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No Peace Until Hamas Is Destroyed, Israel PM Declares

Published

2 years ago

December 26, 2023

Israel bombed Gaza on Tuesday after its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed there won’t be peace until its Hamas rulers are destroyed and Palestinian society is “deradicalised”.

The army said it had struck more than 100 targets in 24 hours, including military sites and tunnel shafts in central Jabalia and Khan Yunis in the south, as heavy ground combat continued.

The withering military campaign launched after the Hamas attacks of October 7 has caused mass civilian casualties and widespread hunger and reduced much of the coastal territory to rubble.

The UN World Health Organization reported “harrowing” accounts of entire families killed during Christmas Eve strikes on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central area of the Gaza Strip.

Global concern has mounted and international calls for a ceasefire have multiplied but Netanyahu vowed to stay the course in an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal late Monday.

“Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarised and Palestinian society must be deradicalised,” he argued.

“These are the three prerequisites for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbours in Gaza.”

Once the fighting ends, he said, “for the foreseeable future Israel will have to retain overriding security responsibility over Gaza” and build a “temporary security zone on the perimeter” of the territory.

Netanyahu had earlier visited Israeli troops inside Gaza, then reportedly told a meeting of his conservative Likud party that “we’re not stopping… We’re intensifying the fighting in the coming days”.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war erupted when Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7 and killed about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

They took 250 hostages of whom 129 remain inside Gaza.

Israel launched extensive aerial bombardment and a siege followed by a ground invasion. The campaign has killed 20,674 people, mostly women and children, according to Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry.

‘Great destruction’

The Israeli army published footage showing its troops moving through the muddy war zone of shattered buildings as gunfire rings out, tanks churning up dust and a soldier firing a heavy machine gun from a window.

The army says 158 Israeli soldiers have been killed inside Gaza.

AFPTV images from Gaza City’s devastated and largely deserted Tal al-Hawa area showed dirt roads winding through mountains of rubble amid multi-storey buildings pancaked by strikes or standing askew.

“By God, the destruction is very great, and all the owners of the place have been displaced to the south,” says one Palestinian man. “May God help people through the misfortunes they are in.”

Video footage from inside the city’s Al-Quds Hospital showed an empty ward with a hole blasted into a wall, broken window glass strewn across the floor and medical equipment covered in a layer of dust.

Some residents of Al-Maghazi refugee camp returned to the ruins of their homes after strikes that Gaza’s health ministry said killed at least 70 people. AFP was unable to independently verify that toll.

One of those coming back, Zeyad Awad, said there had been no evacuation warning before the strikes.

“What should we do?” he asked. “We are civilians, living peacefully and wanting only safety and security.”

WHO staff visited a hospital treating victims of the strikes and “heard harrowing accounts” from health workers and victims, said the agency’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Sean Casey, a WHO emergency medical teams coordinator, described the fate of a nine-year-old being treated who was expected to die.

“He was crossing the street in front of the shelter where his family is staying and the building beside him blew up,” he said.

The Israeli army said it was “reviewing the incident” and added that it was “committed to international law including taking feasible steps to minimise harm to civilians”.

‘Real hunger’

Vast areas of Gaza lie in ruins and its 2.4 million people are enduring dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine, alleviated only by the limited arrival of aid trucks.

“Now there is real hunger,” said Nour Ismail, who was waiting for food to be distributed in the southern city of Rafah.

“My children are dying of hunger.”

An estimated 1.9 million Gazans have been displaced, according to the UN, many fleeing south and crowded into shelters or makeshift tents in the winter cold, even as the fighting comes ever closer.

Netanyahu told Likud party members on Monday that he was ready to support the voluntary migration of civilians out of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

He reportedly told party members “our problem is not whether to allow an exit, but that there will be countries that are willing to absorb an exit”.

Hamas rejected as “absurd” any such discussion. Palestinians “refuse to be deported and displaced”, it said in a statement. “There can’t be exile and there is no other choice than to remain on our land.”

The Gaza war has heightened regional tensions between, on the one hand, Israel and its ally the United States, and, on the other, Iran-backed armed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said an Israeli air strike in Syria had killed the senior Quds Force commander Razi Moussavi, and President Ebrahim Raisi vowed Israel “will certainly pay for this crime”.

In Iraq the US military launched strikes on pro-Iran groups whom it has blamed for more than 100 attacks in recent weeks, said US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The Iraqi government denounced the air strikes, which it said had killed one member of the security forces and wounded at least 18 others, as a “hostile act”.

Related Topics:Gaza Hamas Israel Israeli

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Pope Decries Lack Of Political Will On Climate Change

Published

2 hours ago

November 18, 2025

Editor

Pope Leo XIV on Monday urged “concrete actions” on climate change and complained that some leaders lacked the will to act, as he addressed religious dignitaries on the sidelines of the COP30 summit.

The Vatican released the American pope’s address to churches of the southern hemisphere assembled on the sidelines of the UN climate talks in Belem, Brazil, in which he called the Amazon region “a living symbol of creation with an urgent need for care”.

“Creation is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat,” the pope said.

“One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes. To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to ignore these people is to deny our shared humanity,” he added.

“What is failing is the political will of some.”

The UN climate negotiations enter their final stretch this week, with nations split on key issues as government ministers began arriving Monday to take over negotiations.

“There is still time to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5C, but the window is closing,” warned Leo, who called for “concrete actions” while championing the landmark Paris Agreement.

– Pope defends Paris Agreement –

The historic 2015 accord, from which US President Donald Trump has said he will withdraw the United States for the second time, aims to keep temperature rises “well below” 2C compared to pre-industrial levels and, if possible, to 1.5C.

The Paris Agreement was the “strongest tool for protecting people and the planet”, Leo said, decrying a lack of effort by some leaders, whom he did not name.

“True leadership means service and support on a scale that will truly make a difference,” he said, urging firmer climate action to bring about “stronger and fairer economic systems”.

“Let us send a clear global signal together: nations standing in unwavering solidarity behind the Paris Agreement and climate cooperation,” he said.

Since being made pope in May, the Chicago-born pontiff — who spent about 20 years as a missionary in Peru — has urged more pressure on governments to stop climate change.

Last month, during a climate conference near Rome, he called for an “ecological conversion” to help vulnerable communities.

October marked the 10-year anniversary of the late Pope Francis’s landmark climate manifesto “Laudato Si”, which appealed for action on human-caused global warming.

COP30, without the presence of the US government, is scheduled to end in five days, but groups of countries still disagree on many issues, including climate ambition, unilateral trade measures, and finance.

Some countries also want a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell welcomed what he called Pope Leo’s “strong message”.

“His words urge us to continue to choose hope and action,” he said.

Headline

Genocide: U.S. Lawmaker Alleges Tinubu Lying, Protecting Own Interest

Published

10 hours ago

November 18, 2025

Editor

Riley Moore

…Congress to debate ‘Christian Persecution’ in Nigeria on Thursday

United States (U.S.) lawmaker, Riley Moore, has dismissed President Bola Tinubu’s denial of the targeted killing of Christians as “completely false”.

Moore said Tinubu’s denial was to “protect his interests,” adding that Nigeria’s political leaders were “complicit” in the killing of Christians.

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Moore noted Tinubu’s statement, claiming that the “characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality” as incorrect.

Meanwhile, the Congress will, on Thursday, debate the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.

This was as International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule (Intersociety) raised fresh claims 99 Christians were, again, killed in Nigeria in 14 days.

“Unfortunately, that is completely false. There are states in Nigeria that have blasphemy laws. People are facing the death penalty for blasphemy against Islam,” the U.S. lawmaker said. “I know President Tinubu is in a difficult position, and trying to protect his interests there in the country. But they are complicit in this to some degree or another for a statement like this.”

Moore cited the case of an Adamawa Christian farmer, Sunday Jackson, who was sentenced to death for defending himself against a killer herdsman.

“There is serious persecution in Nigeria,” Moore said.
CONGRESS is set to convene a hearing on Thursday to examine allegations of widespread persecution of Christians in Nigeria, following President Donald Trump’s recent decision to redesignate the country as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).

The session will be led by Congressman Chris Smith, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, and a vocal advocate for stronger U.S. action on reported religious violence in Nigeria.

Smith previously introduced a congressional resolution naming the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (MACBAN) and Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore as responsible actors in several attacks. The resolution recommends visa bans and asset freezes against members of the groups.

It also called on White House to classify “Fulani-Ethnic Militias” operating in states such as Benue and Plateau under the Entities of Particular Concern (EPC) framework established by the International Religious Freedom Act.

Witnesses scheduled to testify include Jonathan Pratt, senior bureau official at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, and Jacob McGee, deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labour.

A second panel is expected to feature Nina Shea, senior fellow and director at the Centre for Religious Freedom; Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the Makurdi Catholic Diocese; and Oge Onubogu, director and senior fellow for the Africa Programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
INTERSOCIETY alleged in a statement yesterday that 99 Christians were killed within the last 14 days.

It stated that the killing occurred between October 28 and November 11, adding that 114 others were kidnapped by the group that carried out the action, called Jihadist militants.

The report was signed by the Head, Intersociety, Emeka Umeagbalasi, and two human rights lawyers, Joy Igboeli and Ogochukwu Obi.

Headline

Trump Unveils Fast-track Visas For World Cup Ticket Holders

Published

11 hours ago

November 18, 2025

Editor

President Donald Trump on Monday unveiled special fast-track visas for people with tickets to the 2026 World Cup — but his administration warned it was no guarantee of entry to the United States.

The United States has promised a seamless experience for next year’s tournament despite concerns that Trump’s border crackdown could hurt fans.

“For those who intend to join us for the World Cup, I strongly encourage you to apply right away,” Trump said as he announced the scheme in the Oval Office with Gianni Infantino, the boss of global soccer body FIFA.

Infantino — who has repeatedly appeared at Trump’s side since the Republican’s return to the White House in January — said the so-called “FIFA Pass” was a “very important announcement.”

“If you have a ticket for the World Cup, you can have a prioritized appointment to get your visa,” Infantino said.

“We’ll have between five and 10 million people coming to America from from all over the world to enjoy the World Cup, and with this FIFA pass, we can make sure that those who buy a ticket, that are legitimate football fans or soccer fans, they can come and attend the World Cup in the best conditions.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio however issued a warning to those hoping to come for the tournament.

“Your ticket is not a visa,” Rubio said at the announcement. “It doesn’t guarantee admission to the US. It guarantees you an expedited appointment, you’re still going to go through the same vetting.”

Rubio said ticket holders would get an interview within six to eight weeks under the plan but urged people to act now.

“Don’t wait till the last minute,” he said.

Trump has made the World Cup a centerpiece event of both his second presidency and the 250th anniversary of US independence next year.

But the giant sporting extravaganza has not escaped the political turmoil caused by Trump’s hardline stance on a host of issues.

Trump has raised the possibility of moving games from certain host cities amid a crackdown on what he says is crime and migration in some Democratic-run cities.

The draw for the World Cup is due to take place in Washington on December 5.

FIFA will present a new peace prize on the same day, with widespread speculation that it it could go to Trump.