UNICEF says polio vaccination campaign in Gaza is surpassing its target

International Desk: The U.N. children’s agency says a polio vaccination campaign in Gaza reached 189,000 children, surpassing its target and providing a “rare bright spot” in nearly 11 months of war.

UNICEF said Wednesday that more than 500 teams deployed across central Gaza this week, administering the vaccine to children under 10.

It said Israel and Hamas observed limited pauses in the fighting to facilitate the campaign. U.N. agencies now hope to expand the campaign to the harder-hit north and south of the territory. They hope to vaccinate a total of 640,000 children.

The campaign was launched after Gaza had its first reported polio case in 25 years — a 10-month-old boy, now paralyzed in the leg.

Health experts have warned of disease outbreaks in the territory, where the vast majority of people have been displaced, often multiple times, and where hunger is widespread.

Hundreds of thousands of people are crammed into squalid tent camps with few if any public services as Israel continues into offensive, which has killed more than 40,800 people in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people.

Here’s the latest:

Israeli drone strike kills 5 men in a car in the West Bank, Palestinian news agency reports
The Palestinian news agency WAFA reported early Thursday that an Israeli drone strike killed five men and wounded another in a car in Tubas in the West Bank.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it carried out “three targeted strikes on armed terrorists that posed a threat on the soldiers,” without immediately elaborating.

For more than a week, hundreds of Israeli forces have been carrying out the deadliest operation in the occupied West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began.

Israel and Hamas in agreement on 14 of 18 paragraphs in proposal, US official says
Israel and Hamas are in agreement on 14 of the 18 paragraphs in the proposal meant to bridge gaps in cease-fire talks between the two sides, according to a senior Biden administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing negotiations. But the official said Israel and Hamas have technical differences about one paragraph and deeper differences about three paragraphs of the proposal.

Those three paragraphs focus on the number of Palestinian prisoners who would be released in exchange for Hamas’ Israeli hostages during the first phase of the three-phased cease-fire deal.

Hamas has also raised objections about a continued presence of Israel Defense Forces in the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow 14.5-kilometer-long (9-mile) stretch of land along the coastal enclave’s southern border with Egypt.

Netanyahu has been adamant that Israeli troops remain in the corridor, while Hamas says that position is in breach of the bridging agreement’s call for Israel to leave densely-populated areas of Gaza. The official, however, said there is no direct mention of the Philadelphi corridor in the bridging proposal.

Significant differences remain between the two sides regarding the prisoner-for-hostage exchange in phase one. The list of Palestinian prisoners to be released in the initial phase of the deal includes some who are serving life sentences in Israeli prisons. But the official said that dispute about the ratio of prisoners to hostages to be swapped has been further complicated by last week’s execution of six people taken captive by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

For each hostage, there’s a certain number of Palestinian prisoners that were to be released. Now, “you just have fewer hostages as part of the deal in phase one,” the official said.

The official also expressed frustration with far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition who are staunchly opposing a cease-fire agreement, arguing it would jeopardize Israel’s security in the long term. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir say that the war must continue until Hamas is destroyed and have threatened to topple the government if Netanyahu were to move forward with a cease-fire deal.

The official called the far-right ministers’ position “fundamentally, totally untrue” and argued that “not getting into this deal is more of a threat to Israel’s long-term security than actually concluding the deal.”

US and Israeli officials discuss tensions at the Israel-Lebanon border

WASHINGTON — White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer held a virtual meeting Wednesday to discuss the ongoing tensions at the Israel-Lebanon border, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.

The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly, said that senior White House national security officials Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein also took part in the discussions about concerns that the tensions with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah could cause the war in Gaza to spread into a regional conflict.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said White House officials on Wednesday continued conversations with Israeli officials in hopes of sealing a cease-fire deal. U.S. officials also spoke with Egyptian and Qatari officials, who have served as intermediaries for Hamas. But Kirby declined to confirm that Sullivan and other senior White House officials spoke with Dermer on Wednesday.

Netanyahu says Israel must keep open-ended control of Gaza’s border with Egypt

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel must keep open-ended control of Gaza’s border with Egypt, digging in on his stance on an issue that has threatened to derail cease-fire efforts.

The question of Israeli control of the Philadelphi corridor – a narrow strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt, seized by troops in May – has become a central obstacle in the latest negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release. Hamas has demanded an eventual full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in the multi-phase truce deal.

Egypt, a mediator in the talks along with the U.S. and Qatar, has also demanded a concrete timeline for Israeli troops to leave the Philadelphi corridor.

In a press conference Monday, Netanyahu repeated his stance that Israel must maintain its hold on the border to prevent Hamas from rearming by smuggling weapons into Gaza.

“Gaza must be demilitarized, and this can only happen if the Philadelphi corridor remains under firm control,” he said, claiming Israeli troops had discovered dozens of tunnels under the border.

He said Israel would only consider withdrawing from the corridor when presented with an alternative force to police it.

Hostages’ families demand that Netanyahu stop wearing a yellow pin of solidarity

JERUSALEM — A group representing families of the hostages held in Gaza demanded Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stop wearing a yellow pin, a global symbol of solidarity with the hostages.

“Stop creating a false impression of support and of striving to bring back the hostages when in reality you are doing everything to torpedo the deal,” the group, the Hostages and Missing Families forum, said in a statement.

The demand comes as protests rock Israel over the recent recovery of six young hostages from Gaza, who the military says were shot by their Hamas captors as Israeli forces closed in on the tunnel in which they were held.

The news has escalated calls for Netanyahu to immediately agree to a deal that would free some of the hostages remaining in the strip in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and a pause in combat. Netanyahu wants to maintain the presence of Israeli troops along a key corridor inside Gaza, a demand that Hamas has refused and the families of the hostages say is derailing negotiations.

Israeli shelling kills woman, injures child in southern Lebanon, officials say

BEIRUT — Israeli shelling Wednesday in southern Lebanon killed a woman and wounded two others, including a 12-year-old child, the Lebanese Health Ministry said.

The ministry did not disclose details about the second person wounded in the southeastern town of Qabrikha.

The Health Ministry also said two people in Khiam and three others in Houla were wounded following Israeli attacks over the southern towns.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah also announced six rocket and artillery attacks on military positions in northern Israel.

German foreign minister says cease-fire deal must be highest priority

BERLIN – Germany, a close ally of Israel, says a cease-fire agreement with Hamas must have the “highest priority.” The foreign minister is expected to underline the message on a trip to the Middle East this week.

Government spokesperson Wolfgang Büchner said Wednesday that the killing of six Israeli hostages “has once again made clear that a cease-fire that opens the way to the freeing of all hostages held by Hamas must now have the highest priority. Other considerations should stand back.”

He called on all involved in the negotiations to show flexibility and readiness to compromise, and said an agreement could also help de-escalate regional tensions.

Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is setting off Wednesday evening on a trip to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and the West Bank to speak with regional officials, including Israel’s foreign and defense ministers and the Palestinian prime minister. It will be her 11th visit to the Middle East and her ninth to Israel since Hamas’ attack on Israel triggered the war nearly 11 months ago.

Greta Thunberg among 6 detained at anti-Israel demonstration in Denmark
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg was among six people who were detained in Denmark, police said, after they demonstrated against the University of Copenhagen for cooperating with Israeli universities and shouted pro-Palestinian slogans.

The group was detained Wednesday for suspected trespassing after police said they briefly occupied one of the entrances to the university. They were all later released.

Police evicted the demonstrators after they hung an anti-Israel banner from one of the windows of the university’s old administration building in downtown Copenhagen.