The Commissioner General of the UN Palestine Refugee Agency (UNRWA), Philip Lazarini, accused Israel today of refusing to respond to repeated requests to provide evidence that some of the agency's employees work for the Palestinian Islamist Hamas.
Lazarini told a UN General Assembly committee meeting that Israel continues to use the allegations to undermine the agency.
He said Hamas also accuses UNRWA and its leadership of colluding with the Israeli occupier.
In addition, Hamas has for years opposed the agency's education program and questioned its commitment to gender equality and neutrality.
The Secretary-General of UNRWA has again called on all countries to prevent Israel from implementing laws banning the agency's work.
The laws passed by the Israeli parliament in October will take effect in 90 days.
Israel claims that more than ten UNRWA employees took part in the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas in southern Israel, which sparked the Gaza war.
The country recently gave the UN 100 names of agency employees it claims have links to extremists, but Lazarini said he had not received a response to repeated requests for evidence.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dani Danon replied to Lazarini that he had a video of a terrorist allegedly employed by UNRWA who kidnapped an Israeli in the October 7 attack.
At the meeting, Danon sat next to the abductee's mother and said that no more evidence than the video was needed.
He also called on Lazarini to resign if he has any decency.
At the decolonization committee meeting, speaker after speaker expressed support for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres reiterated the statement that the agency is crucial and irreplaceable and Lazarini's warning that the implementation of Israeli laws will be a disaster for millions of Palestinians.
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Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced today that the Israeli army will continue to fight against the Lebanese Hezbollah until Israel's goals are achieved.
He said this while Washington and Beirut are trying to agree on an end to the conflict.
"We will not establish any ceasefire, we will not reduce the gas, and we will not allow any arrangement that does not include the achievement of war objectives and Israel's particular right to act alone against any terrorist activity," Katz said during a visit to the Israeli army's Northern Command, along with Chief of Staff Gen. lieutenant colonel Herci Halevi.
Katz stated that the goals are to disarm Hezbollah, push the pro-Iranian organization across the Litani River and allow the residents of northern Israel to return safely to their homes.
Disarming Hezbollah has not been included in Israel's war aims in Lebanon so far.
It is unclear whether that statement is a slip, commented the Israeli media.
"Now we need to continue hitting Hezbollah with all our might," Katz said.
Israeli airstrikes today targeted the southern suburbs of Beirut for the third time in 24 hours.
In a separate attack, south of the capital, eight people were killed, including three children and three women, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health.
The Israeli army announced that today it intercepted 40 missiles from Lebanon, of which at least two were drones, adding that there were no injuries in the attacks, reported Agence France-Presse.
The intensive bombing of Lebanon began on September 23, and the target is primarily Hezbollah strongholds. On the last day of September, the ground offensive against Lebanon was launched.
According to the Lebanese authorities, more than 3.360 people, mostly civilians, have died since the beginning of the conflict between Israel and the heavily armed organization. Most of the victims died after the start of the Israeli ground offensive.
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At least 22 Palestinians were killed today in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, and in Lebanon, the southern suburbs of Beirut, from which most residents had evacuated, were again targeted.
Israeli forces have deepened their incursion into Beit Hanun, in northern Gaza, forcing much of the remaining population to leave, Reuters reports.
Residents said shelters for displaced families and the remaining population were surrounded and ordered to go south through the checkpoint.
The men were detained for questioning, while the women and children were allowed to continue on their way to the capital, Gaza City.
Israel's military operation in northern Gaza and the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from the area has fueled Palestinian claims that it is being cleared to serve as a buffer zone for the potential return of Jewish settlers.
The Israeli army denied it and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that he does not want the return of Jewish settlers evacuated from Gaza in 2005.
The stalwarts in Netanyahu's government, however, are openly talking about a return.
The Israeli military announced on social media today that it will soon attack targets in the southern suburbs of Beirut, warning residents that they are close to facilities of the pro-Iranian extremist Hezbollah.
Israel carried out several attacks at night on those suburbs, but yesterday and today the attacks started in the morning. Yesterday, airstrikes destroyed more than ten buildings in the suburbs of Dahija.
Today, there are still no reports of victims.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelati said during his visit to Beirut that Cairo is in almost daily contact with Western and Arab countries, as well as Russia and China, and that the main goal is an immediate end to aggression, as well as how to increase pressure and all forms of influence. on the Israeli government to stop it.
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Lebanon's pro-Iranian organization Hezbollah claims it carried out a drone strike targeting the headquarters of the Israeli army and Israel's Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv this afternoon.
In a statement from the extremist organization, it was stated that it carried out an "air attack by a squadron of exploding drones" in the place where the main defense institutions of Israel are located.
The Israeli army announced earlier that it had intercepted two drones from Lebanon in the north of Israel.
Israeli media reports that there is no indication that any drone has reached central Israel or near army headquarters.
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At least 22 people were killed today in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, as Israeli forces deepened their incursion into the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern coastal Palestinian territory, forcing most of the remaining residents to flee to other parts of the enclave, Reuters reported.
Residents said Israeli forces surrounded shelters housing displaced families and the remaining population, estimated to number several thousand, ordering them to move south into the Gaza Strip through a checkpoint.
The men were detained for questioning, while the women and children were allowed to continue walking toward Gaza City, residents and Palestinian doctors said.
Israel's offensive in the northern Gaza Strip and the evacuation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the area have fueled Palestinian claims that Israel is clearing the area to use as a buffer zone and potentially for the return of Jewish settlers.
The Israeli military has denied such intentions, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he does not want to reverse the 2005 withdrawal of settlers from the Gaza Strip. However, the hard-line representatives in his government openly talked about returning to that territory.
Israel's military said its forces in Jabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanun killed hundreds of Hamas militants, which the US and EU consider a terrorist organization, during a new military offensive that began more than a month ago.
Hamas and the armed wing of Islamic Jihad claimed to have killed several Israeli soldiers during ambushes and anti-tank rocket fire.
Efforts by Arab mediators, Qatar and Egypt, with the support of the US, have so far failed to end the war in the Gaza Strip, while Hamas and Israel accuse each other of the lack of progress.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said today that Israel had "achieved its objectives" by removing the leadership of Hamas and ensuring that the organization could not launch another massive attack. "That should be the time to end the war," he said.
"We also have to make sure we have a plan for what comes next," Blinken said, "so that if Israel decides to end the war and we find a way to get the hostages out, we also have a clear plan for how Israel can get out of Gaza and make sure that if Hamas does not return".
A senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, said of Blinken's statement: "We are facing an enemy and the US hostility towards the Palestinian people is nothing less than the occupation."
The war in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7 last year when extremists led by Hamas invaded Israel where, according to Israeli data, they killed 1.200 people and kidnapped more than 250 hostages.
More than 43.500 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip during the war, according to health authorities in the Hamas-controlled territory.
(Radio Free Europe)
Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group affiliated with Hamas, released a new video today showing a man who appears to be a hostage, one of the Israelis kidnapped on October 7, 2023.
The video showed a young man with a beard who identified himself as Aleksandar Trupanov.
He mentioned the Israeli offensive in Lebanon launched in the second half of September and the Israeli airstrikes against Iran carried out in late October and called on Israelis to step up demonstrations to pressure the government to do something to free the hostages held in the Gaza Strip.
This is the third video that the group published with Sasha Trupanov, a 29-year-old citizen of Russia and Israel, who was kidnapped together with his girlfriend Sapir Cohen in Kibbutz Nir Oz, with whom he was visiting his family.
The video was released a few days after Qatar announced that it was ending mediation between the Israeli authorities and Hamas in order to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and release the hostages.
Sapir Cohen, as well as the mother and grandmother of Saša Trupanova, were freed during the only truce in the war initiated last October after the Hamas attack on Israel.
The hostage's father, Vitali Trupanov, was killed on October 7.
The main association of the hostages' relatives said the release of the video showed the urgency of the hostages' return, and that there was no more time to waste, as the risks of their lives increasing after more than a year in custody.
During an attack by Hamas commandos on October 7, 2023, 251 people were abducted from Israel, and a total of 97 hostages are still in Gaza, of whom the military declared 34 dead.
(BETA)
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