Puma to end kit deal with Israeli national football team

BERLIN, Germany -- German sportswear maker Puma said Tuesday it would end a sponsorship deal with the Israeli national football team in a decision made before the beginning of the war in Gaza.

Following a strategy review carried out at the end of 2022, Puma would stop outfitting the Israeli team from next year, the company said.

"While two newly signed national teams –- including a new statement team –- will be announced later this year and in 2024, the contracts of some federations such as Serbia and Israel will expire in 2024," a spokeswoman said in a statement.

"These decisions were taken in 2022 in line with the regular timelines for the design (and) development of the team jerseys," the spokeswoman said.

The deal with Israel, which was signed in 2018, prompted calls to boycott the sportswear brand.

Campaigners accused Puma of endorsing illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank through its deal with the Israeli FA, which includes teams from the occupied Palestinian territory.

The outbreak in October of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, has strengthened longstanding calls to boycott products which support Israel.

The war was triggered when Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip carried out an unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 240 hostages -- 137 of whom remain in Gaza, Israeli officials say.

In response, Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and began intense bombardments and a ground offensive in Gaza that has killed at least 18,200 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Agence France-Presse

34 Palestinians dead as Islamic Jihad, Israel stop hostilities across Gaza Strip

GAZA/JERUSALEM - Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad and Israel halted hostilities across the Gaza Strip border on Thursday following efforts mediated by Egypt and the United Nations to end the worst surge in fighting in months.

Islamic Jihad said a truce went into effect at 0330 GMT, about 48 hours after Israel triggered the exchange of fire by killing the Iranian-backed faction's top Gaza commander in an airstrike, deeming him an imminent threat.

Gaza medical officials put the total death toll at 34 Palestinians, almost half of them civilians and including eight children and three women.

On the other side of the Gaza border, hundreds of rocket launches by militants paralyzed much of southern Israel, injuring dozens of people.

Hamas, Gaza's dominant faction, appeared to have stayed out of this round of fighting. That may have helped stem escalation.

An Egyptian official contacted by Reuters confirmed a truce had been reached. The Israeli military eased emergency regulations imposed on areas within range of Gaza rockets.

Islamic Jihad said Israel had accepted its demand to stop both the targeted killing of militants and sometimes lethal army gunfire at weekly Palestinian protests on the Gaza border.

"The ceasefire began under Egyptian sponsorship after the Occupation (Israel) submitted to the conditions set by Islamic Jihad on behalf of Palestinian resistance factions," Islamic Jihad spokesman Musab Al-Braim said.

But Israel said it would observe a more limited quid-pro-quo. "Quiet will be answered with quiet," Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Israel's Army Radio.

MISSILE STRIKE

In the deadliest incident of the two-day hostilities, eight members of a Gaza family were killed by an Israeli missile strike shortly before the truce took hold, said medical officials and residents.

They said all were civilians. But Israeli military spokesman Major Avichay Adraee said the head of the family, Rasmi Abu Malhous, who was among the dead, was the commander of Islamic Jihad rocket crews in the central Gaza Strip.

Neighbors left their homes to help rescue workers pull out the bodies of the family, some of which were completely buried in sandy earth. Civilians tried to test the pulse of one body before pulling it out.

Israel's allegation about Rasmi Abu Malhous could not be immediately confirmed by Reuters. Islamic Jihad did not claim him as a member.

Neither the two days of hostilities nor the sudden cessation shifted the dynamics of the underlying core conflict.

While Hamas has been open to long-term ceasefires, like Islamic Jihad it refuses to accept permanent coexistence with Israel.

Gazans are seeking to end years of an Israeli-led blockade. Refugees from the 1948 war of Israel's founding and their descendents make up most of the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza and are seeking the right to return to their former lands.

Israel rejects this as demographic suicide and sees no means of making peace as long as Hamas and Islamic Jihad are armed.

Katz said there would be no change to Israeli military policy in Gaza, contradicting the assertion of Islamic Jihad.

Targeted killings "will not cease," he said, and "the open-fire policy for which the Israel Defence Forces is responsible (at the Gaza border) will not change."

Gaza was mostly quiet at daybreak, with the exception of a lone rocket launch witnessed by a Reuters correspondent and the sounding of sirens in some outlying Israeli towns.

Markets in Gaza reopened as life returned to normal, though people expressed mixed feelings about the truce.

"We responded and made clear our blood was not shed in vain. Also a truce is good because we don't want our people to suffer more under the blockade," said one resident, Mohammad Al-Smairi.

UN mediator Nickolay Mladenov said the Gaza situation remained fragile, tweeting: "All must show maximum restraint and do their part to prevent bloodshed. The Middle East does not need more wars."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Palestinian president to shun Pence over Jerusalem move

Ramallah, Palestinian Territories - Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas will refuse to meet US Vice President Mike Pence later this month following Washington's controversial policy shift on Jerusalem, an Abbas aide said on Saturday, as protests gripped the Palestinian territories for a third straight day.

   
Retaliatory Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip killed two Hamas militants before dawn, as unrest simmered over President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital on Wednesday.

Four people have been killed and dozens wounded since Trump announced the move, which drew criticism from every other member of the UN Security Council at an emergency meeting on Friday.

"There will be no meeting with the vice president of America in Palestine," Abbas's diplomatic adviser Majdi al-Khaldi told AFP.

"The United States has crossed all the red lines with the Jerusalem decision," he added.

Egypt's Coptic Pope Tawadros II also cancelled a meeting with Pence, with the church saying it "declines to receive" him in protest at Trump's announcement which failed to take into account the "feelings of millions" of Arabs.

That decision came a day after Ahmed al-Tayeb who heads Al-Azhar, Egypt's top Sunni Muslim institution, also scrapped plans to meet the US vice president over the "unjust and unfair American decision on Jerusalem".

There were fresh clashes on Saturday as Palestinian protesters in the occupied West Bank hurled stones at Israeli troops, who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds.

In the Gaza Strip, mourners vented their anger at the funerals of two people killed by Israeli troops during clashes at the border fence on Friday and the two Hamas militants killed early on Saturday.

'VIOLENT RIOTS'

An Israeli army statement said "violent riots have erupted at approximately 20 locations" in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip" with protesters throwing rocks, petrol bombs and rolling burning tyres at troops.

It said soldiers responded with unspecified "riot dispersal means", lightly wounding three Palestinians.

In Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, police fired stun grenades to disperse Palestinian demonstrators on the main Salahedin street, an AFP cameraman said.

A police statement said two policemen were slightly injured and six protesters arrested.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said 12 Palestinians were injured by shrapnel from grenades or by blows from police.

INTIFADA CALLS

There have been fears of a much larger escalation of violence after Hamas leader Ismail Haniya called for a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad militant group both renewed that call on Saturday.

Dozens of protesters were wounded by rubber bullets or live fire in clashes in the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem that followed the main weekly Muslim prayers on Friday.

Tens of thousands also protested in Muslim and Arab countries, including Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia.

Saturday's pre-dawn air strike on a base of Hamas's military wing in Nusseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, was one of several, the Israeli military said.

A statement said the air force "targeted four facilities belonging to the Hamas terror organisation" in Gaza a day after three rocket attacks from the Palestinian enclave into southern Israel.

One rocket hit the southern Israeli town of Sderot although Israeli public radio said it did not explode and did not cause any casualties.

Israel had already responded on Friday night to the first two rockets with air strikes in which the Gaza health ministry said 14 people were wounded, among them women and children.

In an Arabic-language Facebook post on Saturday, a senior Israeli military officer delivered a stern warning to the people of Gaza.

"Continued fire will result in a harsh and painful response from the Israel Defence Forces, so do not test our strength," wrote Major General Yoav Mordechai, head of the defence ministry agency responsible for civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories.

The Hamas health ministry in Gaza said the two men killed in Saturday's strikes were members of the movement's armed wing, which has fought three wars with Israel since 2008.

US ISOLATED

Trump's decision drew lavish praise from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but has sparked a worldwide diplomatic backlash. 

Five European countries on the Security Council insisted the new US policy was inconsistent with past resolutions, including one that declares east Jerusalem to be Israeli-occupied.

The meeting was requested by eight of the council's 15 members but was largely symbolic as no vote on a resolution was planned because the US wields veto power.

Trump said his defiant move -- making good on a 2016 presidential campaign pledge -- marked the start of a "new approach" to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The decision is likely to impact domestic Palestinian politics, particularly between Abbas's Fatah and the Islamist Hamas, after a decade of bitter enmity now at a key stage in a fragile reconciliation process.

Abbas "will soon take a harder line toward the peace process and a softer line toward Hamas than he otherwise would have," wrote Ghaith al-Omari of the Washington Institute of Near East Policy.

Hamas, which violently seized Gaza from Fatah in 2017, is due to formally hand back power on Sunday.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement on Saturday that the group "reiterated its commitment to all that has been signed and agreed upon and the completion of the handover".

burs/scw/hc

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Fresh bloodshed in Gaza as Hamas denies holding soldier

GAZA CITY - A fresh wave of violence killed dozens in Gaza after the collapse of a UN and US backed ceasefire, officials said Saturday, as Hamas denied it kidnapped an Israeli soldier.

A Palestinian delegation was due to arrive in Cairo for talks on the terms of a durable truce, however, even after the 72-hour humanitarian ceasefire fell apart within hours starting on Friday.

But the chances of a new truce seemed remote after Israel said it believed militants captured Second Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, 23, in an attack near the southern Gaza city of Rafah that killed two other soldiers.

In the violence that ensued, at least 107 Palestinians were killed in Israel air strikes on the Gaza Strip, including 35 since midnight, officials said.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, a member of Israel's security cabinet which met till the early hours of Saturday, accused Hamas of being behind the soldier's disappearance and said the group would pay a high price.

US President Barack Obama called for the soldier to be "unconditionally" released, but also said more must be done to protect Gaza civilians.

But Hamas' armed wing denied any knowledge about the fate of the missing soldier.

"The Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades has no information on this soldier. We have lost contact with one of our combatant groups, which was fighting in the sector where the soldier went missing and it is possible that our fighters and this soldier were killed," it said.

On Saturday, AFP correspondents said Israeli aerial strikes targeted a mosque at Jebaliya, in northern Gaza, and flattened houses in a beachside neighbourhood.

In Israel, the Iron Dome air defence system intercepted two rockets fired from Gaza over the Tel Aviv area and another over the southern city of Beersheba, the army said.

The Qassam Brigades said they had fired three rockets at Tel Aviv.

- Congress approves Israel funds -

The US Congress had meanwhile on Friday approved an emergency $225 million to restock the Iron Dome systems with interceptor missiles, in a measure that awaits Obama's signature.

Palestinian emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said at least 107 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza since the planned three-day ceasefire collapsed soon after it started at 0500 GMT on Friday.

Since the conflict broke out on July 8, a total of about 1,650 Palestinians have been killed in the violence, the vast majority of them civilians, Qudra said. On the Israeli side, 63 soldiers and three civilians have died.

The Israeli military said the two latest deaths among its forces occurred in the same incident in which the soldier went missing near Rafah.

"Our initial indications suggest a soldier has been abducted by terrorists in an incident where terrorists breached the ceasefire," said spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner.

Israelis are highly sensitive about the kidnapping of their soldiers.

In 2006, Hamas militants from Gaza captured Israeli conscript Gilad Shalit and held him for five years before freeing him in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Obama said the United States "unequivocally condemned Hamas and the Palestinian factions that were responsible for killing two Israeli soldiers, and abducting a third almost minutes after a ceasefire had been announced".

"If they are serious about trying to trying to resolve this situation, that soldier needs to be unconditionally released, as soon as possible.

"We have also been clear that innocent civilians in Gaza caught in the crossfire have to weigh on our conscience and we have to do more to protect them," the US president added.

- Cairo talks 'still on' -

US Secretary of State John Kerry had said that once the ceasefire was under way, Israeli and Palestinian representatives, including from Hamas, would begin talks in Cairo on a more durable truce.

The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad later said Egypt was postponing the talks after news of the missing Israeli soldier, but Cairo said the invitation to talk was "still in place".

And Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said a joint delegation, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, would travel to Cairo on Saturday for talks despite the renewed fighting.

Before the truce, Israeli tank fire and aerial bombardment killed 14 Palestinians in Gaza, and the army said five soldiers died in mortar fire near the shared border.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office accused Hamas and other Gaza militants of "flagrantly violating" the ceasefire.

Hamas in turn said Israel "violated the ceasefire" and that "the Palestinian resistance acted based on... the right to self defence".

Israel launched "Operation Protective Edge" on July 8 to counter rocket fire from Gaza, and nine days later it sent ground troops into the Palestinian enclave to destroy tunnels used by militants to attack its territory.

It has vowed to press on with the offensive until the tunnels are demolished.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Israel shell fire brings Gaza deaths above 800: medics

GAZA CITY - Israeli shell fire on a house in Gaza killed one person Friday, bringing the total death toll to more than 800 Palestinians after one of the bloodiest days of the conflict.

The tank shell hit a home in the southern city of Khan Yunis, emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said, killing at least one man.

Nearly 100 Palestinians were killed on Thursday, according to figures from emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra, as Israel pressed on with its 18-day campaign to stamp out Gaza rocket fire.

Projectiles fired into Israel have killed three civilians - two Israelis and a Thai migrant worker - and fighting in and around Gaza has killed 32 Israeli soldiers.

It is the bloodiest conflict in the besieged Palestinian territory since a 2009 military operation there.

NGOs put the Palestinian civilian toll at around 80 percent of total casualties, including a large number of women and children.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Gaza bloodshed deepens as airlines shun Israel

GAZA/JERUSALEM - Gaza fighting raged on Wednesday, displacing thousands more Palestinians in the battered territory as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said efforts to secure a truce between Israel and Hamas had made some progress.

In a blow to Israel's economy and image, American aviation authorities extended a ban on U.S. flights to Tel Aviv for a second day, spooked by rocket salvoes out of the Gaza Strip, with many other global airlines also avoiding the Jewish state.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, speaking in Qatar, praised the group's fighters, whom he said had made gains against Israel and said he supported a humanitarian truce but a ceasefire would only be acceptable in exchange for easing Gazans' plight.

"Let's agree first on the demands and on implementing them and then we can agree on the zero hour for a ceasefire... We will not accept any proposal that does not lift the blockade... We do not desire war and we do not want it to continue but we will not be broken by it," he said.

Adding to the pressure on Israel, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said there was "a strong possibility" that it was committing war crimes in Gaza, where 692 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting.

She also condemned indiscriminate Islamist rocket fire out of Gaza and the United Nations Human Rights Council said it would launch an international inquiry into alleged violations.

Israel denied any wrongdoing. "Get lost," Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said on her Facebook page in response to the investigation.

Kerry met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and a grim-faced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday. He later returned to Egypt, which shares a border with Gaza and has mediated with Islamist Hamas.

"We have certainly made some steps forward. There is still work to be done," said Kerry, on one of his most intensive regional visits since the peace negotiations he had brokered between Netanyahu and Abbas broke down in April.

An Egyptian official said he expected a humanitarian truce to go into effect by the weekend, in time for the Eid al-Fitr festival, Islam's biggest annual celebration that follows the fasting month of Ramadan.

However, a senior U.S. official played down the Egyptian official's confidence that there would be a truce during Eid, saying this was a U.S. hope but it was by no means locked in.

"It would not be accurate to say that we expect a ceasefire by the weekend," said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We are continuing to work on it, but it is not set at this point."

Kerry, who plans to stay in Cairo until Friday, has been working through Abbas, Egypt and other regional proxies because the United States, like Israel, shuns Hamas as a terrorist group. Hamas brushed off the U.S. diplomat's appeal, saying it would not hold fire without making gains.

"Our interest and that of our people is that no agreement should be made before the conditions of factions of resistance are met," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.

Israel launched its offensive on July 8 to halt rocket salvoes by Hamas and its allies, which have struggled under an Israeli-Egyptian economic blockade on Gaza and been angered by a crackdown on their supporters in the nearby occupied West Bank.

After an aerial and naval bombardment failed to quell the outgunned guerrillas, Israel poured ground forces into the Gaza Strip last Thursday, looking to knock out Hamas's rocket stores and destroy a vast, underground network of tunnels.

"We are meeting resistance around the tunnels ... they are constantly trying to attack us around and in the tunnels. That is the trend," Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner said on Wednesday.

MILITARY LOSSES RISE

Israel announced that three of its soldiers were killed by explosive devices on Wednesday, lifting the army death toll to 32. Three civilians have also been killed in rocket attacks out of Gaza, including a Thai labourer hit on Wednesday.

The military says one of its soldiers is also missing and believes he might be dead. Hamas says it has captured him, but has not released a picture of him in their hands.

Already hurt by mass tourist cancellations, Israel faced increased economic pressure after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) took the rare step on Tuesday of banning flights to Tel Aviv, renewing the order on Wednesday.

Many other foreign carriers, on heightened alert after a Malaysian airliner was shot down over a combat zone in Ukraine last week, followed suit. Israeli carriers continued to operate.

"Hamas's success in closing the Israeli air space is a great victory for the resistance, a terrible failure for Israel that wrecks the image of Israeli deterrence," said Hamas's Abu Zuhri.

The Tel Aviv stock exchange and shekel currency were flat, with traders showing little concern about the flight stoppages.

Clouds of black smoke hung over Gaza with the regular thud of artillery and tank shells filling the air, sending thousands of civilians fleeing from the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip.

"This is not war, this is annihilation," said 17-year-old Hamed Ayman. "I once dreamt of becoming a doctor. Today I am homeless. They should watch out for what I could become next."

Palestinian medics said two worshippers were killed and 30 wounded in an attack on a mosque in the heart of the densely populated Zeitoun neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City.

A Palestinian protester died after a confrontation with Israeli forces in the West Bank.

Israel named four commanders of Hamas ally Islamic Jihad that it said it had killed in recent days.

HAMAS DEMANDS

Egypt has tried to get both sides to hold fire and then negotiate terms for protracted calm in Gaza, which has been rocked by regular bouts of violence since Israel unilaterally pulled out of the territory in 2005.

Hamas, which rejects Israel's right to exist, has balked at Cairo's original proposal, wanting its conditions to be met in full before any end to the conflict.

These demands include the release of hundreds of Hamas supporters recently arrested in the nearby West Bank and an end to the Egyptian-Israeli blockade of Gaza, which has stymied the economy and made it near impossible for anyone to travel abroad.

The war is extracting a heavy toll on impoverished Gaza, with Palestinian officials saying that at least 475 houses had been totally destroyed by Israeli fire and 2,644 partially damaged. Some 46 schools, 56 mosques and seven hospitals had also suffered varying degrees of destruction.

"There seems to be a strong possibility that international humanitarian law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes," the U.N.'s Pillay told an emergency session at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva.

Netanyahu reacted furiously to news of the planned U.N. investigation, aware of the damning report into Israel's 2008/09 Gaza operation, which killed more than 1,000 Palestinians.

"The decision today by the HRC is a travesty," he said in a statement. "The HRC should be launching an investigation into Hamas's decision to turn hospitals into military command centres, use schools as weapons depots and place missile batteries next to playgrounds, private homes and mosques."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com