Amnesty International accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war in a report published on Thursday, an allegation Israel angrily denied.
Hezbollah had paid out more than $50-million in cash gifts to families affected by the war with Israel, said its leader Naim Qassem on Thursday, as the Iran-backed group seeks to shore up its support base after a devastating conflict with Israel.
Syrian rebels captured the city of Hama on Thursday, a major victory in a week-old lightning advance across northern Syria and a devastating new blow to President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies.
Israel has committed genocide in Gaza - Amnesty International report
Amnesty International accused the state of Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war in a report published on Thursday, an allegation Israel angrily denied.
The London-based human rights group said it reached the conclusion after months of analysing incidents and statements of Israeli officials. Amnesty said the legal threshold for the crime had been met, in its first such determination during an active armed conflict.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
Israel has repeatedly rejected any accusation of genocide, saying it has respected international law and has a right to defend itself after the cross-border Hamas attack from Gaza on 7 October 2023 that precipitated the war.
“The deplorable and fanatical organisation Amnesty International has once again produced a fabricated report that is entirely false and based on lies,” wrote Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein on X.
Amnesty’s branch in Israel distanced itself from the findings of its parent group, saying it had played no part in the research and did not believe Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
However, in a long statement, it said the killing and destruction in Gaza had reached “horrifying levels” and called for an investigation into possible crimes against humanity.
The US disagreed with Amnesty International’s conclusion that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza war, State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel told reporters on Thursday.
Israel launched its air and ground war in Gaza after Hamas-led fighters attacked Israeli communities across the border 14 months ago, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says that Israel’s military campaign since then has killed more than 44,500 Palestinians and injured many others.
Palestinian and UN officials say there are no safe areas left in Gaza, a tiny, densely populated and heavily built-up coastal territory. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been internally displaced, some as many as 10 times.
Amnesty’s report came just two weeks after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. They have both denied the allegations.
Presenting the report to journalists in The Hague, Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Callamard said the conclusion had not been taken “lightly, politically, or preferentially”.
She told journalists after the presentation: “There is a genocide being committed. There is no doubt, not one doubt in our mind after six months of in-depth, focused research.”
Amnesty said it concluded that Israel and the Israeli military committed at least three of the five acts banned by the 1948 Genocide Convention, namely killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a protected group’s physical destruction.
Hezbollah to pay $77m and rent to families affected by war
Hezbollah had paid out more than $50-million in cash gifts to families affected by the war with Israel, said its leader Naim Qassem on Thursday, as the Iran-backed group seeks to shore up its support base after a devastating conflict with Israel.
The payments of between $300 and $400 per person would total more than $77-million when paid out to all 233,500 families who registered, said Qassem in a recorded speech, thanking Iran for its financing of the effort alongside Hezbollah.
Hezbollah would also provide a lump sum of $8,000 to those whose primary homes were destroyed in the war, $6,000 for a year of rent for those living in Beirut or its suburbs and $4,000 for those living outside the capital until they could move back home, he said. The payments would be financed mainly by Iran, he said.
Israeli strikes have flattened swathes of Shi’ite majority areas Hezbollah’s support base calls home in Beirut’s southern suburbs and southern and eastern Lebanon.
A ceasefire to the 14-month conflict took effect late last month, though Israel has been accused by UN, French and Lebanese officials of violating it dozens of times.
Israel says it is enforcing the terms of the deal and also accuses Hezbollah of breaching it.
With the guns mostly silent, Qassem said Hezbollah was turning its focus to reconstruction.
The World Bank says nearly 100,000 homes in Lebanon were partially or fully damaged during the conflict, amounting to $3.2-billion in damages and losses.
The conflict began on 8 October 2023, when Hezbollah began firing on Israel in solidarity with its ally Hamas, and then steeply escalated in September this year.
Qassem called on “Arab brothers” and the international community to participate in reconstruction and said Hezbollah would work hand in hand with the Lebanese government.
Syrian rebels capture key city of Hama in fresh blow to Assad
Syrian rebels captured the city of Hama on Thursday, a major victory in a week-old lightning advance across northern Syria and a devastating new blow to President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies.
After years locked behind frozen frontlines, the rebels have burst forth to mount the swiftest battlefield advance by either side since a rebellion against Assad descended into civil war 13 years ago. The capture of Hama gives them control of a strategic central city they never managed to seize before.
The Syrian army said it was redeploying outside the city “to preserve civilian lives and prevent urban combat” after what it called intense clashes.
Rebels were seen on television parading through Hama into the evening to the sound of celebratory gunfire. Other footage showed detainees pouring out of the city prison after rebels freed them.
The insurgents said they were ready to march on south towards Homs, a crossroads city that links the capital Damascus to the north and to the coast. “Your time has come,” said a rebel operations room in an online post, calling on Homs residents to rise up in revolution.
Al Jazeera television broadcast images of rebels inside Hama, some of them greeting civilians near a roundabout while others drove in military vehicles and on mopeds.
The rebels took the main northern city of Aleppo last week and have since pushed south from their enclave in northwest Syria. Fighting has raged around villages outside Hama for two days but once rebels entered the city the battle ended in hours.
The collapse of Syrian government control in the north has sharply illustrated a shift in the balance of power since Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, a lynchpin of Assad’s battlefield force, suffered catastrophic losses in its war with Israel.
Assad relied heavily on Russian and Iranian backing during the most intense years of the conflict, helping him to claw back most territory and Syria’s biggest cities before front lines froze in 2020.
But Russia has been focused on the war in Ukraine since 2022, and many in the top leadership of Hezbollah, the most powerful Iran-aligned force, were killed by Israel over the past two months. The group’s new leader, Naim Qassem, pledged to stand by Syria in a television statement.
The main insurgent commander, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, declared full rebel control over Hama on Thursday and issued a video statement warning against any involvement by another Iran-aligned force — Iraq’s Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary coalition.
Hama lies more than a third of the way from Aleppo to Damascus and its capture will hinder any quick attempt by Assad and his allies to launch a counteroffensive against rebel gains of the past week.
Dozens killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza
The Israeli military killed at least 39 Palestinians in strikes across the Gaza Strip overnight, said medic on Thursday, including at least 20 in an attack that set ablaze tents sheltering displaced families in a crowded camp.
Residents carried a body wrapped in carpets out of the charred wreckage of the makeshift shelters in Mawasi, near the beach west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where tens of thousands of people have sheltered for months. Israel calls the area a humanitarian zone and has long told people to go there for their safety.
Gaza medics said the 20 confirmed dead in the Israeli strike there included women and children. Israel said the strike targeted senior Hamas operatives, whom it did not identify.
Later on Thursday, Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in the north of the enclave, said a 16-year-old boy who used a wheelchair was killed and several people, including medics, were wounded by Israeli drone fire against the medical facility.
There was no Israeli comment on Abu Safiya’s account. The health ministry said the three hospitals that are barely operational on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip have come under repeated attack since Israeli forces sent tanks to Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun towns and the nearby Jabalia camp in October.
Israel said it has since killed hundreds of militants in fighting with Hamas. The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad claimed they had killed many Israeli soldiers in those areas in the same period.
The strike at Mawasi set several large tents ablaze and exploding cooking gas canisters and burning furniture fuelled the fire. The area was strewn with charred clothing, mattresses and other belongings among the twisted frames of burnt-out shelters.
“We don’t see anyone from the whole world standing by us or helping us in this situation. Let them stop this crazy war that’s against us. Let them stop the war,” said Abu Kamal Al-Assar, a witness at the site.
Other Israeli strikes reported on Thursday hit Gaza City, where medics said an attack destroyed a house where an extended family had taken shelter and damaged two nearby homes, killing at least three people.
In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, an Israeli strike killed three Palestinians on Thursday, said medics. Three others were killed in a separate air strike in Shejaia, in eastern Gaza City, they added.
Cyprus takes delivery of Israeli air defence system
Cyprus has taken delivery of an Israeli air defence system, local media reported on Thursday, as the east Mediterranean island taps new markets to upgrade its defence capabilities after the loss of key supplier Russia.
TV station Sigma said the first deliveries were made on Tuesday. Cypriot officials declined to comment on the specifics of the report.
The Barak MX anti-aircraft system will complement and eventually replace the older Russian-made Tor M1. Russia has been a leading supplier of military hardware to Cyprus for decades, but deals tapered off even before a blanket ban on exports in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Trump’s Middle East envoy in push to help reach Gaza ceasefire
Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy has travelled to Qatar and Israel to kickstart the US president-elect’s diplomatic push to help reach a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal before he takes office on 20 January, a source briefed on the talks told Reuters.
Steve Witkoff, who will officially take up the position under Trump’s administration, met separately in late November with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said the source.
Witkoff’s conversations appear aimed at building on nearly 14 months of unsuccessful diplomacy by the Biden administration, Qatar and Egypt aimed at a lasting ceasefire between Israel and militant group Hamas in Gaza and the release of dozens of Israeli hostages held in the enclave.
The meetings also signal that the Gulf state of Qatar has resumed as a key mediator after suspending its role last month, said the source.
The source added that Hamas negotiators would probably return to the Qatari capital Doha for more talks soon.
Witkoff is a real estate investor and Trump campaign donor with business ties to Qatar and other Gulf states, but he has no prior diplomatic experience.
He met Sheikh Mohammed, who also serves as foreign minister, in Doha on 22 November.
“Both agreed a Gaza ceasefire is needed before Trump’s inauguration so that once the Trump administration takes office it can move on to other issues, like stabilising Gaza and the region,” said the source, who was briefed on Witkoff’s meetings and spoke on the condition of anonymity. DM
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