Stati Uniti e Gaza: (Associated Press) US military aircraft airdrop thousands of meals into Gaza in emergency humanitarian aid operation - U.S. military C-130 cargo planes dropped food in pallets over Gaza on Saturday in the opening stage of an emergency humanitarian assistance authorized by President Joe Biden.
- Three planes from Air Forces Central dropped 66 bundles containing about 38,000 meals into Gaza at 8:30 a.m. EST (3:30 p.m. local). The bundles were dropped in southwest Gaza, on the beach along the territory’s Mediterranean coast. The airdrop was coordinated with the Royal Jordanian Air Force, which said it had two food airdrops Saturday in northern Gaza and has conducted several rounds in recent months.
- “The amount of aid flowing to Gaza is not nearly enough and we will continue to pull out every stop we can to get more aid in,” President Joe Biden said Saturday in a post on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter. The U.S. airdrop is expected to be the first of many.
- Three Biden administration officials said the planes dropped the military Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) — shelf-stable meals that contain a day’s worth of calories in each sealed package — in locations that were thought would provide civilians with the greatest level of safety to access aid. Afterward, the U.S. monitored the sites and was able to see civilians approach and distribute food among themselves, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide additional details that had not been made public.
Negoziati: (Reuters) Israel reported to boycott ceasefire talks in Cairo over Hamas' rejection of hostage list - Israel boycotted Gaza ceasefire talks in Cairo on Sunday after Hamas rejected its demand for a complete list naming hostages that are still alive, an Israeli newspaper reported.
- A Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo for the talks, billed as a possible final hurdle before an agreement that would halt the fighting for six weeks. But by early evening there was no sign of the Israelis.
- "There is no Israeli delegation in Cairo," Ynet, the online version of Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, quoted unidentified Israeli officials as saying. "Hamas refuses to provide clear answers and therefore there is no reason to dispatch the Israeli delegation."
- Washington has insisted the ceasefire deal is close and should be in place in time to halt fighting by the start of Ramadan, a week away. But the warring sides have given little sign in public of backing away from previous demands.
- One source briefed on the talks had said on Saturday that Israel could stay away from Cairo unless Hamas first presented its full list of hostages who are still alive. A Palestinian source told Reuters Hamas had so far rejected that demand. In past negotiations Hamas has sought to avoid discussing the wellbeing of individual hostages until after terms for their release are set.
- A U.S. official told reporters on Saturday: "The path to a ceasefire right now literally at this hour is straightforward. And there's a deal on the table. There's a framework deal." Israel had agreed to the framework and it was now up to Hamas to respond, the U.S. official said.
- An agreement would bring the first extended truce of the war. Dozens of hostages held by the militants would be freed in return for hundreds of Palestinian detainees. Aid would be ramped up for Gazans. Israeli forces would pull back from some areas and let Gazans return to abandoned homes.
- But the proposal appears to stop short of fulfilling the main Hamas demand for a permanent end to the war, while also leaving unresolved the fate of more than half of the more than 100 remaining hostages - including Israeli men not covered by terms to free women, children, the elderly and wounded.
Israele e Gaza: (The New York Times) Israel Helped Organize Convoy That Ended in Disaster - The Gaza aid convoy that ended in bloodshed this week was organized by Israel itself as part of a newly hatched partnership with local Palestinian businessmen, according to Israeli officials, Palestinian businessmen and Western diplomats.
- Israel has been involved in at least four such aid convoys to northern Gaza over the past week. It undertook the effort, Israeli officials told two Western diplomats, to fill a void in assistance to northern Gaza, where famine looms as international aid groups have suspended most operations, citing Israeli refusals to greenlight aid trucks and rising lawlessness. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the matter.
- Israeli officials reached out to multiple Gazan businessmen and asked them to help organize private aid convoys to the north, two of the businessmen said, while Israel would provide security.
Israele e Gaza: (Reuters) Israeli military review of Gaza aid convoy deaths finds most killed in stampede - Israel's military said on Sunday most of the Palestinians killed last week as crowds massed near an aid convoy in Gaza died in a stampede but local health officials said casualties brought into hospitals had been hit by large-calibre ammunition.
- Palestinian health officials say more than 100 people were killed in the incident in the early hours of the morning, most of them shot by Israeli troops. Israeli officials have dismissed the figures given by the Palestinians but have not offered any estimates of their own.
- On Sunday, Israel's main military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari announced the result of a preliminary review which repeated earlier Israeli statements that most of those killed had been trampled underfoot as crowds rushed the aid trucks. In addition "several individuals" were targeted as troops fired on people who approached them in the aftermath in a manner that suggested an immediate threat, he said, adding that an independent inquiry had been opened but giving no details.
- Hagari's remarks suggested that some of the dead had been killed by Israeli fire after soldiers fired initial warning shots but he gave no details or figures. "Following the warning shots fired to disperse the stampede and after our forces had started retreating, several looters approached our forces and posed an immediate threat to them. According to the initial review, the soldiers responded toward several individuals," he said.
- Muatasem Salah, a member of the Emergency Committee at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, said there were more than 1,000 casualties, dead and wounded, from the incident and he dismissed the findings of the Israeli review. "Any attempt to claim that people were martyred due to overcrowding or being run over is incorrect. The wounded and martyrs are the result of being shot with heavy-calibre bullets," he told Reuters.
- Giorgios Petropoulos, head of the Gaza sub-office of the UN Co-ordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), who visited Gaza's Shifa hospital on Thursday and Sunday, said he had seen five or six people with bullet wounds including a young man shot in the right side of the chest who had taken himself to hospital as there were no ambulances. In addition, a smaller number of people had injuries consistent with falling over or being trampled in the dark.
- Many of Israel's closest allies, including the United States, have called for an U.N. inquiry into the incident, which underscored the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the increasingly chaotic conditions in which the small amount of aid reaching the enclave is being distributed.
Israele: (Associated Press) Israel’s wartime Cabinet is shaken by a dispute between Netanyahu and his top political rival - A top Israeli Cabinet minister headed to Washington on Sunday for talks with U.S. officials, sparking a rebuke from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to an Israeli official, in a sign of widening cracks in Israel’s wartime government nearly five months into its war with Hamas. The trip by Benny Gantz, a centrist political rival who joined Netanyahu’s hard-line government in the early days of the war following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, comes amid deep disagreements between Netanyahu and President Joe Biden over how to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza and create a post-war vision for the enclave. The U.S. was prompted to airdrop aid into Gaza on Saturday after dozens of Palestinians rushing to grab food from trucks were killed last week. The airdrops circumvent what’s been a prohibitive aid delivery system, which has been hobbled by Israeli restrictions, logistical issues within Gaza as well as the fighting inside the tiny enclave.
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