Abbas urges Hamas to sign truce agreement
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas today urged Hamas to reach a cease-fire and prisoner swap deal with Israel to "avoid the dire consequences."
According to WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency, Abbas said that Hamas needed to seal a deal quickly to stop "another catastrophe with ominous consequences, no less dangerous than the Nakba of 1948, and to avoid the occupation’s attack on the city of Rafah, which will lead to thousands of victims, suffering and displacement for our people."
Nakba is the Arabic word for “catastrophe” that many use to describe the 1948 displacement of roughly 700,000 Palestinians who were expelled from their land in what became Israel.
Abbas said that while Israel was waging open war in Gaza, everyone involved in the conflict was responsible for working toward peace. "Therefore, we must bear our responsibilities in stopping this comprehensive war on Palestinian people," he said.
Israeli minister calls for action in the north after at least 1 killed, 7 injured by rockets fired from Lebanon
Rockets fired into Israel from Lebanon killed one person and injured at least seven, emergency services said today — a rare deadly attack on the country's north during its war in Gaza.
The Magen David Adom emergency service said on X it was treating injuries in the region surrounding the northern Israeli city of Safed and its CEO, Eli Bin, told Israeli media that one woman was killed and seven injured.
The Israel Defense Forces said in a statement that "numerous launches were identified crossing from Lebanon into the areas of Netu'a, Manara, and into an IDF base in northern Israel."
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's right-wing national security minister, said on X: "This is not a trickle [of rockets], it’s war. It’s time to leave behind the ‘conception’ in the north as well." There have long been fears of escalation between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, but so far the fighting has remained limited.
Displaced Gazans leave Rafah fearing more Israeli attacks
Under the threat of a ground invasion by Israeli forces, panicked and already displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza said today that they were trying to chase relative safety.
In video shot by an NBC News crew team in Rafah, young children disassembled tents, while other displaced Gazans packed rolled-up mattresses and collected jugs of water ahead of their journey out of the refugee camp.
Fayza Abou Wadi, 65, said the intensity of Israeli attacks on Rafah in recent days has left her family so fearful that they’ve decided to flee even though they don’t know where to go.
“We have young ones. We don’t know where to go in the tents, and we are so scared the shells may attack us. This is why we want to leave. We can’t live. There is no safety here,” she said.
Wissam Al-Arkan, 37, said he had resorted to loading his family’s belongings onto a three-wheeler, despite not knowing their destination.
“The question is, where do people go? We came to Rafah, and now they are threatening to invade it, so where do we go?” he said, referring to an impending ground invasion.
“I brought a tuk-tuk truck and started loading our belongings,” he added. “Hopefully, we will find safety and be safe from the bombing. We feel hopeless. What do we do?”
A rocket fired from Lebanon lands in northern Israel
An Israeli policeman inspects a crater left by a rocket fired from southern Lebanon, after it landed near the entrance of the Ziv Medical Center in the northern city of Safed today.