Israel’s Netanyahu in US to address Congress ahead of ceasefire talks
Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington to address Congress on Wednesday. He has signaled that a ceasefire deal could be taking shape after nine months of war.
Palestinians displaced by the Israeli military’s latest order to leave parts of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis say they are sleeping in the streets. The Health Ministry in Gaza says over 39,100 Palestinians have been killed in the war.
On Thursday, officials from Egypt, Israel, the United States and Qatar will meet in Doha with the aim of resuming talks for a proposed three-phase cease-fire to end the war between Israel and Hamas and free the remaining hostages.
West Bank — Hundreds of mourners have attended the funeral of two people killed during an Israeli raid in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem that killed six people, at least three of them known militants. The bodies of Iman Juma’a, a 50-year-old woman, and Yazan Abdo, a 30-year-old man, were carried through the streets.
On Wednesday, the Israeli military released footage of a person dressed as a woman wearing a paramedic vest and holding a gun, but did not show the person’s face.
The video could not be independently verified by the AP, and the military did not provide any further evidence.
At the funeral, the body of Juma’a was covered with a paramedic jacket. Tulkarem and its two refugee camps have become a flashpoint in the West Bank and are regularly raided by Israeli forces. Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are active in the city.
Israel’s far-right national security minister says Jews are allowed to pray at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, threatening to stoke tensions that are already soaring over the war in Gaza.
Itamar Ben-Gvir has said before it’s his policy that Jews should be able to pray at the hilltop compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
But his statement on Wednesday comes at a politically sensitive time, hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress in Washington. Netanyahu’s office quickly released a statement saying nothing had
changed in the decades-old arrangement that prohibits Jewish prayer at the site.
“I am the political echelon and the political echelon permits Jewish prayer there,” Ben Gvir said during a conference focused on Jewish access to the compound.
