Middle East: Gaza negotiators to restart cease-fire talks

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said late on Thursday that it killed a staffer form the UN's Palestinian aid agency, the UNRWA, whom it accused of taking part in the October 7, 2023 terror attacks on southern Israel.

The IDF claimed the man in question was a Hamas commander involved in the "murder and kidnapping of Israeli civilians" on October 7. It also claimed he had been involved in attacks on IDF soldiers fighting in the Gaza Strip since then.

The UNRWA, which in August fired nine workers because they were possibly involved in the October 7 attacks, confirmed that the killed individual was a member of its staff.

The agency said his name was included in a letter it received from Israel last July which included a list of 100 staff members allegedly members of armed groups, including Hamas.

"The UNRWA commissioner general responded to that letter immediately stating that any allegation is taken seriously," Juliette Touma, UNRWA's director of communications, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying.

"He urged [the government of Israel] to cooperate with the agency by providing more information so he could take action. To date, UNRWA has not received any response to that letter."

The UNRWA was founded in 1949 to aid Palestinians who fled or were expelled during the 1948 war. It currently provides services to nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees.

Israeli airstrikes on two areas in eastern Lebanon on Thursday killed 12 people, including three children, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.

The first strike hit the town of Al-Khodr in the Baalbek-Hermel region, killing seven people including three children, the ministry said.

The other strike hit another town in the same region, killing five others.

Five Israeli soldiers were killed and seven others were wounded in southern Lebanon, where Israel began a ground invasion nearly a month ago, with the stated aim of fighting Hezbollah militants and ending border tensions.

The Israeli army first provided the names of four soldiers it said "fell during combat in southern Lebanon" on Wednesday. It later said another soldier was killed on Thursday, also in southern Lebanon.

A tally by the French AFP news agency puts the number of Israeli troops killed in combat in southern Lebanon at 27 since the ground operation was launched.

Before that, border skirmishes between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party and militant group, had been almost daily since the war in Gaza started in October 2023.

Hezbollah is designated as a terrorist group by Israel and the US, while the EU lists its armed wing as a terrorist group.

An Egyptian security delegation met with Hamas leaders in Cairo on Thursday to discuss resuming Gaza cease-fire negotiations and a hostage deal, Egypt’s state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV reported, citing an unnamed official source.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed Egypt's willingness to advance a hostage deal, according to Reuters, which reported that he decided to send the head of the Mossad intelligence agency to Qatar to "promote a series of initiatives on the agenda."

Israeli spy chief David Barnea will travel to the Qatari capital Doha on Sunday, following the prime minister’s instructions, to meet with CIA Director William Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

Mediated by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt, the negotiations are focused on achieving a cease-fire in Gaza, the release of hostages held by Hamas and other militants, and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

US and Israeli negotiators will meet in Doha soon to restart Gaza cease-fire and hostage release talks, according to top diplomats from Qatar and Washington.

"I anticipate our negotiators will be getting together in the coming days," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a visit to Qatar.

A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a delegation will travel to Doha on Sunday.

Israeli spy chief David Barnea will meet with CIA director William Burns and the Qatari prime minister, Netanyahu's office said.

Blinken said the US was looking at "different options" that it could pursue when it came to Gaza cease-fire talks without giving further details. 

Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman said that US and Israeli negotiation teams will visit Doha "and we will discuss ways to find a breakthrough in the negotiations."

Months of cease-fire negotiations, facilitated by the US, Egypt, and Qatar, halted over the summer.

It was not yet clear if Hamas was willing to join new negotiations.

France's foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, says that pledges of humanitarian aid and military support to Lebanon at a Paris aid conference have reached $1 billion (€925 million).  

"We have collectively raised $800 million in humanitarian aid and $200 million for the security forces, that's about $1 billion," he said in closing remarks at the conference, attended by delegations from some 70 nations and international organizations.

"We're up to the challenge," Barrot said.

Lebanon was administered by France for some two decades in the first half of the 20th century, and links between the two countries have remained friendly since then.

The Middle East country is currently in the grips of a major economic crisis, in addition to being the arena of a war between its Hezbollah militants and Israel.

The fighting has displaced a million people and killed more than 2,500, mostly in the south of the country.
 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced that Washington will provide Palestinians with another $135 million (€125 million) in aid, while calling once more for a cease-fire in Gaza.

"Today, we're announcing an additional $135 million in humanitarian assistance, water sanitation, internal health for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as in the region," Blinken announced in Qatar.

He said that this brought total US aid to Palestinians to $1.2 billion since last year's October 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas last year triggered the war in the Gaza Strip.

Blinken, who is making his 11th visit to the region since the start of the war in Gaza, also said the US was open to "different options" to end the war even after pushing a US-led cease-fire plan for months.

Qatar has acted as a key mediator in the conflict along with the US and Egypt.

Germany has approved exports of military equipment to Israel to the tune of €94.05 million ($101.4 million) since August, more than double the worth of approvals for the year up to October 13, German news agency dpa has reported.

Arms deliveries to Israel are a contentious issue in Germany, with a Forsa Institute poll this week showing 60% of respondents rejecting ongoing arms exports to the country as it fights several regional enemies. 

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has defended the government's exports, saying the deliveries are not "a contradiction, but two sides of the same coin: the right to self-defense in accordance with international humanitarian law."

She also said a distinction should be made between weapons and defense equipment.

However, the party that enquired after the figures, the populist left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), said Germany was condoning "war crimes" by Israel by supplying arms.

"By providing arms aid to Israel, the [coalition] government is aiding and abetting war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon instead of honouring the majority of the German population's wish for an arms embargo," BSW lawmaker Sevim Dagdelen said.

Israeli forces have carried out a strike on a school in the Gaza Strip being used as a shelter for displaced persons, killing at least 17, including children, and wounding another 32, Palestinian medical officials said on Thursday.

The Israeli military said it had hit a Hamas command and control center embedded in a compound formerly used as a school.

In recent months, Israel has carried out several strikes on schools in the Gaza Strip, saying that they are often used by Hamas militants as hideouts among civilians.

In the past several weeks, Israeli forces have increased air and land assaults on northern Gaza in an operation the military says is aimed at preventing Hamas militants from regrouping.

Israel and several other countries and world bodies, including the EU and Germany, classify Hamas as a terrorist organization.

The war in Gaza was sparked by the Hamas terror attacks on October 7 last year in southern Israel, in which some 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, were killed.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has told a Russia-hosted conference of BRICS emerging economies that the grouping should be a "stabilizing force" amid the "serious challenges" currently facing the world.

Among other things, Xi called for a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israel is conducting a military operation against the militant Hamas group in response to its terror attack in southern Israel on October 7 last year.

He also said further conflict should be prevented in Lebanon as Israel and the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah exchange escalating hostilities.

"We need to continue to push for a cease-fire in Gaza, relaunch the two-state solution and stop the spread of war in Lebanon," Xi said.

"There should be no more suffering and destruction in Palestine and Lebanon," he added. 

China has long supported Palestinian causes, a tradition going back to the era of Mao Zedong, who sent weapons to Palestinians in line with his backing of "national liberation" movements worldwide.

In more recent times, China has upped its efforts to rival the US as a global mediator, among other things brokering a reconciliation deal last year between Middle East rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia.

French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to provide Lebanon with a €100-million ($108-million) aid package as he opened an international conference in Paris.

Macron said that "in the immediate term, massive aid is needed for the Lebanese population, both for the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the war and for the communities hosting them."

Lebanon's already existing economic crisis has been exacerbated by the current war between Iran-backed Hezbollah militants and Israel, which has displaced more than a million people and killed more than 2,500.

The French Foreign Ministry has said it hopes pledges from the around 50 delegations at Thursday's conference will raise €500 million, meeting the $426 million target set by the UN to cover Lebanon's urgent needs.

Lebanon's caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has said international support was needed to help rebuild the country's infrastructure and bolster its army.

Lebanon's caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, has said his government plans to recruit more troops as part of a scheme to implement a cease-fire but that international support will be needed to bolster the army.

Mikati's remarks came at a Paris aid conference aimed at raising money for Lebanon amid Israel's attacks on the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia that forms a state within a state in the country.

He said Lebanon could deploy 8,000 soldiers to southern Lebanon to help maintain the cease-fire, in line with a UN Security Council resolution calling for such a deployment.

Mikati said Lebanon's government still supported an initiative by France and the US to put in place a 21-day cease-fire.   

The Israeli military says its strikes overnight in the south of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, hit several Hezbollah weapons production facilities.

"Overnight, the IAF [Israeli Air Force] conducted intelligence-based strikes on several weapons storage and manufacturing facilities belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the area of Dahiyeh," it said in a statement.

Lebanese state media reported that six buildings were destroyed in at least 17 Israeli strikes during the night.

The Israeli military said the targeted sites were "located by Hezbollah under and inside civilian buildings in the heart of populated areas."

Germany has said it will give Lebanon a further €96 million ($103.57 million) in humanitarian and development aid.

Speaking ahead of an aid conference for Lebanon in the French capital, Paris, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Germany wanted to show it was responding actively to the current Middle East crisis.

"We are making it clear that we not only see the suffering in Lebanon these days, we are taking action; we are supporting the people on the ground who, for the most part, want only one thing: to live in safety and peace in the future, just like so many people in Israel," Baerbock said.

The German foreign minister added that "everything must be done" to prevent a new war breaking out between Israel and Lebanon.

"That is exactly what we are continuing to work on, even if it has become much more difficult," she said. 

The French Foreign Ministry says it is hoping that the meeting of some 50 delegations will raise about €500 million in humanitarian aid.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz already announced the support late on Wednesday during a phone call with Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, according to government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit.

Three Lebanese soldiers, including one officer, were killed by Israeli fire while helping evacuate wounded people in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese army said in a statement on Thursday.

"The Israeli enemy targeted Lebanese army personnel in the vicinity of Yater village, in the Bint Jbeil area of the south, while carrying out an operation to evacuate wounded, which led to the deaths of three martyrs, including an officer," the statement said.

Israel has been carrying out strikes on Lebanon, particularly in the south, in response to cross-border attacks by the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia. It is not technically at war with Lebanon itself.