Hamas says it rejects any military presence on Palestinian land
Hamas issued a statement on Friday saying the US-built pier off the Gaza Strip is no alternative to opening all land crossings under Palestinian supervision, adding that they reject any military presence on Palestinian land.
Trucks carrying badly needed aid for the Gaza Strip started rolling across a newly built US pier and into Gaza for the first time.
Friday’s shipment is the first in an operation that US military officials anticipate could scale up to 150 truckloads a day, reports the Associated Press (AP).
It comes as Israeli restrictions on border crossings and heavy fighting hindered the delivery of food and other supplies seven months into the Israel-Hamas war.
But the US and aid groups warn that the floating pier project is not a substitute for land deliveries that could bring in all the food, water and fuel needed in Gaza.
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Palestinian sources in Rafah told AFP that Israeli forces were operating in the city’s al-Salam and Jenina neighbourhood as well as on the Philadelphi route along the Egyptian border.
“Troops are advancing and retreating around these areas,” a security source said.
Cairo, which has been involved in mediation efforts during the war, says a potential Israeli takeover of Philadelphi could violate its landmark 1979 peace deal with Egypt, writes AFP.
In northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia, witnesses reported airstrikes near Kamal Adwan hospital on Saturday, according to the news agency.
The hospital’s director Hussam Abu Safiya told AFP on Friday that the facility, which has received “large numbers of injured and killed” from fighting in nearby Jabalia, was running low on medical supplies and fuel to power generators.
The fuel aid that had reached the hospital was “barely enough for a few days”, Abu Safiya said.
The World Health Organization has received no medical supplies in Gaza since the Rafah operation began on 6 May, spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said on Friday.
Israel said it killed two senior Islamic Jihad militants in separate airstrikes in the northern West Bank and in Rafah.
The armed wing of Islamic Jihad confirmed that a local commander was killed in an overnight strike on the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp (see 14.36 BST).
However there was no immediate comment from the group, which has fought alongside Hamas, on the army’s announcement that a “significant” operative was killed in Rafah.
According to AFP, a military statement did not name the slain militant and said he had been involved in “preparing … for operations against IDF [army] ground troops in the area”.
With key land crossings closed or operating at limited capacity due to fighting, some relief supplies have begun to flow into Gaza via a temporary, floating pier constructed by the US, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The Israeli army said 310 pallets began moving ashore in “the first entry of humanitarian aid through the floating pier”.
In the coming days, about 500 tonnes of aid are expected to be delivered to Gaza through the pier, according to US Central Command (Centcom).
![The US reported that aid trucks hadstarted leaving the temporary port in Gaza on Friday.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ccd1709871ccf56c1d084e9b707f8f60e9304f52/0_0_1024_673/master/1024.jpg?width=465&dpr=1&s=none)
But UN agencies and humanitarian aid groups have warned sea or air deliveries cannot replace far more efficient truck convoys into Gaza, where the UN has repeatedly warned of looming famine.
According to AFP, the EU welcomed the first shipment from Cyprus to the Gaza pier, but called on Israel to “expand deliveries by land and to immediately open additional crossings”.
The Rafah crossing, a vital conduit for humanitarian assistance, has been closed since the Israeli Rafah operation began early last week.
Israeli military said its air forces “struck over 70 targets” across the Gaza Strip over the past 24 hours while ground troops “continue precise operations” in eastern Rafah, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
More than 10 days into what the Israeli military called a “limited” operation in Rafah that triggered an exodus of Palestinians sheltering there, fighting between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants has also flared again in Gaza’s north, according to the news agency.
The Kuwaiti hospital said an overnight Israeli strike killed two people in a displacement camp in Rafah, with witnesses reporting heavy gunfire and shelling in the city’s southeast and jets bombarding its eastern areas.
The army said its forces “conducted targeted raids” in Rafah and found weapons and explosives, report AFP.
AFP correspondents, witnesses and medics said there were intense battles overnight in the northern Jabalia refugee camp, after the Israeli army reported on Friday “perhaps the fiercest” violence in the town in more than seven months of war.
Israeli forces “eliminated terrorists in a number of battles” in the Jabalia area and parts of central Gaza, the army said.
According to AFP’s report, Israel in early January said it had dismantled Hamas’s command structure in northern Gaza, but the army said the Palestinian group “was in complete control here in Jabalia until we arrived a few days ago”.
Lorenzo Tondo
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say they killed a senior Palestinian militant during an airstrike on an “operations centre” in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.
“A number of significant terrorists were inside the compound,” the IDF said in a statement posted to Telegram.
The strike, carried out on Friday night by a fighter jet and a helicopter, killed Islam Khamayseh, a “senior terrorist operative in the Jenin camp” who was responsible for a series of attacks in the area, the IDF said.
Al-Quds Brigade, the armed wing of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, confirmed in a statement that one of their members was killed and several others wounded during the Israeli raid.
Al-Quds Brigade said Khamayseh was a leader of the Jenin battalion, which is affiliated with Islamic Jihad.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said one person was killed while eight were wounded and receiving hospital treatment as a result of the strike.
With thousands now held without charge, lawyers say Israel is
signalling that no detainee is safe, write Ruth Michaelson, Sufian Taha and Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem and Ramallah:
Marwan Barghouti spends his days huddled in a cramped, dark, solitary cell, with no way to tend to his wounds, and a shoulder injury from being dragged with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Barghouti holds almost mythic status within Palestinian politics, seen as a figure whose potential to unify different factions has only grown during his 24 years in prison.
“Mentally he’s a very strong person, but physically his condition is deteriorating, you can see it. He’s struggling to see out of his right eye, as a result of one of the assaults,” said his lawyer Igal Dotan, who visited Barghouti in Israel’s Megiddo prison two months ago. “He has lost weight – he doesn’t look good. You wouldn’t recognise him if you compare his current appearance with the famous photos of him,” he said.
Israel jailed Barghouti on five counts of murder while accusing him of directing attacks against civilians, which he denies. His lawyers and supporters fear that as one of the highest profile Palestinian detainees, he was abused to send a message to others that no one is safe.
He has been moved to three different detention facilities since October, each time held in solitary confinement. Last December in Ayalon prison, “he was beaten on several occasions,” said Dotan, including an incident where guards swore at him while Barghouti was “dragged on the floor naked in front of other prisoners”.
“What Barghouti has endured amounts to torture, but that has become standard across all detention facilities since 7 October,” said Tal Steiner, of the rights group the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel. The Israeli prison service did not respond when contacted for comment. Both PCATI and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been denied formerly routine visits to Israeli prisons since last October.
You can read the full version of this story here:
German-Israeli Shani Louk’s father says that finally laying his daughter to rest will be a gift after her body was recovered from Gaza, months after she was killed in Hamas’s 7 October attack on southern Israel, reports Reuters.
Louk, a 23-year-old tattoo artist, was celebrating with friends at the Nova music festival just inside Israel before it was attacked by gunmen from the Palestinian militant group. Her body was soon seen in a video, slung across the back of a pickup truck, surrounded by gunmen and paraded through Gaza.
On Friday, the Israeli military informed her parents, Nissim and Ricarda Louk, that their daughter’s body had been found by Israeli commandos in Gaza. Nissim Louk said that to be sure, he had viewed photos.
“We also saw the tattoos on her hands,” he said on Saturday. “Now she will have her own place next to us and we can go there whenever we want. And she can rest.”
According to Reuters, he said the funeral will be held on Sunday, which is Ricarda Louk’s birthday.
Having Shani’s grave nearby would be a comfort, said Ricarda Louk.
“Maybe we’ll find more peace,” she said.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports that new divisions have emerged among Israel’s leaders over postwar Gaza’s governance, with an unexpected Hamas fightback in parts of the Palestinian territory piling pressure on prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu came under personal attack from Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant for failing to rule out an Israeli government in Gaza after the war.
According to AFP, the Israeli premier’s outright rejection of postwar Palestinian leadership in Gaza has broken a rift among top politicians wide open and frustrated relations with top ally the US.
AFP spoke to experts who said that the lack of clarity only serves to benefit Hamas, whose leader has insisted no new authority can be established in the territory without its involvement.
![Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war planning has come under recent attack from officials, according to Israeli media reports.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/bc56afecbad2b0988059ac796c48c0034f424bbd/0_0_3604_2403/master/3604.jpg?width=465&dpr=1&s=none)
“Without an alternative to fill the vacuum, Hamas will continue to grow,” International Crisis Group analyst Mairav Zonszein told AFP.
Emmanuel Navon, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University, echoed this sentiment. Navon told AFP: “If only Hamas is left in Gaza, of course they are going to appear here and there and the Israeli army will be forced to chase them around. Either you establish an Israeli military government or an Arab-led government.”
Gallant said in a televised address on Wednesday: “I call on prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a decision and declare that Israel will not establish civilian control over the Gaza Strip.”
Netanyahu’s war planning also came under recent attack by army chief Herzi Halevi as well as top Shin Bet security agency officials, according to Israeli media reports.
Washington has previously called for a “revitalised” form of the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza after the war, but Netanyahu has rejected any role for the Palestinian Authority in postwar Gaza. Speaking on Thursday, Netanyahu said that it “supports terror, educates terror, finances terror”.