Gaza truce deal: Netanyahu accuses Hamas of ‘rejecting everything’ wholesale
The Israeli Prime Minister on Wednesday evening accused Hamas of having “rejected” in block “All” what was proposed during the negotiations under the auspices of international mediation with a view to obtaining a truce in Gaza. “We are trying to find grounds on which to start negotiations, but they refuse and say there is nothing to discuss,” added the leader, “So I hope that will change because I want these hostages to be released.”
During this press conference, the Israeli head of state also reiterated that he wanted Israel to retain control of the Philadelphia Corridor – a buffer zone along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt – for as long as he deemed it necessary, to prevent Hamas from bringing weapons into Palestinian territory. The Palestinian Islamist movement, for its part, is demanding a total Israeli withdrawal from the area. Netanyahu’s insistence on wanting to control this corridor “aims to prevent an agreement from being reached” and to “to prolong the aggression against (the) people” Palestinian, Hamas deplores on Telegram this Thursday. In Washington, the spokesman for the State Department, Matthew Miller, called on each party to make the necessary concessions.
‘Unjustified’ destruction in Gaza: Amnesty calls for investigation into Israel for ‘war crimes’
An international investigation for “war crimes” must be opened against the Israeli army, which has so dramatically destroyed “unjustified” entire neighbourhoods of Gaza along the Palestinian enclave’s border with Israel have been destroyed, Amnesty International said on Thursday. According to the human rights NGO, more than 90% of the buildings appear to have been “destroyed or seriously damaged” and 59% of crops damaged between October 2023 and May 2024 in a strip 1 to 1.8 km wide along the wall separating the two territories. Damage covering a total of 58 km², or around 16% of the territory of the Gaza Strip, Amnesty calculates.
In four areas where the NGO investigated, “structures were deliberately and systematically demolished” after the Israeli army took control of it, outside of fighting with Hamas. In August, the UN also estimated that nearly two-thirds of Gaza’s buildings had been damaged or destroyed since October 7. However, international humanitarian law, to which all belligerents in a conflict are subject, “prohibits the destruction of an adversary’s property unless justified by compelling military necessity,” attacks on civilian objects also being “forbidden”, recalls the NGO.
First phase of anti-polio campaign in Gaza a success, WHO announces
The first phase of the polio vaccination campaign in Gaza has successfully concluded, with nearly 200,000 children receiving their first dose in the central Palestinian territory, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Wednesday. Following the discovery of the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years, a large-scale campaign began on Sunday, with the help of “humanitarian breaks” in the fighting. WHO is also set to begin vaccinations in the south of the territory today, where it estimates it will reach 340,000 children over four days. Between September 9 and 11, the organization will then move to northern Gaza. At least 90 percent of Gazan children need to receive both doses to “to stop transmission within Gaza and prevent polio from spreading to neighboring countries” and internationally, explains Dr Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territories.
