will house the most hotel rooms in the country, the outlet noted.

Read the full article here:

UN humanitarian officials say aid entering Gaza is at its lowest level in months and warn that critical lifelines in the territory’s north, where Israel has renewed its military offensive, have been cut off.

UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq delivered the grim news Friday, saying the main crossings into northern Gaza have been closed and no food or other essential supplies have entered since Oct. 1. More than 400,000 people who remain in the north are under increasing pressure to move south, he said.

“The situation is terrible” across northern Gaza, Haq said, adding that the entire territory faces insecurity.

Read the full article here:

Israel’s military ordered residents of 23 southern Lebanese villages on Saturday to evacuate to areas north of the Awali River, which flows from the western Bekaa Valley into the Mediterranean.

The order, communicated via a military statement, mentions villages in southern Lebanon that have been recent targets of Israeli attacks, many of which are already almost empty.

The Israeli military stated that evacuations were necessary for the safety of residents due to increased Hezbollah activities, claiming the group is using sites to conceal weapons and launch attacks on Israel.

Hezbollah denies concealing weapons among civilians.

Another member of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, UNIFIL, was struck by gunfire on Friday, it said in a statement on Saturday, adding that the man was now stable after undergoing surgery to remove the bullet.

In a statement on Saturday, Hamas said Israel’s “massacre against the civilians” aimed to punish the residents of Jabalia for refusing to leave their homes. It also said it was a sign of Israel’s military failure to defeat the group.

Israel has denied it targets civilians.

The armed wings of Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and smaller other factions said their fighters attacked Israeli forces in Jabalia and nearby areas with anti-tank rockets, and mortar fire.

The 30 Irish peacekeepers carried only rifles and small arms. The Israeli force was preparing to advance with all the tools of a military superpower: tanks, aircraft, drones, heavy artillery and thousands of troops.

But when the Israelis ordered the Irish soldiers to vacate their observation post on the Lebanon-Israel border last week to clear the way for their invasion, they refused.

Read the full article here:

Two events took place last weekend in Germany. At a conference in Berlin called The Big Chill, a group of thinkers and activists denounced what they called “anticipatory obedience” in which Germans, including Jews, had been “muted, de-platformed and stigmatised” for criticising Israel’s response to the atrocities of 7 October 2023.

At the same time, in a small town called Zeitz in eastern Germany, 10 “stumbling stones”, small memorial brass plates denoting the homes of Jews taken to be exterminated in concentration camps, were ripped up. “Whoever did this wants to tear the Holocaust out of our memory,” a leading local politician, Götz Ulrich, declared.

The sad fact is both sets of assertions are largely true. And yet, it was a weekend like any other and neither event received particular coverage.

Read the full article here:

Israeli military strikes on Gaza overnight killed at least 19 Palestinians, medics said on Saturday, while forces continued to push deeper into the Jabalia area, where international relief agencies say thousands of people are trapped.

Residents said Israeli forces continued to pound Jabalia, which is in the north of the enclave and is the largest of the enclave’s historic refugee camps, from the air and ground.

There has been no fresh Israeli comment but the military said in past days that forces operating in Jabalia and nearby areas killed dozens of militants, located weapons and dismantled military infrastructure.

The operation in this area began a week ago and the military said then it aimed to fight against Hamas militants waging attacks and to prevent Hamas from regrouping.

Palestinian health officials put the number of people killed in Jabalia over the past week at around 150.

The United Nations food agency said on Saturday that no food aid had entered northern Gaza since 1 October.

The World Food Program said that the primary border crossing into the war-ravaged area had been closed for about two weeks, warning that Israel’s ongoing ground operation has a disastrous impact on food security for thousands of Palestinians families there.

“The north is basically cut off and we’re not able to operate there,” said Antoine Renard, the WFP country director of Palestinian territories.

Concerns of a hunger crisis have risen in Gaza roughly a month after the U.N.’s independent investigator on the right to food accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians.

Israel has denied such allegations and insisted that it has allowed food and other aid into Gaza in significant quantities.