Israel Presses Onslaught in Gaza’s Khan Younis as US Pursues Ceasefire Quest 

Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Deir al Balah, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. (AP)
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Deir al Balah, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. (AP)
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Israel Presses Onslaught in Gaza’s Khan Younis as US Pursues Ceasefire Quest 

Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Deir al Balah, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. (AP)
Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip in Deir al Balah, Monday, Feb. 5, 2024. (AP)

An Israeli air strike on an apartment in southern Gaza killed six people on Tuesday, Palestinian health officials said, as the top US diplomat arrived in Egypt to pursue a quest for a truce deal in the shattering four-month-old war.

Israel said its forces had killed dozens of Palestinian gunmen throughout Gaza in the past 24 hours with fighting focused on Khan Younis in the south and a threatened assault looming on a nearby border town teeming with displaced people.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed for meetings in Cairo after a stop on Monday in Saudi Arabia during his latest trouble-shooting Middle East swing Palestinians hope will clinch a truce before Israeli forces storm Gaza's southern fringes where over a million of Gaza's people are sheltering.

It was Blinken's fifth trip to the region since Hamas militants' lightning attack on Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7 triggered the war, and his first visit since Washington brokered an offer, with Israeli input, for the first extended ceasefire of the conflict, which Hamas says it is still weighing.

Blinken departed Riyadh just after sunrise for a marathon day of talks in Egypt and Qatar before he flies on to Israel.

Washington seeks a deal to secure the release of remaining hostages among those Hamas kidnapped in its Oct. 7 assault as key to making headway on broader challenges such as the governance of post-war Gaza.

The ceasefire offer, delivered to Hamas last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators, awaits a reply from militants who say they want more guarantees it will stop Israel's blitz on Gaza, against Israeli vows to keep fighting until Hamas is wiped out.

Washington also aims to prevent further escalation elsewhere in the Middle East, after days of US airstrikes on armed proxies of Iran, a major backer of Hamas, and further attacks on Red Sea shipping by Yemen's Tehran-aligned Houthi militias.

In an update on Tuesday, Gaza's Health Ministry said at least 27,585 Palestinians had been confirmed killed in Israel's ground and aerial blitz with thousands more feared buried under vast tracts of rubble across the densely populated enclave. Some 107 had been killed in the past 24 hours, the ministry said.

Israel says 226 of its soldiers have been killed in its offensive, launched after militants from Hamas-ruled Gaza burst through the border fence and killed 1,200 people and took 253 hostages in a rampage through nearby Israeli communities.

ISRAELI FIREPOWER FOCUSED ON KHAN YOUNIS

Israeli forces on Tuesday kept up the pressure on Khan Younis, the focus of its offensive for weeks, bombarding targets from the ground and air again overnight, causing many more deaths and injuries including the six dead from the air strike on the apartment, Palestinian residents and medics told Reuters.

They said Israeli tanks and aircraft continued to pound and besiege areas around Khan Younis's two main hospitals - Nasser and Al-Amal. Israel's military says Hamas militants use hospital premises for cover, which Gaza's rulers Hamas deny.

Rafah, Palestinians' last southern refuge from Israeli advances towards the border with Egypt, was battered by several Israeli air strikes and tank shelling overnight with medics reporting at least several wounded among the many displaced.

At makeshift tent camps in Rafah, untreated sewage flooded towards a shelter for the displaced, the latest sign of Gaza's sanitation system collapsing, raising the specter of disease.

Clothes flapped outside tents made from sheets of thin plastic. Hanan Abu Gabal cooked for her family in a pot over a small fire in the sand.

"We fled for our lives right in the middle of the battle. A rocket was thrown in the school and we barely made it out alive," she said. "We were forcefully displaced from Khan Younis; they followed us. And now we've been forcefully displaced to Rafah, but where else are we meant to go?"

In Gaza City in the north of the narrow coastal enclave, residents reported further Israeli air strikes and tank shelling. Fighting has resurged in Gaza City two months after Israel said it had subdued the area.

In parts of urban north Gaza, displaced people venturing back to check the fate of their homes after some Israeli tanks pulled back told Reuters they were shocked to find few buildings still standing, with rows of multi-floor apartment blocks razed and roads flipped upside down by Israeli bulldozers and bombs.

TRUCE PROPOSAL, WIDER AMBITIONS

During his trouble-shooting Middle East swing, Blinken also aims to win backing for US plans for what would follow a Gaza truce: rebuilding and running the tiny territory, and ultimately for a Palestinian state - which Israel now rules out.

The ceasefire proposal, as described by sources close to the talks, envisages a truce of at least 40 days when militants would free civilians among remaining hostages they are holding, followed by later phases to hand over soldiers and bodies, in exchange for releases of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.

The only truce so far lasted a week in November.

The Gaza war has escalated violence in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Palestinians also seek statehood.

On Monday, Israeli police said officers killed a knife-wielding male who tried to attack them near Maale Adumim, a large West Bank settlement near Jerusalem. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA said a 14-year-old Palestinian was killed in the incident.



Lebanese Officials, Palestinian President Agree on State Monopoly over Arms

This handout picture released by the Palestinian Authority's Press Office (PPO) shows President Mahmoud Abbas (L) and Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam talking as they overlook Beirut on May 22, 2025. (PPO / AFP / Handout)
This handout picture released by the Palestinian Authority's Press Office (PPO) shows President Mahmoud Abbas (L) and Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam talking as they overlook Beirut on May 22, 2025. (PPO / AFP / Handout)
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Lebanese Officials, Palestinian President Agree on State Monopoly over Arms

This handout picture released by the Palestinian Authority's Press Office (PPO) shows President Mahmoud Abbas (L) and Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam talking as they overlook Beirut on May 22, 2025. (PPO / AFP / Handout)
This handout picture released by the Palestinian Authority's Press Office (PPO) shows President Mahmoud Abbas (L) and Lebanon's Prime Minister Nawaf Salam talking as they overlook Beirut on May 22, 2025. (PPO / AFP / Handout)

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas continued on Thursday his visit to Lebanon with agreements being reached that only the Lebanese state should have monopoly over the possession of weapons, effectively ending the proliferation of Palestinian arms in the country.

Abbas held separate meetings with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Thursday. The visit, his first to Lebanon since 2017, aims to resolve the issue of Palestinian weapons in refugee camps as the Lebanese state seeks to impose its authority throughout its territories.

The hour-long meeting with Berri tackled the general situation in Lebanon and the region as “Israel continues its aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank,” said a parliament statement. They also covered Lebanese-Palestinian relations.

Lebanese parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, right, shakes hands with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ahead of a meeting in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, May 22, 2025. (AP)

At the government palace, Abbas held a bilateral meeting with Salam, and later a security meeting attended by Lebanese and Palestinian officials.

A statement from Salam’s office said discussions focused on “ongoing efforts to bolster Lebanon’s stability and security and ensure that the sovereignty of the Lebanese state is respected throughout its territories, including in the Palestinian refugee camps.”

Salam and Abbas agreed that the Palestinians in Lebanon “are guests and they should commit to the decisions of the Lebanese state.” They rejected attempts to naturalize the Palestinians, underlining their right to return to their homeland.

They agreed “to end all forms of armed presence outside the authority of the state and completely put an end to the issue of Palestinian weapons outside or inside the camps, so that the state can have monopoly over arms.”

An agreement was reached to form a joint executive committee to implement these agreements, said the statement.

Salam and Abbas also underscored “the importance of joint work to address the rights and social issues related to the Palestinian refugees, so that their humanitarian conditions are improved while state sovereignty is respected.”

On Gaza, they called for an end to Israel’s war and rejected attempts to displace the Palestinian people. They reiterated support to the two-state solution, saying it would fairly and comprehensively resolve the conflict in the region. They urged the implementation of relevant international resolutions and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative that would ensure the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Lebanese sources confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat the formation of the joint Lebanese-Palestinian committee that would handle the issue of Palestinian weapons in Lebanon. It will hold its first meeting on Friday.

The sources said it will be comprised of Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Committee chief Ramez Dimechkie, Lebanese General Security chief Hassan Choucair, Lebanese Army Intelligence chief Brigadier General Tony Kahwaji, Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Azzam al-Ahmed, Palestinian Ambassador to Lebanon Ashraf Dabbour, and Secretary of Fatah and PLO factions in Lebanon Fathi Abu al-Ardat.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (R) signs a guest book as Lebanese President Joseph Aoun looks on at the presidential palace in Baabda, near Beirut, Lebanon, 21 May 2025. (EPA)

Salam confirmed Friday's meeting in a post on the X platform. He said it will discuss “setting a clear timeframe for the implementation of the mechanism to limit the possession of weapons to the state, including arms inside the camps. It will also discuss the civil rights of Palestinians in Lebanon.”

“These weapons no longer help achieve the rights of the Palestinian people, but they are a danger because they could be used to stir intra-Palestinian or Palestinian-Lebanese strife,” he warned.

“The strength of the Palestinian cause does not lie in the weapons inside the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, but in the rising number of countries that recognize a Palestinian state and hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating across the world in solidarity with the Palestinians and Gaza,” Salam stressed.

Abbas had kicked of his three-day visit to Lebanon on Wednesday with a meeting with President Joseph Aoun.

He had declared to Aoun that the Palestinians in Lebanon “will not operate outside of Lebanese law. They are temporary guests and have no desire, opinion or stance that supports the carrying of weapons.”

Leading member of the Progressive Socialist Party Toufic Sultan described Abbas and Aoun’s meeting as “historic”.

Speaking at a press conference, he added: “We have waited long for the Palestinian presence and their weapons to be put on the table. It has long been a dream for Lebanon to be devoid of weapons. Gone are the days of a state within a state.”