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Several Democratic lawmakers called Thursday for the Israeli and US governments to fully investigate a deadly 2023 attack by the Israeli military on journalists in southern Lebanon.The October 13, 2023 airstrike killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six other reporters, including two from AFP — video journalist Dylan Collins and photographer Christina Assi, who lost her leg.”We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets the international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” Senator Peter Welch told a news conference, with Collins by his side.The lawmaker from Collins’s home state of Vermont said he had been pushing for answers for two years, first from the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden and now from the Republican White House of Donald Trump.The Israeli government has “stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch added.”With the Israeli government, we have been extremely patient, and we have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability,” he said.”The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said, referring to the Israeli military, adding that it has told his office its investigation into the incident is closed.Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured. “But I’d also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account,” he said, echoing the lawmakers who called the attack a “war crime.””We’re not letting it go,” Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. “It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us.”AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.Unlike Welch’s assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that “findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded.” 

Wearing only sandals and cotton sweaters to protect themselves from the winter rain, Palestinians dug trenches in the muddy ground around their tents in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood in an effort to keep out encroaching storm waters. Starting late Wednesday, heavy rains from Storm Byron have swept across the Palestinian territory, flooding tents and makeshift shelters, bringing yet more hardship to Gaza’s residents, nearly all of whom have faced displacement in more than two years of war.In Zeitoun, a child carrying two empty 20-litre jerrycans walked barefoot in the mud to retrieve drinkable water from a temporary water station.With most of Gaza’s buildings destroyed or damaged, thousands of tents and homemade shelters now line areas cleared of rubble.Although a truce between Israel and militant group Hamas that took effect in October has partially eased restrictions on goods and aid, supplies have entered in insufficient quantities, according to the United Nations, and the humanitarian needs are still immense.- ‘Don’t know where to go’ -According to a UN report, 761 displacement sites hosting about 850,000 people are at high risk of flooding.In the low-lying areas between tents in central Gaza’s Al-Zawayda camp, water pooled and formed small ankle-deep ponds, forcing displaced residents to wade through or hop across on exposed patches of soil.”Last night was a terrible night for us and our children because of the heavy rain and cold. The children got all wet, the blankets got wet, the mattresses got wet, and we did not know where to go,” said Suad Muslim, who lives in a tent with her family in Zawayda.”Give us a decent tent, blankets for our children, clothes to wear. I swear their feet are bare and they have no shoes. How long will we remain in this situation? This is injustice,” she told AFP, raising her voice over the sound of large raindrops hitting the plastic tarp roof of her tent.Located between the Sinai and the Negev Desert on one side, and the Mediterranean Sea on the other, the tiny Gaza Strip receives almost all of its precipitation in the form of strong rain in the late autumn and winter.- Drenched with no heat -In the fully closed-off territory, aid shortages mean the already destitute population is not equipped to properly cope with the winter weather.”The situation is dire,” said Shuruq Muslim, a displaced woman from the city of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza. “We can’t even go outside to light a fire (to cook) because we have no gas or firewood.”Gas, firewood, food and medicine have all been in short supply since the start of the war, with most people surviving on aid coming from outside.In Zawayda, the most fortunate had paved the floor of their tents with reused bricks to keep the sodden sand from dampening their few belongings.In areas where tarmac had not been stripped from the road, bulldozers were still at work clearing rubble from buildings destroyed during the war.Many residents in the camp stood under their tent awnings rather than sitting on wet surfaces and waited for the rain to stop.- Reconstruction still far away -Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s civil defence agency, told AFP the weather had brought more suffering for the territory’s already reeling residents, causing one death when a wall collapsed during the storm.”The storm has had a severe impact on the population. Buildings have collapsed and much of the infrastructure has been destroyed, leaving the area unable to drain the large volume of rainfall,” he said.His agency said in a statement Thursday that its teams responded to three houses that partially collapsed during the strong rainfall.It warned residents against returning to homes made structurally unsound during the war — and made even more unsafe by the rains washing away topsoil and rubble.Bassal said more aid needed to enter Gaza, but of the sort that would lead to long-term shelters for people, not temporary fixes.”Tents are categorically rejected. What must be provided now are mobile homes equipped with solar power, comprising two rooms, a bathroom, and all the necessary facilities for residents. Only then can reconstruction begin,” he added.

Israel said Thursday that Hamas “will be disarmed” as part of the US-sponsored peace plan for Gaza, after a top leader from the Palestinian Islamist movement suggested a weapons freeze.The ceasefire, in effect since October 10, halted the war that began after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. But it remains fragile as Israel and Hamas accuse each other almost daily of violations.Top Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told Qatari news channel Al Jazeera that the militant group is open to a weapons “freeze”, but rejects the demand for total disarmament put forward in Trump’s plan for the Palestinian territory.Shosh Bedrosian, spokeswoman for the Israeli prime minister’s office, said “Israel will continue to follow the 20-point plan. There will be no Hamas inside of the Gaza Strip. Hamas will be disarmed”.”The prime minister says this will happen the easy way or the hard way,” Bedrosian told journalists in a briefing.The agreement is composed of three phases. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently indicated that he expected the second phase to begin soon.Under that phase Israeli troops would further withdraw from their positions in Gaza and be replaced by an international stabilisation force (ISF), while Hamas would lay down its weapons.The Palestinian militant group has indicated it would not agree to giving up its arsenal.”The idea of total disarmament is unacceptable to the resistance (Hamas),” Meshaal said in the interview aired on Wednesday.”What is being proposed is a freeze, or storage (of weapons)… to provide guarantees against any military escalation from Gaza with the Israeli occupation,” he added.”This is the idea we’re discussing with the mediators, and I believe that with pragmatic American thinking… such a vision could be agreed upon with the US administration,” he said.- Mediators as ‘guarantors’ -Netanyahu is expected to meet US President Donald Trump in the United States on December 29 to discuss the next steps in the truce.In the first phase of the deal, Palestinian militants committed to releasing the remaining 48 living and dead captives held in the territory. So far they have released all of the hostages except for one body.In exchange, Israel has released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in its custody and returned the bodies of hundreds of dead Palestinians.As for the international peacekeeping force, Meshaal said the group was open to its deployment along Gaza’s border with Israel, but would not agree to it operating inside the territory, calling such a plan an “occupation”. “We have no objection to international forces or international stabilisation forces being deployed along the border, like UNIFIL,” he said, referring to the UN peacekeeping force deployed in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border.Meshaal said such forces would separate Gaza from Israel.Mediators as well as Arab and Islamic nations, he said, could act as “guarantors” that there would be no escalation originating from inside Gaza.- Rains batter Gaza -Heavy winter rains swept across Gaza starting late on Wednesday, flooding tents and makeshift shelters, bringing yet more hardships to Gaza’s residents, nearly all of whom faced displacement at least once in over two years of war.”Last night was a terrible night for us and our children because of the heavy rain and cold. The children got all wet, the blankets got wet, the mattresses got wet,” Suad Muslim, who lives in a tent with her family in al-Zawayda, said.With most of Gaza’s hard structures destroyed or damaged, thousands of tents or homemade shelters line areas cleared of rubble in the Palestinian territory.According to a United Nations report, 761 displacement sites hosting about 850,000 people are at high risk of flooding.”Give us a decent tent, blankets for our children, clothes to wear. I swear their feet are bare and they have no shoes. How long will we remain in this situation? This is injustice”, she told AFP.