Leaders condemn videos of emaciated hostages as Red Cross calls for access
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said "images of hostages being paraded for propaganda are sickening" and they must be released "unconditionally".
The calls come after the Palestinian Islamic Jihad published video of Rom Braslavski, thin and crying, on Thursday, and Hamas released footage of an emaciated Evyatar David on Saturday.
Israeli leaders accused Hamas of starving hostages.
Hamas's armed wing denied it intentionally starves prisoners, saying hostages eat what their fighters and people eat amid a hunger crisis in Gaza.
Reports from Gaza say Palestinians desperately seeking aid near distribution points came under fire from Israeli troops at two different locations on Sunday. At least 27 Palestinians were killed, hospitals in Gaza say.The Israeli hostages Braslavski, 21, and David, 24, were abducted from the Nova music festival on 7 October 2023 during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.They are among 49 hostages, out of 251 originally taken, who Israel says are still being held in Gaza. This includes 27 hostages who are believed to be dead.After the videos were released, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with the two hostage families, expressing "profound shock" and telling them that efforts to return all the hostages "will continue constantly and relentlessly".On Sunday, Netanyahu spoke to the head of the Red Cross in the region, requesting his immediate involvement in providing food and medical care to hostages.The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was "appalled" by the videos that gave "stark evidence of the life-threatening conditions in which the hostages are being held".The charity reiterated its call to be granted access to the hostages to assess their condition, give them medical support and facilitate contact with their families.Hamas's armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades said it would respond positively to any Red Cross request to deliver food and medicine to prisoners if humanitarian corridors were opened into Gaza on a regular and permanent basis, and air strikes halted during the time of receiving aid.The Red Cross has faced heavy criticism in Israel over its role in the war, with claims that it has failed to help the hostages being held in Gaza.Earlier this year, amid anger over chaotic scenes as hostages were freed as part of a deal between Israel and Hamas, the organisation explained the limits of its role, saying it relies on the warring parties' goodwill to operate in conflict zones.There has also been criticism from Palestinians, as the group has not been allowed to visit Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails since 7 October 2023.At the weekend in Tel Aviv, crowds of protesters and hostage families gathered once again, calling on the Israeli government to secure the release of hostages.David and Braslavski's families said at a rally on Saturday that "everyone must get out of hell, now."In one video, Braslavski is seen crying as he says he has run out of food and water and only ate three "crumbs of falafels" that day. He says he is unable to stand or walk, and "is at death's door".Braslavski's family in a statement said "they managed to break Rom" and pleaded to Israeli and US leaders to bring their son home."He has simply been forgotten there," they said.In the second video, David said "I haven't eaten for days... I barely got drinking water" and is seen digging what he says will be his own grave.His family said he was being "deliberately and cynically starved in Hamas's tunnels in Gaza - a living skeleton, buried alive".German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was "appalled" by the images, adding the release of all hostages was a mandatory prerequisite for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.French President Emmanuel Macron, who said Hamas embodies "abject cruelty", added France continues to work tirelessly towards the release of hostages, to restore a ceasefire, and to enable humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.He said this effort must be accompanied with a political solution, with a two-state solution "with Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace". France recently announced its intention to recognise a Palestinian state, along with Canada and the UK, under certain conditions. Israel has strongly condemned the moves.The images of emaciated hostages are coming out as UN-backed agencies have said the "worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out" in Gaza, with malnutrition deaths reported daily.The Hamas-run health ministry said on Sunday that 175 people, including 93 children, have died of malnutrition since the start of the war.The UN, aid agencies and some of Israel's allies blame the hunger crisis on Israeli restrictions on the entry and delivery of humanitarian aid. Israel denies the allegation and blames Hamas.Despite the overwhelming evidence, Israeli authorities, and part of the country's press, strongly reject that there is starvation in Gaza, and say the crisis is a lie fabricated by Hamas and spread by international media.Some pictures of emaciated children have been displayed by Israeli protesters calling for a deal with Hamas, but many in Israel seem unaware of the extent of the emergency there.As the war continues, Israel faces growing international isolation, as the widespread destruction in Gaza and the suffering of Palestinians spark outrage.Polls around the world suggest that public opinion is increasingly negative about Israel, which is putting pressure on leaders to act. — BBC
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Arab News
an hour ago
- Arab News
Aid truck drivers face increasing danger from desperate crowds, armed gangs
GAZA CITY: Truck drivers trying to deliver aid inside Gaza say their work has become increasingly dangerous in recent months as people have grown desperately hungry and violent gangs have filled a power vacuum left by the territory's rulers. Crowds of hungry people routinely rip aid off the backs of moving trucks, the local drivers said. Some trucks are hijacked by armed men working for gangs who sell the aid in Gaza's markets for exorbitant prices. Israeli troops often shoot into the chaos, they said. Drivers have been killed in the mayhem. Since March, when Israel ended a ceasefire in its war with Hamas and halted all imports, the situation has grown increasingly dire in the territory of some 2 million Palestinians. International experts are now warning of a 'worst-case scenario of famine' in Gaza. Nahed Sheheibr, head of the Special Transport Association, accused Israel of detaining drivers and using them as human shields. Under heavy international pressure, Israel last week announced measures to let more aid into Gaza. Though aid groups say it's still not enough, getting even that amount from the border crossings to the people who need it is difficult and extremely dangerous, the drivers said. Thousands of people packed the road around them on Monday as two trucks entered southern Gaza, as shown in AP video. Young men overwhelmed the trucks, standing on the cabs' roofs, dangling from the sides, and clambering over each other onto the truck beds to grab boxes even as the trucks slowly kept driving. 'Some of my drivers are scared to go transfer aid because they're concerned about how they'll untangle themselves from large crowds of people,' said Abu Khaled Selim, vice president of the Special Transport Association, a nonprofit group that works with private transportation companies across the Gaza Strip and advocates for truck drivers' rights. Selim said his nephew, Ashraf Selim, a father of eight, was killed July 29 by a stray bullet when Israeli forces opened fire on crowds climbing onto the aid truck he was driving. Shifa Hospital officials said they received his body with an apparent gunshot to the head. Earlier in the war, aid deliveries were safer because, with more food getting into Gaza, the population was less desperate. Hamas-run police had been seen securing convoys and went after suspected looters and merchants who resold aid at exorbitant prices, Now, 'with the situation unsecured, everything is permissible,' said Selim, who appealed for protection so the aid trucks could reach warehouses. The UN does not accept protection from Israeli forces, saying it would violate its rules of neutrality, and said that given the urgent need for aid, it would accept that hungry people were going to grab food off the back of the trucks as long as they weren't violent. Flooding Gaza with renewed aid would ease the desperation and make things safer for the drivers, said Juliette Touma, communications director at UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. Ali Al-Derbashi, 22, had been an aid truck driver for more than a year and a half, but he quit after his last trip three weeks ago due to the increasing danger, he said. Some people taking aid off the trucks are now carrying cleavers, knives, and axes, he said. He was once ambushed and forcibly redirected to an area designated by Israel as a conflict zone in its war against Hamas. There, everything was stolen, including his truck's fuel and batteries, and his tires were shot out, he said. He was beaten and his phone was stolen. 'We put our lives in danger for this. We leave our families for two or three days every time. And we don't even have water or food ourselves,' he said. In addition to the danger, the drivers faced humiliation from Israeli forces, he said, who put them through 'prolonged searches, unclear instructions, and hours of waiting.' The war began Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 others. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to the latest figures by Gaza's Health Ministry, which doesn't distinguish between militants and civilians and operates under the Hamas government. The threats come from everywhere Nahed Sheheibr, head of the Special Transport Association, said the danger for the drivers comes from everywhere. He accused Israel of detaining drivers and using them as human shields. In recent days, men linked to a violent Gaza clan fired at drivers, injuring one, and looted a convoy of 14 trucks, he said. They later looted a convoy of 10 trucks. Hossni Al-Sharafi, who runs a trucking company and was an aid driver himself, said he is only allowed to use drivers who have no political affiliation and have been approved by Israel to transport aid from crossings. Al-Sharafi said he was detained by Israeli forces for more than 10 days last year while transporting aid from the southern Kerem Shalom crossing and interrogated about where the truck was headed and how the aid was being distributed. Israeli officials did not comment on the accusations. Some drivers spoke of being shot at repeatedly by armed gangs. Others said their trucks were routinely picked clean — even of the wooden pallets— by waves of desperate people, many of whom were fighting each other for the food, while Israeli troops were shooting. Hungry families who miss out on the aid throw stones at the trucks in anger. Anas Rabea said the moment he pulled out of the Zikkim crossing last week, his aid truck was overwhelmed by a crowd. 'Our instructions are to stop, because we don't want to run anyone over,' he said. 'It's crazy. You have people climbing all over the cargo, over the windows. It's like you're blind, you can't see out.' After the crowd had stripped everything, he drove another few hundred meters and was stopped by an armed gang that threatened to shoot him. They searched the truck and took a bag of flour he had saved for himself, he said. 'Every time we go out, we get robbed,' he said. 'It's getting worse day by day.'
Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
How Israel's Netanyahu created a monster in Gaza — which came back to bite him
LONDON: Politics often gives rise to unexpected partnerships, which might at first glance seem illogical — even outright irrational. But for those who broker them, there is usually some inherent logic. In the case of the partnership between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, however, they can also be twisted and destructive. The relationship between Netanyahu and Hamas, which began long before the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war in Gaza, is a prime example of a complete misreading by the Israeli prime minister of the true intentions of this fundamentalist organization, which would have tragic repercussions for both peoples. What brings Netanyahu and Hamas together is that neither appear to have any interest in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a compromise that could lead to a two-state solution. For the longest-serving Israeli prime minister in the country's history, averting an end to the conflict based on ending the occupation and agreeing to a two-state solution is his life's mission. James Dorsey of the Middle East Institute believes Netanyahu has developed a symbiotic relationship with the hardliners on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide as a tool for sabotaging any progress toward a peace process — let alone a successful conclusion. One telling instance came soon after Netanyahu was first elected as prime minister in 1996 and Israel unexpectedly dropped the request made by his predecessor, Shimon Peres, for Hamas political bureau member Mousa Abu Marzouk to be extradited from the US, where he was a resident, against the advice of the security establishment. This enabled a major Hamas figure to continue his advocacy for armed resistance freely from outside Gaza after his deportation to Jordan. One might think that a right-wing leader, at a time when other Hamas leaders were in Israeli jails, including its founder, Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, would be keen to put someone with Abu Marzouk's history behind bars. That is unless Netanyahu already saw the potential in Hamas, with its total resistance to Israel's existence, of keeping him in power, allowing him to become increasingly authoritarian, and leaving the two-state solution as an eternally hypothetical option. In the symbiotic relationship between the two, Netanyahu needed Hamas and Hamas needed Netanyahu, because they justified each other's existence in convincing their respective constituencies that they are each other's antidote. Preserving the relevance of Hamas in Palestinian politics and the conflict with Israel have become key instruments in Netanyahu's strategy of preventing Palestine from becoming a state, mainly by maintaining divisions within Palestinian society. The victory of Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council election against the governing Fatah movement played into the hands of Netanyahu. He further relished the violent split in Gaza a year later between Fatah and Hamas, which left Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, in control of the West Bank and Hamas in control of Gaza. With the Palestinian polity divided politically and territorially, and bad blood between the two factions, Netanyahu saw more than ever the opportunity to divide and conquer. He is not the only one in Israeli politics to harbor this Machiavellian approach. Bezalel Smotrich, now Israel's finance minister and one of the most extreme representatives of the settlers' movement in the cabinet, told the Knesset Channel in 2015: 'Hamas is an asset and Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) is a burden.' Speaking to Israeli media outlet Makor Rison in 2019, one of Netanyahu's closest advisers, Jonathan Urich, praised the Israeli prime minister for succeeding 'in achieving severance' between Gaza and the West Bank and 'effectively smashed the vision of the Palestinian state in those two regions.' One of the ploys to keep the Palestinian political system divided and paralyzed, many times with the unfortunate helping hand of Palestinian factions themselves, is to make it impossible to conduct free and fair elections. Such elections would offer the victor both domestic and international legitimacy, allowing them to advocate with enhanced credibility for an end to Israeli occupation. On the rare occasion that holding elections seemed to be possible, as was the case in the spring of 2021, Israel created obstacles, such as ignoring the EU's request to access the Palestinian occupied territories to observe the elections, in violation of the Oslo accords, and refusing to allow for East Jerusalemites to vote, knowing that without their participation, no Palestinian leader would agree to hold elections. Elections, therefore, have not been held for nearly 20 years. This democratic deficit is constantly exacerbated, allowing Israel under Netanyahu to maintain that neither the leadership of Gaza or the West Bank are legitimate or credible entities with which to conduct peace negotiations, and question why it should negotiate with one faction while the other might reject any agreement anyway. It is hardly an honest argument for an Israeli prime minister who has undermined every attempt at reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Worse for him and Israel, it served to maintain the apparent status quo, which imploded in the deadliest day in Israel's history on Oct. 7, 2023. In Netanyahu's world, it is impossible to separate between what serves him personally and his political creed. Still, the leitmotif of opposing the two-state solution goes back to the Oslo accords. His name is closely associated with incitement against the agreement and those who signed it. It propelled him to his first term as prime minister and five subsequent terms. When he expressed support for a two-state solution, it was for tactical reasons, under US pressure, or because he tried to form a coalition with more centrist elements in Israeli politics, but without conviction or the intention to ever make it happen. When he returned to power in 2009, Netanyahu was more determined than ever to weaken the Palestinian Authority and its president, Abbas, with measures such as downgrading the cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian security forces in their fight against Hamas. Years later, in 2018, when Abbas decided to entirely halt the transfer of money to Gaza, leaving the Hamas-led government teetering on the brink of collapse, Netanyahu was the one who came to its rescue, with the ill-advised idea of encouraging a flow of cash from Qatar, literally in suitcases, into the hands of Hamas. It was alleged that $30 million passed through the Rafah crossing into Hamas coffers every month until October 2023. In addition, under the current Netanyahu government, Israel sanctioned more work permits than it had ever allowed prior to Hamas winning power. While it improved the dire economic situation in Gaza, it provided Hamas with the resources to build tunnels and purchase weapons. It has gradually transpired that Netanyahu was warned by security chiefs in the months leading up to the Oct. 7 attack that Hamas was preparing for another round of violence with Israel. At that point, however, he was too invested in the paradigm that Hamas had been pacified and had no interest in rattling the Israeli cage that might risk its hold on power. A future independent state commission of enquiry into the Oct. 7 attack will have to address the folly of Netanyahu in propping up Hamas and how it enabled this major security lapse to occur.
Saudi Gazette
2 hours ago
- Saudi Gazette
Saudi Arabia urges global recognition of Palestinian state in UN-backed framework
Saudi Gazette report NEOM — Saudi Arabia has renewed its call for the international community to support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stressing that the wave of recognition of Palestine by several countries marks growing momentum toward a just and comprehensive resolution. The call came during a Cabinet session chaired by Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman on Tuesday in NEOM. The meeting reviewed the outcomes of the recent high-level international conference on the peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue, which Saudi Arabia co-hosted with France. The conference concluded with a final document urging UN member states to endorse it as a viable implementation framework. The Cabinet also reiterated Saudi Arabia's continued humanitarian support to the Palestinian people, particularly in Gaza, through its ongoing air and sea aid bridges, including relief and medical ministers condemned repeated provocations by Israeli occupation officials at Al-Aqsa Mosque and called on the international community to halt violations that contravene international the economic front, the Cabinet highlighted a 3.9% year-on-year increase in Saudi Arabia's real GDP in Q2 2025, driven by non-oil sector IMF's Article IV consultation report confirmed Saudi Arabia's strong fiscal position and its ability to navigate global economic industrial development, the Cabinet welcomed the launch of new projects in the Eastern Province as part of a broader drive to boost local content and global competitiveness in the Saudi industrial Cabinet also praised the World Health Organization's designation of Jeddah and Madinah as healthy cities with populations exceeding one million, bringing the total number of certified healthy cities in the Kingdom to the environmental front, the government reviewed progress on the Saudi Green Initiative, reporting the rehabilitation of over 500,000 hectares of degraded land and the planting of 151 million trees as part of the national campaign to combat desertification and restore agreements and memorandums of understanding were approved with countries including Mongolia, China, New Zealand, Kuwait, Pakistan, Oman, and Thailand, covering areas such as mining, healthcare, customs, vocational training, competition regulation, and non-oil Cabinet approved the 2025–2028 GCC strategy to combat narcotics, endorsed a two-semester school year for public education, and adopted the use of national address-based numbering for street and building meeting also included structural amendments to the National Center of Meteorology.
