Israel-Hamas cease-fire negotiations on a knife’s edge

JERUSALEM — Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that by preventing the transfer of much-needed humanitarian aid into Gaza, Israel was violating orders handed down by the International Court of Justice.

The Court has twice ordered Israel to do more to allow aid into Gaza. For the last two days, both major crossings into the besieged enclave have been closed. One, Kerem Shalom, was closed after a Hamas mortar attack there killed soldiers. The other, Rafah, was seized by Israel on Tuesday morning.

Human Rights Watch alleges that even before the recent crossing closures, the amount of aid entering Gaza was far from enough. The United Nations reported an increase on average of only 24 trucks a day after the order came down from the International Court of Justice. That’s as the head of the UN’s main food program says a “full-blown famine” is developing in Gaza’s north.

“Despite children dying from starvation and famine in Gaza, the Israeli authorities are still blocking aid critical for the survival of Gaza’s population in defiance of the World Court,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “With each day that Israeli authorities block lifesaving aid, more Palestinians are at risk of dying.”

COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of civilian affairs in Gaza, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report. Israel disputes the U.N.’s figures and, prior to the recent crossings closures, said it was surging aid into the strip, opening up additional crossings in the north and allowing aid shipments through a port in Ashdod.

The report, citing interviews with aid workers, also said Israeli authorities continue to deny certain items from entering Gaza and have refused to provide a comprehensive list of what is not allowed in.

The report says that solar panels, motors, metal parts, and things stored in wooden crates are often rejected. That means advanced medical equipment and generators are difficult to get in. Several aid workers said that entire trucks of aid can be rejected by Israeli authorities if they are carrying banned items. Israel says that it rejects items that are “dual use,” or could be used for militant purposes.

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday that the U.S. expects the Kerem Shalom crossing to be reopened to humanitarian aid for Gaza on Wednesday.

The Rafah crossing with Egypt and the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel are critical entry points for food, medicine and other supplies for Gaza’s 2.3 million people. They have been closed for at least the past two days, although the smaller Erez crossing between Israel and northern Gaza continues to operate.

Kerem Shalom was closed after a Hamas mortar attack there killed soldiers. Rafah was seized by Israeli forces early Tuesday morning.

The U.N. warned of a potential collapse of the flow of aid to Palestinians from the closure of the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings, at a time when officials say northern Gaza is experiencing “full-blown famine.”

TEL AVIV — A support group for the families of Israeli hostages taken into Gaza confirmed Tuesday the death of Lior Rudaeff, 61, the 39th hostage known to have died.

Rudaeff was killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and his body taken into Gaza, the Hostages Families Forum said. He was from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, and came to Israel from Argentina as a child, the Forum said.

Israel says Hamas is holding about 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.

Rudaeff’s body has not been returned, the Forum said, demanding that the Israeli government “pursue every avenue in the current negotiations” to bring back his remains as well as all the hostages still in Gaza.

BEIRUT — A Hamas political official said Tuesday that the militant group would not make concessions under fire in its ongoing negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release deal.

The comments by Osama Hamdan on Tuesday followed Israel’s incursion into Rafah, where troops seized a key border crossing from Gaza to Egypt. At the same time, a delegation of Hamas officials arrived in Cairo to continue the negotiations.

Hamdan said the proposal Hamas had agreed to “represents the minimum that meets the demands of our people and our resistance” and was agreed upon by all the Palestinian factions operating in Gaza.

“The ball is in the Israeli court and in the court of the American administration because this agreement, the text we agreed to, before it was presented to us, was approved by all the mediators, including the American side,” he said. The mediators, he said, had given guarantees that Israel would implement the agreement.

The Associated Press could not independently confirm these behind-the-scenes details of the negotiations.

Hamdan said Hamas “will not respond to any initiative to stop the aggression or any exchange deal under military pressure and under the escalation of aggression, and these illusions, if (the Israelis) have them in their minds, will go unrealized.”

He said the group “will not accept the presence of any occupying force” on the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing, which “was and will remain for us a purely Egyptian-Palestinian crossing.”

WASHINGTON — A White House spokesman on Tuesday expressed guarded optimism that Israel and Hamas “should be able to close the remaining gaps” to complete an agreement that would lead to release of hostages and pave the way for an extended truce in the seven-month war in Gaza.

“It’s based on our understanding of where the text is right now,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said of the administration’s optimism. “Again, Hamas responded yesterday and there were amendments offered. Again, that’s the task of negotiating. That’s what negotiations are all about. It’s our understanding from looking at the text that we feel it suggests that we should be able to close these gaps.”

Talks are to continue on Tuesday in Cairo. Kirby declined to put a timeline on when Americans officials believe a deal can be sealed.

“Everybody’s coming. Qatar is coming. The Israelis are coming. Obviously, the Egyptians will be there of course, and Bill Burns will be there,” Kirby said. “That’s not insignificant. Everybody is coming to the table.”

The Israeli tanks that entered the periphery of Rafah early Tuesday stoked global fears that an offensive on Gaza’s southernmost city could endanger the more than a million Palestinian civilians sheltering there.

The ground assault dimmed hopes of an immediate cease-fire deal that the U.S., Egypt and Qatar have spent months pushing for. In the hours before the attack began, Hamas agreed to a cease-fire proposal that the Israeli government swiftly rejected.

About 1.3 million Palestinians — more than half of Gaza’s population — are jammed into Rafah and face the prospect of having to evacuate with no good plan for where to find adequate shelter.

▶ Read more: What we know so far about the operation and evacuation plan.

WASHINGTON — White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby says Israel’s operation along the Gaza-Egypt border in eastern Rafah is not a full-on invasion of the city that Biden has repeatedly warned against on humanitarian grounds.

Kirby said the U.S. has been told by Israelis that it “is an operation of limited scale and duration and aimed at cutting off Hamas’s ability to ship arms across the Rafah border.”

He said that the U.S. would be closely monitoring Israeli conduct, adding: “How they describe this is not of a size, scale, duration and scope that one could equate to a major ground operation.”

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden condemned the “ferocious surge of antisemitism in America and around the world” during a Tuesday ceremony to remember victims of the Holocaust at a time when the Hamas attack on Israel and controversy over the war in Gaza have sparked new waves of violence and hateful rhetoric toward Jews.

“We’re at risk of people not knowing the truth,” Biden said of the horrors of the Holocaust, when 6 million Jews were systematically killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. “This hatred continues to lie deep in the hearts of too many people in the world.”

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here

JERUSALEM -- Israel’s defense minister has vowed to “deepen” the military offensive in Rafah if a deal to bring home Israeli hostages held by Hamas does not make progress.

Israel sent troops into Rafah late Monday and seized the city’s strategic border crossing with Egypt after rebuffing a cease-fire proposal approved by Hamas. Israel said the proposal did not address its “core” demands but agreed to continue negotiations.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visited troops in the Rafah area on Tuesday and said the operation would continue until Israel “eliminates” Hamas in Rafah and the rest of Gaza.

But he said Israel is willing to make “compromises” to bring home hostages. “If that option is removed, we will go on and ‘deepen’ the operation,” he said. “This will happen all over the strip — in the south, in the center and in the north.”

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the military’s capture of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing is an “important step” toward dismantling Hamas’ military and economic capabilities.

Tuesday’s capture of the crossing, which is one of the main conduits for humanitarian aid to the territory, puts Israel in full control of Gaza’s borders for the first time since it withdrew troops in 2005.

The U.N. has warned of a potential collapse of the flow of aid to Palestinians from the closure of Rafah and the other main crossing into Gaza, Kerem Shalom, at a time when officials say northern Gaza is experiencing “full-blown famine.”

BERLIN — German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Tuesday warned Israel of “a major offensive on Rafah.”

“I strongly caution against conducting a major offensive on Rafah,” the minister wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“One million people cannot vanish into thin air. They need protection. They urgently need further humanitarian assistance,” she added, demanding that ”the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings must be reopened immediately.”

Germany has for decades been a staunch supporter of Israel. Berlin, however, has gradually shifted its tone as civilian casualties in Gaza have soared, becoming increasingly critical of the humanitarian situation in Gaza. In recent weeks, Baerbock has repeatedly spoken out against a ground offensive in Rafah.

CHICAGO (AP) — Police cleared a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at the University of Chicago on Tuesday as tension ratcheted up in standoffs with demonstrators at other college campuses around the U.S. — and increasingly, in Europe.

Nearly three weeks into a movement launched by a protest at Columbia University, the Rhode Island School of Design held talks with protesters occupying a building, and MIT dealt with a new encampment on a site that was cleared but immediately retaken by demonstrators.

The confrontations come as campuses try a range of strategies, from appeasement to threats of disciplinary action, to resolve the protests against the Israel-Hamas war and clear the way for commencements.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here

BEIRUT— A Hezbollah-claimed drone attack targeted northern Israel on Tuesday, sparking a fire at one location, authorities said.

The Lebanese militant group said its attack targeted “enemy officers and soldiers” around Yiftah, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Jerusalem.

The Israeli military said its air defenses intercepted one target around Yiftah, while another fell and “a fire broke out at the scene.” Two other objects fell in an open area, while the rest “fell and caused light damage,” the Israeli military said.

The military acknowledged no casualties and declined to identify the objects as drones.

Hezbollah has been supplied with Iranian bomb-carrying drones and has previously used them to attack Israel.

AMSTERDAM (AP) — Berlin police on Tuesday broke up a protest by several hundred pro-Palestinian activists who had occupied a courtyard on Berlin’s Free University earlier in the day. The protesters had put up about 20 tents and formed a human chain around the tents.

Police called on the students via loudspeakers to leave the campus.

Most protesters had covered their faces with medical masks and had draped kufiyahs around their heads, shouting slogans like “viva, viva Palestina.”

In recent days, students have held protests or set up encampments in Finland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, France and Britain, following earlier protests that have roiled U.S. campuses.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Police arrested about 125 activists as they broke up a pro-Palestinian demonstration camp at the University of Amsterdam early Tuesday, as protests that have roiled campuses in the United States spread into Europe.

Police in the Dutch capital said in a statement on the social media platform X that their action was “necessary to restore order” after protests turned violent. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Video from the scene aired by national broadcaster NOS showed police using a mechanical digger to push down barricades and officers wielding batons and shields moving in to end the demonstration, beating some of the protesters and pulling down tents.

Protesters formed barricades from wooden pallets and bicycles, NOS reported.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here

GENEVA — The U.N. humanitarian aid agency said Tuesday that Israeli authorities have denied it access to the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt that is now in the control of the Israeli Defense Forces.

“Rafah is in the crosshairs,” said Jens Laerke, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at a regular briefing in Geneva.

“IDF is ignoring all warnings about what this could mean for civilians and for the humanitarian operation across the Gaza Strip,” he added. “I think it’s fair to say that the reports that we get from colleagues on the ground is that panic and despair has taken hold: People are terrified.”

He said 76% of the territory of Gaza is “under evacuation orders” and people in Rafah have not been given adequate time to abide by evacuation orders.

Laerke said the operations of the U.N. and its partners in Gaza have a “very, very short buffer of about one day of fuel” — primarily diesel to run trucks and generators. “It’s not like there are huge warehouses full of aid” in Gaza because as a general rule it’s distributed upon entry, he said.

BEIRUT — Human Rights Watch said Tuesday that a March 27 Israeli strike on a paramedic center in south Lebanon that killed seven emergency service workers “was an unlawful attack on civilians that failed to take all necessary precautions.”

It added that U.S.-supplied arms were used in the strike in the village of Hebbariye that was carried out using a U.S.-made joint direct attack munition guidance kit and an Israeli-made 500-pound (about 230 kilograms) general purpose bomb.

The rights group called for Washington to stop providing arms to Israel “given evidence that the Israeli military is using US weapons unlawfully.”

Israel at the time of the strike said it had hit a “military compound” and killed a “significant terrorist operative” from the Jamaa Islamiya, or Islamic Group, a Lebanese Sunni political group with an armed wing that has sometimes joined forces with the Shiite Hezbollah militant group as it has clashes with Israeli forces on the border over the past seven months.

Human Rights Watch said it found “no evidence of a military target” at the Lebanese Succour Association-run paramedic center that was struck, and that Islamic Group officials and family members of the seven people killed said they were civilians.

The Islamic Group said that while some of its supporters volunteered as paramedics with the association, “they do not include any fighters from its armed wing.” The report noted that under international law, warring parties “have a duty to distinguish between combatants and civilians” and “in case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person must be considered a civilian.”

Israeli strikes have killed more than 370 people in Lebanon over the past seven months, most of them fighters with Hezbollah and allied groups, but also including more than 70 civilians and non-combatants. In Israel, strikes launched from Lebanon have killed 14 soldiers and 10 civilians.

BEIRUT — Hamas has published a copy of the cease-fire and hostage release proposal that the militant group said it had agreed to on Monday.

The framework brought forward by Qatar and Egypt aims to bring a halt to seven months of war in Gaza. However, it’s unclear if Israel will agree to the terms. The proposal outlines a phased release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza alongside the gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops from the entire enclave and ending with a “sustainable calm” or “permanent cessation of military and hostile operations.”

Israel has previously said it would not agree to either a full withdrawal of its forces or a permanent cease-fire as part of a hostage release deal.

The first stage would last 42 days and would involve a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and the release of about 33 hostages held in the territory, including the remaining Israeli women — both civilians and soldiers — as well as children, older adults and people who are ill.

Thirty Palestinian prisoners held in Israel would be released in exchange for each Israeli civilian hostage and 50 in exchange for each female soldier.

Palestinians displaced in Gaza would be allowed to return to their home neighborhoods during that time.

The parties would then negotiate the terms of the next stage, under which the remaining civilian men and soldiers would be released, while Israeli forces would withdraw from the rest of Gaza. This phase would be conditioned on achievement of a “sustainable calm.”

The final stage would involve exchange of the bodies of hostages who died in captivity and the beginning of a reconstruction plan for the enclave that would take place over three to five years “under the supervision of a number of countries and organizations, including: Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations.”

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli tank brigade seized control Tuesday of the Gaza Strip side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, authorities said, moving forward with an offensive in the southern city even as cease-fire negotiations with Hamas remain on a knife’s edge.

The move comes after hours of whiplash in the Israel-Hamas war, with the militant group on Monday saying it accepted an Egyptian-Qatari mediated cease-fire proposal. Israel, meanwhile, insisted the deal did not meet its core demands. The high-stakes diplomatic moves and military brinkmanship left a glimmer of hope alive — but only barely — for an accord that could bring at least a pause in the 7-month-old war that has devastated the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli 401st Brigade entered the Rafah crossing early Tuesday morning, the Israeli military said, taking “operational control” of the crucial crossing. It’s the main route for aid entering the besieged enclave and exit for those able to flee into Egypt. Israel fully controls all access in and out of Gaza since the war began.

▶ This is an excerpt from a full story. Continue reading here