Friday briefing: Israel continues to search Al-Shifa
Israeli forces search Al-Shifa for a second day
Israeli soldiers were still yesterday combing the Al-Shifa hospital, which the Israeli army says hides a secret Hamas base. Gaza’s Health Ministry said thousands of people remained in Al-Shifa hospital with little food and water.
A communications blackout swept through Gaza, making it extremely difficult to reach anyone in Al-Shifa or other hospitals. Fighting continued around the complex and the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed armed group in Gaza, said on Telegram it was fighting Israeli forces near the hospital.
Israel released videos showing about a dozen weapons, a grenade, protective vests and military uniforms that it said soldiers found in an MRI unit; a white pickup truck on the hospital grounds and, on the ground next to it, the arsenal the narrator said was its contents, including guns, ammunition, and grenades; and what it described as a tunnel entrance. The images could not be independently verified.
An Israeli army spokesman, Major Nir Dinar, said Israel needs more time to find and present evidence.
“It takes time because Hamas knew we were coming, and they tried to hide evidence of their war crimes,” Major Dinar said. “They ruined the place, they brought in sand to cover some of the floors and they created double walls.”
Here’s the latest.
Press Israel: Israel’s ability to prove its claim could be crucial to whether its foreign allies continue to support its military response. White House officials have said that based on intelligence gathered independently from Israeli sources, they believe Hamas has used the hospital as a base.
Diplomacy: The US has not blocked a UN resolution calling for humanitarian pauses. It is the first time that Washington has refrained from blocking a resolution that does not condemn the Hamas attack. President Biden said he and his aides had negotiated next steps with Arab countries, and that the endpoint of the conflict should be a “real” Palestinian state.
Xi wants to provide and assert certainty in talks with Biden
President Biden and President Xi Jinping of China spoke for four hours on Wednesday and reached key agreements on curbing fentanyl production and resuming military-to-military communications, Biden said. But little progress was made on issues like semiconductors, AI or engaging China’s peacekeeping efforts in the Gaza war.
As shown in official Chinese summaries, Xi’s message to world leaders at the APEC summit in San Francisco was that he is willing to engage with the US, in part to lure back foreign investment. But he also wanted to show the Chinese people that he was vigorously defending Beijing’s interests and upgrading its image as a global power on par with the US.
Here is an overview of what the conversations yielded (and not).
Pandas, Ping-Pong and winning: Xi emphasized friendship in a speech to American business leaders on Wednesday. Among those who paid thousands of dollars to attend the event were Apple CEO Tim Cook and Jerry Brown, the former governor of California. They mingled with executives from Boeing, Pfizer, Nike and FedEx. Elon Musk stopped by during cocktail hour to greet Xi.
Paramilitary forces are accused of atrocities in Darfur
Seven months after Sudan’s disastrous civil war, a powerful paramilitary group has won a series of sweeping victories over the country’s military in the Darfur region in recent weeks.
The paramilitary group, called the Rapid Support Forces, and its allies have captured three of Darfur’s five capitals and are poised to take over the entire Darfur region, residents, analysts and U.N. officials said. Aid workers and witnesses reported sexual violence, torture and killings of members of the Masalit, an ethnic African group with a long history of conflict with ethnic Arabs.
“People are dying like insects,” said one aid worker.
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