James Cleverly Urges Israel To Show ‘Restraint And Discipline’ In Gaza

The UK government urged has Israel to show “restraint and discipline” as it steps up its military action against Hamas in Gaza.

Foreign secretary James Cleverly said that while he supports Israel’s right to defend itself, they must do everything they can “to minimise civilian casualties”.

His comments came as he was being interviewed by Trevor Phillips on Sky News this morning.

Phillips asked him: “As steadfast as you might be in your friendship, one element of friendship is giving good advice.

“The Israelis say that they plan to eradicate or eliminate Hamas. Are you saying to your Israeli counterpart, this is a realistic objective?”

Cleverly said: “We have a very, very good working relationship with the Israeli government and whenever I have spoken to them, I’ve reinforced the UK’s position about the preservation of life, the avoidance of civilian casualties.

“I know the Israelis completely understand that.”

He added: “Restraint, discipline. These are the hallmarks of the Israeli defence force that I want to see.

“And indeed, those are the hallmarks of a high-functioning military organisation which the Israel Defence Force is, in stark contrast to the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas and I’ve maintained that clear distinction.”

More than 1,300 Israelis were killed and hundreds taken hostage following attacks by the Hamas militant group a week ago.

Some 2,300 have been killed in Israel’s bombing campaign of the Gaza Strip launched in the aftermath.

Around 1.1 million people in northern Gaza have also been ordered to leave by Israel ahead of an expected ground invasion.

The UK government has faced mounting pressure to be clearer in their stance on the war amid claims Israel is breaking international law.

Phillips said: “So to be absolutely clear, our government’s position is full support for Israel, full support for military action, but we are urging restraint and discipline?”

Cleverly said that was “a pretty good synopsis”.

He added: “Of course we respect Israel’s right to self defence. They’ve experienced the most horrendous terrorist atrocity which is still being perpetrated.

“Images of people being held, images of bodies being desecrated, are still sloshing around on social media, so of course, they have every right and we support this right to protect themselves whilst doing it.

“We’ve said though, do everything you can to minimise civilian casualties. Do everything you can to prevent Hamas getting what they want, which is this to escalate into a wider regional conflict.

“No country, including the United Kingdom, would give carte blanche to any other nation and that is a universal truth not not specifically about Israel.”

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Israel Wages Intensifying War On Gaza As Residents Grow Desperate

With messages telling Gazans to leave their homes and medical staff to evacuate their hospitals, a build-up of troops on the border and continued airstrikes that killed dozens of people as they fled, Israel on Friday confirmed what the world had suspected for a week: It is once again invading the Gaza Strip.

The operation is payback for the attacks that Hamas and other Gaza-based militants carried out inside Israel on October 7, killing 1,300 Israelis and taking more than 100 hostages, mostly civilians.

Israel’s response has already extended beyond armed Palestinian groups, with Israeli airstrikes so far killing more than 500 children in Gaza, according to local authorities. And the full-scale offensive that is now underway threatens all of the region’s more than 2 million people, residents and humanitarian organisations say.

Abderhmam, a New York-based physician who asked HuffPost to withhold his last name for fear of retribution from future employers, said he is relying on “doomsday measures” to keep track of his family members in Gaza – including his parents, his two sisters, and his nieces and nephews, the youngest of whom is just 6 months old. He is maintaining an Excel spreadsheet tracking their movements so he can know if they are in one of the residential neighbourhoods that are being targeted by Israel.

The Israel Defence Forces say they are giving civilians fair warning to depart for safety with evacuation orders, including a directive issued to the United Nations on Thursday that gave Gazans a 24-hour deadline to leave the north of the strip for its southern section. And the U.S., Israel’s most important backer, is reportedly seeking to delay a total Israeli ground invasion until it can negotiate safe passage for civilians to leave the area.

Yet those warnings have sparked panic. Gazans who are attempting to take one of the two routes to the south of the strip are fleeing with mattresses strapped to the top of their cars, while others are cramming into whatever semblance of safe haven they can find. Abderhmam said his relatives fled to his uncle’s home south of Gaza City, which is now hosting close to 60 people.

“I don’t know how people come out of these things with a sense of humanity,” he told HuffPost.

Many internally displaced Gazans are now sleeping on the street, Amnesty International said in a Friday statement. Meanwhile, some of the most desperate members of the community cannot flee northern Gaza at all because they need consistent medical support or are too injured, the World Health Organisation said on Friday.

And any American talk of Israeli restraint has a clear limit. HuffPost revealed on Friday that the State Department has discouraged U.S. diplomats from publicly endorsing a “ceasefire” or “de-escalation,” which aid agencies say would be vital to give Gaza residents any real chance to reach safety.

Ghada Alhaddad, a Gaza-based media and communications officer at the charity Oxfam, told HuffPost the last week of Israeli bombardment has already felt “like the last few escalations of violence multiplied by one thousand,” referring to multiple previous episodes of protracted Israel-Hamas conflict.

“This time’s bombardments are louder and crazier — loud enough to make your heart race really quickly,” Alhaddad wrote in an email, adding that her nieces and nephews have been shivering when they hear the sound of bombs falling.

To her, Israel merely sending warning signals ahead of an even more devastating assault is insufficient.

“Leaving our homes in order to feel safe cannot be the solution — we need to be safe in our own homes,” Alhaddad told HuffPost.

Already Worn Down

The past six days of Israeli bombing — and Israel’s decision to cut off electricity and water — have fuelled mass trauma in Gaza.

Ghada Kord, a freelance journalist based there, told HuffPost she witnessed displaced residents going to Shifaa Hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza City. They built makeshift tents there with pillows and bedcovers as hospital officials warned civilians they only had around 48 hours of fuel left.

The hospitals in northern Gaza are already overcrowded, the WHO reported Friday, and those in the south are at or nearing capacity.

Many of Alhaddad’s colleagues have lost their homes and sought shelter at United Nations schools, she said. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency said Friday it had moved its operations center and international staff away from northern Gaza.

Aid workers are tracking whether it is safe enough for them to restart humanitarian work, but as they wait, fuel, food and medical supplies are running low, she added. “The response will not be able to meet [people’s needs] while a total siege is in place,” Alhaddad said.

The WHO has nearly used up its full stockpile in Gaza and has not yet received permission from Egypt to move in additional supplies, the U.N. agency said in its Friday statement.

For Gazans trying to stay with their families — and just stay alive — the current fighting compounds the misery they have experienced since Hamas won elections in the strip in 2006, quickly imposing heavy-handed rule. Israel and Egypt began blockading the region beginning in 2007.

“There is a lack of housing, a lack of jobs, a lack of feeling of hope and security… This has pushed people to be more frustrated, more radical, more desperate,” said Omar Shaban, the director of a Gaza-based think tank called PalThink for Strategic Studies.

A number of Gazans privately and publicly bid farewell to the broader world on Friday in anticipation of an all-consuming Israeli offensive.

“Our mom sends messages from there saying ‘We’re alive,’ but that’s it. The other day, we didn’t hear from them for 18 hours and we thought: ‘That’s it.’”

– Mona, New Jersey resident with parents in Gaza

Shaban was one of the few Gazans able to flee to Egypt on Monday before the country closed its border following multiple Israeli airstrikes on the crossing. He fled for two reasons, he told HuffPost.

“I knew that the Israeli reaction would be extraordinarily tough,” said Shaban, who noted that as a 62-year-old, he has experienced multiple rounds of warfare. And he was focused on reuniting with his wife, who had traveled abroad for work and was unable to reenter Gaza after the Hamas attack on Israel. The two are now in Cairo.

Still, Shaban is wary of the suggestion from some observers worldwide that Gazans should be encouraged to travel to Egypt en masse, noting that it echoes the Palestinian experience when Israel was established and many fled their homes and were never able to return.

“Palestinians have experienced leaving their homelands in 1948 and they realized that they will never come back, at least for the foreseeable future, so I don’t think Gazans will leave to [the Sinai Peninsula], and Egypt will not accept this at all,” Shaban said.

Stateside Anxiety

Up to 600 American citizens remain in Gaza as it braces for the larger Israeli advance. Their relatives are worried about staying in touch with them and their basic survival.

Mona, a New Jersey resident who asked to withhold her last name for fear of retaliation, told HuffPost she has been trying to help her parents evacuate from Gaza to no avail.

“Our mom sends messages from there saying ‘We’re alive,’ but that’s it,” Mona said. “The other day, we didn’t hear from them for 18 hours and we thought: ‘That’s it.’”

She has sent nearly a dozen messages to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem but has only received automatic messages about evacuation recommendations from Israel.

“I cannot believe how unheard we are. We are not seen at all,” Mona said. “The government is doing so much [for Israeli Americans.] You’d think you would get the same because you are also a U.S. citizen, but no.”

The U.S. government began charter flights out of Israel on Friday but has not yet solidified a plan to help U.S. citizens leave Gaza.

Mona has been missing work. She’s worried about her parents — particularly her father, a diabetic who has been unable to find power to charge his phone — and no one in her family is eating or sleeping well.

“We are hoping for a sign of relief. A light,” she said. “Anything to look forward to. To give you some hope that you’re going to see your parents again.”

Duaa Abufares, a 24-year-old college student at Montclair State University, has similar hopes for her father, who went to Gaza to visit his family last month.

“He doesn’t want to leave his mom or his siblings” in the strip, she said.

She’s looking for a response bigger than one just for her family — one that gets to the heart of the U.S.’s responsibility for the current situation and the way it might be able to halt this and future episodes of violence.

“I want people to know that they not only are targeting Palestinians — they are targeting American families as well,” Abufares said. “The U.S. is hurting their own people at the same.”

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BBC Journalist Reports On Finding Friends And Neighbours In Overrun Gaza Hospital

A BBC Arabic journalist reported on the distressing conditions inside an overwhelmed Gaza hospital that he said contained many of his friends and neighbours.

“Today has been one of the most difficult days in my career. I have seen things I can never unsee,” BBC’s Adnan Elbursh, a Gaza resident, said in the report from Al Shifa, Gaza City’s main hospital, posted late on Thursday.

“Bodies lay everywhere. The injured scream for help. You can never forget the sounds,” he reported.

Among the dead and wounded, his cameraman had spotted his friend Malik, Elbursh said.

“Malik has managed to survive, but his family have not,” Elbursh said over footage of his tearful colleague.

Elbursh said bodies were being placed outside the hospital on the ground after the morgue reached capacity.

“You never want to become the story. Yet, in my city, I feel helpless as the dead were given no dignity and the injured are left in pain,” he said.

Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, launched a devastating surprise attack on Israel on Saturday, massacring hundreds of people and taking scores of hostages.

Israel declared war on Hamas in response. It has since laid siege to Gaza, which has a dense population of more than 2 million, bombarding the Palestinian enclave with airstrikes and preparing for a possible ground invasion. It has also shut off access to electricity, food, fuel and water in Gaza.

The conflict has already claimed over 2,800 lives on both sides. Thousands more are injured.

At least 10 journalists — nine Palestinians and one Israeli — are among the dead, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Several others are wounded or missing.

It has become increasingly difficult for journalists in Gaza to cover the situation on the ground, as fuel, electricity and internet access become more and more scarce.

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4 Ways The Israel Conflict Has Impacted UK Life Over The Last Week

Israel’s ongoing conflict with Palestinian militants may be far away, but it’s having a profound impact on life around the world – including the UK.

At the moment, despite voicing support for the Israelis after Hamas’ brutal attacks and sorrow for the suffering in Gaza, none of the Western powers are directly involved yet.

In fact, UK PM Rishi Sunak has said he is keen to prevent “further escalation” in the region, and the US secretary of state Anthony Blinken has promised “intensive diplomacy” to stop more nations wading into the conflict.

But, the horrendous eruption of violence in the Middle East has still triggered ripples all around the world. Here’s how.

1. International citizens likely to be hostages

When Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel on Saturday, it took at least 150 people, including women and children, hostage – and it has killed more than a thousand people in the days since.

The majority of those taken are believed to be Israeli, but US President Joe Biden said on Monday that it was “likely” American citizens were among them.

UK defence secretary Grant Shapps also said it was “highly likely” that there were British civilians among the hostages on Thursday.

However, there’s been no confirmation about the hostages’ nationalities yet.

They are currently being hidden by Hamas in Gaza, and Israel does not plan to stop its siege of the region until they are released.

According to the Washington Post, people from 23 countries outside of Israel and Palestinian territories have been killed in the conflict. That includes Europeans, those from North and South America, Africa and Asia.

The UK is in the process of organising flights out of Israel for vulnerable Brits and diplomats, although it will cost £300 per passenger.

Protesters in solidarity with Israel and in solidarity with Palestine have popped up across the UK recently
Protesters in solidarity with Israel and in solidarity with Palestine have popped up across the UK recently

2. Jewish schools in the UK

Several Jewish schools closed in north London on Friday due to safety concerns.

One parent told Sky News that he had been advised to change his children’s uniforms so “they are not signalling in any way they are Jewish”.

Downing Street declared it was putting £3 million aside for the Community Security Trust, on Thursday, to protect the UK’s Jewish population.

3. Rows over flags

The FA announced on Thursday that the Wembley arch will not be lit up in the colours of the Israeli flag, despite calls for the landmark to show solidarity with Tel Aviv.

Only flags supporting the two teams playing on Friday will be permitted into the stadium, too, while players will be wearing black armbands to show support for all the victims of the war.

The UK’s culture secretary Lucy Frazer posted on X (formerly Twitter) to say she was “disappointed” by the FA’s decision.

Police around the UK won’t stop people waving Palestinian flags either, while France has banned pro-Palestinian protests – and arrested anyone who defies them.

4. BBC criticised over language for Hamas

The BBC has been dragged into a row about bias over its reluctance to use the word “terrorist” to describe any Hamas fighter.

Following a widespread backlash, it justified the decision on Wednesday, saying it was following its editorial guidelines.

The broadcaster’s head of editorial policy and standard, David Jordan, said: “It’s a policy that’s been applied to conflicts around the world and indeed conflicts in our own country.

“We didn’t have a policy of describing the IRA as terrorists throughout the Troubles in Northern Ireland. To this day, we don’t call republican splinter groups, for example, and others terrorists in that context.”

However, defence secretary Shapps clashed with a BBC presenter over its decision on Friday, while the PM has said that it is “incumbent” on the BBC – as the UK’s national broadcaster – to refer to the militants as terrorists.

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