John Kirby, in an interview on NBC television in the US, has said that the White House is not seeking a war with Iran or regional escalation.
The national security council spokesperson said:
We are not looking for a war with Iran. We are not looking to escalate the conflict in the region. Obviously, these attacks keep coming. We’ll keep looking at the options. I can’t speak for the Supreme Leader or what he wants or he doesn’t want. I can tell you what we want. What we want is a stable, secure, prosperous Middle East, and we want these attacks to stop.
On the accusations made by Israel against 12 staff at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which has led to the US pulling funding for the agency, Kirby said
It’s important to remember that UNRWA does important work across the region, certainly in Gaza. They have helped save thousands of lives, and we shouldn’t impugn the good work of a whole agency because of the terrible, just terrible allegations lobbied against just a small number of their employees. So I think we have decision points that we’re going to have to make going forward here, but I don’t want to get ahead of the investigation and what it’s going to find.
Here are some of the latest images sent to us over the newswires from inside the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, has posted to social media that he has cancelled planned meetings with UNRWA, and called on the head of the organisation, Philippe Lazzarini, to resign.
Katz added: “Supporters of terrorism are not welcome here.”
The Palestinian new agency Wafa reports that Jordan’s king, Abdullah II, and Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, have spoken by phone today, and reiterated that both countries were pushing for a ceasefire, the delivery of more humanitarian aid to Gaza, and that “no peace or stability would be achieved in the region without a just solution to the Palestinian issue based on the two-state solution”.
The UK added eight designations under its Iran sanctions regime, Reuters reports a government notice showed on Monday.
The overall death toll in Gaza since 7 October has reached 26,637 Palestinians, with a further 65,387 injured in Israeli strikes, according to the Gaza health ministry.
215 Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours, the ministry reported.
A Palestinian academic who had worked as a visiting fellow at the University of Manchester has been killed in Gaza, the university has confirmed.
Dr Wiesam Essa, of Al-Aqsa University in the Gaza Strip, worked in the geography department at Manchester between June 2019 and March 2021.
He died earlier this month when his apartment block was badly damaged by Israeli bombs, the university said. His wife and four children survived the attack and are staying with extended family in Gaza.
In early December, the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA) and the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF) secured a new academic placement for Essa and were hoping to place him the UK, the university said, but it proved impossible to get him out of Gaza.
Prior to his placement in Manchester, Essa said:
The University of Manchester and the department of geography will be an oasis for me after years of wandering in both human and academic crises within the Gaza Strip.
A statement by the University of Manchester said:
Wiesam is fondly remembered by colleagues in geography – he was a regular and cheerful presence in the department, contributing enthusiastically to the mapping, culture and geographical information science research group.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared to confirm on Monday that Israel had circulated an intelligence dossier alleging that some UNRWA staffers participated in the October 7 attack from Gaza, and described the the relief agency as “perforated with Hamas”.
Netanyahu told Britain’s TalkTV:
We discovered that there were 13 UNRWA workers who actually participated, either directly or indirectly, in the October 7 massacre.
In UNRWA schools they’ve been teaching the doctrines of extermination for Israel – the doctrines of terrorism, glorifying terrorism, lauding terrorism.
The UK will not provide further aid to UNRWA while claims about links to Hamas are being investigated, the prime minister’s spokesperson has said.
Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson said this morning that the government did not think any UK aid funding had gone to Hamas.
Asked about claims that up to a dozen staff at the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which is part-funded by Britain, were involved in the Hamas massacre of Israelis on 7 October, the spokesperson said:
We have tight controls and agreements and due diligence on how the funding is used, as you would expect, but it’s right in light of these allegations that we conduct a further investigation with our allies and seek the reassurance that will be required in order to allow funding to continue.
The spokesperson said that the UK committed £16m to UNRWA after the Hamas attack, but that that money had now been disbursed. He said no further money would be allocated while the Hamas link was being investigated.
You can follow the detail over at our UK Politics blog.
A dossier drawn up by Israel claims that a school counsellor employed by the UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza was involved in kidnapping an Israeli woman during atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October, the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood writes.
Another employee of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), a social worker, helped to bring the body of an Israeli soldier into Gaza and distributed ammunition, the dossier claims, the New York Times reported on Monday.
They were among 12 UNRWA staff alleged by Israel to have taken part in the 7 October attacks or in the aftermath. As a result of the claims, a string of western countries including the US and the UK have suspended funding to the agency, which provides aid to more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees across the Middle East.
Austria and Romania said on Monday they were also suspending funds to UNRWA, and the EU said it was considering future payments to the agency “in light of the very serious allegations”.
The full story is here:
John Kirby, in an interview on NBC television in the US, has said that the White House is not seeking a war with Iran or regional escalation.
The national security council spokesperson said:
We are not looking for a war with Iran. We are not looking to escalate the conflict in the region. Obviously, these attacks keep coming. We’ll keep looking at the options. I can’t speak for the Supreme Leader or what he wants or he doesn’t want. I can tell you what we want. What we want is a stable, secure, prosperous Middle East, and we want these attacks to stop.
On the accusations made by Israel against 12 staff at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), which has led to the US pulling funding for the agency, Kirby said
It’s important to remember that UNRWA does important work across the region, certainly in Gaza. They have helped save thousands of lives, and we shouldn’t impugn the good work of a whole agency because of the terrible, just terrible allegations lobbied against just a small number of their employees. So I think we have decision points that we’re going to have to make going forward here, but I don’t want to get ahead of the investigation and what it’s going to find.
Protesters, including some relatives of those being held hostage in Gaza by Hamas, have gathered again at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip, with the intention of blocking humanitarian aid entering Palestinian territory.
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday declined to join critics who accuse Israel of genocide in its actions in Gaza, but said American society should not “toss someone out of our public discourse” for doing so.
Following the international court of justice’s order to Israel to work to prevent genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza, the Democratic representative from New York argued on Meet the Press that “large amounts of Americans” think “genocide” is the right term for what is happening in Gaza.
“The fact that [the ICJ] said there’s a responsibility to prevent it, the fact that this word is even in play, the fact that this word is even in our discourse, I think demonstrates the mass inhumanity that Gazans are facing,” she said.
Read more here: AOC says no one should be ‘tossed out of public discourse’ for accusing Israel of genocide
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2024-01-29 12:58:41Z
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