Palestine Financial News

There is a rising chorus of voices, mostly from the Global South, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the urgent provision of aid to a population that is facing imminent famine. Is anybody listening? Singapore’s foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan is the latest to intervene, telling Israel that it had “gone too far" in its war against Hamas in Gaza. “I have communicated that both to the prime minister, to the foreign minister, and to the other Israelis whom we have met," he said last week on Wednesday.

Israeli forces besieged two more Gaza hospitals on Sunday, pinning down medical teams under heavy gunfire, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, and Israel said it had captured 480 militants in continued clashes at Gaza's main Al Shifa hospital. Israeli forces say hospitals in the Palestinian enclave where war has been raging for over five months have frequently been used as strongholds of Hamas militants harbouring bases and weapons. Hames and medical staff deny this. The Palestinian Red Crescent said one of its staff was killed when Israeli tanks suddenly pushed back into areas around Al-Amal and Nasser hospitals in the southern city of Khan Younis, amid heavy bombardment and gunfire.

Yemen Saturday by ballistic missiles fired by H0uthi rebels, who have intensified strikes on Red Sea shipping, the US military said. The Panamanian-flagged, Chinese-owned and operated Huang Pu issued a distress call but did not request assistance, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement on social media platform X early on Sunday.

Israel in exchange for every hostage freed by Hamas in any new Gaza truce, an Israeli official briefed on the Qatar-hosted talks said on Saturday. An Israeli delegation led by Mossad chief David Barnea is in Doha for indirect negotiations with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which CIA director William Burns is helping Qatari and Egyptian officials to mediate.

By Dan Williams and Nidal al-Mughrabi

By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Bassam and Masoud

Australia and Britain said in a joint statement on Friday there were potentially devastating consequences of an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah in Gaza. «Given the large number of displaced persons taking refuge in the area and lack of safe spaces in Gaza, ministers shared deep concern at the potentially devastating consequences for the civilian population of an expanded Israeli military operation in Rafah,» the statement said. Israel says a ground invasion of Rafah is necessary to eliminate Hamas, despite countries including the United States warning of dire consequences for the more than a million Palestinians who have sheltered there since being displaced elsewhere in the Gaza Strip during the five-month-old war.

maintained its key interest rates at 5.25-5.50 per cent for the fifth straight meeting. Brent crude futures for May were down 68 cents, or 0.8 per cent, to $85.27 per barrel after dropping by 1.6 per cent on Wednesday. US West Texas Intermediate futures for May were down 69 cents, or 0.9 per cent, to $80.58 per barrel after a fall of about 1.8 per cent in the previous session, according to Reuters.

Israel is determined to launch a ground offensive against Hamas in Rafah, Gaza's southernmost city, a plan that has raised global alarm because of the potential for harm to the hundreds of thousands of civilians sheltering there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel can't achieve its goal of «total victory» against Hamas without going into Rafah. Israel has approved military plans for its offensive. But with 1.4 million Palestinians jammed into the city, Israel's allies, including the U.S., have demanded greater care for civilians in its anticipated incursion.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk denounced the rampant hunger and looming famine in Gaza.

Gaza are starving to death right now. The speed at which this man-made hunger and malnutrition crisis has ripped through Gaza is terrifying," said Cindy McCain, head of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP). The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) partnership on Monday estimated that 1.1 million people -- half the population, according to UN data -- were facing catastrophic conditions.

request by South Africa for interim orders to prevent starvation in Gaza as part of a case accusing Israel of breaching the Genocide Convention with its military offensive against Hamas. In a written response published Monday by the International Court of Justice, Israel said that claims by South Africa in its request filed earlier this month are “wholly unfounded in fact and law, morally repugnant, and represent an abuse both of the Genocide Convention and of the Court itself." Israel's response was published on the day that the U.N.

Gaza Strip's largest hospital early Monday, saying Hamas militants had regrouped there and had fired on them from inside the compound, where Palestinian officials say tens of thousands of people have been sheltering. In a separate development, the European Union's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, accused Israel of continuing to hinder efforts to deliver aid to Gaza, saying the territory faces an «entirely man-made» famine as «starvation is used as a weapon of war». The army last raided Shifa Hospital in November after claiming that Hamas maintained an elaborate command centre within and beneath the facility. The military revealed a tunnel leading to some underground rooms, as well as weapons it said were found inside the hospital. But the evidence fell short of the earlier claims, and critics accused the army of recklessly endangering the lives of civilians. People sheltering in the hospital said Israeli forces backed by tanks and artillery had surrounded the medical complex and that snipers were shooting at people inside. They said the army raided a number of buildings and detained dozens of people.

AP, in recent days, US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the country and a strong Israel supporter, called on Israel to hold a new election, saying Netanyahu had “lost his way." President Joe Biden expressed support for Schumer’s “good speech," and earlier accused Netanyahu of hurting Israel because of the huge civilian death toll in Gaza. Netanyahu told Fox News that Israel never would have called for a new U.S. election after the Sept.

By Sarah Marsh

Gaza said on Saturday that acute malnutrition was accelerating in the north of the Palestinian enclave as Israel prepared to send a delegation to Qatar for new ceasefire talks on a hostage deal with Hamas. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said one in three children under the age of two in northern Gaza is now acutely malnourished, putting more pressure on Israel over the looming famine.

Israel-Gaza war: At least 20 people killed, 155 injured in shelling while awaiting food aid in Gaza, says report On Friday, Israel said it would send a delegation to Qatar for more talks with mediators after its enemy Hamas presented a new proposal for a ceasefire with an exchange of hostages and prisoners. The delegation will be led by the head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, David Barnea, a source familiar with the talks said, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seeking to convene his security cabinet to discuss the proposal before the talks start.

By Andrew Mills and Maayan Lubell

Palestinians in Gaza held the first Friday prayers of Ramadan outside the ruins of a mosque levelled in Israel's offensive, one of hundreds the Hamas-run authorities say have been damaged or destroyed in Israeli attacks since October. Scores of worshippers knelt in rows in the street by the wreckage of the al-Farouk mosque in Rafah, laying out their prayer mats in the shadow of a white minaret marking all that remains of the otherwise flattened building.

Israel and Islamist militant group Hamas. Palestinian leaders hope he could now emerge as a unifying figure as he prepares to rebuild the enclave after five months of Israeli bombardment since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

(Reuters) -Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas named Mohammad Mustafa, an ally and leading business figure as prime minister with a mandate to help reform the Palestinian Authority (PA), the state-run WAFA news agency said on Thursday.