middle-east
US Army is slashing thousands of posts in major revamp to prepare for future wars
The U.S. Army is slashing the size of its force by about 24,000, or almost 5%, and restructuring to be better able to fight the next major war, as the service struggles with recruiting shortfalls that made it impossible to bring in enough soldiers to fill all the jobs.
The cuts will mainly be in already-empty posts — not actual soldiers — including in jobs related to counterinsurgency that swelled during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars but are not needed as much today. About 3,000 of the cuts would come from Army special operations forces.
At the same time, however, the plan will add about 7,500 troops in other critical missions, including air-defense and counter-drone units and five new task forces around the world with enhanced cyber, intelligence and long-range strike capabilities.
Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said she and Gen. Randy George, the Army chief, worked to thin out the number of places where they had empty or excess slots.
"We're moving away from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. We want to be postured for large-scale combat operations," Wormuth told reporters on Tuesday. "So we looked at where were there pieces of force structure that were probably more associated with counterinsurgency, for example, that we don't need anymore."
George added that Army leaders did a lot of analysis to choose the places to cut.
"The things that we want to not have in our formation are actually things that we don't think are going to make us successful on the battlefield going forward," he said.
According to an Army document, the service is "significantly overstructured" and there aren't enough soldiers to fill existing units. The cuts, it said, are "spaces" not "faces" and the Army will not be asking soldiers to leave the force.
Instead, the decision reflects the reality that for years the Army hasn't been able to fill thousands of empty posts. While the Army as it's currently structured can have up to 494,000 soldiers, the total number of active-duty soldiers right now is about 445,000. Under the new plan, the goal is to bring in enough troops over the next five years to reach a level of 470,000.
The planned overhaul comes after two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan that forced the Army to quickly and dramatically expand in order to fill the brigades sent to the battlefront. That included a massive counterinsurgency mission to battle al-Qaida, the Taliban and the Islamic State group.
Over time the military's focus has shifted to great power competition from adversaries such as China and Russia, and threats from Iran and North Korea. And the war in Ukraine has shown the need for greater emphasis on air-defense systems and high-tech abilities both to use and counter airborne and sea-based drones.
Army leaders said they looked carefully across the board at all the service's job specialties in search of places to trim. And they examined the ongoing effort to modernize the Army, with new high-tech weapons, to determine where additional forces should be focused.
According to the plan, the Army will cut about 10,000 spaces for engineers and similar jobs that were tied to counter-insurgency missions. An additional 2,700 cuts will come from units that don't deploy often and can be trimmed, and 6,500 will come from various training and other posts.
There also will be about 10,000 posts cut from cavalry squadrons, Stryker brigade combat teams, infantry brigade combat teams and security force assistance brigades, which are used to train foreign forces.
The changes represent a significant shift for the Army to prepare for large-scale combat operations against more sophisticated enemies. But they also underscore the steep recruiting challenges that all of the military services are facing.
In the last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the Navy, Army and Air Force all failed to meet their recruitment goals, while the Marine Corps and the tiny Space Force met their targets. The Army brought in a bit more than 50,000 recruits, falling well short of the publicly stated "stretch goal" of 65,000.
The previous fiscal year, the Army also missed its enlistment goal by 15,000. That year the goal was 60,000.
In response, the service launched a sweeping overhaul of its recruiting last fall to focus more on young people who have spent time in college or are job hunting early in their careers. And it is forming a new professional force of recruiters, rather than relying on soldiers randomly assigned to the task.
In discussing the changes at the time, Wormuth acknowledged that the service hasn't been recruiting well "for many more years than one would think from just looking at the headlines in the last 18 months." The service, she said, hasn't met its annual goal for new enlistment contracts since 2014.
Israel and Hamas indicate no deal is imminent after Biden signals Gaza cease-fire could be close
Israel and Hamas on Tuesday played down chances of an imminent breakthrough in talks for a cease-fire in Gaza, after U.S. President Joe Biden said Israel has agreed to pause its offensive during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan if a deal is reached to release some hostages.
The president's remarks came on the eve of the Michigan primary, where he faces pressure from the state's large Arab American population over his staunch support for Israel's offensive. Biden said he had been briefed on the status of talks by his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, but said his comments reflected his optimism for a deal, not that all the remaining hurdles had been overcome.
In the wake of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, Israel's air, sea and ground campaign in Gaza has killed tens of thousands of people, obliterated large swaths of the urban landscape and displaced 80% of the battered enclave's population.
Israel's seal on the territory, which allows in only a trickle of food and other aid, has sparked alarm that a famine could be imminent, according to the United Nations.
With U.N. truck deliveries of aid hampered by the lack of safe corridors, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and France conducted an airdrop of food, medical supplies and other aid into Gaza on Tuesday. At a beach in southern Gaza, boxes of supplies dropped from military aircraft drifted down on parachutes as thousands of Palestinians ran along the sand to retrieve them.
But alarm is growing over worsening hunger among Gaza's 2.3 million Palestinians.
Two infants died from dehydration and malnutrition at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza City, said the spokesman for Gaza's Health Ministry, Ashraf al-Qidra. He warned that infant mortality threatens to surge.
"Dehydration and malnutrition will kill thousands of children and pregnant women in the Gaza Strip," he said.
The U.N. Population Fund said the Al Helal Al Emirati maternity hospital in Gaza's southernmost town of Rafah reported that newborns were dying because mothers were unable to get prenatal or postnatal care. Premature births are also rising, forcing staff to put four or five newborns in a single incubator. Most of them do not survive, it said, without giving figures on the numbers of deaths.
Now the prospect of an invasion of Rafah has prompted global alarm over the fate of around 1.4 million civilians trapped there.
Talks to pause the fighting have gained momentum recently and were underway Tuesday. Negotiators from the United States, Egypt and Qatar have been working to broker a cease-fire that would see Hamas free some of the dozens of hostages it holds in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners, a six-week halt in fighting and an increase in aid deliveries to Gaza.
The start of Ramadan, which is expected to be around March 10, is seen as an unofficial deadline for a deal. The month is a time of heightened religious observance and dawn-to-dusk fasting for hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world. Israeli-Palestinian tensions have flared in the past during the holy month.
"Ramadan's coming up, and there has been an agreement by the Israelis that they would not engage in activities during Ramadan as well, in order to give us time to get all the hostages out," Biden said in an appearance on NBC's "Late Night With Seth Meyers" that was recorded Monday.
In separate comments the same day, Biden said that he hoped a cease-fire deal could take effect by next week.
At the same time, Biden did not call for an end to the war, which was triggered when Hamas militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted roughly 250 people, according to Israeli authorities.
Israeli officials said Biden's comments came as a surprise and were not made in coordination with the country's leadership. A Hamas official played down any sense of progress, saying the group wouldn't soften its demands.
The Israeli officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the sensitive talks with the media, said Israel wants a deal immediately, but that Hamas continues to push excessive demands. They also said that Israel is insisting that female soldiers be part of the first group of hostages released under any truce deal.
Hamas official Ahmad Abdel-Hadi indicated that optimism on a deal was premature.
"The resistance is not interested in giving up any of its demands, and what is proposed does not meet what it had requested," he told the Pan-Arab TV channel Al Mayadeen.
Hamas has previously demanded that Israel end the war as part of any deal, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called "delusional."
In Washington, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by phone separately with the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to discuss planning for post-conflict reconstruction and governance of Gaza.
Neither country is directly involved with the ceasefire negotiations but both will be critical in supporting what will an expensive, lengthy and difficult scenario when the fighting stops, particularly in winning popular Arab backing for security guarantees for Israel should it agree to talks on the creation of a Palestinian state.
In nearly identical statements, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Blinken had discussed with the ministers the U.S. "commitment to achieving sustained peace through the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel."
At a news conference in Doha on Tuesday, Qatar Foreign Ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said his country felt "optimistic" about the talks, without elaborating.
A senior official from Egypt has said the draft deal includes the release of up to 40 women and older hostages in return for up to 300 Palestinian prisoners — mostly women, minors and older people.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations, said the proposed six-week pause in fighting would allow hundreds of trucks to bring desperately needed aid into Gaza every day, including to the hard-hit north.
Biden, who has shown staunch support for Israel throughout the war, left open the door in his remarks for an eventual Israeli ground offensive in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, on the border with Egypt, where more than half of the enclave's 2.3 million people have fled under Israeli evacuation orders.
Netanyahu has said a ground operation in Rafah is an inevitable component of Israel's strategy for crushing Hamas. This week, the military submitted for Cabinet approval operational plans for the offensive, as well as evacuation plans for civilians there.
Biden said he believes Israel has slowed its bombardment of Rafah.
"They have to, and they have made a commitment to me that they're going to see to it that there's an ability to evacuate significant portions of Rafah before they go and take out the remainder Hamas," he said. "But it's a process."
Israel's offensive in Gaza has killed more than 29,700 people, most of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. It does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its count.
The first and only cease-fire in the war, in late November, brought about the release of about 100 hostages — mostly women, children and foreign nationals — in exchange for about 240 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, as well as a brief halt in the fighting.
Roughly 130 hostages remain in Gaza, but Israel says about a quarter of them are dead.
What would a new Palestinian government in the West Bank mean for the war in Gaza?
The Palestinian Authority's prime minister announced his government's resignation on Monday, seen as the first step in a reform process urged by the United States as part of its latest ambitious plans to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But it will do little to address the authority's longstanding lack of legitimacy among its own people or its strained relations with Israel. Both pose major obstacles to U.S. plans calling for the PA, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to govern postwar Gaza ahead of eventual statehood.
That's assuming that the war in Gaza ends with the defeat of the Hamas militant group — an Israeli and U.S. goal that seems elusive nearly five months into the grueling war that has killed almost 30,000 Palestinians and pushed the territory to the brink of famine.
Here's a look at the government shakeup and what it means for the Israel-Hamas war.
WHAT IS THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY?
The PA was created in the early 1990s through interim peace agreements signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, then led by Yasser Arafat.
It was granted limited autonomy in parts of the West Bank and Gaza ahead of what the Palestinians hoped would be full statehood in both territories as well as east Jerusalem, lands that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
But the sides were unable to reach a final agreement through several rounds of peace talks. Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the PA in 2005, months after Arafat's death. Hamas won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections the following year, triggering an international boycott of the PA.
A power struggle between Abbas' secular Fatah party and Hamas boiled over in the summer of 2007, with Hamas seizing power in Gaza after a week of street battles. That effectively confined Abbas' authority to parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Abbas recognizes Israel, is opposed to armed struggle and is committed to a two-state solution. His security forces have cooperated with the Israeli military to crack down on Hamas and other armed groups, and his government has worked with Israel to facilitate work permits, medical travel and other civilian affairs.
WHAT DOES THE RESIGNATION MEAN?
In announcing his resignation, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said new arrangements were needed to address "the new reality in the Gaza Strip.”
Abbas accepted Shtayyeh's resignation and is expected to replace him with Mohammad Mustafa, a U.S.-educated economist who has held senior positions at the World Bank and currently leads the Palestine Investment Fund. He was deputy prime minister and economy minister from 2013-2015.
As a political independent and not a Fatah loyalist like Shtayyeh, Mustafa's appointment would likely be welcomed by the U.S., Israel and other countries.
Mustafa has no political base of his own, and the 88-year-old Abbas will still have the final say on any major policies. Still, the appointment would convey the image of a reformed, professional PA that can run Gaza, which is important for the U.S.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said it was up to the Palestinians to choose their leaders, but that the U.S. welcomes any steps to “reform and revitalize” the PA.
“We think those steps are positive. We think that they’re an important step to achieving a reunited Gaza and West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”
HOW DO PALESTINIANS VIEW THE AUTHORITY?
Abbas' popularity has plummeted in recent years, with polls consistently finding that a large majority of Palestinians want him to resign. The PA's security coordination with Israel is extremely unpopular, causing many Palestinians to view it as a subcontractor of the occupation.
Both the PA and Hamas have cracked down on dissent in the territories they control, violently suppressing protests and jailing and torturing critics. Abbas' mandate expired in 2009 but he has refused to hold elections, citing Israeli restrictions.
Hamas, whose popularity has soared during this and previous rounds of violence, would likely do well in any free election.
But the most popular Palestinian leader by far is Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader who is serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison after a 2004 terrorism conviction.
Hamas is demanding his release in exchange for some of the hostages it captured in the Oct. 7 attack that ignited the war, but Israel has refused.
Hamas has called for all the Palestinian factions to establish an interim government to prepare the way for elections. But Israel, the U.S. and other Western countries are likely to boycott any Palestinian body that includes the militant group, which they view as a terrorist organization.
DOES ISRAEL SUPPORT THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY?
Israel prefers the PA to Hamas. But even though they cooperate on security matters, Israel accuses the PA of inciting terrorism, and the PA accuses Israel of apartheid and genocide.
Israel's criticism largely focuses on the PA's provision of financial aid to the families of Palestinian prisoners and Palestinians killed by Israeli forces — including militants who killed Israelis. Israel says the payments incentivize terrorism. The PA portrays them as social welfare for victims of the occupation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the PA should have no role in postwar Gaza. He says Israel will maintain open-ended security control over the territory while local Palestinian leaders administer civilian affairs. Netanyahu’s government is opposed to Palestinian statehood.
The U.S. has outlined a path to a broader postwar settlement in which Saudi Arabia would recognize Israel and join other Arab states and a revitalized PA in helping to rebuild and govern Gaza — all in exchange for a credible path to an independent Palestinian state.
The reform of the PA represents a small part of that package, which has yet to win over the Israeli government.
Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of blocking aid to Palestinians in violation of a UN court order
Israel has failed to comply with an order by the United Nations' top court to provide urgently needed aid to desperate people in the Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch said Monday, a month after a landmark ruling in The Hague ordered Israel to moderate its war.
In a preliminary response to a South African petition accusing Israel of genocide, the U.N.’s top court ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza. It stopped short of ordering an end to its military offensive that has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe in the tiny Palestinian enclave. Israel vehemently denies the charges against it, saying it is fighting a war in self-defense.
One month later and nearly five months into the war, preparations are underway for Israel to expand its ground operation into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost town along the border with Egypt, where 1.4 million Palestinians have flooded into in search of safety.
Early Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the army had presented to the War Cabinet its operational plan for Rafah as well as plans to evacuate civilians from the battle zones. It gave no further details.
The situation in Rafah, where dense tent camps have sprouted to house the displaced, has sparked global concern and Israel’s allies have warned that it must protect civilians in its battle against Hamas.
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Also Monday, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said he was submitting his government's resignation. The move, which still must be accepted by President Mahmoud Abbas, could open the door to U.S.-backed reforms in the Palestinian Authority, which the U.S. wants to rule postwar Gaza but in a revitalized shape.
In its ruling last month, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to follow six provisional measures, including taking “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
Under the orders, Israel also must submit a report on what it is doing to adhere to the measures within a month. While Monday marked a month since the court’s orders were issued, it was not immediately clear whether Israel had handed in such a report. The Israeli Foreign Ministry had no immediate comment.
Human Rights Watch said Israel was not adhering to the court’s order on aid provision, citing a 30% drop in the daily average number of aid trucks entering Gaza in the weeks following the court’s ruling. It said Israel was not adequately facilitating fuel deliveries to hard-hit northern Gaza and blamed Israel for blocking aid from reaching the north, where the World Food Program said last week it was forced to suspend aid deliveries because of increasing chaos in the isolated part of the territory.
“The Israeli government has simply ignored the court’s ruling, and in some ways even intensified its repression, including further blocking lifesaving aid,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch.
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Echoing Human Rights Watch, the Association of International Development Agencies, a coalition of over 70 humanitarian organizations working in Gaza and the West Bank, said aid deliveries have slowed since the court's ruling, with almost no aid reaching areas in Gaza north of Rafah.
Israel denies it is restricting the entry of aid and has instead blamed humanitarian organizations operating inside Gaza, saying hundreds of trucks filled with aid sit idle on the Palestinian side of the main crossing. The U.N. says it can’t always reach the trucks at the crossing because it is at times too dangerous.
Netanyahu’s office also said Monday the War Cabinet had approved a plan to deliver humanitarian aid safely into Gaza in a way that would “prevent the cases of looting.” It did not disclose further details.
The war, launched after Hamas-led militants rampaged across southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 people hostage, has unleashed unimaginable devastation in Gaza.
Nearly 30,000 people have been killed in Gaza, two thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza which does not distinguish in its count between fighters and noncombatants. Israel says it has killed 10,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Palestinian prime minister submits government’s resignation, a move that could open door to reforms
Fighting has flattened large swaths of Gaza's urban landscape, displacing about 80% of the territory’s 2.3 million people who have crammed into increasingly smaller spaces looking for elusive safety.
The crisis has pushed a quarter of the population toward starvation and raised fears of imminent famine, especially in the northern part of Gaza, which was the first focus of Israel’s ground invasion and where starving residents have been forced to eat animal fodder and search for food in demolished buildings.
“I wish death for the children because I cannot get them bread. I cannot feed them. I cannot feed my own children," Naim Abouseido yelled in anguish as he waited for aid in Gaza City. "What did we do to deserve this?”
Bushra Khalidi, with U.K. aid organization Oxfam, told The Associated Press that it had verified reports that children have died of starvation in the north in recent weeks, which she said indicated aid was not being scaled up despite the court ruling.
Israel said that 245 trucks of aid entered Gaza on Sunday, less than half the amount that entered daily before the war.
But Human Rights Watch, citing U.N. figures, said that between Jan. 27 and Feb. 21, the daily average of trucks entering stood at 93, compared to 147 trucks a day in the three weeks before the world court’s ruling. The daily average dropped further, to 57, between Feb. 9 and 21, the figures showed.
Aid groups say deliveries continue to be hobbled by security issues. The French aid groups Médecins du Monde and Doctors Without Borders each said that facilities belonging to them were struck by Israeli forces in the weeks following the court order.
United Nations agencies and aid groups say the hostilities, the Israeli military’s refusal to facilitate deliveries and the breakdown of order inside Gaza make it increasingly difficult to get vital aid to much of the coastal enclave. In some cases, crowds of desperate Palestinians have surrounded delivery trucks and stripped the supplies off them.
The U.N. has called on Israel to open more crossings, including in the north, and to improve the coordination process.
Palestinian prime minister submits government’s resignation, a move that could open door to reforms
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh says his government is resigning, in a move that could open the door to U.S.-backed reforms in the Palestinian Authority.
President Mahmoud Abbas must still decide whether he accepts Shtayyeh and his government's resignation, tendered Monday. But the move signals a willingness by the Western-backed Palestinian leadership to accept shake-up that might usher in reforms seen as necessary to revitalize the Palestinian Authority.
The U.S. wants a reformed Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza once the war is over. But many obstacles remain to making that vision a reality.
'Will no longer be complicit in genocide': US Air Force personnel sets himself on fire outside Israeli Embassy in Washington
An active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force was critically injured Sunday after setting himself ablaze outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., while declaring that he “will no longer be complicit in genocide,” a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
The man, whose name wasn’t immediately released, walked up to the embassy shortly before 1 p.m. and began livestreaming on the video streaming platform Twitch, the person said. Law enforcement officials believe the man started a livestream, set his phone down and then doused himself in accelerant and ignited the flames. At one point, he said he “will no longer be complicit in genocide,” the person said. The video was later removed from the platform, but law enforcement officials have obtained and reviewed a copy.
The person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of the ongoing investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Police did not immediately provide any additional details about the incident.
Read: Israel vows to target Lebanon's Hezbollah even if cease-fire reached with Hamas in Gaza
The incident happened as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking the cabinet approval for a military operation in the southern Gazan city of Rafah while a temporary cease-fire deal is being negotiated. Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, however, has drawn criticisms, including genocide claims against the Palestinians.
Israel has adamantly denied the genocide allegations and says it is carrying out operations in accordance with international law in the Israel-Hamas war.
In December, a person self-immolated outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta and used gasoline as an accelerant, according to Atlanta’s fire authorities. A Palestinian flag was found at the scene, and the act was believed to be one of “extreme political protest.”
Read: Israeli officials to meet on a proposed pause in Gaza while the Cabinet is set to OK a Rafah plan
In a statement, the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington said its officers had responded to the scene outside the Israeli Embassy to assist U.S. Secret Service officers and that its bomb squad had also been called to examine a suspicious vehicle. Police said no hazardous materials were found in the vehicle.
Also read: Netanyahu seeks open-ended control over security and civilian affairs in Gaza in new postwar plan
Israel vows to target Lebanon's Hezbollah even if cease-fire reached with Hamas in Gaza
Israel’s defense minister vowed Sunday to step up attacks on Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group even if a cease-fire is reached with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Hezbollah, which has been exchanging fire with Israel throughout the war in Gaza, has said it will halt its nearly daily attacks on Israel if a cease-fire is reached in Gaza.
But Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that anyone who thinks a temporary cease-fire for Gaza will also apply to the northern front is “mistaken.”
“We will continue the fire, and we will do so independently from the south, until we achieve our goals,” Gallant said. He said there is a simple aim: to push Hezbollah away from the Israeli border, either through a diplomatic agreement or by force.
Hezbollah began striking Israel almost immediately after Hamas triggered the fighting in Gaza with a deadly attack along Israel’s southern border from the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7. Tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border have been displaced by the continued cycle of Hezbollah rocket and missile attacks and Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech earlier this month that the group would adhere to a cease-fire in southern Lebanon if a cease-fire should be reached in Gaza. But he said it would resume and escalate attacks if Israel continued to strike in Lebanon after any agreement with Hamas.
A Lebanese security official said Sunday that five Hezbollah members were killed in two separate Israeli airstrikes on trucks in the border area between Lebanon and Syria. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to share the information with journalists. Hezbollah announced that three of its fighters had been killed, but did not say where.
The Israeli military did not acknowledge the strikes on the Lebanon-Syria border but announced that it had struck several sites in southern Lebanon in response to missile launches and that it targeted a “terrorist cell” in the town of Blida.
Read: Israel claims to uncover Hezbollah missile plant in Lebanon
Gallant said Israel’s targeting of Hezbollah commanders has significantly weakened the group's ability to attack Israel.
About 200 Hezbollah fighters and 35 civilians in Lebanon have been killed in nearly five months of daily low-level clashes between the Lebanese militant group and Israeli forces against the backdrop of the Israel’s war with Hamas, a Hezbollah ally. In Israel, nine soldiers and nine civilians have been killed in Hezbollah attacks.
Most of the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel has been confined to the area within a few kilometers on either side of the border.
Diplomats from the United States and European countries have presented a series of proposals in hopes of producing a deal that would tamp down the border conflict.
The ideas mostly hinge on a Hezbollah pullback a few kilometers from the border, a beefed-up Lebanese army presence in the border region, and negotiations over border points where Lebanon maintains Israel has been occupying small areas of Lebanese territory since withdrawing its forces from the rest of southern Lebanon in 2000.
Read: Hezbollah leader: We have no missile factories in Lebanon
Eventually, the plans could lead into a demarcation of the land border between Lebanon and Israel, following the maritime border deal reached in 2022.
The most recent of these proposals, put forward by France, would involve Hezbollah withdrawing its forces 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border, said a Lebanese government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the negotiations.
Lebanon is still studying the proposal, and Hezbollah officials have indicated they are willing to consider it, but both government and Hezbollah officials have said there would be no agreement on the border before there is a cease-fire in Gaza.
Read more: Hezbollah: Israeli drone falls, another explodes over Beirut
Netanyahu says a cease-fire deal would only delay 'somewhat' an Israeli military offensive in Rafah
An Israeli military offensive in Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah could be “delayed somewhat” if a deal is reached for a weekslong cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday, and claimed that total victory in the territory would come within weeks once the offensive begins.
Netanyahu confirmed to CBS that a deal is in the works, with no details. Talks resumed Sunday in Qatar at the specialist level, Egypt’s state-run Al Qahera TV reported, citing an Egyptian official as saying discussions would follow in Cairo with the aim of achieving the cease-fire and release of dozens of hostages held in Gaza as well as Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Meanwhile, Israel is nearing the approval of plans to expand its offensive against the Hamas militant group to Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border, where more than half the besieged territory's population of 2.3 million have sought refuge. Humanitarian groups warn of a catastrophe. Rafah is Gaza's main entry point for aid. The U.S. and other allies say Israel must avoid harming civilians.
Netanyahu has said he will convene the Cabinet this week to approve operational plans that include the evacuation of civilians to elsewhere in Gaza.
“Once we begin the Rafah operation, the intense phase of the fighting is weeks away from completion. Not months," Netanyahu told CBS. ““If we don’t have a deal, we’ll do it anyway.” He said four of the six remaining Hamas battalions are concentrated in Rafah.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told NBC that President Joe Biden hadn't been briefed on the Rafah plan. “We believe that this operation should not go forward until or unless we see (a plan to protect civilians),” Sullivan said.
Early Monday, Netanyahu’s office said the army had presented to the War Cabinet its “operational plan” for Rafah as well as plans to evacuate civilians from the battle zones. It gave no further details.
His office also said the War Cabinet had approved a plan to deliver humanitarian aid safely into Gaza.
United Nations agencies and aid groups say the hostilities, the Israeli military’s refusal to facilitate deliveries and the breakdown of order inside Gaza make it increasingly difficult to get vital aid to much of the coastal enclave. In some chaotic scenes, crowds of desperate Palestinians have surrounded delivery trucks and stolen the supplies off them.
Heavy fighting continued in parts of northern Gaza, the first target of the offensive, where the destruction is staggering.
Read: Israel vows to target Lebanon's Hezbollah even if cease-fire reached with Hamas in Gaza
“We’re trapped, unable to move because of the heavy bombardment," said Gaza City resident Ayman Abu Awad.
He said that starving residents have been forced to eat animal fodder and search for food in demolished buildings. In nearby Jabaliya, market vendor Um Ayad showed off a leafy weed that people pick from the harsh, dry soil and eat.
“We have to feed the children. They keep screaming they want food. We cannot find food. We don’t know what to do,” she said.
Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner general of the U.N. agency for Palestinians, said it has not been able to deliver food to northern Gaza since Jan. 23, adding on X, formerly Twitter, that “our calls to send food aid have been denied."
Israel said that 245 trucks of aid entered Gaza on Sunday — less than half the amount that entered daily before the war.
DETAILS OF THE PROPOSED DEAL
A senior official from Egypt, which along with Qatar is a mediator between Israel and Hamas, has said the draft cease-fire deal includes the release of up to 40 women and older hostages in return for up to 300 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women, minors and older people.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations, said the proposed six-week pause in fighting would include allowing hundreds of trucks to bring desperately needed aid into Gaza every day, including the north. He said both sides agreed to continue negotiations during the pause for further releases and a permanent cease-fire.
Negotiators face an unofficial deadline of the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan around March 10, a period that often sees heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions.
Hamas says it has not been involved in the latest proposal developed by the United States, Egypt and Qatar, but the reported outline largely matches its earlier proposal for the first phase of a truce.
Read: New attempts at Gaza cease-fire are underway, Israel's Gantz says
Hamas has said it won't release all of the remaining hostages until Israel ends its offensive and withdraws its forces from the territory, and is demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including senior militants. Netanyahu has rejected those conditions.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday made clear that a cease-fire deal for Gaza wouldn't affect the military's daily low-level clashes with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a Hamas ally.
“We will continue the fire, and we will do so independently from the south," he said while visiting the Northern Command.
Israel declared war after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages were released in a cease-fire deal in November. More than 130 remain in captivity, a fourth of them believed to be dead.
Families have followed the negotiations with hope and anguish.
“It feels like Schindler's list. Will he be on the list or not?” Shelly Shem Tov, the mother of Omer, 21, told Israeli Army Radio of his chances of being freed.
Israel's air and ground offensive has driven around 80% of Gaza's population from their homes, putting hundreds of thousands at risk of starvation and the spread of disease. The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza says 29,692 Palestinians have been killed in the war, two-thirds of them women and children.
The ministry's death toll doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel says its troops have killed more than 10,000 militants, without providing evidence.
NEWBORNS DYING IN RAFAH
The war has devastated Gaza's health sector. Less than half of hospitals even partially function.
At the Emirates Hospital in Rafah, three to four newborns are placed in each of its 20 incubators, which are designed for just one.
Read more: US vetoes Arab-backed UN resolution demanding immediate cease-fire in Gaza
Dr. Amal Ismail said two to three newborns die in a single shift, in part because many families live in tents in rainy, cold weather. Before the war, one or two newborns in incubators there died per month.
“No matter how much we work with them, it is all wasted,” she said. “Health conditions in tents are very bad.”
Israeli officials to meet on a proposed pause in Gaza while the Cabinet is set to OK a Rafah plan
Israeli officials will meet Saturday night on the next steps after the latest talks with the United States, Egypt and Qatar in search of a deal on pausing the fighting in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
But Netanyahu announced that he'll convene the Cabinet early next week to “approve the operational plans for action in Rafah,” including the evacuation of civilians, despite widespread warnings from the international community about a military ground operation in the southern city where more than half of Gaza's population shelters. "Only a combination of military pressure and firm negotiations” would achieve Israel's aims in the war, he said.
A senior official from Egypt, which along with Qatar is a mediator between Israel and the Hamas militant group, said mediators were waiting for Israel's official response to a draft deal that includes the release of up to 40 women and older hostages held in Gaza in return for up to 300 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, mostly women, minors and older people.
The Egyptian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations, said the proposed six-week pause in fighting would include allowing hundreds of aid trucks to enter Gaza every day, including the northern half of the besieged territory. He said that both sides agreed to continue negotiations during the pause for further releases and a permanent cease-fire.
Negotiators face an unofficial deadline of the start of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan around March 10.
Read: Netanyahu seeks open-ended control over security and civilian affairs in Gaza in new postwar plan
Hamas political official Osama Hamdan noted that the group wasn't at the talks, but asserted to reporters in Beirut on Friday that Israel had refused its main demands, including stopping the “aggression” and withdrawing from Gaza.
The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said Saturday that the bodies of 92 Palestinians killed in Israeli bombardments were brought to hospitals over the past 24 hours, raising the overall toll in nearly five months of war to 29,606. The total number of wounded rose to nearly 70,000.
The ministry's death toll doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said that two-thirds of those killed were children and women. Israel says its troops have killed more than 10,000 Hamas fighters, but hasn't provided details.
An Israeli airstrike hit a house in Rafah, killing at least eight people. including four women and a child, health authorities said. An Associated Press journalist saw the bodies at Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital.
“Enough, enough. Either the Israelis or us should stop. There should be a truce,” said neighbor Abdul-Qader Shubeir, who described feeling lost at not being immediately able to put out the fire burning the bodies.
NEW GENOCIDE ALLEGATIONSBrazil’s president alleged Saturday that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, doubling down on harsh rhetoric after stirring controversy a week ago by comparing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza to the Nazi Holocaust in which 6 million Jews and others perished during World War II.
Israel has pushed back against genocide claims made at the U.N.’s top court and elsewhere, saying its war targets the militant group Hamas, not the Palestinian people. It has held Hamas responsible for civilian deaths, arguing that the group operates from civilian areas.
“What the Israeli government is doing is not war, it is genocide,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Children and women are being murdered.”
Read: Israel orders new evacuations in northern Gaza, where UN says 1 in 6 children are malnourished
In response to Lula’s initial comments, Israel declared him a persona non grata, summoned Brazil’s ambassador and demanded an apology. Lula recalled Brazil’s ambassador to Israel for consultations.
Last month, South Africa filed a landmark case with the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians. The court issued a preliminary order ordering Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza.
Israel, created in part as a refuge for survivors of the Holocaust, has accused South Africa of hypocrisy. South Africa has compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza with the treatment of Black South Africans during apartheid, framing the issues as fundamentally about people oppressed in their homeland.
HUNGER AND DISEASES SPREADIsrael declared war after the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel in which militants killed about 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages remain in captivity in Gaza.
The rising civilian death toll and worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza have amplified calls for a cease-fire. Hunger and infectious diseases are spreading and about 80% of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been displaced, with about 1.4 million crowded into Rafah on the border with Egypt.
“There are choking, skyrocketing prices. It’s terrifying. There is no source of income. The area is very overcrowded," said Hassan Attwa, a displaced man from Gaza City who now shelters in a tent on the sand in Mawasi in the south. "The garbage, may God bless you, is not collected at all. It stays piled up. It turns into a mess and clay when it rains. The situation is disastrous in every sense of the word.”
In Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, children banged on pots as part of a protest outside a closed hospital demanding more aid to the north.
Netanyahu has vowed to fight until “total victory," but is under pressure at home. Police used a water cannon to disperse anti-government protesters in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, and 18 people were arrested. Others protested in Jerusalem.
Netanyahu seeks open-ended control over security and civilian affairs in Gaza in new postwar plan
A long-awaited postwar plan by Israel's prime minister shows that his government seeks open-ended control over security and civilian affairs in the Gaza Strip. That was swiftly rejected Friday by Palestinian leaders and runs counter to Washington's vision for the war-ravaged enclave.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented the two-page document to his security Cabinet late Thursday for approval.
Deep disagreements over Gaza's future have led to increasingly public friction between Israel and the United States, its closest ally. The Biden administration seeks eventual Palestinian governance in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank as a precursor to Palestinian statehood, an outcome vehemently opposed by Netanyahu and his right-wing government. Netanyahu's plan envisions hand-picked Palestinians administering Gaza.
Separately, cease-fire efforts appeared to gain traction, with mediators to present a new proposal at an expected high-level meeting this weekend in Paris. The U.S., Egypt and Qatar have been struggling for weeks to find a formula that could halt Israel's devastating offensive in Gaza, but now face an unofficial deadline as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approaches.
In Gaza, Israeli airstrikes in the center and south of the territory killed at least 92 Palestinians, including children and women, overnight and into Friday, health officials and an Associated Press journalist said. Another 24 bodies remained trapped under the rubble.
After a strike levelled his apartment building in the central town of Deir al-Balah, online video showed Mahmoud Zueitar — a comedian well known in Gaza for his appearances in TV commercials — rushing into the hospital holding his young sister, who was screaming and covered in blood. At least 25 people were killed in the strike, 16 of them women and children.
Throughout the war, Zueitar has been posting upbeat and cheerful videos on social media, joking with people about ways they endure bombardment and displacement, praising Palestinian culture and assuring those around him that one day things will be better.
Another video at the hospital showed him cradling his wounded sister in his lap. "I always say, 'God, may they not force us out of Gaza,' that's how much I love it and its people," he says, crying. "But it looks like they want us to leave Gaza." Earlier at the hospital, relatives wept over bodies laid out in burial shrouds in the courtyard, and a man cradled a dead infant.
The overall Palestinian death toll since the start of the war rose to more than 29,500, with close to 70,000 people wounded, Gaza health officials said. The death toll amounts to close to 1.3% of Gaza's population of 2.3 million.
NETANYAHU'S VISION FOR GAZA
Netanyahu's plan, while lacking specifics, marks the first time he has presented a formal postwar vision. It reiterates that Israel is determined to crush Hamas, the militant group that overran the Gaza Strip in 2007.
Polls have indicated that a majority of Palestinians don't support Hamas, but the group has deep roots in Palestinian society. Critics, including some in Israel, say the goal of eliminating Hamas is unattainable.
Netanyahu's plan calls for freedom of action for Israel's military across a demilitarized Gaza after the war to thwart any security threat. It says Israel would establish a buffer zone inside Gaza, which is likely to provoke U.S. objections.
The plan also envisions Gaza being governed by local officials who it says would "not be identified with countries or entities that support terrorism and will not receive payment from them."
It's not clear if any Palestinians would agree to such sub-contractor roles. Over the past decades, Israel has repeatedly tried and failed to set up hand-picked local Palestinian governing bodies.
The Palestinian Authority, which administers pockets of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Friday denounced Netanyahu's plan as "colonialist and racist," saying it would amount to Israeli reoccupation of Gaza. Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but maintained control of access to the territory.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he had not seen details of the plan. But he said any plan should be consistent with basic principles the U.S. had set out for Gaza's future, "including that it cannot be a platform for terrorism, there should be no Israeli re-occupation of Gaza, the size of Gaza's territory should not be reduced."
The Biden administration wants to see a reformed Palestinian Authority govern both Gaza and the West Bank as a step toward Palestinian statehood. It has sought to chip away at Netanyahu's resistance by holding out the prospect of the normalization of ties between Israel and Arab powerhouse Saudi Arabia, which demands a Palestinian state as a precondition.
THE WAR DRAGS ON
U.S., Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials are expected to meet in Paris this weekend to discuss cease-fire efforts. A senior Egyptian official said Egypt and Qatar would bring an understanding reached with Hamas leaders that calls for a six-week cease-fire and the release of elderly and sick hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners in Israel. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press. During the cease-fire, details would be worked out on a further stage.
Hamas has demanded a complete halt to Israel's offensive and a withdrawal of its troops from Gaza in return for releasing all its remaining hostages, as well as the freeing of Palestinians held by Israel, including top militants. Netanyahu has rejected those demands.
Israel declared war on Hamas on Oct. 7, after the militants stormed into southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages were freed in a weeklong cease-fire in late November.
Since the start of the war, 29,514 Palestinians were killed in Israel's offensive and close to 70,000 were wounded, the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Friday. Two-thirds of those killed have been women and children, said the ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count.
Israel says it has killed at least 10,000 Hamas fighters, without providing evidence for its count. It holds Hamas responsible for civilian casualties because the group operates and fights from within civilian areas.
The Israeli offensive has inflicted immense suffering in Gaza. About 80% of the population have been displaced, infectious diseases run rampant and hundreds of thousands of people are facing hunger.
In the West Bank, two Palestinians killed in an Israeli drone strike on their car were buried Friday in the Jenin refugee camp. The two bodies were wrapped in flags of the militant group Islamic Jihad and carried on stretchers during the funeral procession.
Israel says one of those killed was previously involved in shooting attacks on Israeli settlements and army posts, and was about to carry out another attack when he was killed in the drone strike late Thursday.