Pressure mounts on Netanyahu to quit
ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces pressure to resign as thousands of protesters gather in Tel Aviv to call for new elections.
Dozens of Congressional Democrats in the US, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have signed a letter calling on the US to stop the transfer of weapons to Israel.
It comes as Israel’s military assault on Gaza, which followed Palestinian Islamist group HAMAS’ October 7 attack, marks its six-month anniversary amid increasing international criticism.
The Gaza Health Ministry has reported more than 33 000 people killed in the war while the narrow coastal enclave suffers widespread hunger. HAMAS’ October 7 attack on Israel killed 1 200 people, according to Israeli tallies.
UN warns of famine in Gaza
In northern Gaza, where Israel first launched its military invasion of the enclave in October, thousands have been killed, and entire neighbourhoods flattened and destroyed.
The north is now the epicentre of Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe, with many residents eating animal feed to survive.
Despite the dire situation, Wael Attar, together with his wife and children, decided to stay.
After the family’s home in Jabaliya was destroyed, they moved to live with hundreds of others in a school used as a shelter, where they have been struggling to find food and water, and a safe place to live.
Attar and his daughters start their day by collecting mallow leaves, which will be used to cook a broth that the family will eat to break their fast during Ramadan.
His wife Mariam said her husband had been putting his life in danger to gather things to keep his family going.
According to a report by the World
Bank and UN, more than half the population of Gaza is on the brink of famine and the entire population is experiencing acute food insecurity and malnutrition.
Hundreds of thousands have lost their homes while about 80 percent of the population has been displaced.
The report said the bill for damage to infrastructure in Gaza was about US$18,5 billion and estimates that 26 million tonnes of debris and rubble have been left in the wake of the destruction — an amount that will take years to remove.
Israelis rally against Netanyahu
Tens of thousands of Israelis protested against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, chanting: “Elections now!” and calling for his resignation, AFP reported.
Organisers said about 100 000 people converged at a Tel Aviv crossroads, renamed Democracy Square, since mass protests against controversial judicial reforms last year.
Rallies were also held in other cities, with Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid taking part in one in Kfar Saba ahead of his departure for talks in Washington.
“They haven’t learnt anything, they haven’t changed,” he said at that rally.
“Until we send them home, they won’t give this country a chance to move for
Israeli media said clashes had broken out between protesters and police at the Tel Aviv rally and police said one protester had been arrested.
Later, the protesters in Tel Aviv were joined by families of Gaza hostages and their supporters.
The army announced earlier that troops had recovered the body of Elad Katzir, one of the about 250 hostages abducted by Palestinian militants from Israel during the October 7 attack.
The recovery of Katzir’s body brings to 12 the number of bodies of hostages the army says it has brought home from Gaza during the war. The army says 129 are still being held in Gaza, including 34 who are presumed dead.
Support from Pelosi, a veteran member of Biden’s Democratic Party, showed that the view was becoming increasingly mainstream in the party.
The UN Human Rights Council also called on countries to stop selling or shipping weapons to Israel in a non-binding resolution that aims to help prevent rights violations against Palestinians. The US voted against the resolution. Last Friday’s letter called on the Biden administration to conduct its own probe of an Israeli air strike that killed seven staff of the aid group World Central Kitchen.
“In light of the recent strike against aid workers and the ever-worsening humanitarian crisis, we believe it is unjustifiable to approve these weapons
transfers,” the letter said.
It was signed by Pelosi and 36 other Democrats, including representatives Barbara Lee, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Meanwhile,the US is on high alert and actively preparing for a ‘significant’ attack that could come as soon as within the next week by Iran targeting Israeli or American assets in the region in response to last Monday’s Israeli strike in Damas-cus that killed top Iranian commanders, a senior administration official told CNN.
Senior US officials currently believe that an attack by Iran is ‘inevitable’ – a view shared by their Israeli counterparts, that official said. The two governments are furiously working to get in position ahead of what is to come, as they anticipate that Iran’s attack could unfold in a number of different ways – and that both US and Israeli assets and personnel are at risk of being targeted.
A forthcoming Iranian attack was a major topic of discussion on President Biden’s phone call with Netanyahu last Thursday.
The two governments did not know when or how Iran planned to strike back, the official said.
A direct strike on Israel by Iran is one of the worst-case scenarios that the Biden administration is bracing for, as it would guarantee rapid escalation of an already tumultuous situation in the Middle East. Such a strike could lead to the Israel-HAMAS war broadening into a wider, regional conflict – something Biden has long sought to avoid.
It has been two months since Iranian
proxies attacked US forces in Iraq and Syria, a period of relative stability after months of drone, rocket and missile launches targeting US facilities. The lone exception came on Tuesday, when US forces shot down a drone near Al-Tanf garrison in Syria. The drone attack, which the Defence Department said was carried out by Iranian proxies, came after the Israeli strike on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus.
“We assess that al-Tanf was not the target of the drone,” a Defence official said.
“Since we were unable to immediately determine the target and out of safety for US and coalition partners, the drone was shot down.”
The incident came after the Israeli airstrike on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus on Monday, though an Israel Defence Forces spokesman told CNN that their intelligence showed the building was not a Consulate and is, instead, “…a military building of Quds forces disguised as a civilian building”.
Israel has carried out numerous strikes on Iran-backed targets in Syria, often targeting weapons shipments intended for Hezbollah, a powerful Iranian proxy in Lebanon. But the targeting of the Embassy itself marks a significant escalation, since Embassies are considered the sovereign territory of the nations they represent.
Iran vowed to take revenge after Israel’s airstrike on Iran’s Embassy complex in Syria, which killed at least seven officials. Mohammed Reza Zahedi, a top commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), and senior commander Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi were among those killed, according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
At least six Syrian citizens were also killed, Iranian state television reported on Tuesday.
Zahedi, a former commander of the IRGC’s ground forces, air force and the deputy commander of its operations, is the most high-profile Iranian target killed since then-US President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of IRGC Gen Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in 2020.
The US was quick to inform Iran that the Biden administration was not involved and had no advance knowledge of the strike on the Embassy and has warned Iran against coming after American assets.
“The United States had no involvement in the strike and we did not know about it ahead of time,” a National Security Council spokesperson told CNN last week.
The US has warned Iran not to use the Israeli strike in Damascus as “…a pretext to attack US personnel and facilities…” ,a State Department spokesperson told CNN.
The warning was sent in response to a message from Iran, the spokesperson said. Iran’s message to the US blamed the US for the Damascus attack, a senior administration official said, though it was not clear what, if anything else, Iran conveyed to the US in that initial message.
The deputy chief of staff of the Iranian President, Mohammad Jamshidi, said on Friday that “…in a written message, the Islamic Republic of Iran warns US leadership not to get dragged in Netanyahu’s trap for US: Stay away so you won’t get hurt” .
He added that in response, the US asked Iran not to target American facilities
“As Iran noted publicly, we received a message from them,” the State Department spokesperson told CNN when asked about Jamshidi’s post.
“We responded by warning Iran not to use this as a pretext to attack US personnel and facilities. We did not ‘ask’.”
A senior administration official described the US’ warning to Iran as: “Don’t think about coming after us.”
The State Department spokesperson did not provide further information about how the US’ message was conveyed to Iran.
The US considers its own embassies and consulates abroad, as well as foreign countries’ embassies and consulates in the US, to have a special status. According to the US State Department, “… an attack on an Embassy is considered an attack on the country it represents”.
The Pentagon’s Deputy Press Secretary, Sabrina Singh, has said the US’ assessment was that Israel had carried out the airstrike.
“That’s our assessment, and it’s also our assessment that there were a handful of IRGC top leaders there. I can’t confirm those identities, but that’s our initial assessment right now,” Singh said.
Israel has intensified its military campaign against Iran and its regional proxies following the October 7 attack on Israel by Tehran-backed Palestinian group HAMAS, which killed about 1 200 people and saw more than 200 taken hostage.
Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 32 800 people, according to the Ministry of Health in the besieged enclave, wrought widespread destruction and brought more than one million people to the brink of a manmade famine. — abc.net.au, edition. cnn.com.