Israeli forces killed three Palestinian militants Tuesday inside a hospital in the occupied West Bank, including one that Israel’s military said was a Hamas member planning an imminent attack.
Palestinian health officials said Israeli forces shot and killed the three men after storming Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin.
Video said to be from a surveillance camera at the hospital appeared to show about a dozen undercover troops wearing civilian clothes or dressed in hospital scrubs and white lab coats carrying guns and moving through a corridor of the hospital.
Reuters, which obtained the video, said hospital signs, as well as the color and design of the door and walls in the video, match its own previous footage from the hospital.
The Gaza Health Ministry called on international institutions to pressure Israel to halt operations in health facilities.
Israel has accused Hamas of operating in hospitals and in tunnels underneath health facility sites to hide weapons and use civilians as shields.
The Israeli military identified one of the people killed Tuesday as Mohammed Jalamneh, saying he had links to Hamas and planned to carry out an attack inspired by the October 7 Hamas assault that Israel says killed 1,200 people.
About 370 people in the West Bank have been killed by Israelis, mostly by Israeli forces, since October 7.
In the Gaza Strip, Israel’s counteroffensive has killed more than 26,700 people, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, while also destroying vast swaths of Gaza and displacing nearly 85% of the territory's people.
Israeli strikes continued Tuesday across Gaza, including airstrikes in the Khan Younis area. Israel’s military said airstrikes also hit launchers in central Gaza that had been used to fire rockets at central Israel on Monday.
Hostage talks
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said Tuesday the group had received a cease-fire proposal that would include a six-week halt in fighting and the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians jailed by Israel.
Haniyeh said that Hamas would study the proposal, and that he would visit Cairo to discuss it. But he emphasized the militants’ long-time demand for a permanent cease-fire and an Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza.
“The priority is ending the unjust aggression on Gaza and the complete withdrawal of the occupation’s forces,” Haniyeh said.
He also said Hamas was seeking the reconstruction of Gaza, the lifting of a yearslong Israeli blockade on Gaza and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.
The outline for a possible new agreement came out of talks in Paris among U.S., Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials.
“As Secretary [Antony] Blinken noted yesterday, the proposal on the table is strong and compelling,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters Tuesday. “It envisions a longer humanitarian pause than we saw in November, which would provide an opportunity to get more hostages out and lifesaving humanitarian assistance in: food for the hungry child, medicine for the elderly woman in need, shelter for the family that has been displaced multiple times.”
More than 100 hostages were released during the weeklong November cease-fire in exchange for 240 Palestinians jailed by Israel. Hamas is believed to still be holding another 100 or so hostages.
Palestinian aid
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is to meet with representatives from 35 donor states and the European Union later Tuesday after several major donor countries suspended financial assistance for the United Nations’ relief agency for Palestine refugees following Israeli allegations that a dozen UNRWA staffers may have been involved in the October 7 terror attack.
“We expect the secretary-general to brief member states on the actions taken on the allegations regarding some UNRWA staff, and we will, of course, listen to their concerns,” his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, told reporters. “The secretary-general will again underscore the importance of the humanitarian work that UNRWA does every day in Gaza and in the region.”
More than a dozen countries, including the top donor, the United States, said they are suspending financial support to UNRWA while an investigation is carried out. UNRWA says the suspensions amount to $444 million in revenue.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Tuesday that about $300,000 is currently frozen in funds designated for UNRWA. Future funding this year would depend on the outcome of the investigation and steps taken at UNRWA.
“We need to see fundamental changes before we can resume providing funding directly to UNRWA,” Thomas-Greenfield told reporters. “And as you know, we shouldn't let that cloud the great work that UNRWA does.”
Sigrid Kaag, the U.N.’s new senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters following her first meeting with the Security Council on Tuesday that currently, “There is no way any organization can replace or substitute the tremendous capacity, the fabric, of UNRWA, their ability and their knowledge of the population in Gaza.”
UNRWA employs 13,000 mainly Palestinian staff in Gaza. It has continued to work since October 7 to provide some relief to nearly 2 million displaced Palestinians. More than 150 UNRWA staff have been killed in the fighting between Israel and Hamas. But the U.N. says aid could soon be in jeopardy if funding is not resumed.
Of the dozen staffers implicated by Israel in the deadly attacks, the U.N. immediately fired nine of them, one was confirmed dead, and officials are clarifying the identity of two others. The U.N. immediately opened an internal investigation.
Israel has criticized UNRWA for years, alleging that the schools the agency operates have been used by Hamas for terrorist activities and that they promote an anti-Israel curriculum. Since the October 7 attacks, Israeli officials have accused some agency staffers of celebrating the attacks on social media.
Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and others.
UNRWA has provided basic services, including medical care and education, for Palestinian families who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding the country's creation. They now live in built-up refugee camps in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
In Washington, a congressional subcommittee held a hearing on the agency’s work Tuesday.
Republican Representative Brian Mast accused UNRWA of directly and indirectly supporting “Hamas and other terrorist organizations in multiple different ways,” including allowing Hamas tunnels and rocket launchers under their schools and other facilities — a charge UNRWA has denied.
Democratic Representative Susan Wild agreed that the agency is facing an “unprecedented crisis of credibility” but said it is important that the population of Gaza, which is in a dire humanitarian crisis, does not pay a steeper price because of the action of a dozen bad individuals.
Several protesters were in the hearing room, including from the group Code Pink, and shouted as the legislators spoke. Some protesters wore blue shirts that said, “Ceasefire Now” and held up their hands that were coated in a red substance meant to resemble blood.
VOA correspondent Margaret Besheer reported from the United Nations, and VOA’s Nike Ching contributed reporting from the State Department. Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
