Israel’s military said Friday that one of its soldiers was killed in combat in the country’s north, as the near-daily exchanges of fire with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah keep stoking the risk of a regional war. The military did not specify how the 33-year-old sergeant was killed.
After a two-week Israeli offensive in northern Gaza, dozens of bodies were collected throughout Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighborhood and brought to Al-Ahli Hospital on Friday morning. Civil defense workers said they were still recovering dead and wounded from destroyed streets and buildings.
Meanwhile in Cairo, mediators are pushing to narrow gaps between Israel and Hamas over a proposal deal that would include a cease-fire and hostage release in Gaza.
Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250. Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,300 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are crammed into squalid tent camps in central and southern Gaza. Israeli restrictions, fighting and the breakdown of law and order have limited humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine. The top United Nations court has ordered Israel to take steps to protect Palestinians as it examines genocide allegations against Israeli leaders. Israel denies the charge.
Currently:
— Israeli army acknowledges Oct. 7 failures, including slow response times and disorganization.
— ‘We have nothing’: Palestinians return to utter destruction in Gaza City after Israeli withdrawal.
— The U.S. says the end of its pier for Gaza aid is coming soon.
— A boy in Gaza was killed by an Israeli airstrike. His father held him and wouldn’t let go.
— Head of U.S. aid agency says Israel has pledged to improve safety for humanitarian workers in Gaza.
— Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired an Iranian missile at ship, debris analyzed by U.S. shows.
— Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Gaza at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.
Here’s the latest:
Hamas wants written guarantees Israel won’t resume Gaza war after first hostages are released
BEIRUT — A Hamas political official said Friday that the Palestinian militant group is still insisting on written guarantees from mediators in the ongoing cease-fire negotiations that Israel will not resume the war after the first group of Israeli hostages held in Gaza are released.
While the two sides have agreed on a general framework for a deal, the main sticking point remains that Hamas wants it to result in a permanent cease-fire, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that any agreement “must allow Israel to return to fighting until all the objectives of the war are achieved.”
Ahmed Abdul-Hadi, the head of Hamas’ political office in Lebanon, said Hamas has been “flexible” on some points but continues to insist that “negotiations should continue for a permanent cease-fire until a permanent cease-fire is reached,” as opposed to the wording in the current proposal, under which the cease-fire should continue as long as negotiations continue.
“Netanyahu can stop the negotiations and thus resume the aggression” at any time, he said. “We want something in writing to ensure that negotiations continue … in order to reach a permanent cease-fire.”
He denied reports that the group’s leadership inside Gaza had pressured political leaders outside to accept the deal on the table due to the military pressure it is facing, saying that the “military situation is very solid for the resistance (Hamas) and is better than the early days of the war.”
Abdul-Hadi said that Hamas does not expect to resume its role as the ruling party in Gaza after the war but wants to see a Palestinian government of technocrats. However, he said the form that future governance in the enclave should take is “a Palestinian matter that is agreed upon by the Palestinian people” and is not on the table in the current negotiations.
“We do not want to rule Gaza alone again in the next phase,” he said. “We want to have a partnership and national consensus.”
Abdul-Hadi said a meeting between Hamas and its main rival, Fatah, is expected to take place in China later this month and that “We hope that this meeting will result in a national consensus.” The meeting was previously scheduled to take place last month but was postponed, with the two sides trading blame for the delay.
Emergency workers collect bodies in Gaza City
Dozens of bodies collected throughout a western neighborhood of Gaza City arrived at Al-Ahli Hospital on Friday morning as Palestinian emergency workers said they continued to unearth the dead throughout the neighborhood’s destroyed streets and buildings.
The hospital’s director, Fadel Naem, told The Associated Press that people both dead and wounded had been brought to the hospital from the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, transported in groups of up to 10, amid sniper fire and the buzz of helicopters.
Meanwhile, emergency crews from the civil defense were continuing to recover bodies scattered in destroyed streets and buildings, where entire families appear to have been killed by artillery fire and aerial bombardment, Mahmoud Basal, the group’s spokesperson said.
The Israeli army said it could not comment on its activities in the area.
“There are homes that we cannot reach, and there are those who were burned inside their homes,” Basal said, noting many of those who were killed had left nearby shelters after being ordered to evacuate.
In recent months, Israel has intensified operations in various neighborhoods of Gaza City, including the Shati refugee camp and the Shijaiyah district, and has issued multiple evacuation orders in the north of the territory.
The scenes in Tel al-Hawa mirror those in other Gaza City neighborhoods from which Israel’s military has withdrawn in recent days. On Thursday, civil defense workers found 60 bodies in Shijaiyah under similar circumstances, with more believed to be buried under rubble.
Israeli soldier killed in cross-border fire with Hezbollah
JERUSALEM — Israel’s military said Friday that one of its soldiers was killed in combat in northern Israel as the country’s army and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah continue to trade cross-border fire.
The military did not specify how the 33-year-old sergeant was killed.
The Iranian-backed group and Israel have been trading near daily exchanges of fire since the Israel-Hamas war broke out last year.
Hezbollah says it is striking Israel in solidarity with Hamas, another Iran-allied group that ignited the war in Gaza with its Oct. 7 attack into southern Israel. The group’s leadership says it will stop its attacks once there is a cease-fire in Gaza, and that while it does not want war, it is ready for one.
President Biden acknowledges disappointments, missteps and frustrations with Israel’s hard-right government
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden acknowledged disappointments, missteps and frustrations with Israel’s hard-right government Thursday, but pointed to increased hopes now of a cease-fire to end the Israel-Hamas war devastating the lives of Gaza’s people.
Biden looked back over the course of his efforts in Israel’s war against Hamas during a much-watched press conference at the site of the just ended NATO summit.
He called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government the most conservative Israeli administration he had experienced, and said he had urged Israeli leaders not to follow the example that the U.S. set against al-Qaida and other extremist militant groups. “’Don’t think that’s what you should be doing, doubling-down,”’ he recounted telling them.
He said he had been “disappointed” his order for the U.S. military to build a pier to bring aid by sea to Gaza, along with some other efforts, “have not succeeded as well.”
But Biden said Israel and Hamas had now both agreed to the broad terms of a deal to pause fighting and free hostages, and said that made prospects brighter now. Mediators were helping work on gaps in agreement, he said.