UN security council does not pass US resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza
In breaking news, Reuters reports that the UN security council did not pass the US resolution calling for an “immediate” ceasefire in Gaza as part of a hostage deal.
Key events
Spain, Ireland, Malta, Slovenia agree to work towards Palestinian state recognition
According to Reuters, Spain has agreed with the leaders of Ireland, Malta and Slovenia to take the first steps towards recognising a Palestinian state, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said on Friday following a meeting of the European Council in Brussels.
UN security council does not pass US resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza
In breaking news, Reuters reports that the UN security council did not pass the US resolution calling for an “immediate” ceasefire in Gaza as part of a hostage deal.
UN seeks $4bn for aid in Syria as civilians face growing humanitarian crisis
A UN humanitarian official appealed on Friday for more than $4bn (£3.17bn) in aid for more than 10 million Syrians, saying that the country’s largely forgotten crisis remains “one of the most deadly to civilians in the world”, reports the Associated Press (AP).
Adam Abdelmoula, resident coordinator in Syria for the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs, made the appeal days after Syria marked the 13th anniversary of the conflict that has killed nearly a half million people and left large parts of the country destroyed.
“Today, we are facing an unprecedented situation in Syria – one that we cannot afford to ignore,” Abdelmoula told reporters in Geneva. “Inaction will be costly for all of us and will inevitably lead to additional suffering.”
About 16.7 million people require some form of humanitarian assistance in Syria, an increase from 15.3 million last year, he said. More than seven million people are internally displaced and nearly as many are refugees in other countries, including neighbouring Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, reports the AP.
The war has left 90% of Syria’s population below the poverty line as millions face cuts in food aid because of a funding shortfall. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) ended its main assistance program in the country in January.
“The Syria crisis remains one of the most deadly to civilians in the world. Hostilities continue to plague various parts of Syria and have recently seen a sharp spike, especially in the north,” Abdelmoula said.
He suggested that Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza had given cover for more military activity in parts of Syria.
“We saw the world’s attention focusing on Gaza, and that provided some kind of diversion of attention that allowed the significant escalation of hostilities in the northeast without much attention being paid to that situation by the international community,” Abdelmoula said.
“We are competing with so many crises. If you look at the global picture, you have Gaza, you have Ukraine, you have Sudan, you have Afghanistan … and the list goes on and on,” he said.
“With each emerging crisis, the Syria one that is now over a decade old keeps being pushed to the back burner,” said Abdelmoula. “We are struggling to keep it in the global attention. And that is proving to be challenging every year.”
Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run government media office in Gaza, said the misidentification and the inclusion of pictures of medical staff and people outside the country by the Israeli military in a composite picture of what was described as detainees from al-Shifa hospital showed it was spreading false narratives to justify its assault on the medical complex.
R Adm Daniel Hagari, Israel’s main military spokesperson, displayed a composite picture of what were described as detainees from al-Shifa hospital during a briefing late on Thursday.
Reuters reports that on Friday, the Israeli military said some of the photographs were of militants who had not been detained but whose pictures were included through human error.
According to the Times of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israeli internal security forces, known as the Shin Bet, denied the composite was an attempt at “psychological warfare.”
In a joint statement published on the Israeli online newspaper’s article, the IDF and Shin Bet said: “Due to human error, there are several photos in the graphic of terrorists who have not yet been caught but are, according to the information we have, in the area of the hospital and are holed up there.”
The Times of Israel said the IDF would “provide the identities of all those it had captured once the operation at Shifa is over”.
Israeli troops entered the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in the early hours of Monday morning and have been combing through the sprawling complex, which the military says is connected to a tunnel network used as a base for Palestinian fighters.
It says troops have killed hundreds of fighters in the operation and also detained more than 500 suspects, including 358 members of the Islamist militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Hamas and medical staff deny that the hospital is used for military purposes or to shelter fighters.
In recent days, Hamas spokespeople have said that the dead announced in previous Israeli statements were not fighters but patients and displaced people and have accused Israel of war crimes.
The US secretary of state Antony Blinken has spent around 40 minutes in talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, Reuters reports.
Ahead of the meeting, Blinken said he would push for more aid to flow into Gaza and address the growing gap between the two countries. Blinken also met the Israeli war cabinet.
“A hundred percent of the population of Gaza is experiencing severe levels of acute food insecurity. We cannot, we must not allow that to continue,” Blinken told a news conference on Thursday evening.
Palestine has condemned Israel’s declaration that an 800 hectare (1,977 acres) section of the occupied West Bank is state land.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the latest move was “a continuation of the extermination and displacement of our people from their homeland,” Reuters reports.
“The international failure to protect our people is complicity and cover for Israel’s ongoing evasion of punishment,” it added.
The move has underlined Israel’s determination to press ahead with settlement building in the West Bank, despite growing international opposition.
Israel has reported the seizure of 800 hectares (1,977 acres) of land in the occupied West Bank, which activists called the largest action of its kind in decades.
AFP reports:
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared as “state lands” the area in the northern Jordan Valley, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel for Gaza war talks.
Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said the size of the seized area is the largest since 1993’s Oslo Accords, and that “2024 marks a peak in the extent of declarations of state land”.
Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
“While there are those in Israel and the world who seek to undermine our right over the Judea and Samaria area and the country in general, we are promoting settlement through hard work and in a strategic manner all over the country,” Smotrich said, using Israel’s term for the West Bank.
Settlements in the Palestinian territories are illegal under international law.
Portugal gives €10m to Unrwa as new additional aid
Portugal said on Thursday it would give €10m ($10.89m/£8.6m) to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (Unrwa) as a one-off contribution intended to provide food, medicine, and humanitarian aid to Palestinians, reports Reuters.
The amount was announced by acting cabinet affairs minister Mariana Vieira da Silva following a cabinet meeting. According to the news agency, a foreign ministry official described the amount as new additional aid that had not been in the state budget for 2024.
Portugal cannot accept to be indifferent to the terrible humanitarian situation of the Palestinian people. Supporting @UNRWA is the best way for aid to reach those who need it. Israel must urgently facilitate the delivery of this humanitarian aid. https://t.co/oVYAIjOInv
— João Cravinho (@JoaoCravinho) March 21, 2024
Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner general of Unrwa, expressed his thanks via social media on Friday. He wrote on X:
Thank you Portugal [and] João Cravinho, for your new contribution to Unrwa. Your decision comes at a time of unprecedented challenges and will support our efforts to reverse the impact of the looming famine in Gaza and to provide lifeline services to Palestine refugees across the region. I hope other countries will follow your solidarity.”
UK aid-funded field hospital is ‘up and running in Gaza’, says foreign office
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office announced on Friday that a UK aid-funded field hospital is “now up and running in Gaza”.
In a social media post on its X account, the UK Foreign Office said the hospital will treat more than 100 patients a day and “make a real difference on the ground”. The hospital is run by the medical and humanitarian NGO, UK-Med.
UK-Med posted a YouTube link to a video which showed its CEO, David Wightwick, on a tour of the hospital in Gaza.
“With the emergency department, operating theatre and inpatient wards currently under construction, this facility will be able to treat at least 250 patients per day,” UK-Med said.
A UK Aid-funded field hospital is now up and running in Gaza.@UKMed‘s hospital will treat more than 100 patients a day and make a real difference on the ground ⤵️ https://t.co/nyic4II2pW
— Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (@FCDOGovUK) March 22, 2024
‘Rafah is Gaza’s last hope’, says Unicef spokesperson
Unicef spokesperson James Elder said he is “overwhelmed by loss” as he travelled through Khan Younis in southern Gaza and narrated a video published on the UN agency’s X account.
Speaking as the video showed images of destroyed buildings in the city, Elder said:
I don’t need to explain what you are seeing right now in Khan Younis. It’s obvious. Utter annihilation.”
What you don’t see are the memories in these broken homes. You don’t see the embrace of that mother and her toddler. You can’t smell the dinner that was once made by a grandmother for her family.
Moving around these streets, I’m overwhelmed by loss.
“And then I think of Rafah and the endless talk of a large scale military operation in Rafah. I think of this in Rafah,” he said, calling Rafah “a city of children” and “Gaza’s last hope”.
Elder said:
Rafah is a city of children – 600,000 girls and boys are there. A military offensive in Rafah? I mean, yeah, offensive is the right word. Rafah is home to some of Gaza’s last remaining hospitals and shelters and markets and water systems. Rafah is Gaza’s last hope. And yet, in the shadow of so, so many brutal scenes like this all across Gaza, voices are converging to contemplate doing it all again in Rafah.
The world’s madness on edge for the unfolding horror. Whatever voice, whatever influence we have now is the time to use it … for the children of Rafah.”
Earlier, the UK and Australia issued a joint statement warning of “potentially devastating consequences” of an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah in Gaza.
The US secretary of state Antony Blinken, who is in Israel today to press for a truce in Gaza ahead of a key UN security council vote on a draft resolution by the US calling for an “immediate” ceasefire, said on Thursday that a major Israeli ground assault on the southern Gaza town of Rafah would be “a mistake” and unnecessary to defeating Hamas.
Here are some of the latest images on the newswires:
The Times of Israel is reporting that Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz has summoned Turkey’s deputy ambassador to Israel for a reprimand after Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed to “send [Netanyahu] to Allah to take care of him, make him miserable and curse him,” during an election rally yesterday.
The purpose of the summons, Katz wrote in a social media post on X, is to “convey a clear message to Erdoğan”.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Friday that its disaster risk management teams have started a project to distribute fresh bread daily to displaced families in the al-Mawasi area, west of Khan Younis and Rafah governorates in Gaza.
According to a social media post on X, 20,000 loaves of bread have been distributed by the teams, benefiting approximately 1,000 families.
The PRCS Disaster Risk Management teams have started a project to distribute fresh bread daily to displaced families in the Al-Mawasi area west of Khan Younis and Rafah governorates. The total distributed so far has reached 20,000 loaves, benefiting approximately 1,000 families. pic.twitter.com/oLrTTBeIHw
— PRCS (@PalestineRCS) March 22, 2024
Miranda Bryant
Finland has announced plans to reinstate funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (Unrwa) after suspending its €5m (£4.29m) annual payments to the aid organisation in January.
Finland was one of 16 major donors that suspended payments after Israel accused a dozen staff at the aid organisation of involvement in the 7 October Hamas attack. The Unrwa denies the charge and says no substantial evidence has been provided to support the allegation.
Ville Tavio, Finland’s minister for foreign trade and development, said on Friday that while he had read reports that there were shortcomings in the Unrwa risk management, there was insufficient information about alleged connections to supporting Hamas to continue withholding funding.
The Finns party member said the government had received sufficient information to re-start the payments. However, he said 10% of the support would be allocated to improving risk management.
“We allocate ten percent of the support, i.e. €500,000, to risk management. That money is used to monitor the implementation of policies regarding abuses. In the future, we also require Unrwa to hold annual bilateral discussions with Finland on how the enhancement of risk management will proceed.”
Finland will closely monitor the investigation work into Unrwa in cooperation with other countries, he added.
“I am especially waiting for the final report of the UN internal audit unit OIOS. It is of the utmost importance for Finland to ensure that our money does not end up benefiting terrorism. However, the investigation will take time, and Unrwa cannot be replaced as a humanitarian actor in Gaza in the short term.”
Antony Blinken in Tel Aviv to discuss alternatives to Israel’s planned ground assault in Rafah
US secretary of state Antony Blinken has arrived in Tel Aviv, Israel, on the final stop in his sixth trip to the region since the start of the war.
Blinken said he would share alternatives to Israel’s planned ground assault into the southern Gaza town of Rafah during talks with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet.