الكاتب: kafej

A group of 15 Palestinians, including eight children and their families, arrived in Abu Dhabi, UAE, by plane for treatment after being evacuated from Gaza through the Rafah border crossing to Egypt, according to the Reuters news agency.

A few of the seats on the plane were removed to make room for the most critically wounded children, who needed to lie on stretchers. Some children had bandaged arms and legs. Some sat quietly next to their parents or relatives, while others travelled alone.

Mohammed Abu Tabikh, 14, was one of the more seriously wounded children on the flight. He suffered injuries to his neck and spine when a car he was travelling in was hit in an attack.

“When I got injured, I felt shock. And then I stopped moving,” he said.

The patients, including some with critical injuries and a cancer patient, were the first to arrive after President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed pledged to treat 1,000 in UAE hospitals. Daily flights are expected to bring more in.

The unwavering United States support for Israel’s all-out assault on Palestinians in Gaza is shifting global perceptions.

Several analysts and Arab leaders have warned that Washington risks severe reputational damage in the region if it continues to back Israel – whose forces bomb hospitals, schools and refugee camps.

The administration of US President Joe Biden has been criticised for failing to pressure Israel to declare a ceasefire.

The US is no longer the world’s only superpower. The emergence of several new alliances could challenge US dominance.

So, where does this leave the US on the international stage?

Presenter: James Bays

Guests:

Rami Khouri – Issam Fares Institute distinguished fellow at the American University of Beirut and author of, A US Pivot Away from the Middle East: Fact or Fiction?

Samuel Ramani – Associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a military and geopolitical analyst

James F Jeffrey – Former US ambassador to Iraq and Turkey, and chairperson of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center

Protests in Tehran, other cities were held in ‘support of the oppressed children of Gaza’ under the slogan ‘Palestine is not alone’.

Thousands of Iranians held rallies across the country against Israel’s unrelenting bombardment of Gaza, with a top military commander warning that Israel was heading for a long and bloody war with Palestinian group Hamas.

The demonstrations on Saturday in the capital Tehran and other cities were held in “support of the oppressed children of Gaza” under the slogan “Palestine is not alone”, according to local media.

Israel’s air and ground campaign has killed an estimated 12,000 people in the Palestinian territory, including 5,000 children, according to Palestinian authorities.

Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s October 7 attacks which Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and in which about 240 people were taken captive.

“Palestine stands on the path of a war of attrition … Israel will face a definitive defeat and end up in the dustbin of history,” Commander Hossein Salami from the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps told the rally in Tehran, which was aired live on state TV.

“The battle is not over. The Islamic world will do whatever it has to do. There are still great [unused] capacities left,” Salami said, without referring to any possible moves by Iran to join the conflict.

“The Zionist regime [Israel] can no longer see peace and security. Muslims will take revenge on behalf of the oppressed people of Gaza, and this revenge has no expiration date.”

In Tehran, demonstrators waved Palestinian flags, while others held banners that read, “Down with America” and “Down with Israel”, according to the AFP news agency.

Others set alight Israeli flags, while some waved the flags of Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, Iran’s ally, which has been engaged in border skirmishes with Israel since October 7.

State television also showed some protesters carrying bundled white shrouds symbolising the children killed in Gaza, during the marches held in advance of World Children’s Day on Monday.

Similar demonstrations took place in other major cities including Shiraz, Kerman and Isfahan.

Earlier this week, hundreds of body bags were laid out in Palestine Square in Tehran to protest against the continuing Israeli offensive on Gaza.

Iran has made support for the Palestinian cause a centrepiece of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Iran, which supports Hamas financially and militarily, has hailed the October 7 attacks a “success” but denied any involvement.

It has also lambasted Israel’s bombardment of Gaza as “genocide” while denouncing the United States over its support for Israel.

On Saturday, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Nasser Kanani decried Israel’s “attacks” on hospitals in Gaza.

“Attacking hospitals is in conflict with all human rights standards, international law and Geneva Conventions and makes the criminal nature of this regime even more obvious to the world,” he said on X.

His statement came as hundreds of people fled Gaza’s main al-Shifa Hospital, where more than 2,000 patients, medics and displaced people were trapped.

Israel has been pressing military operations inside the hospital, searching for a Hamas operations centre it claims lies under the sprawling complex – a charge Hamas has denied.

The Hamas-run health ministry has claimed at least 50 people have been killed in an Israeli attack on a school in northern Gaza.

The ministry claimed Israel attacked the UN-run al Fakhoura school, in Jabalia refugee camp, with at least 32 people killed in a separate attack on another building in the same camp, as reported by AFP.

Commissioner general of the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, said he has seen “horrifying images” of people killed and injured in a school run by the organisation.

Latest as Gaza health ministry says at least 50 killed in attack on school

He did not specify if this was al Fakhoura and Sky News cannot verify these reports.

“Receiving horrifying images and footage of scores of people killed and injured in another UNRWA school sheltering thousands of displaced in the north of the Gaza Strip,” he posted on X.

“These attacks cannot become commonplace, they must stop. A humanitarian ceasefire cannot wait any longer.”

Sky News has geolocated a video from a building at Jabalia refugee camp, where the school is located, which appears to show dozens of dead bodies.

The footage shows women and children among those motionless on multiple floors of the building.

Many people seen were lying still, surrounded by blood, in one damaged room, which appeared to also contain school desks.

The IDF has told Sky News they are looking into reports of the attacks, while the Hamas-run health ministry also claims Tal al Zaatar school, in Beit Lahia, was attacked too.

Unicef’s director for the Middle East, reacting to the reports, said these “horrible attacks should cease immediately”.

“The scenes of carnage and death following attacks on al Fakhoura… in Gaza killing many children and women are horrific and appalling,” Adele Khodr posted on X.

“Children, schools and shelters are not a target. Immediate ceasefire needed now!”

Read more:
Israel poised for ‘second phase’ of war against Hamas – but sympathy is waning
IDF drops leaflets warning Palestinians to flee parts of southern Gaza

Jabalia camp has been converted into a shelter for displaced Palestinians as Israel’s bombardment of the territory continues, with Hamas claiming more than 12,000 people have been killed.

Israel’s current offensive was launched after Hamas attacked the country on 7 October, which Israel says killed 1,200 people and left 242 taken hostage in Gaza.

Family, friends and supporters of Hamas captives marched from Tel Aviv to demand immediate release, government action.

Tens of thousands of protesters have arrived in Jerusalem after a five-day march from Tel Aviv to put pressure on the Israeli government for the immediate release of captives held by Hamas in Gaza.

An estimated 20,000 demonstrators, including family and friends of about 240 captives, held a rally in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s office on Saturday. They say the government has been ignoring their pleas to prioritise bringing their loved ones home.

The marchers walked for hours along the highway connecting the two cities, holding posters of the captives with the slogan “Bring them home now.”

They want to put pressure on the government “to do everything they can to bring the hostages back,” said Noam Alon, 25, clutching a photograph of his abducted girlfriend, Inbar.

“We are expecting them to meet with us, we are expecting them to tell us how they are going to do it,” he told the Reuters news agency. “We cannot wait any longer, so we are demand [ing] them to do that now, to pay any price to bring the hostages back.”

The captives were taken during the October 7 attack by the Palestinian group on southern Israel, which also left 1,200 people dead, mostly civilians. Since then, Israel launched a massive aerial and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip, which is under Hamas’s control, killing more than 12,000 people, also mostly civilians.

A spokesperson for the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, said on Saturday that it has lost contact with some of the groups responsible for the safety of the captives in the Gaza Strip.

“The fate of the captives and those holding them is still unknown after we lost communication with them,” he said.

Many relatives and friends of the missing fear they will come to harm in Israeli attacks on Gaza designed to destroy Hamas. The government says the offensive improves the chances of recovering hostages by putting pressure on Hamas.

Among those who marched to Jerusalem was centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid, who has been mostly supportive of the war but has demanded Netanyahu’s resignation.

Miki Zohar, a member of Netanyahu’s cabinet and party, was heckled on Friday when he visited the marchers at a rest stop.

Government ‘isn’t talking’

Hamas on Monday released a video of the first hostage confirmed to have died in captivity, and earlier said others have been killed.

That has stoked the anxiety of campaigners and relatives calling on the Israeli government to speed up any prisoner swap, and frustration with Netanyahu’s insistence that discretion is required around the Qatari- and Egyptian-mediated negotiations.

“It’s impossible that there are 240 kidnapped people and the government – our government – isn’t talking to [the relatives], isn’t telling them what’s going on, what’s on the table, what’s on offer, what are the reasons for and against. Nothing,” campaigner Stevie Kerem told Reuters.

Oliver McTernan, who has worked on hostage negation for 20 years, said the families were right to be concerned. The only way to achieve the return of the captives, he said, is a ceasefire of enough duration to move them safely across the battlefield. Israel has said such a move would simply allow Hamas to rearm.

“I think every day that goes on there is a risk — risk with bombings, risk with incursions and whatever — of the civilians, Israeli civilians, dying in Gaza,” McTernan told The Associated Press news agency, adding that that “should be a priority of any government: to ensure their safety and their return to their families”.