Middle East latest: Israel orders another Gaza evacuation ahead of an offensive
The Israeli military on Wednesday ordered Palestinians to evacuate another section of central Gaza ahead of an offensive in the built-up Bureij refugee camp, even as Israel and the Hamas appeared to inch closer to a ceasefire in the 14-month war.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he will meet Wednesday with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy, Adam Boehler, at home in Jerusalem. Boehler, a former aid to Jared Kushner, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week.
As deadly Israeli strikes pound Gaza each day, talks to broker the ceasefire and hostage release deal have restarted after a monthslong pause. The deal on the table includes a six-week pause in fighting in which Hamas would release 30 hostages, including three of four dual Israeli-U.S. citizens. In exchange, Israel would release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Trump has said he wants a quick end to the war.
Israeli bombardment and offensives in Gaza have killed more than 45,000 Palestinians during the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry’s tally does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but it says more than of half the dead were women and children.
Israel launched the war in retaliation for Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel in which militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted 250 others, around 100 of whom remain in captivity. Israel believes a third of the remaining hostages are dead.
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Here’s the latest:
UN official calls Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza ‘unjustifiable’
UNITED NATIONS – Israel’s continuing collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza is “unjustifiable” and its relentless bombing causing escalating casualties, destruction and dire humanitarian needs is “horrific,” a senior U.N. official says.
Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari told the U.N. Security Council Wednesday that life for Palestinians has become “untenable” in North Gaza, singling out Israel’s military operations especially around Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun where the U.N. says Israel has refused to allow aid convoys.
He condemned the widespread killing and injury of civilians in Gaza and Israel’s use of weapons in densely populated areas that have caused massive casualties and damage to residential buildings, schools, hospitals, mosques and U.N. premises.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian U.N. ambassador, accused Israel of killing, starving and forcibly displacing Palestinians in Gaza. “The aim has always been to ensure that Israel could seize maximum Palestinian land with minimum Palestinians,” he said.
Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said that humanitarian aid is getting into Gaza and touted Israel’s actions in 2024 to dismantle Hamas in Gaza and heavily degrade Hezbollah in Lebanon. He also praised the Assad regime crumbling “to dust” in Syria.
All these events are connected, he said. “And together they present an extraordinary opportunity to this council and the world, … the chance to finally end the Islamic regime of Iran’s aspirations for a Shiite supremacist empire.”
He urged the Security Council to implement “crushing sanctions” on Iran and declare its Revolutionary Guard Corps — “its tentacle of terror” — a terrorist organization.
Israeli forces hit the ICU at a northern Gaza hospital, doctor says
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli forces fired directly at the intensive care unit at Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, the facility’s director said Wednesday, knocking the last ICU in the north out of service and killing at least eight people in nearby buildings.
Palestinian medical staff rushed patients out of the ICU late Tuesday after Israeli tank shelling caused fires, said Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya in a written statement.
“The scene inside the ICU was like a war zone,” he said, as medics put out the flames with blankets and their bare hands because the hospital had no water or fire extinguishers. “It is incomprehensible why we are being targeted in such a brutal way.”
The Israeli military said it was “not aware of any strike or shooting towards the ICU in Kamal Adwan hospital,” and was looking into whether there had been fighting nearby.
In a video Abu Safiya posted to social media, medical staff can be seen trying to extinguish orange flames in a smoke-filled hospital room. Another clip showed what appeared to be human remains burned beyond recognition on a stretcher.
Abu Safiya said people with their bodies on fire had run out of a nearby building that was hit by Israeli airstrikes. At least eight of them died, and he said there were children trapped under the rubble.
Israel says it only strikes militants and blames Hamas for civilian deaths because its fighters operate in residential areas. Kamal Adwan Hospital has been struck multiple times over the past two months since Israel launched a military operation against Hamas in northern Gaza.
Syrians recover human remains from site used by Hezbollah and other Assad allies
DAMASCUS — The Syrian Civil Defense group, known as the White Helmets, uncovered at least 21 corpses as well as incomplete human remains on Wednesday in the Sayyida Zeinab suburb of the capital Damascus.
The discovery was made at a site previously used by Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran-backed Iraqi militias, both allies of deposed President Bashar Assad during the country’s civil war. The site included a field kitchen, a drugstore and a morgue, according to Ammar al-Salmo, an official with the White Helmets, a volunteer organization that operated in areas that were controlled by the opposition.
Rescue teams in white hazmat suits searched the site, located not far from the revered shrine of Sayyida Zeinab, the granddaughter of Prophet Mohammad. The remains were placed into black bags and loaded onto a truck as bystanders from the neighborhood looked on.
“Some (of the remains) are skeletons, others are incomplete, and there are bags of small bones. We cannot yet determine the number of victims,” al-Salmo said.
“Damascus has become a mass grave,” he said, pointing out the growing reports of war-related graves and burial sites in the capital and other places in Syria.
Iran and Hezbollah provided Assad’s government with military, financial and logistical support during the civil war.
Israeli settlers briefly crossed into Lebanon, the military says
JERUSALEM — A group of Israeli settlers have briefly crossed the border into Lebanon before they were removed by troops, the military acknowledged Wednesday.
The civilians who crossed the border came from the Uri Tzafon movement, a group calling for Israeli settlement of southern Lebanon. Photos posted by the group online Saturday showed a small group of activists holding signs and erecting tents inside Lebanon while Israeli soldiers were present.
After first denying the reports to Israeli media, the military said Wednesday that civilians had crossed the border “by a few meters” and were removed by troops.
The military called the border breach a “serious incident” and said it was investigating.
“Any attempt to approach or cross the border into Lebanese territory without coordination poses a life-threatening risk and interferes with the IDF’s ability to operate in the area and carry out its mission,” the military said, using the acronym for the Israel Defense Forces.
The settler group Uri Tzafon, which means “Awaken the North” in Hebrew, crossed the border in the area of the Lebanese village of Maroun Al-Ras. In the past, the movement has said the area is home to an old Hebrew settlement.
Groups of settler activists also have breached the Gaza border more than once since the Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, at one point erecting small wooden tents before they were evacuated by troops. Daniela Weiss, the leader of the movement to resettle Gaza, claims she has entered Gaza twice since the start of the war.
Israel’s settler movement has been emboldened by its current government — the furthest-right in Israeli history — and is now seeking to expand to parts of southern Lebanon and the north of the Gaza.
UN envoy says Syria needs a credible and inclusive transition
DAMASCUS, Syria — The U.N. envoy to Syria said after concluding a visit to Damascus and meeting the new administration that the country needs “a political transition that will be credible, inclusive and include the broadest range of the Syrian society and Syrian parties.”
Geir Pedersen said Wednesday that the process should take place under a U.N. resolution adopted in 2015 to help negotiate a political solution between the government of now-deposed President Bashar Assad and the opposition.
“There is a lot of hope. We can all see the beginning of a new Syria … that in line with Security Council Resolution 2254 will adopt a new constitution that will ensure that there is a new social contract for all Syrians and that we will have free and fair elections when that time comes after a transitional period, also in line with Security Council Resolution 2254,” Pedersen said.
It is not yet clear if Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, the main former rebel group now in control of Syria, will pursue such a process. The group has set up an interim administration comprising members of its “salvation government” that had ruled its former stronghold in northern Syria. It will oversee the country until March, but the new rulers have not made clear how the transition to a fully empowered government would take place.
Pedersen also warned of ongoing violence in parts of the country, particularly in the northeast, where U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces and Turkish-backed armed groups have clashed, and called for humanitarian assistance and for starting a process to end Western sanctions on Syria.
Israeli students walk out of class to call for release of hostages
JERUSALEM — Hundreds of Israeli students walked out of school Wednesday to call for an immediate deal to release the remaining hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip as there appears to be progress in ceasefire talks.
From Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, students headed for central junctions, blocking roads and holding signs with the faces of the captives remaining in Gaza after 14 months of war.
There are 100 hostages in Gaza, a third of whom Israel’s government says are dead. Hamas militants dragged them to Gaza in the October 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war.
At the high school in central Israel attended by hostages Naama Levy and Guy Illouz, who Israel’s military says was killed in the Oct. 7 attack, students crammed the auditorium with signs reading “Bring them Home Now.”
In Tel Aviv, high school students chanted, “Their time is up. There’s a deal on the table.”
Netanyahu takes the stand on Day 4 of corruption trials
TEL AVIV, Israel — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the stand on the fourth day of testimony in his corruption trials Wednesday, saying the accusations against him are “idiotic.”
Netanyahu, the first sitting Israeli leader to take the stand as a criminal defendant, is on trial on charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases.
Netanyahu was supposed to testify on Tuesday, but it was canceled after he requested a postponement due to “security reasons.”
Netanyahu went to the summit of Mount Hermon, part of the Syrian buffer zone that Israeli forces seized after President Bashar Assad was ousted by rebels last week. It appeared to be the first time an Israeli leader had set foot that far into Syria.
The testimony, set to take place six hours a day, three days a week for several weeks, will take up a significant chunk of Netanyahu’s working hours. Critics ask if he can capably manage a country embroiled in a war on one front, containing the fallout from a second, and keeping tabs on other potential regional threats, including from Iran.
Damascus airport reopens
for domestic flights
DAMASCUS, Syria — The Damascus airport reopened Wednesday for the first time since the fall of the government of Bashar Assad, and the first civilian plane took off from Damascus and landed in the northern city of Aleppo.
The airport is currently open only to domestic flights, but Syrian airspace is open to international traffic.
Airport officials have not yet specified when international flights will resume at the Damascus airport, but Saad Khair Bec, technical supervisor, called Wednesday’s reopening “an important day in the life of the Syrian people … after the fall of the former shabby regime.”
State institutions have been gradually returning to work in recent days, including the main port in the coastal city of Latakia.
UN migration agency head says interim Syria leaders recognize challenges ahead
GENEVA — The head of the U.N. migration agency said she was reassured by commitments she heard from Syria’s new caretaker government in meetings in Damascus, as the country seeks to rebuild after more than a half-century of rule under the Assad family.
Amy Pope, director-general of the International Organization for Migration, said in a phone interview Wednesday that Syria’s new leaders “recognize the job they have ahead of them is enormous and that they need the support of the international community.”
IOM estimates about 100,000 people — many looking to return to their former homes — have entered Syria from neighboring countries since Dec. 8, the day former President Bashar Assad fled the country as opposition fighters swarmed into the capital.
“We are also seeing about 85,000 people come out” of Syria into Lebanon through established border crossing points, she said. “It’s a rough figure: There’s certainly people who cross informally and so they’re not counted.”
Most of those found to be leaving are Shiite Muslims, she said. The armed groups who took control of Syria are primarily from the country’s majority Sunni Muslim community, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the terrorist-designated group that led the coalition of armed opposition groups that drove Assad from power.
“There’s no question to me that at this moment in time, they are looking for ways to make this work, to be more inclusive, to build partnerships across the international community, to build partnerships with other governments,” Pope said of the caretaker government. “It’s just going to be a question of whether they can deliver.”
IOM said Pope was one of the first heads of a U.N. agency to visit Syria since Assad’s ouster, and she met with unspecified members of the caretaker government on Tuesday, as well as U.N. officials and advocacy groups.
