U.S. to Israel: Boost humanitarian aid to Gaza or risk losing weapons funding
CBSN
The Biden administration has warned Israel that it must increase the amount of humanitarian aid it is allowing into Gaza within the next 30 days or it could risk losing access to U.S. weapons funding.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned their Israeli counterparts in a letter dated Sunday that the changes must occur. The letter, which restates U.S. policy toward humanitarian aid and arms transfers, was sent amid deteriorating conditions in northern Gaza and an Israeli airstrike on a hospital tent site in central Gaza that killed at least four people and burned others.
A similar letter that Blinken sent to Israeli officials in April led to more humanitarian assistance getting to the Palestinian territory, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Tuesday. But that has not lasted.
The Nobel Peace Prize for 2024 was awarded Friday to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, with the Nobel committee lauding the "grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki" for its work to "achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again."
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, said Thursday that Israeli forces had opened fire on several of its installations in the area, as tension between the global body and Israel mounted amid escalating Israeli military operations against the Iran-backed group Hezbollah.
Haiti's rampant criminal gangs are luring more children into lives of crime and sexual abuse, as hunger and poverty in the tiny Caribbean nation drive young people to desperation, according to a report published Wednesday by the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch. Hundreds, possibly thousands more children have joined the violent gangs in recent months, HRW says, with members forcing youngsters to commit crimes and subjecting them to sexual abuse and violence.
Tel Aviv — President Biden was scheduled to speak Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the phone, two sources familiar with the plans told CBS News. It will be the first conversation between the leaders in two months, and it will come as Israel plans its promised retaliation for Iran's ballistic missile attack last week.
The Iranian-backed group Hamas, long designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and Israel, launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The massacre of some 1,200 people ignited a devastating war in the Gaza Strip, a densely-packed Palestinian territory that had been ruled by Hamas for almost two decades. The Hamas-run Ministry of Health says Israeli military operations in Gaza since Oct. 7 have killed almost 42,000 people.