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UK announces sanctions against extremist settler groups in West Bank
The UK foreign minister David Lammy criticised the “inaction of the Israeli government” for allowing “impunity to flourish” among extremist settlers in the West Bank while announcing a fresh wave of sanctions against the groups in response to continued violence.
The measures target three outposts and four organisations that have supported and perpetrated “heinous abuses of human rights” against Palestinian communities in the occupied territory, the Foreign Secretary said.
Settler outposts sanctioned on Tuesday include Tirzah Valley Farm Outpost, Meitarim Outpost and Shuvi Eretz Outpost.
The four organisations targeted are Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva, Hashomer Yosh, Torat Lechima and Amana.
Key events
US says Israel must take steps to improve humanitarian situation in Gaza or face legal action – report
Back to events in Gaza now, and as we reported in our post at 1.32pm BST, the UN believe the area is facing the worst restrictions on aid since the current conflict began on October 7
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and defence secretary Lloyd Austin have reportedly told Israel it must take urgent steps to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza to avoid legal action involving US military aid.
“We are writing now to underscore the US government’s deep concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, and seek urgent and sustained actions by your government this month to reverse this trajectory,” they wrote in an October 13 letter to their Israeli counterparts, posted by an Axios reporter on X.
Foreign Office outlines West Bank outposts and organisations subject to UK sanctions
More now on those new sanctions announced by the UK government as targeting three settler outposts and four organisations in the West Bank.
The UK Foreign Office has released a statement expanding on the reasoning behind the move, made – it says – in response to a rise in violence against Palestinian communities. This is expected to peak during this month – the start of the olive harvest.
The illegal settler outposts sanctioned – Tirzah Valley Farm Outpost, Meitarim Outpost, and Shuvi Eretz Outpost – have been “involved in facilitating, inciting, promoting or providing support for activity that amounts to a serious abuse of the right of Palestinians not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” the Foreign Office said.
They’ve also provided details on the four organisations now subject to sanctions.
Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva is a religious school embedded in the Yitzhar settlement, while Hashomer Yosh is a non-governmental organisation that provides volunteers for illegal outposts, including Meitarim Outpost, also sanctioned today). Meitarim was founded by the extremist settler Yinon Levy, who the UK sanctioned in February.
Torat Lechima is a registered Israeli charity that has been documented as providing financial support to illegal settler outposts linked with acts of violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
Amana has overseen the establishment of illegal outposts and provides funding and other economic resources for Israeli settlers involved in threatening and perpetrating acts of aggression and violence against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the three hospitals in northern Gaza, said they were facing serious shortages of food, medication, and fuel, that could soon impact patients in their facilities.
“There is a stark shortage of consumables and supplies began to run out. Milk is running out, and everything available is depleting and we could face a humanitarian disaster that would impact those in the maternity and the neonatal units,” said Abu Safiya in a video appeal to international relief and human rights groups.
The northern part of Gaza is home to well over half the territory’s 2.3 million people. Around 400,000 people remain, according to United Nations estimates.
UK announces sanctions against extremist settler groups in West Bank
The UK foreign minister David Lammy criticised the “inaction of the Israeli government” for allowing “impunity to flourish” among extremist settlers in the West Bank while announcing a fresh wave of sanctions against the groups in response to continued violence.
The measures target three outposts and four organisations that have supported and perpetrated “heinous abuses of human rights” against Palestinian communities in the occupied territory, the Foreign Secretary said.
Settler outposts sanctioned on Tuesday include Tirzah Valley Farm Outpost, Meitarim Outpost and Shuvi Eretz Outpost.
The four organisations targeted are Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva, Hashomer Yosh, Torat Lechima and Amana.
Lisa O’Carroll
Ireland is not going to “wait” for the rest of the EU to take action against extremist Israeli settlers, the country’s prime minister has said, amid growing frustration in Dublin and Madrid over Brussels’ perceived inaction.
On his way into a cabinet meeting in Dublin, Simon Harris said he Ireland is “not going to wait for consensus” in the EU to take action.
It comes as Ireland looks afresh at drating legislation which could block imports of products made in the occupied territories.
Such laws were considered in 2020 but it is thought a stronger legal case exists in the wake of July’s International Court of Justice advisory opinion that there were multiple breaches of international law in the occupation of Palestinian territories.
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez called on the European Commission to “once and for all” respond to the “formal request” made by Dublin and Madrid in February “to suspend” the trade association agreement.
After his meeting with Joe Biden in Washington last week Harris said he would be asking the EU to revisit the trade agreement complaining the world was not doing enough to stop the human catastrophe in the Middle East.
“When people look back at this time in history, it will be a moment of shame of the world that more is not done to stop the war,” he said.
In a sign Israel may expand its ground operations against Hezbollah while bolstering its own defences, its troops have cleared landmines and established new barriers on the frontier between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and a demilitarised strip bordering Syria, security sources and analysts told Reuters.
The move suggests Israel may seek to strike Hezbollah for the first time from further east along Lebanon’s border, at the same time creating a secure area from which it can freely reconnoitre the armed group and prevent infiltration, the sources said.
Israel’s mine removal and engineering works have accelerated in recent weeks, according to a Syrian intelligence officer, a Syrian soldier positioned in southern Syria, and three senior Lebanese security sources who spoke to Reuters for this story.
Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general Sheikh Naim Qassem said on Tuesday the militant group has adopted a new calculation so that Israel feels ‘pain’, even though he called for a ceasefire.
Conflict-ravaged Gaza appears to be facing the worst restrictions on aid since the Israel-Hamas war began over a year ago, the UN said Tuesday, lamenting the especially devastating impact on children.
“Day after day, the situation for children becomes worse than the day before,” said James Elder, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF.
Despite a desperate need to increase the amount of aid going in to Gaza, Elder lamented that aid access was worsening. “August was the lowest amount of humanitarian aid that came into the Gaza Strip of any full month since the war broke out,” he said.
There had been “several days in the last week (where) no commercial trucks whatsoever were allowed to come in,” Elder added.
Israeli military “cutting off North Gaza completely”, UN human rights office says
The United Nations human rights office said on Tuesday the Israeli military appeared to be “cutting off North Gaza completely from the rest of the Gaza Strip.”
“Amid intense ongoing hostilities and evacuation orders in northern Gaza families are facing unimaginable fear, loss of loved ones, confusion, and exhaustion. People must be able to flee safely, without facing further danger,” Adrian Zimmerman, ICRC Gaza head of sub-delegation, said in a statement.
“Many, including the sick and disabled, cannot leave, and they remain protected under international humanitarian law all possible precautions must be taken to ensure they remain unharmed. Every person displaced has the right to return home in safety,” he added.
The Israeli military’s humanitarian unit, Cogat, which overseas aid and commercial shipments to Gaza, said in a statement on Tuesday that the operations in Jabalia were targeting terrorist infrastructure and operatives embedded inside civilian areas. It said it was facilitating humanitarian and in particular medical aid to residents.
Advanced anti-missile system sent by US begins to arrive in Israel, Pentagon says
The Pentagon said components for an advanced anti-missile system began arriving in Israel on Monday and that it would be fully operational in the near future, according to a statement on Tuesday.
“Over the coming days, additional U.S. military personnel and THAAD battery components will continue to arrive in Israel,” Pentagon spokesperson Major General Pat Ryder said.
“The battery will be fully operational capable in the near future, but for operations security reasons we will not discuss timelines.”
Israeli policeman shot dead in Ashdod by gunman, who was also killed
An assailant shot dead an Israeli policeman and wounded five other people near the southern city of Ashdod on Tuesday in what police called a “terrorist” attack.
The gunman was killed during the attack at the Yavne interchange along the highway connecting Ashdod to Tel Aviv, the authorities said.
“A terrorist wounded five people, including a policeman who was critically injured and then died later,” a police spokesman said.
The attacker had approached the main road on foot, fatally wounding the policeman before going on a shooting rampage and wounding others.
The World Health Organization said on Tuesday it had been able to start its polio campaign in central Gaza and vaccinate tens of thousands of children despite Israeli strikes in the designated protected zone hours before.
WHO spokesperson Tarik Jaarevi told a Geneva press briefing that over 92,000 children, or around half of the children targeted for polio vaccines in the central area, had been inoculated on Monday.
“What we have received from colleagues is that the vaccination went without a major issue yesterday, and we hope It will continue the same way,” he said.
But the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA said one of its schools in the central Gazan city of Nuseirat, intended as a vaccination site, was hit overnight between Sunday and Monday, killing up to 22 people.
Israeli strikes killed at least 50 Palestinians across Gaza Strip
The death toll of people killed in Israeli military strikes has risen to 50, Reuters reports, as Israeli forces tightened their squeeze around Jabalia in the north of the enclave on Tuesday, amid fierce battles with Hamas-led fighters.
Palestinian health officials said at least 17 people were killed by Israeli fire near Al-Falouja in Jabalia, the largest of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while 10 others were killed in Bani Suhaila in eastern Khan Younis in the south when an Israeli missile struck a house.
Later on Tuesday, the Gaza health ministry said one doctor was killed when he tried to help the people wounded by Israeli strikes in Al-Falouja in Jabalia. It added that several medics were wounded when their ambulance came under Israeli fire in the northern and southern Gaza Strip.
Jabalia has been the focus of an Israeli offensive for more than 10 days, with troops returning to areas of the north that came under heavy bombardment in the early months of the year-long war.
Here are some images from a makeshift tent camp in al-Mawasi, which has been designated as a “humanitarian zone” by Israel. Last month, the camp was hit by an Israeli strike, killing 19 people and wounding 60 others.
More than a quarter of Lebanon under evacuation orders, says UN
The UN Refugee Agency held a press briefing in Geneva today, where they addressed the ongoing battle in Lebanon.
Middle East director Rema Jamous Imseis told journalists new Israeli evacuation orders to 20 villages in southern Lebanon meant that over a quarter of the country was now affected.
“People are heeding these calls to evacuate, and they’re fleeing with almost nothing,” she added.
Israeli strikes have killed at least 2,309 people over the last year, the Lebanese government said, and more than 1.2 million people have been displaced.
The majority have been killed since late September when Israel expanded its military campaign. The toll does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Around 50 Israelis, both soldiers and civilians, have been killed, according to Israel.
Most of 22 victims of Israeli strike in Lebanon were women and children, UN
More now on the Israeli airstrike on the northern Lebanon village of Aitou we reported on in our post at 9.28BST.
The UN human rights office said on Tuesday it had received reports that most of the 22 victims of the hit on a building there were women and children.
“What we are hearing is that amongst the 22 people killed were 12 women and two children,” UN human rights office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence told a Geneva press briefing in response to a question about a strike on Aitou on Monday.
“We understand it was a four-storey residential building that was struck. With these factors in mind, we have real concerns with respect to IHL (International Humanitarian Law), so the laws of war, and the principles of distinction proportion and proportionality,” he said, calling for an investigation into the incident.
In northern Gaza, where Israel has been waging an air and ground campaign in Jabaliya for more than a week, residents said families were still trapped in their homes and shelters Tuesday.
Adel al-Deqes told AP his relatives tried to move to another place in Jabaliya in the morning, but the military shelled them. “We don’t know who died and who is still alive,” he said.
Ahmed Awda, another Jabaliya resident, said they heard “constant bombing and gunfire” overnight and Tuesday morning. He said the military destroyed many buildings in the eastern and northern parts of the camp, which dates back to the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. “They bombed many buildings; some of them empty buildings,” he said.
The funeral of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general killed alongside Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah drew the largest crowd of top leaders in the paramilitary organization together Tuesday for the first time since Tehran launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel.
The Guard’s leadership hasn’t been as visible in the two weeks since Iran’s Oct. 1 attack on Israel, AP reports. The Guard is the main power behind Iran’s theocracy and oversees its arsenal of ballistic missiles – which would be crucial in any future attack on Israel.
At the funeral in Tehran for Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, the Guard’s chief commander, Gen. Hossein Salami, attended alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian and the head of the country’s judiciary. Other Guard generals also attended, including Gen. Esmail Qaani of the Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force, about whom rumors had circulated for days regarding his status after the strike that killed Nasrallah.
At least two prominent Guard generals were not on hand: Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of Guard’s aerospace division that oversees its missile program, and Gen. Ali Reza Tangsiri, commander of the Guard’s navy, did not attend.
Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 42,344 Palestinians and wounded 99,013 since Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry said on Tuesday.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza does not distinguish between civillians and combatants in its statistics.