Important Takeaways:
- The world turns on Israel after World Central Kitchen slaughter: International fury grows with Biden saying he is ‘outraged and heartbroken’ as IDF is accused of war crimes and aid worker death toll exceeds that of any other conflict
- After long standing support of Israel in its war with Hamas terrorists, President Joe Biden is joining a chorus of world leaders furious over the drone strikes that killed aid workers in Gaza, including one American.
- Biden issued a statement claiming Israel ‘has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians’ as thousands of Palestinians are caught in the crosshairs of war and left without food, water and other necessary supplies.
- The president called for a ‘swift’ investigation to bring accountability to what he said was not a ‘stand alone incident’.
- Israel apologized for what it called ‘a grave mistake’ and said it is investigating the incident.
- International outrage ensued after the convoy of aid workers for World Central Kitchen was hit by an Israeli ‘triple tap’ drone strike on Monday, leaving seven dead. The three cars were marked as humanitarian aid and were struck while moving along a route approved by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
- Britain summoned the Israeli ambassador to London and demanded ‘full accountability’ over the deaths. The UK government is also considering suspending arms sales to Israel should an investigation reveal wrongdoing, inside sources have reportedly said.
- World Central Kitchen was facilitating the provision of supplies brought by sea from Cyprus
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Important Takeaways:
- Netanyahu CANCELS Israeli diplomatic trip to Washington after the US refuses to veto United Nations resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire over Ramadan
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday announced that he is canceling the planned visit of a delegation to Washington after the United States refused to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
- Minutes before the resolution was carried by 14 votes to zero, Netanyahu told Israeli news media that the visit would not happen if Washington failed to veto it.
- ‘In light of the change in the American position, Prime Minister Netanyahu decided the delegation would not leave,’ his office said after the vote, calling the decision a ‘clear retreat’ from its previous stance.
- highlights how the relationship between the U.S. is breaking down amid the bloodshed in Gaza
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia and China on Friday vetoed a U.S. draft UN Security Council resolution which called for an “immediate and sustained ceasefire” in Gaza along with “the release of all remaining hostages” held by Hamas.
- This was the fourth time since the war began in October that the Security Council failed to agree on a resolution calling for a ceasefire.
- This time, the dispute was over the U.S. insistence on linking the ceasefire call to a hostage deal and condemnation of Hamas, rather than the unconditional ceasefire resolution demanded by Russia and China.
- S. and Israeli officials said the Biden administration had been working for weeks on mobilizing support for its draft resolution.
- In order to garner more votes, the U.S. strengthened the paragraph in the draft resolution that referred to the ceasefire.
- The U.S. draft resolution also included strong language expressing concern about a possible Israeli ground offensive in Rafah.
- The Security Council is expected to vote on an alternative resolution put forward by eight member states, calling for an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan to lead to a permanent ceasefire.
- The U.S. is expected to veto.
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Important Takeaways:
- Four months after Israeli troops first stormed Gaza’s biggest hospital, al-Shifa, claiming it was a cover for a Hamas command and control center, they have returned.
- The Israeli military said it had “concrete intelligence” that Hamas operatives had regrouped there
- The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) now claim to have killed “over 140 terrorists” in ongoing fighting at al-Shifa and to have made some 600 arrests, including dozens of top Hamas commanders as well as some from Islamic Jihad.
- Israeli reports suggest that in recent weeks the army found that senior Hamas figures had resumed operations at al-Shifa and that some even took their families to the hospital.
- The IDF says it uncovered arms caches and a large quantity of cash at the site.
- Israeli media have suggested the operation at Shifa Hospital could last for several days. It is not being linked to the military operation in Rafah which Israel insists it must carry out to win the war with Hamas.
- “It’s going to happen. And it will happen even if Israel is forced to fight alone,” the Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister
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Important Takeaways:
- Israeli forces are in control of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, after an overnight raid on the medical complex, and have told thousands living nearby to evacuate towards the south of the Palestinian territory.
- Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesperson, said early on Monday that troops were “conducting a high-precision operation in limited areas of Shifa hospital based on … intelligence information indicating the use of the hospital by senior Hamas terrorists to command attacks”.
- The IDF has used leaflets and social media to urge civilians around Shifa to leave the vicinity, telling them to head immediately along Gaza’s coastal road to al-Muwasi, an area 18 miles (30km) south.
- The Israeli military issued grainy drone footage of the Shifa raid that it said showed troops coming under fire from a number of buildings within the hospital complex.
- The IDF said troops had been instructed on the importance of avoiding harm to patients, civilians, medical staff and equipment.
- Israeli forces have raided a number of hospitals in Gaza during a military campaign launched after the surprise attack by Hamas into southern Israel in which the militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 others hostage.
- Benjamin Netanyahu has said no amount of international pressure would stop Israel from realizing its war aim of “crushing Hamas” and has pledged to launch a long-anticipated offensive in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza that is now home to more than 1 million people displaced from elsewhere in the territory.
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Important Takeaways:
- Netanyahu Renews Israel Victory Pledge as Biden Calls for Ceasefire, Two-State Solution
- The U.S. and Israel stand at a diplomatic and military crossroads.
- Israel says it needs to finish the war against Hamas in the key Gazan city of Rafah, yet the U.S. is threatening that Israel won’t be able to use American weapons if Israel launches its military campaign against the Hamas stronghold.
- On the northern border, Hezbollah continues to fire rocket volleys on Israeli communities.
- In his State of the Union address, President Biden put the burden on Israel to protect Gazans.
- “Israel has an added burden because Hamas hides and operates among the civilian population like cowards under hospitals, daycare centers, and all the like. Israel also has a fundamental responsibility, though, to protect innocent civilians in Gaza,” Biden declared.
- He added what he says is the solution: “As we look to the future, the only real solution to the situation is a two-state solution (between Israel and the Palestinians) over time.”
- To increase humanitarian aid to Gaza, the administration announced plans to construct a port in Gaza
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel sets date for Rafah offensive in ultimatum for Hamas: War cabinet member warns onslaught will begin in three weeks unless all hostages are released
- Israel has threatened to invade Gaza’s Rafah by the start of Ramadan if Hamas does not return the remaining hostages in a dark ultimatum condemned by international observers.
- The United States and other governments, as well as the United Nations, have issued increasingly urgent appeals to Israel to call off its planned offensive on Rafah, where three-quarters of the displaced Palestinian population has fled.
- Some 1.2 million people are now taking shelter in sprawling tent encampments without access to adequate food, water or medicine in the city that used to be home to just 250,000.
- But the Israeli government says the city on the Egypt border is the last remaining stronghold in Gaza of the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
- ‘The world must know, and Hamas leaders must know – if by Ramadan our hostages are not home, the fighting will continue everywhere, including the Rafah area,’ Benny Gantz, a retired military chief of staff, told a conference of American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem on Sunday.
- ‘Hamas has a choice. They can surrender, release the hostages and the civilians of Gaza can celebrate the feast of Ramadan,’ added Gantz, a member of the three-person war cabinet.
- Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, is expected to begin around March 10.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israeli forces rescue 2 hostages in Rafah and hammer the crowded city
- The dramatic rescue of Fernando Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70, came amid mounting international concerns over a planned Israeli ground assault on Rafah.
- Israeli forces retrieved the two Israeli men taken captive during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in a “complex” overnight operation carried out “under fire in the heart of Rafah,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said.
- The operation included a “wave of strikes” to help “enable the force’s disengagement” and strike Hamas operatives in the area, he said.
- The strikes set off widespread panic, according to the NBC News crew, with crowds racing to take loved ones, including children, to the Kuwait Hospital.
- The IDF had confirmed overnight that its forces conducted strikes in the area of Shaboura
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Important Takeaways:
- Plans for U.S. strikes on Iranian personnel and facilities in Iraq, Syria approved after Jordan drone attack
- U.S. officials have confirmed to CBS News that plans have been approved for a series of strikes over a number of days against targets — including Iranian personnel and facilities — inside Iraq and Syria. The strikes will come in response to drone and rocket attacks targeting U.S. forces in the region, including the drone attack on Sunday that killed three U.S. service members at the Tower 22 base inside Jordan, near the Syrian border.
- Speaking at the Pentagon Thursday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters that the U.S. won’t tolerate attacks on American troops.
- “This is a dangerous moment in the Middle East,” Austin said, noting that Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen on commercial shipping in the Red Sea were also happening in the region. “We will continue to work to avoid a wider conflict in the region, but we will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our interests and our people, and we will respond when we choose, where we choose and how we choose.”
- Weather will be a major factor in the timing of the strikes, the U.S. officials told CBS News, as the U.S. has the capability to carry out strikes in bad weather but prefers to have better visibility of selected targets as a safeguard against inadvertently hitting civilians who might stray into the area at the last moment.
- Iran’s Reaction…any strike on Iranian territory or personnel would escalate tension in the tumultuous region, not make U.S. forces safer.
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Important Takeaways:
- King Abdullah of Jordan warns Antony Blinken there will be ‘catastrophic ramifications’ if Israel keeps dropping bombs on Gaza – as secretary of state tells Israel displaced Palestinians must be allowed to return to war-torn Strip
- King Abdullah II of Jordan has warned Antony Blinken there will be ‘catastrophic ramifications’ if the war in Gaza continues.
- During a meeting in Amman on Sunday, the Jordanian leader told the US Secretary of State there needed to be an end to ‘the tragic humanitarian crisis in the Strip.’
- Blinken is back in the region to speak with Arab leaders about a joint mission to contain the violence of the ongoing Israel-Gaza war.
- After speed round visits to Greece, Turkey, Jordan, and Qatar, Blinken will continue his visits later this week with stops in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the West Bank, Egypt, and Israel before heading back to Washington.
- At the press conference, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani conveyed the country’s desire for stability in the region, which requires an immediate ceasefire, the release of the Israeli hostages, and continued aid into Gaza.
- Israel has not agreed to a ceasefire, and the US has largely not pushed Netanyahu’s government on the point, rather, advocating for temporary humanitarian pauses in the fighting to allow aid to be delivered.
- Several weeks back, Israel opened Kerem Shalom up as a second entry point for aid to Gaza.
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