KUWAIT/GAZA: Kuwait on Tuesday voiced condemnation and denunciation of recent remarks by a Zionist occupation minister calling for establishing a synagogue at Al-Aqsa Mosque in a bid to wipe out the religious identity and legal status of the holy site. Zionist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir had told Army Radio that if it were possible, he would build a synagogue at the Al-Aqsa compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
In a press statement, the Kuwaiti foreign ministry termed this aggressive behavior as provoking sentiments of all Muslims, while calling on the international community to take up its responsibility to put an end to the Zionist occupation’s obvious violations and breaches of international law and safeguard the religious and historical identity of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians displaced by fighting crowded onto the seashore as Zionist forces continued to battle Hamas fighters in central and southern areas, freeing one captive in an operation in the south of the enclave on Tuesday. Gaza’s health officials reported that at least 22 Palestinians had been killed by Zionist military strikes across the territory.
As ceasefire talks were continuing in Cairo with little sign of a concrete breakthrough over key issues separating the sides, the Zionist entity said it had rescued Qaid Farhan Alkadi, a Bedouin citizen of the Zionist entity, after a "complex operation” in southern Gaza. It said his medical condition was normal.
In recent days, the Zionist entity has issued several evacuation orders across Gaza, the most since the beginning of the 10-month war, prompting an outcry from Palestinians, the United Nations, and relief officials over the reduction of humanitarian zones and the absence of safe areas. Residents and displaced families in the southern city of Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah, in central Gaza, where most of the population is now concentrated, said they have been pushed to live in tents now packed on the beach.
"Maybe they should bring ships, so next time they order people to leave we can jump there, people are now on the beach near the seawater,” said Aya, 30, a displaced woman from Gaza City, who now lives with her family in western Deir Al-Balah. "Every day they say talks are progressing, an agreement is close, then all falls like dust. Do negotiators know that every day more families get wiped out by (Zionist) bombardment? Does the world understand that every day more costs us more lives?” she told Reuters via a chat app.
Palestinian health officials said Zionist strikes killed nine Palestinians in Bureij and Maghazi, two of Gaza’s eight historic refugee camps, while another strike killed five people in Khan Younis and a third killed three others in Rafah. At the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, relatives of those killed in Maghazi camp arrived to say farewell to their loved ones before burials.
"Suddenly we heard them saying that they (Zionists) struck the building, they struck the building, we started calling them on their mobile phone but no one was answering, then we called the neighbors and they told us that the building has been struck, the missile fell inside our son’s house,” said Palestinian woman Umm Mohamed Thabet. She said her daughter and her daughter-in-law had been killed, along with her 12- and five-year-old grandsons and a granddaughter, whose twin survived. "Those who are inside the house, look who they are, women and children, these are their targets.”
Later on Tuesday, a Zionist air strike killed five Palestinians, including three children, in Khan Younis, medics said. More than 40,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Gaza’s health ministry, mostly women and children. The crowded enclave has been laid to waste and most of its 2.3 million people have been displaced multiple times and face acute shortages of food and medicine, humanitarian agencies say.
Meanwhile, Zionist settlers shot dead one Palestinian and wounded three others in the occupied West Bank’s Bethlehem, while five others were killed in a Zionist strike on the Nur Shams refugee camp near the city of Tulkarem, the Palestinian health ministry said. Palestinians regularly accuse Zionist security forces of standing by and allowing groups of violent settlers to attack their houses and villages and the incidents have attracted increasing concern internationally.
On Monday, United Nations aid operations in Gaza ground to a halt after the Zionist entity issued new evacuation orders on Sunday for Deir Al-Balah, where the UN operations center was located, a senior UN official said. The evacuation order came as the UN has been preparing a campaign to vaccinate an estimated 640,000 children in Gaza against polio, after at least one case of the disease was identified.
As the fighting continued, negotiators in Cairo continued meetings aimed at halting the fighting and bringing 109 Zionist and foreign captives home in an exchange deal for Palestinian prisoners. Although there has been optimism from the United States, which is supporting the talks along with Egypt and Qatar, Hamas and the Zionist entity have been trading blame for a lack of progress.
Among the main sticking points has been the Zionist entity’s insistence on maintaining control over the so-called Philadelphi corridor on the border with Egypt, which the Zionist entity says has been used as one of the main routes for smuggling weapons into Gaza. The Zionist entity has also insisted on checks on people moving from southern and central Gaza into northern areas across the Netzarim corridor, running across the center of the Gaza Strip, saying it needs to ensure armed fighters cannot move north. - Agencies