[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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Three U.S. service members were killed and at least 34 wounded in a drone attack by Iran-backed militants on U.S. troops in northeastern Jordan near the Syrian border, President Joe Biden and U.S. officials said on Sunday.

It is the first deadly strike against U.S. forces since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October, and marks a major escalation in tensions that have engulfed the Middle East.

"While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq," Biden said in a statement.

"Have no doubt - we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing," he said.
Iran's mission to the United Nations said in a statement on Monday that Tehran was not involved in the attack.

"Iran had no connection and had nothing to do with the attack on the U.S. base," the mission said in a statement published by the state news agency IRNA.

It added: "There is a conflict between U.S. forces and resistance groups in the region, which reciprocate retaliatory attacks."
Biden asked for a moment of silence for the three killed service members during a campaign event in South Carolina, adding: "We shall respond."

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin echoed that threat. He and other senior officials briefed Biden earlier in the day on the attack.

At least 34 personnel were injured in the attack, but that number is expected to change as more people seek care, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command. Eight personnel were evacuated from Jordan for higher level care, but are in stable condition.

Two U.S. officials said the drone struck near the barracks early in the morning, which could explain the high number of casualties.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella organization of hardline Iran-backed militant groups, claimed attacks on three bases, including one on the Jordan-Syria border.

The attack is likely to fan fears of wider conflict in the Middle East, where war broke out in Gaza after Palestinian Islamist group Hamas' attack on Israel on Oct. 7 which killed 1,200. Israel's subsequent assault on Gaza has killed over 26,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry.

Since then, U.S. forces have come under attack more than 150 times by Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria, causing at least 70 casualties prior to Sunday's attack, most of them traumatic brain injuries.

U.S. warships have also been fired at by Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen, who are regularly attacking commercial ships passing through Red Sea waters off Yemen's coast.

Why suspend funding to UNRWA???

UNRWA has already done the responsible thing by firing the relevant aid workers and launching an investigation. What more is UNRWA supposed to do?

(If anything, if seems to me that UNRWA has gone a bit too far by outright firing those employees, rather than just suspending them, pending the investigation.)

Suspending funding to UNRWA, at this time, just makes the U.S.A. even more complicit in Israel's mass murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

See also U.S., U.K. among 9 countries pausing funding to UNRWA amid allegations 12 employees were part of Oct. 7 attack: "The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said it terminated the contracts of the people alleged to have participated in the incursion," by Dennis Romero and Beatrice Guzzardi, NBC News, Jan. 27, 2024, updated Jan. 28, 2024.

In front of an impassioned audience of thousands of right-wing activists, 11 government ministers and 15 coalition lawmakers pledged Sunday night to rebuild Jewish Israeli settlements in the heart of the Gaza Strip, with some also encouraging the emigration of the Palestinian population after the war with Hamas is over.

Speaking amid a carnival-like atmosphere at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the ultranationalist Religious Zionism party, extolled the virtues of creating new settlements, declaring: “God willing, we will settle and we will be victorious.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the extreme-right Otzma Yehudit party, told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was not present, and the audience that it was “time to return home to Gush Katif” — the name of the Israeli settlement bloc in Gaza that was evacuated in the 2005 Disengagement.

Smotrich and Ben Gvir, together with six coalition MKs, signed what was dubbed the “Covenant of Victory and Renewal of Settlement,” which pledged that the signatories would “grow Jewish settlements full of life” in the Gaza Strip.

Alongside them, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi of Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party also called for building settlements in Gaza and “encouraging voluntary emigration.”

But Karhi went further than his fellow ministers, saying that the war imposed on Israel by the Hamas terror group meant that Gazan civilians could now be coerced into saying they want to leave the territory.

Similarly, one banner in the crowd said, “Only a transfer [of Palestinians from Gaza] will bring peace.”

Footage from the conference drew backlash on social media, with critics noting that government and coalition ministers were gleefully dancing while a war is raging, tens of thousands of Israelis are displaced, soldiers are being killed on a near-daily basis, and 136 hostages are still being held by terrorists in Gaza.

Netanyahu himself didn’t attend the conference, and indicated Saturday night that he opposes resettling Gaza and that this wasn’t an accepted government policy.

Asked about the issue at a televised press conference, the premier said lawmakers and ministers were allowed to speak their minds, but Israel’s policy on postwar Gaza was set by the full security cabinet, the body authorized to make such decisions, and that no decision to resettle Gaza had been made. His opposition to revived Jewish settlement in Gaza “has not changed,” he said.

’Correcting the mistake’
Sunday night’s conference was organized by the Nachala settlement activist group and the West Bank’s Samaria Regional Council and its head Yossi Dagan.

The event’s express purpose was to serve as a rallying cry to the general public and the government to take advantage of the current war, in which the Israel Defense Forces has asserted control over large parts of the Gaza Strip, and begin to build Jewish settlements in the coastal enclave once again.

Israel dismantled its 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip, and compelled their 8,000 residents to leave, when it unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, pulling back to the pre-1967 lines.

Housing and Construction Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, head of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, attended and called for the reconstruction of Jewish settlements in Gaza, as did the numerous settler leaders who organized the event.

Ben Gvir, like many other speakers, argued that the evacuation of the settlements in the 2005 Disengagement had resulted in terrorism and rocket fire emanating from the territory against Israeli citizens, culminating in the October 7 massacre in which thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, murdering some 1,200 and taking 253 hostages to the Strip.

The White House said on Monday that talks to secure a new release of hostages held by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza were constructive and promising but there was still a lot of work to be done.

A series of negotiations in recent days involving CIA Director William Burns and U.S. Middle East envoy Brett McGurk focused on securing the release of hostages as well as a humanitarian pause in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

"I think it's fair to describe them as constructive," White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on CNN.

"We think there's a framework here for another hostage deal. That could really make a difference in terms of getting more hostages out, getting more aid in and actually getting the violence to come down."

Burns met with the head of Israel's Mossad intelligence service and Qatar's prime minister along with the head of Egyptian intelligence on Sunday in talks described as constructive by Israel, but with significant gaps in positions.

Kirby said there have been very good discussions with the Qataris, the Egyptians and the Israelis.

"We're not over the finish line right yet," he said on CNN. "But we feel pretty good about the discussions and where they're going and the promise of something potentially pretty significant."Some 1,200 people were killed and 253 abducted in Hamas' cross-border rampage on Oct. 7, according to Israeli officials. The attack ignited Israel's war to eliminate Hamas, unleashing a torrent of strikes on Gaza that have flattened most of the Palestinian enclave and killed more than 26,000 people, Palestinian health officials say.

There are reports Israeli forces have stormed Ibn Sina hospital in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday and reportedly killed three Palestinians.

Voice of Palestine radio has reported the raid, according to the Reuters news agency.

A short time later the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) posted on their Telegram channel saying they had “neutralised” a “Hamas terrorist cell” inside the hospital. The IDF also says that there was a plan to “carry out a terror attack in the immediate period”.

The army statement identified the main target of the overnight raid on Ibn Sina hospital in the city of Jenin as a member of the Islamist militant movement, and the other two as members of Islamic Jihad and a local group of gunmen.

The IDF statement alleges one of the men was planning “a raid attack inspired by the October 7th massacre”.

There was no immediate Palestinian confirmation of their identities, Reuters reports.

The military also declined to say whether the three had been killed according to Reuters, but Voice of Palestine radio reported three Palestinian had been killed at the hospital.

The West Bank has seen a surge of violence since the 7 October attack triggered the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas.

A dozen Israeli soldiers just stormed a hospital, disguised as doctors, nurses, patients, & veiled women & executed 3 Palestinians in Jenin - the West Bank.

The IDF has entire units whose specialty is to fight in urban spaces dressed as civilians, like the “Duvdevan unit 217”.

The U.S. response to the attack by Iran-backed militants that killed 3 U.S. servicemembers in Jordan could be multi-level and come in stages, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, adding that the decision to retaliate comes at a time when the Middle East is at its most volatile point since 1973. More details are emerging about this weekend's strike, with one theory being that the drone evaded the base's air defenses because it flew in as a U.S. drone was also entering the base, Pentagon officials told NBC News.

Israeli, Qatari, Egyptian and American officials in Paris have reached a “unified position” on a framework for a hostage deal that would involve a 60-day pause of hostilities in Gaza, a source familiar with the talks told NBC News. The framework is now being presented to Hamas in Egypt.

More than 26,700 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. More than 65,000 have been injured, and thousands more are missing and presumed dead.

Israeli military officials said at least 220 soldiers have been killed during the ground invasion of Gaza.

Cold temperatures, heaps of waste plague displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza
Stray cats pick through piles of discarded waste, heavy rainfall seeps through nylon tents and Gazans transport their mattresses and belongings on their back as they flee for relative safety farther south.

An NBC News team on the ground filmed the scenes and dire conditions unfolding for displaced Palestinians taking shelter in the Nasser Hospital medical complex in Khan Younis over the weekend.

Imra Fija Bitarrabish, a concerned mother, showed NBC News around her tent, which she said sustained rips through the nylon fabric and allowed rain to fall through, worsening the already basic conditions her and her two kids are weathering in the makeshift tent campsite.

“A little while ago a bomb fell behind us,” Bitarrabish told NBC News. “I went to the people responsible for Gaza over there, I told them a bomb fell, and the Nylon ripped. I can be hurt because of all the water falling on me but no one believed me. I begged for Nylon.”

The U.K. is considering a push to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations, Foreign Secretary David Cameron said, as he tries to sell a plan aimed at ending the war in Gaza.
The former prime minister — drafted into the foreign affairs brief by his boss Rishi Sunak last year — said the move could bring about “irreversible progress to a two-state solution.”

“We should be starting to set out what a Palestinian state would look like – what it would comprise, how it would work,” he said in remarks to the Conservative Middle East Council in the House of Commons on Monday night.

As that happens, we, with allies, will look at the issue of recognizing a Palestinian state, including at the United Nations,” he added. “This could be one of the things that helps to make this process irreversible.”

Cameron is on a fresh tour of the Middle East to try and push a five-point plan to quell the latest war between Israel and Hamas.

The U.K. is among those continuing to argue that a two-state solution is the only viable long-term solution to the conflict. But such a proposal faces fierce resistance from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called for “full Israeli security control over the entire area in the west of Jordan,” a move he made clear is “contrary to a Palestinian state.”

Cameron’s five-point plan includes a push for a new international support package for Gaza; the formation of a new Palestinian government for the West Bank and Gaza; removing Hamas’ ability to attack Israel; releasing Israeli hostages held by Hamas; and the removal of “key Hamas leaders” from Gaza.

The White House on Monday slammed a conference on Sunday night in Jerusalem aimed at encouraging the reestablishment of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, which was attended by nearly one-third of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet.

A statement issued by a National Security Council spokesperson said the US is “troubled” by the gathering, particularly due to the host of controversial statements by participants calling for the mass displacement of Gaza’s Palestinian population.

“We have also been clear, consistent, and unequivocal against the forced relocation of Palestinians outside of Gaza,” the White House statement said.

“This rhetoric is incendiary and irresponsible, and we take the prime minister at his word when he says that Israel does not intend to reoccupy Gaza,” the statement added, implicitly urging Netanyahu to crack down on such calls by his coalition partners.

France also condemned the Sunday conference, with its foreign ministry saying in a statement that it expected the Israeli government to “clearly denounce the positions” championed at the gathering.

“In this respect, France recalls that the International Court of Justice recently set out Israel’s obligation to take all measures within its power to prevent and punish this kind of rhetoric,” the foreign ministry statement added, referring to the ICJ initial ruling regarding South Africa’s allegation that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza.

It is not up to the Israeli government to decide where Palestinians should live on their land. The future of the Gaza Strip and of its inhabitants falls within the framework of a unified Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside Israel,” France added.

The UK Foreign Office said Tuesday that it was “alarmed” by the conference.

“The UK’s position is clear: Gaza is occupied Palestinian territory and will be part of the future Palestinian state,” its statement said. “Settlements are illegal. No Palestinian should be threatened with forcible displacement or relocation.”

A Palestinian girl called emergency services, her voice audibly distraught. She tells the man who picks up that she’s in a car with others right next to an Israeli tank and she fears for her life and the lives of those around her. Then gunshots ring out and she screams. The dispatcher says hello over and over again, with no response. The only survivor of the attack is 6 year old Hind. Or perhaps, “was”: the Red Cross sent a team to save the girl from the car, which she was still in, but after their attempts at rescue were impeded by Israeli forces, the group lost contact with command.

The Red Cross has no clue where the group is or what happened to them or the girl inside.

The fate of the ambulance crew that headed yesterday to rescue the child Hind remains unknown until this moment.
PRCS completely lost contact with them for 24 hours.
Six-year-old Hind was trapped by Israeli tanks inside a vehicle and the occupation soldiers fired at it, resulting in the killing of everyone inside, including four children while Hind is the only survivor.
#Save_Hind
Safety to the heroes of humanitarian work #Ahmed_and_Yousef

An Iran-backed Iraqi militia suspected of a drone strike in Jordan that killed three US soldiers says it has suspended operations against US forces.

Kataib Hezbollah, which is part of an umbrella group that claimed Sunday's attack, said this was "to prevent embarrassment of the Iraqi government".

The US defence department said: "Actions speak louder than words."

US President Joe Biden meanwhile said he had decided how to respond to the attack but did not elaborate.

Iran warned it would retaliate against any attack on its "interests".

The US has blamed Iran-backed groups and has not yet conclusively determined that Kataib Hezbollah was behind it.

However, a Pentagon spokeswoman said it carried "the footprints" of the group.
"Actions speak louder than words," Pat Ryder told reporters after the group released its statement.

"There will be consequences," he added.

Meanwhile, the US is taking steps to bolster security at Tower 22, where some 350 US soldiers are stationed in a mission focused on defeating the Islamic State (IS) group.
Additional air defences are being sent to the base, a US official told CBS News on Tuesday, including a system designed to intercept drones.

Certainly all roads of responsibility lead back to Iran," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner told BBC News, also linking the country to attacks by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi movement against ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

"This needs to be responded in a way where they understand that we're not going to just continue to play defensive," he said.

He added that the US reaction would force Iran to "understanding that this is a conflict that is going to come to their doorstep".

Mr Biden has been weighing a number of retaliatory options, including strikes on Iran-aligned militia bases and commanders.

The US could also target senior commanders of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iraq or Syria.

It is also possible that the US will attack inside Iran's borders, a move which is considered the highest possible escalation that Mr Biden could take.

In New York, the Iranian envoy to the UN, Amir Saeed Iravani, warned that Iran would "decisively respond to any attack on the country, its interests and nationals under any pretexts", Iran's state news agency Irna reported.

He also denied reports that several messages had been exchanged between the US and Iran via intermediaries over the past two days.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government does not support the immediate discontinuation of UNRWA, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday as a host of Western countries moved to suspend funding for the UN relief agency for Palestinians amid allegations that roughly a dozen of its employees took part in Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught and hundreds more are either operatives or have close ties with members.

“If UNRWA ceases operating on the ground, this could cause a humanitarian catastrophe that would force Israel to halt its fighting against Hamas,” the senior Israeli official said, briefing The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity. “This would not be in Israel’s interest and it would not be in the interest of Israel’s allies either.”

The senior Israeli official clarified that Jerusalem supports the decision made by countries to suspend their funding and stressed that every UNRWA staffer “involved in terror activity must be held accountable.

A second Israeli official separately confirmed a Wall Street Journal report revealing that in addition to the 12 UNRWA staffers who allegedly took part in the October 7 terror onslaught, roughly 1,200 employees — 10% of the Gaza staff — are either tied to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, according to Israeli intelligence.

Thirty-eight percent of Israelis are in favor of reestablishing settlements in the Gaza Strip, according to a Tuesday television poll.

Channel 12 news asked respondents whether they were in favor of resettling Gaza two days after thousands of settlement activists gathered in Jerusalem to advance plans for such a move, at a conference attended by 11 coalition ministers and 15 coalition MKs.

Fifty-one percent were opposed to reviving the settlements in Gaza, where some 8,000 people lived before Israel unilaterally withdrew from the strip in 2005.

The poll also asked respondents whether they would support a deal that saw Hamas return 35 hostages to Israel in exchange for a 45-day pause in fighting and thousands of freed Palestinian terrorists. Fifty percent said they would oppose such a deal, 35% would back it, and the rest were unsure. (It is not clear that a potential deal taking shape in ongoing negotiations mirrors the terms that were put to respondents.)

Also regarding the hostages, Channel 12 asked whether Israelis support halting humanitarian aid to Gaza until Hamas returns all the hostages it is holding. An overwhelming 72% said yes, while 21% said the aid should continue. Earlier this week, the IDF declared the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza a closed military zone after some relatives of hostages and other activists repeatedly demonstrated there and blocked aid from getting through.

Respondents were asked whether and when Israel needed a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the Hamas-led October 7 attack, in which the terrorist organization slaughtered 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, and took 253 hostages.

Sixty-one percent believed the inquiry should wait until after the war, while 32% called for it to happen immediately. The rest did not think a state inquiry was necessary.

Meanwhile, the poll revealed that public support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to slip in recent weeks.

The poll was taken on Tuesday by Midgam/Mano Geva among 503 representative respondents with a 4.4% margin of error.

Protesters blocked trucks carrying humanitarian supplies to Palestinians in Gaza on Thursday, demanding that no aid be allowed to enter the Strip via Israel while 132 hostages taken captive by terrorists on October 7 remain in captivity.

The protest came days after the IDF designated the areas of both the Kerem Shalom and the Nitzana border crossings as closed military zones to prevent disruptions. Large groups of activists, including some families of hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, protested daily at the crossing last week.

Photos and videos circulating on social media on Thursday morning showed protesters arguing with truck drivers and attempting to check their loads to see which were headed for Gaza.

Likud activist Orly Lev posted a photo from the protest on X, formerly Twitter, with the caption, “Now at the Ashdod Port, blocking aid to Nazis.”

Ultranationalist MK and radical settlement activist Tzvi Succot also attended the protest, according to Channel 12 news.