Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said today that providing more aid to Palestinians in Gaza requires a "resolute stance" by the international community to push for a ceasefire, according to a statement from the Egyptian presidency, Reuters reports.
Sisi met with Jordan's King Abdullah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the Jordanian Red Sea city of Aqaba, where the three leaders rejected what they said were any efforts or proposals aimed at "liquidating the Palestinian cause."
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken asked Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today during his visit to the West Bank to reform the Palestinian administration, as part of the post-war plan for Gaza that includes concrete steps towards a Palestinian state.
The U.S. wants to reform the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza after the war, and the involvement of President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as other Arab countries the U.S. hopes will participate in the reconstruction of Gaza, depends on moving toward a Palestinian state after years of a stalled peace process.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the Palestinian Authority's control of Gaza and is staunchly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The autocratic, Palestinian leadership, whose forces were driven out of Gaza when Hamas took power in 2007, is seen by many Palestinians as having no legitimacy to govern.
Thus, 88-year-old Abbas has not run in elections since 2005 and has no support among his people.
In a meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Blinken told Palestinian President Abbas that the U.S. supports "tangible steps" toward a Palestinian state, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
Blinken later said they discussed reforming the Palestinian Authority to "effectively take responsibility for Gaza" and Abbas seemed willing to "engage in all these efforts," Blinken said.
Abbas's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudayneh, said they had heard "good statements from the Americans, but nothing happened," he said. "The priority now is to stop the war in Gaza."
In his fourth visit to the region since the war began three months ago, Blinken has met in recent days with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.
According to him, they agreed to help rebuild Gaza and that broader Israeli-Arab normalization is still possible, but only if there is a "path to a Palestinian state."
Since the beginning of the war, more than 23.300 Palestinians have been killed and more than 59.000 wounded, according to a statement issued today by the health ministry in Gaza under the administration of Hamas.
(Beta)
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society announced that an Israeli attack on an ambulance in the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday killed four medics and two other people in the ambulance.
The Red Crescent initially said four people were killed, but revised the figure, saying "two people who were in the ambulance at the time of the attack sustained injuries and later died".
The Israeli army has not yet responded to AFP's request for comment.
Jagan Chapagain, head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, called the attack "unacceptable".
"I strongly condemn their murder," he wrote on social media.
He added that "the protection of patients and healthcare workers is non-negotiable".
"They must never be a target," he stressed.
The Red Crescent said the ambulance was on the Salah al-Din road, a highway running north-south through the Gaza Strip that thousands of Palestinians have used in the past to flee Israeli military advances.
Earlier on Wednesday afternoon, Gaza's health ministry, run by the militant Hamas, said several people were killed in an Israeli strike near a hospital in Deir al-Balah.
(Radio Free Europe)
Jordanian King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi stressed at the end of the Arab summit in Aqaba that pressure should be increased to end Israeli "aggression" in Gaza and protect civilians there, Reuters reports.
In a palace statement, both leaders - who attended a tripartite meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas - said they rejected any Israeli plans to separate the fate of Hamas-ruled Gaza from the Israeli-occupied West Bank, adding that the two entities were the basis of a future Palestinian state. of the state.
Four members of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society were killed today when an Israeli attack hit an ambulance near Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, the Red Crescent said in a statement, Reuters reports.
The World Health Organization (WHO) today canceled another planned medical aid mission to Gaza due to security concerns, the sixth such cancellation in two weeks, Reuters reports.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said it was the sixth mission to northern Gaza that the UN agency had canceled because requests for a visit had not been approved and security assurances had not been provided since its last visit on December 26.
"Intensive bombing, movement restrictions, fuel shortages and disrupted communications are preventing WHO and our partners from reaching those in need," he told a virtual news conference from Geneva.
"We call on Israel to approve the requests of the WHO and other partners for the delivery of humanitarian aid," Gebrejesus said.
The Israeli offensive launched after a deadly rampage by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7 has displaced most of Gaza's 2,3 million residents, left many homes and civilian infrastructure in ruins and caused acute shortages of food, water and medicine.
The fighting has intensified recently despite a promise this week that the war would be reduced.
The WHO said on Wednesday that only 15 hospitals in Gaza remain functional, even partially.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke with President Mahmoud Abbas about the reform of the Palestinian Authority, the State Department said.
At the meeting in Ramallah in the West Bank, Blinken told Abbas that the U.S. supports "tangible steps toward the creation of a Palestinian state," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
He said that the two discussed administrative reform.
Abbas told Blinken that Gaza is an integral part of Palestinian statehood hopes and should not be cut off as a result of Israel's war with Hamas, according to an official statement.
The statement, published by the Palestinian news agency VAFA and reported by Reuters, further quoted Abbas as saying that Palestinians must not be displaced from Gaza or the occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority has limited power after a 2007 split with Hamas.
Abbas further called for "the convening of an international peace conference to end Israel's occupation of the land of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, thereby achieving peace and security for all," according to VAFA.
(Radio Free Europe)
Security camera footage taken outside a house in the West Bank city of Tulkarm shows Israeli security forces vehicles repeatedly running over the body of a Palestinian who was shot during a raid by Israeli forces, reports Reuters.
The Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Hamas announced today that 23.357 people have died in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the Israeli attack.
According to the previous balance, published yesterday, Tuesday, the number of those killed was 23.210.
Since October 7, 59.410 people have been wounded.
As stated by the Ministry, the majority of those killed were women, adolescents and children.
Israeli politician Nissim Vaturi repeated today his call to burn Gaza, saying "there are no innocents there".
Vaturi, the deputy speaker of Israel's parliament (Knesset), said in November that Israel must do "nothing less than burn Gaza" and "burn it down," saying that "Gaza is Hamas."
He told Hakol Baramah radio today that he does not regret his words and that he stands by them, adding that "it is better to burn buildings than to injure soldiers."
Alluding to the Palestinians who remained in the north of Gaza after the repeated orders of the Israeli army to leave there to the south, Vaturi said that there are hundreds of them and that he has no mercy for them.
"We need to eliminate them," said an Israeli politician, a day before a hearing at the International Court of Justice, in which South Africa accused Israel of genocide.
(BETA)
Conflict between Israel and Hamas - 95th day.
The Israeli army announced this morning that it had found more than 15 entrances to underground tunnels in Magazi in central Gaza and that it had killed several terrorists with airstrikes.
Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers killed dozens of "terrorist operatives" in fighting over the past day in the Khan Younis area.
In a statement published on the Telegram channel, it is written that during the operation in Khan Younis, the soldiers identified a terrorist who planted an explosive device near the route along which the army moves.
It added that IDF soldiers hit a total of 150 terrorist targets in the past day.
Those claims could not be independently confirmed, the agencies report.
(BETA)
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