A peace agreement in Africa that will probably not bring peace
William Ruto's tenure is a how-to guide for sowing cynicism about democracy
But today transnational political Shiism is struggling for its survival
Making peace with the Palestinians looks much harder than with Iran's regime or Shias in Lebanon
The government is failing to protect them
Where people once died in air strikes, now they are dying as they try to find food
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Rhyl Journal
5 hours ago
- Rhyl Journal
Dozens more Palestinians killed by Israeli fire as war drags on
Israel has continued to carry out daily strikes as its military offensive and blockade have led to the 'worst-case scenario of famine' in the territory of two million Palestinians, according to an international authority on hunger crises. Meanwhile, US envoy Steve Witkoff headed to Israel for talks after ceasefire negotiations with Hamas appeared to have stalled last week. Mr Witkoff, who has led the Trump administration's efforts to wind down the nearly 22-month war, will arrive in Israel on Thursday for talks on the situation in Gaza. More than 30 people were killed while seeking humanitarian aid, according to hospitals that received the bodies and treated dozens of wounded people. Another seven, including one child, died of malnutrition-related causes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on any of the strikes. It says it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas, because the group's militants operate in densely populated areas. Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said it received 12 people who were killed on Tuesday night when Israeli forces opened fire towards crowds awaiting aid trucks coming from the Zikim crossing in northern Gaza. Thirteen others were killed in strikes in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, and the northern towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, the hospital said. In the southern city of Khan Younis, Nasser Hospital said it received the bodies of 16 people who it says were killed on Tuesday evening while waiting for aid trucks close to the newly built Morag corridor, which the Israeli military carved out between Khan Younis and the southernmost city of Rafah. The hospital received another body – a man killed in a strike on a tent in Khan Younis, it said. The Awda Hospital in the urban Nuseirat refugee camp said it received the bodies of four Palestinians who it says were killed on Wednesday by Israeli fire close to an aid distribution site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in the Netzarim corridor area, south of the Wadi Gaza. Under heavy international pressure, Israel announced a series of measures over the weekend to facilitate the entry of more international aid to Gaza, but aid workers say much more is needed. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) – the leading world authority on hunger crises – has stopped short of declaring famine in Gaza but said on Tuesday that the situation has dramatically worsened and warned of 'widespread death' without immediate action. Cogat, the Israeli military body that facilitates the entry of aid, said more than 220 trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday. That is far below the 500-600 trucks a day that UN agencies say are needed, and which entered during a six-week ceasefire earlier this year. The UN is still struggling to deliver the aid that does enter, with most trucks unloaded by crowds in zones controlled by the Israeli military. The alternative aid system run by the Israeli-backed GHF has also been marred by violence. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid since May, most near sites run by the GHF, according to witnesses, local health officials and the UN human rights office. The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots at people who approach its forces, and the GHF says its armed contractors have only used pepper spray or fired warning shots to prevent deadly crowding. International airdrops of aid have also resumed, but many of the parcels have landed in areas that Palestinians have been told to evacuate while others have plunged into the Mediterranean Sea, forcing people to swim out to retrieve drenched bags of flour. A total of 89 children have died of malnutrition since the war began in Gaza. The ministry said 65 Palestinian adults have also died of malnutrition-related causes across Gaza since late June, when it started counting deaths among adults. Israel denies there is any starvation in Gaza and says the focus on hunger undermines ceasefire efforts. Hamas started the war with its attack on southern Israel on October 7 2023, in which militants killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others. They still hold 50 hostages, including around 20 believed to be alive. Most of the rest were released in ceasefires or other deals. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Its count does not distinguish between militants and civilians. The ministry operates under the Hamas government. The UN and other international organisations see it as the most reliable source of data on casualties.
Spectator
7 hours ago
- Spectator
Israel has gone too far
If any other country in the Middle East had behaved as monstrously as Israel has in recent weeks, the jets would be lined up on our runways ready to do a bit of performative bombing. Never mind BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) and diplomatic pressure. I mention this because those of us who support Israel, and have done so largely uncritically since 7 October 2023, need the scales to fall from our eyes a little – for the good of Israel, as well as the good of those starving Palestinians. I have been to Israel many times, as a journalist, as a holidaymaker, as a friend. I accept without demurral the argument that it is the region's only democracy – and a liberal democracy at that – surrounded on all sides by authoritarian failed states which wish to see it wiped from the face of the Earth. I subscribe to the notion, too, that if Palestine got what Palestine wants – from the river to the sea and all that vainglorious spite – then they would turn one of the most remarkable countries in the world into a variant of Somalia within about six months (if that), no matter how much money its gullible white liberal well-wishers poured into the place. I have an absolute lack of respect for the impoverished Arab countries that are governed, in the main, by bloodthirsty and intellectually challenged religious maniacs, just as I have an absolute lack of respect for the rich Arab countries that were lucky enough to find a reservoir of oil in their sandpits and have created odious totalitarian slave states as a consequence. This may be unfair, but I have the distinct feeling that the Arab culture, when allied to Islam, makes for a uniquely toxic mindset; one fuelled by absolutism, hatred and a disrespect for human life. I despise the feral savages of Hamas and was wholly in support of Israel's incursion into Gaza, even if, at the time, I thought it might be more useful to begin by lobbing a few missiles at Tehran. Why not target the organ grinder rather than its imbecilic monkeys? Equally, I have a fierce loathing of the Keffiyeh Klan, the deluded legions of affluent western liberals who have embraced anti-Semitism with gusto and when asked to identify the sins of the world have only one answer. In short, I am instinctively, politically, morally and pragmatically on the side of Israel. I do not wish our country to recognise Palestine as a sovereign state (and Keir Starmer's decision to do so is a crass genuflection to his idiot backbenchers. Just what is it you are recognising, you abject little man?). Nor do I think, pace Starmer, that Palestinians have 'an inalienable right' to independent statehood. Just to press the point home, I believe that from the Maghreb to the Levant and then eastwards, over those vast dunes, into what was once much better off when it was called Persia, corrupt and vindictive regimes govern a corrupt and vindictive culture, one that is responsible for much of the misery in the world. Israel, then, is an oasis – which is why we cannot afford to allow it to pollute its own waters. And that seems very much like what it is doing right now. If you are already howling that I have swallowed Hamas propaganda, and that either it is Hamas who is stopping the aid getting through or that the far-from-starving Palestinians are tucking into three square meals per day, eggs Benedict, shrimp étouffée, bananas Foster and so on, then you are labouring under a delusion. If virtually every non-aligned observer in the world, including the President of the USA, believes that the people of Gaza are starving to death and Israel is primarily responsible, then that's good enough for me, frankly. Of course Hamas has looted aid convoys and of course it lies to the press and the press is often far too quick to report what it says as being the truth. But that does not alter the fact that people – largely blameless people – are dying and that Israel is in large part to blame. Of course this conflict has, in the West, become hideously polarised and so it is all too easy simply to continue repeating the mantra that everybody is against Israel and one should believe only what one hears from the mouth of Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF press office. (Even in that case, Netanyahu accepts that there are several areas where assistance has not made it through.) But if you sign up to that credo you are morally lost. We have to form opinions based upon the evidence that is put before us, not have them devolve from partisan loyalties, no matter how well-founded those loyalties might be. It has to be said that the United Nations should be held primarily responsible for the partisan nature of the debate. Supposedly neutral, it has vilified Israel at every turn, just as in the past 20 years it has entertained resolution after resolution condemning Israel while ignoring every other transgression which occurs anywhere else on Earth. It came as no surprise to discover that Hamas terrorists were actively involved in UN programmes. As soon as that was revealed, the awful secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, should have resigned. Meanwhile, we should take our leave of an organisation which cleaves to the palpably stupid view that the wrongs of the world are the consequence of colonialism, except when those wrongs are committed by Israel. It is very far from being a force for good. Instead, it has become a force for disseminating demonstrably absurd post-Marxist delusions. I do not have a solution to the crisis. Frankly, Donald Trump's idea of turning the Gaza Strip into a kind of Las Vegas, except with falafel in place of T-bone steak, has much to commend it, but that simulacrum of Sodom should not be built over the bodies of dead children. We support Israel because of its erudition and its strength but most of all because it has decency. Had decency. Please let it get that decency back.
Metro
8 hours ago
- Metro
More than 48 Palestinians killed as they wait for flour delivery in Gaza Strip
Blood mixed with flour as the dead were wheeled away in carts after gunmen opened fire at hundreds of Palestinians looking for food at an aid point in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Defence Forces, who control the Zikim Crossing distribution point, admitted firing shots when their soldiers felt 'threatened'. Hours later, more than 48 were dead with hundreds more injured at the main entry point for humanitarian aid to northern Gaza, according to a local hospital. Hamas claimed the shooting lasted, three hours as thousands were funnelled towards the trucks delivering vital aid. Graphic photos show bodies being ferried away from the scene of the shooting in wooden carts, which people expected to pick up supplies with, as well as crowds of people carrying bags of flour. The Palestinian NGOs Network (PNGO) say Israeli military have turned these humanitarian points into 'killing grounds, deliberately targeting civilians in their most vulnerable state'. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) said their investigation found their soldiers carried out warning shots in the air, shots that were not directed at the crowd, after they felt threatened. They claimed there were no casualties directly from IDF gunfire. One IDF security official said: 'From an initial investigation, it appears that during the gathering, sounds of gunfire were heard from within the crowd and internal friction among Gazans within the gathering, in addition to several cases of people being run over by the aid trucks.' In a statement, the IDF said: 'We place utmost importance on the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and work to enable and facilitate the transfer of aid in coordination with the international community, and certainly do not intentionally act against humanitarian aid trucks.' The deaths came the day after Sir Keir Starmer said the UK would recognise the Palestinian state if 'substantive steps' were not taken by the Israeli government to the anger of Benjamin Netanyahu. Under a suffocating Israeli blockade, food, fuel and humanitarian aid have become luxuries for Palestinians. A breakdown of law and order has seen aid convoys overwhelmed by desperate, famine-ridden people with Gaza becoming the most expensive place to eat in the world. What little food remains has been pushed to black-market extremities, as shown by prices shared with Metro by Christian Aid workers on the ground. A 25kg sack of flour is now more expensive than a Michelin-star dinner in Paris, costing as much as £414, compared to £8.80 before the start of the war. Al-Saraya Field Hospital, where critical cases are stabilised before transfer to main hospitals, said it received more than 100 dead and wounded. Fares Awad, head of the Gaza Health Ministry's emergency service, said some bodies were taken to other hospitals, indicating the toll could rise. Israeli strikes and gunfire had earlier killed at least 46 Palestinians overnight and into Wednesday, most of them among crowds seeking food, health officials said. Another seven Palestinians, including a child, died of malnutrition-related causes, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Under heavy international pressure, Israel announced a series of measures over the weekend to facilitate the entry of more international aid to Gaza, but aid workers say much more is needed. COGAT, the Israeli military body that facilitates the entry of aid, said more than 220 trucks entered Gaza on Tuesday. That is far below the 500-600 trucks a day that UN agencies say are needed, and which entered during a six-week ceasefire earlier this year. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire while seeking aid since May, most near sites run by the GHF, according to witnesses, local health officials and the UN human rights office. International airdrops of aid have also resumed, but many of the parcels have landed in areas that Palestinians have been told to evacuate while others have plunged into the Mediterranean Sea, forcing people to swim out to retrieve drenched bags of flour. Israel denies there is any starvation in Gaza, rejecting accounts to the contrary from witnesses, UN agencies and aid groups, and says the focus on hunger undermines ceasefire efforts. More Trending Hamas started the war with its attack on southern Israel on October 7 2023, in which militants killed around 1,200 people and abducted 251 others. They still hold 50 hostages, including around 20 believed to be alive. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Its count does not distinguish between militants and civilians. The ministry operates under the Hamas government. The UN and other international organisations see it as the most reliable source of data on casualties. MORE: Recognising Palestine is not rewarding Hamas – and it shouldn't come with strings MORE: What's stopping Keir Starmer from recognising Palestine as a state? MORE: I offered to trade my £600 camera – all for a bag of flour
