[ad_1]
Israeli military says 13 Israeli hostages and 4 foreigners have been released from captivity in the Gaza Strip
ByThe Associated Press
November 25, 2023, 4:35 PM
JERUSALEM — Israeli military says 13 Israeli hostages and 4 foreigners have been released from captivity in the Gaza Strip.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Hamas was preparing to release more than a dozen hostages Saturday for several dozen Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, part of an exchange on the second day of a cease-fire that has allowed critical humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip and given civilians their first respite after seven weeks of war.
While uncertainty remained around the details of the exchange, there was optimism, too, amid the scenes of joyous families reuniting on both sides. On the first day of the four-day cease-fire, Hamas released 24 of the about 240 hostages taken during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war, and Israel freed 39 Palestinians from prison. Those freed in Gaza were 13 Israelis, 10 Thais and a Filipino.
On Saturday, Hamas provided mediators Egypt and Qatar with a list of 14 hostages to be released, and the list has been passed along to Israel, according to a Egyptian official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to talk about details of the ongoing negotiations. A second Egyptian official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the details.
Under the truce agreement, Hamas will release one Israeli hostage for every three prisoners freed. Israel’s Prison Service said earlier Saturday it was preparing 42 prisoners for release. It was not immediately clear how many non-Israeli captives may also be released.
Overall, Hamas is to release at least 50 Israeli hostages, and Israel 150 Palestinian prisoners, during the four-day truce, all woman and minors.
Israel has said the truce can be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed — something U.S. President Joe Biden said he hoped would occur.
Separately, a Qatari delegation arrived in Israel on Saturday to coordinate with parties on the ground and “ensure the deal continues to move smoothly,” according to a diplomat briefed on the visit. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details with the media.
The start of the truce Friday morning brought the first quiet for 2.3 million Palestinians reeling from relentless Israeli bombardment that has killed thousands, driven three-quarters of the population from their homes and leveled residential areas. Rocket fire from Gaza militants into Israel went silent as well.
For Emad Abu Hajer, a resident of the Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza City area, the pause meant he could again search through the rubble of his home, which was flattened in an Israeli attack last week.
He found the bodies of a cousin and nephew, bring the death toll in the attack to 19. With his sister and two other relatives still missing, he resumed his digging Saturday.
“We want to find them and bury them in dignity,” he said.
The United Nations said the pause enabled it to scale up the delivery of food, water, and medicine to the largest volume since the resumption of aid convoys on Oct. 21. It was also able to deliver 129,000 liters (34,078 gallons) of fuel — just over 10% of the daily pre-war volume — as well as cooking gas, a first since the war began.
In the southern city of Khan Younis on Saturday, a long line of people with containers waited outside a filling station. Hossam Fayad lamented that the pause in fighting was only for four days.
“I wish it could be extended until people’s conditions improved,” he said.
For the first time in over a month, aid reached northern Gaza, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive. The Palestinian Red Crescent said 61 trucks carrying food, water and medical supplies headed there on Saturday, the largest aid convoy to reach the area since the start of the war.
The U.N. said it and the Palestinian Red Crescent were also able to evacuate 40 patients and family members from a hospital in Gaza City, where much of the fighting has taken place, to a hospital in Khan Younis.
The relief brought by the cease-fire has been tempered, however, for both sides. For Israelis, by the fact that not all hostages will be freed. For Palestinians, by the brevity of the pause.
The freed Israelis included nine women and four children 9 and under. They were taken to Israeli hospitals for observation and were declared to be in good condition.
At a plaza dubbed “Hostages Square” in Tel Aviv, a crowd of Israelis celebrated the good news but pressed for more. “Don’t forget the others because it’s getting harder, harder and harder. It’s heartbreaking,” said Neri Gershon, a Tel Aviv resident.
The hostages included multiple generations. Nine-year-old Ohad Munder-Zichri was freed along with his mother, Keren Munder, and grandmother, Ruti Munder, during the child’s visit to his grandparents at the kibbutz where about 80 people — nearly a quarter of community residents — are believed to have been taken.
The hostages’ plight has raised anger among some families that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was not doing enough to bring them home.
Hours later, 24 Palestinian women and 15 teenage boys held in Israeli prisons in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem were freed. In the West Bank town of Beitunia, hundreds of Palestinians poured out of their homes to celebrate, honking horns and setting off fireworks.
The teenagers had been jailed for minor offenses like throwing stones. The women included several convicted of trying to stab Israeli soldiers.
“It’s a happiness tainted with sorrow because our release from prison came at the cost of the lives of martyrs and the innocence of children,” said one released Palestinian prisoner, Aseel Munir al-Titi.
According to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group, Israel is holding 7,200 Palestinians, including about 2,000 arrested since the start of the war.
The war erupted when several thousand Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking scores of hostages, including babies, women and older adults, as well as soldiers.
Majed al-Ansari, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of Qatar, said the hope is that momentum from the deal will lead to an end to the violence,
Israeli leaders have said they would resume fighting eventually and not stop until Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for the past 16 years, is crushed. Israeli officials have argued that only military pressure can bring the hostages home. But the government is under pressure from hostages’ families to make the release of the remaining captives the top priority.
The Israeli offensive has killed more than 13,300 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza government. Women and minors have consistently made up around two-thirds of the dead, though the latest number was not broken down. The figure does not include updated numbers from hospitals in the north, where communications have broken down.
___
Rising reported from Bangkok, Magdy from Cairo. Associated Press writer Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
___
Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
Egyptian officials say Hamas to free 14 hostages Saturday for 42 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, in second swap
ByThe Associated Press
November 25, 2023, 5:31 AM
CAIRO — Egyptian officials say Hamas to free 14 hostages Saturday for 42 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, in second swap.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
NANTUCKET, Mass. — It wasn’t all work and no play for President Joe Biden on Friday on this picturesque Massachusetts island.
He spent much of the day in multiple briefings with national security aides, who were updating him as the first phase of hostages were released in Gaza earlier Friday. Biden then delivered brief remarks on the hostage deal, saying it is “only a start, but so far, it’s gone well.”
But then the president joined in the traditional Biden day-after-Thanksgiving festivities – lunch with his family, perusing local shops and mingling with the Nantucket crowd as the town Christmas tree is lit.
Because of the remarks on hostages, the traditional family lunch happened later than usual. But like always, it was at Brotherhood of Thieves, a cozy bar and grill that advertises itself as an “1840s whaling bar.”
Then the president’s shopping outing began.
His first stop was just a couple doors down from the restaurant at Nantucket Books, where first lady Jill Biden and daughter Ashley were already browsing.
“Can’t come without going to the bookstore,” the president said as he ducked inside. “We’ve got a tradition.”
He left about 20 minutes later, carrying a copy of “Democracy Awakening” by the historian Heather Cox Richardson, who interviewed Biden at the White House last year.
Biden then stopped at Craftmasters of Nantucket, followed by a quick stop into the Jeweler’s Gallery. He was greeted throughout his walk by cheering crowds, shouts of “happy birthday” (the president celebrated his 81st birthday on Monday) and people waving and taking photos of the first family.
Finally, the Bidens ended up at Nantucket’s annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony, clapping as the town crier led the countdown and the tree was illuminated with colored lights.
Biden’s outing was interrupted twice by pro-Palestine protesters, once earlier Friday as he walked to lunch and then again by a handful of demonstrators at the tree ceremony who had wiggled their way to the front of the crowd. Leaning against metal barricades and waving banners that said “Free Palestine,” the protesters chanted: “Biden, Biden, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide!”
It was unclear whether the president – who was greeting members of the children’s choir — heard them. A local official urged the protesters to stop, noting that the community event was not a political one.
Visiting Nantucket for Thanksgiving is a decades-long tradition for the Biden family.
Joe and Jill first came here for the holiday with young sons, Beau and Hunter, in the mid-1970s. As they’ve done in past years, the Bidens are staying at an expansive compound owned by billionaire businessman and philanthropist David Rubenstein, according to the White House.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
A four-day cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war began Friday morning in Gaza as part of an agreement that Qatar helped broker. The deal also includes the release of dozens of hostages held by militants and Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, which was to begin later Friday.
With the deal comes increased shipments of fuel and supplies into Gaza — though still only enough to dent the needs of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza who have endured weeks of Israeli bombardment, according to aid groups. Israel has agreed to allow the delivery of 130,000 liters (34,300 gallons) of fuel a day into besieged Gaza for humanitarian needs for the duration of the truce.
More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza after a dayslong pause in its casualty report, which it attributed to the health system’s collapse in northern Gaza making it impossible to provide a detailed count.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will press ahead with the war after the cease-fire expires. Some 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mostly during the initial incursion by Hamas.
Currently:
— A four-day truce begins, setting the stage for the release of dozens of hostages.
— Families of hostages not slated for release from Gaza during current truce face enduring nightmare.
— Palestinians in Gaza seeking refuge from war find their world is shrinking.
— Hezbollah fires rockets at north Israel after an airstrike kills 5 of the group’s senior fighters.
— Thousands led by Cuba’s president march in solidarity with Palestinians.
— Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Here’s what’s happening in the war:
CAIRO — Twelve Thai nationals are to be released from Gaza on Friday along with 13 Israeli captives, according to the head of Egypt’s state information service.
The hostages are expected to pass through the Rafah crossing with Egypt.
Thirty-nine Palestinian prisoners are also to be released by Israel.
The releases are part of a four-day cease-fire deal. In all, 50 hostages and 150 Palestinian prisoners are to be freed during the four-day truce.
BEITOUNIA, West Bank — Israeli security forces are firing tear gas at a crowd of Palestinians gathered to greet prisoners who are to be released from Israeli jails as part of a truce between Israel and Hamas, AP journalists in the West Bank witnessed.
Tear gas was fired to push away crowds from the vicinity of Ofer prison, from where the prisoners are to be released later on Friday.
Palestinian authorities have released a list of 39 Palestinian prisoners expected to be released on Friday, including 24 women and 15 teenage boys, in exchange for 13 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
In all, 50 hostages and 150 Palestinian prisoners are to be freed during the four-day truce.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s foreign minister said Friday that Israel will resume the war against Hamas after a temporary cease-fire ends.
A truce in the Israel-Hamas war began Friday, setting the stage for the release of 50 hostages held by militants in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. The releases are to take place in stages over four days.
The truce could be extended by a day for each additional release of 10 more hostages — an arrangement that could translate into a longer cease-fire. In all, militants from Hamas and other groups kidnapped about 240 people in their Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Israeli leaders have pledged that the war will resume.
“Israel will continue its war on Hamas and we will not stop until we achieve our two main goals, overthrowing the rule of Hamas and returning all the abductees back to us, safe and sound,” Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said Friday as he toured Israel’s ravaged border areas with his counterparts from Portugal and Slovenia.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have made similar pledges.
However, the government is under intense public pressure to bring all hostages home, which might make a resumption of the war exceedingly difficult.
JERUSALEM — Palestinian authorities have released a list of 39 Palestinian prisoners expected to be released on Friday, including 24 women and 15 teenage boys, in exchange for 13 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
The swap is part of a four-day truce in the Israel-Hamas war. The truce began Friday after seven weeks of war.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group, said the 39 detainees from the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem will be delivered to the International Committee of the Red Cross at Israel’s Ofer Prison near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Their release is to take place after 4 p.m. local time (1400 GMT), when Hamas is due to return the 13 Israeli hostages to Israel.
Most of the 15 Palestinian teenagers to be released Friday were arrested over incitement and stone-throwing, as well as the broadly defined charge of “supporting terrorism.”
The 24 women include some convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to yearslong prison terms for attacks against Israeli security forces.
In all, 50 hostages and 150 Palestinian prisoners are to be freed during the four-day truce.
Israel currently holds 7,200 Palestinians charged with or convicted of security offenses, the Prisoners’ Club said.
It said about 2,000 Palestinians were arrested since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that triggered the war.
BEIJING — French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna called Friday for the release of all hostages held in Gaza, including eight French citizens, and a lasting truce between Israel and Hamas.
‘’It is essential that international law is applied there (in Gaza) as elsewhere,’’ Colonna said during a trip to Beijing. ‘’All states have the right to defend themselves, but we must cooperate so that terrorism is contained.’’
She called for a durable truce so that ‘’the wounded can be treated, and humanitarian aid can arrive and ease the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.’’
The eight French hostages in Gaza include three children. The French president, foreign minister and defense minister have traveled to the region in recent weeks to push for their release and a long-term peace.
Forty French citizens were killed in the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, and two French citizens have been killed in attacks on Gaza, according to the Foreign Ministry. France has sent flights and warships to bring humanitarian aid for Gaza.
HATZERIM MILITARY BASE, Israel — Ambulances arrived at Hatzerim military air base in southern Israel on Friday, hours before hostages were expected to arrive after being released from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials said that after arriving at the air base escorted by Israeli soldiers, the released hostages will be flown or driven to five different hospitals across the country for medical treatment, as needed.
Gaza’s ruling Hamas group has pledged to free at least 50 of the about 240 hostages it and other militants took in their deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel. In turn, Israel is to free three Palestinian prisoners for each released hostage. The releases are to take place in stages over the next four days.
JERUSALEM — Israeli forces shot and killed a 12-year-old Palestinian boy in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials said Friday, as violence surges in the territory under the shadow of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
The boy was killed Thursday in the village of Beita near the flashpoint city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, the officials said.
The Israeli military said Palestinians threw stones when soldiers entered the village and that troops responded with live fire. The military said it was looking into the circumstances of the boy’s death.
Since the Israel-Hamas war began seven weeks ago, the West Bank has seen one of the deadliest periods in at least two decades. Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 229 Palestinians, including 52 children and minors under the age of 18, in arrest raids and violent confrontations, according to U.N. figures.
The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel in which about 1,200 people were killed.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Israeli troops fatally shot two Palestinians and wounded 11 others as they headed toward the main combat zone in northern Gaza despite warnings by the Israeli army to stay put.
An Associated Press journalist saw the two bodies and the wounded as they arrived at a hospital in the town of Deir al-Balah in the southern half of Gaza. The injured had been shot in the legs.
Friday’s shooting came hours after the Israeli military warned hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians who sought refuge in southern Gaza not to attempt to return to their homes in the northern half of the territory, the focus of Israel’s ground offensive.
The military had dropped leaflets on southern Gaza saying that returning to northern Gaza is prohibited and dangerous.
Since a four-day truce went into effect Friday morning, hundreds of Palestinians were seen trying to head to northern Gaza.
Witnesses said Israeli troops are opening fire on people trying to head north.
Sofian Abu Amer, who had fled Gaza City, said he decided to risk heading north to check on his home.
“We don’t have enough clothes, food and drinks,” he said. ”The situation is disastrous. It’s better for a person to die.”
Since the early days of the war triggered by the Hamas attack on southern Israel seven weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of people have left their homes in the north at the orders of the Israeli army.
BEIRUT — The leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group said Friday that Israeli soldiers among the 240 hostages held by militant groups in Gaza will only be released in exchange for all the Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Islamic Jihad is reportedly holding about 40 of the hostages who were captured by Hamas and other militant groups during their Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. Over the next four days, 50 hostages are to be released in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners, with both sides releasing women and children first.
In a televised speech on the first day of what is meant to be a four-day truce in the Israel-Hamas war, Islamic Jihad leader Ziad Nakhaleh said that “the enemy’s military prisoners will not be released without the freedom of our prisoners and this is linked to the end of the aggression.” He said that Israel would be forced to “eventually reach a deal of everyone in return for everyone.”
It was not immediately clear how many of the hostages held in Gaza are currently serving in the military and whether the militants also consider reserve soldiers to be military hostages.
Close to 7,000 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel on security charges, including about 1,800 arrested since the start of the war.
JERUSALEM — Israel announced that four tankers with fuel and four tankers with cooking gas entered the Gaza Strip on Friday, the first day of what is meant to be a four-day cease-fire.
Israel has agreed to allow the delivery of 130,000 liters (34,300 gallons) of fuel a day into besieged Gaza for humanitarian needs for the duration of the truce. This would be roughly twice the amount permitted previously, but still only a small portion of Gaza’s daily needs, estimated at more than 1 million liters (264,000 gallons).
For most of the past seven weeks of war, Israel had barred the entry of any fuel to Gaza, claiming it could be used by Hamas for military purposes. United Nations aid agencies pushed back against such claims, saying fuel deliveries were closely supervised and urgently needed to avert a humanitarian catastrophe.
It was not immediately clear if Friday’s deliveries meant the new daily target set by the truce deal had been reached. The announcement was made by COGAT, a body in Israel’s defense ministry responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs.
BANGKOK — Thailand’s foreign minister said Friday morning that he has not yet been able to confirm media reports that 23 Thai workers held hostage in Gaza were set to be released. But, the minister said, his Iranian counterpart, who is serving as an intermediary with Hamas, told him there will be “good news soon.”
Thai Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara said his ministry has been preparing to receive the hostages if and when they are released.
Qatari officials, who have been the main intermediaries in hostage release talks, will have a meeting about the matter, Parnpree said, and by Friday afternoon Thai officials expect to know more developments and hope it will be good news.
The missing workers were among about 30,000 Thais employed mostly in Israel’s agricultural sector. According to the Thai foreign ministry, 39 were killed in the Oct. 7 attacks, and 36 abducted. More than 8,600 workers have been voluntarily repatriated home since the attacks.
JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said Friday it has destroyed stretches of tunnels and a number of tunnel shafts in the area of Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest.
On Wednesday, Israel showed a tunnel and rooms that military officials said were a major Hamas hideout beneath Shifa. Hamas and hospital staff deny Israeli allegations that Shifa was used as a militant command center.
On Thursday, Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Israel mapped out Shifa Hospital and plans to destroy all “terror infrastructure” it has found.
Separately, the military said it continued to strike targets throughout the night leading up to a four-day truce that began Friday morning. It said it “completed its operational preparations according to the combat lines of the pause.”
A temporary truce in the Israel-Hamas war took effect early Friday, setting the stage for the exchange of dozens of hostages held by militants in Gaza for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
The halt in fighting began at 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) and is to last at least four days. During the truce, Gaza’s ruling Hamas group pledged to free at least 50 of the about 240 hostages it and other militants took in their deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel. In turn, Israel is to free three Palestinian prisoners for each released hostage. The releases are to take place in stages over the next four days.
The truce deal was reached in weeks of intense indirect negotiations, with Qatar, the United States and Egypt serving as mediators. If it holds, it would mark the first significant break in fighting since Israel declared war on Hamas seven weeks ago.
About 1,200 people were killed by Hamas attackers in Israel on Oct. 7. Israel responded with a massive air and ground offensive that has devastated large swaths of Gaza and killed at least 13,300 Palestinians.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An agreement for a four-day cease-fire in Gaza and the release of dozens of Hamas-held hostages and Palestinians imprisoned by Israel appeared to have hit a last-minute snag when a senior Israeli official said it would not take effect until Friday, a day later than originally announced.
The diplomatic breakthrough promised some relief for the over 1.7 million Palestinians who have fled their homes under weeks of Israeli bombardment, as well as families in Israel fearful for the fate of their loved ones captured during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war.
Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, announced the delay late Wednesday, without providing a reason. Israeli media reported that some final details were still being worked out.
The Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, which played a key role in mediating with Hamas, said early Thursday that a new time for the agreement to go into force would be announced “in the coming hours.” It was originally set to begin at 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) Thursday. The U.S. and Egypt also helped negotiate the deal.
The agreement had raised hopes of eventually winding down the war, now in its seventh week, which has has leveled vast swaths of Gaza, fueled a surge of violence in the occupied West Bank, and stirred fears of a wider conflagration across the Middle East.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a nationally televised news conference that the war would resume after the truce expires, with the goal of destroying Hamas’ military capabilities, ending its 16-year rule in Gaza and returning all of the estimated 240 captives held in Gaza by Hamas and other groups.
“The war is continuing. We will continue it until we achieve all our goals,” Netanyahu said, adding that he had delivered the same message in a phone call to U.S. President Joe Biden. Washington has provided extensive military and diplomatic support to Israel since the start of the war.
Israeli troops hold much of northern Gaza and say they have dismantled tunnels and much of Hamas’ infrastructure there. Israeli forces on Wednesday revealed what they said was a major Hamas hideout in a tunnel beneath Shifa Hospital. The territory’s largest medical center has been at the heart of a fierce battle of narratives over both sides’ allegedly reckless endangerment of civilians.
Shifa’s director, Mohammed Abu Selmia, was detained by Israeli soldiers, according to Israeli army radio and Al-Jazeera television. There was no immediate comment from the military or Gaza health officials.
Israel meanwhile ordered the full evacuation of the Indonesian Hospital in the north, Dr. Munir al-Boursh, a Health Ministry official inside the facility, told Al-Jazeera. He said hospital officials were trying to organize buses to evacuate some 200 patients, including children with burn injuries. Fighting has raged outside the hospital for days, and hundreds of people have already been evacuated to the south.
Despite the advances in the north, Israeli officials acknowledge that much of Hamas’ infrastructure remains intact. Israel has threatened to launch wider operations in southern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people who fled the north have crammed into overflowing U.N.-run shelters with dwindling food, water and basic supplies.
For Hamas, the cease-fire would provide an opportunity to regroup after weeks of apparently heavy losses. Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar, who is believed to be alive and in hiding in Gaza, is likely to claim the release of Palestinian prisoners as a major achievement and declare victory if the war ends.
Under the truce deal, 50 hostages will be freed in stages, in exchange for the release of what Hamas said would be 150 Palestinian prisoners. Both sides will release women and children first, and Israel said the truce would be extended an extra day for every additional 10 hostages freed by Hamas.
The return of hostages could lift spirits in Israel, where their plight has gripped the country. Families of the hostages have staged mass demonstrations to pressure the government to bring them home.
Qatar said the cease-fire would allow a “larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid” to enter Gaza, including fuel, but it gave no details on actual quantities. Israel cut off all fuel imports at the start of the war, causing a territory-wide blackout and leaving homes and hospitals reliant on generators, which have also steadily been forced to shut down.
Netanyahu said the deal includes a provision for the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the hostages in captivity.
Israel’s Justice Ministry published a list of 300 prisoners eligible to be released, mainly teenagers detained over the past year for rock-throwing and other minor offenses.
The war erupted when several thousand Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking scores of hostages, including babies, women and older adults, as well as Israeli soldiers.
Israel has a long history of agreeing to lopsided prisoner swaps with militant groups, and Hamas is expected to demand a large number of high-profile Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the soldiers.
Weeks of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, followed by a ground invasion, have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. It does not differentiate between civilians and militants, though some two-thirds of the dead have been identified as women and minors.
The ministry said that as of Nov. 11 it had lost the ability to count the dead because of the collapse of large parts of the health system, but that the number has risen sharply since then. Some 2,700 people are missing and believed buried under rubble.
Israel says it has killed thousands of Hamas fighters, though it has presented no evidence for its count.
Three-fourths of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been displaced in the war. Many, if not most, will be unable to return home because of the vast damage and the presence of Israeli troops in the north.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said that more than 1 million Palestinians were seeking shelter in 156 of its facilities in Gaza, where many have been forced by overcrowding to sleep on the streets outside as a cold, rainy winter sets in.
Israel has barred imports to Gaza since the start of the war, except for a trickle of aid entering through Egypt’s Rafah crossing. Humanitarian aid groups operating in Gaza said the truce was too short and the Rafah crossing’s capacity was insufficient to meet urgent needs.
___
Chehayeb reported from Beirut. Associated Press reporter Najib Jobain in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip contributed.
___
Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
JERUSALEM — Vivian Silver, a Canadian-born Israeli activist who devoted her life to seeking peace with the Palestinians, was confirmed killed in Hamas’ Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel.
For 38 days, Silver, who had moved to Israel in the 1970s and made her home in Kibbutz Be’eri, was believed to be among the nearly 240 hostages held in the Gaza Strip. But identification of some of the most badly burned remains has gone slowly, and her family was notified of her death on Monday.
Silver was a dominant figure in several groups that promoted peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as a prominent Israeli human rights group. She also volunteered with a group that drove Gaza cancer patients to Israeli hospitals for medical care.
“On the one hand, she was small and fragile. Very sensitive,” her son Yonatan Zeigen told Israel Radio on Tuesday. “On the other hand, she was a force of nature. She had a giant spirit. She was very assertive. She had very strong core beliefs about the world and life.”
Zeigen said he texted with his mother during the attack. The exchanges started out lighthearted, with Silver maintaining her sense of humor, he said. Suddenly, he said, there was a dramatic downturn when she understood the end had come, and militants stormed her house.
“Her heart would have been broken” by the events of Oct. 7 and its aftermath, Zeigen said. “She worked all her life, you know, to steer us off this course. And in the end, it blew up in her face.”
At least 1,200 people were killed in Hamas attacks on Israel while more than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed so far in the Israeli war in Gaza, now in its 39th day.
“We went through three horrific wars in the space of six years,” Silver said in a 2017 interview with The Associated Press. “At the end of the third one, I said: ‘No more. We each have to do whatever we can to stop the next war. And it’s possible. We must reach a diplomatic agreement.’”
Zeigen said he has now taken on his mother’s baton.
“I feel like I’m in a relay race,” he said. “She has passed something on to me now. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but I think we can’t turn the clock back now. We have to create something new now, something in the direction of what she worked for.”
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back Saturday against growing international calls for a cease-fire, saying Israel’s battle to crush Gaza’s ruling Hamas militants will continue with “full force.”
A cease-fire would be possible only if all 239 hostages held by militants in Gaza are released, Netanyahu said in a televised address.
The Israeli leader also insisted that after the war, now entering its sixth week, Gaza would be demilitarized and Israel would retain security control there. Asked what he meant by security control, Netanyahu said Israeli forces must be able to enter Gaza freely to hunt down militants.
He also rejected the idea that the Palestinian Authority, which currently administers autonomous areas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would at some stage control Gaza. Both positions run counter to post-war scenarios floated by Israel’s closest ally, the United States. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the U.S. opposes an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza and envisions a unified Palestinian government in both Gaza and the West Bank at some stage as a step toward Palestinian statehood.
For now, Netanyahu said, “the war against (Hamas) is advancing with full force, and it has one goal, to win. There is no alternative to victory.”
Pressure was growing on Israel after frantic doctors at Gaza’s largest hospital said the last generator had run out of fuel, causing the death of a premature baby, another child in an incubator and four other patients. Thousands of war-wounded, medical staff and displaced civilians were caught in the fighting.
In recent days, fighting near Shifa and other hospitals in northern Gaza has intensified and supplies have run out. The Israeli military has alleged, without providing evidence, that Hamas has established command posts in and underneath hospitals, using civilians as human shields. Medical staff at Shifa have denied such claims and accused Israel of harming civilians with indiscriminate attacks.
Shifa hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia said the facility lost power Saturday.
“Medical devices stopped. Patients, especially those in intensive care, started to die,” he said by phone, with gunfire and explosions in the background. He said Israeli troops were “shooting at anyone outside or inside the hospital” and prevented movement between buildings.
Israel’s military confirmed clashes outside the hospital, but Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari denied Shifa was under siege. He said troops will assist Sunday in moving babies treated there and said “we are speaking directly and regularly” with hospital staff.
Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told broadcaster Channel 12 that as Israel aims to crush Hamas, taking control of the hospitals would be key but require “a lot of tactical creativity,” without hurting patients, other civilians and Israeli hostages.
Six patients died at Shifa after the generator shut down, including the two children, spokesmen with the Hamas-run Health Ministry said.
The “unbearably desperate situation” at Shifa must stop now, the International Committee of the Red Cross director general, Robert Mardini, said on social media. U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths posted that “there can be no justification for acts of war in health care facilities.”
Elsewhere, the Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli tanks were 20 meters (65 feet) from al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, causing “a state of extreme panic and fear” among the 14,000 displaced people sheltering there.
Israel’s military released footage which it said showed tanks operating in Gaza. The images showed shattered buildings, some on fire, and destroyed streets empty of anyone but troops.
A 57-nation gathering of Muslim and Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia called in their communique for an end to the war in Gaza and the immediate delivery of humanitarian aid. They also called on the International Court of Justice, a U.N. organ, to open an investigation into Israel’s attacks, saying the war “cannot be called self-defense and cannot be justified under any means.”
Netanyahu has said the responsibility for any harm to civilians lies with Hamas, which denied it was preventing people in Gaza City from fleeing.
The spokesman of the Hamas military wing said militants were ambushing Israeli troops and vowed that Israel will face a long battle. The Qassam Brigades spokesman, who goes by Abu Obaida, acknowledged in audio aired on Al-Jazeera that the fight is disproportionate “but it is terrifying the strongest force in the region.”
Israel’s military has said soldiers have encountered hundreds of Hamas fighters in underground facilities, schools, mosques and clinics during the fighting. Israel has said a key goal of the war is to crush Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for 16 years.
Following Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which at least 1,200 people were killed, Israel’s allies have defended the country’s right to protect itself. But now into the second month of war, there are growing differences over how Israel should conduct its fight.
The U.S. has pushed for temporary pauses that would allow for wider distribution of badly needed aid to civilians in the besieged territory where conditions are increasingly dire. However, Israel has only agreed to brief daily periods during which civilians can flee the area of ground combat in northern Gaza and head south on foot along the territory’s main north-south artery.
Since these evacuation windows were first announced a week ago, more than 150,000 civilians have fled the north, according to U.N. monitors. On Saturday, the military announced a new evacuation window, saying civilians could use the central road and a coastal road.
A stream of people fled southward on the main road, some on donkey-drawn carts. One man pushed two children in a wheelbarrow.
“Where to go, and what do they want from us?” said Yehia al-Kafarnah, one fleeing resident.
Palestinian civilians and rights advocates have pushed back against Israel’s portrayal of the southern evacuation zones as “relatively safe.” They note that Israeli bombardment has continued across Gaza, including airstrikes in the south that Israel says target Hamas leaders but that have also killed women and children.
Demonstrations and outrage continued. Police said 300,000 Palestinian supporters marched peacefully in London, the largest such event there since the war started. Right-wing counterprotesters clashed with police.
“Shelling and explosions never stopped,” said Islam Mattar, one of thousands sheltering at Shifa. “Children here are terrified from the constant sound of explosions.”
The Health Ministry told Al Jazeera there were still 1,500 patients at Shifa, along with 1,500 medical personnel and between 15,000 and 20,000 people seeking shelter.
Thousands have fled Shifa and other hospitals that have come under attack, but physicians said it’s impossible for everyone to get out.
“We cannot evacuate ourselves and (leave) these people inside,” a Doctors Without Borders surgeon at Shifa, Mohammed Obeid, was quoted as saying by the organization.
More than 11,070 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed since the war began, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. About 2,700 people have been reported missing and are thought to be possibly trapped or dead under the rubble.
At least 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mainly in the initial Hamas attack, Israeli officials say. The military on Saturday confirmed the deaths of five reserve soldiers; 46 Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the ground offensive began.
Nearly 240 people abducted by Hamas from Israel remain captive.
About 250,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate from communities near Gaza and along the northern border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants have traded fire repeatedly.
“Hezbollah is dragging Lebanon into a possible war,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said after meeting with soldiers stationed along the border.
___
Mroue reported from Beirut. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, Samy Magdy in Cairo and Baraa Anwer in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.
___
Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Israeli warplanes struck a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip early Sunday, killing at least 33 people and wounding dozens, health officials said. The strike came as Israel said it would press on with its offensive to crush the territory’s Hamas rulers, despite U.S. appeals for a pause to get aid to desperate civilians.
The soaring death toll in Gaza has sparked growing international anger, with tens of thousands from Washington to Berlin taking to the streets Saturday to demand an immediate cease-fire.
Israel has rejected the idea of halting its offensive, even for brief humanitarian pauses proposed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his current tour of the region. Instead, it said that the besieged enclave’s Hamas rulers were “encountering the full force” of its troops.
“Anyone in Gaza City is risking their life,” Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said.
Large columns of smoke rose as Israel’s military said it had encircled Gaza City, the initial target of its offensive against Hamas. Gaza’s Health Ministry has said more than 9,400 Palestinians have been killed in the territory in nearly a month of war, and that number is likely to rise as the assault continues.
Early Sunday, airstrikes hit the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 33 people and wounding 42, said Ashraf al-Qidra, the spokesman for the Health Ministry.
He said first responders, aided by residents, were still searching the rubble for dead or possible survivors.
The camp, a built-up residential area, is located in the evacuation zone where Israel’s military had urged Palestinian civilians in Gaza to seek refuge as it focuses its military offensive in the northern areas.
Despite such appeals, Israel has continued its bombardment across Gaza, saying it is targeting Hamas fighters and assets everywhere. It has accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields.
Critics say Israel’s strikes are often disproportionate, considering the large number of women and children killed in such attacks.
Blinken met with Arab foreign ministers in Jordan on Saturday after talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who insisted there could be no temporary cease-fire until all hostages held by Hamas are released.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Arab countries want an immediate cease-fire, saying “the whole region is sinking in a sea of hatred that will define generations to come.”
Blinken, however, said “it is our view now that a cease-fire would simply leave Hamas in place, able to regroup and repeat what it did on Oct. 7,” when the group launched a wide-ranging attack from Gaza into southern Israel, triggering the war.
He said humanitarian pauses can be critical in protecting civilians, getting aid in and getting foreign nationals out, “while still enabling Israel to achieve its objective, the defeat of Hamas.”
Senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan told reporters in Beirut that Blinken “should stop the aggression and should not come up with ideas that cannot be implemented.” The spokesman of the Hamas military wing, who goes by Abu Obeida, said in a speech that fighters had destroyed 24 Israeli vehicles and inflicted casualties in the past two days.
Egyptian officials said they and Qatar were proposing humanitarian pauses for six to 12 hours daily to allow aid in and casualties to be evacuated. They were also asking for Israel to release a number of women and elderly prisoners in exchange for hostages, suggestions Israel seemed unlikely to accept. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press on the discussions.
Israel has repeatedly demanded that northern Gaza’s 1.1 million residents flee south, and on Saturday it offered a three-hour window for residents to do so. An Associated Press journalist on the road, however, saw nobody coming.
Israel asserted that Hamas “exploited” the window to move south and attack its forces. There was no immediate Hamas comment on that claim, which was impossible to verify. Israeli planes dropped leaflets urging people to head south during another window on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Some Palestinians said they didn’t flee because they feared Israeli bombardment.
“We don’t trust them,” said Mohamed Abed, who sheltered with his wife and children on the grounds of al-Shifa hospital, one of thousands of Palestinians seeking safety at medical centers in the north.
Swaths of residential neighborhoods in northern Gaza have been leveled in airstrikes. U.N. monitors say more than half of northern Gaza’s remaining residents, estimated at around 300,000, are sheltering in U.N.-run facilities. But deadly Israeli strikes have also repeatedly hit and damaged those shelters. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees has said it has lost contact with many in the north.
An Israeli airstrike overnight struck a water well in Tal al-Zatar in northern Gaza, cutting off water for tens of thousands of people in the area, the Hamas-run municipality in the town of Beit Lahia said in a statement early Sunday.
The U.N. said about 1.5 million people in Gaza, or 70% of the population, have fled their homes. Food, water and the fuel needed for generators that power hospitals and other facilities is running out.
The war has stoked tensions across the region, with Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group repeatedly trading fire along the border. In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, at least two Palestinians were shot dead during an Israeli arrest raid in Abu Dis, just outside of Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. At least 150 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the war, mainly during violent protests and gunbattles during arrest raids.
Thousands of Israelis protested outside Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem, urging him to resign and calling for the return of roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas. Netanyahu has refused to take responsibility for the Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that killed more than 1,400 people.
“I find it difficult to understand why trucks with humanitarian aid are going to monsters,” said Ella Ben Ami, whose parents were abducted. She called for aid to be halted until the hostages are released.
Air raid sirens sounded Saturday evening in southern Israel as Hamas launched rockets into Ashkelon. Rocket fire has continued in the area throughout the conflict, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes.
Among the Palestinians killed in Gaza are more than 3,900 Palestinian children, the Gaza Health Ministry said, without providing a breakdown of civilians and fighters.
The Israeli military said four more soldiers have died during the Gaza ground operation, bringing the confirmed death toll to 28.
___
Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Amman, Jordan contributed to this report.
___
Full AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
JERUSALEM — The gas-rich nation of Qatar has become a key intermediary over the fate of more than 200 hostages held by Hamas militants after their unprecedented attack on Israel, once again putting the small Arabian Peninsula country in the spotlight.
The negotiations have also thrust Qatar into a delicate international balancing act as it maintains a relationship with those viewed as militant groups by the West while trying to preserve its close security ties with the United States.
Under arrangements stemming from past Hamas cease-fire understandings with Israel, the gas-rich emirate of Qatar has paid the salaries of civil servants in the Gaza Strip, provided direct cash transfers to poor families and offered other kinds of humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.
Qatar has also hosted Hamas’ political office in its capital of Doha for over a decade. Among officials based there is Khaled Mashaal, an exiled Hamas member who survived a 1997 Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan that threatened to derail that country’s peace deal with Israel. Also there is Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ supreme leader.
The U.S. sanctioned Mashaal in 2003 for being “responsible for supervising assassination operations, bombings and the killing of Israeli settlers.” Washington sanctioned Haniyeh in 2018, saying he had “close links with Hamas’ military wing and has been a proponent of armed struggle, including against civilians.”
Mashaal, in an interview with Sky News this week, said hostages taken during Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 could be released if Israel stops its airstrikes — something incredibly unlikely as Israel prepares for a ground offensive inside the Gaza Strip.
More than 200 people, including foreigners, were believed captured by Hamas during the incursion and taken into Gaza. Four of those have been released, a mother and daughter on Friday and two more on Monday.
“Let them stop this aggression and you will find the mediators like Qatar and Egypt and some Arab countries and others will find a way to have them released and we’ll send them to their homes,” Mashaal said of the hostages.
Hosting the Hamas leaders has brought scrutiny to Qatar, both in the past and since the attack over two weeks ago that killed more than 1,400 people in Israel.
However, the Biden administration has repeatedly praised Qatar for its efforts in working to free the hostages and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Doha during his recent shuttle diplomacy trip in the region.
“Qatar is a longtime partner of ours who is responding to our request, because I think they believe that innocent civilians ought to be freed,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Monday.
Meanwhile, Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, channeled the wider anger in the Arab world over Israel’s unrelenting airstrikes and siege of the Gaza Strip after the Oct. 7 attack. The Hamas-controlled Health Ministry says the strikes have killed over 5,000 Palestinians so far.
During Qatar’s hosting of the FIFA World Cup last year, Palestinian flags were prominently displayed and Israeli journalists sometimes harassed.
“It is untenable for Israel to be given an unconditional green light and free license to kill, nor it is tenable to continue ignoring the reality of occupation, siege and settlement,” Sheikh Tamim said on Tuesday in a speech to the country’s Shura Council, an advisory and legislative body.
He slammed Israel’s siege, saying that it “should not be allowed in our time” to use as weapons the cutting off of water and preventing medicine and food supplies to an entire population.
Qatar, a peninsula sticking out like a thumb into the Persian Gulf with a small population and military, has always looked warily at its larger neighbors Saudi Arabia and Iran. It faced a yearslong boycott by four Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, over a political dispute, which Kuwait’s ruler at the time warned could have sparked a war.
It also bore withering criticism from the U.S. and others over its pan-Arab satellite news network Al Jazeera. It aired statements from the late al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden and has been providing nonstop coverage of the toll of Israel’s punishing airstrikes in this war with Hamas, including images of the dead and dying that have fueled demonstrations across the Middle East and wider world.
But those concerns about larger powers have seen Qatar balance the risks through its diplomacy and hosting of the forward headquarters of the U.S. military’s Central Command at its sprawling Al-Udeid Air Base. The U.S. considers Qatar as a major non-NATO ally and Doha has widening defense trade and security cooperation with America, including priority delivery for certain military sales.
The Al-Udeid base served as a key node in America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, while Qatar also hosted the Taliban officials with whom Washington earlier negotiated to end the longest U.S. war.
But Qatar’s negotiations have led to headaches in the past.
Most recently, Qatar agreed to have just under $6 billion in Iranian assets once frozen in South Korea transferred to Doha as part of a September prisoner swap between Tehran and the U.S. After the Hamas attack, Qatar and the U.S. agreed not to act on any request from Tehran to access those funds for humanitarian goods as initially planned — at least for now.
That enraged sanctions-choked Iran and left Qatar “walking the tightrope of international relations,” said David B. Roberts, who has long studied Qatar as an associate professor at King’s College London and recently published the book “Security Politics in the Gulf Monarchies.”
“The reality is it is quite straight forward that so many senior government people in Israel and America want Qatar to have this role and … Qatar ultimately will be seen in a broadly positive light in trying to free these hostages,” Roberts said.
“If you do want this unique spot,” he added, “then you’re not signing yourself up for an easy life.”
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
Israeli military says 199 hostages being held in Gaza, higher than previous estimates
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
JERUSALEM — In the hours after Hamas blew through Israel’s heavily fortified separation fence and crossed into the country from Gaza, Ahal Besorai tried desperately to reach his sister. There was no answer.
Soon after, he learned from witnesses that militants had seized her, her husband and their teenage son and daughter, along with dozens of others. Now, aching uncertainty over their fate has left Besorai and scores of other Israelis in limbo.
“Should I cry because they are dead already? Should I be happy because maybe they are captured but still alive?” said Besorai, a life coach and resort owner who lives in the Philippines and grew up on Kibbutz Be’eri. “I pray to God every day that she will be found alive with her family and we can all be reunited.”
As Israel strikes back with missile attacks on targets in Gaza, the families grapple with the knowledge that it could come at the cost of their loved ones’ lives. Hamas has warned it will kill one of the 130 hostages every time Israel’s military bombs civilian targets in Gaza without warning.
Eli Elbag said he woke Saturday to text messages from his daughter, Liri, 18, who’d just began her military training as an Army lookout at the Gaza border. Militants were shooting at her, she wrote. Minutes later, the messages stopped. By nightfall, a video circulated by Hamas showed her crowded into an Israeli military truck overtaken by militants. The face of a hostage next to Liri was marred and bloodied.
“We are watching television constantly looking for a sign of her,” Elbag said. “We think about her all the time. All the time wondering if they’re take caring of her, if they’re feeding her, how she’s feeling and what she’s feeling.”
For Israel, locating hostages in Gaza may prove difficult. Although the strip is tiny, subject to constant aerial surveillance and surrounded by Israeli ground and naval forces, the territory just over an hour from Tel Aviv remains somewhat opaque to Israeli intelligence agencies.
Militants posted video of the hostages, and families were left in agony wondering about their fate.
Yosi Shnaider has wrestled with worry since his family members were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, just over a mile from the Gaza fenceline. He saw video of his cousin and her two young boys, held hostage.
“It’s like an unbelievable bad movie, like a nightmare,” Shnaider said Monday. “I just need information on if they are alive,” he added.
Also missing, his aunt who requires medicine to treat her diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. Since the family found out they were taken hostage, the woman’s sister has been so mortified that she is “like a zombie, alive and dead at the same time” said Shnaider, a real estate agent in the Israeli city of Holon.
Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, said the country is committed the bringing the hostages home and issued a warning to Hamas, which controls Gaza.
“We demand Hamas not to harm any of the hostages,” he said. “This war crime will not be forgiven.”
Hamas has also said it seeks the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails — some 4,500 detainees, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem — in exchange for the Israeli captives.
Uncertainty also weighs heavily on families who still do not know whether their relatives have been killed, taken into Hamas captivity, or have escaped and are on the run. Tomer Neumann, whose cousin was attending a music festival near the Gaza border and has since vanished, hopes it’s the last of the three options.
The cousin, Rotem Neumann, who is 25 and a Portuguese citizen, called her parents from the festival when she heard rocket fire, he said. She piled into a car with friends, witnesses said, but fled when they encountered trucks filled with militants. Later, her phone was found near a concrete shelter.
“All we have is bits and pieces of information,” said Neumann, who lives in Bat Yam, a city just south of Tel Aviv.
“What now is on my mind is not war and is not bombing,” he said. “All we want is to know where Rotem is and to know what happened to her and we want peace.”
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
ATLANTA — J. Edgar Hoover became the federal government’s top cop. Ellis Island was curtailed as a portal for immigrants to the United States. France hosted the first Winter Olympics. And a baby in rural Georgia became the first future American president born in a hospital.
The year was 1924, and that tiny fellow in Plains was James Earl Carter Jr., known as “Jimmy” from the start.
The 39th president was celebrated Saturday at his presidential library and museum ahead of his 99th birthday on Sunday. The party was moved up a day to ensure it wouldn’t be canceled by a potential federal government shutdown that Congress narrowly averted Saturday evening with a deal sent to President Joe Biden for his signature.
“I think of him as a man who did so much to help low-income people and minorities–and I was both growing up,” said Marcia Rose, who brought her grandchildren from suburban Marietta to the Carter Presidential Center near downtown Atlanta.
A native of Buffalo, New York, Rose said she is not old enough to have voted for Carter, a Democrat, when he won in 1976 or when he lost to Republican Ronald Reagan four years later. “But I’m old enough to remember his impact,” she said. “I wanted to be here to honor him and for us to be part of that history.”
Rose joined a few thousand well-wishers who wrote birthday cards that will be taken to Carter’s home in Plains. He has been in hospice care since February, spending time his wife, Rosalynn, who is 96 and suffering from dementia, and other family members. Carter is the longest-lived U.S. president ever. Rosalynn Carter trails only Bess Truman, who died at 97, as the longest-lived first lady.
Attendees on Saturday saw video tributes to Jimmy Carter from celebrities and competed in rounds of trivia that highlighted underappreciated details about his life and how much the world has changed since it began. A discounted 99-cent ticket allowed them museum access, which includes a replica of the Oval Office as it appeared during Carter’s 1977-81 White House term. And those who stood in line early enough got birthday cake decorated in green, the color Carter chose for his presidential campaign materials in 1975 to reflect his environmental priorities.
For many attendees, the occasion was another step in the evolution of how Carter is remembered.
“Growing up in Texas, our history classes talked about him mostly as a failure, a weak figure, especially militarily and on foreign affairs,” said Zach K, an Atlanta banker born after Carter’s presidency.
Marlene Salgado is now a public high school history teacher. But as a student herself, “all I remember learning about him was the ‘malaise speech’ on the energy crisis and the hostages in Iran.”
Now, the pair is reading together a comprehensive Carter biography, “His Very Best” by Jonathan Alter, which is among several recent books and documentaries that reassess Carter as more than a failed president who rehabilitated himself as a global humanitarian through his work at The Carter Center.
Salgado noted that it was Carter who secured the release of American hostages held in Tehran from late 1979 through Inauguration Day 1981.
“Reagan gets the credit from most people,” she said. Indeed, Carter worked for the hostages’ freedom even after Reagan’s Election Day landslide. Carter and his administration secured a deal in the final days of his presidency, but Tehran staged the actual release hours after Reagan was sworn in. Reagan sent Carter to greet the hostages in Europe.
“The details get lost,” Zach K said. “I think his focus on diplomacy and peace should be admired. We need more of that now.”
Salgado said she teaches from Carter’s negotiations with Israel’s Anwar Sadat and Egypt’s Menachem Begin on the Camp David Accords. She called it “an important peace” of understanding the modern political landscape of the Middle East.
Ken Driggs, who voted for Carter, said the former president has been vindicated on many matters that helped lead to his defeat.
“The Panama Canal decision was so unpopular,” he said, referring to Carter’s treaty that ultimately turned over control of the waterway in Central America. “But it was the right thing to do at the time” for stability in a volatile region, “and that’s the accepted reality now.”
Driggs first met Carter as a candidate for president in 1976 because of his job at the time as an aide to the speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.
“I remember him being very informed, very detailed on policy matters,” Driggs said.
Florida was a consequential state for Carter. In the 1976 primary there, he defeated Alabama Gov. George Wallace, a former segregationist and perhaps Carter’s most significant remaining threat for the Democratic nomination. In the general election, Florida was part of Carter’s sweep of the South from North Carolina to Texas, a swath of electoral votes that was the difference in his contest against Republican incumbent Gerald Ford.
Driggs said Carter’s political acumen is sometimes overlooked because once he was president, he approached decisions on the merits, often to his peril. Driggs acknowledged that inflation and interest rate spikes were an albatross for Carter, just as they have been for Biden ahead of his 2024 reelection campaign. But Driggs noted that Carter stayed out of the way as his appointee as Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Voelker, raised rates to combat rising prices.
“History,” Driggs said, “is already starting to be kinder to President Carter than voters were.”
Festivities at the Carter Library & Museum, including 99-cent admission, were expected to continue Sunday after the spending deal to keep the government open. Regardless of any shutdown, events will include a naturalization ceremony at The Carter Center, which is not a federal facility, recognizing 99 new U.S. citizens. The Carter family planned to celebrate privately in Plains.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuador’s fragile security situation was underscored Thursday by a series of car bombings and the hostage-taking of more than 50 law enforcement officers inside various prisons, just weeks after the country was shaken by the assassination of a presidential candidate.
Ecuador’s National Police reported no injuries resulting from the four explosions in Quito, the capital, and in a province that borders Peru, while Interior Minister Juan Zapata said none of the law enforcement officers taken hostage in six different prisons had been injured.
Authorities said the brazen actions were the response of criminal groups to the relocation of various inmates and other measures taken by the country’s corrections system. The crimes happened three weeks after the slaying of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
The corrections system, known as the National Service for Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty, in recent years lost control of large prisons, which have been the site of violent riots resulting in dozens of deaths. It has taken to transferring inmates to manage gang-related disputes.
In Quito, the first bomb went off Wednesday night in an area where an office of the country’s corrections system was previously located. The second explosion in the capital happened early Thursday outside the agency’s current location.
Ecuador National Police Gen. Pablo Ramírez, the national director of anti-drug investigations, told reporters on Thursday that police found gas cylinders, fuel, fuses and blocks of dynamite among the debris of the crime scenes in Quito, where the first vehicle to explode was a small car and the second was a pickup truck.
Authorities said gas tanks were used in the explosions in the El Oro communities of Casacay and Bella India.
The fire department in the city of Cuenca, where one of the prisons in which law enforcement officers are being held hostage is located, reported that an explosive device went off Thursday night. The department did not provide additional details beyond saying the explosion damaged a car.
Zapata said seven of prison hostages are police officers and the rest are prison guards. In a video shared on social media, which Zapata identified as authentic, a police officer who identifies himself as Lt. Alonso Quintana asks authorities “not to make decisions that violate the rights of persons deprived of their liberty.” He can be seen surrounded by a group of police and corrections officers and says that about 30 people are being held by the inmates.
Ecuadorian authorities attribute the country’s spike in violence over the past three years to a power vacuum triggered by the killing in 2020 of Jorge Zambrano, alias “Rasquiña” or “JL,” the leader of the local Los Choneros gang. Members carry out contract killings, run extortion operations, move and sell drugs, and rule prisons.
Los Choneros and similar groups linked to Mexican and Colombian cartels are fighting over drug-trafficking routes and control of territory, including within detention facilities, where at least 400 inmates have died since 2021.
Villavicencio, the presidential candidate, had a famously tough stance on organized crime and corruption. He was killed Aug. 9 at the end of a political rally in Quito despite having a security detail that included police and bodyguards.
He had accused Los Choneros and its imprisoned current leader Adolfo Macías, alias “Fito,” whom he linked to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, of threatening him and his campaign team days before the assassination.
Ecuador’s Security Secretary, Wagner Bravo, told FMundo radio station that six prisoners who were relocated may have been involved in Villavicencio’s slaying.
The mayor of Quito, Pabel Muñoz, told the Teleamazonas television station that he was hoping “for justice to act quickly, honestly and forcefully.”
“We are not going to give up. May peace, calm and security prevail among the citizens,” Muñoz said.
The country’s National Police tallied 3,568 violent deaths in the first six months of this year, far more than the 2,042 reported during the same period in 2022. That year ended with 4,600 violent deaths, the country’s highest in history and double the total in 2021.
The port city of Guayaquil has been the epicenter of violence, but Esmeraldas, a Pacific coastal city, is also considered one of the country’s most dangerous. There, six government vehicles were set on fire earlier this week, according to authorities.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
ROSEVILLE, Calif. — The suspect in a Northern California shooting last week was wearing body-armor vest when he took two hostages in a public park, killing one, wounding the other and opening fire at California Highway Patrol officers, authorities said.
The CHP officers approached suspect Eric Abril on April 6 near Mahany Park in Roseville, northeast of Sacramento, authorities said. He was wanted for questioning in connection with a freeway shooting.
But the situation turned violent. The officers confronted Abril — in a park where families played nearby at baseball fields and children attended camp — and he took two hostages in response and opened fire, prompting a gun battle that became deadly, authorities said.
Investigators are “confident” that Abril fatally shot James MacEgan and wounded his wife, Patricia MacEgan, according to Roseville police and court documents filed by the Placer County District Attorney’s Office.
The criminal complaint filed against Abril says Officer Matthew Hiatt was also wounded in the shooting, The Sacramento Bee reported.
The officers had search warrants for Abril’s home and vehicle, but not an arrest warrant to take him into custody. Why they approached him in such a public area, despite a lengthy criminal record, has not been made public and Officer Ricardo Ortiz, a CHP spokesperson, declined to release additional details about the situation on Saturday.
Prosecutors say Abril had a 10 mm handgun in his possession during the confrontation last week and was wearing the body-armor vest when the officers approached him, according to The Sacramento Bee. The Placer County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to The Associated Press’ request for comment.
Abril is charged with murder, aggravated kidnapping causing bodily harm, attempted murder of a peace officer and of being a convicted felon in possession of a gun, the newspaper reported.
Abril remains in jail without the opportunity to post bail and his arraignment was postponed to Tuesday. It was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
Abril fired 15 to 20 rounds at the CHP officers and the MacEgans during the shootout, according to Roseville police. CHP officers fired 15 to 25 rounds and Roseville officers shot six bullets in response.
Abril was struck once in his left arm but it was not clear whose bullet hit him, police said.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
ROSEVILLE, Calif. — A man fleeing police in Northern California took two hostages at a public park on Thursday, killing one of them and wounding a California Highway Patrol officer before surrendering, authorities said.
The events played out in Roseville, a city of about 150,000 northeast of Sacramento, in the early afternoon as families played at nearby baseball fields and children attended camp.
The California Highway Patrol officer was in stable condition at the hospital. The names of the two people taken hostage, including the one who died, were not released. The condition of the second hostage was unknown. Both were adults.
The incident unfolded when highway patrol officers were looking to serve the man a warrant, prompting him to shoot at and wound an officer. The Roseville Police Department received a radio call around 12:30 p.m. alerting them an officer had been shot, Capt. Kelby Newton said. When they arrived, the suspect was seen carrying a gun and running. He then grabbed two civilians in the park and held them hostage, shooting both, Newton said.
The names of the suspect and victims were not released. Newton said he didn’t know what prompted the warrant.
Victor Michael was at batting practice with his child at Mahany Park when he saw what he thought was kids playing paintball. But then he heard police tell someone to stop and “get down.” Then, gunfire.
“I can’t tell you who shot first, I just know that I saw a suspect look back and the volley of fire just went off. It was crazy,” Michael said. “I just told my kid and everybody to get down.”
Michael said he heard between 20 and 30 gunshots in all. He said he and his child took refuge behind the tires of his truck.
The sprawling park tucked into a quiet suburb of Sacramento includes a sports complex, public library, aquatics center and nature trails. The fitness center and library were temporarily locked down, and students attending camps were taken to a nearby school to be reunited with their families.
Roseville is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Sacramento.
___
Dazio reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Adam Beam in Sacramento, California, and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
Several members of the crew on a Liberia-flagged tanker that that was boarded by pirates earlier this month in West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea, are being held hostages
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Several members of the 16-man crew on a Liberia-flagged tanker are being held hostage by pirates who boarded the ship in West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea last week, the Danish shipper that owns the vessel said Friday.
Pirates boarded the Monjasa Reformer southwest of Port Pointe-Noire, Congo, on March 25 and five days later, the French Navy that was patrolling the area, found the ship off the small island nation of Sao Tomé and Principe north of where it had been attacked.
In a statement, company spokesman Thorstein Andreasen said that “the pirates had abandoned the vessel and brought a part of the crew members with them.” It did not say how many had been kidnapped or how they were taken. The online shipping magazine Trade Winds said it was three crew members.
After the pirates had boarded the tanker, the crew sought refuge in a citadel — a safe area on the ship — in line with the onboard anti-piracy emergency protocol. However, the pirates somehow managed to take some of them hostage. The nationalities of the crew members has not been announced, nor were details given as to where they are being held or whether any were injured.
Andreasen was not available for further details.
In the statement, he said that the crew members who were not taken hostage “are all in good health and safely located in a secure environment and receiving proper attention following these dreadful events.”
The Gulf of Guinea is the world’s most dangerous spot for attacks on ships. In June, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution strongly condemning piracy, armed robbery and hostage-taking in the area. This hijacking took place further south in an area that is not typically attacked by pirates.
Andreasen said that there is no damage reported to the ship or its cargo.
The Monjasa Reformer is used in West Africa as part of Monjasa’s global marine fuels operations and was carrying marine gas oil, very low sulphur fuel oil and high sulphur fuel oil products on board, the shipper said.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
Federal prosecutors say two men have been convicted of helping Somali pirates who kidnapped a U.S. journalist for ransom and held him for 2 1/2 years
NEW YORK — Two men have been convicted of helping Somali pirates who kidnapped a U.S. journalist for ransom and held him for 2 1/2 years, prosecutors said.
Mohamed Tahlil Mohamed and Abdi Yusuf Hassan were convicted by a federal court jury in New York on Feb. 24 of hostage-taking, conspiracy, providing material support for acts of terrorism and other crimes that carry potential life sentences.
Michael Scott Moore, a German-American journalist, was abducted in January 2012 in Galkayo, Somalia, 400 miles (643.7 kilometers) northeast of the capital of Mogadishu. He was working as a freelancer for the German publication Spiegel Online and researching a book about piracy.
The kidnappers demanded $20 million in ransom and at one point released a video showing Moore surrounded by masked kidnappers who pointed a machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade at him.
Moore was freed in September 2014. Moore has said his family raised $1.6 million for his release.
“Tahlil, a Somali Army officer, left his post to take command of the pirates holding Moore captive and obtained the machine guns and grenade launchers used to threaten and hold Moore,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “Hassan, the Minister of Interior and Security for the province in Somalia where Moore was held hostage, abused his government position and led the pirates’ efforts to extort a massive ransom from Moore’s mother.”
Hassan, who was born in Mogadishu, is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He was arrested in Minneapolis in 2019 and charged with federal crimes.
Details of Tahlil’s arrest haven’t been disclosed but he was jailed in New York City in 2018.
In a 2018 book Moore wrote about his captivity, he said that Tahlil got in touch with him from Somalia by Facebook two months after the journalist’s release and included a photograph. Moore recognized him as the “”boss” of his guards.
The men began a correspondence.
“I hope u are fine,” Tahlil said, according to the book. “The pirates who held u hostage killed each other over group vendetta and money issues.”
According to the criminal complaint reported by the New York Times, that was consistent with reports that some pirates were killed in a dispute over division of Moore’s ransom.
Hassan and Tahlil were scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 6.
Attorneys for the two men were emailed for comment by The Associated Press after hours on Monday but the messages weren’t immediately returned.
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
PLAINS, Ga. — Exaggeration, misinformation and myth have always infected politics – even before social media took it to the extreme.
Misconceptions take especially strong hold where U.S. presidents are concerned: sometimes their advantage, sometimes not. Some claims relate to policy, others to their biographies and personal traits.
That George Washington story about the cherry tree? Apocryphal. And his teeth weren’t actually made of wood. (At least some of his “false teeth” were taken from the mouths of enslaved persons.) There’s no evidence that William Howard Taft ever got stuck in a bathtub. (He was the heaviest president on record, though, at more than 300 pounds.)
James Monroe wasn’t the principal force behind the Monroe Doctrine. (That would be his secretary of state and future president John Quincy Adams.) And Richard Nixon wasn’t actually impeached. (He resigned before the full House could vote on the matter.)
As former President Jimmy Carter receives home hospice care at the age of 98, misconceptions about his life are coming into focus as well. Most are rooted in some truth but need more context:
MISCONCEPTION: Ronald Reagan freed the American hostages in Iran.
MORE ACCURATE: Carter and his administration negotiated their release, but Tehran wouldn’t free them until after Reagan’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981.
THE DETAILS: Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979. They would hold 52 U.S. citizens for 444 days. From the outset, Carter resolved not to start a shooting war in response. He authorized a rescue mission in the spring of 1980, but mechanical problems forced the helicopter operation to abort and one crashed, killing eight servicemen.
Carter, a Democrat, continued diplomatic efforts but suffered politically amid intense news coverage of the crisis. He lost in a Nov. 4 landslide to the Republican Reagan. A final round of negotiations began in Algeria after. The U.S. delegation was led by Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Iradays n and the U.S. finalized terms for the hostages’ release on Carter’s final full day in office, Jan. 19, 1981, and Carter remained in the Oval Office the next morning, Inauguration Day, seeing through details. They were released shortly after Reagan was sworn in. Reagan then sent Carter to West Germany to greet the freed Americans.
MISCONCEPTION: Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter founded Habitat for Humanity.
MORE ACCURATE: The Carters have been Habitat’s most famous endorsers and volunteers. But the organization was established by wealthy businessman Millard Fuller and his wife, Linda, as an outgrowth a Georgia commune where the spent time in the 1960s.
THE DETAILS: Habitat grew out of the housing ministry of Koinonia Farm, a multiracial commune in Carter’s home county that was ostracized in the days of Jim Crow segregation. In 1965, Fuller came to the farm for what he’d later describe as spiritual renewal.
Carter biographer Jonathan Alter details that Martin Luther King Jr. befriended Koinonia’s white founder, Clarence Jordan, during the civil rights movement. But the non-profit organization was accused in Georgia courts of being a communist front, and King’s inner circle considered it radical. Jordan was beaten on the streets of Americus, a short distance from Plains. Against this backdrop, Alter writes, Jimmy Carter kept his distance. Jordan’s nephew, Hamilton Jordan, would become Carter’s White House chief of staff. Alter records the younger Jordan, who died in 2008, saying his uncle viewed Carter as “just a politician.”
Koinonia’s local housing programs were formalized as the “Fund for Humanity” in the late 1960s. Carter was running for governor then. The Fullers established Habitat for Humanity in 1976, the year Carter won the presidency. The Carters’ first volunteer Habitat build was in New York City in 1984. That became the annual Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project, which would eventually build, renovate or repair 4,400 homes in 14 countries. The Carters worked alongside more than 104,000 volunteers, by The Carter Center’s count.
MISCONEPTION: Jimmy Carter was an unabashed liberal.
MORE ACCURATE: Carter was a moderate politician, campaigned deliberately and, once in office, pursued policies that don’t fit easily under one label.
THE DETAILS: Carter sought the presidency in 1976 as an outsider in a party largely controlled in Washington by New Deal liberals and Kennedy loyalists. Carter was a “Southern Democrat” who never gelled with Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, who challenged him in a damaging 1980 primary. Carter had described himself in Georgia as both “conservative” and “progressive,” depending on the issue, the audience and the campaign. Sometimes he even used those words together.
He was a good-government policy wonk who spent considerable political capital reorganizing government in Atlanta and then Washington. He pushed windfall taxes on big oil (unsuccessfully) but frustrated fellow Democrats on spending priorities and added little to the national debt compared to all his successors (less than $300 billion in four years). The deregulatory era often associated with Reagan actually began with Carter loosening regulations on airlines, trains and trucking.
Carter advocated for a national health program but his top health care bill failed because it didn’t go far enough for party liberals, including Kennedy. Carter grew more openly progressive as a former president, voting for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primaries. But he also warned his party ahead of 2020 not to move too far left if they hoped to defeat then-President Donald Trump.
MISCONCEPTION: Jimmy Carter is married to “RAHZ-lyn,” and he was there when she was born.
MORE ACCURATE: It’s “ROSE-lyn,” and he met her as a newborn – but not immediately.
THE DETAILS: Eleanor Rosalynn (again, “ROSE-lyn”) Smith was born in Plains on Aug. 18, 1927. The nurse who delivered her was Lillian Carter, the future president’s mother. But Jimmy Carter, who was born Oct. 1, 1924, was back on the family farm in nearby Archery, outside Plains. “Miss Lillian” brought her her son back to the Smiths’ house a few days later to see baby Rosalynn, who is now 95.
As for the pronunciation, remember the flower. The former president’s affectionate name for her might help, too. He often calls her “Rosie.”
[ad_2]
[ad_1]
WASHINGTON — Ever the outsider, Jimmy Carter served a turbulent term in the White House. His presidency was beset by soaring interest and inflation rates, gasoline pump lines and the Iran hostage crisis that eventually led to his re-election defeat.
But he rose to even greater heights with his post-presidential career, devoting another four decades to working as an international envoy of peacemaking and democracy. James Earl Carter Jr., a peanut farmer who became the 39th president of the United States, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
—-
EDITOR’S NOTE — Walter Mears, an AP special correspondent who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 1976 presidential campaign, died in 2022. He wrote this appreciation of Carter, who entered hospice care on Feb. 18.
—-
Trounced by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, Carter was, at 56, a politician with only a past and “a potentially empty life” ahead. Then, in 1982, he organized the Carter Center in Atlanta.
It kept him traveling, negotiating, leading election observation teams and speaking out, often to the discomfort or even resentment of the government he’d once led. Carter’s Nobel citation honored “his decades of untiring effort” to resolve conflicts, promote democracy and foster economic development.
The man who conceded that some considered him “a failed president” made himself the most active and internationally engaged of ex-presidents. “My role as a former president is probably superior to that of other presidents,” he said in a 2010 television interview.
When he ran for president as a one-term former Georgia governor, Carter was so improbable a candidate that he said his mother asked him, “President of what?”
To answer that and his all-but-invisible name recognition rating, he started campaigning early. Carter covered some 50,000 campaign miles, his garment bag draped over his shoulder.
He won the Democratic nomination and challenged President Gerald Ford, Nixon’s appointed vice president.
Ford had pardoned Nixon for any Watergate crimes. In the aftermath of Watergate, Carter was the anti-Richard Nixon figure. “I will never lie to you,” he told voters. But Carter was elected by only 2 percentage points.
The newly elected president and wife Rosalynn shunned the limousine and walked from the Capitol to the White House after his inauguration and tried to drop some of the pomp surrounding the presidency. But his solo style and unintended snubs left him short of political allies when he’d need their help.
For all that, Carter’s term left landmarks, such as the Israel-Egypt peace accord he engineered in personal negotiations at Camp David in 1978.
He won the beginnings of an energy conservation policy. He gained ratification of the treaties that yielded U.S. control of the Panama Canal. He opened full diplomatic relations with China. The departments of energy and education were created. But his administration struggled and Carter shook up his Cabinet amid “a crisis of confidence.”
And then things got worse.
On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian demonstrators invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, incited by their ayatollah to retaliate for the exiled former shah’s admission into the United States for medical treatment. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage for more than a year. Carter tried to negotiate, and when that didn’t work, he ordered the military rescue attempt that failed disastrously in the desert in April 1980.
Eight Americans were killed in the attempt. It was Carter’s bleakest hour.
The hostage crisis shadowed and essentially crippled Carter’s re-election campaign. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy challenged him in the Democratic primaries.
After that, it was all uphill against Reagan. Carter carried only six states to Reagan’s 44.
Minutes after Reagan was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 1981, the hostages were freed after 444 days in captivity. Carter’s first major act as an ex-president was as Reagan’s special envoy to welcome the freed hostages in Wiesbaden, Germany, the next day.
Jimmy Carter, the only president inaugurated by nickname, was born in tiny Plains, Georgia, where he arranged to be buried. The father for whom he was named was in the peanut business, with a farm and warehouse. His father, brother, Billy, and two sisters all died of pancreatic cancer.
Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946, the year he married Rosalynn Smith, also of Plains. They had three sons and a daughter, Amy, the youngest child, who went with them to the White House.
Carter spent nearly seven years in the Navy’s nuclear submarine force, resigning to take over the family business after his father died in 1953. His first political stop was in the Georgia State Senate. A Democratic moderate with a New South image, Carter was elected governor of Georgia in 1970, succeeding segregationist Lester Maddox and gaining his first national note when he declared in his inauguration address “the time for racial discrimination is over.”
After he lost his presidential re-election bid, a shaken Carter retreated to Plains, to “an altogether new, unwanted” chapter in his life.
He began the Carter Center which, he said later, offered “superior opportunities to do good.” He and Rosalynn also worked with Habitat for Humanity, building housing for the poor in the United States and abroad.
Carter was a tireless peacemaker who bypassed usual diplomatic channels and, as he said in 1994, went “where others are not treading” — places such as Ethiopia, Liberia and North Korea, where he secured the release of an American who had been imprisoned after wandering across the border in 2010.
He helped oversee democratic elections in Nicaragua and Haiti, and the first Palestinian elections. Altogether, he participated in 39 of the center’s 100 election observation trips.
Carter said his center “filled vacuums in the world. When the United States won’t deal with troubled areas, we go there.”
And not always quietly.
He went to Cuba in 2002, met with Fidel Castro, then delivered a televised speech calling for an end to the U.S. trade embargo. He likened Israeli policy toward the Palestinians to apartheid. He denounced the Iraq war as “based upon lies.” He said George W. Bush was the worst president in history in foreign affairs.
That prompted a Bush White House spokesman to describe Carter as “irrelevant.”
He could be meddlesome, a freelance diplomat who irked more than one administration.
But never irrelevant.
[ad_2]