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Tag: israel-hamas war

  • Ruins and memories of a paradise lost in an Israeli village where attackers killed, kidnapped dozens

    Ruins and memories of a paradise lost in an Israeli village where attackers killed, kidnapped dozens

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    KIBBUTZ NIR OZ, Israel — Nearly two weeks after Hamas militants left his village scorched and shattered, Shachar Butler returned to bury a friend who was slain. But it was the town itself, a quarter of its residents dead or missing, that he eulogized.

    “It was the happiest place alive. It was a green place, with animals and birds and kids running around,” Butler said Thursday, standing in a landscape of ransacked homes and bullet-riddled cars, the heat thick with the odor of death.

    “They burned the houses while the people were inside,” said Butler, a father of three who spent hours trading gunfire with militants on Oct. 7. “The people who came out are the people who got kidnapped, killed, executed, slaughtered. … It’s unimaginable. It’s just unimaginable.”

    Nir Oz is one of more than 20 towns and villages in southern Israel that were ambushed in the sweeping assault by Hamas launched from the embattled Gaza Strip. In many, the devastation left behind is shocking. But even in that company, it is clear that this kibbutz, set on a low rise overlooking the border fence with Gaza, suffered a particularly harsh toll.

    On Thursday, the Israeli military and a pair of surviving residents led a group of journalists, including an Associated Press reporter, on a tour of the battered village.

    Until the morning of the attack, Nir Oz was home to about 400 people, many employed growing asparagus and other crops, or in the local paint and sealants factory. Surrounded by the Negev desert, it remains an oasis of greenery, with a botanical garden that is home to more than 900 species of flowers, trees and plants.

    Now, it is virtually devoid of the people who gave it life.

    Authorities are still trying to identify bodies. Residents say fully a quarter of the town’s population fell victim to the attack. More than two dozen have been confirmed dead, and dozens of others are believed to be among the roughly 200 people taken to Gaza as captives.

    On Thursday, the Israeli army released what it said was a manual used by militants outlining methods for taking hostages. It included instructions to light tires outside the heavy metal doors of safe rooms that are built into many Israeli homes to smoke people out.

    The manual’s contents could not be independently verified, and it wasn’t known if any were used by the estimated 200 militants who invaded Nir Oz.

    In all, about 100 people from Nir Oz are dead or missing, said Ron Bahat, 57, who was born in the kibbutz and has spent most of his life here. He recounted how militants tried repeatedly to break into the safe room where he and his family barricaded themselves during the attack.

    “Luckily we were able to hold the door. I was holding the door, my wife holding the windows, and luckily we survived,” he said.

    On a walk through Nir Oz, signs of life cut short are everywhere. Ceiling fans still spin lazily inside some ruined homes. A tub of homemade cookies sits uneaten on a kitchen table in one. A tricycle and toys are scattered across the front-yard grass of another.

    “Home. Dream. Love,” reads a sign that still hangs on the wall of yet another home left vacant.

    But destruction overwhelms those reminders of domesticity. Alongside a grove of pines, the windows of nearly 20 cars are shot out, with the Arabic word for Palestine spray-painted in orange across many. A trail of blood curls through one home, stretching through the battered doorway of its safe room. In another, bloodstains sit near an overturned crib.

    Bahat said that some surviving residents plan to return eventually. But the Nir Oz that used to be is gone, he and Butler said.

    “I lost many friends,” Butler said. “We worked the fields until the last yard and always hoping that maybe one day there’s going to be something peaceful … between us and the other side.”

    Long before the attack, he said, on days when the kibbutz’s air raid siren warned of rocket fire from Gaza, holding on to that dream wasn’t easy.

    But nowhere near as hard as it is now.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Adam Geller contributed from New York.

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  • Major US Muslim group cancels Virginia banquet over bomb and death threats

    Major US Muslim group cancels Virginia banquet over bomb and death threats

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    ARLINGTON, Va. — A national Muslim civil rights group said Thursday it is moving its annual banquet out of a Virginia hotel that received bomb and death threats possibly linked to the group’s concern for Palestinians caught in the Israel-Hamas war.

    The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, canceled plans to hold its 29th annual banquet on Saturday at the Marriott Crystal Gateway in Arlington, just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The group, who has used the hotel for a decade, will imove the banquet to an undisclosed location with heightened security, the group’s statement said.

    “In recent days, according to the Marriott, anonymous callers have threatened to plant bombs in the hotel’s parking garage, kill specific hotel staff in their homes, and storm the hotel in a repeat of the Jan. 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol if the events moved forward,” the statement said.

    Arlington police said in an email that the department was investigating a Thursday morning report from the hotel that it received anonymous phone calls, “some referencing threats to bomb,” regarding the CAIR event.

    Emails seeking comment from the FBI, which CAIR said also is investigating, and the Marriott hotel chain were not immediately answered late Thursday night.

    A separate banquet planned for Oct. 28 in Maryland also was cancelled and will be merged with Saturday’s event, CAIR said.

    The threats came after CAIR updated banquet programming to focus on human rights issues for Palestinians. The group has started an online campaign urging members of Congress to promote a ceasefire in Gaza.

    “We strongly condemn the extreme and disgusting threats against our organization, the Marriott hotel and its staff,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad, who is Palestinian American, said in a statement. “We will not allow the threats of anti-Palestinian racists and anti-Muslim bigots who seek to dehumanize the Palestinian people and silence American Muslims to stop us from pursuing justice for all.”

    Hamas militants from the blockaded Gaza Strip stormed into nearby Israeli towns on Oct. 7, which coincided with a major Jewish holiday. The attack killed hundreds of civilians. Since then, Israel has launched airstrikes on Gaza, destroying entire neighborhoods and killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians.

    There have been concerns the war will inspire violence in the U.S. Last week, police in major cities increased patrols, authorities put up fencing around the U.S. Capitol and some schools closed. But law enforcement officials stressed there were no credible threats in the U.S.

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  • As Israel-Hamas war rages, Israelis can now travel to US for 90 days without getting a visa

    As Israel-Hamas war rages, Israelis can now travel to US for 90 days without getting a visa

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    As the Israel-Hamas war intensifies, the United States is now allowing Israelis wishing to visit the United States for 90 days or less to come visa-free

    ByThe Associated Press

    October 19, 2023, 5:56 PM

    FILE – A woman holds her boarding pass in her passport after checking in for her flight at Newark Liberty International Airport, July 24, 2014, in Newark, N.J. As the Israel-Hamas war intensifies, the United States is now allowing Israelis wishing to visit the United States for 90 days or less to come visa-free. The U.S. announced Sept. 27 that it was admitting Israel into the visa waiver program. (AP Photo, File)

    The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — As the Israel-Hamas war intensifies, the United States Thursday launched a visa waiver program allowing Israelis wishing to visit the United States for 90 days or less to come without applying for a visa.

    The U.S. announced Sept. 27 that it was admitting Israel into the visa waiver program, adding the country to a select group of 40 mostly European and Asian countries whose citizens can travel to the U.S. for three months without visas.

    At the time, the U.S. said Israelis could start traveling to America without visas as of November 30. In a news release, the Department of Homeland Security said the program was operational as of Thursday.

    Officials gave no reason for the changed timeline in a news release Thursday. But just days after Israel’s admittance to the visa waiver program, Hamas launched attacks against numerous locations in southern Israel. Since then the Israeli military has relentlessly attacked locations in the Gaza Strip as it prepares for a ground invasion.

    Under the waiver program, Israelis first register with the Electronic System for Travel Authorization. That’s an automated system that helps determine whether the person is eligible to travel, Homeland Security said in the news release. The process can take up to 72 hours. Then they can travel to the U.S.

    To be eligible, Israelis must have a biometrically enabled passport. Those who don’t have such a passport still must apply for a U.S. visa, the department said.

    Countries that want to take part in the visa program have to meet three critical benchmarks. Israel met two of those benchmarks over the past two years: a low percentage of Israelis who applied for visas and were rejected and a low percentage of Israelis who have overstayed their visas. Israel had struggled to meet the third, for reciprocity that essentially means all U.S. citizens, including Palestinian Americans, must be treated equally when traveling to or through Israel.

    Many critics said that despite American assertions, Palestinian Americans were still facing discrimination when traveling to Israel.

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  • Chicago-area man charged with hate crimes for threatening Muslim men

    Chicago-area man charged with hate crimes for threatening Muslim men

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    WHEATON, Ill. — A suburban Chicago man has been charged with two hate crimes for allegedly verbally abusing and threatening to shoot two Muslim men, a prosecutor said Thursday.

    Larry York, 46, of Lombard, was denied pretrial release during a court hearing Thursday, DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said.

    York confronted the victims and cursed at them Tuesday night at an apartment complex, where one of the victims had gone to meet a friend, Berlin said.

    While one man was seated in his car waiting for his friend, York initially approached him and asked the victim what he was doing there and began swearing at him and telling him he didn’t belong in this country and to leave, Berlin said.

    York punched the man’s car window and walked to the lobby of the building, where the second victim was leaving an elevator. York began swearing at the second man and threatened to beat him, Berlin said.

    A short time later, while one of the men sat on a bench outside the building, York again approached the men and twice lifted the opposite end of the bench, causing the seated man to fall to the ground, the prosecutor said.

    York also allegedly told the men that he called four of his friends to come over and shoot the two men.

    The violence occurred amid heightened fears that the war between Israel and Hamas is sparking violence in the United States.

    The confrontation came three days after authorities say a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy was stabbed 26 times by his landlord in suburban Chicago.

    In California last week, flyers spreading anti-Jewish rhetoric were left in neighborhoods and on vehicles in the city of Orange. And in Fresno, police said a man suspected of breaking windows and leaving an anti-Jewish note at a bakery also is a “person of interest” in the vandalism of a local synagogue.

    York was arrested Wednesday at a Lombard bar.

    York’s attorney, assistant public defender Michael Orescanin, argued in court his client was a moderate risk and could wear an alcohol monitor. He said York was intoxicated at the time, thought the victims were trying to enter the building illegally, and that, perhaps, the victims instigated the conflict.

    A telephone message seeking further comment was left for Orescanin late Thursday afternoon at the DuPage County Public Defenders Office.

    “Hate crimes have no place in a civilized society,” Berlin said in a news release. “The allegations against Mr. York are extremely disturbing and in DuPage County we have no tolerance whatsoever for such vitriolic actions.”

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  • Israel’s defence chief tells troops they’ll see Gaza ‘from the inside soon’

    Israel’s defence chief tells troops they’ll see Gaza ‘from the inside soon’

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    ISRAEL’S defence chief has told troops they will soon see Gaza “from the inside” as thousands of soldiers gather at the border.

    The minister today wished the men luck as he said “there is no forgiveness” for the Hamas’ horror attack.

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    Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has told troops they will soon ‘see Gaza from the inside’Credit: Getty
    Tens of thousands of Israeli troops are said to be waiting on the border

    2

    Tens of thousands of Israeli troops are said to be waiting on the borderCredit: Reuters

    Today marked 13 days since Hamas gunmen caught Israel off guard as they stormed out of the Gaza Strip.

    The horror massacre, and Israel’s defence, has cost thousands their lives and seen thousands more injured.

    It’s also feared hostages could be being held in Hamas’ mysterious 311-mile maze of tunnels riddled with deadly traps.

    And today Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant sent a strong message to the tens of thousands of troops waiting on the Gaza border.

    He told the soldiers: “There is no forgiveness for this thing. Only total annihilation of Hamas organisation, terror infrastructures, everything that has to do with terrorists and whoever sent them.

    “It will take a week, it will take a month, it will take two months, until we eliminate them.

    “You are not alone in battle. We trust you and count on you.

    “Carry on training while there is time, get organised, be prepared, the command will come.

    “Thanks guys, we count on you, good luck.

    “And anyone who now sees Gaza from a distance will soon see it from inside, I promise you.”

    Gallant’s words came as Economy Minister Nir Barakat told ABC News the Israeli military has been given the “green light” to move into Gaza whenever it’s ready.

    Israel also warned more than one million Palestinians should evacuate from the northern areas to the south.

    This is said to have sparked fear from within of a humanitarian crisis – after electricity and other supplies were cut off.

    Israeli authorities say at least 1,400 people have died in Israel, while another 3,785 people have died in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

    ‘POGROM’

    At least nine Brits have so far been confirmed dead following Hamas’ brutal attacks.

    The latest confirmation was Manchester United fan Yonatan Rapoport – who was killed in an attack on the kibbutz Be’eri.

    The British-Israeli citizen was set to take his son to his first game at Old Trafford next month, BBC reports.

    A further eight Brits remain missing, according to the UK government.

    Rishi Sunak, who is in Israel on a two-day visit, this week branded Hamas’ slaughters a “pogrom” as he vowed: “We stand with Israel”.

    As families of some of those missing watched on, the Prime Minister told the Commons: “The attacks in Israel last weekend shocked the world.

    “Over 1,400 people murdered one by one, over 3,500 wounded, almost 200 taken hostage.”

    He went on: “The elderly, men, women, children, babes in arms, murdered, mutilated, burned alive.

    “We should call it by its name: it was a pogrom.”

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    Jane Matthews

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  • EU demands Meta and TikTok detail efforts to curb disinformation from Israel-Hamas war

    EU demands Meta and TikTok detail efforts to curb disinformation from Israel-Hamas war

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    LONDON — The European Union on Thursday demanded Meta and TikTok detail their efforts to curb illegal content and disinformation during the Israel-Hamas war, flexing the power of a new law that threatens billions in fines if tech giants fail to do enough to protect users.

    The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive branch, formally requested that the social media companies provide information on how they’re complying with pioneering digital rules aimed at cleaning up online platforms.

    The commission asked Meta and TikTok to explain the measures they have taken to reduce the risk of spreading and amplifying terrorist and violent content, hate speech and disinformation.

    It’s the prelude to a possible crackdown under the new digital rules, which took effect in August and have made the EU a global leader in reining in Big Tech. The biggest platforms face extra obligations to stop a wide range of illegal content from flourishing or face the threat of fines of up to 6% of annual global revenue.

    The new rules, known as the Digital Services Act, are being put to the test by the Israel-Hamas war. Photos and videos have flooded social media of the carnage alongside posts from users pushing false claims and misrepresenting videos from other events.

    Brussels issued its first formal request under the DSA last week to Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

    European Commissioner Thierry Breton, the bloc’s digital enforcer, had previously sent warning letters to the three platforms, as well as YouTube, highlighting the risks that the war poses.

    “In our exchanges with the platforms, we have specifically asked them to prepare for the risk of live broadcasts of executions by Hamas — an imminent risk from which we must protect our citizens — and we are seeking assurances that the platforms are well prepared for such possibilities,” Breton said in a speech Wednesday.

    Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said it has a “well-established process for identifying and mitigating risks during a crisis while also protecting expression.”

    After Hamas militants attacked Israeli communities, “we quickly established a special operations center staffed with experts, including fluent Hebrew and Arabic speakers, to closely monitor and respond to this rapidly evolving situation,” the company said.

    Meta said it has teams working around the clock to keep its platforms safe, take action on content that violates its policies or local law, and coordinate with third-party fact checkers in the region to limit the spread of misinformation.

    TikTok didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    The companies have until Wednesday to respond to the commission’s questions related to their crisis response. They also face a second deadline of Nov. 8 for responses on protecting election integrity and, in TikTok’s case, child safety.

    Depending on their responses, Brussels could decide to open formal proceedings against Meta or TikTok and impose fines for “incorrect, incomplete, or misleading information,” the commission said.

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  • We won’t leave, Palestinian Authority leader tells Cairo summit

    We won’t leave, Palestinian Authority leader tells Cairo summit

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    Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday the Palestinian people would not be displaced, in an address at a peace summit in Cairo aimed at preventing the Israel-Gaza crisis from escalating into a regional war.

    “We warn of the danger of [the] displacement of our civilians from their houses or their displacement from the West Bank or from Jerusalem,” said Abbas, who leads the PA, which is in charge of semi-autonomous parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

    “We will never accept this forcible displacement and will stand tall on our land,” Abbas added.

    The West Bank has seen a surge in violence since the Hamas militant group’s surprise attack on Israel near the Gaza Strip on October 7, which killed more than 1,400 people. At least 83 people have been killed in clashes with Israeli settlers and police in the West Bank, Agence France-Presse reported Friday.

    In retaliation for Hamas’ attack, Israel declared a siege of Gaza, launching thousands of airstrikes on the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave which have killed more than 4,100 people. Israeli authorities have also ordered about 1.1 million civilians to evacuate Gaza City and move to the southern part of the enclave — which borders Egypt — amid reports it is preparing to launch a ground assault on Gaza.

    At the summit in Cairo on Saturday, Egypt’s leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said he opposed the displacement of Palestinians into his country. “Egypt says the solution to the Palestinian issue is not displacement, its only solution is justice and the Palestinians’ access to legitimate rights and living in an independent state,” el-Sisi said, according to Reuters.

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    Nicolas Camut

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  • EU fails to agree on call for ‘humanitarian pause’ to allow aid into Gaza

    EU fails to agree on call for ‘humanitarian pause’ to allow aid into Gaza

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    LUXEMBOURG — The European Union’s foreign ministers failed to reach an agreement at a meeting on Monday on recommending a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid to reach Palestinians in Gaza as Israel continues its airstrikes on the besieged territory.

    U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” last week but EU ministers have discussed what foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell called a less ambitious “humanitarian pause.” Borrell stressed that while the EU cannot “decree” a pause, it can send the message that it is in favor of one.

    While there is a “basic consensus,” several diplomats, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly about the meeting like others quoted in this story, stressed there is not the required unanimity. The ministers have not yet voted, Borrell said.

    EU ambassadors discussed a draft text on the humanitarian pause on Monday afternoon that could be added to the final text that leaders will endorse at the EU summit later this week, but they could not find a compromise even though a majority was in favor, according to two diplomats familiar with the discussion. An agreement around the language could come at the next meeting of ambassadors on Wednesday, said one of the diplomats.

    The move to endorse a “humanitarian pause” reflected increasing alarm within the EU about Palestinian civilians in Gaza after two weeks of bombardment by Israel in the wake of an attack by Hamas that killed 1,400 people. According to Gaza’s Hamas-led Health Ministry, more than 5,000 Palestinians have died from Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza.

    Before the Israel-Hamas war, more than 60 percent of Palestinians in Gaza relied on international aid, according to the U.N., and more than 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced since the start of the war.

    Israel imposed a “complete siege” on Gaza after the start of its war with Hamas, cutting off power, water and fuel to the 2.2 million inhabitants of the blockaded territory, of which Israel has controlled the air, land and sea borders since 2007, strictly limiting the movement of goods and people. The ongoing blockade has pushed Palestinians in Gaza to the brink of starvation, Cindy McCain, executive director of the U.N.’s World Food Program, told POLITICO on Sunday.

    A lot more aid needs to be delivered, she said.

    So far, EU leaders have emphasized the right of Israel of self-defense in line with international law, as well as the need for a two-state solution and protecting civilians, but without calling for an end or pause to hostilities.

    Borrell and the diplomats explained it will be up to EU leaders gathering later this week to define a common line.

    Speaking to reporters at the end of the meeting, Borrell explained the difference between a ceasefire and a pause. A pause means “that something ceases temporarily, but then continues, so of course it’s a less ambitious objective than a ceasefire, which means a full agreement between the parties,” he said.  

    At the start of the meeting many countries — including the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland and Luxembourg — called for an initiative to allow aid to reach Palestinians trapped in Gaza with varying language ranging from “humanitarian pause” to “ceasefire” or “humanitarian corridors.” 

    Others sounded more skeptical: “We can’t stem the humanitarian disaster if terrorism from Gaza continues. Therefore, fighting terrorism is essential,” the German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, told reporters.

    Two diplomats said the mixed language of humanitarian pause, humanitarian ceasefire and ceasefire left the group without a clear decision. A third diplomat was skeptical the group would achieve unanimity, pointing to countries like Austria which don’t seem convinced about speaking out in favor of a humanitarian pause.

    High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell | John Thys/AFP via Getty images

    Humanitarian aid has started to reach Gaza but it’s not enough, Borrell told reporters before the meeting in Luxembourg. “The first day, 20 trucks were allowed to come in — 20. Yesterday, there were about 20 more. But in normal times, without the war, 100 trucks entered into Gaza every day. So, it is clear that 20 [trucks], it is not enough,” he said. 

    Both sides, Hamas and Israel, need to agree on a pause, and there is an obligation by both parties to ensure aid reaches Palestinians, Janez Lenarčič, the European commissioner for crisis management, who was called to the meeting by ministers, told POLITICO.

    “All involved are under international legal obligations, to provide for safe and unhindered access for humanitarian aid all involved,” he said.

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  • Aid enters Gaza as Rafah border crossing opens

    Aid enters Gaza as Rafah border crossing opens

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    The Egyptian-controlled Rafah border crossing from the Gaza Strip opened on Saturday morning, letting trucks carrying humanitarian aid into the blockaded enclave, which has been under siege from the Israeli military for almost two weeks.

    The first of 200 trucks loaded with about 3,000 tons of aid, which have been blocked near the Rafah crossing for days, started moving toward Gaza early Saturday, the Associated Press reported.

    Earlier this week, U.S. President Joe Biden said Egypt had agreed to open the border and let 20 trucks enter the Palestinian enclave, while Israel said it would allow the delivery of food, water or medicine — but no fuel — from Egypt, provided they were limited to civilians in the southern part of Gaza and would not go to Hamas militants.

    European leaders were quick to welcome the border’s opening. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on social media that the crossing’s opening was “an important first step that will alleviate the suffering of innocent people.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said it was “good and important that the first humanitarian aid is now coming to the people in Gaza.”

    “They need water, food and medicine – we won’t leave them alone,” Scholz said.

    The Gaza Strip has been besieged by Israeli forces since October 9, when Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallan moved to restrict all access to food, water and energy in the enclave in retaliation for a surprise incursion from the Hamas militant group that killed at least 1,400 people in Israel.

    In response, Israel launched thousands of airstrikes on Gaza, killing more than 4,100 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and ordered all civilians to evacuate Gaza City to the southern part of the enclave as its troops get ready for a ground assault.

    The U.N. has called on Israel to reverse course, with a spokesperson saying an evacuation in Gaza “could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”

    The news of the border crossing’s opening comes as leaders of a dozen countries — including top officials from Germany, France, Turkey and Qatar — are set to meet in Cairo on Saturday at the invitation of Egypt’s leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in an attempt to prevent the conflict from escalating into a broader regional war.

    Meanwhile, Israel asked its citizens living in neighboring Jordan and Egypt to leave those countries “as soon as possible” and to “avoid staying in all the Middle East/Arab countries,” according to a joint statement from the prime minister’s office and the foreign ministry.

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    Nicolas Camut

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  • UN warns of Gaza catastrophe as Israel prepares ground invasion

    UN warns of Gaza catastrophe as Israel prepares ground invasion

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    The ongoing blockade of Gaza has pushed the enclave’s 2.3 million people to the brink of starvation, Cindy McCain, executive director of the U.N.’s World Food Program, warned on Sunday.

    Israel has besieged the densely populated coastal region for almost two weeks, refusing to allow in food and medical aid amid fears it could fall into the hands of the militant group Hamas. As Israel intensified airstrikes over the weekend in preparation for a ground invasion, the first 20 aid trucks entered Gaza on Saturday after being blocked near the Egyptian-controlled Rafah border crossing.

    But a lot more aid needs to be delivered, McCain told POLITICO.

    “Right now we’re facing a catastrophe in the area with the inability to feed people and the inability for the people to find anything to eat at all,” McCain said in an interview Sunday. “These people are going to starve to death unless we can get in.”

    Her warning was echoed by the regional director of the relief organization Mercy Corps, Arnaud Quemin, who told POLITICO a ceasefire is needed if there is going to be a sustainable flow of humanitarian aid into the Gaza.

    Quemin warned that a spread of the conflict to neighboring countries, like Lebanon, already wracked by recent wars and deep in an economic crisis, would present the international community with a “daunting challenge.”

    A second convoy of aid trucks entered the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing on Sunday, heading toward the Gaza Strip, Reuters reported, citing Egyptian security and humanitarian sources at Rafah. The trucks were carrying medical and food supplies, according to the report.

    There are already an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon and any major displacement of the Lebanese from southern Lebanon in the event of full-scale hostilities breaking out between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, would have catastrophic repercussions, Quemin said on Sunday. “It would be horrible. I hope the all the major actors in the region understand that there aren’t any buffers.”

    The Gaza Strip has been besieged by Israeli forces since October 9, when Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallan moved to restrict all access to food, water and energy in the enclave in retaliation for a surprise incursion from the Hamas militant group that killed at least 1,400 people in Israel.

    Israel’s retaliatory air and missile strikes have killed at least 4,385 Palestinians, including hundreds of children, and displaced more than a million people, Gaza’s health ministry said on Saturday.

    Israel intensified its airstrikes Saturday night, killing more than 50 Palestinians, according to medical authorities in Gaza. The Israeli military warned that civilians who refused to relocate to the southern part of Gaza could be identified as sympathizers with a terrorist organization, Reuters reported.

    Next stages of the war

    Israeli military officials are warning that the near-constant aerial bombardment of the coastal enclave will only intensify in the coming days in preparation for a ground incursion into the Gaza.

    “We will increase our strikes, minimize the risk to our troops in the next stages of the war, and we will intensify the strikes, starting from today,” Daniel Hagari, a spokesman for Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said on Saturday, adding that a ground operation in Gaza would be launched when conditions are right.

    All eyes are now on the next move by the IDF, which has amassed huge numbers of troops outside Gaza and pounded the densely populated area with airstrikes in its attempt to eradicate Hamas following its deadly October 7 attack on Israel.

    Meanwhile, Israel on Sunday launched an airstrike on the Al-Ansar Mosque in the city of Jenin in occupied West Bank, claiming militant Palestinian groups have been using it to plan “an imminent terror attack.” Violence has flared in the West Bank with Israel stepping up operations since the Hamas attack on southern Israel two weeks ago.

    And according to Syria’s state news agency, Israeli airstrikes targeted both Damascus and Aleppo airports in the early hours Sunday, putting out of action the runways and forcing air traffic to be diverted to the city of Latakia. An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson declined to comment.

    Israel earlier struck both airports on October 12 amid fears that Iran might use them to transfer weaponry to Hezbollah in readiness to launch a “second front” against Israel, something Iran and the Lebanese militant group have threatened to do if Israel fails to stop bombing Gaza.

    Since the Gaza war erupted earlier this month, Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire across the southern Lebanese border with increasing intensity. Both sides have largely confined their exchanges to military targets with Hezbollah acknowledging 15 of its fighters have been killed but claiming to have knocked out two Israeli tanks.

    ‘The heart of the battle’

    Speaking at a funeral for one of the dead fighters on Sunday, a senior Hezbollah official vowed to step up attacks on Israel. Sheikh Naim Kassem, deputy leader, said Hezbollah is “already in the heart of the battle,” adding his group is “trying to weaken the Israeli enemy and let them know we are ready.” He added: “Do you [Israel] believe that if you try to crush the Palestinian resistance, other resistance fighters in the region will not act?”

    Visiting troops on Israel’s northern border on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that if Hezbollah wants war, Israel is ready. Netanyahu said Hezbollah would be making “the mistake of its life.” He added: “We will strike it with a force it cannot even imagine, and the significance for it and the state of Lebanon will be devastating.”

    Hezbollah is “dragging Lebanon into a war that it will gain nothing from, but stands to lose a lot,” Israeli army spokesman Jonathan Conricus said on Sunday. “Hezbollah is playing a very, very dangerous game.”

    Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has admitted publicly that his government has little leverage on Hezbollah. In a phone call with the Lebanese leader on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted “growing concerns over rising tensions” but underscored continued American support “for Lebanon’s army, security forces and people,” according to the U.S. State Department.

    Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced Sunday that it is instructing more communities near the Lebanese border to evacuate. Twenty-eight communities were evacuated last week living within 2.8 kilometers of the border, but now the buffer zone is being expanded to 5 kilometers affecting another 14 communities. According to Mercy Corps, more than 12,000 Lebanese have been displaced by the fighting in southern Lebanon.

    For humanitarian agencies, the immediate concern is Gaza and they are lobbying for all sides to allow more aid to get through to the besieged enclave.

    “We can’t allow politics to begin to shape how humanitarian aid is given or sent in and so that’s what we’re pressing on people,” McCain said, noting the increased risk of diseases like cholera due to the collapse of Gaza’s water and sanitation services. “This is a humanitarian crisis. We need to be in there and we need to be in there now.”

    Before the blockade, about 400 aid trucks entered the territory every day. After a visit by U.S. President Joe Biden last week, Israel said it would allow deliveries of food, water and medicine — but not fuel — from Egypt, provided they were limited to civilians in the southern part of Gaza and did not go to Hamas militants.

    The 20 aid trucks that entered on Saturday “are not enough,” Samer AbdelJaber, the World Food Program’s country director for Palestine, said in a statement.

    Palestinians carry their share of food aid provided to poor families at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) distribution center | Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images

    Saturday’s deliveries “are a window of hope amid a catastrophic situation,” AbdelJaber said. “But they are not enough. We need continuous access. People need food, water and medicine every day, not just once.”

    McCain said the WFP had systems in place to minimize the risk. “We have ways to be able to track and trace our goods,” she said. “We also have ways to make sure that our recipients are actually the people who should be getting it and not the bad guys.”

    Bartosz Brzezinski reported from Brussels. Jamie Dettmer reported from Beirut.

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    Bartosz Brzezinski

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  • Israel-Hamas war cuts deep into Germany’s soul

    Israel-Hamas war cuts deep into Germany’s soul

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    It’s as if one front in the Israel-Hamas war is playing out on the streets of Berlin.

    The main battleground has been an avenue lined with chicken and kebab restaurants in Neukölln, a neighborhood in the south-east of the city that’s home to many Middle Eastern immigrants. Some pro-Palestinian activists have called for demonstrators to turn out almost nightly, and, as one post put it, turn the area “into Gaza.”

    On October 18, hundreds of people, many of them teenagers, answered the call.

    “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” chanted many in the crowd as a phalanx of riot police closed in on them. Berlin public prosecutors say the slogan is a call for the erasure of Israel, and have moved to make its utterance a criminal offense.

    While similar scenes have played out across much of the world, for Germany’s leaders, they are profoundly embarrassing and strike at the heart of the nation’s identity, on account of the country’s Nazi past. 

    Germany’s “history and our responsibility arising from the Holocaust make it our duty to stand up for the existence and security of the State of Israel,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said during a visit to Israel on October 17 intended to illustrate Germany’s solidarity.

    The difficulty for Scholz is that far from everyone in Germany sees it his way.

    German leaders across the political spectrum expressed outrage when, after the Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, dozens of people assembled in Neukölln to celebrate. One 23-year-old man, a Palestinian flag draped over his shoulders, handed out sweets.

    A community on edge

    Since then, tensions in Berlin and in other German cities have rapidly escalated. A surge in antisemitic incidents has left many in the country’s Jewish community on edge and German police have stepped up security at cultural institutions and houses of worship.

    At the same time, German police have moved to ban many pro-Palestinian demonstrations, saying there is a high risk of “incitement to hatred” and a threat to public safety. Demonstrators have come out anyway, leading to violent clashes with police.

    Some in Germany, particularly on the political left, have questioned whether the bans on pro-Palestinian protests are an overreach of the state, arguing that they stifle legitimate concerns about civilian casualties in Gaza stemming from Israel’s retaliatory strikes.

    But Berlin authorities say, based on past experience, the likelihood of antisemitic rhetoric — even violence — at prohibited pro-Palestinian demonstrations is too high.

    Protesters demanding a peaceful resolution to the current conflict in Israel and Gaza demonstrate under the slogan “Not in my name!” in Berlin | Maja Hitij/Getty Images

    Many on the far-left have joined those protests that do take place.

    On Wednesday night, around the same time demonstrators assembled in Neukölln, a group of a few hundred leftist activists showed up at a planned vigil for peace outside the foreign ministry.

    “Free Palestine from German guilt,” they chanted in English. Germany, the argument went, should get over its Holocaust history, at least when it comes to support for Israel. The irony is that there is much sympathy for this view on the far right.

    One recent poll showed that 78 percent of supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany disagreed with the idea that the country has a “special obligation towards Israel.” Extreme-right politicians have also called on Germany to get over its “cult of guilt.”

    For many in the country’s Jewish community — which in recent years has grown to an estimated 200,000 people, including many Israelis — the conflagration in the Middle East has made fear part of daily life.

    Molotov cocktails

    In the pre-dawn hours on Wednesday, two people wearing masks threw Molotov cocktails at a Berlin Jewish community hub that houses a synagogue. The incendiary devices hit the sidewalk, and no one was hurt. But the attack stoked profound alarm.

    “Hamas’ ideology of extermination against everything Jewish is also having an effect in Germany,” said the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the country’s largest umbrella Jewish organization.

    Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, several homes in Berlin where Jews are thought to live have been marked with the Star of David.

    “My first thought was: ‘It’s like the Nazi time,’” said Sigmount Königsberg, the antisemitism commissioner for Berlin’s Jewish Community, an organization that oversees local synagogues and other parts of Jewish life in the city. “Many Jews are hiding their Jewishness,” he added — in other words, concealing skullcaps or religious insignia out of fear of being attacked.

    It remains unclear who perpetrated the firebombing attack and Star of David graffiti. But historical data shows a clear correlation between upsurges in Middle East violence and increased antisemitic incidents in Europe, according to academic researchers.

    In the eight days following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, there were 202 antisemitic incidents connected to the war, mostly motivated by “anti-Israel activism,” according to data compiled by the Anti-Semitism Research and Information Center. 

    Fears within the Jewish community were particularly prevalent after a former Hamas leader called for worldwide demonstrations in a “day of rage.” Many students at a Jewish school in Berlin stayed home. Two teachers wrote a letter to Berlin’s mayor to express their dismay that, as they put it, the school was nearly empty.

    A pro-Palestinian demonstrator displays a placard during a protest against the bombing in Gaza outside the Foreign Ministry in Berlin on October 18, 2023 | John Macdougall/AFP via Getty Images

    “This means de facto that Jew-haters have usurped the decision-making authority over Jewish life in Berlin,” they wrote. The teachers then blamed Germany’s willingness to take in refugees from war-torn places like Syria and Lebanon. “Germany has taken in and continues to take in hundreds of thousands of people whose socialization includes antisemitism and hatred of Israel,” they wrote.

    Day of rage

    Surveys show that Muslims in Germany are more likely to hold antisemitic views than the general population. Politicians often refer this phenomenon as “imported antisemitism,” brought into the country through immigration from Muslim-majority nations.

    At the same time, it was a far-right attacker who perpetrated some of the worst antisemitic violence in Germany’s recent history. That came in 2019, when a gunmen tried to massacre 51 people celebrating Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, in a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle. Two people were killed.

    German neo-Nazis have praised Hamas’s October 7 attacks in Israel. One group calling itself the “Young Nationalists” posted a picture of a bloodstained Star of David on social media next to the slogan “Israel murders and the world watches.” 

    During the Neukölln demonstration, officers arrested individual protestors one by one, picking them out from the crowd and dragging them off by force.

    The atmosphere grew increasingly tense. Demonstrators lobbed fireworks and bottles at the police. Dumpsters and tires were set alight. By the end of the night, police made 174 arrests, including 29 minors. Police said 65 officers were injured in the clashes.

    At one point amid the chaos, a 15-year-old girl with a Palestinian keffiyeh — a black and white scarf — wrapped around most of her face emerged amid the smoke and explosions to pose for a selfie in front of a row of riot police.

    She said she was there to demonstrate for “peace.” When asked how peace would be achieved, she replied: “When the Israeli side pisses off our land, there will be peace. Won’t there?”

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  • Israel slams Greta Thunberg after she backs Palestinians in Gaza

    Israel slams Greta Thunberg after she backs Palestinians in Gaza

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    The Israeli military lashed out at Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on Friday, after she sent a message supporting Palestinians and endorsed a comment which said a “genocide” was being perpetrated in Gaza.

    Thunberg said “the world needs to speak up and call for an immediate ceasefire, justice and freedom for Palestinians and all civilians affected,” as the Israel-Hamas war escalates and threatens to become a regional conflict.

    Thunberg also shared on her Instagram account a post by a German-based pro-Palestinian account which says a “genocide” is happening in Gaza.

    The group, Palestine Speaks, talked of its “indignation against genocide in Gaza and the repressive state terror of many Western states against anyone who shows and acts in solidarity with the Palestinians.”

    In reaction, Arye Sharuz Shalicar, spokesman for the Israeli army, told POLITICO: “Whoever identifies with Greta in any way in the future, in my view, is a terror supporter.”

    He added: “Because what Greta is doing, that she is now showing solidarity with Gaza while not saying a word about the massacres of Israelis, shows that she is actually not in favor of the Palestinians, but that she is sweeping the terror of the Palestinians or Hamas and Islamic Jihad under the table as if it did not exist.”

    Hamas militants triggered the most serious military flare-up in decades, after launching a violent attack on Israeli communities earlier this month, killing more than a thousand people and firing rockets at major cities including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Israel has since retaliated with a relentless bombing campaign on the Gaza Strip, as it moves to destroy Hamas.

    Pro-Palestinian protests have broken out across Europe, with governments including those in France and Germany looking to crack down.

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    Pierre Emmanuel Ngendakumana and Peter Wilke

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  • MI5 considers raising UK terror threat level

    MI5 considers raising UK terror threat level

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    LONDON — British intelligence chiefs are considering putting the U.K. on high alert for a terrorist attack, as tensions rise around the world after the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel.

    According to people familiar with the matter, officials are weighing up whether to raise the government’s terrorism alert level to “critical,” the maximum state of vigilance.

    The current level is set at “substantial,” which means an attack is “likely,” according to the government’s definitions. Raising it two levels to “critical” would mean that intelligence and security services regard an attack as “highly likely in the near future.”

    No final decision has been taken, according to the people, who discussed sensitive security matters on condition of anonymity. The level could also remain the same or be raised one notch to “severe.”

    Security officials across the West have been assessing the threat of violence inspired by the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel, as well as by Israeli reprisals in Gaza. Europe has already seen two fatal attacks in recent days.

    France raised its security level after an attacker last week fatally stabbed a teacher and seriously wounded two others. Earlier this week, two Swedish citizens were killed in Brussels in a terror attack; the suspect was subsequently shot dead by police.

    The U.K.’s national threat level system is designed to give a broad indication of the likelihood of a terrorist attack, and is set by the government’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre and security service MI5.

    The country’s threat level was last rated as “critical” in September 2017 following a bomb attack on the London underground. It has been at “substantial” since 2019.

    When deciding whether to raise the threat level, officials sometimes have specific information about potential attacks, but consider a range of intelligence as well. They also look at likely targets, the scale of any potential plot, and whether an attack appears imminent.

    Speaking this week before a summit of intelligence chiefs in California, MI5 chief Ken McCallum said there “clearly is the possibility that profound events in the Middle East will either generate more volume of U.K. threat, and/or change its shape in terms of what is being targeted.”

    A higher terror threat level would prompt increased security activity such as more meticulous bag searches and checks at airports. The public would be asked to remain vigilant and report suspicious activity, but would not be expected to take any other action.

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    Tim Ross and Andrew McDonald

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  • Survivors of kibbutz attack turn their ire on Netanyahu

    Survivors of kibbutz attack turn their ire on Netanyahu

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    Tomer Eliaz, a 17-year-old boy in the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, was forced to go door-to-door by Hamas and tell neighbors to come out, saying he would be killed if they didn’t.

    Several opened up and were murdered, while others were hauled off as hostages to Gaza — with several children cooped up in chicken pens. After using the teenage boy as bait, the Islamist militants shot him dead too.

    Just 800 meters from the Gaza border, Nahal Oz was one of the first Hamas targets on October 7, and the events of that morning are now painfully seared into the minds of residents Elad Poterman and Addi Cherry.

    Now both in Belgium, they vented their frustration over what they saw as abandonment by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s divisive right-wing government, whose hostile policy toward Palestinians is accused of undermining Israel’s security.

    “He [Netanyahu] needs to say: ‘I’m sorry, I failed you. It’s because of me and my pride, you were almost murdered,’” said Cherry, a 45-year-old Belgian-Israeli health economist.

    Poterman and Cherry described how they shut themselves in safe rooms on the morning of the attack, and hunkered down for 12 hours, waiting for the Israel Defense Force to come to their rescue. Over those excruciating hours, rockets flew overhead and Hamas raided homes across the kibbutz shouting “Allahu Akbar” [God is greatest] and “Massacre the Jews.”

    Poterman, who until last week worked as an after-school teacher, sent what he believed would be his last Facebook post from the safe room: “Half an hour, we are locked up with terrorists at home, no one comes.”

    The 40-year-old said he sent the message as he stood next to the safe room door holding an ax, while his wife Maria held their seven-month-old baby girl in one hand and a knife in the other. Neither of them expected to survive, but a latch installed on the inside of the door by a previous tenant prevented the terrorists from bursting in.

    In a separate safe room, Cherry, her husband Oren and their three children barricaded the door as best they could with a cupboard and chair.

    The reasons for such a spectacular security lapse in a nation that prides itself on its intelligence apparatus is still unclear and a huge embarrassment for Netanyahu’s administration.

    The surviving residents were put onto a bus and taken to an army base in the south of the country, from where they would be relocated. But Cherry had already decided she would leave the country. Four days later she and her family were on board an El Al flight for Paris, from where they were picked up by her brother and driven to Belgium. Poterman’s family arrived the next day.

    That’s Netanyahu’s work

    The two families want to rebuild their lives but returning to Nahal Oz — which Poterman described as a “big garden” — is now impossible, they argued. Many of the buildings and fields around the village were burned and both Poterman and Cherry said that they had lost faith in the current government’s ability to protect them.

    Some Israelis living abroad want to hear Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say “I’m sorry, I failed you” | Jacquelyn Martin/AFP via Getty Images

    On Wednesday, Poterman and Cherry along with other survivors spoke at the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with Israel on the atrocities they experienced.

    “I have a personal account with this [Israeli] government,” Poterman said. “They abandoned my daughter to die. That doesn’t go away. I’ll never forget.”

    “With the Netanyahu government, I will take them out of the Knesset [parliament] myself, with my own hands, I will do that. I already started organizing a whole lot of people from the area that have been abandoned and want to do just that very thing,” he added.

    Similarly, Cherry said she isn’t able to sleep, worrying about what could have happened to her family.

    She still hasn’t told her son that half of his classmates won’t be coming back to school since they were killed. “A week ago I started my PhD in economics, I was picturing myself standing on a podium receiving a PhD, now I cannot imagine a week ahead,” she said. “We had everything and now we have nothing.”

    “I think it will take some time to heal because I don’t trust the government. I don’t trust them,” she said.

    Poterman highlighted the antagonism of Netanyahu toward Palestinians — the prime minister is allied with far-right parties and his national security minister has convictions for anti-Arab racism. Two days before the attack, Poterman complained a man from the Religious Zionist Party, HaTzionut HaDatit, constructed a hut in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The move was a PR stunt to “fool the people of Israel” that “we are the landlords and we can do whatever we want,” he said.

    As the conflict escalates and threatens to involve other countries in the Middle East, Poterman called for a “national sobering” and for both Israelis and Palestinians to rise above lies told to them by their politicians. “We’re on the brink of civil war and that’s Netanyahu’s work. The problem is that big parts of the population have been willing to repeat lies, told by politicians for years.”

    “What holds these kinds of regimes is the willingness of the people to lie,” he said. “The moment they are unwilling to lie and the word comes out that the king is actually nude, it topples very quickly.” 

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  • Von der Leyen doubles down on pro-Israel stance, lashes out at Iran

    Von der Leyen doubles down on pro-Israel stance, lashes out at Iran

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    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Sunday reiterated her strongly pro-Israeli stance despite growing criticism from within her own staff, while also harshly criticizing Iran for seeking to sow “violence and chaos” in the Middle East.

    Some 800 EU staff took the unusual step of writing to von der Leyen at the end of last week to protest against what they see as unjustifiable bias toward Israel in the Israel-Hamas war. The protest came after the president neglected to mention the EU’s support for Palestinian statehood in a speech on Thursday in Washington — despite a two-state solution being a core part of the position of European countries.

    Yet on Sunday von der Leyen doubled down on her previous stance during a speech to the youth organization of her German center-right CDU/CSU political group.

    While she stressed that any Israeli defense against the Hamas terrorist group must be “in accordance with international law,” she again did not mention Palestinian statehood and instead just referred to necessary humanitarian aid, saying: “There is no contradiction in standing in solidarity with Israel and providing humanitarian aid in Gaza.”

    Von der Leyen also compared Israel’s role in the conflict to Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression.

    “All these conflicts have one thing in common: they are about the struggle between those who seek peace, balance, freedom and cooperation — and those who do not want any of this because they profit from the chaos and disorder,” von der Leyen said in her speech at the CDU/CSU youth wing congress in Braunschweig, Germany.

    Her remarks can be seen as controversial because, even though Israel is undeniably defending itself following a brutal aggression by Hamas terrorists, the country’s at times very complicated and highly criticized settlement policy may not exactly qualify as balanced or in the interest of peace and cooperation.

    Human Rights Watch has criticized Israel for “committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against millions of Palestinians.”

    Von der Leyen also took a very critical position toward Iran, saying that Tehran stood “behind Hamas.” She added: “Iran has no interest whatsoever in this region coming to peace. On the contrary, Iran wants to foment violence and chaos because that secures its influence.”

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    Hans von der Burchard

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  • Palestinians trapped in Gaza find nowhere is safe during Israel’s relentless bombing

    Palestinians trapped in Gaza find nowhere is safe during Israel’s relentless bombing

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    KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — Israeli airstrikes pounded locations across the Gaza Strip early Thursday, including parts of the south that Israel had declared as safe zones, heightening fears among more than 2 million Palestinians trapped in the territory that nowhere was safe.

    In the nearly two weeks since a devastating Hamas rampage in southern Israel, the Israeli military has relentlessly attacked Gaza in response. Even after Israel told Palestinians to evacuate the north and head to what it called “safe zones” in the south, strikes continued overnight throughout the densely populated territory.

    A residential building in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had fought shelter, was among the places hit. Medical personnel at Nasser Hospital said they received at least 12 dead and 40 wounded.

    The bombardments came after Israel agreed Wednesday to allow Egypt to deliver limited humanitarian aid to Gaza, the first crack in a punishing 11-day siege. Many among Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have cut down to one meal a day and resorted to drinking dirty water.

    The announcement of a plan to bring water, food and other supplies into Gaza came as fury over a Tuesday night explosion at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Hospital spread across the Middle East. There were conflicting claims of who was behind the blast, which the Hamas-run Health Authority said had killed hundreds of Palestinians.

    Hamas officials in Gaza blamed an Israeli airstrike, saying hundreds were killed. Israel denied it was involved and released a flurry of video, audio and other information that it said showed the blast was instead due to a rocket misfire by Islamic Jihad, another militant group operating in Gaza. Islamic Jihad dismissed the Israeli claim.

    The Associated Press has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence.

    U.S. President Joe Biden, who visited Israel on Wednesday, said data from his Defense Department showed the explosion was not likely caused by an Israeli airstrike. The White House later said an analysis of “overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information” showed Israel was not behind the attack. But the U.S. continues to collect evidence.

    Video from the scene showed the hospital grounds strewn with torn bodies, many of them young children. Hundreds of wounded were rushed to Gaza City’s main hospital, where doctors already facing critical supply shortages were sometimes forced to perform surgery on the floors, often without anesthesia.

    More than 1 million Palestinians, roughly half of Gaza’s population, have fled their homes in Gaza City and other places in the northern part of the territory since Israel told them to evacuate. Most have crowded into U.N.-run school shelters or the homes of relatives.

    Following early Thursday’s airstrikes, sirens wailed as emergency crews rushed to rescue survivors from a building in Khan Younis, where many residents were believed trapped under misshapen bed frames, broken furniture and cement chunks.

    A small, soot-covered child, unconscious and dangling in the arms of a rescue worker, was taken out of a damaged building and rushed toward a waiting ambulance.

    Gaza’s Hamas-led government said several bakeries in the territory were hit in the overnight strikes, making it even harder for hungry residents to get food.

    The Israeli military said it killed a top Palestinian militant in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, and hit hundreds of targets across Gaza, including tunnel shafts, intelligence infrastructure and command centers. It said it hit dozens of mortar launching posts, most of them immediately after they launched shells at Israel. Palestinians have been launching barrages of rockets at Israel since the fighting began.

    Israel has said it is attacking Hamas militants wherever they may be in Gaza, and accused the group’s leaders and fighters of taking shelter among the civilian population, leaving Palestinians feeling in constant danger.

    The Musa family fled to the typically sleepy central Gaza town of Deir al-Balah and took shelter in a cousin’s three-story home near the local hospital. But at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, a series of explosions, believed to be airstrikes, rocked the building, turning the family home into a mountain of rubble that they said buried some 20 women and children.

    The dead body of Hiam Musa, the sister-in-law of Associated Press photojournalist Adel Hana, was recovered from the wreckage Wednesday evening, the family said. They don’t know who else is under the rubble.

    “It doesn’t make sense,” Hana said. “We went to Deir al-Balah because it’s quiet, we thought we would be safe.”

    The Israeli military said it was investigating.

    In northern areas that Israel warned to evacuate, airstrikes also hit three residential towers in al-Zahra, the Hamas-led Interior Ministry in Gaza said, as well as homes along the border with Israel. Israel has massed troops in the area and is expected to launch a ground invasion into Gaza, though military officials say no decision has been made.

    The Gaza Health Ministry said 3,478 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, and more than 12,000 wounded, mostly women, children and the elderly. Another 1,300 people are believed buried under the rubble, health authorities said.

    More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed, mostly civilians slain during Hamas’ deadly incursion on Oct. 7. Roughly 200 others were abducted. The Israeli military said Thursday it had notified the families of 203 captives.

    Violence between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon has also flared in recent days amid fears the Hamas-Israel conflict could spread across the region. In the West Bank, where scores of Palestinians have been killed since the war started, Israeli forces killed dozens of Palestinians in the past two days, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

    The deal to get aid into Gaza remained fragile, while hospitals in the sealed territory say they are on the verge of collapse.

    Biden said Egypt’s president agreed to open the Rafah crossing to let in an initial group of 20 trucks with humanitarian aid. If Hamas confiscates aid, “it will end,” he said. The aid will start moving Friday at the earliest, White House officials said.

    Egypt must still repair the road across the border, which was cratered by Israeli airstrikes. More than 200 trucks and some 3,000 tons of aid are positioned at or near the crossing, Gaza’s only connection to Egypt, said the head of the Red Crescent for North Sinai, Khalid Zayed.

    Supplies will go in under supervision of the U.N., Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told Al-Arabiya TV. Asked if foreigners and dual nationals seeking to leave would be let through, he said: “As long as the crossing is operating normally and the (crossing) facility has been repaired.”

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the decision was approved after a request from Biden. It said Israel “will not thwart” deliveries of food, water or medicine from Egypt, as long as they are limited to civilians in the south of the Gaza Strip and don’t go to Hamas militants. The statement made no mention of fuel, which is badly needed for hospital generators.

    Relatives of some of the people who were taken hostage and forced back to Gaza during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack reacted with fury to the aid announcement.

    “Children, infants, women, soldiers, men, and elderly, some with serious illnesses, wounded and shot, are held underground like animals,” said a statement from the Hostage and Missing Families Forum. But “the Israeli government pampers the murderers and kidnappers.”

    In his brief visit, Biden tried to strike a balance between showing U.S. support for Israel, while containing growing alarm among Arab allies. He also announced $100 million in humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

    King Abdullah II of Jordan planned to meet in Egypt with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi to discuss the conflict. The two countries have peace agreements with neighboring Israel and are dealing with anger from their populations over the hospital blast.

    British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrived in Israel on Thursday in a trip aimed at showing solidarity after the Hamas attack and preventing the war from escalating.

    The people of Israel had “suffered an unspeakable, horrific act of terrorism and I want you to know that the United Kingdom and I stand with you,” he said on arriving.

    ___

    Nessman reported from Jerusalem and Kullab from Baghdad. Associated Press journalists Amy Teibel and Isabel Debre in Jerusalem; Samy Magdy and Jack Jeffrey in Cairo; and Ashraf Sweilam in el-Arish, Egypt, contributed to this report.

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  • The last remaining exit for Gazans is through Egypt. Here’s why Cairo is reluctant to open it | CNN

    The last remaining exit for Gazans is through Egypt. Here’s why Cairo is reluctant to open it | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.



    CNN
     — 

    Egypt is facing mounting pressure to act as neighboring Gaza gets pummeled by Israeli strikes after last weekend’s brutal assault in Israel by Hamas.

    In the wake of the Hamas attacks, Israel closed its two border crossings with Gaza and imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, blocking supplies of fuel, electricity and water.

    That has left the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt as the only viable outlet to get people out of the enclave and supplies into it.

    But the crossing has been closed for much of the past week, with neither Gazans nor foreign nationals able to cross, and tons of vital humanitarian supplies for people in Gaza piling up on the Egyptian side of the border.

    A Palestinian border official told CNN that Egypt had blocked the gates of the crossing with concrete slabs. Egypt has denied reports that it has closed its side of the crossing, and said the Palestinian side had been damaged by repeated Israeli airstrikes.

    Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told CNN on Saturday that the crossing was open but aerial bombardment had rendered the roads “inoperable” on the Gaza side.

    The Biden administration has held talks with Israel and Egypt about ensuring safe passage for Americans and other civilians out of Gaza.

    But Egypt, which already hosts millions of migrants, is uneasy about the prospect of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees crossing into its territory. More than two million Palestinians live in Gaza, a densely packed coastal enclave that is under intense Israeli bombardment.

    Israel’s military has called for the 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to evacuate their homes and move southwards, according to the United Nations, as Israel amassed 300,000 reservists on the border in apparent preparation for a ground incursion.

    Hamas’ brutal October 7 attack on Israel killed 1,300 people, prompting retaliation by Israel against which has killed 2,329 people in Gaza. As attacks intensify and Israel continues to cut off essential supplies, rights groups have raised concerns about a potential humanitarian catastrophe.

    People and supplies stuck at the border

    Movement through the Rafah crossing is normally extremely limited; only Gazans with permits as well as foreign nationals are able to use it to travel between Gaza and Egypt. But the border has been effectively sealed shut in recent days.

    Western efforts to reopen the crossing and evacuate their nationals from Gaza continued over the weekend, with the US advising Americans in the strip to move closer to Rafah in case the crossing opened, if it was possible for them to relocate safely.

    Meanwhile, hundreds of Palestinians with foreign passports have flocked to the border but have been left sitting in the streets for hours, the Palestinian border official said Saturday.

    “Unfortunately, the crossing is closed. There is no crossing for any traveler or any holder of Arab or foreign residency or otherwise,” the official told CNN.

    US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that Egypt was willing to allow Americans to cross at Rafah but that a group of them had been blocked by Hamas.

    Alqahera News, a local news channel linked to the government, reported Saturday that Egyptian officials were not allowing US and other foreign nationals to use the crossing because a deal had not been struck on facilitating aid into the strip, citing Egyptian sources.

    CNN could not independently verify the claims.

    Meanwhile, humanitarian supplies are continuing to arrive in Egypt as diplomatic efforts continue to bring aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

    Aid flights from Jordan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the World Health Organization, and the Red Cross have arrived in the Egyptian city of El-Arish, approximately 45 kilometers (23 miles) away from Rafah, according to footage aired on Egyptian state television on Saturday.

    The Red Crescent has warehouses full of humanitarian aid and the El-Arish stadium has been prepared to accommodate more aid, an Egyptian Red Crescent official said on Saturday.

    A World Health Organization plane carrying medical supplies landed in Egypt on Saturday, said Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of WHO. However, the organization is still waiting for humanitarian access through the crossing.

    Shoukry said Egypt has tried to ship humanitarian aid to Gaza but has not received the proper authorization to do so.

    Egypt said Sunday it would intensify its efforts to try and help relief organizations deliver aid to Gaza as the territory’s humanitarian crisis worsens, though a statement from the Egyptian presidency said “national security is a red line and that there is no compromise in its protection.”

    Speaking at a military graduation ceremony Thursday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi compared the situation in his country to a lone house in a neighborhood that’s on fire. He said that rumors about Egypt not seeking to help its Palestinian neighbors are untrue.

    “We are making sure that aid, whether medical or humanitarian, at this difficult time, makes it to the strip,” Sisi said, adding that “we sympathize.”

    But he warned that Egypt’s ability to help has limits.

    “Of course we sympathize. But be careful, while we sympathize, we must always be using our minds in order to reach peace and safety in a manner that doesn’t cost us much,” he said, adding that Egypt hosts 9 million migrants already. The largest groups in the country’s migrant population are from Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Libya, according to a 2022 report by the UN’s International Organization for Migration.

    Egypt’s foreign ministry warned Friday against Israel’s call for evacuation, calling it “a grave violation of international humanitarian law” that would put the lives of more than 1 million Palestinians in danger.

    The Jordanian official told CNN Thursday that Jordanian and Egyptian officials are applying “diplomatic and political pressure on the Israeli government to allow for the safe passage of aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing.”

    But Egyptian media outlets have sounded alarms about the prospect of allowing Palestinian refugees into the country, warning that it may forcefully displace Gazans into Sinai.

    Sisi echoed those sentiments on Thursday. “There is a danger” when it comes to Gaza, he said – “a danger so big because it means an end to this (Palestinian) cause… It is important that (Gaza’s) people remain standing and on their land.”

    Jordan’s King Abdullah, who met with Blinken Friday, warned against “any attempt to displace Palestinians from any Palestinian territories or to cause their displacement.”

    The vast majority of Gaza’s residents today are Palestinian refugees from areas that fell under Israeli control in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. That war marked Israel’s creation, but it is also lamented by Palestinians as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” as more than 700,000 Palestinians were either expelled or forced to flee their homes in what is now Israel.

    Tens of thousands of Palestinians took refuge in Gaza, which fell under Egyptian control after the war. Israel captured the territory from Egypt in the 1967 war and began settling Jews there, but it withdrew its troops and settlements in 2005.

    Additional reporting by CNN’s Celine Alkhaldi, Caroline Faraj, Hamdi Alkhshali, Mitchell McCluskey, Magdy Samaan and Lauren Kent

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  • From hospital, to shelter, to deadly inferno: Fleeing Palestinians lose another sanctuary in Gaza

    From hospital, to shelter, to deadly inferno: Fleeing Palestinians lose another sanctuary in Gaza

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    JERUSALEM — The courtyard of al-Ahli hospital, where thousands of Palestinians had sought shelter or medical treatment, is now a blackened expanse of charred cars, stretchers coated in ash and shredded dolls.

    That’s all that remains after an explosion on Tuesday turned it into an inferno, tearing apart men, women and children, and burning people alive. Images of the aftermath ignited protests across the region, threatening to broaden the war between Israel and Hamas.

    Mohammed al-Hayek had stepped away to fetch some coffee, making his way through the crowd of displaced people who were singing, praying or sleeping after fleeing to the Gaza City hospital in fear of Israeli airstrikes. Seeking the warm drink on a cold night saved his life.

    “I returned to find them torn in pieces,” al-Hayek said of his five cousins. He pointed to the mound of debris where they had been sitting, to their blood on the walls.

    “This is where Shahir was. This is where Mutasim was,” he said of the young men in their early 20s.

    There were conflicting claims of who was responsible for the blast.

    Israel has been launching waves of airstrikes and Palestinian militants have been firing rockets into Israel since the wide-ranging Hamas incursion on Oct. 7 ignited the fifth, and deadliest, war between the sides.

    Officials in Hamas-ruled Gaza quickly said an Israeli airstrike had hit the hospital. Israel denied it was involved and released live video, audio and other evidence it said showed the blast was caused by a rocket misfired by Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian militant group. Islamic Jihad denied responsibility.

    The Associated Press has not independently verified any of the claims or evidence released by the parties.

    Dr. Fadhil Naim, an orthopedic surgeon, was taking a short rest between operations when he heard a loud crash at about 7 p.m. Tuesday. At first he ignored it, thinking it was another airstrike nearby.

    Then the wounded began streaming into the operating ward, screaming for help.

    “They were alive, and they died in our arms because there wasn’t enough of us to save everyone,” he said.

    He didn’t realize the full scale of devastation until later, when he stepped outside into the courtyard and saw that it was filled with corpses.

    Saeb al-Jarz, 27, was tending to his mother at Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, just a few miles (kilometers) away, when he felt the ground shake and heard the blast. He raced to al-Ahli to see what had happened.

    He remembers the scene in fragments: Flames lapping cars and hospital walls, victims stumbling around in horror, a courtyard littered with body parts, sheets with soccer ball and flower patterns draped over corpses.

    He saw a little girl being carried away by a rescue worker, holding a doll and calling out for her mother.

    “I was so, so scared,” he said.

    The wounded flooded into Shifa, which was already packed with patients. On Wednesday, officials said the hospital was running out of fuel to power its emergency generators after Israel cut off fuel shipments as part of the siege, forcing Gaza’s only power plant to shut down.

    The death toll from the blast was in dispute Wednesday, even among Palestinians.

    The Hamas-run Health Ministry initially said 500 had died, then revised that number to 471, without providing a list of names. The staff at al-Ahli said only that the toll was in the hundreds. Mohammed Abu Selmia, the director of Shifa, said he thought the toll was closer to 250.

    But in Gaza, nearly everyone blames Israel. Ten days of fighting have killed over 3,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry. More than 1,400 people have been killed on the Israeli side, the vast majority civilians killed in the initial Hamas onslaught. Some 200 were taken into Gaza as captives.

    Israel has vowed to crush Hamas, threatening a war like no other. It has ordered the evacuation of over a million Palestinians — around half of Gaza’s population — from north to south of the territory it has completely sealed off. Israeli officials say they are trying to separate civilians from Hamas, which they accuse of using Palestinians as human shields.

    Many Palestinians have crowded into hospitals, hoping they will be spared. Al-Ahli, an 80-bed hospital founded in 1882 and run by a branch of the Anglican Communion, was seen as especially secure because of its international connection.

    “I am tortured when I think, why did those kids have to be killed?” said Suhaila Tarazi, the general director of al-Ahli. “This was not just a hospital, but a safe space for everyone to take refuge — Christians, Muslims, Jews, it doesn’t matter. Now it is neither.”

    The Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Hosam Naoum, said the hospital received at least three Israeli military orders to evacuate before Tuesday’s explosion. The warnings by phone began Sunday, after Israeli shelling hit two floors of the hospital, wounding four medics, he said.

    The staff at al-Ahli, like those of other hospitals across Gaza, refused the evacuation orders, saying that it would endanger the patients to try to move them, violating the medical vow to do no harm.

    On Wednesday, shell-shocked families who survived the blast packed up their mattresses and other belongings and headed out into the streets to look for safety in a war-torn land with one less sanctuary.

    “The explosion points to the madness and futility of the current fighting,” said the Rev. Canon Nicholas Porter, from an American fundraising arm for the Anglican church.

    “It is the poor, the sick, and the innocent who seem to be paying the price.”

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  • Why Egypt and other Arab countries are unwilling to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza

    Why Egypt and other Arab countries are unwilling to take in Palestinian refugees from Gaza

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    CAIRO — As desperate Palestinians in sealed-off Gaza try to find refuge under Israel’s relentless bombardment in retaliation for Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack, some ask why neighboring Egypt and Jordan don’t take them in.

    The two countries, which flank Israel on opposite sides and share borders with Gaza and the occupied West Bank, respectively, have replied with a staunch refusal. Jordan already has a large Palestinian population.

    Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi made his toughest remarks yet on Wednesday, saying the current war was not just aimed at fighting Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, “but also an attempt to push the civilian inhabitants to … migrate to Egypt.” He warned this could wreck peace in the region.

    Jordan’s King Abdullah II gave a similar message a day earlier, saying, “No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt.”

    Their refusal is rooted in fear that Israel wants to force a permanent expulsion of Palestinians into their countries and nullify Palestinian demands for statehood. El-Sissi also said a mass exodus would risk bringing militants into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, from where they might launch attacks on Israel, endangering the two countries’ 40-year-old peace treaty.

    Here is a look at what is motivating Egypt’s and Jordan’s stances.

    A HISTORY OF DISPLACEMENT

    Displacement has been a major theme of Palestinian history. In the 1948 war around Israel’s creation, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from what is now Israel. Palestinians refer to the event as the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe.”

    In the 1967 Mideast war, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 300,000 more Palestinians fled, mostly into Jordan.

    The refugees and their descendants now number nearly 6 million, most living in camps and communities in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The diaspora has spread further, with many refugees building lives in Gulf Arab countries or the West.

    After fighting stopped in the 1948 war, Israel refused to allow refugees to return to their homes. Since then, Israel has rejected Palestinian demands for a return of refugees as part of a peace deal, arguing that it would threaten the country’s Jewish majority.

    Egypt fears history will repeat itself and a large Palestinian refugee population from Gaza will end up staying for good.

    NO GUARANTEE OF RETURN

    That’s in part because there’s no clear scenario for how this war will end.

    Israel says it intends to destroy Hamas for its bloody rampage in its southern towns. But it has given no indication of what might happen afterward and who would govern Gaza. That has raised concerns that it will reoccupy the territory for a period, fueling further conflict.

    The Israeli military said Palestinians who followed its order to flee northern Gaza to the strip’s southern half would be allowed back to their homes after the war ends.

    Egypt is not reassured.

    El-Sissi said fighting could last for years if Israel argues it hasn’t sufficiently crushed militants. He proposed that Israel house Palestinians in its Negev Desert, which neighbors the Gaza Strip, until it ends its military operations.

    “Israel’s lack of clarity regarding its intentions in Gaza and the evacuation of the population is in itself problematic,” said Riccardo Fabiani, Crisis Group International’s North Africa Project Director. “This confusion fuels fears in the neighborhood.”

    Egypt has pushed for Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, and Israel said Wednesday that it would, though it didn’t say when. According to United Nations, Egypt, which is dealing with a spiraling economic crisis, already hosts some 9 million refugees and migrants, including roughly 300,000 Sudanese who arrived this year after fleeing their country’s war.

    But Arab countries and many Palestinians also suspect Israel might use this opportunity to force permanent demographic changes to wreck Palestinian demands for statehood in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which was also captured by Israel in 1967.

    El-Sissi repeated warnings Wednesday that an exodus from Gaza was intended to “eliminate the Palestinian cause … the most important cause of our region.” He argued that if a demilitarized Palestinian state had been created long ago in negotiations, there would not be war now.

    “All historical precedent points to the fact that when Palestinians are forced to leave Palestinian territory, they are not allowed to return back,” said H.A. Hellyer, a senior associate fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Egypt doesn’t want to be complicit in ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”

    Arab countries’ fears have only been stoked by the rise under Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of hard-right parties that talk in positive terms about removing Palestinians. Since the Hamas attack, the rhetoric has become less restrained, with some right-wing politicians and media commentators calling for the military to raze Gaza and drive out its inhabitants. One lawmaker said Israel should carry out a “new Nakba” on Gaza.

    WORRIES OVER HAMAS

    At the same time, Egypt says a mass exodus from Gaza would bring Hamas or other Palestinian militants onto its soil. That might be destabilizing in Sinai, where Egypt’s military fought for years against Islamic militants and at one point accused Hamas of backing them.

    Egypt has backed Israel’s blockade of Gaza since Hamas took over in the territory in 2007, tightly controlling the entry of materials and the passage of civilians back and forth. It also destroyed the network of tunnels under the border that Hamas and other Palestinians used to smuggle goods into Gaza.

    With the Sinai insurgency largely put down, “Cairo does not want to have a new security problem on its hands in this problematic region,” Fabiani said.

    El-Sissi warned of an even more destabilizing scenario: the wrecking of Egypt and Israel’s 1979 peace deal. He said that with the presence of Palestinian militants, Sinai “would become a base for attacks on Israel. Israel would have the right to defend itself … and would strike Egyptian territory.”

    “The peace which we have achieved would vanish from our hands,” he said, “all for the sake of the idea of eliminating the Palestinian cause.”

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    For more AP coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict: https://apnews.com/hub/israel-palestinian-conflict

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  • Stock market today: Wall Street falls following profit reports, and oil prices jump on war worries

    Stock market today: Wall Street falls following profit reports, and oil prices jump on war worries

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    NEW YORK — Wall Street is falling Wednesday following a mixed set of profit reports from big U.S. companies. Worries about war in the Middle East are also dragging on the market.

    The S&P 500 was 1% lower in afternoon trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 248 points, or 0.7%, as of 12:54 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.2% lower.

    Crude oil prices jumped sharply overnight following a deadly explosion at a hospital in the Gaza Strip, which sparked protests across the Middle East. But oil prices pared their gains as the morning progressed. Gold, meanwhile, rose as investors continue to look for safer investments following the Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel by Hamas.

    On Wall Street, United Airlines slumped 8.1% after it showed how big a hit to profits it may take because of surging fuel prices and the suspension of flights to Tel Aviv. It gave a profit forecast for the last three months of the year that fell well short of analysts’ expectations.

    The forecast overshadowed United’s reporting a bigger profit for the summer than Wall Street had predicted. Other airlines fell in concert, with American Airlines down 4.7% and Delta Air Lines down 4.3%.

    Morgan Stanley also tumbled, down 7.7%, even though it likewise reported a bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Investors focused on a weaker-than-expected showing by the company’s wealth management business, analysts said.

    On the winning side of Wall Street was Procter & Gamble, the giant behind such brands as Charmin, Febreze and Oral-B. It rose 1.8% after reporting stronger profit than expected for the latest quarter. Its revenue rose after it increased prices for its products.

    Nasdaq rose 4.3% for one of the stock market‘s bigger gains after it reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. It benefited from high-profile stock debuts on its trading exchange, as well as growth for its anti-financial crime business.

    The earnings reporting season for the summer is still in its early days, and the broad expectation is for S&P 500 companies to say their overall earnings per share rose last quarter for the first time in a year.

    Such growth in profits are essential for the stock market to keep rising, particularly when the other big factor that drives stock prices is pushing the other way.

    Treasury yields in the bond market have been on a steady march higher as investors accept a new normal where the Federal Reserve is likely to keep interest rates high to get inflation under control. High rates and yields hurt prices for stocks and other investments.

    The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.91% from 4.84% late Tuesday and from less than 3.50% during the summer.

    Yields have climbed as the U.S. economy has remained remarkably resilient, even after the Federal Reserve raised its main interest rate to the highest level since 2001. That strength has a large group of investors believing the Fed may pull off the balancing act of slowing the economy through high rates just enough to smother high inflation but not so much as to cause a painful recession.

    Still, investors remain cautious. Global fund managers are holding more cash to protect themselves, up to 5.3% of their total portfolios in October from 4.9%, according to the latest survey by Bank of America.

    A big threat for the global economy is what oil prices do to inflation amid the latest war between Hamas and Israel.

    In the oil market, a barrel of U.S. crude approached $90 early in the morning before paring its gain. It was up 2% at $88.36 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, was 1.7% higher at $91.47 after earlier nearing $93 per barrel.

    The spark for the jump was a blast at a Gaza hospital that reportedly killed hundreds. Hamas blamed it on an Israeli airstrike, while the Israeli military blamed a rocket misfired by members of another Palestinian militant group. President Joe Biden seemed to suggest it wasn’t Israel.

    The fear in financial markets is that the war will draw in big oil-producing nations, such as Iran, and lead to disruptions of supply.

    Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian called on Muslim nations Wednesday to expel their Israeli ambassadors and launch an oil embargo on Israel after the explosion at the hospital.

    Gold rose 1.4% to $1,962.90 per ounce as investors looked for safer things to own.

    In stock markets abroad, indexes were lower in much of Europe after ending mixed in Asia.

    China reported Wednesday that its economy grew at a 4.9% annual pace from July through September. That’s down from 6.3% growth in the previous quarter but better than economists feared for the world’s second-largest economy.

    ___

    AP Business Writers Matt Ott, Elaine Kurtenbach and Zen Soo contributed.

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