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Netanyahu vows to bring all Gaza hostages home

Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to bring home all the hostages still held by militants in war-stricken Gaza, where the civil defence agency said 73 people were killed Thursday in his country’s ongoing offensive.Netanyahu has come under strong pressure to get the hostages back after US President Donald Trump said Israel had agreed to a 60-day ceasefire with Palestinian militant group Hamas that could lead to their release.”I feel a deep commitment, first and foremost, to ensure the return of all our abductees, all of them,” Netanyahu told inhabitants of the Nir Oz kibbutz, the community that saw the most hostages seized in the 2023 Hamas attacks that sparked the war.”We will bring them all back,” he added, in filmed comments released by his office.Netanyahu is due to meet Trump in Washington DC next week, with the US president expected to push for a ceasefire.   “I want the people of Gaza to be safe more importantly,” Trump told reporters Thursday when asked if he still wanted the US to take over the Palestinian territory, as he announced in February. “They’ve gone through hell.”Israel’s leaders have held firm to their aim of crushing Hamas, even as the group said Tuesday it was discussing new proposals for a ceasefire from mediators.- Israeli offensive expands -Israel has recently expanded its military operations in the Gaza Strip, where its war on Hamas militants has created dire humanitarian conditions and displaced nearly all of the territory’s population of more than two million.Many have sought shelter in school buildings, but these have repeatedly come under Israeli attacks that the military often says target Hamas militants hiding among civilians.Gaza civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said those killed Thursday included 15 in a strike on a school sheltering Palestinians displaced by the war.In an updated toll on Thursday evening, he told AFP that 73 people were killed across the territory by Israeli strikes, artillery or gunfire.They included 38 people he said were waiting for humanitarian aid at three separate locations in central and southern Gaza, and a child killed by a drone in Jabalia in the north.Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties in accessing many areas mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency.- Israel says targeted ‘terrorist’ -Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said regarding the Gaza city school incident that it “struck a key Hamas terrorist who was operating in a Hamas command and control centre in Gaza City”.”Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence,” it added.Regarding numerous other strikes across the territory on Thursday, it said it could not comment in detail without precise coordinates and times.”In response to Hamas’ barbaric attacks, the IDF is operating to dismantle Hamas military capabilities,” it told AFP.It said it “follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm”.Bassal said later in a message that the army was refusing to let the civil defence into three neighbourhoods of the city where he said people were trapped under rubble, some of them still alive.The Israeli military did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment on the claim.- Strike hits school: civil defence -At the Gaza City school compound hit on Thursday, AFP footage showed young children wandering through the charred, bombed out building, as piles of burnt debris smouldered.Groups of Palestinians picked through the rubble and damaged furniture that littered the floor.Umm Yassin Abu Awda, among mourners who gathered at the city’s Al-Shifa hospital after the strike, said: “This isn’t a life. We’ve suffered enough.””Either you (Israel) strike us with a nuclear bomb and end it all, or people’s conscience needs to finally wake up.”Bassal of the civil defence agency reported 25 people killed while seeking aid near the Netzarim area in central Gaza, six others at another location nearby and seven in Rafah, southern Gaza, with scores of people injured.They were the latest in a string of deadly incidents that have hit people trying to receive scarce supplies.The US- and Israeli-backed aid distribution group Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has distanced itself from reports of people being killed while seeking food from its sites.Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that prompted the Israeli offensive resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 57,130 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations considers its figures reliable.

UN expert says firms ‘profiting’ from ‘genocide’ of Palestinians

UN rights expert Francesca Albanese on Thursday denounced companies she said “profited from the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid, and now genocide”, in a report that provoked a furious response from Israel.Some of the companies named in her report also raised objections.Albanese presented her report, investigating “the corporate machinery sustaining the Israeli settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians”, to the UN Human Rights Council.Companies should stop all business activities and relationships that caused or contributed to rights violations and international crimes, she argued.In response, Israel’s mission in Geneva said Albanese’s report was motivated by her “obsessive, hate-driven agenda to delegitimise the state of Israel”.It was “legally groundless, defamatory and a flagrant abuse of office”, it added.Swiss mining and commodity trading giant Glencore, named in the report, also denounced her allegations as “unfounded”.- Machinery of erasure’ -Albanese is the UN’s special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.She described the situation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as “apocalyptic” as she presented the report.”In Gaza, Palestinians continue to endure suffering beyond imagination,” she added.Businesses from arms makers to supermarkets and universities had facilitated “this machinery of erasure”, Albanese told the UN’s top rights body.Some had supplied the financial and general infrastructure for Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territories, she said.”All have helped entrench apartheid and enable the slow, inexorable destruction of Palestinian life.”Her presentation Thursday was received with applause in the chamber.But Albanese has faced harsh criticism, allegations of anti-Semitism and demands for her removal, from Israel and some of its allies, over her relentless criticism and long-standing accusations of “genocide”.While appointed by the Human Rights Council she does not speak on behalf of the United Nations itself.- ‘Profited from the violence’ -Albanese told journalists she had contacted all 48 companies named in her report, entitled “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide”.Eighteen had responded and “only a small number engaged with me in good faith”, most of them saying “there was absolutely nothing wrong”.”There have been people and organisations who have profited from the violence, the killing,” she said.”My report exposes a system, something that is so structural and so widespread and so systemic that there is no possibility to fix it and redress it: it needs to be dismantled.”Albanese said the first responsibility to take action was on countries, then on companies, then their consumers.However, “we are part of a system where we are all entangled and choices that we make… have an impact elsewhere”, she said.”There is a possibility for consumers to hold these companies accountable, because somewhat we vote through our wallets.”- ‘Unsubstantiated’ -AFP sought a comment from several companies named in the report. Some did not respond. Travel platform Booking.com said: “Our mission is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world and as such we believe it’s not our place to decide where someone can or cannot travel.” A communications firm representing Microsoft said the tech giant “doesn’t have anything to share”.Danish shipping giant Maersk said it disagreed with many of Albanese’s assertions.Maersk “remains committed to following international standards for responsible business conduct”, it said.Since the war between Israel and Hamas began, “we have maintained a strict policy of not shipping weapons or ammunition to Israel”, it added.A Volvo Group spokesman told AFP: “We obviously respect human rights in accordance with the United Nations framework.”We have no operations of our own, either in Palestine or in Israel, but rather sell through resellers,” he added.Glencore, in its response, said: “We categorically reject all the allegations appearing in this report and consider them unsubstantiated and devoid of any legal basis.”Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that prompted the Israeli offensive resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 57,130 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The United Nations considers its figures reliable.Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and violence has surged in the territory since October 2023.rjm-burs/vog/jj