Israel battles Hamas as mediators call for both to accept Gaza truce plan
Israel’s military reported more air strikes and ground combat on Sunday in central Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, as well as the Zeitun and Sabra areas in Gaza City in the north.
Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have threatened to quit Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government if he goes ahead with a truce deal outlined by US President Joe Biden. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Egypt hosts Israeli and US officials on Sunday to discuss the reopening of the Rafah crossing, a vital conduit for aid into the besieged Gaza Strip, Egyptian state-linked media reported.
At least 36,439 Palestinians have been killed and 82,627 wounded in Israel’s war in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. Some 1,170 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks and 250 people were taken hostage, according to Israeli figures, with 132 still missing.
Israeli justices press government on religious conscription waivers
The top Israeli court heard responses by the state on Sunday to challenges against exemptions granted to ultra-Orthodox Jews from military conscription, a long-standing source of friction with more secular citizens now inflamed by the long Gaza war.
In the name of equality, the Supreme Court in 2018 voided a law waiving the call-up for ultra-Orthodox men who want to study in seminaries instead. Parliament failed to come up with an alternative arrangement, and a government-ordered stay on a mandatory mobilisation of ultra-Orthodox expired in March.
That has left Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu scrambling to agree with ultra-Orthodox coalition partners on a military service compromise that might preempt any Supreme Court ruling that Israel’s fasted-growing minority must be forcibly drafted.
“We’re not on quiet waters. We are at war, and the need (for military personnel) cries out,” one of nine justices hearing the case, Noam Solberg, told a government lawyer who argued that it was still too early for an ultra-Orthodox mass-conscription.
It was not immediately clear when the court might rule in the case, whose first hearings took place in February.
Gaza ceasefire proposal: ‘There is a swirl of confusion around this deal at the moment’
UAE’s president, Qatar’s emir discuss Gaza proposal, news agency WAM says
United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani discussed in Abu Dhabi proposals for a ceasefire deal in Gaza that were laid out on Friday by US President Joe Biden, the UAE state news agency (WAM) reported on Sunday.
The two leaders expressed support for all “serious initiatives and efforts” toward a lasting peace in the region, it said.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric said Saturday his country was joining South Africa in its case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of “genocide” in the war against Hamas.
Speaking to the National Congress, Boric decried the “catastrophic humanitarian situation” in Gaza and called for “a firm response from the international community.”
“Chile will become a party to and support the case that South Africa presented against Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague,” Boric said.
The ICJ is considering South Africa’s case, but in the interim has brought in “preliminary measures” ordering Israel do everything it could to prevent acts of genocide during its campaign against Hamas.
Israel fights Hamas as mediators urge both to accept Gaza truce plan
Israel battled and bombarded Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Sunday as mediators called on both sides to agree to a truce and hostage release deal outlined by US President Joe Biden.
Since Biden spoke at the White House on Friday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has insisted Israel will pursue the war raging since October 7 until it has destroyed Hamas and freed the captives.
Netanyahu, a hawkish political veteran leading a fragile right-wing coalition government, is under intense domestic pressure from two sides.
Lebanon state media says two civilians killed in Israeli strike
Lebanon’s state media on Sunday reported that two civilians were killed in an Israeli strike in the south of the country, as fighting between Israel and the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah intensified.
Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, has traded regular cross-border fire with Israel since the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack on southern Israel which triggered the war in the Gaza Strip.
“Two civilians were killed in an Israeli strike that targeted their home in the village of Houla,” near the border, the National News Agency reported.
A local official told AFP that those killed were “two brothers, shepherds whose house was destroyed.”
The powerful pro-Iran group said in the morning it launched several attack drones toward an Israeli military position in the occupied Golan Heights, just hours after Israel targeted their fighters in a remote area of eastern Lebanon far from the border. rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx rfx
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