Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned a statement by the president of Brazil who compared the war against Hamas to the Holocaust and said that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva "crossed a red line".
Israel's prime minister responded angrily to Lula's comments, calling them "shameful" and saying a note of protest would be handed to Brazil's ambassador to the country.
"The words of the president of Brazil are shameful and alarming. This is a trivialization of the Holocaust and an attempt to harm the Jewish people and Israel's right to defend itself," Netanyahu said in a statement, reports the Times of Israel.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz called these comments "shameful and difficult".
"No one will harm Israel's right to defend itself," he said.
(BETA)
Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva has accused Israel of genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, drawing parallels with the extermination of Jews by Adolf Hitler's regime.
"What is happening in the Gaza Strip is not war, it is genocide," Lula told reporters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he is attending an African Union summit.
The Brazilian leader, a veteran of the left, pointed out that it is not a war between two armies, but a war of highly prepared soldiers against women and children.
"What is happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people has never happened in history. In fact, it happened before, when Hitler decided to kill the Jews," said the president of Brazil.
That statement is one of the harshest that the president of Brazil, whose country currently chairs the G20 group, has made regarding the war in the Gaza Strip.
He also initially condemned the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, calling them a "terrorist act", but has since been highly critical of Israel's military campaign of revenge.
More than 7 people, mostly Israeli civilians, were killed in Hamas attacks on southern Israel on October 1.160, according to France Press.
Around 250 hostages were then taken to Gaza, of which 130 are still being held.
In the Israeli offensive that followed, at least 28.985 Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed, according to the Hamas-controlled ministry there.
(BETA)
Israeli attacks across Gaza killed at least 18 people overnight and Sunday, according to doctors and witnesses, AP writes, while the United States of America (US) said it would veto another draft United Nations (UN) resolution on a ceasefire.
The US, Israel's main ally, is instead hoping to broker a ceasefire and hostage-release deal between Israel and Hamas, and envisions a broader solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed down, calling Hamas's demands "delusional" and rejecting US and international calls for a path to Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu vowed to continue the offensive until "total victory" over Hamas and expand it to Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half of the enclave's population of 2,3 million Palestinians have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.
An airstrike in Rafah overnight killed six people, including a woman and three children, and another attack killed five men in the southern city of Khan Younis, the main target of the offensive in the past two months. Associated Press reporters saw the bodies arrive at a hospital in Rafah.
In Gaza City, which was isolated, largely evacuated and suffered widespread destruction in the first weeks of the war, an airstrike demolished a family home, killing seven people, including three women, according to Sayed al-Afifi, a relative of the deceased.
The Israeli military rarely comments on individual attacks and blames Hamas for civilian casualties as the militants operate in densely populated residential areas.
Meanwhile, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that Nasser Hospital, the main medical center serving southern Gaza, is no longer able to function after Israel raided the facility late last week.
In a post on social network X, formerly Twitter, dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO team was not allowed to enter the hospital on Friday or Saturday "to assess the condition of patients and critical medical needs, despite reaching the hospital complex to deliver fuel".
He said there are still about 200 patients in the hospital, including 20 who need immediate referral to other hospitals.
Israel says it has arrested 70 suspected militants, including 20 it says were involved in the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, without providing evidence. The military says it is looking for the hostages' remains inside the facility and is not targeting doctors or patients.
The war broke out after Hamas broke through Israel's defenses on October 7 and attacked communities across southern Israel, killing about 1.200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages. The militants are still holding around 130 hostages, a quarter of whom are believed to be dead, after most others were released during a week-long ceasefire in November.
At least 28.858 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its records. About 80 percent of Gaza's population has been driven from their homes, and a quarter are facing starvation.
(Radio Free Europe)
The Health Ministry of Hamas announced today a new balance of casualties, that 28.985 Palestinians have been killed and 68.883 wounded in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist organization.
In the past 24 hours, at least 127 people were killed and 205 wounded, the ministry added. Most of the victims are women and children, and thousands of bodies lie under the rubble across Gaza.
(Beta)
Prospects for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war were weakened today as the United States announced it would veto the latest United Nations Security Council resolution and mediator Qatar said truce talks in Cairo were not promising.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed last night to reject appeals to spare the southernmost town in the Gaza Strip, Rafah, where some 1,5 million people have fled the conflict.
The Israeli offensive, which aims to defeat every battalion of Hamas, is closing in on the city.
At least ten Palestinians were killed there and in the central part of the territory in Deir al-Balah last night, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa (WAFA) reported.
Meanwhile, concerns are growing in neighboring Egypt that an Israeli invasion of Rafah could force Palestinians to cross the border.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Saturday reiterated his country's opposition to any forced displacement in the Sinai desert.
In a telephone conversation, French President Emmanuel Macron and El-Sisi agreed that "quick progress on the ceasefire" is necessary.
However, even if a cease-fire agreement were reached at the talks in Cairo, Netanyahu said that Israeli ground forces would invade Rafah.
"Even if we achieve that, we will enter Rafah," he said at a press conference, assessing that the countries that appeal to Israel and are against it are basically telling Israel to "lose the war."
As Netanyahu spoke, thousands protested in Tel Aviv calling for snap elections and accusing the government of abandoning hostages.
"This is the moment of truth, there won't be many more if the initiative in Cairo fails," said Nisan Calderon, brother of hostage Ofer Calderon.
US President Joseph Biden has spoken several times with Netanyahu and the Egyptian and Qatari leaders to influence an agreement to be reached. The US supports a hostage truce that would see a six-week pause in the war, and a draft resolution proposed by Algeria calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Qatari Prime Minister Muhammad bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that these talks do not hold much promise.
He also said that these efforts were complicated by the insistence of many countries that any new truce should include the further release of hostages.
Meanwhile, Hamas has threatened to suspend participation in those talks if aid does not reach the famine-stricken north of the Gaza Strip, as humanitarian agencies have warned.
A little earlier, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who lives in exile in Qatar, repeated the Islamist organization's demands, which Netanyahu called "ridiculous," and which include a pause in the fighting for the release of "Hamasists" from prison, and the withdrawal of the Israeli army from Gaza.
Netanyahu also rejected pressure from some Western governments for unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, saying "there is no greater reward for terrorism."
(Beta)
The second largest hospital in the Gaza Strip "is completely out of order", said the spokesperson of the Gaza Ministry of Health today, reports Reuters.
"There are only four medical staff currently taking care of patients" at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis, Ashraf al-Kidra told Reuters.
"The Nasser Medical Complex is the backbone of health care in the southern Gaza Strip. Stopping it is a death sentence for hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian people in Khan Younis and Rafah," he said.
Kidra said the lack of fuel and fighting over the facility put them out of business.
Nasser was the largest functioning hospital in Gaza until Sunday and has been under siege this week in Israel's war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Israeli forces raided the hospital on Thursday.
The United States of America has announced that it will veto the Security Council's draft resolution on an emergency cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, proposed by Algeria.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that the proposed resolution, which is likely to be voted on on Tuesday, contradicts the White House's policy for the release of hostages, Israeli media reported today.
The draft resolution was proposed more than two weeks ago, and she said it could jeopardize "sensitive negotiations" aimed at brokering a pause in the war.
The resolution would be adopted if it received at least nine votes and if the US, Great Britain, France, China or Russia did not exercise their veto power.
Thomas-Greenfield announced that the resolution would not be adopted if voted as proposed.
The vote will come as Israel plans to launch an offensive in the Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where more than a million Palestinians have fled conflict in other areas.
This has caused international concern as it is believed that such a move could sharply worsen the humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.
"The situation in Gaza is a terrible indictment of the impasse in global relations," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.
UN spokesman Stefan Dižarik said that Guterres is "pointing the finger" at the lack of unity in the Security Council and at "holding back our ability to fix the situation around the world".
Washington has twice vetoed the resolution against Israel since the war began on October 7, when attacks by Palestinian extremists led by Hamas killed around 1.200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 250 hostages in Gaza.
More than 28.800 Palestinians, mostly women and children, were killed in retaliatory Israeli attacks.
The US twice abstained and allowed the Council to adopt resolutions to increase humanitarian aid in Gaza and call for an extension of the humanitarian pause in the fighting.
Negotiations are underway between the US, Egypt, Israel and Qatar on the establishment of a pause in the war and the release of hostages held in Gaza, according to Israeli media.
The American ambassador believes that the negotiations should be given a chance to bear fruit, instead of jeopardizing each other.
(BETA)
The war between Israel and Hamas has entered its 134th day.
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