Hamas has named Yahya Sinwar as the new head of its political bureau, elevating the hardline militant to the group’s top post after the assassination in Tehran of its previous political leader.
Sinwar’s appointment was announced in a brief statement by Hamas on Tuesday that was aired on pro-Hamas Iranian state media channels.
Sinwar, the Hamas military leader who is seen as the mastermind behind the 7 October attack against Israel, is believed to be hiding in the series of tunnels underneath Gaza. He is the group’s chief decision-maker in Gaza, and is believed to hold control over the estimated 120 Israeli hostages who are still in Hamas’s custody.
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The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders Wednesday for an area in northern Gaza that was heavily bombed at the start of the war some 10 months ago.
The military said it would respond to a Hamas rocket attack from the Beit Hanoun area the day before and urged residents to relocate to Gaza City, large areas of which have been destroyed.
Beit Hanoun, which is close to the border, was one of the first targets of the massive bombardment and ground invasion launched after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, which triggered the war.
Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to areas where past air and ground operations caused widespread destruction, as militants have regrouped. The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced within the narrow coastal strip since the start of the war - often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are sheltering in crowded tent camps.
Ambassadors from Western countries including the United States will skip a ceremony marking the 79th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki after Israel was snubbed, officials said Wednesday.
Nagasaki’s mayor last week said that Israel’s ambassador Gilad Cohen was not invited to Friday’s event in the southern Japanese city because of the risk of possible protests over the Gaza conflict.
The US and British embassies said on Tuesday that their ambassadors would not take part as a result, and that their countries would be represented by lower-ranking diplomats.
Media reports said that Australia, Italy, Canada and the European Union, who together with the US, Britain and Germany signed a strongly worded joint letter to Nagasaki’s mayor last month, would follow suit.
US ambassador Rahm Emanuel will not attend “after the mayor of Nagasaki politicised the event by not inviting the Israeli ambassador”, an embassy spokesperson told AFP.
Turkey will submit on Wednesday a declaration of intervention in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, a diplomatic source told Reuters.
The declaration will happen at 2.30pm, the source added, after Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said this week that Turkey would make the declaration on Wednesday.
“Turkey’s intervention pushes the international community to recognise and address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” the source said.
In May, Turkey said it had decided to join the case launched by South Africa as it stepped up measures against Israel over the assault on Gaza, adding that its bid would follow the necessary legal preparations.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Tuesday that it was up to Yahya Sinwar, the new head of Hamas’s political bureau, to help achieve a ceasefire as he “has been and remains the primary decider”.
The US has sent extra warships and fighter jets to the region in support of Israel, and President Joe Biden called Jordan’s King Abdullah II, whose country helped down Iranian drones and missiles in an attack on Israel in April.
This was followed by a call with Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and another with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, whose countries have been the key intermediaries seeking a ceasefire in the 10-month Gaza war.
Blinken also called top officials in Qatar and Egypt.
“We are engaged in intense diplomacy, pretty much around the clock, with a very simple message - all parties must refrain from escalation,” Blinken said after joining other top officials in a White House meeting.
US warn Israel and Iran over escalation of conflict
The United States has communicated to Iran and Israel that conflict in the Middle East must not escalate, secretary of state Antony Blinken said. The Middle East is bracing for a possible new wave of attacks by Iran and its allies after last week’s killing of senior members of militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
He said:
We’ve been engaged in intense diplomacy with allies and partners, communicating that message directly to Iran. We’ve communicated that message directly to Israel.
The United States will continue to defend Israel against attacks, Blinken added, but noted that everyone in the region should understand the risks of escalation and miscalculation.
Further attacks only raise the risk of dangerous outcomes that no one can predict and no one can fully control.
More on that in a moment, first here’s a summary of the day’s other main news.
Hamas has named Yahya Sinwar as the new head of its political bureau, elevating the hardline militant to the group’s top post after the assassination in Tehran of its previous political leader, Ismail Haniyeh. Sinwar’s appointment was announced in a brief statement by Hamas on Tuesday that was aired on pro-Hamas Iranian state media channels.
Vladimir Putin has reportedly told Iran to avoid civilian casualties in any retaliatory attack on Israel, an underlining of the constraints it faces as it frames its response. It is a call for restraint that is likely to be echoed by many foreign ministers from the 57 countries inside the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) at a meeting in Jeddah on Wednesday as tensions in the Middle East grow.
UN peacekeepers on the Israeli-Lebanese border have never been more crucial, the force’s global chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said on Tuesday, as fears soared of an escalation in the Middle East. Since Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, sparking a war in the Gaza Strip, Israel and Lebanese movement Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, have traded near-daily cross-border fire.
Israeli forces backed by drone strikes killed at least 12 people in the occupied West Bank, medics said on Tuesday, after raids around two flashpoint cities in the north led to gunbattles with Palestinian militants. The Israeli military said it conducted two separate airstrikes in the volatile city of Jenin, hitting armed militant cells, but gave no details.
Israeli forces killed 45 Palestinian fighters in Gaza over the past day, the military said on Tuesday, after heavy fighting in which militant group Hamas said it destroyed two armoured personnel carriers during an ambush near the city of Rafah. The Israeli military said the Hamas official in charge of smuggling operations was among those killed and that his death significantly hit their ability to bring weapons and military equipment into the besieged enclave.
Air France said Tuesday that its flights and that of its low-cost subsidiary Transavia to Beirut will be suspended through at least Thursday because of fears that the Gaza war could spread. The resumption of flights to Lebanon’s capital, which have been halted since 29 July, “will be subject to a new assessment of the local situation,” the airline told AFP.
Lebanon is working to ensure any response to the Israeli killing of a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut does not trigger total war in the Middle East, its foreign minister Abdallah Bou Habib said on Tuesday. Tensions in the region have spiralled in the last week following the killing in Tehran of Palestinian militant group Hamas’ leader, and an Israeli strike on Beirut’s suburbs that killed the senior commander Fuad Shukr.
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