Hamas responded to a U.S.-backed proposal for a Gaza cease-fire and hostage release, with some “remarks” on the deal, Qatari and Egyptian mediators said Tuesday. The United States was “evaluating” the response, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
Here’s the latest:
Quick Read
- Hamas Response: Hamas responded to the U.S.-backed Gaza cease-fire and hostage release proposal with some “remarks” on the deal, as stated by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
- US Evaluation: The U.S. is currently evaluating Hamas’ response, according to White House national security spokesman John Kirby.
- Hamas and Islamic Jihad: Both groups expressed readiness to “deal positively to arrive at an agreement” and emphasized the need for a “complete stop” to the war.
- Mediators’ Role: Qatar and Egypt are examining Hamas’ response and will continue mediation efforts along with the U.S. until an agreement is reached.
- UN Involvement: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken highlighted the UN Security Council’s vote in favor of the cease-fire plan and called on Hamas to accept it.
- Human Rights Concerns: The UN human rights office cited possible war crimes by both Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups related to the deadly raid that freed four hostages and killed 274 Palestinians.
- Casualties: The war in Gaza has resulted in over 37,100 deaths according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which includes both combatants and civilians.
- Humanitarian Crisis: Palestinians face severe hunger and lack of essential supplies due to the ongoing conflict, with over 1 million at risk of extreme starvation by mid-July.
Additional Developments:
- UN Security Review: The UN is reviewing whether Israeli military used a U.S.-built pier for aid shipments during the raid, which could affect future humanitarian engagement.
- West Bank Violence: Israeli forces killed six Palestinians in a raid near Jenin, as violence continues to escalate in the region.
- Aid Conference: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and other leaders called for increased humanitarian aid to Gaza during a conference in Jordan.
- US Humanitarian Aid: Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced over $400 million in new aid for Palestinians.
- US-Israel Meeting: Senior US and Israeli officials to discuss the threat from Iran amid growing tensions in the Middle East.
- Lebanon Casualty: An Israeli drone strike killed a public utility worker in southern Lebanon, amid ongoing clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah.
The Associated Press has the story:
Hamas responds to Gaza cease-fire plan, with ‘remarks,’ US is evaluating
Hamas responded to a U.S.-backed proposal for a Gaza cease-fire and hostage release, with some “remarks” on the deal, Qatari and Egyptian mediators said Tuesday. The United States was “evaluating” the response, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group said they were ready to “deal positively to arrive at an agreement” and that their priority is to bring a “complete stop” to the war. A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, told Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen television that the group had “submitted some remarks on the proposal to the mediators.” He did not give any details.
The foreign ministries of Qatar and Egypt said in joint statement that they were examining the response and that they would continue their mediation efforts along with the U.S. “until an agreement is reached.”
Earlier Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.N. Security Council’s vote in favor of the Gaza cease-fire plan made it “as clear as it possibly could be” that the world supports the proposal, and called on Hamas to accept it.
Also Tuesday, the U.N. human rights office said both Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups may have committed war crimes in connection with a deadly raid by Israeli forces that freed four hostages and killed at least 274 Palestinians over the weekend.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 37,100 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. Palestinians are facing widespread hunger because the war has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and other supplies. U.N. agencies say over 1 million in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by mid-July.
Israel launched the war after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.
Hamas says it gave mediators its response to Gaza cease-fire plan with some ‘remarks’
BEIRUT — Hamas says it has given Qatari and Egyptian mediators its reply to the U.S.-backed proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza, with some “remarks” on the deal.
Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group said they were ready to “deal positively to arrive at an agreement” and that their priority is to bring a “complete stop” to the war.
A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, told Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen television that the group had “submitted some remarks on the proposal to the mediators.” He did not give any details.
The foreign ministries of Qatar and Egypt said in joint statement that they were examining the response and that they would continue their mediation efforts along with the United States “until an agreement is reached.”
White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters, “We’re in receipt of this reply that Hamas delivered to Qatar and to Egypt, and we are evaluating it right now.”
Earlier Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Hamas to accept the proposal, saying that the U.N. Security Council’s vote in favor of the proposal made it “as clear as it possibly could be” that the world supports the plan.
UN could reconsider role in US-built aid pier if Israel used it for deadly raid, humanitarian chief says
DEAD SEA, Jordan — Allegations on social media that the Israeli military may have used the U.S.-built pier for aid shipments in Gaza in a weekend raid that killed nearly 300 Palestinians would jeopardize future humanitarian engagement in the U.S. aid project if they turn out to be true, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said Tuesday. The U.S. and Israel have repeatedly denied those allegations.
Griffiths, speaking at a conference on Gaza at the Dead Sea in Jordan, said an ongoing U.N. security review was examining whether any aspect of the month-old U.S. pier project in Gaza was used in Saturday’s Israeli military operation.
The air and ground assault by the Israeli military killed 274 Palestinians, according to local health officials. It freed four Israeli hostages who had been held by Hamas since the group’s Oct. 7 attack in Israel.
The U.N. World Food Program, which oversees distribution of aid brought in via the pier, announced after the raid it was suspending aid work at the pier while it reassesses the safety of aid workers.
If the allegations are “true they are very concerning, because they would put at risk any future humanitarian engagement in that operation,” Griffiths said, referring to the U.S. pier project.
Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder says an area south of the pier was used in returning the rescued hostages to Israel. Ryder has repeatedly denied the pier, its equipment or any of its other assets were used in the deadly raid.
Griffiths was responding to a question Tuesday about whether the Israeli military operation Saturday, and the perception among Palestinians that the aid was aligned with the military, would affect the U.N.’s willingness to keep working with the U.S. sea route for aid.
While he had no proof either way, Griffiths said, the U.N. would be concerned if it found either the beach or the roads leading from the pier were used in staging Saturday’s military operation.
U.N. leadership was conducting the security assessment and would “see if it is becoming, to see if it is safe and proper and right and principled, for us to re-engage in that maritime operation.”
“You can be damn sure we are going to be very careful about what we assess and what we conclude,” he said.
Israeli forces kill 6 Palestinians in northern West Bank near Jenin
JERUSALEM — Israeli forces killed six Palestinians on Tuesday in the northern West Bank village of Kafr Dan, near the city of Jenin, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, as violence flares across the occupied territory.
The Israeli army said it killed four militants in a gunbattle and wounded other fighters in the village, and a helicopter struck the area near a structure the militants were using. The army statement said four guns were also found during the raid.
Over the past few years, Jenin and the surrounding areas have become a major flash point in the decadeslong conflict.
Since the war in Gaza began, Israeli fire has killed more than 530 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry — some in gunbattles with Israeli forces, and others shot dead for posing no apparent threat. Palestinian attacks against Israelis have also been on the rise.
The Palestinian Authority, which administers semi-autonomous parts of the West Bank, has limited influence in the northern areas, where other armed factions have grown in power.
The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule. The more than 500,000 Jewish settlers in the territory have Israeli citizenship.
UN chief calls for more aid to Gaza at conference co-hosted by Jordan and Egypt
DEAD SEA, Jordan — The United Nations chief says the flow of critical humanitarian aid to Palestinians throughout Gaza, “which was already woefully inadequate,” has plummeted by two-thirds since Israel’s operation at the border crossing in southern Rafah a month ago.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told an international “Call for Action” conference on Gaza’s desperate humanitarian crisis that “the speed and scale of the carnage and killing in Gaza” is beyond anything he has since he took the helm of the United Nations in 2017.
“At least 1.7 million people — 75% of Gaza’s population — have been displaced, many times over by Israel military attacks,” Guterres said. Over one million people face desperate hunger and don’t have enough clean drinking water, he said, and more than 50,000 children require treatment for acute malnutrition.
Guterres also said around 60% of all residential buildings in Gaza and at least 80% of commercial facilities have been damaged by Israeli bombardments, with health and educational facilities “in rubble.”
“And despite the ocean of needs, at least half of all humanitarian aid missions are denied access, impeded, or cancelled due to operational or security reasons,” Guterres said, without naming Israel as responsible for these obstacles.
Guterres co-hosted the meeting in Jordan’s Dead Sea with the country’s monarch, King Abdullah II, and Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, and urged support for their humanitarian efforts.
U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths called what the world has witnessed in Gaza since Hamas’ Oct. 7 surprise attack in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and saw about 250 taken hostage “a stain on our humanity.”
According to the U.N. and its humanitarian partners, he said, $2.5 billion are estimated to be needed for aid to Palestinians in Gaza from the past April until December. “This roughly provides for $930 million for food and nutrition, $400 million for health and medicine, $700 million for shelter and sanitation,” he said.
Griffiths noted that both Jordan and Egypt called for $300 million per month for commodities for Gaza, and an additional $500 million “for an optimal capacity for the flow of aid” for the people of Gaza.
The secretary-general and the humanitarian chief called for all Gaza’s border crossings to be opened, security for aid convoys and workers, and the free flow of assistance into Gaza. The U.N. chief welcomed U.S. President Joe Biden’s cease-fire initiative and urged Israel and Hamas to agree to implement it, but he stressed the only path to peace must be political and lead to a two-state solution.
Israel says it will improve facilities at a prison where thousands of Palestinians have been detained during Gaza war
JERUSALEM — Israel says it will improve facilities at the Sde Teiman military prison for Palestinians taken from Gaza and will transfer the bulk of the detainees to other lockups, state attorneys said in a court filing Tuesday, as rights groups petition to close the prison entirely after whistleblowers described serious human rights violations there.
The desert military prison is the main place where Israel has held thousands of Palestinians pre-trial and incommunicado for weeks at a time since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, after they were captured during large-scale raids in the Gaza Strip.
In Tuesday’s court filing, state attorneys admitted that the military had been holding detainees at Sde Teiman for longer than was originally intended. They said Israel will begin using the prison as a short-term holding facility for Palestinians, a place to screen them for potential militant affiliations before either releasing them back to Gaza or transferring them to the prison system.
In response, the lead rights group challenging the facility told The Associated Press that the conditions at Sde Teiman were “inhumane” and detention there “even if for short periods, for screening purposes” could be considered a war crime. The group, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, again called for the facility to be closed.
Photos that have emerged of the facility have shown detainees kept blindfolded and handcuffed in large warehouse-like spaces under harsh floodlights. Whistleblowers who spoke to the AP said that detainees are made to sit for most of the day and only wounded people have beds — thin mattresses — to sleep on.
Doctors working in the medical facility said that the facility raises serious ethical concerns by keeping detainees, many of whom are elderly, shackled and blindfolded while they receive treatment and using inadequate anesthesia while performing surgeries.
The state said Tuesday that about 250 of the 700 Palestinians at Sde Teiman have already been transferred to a new military facility at Ofer Prison in the West Bank, and 250 more will be transferred by June 19. It said that the military was working on building showers and bathrooms at Sde Teiman, adding yards for detainees to go outdoors and constructing spaces with beds and tables affixed to the ground. It will also upgrade an existing military hospital at the facility with a more spacious operating room, a recovery area, and air conditioning.
US and Israeli officials will meet to discuss threat from Iran, White House official says
WASHINGTON — White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that senior U.S. and Israeli defense and intelligence officials will hold talks next week to discuss what he described as the ongoing destabilizing threat of Iran to the Middle East amid growing worries about tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border.
Sullivan said the U.S. and Israeli teams known as the Strategic Consultative Group in the talks would discuss the “common picture of the threat posed by Iran and how we respond to it in a joint way.” Iran backs both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.
“We recognize at the end of the day that groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are direct, present threats to Israel,” Sullivan said at event Washington hosted by the American Jewish Committee. “But standing behind them is an even larger strategic threat. And we need to be working closely with Israel to contend with that.”
The Biden administration throughout the eight-month Israel-Hamas war has sought to prevent the conflict from spiraling into a wider regional war that either opens up new fronts of Israeli fighting or draws the U.S. in directly.
But tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have been escalating, with two sides exchanging fire daily since a day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, which set off the war in Gaza
The Lebanese militant group has stepped up its attacks on Israel in recent weeks, particularly since the Israel last month began its incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah. It has struck deeper inside Israel and introduced new and more advanced weaponry.
The deadly fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.
Blinken announces more than $400 million in assistance for Palestinians
DEAD SEA, Jordan — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday announced more than $400 million in new American humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank and neighboring countries.
Blinken spoke at an emergency international conference on boosting aid to Gaza as the Israel-Hamas war rages into its ninth month.
Blinken says the Biden administration will contribute an additional $404 million to support vulnerable and displaced Palestinians with food, drinking water, health care, education, shelter, and psychosocial support. The aid brings the total amount of U.S. assistance to the Palestinians since the war erupted in October to more than $674 million.
“As the largest single country humanitarian donor to the Palestinian people, we recognize the urgent need for more assistance to reach civilians given the dire humanitarian conditions and call on all donors to support life-saving operations for Palestinians in Gaza and the region,” Blinken said.
Blinken was in Jordan for the aid conference after visiting Israel and Egypt where he held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi on pushing a proposed Gaze cease-fire deal.
The aid conference was hosted by Jordan’s King Abdullah II and attended by el-Sissi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, among others. The three Arab leaders have repeatedly called for a cease-fire in Gaza.
An Israeli drone strike killed a public utility worker in southern Lebanon, state news agency says
BEIRUT — An Israeli drone strike on Tuesday killed a public utility worker in southern Lebanon.
The state-run National News Agency said the drone strike hit a worker for the South Lebanon Water Establishment while he was driving his motorcycle in the coastal border town of Naqoura.
The utility identified him as Saleh Ahmad Mehdi and said he was helping to supply water to Naqoura when he was killed. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
More than 400 people have been killed in Lebanon in clashes between the Israeli military and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza on Oct. 7.
Hezbollah is a close ally of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose attack ignited the war, and says it will continue striking Israel until the fighting in Gaza stops. Most of the casualties were combatants but they also included more than 70 Lebanese civilians. In Israel, 15 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed.
Currently:
— Blinken welcomes UN vote in favor of Gaza cease-fire plan and again calls on Hamas to accept it
— UN says Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups may have committed war crimes in a deadly raid
— How an Israeli raid freed 4 hostages and killed at least 274 Palestinians in Gaza
— What does Israel’s rescue of 4 captives, and the killing of 274 Palestinians, mean for truce talks?
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
