Israel keeps bombing the refugee camp’s….
The portal between Israel and Egypt has opened for injuries and foreign nationals to pass thru….
Commications in Gaza have been disrupted…
Amwerican nationals should be exiting Gaz in the near future…
US Sec of State Blinken is flying back to Israel in a few days presumedly to lean on the Israeli’s to let up on the bombing, which they seem to be ignoring….Blinken is working on post conflict Gaza ….
Quietly so far….
US and other countries have been inserting their own Special Operators into Israel to stand by and help if any hostage action should dvelop for their countries people….There maybe FBI (State CIA) and other agencies on the ground in Israel also….
US has also sent senior US Military staff to consult with their Israeli counterparts….
Here’s what to know
Some people with dual nationalities and seriously injured Palestinians arrived in Egypt on Wednesday, Egyptian state-owned TV said, as the Gaza border opened for the first such crossings since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel.
Three critically injured people from Gaza arrived at an Egyptian hospital near the border, a hospital official said. And Egyptian state TV showed what it said was a group of foreign or dual nationalscarrying luggage on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, where they were to have documents checked.
The crossings came after a deal negotiated late Tuesday among Israel, Egypt, Hamas, the United States and Qatar. Egypt was set to receive hundreds of people on Wednesday, according to Western diplomats in Cairo and Jerusalem and the Gaza authorities.
The Rafah crossing has been the focus of heated international negotiations as the only possible escape route, as well as the only entry point for relief supplies, as Israel retaliated for an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas by starting a three-week bombing campaign and sending troops deep into Gaza. The toll of Israeli strikes in Gaza deepened on Tuesday when Hamas and hospital officials said that many people had been killed or injured in an Israeli airstrike on the Jabaliya neighborhood. On Wednesday, the Gazan interior ministry said that another airstrike in the same area had killed and injured more people.
Early Wednesday, Gaza’s two million residents appeared to have been once again plunged into a communication blackout. The strip’s main telecommunications provider said around 4 a.m. that its services had been disrupted. Over the weekend, as Israel began its ground invasion, residents endured a panic-inducing 34-hour blackout, cut off from the outside world and each other and unable to contact emergency services.
Here’s what else to know:
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Israel said its strike on Tuesday in the Jabaliya area, home to Gaza’s largest refugee camp, had successfully targeted Hamas militants, including a commander who was central to the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1,400 people. A Hamas spokesman denied that a commander had been in the area. Nearly 8,800 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, according to the Gazan health ministry.
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American citizens are not expected to be among Wednesday’s evacuees, other than those working for certain aid groups, but they are slated to follow in batches later in the week, three of the diplomats said. A U.S. State Department email sent to U.S. citizens in Gaza said “limited departures from Gaza may begin this week.” It was not immediately clear why U.S. citizens were not on the list to leave on Wednesday.
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Bolivia severed diplomatic ties with Israel over its strikes on Gaza, a decision that Israel condemned as a “surrender to terrorism.” Israel’s ties with other countries in Latin America have begun to fray over the war.
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The Pentagon said that American commandos were on the ground in Israel to help locate the more than 200 hostages seized during the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.
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The U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, plans to travel to Israel on Friday to meet with Israeli government officials before going to other countries in the region, the State Department said…..