Persona Digest

Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and accuses Hamas of putting them in danger by fighting in residential areas. But the military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children
Palestinian officials say Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip have killed at least 14 people, half of them children.

The Civil Defense, first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, said three children and their mother were killed in an airstrike late Monday in the Tufah neighborhood of Gaza City. It said three other people were missing after the strike.

Another strike late Monday hit a building in downtown Gaza City, killing a child, three women and a man, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

In southern Gaza, a strike on a home early Tuesday killed five people, including a man, his three children as young as 3 years old and a woman, according to a casualty list provided by Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, where the bodies were taken.

Palestinian health officials do not say whether those killed in Israeli strikes are civilians or fighters.

Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians and accuses Hamas of putting them in danger by fighting in residential areas. But the military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children.

Gaza's Health Ministry says Israel's offensive has killed over 40,000 people in Gaza. The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people.

Here's the latest:
Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff meets with Israeli defense leaders
TEL AVIV, Israel Gen CQ Brown, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with top Israeli defense leaders on Monday, and visited the military's Northern Command headquarters.

Navy Capt Jereal Dorsey, Brown's spokesperson, said the chairman met with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli Chief of the General Staff Lt Gen Herzi Halevi in Tel Aviv, and he participated in operational updates with Israeli Defense Force senior leaders.

The leaders reaffirmed the importance of the US-Israeli strategic partnership while also discussing the most recent engagement across the Israeli-Lebanese border and the need to de-escalate tensions to avoid a broader conflict, said Dorsey.

He said they also discussed Israel's need to defend itself as well as the need to get more humanitarian support into Gaza and the importance of minimizing civilian casualties. Dorsey said they talked about Brown's recent meetings with other partners in the region. He visited Jordan and Egypt.

He said the US continues to coordinate with Israel and other allies and partners on ways to improve regional security and stability, protect US forces in the Middle East, and deter a broader conflict.

Gallant's office said the Israeli defense chief thanked Brown for his unequivocal commitment to Israel's security, including through the deployment of US forces in the Middle East.

Israeli airstrike kills 5 Palestinians in the West Bank, health officials say
RAMALLAH, West Bank Palestinian health officials say an Israeli airstrike has killed five Palestinians in the northern West Bank.

The military said late Monday that it struck an operations room used by militants in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the city of Tulkarem. Palestinian health officials said five bodies arrived at a nearby hospital

Neither Palestinian health officials nor the military immediately identified those killed.

It's the latest violence to occur in the West Bank, where around 640 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, most from Israeli raids into Palestinian cities and towns.

Israel continues to shrink the humanitarian zone in Gaza, UN says
UNITED NATIONS Sixteen evacuation orders by Israel's military this month have squeezed Gazans into even smaller areas of the territory and the latest has shut the UN humanitarian operations center. However, the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA is still providing health care and other assistance.

As a result of the orders, several hundred thousand already displaced Palestinians have been forced to move again, and the humanitarian zone declared by Israel has shrunk to about 11 per cent of the entire Gaza Strip, Sam Rose, the senior deputy field director for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees told reporters Monday.

And this isn't 11 per cent of land that is fit for habitation, fit for services, fit for life, really, Rose said in a briefing from Gaza,
He said it's precisely in this environment with lack of access to aid, services, water and health care that polio has recently reemerged in Gaza, with a small number of cases that could spread very rapidly.

Rose said a UN campaign to vaccinate 95 per cent of children under the age of 10 is scheduled to start on Saturday and involves over 3,000 people, including 1,000 from UNRWA, the largest primary health care provider in the Gaza Strip.

He expressed hope that humanitarian pauses needed for the campaign will be heeded by Israel, Hamas and other militants.

A senior UN official said Israel's latest evacuation order on Sunday included the UN operations center in Deir al-Balah, which was forced to close on short notice. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the UN has been in contact with Israel about the latest order and improving humanitarian operations.

Rose said UNRWA services are continuing with national staff, estimating that 15,000 Palestinians received health services across Gaza on Monday.

But he stressed that the ability of the UN humanitarian system to operate in Gaza is becoming increasingly difficult.

He said an estimated one million Palestinians a month aren't getting the food they desperately need because of obstacles at crossing points, with only about 100 trucks with aid getting into Gaza every day instead of the 500 needed.

Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah hasn't hindered negotiations, US says
WASHINGTON Intense fighting between Israel and Hezbollah over the weekend did not derail Gaza cease-fire talks in Cairo as a working-level group of negotiators remain in talks over technical aspects of a potential deal, the White House said on Monday.

A cease-fire is seen as the best hope for heading off an even larger regional conflict as Hezbollah has vowed retaliation against Israel for the killing of senior commander Fuad Shukr last month. Iran, meanwhile, has vowed revenge for the recent assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, who was killed in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

There was not an impact on the talks in Cairo, White House national security John Kirby told reporters. We're certainly glad to see that.

Kirby said progress was made during four days of high-level talks that concluded in Egypt on Sunday without a long sought-after cease-fire and hostage agreement.

But the parties agreed to continue talks between lower-ranked officials aimed at hatching out some of the differences that remain between Israel and Hamas.

Kirby said that the working group, in part, is trying to flesh out the proposed exchange that would take place involving hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners that Israel is holding.

But the two sides also are at odds over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's insistence that Israel Defense Forces maintain a presence in two strategic corridors in Gaza, the Philadelphi corridor alongside Gaza's border with Egypt and the Netzarim east-west corridor across the territory.

White House Middle East adviser Brett McGurk was leading the US delegation in the talks in Cairo on Monday, but was expected to soon depart as lower-level officials aim to work through some of the outstanding issues, Kirby said.