Boeing threatens lockout of Seattle firefighters over pay dispute

May 4, 2024

NEW YORK (AP) – Boeing is threatening to lock out its private force of firefighters who protect its aircraft-manufacturing plants in the Seattle area and bring in replacements beginning Friday night unless the workers accept the company’s last offer on wages.

The company said the two sides were far apart in negotiations. It described the lockout as a precautionary move because the union could go on strike at any time once the current contract expires at midnight local time.

Each side accuses the other of bad-faith negotiating.

The labour showdown comes as Boeing deals with mounting losses — more than USD24 billion since the start of 2019 — and increased scrutiny over quality and safety in its manufacturing since a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max flying over Oregon in January.

On Friday, Boeing dismissed any safety concerns about the dispute with its industrial firefighters. The company said it has made arrangements with “highly qualified firefighters” to replace the union workers, and the lockout will not affect operations at plants where it builds planes.

Boeing has about 125 firefighters in the Seattle area and a facility about 275 kilometres away in central Washington state. They serve as first responders to fires and medical emergencies, and can call in help from local fire departments. The union says their constant presence lets Boeing get much lower insurance rates.

The company says firefighters were paid USD91,000 on average last year.

Casey Yeager, president of Local I-66 of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said Boeing was proposing raises of 18 to 20 per cent that would still leave crews earning 20 to 30 per cent less than firefighters in the cities where Boeing plants are located. He said the union is seeking raises of 40 to 50 per cent.

A major sticking point is Boeing’s demand to make firefighters wait 19 years to hit top pay scale, up from 14 years. The union is proposing five years.

“If they keep pushing it out, you’ll never get” to top scale, said Kjel Swedelius, a Boeing firefighter for more than six years. “Our turnover rate is super, super high.”

Swedelius said he needs financial assistance to cover care for his autistic 7-year-old son.

“I really like working at Boeing, but it’s getting harder and harder,” he said. “They don’t want to keep up with inflation.”

In a letter to the union this week, Boeing said the union had rejected two previous proposals, and the company “has gone as far financially as it is willing to go and will not add any more money to its offer.”

The company, which is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, said it proposes to pay firefighters four hours of overtime in every 24-hour shift, which would increase their pay USD21,000 a year on average.

Boeing has lodged a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the union of bad-faith bargaining during more than two months of negotiations and several meetings with a federal mediator.

“With a potential for a strike, we have activated our contingency plan that includes the use of highly qualified firefighters,” a company spokesperson said in a statement Friday. “If a contract is not ratified by 12.01am (Saturday), we will lock out all members of the bargaining unit.

U.N. Official Warns That Famine in Northern Gaza Is Already ‘Full-Blown’

USAID Administrator Samantha Power talks with Mana operations director Harry Broughton during a tour of its factory in Fitzgerald, Ga., that produces emergency nutritional aid for starving children, on May 3, 2024. Russ Bynum—AP

BY ELLEN KNICKMEYER AND RUSS BYNUM / AP

MAY 3, 2024 


WASHINGTON — A top U.N. official said Friday that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in “full-blown famine" after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory.

Cindy McCain, the American director of the U.N. World Food Program, became the most prominent international official so far to declare that trapped civilians in the most cut-off part of Gaza had gone over the brink into famine.

“It’s horror," McCain told NBC's “Meet the Press” in an interview to air Sunday. “There is famine — full-blown famine — in the north, and it’s moving its way south."

She said a cease-fire and a greatly increased flow of aid through land and sea routes was essential to confronting the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, ilhome to 2.3 million people.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which controls entrance into Gaza and says it is beginning to allow in more food and other humanitarian aid through land crossings.

The panel that serves as the internationally recognized monitor for food crises said earlier this year that northern Gaza was on the brink of famine and likely to experience it this month. The next update will not come before this summer.

One of the U.S. Agency for International Development's humanitarian officials in Gaza told The Associated Press that on-the-ground preparations for a new U.S.-led sea route were on track to bring in more food — including treatment for hundreds of thousands of starving children — by early or mid-May. That's when the American military expects to finish building a floating pier to receive the shipments.

Ramping up the delivery of aid on the planned U.S.-backed sea route will be gradual as aid groups test the distribution and security arrangements for relief workers, the USAID official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity over security concerns for work done in a conflict zone. They were some of the agency’s first comments on the status of preparations for the Biden administration’s $320 million Gaza pier project, for which USAID is helping coordinate on-the-ground security and distribution.

At a factory in rural Georgia on Friday, USAID Administrator Samantha Power pointed to the food crises in Gaza and other parts of the world as she announced a $200 million investment aimed at increasing production of emergency nutritional paste for starving children under 5.

Power spoke to factory workers, peanut farmers and local dignitaries sitting among pallets of the paste at the Mana nonprofit in Fitzgerald. It is one of two factories in the U.S. that produces the nutritional food, which is used in clinical settings and made from ground peanuts, powdered milk, sugar and oil, ready to eat in plastic pouches resembling large ketchup packets.

“This effort, this vision meets the moment,” Power said. "And it could not be more timely, more necessary or more important.”

Under pressure from the U.S. and others, Israeli officials in recent weeks have begun slowly reopening some border crossings for relief shipments.

But aid coming through the sea route, once it's operational, still will serve only a fraction — half a million people — of those who need help in Gaza. Aid organizations including USAID stress that getting more aid through border crossings is essential to staving off famine.


Children under 5 are among the first to die when wars, droughts or other disasters curtail food. Hospital officials in northern Gaza reported the first deaths from hunger in early March and said most of the dead were children.

Power said the U.N. has called for 400 metric tons of the nutritional paste “in light of the severe hunger that is pervading across Gaza right now, and the severe, acute humanitarian crisis.” USAID expects to provide a quarter of that, she said.

Globally, she said at the Georgia factory, the treatment made there “will save untold lives, millions of lives.”

USAID is coordinating with the World Food Program and other humanitarian partners and governments on security and distribution for the pier project, while U.S. military forces finish building it. President Joe Biden, under pressure to do more to ease the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as the U.S. provides military support for Israel, announced the project in early March.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement Friday that offshore assembly of the floating pier has been temporarily paused due to high winds and sea swells, which caused unsafe conditions for soldiers. The partially built pier and the military vessels involved have gone to Israel's Port of Ashdod, where the work will continue.


A U.S. official said the high seas will delay the installation for several days, possibly until later next week. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operation details, said the pause could last longer if the bad weather continues because military personnel and divers have to get into the water for the final installation.

The struggles this week with the first aid delivery through a newly reopened land corridor into north Gaza underscored the uncertainty about security and the danger still facing relief workers. Israeli settlers blocked the convoy before it crossed Wednesday. Once inside Gaza, the convoy was commandeered by Hamas militants, before U.N. officials reclaimed it.

In Gaza, the nutritional treatment for starving children is most urgently needed in the northern part of the Palestinian territory. Civilians have been cut off from most aid supplies, bombarded by Israeli airstrikes and driven into hiding by fighting.

Acute malnutrition rates there among children under 5 have surged from 1% before the war to 30% five months later, the USAID official said. The official called it the fastest such climb in hunger in recent history, more than in grave conflicts and food shortages in Somalia or South Sudan.


One of the few medical facilities still operating in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan hospital, is besieged by parents bringing in thousands of children with malnutrition for treatment, the official said. Aid officials believe many more starving children remain unseen and in need, with families unable to bring them through fighting and checkpoints for care.

Saving the gravely malnourished children in particular requires both greatly increased deliveries of aid and sustained calm in fighting, the official said, so that aid workers can set up treatment facilities around the territory and families can safely bring children in for the sustained treatment needed.

___

Bynum reported from Fitzgerald, Georgia. Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

Top U.N. Official Cindy McCain Says Northern Gaza Is Now In 'Full-Blown Famine'

“It’s horror," McCain told NBC's “Meet the Press” in an interview to air Sunday.

ELLEN KNICKMEYER and RUSS BYNUM

AP
May 3, 2024



WASHINGTON (AP) — A top U.N. official said Friday that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in “full-blown famine” after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory.

Cindy McCain, the American director of the U.N. World Food Program, became the most prominent international official so far to declare that trapped civilians in the most cut-off part of Gaza had gone over the brink into famine.

“It’s horror,” McCain told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview to air Sunday. “There is famine — full-blown famine — in the north, and it’s moving its way south.”

She said a cease-fire and a greatly increased flow of aid through land and sea routes was essential to confronting the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which controls entrance into Gaza and says it is beginning to allow in more food and other humanitarian aid through land crossings.

The panel that serves as the internationally recognized monitor for food crises said in March that northern Gaza was on the brink of famine and likely to experience it in May. Since March, northern Gaza had not received anything like the aid needed to stave off famine, a U.S. Agency for International Development humanitarian official for Gaza told The Associated Press. The panel’s next update will not come before this summer.

The USAID official said on-the-ground preparations for a new U.S.-led sea route were on track to bring in more food — including treatment for hundreds of thousands of starving children — by early or mid-May. That’s when the American military expects to finish building a floating pier to receive the shipments.

In this image provided by the U.S. Army, soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) and sailors attached to the MV Roy P. Benavidez assemble the Roll-On, Roll-Off Distribution Facility (RRDF), or floating pier, off the shore of Gaza in the Mediterranean Sea on April 26, 2024. The pier is part of the Army's Joint Logistics Over The Shore (JLOTS) system which provides critical bridging and water access capabilities. (U.S. Army via AP)

Ramping up the delivery of aid on the planned U.S.-backed sea route will be gradual as aid groups test the distribution and security arrangements for relief workers, the USAID official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing security concerns accompanying the official’s work on conflicts. They were some of the agency’s first comments on the status of preparations for the Biden administration’s $320 million Gaza pier project, for which USAID is helping coordinate on-the-ground security and distribution.

At a factory in rural Georgia on Friday, USAID Administrator Samantha Power pointed to the food crises in Gaza and other parts of the world as she announced a $200 million investment aimed at increasing production of emergency nutritional paste for starving children under 5.

Power spoke to factory workers, peanut farmers and local dignitaries sitting among pallets of the paste at the Mana nonprofit in Fitzgerald. It is one of two factories in the U.S. that produces the nutritional food, which is used in clinical settings and made from ground peanuts, powdered milk, sugar and oil, ready to eat in plastic pouches resembling large ketchup packets.

“This effort, this vision meets the moment,” Power said. “And it could not be more timely, more necessary or more important.”

Under pressure from the U.S. and others, Israeli officials in recent weeks have begun slowly reopening some border crossings for relief shipments.

But aid coming through the sea route, once it’s operational, still will serve only a fraction — half a million people — of those who need help in Gaza. Aid organizations including USAID stress that getting more aid through border crossings is essential to staving off famine.

Children under 5 are among the first to die when wars, droughts or other disasters curtail food. Hospital officials in northern Gaza reported the first deaths from hunger in early March and said most of the dead were children.

Power said the U.N. has called for 400 metric tons of the nutritional paste “in light of the severe hunger that is pervading across Gaza right now, and the severe, acute humanitarian crisis.” USAID expects to provide a quarter of that, she said.

Globally, she said at the Georgia factory, the treatment made there “will save untold lives, millions of lives.”

USAID is coordinating with the World Food Program and other humanitarian partners and governments on security and distribution for the pier project, while U.S. military forces finish building it. President Joe Biden, under pressure to do more to ease the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as the U.S. provides military support for Israel, announced the project in early March.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement Friday that offshore assembly of the floating pier has been temporarily paused due to high winds and sea swells, which caused unsafe conditions for soldiers. The partially built pier and the military vessels involved have gone to Israel’s Port of Ashdod, where the work will continue.

A U.S. official said the high seas will delay the installation for several days, possibly until later next week. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operation details, said the pause could last longer if the bad weather continues because military personnel and divers have to get into the water for the final installation.

The struggles this week with the first aid delivery through a newly reopened land corridor into north Gaza underscored the uncertainty about security and the danger still facing relief workers. Israeli settlers blocked the convoy before it crossed Wednesday. Once inside Gaza, the convoy was commandeered by Hamas militants, before U.N. officials reclaimed it.

In Gaza, the nutritional treatment for starving children is most urgently needed in the northern part of the Palestinian territory. Civilians have been cut off from most aid supplies, bombarded by Israeli airstrikes and driven into hiding by fighting.

Acute malnutrition rates there among children under 5 have surged from 1% before the war to 30% five months later, the USAID official said. The official called it the fastest such climb in hunger in recent history, more than in grave conflicts and food shortages in Somalia or South Sudan.

RAFAH, GAZA - MAY 03: Children in Rafah city queue to receive a bowl of food for their families from charity organizations, in Rafah, Gaza on May 03 2024. As the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip continues unabated, the full embargo imposed on the territory has left Palestinians unable to obtain many vital needs, including basic food supplies.

 (Photo by Doaa Albaz/Anadolu via Getty Images)

One of the few medical facilities still operating in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan hospital, is besieged by parents bringing in thousands of children with malnutrition for treatment, the official said. Aid officials believe many more starving children remain unseen and in need, with families unable to bring them through fighting and checkpoints for care.

Saving the gravely malnourished children in particular requires both greatly increased deliveries of aid and sustained calm in fighting, the official said, so that aid workers can set up treatment facilities around the territory and families can safely bring children in for the sustained treatment needed.

___

Bynum reported from Fitzgerald, Georgia. Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

 

The spread of anti-war protests could become ‘Biden's Vietnam’

Posted May. 04, 2024 07:29

   ,  Headline News | The DONG-A ILBO (donga.com)  S. KOREA 

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As protests against the Middle East conflict spread in the U.S. and European university campuses, U.S. President Joe Biden issued an urgent statement urging restraint. He affirmed the right to protest while unequivocally denouncing violence, saying, "There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos." However, despite its issuance as an emergency response following a week of deliberation, critiques suggest it fell short of fully appeasing both proponents and opponents of the protests.

President Biden delivered an impromptu address at the White House on Wednesday (local time), saying that no individual had the prerogative to incite chaos, and emphasized that maintaining order was of paramount importance. Against the backdrop of ongoing clashes at Columbia University in New York and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), an official response was issued eight days after the declaration on April 24, saying that there was "no place in America for antisemitism." According to media outlets such as the Associated Press, approximately 2,200 college students had been arrested or detained by law enforcement across the U.S. as of Wednesday.

After his speech, President Biden dismissed calls to halt support for Israel when asked if protests influence Middle East policy, he responded, "No." Additionally, he rejected the opposition Republican Party's demand for deploying state National Guards. Professor Douglas Brinkley of Rice University commented to the U.S. political media outlet Politico, “He was taking a sane, centrist approach to appease people on both sides of the barricades, but it will do nothing to placate the anger on college campuses.

Some argue that this incident could serve as a trigger damaging President Biden's path to the presidential election. Sen. Bernie Sanders (Independent, Vermont) said that people believe this incident could become “Biden's Vietnam.” In 1968, then President Lyndon Johnson was swayed by public opinion against the Vietnam War and eventually gave up running for re-election.


워싱턴=문병기 기자 weappon@donga.com

Palestinian journalist describes fight to protect his family while covering war in Gaza

On World Press Freedom Day, the Committee to Protect Journalists says some two dozen journalists have been killed so far this year, the vast majority of them dying in Gaza. At least 97 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon since the start of the war. Nick Schifrin has a look at the life of our journalist in Gaza, cameraman and producer Shams Odeh.

Read the Full Transcript


Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

William Brangham:

Today is World Press Freedom Day.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says some two dozen journalists have been killed so far this year, the vast majority of them dying in Gaza. All told, at least 97 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon since the start of the war, making this by far the deadliest conflict for reporters in recent memory.

So we wanted to give you a look at the life of our own journalist in Gaza, cameraman and producer Shams Odeh. He's been filming in Gaza since the October 7 terrorist attacks.

Here's Nick Schifrin.


Nick Schifrin:

Gaza today is defined by destruction, death and displacement. And Gaza producer and cameraman Shams Odeh has documented and experienced all three.

Shams Odeh, Photographer and Producer: There is a lot of people killed here in this place in Rafah. This is my tent, my bed, and my kitchen.


Nick Schifrin:

Today, this is his canvas home, where the war forced him and his family to flee in December. They live underneath the constant sound of Israeli drones in Emirati tents, part of a tent city in Deir al Balah, one of tens of thousands of displaced families finding a way to live.

Four-year-old Kareem leads a gaggle of grandchildren. The youngest, 1-year-old Rose, sleeps with a prized possession. Their mother, Diana, is Shams' eldest child.

Diana Odeh, Daughter of Shams Odeh: My message to the world is, we are humans. We are not numbers. We deserve to live a better life, such as any person in the world. So we all here evacuated our homes.


Nick Schifrin:

In November, even after an initial displacement, they had a real roof over their heads near Nuseirat. A madhouse of extended cousins lived in a house Shams built himself, with Benjamin Netanyahu's televised speeches and Diana Odeh's deferred dreams.


Diana Odeh:

We here in Gaza suffer, that we need our children to have a better future. I want my kid Kareem to be a doctor in the future, but we don't know if we are going to make until the morning.


Nick Schifrin:

But the children now know things they should never have to know.


Diana Odeh:

My son Kareem even knows if this bomb — if this bomb is dangerous or not. He tells me: "Mom, it's far away. It's far away. It's not beside us."


Nick Schifrin:

But, one day, it was beside them, and Shams' house is now reduced to rubble, where grandkids once played, debris and devastation.


Shams Odeh:

I choose to live here far away from troubles, far away from militant places. I choose this place to live in peace, me and my kids.


Nick Schifrin:

This house was his life's work, his family's safe haven.


Shams Odeh:

My dream was that everyone, Israelis, Palestinians live near each other with peace, with love. And this bloody war must end, must end because of our kids and their kids, for a good future for them. We must teach them how to love each other.


Nick Schifrin:

Love might feel lost in Khan Yunis, once home to half-a-million people, where today houses are flattened like pancakes and apartment blocks are cut into carcasses, including one more Odeh family home.


Shams Odeh:

This is the last home that our — my family owned in all of the Gaza Strip, after destroying my apartment in North Gaza, then my house in Nuseirat camp.


Nick Schifrin:

The Israeli military says it does not target journalists, and blames Hamas for the death of Gaza civilians.


Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister:

Hamas places its weapons, it's terrorists in hospitals, schools, mosques and throughout civilian areas. They do this in order to win immunity and to maximize civilian casualties.


Nick Schifrin:

As for Shams, he will keep working and trying to protect his family…


Shams Odeh:

They are refugee like me.


Nick Schifrin:

… including the newest members. But he couldn't protect everyone.


Shams Odeh:

They were playing here, spend their life here.


Nick Schifrin:

Thirty-one of his extended family have been killed.


Shams Odeh:

This is Shams Odeh. Journalist Shams Odeh spend his life as a peaceful person. But this is what happened to me.

Hardly, we can find food. Hardly, we can have money. But this will not stop our hope. We love you all, and I will keep love you all.


Nick Schifrin:

For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Nick Schifrin.

38% of Americans disagree with US policy in Israel-Hamas war

The new ABC News Ipsos poll reveals how Americans feel about U.S. policy toward Israel.

May 3, 2024

Hamas, CIA director to hold talks in Cairo on Gaza truce

AMERIKA DOES NOT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS, THUS HAMAS ARE NOT TERRORISTS


A Palestinian man walks on piles of garbage, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, at Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, May 2, 2024. ― Reuters pic
Join us on our WhatsApp Channel, follow us on Instagram, and receive browser alerts for the latest news you need to know.

Saturday, 04 May 2024 

CAIRO, May 4 ― Hamas said yesterday it was sending a delegation to Cairo to discuss a deal for a truce and the release of hostages in Gaza, hours after US CIA Director William Burns arrived in the Egyptian capital, according to Egyptian sources.

Egypt, along with Qatar and the United States, has been leading efforts to mediate between Israel and Hamas to broker a deal for a ceasefire in the conflict that began on October 7.

The Hamas and CIA officials will meet Egyptian mediators today, an Egyptian security source said, though it was unclear whether they would meet separately or together.

Hamas said its delegates were travelling to Cairo in a "positive spirit" after studying the latest proposal for a truce agreement.


"We are determined to secure an agreement in a way that fulfils Palestinians' demands," the Palestinian militant group said in a statement.

A US official said the United States believed there had been some progress in talks but was still waiting to hear more.

The CIA declined to comment, reflecting its policy of not disclosing the director's travel.

Ceasefire talks have continued for months without a decisive breakthrough. Israel has said it is determined to eliminate Hamas, while Hamas says it wants a permanent ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Egypt made a renewed push to revive negotiations late last month. Cairo is alarmed by the prospect of an Israeli ground operation against Hamas in Rafah in southern Gaza, where more than 1 million people have taken shelter near the border with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Egyptian sources say both sides have made some concessions recently, leading to progress in the talks, though Israel has continued to say an operation in Rafah is imminent.

The war began after Hamas staged a cross-border raid on October 7 in which 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed and 253 hostages taken, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 77,000 have been wounded by Israeli fire during a campaign that has laid waste to the coastal enclave, according to Gaza's health ministry.

A major Israeli operation in Rafah could deal a huge blow to fragile humanitarian operations in Gaza and put many more lives at risk, according to UN officials. ― Reuters

Falling aid pallet kills, injures several Palestinians waiting for aid in Gaza

May 3, 2024 

A pallet of Jordanian Aid, rigged with a parachute and ready to be dropped over Gaza by a US Air Force flight on March 12, 2024 

[Steve Hendrix/The Washington Post via Getty Images]

Several Palestinians waiting for aid were killed and injured on Friday when an aid pallet airdropped on the northern Gaza Strip fell without its parachutes opening, Gaza’s Civil Defence Agency said, Anadolu Agency reports.

“The falling of an aid pallet from the air directly onto a group of citizens in the northern part of the Strip led to the deaths and injuries of several people,” the Agency’s spokesperson, Mahmoud Basal, said in a statement.

Basal, however, did not specify the number of casualties.

Similar incidents in the past have resulted in the deaths and injuries of a significant number of people in Gaza.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Gaza since the 7 October Hamas incursion, which killed around 1,200 people.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Tel Aviv, in comparison, has killed nearly 34,600 Palestinians and wounded 77,700 others amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities in the Palestinian Territory.

More than six months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85 per cent of the enclave’s population into internal displacement besides a crippling blockade on food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which, in January, issued an interim ruling that ordered it to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Over 10,000 women killed in Gaza, says UN Agency

IS ISRAEL'S VENGENCE SATIATED YET

May 3, 2024 

Women mourn together over their fallen relatives who were killed during Israeli bombardment, at Al-Najjar hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on April 16, 2024 [/AFP via Getty Images]


More than 10,000 women were killed in the ongoing Israeli onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip, the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said on Friday, Anadolu Agency reports.

In a statement, the agency said: “The war in Gaza continues to be a war on women.”

“Over 10,000 women have been killed and 19,000 injured,” it added.

The Agency also said: “37 children lose their mother every single day.”

It stressed that “conditions are appalling,” noting that “over 155,000 pregnant or breastfeeding women faced with severely limited access to water and sanitary items.”

Israel has, for over half a year, waged a war on Gaza that has resulted in widespread death and destruction in the coastal enclave.

More than 34,600 Palestinians have since been killed and over 77,800 injured. The vast majority of the dead have been women and children. Israel has also imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which, in January, issued an interim ruling that ordered it to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Majority of Rafah's 600,000 children face injury, illness, malnutrition, trauma, disabilities: UN

May 3, 2024 

Displaced Palestinian children cool themselves with water from a hosepipe at a temporary camp in Rafah, southern Gaza, on May 3, 2024

 [Ahmad Salem/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

The UN, on Friday, issued a stark warning on the potential consequences of a ground operation in the Gaza city of Rafah, emphasising the grave threat it poses to the lives of some 600,000 children in the region, Anadolu Agency reports.

Citing reports from UNICEF, the UN deputy spokesperson, Farhan Haq, at a news conference said a military operation into Rafah “would bring catastrophe on top of catastrophe” for the children there.

Echoing UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell’s sentiments that emphasised the dire conditions faced by the children of Rafah, Haq said “nearly all of the some 600,000 children in Rafah are either injured, sick, malnourished, traumatised or living with disabilities.”

Additionally, the World Health Organisation (WHO) underscored the precarious state of healthcare facilities in Rafah, revealing that three out of the 12 hospitals in Gaza that are still partially functioning are located in the region.

WHO warned that these facilities “will quickly become non-functional if there’s a military incursion into Rafah, and then a full scale military operation into Rafah could lead to a bloodbath,” Haq said.

He also stated that the convoy carrying humanitarian aid from Jordan was attacked by “civilians” in the Occupied West Bank, and some items were damaged. Haq noted that the convoy later reached Gaza.

Saying that, upon convoy’s arrival to Gaza, it was redirected to a different facility instead of the previously designated location by an armed group, Haq said this issue was addressed through discussions with local authorities to resolve the misunderstanding.

NOT HAMAS
READ: Jordan says Israel settlers attacked Jordanian aid convoys on way to Gaza

Haq expressed confirmation of the local authorities’ respect for humanitarian aid convoys, stating that the convoys reached their destinations and that aid distribution was ongoing.

Emphasising that the redirection to a different facility was purely a communication error, he said it was promptly corrected, adding that officials in Gaza confirmed that such incidents would not recur.

Jordan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that Israeli settlers attacked two aid convoys from Jordan who were on their way to Gaza.

“Two Jordanian aid convoys carrying food, flour and other humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip were attacked by settlers,” the Ministry said.

The aid convoys were the first major shipment from Jordan into the Erez Crossing, which was reopened for the first time by Israel since 7 October after months of pressure from the US.

US Senators intensify efforts to block ICC arrest warrants against Israeli officials

May 3, 2024 

A pro-Palestinian demonstrator holds a sign that reads, Selective Justice is Injustice during a pro Palestine demonstration in front of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on October 18, 2023 in The Hague, Netherlands [Roger Anis/Getty Images]

US Senators have intensified their efforts to block potential arrest warrants being issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and other top Israeli officials over the ongoing military assault in Gaza, Axios has reported. This development comes as the US is also reportedly considering inviting the Israeli Prime Minister to address Congress, despite the ICC’s investigation into possible war crimes committed by Israeli forces supported by Washington.

According to three sources who were either present in the meeting or briefed about it, a bipartisan group of Senators held a virtual meeting on Wednesday with senior ICC officials to express their concerns about the potential arrest warrants.

The ICC, based in The Hague, Netherlands, has been investigating possible war crimes dating back to the 2014 Israeli onslaught on Gaza and has extended its investigation to the recent attack which has killed nearly 35,000 people, the vast majority of whom are women and children.

In February ICC Prosecutor expressed deep concern over Israeli bombardment and potential ground incursion by Israeli forces in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Since then, the death toll in Gaza and devastation of the besieged enclave has increased.

Israeli officials have grown increasingly apprehensive over the last two weeks, fearing that the ICC may issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi. The Israeli government has warned the Biden administration that, if such warrants are issued, it will take punitive measures against the Palestinian Authority, potentially leading to its collapse.

Read: International Criminal Court applies double standards on Palestine: Euro-Med

The issue of potential ICC arrest warrants was reportedly discussed during a recent call between Netanyahu and President Joe Biden, with the Israeli Prime Minister seeking US assistance in the matter. Republican lawmakers have threatened to pass legislation against the ICC if it proceeds with the arrest warrants, a move that the Biden administration has stated it opposes.

Sources, reported in Axios, familiar with the meeting between Senators and ICC officials have not disclosed the identities of the participants, citing the confidential nature of the discussion. However, one source described the meeting as an opportunity for the Senators to voice their concerns about the ICC’s investigation into the war in Gaza.

The office of the ICC Prosecutor is said to have declined to comment on the specifics of the meeting, stating, “Confidentiality is a crucial aspect of the work of the Prosecutor. Therefore, we do not publicly discuss specifics related to the office’s activities and engagements.”