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Israel says expecting one million Gazans to flee new offensive

Israel estimates that its imminent offensive on Gaza City would displace one million Palestinians, a senior military official said Wednesday, as Gaza’s civil defence reported dozens killed across the territory.In Jerusalem, meanwhile, hundreds of Israeli protestors took to the streets to call for a truce and hostage release deal after nearly two years of war.Israel’s military has been building up its forces for the planned operation to seize Gaza City, the Palestinian territory’s largest urban centre located in its northern part, despite mounting global concern for Palestinian civilians suffering dire humanitarian conditions.Military chief Eyal Zamir said troops were already “intensifying our combat operations”, according to an army statement.The senior official from COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories, said “approximately 70,000” Palestinians had already left Gaza’s north in recent days, fleeing the Israeli advance.Briefing journalists on condition of anonymity, the official said Israeli authorities expected “a million people” to flee south, without giving a specific timeframe.The vast majority of Gaza’s more than two million people have been displaced at least once during nearly two years of war.According to UN estimates, nearly a million people currently live in and around Gaza City, where famine has been declared.In late August, an Israeli military spokesman said the evacuation of Gaza City was “inevitable”, while the Red Cross has warned that any Israeli attempt to do so would be impossible in a safe and dignified manner.- ‘Waiting 700 days’-Families of hostages held in Gaza and Israeli anti-war groups called for a three-day protest in Jerusalem, culminating on Friday — day 700 since the Palestinian group Hamas launched its unprecedented attack on Israel in October 2023.The mother of soldier Matan Angrest, who is held in Gaza, appealed to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a news conference.”I have been waiting 700 days for you to get my child out of hell, and it is in your hands. I could see Matan again tomorrow, with a single decision on your part,” said Anat Angrest.Of the 251 hostages seized during the Hamas attack, 47 are still in Gaza, including 25 the Israeli military says are dead.Last month Hamas said it had accepted a new truce proposal that would include phased hostage release.But as mediators have awaited a formal Israeli response, Netanyahu said the war would only end on Israel’s terms as he pushed ahead with plans for the Gaza City offensive.”Instead of seizing the agreement on the table to reach a comprehensive deal, you choose to continue sacrificing them, abandoning them,” Angrest said.Nira Sharabi, whose husband Yossi was killed in captivity, called for an end to the war.”Military pressure endangers the lives of the hostages” and “jeopardises the possibility of bringing back the dead” for burial, she said.During the protests in Jerusalem, a bin was set ablaze near the prime minister’s residence, and the fire spread and destroyed a car belonging to a reservist.Police called it “a red line that has been crossed”, while Justice Minister Yariv Levin denounced “terror” on the part of the demonstrators.- Deadly strikes -On the ground, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed at least 62 people on Wednesday.Umm Abd Abu Al-Jubain told AFP she lost her daughter, son-in-law and several other relatives in a strike on Gaza City.The bodies were “in pieces, and we pulled this boy out” from under the rubble, she said of her grandson, who survived the strike.”Your father and mother have gone and left you, my dear,” Abu al-Jubain told the bruised boy, holding him in her arms.As Israel prepares for Gaza City’s evacuation, the COGAT official said a planned “humanitarian area” would be set up, extending from a cluster of refugee camps in central Gaza to the southern area of Al-Mawasi and eastwards.Israel had designated the coastal area of Al-Mawasi a humanitarian zone in the early days of the war, but has repeatedly struck it since.In mid-August, UN human rights office spokesman Thameen al-Kheetan said Palestinians in Al-Mawasi had “little or no access to essential services and supplies, including food, water, electricity and tents”.Hamas’s 2023 attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 63,746 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.

New York’s Met Opera unveils Saudi collaboration to boost finances

The Metropolitan Opera in New York announced Wednesday an agreement to perform in Saudi Arabia and provide artistic training in the oil-rich kingdom as it works to shore up a creaky financial outlook.The prestigious cultural institution, which received a Moody’s credit downgrade just days ago, will travel to Riyadh for five years to perform during the opera house’s winter break under an agreement with the Saudi Music Commission.The performances will be at the Royal Diriyah Opera House, which is expected to open in 2028.The agreement commits Met creative staff to provide training to Saudi opera singers, composers, directors and other artisans. The collaboration also envisions the commissioning of a new opera, according to a joint press release by the Met and Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture.”Music is a universal language that transcends borders, uniting people through creativity,” said a statement from Paul Pacifico, the CEO of the Saudi Music Commission.”This collaboration is more than a cultural exchange; it is an opportunity to forge new connections, share our stories through music, and contribute to a vibrant global arts community.” The venture reflects the “increasingly challenging” economics of producing Grand Opera, Met General Manager Peter Gelb told AFP.”The Met cannot survive based on the earned revenue sources and the annual fundraising,” said Gelb, who declined to provide financial details about the venture. “This agreement with the Saudi government helps us meet our financial needs.”On August 27, Moody’s Ratings downgraded the Met two notches to “B3,” placing the institution more deeply into the non-investment grade category, reflecting “persistent and increasing deterioration in the operating performance.”A note from Moody’s emphasized Met moves to tap its endowment to cover deficits, noting a $70 million draw in 2023 and 2024 and another $50 million authorized in 2025.”These draws will reduce future support to budgetary operations as regular draws decline in line with lower reserves,” Moody’s said.Gelb said the Met is actively exploring other sources of raising funds. These include licensing agreements of its intellectual property, as well as naming rights to the Met building at Lincoln Center. 

Director Julian Schnabel hits out at boycott calls over Israel

US director Julian Schnabel has hit out at calls to boycott Scottish actor Gerard Butler who has been targeted by activists for his alleged previous support for the Israeli military.Butler gives a gripping performance as a hit man in Schnabel’s latest film — “In The Hand of Dante” — which premieres at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday.”It’s unfortunate,” Schnabel told AFP of the boycott calls by activist group Venice4Palestine which has cited Butler’s appearance at a fund-raising event for the Israeli military in 2018.”It’s not even true,” the artist and director of Oscar-nominated “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” added. “He went to a cocktail party with somebody and happened to have his picture taken. He didn’t raise that dough for them.”Butler (“How To Train Your Dragon”, “300”) was one of several stars to attend a 2018 Hollywood gala organised by the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), which raised a record $60 million, according to a Variety report at the time.Other attendees included actor Ashton Kutcher and musician and Louis Vuitton menswear head Pharrell Williams, who provided entertainment. Venice4Palestine, a collective of independent Italian filmmakers, had called on organisers of the Venice festival to disinvite Butler as well as Israeli actor Gal Gadot, who also stars in “In The Hand of Dante”.Schnabel, who is Jewish and a critic of the Gaza war, told AFP that Butler had given the “performance of his life” in his movie about the theft of the original manuscript of Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy”.The Venice Film Festival has ruled out disinviting actors — Butler and Gadot were not expected this year in any case — but Venice4Palestine co-founder and director Fabiomassimo Lozzi has defended the boycott call.”I believe that it’s justified in the same way I believed about 40 years ago that it was justified boycotting artists who performed in South Africa at the height of the apartheid system,” he told AFP.Israeli TV writer Hagai Levi (“Scenes From a Marriage”), another outspoken critic of the Gaza war, told AFP in Venice that any boycotts had to be targeted.  “Ninety percent of the artistic community in Israel” was against the war, he said.”Boycotting them is actually weakening the only people who can make a change, or those who are at least fighting,” he told AFP on Tuesday.

At least 21,000 children disabled in Gaza war: UN committee

At least 21,000 children in Gaza have been disabled since the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, 2023, a United Nations committee said Wednesday.Around 40,500 children have suffered “new war-related injuries” in the nearly two years since the war erupted, with more than half of them left disabled, said the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.Reviewing the situation in the Palestinian territories, it said Israeli evacuation orders during the army’s offensive in Gaza were “often inaccessible” to people with hearing or visual impairments, “rendering evacuation impossible”.At a news conference, committee member Muhannad Al-Azzeh cited the example of a deaf mother in Rafah killed alongside her children, unaware of instructions to evacuate.”Reports also described people with disabilities being forced to flee in unsafe and undignified conditions, such as crawling through sand or mud without mobility assistance,” the committee said.Restrictions on humanitarian aid being brought into the Gaza Strip were disproportionately impacting the disabled, said the committee.”People with disabilities faced severe disruptions in assistance, leaving many without food, clean water, or sanitation and dependent on others for survival,” it said.- Gaza aid restrictions -The decision to centralise aid distribution in Gaza has also made it far more difficult for the disabled to access desperately needed assistance, the committee warned.While the new private US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has four distribution points across the territory, the UN system it has largely replaced had about 400.”We can’t expect children with disabilities… to be able to run and go to the (aid) points,” said Azzeh.”This is why one of our main recommendations is that children with disabilities must be reached out to,” as a high priority for humanitarian aid, he said.Physical obstacles, such as war debris and the loss of mobility aids under the rubble, have also prevented people from reaching the relocated aid points.The committee said 83 percent of disabled people had lost their assistive devices, with most unable to afford alternatives such as donkey carts.It voiced concern that devices like wheelchairs, walkers, canes, splints and prosthetics were considered “dual-use items” by the Israeli authorities and were therefore not included in aid shipments.The committee called for the delivery of “massive humanitarian aid to persons with disabilities” affected by the war.It said it had been informed of at least 157,114 people sustaining injuries, with over 25 percent at risk of life-long impairments, between October 7, 2023 and August 21 this year.There were “at least 21,000 children with disabilities in Gaza as a result of impairments, acquired since October 7, 2023”, it said.The committee urged Israel to adopt specific measures for protecting children with disabilities from attacks, and implement evacuation protocols that take into account persons with disabilities.Israel should ensure disabled people are “allowed to return safely to their homes and are assisted in doing so”, it added.