Author: ALJAZEERA

Framework of the agreement includes a six-week pause in fighting that could see an exchange of captives and increase in aid.An Israeli delegation is soon expected in Qatar to continue talks on securing a pause in the war on Gaza that could see captives released. The talks began last week in Paris and were attended by the chiefs of Israel’s spy agency Mossad and domestic security service Shin Bet, along with mediators from the United States, Qatar and Egypt. The Israeli delegation returned from the French capital, with Israeli national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, saying during a televised interview late…

Qatar tells the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that it rejects the “double standards” when international law applies to some but not to others during a hearing on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. “Some children are deemed worthy of protection while others are killed in their thousands,” senior Qatari diplomat Mutlaq al-Qahtani said on Friday in The Hague. “Qatar rejects such double standards. International law must be upheld in all circumstances. It must be applied to all, and there must be accountability”. Al-Qahtani added that Israel had implemented an “apartheid regime” to maintain the “domination of Jewish Israelis over…

A two-month-old Palestinian boy has died from starvation in northern Gaza, according to media reports, days after the United Nations warned of an “explosion” in child deaths due to Israel’s war on the besieged enclave. The Shehab news agency said Mahmoud Fattouh died at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Friday. Footage, verified by Al Jazeera, shows the emaciated infant gasping for breath in a hospital bed. One of the paramedics who rushed the boy to the hospital says Mahmoud died from acute malnutrition. “We saw a woman carrying her baby, screaming for help. Her pale baby seemed to…

The Palestinian Authority has sharply criticised a “day after” plan for Gaza presented by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling it “destined to fail”. “If the world wants security and stability in the region, it must end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and recognise the independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesperson for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, was quoted as saying on Friday by the Palestinian state news agency Wafa. Netanyahu’s plan is his first official proposal for what comes after the war in Gaza – in which Israel has killed more than…

US and UK forces hit 18 Houthi targets including underground weapons and missile storage facilities, officials say.The United States and the United Kingdom have bombed more than a dozen Houthi sites in Yemen, officials said, as the rebel group stepped up its attacks on ships in the Red Sea in protest against Israel’s war on Gaza. In a joint statement on Saturday, the US and UK said the military action targeted 18 Houthi sites across eight locations in Yemen, and included attacks on underground weapons and missile storage facilities, air defence systems, radars and a helicopter. The operation marked the…

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Already facing a deep crisis, Egypt’s economy appears poised to take a hit from Israel’s war on Gaza and the spiralling tensions in the Red Sea, analysts have said. Currently on “life support”, Egypt’s deteriorating economy suffers from growing public debt now at more than 90 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), capital flight and the currency’s fall against the US dollar. Now, those challenges are being compounded by the war, as it edges closer and closer to Egypt’s border, with a large chunk of Gaza’s population pushed into Rafah, after four months of displacement as a result of…

EXPLAINERUN agency for Palestinian refugees say it can no longer provide services in northern Gaza, citing staff shortages and a ‘collapse of social order’.Here’s how things stand on Saturday, February 24, 2024: Humanitarian crisis, fighting on the ground: A UNRWA official says the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees can no longer provide services in north Gaza, citing staff shortages and a “collapse of social order” amid Israeli attacks on civilians and restrictions on food aid access that have left the population starving. An Israeli strike on a home housing displaced Palestinians killed at least 24 people in Gaza’s Deir el-Balah…

The US and its allies have historically done little to pressure Israel to halt or roll back settlement expansion.The United States has said that new Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal, effectively reversing a policy by the administration of former President Donald Trump. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said an announcement by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that more than 3,300 new Israeli settlements are to be built in the occupied West Bank was “disappointing”. “It has been a longstanding policy of both Democratic and Republican administrations that new settlements are counterproductive to achieving enduring peace.…

In the narrow crevices between the tents that crowd nearly every inch of the southernmost Gazan city of Rafah, Palestinians cling to life amid the grinding Israeli ground offensive. A barefoot boy wears a pot on his head and beams a smile. A child lugs a jerry can half his size full of water. Men sit at half-empty tables selling canned goods. A tapestry of laundry hangs from every line. The world’s gaze is on Rafah, the once-sleepy town along the Egyptian border deemed a “safe zone” for displaced civilians to flee to, but now likely Israel’s next focus in…