Area West Bank Financial News

BBC reporter asks if Banksy's real name is «Robert Banks,» to which the artist responds, «It's Robbie.» Banksy spoke to former BBC arts correspondent Nigel Wrench on the anti-authority element of his work, which is still evident today, while working on his show Turf War in east London. The BBC has now broadcast the entire interview as The Bansky Story, which is available on BBC Sounds 20 years later. Banksy appeared to confirm his first name during the interview.

Bloomberg report. In the wake of Hamas’s long-planned and brutal October 7 assault on Israel, the Israeli security establishment is looking back on his words in a new light: as part of an effort to create the illusion that Hamas, considered a terrorist group by the US and European Union, was limiting its embrace of violence to focus on governance. Israeli officials now acknowledge that a sense of complacency had set in around Hamas.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, sits a six-meter-high bronze statue of Nelson Mandela, donated by the South African city of Johannesburg in 2016.  A reminder of the long-standing bond and kinship the Nobel Peace Prize winner shared with the Palestinian people.

The Washington Post. "As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace.

Israel prepared on Sunday to expand its offensive against Hamas militants to southern Gaza after air strikes killed dozens of Palestinians, including civilians reported to be sheltering at two schools. After earlier in the week dropping leaflets, Israel on Saturday again warned civilians in parts of southern Gaza to relocate as it girds for an onslaught in that part of the small coastal enclave, after subduing the north. Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini of UNRWA, the U.N. aid organization for Palestinian refugees, said on social media platform X that Israel bombarded two agency schools in the north.

The Washington Post on Saturday, US President Joe Biden dismissed increasing ceasefire calls for Gaza, asserting that it won't bring about peace. He wrote, "As long as Hamas clings to its ideology of destruction, a cease-fire is not peace.

Kristalina Georgieva said on Friday this week's meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping is a badly needed signal that the world needs to cooperate more.

Catch all the LIVE Updates on the Israel-Hamas war here,US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday called on Israel to take "urgent" action to stop settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Israel and Hamas. "With winter fast approaching, unsafe and overcrowded shelters, and the lack of clean water, civilians are facing the immediate possibility of starvation," Cindy McCain, executive director of the Rome-based WFP, said in a statement. The WFP has been warning of increasing hunger for weeks in Gaza.

Canadian-Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver, whose family believed she had been taken hostage by Hamas militants during their brutal attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, is dead, according to Global News Canada and multiple sources close to her family.

conflict in the Middle East, it said. The evidence includes drawings, maps, notes, and weapons collected from slain militants, it added.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) — German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on Saturday in Tel Aviv that the international community should focus on limiting the impact of military operations in Gaza on the civilian population.

A new U.N. report paints a stark picture of the collapsing Palestinian economy after a month of war and Israel’s near-total siege of Gaza

By Michelle Nichols

Gaza Strip, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the United Nations Security Council on Friday, warning: «Nowhere and no one is safe.» He said that half of Gaza's 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its primary healthcare centers were not functioning and those that were operating were way beyond their capacities, describing the healthcare system as being «on its knees.» «Hospital corridors crammed with the injured, the sick, the dying. Morgues overflowing. Surgery without anesthesia.

Palestinian economy after a month of war and Israel’s near-total siege of Gaza. The gross domestic product shrank 4% in the West Bank and Gaza in the war’s first month, sending over 400,000 people into poverty — an economic impact unseen in the conflicts Syria and Ukraine, or any previous Israel-Hamas war, the U.N. said. Hamas militants, who rule Gaza, launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct.

Read all the latest updates on the Israel-Hamas war hereThe Israel-Hamas war will push millions of Palestinians into poverty, a UN report on the conflict's possible long-term impacts warned.The gross domestic product shrank 4% in the West Bank and Gaza in the war’s first month, sending over 400,000 people into poverty.If the war continues for a second month, the UN projects that the Palestinian gross domestic product, which was $20.4 billion before the war, will drop by 8.4%. That’s a loss of $1.7 billion.

Gaza has murdered thousands of Palestinians. On Tuesday, Netanyahu said that Israel will have “overall security responsibility" in Gaza for an indefinite period after its war with Hamas.

military action that became inevitable given the remorseless logic created by the October 7 attacks by Hamas that killed some 1,400 Israelis. Given the magnitude of that move, Israel had no option but to attack Gaza with stated maximalist aims: the elimination of Hamas. Considering the militant organisation runs the densely populated territory — it's more Taliban than the Islamic State, in this respect — civilian casualties are sadly inevitable as Israel follows its goal of uprooting it.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken paid an unannounced visit to Iraq on Sunday, as he tours the Middle East attempting to tamp down tensions after war erupted between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas last month.

Mahmud Abbas said Sunday that the Palestinian Authority could return to power in the Gaza Strip only if a «comprehensive solution» is found for the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Israel has sought to destroy Gaza's Hamas rulers since the deadly October 7 attacks, raising the question of who would run the Palestinian territory after the war. «We (the Palestinian Authority) will fully assume our responsibilities within the framework of a comprehensive political solution that includes all of the West Bank, including east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip,» Abbas told visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. At a congressional hearing late last month, Blinken said that «what would make the most sense would be for an effective and revitalised Palestinian Authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza.» There cannot be a «reversion of the status quo with Hamas running Gaza», Blinken said.