US and Israel agree to develop humanitarian aid plan for civilians in Gaza, Blinken says
From CNN's Jennifer Hansler
The United States and Israel “have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced in the overnight hours in Tel Aviv Tuesday.
“It is critical that aid begin flowing into Gaza as soon as possible,” Blinken said in remarks at a US diplomatic building in Tel Aviv.
The top US diplomat noted that the US shares “Israel's concern that Hamas may seize or destroy entering Gaza or otherwise preventing it from reaching the people who need it.”
“If Hamas in any way blocks humanitarian assistance from reaching civilians, including by seizing the aid itself, we'll be the first to condemn it," he said. "And we will work to prevent it from happening again,” he said.
Blinken said the agreement to work on the plan was done at the US’s request, and they “welcome the government of Israel's commitment to work on this plan.”
“The President very much looks forward to discussing it further when he's here on Wednesday,” he said.
Some context: Blinken's announcement comes as a "complete siege" by Israel has triggered a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with UN officials warning that the crowded strip's health care system is on the brink of collapse. Closed border crossings with Israel and Egypt mean that humanitarian aid has been unable to enter the territory.
8:23 p.m. ET, October 16, 2023
Israel won't stop until it "destroys the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas," Netanyahu says
From CNN’s Hadas Gold
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday that Israel won’t stop until it destroys Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities, according to a statement from the office of the prime minister.
“The Prime Minister made it clear that Israel was attacked by vile and cruel murderers, went to war determined and united, and will not stop until it destroys the military and governmental capabilities of Hamas,” the statement read.
Earlier Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with leaders from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Iran and Egypt where he addressed the escalating Israel-Hamas conflict.
The Russian president told Netanyahu that Russia is ready to help end the conflict peacefully, by diplomatic means, according to a Kremlin readout of the call.
8:43 p.m. ET, October 16, 2023
President Biden to visit Israel, US Secretary of State Blinken says
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a news conference in Tel Aviv, on October 17, 2023. Jacquelyn Martin/Pool/AFP/Getty Images
US President Joe Biden will visit Israel on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced in the early hours Tuesday in Israel.
Blinken announced the visit at the end of a more than seven-hour long meeting with Israel's war cabinet. The secretary of state's latest stop in Israel is part of his whirlwind seven-nation tour of the Middle East as Israel seems poised for a ground invasion of Gaza and the conflict threatens to spill into other parts of the region.
During his visit to Israel, Biden “will hear from Israel how it will conduct its operations in a way that minimizes civilian casualties and enables humanitarian assistance to flow to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not benefit Hamas,” Blinken said.
Biden “will reaffirm the United States’ solidarity with Israel and our ironclad commitment to its security” in his visit Wednesday, Blinken said.
“President Biden will again make clear, as he's done unequivocally since the Hamas slaughter of more than 1,400 people, including at least 30 Americans, that Israel has the right and indeed the duty to defend its people from Hamas and other terrorists and to prevent future attacks,” Blinken said.
Biden will hear what Israel needs to defend his people as "we continue to work with Congress to meet those needs,” he said.
Biden “will underscore our crystal clear message to any actor, state or non-state, trying to take advantage of this crisis to attack Israel: Don't,” Blinken said, noting the deterrent measures the US has already undertaken.
The president “will continue to coordinate closely with our Israeli partners to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas, including men, women, small children, Holocaust survivors, and American citizens,” Blinken said.
“President Biden will receive a comprehensive brief on Israel's war aims and strategy,” the top US diplomat said.
In addition to visiting Israel on Wednesday, the president will also visit Jordan — a nearby crucial ally to the US. There he'll meet with a critical group of Middle East leaders including King Abdullah II of Jordan, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, according to the White House.
John Kirby, National Security Council spokesperson, told reporters that the focus of Biden’s Jordan stop will be on humanitarian assistance amid the deepening crisis.
Kirby said Biden “will certainly reiterate that Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people's right to dignity and self-determination. And he'll discuss again the humanitarian needs of all civilians in Gaza.”
In Amman, Biden will “make it clear that we want to continue to work with all our partners in the region, including Israel, to get humanitarian assistance and again to provide some sort of safe passage for civilians to get out.”
The entire trip will take place “over the course of a single day,” Kirby said.
8:15 p.m. ET, October 16, 2023
Palestinian-American family of 6 hunkered down in Gaza City, sister says
From CNN’s David Williams and Caroll Alvarado
Sajah Naggar says the last week has “been literal hell” as she waits for word on her sister Sarah Naggar, who is stranded in Gaza City with her husband and their four children.
“Every time my phone rings I jump,” Sajah Naggar, who lives in Riverside, California, told CNN. “It's unfortunate to say, but it's like I'm expecting bad news because it's so many people are dying, so many people are getting hurt.”
Sajah Naggar said communication with her sister has been pretty sparse — she got a message that her sister was alive on Sunday after days of silence.
“We don't have any real conversations. It's just her letting us know that she's alive because the bombing is literally all around her," Sajah Naggar said. “And the bombing is everywhere. There's not one safe spot in Gaza.”
Naggar said her sister, her husband, Fady Elnajjar, and their children — ages 13, 11, 9 and 2 — are all Palestinian-Americans and US citizens.
The children grew up in California and are traumatized by the situation, she said.
They have been living in Gaza for almost a year, because her brother-in-law’s family are all there.
Naggar said her sister got an email telling them to move south, but the family has stayed in their Gaza City home because they didn’t feel safe evacuating due to the Israeli bombardments.
“They're US citizens, you know, the US should be doing something about this to save its people,” Naggar said. “If it was US citizens in any other country, it would be completely different, but because it's in Gaza, it's just like they're stuck there.”
The family only has the food they had on hand before the war and are not sure how long that will last.
Five other family members, all American citizens, had traveled recently to Gaza to visit and are now stranded because of the war, Naggar said. They have been able to move south.
Naggar said her family is praying for good news, but it is hard to have hope.
“We definitely do want our sister home safely and my uncles back safely, but we also want the safety of every Gazan and every Palestinian in Palestine right now,” she said. “We want not just a ceasefire, honestly, we want it to be a solution that will be a long-term solution so that the kids and families and everyone in Palestine can feel secure in their life.”
12:29 a.m. ET, October 17, 2023
31 humanitarian staff killed and hospitals "on the brink of collapse" in Gaza, UN office says
From CNN’s Kareem El Damanhoury
The number of humanitarian staff killed while on duty in Gaza has risen to 31, after an Israeli airstrike killed seven civil defense members on Monday, according to a statement from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The statement added that Gaza is under “full electricity blackout” for the sixth day, warning of the repercussions on the healthcare system in the strip.
“Hospitals are on the brink of collapse as their fuel reserves used to operate backup generators have been almost totally depleted, endangering the lives of thousands of patients,” OCHA said.
Earlier, UNRWA, the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees, said at least 1 million people had been forced to flee their homes in one week alone and at least 400,000 displaced people are taking shelter in UN schools and buildings in Gaza.
Meanwhile, UNICEF-led WASH Cluster warned that the Gaza population is at “imminent risk of death or infectious disease outbreak” if water and fuel are not allowed to enter the strip.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office told CNN Sunday that Israel has restored water to the south of the strip, but the director of Gaza’s water authority disputed that Monday.
The government's media office in Gaza also warned that the strip is “on the brink of a real famine as goods in stores are running out, and no aid is coming to the displaced individuals.”
The World Food Programme (WFP) said in a statement that it provided bread to 107,192 internally displaced people in south Gaza on Sunday, but stressed the need for humanitarian aid to enter the strip.
“We urgently need access through all borders to replenish stocks & deliver assistance,” WFP added.
8:01 p.m. ET, October 16, 2023
New Jersey man traveled to Israel after his father went missing near Gaza
From CNN's Sarah Boxer and Artemis Moshtaghian
A New Jersey man who hasn’t heard from his father since the Hamas attacks flew to Israel to be with his family and await news, according to CNN affiliate WPVI.
The family says Danil Kimenfeld, 64, was fishing on a beach just north of Gaza on the morning of October 7, according to News 12 New Jersey, and while the family heard from him after the attacks started, they haven’t heard from him since.
"He called us and told us he was going into a shelter at 6:30, and since then, we never heard from him back,” Dani Kimenfeld’s son, Igor Kimenfeld, told the New Jersey station on Thursday. “He went there with a friend and they're both missing.”
Igor Kimenfeld, who flew to Israel to be with his mother and brother, said he gave DNA samples as part of the search for his father.
On Friday, Igor Kimenfeld was told that his DNA didn’t match any of the dead, he told WPVI.
“I’m getting a lot of phone calls ... from his colleagues, and they’re all crying and supporting us,” Igor Kimenfeld told News 12 New Jersey Friday.
7:56 p.m. ET, October 16, 2023
Kuwaiti Hospital in Gaza refuses Israeli warning to evacuate site
From CNN’s Mariya Knight and Kareem Khadder
The Kuwaiti Hospital in Gaza’s Rafah city said Monday that it had received a second warning to evacuate from Israeli's military, but the director-general says he will not leave the site.
In a video obtained by CNN, Sohaib al-Hams, the hospital's director general, said that he won’t evacuate because it is his staff’s duty “to serve the wounded and help the needed" and they can’t leave their patients to die.
He added that the hospital should be protected “under international law.”
Israel's warnings for the hospital come as UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said on Monday that there is an "urgent need for a humanitarian pause" in the fighting in Gaza.
Shamdasani said there are hospitals that have been forced to evacuate but “doctors are insisting that they will stay with patients who are in the ICU wards and the neonatal units, where you have the impossible choice of whether to abandon your patients or to stay with them and risk death.”
CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment.
Airstrikes in the south: Israeli authorities told more than a million people living in north Gaza to evacuate to the southern part of the densely populated strip. But Israeli airstrikes have continued to hit parts of the strip outside the evacuation zone, like Rafah, where at least five people were killed and 15 others were injured in an Israeli airstrike on Monday, according to the Palestinian interior ministry. The ministry said the airstrike happened without prior warning from the Israel Defense Forces.
A humanitarian crisis: Last Monday, Israel announced a complete siege on Gaza, cutting off food, water, and fuel to the territory. The World Health Organization warned that the people in Gaza face an “imminent” public health crisis, saying the limited amount of water is creating a desperate situation as the lives of more than 3,500 patients in 35 hospitals are at immediate risk.
7:40 p.m. ET, October 16, 2023
Attorneys for family stuck in Gaza file lawsuit and demand safe evacuation
From CNN's Melissa Alonso
The family of Palestinian Americans currently stuck in Gaza filed a lawsuit Friday against the US Department of State and the US Department of Defense for allegedly failing to safely evacuate citizens, according to a released statement.
The complaint was filed Friday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of Zakaria A. Alarayshi and Laila K. Alarayshi— US citizens who are "of Palestinian ethnicity and residents of Dearborn, Michigan ... currently trapped abroad in the Gaza Strip," according to the lawsuit.
The couple left Michigan to "visit family residing there in the Gaza Strip. They left the United States before the commencement of the current hostilities unaware that they were on the horizon," said the complaint.
“They just hit the house next to us. We are scared," the Alarayshi family said in a statement released by their attorneys. "We can’t go to the bathroom; we can’t go anywhere. We don’t have electricity, we’re without water, there’s nothing. I think we are going to die before we leave.”
Attorneys with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) along with the Arab American Civil Rights League (ACRL) are working with the couple's son, Yahya Alarayshi, who authorized lawyers to file the complaint on behalf of the family after they lost all communication with his parents for 24 hours, the complaint said.
ACRL and ADC "accuse the US Government of unconstitutionally discriminating against Palestinian Americans by not securing their safety and well-being," the attorney statement read.
"Our lawsuit underscores a grave concern: the deeply troubling inaction of the US Government in ensuring the safety and well-being of its own citizens. We believe that every American deserves the unequivocal support and protection of their government when faced with life-threatening circumstances,” said Abed Ayoub, ADC national executive director.
“American Muslims and Arab Americans do not feel represented by our government right now," said a Friday statement from Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib.
"Many families in the US seeking help to get their loved ones out of Gaza feel that Secretary (Antony) Blinken is not making their safety a priority. The Biden Administration is failing in its duty to protect all civilian and American lives in Gaza. I cannot believe I have to beg our country to value every human life, no matter their faith or ethnicity. We cannot lose sight of the humanity in each other,” Tlaib said.
9:18 p.m. ET, October 16, 2023
Israeli military striking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon
From CNN's Hadas Gold
The Israel Defense Forces released video of the military striking Hezbollah targets. IDF
The Israel Defense Forces early on Tuesday morning local time said it is currently striking Hezbollah "terror" targets in Lebanon.
