Laura Rozen:
"American diplomats, on their first visit
to the Syrian capital in 12 years, met with
a Syrian rebel leader -- [Ahmed al-Sharaa,
leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)] -- in
Damascus today...and said they were lifting
a $10 million US bounty on him"...
Laura Rozen [cont'd]:
"Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of a Turkish-backed
rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has become Syria’s de facto interim govt after ousting Assad.
'Based on our discussion, I told him we would not be pursuing the Rewards for Justice reward offer that's
Laura Rozen [more]:
"...'that's been in effect for some years',
Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf
told journalists from Amman, Jordan...
'We also discussed the critical need to ensure
terrorist groups cannot pose a threat inside Syria
or externally, incl to the US..
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"Veteran settler activist Daniella Weiss
[a heavy presence in Hebron] revealed
during a [TV] interview that she took a field tour
of an area in north Gaza where she + her fellow expansionists plan to establish Jewish settlements with ISR sovereignty"
[ISR forces have denied delivery of essential humanitarian aid there -- incl food, water, medicine
+ fuel -- for more than a month.
For that matter, no journalists have been allowed
to enter, either -- unless approved by the IDF.
But Messianic Israeli settlers can go in+out]
"Weiss, appearing on Channel 13's evening news program on Saturday night, [said]:
'Yesterday we were on a tour at a temporary site
near the Gaza border, where we set up 40 trailers
that we will eventually move into Gaza'...".
OCHA Flash Update #110, just in:
Between the afternoons of 2 + 4 February,
acc to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza,
234 Palestinians were killed
(107 on 3 Feb + 127 on 4 Feb)
+
343 Palestinians were injured
(165 on 3 Feb + 178 on 4 Feb)... ochaopt.org/content/hostil…
OCHA:
"Between 7 Oct 2023 and 13:30 on 4 Feb 2024:
at least 27,365 Palestinians were killed in Gaza
and 66,630 Palestinians were injured,
according to the MoH"...
OCHA:
"As of 4 February:
223 [ISR] soldiers were killed
+
1,296 soldiers were injured in Gaza
since the beginning of the ground operation,
according to the Israeli military".
Ramallah, October 20, 2023
Israeli forces operating a U.S.-sourced Apache
attack helicopter fired a missile toward a group of Palestinian civilians, mostly children, around 1:30 p.m. on Oct 19 in Nour Shams Refugee Camp near Tulkarem..killing ten Palestinians, incl four children
"The four Palestinian children killed in the attack
are Yousef Mohammad Omar Zaghdad, 11, Mujahed Mohammad Yousef Sa’aydeh, 15, Udai Ma’moun Khaled Abu Al-Heija, 15, and Sari Udai Ali Al-Sada, 15...
+
"A fifth child, 14-year-old Ali Abdullah Mohammad Said Khazna, was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the Thenaba neighborhood of Tulkarem around 5 p.m...
+
Gideon Levy asks | Do Israelis really want to go on living like this?
"Living by the sword, war after war, one more unnecessary than the one before, all of them
wars of choice, Israel’s choice, with no future
+ no purpose? ... haaretz.com/opinion/2023-0…
Gideon Levy: "This is the 17th operation in Gaza
in 19 years. A war almost every year. Sometimes,
like in 2004, even two wars...
Gideon Levy: "This was perhaps the most pointless + banal of them all. An aimless war, in which few took interest. While it was going on, Tel Aviv enjoyed an
Aviv Geffen concert..+ later they watched Eurovision. The war broke out b/c a detainee was intentionally allowed to die".
Is this what Israeli media has meant, when saying "foreign workers" hit?
"PALEST worker from Gaza killed by rocket
at ISR construction site [Saturday]..
Since the fighting broke out, 6 workers have been wounded or killed in Gaza [envelope] communities".. haaretz.com/israel-news/20…
Haaretz: "At no point during the current fighting have there been any communities restricted to only 'essential activity' – meaning a total ban on any workplaces continuing to operate..
BUT Nearly all the dead + injured had no access
to a bomb shelter as mandated by Israeli law"
"On Thursday, a foreign-born worker was wounded
by a rocket at a farm in one of the border communities. Last week, two Chinese construction workers were wounded by rocket fire, one of them seriously"...
It’s déjà vu all over again, Alon Pinkas writes:
"The fact that we’ve been here before + know
the plot + ending does not change the tragic + unnerving fact that, politically, this is another exercise in futility, a preamble to the next round"... haaretz.com/israel-news/20…
Alon Pinkas: "There are two discernible trends
in all these recurrent confrontations in Gaza
over the years. The first is that it clearly highlights Israel’s lack of strategy and creative policy.
Israel is always reactive, living from one event
to the next"...
AlonPinkas: "Why? That’s easy. It provides the
ultimate pretext for never having to engage in
a diplomatic process, previously known as
'the peace process'.”