A member of the Israeli War Cabinet, Beni Gantz, said this evening that new attempts are underway to reach an agreement on a cease-fire in the war in Gaza.
Gantz, a former defense minister and chief of staff, however said Israel was ready for an offensive on the southern Gaza city of Rafah during the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan, despite widespread international opposition to the move.
Israel is demanding the release of more than 100 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza since October 7.
Hamas in turn demands an end to the war, the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers and the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.
So far, weeks of efforts by the US, Egypt and Qatar to reach an agreement on a truce have not borne fruit.
Ganz now assessed that there are "initial signs" that "hint at the possibility" of moving towards that goal.
"We will not stop looking for a way and we will not miss the opportunity to bring our girls and boys home," Gantz said.
He repeated the announcement of the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of civilians from the city of Rafah before the offensive that will take place during Ramadan starting around March 10, if the hostages are not released.
"I repeat that if there is no indication for the release (of the hostages), we will act during Ramadan," announced Ganz.
The US, along with other countries, appealed to Israel not to attack Rafah if there is no plan to protect civilians.
The Association of Crisis Centers for Victims of Sexual Violence in Israel said today that it found evidence of "systematic and deliberate" rape during the October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israeli territory that sparked the war in the Gaza Strip.
The report said that in some cases the victims were raped in front of family and friends to cause more pain and humiliation.
Orit Suliceanu, executive director of the Association, said that in many cases, the bodies of the victims - both men and women, were severely mutilated, including the genitals.
The report published today does not specify the number of documented victims, nor their identity.
Suliceanu said that would be difficult because many of the victims were killed after being attacked, and emergency services were so preoccupied with the number of dead and the extent of the destruction that they did not document signs of sexual violence.
The report's authors said they based their research on confidential and public interviews with officials, emergency workers and media reports.
An Associated Press investigation also found that sexual violence was part of a rampage by "Hamas" and other extremists who killed about 7 people, most of them civilians, in southern Israel on October 1.200, and kidnapped more than 250 and took them hostage to Gaza.
The Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas has rejected accusations that its fighters have committed sexual violence.
According to the Israeli report, submitted to the UN, whose investigators are conducting a similar investigation, sexual and gender-based violence occurred in four main places: at the Nova music festival, in settlements near the Gaza border, in Israeli military bases and in places in the Palestinian territory where hostages were held.
Suliceanu said the purpose of the report was to document that the sexual violence was similar in many places, suggesting that it was organized by Hamas.
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The Gaza Strip has become a killing zone, and a large part of the Palestinian enclave has been destroyed, said the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
As Anatolia reports, he said at the regular weekly press conference that WHO and partners have carried out emergency operations for the Nasser Hospital in the south of the Gaza Strip in the last three days.
Gebrejezus pointed out that the health and humanitarian situation in Gaza continues to deteriorate.
Stating that there are still about 130 patients and at least 15 doctors and nurses in that hospital under the Israeli blockade and attacks, Gebrejezus said that the hospital's intensive care unit is no longer working.
WHO, he added, helps transfer patients to other health facilities.
"Gaza has become a killing zone. A large part of the territory has been destroyed. More than 29 thousand people have been killed and many more injured. Severe malnutrition has increased rapidly since the beginning of the war," Gebrejezus pointed out.
He emphasized the urgent need for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and pointed to the importance of providing unlimited humanitarian aid in that region.
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Israeli lawmakers voted today to back Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rejection of any "unilateral" recognition of a Palestinian state, as international calls for reviving Palestinian statehood talks grew, Reuters reports.
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Issued amid the Gaza war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, the symbolic declaration also received support from members of the opposition, with 99 of 120 lawmakers voting in favor, a spokesman for the Knesset (Israel's parliament) said.
The Israeli position says that any lasting agreement with the Palestinians must be reached through direct negotiations between the parties, not international dictates.
"The Knesset gathered with an overwhelming majority against the attempt to impose on us the establishment of a Palestinian state, which would not only not bring peace but would threaten the state of Israel," Netanyahu said.
The vote drew condemnation from the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, which accused Israel of holding the rights of the Palestinian people hostage by forcibly occupying territories where Palestinians want to establish a state.
"The ministry reaffirms that full membership of the State of Palestine in the United Nations and its recognition by other nations do not require Netanyahu's permission," the statement said.
Since the signing of the interim Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, little progress has been made towards achieving a two-state solution – a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza alongside Israel.
Among the obstacles impeding Palestinian statehood are the expansion of Israeli settlements in territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
Most countries consider the settlements, which in many areas separate Palestinian communities from each other, as a violation of international law.
The two-state solution has long been a key Western policy in the region.
Since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October, the United States has been trying to promote steps toward the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a broader Middle East deal that would include Saudi Arabia and other Arab states officially normalizing relations with Israel.
The United States of America (USA) announced today that the highest court of the United Nations should not give an advisory opinion on the "immediate and unconditional withdrawal" of Israel from the territories where the Palestinians want to establish their state.
Acting State Department Legal Adviser Richard Visek said the 15-judge panel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) should not seek to resolve the decade-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict by issuing an advisory opinion on the actions of just one side.
Visek was speaking at the ICJ hearing, which began on Monday, at the UN General Assembly's request for a non-binding advisory opinion on the legality of Israel's policy in the occupied territories.
He assessed that the court's opinion will have consequences for the parties to the conflict and the efforts of all those working to achieve sustainable peace.
On the first day of the hearing, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki called on the court to uphold the Palestinians' right to self-determination and declare that Israel's occupation is illegal and must immediately end completely and unconditionally.
The Acting Legal Adviser of the State Department reminded today that there is an established framework based on the principle of a country for peace and established principles of the occupation law.
The idea of a land for peace has been the cornerstone of US diplomacy for decades and the basis of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, concluded in 1979, on the basis of which Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace and recognition.
The same principle has been applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the peace process has repeatedly stalled due to Palestinian attacks, the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territory and the inability of the two sides to agree on explosive issues such as the final borders, the status of Jerusalem and the fate of the Palestinians. a refugee.
The US arguments at the world court came a day after Washington vetoed an Arab resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, saying it would affect negotiations on a deal to free hostages held by Palestinian extremist Hamas.
13 out of 15 members of the UN Security Council voted for the resolution, and Great Britain abstained.
This is seen as a reflection of the strong support of countries around the world for ending the war.
"Hamas attacks, hostage-taking and other atrocities and the continued hostilities and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and the violence in the West Bank reinforce the US determination to urgently achieve a final peace that includes the full realization of Palestinian self-determination," Visek said.
His speech was preceded by condemnations of Israel's policies by representatives of Colombia, Cuba and Egypt.
In addition to the Palestinians, representatives of 51 countries and three international organizations are speaking at the hearing.
Months are expected to pass until a final advisory opinion is issued.
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The United States said that the International Court of Justice in The Hague cannot order the immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied territories without taking into account Israel's security needs, reports Reuters.
"Any move toward an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza requires consideration of Israel's security needs," said Richard Visek of the US State Department, during proceedings examining the legality of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.
At least one powerful explosion rang out in Damascus, the capital of Syria, eyewitnesses and local journalists told Reuters.
The witness said that the explosion was heard several hours after Israeli missiles hit the residential area.
Local Syrian media reported that multiple explosions were heard in the capital.
At least 29.313 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks since October 7 in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
The ministry states that another 69.333 Palestinians were injured, reports Reuters
Israeli forces killed three suspected Palestinian fighters during an overnight attack in the Jenin sector, a stronghold of armed factions in the north of the occupied West Bank.
"In an anti-terrorist operation in Jenin, Israeli forces arrested 14 suspects and killed three terrorists. Soldiers also located weapons and explosives planted with the aim of carrying out an attack on Israeli soldiers," the Israeli army said in a statement.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced that one Palestinian was killed in the attack.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Israeli soldiers surrounded two buildings in the Jenin camp, which is located below the city of the same name, and that during the conflict a missile was fired at one of the buildings.
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The Palestinian presidency condemned the United States' veto in the United Nations Security Council on a draft resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
"The Presidency condemns the continued refusal of the US to stop the genocidal war that Israel is waging against the Palestinian people. The US veto defies the will of the international community and encourages Israel, the occupying power, to continue its aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, as well as to carry out its planned bloody attack at Rafah. The presidency holds the United States accountable for Israel's ongoing barbaric crimes against Palestinian civilians, including children, women and the elderly in Gaza. This unacceptable position makes the United States complicit in the war crimes committed by Israel, including crimes of genocide and of ethnic cleansing in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Jerusalem. We warn that this attitude of the USA represents a serious threat to international peace and security," states the statement delivered to the media by the Embassy of Palestine in Podgorica.
They thanked the member states of the UN Security Council who "stood by justice, peace and human ethics, supporting the resolution calling for an end to Israeli aggression."
"We also call on the international community to intensify its collective efforts and take practical measures to stop Israel's genocidal war in the occupied Palestinian territory, especially in the Gaza Strip," it concluded.
At least two people were killed today in Damascus, in an attack attributed to Israel, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) announced.
"At least two people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in the Kafr Susa neighborhood of Damascus," the non-governmental organization said.
The news about the victims in the attack was subsequently reported by state television.
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Several Israeli rockets hit the Kafr Susa neighborhood in Damascus, Syrian state media reported.
Several security agencies are located in that part of the Syrian capital, according to Reuters, adding that Iranian military experts were killed in an Israeli attack on the same area in February last year.
In the city of Borujen in the Iranian province of Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, an explosion occurred on a gas pipeline on February 14, after which a fire broke out, the Iranian authorities announced.
The war between Israel and Hamas - 138th day.
Israel continued to bombard Gaza while Washington vetoed a United Nations (UN) Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Palestinian territories.
Global powers trying to find a way out of the spiraling crisis have so far failed, and mediation efforts have failed to secure a ceasefire to end the fighting.
Adding to Gaza's woes, the UN's food agency said it had to halt desperately needed deliveries to the north of the territory after it faced "total chaos and violence" there, reports AFP.
The Hamas government's media office said they were shocked by the decision of the World Food Program to suspend the delivery of food aid to northern Gaza, which means the death penalty and the death of three quarters of a million people.
Calling on the agency to immediately reverse its disastrous decision, they added that they consider the UN to be responsible.
The UN has repeatedly warned of the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, warning that food shortages could lead to an "explosion" of preventable child deaths.
More than four months of relentless fighting have flattened much of the coastal territory, pushing 2,2 million people to the brink of starvation and displacing three-quarters of the population, according to UN estimates.
"We can't do it anymore. We have no flour, we don't even know where to go in this cold weather," said Ahmad, a resident of Gaza City, where the streets are littered with the rubble of destroyed buildings and garbage.
He said that they are asking for a ceasefire.
"We want to live," Ahmad said.
But in New York, Washington vetoed a UN Security Council resolution drafted by Algeria demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire and the "unconditional" release of all hostages kidnapped in the October 7 attacks.
Washington's ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas Greenfield, called the vote wishful thinking and irresponsible because it could "jeopardize" negotiations on the release of hostages in Gaza.
The veto drew criticism from countries including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and even close US allies France and Slovenia.
Hamas said the US veto was a "green light for the occupation to commit more massacres".
As world powers voted, Israeli strikes hit Gaza this morning as fighting continued on the ground, leaving 103 people dead, according to the territory's Hamas health ministry.
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