Top Israeli general quits over 7 October as 9 killed in West Bank raid: Latest

Nearly 900 humanitarian aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the third day of a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas, as a senior UN official said so far there had been no apparent law-and-order issues.

The latest arrivals bring the three-day total to more than 2,400 trucks entering the enclave.

Throughout the 15-month war, the UN has described its humanitarian operation as opportunistic – facing problems with Israel’s military operation, access restrictions by Israel into and throughout Gaza and more recently looting by armed gangs.

Muhannad Hadi, the top UN aid official for Gaza and the West Bank, said there had been minor incidents of looting in the past three days, but “not like before”.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said 897 aid trucks entered the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, citing information it received from Israel and the guarantors for the ceasefire agreement – the United States, Egypt and Qatar.

The truce deal requires at least 600 truckloads of aid to be allowed into Gaza every day of the initial six-week ceasefire, including 50 carrying fuel. Half of those trucks are supposed to go to Gaza’s north, where experts have warned famine is imminent.

Israel’s top general has resigned, citing the security failures that allowed Hamas’ 7 October 2023, attack. Lt General Herzi Halevi is the most prominent Israeli official to resign over the attack.

He announced his resignation on Tuesday, just days into a fragile ceasefire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Major General Yaron Finkelman, head of Israel’s Southern Command, which oversees operations in Gaza, also tendered his resignation.

Their resignations will likely add to calls for a public inquiry into the 7 October failures, something prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said must wait until the war is over.

Lt General Halevi’s resignation letter noted that the military’s investigations into those failures were “currently in their final stages”.And he made his most explicit call yet for a public inquiry in comments to journalists, saying it would be “granted full transparency” by the military.

Israel’s former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, was fired by Mr Netanyahu in November after the two clashed on a number of issues, including Mr Gallant’s pushing for a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right politician who resigned as Public Security Minister on Sunday over his opposition to the ceasefire, welcomed Lt General Halevi’s announcement and called on Mr Netanyahu to appoint a new chief of staff who will be “strong and on the offensive” in order to demolish Hamas.

Four people were wounded in a stabbing attack in central Tel Aviv yesterday evening, according to Israeli police, who said the attacker was killed by security forces at the scene.

Two people were in moderate condition and two had light wounds, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency rescue service. Ichilov Hospital said one person was in moderate-severe condition with a stab wound to the neck.

Authorities only identified the attacker as a 28-year-old “foreign national” but believe the stabbings were a terrorist act. The attack took place in a bustling area filled with restaurants and cafes.

Another stabbing attack in Tel Aviv over the weekend left one person seriously wounded, and the attacker was also shot and wounded, police said at the time.

Many Palestinians from the southern Gaza city of Rafah who returned to the area on Tuesday were shocked to find nothing left of their homes and businesses.

Manal Selim, a single mother of six, worked as a hairdresser and owned a shop that rented wedding and evening dresses. Her family lived upstairs.“We thought we’d find some place to live in or stay,” she said. “The destruction is scary. It’s like an apocalypse.”

She broke down in tears seeing it all destroyed, pulling a few ripped dresses from under the rubble.“This is my house. I built it brick by brick for 25 years,” she said.

Elsewhere, Murad Miqdad found his home and electric appliance store in a three-story building completely destroyed.“We found nothing,” he said. “There’s nothing to pull out of the house, and if you were able to pull anything out, you still wouldn’t be able to use it.”

The UN humanitarian coordinator in Gaza says trucks from the UN, aid groups, governments and the private sector are arriving and no major looting has been reported beyond a few minor incidents.

Nearly 900 aid trucks entered Gaza on the third day of the ceasefire on Tuesday, the United Nations said. That’s significantly higher than the 600 trucks called for in the deal.

Muhannad Hadi, who returned to Jerusalem from Gaza on Tuesday afternoon, told UN reporters by video that it was one of the happiest days of his 35-year humanitarian career to see Palestinians in the streets looking ahead with hope, some heading home and some starting to clean up the roads.

In his talks with families at a communal kitchen run by the UN World Food Program and elsewhere, he said, they all told him they need humanitarian assistance but want to go home, to work and earn money.

“They don’t like the fact that they have been depending on humanitarian aid,” Mr Hadi said. Palestinians talked about resuming education for their children and about the need for shelter, blankets and new clothes.

Mr Hadi, who is also the deputy UN coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said the UN hopes to start “early recovery” programmes, beginning with cash-for-work removing the tons of rubble in Gaza. But he said the UN must make sure the banking system is operating and electricity is back, stressing the critical role of UN member states and the private sector in early recovery.

Israel launched a major military operation Tuesday in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin that killed at least nine Palestinians and left at least 40 more people wounded, Palestinian health officials said, as Israel’s fragile ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza entered its third day.

In Tel Aviv, four people were wounded in a stabbing attack and the suspect was killed by security forces, according to Israeli police.

Authorities only identified the attacker as a 28-year-old “foreign national” but believe the stabbings were a terrorist act.

Violence has surged in the West Bank, with Israel launching a deadly raid on the Jenin refugee camp on Tuesday. It comes as settler leaders rushed to praise Donald Trump’s decision to reverse the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration aimed at punishing far-right settlers.

Late on Monday, dozens of masked men who are widely believed to be settlers marauded through at least two Palestinian villages and attacked homes and businesses, according to officials in Jinsafut and Al-Funduq, which are roughly 50km north of Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said it treated 12 people who were beaten by the men.

Jalal Bashir, the head of Jinsafut’s village council, said that the men attacked three houses, a nursery and a carpentry shop located on the village’s main road. Louay Tayem, head of the local council in Al-Funduq, said dozens of men had fired shots, thrown stones, burned cars, and attacked homes and shops.“The settlers were masked and had incendiary materials,” said Mr Bashir. “Their numbers were large and unprecedented.”

A United Nations damage assessment released this month showed that clearing over 50 million tonnes of rubble left in the aftermath of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza could take 21 years and cost up to $1.2 billion.

To make matters worse, some of the debris is believed to be contaminated with asbestos, as some of the coastal enclace’s devastated refugee camps, built up into cities since the 1940s, are known to have been constructed with the material.

Gaza health authorities say at least 47,000 people have been killed in the conflict, with the rubble likely holding the remains of thousands more.

A UN Development Programme reports says that development in the territory has been set back seven decades by the war.

“They [Gazans] are able to return home. …It’s a bit of a stretch of the imagination, I would say, to call it homes, because mostly, particularly in the north, it’s mountains of rubble that they find. So they need help with that,” Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs, told a Geneva press briefing on Tuesday.

Palestinian rescue workers continued the search for remains of Gazans buried under the wreckage of their houses and along the roadsides, locating at least 150 bodies since the truce went into effect, according to the Gaza civil emergency service.

Shocking images of decayed bodies spread on social media. At Shejaia cemetery, which had been flattened by Israeli tanks and bulldozers in previous months, several men dug up the ground searching for the graves of their relatives.

“I have been searching and looking for my father’ grave, my brother’s grave and my brother’s wife’s grave, and I can’t find them,” Atef Jundiya, said at the cemetery in Gaza City.

“I mean, we are relieved by the ceasefire, but at the same time, we are still searching for our martyrs and searching for our graves and can’t find them,” Jundiya told Reuters.

The civil emergency service estimates that 10,000 bodies remain under the rubble, calling for heavy machinery and earth-moving vehicles to help in the extraction process, which officials expect to last for several months.

Some Gazans have not been able to even recognise where they once lived and have consequently turned their back on shattered neighbourhoods to return to tents where they have sheltered for the past several months. Others have begun to clear debris to try to move back to the wreckage of their homes.

“We are cleaning the house, and removing the rubble, so we are able to return home. Those are the quilts, pillows, nothing was left at the house,” said Palestinian woman Walaa El-Err, pointing to her destroyed belongings at her bombed-out home in Nuseirat, a decades-old refugee camp in central Gaza.

She said the feeling of returning to her neighbourhood was “indescribable”. She said she’d stayed up all night on Saturday waiting for the truce to take effect the next day. But the optimism surrounding news of a ceasefire has faded.

“When I went into the camp, I teared up, as our camp was not like that, it was the best. When we left all the towers (and) homes were still untouched, and none of the neighbours had been killed,” she lamented.

In Gaza City in the enclave’s north, Abla, a mother of three children, waited for a few hours to make sure the truce held on Sunday before heading to her home in the Tel Al-Hawa suburb, demolished by Israeli bombardments and ground offensives.

The scene was “horrific” she said, as the seven-floor building had been levelled, “smashed like a piece of biscuit”.

“I heard the area was hit hard and the house could have been gone, but I was driven by both doubt and hope that it could have been saved,” she told Reuters via a chat app.

“What I found wasn’t just a house, it is the box of memories, where I had my children, celebrated their birthday parties, made them food, and taught them their first words and moves,” she said.