Israel-Hamas War highlights: Arab, Muslim leaders reject Israeli claims of 'self-defence' in Gaza

Saudi crown prince, African leaders call for end to war in Gaza

Saudi Arabia's crown prince on Friday called for an end to the war in Gaza, a stance later echoed in a declaration with African leaders attending a summit in Riyadh.

"We condemn what the Gaza Strip is facing from military assault, targeting of civilians, the violations of international law by the Israeli occupation authorities," Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said during the African-Saudi summit in the kingdom's capital.

Israel revises Hamas attack death toll downward to 'around 1,200'

A spokesperson for Israel's foreign ministry said on Friday that the death toll from the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel had been revised to around 1,200 from a previous government estimate of 1,400.

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Israel must stop bombing civilians, French Prez Macron says as Netanyahu places blame on Hamas

Against a backdrop of mounting international outrage over civilian casualties as Israel wages war on Hamas, President Emmanuel Macron of France on Friday called on Israel to stop the killing in the Gaza Strip.

“De facto, today, civilians are bombed — de facto,” he told the BBC in an interview. “These babies, these ladies, these old people are bombed and killed. So there is no reason for that and no legitimacy. So we do urge Israel to stop.”

France, like much of the Western world, considers Hamas a terrorist organization, and Macron stressed that his country had experienced terrorism and condemned Hamas’ devastating Oct. 7 attack on Israel. But he said there was “no justification” for bombing civilians who were not tied to Hamas.

The remarks came a day after a humanitarian aid conference in Paris focused on the war in Gaza. In the BBC interview, Macron said the conference had produced a consensus among aid agencies and governments that a humanitarian pause followed by a cease-fire was needed to protect civilians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that a cease-fire would be contingent on the release of hostages. Israel says that 239 people abducted from Israel on Oct. 7 are still being held.

On Friday night, Netanyahu fired back at Macron, issuing a statement around midnight in Israel in which he blamed Hamas for any harm suffered by civilians in Gaza and called on world leaders to condemn the group.

“While Israel does everything to avoid harming civilians and calls on them to leave the combat zones — Hamas-ISIS does everything to prevent them from leaving safe areas and uses them as a human shield,” Netanyahu said, repeating a parallel he has sought to draw before between Hamas and the Islamic State group, which has conducted and inspired terrorist attacks around the world.

Netanyahu warned that the crimes Hamas “is committing today in Gaza will be committed tomorrow in Paris, New York and anywhere in the world.”

NYT

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and French President Emmanuel Macron embrace following a joint press conference, amid the Israeli-Hamas conflict, in Jerusalem, October 24, 2023.

Gaza City Hospitals Are Caught in Deadly Crossfire

Gaza City’s hospitals were increasingly under siege Friday, with hundreds of seriously ill and wounded patients and thousands of displaced people stranded on hospital grounds as intense, close-quarters combat between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters raged around them.

The precarity of the hospitals was made clear early Friday when projectiles struck inside the Shifa complex, Gaza’s largest hospital, and a video appeared to show people being turned back by gunfire as they tried to evacuate another hospital.

Israeli tanks and troops have surrounded several hospitals in the Gaza Strip, hospital administrators and the Gaza Health Ministry said Friday. A spokesperson for the Israeli military said of the hospitals, “We’re slowly closing in on them,” and urged people to leave them.

Israel has long maintained that Hamas uses the hospitals as shields, operating from within them, while thousands of Palestinian civilians have taken refuge on their grounds.

The chief of Shifa Hospital said it was struck four times Friday, killing seven people, with several others wounded. The sources of the strikes and the extent of the damage were not immediately known.

In what appeared to be his strongest comments to date on the dire state of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that “far too many Palestinians have been killed.” His remarks edged as close as he has come so far to criticizing Israel’s conduct of the 5-week-old war.

“Much more needs to be done to protect civilians and to make sure that humanitarian assistance reaches them,” Blinken told reporters in New Delhi after a diplomatic tour through Middle Eastern and Asian nations. “Far too many have suffered these past weeks. And we want to do everything possible to prevent harm to them and to maximize the assistance that gets to them.”

The overall death toll in Gaza, as reported by the health authorities, part of the Hamas-run government, surpassed 11,000 Friday. Last month, President Joe Biden cautioned against accepting figures from Gazan officials, but Wednesday, a senior State Department official told Congress that the true toll numbers could be “even higher than are being cited.”

Reports NYT

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, take shelter at Rantisi hospital in Gaza City, November 7, 2023.

WHO chief says over 250 attacks on Gaza healthcare facilities verified

The director general of the United Nations’ World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the U.N. had verified more than 250 attacks on health care facilities in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including hospitals, clinics, ambulances and patients, with five hospitals hit in the past week.

The United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting Friday focused on the health crisis in Gaza, but attacks on hospitals dominated the discussion. As the meeting began, U.N. officials and diplomats said they were receiving reports of fighting outside Rantisi Hospital and Shifa Hospital, which was struck Friday.

“The situation on the ground is impossible to describe,” Tedros said. “Hospital corridors crammed with the injured, the sick, the dying. Morgues overflowing. Surgery without anesthesia. Tens of thousands of displaced people sheltering at hospitals.”

Tedros told the Security Council that the WHO had also documented 25 attacks on Israeli health care facilities.

Israel considering deal for Hamas to release all civilian hostages in Gaza Strip

In exchange for releasing all the civilians, Hamas is asking for a brief pause, more humanitarian aid, fuel for hospitals and the release of women and children in Israeli prisons, an official said, adding that Israeli authorities had expressed uncertainty about releasing their prisoners.

Hamas and other Palestinian groups are holding around 240 people hostage in Gaza, according to Israeli officials and others briefed on the talks. A little less than half of them are civilians, and the larger deal being negotiated would involve the release of all of those, one official said.

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Nissim and Ricarda Louk, the parents of Shani Louk, 22, who was taken hostage by Hamas after being seized from the Nova festival, following a deadly infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip into Israel, and who was later confirmed dead by Israel's government, are photographed in their home in Srigim-Li On, Israel October 31, 2023.

Israeli strikes hit Gaza hospitals, schools and other shelters for displaced

Israeli strikes have continued to batter the Gaza Strip since Israel's ground invasion began 15 days ago. As the Israeli military has encircled Gaza City and reached deep within, air and ground strikes have hit locations throughout the enclave where thousands of displaced people are known to be sheltering, including hospitals and schools.

At least two strikes since the invasion have hit Shifa hospital, Gaza's largest medical complex, where the United Nations has said 60,000 people are sheltering. On Friday, Israel struck near the hospital's entrance, killing 15 people, according to Gaza's health ministry and the Palestine Red Crescent Society. Israel has said that Hamas has a command center under the hospital and that the strike targeted an ambulance being used by a terrorist cell.

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A Palestinian woman, who was injured in an Israeli strike and was staying at Al Shifa hospital, moves southward after fleeing north Gaza as Israeli tanks roll deeper into the enclave, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip November 10, 2023.

Protesters rally outside UN Secretary-General’s residence to demand action on hostages

Demonstrators gathered outside the official residence of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in Manhattan on Friday morning to criticize him for not doing enough to free the 239 hostages Israel says were abducted during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

They strung masses of paper butterflies — one for each hostage — on a tree in front of Guterres’ residence, near the U.N. headquarters, and took turns reading out the hostages’ names. Some protesters held up flyers showing the faces and names of hostages and labeled “kidnapped” in capital letters.

Omer Lubaton-Granot, who helped organize the event, is the head of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in New York, an advocacy group formed after Oct. 7. Four of his family members are hostages. He directed some of his remarks to the crowd at Guterres.

“You have the power and the ability to influence and bring them back home, and we’re here, and we’ll come back here each and every week to remind you,” Lubaton-Granot said.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, has called on Guterres to resign over remarks he has made criticizing Israel for its military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which has caused widespread destruction and, according to the Hamas-run health authorities there, left more than 11,000 people in Gaza dead. Guterres has in recent days reiterated his condemnation of the Oct. 7 attacks, during which Israel says some 1,200 victims were killed, and has called “for the immediate, unconditional and safe release of hostages held in Gaza.”

Reports NYT

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Headed to Saudi, Iranian President calls on Islamic nations to unite over Gaza

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Saturday that the time had come for action over the conflict in Gaza rather than talk as he headed to Saudi Arabia to attend a summit on the war between Israel and Hamas militants.

"Gaza is not an arena for words. It should be for action," Raisi said at Tehran airport before departing for the summit of Arab and Islamic nations in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh.

"Today, the unity of the Islamic countries is very important," he added.

It is the first visit to Saudi Arabia by an Iranian head of state since Tehran and Riyadh ended years of hostility under a China-brokered deal in March.

"The summit will send a strong message to warmongers in the region and result in the cessation of war crimes in Palestine," Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, who is accompanying Raisi, was quoted as saying by the Padolat government website.

"America says it doesn't want an expansion of the war and has sent messages to Iran and several countries [to this effect]. But these statements are not consistent with America's actions," Raisi said in the televised comments at Tehran airport.

"The war machine in Gaza is in the hands of America, which is preventing a ceasefire in Gaza and expanding the war. The world must see the true face of America," Raisi said.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

Operations suspended in Gaza's largest hospital, enclave's Health Ministry says

The spokesperson for the Gaza health ministry said that operations in Al Shifa hospital complex, the largest in the enclave, were suspended on Saturday after it ran out of fuel.

"As a result, one newborn baby died inside the incubator, where there are 45 babies," Ashraf Al-Qidra, the spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza told Reuters.

FILE PHOTO: An injured person is assisted at Shifa Hospital after hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza that Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed on each other in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, October 17, 2023.

The Palestinian health ministry said on Saturday that 39 babies are at risk of death in Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital after electricity was cut off amid a lack of oxygen and medicine. (Reuters)

An injured person is assisted at Shifa Hospital after hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast at Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza that Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed on each other in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, October 17, 2023.

The United Arab Emirates plans to maintain diplomatic ties with Israel despite international outcry over the mounting toll of the war in Gaza and hopes to have some moderating influence over the Israeli campaign while safeguarding its own interests, according to four sources familiar with UAE government policy.(Reuters)

Saudi crown prince says Israel bears responsibility for 'crimes' against Palestinians

Mohamed bin Salman.

Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Saturday that Israel bears responsibility for what he called "crimes committed against Palestinian people", calling for an end to the siege of the Gaza Strip. (Reuters)

Israel waging 'genocidal war' in Gaza, says Palestinian president

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that Palestinians are facing an "unmatched genocidal war", calling on the United States to pressure Israel into halting its offensive on Gaza.

Speaking during an extraordinary joint Islamic-Arab summit in the Saudi capital Riyadh, Abbas also said Palestinians needed international protection in the face of Israeli attacks. (Reuters)

Qatar's Emir says making efforts in mediation to release hostages

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said on Saturday that his country is making efforts in mediation to secure the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza and that he hopes a humanitarian truce would be reached in the strip soon.

"The international community failed to bear its legal and ethical responsibilities," Sheikh Tamim said during a joint Islamic-Arab summit on Gaza in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

"For how long will the international community treat Israel as if it is above international laws," he added. (Reuters)

Iran asks Muslim countries to designate Israel army 'terrorist organisation'

 Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Saturday on Islamic governments to designate Israel's military a "terrorist organisation", citing its current operations in the Gaza Strip. (AFP)

British police said they had arrested 82 people in central London on Saturday - members of a group of counter-protesters who opposed a pro-Palestinian march taking place in the city. The police said they had made the arrests to prevent a breach of the peace. (Reuters)

Joint Islamic-Arab Summit calls for halting arms exports to Israel. (Reuters)

Israel defence minister warns Hezbollah not to escalate fighting

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah on Saturday not to escalate fighting along the border.

"Hezbollah is dragging Lebanon into a war that might happen," Gallant told troops in a video aired by Israeli television channels. "It is making mistakes and ... those who will pay the price are first and foremost Lebanon's citizens. What we are doing in Gaza we can do in Beirut." (Reuters)

Arab and Muslim leaders on Saturday said they rejected Israeli claims of "self-defence" in Gaza and demanded an immediate halt to military operations there after more than a month of war. (AFP)

Country leaders pose for a picture during the special Arab leaders' summit to discuss the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, November 11, 2023.