The Washington Post
MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT LIVE UPDATES
U.S. policy toward Israel will change unless it heeds Biden on Gaza aid and civilian protections, Blinken suggests
Updated 12 min ago ( April 04 ,2024
BRUSSELS — Washington’s blanket support for Israel will change if Israel doesn’t start listening to U.S. demands about protecting civilians in Gaza and allowing aid into the Palestinian enclave, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested on Thursday. The top U.S. diplomat spoke to reporters following President Biden’s call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The warning lacked specifics and came as the Biden administration continued to approve the transfer of thousands of bombs to Israel despite calls to condition aid in the aftermath of the Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers with the World Central Kitchen charity.
Key updates
U.S. policy toward Israel will change if Israeli actions don’t, Blinken says
U.S. approved more bombs to Israel on day of World Central Kitchen strikes
U.S. defense secretary confronts Israel’s Gallant over killing of aid workers
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Here's what to know
More than 600 legal experts have signed an open letter calling on Britain to suspend weapons to Israel over its offensive in Gaza.
U.N. agencies suspended nighttime operations in Gaza for at least 48 hours after the attack, which also halted WCK food deliveries and other relief operations as aid groups warn of famine in the besieged enclave.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, promised to respond to an attack on its embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, and make Israel “repent for their crime of aggression,” he wrote in Hebrew. The strike killed two senior Revolutionary Guard members.
The Israel Defense Forces said it was suspending leave for all combat units as it wages war. “The deployment of forces is under continuous assessment according to requirements,” the Thursday announcement said.
At least 33,037 people have been killed and 75,668 injured in Gaza since the war began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants and says the majority of the dead are women and children.
Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers, and says 256 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operation in Gaza.
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KEY UPDATE
13 min ago
U.S. policy toward Israel will change if Israeli actions don’t, Blinken says
By John Hudson
National security reporter focusing on the State Department and diplomacy.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken gives a news conference on the sidelines of a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Thursday. (Johanna Geron/AFP/Getty Images)
BRUSSELS — Washington’s blanket support for Israel will change if Israel doesn’t start listening to U.S. demands about protecting civilians in Gaza and allowing aid into the Palestinian enclave, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested Thursday.
The top U.S. diplomat spoke to reporters after President Biden’s call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The warning lacked specifics and came as the Biden administration continued to approve the transfer of thousands of bombs to Israel, despite calls to condition aid in the aftermath of the Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers with the World Central Kitchen charity.
“If we don’t see the changes we need to see, there will be changes in our policy,” Blinken said.
Blinken’s remarks echoed the substance of a readout of Biden’s call with Netanyahu. According to the readout, Biden called on Israel to implement “specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers,” adding that “U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.”
30 min ago
Video: Israel should compensate family of Polish aid worker, Duda says
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By Naomi Schanen
Breaking news reporter + video producer at the London hub
Duda: Israel should compensate family of Polish aid worker
1:28
Polish President Andrzej Duda said Israel should apologize and compensate the family of a Polish World Central Kitchen aid worker killed in airstrike in Gaza. (Video: Polish President’s Office)
Polish President Andrzej Duda said Israel should pay compensation to the family of Damian Sobol, the 35-year-old Polish citizen killed in an Israeli strike Monday on World Central Kitchen workers delivering food aid to Gaza.
Duda has “no doubts” that such compensation should be “paid in an honest and fair way,” he said. “It’s what is owed.”
Sobol had worked to deliver aid after last year’s earthquake in Morocco and in Ukraine in the early days of the war there after Russia’s invasion, among other places, according to former WCK volunteer Aparna Branz.
Branz, who had worked alongside Sobol while volunteering in Poland and Ukraine, described him as “always smiling, kind, patient” and ready to help anyone at any time. “He was one of the bright lights in those horrible months,” she said.
Polish World Central Kitchen aid worker Damian Sobol in a still image taken from a social media video released March 2 and obtained by Reuters on April 2. (World Central Kitchen/Reuters)
Duda said Israel should compensate Sobol’s family “regardless of the cause of the strike.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described it as a “tragic case” in which his forces “unintentionally hit innocent people.”
Simmering tensions between Poland and Israel escalated when Duda in his speech called out Israeli Ambassador Yacov Livne for comments that the Polish president called “very unfortunate — in short, outrageous.”
On Tuesday, Livne wrote on X that the “extreme right and left in Poland accuse Israel of intentional murder” in the strikes on the World Central Kitchen workers, and denounced Polish officials for accusing Israel of committing war crimes and starving Palestinians.
“Anti-Semites will always remain anti-Semites, and Israel will remain a democratic Jewish State that fights for its right to exist,” Livne wrote, citing an incident when a far-right Polish politician extinguished the candles of a menorah in Warsaw in December.
Duda said the ambassador is “the biggest problem for Israel when it comes to relations with Poland.”
“The authorities in Israel speak about this tragedy in a very subdued and sensitive manner,” Duda said. “Unfortunately, their ambassador in Poland is unable to maintain such delicacy.”
In a post on X addressing Netanyahu and Livne, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the majority of Polish people showed “full solidarity with Israel” after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. However, “today you are putting this solidarity to a really hard test,” he wrote. “The tragic attack on volunteers and your reaction arouse understandable anger.”
1 hour ago
What to know about U.S. military aid to Israel
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By Adam Taylor
Foreign reporter who writes about a variety of subjects
Israel has received more U.S. military aid — and more U.S. aid of any type — than any other country since World War II.
That assistance has long been a matter of ironclad, bipartisan near-consensus. But in recent months, it has come under mounting scrutiny, including from some Democratic legislators, amid the emergence of rifts between the United States and Israel over Israel’s conduct in its war in Gaza — in which U.S.-provided weapons are in widespread use.
Israel has been waging war in Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas, the Palestinian group that has long controlled the territory, led a cross-border attack that left 1,200 people dead. The Israeli assault on Gaza has left the Strip in ruins, and has left at least 32,000 Gazans dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants.
The United States has supplied Israel with weapons since the war began. While President Biden has pushed for Israel to allow more aid into the enclave to avert famine and has resisted Israeli plans to invade the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where displaced Palestinians are densely packed, military aid has remained untouched.
Here is what to know about U.S. military aid to Israel.
This is an excerpt from a full story.
KEY UPDATE
1 hour ago
U.S. approved more bombs to Israel on day of World Central Kitchen strikes
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By John Hudson
National security reporter focusing on the State Department and diplomacy.
A man inspects the wreckage of a World Central Kitchen vehicle Tuesday after Israel's deadly airstrike on the convoy in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza. (Ahmed Zakot/Reuters)
The Biden administration approved the transfer of thousands more bombs to Israel on the same day Israeli airstrikes in Gaza killed seven aid workers for the charity group World Central Kitchen, three U.S. officials told The Washington Post this week after the incident elicited global condemnation.
The transaction demonstrates the administration’s determination to continue its flow of lethal weaponry to Israel despite Monday’s high-profile killings and growing calls for the United States to condition such support on greater protection for civilians in the war zone. A U.S. citizen was among the dead.
The move also casts new light on the emotional statement by President Biden that he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the tragedy and was insistent that such events should never happen again.
“They were providing food to hungry civilians in the middle of a war,” Biden said. “They were brave and selfless.”
This is an excerpt from a full story.
1 hour ago
Calls grow for British government to suspend arms to Israel
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By Ellen Francis
Breaking-news reporter
LONDON — More than 600 legal experts are calling on Britain to suspend weapons to Israel over its offensive in Gaza, adding to pressure on the British government after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers, including three British nationals.
The appeal signed by U.K.-based lawyers, legal academics and former judges — including three former Supreme Court justices — urged action to avert “complicity in grave breaches of international law.”
The 17-page open letter to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called for Britain to help secure a permanent cease-fire, citing aid groups warning of famine in the besieged enclave and a preliminary finding by the top U.N. court “that there was a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza,” the letter said.
Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf also sent Sunak a letter, calling for “an immediate end to arms sales” to Israel, his office said Wednesday. He pointed to outrage over the Israeli attack on a World Central Kitchen convoy, the killing of British citizens in that strike, and the scores of Palestinian humanitarian workers who have been killed in Gaza in greater numbers than in any other recent conflict.
The attack this week on nonprofit WCK has fueled uproar in Britain, where the scale of arms exports to Israel falls well below that of the United States. Questions about weapons sales to Israel became the focus of British front pages and radio shows in recent days. “Enough” read Thursday’s front page of the Independent, which said it was time “to do whatever it takes” to stop the war.
Facing questions including from lawmakers, Sunak told the Sun this week that Britain has a “very careful export licensing regime that we adhere to.” The prime minister has called for allowing more aid into Gaza and for an investigation into the killing of the WCK workers, which he said left him “appalled,” while stopping short of punitive action.
Israel, which has rejected accusations of genocide, described the strike on WCK aid workers delivering food as “unintentional” and a “grave mistake.”
Yet the Monday attack came as Israel faces pressure — including from the United States, its largest military backer — over the mounting Palestinian civilian death toll and plans to invade Rafah, where much of Gaza’s population has been forced to flee. Some debate over weapon transfers has also unfolded in Washington.
President Biden and senior U.S. officials issued rebukes over the strike on aid workers, though there has been no indication of significant change in the administration’s Gaza policy or its unwavering support of Israel, including arms sales.
ISRAEL-GAZA WAR
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10:30 a.m. EDT
Gaza is going hungry. Its children could face a lifetime of harm.
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By Ruby Mellen, Artur Galocha, Lauren Weber, David Ovalle and Hajar Harb
Ahmed Qannan, a boy suffering from malnutrition, receives treatment at a health-care center in Rafah on March 4. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)
Gaza’s children are going hungry. More than 25 have reportedly died of complications linked to malnutrition, according to the World Health Organization. Hundreds of thousands more face starvation as Israel continues its siege.
Doctors and nutrition experts say the children who survive the lack of nourishment — and the ongoing bombing, infectious diseases and psychological trauma — are further condemned to face a lifetime of health woes. Malnutrition will rob them of the ability to fully develop their brains and bodies. Many will be shorter and physically weaker as a result.
“At the simplest level, if you have impaired nutrition and growth, your brain stops growing,” said Zulfiqar Bhutta, a physician and the chair of global child health at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
In the short term, even less sustenance will be available for the children of Gaza: This week, an Israeli airstrike that killed seven aid workers led several assistance organizations to announce they would suspend operations.
This is an excerpt from a full story.
KEY UPDATE
7:33 a.m. EDT
U.S. defense secretary confronts Israel’s Gallant over killing of aid workers
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By Frances Vinall and Lior Soroka
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, left, meets with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, across the table on the right, in Washington on March 26. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “expressed his outrage” to his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant over the Israeli strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza, including an American, according to a Department of Defense readout.
“Secretary Austin stressed the need to immediately take concrete steps to protect aid workers and Palestinian civilians in Gaza after repeated coordination failures with foreign aid groups,” the statement on Wednesday’s call said, adding that Austin had called for a transparent investigation.
A statement on Thursday from Gallant’s office said he had briefed Austin on the WCK strike, expressed “sorrow and condolences to all those affected,” and “emphasized that a thorough and transparent investigation is being conducted and that its conclusions will be shared with partners.”
President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are also expected to speak Thursday, an Israeli official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the event has not been made public.
The Monday attack on WCK came as Israeli restrictions on aid to Gaza, and Netanyahu’s pledges to launch an invasion of Rafah, have fueled mounting frustrations and increasingly sharp rhetoric from officials in Washington, Israel’s largest military backer. Biden and senior U.S. officials issued rebukes over the strike, though there has been no indication of significant change in the administration’s Gaza policy or unwavering support of Israel.
The Israeli military has described the strike as a “grave mistake” and the result of a “misidentification.” WCK founder José Andrés said in a Reuters interview that Israel targeted his aid workers who were hit “systematically, car by car,” and the nonprofit has called for an independent, third-party investigation.
Claire Parker contributed to this report.
7:00 a.m. EDT
American killed in Israeli strike in Gaza was father, military veteran
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By Joanna Slater
National correspondent
Jacob Flickinger, an aid worker with World Central Kitchen, pictured with his partner, Sandy Leclerc, and their son. (Courtesy John Flickinger)
When Jacob Flickinger went to the Gaza Strip three weeks ago to distribute food with World Central Kitchen, he asked his father to tell his mother he was in Cyprus instead. He didn’t want her to worry.
He planned to leave at the end of this week, he told his father, John, on Sunday via text. The two wished each other a happy Easter.
The next day, the 33-year-old dual U.S.-Canadian citizen was dead, one of seven World Central Kitchen workers killed by Israeli airstrikes on the aid group’s convoy.
“He was a good man,” his father said. “He was doing what he loved and just wanted to serve and help others.”
Jacob Flickinger was born and spent most of his childhood in Saint-Georges, a small city in Quebec, the son of a Canadian mother and an American father.
Flickinger spent nearly a decade in the Canadian Armed Forces and did a tour of duty in Afghanistan, where he served in Kandahar, his father said.
After leaving the military in 2019, he met his partner, Sandy Leclerc, and they had a baby boy. The couple moved to Costa Rica, where Flickinger began building a business as a fitness trainer.
To support his family, he started looking for other opportunities. His first stint with World Central Kitchen was last November, when he spent a month in Mexico in the aftermath of a major hurricane.
When a friend told him about the WCK mobilization in Gaza, he volunteered to help distribute food shipments arriving by sea. The work combined the skills he learned in the military and his desire to help, his father said.
“Women and children are starving to death, it’s all over the news every day,” said John Flickinger, 67. “He felt he could make a small difference.”
This is an excerpt from a full story.
5:22 a.m. EDT
Analysis: Biden’s ‘red line’ on Gaza is nowhere to be found
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By Adam Taylor
Foreign reporter who writes about a variety of subjects
People stand near a destroyed car of the World Central Kitchen along Al-Rashid Road in south Gaza on Tuesday. (Mohammed Saber/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
This week’s killing of aid workers in Gaza left no gray area. The workers were driving through a deconfliction zone in marked vehicles when they were repeatedly targeted, leaving one Palestinian and six foreign aid workers dead. That the seven dead were working with World Central Kitchen, headed by the widely admired chef José Andrés, made it almost impossible to ignore.
Some view the tragedy as a potential turning point in the Israel-Gaza war, which has dragged on for almost half a year. Notably, the strike on the WCK convoy led to the death of a U.S. citizen: 33-year-old Jacob Flickinger. “The killing of foreign aid workers in Gaza might finally exhaust the considerable patience of Israel’s allies, led by the United States,” Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s veteran international editor, wrote Wednesday.
But have the attacks crossed President Biden’s “red line”? Though Biden and U.S. officials have repeatedly criticized the leadership of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over recent months, they have so far refrained from exerting their real leverage: blocking military aid and the sale of weapons to Israel.
This is an excerpt from a full story.
KEY UPDATE
3:38 a.m. EDT
World Central Kitchen calls for third-party investigation into strike
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By Frances Vinall
José Andrés: Aid workers 'targeted deliberately' by Israel
0:59
Chef José Andrés on April 3 said that the World Central Kitchen aid group had clear communication with the Israeli military before the strike. (Video: Reuters)
World Central Kitchen on Thursday called on the home countries of its employees who were killed in Israeli airstrikes this week to join it in “demanding an independent, third-party investigation into these attacks, including whether they were carried out intentionally or otherwise violated international law.” The victims were British, Australian, Polish, Palestinian and a dual U.S.-Canadian national.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel “deeply regrets” the strike on the World Central Kitchen workers, while the IDF said the strike was a “grave mistake” and the result of a “misidentification.” The strikes hit three World Central Kitchen vehicles as they traveled in Gaza on a route that had been coordinated and cleared with the Israeli military, WCK said.
An identification card for World Central Kitchen worker Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, who was killed in an Israeli strike this week. (Mohammed Salem/Reuters)
Humanitarian organizations have repeatedly warned that Gaza is facing a potential man-made famine, especially in the north, where at least 27 children have died for lack of food and water, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and the United Nations.
U.N. relief agencies have paused night operations for 48 hours to make a security assessment since the strike, a spokesperson said Wednesday. WCK and at least two other groups have also said they would pause operations in Gaza because of safety concerns for their staff. About 200 aid workers have been killed during the war, most of them Palestinian, according to the United Nations.
President Biden said Tuesday he was “outraged and heartbroken” by the deaths and urged Israel to better protect aid workers and civilians.
KEY UPDATE
2:12 a.m. EDT
Biden rebukes Israel over aid workers, but his Gaza policy is unchanged
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By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Matt Viser
As outrage built Tuesday over an Israeli strike that killed seven workers from the José Andrés-run World Central Kitchen, President Biden issued a rare direct rebuke of Israel for creating the conditions that have made the distribution of aid inside Gaza so difficult and deadly.
“This is not a stand-alone incident. This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed,” Biden said. “This is a major reason why distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza has been so difficult — because Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians.”
Yet there is no indication that the Monday deaths of the workers — who included one American — will result in any significant changes to the Biden administration’s unwavering support of Israel. The president’s sharp condemnation stands as the latest example in what experts, outside advisers and even some Biden officials say is an increasingly contradictory approach to Israel’s six-month assault in Gaza.
This is an excerpt from a full story.
2:12 a.m. EDT
In Israel’s war against Hamas rule, Gazans go hungry, aid groups retreat
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By Miriam Berger, Hajar Harb and Hazem Balousha
Smoke rises during an Israeli strike in the vicinity of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on March 28. (-/AFP/Getty Images)
JERUSALEM — There is no drought in northern Gaza. No natural disaster or crop failure. Yet in less than six months of war it has been pushed to the cusp of famine, a process that usually unfolds over years.
“Never before have we seen such rapid deterioration into widespread starvation,” Sally Abi Khalil, Oxfam’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said last month.
The enclave’s headlong descent into hunger has happened in tandem with Israel’s destruction of Hamas’s de facto state. Israel’s inability to institute an alternative system of civilian rule — as well as its attacks on local grass-roots initiatives — has resulted in the breakdown of Gaza’s typically tightknit society, making it virtually impossible for aid groups to safely carry out their work.
International aid efforts were dealt a further blow this week when an Israeli airstrike killed seven workers from World Central Kitchen. Israel said the attack was “a mistake” and vowed a swift investigation. WCK and at least two other humanitarian groups have now suspended their operations in Gaza.
This is an excerpt from a full story.
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Israel-Gaza war
President Biden issued a rare direct rebuke of Israel for creating the conditions that have made the distribution of aid inside Gaza so difficult and deadly, following the strike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “deeply regrets” the incident.
Israel-Gaza war: On Oct. 7, Hamas militants launched an unprecedented cross-border attack on Israel that included the taking of civilian hostages at a music festival. (See photos and videos of how the deadly assault unfolded). Israel declared war on Hamas in response, launching a ground invasion that fueled the biggest displacement in the region since Israel’s creation in 1948.
Gaza crisis: In Gaza, Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars, killing tens of thousands and plunging at least half of the population into “famine-like conditions.” For months, Israel has resisted pressure from Western allies to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave.
U.S. involvement: Despite the tensions between some U.S. politicians, including President Biden, and Netanyahu, the United States supports Israel with weapons, funds aid packages, and has vetoed or abstained from U.N. cease-fire resolutions.
History: The roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mistrust are deep and complex, predating the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Read more on the history of the Gaza Strip.
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